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anashins · 3 years

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The Right Kind of Wrong

Title: The Right Kind of Wrong

Pairing: Jaehyun x You

Genre: hate to love, cheating, college!au, friendship, romance, smut

Warnings: smut, cheating, cursing, toxicity

Word Count: 8.454

Summary: There are many reasons for you to hate Jung Jaehyun. Aside from being cocky and selfish, the fact that he is dating your best friend is another one of them. But his mesmerizing smile - to hell with it - just isn't.

____

There were at least a hundred things you hated about Jung Jaehyun.

The fact that he was dating your best friend was just one of them.

Not a single day had passed by in the last year in which she hadn’t complained about her boyfriend having flirted with another woman, having ditched her again, going to a party and ignoring her all night, or simply dragging her mood down by one of his unpredictable and hurtful actions.

Aside from being cocky, selfish, arrogant and reckless, Jung Jaehyun was absolutely incapable of being a decent human being for more than ten seconds, and you were wondering why he was so damn popular despite all his faults.

When you went out with your friend group, he mocked the boys trying to hit on you, telling you they were so desperate for that move. When you were attending the same class, he purposely sat down next to you to distract you from the lesson. When he was at your dorm, he kept moving your things onto high shelves, knowing you couldn’t reach them.

And his smirk everytime he did so… his smirk every time he mocked you was so annoying. But also so hot.

Fuck, you thought whenever his mischievious eyes met yours again, and you had to turn away, at a loss for words and afraid he’d caught you flushing. You were so ashamed, because you actually wanted to hate him.

There were many reasons for you to hate Jung Jaehyun, but his mesmerizing smile wasn't one of them.

You hadn’t hated him from the first moment that you two had officially met as you had gotten introduced to each other through your best friend who was also your dorm mate, though. She had found him on a dating app, and you had found him sitting in your class two days later, talking back to the professor.

Back then, you had started admiring his intelligence and courage. But those were the only two positive things you had spotted so far as you only tried to stay as far away from him as possible, emphasizing his negative character traits over and over again.

But the truth was that staying away from him was a very hard thing to do, and you fought every day for your sanity, trying to be a good friend and suppressing your controversial feelings for a man who was absolutely forbidden to you.

“He went drinking last night and I saw an instagram story of him grinding against another girl on the dancefloor!” your best friend complained in your arms, tears on the verge of flowing. “Who’s doing that even?!”

A few pairs of eyes turned into your direction, but when you threw fierce glances at the people staring at you, they passed by very quickly.

When you had been invited to your friend Johnny’s house party, you hadn’t expected to be spending the evening comforting your best friend, even though that had been your daily routine for the past three weeks.

It had grown toxicly usual for Jaehyun and her to fight in a two to three day rhythm over the smallest things, and although their wonky relationship or whatever it was hadn’t been very steady before with them breaking up nearly monthly, lately it had grown almost obnoxious.

“Why don’t you just break up with him?” you suggested again and immediately felt your heart sink.

It wasn’t like you wanted them to break up because you wanted Jaehyun for yourself. You’d never do that to her.

Your best friend was just constantly hurting, and it hurt you just as much when you saw her suffering so greatly. Jung Jaehyun wasn’t a good guy, and you both knew. Yet, she couldn’t let go of him. You knew exactly how that felt.

Even if they were to break up, he wouldn’t belong to you. Because a friend’s ex was a taboo. So having Jaehyun gone entirely from your lives would kill two birds with one stone.

“Not that again!” your friend whined and retreated from you, sinking into the couch with her arms crossed and no signs of tears anymore. “I can’t! I mean… look at him! He’s so hot, and don’t get me even started about his skills in bed. That’s where we usually make up, you know, so-”

“I’m going to get you something to drink!�� you interrupted her and jumped up. “You totally need a cocktail now! To come to your senses!”

You loved your best friend dearly, but you didn’t want to hear about Jaehyun’s skills by all means. At some times, your friend didn’t have a filter, and then, it only spiraled downhill from there. You heard them often enough in the dorm, that was already pushing you to your limits.

When you entered the kitchen, you reached up to get a glass from the shelf, but like most of the times, you were too short for the remaining ones at the very top.

“Here, let me help you.”

A soft voice echoed from behind you, but before you could turn around to follow the tone, the guy had already heaved up his arm and reached over you to the very top of the shelf to get you a glass.

Shifting around, you faced the mischievous expression of the young man you had wanted to avoid and who your best friend was currently crying over.

Without a “thank you”, you reached out your hand to grab the glass from Jaehyun, but he immediately shot his arm up to bring the glass high over his head and far out of your reach.

“You think a simple ‘thank you’ is too much for you?”

“Fuck off, Jaehyun.” You crunched with your teeth and narrowed your eyes. “I’d rather die of thirst!”

“What did I do again?” He rolled his eyes in an annoyed manner as though his high spirits got ruined. “What did she tell you?”

“She told me everything she saw from last night!” you defended your friend. “That’s enough for me to get the picture!”

“Okay, and did the picture somehow include me pushing the girl away after she had grinded on me?”

You gulped.

“Just as I thought.”

He placed the glass on the counter, but somehow, this hadn’t got your both’s attention anymore.

“There are two sides of the same coin, yet all you've ever done was looking only at one.”

He approached you, and the rising hotness in your cheeks made you withdraw until your hips bumped into the kitchen counter.

Jaehyun leaned in and propped his arm against the same spot right next to your hip as he asked, “I know you’re her best friend, but being a friend doesn’t mean supporting your friends delusional, one sided thoughts into oblivion. Being a friend sure means to support, I’m not denying that. But being a true friend means to tell someone when they’re wrong. And I am not the one at fault here, y/n.”

“You were doing many stupid things to hurt her in the past!” you started blabbering just to bridge over the silence you’d get when you would stare at his mesmerizing eyes for a little longer. “How am I supposed to believe you?”

“You aren’t supposed to believe me.” He retreated, with the glass in his hand. “All I’m asking for is a chance to explain myself.”

Again, you were flabbergasted by the way he expressed his thoughts that stood in contrast to his questionable behavior. One of the main things that fascinated you. But you quickly turned this feeling into hate by recalling his wrongdoings from the night before.

Looking at the glass, Jaehyun continued, “Yes, there were many things I did wrong in the past. And I’m not going to pinpoint my finger at my girlfriend to tell that she was doing just as many questionable things as me. But people have reasons for doing the things they do. That’s probably why we’re such a good match.”

You didn’t understand a word. In your eyes, and you only knew about their relationship by what your friend told you and what you observed when you were hanging out, the two weren’t a good match at all.

He was the one constantly hurting her feelings, and she was the one to always get hurt.

Or... wasn’t it?

Jaehyun then thrusted the glass into your hand. “You’re lucky, y/n, you know that? It must be so great, living that freely, without any burdens… So oblivious to everything.”

With these words, he disappeared from the kitchen, leaving you behind all alone with the glass in your hand.

You looked at the item, your face getting reflected in the crystals to unrecognizability while Jaehyun’s words still kept you occupied. They had such an impact on you that you suddenly started to question whether your hate against him was actually valid.

When you stepped out of the kitchen yourself with a full glass of your best friend’s favorite cocktail in your hand, you found her in Jaehyun’s arms again, wildly kissing, his kind words suddenly vanished from your mind upon spotting them.

Instead, there was a little monster called jealousy sitting right inside your chest.

___

“8am in the morning! Who even places classes that early?!”

With a groan, Jaehyun flopped down in the seat next to you.

“Shut up, class is about to start.”

“Man, you must be really fun at parties,” he replied. “The professor is not even here yet.”

“You’re annoying, Jung Jaehyun, and if you weren’t dating my friend, I wouldn’t actually talk to you at all.”

“What are the odds we’re still connected to each other, huh! Tell me, y/n, what did I ever do to you? How did I ever hurt you? We’ve never even really spoken with each other ever since we’ve gotten introduced.”

“And I am grateful for this every single day.”

“What is it that you hate about me so much?” he questioned further, his eyes challenging.

But with your eyes straight ahead and no words on your lips, you ignored him as the professor entered the room only a short moment after, announcing the class’ start.

Your pen flew over the sheet, noting down the professor’s words when suddenly, goose bumps spread all over your arm.

When your eyes followed the trail to its source, your right elbow touched Jaehyun’s left one as a result of your hectic writing motions as you had moved too far to the side. The spot on your skin was so warm and so…

You withdrew your arm right away, placing it back to where it usually belonged, but Jaehyun’s own limb had moved so far to the left that you had no place to rest it next to your notes anymore without having his skin barely one inch apart from you. You weren’t touching anymore, but he was so close that you still felt him somehow.

Of course you could drop your arm and place it on your lap as the professor had stopped presenting the most important points of this lesson. Of course you could just move further away with your entire belongings, but the fact was that you didn’t. That you couldn’t.

Instead, you were fixating your eyes on the board right in front of you, listening to your professor’s words but not actually understanding a single syllable that he uttered as your heart beat fast against your chest.

You hoped that Jaehyun didn’t notice how desperate you were for him not to shift away right now. That you actually enjoyed it, but felt so much hatred at the same time. Not against him, but against you - for feeling this way.

“Can you answer my question, Miss y/n?”

Your eyes widened in shock as you got addressed by the professor by your surname. You were actually a good student who was always paying attention in class. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have happened. But now you got caught red handed not listening to him, and he was a very strict lecturer.

“I… um…” you stuttered.

“The answer to my question, Miss.”

“Yes… the answer…” You gulped as you didn’t even know the question. “The answer is…”

From the corner of your eyes, you perceived how a sheet was slowly moving into your direction from Jaehyun’s place. His finger was pointed at a paragraph that you had also noted down only shortly before.

Suddenly, you knew what the question was about and answered formally to the professor’s task.

With your heart having calmed down after the shock, you let yourself sink down on your seat again. You had gotten distracted only once by something that shouldn’t bother you at all.

This wouldn’t happen again, you swore to yourself.

____

“No ‘thank you’ again from you?”

You turned around to Jaehyun who had rosen a brow at you. “Is this becoming your thing now? Asking for ‘thank yous’?”

“Is this becoming your thing now?” he returned. “Not saying ‘thank you’? I saved your ass in class.”

“Well, I haven’t asked for that, so go beg somewhere else for attention.”

You made your way through the crowded club, feelling the bass under your feet and the techno music in your ears. Jaehyun was following suit.

“Do you want some kind of reward from me? Because you’re not going to get it.”

“I don’t want a reward. Hey.”

He reached out and grabbed you by your arm, right there on the dancefloor. The feeling from this morning returned, but in a higher intensity as it spread all over your body.

“All I’m asking for is respect.”

You snorted. “Respect? Do you respect my friend when you destroy her weekend plans to go drinking with your friends instead? Do you respect my friend when you dance ass on ass with another girl? Do you respect my friend when you hurt her feelings with your rude words? I don’t like you, Jung Jaehyun, because you’re a bad person, and respect is the last thing you’ll ever get from me!”

You yanked yourself out from his grip and disappeared in the mass. What was up with him? Why was he bothering so much lately and evoking all these controversial feelings inside you by acting like this? He should just stay away.

With your eyes closed, you started to move with the music, all by yourself there on the dancefloor. You wanted to collect your thoughts, but as the music flooded through your body, you realized that thinking about nothing was probably the best way to cope with your inner struggles right now.

You opened your eyes widely when you suddenly felt a hand on your bum.

Turning around with much anger reflected in your mien, you stared at a boy around your age who grinned at you seductively. Your fierce gaze was probably mistaken for an invitation when he approached you further, grabbed you by your hips from the front and pressed you against him.

With his lips on your ear, he whispered, “I like what I see.”

And you wanted to scream. You probably did, but it got drowned out by the loud music, and his grip was way too hard for you to free yourself that easily as you shuffled in his arms.

“Let me go!”

Yet, his hands roamed around your private areas like they owned it.

“HEY!”

Before you could scream once more, the guy got dragged away from you by the last person you had expected it from.

“She said let go of her, you asshole!”

Jaehyun grabbed him by his collar, and his height and angry expression alone were probably enough for the other guy to nearly piss his pants as he hastily mouthed,

“I’m so sorry!”

When Jaehyun let go of him, he slipped off silently and wasn’t seen again.

You stood there awkwardly with your arms hugging your chest, still digesting the happenings.

“Did he hurt you?” Jaehyun asked when he leaned in for you to understand better.

You shook your head.

“Do you want to go outside?”

You nodded.

Jaehyun took you by your hand to lead you through the dancing crowd, and you didn’t protest.

This gesture was the total opposite to the disgusting one from the guy who had harassed you shortly before. This touch was raw and chaste. Nothing to be ashamed of and fight against, but something you wanted to accept wholeheartedly.

When you stood outside of the club, Jaehyun let go of your hand, and you finally whispered the words that he had been longing to hear for quite a time,

“Thank you.”

Against your expectations, he didn’t mock you or return witty words. With his eyes locked with yours, he sincerely told you,

“You’re welcome.”

That was the moment it dawned on you that Jung Jaehyun had more positive sides to him that you had always wanted to blend out. But perhaps, you had reached a point in which this wasn’t possible anymore.

You couldn’t continue keeping your eyes closed to all the kind sides of him. Because the more he showed you, the more you’d open your heart for him.

To you, Jung Jaehyun had to remain a bad person, otherwise you’d fall for him, and falling for your best friend’s boyfriend was a taboo.

“Hey, what are you two doing outside?!” Speaking of the devil, your best friend jumped out of the club’s door and into your direction. “Isn’t the music fun?”

Jaehyun looked at you, waiting for your reaction. You knew that if you wanted to go home, he’d follow. If you wanted to stay, he’d stay too, not letting you out of his sight. Because - and you couldn’t repeat this often enough - Jaehyun was actually a good person.

“I want to go home,” you decided. “You can stay, though! Please just let me be the party pooper all alone, I don’t want to spoil your night.”

“Oh, what a pity!” your friend said with a pout. “You always leave when the party is about to start!”

You shrugged with a weak smile, tired of fighting. “Yeah, I guess so. But I still have a lot of pages to revise.”

“Shall we take you back to the dorm?” Jaehyun offered in a caring voice that you apparently encountered for the first time, and your friend immediately shot a reproachful glare at him.

“Are you being serious right now?” she complained. “She’s a grown ass woman who can go home alone!”

His eyes hadn’t left yours. “I’m talking to her, not you.”

Had it always been like this? Her caring about herself more than about you? If it were the other way around, you wouldn’t let her go home alone in the middle of the night, no matter if you knew something had happened before or not.

Suddenly, you saw your best friend from a whole other perspective. Suddenly, she was the one having Jaehyun on a leash, and he was the one fighting back for his rights, not against her.

Two sides of the same coin… If you were to flip it, would your entire world view change?

For a moment, you hesitated. But not wanting to disturb your friend’s evening, you gave in with a, “It’s okay, I can go alone. Have a nice night!”

But Jaehyun held you back when he insisted on calling you an uber for which he even paid while your best friend continued pouting on the side.

____

“FUCK YOU, JAEHYUN!” you heard your best friend scream later that night from her room, every syllable of hers clearly to hear in your own room while you laid in bed later that night.

The hours before had passed by in a trance as you had only fallen onto your mattress face forward after having quickly changed into your pj’s, that was how much of a toll the day had taken on you.

You just wanted to forget what had happened in the club, but also the thoughts that had constantly been in your mind all the way home that only revolved around Jaehyun. So sleep was the best solution, and you would have gladly continued doing so if there weren’t your best friend and Jaehyun arguing loudly next to you for an hour already.

Then, Jaehyun seemed to return something to which she screamed again, “I DON’T FUCKING CARE!”

Stomping followed the brief silence, a door getting opened, then shut again, and footsteps moved into the direction of the entry door before it fell close behind Jaehyun.

This was a nearly weekly experience for you lately, and usually, you’d just miss hearing their arguments, but this time you couldn’t help but to wonder what they had been yelling about. You just hoped it wasn’t because of you and what had happened to you earlier, because in your eyes, Jaehyun had done nothing wrong.

He had been so incredibly nice and thoughtful that you started to doubt their relationship.

You turned in your bed, wanting to fight those thoughts so badly. Jaehyun was your best friend’s boyfriend, and hence, forbidden fruit for you. But you just couldn’t stop your imagination from running now.

What it would be like in your best friend’s place and get treated like this every day, and the worst part was that you didn’t even feel bad about betraying her in your mind.

Fuck, you only thought and sat straight up in bed, now surely not being able to grasp a light thought to accompaby you back to lseep anymore.

Feeling safe to leave your room ten minutes later as your roommate must have fallen asleep by now, you didn’t think about sleep anymore but wanted to get a glass of water from the kitchen to calm yourself down.

Perhaps, tomorrow, you’d have another look at the entire situation, you tried to convince yourself. After a few more hours of sleep, all these confusing thoughts and feelings might have already been forgotten.

“Cannot sleep yet?”

You turned around and found a half naked Jaehyun only dressed in boxers right in front of you. The empty glass of water in your hands got placed back on the counter with shaky fingers.

“What are you doing here?” you contered.

“Well… she suddenly left.” He shrugged. “We’ve been arguing. You sure haven’t missed that one.”

“I didn’t.”

Still, you were wondering what that was all about, but didn’t want to ask. He lifted the weight off your shoulders himself though.

“It was about you.”

“Oh…?” You gulped.

“When you were gone, I went back to that guy and didn’t let him go that easily. They threw me out of the club and your friend thought I'd ruined the night for her.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

You wanted to make your way around him, but he blocked your way as he didn’t move to make space for you to pass by the door.

“What’s making me a bad person, y/n?” Jaehyun suddenly asked. “ The way I saved you in class? In the club? Tell me.”

“You cannot be serious right now. It’s 5am, draw a number for another day.”

You wanted to slip under his stretched out arm, but he moved his body to block you again. “Number one. Now tell me.”

“Because those have been the only times you were nice to me, Jung Jaehyun!” You clenched your fists, breathing in deeply. “When we go out with our friend group, you mock the boys trying to hit on me, telling them they’re so desperate for that move!”

“Because I heard them speaking about you before,” he declared. “They were not looking for something serious but only fun, one had even placed a bet. I tried to spare you from this embarrassment and eventual lovesickness. Go on.”

“When we’re in the same class, you purposely sit down next to me to distract me from the lesson!”

This one let him smirk. “Because I always saw you sitting there alone. You have no friends in that class, and I thought you might need some company. Besides… I knew you couldn’t afford that book we needed, and I purposely always shoved it into your direction when the professor read from it. Have you never noticed?”

Now you have. And you were flabbergasted.

“Wh… when,” you stuttered, “you’re over here, you always move my stuff onto high shelves, knowing I cannot reach them!”

“Because I love to see the defeated look on your face and your cute pout when you have to ask me to get the things for you.”

You didn’t know what to say further as you stood there, frozen on the spot. You hadn’t seen this answer coming.

“Anything else?”

Yes, there were many things you hated him for, and you wanted to throw them all into his face, but as he was standing there in front of you, not even one more came into your mind.

“I just hate you to the core!” you hissed.

But with calmness in his voice, he only turned, “No, you don’t.”

And then, it was all only a blur.

You wanted to push him away, but instead, you found yourself nudging against his body. You wanted to free yourself from his grip, but instead, you wrapped your arms around him. You wanted to escape from his kiss, but instead, you kissed him back in the same passionate manner he kissed you.

Jaehyun’s hands roamed all over your lightly covered body while his lips moved against yours, touching every spot he had missed out on during the entire time he knew you, because you had always pushed him away.

But now that you had opened up to him, you were scared the time window was about to close very soon, so you had to work fast.

You jumped on him, hooking your thighs around his waist while his hands instantly clung around your buttocks to give you the support he needed to carry you to your bedroom. Your hands remained interlaced on the back of his neck when he placed you onto your bed and laid himself between your legs.

Thrown overboard were all your morals, priorities, and the friendship to the person that meant the world to you. You didn’t want to think about all that, but were longing for him so desperately that you wondered for how long you had been suppressing that desire already.

Jung Jaehyun was hot. But he was a bad person.

Or… wasn’t he?

You desperately ground upwards against him, feeling him growing between your legs, and you brought your hands down to massage his length. Jaehyun interrupted your kiss as he hadn’t expected this move to come, and groaned into your ear.

You smirked triumphantly, your hands kneading muscles until he was pressed hard against your palms. Tucking your fingers into the waistband of his boxers, you slid the garment from his hips, revealing his bum. Your hands glided along his curvy, soft mounds, grabbing into them like you were testing ripe peaches.

Jaehyun was pecking your lips as you slid your hands under his body again and closed around his entire girth. He stopped for a moment, but the second he continued on, you started moving your hands, top on top, along his length.

Not being able to concentrate on the feeling down there and kissing you simultaneously anymore, you perceived how Jaehyun got weak with supporting his body on his own arms that he had rested to the left and right of your head. So you decided to take the lead from here on.

Sitting up yourself, you put your palms on Jaehyun’s chest and pushed him backwards onto the mattress. He watched you with surprised eyes, but didn’t protest as you sat on his thighs, eyeing his member with much anticipation.

You slid further down his legs, nearly close to his ankles, and bowed down. With your fingers wrapped around the base of his dick, you led him to your mouth. First letting the tip pass by your lips, then his entire length up until the very middle.

You only heard him swearing, “fucking shit,” before Jaehyun covered his face with his arm placed over his eyes and his other clasping the sheet by his side. Your hair grazed over the area around his navel while you moved your head up and down, cautiously slow at first to give yourself time to adapt to his length.

Then, you started bobbing your head, increasing the speed with every time you came up and nearly let him slip out, your fingers that had closed around him sliding in the same rhythm, adding to the pleasure. The slurping noises that came along with this act filled the room until they got drowned out by Jaehyun’s moans.

He directed his hand towards your head and grabbed it by the back, ruffling your hair between his fingers while he started to thrust upwards, meeting you halfway in the fast motions. Like this, he was able to reach deep within you, but still not far enough so that he could hurt you.

