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latenightbreezeinheaven · 2 years

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Synastry aspects with my unforgettable and beloved ex (Personal Experience) *Part-1* 💝👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏻

I’ve been feeling quite nostalgic about the memories I had with my first ex in these days. I normally don’t reveal my feelings this because I’m worried that I wouldn’t be able to control myself and things would go worse as I tend to be impulsive when I really want something. However, I checked our synastry chart last night as I couldn’t sleep and I saw some lovey-dovey aspects as well as heartbreak aspects so let’s dive into it!🤿

His sun conjuncts my moon

💗This is a traditional soulmate aspect and I also think he’s my soulmate. We broke up because we were too young and our parents forced us to. Also, it was because he was moving to another city. If it had not been like that, I’m pretty sure that we would still be together to this day. He has also told me that he felt that we’re soulmates. I felt very comfortable with him most of the times and he just got me. He understood my feelings and I also could tell his feelings just by looking at him. Our energies also sometimes were mixed up. If he was sad, I was sad too and we were not even in the same place at those times. It was like magic. He was like the Ying to my Yang and Romeo to my Juliet. Even though we don’t have mercury aspects, our conversations were always going with the flow and there was not a single time when we had nothing to say. We were friends and also lovers.👫🏻

His moon conjuncts my Venus

💗This is also very warm and sweet, especially in Cancer. We both were romantic but needless to say, as I have a Venus in 12th house, I made more romantic gestures for him than he did for me. Whenever we were together, we stared at each other while holding hands and we smiled and giggled. It was like a scene from a typical high school romance movie. I loved to hold his hands so much. I felt very safe when I held his hands. I used to hug him from behind and from the front and at those times, I just felt like I was at home even though I was at school where I hated the most. I used to rub his cheeks while holding his hands from the other hand when he cried. I felt appreciated with him and we loved each other’s presence. Lovey-dovey for sure!👀

My moon conjuncts his mars

💗This is known as a “baby making” aspect in synastry from my knowledge. And even though we didn’t have sex and he didn’t even touch my private parts and neither did I, I always felt this electric connection flowing in my body whenever he touched my arms and thighs. My blood boiled suddenly and it was special. I felt like he could be the father of my children lmao😭😂. And I also loved staring at him and brushing off his hair when he slept. He was like a cheerleader for me too. He supported me emotionally and I supported him to take actions to achieve his goals. I was prone to anxiety attacks so I had difficulties in studying but he uplifted me and I also helped him learn by studying with him together. The connection between us felt so traditional though. Most of the time, I loved switching gender roles (not in bed). For instance, I didn’t want to become a housewife who stays at home and takes care of children. But with him, I just wanted to marry him, stay at home, nurture him and our children, cook for them and do typical housewife duties.👰🏻‍♀️

His venus trines my mars

💗That also indicates a sexual attraction but his Venus was in Leo and I am allergic to guys with Venus in Leo. I just don’t get along with them normally because they irritate me. They want someone who they can show off to public and I don’t know his intentions towards me but urgh idk I don’t like Venus Leo men (I love girls though). At this point, I think I played as a masculine role and he was in feminine mood because I kissed him first. Yes you saw it. He wasn’t making any moves so I wasn’t patient anymore and I just kissed him and he was soo surprised because in our country, girls don’t normally kiss first. He told me that it turned him on more but in a romantic way and not sexually.😃

My moon conjuncts his Jupiter

💗We were bubbly together. I laughed with him a lot and our relationship was teemed with giggles and crazy laughs. I enjoyed his company and he enjoyed mine too. I felt expanded intellectually when I was with him and I was willing to do everything together with him such as traveling and trying out adventurous activities. I provided him to open up his feelings but he never fully did.🤷🏻‍♀️

My sun squares his mars

💗We rarely fought during our relationship but there was one fight that I can never forget. At that time, he teased me about a trivial matter and I was so serious about it because I was on a period and I lashed out my anger at him. He didn’t get it and he never retreated and went on teasing me so I didn’t talk to him for 3 days even though he was sitting beside me in the class for all those days. He tried so hard to make me talk to him but I kinda insulted his mom and his exes and then, he fought me back (he was a momma boy, he still is). Our argument was intense and explosive. My mars Aries shot his ass off with non-stop cursing words and he also said that I was selfish and etc. The fight ended with the help of mutual friends but during the argument, it was like two tigers fighting for a piece of beef.🐯

His sun sextiles my Venus

💗I have to admit it. I liked him first and I kind of flirted with him. He flirted me back and we got together. From the first time I saw him, I had this lil crush on him like he was my type even though he didn’t meet my expectations. I adored him the way he was. I just felt so positive about him and he told me he felt it too.

My north node squares his moon

💗I have seen in a post on tumblr (I don’t remember the original author sorry) that those people whose personal planets make square aspect to your north node may drag you down or delay you in some way. In other words, they may be the reason for delays and restrictions to get to your life purpose. His moon squares my north node and I had to process our break up for about a year because of his feelings and mine. I don’t know how to explain this but I felt emotionally stuck with him like I could not escape from my own emotions and I felt that he was the one responsible for it.

My Lilith conjuncts his Venus

💗It’s really interesting to see this pattern going on with me because there are 3 guys that I can never forget in my life and two of them have their Venus conjunct my Lilith. I’ve read countless posts about Lilith contacts and I still don’t clearly get who is more obsessed with who but I’m pretty sure I was the one more obsessed with both of them. I couldn’t let go of them even after a long time. This guy and I broke up 3 years ago and look at me, I’m still here, writing a post about the synastry between him and I😭😂. Plus, I felt that I could show my Lilith side to him without worrying about being judged. So if any of you have experiences with Lilith conjunct venus, please share yours freely because I’m so curious!!😩

His Lilith conjuncts my mercury

💗He was obsessed with the way I talked. He told me to talk more with him about various topics because he felt good hearing my voice. I find this funny because my word usages are not even attractive and my voice is also not hot but he said he loved it. He didn’t like it too when I talked to other people, even to my older cousin brother. Pretty bit of a tiny red flag but I was so in love with him so I was blind at that time.😪

My Chiron opposes his Venus

💗This is also a same pattern because I was always heartbroken by guys who had their Venus in aspect with my chiron (not only opposition). People say that Venus conjunction chiron is a marriage aspect and it’s very healing but I got major traumas from a guy whose Venus conjunct my chiron so hmm umm excuse me!? Back to my ex, his Venus is in opposition with my chiron and it was not healing at all. AT ALL. He traumatized me. His parents traumatized me. His friends traumatized me. Honestly, it’s very complicated to explain but the reason why I got bullied and slut-shamed at school is because of him. But those experiences made me stronger and more mature. It brought me to where I am right now and that’s why I don’t regret it. It hurt me so much though. Like a sword in my heart.😔

His Saturn conjuncts my ascendant

💗So, I don’t have much to say about this aspect but I felt insecure with him at some times. Especially when it came to my daily activities and my appearance. I felt that I wasn’t pretty enough and I felt ashamed to mention what I did in my daily life. But this is not very personal because most guys from my class had their Saturn conjunct my ascendant as Saturn moves not so fast and those guys were at the same age with me. In a way, I felt insecure about my appearance with people who were at the same age with me.

His moon conjuncts my ascendant

💗I’m not very sure about this because I don’t know his birth time and the moon can differ from 1-10 degrees forward or backward depending on the birth time. But his moon is at 15 degrees (without birth time) and my ascendant is at 21 degrees, so it conjuncts as of now. I felt at ease with him as I mentioned earlier but I’m going to talk more about this aspect in my later post because his moon is in my 12th house and I have a lot to say about that. Even creepy and paranormal stuffs.🥶

His chiron conjuncts my descendant

💗I searched it up on Google and I saw that the chiron person is destined to give the descendant person a lesson in whatever ways and that is absolutely true. He brought lessons into my life and I’m really grateful for those and interestingly, back in those days, most guys in my class also had their chiron conjunct my descendant and they also brought me lessons and lessons and lessons. The whole class didn’t speak to me FYI. And also the whole school. That’s okay now because I realized that being alone doesn’t mean feeling lonely and you can feel lonely even though you’re going out with friends if you’re not in the right circle.

Anyways, I had to write this out because my heart was crying out for him so much and the only thing I can do at this time is writing this and recalling some sweet memories we shared. I have a love-hate relationship with him and currently, I miss him so much and wanna talk to him but I can’t. I wanna g we back with him kinda but as my friend said, there was a reason why I broke up with him and why I blocked him on social media so I shouldn’t go back.

This is the end of this post and remember these are not facts. These are just my personal experiences so take them with a pinch of salt!! Thank you for reading to the end and have a nice day!❤️

•There is gonna be a part-2 for the synastry with this ex and I will be mentioning about house overlays in that post but mainly about moon in 12th house so stay tuned!✨

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captainsspnanon · 2 years

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C3E35 reaction

I skimmed some things before hand, so stuff I knew before watching:

1) They interrogated Treshi some more (but no context for what about)

2) There was a skill challenge at some point that involved Calm Emotions

3) Ashton is confirmed to have chronic pain (no context as to HOW it was discovered, but that FCG was feeling Ashton’s body at the time, so I guessed the scene but nowhere near how it ended up playing out)

4) Keyleth brings them to Whitestone.

I’m glad the Treshi plot point is now wrapped up. It was a fun impetus, but so much ended up happening all around the beat that it no longer felt like a driving force, but instead an anchor that was holding back their progress. To have it resolved means that they are now free to travel and move fairly freely. The time limit of a month could be up to another almost year of gameplay, so that should give them plenty of time to do things.

Skill challenge was super fun! Also now gave a taste of the sinkholes, which should hopefully satisfy Travis a tiny bit about not being able to thoroughly explore the map and all the points. (Though I agree with him, there are a number of places with very interesting sounding names!)

I’d seen somebody comment that they thought Thull was going to end up killing Eshteross because the Hells left, which had made me think that they never reported to him at all. I’m very glad to be proven wrong, I missed him and his (justified) paranoia. I’m relieved they gave him some detailed information about Thull’s fighting style, though this is one of the instances where I sort of wish they would just go “and we update Lord Eshteross about everything that happened in Bassuras” or some other narrative shorthand which would imply that they shared everything with him, and not just the parts that they actually roleplay through.

Yay for completing the bounty and getting funds!! NO BEING BROKE THIS CAMPAIGN! Checking now, M9 got about 8k gold in E30, and then no particularly large sums until E63. They’d made just under 20k total by E35, compared to the Hells about 38.5k. They’ve spent about the same though....maybe I just feel like the M9 was poorer because of the memes XD

The scene with Imogen and Fearne in Ashton’s mind was HARROWING. Nothing new was found out during the memories, Milo had already told Ashton that they poured the potion in their head, but I guess Taliesin may have forgotten or misunderstood. Ashton acted like he was just learning the information for the first time. ON THE OTHER HAND - STRESS. I cannot tell what Matt is planning with this, and it’s awesome and terrifying and I want more.

There’s been tons of speculation of chronic pain for Ashton, though at least among those that I follow the speculation had died out fairly early on. It’s a hell of a thing to have it confirmed, and I wonder if it will ever come up again, or if it’s something which Tal has put out there but doesn’t really portray ‘loudly’, so to speak.

Mixed feelings on Keyleth appearing and the party going to Whitestone (TLoVM!Whitestone, at that XD), but Matt did seem like he was cutting off a lot of other possible options. ...well, just Eshteross and Seshadri, I suppose. Hexum could still have been an option, but I am glad they didn’t go with that. (My mom was shouting at the screen for them not to tell Hexum or go to her XD)

I’ve read a lot of good posts about how it makes sense for PCs to be meeting high level NPCs around this point, and that we can just consider VM to be high level NPCs. Personally, I still struggle with it a bit. Again, mixed feelings. Honestly, I think my feelings on this will really only be decided towards the end of the campaign when I will know how frequently or heavily involved VM is in the entire situation. I really did love the fact that the M9 were so unrelated to C1 with only minor references tossed in until Allura, and C3 is being handled so differently just from the start. It’s something I can’t decide until hindsight.

Either way........UGH HAVING TO WAIT TWO WEEKS INSTEAD OF ONE NOOOO

#critical role #cr spoilers #bells hells

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itsnothingofinterest · 2 years

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You know what? We basically have the week off. You remember that theory I made last weekend about AFO’s control over Tomura being dependant on Tomura acting as a groomed duplicate of AFO? Well I’m gonna see if that theory’s got any validity by going over the instances of Tomura’s emotions and their correlation to AFO gaining or losing control over Tomura since he got the AFO, as well as what we can gleam from their arrangement if it does.

To summarize: said theory was that, while it had up until now seemed as though Tomura/Tanko feeling hate had give AFO more control, it seemed as though certain instances of hate towards something personal to Tenko gave him more control. Thus the idea formed that it is not simple hate that gives AFO control, but being on the same wavelength as AFO; feeling the same as him or else feeling nothing to remain in AFO’s shadow. In turn, any emotions that stimulate his own identity and individuality, even if they are in the form of hate or destructive wants, allow him to rise from AFO’s suffocation.

Literally.

Anyway, with that established, let’s get started.

Jaku:

We begin with the first instance of AFO directly influencing his thoughts and actions; seeing Midoriya and addressing him as his brother (Yoichi).

Imminently after we get some support for my theory on Tomura’s individuality being the key to gaining control; by way of him swiftly stating his intention to keep his individuality and surpass his master. Stating “I control myself”, allowing him to do just that,. For a while at least.

And though I theorized a long time ago that AFO was fighting to wrestle control from Tomura the whole fight, causing those crack-line injuries; Tomura keeps control until Deku instigates the sky battle. On a related note, that pre-sky battle section is also where he gives his speech on the failings of hero society and stats his own person reasons for villainy. The “That’s what makes us heroes and villains” speech. So, what is it that causes control to slip?

Well, it’s a bit boring of an answer, but my first assumption is that rather than being based on hate or any other emotion, AFO simply asked for it while Tomura was burning; and either Tomura acquiesced, or was unable to keep control while in pain from the fire. Likely the latter since Tomura then immediately tried to fight for control back next chapter.

Although another option is that AFO synchronized with Tomura’s frustration in fighting One For All. This only starts working as Deku and his amazing strength start laying down the hurt; something AFO knows all too well from Deku’s past few successors. And oh we will get back to their shared hatred of All Might.

After that, while AFO keeps control until he gets knocked out, Tomura briefly wakes up in control while captured by Best Jeanist.

It’s very quirk, but once again features emotions rooted in Tomura/Tenko, namely his feelings towards his home. It also features his talking to Machia as a League member, as an equal. Even seeming to sympathize with his current plight and telling him to do what he would do; break free/destroy (I was once told that, thanks to a funny quirk in the Japanese language, he told Machia to do both of these things at once).

(See below the cut for everything from The Hand scene to the latest chapter.)

The Hand:

And of course, all this changes once the final hand of the Shimuras in placed on his face; stimulating the lump of lead in his heart to fuel his rage and bring AFO into full control from which he’s yet to really be removed.

Now seemingly, this should really interfere with my theory; as the hate-lead of Tenko’s originates from his family and specifically wearing their remains. On the other hand, the fact that this increases his synch with AFO is of no real surprise as he has been cultivating this specific hate-disgust-mix since Tomura went by Tenko. One way pr another, the hate-lead is what AFO cultivated the most to most easily control Tomura. So assuming I’m not wrong right out the gate, what might be causing this?

Well, Tomura’s hate-lead originates from how his family died, which AFO made sure he never forgets or heals from by making him were his family’s remains on his body to instill a constant sense of disgust and hate. So, could it be that AFO feels similar feelings that he can match to Tomura’s, and planned to use them?

