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#if he's a greek anything it's a greek tragedy
maintitle · 5 months
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Now that I'm back in the online discourse of the Red Dead community after half a decade away waiting to have the ability to play and beat the second game, I'm really fairly quickly learning that there's this... weird, romanticized version of Arthur Morgan's character out there that really has no basis in reality.
Today I accidentally stumbled upon an anti-John Marston post and I'm not going to get into that here (even though I have A LOT to say), but the top comment was very strange to me. It talked about how Arthur is this 'giant', this 'greek hero', a perfect person, and as I read it I just... wasn't sure if I played the same game as them.
There's obviously a way of playing the game where he's this high honor hero, and I largely played that. But Arthur is also a deeply violent man, a deeply cynical and sometimes cruel guy. He's not a gentle humored guy, he's deeply sarcastic and at times kind of nasty with his humor, even to people he likes. He really often struggles with his worse nature, and it's not a struggle without reason. His first response to a situation is really often the most extreme, and the only reason I feel like people don't realize that outside of having a hand at deciding his honor is because he's the most outspoken about unnecessary vengeance... but that's not because he's opposed to it on principle, it's because it's important for him to protect his people, and that requires letting things go.
This isn't me bashing Arthur, by the way. The beauty of his character is how he struggles against himself, his own nature. How everyone can see his kindness even when he can't himself, even when his actions say otherwise. He's conflicted between what he wants his life to be and the life he has lead, the most important man in his life, one that's practically a father to him, instilled in him rules for life and he's watching him break every single one. For the first time in his life he has to figure out who he is and how he wants what little time he has to be defined. THAT'S a fantastic character, a hero even... but far, far, FAR from perfect. He's a deeply flawed human being who has done terrible things, and it makes me wonder the level of media literacy it takes to not understand that.
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aroaceleovaldez · 1 year
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yall dont wanna see the rant i just went on trying to math out if Clarisse and Silena = Achilles and Patroclus, then does the Battle for Manhattan in TLO = the Trojan War, and in which case who’s who. is the Titan Army the Trojans? or is Olympus the Trojans because they’re defending Olympus (i.e. Trojans defending Troy)? If Percy is also Achilles, kinda, cause curse of Achilles, what’s everybody’s roles then? What do we do with two Achilles? is Ethan Nakamura Hector? Does Luke = Paris? (in which case Hermes = Priam? which actually works really well cause Hermes did aid Priam in the Trojan war). or is Luke... Helen? Or is Luke just straight up the Trojan Horse?
Also side-tangent, if Clarisse and Silena are Achilles and Patroclus, we can make some guesses for who Chris Rodriguez vaguely is analogous to, but not really Charles Beckendorf? at least purely in terms of love interests. Which is interesting. Again: who’s who. I simply must know.
#pjo#percy jackson#riordanverse#analysis#there's also a whoooole lot of Percy and Nico in the Underworld = Caeneus in the rant#but that's besides the point i've gone on that rant enough times#though i do think its interesting in a manner of if it is an intentional parallel (which is very possibly is!)#then it implies that Rick started leaning more into Nico being canonically romantically interested in Percy back in TLO#which would make sense given you also have Clarisse and Silena as Achilles and Patroclus *very* explicitly in the same book#and whereas Achilles and Patroclus being lovers is a debated topic - Caeneus' romance is as far as im aware undisputed#(probably primarily because Caeneus was a woman for most of it)#and like from book one Rick referenced myths like Ganymede#so like. i dont think the whole ''greek mythology had a lot of gay stuff' was going over his head or anything#and Caeneus is not an obscure figure. he was an Argonaut!#and the Argonauts were. yknow. the entire basis for the second series. and also a good amount of SoM#there was also a lot of ''Does Nico = Orpheus?'' and How Many Times Did Nico Pull An Orpheus (the answer is like. 2. maybe 3.)#(maybe 4 actually)#regardless Nico has fully exhausted Most Orpheus Myths so theoretically they shouldn't come back.#[I AM LOOKING VERY HARD AT THE NICO BOOK. DO NOT DO THE THING I SWEAR I WILL BE MAD.]#not because ''oh no tragedy'' because i KNOW it's gonna turn out fine and Different This Time and ill just be mad#because it got overused cause WE'VE ALREADY DONE THAT SPECIFIC PART LIKE. TWICE. IN THE FIRST SERIES. GET OUTTA HERE.#anyways options for if the Argo 2 members represent Argonauts then Who Orpheus - Piper. Leo. Nico.#i personally prefer Piper best for thematic reasons but Leo could also fit and Nico is really trying on the myth-reenactment-front#and also being the mopey guy on the Argo ruining the vibes for everyone cause he's busy being heartbroken and emo#he hasn't been torn limb from limb and his immortal severed head turned into a speaker for his parents to listen to tunes from though#so really Nico are you even trying? (the ''parents-grant-immortality-after-death'' thing though is also a Nico-pulls-an-Orpheus moment tho)
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burningthetree · 1 month
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If I could travel back in time I would go to Ancient Greece and give Oedipus a hug to apologise on behalf of everyone for what Freud did to him
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tekehu · 8 days
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sometimes i wonder if my grandma (polish) ever shared any recipes with my dad or if they still performed some traditions, at least when he was younger. because if not that would be very sad
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lios-archive · 10 months
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well now that I've finished this wacky ass novel how am I supposed to live real life
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saintchaser · 2 years
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orpheus had lost his euridyce, the same way that dorcas had lost their marlene; their love cut short, and bittersweet.
and, the same way orpheus did, dorcas knelt down to the pits of the inferno and, with vengeance burning in their blood and death in their hands, they went down for marlene. to bring her back, bring her back to them, to continue their story, to continue their love; and if they couldn't bring her back, they'd look for her memory.
dorcas went down just like holy mary, just like orpheus, but it was all with a price. think back on love, and never get it back. her memory burnt in their head, her lips against their neck, and for then, that was enough.
but the whispers grew louder and louder, dorcas, dorcas, dorcas, a chant of love, and, just once, they looked back. they looked back for marlene, to see her once more, give them one last kiss, one last glance. and for them, that was the end. they'd never see her again. they would be just another greek tragedy.
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non-un-topo · 2 years
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The cis male ability to mansplain a subject I myself brought up astounds me. Like I actually want to study them under a microscope. My guy, I brought it up. Why are you explaining it back to me?
#anyway went to dinner with my partner's fam. actually had a good time but their father is still their father.#the waiter did his best not to even acknowledge my existence. talked to my partner's dad exclusively even though there were five of us.#he also retold the story of agamemnon (something to do w the wine we picked) and i perked up like !!!!! yes i've read it!!!#i kept coming in like yeah that's right!! but the man did not even look at me once. he was even standing so he was turned away from me.#but to explain the mansplain thing sdfghfdss.... i mentioned i was reading the name of the rose#and FIL bulldozed anything i was going to say about it and started explaining it to me as if i'd never read it? or heard of umberto eco?#my guy i literally just brought it up.#i've been noticing this shit happening a lot more lately. got serious woman-in-her-20s syndrome.#i'm simultaneously a 15 year old girl and a ghost. whoa the tiny little woman has heard of this extremely famous greek tragedy?? noooo#oh my god and she likes to read?? and she likes history too?? no she doesn't she's wrong let me explain her own interest to her.#sometimes i sit there and i honestly want to scream. like would you like to know what i know??? for once?? because i actually know things.#anyway i know exactly why cis men do this i know all the cogs. and i have no patience for it.#in good news my partner and i managed to steal a few moments alone at a book store and i bought a few history books#whose subjects would absolutely pop my sexist FIL's mind like a grape. i'm fucking pissed off. okay. i'm good i'm done.
