#i hate this fucking game its a violent illness in my head

[venvellan]

touchstarved is such a sick twisted game. i'm not talking abt the plot or theme at all that's all good and dandy. i mean the way that it's possessed my soul and body.

i seriously need and want all five of them. to a sickly degree. i don't wanna have to pick a route. i want five lovers. yea some of them hate each other but i'm not making them hang out it's fine.

tack on a 2 year wait for the full release and it's only a matter of time before i'm hysterical

#i could go on #kuras is objectively the perfect man #vere is my gayest and evilest alter ego and i am in love with him #and just like vere i too am compelled to start purring when ais is around #dont get me fucking started on mhin i can't get into it #mhin is genuinely GENUINELY the love of my life in the most serious way #they don't get showered with the love they deserve on this platform and i fucking love mhin so much #leander like aint my type traditionally but smthn bout him #the mageness the touching #he's speaking to me in a way i couldn't have predicted #i hate this fucking game its a violent illness in my head #the power of queer poc creatives is unmatched #touchstarved #touchstarved game

[feddy-fagbear]

25 for the most recent ask game you rb, i want to hear it

25: common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

i feel like im gonna lose followers for this but whatevs

so like- i think most overarching fandom complaints i dont like- disagree with? mostly cuz its usually shiz like "you should have a woman blorbo" and other obvious stuff so im gonna bitch abt my hot takes for my main fandoms

FNAF: i'll be so fucking real, i hate any complaints ppl have about "that isnt lore accurate" THE FUCKING LORE ISNT LORE ACCURATE YOU CUNT, THIS GAME IS A MESS, SCOTT IS A BAD WRITER, IM TIRED. also any time ppl bitch abt certain headcanons, like im not even immune but like if i see one more person complain abt william being a good dad im splitting ppl's heads. oh also just- bitching abt theories, i hate that entire section of the fandom.... okay i hate fandoms but- like hear me out

EverymanHYBRID: i.... like..... get actually fucking violent seeing ppl get mad at others for being like "ough HABIT <3333" and like- maybe its me being a delusional kinnie of him buttttttttt shut up, i dont wanna hear abt how he's a bad person, let me enjoy my limited time on earth thirsting over an evil rabbit man okay? fuckin hell-

Marble Hornets: ill be so real w/ you chief, the fandom's right, tim shouldnt be drawn as skinny, it is weird and fucked up, but also like i got sick of hearing ppl bitch abt it like before i even joined the fandom like we get it, its weird and fucked up to do, this weird white knight crusading isnt gonna change the minds of ppl who havent already changed. theres probably also something ppl like to bitch abt when it comes to alex kralie (who i will defend with my life, i am an alex kralie apologist) but like- idk ive avoided mh fans (besides my bestie and gf <3) for like months now so- meh

i would add something animal jam related as a joke but realistically i didnt know what was going on in that community even when i was active in it lmao

#admin chaos #after posting this i realized i have even more bones to pick w/ the marble hornets fandom LMAOOOOO #fnaf #creeps

[k-0-s-k-1]

[rant post idk just getting shit off my chest]

cw mild violence!! ig but nothing too grapphic, just mentions of it

guys question today i talked to a girl and mentioned how sometimes i rlly want to beat the fucking shit outta some ppl that annoy me a lot and then she was like "i dont feel like that" and then she said she barely hated anyone anyway and like does everyone have a bunch of violent thoughts that arent intrusive thoughts abt hitting ppl u love but teaching ppl u fucking hate a lesson???? Bc intrusive thoughts are things u dont wanna do thats why theyre intrusive but these are more like obessive bc i OBSESS with them but i WANT to teach SOME people some lessons and i wouldnt regret doing it no, bc i only think abt hurting ppl i HATEEE and not ppl i care for. I dont obsess over ppl i love dying and me hurting them its just fucking racist ableist mean (and honestly fucking cruel) assholes . like srsly thank GOD school just ended yesterday cause if i had to spend one more day around the same annoying ppl, even if theyre few in the class and not most, i wouldve gone fucking crazy and WOULDVE hit someone. Like idk if this is a rant or what buT SRSLY sometimes id be there looking around and thinking abt how someone rlly shitty would go up to me be annoying and id idk punch them so hard i break their jaw GUYS IS THIS CONCERNING??? LIKE IS CREATING CENARIOS IN UR HEAD WHERE ITS BASICALLY JUST U YELLING AT PPL AND HIT THEM A LOT A WELL ADJUSTED THING??? or am i like rlly mentaly ill. its almost an obsession at this point rlly, i hope during this school break i get to idk forget all of this only think abt my fav games and kpop groups and women and get thru it but damn wtf.

tldr i have lots of violent thoughts but only abt very specific ppl i hate a bunch.

(also plsss feel free to tell me abt yalls own experiences and tell me if this is a sign of idk me being rlly miserable and NO im not a sociopath or smth bc ive never shown signs of having one of those antisocial disorders idk the name of but i know i dont have those, cause if i did my therapist wouldve probably noticed yk???)

#rant #rant post #cyber rants #tw violence #cw violence #mental health #neurodivergent #neurodiverse stuff #:( #off my chest

[fecto-forgo]

Ask game: Mordred

MY BOY!!!!

favorite thing about them:hes just a little creacher.a little asshole.if you look up the definition of spite on a dictionary youll find him there.im a sucker for his dynamic with agravaine.also the multiple takes on why he kills arthur are sooooo interesting.rip king you would have loved the 2000s

least favorite thing about them:ok uh hes.not there much for the most important guy at the end? which on one hand would imply he was p okay at life before a certain point but also hes mean and i like him and he should appear in every text just to stand there.also why the fuck do some stories try to make him into a rapist or an alt right villain.he just wants to kill his dad leave him alone

favorite line:can i just say everything iotq mordred says.hes like peak mordred when it comes to how i like his personality.tbh hes more defined by his weird ass suicide attempts than his bullying.anyways a sucker for kay saying "god damn you to hell mordred!" and him responding "yeah probably lol"

brOTP:HIS DYNAMIC WITH AGRAVAINE MEANS EVERYTHING TO ME THEY CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER SO MUCH IT MAKES ME SOFT AND I CRY ABOUT IT EVERY WEEK

OTP:i like mordred and galahad together but i also like him and percival together so i just tend to put the three all in one.i do think abt the fucked up story i gave mordred and galahad in the silly adaptation i have in my head more than the three happy together lol

NOTP:i tried reading toafk to make fun of it once and started procrastinating and i fear the day ill get to the part where white wrote mordred had a thing for his mother.toafk mordred would be one of my top choices for him if he didnt get butchered throughout the book and went from funny spite asshole to "incest nazi".i hate that fucking book.

random headcanon:*starts giggling like an idiot* he has...autism and ppd like me ♥️ the way i write the takeover at the end literally started from me wanting to have violent psychosis representation thats not demonized lol

unpopular opinion:i already mentioned i hate the rapist and alt right takes so uhh i also dont dig the ones where hes just sad and serious and emo.hes one of those characters whos mentally ill but in a fucked up way that people with mild anxiety would be scared of.also fuck th white man.

song i associate with them:wish i could say the camelot musical songs but honestly theyre SO weak.wheres the spice.so ill just say debt collector bc its the first one that came to mind lol

favorite picture of them:

dragon armor :)

#tyyyy for asking mwah mwah mwah #ask #incest mention #??? #bc of the toafk mentions #i hate that book. #so much. #look how white massacred my boy... #again he starts out interesting but then.yeah #wrote too much dont wanna proof read sorry 💔

[butwhatifidothis]

I'm kind of unclear on what your central gripe is with the fic is here. Like, would you prefer a massive longfic where everyone just points out how wrong Edelgard is all the time? There's a CF rewrite on AO3 that's like 400K words of everyone belittling her that you can read instead. Just as pretentiously written as this one. Only other meaningful difference is that it's got Male Byleth, and he's the only one not pointing out how wrong she is because "Ashen Demon" logic. Even Hubert joins in.

My #1 gripe with the fic itself - and I won't blame you if you missed it, but I have clarified this before - is the absolutely staggering amount of blatant contradictions to the canon game combined with the fact that this fic is commonly referred as must-read material to understand not just Edelgard, but the game itself. From character motivations, to basic plot points, to character backstories, to lore, to objective facts of 3H's world (he fucks up how the SotC works in Chapter 59) - there are many, many things that aren't just "up for interpretation" but are flat out wrong, something I've tried to keep track of the amount of times they occur/reoccur.

This fic and its author - along with others, yes, but Cap'n is a major player in this as well - have let outright wrong shit become seen as basically canon at this point. Rhea unironically being an actual tyrant? Her being the sole one to start the Church of Seiros, and for the purpose of controlling the nobility? Her saving Byleth to make them a vessel, along with her not really caring that much about Sitri? All in this fic, and also in this author's meta outside the fic he himself says he considers meta (since he believes all fanfiction to be inherently meta), and all of it being seen as who Rhea actually is as a character by the majority of the (English-speaking) fanbase, when literally none of that is true.

And that's just one character. That's not even going into how absolutely butchered all of the other major characters are, with special nods to Edelgard herself, Ingrid, Claude, Dimitri, and Byleth. That's not going into the pieces of lore he gets wrong. That's not going into the worldbuilding he gets wrong. That's not getting into how even basic, bare-bones facts of character's backstories are incorrectly portrayed (for example, Bernadetta knowing about her almost-arranged marriage to Ferdinand before entering the academy - that's literally not true, but he says it is anyway).

And that's not even getting into all of the blatantly horrible shit that's smeared all over the place. Young women are all pure innocent little girls who just want to be beautiful domestic mothers (and if they don't want that then maybe they aren't really women). Men who don't bow to women are usually sexual deviants who hate women, or are otherwise terrible people who can't be trusted, and they can only redeem themselves if they eventually bow to women. Being mixed-race means you don't belong anywhere and you will never belong anywhere, and the good end for your character arc is if you find a way to erase the "bad part" of your heritage that's always been a part of who you are. Fighting back against oppression means that you, the oppressed one, are continuing a cycle of hatred and vengeance, and the only way to break that cycle is to mindlessly bow your heads to your oppressors, or risk execution. If you're the wrong kind of mentally ill then you are broken beyond repair and there's nothing anyone can do for you. Romantic love is the only way anyone can be saved, because platonic love is lesser and inferior and incapable of helping anyone become better. Having religious faith - without always shitting on the religion in question - will make you a crazed, violent zealot who will do anything your religious leaders tell you to do. This is just some of the terrible things this fic just has crop up again and again, with Cap’n and his audience either genuinely never recognizing it or just not giving a shit.

But. To get to what you specifically said: "would you prefer a massive longfic where everyone just points out how wrong Edelgard is all the time?" No. Because there's already a longfic that does that, that is 400k words long: it's called The Emperor and the Goddess.

My issue - in this regard - is not that no one calls Woobiegard out; it's precisely that, for all her side constantly bails her out of accepting any accountability for anything and always lavish her in undue praise, other people do call her out, constantly, insistently, over and over and over, and nothing comes of it. Ever. Woobiegard's violence, her deceitful nature, her manipulativeness, her hypocrisy, her brutality, her patheticness, and the trajectory her ideologies and methods is headed - they have all been something that her naysayers in the fic have completely rightfully pointed out to her, to her face, in no uncertain terms, and literally nothing happens. She stays the exact same - her and all of her slobbering dogs, they all stay completely stagnant as characters even when their glaring and horrific flaws and actions are shoved in their face. They bemoan how easily people can excuse terrible actions as they - as though they were in a fuckin' comedy - go on to unironically do exactly that immediately afterwards, with no self-awareness whatsoever despite being beat over the head with their actions.

All of the rightful, accurate criticism anyone in this fic lays out to Woobiegard and her side is strictly and solely meant to make Woobiegard look sympathetic and the ones giving the criticism harsh/cruel/ignorant. There's a reason that it's a problem that Dimitri's line "Has your moral compass become so tarnished that you would spare more pity to a murderer than his victims?" from Chapter 14 is still relevant to what Woobiegard will go on to do up to the current chapter (59). That is forty-fuckin'-five chapters - around 370,000 words - of FUCKIN'. NOTHING. HAPPENING. FOR HER CHARACTER. And criticisms just as accurate as that are all over the place, and they all similarly go nowhere.

So, I hope that answers your question! While your question isn't really in the realms of my actual main gripe with the fic (it and its author's part in influencing the fandom towards inaccurate assessments of the game), I hope I've clarified that particular gripe with the fic itself better

#ask #anon #exqueuese me princess #o captain my captain #like if that fic has people all around Edelgard constantly criticism her for THAT long? It likely means that she isn't growing there either #*criticize #and if that's the case then yes that fic would also be similarly poorly written #*likely similarly be poorly written #but the issues here isn't even that people aren't criticizing her it's that any criticism is made out to be the Devil's evil whispers #where one must reject any temptation to even think about listening to the words being said lest they become evil sinners or some shit

[yuedama]

at your mercy

hard dom!yelena x gn!reader (female bodied)

synopsis : you loved being good for yelena, but sometimes you couldn't deny the fact that you enjoyed her putting you in your place just as much.

content : nsfw, degradation, clit slapping, vaginal fingering, orgasm denial ; use of the word 'pet' like once

notes : jus want yelena to be mean to me and tell me i'm nothing

yelena hated having you come to her as she finished her work til the late hours of the night. it was distracting, she says, and you would only become a reason for her to be irresponsible.

there are times though when she considered it a test of your patience. and, well, restraint.

during the nights when you were needier than usual, she loved seeing just how long you would last without any of her attention, how long you could keep yourself from being bad and eventually touching yourself.

it was a tough game for you, but yelena enjoyed every bit of it; from the flustered look on your face as she catches you breaking the rules she had so carefully set, to the mewls and whimpers you gave her as you pleaded for her forgiveness.

she hated having to discipline you for your ill behavior, for she expected you to be good for her always, but she also wouldn't be lying if she were to admit how titillating it was to see you all sullied and glistening like a whore beneath her, rambling repeatedly about how sorry you were and that you wouldn't do it ever again. something about it fed the sadistic hunger inside her.

tonight was like one of those nights.

“what did i tell you about coming to my office while i'm working?” steel eyes bore into your meek form, menacing and unforgiving, yet lustful and hungry at the same time as she drank in every inch of your skin that was revealed by the skimpy nightdress you wore.

“that i would only distract you and that i should wait in our bedroom like a good pet....”

“and what are you doing right now?” her voice, despite being stern and cold with anger, did nothing to intimidate you, if anything, it only fanned the flames of excitement burning in your stomach.

“i-im...please, 'lena, i need you,” glossy eyes looked up at the blonde, silently hoping she would see the desperation behind them. she did see, she could tell without even looking at you for she knew you like the back of her hand; knew just how to reduce you into nothing but a filthy mess begging for her touch like it was all you've ever known. “need you so bad!”

“poor little thing,” mock pity laced her voice as she leaned back into her chair and rolled her eyes, resting her chin on her hand to take a good look at you once more. it took everything in yelena to not pin you down on the wooden table and devour you right then and there, the thin fabric hanging loosely on your body left little to the imagination.

“have you no dignity?”

you could only shake your head timidly at them, the ache in between your legs only seeming to become more intense with each passing second.

“c'mere.” they growled, low voice echoing in the room, but you were far too lost in your thoughts to hear her the first time. “i said come here you fucking slut.”

you scampered towards the woman and made yourself comfortable on her lap, peering at her eagerly as your hands held her shoulders for support. however, your fingers were slapped away from her shirt as soon as they got there, causing you to retract them as a stinging sensation bloomed.

“don't touch me with your filthy hands,” yelena seethed into your face, the tone in their voice making you rub your clothed cunt against her thigh.

“'m sorry...” your apology was sincere, but yelena seemed to have none of it. her stare remained indifferent, though you were sure you saw the slightest glint in them as she bent you over her lap. you let out a yelp at the sudden action, but as you peered up at her you were greeted by an all too familiar, condescending smirk.

“you're being very bad, you know that?” she drawled as she slowly, teasingly, traced a finger down the curve of your back, gripping the flesh of your ass harshly before pulling your underwear down to your ankles. goosebumps arose on your skin as the cool air in their office kissed your dripping cunt.

“stepping into my office looking all desperate to get fucked—” a slap made its way to your clit, causing a loud smack to resound in the room, followed by your shaky whimpers. the bud burned from the impact, but god did the burn feel so satisfying.

“putting your hands on me without my permission—” squeals tumbled out of your mouth as you receive another smack, the painful sensation of her fingers against your clit euphoric. your limbs flailed weakly, fists clenching and unclenching as you didn't have anything to grip on.

“and now your cunt's making a mess all over my pants,” long fingers ran across your folds as yelena gathered your slick, scoffing at the way your body trembled deliciously on her lap, before pushing your juices back into your hole without notice. your body jerked forward at the sudden intrusion, hands coming to your mouth to muffle your sobs.

“y-yelena...mmph...” you shut your eyes, all inhibitions flying out the window as yelena repeatedly pushed her slender fingers in and out of your deprived cunt, curling them just a bit to tease your sweet spot. hot tears spilled down your cheeks as the stimulation became overwhelming, the blonde's ministrations easing the painful ache in your core in the slightest, just enough to rouse you to your high.

“fuck,” yelena laughed at your pathetic, twitching form, a sadistic glint flashing in her eyes as she watched the way your walls eagerly sucked her fingers. “you're so fucking greedy, i can barely pull my hand from your cunt.”

she sped up her pace, the pads of their index and middle finger brushing against your spongy spot as her other hand busied itself with groping your tit, sending you into a state of delirium. the lewd squelching of your walls along with your desperate pants for air resonated in the room as you felt the knot in your abdomen close to snapping.

your legs shook violently as you shut your eyes hard til all you could see was black, toes curling as a sign of your impending climax. the tension had been built for so long, and you could finally feel your release until—

“h-ha ah, yelena!” you cried as yelena withdrew their fingers from your dripping hole, voice raspy as your throat had gone dry from all the sobbing.

“look at your pathetic hole clenching around nothing.” your body, exhausted and limp, felt flush as you looked up at her and saw the way she was eyeing your entrance like it was the most intriguing thing she'd ever seen.

“y-yelena...why'd you do that?”

“ah, the filthy whore is speaking. you think you deserve anything after disobeying my rules?” yelena turned her head to meet your eyes, fingers gripping your chin as she pushed you off her lap and made you kneel between her legs. “you should be glad i even touched you; let alone give you my time.”

your swollen lips quivered as you looked up at her, cheeks wet and red, with slick weeping out of your hole.

“i promise i'll be good! just please, let me...”

“what? spit it out, i haven't all night,” she sneered at you with no interest, as though she was seeing dishrags and not her lover who was needy for her touch.

“please, let me c-cum.” you contemplated making any promises you were uncertain you could keep, though in your state, you were practically willing to do anything just for her to get you off. “i'll do anything, 'lena.”

yelena's eyes lit up at your proposal, a wicked smile spreading across her lips as you craned your neck to gaze at her just as a subject would to their god, devoted and completely at her mercy. the rumbling of your heart against your chest was loud as you anticipated her next words, watching her longingly as she licked her lips before parting them to speak.

oh, you were in for a long night.

