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#is all of this definitely more deep and serious than was ever intended in canon
whoredmode · 4 days
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for the ask game 002 for troy
Send me one of three prompts
let’s smoke cigarettes. together.
How I feel about this character: 
i love him. when i first got into sr1 i definitely enjoyed him just fine, but over time just thinking about his role and development and his general character it really turned into a very deep love for him. he’s such an interesting character to me and he plays an important role in my canon for a reason. one of the characters i’ve enjoyed developing and using for stuff the most bc he has a unique position in the context of the story that has a lot of potential places to go, and since the actual games just kinda. ignored him. it’s fun to give him an actual role and arc.
All the people I ship romantically with this character: 
troyteros is the most obvious. i didn’t even intend for it to happen, but it did and now their relationship and history is super important to both his and anteros’ respective developments. i think this just goes for troy/boss in general. i think it’s a fascinating relationship even just on a surface level. as far as others, none immediately come to mind? troy’s a loner.
i’ve seen troy/johnny before and i’ll say i’m mildly intrigued by the idea but that would have to be a dynamic that would take like. decades.
My non-romantic OTP for this character: 
does dex and troy count? bc i could talk about their dynamic for HOURS. i love bitches who hate each other and go through hell together and still come out the other side hating. i love it so much. i love how painfully connected they are, how their dynamic is based on the cyclical nature of the relationships in sr1. it’s like they’re both aware they’re trapped in a time loop w a person they can’t stand. it’s so compelling to me. way more than it ever could be romantically, imo.
also! from my own canon. shaundi and troy. they have a minor subplot that starts in saints in hell/GooH side story where shaundi is helping troy become sober. this goes into sriv where she’s still helping him w it. i think they’d end up having a really interesting friendship all things considered. it’s a dynamic i think about A LOT!!
My unpopular opinion about this character: 
he’s an important member of the cast?? maybe more targeted towards the how the games ended up treating characters like him and dex. i guess that kinda plays into the next prompt.
ig as an actual answer to the question. i think he was more than happy to quit his job in srtt. excited even. i don’t think he ever had any friends in the SPD, and i genuinely think a lot of ppl actively disliked him. it’s why it was so easy for ultor to convince several cops to be on their payroll and work against him.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:
i wish he got an actual conclusion. like he doesn’t have to appear in every game, but holy shit i hate how sr2 handles him. he should’ve had an actual confrontation w the boss, not just relegated to homie you get after completing an activity. where is their reunion? where is their conversation? there’s a million things left we deserve to see w him and the saints and we get none of it.
also a bit of a nitpick but. like i have him do in my canon, i think in sr2 if you call him for help he should be disguised or in normal clothes. like be serious. no way in hell he or the boss should be fine w him all dressed up like that while they go commit crimes
My OTP:
for him? troyteros. like hands down. no contest. there’s a reason they seem to get together in like all my AUs.
My crossover ship:
not really a crossover person….does santo ileso blues count as a crossover bc it features the reboot….can i count it in this case so i have an answer and say him and jimrob have a vague friendship. like the one friend he’s made in santo ileso after 10 years.
A headcanon fact:
like all my family lore for him. he’s the youngest of his family. has an older brother and sister. anteros saw a picture of his brother once and was like oh i could’ve had this bradshaw……..
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charlieconwayy · 7 months
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why jay/leia is the intended endgame: an unnecessarily long post
the very obvious answer to this is the whole legacy argument. who didn't know when the character descriptions dropped that those two would be a couple just for the whole "haha the kelsos are still driving the forman women crazy" joke? (which they haven't even made yet, which also makes me think we have in no way seen the last of them. we are DEFINITELY getting an eric freakout) kelso was a joke character nearly his entire stint on t70s. they never portrayed him as a good bf or caring ab . . . well anything other than sex, and then eventually betsy (trans!jay kelso theory?). jay, however, they make a big point of showing/saying that he is not like his dad. there is an entire episode dedicated to red realizing that jay is a good boy and that is not kelso just bc he is a kelso.
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this is the jay defining moment for me. i think if they had cast a lesser actor than mace this could've come off as 'haha jay trying to get into leia's pants' but mace delivered it so genuinely and sincerely that it is very clear to me that leia is not going to be someone that jay gets over easily. he's this "reformed playboy," yet we never see him be anything less than a gentleman to leia. i am pointing out this line in particular bc of it's OBVIOUS parallel to eric saying that he needed to go to africa so that he can deserve donna.
i have trauma from the gmw fandom debating to death who the corpanga was supposed to be (as if that was a good thing lmfao) but there is literally no debate that jay/leia is the new donna/eric. jay is the cool hot love interest who centers the neurotic dorky protagonist. plus, i mean, the car scene within the first three episodes? be so serious here.
the show spent sooooo much time on jay and it would be so weird to me if they suddenly were just like "actually nate is the male lead now!" i think he probably got the least amount of screentime of any of the kids.
i know the showrunner came out and said leia needed to find a ~deep connection not built on lust~ and that's where nate came in. i do agree with that to an extent, but nate/leia is clearly just to throw off the viewers. also, nate is the kelso archetype more than jay is, lbr. (i could do an entirely separate blog post on that). yes, nate and leia connected. they were able to confide in each other about their relationship issues. does that mean there's romantic chemistry there? no. it just means that they were there for each other in an important moment.
is a big proponent of leia/jay's relationship built on lust? i would argue moreso on leia's side than jay's, but also, leia didn't like jay bc of his looks. she liked him because he made her feel special and treated her with respect. she liked the kind, sensitive part of him. it was only once they had that moment where she began to ~lust after him. and for anyone to argue that jay's feelings for leia are lust related is fucking stupid because
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like jay could get any girl he wants canonically. he likes leia for leia. he likes her for all of her little quirks and flaws. plus there is ANOTHER episode dedicated to her feeling she needs to put out and him saying he only wants what she is comfortable with. c'mon man.
this is not some lust related fling that was built on nothing but mutual attraction. i'm not gonna act like their convos ever get super deep or anything (mainly because we only got ten episodes in season one), but nate/leia rly didn't either. like. they were both just upset about jay and nikki. and then they almost kissed.
are nate and leia probably going to be a focus in season two? oh, for sure. but the obvious endgame is jay and leia.
like be so for real.
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i could also talk about the difference in her expressions here for hours but i'll just leave all of this here.
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porgthespacepenguin · 2 years
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2.10 sneak peek mini-meta (2/2)
All right, folks. It’s time for the second trailer madness post.
The trailer is literally 30 seconds long, and I’ve managed to squeeze two posts out of it. Imagine how crazy the episode itself is going to be!
Anyway, onwards!
(Major spoilers under the cut.)
Two Renees
So Queen Agnes told us:
“To succeed, there must be two Renees. One who lives, and one who dies.”
At first, I wondered if she meant it metaphorically: parallel timelines, for example.
But now from the look of the trailer’s, I think it may be more literal:
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(By the way, I’ve been trying to figure out what this device is, or if I’ve seen it before, but no luck. If you know what it is, drop me a line and I’ll edit the post.)
But considering Estonia is wearing the same clothes as Renee, it may be that she intends to take Renee’s place, so the silver device could be meant to disguise her.
Edit: @ellewood117​ found it! It’s actually Renee’s sailboat pendant we see in 2.5 when we first learn about Renee:
I had been wondering about Estonia’s narrative purpose in season 2. Early on, like most people, I wondered if she was actually Laris. But looking at Laris’ canon life, it seems difficult, if not impossible.
According to canon, Laris was a Tal Shiar operative, along with her husband Zhaban:
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After meeting Picard during the Romulan crisis, she and Zhabhan defected from the Tal Shiar around 20 years before season 2, and have been with Picard ever since. Estonia looks roughly the same age as Laris, so when, exactly, would she have been a Watcher? And given how much she loved Zhaban, he would be with her, unless she became one after his death. But then she would definitely know who Jean-Luc is.
Timeline-wise, it makes no sense.
Besides, the only practical purpose of bringing Laris herself into the story would be if they intended to pursue a Picard/Laris romance: but in that case, they would have used their time together in S2 to deepen their romantic connection.
Thankfully, they haven’t. In 2.9, they had a the perfect opportunity for deep longing looks, or even (god forbid) an attempted kiss. Anything to signal an “oh” moment from Picard, who, might I remind you, left Laris without a backward glance in 2.1 (more on that in the upcoming retrospective).
So if they intended to pursue Laris as serious LI, they would need to show Picard realizing her importance to him. Having Estonia be Laris, and showing them growing romantically closer, would work.
But no. Nothing.
Even their half-hug, while sweet, remains pointedly platonic, lacking intimacy:
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She’s hugging him more than he’s hugging her, and they’re out of step, not fully facing each other. Estonia is seeking to comfort him but her narrative role confines her to the sidelines.
Now compare the above with Picard hugging Deanna and Will:
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 (If we ever get a Qcard hug, I guarantee it will be a full hug like the above.)
And now it seems Renee may sacrifice herself for her Picard (or at the least strongly consider it) to save both her and the timeline.
Wait, what? Could Estonia be yet another Q mirror?
Let’s recap:
Estonia is a Watcher, "an agent who would protect the tapestry of history," although in her case, she’s protecting a single thread: the first Picard.
She’s been watching over Renee from afar. She admires her, knows her better than anyone. But she’s keenly aware of her struggles.
Since she’s met Picard in 2.4, she’s been walking him through her trauma, going into his mind to help him, encouraging him to follow his memories all the way to his mother’s death...
All things Q isn’t able to do himself for his own Picard, but almost certaintly desperately wishes he could.
(By the way, it will never stop being hilarious to me that what convinces Picard Estonia isn’t Laris is that she doesn’t know who Q is,
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She doesn’t know his space husband, so she can’t be Laris, because you just know Picard has been talking everybody’s ears off about Q for years.)
And now, like Q, Estonia intends to save her Picard, ready to lay down her own life if need be (although it may not be necessary), choosing to be the “Renee who dies” so that the real Renee can live.
Interesting.
Also, if Estonia is yet another Q mirror, then Picard’s question in 2.6 hits much harder, doesn’t it,
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Who is watching over Q?
Nobody, that’s who. 
And as we find out in 2.8, Q really needs Picard’s light to guide him home. He’s lost in the darkness, much like Renee, much like Maman. And he’s not expecting anybody to care, or to try to save him.
(Hey, who stuck a dagger in my heart?! That’s not supposed to be here.)
The path to the right future
In my time meta, I wrote two things:
They have to make sure the launch happens, because otherwise, they will find themselves in the wrong timeline: if they moved forward in time, it would just bring them right back to the dark future.
[But] no matter what they do, they can’t actually go back to where they have to be in order to fix the problem. Not on their own, at least.
Well, the latter part has come true: they don’t have a ship anymore. Not that it would have helped then anyway.
But at least, it seems they’ve realized that they need to be on the right track before even thinking about going home. So, progress.
So, with Agnes out of the way, stopping Soong is the priority on the agenda. And with about 12 hours to go before the launch, they’d better hope Estonia can beam them back to the US, otherwise, they’re screwed.
But look where Rios and Saffi find themselves:
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Soong’s lab! Now that’s interesting. And as always, I have questions.
First, I have to wonder how they managed to get in at all. We know Soong has pretty tight security. So unless Q left them a backdoor when he hacked Soong’s network, I don’t see how they would manage to 1) get in, 2) access the systems at all.
Second, we also know from the trailer that Soong will be in his lab at some point:
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And he’s not happy. At all. Whether that’s before or after Rios and Saffi break in is anybody’s guess at this point.
But look who’s also in the trailer, apparently still wearing what appears to be Soong’s VR glasses:
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Is Kore talking to Q’s simulacra? And what’s her role in all this? After episode 2.8, I didn’t actually expect we would see her again, because we had so little time left and I can’t see yet how she ties in to the plot.
(What? 99% of my thought processes go to analyzing Qcard, the rest of the plot interests me only marginally.)
Back to La Barre
Another thing that I find exceedingly interesting in the trailer is that Q and Picard are both alone in La Barre, with the rest of the team ostensibly in the US trying to prevent the launch.
So did Picard not leave in the first place? Did Picard go to the US, and come back somehow?
Or did they encounter Q on the way to the airport, and Q just threw Picard over his shoulder, running away? (I’d pay good money to see that, but alas...)
And yes, they seem to be in the actual solarium, from what we can tell:
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Although now that Q is here physically, the sun is shining radiantly.
Answering an ask yesterday, @celestialwarzone​ theorized that Q may have gotten some of his powers back as we near the apex of the time disturbance: the closer the launch, the more power.
Not unlike a supernova, actually,
“burning brighter as [he spins] towards extinction.”
That’s a fascinating theory, and one I agree with, for practical, narrative and symbolic reasons.
Let’s start with the practical: Picard and his ducklings need a way home. Specifically, they need to go back to the Stargazer at the right time to prevent disaster. Without Q and his powers, that seems impossible.
Narratively, it would also bring us closer to the Q-bayashi Maru. If Q has some of his powers back, he could conceiveably save himself, but at the cost of the timeline and Picard’s life. But if he saves Picard, he dooms himself. In other words, a no-win scenario the likes of which Jean-Luc has never faced before.
Finally, from a symbolic standpoint, just look at the sun. Following Q’s despair in 2.8, the sun sets, pluging team Picard into darkness: the dark night of the soul. Then, as the sun rises, everything takes a turn for the better. And now, the sun is shining, full of life again.
Not that I think Q’s well again. He isn’t. But a temporary improvement, just enough to save either him or Picard? I could see it.
Anyway, after digging through the trailer, it seems Picard spends a good chunk of the episode in La Barre:
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He’s talking to Q here, by the way, when he says,
“There’s been so much loss. So much death.”
Aside from the obvious foreshadowing (the biggest loss of all coming straight at him like a freight train in a tunnel), I wonder what he means. In the 21st century, nobody has died yet. Except Soong’s soldiers, but they were Borg so nobody cares for some reason.
So I doubt Picard is talking about Q’s actions having horrible consequences. He could, however, mean the Borg, and his difficulty accepting that they could change. Since, you know, he’s going to be facing the Stargazer choice again soon. Very soon.
Anyway, there’s only one Picard scene in the trailer that’s not ostensibly set in La Barre:
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They’ve kept the scenery exceptionally vague. He could be anywhere.
And we don’t seem him with Rios/Saffi infiltrating Soong’s lab, or with Estonia at the launch site. So maybe Picard does actually stay in France, and he’s saying goodbye to Estonia, Rios and Saffi in the scene above.
But why would he stay behind? He’d need an exceptionally good reason not go with them.
Like, Q?
Anyway, it seems we’ll have to wait until the episode is out to get our answers.
In the mean time, Part 1 is here if you missed it.
As always, thank you for reading! ❤️
Read more:
[Back to part 1]
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chisatowo · 3 years
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I wanna talk more abt my pastel*palletes hcs but I'd have to explain my hced dynamics between everyone and hoo boy would that take a while
#rat rambles#band posting#long story short; they all care abt each other a lot but they also have a lot of issues and very different ideas on how to help everyone#chisato and maya especially tend to frustrate the other a lot in that regard#chisato and aya's dynamic is also very complicated because although it is unintentional chisato really feeds into a lot of ayas issues#and like aya rly doesnt do a good job at hiding it but chisato tries very hard to ignore how her words may hurt him or the others#they have had jt drilled into their head that things have to be like this. sacrifices must be made to make it in these fields.#which is why I think they sort of unknowingly hold a grudge against maya#Im not gonna write a whole essay on my hcs for her but basically she very much has her limits and boundaries to what shes willing to change#and/or hide abt herself and that high key freaks chisato out a bit#just... theyve had to sacrifice so much and here maya is doing just fine for himself while not doing that.#thats not to say I think things are going perfectly smootly for maya. because theyre super not.#but shes still managing to have a decently successful career as an idol despite being decently open abt her identities#and that freaks out both chisato and aya quite a bit#aya has been pretty aware of his gender and sexuality for a while now but had long ago accepted that coming out wasnt an option for him#and chisato has basically been dodging thinking abt that shit for years by simply telling themself that they couldnt be not cishet because#thatd ruin their career so even considering it cant be an option#and thats only scratching the surface of just these three not even includinh the other two#is all of this definitely more deep and serious than was ever intended in canon? absolutely. will that stop me? absolutely not.
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My complicated opinion on Keith Kogane
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Keith Kogane is definitely one of the more popular characters in the VLD fandom. People love brooding emo bad boys.
My feelings on Keith are... complicated. I definitely don’t hate him. I have a lot of problems with the character but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to actually hate him. Mainly because I kinda relate to him. We both have problems controlling our emotions, interacting with people, and making friends.
And we both have trouble believing there are people who truly have our best interests at heart and won’t abandon us because we’re a burden.
What I do hate is the way his character was written and the way it negatively impacted the characters around him.
There are definitely a lot of factors that contributed to VLD ending up the way it did. But to me, Keith and the writers insistence on pushing him to the forefront was the poison that killed the show.
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Ok, before we get into this whole rant I feel like I should talk about the things I do like about Keith.
I like the premise of Keith’s character. He’s half Galra and never really fit in on Earth. He didn’t act like the other “normal” kids so kids made fun of him and adults didn’t want to deal with him. So in order to protect himself from the pain of rejection he would put up a tough angry facade and push people away and reject them before they could reject him.
This is something that really resonates with me personally having grown up neurodivergent. It’s awful growing up in a world that isn’t made for people like you and not knowing how to interact with or connect with your peers. Especially when you don’t know why you’re like that.
You learn to avoid social interaction because it always ends up negative. You put up walls because you don’t feel like anybody understands you or what you’re going through.
I know the writers probably didn’t intend to code Keith as neurodivergent. They just wanted Keith to be a hothead with abandonment issues, but nonetheless, this interpretation means a lot to me.
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I also really like his relationship with Shiro. Keith is so used to being left behind and abandoned that when he meets someone like Shiro who’s patient and genuinely cares it’s new and strange. He’s so ready for Shiro to abandon him, even telling Shiro to send him back to the home, but Shiro refuses to leave him and tells Keith ethat he’s never going to give up on him.