This is just speculation at this time; but perhaps he can, and perhaps he did. He does have at least 1 dead family member after all, in Yoichi. Now AFO has never expressed any motion for Yoichi besides a creepy level of possessiveness, but at present we don’t know how Yoichi died or what AFO felt about it. So, suppose AFO watched Yoichi die a truly gruesome death, or perhaps even caused that death (very possible given their relationship). That would allow him to synch with the hate-lead, especially if it’s something AFO feels particularly strongly. And supposing he does; perhaps it could even motivate his future actions, him refusing to let that horrible scene be the last he ever sees of his brother so he needs to steal his quirk.

Again, this is basically just speculation that I’ll admit I’m mostly doing to cover what would otherwise be a big hole in my theory. But it could be reasonably assumed. We’ll have to see if we ever get a Shigaraki-brothers flashback.

Fighting Star and Stripe:

Anyway, that was the interesting bit of speculation, but this next section should be a bit simpler. mainly because...it’s just hard to see who’s in control at any given time unless we’re actually peering into Tomura’s mind. Lets go over the fight with Star and Stripe.

First, just to repeat myself; we see the fight for control allowing for AFO to gain more control, theoretically because a want for control is something AFO feels very strongly and allows for him to slip in to Tomura’s mind. AFO even stats that Tomura hating him and fighting him causes their melding to accelerate.

A scene of note shortly after this is Tomura remembering his house; and starting to think a bit more like Tomura in the next chapter as he analyzes New Order; thinking of it in terms of game play and mentioning using it on Mon-chan. Although this is brief, as pondering the quirk causes AFO to surface and want it even more.

But a big factor is Star bringing up All Might, how much she admires All Might, and her desire to be the next All Might. As mentioned, a hatred for All Might as both a person & the symbol of peace is something Tomura and AFO have in common, which leads to AFO gaining more control. Star commenting on All Might prompts a trip into Tomura’s mind to see AFO suffocating him. And as the New Order quirk attacks him, it brings to mind All Might; and as it dies talking about another hero surely killing TomurAFO, their fight ends with AFO in basically full control with the inner Tenko smothered.

Recovering in the cave:

In between this and the war is one simple but notable scene because it supports the idea of All might giving AFO control of Tomura; as he rieths in agony thinking about how he hates All Might. This is basically Tomura’s only talking scene before the 2nd war that AFO is losing for him.

The War AFO is losing for him:

Which bring us to said 2nd war, where in Tomua was trapped in UA and where AFO is basically in full control of him. And as mentioned in the original post; most of what’s discussed are things AFO fells that same as Tomura about, or else only he cares about. His want to be in control of everything, how heroes suck in a vague sense, the quirk singularity and associated projects, how dare these extras be holding their own against him, etc. As such, it’s more interesting to talk about what brings Tomura to the surface.

Now there are a few signs of Tomura doing just that throughout this fight, but they’re mostly pretty faint, so I’m gonna stick to the 2 big instances.

First is Mirio commenting on Tomura having no freinds because he wants to destroy so much (quick tangent: he wants to destroy for his freinds, dummy). This has no effect on AFO, but resonates with Tenko, who takes great offence to the idea of him having no friends. Ergo, we see a de-synch and Tenko chews Mirio out.

This also causes AFO to comment on how “Tenko” could be a problem for him and his control over Tomura. At the time, I think a lot of us though he was suggesting Tenko and Tomura had split as personalities. Given how that image at the top of the post seems to disprove that; we can assume he was either wrong, or that’s not what he meant. (Both are very possible, but I’ll discuss that latter.) See, Tomura is a persona AFO has groomed into the “next him”, and thus he has a lot in common with and should easily synch too. I think I’ve shown this isn’t as true as he’d like, such as that instance of him talking to Machia as an equal; but it is mostly true that most of his post-Tomura life has a lot in common with AFO.

AFO has little in common with Tenko though. I mean, Tenko does seem to hate heroes & authority, but in ways vastly different from AFO. If something personal to Tomura’s past comes up, even if it enrages him and makes him want to break stuff, AFO’s control slips.

Which brings us to the end where we began; Tenko rising from the depths of All For One pissed at the heroes over matters related to his own trauma. Namely their saving Bakugou when they couldn’t give a rat’s left butt cheek about young Tenko or his family, being so hypocritical & human while pretending to be so upstanding & great. Yadda yadda, I went over this in the original post, and Tomura will probably go over this some more in the next chapter.

Summary:

While I won’t say anything definite, I do think the theory has merit, as there does seem to be a correlation of Tomura rising to the surface and instances of his individuality and personal experiences being stimulated. And if it is true, then that would imply two things:

First is that AFO feels a similar feeling of horror, revulsion, and hate that is caused by Tenko wearing his dead family. And he knows this well enough to cultivate it, more than any other emotion, in Tomura during his development. For lack of any mention of his parents, these emotions would probably originate from however Yoichi died.

Second is that this opens the door to Tomura regaining complete control of his body through sufficient stimulation of his individuality without having to directly change into a new personality first. Though this would mean that even if Deku helps save him, what would come out is the Tenko/Tomura we all know; hero-hating anti-authoritative attitude and all.

Personal thoughts to end on:

And I’d be very glad if he did. Not only am I a well-known Final Boss!Tomura supporter; but I’ve just never been a fan of the idea that Tomura had to erase all his hate to be free of AFO.

I mean first I’ve just never been a fan of “saving Shigaraki’s heart” and “saving Shigaraki from AFO“ to happen at the same time; as I worry that would allow for the challenge of ‘Shigaraki the villain’ and ‘Shigaraki the victim’ to both be done at once with AFO acting as an easy out to both (AFO is much easier to beat tan Tomura, and could act as a scapegoat to save him). All while also supposedly giving Deku a free pass to not have to tackle those political and societal issues that caused Tomura & the League; as removing all hate means Tomura wouldn’t care and wouldn’t hold heroes accountable any more. That’s how the idea was initially presented to me anyway. Never mind how that leaves the door open for more Leagues to form and kill people.

And also it just never sat right with me that the solution to AFO’s attempted grooming of Tenko into an exact duplicate of himself is to becomes the exact opposite. I mean I understand there’s some nuance to these situations I’m hardly equipped to properly comment on; but personally the idea of continuing to define himself by what AFO wants, just aiming for the exact opposite, who Tomura/Tenko was before or wants to be and where all those things overlap be damned, just doesn’t sit right with me.

So if this opens the door to another resolution more accommodating to Tomura’s own identity and issues, I’m all for it. And I’m quite happy that we have evidence of just that possibly happening.

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #gigantomachia #paranormal liberation front #PLF #league of villains #lov #all for one #yoichi shigaraki #midoriya izuku #star and stripe #all might #analysis #one for all #my stupid long term predictions

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thetaekookcloset · 2 years

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Hi there, just wanted to say hi from one Taekooker to another. I immediately adored there bond and wondered if there was something more when I watched a video of there BWL moments during the LS tour. You can argue the point it was FS but I think there were genuine “real” moments mixed in, such as when Tae’s hand went around JK’s waist and he looked down in surprise. What are some of your fav moments and also when did you become Army? I joined last yr after My Universe came out.

Hello and welcome! I’ve seen you around on other blogs and I always enjoy your thoughts -- thanks for saying hi!

I definitely take more of a nuanced view when it comes to fanservice, personally, so I understand where you’re coming from. Technically anything done in part for audience reaction is fanservice, but I don’t think any of the guys would do something for fanservice that they have absolutely no desire to do themselves, you know? There are lots of ways to push those buttons, so why would they do something that makes them uncomfortable? I’m sure some lines get crossed sometimes, because that happens in regular life too, but while I wouldn’t look solely at concert moments to try to determine the shape of a relationship, I do think they can tell us some interesting things.

The moment you mentioned, for instance, is a great example of something I’ve noticed with JK when he has fs with Tae, which is that his body language tends to be very open in those moments. He’s surprised when Tae grabs his waist, looks down, and as soon as he sees that it’s Tae wrapping an arm around him, he smiles and spreads his arms wider, opening himself up and leaning back into Tae slightly. It shows how comfortable he is with Tae, even in a pretty intimate embrace in front of thousands of people. He doesn’t feel any desire to close himself off or protect himself in that moment.

As for when I got into BTS, it was pretty recently -- right at the very end of 2021. So I’m a newbie, but I’ve watched a lot of content at this point because that’s what I always do when I get into something new lol. Anyway, thank you and welcome again! Now here is a collection of (some of) my favorite Taekook moments, though it’s pretty hard to narrow them down:

I just love how completely soft they are in this clip, it destroys me every time I watch it.

Seriously DNA from D-4 in Vegas made my entire life. What I really can’t get over with this one is just how huge their smiles, especially JK’s, are. I love how Tae clearly surprises him by doing this, I love how JK is delighted by it, I love how he just rolls with it, I love how brightly they glow with joy through the whole moment. This is also another example of Jungkook’s open body language with Taehyung, when Tae sort of drags his hand down JK’s chest and Jungkook just opens his arms and tips his head back, baring his throat -- again just very open, comfortable being physically vulnerable to Taehyung in this way that obviously comes naturally.

Can an entire 13-minute V Live be a favorite moment? Seriously I love everything about this live, there is so much wild happening in this one little broadcast. If I have to pick favorite specific moments from it, though, I choose Tae correcting Jungkook’s grip on him so that they’re holding hands, and also the little gesture Tae does which seems to indicate that he wants Jungkook’s attention. He sort of clears his throat, I think, while the others are speaking, and scratches at the back of his own neck while giving JK a significant look, which could mean anything, but definitely stands out to me as an indication of nonverbal communication and intimacy between them.

Honestly I could keep going with favorite moments probably forever (and if anyone wants to ask for theme-specific favorites, I would be more than happy to indulge lol), but to keep this post from getting way too long, I’ll end here. What Taekook favorite moments list would be complete without GDA 2020? I have an endless well of cottony softness inside me for this moment. When I saw this for the first time, I think my heart actually stopped for a few beats. At that time, I didn’t really think it likely that Tae and JK were together, but after seeing this, it was absolutely undeniable that there is such a depth of love and sweetness between them and it just melted me, and it continues to melt me every time I see it.

#taekook #vkook #kookv #ask #favorite taekook moments

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cerealmonster15 · 2 years

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silver/kalim, you say? 👀

i havent thought of this ship before but i Am curious if you want to talk about them

YES OUGH i love themmmm. theyre def one of those ships that like, i didnt notice in main story bc they havent shown up together much, so it's very much come more from the vignette/card stories + some events. especially bc silver himself hasnt been in the main story much yet!

there are a handful of specific instances that really have me 👀 at them:

in i think leona's ceremony robes card, when leona's coming to get his mixed up laundry from malleus, silver's at peak Oblivious Mode and thinks leona's there to talk to malleus bc they are Friends, despite leona very blatantly saying they arent lkfdshgklfdj. ruggie makes a comment that silver and kalim are known by the second years for their kinda airheaded happy go lucky vibes. i think the eng translation called it 'the facepalm brigade' or something lol. like everyone else can be in a bad mood but those two never are and are just painfully oblivious lol. it's cute that they have the same sweet boy vibes :)

they're classmates! in... uhhh.. i think it's either kalim's standard uniform or silver's standard uniform story, kalim makes a point to wake silver up after he fell asleep, to remind him to change classes. it's cute that kalim cares!!! he also gets advice in kind of a funny way from kalim lol, about if he's being too hands off with malleus like sebek says he is [and then silver decides, after seeing how helplessly reliant kalim is on jamil, that silver is Right to want to give malleus space to grow LOL]

silver's lab coat story - silver and kalim are held after class and have to do make up work bc silver fell asleep in class and kalim broke equipment in class jfkldshg. they decide to stay back and work together :) silver is still having trouble staying awake, and confides in kalim [and jamil who got pulled into it lol rip] about his chronic sleep problem, kalim decides that before they work on their assignment, they should make a wake-up potion to help silver stay awake, and silvers really grateful that kalim's so enthused about helping him with it 🥺 the poor goobers both get each other so off track so easily lol. but it's so cute. you can tell in that story kalim really cares about silver and helping him feel better ;A;

a very small thing lol but in jade's halloween ssr story at the very beginning, when kalim's trying to bargain with jade or w/e, jamil complains that kalim's taking so long and silver fell asleep bc he had to wait so long. the way that convo goes just makes it sound like silver was hanging out with kalim and jamil Just Cuz and i thought it was cute kjlfdshg ANYWAY

in the second halloween event [it hasnt come out in engtwst yet so ill avoid story spoilers; im talking the endless halloween/not the masquerade one] there's a scene where jamil says silver scarily reminds him of kalim - i think it had something to do with his Innocent Good Boy Energy or something lol. and silver's response was something like "oh, thank you. kalim is nice to me in class so i am glad you think we're similar." and then later when [REDACTED] happens, silver makes a point to say to kalim that he is a good person and considers him a dear friend 🥺 this scene in particular made me SO HAPPY lol i felt SO VALIDATED!!!!

i THINK. I THINK!!! there's a similar opposite scene. where someone tells kalim that he's a lot like silver and kalim takes it as a compliment?? BUT i can't for the life of me remember the context. i'm not sure if it also happens in halloween 2 or if that's in another event/story. or if i made it up LOL <- god does anyone know what the hell i'm talking about. it's been so long. i used to be so sure it existed and now i dont KNOW!!!

the general vibe of noble/knight is cute. like kalim is the eldest of a wealthy powerful family, to the point that he has an attendant- jamil - and silver is raised as a knight to malleus. i always thought it would be cute if later down the line, jamil's off to live his life free as he pleases, and silver like takes on that role either officially or unofficially by Kalim's side to protect him bc he Loves Him 🥺 wah wah let me have my cliches LOL

circling back to the thing ruggie said in my first bullet point lol, i found through google translating journeys lol, theres a ship tag or something for them in jpntwt/pixiv or w/e that i believe comes from that story. i think it's いらふわコンビ - if you search that it's nothing but silver/kalim lol. when i was auto translating captions with google on fanart of those two, i kept seeing the term "fluffy combination" or "irritated combination" and i was like. what the hell's that mean lol. this was before engtwst existed, so i think i eventually tried comparing the characters to ruggie's dialogue in that story ^ on youtube, and it was clllloooose but not quite the same or something. a few fan translations i saw translated the thing ruggie said as "mad free zone". like those two together Do Not Get Mad lol, or that they have a "frustratingly, easy going vibe". and a spanish sub called it "el espacia libre de locos" which is roughly "space free of craziness/wildness" whatever. anyway. いらふわコンビ. whatever it means, people use it in silver/kalim fanart lol <- there is a lot of adorable fanart of the two of them :')

not really super related but i believe the miraheze wiki says somewhere that silver, kalim, and rook are the only three students that use/specialize in light magic. i dont really know where that comes up but it's a fun fact/i think it's bc theyre the only three characters not based on villains/are more hero leaning from their origins? [besides i guess jack since hes supposedly not based off Anything lol just a random wolf boy]. it was just cute that they had that in common, like boys with the good vibes that make u think "why are you in villain school for villains" fjkdslhgf

there might be other scenes/reasons i'm forgetting but that's the gist of why i Love Them. they are sweet good boys.