#yelena aot #yelena x reader #aot x reader #aot smut #yelena smut #attack on titan smut #snk smut #shingeki no kyoujin smut #yelena drabble #yelena x reader smut #snk.%!

[icecreamkink]

watched all of the untamed / cql in two weeks after my friend 1 told me abt mdzs a hundred years ago and my friends 2 and 3 tried to get me into cql for like two whole years and there are.

feelings.

very first scene is a very dramatic death in the middle of nightmare battle on sith planet land . i will forget abt it in the next tenish episodes and then will be very surprised when it becomes Extremely Painful

anyway magic flying gays and possession and human sacrifice! we are off to a great start

in retrospect, chaos goblin wei wuxian must have had a blast pretending to be so cRaZy and be as disruptive as he could as mo xuanyu lbr

listen. why is fire always evil coded. cant a magic clan wear red, black and orange and have flame motif while being wholesome?

For Legal Reasons These Are Not Zombies

i wish the politics of the sect were a bit clearer, especially at the beggining when the wen clan had sm power, was wen ruohan the chief cultivator? is that why they were so slow in responding to the attacks? im v confused by the pre yiling patriarch politics

fighting in the roof by the moonlight as way of flirtiiiiiiing. as i understand this is a wuxia/xianxia trope and honestly...... thank u for ur service

slight bullying and being a nuisance in general, as a way of flirting we love to see it

wwx: if i drink on the rooftop, thats not inside the cloud recesses! hmmm check and mate :D lwj: i will fuck u up so help me god   wwx: :0

i lov them

through hell or high water (quite literally) wei wuxian rem ains a trashfire gremlin till the end and i love him with my whole heart

in the pt subs wei wuxian calls jiang cheng a stubborn duck and i dearly wish that had come back

my opinions on almost every character goes from love to hate u - Hmm Me Like U - BABY. ILY. and i am Very Pleased w that. its been a while since i loved such a complete cast so much i think

no really. i WONT go into a detailed rant abt what i love about each of these characters and each of their relationships to each other. but i COULD. 

some lan disciples in the loudest whisper ever: YEAH THATS THE JIN BASTARD MENG YAO HEARD THE GOT SUPER HUMILIATED BY HIS DAD LOL SURE HOPE HE DOESNT TAKE SLIGHTS TO HIS CHARACTER TO HEART

lan xichen, immediately: i must Love him 

being into problematic ppl is in the Lan genetics, we come to realize

wen qing deserves so many awards for so many things but not snapping and just stabbing wen chao is at the top 

that scene at lan qirens class where wwx talks about using resentful energy to fight a violent spirit. exquisite.

 It establishes Good Student lan wangji, wei wuxian as curious and questioning and not afraid of taboo,  lwj sees that wwx is not, in fact, a dumb ass hes just a Dumbass,  shows us the audience (esp. a western audience) how shocking the idea of disrupting the dead/dying and controlling resentful energy actually is,  the theoretical foreshadow arguing, everyone else like ‘shUT UP’,  “and how could you ensure that the resentful energy would obey you and not hurt other?” “well i havent thought that far” and of course, lan qiren just straight up lobbing a hard object at wwx head,. chefs kiss

fellas is it gay to bother the hot rule obessessed nerd from ur school and make drawings of him with flowers in his hair and then hide gay porn in his book to antagonize him and ask him to hold ur hand and be ur friend and talk to him all the time and get him drunk and give him bunnies bc you know he likes them and give him a lantern and always want his attention and dedicate yourself to getting him to smile-

and after all of that wwx rly said oh i Admire him, aksd like yeah we all were there in high school buddy

i have Learned. caves = gay.

 accidental marriage +beint physically tied together with the sacred married ribbon+ gay panic+foreshadowing+bunnies! in the cave (1)

the story abt lan yi and baoshan sanren tho. i would like to see it

early days wen bros pull my heart strings like a guqin 

EVERYTHING about the lantern scene; disaster hets jiang yanli and jin zixuan; how wwx made lwj a bunny lantern. how soft and touched lwj was. wwx gleefully pointing out he was smiling and lwj IMMEDIATELY PULLING HIW SWORD ON HIM LMAO. tragically foreshadowy promises to do right by pepople, living without regrets. lwjs 'oh no do i love him??' face. just. all of it. 

i have it on good acc that in the novel lwj is explicitly Repressed Gay Panicked Big Horny which is delightful and rly Adds to the performance

 baby lwj is really just conceal dont feel dont let them know u have EMOTIONS (derogatory)

jiang cheng rly went "why dont.u go play with HIM if u like him so much"

jc and wwx have big BIG annoying sibling energy dont think too hard abt it or youll cry

lotus pier is soo pretty :((((((((((((((((

up until episode 13 you could think this could be a magical ancient chinese gays pride n prejudice w swords and shenanigans ................youre just not prepared for the game of thrones of it all

seriously ha ha ha i cried so much w this show my eyes genuinely swelled up . like. physically. fun timez fun timez

that being said, its hilarious that wen xu goes to cloud recesses like 'come out or ill kill all these hostages' and then DOESNT WAIT FOR AN ASWER AND KILLS THEM ALL IMMEDIATELY. do u know how blackmail works sir

 would like to make it recorded that from day one i was like 'CALL A GODDAMN CULTIVATION G20 THIS ASSHOLE SECT IS LITERALLY MASSACRING YALL!!' and it took them like 3 or 4 massacres to do anything and they STILL sent their heirs into their territory  LIKE

when wwx cites the gusu lan rules to wen chao tho. that rebel/attention whore/cutie pie 'look lan zhan i DID memorize the rules after all' ‘also a big fuck you to the wen sect :D :D’ sweet spot that scene achieves . delicious

all the cultivator young masters being petty af even though they are practically prisoners at the cave is hilarious and i love them

hurt and comfort + gay mistunderstandings + watsonian gay declaration music + accidental evil acquisition! at the cave (2)

its like where do i start? the fact theyre both trapped and kind of heavily injured inside an isolated cave with a murder turtle? wwx gay panicking lwj into coughing up bad blood? lwj being jealous as wwx babbles abt mianmian? telling him he shouldnt play with people and wwx saying he never played him? wwx going Oh. I See what is happening. YOU like mianmian, and lwj absolute done face ??? (iconic) wwx touching the sacred married ribbon Again? the telepathic communication? the sword? WEI WUXIAN ASKING LAN WANGJI TO SING TO HIM AS HE IS PASSING OUT AND LWJ SINGING HIM. THE SONG. HE WROTE. FOR WWX. AND THAT HE CALLED. THEIR SHIP NAME????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

they are SO insufferable pleeeeease

in the words of my friend 1 : “CQL is so gay we were all amazed how it got past the censors Ofc unfortunately it can't be novel level gay But they did their best And we love them for it”

in the theme of songs THIS OST. WUJI HAS BEEN LIVING IN MY MIND RENT FREE SINCE I FIRST HEARD IT the whole ost is so so sO beautiful.

 the costuming in this is also soooo exquisite. the embroidery? the fabrics? the details? how every sect and clan has a distinct style and architecture? (also ik they based each off of dif periods in chinese history which is REALLY fucking cool) just chefs kiss

the direction too!. i enjoy the unusual camera movements and i think they give it that Vibe, also their composition is PARTICULARLY good when it comes to telling the subtext through position of camera/position of character (like nhs off to the side in scenes he at first glance doesnt need to be/ how lwj is often centered when hes Jealous Yearning at wwx being affectionate w other ppl, wwx return from burial mounds etc)

ik madam yu is like Badass Milf Check and shes not getting any mom of the year awards but im delighted at how messy she is. IMAGINE that woman on tiktok

you better have enjoyed gay cave (2) bc its Just Pain from here on out! 

jiang fengmian and madame yu win the Most Dramatic Way to show they do care about each other, actually ..... ever :)

i thought jiang yanli jiang cheng and wei wuxian forcing themselves to escape yunmeng barely holding on after their parents are killed was going to be the height of pain in this show. ha. 

the family dynamics in general on this showwwww, both blood/ adopted/ found families, brotherly bonds and lifelong friendships just. rly. truly. fucked me up. theyre all so important and complicated and well rounded and beautiful and tragic

and beyond being a Win For the Gays im so glad the relationships w wwx and jiang yanli/ wen qing were NOT changed from platonic bc they are so much better like that imo. like maybe if we didnt Live In A Society it wouldnt be so, but the fact wwx and others can love and value them so much and theres nothing romantic or sexual abt it is like. so refreshing. especially @ jyl, with the way he and jc are overprotective of her and shes such a nurturing/care taker figure for them, it would just not vibe as well if they made it romantic

i love that this is a story abt Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch aka Actual Satan/Boogey Man/Village With/Public Enemy Number One , my dude is literally a necromancer who only dresses in black and has evil smokey black tendrils wafting out of him, but the really edgy one is still jiang cheng, pastel purple fashion icon

and speaking of best/worst siblings wei wuxian and jiang cheng *immediately starts crying* 

The Golden Core Transfer i just. no thots only tears 

wen qing and wen ning putting themselves in so much danger just.... to help them. wn saving jc from wen chao. wq finding a way to get wwx to transfer his core. like thinking about the monumental work these two did to help wwx and jyl and jc... jyl trying so fucking hard to be strong and keep on moving and giver her little brothers comfort after losing everything... jiang cheng. losing his parents and his home and his ability to do anything abt it and his complete desperation and lack of self worth and turning on them with agression  when he didnt realize all that they did for him ... hhhhhhhhhhhhh

me, pointing at the whole cast “i just LOVE them mom!!!”

its sad tho, that BARELY ANY of the women have like.... actual important conversations let alone relationships with each other at all in the story. and like wq and jyl have stayed at the same place for extended periods of time, where wq actively took care of her TWICE,  and still! not one measly convo, nothing! ................ .𝓌ₕᵧ

everyone in this show need a good sip of Self Worth and Stop Sacrificing Yourself juice 

ngl the sword flying looks very dumb 

“a-cheng, please bring a-xian back.” “i will, i promise.” ;-;

the whole calling each other by the More Intimate Version of the name, first as teasing and later as true intimacy. mmmhmmm yes

untamed where everythings the same but wwx evil flute song is eoeo

related that scene when wwx comes back from the burial mounds for the first time w demonic cultivation and he acts all formal and calls lwj hanguang-jun and keeps being evasive and distant and mean and soooooo................. facetious 

and how hes kind of desperately trying to keep intense lwj at bay (A FIRST) and avoiding actually talking to either of them and its all tension ughhh and then he MOCKS his and lwjs relationship, he jokes w him in this like... mean echo of their usual ~banter~ oof 

 and like!!! uncertain but so relieved jc who just HUGS him w no reservations for once and its not like he isnt just as worried as lwj abt wwx and what hes doing, but he chooses in that moment to enjoy getting him back first and mmhmMMMmMm yes (maybe my favorite scene in the whole show? MAYBE SO. ) 

highkey hurt me but also. i might be into mean wwx. i will take no criticism.

lan zhans sad eyes tho :((((((((( 

on one hand i wish we could have seen what happened at the burial mounds but on the other the timeskip adds so much flair to his return so im hnnn

also i love that hes been missing for 3 months reappears kinda melancholic and bloodthirsty and knowing malign tricks and jc is like 'so. are u sad bc of lan wangji'

when ur bae survived the war but he thinks ur evil/ might be evil so you cant kiss :///

hmmm talking at the rooftop under the moonlight not mentioning everything that stands between usssss

they are the two jades of lan and we’ll be the two heroes of yunmeng is the type of line u dont even need to know whats gonna happen to know thats gonna be sad

when they fight wen ruoshan at the nightless city i thought that was the battle we see at the first ep and its not and its so easy and theyre all like ‘yayy we won go wwx!’ i was just. SCREAMS WHAT is gonna HAPPEN

so like. post burial mounds/sunshot campaign pre yiling patriarch wwx is like. ultra arrogant, ultra mocking, peak lil shit and it gave me e v e r y t h i n g i wanted

even tho having the wen prisoners at the targets at phoenix mountain and still having wwx and jzx shooting the arrows was???? so.... tone deaf 

wwx: fucking w demonic energy   jyl: he has never done anything wrong in his life, ever <3 <3 (mood)

the parallels between meng yao/wei wuxian (and even xue yang a bit?) are Seen and they are Valid

wwx post burial mounds: can yall SHUT UP abt the goddamn sword (suibian left the chat)

LIKE truly, we talk abt the angst and yearning with wangxian. but what abt wwx and suibian. xianbian / xianqing angst and comfort 100k

take a shot everytime someone coughs up blood

zidian is simply the coolest spiritual weapon rip to suibian and chenqing and bichen and sendou and baixa........ but tis the truth 

cons: everyones families died in a nightmare war! everyones homes burned to the ground! everyone is traumatized! pros: everyone gets cooler clothes and weapons!!

wen ning and a-yuan and yanli bestest babes squad dont touch me rn

everyone: brooding and fighting                                                                wq and jyl: why dont you try some acupunture/drinking some soup and calm down huh? how abt that bitch?? 

showing the battle/massacre at the nightless city first was genius actually bc then everytime we have a cute scene w yunmeng bros and theyre like 'we'll be together forever! uwu' youre like oh. oh no. oh no no no. 

justice vs lawfulness vs means and ends 👁

jc: stay in the right path and practice the art of the sword                        wx: yeah thats not gonna happen chief

my reaction to wwx renouncing to the sect politics to help the wens was just that elmo burning gif in succession

the dramatic rain. wen qing desperately calling out to wen ning. the ghosts/puppets killing the guards. how terrifying wn actually was while wwx was controlling him :( lwj goeing after him to try and stop him and then he just; he Sees him and understands him even if he cant actually do anything about it other than let them go. 

“there must be somewhere in this earth we can go to :(((((((((”

"IF I HAVE TO FIGHT THEM, I'D RATHER IT BE YOU. DYING BY YOUR HANDS WOULD AT LEAST BE WORTH IT." oh my god oh my god oh my goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddd

also lwjs umbrella is white w black smoke.. .  . nice

yiling patriarch / demonic farming burial mounds settlement is like one of my favorite concepts. they an "EVIL" FARMING COMMUNITY LED BY THE VILLAGE WITCH COME ON

they planted TURNIPS and LOTUS FLOWERS and ONE (1) baby and made lanterns and a common hall :(((((((

wen qing and wei wuxian, baddest bitches and genius science best friends i absolutely LOVED to see it. they rly went ‘is anyone gonna sibling/project partner that’ and didnt wait for an answer

both wwx and jyl getting lotus ponds at the burial mounds and in lanling bc they miss lotus pier ;;;;;;;w

;;;;; wish jyl had actually gone into the burial mounds. we were robbed of jyl and wq meeting again and jyl meeting a-yuan and seeing the settlement and the homes and all ;w; at least jc did go, stab wounds and broken arms and all

wwx like... having thrown his whole life away to help the wens (yeah the sect leaders and jin guangshan in particular wanting his stygian tiger amulet was an Element but still) and not.... necessarily regretting it, but grappling with all of the consequences of it... becoming moody and drepressed at times, missing his family and lotus pier and his friends and probably simply missing being around people and causing trouble, extrovert that he is, lashing out at the wens and at a-yuan, just in general the whole messiness of that experience

the way the resentful energy does affect his temperament is rly nice bc its not too in your face,(i mean outside of the Shaky Hands of Rage) but like he clearly has a much lesser control on his anger and impulsivity (tall order) than both before bm and after hes ressurected

on that note A-YUAN BABIEST BABY BOY BEST BOY

lan zhan being like oh hey there wei ying fancy meeting u and our son here. just passing by u know how it is hmmmmMm and then PLOT TWIST having defied orders to go see him and being punished for it. oof;;

 they habent seen each other in like? a year? and now theyre tgt 10 seconds and are already parenting a child together

also lwj rly kneels down in the snow way too much to be healthy

wwx: calm down guyssss i wont lose control of demonic cultivation omgggg  .   spoiler alert: he loses control of demonic cultivation

did u enjoy cute children? good bc now the Real Pain Begins

jiang yanli and jin zixuan rly out there APROPRIATING both disaster gays AND bury ur gays huh ;w;

i KNEW jin lings birthday was gonna fuck something up but the GASP that left my body when wwx lost control of wn and killed jin zixuan .. . . 

im sorry and thank you aaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAaAAAAA 

when wen ning and wen qing were telling wwx their plan i was saying NO NO NO NO NO NO out loud in despair 

also can we talk abt how wq is definetely talking about only the both of them surrending themselves but then? everyone else just surrenders w them? IT MAKES NO SENSE LIKE WHY WOULD THEY what would be the Point

 sometimes there are some pretty gaping jumps in logic and continuity that are just like                     ?          ?

wwx: oh so when you try to murder me its justified but when i survive through dark magic and murder all of you its a "war crime"

unsurprisingly, his most feral, most spiraling moment talking to the sect leaders on the roof and attacking them and even fighting lan zhan is among my favorite scenes... its like, so painful to watch but also   so       thrilling   (and maybe my wen bbs dying arose some resentful energy in me what can i say) 

and its JUST, all they ever wanted was to do good but then... war. and trauma. and hubris. 

jiang cheng on the ground clearly thorn between what to do and feel is a Mood, lets just say

i was already crying when jyl showed up, but if i wasnt-

 i suffered SO MUCH through this series trying to figure out WHY jc would kill wwx. and when i understood. its somehow not as bad as i thought and also MUCH MUCH WORSE

a look into my group chat during the last flashback episodes:

SO ANYWAY. after the BLOOD BATH and RIPPING YOUR HEART OUT and FEEDING IT TO YOU  the untamed goes ‘ayy back to the present!! tu du dud ud du’ 

literally it ends a quarter into an episode and then KEEPS GOING i had to pause and stare blankly at the ceiling for an hour

babie cultivators and detective soulmates . i do need some cute after All of That 

(not that the pain is over LOL)

lwj is significantly less emotionally repressed in the present and its delightful. hes just ALL IN with wwx. and not just in the ‘i would and have killed various men and risked my reputation for you’ but also ‘ur tired here have a drink i brought it up cause i know u like it and it want you to be happy, always’

“when everyone praised me and wanted my power, you were the only one that challenged me. now that everyone hates me and wants me dead, youre the only one that stands by my side.” hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 

and just filling in the blanks how lan zhan searched for him. for all of those 16 years he searched for him and was punished for it and raised a-yuan, the only survivor of the burial mounds settlement, as his own in gusu......

and jiang cheng.  being the tough love uncle . having raised the yunmeng jiang clan from the rubble all alone, his whole family dead, some of it on the blame of his own brother, his siblings, his closest friends gone.......and only jin ling there needing his guidance. 