It’s also interesting to see how their relationship develops over time. It’s clear Keith trusts Shiro, but you can tell that that fear of abandonment is still there deep down. In S2, Keith tells Shiro that he’s like a brother to him, and then in season 6, he takes the extra step and tells Shiro that he IS his brother and that he loves him. And for someone like Keith, telling their friend they love them is a big scary thing.
And also it’s just great to see a platonic “I love you,” especially between two guys. Don’t be afraid to tell your bros you love them!!!
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Now let’s talk about the stuff I didn’t like.
Keith doesn’t have much going for him in terms of personality. He’s just sorta brooding and serious all the time. He does make jokes occasionally but it’s rare. The writers were more focused on making him cool and badass rather than fun.
I always loved the idea of Keith as a cocky carefree asshole who doesn’t give a shit about rules/laws and is kinda rude/aggressive but has a heart of gold deep down and would do anything for the people he cares about. (Just like a cat.)
I would also make him more alien esc. In terms of design I like the idea of Keith having red eyes with narrow pupils and fangs. And also just small things like the way he walks and holds himself. He growls and bears his teeth when he’s angry, his hair puffs up when scared, he’s fast and agile, disappearing and reappearing without making much noise, small things.
Then you have his race and sexuality. I have no doubt in my mind that Keith was intended to be a straight white dude. A lot of people see him as gay and Asian but there’s no evidence for this in canon. Acxa was originally intended to be his love interest and his race was never mentioned in canon. His name isn’t even Kogane in canon. (And the race of the voice actor doesn’t equal the race of the character. If that was the case Shiro, Hunk, and Lance would be white.)
They should’ve totally made Keith Japanese like he was in the original. It would’ve been so easy! Just canonize Kogane as his last name and have the book say he’s half Japanese half Galra. They could’ve also done what they did with Shiro and keep his og GoLion name. Just have him be Akira Kogane. Definitely cooler than “Keith.”
And as for his sexuality, I definitely think they should’ve had Keith be gay. But well get to that Later...
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I also don’t like how they handled the whole Krolia thing. Not only was it crazy rushed, but it completely goes against the shows theme of found family.
Keith’s arc should’ve been about overcoming his abandonment issues and learning to accept the paladins as family. But instead they just get rid of the abandonment issues by just giving him his mom back.
I know a lot of people love Krolia but I don’t feel like she should’ve been introduced in anything other than flashbacks. Because Keith’s mom isn’t really that important. The show is about found family and friendship, not blood relation.
You can definitely have Keith learn about his mom and his family, but I feel like giving him his mom back was too much.
Personally, I always headcanoned that Kolivan was Keith’s grandfather or just a close friend of Krolia’s, and when Keith showed up at the Blade’s base Kolivan recognized the blade as his Krolia’s. Keith could learn about his mom through Kolivan telling him about her, how she was a great person and warrior who died fighting to make the universe a safer place for her son.
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Another thing I didn’t like was the whole Keith leaving the team for the Blades thing. I know why he did it, he felt like the team was gonna reject him, he wanted to be more useful, and wanted to learn about his family, but I feel like you could’ve touched on all that without having him abandon his team.
One of the biggest problems with the show is that they did a bad job at establishing the paladins as friends, they feel like coworkers more than anything, and I feel like Keith being absent for two seasons contributed to that.
And his absence is hardly addressed. The team forms Voltron perfectly without him and no one ever says they miss him. Keith doesn’t even seem like he missed them after being gone for two years.
And a lot of the weight was taken out of that Keith v Kuron fight by the fact that Keith and Kuron hardly interacted.
That whole thing amounted to four things, Keith meeting Krolia (which I don’t think should’ve happened), them finding the colony (which was a dumb plot I don’t think should’ve happened), Keith aging up two years (which was weird and unnecessary), and Keith meeting Kosmo (which is... complicated).
I don’t think this plot was necessary. Keith should’ve stayed with his team.
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Then you have his relationship with Lance. I know people are very sensitive about this topic. People have very strong opinions about whether or not Keith and Lance were intended to be romantically coded.
Personally, I do like Klance but I don’t believe they were romantically coded. I think if you want them to get together some things would have to go differently.
For example, the bonding moment. In canon, Lance tells Keith, “we make a good team.” I don’t see this as referring to him and Keith. I think he was talking about the whole team. If you want it to be about the two of them, I feel like it should be Lance telling Keith something like, “ya know, you’re not so bad after all,” and then Keith smiles and responds, “you’re not so bad yourself.”
Another example could be the scene where Lance comes to Keith with his insecurities. (Whether it’s as a leader or a friend.) This scene was weird in canon, Lance comes to Keith for advice and Keith basically tells him to just stop thinking about it.
I would prefer if Lance brought up to Keith how he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough or that he doesn’t have, “a thing,” and Keith is completely dumbfounded like, “what are you even talking about?” He goes on about all the good shit about Lance. Talks about how Blue chose him, how he’s a great shot, how he’s good at dealing with people, meanwhile Lance is standing there in shock as Keith says all these nice things about him.
Over all you would just have to develop their relationship more. More meaningful interactions. And if you want the relationship to be romantic you would have to establish that early on. Establish that one or both has romantic feelings for the other in like S1/S2 because if you wait too long it’s gonna feel forced/out of no where.
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And then... you have the Black Paladin arc... I’m gonna be real with y’all, this is the arc that killed the show for me, for a few reasons.
One, even ignoring the whole quintessence bond thing, it makes no sense for Keith to be the bp. He doesn’t fit the role. I adore Shiro but choosing Keith as his successor was a dumb move. I get that he saw potential in Keith but they’re are fighting a war, there’s no room for favoritism.
Shiro should’ve chosen Allura as his successor. Not only does she have actual leadership experience, but you would only have one paladin in a new Lion instead of three.
If a lifeguard breaks his leg and can’t work, he should choose an experienced swimmers to take his place, not his little bro that’s still in water wings in the hopes that it’ll teach him to swim.
Two, Keith being the bp doesn’t help his arc. Keith’s arc is about overcoming his abandonment issues and learning to be a team player, he doesn’t need to be the leader for that.
VLD should’ve been about the paladins growing into the best versions of themselves they could be. Their development shown by unlocking new abilities in their respective lions, new forms for their bayards, and new Voltron bayard power ups. They shouldn’t have to change lions and themselves.
Keith and Red have a strong bond and work great together. Keith and Red are both temperamental, unpredictable, and have issues with trust. Keith having to fight to get Red to trust and open up to him mirrors how others have to fight to earn Keith’s trust and get him to let down his walls.
It would’ve been interesting to see them grow together. Keith has no emotional connection with Black.
We never even get to see them bond. Keith just suddenly becomes the “perfect” bp/leader because he got over his mommy issues
Three, it’s a MASSIVE disservice to Shiro’s character. Shiro put all the work in earning his position as the bp, he literally fits fought Zarkon on the astral plane to earn her trust, yet Keith is the true bp? What?
It sucks. Sendak told Shiro that a monster like him could never be a paladin and the writers went and proved him right. Hell Shiro didn’t even get to kill Sendak, Keith got that too.
And don’t tell me, “but he got the Atlas!” REALLY!? A massive Deus ex machina that required absolutely no effort from him to acquire!? Filled with a bunch of rando background characters no one gives a shit about!? You’re totally right, that 100% makes up for it.
I could go on and on about how the treatment of Shiro in this show (and fandom) is blatantly ableist but that’s a rant for another time.
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It sucks. I want to like Keith! He had the potential to be an amazing character but the writers just kept on trying to turn him into something he wasn’t and it ruined him for me.
They kept trying to turn Keith into the main character and ignored that ALL the paladins are the main characters. It’s an ensemble cast! You don’t have to have everything come back to one guy.
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firelxdykatara · 3 years
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gods, ok, apparently i’m not done.
atla fandom? we need to have a chat.
(....ok that made me sound pretentious as fuck. and maybe i am, but this needs to be said, cause i’m getting....real, real tired of a Certain Corner of this fandom and as a result, this is gonna be a discourse-heavy post so feel free to scroll past if that’s not your bag. as always, my salt posts all carry the catch-all #salt for ts tag, which you’re free to blacklist/filter at your leisure. i’m Very Annoyed at the moment, which will probably come through in the following post, so just. yknow. be prepared for that. or ignore it, that’s perfectly valid too.)
under a cut bc i do care for my followers and their sanity i swear lmao
there’s a real serious issue in this fandom with not understanding what queer terminology actually means or implies, especially when applied to a fictional narrative.
i’m specifically talking about ‘coding’, here. (if i were in a more meme-y mood, i might have said ‘the atla fandom found out about the term “gay-coding” and haven’t shut up since’.)
to the people who say ‘zuko is gay-coded’, i have this to say: you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means. because he isn’t. i’m sorry, but he’s not! and the fact that this is such a prevalent claim in this fandom is distressing, bc it says to me that none of y’all know what gay-coding is or when and how to apply it! please, i’m begging you, go and look up these terms and what they mean and when they should be used before actually trying to plug them into your critical analysis, because when you misuse them and then call other people delusional for disagreeing with you it casts a pall over the entire fandom and is, i think, the root of some of the worst toxicity this fandom has to offer.
and the thing is, there are cases where gay-coding would apply--for instance, a couple series that are famous for queerbaiting their audience by coding their main characters as being attracted to one another (sometimes even despite their openly stated sexualities) come to mind, but those shows bare no similarities at all to atla and how zuko was written and portrayed! (and it would be funny, if it weren’t so obnoxious and infuriatingly wide-spread throughout the fandom, because the only queer couple we actually seen on-screen in either show wasn’t even queer-coded in any respect, and they’re canonically bi! [yes, i’m shading korrasami, or more accurately i’m shading bryke for refusing to give ka the build-up and development they deserved].)
this absolutely isn’t to say that headcanoning zuko as gay is a bad thing or invalid in any respect. (although the tendency for zukka shippers to do this specifically to keep zuko away from katara and/or invalidate his canon relationship/attraction to girls is more than a little eyebrow raising. especially since sokka is usually allowed to be bi, bc fans have no problem letting sukka stay in the background bc it’s no real threat, while jetko shippers are happy to have both boys be bi. [possibly bc katara is less a threat to jetko bc jetkotara is every bit as valid as any single ship between the three, but zukka can’t exactly let katara join in, and if the potential exists for zuko to be attracted to her then canon giving them the far deeper emotional bond becomes a threat to zukka’s existence? idk for sure--you be the judge.]) i prefer to hc zuko as bi (and always have, long before the atla renaissance), bc i don’t think zuko being attracted to boys is outside the realm of possibility, and it isn’t a threat to my ship since zuko&katara had a deep and emotional bond in canon that is very easy to develop further into something that becomes explicitly romantic--but the headcanon itself isn’t really the problem (although what it’s often in service to can be).
it’s the strange insistence that this is the only way to read his character, bc he was coded that way and so anyone who doesn’t see it must be too straight to understand--and i really shouldn’t have to say why and how that is so incredibly fucking insulting. (the ‘hetero lenses’ comment wasn’t cute when it came from bryke six years ago, and the same sentiment being repackaged and delivered by zukka shippers ain’t cute now.)
calling zuko gay-coded not only demonstrates ignorance as to what the term actually means, and how to usefully apply it in critical analysis, but also validates the frankly bullshit insertion of institutionalized homophobia in the world of atla where it was neither needed, nor wanted, nor ever hinted at in canon. as a queer woman i’m still infuriated by one fucking comic panel shoving institutionalized and systemic homophobia into a world where it was entirely unnecessary (and doing this in the first installment of the franchise showcasing a queer relationship??? making korra and asami worried about ‘coming out’ when they could have just gone on to have cute adventures together and tell people ‘hey we’re dating’ and have everyone else be ‘that’s awesome =DDD’ [because it is, in fact, possible to just have a world without homophobia i promise!!!!!] double yikes, i’m still pissed at bryke about it), and i doubly hate that ‘zuko is gay coded’ has become so widespread that ‘ozai hates him bc he’s gay’ has become a staple in that part of the fandom.
not only does making zuko gay and implying (or outright stating) that ozai hated and abused him because of it completely undermine zuko’s character arc by making his abuse about his sexuality rather than ozai’s toxic pride and anger at seeing himself reflected in his ‘weak’ son, but it comes very close to outright stating that abuse and trauma are inherently gay experiences, and they aren’t!!! they really aren’t, i promise!!!
abuse and trauma narratives exist outside of ‘my dad hates me because i’m gay’. and, quite frankly, there are MORE THAN ENOUGH queer trauma narratives out in the world. we do not need to start trying to retroactively make them canon in a series where they didn’t exist! if you’re gay and see yourself in zuko and project your own experiences on him, that’s understandable and valid. that does not make zuko gay-coded. and honestly, the insistence that he is makes very little sense to me, because you’re essentially trying to give the show credit for work you put into interpreting the characters! why would you want to do that? why not own your own headcanons and take credit for them, rather than insisting they are canon and everyone else is wrong for not seeing them??? like, i’ve said before that i’ve always headcanoned zuko (and katara) as bi, and even support it with my interpretations of evidence from the show, but the difference between ‘i think zuko is bi’ and ‘zuko is definitely gay-coded’ is that i know that bi zuko is my interpretation of canon, and that it is work i’m putting into the show that wasn’t actually intended by the creators/writers, no matter how much sexual tension i read into the jetko swordfight.
and like, zuko’s character arc doesn’t actually parallel a queer one all that well to begin with. it’s easy enough to do the work and twist it sideways just enough to make the general points fit, but the fact is, zuko’s arc is not one of self-discovery. it’s not one of coming to understand something fundamental about himself that he can’t change, that he was hated for, and coming out to his father in a dramatic confrontation where he shows that he understands himself and doesn’t need his father’s acceptance to be fulfilled.
zuko’s arc is actually one of trauma and healing. and those can (and often are--like i said, there are more than enough queer trauma narratives in the world, atla really doesn’t need to be one of them) be part of queer narratives, for sure! but they aren’t uniquely queer. and zuko’s confrontation with ozai during the eclipse doesn’t read like a ‘coming out’ at all. (yes, i’ve seen that post. yes, i rolled my eyes and moved on, bc unlike some people, i’m capable of not clowning on correctly tagged posts i disagree with.) zuko is specifically confronting ozai over his abuse, because his arc wasn’t about discovering anything fundamental about himself (and therefore realizing that ozai was hating him for something he couldn’t change)--it was about realizing that he was not at fault for the way his father treated him. it was also about realizing that the fire nation was broken and corrupt at its core, and that his father was an aspect of that he needed to break away from so that he could help the world begin to heal.
he says it himself:
Zuko: No, I've learned everything! And I've had to learn it on my own! Growing up, we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history. And somehow, the War was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don't see our greatness. They hate us! And we deserve it! We've created an era of fear in the world. And if we don't want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.
making this about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.
is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.
(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)
anyway, uh, that was a lot of words, so have a tl;dr: zuko is not gay-coded. there is nothing uniquely gay (or even uniquely queer) about his character arc or characterization, and he was certainly not coded gay in an attempt to sneak a queer character past the censors. if anyone involved with atla was gonna try that, it would’ve been in lok, and as established, they didn’t even manage to queer-code the actual queer relationship before the last few minutes of the final episode. headcanoning zuko as gay is absolutely fine (though if it’s only done to keep him away from female characters he may otherwise be attracted to, that smells more like misogyny than anything else), but insisting that this reading is the only one that makes sense, and anyone who doesn’t agree must be straight (hello, queer woman here making this insanely long thinkpiece) is very much not.
ship what you like, but stop trying to invalidate other ships and other interpretations of characters just to make your ship seem more plausible. it’s really not a good look.
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imo-chan-imagines · 3 years
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『 As your boyfriend | BNHA Headcanons 』
From the good, to the bad, to the downright adorable.
Characters: female!reader, Aizawa Shouta
Tags/warnings: Boku No Hero Academia (anime), 18+, explicit descriptions of sex, smut, fluff, soft dom Aizawa, relationship, headcanons
⚠️ 18+ CONTENT! MINORS: PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT ⚠️
A/N: Right, so I'm simping for this man biG TIME, but I'm only on season 3, so no spoilers or anything, please. This is my first BNHA post (and it turned out way longer than I was intending 😅) Please let me know if you want more in the future!
Also, I have a repetitive strain injury, so typing stuff is taking a while at the moment. Sorry about that. Thanks for reading! Please enjoy ♡ ~Imo
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☆ Aizawa Shouta ☆
I'm not going to lie. Shouta can be a big ol' grouchy pants sometimes, and it's basically impossible to win an argument against him makes you want to tear your hair out, sometimes
But most of the time, he's just tired and in pain, and he doesn't mean to be so crotchety
He's not the type to make excuses, though. That's childish. He means his apologies, even if they're simple
He'll normally initiate an apology by gently wrapping his arms around you from behind and resting his forehead on your shoulder 🥺
Physical contact is incredibly personal and intimate for him. He doesn't just touch anyone, or allow them to touch him
You're special 💞💫
Soft, gentle touches, like his fingers interlacing with yours, or his leg brushing up against you, are basically his way of saying 'I love you'
Catch me crying in the corner, a'ight? 😔
He rarely ever raises his voice. Like, ever he doesn't need to, and is aware that it can be scary
He's definitely the kind of guy to forget to tell people that you're dating, simply because he doesn't see how it's relevant or anyone else's business 🤦‍♀️
I mean, he ain't wrong, but–
And his mood switches between 'antisocial' and 'clingy' like a mechanical metronome did someone say 'cat'?
Sometimes, you'll be lucky if he speaks more than three words to you together in a whole day nothing personal 🤷‍♀️
But on other days, he literally won't let you out of his arms for the world he's complicated, okay?
