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likeumeanit9497 · 2 days

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please baby | c. s. |

chris sturniolo x fem!reader

summary: chris and y/n have always had what felt like a perfect relationship. that is, until a few weeks ago. chris had been treating y/n poorly, and after one especially hurtful conversation, she is forced to make a difficult decision. when chris comes to the realization that he is about to lose it all, will he swallow his pride and do what he needs to win her back?

warnings: established relationship; smut; angst; fighting; (relatively) toxic chris; crying; unprotected sex; fluff; 18+

notes: based on this request by 🎀. i've never rlly written an angsty fic before, so let me know what u all think! also wrote this super quick so i don't think it's my best work, but still i hope u enjoy <333

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Through tears, I stared blankly at my phone. My eyes had been glued to my lit up screen for the past two minutes — unmoving, and unable to register what I was reading. Even with blurry vision, Chris’ last message to me was seared into my memory.

Chris: Ffs Y/n, just shut up. I said I’ll get there when i get there jesus.

Just as my brimmed tears finally spilled over, so did the water I was boiling on the stove. The immediate steam and sizzling noises pulled me from my phone, and frustrated for more than one reason, I raced over to the stove and shoved the pot off of the element; leaving the boiling pasta noodles to sit in the water. Just looking at my failed attempt at dinner brought on a new level of pain, as it was a reminder of what I hoped that the night could be.

Chris, my boyfriend of almost one year, was supposed to be coming over tonight. I had been super excited, because both of our schedules had been especially busy lately and we hadn’t been able to spend much time together over the past three weeks, plus I had some good news to share with him about my work. I had wanted to make the night special, so I had decided to cook one of Chris’ favourite meals — chicken alfredo — to surprise him with once he arrived.

He was currently stuck at the warehouse for a merch meeting with Nick, Matt, and his manager, and he had told me that he would come over and spend the night once he was done there. That was a few hours ago, and I had been patiently waiting for an update from him until about thirty minutes ago, when I sent him a simple message asking if he had any idea when he would be done at the warehouse. Little did I know, that singular message would cause a massive storm to erupt.

Y/n: hey babe! just wondering if you have an idea on when you can come over?

Chris: Not rlly sure

Y/n: okay…rough estimate maybe?

Y/n: just have some things i need to get done before u get here hehe

Chris: I’ll get there when I get there.

Y/n: uh..is something wrong?

Chris: No why

Y/n: ur being kinda mean???

Chris: No I’m not

Y/n: ok

Chris: My god Y/n I don’t have time for this rn

Y/n: i just said ok

Y/n: you go ahead and go back to your meeting

Y/n: i was just asking for an update, that’s all.

Y/n: didn’t realize that was such a horrible thing.

Chris: Ffs Y/n, just shut up. I said I’ll get there when i get there jesus.

Even though I hate to admit it, this wasn’t the first time that Chris had been an absolute asshole to me lately. Just last week, he had started a fight that ended with him hanging up the phone on me; only to call back a little while later to apologize. And then a few days before that, he had put zero effort into making time for me when I had tried to make plans for us to go to the movies. And during all of this, he has been incredibly dry over messages. It had been bothering me for a while now, because to me it was clear that he was losing interest. I knew that our relationship would be far from perfect going in to it, considering Chris had never been in a real relationship before me, but deep down I hoped that it would always be as perfect as it was at the beginning. Unfortunately for my hopes and dreams, his actions — or lack thereof — were shattering.

I wasn’t some oblivious girlfriend either; it was clear to me that Chris was going through something. I knew that for a fact, but every time I tried to get him to open up to me about it all, he shut me down with lame excuses: “Oh, I’m just tired,” or, “I’ve just been stressed lately”. I figured that he just needed time, and that eventually he would come to me and explain exactly what had been going on so that I could help him through it.

But now, after his hurtful words to me tonight, I was seriously considering my other options. I had been in far too many toxic relationships in the past, and had learned that I deserve more than what I had been accepting. I wouldn’t let myself be Chris’ punching bag anymore, and I knew right then and there that I had an incredibly painful task to do.

Allowing myself to be overtaken by my build up of tears, I slowly walked into my bedroom; turning off the lights and covering myself with my comforter. My shoulders heaved as I let the tears stream down my face; my brain accepting what I needed to do but my body rejecting it in every way possible. Through the tears, I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Chris — telling him that I was tired and that he might as well not come at all tonight, but we should talk tomorrow — before curling into a ball and wallowing in my own sorrows.

I stayed in the exact same position for what felt like ages; allowing myself to get all of the emotions out now so that when I had to do what I had to do tomorrow I could do so without breaking down so hard. Eventually, my tears slowed and I felt my burning eyes begin to grow heavy. Sleep was beginning to overtake me, and as I gave into my exhaustion my mind filled with scenes of the nightmare that I was going to have to face tomorrow.

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I was startled out of my sleep by the sound of keys jangling from the direction of my front door. Disoriented, it took me a moment to be overtaken by the feeling of dread that came from hearing that noise. The only person who had a key to my apartment was Chris. Before, hearing his keys at my door filled my stomach with undeniable excitement — now, my stomach did anxious flips knowing what had to be done.

As I heard the door open and close, I rolled over so that I was facing away from my bedroom door and glued my eyes shut; pretending to still be asleep. I heard his soft footsteps on the other side of the door as he wandered through my dark apartment, before a hushed “shit!” broke the silence. After a few moments, I listened as his footsteps grew closer and closer to my bedroom door, and as I heard it slowly creak open, I braced for impact.

The room stayed silent, though I couldn’t really say that for sure since I couldn’t hear anything above the sound of my own racing heart in my ears. I did my best to stay completely still, though it felt like every part of my body was vibrating; waiting for his next move. Suddenly, I felt a shift in my mattress as his body leaned against it, and physically jumped at the feeling of his hand on my shoulder; shaking it gently.

“Y/n, wake up.” He spoke in a faux whisper, and, even though I had been pretending, I felt my body grow hot in anger that he would have the audacity to wake me from my sleep after showing up to my apartment uninvited. However, my body still not understanding that it wouldn’t belong to him much longer, I shot up from my place on the bed and searched for his eyes. The room was pitch black, but I could sense exactly where he was in front of me.

Rubbing my eyes, I searched the bed for my phone, checking the time to find that it was already nearly 2 a.m. I felt the mattress shift once again and watched his faint outline as he sat on his side of my bed. “Y/n, you left the stove on.” He was still whispering, and his sentence ended in a slight chuckle; clearly oblivious to the decision that I had made on my own just hours before.

Too heartbroken to really care about the stove, I shrugged my shoulders. “Whoops.” Was all I said to the silent room. “What happened? You fall asleep in the middle of making dinner or something?” His voice was still light-hearted, and was far from a tone that matched his previous texts to me. It made it so difficult for me to remember what I had to do.

“Turn the lamp on please.” I said simply, using every ounce of strength in my body to keep my tone monotonous. Chris stayed still for a moment, clearly thrown off by my behaviour. “Uh, okay.” He finally said as he leaned toward the bedside table closest to him and switched on the warm-toned light. After allowing my eyes time to adjust to the sudden brightness, they immediately fell on him.

Oh, my Chris.

His beautiful blue eyes were so kind and bright, his long hair was wet and messily draped across his forehead, and his matching oversized sweat set made me want nothing more than to curl into him and breathe him in. He stared at me blankly for a moment, clearly beginning to register that I was upset, before finally speaking. “I’m really sorry about earlier, baby. I had been in the meeting for hours and was getting really stressed out.” I felt the lump in my throat begin to grow. Some variation of that exact sentence had been the same excuse he had given me each and every time he had hurt me over the past few weeks, and it had lost its sincerity long ago. So, instead of giving into his cheap apology, I sat up in my bed and faced him; taking a deep breath before speaking.

“I have to tell you something. And I need you to let me say this without interrupting, or else I’m scared I won’t be able to go through with it. I’ve had to say this for a while now, and now that we are where we are I know it has to be done. So please, let me say it, okay?” His light eyes were focused intensely on me, he was clearly trying to figure out where this conversation was going. But finally, he swallowed before tentatively nodding his head. “O-okay.”

I closed my eyes, feeling my lower lip quiver as I tried to find my footing on this conversation. After taking a shaky breath, I finally found my voice. “I can’t do this anymore, Chris.” Immediately, my attempt at getting all my tears out of the way earlier proved to be a failure; because as soon as the heavy words left my mouth I broke down into sobs.

Over my crying, I heard Chris’ disbelieving voice. “What do you mean you’re done with this? With what? Me?” His voice cracked slightly as he spoke, clearly being hit with the same emotions that I was. I stayed silent — my eyes screwed shut as I wrapped my arms around my torso; doing my best to comfort myself. “Y/n, please tell me what you’re talking about.” He pleaded, and I felt him scoot closer to me on the bed; placing a hesitant hand on my knee.

After catching my breath, I wiped my tears away and opened my eyes to find his frantically searching my face like an uncertain creature. “I know you’re going through something right now,” My voice was coming out nearly silent, but I continued, “And I tried so hard to be there for you, I really did Chris. But you won’t talk to me! Instead, you’ve been taking out all of your frustrations on me and treating me like absolute shit. Do you really think that’s okay?” I fought the lump in my throat as I got my words out, his shattered face no help in that department. Frantically, Chris shook his head. “No. No, it’s not okay, baby, and I’m really sorry. But please, please don’t do this.” His tone tugged at my heart strings as his desperation grew more and more transparent.

Shaking my head and closing my eyes, I shut him down. “Can you tell me why you’ve been acting the way you have?” I knew my question was pointless before I even asked it, but his silence confirmed it. Releasing an ironic chuckle, I continued. “I promised myself that I would never let another man treat me badly. I’ve put up with it far too many times, and no matter how much I love you, Chris, I can’t allow you to speak to me the way you have been lately.”

I opened my eyes and felt my heart sink at his ghostly expression, clearly on the verge of losing his shit. I brought a hand up to his cheek and stroked it for a moment, and as I did he closed his eyes and let a few tears fall. “I want you to get better, I really do. But I clearly can’t help you, so you need to do it on your own.” My own words felt like a stab in the chest, and I couldn’t help the tears as they streamed down my face. “Come to me when you’ve worked through your shit, and we can see if we can repair things. But for now, I need you to leave.”

At that, Chris’ eyes shot open in a panic and he immediately grabbed onto my leg. “No, Y/n, please. Don’t do this.” I turned my head away from him as his desperation became too much to bear. His hands traveled across my body in anguish, clearly losing all control of his emotions as the reality of our situation began to set in for him. His body slid off of the bed as he dissolved into tears against my comforter. Still having the instinct to comfort him, I scooted towards the edge of the bed, where I let my legs stretch out beside him as I ran my hands through his beautiful curls.

“Please, please baby, I swear to god I can’t do this shit without you.” He wretchedly pleaded with me, clutching my leg and trailing distressed kisses along it. I looked up at the sky, too pained by the scene that was playing out in front of me. “Chris, please, I need you to go.” I begged him, needing to put him out of his misery so that I could hurt in private. He maintained his grasp on my leg, sobbing inconsolably against it. I gave him a moment, in which he slowly began to regain control of his emotions. I watched as his sobbing grew quieter and his breathing slowed, before finally watching as he pulled himself up to his feet; the weight of our conversation evident in the way he held himself weakly.

He glanced down at me quickly, his blue eyes red and puffy, before turning away in what looked like shame. In utter silence, he turned and began walking slowly in the direction of my bedroom door. With his hand on the door knob, he paused for a moment. “I’m sorry.” His words were so quiet I could have easily missed them, but the sincerity cut through my heart like a knife. That sincerity hadn’t been present in any of the other apologies he gave me, and I was gutted that it appeared too late.

And then just like that, he was gone. I felt all the air leave my chest at the realization of what I had just done, and let my body fall back against my bed as tears once again poured down my cheeks. I couldn’t help but immediately question whether or not I had done the right thing. Was I a horrible person for abandoning the man I loved when he was so clearly dealing with something? Did I allow my fears of repeating my past distort my current reality? Were the things he said to me really that bad?

I was pulled out of my tormenting thoughts by a soft voice coming from my doorway.

“My meeting today wasn’t about merch.”

That was all that he said. That was all it took for my heart to begin to beat for him again. One small hint of vulnerability. Feeling humiliated internally, I sat up on my elbows and found him hovering in the doorway. “Talk to me about it Chris.” I sounded exacerbated even to my own ears, feeling frustrated from all of the overwhelming emotions that the evening held. Tentatively, he walked over to the bed and sat beside me on the edge, arms resting on his knees. After clearing his throat, he began to explain. “The meeting today wasn’t about merch, it wasn’t really about anything to be honest.” Confused, I waited in silence for him to continue.

