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#that doesnt change the hurt of the consequence
allykatsart · 5 months
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Sorry I have FNAF thoughts I must share.
The thing about William, specifically in the fnaf movie but also kinda in the games, is that he's... Just some guy? Like.... yeah he possesses springtrap at some point, but before that... William Afton is second to his creations.
The animatronics are the ones we see killing the intruders, they're the threat Mike has to navigate. William only comes in at the end to interfere when they're not able to kill Abby and Mike.
Even then he doesn't have powers like the kids do. He can't lock doors, make you see visions of a child to follow, he's secondary to the things he has created.
(ye I know this is probably gonna change but like I'm focusing on the first movie)
And isn't it fitting that his ego is what gets him killed? He tries too hard to make the animatronics seem small, like he is the monster behind it all. But really.... He's just some guy and he dies all the same. He thought too highly of himself, thought what happened to the kids could never happen to him.
William Afton isn't as special as he thinks he is. Because he's just some guy.
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ourhouseishaunted · 1 year
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70% of my trigun thoughts are abt how plants (independent and dependant) work and what they symbolize and their relationships with other characters and the world and stuff and the implications of independent plants coming with the earth forces and what it says about how earth has progressed since SEEDS left the planet, 20% of my thoughts are "hope those guys (meryl milly vash livio ww knives) are having fun" and 10% is rotating trimax Rem Saverem around in my head at all times
#i think abt rem a lot for a character that is like important but also isnt materially present in the story much#like idk her relationship with grief and regret and the idea of her looking at the shambles of her life and having to say#'well at least i can start over since theres nothing left for me' multiple times (after alex dies and she joins seeds#and after failing to keep tesla alive and getting a 'second chance' with vash and knives) idk its just so fascinating to me#and her idea of a blank ticket to the future and what it means in terms of how vash shapes his worldview in trimax#where it seems to be about how. death stops all future potential of a person. if they die they can never get better they dont learn#they cant change and experience consequence#like smth i find fascinating in trimax is that vash doesnt kill people but he will let somebody that person has hurt punch them in the face#and he thanks ww for killing to save the colony that one time. hes not opposed to killing/consequence entirely#i think it comes down a lot to how rem behaved in the aftermath of him finding out about tesla. how the potential for things to get better#would have died with him or rem and it would have just stayed horrible#idk idk im Rambling im turing things around in my brain#also man my main complaint with the manga is i wish it focused on the dependant plants more. they clearly experienced a big emotional#struggle esp in the final volumes and i wish we got to see more of it#but also i just like the wacky small town hijinks esp in the 98 anime i love when the main cast is just goofin around. i think they should#get to goof more#trigun#.txt#Dont Look At This Post Man its EMBARRASSING nobody should let me talk abt anything#the secret special bonus tjoughts are about chronica bc she fascinates me but i cant draw her good the way i can draw meryl and rem :(
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made-nondescript · 2 years
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Joel accidentally turning Jimmy into a toy pairs beautifully with my interpretation that joel is losing pieces of himself to godhood and I'm going fucking nuts over here. Read tags
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lepidopteragirl · 2 years
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hm yes i love talking cq being a tricky little guy whos maybe just a little too enthusiastic about grabbing the presidency and taking down everyone in power over him during the election arc about but why do literally like a good 2/3s of the takes i see talking about it discuss how what happened in manburg made him go from a Bad character to a Good character once he saw that schlatt was Bad bc he did Bad things to lmanburg, which allowed him to have an Epiphany and become a good character (joining cwilburs side) after seeing this
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will80sbyers · 8 months
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In fiction there can be one dimension but in the real world there are no good people there are only people that are actively trying to be good and people that aren't trying, don't want to try and don't care about what their actions do to others.
You can shift from one position to another at any point in your life and mental health and circumstances around you makes it more difficult to change position but not impossible.
That said, this doesn't justify you hurting others and if you do you deserve to live with the consequences of your actions, you are not owed forgiveness from anybody, even less from the people you did hurt.
People have the right to defend themselves from you if they know you actively do or did something to hurt others and don't want to associate with you that's a valid choice they are making for their life, they are safeguarding their own mental health and well-being and every human being has that right.
Maybe this doesn't help your "healing journey" in your opinion and it makes you mad that you aren't immediately accepted into the group, but that's also how society survives- other people are not inherently responsible for your healing unless they are being paid to be, only your parents were responsible and they failed.
You will always find people that are kind and have that much heart to forgive you if you are actively trying to do better. They exist and many times they have done some shit themselves in the past so they are more prone to give opportunities to others, there are also people that give opportunities by looking at how you act day by day without completely trusting you, keeping up healthy boundaries for themselves.
There are also people that have trauma themselves that makes them too accepting and too trusting and see things too positively because they are not educated in mental health and believe that humans are fundamentally good and "even if they hurt me I can take it because who am I if I don't help them when they have suffered in the past this much, I have not so I should give all that I can give to help them or it means I'm bad"
( I was one of these people lost in that narcissistic and delusional "good Samaritan" mentality for 25 years of my life, giving so many second chances to others that I lost myself, burned out all that I had and after being forced to put up a wall to literally not die myself, is in the process of trying to reconstruct outside of that identity, with healthy boundaries, went to therapy for it and all... and it takes YEARS to dismantle that toxic thought process and it's a lonely as fuck journey! Still, I'm not going back, I will be giving respect, not forgiveness. I am trying to reach and keep being in the middle ground.)
Other people don't have to associate with you but they are responsible for how they treat you, like for any other human being, in the sense that they should not harass you with verbal or physical abuse.
Mental health should be looked after by people that are not connected to what you did, that are well rewarded for doing that job and that are protected by someone looking out for them so that you don't hurt them if you fall back on your pattern like many people with mental health problems do often.
Humans have also the right to feel anger towards people that hurt them or have hurt others that they love and they should be able to express that anger in healthy ways, one of the healthiest ways is through fiction... where if you're rooting for the villain that is fixed on his path of wanting to hurt others and likes the feeling that hurting others gives him, to die suffering, then you should be allowed to do it without that automatically meaning that you are wanting to hurt people in the real world.
How you act in real life is what's important.
But also in real life you don't have to necessarily have empathy for people that do bad shit like abusing, raping or killing someone, you don't owe them anything except the bare minimum of respect that it means you don't abuse them back. They can give you empathy and understanding and many will, not everyone will and they are allowed not to have empathy for you and if you're really in a healing path you will understand that.
At the same time if people are punching you first I will always encourage you to punch back, you will not find me on the "give the other cheek to be slapped" side of that spectrum, you will not find jesus in my blog.
I don't cry when abusers die, I am happy that there is one less abuser in the world. Does that make me "not good" ? Free to think that, I don't think it does.
I think that if you can't stop them from punching you punch back until they stop.
You should have the right to defend yourself when you don't have any other means to stop them and if you do something like killing them because you were defending yourself I will definitely forgive you more easily, you still need therapy and to be watched over for a while so that you can go back into society after all that trauma you just experienced, but I will not be as distrustful of you as I am of someone that hurts random innocent people to satisfy a personal urge inside of them even if I can recognize it's their poor mental health making them do that.
Experiencing trauma in the past can explain why you become a perpetrator in the future even to people that have done nothing to you, but it doesn't justify the abuse you are doing and keep doing day by day, and it doesn't grant you forgiveness by others that need to defend themselves from your violent impulses.