You have missed many a parcel delivery because he wouldn't let you get up from his lap to answer the door 🙄😂
Boundaries and responsibilities are key and highly respected by Shouta, and he would NEVER erase your quirk without your permission, unless he literally had no other choice like someone's going to get hurt, or something
Is generally quite serious so what's new? but you're one of the few people he can relax around when he feels like it
9/10 of his jokes are dad jokes 😎 hell yeah
Takes a hard stance in financial debates, but is constantly broke af 😶 says he'll buy you dinner and presents you with some instant noodles with a 'Reduced To Clear' sticker on them
Will take a bite of your food/steal some off your plate without asking, and literally say nothing to defend himself #gremlin
Is incredibly shy and uncomfortable about being ~le horny~ until you've been together for literally forever
Even then, he's still shy about it when he has to bring it up and it's pretty cute, let me tell ya
It took him forever to admit to you that he gets turned on when you eat ice lollies
Guess what you do whenever you want to mess with him like a little brat 😛
But if he's in the mood, he will 100% whisper something dirty in your ear, even if you're completely alone and probably well past third base
He does it because he knows your pussy will clamp around him at the sound of his voice 😳🥵
*fans self profusely*
Genuine, unadulterated smiles are rare with Aizawa, but when he does 🙌 Heaven hath opened its gates and allowed an angel walk amongst mere mortals 🥺🤧
If he lays his head on your chest, he will fall asleep like that *snaps fingers*
Surprise nose and forehead kisses to show he loves you ❤
Calls you 'Kitten' this is basically already canon at this point
And he's all about those deep talks with you at 3 am when he can't sleep
Speaking of insomnia!
It's cheesy, but you're like a soothing balm. The warmth of your body makes him feel safe, your touch helps him relax, and your voice soothes him to sleep
He's never slept as well as when you're beside him 😭🤧
When cuddling, he likes to be the big spoon but will accept being the little spoon if you if you press your boobs against his back and ask really nicely 🤭
And he loves you stroking his hair and running your fingers through it 🥺
Netlix nights and pillow/blanket forts!!
Rainy days are a godsend. Staying inside all day under the blankets, with the soft sound of the rain falling outside and no-one to interrupt you – literal paradise
He makes mean hot cocoas and Irish coffees 😋 I feel like this man lives off Irish coffees 😂🤣
Wears a lot of black and grey sweatpants at home 😗 which highlight the outline of his dick just right, if ya know what I'm sayin' 👀
Doesn't like going out for dates and prefers staying inside and doing stuff together same, honeyy
But if you really like going out, he will somewhat begrudgingly agree to it and get all dressed up for you, just so long as he gets his fair share of home-dates, too 🤗
But if you also don't like going out... the two of you will basically never leave the house, except to get groceries in your pyjamas from the 24-hour convenience store down the road at one in the morning oddly specific, I know, but you get me
And sorry, but I don't make the rules
Well, actually, I do. But shush
We all know that Shouta cleans up *chef's kiss* So when you go somewhere ~fancy~ he always looks so damn fine 😩
But he has very little idea that he's hot he sees himself as a tired, walking dumpster fire🚶‍♂️🔥
Shouta will 100% turn into a crazy cat dude with 15+ cats if you don't stop him I never said you should, though 🙃
And is a 'minimalist texter' – basically, if he can't answer a text with 'yes', 'no,' 'maybe', or 'OK', then he probably won't answer it at all 😭😂
Especially if you try and sext him or send him your nudes while he's at work. He'll probably lecture you when he gets home and depending on just how much you turned him on, he might proceed to teach you a lesson...
But wear his shirt, and just his shirt or his hoodie and he's yours
Heart eyes, motherfucker 😍
And, depending on how you two are feeling that day, you may or may not end up getting dicked down on the nearest semi-flat surface right then and there 👀
But don't misunderstand. This is an incredibly tired man you have here, and his libido actually isn't through the roof sorry, ladies so this kind of thing isn't an everyday occurrence
But when he dicks you down, he dicks you down goooood
Shouta's not big on PDA, but makes up for it in private. We're talking hands and kisses all over your body he leaves nothing unloved 😏
And while he's not big on PDA, he is big on sneaky displays of affection or 'SDA', as I like to call it
Like subtly grabbing your butt for a second, or his hand on your thigh under the table at a dinner etc. especially around other people
But what really gets him going is slowly removing your clothes and taking you fully naked, spreading your legs wide and holding them open he likes the view 😍
He lowkey highkey worships your body 🙏 and will literally not shut up about how fucking pretty you are, and how fucking good it feels inside you his words, not mine 😳
Groans and growls a little when he's getting close/cumming especially when he's being a little rough and likes to cum together, but knows it's not always practical
He tends to be a gentle dom, but can get just a teensy bit 🤏 rough if he's too into it – but nothing outrageous
We're talking rough thrusts and a brutal pace, maybe holding onto you a little too hard and, waaahh, he gets so embarrassed if he leaves bruises
Is also into a little bondage, but again, only light stuff – restraining your wrists with his hands or his tie or his Capturing Weapon 👀 maybe blinding-folding you if you're okay with it
If you're not blindfolded, then I'm afraid he's all about that eye contact
Eating out your pussy? Eye contact. Pounding you into the mattress? Blazing eye contact. Rearranging your guts in front of the mirror? Fucking eye contact
And CONSENT, BABY. THAT'S WHAT HE'S FUCKING INTO 😌🙌💞
But all jokes aside – he's too used to taking without consent with his quirk, that he's kind of paranoid about it comes to sex but it's adorable and sweet, and honestly, still kind of hot
And speaking of eating pussy – goddamn does he like to please you. Like cream to a kitty 😛
Oh, and he just loves it when you suck on his fingers as he's pounding into you 🤤
And he likes to leave love bites in personal, inconspicuous places and sometimes on your neck
He's marking his woman 😌
When he gets suuuper horny, he likes to fuck you from behind, standing upright in front of the mirror. It's a specific kink he has of watching himself stretch you out as the length of his cock disappears inside you...
I can get behind that, lemme tell yaaa
I said he tends to be dominant, but female doms – fear not!
Shouta is quite flexible when it comes down to it and is kind of lazy, lmfao so he definitely has time for laying back, having the control taken away, and having his dick ridden
For him, it's really all about communication and what you're both comfortable with
I will say this, though: sometimes, his cat watches you while you're banging 😅😂
The first time it happened, you freaked out and refused to continue because – how could you??? But eventually, you just kind of got used to it 🤷‍♀️
The same way you've got used to it following you to the bathroom every time you go to take a shit 😭
So now, you just kind of laugh about it, which helps keep things a little lighter 🤗
After sex, he does like to snuggle, but you'll be lucky if he stays awake for more than 30 seconds it's one of the few times he actually can sleep well
If you're ever out and about, or even inside, and cold, he'll wrap you up in his clothes/scarf/blanket like a sushi roll like Eren wrapping up Mikasa in his scarf, all deadpan and everything 😐
It's not that often, but when he gets drunk, he gets all soft and emotional, and starts babbling about how he can't believe he got so lucky to be dating you, and that he's sure he hasn't done anything to deserve it mah heart
He's pretty sure he wants kids, but he doesn't feel like now is the right time, and is lowkey afraid that it's never going to feel like the right time
He also constantly doubts himself, wondering if he'd actually able to look after them and protect them the way a father should class 1-A got him second-guessing himself 🥺
Besides, it's not all about him. You clearly have a say in it too, and he doesn't want to force you into anything
Again: communication and comfort zones
Dating Aizawa definitely has its ups and downs, and it's not smooth sailing, but he's prepared to work for a life with you because he's found a connection with you that he hasn't feel with anyone else
He knows that you're both far from perfect, but hopes that, for once, you might just make something good, and make it last 🥰😇
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© imo-chan-imagines 2020
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akhilleus-kosmos · 3 years
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YuuMori meta theory: why we didn’t get the story that was originally planned by the author - part 2
As promised, here is part 2, which is much longer than part 1 (and it will just keep on getting longer). Without further due, here comes our dear protagonist!
Again: this post is full of SPOILERS up until the current arc. It includes the Final Problem arc, so be mindful of what you read!
William James Moriarty:
TL;DR: William was established as an angry person in touch with his emotions whose moral compass is very different from our modern values; and was turned into a tortured sympathetic “villain” solely because it’s a more popular trope.
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William is an angry person who appears calm most of the time, but he’s even angrier than you’d believe deep down. It’s actually terribly obvious if you pay attention to the first few volumes.
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(here, you can clearly see a fade-away/parallel between William’s anger and Albert’s; hence the change of colours.)
William in the early story is someone who is doing the right thing (in his opinion) because he has an endless anger fuel that he’s very good at hiding from most people.
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(this doesn’t look like somebody who is in terrible pain and is crushed by massive guilt because he killed too many people over the years, just saying)
However, in the later arcs (and currently, if he’s still alive), he does things because it’s the “necessary thing to do” but he has no further emotional fuel behind it.
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I had a good discussion with a friend about it and she said that the opposite (thinking that he has no right to judge people > becoming someone who judges and murders criminals) might have been an interesting character-development, but that this one doesn’t make sense. I agree with her, and I intend to develop more in detail why. 
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever met an activist. Or if you follow them on social media. Or if you are one. What’s their primary characteristic? The one politicians and bigots are always pointing at? The one you might hear from time to time whenever you try to speak of social justice to people who don’t want to listen to you?
“You’re always so angry about [insert topic]/everything!”
Feminists are angry. BLM protesters are angry. Any LGBTQ+ activist who isn’t ashamed of who they are and actively asks for more rights, to the point of talking back when they are trash-talked and insulted, is too angry.
William is, inherently, angry. All activists are. The only time they aren’t angry is when they suffer from emotional burn-out after being too angry and caring too much, too long, without being able to take a break or to have emotional support. It’s usually because they start to believe that no matter what they do, nothing will change-- and they are driven to despair and apathy. Typically, when they do suffer from this burn-out, well, it’s exactly as you’d expect from any other burn-out: they can’t manage to get anything done.
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(Does this look like a chronically depressed, apathetic person barely keeping their life together?)
Anger, frustration, indignation are what fuel activits.
The burn-out is inherently tied to their mental health, and a proper support system plus taking a few steps back (if they can, but William has the privilege to live his life however he wants without much trouble, honestly) can make it right. I’ll come back to that later.
Activists also believe that they are in the right. You don’t go this far into your actions without firmly believing into the thoughts you are trying to spread. But that’s not William’s case past a certain point. Now, he (mostly) believes that his actions are necessary but, still, that he shouldn’t do them because killing is bad and all murderers are evil, from the Scandal arc and beyond.
Let’s compare his behavior in the first few volumes:
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(In all of these, he is either angry or straight up sadistic against the evil he has to face. He could make it less painful for them. He doesn’t have to go this hard at everything--- but he chooses to make it so, because of his deep-seated anger.)
And the one he had against the fake Jack the Rippers---
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(ah, yes, this is the very emotional face of someone who has just seen his younger brother threatened. Very much emotion and anger right here.)
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Or even Milverton.
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This, however, isn’t an openly angry man. This is someone making cold, detached observations about the situation without seeming emotionally involved. He is merely smiling (in some of it) but there is no emotion through it: at least nothing similar to the very real hatred he showed previously. There is no zoom on his mouth…
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(please note the complete lack of expression here: he shows no emotion but it’s sufficient to underline the genuine anger he feels towards the situation)
or fists…
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to underline his disgust. No openly bitter comment towards people he openly despises (and/or is trying to test).
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Even if we do follow the idea that William has somehow let go of his anger in the series and is detached from everything because of his emotional burn-out, what does it even mean?
Well… That meeting Sherlock and starting his plan to reform society in earnest (after many years of killing people), far from making him happy or satisfied, were both hugely detrimental to his mental health. There is literally no other way to analyze this.
This isn’t about William feeling relieved that he doesn’t have to kill anymore because his plan is over, or internalizing all his hatred to redirect it towards himself (again, not how activism works, plus he’s too adjusted for it and shows 0 vulnerability until the Final Problem arc). No, according to the timeline, this is him, meeting someone like Sherlock and, for no other reason, slowly descending into emotional burn-out as his plan comes to an end. How exactly does making a “friend” (since that’s what canon calls it), who actively seeks your company and keeps saying how cool and smart you are, makes you feel that way? Having a new supportive person into your life can be what keeps you afloat when you’re in a bad place. It doesn’t send you to the bad place.
He clearly did not get influenced by Sherlock’s moral compass either (which… isn’t a very good one to begin with, but I’ll get to it in its own post), as they rarely even meet.
If you’re thinking right now “well, it’s because he’s a closeted gay, duh”, I’m gonna have to redirect you to the definitions of queer reading and queerbaiting because you’re fully into it. But, never mind. I’ll speak in more detail of their relationship later (in its own post too). Back to William himself.
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William hides his feelings, yes. All the time. At least when it comes to crimes. Though he did have more facial expressions early on.
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(this is very different from the three facial expressions we get in the later arcs: dead eyes, smiling/neutral face and serious face.)
But is he repressing his feelings? No, far from it. And even if he was? Then not showing it until the Final Problem arc, especially after talking about how he was planning to take himself out, was bad writing. Show it! Show him brooding on his bed while he can’t sleep despite being tired out of his mind! Or implying that there is something he wants to say to his brothers or friends, and ultimately choosing to withhold it! Or making a sad face as soon as no one is looking! “Show, don’t tell” also works for this sort of character-development.
Literally the only thing we get about his mental health problems are… some dead-looking eyes…
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and everyone else stating how William must feel (if they talk about it at all).
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Yes, William does write a letter, but it isn’t about how hollow he feels, or that there is no point to all of this, or that he is sick of himself for killing others, or anything of the likes. No, it’s just… people realizing that William has decided since the creation of his plan (you know, the stupid plan he never, ever changed? This plan?) that he would die to make it a reality.
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This scene feels like an important moment to better understand what drives the Moriarty brothers. William makes a point to underline here that people, even if they feel like they no longer have a reason to live (in Michelle’s case, because her vengeance finally took place), they should keep hoping and holding onto the people who love them. And that’s how they should stay alive. By hoping.
Albert and Louis themselves make the parallel between their situation and the Bartons’ (yes I’m calling them Bartons because that’s how the french anime calls them, sue me). Once upon a time, Louis was a sickly boy who relied on his brother’s intelligence to stay alive and to eventually get cured. Once upon a time, Albert did not have the wits and strength and bravery to act on his hatred towards the twisted world all around him. But William changed that. He gave them hope, hope that a new world could be possible. It’s cruel because they are now afraid of dying, and have feelings beyond hatred and despair, and they have to keep living on in an unfair world until William’s plan is executed.
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But this still very much feels like hypocrisy on the author’s part. Albert points out that it is something that happens “as usual” when William solves a case and his contractor no longer wants to live because they finally reached a long desired goal. William knows very well all of this. He also knows that these people are murderers, just like him. So how come he is able to be compassionate towards them and seems utterly convinced by what he says, but he is incapable of thinking this way for himself?
Well. Simply put: it doesn’t make sense whatsoever. I’ll come back on William’s statement during the Final Problem in a bit. First, let’s go back again to activism.
Activism isn’t done in one day. It’s done by waves. Again, and again, and again, until you reach some sort of legal advances, and then you work hard to make sure they aren’t taken away from you; and to see that society accepts it, with time. The point of activism is to see things change, you, yourself.
Do you really need an example? I’ll give you one, for the sake of it.
After months of protests from the far right on one side, and the LGBTQ+ protesters and allies on the other, the law for marriage equality was legally passed in 2012 in France, my home country. There were many debates. It was all over the news, and we believed until the last minute that it might fail. It’s been nine years since then. Some bigots are still talking about going back on this because “marriage should be between a man and a woman” (sighs). Schools aren’t educating anyone on homophobia beside telling people “don’t be homophobic!!” and then patting themselves on the back for it. Conversion therapies are still legal. The ministry of education has passed a bill to forbid inclusive writing, in a language that has no neutral forms to begin with.
Change is slow. Very slow.
You cannot just set London on fire and call it a day because nobles and commoners cooperated for a one-time event.
The dissolution of the House of Lords? Please, as if that would take away enough privileges from the nobles. Do you want another example of how passing a bill to make things right can fail and still protect the privileged group?
In France, men and women (yeah, other genders still aren’t officially recognized here) are supposed to have equal salary since 1972. It is literally illegal to pay women less. On average, in 2021, there is a 16,8% difference (for equal work time!) of pay. Even people who work for the government (!) suffer from this, because the government itself isn’t taking it seriously. Law doesn’t make things right if you’re not there to make sure things go smoothly and if you’re not actively working for it, over several decades.
William should know this. Any adult with a minimum of social analysis knows this. So why does it seem like he doesn’t? This shouldn’t be the whole plan, merely the first part of the Moriarty plan because society is far from being healed. Someone who is capable of analyzing and understanding how the nobles of his city took advantage of the farmers and how to remedy it, in barely a day of being there-- is someone who understands how society works. There isn’t any solution to making commoners trust William except being kind, helping them, and giving them time. Just like there isn’t any solution to instantly erase (or almost, a couple of years means nothing in politics) the class system and its horrid repercussions.
What is the point of making a story about activism (albeit some very violent one) if you don’t even try to write it properly? No, that’s not correct. What is the point of getting it right in the first few volumes, with small, calculated, important details, then seemingly completely missing the point later on?
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(How can you go from talking about murderers, rapists and all kinds of criminals as “demons” and clenching your fist in anger just thinking about it, to “oh, but I've never believed that I was accomplishing any kind of justice, since I don’t think that I, a fellow human, should judge others”?)
If anything, someone as smart and skilled as William is much more likely to start developing a god complex about his actions; especially considering the faith his support system has in him. It would have been somewhat boring and expected since this trope has been done and done again, but, you know: at least it would make sense. This doesn’t.
Beside, there are other ways to create character-development. Just look at what YuuMori shies away from! Colonialism? Women’s rights? Have the Moriartys be racist and sexist in their younger years, then take a slap to the face when they confront their ideals (to create a just world) with what they actually see (yes, commoners in Britain have it bad, but the British Raj was so much worse; and women! women and the suffragettes!). It would have been great. It would have forced them to grow up and to realize that they were still basking in their privileges. We could have had more afab characters! More people of colour! Maybe add some more to the Moriarty group!