“A few weeks ago, Laura brought up the idea of going on another tour. A European tour.” He paused for a moment. “Nick and Matt immediately agreed and wanted to start planning everything so that we could do it this summer, but I said I didn’t want to do it.” I watched the back of his head, slightly shocked by his words since I knew that he had enjoyed the previous tours so much. “We would be overseas for a month, and I didn’t want to be so far away from you for that long. So I told them I didn’t wanna do it.” He took a deep breath. “Now, Matt and Nick are super pissed at me. They’ve both been giving me the silent treatment for weeks outside of the few times when they’ve just tore me a new one. And sure, we’ve all fought before, but never this bad. It’s been going on for so long, and I feel like I’ve lost sight of everything without having them be there for me.” His voice grew thick with emotion, and I fought the urge to cry along with him.

“Things have gotten so bad between us, that Laura forced us all to come in tonight to basically have a supervised argument. We sat there for hours, Y/n, just screaming at each other. And we got nowhere. I stood firm in what I wanted and so did they, so that’s why it went on for so long. And that’s also why I have been treating you like a complete dick lately. Because even though you had no clue what was going on, I think a part of me was kinda blaming you for all this shit. And I know that wasn’t fair, I really do. I just didn’t know how to tell you all of this because I’ve never been in a situation like this before.”

He turned to look at me, grabbing at my hand that was lying dormant in the space between us. “And I’m so, so sorry that I treated you the way I did. You didn’t deserve it. At all. But please baby, please don’t leave me. Because if you do, I will be completely lost. You are my anchor, and I need you to be there for me.” Tears rolled down my face as his voice cracked in desperation. “And I swear, baby, I won’t treat you like shit ever again. If you can’t believe me, and if you’re really truly done, I’ll understand. But please, Y/n, if there’s any part of you that believes me, please don’t leave.” He dropped his head into my lap, wrapping his arm around my waist and gripping onto my oversized t-shirt. Out of instinct, I brought my hand to his face and began stroking it softly; wiping away his tears as I did.

We stayed that way for a long time, both of us sniffling, heaving messes. I couldn’t lie, his honesty truly impacted me. I knew that he had to have gone against every single one of his instincts to finally tell me what had been going on in his life, and the fact that he did meant so much to me. I knew that Chris was extremely reliant on his brothers being a constant in his life, and couldn’t even imagine how lost he must feel knowing that they’re against him. His problem was much more severe than I thought it would have been prior to him opening up, and I felt an overwhelming amount of empathy for him. I knew that his poor treatment of me — as wrong as it was — had been completely out of character, and as I sat there stroking his soft cheek, I decided that I would believe him.

“Come up here.” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Immediately, Chris lifted his head off of my thighs and sat up, his face inches from mine. Without a moment of hesitation, I leaned forward and engulfed his lips with my own. He immediately reciprocated, and both of our tongues worked in unison to lap up the salty taste of each other’s tears. Chris leaned forward, encouraging me to fall back against my pillows as he continued his passionate assault on my lips. His mouth travelled down my neck, where I shuddered as I felt him place sucks and nibbles sure to leave a trail of purple bruises. His body was warm on top of mine, and I had never before felt so present with him; so aware of his every movement.

He moved down my body, stopping briefly at my chest to remove my shirt, before continuing down below my waist. With his tongue, he created a path from just below my belly button to my right hip bone, where he left another purple bruise; causing my skin to break out in goose bumps. Lifting my hips, he wasted no time in pulling my boy shorts off of my body and leaving me completely bare. He continued to leave gentle kisses along each square inch of my body surrounding my core, but making sure to leave the place where I needed his mouth the most completely untouched.

I began to grow impatient, my body temperature increasing as my body filled with arousal. As he placed a kiss on my inner thigh, I bucked my hips up in frustration; practically begging for contact. Noticing my agitation, Chris almost immediately obliged, and I gasped out in pleasure as his tongue began working its magic against my clit. With each hand holding up my thighs, Chris swirled his tongue relentlessly against my bundle of nerves. I struggled to keep my body still as his movements continued, and failed miserably once he inserted two of his fingers into my core. “Fuck Chris, t-that’s so good.” I moaned out as his tongue and fingers worked my cunt in harmony. The wet sounds of my arousal grew louder and louder as I began to approach my orgasm, and in reflex my hands tangled in his hair; doing everything I could to keep him exactly where I needed him.

“Gonna cum, baby.” I cried out, and his encouraging hum against my clit was enough to get me there. My back arched off of the bed as my body began to convulse. To keep me in place, Chris took his free hand and placed it firmly on my lower stomach; causing me to scream out in pleasure. His mouth and fingers continued to push me through my orgasm, and didn’t stop even after my nerves became over sensitive. “C-Chris please. Can’t take anymore.” I struggled to get out the words, but he listened. Detaching his mouth from my core, he dragged his body back up my own and came face to face with me.

With the glean of my arousal still on his lips, he kissed me so deep I felt my lungs inflate. I could taste myself on his tongue, and my eyes nearly rolled to the back of my head from the intensity of the moment. I broke the kiss for only a moment to pull his hoodie over his head; relishing in the feeling of his bare chest against my own. Through his sweatpants, I could feel his bulging member press against my pelvis, and I reached in between our bodies and pulled his waistband down along with his boxers. Now completely free, his cock dribbled pre-cum down my stomach. With my hand still between us, I collected what was left of his fluid along his slit before slowly stroking my hand up and down his swollen shaft.

His breath hitched as I continued my movements, and he thoughtlessly bucked his hips into my hand to increase the friction along his trembling member. My hand twisted around his dick for a few more pumps, before I slowly guided it down toward my entrance. Once Chris felt the heat of my core at the tip of his cock, he looked down at me with darkened eyes — still slightly puffy from his previous tears — and dropped his jaw as he began to slide into me.

I gasped at the feeling of my walls stretching around his sizeable girth, and released a breathy moan as he bottomed out. Laying on top of me, he grabbed both sides of my face in between his hands and held it firmly as he began thrusting into me. His eyes never left mine as his hips rolled into me, and I watched in ecstasy at the pleasure visible on his face — as I’m sure he was doing to me. Our bodies smacked together in a steady rhythm and the wet sounds filled the room, adding an additional sensation to my arousal.

“I-I’m so sorry, baby.” Grunted Chris through deep thrusts. “It’s — oh fuck — it’s okay Chris.” I replied as I wrapped my legs around his waist. “Just please — please tell me you’re mine.” His voice sounded desperate and choppy, most likely caused by a combination of arousal and real distress. His choice of words and the tone at which he said them caused my stomach to do a flip, and I felt my second orgasm approach. Fighting the urge to give into the overwhelming feeling, I reached up and swiped his glistening lip with my thumb. “I’m yours baby, always.” I managed to respond through my cries of pleasure. Chris smiled down at me lazily before burying his face in my neck; leaving sloppy, breathy kisses along its thin skin.

My walls began to pulse and my skin started to feel like it was being lit on fire; both clear signs that I was extremely overstimulated as I was approaching my orgasm. “Shit, gonna cum again.” I blurted out just as I was hit with a tsunami of an orgasm. My legs tightened around his waist and my nails dug into his arms as I fought to keep my head above water, but my mind grew fuzzy as I spewed guttural profanities into the room as I came in waves.

It didn’t take long for Chris’ orgasm to follow, and that was made clear by his throaty grunts and sloppy pace before he stopped entirely; shouting breathless 'I love yous' into my neck as his cock shot its warm fluid deep inside of me. He eventually pulled out, before curling two fingers into me and shoving all of our conjoined juices up to my cervix. His eyes stayed glued to my cunt as he did so, seemingly in awe of the view.

“You’re all mine, and I’m all yours.” He said it so quiet that he might have just been saying it to himself, before he leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on the crest of my heat; earning a full-body flinch from me.

He came back up to the top of the bed where he laid down beside me, pulling me towards his chest and running a hand up and down my naked back. I felt so secure in his arms — his familiar smell filling my nostrils and calming my mind — that I nearly forgot everything that had happened prior to the past 15 minutes or so. That is, until he spoke.

“So, are we okay?” His voice was tentative, and he was very clearly afraid to hear my answer. I uncurled myself from his body so that I could look up at his lovely face, his desperate eyes scanning my poker face for any sort of hint.

“You will never, ever, speak to me like that again, no matter what.” I kept my voice firm, even when his face immediately relaxed into a grin. “I swear, I won’t baby.” He responded, trying to tuck me back into his chest, but I pushed back slightly. “And, I need you to talk to me about shit you’re going through, Chris. I’m your girlfriend. That’s my job. You need to promise me, you will come to me about anything, and I will do everything I can to help you through it.” He continued to gaze at me, though his wavering eyes and his chewing on his lower lip made it clear that the idea made him anxious. “Promise me, Chris.” I repeated, making it clear how serious I was.

Finally, Chris nodded his head. “I promise, baby. I’ll tell you everything.” I smiled, then, finally feeling secure in our relationship for the first time in weeks. “Then yes, we’re okay.” I responded before planting a soft kiss to his pink lips. “And you and your brothers are going to be okay, too.” His worried expression deepened at the reminder of his conflict with Nick and Matt. “We’ll talk about it more tomorrow once we get some rest, but we can make the tour work. You know, I’ve always wanted to visit Europe.” I watched as his lips began to turn up into a soft smile. “Plus,” I leaned forward to whisper in his ear, “I wouldn’t mind being your groupie.”

He dissolved into giggles at that. “But what about your job?” He asked tentatively. I shrugged. “I actually got promoted today. I was gonna tell you earlier, but y’know.” His face fell momentarily. “I got a raise, but more importantly I got more benefits. Including thirty vacation days.” His face lit up once again, and it was almost like I could see the weight lift off of his shoulders before he attacked my face with kisses. “So let’s have another meeting with Laura and your brothers tomorrow and work this all out. I can come, and we can fix this easily together.” Tears welled in his eyes, and he nodded his head before kissing me hard. “I love you, Y/n.”

I curled myself back into his chest and sighed, taking in the feeling of him mindlessly drawing random shapes on my back. This was the Chris that I knew and loved, and I knew that this is who he really was. He wasn’t perfect, but I never expected him to be. Problems come with every relationship, and of course there was never any guarantee, but I had a feeling that this night would vastly change our relationship for the better.

ᵕᵕᵕᵕ୨♡︎୧ᵕᵕᵕᵕ

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mswyrr · 1 day

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kanthony thoughts: wrestling with love and death

The bee is such a perfect symbol for the love story of S2 - it symbolizes the duality of life. It is a symbol of fertility: bees are associated with spring, the act of pollination, and sex (e.g. "the birds and the bees"). But here it is also a symbol of death and trauma. It is what killed Papa Bridgerton, took Violet's true love, stole a father from the kids, and what (in this patriarchy) forced an 18 year old boy to become the "father" of the family, trapping him emotionally in time at that period of loss which Anthony never processed.

Through this duality, the bee embodies the themes and core struggle Kate and Anthony are confronted with. It is both Eros, sexual love and reproduction, and Thanatos, a representation of death. Both are interwoven throughout our lives. And we all end up in death's country eventually, some sooner than others. People like Kate and Anthony, who've met the heartbreak of the world very young, often see death and loss everywhere - because it is everywhere, but so too is life.

There is another fertility symbol that is also a death symbol: the pregnant Violet in flashbacks. The great love she and Edmund shared has brought beautiful children into the world - but the act of creating life can kill a mother. Violet herself has suicidal thoughts about wishing the act of giving life had killed her. It is an inescapable part, even with the best modern medicine, of procreation for someone who gives birth. Bringing life is also risking death.

This is the truth that Anthony and Kate both know and fear and have shaped themselves around. They fear living because they've both suffered losses young and known, from a young age, that death is always there. Uncertainty and loss are woven throughout all joy and love. Their solution to this problem has been simple: they will choose to not participate in living.

They both make statements to this effect. Anthony to Violet, saying he will be not happy but "content" without love.

And Kate shares her similar plans for a miserable "contentment" without love:

Anthony will make himself the image not even of his vibrant and loving father, but of something worse: an old man before his time. No joy, no pleasure, no love. Just duty and a rigid focus exclusively on the mind over the heart. Violet tells him - your father allowed himself to love. The truth is Anthony cannot be like him like this.

Kate has a similar scene - she has made herself exiled from life by choosing to be a spinster. As she explains, she wants to be like Lady Danbury, but in the same way Anthony cannot be like Edmund without letting himself live, Lady Danbury tells her: you will *never* be like me if you go on like this. I had a life! I lived and now I enjoy my social games very much because I am satisfied that I have lived.

These two young people, they're not even thirty yet, and both of them have buried themselves alive. They've done it in a futile effort to escape the pain, the loss, that comes along with the joy of living. We open ourselves to it when we open our hearts. And keeping our hearts shut is not an escape from death, it's giving our lives up to it before we've even had our measure of joy.

In case we missed the point, Kate and Anthony's little sisters come in to drive it home: you think we respect you for the things you do, emptying your life of anything but duty, Daphne tells Anthony, knowing that he longs to be the respected and great figure their father was. We don't. We pity you. OUCH. Harsh but so so necessary - when someone has created a toxic and false narrative in their mind and they're giving all their energy to it, sacrificing everything to this... broken coping mechanism, sometimes a jolt is required. Daphne is letting him know that the thing he consoles himself with, the idea he is respected by his family for his dutiful sacrifice, is a lie.