#asks #types for 600 years thank u for indulging me byeee #im literally always ready and willing to Gush the second im asked something LOL

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hospitalterrorizer · 3 months

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diary146

2/7-8/2024

wednesday - thursday

off tomorrow, and tonight is my friend's birthday.

my friend, the girlfriend of my other friend. i'm not going though. it's just not a good time, i guess. i feel bad about it, like pretty bad, i hope she's having a good time, but too much is going on rn, scary or whatever, i need to keep everything stable for myself, if i don't work will get worse. i'm just nervous at these early stages, idk what i can really get away with.

anyway, i'm really in love with this music video:

youtube

it might be smarter than the song, it's a really good bit of filmmaking honestly, i love the script, the bit where the lusty cameraman goes "how many girls you been with," and the subject goes "a bunch..." and then the guy is like "lucky ladies," and the way the obvious lust and the subject interact, it's not a clear cut relation, there's a strange giving and taking, it's very dirty and weird, and the sadness passing over/through the man being objectified, it's so strange. it feels pretty unique to me.

did something weird, i just listened to the whole cocoron ost, i haven't thought about this game in a very long time. i discovered it because of eversion, an early internet horror game, it's like an nes platformer with BLOOD and DEATH and it's actually really cute and good, i think the game is super awesome actually, it really inspired me as a kid, when i watched a playthrough of it. anyway, that game lifts the cocoron ost, and i watched a playthrough of cocoron as a kid, i wanna play it now kinda, might be good. nes music rlly is cool, sometimes, they tried a lot of weird stuff, it makes sense a lot of people heard that and decided to make it like, grindcore/punk eventually, the noises are so piercing at times, it kind of begs to be screamed over, + the inherent sarcasm in doing that, and then it also sorta overlaps w/ the whitebelt stuff, weirdness of tones when creating music, weirdly colorful sounds for fucked up loud music.

for instance:

youtube

i've posted this before i think but this song is great, i love it so much. and i love the color. a perfect aesthetic touch point for me.

another fun one:

youtube

i also started looking at spritesheets tonight, just cuz it seemed fun, in the cocoron ost desc the uploader linked a site w/ sprite rips. reminds me of when i was ripping stuff out of ps1 and dreamcast games. i got a lot of stuff out of one game, sengoku turb on dreamcast, i should put some of that here, really cute artstyle i think, one of my fav looking games ever:

crazy looking game, i'm glad it has a sequel out there, also on dreamcast, they seem like pretty obtuse and random games, i miss the whole feverdream thing that could come out on consoles, illbleed, stretch panic is another similar game to me, even katamari on some level, though it's also way indebted to some other stuff, and killer7 is also in the maybe similar but i understand its particular history way better i think, the angura movement in japan offering a kind of springboard for the game's design i feel like, where it absorbs old forms and sticks them right beside the 'new,' as many of those plays had done, to channel something strange, to bring forth the negative and inconclusive, or maybe not inconclusive, just concluding things positivist works could not arrive at.

after finishing wiseblood i am unsure what to begin reading, i have discipline & punish beside me now, the foucault book, but maybe i need to stick with fiction, and just do agua viva by lispector. that might be good... we'll see. also quibbling over if i should try mixing a bit tonight.

also, we finally have real wifi, and it's like the old place, i am happy with it, it's pretty fast and stuff, so that's good.

all the videogame and nes music talk is making me think about how loud i've made the chip synths in my songs, and if i want them to be more prominent or not. it shouldn't be too big a deal, as long as they're there enough, you know.

now i am looking at closet child...dangerous, cuz i will get my heart broken over something i don't get but idk.. soon i really may be able to buy something, and then i will be sooo happy.

i am opening ableton now, i should do my night routine now and try and get the mix right quickly and just go to bed.

i did it, and there's just a couple things that i think i'll end up having to do to that song, cut some lows in the vocals, just a tiny bit more, and drop by 1-2b, raise the left channel guitar up by 1 db, and then maybe cut some of the low lows in the bass. that should do it on that song i think, but i might decide to just come back to it after the full listen w/ the rest of the songs to hear it in context. that leaves 3 more songs on this list, i should try and get them as right as possible, and then listen to the album, w/ some of the new songs i've got with vocals laid down, which there's a few, actually, and then i will see what i need to do, if any songs should be cut, anything like that, and if there's room for anything else. what there isn't room for, or even whatever there is, i need to go and write down the names of the project files i need to finish, just so i can mess with them sooner or later, maybe an ep of stuff i'm still attached to, and stuff.

but i am beat now,

so,

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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makeste · 3 years

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“but I thought about how I needed to say this”

a.k.a. yet another meta dissection of The Apology. I actually wrote most of this up on Friday night based on the original Japanese (@pikahlua has an excellent translation up here, and I also used @hanashimas’ translations as a reference as well), but I wanted to wait until the official release, though that turned out to be a mixed bag to say the least lol.

I would also recommend reading @pikahlua and @class1akids’ breakdowns of this scene (here and here, respectively), because they are excellent, and because if any scene deserves to have as many meta breakdowns written about it as possible, it’s this one.

anyway so here goes.

Caleb did a more accurate job with this than the fanscan, even if he did try his best to take us out of the seriousness of the moment by throwing in that swiss cheese line lol. anyway so there are two things I want to talk about here. the first is the line about Izuku not remembering, which I thought was a nice touch. of course he doesn’t remember what Kacchan said back then. he wasn’t exactly in the soundest emotional state after seeing one of the people he cares about most taking a near-fatal blow that was meant for him. I’d be shocked if he remembers anything about the aftermath (including the way he flew into a mindless rage afterwards) right up until the point when he entered the OFA Interstellar Party Void with Tomura. anyway, so I thought that was a nice callback.

and speaking of emotional states, the other thing I wanted to talk about is the part that Caleb got right which the fan scanlation didn’t. “but I had more to say.” in other words, “stop trying to win on your own” wasn’t just a one-liner; it was meant to be the beginning of a much longer speech. “there were other things that I needed to say.”

like, can we just stop and talk about that for a second. because basically what this means is that in that instant, when Kacchan pushed Deku out of the way and got impaled, his one and only thought was that he needed to apologize to Deku. his life was presumably flashing before his eyes, he had no idea if he was going to survive or not, and the only thing on his mind was how urgently he needed to make things right with his former childhood friend.

moving on!

so I have a confession to make, which is that I am relieved to see Katsuki describing this as the reason why he bullied Deku, as opposed to Horikoshi trying to retcon it into some sort of “secretly he was just trying to protect him and keep him out of harm’s way because he was worried” thing, which ngl would not have gelled very well with me. the thing is that I’m really not a fan of the whole “Kacchan Did Nothing Wrong” mentality that some fans seem to have. like, I have seen all sorts of convoluted attempts to find excuses for Katsuki’s shitty behavior, but in my view those attempts undermine what I love about his character in the first place. Katsuki is such a great character specifically because he is not perfect. his redemption arc is so compelling because he was such a giant asshole at the start. he was completely at fault, and he acknowledges this, and takes full responsibility for it. and that is fucking fantastic.

his arc is so great because it doesn’t rely on garnering sympathy by giving him a Tragic Past, or by trying to foist the blame for his behavior over on someone else. it’s an arc that acknowledges that redemption isn’t something you achieve by making people feel sorry for you; it’s something you have to earn by actively working to change and do better. and by forgoing the “misunderstood/tragic past” route, Horikoshi is making a statement that anyone can go down the wrong path, but that more importantly, anyone can also choose at any time to turn away from said path. there is only one requirement for doing so, and that is realizing that you’ve done wrong, and deciding that you want to change.

anyway, so in chapter 284 Kacchan of course had that whole speech about Deku not taking himself into account, and mentioned how that made him want to keep his distance. and a good chunk of fandom took this to mean that Katsuki’s bullying was actually a misguided response to Deku’s reckless tendencies -- sort of an “if I show him how weak and powerless he really is, I can get him to accept the reality that he’s quirkless, and that being a hero will just get him hurt or killed” type of thing. and I won’t lie, for a good while I was wondering myself if Horikoshi was really going to go down that route. and like I said, I am honestly relieved that he didn’t. not only for the reasons stated in the previous paragraph, but also because the message that would have sent -- that there are certain circumstances in which bullying can almost be excused because the bully had Good Intentions and was just trying to save the other person from themselves, and so it Wasn’t That Bad, Actually -- is all kinds of fucked up to say the least. so yeah, I’m glad we ended up steering well clear of that.

(ETA: this post was long enough already so I edited out the 3 additional paragraphs I originally wrote analyzing the dialogue from 284. but just to be clear, I’m not trying to imply that Kacchan worrying about Deku’s recklessness is a retconned thing that Horikoshi only threw into the story recently, because there are multiple instances throughout the story where he clearly is worried and in total denial of it. but I firmly believe those feelings are not what led to the bullying. they’re two separate things. Kacchan worrying about Deku is what prompts him to yell at him in chapter 1 when Deku comes to save him. but it’s not what incited him to burn his notebook and taunt him earlier in that same chapter. that action had a much meaner and more selfish motivation behind it, and I’m glad Horikoshi didn’t try to change it up last minute, because it wouldn’t have felt right.)

thankfully as of this chapter I think we can safely cross that out as a possibility, as we’re given the true explanation straight from Katsuki himself. and the truth is that he bullied Deku out of insecurity and jealousy and fear and intolerance. there was nothing noble about it. there were no good intentions concealed in his actions. there are no justifications given, no excuses offered, and no mitigating circumstances to be considered, other than the fact (which neither he nor Horikoshi bring up) that he was and is still a child, and that children make mistakes.

it’s an explanation that challenges many of fandom’s ideas on who is and isn’t eligible to be redeemed. there is no Ozai in Katsuki’s backstory. there’s no great tragedy that he spent a lifetime trying to rise above. the only villain in Katsuki’s story is Katsuki himself. the only darkness that he has to overcome is his own. and it’s challenging, because I think many people believe the only way someone can be redeemed for doing bad things is if bad things happen to them in return. but what Horikoshi is saying here is that that’s not the case. bad doesn’t erase bad. and the one and only way to truly earn redemption is by doing good.

and that’s what makes this such a phenomenal scene for me. by not shying away from Katsuki’s flaws and failings, and having him take full responsibility for them, Horikoshi keeps the apology from being self-serving, and underscores the true depth of Katsuki’s character development. the level of self-awareness he has here is something most people can only dream of. which is very fitting, as that’s perhaps the most important takeaway from his character arc -- that it’s only by acknowledging your own weaknesses and flaws that you can learn to overcome them and reach your full potential.

one last thing to point out here, which is that in the panel where Katsuki finally acknowledges his terrible treatment of Deku, Deku is not even visible. instead, Horikoshi drew the panel from a perspective that makes it appear that Katsuki is addressing this particular line not just to Deku, but to all of his classmates.

again, he shows him taking full responsibility and admitting his wrongdoings in front of the people whose opinions and approval he cares about most. and just to clarify in case there’s any confusion from Caleb’s translation, Kacchan’s wording makes it very clear that he wasn’t just “mean” to Deku, but that he full-on bullied him (he uses the same verb -- “ijimeru” (苛める) -- that he did back in chapter 284). there’s no attempt to downplay his actions here.

moving on now, this chapter also reaffirmed another thing about Deku and Kacchan’s relationship which I was glad to see revisited -- Kacchan’s unwavering belief in Deku’s ability. this is one of those paradoxical things about their relationship which I’ve always been fascinated by, but which is also kind of hard to explain, because I don’t want it to come off like I’m trying to put a positive spin on something which was unequivocally awful. like, please don’t think I’m trying to say that Katsuki’s bullying of Deku was in any way a good thing. but that being said, there’s also a strange irony at play here, which is that Katsuki’s jealousy and insecurity also betray the fact that even at his very worst, he never once underestimated Deku. he has always believed in Deku’s strength, even when that strength pissed him off and made him afraid and uneasy.

no one else -- not All Might, or even Deku’s own mom -- believed from the get-go that Deku could become a hero. but Katsuki never once counted him out, even when he was calling him a pebble in his shoe. he confesses here that even though he “tried to act superior by rejecting [Deku]”, in truth he was never able to shake the feeling that Deku was above him. long before he ever understood the concept of “win to save”, he knew instinctively that there was a strength in Deku’s heart that couldn’t be measured, and which had the potential to surpass even his own strength. and I’ve always felt that this was so important, because it’s the one aspect of their early relationship that hinted that on some level, however subconscious, Katsuki held the same type of faith in Deku that Deku always held in him. it was one of the few things that hinted at there being a possible path towards reconciliation one day. and it paved the way for the most important shift in their relationship to date, when Katsuki finally realized who Deku got his quirk from, and responded not with resentment or spite, but with acceptance.

moving on, I also really love the way we see them portrayed at the different stages of their childhood throughout this speech, and how it perfectly lines up with the dialogue. from small children (when Katsuki talks about his insecurities first manifesting), to middle schoolers (when he talks about the bullying), to high schoolers (when he talks about the past year and everything he’s learned at U.A.). Horikoshi really didn’t have to go that hard, but he did, and that’s why we love him.

and then we finally get to That Part.

where do I even start with this there are so many things omg.

the bow. this is the one and only time Katsuki has ever bowed to anyone of his own volition as far as I recall. and this absolutely is a bow, just to be clear, even though his form is straight-up garbage (very Kacchan-esque, with his feet and arms spaced apart because he’s still a punk after all). this is Kacchan showing more humility and respect than he’s ever shown to anyone else in his entire life.

regarding “Izuku”, I actually have mixed feelings about this to tell the truth. I think it was a good call here because it was incredibly effective in setting the tone and showing just how serious Kacchan is. however if he continues to use “Izuku” rather than “Deku” from here on out, that would give the impression in hindsight that all his past usage of “Deku” really was meant as an insult, which would undermine some of my favorite scenes. I would really like to believe that since DvK2 or thereabouts, Kacchan has (mostly) been using “Deku (affectionate)” rather than “Deku (useless loser)”, lol. but if he switches to the “nicer” name on a permanent basis following his apology, it implies that the previous nickname was indeed being used cruelly. and so honestly I hope this was just a one-time thing, because I do think that in Katsuki’s mind, the name “Deku” hasn’t been meant as a slight to him for a long time now.