THE PARALLEL BETWEEN JIN LING BEING A LIFELINE FOR JIANG CHENG AND A-YUAN FOR LAN WANGJI AFTER THE BATTLE AT THE NIGHTLESS CITY  

great now i made myself sad

and like . the fact! that lwj and jc dislike each other!!. jc projects blame onto him for wwx both “leaving” him and indirectly causing their families deaths and when hes so consumed by it he makes wwx an enemy, lwj is there now? trying to protect him?? and lwj, who can never understand the pain that wwx , indirectly or not put jc through, but who was right there when jc tried to kill him and will never allow him to hurt wwx again. and how they like. in a way project blame of their tragedies onto each other while dealing with some type of survivor guilt and in their own way still loving wwx through it all???  amd in way its kind of fundamentally selfish but also tragically understandable? and like when u put it against the fact that after he disappears during the sunshot campaign they were looking for him together and fought together??

JUST. THE CHARACTERS. AND THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THIS. MAN. UGH. GOD. 

and like i think thats what makes it so good? its such a sad and painful and violent story, edgy even, but its compelling bc at the center of it there are all of these relationships and different types of love and hope and. :( i love it

enough crying lets talk abt wwx sleeping at the jingshi with lwj and wearing his under garment for a minute 🙏

 jin ling just has that Was Raised by JC energy tho lmao i love him

babie cultivator squad is the perfect ammount of cute and comedic relief while still bearing the weight? of the narrative in a way, both from sizhui and jin lings existences, and also. like. how do i put this. they feel hopeful? they were born after a war, they came of age at a time of relative peace, they dont hold on so closely to the resentments of their parents/father figures, they are specifically shown as more accepting and open minded. and its like.... Hope for the future  

one of the ?? things  i love the most is the fact that the main cast are often in situations where theyre hunted/running but they like. never wear disguises... just going around in their gorgeous expensive clan clothes and hair ornaments and distinctive spiritual weapons.... maybe w a straw hat on, just for kicks

wwx teacher 🥺🥺🥺

so this is why its called Yi City Misery huh

a-qing is such. an icon. im so sad. my girl even knew to leave xys dumb self rotting by the road but no one listens to her thats why theyre all dead or sad 

her and xue yang measuring each other up was so entertaining lmao

 its the funniest thing when hes like. HERES MY SAD STORY. FOR WHY IM A SADISTIC MURDERER. I BROKE MY HAND ONCE. 

like ok someone broke his hand in a horrible way, and like Poverty, i get it but also like.......... that lost the brunt of a proper sob story like, 50 sadistic murders ago bby

and i love that xingchen does not entertain that for a second hes like ‘not ?????? good enough???’ and the best thing is he wasnt even like 'u hadto be the bigger person' or sth but ' well then break that dudes hand back, rip his arm off for i care, what do the rest of us have to do w anything???” 

anjo sensato :(

xue yang is like..... the sexy sadistic evil version of a himbo..... a meanbo...

the fucked upness of xy’s feelings for xxc/ xxc and sl feelings for each other... like my dude literally gave his bf HIS EYES. and xy getting so attached to xxc .... the fucked up fake domesticity.... having him hurt sl..... then desperately trying to bring him back ...................... oof

song lan........... literally had his eyes AND tongue removed, his bfs eyes put in place, was almost killed, turned into a puppet by his bf unknowingly, manipulated by xy, sees his bf killing himself in despair.... and STILL finds the strenght to get up from there, and keep on traveling and helping people and attempting to fix xxcs soul.......... like, my man. damn. 

wangxian looking at songxiao and seeing an Actually more painful parallel for themselves. ft. that Color Coding. 

THE A-YUAN/SIZHUI REVEAL PUNCHED ME IN THE HEART but in a good way for a change

should have know that he would be the Best Boy the cute one w all the braincells

the butterfly AND the bunny lantern. i see how it is

u know is very convenient that no one can see the stark black veins on wen nings neck, ever 

BAT WEN NING 

wns face when lwj comes into wwx room like ‘:0 omg did u two finally get your shit together? good for you master wei good for u’ 

(they didnt) (yet)

DISASTER DRUNK LWJ. JUST. THRUST SOME CHICKENS TO SHOW UR RESSURECTED BAE THAT U LOVE THEM.

i have absolutely no idea WHY they gave lwj the same punishment for fighting his own sect/allies to protect the burial mounds as when they got drunk on cloud recess class days.... like? its such a ... emotional continuity error again

also is lwj gonna get an actual friend besides wwx , ever

mianmian marrying and having a family and a cute life after saying FUCK U AND UR SYSTEM TOO in a much less unhinged and dramatic way than wwx......... fills me w joy

also lol the idea that like. her husband not knowing that shes friends w satan/the boogey man/the village witch is hilarious

i love nie mingjue bc hes the resident Though Guy but also the most dramatic bitch in this show and thats Saying Something

jin ling cant have one uneventful relative can he

the fact that everyone present already knew “mo xuanyu” was wwx at the stairs is so funny, their faces are like ‘oh............ wow. that. sure is a development. shock” 

in the tradition of extremely loud whispers wwx tells lwj with twelve guards standing like one meter away from them: HEY PSH LAN ZHAN PRETEND IM FORCING YOU TO STAY W ME DO IT

oh my god oh my god

the absolute Yearning on his face when he leaves wwx and a-yuan at the burial mounds and refuses to stay for dinner was already Enough but the fact?? they brought it back?? to this declaration of love?? their expressions??????? strike me dead right now just go ahead

lFor Legal Reasons We Cant Kiss but we will have a very sappy declaration of love and trust and look at each other in way that is the actualization of 💞💘💗💖💓💘💞💗💖💘💗💖💕💞

also icb all the sect leaders and guards are standing there watching them say they like like each other with a dozen swords pointing at their neck

i enjoyed the depiction of the fickle public perception and how easily it can be used to scapegoat people. when the sect leaders turn on jgy and wwx knows thats its more for convenience than anything else...

poor lxc is literally like 'oh so when YOUR problematic boyfriend gets called evil its a misunderstanding but when its MY problematic bf-'

ok like i cant get over nmj let jgy play a song that messed with his temperament at all, like maN u KNEW he might be shady wth

wwx: “hey dont say anything bad abt lan zhan hes not an arrogant dick, thats just his face. 

ME ON THE OTHER HAND"

the cultivators as wwx is poking holes in their narrative is literally *nazaré meme*

"wei wuxian-!" "what did i break your leg, too?" not to be problematic but i laughed so hard

not as hard as "you dont have the rank to talk to me " tho

i Enjoy that, over the course of story, wwx sees that... theres nothing truly to Do, but move on. he saw how his arrogance and his mistakes hurt others, and hes trying to fix what he can, but he already did die for his mistakes and there are things he cant fix and that's. just how it is. even towards jgy, the narrative doesn't go gleefully and completely with "lets make THEM pay bc theyre the big bad" bc its not that simple, and it wouldn't lead anywhere but more pain...

re him and jiang cheng and the wens and kinda. isnt that what nhs did? scheming to displace jgy out of revenge more than any justice and doing so in the most painful way?

idk if that actually makes sense im truly just babbling

i thought the scene at the lotus pond would be CUTE but the context was PAIN again

jiang cheng finding out about his golden core and his conflict with wwx at the guanyin temple .... destroyed me but in a nice way kinda.... same way it destroys him look at his face oh god

and. the fact??? he sacrificed himself for wwx?? first?? and he'll probably never tell anyone much less wwx???? keeps me up at night

i havent decided if the neckbreak transition between jgy does sth super Evil or does he he does OR Does He yes he does O R does heeeee is sth i dislike or not

jin guangyao and wei wuxians most interesting parallel is that... theyve both seen 'hmm hey this system is fucked up' and wwx went 'so fuck it all i will renounce it and challenge it' and jgy went 'so fuck it i will use all of it to my advantage and manipulate it to my goals and whims'

the fact jgys mom was actually great and he loved her and his whole issue w it was more than simply being ashamed of being a bastard kinda got me ngl

never trust a dude with a fan.

nhs and jgy: the first rule to a convoluted and decades spanning violent revenge plot is to have fun and be yourself! 

when a-yuan finally FINALLY remembers ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;-;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; wen ning has someone in his family back and a-yuan has someone to talk abt his wen family and wwx has him back bc he survived and lwj raised him anD HES THEIR SON. THEYRE MARRIED AND HAVE A SON. UGH.

and theyre allowed to heal. everyone is allowed to try and recover and be happy

netflix put all of the 3 endings on top of each other and it looks kinda weird actually BUT I DONT EVEN MIND :’’’’’’’’’)

the gasp that left me when lwj says ‘wei ying’ and wwx turns.........

there was also a screen with ‘thank you mxtx for creating these characters, we hope their wishes come true’ and i might. have cried then too. maybe. 

that was . a ride. as is proven by this behemot of a ramble clearly i just really needed and Outlet. i am currently trying to convince dumb monkey brain to not consume the other medias of mdzs immediately bc i REALLY need to like. live. a life. and take care of real responsibilities.  *longest oh boi ever*

#m. #ANYWAY #ENOUGH TALKING #THIS IS SO LONG #LOL #but whatever this is MY performative journaling i do what i want #rambling impressions abt what i watch is a thing i do now? apparently?? #cql #untamed #the untamed #fun fact that chat is named 'k keeps on babbling abt the untamed' and it STILL wasnt enough #also it took me 15 episodes to realize lwj was yibo #IT WAS V SHOCKING #i did not recognize him at a l l #but in retrospect he WAS the perfect choice

[mirrerover]

Big Plans

“You know shit’s never gonna fucking change, right?” Jason makes to grab for his Zippo. Remembering Dick will happily remove his nuts from his waxed sack for even contemplating smoking inside Dick’s apartment, he stops. His fingers twitch with irritation, nothing like a little nicotine deprivation to start the day. “Gotham’s a gothic nightmare where corruption runs thicker than blood and Blüdhaven’s worse, somehow. Like looking in a funhouse mirror. Uglier. More warped.”

“I really do enjoy our little morning pep talks,” Dick replies, closing the last two buttons on his dress shirt before tucking the fabric into the waistline of his pants. In general, Jason would say he prefers the Kevlar-enhanced, ass-hugging suit Dick prowls the night in—but there’s something to be said for a crisp, white button-down with the sleeves rolled up, forearm veins on display. He doesn’t know how the Blüdhaven criminals are faring but, personally, he wouldn’t mind letting Detective Richard Grayson slap some cuffs on him. Let Dick work him over hard in a surveilled box until Jason cracks, raw and bloody under the harsh fluorescent lights. 

“These fucking places,” Jason grumbles, tired and cranky from watching Dick getting ready to leave, all that warm, gold skin about to slip right out the door. “It’s not something anyone can fix. Nothing short of dropping a bomb on the damn place and razing it to the ground.” 

Dick sighs, running a hand through his hair. It’s getting longer, strands brushing the bone of his jaw. He’s no stranger to this; Jason and the trash he talks. Words pouring out of him sharp as knives, the blades full of blood. Just endlessly spewing shit.

“No point to it all, huh?” Dick leans a hip against the dresser, arms folded, eyebrow raised. There’s an ease to him that’s inherent; the way he owns his body, his space, every room he’s in. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re trying to lure me back to bed.”

 Jason thinks it over. Admits, “not originally,” and lets his legs fall apart slowly. Nude body lounging against cheap, synthetic pillows, he’s got Dick’s low-rent sheets strategically draped across his crotch, all tasteful and shit. Just like the Renaissance paintings cluttering the hallways of the Wayne Manor. None of the shameless, naked peacocking Dick gets up to after sex. No, Jason’s classy. Artful. The signature Jason Todd brand. “But are you feelin’ down to fuck?” he asks. 

Dick throws his head back and laughs. Really fucking laughs. Eyes scrunched up and shoulders shaking, all charisma and beauty and warmth. Laughing like that, it’s suddenly easy to see how a group of metahumans chose Dick as their leader despite his lack of superpowers or how the Blüdhaven Police Corps would accept him as their own despite him being the ward of Gotham’s favourite billionaire asshole. There’s something about Dick like there’s something about Bruce. Something captivating and inescapable that would make you launch a thousand ships for them. Burn down entire worlds for them. Jason’s not sure Dick’s aware of that. And in a way, Jason thinks he understands the Joker better than Bruce ever could. 

Dick’s laughter fades too slowly, and Jason would be annoyed but there’s a tightness to Dick’s pants that wasn’t there two minutes ago, and Dick’s always laughing. Joyful and happy. Like those are easy feelings to conjure and easy feelings to have. As if getting out of bed isn’t like crawling out of a dark pit every morning and as if life isn't like taking a suckerpunch to the gut, over and over.

“Wish I could,” Dicks says, and Jason swears he sounds like he means it. “But I got big plans today. Gotta save a city.”

“‘Save a city.’ Jesus Christ. More like go get shanked in the gut.”

Dick shrugs and slips on a watch. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

The other bats all have their day jobs. The Police Detective, the Socialite, the rising Tech Wunderkind, and Jason’s personal favourite: the Student. Jason derives no small amount of pleasure from knowing that Bruce and the Demon Spawn get to suffer through the worst of it. Like an ill-fitted suit, Jason hopes it pulls and itches every time they’ve got to slip their disguises on. It shows how removed they are from the rot and the grit and the filth of what is Gotham. The gore at the core of it all. 

That’s where Jason lives, at its epicentre. 

He’d fallen into it naturally, being a crime lord. It had been a logical first step when he’d come home, head full of green fumes and rage. He’s proud to say, he puts the organized in organized crime. Outshines even the worst of them in calculated vicious violence. The crime part of the job, Jason can admit he’s gotten more discerning about. There’s no peddling drugs to kids or bleeding junkies dry, no people traded like cattle, and he doesn’t like selling guns to the lowlifes clogging Gotham’s streets. So, he’s become a parasite instead. Infiltrates a crime organisation and eats it from the inside out till it finally collapses. Scraps the dead beast for parts and money.

It’s not something Jason talks about with this version of Dick. His shady deals, his underground moonlighting. Never with a cop like the one making his way to the bed right now, uniform tight over thick thighs and a sway in his hips that’s nothing less than sexual warfare. 

“Try smoking in my bed again, Todd,” Dick warns, looming over him. He stops whatever threat he was going to utter, disrupted by Jason grousing at him to fucking let that go already. Perfectly pleasant, Dick does exactly that. Just stares at Jason with a face far too naked and utterly too fond. Something’s creeping under Jason’s skin at the sight of it—an itch he doesn’t know how to scratch, unable to decide whether he wants to kiss the prick or break his perfect face instead.

A little lower, there’s a bruise peeking out of Dick’s collar that looks like a handprint. Jason had put that there last night. Violently. Not even the fun kind of violent but the messy kind. The kind where something hunts Jason through nightmares and his body acts before his sleeping brain has had the chance to catch up—that kind of violence. Maybe a better person would wallow in the guilt and remove themselves from the situation. Not Dick and Jason. They just get better at hiding the batarangs and guns. The 200 pounds of well-trained muscle and murderous reflexes are a little harder to counteract but Dick’s no babe in the woods. Besides, Jason’s not exactly the first lethal bitch between Dick’s bedsheets.

Dick smiles. A teasing thing full of soft edges. “Mornings are hard. Aren’t they, Sugarplum?”

“Fuck you to hell.” Jason groans with feeling, hating the hard lumps of Dick’s mattress when he sinks back into them. “Just get lost already, Birdbrain. There’s no fucking point to you with your clothes on.”

“Nice to know I’m not completely useless.”

Jason wants to fight that far too favourable self-assessment. Would fight it, were he not half a pack of Lucky Strikes and three cups of coffee short of mustering the energy. Which is also the only reason he’s letting Dick press an off-centre kiss to his forehead. A shitty place for a shitty kiss from a shitty person, if you ask Jason. Very much Dick Grayson’s style.

“Try and behave, Little Wing.” Dick’s already moving away from the bed and shrugging on a jacket. “I really like this place. Got three South facing windows and none of the neighbours run a meth lab.”

“Prime Blüdhaven real estate,” Jason mutters darkly.

“Glad we’re on the same page.” Dick takes one last look at himself at the mirror, shoots Jason a tacky wink because his existence is a curse, and promises under his breath something that sounds suspiciously like I’ll be back or I’ll miss you. Another twenty seconds later and Jason hears the front door lock click back into place.

His day is wide open now. 

There are things to do but there are always things to do. At any time, Jason’s got about forty things in various stages of motion. Always working on something. Someone. Bigger games than the one he’s running on Dick right now, lighting one up in his bed.

Blowing smoke up into the air, Jason decides that today he’s going to crack the safe Dick keeps behind the panel in his closet. Perfectly harmless, really. Just him fishing through some of Dick’s case files—maybe even solving a few, if he’s feeling charitable. And for tonight, there’s that Malaysian place three blocks over that does a better Rendang than anything he’s found in Gotham. Dick never shuts up about it. Like he’s never going to shut up about the cigarette smell seeping into the wallpaper.

Jason smirks. Solid options. He still has last night’s terrors painted on the back of his eyelids and the feeling of Dick’s neck under his hand but they’re slowly fading. And Dick’s got him covered, said he’d take care of the big plans, so Jason doesn’t have to. And next time, when Jason’s Dick and Dick’s Jason, he’ll have Dick covered too. Jason will tackle the big plans while Dick raids Jason’s fridge and leaves wet towels all over his apartment. Jason knows it’ll happen. It has happened. Just not today.

Maybe tomorrow.

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

@wethatake thanks for being the beta and basically a co-writer. You suck but I love you. <3 Here’s to hoping that your sad little sack of a co-worker doesn’t kill you. XD

#jaydick #jaydick-flashfic #jaydick-flashfic: big plans #jason todd #dick grayson #mirre writes

[nctzendreamz]

off the table — lee taeyong

genre: angst w/ hints of fluff.

warnings: language, mentions of drug abuse, and mental illness.

featuring: nct members + chan and felix from stray kids.

authors note: taeyong was perfect for this in my head. also, thank you ariana grande.

is love completely off the table?

will I ever love the same way again? will I ever love somebody like the way I did you?

it had been almost a year. almost a year since he had heard your laugh. you know, the one only he was capable of getting out of you. it was gentle, yet so vibrant that it could color even the most plain and unpleasant rooms. he had seen you do it a million times, but his favorite work of art of yours was the one you did on his heart.

obviously, he couldn’t see what the inside of him looked like. but he could feel it. before he met you, he was certain everything was pitch black. to be specific, the darkest shade of the night sky one could possible fathom. so much pain resided in him. some he brought to himself, some he did nothing to earn. regardless, it was there, and as anybody with demons did, he found coping methods.

that’s how he met you, actually. holed up a strip club he had no business being in. one, because there was no one here he truly wanted. he would never admit it outloud, but the thought of love warmed him. not much, but it did. more than silly one night stands that have soul ties no one wanted to keep.

you were clearly out of place in the building filled with the scent of marijuana and flashing lights, although it did perfectly consume your complexion in the most beautiful way. he observed you for what felt like hours, just admiring you. he had no idea he would want to do this for the rest of his life.

it didn’t take much liquid courage for him to approach you. he could sense your fear when his slender fingers touched your exposed shoulder. for some reason though, the minute your eyes locked it was as if you were looking at someone you had known for a million lifetimes. or maybe that was just Taeyong’s point of view. maybe, everything was all an illusion. meeting you. falling in love with you. you falling in love with him.