He cannot be the man he wants to be if he won't let himself live, like Edmund did. Edmund spent every moment of the short time he got on earth living and loving deeply. And when he died, it broke so many hearts. But, as Violet tells Anthony later: I'd do it all over again, I'd suffer the pain again, just to have the time we got together. The love Edmund and I shared was worth all the pain.

And Edwina, for her part, is brave enough to see the truth. She finally realizes that Kate has inadvertently been living vicariously through her - trying to give her little sister her own dreams, not realizing the problem with that. Edwina is a grown woman and she still doesn't actually know what she truly wants her life to be. Again, this is such an OUCH moment. Kate never would have intentionally done such a thing to her beloved little sister. But she needs to hear that she has!

The kind of repression Kate and Anthony engaged in - it comes from a place that makes sense, they even mean it lovingly, but it doesn't work. As Daphne said earlier: these kind of feelings will find a way out. Kate accidentally imposed her own dreams on her sister and thwarted Edwina's growth and choices.

Both younger sibs are courageous enough to demand more, for themselves, and for the elder siblings they love - even though they can be overbearing. Even though, in this moment, both of them need their younger sibs to give them some "tough love" to shock them out of the nonsense they've fallen into and dragged their families along with them.

The parallels are so gorgeous. And the power of these two fearful people, who have buried themselves alive, choosing risk and joy and love finally? Embracing life and all its pain for the joy it brings? Soaringly romantic and such a beautiful affirmation of life.

I adore this romance!

#kanthony #bridgerton #bridgerton meta #kate sharma #anthony bridgerton #kate bridgerton #my meta

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logansargeantsbabymom · 24 hours

Text

Too Good To Say Goodbye pt 5

Logan Sargeant x Fem!Reader, Lando Norris x Fem!Reader

warnings: cursing, mentions of miscarriage/stillborn

part 1 I part 2 I part 3 I part 4 I part 5

I couldn't put this off anymore. I had to talk to Logan about the night in the delivery room and I had to tell Lando about my reoccurring dreams. I know I technically haven't done anything wrong and I haven't cheated but something about my dreams have been feeling a little too real. My feelings for Logan might be too real.

No, stop that Y/N, Logan treated you like shit, there's no way you possibly like him. No. You're not that naive , you know better than to have feelings for a man that treated you like shit. But he also gave you a kid. A kid you so desperately wanted, one you needed to have, to love, to hold, to care for, to cherish after my first born passed.

I'd gotten off the phone with Logan shortly before Lando re-entered our room.

"She's finally back down, her pacifier fell out of her mouth." all Lando said before he got back into bed, trying to cuddle me. I felt so awful with myself and felt like I didn't deserve his comforting touch so I scooted away and attempted to get out of bed.

"Hey what's wrong? Where are you going?" a hint of sadness in his voice but that was quickly covered up with a simple clearing of his throat.

"Shower. Me and Lily are gonna hang out. Maybe you and Oscar could have Yelena for the day? I know Oscar has been begging to take her out and be the favorite uncle but I don't trust him alone with my daughter." a chuckle leaves my lips as I try not to sound nervous.

Why is the thought of having a civil conversation about the well being of my daughter with her father making me feel so icky and nervous? Part of me longs to have a healthy relationship with Logan, I mean he was my everything. Logan made me believe in love, he gave me 2 wonderful pregnancies even if I'll be able to never meet my other baby.

I quickly gathered things that I would need for my shower, a McLaren t-shirt, a pair of jeans, a bra, underwear, my Bose speaker, and a pair of slides before I made my way into the bathroom. I turned the shower on hot before I set everything down and got all my hair products that I'd need.

I took my H/C hair out of the bun I'd just had up prior, letting it fall past my shoulders in a curly nappy mess. I loved my hair don't get me wrong, but all the products I needed for it and how fast it would get nappy would sometimes be too much for me.

Stepping into the hot shower, I let it flow over me and letting my hair get soaked before I started lathering on some shampoo. While I was working the shampoo on my scalp, I couldn't help but imagine a life where Logan and I were endgame, a life where we didn't have split custody of our daughter, a life where when me and Yelena went to the paddock we were going into the Williams garage to cheer for Daddy instead of going into McLaren to cheer for mommy's new boyfriend, a life where little Theo James Sargeant was still alive.

Thinking about little Theo always made me emotional, I couldn't ever imagine a moment in the future where I could talk about him and not want to sob and quite frankly, I don't want their to ever be a time where it doesn't. I'll feel like I forgot about him and that's the last thing I want.

Maybe if Theo was alive none of this would've happened, me and Logan would still be happy, we could have 2 kids instead of 1. If Theo were here all my problems would be solved, I would be happy, Logan would be happy, but I wouldn't be with Lando. Life had its ups and downs, I wouldn't trade my relationship with Lando for the world.

It felt like I was lathering my scalp while being deep in thought for hours but in reality, when I snapped out of my trance I heard the ending of Taylor Swift's All Too Well (10 minute version). I quickly rinsed the shampoo out before quickly conditioning and brushing my hair out. I put my hair up in a little bun to allow my hair to soak up as much conditioner as possible while I scrubbed the rest of my body clean, I decided that today would be one of my ‘everything’ shower days so I also grabbed Lando’s razor that he has in the shower and shaved my legs and armpits.

Once I was done shaving, I took my hair out of the bun and rinsed the conditioner out while simultaneously raking my hands through my hair to get rid of the knots that formed. Once that was done I turned off the shower, wrapped my velcro towel around my body and wrapped my hair in a towel wrap. I’d looked at the time on my phone while trying to change the song, only to realize that I’m supposed to meet Logan at a little coffee shop that was 10 minutes away, in 20 minutes and I wasn’t ready yet.

I’d quickly a no makeup makeup look before quickly drying off my body and throwing my clothes on. I took my hair out the wrap and quickly, but efficiently worked some product in my hair to make sure I still had the curl and bounce when it dried.

I was so busy rushing out of the bathroom that I almost ran right into Lando who was holding Yelena.

“Oh there’s mommy!” Lando says while he points in my direction while simultaneously poking Yelena’s tummy “We were just coming to say bye to you. Oscar is waiting in my car” a smile appears on my face. Lando’s been so good to me and how do I repay him? I’m going behind his back to talk to my ex and baby dad about reoccurring dreams I’ve had about us being a happy family after our little “moment” in the delivery room.

I place a quick sweet kiss against Lando’s lips before I place a big fat one on Yelena’s head “Sorry I took long in the bathroom. Took an ‘everything’ shower, you know how it is.” a small chuckle leaves his lips before we hear a honk from outside “You guys should get going before Uncle Oscar gets mad” I say while I also place delicate pokes on Yelena’s tummy. A quick nod, faint goodbye and a goodbye kiss from Lando was what I got before he left.

I checked my phone again, I had 5 minutes to get to a coffee shop that was 10 minutes away. I quickly shot Logan a text saying that I was gonna be about 5 minutes behind schedule because I got caught in ‘traffic’. I figured it was believable when Logan shot me a ‘All good, I’ll be here when you arrive’ text.

——

When I’d arrived at the little coffee shop I spotted Logan in a quiet corner. He quickly spotted me because he’d basically leaped out of his seat to welcome me.

“Hey, I figured since you were gonna be late, I’d just order your drink for you. I got you a y/f/d, I hope that’s still your favorite.” the nervous smile that sprawled across his face made my heart clench. He was so cute, oh how badly I wanted to grab his face and pull him close to me. I shook my head to rid the thoughts in my brain.

“Yep, once my favorite always my favorite.” I graciously took the drink from his hands before we both sat down. We sat in silence for what felt like forever before Logan started the conversation.

“So, I called you here because, oh man, how do I say this? I asked you to be here because,” he let out a shaky breath before continuing “because ever since that night in the delivery room, I haven’t stopped dreaming of you. About us, all of us being one big happy family. Me, You and Yelena just living the life and I can’t help the yearn for that. I know you want nothing to do with me but” he placed his hand on top mine that rested on my drink “I know I fucked up big time all those months ago, and I know you hate me and want nothing to do with me, but please, give me one more chance. One more chance to prove to you that I’m a better, changed man. To prove to you that I’ll do anything it takes to be the best father and husband I can be. I love you and Yelena, will all of my heart, soul and bones I love you.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, I can’t tell him I’ve had the same dreams and that I feel that way too. The universe has a weird way of trying to get people together.

I pull my drink up to my lips which caused his hand to fall off mine. “Logan, I- We can’t- I’m with” I closed my eyes and took a long deep breath before I tried to continue “Logan, I love you more than you’ll ever know. You gave me a beautiful daughter and a life I never thought I’d have. I owe you so much but that debt I owed you went straight down the drain the moment you said that I should’ve killed myself, the moment you said I was another piece of ass to you and the moment” a few tears slipped “The moment you said you could impregnate ANY woman.”

I placed my drink down before grabbing a napkin from the dispenser on the table to wipe the fallen tears off my face. A beat or two passed before anyone said anything.

“Do you ever think,” Logan waited a beat before the continued, almost as if he was regretting what he was about to say “Do you ever think that if Theo were still here, none of this would’ve happened? That we’d be happy and together, that Yelena would be able to meet her big brother?”

I could see the tears forming in Logan’s eyes and the tears that once stopped falling came right back.

A choked sob left my throat at the mention of our late son. My body shook with so much pain and sadness that I hadn’t notice Logan left his seat. Not at least until I felt his big strong arms wrap around my body in a tight embrace. I could feel his body shake in his own quiet sobs. We stayed like this for what felt like hours, just in an embrace, sobbing, in public, where everyone is staring.

“Y/N?” Oh no, I recognized that voice. We pulled apart at the mention of my name turning to see Lando pushing a stroller and Oscar following suit “I thought you said you were hanging out with Lily?” Lando sounded suspicious as he looked between Logan and Me observing both of us red eyed. “Why are you both crying? Baby, are you okay?”

“Oh! Yes! Haha, Lily was running late so I grabbed a drink and saw Logan here and then we started talking about Theo” I said wiping the tears from under my eyes again

Oscar’s eyes closed and his face contorted in its own way of saying ‘oh no’

“That’s so funny babe because” Lily walked in “We actually ran into Lily and she mentioned nothing about your guys’ plans. Actually said that she’s been trying to set up a day where you guys could spend the day out and shop and have girls night but said that you kept postponing it. So why are you here with Logan and why’d you lie?”

The tension between us so thick you could hack it with a butcher knife a few times and it wouldn’t cut.

I’ve been caught in lies before but this one, I don’t know how I’m getting out of it.

“I promise I will tell you everything Lando, just not here”

Lando turned and whispered some things to Oscar and Lily whom nodded in agreement before handing them the stroller and the diaper bag and kissing Yelena goodbye.

He’s taken on such a natural fatherly role in her life that to the outside world, Yelena was his daughter and that’s what I admired about him, that’s why I fell in love with him and that’s why I really, really can’t lose him.

“We’re leaving.” was all Lando said before I whispered a goodbye to Logan and followed him out the door and to his McLaren.

The car ride home was awkward and silent. It hadn’t felt this bad in a car alone with him since I told him all those months ago about what happened with me and Logan. After what felt like an eternity we finally arrived at our house. The walk inside and into our bedroom was also awkward and silent.

Oh how I hated when Lando was mad at me.

“Why’d you lie?” it sounded cold, kinda made my heart break “Why were you out with Logan and why did you lie to me?”

“I-” I released a shaky breath “I met with Logan because” I was cut off

“Are you still in love with him?” betrayal and heartbreak coated Lando’s voice

“No! Absolutely not! Lando please don’t think like that!” I quickly walked over to him cupping his face and used my thumb to wipe a stray tear from his face

“I was with Logan because he wanted to talk about that night in the delivery room. He wanted to tell me that he’s been having dreams of us being a big happy family. He asked me what he could do to get me back, to win us back” the look in his eyes told me he believed what I was saying

“and what did you say?”

“I told him that after the way he treated me that I would never get back with him.” I felt him nod against my hands that were still holding his face before I wrapped them around his neck and pulled him into a tight hug feeling his arms wrap around my waist and squeezed tight.

I wanted to stay like this forever, wrapped up in his tight embrace. I felt like nothing bad could happen, I felt on top of the world and that’s how I wanted to stay, but all good things eventually come to an end.

The churn of my stomach is what pulled me away from Lando and I knew I was gonna be sick. I rushed myself to the bathroom before spilling my guts into the toilet. Lando quickly rushed in to hold my hair back and rub my back.

“I’ll be back. I’m gonna grab you a bottle of water” Lando said before he quickly jogged to the kitchen.

I’ve been sick before, but this felt different. I’ve felt this kind of sickness before. Twice, actually. I rested my head in my arms on the toilet seat before frantically looking around in the sink cupboard. I had to search quickly before Lando came back, I couldn’t find it and I didn’t want to call for Lando. One more quick search of lifting things up is when I finally see them.

pregnancy tests.