“my truth/this is what I truly feel” -- the word Katsuki uses in Japanese is honne (本音), and if you’re familiar with the concept of honne/tatemae, that’s the same “honne” he’s talking about here. it means that he’s casting aside all of his walls and facades and expressing what he truly feels. and of course, one of the fascinating things about Katsuki’s character is that he’s the exact opposite of most people in that he chooses to put his meanness on full display to the public, and ironically it’s the kindest parts of himself which he tends to keep the most carefully guarded and hidden away. this also means that while his rage and anger are very often insincere and put on just for show, those relatively few occasions where he lets his humanity truly shine through are pretty much 100% genuine, as is the case with this one here.

and Deku’s face says it all when it comes to how powerful those moments can be as a result.

and this, right here, is why it wasn’t enough for Katsuki to atone solely through his actions, and why he needed to actually say the words as well. it’s not that the words are more important; obviously the actions are far and away the most important part, and carry far more meaning. but the reason why Katsuki needed to say the words as well is simply because Izuku needed to hear them. needed to, and deserved to, because this is one of the most important people in the world to him.

and so he deserves to know that the relationship isn’t just one-sided, and that he is just as important to Kacchan as Kacchan is to him. he deserves to know that Kacchan understands how horribly he treated him, and that he’s sorry for it. and he deserves to know that Kacchan, without any expectation of it changing their relationship -- meaning that he will continue to feel this way regardless of what Izuku says or does from here on out -- cares about him. now more than ever, with AFO out there doing everything in his power to make Izuku feel as alone as possible, this is something that he really, really needed to hear.

so this part has some interesting wordplay which neither Caleb’s translation nor the fan scanlation was really able to get across. basically, in the Japanese version, when Katsuki talks about “those ideals”, Horikoshi uses the kanji for “ideal”, but pronounces it as “All Might.” obviously the meaning of this isn’t too hard to decipher, as we all know how much both boys admire All Might. to them, he absolutely is synonymous with the Ideal. so this is a way of showing that respect they both have towards him, even as Katsuki goes on to point out the one fatal flaw that All Might was never able to overcome.

and speaking of interesting wording, as others have noted, at this point in his speech Katsuki switches from “temee” (which he was using earlier during the “your strengths and my weaknesses” part) to “omae” (“omae” being a less insulting word for “you”, though still very manly and tough-sounding), which is definitely a big deal. though fwiw this is not the first time he’s used “omae” for Deku (he switches to it briefly right after DvK2, when he tells Deku “you had the strongest guy lay the groundwork for you -- don’t lose”, and then later when they’re walking back to the dorms and he says he’ll learn and get stronger by watching everyone around him just like Deku did). it’s definitely a good choice on Horikoshi’s part though, as it makes this last part of the speech sound more earnest and sincere.

just a quick note, he does indeed use a plural pronoun here, as in “the obstacles that you can’t overcome, we will overcome.” but as @pikahlua pointed out, the “we” here is ambiguous -- it could either mean “we” as in class 1-A -- “we will overcome them for you” -- OR it could mean “we” as in all of them -- class 1-A and Deku. “we will overcome them together.” idk about you, but I know which one gets my vote.

anyway, and so this is the line that finally wins Deku over and allows him to let go of his fears, however briefly. what I love about this is Kacchan’s utter conviction. one thing that Caleb’s translation doesn’t quite get across is Kacchan’s use of the word morenaku -- “without exception” -- when he talks about how they’re going to save everyone and win. it echoes that same sentiment he showed back during the Joint Training arc -- that it’s not a perfect victory unless they save everyone. every last person. and he explicitly lists Deku among their number, just so there can be no doubt.

and Deku’s response to this (or at least his thoughts, since he’s not really able to get many words out) pretty much brings everything full circle here.

he acknowledges that everyone else has gotten ahead of him. which is especially meaningful given who he’s standing directly across from. because for most of the series, as we all well know, it’s been Kacchan who was woefully lagging behind Deku in the character growth department. but now Deku himself is acknowledging that not only has Kacchan finally caught up at last, but that he and the others have surpassed him. which is only temporary, I should add, as I have zero doubt that Deku will catch up again soon. but the fact remains that just as Deku’s rapid increase in strength and skill left Kacchan scrambling to keep up earlier in the series, Kacchan’s extraordinary character development has now left Deku in that same position. as All Might once put it, “when he’s starting at level one, and you’re already at level 50, it’s only natural that you’ll be growing at different rates.”

and what’s so wonderful about this though is that the two of them are finally approaching that point where they’ve both caught up to each other and are finally starting to level out. Deku is a full-on badass, and Kacchan is out here talk-no-jutsuing with the best of them. the two of them have been chasing and chasing after each other this entire time, and now they’re finally just about ready to meet in the middle at long last, with each of them fully embodying both of those two crucial aspects -- win, and save.

just about. because Deku still needs some help catching up. but seeing as help has already been offered -- and accepted -- I can’t imagine it will be very long now, and I can’t wait to see him finally overcoming those fears and doubts with his friends by his side. it’s going to be such a powerful moment.

and last but not least,

or, as I prefer,

you had one job, Caleb. flkjsdlk.

but at least this provides a good opportunity to note that unlike the “we’ll help you handle it” line earlier in the speech, here the phrasing is left up to interpretation, as he doesn’t use a pronoun. so it could be “we know”, or, as the fan scanlation put it, “I know.” or it could be both. regardless, it’s good stuff.

anyway, and so Deku passes out, and in the process Horikoshi gives us one last parting metaphor, just in case anyone still thinks Kacchan is all talk because they haven’t been paying attention for the past 322 chapters (more likely than you think). once again, Katsuki’s actions speak louder than his words (even his nice words) ever could: he is literally there to catch Deku when he falls.

so that’s it! my sincere thanks to anyone who actually read through all of my endless ramblings about this scene which I have been waiting for since day one. props to Horikoshi for taking on an impossibly difficult task, and pulling it off with all of the emotion and care and nuance that I’ve come to expect from his writing. imo he delivered on every single level with the exception of the aftermath, which I don’t consider to have actually happened yet. Deku’s part of this is definitely a “to be continued.” but yeah, as far as Kacchan’s part goes, 10/10. so fucking proud of this kid.

#bnha 322 #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #bnha meta #bakugou meta #deku meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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edoro · 2 years

Note

Hi! What do you think Hunter's reaction would be if he finds out Belos wants to sacrifice him? Or to the fact that he is grimwalker? (love your analyzes!)

thank you for the ask and also the compliment! sorry it took me so long to get to it.

i think those two questions have very different answers!

to start with, while i think there's definitely a lot of evidence pointing towards Hunter being a sacrifice, i'm not personally 100% sure that Belos intends for him to die - my personal pet theory is that Hunter might be a conduit of sorts, based on the ingredients we've seen for a grimwalker. most of them have to do with containing, channeling, or amplifying magic (palistrom wood, galdorstones), or otherwise enduring highly adverse conditions (the selkidomus that swims in the boiling sea, stonesleepers that came from a highly geologically active time), so my going theory is that he might be looking to use Hunter to channel and direct all the magic he's going to be gathering for this big spell.

so anyway! i think that if Hunter found out the 'big plans' for him included him being sacrificed, he would have... mixed feelings. chief among them would be intense betrayal, of course. he's worked so hard and sacrificed so much for Belos, and all along, he was just a tool? he was just something for Belos to use and then throw away?

that would hurt. and i'm interested to see where he is in terms of his relationships with others, his connections to people, when that inevitably happens, because i think his reaction would really hinge on that. where he is right now? still so isolated, so desperate for his uncle's approval, so dependent on others to tell him who he is and what he's for and what he's worth? i could see that version of Hunter deciding that maybe it's worth it, if this is what he's been for this whole time, if it'll help Belos.

but self-preservation is a strong instinct. Belos has trained it out of Hunter pretty thoroughly - not only things like fondly recalling grueling, deadly training, but also little things like teaching him to freeze and wait to be hit rather than trying to protect himself, for instance - but i have doubts he's got Hunter to the point of being willing to literally sacrifice his own life.

and there's Flapjack, too. Hunter has someone else to want to live for. even if he can't value himself, even if he thinks his own life is a reasonable sacrifice for his uncle's goals, he cares more about Flapjack - someone who unconditionally loves and relies on him - than himself, and might be more moved to protect his palisman.

and now, of course, he's making friends and making connections, and getting a glimpse of how different life can really be, and how it feels to be in a non-abusive relationship.

so that would really devastate him emotionally, and it would prompt a huge crisis of faith in Belos. i can see his loyalty and programming winning, but i think it's a lot more likely that it would be the final straw.

as far as finding out that he's a grimwalker - well, we don't know what one does just yet. so that's also a couple of questions - Hunter finding out he's a construct or Hunter finding out he's a clone, specifically?

finding out that he's something Belos specifically made - i think it might shake him, yeah, and give him cause to question everything he knows about his life up until now. why there ever was a time when he didn't know or live with Belos, or if that even really happened or if his memories are false, etc...

but i could see Belos being able to spin that in a way where he wouldn't lose Hunter's loyalty. after all, that makes Hunter very valuable, doesn't it? not only does Belos love him because they're family, Belos went to all the trouble of creating him. he owes Belos his life not just in the sort of abstract way he already views it, where he sees Belos as having given him a future and a place to belong, but in a very literal sense! and doesn't that therefore mean he must really matter to Belos?

so on the one hand, it reinforces that he owes Belos in a much more literal way than he ever thought, but it does also reveal that something enormous has been kept from him, something that makes him have to question everything else - and it means he has even less autonomy than he thought. of course he can't figure out he's own destiny - he's not a person, he's just a thing.

i think there's a lot of objectification going on with Hunter, with the way he's been made into a tool to suit Belos's needs, and this would only increase that. and it's already something he struggles with! so that would be difficult for him.

as far as Hunter finding out that he's a clone of a specific person, this one is interesting. i see a lot of stuff about Hunter having an identity crisis because of that, and don't get me wrong, i love a good Hunter identity crisis!

but honestly... i could almost see it being kind of a relief to him. my read on Hunter is that right now he doesn't know who he is. he doesn't have a stable sense of self or identity. he has the role of the Golden Guard - a role we now know has a predecessor who he never met, and whose shoes his feet are sure as hell not big enough to fill - but that's not him.

he doesn't know who Hunter is. there's not much to him outside of his work for the coven, outside of being his uncle's weapon and tool and whatever else it is Belos needs from him. which suits Belos, of course, but between that and the objectification and the emotional abuse and the isolation, it sure leaves Hunter feeling like he's not even a real person and has no idea how to be. (i can imagine that making friends with normal kids his age might exacerbate this feeling, honestly.)

since part of his whole thing is that struggle for self-determination and self-identification, to decide his own destiny and even figure out who he is and what he wants outside of what Belos wants from him - i can see him clutching onto the idea that he's made in the image of a specific person.

now he knows who he's supposed to be! now he knows what Belos wants from him! sure, yes, it hurts to realize that he isn't whatever nascent idea he had of his own identity, that he's just some artificially constructed thing wearing a dead man's face, that whatever feelings his uncle has about him aren't really about him at all but are about someone who he's never met - but at least now he knows.

which is to say i can see Hunter trying, at least for a bit, to lean really hard into adopting his originator's identity as his own, because to him it seems better than the uncertainty and the pain of self-determination. of course, that won't work, but i can see him trying it.

#hunter toh #meta #grimwalker theory a bit #the owl house #asks

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shkspr · 3 years

Note

hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

#sorry if this is repetitive or makes no sense or if i got some details of the show wrong #i simply couldnt be bothered to put too much effort into this post #lest it become a research paper and take me several weeks to answer #anyway thats all my opinions #dw #ok to rb

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mercy-burning · 3 years

Text

Fake Fiancée - Part 3

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!Reader Summary: Reader and Spencer write letters back and forth, both of them slowly starting to fall in deeper. Category: Smut (18+) Content Warnings: Strong language, sexual themes, masturbation (male and female), sexting, face sitting Word Count: 6.3k

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

MASTERLIST

NOTE: Hello!! Sorry this has been so long in the making, but for a while my inspiration for this story absolutely disappeared, and then I tried to think of how to bridge the previous chapters to the final one with absolutely no luck. And then I re-read Part 2 and got stuck on the letter, thus this chapter was born! I didn’t want to drag this miniseries out any longer than 4 parts, and the letter format combined with other inner monologuing and description really allowed me to do that in an interesting way that hopefully doesn’t feel rushed!

It was so much fun and very refreshing to write. I hope you like how it turned out!

Thank you all for being so patient while I get my shit together 😅 Love you guys! Enjoy 🥰

***

We've been sending letters back and forth for about a month now.

If I'm being honest, it took me about two weeks to decide whether or not I actually wanted to send one back, but could you blame me?

Here was this guy I couldn't stop thinking about after a one-night stand, only for him to catch me—months later at the same exact bar we'd met in—flirting with his friend. And then after our sexual encounter that night, all the things we said, the connection I thought we had, all of it...

He left it all behind the next morning, only to send me a letter in the mail.

I was pissed.

Sure, it was a nice letter, but the fact that he'd reduced what we had down to a piece of paper and scribbled ink had made me angrier than I cared to admit.

In retrospect, I may have overreacted.

Over time I started re-reading his words, and the more I thought about it all, the more I started to regret my anger. And more than anything, I just wanted to see him again. I couldn't stay mad at him, not when all I could picture was his pouty face and nervous hands. His sunbeam of a smile peeked through the clouds of my anger here and there, and the longer it settled, the more it bathed me in a warm light that should have made me happy. But all it did was make me long for him.

Once I'd actually started writing that first letter back, I wondered why I hadn't jumped on the opportunity in the first place. I mean, after all the cliché shit we'd experienced in our short relationship thus far, adding love letters to the mix was just as perfect as you could get, right?

Spencer,

I'm sorry it's taken me this long to finally write you back. Truthfully I wasn't sure I wanted to write you at all, but your letter kept drawing me back in. I couldn't stop re-reading it, imagining you sitting down somewhere and contemplating every word as you wrote them down. I wondered if you'd thrown out hundreds of pieces of paper after messing up when you could have just as well typed out a letter without wasting them.

And then by that point, all I could think about was just you.

I always pictured what your living room looks like, or your kitchen table, or your office, or wherever you sit down to write. I wondered if you looked like one of those hopeless writers in the movies that have a scruffy face, coffee stains on their white tee shirts, and messy hair that hasn't been washed in days due to lack of inspiration.

But in the end, the image that won out over all the others was just you as I remember.

I'm not going to lie, that image most of the time was your body above mine while I held my hand to your throat, but for the sake of romance I guess I should probably tell you what it was every other time— the outfit you were wearing the first time we met.

When I think of you, I think of your hand nervously clutching that beer bottle for dear life and the other one occasionally pushing your glasses up your nose. I think of your eyes every time they'd look away from me, probably to keep yourself from staring too long.

But the thing that always gets me the most is your smile— even when it comes in little flashes, after you've said something you probably thought was lame. You covered it up with that perfect smile.

I've dreamt of that smile nearly every night since I met you, and I wouldn't be opposed to seeing it in person again.

I'd love to meet you for dinner some time.

But since you did manage to "more or less abandon me twice now", I think it's only fair that you make it up to me first.

Make the next letter a good one, and we'll see what happens.

Yours, Y/N

P.S. I hope my handwriting is as pretty as you hoped. I'd hate to disappoint.

***

Y/N,

I'm incredibly grateful that you've given me a chance to redeem myself. Every night since I last saw you has also been spent wondering what your house looks like on the inside... What you looked like reading my letter (perhaps at your kitchen table?)

And this might sound silly, but I've also wondered what your bedroom looks like. You may be laughing at me, because I've been in your bedroom, but in my defense I was a bit preoccupied to really take notice of my surroundings— I was simply surrounded by you.

But since I've been to your home, I figured it was only fair that I invite you to mine, possibly for dinner. I don't know how to cook much— in fact I'm pretty awful at making anything that's not a can of Spaghetti-Os... But one of my co-workers is an excellent chef, and with a recipe from him and some practice under my belt, I'm sure I can pull it off.

But by "some" practice, I mean probably weeks or months of practice. So hopefully that gives you ample time to mull it over.

Perhaps in the meantime we can get to know each other through our letters. And who's to say, it might spare us the awkward "getting to know each other" stage of a first date. Though, pretty much every stage of every date is awkward for me, so it might not help at all.

Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to hearing from you again.

I do get called away for work quite often, however. So I apologize in advance if I can't get back to you as soon as I'd like.

But in any instance, you're still welcome to text message or call me. I know it isn't as romantic or personal as handwritten letters, but it's certainly practical.

Yours, Spencer.

P.S. Your handwriting is just as beautiful as I'd imagined it would be. And you could never disappoint me.

That being said, if you somehow decide that this letter wasn't up to your standards and reject my offer, I may just find myself in the deepest despair imaginable.

***

I was definitely way too in my head about this.

It was just a text. Sure, it was a risky text to send, but I had no doubt in my mind that it would be fine in the end.

So why was my stomach churning just thinking about sending it?

Some might have chalked it up to my fat ol' crush on Spencer, but I knew it ran deeper. It had to do at least a little with my history with Patrick... The man stood me up and sent divorce papers to my place of work rather than to my face... And as much as I liked to think I was completely over it, we'd been together for years, and it really did a number on me.

I didn't want to ruin this new thing with Spencer so badly that I was overthinking everything.