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lucidicer · 1 year
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ramons-elevator · 7 months
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As much as I want the eggs back, its gonna be so bittersweet.
We have people like Fit and Foolish who arent letting it get to them. They know their kids are gonna be okay. They will sit and wait and know things will fall into place when need be. Yes they are sad and mourning, but they need to keep a level head and be hopeful.
Then we have everyone else.
We have Bad who is actively hurting himself and doing stuff that will have consequences.
We have the favela 5 who are held with a thin but very strong string of hope. Forever is coming back from a drug overdose, but had to go through horrible things during it. Pac is also coming back down, but lost his soulmate and his home is haunted by things he has done. Mike is kidnapped and there's no trace or clue to where he is. Cellbit has to cure his friends and has the whole island relying on him while also investing the federation to try to figure out what their plan is. And Felps is Felps.
Phil is kidnapped all because he wanted an answer. He wants his kids back. Thats all he cares about. He was mindfucked seeing Chayanne's floatie in the middle of the circle.
Baghera just came back after finding out she was created by the Federation and that she might be the reason her family is stuck here. She also found out that she isnt the only experiment. There were more like her.
Etoiles is constantly fighting the Code and while he is winning and getting more powerful, he was given a task to protect. He already was ready to die for everyone, but now its something he has to do. No matter what.
Can you imagine the eggs coming back? The eggs, who have been for god knows how long, just want their parents and to feel safe come back to their parents who have changed.
Dapper and Pomme coming back to Bad who is littered in blue marks. Dapper knows what Bad has done. They know how much it hurts and how deep Bad's marks are. Pomme not quite understanding how bad it is, but she knows her dad isnt the same.
Richarlyson comes back and is engulfed in a giant hug, but he notices how badly everyone is shaking. He notices how broken his parents are. How tired and worn they all are. He notices how Pac has new scars on his arms. How quiet Forever is. How dull Cellbit's eyes are.
Chayanne and Tallulah coming back to see only Tubbo and Niki. Or they see Phil and engulfed in a giant hug and noticed how tight he holds them. They know Phil is paranoid, but never like this. He doesnt let go of them. His eyes never leave them for a second.
Pomme comes back to see Baghera crying they hug. Pomme can barely hear her mom saying "Im sorry" over and over again. Etoiles joins the hug and he tells her that he failed. He couldnt keep her safe. She has two lives, but now she is cracked.
The eggs just want to come home and feel safe, but now they dont know where safe is
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ganondoodle · 7 months
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wait i just realized... the mastersword isnt even important enough to warrant zelda doing to such extreme lengths to repair it bc its NOT EVEN REQUIRED FOR DEFEATING GANONDORF
idk about you but the mastersword being not just this weak after all this but also not even required is like ... hurting the whole plot SO bad for all that zelda knew she was basically killing herself by doing the dragon thing ONLY for the mastersword, which isnt even needed to reach the end why do the dragon thing at all??? she could have put it in some other divine place for it to recover (she knew where the springs are, she knew where the krog forest is, heck she even knew where the forgotten temple is BC THEY WERE ALL THERE* and im not going to belive any of them came into existence afterwards), in botw it took 'only' a 100 years to regenerate the damage it took in botws past which, while not as extreme as in totk, was pretty bad! yeah it gets outright broken in totk but like ... really? far over 10 000 years to recover it? through ZELDA? one of the most divine being IN THE FORM of one of the most divine beings aside from the very gods themselves?? whats the use of it being able to regernate if it takes THAT long?? feels easier to forge a new one for that matter?? and the excuse that "it needed to be able to resist miasma" is like .. why tho? yeah ok fine i could do the entire bossfight with JUST the mastersword, but again, its not required! i can do it with anything else!! and its doesnt cleanse miasma either, like the sword did in tp when you could do away the twilight stuff when it got the super glow stuff so its really like ... she did that JUST for the sword? really? the fact that her becoming a dragon is the way to get her back into her time isnt something she could have known and it working out like that makes it feel like a massive fail of the writers bc it makes it feel less like an actual decision she made for good reason and more bc its a decision the writers made bc the writers already knew where it would end, the writers knew shed be turned back in the end no problem so they had her do the dragon thing despite it being pretty senseless from her perspective
(wouldnt it have felt more in character and logical to put the mastersword somwhere safe where it can recover over all those centuries and search for a way to return to her time herself? like in these two games ZELDA feels like the more important thing that the sword, -zeldas prone to sacrifice herself for other- WHY! its better for everyone if you are alive rather than dead! you got to this time by yourself and also somehow not jsut shifted the time but also PLACE bc you sure as hell didnt appear in a cavern in the middle of the land, you have wielded incredible magic before and are a researcher, surely theres some way for you to at least TRY to return on your own?? how cool would it have been to find little markers and spots where clearly she has left you some sort of message, maybe like a way for you to do something that helps her in the past, USE THE WEIRD ASS TIME BUBBLES FROM THE TUTORIAL AGAIN!! send back something she needs to return! go and talk with impa and purah to determine what shes trying to tell you, help her along the way and in the end she makes her triumphant return, having grown and learned with what she did instead of regressing her chaarcter to the big eyed maiden that you get as a reward at the end through unsatisfying bs reasons and hurray she doesnt even remember, perfect little fairytale of no consequences wahoo- im salty about this let me be salty-)
you can absolutely combine a free to explore open world with good story without restricting it by much, like locking the bossfight behind aquiring the mastersword doesnt feel like that big of a change and its not making it a whole lot more linear, most people do it anyway right?
(also a thing im doing in my rewrite of it is locking certain things for some parts, it just makes sense if you are trying to tell a story, but its pretty clear now they werent trying to do that, just throw you into a box of virtual toys, and i think thats just sad)
*yeah actually whats up with the sonau/rauru putting their little nuclear super weapon storage room inTO THE ANCIENT RELICT OF THE FORGOTTEN PAST TEMPLE BEHIND THE BIGGEST STATUE OF HYLIA IN EXISTENCE?? you cant tell me all those ancient ruins (springs, forgotten temple) were made AFTER all of the shitshow that went down in totks past; putting it behind that statue? building it into there feels incredibly disrespectful, maybe it makes more sense if you just see it as the devs wanting to put somethign new there, but if you consider it in universe its just ??? also HOW is any of it in such a good shape??, it looks like they buried sonia there a year ago, the structures look like they just came out of a 3d printer despite supposedly being older than their recorded history??
on that note ... how does the room with the order and location of zeldas tears make sense .. are you telling me someone of the past ran around after dragon zelda recording where her fucking tears went down and what markings it made on the ground and then built a room next to the nuclear weapon storage room with the laughably unceremonial grave of the fucking queen just to put all that into statue form? also none of the geographical things changed in ALL that time?? the castle is drawn on there too so i guess that was super fresh then since it "was built above ganondorf as a symbol of royal blahbla" at least in botw you had the photos on your SHIEKAH stone to recover them once you found the place they were taken in, it felt so organically integrated ..
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netherfeildren · 1 year
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Forfeiting My Mystique
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Pairing: Ezra x F!Reader
Summary: You're a girl made of golden gossamer, a work of art come to life, and Ezra, well he's dedicated his life to collecting beautiful things.