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gay-dorito-dust · 11 months
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Would you be willing to write a Miguel x Spider!Reader oneshot where they’re arguing over something the reader did on a mission. And in the heat of an argument, Miguel yells “Because I love you!” at the perfectly wrong time, revealing why he cares about the reader’s safety.
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‘What the hell was that back there. You could’ve jeopardised the whole mission with that reckless stunt you pulled back there!’ Miguel barked, ripping off mask the first moment moment he could; Hellfire were setting ablaze to his beautiful scarlet eyes that were zeroed in on you as the anger, the frustration upon his face became prominent the more he closed the distance between you.
‘When will you let this go, Miguel. When we became Spider-Man we knew the risks that we were running with-‘ ‘so you thought it’d be better to take a running head start by taking the leap and then diving headfirst into them?!’ Miguel cuts you off and with an indignant huff he adds, ‘you don’t get extra points for being reckless, this isn’t some little game that you can just come back to when you feel like it. No, what we do is a full time commitment with no room for last minute deviations just because you were feeling more heroic.’
You grit your teeth. You respected Miguel, you truly did and at one point in time you wanted to do right by his little rule book of how to be a great hero. However you soon learned that it’s better to play by your own rules rather then it was to play by those made by others and slowly but surly found a method that worked for you. For no two methods were the same when it came to protecting and saving people but if they both end in the same conclusion, then no one should be able to raise an issue with it. At the end of the day you and Miguel saved people from a much bigger problem if left unchecked; so why was it that all of a sudden he had an issue with your methods?
It never upset him this much before, so why now. Did he think you as incapable? As unreliable? As untrustworthy to fully let you handle a situation on your own? Whatever it was it only proved in pissing you off despite your semi-injured state; you didn’t care that you’ve gotten hurt, you’ve gotten hurt plenty of times before and he never once batted an eye or exemplified his emotions as he did as of right now. You could barely get a read on the guy as he stood mere feet away, chest heaving even though he wasn’t out of breath, eyes wide and his hair slightly disheveled from the way he had torn off his mask earlier.
And yet you couldn’t help but find him beautiful in his anger, for it was like witnessing the makings of a Greek tragedy; beautifully written, yet so heartbreakingly tragic.
‘Why does it matter?’ You spat, getting up, despite your injured leg’s desire to buckle beneath the weight of not only you but the situation at hand. You saw the briefest movements of Miguel’s arms almost stretch out to instinctively catch you but stopping midway through the motion before going slack at his sides once more; as though remembering why he was mad at you in the first place. ‘It never mattered before, so why does it matter now? You don’t hound the others for doing it so why is it me that’s getting shit on for doing the same when I ain’t the first to do so!’
‘Because I love you!’ Miguel exclaimed.
The silence afterwards was almost deafening. Miguel’s outburst quieted you quickly as a thousand and one thoughts raced in your head; how long? why now? Was this merely a ruse to silence you so he could badger on at you for your supposed mistake? You didn’t know what to make of anything anymore now that he said that. You didn’t want to believe it for starters on the basis that not once had he ever shown interest in you, if anything he made it apparent to push you away or avoid you entirely from any and all interaction, and even when he did it was comprised of short responses that left the attempts at conversation to die as an overwhelming awkwardness forced you into leaving him be.
‘What?’
‘I love you.’ Miguel repeated, softer this time.
‘I get that but why-‘ ‘haven’t I shown it until now? As stupid as it sounds but I didn’t want you to get hurt because of me and look where you are,’ he gestured to your injured state, ‘hurt because of me.’ He adds defeatedly. You were about to open your mouth when Miguel raised a hand, indicating that he wasn’t finished, ‘I know I haven’t given you any reason to believe me when I say that I love you. I avoid you like the plague and I push you away whenever I see you starting to get too close and respond in a clipped tone of voice so that you’d loose interest and move on to talk to someone else.’
He stopped talking to move in closer to you, grasping you by arms with a firm grip as all the anger in his face seemingly having been melted away. The raging hellfire that once consumed his scarlet eyes in their entirety had been diminished to that of dying ambers, unveiling his admiration, his worry, his guilt and most importantly, his love; the sneer now long gone was replaced by a softer more tender expression that didn’t hide away the worry lines that were deeply etched into his skin. ‘I don’t deserve you, I’m not worth having you because sooner or later you’ll see me the way I’ve always seen myself and I’d rather you be as far away as possible when that happens.’ Miguel said, making sure he was maintaining eye contact with you the entire time to prove that he was being wholeheartedly genuine, not wanting to lie to you about something as personal as his feelings; He’s done that for long enough, Miguel knew his breaking point was upon the incline and seeing you act the way you did during the mission only fast forward it.
‘Yet for some inexplicable reason I can’t stop myself for wanting to protect you, to make sure you’re safe, to make sure that you never come to harm. At first I thought it was because I was looking out for a teammate, making sure you didn’t slip up and cause more potential problems for the rest of us, making sure that you didn’t let a single perpetrator slip but soon I learnt it was far more then just simply looking after a teammate...’ Miguel paused to blink away the images regarding of the nightmares he’d get concerning you, which were few and far between but those times were enough to suffocate him with fear. ‘It was something more and I grew scared, I grew scared because I know what it’s like to loose it all but for some reason I also knew that loosing you would just be the nail in the coffin for me.’
Miguel admits as he presses his forehead against your own, his hands trailing from up your arms until they’re caressing the skin of either side of your neck between calloused thumbs. He closing his eyes and allows himself to breath you in, reminding himself that you were here and that he managed to get to you before anything else could, that he kept you safe, not from all harm but at least from some of it and that was good enough but he knew deep down that he needed the do better. ‘Don’t make me imagine a life without you,’ he whispers, pressing his forehead against yours just that tiny bit harder as his fingertips found their home where your pulse points were to remind him that you weren’t gone completely from his grasp, ‘for I don’t think I’m strong enough to withstand that reality.’
‘You don’t have to.’ You told him softly, lifting your hands to caresses the skin of his cheeks and feeling him effectively melt within your hold. ‘Not anymore.’
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aphroditelovesu · 4 months
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Yandere Apollo w/Soulmate!Reader Headcanons (Romantic)
❝ ☀️ — lady l: Who asked for soulmate au with Apollo? It's more of a soft yandere, but I hope you like these hcs! 💞
❝tw: soulmate au, obsessive and possessive behavior, soft!yandere, implied death.
❝☀️pairing: yandere!apollo x gender neutral!reader.
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Apollo always wanted someone to love, someone he could pour out all the love he held inside, be completely devoted to that person and be completely theirs. Apollo always wanted to be loved unconditionally and in return he would love with everything in him.
He wanted more than anything to find his soulmate. The true person he belonged to, the person he would spend all eternity with.
Apollo desperately searched for love, in search of his soulmate, the person who would complete him. He had several affairs, hoping that one of them would complete the missing part of him, but it always ended in tragedy and he knew that none of his past lovers were his soulmate.
So he remained alone for centuries, hoping to one day find the one to whom his heart and soul belonged. Apollo sometimes spent his days wandering among humans, hoping to bump into his love, but that never happened. He was tired. He had become desperate for love, to be loved and this shaped him completely. Apollo was no longer the same.
Until one day he found his soulmate. He found you. The person he had searched for for centuries, the half of himself that was missing. His soulmate.
Apollo would never forget the day he discovered that you were his soulmate. The way his heart began to pound in his chest, his breathing became heavy and his hands sweaty. Soulmate, was all his mind screamed.
During yet another of his pointless visits to humans, Apollo found himself walking aimlessly somewhere when he felt something different. Something inside him clicks, something connecting him to somewhere or someone. He followed what was calling him and was breathless when he discovered what it was.
Among lush forests and bustling cities, he saw a young human with a radiant aura, enveloped by the essence of wisdom and compassion. He saw you and saw the red thread of destiny that connected you. You were his soulmate.