“it’s been awhile.” a voice snaps Taeyong out of his deep thinking. the minute his concentration breaks does his surroundings suddenly blast into the center of his cortex. the volume increases. he is in the real world again. he isn’t high, yet.

“yeah.” is all he can spit out. all of the different coversations he could hear take place all of a sudden was making him extremely frustrated and unable to form coherent thoughts. or maybe he wanted it that way so he wouldn’t have to think about you.

you loved coming here. he hated coming here. but he loved you, and your favorite thing to say to him was, “when you love someone, you do things you hate. just like me sitting and watching you smoke for hours without stopping.”

he never realized how much you hated his distractions.

the here, was a restaurant that resembled a sports bar back where you are from. the food was less Korean and more greasy chicken tenders. and you really admired their honey mustard. it was kind of ridiculous how much you loved this place. it was always crowded. the smell was odd - a mixture of people who can’t seem to do anything but drink beer and yell, and foreigners who hated living in Korea. this was the only taste of home they got, so they took advantage of it.

did you feel that way too?

he doesn’t know. and he doesn’t want to think about it. some soccer game was on. people were cheering. he was just waiting on his to-go order.

“how have you been?” the familiar woman asks behind the counter. she was definitely in her mid-50’s. he assumed. she always would be here when Taeyong was dragged along, and she was always nice. who wouldn’t be with all the money you gave to this place.

“i’ve been fine.”

taeyong feels a little cheery conversating with another human. if it wasn’t his dealer, there wasn’t anything to say if he was being quite honest. his relationship with his family died out a long time ago. the only person that he could talk to was himself. the guys who were constantly down in the basement at his dealer were cool, but they never really got him. they thought he was weird, violent. only you cared enough to see how sweet he was. to paint him.

“good to hear. you tell your lover that i miss them!”

his heart, still colored from the mention of you, breaks. it had broken many times from your presence on this earth being acknowledged. everytime his chest would explode into his stomach.

he couldn’t say anything.

he simply walks out the place, not caring about manners. he just wants to go home. he doesn’t even like these fucking chicken tenders, but he’s going to go home and eat them. in your honor.

“excuse me.” a voice exclaims as he finally makes it outside.

once again, words don’t leave his mouth. the woman was probably lost. he truthfully didn’t care. he didn’t care about anything anymore.

“sorry,” she begins. her hair is almost a white color. it’s clearly dyed, but she might have been naturally a darker shade of blonde since the coloring seemed too perfect. “i just...i’ve been watching you - wait, that sounds incredible creepy—“

no one could compare to you, but she reminded him of you. you always did this when you were nervous, or had a severe lack of sleep. you would say things you considered to be silly. fumble with your words. and you would always ruin it more by acknowledging it.

but he was never irritated. he thought it was the cutest thing in the entire world. you were the cutest thing in the entire world.

even now, he’s okay. maybe because he was reminded of you, he can appreciate the art.

“you’re really cute.” she finally spits out.

he couldn’t respond, for the third time today.

why was this so hard? it has almost been a fucking year. a year without you. a year without touching you.

yet, no one could ever compare. not the blonde woman standing in front of him. not the sky. not the stupid bar. even his drugs seemed lackluster to the high you gave him whenever you told him you loved him.

he walks away. he needs something. something to make him unable to think for the rest of the night.

never thought you’d be so damn hard to replace. i swear I don’t mean to be this way, if I can’t have you? is love completely off the table?

“y/n? you there?” you feel vibrations from snapping on your face from the man sitting beside you. he snapped three times, to be exact.

“yeah! yes.” you quickly correct, adjusting your posture along with it.

“i know you appreciate the arts, but that painting is nothing to stare at.”

the painting chan was referring to, seemed plain to a simple eye. it simply, was a black square. but you saw worlds in it. you saw him.

“you know christopher,” you cooed, giving his slim cheek a quick sqeeze before continuing, “just because something seems boring to the naked eye, doesn’t mean it actually is. sometimes, a simple work of art such as that lame black square can hold a thousand meanings.”

he smile is radiant. honestly, the neon colored walls in the movie theater couldn’t compare to it no matter how hard it tried. lately, you had been trying to predict what he would say when you tried to be somewhat of substance around him. you were truthfully scared of boring him.

maybe you saw yourself in the black square as well.

“you really find it interesting, love?”

his accent - God his accent. it had an effect on you that truthfully wasn’t healthy, but even so you always felt guilty when your heart would papilate as it touched your eardrums. but why? you were single. you were moving on.

you can’t even look at him anymore, so you settle on the painting once more. now that you think about it, it was kind of scary that it was in a movie theater. maybe chan was on to something - what was its purpose? to simply cause you pain? to make you think about things and people you could no longer have? a person who is the worst possible thing for your growth, but the best food for your pitiful, lonely soul?

“never mind, you’re right.” you stand promptly, suddenly wanting to get as far away from the evil on the wall. it didn’t matter how chilly it was outside.

“woah.” chan chases after you. you’re too quick though. you’ve practically swam through the crowd to escape into fresh air. what is wrong with you?

it doesn’t take long for you to find yourself at his car. his pride and joy by the way, in which he never let anyone else ride in yet. he had been saving for so long to get it. you didn’t know the model, all you knew was that it made loud noises when he wanted it to. the car was originally white, but the two of you agreed that it was the worse possible color for a car, so he got a paint job and now it was as black as a dark hole.

the stars are beaming, and it’s odd. you used to love nights like this. you preferred the day time, but it was something about a light in the dark, such as the moon that pulled you in. it always destroyed you in the end though.

“what did I do?” his voice snaps you out of your thoughts.

“huh?” you wizzle in confusion, not understanding why he believed he had done anything but gave you a peaceful night not lost in your thoughts.

his eyes tell you everything you need to know before his mouth does. he isn’t questioning your ever changing emotions and happiness to hear satisfaction from your mouth - to boost his ego. he truly feels as if he’s ruined any chance he’s had with you simply from being himself. even so, as he waits for you to answer he’s taking his bomber jacket off for you to wear. he was sweet like that.

“chris, you are always perfect. why would you think anything different?” you say as you put the jacket on.

he’s holding back a smile, but you can tell it’s more so from your proper word choice, and not what you said.

“you trying to sound English?”

“no.” you giggle, pushing his shoulder lightly. “I’m just trying to communicate with you.”

“then tell the truth.” he prompts, taking a step closer to you.

“can I lean on the car?”

“yes.” he laughs in a low tone. “you can lean on the car.”

“okay.”

“okay.”

silence is filling the air, and it’s making you sick even though it shouldn’t be.

“y/n.” he finally speaks. you decide you have the balls to look at him even though it feels so wrong. the stars - they’re sparkling right into his eyes and you know you are the dumbest idiot on earth.

why can’t you just choose him?

the question is repeating over and over in your head, but no answer comes. well, no answer you want to hear comes. this should’ve been easy money. the perfect guy, with a good family and solid morals is madly in love with you. he’s still here, even when you barely give him anything to work with, and you’re thinking about others who were nothing close to that no matter how they made you feel.

“my confession ruined everything, didn’t it?”

it was about two months ago that chan confessed his love for you. you laughed a bit, as it made no sense. the two of you had been in the same circle for awhile, and you had been notified of his appreciation for you long ago, but he had seen you break. he watched you go from happy soul to broken and he still liked you? in what world?

you enjoyed his company. that’s why you began to hang out with him practically everyday - doing whatever you two wanted. most of the time you two just watched movies, or played silly board games. but sometimes you would go shopping, or he would play you his music he worked on. you could tell he lacked confidence on what he could become, but you knew he had the potential to be so great.

his confession was short and sweet. and the way he approached you, you could tell he was somewhat confident that you would feel the same. you did feel the same, but you also still had feelings for others. when you declined his request to take things to the next level, he didn’t get upset. or at the least he didn’t show it.

he promised the two of you would move at your pace. and that was all you needed to hear to know that maybe one day, when you got yourself together, the two of you could be something.

chan always protected you. you never felt endangered, or unsafe when you were with him. to you, he was sweet, to others he was still sweet, but he knew when to be stern.

“no. i promise.” is all you answer. “it’s cold.” here you go again trying to change the subject. this wasn’t like you.

he promptly unlocks the door to his car, opening it for you as well. it isn’t long before he’s on the drivers side turning on the car so you could feel some heat on your body.

“i won’t bring it up anymore.” he sighs.

“no chris. you bring it up everytime you feel it. i like you, okay? i do. i know I’ve never said it out loud before, but I do. i just...i don’t know what I’m doing right now. there are some things I have to get over you know?”

you can tell the amount of words you used - probably the most you had spoken to him in months shocked him, and made him feel extremely guilty. you know he didn’t want you to feel like he was trying to pressure you. all he wanted to have was something. something that made him feel as special as he knew you had made others feel in the past.

“y/n I’m a fucking idiot. God, don’t listen to me. you are perfect okay? we are working at your pace and we always will. i - fuck.” his face goes directly in his hands.

it’s cute - the way he cares about his every move around you so deeply. you remember what it felt like to feel like that. it was the most nerve wracking, yet butterfly giving thing to experience when around someone you admired so much.

“chris...” you whisper, removing his face from his palms. he had the softest hands ever. “hey, don’t beat yourself up okay? i know what you want and I know you have nothing but the purest intentions. if I didn’t feel that way I wouldn’t want to spend everyday with you okay? whatever you think this is, it is. i promise.”

“okay.” he sighs the biggest breath of relief you had heard in a long time. “okay. i know what we need.” he offers. your hand lingered on his, and he decided it would be best to hold yours as the opportunity presented itself. it’s nice - the warmness. yet, it feels incredibly wrong.

you truly didn’t mean to be this way. you would do anything to not be this way.

“let’s go cop something from felix. hm?”

what chan was reffering to was the good ole’ mean green, weed. you smoked a lot more in the past than you did now, but you were still no angel. especially tonight did getting high sound like the best decision you could have made.

“yes please.” you say without hesitation, leaning back in the seat. your left hand is still in chan’s right, and you don’t plan on letting go. felix’s house isn’t that far from here, so you know your pleasure will be coming sooner or later. chan starts the car and begins the journey. usually, the two of you drive with music on, but tonight the silence was what the both of you wanted.

secretly though, chan snuck his AirPod into his left ear. he loved music, but he could tell you weren’t in the mood. and he didn’t mind that. he would do anything for you. the lyrics resonated with his with his soul so much that he felt it ache, even though he felt he had no right.

i’ll wait for you

even if I always feel like I’ll be number two

to someone you can’t hold anymore

taeyong can’t even recall how long he had been pent up here, high as hell. intoxicated as fuck. the chicken tender meal he brought had been long gone, but not from his mouth. the junkies smelt food, and took food like the animals they claimed to be.

this all sucked so bad. he hated being here. but he couldn’t move.

it was so loud in here. the boys he knew - johnny, mark, and jaehyun were all present. they seemed to be the leaders of the basement and they also seemed to be functioning quite well considering how high they also were. taeyong couldn’t fathom or make out what their conversation were, but he assumed it was about girls. he caught, “they’re supposed to be here any minute now.” from jaehyun’s lip. he seemed to be the strongest ladies man. all taeyong knew, was that he wanted no parts of the drug induced orgy he knew was going to take place. he also knew if he didn’t leave, they didn’t care. they were going to give a show regardless.

“taeyong!” johnny yells, bringing him back to focus. johnny was always very intimidating. he wore a smile when he got what he wanted, but if he spoke to you and you didn’t listen, he quickly got upset. maybe he was different when he was sober, but that was never.

“what’s up.” taeyong answers dryly, still not looking at him.

“you know,” johnny sits down in the dirty floor right beside him. “you’ve never been fun, but you were more fun before than you are now.”

“i went through this phase.” mark interrupts, taking the seat on taeyong’s opposite side. “what is it? mommy issues? a girl? or a boy? if you get spicy like that.” he chuckles. he coughs right after.

“how about everything. except the last part.” taeyong whispers.

“oh...you have it rough. was your mom a druggie too?”

“no - well, I don’t know. i met her like once when I was younger. she told me ‘i did it for your good’ and left.”

“so you were in a foster home? or did you get adopted?”

“foster home. neglected, so now I’m like this.” he chuckles. he’s laughing, but in reality to admit these things out loud hurt, even though he was sure the other boys had similar or worse stories.

“and the girl?” mark asks. he had began to roll up another blunt in the midst of taeyong’s life story. maybe it was too much for him. or maybe he was just an addict.

“i cheated. and i was mean. she was the best thing ever though. she got me clean.”

“for what? a day?” johnny laughs outloud.

“well, not clean clean.” he explains. “but off the hard stuck like coke, and lsd and shit. we both smoked weed. and I smoked cigs.”

“ew!” the two of them exclaim. “cigs?”

“so you’re telling me that the two of you do every drug under the sun, but cigarettes are where you draw the line?”

“duh!”

“have you seen all the commercials? with the person with the hole in their throat sounding like the old shriveled lady from spongebob going ‘chocolate!’ we don’t want that!”

“cigarettes aren’t the only thing that can cause that, you know?”

“whatever.” johnny shivers as if he had just gotten the worse news ever. “so this girl wasn’t a druggie? why did she even like you?”

“i don’t know. still to this day I don’t know. but she did. and she tried everything to make me happy. it just felt too good to be true, so I ruined it.”

“damn bro.” mark sighs, taking a deep puff of his blunt. “i thought people only did stupid shit like that in the movies or tv shows.”

“hey hey now, markie.” a voice speaks out of the corner. “be nice to our new friend.”

it’s jaehyun. funny enough, jaehyun tried to get at you once long before you met taeyong, but you had no interest in him once you found out his issues. then again, while he was attracted to you, he didn’t want you to love him. he just wanted to corrupt you.

“our boy is broken hearted. seems to me like he just needs some fun.”

“relax, jae.” johnny explains. “he’s not there yet. let him fall for us on his time.”

“what are you on right now?” jaehyun inspects.

“just a couple of blunts.”

“so just a starter?”

“hyung...” mark sighs.

“okay okay. fine. but when the heartbreak starts to kick in more, i got something that’ll change your life. you just let me know.”

“he will.” johnny and mark say once again in unison.

“boys!” a voice yells. it makes everyone stand up minus taeyong, as he had no idea who it was. he can hear feet coming down the steps. there’s a boy with blonde hair. the same boy who let him in. he was a new face, but clearly an important one from the way even jaehyun was waiting for his comment.

“hi felix!” everyone begins to repeat after eachother.

his voice is deep as he speaks, and his accent is thick. his face itself may have not been scary, but the way he carried himself was.

“clean up this fucking mess. i know you can’t do anything about the shitty couches, but make an attempt. i got some good people coming over and I need quiet. when I bring them down here to show them the product, i need everyone on their best behavior.”

“what exactly does that mean?” taeyong speaks. maybe he shouldn’t have, because everyone is looking at him as if he just called the president a bitch to his face or something.

“you’re new here.” felix explains as he finishes his strut down the stairs. he can be seen more clearly now, and his outfit reminds taeyong of someone you knew. he couldn’t remember his name, but it was chan or something. “well, new to me.”

“and?”

“and...” felix crouches to his level. “im the boss. and all of you do what I say. my brother ran this like a crackhouse. i want us to make some real money, therefore you all will be getting cleaned up. there will be people coming in and out, looking at what we have, so try not to act like the druggie you are. thanks.”

“yes sir.” taeyong says, although he has no intentions of respecting this felix cat.

the doorbell rings promptly. the house wasn’t so big that they wouldn’t be able to hear. clearly this felix had plans to change that, but for now he had to settle.

“that’ll be them. look like friends so they won’t be scared. they’re not like us. or, what you will be.”

with that he leaves. everyone is silent as they want to know who exactly is this person. they all expected some rich man with a million connections to be at the door. they hear one voice - an accent is present. he’s laughing, and they hear the sound of them dapping up.

“friend.” the voice says. they must have not seen each other in a long while. “what’s up? how have you been?”

“oh, I’ve never been better.” felix says. “and y/n.”

the sound of your name makes taeyong’s heart stop in his chest. what the? how could you of all people be here? you hated drugs. this was clearly a trap house. this is where taeyong would go to get everything you wanted, but you always refused to go with him. what male had you here?

jaehyun is smiling as he recognizes your name too. taeyong can’t notice though as he is genuinely about to have a panic attack.

“come downstairs will you? since chan told me it was a special occasion, I decided I’d let you two take a look.”

“felix...are you running a trap house?” you joke, not realizing how true your words were.

“not at all, sweets.” he relaxes you. “i just have good shit from my brother that needs to be sold. this is our little secret though.”

“we know.” chan answers for you. “snitches get stitches.”

“and end up in ditches.” felix finishes. “there are people down here, but they’re just chilling. don’t be scared.”

the three of you make your way down to the basement. jaehyun is the first face you recognize. you feel sick, but he didn’t phase you that much.

the black haired boy though, sandwiched between two other guys, makes your trip and fall on the disgusting floor.

it’s him. it’s really him.

why? all you wanted to do was have fun. all you wanted to do was forget him.

you can see in his eyes does he want to explode. but this was his fault. this was all his fault.

to be continued...

#nct #nct 127 #nct imagine #taeyong nct #NCT angst #nct reactions #taeyong series #taeyong angst #taeyong imagine #nct imagines #NCT series #stray kids #stray kids felix #chan stray kids

[virtueangel]

limitless.

chapter one. 

wc: 2,034. original publish date: october 1, 2020.

Winter seems to drag on this year, pushing back Spring farther and farther until it steps off the chessboard of seasons completely. It's early April, but there is still snow piled up on the sidewalks, filling in the cracks of the concrete squares and melting into slush on the smooth surface. John F. Kennedy and Cleopatra walk down the sidewalk now, grasping hands dearly so as not to slip on the melted snow. Cleo is bundled up tightly in a black cardigan, John's varsity letterman jacket draped on top for extra warmth. She huddles close to the boy as she walks, trying to bask in some of the natural body heat wafting off of him. They like to walk in silence -- sometimes it's easier that way. Their questions don't have to be answered if they're never asked. But sometimes, the burden of carrying around the question is greater than the weight of hearing the answer.

"Why don't you ever take me on real dates, John?" Cleo asks in her shrill voice, almost whining.

"I don't know why you'd want me to, Cleo," he replies coolly, still grasping her hand. She wears elegant black gloves which hug her lean fingers fittingly. The cashmere is smooth and inviting against John's palm.

"Because some girls like romance, John."

"I thought you liked making out with me."