But going down the road of denying William’s established character to turn him.. into… a tortured villain who really just wants to die and no one can understand him or save him except maybe his frenemy who he has met a grand total of five (short) times prior to their final battle? It’s bad and lazy writing.
I am going to quote Lindsay Ellis in her Game of Thrones season 8 video essay, because it feels very, very fitting for William and how he used to be written versus how he is perceived today. 
“His character is driven into nonsense in the service of keeping him sympathetic.”
This is quite exactly what happened to William.
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William was established as a villain who recognizes that murder is bad, but also necessary in his mindset; and he shows no sign of disliking it (quite the opposite, actually) so long as the people he kills are recognized criminals. He is fine with being a “demon”. That’s cognitive dissonance at its finest-- or maybe he simply does not have the same moral values as we do.
And that’s fine. It’s fine! You can still love him and stan him! You can even root for his plan to succeed without agreeing with any of this in real life!
William can be a good, entertaining character without having our modern moral values shoved onto him. But even so--- they went down the road of completely denying his previous behavior and mindset (not just changing, no, denying it even happened) because… tortured villains are popular and sympathetic, I suppose? Redemption arcs are our jam. But William doesn’t need redemption to have character-development. Especially the one he ended up with. 
By the way, in this scene--
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My (official) french translation strictly refers to what the noble was saying as the Last Judgment (“le jugement dernier”).
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It’s an interesting translation because it actually strangely fits if you know anything at all about the Last Judgement. For those who aren’t familiar, Wikipedia will do a better job at explaining this than me but long story short: angels fight demons during the Book of Revelation and Satan is hurled to the earth with the rest of his army. A terrifying warrior (William) who judges and slays an existence similar to him (a noble, Baskerville) because the latter has committed terrible sins. Just as Baskerville is claiming to be a chosen one from God who will stand by his side on the Last Judgement day, William strikes him down and punishes him. That sounds like a fairly accurate parallel to the situation, wouldn’t you say?
Speaking of violent deaths: have you ever noticed that the deaths seen in the later arcs of YuuMori are pretty straight-forward and, while violent, they’re not extremely violent and sadistic like they used to be? The murders of the first arcs were deaths of vengeance, usually carefully planned to be as ironic as possible. Making a man “dance” to his death, the same as he killed an innocent woman. Poisoning a man with the fruits a mother used to eat during her pregnancy, and said man let her child die. Setting on fire a man who was just about to burn children to death. Stabbing the throat and cutting the head off a man who kept the heads of children after murdering them. It ties in again with the genuine anger and hatred I mentioned before; the one the entire Moriarty group probably feels most of the time.
Where did it go? Later down the line, the deaths are much, much more pacified. It’s odd. The worst any enemy of the Moriartys get past the Scandal arc is… being exploded? which is an instantaneous death? While everyone else is either shot or efficiently killed with a blade without their death being drawn out. It speaks volumes of the shift in writing and how William (and the Moriarty group in general, but William especially) has been tamed and watered down, in order to make him somewhat more relatable and sympathetic; far from his sadistic tendencies he used to show towards criminals.
Last but not least:
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William not changing his plan since he was a child is beyond stupid and makes no sense whatsoever. Everyone changes when they grow up; especially someone like William who has his eyes wide open on society’s worst actions every single day. We gain new knowledge, develop emotional and psychological maturity and we are able to choose the life we want for ourselves (unlike when we were children and mostly followed along what was asked of us because we legally, physically, psychologically and emotionally couldn’t do much else). I’m not the same person I was five years ago, let alone ten years ago. Neither are you. Neither is he.
You cannot both be a genius and someone who refuses to change, especially if your aim itself is to change society.
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Oh, and I already talked previously about how they butchered French revolution and oversimplified it for the sake of explaining the Moriarty plan so I won’t get into it again but. You get the gist. They only introduced this nonsensical explanation to justify the Moriartys’ very sudden wish for death and self-destruction they had shown no sign prior to this arc. (except if you consider that William pointing a gun to his head in the OP1 and on the cover of volume 1 are sufficient signs for wanting to kill yourself due to overwhelming guilt and that it needs to development whatsoever).
Okay, this wraps up the inconsistencies about William’s character! My next post will be tomorrow evening, and will cover Sherlock Holmes. Thank you so much for reading!
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Here is something fun to think about, fullscore trio confession headcannons?
Pffft fun ask here we go!!
I already mentioned it, but I believe canon and modern au would take different routes: in canon I can imagine the proposal sequence to go like Emma + Ray → Norman, while in modern au it seems more likely to be Emma + Norman → Ray. I'm not 100% sure tho... Because they're still very young in canon (I'm talking about 2047), and it looks pretty early to me to enstablish a relationship... But they always act so adult and mature so it doesn't seem too far from reality? I don't know. The shipping discourse in tpn is complicate and I don't have enough energies for it right now.
I didn't really know how to organize this, so pardon the messy form,,, It's mostly ideas I'm just throwing there. Enjoy! Under the cut because it got l o n g
You see, Emma and Ray arrive to the Paradise Hideout already being pretty much together y'know? They keep acting as partners and they're all extremely affectionate towards each other, but they don't really discuss about it with Norman- hell, their closest friend they had spent one year and eleven months considering dead just turned out to be alive, there's so much to discuss and to catch up with!!! So at first they don't really think about mentioning their relationship to him: for Emma and Ray, it's like having suddenly returned to the happy times of their childhood. Yet, Norman definitely notices they're closer than they where at GF. He is happy for them- he really, genuinely is! They're his best friends, his greatest source of joy, the reason he goes on; he's obviously, sincerely glad they're happy together. But still, deep inside he does feel a little distressed? He's been alone for so long, he didn't want to be cut out of the special bond that used to link the three of them. He obviously already knew things would have never come back to be like they were at GF, yet he couldn't keep himself from mourning how their relationship had been irreparably changed. However, he pushes these feelings aside, not even allowing the thought to take shape in his mind: Emma and Ray are happy, and that's all that matters. That's everything he's been fighting for untill that day, and that's the reason he keeps fighting every day- to give them a bright future where they can be safe and happy. But his unexpressed anxieties are hard to suppress: he fears that things will not be like they where before, that something was lost forever; he fears he is now going to be sidelined in their relationship. He has been crushing on them since he could remember, so it's quite obvious deep down it was a bit upsetting for him to come up with the realization the three of them wouldn't have been together- even though he would have rather died than admit it to himself, or allow it to show. So I like to imagine we are at the end of chapter 121, when the trio is spending some time just the three of them, chatting and playing and forgetting about everything scary or painful. Emma talks and talks, trying catching up Norman on everything: it's almost like she's trying to make the time they've spent apart disappear, rewriting the narrative to make Norman fit in their (terrifying) adventures. She would have probably been overwhelming to any other, but not to Norman, who looked like he was having the best time of his life, never getting his glimmering, adoring eyes off her. Then at some point Emma goes:
Emma: Mmmhh what else... Oh, apparently me and Ray are together now? Dunnot at some point Gillian and the others said that judging from how we acted we where totally together-
Norman: W h a t.
Emma: Ahah I know, crazy right? Obviously you're in as well lol
Norman: W H A T ?
Emma didn't have the time to talk about it with Ray beforehand, but it was ok: for Norman to be included in their relationship felt like such a natural consequence to Norman being alive that they hadn't felt the need to discussing about it at all. Besides, at this point of the story, Emma and Ray are so much on the same page that they don't even need to talk about something to know what each other is thinking.
And you know how Norman is. He was too taken by overthinking everything and reconsidering his life choices, too distracted by his self loathing to even consider Emma and Ray would have asked him to take part of their relationship, no matter how obvious it sounds.
Ok now, I didn't plan this beforehand but PLOT TWIST Norman doesn't accept
He's like "No... I... *Dramatic pause* I can't."
Emma and Ray are sincerely surprised. Emma exclaims: "Why???"
Norman panicks and says: "There's... Another person". There is, in fact, no other person, and he's just making up excuses.
Emma and Ray don't believe him for one second but go along with it basically just to mess up with him
Ray, mockingly: Yeah of course... Wait don't tell me, the mysterious girl with the coral dress is back? [Reference to the first novel]
Norman, flustered: I'M SERIOUS GUYS
The true reason why Norman didn't feel like accepting their proposal is because he's self sacrificing and stuff, and because he believes he's going to die in a year anyway so he doesn't want to make them suffer.
In his head he's probably thinking "I'm sorry Emma... Ray... But I'm taking a path you can not follow... You don't know the horrible things I've done... You deserve better than me..." (Yeah he's just THAT dramatic).
(Ok tho I later realized that this is literally canon:)
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Ray, in the meantime, knowing exactly what he's thinking because he just knows him that well (and can relate to his self-sacrificial nature), is like *rolls his eyes*
Ray, telepathically, to Norman: You know you can't escape Emma's love, right?
Honestly the thought of the trio being romantically involved is so funny to me because then the whole conflict for Norman's genocidal tendencies would be like:
Emma, talking to Ray: Ray I love our boyfriend BUT IS HE DUMB, ALWAYS TRYING TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF AAAAAAAAAAHHH SERIOUSLY WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU GUYS?????
Ray, remembering the times he used to be as sacrificial: *sweats*
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I don't have much to add because the rest of canon pretty much does it without me having to change anything ahah. Norman tries to execute his genocide plan, stuff goes wrong, and Emma and Ray manage to talk to him before it's too late. I don't think much of any at all of their conversation from chapter 153 would change.
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When this happens, Norman knows they intend both literally and romantically, and, as soon as he accepts, Emma and Ray understand he finally resigned to his feeling and accepted to stay with them forever. That's very sweet actually, this scene makes me soft 🤧🤧🤧 Still one of the best tpn moments ever!!!!
I'm reading the initial ask again and honesty... I'm not sure that's what Anon ment with their ask but I kinda got carried away /////////////
This got long enough and I don't want to make Anon wait any longer so I'm not going to write here how I think the modern au confession would go; however feel free to ask if you're interested in it and I'll try to summarize it! But I have just a vague idea of what it would happen so it would probably be shorter than this :)
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iloveyou3thousand · 3 years
Text
Ever
Pairing: Pepperony Rating: Teen & Up Word count: 2785 A/N: This was written for the Pepperony Valentine's Exchange for @kassyscarlett​. I hope you like it!!
Tags: Jealousy, misunderstandings, light angst with a happy ending, established relationship, mid-canon
Read it on AO3 here!
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“Oh—” Pepper stops dead in her tracks, and almost takes a step back, “Sorry, I didn’t know you had company.”
Which is odd, considering that she is used to knowing the ins and outs of Tony’s schedule by heart. Rarely does any set appointment pass by her unnoticed. She may not be Tony’s personal assistant slash glorified secretary anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’s managed to get out of her ways yet. Old habits die hard, as they say.
The lady in the chair opposite Tony’s turns, and while she gives Pepper in the doorway a polite smile, Pepper can tell that they were laughing about something just moments before by the way her eyes are still wrinkled at the corners and the way Tony’s leaning back in his own chair, so nonchalant, with a lopsided grin on his face.
A grin that, in any other circumstances, could make Pepper feel weak in the knees.
But she stands firm, looking from the vaguely familiar woman to Tony and back again.
“It’s fine, Ms. Potts, join the party,” Tony says with an air of relaxation.
I’d rather not, she thinks, but doesn’t say. She stays polite, as much as it infuriates her to have to do so when the cogs in her mind are already working overtime connecting dots that she’s sure aren’t there, or shouldn’t be there.
“You remember Ms. Hansen, right?” Tony continues.
“I do,” Pepper says, “How could I forget?” Frankly, she’s a little surprised that Tony remembers. Or maybe he doesn’t, and he’s doing a great job at bluffing his way through this little get-together – or whatever it is.
She briefly shakes hands with Maya when she extends hers over her shoulder to not have to twist around in her seat too much. Either she doesn’t want Tony looking right up her skirt, or she’s found a position in which she knows Tony can most certainly look directly at her panties and she doesn’t want to risk losing that. Pepper doesn’t know which one it is, and she’s not sure she even wants to know.
Maya’s smile is friendly and her handshake is professional but still, something about the situation doesn’t sit right with Pepper, who suddenly feels like she would much rather be anywhere else than with those two in one room.
“Pleasure to meet you again, under somewhat better circumstances,” the other woman says, and Pepper flashes an amiable smile.
“Likewise,” she responds, and backs up again to return to her spot in the doorway. She focuses her attention on Tony again, because that’s who she came in for in the first place after all. It looks like she manages to cut him off right before he is undoubtedly about to say something about what him and Ms. Hansen were just talking about. Pepper, frankly, doesn’t want to hear it. “I have something I want you to look at, but it’s not urgent. I’ll forward it to you so you can tell me what you think later. Okay?”
Tony salutes her solemnly, and gives a nod. “You got it, Pep.”
“Good. And don’t forget you’re having lunch with Osborn.”
Tony mutters a grumbled ‘how could I forget’ under his breath before Pepper turns to take her leave. She closes the door behind her and puts a good amount of distance between her and it in just a few quick strides. But even so, she can hear the unmistakeable sounds of laughter coming from inside the office. She stops, listens to the muted cadence of Ms. Hansen’s voice, honeyed sweet without a doubt. She winces, and makes herself scarce as quickly as she can. It won’t do her any good to stand outside of Tony’s office and listen in to what she assumes might very well be going on inside.
She doesn’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss, right?
Except even though she doesn’t really know what has been going on inside Tony’s office, she still spends the rest of the day thinking about it. Tony rarely invites women over nowadays, and they rarely show up in the kind of skirts that Maya was wearing. Jesus, she wasn’t even wearing pantyhose or anything. Pepper can’t help but wonder if she was wearing anything underneath her skirt at all…
But Tony has changed over the years. She thought that he was really committed to what they had going for them and how their relationship had grown. She had been tentative in hoping that Tony’s playboy days were over, but Tony had proved himself to be loyal, at least in the first few months.
As the day progresses, Pepper can’t help but think that maybe he’s slowly drifting back to what he used to know because he’s gotten bored of it all.
And what if he has? What if he has gotten bored of Pepper and of their relationship and of what she can and has offered him for the time that they have been together? What is she supposed to do, or say, about that? It’s not like she could help that – if it was even true at all.
That is probably the worst thing though. Even if this is really taking place, if her fears are correct, then there is nothing she can do to change Tony’s mind. She doesn’t have much more to offer than she has already given Tony, and she can’t exactly make something up.
She thought it was enough…
But now she can’t stop thinking about all the things they could possibly be doing behind closed doors, and all the things that Pepper should have been doing, or could have done, or at least suggested. Has she really not tried enough? Has she not shown Tony that things don’t have to stay the way they used to be?
She really thought that Tony had been happy with what they had.
A voice in the back of her mind says that it should reassure her that at least he’s not going for any random floozie at least, he’s sticking to someone he knows this time, but the longer she thinks about it the longer she realizes that that’s actually even worse. At least there are no feelings involved when he sleeps with someone he doesn’t know and won’t remember the next day.
Has he fallen out of love with her?
Was he ever in love with her in the first place?
Pepper can’t concentrate the rest of the day and it shows. Usually she’s all smiles, even with the people she doesn’t like. She knows that politeness gets her furthest, but her face is set with tension for the remainder of that day at the office and she avoids people she doesn’t necessarily have to see at all cost.
Unfortunately, Tony is her ride home.
Or, well, she could call a taxi. But if she gets her own ride back while they usually drive together, it will most certainly arise suspicion, and she knows that Tony won’t be able to let it go until she spills her guts – and she’s not keen on doing so at the moment. She’s sure that if she does, a lot more will come flooding out than she intends to allow, and that’s a recipe for disaster.
So begrudgingly, she walks into Tony’s office toward the end of the day, glad to find that it’s empty bar for Tony this time, at least. She can’t help but comment on it.
“No more surprise guests?”
“Just little old me, Ms. Potts,” Tony hums as he gathers his things before whipping out the doors and heading toward the elevators.
They ride down toward the garage together but Pepper doesn’t have much to say. Usually she would put some effort into trying to explain Tony’s schedule to him so that he’s prepared for what the following day has in store for him in case he forgot (which he is prone to do), but this time she is quiet.
Occasionally, Tony tries to break the silence with a comment here and there, but Pepper’s answers are short and to the point, leaving little room for the conversation to continue. She tries to busy herself with her phone, drafting some emails to send the following morning, but she comes up blank most of the time now with her mind so clearly on something else.
Even as Tony puts the top of his car down as they drive down a long, winding road back to their home, offering the occasional glimpse of the sea and the California coast, she’s quiet. Lost in thought. Normally she might have complained about the wind whipping through her hair and pushing it into her face, might have tried to control it with both hands while watching Tony laugh as she cusses him out, but now she just lets it.
Maybe that’s what is the final straw for Tony.
He slows down, which Pepper doesn’t realize until they’re pulling up alongside the mostly empty road, and Tony goes as far as to turn the engine off and twist in his seat towards her. He means business, that much is clear. Pepper turns her head to the right and looks out over the ocean and the sun dipping lower and lower toward the horizon.
“I feel like I’m being punished for something and I’m not quite sure what it is,” Tony says. Pepper worries her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, but doesn’t answer.
“C’mon, Pep. Can’t even look at me now? Must be something serious.”
There’s a beat of silence before Tony’s warm hand lands gently on her thigh just above her knee and just below where her skirt stops. She resists the urge to pull away because she knows it’s childish. Instead, she turns her head to Tony at last. It’s the least she can do.
“Oh, it’s definitely something that I did,” Tony teases, although a moment later a frown creases between his eyebrows as if he can see something in her expression that worries him.
Pepper takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Might as well be honest and get this over with to avoid stewing for much longer, right?
“Why was Maya in your office?” She can barely stand to look at him, but keeps her eyes level as best as she can.
Tony looks puzzled for a moment.
“Ms. Hansen,” she clarifies. Immediately, Tony’s expression clears up significantly.
“Ah, Ms. Hansen. Honestly, I’m still not entirely sure why. Something about… Right, she was wondering if I could oversee a project she’s doing. As if I’m responsible enough to be able to oversee anything.”