When you witnessed him twitching his legs, you stopped, held him still by the base and decided to tease him further a bit before you allowed him to release himself. With the tip of your tongue, you touched his glans, trailed along the slip and then circled around the entire top part.

Jaehyun’s swearing words came in a never ending trail like a waterfall that you couldn’t really understand all syllables from, but you were sure you did a good job and rewarded him for being patient with the motions from before again, but this time with added pressure and passion.

Suddenly, he grabbed you by your arm, urging you to stop.

“Or else I’m gonna cum,” he said and sat himself up, flipping you around so that you laid under him again.

Hastily, you got rid of your top while Jaehyun worked on your sleeping shorts until shortly after, you were both lying naked on top of each other. You wanted him desperately inside you, because you just didn’t know when you’ve had had sex the last time, but instead of wanting to get through this fast, Jaehyun took his time.

That was when you realized that this entire joining was probably more to him than just sex to get it off. You had thought that because he hadn’t been able to get it tonight from your best friend, he’d take it from you. But the way he touched you insisted otherwise.

If it wasn’t more than just sex, he wouldn’t trail his fingers over your ribcage in feathery-light motions, admiring every inch of your body. If it wasn’t more than a body-focused act, he wouldn’t place soft kisses not only on your mouth, but also onto your forehead, your cheek, your neck… If it wasn’t more, Jaehyun wouldn’t be so damn thoughtful and tender.

He remained his tenderness and his gaze didn’t leave your eyes as well when he finally nudged between your thighs, pushing forward until he filled you up to the brim.

Restraining himself from starting to move right away, Jaehyun took his time to ask you whether you were okay at first when you let out a quiet “oh” that alarmed him. But you were eager to calm him down when you explained that it was only because you hadn’t been with a man in so long, and somehow, after speaking it out, it made you feel embarrassed.

As the boyfriend of your best friend, he’d surely know when you had been in contact with a man the last time, and you hated yourself for being so pressured by society to feel ashamed of who you were and how you lived your life.

But instead of judging you, Jaehyun only nodded and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear, and suddenly, you were flooded with such a warm feeling towards him that you nearly cried. Rarely had you encountered a man so considerate and caring.

“Tell me when I can go on.”

You bit your lip and felt the uncomfortable pressure in your nether regions getting replaced by a feeling that you hadn’t encountered in so long. A feeling that made you want more, want him.

Holding onto his shoulders with both of your hands, you nodded back at him with a smile which he then returned. When Jaehyun started thrusting in and out of you, your eye contact didn’t break, and you were sure that right now, you were looking at the real Jaehyun at this very moment.

Not the guy you hated. Not the guy your best friend was dating. But instead the person who wanted to protect you from guys that only wanted to use you. A person who offered you company in class and shared his equipment with you. And a person whose cheekiness and affection he showed through childish acts because he didn’t know how to express his feelings otherwise.

This was not the person you were sure of knowing all along. Probably because you hadn’t even gotten to know him in the first place.

One arm now clung around his neck while with the other, you grabbed the pillow beside you. You threw your head back in excitement, his pushes coming in short intervals one after another, and he was hitting all the right spots with them.

Jaehyun propped his arms up to the left and right of him, lifting his upper body to gather all his strength in his groin area and stopped for a brief moment before he thrusted inside you with such force that it nearly knocked all air out of your lungs, and you couldn’t respond with anything else than moaning.

It felt so good, so… right. But how could something so wrong still feel so right?

Right now, you didn’t hate Jaehyun or your best friend the most, but yourself and the fact that you continued on and on. That you brought your hips up to meet his thrusts with hazy thoughts and his lips all over yours when he slowed down with his movements to dedicate himself to caressing your breasts.

You felt Jaehyun’s hot tongue swirling over your buds, and you shook under him. Not because it felt cold, but because his tender caresses just felt so good. You didn’t have the feeling that he could do anything wrong with whatever he carried out, that was your impression about how well your bodies meshed together.

No, you didn’t hate Jaehyun. You had always only hated how he had presented himself to you. But there was so much more to him.

Sweat droplets showed on his forehead when he continued with the hard thrusts again, the sound of you both breathing heavily mixing together with the sloppy noises of your bodies moving against each other filling the room, but no matter how messy sex was, it was the most romantic thing you had experienced in a long time.

Your eye contact also didn’t break when Jaehyun arose above you, his sweaty chest glistening in the dim light that shone through your windows, and increased his pace even more. When he dropped his head and bit his lip in the process, you wrapped your arms around him and added pressure to your nether regions as you felt him approaching his heights.

It felt very good to you too, but you were by any means not as far as him yet, so you didn’t blame him when he came only a short moment after with a groan that sounded sexy as hell to you.

You held him tightly when he fell limply onto your chest, still breathing heavily from the orgasm that slowly faded. Staring at the ceiling, you smiled with him in your arms, just enjoying the moment when Jaehyun moved away from you.

“We’re not done here yet,” you saw him grin as he laid himself next to you, rolled onto the side and placed his head in his palms as he propped his elbow against the mattress.

You wondered what was to come when you felt his finger tips dragging from your thighs to your navel, then lower again and stopped right at your most sensitive spot.

“Oh!” you let out as he placed two fingers on your folds and started moving them up and down with your remaining juices as lube that made the intense feeling kick in almost immediately.

You screamed when he added pressure and now directed circling motions around the sensitive bundle of nerves. From your half-closed eyes, you witnessed him looking at you with such admiration but also cheekiness as you writhed and wreathed under him, yet spread your legs even wider as release was so close.

Jaehyun leaned in to you, his fingers not letting go of the continuity as he half covered your body with his and just kissed you passionately. Like this, he encountered first hand how the orgasm took over you, and you moaned into his mouth, riding it out against his hand.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world when he wrapped his arms around you right after and pulled you onto his chest, and you drifted off into a slumber shortly after.

Even though the first tendencies of your bad consciousness set in before you closed your eyes, you decided that this would be the problem of tomorrow.

No, you didn’t hate Jung Jaehyun.

If anything, you should probably hate yourself.

___

“YES… YES… YESYESYES, OHMYGOD!”

You heard your friend from the other side of the wall, having rudely awakened you in the early morning hours. At least you thought so. But a glimpse at your phone through sleepy eyes told you that it was past 11am already.

Within a second, you were wide awake.

You were still naked, but the clothes on your floor only belonged to you, and the spot next to you in the bed was empty.

“OH!MY!GOD!.... YES! OH… OH.... AAAAH… OHOHOH… YES!!”

Jaehyun was gone. At least from your room.

Your best friend’s headboard constantly bumped against the wall, and you grabbed your pillow to cover your ears with it. You didn’t want to hear the sounds. Not because they stole your sleep, but because somehow, for the first time, you didn’t feel disturbed by the noise, but actually hurt.

In your mind, you imagined Jaehyun’s mesmerizing smile, the witty expression he was constantly wearing and his deep voice that had showed you for the first time last night that there was a certain softness within it.

You felt hurt, because you knew all the things from last night had been real between you two, yet he was still fucking your best friend mere hours later. What you had shared and felt had been special, yet he was still with her.

And suddenly, you felt hate again. But towards yourself. For betraying your best friend with him. But first and foremost, for betraying yourself.

You had never hated Jung Jaehyun.

You had always felt some certain kind of attraction towards him, but kept telling yourself you hated him to push him as far away from you as possible. If this wouldn’t be so wrong under these circumstances, this attraction would feel right and could blossom. But like this, you could never come to enjoy this feeling entirely.

Your relationship had been doomed from the very start, because given the wicked circumstances, you would never be able to form a healthy relationship. It was like a stain that would never vanish on a white sheet.

So you just decided to continue as usual. To keep this a secret between the both of you and just to carry on with your life.

And to hate Jung Jaehyun just a little more.

You just didn’t know how to feel and act towards your best friend without feeling so much… regret.

“Good morning.”

But the young man stepping out of your best friend’s room wasn’t Jaehyun. But Johnny.

You sat there in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, your mouth agape. And then it started to rattle in your head.

Lately, there were times when your best friend had screamed the name “Jaehyun!” loudly during the act. Those were the times you had actually seen him the next morning. But the nights she hadn’t screamed a certain name, no one had ever come out. And those times, you had counted more than the ones with Jaehyun in the past weeks, just when their loud arguments started on a nearly daily basis.

“Where’s Jaehyun?” you asked without greeting her good morning as you walked into her room.

“Oh, we had a fight last night,” she explained to you while getting herself dressed casually. “And then we broke up. I went away to be with Johnny after throwing him out, and we’ve only gotten back this morning. I hope he left last night already and didn’t stay here.”

“What?” you wondered.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”

“You actually already got over it as I’ve seen!”

“Oh, Johnny?”

“You’ve been fucking him for weeks already?” you provoked.

She shrugged again. “Perhaps a month… So what?”

You stood there, totally lost for words. “You’ve been crying about Jaehyun to me ever since you got together! That he flirted with other women, ditched you, went to parties and ignored you! And now you’re telling me you’ve been cheating on him for quite a while?! And this instagram story drama from last week?”

She sighed and flopped down onto the bed. “Okay, admittedly, I’m not an angel in this story, but he is by far neither! He was not. There were many things he has done wrong in the past. But then he actually started… doing nothing wrong. Being the picture perfect boyfriend without all these flaws and drama. And perhaps, this is not something that I want, so I started to look around elsewhere.”

“So…” You paused, still processing the shock. “Was it all an act? All the times you’ve cried to me over him lately while cheating behind his back?”

“Not an act, precisely,” she said reluctantly. “Yes, he explained every situation to me. And I was being dramatic over it for nothing, perhaps. I don’t know… I still enjoyed being with him though, but it just didn’t feel right anymore. I want to have men just… telling me I’m right, always coming back to me… what’s a relationship without fire? But Jaehyun didn’t want to do this anymore.”

In your head, you recalled everything that Jaehyun had told you. About there being two sides of the same coin, about you being so oblivious. All this time, he knew that she had cheated on him. He knew what you thought of him, yet he had never made a move to ever explain it to you.

But why?

“As he should,” you then stated. “How you treated him was awful!”

“Only because I cheated on him a few times?” she chuckled. “Come on!”

“I’m your best friend, and yet you lied to me! You twisted and turned stories so that you’d always be the one at right! But the truth is, you’re the bad person here. Not him.”

“Now what? He’s gone from our lives. Don’t care about him.”

But the truth was, you did. Now more than about her.

That was why, an hour later, you found yourself in front of his dorm. When he opened shortly after you had knocked, you stared at him, still gasping for air as you had run the entire way here, with all the memories from last night coming back with each step.

“She’s been cheating on you,” were the only words you brought out.

“I know.”

“For how long?” you asked.

“I assume for just as long.”

You breathed in heavily, not understanding a word. “But why did you stay with her?”

Jaehyun smiled meekly. “Because I don’t think I deserve a good person like you are.”

It ran hot and cold down your back. “I… I don’t understand.”

He leaned against the door frame with crossed arms, and even though he seemed uncomfortable talking about his feelings, he still did.

“I haven’t been the best boyfriend for her most times in this relationship, I admit this openly. We weren’t really good for each other and it destroyed me to the point that I wanted to change. But when I started being the boyfriend she had wished for, it wasn’t right either and she started cheating. So I just settled with it. Because I thought I screwed up to that point where I won’t be able to make anyone happy anymore and also don’t deserve the same in return. Even though I only wanted you...”

“You douche!” You stomped with your feet on the ground.

“What?” he returned perplexed with furrowed brows.

“Everyone deserves love and to love! And you’re not different from anyone else!”

His confusion got replaced with a mild smile. “You’re so kind, y/n. That’s one of the things I like the most about you. But you’re also oblivious.”

Jaehyun pulled out his phone, scrolled through his messenger and started playing a voice message from a very familiar person.

“Why do you even care about this bitch, Jaehyun?!” In the background, you heard music and other people talking. “She’s a stupid nerd, and I’ve only befriended her because she helps me studying and listens to my complains since we’re dorm mates, so don’t even waste a single thought about this party pooper!”

You stood there as though you had been rendered motionless. Your heart had dropped to your feet.

“This is from last night when I quickly went outside again to check whether you rode away safely with your uber and she couldn’t find me directly. That’s why we argued and broke up. No, it’s not the first time she’s talked about you like this.” He put his phone away. “I thought letting you hate me would make it easier for a kind person like you to keep their distance from someone like me. Because, in the end, I will only hurt you too. But the more I started to genuinely like you, the more I felt protective towards you. I couldn’t see her speaking about you like this anymore.”

Your breathing came in hitches as your whole world suddenly crashed over you. Your best friend wasn’t your best friend. She had probably never been.

You stumbled backwards, and Jaehyun stepped forward to grab you by your arm, but you pulled it away.

“I…. I just…” you stuttered. “I have to… talk to her.”

“Sure.”

The whole way home, you only cried.

Not over Jaehyun, but over the betrayal of someone you had considered your best friend, yet had hurt you in the most painful way like no man ever could. And the fact that you had been an asshole to her to the same extent after having slept with her boyfriend the same night they had broken up was probably the final straw.

You were no saint here. You had added to your both’s downfall just as much. And it hurt much more than any heartbreak you had experienced so far.

You had to sort your life out and right now, and amongst this chaos there was no place for Jaehyun in your life.

____

You put the last vase with dried flowers on your shelf, stepped backwards to your room’s door and inspected the final set up.

“Finished!” you praised yourself.

It had taken you three months to move to a new dorm, but this was your last step to a new chapter in your life.

You hadn’t had contact with your former best friend ever since your final conversation in which you had handed the keys over to her. The many conversations before had only consisted of screams, accusations and tears.

She had admitted to saying all those things about you, but also to genuinely have come like you. You weren’t so sure whether that was real or one of her lies again. You had admitted to sleeping with Jaehyun, and she would have forgiven you for that as she hadn’t been really in love with him anymore at this point, but you were sure you didn’t want either in your life anymore.

Your best friend because she had hurt you deeply, and Jaehyun because of your burdensome history. All of you had done so many wrong things, and you were only a bundle of toxic people together, so chaotic that you were better off apart from each other.

But you didn’t want to be this toxic kind of person anymore. So you moved out and left your old life behind.

You didn’t go to that class with Jaehyun anymore, and although you missed him, the touches of your joint night still present on your skin sometimes, you wanted to move on from even the mere imaginations of him as well. You were sure that you’d find a guy just like him, but you missed him wherever you went and couldn’t help but ask yourself “what if?”

The fact that he hadn’t reached out to you either made it easier, and as summer break came and passed, and the new semester started, you had kissed two news guys already, made a new friend group and were just overall happy.

But you still missed Jaehyun dearly and all the possibilities of what could have happened if only your timing had been right in life. Even if he wasn’t the right one for you.

“Is this seat taken?”

And then, one day, there he was again. Taking the seat next to you as though no time had ever passed between the two of you, smiling that mesmerizing smile you didn’t hate.

You only stared at him, and his kind expression didn’t break. When you moved your head to the front again where the professor introduced himself, you couldn’t help but to smile too. Because this wasn’t the expression of a bad person.

People changed, and just like good traits could turn into bad traits, a bad person could turn into a good one also. And they all deserved a second chance.

You had only known the Jaehyun from your best friend’s perspective, and then also his body. But even though you had gotten a glimpse of the real Jaehyun here and there, you didn’t quite know him entirely yet.

But you wanted to. The good, the bad, the real. Jaehyun wasn’t the right one for you, but such a thing didn’t exist. What mattered were only your feelings.

Because in fact, you didn’t hate Jung Jaehyun. At all.

#jaehyun #jung jaehyun #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun smut #jaehyun x you #jaehyun x reader #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct smut #nct x reader #nct x you #kpop scnearios #kpop x you #kpop imagines #my writing #one shot

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kirisaki-daichi-scenarios · 3 years

Text

a discussion of jabberwock with team interaction hcs + deeper nash analysis

for anon who asked "Can we get some headcanons for jabberwock members or like headcanons when they're together? (its okay if it was jason or nash only)" and made me realise it's about time i get these guys' personalities down

note before we start: cause i didn't know their names until i wrote this

zack is the bald one, allen is the one with a headband, nick is the other white guy apart from nash.

team hcs

nick gets bullied for being under 6ft, but not by jason

nah good old jason teases all of them for being short fucks, emphasising that they’re all 5ft tall in comparison to him

he 100% lifts things out of the others' reach and then laughs for ages after when they try get them

unfortunately though, they’re all used to this and now just ignore him. either that or nash stares at him so intensely jason actually repents and hands it back

zack’s another one with a very good glare, but he’s used it too often on jason and it’s since stopped working.

also jason gives me ‘straightens his back as much as possible when getting measured so he’ll measure in as 7ft’ vibes

oh and he thinks he could wrestle a gator and win. i’ve got no explanation for that except for the fact you can't tell me it's ooc.

allen’s very protective over his white headband - it’s his lucky item - but he’d never let anyone know that

he’s confident in his abilities like the rest of them, but there’s nothing wrong with wearing a headband just in case

(nash knows anyway)

they watch nba matches together and do not shut up once throughout the entire match - lots of jeering, booing each other if someone criticises a player they like, lots of “i could do that”, lots of “get your fucking hand out of my popcorn do you want me to punch you in the face” etc

they used to all live together, but nash has since moved out. he was sick and tired of trying to make people do chores, as the only one who kept their room clean.

yeah the others’ house looks like a heap of trash but also very much “where’s my toothbrush?” “it’s in the third coke can by the orange peel behind the sink” *silence* “yeah thanks” *a minute later* “who the fuck has been using my toothbrush”

they’re all “bro your dribbling sucks why are you on this team loser” to one another, but also very protective (aka arrogant for one another) if anyone else Dared to criticise one of their teammates

then again, what kind of person would criticise jabberwock

half of the time he spends with jabberwock, nash is a Single Mother TM trying to get a bunch of man children to behave; the other half of the time, he's just as bad as the rest of them

i talk about this a lot but i get the feeling nash is an exceptionally hard worker, but at least he gets to let his hair down around his teammates sometimes

nash is also the only person jason thought was truly ‘strong’ at first sight

and nash is also the only person who can beat jason in a fight, and also the only person who can get nash to train, and also the only person who can.. [etc. you see my point].

(n.b jason calls himself the ‘almighty me’, nash says that ‘even god can’t beat me’. point made.)

you know how jason silver’s motto is “I have never thought”

imagine him proudly stating that, before zack adds with a straight face, “yeah cause nash does it for you.”

in short, the team would fall apart without nash.

although the team’s communication and coordination is very fine tuned, nash is the guy who keeps everything in order off the court to prevent what is essentially a team of aces ('main characters', if you will) from falling apart

they hang out together a lot, but do all have other friend groups that do not overlap

team bbqs

unofficial rule not to criticise anchovies on pizza because the one time nick did, nash snapped

however pineapple on pizza is fair game, even though zack quite likes it

more than once, jason has brought a girl home and nick has stolen her attention away with effortless trick shots, funky ball manoeuvring etc

more than once nick has had to trek to nash’s place (with a black eye) at midnight to have somewhere to sleep

do you see a correlation?

oh and everyone in the team has been walked in on by nash when they were naked with some girl

nash has absolutely no shame

he apologises to the girl with a charming albeit insincere tone, and then remains standing in front of the bed/couch until his teammate does what he expected of them

usually it involves not having come to practice

allen learnt a few (emphasis on ‘few’) words of japanese before they travelled to japan and was disappointed that he never got to use them

that said, one of those words was hentai

and now a quick analysis of some panels

a) so there's at least one player who wasn't underestimating vorpal swords. if i were to overanalyse, i'd add that nick's wearing a hoodie (possibly athletic wear) whilst nash has a 'fancy' shirt on; perhaps nick wasn't expecting them to be going to host clubs instead of chilling/training?

b) i know what you're thinking: "how can you say nash is a hard worker when he didn't want to practice for the match". i reckon he was still pretty high on the complete and utter success of their previous match, that plus being around girls, encouraged him to have a more 'jason-y' personality. (either that or fujimaki didn't want to add too much depth/realism into nash's character bc he's unequivocally the villain, right? and obviously this helps with the plot and the jabberwock bad geniuses gom good geniuses rhetoric.)

earlier, i mentioned how nash is the only one that could keep the team together, and is thus the undeniable head of the team; here's a clear example. you can see both jason and zack have no interest in continuing - if anything, there's disgust in their faces, kinda just saying "we spat on all of japan, now we can go home". whereas nash won't allow for the slightest of possibilities that there might exist a team stronger than them, and hence agrees to the match. the key thing here is that the others do as he says without too much fuss.

another thing to note is nash's reference to harakiri. now what can we make of that, alongside his proficiency in japanese, in relation to his character? the way i see it, he's either a weeb or possibly has some japanese lineage. (you could spin that even further and say his mother was japanese, taught him the language, then abandoned him, and hence his almost excessive hatred/mockery of the japanese people.) (is that why he wanted to do another match in japan..?)

just a quick point. "thanks to him" - jason isn't so superior as to think that he could win this match effortlessly without nash's support. links pretty nicely with my earlier idea about how nash is the only person jason has always considered 100% strong.

yet another point about how nash is the strongest of the team in pretty much every way you can think of. you know how scary/powerful you have to be to shut jason up (after he's getting real pissed from being prevented from scoring?)

i personally think this is a pretty important panel, though i've never seen anyone mention it before. did nash grow up training in a professional basketball training situation, as opposed to growing up playing streetball like i suspect the others did? well, to answer that question, imma bring in another panel.

here we see visible rage on nick, zack and jason's faces - they can't accept their loss, which is fair enough. but i'd argue that nash's face seems to depict sadness more than it does anger like to rest of them, look at how downturned his mouth is - and he's looking away from the 'camera', as if hiding his shame.

when you combine that with what he says here, i have no doubt that this is someone who has experienced some proper lows in basketball - as would be expected from someone who's played 'properly'. he's possibly not even a prodigy like the rest of them - compare jason's motto with his. "i have never thought" versus "do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door".

there's various lines of thinking you could design with this - he might have been trained by alex (hence, himuro having heard of jabberwock, though he should have known of a team as popular of jabberwock regardless), he might have grown up with professional basketballer parents etc. but here's my own little theory:

nash received serious basketball training from early on - maybe because his parents were living vicariously through him, or maybe he always loved the sport and wanted to be no1. so there he was training away, but, as he grew older, it started getting all a bit too much.

he didn't want to dedicate his entire life to basketball. after all, his hobby is water sports and his speciality is boxing; that's a lot of different things to be keeping up with, whereas the pipeline for promising athletes demands people focus solely on basketball. as a result, nash become bitter: stopped attending practice regularly, got in trouble for trash talk of increasing severity, etc.

result was he was kicked out of the program.

only when he was no longer playing basketball again, did he realise how much he missed it. and hence he got into streetball, where he was tremendously successful as someone with so much training, 'elite skills', and the overly confident attitude to boot.

then, one fateful day, he met jason and the rest is history.