-OR-
An Ezra Art Collector AU
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: voyeurism; kind of objectifying? (not sure how to tag the strange shit going on here); ezra’s weird; mommy issues; references to past childhood abuse; touch aversion/touch starved (at the same time); sugar daddy vibes; size difference; oral sex (f! receiving); butt stuff lite; dom/sub undertones; power dynamics; self esteem issues x2; panty thieving; masturbation; obsessive behavior; possessive behavior; brief mention of recreational drug use; brief discussion of parent death
A/N: This is extremely self indulgent - basically I wrote it for me, but you guys can read it too. I know I took some liberties with Ezra's characterization but whatever.
Inspo (and some of the dialogue) pulled from Lenny Kravitz’s Paris town house Vogue tour, Jeremy Strong’s favorite things GQ interview, and “Marianne” from Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin.
Title is from the poem by the same name by Kaveh Akbar.
Word Count: 12K
Read on AO3
Ezra has always loved beautiful things. Since he was a child, his mother taught him to instill an appreciation for beauty into all facets of his world. She herself, a gorgeously beautiful creature, was well versed in such a life. But beautiful as she was, she was also cruel, selfish, capricious to her very core, and she’d turned him into a strange amalgamation of a man by proxy. At once also cruel and selfish and capricious, but hurt and soft and gnarled, as well, so that he was also made gentle and aware and hopeful. That above all else, his greatest weakness, always hopeful. Perhaps, to the point of naivety, the point of peril. For he looked for beauty in all things, and to do that, he was forced to bestow his hopeful eye upon even the ugly and harsh things of the world. 
And so he’d dedicated his life to finding those beautiful things. An art collector by virtue, they called him. A vulture, a scavenger, a treasure hunter. A man full of greed and pride, demons and too much money. All he thought of himself as, was hungry. So yes, perhaps a scavenger, a morsel of greed within the marrow of his bones, always looking for the next sublime artifact, painting, statue – person. But he also liked to think of himself as a protector of those beautiful things, of historic things. Things that changed the very face of humanity, shifted the tide of the world. A collector – always in search of the next life changing sight. Always certain the world was filled with endless possibilities for beauty, for loveliness, for sensuality, for something to captivate, to overwhelm him.
-
The first thing he sees are your feet. Standing in the gallery over from the one you’re inhabiting, people he doesnt know or give a fuck about talking at him, schmoozing and preening and prostrating themselves. Probably hoping he’ll cough up a couple million euro for whatever cause they’re pretending to crusade behind at the moment. He can see only the quarter bottom half of the famed performance artist he’d heard so much about. The entire exhibit tonight had been built around you, and it had the whole of Paris raving and ravenous for a piece of the lovely morsel they so claimed you posed as. Shallow and vain creatures that the peers of his echelon were, they were easily amused and easily bored by the smallest passing fads. At once desperate to be the first to see or speak of a thing, and consequently, the first to discard it as dépassé. 
He’d made the trek all the way to the Left Bank from his townhouse in the 16th arrondissement, to see the performance of the woman whom his associate, Oruf, had said would change the way he thought of a living creature forevermore. Big words from a little man, Ezra had no real inclination to believe. 
The angle of the wall blocks most of you from his view – granting him the sight of only your knees down. Your feet are small, he can see the tiny square shape of your nails, the gleam of them under the soft warm overhead light – lying on your side, one slotted above the other. The fine architecture of your ankles – delicate, the blue hued veins crawling like vines up the top of your foot, lost to the pale of your skin. The smooth, glossy slope of your calf, up to the flat round of your patella. It’s all he can admire from where he stands. Pretty legs, but nothing to lose one’s head over so far. 
The person talking at him is interminably long winded. Ezra would like nothing more than to beg them to shut the fuck up and be on his way. He wants another drink. He wants to see you in full. He’d heard so much about the woman sitting for the live art exhibit. You’d been heralded into a creature of myth by the wagging tongues of Paris. He wanted to discern for himself the level of sanctity you deserved. He wanted to see your face. 
Finally, he’s able to demure from the conversation, the promise of ten million euro for the charity of the sycophant’s choice, promised off-handedly – any amount of money would’ve been too little to get the gaping, begging maw to quit it’s yapping. 
He slinks along the shadows of the walls, a vulture in its natural habitat. The lights brought down to a low warm hue, meant to shape itself along the contours of your skin, bring out the soft gleam within you. Surely the oldest trick in the book, that of light and shadows. He moves further into the room slowly, your back to him. The plush round of your bottom comes into view, two little dimples gracing the low of your back, the notches of your spine, up, up, to the heavy mantle of your hair. You’re resting on your hip, your torso twisted so your chest is pressed to the chaise you lounge on, your head laying cradled in the circle of your bent arms. There is a tiny, delicate outline of a sparrow tattooed at your shoulder. He watches the slow rise and fall of your back, the shadow of your ribs – he’d feed you more if you were his. The thought comes unbidden – a little shocking – a lovely bottom, beautiful, long hair, but for a man like Ezra – one who so wholly avoided any sort of ownership by another or over another, the thought of such intimacy, something to cause revulsion, not desire, coming from his own psyche, it’s almost distressing to acknowledge as his own. 
The crown of your head gleams like a halo in the soft overhead gallery light. The room is muted, voices hushed, and the patrons rove around your unmoving body, the rhythm of your breath the only discernible sign of life on your form from back here. Oruf had claimed that you did not move a single millimeter during the entirety of the three hour long performance. He sure as fuck didn’t believe that. He was having a quite, self proclaimed, contrary and bitter season, by his own choosing, and was prone to bouts of obstinance and general disagreement at anything and everything that presented itself to him. He was choosing, as of now, to not believe in your myth.
He moves further around the center where you lay in repose. He needs to see your face. That will give him the answer he’s come here for. 
There’s a large group standing right in front of you – rudely pointing, whispering, and he feels a surge of annoyance at the sight of them. You were here to be observed, appreciated, not fucking ogled like some cheap attraction, and he was here to see you – they needed to get the fuck out of his way. 
Finally, they shuffle off, leaving the space directly in front of you open. He makes the final round above your head, comes to stand before you. Oruf had said the only part of you that moved were your eyes.
They fall on Ezra now. 
It could have been as if, in that moment, you’d gotten up, naked as Venus, to shriek directly in his face. That powerful was the force behind your gaze – a punch to the gut, his mothers handbag swinging unexpectedly, purposefully into his stomach as he scurried meekly behind her as a child. 
He pulls his Jacques Marie Mage frames from his nose. He needs to look away from the searing power of your attention. He needs a moment to collect himself, taking deep breaths as he studies the glasses, runs the tip of his finger over the bridge. He’s held frozen in place by the feel of your gaze still upon him. 
He decides in that very instant he has to have you. 
When he looks back at you, your eyes flit away. He is dismissed – made ravenous. On the verge of tears, perhaps. Look back at me, look back at me, look back at me. What sort of reaction is this to a woman whose name he doesn’t even know? Nonsensical. Perhaps it’s the sleep deprivation – the edibles he’d downed before coming, maybe he’s having a bad reaction. 
But the gift of your slow, lazy gaze roves around the space he inhabits now, everywhere but directly at him, almost like a punishment for having looked away from you first – even for a second. 
He’s never considered the prospect of trying to buy a person. The moral question or dilemma of it. He decides he doesn’t necessarily care. Whatever he has to do to get you to leave this place with him, he’ll do. What he’ll be able to bring himself to let happen after that,  if he’ll even be able to touch you, be brave enough to let you touch him, remains to be seen. Inconsequential too, he finds. 