"I do!" She relaxes her hand, still holding onto John but not as violently. "But I don't feel like your girlfriend when I'm being shoved into a closet. I just feel like a pair of breasts and an open mouth."

John stares ahead nonchalantly. "That's because you're not my girlfriend, Cleo."

She lets go of his hand completely and scoffs. She shoves her own hands into her pockets -- John's pockets -- and watches her feet on the sidewalk. Her shiny black boots tick against the pavement, her movements slow and even steadier now that she doesn't have the boy's support. "Some girls like being girlfriends, too."

John sighs, shaking his head in exasperation. "We've been over this, Cleo. I don't date, but you like me and you're hot."

Cleo clenches her jaw. "That's a shitty thing to say, JFK. Don't you like me, too?"

JFK shrugs. "I like your ass."

The girl rolls her eyes, quickening her pace to walk in front of John. She slows down again, realising that the bottoms of her new boots are too slippery to risk a pace faster than normal. "Whatever. We're almost to my house anyway."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Cleo lets out a huff before grabbing onto JFK for support again. She wraps her gloved hands around the loop his arm makes as it sticks out of his pocket. "I'm not gonna argue with you when we're right on the verge of a make-out session," she says.

"I thought you didn't want to be used for your body."

She shrugs before giving the shameless answer, "I don't, but you give exceedingly good head."

John F. Kennedy smirks. "Oh, you bet I do."

Cleo blushes, and tries to hide her face from John.

"But I can't today."

“What?” She asks. “Why?”

"Because I've got a lot of homework," he says, knowing it's a half-assed excuse.

Cleopatra turns to him, her eyebrow raised. "You don't do homework, John."

"I have to help Van Gogh today," John explains.

"Van Gogh?" Cleo repeats. John nods. "He needs your help?"

John rolls his eyes impatiently, wondering why Cleo can't seem to get it. Wondering why everything about her is so superficial that she can't understand that he has a best friend; why she isn't the only one who matters. "No, he doesn't need my help, he just doesn't like being alone on Friday nights."

"Neither do I," Cleo protests, batting her eyes desperately. She means the action to come off as flirty, but she knows she's going to lose this fight.

"So call some of your other friends. Abe, Joan-"

"Abe Lincoln and Joan of Arc are both cool enough to have plans on a Friday night," she combats.

JFK smirks. "Surely you won't let them be cooler than you."

Before Cleo can protest, they are walking up her driveway, her hands still wrapped around his arm. John walks her up the three steps to her front stoop, whirling her around so her back is to the door and her face is to him. He holds her gloved hands delicately, pretending to feel bad about blowing off his hot not-girlfriend to go spend time with his emotionally deprived best friend. It does sound depressing and lame when he hears it in his own head, but there's no going back now.

"Call me tonight?" Cleo asks, the slightest hint of a beg in her voice. She tries to hide it again under a flirtatious lilt, but it falls flat for the second time this afternoon. Cleo already knows what JFK is going to say.

"I never call, Cleo. People who are dating call, and I-"

Cleo cuts him off with an exasperated eye roll. "-don't date. I know."

"So why did you ask?"

Cleo shrugs. "I don't know. But I'm going now."

Nonetheless, she steps toward John for her expected kiss. He leans down to give her one, as per their afternoonly routine, but it doesn't bury itself as deep as usual. John keeps his mouth closed, despite Cleo's best efforts to engage him in the endeavour. When she realises her plan isn't going to work, she pulls away and scrambles into her house, swiftly shutting the door behind her to close off her embarrassment from the rest of the world. She has enough to worry about it seeping through the cracks.

***

JFK knocks on his best friend's door nearly ten minutes later, his feet sopping wet in his tennis shoes. He'd made a mistake when dressing that morning. He could see the snow intruding the sidewalk from his bedroom window, but he'd still opted for his sneakers, full of breathable holes and heat-accommodating fabrics. His big toe feels like it could snap off at any moment. He thinks if he were to take off his cotton sock and look at it, his toe would be blackened with the final stages of frostbite.

Vincent Van Gogh answers the door himself, wrapped in a fleece blanket and feet smothered in three layers of sock. Kennedy can't help but feel a little bit jealous, sure his toes are nice and cozy in their thick woollen fortress.

"JFK," Van Gogh greets the boy, standing aside to let him through the door. Van Gogh wonders how Kennedy ever could've noticed him at school; he stands at 5'5” while the varsity cross country runner was 6'1" last time he measured. Van Gogh is often a traffic cone to be tripped over.

"Sorry I'm so late. Cleo was bitching at me," JFK apologises.

"That's okay. I'm used to being alone," Van Gogh shrugs.

"But I know you especially hate Friday nights. You hate when there are sports games because the town gets loud and the drunken yelling echoes through the neighbourhood, bouncing off of the shingles and spinning like tops in your ears -- ear."

Van Gogh scoffs. "Spare me the poetry, Kennedy. You don't need to romanticise my mental illness, okay? It's not fucking fun."

"I thought you liked all that flowery prose -- all that girly shit."

The shorter boy shakes his head, feeling even smaller under Kennedy's scrutiny. "Don't talk down to me. And just because literature is written like a painting doesn't mean it's 'girly'. You like my artwork, don't you?"

"I like the one you did for AP art last year... the self-portrait."

Van Gogh smiles internally, secretly pleased with his best friend's answer. "I never thought I'd get a real compliment out of you, Kennedy."

"I compliment you!" He protests.

Van Gogh shakes his head, still wearing his smile. His lips are like daisies soaked in blood -- full and dripping. "Not without coating it in some condescending insult."

"Whatever, Gogh. You didn't want to be alone, and I'm here. So what now?"

"Well, so long as I'm holding you hostage, you may as well do some homework."

"I don't do homework," JFK reminds him.

Van Gogh smirks. "I know that, Kennedy. I just had to remind you of your morals before you go off and give me an honest compliment again. Weirds me out when you go soft, even for me."

JFK follows Van Gogh to his bedroom. The hallway walls are oddly bare and would go without notice if they hadn't been painted a murky blue. No pictures are hung, which strikes Kennedy as uncomfortably odd every time he visits his best friend's house. JFK's dads have hundreds of pictures of him stuffed into each nook and cranny of their house -- it's striking to see a pair of parents who care so little about documenting their child's early years.

Gogh pushes open the door to his room tentatively, almost as if he's scared there'll be an apparition seated on his bed. He shudders at the thought, trying to shake it off by opening the door all the way. He sits on a chair instead of the bed, nervous to accidentally sit on top of the ghost and give it a perfect chance to tunnel its way up into his organs. JFK notices the boy's shuddering and raises an eyebrow, taking note of the closed window and the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Who knew such a small boy could be so hopeless at keeping warm?

"Cold?" Kennedy asks, and Van Gogh looks up from the spot on his hand where he'd been anxiously picking at a scab. "And don't do that; the skin's almost healed," he adds.

Van Gogh narrows his eyes at the boy on his bed. "Since when do you care whether or not my scabs are healed?"

JFK shrugs, nervous to admit that he feels like he has to care since his friend's parents so obviously don't.

"Sorry I snapped," Van Gogh covers quickly. "Reflex."

Kennedy nods dismissively as if to show that he understands.

A couple seconds tick by, filling the room like a hose in a swimming pool. The time collects in the bedroom, spilling into every corner and fault line crack of the walls. It begins to overflow, and that's when Van Gogh can't stand the silence anymore. He invited Kennedy over so he wouldn't have to drown in stillness. Why can't JFK talk, dammit? Why is he so self-absorbed that he can't carry on a conversation for longer than five minutes at a time?

"Do you wanna read a book?" Van Gogh suggests, but it comes out in an urgent blurt. Maybe that's for the best. It gets Kennedy's attention.

"I don't read books."

Van Gogh rolls his eyes, cheeks burning a violent fire from embarrassment. "That's because you don't have the attention span to," he spits. "I could read it to you."

JFK's head snaps up. Gogh's cheeks darken an even deeper shade of red and he can feel his heartbeat in his face. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Okay," Kennedy says at last. "Read me a bedtime story." His overconfident, annoyingly-flirty tone is back, and Van Gogh smiles in relief. The blood drains from his cheeks and his heartbeat follows, little by little.

He excuses himself from his chair to slide a book off of his shelf. Kennedy lies down on the bed, his head on the pillow and his too-long legs spilling over the edge. "Give me a blanket," he demands, clearly serious about the "bedtime" thing. Van Gogh rolls his eyes, but fishes a blanket out of his bottom dresser drawer and throws it over to Kennedy nonetheless. JFK has just finished unfolding the blanket and throwing it over himself when Van Gogh settles back into his chair, lifting the cover of the book with his long fingers gingerly. His nails grow out past his fingertips which is normally a girlish look, but Kennedy can't help but wash his eyes over the boy's hands anyway. It doesn't look girlish on Van Gogh. Nothing looks girlish on Van Gogh.

#jfgogh #jfk clone high #clone high #van gogh clone high #fanfiction #van gogh x jfk

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt 206

206

Keith did not enjoy seeing Lotor again. He didn’t think it possible that the amount of annoyance he felt for the man was actual, until he saw his face again. Hair pulled back. Ridiculous purple and blue suit. Ridiculous blue leather shoes. One look at him and he wanted to kill Lotor. He wanted to kill him, but for a bastard, he was a nimble bastard.

Laying on the floor of the training room, Keith’s chest heaved as he fought to catch his breath. They were “playing” tag. Coran recording each session to monitor Keith’s growth. So far the only thing that had grown with these stupid session was Keith’s bank account. He couldn’t catch Lotor, and he couldn’t turn into a damn werewolf. He could catch up to Lotor, then as if by magic, Lotor would be out of his grasp again. Surely if Keith was meant to learning how to live, move, and think, like a werewolf, a werewolf teacher would have been better? Matt had been in a huff over someone else teaching him, but he didn’t have time between being head over heels for Rieva and working at Hunk’s dad’s garage. Rieva had the time, but didn’t have the right words. She’d tried to talk him through grasping his ego and letting the shift happen. It hadn’t happened.

“Get up. Let’s go again”

Rolling his eyes at Lotor, Lotor could go again. He could go and keep going. Keith might even drag himself up off the floor to get the door for Lotor on the way out

“Fuck off. You stick and you make a lousy partner”

Lance smelled like “good death”. Lotor smelt like fish left in the sun to rot in a plastic bag, then someone had come along and poked a hole in it

“The little werewolf all out of bark. Maybe I’ll take it on myself to show Lance how nice it is to be around a fellow vampire rather than a flea riddled mongrel”

Snarling at Lotor, Keith wished he didn’t bite every time Lotor baited him. The vampire had asked how Lance was, Keith had told promised him that he’d kill him if ever did again. Forcing himself up, the werewolf reminded himself that this was all for Lance and buying Lance the engagement ring of his dreams. The physical exercise bit felt good, his body felt good for now active he’d been, yet Lotor couldn’t let him have that... Noooo. He was “too slow”. He couldn’t go any faster than the limits he’d been hitting. He gladly would if he could. Lotor’s throat would feel so nice between his teeth. He, and his ego, hated Lotor with so much passion that Keith truly expected his inner wolf to break free.

“It’s obvious to anyone who looks at you that you’re nothing more than a rotting sack of meat and bones. We should have killed you when we had the chance”

Lotor laughed, Keith not amused as he’d been deathly serious. His nails long, teeth extended, and he knew he was pulling his “scary face”

“You wound me, Keith. Do you really hate me, or are you simply jealous that I could snatch your life away before you even blinked”

“A piece of shit like you who values nothing could never understand”

“Says the turned runt who can’t lay a finger on me. I must say, you are lacking in every single point in your personality. You must be a hell of a fuck, for I no other reason for Lance to keep his pet dog around”

Lotor could rile him up, but the moment he mentioned Lance, he crossed the damn line. Snarling, he locked his gaze on Lotor, chest heaving as rage threatened to boil his blood

“I’m going kill you. I’m going to sink my teeth into your throat and enjoy the blood running down my throat”

“You have to catch me first”

*

Lance scrubbed his face tiredly as he watched Keith and Lotor on the camera feed. The pair were as bad as each other, and reminded him painfully of his training with Lotor. Lotor was an expert at exploiting a persons weakness

“Have they been like this for the whole week?”

“Indeed they have, my boy. Lotor refuses to rein his ego in, constantly provoking Keith until he loses his cool”

“Keith’s gotta learn how to control himself, I’m getting tired of him coming home in a bad mood”

Keith didn’t know Lance had come to pick him up. The vampire escaping Rieva’s wrath and fussing. Feeling like doing some yoga and light stretching, she’d scared the crap out of him by yelling “boo!”. As a result he’d bitten through his tongue and smacked his face on the coffee table as he lost his balance. The whole reason he’d been practicing so close to the coffee table was so if he lost his balance he had something to grab for. Spending half an hour patching him back, she’d shifted into talking about his birthing plans and lectured him for sleeping too much during the day. He didn’t have birthing plans. He left that for Coran. If he went into labour, he went into labour. Keith would take him to VOLTRON, where Coran would perform the Caesarian. He loved Rieva, but he’d also loved stretching in near privacy because his body felt so stiff from sleeping all sorts of odd hours, not that he could help it. Now he’d not only been interrupted, and felt highly embarrassed being sprung in yoga pants and an ill fitting shirt, but was slightly slurring as his tongue was taking forever to heal its damn self, almost like his stupid arm that’d taken a whole stupid week to fix itself.

“Shall I have a word with Lotor? I’m quite sure he’d stop antagonising Keith if I were to ask”

Allura had the vampire shaking his head

“Nah. This is something they have to work out. Keith’s holding back too much. I can see him thinking. He’s thinking he wants blood, but the good part of him is conflicted about going too far and potentially hurting Lotor”

Crossing her arms, Allura wore a heavy frown that didn’t suit her beautiful face

“I’m more worried about Lotor hurting him. I understand he needs to provoke Keith, yet he is quite disrespectful”

“Keith has to learn how to cope with it. It’s no good if he goes up against a group of vampires and finds himself overwhelmed. I don’t like it, and I’m not fond of Lotor’s methods, but this is for Keith’s sake. I wish I could go down there and tell him to give it his all”

Coran and Allura knew he’d snuck out, Allura giggling as she covered her mouth

“Afraid you’ll be in trouble for running away?”

“Hey, I know I’m going to be in trouble. Keith’s very protective of me and if he knew Rieva upset me, he’d probably try to throw her out the house”

He’d left in tears. Well, he’d held his tears in until he was squashed into his car, then burst into tears over not having a birthing plan

“That’s no good. If he’s not getting along with them, that makes for a stressful situation”

If they talked to Lotor and gave Keith a win, he’d be devastated by the fakeness. Lance naturally wanted Keith to win, but he believed his fiancé and knew Keith would work his arse off harder after each defeat...

“That’s not the problem. He’s cranky over Lotor beating him day after day. We both get on with Matt and Rieva, even if Matt keeps pushing Keith’s buttons. Rieva had to stop them from murdering each other last night. Matt cheated on the game they were playing together and nearly got the controller embedded in his head for it”

Allura’s giggle turned into a proper laugh. She could laugh it up as she hadn’t been there

“Trust me, it’s not that funny. Matt tackled him on the sofa and I swear they nearly broke it. Rieva put Matt in a time out and Keith refused to talk about it when we went to bed”

Coran wiped an imaginary tear from his right eye, gushing as he did

“I think it’s lovely that you young folk get along so well. Perhaps I should give Keith the day off? I don’t want to upset him so much that he doesn’t return to active duty. He’s grown so much. Oh, he’ll make such a wonderful father to the twins...”

Great. His family were weirdos. He didn’t need Coran gushing over Keith, his ego was happy enough to do that about their mate as it was... Keith was strong and brave, that knowledge was what kept him from marching down there and going Lotor for the hurtful things he was saying

“Coran, that has nothing to do with what’s happening now. Isn’t there any way you can get Keith to shift that’s actually helpful? Rieva tried to help and he had no luck there”

“No. I can manipulate his quintessence, but I would prefer not to. Keith needs to focus on finding those feelings that’ll trigger that change in him for himself. How has been after his second moon?”

Lance wasn’t sure there was much of a difference after the second moon seeing Keith had made such a big stride in learning he could be himself around Lance. His fiancé never violent or threatening towards him, just frustrated and cranky to Matt and Rieva... Mostly Matt, and mostly deserved at the time. Matt and Rieva understood it was ego related, and weren’t actually able to help Keith calm it back down

“You’ve seen him more than I have. He’s here from 9am to 4pm every day. All we’ve got time for when he gets home is dinner, snuggles on the sofa, then bed early because he’s worn out. The first thing he does when he gets home is take a shower. He thinks it helps lessens Lotor’s scent, but it doesn’t do much when the scents on his clothes and I’m the one who puts the washing on. I made the mistake of mentioning I could smell Lotor and it really upset his ego”

Coran hummed. Lance mentally agreed. Humming summed things up perfect, as if these sessions didn’t start improving, they’d have to look at other options. Lance knew if Keith could just land that one hit, his confidence would skyrocket and he’d start believing in himself again.

Giving Keith another half an hour, Lance couldn’t let the pair of them go on any longer. Keith kept lashing out, and Lotor’s laughing had gotten on his nerves. Sometimes a vampire had to take matters into his own hands. Pushing his chair, back Lance bit down a groan a he pushed himself up. Coran shifted back, the fae raising an eyebrow at his actions

“Lance?”

“I’m going to go talk with Keith”

“My boy, I hardly think now’s a good time. I think it best we wait until these two tire fire the day”

“That’s why now is the perfect time. I just remembered something that I think is going to help Keith and I want to see if I’m right”

“You should let me go in first...”

Coran worried too much

“Coran, it’ll be fine. If Lotor tries something, Keith will lose it. Lotor will know that the moment he sees me, and this can’t wait”

“Still, it’s better to be safe that sorry”

“I’ll be okay. This is something I have to tell Keith properly and alone. Just keep watching over them”

Waddling his pregnant arse down to the training room, Lance knocked before he opened the door. Lotor casually leaning on one of the training dummies across from Keith. Their egos ridiculously strong, but he wasn’t going to back down now that he’d cured his own stupidness over the situation. Snarling at him, Keith needed a few moments to register him before his body slumped

“Babe?”

“Sorry to interrupt, Keith, I need to borrow you for a moment”

His fiancé sounded frustrated as he muttered

“We’re pretty much fucking done here...”

“Don’t. Just come out here for a moment. Lotor, give us a few minutes then I’ll send Keith back in”

Following him out into the hall, Keith threw himself to lean against the wall as Lance shut the door behind him

“What are you doing here?”

“Escaping Rieva and her birthing plans”

“So I suppose you saw how badly I was doing?”