Delighted and stunned by the discovery, the god approached disguised as an ordinary human man, wanting to get to know that luminous soul better. You welcomed him with open arms, eager to discover more about this mysterious man and why he enchanted you so much. It was only after a few weeks together that Apolo revealed the truth. He was a god and you were his soulmate. You felt like you might cry at that moment.
You have always wanted to find your soulmate, all your friends have already found the missing part of them, except you. And your soulmate was not only the most handsome man you've ever seen but also a Greek god, literally. You hugged him tightly and kissed him. Soon you were both undressed and sweaty, the love shining through and the consummation of your bond was made. You were officially soulmates.
Everything was rosy at first, but eventually, Apollo changed. His fear, and his trauma of being alone for so long changed him. He became more possessive and controlling every day. You started to feel suffocated. Apollo, however, didn't care.
He tried to compensate for his possessive tendencies towards you with presents, from jewelry to gifts that he could bestow upon you, in addition to giving you the gift of immortality. He wouldn't lose you to anyone, not even the god of death.
Your soul was linked to his, linked by the thread of destiny that united you as one. It said that Zeus was the one who separated humans from their soulmates and Apollo was so happy that he finally found you that all that mattered to him was that you stayed with him. After all, you were destined to be together.
Apollo's love had become increasingly possessive and needy, the god demanded you all the time. He became clingy, not wanting to be away from you. He's already spent too much time away from you, he wouldn't do it again.
How delirious he was could not be said, but felt. You felt the fear, the dread that Apollo had of losing you and that was what made you susceptible to the god's manipulation. He's just in love with his soulmate. That's why he acts like this.
That's how you end up stuck with your soulmate for all eternity. But for Apollo, in the warmth of true love, they transcended the boundaries between the divine and the mortal, uniting as soulmates destined to remain together for eternity.
Thus, the Greek god found his soulmate, a union that shone with the light of the gods and the purity of human hearts that would later be contaminated by the obsession that controlled him. There's no else to go but his side.
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moonriverrise · 1 year
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Steve has a secret, well “secret” may not be the correct way to describe it. He has something for himself, thats what. Ever since he stopped playing basketball and doing swim competitions once he graduated he's had way more free time, which at first he filled with shifts at Family Video, or bothering Robin.
Then, when she started school he started doing art more. Which, may come a surprise to many, as he never really talked about his interest in paintings and old art.
Greek sculptures that are able to show life in a still ethereal way, while still being able to twist it at their will. Renaissance oil paintings, capturing tragedy yet still being able to portray it as beautiful, in their own terrible twisted ways.
He likes sketching on paper, painting on canvas. His paintings aren't usually too different from the things he sees around him. Honestly thats the only things he paints, people, his friends, places he goes, things he sees that stick with him, dreams, moments that play on repeat in his head.
Around his Junior year, after the Demogorgon, Steve had turned the sad basement in his sad empty house, into his own space. A place where he can go and do his art, hang it, play music on his walkman, or using the record player he got from a pawn shop a few months prior. Somehow the basement is the only space that actually feels like his in his house, not even his bedroom.
Steve’s art was not very consistent to be honest, mostly the kids and Robin, landscapes that he liked, the Demogorgon/dogs, the Mindflayer (he needs some way of getting those out of his head, and somehow drawing them down feels freeing.) He does have a few paintings of Nancy from when they were together, she’s become less of a model for his work after everything though.
The last time he painted her in a painting alone, was one of that bathroom in a girl he barely knows’ house, a spilled drink on Nancy’s dress, and red solo cups littering the counter.
Steve’s art shifts though, after a moment that will never leave his mind. He knows who Eddie Munson is, obviously. How could he not? Honestly Steve isn't that surprised Henderson and the others befriended the guy, he does run a DnD club.
But then, Henderson needs a ride home after their club meetings because his mom is working late, and then Lucas and Mike’s parents are also asking Steve to pick them up too. Babysitting duty, as per usual.
Steve arrives a bit earlier than he planned. He didn't have any project to consume himself into, hitting an art block begrudgingly. But then, Steve sees Eddie Munson, sitting on a fake throne, watching the kids and other club members argue, he has his chin rested on his fist, and he's wearing a white tank top, showing off his shoulders, given the fact it’s still September.
The lighting of the small theater room captures Steve’s interest like a moth to the flame, and he is regretting having left his sketchbook at home, even though he never draws around the kids or anyone he knows.
Eddie Munson’s face and curly locks fill up the pages of Steve’s journal and some canvases for months after, and Steve rarely genuinely complains about coming to pick the kids up.
Afterwords, months later from that day. Chrissy Cunningham dies, and Eddie Munson almost goes with her. God, or whatever deity that was looking down upon him, was on Steve’s side in that moment, when he was able to revive Eddie and then drag him out of the Upside Down.
Steve gets closer with Eddie after that, they become actual friends. Steve was so used to witnessing his muse from afar, it was so…exciting, to see Eddie in all his glory, just a few feet away, and his smile being directed at him.
“Do you even have any hobbies, Harrington?” Steve blinks. Him, Eddie, Robin, Nancy, and the party, are all hanging out by the pool. Steve is lounging on one of the chairs, sunglasses over his eyes as Eddie talks beside him.
“What?” Steve responds.
“I mean…I like barely ever see you do anything besides sort Movies at Family Video, or boss around the kids. Like, what do you do when we're not all together?” Eddie asks, moving his hand a little as he talks. Steve thinks for a moment.
“Funny,” Steve answers instead. Eddie scoffs.
“I'm being serious, man! What do you do?” Eddie laughs a little, most likely at the ridiculousness of it all. What would Steve know, Eddie is like a puzzle, and Steve has to take every minute slowly, deciphering everything he lays out for him, via tongue or action.
“I don't know, what do you do?” Steve says, almost carefully.
“Band stuff, DnD, Writing,” Eddie lists. “And I guess saving the world now, but thats a bit of a side hussle.” Steve scoffs.
“Whatever, man.” And thats that, they don't talk about it again. But it sticks with Steve, because his friends really do think he doesn't do anything with his life. It's not like he has college classes to study for, so what does he do?
Later, maybe two or three weeks after, Steve decides he wants to show Eddie his space. The two of them are alone, Robin is in Nevada, visiting her grandparents, so the trio’s usual movie night is cut down to a duo’s movie night.
Although Steve finds himself mostly focusing on Eddie and his beautiful hair sitting next to him, than watching ET. The little alien scares him a bit anyway. Eddie notices him staring though, his eyes flickering to meet Steves, then a smirk spreading across his lips.
“We are watching a movie, lover boy.” Eddie says. Steve goes red, his gaze shifting to his lap. Steve furrows his eyebrows then stands and shuts the TV off. “Woah! Hey!”
“I want to show you something.” Steve says, it's a bit quieter than he meant it to be, but his tone indicates something to Eddie, which has him staring at Steve, starstruck.
Steve walks out the room and hears Eddie follow him. He gets to the basement door and opens it, flicks on the stair light.
“Basement- woah- okay, guess I'm getting murdered. Thought I’d go out in a more metal way than this.” Eddie says as they walk down. Steve laughs a little and shakes his head.
“I just think you should see this.” Steve says. “Nothing life threatening, I promise.”
“Alright, I trust you, Stevie.”
“Good.”
Steve turns and flicks on the light as they step onto the concrete. The lights flicker on, revealing the paintings on the walls and art supplies on the tables and counters.
“Woah-” Eddie says. “Is this, all your stuff?” Steve sighs, he folds his arms and faces Eddie. He looks shellshocked.
“Yeah.” Steve says. “You said I don't have any hobbies, I do, actually.” Eddie looks around, walking slowly.