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songbirdsingingthings · 3 years

Text

Heartbeats - Levi Ackerman x Reader

WARNINGS: Season 4 Spoilers, Mentions of Blood, Stitching up Major Injuries, Somewhat Angst, Ending In Fluff, FLOCH SLANDER

Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, they belong to Hajime Isayama

AOT Masterlist - Main Masterlist

Word Count: 3.6K

A/N: I REPEAT - SEASON 4 SPOILERS!!! Okay, so basically in this, you replace Hange in the little ride that she, Floch, and the rest of his little group takes out into the wilderness when they end up finding the remnants of the cart explosion. This also means you find out what happens to Levi (poor bby). I hope you enjoy, I had a lovely time writing this!

To put it simply, you were pissed off. If anyone could do a deep dive into your brain, navigate your nervous systems, and land themselves straight into your amygdala, they would find out just how livid you are. Being betrayed by your comrades was one thing. You’ve seen corruption in the military before whether it be in the Military Police or in the Garrison, so you knew it was only a matter of time that a seed of deceit sprouted within the Scout Regiment. However, you didn’t think that there would be so many to purposely go against their oath and betray the core values and people who helped the Scouts become who they were. But the real kicker was that you and Hange, two of the highest ranking people in the regiment, were being led out by gunpoint by Floch. As one of the last remaining captains of the Scouts, you were almost humiliated at the thought of cadets technically holding your life in their hands as the group of you rode on horseback.

“Move along Y/N, we don’t have all day.” Floch said. You didn’t have to turn your head to see the power hungry grin donning the red head’s face. Instead, you scoffed and moved one of your hands up to tug the hood of your cape lower over your face. The rain was pelting your back relentlessly and you shuddered a little at the chill that ran down your back. Of course the rain had to come to make this experience even more miserable than it already was. You wished that Hange was by your side on this little outing, but of course, the little group headed by Floch would only take one of you out at a time. Pay no mind, just try to get through this, you tell yourself, gritting your teeth. You turn your focus onto happier thoughts to try and propel yourself through this little “mission”. Your mind flitted to random, somewhat material things; a freshly washed and dried long sleeve shirt, a cup of soothing tea, and using your ODM gear just for fun. But, like all thoughts of yours tend to do, they all turned onto the man that had been stationed out in the woods for weeks. Levi Ackerman. Four, maybe five years ago, you never would have thought that the gray-eyed man could become anything closer to you than a colleague, much less a boyfriend. But, things just fell weirdly into place, setting up your relationship. Oh, what he would say when he finds out what has been happening back at HQ, you muse, your mouth twitching into a small smile. However, your somewhat appeased expression morphed into one of confusion when a sudden cracking noise reverberated through the air and landed on the ears of you and the group of traitorous scouts.

“Uh… Floch?” You hear one of the scouts say, their voice laced with concern.

“What the hell was that?” Floch asks.

“Thunder maybe?” Another scout chimes in, not sounding confident in their answer. Your eyebrows knit in perplexity as your eyes narrow in the direction the sound came in. Then, it all comes together. A Thunder Spear. You conclude. A lump in your throat forms. But why? The only people out in the woods would be… Levi.

“Let’s head in that direction.” The redhead concludes. The group wordlessly kicks their horses into a canter as everyone heads toward a more northern direction. It’s only when you get closer to the forest’s tree line that you see where that sound came from. In the short distance, a somewhat mangled titan was laying down on its stomach, but closer to you was the wreckage of a wooden cart. Planks of wood were sticking out haphazardly, and to your sorrow, so were two horses. You heard the murmurs of confusion from Floch’s group, but your focus remained on one of the horses. Why was your attention captured by such a sad sight? This poor, jet black horse was on its side. It almost reminded you of Levi’s… no, it looks exactly like his horse. Hurriedly, but not so fast as to draw attention to yourself, your eyes and head dart around the surroundings of the wreckage. Over the drenched plains and tall grass, nothing was out of the norm. Until your eyes landed a green Scout Regiment cloak with its hood up, definitely covering a person’s body that you recognized immediately. Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Without hesitation, you hopped off your horse - your feet almost getting tangled in the stirrups of the saddle - and sprinted towards the cloak-wrapped body.

“CAPTAIN Y/N, DO NOT RUN OFF!” Floch shouts over the downpour of rain. Paying no mind to the mud that caked your boots and the stinging of the tall grass as it cut and pricked your face. You reach him and flip him over immediately. As soon as you see his face, you audibly gasp. A long, slightly deep cut stretched from just on top of his right brow, over his right eye, over his mouth, and then finally stopped at his chin. Substantially sized wood chips were buried into his left cheek. What made your hands shake, though, was the fact that all over his pale face and stuck in his silky black hair was his blood. You jostle him once, then twice, and then finally a third time to yield no movement from him.

“ARE YOU ALIVE?” You shout into his ear, your voice trying to reach his eardrums. “ANSWER ME, PLEASE!” You feel your heart breaking as his lips don’t move and his eyes don’t flutter with movement. Never did you think that your time with him would run out. Humanity's strongest soldier, the captain of the special ops squad, and the love of your life taken out of the world just like that? No. He was too stubborn, too hellbent on avenging Erwin and making sure that you don’t get yourself into ‘dumb predicaments’ as he likes to say. You hug his limp body close to you and press your ear to his chest. You knew that Floch and his cronies would be surrounding you soon, but you just wanted one last moment with you and him alone. Your eyes closed as you nestled yourself into him in a last ditch effort in order to find some final comfort from him. All you could hear was the rain and the faint squelching of the “Scouts’” boots coming towards you. But then, as light as a feather, a heartbeat. Your eyes shoot open as you press your ear against his chest closer to his chest, trying to make sure what you heard wasn’t a hallucination. Another heartbeat, although faint, was there. You didn’t have time to react when you heard a voice from behind you.

“I don’t know what happened, but we got lucky. Our biggest threat, now covered in his own blood.” Floch’s words pierced your heart. How he could be so insensitive, so disrespectful of a human life.

“I’ll send a shot through his head.” Another one said.

“He’s dead.” You quickly say, earning silence from the rest of the group. If he’s going to stay alive, I have to act fast. I have to make up stuff on the fly. You say to yourself. “He must have been hit by a Thunder Spear explosion at close range,” you say, incorporating the cracking noise that everyone heard. “I saw something similar in a training accident when Hange was in the developing stage with prototypes. He might not look dead, but his vital organs are in shreds. He died immediately from the internal bleeding.” You say, trying your best to convince them that Levi was, in fact, ready to be buried six feet under. You look up to Floch, forcing tears to spring from your eyes in order to fully sell the effect.

“Well, I know how to take a pulse. Lemme see him and I’ll check to make sure that he is, as you say, dead.” Floch said, nonchalantly. Shit. But, like some higher power was looking down on you, the titan near the treeline produced a strange smoky-like substance, gaining the attention from the group.

“What’s going on?”

“I haven’t seen anything like this before.”

“What do we do?” Comments from everyone in the group were voiced, everyone’s eyes - including yours - trained on the origin of the smoke. And there, like he emerged from a phoenix’s ashes, was Zeke. Your eyes widen, and then narrow. They’re obsessed with Zeke and Eren. This is my chance. Gripping Levi as tightly as you can and putting all of your energy into this exact moment, you launched you and Levi into the river that ran right next to you. You could hear the warped voices of the traitorous scouts as you plunged into the freezing water, but you couldn’t and wouldn’t turn your head. They had the guns, they had the manpower, and they had the higher ground. The only way you and Levi would survive this is if you swam down the river. So, you swam, and swam, and swam.

You gasp and cough up water as you resurface, immediately putting your efforts into getting Levi out of the river water. You manage to push his body and roll it a foot away from the riverbank before you get swept under the water again. FIGHT, DAMMIT! You scream to yourself, clawing your way out and onto the land next to Levi. With another cough and hack, you grab hold of your unconscious boyfriend and somewhat drag, somewhat carrying him into the woods to find what little shelter you could get. You whip your head around quickly to survey your surroundings, finding solace in the fact that it’s just the two of you.

“O-okay,” you waver, your mind strained and your body exhausted, “there’s no one here or after us right now. We’re safe for right now.” You say, hopeful that Levi could hear you. You quickly make a camp out of the supplies that you had on your back as well as the things you could find in nature. Thankfully, every scout - captain or cadet - was required to carry a full tent and sleeping pack, so as quickly as you could, you set those both up. From when you were hammering in the little pegs of the tent and unfolding and rolling out the sleeping pack, you kept a watchful eye on Levi. Finally, everything was set up and a small campfire was roaring. Now, you could officially tend to him. You peel back the cloak from his body and set in near the fire to dry it off. Pulling Levi gently over and onto the sleeping pack, you brush back his hair from his face so that you could fully assess his injuries.

“Oh Levi…” You murmur, taking in that big scar again. There was no doubt that he had gone blind in his right eye. All you could hope was that there is no infection. So, quickly, you take out your first aid kit and get to work. First, you start to remove the wood chips from his face with tweezers. “You know, you would be furious if you saw how Floch treated Hange and the rest of the leading officials within the Regiment. Probably would’ve ended him right then and there.” You blab, trying to distract yourself and talk to Levi at the same time. Pulling wood out of your boyfriend’s face was not something you loved doing. Thankfully, there weren’t that many chips and they didn’t splinter, so that work was quick. Now came the monstrous task of stitching up those gashes stretching across his face. The one on his cheek didn’t worry you, but the one stretching across his eye and mouth most definitely did. So, to try and fuel your confidence, you start with the smaller and less dependent one. After a couple of shaky tries, you finally thread the needle and tie a knot at the end of it to prevent the stitch from coming undone.

“Okay, you can do this Y/N. It’s just like when your mom used to stitch up your clothes, right? Just nice and slow…” you say to yourself, bringing the needle to his mangled skin. “Levi, I can’t believe you’re making me do this you asshole!” You whine, a few tears falling from your eyes as you finally stick the needle through his skin and stitching it together. You got into a steady rhythm, messing up a bit here and there, but eventually getting the job done. You grab the little thread scissors and snip off the end of the thread, tying the little thread at the end of the gash tightly, but not as taut as to rip the stitching.

“Now onto the big one.” You breathe, prepping yourself. With a deep breath and a scrunch of your eyes, you begin at his chin and start making your way up. It was a short distance to stitch to his bottom lip, but you hated to sew that part up. Those lips were always so soft against your skin. From pressing butterfly kisses to your shoulders when you would wake up in bed, quick ones to your forehead before leaving for a mission, and passionate ones to your lips when you would finally get back, those lips comforted you and helped you through the tough reality of living. Now, you had to leave a permanent reminder on his lips that he wasn’t as invincible as he might’ve once thought. You tie that part off before starting at his top lip, making your way up to his eye. This was the part you were dreading. Those silver irises drew your attention in whichever situation you were in. Whether it be a meeting of the minds or just a quick glance his way, you would get absolutely lost in those gray pools. Now, he would have only one and his vision would be used through a single eye.

“Come on L/N, you’ve got this.” You whisper while starting to stitch his eye. It was a rough, uncomfortable experience, but finally you made it over his eye and to his forehead. And, with one last tie and a snip from the scissors, you were done. The last thing you had to do was wrap his right hand. You discovered, when dragging him through the river, just how far his injuries extended. Two of his fingers, his middle and index, were cut clean off. It pained you to know that he would have to relearn how to use ODM gear again. The tool he was a master and artist at using, making himself look graceful and deadly at the same time, he would have to relearn. You just covered his hand and wounds quickly, and let your mind veer from that. You cleaned his face again, swiping a clean strip of your shirt, a piece you ripped off, and went carefully over his stitches and took extra care in the more tender areas. Then, you threw it to the side and plopped down at his side, staring at the grass in front of you.

“What the hell do we do now…” You say, your voice dry and void of life, your eyes sullen. “We can’t stop Zeke between you, me, and the rest of the scouts we have on our side. Eren’s on this weird and insane rampage, ostracising Mikasa and Armin from himself, as well as the rest of us. The Yeagerists are becoming this crazed cult by seizing control over everything… I just do not know what to do.” You confess, laying all of your feelings out for him to, hopefully, hear. Glancing back at Levi, you see he’s still motionless. However, you see the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and that comforts you for now.

Levi is still unconscious when you begin formulating ideas on how to get him back or get help in general. Armin, Mikasa, and the rest of the 104th cadets were being kept somewhere, you knew that much. You had no way of knowing where they were keeping Hange or how she was doing, and the other top ranking officials of each of the different regiments were either colluding with the Yeagerists or being beaten to a pulp by them. Even Hitch, a member of the Garrison that everyone had taken a large liking to, was probably still guarding Annie who was stuck in her crystal for four five years and counting. Your thoughts were put to a hold, though, when a beam of light and a booming sound erupted from the walls. You spun around to face the light, absolutely dumbstruck at the sight. You had seen something like this before, for example whenever Armin or Eren changed into their respective titans, but this was something different.

“Oh my-” You begin to say, but then a strangled sounding groan was voiced. Levi. Whipping your head to face him, you find the black-haired man sitting up slowly and grumbling.

“The Beast… That piece of shit… where is he…?” You quickly make your way over to him, pressing a gentle hand to his stomach.

“Hey, easy, lay back down.” You order softly. To your surprise, he complies. “Zeke went back to Shiganshina with the Yeagerists.” You explain, trying to answer Levi’s question. You see the absolutely defeated look in his eye, but was not able to see his frown through the wrappings you had placed around his head to dress his wounds. “Levi,” you ask softly, bringing your hand to lightly hold his left hand, “what happened?” His gaze left yours to look beyond yourself, maybe towards the sky.

“I screwed up. I didn’t take into question whether Zeke was ready to die or not. I guess he was since he triggered that thunderspear I had aimed towards his neck. I let him get away. Again.” His eyes went back onto yours.

“I… I know you’re upset and you want your revenge, I really do. But, for right now, I think that we-”

“If we keep running and hiding, where the hell will that get us.” Levi interrupts. You press your mouth into a tight line and look away from him.

“I know, I agree.” You say, sighing. “We’ll get back there, back into the action. We’ll make things right.”

“My goal is to kill Zeke.” He says. You know that killing Zeke has been on his mind ever since Erwin, and you know it will never leave it. However, you can’t stop the worry that rises within you when you think about how that may be Levi’s only goal. How after he completes it, he won’t make new goals or find new dreams to carry out within life. Your body goes a bit rigid and now you turn away from him completely. However, if you could see Levi’s face, you would know that he realizes how his wording found a way to hurt you, and he hated that. He hated the thought that you had to risk your neck for his, take care and stitch him up, and now put up with him. “Y/N-”

“No, I understand.” You say, turning your face back to his and pressing a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes onto your face.

“Y/N.” He says more forcibly now, causing your fake smile to drop. “Killing Zeke is my goal. It’s not my entire life's purpose.” Tears start to well in your eyes as you bite your cheek, willing them to stop.

“Okay.” You croak, grasping onto his hand tighter. You feel his grip on you tighten as well. “Levi Ackerman, we will get through this, do you understand me? You are not allowed to die on me until we are both old and gray and on rocking chairs outside on the little patio in front of our house, got it?” You say, letting the tears flow freely.

“Until we’re old and gray.” He repeats, nodding. You sigh out of pure exhaustion and lay down next to him.

“It fucking sucked stiching you up. I don’t understand how medics do that.” You say, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah, well, I could tell the stitches are shoddy at most. You’ll probably leave me with an ugly ass scar across my face.” He bites back. This earns a smile from you as you turn your head, pressing a kiss to his left cheek.

“You could prove to be a whole lot nicer to me. I had to drag your ass through a river.”

“I would’ve paid money to see you swim.” He muses, earning a drop of the jaw from you.

“Hey, I can swim fine!” You reason. A few beats of silence pass.

“Thank you. For dragging me away from those little shits and cleaning me up.” You nod and let one of your hands fall on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. It’s steady and consistent this time, causing a smile to spread across your face as you close your eyes.

“I love you.” You say, grasping onto his shirt.

“I love you too. And I promise, for the rest of your life, I’ll be there for you too.” Unfortunately, the last part of confession falls upon deaf ears on your part since you passed out into a much needed sleep. That’s okay to him, though. He would be there by your side to tell you that again, and again, and again.

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hey-hamlet · 3 years

Note

The SCP AU has only been mentioned ONCE but I’m already thinking about it! AU where sometimes, children have anomalous abilities and attributes. They may be showing it of to their classmates. They may be desperately hiding. They may not be of this world. They might not even notice it. But there is a foundation that calls them SCPs, and it wants to steal them away to a place of cold cells, calculating researchers, and containment. Where they will never see the light of day again. That is, if they don’t succumb to their own powers or get killed by some other SCP. But if they are careful, and brave, and in need… a door will open.

those doors lead to UA! And UA isn’t just a high school. It’s also a research center, a college, a middle school, an elementary, AND a preschool. Anything a lost child could need while they learn who (what) they are and what they can do. SCPs get a basic curriculum for whatever dimension they plan to live in, plus the skills (if possible) needed to blend in- the courses offered are varied. Most move to a more accepting place (three Portlands is a popular destination). They can also choose to live permanently in UA, as staff. Adults… can SOMETIMES get in. If they’re lucky. And Nedzu is looking for new employees. (parents of young anomalies might get an exception)

UA is… if a place could be the definition of “reinforced”, that would be it. The main building gets, well, destroyed or blown up every now and then, but it always puts itself back together by sundown. Reality benders find the locally reality to be unusually… stiff. Unbendable. It has separate buildings for each school level, student dorms, staff apartments, Several massive underground bunkers, all the regular stuff. A few gyms open up into seemingly indefinite planes of grass, for especially dangerous SCPs to practice.

As for where UA is… nobody can tell if it’s a pocket dimension or a parallel world, but across the wall is a view of regular Japan. Getting close to the walls is impossible- you simply find yourself on the other side of the property, or right where you started. Students have attempted to cross reference the view of “regular” Japan to events happening in REAL Japan, and things don’t quite match up! Some swear they’ve seen Nedzu exit the front gates and return with a little bag of groceries, but he’s probably just messing with them. Maybe.

As for the price… Nedzu is a little fey-like when it comes to the price. A student can pay back tuition as a no-interest loan, but most are encouraged to instead become alumni- basically pledging to protect UA and its students in any time of need. Protecting can mean many things, from obtaining critical resources to infiltrating oppositional groups to straight up serving as Nedzus own private (hero!) army. (1/3)

Random character backstories:

Eraserhead has the ability to drag halt abnormal things. But if he stares for long enough, he will bring ALL things back to normalcy- a grimoire becomes a book. a teleporter is forced to walk. A god becomes a man.

Of course, living in normal society, he had no idea. But one day his friend came to school nervous and excited and pulled off his hat and his hair was made of mist!! And he could make little clouds!!! And Shouta thought it was some crazy prank, but he went along with it. Until lunch time when a bunch of strange men in black robes with guns and tattoos all over their faces broke into school! They demanded to have “the missing link”, and then they blew up a hallway and people were screaming, and then black ooze was dripping from the walls and blood was dripping out of their eyes and they killed someone. and then helicopters were landing outside and different men in white were running in and shooting back and the cafeteria ceiling collapsed and the sky was RED and someone grabbed Shirakumo and tried to drag him away but Yamada started yelling except he was SCREAMING and the ground was shaking with his voice and his mouth was too wide and the building started to collapse and this is all TOO MUCH and this is ILLOGICAL and WRONG and Shouta grabbed his friends and ran for an exit but Shirakumo turned around to throw a cloud over a kid under a falling wall and Shouta and Yamada fell forward and the door shut and there was a little white mouse in a tuxedo and Shouta.

Blacked out.

Tokoyami bought a fake grimoire on eBay and accidentally summoned a real demon to his soul

Recovery girl wasn’t hired by Nedzu, she just showed up one day on UA grounds to heal. Sometimes she mentions ancient history like it was yesterday.

Ectoplasm is a ghost. Like, a dead guy. Nedzu had his grave, dirt and all, moved to one of the apartments so he could “haunt” (teach) at UA.

Shoto is the son of a high ranking manager in the SCP foundation. Endeavor very much does not believe in sympathy for SCPs, and he made that clear when Shoto was locked up.

Hawks is a first responder to attacks on UA, due to his ability to “fly” between dimensions. He is also somewhat overworked.

Iida didn’t need rescuing- his parents are well respected alumni so he and his brother got in free. Having practically grown up there, he is among the few who NEVER get lost no matter how many times the school rearranges itself. Some kids joke that he is one of the many robots that keep UA functional.

Ashido ate an entire packet of Wondertainment® ExTrA sOuR gummy worms.

(2/3)

A bonus Crack backstory- the SCP UA is situated right in the regular BNHA world. Nedzu grew up in a lab like normal, but he never escaped. He just… popped out of existence one day. Twenty years later he returned, older, wiser, impossibly powerful. He sniffed the air, wandered Japan like a little cryptid, and finally found a nice hill in the woods. The next day… UA sprouted like a sunflower fell from the sky unfolded from the wrong dimension materialized from nothing APPEARED, and everyone aptly freaked out. Heroes stood guard as scientists and researchers poked and prodded at the walls, but nobody could get through the barrier. The people inside are weird and wrong but don’t seem to notice them, or even the occasional nearby villain battle. Even all might tried to break through, decades later, when he spotted a little girl get decapitated (she’s fine), but UA simply isn’t of this world. The main cast goes to Ketsubutsu, I guess. And if there are rumors of doppelgängers, of heroes swearing up and down that they saw themselves (but WRONG) inside The School, well. Those are just rumors.