HEY!! I MISSED YOU!

taglist

@luckyladycreator2 @itsmiamalfoy @jeffs77 @ilivbullyingjeongin @forevercaffeinated-lee @daemyratwst @gulphulp @callsignwidow @f1wintermoon13 @teenwolf01 @victoriassecret101 @hiireadstuff @formulaal @kazza72584 @zabwlky1999 @dark-night-sky-99 @rougekiki @xoscar03 @jess-wither @bountychanti@dhanihamidi @Ggasly.p @tellybearryyyy

#charles leclerc #f1 #f1 fanfic #f1 smut #f1 x reader #formula 1 #formula one #lando norris #lewis hamilton #logan sargent fluff #too good to say goodbye #too good to say goodbye series #logan sargeant hurt #logan sargeant angst #lando norris fanfic #lando norris imagine #lando x reader #logan sergeant imagines #logan sargent x reader

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ilovewanda · 3 days

Note

Heyyy can you do Wanda x Fem!reader where we are at Tony party and Wanda gets like super protective and jealous?

you got it ;)

take me home

if you guys want me to make a part 2 with smut just let me know

wanda maximoff x reader

wanda hears a bang and a loud groan as she walks by her and y/n’s shared bedroom. she opens the door cautiously and sees her girlfriend laying on the ground. “angel, what happened?” wanda asks as the rushes to help her girlfriend off of the ground. “this outfit is so hard to walk in, but i wanted to look sexy for you at the party tonight” y/n says with a smirk in her tone. y/n is wearing a short sparkly pink dress that ends at her upper thigh. to finish the outfit she has beautifully done makeup, and 4 inch heels that wanda gifted her for valentine’s day last year.

y/n is estatic to finally be able to go to one of the parties that tony stark is known for throwing. wanda is not so excited, because she has been to so many before and she knows that it is just a bunch of filthy rich drunk men hitting on all of the women all night.“come on, baby let’s go our uber is here!” y/n says. wanda sighs and follows her girlfriend out the door.

once they arrive at the party, y/n takes a moment to take in the huge party and spends a little while imagining how much this party costs. once y/n is done pondering she quickly makes her way to the bar. wanda sighs and sits down at a table and looks around to see if she knows anyone here. most of the other avengers are on a mission right now, so wanda is not familiar with the crowd at this party. y/n makes it back to the table with 6 shots and a margarita. “2 for you, and 4 for me. i also figured we could share a margarita? it’s mango, it’s your favorite!” y/n says excitedly. “i’m not really in the mood to drink right now, thank you though baby. you stay here, i’m going to go talk to tony for a little while, okay?” wanda says as she looks at the alcohol her girlfriend is holding. y/n nods and wanda leaves the table.

y/n drinks all 6 shots and the entire margarita by herself as she waits for wanda to return. she hates to waste alcohol, and she hasn’t been drunk in months so why not? wanda does not notice her girlfriend downing the drinks across the room because she is so caught up in her conversation with tony. when wanda turns and looks over to the table her girlfriend is at, she immediately feels her fists clench and her teeth grit.

fucking todd has taken wanda’s seat at the table and he is laughing along with HER (clearly) drunk girlfriend. wanda hates todd with every fiber of her being due to the way he clearly flirts with y/n every chance he gets. wanda leaves tony with no explanation as she swiftly walks over to the table. she slams her hand on the desk and she turns to face todd. “you will stand up and leave this party right now, and you will never dare to even look at my girlfriend again, do you understand me?” wanda says through gritted teeth.

todd laughs and says “or what?”. wanda’s eyes glow red as she enters todd’s mind and shows him exactly what she will do to him. todd’s smile quickly fades as he realizes who he was messing with. before wanda is able to say another word, todd has ran out of the building.

wanda turns to y/n with a snarl and says “what the hell were you thinking!! you drank way too much and you were letting todd flirt with you!”. y/n looks up at wanda with hazy eyes and says “well it’s not like you were giving me attention anyways, you were talking to tony for like forever!” . most of that sentance was slurred but wanda could understand what y/n was saying to a certain extent.

wanda bends down to whisper in y/n’s ear “you want attention so bad? oh ill certainly give you attention when we get home and you’ve sobered up. you’re in for a huge punishment, don’t you think princess?”. y/n smiles and says “take me home, now.”

pt. 2

#wanda x y/n #wanda mcu #wanda x you #wanda x reader #mommy wanda #wanda marvel #wanda maximoff #wandanat x reader fluff #wandavision

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honeipie · 19 hours

Text

THE WIFE

izuku midoryia x reader

synopsis: you’ve been asked to do an interview after your husbands cute little story blew up. now it’s your turn to express your love for him

authors note: to the anon who did the ask i am SO SORRY. i posted it by accident then fucking deleted it in a panic.. don’t worry though i got the gist of it! for the people who don't know it was getting the reader's POV of how they fell in love with izuku as well. also sorry if i went a little off track. i js wanted to give reader a lil opinion and personality ☺️

you can find part one here

this was out of your comfort zone.

you sat in a plush chair across from a woman who was currently fiddling with the microphones. your husband izuku had done an interview with a popular podcast about a month ago. it wasn’t only popular because he was the number one hero. there was a charm to the episode that others couldn’t fake. the way he talked about you as if you showed him colors for the first time. everyone loved it.

now people really wanted to get into the lives of the midoryia’s, which included you. about a week ago you had gotten an offer to be on another podcast. you made sure to check out some of her work before you leaped into it.

the host's name was aiya, and she was absolutely amazing. not only were you laughing with the one episode you did listen to, but so did izuku since he was kind enough to watch with you.

"are you ready mrs. midoryia?" aiya asked going to put on the headphones. taking your own set of headphones, you placed them on as well.

"i am! plus you can just call me y/n. i really don't mind"

"thanks for letting me know," she clicked a button on her computer which started the camera up "hello everyone! it's aiya here! on this special episode we have the wonderful, and very lovely y/n midoryia in the building"

you gave a shy smile and waved to the camera "hello everyone!" you faced the aiya letting her smile ease your tensions "i just wanted to say thank you before we start. not only for inviting me on your podcast, but just being so respectful and kind as well"

aiya nodded placing both hands over her heart "you're just too kind! but girl you don't have to thank me for doing the bare minimum"

"no i really do have to. because there are a lot of other people out here that i've talked to and are not as professional and sweet like you. it's really crazy" you shook your head when you heard yourself start to get off topic "i'm sorry i don't want to control this whole interview. i think i got the rambling from my husband through the years"

both you and aiya laughed at your statement.

"don't worry about it! this is not a place where i will every cut you off from rambling, seriously. plus i want to get into some of that as well. what is your experience with the whole ‘being a wife of the number one hero’ thing? like you said before people can be unusually cruel to you for absolutely no reason"

you scoffed dramatically making aiya laugh.

"so when people ask me this in person, which has never happened ever" you made direct eye contact with the camera before turning back. this had aiya laughing more now than before "being married to izuku is great, but being married to deku can be.. iffy on my end. does that make sense?”

"yes and no"

"okay so what i mean is that being deku's wife is stressful. not only because of the major backlash that i get from the internet, tabloids, and gossip shows, but also because of my safety. the backlash is something that doesn't go away but gets easier as time goes on. for me it was easier to just laugh at how stupid they are. like one article called me fat, cool, but then another one from the same company called me pile of bones skinny" you tilted you head slapping one hand down on your thigh "now you just look fucking stupid because you can't pick one and clearly can't run a business. cause like how didn't you know that both of these articles were coming out?" you shook your head "they piss me off more than make me upset"

aiya listened carefully letting you go on with your rant.

"but when i say i love being izuku’s wife i really mean it. i love that man more than i love anyone else. i love the way he looks when he wakes up in the morning. i love the way he gets excited every time we see cows when we're driving. he is who i was meant to be with and i believe that with my whole heart. i see deku and izuku as two totally different people because i get to see it from both perspectives. i can understand how some people might not understand where i’m coming from with this and that’s okay. this is just how i’ve been able to express the way i feel about the whole situation”

“wow.. thank you so much for sharing your point of view on things. i hope this really opens the eyes to some of the haters out there”

“ugh me too” you played with the ring on your finger “i feel bad now. when this episode airs i can just imagine what he’s gonna say, ‘oh so my episode was me spewing my undying love for you and all i get is i hate my husband?’”

the two of you laughed thinking about it.

“no, but we’ve seriously talked about it before and he understands where i’m coming from. i love that he’s so understanding about everything”

“speaking of love,” aiya pulled out a piece of paper coming from her lap “we’ve got questions”

you clapped your hands together excitedly.

“oh! hit me”

“okay so of course deku did a podcast episode where he made all of us singles jealous by describing the moment he fell in love with you. so now people are wondering what was the moment you fell in love with him?”

you had been preparing for this question ever since you read the email.

“i actually fell in love with izuku pretty early in our relationship. maybe like a month in? i’ve honestly had a crush on him since year one, but we never got the chance to interact.”

it was early off in your third year when you had come down with a bad fever. the only reason you could assume the sickness took over you was because everyone had just moved back into the dorms. bringing whatever kind of diseases they wanted back.

“hi izuku”

the phone was placed on the pillow beside your head. you didn’t have enough energy to hold it up. hell, you’re surprised you even had enough energy to accept the call. everything on your body was just hot. they only thing you felt you needed was a cold compress on your forehead, but getting up just wasn’t an option at the moment.

“y/n you’re making me worried. are you sure you don’t need recovery girl?”

“i should be okay,” you stopped in the middle of your sentence to take in a long breath “plus i don’t think she could help with what i have anyway”

izuku was slipping on his training uniform as he was talking to you. he didn’t know if you could hear yourself, or if you even cared, but he could probably picture what you looked like. comforter thrown to the floor. medicine bottles scattered on your dresser and not knowing which one to choose.

“are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“i should be fine izu. just focus on- on training for the festival. bye now”

izuku had wanted to get a couple more sentences in to ease his anxiety, but you quickly hung up the phone without a second thought.

once you found yourself a semi-comfortable position you took the chance of drifting off to sleep.

the nap lasted about thirty minutes before you woke up to the feeling of a cold compress being laid onto your forehead. slowly, your eyes opened to reveal your boyfriend making sure it was in the right spot.

“izu” you mumbled going to sit up but he placed his hands on your shoulders laying you back down.

“nope, you’re resting”

he still had his training uniform on from the time you had called him.

“but you shouldn’t be here. you should be training”

the newfound coolness on your forehead felt amazing, and part of you wished he had came sooner.

“i can take a day or two off. it’s fine”

you shook your head gently.

“i don’t want you to miss it because of me”

“y/n are you me?”

“no”

“are you my teacher?”

“no, but-“

“then don’t worry about it. your health means more to me than training. i’ve been working hard for the past two years, so if i have to take a day or two off to take care of my girlfriend then i’m jumping at the opportunity”

it was right then and there you felt some of the weight lift of your shoulders. this felt like confirmation of what you had assumed you were feeling from the moment you first saw him.

you loved him.

you loved him so, so much.

taglist! @sagejin 🫶🏾

lmk if you’d like to be added

#honeipie #anime #bnha x reader #mha #writing #x reader #drabble #izuku x reader #izuku midoriya #mha izuku #bnha izuku #deku x reader #mha deku #bnha deku #my hero academia #bnha #izuku midoryia x you

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alltheboysandgirlsiloved · 3 days

Text

Chaos Theory review (characters' oriented review)

Since everyone is doing this, I thought I'd share my thoughts too because, to some extent, I feel like I'm in a minority here. In this post I'm going to focus mostly on the characters because there's a lot to say about the show in general and I don't have patience to write everything in one post.

spoilers under the cut

I said it yesterday and I will say it again: I absolutely loved Chaos Theory. It was action-packed, well-paced, dramatic and funny. It was everything I loved in Camp Cretaceous.

I'm especially grateful that they gave us a whole variety of emotions coming from all of characters.

I loved yasammy's conflict because it felt real and natural. Yas' PTSD being openly addressed was everything I hoped for (all of them have PTSD in some capacity but when it comes to Yas the execution was on the next level). And Sammy being fiercely overprotective over her girlfriend to the point it became too much?? That made so much sense because she had always been always protective but after the experiences in camp cretaceous, it is no wonder that this trait started to get out of her control. I don't know, it just made sense. I hope that in season 2 they go in detail about Sammy's family situation, I want her to talk about it with Yas. I'm really curious how it will play out and I can't wait to see Yas being super awesome supportive girlfriend.

I also really liked Darius and Kenji's relationship - I know, I know but hear me out. I actually enjoyed how the conflict(s) in their case seemed to keep piling up; they were growing like a fungus. I adored that little bit when Kenji mentioned that he stayed in touch with Darius' mother, while Darius didn't call her. I think it was incredible; such a small detail but tells you a lot about the years in their life that we didn't get to see.