Tony flashes a smile but Pepper doesn’t think it’s entirely funny. He has a habit of playing the self-deprecating joke card when she’s not feeling great, and she doesn’t think that that kind of behavior should be encouraged. She doesn’t want Tony to think about him in that way.
When Tony sees that there is no smile on Pepper’s face but only a slightly disapproving set of her mouth, he drops the joking act and tilts his head toward one shoulder.
“Why does it matter what she was there for?” He asks. Pepper doesn’t have a good answer for that except the truth, and she’s not about to hand that over to Tony on a silver platter. It feels ridiculous. She shouldn’t be so doubtful to the point of distrust, but seeing Tony so at ease with a woman he’s slept with doesn’t sit right with her.
It’s prejudice, she realizes. She doesn’t have that reaction to Tony talking to any other woman, and there aren’t enough ladies like Maya who slept with Tony and yet somehow always kind of…stuck around.
Pepper looks away, shame on her cheeks. She feels awful for the way she feels and can’t argue past the lump in her throat because it’s getting too real. Either Tony is about to tell her that it’s fine and nothing is wrong, or he’s about to tell her that they can no longer work things out, that he’s no longer interested, that once they get home maybe it’s better if they part ways…
“Hey…” Tony murmurs, his voice dropping into something concerned now. He takes his hand off her knee and puts it on her back instead, laying the warm flat of his hand over her spine – something that could have been so soothing if it hadn’t been for the intrusive thoughts in Pepper’s mind that maybe Tony would rather be somewhere else touching someone else like that right now.
As if he can read her mind, Tony leans in and presses a kiss into her hair just above her ear.
“You know you’re the only woman in my life, don’t you?” He says softly, a kind of soft that is usually only reserved for her. She hopes that’s still the case. She really does. “If that’s what you’re worried about, then don’t be. I only have eyes for you, Ms. Potts.”
Pepper doesn’t realize how much she needed to hear that until she sighs out another deep breath, and feels the tension set in her shoulders ease, feels herself lean into Tony a little bit, almost wishing they weren’t divided by the center console in the car.
Again, it’s as if Tony reads her mind, because he’s out of the car and around by her side in moments, opening the car door and offering her his hand to get her out and pull her directly into a firm embrace.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” Pepper says, breaking her own silence for the first time since the last thing she said in the elevator.
Tony combs a hand through her hair at the back of her head, and presses a kiss to her shoulder. She buries herself into his neck even further at that.
“A little bit,” Tony admits, but Pepper can hear the playful tone in his voice, “But if it was really that ridiculous then you wouldn’t be feeling this way. So I guess I just have to prove to you that you’re the only one for me until that feeling subsides once and for all. Are you agreeable, Ms. Potts?” He pulls back, cups her cheek, and makes her look at him.
Sometimes, Tony’s emotional availability is far beyond what he makes it out to be and it still surprises Pepper sometimes. But above all, she’s relieved that he knows just when to be serious and genuine about these things. Right now, it helps her calm, and see the realistic side of things.
Tony would never have stayed with her if he didn’t love her anymore.
He would never have lead her on like that. He respects her far too much.
And of course, that feeling is mutual.
She sighs again, and nods her head, mimicking the tentative smile curling at the corners of Tony’s lips. “I’m sorry,” she says, but Tony shakes his head.
Wordlessly, instead of tucking her back into the passenger seat and driving them the rest of the way home, Tony takes Pepper’s hand and guides her toward the hood of his expensive car, where he urges her to sit down.
In the distance, the sun is just about to dip below the horizon. With all the things that had been going through Pepper’s mind, she barely noticed it before, but now she can see it all up ahead.
The sky is a canvas of blended hues of yellow, orange and pink, stretching far and wide. Tony sits down next to Pepper and puts his arm around her. Pepper doesn’t hesitate to lean into his side.
“It’s almost as if you planned this. The timing is immaculate,” Pepper comments as the sun sinks down further, remembering how Tony had delayed their departure by a little while, saying he still had some work left to ‘finish up on’. Pepper feels Tony smile where his cheek rests atop her head.
“I may or may not have heard through the grapevine that you weren’t feeling too well today,” he admits.
“Tony…”
Pepper loves sunsets. She’s always loved sunsets. It’s the sole reason she sits by the large floor to ceiling windows of their Malibu house every night, looking out over the sea and at all the colors swirling in the sky.
“I would do this any day for you, Pep.” Tony’s voice is soft. “I’ve already missed so many sunsets in my life. I never want to watch another one without you.”
“Ever?” Pepper asks with a curious quirk of her brow, lifting her head a touch to be able to look at Tony.
He smiles, and kisses her gently, pulling her close.
“Ever. Never ever.”
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desiree-harding-fic · 4 years
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On Loving one Taako Taaco
ReJEANcy again! Taako is away on business. Lup and Kravitz attend a party as new in laws. The people who can boast to be loved by Taako form an exclusive club. AKA: Lup and Kravitz are best friends and I will never not use the fact that Kravitz and Taako fell in love without Lup around in canon to my advantage because it has me feeling Some Kinda Way.
As always, thanks to @fandomsnstuff for you know... everything?
This felt longer when I wrote it but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Enjoy!
ReJEANcy can be found Here and Here.
*~*~*~*~*
The evening came to its close, and with it, Kravitz and Lup retired with all due gallantry and ceremony, making their excuses and saying their goodbyes, until their coach was pulled around the front of the manor house drive, and Kravitz himself held out his hand to help Lup step up into the carriage.
She could not help but notice that the other guests began filtering out as well at their departure, and with it came the errant wondering - whether all in the county followed Kravitz’s lead in everything. She supposed they would, as he owned the majority of it. As the coach pulled away, beginning the long journey back to Astral, her thoughts strayed to the many introductions of the evening, to Kravitz’s neighbors, his friends.
Never had she been treated with such respect and deference in company. It was intimidating, in a way, to stand by Kravitz’s side; he could not stand in a room without one immediately taking notice of his excellent manner and breeding. He inspired a certain self-consciousness in company, it was clear, though he seemed at all times to combat it with a practiced grace. What a ridiculous thing money was, she thought, to inspire such feeling in a crowd. That simply because Kravitz’s wealth was so vast, he was treated as a great man. 
And by extension, she as a very great woman. And there lay the contradiction to her first inclination. That as intimidating as it was to stand on Kravitz’s arm, there was a power to it. That the difference between the treatment of Miss Lup Taaco, and Kravitz’s sister-in-law Miss Taaco was tangible.
It was another thing about him, she thought, perhaps the thing that most swayed her to liking him;  that beyond the other facets of his character, one thing had stood out: he had, from the moment they first met, treated Lup not as a lower-class member of the gentry, a supposed gentleman’s daughter with no fortune to her name. No, he had always acted, from the moment he was introduced to her, as though Lup was every bit his equal in rank, class, circumstance, breeding, and all. And in company, his example was always followed, for who would dare offend Lord Kravitz of Davenshire? 
She wondered if Taako had felt this way when Kravitz was courting him. There was something intoxicating about standing on Kravitz’s arm, being so well treated and highly thought of. It was no wonder he had been taken with the man in so short a time.
“You are contemplative,” Kravitz said, from where he sat opposite her. He was leaned back against the wall of the carriage, one leg bent on the seat, all relaxation now that they were unobserved. “What are you thinking of?”
He looked warm from the evening’s wine. Lup felt much the same: warm, loose, a bit tired from drink and company. It led her, perhaps, to speak more earnestly than she was used to.
“That you treat me better than I deserve, in their eyes,” she replied. His head cocked to the side, slow, brow furrowing inquisitively. “You behave in company as though I am your equal,” she explained,  “when women of my status are not even  allowed into the rooms in which you are treated as an honored guest. You have married Taako; I may be his sister, but my circumstances are unchanged. I am not accustomed to being treated as equal to someone of such rank as yourself.”
The man looked amused, a smirk on his lips.
“Taako would have me believe you are not my equal at all; rather he would tell me that you are my better. I believe he has said as much more than once.”
Lup laughed, quiet.
“He would say it.” She could not help but smile. Taako was better to her than she deserved.
“He thinks more highly of you than of any person living or dead,” Kravitz said, and Lup was taken, once again, by how… lucky she was.
“I am fortunate it is so,” she replied, her voice falling quiet. Kravitz looked at her fondly, and Lup thought how much more handsome he seemed here, quiet and relaxed and content in a comfortable space all his own. In company he was like a marble, fixed and perfected. He was much the same at the Estate when he was working, in order that those who worked under his name could follow a strong, confident example. She much preferred the softer iteration of him here, with life flowing through him, and so obviously. She thought that this must have been what Taako saw in him when he consented to marry him.
“My brother does not love easily,” she said, the words abruptly coming up from somewhere deep, secret, and true inside of her, spilling from her lips quickly and unexpectedly, lingering in the still air. She must’ve been inspired to say them by the drink, or by the intimate darkness of the swaying carriage, but now that she had said them, she felt at once as though there was a weight on her chest that, if not removed at once, would surely kill her. She tore her eyes from Kravitz, gazed toward the window at the blackness of the country night. 
“If I knew him any measure less than I do,” she confessed, “if anything had driven us from one another as children… I might believe that he had no heart at all.”
She looked back to Kravitz. His brow was furrowed once more, and he appeared fixed on her every word.
“It is quite the opposite you know,” she said. “It took me so long to understand, when we were younger. But he is not without feeling; rather… he feels so much, when he allows himself, that he can hardly stand it. He is so capable of love that he feels the need to conceal his heart behind wit and artifice, behind distant manners. It is how he survives this world; if everything were to touch him, as it touches us, he would drown from the force of it.”
Lup could not continue for the lump in her throat. She had always been the only one, save Auntie, who could understand the warmth under Taako’s iron exterior, the softness that he hid away for fear that it would one day be his destruction. Lup was the only one in the world who knew Taako enough to understand that to be loved by him was the greatest privilege man could bestow, so great, sometimes, that it was almost painful to know. Lup was the only one who understood the responsibility implied in being one of Taako’s beloved.
And then there was Kravitz.
“I apologize,” she said, around her tightened throat. “I am sure these are not revelations to you. But I must confess I was… taken off guard, upon my arrival to Davenshire, by how much he has come to care for you.” And suddenly it was vital that Kravitz understand, in no uncertain terms, how great his responsibility was too, alongside hers.
“Against all odds, you have captured my brother’s heart,” she said, looking at Kravitz, beautiful Kravitz, and she felt she would cry any moment. She spoke with as much gravity as she would muster, the wine in her blood loosening her tongue to an honesty she rarely felt confident enough to employ.
“You must be very careful with it.”
Kravitz looked warily at her, sympathy deep in his eyes. But with it, something more, something she could not yet identify. 
“I intend to be,” he hedged, and Lup shook her head, closing her eyes, and then looking at him imploringly, leaning forward in her seat. 
“You do not understand me. He will love you like no one alive can. I do not say it lightly. It is… to be loved by my brother, actively, is like nothing else. But betray the trust he places in you for a moment, Kravitz, and it will destroy him. It will break him so that he dares not allow himself to love again, and if there is one thing I will not see, it is my brother, shut off from this world and heartless.
“He weathered the death of our Aunt last year,” she said, “She was one of two people I could say definitively that Taako cared for. I am the other. You are the third I have seen him open himself to in the way that he has in my lifetime.” She swallowed thickly, thinking of Taako’s frightened, joyful expression the first moment he confessed to Lup that he loved Kravitz. Lup had never seen anything akin to it in the world.
“You must understand,” she said, “that you carry his heart in your hands now. He has made himself defenseless for you, and there is nothing in existence he fears more than that. There is no bravery he can summon greater than that which allows him to trust. It has never been simple for him. If he loves you, Kravitz, and he does, it is, whether you know it or not, the result of contemplation deeper and more labored than you can possibly have known when you asked him for his hand.
“I am his sister. He has always trusted me, in our own way. But he has chosen to place his trust in you, quite against his nature, and your responsibility is greater for it.” She blinked the tears from her eyes. To think Taako had only been absent a few days, and she missed him so terribly already. She did not understand how she had lasted in London without him, without being on the receiving side of that deep, overwhelming affection - without seeing him errantly in the hall or across a crowded room, and remembering, every moment, that she would do anything in the world for him.
Kravitz was gazing at her with wide eyes, half frightened, but immensely serious nonetheless, and Lup thought, of all people she had ever met, he seemed the one to hear her words and take them to heart more deeply than any.
“It is precarious ground upon which we stand, you and I,” she said, wryly. “Those who love him as we do.” She chuckled wetly. “But he is the best of us, is he not?”
“He is worth every trial,” Kravitz said then, conviction imbued in every aspect of his voice, and a wave of relief and affection swept over Lup so suddenly that she could hardly breathe. That Kravitz, with one sentence, had made it clear that he knew not only the weight of bearing Taako’s love, but also that he had come, independently, to the conclusion that he would bear it willingly, was a greater gift to her heart than any she could have received from her brother-in-law in all her life. The relief that there was someone in Taako’s life who understood him so that if she was made to leave him, he would be held in safe and loving hands was enough to finally bring the tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. And the kinship that had been lurking in the back of her mind; the sense that Kravitz knew her in an unspeakable way, simply for how much he was able to see the value of her brother, grew in her suddenly and fiercely until it was all consuming.
She smiled at Kravitz.
“Then you are worthy of  him,” she said. And she let her head rest against the carriage wall, and her eyes to slide shut.
*~*~*~*~*
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VLD S8 – The Purpose of Lance’s Altean Markings, Allura’s Canonically Inconsistent “Death,” and Voltron’s Mysterious Interstellar Road Trip in the End: Are Things Really As They Seem?
Hello dear ones, I received asks to follow up on my previous post about Allura’s capability to live a very long life if she hadn’t died in s8. I’d mentioned in this post that Alfor had connected Allura’s life force to the indestructible Voltron, and that this had significant implications for Lance’s strange Altean marks and Allura’s “death” in s8. So this is me, attempting to follow up on those requests! 
Let’s start with those strange marks. It seems like a lot of us who have watched Voltron: Legendary Defender season 8 scratched our heads over Lance receiving Altean marks at all:
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This event happens when Allura and the paladins are standing in the “connected consciousness of all existence”—which is this…Mother-Brain realm for every consciousness that ever existed ever. Allura is preparing to sacrifice herself alongside Honerva, because they both have to give of their energy to regenerate the fallen multiverse. Honerva is already accepting of this and already interacting with her dead family whose minds and forms are preserved within the Mother-Brain space. It seems, even so, Honerva is still alive because she hasn’t yet completed the foretold Wild Sacrifice Move of Ultimate Alchemy alongside Allura: 
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The Big Boom of Life happens after this point, so there’s something fascinatingly screwy about this realm. The typical separations between the Living and the Death are just…totally meaningless. We’re actively seeing a living Honerva physically interact with the minds and forms of her fallen son and husband. And if this Mother-Brain location truly preserves the consciousness of all existence, then I suppose it actually makes sense to me that Allura and Honerva could still be alive themselves while also being able to interact with the Dead who are preserved within this realm…
But Allura—she turns to the paladins and tells them that they’re all about to experience a massive fragmentation from her. It seems pretty heavily suggested that she’s going to die. In doing so, she kisses Lance and then gives him Altean marks: 
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And the first question I have is….whyyyy the marks? What the heck was that for? Because I think it’s really weird that she’d just give Lance the most visually identifying mark for her own species. At least, I think it’s weird on the surface. The more important question may lie within Allura’s motives...and that gets into some much larger implications for ways to view those marks and the show’s ending. Some of the theories I’ve seen about those marks:
Theory 1: Lance as Trans-Species to Preserve Allura’s Species and/or Allura Giving Lance Some Unknown Gift/Power
I want to bring this up because it appears to be a largely accepted theory that I’m now heavily questioning. I’m not sure who first vocalized this understanding of canon, but Neko Chicana offers the theory in their Youtube video “Why did Lance get Altean markings!?” The theory is that in Allura’s last-minute panic about dying, she was trying to ensure The Chosen Altean vibes got passed down. This would mean that Allura infused Lance with deep Altean powers to inherently change him from being human into being a trans-species human/Altean.
But I struggle with this interpretation, because…she already had an entire colony of Alteans, many of whom clearly were presenting with high quintessence sensitivity and would have been even potentially fit for Oriande. And it’s not like Lance was going to know how to apply alchemy without learning it anyway.
In terms of the transformation itself, it’s incredibly superficial. It’s a face-lift and that’s it, as Lance never exhibits any other features of a standard Altean. And not just from a visual perspective, but also from a physiological one. He definitely is not shown suddenly freaking out over having alchemy powers. He isn’t shown connecting with anything on the astral plane. I would even posit that he appears to be aging right alongside his fellow humans, given his more adult/less baby-face facial structure in the epilogue, just like everyone else:
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This article here seems to contain a similar level of skepticism about a genuinely trans-species Lance. 
And what would even be the point of converting Lance to have a token visage of Alteans, if Allura knows that his true heart and soul lies with his human family? Just by Allura’s reaction of disgust to his rounded ears in season 1, it seems pretty obvious that other Alteans would see him as “other.” If anything, a trans-species interpretation overly complicates the show here and generally can’t provide a self-contained, meaningful reason for its existence at all. 
Theory Two: The Markings as a Token of a Lost Lover/Remembrances
Another suggestion has been that Allura gives Lance such markings just as…a reminder? Of herself? But I don’t feel this at all makes sense with seven previous seasons of her character behavior.
Allura is shown consistently trying to sacrifice herself and her things at all costs, without anything in return or demanding that people remember her. She did it in season 1 to regenerate a Balmera, knowing full well she could die. But we don’t see her asking Coran to sing a pretty song for her. She sacrifices herself again for Shiro, by tossing him out of the way of Galran soldiers, without even begging that he come back for her. She sacrifices herself in Oriande to the White Lion. She sacrifices her crown in season 7 to stabilize Shiro. She even gives up her dresses and her station as a princess in order to better fit in with the humans in season 7. It’s not inherent in Allura’s character to demand anything in return for her sacrifices, much less that she be remembered for them. As a matter of fact, she’s very particular about ensuring that other people get recognized for their actions, and she’ll often place her own good work as part of a “whole” accomplished by the many. Here’s an example from season 6, episode 1:
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So here we see her raising up other people and their contributions rather than demanding some offering or worship for her actions.