!! Everyone read this this is so good!!

#asks #bnha au #scp children au

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embrassemoi · 3 years

Text

No Body, No Crime ✁ 1

AU - Y/N L/N is a second-year law student attending Stanford and studying under Professor Aaron Hotchner. Along with his associate attorneys, Ms. L/N is alongside some of the most ambitious and cutthroat law students in the nation. However, her life gets flipped upside down as she’s thrust into a life of murder, sex and lies.

Main Pairing: Spencer Reid x [F]Reader

Content — Mature themes, blood, major and minor character death, violence, angst, triggering themes, bad coping mechanisms, drugs, mental health shit, alcoholism, lots of smut, language, fluff, mystery, thriller, mentions of cheating, canonical typical themes , dark academia vibes, explicit content - read with caution

DISCLAIMER: This story will contain MATURE content. It will include themes such as smut, violence, etc (see content). If you are not 18+ and unable to handle such themes, respectfully, please exit this story. It is not my intention to make readers uncomfortable or trigger them in any way. If you continue to read the story despite the multiple warnings, I am not responsible for any triggers that may pop up.

Also, based off this blurb!

I am also not a law student, so there is bound to be misinformation!

【 ao3 | Masterlist | Playlist 】

CHAPTER 1: Death and All His Friends

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

Blood, she thinks, you never really know how much blood is in a person. Logically, she did know; she had to learn how many pints there were in the human body from med school and the mass amount of profile study cases. From looking at crime scenes, reading textbooks, medical journals and fake charts; blood has never bothered her, if anything, she got used to seeing and being around it.

There are roughly about ten gallons of blood in the average adult, but typically, losing more than forty percent will result in death. That was about two thousand millilitres.

But, you never realize just how much blood a person can hold, not until a human is slaughtered like an animal, eyes glossed over, body turned cold and stiff — splayed out in front of you. It seems like a lot more than what was described.

There’s a saying, bleed like a pig. Well, she understood what it meant now.

God, she sounded like Spencer.

“What are we going to do with the body?”

“Let’s leave it. We need to go back and clean!”

“No, let’s bury it.”

A chuckle of utter disbelief forces its way out of Derek’s mouth in a rush. It’s both strained and ragged and sounds as if he’s about to burst into tears, but the shock and anger seem to immerse deep in his bones and control his actions. His head shakes subconsciously, “You’re — you’re fucking joking, right? It’s the middle of winter! Tell me how the fuck we’re going to bury a body when the soil’s hard?!”

There’s a collective panicked sigh that goes through the group as the implications finally start to settle in.

“Be any louder!” Emily half-shouts. She paces back and forth, the freshly fallen snow crunches under her shoes as they leave footprints in their wake. Her hands make extravagant hand movements, almost in an attempt to speak with her actions. But, the only thing that has Y/N somewhat grounded is the rusty blood on Emily’s hands. The stark contrast of her pale skin against the deep red does nothing but make bile rush to her throat.

“The body is what gets us caught!” JJ cuts in through her half-sobs.

“The one time it snows in California! Since when do we get snow?!”

Sticky, cold, dry, flakey blood. It brings too much attention to the blood painting her body in a cruel, evil painting. Y/N lifts a shaky hand as she turns to observe the way the pads of her fingers were stained red. Underneath her fingernails, she can see the blood caking, dried underneath and can feel the heavy liquid travelling up her sleeve.

Her fingers pressed together before a hand shoots up, trying to pick off the blood in a hasty attempt.

Everything was uncomfortable — too uncomfortable and it was sticky and disgusting and there was too much happening. Her brain was overstimulated and all she wanted to do was yell or cry or strip herself clean from these heavy clothes, hiding the blood drenching her underneath. A hand went to claw at the fabric — she needed to breathe — she needed air and it was too tight and —

The falling snow had finally come to a stop, the ground becomes muddy, wet snow being tracked all around but aside from that, it’s dry out. Panic is slow seep within her body, only just registering the dull, prickling ache that travels up the side of her right arm. Not to mention the pounding in her skull felt like someone had taken a power tool, drilling a burl hole into the side of her head in hopes of creating a make-shift lobotomy. On instinct, her hand reaches up to her temples, massaging small circles in hopes to find relief.

But then she catches sight of her hand again from her peripheral vision, or rather, it’s as if she can feel it laminating her skin. Blood.

Now there must be smeared streaks of dried blood coating her face. Fuck, now she really feels like throwing up.

A soft wail can be heard in the background somewhere, but it sounds distant and underwater. She thinks it’s JJ. Her high-pitched cries are loud and she thinks that’s Derek’s voice yelling at her and god… it only amplifies her headache.

She needed an aspirin, Advil — maybe Spencer had some.

Her mind wanders back to the group. Emily… Emily — she’s — Y/N doesn’t know where Emily went actually. She could have sworn she was by the trees…

She continued to pick at her skin absentmindedly, and now she couldn’t tell where her blood started and the one that was sprayed onto her ended.

And Spencer, he’s pacing and hadn’t muttered a word since they left Hotch’s house. His body language is closed off, his hand rubbing up and down his arms in either a self-soothing method or because it’s cold out. She assumes it’s the former.

The one time — the one fucking time the asshole is supposed to be smart, his IQ magically drops below zero.

Everyone is arguing and they all hear the faint cheers, laughter, early fireworks and music blaring in the background. The sound of the bonfire crackles in the distance and all she can do is drown it out. She was supposed to be having fun. She should’ve been visiting home, or maybe studying of fucking Spencer, not wearing shoes twice her size, gloves to cover up her fingerprints; not trying to come up with an alibi and there definitely shouldn’t be someone else’s blood clinging to her. She should’ve been anywhere but here. It’s too much.

Lightheaded, Y/N stumbles backwards, supporting herself against a nearby tree. The shadows and black coat camouflaged her, engulfing her into the night and she feels an odd sense of comfort by it. But, it does anything but calms her down as her chest begins to rise rapidly up and down.

Oh god, oh shit, shit, shit! They’re all fucked — she’s fucked. Her DNA is all over the crime scene. The crime scene is on her and probably under the body’s fingernails. There was no way she was getting out of this. It wasn’t even her fault and look where she is.

She should’ve listened to her Grandparents; don’t go to law school, it’ll turn her into something she’s not. Y/N smiles twistedly thinking about it, they were right.

You can’t get away with murder.

Shit, fuck, fuck, FUCK!

“We need to stop wasting time,” Emily announces, appearing remarkably calm.

“W-we should call the police,” Y/N mumbles in a shaky voice. Her voice hitches and she sucks in a cry.

All of their heads, besides Spencer’s, whip over to her; she’s on the verge of breaking — possibly even running off and going straight to the local police station. Her phone suddenly feels heavy in her pocket.

“What we’re not going to do is that! Do you want to spend the rest of your life in jail?!” Derek exclaims. His mouth goes to open again before he suddenly halts, looking over to Spencer and shouting. “Ayo, kid-fucking-genius, could you, I don’t know — think?!”

The yelling makes her shrink in on herself. Yes, call the police, turn yourself in. Obstruction of justice; tampering with evidence, manslaughter, attempting to hide a body, invasion of privacy, possible perjury — all this leads to incarceration and more time. Maybe she could even get a deal, say that she was in shock, dealing with PTSD. Immunity! Maybe she could strike herself and Spencer an immunity deal.

God — they killed her. They murdered someone.

Immense guilt bubbles its way through her before she turns to gag on air. Her hands clutches her stomach as she heaves, distantly hearing the arguing background.

“— about Hotch?”

“What about him? He’s going to put us in jail himself. If we’re lucky, he’ll kill us so we can skip a life sentence!”

JJ cries louder. God was she fucking annoying.

“He doesn’t give two shits about her —” “Could everyone just stop for a fucking moment,” a new, irritated voice cuts in. It sounds like it’s been pushed through gritted teeth, muddled by straining and holding back tears. It’s Spencer.

His eyes shut, the palm of his hands pressed harshly on them before rubbing them hard. But, they travel up to his forehead and through his hair, pulling down so hard that Y/N would be surprised if he didn’t already lose a chunk. But within a swift motion, he crouches to the ground in a fetal-like position; the balls of his feet roll back and forth, making his entire body bounce in small rhythms.

He’s having a panic attack, judging by the way his breathing cuts in and out in large volumes, hyperventilation bound to happen soon.

The entire group stays silent before Derek has enough. He walks up to Spencer, a hand clutching his jacket which forces him to stare straight into his eyes.

“Don’t treat him like that,” Emily tries to cut in.

“If you don’t give us something good within the next few seconds, you better pray to god —”

With newfound determination, Spencer meets his eyes with a fiery look, his chest puffed out a bit and his voice is even.

“We burn it.”

━━━━━━━━━༻✈︎༺━━━━━━━━━

Friday, August 29th, 2003

Palo Alto, California. Apartment 7

Four months before

A clanging sound reverberates throughout the empty hallway for the third time within the last five minutes. Her keys.

An annoyed sigh involuntarily leaves her lips as she struggles to lift the stacks of heavy boxes in her arms. Her attention was drawn to a bulletin board near her door. A missing person’s photo was plastered, marked with an eye-catching red border. Printed underneath a photo of a man in bold letters: George Floyet, twenty-five-year-old student at Palo Alto University. Last seen on July 30th, 2003.

When Y/N L/N was fourteen, she vaguely remembered people asking her where she saw herself in the next ten years. Now standing outside her newly rented apartment, sweating as she juggled a stack of large boxes without tripping — well, she certainly hadn’t thought this.

Life had many ups and downs, as cliche as that sounded. She hadn’t expected to graduate university with an English and Human Physiology degree, nor had she expected into medical school before ultimately deciding to take the LSATs, pursuing a career in law.

Truly, had Y/N used one word to describe her career ambitions at the moment, she’d say she’s pretty fucked and clueless. Although, she’d liked to consider herself fairly motivated, resilient, perhaps even strong-willed and quick on her feet. Scratch that, if anything, the one thing she did pride herself on was her ability to compose herself quickly and the want to overcome fear. It was a motto, of sorts, which she’d been sticking close to: going with the flow.

If anything, those were the attributes that built the foundation of what anyone needed to become a successful lawyer. Yes, that made her situation sound a lot less… pathetic.

But certainly, standing in the middle of a corridor in a shitty apartment with walls too thin to save money on rent, she’d consider herself pretty pathetic.

Oh, the joys of moving.

Just as she felt one of the boxes tipping, the sound of shuffling fills the hallway. A pair of large pale hands come out of nowhere, swiftly catching the stacked cardboard boxes with ease.

When she looked up, she hadn’t quite caught a look at the man in front of her as he bent down to pick up her keys. But when he finally stood straight, eyes locking, she took note of his features

He was tall, much taller than herself and dressed in black slacks and a light lilac dress shirt which was pushed up by the sleeves. He was young, probably the same age as her or younger. He was wide-eyed, almost doe-like and wore a nervous yet seemingly gentle expression.

“Hello,” said the stranger. His hair was rumpled as if he’d just woken up as darken eyebags accentuated his face. His face was sharp, features dark — but in a soft sharp way that made the shape of his nose and lips the most noticeable. Pink lips, a tired look, pretty face.

This stranger was friendly and very attractive. That was her first impression of him.

“Hi,” she replied, a bit breathless from the weight of juggling the boxes. But still, she smiled and her head tilted to the side slightly.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you were my new neighbour, I hope you don’t mind me helping, you looked like you needed it,” he says nervously, his extra free hand goes back to rub the back of his neck.

Y/N’s eyes shoot over to the door at the end of the hallway, conveniently next to hers: apartment 8. He must've heard the banging against the doors and walls, and suddenly, she felt guilty. She must’ve woken him up.

“Haha, yeah! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so loud.”

“No! It’s fine.”

Now, both stand there a bit awkwardly before she coughs, which has him nodding and fumbling with her keys in his hand, “Er — I have a couple of minutes before I leave for work, do you still need help?”

“Right, yes!”

Y/N hands him over her other box, her hand taking the keys back as she clicks open her door. The smell of cleaning products filled her nose along with the smell of old books. It’s spacious, considering what she’s paying for it. It’s a flat, aside from the bathroom and kitchen and there’s a small balcony that’s connected with another set of railings outside. The view of green trees and flowers could be seen and suddenly, Y/N considers herself lucky when she’s realized the place she’s snagged.

The man trails behind her, setting the boxes down on the kitchen counter before dusting off any non-existent lint off his pants. His eyes quickly scan the area, in an analytical fashion.

He clears his throat, “Well, it was nice meeting you.”

She nods too, walking back up to her door to lead him out. “Likewise, neighbour.”

This time, a real smile crosses his face before looking down sheepishly, a small tint covering his cheeks. “Please, I’m Doctor Reid — but please, call me Spencer.”

“Doctor?” Her face lights up with curiosity. This man looks as young as her, younger — and she’s only twenty-four.

“Oh, I don’t practice medicine,” he quickly adds. His hands go to fiddle with each other, “I have three PhDs and an IQ of 187,” he explains. However, it’s not in a blatantly rude manner — like he’s trying to flaunt it. If anything, he looks embarrassed. His head drops to look down at his shoes, trying to make himself appear smaller, seeming uncomfortable. But like she said, Y/N likes to believe she’s quick on her feet.

“Well then, Doctor,” she teases, which has him going a deeper shade of pink, “I’m Y/N L/N, I have no PhDs, I used to practice medicine and I have an IQ of — probably a hundred or less.

At this, Spencer visibly relaxes as a deep chuckle makes its way out. He nods again, making his way out the door and does a small wave before disappearing back into his apartment. Y/N leaves her door open, but her back is faced towards it as she hears his door click back open and she feels the vibrations of his door closing before the tapping of his feet becomes more and more distant.

There are a dozen other boxes she ends up hauling in, but she’s noticed that Spencer must have somehow carried a few of the boxes to the top of the stairs rather than just leaving them in the lobby.

As she wipes down the surfaces, music blasting through her earbuds before unboxing her new bed frame, a smirk crosses her face; cheap rent, enrolled at one of the top law schools in the country, has enough money saved for the next few months and a cute, tall, polite and a fucking doctor that just so happens to be her neighbour — damn, Y/N doesn’t mind this at all.

【 Next Chapter 】

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merry-thieves · 4 years

Text

Possible meanings of Chain of Iron snippets

Yes, this is going to be a long post.

I didn’t put all teasers here only those where I could actually come up with something.

Alastair looked amused. “Never before have I heard such a concise statement of the ludicrous philosophy with which you and your school friends go through the world.”

So, Alastair is definitely speaking to one of the Merry Thieves

probably James, since Al and Matthew aren’t on the best terms and conversations between Thomas and Al would go in another direction (either fighting or with way more feelings)

it seems like James and Alastair are on quite good terms here if Alastair isn’t snappish and shows his true (happy) emotions

Anna was fortress-surrounded by her friends: tall, handsome Thomas; Christopher, who shared his sister’s stern delicacy of feature, peacock Matthew, who always looked as if he’d just rolled out of an unmade bed piled with silks and velvet. And Eugenia Lightwood, who hadn’t bothered to take off her canary-yellow gloves or hat, as if she were ready to run out the door any moment.

They all eyed Ariadne suspiciously as she approached Anna. Anna didn’t seem to see her at all; she was leaning back with one booted foot braced on the wall behind her. She was all lean black and white lines, her close-fitting jacket following the outline of her slim curves, her head thrown back as she laughed. Her ruby pendant glimmered in the hollow of her throat.

Keep your head up, Ariadne, she told herself. You can do this.

“Hello, Anna,” Ariadne said.

First of all, Eugenia is in this group which is interesting regarding the main characters in Chain of Iron

Is Eugenia part of the main group? Has she an important role to play? (we are supposed to find out the reason why she is disgraced)

We have Ariadne’s pov here, so she might play a big role too in Choi, at least we will have more of her and Anna’s relationship

Also, she calls Matthew “peacock” which is so accurate and funny!

Alastair’s gaze flicked to Matthew. “Why,” he said, “are you not even wearing a hat?”

“And cover up this hair?” Matthew indicated his golden locks with a flourish. “Would you blot out the sun?”

Okay, Matthew and Alastair aren’t brawling which is a good sign

Also, where are they? There has to be a good reason if both of them are attending and standing next to each other

I’m guessing they’re outside since they’re supposed to wear hats

The brave princess Lucretia raced through the marble halls of the palace. "I must find Cordelia," she gasped. "I must save her."

"I believe the Prince holds her even now, captive in his throne room!" Sir Jerrod exclaimed. "But Princess Lucretia, even though you are the most beautiful and wise lady that I have ever met, surely you cannot fight your way through a hundred of his stoutest palace guard!" The knight’s green eyes flashed. His straight black hair was disarranged, and his white shirt was entirely undone.

"But I must!" Lucretia cried.

So, the main thing I want to point out here is that Lucie is crushing so hard on Jesse!

and does she picture him with an open shirt or am I reading too much into this?

James spoke at last, and there was real kindness in his voice. “You must give people time, Alastair,” he said. “We are none of us perfect, and no one expects perfection. But when you have hurt people you must allow them their anger. Otherwise it will only become another thing you have tried to take away.”

Alastair seemed to hesitate. “James,” he said. “Does he think —“

Soooo, James and Alastair are friendly now? (please, please, please)

And who does Alastair have to give time? Matthew or more likely Thomas?

Also, James is one eloquent babe

“I know that you’ve been doing something — something you’re keeping secret. I’m not angry,” Cordelia hastened to add. “I just wish you’d tell me what it is.”

Lucie tried to cover her surprise.

it was about time that those two speak about all their secrets! They want to become Parabatai for Raziel’s sake!

but I have the sneaking suspicion that Lucie is going to deflect the question or is going to make something up to avoid telling the truth

(please let me be wrong)

“Alastair! Cordelia!” A familiar voice bellowed up from downstairs.

Sona went white and laid a hand against the wall to steady herself. “Elias?”

I’m not sure about you guys but going white and bracing oneself against a wall doesn’t seem like someone is happy

So, I guess Sona isn’t really happy that Elias is back

is there another reason besides the drinking why she isn’t

and is Elias mad at his children? I mean he is bellowing

also why is Elias mad at all? All his charges were dropped and he is a free man once more

Cordelia shivered a little, though it was not cold in the room. “There is something weighing on you, Matthew,” she said gently. “A secret. Will you tell me what it is?”

She saw his hand go to his breast pocket, where he often kept his flask. Then he lowered it stiffly to his side and took a deep breath. “You do not know what you are asking.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I am asking for the truth. Your truth. You know mine, and I do not even know what makes you so unhappy.”

Cordelia told Matthew everything about her father and maybe about her feelings for James

if we’re lucky Matthew tells Cordelia about the poisoning and someone can finally help him (I think CC said that Matthew would tell Cordelia everything in Chain of Iron, hopefully that’s true)

also, Matthew doesn’t want to drink after Cordelia told him the story about her father

Matthew also found out why Alastair had been so mean in school and that Matthew can't really partially blame him for what happened with Charlotte

Jesse glanced out the window. They were passing through Piccadilly Circus, nearly deserted at such a late hour. The statue of Eros in the center was lightly dusted with snow; a lone tramp slept upon the steps below it. “Don’t have too much hope, Lucie. Sometimes hope is dangerous.”

“Have you said that to Grace?”

Jesse shook his head. “She won’t listen.”

is there a possibility that Lucie won’t try to raise Jesse from the dead and instead tries to stop Grace from doing so? (the parallels between this and qoaad are uncanny)

I don’t think that there is anything that will stop grace from trying to perform necromancy other than force

“I’ve been trying to hate you,” Thomas said quietly, “for what you did to Matthew. You richly deserve to be hated for what you have done.”

Alastair’s dark eyes glittered. “It wasn’t just his mother I slandered. It was your father, too. You know it. So you don’t have to—to act all high-minded about this. Stop pretending you are only upset on behalf of Matthew. Hate me on your own behalf, Thomas.”

he is calling him Thomas!!! Ahhhh! (so they’re probably alone)

Thomas doesn’t really hate Alastair at this point but also hasn’t fully forgiven him

at least he hasn’t thrown Alastair into the themes

maybe Thomas is trying to suppress the fact that Alastair also wronged Thomas’s own family and it’s easier for him to direct his attention to Matthew’s family?

His golden eyes were fixed on her, fierce as a hawk’s gaze. She said, "It doesn’t matter what I said. I wanted them to leave you alone —"

"I don’t believe you," he said. She could feel the slight tremors running through his body — tremors of stress, that meant he was holding himself very still. Holding himself back. "You don’t say things you don’t mean, Daisy —"

Okay now, what did she say? I’m guessing something quite flattering or that she loved him maybe?

also, who didn’t want to leave James alone? Some bigoted Enclave members?

is James trying to fight against the bracelet’s spell? Or is he breaking Cordelia’s heart yet again?

James closed his eyes. Against the back of his eyelids, he could see the city take shape—the minarets flung darkly against a blue sky, the silver river. Cordelia’s voice, low and familiar, rose above the clamor of his nightmare. He followed it out of the darkness, like Theseus following the length of thread out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. And it was not the first time. Her voice had lifted him out of fever, once, had been his light in shadows. . . . A sharp pain spiked through his temples. He blinked his eyes open: he was firmly back in the present, his friends all looking at him worriedly. Cordelia had already moved away from him, leaving behind the lingering scent of jasmine. He could still feel where her fingers had rested against his shoulder.

JORDELIA! (Sorry; I just had to get that out)

What city is this? One in a demon dimension?

And does James have some kind of visions now? Interesting...

I love the connection between James and Cordelia

Apparently, the gracelet is trying to suppress James's feelings and memories of Cordelia...but please tell me he notices here that he is in love with her?

Also, Cordelia is trying to stay away from James :(

Hands caught his wrists; he was hauled up roughly, an arm around his back. he smelled brandy and cologne.