While we are at it, I have to address the whole Darius and Brooklyn thing which I actually... didn't mind. I really didn't? And I don't mind that it was one-sided either. Maybe because it is the first (*cough*) openly addressed one-sided love story between the campers. I've always loved Darius and Brooklyn friendship, I genuinely believe that it was one of the strongest relationships in CC. It would be cool if they stayed platonic but really, I truly don't mind that one-sided love plotline. I wouldn't even call it a love triangle because to me it seems that Darius, to some extent, always knew that it was an unrequited crush, and I don't feel a sense of a privatization (between Kenji and Darius) either. You know what I actually liked about this situation? The fact that Darius didn't go to meet with Brooklyn because he was basically ashamed, embarrassed, and a little scared of his own feelings, of getting hurt. I feel like, in the long run, this is going to be incredible for his character development. Darius trying to run away from his own feelings to the point where he abandoned someone, where he tried hiding something from others? I genuinely think it added to his character and gave him additional depth. That's just my opinion though. I also think that even without that romantic plotline he would still call Brooklin after her "death". So to me, this really didn't change much other than adding more awkwardness and I had no trouble handling that (I always really liked visually the scene where Kenji and Darius were sitting in the bathtub. There was something pleasing about this)

Moving on to Kenji... Killing Daniel Kon so fast was certainly... a choice but. Kenji's reaction to his death was so well-done. It really highlighted the complex relationship that Kenji had with his father - someone he hated but who he also considered kind of a indestructible. His reaction was so heartbreaking and I was there for it.

And then there's also Ben. I'm gonna be honest - I am biased. I loved him before, I love him still so it feels unfair to write about him from my very biased perspective. Still - they could never make me hate him. I like how his character changed in so many ways but also stayed true to his core – he is adventurous and a little reckless (like a Jungle Boy that he was), and he is also soft and sensitive (that scene when he was crying when he was hiding under the truck broke me). I'm extremely curious about his background story that we barely touched upon - it is obvious that he had been living in that van for a while, which is interesting considering how he used to live on the campus and (let me remind you that) he has a loving mother that would surely support him if he decided to take a break just because he needs a break. From the looks of it, Ben seemed to be living on his own for a while – was his obsession with "being hunted" the only reason? or was there more? many questions. I am also a bit... sceptial about his girlfriend. The first time he mentioned her was not convincing to say at least, not to mention that apparently he had been living without his phone for a while now - were they talking online all this time or what? Idk, if he really has a girlfriend then first of all - the screenwriters are cowards, second of all - the relationship doesn't seem super-convincing for now.

Bonus: Mateo is one of the best characters introduced in the show, for me, he beats even Mae. He was perfect, actually perfect, I loved him. I really hope we will see him again in season 2 (above taking care of Bumpy) because I really liked his agency and his character arc.

Overall: I feel like your final review of CT depends heavily on what you tend to focus on while watching the show, and what you like in shows in general. I don't mind drama as long as it doesn't interfere with characters' personality. And I feel like a lot of choices they made in CT actually makes sense for these characters. I think it is also important to remember that this was - from what I understand - planned as a two-seasons long shows from the beginning which means that a lot of loose ends and decisions may not make sense yet but they will eventually be developed in season 2 (which would be awesome, we love consistent writing)

anyway, I only watched CT once for now, so don't quote me. I'm sure that I will have more thoughts later

#camp cretaceous #jwcc #jurassic world camp cretaceous #jurassic world #jurassic world chaos theory #chaos theory #chaos theory spoilers #jurassic world chaos theory spoilers #jwct spoilers

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cokou · 2 days

Text

—MY DEAREST RESEARCHER♡

༄ ғᴀɴᴅᴏᴍ ➢ One Piece ༄ ғᴇᴀᴛᴜʀɪɴɢ ➢ Law x Fem!Reader ༄ ʀᴀᴛɪɴɢ ➢ NSFW // Smut // MDNI! ༄ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴅɪsᴄʟᴀɪᴍᴇʀ ➢ Fingering, PIV sex, porn, Law literally fucks you on a lab, Semi-naked sex, Desk fucking, Shit Writing, & Concerning Themes ༄ ᴀ/ɴ ➢ Do not transfer my works to any other platforms // this is my only account, will not be cross posted to any other sites or apps! Also MDNI, NSFW Content ahead <3 I hope no one has done this yet Oofs :)

—For the past few weeks, your Captain, Law had focused into a research about the side of feminity. (Just pretend he doesnt know much)

And, for the past few weeks, he'd also call you to help him at his research lab. Asking you all kinds of questions such as, 'what does it feel like? ' or 'how does it feel when—' this and that. Some questions being personal as well. —

This was no different day, he asked you to go help him at his research lab. So, of course you went to help him— i mean there's nothing more to do on such a boring day. You peeked inside his lab on a small opening of the door, he noticed you and welcomed you in.

You sat on the stool nearest to him and quietly explored the lab with your eyes, ready to answer his embarrassing questions.

"So," he clears his throat while looking at his notes. "We'll try something different today, but, before we start, wear this." He gave you a, hospital gown?

You sighed, "Are you gonna operate on me?"

"No, not today. "

You nodded slightly, "It can't be too different anyway." Just his presence is enough to make your heart beat faster. Now you're wondering how different this would be.

"lay here." He taps the Laboratory Caster (if thats what you call it) , his voice low but commanding.

You looked at him with a confused look—, he had never asked you to lay on a caster, usually he'd ask you these questions on a chair, so, this was definitely different.

"C'mon, we don't have all day" he snaps his fingers at you with a small grin, his look made you think if he's gonna eat you alive or what.

You followed his order and laid down on the caster whilst looking at him, waiting for his orders.

"So,—" He paused. "Spread your legs."

You were taken aback if what he had just asked you to do, clearly embarrassed at the same time, you took your time to process what he had said, thinking that you just misheard him.

"S-sorry? Did i hear you corr—", "Yes." He cutted you off, now you're confused AND embarrassed. You didn't even know what to do, so you just obeyed him and slowly parted your legs. You're not sure where this is going, or how this will escalate. You had so much thoughts going on inside of your mind that you didn't hear what he was saying.

"Ehem, are you listening?" He cleared his throat, tapping his shoe on the floor.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"Nevermind it." He held your hips tightly that you swore he left imprints on it, he then pushed your legs apart, enough for him to see the underwear you were wearing. He had a sly grin spread on his face as he eyes you.

"C-Captain? What are you—" His sudden movements sent shivers down your spine, it doesn't help that his lab was on a cooler side.

"Hmm." He pressed his tatooed thumb on your clothed clit, making you jump and gasp loudly.

"How'd that feel?" He was looking up on your face then down onto your clothed pussy.

"Mh, felt gd'.." You were thinking that, since you and him had escalated on the research so far, that, he took it on whole another level.

"hm, how about—" he pressed his thumb onto your clothed clit once again and started rubbing it in circles. "This?" .

You gasped at the feeling, biting back a moan from your lips. "g-good'.."

He took his thumb back, reaching for his pen and started writing down your reactions— from you gasping and moaning just with him touching your clothed clit.

"Let's proceed then." He placed his clipboard down, resting his hands on your hips once again. You felt him playing with your underwears string, tugging it and slightly pulling it. Once he got a grip on it, he slowly pulled it off you, connecting yourself with a thin string of slick.

"Let's not get excited shall we? It's only a research purpose." You're sure it's more than a research purpose with that grin on his face.

"Uhm..i dont—, exactly know how this helps you.." you could feel the atmosphere inside the room thicken, which makes you have goosebumps all over your body. You pressed your thighs together hoping to get yourself to grip it and stop, but he didn't let you.

"Stay like that." He wasted no time into playing with your now, bare pussy. He traced the entrace, circling around your clit, hoping to get reactions out of you. You, on the other hand, was already giving out groans and gasps as he touches your slick covered cunt.

He stopped for a second, then slowly enters two of his tattooed digits inside your core, quickly receiving a moan from you. He scissored his fingers, twisted, and added one more finger inside. You—, still not sure of what to do, just followed how everything flew.

He took his digits out, wiping them on his clothes and grappled his clipboard and started to write everything down. It's as if he's almost trying to know everything about you and your body, which he is probably doing.

You sit up slowly and peeked onto his sheets—, which are full of written down reactions and how you felt like. You're starting to get a grip of what he's trying to do.

"I told you not to move, yes?" He looked up from the sheets of paper to you,

"Sorry.." you positioned yourself as the position you were in a while ago, which was literally you, laying down, with your legs wide open. It was starting to make you have cold feet, and embarrassed.

You heard the sound of a metal clank, only to be greeted by a pair of a cold hand on knee, with his other hand already on your core once again. He slowly entered two of his fingers inside you, his thumb resting on your clit. With just his fingers, it was enough for you to feel as fuck.

He slowly thrusted his digits in and out, with his thumb circling on your clit.

You were already a moaning mess with just his fingers alone, and— you weren't expecting this to happen at all.

"Enjoying yourself too much?" You couldn't see his face as you shut your eyes so tightly due to the stimulating pleasure that he was giving you, but you were sure that he was grinning while playing with your cunt.

"Mhmore..please..." You already gave in to the pleasure that he was giving you, it felt too good, so good that you could feel your eyes rolling back into the back of your skull. And, it was only his fingers still.

He took his fingers out of you, earning a loud gasp from you, "why'd y' stop..?" You felt impatient as you waited for him to initiate a move,

"Stand up." His tone was serious, but you could tell that he wasn't at all serious. You picked yourself up and stood Infront of him.

"Be a doll and bend yourself over over this desk, I'll be right back." He lightly taps the desk beside you.

He left the room, so you decided to obey him and you bent yourself over the cold netal desk. You felt another goosebump laying on your body as you waited for him to return. It had been minutes, and soon you heard the door clicked, you turned your head to the sound but was pushed back down onto the desk, with your arms for support.

"It's good to know that you obey orders every now and then." You received a loud slap on the ass as you felt him grab the hem of your dress and he lifts it up, completely exposing your bare ass. You jumped at the sudden feeling and press yourself on him.

"Please.."

"Please what? Use your words." He was milking out the sound of begging out of you and it was working, you think hes a total devil for making you do something so embarrassing.

"Please just— touch me..." You buried your face harder onto your arms as the embarrassment floods your mind.

"Alright-ya." Just as soon as the words escape his mouth, you felt him press up his hand on your ass as he discards his pants using his free hand. You felt his cock sprung out as it hit your ass. He pressed it on your entrance teasingly, slowly entering your cunt.

You moaned it response as you felt him enter you, feeling like you were being torn apart from your core. He slowly thrusted in and out, and eventually picking up his pace. Skin slapping could be heard along with grunts and moans all over the room— or even outside the lab. Your face buried in your arms so hard you feel like you're bruising yourself.

He continued with his pace up for longer, eventually making you close to your climax. "m'close!" But god he probably knows just by the way you clenched on his throbbing cock.

"Fuck— me too-" you came not too long later, and him following just moments later. He stayed inside you for a good minute or two, eventually pulling out, making you moan.

You dropped onto the floor, ass first as he grabs hus sheets.

"Ya, thanks for helping me." He was grinning while looking at you now.

"It's research purposes y'know!" You give him a sly wink and a thumbs up.

"Then you won't mind helping me out again, ya? After all it's a 'research purpose' you say."

©Cokou 2024, all works belongs to me.

#one piece #op #law x reader #trafalgar law #law smut #one piece x reader #trafalgar law smut #trafalgar law x reader #one piece law #trafalgar one piece #the brainrot is real #cokou

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bestworstcase · 1 day

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I can't remember whether you've answered this before, but. You postulate that everything Salem does in 8.9 after learning Yang's identity is a ruse to justify letting Yang and the others go free; that threatening Emerald is a deliberate attempt to provoke Hazel into attacking her so she has an excuse to turn her attention away from the prisoners.