So even though I could see his face opening the text, my heart doing jumps at the mere thought of it, a bigger part of me worried that it would be a step too far in the wrong direction. I didn't want him to think I was only in this for... sexual reasons. Which, don't get me wrong, have been pretty damn great so far, but I really did want to get to know him and see where this went.

In the end I decided to hold off. I settled for something a little lighter.

Spencer,

Don't feel too bad about your cooking skills. I've been through my fair share of burnt frozen pizzas to know how you're feeling. So the fact that you've given yourself the opportunity to practice and learn a recipe just for me is extremely romantic, and I appreciate the thought.

I won't stop you from following through, though I'm telling you now that no amount of slaving away in the kitchen will make me change my mind about you. We could probably eat stale crackers on the floor and I'd still find you utterly fascinating.

Maybe that's a bit too extreme, but I hope you get my point.

Anyway, I'd love to come over for dinner some time. Whenever you think you're ready to show me those improved cooking skills, you just let me know and I'll happily make my way over.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of sending more with my letters. I don't want to give away too much, but I will say that I'm very crafty. And don't feel like you need to send anything in return, though I'll let you know if I ever change my mind.

Yours,

Y/N

***

In the bottom right corner of the letter, right next to her signature, was a red lipstick stain in the shape of... well, her lips. It was common sense to know that they were hers and no one else's, not just a stamp or a drawing, and rather her actual lip stain... But even without it, I would have been able to tell by their shape.

Was that pathetic?

I could hear her, picture her in front of me, hovering above me with red-painted lips in the shape of a smirk, visibly cooing as she called me names... I could feel the ghost of her fingertips trailing up my throat and tilting my chin up to look at her as she rocked her hips teasingly into mine...

The whine I let out truly was pathetic.

You pathetic, needy little thing, I could hear her say...

My hands clutched the paper so tightly I thought I'd tear it, but it didn't matter when all I could see while staring at it was her luscious, red lips... Her voice was right there in my ear, like she was really beside me, watching me...

Oh, God, what would she do if she saw me right now? Staring at her lipstick stained paper and subconsciously grinding down into my chair...

You pathetic, needy little thing...

My hips jolted with a small, broken shout of her name, and in no time the front of my pants were flooded with warmth. I felt her eyes burning into me from the void, sparking to life with amusement as her voice crept into the deep corners of my brain and whispered praises to me.

Ohh, what a good little whore... Getting off to the thought of me... That's it, sweet boy... Come for me...

By now my eyes had squeezed shut and the letter was crumpled in my hand, the other reaching down to add much-appreciated burning friction to my crotch as I rode out my orgasm. My whole body tensed and shuddered at every sensation, from Y/N's image behind my eyes to the sweet warmth that pooled in my underwear and soaked through onto my hand.

Holy mother of—

The next time I saw her, I was screwed. I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. I'd surely go red the second I laid eyes on her, and she'd know right away what I was thinking and feeling.

Simply put, it scared and excited me at the same time.

She'd utterly and thoroughly wrecked me, and if she didn't already know it, she certainly would soon.

Y/N,

I'm not sure what you intend to send in addition to your letters, but if it's anything near the sentiment of your lip stain, then you might have to refrain in favor of my poor, fragile heart.

See, it aches for you. It's bad enough I think of you always, but the moment I saw the shape of your lips on that letter, my heart almost shot straight out of my chest. Maybe it was the familiar shape of your lips or the implications of its place next to your name, signed after the word 'yours', that sent me into a tailspin, but whatever the case...

I'm pretty sure I've completely fallen under your spell.

I suppose I should also tell you that my heart wasn't the only part of my body that came to life at your added signature. I assure you, it took no time at all for me to come undone at the thought of your lips pressing gently against the paper, imagining that they were instead pressing to my skin... I didn't even have to touch myself, really. It just happened. Because of you and you alone.

I hope that wasn't too forward, but I felt it necessary that you know just how much of an effect you have on me.

If I could see you again in a millisecond, it wouldn't be soon enough.

That being said, I am determined to spend as much time as possible to perfect this dish for our dinner. Because you deserve nothing but the best, even if you insist that you could settle for less.

It's the least I can do.

Yours, Spencer.

And a week and a half later, when I didn't get a letter back on time, I was sure I'd messed up for good.

My mind was racing a mile a minute, yelling at myself for even thinking for a second of being that detailed in a letter without any consent. Sure, she'd taken it a step up by signing off her letter with a kiss, but I'd been absolutely idiotic in telling her that I got off to it.

I was honestly well and truly prepared to show up at her house with a big bouquet of flowers and an apology so wordy and probably too long for anyone's liking, in hopes that she'd forgive me for making this huge mistake.

Thankfully, though, it wasn't needed.

My phone chimed as I was pacing, my lip near bloody with how hard I'd been chewing at it, and I saw an unknown number attached to a text message and photo attachment.

The photo wouldn't load (I would have to plug it into my laptop and transfer the image there to see it— a fact which always irked Penelope to the core), but with the sentences I saw above the file, I almost knew exactly what I'd find when I had the means to see it.

There. Now we're even... Who says text messages can't be romantic and personal? XXX, Y/N

I felt like Bambi as I scrambled to my laptop three rooms over, stumbling over weak legs with my phone clutched tightly in my hand. My heart raced faster than it ever had as I started everything up and retrieved the right cord for my phone. With a few shakes and stumbles here and there, I briefly entertained the idea of upgrading my phone.

I probably would have left the apartment to do it immediately after seeing her photo attachment, but the moment it loaded up on my screen, my brain and body lost all ability to function properly.

A familiar burn coursed through the lower half of my body and tightened my chest at the sight of her, open and exposed and... wet.

My laptop screen was completely taken over by the image of Y/N's pussy, visibly glistening and aroused. A manicured hand—her hand— was in frame as well, middle finger resting snugly between the supple skin of her wet lips.

The fact that I only tasted her once felt downright cruel.

I tried to imagine it again— my face buried between the softness of her thighs. As much as I wanted to lay her down and indulge myself as long as possible, taking all the time in the world to slowly devour her and truly explore her for myself, what ran through my mind then was something more in the vein of our dynamic thus far.

My mind wandered, specifically to a place where I was the one laying down as she sat down directly onto my face and gave me what she thought I deserved. My hands were tied to the bed, maybe handcuffed. All I knew was that I couldn't touch her, and it bothered me. So I whined, and every time the sound left my mouth, she would let up, lifting further out of reach and causing me to instinctively reach my head up to chase her.

You greedy little slut... Take what I give you...

Desperately seeking her approval, I told her I'd be good and rejoiced when she lowered herself down to me again, allowing me to me completely wrapped up in her once more. My tongue lapped and lapped, gathering as much of her as I could before she'd inevitably leave again.

But she never did.

Somehow I kept my quiet, even though it was extremely difficult, and ate her out like my life depended on it. She glided smoothly over my face, coating more than just my lips in her arousal, and it thrilled me to my very core.

Every time I breathed in I could smell her, every time she groaned out my name my stomach fluttered, and it wasn't long before she was clutching my hair, shaking above me while I drank her in and repressed my whines.

My hips were uncontrollable though, bucking up into nothing and begging for any type of stimulation.

But then suddenly it was there— Her hand, firmly wrapping around my dick and gliding over it beautifully with a slickness that she must have transferred from her pussy. I could still taste her as I cried out her name, her movements quickening with every second until—

I didn't even realize I was actually alone until my eyes opened, cum coating my hand, my heartbeat heavy and loud, and the laptop screen in front of me a shade darker signaling a long period of inactivity.

I'd done it again...

And now we most certainly were not even.

I glanced over at my phone—plugged into the laptop—and then down at my lap, and my stomach knotted as my next move rang clear as day.

***

I woke up the next morning to texts from Spencer, and my heart picked up speed, a gentle warmth blooming through my chest at the sight.

I thought maybe he'd thank me for the photo I'd sent. Maybe he'd return it with an influx of messages along the lines of Oh my god, Holy fuck I miss you, and the like.

But what I wasn't expecting was to see a photo in return, of his hand that I'd dreamt of nearly nightly, wrapped firmly around his cock and all of it completely covered in cum.

Below the photo were three messages in a row, and each one gave me more butterflies than the last.

Sorry for low quality. No smartphone.

Also sorry we're not even anymore.

But I'm not sorry I did it- you're too perfect to resist.

***

Dearest Y/N,

I'm sorry you haven't gotten a letter from me in a while. And I know we've kept in touch through texting and calling while I was swamped at work, though now that I have some time off, I'd love to write you again. As much as I enjoy our virtual conversations, I still find sending letters to be my preferred method of communication (only second to speaking with you in person, that is).

Which brings me to the main point I'm trying to make.

I want to see you again. In person. I'm not completely confident in my cooking ability yet, but if you wouldn't mind the potential of it tasting awful, I'd love to have you over. I promise you nothing but the best, and I know that's a high promise, especially considering I probably haven't sold you on the meal, but it's true.

I'd do anything to please you.

And I really do mean 'anything', I hope you understand that.

Yours, Spencer.

***

The thought of seeing him in person again after so long made my hands way shakier than I would have liked. It made no sense the longer I thought about it, because it was obvious that we liked each other, and seeing each other in person wouldn't be a problem. Because it'd never been a problem before.

It irked me.

Still, I knocked on his door and physically shook out my hands, praying I could keep my cool when he finally opened the door.

But I should have known better.

One second I was staring at a large plank of wood, and the next I was staring into frantic eyes, golden and sparkling just as I remembered, but with an added glimmer of fear that matched the shakiness of my hands.

I don't know how long we stood there, just staring at each other, but the longer we did, the more we relaxed. His fear was gone, and the shaking in my hands turned into a dull hum that longed to reach out for him.

Still, I refrained, settling on a simple, "Hey, pen pal..."

By the way he looked at me, silent as ever, I started to wonder if that was a stupid thing to lead with. So I opened my mouth to apologize, to say anything else, but he beat me to it.

"Y/N... I... H—Hi, you look... incredible."

"O—Oh, thanks... Thank you, yeah, I um... figured I should... dress up a little. I know we're not going out anywhere, but I thought it might be nice."

He doesn't need to know that, Y/N, stop talking!

I gave him a small smile and a nervous laugh in an attempt to stop myself, hating how I was so nervous around him.

Spencer didn't seem to mind, though. He let me in and closed the door behind me as I quickly glanced around his apartment. It was littered with greens and browns, books everywhere, and I'd never felt more at home.

"Is it, uh... What you expected?"

"Hmm?" I turned to meet him, his soft voice pulling me from my wandering eyes.

"My apartment."

"Oh! Yeah, it's very you... I love it."

The compliment had his cheeks turning pink, and there was nothing I wanted to do more than kiss them over and over again.

And just like that, once again we were caught just staring at each other. I didn't know what he was thinking, and honestly, I didn't know what I was thinking either. All I knew in that moment was that Spencer Reid was standing right in front of me, close enough to touch, and I wanted to give in.

I was so wrapped up in the idea of feeling him that I almost didn't hear him speak. I wouldn't have heard him at all had it not been for his lips moving.

"I'm sorry, I haven't started dinner yet..."

"That's okay," I reassured. Or, at least I tried to. Really, though, I think it sounded more like I was uninterested in what he was saying, my voice flat and lifeless as I continued to stare at him.

Suddenly we were closer, and I had to look up higher to see his face, butterflies swarming in my stomach at the way he looked down at me.

"You're sure?"

"Mhm."

"I can start it now if you're getting hungry."

Food isn't what I'm hungry for, is what I thought. I almost said it, too, because he was even closer now, his hands coming out to touch mine. If they were humming before, they were certainly blaring with life now, growing hot under his light touch. And it took everything I had not to look down, because it had been too damn long since I'd seen his hands in person, and I wanted them on me immediately.

He could tell, too. He could sense my urgency, feel the longing radiating off my presence, and I knew this because I could feel his, too. His eyes practically dared me to say what I was thinking, and so I did.

"Don't you dare."

It was hard to tell who moved in first, but it really didn't matter.

I was here, in his apartment, feeling his lips glide over mine with reckless abandon, and that's all that mattered.

His hands gripped my waist so tightly I would have thought he was trying to hold me in place, to make sure I wasn't ever going to leave his sight again. And if that was the case, I would have let him hold me there forever.

My hands, meanwhile, clutched at his hair, forcing myself closer and closer to him with every sharp tug. I reveled in the way he whined into my mouth with every little thing I did, whether it was a tug of the hair or a roll forward of the hips, or even a swipe of my tongue over his.

He was putty in my hands yet again, and just like every time before, it turned me into a fucking goner.

Being with Spencer wasn't like anything I'd ever known. And the only other thing I'd known was Patrick. He didn't want me, not really, and even though he was good to me in the beginning, it was never like this.

I didn't come over to his apartment with shaking hands. I didn't send him fucking love letters almost weekly, and I certainly didn't get kissed like this...

Spencer was drunk on me, and I wasn't any sober myself.

"That picture you sent me..." I mumbled over his lips, still keeping myself as close as I could while I got out what I needed to say. "Where did you take that?"

We kissed for a few more seconds, unable to stay apart, before he answered, his voice just as breathy and brimming with desperation as mine. "My office. Just down the hall."

I kissed him again, hard, and then pulled back to look him in the eyes. They widened when I said, "Show me."

He dragged me through the apartment on rushed legs, and I almost laughed at the urgency, only stopped by the realization that I was just as urgent. It occurred to me that perhaps my laughing at his urgency might just be a slight turn on for him, given our history with my playful degradation, but still I pulled back— Tonight felt... different.

It didn't feel like we were headed in the direction of me calling him my dirty little whore throughout the night, and it was something I was more than okay with. In fact, I welcomed it, excited to see where this new night would take us.

We ended up in his office, which remained more or less the same aesthetic as the rest of his place. In the middle sat a small desk with a laptop and some papers scattered about on it, accompanied by a tall floor lamp and a rolling desk chair.

"Where were you exactly?" I mused, gripping his hand tightly and buzzing at the way his fingers flexed against my own.

"In the chair... I pulled the photo up on my laptop."

"Right. No smartphone."

Spencer hummed in confirmation before dragging me along to the chair, and I fucking giggled as he plopped down and practically pulled me right on top of him, the chair rolling back a foot or two. I went down for a bright, messy kiss that ended with his hands clutching my ass over my skirt and my own cradling his face.

His growing bulge nudged right up into my inner thigh, and I groaned lightly in his mouth, my fingers dragging softly down his jaw and neck until I reached his shoulders.

"What were you thinking about?"

He raised his eyebrow, and I rocked my hips forward with a sly grin, hoping to get my point across. "When you were looking at my picture, in this very chair, what were you thinking about?"

Seeing his eyelids stutter and his tongue dart out at my movements sent a rush through me, and I moved my hips once more to emphasize my urgency.

"I... I thought about you... riding my face. You tied my hands..."

"Oh?" I sighed, rocking forward again and humming into his neck. "Well, that can definitely be arranged if you want it bad enough..."

"Please, Y/N, yes... Please..."

The need dripping from every syllable made it near impossible to breathe, and I was suddenly very inclined to give him everything he wanted. With or without the begging.

So I reluctantly peeled away from him and stood up on weak legs. Staring at Spencer as he sat there, leaning back in the chair with disheveled hair and obvious desire in his eyes, made it all the better when I took my panties off from under my skirt and motioned for him to come forward. "On your knees?"

I would have demanded it in any other situation, but I was feeling a bit more sweet this time around.

And he seemed grateful for it, sliding the chair back further and getting down in front of me. I reached out and played with his hair, trying my hardest to commit his beautiful face to memory. I wanted it burned there for the rest of time.

"Hands?"