“Is that Henderson? Why is he wearing yellow gloves?” Eddie asks. Steve walks over to a painting of Dustin from Steve’s angle while they were walking on the train tracks, a bucket of raw meat is in one hand and he's wearing the headphones for his radio.
“D’Art,” Steve says. “That was when we were leading him away. I made that one after everything happened. I was trying not to think about the Demogorgon stuff and everything, so I just drew him. I have one of Max from that day I never finished painting in a stack I think too.” Eddie doesn't say anything for a minute after Steve is done explaining.
“You can paint.” Eddie says, though not like a question. “These are beautiful…” Eddie looks around and walks to another one he sees. It's one of the Byers and Hopper’s, all hugging while laughing. El looks the happiest. Steve had painted that after they had all gotten together after everything. “Why…didn't you tell anyone?”
“About what?” Steve asks, folding his arms as Eddie brings up a hand to touch the painting.
“This- Steve, you're amazing at this. These are…” Eddie trails off as something catches his eye, he slowly starts to walk towards a big painting propped up behind one of the tables laid out in the middle of the room. Steve walks to him to see which one he's looking at.
An angel, knelt over a puddle, crying as it stares at his reflection, which is blurred and dark. He stands in a forest, his wings are long and huge, sprawling out above him.
It’s one of Steve’s bigger ones, the inspiration came from a dream he had after they had read about Icarus in his english class back in Highschool.
“It’s… magnificent.” Eddie whispers. Steve smiles gently at Eddie’s reaction. Eddie backs up a bit and looks away from the painting. “Is that me?” Steve follows his eye, to the painting. Eddie walks towards it, Steve stays behind him. It’s the first one Steve ever made of Eddie, the one of him on the throne.
“Yeah, it is.” Steve says. “I made that the first night I came to pick up the kids.” He says. “The first time I met you, actually met you.” They share a look.
“You are incredible, Steve Harrington.”
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skyistheground · 3 months
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beneath the brine - the family crest
honestly this art was kinda experimental for me! in both art and inspiration. kind of made a brain blast about a possible interpretation of the story of isat (below) and i will take ANY excuse to draw mal du pays
ANALYSIS BELOW
siffrin. sounds similar to suffer. or sisyphus
the image of siffrin in the first panel is directly referenced off an old painting of sisyphus. for those who don't know, he is the ancient greek king who cheated death and, as punishment, was forced to roll a boulder up a hill. but whenever he got to the top, the boulder would roll all the way back down and sisyphus would have to start again
sounds familiar, doesn't it? unsure if that was the intention but considering siffrin's love of plays and tragedy, stories, and their whole situation, i think it is an interesting reading of isat
and the king is a rock. he is literally a boulder. he is the climax of the loop's story, the top of the mountain, where after, siffrin falls all the way back down to dormant
as for the rest of this art. i have intentions but i would like to see if anyone else comes up with anything :)
and the full version:
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mooishbeam · 8 months
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『♡』 Obey Me
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♡ featuring: kaeya x f!reader
♡ summary: you learn your lesson for disrespecting the calvary captain wc: 4.1k+ (i am so sorry)
♡ cw/tw: wax play, humiliation, degradation, sex toys, dacryphilia, rough sex, hard dom, overstim, orgasm torture, edging, bondage, squirting, pet play if you squint, kaeya is kind of an asshole, pet names (dove, pretty girl, sweetie)
notes: idk how the word count did that I'm too silly. feral kaeya does something to me tbh. n e way I promise a shorter one next time hehe. art by ttalby_ on ig <3 comments and reblogs are appreciated!
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Kaeya isn’t used to feeling like this.  
The interesting days of tasks and adventitious missions superseded his need for activities outside of the Knights of Favonius. He often stumbled—more so, needlessly interjected—into petty situations. He lived for theatrics, an audience to indulge emotion and intimacy in its most vulnerable state. A man who solves the problems of the public before his own knew neither authentic nor genuine connection. Kaeya was well aware of how easily he made hearts swoon, with a silver tongue and attractive timbre, a mask imperceptible. When you arrived as an apprentice for the 6th Company, he assumed you’d be just as easy, just as captivated. You were anything but. You barely acknowledged his existence for the first year, and he’d be wrong to say your lack of dalliance didn’t chip away at his self-esteem. 
Something egotistical in him wanted your attention. Romantic prospects were dispensable to him, but you had to know who he was. After all, who doesn’t love the Calvary Captain?  
Just for fun he told himself, as you became the first person to turn him flushed and sow seeds of doubt surrounding love in his heart. Kaeya finally managed to achieve your regard and all you asked for was his name. The audacity of you, to ask the captain who he is? He nearly busted out laughing. He gently held your hand and kneeled to kiss it, maintaining eye contact throughout. 
“Kaeya, my dear.” 
You were surprised to find him waiting for you outside the headquarters one day, handsome navy strands haloed in confidence, a delicate flower and perfumed letter in hand. Kaeya watched you read it in silence, his poem dedicated to you, requesting a date. You couldn’t help but smile at his charm, despite his sweaty palms as he awaited your answer. An accumulation of the little things; the bouquet of roses he bought you weekly, so you’d always have a fresh one, making sure you were always hydrated, his ability to make you laugh in trying times. You were both full of adoration, though he wouldn’t admit how invested he was. The only person who glimpsed the truth was Diluc. Kaeya rambled in his drunken stupor at the tavern, and Diluc sighed at the overdramatic sonnet. “My heart beats for her like no other. Will this be my fate? My Greek tragedy?” he mumbled through hiccups. 
As your relationship blossomed, work withered. An emerging problem reared its ugly head. Your assignments consumed your daily life and dwindled the moments spent with Kaeya. In the beginning stages of dating he understood, exuding nothing but patience and encouraging words. He didn’t expect you to drop work for him, and he was willing to accommodate the hectic schedule. Romantic gestures were limited to light caresses or kisses, clandestine sessions in abandoned alleyways. Frequent dates reduced to a couple a week, then a month, then none. The worst instances were when you assured Kaeya you’d arrive, only to call him a couple hours later with a tired apology, still stuck at your office. You promised him you’d make time for yourself and practice self-care, but it was evident you weren’t listening to his advice. You were no stranger to quickies, kindly offering them to Kaeya if he ever needed “destressing”. But the captain was never a fan of rushed affairs. He wanted desperately to share extended time with you, and you had none to give. It became easier to lie than to admit how overworked you were. 
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Kaeya didn’t come to headquarters today, but you recall the conversation from the previous night. 
“Mm, I’m missing my little dove. Think you can come see me?” he said, tilting your chin up to meet his loving gaze. 
“Of course. I don’t have a lot of work tomorrow so I should be done early.” 
“Great. I’ll make dinner for us. Be at my place by 8, okay?” You agreed to the timeframe. 
Now that you’re comprehending the incomplete documents strewn across your desk, you regret your conviction. You shouldered the weight of everyone in your division. It’s getting close to the date, and you’ve barely scratched the surface. You fumble for concentration, anchoring down to finish the rest of the list. You make haste and shove the papers at Hertha. I still have time to get there you thought. Glancing up at the clock as you dart out the building, your eyes widen at what it reads. 10:15 pm. 
Fuck. You’re running now, skirt bouncing and bag rustling, navigating busy streets with an uneasy mind. Once again you promised, and once again you broke it. How could you be so careless? You catch your breath when your hand contacts the door. You relax before giving a few light knocks. The door swings open.  
Kaeya’s hair is free from its usual constraints, draping down his back and shoulders, wispy bangs hugging his sharp features. He’s clearly pissed reclining against the doorframe. He stares at you with his arms folded in front of the parted button down that peaks into the muscular, scarred chest underneath. 