He circles the gallery for close to an hour before he can no longer help himself, can no longer feign casualness. The rest of the art here is pale and dull in the light of your luminescence. He finally comes to a stop in a corner diagonal from where you face, in the shadow of the sculpture of Paolo e Virginia. At this moment, he feels certain Puttinati prophecised your existence, to so depict the vision of reverence he’s feeling for you in this moment. 
The performance is three hours long. In that time you don’t move your body at all, Oruf was right – lying with the stillness of marble. The only thing that moves are your eyes, and you watch the patrons closely, examine them. Your gaze is part of the art, part of the power of it. 
The visage of you is shocking, not for your nudity, but because in a lifetime filled with unimaginably lovely things, you are, by far, the most magnificently gorgeous creature Ezra has ever laid eyes on. It is like a recurring bullet to the temple over and over again for the visceral shock you pull out of him. 
Finally, finally, your gaze falls on him again. The meeting of your eyes, like the strike of lightning against the earth. He can feel his cock thicken, grow heavy, just at the touch of your gaze. It’s voyeuristic – unexpected – he can’t remember the last time he got hard. He feels almost perverted, sporting an erection at the mere sight of you, surrounded by all these people in this crowded gallery.
He can’t see your breasts entirely, pressed to the chaise as they are, only the full, pale sides. He wonders desperately at the color of your nipples, the shade, the hue. He’d like to imprint it in his mind. Know the taste of them, as well, of all your skin – wonders if the color there matches that of the skin between your legs. The thought causes hunger to climb like fire up his chest into his throat, saliva pooling heavy in his mouth at the mere suggestion of your cunt in his mind.
His eyes leave you for a moment, to cast the wide net of his gaze around the room, at the other men. He wonders if they’re hard too, if only your naked skin, lying still in repose, has the power to make their blood rush, their muscles thicken. He is not pleased by the thought of that. And when he comes back to you, you’re still on him. Gaze roaming down his body, taking in the fine cashmere sweater, his perfectly tailored suit, built to hang in a precisely designed loose cut over his shoulders, down his long legs, the incongruous sneakers, back, back up to his face, the spot of blonde at the front of his hair. A single delicate eyebrow crooks in a minute arch at him. It is all the answer he needs
You are looking back at him. It’s all he needs to know. 
As the three hour mark comes to a head the lights dim even further until only a singular overhead spotlight falls upon your form. Your skin glows, seems to flare brighter for a single moment, and then a golden sheet of gossamer begins to slowly fall from the ceiling, and right before it lands upon your body, you finally move. Your body stretches, toes pointing and curling, long arms stretched in an arc over your head. The fine lines and slopes of your body coming into startling clarity for one moment, and then you turn over, away from him, where he can’t see your face anymore, and curl in on yourself. The golden gusset falls upon your coiled form, as if you’ve finally been put to rest. The lights dim until all that’s visible is the luminous gleam of the shroud over your curled body. 
You are a girl made of golden myth and gossamer, and he must have you. 
-
“Hello, Sparrow.” He steps into the small, warm space of your dressing room.
You turn to face him, you’ve been waiting for him. “Hello,” you say slowly. “You were watching me.”
“Everyone was watching you.”
“Not like you were–”
“No… not like I was.” His accent is some strange sort of concoction of eclectic European – at once French, but also slightly Germanic, with an inflection of deep American South at the end. The vowels and consonants rolling off his tongue, smooth and hypnotizing like the warm pour of honey, and then, suddenly, inflected with a bout of sharpness. Something that snaps you awake, forces you to come to attention, to pay attention to him. That was all it was really, you could tell, a forceful, demanding grab for attention at all times. He called it to himself, seduced the people around him into ardor. Whether they knowingly chose to be entranced or not, was not up to them.
“Ezra,” he gives an imitation of a little flourished bow. You give him your own name in return. “You were watching me back.” 
“I couldn’t help it.” He had demanded it of you, after all, no need to lie now. 
“I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me.” You turn back to continue packing your bag. 
“I’m not very hungry.” You feel him come closer, hear the subtle hint of pleading desperation in his sensual voice that has pleasure coiling deep in your belly. 
“A drink then.”
You’d like to be on clear ground with this man who you can see, even now, is an enigma not to be trifled with unconscionably. “Where? At your house?” you turn to crook a sardonic brow at him.
“Would you like me to take you to my house?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want too.” You’d already decided, didn’t see the point in prolonging the game. 
-
His security takes you out the back of the gallery, dark Maybach rolling smoothly up as soon as you reach the curb, and you feel the searing phantom  heat of his large palm hovering over the small of your back. 
He hasn’t touched you a single time yet, and everything within you is coiled tight, waiting for that first graze. 
He pulls the car door open for you himself, and then his driver is there, smoothly offering you his hand to help you step into the sleek interior. The leather beneath you is buttery chocolate brown and you press your thighs together. His security had taken your bag from you, and you felt bereft and listless without the protective clutch of it within your hands now. 
He follows after you, sliding gracefully onto the seat across. You can see he’s wearing two gold chains around his neck that rest in the dip of his collarbones, and your mouth waters at the sight. The car pulls quietly away from the curb and then you’re merging into the busy city traffic, ensconced in the quiet of this liminal space he’s stolen you into with him. 
He crosses one knee over the other, one thick arm thrown languidly over the back of the seat. You can see a small gold signet ring gracing his pinky – some sort of crest emblazoned on it. 
Fucking family crest kind of rich. God. You don’t know if you’re prepared for this. 
You cock your head to the side, the muscles in your neck are a little stiff and sore from holding your pose for so long, and you let your neck roll back on the head rest. 
He’s quiet, still observing, as if you’re still existing within the walls of the gallery, and not being spirited away to his home so that he might have his way with you. 
“Are you going to fuck me?” Might as well be blunt, you think, now that you’re here. He was so gorgeous in that room, watching you, circling you like a beast hunting in the wild. There was really no other way this night was destined to end, but with you beneath him, taking him into your cunt. 
“Would you like me to fuck you?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t respond, only gives you a melodic little non-committal hum, continues to look at you from the seat across with those deceptively guileless eyes. You want him to snatch you by the chin and spit in your mouth.
-
The drive ends in front of the grand façade of a pristine Parisian townhouse on a secluded street in the 16th arrondissement – flanked by national embassies, no less. 
You are very, very far from home. In a Paris you’ve not ventured into in all your years of living here. 
He helps you from the car, finally, finally, finally, thick palm wrapping entirely around the thin of your wrist. Everything within you coils and pulses, tight and wet. His skin is warm and dry, you can feel the pull of rough calluses on his palm. You’re sure he can feel the hammering staccato of your pulse through the thin membrane as you stare at the way his fingers overlap completely around the circumference of your limb.
He lets you step into the foyer ahead of him as one of his staff sweeps the door open for the two of you, ready and waiting for their master to return with a respectably quiet, monsieur, mademoiselle, in greeting. There’s a huge Basquiat in the entrance hall, across from the sweeping staircase.
“Lots of his art came my way,” he says at your obvious admiration, shock, desire to tuck tail and run back home. “We weren’t friends, but I was roommates with a guy he’d lived with. His last girlfriend was best friends with my girlfriend at the time, so when he died we had one of the first calls.”