“It wasn’t that you were doing bad... Look, I’m an idiot. I didn’t think about it, then I remembered something important”

Keith seemed pretty disinterested in this “important something”, gesturing for him to continue

“Well, watching you two, it reminded me what it was like to fight Matt”

Rolling his eyes at him, Keith kept with the muttering

“Matt was a proper wolf, not like me”

“You are a proper wolf. But that’s the thing. You saw how hard it was at first for us to get along comfortably until we had that fight. It made me think about how I felt. Your ego doesn’t respect Lotor because he doesn’t respect you”

“Tell me something I don’t know”

“Well, it’s basically because you’re holding back. I didn’t hold back when I fought Matt, and he didn’t hold back either. You need to stop holding yourself back”

“Thanks, Sherlock. No fucking shit”

Nope. Keith was not going to get under his skin

“When you go back in there, you have to stop seeing Lotor as a person. He’s not. Matt tore me to shreds, but I healed right up. Remember? I know it scared the shit out of you to see what it was like, and I think that’s part of what’s holding you back. You’re scared you’re going to hurt Lotor, even if it’s subconsciously, the thought is still there. You’re thinking too much like a human. Think of him as your pray. The hunter become the hunted. You are nine-hundred-and-fifty-zillion times the man he’ll ever be. You have the skills. You have the training. I know you’re scared of yourself because I have moments when I’m scared of myself”

Keith threw his hands up

“I’m not like you, babe. I don’t know how to cope with this. I’m sorry, but turning me into a wolf was wasted on me. I’m useless”

Lance snapped hard

“Keith Kogane, you are not useless. You’ve had two fucking moons and you’ve already settled into living with a vampire for a lover. God. I want to shake you right now. I felt how badly your egos were clashing in there. You were an absolute fucking bad arse hunter before you turned. You need to have faith in yourself”

“Yeah, and what if I can’t fucking turn back from being a wolf?!”

“You will because I know you will. Matt and I worked things out because our egos accepted each other as pretty much being mutual bad arses. Lotor, is Lotor. Everything he’s riling you up with is shit. You are my fucking mate, and I love you. When you go back in there, remember that you’re top dog. The only vampire who’ll ever now down to you is me. The only way to get Lotor to respect you is to make him bleed. It’s not pleasant but that’s how our stupid egos work. You can do this. You can do this because I know for a fact you can”

“And what if I take it too far?”

“Coran will stop things before that happens. Babe, we can’t help or protect people from the bad things if you can’t get out of your own head. You’re amazing. You’re amazing and I love you. Even if Lotor kicks your arse, we’ll watch it over and over and we’ll figure out where you need to make adjustments. Even if he makes me cry because you’re bleeding, I‘ll be there to patch you up. You’ve got this, and I’ve got you”

Shuffling over to him, Keith wrapped his arms around him

“You’re the amazing one. It’s nothing like how it was when you fought with him”

“That’s because I’m older than you. But you have a secret a weapon that he doesn’t. You have me on your side. Your very pregnant me”

“I feel like I’m back at the beginning again”

“Because you are. That’s not a bad thing. You haven’t picked up a lifetime of bad habits. Your stances are sloppy and your feet are too far apart. Raise your head and be confident. Then, once you’ve won, you can buy me dinner”

“I’m sorry I’m so weak”

“Aw, baby. No. You’re not weak. I was traumatised for a very long time after my turn. But when facing someone like Lotor, you can let that last little bit of fear fuck right off. You’re a werewolf. You’re my werewolf. Remember all that shit he used to go on about, about the “blood of kings”? What’s so good about it? When you fight, you’re fighting to protect families like ours. I’ve got your back”

“You always encourage me... I don’t deserve it”

“You’re always encouraging me too. You encourage me to go to bed. You encourage me to stop scrubbing at the grout in the kitchen...”

Keith snorted at him, the sniffled. His poor fiancé had shocking self esteem since his turn

“I don’t think you’re using that word right. And why do you have a lisp?”

“I bit my tongue. Rieva scared the crap out of me when I was doing my yoga in peace. I don’t know if that was better or worse than her insisting I need a birth plan”

“I thought the plan was that if you went into labour we came here?”

“I know right?! But nooo. Apparently wolves do it different? Anyway, I’m going to go back up there, and I’m going to be cheering you on”

“I don’t...”

“Nope. No. Nooo. No bad mouthing. That’s like insulting my ego and my choice in men. I refuse to be anything but proud of you”

“I’m proud of you too... but please don’t ever go that close to Lotor again. Not when we’re... training”

“For you, I won’t. Now go get him!”

*

Slipping back into the training room, Keith felt his ego flare at the feel of Lotor’s. Lotor was standing there checking his phone, giving Keith a sideways glance as if his presence was worthless. Lance had it all figured out. Turning into a wolf terrified him. He didn’t know if he’d be able to control himself, or how to move his body once he shifted. He didn’t know if he’d lose his mind and go Lotor with dire consequences he’d have to live with. Lance was also right. He couldn’t not draw on his wolf side if it meant protecting people. Him being cowardly could cost Curtis and Shiro their lives.

“Everything okay?”

The way Lotor asked with obvious curiosity instantly got under his skin. Taking a deep breath, Keith nodded. He had Lance on his side. His fiancé hadn’t cared about Lotor. He’d barely glanced his way when he’d opened the door to the training room, and that’d done wonders for Keith’s twinges of jealousy. Out of the two of them, Lance had chosen him all over again. He now got what Lance meant. There’d been a little respect between him and Matt, allowing them to fight as equals. He didn’t see Lotor as his equal so he’d been fighting on his back foot, half a step behind. Wounds would heal. This was training and not real life. He could afford to test his limits because neither he nor Lotor had to currently worry about the consequences of them going all out.

“Fine. Nothing for you to worry about”

And a lot less for him to worry about. Lance was watching over him. He’d stop him before he fucked up beyond repair. Lotor didn’t respect him... it pained Keith to admit he needed to show more respect towards the vampire and treat training much more seriously than he’d let himself previous

“Are you sure? Lance seemed positively ready to burst on the spot”

“What do you except? He’s heavily pregnant with our twins. Are we going to do this or are you too busy playing on your phone?”

Lotor sighed at him

“We’ve spent hours accomplishing nothing. Perhaps it’s time you tucked your tail between you legs and trotted back home? I doubt that wolf inside you is anything more than a yapping puppy”

Keith could feel his wolf... he could feel it and that was the whole problem. Him not being himself. He didn’t want to be that kind of person. He was too scared Lance would reject him for letting his wolf out. But Lance had soothed him, told him to go for it, he hadn’t been very talkative at home thanks to all of this weighing on his mind. He was working through his fears, but needed to grow sure of himself again. It felt like he had to rebuild himself bit by bit ever since he’d woken up. He’d never admit to Lance that he wanted to give up almost every single day, even with all the love and support poured on him.

“You want to see my wolf?”

“Isn’t that the whole reason we’ve been tasked with this ridiculous endeavour?”

“Remember you asked for it”

“I’ll remember that when I’m wiping the floor with this human form of yours”

*

Shuffling back into the monitoring room, Lance let out a sigh of deep relief to be off his feet the moment his butt hit the chair. He could totally go for a nap right now, but had to stay awake. He had to see what Keith could do, and if his words had helped in any way

“Everything okay, my sweet boy?”

“Just had to remind Keith of something. Did I miss anything?”

“Only Keith watching Lotor as he taunts him”

Coran sounded annoyed with Lotor. Lance was as annoyed, but egos were like that. The way the room had felt left him feeling grimy, egos so thick he could taste it on his tongue. Any longer in the space he would have fallen to his knees with his head bowed and in labour. His stomach cramping from the few moments of intense pressure, not that he’d let it show. Not that his ego would let it show. They were a vampire, and Lotor was no otherworldly demon.

Coming up behind him, Allura looped her arms around him

“How do you feel?”

Patting Allura’s arm, Lance rubbed his cheek against hers. He still hadn’t replied to Veronica. He really needed to reply to Veronica

“Good. Allura, I should probably warned you that I told Keith to stop holding himself back... He was thinking too much as a human and not enough as a werewolf”

Allura kissed his cheek. His ego didn’t want to be touched by anyone other than Keith, but he’d never turn Allura away. She knew is as she quickly drew back

“I’m not surprised. Keith has quite a soft heart. I do hope Lotor doesn’t hurt him”

“If Lotor doesn’t hurt him, then he didn’t listen to me. Watching them reminded me of when Matt and I fought to settle our egos. Neither of them want to acknowledge the other out of personal pride. And Keith’s scared of losing himself to his wolf. We should be in for something good... well, not that I want Keith hurt, but you know”

“We do love stubborn men, don’t we? Perhaps we should get some popcorn as we watch them make fools of themselves?”

“Allura, sister from another mister, I couldn’t agree more”

Coran sent himself for snacks, being pregnant had its perks as all he had to do was fake the idea of leaving VOLTRON to retrieve them and Coran was quick on his case about how he’d go while Lance rested. Lance felt a little bad, for a few moments, before he was beaming at the screen in front of him. Carefully Keith had watched Lotor. They’d circled each other, then Keith had torn his shirt off. Damn if his fiancé wasn’t the hottest man on Earth, Allura copping a snarl at her low “oh my”. Rolling his neck, there was bloodlust in Keith’s eyes. His claws extending further, initialling resisting before shifting before their eyes.

Lotor packed himself. Well, Lance liked to think he did as Keith’s huge wolf form lunged for him. God knew Lance swooned on the spot. The power and speed well and truly befitting the man he loved and prided himself on being the mate of

“He’s certainly larger than I believed”

“You should see him in real life. He’s so fluffy and soft...”

“Coran had said he acted rather tame”

“Mhmm. Unless I’m threatened... Those jaws of his are no joke. My arm’s only just regained full function, which was a pain in the arse to hide from him”

“He bit you?”

“Only a little. Pidge was watching movies with me and he got startled by her”

“Shouldn’t you have healed?”

Ugh. Tell him about. Memory loss. Napping all day. His arm and his tongue... his hips... He had the utmost respect for pregnant people who were able to work through everything right until the end of the their pregnancy

“I can only guess everything I’ve got is going to the twins”

“Lance, you can’t be so careless with your body. We would all be devastated should something happen to you”

“I’m fine, Allura. I’ll be fine. It’s only a little longer and they’ll be here”

“Perhaps you should come stay here until you give birth? You could share my space... and we could have movie nights whenever you wished. Do each other’s hair. Paint our nails”

That sounded so damn tempting

“Thanks for the offer, but honestly, being home feels best. And Keith needs the space”

“I just don’t want you to feel like you’re alone...”

“I’m not. Besides, I know I always have you and Coran right here”

“Don’t you ever forget that. You’re like a brother to me...”

“And you’re like a sister to me. I can put up with some discomfort for a little while longer. It’s all going to be worth it when we finally get to meet them”

“I hope you know Allura is a fine name”

Lance chuckled

“I do. I’m sorry to tell you, but out of fairness to all our friends, we’re not going with your names. I love each and every one of you, and could never replace any of you. No. I have one name in mind, but we’ll wait and see”

“Alfor’s also a good name. So is Alfie...”

“And one day, when you have a child of your own, what are you going to do when I’ve stolen your name?”

Allura sighed

“I must admit, I hadn’t thought of that”

“You’ll be a great mum. But even if you don’t have kids, you’ll be a great aunty to the twins...”

“Oh, I’m going to spoil them rotten. We’re all so happy for you and Keith”

“I know... and speaking of Keith, I think he’s got Lotor on the run”

Pulling a well used trick, Lotor had scaled the wall and was now frowning down on Keith who was patiently watching his every move. Lance didn’t know if Keith would remember shifting, but he sure as heck was going to brag about it when they got home. His fiancé was best boy. He just needed to believe in himself the way Lance did.

#once bitten twice stupid #oncebittentwicestupid #ashratherose

[artbyfuji]

R,,,Reincarnation AU; Summer and Raven keep meeting each other (and falling in love ofc lmao) everytime. 🏃

I think my ass just wrote a whole fic up in here lol:

1341

You were the heir to the throne. I was assigned as your personal guard. You hated this life, your family formed you into the perfect being. The smartest. The wisest. The best fighter. But you hated it. They saw you as an object. Just like the subjects of their kingdom. They cared only for status, willing to sacrifice them all in a moments notice. You said I was the first person to view you as something more than a name. More than just the heir to the Rose Kingdom. One day in the royal library, you suggested it. “Let’s run away.” You showed me an old map of the castle, secret tunnels leading outside of the kingdom. 

I was loyal to the kingdom that gave me a chance to be something. But my loyalty to them couldn’t compare to my loyalty to you. We ran away. Crept through the tunnels and fled as far as our legs would take us. We were free, just the two of us, and in that moment, we shared a kiss. It was just us for maybe a year, but forces beyond our control wanted to break us apart. Enemy kingdoms were on the hunt for us, if you were killed it would benefit them immensely. They found us in the cottage we built by the river, it was two assassins intent to slaughter us. We fought but you were always stronger than me, I never understood why they would make me your guard if you could so easily defend yourself. Perhaps it was so I could take the fall in your stead. Maybe that’s what your family viewed me as, not a person, just a shield.

I was over powered, laying by the river bed bleeding out, wouldn’t make it much farther. The assassin grinned as he scraped his blade along the ground. He charged to stab me, but instead of hitting me…. the blade pierced right through your abdomen. I never noticed that you killed the assassins partner, never noticed you jumping into his path. Until it was too late. He pulled the blade from you, and the sound you made hurt me more than these wounds ever could have. But with the last of your strength you killed him, sliced his throat while he was mid swing. You then limped over and laid down beside me. We stared up at the sky, stars were visible and the dusk began to slip away. The sound of the river flowing drowned out our weak breaths.

Your bloodied hand grabbed for mine squeezing it as tight you could manage. Then we turned to look at each other, your lone silver eye piercing me to my core. Your smile barely masked the pained emotions creeping under the surface. I wanted to be angry with you. for taking the blade for me. But some reason, I felt nothing…. I was just lost in your presence. You looked me in the eyes and said it “we’ll find each other again.” It was a statement like you were positive this wouldn’t be the end of our story. I smiled… because I believed you. We both looked at the sky again. Watched the stars shine in the dark blue night sky.

Until it was black that consumed us both.

1674

Seeing you again shocked me to my core. We lived in the same town, I worked as a carpenter with my brother. You were an apprentice to a tailor. You wandered into our shop in hopes of getting a stool repaired. We looked each other in the eyes and just knew… knew of our past lives, of our struggles. Of our promise. We were finally together again. “I didn’t want to lose you again,” I said as we held each other in a tight embrace. “I didn’t want to lose you again,” I said as our lips pressed together for the first time, under that oak tree outside of town. “I didn’t want lose you again,” I said as we laid in the same bed, clothes long abandoned on the floor. “I wouldn’t lose you again,” I said as knelt in front of you holding a ring up. You laughed, and confusion flooded my mind, until you knelt down and showed me the ring you were hiding….. it made our love grow that much more.

We were set to be wed. We decided on late spring, the ceremony would be held on that cliff side you loved so much. The way the sky looked at sunset was a true marvel, with brilliant hues of orange and purple that would dance across the sky. Was this the happiness we deserved in our past lives? I remember regretting asking myself that. Because two months before our wedding, I fell ill. double pneumonia, they said i should cherish the days I have left because it wouldn’t be many. 

It was the eve of our would-be wedding when my body lost its battle. You sat beside the bed everyday soothing my pain. But this day was different, I could barely keep my eyes open, I knew the end was coming, and maybe you did too. Because you reached for my hand and squeezed it tight. You delicately brushed hair away from my eyes and through ragged breaths, I parted them as best I could. your lone silver eye piercing me to my core. It felt familiar. You smiled, leaned down and pressed a kiss against my forehead.

I spoke one final request. “Lay beside me.” I knew you wouldn’t deny it. You got up and walked around the bed, it dipped to my right. You lifted my head and placed it against your chest. Your shirt was soft against my sallow skin. You cradled my weak form. That’s when you whispered it. “We’ll find each other again.” I believed you. I closed my eyes and listened to your heartbeat.

Until i didn’t have the strength to even do that.

1856

Maybe the frustration of how unfairly my life played out in my last incarnation is what caused me to pick such a violent path in the new one. My brother and I were bandits. Robbing train cars and stage coaches to make a living in this cruel world. When we met again I never expected to be looking down the barrel of your gun. It seems you too chose a dangerous path in your new life. You were the leader of a group of train robbers Ivory Rose, and we both had the same idea of robbing a train delivering gold. 

My brother and I joined your group. We took on whatever the world threw at us guns blazing. It was such a thrill, the rush of adrenaline as we dodged bullets together. I remember every close call we had, how the thrill of survival would sometimes turn to lust, how our bodies would meld together whenever we shared a bed in a heady mix of sweat and arousal. This life wasn’t going to end in a happily ever after. But we didn’t really care. We were just happy to find each other again.

Our dangerous life caught up to us. Wanted posters plastered in every town. wanted dead or alive. We stole from one too many of the wrong people and the Pinkertons we encountered chose “dead”. They trapped us in an abandoned lumber factory. They wouldn’t leave until they knew we were dead. You laughed as you reloaded your guns counted how many bullets you had left. I did the same, we both knew we wouldn’t make it far, but we weren’t ones to cower in fear. Everyone outside ceased fire for a moment, and if felt like the world ceased spinning for a moment, maybe giving us one last chance to say goodbye. We used that time to look each other in the eyes, your lone silver eye piercing my very core. We shared a kiss. Your lips burned like fire against mine. You said those words again. “We’ll find each other again.” I believed you. We ran out into gun fire. I can’t say I remember much after that.

But i’m sure you lasted just a bit longer than me.

1915

Our time together lasted long this time. It was the turn of the century when we met, we were just children, I was 5 you were 6. And we became close friends. “Inseparable,” as everyone in town liked to call it. I remember all the days we spent under that weeping willow just outside of town. Picking flowers, or blowing dandelions in the wind. Sometimes I wished for simple things. Money to buy a pastry from the bakery, or a pair of shoes I saw the shoemaker putting on display. But in my teenage years I almost always found myself asking the same question. “Please let her love me back.” 

I sometimes wondered if you wished the same thing. A few years later, my wish came true and we chose to be more than friends. I was 20 and you were 21 when we shared a kiss. I would never forget how soft your lips felt against mine. But things were soon going to test our love.

In 1914 the great war began. In 1915 it was right outside our town.

Our love was strong even as air crafts flew over our town dropping bombs. Our love was strong even as we stood in the middle of destruction. Our love was so strong when enemy soldiers grabbed us and forced us to kneel down with other survivors. They shot down the line killing everyone until it was just the two of us left. It was so easy to see what we meant to each other so the leader of the group played a game. A fucking game. “Eenie” the barrel of his gun pointed to you. “Meenie” it pointed to me. “Miney” back to you. He stretched it on and on and ON until he said the final “moe” and the barrel landed on you. 

I remember screaming. Remember him tell the other soldiers to hold me down. I was scared but you just smiled. You looked towards me and just smiled. Your lone silver eye piercing my very core. That gaze, that beautiful gaze, it always had a way of erasing my fears. That’s when you said it “we’ll find each other again.” I believed you. I had to believe you. I would always believe you.