“Kaeya, I-” 
“Get inside.” He turns and walks to the kitchen. You follow him inside and take note of the cold portion of a beautiful plate—presumably your meal—sitting on the table. He swishes the nearly finished red wine before taking a sip. You search aimlessly for an acceptable excuse while he leans against the table with his hand, glass in the other, eyes trained to the floor. Each second of silence simmering makes your stomach knot tighter, and he lets you stand uncomfortably.  
“I’m sorry, I... There were a few roads closed in the area. I had to take a different route.” you fib. He gazes at you, panning up and down before forcing a sarcastic smile. 
“How unfortunate. Are these the same roads that made you three hours late?" His jaw tightens. 
“It was pretty busy today-”  
“I’m feeling generous tonight, so I'll give you one more chance to be honest.”  
You sighed. “I’m so sorry. There’s been a lot of work lately. It’s not fair to you to deal with my problems.” He scoffs deeply, downing the rest of the glass and sets it on the table. 
“If this isn’t working for you, I understand.” 
“Oh? Are you suggesting a separation? Not even the gall to try and make it up to me?” he sneers. 
“You’re handsome and people like you. It’s not hard to find other options.” 
“If it’s not hard, why is the one thing I truly desire so difficult to hold? A petal drifting unpredictable wind, too quick to grasp.” He starts stalking towards you, relaxed but seemingly irritated. The contrast between his words and actions unnerves you. 
“How many times must I tell you to take care of yourself, to not let them walk over you, to come to me if you need help?” He gets to you and snakes his calloused hand behind your neck, a firm grip. Yearning lips are inches from yours, his hair tickles your eyelashes. 
“Why can’t you just listen to me, (Y/N)? Hmm?” He’s lenient, but you feel a shiver up your back and heat pooling in your stomach, nonetheless. 
“I’ll try harder. I promise.” you say, barely above a whisper. The pad of his thumb swirls your cheek. 
“I won’t entertain promises. Show me your dedication.” 
“What do I do to prove it?” A sadistic grin grows across his face, and lips graze your ear, sultry voice coiling around the shell. Your breath stalls. 
“Tonight, I’ll eat you up slowly-” Kaeya peppers soft kisses between the words against your jaw. “-savoring every. Little. Bite.” He trails down to your neck. You're melting in his hold, grabbing his robust arms for anything to stabilize you. "And when I’m picking you apart, and there’s tears in your eyes and you’re begging and you can’t take it anymore-” He drinks up your anticipation, an amused chuckle from the shudder prickling your skin.  
“-you’ll sit there and obey me until I'm done. Like a good pet.” 
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You’re stripped of everything besides your underwear in front of the restlessly eager man. Standing in the center of this candlelit room, you feel miles away from him as he sits fully clothed on the edge of the bed. He’s lax, legs spread with a nonchalant posture; they invite you to kneel between them. Sex with Kaeya was never like this. Though infrequent, your back-alley blowjobs were done with kindness and haste. It was one thing for Kaeya to ogle your mouthwatering figure, another in the humiliating state he constrains you to. Your hands are bound by leather handcuffs that clip to a chunky black collar on both sides, limiting the movement of your wrists to just centimeters away from your face. You could move if you tried to, but the collar locked and tightened around your neck the harder you struggled. In the middle was attached a dangling leash, empty of its owner.  
The vibrating lace panties he put you in buzz agonizingly low against your clit, sending gentle bursts to the butt plug filling deep, foreign space in your body. You’re glutted, chafing your thighs together to numb the sweet ache dotting your core. 
“C’mere dove.” Kaeya orders, his finger curls in a guiding motion. You take one step assuming his entreat, and he retorts with a tut. 
“Aht aht, dogs don’t walk. Get on your knees and crawl to me.” Embarrassment overcomes you as you drop to your knees from the filthy demand. It’s degrading, having to crawl without the use of your arms. You scuffle with balance, and he takes pleasure in playing with the controller. Your rocking rear and wobbly legs find rhythm on the floor through the violent highs and lows of vibration. It was harder due to the position you stumbled in; the bullet teases you in the right spots. You finally reach him, resting your head on his knee, exhausted for what’s to come. He merely pats your head and uses the other to stifle the smug smirk. 
“Good puppy. Look at me.” Suddenly, he wraps the leash around his hand and pulls in taut. It snaps your eyes to his lustful expression, a thick aura that encapsulates you, suffocates you in his command. Kaeya zips his pants down to spring his throbbing cock free, a dark brown gradient to the mushroom tip.  
“Suck. If you let anything spill, I’ll punish you” he cooes. You lick the pre come away, fixating on the sensitive tip. His breathy sighs show appreciation. You lick in circular motions around it before lolling your tongue and taking all of him between your lips. His girth makes space in your mouth impossible until the head presses the back of your throat. “Ugh, fuck” he groans. Kaeya stands and pulls the leash towards him, enough to nuzzle your nose against his pubes. You gag and slobber over his balls from the constant pressure in your throat, and he keeps you there, watching the tears ball in your eyes, unfazed by your retching pleas. He keeps a firm grip on the back of your head.  
“Can you take it?” It’s almost mocking, as if he can’t see the mascara that smears your cheeks and your sweaty, breathless figure. You nod anyway, eager to please. He hums approval before pulling out completely and hammering his length down your throat. His heavy balls smack your chin at a savage pace, and strings of spit connect your puffy lips to his shaft. It’s barbaric and your throat is raw from the impact, but he chases his high. You’re absolutely powerless, your hands can’t even push his thighs back. However, subconsciously it felt nice, to be out of control, at the mercy of someone else using you for their impulse. The whir in your soaking panties feels richer now, tangling in your lower back and clouding your senses. All you smell and feel is him, it was like you never worked a day in your life. Like you were made for this, and this alone. Obscene noises come from your squelching mouth and Kaeya’s broken moans. Fuck and yes are all he can handle through constant whimpers, and you feel him trembling toward his release. He tilts your head to get a better view of you, spit and tears mixed with strands of hair stuck to your skin. You were a mess. But his eyes are solely on you, drenched in adoration and pure love for your trust in him.  
“I want this pretty face on me when I come” he whines and speeds up his thrusts before spurting hot, creamy ropes down your throat, painting your mouth white. He twitches wildly on your tongue till rest, and his guttural moans echo in your ears as you hollow your cheeks to suck him clean. A satisfying pop emerges when you free his tip, and he recollects himself. He somehow looks completely untouched, besides the sheen of sweat; the poise of a prince. 
Once Kaeya comes to his senses, he eyes the evidence of wetness that soaks through your panties, along with drops of pre come you failed to notice. Truthfully, you tried hard to avoid spilling anything, but the sensations in both your back and front were dizzying. He drawls a dramatic sigh, and loosely fiddles with the leash. 
“Didn’t I say not to spill anything?” His words are methodical, weaving enough vitriol to make your blood still at the upcoming punishment. “I’m sorr-” 
“You made a mess. Clean it.” He drops the leash and waits. What you assumed to be a towel clean-up was quickly refuted as you felt the tension of his boot press on your upper back. With just enough weight, he forces your body down towards the fluids, arms crossed. You lick it up without complaint. “Good puppy” he praises. 
Kaeya picks you up as if you’re featherlight and sets you on the edge of the bed on your stomach. You can’t see what he’s doing, and the silence frightens you. Immediately, the judder of the bullet increases significantly—not enough to make you come, but just enough to torment. You attempt to sway from undying heat between your legs, yet the static overtakes. Unbeknownst to you, the butt plug begins to vibrate, as well. You whine and arch your back involuntarily. You finally hear a deep chuckle from Kaeya. His fingers graze your sopping underwear. 
“So naughty, you got like this just from sucking me off?” He pushes the bullet harshly against you. You mewl from the feeling. “Please Kaeya, it’s too much.” 