“It’s wonderful–” Your voice is full of awe, eyes taking in a type of home you’ve never seen before up close like this. Something out of a picture book that sits on the coffee table of someone wishing for more. 
“How many bedrooms does it have?”
“Well… they get used for different things – so I’m not sure. Let’s call it eight.”
You huff a small laugh, run your finger along the keys of the opulent crystal Steinway. “Let’s call it eight, sure.”
Now that you’re here, that he hasn’t overtly said he’s brought you here for sex, you don’t really know what it is he wants from you. A bad thought, but an honest one. 
“Drink?”
“Yes, please.”
He leads you into an elegantly lush reception room, hovering hand again at the place above the small of your back. There’s a gargantuan crystal chandelier hanging at the center of the room, two enormous elephant tusks flank the elaborate mantelpiece. The room is a mix of eclectic eccentricities, both neutrally elegant and demure in its obvious wealth, but inflected with touches of vibrant color and idiosyncrasies to bring the room together in a way that you think must reflect the house’s owner. 
He moves to the bar, choosing the green bottle of twenty year Laphroaig and pours a knuckle into two crystal tumblers. He’s quiet, subdued, and the lack of small talk to fill the silence has the backs of your knees itching and sweating. 
There’s a glossy red panther sculpture prowling across a gold and ivory lacquered coffee table. He comes to hand your glass to you. “That’s a museum piece. I can’t remember where I got it, but it’s rare.” You can’t tell if he’s trying to boast, to impress you, or merely share his satisfaction at owning a piece of art worthy of a museum's gallery. You’d already discerned that at the Basquiat’s first glance, shit, at the first sight of the house. It was a veritable museum on its own. You were sure the number of museum pieces in every room were too many to count in a single night, nay week. 
You don’t sit as he goes to do, but start to slowly circle the room. An imitation of his slow roving of you earlier at the gallery. The peat whisky is bold and smoky, a surprising hint of something akin to seawater, but also mellowly sweet. You think that this must be what his skin tastes like, his come – an amalgamation of all the different flavors on the wheel. Saliva pools heavy on your tongue and you take a deeper sip, eyes flitting to him. 
“Three hours is a long time to lay so still,” he says. 
“It is. But I’m used to it by now.”
“You must be tired.”
“Not particularly – perhaps a bit stiff.”
“Have you been doing this for a long time?”
“Not so long, but not so short, either.”
“So just the right amount?”
“Yes.” He’s quiet for a moment then, still watching, watching, watching. His gaze upon you feels like the drag of a specter’s fingers along your skin, goosebumps rising in its wake. You wonder if this is how he felt while you watched him in the low light of the gallery. Hunted. But no, you imagine there isn’t anything that could make a man such as this feel like prey. 
“Can I draw you a bath?” You pause at this – firmer, more familiar ground, finally. This is what you’ve been waiting for. His request for you to get naked for him, to let him into your body. It’s what you want also. He’s not rushing this, and it’s making you feel unstable, unsure of the ground you’re treading here together. 
“Yes, I’d like that.”
-
He leads you upstairs, to one of the guest bedrooms. The en suite, one of his favorites in the house – dark marble tub in the center of the room under a low hanging crystal chandelier. The French windows let in the soft glow of the moon outside, and he draws the bath for you as you peer through the glass. The reflection of your face in the windows, eternally distracting. 
When the water is warm and ready, a splash of Neroli Portofino Body Oil poured under the stream, he turns to you. He’s hesitant – both of himself and you, equally. It’s been a long time since he’s touched a body not his own, and he feels the slight anxious tremor of his hands. Although he can’t be sure if that’s strictly attributed to nerves, or all the blood in his body pooling in his cock at the moment. 
“Can I take your clothes off?” said as gently as possible, so as not to spook you.
Your gaze is as direct as it was while you lay watching him, surrounded by half of Paris. “Yes.”
He starts at the tiny bow holding the front of your soft silk blouse together – the weave so fine, it’s almost translucent, and he can see the outline of your evasive nipples he’s been so desperate to see. He pulls on the string letting the neck of the blouse fall open, then down to the tiny pearl buttons holding the rest of it together. All without touching your skin. 
You’re panting, face already flushed, eyes bright, almost fevered. His balls are tight and heavy, ready to come, just with this. Just at the mere fucking vision of you ready and panting for him. His belly clenches and then he pushes the silk off the fine bones of your shoulders. The wings of your collarbones, the shadow of the dip in them the most tempting image he’s ever beheld in his entire life. He wants to dip his tongue into the tiny pool, fill them with ambrosia and drink directly from your skin. 
He feels his cock begin to leak. 
The zipper at the side of your skirt is next. He watches the rise and fall of your ribs, the tremble of your throat as he pulls it down slowly, revealing the rest of your skin to him. There’s a tiny lace thong around your hips, robin's egg blue. Oh, he will be stealing that for himself. 
He finally lets himself touch your skin as he pushes the scrap of lace down your legs, crouching smoothly to his knees to help you step out of it. He takes in the sight of your small feet up close now. The fine tendons of your musculature entirely too fucking beguiling. He ghosts the tip of a single finger over the top of your foot and you moan for him. So goddamn sweet and wanton. 
He unfolds to his full height and pockets your panties. To be inspected at a later time, pressed to his nose and mouth so that he might drink the scent of you down into himself. He tips his chin at the tub now, holding your wild gaze, breaths coming in short little gasps. Your cheeks are flushed the color of your nipples. The tiny wisps of hair at your neck and temples beginning to curl deliciously in the humidity of the bathroom. He could spill his seed just at the look in your eyes, he’s sure of it. 
“In,” he orders, crowds you towards the edge of the tub and grips the bend of your elbow between his thumb and index finger – as little contact as possible – to help you into the water. “Sit.”
You immediately obey, and that fills him with more pleasure than the sight of your naked skin. The control you’re granting him right now, allowing him the privilege of ordering you for the sake of his own comfort – he’s going to reward you very well for being so good for him.
He bends over the edge of the tub, hovering over your beseeching upturned face. He brushes his thumb softly over your full bottom lip. “Good girl.” Your eyes flutter shut, you look down into the water, a lovely pink blush blossoming over your cheeks. “Relax. Soak for a while.”
He can tell you want him. Badly. The flush of your cheeks down to your breasts, rosy little nipples peaked, your quick breath. That want, compounded doubly by his refusal so far to really touch you — his inability. The more he stays his hand, the more you want him, and the more you want him the harder his cock grows, the more frightened he becomes. He thinks it’s very true, that old adage, the harder you try to push a woman away from a man, the closer she will go to him by virtue of rebellion.
You sit in the warm bath for close to an hour, and he watches rapturously, hypnotized by the slick wet of the water rolling over your skin, from his seat on an ottoman at the center of the room. The weight of his gaze on your skin, almost violent in its intense desire. He wants to lick every single droplet from your body and then bite into the heavy lush weight of your tits until his teeth are imprinted in the soft flesh, bruises sucked into the pale globes. He hopes you’ll let him. He hopes he’ll let himself. 