Princess Allura doesn’t even hold a grudge for Keith being accepted as Black Paladin or Lance as Red Paladin in s3, despite the fact that she secretly cried over it.
So, Allura wanting anything in return for what she sacrifices, or trying to intentionally drag down someone’s spirit for her own comfort, is not inherent to her character. If anything in s8, Allura consistently seems to want the paladins to move on without her:
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In response to the emotional distress of the other paladins, she doesn’t give them an everlasting token to memorialize herself, but instead gives encouragement for the future:
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And even Shiro! He warns her that she’s about to become the multiverse’s most anonymous hero:
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And Allura’s response to this?
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So Princess Allura went into this s8 self-sacrifice, fully expecting that the paladins would keep her actions totally secret. She was completely and utterly prepared to accept the very reality that Lotor had threatened her with in season 6:
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So literally the only reason in s8 that anyone remembers Princess Allura…is because the paladins choose to honor her memory despite her stated sentiments against it:
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So…all of this is to say, I don’t think it makes sense to assume that suddenly, Allura would want to forever keep Lance from moving on. She’s literally handed them her blessing to move on, and suggested that they even hide what she’s done. It’s the paladins who choose to remember her. So I think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest against an interpretation where Allura was intentionally trying to mark Lance to be her forever-doomed lost love. It’s completely inconsistent with other surrounding details about who Allura is.
I think there’s instead evidence to suggest a new theory about these marks. And if anyone’s suggested this before, please feel free to jump in, lol. I’m like, 1.5 years behind the times here, although I did find this article that also would seem to support the theory: 
Theory Three: Lance’s Altean Marks as a Tactical Homing/Location Beacon, Strengthened by His and Allura’s Shared Bonds With Blue Lion
Before she casually walks off to her alleged death, Allura tells Lance, “I’ll always be with you.” And then she gives him the Altean marks:
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While I think this “I’ll always be with you” statement has some classic lessen the hurt of impending death vibes, Allura herself actually states she’ll always be with him. How certain are we that she’s not being actually serious? That this isn’t an intentional decision to ensure some kind of ongoing link?
So backing up here, we know from previous seasons that Altean markings can glow, unlike the rest of their body. They appear to glow in response to external stimuli. For example, in season 5, Allura and Lotor’s markings glow because they are within the vicinity of Oriande and have a deep well of quintessence within them. And this glowy activity is discriminatory, because Coran’s marks don’t glow:
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Lance’s own markings initially glow when activated by Allura:
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So for Lance’s markings to glow at all, that means something is happening. It means that an all-new, external stimulus is making those markings react, and that the magic of it is active. And that Lance is now housing enough magic to react.
That article I linked to earlier suggests that perhaps Allura intended to use the marks as….a communicative link with Lance. However, in a full year since Allura’s disappearance, we see no evidence that Lance has been talking to a mysterious spirit!Allura. He seems pretty depressed, and everyone seems largely accepting of the concept that Allura is dead and also is incapable of interaction.
In which case, if you did have a link to a supposedly dead person, even if you wanted to keep it secret, wouldn’t you at least look a little more…happy? That they’re not actually gone? So something’s a little screwy there too, that makes me think Lance wasn’t in some kind of interdimensional communication with Allura.
But I do think Lance’s markings, and how they glow in response to external power sources in the final episode, suggest something about Allura’s state of being.
So let’s jump in. We know that Allura’s life force is inherently tied to Voltron:
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As I’ve mentioned in a previous post of mine: Right in season 1, episode 1, Coran admits that Alfor has done some pretty wild alchemy. He physically connected Allura’s essence with the essence of Voltron—the single source of self-regenerating, infinite quintessence throughout the whole of the entire universe.
I don’t know if a person’s life force being personally connected to Voltron would confer physical immortality, but I do think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that as long as Voltron exists, Allura’s essence would be preserved within it. And as we saw in season 6, Shiro was capable of interacting with other paladins despite his physical death, because Black Lion had preserved his essence….
All of this backstory and worldbuilding means at the very least that Allura was also capable of linking some part of her quintessence to Lance as well. And that, even if she hypothetically didn’t have a body on the material plane, that she would be very active on the astral one.
So why specifically Altean marks, then?
This isn’t the first time in the show that strangely powerful bonds have been made by the touching of faces and the transfer of energy around Altean marks. As a matter of fact, we might have even seen Alfor actively bind Allura’s life-force with Voltron, right here:
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In which case, Allura was simply mimicking the work of her father as she knew it, but on a much smaller scale. Because she knew from her father that it was possible to bond life-forces, and for some reason, that alchemy trick appears to involve the face or else something to do with Altean markings.
So therefore, the activation of this marking “link” and alchemical bond might help to explain why Lance actually appears to be smiling with tears in his eyes when the Voltron lions fly away:
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But why even Lance specifically?? What about all the other paladins she’s made connections? What makes Lance so totally special?
It might not be unintentional that, out of all the lions possible, the one to respond to some unknown activator one year later—with massive amounts of quintessence in the bond—is Blue Lion.
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Notice that while the other lions are in flight, none of them are glowing like Blue Lion. There’s something inherently special about Blue Lion right now, especially given that it’s not even the leader of the pack.
In this scene, we see the paladins rushing out per all the ruckus. Lance’s markings start to glow:
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And then the lions powerfully surge off on their merry, totally unexplained way:
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So…in looking back at this, it’s interesting that Lance’s marks are shown glowing in ONLY two instances: 1) When Allura first activates them, and 2) When the marks themselves mysterious activate again in response to Blue Lion glowing outrageously blue, and the lions soaring off into space as well…
Is it a mistake that Lance just so happens to be the only other living Blue Paladin in the universe?
Allura’s life force might have been connected to the full of Voltron, but season 3 shows that her communicative/mental connection to it is through Blue Lion alone. Because Black Lion certainly had nothing to say to her, at the very least.
So Allura’s life force is connected to Voltron…Blue Lion responds to an unknown source of massive, pure quintessence, and then Voltron follows…Lance’s markings start to glow....
Could it be that in order to even re-locate Voltron and the paladins again in the larger scheme of the multiverse, Allura needed Lance’s connection to Blue Lion as well? To keep Allura in spiritual/mental communion with Voltron and with that universe?
With Allura gone and the Atlas portion of Voltron totally missing from Voltron, there’s the hint that possibly the Lion Musical Chairs event has undone itself and reconfigured once more. Blue Lion has re-accepted Lance, with Keith and Shiro piloting Red and Black. The lineup in the screenshot below would suggest that Shiro’s the one in Red this time, resulting in an interesting addition to the Keith and Shiro relationship arc. It suggests that Shiro is now back on the team as an established paladin, as the right hand of the Black Paladin, and is actively supporting Keith’s ongoing growth as a leader:
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But if Blue Lion were Allura’s only true connection to “speak” with and interact with Voltron on a material plane, then it would make sense that she would intentionally connect her own life-force to the last Blue Paladin.
Lance, out of all of the paladins and with respect to this lineup shown here, is the only one who would be even remotely capable of ensuring this link in their universe (notwithstanding as well that canonically, Allura was in a romantic relationship with him, which might have something to do with this too, idk).
So what does this mean for Allura’s state of being? What’s exactly happening in this moment? Why do the lions leave their paladins? Is everything truly so pointless and nihilistic?
So Lance’s markings and the exit of the Voltron lions result in what I feel are two interpretations of the entire end of Voltron. And I think one is potentially more consistent with the overall show than the other:
Theory One: Allura Really Died/Shed Her Physical Body/Was Lost to the Material Plane After a Year of Hard Work
So, we do have evidence that the work to restore the full of the multiverse began pretty quickly, and that there was an explosive event to jumpstart it:
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We otherwise have no evidence to support that this image meant the work (to restore every thread and all things within the threads) was DONE. Yet. It may have taken an entire year to regenerate the multiverse, which would explain the Voltron lions suddenly reacting strangely after that span of time. If we assume that Allura really died, then this would suggest that—with the overarching multiverses finally totally restored—her energy is spent up. She’s physically dying. And per the extinguishing of her own life force, Voltron….somehow can’t exist on the material plane without her? Because let’s not forget, the whole mecha is connected to her life force. So this interpretation would suggest that in her dying/being unable to remain on the material plane, Voltron itself has to die as well. This could explain why at the end here, they activate to go be with Allura and team in the shiny afterlife party in the Mother-Brain dimension. Lance may be crying here because he feels or recognizes the last of Allura’s energy slipping away. And it’s possible I was misinterpreting his smile earlier, because it’s, idk, maybe a sob.
And there does seem to be some canon support for a potentially permanent break between Allura and the material plane, as well as for why Voltron would leave:
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But I’m really struggling to understand the deathy interpretation of these events at the end of s8, from SEVERAL angles, haha.
Strike One:
This scene would appear to blatantly and outrageously contradict previous show worldbuilding. To accept a “death” interpretation, one must also accept that s8 completely rewrites the inherent properties and behavior of quintessence, as well as show details that Alteans/Altean technologies more consistently function as conduits/capacitors of external energy sources rather than as massive batteries by themselves. The true batteries, even into season 7 with Shiro and Atlas, appear to be becoming from sources external to the power-wielder. This reality largely relieves the personal cost of any alchemical action/draining oneself, just so long as you have a powerful enough battery. In which case, given the resources and deep knowledge available to Allura and Honerva even in this apocalyptic moment, any action resulting in physical death feels...unearned.
If you’re interested in more specifically about this, I have a few other posts looking at these basic worldbuilding details:
Question on Quintessence and General Worldbuilding in     VLD S8
The Search for the “Bluest Quintessence” and S6 - The Most     Unnecessary Conspiracy In VLD?
It’s entirely possible I could be missing some information that would reconcile the s8 worldbuilding contradictions about quintessence and Altean energy back to the previous seven seasons. I suppose it’s possible that this s8 regeneration trick resulted in Allura and Honerva being physically unable to handle the amount of power they were conducting. But just after casually re-watching the show, I heavily question whether this is possible or consistent with everything else, haha.
Strike Two:
The concept of Voltron not being needed in a peaceful universe is nonsensical. So this show is telling me that a gigantic mecha capable of massive construction projects and space anomaly protection services couldn’t reorganize its paladins or get new ones, and transition to a new day job? Because Voltron has to exist in a combat theater only? This is wildly myopic, especially considering that Voltron already has a team of five who could pilot it again via a little game of musical chairs…and even the final lineup shown would suggest that Shiro had already taken over Red. I guess if the Galra aren’t attacking?? This must mean that there won’t be any civilizations in need of help or in need of being protected from imminent natural disasters?? At the very least, a new day job would be an incredibly meaningful way to convert Voltron from a war machine to a champion of the people. And it would still give the paladins a reason to come back together as a team and to exercise the bonds they’ve forged together as defenders of the universe.
Strike Three:
After this s8 scene, and even assuming Allura has physically died, Voltron existed before Allura got linked to it. And it existed as a largely infinite and indestructible source of energy. Even if Allura did die, the loss of her personal quintessence was of no account to its existence. The worldbuilding of Voltron as a mecha suggests it didn’t need her to continue existing on the material plane like it had existed before their alchemical link from Alfor. And even if she’d died, taking Voltron’s life-force with her away from the material plane, then why in the world wouldn’t Voltron just…totally power down? Become completely inert with the lights fading from its eyes? But then, oh wait, according to the last seven seasons, Voltron is supposed to be indestructible and constantly self-regenerating even when temporarily drained, so how could it power down forever? Even the concept that Voltron could physically destroy/remove itself from the material world to fully join Allura on the astral plane is an oxymoron.
And even if Allura’s life force was fading out and the Voltron lions are dying too, how in the world could Lance’s Altean markings suddenly even manage to glow in response to an active and powerful external stimulus? And why would the lions themselves suddenly be lighting up and capable of expending massive amounts of energy on a sudden, random interstellar space trip?
Even if the Lions themselves longed to reunite with its dead creator or its missing piece per their Allurian life-force link (despite them clearly not caring when Alfor died or when Allura got put in stasis 10k years ago), this show would have me believe that Voltron wanted to die or give up? And...for what? To lounge about in an afterlife Cabana for Retired Mechas, sipping quintessence drinks while the universe experiences ongoing natural physical disasters or anomalies that could endanger entire galaxies? What if more trans-reality comets fell from the sky? They appear to not be an isolated incident, and where there’s one, there’s usually more…What if that causes more rifts to open? And let’s just assume for a moment that those two comets are the only two trans-reality comets in the multiverse. I guess we can all sleep tight tonight because Voltron is unconcerned that the universe still has several weak stitches between it and the quintessence field, where dark entities and rift creatures roam? Lol, what?
Lotor even confirms these weaknesses in season 4:
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“Zarkon believed Alfor’s plan to blow up Daibazaal and destroy the rift between realities actually worked. No one comprehended that the experiments of my mother, Honerva, could never be undone.”
Lotor’s statement here would suggest that after everything that’s happened, it might be even easier to break open rifts. But okay cool, time for Voltron’s retirement/death, I guess. Just leave a peaceful universe to be one day swallowed up and destroyed by shadow rift creatures, dark entities, apocalyptic comets, and natural disasters…
Everything about the Allura/Voltron death theory doesn’t make sense to me and raises more questions than answers. So let’s look at another way of viewing this ending!
Theory Two: Allura Didn’t Die At All—She Just Finished Working for the Year And Needs a Ride Home
The fact that Voltron survives and is activated into movement by an external source of massive, pure quintessence suggests that Allura is likely NOT dead and is STILL ALIVE. In this case, the astronomical undertaking of regenerating a multiverse still took a full year to complete. We do know there’s no major time slippage between the paladin’s universe and the Universal Consciousness realm, because the paladins were seen right back in the heart of establishing/confirming peace when they returned to their universe. And again, s8 also shows people being able to interact on the border between the Living and the Dead, so Allura simply existing within this realm should not be enough to kill her. Because life and death are largely meaningless concepts in this space where all consciousnesses are preserved.
So, if Allura is alive and just finished her work, then oop, now she’s stuck in the middle of Space Nowhere without a certain ride home. So who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters. Voltron is the only ship that Allura has a deep psychical and life-force link to, so it would be within canonical bounds that if she just helped resurrect the multiverse, then surely one hard-working princess could use Lance’s markings (her own life force) to relocate her own universe, and then use that bond on the material plane to call Voltron from across the universe to come pick her up, lol.
I really like this re-interpretation of canon for several reasons:
One, it feels a lot more consistent with the world-building and the overall tone of the show.
Two, it suggests a much happier ending where canon confirms—sort of like the Iron Giant (1999) ending—that Allura would eventually reunite on the material plane with the paladins.
Three, it suggests that there’s been a full one-year span of time where Allura and Honerva were both working together to restore the universe…while in the presence of and even interacting with Alfor, Zarkon, and Lotor, and probably a billion other dead people they thought were gone forever, but who were preserved in form and mind within the Consciousness of the universe. I feel like there’s just LOADs of possible content someone could get out of this. Did Honerva and Zarkon reunite? Did Alfor get to hug his baby girl again? Did Allura and Lotor have a major heart-to-heart discussion about the Altean colony and his quintessence insanity, and positively reconcile? Which, regardless of however you interpret what Lotor’s accused of, Allura had already…exonerated his motives and turned him into, like, a Joan of Arc figure well before she saw him again. And she even wanted Honerva to honor his memory by doing the right thing:
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So there’s some clear signs that Allura and Lotor could have reconciled now that there’s no apparent quintessence insanity or witch shenanigans afoot... And it’s very likely that Allura might have even reconciled with the true, uncorrupted Emperor Zarkon himself:
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 And in the meantime, what would the paladins of old be like? Were there other victims of this war who would have found it meaningful to interact in some way to obtain justice for themselves…or to obtain something more??
And this gets into reason four of why I like this re-interpretation of the ending. So canonically, mechas created out of the trans-reality comet are infinitely regenerating and indestructible. So not just Voltron, but also the Honervian/Sincline mecha. This suggests that Allura already had a ride home.
So why would Allura need more ships?
This interpretation has the potential to reverse all the painful deaths that happened throughout the show. The original paladins, the Alteans and Galrans who perished for various reasons...Alfor, Bandor, Lotor, Kova…even deaths we didn’t see.
And in calling Voltron back to her, is Allura maybe…planning to bring some new friends with her too? If she already has the Honervian/Sincline mecha to fly home, why does she need all five lions, anyway? Who would pilot them? Who else is waiting patiently in the celestial mind/heart of the multiverse to return to reality with her?
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And reason five, on a simpler and maybe less galaxy-brain note, this interpretation provides a completely different context, however apparently sorrowful, for Allura’s canonical goodbyes:
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Allura’s path did end here...at least as a paladin of Voltron. Because that position was temporary anyway. Restoring the multiverse was going to be an ultimate act. And there’s probably nothing after this that Allura could perform to outdo herself in saving things, lol. This is the height of everything she is and has worked for. She intentionally identifies this as her purpose:
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“It is my purpose.”
Her action in s8 is the full and total culmination of everything she has learned and grown capable of doing since s1. Everything has been leading up to this. It’s her one chance to undo all the universal pain. And through restoring the multiverse, she’d be restoring balance in her own life too—to reconnect with her fragmented past, to give those from her past a chance to live in the new universe with her….
The other paladins, though—they were still needed in the meantime to confirm peace with the Galran empire, to convert it (however questionably) to a democracy, and to establish relations between Earth and other vast galaxies of people. Allura was not wrong that their paths as paladins had not ended. Because she needed them to ensure their universe would be truly at peace while she was up in the stars, working to restore and reconcile with all that had been lost in painful war.