Spencer offered his hands to me, and I hummed happily, doing my best to tie his hands together with a makeshift knot from my panties. It wasn't really tight or secure, but it was enough for him to whine as he set them in his lap.

He watched intently as I dropped my skirt—a bit redundant now, but I thought it'd be a nice way to get him more excited. Plus I wanted to see his face (or at lease what I could see of it while it was buried between my legs).

I stepped forward then, looking down at him with a smile while my hands reached out to comb through his hair. "You ready?"

"Uh huh."

The look in his eyes right before I came forward and hovered over his face almost made my come on the spot.

But as fun as that would have been, I was glad for the way my body held off and settled for a beautiful, burning increase of pleasure that dragged out the longer he swiped his tongue through my folds. Actually, I forgot for a moment that I was supposed to be moving, riding his face like he'd thought about.

I willed my eyes open and clutched Spencer's soft locks of hair beneath me, gently rolling my hips and grinding down further on his face. The groan he let out not only felt good against my skin, but it sounded like pure bliss, eliciting a small whimper of my own as I tightened my grip in his hair and rocked faster.

"God, I missed having your mouth on me, baby... You're... so good..."

The longer I spoke the more breathless I became, not because the words didn't come easily, but because I truly believed them to be true.

Spencer really was so fucking good, his tongue the most delicate, divine object of the universe as it drew out every ounce of delight from my body. I may have been the one above him, calling the shots and directing him where and how to please me, but he was the one who clung to my soul like static and politely guided me towards damnation.

I wasn't even sure of my surroundings to tell you the truth. As my body tensed and took me through one of the most blinding pleasures I'd experienced in weeks, My eyes were squeezed so tightly it's like I saw the universe. All I knew was Spencer's lips sucking my clit and my hands deeply rooted in his hair as I shouted incoherently, stars swirling around behind my eyelids.

Truly, for all I knew, we could have been in space. It wouldn't have made any difference.

But eventually it came to be too much. I was reaching a limit I didn't want to get to so quickly, and so I flashed my eyes open and tried to adjust to this brand new atmosphere, unweaving my fingers through pretty brown waves of hair and stepping back to assess the situation.

What I found was the most beautiful man I'd ever known, panting like he'd just ran a marathon and yet harboring the most intense joy and desire a person could hold. He was on his knees, bound hands writhing in his lap as he awaited further instruction and licked up as much of myself on his face as he could before I stopped him.

Under normal circumstances, I would have wanted to absolutely ruin him. That adoring, desperate look in his eye would have spurred me to more devious endeavors, but all I wanted in this moment was to make sure he was satisfied. I wanted to take care of him, to let him know that I longed to make him feel as worshipped and adored as he'd made me feel.

I got down to Spencer's level, quickly removing the fabric from his wrists and hauling him to his feet, where he now towered over me, still waiting for words to address and instruct him.

Instead, I leaned up with soft hands upon his cheeks and pulled him down to meet my lips in a kiss that changed the tone entirely. It was erotic still, of course, what with my arousal infiltrating my taste buds and eliciting a soft sigh from the both of us, but our urgency manifested in sweeter ways... Softer lips, gentle touches of the face, and an exchanging of breath that was so smooth and seamless it felt like we were floating on air.

I was finding it hard to breathe again, but it wasn't an issue in the slightest. In fact, there was nowhere else I'd rather have been than right there, kissing Spencer Reid like we had all the time in the world.

When the breathlessness was a little too much to bear, we pulled away, though only leaving just enough space to breathe. Our lips stayed briefly connected while we caught up, and his hands found their way to the sides of my face. The way they practically engulfed my whole head brought a brief smile to my lips as I finally gave him the words he was looking for.

"I'm so glad I met you," I whispered.

"Funny, I was just thinking the same thing."

We kissed each other again, naturally and with so much ease that I wondered how I had ever lived without him.

And then, as my hands slid gently down his chest, I felt it.

Something that felt very much like a ring attached to a necklace sat right where his heartbeat resided, and I knew exactly which ring it was.

"W—" I pulled back and circled the shape of it with my finger through the shirt, then looked up at him. "Is that what I think it is?"

Spencer looked briefly panicked, pulling away a little and fishing down the front of his shirt for the chain. "Oh... Um, yeah. I, um... I forgot to take it off, I'm sorry. I..."

"You... kept it?"

I observed the diamond as it laid flat on my palm, still attached to the chain and around his neck. Honestly, after all this time I figured he'd never found it or gotten rid of it, seeing as he never brought it up. And yet there it was, glittering in the palm of my hand as my other one presses firmly against Spencer's rapidly beating heart.

"Y—Yeah... It um... It was really the only physical thing I had to remember you—Well, at least until we started sending letters... And I guess I just... W—Wearing it has become such a habit that I forgot to take it off."

"You never take it off?"

I could tell he was nervous, and rightfully so given I wasn't really letting on how I was feeling about the whole thing.

Still, he answered my short question in such a small whisper I'd have thought he was trying not to get in trouble.

"No."

"Why?"

My words certainly weren't helping ease his anxieties, so I remained close, dropping the ring and focusing rather on his eyes. I softened the look in my own and glided my hands down to hold his. His fingers flexed against mine, squeezing them for dear life as he sighed out in relief and flashed me a soft smile.

"Because... I wanted you close to my heart."

With a smile that mirrored his eyes, full of enchantment and pure adoration for the person in front of me, I didn't use my brain and instead focused on what my heart was telling me, consequences be damned.

"I think I might love you..."

Spencer squeezed my hands tighter, that relief spreading out to all his features and brightening that beautiful smile.

"Funny... I was just thinking the same thing."

Our lips met once more, and I swear it was like nothing bad was ever going to happen for the rest of time.

I'd never felt that way. Not once with Patrick did my heart feel settled into place, even during the great parts of our relationship.

And now here I was, with a man who sent me love letters and kept every physical reminder of my existence, who kissed me like I was the most precious thing in the world and slowly mended my wounded heart.

He held me close the whole way to his bedroom and never let me go until the morning. Though, even then his arms outstretched towards me and his fingers flexed, needing to grab onto any part of me that he could find.

And as I was sure I always would, I welcomed him with open arms.

***

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#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid x reader smut #criminal minds #criminal minds smut #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfiction

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spacedikut · 3 years

Text

exam help ; spencer reid

pairing: spencer reid x gn!reader

summary: a self-indulgent blurb about spencer helping with exams :) 1.7k

a/n: first fic of the year :D happy 2021!

masterlist

Another anguish-filled screech reverberates from your and Spencer’s shared office, bringing even your pet fish in the tank to attention.

It’s the third one this hour. Spencer tries to ignore it, just like you told him to, but God you sound like you’re in pain and Spencer can’t exactly ignore that, can he? He loves you and cares for you and- oh. A thump reaches his ears. A textbook, maybe? Did you punch your textbook?

He considers for a moment that the neighbours will be alarmed, perhaps call the police or tentatively knock with a, “Is everything okay in there?”

It wouldn’t be the first time.

What would he tell them? Oh, my apologies, my partner has exams coming up and just told me they get why unsubs do that now. I am also terrified.

There are many instances where Spencer feels useless. During his job, when his mother would have an episode, when his friends have problems he just wouldn’t understand. But, somehow, and maybe controversially, this is the worst type of uselessness. The type that leaves him staring at the wall, questioning everything, the type that makes his stomach drop because all he can do is watch.

He’s been watching you for the last two weeks. He’s sick of watching, of being no help, and he needs to do something before he breaks and does something illegal.

(The illegal thing is doing your exams for you - not illegal as in, perhaps, murder)

Your frazzled head pops out from the office, one hand rubbing your eyes and a permanent frown etched on your face, and with a fragile voice you ask, “Can you make me a coffee, please?”

Now, Spencer feels hypocritical, but he has to say it. “Another? Are you sure?”

He sees the internal battle within you, how you try your hardest not to snap. It’s not his fault you’re stressed. He’s just trying to help. “Yes, I’m sure. Please, Spence,”

“Of course. I’ll bring it in.”

“Thank you.” With a pained smile, you’re gone again into the dark abyss of where you’re studying.

With quick, ingrained movements, Spencer makes your coffee with too much creamer and marshmallows. Unusual, yes, but your current diet consists of coffee and whatever he can force you to consume – like marshmallows.

But then, hello, he spots a chocolate bar haphazardly close to the bin, grabs it, and hopes you let him watch you eat it.

Stepping into the room as quietly as possible, he’s smacked in the face by the smell of lavender. It makes him nauseous, the intensity of it, quickly followed by a lurch of his heart because you poor thing, you’re being crushed by the weight of your degree – literally. The other day you purchased an insanely heavy weighted blanket and you’re drowning in it.

Now, if you were to ask Spencer who the most beautiful person on the planet is, he’d say you in a heartbeat. He’s thought that since you first met and, years later, still stands by that. But now, right now, glowering at him in the dimly lit, lavender drenched study that you used to love oh-so-much? You have the face of a French bulldog, all grumpy and furrowed and too many creases on your face to make Spencer feel like he’s actually helping when he places the coffee and snack on your desk.

Despite the crabby expression, your words are filled with love and appreciation – which happens to be Spencer’s favourite mix. “Thank you, my love.” You take a sip of the coffee, hum in delight, and for the first time in days there’s a spark of something other than torment. “You’re the best.”

Spencer’s hand holds the back of your neck and he places a series of soft kisses to your temple, mumbling, “I love you. Very much. Is there anything else you need?”

“Death.”

“Okay. I’ll work on it.”

At that, you grace Spencer with a weak half-smile. It’s enough to overwhelm Spencer, overflowing and only able to be shown through a chaste, encouraging peck on your lips and a half-hug, Spencer bent at the waist to hold you in your desk chair. He noses your hair, hoping his closeness will alleviate some stress, before stepping back and praying his eyes tell you everything he wants to say but know will elicit annoyance from you.

I love you. Take care of yourself. Rest, please. You can do this, but not if you over exert yourself. I love you.

Your eyes tell him, I’ll try. I love you. And that’s all he can ask for.

But when he leaves, shuffles past his bookshelf, his eyes catch sight of an old file that reminds him of when he was preparing for his own exams.

He gets an idea.

+++

It takes another two days, full of late nights involving work that isn’t staying up and distracting himself with books to avoid worrying over you and how late you go to sleep, and reading that leaves Spencer in awe of you and everyone in your field.

A part of him is amazed by how he wheelbarrowed the resources behind you without you noticing, another is worried about that fact, and the rest of him is excited that he can finally do something that will actually help. At least, he hopes.

(When everything is said and done, despite being endlessly grateful, you also inform Spencer that simply being there and being him and getting you coffee every time you ask is more than enough, really)

With pride, he leans back on the couch, observing his creations on the coffee table. There’s plenty of different colours, all representing a different topic, and he presses the thumbs up to like the Youtube video he was using to ensure his handwriting is easy to read.

Flashcards. Hundreds, if Spencer counted correctly. The textbooks he stole – borrowed – from under your nose lie next to his feet, the weight of them combined more of a workout than he’s (voluntarily) done in eons.

He only hopes you don’t think it’s too late, think he’s overstepping or-or that he’s doing those things that he’s been accused of before – thinking he knows best (he does, but whatever), overbearing arrogance, an unwillingness to hear and accept other people’s way of doing things.

He just wants to help. He wants you to know he’s here for you, no matter what you need. This is the thing that lets him believe he’s doing something, something good and useful. Spencer just wants to be useful.

He’s convinced you to eat a proper breakfast – fruit, oats, bread, meat, a whole buffet – and you sense something is amiss when you hear slow, tentative footsteps creeping from your bedroom.

Spencer, still in his pyjamas, glasses perched on his nose, approaches with a shallow box in his grasp. You swallow your bite, turn to face him. “What’ve you got there?”

The box is slid onto the counter next to your plate hesitantly, as if he regrets his actions as he’s doing them. Peering in, you see a blur of colour, stacks on stacks of rectangular paper filled with writing and questions and even a tips! section.

You pick up the first batch, all light blue, and flick through them, heart getting bigger and bigger with every word you read. And when you realise what they are, what Spencer’s done – for you – your heartrate has skyrocketed and the watch on your wrist is asking you if you’re okay.

“You made me flashcards?” You ask, in awe, again looking at the love of your life to find he’s already staring at you.

“I did,” He tells you, apprehensive and scared, already backtracking, “But, if you don’t think they’re useful, or-or you think I’m overstepping – I’m not trying to, I promise, I just thought…” He starts nervously shuffling and reshuffling some of his creation. “Flashcards are known to engage active recall and metacognition. Research consistently finds that applying metacognitive strategies tends to ingrain memories deeper into your knowledge, and that this kind of active recall retrieval practice leads to one-hundred and fifty percent better retention than passive studying, so…”

Your hands have a mind of their own, pulling what feels like an endless amount of cards out and turning them in your hands, from the questions on the front to the answers on the back, the ones with hints and advice and there’s several with doodles that are so Spencer you hold them to your chest. You’re so enamoured by this man that is still rambling and bumbling because he takes your silence as distaste.

“I just- I hate seeing you so stressed, so I made these. You don’t have to use them, of course. They’re not even that great. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable, you’re beyond capable, or that your methods don’t work- Just, personally, I love flashcards. I used them all the time when studying, even though I didn’t really need them, so perhaps a change of medium would do you good-“

A warm hand on his own that keep fidgeting stops him mid-stream of consciousness.

“Thank you,” You say, earnestly, “Really. These are lovely.” You leap from your seat, wrapping Spencer in warmth and love and care, and he shivers when he feels your hot breath on his ear when you repeat your thanks again and again.

When he pulls you even closer, so your torso curves into his own, you feel the lightest you have in weeks. You’re in the arms of the man you love, who knows you love him too and you know loves you so much – enough to spend several nights reading your cursed textbooks so he could create something that might help – and now you’re confident that you can do it. With the help of Spencer and his lovingly hand-made flashcards, you can do it.

And if, somehow, it goes awry, that’s okay too. Because you’ll still have Spencer, your number one fan, who will be there to comfort you and advise you in any way he can. He’ll never let you doubt yourself, never allow a self-deprecating joke if he can help it, because if he has to, he’ll love and support you enough for the both of you until you can do it yourself.

The world feels a little brighter, your breaths feel a little lighter, all because of Spencer. So you kiss him, murmur love against his lips, and get ready to take on whatever dares to come your way.

+++

tags: @pinkdiamond1016 @bluerose512 @andreasworlsboring101 @roses-and-grasses @ta-ka-shi-ma @ogmilkis @chiffonchronicles @rexorangecouny @unmistakablyunknown @goofygubler14 @gublertoon @averyhotchner @wheeledup @shadyladyperfection @joodeduarte @calm-and-doctor @

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x y/n #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #mine #the end is super cheesy but #eeeeeeeeeeeeee

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stxleslyds · 3 years

Note

What do you think about the theories that Jason was sexually abused as a child? Or even possibly while he was comatose after his resurrection?

Implications of this theory include his conversation with Mia (Speedy) and Bruce's message (Battle for the Cowl). In addition, when he was Robin he expressed what was then considered uncharacteristic rage towards the perpetrators of sex crimes.

Garzonas - unrepentant rapist who got no consequences

When a woman killed her sister's rapist and murderer (because Batman's evidence was not admissible in court), Batman said that she went too far with murder. Jason's disagreed with "Good riddance". Good for you, Jason.

His recklessness when dealing with a child sex trafficking ring.

I highly doubt that DC would ever confirm this theory. I would rather they leave it ambiguous because I don't trust them to not botch Jason... much less respectfully address the subject matter.

I have read so many thoughts on Jason that they're starting to blend together. So I apologize if you've already answered this before.