“Matthew,” he said, in a dry voice. “James needs water,” Christopher said. “Do we have any water?” “Never touch the stuff,” said Matthew, settling James onto the long sofa. He sat down next to him, staring so intently into James’s face that, despite everything, James had to stifle a laugh. “I’m fine, Matthew,” said James. “Also, I don’t know what you expect to discover by looking into my eyeball.”

Okay WHAT IS UP with James in the latest snippets?!? I NEED answers!

Is James follwing in his father's footsteps? Regarding drugs you know...

Also, Matthew has a tendency to stare into Jame's face (not that I blame him)

Christopher!

Okay, I'm devestated that James knows it's Matthew because he smells of alcohol. I'm NOT okay!

Also, what kind of stuff is this?

“You should have told us,” said Thomas. “We would have helped you move your things. I’m exceptionally good at carrying large objects.” “And think of all those hairbrushes you would have had to relocate,” Lucie said. “Haven’t you got six or seven?” Matthew glowered at her affectionately. “I try to be at least as stylish as our local ghosts.”

I think it's clear that Matthew just moved and didn't tell any of his friends of his plans...Why Matthew, why?

Also, Thomas and Lucie are just so wholesome how they try to brighten the situation with their comments

Sooooo, is Thomas also good at carrying people *cough*Alastair*cough*, just asking...?

How many Hairbrushes does one need? Seriously, what kind of purpose do seven hairbrushes serve?

Don't worry Matthew, only Magnus can beat your stylishness

That’s all for now! Should I add anything else in your opinion?

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stellar-imagines · 4 years

Text

SCENARIO REQUEST: ❝boyfriend supporter.❞

[ Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia ] [ Characters: Todoroki Shouto ]

「Scenario of Todoroki with an S/O who goes to another school and studying to become a doctor. She comes to visit UA during the Sports Festival to cheer for him.」

TODOROKI SHOUTO

"You got the tickets to UA's Sports Festival!?" your friend exclaimed. You motioned her to keep her voice down and sipped your miso soup before gently placing it back down onto your tray.

"Aren't those like really hard to get, [First Name]-chan?" one of your other friends asked.

You find yourself laughing lightly at that. Like your friend mentioned, its something that's very difficult to obtain. Before there were quirks, sports fans would obsess over the Olympic Games. When Quirks became apart of the world, the UA Sports Festival became the most-watched sporting event and surpassed the Olympic Games. You had managed to miraculously score a ticket to the UA Sports Festival. This was a popular event where billions of people would stop whatever they're doing to watch or even watch while doing their work. Well, it's one of the biggest events in Japan so its no surprise.

It was really hard to obtain and at this very moment, you were really glad that you decided to buy it the moment it was being sold online. What's more, you promised Todoroki that you'd be there to watch him. You have been dating him for a year or so, being classmates in middle school. It was really surprising to know that aloof and quiet Todoroki actually liked you. The two of you happened to be paired up for countless group projects, were in the same class for 3 years straight and often sat nearby each other. Your relationship with him was quite slow but you really love it.

"I guess having a boyfriend who studies in UA makes it easier." your friend teased you, giving you a nudge. Your face turned a bit pink as you lightly punched her shoulder.

"That doesn't have to do anything with me getting the tickets!" you exclaimed, keeping your tone in a reasonable volume to not disturb the people around you.

When the day actually came, you sent a text to your boyfriend to inform him that you'll be watching at the stands. Your parents told you to be careful when you left the house and you understood why you should be. There were a lot of people, like a huge sea of people! It feels like you're inside the commute during rush hour. As much as you hated cramped spaces, you had to grow used to this because you paid for it and you weren't going to miss your boyfriend's big day. The moment you got to your seat, you let out a sigh of relief and placed your bag on your lap. You never really had the passion to become a hero like your boyfriend and were content admiring them from a distance.

You weren't blessed with a quirk like Todoroki's which was hero-material. Though, you still want to help people like heroes do and you chose to study to be a doctor. You looked at your phone before the event started and saw that Todoroki replied to your message with a simple, 'I'll see you after the match.' Watching the upcoming generation of heroes battle their hearts out and showcasing their quirks had you sitting at the edge of your seat. That was so like him. Most of the students from the Heroes Department had made it to the fighting tournament. You knew that your boyfriend has issues with his quirk and his father. And you can't help but pray that he will be just fine.

Honestly, you almost felt your heart stop at Todoroki and Midoriya's match.

The stage was far too damaged from the battle and it was delayed until they fixed the stage. Poor Midoriya had hurt himself so badly in that frightening battle. As a doctor in training, you were able to tell that he has broke his arm and that definitely needs surgery. You hoped that boy will be just fine. On the other hand, Todoroki looked a bit sad and you wished you can go comfort him. He's not only fighting with these people but also himself.

The finals were probably the second most terrifying this you've witnessed today. The boy your boyfriend was against, Bakugou -- looked like a strong person, you had been watching closely on the other matches and can tell. You watched as Bakugou clawed out of the mass of ice by using his explosions. They were both strong but you could tell that Bakugou has the slight edge over Todoroki. If he had used his fire, he could've turned the situation around. But, you could see it in his eyes, he was unsure and he looked ready to give up.

You finally found your voice at that moment.

"Don't lose, Shouto!" you were the only person in the stands screaming. Your throat burned and you could feel everyone's gaze on you but you didn't care. Todoroki's eyes met yours for the first time throughout the entire festival. His eyes widened a fraction and he seemed to start igniting his flames. You couldn't see him as you were too busy catching your breath.

By the end of the battle, Bakugou had emerged as the victor. You were sad or disappointed, you were glad that he heard you and hoped that he was okay. When the award ceremony ended, everyone began to leave but you stayed by the entrance, clutching onto your backpack. You looked at your phone again and saw that Todoroki had told you that he will pick you up by the entrance. You put on your backpack and waited patiently. The moment you saw his red-white hair, you jumped onto him which earned a grunt from the male. You held his hands in your own.

"Are you okay? The last fight was amazing! I'm super proud of you, did you get your wounds treated?" you asked, examining his handsome face. You cupped his cheeks and squished them together. Todoroki knows that you're worried about him, you always had been the one patching up his Todoroki gave you a nod.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

"Oh?"

"You're the girl who was cheering Todoroki at the stands when he was fighting Bakugou!"

"You're so lucky, man! You already have fans! Guess this is what being handsome and strong is like."

Todoroki had turned around to see his classmates slowly leaving the stadium too. You quickly hid behind your boyfriend, suddenly embarrassed that you had people watching you. A few seconds passed by and before you knew it, you were surrounded by the students of Class 1-A. You had never been this close with such amazing people before -- of course, let's not talk about your lovely boyfriend. It was quite embarrassing how they remembered you from that one little incident during the sports festival. You were about to protest and introduce yourself properly as his girlfriend.

"Hey, Todoroki, who's this girl?" a girl, you recalled her name was Ashido was next to you. Her closeness made you squeak in surprise and cling onto Todoroki even more.

"Hey, Ashido, you're scaring her. You should learn not to step into people's comfort zone so casually." It was Kirishima who told the pink-haired girl to back off and you were grateful that he did.

"Is she your friend, Todoroki?"

"Introduce us!"

"Hey, nice to meet you! What's your name?"

You were overwhelmed. They all seemed to be very nice and friendly but having a number of people around you and asking you questions at the same time made your head spin. At this point, you couldn't even remember what was the question.Todoroki slipped his hand into yours, gently squeezing as if to calm you down.

"This is my girlfriend."

There was a moment of silence before a collective gasp was heard.

"Girlfriend!?" they all had screamed in unison.

"N-Nice to meet you! I'm [Last Name] [First Name] from Sakurazaka Medical Academy." you bowed and stood next to Todoroki. The atmosphere was silent and you were feeling a bit nervous because everyone still had their eyes on you ― something you weren't really used to. You expected them to be a bit quieter this time but they weren't. Everyone seemed to be pretty amazed that you were going to such a prestigious school and aiming to become a doctor.

"Please give me some time with [First Name]. I promised that I will be walking her home." Todoroki intervened. You felt his tug your hand and pull you along with him. His classmates said goodbye, giving the two of you a small wave. Some of them seem to be jealous of how smooth Todoroki was, especially the short student who was muttering to himself.

"Thanks for coming all the way here." Todoroki said, as you both walked hand in hand.

"It's not a big deal. I just thought you needed some encouragement." you smiled gently at him.

There were a lot of things he wanted to tell you. The reason why held back in the finals, why he decided not to use his flames to win the festival. These were the things that he has never told you before. What if you think that he was being ridiculous? It was a sensitive topic to Todoroki. You had accepted him without knowing his past, what happened with his family, and the main reason he has never actually talked about his own family. You glanced over at him only to see that he seemed to be struggling to say something.

"Shouto." your voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

"You don't have to force yourself."

You always knew what to say. You always knew what's going on with him without him having to voice it out loud. You were such an understanding, kind and loving person. He wonders if he actually deserves you or not. For a moment, his eyes soften and you could see the love in his eyes.

"Thank you." he smiled gently.

When you returned the smile and told him you loved him, he knew. He knew that he was worthy of your love.

Total: 1668 words Published: 14.09.2020

Thank you for requesting! ｡٩(ˊᗜˋ)و*｡ Kinda want to finish all requests before break ends.... Hope you liked it! ― author Lou

Thank you for requesting it! We hope you enjoyed this! ― author Natsuki

Requests areopen! Matchups are closed!

Please do not mind the grammar mistakes and typos.

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kaizokuou-ni-naru · 4 years

Text

Some Reasons I Love One Piece

So I set up a poll to ask what I should do for my 4000 follower milestone, and something like 85% of the responses to my poll said you wanted me to do a compilation of stuff I love about One Piece! So hell yeah, get ready for me to talk about pirates for way too long (a sentence that could also serve as an accurate blog description).

Before that though, lemme just say- thank you all! Seriously! When I started this blog I figured I’d be extremely lucky to end up with like a thousand followers, and now I have four times that and it just keeps growing, which just constantly baffles and amazes me. I adore every one of you, and you’re providing me something fun and productive to do in quarantine, and I love you for that.

Anyways! Let’s talk good shit.

Let’s start with Luffy. The whole story starts with him, after all.

I love Luffy, just as a character. He’s one of my favorite protagonists in anything, ever, when ordinarily protagonist characters don’t really appeal to me all that much. I genuinely think he might be my favorite character in One Piece now that I sit down and really think about it. I love how unconventional of a main character he is- he actively shuns the idea of being a hero and is in fact the most chaotic neutral motherfucker on the planet, and yet he’s so friendly and loyal and fun that you straight up can’t not love him both in-universe and out.

I also love the Strawhats just in general, both as a group and individually. Found family is one of my all-time favorite story tropes, and they do it better than like, the vast majority of stories out there. They’re all so completely unique from each other and play off each other so well and they really do feel like a family. I love how often Oda just shows them fucking around and hanging out. (One of my only gripes with post-timeskip is how much time they spend split apart.) I think it says a lot about them that I struggled so much when someone asked me to rank the Strawhats a few months back and had to rearrange the list like four times. I just!! Love them all!!

One of my favorite things about One Piece is that it’s the story of Luffy’s rise, and that it occurs in a world that’s so solidly scaled and well-developed that all progress he makes actually feels tangible and impactful. Some of my favorite moments in One Piece are the ones where we can see how far he and the crew have come and see other people’s reactions. His reappearance at Sabaody after the timeskip is my favorite scene in the manga, full stop. His entrance at Marineford and all of the Decks of the World cover stories delight me for the same reason.

Speaking of the worldbuilding, god it’s so good? I think one of the greatest potential strengths of a long manga is that its just got so much time to establish and build on so much information, and sometimes that leads to mangaka kind of tying themselves in knots with too much lore and explanation, but Oda just fucking nails it.

I recently read a conversation during Zou where the Strawhats are talking to Inuarashi, Nekomamushi and the Wano folks about all their mutual acquaintances on the Roger Pirates- Brook asks about Crocus, Franky mentions Tom, etc- and I had a moment where I realized how in pretty much any other series all those connections might seem contrived, but in One Piece it works so well. So much time has been dedicated to establishing all these facts and characters and connections over years and hundreds of chapters that when they do come together, it just feels so satisfying.

Like, at Twin Cape Crocus mentions he was a ship’s doctor and then mentions Roger as the Strawhats leave, at Thriller Bark we find out he’s Brook’s friend, at Sabaody in conversation with Rayleigh we find out for sure which ship he was a doctor on and that he joined them to look for Brook’s crew- and it all just falls together so nicely. One Piece is maybe the strongest series I’ve ever read in terms of how it establishes its characters and concepts and how they all fit into the world and cross over and connect with each other. The world of One Piece is huge, but it also feels so alive and interconnected, and that’s just wonderful.

I love how hopeful One Piece is. I was talking to a friend a couple months ago who doesn’t watch it, and she kind of dismissed it as ‘a show where nobody dies.’ Which- setting aside the fact that that’s just not fucking true- my first response to that was, “So?” I think it’s nice that we can all know for pretty much certain that the Strawhats will achieve their dreams in the end. There’ll be a happy ending, and Luffy’s going to be Pirate King, we’ve known that from the start. The fun is in seeing how they get there.

Aside from a few specific cases, I also really like how Oda does his character writing just in general. The female characters in One Piece generally get a bad rap, largely from people who haven’t watched the show and judge it on the (admittedly exaggerated) artstyle, but fuck if I haven’t seen such a widely varied and developed and flawed female cast writing-wise since- I don’t even know. Oda does a really good job of giving his characters, both male and female, unique and memorable personalities, which is super fucking impressive considering just how many there are. Similarly, I’m impressed by how new characters are introduced without getting repetitive or annoying, and very often those characters are really fantastic. I could talk about all the different One Piece characters I love and why, but we would legitimately be here all day.

I also love how unlike a lot of long-running series like this, characters don’t just go away when their time in the spotlight is done. In just about any other series, characters like Buggy and Coby and Crocodile would just be gone and never to be heard from again after they’ve served their purpose. Instead you have the stupid clown villain from the second arc becoming a fucking shichibukai several hundred chapters later, and it makes sense in the context of the story! The whole concept of the cover stories works really well towards this aspect of One Piece, letting us see what all these other characters are up to without taking attention off the main story. This fits in with the interconnectedness I mentioned earlier, too.

And I like how (and I know there are people who will argue this, I have had them in my inbox, but I do not care) One Piece has stayed so strong for so long. I’ve mentioned before that both of my favorite big arcs are pre-timeskip- Alabasta, for the civil war storyline and great supporting cast and villains, and W7/Enies Lobby, for the epic emotional highs and lowers + ANOTHER great supporting cast. But like, I’ve been enjoying the more recent arcs just as much! Honestly, now that I’ve finished Dressrosa, I think it definitely ranks up there among my favorites as well, for how chaotic and fun and high-stakes the whole thing felt when I was binging through it. I’m only a few chapters into Whole Cake Island so far but it seems very promising, and I’m really excited to get to Wano from what I’ve seen of it.

I haven’t even really touched on the art yet, either. I know the artstyle turns some people off of the series, for how kind of cartoony it is sometimes and how different it is from most other series, but honestly I just love it. I wasn’t sure about it at the start but it grew on me very fast. Hell, I have a whole tag (which I should use more) dedicated just to appreciation of pretty panels.

And the action scenes in One Piece are so fun and expressive and creative and almost always at least a little silly just by the nature of Luffy’s powers. I don’t think I’ve ever been bored during a One Piece fight. And the splash pages are frequently just breathtaking. I’m a writing person, not an art person, so I’m bad at putting this kind of thing into words nearly as well, but- yeah. One Piece Art Good. (My friend Narramin also has a really, really good series of posts about how great the visual storytelling in OP is starting here that I highly recommend, if you’re interested.)

Finally, I think my favorite thing about One Piece is that it’s all one story, start to end. I kind of touched on this above with the worldbuilding thing, but you can see what a ridiculous degree of thought and planning Oda has put into his story, and how well everything comes together. It’s the main aspect that got me to give One Piece a try in the first place- I heard how good and thought-out the long term storytelling is, and I just eat that shit up. I don’t think I’ve ever had the level of trust in a creator to handle and end their story satisfyingly that I have in Oda. It’s a good feeling.

#took me so long to write this post that im now like #a third of the way to 5k #which is ridiculous #feel free to ask me to elaborate on any of this!!#i write better meta when i have a single topic to focus on fjdsh #which is one of the reasons this took so long #so yeah ask box open!!#jonny talks #one piece #not japanese #long post #opmeta

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x-woozi · 4 years

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Sugar, Spice, and Everything.. else?

Part 9: Friday nights

Summary: After a very public embarrassing moment, y/n manages to make a few new friends. Though in trying to make those friends there is a bit of a complication in winning over the group.

A/n: Hi yes the next written out part is here! Please be kind, I’m still getting back into writing again so bear with me. Please enjoy it though!

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Tag list: @smileyjisung3 @milkywayfelix @scoups-of-sugar @holaaaf @hey-i-really-miss-you

“It's going to be fine. They're just a bunch of goofy guys, totally harmless,” attempting to give yourself a pep talk. “I trust Chan, and those are his friends, so it's going to be okay.” Alright so you were a little nervous, definitely excited but nervous.

Once you were already walking up to the front door you texted Chan to come and open the door. When he finally came out he stood in the doorway leaving it only halfway open to block you from coming in right away.

“Look I’m not saying this is going to be a complete disaster or anything” Chan paused before letting you through the front door. “Just.. be ready,” he moved inside for you to follow behind him. Immediately the smell of cookies filled the air around you. Felix had been busy again and you couldn’t wait to see what he had ready.

You were suddenly greeted with several loud hellos and introductions with smiling faces.

“You’re here!” Felix exclaimed as he came around the corner. “I tried my best to save what I could for you because SOMEONE tried to eat it all” looking directly at the boy with what looked like chocolate still in the corner of his mouth.

“You said you wanted me to taste them??” Jisung flailed his arms trying to defend himself.

“Yeah taste, like try one. Not eat all of them” Felix corrected.

You couldn’t help but laugh at the two. “Han, you were going to have them all for yourself?”

Turning his focus to you, “no no, of course not. How could I? Felix made them for you.”

“Wow, in all my years of knowing you, you’ve never had a problem eating what was mine.” There was a little more than a hint of betrayal in Minho’s voice when he joined.

The boys began to bicker and tease each other, jokingly you hoped. Chan leaned over pulling your attention from the mess “See, what did I tell you? You know, it’s not too late to back out still.”

“What and miss out on all this?” gesturing to the argument in front of you, “You’re just upset because your friends are starting to like me more” you teased sticking your tongue out like the 5 year old you really were.

“Are you trying to say I’m jealous?? Me?? THE Bang Chan??” Now fully facing you, pointing to himself to emphasize.

“Okay Channie whatever you say.” You laugh patting his shoulder.

“Wow, I can’t believe this” there was so much denial coming from Chan as he walked away and sat himself on the couch beside the boy who almost never smiles.

You had sort of forgotten about that part on your way over, mainly just thinking about getting to meet the rest of the guys. After hearing so much about them, though not always good, you were excited to see what they were really like, and when they’re all together.

You knew that Chan was Chan, the brother you always wanted but always focused on his music. Felix truly was personified sunshine with just a little bit of attitude when needed. Jisung was the loud hyperactive squirrel that constantly ate. Seungmin was supposedly the devils spawn at times, but you doubted it. Minho is far too obsessed with his cats. Hyunjin has always been the drama queen, and he sort of looked the part. Jeongin is the youngest and sweetest at times. Last but not least, Changbin. Though he looked rough on the outside and stuck to his small group. You were determined for him to accept you as a friend too.

Following Jisung’s lead, you grabbed some snacks and made your way to the main room to see the boys starting to gather in front of the TV.

“Alrighty boys what’s the plan here?” You asked sitting between Felix and Jisung on the floor just in front of the couch.

“Well we can watch a movie-“ Minho tried to suggest before being interrupted.

“We can play Mario kart!” Jeongin yelled out.

“But how will I eat?” Jisung pouted, real concern showed on his face.

Patting Jisung on the back you teased, “You’re just going to have to learn to multitask Ji.”

“Well some of you get way too competitive with that” Hyunjin added from the other side of the room. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea right now.”

“Someone must not be very good” you mumbled loud enough for everyone else to hear.

Causing a couple muffled laughs from the group. When you looked up at the boys behind, you were unsure if you were seeing this correctly. Was that a small tiny hint of a smile on Changbins face?

Hyunjin became very defensive, “pfft what? Not me. Let’s play.”

Seungmin leaned forward to look past Jeongin on the floor next to him “why have we not met sooner?”

Trying to look back at him past Jisung, “I blame Chan.”

“Yeah well I’m still not sure this was a good idea” Chan crosses him arms just waiting to start the game.

After the game was set up you let the boys decide who they wanted to go against for each race. Their house, their “rules”. Plus you didn’t really care about the matches or winning you were here to have fun and get to know the guys.

It was great, all fun and games until it wasn’t.

Hyunjin had been very correct from the beginning, they were all extremely competitive. To make it worse, they were also very sore losers. It was after the 6th race and your second win you were accused of cheating.

“It wasn’t even back to back?” Trying to defend yourself.

Hyunjin and Minho immediately started arguing to prove that you were. Seungmin Felix and of course Changbin stayed quiet, only scoffing and eye rolls came from them. Chan just sat back and laughed. Jeongin silently supported you from the side. Jisung was nowhere to be seen, but was definitely heard rummaging through the fridge yet again.

“I just got lucky that time” you pleaded.

“Ha luck. Right.” Hyunjin crosses his arms.

“I think you’re just upset you came in last every time” pushing his buttons ever so slightly.

“THE PIZZA IS HERE!!” Jisung yelled, running straight to Chan. “Uh.. Hyung.. Can borrow your wallet for a very unrelated reason..”

You stood up ready to eat, “ugh finally I thought it’d never come!”