Your returning look is equally wanton. He watches your gaze trained and hungry on the heft of his cock hiding beneath his trousers. You spread your legs for him beneath the water as you wash yourself, putting on another show, private, just for him. An unjustly jealous wrath stirs within him, coiled and hissing, at the thought of any other human on earth ever getting to see you the way he is now. Largely a passive man, the violence that surges within him has him surprised and not, in equal measures. For he thinks that no being ever having beheld you, could ever possibly be driven to feel any other way than obsessively possessive over such a creature as yourself. You’re like a siren in this moment, languishing in the warm water of his bath, in his house, where you agreed to come with him tonight. A nymph willingly slinking into the depth of Tartarus, knowing she’s in peril of being wholly devoured by the beasts that lay at its depths, and still going anyways. 
He helps you out after a while, tiny little fingers and toes soaked to wrinkles, elbow once again caught between his two fingers, and the heat rolling off your skin sears him. Has a violent tremble running jaggedly down his vertebrae. 
He wraps you in a plush white towel, pulled from the warming rack, helps you dry your long hair. Then goes to his room for one of his shirts to put you in. He pulls one he’d worn a few days ago off the pile from the chair in the corner. He wants to know you’re sleeping in something that’s already been on his skin, that smells like him, that you’re soaking now in his own scent. 
As he pulls the towel from around your body to once again reveal your bare form to him he presses a soft kiss to your naked waist – can’t help himself, the soft slope entirely too beguiling. Overtaking any apprehensions he may have, and his gut clenches with fear and desire. He can feel the weeping of his cock dribble down his thigh as he presses his lips to the warm, fragrant skin. 
You’re quiet, watching him, letting him do with you as he wants. His own little sentient doll, created for his pleasure only. “I have a farm in Brazil,” he says. He rounds your form, starts to braid the long strands of your hair into a single plait. You put up no protest – it feels like water, slipping through his hands.  “We grow organic fruit and vegetables and there’s cows, lots of cows. We never kill them, they just live there, graze.” One of his favorite places in the entire world, but perhaps, second to the place he resides now, staring at you, dressing you, touching your hair. “I love it there, I’ll take you.”
“Okay,” you say easily. “I’d like that,” the gift of the gentle curve of your smile. He wants to lick into your mouth, fuck you with his tongue, slap your pussy and watch the blood rush to the surface, feel the tight clench of your asshole as he fills you with his come. 
“Will you let me watch you play with your cunt?” he asks gently.
“Won’t you do it?”
“I’m scared to touch you yet – to find out if you’re actually real.” He feels an uncharacteristically self conscious blush mar his cheeks. “I–I’m not ready. I want to watch first.” He comes to kneel between your parted thighs that dangle off the high bed. “Pet your cunt for me – show me how you like it, sweet girl. Please.” He is not above begging. Not for this. Not for you – for the sight of you playing with your wet, pink pussy. 
You spread your legs wider, give him the tantalizing peak of your bare sex, your glistening folds. You’re already fucking wet for him. He feels an unrestrained growl claw up his throat like fire. His mouth goes dry, parched. The only way to sate himself, to drink straight from the source of your glossy slick. 
You press your fingers to the pearl of your clit, swollen and needy already, he can see. You start to swirl little circles over your slippery flesh, your wet mouth falling open in a gasp. “That’s it, yeah–” he whispers, bringing his face in closer to the apex of your thighs so he can smell you directly from the source. His eyes flutter as he breathes in the scent of you, the deep amber and citrus from the bath oil, but beneath that, entwined in the rich notes, the musky scent of you. Fucking mouthwatering. He hears himself moan, the sound pulled almost unconsciously from his body. 
“Inside– put your fingers inside. Let me see you fuck yourself.” You press a single finger in, all the way to the last knuckle, and start to rock your hips. He can feel your gaze on his face, the weight of it heavy and pleading.
“Ezra– p–please, please, you do it,” you beg, let your head roll back as you press another finger in and start to rock your clit against the mound of your palm in earnest.
“But you’re doing so well, sweet girl. About to make that little cunt come for me. Look–” He gives you the weight of a single palm on the bend of your knee and you moan deep and ragged at just that compact touch. He can’t help himself – he pulls the edge of the t-shirt up to bare your tits to him and holds it up against the base of your throat where he cradles the delicate column in his hand – the entire large span of him completely engulfing your smallness. “Your thighs are trembling, treasure. You’re going to do it just for me, aren’t you?.”
“Y–Yes, yes–” 
He pushes your knee in his grasp wider, opening you more for the fileting of gaze. “Make yourself come – I want to see it. Fucking come,” it’s a demand you answer, just the sound of it causing the heat of your skin to seemingly ricochet even higher. You start to come – he watches the clenching of the muscles in your stomach as you grind your fingers deep. He can hear how wet you are, the sopping wet squelch of your pulsing cunt, and he worries for one second that he’s about to come in his pants. 
You let out a reed high mewl, like you’re singing just for him. “What a good, good girl you are,” he praises, and your eyes flutter shut, pulling your fingers away so that he’s left to admire the clenching of your stretched hole. He can see the glossy shine of your slick sliding down the crevice of your ass, and he wants to lick through your sticky arousal so fucking badly he bites down on his cheek until he tastes blood. He bends his head to press his brow to the edge of the bed between your spread thighs, tightening his grip around your knee until you whimper in pain. He loosens his hold immediately, thumb brushing soothingly over the bend before he stands, lets out a long breath. He stares down at your panting, flushed form. Wet and sated after your orgasm. Fuck all the art in the world. He’d set fire to every single masterpiece he owns in this very moment if he was granted the gift of getting to watch you come even one single time more. 
He passes his palm over his mouth, feeling the soft bristles of his scruff. He’d like to see the smooth insides of your thighs rubbed raw with it, he’d like to see the stretch of your cunt as he stuffs you full of himself, the milky white of his spend leaking from all your holes. 
“It’s time to put you to bed,” he says instead. 
Your brow creases in the sweetest little frown, red mouth puckering, still panting. “You’re not staying?” 
“No, sweet girl. I think it’s best if you sleep here tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“But–”
“It’s alright. There’s no rush.” He leans over you to press a lingering kiss to your brow, pulls his shirt down to cover your breasts. You give him a little whimper, and he allows your hand to come up to clutch the thick swell of his bicep, the heavy muscle there bunching at the feel of your grip. He moves to help you settle beneath the silk duvet, pleased beyond belief at the sight of you tucked into a bed in his home, wearing his clothes, flushed and wearing the sated look of a recent orgasm. 
“Goodnight, treasure.”
“Goodnight, Ezra.”
-
You find his room later. You can’t help yourself, following the glow of the soft light spilling between the crack of his slightly open door, like he’d left you a bread crumb trail to follow, like he knew you’d come searching. You can’t sleep knowing he’s so close, this dazzling creature come straight from a dream. Twisting and turning in the plush monstrosity of a bed he’d left you in. His shirt, butter soft, the dark, gray blue swimming around your much smaller frame. It smells like him, his cologne – you recognize the scent of Le Labo Another 13. Musky with the softest most subtle hint of jasmine, paired with something earthier – greener, and folded between all that: the soft saltiness of his sweat.  Why would you sleep when a figure from your very fantasies was right here in the flesh. Your cunt clenches, wet and aching, even after he’d watched you make yourself come. You need more, want to feel the press of his cock inside of you, the heavy weight of it. 
He’s sitting up in bed, reading something on an iPad, glasses propped low on his nose. He looks up at your small knock, not waiting for his permission to slip inside. 
“I promise, I’ll be good.” You hold your hands up in surrender. “I won’t touch you. We can put a pillow between us if you like.” You move towards the bed.