Hello friend! Aside from the fact that I took way too much time to answer your ask, this was also a hard question to come up with an answer to, I wanted to remain respectful of the subjects at hand even though I don’t second this headcanon. But before we keep going, let me put some trigger warnings in this post.

trigger warning: mentions of sexual abuse, child abuse, rape.

First, I would like to bring up these two concepts because I oftentimes mix them up when talking about these “ideas”.

Theory: a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something; an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action.

Headcanon: Headcanon generally refers to ideas held by fans of series that are not explicitly supported by sanctioned text or other media. Fans maintain the ideas in their heads, outside of the accepted canon.

I think the idea of Jason having been sexually abused at any point in his lifetime is a mix between a theory and a headcanon. Why I am saying this? Because as you have put in the ask, there has been instances where fandom has found pieces of information that they have considered the base of this idea.

So, if we say that there is a piece of text that might support that idea and they build from that to justify a course of action we would be looking at a theory. In this case Jason having been abused would the reason as to why he acts in that strong and violent way towards cases of sexual abuse/harassment.

In the other hand those pieces of text might not support that idea so fandom headcanons that idea in order to build another layer to a character, in this case Jason having been abused would also justify his actions towards certain criminals.

The “text” (panels, issues, mentions) are most of the time ambiguous, which makes readers have different perspectives in what is being written and what then is made into a theory or headcanon.

Personally, I don’t like this theory or headcanon for various reasons (which I will explain later in the post), and I have read and understood those moments mentioned as Jason just having survived Crime Alley as something general, I don’t think he suffered that kind of abuse but I think he was made aware of that type of behaviour every day that he spent alone in the streets and that why we saw Jason in Batman #408 saying that he had “graduated a long time ago from the streets of crime alley”.

Having said that, I do understand that some of the moments mentioned can be seen as ambiguous and that’s what leads people to theorize/headcanon that idea, because of that I would like to show the panels mentioned in your ask so everyone can read them and make up their own conclusions and then I will talk about the reasons why I don’t like this particular theory/headcanon.

As Robin:

Batman (1940) #422

In these panels we can see Jason as Robin jumping in to defend a woman that was being attacked by a man. There I only see Jason acting like a vigilante would, maybe he was hitting too hard or whatever but Batman has hit people as much as Jason was doing it this time around, plus I, personally, don’t see any kind of problem with Jason beating a man that was harassing and threatening a woman with death.

Right beside we have Jason being on the side of the woman that killed her sister’s attacker. He didn’t see any problem with that woman seeking justice for her sister on her own when the police, Batman and himself couldn’t get the job done.

Here I see Jason having a big problem with authorities and justice system, which is not something new, in Batman #408, Jason says very clearly that he doesn’t trust the system in Gotham (the police, social workers and such), and he was also shown in that comic talking very fondly about his mother and about how much he cared for her when she was at her worst. Let’s remember that Jason loved his mother, he took care of her and resented his father for being abusive towards her and even introducing her to drugs.

Instead understanding these panels as Jason having been abused himself, I see it more as Jason having a humongous understanding of how much women and others suffer in Gotham due to the justice system’s lack of action. I also see Jason as the kind of boy that respected all women and could not sit and do nothing when people were hitting and abusing women just like his father did to his mother.

Batman (1940) #424

This issue starts by saying that Jason jumps into action as soon as he hears someone scream but that he wasn’t going to be prepared to see what was happening. This is the issue where all of us meet Felipe Garzonas, the abuser and rapist of many women. At first Jason doesn’t know what Felipe was doing but after he and Batman “defeat” Felipe, he goes to the room where he finds Gloria in a bed badly hurt and scared. Jason is shocked when he first finds her and after hearing her story in the police station, he becomes more and more happy about the fact that by having caught Felipe, he and Batman would be able to offer some peace and justice to Gloria after he goes to jail, but that doesn’t happen.

They had all the evidence to put Felipe in jail and the police could easily see that Gloria was the victim but because Felipe had someone to back his made-up story up, he was able to not be arrested and jailed.

Jason once again is baffled at the lack of action by the police or simply justice not being able to be made in favour of the true victim. Batman even says that he has noticed that Jason “had become to emotionally invested with the case” which could favour either idea (Jason having suffered sexual abuse or not), in my case I see this once again as Jason not being able to remain calm after doing everything to keep that woman safe and the justice system not being able to do it themselves in a more permanent way (jail time, or whatever).

But that’s not all because Jason being too emotional with that case was brought up as a way to show that Jason couldn’t see that Felipe had been under the influence of drugs, which is something that Jason can see in people very well (do to experience with his mother and his training with Batman). So, Felipe is now a rapist, an abuser, he does drugs and he also has a market for it.

Because Felipe was allowed to go back to his “normal” life he had Gloria be killed, and he kept abusing drugs and women, when Jason finds Gloria’s dead body and that Batman still seems to abide the justice system he snaps. He goes alone to see Felipe and that’s were this iconic panel comes from. The moments before Jason made his first kill and felt no remorse about it. I know this is kinda soft topic because Jason was a teenager, but good for him, kill that bitch. Gotham doesn’t need more people like him.

Batman (1940) #226

This is the issue where Jason attacks the men that were involved with some very nasty stuff involving children. Batman narrates and says that him and Jason had been working on this case for three weeks. Jason jumps into action suddenly and “recklessly” even though Batman considered their investigation wasn’t over, he also says that he thinks that Jason had been “acting oddly” and that he was very “moody, resentful and reckless” and that that attitude could “get him killed”.

This could be used as to add more proof of the abuse idea but I actually see it as build up to Jason’s death, that happened two issues later. Let’s remember that Jason found out of his birth mother and was desperate to find and save her from Joker, because he was a good son but also because he didn’t feel like Bruce loved, cared or appreciated him anymore. Ever since Jason made it clear that he didn’t see the world and justice in the same way that Batman did back in issue #422, Jason and Bruce’s relationship suffered, they just couldn’t see eye to eye on some subjects and Bruce’s neglect or lack of care for what Jason believed in drove Jason to act the way he did in the case involving his mother and the Joker.

Jason obviously has major issues with kids being abused and put in dangerous situations, he as the Red Hood (Winick’s Red Hood) is the same, he really wants kids to be taken far away from drugs so they cannot be manipulated, used and abused by Gotham’s Drug Lords. Here I can see some of the same thing, Jason being protective of those kids and getting fed up with how much time he and Batman had to wait to do anything about the subject, along side it I bet Jason wasn’t seeing the police or the justice system doing anything about the whole thing so that could have probably fuelled his desperate attack of those horrible people.

As Batman/Red Hood:

Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3

Battle for the Cowl… yeah I am going to be brutally honest about this, if anyone thinks that this is someway or somehow proof that Jason had been abused in the past then I think we have very different ways of thinking how survivors must be treated or written in comics and other media.

This to me is pure bad writing, this is some of the worst things I have seen being written in comics. Whether or not this implies Jason being abused or not, Bruce’s message is absolutely disgusting and not at all helpful, it is even worse when you realise that Dick, a canon sexual assault survivor, is the one playing the message to Jason even though Jason explicitly said that he didn’t want to hear it again. That Book, issue, page and panel are extremely badly written and is one of the most terrible Jason and Dick characterizations ever.

So, I don’t really care if this panel is supposed to offer support to that theory or headcanon, I really dislike that speech and if it is actually referencing Jason as being a survivor of child abuse, then Tony S. Daniel needs to make an apology from today to the day he dies.

“Of all my failures, you have been my biggest” “You were broken and I thought I could put the pieces back together. I thought I could do for you what could never be done for me. Make you whole” “What happened to you as a child… the terror, the pain, the horrors” “You needed repair and instead I gave you an outlet to act out on”

Absolute garbage writing. Me, as Bruce is number one hater, know that that speech is even out of character for Bruce. Listen, if Jason had been a victim of sexual assault or just being a kid living alone in Crime Alley, no one should leave a message like that, telling a victim that they were broken and needed fixing, what the hell? No, thank you, this issue proves nothing except that Battle for the Cowl was a mistake as a whole.

Green Arrow (2001) #72

Judd Winick is clever I will always say that, and while I do see why people think that Jason is making the “child abuse idea” canon I still think that the way that he talks is still fairly ambiguous if not just him playing mind games with Mia.

I know it sounds wrong, but hear me out, Winick, in this arc makes Batman say that Jason distracted him and Oliver just to take Mia as a “hostage” because that was Jason’s way to mess with him. This arc happens right after UtRH and Jason is a bit more unhinged than ever. But he doesn’t harm Mia, he just talks to her, he tries to make her see why he acts the way he does and to do that he talks about how much he sees of himself in her. Do I believe that Jason suffered the same things Mia did? No. Do I think that their past is similar? Yes.

But Jason doesn’t only use the fact that they have similar pasts to make Mia rebel against her “no killing ways” and Oliver like he did with Bruce, but he also brings up the fact that their past is incredibly different to the lives of Bruce and Oliver, and that those differences are of importance.

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t see Jason bringing Mia’s past for anything other than manipulating her and kinda make her see Oliver in a negative light the way that he does Batman and Bruce. Jason was at a point in his life where all he wanted to do was deliver the same pain that he had gone through but he didn’t do it by physically harming anyone (Mia was left unscratched), he was just out there trying to play mind games so he could break more havoc in Batman’s name.

Mia’s past is just way too different to whatever we have seen in canon from Jason’s past. Maybe I am wrong, after all, I only read about Mia in that arc.

With all that having been said I think it’s pretty obvious that I just don’t think that Jason’ having been sexually abused as a child actually happened, and I also don’t like to think about his past in that way. His canon suffering could have made him act that violently against criminals involved with sexual attacks and drug-related crimes, but I also think that’s just how Jason was, he really disliked the justice system in Gotham and saw how much it failed to protect victims, so now that he had the training to help those who couldn’t do it for themselves, he tried his best to bring criminals to justice.

And when that didn’t work, he grew more and more frustrated with Batman’s methods which led him to be more unforgiving and violent.

I also don’t like the theory/headcanon as a whole because I think its one of those things that Fandom comes up with just for that extra angst factor in their favourite character’s story so they can make him suffer more and because of that no other Robin or character as a whole can ever understand his pain or whatever. In this fandom there is a lot of “competitive trauma” going on and I honestly dislike it a lot.

About Jason having been assaulted while he was in a coma, I don't really know, he was at a hospital for what I believe were six moths, maybe that idea comes from real life happenings but I have never thought of that happening in Jason's life and I would rather not give it much more thought.

Also, I believe that DC just like fandom would have never been able to handle the subject of Jason having been a sexual assault survivor with the respect and care that it actually needs. We have seen DC treat sexual harassment and abuse as nothing but a side plot or bringing it up in an extremely disturbing way. In Fandom some (very few) people end up glamorising or romanticising these subjects so, I don’t believe the comic world was or is ready to treat a backstory like this with the respect it needs.

Maybe I haven’t even treated the subject with the respect and care that it needs and if that’s the case then I am truly sorry.

I had never answered a question regarding this subject before and I really appreciate all the questions you send my way; they do make my brain happy. I am really sorry it took me this long to write an answer to you but I hope the post is good enough for all the time I made you wait!

I hope you have an amazing week!

#jason todd #red hood #robin jason todd #batman #tati writes and is nervous about it #theories and headcanons #dc comics

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sineala · 3 years

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Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good.

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference.

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

#posts i actually wrote

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moon-lixie · 3 years

Text

about a letter left to be found and a boy who disappeared into thin air.

word count: 2.046k

genre: slight angst

song: 말할 수 없는 비밀 (Secret Secret) - Stray Kids

I don't think any of you would be able to understand, not even if I sit down and speak all of my truths. Still, I think I owe an explanation.

With trembling hands he gathered his things, the notebooks filled with dreams spilling from the edges of every page, his favourite hoodies, the pair of bright red headphones he had since the beginning of high school.

From the open window a cold breeze came in and ruffled the slightly damp hair of the boy, paying special attention to the ends that were still clamped together due to the dampness.

He wasn't exactly in a hurry, but he still felt nervous and anxious, because even if it was almost impossible, at the back of his mind he was haunted by the idea of someone coming in and stopping him.

Moving quickly he reached down for the towel hanging around his shoulders and ruffled his hair a couple of times more until he felt satisfied.

First of all, I have no idea where I am going but know that I'm fine.

A loud sigh caressed his lips as it escaped, filling the room that he had always called his own, his little world nobody could disrupt because in between the forgotten comics and the piles of clothes sprawled here and there he had felt more at home than he has ever felt anywhere else.

Throwing the towel to the basket of dirty laundry at the end of the hallway, he finally finished everything he had to do, simply being left with staring at himself in the mirror and fixing the wild strands of hair that had been upset by the freshly washed hoodie hugging his torso.

He could barely muster a smile at his reflection, not because he was sad, but because it all felt surreal in a sense that left him wondering if it was still the middle of the night many years ago and the last years had been nothing but the hopeful dreams of his younger self.

Maybe it's a bit selfish of me to simply leave without a warning, but please understand that I want much more than this place could ever offer me.

He closed the front door of his house, locking it with the pair of keys his mother had given him once he turned twelve; they were still held together by the Pororo keychain he had bought one day after school with such an overwhelming excitement that made the memory pull at the corners of his lips.

It felt bizarre to walk away from the entrance of his home knowing that he was never really going to come back, that this was the last time.

Just like the very first time he had arrived there along with a moving truck packed with boxes and furniture, he felt breath leave his lungs at the sight of the white façade. It made him stop for a second and contemplate in utter silence.

Goosebumps coated the length of his arms once he turned around and kept moving forward at a steady pace, leaving his old bike behind as well.

Know that the decision to leave wasn't made in a haste, I've been thinking about it for long and now just seemed like the perfect time.

Mr. Kim lazily waved in his direction, gentle smile and downturned eyes with the familiar brown that reminded Jisung of his grandfather; maybe that's where he would go next, to visit his grandfather.

Without much thought he returned the sweet and familiar greeting, feeling a bit nostalgic when he thought back to all the summers that he had spent working with the man in his garden.

Back then a young Jisung had been happy to make a few bucks while getting to stay out all day in the yard playing with bugs and with the sun kissing the skin of his chubby cheeks and legs that weren't covered by his favourite pair of green shorts.

He couldn't help but wonder where had all that time run to because despite being the one who lived through it, he could barely make sense or when had he ended up where he was.

Time moved too fast and without a warning, it left everyone wondering.

It isn't easy to leave my whole life behind but it feels right, the mere idea makes me feel lighter because who knows who I'll get to be when I get to the end of my journey.

Perhaps I'll be braver, a little bit smarter, more mature, maybe even a couple of centimetres taller.

He could walk the streets with his eyes closed and still know where every bump and crack was in the sidewalk, he could still point where his old school was, where the closest convenience store stepped in his way and as usual tempted him to buy a snack even on those days were his pockets were empty and his tummy full.

From there he knew his way to everywhere else in town, he even knew how long it would take him to get to said places on foot or with his trusty bike.

It all felt too easy and familiar, too comfortable, and those things weren't bad at all but Jisung thought he had had enough of them. He craved discovering himself inside the walls of another place so foreign that every single one of his truths were only known by himself.

Was it silly? That he thought a change of scenery would make him a new person, one much more alike to who he truly was.

Sometimes talking to someone isn't enough, because you don't think they'll understand, you know they won't. That's why I never said anything about the deepest desires looming in my heart or the biggest fears that tied me down for as long as I can remember.

All the interrogations running leaps around his mind made him walk faster, filling him with the same dreadful excitement he felt every first day of school, one that mixed with nervousness and fear.