And all of this would ultimately suggest that she would return to the universe, to the paladins, and probably take back the piece of her life force she’d given Lance that ensured a link with Blue Lion. Because…that homing beacon wouldn’t be needed anymore. Perhaps Allura would even consider decoupling the remainder of her life-force from Voltron, to fully reconcile herself to herself. To finally be whole and just Allura again, idk.
The only major problem with the “Allura is Alive and Bringing Some Friends/Family Home” interpretation is that...lol, the development team for the show doesn’t subscribe to it, at least not in any outward way I’ve heard. Based on their March 28, 2019 interview with Let’s Voltron, the executive producers talk about Allura like she’s dead. They say that they wanted to show sacrifice, the impact of death, and how important it is to honor the memory of the dead:
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And we definitely feel it. There is a massive weight of loss and memorial in the finale here. Coran looks just this side of totally broken as he remembers Allura, and he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. He reiterates just how much Allura means to the people still alive in this universe:
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“For some of us she was a diplomat, a teacher, a leader, and a friend. But to those of us around this table, she will always be family.”
The EPs have suggested that, like other shows, there may be ways to resurrect Allura, and there may have been happier endings possible. But again, please see the Theory 1 statements above regarding the massive worldbuilding contradictions when assuming that Allura had to die in the first place.
In which case, hilariously, the EPs have also expressed their interest in creative works that keep going, with plot tensions that require even supposedly dead heroes to return, as in this article here: 
“You can kill Captain America a million times and he’ll always show back up.”
So creator statements are just all over the place regarding the finality of “death” or even of “separation” in this universe. We definitely don’t get a body to prove that Allura is dead. And we also know that canonically, there is a place where the rift between the Dead and Living breaks down. And oh, by the way, Allura just regenerated entire multiverse strands that had been destroyed. So even if it’s not as simple as…holding someone’s hand as they step out of the consciousness realm, what canonical detail or limitation would keep her from resurrecting them herself? It is well within Allura’s canonical range to bring back all of these people without dying herself. 
Conclusion
Regardless of creator intention, the various contradictions in the worldbuilding itself make the angst of Allura’s death, the memorial statue, the lingering pain of the characters (oof, poor Coran and Lance especially), and all the interviews talking about Allura’s death feel excessively unnecessary. And at the same time, I’ve been very fascinated by what one can do with the details about the Consciousness Realm; the inherent properties of comet-based mechas, quintessence, and alchemy; Lance’s strange marks; and even the odd, last-minute Voltron interstellar space trip surging toward the Allura in the stars, with Blue Lion in the lead:
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It appears that Allura could be very much alive in the final screenshot of her in the stars. Through Lance and their shared connection via Blue Lion, she’s maintained a homing beacon for her own reality, activated Voltron to complete a massive interstellar trip to come get her and likely several others—and now, she’s faithfully waiting in the Consciousness Realm with everyone, preparing for a family trip back to their resurrected worlds, in their trusty mechas.
I watched s8 on the day it dropped. I was in a daze about all of its wild and painful messaging. I wrote some unhappy metas about the sheer nihilism of this show. It’s taken me, lol, 1.5 years to actually go back and re-watch several episodes at a time. And I don’t believe this interpretation of the ending would fix every problem in Voltron: Legendary Defender. Sometimes, trying to make sense of this show feels like trying to reconcile quantum theory with classical mechanics, haha. So I’m sure one could poke holes in this post. And to even arrive at these conclusions, I had to throw out or reinterpret some of the worldbuilding and scenes, in direct conflict with the stated perspective of the show’s development team.
But even so...I derived most everything for this interpretation from the show itself. And even if the development team didn’t intend this happy ending of resurrections and reconciliations as I’ve suggested…it seems that this finale—at least while I’m thinking about it right now—is canonically possible and an attempt at consistency with the material provided across multiple seasons. It offers resurrections, redemptions, reconciliations...
Its ultimate message even genuinely coincides with the last episode’s title.
The End Is the Beginning.
And I really like that.
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thatblondeperson · 3 years
Note
TimSteph, taking care of chronic injuries!
Hey look, another ask that got buried! Sorry friend!!!! 
This is all preboot, RR/Batgirl era.
Ok so Tim is super extra imo when it comes to treating any kind of sickness, injury, ANYTHING. He’s the type of guy who will go to CVS and buy out the entire “cold + flu” aisle as soon a Steph gets a runny nose. He absolutely drowns her in cough drops and tissues. I can see him being extremely attentive as well. Like bringing blankets and pillows around the clock, happy to carry her from point A to point B, almost insisting to do so on occasion, and just sitting with her for as long as she desires/needs company. He absolutely pays no mind to germs. Steph can cuddle all she wants.
Steph is similar but less extra. She’s got some more classic home remedies that Tim doesn’t have. She absolutely would baby the hell out of him if he got sick though, and probably more often than not she has to put her foot down on him trying to patrol even if he’s completely out of it and burning up. Tim has a hard time relaxing, but eventually the time is used for him to catch up on sleep. Tim getting sick is like a mini-hibernation. I can see Alfred stepping in occasionally if they were both sick because Tim’s an absolute mess, and Steph can only do so much before she gets wiped out. They’re hopeless and completely out of service if they’re both ill at the same time. Error 404: Dorks not found. 
Chronic injuries are a constant process. Steph obviously has a ton just from Black Mask alone. I’m sure she gets aches and pains on the regular due to the severity of the torture she experience. Power drills would leave some lasting abdominal pain for sure. Hell, I wonder if it makes cramps worse for her? It could in all honestly. She may need serious pain meds during that time of the month which are of course always kept on hand. On top of that, the physical trauma definitely left endless mental trauma. No question about it. Not to mention that time she got lightly shot in the head. I say lightly because I forgot this was a thing because they don’t really address it again. I imagine that would cause occasional headaches/migraines, and I’m sure Tim likes to run a scan every now and again to make sure there isn’t any lasting damage. And of course, we return to the medicine cabinet for more pain pills. (Thank you @incoherentbabblings for reminding me of the gunshot.)
I headcanon that both of them get nightmares on almost the regular. They’ve both got it set that if one of them is in the middle of a bad nightmare, the other just holds them close, doing whatever they can to soothe them until the calmness sets back in. The nightmares get more spaced out some time after they move in together because I think the constant safeness of having someone beside them every night would eventually help them both sleep through the night better. It is hard to get back to sleep though. Both of them have been put through the ringer, they’ve both seen death of loved ones up close and personal, and I imagine a lot of what they’ve experienced is still very vivid and intense for them.
Tim’s got his own fair share of recurring pain. The boy doesn’t have a spleen and tbh I don’t know how he’s not getting sick more frequently. But extra precautions need to be taken to keep him from getting infections when he gets any kid of open wound, thank GOD Steph is a nurse. Tim has to be kept pretty healthy though if at all possible, which brings us back to my previous headcanon about him not caring about germs when Steph is sick? Yeah, not his smartest move, but Tim’s an idiot and forgets that he’s fragile. 
Both of them have regular joint issues. They’ve dislocated enough things for just about everything to make awful clicking sounds now and again. Steph doesn’t have as much regular muscle pain, she’s far more flexible than Tim is so she stays pretty loose and limber, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to work at it every day. Steph does yoga as a part of her routine. She gets Tim to join sometimes but he’s not very good at keeping up with it. He’s flexible too but not to her level, and he locks up easier if he’s had an especially tough night. They both try to put the time in to exercise when they can, spotting each other, keeping a routine going, because given how much they both get beaten and battered on the daily, if they don’t keep up with muscle pain, it’ll just get worse. On bad days when the pain makes any mobility difficult, massages ensue. They’ve got at least 15 ice packs in the freezer at all times, and a stack of heating pads in the medicine cabinet. And if all else fails, a nice hot bubble bath never hurts. With Epsom salts and everything. Steph likes to add a touch of lavender oil.
Immediate injuries they’re both very good at treating. Steph obviously has more technical knowhow, and she is the most medically trained of all the Batfam members, but Tim is detail oriented and good at focusing when he needs to so he can keep up just fine. They’re both good at stitches and general wound treatment, but Steph is better at consistent treatment. Tim will absolutely forget to switch out his bandages or clean things because his brain is soup and he cannot be bothered to think about injuries when he’s too busy with 50 other things on the constant. He needs to slow down. We get right back into “more prone to infections” again. Alas. Idiot. 
They both have their fair share of mental health issues, though Tim’s tend to be more intense. Steph has her ways of managing her own mental state but Tim gets stuck often. He falls into some pretty deep depression spells, and his anxiety acts up fairly frequently. Steph has started teaching him how to meditate, but also has a list of distractions and special remedies that she can utilize if need be. Movies and tea are a good base line, though Tim’s mind gets very far away sometimes and it’s hard to pull him back out. Like he almost wants to wallow in his sadness. Often she just tries to ground him as best she can so he doesn’t get so lost that he can’t come back. Steph likes to make sure that he isn’t always using patrol as a crutch for when he’s feeling upset or tense. It’s hard to sway him away from more pain when he lets himself get so close to the edge. It breaks her heart, sometimes she feels helpless.
Steph has anxiety as well, and some psychosomatic tics from her past abuse. She needs a lot of reassurance and gentleness when her mind starts racing. She’s still prone to trust issues, even now when she’s surrounded herself with stable people. She’s been let down and she fears losing her steady ground sometimes. Tim, let’s face it, hasn’t been the most reliable in the past, but I firmly believe that with some growing up he’d step up to the plate and try to be a solid home base for her to the best of his abilities. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon. He’s very good at being gentle. That’s canon as fuck. I will die on the hill that Tim is as delicate with Steph as one would be with a priceless porcelain heirloom. Fight me, the boy would never intentionally try to physically or mentally hurt her. He tries so hard to reassure her but I thinks he feels a little helpless sometimes too. Some of her trust issues are his fault, and he can’t just snap his fingers and reverse his mistakes. He tries his best, but there will always be scars. 
All in all, I think they’re both very tender and caring with one another. They’re both beyond broken sometimes, and they are a mess and a half. But they know each other, they know each others pain and sadness and I think once they got back together they’d settle very easily into a care routine. Both of them are carrying the weight of countless consequences and mistakes and hardship on their shoulders. Pain is just a side affect that comes with carrying so much baggage, but it’s a little easier to manage when they have each other for support. I do think some of it would get easier over time, and my wish for them is that they can move somewhere just outside the city, maybe by a lake. Far enough away that things are quiet, but not so far that they would completely leave the hero gig behind. I agree with the consensus that neither of them could fully quit. Tim would just sink into the background, but Steph would be out there in the field for many years. Justas long as they have somewhere safe and comfortable to return to, I think they’ll both be just fine. Plus smooches are the best fallback medicine for all ailments and we all know that they never run out of those. 😘💋
THANK YOU FOR THIS ASK! More than half of this was not anything to do with chronic injuries but fuck it. We’ve tapped into the hurt/comfort section of my brain and there is a lot of material there to work with. Idk when you sent this in but I hope it wasn’t too long ago. I hope this answered more questions than you ever intended to ask. 💜❤
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azure7539arts · 4 years
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Beacon
Pairing: Q/James Bond (00Q)
Prompt(s): Blaze + Reverse a common trope
Warning: Angst, hurt/comfort, canon typical violence, possession, idiots
Summary: One day, perhaps people will forget that a Flame Alchemist has ever existed, but the same can never be said of his subordinates. And today is not that day anyway.
Or: 00Q but Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood AU
A/N: this was supposed to be a drabble… And here we are. Again. If you find this intro familiar, thanks for reading Sword! If you have no idea what Sword is and just know my penchant for biting off more than I can chew, please refer to my previous post. Thanks!
Also, look, @solarmorrigan​, pyrokinesis! And @opalescentgold​, because you know the fandom and may appreciate some references. Damn, I have been dying for a FMA AU for. so. long. And now I’ve managed to somehow realize it into fruition. Jeez. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this!
-
Q couldn’t stand. The rush of adrenaline and sheer agony were urging his heart into overdrive, as if in beating a punishing pace right then, it would somehow make up for the gaping hole wedged in his side.
He bit back a sharp cry, alchemy flaring as bright as the pulsing pain invading his system. In what was either an eternity or no time at all, the wound was cauterized in a fit of smoke and sizzling burnt flesh, effectively staunching the intolerable amount of blood loss in a matter of seconds. His head spun.
(For as long as he’d lived, Q had wished for a lot of things. Right then, though, there was only one thought that kept repeating itself in the confines of his mind—)
Footsteps were approaching. Q scrambled to get to his feet with whatever remaining strength he had left and snapped his fingers again. Vicious ropes of flames sprang forth like spiteful cobras, eliciting an intense wall of fire that stood guard between him and his would-be captor.
One steel arm shot out from among the blaze and seized him by the throat.
Q choked.
The rest of that body stepped through quickly enough, like an emerging monster materializing from the depths of hellfire.
“Ultimate shield, remember?”
Q clawed uselessly at the still squeezing hand around his throat. “L–Lieutenant—” he wheezed, bitter reluctance warring with his struggling will to survive. “Bond—”
“Hm?” The steel receded, and Bond looked back at him now, head tilting to the side. “What, the old owner of this body?” He tutted, visibly frustrated despite the good humor gleaming in those too sharp eyes. “I told you: He’s gone—he’s become one with the stone. I’m the one in charge now, and the name is Greed.”
He grinned, and Q’s guts twisted at the sight, eyes watering from the lack of oxygen. (He could still hear the sound of Bond’s screams piercing all the way down the long corridors. The way his body had writhed and bucked in violent pain as it died and regenerated again and again, rejecting the philosopher’s stone that had been wrongfully injected into it. The way he had suddenly gone lax while Q had done his best to burn through the literal living wall of obstacles out of existence to get to him.)
He gathered all his strength to curl up his legs and kick Bond in the stomach.
No, not Bond. (But that was still his face.)
Not anymore. (Still his eyes, his voice, the low gravel of his laughter, chest-deep and oh so warm.)
Just Greed.
(What if he was still in there?)
The momentum of that kick thrusted Q out of the vice-like grip as he landed onto the ground with a dull thud. A twang of stabbing pain in his side knocked the air out of his lungs, distracting him from the stings of having steel claws dug long strips into either side of his throat.
(The thing was that: if he really was still in there…)
“Damn it,” Bond—Greed—hissed, staggering back before steadying himself with an annoyed huff of breath.
Like this, Q recognized that whoever was in front of him then, despite appearing and sounding exactly like him, didn’t have the firm stance that Bond had always maintained, edged into his bones from all the arduous training he’d put himself through.
The red Ouroboros tattoo on the back of his left hand seared into Q’s vision like a brand, as though sealing a death sentence.
(... If he really was still in there, Bond wouldn’t have willingly punched a hole straight through Q.)
Once the thought sank in, Q’s stomach plummeted.
“Could you stop being such a nuisance?” Greed clicked his tongue.
When he tried to reach out again, molten fire engulfed the room at another snap of the fingers.
And in the roaring flames, Q screamed.
-
He wakes with a startled gasp, cold sweat breaking all over.
It takes a moment, but the familiar ceiling of his office finally shifts into focus once more, and Q lets out a shuddered sigh. The documents he was looking at lie strewn across the littered desk surface right where he left them, and at this very moment, the phone rings, shattering the disquiet that has settled over his foggy mind.
He doesn’t notice the long overcoat that’s, apparently, been laid over his person while he slept until he reaches over to make a grab for the handset. It slides down from over his shoulders and pools in the middle of his lap with a rustling of fabric.
Q purses his lips and picks up, free hand settling over his now healed side to ease the aching phantom pain.
“Yes.”
“Brigadier General, sir,” the operator greets. “Major General Moneypenny is on the line for you.”
“Put her through.”
The line clicks after a final ‘yes, sir,’ and instantly, Eve’s voice filters through from the other side. “Why am I not surprised that you’re still there despite the atrocious hours.” It isn’t a question, and he smiles.
“Hypocrite,” he replies without heat, thumb smoothing along the raised ridges of those scars that he can still feel even through the thick layers of his uniform. “How has Briggs been welcoming you back?”
“Oh, you know, the usual warmth and sunshine,” she says, a joking lilt to her tone, and Q winces just from imagining the howling gales of a normal Briggs snowstorm that must be sweeping through the barracks even as they speak. “Now, enough of your diversion scheme. How are things on your side?”
Q thinks he’s too tired to do much of anything else and chooses the easy way out. “I’m fine.”
“Right,” Eve hums, entirely unconvinced, but doesn’t point out that his answer isn’t all that she asked. She knows him too well by now to press. “Sometimes, though, I do wonder if you should’ve just retired and gone to Rush Valley to do whatever it is that you automail enthusiasts do.”
The sentiment sends a soft snort through his nose. Not that he doesn’t wish to be a simple automail mechanic from time to time, especially when the price paid doesn’t seem equivalent to subsequent results, but in life, simple wants and actual needs are two different things.
They’ve all learnt this the hard way.
Even so, Q appreciates Eve looking out for him. Thousands of miles away, she’s still one of the few people who truly know and understand him. One of the few whom he trusts with his life. “Oh, definitely—once I find someone suitable to man the post for me, that is,” he muses, only half-serious. “No promises otherwise.”
There’s a knock on the door. “Sir.”
“Come in,” he calls and straightens up, popping the crick in his neck. “Gotta go now. Send my regards to Captain Tanner, would you? God knows the length that man’s gone to to keep up with you.”
Eve laughs, and he smiles, too, just as Bond walks in and closes the door behind him.
(There’s no Ouroboros tattoo on his hand, Q notes and subconsciously relaxes.)
(He shouldn’t feel bad for it—but he does anyway. Just the same as Bond, who didn’t mean to lose control long enough for Greed to hurt Q the way he did.
Emotions are fickle things.)
Eve has gone quiet for a long second as well, probably considering her words. In a way, Q feels he already knows what they are going to be, and grim satisfaction paints his tongue when what she says next is precisely just that, “How’s First Lieutenant Bond?”
How are things between you two, goes unsaid, but he hears it loud and clear nonetheless.
Bond is patiently waiting for him—hands tucked behind his back, perfect military posture, too proper and formal to bear—and Q squeezes the coat that remains in his lap.