You died first. And the last thing I remember was how wrong it felt.

1982

I was far older than you this time. The more decades that passed, the more convinced I was that I would never find you again. I sat in the gardens of the hospital, how curious it is knowing that you’ll die. They gave me three months to live. I craved your presence. What would you look like? Did you dying first in the last life break the chain? Would i never see you again? Would I be born again over and over cursed to never find you? Lost in my thoughts, a ball rolled towards me. Almost didn’t realize it at first but I could never forget that silver gaze. The child that came to retrieve the ball…. was you. Eight years old and just as sick as me. Was the universe laughing at us? Trying to finally separate us for good? For weeks we talked to each other. Right here in the gardens. You had the memories of past lives, but you were so young and you couldn’t understand what they meant. You called them “sad thoughts” memories of how you died in past lives would turn up in your dreams and it scared you. But you said once we met, they stopped. I enjoyed your company, but i hope you could forgive me for wondering what our time together would be like had we been the same age.

I remember always wondering how you died in our second lifetime. But maybe its better that I never asked.

One day you looked nervous. I asked what was wrong. You said you had a surgery in a few days, the doctors told you it would help your heart. I would grab your hand and squeeze, it was about the only thing I could manage to do for you in this lifetime. You looked up to me, your silver eyes pierced my very core, it was the first time I saw you without an eyepatch, there was such an innocence to them. I smiled and told you to everything would be okay…. and you believed me. 

A few days later I asked some nurses about you, about the child in Room 207. The somber looks on their face told me everything I needed to know. You died first again.

And this time you never said that we’ll find each other again.

2004

I sit in these college classes everyday. Lessons these professors teach barely process in my mind. In my philosophy class I always look down at the woman with dark red hair tied in a half bun, her eye patch, her breathtaking silver gaze. We pass each other in the halls, on campus. Her dorm is right next to mine.

Sometime’s when I pull up on my motorcycle at my spot on the campus parking lot, she is there. Talking with a friend. Some guy with blond hair. The first time we met she admired the paint job on my bike. She attempted to introduce herself. “By the way my name is-”

“Summer.” I said. Was I smiling? I think so. But I remember concern clouding my mind when she looked confused.

“How’d you know? Have we met before?”

I remember you. I remember all your past lives. I remember that child with the ball. The woman knelt in front of the barrel of a gun. The train robber that took on gun fire. The tailor’s apprentice. The heir to the Rose Kingdom. 

So why don’t you remember me?

#this really is a whole fic lol #rosebird #i dont like first person POV but thats the only way this was gonna work lol #au ideas #reincarnation au #i like it as you can tell #asks

[whumpy-tales-and-thoughts]

Hello oo! May I request "fainting " for the bthb please ?

Thank you for your request and support!! I hope this matches your expectations!! <3 

Words: 1.639

Taglist: @mnmlover2002 

TW: Illness, non con touching/ thoughts, manipulation, left out in the cold. 

****

  It started as sore throat, something Leo was getting used to, what with all the screaming. There was a heavy rainfall the day before, and he’d not pleased Marcus enough for him to leave him alone, so he found it funny to see whether his shouting could be louder than the rain. His whip wound hurt when he sank himself in a hot bath later that night, but he still woke up sore and in pain and he felt kind of weird, but he chose to ignore that. It had been around two months since he had been brought here. Feeling weird was routine by now.

  Marcus knocked on the door, and he pretended to be asleep. He was up later than he’d thought, if Marcus had to come upstairs himself and wake him. He covered himself up before the door creaked open.

  “Good morning baby,” the man’s mellow voice reached his ears, and he rolled his eyes underneath his eyelids. Leo flinched when Marcus placed his hand on his shoulder. “So, you’re awake”, he said, unamused, and pulled the blanket off of Leo’s head.

  “Good morning,”, he said, his voice hoarse. “I just wanted to sleep more”.

  “Too bad you don’t get to choose in here, huh”.

  Leo only pressed the pillow against his ear.

  “I don’t like you today, you’re too irritable”.

  “I don’t like you any day”, he replied tiredly and tried to resist when Marcus grabbed him by the arm, but found he didn’t have enough strength for that.

  Marcus practically pulled him to his feet, and Leo felt the need to sit down again, his vision dark with a dizzy spell. It had been a while since he’d had one of those. “You might want to buy me some iron supplements”, he said, putting on his shirt, turning his back to Marcus’ stare. He never hid that look of his, and it made Leo feel more unsafe than ever. He changed into his usual clothes as soon as humanely possible.

  “Come, let’s go have breakfast”, he smiled, taking his hand and leading him down the stairs. It was unusually difficult to trot them down, even though his legs weren’t injured. His head felt heavy on his shoulders, heavier than the rest of his body. He paid it no mind once more.

  Leo didn’t eat a lot of the French toast Marcus had made; his appetite was lacking. Marcus kept staring at him funny, and Leo really wasn’t up for his games today.

  Marcus was annoyed. He didn’t like it when Leo was being unsocial; he thought it more as him being ungrateful, being resentful and rejecting him, his owner, his boyfriend -although in the making. Taking a deep breath, he stood up, banging his fists on the wood of the table. Leo flinched, caught off guard.

  “I’ve been rough with you, I’ve hurt you, I’ve punished you and you still don’t get how you’re meant to act? What else do you want me to do, hm?” he walked towards the smaller man with loud, heavy steps, which were enough to pin him in place by now. He laughed. “Look at you. I’ve done nothing more than come near you, and you’re freezing up. You know I can hurt you. And you still choose to act like this? I feed you, I let you roam free, and all I get back is disobedience.” He reached down, grabbed Leo’s chin rather violently and smiled at him. He noticed his face was rather red. “Look at you, blushing. You’re so cute, so pretty, my sweet Leo. Don’t make me hurt you so often”.

  Leo averted his eyes. He was, most definitely, scared. But he didn’t want to be hurt, not today, not tomorrow, not ever again. He grimaced on his comment. Hearing he was pretty was getting revolting and each passing day, he hated himself in the mirror more and more.

  Marcus reached for the butter knife by Leo’s plate, while the younger wasn’t watching. Tilting his hand -and with that motion, Leo’s chin- towards his face, he leaned to plant a kiss to his forehead, smiling all the while. As Leo’s attention was diverted to the man, he jabbed the knife into the hand Leo had placed on the table. It was a swift motion, which earned him a quick reaction. Leo pulled his head away as he screamed and groaned in pain, using his other hand to remove the utensil.

  He brought his hand close to his chest, staining his gray t-shirt with blood. His body felt extremely hot now, and he was sweating. Probably from the shock of the pain, he thought amongst other thoughts of agony. “What the hell was that for?!” he yelled, tears prickling the corners of his eyes.

  “It was just to bring your attention back to me, love. See, now you’re focused only on me”.

  “Yeah, you and the pain in my hand which you fucking stabbed!”

  As he was getting angrier, he was also getting dizzier. His ears had begun ringing, as well. This wasn’t good, not at all. He took a deep breath, calming his inner voice, which was screaming at him to turn on his panic mode.

  “Let me help you patch it up, lovely”, Marcus offered, but Leo slapped his hand away.

  “I think you did enough”.

  Those were not the words Marcus wanted to hear. He grabbed him by the arm, using every bit of his strength and, basically dragged him to the front door. Leo was stumbling, his legs weren’t listening to his dazed thoughts. Hit by the heavy raindrops, Marcus brought Leo to the wooden storage by the house, and tied him to the tall, wooden pole in front of its door.

  “Stay here for a while, why don’t you, dear. It’ll be nice for you to reflect on your actions, once in a while.”

  Leo struggled at first, he always did. But today he couldn’t bring his body to cooperate with his scrambled thoughts. He was cold and weak and scared. His hand hurt, and so did his head, and his ears were buzzing and he was dizzy and suddenly, he felt like a little child again. He felt as if someone had taken his comfort blanket away from him. He was alone, in the rain, with his only savior, a sadistic serial killer who claimed to love him. This was all horrible and horrifying, and he didn’t know why he still struggled against Marcus. He knew there was no way out; he knew he couldn’t earn anything but pain by going against him. His hands were bound behind him. He couldn’t bury his face in them, so he brought his knees near his head and settled with that, for a while, as he was crying.

  He let out a shuddering sigh. He was so cold but felt so warm. It was a weird, disgusting feeling. He was shivering, though; he knew that much. He had been staring at the drifting clouds for what he thought was a few minutes now, but Marcus had come to get him, so it must have been longer than that. He unlocked his handcuffs and ordered him to get up. Leaning against the pole, Leo breathed heavily as he stood up.

  “Go on in”, Marcus ordered, not even looking at him. He passed by him and the pole and was about to unlock the storage to get some things he needed, when he felt a tug on his shirt. He turned around; looking very pleased with what he saw, he smiled. “What is it, dear?”

  Leo let out a breath. His face was bright red, his vision was dancing and Marcus kept going left and right in front of him, as if he was refusing to stay in one place. “Stay still”, he whispered to the man who was really, very much unmoving. “I’m not…”

  He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Swaying, he fell forward, right onto Marcus’ chest. God, he felt horrible. His eyes wouldn’t open and he didn’t have the strength or the will to get himself straight, and if Marcus wasn’t in front of him, Leo knew he’d have planted himself face first into the mud. His body had now decided on a temperature, and he was downright cold. And he felt exhausted, as if he’d been running for a day or so. He just wanted to get warm and sleep. Or disappear, whichever was easier. For now, though, he couldn’t do anything but breathe heavily into Marcus’ shirt. He hated it, sure, but he didn’t see any other alternative.

  Marcus placed a hand to Leo’s forehead and let out a laugh. “My oh my, whatever am I supposed to do with you…” He picked him up and led him up to his room.

  Marcus changed Leo’s clothes, and although Leo was semi-conscious, he didn’t put up a fight, and Marcus didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation, sliding his hands around Leo’s torso, until he remembered that, there was a time and place for everything, and today was not it. He placed the younger man on the bed, covering him up with the blankets.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, and Leo only groaned in return. Marcus knew. He knew Leo had had a fever since he’d kissed his forehead a few hours before. I need you to become depended of me. Forgive me for this tease, he thought and smiled at him. “I’ll go make you some warm soup. Just stay cooped up, alright, baby?”

  Leo didn’t get to eat the warm soup. He didn’t have the appetite for it but, that wasn’t the reason. As soon as Marcus left the room, he relaxed into the warmness of his bed and, although still shivering, he allowed his unconscious to take over. He needed a break from the pain, from the tiredness. He wanted out, and he was thankful to his sickness for giving him a temporary hideout.

#non con touching tw #illness tw #non con thoughts tw #leo and marcus #my writing #whump

[macklives]

hey so this is gonna be a long-ish one. ive decided its been far too long since i did a session, and we did so many i can often forget what happened. i started in july and im pretty sure its been more than half a year now since this whole blog happened. and in that time, we’ve gone through 88 sessions and i want to know if i remember the relevant plot points and what we got up to in the last few sessions. a refresh/reminder if you would.

so i hereby commence my own little recap of act 5 because yeah no, its too much to do a recap of everything and i have andrew for that after every few acts. but i wanna refresh my mind on act 5 for now. so here we go.

1. alternia.. fucked up place. but its a place the trolls live on so what are we gonna do about it? overthrow the government? seems about right, lets do that with the next troll that gets introduced and if its not kanaya idk what andrew is doing by not having introduced the best troll yet. why the long wait? it was the second introduced? i honestly expected it to go in order when i first read act 5, because first we had karkat talk to jade which was the first new piece dialogue in the comic besides the main kids, but then we had kanaya with rose, which was followed by tavros, then terezi (iirc). so id assume we were following that order but nope karkat got fully introduced, then this random fucking juggalo called gamzee made its way into the comic. imagine my surprise.

2. theres been terminology throughout act 5, that i do not fucking know and will not remember and probably never will. like tf is a perigee again? i made a doc somewhere ill probably find it.

3. karkat’s introduction... short but very sweet. and by sweet i mean we got to know the depths of the angry edge lord. and by depths i mean karkat got angry at gamzee for typing in a way that he didnt like so he yapped like a chihuahua. nah, but seriously, i do like karkat tho, hes growing on me but only bc hes a bitch baby and his whole personality makes me want to mock him so thats the reason im not that annoyed and think hes funny, and the most harmless troll. even more so than tavros. and thats saying something. 7.5/10 bc im generous.

4. then gamzee... the high juggalo troll who has the worst typing quirk imo, i cannot for the life of me read it. but hes chill, i actually really like gamzee. hes funny and the least problematic as of right now. 8.5/10.

5. terezi’s introduction next i think. she likes playing as a lawyer with her stuffed dragons, ie by roleplay, shes blind, can see through licking, and she likes eating chalk, maybe its even nutritious. shes good. 9/10. 

6. uhh in the process of these intros, there are teams being made? karkat joins gamzee and terezi in, i THINK, the red team?? bc terezi likes red?? could be wrong, i dont remember the teams except that its red/blue to represent sollux’s duality in those colors. terezi then tries recruiting AC but AC is like lol sorry i have to ask this friend of mine who has authority over me for some goddamn reason and terezi goes yuck tf i hate that guy................... yeah thats all we have on the teams. pretty sure sollux had smth to do with karkat about the making of the leaders, and they did the “i hate me” and the “no i hate me more than u hate u” or whatever the fuck that was. they got embarrassed afterwards and deleted their messages. im pretty sure they have no messages because everything ends up being mutually deleted so their logs are actually empty. ngl, kinda enjoyed their convos, made me appreciate their characters. i hope we get more because its good content. i also dont know what order this whole thing is in, who contacted who first? couldnt tell you. ill remember later on. and since im basing this off from memory alone, gotta deal with what i remember. uhhhh so yeah. we havent met all characters yet so the teams have not been officially decided but we got the bases, which is that.

7. god i found it, and the only thing im looking at right now is the terminology list i made and what the fuck?? what the fuck?? you miss a few weeks and suddenly the word nubslurping comes up and you forget what the fuck youre reading.

8. im PRETTY SURE aradia is seen after that whole team fiasco?? or its sollux... maybe. wait. its sollux, right. i just knew someone gets introduced mid way through is all. actually, someone gets introduced after every 20 pages. i have no idea. but ik aradia and sollux go hand in hand.

9. oh shit. OH SHIT! RIGHT! I REMEMBER! so this occurs in the latest session i did, and not the beginning of act 5, but AG and aradia team up, right?? and sollux fucking gets manipulated by them and ??? idk??? they make him find the game, reprogram it and then make him believe its going to end the world (which in hindsight is true, but anyways) so he refuses to play it which was AG’s plan all along so she steps up and becomes leader in his place. but aradia says sollux will still play the game no matter what, but she never went through with the plan for AG but it was apart of a prophecy? that sollux wouldnt be the leader at all? that he’d still play? but it had to go according to plan so it could succeed??? we just dont know why yet. anyways, point being, she still cares for sollux since she did it for him rather than for AG. and thats what i recall. god tf i forgot about that whole drama until writing down “sollux and aradia go hand in hand” which gave me violent flashbacks to the memory.

10. oh and id give aradia 9/10 and sollux 7/10. i do like sollux but if i put him higher than karkat, id get crucified. so im keeping them around the same.

11. man i really like sollux and aradia tho, i may have put him at 7, but i really like their dynamic and i really hope they make up and aradia explains herself about AG. because from one side it looks shitty. and while sollux is rude and never makes up his mind, he apologized to aradia after going off, and that was the only time ive seen him be sincere, so im pretty sure he cares for her to some extent. and i think its somewhat mutual? considering the whole “did it for him” thing. man, i see potential because i actually like both their characters. theyre well written. may not have the best personalities, but i appreciate well written characters and homestuck has the best ones ive seen in a while.

12. oh shit, hell yeah, the more i write, the more im connecting the dots and remembering. however, the more i write, the more i want to just make an analogy post but thats not for now. jesus christ its not all about analogies, mack, this is a recap. but.. how does andrew do it? to not go off track??? hard. telling ya.

13. anyways, didnt we break the fourth wall at some point and have the demon gods or whatever the fuck speak to us in third person for the first time in the comic, after having only gone into second person narrative, right after we were introduced to sollux and his “virus”? the uh, the phrase “the demon was already here” was said, or something along those lines. first line in homestuck to give me the creeps ngl and i appreciate it bc it gives me motivation to know what the fuck its about. its cool bc you have no idea where its going and it sure doesnt have anything to do with the current plot, since the trolls’ session/game doesnt have fucking demons so im curious as to what the fuck that was about. and if i really have to make a theory, i feel it has something to do with aradia’s voices in her head which also connect to the gods rose heard when she started disregarding rules and told dave to look at derse without listening to music bc it was as if he was purposely blocking away their calls. like holy shit, that gave me the shivers. while i do want to know more about wtf happens after act 4, trolls are taking priority right now. just like we did with the intermission. no discussing the kids unless necessary. treat this as its own separate comic. and THEN we can connect.

14. ANYWAYS, tavros’ intro???? that comes afterwards?? with the fiduspawn that made me gag a little on the inside? yep. remember that. fuck that lol. -1/10 but tavros himself is MAYBE a 6/10? i wish we explored his character more in his intro bc right now he just looks like a character made only to be a victim rather than have any depth and i feel thats robbing someone of their full potential. give me more personality andrew, rather than a quivering boy who falls prey to bitches. im expecting more throughout the comic honestly and i hope he gets growth so hes not looked as a “victim” but rather his own character. he is still sweet, and i like him because i want to protect him, but id rather have more info, you know what i mean?

15. oh hell. kanaya had a chainsaw at some point. that made me happy. and didnt she cut off tavros’ legs?? and he got robot ones? and some creepy dude was looking and we called him saggy tits bc hes sagittarius? right? neat. that did happen. pretty sure saggy tits is ACs friend that tells her what to do. the more u know. OH and they all have colored blood similar to their text colors lol. that i remember... so tavros has brown, terezi has blueish green, um. karkat has grey the loser. and apparently it forms a rainbow which is nice. rainbow is good.

16. i dont remember anything else actually

17. wait no i do. AG appeared. shes a petty bully. idk what to say about her. we didnt get that much, except that she hates tavros but is okay with aradia. she also looks like a bottle opener. actually, i think she teamed with aradia to gain leadership rather than to “be friends”. and while that is similar to how karkat did it, meaning the gain, the motivation and how they earned it is entirely different. kinda seeing a trend tho. the leaders of the red/blue teams are both characters who wanted the role, but never had it to begin with. only to win their way into the position. but rather than ask non-stop like karkat did, AG manipulated others so she could be successful. not too sure if she also used aradia for that, or is actually motivated to become friends since they were “past enemies” and she needed a rebound. pretty sure its somewhat both. while AG did mostly use aradia to speak with sollux, what she doesnt know is that aradia is a bad bitch who never even thought about AG and only followed through with the plan bc she had a plan of her own. i guess we’ll look into that later. i lowkey want to know their history.