The rest of the group stared at the two of you very confused, “when did you order pizza?” Chan asked braking the silence before regretfully handing over the wallet. Jisung happily took it and ran back to pay the delivery person and bring in the food, leaving you to explain alone.

“Ah.. well you see, while everyone was picking their characters and the track and stuff,” you rambled on fiddling with your fingers. “Me and Jisung were just sort of thinking that, you know.. at some point.. maybe, everyone was going to want to eat again, right?”

“Umm you know I made like real food for us to eat too right?” Felix asked.

“Yeah, no of course. I knew that, and it was amazing by the way,” you tried, “but you see umm there’s nothing left so-“

“YOU ATE IT ALL?!” Minho stopped you from continuing. “LIKE ALL OF IT??”

Chan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “ugh, I knew it. I knew something like this was going to happen. Now I regret SO MUCH” throwing his arms up in defeat.

“Hey it wasn’t just me!! You guys ate it too!!” Pausing for a second, “it’s just.. me and Jisung might have finished it off is all..”

Jeongin chimed in right after trying to be on your side still, “it’s okay you got pizza, and you can’t go wrong with pizza.”

“But really I’m the one that got it,” reminding everyone who is paying as Jisung walked in with the 6 boxes. Chan threw himself back on the couch when he saw how much it was “ugh, why me?”

In the midst of all that you noticed the actual smile growing on Changbins face which turned into laughter at Chan’s reaction to the pizzas.

Well something must be working here, giving yourself a mental pat on the back.

“Well it’s too late now, and I mean I could eat” Seungmin stood from his seat followed by Hyunjin and Jeongin.

“Great,” you smiled walking over to Changbin. “Come on Binnie aren’t you coming?” You said as you tried to pull on his arm to get him up, slightly succeeding. He got up but only after he moved his arm from your grasp.

Muffled snickers came from the boys but quickly hushed when Changbin looked their way.

Wow so easily silenced, what a bunch of babies.

You could see a slight red tint to his cheeks and the tips of his ears and just smiled to yourself, following behind them to the food.

Hyunjin moved to your side. “wow he really let’s you call him that,” he whispered to you in surprise.

Seeing the color fade slightly from Changbins face, “what, you mean Binnie?” You asked “it’s only a little nickname.”

“Yeah well the last time one of us gave him a nickname, he didn’t let it last very long,” Seungmin added before distracting himself, leaving you in your thoughts.

Hmm, maybe I really could be close to winning him over. The only question still is how close?

“That’s because you were calling me a pig!” You were surprised by the outburst not realizing he was now sitting beside Seungmin at the table.

“Don’t worry I’ll only call you Binnie” smiling trying to make it better but really doing the opposite.

Hyunjin, who sat across from him, smiled and said “Yeah me too Bi-“ followed by a loud thud from under the table. “Ah okay never mind.”

This was fun, it was like suddenly having a bunch of brothers. There certainly wasn’t going to be anymore dull moments.

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majorshiraharu · 3 years

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Echoes In My Mind; Chapter 8 - Concerned Commander - Echo x Reader Fic

Previous Chapter

————————————————- Content Rating: Mature+ (18+)

Warnings: Kissing

If there are any warning labels I’m missing, please inform me.

Rendezvousing = meeting up with someone at a location Notes: Y/O/N = Your character's original name (before they went into hiding) ————————————————-

A/N: I’m so sorry this took so long, I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for forever, my notes pad deleted most of this chapter and I was struggling with remember what I had written and then I had a bunch of health problems so I’ve neglected this fic :( So I’m just going to go ahead and post this chapter so you’re not waiting 3 more months. Sorry <3

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Rendezvousing with your bounty hunter friend, you catch them up on the plan as they join you walking onboard the ship; you introduce the bad batch to them. They're unsure of if your plan will work but Echo and the others assure them that it will work out, that everyone just needed to stay focused and get in and out as fast as possible, knowing the longer everyone was there the more dangerous it would become. Stealing away Echo for a moment you slid into your room with him, wrapping your arms around his neck as the door closed behind him, running your fingers through his curly black hair. It had grown a lot since you first met him; it was long enough that you could actually pull on it. Your nails brushing against his scalp makes him hum with delight, you ran your fingers around some of the metallic numbs that partly stuck out of his head; you knew he felt pretty insecure about a lot of his mechanical parts. He appreciated you making him feel loved no matter how he looked or what his body was made of. His eyes were closed as he enjoyed you massaging his scalp, your warm breath tickling his skin, a beautiful smile on his face. You press a smiley kiss against his mouth. His hands run along the curve of your spine making you giggle, "Echo," you whispered kissing him, the smiling makes it hard to hold your lips together, opening your eyes to look at him seeing him looking at you. "Do you always watch me when I kiss you?" You laughed, watching a grin spread across his face. "Sometimes, it's hard to take my eyes off of you." "Stop it," you joked, kissing him more passionately, this time he closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling. "I love you," he said as you pulled away, Tech's voice came on over the comm system saying they were getting ready to land. "We should get going, lover boy." He takes your hand in his, opening the door walking back out to the rest of the crew, "Oh, I love you too," you said turning him around to kiss him one last time before both of you walked into the main area. "Getting in some action before our little mission," your friend jokes, making you and Echo get defensive and flustered. "I'm just teasing you," they said, cutting you both off in your nonsensical babbling. "I hate you," you joked, hitting their arm. "Oh, well, I hate you too, that's why I came along on this mission," they teased back making you roll your eyes as you shook your head, trying to hide a grin. "Also, since we need to steel uniforms from the Empire, shouldn't we take off ours?" They asked, looking at the armor everyone was wearing. "Well, take out whom we need and then bring them back here so we can switch," Hunter explained. "I guess that makes sense," they said, tapping a finger against their chin as they thought it over. "We'll be landing on the outskirts, make sure you don't get spotted by any patrols," Tech said landing the ship, "Call me if there's anything you need, Echo should be able to handle any panels you encounter but in case there's one he can hack patch me through and I'll get it." "I'll do my best," Echo said with a weary smile. "You'll be fine, Echo," you say, placing a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, his smile growing as he looked at you. "Crosshair, Wrecker, if we need an extraction, be ready, okay? We might not have much time to escape if something goes wrong," Hunter ordered as he walked to depart the ship. "Understood," they both say, wishing you guy's luck as the rest of you followed Hunter out of the ship, putting on your helmet and drawing your weapons as the four of you snuck through the forest area leading to the base. Avoiding the patrols you radio Tech to be careful, hoping they wouldn't notice the rather large ship between the thick line of trees. — Echo stuck by your side until Hunter ordered Echo to come with him and your bounty hunter friend to go with you, since you and your friend would be stealing uniforms from officers it was best that you go together. Meanwhile, Echo and Hunter got some Stormtrooper armor. Luckily it was easy to find some on their own, quickly taking them out and dragging them back to the ship where they awaiting your arrival. Sadly, things were going as smoothly for you and your friend. The only officers you spotted were hanging out in a group, no way of splitting them up that you could find. It took a while of waiting and a rather uncomfortable conversation between you and your friend, "So you dating that guy or what, I know we haven't talked in a while but I feel like that's some worthwhile news you could have sent me," they teased. "Oh shut it, we're not dating.... besides you could have contacted me at any point and never did." ��"Geez, no need to get snippy, also you may not realize it, but he's totally got a thing for you, like the way he looked at you." "Yes, I noticed, why do you care." "Ohhh, so you've learned, good to know my teaching stuck with you. I care because you're both adorable and I enjoy teasing you," they replied putting a hand on your shoulder. "Sorry I'm just stressed with this mission and I'm not in a good mood, I don't mean to be snippy..." "I know... so this Commander Cody used to be your friend... any idea why he joined the Empire?" "He didn't choose to join them, he's a clone, they don't give them much choice sadly..." "Oh, I see... Well, he's lucky to have you as a friend, willing to get him out of there." "I don't know, I'm worried he won't come with us." "Why?" "When I spoke to him last, he just wanted me to be safe and take care of the others, I'm just concerned he'll reject our offer so we don't get in trouble." "Well, if it comes to it, I'll happily knock the guy out and take him with us." "What?! You can't just do that!" "Yes I can, just watch me," they teased, quietly giggling to themselves. "Ugh, if you do, he won't be happy." "I honestly don't care I'm just here to help you and get him out of here no matter the means." "I won't let you knock him out, besides there are perfectly good Imperials all around us, have fun knocking them out but not Cody." "But this Cody guy is an Imperial dear..." "I swear I can't win with you." "You did once, and that's why I'm here, and that's also why you're one of my only friends." "You call that winning," you snapped back being sarcastic. "Ah, you're learning young Padawan," they said, showing their admiration for your quick comeback. "Now can we please deal with these guys, the others are waiting for us," you said pointing out two Imperial Officers who just spit off from the group. "Ready when you are, just lead the way," they said, sneaking to closer cover with you. After following them for a bit, they end up in just the perfect place for a quick takedown, knocking them out and dragging them quickly and quietly back to the ship.

"What took you guys so long?" Hunter teased, crossing his arms as he shook his head, Echo bashfully smiling behind him as he finished putting on the Stormtrooper armor. "Got these guys," your friend said, kicking the unconscious Imperials, "They kept hanging out with their little friends so we had to wait till they split off." "Now let's get these disguises on, I'd rather not be here longer than is necessary," you said, helping your friend remove the uniforms, tying up the Imperials before all of you set off. "This armor sucks, I can hardly see anything," Echo scoffed, trying to adjust the helmet. "Yeah, not the idea armor for my kind of fighting," Hunter said. "Ha, we got lucky these uniforms are pretty comfy," your friend boasted. "Just try not to act suspicious," you told them with a grin, earning a laugh from them. As they get to a locked door, the three of you keep watch while Echo works, seeing some Imperials walking straight for you guys everyone begins to panic. "Echo any time now," Hunter said. "He's working on it," you scoffed while trying to keep an eye on those headed towards you. "Even if he gets it, what do we do?" Your friend asked, positioning themselves to be ready for a fight. "Calm down, they haven't done anything yet, just wait," you say looking over at them. "Excuse us, we require your assistance," one of the Imperials says to you and your friend. Both of you look at each other confused, still using your bodies to hide Echo behind you. Luckily they hadn't noticed him yet and were instead focused on the two of you, awaiting your response. "Yes sir, how can we help you," your friend finally replied after looking at their badges. - "Come with us please, there's an error with one of the terminals and we haven't been able to fix it." "Why do you think we can fix it?" Your friend hissed, annoyed that they're bothering you with something a mechanic could easily fix. Suddenly you remember the scans Tech had gotten off the base. If they were talking about the terminal in the main building it would put you close the where Cody was. It would be risky to get to him going that way, hence why the lot of you were sneaking in from a less watched corner, but if they were willing to just let you walk in the front door, why not go? Jabbing your friend with your elbow, you apologize to the Imperials for their behavior, "What terminal requires fixing, and what's wrong with it? I have some experience with those things and can take a crack at it." They look at each other, almost like they were nervous or ashamed, "It's the main terminal, don't tell anyone, but we spilled some caf on it and not it won't start back up." "If you tell anyone you'll regret it, got it!?" The other one said sternly, staring the both of you down, still somehow not noticing Echo who was kneeled down on the ground. - Your friend snickers some before you jab them with your elbow again, glaring at them like your eyes could kill. "We'd be happy to help, and I promise we won't tell anyone," you say saluting them. Turning in their heels, they motioned for you to follow them, talking to each other as you and your friend stayed silent, looking back at Echo and Hunter who were now on their own. "What do we do now?" Echo asked, knowing without the both of you they had no business being in this building and would easily get spotted. "We'll have to just try to get through, you're an arc trooper after all, as long as we can at least find his location we could contact them," Hunter says, looking down at Echo as he finally got the door unlocked. Standing up he realizes something, the Imperials said the main terminal, that was closer to Cody's office, "Hunter, the terminal they're going to is close to Cody's office, if one of them can slip away they could bring him out this way as long as we keep a lookout." "Echo, that's a good idea, now just to figure out how to get one of them out of there." "We could fake it, I know Cody I could easily comm them and order them to his office." Patting Echo on the shoulder for his quick thinking and excellent plan, he agrees. Both of them sneak inside, hiding at the end of one of the halls behind some crates. - After a little meddling Echo finds out how to contact you guys, but instead of calling you your friend is the one who received the call instead. At first, they tried to ignore the beeping and blinking coming from their wrist. The two Imperials quickly look over to both of you, "Aren't you going to answer that?" One of them asked them. "Uh yeah, excuse me a moment." Damn them, they left you here with these two watching over you, making sure you actually were fixing it. Walking out into the hall but still within ear range of the snooping Imperials, your friend answered the call.

"Hello? Who is this?" They asked. "This is Commander Cody, I require you in my office now to discuss some information." "Oh um sir, I'm currently assisting someone with repairs, could it ---" "I said now, get a mechanic to fix the problems unless you've suddenly become one." Good thing the terminal obstructed your face, you could tell it wasn't Cody, assuming it was Echo impersonating him made it hard for you not to laugh. The two Imperials quickly walk out to your friend, with terrified expressions they told them to go, that you could handle the repairs, and it was wise not to upset the commander. "I'll be right there, sir," your friend said before turning off the comm device. "Yeah, best not upset the commander or keep him waiting. Go," one of the men said, almost pushing your friend down the hall. Setting a quick pace, they walk through the halls. They didn't know Cody or Echo well enough to know it wasn't actually Cody. Knocking on the door yields no response from inside, "Kriff, where is he?! This is his office...man, I better not be at the wrong place," they say studying the area, confirming that they were in fact in the right place. "This is my office, are you looking for something?" Cody said, startling your friend. "Blast, did you have to scare me like that?? Oh, um, Commander Sir!" They said, quickly saluting. "What do you want, and who are you? I've never seen you on this base before," he replied. "I'm Y/N's friend, I'm here with a rescue team to get you out!" "I already told her I won't be going, there's no reason for everyone to put their life at risk for mine." He coldly replied, unlocking his office and walking inside. Following him your friend continues to try to talk sense into him, "Look, I don't know you, but Y/N is my friend and I would do anything for her especially since I owe her for saving my life. So can you give me a break and just come with me, there's a ship waiting for you not too far from here." "I'm not going and nothing you say will change my mind, Y/N was - is my friend and I won't needlessly put her life at risk," Cody said in an angry tone crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. "Well then, I guess you give me no choice..." They said huffing. "What do you --" before he gets a chance to finish they pull out the hidden blaster and stun him, "You better not be heavy," they grumbled, walking over to drag his body with them. "Echo, Hunter, come in I completed my task," they said over the comlink. "Oh, good work, is Y/N with you, we're covering the hallway here by the exit but not sure how long we can keep this up," Hunter replied. "No, she's still off helping those knuckleheads. Maybe try to contact her, pretend to be the Commander and order her over here, I could use help to drag him out of here." "Wait WHAT — what did you do??" They heard Echo shout. "Please tell me you only stunned him..." Hunter added. "Of course, what did you think I did, I might be a bounty hunter but I'm not going to shoot this guy." "I mean, technically you did shoot him," Echo said sarcastically. "Listen here you, I just stunned him, he'll be waking up in a bit so get Y/N over here to help me." "Copy that," the comm cut out. It had been a few minutes, and still no response, and you were nowhere in sight. Assuming their attempt didn't work, your friend tried getting Cody out of there on their own. Damit he was heavy, good thing they were strong enough to still lift him, draping his arm over their shoulder and grabbing his waist. It took a while, but slowly they got down the hallway, having to duck into cover a few times to avoid the patrols and random Imperials walking about. Luckily, the exit wasn’t far away.

#echoes in my mind #finally updated this lmao #echo x reader #arc trooper echo x reader #clone trooper echo x reader #the bad batch #female reader #use of y/n #chapter 8 #i'm sorry this took so long to post #star wars #the clone wars #the clone wars fic #clone force 99 #clone trooper hunter #clone trooper tech #clone trooper crosshair #clone trooper wrecker

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highandlowculture · 4 years

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MEET THE NEW WEST, SAME AS THE OLD WEST

In the second act of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, washed-up actor Rick Dalton is on the set of a TV western as his stuntman and best buddy, Cliff Booth is revisiting Spahn Ranch, a former set for movie westerns. The ranch has been taken over by a bunch of hippies who follow some guy name “Charlie”. The heavy of the hippies is a fella by the name of Tex Watson. When conflict arises between Cliff and the hippies, one of the girls runs off to fetch Tex, who’s busy showing a tourist couple around the ranch. Hearing that there’s trouble brewing, Tex snaps to it, galloping across the western landscape on horseback and wearing a black hat. It’s a sweeping shot straight out of a John Ford film. That’s when it clicked for me…

Tarantino has made his third western.

Although there were always spaghetti western elements in his films (especially in Kill Bill vol. 2), QT hadn’t made a full-fledged western until 2012’s Django Unchained. Though entertaining and with an African-American lead, the film is his most straight-forward movie. We know who the heroes are, we know who the villains are. Wrongs are righted with a six-shooter and a hero’s grin. Its followup was another western, 2015‘s The Hateful Eight, a much darker and far less heroic film. All of the characters are flawed if not outrightly fucked-up. If Django Unchained was the sumptuously shot crowd pleaser, The Hateful Eight was the claustrophobic, nihilistic reversal. The western myth of heroes and villains is subverted by an unsavory group of characters who drag each other through snow, blood and racial slurs. Maybe the Old West was a pretty rough place to live in after all!

And now, in 2019, QT transports us to another Old West: 1969 Hollywood.

Fifty years ago. Half a century. Pretty old, right?

Already contentious with reviewers, one of the main debates surrounding Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is its handling of Sharon Tate and the Manson Family. In the summer of ’69, when Tate, her unborn baby and her houseguests were brutally murdered by three members of the Manson Family, it sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood and America. The utopian dream of the 1960s was over. That’s the sanitized, less complicated history anyway. At the time many people were blaming satanism and Tate’s husband Roman Polanski for his hedonistic ways. Plus anyone deep in the trenches of late 60s hipdom knew that some of the peace-and-love spouting Flower Children might be psychopaths that could turn on a dime. Such darkness was foreshadowed in the music of The Doors and Velvet Underground. As Joan Didion recalled in her seminal work The White Album:

“Black masses were imagined, and bad trips blamed. I remembered all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”

Knowing this I find it disappointing just how many reviewers fail to see how sympathetic QT is to Sharon and her friends. They’re shown as cool people with a good vibe (only Roman is shown to be prickish when he speaks rudely to a dog). Sharon and Jay Sebring like to listen to records and enjoy life. No satanism. No orgies. And Sharon’s a generous person. She picks up hippie hitchhikers and buys her husband a Thomas Hardy novel. She relishes the communal experience of watching herself in the Dean Martin film The Wrecking Crew. It’s not just about her. She’s enjoying the connection she’s making with the theater’s audience. On the infamous August night, the film’s narrator talks about how Sharon, in the late stage of her pregnancy, was feeling hot and anxious. In short, Sharon is humanized. She’s a thoughtful, spirited and benevolent presence throughout the film. I think reviewers who view her just as “a Barbie doll” are revealing more of their own lack of empathy than QT’s. And people getting hung-up on how many lines her character speaks have some skewed priorities. As if the only way a person has worth is if they talk a lot. Talking. Talking. Talking. There are so many empty vessels running at the mouth these days. Social media voices bombard us constantly. There’s something to be said for some quiet dignity every once in awhile. Regardless, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood isn’t Sharon’s film and it’s not a biopic. It’s Rick and Cliff’s film and it’s a western.

If comedy is “tragedy plus time”, then the same can be said for any work of art. The mythology of the Old West often mixed historical and fictional characters. Whether they were Billy The Kid, Wyatt Earp or Butch Cassidy, we’ve seen countless retellings of their exploits, never exactly the same, never entirely accurate. That’s what makes it a myth. A good portion is made-up. Going back to Homeric and Arthurian legends, the foundation of storytelling has always been a collision of fact and fiction, chronicle and embellishment. People make too much of QT altering historic events. Are the Nazis of Inglourious Basterds and the Manson Family of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood any different than any other mythical villains of earlier works of art? If a filmmaker can’t riff on a fifty-year-old historical event, then what are we really doing here? Do we just want the cinema of Marvel Comics and discreet biopics? QT doesn’t treat history any different than the filmmakers of the 1960s treated the events of the 1860s. Tex Watson, galloping away in his black hat, is a signpost for this. It’s QT’s way of saying: “Every time has its myths, every time has its black hats and white hats”. And the Manson Family, filled with bloodlust and megalomania from the top down, fulfill the role of black-hatted villains quite perfectly.

Does this make Rick and Cliff, two middle-aged white guys who love booze and hate hippies, our white-hatted heroes? Hell, no. With the exception of Django Unchained, that was never QT’s bag. He’s all about the anti heroes of spaghetti westerns and Sam Peckinpah films. Men who have done plenty of bad, sometimes unspeakable, things. They’re only the hero because they wrestle with their past and because there’s always a meaner, badder fella waiting to shoot it out with ‘em. Clint Eastwood’s character in the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is only “Good” because Lee Van Cleef is so clearly “Bad” (and Eli Wallach “Ugly”). In 1992’s The Unforgiven, Eastwood’s character talks of killing “women and children” in his past. Yet he’s still clearly our hero. The Old West is a morally complex time in which one’s heroism is often defined by a greater and competing villainy.

So when it’s revealed that Cliff possibly murdered his wife and got away with it, he’s stepping into the role of anti hero with a dark past. Is Cliff haunted by his past? Not seemingly. He’s more inclined to shrug it off with a smirk and swig of beer. Shit happens y’know. This makes him exactly the type of guy murderous hippies shouldn’t fuck with. They justify their bloodlust with a self-serving philosophical bent: Entertainers taught them to kill via TV and movies, so it’s okay to kill the people who are involved in making TV and movies. QT makes the bold and provocative choice to not confirm whether Cliff did or didn’t kill his wife, but if he did, he probably wouldn’t dress it up as anything other than a burst of brutish violence that he was lucky to get away with. He loves his dog though, and he’s a good friend. In real life that might not justify liking the guy, but in a western that’s usually enough. Ultimately these character choices made by QT are to set up a mythic showdown between Cliff and the Manson Family. He’s good because they’re bad. It’s the same reason Cliff was shown going head-to-head with Bruce Lee. Masked racism by QT, a known lover of Asian and martial arts films, or a way of building up Cliff’s status to mythical proportions? There was once this ex war hero, who became a stuntman and maybe killed his wife, and he once threw Bruce Lee into a car door on the set of The Green Hornet! Cliff is Paul Bunyan. He’s Bill Brasky. A folk hero for stuntmen and for his time.