He wasn't sure if starting fresh would let him be someone whose fears didn't weigh upon his heart so harshly, he wasn't sure if he would get to be the person he had always wished he could be but he could only hope.

Hope had been what drove him this far and today he was giving it full control of where his feet moved to, control over how his next day would look like or where he would wake up the next day.

Never in his life had he felt more ready to wander around by himself.

But I guess, since I'm going, it's only fair that I try to sit down and talk to someone, hoping that they will understand even if my words are scarce and there will be nobody to talk back to at the end of this letter.

On the horizon the sun rushed to slumber, leaving a comforting lilac pooling around the clouds and making them stand out even more.

Night hovered over his shoulders making him breathe with much more ease because if there was something that portrayed hope and tomorrow with an uncanny resemblance and lack of effort, it was the night sky with its endless stars and its shining moon.

In his childhood days he had discovered that there was no better cure for uncertainty and a nostalgic heart than staring up at the night sky; there was something about it that made him feel like time stopped for an instance, that time wasn't quite as unforgiving while the veil of darkness covered everything.

If he could go anywhere he wanted —which he was already doing— he would wish to go to the sky, not the endless and uncertain space, but the idea of the sky that humans have in their ignorance, a canvas that goes no further than our eyes can see.

Ever since I can remember I've felt like there was a place for me somewhere out there, a place I always called home without knowing what it really was.

It wasn't like I didn't feel at home here, there was just a feeling in my chest that told me out there I could feel completely free in the way I've always craved.

For him it had always felt unfair, how everyone got to live and walk around without the things that kept him back. Of course when he grew older he understood that everyone had their own problems but sometimes that was easy to ignore when one's own darkness loomed around their heart.

He had spent many years wishing, praying to whoever was listening, that he could just be himself without the voices in his head and the uncertainties that made every single one of his steps be cautious.

Nobody seemed to have listened as years went by and things got harder, still, he never gave up and even though he could never really say that there was nothing else bothering him he could at least say that he had everything under control.

If time is unforgiving it also is healing, and for him it had healed many wounds that couldn't be seen.

Unknowingly I spent a lot of time wanting to go to that place, craving to find where it was.

Some years ago I understood that it perhaps wasn't a place but a version of myself that could bring such soothing feelings. That's where I'm going to, that's why I have no destination.

He wanted to believe that nothing had been planned, that his savings carefully stuffed at the bottom of his backpack had just been him being responsible about his money and having enough for the impulsiveness that one day had won over reason and had driven him to this adventure.

He wanted to pretend but it was stupid to do now, there was nobody around to judge him or question his motives, so there was no use in not being honest with himself.

Thinking back to all those evenings spent running around the small restaurant in which he had found a job, he could see that perhaps this plan had been many years in the making.

Unconsciously he had always been hoping for a moment like this, a moment of unadulterated freedom.

Hopefully I do get there, hopefully I get to be happy and everyone I left behind does too.

The journey to happiness, to authenticity, to being unapologetically himself, had taken him to the airport, another thing that wasn't as spontaneous as he had tried to make it seem.

Passport in hand and trembling self, the whiteness of the place and the various people walking back and forth made him realise that this was really going on, he was really leaving.

For the first time in his life overthinking had no place in his plans.

I wish to be who I am meant to and disappearing was perhaps the thing I had always been destined to do. A boy who disappeared into thin air, that's who I am, a boy with secrets that weigh down on my heart and that I'm unwilling to carry with me on this journey.

Approaching the desk he was met with a young woman, in her mid twenties or early thirties, sweet but practised smile covering her lips as she recited the words that he must've learned a long time ago when she first started working there.

"I want a ticket for the next flight available," Jisung said, offering a reassuring smile after the confused look the woman gave him.

He looked around as the sounds of typing filled his ears and before he had time to start regretting something the ticket had been placed on his palm and his savings were short by a considerable amount.

I'm afraid that wasn't much of an explanation but it was my truth.

Good luck and see you whenever we're meant to cross paths.

The last thing he saw before falling asleep were the clouds from above and the sky now completely dark like the many nights he had wondered where he belonged.

Now he had an answer, he belonged wherever he felt free and right then in that comfortable plane seat he felt the freest he had ever been.

#kpop #skz fanfic #skz fanfiction #stray kids #stray kids fanfic #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids fic #skz imagines #stray kids imagines #skz angst #skz comfort #skz han #skz jisung #stray kids han #stray kids jisung #han angst

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riddlecrux · 3 years

Text

The quiet power of emotions - a study of Azriel's feelings (part one)

I would love to preface this meta with my favorite disclaimer that everything I will discuss is based on what I have gathered from SJM writing. The quotes used in this post will serve as a starting point for further analysis. Additionally, I will use symbolism, metaphors, and literary device methods to build up my reasoning and beliefs. On another note, this, as usual, is strictly pro-Elriel meta. If they are not your cup of tea and you wish to comment, please be civil and bring arguments supported by the text.

I've wanted to study Azriel’s behavior in ACOFAS, since it's an official novella and it was translated and published in many countries. Since it has come to my attention that some people say that without Azriel's POV, Elriel wouldn't have anything to be based on (which is totally wrong) I decided to tackle Azriel's behavior and show how he had exhibited his feelings for Elain even before ACOSF came out. The scene I would like to start with this series (meta series if I may call it that way) is the one where Rhys and Azriel talk about Illyria, Jurian, and Vassa. Rhys constantly observes Azriel, and he decides to drop this.

“Send Lucien, then. As our human emissary.” I studied the tenseness in Azriel’s shoulders, the shadows veiling half of him from the sunlight. “Lucien is away right now.”

We can see that Azriel is uncomfortable. He's tense and he even shields himself from Rhys' prying gaze. It's all because Lucien was mentioned - which is a bit telling at this point.

Az’s brows rose. “Where?” I winked at him. “You’re my spymaster. Shouldn’t you know?”

Rhys is kind of testing the waters as well, you can say he's railing up Azriel to bring some reaction. However, the question is why would he? What is the reason behind this behavior? It came out of nowhere in the novella, so it's even more surprising to us to reflect upon it, taking into account what transpired in the bonus POV in ACOSF.

Az crossed his arms, face as elegant and cold as the legendary dagger at his side. “I don’t make a point of looking after his movements.” “Why?” Not a flicker of emotion. “He is Elain’s mate.”

I highlighted Azriel's body language because it's very important. Here we have the notion of crossing arms, which can mean that someone is anxious, resistant, tense, insecure, afraid, or defensive. As we can pinpoint some of these emotions are present in this particular scene - Azriel definitely shields himself up, not only by physically crossing arms but also in the indignation of his expressionless face. The fascinating thing is the addition of the comparison between Azriel's cold face and his legendary dagger - which only further solidifies that Truth Teller is in fact a big part of Shadowsinger. Summarizing up with what we got from these passages we have: - tenseness - obstructing oneself from the view - defensive stance - crossing arms - coldness - emotionless

I waited. “It would be an invasion of her privacy to track him.” To know when and if Lucien sought her out. What they did together.

Here comes my favorite part in this conversation - Rhys seeing himself in Azriel at that moment and Azriel keeping in mind Elain's privacy and agency. Some people try to paint Azriel as some sort of a toxic guy, who is so traumatized that he doesn't value anyone but himself. I'm wondering where this reasoning came from - since nothing exclusively supports that theory. It's clear that Azriel shows respect towards Elain, as stated above in the quotes - even if at this moment, he is clearly showing signs of jealousy. Which, once again is totally fine. All bat boys showed jealousy throughout the books, and every one of them loved their significant other with all their flaws and weaknesses. But going back to the quote, we are met with the assumption about Azriel's decision of not spying on Lucien - given by Rhysand. Nevertheless, something must have had triggered such response to Azriel's behavior and his stance - that's why I strongly believe that Rhys knew what Azriel felt like (in ACOFAS he's testing the waters, trying to see if his assumptions are right or wrong, in ACOSF he pulls a rank because of the consequences of the possible outcome with Lucien being so close.)

“You sure about that?” I asked quietly. Azriel’s Siphons guttered, the stones turning as dark and foreboding as the deepest sea. “Where did Lucien go.”

Rhys noticed and understood that his assumptions about Azriel's feelings and emotions are correct, that's why his tone changed. He is constantly observing and giving us very detailed descriptions of the changes undergoing in Azriel's persona while discussing Lucien (and inwardly Elain.) Now, let's look at the metaphor used to underline his emotions in relation to his Siphons. Azriel’s Siphons guttered, the stones turning as dark and foreboding as the deepest sea. - gutter - flicker and burn unsteadily - foreboding - a feeling that something bad will happen; fearful apprehension

SJM used these words in such a situation - a whole sentence that indicates turmoil that is happening inside Azriel. Behind his aloof expression, we got to know that his emotions are restless, that what he is experiencing is sound and present at this moment. We see that by the description of his Siphons - turning dark at the mention of Lucien's possible whereabouts. We don't necessarily know what Azriel thought - if it was apprehension connected to the possibility of Lucien being in the same house, near Elain, or even somewhere where Azriel wouldn't have expected him to be. Judging by the course of the conversation, I would be inclined to believe that it was thought of Lucien being close to Elain.

I straightened at the pure order in the words. But I said, voice slipping into a drawl, “He went to the Spring Court. He’ll be there for Solstice.”

As we are in Rhys POV we can see that he has been caught off guard by the way Azriel delivers his line, yet he masks it with a drawl. Was it because something that Rhys suspected came true? As in, for example, some validation about Azriel and Elain's relationship? We can guess, however, the text clearly states that Rhys was somehow surprised by the tone of his friend. The pure order is what initially made me reread ACOFAS and this scene few times since it carries a heavy chunk of foreshadowing, but also the weight of Azriel's emotions.

Azriel doesn't let anything on his face, which is almost devoid of emotions while talking to Rhys about Lucien - yet, we get so many descriptions about the way his tone changes, his body language, his Siphons, and gaze. Even if he doesn't show externally that he is feeling all those emotions, that doesn't mean that he lacks them. Because, clearly what we have in the text, suggests that Azriel exhibits symptoms of jealousy. This is completely understandable since in the books we get to know that he and Elain have already started getting to know each other off the pages. Another interesting thing is, how structured and written this scene is. We have an insight into Rhysand's thoughts and he is thinking about Feyre and Tamlin.

With Tamlin, it was more complicated than that. More complicated than I let myself usually dwell on. He was still in love with Feyre. I couldn’t blame him for it. Even if it made me want to rip out his throat. I shoved the thought away.

Rhysand acknowledges the fact that the whole thing with Tamlin is complicated, as he repeats in his mind - the situation was something that literally destroyed one of the Courts. It's also peculiar and worth noticing that Rhys is aware of the love Tamlin has for Feyre, and even if he knows that, he is ready to kill Tamlin.

In the contrast, the talk is about Azriel, Lucien, and... Elain. Another triangle that is, in fact, complicated.

“I’ll discuss Vassa and Jurian with Lucien when he returns. See if he’s up for another visit.” I angled my head. “Do you think he can handle being around Graysen?” Az’s expressionless face was precisely the reason he’d never lost to us at cards. “Why should I be the judge of that?”

Rhys asks about Lucien and how Azriel sees him behaving around Graysen, which in my opinion is another instance of testing Spymaster. I angled my head, which is what Rhysand does and synonym to angle is tilt. Once again we are going to look at what does body language says about it. It can indicate curiosity, suspicion, and in some cases even uncertainty. In this particular moment, I believe it's curiosity mixed with suspicion - Rhys has been observing Azriel the moment he changed the subject of the conversation to Lucien. We also have another description of Azriel's expressionless face - showing us, readers, that Rhys notes the changes in his behavior. Azriel even proceeds with questioning his friend about the purpose of that inquiry and how he of all people is the one who is capable of being a judge in this case. I think we can see it as some sort of dodging, stalling even.

“You mean to tell me that you weren’t bluffing when you said you didn’t track Lucien’s every movement?” Nothing. Absolutely nothing on that face, on his scent. The shadows, whatever the hell they were, hid too well. Too much. Azriel only said coldly, “If Lucien kills Graysen, then good riddance.”

Even if Azriel is described as expressionless and almost emotionless in this scene, we do see the moments when his feelings came up to the surface. Just like here, Azriel bottles down his anger and other emotions, letting out only his coldness. However, the question is why? Why so much iciness and apprehension? If the conversation and subjects of it weren't important to him, he would have probably behaved as usual - with his aloofness, but not necessarily hostility hid behind the frostiness. What's even more notable is the fact that Rhys comments about how his shadows hid his emotions/feelings, even on his scent. Azriel did it on purpose, he covered himself so he wouldn't be detected - or better to say to cover up his true emotions that Rhysand could have easily spotted. The biggest tell about it is the addition of "too much". If there wasn't anything to hide or the emotions under the cover were vain or small - Rhysand wouldn't have had added that thought.

No. Sort of. “I’d think bankrolling her apartment and drinking was gift enough.” Az ran a hand through his dark hair. “Are we …” Unusual for him to stumble with words. “Are we supposed to get the sisters presents?”

The conversation changes its topic - and Rhys starts to discuss sisters and presents. We see that Azriel's first reaction is rooted in body language. He is running his hand through his hair which suggests nervousness, frustration, stress, or even a sign of disagreement over whatever is being said. From all these things I think we can lean towards nervousness the most or even frustration - since just before that leap of the topic he was immersed deep down inside his feelings and tried to mask his true emotions about Lucien and Elain. Another thing is that Rhysand also notices that it's unusual for Azriel to stutter, stumble with his words which he does after he runs his hand through his hair. He's nervous.

“No,” I said, and meant it. Az seemed to loose a sigh of relief. Seemed to, since all but a breath of air passed from his lips. “I don’t think Nesta gives a shit, and I don’t think Elain expects to receive anything from us. I’d leave the sisters to exchange presents amongst themselves.” Az nodded distantly.

Rhysand doesn't even know if he can call Azriel's sigh a sigh since it seems that all it was, was just a short exhale. I do think that it was a sigh - of relief. However, we can speculate about what the relief is connected to. If it is for not buying gifts or maybe because the conversation steered in another direction and all these pent-up emotions, feelings, and even frustrations could finally be released? What's clear is that Azriel feels a lot, in this scene particularly. He is hiding it behind his shadows, obstructing it from Rhys, but also from the reader's point of view. Nevertheless, SJM used an enormous chunk of body language to show us what Azriel is feeling - jealousy. Another thing is that he seemed to think about what's being said about sisters and their gifts - because he was described to be nodding distantly.

Az nodded knowingly. He’d always understood me best—more than the others. Save my mate. Whether it was his gifts that allowed him to do so, or merely the fact that he and I were more similar than most realized, I’d never learned.

I love this quote and that it comes from Rhysand's POV as well. It shows that Rhysand knew and his suspicions were, in fact, correct - because he probably saw himself and his infatuation with Feyre in the way Azriel behaved with Elain. I do also think that it will come back in the next book - the bond between Azriel and Rhysand, and probably some of the small fallout because of what had happened with them in Azriel's POV. SJM put Lucien, Elain, and Azriel in here, while Rhysand thought about his situation with Feyre and Tamlin. Two triangles, two different, complicated outcomes, and relationships. Forbidden romance? Yes. Politically connected? Yes. Could start a war? Yes. There are so many similarities between them.

The thing with Azriel is that his feelings aren't over the top - he's not vocal about them. The power of his emotions lies in the quietness and his actions. If we sat back and looked at scenes in which he acts towards Mor or Elain, we can see that his strength in loving someone isn't connected to words, but rather than that - presence and behavior.

#elriel #pro elriel #elain and azriel #elain x azriel #pro azriel #elriel meta #elriel theory #azriel

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