My question is: Why does she need an excuse? Salem doesn't answer to anyone, and I can't see any particular risk in just saying "I've decided you're free to go, goodbye" and leaving the kids baffled. So what does she have to gain from... making herself seem more dangerous and unreasonable than she is? Not that I think she feels any hope she could convince the heroes she's reasonable -- as you've stated, Oz has done a very good job de-personing her for a very long time -- but I'm not sure why she would go to the effort of constructing an artificial scenario solely to make her enemies think she's more monstrous. What's her motivation here?

in the course of answering the question of her motivation i'm actually going to lay out my argumentation for reading the salem vs hazel fight this way, 'cause i don't think i've ever done so comprehensively before. (on tumblr, anyway.)

the foundational theory isn’t "salem did all this as a ruse to let her hostages go" but rather that this duel with hazel is a performative means to an end. and the reason i think that is the way the fight itself, along with the duel in the lost fable and the brief altercation with the kids preceding the fight, are choreographed.

to preface this discussion, rwby's fight choreography is subordinate to characterization. (this is less true in v1, wherein centerpiece fight scenes put a greater emphasis on style and spectacle, but from v2 onward there’s been an increasing focus on using combat to develop character.) team rwby vs ace-ops is a good example of this: ruby struggles in her matchup with harriet not only because she’s a grimm-fighting specialist whose main advantage (agility) is negated by her opponent being able to match her speed, but also because her heart isn’t in it; she pauses to plead with harriet to stop and think about what she’s doing and never really recovers her footing.

so my first presupposition is that salem isn’t an exception to this principle and her fight with hazel is not meant to just be a dramatic spectacle that Looks Cool but has nothing substantive to say about the characters involved. the writing and fight choreography are reliably cogent and i trust that the same amount of thought was put into this scene. i say this because i think "empty spectacle" is the only other way to parse what happens here.

now on to the most salient piece of context: we know that salem can fight well. because, as ruby puts it, we’ve seen what she’s capable of. the lamp showed us.

in the lost fable, we see:

salem and ozma fighting together, back-to-back, as they escaped her father’s fortress together.

salem stopping a nevermore the size of a commercial plane cold, and then crumpling it up like tissue paper.

salem matching ozma, a skilled, highly-experienced warrior who at the time had the combined might of the four maidens put together at his disposal, exactly blow-for-blow in their last duel.

nevermore crunch gives us a sense of not just the force but also the sheer precision of control that salem has over her magical power. the first fight tells us that even with no formal training, salem had the raw talent (and desperation) to keep up with ozma and hold her own against professional soldiers; the second fight tells us that by the time the ozlem kingdom fell, salem and ozma were equally matched in terms of skill.

the fanon idea that salem can't fight but won their duel by virtue of her invulnerability—whittling ozma down one lucky hit at a time—is a) contradicted by the swift and even back-and-forth volleys shown, and b) plainly at odds with the fanon nonsense that ozma spent most of the duel desperately and futilely on the defensive fighting to shield the girls from her onslaught.

from the tableaux in the second fight, it's hard to determine whether salem bothers with self-defense under normal circumstances (she doesn't, in the tableaux, but nor does ozma). but that in itself isn't a reason to presume a lack of skill in combat because salem has no incentive—other than pain avoidance, which given her extreme tolerance for pain isn't much—to fight defensively.

with all this in mind: we begin with her altercation with the kids.

salem enters the scene by exploding her way out of the whale. notice the kids knocked over like bowling pins on the left: oscar was standing approx. fifty-three feet away from the epicenter of the blast, measured based on salem being six feet tall. (<- with perspective taken into account. from wall to edge, the dock is 48ft wide)

emerald keeps her feet, perhaps because she knows better what to brace for; she's about the same distance away. in any case, salem's next move is to launch herself to the edge of the dock (again, a distance of 48ft—measured based on a different screenshot) and stretch to grab emerald in a fraction of a second.

ok. the women's world record 60m sprint is 6.92 seconds; this works out, rounded, to about 28.4ft/s. at that speed, you can cover forty-eight feet in about 1.7s; salem closes the distance in about half a second, which works out to 96ft/s. from a dead stop.

salem is could-probably-keep-up-with-ruby-rose fast.

next point. these two frames:

are a split second apart. the blast is aimed at ren and when jaune leaps in front of him, hits his shield right in the middle:

had jaune not gotten there in time, this would've hit ren squarely in the chest. in any case it hits with enough force to blast both boys off their feet and slams them into the flesh wall (roughly, eyeballing it based on several shots) 20-30 feet behind them hard enough to visibly strain jaune's aura. keep this timing in your mind for later. salem can fire these things off literally faster than you can blink.

the distance between her and ren at this point is approx. forty-five feet, again using the wide shot from earlier to measure. precise accuracy isn't impressive at this range necessarily but it's worth noting in relation to ren, who fires on her from the same distance, kneeling, with his fully automatics. every bullet goes wide:

& then salem whips around and noscopes him.

similarly, she sticky-hands yang in the face (catching her gauntlets only because yang throws up her arms to shield herself) while upside down with her eyes closed and paste for bones. she's a GOOD shot.

another detail to note here is the difference in salem's reaction to ren's attack versus yang's; ren fires on her, misses, she retaliates with her magical equivalent to his guns, but when yang punches bombs into her chest a second later, salem literally just stands there, even lowering her arm to let yang do it...

...and then after being blown up, rather than firing back with magic, snags yang and pulls her over to look intently at her:

we know that the reason salem grabbed emerald is with the intent to question her about what happened to the lamp, because salem concludes from the available facts that em must have stolen it. we also know that when ren shot at her, salem returned fire immediately, within a fraction of a second—this woman is inhumanly fast, and the time between these two frames:

is exactly equal to the time between these two:

what this tells is that salem did have time to blast yang in the gut with magic. through the whole sequence with yang punching her, salem is looking at yang's face, her gaze tracks down to follow her movement. she sees this coming and she's reacting to it, just making a deliberate choice not to retaliate.

and then she grabs yang.

this is the first weird thing salem does in this scene—every move she makes prior unambiguously follows from salem's belief that emerald stole the lamp and her desire to recapture oscar and take the relic back—and i don't think it's a coincidental that the weirdness begins with salem noticing yang...

...whom she saw like, two days ago rushing forward to comfort ruby after salem your mother-ed her to the ground. i've made this point before but prior to her arrival in atlas salem might at most have seen toddler pictures of these kids; ruby takes after her mother enough to be impossible to mistake for anyone but summer's daughter, but yang isn't even biologically related to summer. so salem wouldn't know her on sight. but this interaction a couple days ago would've given her enough circumstantial context to at least guess that this girl is summer's eldest.

so here, when salem sees yang and instantly flips from slinging bolts of magic around with enough force to break or at least visibly strain jaune's aura to sticky-handing yang to drag her over and grab her, the question is okay, why? why does that shift happen? what is it about this moment that alters salem's motivation? and because the situation hasn't changed whatsoever and there's no other reason for yang to have any significance to salem, the simplest and really only cogent explanation is her relation to summer rose.

onwards. salem isn't expecting oscar to zap her. you can tell because every time salem takes a hit on purpose in this scene, she either tracks her opponent's movements or visibly braces herself and neither of those things happens in the split second between oscar starting to fire and his blast hitting her; and also, she grunts in pain both when it hits her and when she doubles over afterward. given that oscar shouts at her first (so he has her attention) and what oscar and ozma say when they discuss the state of the merge in 7.13 and earlier in 8.9, i think it's pretty likely that salem didn't realize oscar could tap into ozma's magic and thus he caught her off guard.

also i'm not sure oscar realized he could do that until he did it. look at this boy. he's so busy going "wait what?" at himself that he doesn't even notice salem yeeting yang at him until a split second before yang hits him ->

that, or oscar's use of magic jostled oz to the front and neither of them were expecting that to happen.

at this point salem stops fucking around and pins everyone to the floor. and again this is something i want to emphasize because it is effortless for her. when she does this to hazel in 6.4 she makes a gesture with her hands, but here she just decides it's going to happen and it does. (which tells us that the gesturing in 6.4 is for show, just like flipping the table and raising her voice. she's exaggerating her irritation into this over-the-top anger for the sake of intimidating everyone else in the room. it's performative.)

anyway, she hangs emerald on the wall, conjures a ball of magic, and:

SALEM: What did you do with the lamp? EMERALD: ...N-nothing! [Salem leans in to hold the magic close to her face.] SALEM: It's missing. Where is it? EMERALD: I didn't do anything with it! SALEM: Where—[she lowers her hand, turning away]–is it?

ok. salem can tell when people lie. she's also grimm—she can probably sense or perceive emotion the way all other grimm do.

emerald isn't lying to her and salem knows she's telling the truth. the pseudo-repetition of the questions obfuscates this a little, because they're almost but not quite the same, but salem believes both of the truthful answers emerald gives her.

her initial assumption is that emerald stole the lamp and must have done something to hide it ("what did you do with it?"). emerald is startled, confused, and answers "nothing." salem explains why she's asking ("it's missing") and then asks if emerald knows where it is or who took it ("where is it?") because her next guess is that emerald conspired with somebody else who stole the lamp while emerald snuck oscar out.

when the lamp went missing, there were eight people on the whale: salem herself, hazel, emerald, neopolitan, oscar, yang, and these other two children whose names salem probably doesn't know. right before the seers sounded the alarm about intruders, salem encountered emerald and someone she thought was hazel in the corridor. at that point in time, salem expected hazel to still be interrogating oscar, as she's mildly surprised to see him: "ah, hazel. have you gotten what we need yet?"—and 'hazel' behaved oddly enough that salem was side-eyeing him before the alarm distracted her. her reaction to emerald a few minutes later ("you really have been honing that semblance of yours") confirms that she's figured out that 'hazel' was really oscar.

hazel assumes there is an alarm that will go off if they move the lamp, but he's wrong: neo swipes it seconds after they leave the chamber, and salem doesn't know anything is wrong until a) the seers alert her to the presence of intruders, several minutes layer, and b) she goes to personally secure the lamp and finds it already missing.

so salem does not know exactly when the lamp was taken, only that it happened before the seers sounded the alarm. that her suspicion falls first on emerald suggests that salem has—for whatever reason—already considered and ruled out the possibility that the intruders are the thieves (most likely, because the seer alarm calls convey more information than just "stranger danger!" and salem knows the intruders didn't get that far into the whale before being caught). plus by the time she's questioning emerald, salem has a) terrified emerald well past being able to maintain her semblance, which requires active focus, and b) visually confirmed that none of the intruders nor oscar are carrying the lamp with them.

ruling out emerald as the thief therefore leaves her with just two suspects: neopolitan, or hazel. now, salem does not have any reason to trust another of cinder's little pet illusionists, so on the face of it neo might seem to be the obvious suspect.

BUT.

salem expected hazel to be in oscar's cell at the time she unwittingly caught emerald in the act of helping oscar escape. and she knows that hazel is attached to emerald—that's why she punishes him for lying to her in 6.4 by forcing emerald to answer the question hazel tried to dodge, she knows hazel lied to protect emerald.

and emerald could not have freed oscar from his cell without hazel knowing about it.

based on the facts of the situation as salem understands them at the point when she turns away from emerald to ask, rhetorically, where the lamp is, there are only two possible explanations:

hazel stole the lamp while emerald helped oscar escape.

neo stole the lamp while emerald tried to sneak oscar out, either with hazel's assistance or while hazel was somewhere other than where salem expected him to be, doing something he shouldn't.

there is no way—no way—that salem does not realize, at this juncture, that hazel has most likely betrayed her. this woman is a clever strategist who has been running circles around ozpin and his inner circle since the show began and, while she lacks the charisma and social dexterity to be a truly masterful manipulator, she understands human nature and her manipulative tactics are always very shrewd. unless you're willing to assume that the writers just idiot balled her for the sake of the plot—which i'm not; rwby is too well-written—salem's assumption now is that hazel stole the lamp.

(which, she's wrong, but the underlying reasoning in how she handles the situation on the docks up to this point is an application of occam's razor; she begins with the simplest explanation and works upward in complexity from there, so she'd land on hazel stealing the lamp before she got to "neo stole the lamp, emerald freed oscar, hazel was doing something else.")

the shift in her tone as she turns away from emerald and the things she then says to oscar evince this also: her second "where is it?" is rhetorical. she knows that either hazel or neo has it, and hazel is the more likely suspect. since neither of them are here at the moment, but neither of them can leave the whale except through the dock, the question is no longer urgent. she has the situation fully under control. all she needs to do is wait.

so her attention shifts to oscar or ozma. (whether oz is fronting or salem thinks he’s fronting because oscar used ozma's magic is somewhat unclear, but given that she correctly identifies them in both 8.4 and 8.6 i'm inclined to think she’s right this time too, and oz got pulled forward by oscar’s use of his magic)

SALEM: Look how you've diminished. How you've lessened yourself—and for what? These children? This ruined world...? Why—do—you—keep—coming—back? YANG: Why do you?! [Salem glances at her, startled.] YANG: All of this endless death, just because something bad happened to you once upon a time? Nobody gets a fairytale ending! Everything I've lost—every person I've lost!—is because of you! SALEM: And who is it I've taken from you, girl? YANG: Summer Rose. My mom. SALEM: Hm. [amused] Her again?

as i said, salem already has reasonable confidence that this girl is summer rose's eldest daughter, but if she had any doubt or uncertainty prior she now knows for sure. "and who is it i've taken from you, girl?" is salem both engaging with what yang said to her and also fishing for a confirmation that she is who salem thinks she is, which yang obligingly gives to her.

so at this juncture salem now has three goals:

don't severely hurt or kill summer's daughter.

determine who stole the lamp and get it back.

recapture oz/oscar.

with the third being a means to the end of finding out how to access the lamp. this makes #3 the lowest priority, because there are at least six people who know the "password" (ozma, oscar, ruby, yang, and their two teammates) and if salem loses oz/oscar now she can still try to capture one of the other children later.

of the first two, which is more important doesn't really matter yet, because right now they aren't in opposition. she can accomplish the first by not doing anything to harm yang and the second by staying put until the thief—either neo or hazel—tries to get past her.

of course, then hazel IMMEDIATELY shows up. he is, remember, salem's primary suspect at this point and she knows that he, at a minimum, wasn't where she thought he was when emerald snuck oscar out of his cell. even if hazel doesn't have the lamp, salem has to consider him a possible traitor until proven otherwise because there is also this unspoken question of how emerald got oscar out. either hazel was incompetent or he was an accomplice.

salem wants to know which it is.

he walks onto the docks, greets her. salem glances over at him and sees that he does not have the lamp, so either he stashed it somewhere on the whale with the intent to sneak it out later or he isn't the thief. the question of how emerald got oscar past him remains. there is a possibility that hazel wasn't involved in the jailbreak or the theft—he's been in and out of that cell all day—and if salem makes this accusation and she's wrong, she risks losing his loyalty. right. like hazel is already terrified of her and she knows ozma has been feeding him bullshit all day about how she's bent on destroying the world, she walked in on that.

if she takes an aggressive posture here on the basis of an incorrect suspicion that's going to play right into ozma's hands by making her look unreasonable, untrustworthy, dangerous. even if he remains loyal in the moment, he'll have all of this in the back of his mind and he might turn against her at a more crucial juncture in the future.

salem is very risk-averse. she's not going to do that. so now she has a fourth goal: test hazel in a way that will strengthen his commitment to her if he remains loyal, or else force him to definitively prove himself a traitor.

when salem meets emerald and 'hazel' in the corridor earlier in this episode she says "ah, hazel. have you gotten what we need yet?" and then, after the seer alarm, "it seems we have guests [...] find them!"

when hazel arrives at the docks, salem says "ah, hazel. i found our guests." the intonation of "ah, hazel" is the same but exaggerated, and salem's taking "we have guests: find them" and flipping it around; "i found our guests." now, she's aware that the 'hazel' she spoke to in the corridor a few minutes ago was really oscar, so hazel doesn't have context for why this is funny. but she's making a sarcastic little joke at his expense about how she doesn't trust him now.