And did you hear that one tale about Cliff and the Manson Family…?

Rick’s bread and butter is now guest-starring on various TV shows in which he plays the heavy and gets his ass kicked by the show’s star at the end of the episode. Rick is a boozy, bloated hot mess of a man who’s prone to crying. A lot. His first burst of tears in the film is at the Musso & Frank parking lot, after an agent gives Rick a harsh dose of reality regarding the state of his career. Cliff, always keeping his cool, gives Rick his sunglasses and says, “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” Remember — this is a western. Anyway, if Cliff fills the role of macho, gives no fucks, murderous outlaw, Rick is the contrasting “modern man” or, to use a western term, “tenderfoot”. The film begins with a behind the scenes segment for Rick’s old show Bounty Law. In it an interviewer talks to Rick and Cliff about what a stuntman does. During the interview there’s a quip about Cliff carrying Rick’s load. So right out of the gate, QT brings our attention to the idea that Cliff is the real deal and Rick’s the actor playing a role. This notion is repeated throughout the film (even one of the Manson Girls, “Pussy”, makes reference to Cliff being more authentic because he’s a stuntman rather than an actor). Regardless of whether Cliff murdered his wife or not, he’s an ex military man and war hero, so obviously he’s killed people before. So in addition to taking falls and performing dangerous stunts for Rick, he’s more of a bona fide western anti hero than Rick ever could be. Fittingly, while Cliff and the Manson Family black hats are sizing each other up at Spahn Ranch, Rick is busy acting in a TV western. And Rick keeps crying. A lot. He even cries in front of a little girl who simultaneously coddles and reprimands him. No doubt, Cliff would view this as potentially worse than crying in front of Mexicans. But Rick can’t help himself. He’s both a man of his time and out of time. He can’t roll with the hippies and spaghetti westerns but he’d never last a day in Cliff’s shoes let alone the wild frontier. Even at the end, in which Rick finally gets the chance to become an avenging hero (involving possibly the greatest payoff in cinematic history) if one steps back and thinks of the climactic set-piece, Rick is merely stepping in at the end to grab all the glory after Cliff and his wonderful dog Brandy did most of the heavy lifting. Thus Cliff is yet again carrying Rick’s load.

But this doesn’t mean Rick doesn’t have a victory. He does. It just comes at the midpoint, and it’s the closest thing to a real-life victory in the film. When Rick shows up to play the heavy in the TV western, he’s reached his low-point. Like a different part of the anatomy going into ice-water in Raging Bull, Rick is submerging his face into ice-water in his trailer, struggling with a hangover and hopelessness. Making matters worse, the artsy director shows up and tells Rick he wants him to play a hippie-style outlaw with a fringe jacket, mustache and long hair. The only thing Rick does more than drink and cry is insult hippies. He’s living his worst nightmare as an actor. QT makes another one of his most interesting choices by showing the subsequent scenes from the TV show in the same film stock and style as the main narrative. Thus when juxtaposed to Cliff at Spahn Ranch, Rick’s battle with his growing irrelevance as an actor is given the same cinematic weight. This isn’t just a TV show within the movie — it is the movie! This battle or showdown is just as important as Cliff’s eventual showdown with the Manson Family. Rick struggles. He fucks up his lines. He comes totally unglued in his trailer. This looks like the end of the road for him as an actor. He eventually gets his shit together, embraces the role and goes for broke. It’s a credit to both QT as a filmmaker and Leo DiCaprio as an actor that the villain Rick plays in the TV show ends up being more intense and visceral than the one he played in the main narrative of Django Unchained. Rick’s chops as an actor are restored and he decides to go to Italy and star in spaghetti westerns. He learns to maximize his talent in order to roll with the times.

A protagonist who is at odds with changing times might seem regressive or even reactionary to some people today, but it’s also a hallmark of westerns, especially the westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From Once Upon a Time in the West to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an impending future of railroads and industrialization is always treated with uneasiness by the heroes. These changing times aren’t going to include them. Their wild and free ways will soon come to an end. Nowhere is this theme most prominent than in the work of Sam Peckinpah. In many of his westerns, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the heroes are viewed as endangered creatures who are all too aware of their fate. The character of Cable Hogue even meets his end when a motor car rolls over him. He’s killed by the modern age! Another Peckinpah film from this era, Junior Bonner, is set in 1972 Arizona but can also be considered a western (creating a template for QT’s western that’s not set in the canonical “Old West”). The protagonist and title character is an aging rodeo star (brilliantly played by Steve McQueen, who perhaps not so coincidentally also appears in QT’s film). In Peckinpah’s film, Junior has lost his edge and returns home to take a breather and maybe get his chops back. His struggle is not unlike Rick Dalton’s. They’re both aging entertainers and they both fear they’re washed-up. And as with all of Peckinpah’s westerns, encroaching progress is a threat to Junior’s simple cowboy ways. All of these above mentioned westerns are filled with a bittersweet quality; a nostalgic snapshot that’s destined to become yellow and brittle. The power of myths is they suggest immortality for our heroes.They might be long gone but they live through these tales. Whether’s it’s the Old West of outlaws in dusty little towns or the Old West of ’69 Hollywood, people once lived in these places and they lived vibrant, foolhardy and sometimes dangerous lives. Maybe they didn’t live or die exactly as the tale accounts, but they did indeed live and they did indeed die.

In his film QT references another “man out of time” western: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Written by John Milius, directed by John Huston and starring Paul Newman, the film is a highly-fictionalized account of the life of Judge Roy Bean. At the climax an elderly Roy Bean reemerges from a self-imposed exile to have a showdown with businessmen who have surrounded his beloved town with oil rigs. When his enemies ask who he is, Roy Bean shouts “Justice, you sons of bitches!” This is immediately followed by a shootout in which Roy defeats his foes, blows up the surrounding oil rigs and goes out in a blaze of glory. In real life Roy Bean died in his bed after a heavy bout of drinking. What’s most interesting is how QT referenced The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. After the climax of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood there’s a triumphant but wistful epilogue in which one of our heroes is faced with a future that we all know is a fantasy. Over this scene is an evocative piece of music that sounds like it’s from a fairytale and it plays over the end credits. The piece of music is entitled “Miss Lillie Langtry” and it’s the main theme from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Lillie Langtry was a British-American socialite Roy Bean was enamored with and he even went so far to name the saloon in his town after her. “Miss Lille Langtry” plays over the end credits of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood and the opening credits of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. But before the credits in Roy Bean we see written in storybook fashion:

“Near the turn of the last century the Pecos River marked the boundaries of civilization in western Texas. West of the Pecos there was no law, no order, and only bad men and rattlesnakes lived there.

…Maybe this isn’t the way it was… it’s the way it should be.”

With Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino pays homage to a socialite/actress who was tragically murdered before her time and two endangered heroes—one an outlaw stuntman, the other an entertainer—neither of who existed but men like them did. For two hours and forty-five minutes, the onward march of tragedy and time is defeated through a spirited, Old West mix of bravado and audacity. Maybe it’s not the way it was…

But it’s the way it should be.

#Quentin Tarantino #Once Upon A Time In Hollywood #western #hollywood

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theaviskullguy · 3 years

Text

like the lazy ass i am, instead of writing it normally have a post about my danganronpa au

Characters

Goggles Montoya- Ultimate Lucky student

Rider Clark- Ultimate Fighter

Army Vallaha-Williams- Ultimate Actor

Forge Vallaha-Williams- Ultimate Solider

Aloha Palliah- Ultimate Dancer

Diver Vauge- Ultimate Swimmer

Mask Kane- Ultimate Hacker

Skull Beryl- Ultimate Archer

Aviators Jones- Ultimate Baker

Gloves Elaris- Ultimate Gymnast

Emperor Castilo- Ultimate King

Prince Castilo- Ultimate Mage

Niki Pacer (N-Pacer)-Ultimate nurse

Eging Jr- Ultimate speedster

Vintage Auclare- Ultimate Detective

one short of a full dangan cast but shut

I’ll be doing two chapters per post, so here’s part 1!

Executions will be represented by chunks of bold text. Most of these are incredibly gruesome, so I’d advise you skip them if you’re sensitive to that stuff!!!

Also, obviously trigger warnings for blood/ink, death,

Prologue: Rainy day mystery

It’s nothing too big, honestly. Really, there’s a gala inviting some of Inkopolis’ greatest fighters to this really swanky hotel. A rain storm comes and basically locks them in, causing the gang to have to stay the night in suites that seem to have been tailored to them specifically. The next day the rain has stopped, but everything is still locked. There’s no way in or out of the Hotel. At noon, they’re called to the ballroom and BOOM. There’s Monokuma.

Our favorite half and half bear explains that, the reason this gang in specific was invited was because all of them were prodigies in their fields other than Turf Wars/Ranked (i.e, Army is a god-tier actor, and Vintage's record for fastest case solved was 30 seconds), and from now on that would be their “Ultimate”. Monokuma also revealed that, the only way to escape the Hotel is to get away with murder. (and also the other rules)

And y’know how SDR2 had Monomi/Usami, and DR3 had the Monokubs? This edition has the Monosquids! Basically, every time someone dies, a Monosquid would be created with that person’s personality and some brief memories. In a sense, they ARE the deceased group members, in a mechanical/plush form. Also, Monokuma explains them as the souls of the dead reanimated. They appear the day after a trial, and all seem to hate Monokuma. And with the exception of the two murders that were accidents, almost all the victims hate their killer.

They also still have Ultimate labs kinda-each of their rooms, as stated before, are tailored to double as their lab. For instance, Mask’s room has a lot of tech gear, N-Pacer has a place she can study, Emperor’s just has a fucking throne...yeah.

Chapter 1- The line of Light and Darkness is thin (daily life)

As we check in on our gang in the morning, we learn multiple things. One, most-to-all contact to the outside world has been cut off; Mask can access the internet and all of that, but he can’t post on any forums or play any online games, even with his hacking. Prince can’t tap into his mental link with Regent or...really anyone. Two, that there’s plenty of weapons and other things for murder in multiple labs, and around the Hotel in general.

And three, Monokuma has a motive.

The first motive is simple; If you are to get away with murder, you can take one person with you, but they cannot be the one who the class votes in the class trial. Enticing, since multiple couples are present (Emperor and Gloves, for example), but the gang has made a collective decision to try to ignore it. Well, mostly.

This motive ate at someone, driving them absolutely mad. They COULD NOT stand being trapped in the hotel, they needed out!

So, a few mornings after the motive was introduced, Rider takes notice at the breakfast meeting that...well, someone’s missing.

The group splits up, searching the hotel top to bottom. Until, at last, a high shriek pierces the area, and a dreary announcement is played.

Ding dong, dong ding!

“A body has been discovered!”

Chapter 1- The line of Light and Darkness is thin (Deadly life)

The gang rushes to the scream. It would seem Army found the body.

Curled up in a fetal position, arm still clutched around his wound, Prince lays motionless on the floor of his room. Yellow ink stains the area, and a knife stained with the same liquid sits on the floor next to him.

Emperor is near hysterics. He doesn’t even try to hide his tears. Gloves takes him away from the scene, resolving to comfort their lover in their room during the investigation.

Speaking of investigation, Vintage steps up to the plate. Being the Ultimate Detective, he takes to the scene like a fish in water. He questions everyone, and searches through Prince’s room top to bottom.

By the time of the trial, there wasn’t a stone unturned in the hotel. It was almost...scary, how well Vintage seemed to be handling this.

During the trial, Vintage revealed three main suspects.

First, there was Aloha. The dancer had indeed got up in the middle of the night-he had been sharing a room with Army, and the actor confirmed it-to use the bathroom and get himself a drink of water. He passed by the kitchen, and thought he saw a knife on the rack missing. He got up at 11:25 P.M and returned to bed at 11:30. Once again, Army confirmed his alibi for this.

Second, was Aviators. Avi couldn’t sleep as well, so he spent most of the night walking through the hotel, exploring it. He did take a knife, but only in the case if he needed to defend himself. He had gotten out of bed at 10:50, took the knife somewhere at around 11, and returned it when he was heading back to his bed, at 5:00 AM.

And the third was Rider. Sure, the fighter was close friends with Prince, but it was still suspicious; Rider was reportedly awake at 2:00 AM, and got himself a quick snack before simply training in his room. He did hear someone return to their room at around 5:00, but didn’t go check. Looking back, he suspects it was just Avi.

So this was a game of alibis, and luck. Multiple suggestions were made; maybe Aloha took the knife and murdered Prince, washed his hands in the mage’s bathroom, and returned to bed. That was shot down, since the rooms don’t have running water at night (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Normal DR stuff), only the bathrooms in the hotel itself, and the kitchen.

Another was that Rider had taken the knife, but that was also shut down seeing as the period he was awake at wouldn’t line up with Aloha seeing the knife missing.

The third and final one was that Aviators had taken the knife, murdered Prince, and wait for a time when Rider wouldn’t hear him to return to his own room. This one... the only argument against it was that Rider would probably had still heard it. That counterclaim was shut down when Rider said he was taking a short rest when he heard the noise, and then went back to training-practicing hits on a punching bag.

So, after a final vote, Aviators was voted as the blackened. Luckily correctly, but it was much to Skull’s horror. Aviators was seen as a father figure to the S5 (It made sense, with Skull being the mother figure), and he had killed Prince in cold blood. and it didn’t help that Avi said he was planning on using the motive to escape with Skull.

And so, Aviators was dragged off to his execution. RIP big man

Ultimate delight-Ultimate Baker Aviator Jones’ execution executed.

Avi is dragged by a chain around his neck towards his death, located in...a giant oven? He’s strapped down to a cake pan, and the heat turns up.

And up...and up...and up.

Aviators is sweating bullets in the oven, strapped down to this hot pan and in a satin jacket, there’s nothing he can do except grit his teeth and bare it.

Except he can’t.

His head is pounding and he feels incredibly dizzy. He manages to sit up a little in his restraints as he vomits.

And, it would seem, Heatstroke got him. For after a few more minutes of struggling to escape...Aviators fell still.

The first execution of the killing game was a gruesome one.

----

Chapter 2-The butterfly effect (Daily life)

The gang gathered in the dining hall again. Though, both Skull and Emperor were in grief, and everyone was still shaken up from that execution.

This is when Monokuma introduced the Monosquids.

Two robot like things-one purple and one yellow-shaped like baby inklings-appeared. The yellow one ran and hid behind Emperor, shaking, and the purple one only hugged Skull’s leg.

Monokuma explained their deal; They can’t talk, but they are essentially the spirits of the deceased in a more robotic form. So, naturally, Emperor just hugged Prince tightly, still in grief

Monokuma also explained the next motive. This one being taken straight from DR1; Secrets!

Everyone had a slip of paper with a secret of theirs on it. If no one died in the next day, these secrets will be revealed to the world.

So yeah some people didn’t want those secrets to be revealed, but that doesn’t mean they’d kill for it!

But, well, someone did. Not on purpose, mind you.

At around noon, Vintage was exploring the hotel, he heard a gunshot. He knew the only firearms in the hotel were the ones in his room (as Vintage had a license to carry from his detective job). So, basically, he knew someone was screwed.

He rushed to his room, seen by a few people who took no notice.

It was only at dinner they noticed Vintage hadn’t left his room.

Cautiously, Emperor, Army, and Skull went to investigate. When they opened the door and their eyes rested on the sight...

Ding dong, dong ding!

A body has been discovered!!!

Chapter 2- The Butterfly effect (Deadly life)

It wasn’t AS gruesome as Prince’s death. It didn’t mean it was still scarring. There was a hole in Vintage’s forehead, cyan ink flowed out of it. In his hands, he held his gun.

Obviously, it looked like a suicide. He was holding his gun. But, Skull knew better. Despite not getting along well with Vintage, Skull knew that Vintage would never kill himself, even for something like this. Plus, there’s the lack of a note, all of that.

Upon closer examination, the group also finds freckles of some sort of white on the handle of the gun-before you say anything, it’s not drugs.

This lead to two possibilities; 1, Gloves. The gymnast has a thing of chalk dust for extra grip (not like they need it)

Or 2, Skull. He had been baking and using flour earlier that day. Some of that flour could have stuck on his hands and rubbed off after using the gun.

But, the alibis didn’t seem to help at all; Skull was alone while baking, and Gloves was just. Alone all day.

During the trial, it was back and fourth between people saying that Skull killed Vintage, or Gloves, or that it was a suicide at the dust was from something different.

The only reason the trial was solved was guilt.

Throughout the trial, one of the two suspects was looking more and more anxious, more and more guilty.

A few minutes before the end, they yelled, “I’M THE BLACKENED!”

It was Gloves.

They explained what happened-They had found Vintage’s gun lying around somewhere and decided to return it. The thing is, they have no idea how guns work. So they accidentally triggered it. And when Vintage walked in, the same thing happened. Gloves panicked and put it in his hand.

Needless to say, Emperor broke down again. The two closest people in his life, dead or sentenced to it!

Emperor insisted it was Skull. He knew Gloves couldn’t hurt a fly and yet....!

Gloves was the blackened. But they weren’t about to go down without a fight.

They pressed a kiss on Emperor’s lips. It was a promise. It meant “I’ll see you soon”

And they raced down the hall in an attempt to get free.

Racing death- Ultimate Gymnast Gloves Elaris Execution: Executed

Gloves ran down the hallway, not stopping for anything.

Monokuma pressed a button, and pits opened up, showing falls onto spikes down below. So, Gloves got creative.

They leaped up and took hold of support beams, swinging their way across the hall.

But the last one.. The last one was weak, and broke under Gloves’ weight, sending them falling to their death

They collapsed onto the spikes, one impaling them through their stomach, sending neon green ink everywhere.

The second victim, Gloves Elaris, had fallen dead.

#Galax writes #coroika #splatoon #tw death #tw blood #tw gore #danganronpa

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violetwolfraven · 4 years

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modern day (Like highschool) Spirit animals headcanons?

Mkay let’s see what I can come up with. FYI this is kinda gonna be Meilin-centric because she’s my fav. Also this somehow turned into a drama club AU? But I think it turned out okay???

...

Meilin is a straight A student and is really good in every class but doesn’t have any friends because tbh she’s kinda a bitch.

And she’s okay with that I mean who needs friends right?

But her dad thinks she does so when she hits high school he tells her she has to join one club.

She’s not happy about that but she does.

She figures she heard the theatre club’s production of Mary Poppins was good, not that she bothered to go see it, but she decides to try that out because acting is easy right?

Wrong. Meilin finds that theatre is not as easy as she though it’d be and even just the choreography calls are hard.

Then on top of that there’s her fellow freshmen and Conor seems okay but Abeke is competition for female leads and Rollan is just plain annoying. Nobody else really even talks to her.

Rollan hates Meilin because she seems like just some rich entitled bitch who doesn’t even care about theatre which he finds super annoying because Rollan loves acting more than anything.

Even before the 4 of them make friends with each other, they end up friends with a college kid named Tarik because Tarik is really nice and is the club advisor but the members refer to him as Theatre Dad.

Tarik and his girlfriend Lishay starred in everything when they were younger but now they just mentor everyone else.

Also they run a website that partners young actors with professionals for anonymous mentoring. The kids get to ask questions and the pros get to give advice to without anyone getting too excited because the kids don’t know who their pro is and the pro doesn’t know anything about the kid beyond their audition tapes. Not everyone gets picked but a lot of people do. The 4 freshmen get signed up as soon as possible.

Conor gets picked first by someone who uses a wolf as a profile pic. He doesn’t know this, but it is basically that universe’s equivalent of like Chris Evans.

Abeke gets picked second by like Lupita Nyong’o, who uses a leopard profile pic.

Meilin gets picked by someone like Lucy Liu with a panda profile pic.

Much to his annoyance, Rollan is the last to get picked but he does eventually, by a less-known actress. (In my mind she’s like Mizuo Peck {the lady that played Sacajawea in natm})

Basically these actors advise them throughout the AU but moving on.

The next musical is Into the Woods.

Many of the older kids don’t have the advantage of mentoring so all 4 get cast in main roles.

Conor is Cinderella’s Prince.

Abeke is the Witch.

Rollan is the Baker.

And Meilin, much to her annoyance, is the Baker’s Wife.

Also Maya is a year older but she’s short so she plays Little Red.

But basically they all run into a little dilemma here because Rollan and Meilin really want these roles but they also fucking hate each other and while they can get through the scenes where they argue fine they can’t act like a couple for more than 5 minutes to save their lives.

Tarik is the director so he puts them in a room and tells them to figure it out or he’s going to have to move them to different roles.

And Rollan does not want to be Jack for some reason. Maybe because that insinuates that he’s small and dammit it’s not his fault he hasn’t gotten his big growth spurt yet.

Meilin doesn’t want to switch either so they argue talk and eventually work out their differences.

Rollan finds out that Meilin is guarded because she doesn’t have any friends. That she’s never had any friends.

Meilin finds out that Rollan thinks she doesn’t care and he’s defensive because he’s an orphan and theatre is all he’s got.

And maybe they’re not exactly friends after that but they definitely aren’t enemies anymore.

Tarik doesn’t ask what they talked about but he knows that their character dynamic is a million times better so he doesn’t really care.

But Abeke is curious and she drags Conor into it when she tries to investigate but it is Conor who comes to the (wrong) inevitable conclusion which is...

Meilin and Rollan had one decent conversation and now have crushes on each other.

So now Abeke and Conor are trying to get them together, when in reality, Rollan doesn’t have a crush on Meilin (yet) and Meilin is just learning to think of him as a friend.

But besides that, there is a sinister plot going on.