“Shh, I know, I know. We still have a long way to go.” he soothes. He spreads your ass to reveal more area, and he’s hushed to an alluring whisper in your ear. “(Y/N). I’m going to spank you. And each time I do, you’ll count. One, thank you. Two, thank you. Up to sixteen. Understand?” 
“Yes” you rasped. 
“Good girl.” 
Kaeya massages your backside and prepares a slap. His palm crashes sharply on one with a resounding crack. Blazing surge sprawls across the whole cheek, but you manage to stay afloat. “One, thank you.” He promptly delivers another, a staggering strike to match the other cheek. “Two, thank you” you hissed. He kneads the smoldering dough in his hands and smiles at the juices stuck to your inner thighs. 
“Such a pervert. You’re not enjoying this, are you?” he teases. The lines of pleasure and pain blurred for you long before. The crackling fire of his hand swatting your ass makes you cry out. He’s brutal, and the grip you have on his sheets colors your knuckles white. You endure delicious thwacks with a tender bottom all the way through thirteen. Your malleable mind forgets to count past that, forgets your place. Kaeya feigns hurt. “Am I that forgettable? Should we start over?” A shudder trails down your back. 
“M’no, Kaeya ple-ase. ‘M sorry.” you stammer. He swipes your tears with his thumb and licks it. “I’m touched by your tears” he groans. He moves back to your searing bottom, digging crescent shaped indents into the welted flesh with his nails. 
“Do you know why I had you count to sixteen?” 
“N-no...” 
A low hmph. “That’s the number of dates you missed.” You go pale for a second. “It won’t happen again, Kaeya. Please!” you beg. The need for release ruins your rational thoughts, and he can taste your desperation. “Please what, dove?” He plays ignorance. “Tell me exactly what you want.” He caresses your face lovingly, despite his cruelty. 
“Wanna come, I need it so bad, Kaeya.” His name rolling off your tongue in lewd fervor makes his length constrict in his pants. You’re putty in his presence, and he delights in molding you to his wishes. 
"Are you worthy of it?" he taunts. Fresh tears brim your eyes, and he can’t fight back the snicker in his throat. He walks away from you, and you’re left alone until you feel the mattress give way under his knee. What little sight you had in front of you is robbed by the silky black blindfold pulling stiff on your eyes. “Too tight?” 
“A little.” He loosens it a bit and kisses your temple. Suddenly, a sphere makes contact with your lips, and you open. The ball gag secures around the back of your head, and you’re already salivating from the stretch of your jaw. 
“You know what, I’ll let you come.” he lulled. You can’t hear the malicious tinge in his words, and he swiftly turns both vibrators up to a harrowing speed at the same time. A strangled moan gets caught in your throat and you quiver and lurch over. He spanks your sore behind in response. 
“Keep your back arched. I want a perfect view” he husks. You use the stamina you have left to stay in that position. Your hips are unconsciously rutting against the bullet, and the ecstasy lapping at your swollen clit sends trails of fire up your stomach. Kaeya watches the saturated outline of your convulsing vulva, the honeyed, muffled moans unending and palms his erection.  
“I’m sorry, this must be so hard for you” he soothes. “Almost as hard as it was for me to hear you lie so blatantly.” Kaeya wasn’t a man that held grudges, but he took amusement in your reactions. All he can think about is breaking you, with each touch and kiss; so that you travel through heaven and hell, drowning in desire until he carries you out. Your eyes roll to the back of your head, and you come hard, hole fluttering around nothing with electricity squirming in your bones. However, the pressure doesn’t stop, it seems to vibrate faster as you buck and cry. “Oops, wrong setting.” He turns it up higher, the bastard. It rips through your orgasm, already approaching another and you can’t take the sting. “Tell me if it’s too much” he sneers. Your hands jolt and snap back to the collar.  
“I’ll turn it off later, I’m kind of busy right now. You know, work and stuff.” What? He wouldn’t leave you like this, right? Undecipherable noises bounce around the gag, but none persuade him. Footsteps get quieter, then the door shuts.  
You can’t look or beg for Kaeya, and tears begin to stain the blindfold. Buzzing roars in your ears, your limbs are too weak to hold up and you can barely breathe. Your thighs shake from sick passion, and you come undone again over the persistent toys. The twenty minutes he was gone felt like hours. Your muffled sobs are uncontrollable, come cascading down your legs and spit dribbles from your lips. You aren’t sure how many times you came before he got back.  
The Archons must have shown mercy; the vibrations stopped. You hear that suave voice resounding in your brain. 
“I think you’ve earned a break.” he says, freeing the panties from you. The plug steadily glides out of your pulsing ring, and he removes the blindfold. Kaeya is the first thing you see, and for a moment he shines like royalty. The gag comes off and you’re babbling Kaeya’s name over and over like a chant, a devoted disciple. He cradles your face and hushes you. 
“It’s okay, I’m here.” He flips you on your back. You’re in a daze gazing at him but his attention is lowered to your spread legs, slabbering at the slippery aftermath of his abandonment. 
“Beautiful. A living work of art” he whispered. His mask dissolves before you. He reaches for one of the red candles glowing vividly on his nightstand and returns with the wax-leaking stick. You share a soft kiss, warm and pure while he tilts the candle over your chest. He’s careful with the course and allows it to dance across your breasts, down your sternum and above your pelvis. Each crimson plop and fleck are its own singing thrill, but your awareness is diverted to his wanton kisses, the nips on your bottom lip. Heat reignites your core. Once he blows out the candle, he smudges French kisses down your neck, tracing the pattern of the wax to subdue the burn. “You’re flawless” he breaths against your nipple. He sucks one while pinching the other, the occasional bite on your slightly bruising skin makes you wince. He slides off the bed and starts stripping with an insatiable thirst that longed to be inside you, shirt and pants thrown about. In one swoop, he grabs your thighs and pulls you to the edge.  
“If I uncuff you, will you behave?” You nod frantically with the clinking metal, and he detaches the restraints. He brings your legs over his shoulder, and you feel the cockhead prodding your slit. Kaeya sinks his tip into you, and you’re suddenly overcome with frenetic throbbing that ripples through your hypersensitive clit. “W-wait, Kaeya-” You don’t have nearly enough strength to protest when you grab his wrists settled on your waist—he’s determined to fuck it out of you. “Mm, just a little more” He’s craving, his veins rub your walls all the way to the base. With his balls flush, he pulls out and drives into you. The first pump sends a flaming shock through your body, an abyssal fall you succumb to. You can’t register the erotic screams or pleasant shock of Kaeya as a stream of liquid coats your bodies and drenches the sheets. Your hysterical sobs and innocent sorry’s are music to his ears, better than any melody in Teyvat. He rubs circles on your lower belly and starts again at an unrelenting pace. “I-I can’t Kaeya, ‘m coming so hard.” you wail, writhing from the deep strokes coaxing your g-spot. Your stomach quakes and you grip him like a vice, he can’t stop the feral urge. “Fuck- aww, sweetie. I know, I know. Can you do another one, for me?” He tries to keep his composure, but his voice is bordering unhinged, dying to see you squirt again. Kaeya's chest pins yours and he pummels your cunt with your shaky legs locked around him. Your nails latch onto his back and you weep into his shoulder. The emotion is too intense; your heart thrums viciously in your ears.  
“You’re my pretty little fuck toy, hmm?” he stutters through thrusts. “Just lay here and take my cock. Quit your job. Be mine entirely.” Loud plap’s accompany his silent plea, and you feel another orgasm boiling. His palm pressing on your womb makes you incoherent and he chuckles. “Aw sweetie, it feels too good?” he mocks. You touch foreheads. You’re both teeming, waiting for each other. “Give it to me. Come on my cock like a good slut” he demands. Wave after relentless wave splinters you, and the gushing sprinkler covers him exactly like he wanted. Kaeya moans at the sight. “Shit, ‘m coming.” He pursues his sputtering hips, shooting thick globs that greedily crowd your sex.  