(He misses the casual dynamics, easy tandem they used to have. One not laden with guilt and second-guessing.
It’s just one more hurdle for them to work through, he supposes.
Together.)
“We’re… getting there,” he replies, mildly surprised by his own honesty. “Talk to you later. Goodbye, Major General.”
He hangs up, and Bond has gotten closer, despite maintaining a minimum distance of three steps.
Q crosses his arms in front of his chest and waits, eyes expectant.
Eventually, Bond can’t but break the silence. “Was that Major General Moneypenny, sir?”
Q suppresses a sigh and nods. “Yes. Just one of her usual check-ins.” He pauses. “She did ask about you, about us, and how we were doing. And I said we were getting there—you heard.”
When Bond doesn’t reply, Q narrows his eyes, shrewd. “So, are we, Lieutenant? Getting there?” Most likely, he’s coming off much harsher than he originally planned, but Q doesn’t give a damn about that. Not right now. “You said you were following me to the top. Is this how you intend on doing it? By pretending to be a good little model soldier while keeping me at arm’s length?”
At this, Bond seems to further straighten, if that’s still physically possible. There’s steel in his eyes, but not the lost, abandoned kind given into avarice like that of Greed.
It’s all just sheer solid nerve and hardened integrity. It’s all Bond and so much more.
“I will do whatever it takes to protect and help you reach your goal—”
“Don’t you get it? You can’t protect me for damn if you’re always three steps away from me! That only means we’re no longer the team you seem to think we are.” Q’s mouth twists into a snarl. “Do you understand what I’m getting at, Bond?”
Bond turns his head away, staring out into the endless expanse of the night through the large panel of Q’s windows. Bond has never liked them, these ‘uselessly big windows that Central Command seems to prefer for their offices.’ Makes his job harder than it already is, he said.
Q tears himself away from the sudden memory.
“My only mission is to protect you,” Bond grinds out, hands that have fallen to his sides clenching into fists.
“And you have not failed.” Q’s voice has somewhat softened as he stands and clears his throat. “What happened, back then. It just means that we need to update our measures of counterattacks.”
They stare at each other now, mutual challenge shining in their eyes like a beacon to safety in the middle of a raging storm.
(“Q. I’m sorry.” Bond said, desperation ripping his voice raw and vulnerable. Q had never heard him like this. “I–I’m so sorry. Please, forgive me.”
“James, there’s nothing to forgive.”)
“We can discuss that tomorrow, then.” Bond bends down to pick up Q’s coat from the floor and gives it a few perfunctory pats before handing it back over, a tentative smirk on his lips. “Are you ready to go home for the night, sir?”
Q scoffs and takes it, not hiding his own smile. “Just about.”
It’s a long road ahead, but they’re getting there all right.
-
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Bonus art:
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higuchimon · 3 years
Text
[fanfic] In The Arms of Love:  Chapter 2
Ai didn’t need to look behind himself to know that Yuusaku followed him. He caught the closest bit of data and spiraled upward on it as surfers did on waves. There wasn’t much difference between data and waves, not here in Link Vrains.
I wonder if I could learn how to surf. It probably wouldn’t be that difficult. But he would probably have to make sure his Soltis form was waterproof. He hadn’t had a need before but it might be interesting to try.
Not to mention that Yuusaku could definitely use some time off at a beach. He could use a lot of time off at a lot of different places, doing things that didn’t involve saving the world or saving the internet or saving anything except his homework for another day.
The hard part was getting him to do something like that. Ai appreciated the new lease on life that he’d been given, by whatever fashion he still wasn’t entirely sure of. He intended to put it to use helping Yuusaku as well as himself.
“Ai!” Yuusaku surfed up close enough so they could talk. That was one thing Ai missed about constantly living in Yuusaku’s duel disk. It had been much easier to talk about things then. Now they had to wait until they were close.
Of course, he quite enjoyed being close to Yuusaku and he thought Yuusaku enjoyed being close to him. Not that Yuusaku went out of his way to admit that.
“Why did you do that?” Yuusaku demanded. For a moment Ai considered playing dumb. Then he decided that it wasn’t worth the effort and Yuusaku wouldn’t believe it in the first place.
“Because I wanted to hug you and you wouldn’t have done it otherwise.” There, the straightforward truth. He wasn’t sure if Yuusaku would believe that either but it was the truth.
Yuusaku regarded him. Suspicion lurked behind those virtual eyes. Ai flashed one of his best grins and sped up his board.
“Catch me if you can!” Ai declared. “Catch me and you can punish me however you like!”
Oh, he did like the sound of that. And he liked the way Yuusaku’s cheeks turned a brilliant shade of red. It wasn’t easy to get reactions you didn’t actually want to show in Vrains, but it could happen. And being able to make Playmaker blush was a significant victory in Ai’s opinion.
“What if I want to ban you from Link Vrains for a month?” Yuusaku challenged as he sped up in case. Ai casually shrugged.
“You’d miss me too much to do that,” he pointed out. He glanced around, then pointed to one of the buildings that rose in the distance. “Whoever gets there first wins.”
He didn’t know how long it would take Yuusaku to process his challenge and he didn’t wait. He aimed right there and soared forward. Behind him he could hear a faint splutter, then the tiniest noise that sounded a great much like Yuusaku grinding his teeth together. He didn’t know if that were a thing in Vrains, but he liked to thin it was, at least this one time. So he took what satisfaction he could in it and kept on flying.
It didn’t matter which one of them won this little impromptu race. Yuusaku wouldn’t deal out any serious punishment beyond – at most – banning him from the internet for a few days. As if he actually could. Ai’s Soltis body existed in a constant state of being online. And he didn’t have to worry about internet bills either.
Ai cast a quick glance, just to see how close Yuusaku was to him. He still had a comfortable lead, and he didn’t want to get too far ahead. There was a difference between racing and leaving his partner behind – and they were still partners. They would always be partners.
Maybe they'd also be something else, but that would come in the future. Ai still had his worries about the future of the world and the simulations that he’d run before. But Yuusaku insisted that they would make certain that future never happened. How he wanted to do that Ai wasn’t sure. Perhaps it would help that they’d also been able to revive the other Ignis.
He didn’t want to destroy humanity. He wanted to protect Yuusaku with every ounce of his heart – processor – whatever. But if humanity – if what happened in the simulations happened in reality – he didn’t know what he’d do. Or rather, he had a very good idea of what he’d do and if he’d been human it would have kept him up at night.
Bit by bit he pushed all of that away to think about another time. He would not let Yuusaku come to harm because of him. That was the trigger point and if it could be avoided, then so be it.
There were a few of those simulations that he’d never followed to their end. Not out of fear but because he already felt they'd shown him what happened before. There were only so many times that he could see that happen.
Sometimes he considered tracing down those particular simulations and seeing where they’d go. Maybe they would be different now. All that he’d seen before had been when he was alone. Now that he wasn’t alone anymore…
Something caught at his attention – Yuusaku was suddenly a great deal closer than he had been before. His eyes flashed in mild rage – was he still upset about being quasi-tricked into a hug?
It couldn’t have been that bad. Ai would have let them out if Yuusaku really hadn’t wanted to hug. He would never do anything to really, truly hurt Yuusaku if he could get around it. Even his own original death had been because he couldn’t find another answer to he question.
“Are you upset?” Ai asked, tilting his head and making sure to keep ahead by just enough. “Was the hug not good enough for you?”
Yuusaku’s eyes flashed bright. “That’s not the point!”
“Then what is?” Ai deliberately invoked what he suspected worried Yuusaku. “Did you really think I’d just leave us there if you didn’t hug me?”
“Why did you do it at all? How did you do it?” Yuusaku demanded. Ai’s lips twitched into a grin right away.
“Just a little hacking. As for why – you could use a hug. You could use a lot of hugs.” Ai shrugged, tossing his cape in his best dramatic fashion. “And I’m going to make sure that you get them.”
Yuusaku didn’t exactly stumble, but Ai could tell that he was surprised. Hadn’t anyone ever hugged the poor boy?
“I don't want your help,” Yuusaku said at last, turning away. “What do you even think you’re doing this for?”
Was he going to have to explain his every thought process Maybe this was that ‘communication’ he’d heard humans liked to have. Well, if it got Yuusaku to listen to him, relax, and actually let Ai hug him – and maybe more one way – then so be it. Ai would tell him everything.
“Because you need it,” Ai told him. “Humans need hugs – they need contact. I might not be human, but I can do it. And I want to.” For a few moments only silence hung in the virtual air between them. Yuusaku started to shake his head and Ai interrupted at once. “Do you really think there’s anyone who understands you better than I do?”
He could see Yuusaku starting to answer – and then not. Ai couldn’t help but feel a little smug about that.
Then he glanced ahead once more and grinned all over again. He reached out as quick as he could and rested one hand on the building he’d designated as their target.
“Looks like I win. I suppose that means I get to punish you.” Oh, Yuusaku was blushing again! How adorable!
“I don’t need to be punished for anything,” Yuusaku said. Was that a hint of a pout? Ai chose to believe it was.
Ai nodded solemnly as their two boards came to a rest. “I suppose you don’t. But since I won, I deserve a reward.”
He swung his board closer to Yuusaku’s. “Is it really all that bad? Was it that bad? Am I bad at hugging?” He really wanted to answer on that one.
Slowly Yuusaku shook his head. He worried at his lip before he continued. “It wasn’t that bad. It was – nice.”
“As nice as this one?” Ai murmured, sliding one arm around Yuusaku’s waist and enfolding him in his cape. Yuusaku was so warm, a different kind of warmth than Ai’s own. Ai enjoyed playing with Yuusaku’s hair and so he sank his fingers deep in there, stroking ever so gently.
He would have to do this for Yuusaku in the human world. What could he do to Yuusaku like that? Oh, he looked forward to finding out.
Yuusaku made a deep sighing noise and leaned in closer. “I should be mad at you,” he murmured, fitting one arm around Ai’s own waist. “But you make it so hard.”
“I try,” Ai replied with a wicked grin. “There’s really nothing to be mad about.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Yuusaku grumbled, but he didn’t move away from Ai’s embrace. Ai leaned in closer.
“You do that, then.” He wasn’t going to protest, as long as they were so comfortable together. Perhaps Yuusaku would be upset later, or perhaps he’d come to understand that Ai did everything for him.
And maybe Ai could figure out a way to get them to the beach. Snuggling on the sand sounded very good to him.
To Be Continued
Notes: And there’s hug #2!! Four more to go!
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dear-wormwoods · 4 years
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may I ask for a style fanfic rec list? 🥺🥺🥺
I have a couple of requests for this and I’ve been thinking about how to respond, because to be honest, I very rarely read fic these days. And by ‘these days’ I mean like, since 2014. I always have things I intend to read, but then time goes by and I don’t get around to it. So nothing I’m going to rec is new and you’ve probably already read them fkjds.
Anyway, sorry to be predictable by just being like “read Hollycomb’s fics” but...
The Scenic Route - 116k words, should be rated E for the final two chapters (I literally have no idea why it’s rated T on AO3, it was definitely M when I first read it on ff.net years ago)
Summary: The boys embark on a six day road trip to California before separating for college. Cartman is a pain in the ass, Kenny has no future, Butters is in crisis, and Kyle doesn't know how he'll say goodbye to Stan.
Why you should read it: The yearning. This fic is written entirely in Kyle’s POV, and Holly does such a brilliant job of getting into his head and really capturing that feeling of already mourning a friendship/relationship before it’s even over and kind of intentionally setting the bridge on fire to make what is (seemingly) inevitable hurry along, as if that will make it hurt less (it doesn’t). The first six chapters, the actual road trip portion of the fic (where the T rating actually does apply), are where it is at its strongest, and Kyle’s gradual descent into panicky, angry desperation is painfully real. I can’t stress enough how in character everyone is, each retaining recognizable mannerisms and dynamics from canon while still clearly being grown people entering adulthood. There’s a reason this fic is THE Style fic. 
Leave the Pieces - 251k words, rated E (though that rating only represents a small portion of such a long fic)
Summary: Stan and Kyle meet as strangers in their mid-twenties, shocked to encounter someone else who can't remember the first ten years of his life. They form an instant connection, but only one person in South Park remembers them, and Kenny can't explain why they disappeared or why the rest of the town forgot them.
Why you should read it: It’s a lengthy epic with supernatural elements, a complicated plot that fits right into the show’s universe, and the kind of love that quite literally transcends time, space, and memory. I can’t explain it much further without giving away the plot, but this behemoth is gut wrenching and powerful. It is equal parts a story about Stan and Kyle finding each other as adults and falling in love despite not remembering who they are, or each other, and a deep exploration into Kenny’s character and his curse. Kenny is really the MVP of the story, despite it initially seeming like “just” a Style fic, and his relationship with Wendy is written beautifully and convincingly. One caveat, though: some parts of this fic... I’m not a fan of. I greatly dislike Cartman/Butters just as a concept, and there were times, particularly in the first half of the fic, where I almost quit reading because of their scenes. I also feel like this fic fell victim to fandom’s earlier tendency to mischaracterize Craig as borderline sociopathic (but in contrast, he’s absolutely perfect in Holly’s oneshot Other People’s Tupperware). However, I’m such a sucker for supernatural memory loss not being able to sever soul connections, and Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Wendy’s respective journeys more than make up for my reluctance to stomach Cartman/Butters or other comparatively minor issues. And honestly, everything does fall into place as the plot unfolds, so all I can say is... if you hit certain scenes and think ‘wtf IS this??’, just stick it out, the payoff is worth it, especially if you’re looking for high quality Kenny content.
Amalgamation - 78k words, rated T (but should be rated M imo, because there are sex scenes, though they aren’t very explicit, just intimate)
Summary: In 1862, Kyle's family is forced to move from New York to a tiny mining settlement at the foot of Pike's Peak in Colorado. Kyle is sixteen years old and miserable until he meets Stan, a fellow transplant who has been in town for three years. Their feelings for each other are shadowed by the town's haunted history, and for Kyle the local legends begin to feel more like real nightmares.
Why you should read it: I know ‘1860′s gold mining settlement AU’ doesn’t sound very fascinating, but it is. This is another one that’s written in Kyle’s POV and again Holly does a wonderful job of expressing his emotional turmoil, the guilt and shame he feels, his self-righteousness, and the depth of his love for Stan. Everyone is as they would be if the clock was turned back 150 years, made different by the time period and the demands of their circumstances but still obviously recognizable. The old-timey atmosphere and world-building are so seamless and never feels unrelatable. There are also supernatural/ghost/mystery themes in this one and the fear is palpable.
From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell - 170k words, rated E, includes major character death (aside from Kenny)
Summary: Ten years after the execution of Terrance and Phillip, the war with Canada has not ended. Stan and most of Kyle's friends are planning to join the army after high school graduation, bound to be drafted anyway. Kyle doesn't believe in the war, but he's not willing to let Stan go without him.
Why you should read it: This is.... a perfect fic, and I don’t say that lightly. It is quite possibly the ONLY perfect fic I have ever read, in any fandom. I can’t actually describe all the ways in which it’s perfect without giving the plot details away, but, God, if you commit to reading just one of the long-ass fics I’m reccing on this list, make it this one. Please. It honestly makes me mad that this one never got the same attention as like, The Scenic Route, or ‘Night School’ did, because it so deserves to be up there. Only Holly could take the concept of the fucking movie and turn it into a completely devastating, bittersweet, epic romance. There is no caveat here, no ‘I loved it except for this and this’, just thorough, soul-crushing perfection. Just... Kyle. God, Kyle. I can’t elaborate, my heart isn’t up to the task. This fic will haunt me for the rest of my life.
The Ascent of Stan - 32k words, rated E, though it is like 95% domestic fluff
Summary: Stan sells his small pest control company and Kyle thinks they should use some of the money to go to Hawaii, where he proceeds to grill Stan about the mid-life crisis that Stan claims he's not having while their kids frolic nearby.
Why you should read it: This one is everything a domestic fic should be. It basically just chronicles the events of a week-long vacation to Hawaii that nearly-40 Stan and Kyle take with their two kids. This one is written fully in Stan’s POV and it works so well... he’s exactly the kind of dad that I imagine he would be, doing his best to provide for and protect his family’s little bubble and resolving to be better than his father while quietly fighting the lingering shadow of his alcoholism and cynicism. There’s no real conflict in this one, just 30,000 words of a very typical family vacation: not exactly blissful, irritating at times, but ultimately the foundation for perfect memories. 
Never Change - 115k words, rated E
Summary: Thirteen years after his high school girlfriend's pregnancy upended his life, Stan is still in South Park, working with his partner Bebe as a local cop. They're in the process of investigating a series of possibly connected murders when FBI agent Kyle Broflovski returns to town and informs his old friend Stan that this is his investigation now.
Why you should read it: This is equal parts a murder mystery and a romance. It features exactly the kind of Stan/Kyle situation I hate to think about - a decade-long estrangement of their own making that comes to an abrupt end due to extenuating circumstances. It hurts because of how likely it is to happen that way, and it works especially well in this fic because of Stan’s reluctance to embrace his own bisexuality until he’s nearly 30 and Kyle’s tendency to put up walls to protect himself. Also, Bebe features prominently in this fic, which is always a huge bonus.  
Bonus Oneshot Rec:
The Reformation of Fart Boy - 7k words, unrated but probably T, just barely
Summary: Five times South Park has brought Kyle to the brink of sanity and Stan has brought him back.
Why you should read it: I love thinking about the ways in which canon-typical nonsense continues to impact the characters in the long term on a serious psychological level. Kyle has suffered a lot in canon and it’s obvious even in the show that it is gradually changing him and wearing him down, so I really love this fic for focusing on his responses to some of the more traumatic moments, as seen through Stan’s eyes. 
I feel sort of guilty only reccing one author for right now, because there are other fics out there that I liked and am planning on revisiting, but this post is long enough as it is. Chances are you’ve already read some or all of these, but they’re my favorites. I reread all of them while making this list, and they still hit me hard after all these years. 
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