2 weeks before opening night, Maya is caught on the edge of an explosion because someone planted a bomb in her car. She’s alive but she definitely can’t perform so a girl named Drina gets the role. Oddly, she doesn’t seem to feel any sympathy over what happened to Maya.

The police don’t want to scare the kids so they don’t tell them but of course they all find out why Maya’s car blew up.

Meilin starts getting a little paranoid, knowing whoever it was will likely come after other main actors, too.

Sure enough, 3 days later, Finn, the guy who plays the narrator, gets a set dropped on him and is lucky to be alive. His understudy, Zerif, takes his part.

Over a series of ‘accidents’ that badly hurt a lot of actors, most of the remaining ones quit, leaving their understudies in their place. The 4 freshmen kind of close ranks, figuring they can’t trust anyone but each other.

Abeke drops her guard when Shane, the guy who plays Jack and the only other actor who hasn’t gotten off the cast one way or another approaches her and asks if he can stick around their group.

When Abeke asks her friends, Conor is willing to try to trust him, but Meilin and Rollan are pretty sure there’s something... off about him.

She should’ve just ask, but being a dramatic little shit, Meilin breaks into Tarik’s office and finds that Shane wasn’t going to be Jack. The guy who was originally picked was in a car crash before the cast list was even released.

Unfortunately, Meilin is caught in there, making everyone think she’s the one who’s been masterminding the attacks to get people who pay her on the cast. It does not help that one of Shane’s friends plants cash in her locker.

Rollan, Abeke, Conor, and Tarik are the only ones who believe she didn’t do it besides her own father, but none of them can prove it was actually Shane, who Abeke is feeling hella betrayed by.

Also it’s like 2 days to opening night and most of the original cast is incapacitated and Meilin is very possibly going to juvie and if she doesn’t get out Rollan is going to have to act alongside this basic bitch called Ana who he hates.

As a last ditch effort because he has faith in his kids Tarik tells the cops he did it and framed Meilin and he feels guilty for that but he was behind the attacks.

Of course nobody from the school believes it but it’s good enough for the cops and Tarik gets fired and Meilin gets her role back.

But at this point the 4 freshmen want their roles just a bit less than they want revenge.

So at like 4 hours to curtain Meilin confronts Shane because she knows he framed her and figures he knows she can’t prove it.

Little does Shane know Meilin has a recording device on her and she’s recorded his entire confession.

She goes back to the others with all the evidence they need to send Shane packing. Abeke is about to take it to a teacher when Meilin is like:

“Wait. We’re not going to reveal this just yet. Rollan is going to have it in his pocket the entire show and he’s going to play it in a microphone for the whole crowd to hear after finale.”

Rollan is s h o o k.

Like he met her like... a few months ago and she’s trusting him with her revenge and she’s like an evil genius?

He gets overwhelmed and kisses her.

*gasp!* Rollan apologizes but Meilin... doesn’t mind.

Fast forward they do the show without a hitch and the 4 of them are great and Abeke pulls off her quick change from an old lady to a beautiful witch flawlessly.

Conor and Meilin agree never to speak of the Any Moment scene.

When Meilin dies and her ghost is singing to Rollan he actually like... sheds a few tears??? Because the two of them are hella good and Rollan forgot she’s not actually dead.

Then they get revenge on Shane, who goes to jail and gets what he deserves.

So do all his friends.

So happily ever after.

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littlepurinsesu · 4 years

Text

V Watches MagiReco - Episode 12 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime Episode 12*

I have been waiting for so long to see this chapter animated, and at long last!!! This week’s episode finally touches upon the secret truth of magical girls and reveals Yachiyo’s mysterious past!

There are, of course, some parts I wish were handled a little better, but overall, I wouldn’t say it was too shabby ^^ I have a lot to say about this episode, both the good and the meh, so let’s go~ (Tumblr, please don’t eat my post again I IMPORE YOU.)

(Oh, for clarification, I’m still using the name “Meru” instead of “Mel”, since that’s what her name was before the game was localised in English. Both are acceptable, but I guess I’m more used to this spelling xD)

I personally really liked how they began the episode with Kanae and Meru at Mikazuki Villa. The rain and dark lighting and overall silence of the scene was really well-done. It’s a nice way to “tease” their characters before properly introducing them and their roles in Yachiyo’s story. I really don’t have much else to say, but I just really, really liked that opening scene hehe

Speaking of openings, the anime continues to come up with creative ways to bring in the OP, and this week’s was another really interesting idea that I enjoyed a lot! I was just beginning to wonder if they were going to skip the OP this week because there was so much to cover, but I really liked what they came up with, so hats-off for the creativity and originality! ^^

Touka’s lecture really did seem even more lecture-like in the anime, with the lecture hall and screen and her pointer. She’s like a tiny, overly-enthusiastic professor trying to force a reluctant group of students to listen to her haha x) That being said, all the special effects were done very creatively in a way that is true to the PMMM style. It’s not only some impressive artwork, but it also prevents the lecture from becoming boring, since it’s literally just “info dumping” and a whole lot of exposition (most of it essentially being stuff that most of the audience already knows, too).

As for Touka herself, I’m really liking the anime’s portrayal of her. She’s extremely cute, but in a strange way that almost seems suspicious, and with just the right amount of “annoying-ness” that keeps her antagonistic role without making her so obnoxious that you can’t even bear to watch her. Each of her moves seems calculated in some way, and the way she leaps around and twirls her umbrella really does make her seem like a tiny fairy or pixie, and I love that contrast between her supposedly innocent image and the immoral deeds the Magius (and the Feathers) have been committing. A+ portrayal so far, and I hope they keep that up!

I was a bit confused at first when Touka addressed Kanae as “A” (since we know that in the game, “A” is Yachiyo, and Kanae is actually “C”), but I guess they weren’t planning on going ahead with the A-F naming of all 6 characters and this was just a one-off, so fair enough. However, I was a little annoyed that they showed the first secret in “lecture form” and then repeated it once more in “flashback form” once they got on the car thingy. I really felt that they could have skipped that first part and just focused on the flashbacks, because they’re essentially wasting time by telling one of the secrets twice in an episode that already has a lot to cover.

And this brings me to possibly my main issue with this episode: too fast. There was a lot of emotion in these flashbacks, and while the anime did bring them out decently, I just feel that they could have been even better if they had just managed the pacing a little more ideally. The tragedy and feels were definitely there, but it could have been even better. Another problem with this fast pacing is that we barely got to know Kanae and Meru before they met their respective downfalls, with the only clues to their individuality being Kanae’s guitar and Meru’s Tarot Cards. It tells us something, but it’s not enough. The result is that it becomes a lot harder for the audience to feel anything for these characters’ deaths, and Kanae and Meru ultimately become plot devices that serve to move Yachiyo and the others along on their journey. Granted, they were always kind of plot devices even in the game, but at least we got to know them a little better before their deaths, and this isn’t even counting their personal Magical Girl Stories.

But aside from these issues, the rest of the flashbacks were very well, in my opinion :) We as an audience may not have felt much for Kanae’s death because we barely knew her, but Yachiyo’s trembling hand as she tries in vain to purify her friend’s broken Soul Gem, the terrific voice acting, that tragic yet beautifully drawn shot of Kanae lying soulless (literally) on the ground... That was some impressive stuff that actually made me tear up.

The battle scenes also saw a huge improvement this week! Still could be better, but they’re a lot more action-packed and exciting than the quick and easy battles we’ve been seeing so far. I also really appreciate the show of teamwork between the old Team Mikazuki, not to mention that Meru’s use of magic looked absolutely amazing!!! But I would have liked it if she spoke a bit more before Witching out, and I was especially disappointed that she didn’t get to say that line about how today was her lucky day because she got to protect Yachiyo. That line says a lot about her as a character to me, and it was a shame that they only gave her an extremely shortened/simplified (and almost unfinished) version of it here. But I guess this is only because I’ve played the game and have expectations of what I want to see and what I think should be done. Maybe someone who hasn’t played the game at all wouldn’t have an issue with this minor detail haha :)

(By the way, I totally called it and guessed that they were going to release Meru’s Doppel Uncap with the debut of her Witch form in the anime mwahaha >:D Pretty good timing, though, and I like that attention to detail!)

Kyubey is a little sh*t in any and every timeline, and I did enjoy seeing Momoko yelling at him, even though obviously he gives no effs. Another nice nod to the original anime by having Kyubey using the same line about young girls and Witches, too (or maybe he’s had to defend himself so many times that he has the perfect justification memorised to use when needed? xD).

The scene with Mifuyu and Momoko was also a really nice way to show the difference in their personalities, through just the way they respond to and take in all the tragedy and shocking information. I loved the way they animated Mifuyu’s Witch/Doppel moment, and it’s always nice to see a Doppel shown in the anime! Another thing I liked was the way Touka seems to “control” the scene as she pleases, rewinding it like an actual video and pausing on particular frames. It was too easy to forget that these are scenes shown in the Memory Museum, and little details like this remind you that these aren’t just ordinary flashbacks shown in anime and movies.

Yachiyo was as cool ever in the very few (present) scenes she got. I especially loved her confrontation with Touka and how she literally just thrusts her weapon in her face haha. And the way she just ignores Touka talking and smashes open a path and just goes in there herself on foot? BADASS. I LOVE YACHIYO.

And finally, about Team Momoko... A bit funny how Momoko was the one gearing up for the Big Talk but mostly just ended up standing there for the whole thing xD But anyway, I really, really loved Rena in this scene. It’s probably the first time we’ve seen her being so honest with her feelings by hugging Kaede and straight-up telling her how worried she was. It’s these small moments that really make me love Rena so much, no matter how harsh and prickly she can be most of the time. I really liked the scene in the game where she goes to Kaede’s place to comfort her (even if they ended up slapping each other lmao), because it really did show how much Rena cares for her friends. But this anime version was quite nice too and also does some good for Rena’s characterisation, so I’ll take it :)

As for Kaede... what happened to my sweet sunshine child? I’m not liking the dead look in her eyes and how she sounds like a zombie... almost like she’s in a trance? And also... what was with that line at the end? Did Kaede join the Wings of Magius? Is she brainwashed? Would that explain her strange behaviour and way of speech? If any of this is true, then this will probably be the biggest deviation the anime has done, and I’d be both scared and interested to see how they handle it lol.

So yeah, an interesting episode that could have been super impressive if it weren’t for some of the issues I discussed, but overall, still enjoyable and decently good :) I really think the majority of the MagiReco anime’s issues comes from the pacing. Which is understandable, because they’re pressed for time and there’s a lot to squeeze in. It’s just a bit of a shame that so many important scenes and moments don’t translate as amazingly as they could have due to time constraints :(

Next week’s episode will be the final one, right? I know nothing’s been confirmed, but I’m almost certain that there’s going to be another season/cour after this. (They wouldn’t just leave it hanging like that... right? O___O) My guess is that we’ll see Tsuruno, Felicia, and Sana join the Wings of Magius, Yachiyo split up the team, and possibly Iroha going up against the Rumour herself and declaring herself the leader. These are all really important plot points, and adding to the fact that next week will be the (season) finale, hopefully we can end it with a huge BANG! Will we see Holy Mami? Will we see Sayaka? Or will we perhaps see Kuroe, rounding up the season by going full circle and bringing us back to the hanging threads left from all the way back in Episode 1?

It’s almost surreal to think that we only have one more episode left of this season!!! Let’s hope that it’ll end in the best way possible (even if that means leaving us on a cliffhanger lololol) ٩(^ᴗ^)۶

#magia record #magireco #puella magi madoka magica #puella magi madoka magica side story #pmmm #fandom #mine #anime #review #magia record review #v watches magireco

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bekahdoesnerdshit · 4 years

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no one else has reblogged ask meme Mondays so I'm just going fucking apeshit with u. from the big boy: b7 for raini bc it's funny, c1 for cog bc it's inchresting, h3 for brilliance bc I know there's some gay shit going on and I want to hear more, then a17 (character proud of themselves or ur proud of ur rp as them) L5 and L6 for whomsoever u want to talk about

I won’t need a readmore for this one, I tell myself. There’s not that many questions, and they’re not proseboys. I was a fool. She’s too long to be allowed to run on people’s dashboards unrestrained 😔 Thank you! For going apeshit!!

Raini

B7. How do they respond to babies crying in public? I guarantee the image you have for how Raini would react to a crying baby is 10000% correct. She’s unhappy. Uncomfortable. Unimpressed. Can you please make that thing be quiet. Why did you have it if you can’t mange it. This is why she’s never having kids. Like she’s not gonna say anything to the parents or shoot them dirty looks, because she’s not that specific flavor of asshole, but she’s going Mind Her Business and vacate the premises if possible. People who want to take care of something should just get a cat. Goddamn. There is ONE (1) baby that may qualify for an exception, and that’s Red. This is because (and please, picture Raini, the absolute picture of ‘fed up’, squatting down to look a fussy Red in the eye while she says this) “Baby Lent. You’re better than this. I know you are, and you’re letting me down. You need to stop making that noise.” This is unrelated to the question, but please also picture a Raini who was asked (blackmailed?) into babysitting using her Mage Hand to change Red’s diaper. It has nothing to do with the question but I think it’s a Very funny mental image. Thank you.

Cog

C1. Does your OC have a moral code? If not, how do they base their actions? If so, where does it come from, and how seriously do they take it? Absolutely! The way Cog approaches the world is defined by three main mantras: - Kindness is a discipline, not a character trait. - Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it is always worth doing. - If you are able to help someone, you have an obligation to do so. Between these three things, Cog sees the world in pretty black and white terms. There are right decisions, and wrong ones. The difference between the two is usually clear to anyone who cares to look, and so most of the evil in the world is born of selfishness. Consequently, Cog does very poorly in morally grey situations. She will commit without hesitation to any course of action that she deems “right” and “kind” no matter how drastic or dangerous it is, but she pretty much shuts down the second she’s faced with a decision that has consequences for someone regardless of what she does. I’m sure that has not, and will not, come in her life ever at all. Ahah! I think originally, this worldview was born of naivety. She grew up that religious kind of super sheltered where everything in the secular world was dangerous and dirty, and so when Cog began to realize that definitely wasn’t the case she made the choice to intentionally see the best in people and the world around her to fight what she was told growing up. When she started traveling with her party and actually seeing more of the world than the extremes of a) shitty cult town b) shiny clean magic school, she began to realize that the true state of the Wasteland was somewhere between what her Mama had told her and what she wanted to believe it was. But I’ve never in my life made a character who is stubborn as hell deep down, so instead of letting the world she found herself in change her Cog took a deep breath, rolled up her sleeves, and settled in to be the one changing it by loving and helping the people around her.

Brilliance

H3. Does your OC believe there’s only one ideal partner (or multiple ideal if not monogamous) for everyone, or that there are many people who could be right? I think Brilliance absolutely adores the idea of two people being made for one another. Two souls, wandering the world looking for one another? Who slot together so perfectly that when they find each other it’s clear they never could have fit anywhere else? Bruh. Yes, she knows love takes work. Sometimes you and your partner are going to disagree, and sometimes there’s going to be conflict. The world isn’t “love at first sight” then smooth sailing for the rest of your life. But you put in the work to make your lives better, together, because the universe gave you this person to care for. Maybe there are many people who you could be happy with, and those relationships aren’t anything to look down on. But when you find The One, Brilliance thinks, you know. She certainly did.

Don’t Worry About It

A17. What’s one of your OC’s proudest moments of themselves? Gonna hijack this question to talk about rp moments I’m proud of because Alex sorta kinda gave me permission to do that! Alright! For Raini, the biggest rp moment I’m proud of was her “I’m getting our memories back” speech a few sessions ago, specifically the line, “We’ve been fighting with one hand tied behind our backs for too long. If we’re going to die fighting this thing, I want to know exactly what I’m fighting for.” Morgan and I had been planning to kick off our return from July Hell Hiatus with Wish Two for a couple of days, which meant I was lucky enough to be able to spend a little while planning what to say. I feel like that line in particular embodies Raini’s unwavering confidence in her magic, her determination, and her specific brand of caring for the people around her without actually admitting that’s what she’s doing. I also really liked the way the scene of her apologizing to the party for being Bitchy post losing Magic for a minute went! Idk if anyone else remembers it, because it was pretty short in game, but! I thought it was a very good moment of Raini finding the most Roundabout way to say “thank you for looking out for me while I was defenseless”. If I can pat myself on the back a little, my Cog monologues kick Ass. The most recent one was when she was talking to Ace about how War is Bad (radical, I know) and there was a moment where she looked at him and said, “...I’m not going to ask for your help, because I don’t know what I’ll do if I do and you say no.” Which. OOF. That was her and I realizing in real time that she and Ace were very much on different sides of this issue. When the session ended everyone said they Loved how good and hurtful that conversation was and I :’) Also, there was a really small moment when Cog was pleading for Maelo’s life (when Sunny’s dad had him locked in a cat carrier. It’s a Long story, made slightly better by the fact that Maelo was wildshaped into a cat at the time) and Cog went Straight for the dad heartstrings by sniffling and asking if, please, would Robert at least let her say goodbye to her friend before he killed him? Please? 😢 She is using her baby face for EVIL! And oh my god how could I forget! Arcane Timeout! When the party went back to New Alexandria and was confronted by Ace for helping a prisoner escape (which, in fairness, Maelo did do) and Cog brought the encounter screeching to a halt by casting Wall of Stone to make a timeout hut with herself and Ace inside. She then sat herself down, looked Ace dead in the eye, and told him that the wall wasn’t coming down until he actually talked to her, or until he broke her concentration on the spell. She banked hard on him not being willing to hurt her, and it paid off. There were tears all around, both in and out of character. It was Wonderful. Also! I do just want recognition for the fact that I did not give into my impulses to be a little Shit as Cog last session by subtle casting Heal in Ace’s face after he Counterspelled my Healing Word. it was what I Rebekah wanted to do more than anything; unfortunately Cog is a better person than I am. There is No worse feeling than wanting so badly to do something you have no choice but to admit isn’t in character. Rip. For whatever reason, all of my favorite Brilliance rp moments came during combat. Pressing her forehead to Sabre’s after he died in silent grief, forcefully taking a Narzugon off his Nightmare and then using Misty Step to mount it herself and take off after her friend, planting herself in the chokepoint of a hallway to stare down three minotaurs so she could keep her party safe behind her, pushing deeper into the hellwasp nest to rescue Dembe and Sabre despite knowing that doing so all but destroyed her chance of making it out alive, the list goes on. There were good out of combat moments too (despite the rest of the party’s best efforts 🙄), but I feel like for once I made a character who really shone in combat. oh GOD I just remembered one really really good rp moment, when our rogue Zihro died when he got separated from the party during combat. We finished taking care of the main devil we were fighting, then began searching the dungeon for Zihro and the npc he was with. We, instead, found both of their corpses. Dembe looked to Brilliance, our healer, and demanded to know why she was just standing there instead of fixing their friend. We were only level three or four at the time, so Brilliance had to tell Dembe, again and again, that she couldn’t fix Zihro. It was too late, she wasn’t powerful enough yet, her goddess wouldn’t answer a prayer like that- It was a rough scene, and without question one of the best rp moments I’ve had with that group. Tae, if you’re reading this, you’re the only one with rights. Also, please unfollow this blog immediately. Now as a quick pick-me-up after that mess, Pip’s best rp moment was when our barbarian Durokal -who couldn’t read and had a habit of running off and causing Problems- found a plaque he could tell had five words on it, and called Pip over to read it for him when Pip finished chasing him down. Pip, annoyed and out of breath and all of two feet tall, looked up at this 7 foot half-orc and told him, “It says: I’m. Gonna. Kick. Your. Ass.” Also, he regularly called very powerful figures in Barovia by sweet nicknames with “Mr.” in the front. As a sign of Respect. Because he’s the Best. sdfhsdkfj he also he couldn’t think of a fake name quick enough one time so he told an npc that is name was Dick and he was Very embarrassed about it. She: bought it!

Brilliance, Again

L5. Which OC do you think is the most decent morally or behaviorally? AKA, which is supposed to a “good guy”? The answer is Cog, but we already went in depth on her morals this ask. She’s HAD enough screen time let’s move on. Brilliance is the only other character who, if asked, would say they saw themselves as a good guy instead of just “a person”. She strives to do right by the people around her, and to protect the light and beauty found in the world. She doesn’t have the same illusions about the world wanting to be a good place that Cog does, and she very much understands that sometimes the best thing you can do for the world is to put the things that make it dangerous six feet under. What’s interesting I think is that, despite being a paladin, she isn’t Lawful Good! She’s Neutral Good, because you know what? She wants to do the right thing, and laws aren’t always right. It’s up to you, as a person with a mind and free will and agency, to look at a situation and decide what you think is the right thing to do. And, for Brilliance, generally the right thing to do is heft her sword, raise her shield, and face trouble head on.

Raini, Once More

L6. Which OC do you think is the worst morally or behaviorally? AKA, which is supposed to be a “bad guy”? I don’t have any evil aligned characters, because I personally find things like “getting along with my party members” sexy, but the character who’s the shittiest and the worst is obviously Raini. She’s not a bad person per say, she’s just selfish and results oriented. Very much “the ends justify the means” and in a party like hers she’s aware that somebody has to be the bad guy sometimes, and she’s not afraid to make sure that’s her. She’s also very very likely to fall victim to her hubris making her feel like she definitely knows what’s best, and acting on that maybe without consulting other people (see: the whole fucking premise of the campaign). She sees a goal, she sees a way to accomplish that goal, so why shouldn’t she begin taking the necessary steps to reach it? I think the events of the game have mellowed this flaw out a little bit, but you can still see traces of it in the way she, for example, wordlessly handed Lent a bunch of diamonds before launching her consciousness into the Abeast and very nearly dying in there without consulting with the party first. It happens! Also, behaviorally, she’s just. I mean. She’s like that. The worst. And that, I promise, will never change.

#syn-odics #Rainivere #amnesia campaign #cog #wasteland campaign #brilliance #dia #word count: 2273 #new tag! just for my own personal edification #answered #mine

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