Kaeya breathes heavily as he comes down from his peak twitching inside. You still tremble sporadically in his arms. He rubs your back, placing calming kisses all over your face. “You alright, pretty girl?” You’re edging on unconsciousness. He stays with you until you gather responsiveness.  
When you wake, the collar is off, and you identify concern in his eyes. “You weren't this scared when you were killing me” you murmur quietly. Kaeya flashes a genuine smile. “If you died from good sex, that’d be quite the compliment on my part.” He props you into his lap facing him, and you're reposed on his chest. He pats your hair, staring off into nothing and everything. 
“I’d much rather have you in pieces. Because I’m the only one that can put you back together.” It was a passing thought, one that shouldn’t be said out loud. It churns in your gut, and you aren’t sure why. 
“You worked so hard today. Let’s take a bath, okay?” 
1K notes · View notes
theemporium · 8 months
Note
would you be willing to write for hockey player!james and he’s superrr cocky and always loves to make reader blush and flustered cause readers usually super confident, calm and collected?
HOCKEY JAMES IS JUST SO🫠 thank you for requesting!🫶🏽
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When you had seen the position of a social media manager for the university’s hockey team, you didn’t think anything of it other than it would be good money and easy hours to work around your classes. 
However, what you failed to account for was the players on said team. 
You knew the stigma around hockey players, and some of them fit the stereotype perfectly. But a large majority of them were decent guys who were usually quite happy to work with you and make your job a little bit easier each day you were at the rink. 
You bantered with them, you laughed with them. Hell, you might’ve even gone as far to say some of them felt more like friends than acquaintances.
But there was one player in particular that seemed to completely throw you off. 
And that was none other than the captain himself, James Potter. 
“There’s my favourite girl.” 
Your cheeks flushed, your hands gripping the camera in your hand. You contemplated ignoring him, pretending that you hadn’t heard him as you continued to mess around with the settings on your camera. But then you felt a warmth against your back and the smell of his cologne overwhelmed your senses—and you realised it was a pretty stupid thought for even thinking you could ignore him.
“Hi, James,” you murmured half-heartedly as you turned your head to look at him.
His grin widened. “Hi, princess.” 
James Potter was huge. He was huge in the physical sense with his broad shoulders and thick arms and meaty thighs. He was huge in the popular sense with half the campus wrapped around his finger like he is some modern day Greek God worshipped and adored. He was huge in the egotistical sense that had him acting as though he was the best thing that ever walked the Earth. 
And he was a huge pain in your ass that knew how to get under your skin.
“Whatcha doing?” He asked as he leaned over, his chin perched on your shoulder as he watched you flick through the pictures you took from yesterday’s practice. 
“My job,” you stated simply.
“Don’t give me that,” he murmured as he lightly nudged you. “I saw you laughing with Pads earlier. How come I don’t get the same treatment?”
“Because Sirius doesn’t bother me while I’m trying to work,” you replied.
Any other man would have taken the hint and walked away. However, James Potter was far from being any other man.
“You love it when I come over here, don’t lie,” James grinned as he threw an arm over your shoulder. Before you could even realise what he was doing, he was pulling you back against him as his fingers lightly nudged your head to turn and look at him. “C’mon, pretty girl, give me one of those smiles that make my heart all funny.”
You tried to ignore the way your body hummed at his words. “You should go get ready for practice.”
“And leave you here all alone?” James scoffed, a few curls falling in front of his eyes. You resisted the urge to push them away. “That would be a tragedy, princess, someone else could come and swoop you off your feet.” 
You rolled your eyes and hoped your face didn’t look as warm as the rest of you felt. 
“You’re so cute when you get all shy on me,” James murmured as his fingers lightly traced over your cheekbone. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it when you’re feisty. But this is cute, princess. Makes me wanna see how else I can make you blush.”
“James,” you hissed. 
The boy only grinned widely as he stepped back. “Take some hot pictures of me out there, yeah?”
Your lips parted. “I–”
“My ass looks great today, princess! Remember to get my good side!” James added with a wink before he scattered off to the changing rooms, leaving you flustered and blushing and fighting the urge to follow him.
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932 notes · View notes
thepersonnamedsam · 5 months
Text
she got this - op81
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pairing: oscar piastri x academic!girlfriend
summary: oscar visits his girlfriends bachelor thesis defending
word count: 1.3k
face claim: phoebe bridgers
warnings: a swear word, some angst - mentions of a panic attack
note: this is for my baby @lissyontour, you got this, pls wish her good luck for today <3
oh and it’s my first oscar fic, hihi, enjoy it
and there is some of the bachelor thesis… i had to include some of it, thanks to chat gpt
masterlist / taglist
Fuck, was she nervous. Her head was spinning and her legs were jelly - no, scratch that - her legs were liquid.
Her eyes were trying to focus on something, just something that would help her back to reality. She knew she was somewhere else right now, somewhere where she shouldn’t be.
Why wasn’t Oscar with her? Why was she alone? This was not how she planned it!
Her heart was beating, she felt it nearly pop out of her chest. It almost hurt. Oscar should’ve been here with her, but a last minute meeting with Zak just threw her plans overboard.
Her breath quickend and her hands searched for the only safe thing she could think of, her phone. Her fingers quickly glided over the screen and Oscars answer made her hold her breath for a second.
Standing in front of the auditorium, the heavy red doors made her uneasy. It’s gonna be time soon.
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Oscar had to hold himself back not to text her that he was actually sitting in the front row and waiting for her to enter the room. He knew it was cruel. But he just had to do it.
He was so much more nervous than her. He watched her write that bachelor thesis for over six months now. At every race she was sitting in his drivers room with at least ten books and her laptop. Only just for the last five laps she came out of the room to watch him race.
He appreciated her coming, she could’ve just stayed at home and studied, but she always came with. Multitasking her way through her studies. And he was so proud of her. There was no way he would miss her final step of the way.
And he knew his cruelty was all worth it, as she stepped into the room and her eyes spotted his. Her whole face lit up and he could almost spot some tears of relief.
„What are you doing here?“, she mouthed. A small smile on her lips. „Supporting you“, he mouthed back, matching her smile.
„Welcome Ms y/l/n!“, her professor welcomed her. „I am exited to hear you defend your bachelor thesis about; How Greek Mythology influenced modern literature.“
She smiled at her favourite teacher and took out her thesis. She closed her eyes for a second, breathed in and out again. She was ready. Oscar knew she studied English literature and oh did that make her sexy.
But he had no idea of Greek Mythology or modern literature by any means. Yes, he read her thesis at least twice, but did his brain understand anything she meant? It did not. Being the smart one was all her job.
„Welcome Professor McAllister, dear colleagues, guests and friends. I hereby welcome you dearly to my defending of my bachelor thesis: How Greek Mythology influenced modern literature.“
Oscar listened intently and always smiled when she looked at him for reassurance. His heart was swelling with proudness. He soon had a girlfriend with a bachelor degree.
„In the vast tapestry of literary evolution, Greek mythology stands as an enduring thread, weaving its timeless narratives into the very fabric of modern literature. As contemporary authors navigate the labyrinth of inspiration, they find themselves entwined with the rich tapestry of gods, heroes, and mythical creatures that originated in ancient Greece.
The resurgence of interest in Greek mythology can be traced to its profound impact on archetypal storytelling. From the lofty heights of Mount Olympus to the depths of the Underworld, these tales resonate with universal themes that transcend temporal and cultural boundaries. Authors draw from the exploits of Zeus, the sagas of heroes like Achilles, and the tragedies of figures like Oedipus to explore complex facets of human nature. The gods' capriciousness mirrors the unpredictable forces that shape our destinies, while the struggles of mortals against divine intervention echo the perennial human quest for agency in the face of cosmic uncertainty.