18. OH AC!!! she appeared for a second as well. love her. shes amazing. 9.5/10. and you may ask yourself, why am i saying “i love this character” but none of them are 10/10?? weellllll its because, and i cant stress this enough, 10/10 belongs to kanaya, i dont make the rules. im waiting for her introduction, shes my favorite and its obvious. sorry.

19. oh huh seems i forgot about the term “lusus”. which.. is.. their parents but not really, its these fucking weird ass creatures that the trolls fought in a cave or something as a child. i dont fucking know. terezi hatched hers and it died? gamzee’s also died but his goat sea dad was never really there to begin with so while it is sad, its more sad that gamzee never saw him? um.. karkat killed his own by exploding his computer bc sollux said dont run the virus and karkat said u cant tell me what to do and did it anyways. so thats on him. but apparently theyre supposed to die, to become prototyped during the game, right? yeah. i remember now.

20. thats.. about it? idk anything else, nothing is coming back to me apart from the shit above. huh.... im surprised how quickly things do come back to you the moment you rant about the plot tho.... handy trick.

cool. neat. fun. this took me too long. but im glad i remember a little bit.

#i wanted to catch u all up on this #but ill most likely do a liveblog tmr bc i was bust today unfortunately apart from writing this out #bc this took priority for better understanding where i am rn #maaaannnn #writing wears me out #i love it #but its tiring the fucking bitch #so im in need for deep sleep #wish i could do more smh #welll #goodnight :)

[firelxdykatara]

I think if fiction didn’t matter we wouldn’t be rallying for better representation. But at the same time, there’s plenty of fiction that so clearly doesn’t try to impose a moral. Are you of the opinion that any fiction that displays objectively horrible things in a gratifying lense should be banned? Would you call people who liked the saw films monsters? What about first person shooter games? Any porn that features power imbalances as a kink?

Short answer, to all of those questions: No. Absolutely not.

But of course, as it’s me, have a much longer answer:

Here’s the thing that the ‘FICTION AFFECTS REALITY’/’IF YOU LIKE DARKFIC YOU’RE A MONSTER’ crowd fails to realize: when we say ‘fiction is not reality’ we are not saying ‘fiction doesn’t matter’ or ‘fiction has no affect on reality whatsoever’. What we are saying is that fiction does not have a direct, 1:1 affect on reality. ‘Normal’ people will NEVER read a piece of fiction and suddenly become a pedophile. Normal people will not read a piece of fiction and forget about boundaries. Normal people will not read a piece of fiction and suddenly think that societal taboos which used to disgust them are A-OK and then try to enact them in their real lives.

Antis really love to cite the Jaws Effect when talking about how fiction affects reality, but they miss one crucial point--Jaws was playing on the pre-existing fears of the movie-going public. (And also the fact that Jaws had millions of viewers worldwide and reached a far greater audience, and therefore had far greater impact, than some niche darkfic on ao3 ever will.) It’s the same argument that’s been trotted out again and again by the ‘violent video games turn normal happy kids into school shooters’ crowd. Can playing violent video games temporarily heighten someone’s aggression/make someone already prone to violence even more aggressive? Sure. Will playing violent video games (or watching/reading violent media) make someone with a normally healthy emotional responses to stimuli suddenly become a violent person? Absolutely not.

Like, I love games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I love slipping into Ancient Greece and running around, merrily hacking and slashing my way through Athenians and Spartans. I’ve never once gotten the urge to pick up a sword and go outside and start sticking it in people. I know plenty of people who love Grand Theft Auto and don’t have a violent bone in their body. I greatly enjoy taking head shots as a sniper in Mass Effect, but I’ve never picked up a high-powered rifle in my life. (I go to the shooting range sometimes, with my grandad’s old .22, but I certainly have never wanted to shoot anyone with it.) My taste for video game violence has never translated to my reactions or interactions with other people in real life. Because I’m not a violent person, and while I can’t say I’m mentally healthy, I can say that I’ve never wanted to hurt other people. (And I have one of those ‘scary’ mental illnesses that get demonized all the time in popular media.)

So like, here’s the thing: first of all, the argument that video game or media violence (or abuse, rape, incest, pedophilia, etc) creates violence (or etc) in otherwise normal people is absolute bullshit. You may hear antis trotting out the Slenderman killings as another example, but they again fail to take into account that even if the game was the trigger, it was not the cause, and if it hadn’t existed, something else would have set them off. (And that was 2 people out of the, I’m gonna guess, millions of people who’ve played the game or watched let’s plays or whatever else. Not exactly terrifying odds.)

Secondly, you have to remember that while fiction and reality do have a relationship and do have an affect on one another, that affect is far more noticeable from the other direction. Fiction informs reality--it is often a direct reflection of it. This is why Greek tragedies became so popular--because people saw in them the human condition, in all its ugliest parts, and found extreme catharsis in watching it unfold. And this is part of why, yes, representation is so important--because, right now, most fiction is not an accurate reflection of reality, and that creates an unbalanced dynamic that’s going to take a very long time to fix.

Which leads to my final point, that is most often overlooked by antis who insist that fiction cannot be separated from reality: mass media reaches a far greater audience than fanfiction. Yes, it’s bad that so much of Hollywood fare is white--because Hollywood has reach. Billions of people tune in to watch the latest blockbuster. Your average niche darkfic on ao3 will never reach that kind of audience, not in a million years. The effect of that reach is simply not comparable. If someone who is already prone to violence plays a game or watches a movie or tv show that glorifies it, sure, it may heighten their violent response, but that’s because it’s playing on something that’s already there. The fiction itself is not to blame for whatever the person who viewed it chooses to do.

One last thing, since this is something that I feel doesn’t get mentioned enough in these debates: if you’ve been following me long enough, you’ll probably have seen me rag on Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey. I hate both of those series’ with a burning passion. I think they’re badly written tripe, one of which began as fanfic of badly written tripe (and if 50sog had languished in the annals of internet obscurity as Master of the Universe and not become a multi-million dollar hit, I’d probably never have heard of it--again, the difference in reach between niche fanfic and a mass media sensation), and I hate the way the abusive relationships in both of them are glorified. I think the ‘themes’ Twilight spoonfed preteen girls who ate it up are harmful. I think the racism involved in its depiction of the Quileute tribe was despicable. I think everything 50sog had to say about BDSM and the kink community is horrific, and deserves to be called out.

But you know what else these books did?

They started conversations. Conversations that may not have happened to such a wide degree had these books not become famous. (Not that I’m saying it’d be any great loss if they’d never seen the light of day, but hey, they did, and we have to live with the fallout, so at least something good came out of it.) Conversations that desperately needed to be had--about red flags in abusive relationships, about what is ok and not ok to do or say to your partner, about what consent is and what healthy relationships are, and what a healthy BDSM/kink relationship should look like. (I swear to the gods if any anti kinksters start crawling all over this post, I will eat their toes. Stay out of consenting adults’ bedrooms for the love of all that is fucking holy.) Conversations about safe words and how to use them, and how it is always ok to use them please dear lord do not let things progress past the point of your comfort. Conversations about the real life Quileute tribe who has been trying for years to talk about the realities of tribal life, which were so butchered by Twilight, but that hopefully brought more awareness and helped show what not to do when you’re incorporating a real life culture into your work.

These are important conversations, which may not have been had to the widespread degree that they were and are were it not for the cultural phenomena that sparked them. So no, I don’t think it’s wrong to point out if an author is, for instance, glorifying harmful things in their works--however, I do think that the reach of the work in question matters. If you’re targeting a work with a few thousand hits at most, ask yourself: why? Why this work, and not an actual cultural powerhouse like, say, Game of Thrones, which features such hits as the showrunners openly admitting they waited for a teenage actress to turn 18 so they could film a scene where her character is brutally raped on screen? Why is it so important to draw attention to some niche work of darkfic (especially if it’s properly tagged so that it can be avoided by anyone to whom it would be harmful; and by the way, these tags don’t exist for things like, oh, VC Andrews novels, which any kid can pick up in a library without warning; I think that even a glorified/romanticized rape scene that is tagged as rape on ao3 is less harmful than similar themes occurring without warning in a book I picked up because it had pretty flowers on the cover), when you can easily find the exact same things in published, popular fiction?

Just something to think about, before trying to insist that fanfics that reach an audience of a few thousand at most are anywhere on the level of ‘affecting reality’ the same way that mass media that reaches billions is capable of.

#ao3 #rape mention #darkfic #fiction is not reality #Anonymous #asked

[the-overgrowth]

Retrospective: “Faybane” #1

This is where it all started, on July 8th, 2016. Although probably a bit earlier than that, but this is the earliest thing I can find that’s actually written down, so that’s what counts. And back in the day I didn’t let ideas marinate the way I do now, I just started writing pretty much as soon as I got the idea.

Anyway, the document was created at this point in time according to Google Docs, and was last modified in October 3rd, 2016. It’s only 3 chapters long, plus one incomplete fourth chapter, and the whole thing is about 17k words.

Which is a lot for 3 chapters. I would say something about how I’m less wordy now, but the latest draft is like 107k words long, so, like, I will always struggle with shutting the fuck up, methinks.

Also, the reason this is called “Faybane” is because that was the working title I used, and the name of this document. I thought it’d be the proper title but like. It’s bad lmao.

Anywhomst, let’s get into it!

Some background info for those who are new or need a refresher: this WIP became a thing after I read and was disappointed by A Court of Thorns and Roses by SJM, as well as The Iron King by Julie Kagawa and some book by Holly Black, was it Tithe?

ACOTAR was the biggest culprit. I feel that this is important to keep in mind as we go through this mess.

We open on Sidra in the forest with a bunch of men she calls a hunting party. It’s clear she doesn’t want to be there, but since she’s the only decent hunter among them and it’s her sister’s wedding today, she has to make the kill to feed the people attending said wedding.

This is, as the kids say, big stupid, and seems like a very ill-prepared celebration? I guess it makes some sense for them to want fresh meat, but this fresh? What if they didn’t find anything? What if they didn’t manage to kill anything? Is the whole thing cancelled? Stupid.

We find out they’ve been hunting a boar and that this dude named Liam, our Gaston replacement, previously wounded the animal but didn’t kill it, causing it to flee and force the hunting party to follow. It’s up to Sidra to make the killing blow, which she does with an arrow straight into its head. This was back when Sidra was still YA Heroine Extraordinaire and the time period was Vaguely Medieval, I guess.

They begin taking their quarry back home and Sidra thinks about how she normally doesn’t hunt this close to the “Faewilds” because animals closer to the border are said to be bigger and more violent. There isn’t an actual border, people just had to rely on intuition and not wander too far into the forest.

She also mentions a girl named Wilda, who disappeared fairly recently and everyone suspects it was the fae. This isn’t relevant now, but Wilda will return in later drafts, I think.

Everybody, especially my family, knew that I was one of the best archers in town, whether I used a bow or a crossbow.

Shut up, Not!Feyre. Nobody likes you.

I should mention that at this point I didn’t bother googling how big wild boars get and just assumed they were the size of like, a thick medium dog. Which is, if you know how big boars are, very incorrect. Four men pulling the animal seems realistic enough, but then Liam just lifts it up on his own? Not buying it.

Sidra laments how much she hates Liam and we find out that he apparently tried to assault her and she stabbed him? And apparently she’s not happy about his marriage to Sinéad but can’t do anything about it because “Father’s word is law” and Sinéad herself laughed it off when Sidra tried to warn her?

Yeah, gonna call bullshit on that one. No idea why this was here or what purpose it serves, the reason Liam doesn’t exist in the latest draft is because I never figured out what his purpose was so I axed him entirely. 

Current!Sidra would just kill him the moment he showed an interest in Sinéad, and Current!Sinéad would 100% believe her sister about something like that.

Some bloke named Connor strikes up a conversation with Sidra, seemingly worried about being this far away from human civilization. Liam teases him about it and calls the fae “knife-ears”, because I still had brainrot back then and liked Dragon Age and had zero original ideas in my head.

The men make jokes about having sex with fae women and Sidra seems so disturbed by this that she nocks an arrow. This isn’t the first time she makes references to feeling unsafe around these men, I have no idea why I wrote it this way aside from being edgy, I guess.

My village was mostly populated by men, and even though I wasn’t one of the pretty girls there, I knew these men weren’t picky, even with all their talk about beautiful fae women. I’d heard that fae women would kill their men after sleeping with them. I had no way of know it was true, but a part of me hoped it was and that Liam would some day soon get “lucky” and encounter a female fae, so she could end his misery.

Edgy, dude.

They eventually arrive and Sidra goes inside her house, which is a simple cottage with three rooms. I think her family are all farmers? It’s kind of confusing. She goes into her and Sinéad’s bedroom, where Sinéad is preparing for her wedding. Also, she’s blonde.

“Sid! There you are!” she said cheerily. “Killed a boar, huh? Good on Liam for taking all the credit.”

If you know your man is trash, why are you marrying him?

Apparently Liam seduced Sinéad with sweets and baked goods. I mean ... fair enough. Considering how Sidra complains about being hungry and skinny and going without food if she doesn’t kill the boar because this year’s harvest was minimal, I’m assuming y’all are starving.

We find out Sinéad’s mother doesn’t let her do anything around the house or farm, to preserve her “soft and white” hands and pale complexion so she could be married off easily. This makes zero sense, you’d think these medieval men wouldn’t have the same beauty standards as Victorian England, plus having a mouth to feed that doesn’t even help feeding itself is just nuts. 

But remember, this isn’t Sidra, this is Not!Feyre. She needs to be sad and put-upon and a victim. She explains how she was never pretty to begin with and thus nobody considered her to be worthy of marrying off, which then meant she was put to work and became even less attractive because now she was so cool and badass that all the men were intimidated by her.

Yeah, in a village that already doesn’t have a lot of young women? I’m not buying this, lmao. But go off, Not!Feyre.

I’d been the one helping around, instead. Hunting, mostly. Sometimes I’d chop wood or work the farm. Marrying out of the house seemed impossible. Marrying up was practically a dream you forgot upon waking. Had I been pretty from the start there would’ve been a foundation to work from, but I was a lost cause even before my skin became tan and my hands grew veined and calloused. I had freckles which people mistook for mud and dull brown eyes, a long nose that had been broken one time too many and a mouth that made it look like I constantly felt a bad smell no matter what facial expression I made. I’d always been of rather short stature and had brown hair and thick eyebrows, which in combination with everything else made my parents call me their “little goblin”. The scar on my face didn’t help me either: men didn’t like it when their women were more battle-hardened than they were.

Oh god please, don’t go off! We don’t care! Stop going off!

Also what fucking parents call their poor kid a goblin? Yikes.

Sinéad convinces Sidra to get prettied up and Sidra is all “oh I bet all the men will just fall over themselves for my favor now huh” which is just the most annoying fucking thing, prompting Sinéad to respond:

“Well, winter is coming and game is scarce. If they want to survive, marrying the best hunter in the village might be a good bet.”

Yeah! This is correct! I refuse to believe people wouldn’t be into Sidra! Not only does everyone apparently know she’s the best hunter in town, but Sidra herself confirmed the men here outnumber the women and aren’t very picky.

This is fucking stupid. I’m glad I axed it. In my defense, I was very much trying to emulate the YA shit I’d read so far.

Sidra’s grandmother enters the stage. She’s very old in this draft, but otherwise unchanged.

She was a short and wrinkled old lady with extremely bad vision and an even worse grasp on reality. Or maybe an extremely acute grasp on reality, depending on whether you believed her stories or not.

Sidra changes out of the dress again to go out and help her father prepare the boar, all while sulking.

I didn’t envy Sinead, nor any other bride. Despite what most people thought of me, I wasn’t some poor ugly girl longing for the love of a man and the security of marriage. Did I enjoy the idea of having somebody care for me? Sure. But it wasn’t on my list of priorities. I was still trying to figure out what actually was on that list. Not that it mattered. The prospects for a poor village girl were very finite.

Womp womp.

We get some confusing and barely related stuff about Sidra possibly becoming a royal hunter for the king and also about where the village is located in relation to the Faewilds. She speculates that maybe the fae aren’t real, but the way she and everyone else talks about them makes it pretty obvious that they are? This was supposed to build mystery, I guess.

We skip forward to the wedding and Sidra is moping again.

“How are you feeling?” Father asked and squeezed my shoulder. 

I wasn’t sure why he was doing that. I assumed it had something to do with the wedding and the fact that despite there being fewer women than men here, I was still not asked to dance. Though this didn’t really bother me, so I just shrugged.

“It doesn’t bother me. Anyway I will continue to mope and feel bitter about this thing that doesn’t bother me.” Hunny ...

At least Current!Sidra has the self-awareness to admit she’s sad and lonely.

 [Father’s] marriage to Sinead’s mother was never out of love, more out of necessity. It was easier when you had a big family.

Except for when this “big family” is 3 people who work and 2 people who are just being fed, right? See, I knew back then that having a big family helps when you have a farm, but I also needed to make Sidra Special so Sinéad had to sit on her ass to highlight how pretty and feminine she was or whatnot.

Bleh.

They talk a bit about Sidra’s mother, who passed away five years ago, and Sidra reminisces about how she used to tell amazing stories. It’s all very ... whatever, and serves only to make this point for the hundredth time:

I wasn’t like Mother. I wasn’t full of life and spirit like her. I wasn’t loved and respected by the entire village like her. I was just her disappointing child whose existence they’d rather forget except when they wanted something killed.

Right after this there’s a really abrupt scene transition. Nothing about the wedding coming to an end, nothing about her going to bed, it’s just ... some while later?

Sidra’s father comes back home from ??? and tells Sidra he saw a stag somewhere, but it was hours ago so she better get a move on.

I’m not sure what either of them thinks this will accomplish? Like ... what is she gonna do with it when she kills it ... Carry it home? On her little boney ass? Hmm? I guess I didn’t think of that because I had meta knowledge that she wouldn’t get it home either way, so who cares about logic, right?

Sidra kills two rabbits while stalking the deer, and despite telling us earlier that she doesn’t venture far away from human civilization and the boar hunting being the farthest she’d been and that she wouldn’t go this far alone, she has no issue dwelling very deep into the forest this time.

Like. Henlo? Can we have one logic please and thanks you? Granted, she keeps stopping every now and then to Feel Things Out, but this really goes against how careful she was before and at no point do we get an explanation to her sudden boldness. Plot reasons, I guess.

She nearly stumbles into fae territories and finally decides to head back, except when she starts returning, she sees the stag she’s been tracking. It’s abnormally huge and has a “dark brown” coat that she finds odd, but of course she’s too stupid to connect the dots.

She sneaks up on it and honestly? This chapter ending still slaps.

A scream of pain left the creature and I saw it topple. But though my arrow hit a deer, a man fell to the ground.

DUN DUN DUN.

And yeah, the ACOTAR roots rear their ugly heads again. I liked the idea of the protagonist shooting a fae disguised as an animal, but I decided to cut out the middleman and just have her obliterate Val right in chapter one. Don’t worry, he doesn’t die.

#retrospective #my writing