There’s a large stack of books sitting on his bedside table, flooded by the warm moss stained light of the antique Tiffany lamp. A single idiosyncrasy of old world charm in a room made stark by its bright modernity. The pile is made up of a book of paintings by Howard Hodgkin, the diaries of Alma Mahler, The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner, the fourth volume of In Search of Lost Time – you appreciate his excellent taste – and at the very top, laying open, facedown, as if he’d just put it down a moment ago, My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard. You find it fascinating to see a book that spoke of life in such a granular way — realistic, simple, a normal man in a normal world, speaking in such extensive, caring detail on the small things in his life — on the bedside table of this enigma, this person who seemed to be, by far and large, a different species to all other men you’d ever met before. To see the spine so cracked and worn — as if he’d read it over and over again, in search of the equation for that simplicity, to thus inject into his own existence – a way to embalm his own world in such appreciation for the small but infinitely significant moments. You wonder if it’s taught him much— if he’s been able to find and implement whatever it was he’d searched for through so many reads. 
“Alright,” he says easily, but the look in his eyes is slightly wary. You recognize Glenn Gould’s rendition of the Goldberg Variations playing softly on the surround sound as you crawl into his bed – under the silk smooth sheets, bringing a pillow to blockade you from him, protect him. You don’t want him to be uncomfortable, but you desperately want to be close to him also. The two of you have barely talked tonight – too caught up in the observation of one another, like two animals circling in the wild. You want to talk to him. Want to hear the sound of his deep voice vibrate through your nerve endings. 
“Intimacy is… difficult for me,” he says slowly, swallowing. “It’s hard for me to get close to people… emotionally, physically. I need time to — I suppose, to warm up to them.”
“That’s — that’s okay. I understand,” you say, because you do, because you’re the same in many ways. 
“It’s why I love art,” he continues. “You can be close to something, feel its warmth, beauty – whatever feeling it is the artist intended to pull out of you, from a distance. Untouched – it’s untouchable. That comforts me for some reason.”
“I think – I think I understand that as well. Something, perhaps, about the idea of a thing remaining as it was initially conceived as, for all time, undisturbed by outside influences.”
“Yes – yes, exactly.” His eyes are alive with the fire of being understood.
You look down at his straining erection. You can’t help it. “You’re hard,” you say. You want to touch him so badly it’s a physical ache inside of you. 
“I’ve been hard since I first saw you.”
“Let me help.”
He shakes his head, “Not yet.”
“I was embarrassed that the other patrons would be able to tell how wet my pussy was lying there staring at you.” Shocking words. His eyes flutter shut, fuck, he murmurs under his breath, brings his hand up to rub at his jaw. You’ve noticed he does that a lot – a tell of sorts. He takes several deep breaths, the tension seeming to seep out of his body by sheer force of will. 
You take him in as he settles back into the pillows, relaxing, or at least pretending to. His face, smooth and serene, laying there watching you, despite his heavy erection, but the look in his eyes – it’s also slightly provoking. As if he wants you to challenge him, question him, but also afraid, perhaps, that you’ll force his hand, that he’ll be forced to give in to what you both want before he’s ready. You decide to choose mercy – change the subject. More curious to see how he chooses to play this out.
“Let’s play the question game.”
“The question game?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” he turns to lay on his side, facing you. Both of your hands are tucked beneath your cheeks. He’s wearing a soft, worn sweater, a tiny hole at the collar, the sleeves stretched and overly long. Oh, this may just be too much for you to handle. 
“We’ll start with something easy – what’s your favorite color?”
“That’s easy?”
“Yes.” You roll your eyes at him, laughing.
“Depends on the day,” he says very seriously. His blinks are slow, his pupils huge and dilated in the warm light of the lamp. You wonder if he’s taken something. Every time he blinks the thick fringe of his lashes fans over his cheeks, the pause of his languor allows you a moment to appreciate them.
“That’s not an answer – you have to give a real answer.” You want to reach your finger out and brush along that thick fringe, through the patchy hair on his face, threaded through with the smallest hint of silver, stick your nose in his hair and smell him right at the source. 
“It’s the only real answer there is – no one’s favorite color stays their favorite color forever.”
“Do you do this a lot?”
“What’s that?”
“Make things purposely difficult.”
A flash of his brilliant white teeth, “Oh, always.” You want very badly for him to bite into your flesh. 
“Okay, fine. What’s your favorite color right now?”
Without hesitation: “The color of your eyes – they’re very strange,” you can tell it’s a compliment, and he finally touches you again. A single finger, just the tip, to the point of your chin, tilting your head back slightly for his inspection, as if you were one of the pieces in his collection. You think you may become one by the end of this. You think you’d like that very much. You can feel the slight edge of his fingernail dig into your soft skin. 
“I already agreed to fuck you. You don’t have to woo me,” you breathe. You realize that, as of yet, he’s not overtly asked you to have sex with him – you throw the words out anyways, hoping to provoke him. This is too much. This man is too much. You don’t know what it is about him, but you want him desperately, like no one you’ve ever wanted before. You want him to overwhelm you – to take you by force. To take all choice and will and autonomy from your hands. You don’t care what will come of this, what will become of you after he’s done with you, if he discards you, forgets you –  none of that matters. All you care about, in this moment, is that he finally decides to take you, that he gives you the opportunity to let go, to relinquish control. To unfold from the pose for just a moment. A slightly deranged spark fizzes in your belly. Your heart pinches a burning little pain at the thought that he hasn’t kissed you yet, that you still don’t know the taste of his mouth. 
“None of my answers satisfy you. And yes, I do need to woo you. I find it very necessary.”
You try and emulate an unaffected scoff, his finger is still on your chin, but you feel your brow unwittingly fold into a confused frown. There is a tight knot of want coiled at the very center of you, burning hot and smoldering, and you need him to pick it apart with these strong fingers. He takes his hand away. The look on his face is very telling. He can read everything going on in your mind, you can tell. He looks like the cat that ate the goddamn canary. You try and take a deep, calming breath. “Alright, now you have to ask me one?” you divert. 
“Me?”
“Yes, you – that’s how the game works. I do one, you do one.”
“Alright,” he’s quiet for a second, contemplating, “Do you have siblings?”
“No, I’m an only child. Do you?”
“I had a brother, Damon. He died when we were younger.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, well– it was a very long time ago. But thank you. His daughter, Cee, is my ward now. ” Not his niece, not someone mentioned in any capacity as his family. The connection, maintained as if at a distance — his ward — cold. But he gives himself away, his tender vulnerability made transparent, with the sudden flash of bright fondness in his eyes at her name, despite his trying to remain aloof. You are not so easily fooled. You see him despite his attempts to deflect from the true core of himself. 
His gaze is so mercurial – at once relaxed, uncaring, and then flaring into something bright hot like a flash fire. But remote, remote always. Like the very center of him, his true gaze is very far away, very deep within him, and this gaze, the one he presents to the world, is merely a farce, a mask. A shroud he pulls over himself to keep others out. His own golden gossamer. You’re shocked that he’s shared this with you. 
“My parents died when I was very young,” you offer, your own morsel of ragged soul in the face of his sudden vulnerability. 
“I’m sorry to hear that, as well.”
“It wasn’t so bad, after the fact. I went to live with my aunt – my mother’s sister. She was a dancer. My childhood was… unconventional, but wonderful.”