"ah, hazel" is how she greeted the false 'hazel' whom she did trust and told to find their "guests." she suspects that the real hazel was an accomplice to this scheme so she parodies that greeting and then makes a sardonic jab at him as if the false 'hazel' in the corridor were real and just failed so abysmally at finding the intruders that salem had to do it herself. and then she specifically draws his attention to emerald and goes "this one was helping them."

and this is the test, right.

before she asks emerald "what did you do with the lamp?" salem conjures up a ball of magic and holds it up where emerald can see. very unsubtle threat. she does the exact same thing here.

"this one was helping them," she says, magic crackling in her hand where hazel can see it. there is, again, a very unsubtle threat that she'll hurt emerald. and then she pauses for a solid three seconds, which doesn't sound like a lot but it's the similar in length to her other dramatic pauses like "find the girl that did this to cinder... and bring her to me" (~3.5s) and "before you go, inform tyrian... that i wish to have a word with him" (~2s)

in 6.4, salem asks hazel to give her a specific piece of information about cinder, and he tries to evade by saying "i take full responsibility," so she flips the table, pins him to the ground, and intimidates emerald into telling her instead, because she knows hazel is lying to shield emerald from the imaginary threat of salem's wrathful retribution.

in this scene, salem has emerald pinned to the wall and makes an implicit but extremely clear threat to hurt emerald because, she tells hazel pointedly, this one was helping the intruders sneak oscar, the boy hazel was supposed to be interrogating at the time, off the whale: SIGNIFICANT LOOK. DRAMATIC PAUSE.

this is the test. this is the test. the last time salem put hazel into a situation where he anticipated a punishment falling on emerald's head, he lied to try to redirect that punishment onto himself. if he tries to do the same thing now, he's either going to implicate himself as an accomplice, attack her, or exonerate himself by lying (because salem will know that he's lying if he falsely claims to have been in on it a la "i take full responsibility").

she's not making any accusations but she is giving him the chance to come clean. the last time this happened and he lied to her, she bullied emerald to punish him. the implicit promise she's making this time is that if he was also "helping them" and he tells her the truth now, she won't hurt emerald. if he gives her what she wants, she'll reward him with what he wants.

as. usual. she does not communicate this clearly enough for it to be effective (⭐️ SHE TRIED) and hazel doesn't give her anything to work with, just stands there silently, so... she escalates. "take the boy back to his chamber; i have work to do with this one."

if hazel's silence is because he's upset but still remains loyal, he'll obey and she'll know that she has a much firmer hold on him than she thought. if... he was involved, then his silence is because he's trying to figure out a way to salvage this situation. she still does not have absolute certainty. so she provokes him by raising the stakes and turning her back on him.

um, another noteworthy detail that i think supports reading "i have work to do with this one" as a performative threat salem's making to force hazel to make his loyalties clear:

salem touches emerald's face with this very ominous-looking magic crackling around her hands and nothing happens. the specific threat she's been making in this scene of "answer me or i'll burn your face with this nasty dark magic" is quite literally bluffing. it doesn't hurt emerald upon contact with her skin. emerald just experiences the untold horrors of salem grabbing her face.

HOWEVER. escalating in this manner a) takes the risk of hazel choosing to betray her for emerald’s sake right now even if he wasn’t an accomplice before, and b) insures that if hazel is already a traitor, there will be a violent altercation.

the former is a much less dangerous risk than alienating hazel if he's truly loyal by making open accusations (an immediate betrayal that she provoked and is prepared to handle vs a possible betrayal an unknown amount of time in the future which might catch her with her guard down). the latter is a problem, because there are children glued to the floor who will be in the crossfires of any fight, and one of those children is her general's eldest.

and this is where that second goal of "don't severely harm or kill summer's daughter" comes into play and comes into conflict with salem's need to recapture oscar & oz and recover the stolen relic. it's at this point salem has to make a decision about what to prioritize, and her choice is to—if hazel does what she expects him to do and attacks her—let the children go while she "fights" hazel, then pry information out of hazel once they're gone. so she reveals that her priorities are:

summer's daughter.

the lamp.

hazel's loyalty.

the lamp's "password."

also notice that salem does keep her implicit promise not to harm emerald if hazel gives her what she wants—she releases emerald, too, after hazel punches her. she's thinking ahead to what she'll do once the children are gone and she has hazel alone on the docks. by letting emerald and the rest of the children escape, she removes his motivation for betraying her: he no longer has anyone around whom he could possibly sacrifice himself to protect from salem, because all of them have made it to safety. now salem can pin him to the wall and start asking questions.

either hazel took the lamp and stashed it somewhere on the whale once he realized she'd caught the children, or neopolitan stole it and—if she's still aboard—will need to pass the docks sooner or later. so salem stays put, with hazel, until she has the lamp in hand again or knows where hazel hid it. summer's daughter is safe, hazel has no one to sacrifice himself for (and she has some leverage to counter ozma's lies; letting the children go is her proof that she isn't unreasonable), and salem has everything she needs to get the lamp back. she might have to capture someone again in the future to extract the lamp's password, but there's a chance hazel learnt it from oscar before the jailbreak and theft.

worst case scenario, neo stole it and escaped before salem intercepted the jailbreak on the docks, but at least by questioning hazel she'll be able to determine whether that's the case.

a partial victory is preferable to a loss, and knowing what to sacrifice in pursuit of one's priorities is important. this is salem's basic strategic philosophy and it shows through in her actions throughout this scene; she's making choices about what matters to her most and what she can afford to let go, always with the intent to achieve as many of her goals as possible, in descending order of importance.

with salem it's important to keep in mind that she thinks like this. strategic acumen is her greatest strength and being able to evaluate all of one's objectives in terms of priority, feasibility, and tactical means at once is a critical strategic skill. strategy is about the long term, big picture thinking, where salem excels. so she almost never does anything for just one reason; every decision she makes is a balancing act taking into account all of her important short- and long-term goals.

speaking of which, i've so far limited this discussion to her immediate objectives in this scene, but it's worth remembering that salem has long-term plans that she is working toward and her actions and choices in any given scene are mediated by the big picture; her inner conflict regarding cinder aside, salem is never going to do anything that achieves a short-term goal by harming her strategic ends (and her erratic behavior toward cinder arises from a conflict between her strategic ends and her increasing reluctance to treat cinder like a pawn, i.e. her big-picture wants and needs can no longer be easily reconciled.)

it's much harder to discern salem's long-term objectives because we don't really know what her plan is, except in the broadest strokes. but we can hazard a few guesses:

salem is very circumspect about what happened to summer rose; it may be necessary for her plans to preserve the heroically-martyred idea of summer rose—the most obvious reason would be that "summer was the best, and even she failed" is a very exploitable weakness in her opponents' morale.

if salem intends to confront the brothers face-to-face, using the final judgment as bait, and she fails, the only thing she can do that might prevent the gods from annihilating remnant is ensuring that everyone is rallied against her. forcing the truth of her existence into the open while performing to "monstrous evil witch bent on destruction of all things" expectations is the surest way to do that.

likewise, winnowing her own inner circle such that she is truly and completely alone by the time she has all four relics in hand may be part of the plan.

also worth taking into consideration are the ways salem's trauma circumscribes her decision-making. she is:

terrified of rejection.

terrified to care or admit to caring because the divine mandate is a justification and a threat of genocide strictly to punish her, and she knows it.

convinced that no one will ever truly care about her, hear her, or want to help her without getting something in return.

resigned to being seen as a monster no matter what she does, solely on the basis of her inhuman appearance.

all of these things predispose her to retreat behind her emotional walls and just reflect the expectations of others back to them. she's been viciously, brutally punished every single time she's tried to be authentic and vulnerable with others and it hurts less to shut down and be what she's "supposed" to be than to try and be cut down over and over again. this is a defensive learned response and it informs both her strategic planning and her tactical decisions; even in situations where breaking expectations and being emotionally honest might benefit her if people were to give her a chance, she's not going to do it unless she is really, really certain that she won't be punished for trying again.

now, to wrap this up, let's go over the fight with hazel.

i actually debate with myself a lot as to whether salem did or didn't anticipate hazel punching her, because she a) doesn't brace and b) cries out when his fist makes contact with her face, but i am certain that by this juncture salem did expect and was counting on him to do SOMETHING to stop her. the sequence of events is this:

salem approaches emerald while telling hazel, "take the boy back to his chamber; i have work to do with this one." after a brief pause, hazel answers "yes. of course," and begins to walk over to oscar. at this point, salem puts both of her hands on emerald's face and leans in to emphasize the threat, but still doesn't hurt her.

keep in mind that there is a significant distance between salem and oscar. relative to her position when she entered the scene, salem has moved (roughly, eyeballing) about thirty feet to the left and knocked oscar about the same distance from where he fell when she burst through the side of the whale. so they're still about fifty feet apart.

an able-bodied human walks about 4.2ft/s at a normal pace on average; hazel is quite tall—i believe word of god is eight feet, but he is NOT two feet taller than salem, the top of her head is level with his shoulder line, which if salem is six feet tall exactly would make him about 7'2"—which gives him a much longer than average stride, so we'll presume his normal walking pace is about 4.5ft/s.

when salem walks from emerald over to oscar, it takes her about twelve seconds. if we assume that her pace is the average 4.2ft/s, that would make this distance just about exactly fifty feet. 50ft 5in, to be precise. the consistency here between the visible spatial distance and the temporal distance suggests close attention to detail on the part of the creative team.