Prominent literary figures, from James Joyce to J.K. Rowling, have paid homage to Greek mythology, infusing their works with echoes of ancient narratives. The hero's journey, a concept rooted in the mythic structure of heroes like Perseus and Hercules, serves as a narrative template for protagonists in contemporary novels. These echoes are not mere nostalgic nods; they represent a perennial dialogue between past and present, a dialogue in which timeless themes find new expression.
Moreover, the enduring allure of Greek mythology lies in its malleability. Authors wield the myths as allegorical tools to explore issues ranging from power dynamics and hubris to the nuances of morality. The Hydra of Lerna becomes a metaphor for societal challenges that sprout anew when seemingly eradicated, and the labyrinthine trials of Theseus mirror the complexities of modern ethical dilemmas.
In essence, the enduring influence of Greek mythology on modern literature is a testament to the universality of its themes and the perennial resonance of its characters. As authors continue to delve into the wellspring of ancient tales, they discover not relics of a bygone era, but rather a living reservoir of inspiration that fuels the imagination of generations, perpetuating the eternal dance between the ancient and the contemporary.“
Her voice angelic as it could be, drew in people who never even heard of the topic. You didn’t have to be interested in Greek Mythology to listen to her thesis, because she delivered her speech that even Oscar understood and left him wanting to know more about it.
My god was he proud. He was in awe, his beautiful girlfriend standing up there, speaking about her passion and delivering it in a way he never thought she could.
Even the look on Professor McAllister made him proud. She looked at his girlfriend with a proud smile, nodding along with her and reassuring her. She was gonna ace this.
Oscar was snapped out of it when the whole auditorium clapped. She was standing with the biggest smile on that stage. Oscar just had to get a picture of her. His new wallpaper.
„Thank you, Ms y/l/n. This was magnificent! We‘ll just discuss real quick and we‘ll be back with your grade. You can be proud of yourself, Ms y/l/n“, Professor McAllister told the young woman on stage.
And as soon as they left the room, she squealed and ran to Oscar. He opened his arms and let the girl spring into his embrace. „Hi“, he whispered. „Hi“, she whispered back. „I thought you weren’t coming?“
He laughed, a real deep belly laugh. „I had to surprise you!“ She hit his shoulder and said: „I hate you, but I’m glad you came.“
„You did so well, my love. I am so proud of you! We have to celebrate afterwards, anything you want.“
The time together was cut short, when the door opened again and the four professors walked in again. „Ms y/l/n, please, have a seat“, her professor said and pointed to the chair sat in front of the four.
She nervously walked over to them and smiled at them. „No need to be nervous, you did well, you can be proud of yourself.“
They talked stuff Oscar didn’t understand. But when he saw a big smile form on her face, he knew she received the best grade she could’ve. Proud, that’s the only word that came to Oscar’s mind.
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„I love the boys“, she told Oscar. He smiled up at her and said: „I know you do, but only I can celebrate with you today.“ She giggled and would’ve almost kicked her feet, if it weren’t for the others in the room.
Professor McAllister handed y/n her diploma and told her they’d see each other at official ceremony. After that, Oscar and his girlfriend almost sprinted out of the auditorium.
oscarpiastri
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liked by yninsta, landonorris and 82‘729 others
oscarpiastri how did we get from that to this?
view all 22‘219 comments
yninsta the first one is NOT me, idk where you got this from
user1 weren’t we all at that point during our studies?
user2 yes, yes we were
yninsta glad i wasn’t alone…
oscarpiastri so it was you
yninsta oop-
landonorris congrats, y/n! when we gonna get a lecture about greek mythology from you?
yninsta any day you want
landonorris now?
oscarpiastri no, now she’s busy with me
landonorris ewww, my eyes are scarred, don’t ever come back to the mclaren garage
oscarpiastri i didn’t mean it that way
yninsta he did
landonorris you’re just kids
user3 we love an academic wag
user4 so proud of you, y/n!
mclaren congratulations, y/n, next podium is for you 🍾
yninsta thank you, admin
yninsta thank you, baby
oscarpiastri i am so proud of you, darling
loganseargant i cannot believe i have a friend with a bachelors degree…
yninsta better believe it, american boy
user4 do u even know what a bachelors degree is..?
user5 american slander, we love it
alex_albon we are all proud, y/n
user6 we really are
yninsta thank you all so much, i love you guys so much
georgerussel63 oh no, she’s getting sentimental, let’s stop here guys
°°°
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wolfythewitch · 12 days
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hi I feel like I've been attempting to interact with your stuff way too much and I'm probably annoying you but I wanted you to see some of my own sketches of your Hadestown au bc it had a chokehold on me yesterday and it wouldn't leave me alone. I decided Elias would be Hermes for several reasons
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(You don't have to read this bit if you don't want to lol)
Tim doesn't have anything close to a guide/mentor figure in tma and Elias is probably the only person who a) has a connection to him and b) actively utilises Tim's decisions for his own ends. He's a bitch yes, and his Hermes would be a much more insidious, manipulative one, but there's really nobody else who fits the bill as much as Elias does. He enjoys the tragedy, actively basks in it in fact, and I think while Hermes continues to tell the story hoping that it might end well one day, Elias would tell it knowing that it never will and enjoying the inevitability of it all. He would appear genuine to the other characters, but the audience would know that he's a rat bastard - and this would show through to Tim during "Hey, the big artiste...".
Also I gave Jon a bundle of heliotropes instead of a red carnation bc they signify devoted, undying love and they have a tragic origin derived from an old Greek myth.
enjoy (or don't, whatever floats your boat). your art is very cool and got me to enjoy my own art process for the first time in a very long time so thank you a lot for that :)
Oh this is so cool!! Your style is so pretty and aaa jonmartin dancing <33 I've thought more about Elias as Hermes but I've come to the decision that I don't want the tone to shift that much haha, and Elias being hermes would definitely switch the tone of hadestown needing you to think every time that maybe, maybe this time it will end with a happy ending
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Text
1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]
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Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.
Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.
Word Count: 5.7k
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💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜
Let’s begin with a definition.
Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.
Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?
~~~~~~~~~~
Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.
“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.
“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”
“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.
“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”
Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”
You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”
“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”
“I told you to get back!”
“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”
Criston has fought his way through the maelstrom and is dragging Aegon away by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”
“But—”
“Go!” Criston roars, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.
Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.
“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”
“What’s the closest hospital?”
“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.
Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.
“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”
“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”
“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.
“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?
An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.
“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”
Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.
The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”
“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.
“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”
“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.
The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”
It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”
“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.
Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.
~~~~~~~~~~
Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.
In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.
Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.
If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.
In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.
If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.
1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.
~~~~~~~~~~
A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.
Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.
Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.
“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”
Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”
“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”
“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”
“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.
Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”
“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”
“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”
“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”
“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”
“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.
“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”
“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”
“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.
Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”
“What?” you answer, stunned.
Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”
“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”
“You didn’t notice the gun?!”
“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.
“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”
“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”
“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.
“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”
“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”
Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.
Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”
“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”
“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”
“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”
“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”
From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”
“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”
“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.
Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”
The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.
Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.
“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”
“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.
The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”
“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”
“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”
“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.
Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”
The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”
Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”
The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”
“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”
“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”
“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”
“But they are cheering.”
“Not for you.”
Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.
“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.
“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.
Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?
“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”
There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”
More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.
“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”
You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.
“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.
And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”
~~~~~~~~~~
There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.
“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.
“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”
“McCarthy?”
“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”
Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.
“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”
Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.
When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.
“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.
Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”
You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.
Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.
Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”
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