(salem returns from oscar to emerald, off screen, in about two seconds, but this is not problematic given her super-fast gliding pace—we can assume that salem slingshot herself across most of the distance and then walked the last couple steps.)

so at a normal pace of 4.5ft/s, it should take hazel about eleven seconds to walk from salem's side to where oscar is... and in fact it takes him exactly that: he begins to walk at 14:35 and stops in front of oscar at 14:46. again, the consistency is telling—particularly because there is no dialogue at all in this span, so how long it took wasn't dictated by the length of a spoken line.

hazel picks oscar up, murmurs "no more gretchens, boy," into his ear, pushes the long memory into his hands, and then drops him again. this takes another ten seconds. hazel turns away from oscar and begins to walk back toward salem at 14:56, punching her at 15:04, so his return is faster but within the range of a brisk walking pace (eight seconds, fifty feet, approx. 6.3ft/s).

the reason i'm belaboring this point is that salem says "i have work to do with this one," and then... stands there without doing anything except holding emerald's face menacingly for a genuinely awkward amount of time. thirty-one seconds, counting the beat before hazel began to move. it's not even clear that salem said anything to emerald—when hazel turns away from oscar and the camera cuts back to emerald and salem, em blurts out "i really don't know!" but whether this is in response to another question salem asked off-screen or just responding to what she assumes salem wants from her is ambiguous.

compare the way salem questioned emerald earlier in this scene: she asked two questions, one after the other, confirming that emerald didn't take or hide the lamp and doesn't know where it is. as soon as it became clear to her that she wouldn't get useful information from emerald—because em truly did not know anything—salem dropped it and moved on to Plan B. she doesn't LIKE emerald and she's ANGRY that em tricked her and helped oscar escape, but what salem CARES about is finding out what happened to the lamp. she's not going to waste her time trying to get blood from a stone.

and compare the way salem conducts herself when she interrogates oscar in 8.4. again, her questioning is guided by practicality, but the more salient point of comparison for this discussion is what salem does when she shifts gears to punishment and torture. namely, she just tortures him. no hesitating, no warnings, no threats, no grandstanding, she just turns around and does it. practical, again.

if what salem intended to do at this point in the scene was torture emerald, either to punish her or for information, she would do so.

instead, salem just...clutches emerald's face. evilly.

for thirty-one seconds.

now, i will remind you that salem has excellent spatial awareness; she sticky-hands yang from at least ten or fifteen feet away while upside-down with her eyes closed. hazel's footsteps are clearly audible. when hazel enters, salem hears him speak and answers him across this fifty-foot span. oscar cries out when hazel picks him up and grunts in pain when hazel drops him, which also makes a quite loud thud. hazel's footsteps would also be audible to her when he returned, although they aren't to the audience.

so she'd be able to sense hazel approaching her again, and if she paid attention—which she must have, because salem's just spent half a minute doing the bare minimum to sell that she's toootally going to start torturing emerald, any second now, and the only reason for her to do that is if this is about intimidating or provoking hazel—then she would have at least heard him dropping oscar, so she knows he isn't "taking the boy back to his chamber" as ordered.

ok.

when the focus shifts back to them, salem's got emerald like this:

this shot is at 15:01.167. hazel will punch her at 15:04 exactly, which at his brisk pace of 6.3ft/s means he's about eighteen feet away. around 15:02.750, when hazel is less than eight feet away from her, salem begins to pull back, lifting her arm as if preparing to strike:

she holds this pose without moving for almost a whole second. remember just how fast salem can be. her release when she fires back at ren, from the moment she begins her 180° spin to the moment the opalescent bolt leaves her hand, is sixteen frames. from the appearance of the black/violet magic bubbles to the release of the opalescent bolt is one frame. ONE.

when she reaches this position, hazel is quite literally right next to her. he cannot be more than three or four feet away, and we can see in both the initial shot and the replay from the opposite angle that he comes at salem directly from the side, not from behind her.

the point is that salem can see him. unless you have vision problems impacting your peripheral sight, even if you're looking straight ahead, as salem is here, you can visually detect motion directly to the left or right within a close radius. and indeed:

salem's gaze flicks to the side before his fist makes contact, and the wider shot from behind shows just how close he is to her before throwing the punch.

and the last detail i want to note regarding the punch is that salem lets go of emerald when hazel hits her, which is something that she does NOT do when yang blows her up:

if salem can remain standing and keep her death grip on this girl's arm while her ENTIRE TORSO IS EXPLODED WITH BOMBS, it... does not matter how strong hazel is or to what degree salem may have been caught off-guard. she had at least a split second recognition before his fist hit her face; that alone is enough to reflexively clamp down on emerald's jaw if she didn't want to let go.

so whether or not salem anticipated that hazel would punch her in the face specifically—and it doesn't seem like she did, given that she yelps—she must have had at least a vague awareness of his presence/approach (because he marched right up to her), and she made the choice to just ragdoll with the hit. the simplest explanation is that once she heard him drop oscar and start power-walking back toward her, salem knew he was going to try something to save emerald and committed to the bit.

she also isn't actually ragdolling; she lets the force of hazel's punch throw her off her feet, but then instead of falling she soars away in this high arc, flips herself around in midair, drops down in a perfectly-controlled landing at the far end of the dock, and rises again:

ok? ok. this sequence, from the end of the slo-mo reaction shot to when salem reaches altitude, runs 15:08 to 15:11—three seconds.

and then she just, erm...hangs out there, not doing anything, until hazel finishes cramming dust into his body and turning his back on salem to give his heartfelt last goodbye to emerald and everything, and faces salem again at 15:41. at which point she says "so, you've decided against vengeance for your sister, after all this time?"

thirty. seconds.

during which the ONLY ACTION salem takes is this... this:

<- make a particular note of how jaune reacts. the tactics guy. while the other kids gasp in shock/relief, jaune is like "wait what?" as he pushes himself up to look at salem—he's confused, because he knows intuitively that Something Weird just happened.

why did she do that?

she didn't need to. it wasn't an accident. salem manifested these sigils with a mere thought, and later in this same scene we'll see her do that again right after hazel smashes her head like an egg. summoning these things also clearly doesn't inhibit any of her other powers, so this is effortless for her and costs her nothing to maintain.

either happened by narrative fiat, because the kids had to escape and the writers just couldn't be bothered to figure out how. the... problem with this explanation, aside from the obvious that rwby is a well-written story that doesn't pull this sort of bullshit, is that the prelude to the big fight makes a HUGE POINT of,

this! oscar is already free and has long memory. if the intention is for the kids to escape while hazel keeps salem distracted, you don't need a narrative contrivance like this; you just slip in a shot or two of oscar snapping these grimm hands or disarming the sigils with his own magic to release his friends instead.

orrr... salem let them go on purpose.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

wheeze. ok. we're almost done.

remember how salem can go from empty fist to black magic bubble to releasing an opalescent blast in just three frames?

this first shot is at 15:49. the second is at 15:51. in between, salem just kind of sways side-to-side and then waves her arms around for forty-five frames. even if we count only from her conjuring of the Big Bubble at 15:50, it's twenty-two frames—longer than it took her to snap around and fire off a blast that hit her target dead-on and slammed two teenage boys into a wall some 20-30 feet back.

woman's telegraphing harder than a dark souls boss here.

and speaking of aiming...

these are the three bolts salem fires in the wide shot. top row on the left is her first shot in the instant before hazel begins to run up the slope—i've marked the trajectory and the eventual point of impact in green to make it easier to see that this would not have hit him even if he hadn't moved. top row on the right is the real impact, with hazel now running. on the bottom row are her next two shots. one strikes the edge of the dock nowhere even close to him, the other hits the ground about 8-9 feet in front of him (measuring based on hazel being 7'2" tall). and in the next shot:

it's not that she never hits him. hazel is quite a bit farther away from her than ren was and he's also running at a dead sprint while dodging blasts. tricky target. it wouldn't be strange at all if she missed.

but look at where she is aiming.

top row: both bolts strike the ground 1-2ft directly ahead of him—in the shot on the left, he's veering closer to the wall to avoid stepping on the point of impact. bottom left: this is a second bolt aimed just a little bit forward and 1-2ft out from the wall relative to the top right; these two bolts strike eight frames apart and hazel lunges sideways toward the dock's edge as the second one comes into frame, so when salem fired the second one, hazel was still where he is in the top right. and (the clincher) bottom right: this bolt strikes six frames after the one preceding, 1-2ft directly in front of him, and hazel swerves toward the wall to avoid stepping on the point of impact; notice the correction from #3 to #4 when hazel swerved more toward the ledge than salem anticipated.

not a single one of these bolts is actually aimed at hazel. salem is aiming to hit the ground directly in front of hazel, close enough to convince him that she means to hit him but also low enough that if she misjudges his speed she's going to strike his ankles... and when one blast nearly hits him in the head or chest because he jumped further sideways than salem guessed he would, she instantly corrects her aim to ankle-height again.

she is herding him.

up the docks, closer to her, away from the children, all while taking care NOT to hit him without being obvious about it.

this is the same kind of behavior we see from her in 6.4, where she's at worst a little vexed but flips a table and shouts and throws him to the ground as if she's in a terrible fury—and then a minute later hazel tells her something that genuinely infuriates her and we see her freeze while the windows start to crack, before she sends them all out of the room and struggles to press this rage back down.

because there is a huge difference between the loud, explosive "anger" salem performs to intimidate her associates and her real anger, which she tries very hard to contain.

in a similar vein, we get this fleeting glimpse of salem's actual skill in combat when she spins around and blasts the boys into a wall in the time it takes to blink... and then she sees yang, and the key changes. instantly. for the rest of the scene.

onward. hazel vaults over salem's final bolt and launches three fireballs at her. as these spiral up toward her, salem threads herself between them like they're not even there—it's really fast, the whole sequence from when the fireballs form in front of his fist to when she slings past the third one is forty frames and if you count from when the first fireball enters the frame, her evasive maneuver is over within twelve frames. as she continues past the last fireball, salem swings her arms to finish her movement, as if she's going to lash forward and fire off a riposte:

but then instead, she re-centers, pauses, and does... this:

which i'm sure looks very impressive and terrifying for everyone on the ground, but she is... literally just tossing magic around in random directions. this is not an attack. this is a light show. a firework. her big swarm of magic bubbles spits out of of the opalescent bolts and only one hits anywhere close to hazel. she is just fucking around.

from here, hazel sprints to the edge of the dock and launches himself into the air above her, where he dust-conjures a biiiiig spiky boulder to smash her with... and, uh. three things. first:

this shot occurs in slo-mo to really underscore what happens here. note that salem is looking up at him and has a firing bubble ready to go. hazel is approx. twenty-eight feet directly in front of her (measured in salems); a few minutes ago we've seen her be dead accurate at just a bit more than half again that distance, and we know a blast from her has plenty enough force to knock hazel out of the sky. from the beginning to end of this shot her head moves as she tracks his motion.

she has a clear shot lined up here. she chooses not to take it. then:

hazel conjures The Boulder, and we get this shot of salem's reaction—from waiting indifferently to see what he'll do to wry amusement. and then she physically braces herself to take the hit:

after which point salem just Lies There letting him pummel her for a few seconds before evidently deciding that she's done enough fucking around for those children she let out of gay baby jail about sixty seconds ago to have gotten away so she'll just flick her fingers (while her skull is caved in and her brains are splashed all over the floor, mind you) to pull some more grabby hands out of the air and wrap this one up except—

—NO WHOOPS THEY'RE ALL STILL HERE. lol.

like the fight is over, when the camera cuts back to the kids. salem has hazel completely immobilized. jaune is at the other end of the docks, shouting for everyone to hurry. "she'll just come after us," oscar says, but if salem cared to recapture any of them she would've left hazel restrained and dropped down off the dock to scoop them up as they hit the ground.

she's visibly irritated after regrowing her face, yes. but we have seen over and over—there are multiple examples in this scene alone—that salem can and will set irritation aside to focus on what doing what is necessary to advance her practical goals. she's poisonous with emerald but asks her two questions and then turns away as soon as she's confirmed that emerald doesn't know anything. she takes a deep breath and shelves her fury at ozma to listen calmly while yang yells at her. salem just isn't a character ruled by her anger.

so the fact that she a) continues to focus all of her attention on hazel after restraining him, and b) actually hurls him out of the restraints, in the opposite direction from her escaping prisoners, and turns away from them to just bash hazel's face repeatedly into the floor, suggests to me that her annoyance is perhaps more because these children are STILL FUCKING HERE and she needs them to be gone before she can start to properly wring the truth out of hazel.

she pays zero attention to the children until she hears long memory activate, which seems to startle her; after that she straightens up and stares him down for about four seconds.

they're about ninety feet apart here. salem covers a just over half that distance in two seconds... meaning she is gliding at what is for her a downright leisurely 24.5ft/s. that's a little bit more than a QUARTER of her top speed which is, in case you've forgotten whilst reading this very long post, 96ft/s. or 65mph.

(and here i will remind you that the walking speed distance math earlier checks out perfectly with the measurable spatial distance between emerald and oscar. this scene was choreographed and animated with very close attention to time and distance and i think that's because the speed at which salem does certain things at different points is doing a lot of narrative work. it's seldom necessary to be this precise but in this scene it matters.)

the point is that while salem does slingshot herself at oscar pretty fast here, relative to how much faster she CAN go, salem isn't trying especially hard to Get Him. this is like a brisk jog for her.

now granted, if hazel hadn't scraped up the wherewithal to, i assume, yeet himself after salem with all the dust cooking his body from the inside out, oscar would have been toast whether salem zipped along at a normal human sprinting pace or clotheslined him at car-on-a-highway speeds. but it does speak to the intensity of salem's interest in getting oscar in this moment versus when she went for emerald at the top of the scene.

salem had, by this point, already given up recapturing oz/oscar as a loss, accepted sacrificing the opportunity to do that as a price she was willing to pay for the sake of 1. getting summer's daughter safely off the whale and 2. after clarifying hazel's loyalties, removing the children from the equation so she can squeeze him for information about what happened to the lamp. i think the possibility that oz/oscar might have shared the "password" with hazel when hazel decided to help them escape would've at least crossed her mind as soon as she narrowed her list of suspects down to hazel and neo, too.

there's also the factor that with hazel now compromised, the only person around to interrogate oz/oscar is salem herself, and because that would involve being in the same room with and talking to ozma for an indeterminate amount of time, i don't think salem's all that keen anymore.

thennnn hazel sets her on fire and she screams and thrashes because she's having traumatic flashbacks to the moonfall and then oz blows her and her whale the fuck up.

thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

#TOO LONG DIDN'T READ:#she's balancing between two main goals #(get yang off the whale & determine #who took the lamp and where it is)#both of which can be advanced at once by #manipulating hazel in this specific way #for reasons that i discuss at extravagant length because 8.9 lives rent free in my head

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