“What about it was unconventional?”
You laugh a little, looking up at the coffered ceiling above you, the thick beams a rich, glossy mahogany. You feel his gaze on your face like a brand. He has not stopped looking at you since he first started. In a sea of years being observed, his gaze is singular in the pleasure it brings you.
“She was a dancer. I mean—” you hum, “What wasn’t unconventional about it? We lived in New York for several years, then Budapest for a time, and then she brought us here, to Paris, where we stayed until her death – where I’ve stayed since. Her girlfriends were always around – fellow dancers, costumes and makeup, drinking and men. They taught me how to smoke when I was eight — Gauloises like a fucking chimney, at all hours of the day, after that — I forced myself to stop a few years ago. Now I only have one on special occasions, sometimes.” He looks at you like he knows you’re the sort to make a special occasion out of a trip to the market. “She had many lovers. Parties… disaster everywhere, but the riotous, happy sort – not the tragic kind.”
“No?”
“No. Perhaps, to the outside eye it may have appeared different… I don’t know. No life for a child, I think. But it was wonderful. She always protected me. But– but never like a mother. She was never like a mother – more like – a friend, or an older sister.” You laugh fondly at the memories, but also a little sadly. In the eyes of an adult now, you’d never want such a life for a child of your own, as exciting as it was at the time.
“One time someone told me I ended up as I did, naked for the world to ogle at, as a means to earn money, because of her. Because of how she was. And perhaps they were right, but… but not in the way they meant —  to insult me. She taught me what art was, gave me the means to turn myself into it.” 
“Who the fuck said that to you?” His tone makes you look back at him now. All the mystery in his gaze is gone, only fury burns now – very clearly. If he’d let you, you’d cup his cheek, soothe him. 
You can see he isn’t ready yet, though. So all you say is: no one that really mattered – the truth, but you can see that it does not soothe him. 
 “What about you? What was your mother like?” You can appreciate how easily distracted he pretends to be, the deception of it, merely another shroud. 
Another one of his long pauses, filled with his eyes on you. He gives you the gift of his touch again. Thick fingers picking up a strand of your hair, running it between his grasp. You feel the slight ghost-like tingle of the tug along your scalp, there but also not, and a jerking shiver moves through you. All the hair on your body standing on end. Fuck, this man. 
“She was very beautiful – very cruel,” he says slowly, mesmerized by your hair sliding through his fingers. 
“Cruel to you?”
“To the world.”
“Why?”
“But also me.” Succinct in its truth. The thought is a terrible one – for anyone to have been cruel to this magnificent dream of a man. The backs of your eyes pinch. Another long pause. “Hmm,” he tilts his head side to side, still sliding your hair through his fingers, twisting it gently around his hair. He gives it a tiny tug, and you want to scoot forward, even just the smallest bit, just to be a little closer to him, to feel the brush of his belly against yours with the movement of his breathing. “It’s difficult to say – unhappiness, bitterness, boredom. A great and complicated concoction of things that made her into the eternally complex creature she was.”
“She died?”
“Yes. She killed herself.”
“Ezra– I’m so sorry,” the words leave you choked and breathless. 
He says it so plainly, starkly, like a slap to the face, one not meant to cause pain or harm, but shock. One meant to cause fear, something to say, look at how fucked up I am, stay away or I’ll infect you with it too. You scoot closer now, you can’t help it, and he goes immediately still, frozen – eyes wide, hesitant, but you don’t touch him. Your hair is still clutched in his hand, and his eyes move back and forth between your own and his hold on you. You’re close enough now, though, that you can feel the heat rolling off his body. Your eyes flutter shut, you say again: “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“She was too vain to grow to old age.” You feel him relax, comforted by the indication that you’re not going to touch him just yet. “I think she felt it was the only recourse for her.”
You open your eyes again, and he’s still staring at you. You so badly want to know what he’s thinking, to feel the press of his mouth against yours, to know the taste of his tongue, the feel of his incisors pressing into your skin. 
You pivot three-sixty again: “Do you want kids?” He lets out a loud barking laugh at that, head thrown back so the tendons in his neck jump out starkly. Your cunt clenches around nothing. Wet and jealous. 
“This is a very difficult game,” he says, giving you a sly look. 
“We don’t have to play anymore, if you don’t want to.” A great lie – you never want to stop playing with him. 
“No, I want to keep going.” He slides his whole hand into your hair now, palm cupping the entire side of your head in its broad expanse, and you can’t help the desperate moan that claws out of your throat. His responding hum is all-knowing.  “I don’t know. But I love being… I like being able to imagine it.”
Your mind has been lost to a daze induced by the heat of his palm. “Children?” you murmur.
“Yes.”
Your fingers are twisted into the front of your shirt, clawing at yourself to maintain respect for his boundaries. “I want them. Lots of them. I hated being an only child. I always felt alone. I want to have lots of babies.” And his eyes flare with heat at that. The first blazing sign of lust in them tonight. Everything else before this, you realize, was merely a low simmering boil. The fist in your hair tightens so that your head tilts back slightly, the line of your throat exposed for his eyes to follow. 
“Lots of them?” You nod your head minutely, wide eyed, equally ensnared by that look in his gaze as you are by his hand. 
“Then you shall have them, Sparrow.” You let out a shuddering breath, turn your face into the pillow, enjoying the slight pull to your sensitive scalp as his hand follows, try to breathe deep, temper your racing heart. You’re so wet, you can feel it seeping out of you in a constant throbbing stream. The conversation serving as a more intense form of foreplay than anything else you’ve ever done with a man. 
“It’s my turn again. When was the last time you fucked someone?” Blunt – thrown at your face to throw you off kilter. Oh, he fucking loves this. A broken little whimper claws out of your throat at that. Your cheeks are flushed, you can feel them burning, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. The smug look in his eyes taunts you, tells you he knows just how soaked you are. But it is also wild, as wanting as you are. 
“Hmm?” he presses.
“Three years ago.” It’s his turn to be shocked now. You see the pause of surprise in that bright light within his gaze. 
“Three years? Why?”
“You’re not the only one who finds it difficult to be close to people.”
“And yet you agreed to come here with me?”
“And yet I agreed to come here with you.” You don’t return the question. You wouldn’t like to know, you don’t think. And you can tell he sees that in your gaze, for he doesn’t offer up the information either. You like the mystique of him. Like some eldritch beast, a deity of old, something amorphous, not to be contained or understood. The unknowable aspect of him is appealing to you for reasons you haven't quite figured out yet, despite this game of questions you’re flirting with. 
You go next: “Are you lonely?”
“Yes, very.” A pause, and then: “You are too.” This is no question. He can see it, recognizes the same scent of it that permeates the air around him, following you. “You seemed it, laying in the center of that crowded room, naked – bared for everyone to see.” It is not said cruelly. He is only telling you that which you already know about yourself, that which is plain for the whole world to see. “And then shrouded in gold, as if you wanted to hide that vein of aloneness that flows through you – it didn’t work very well.”
“Do you think everyone could see it?”
“No.” Good. You only wanted him. 
You take another turn, you can’t help but break the rules with him. “Have you ever been with someone who– who you didn’t really want to be with, but you were– you were so lonely and needed… something… or someone?” All the surety you’d posed your previous questions with is gone now. He’s already discerned so much of you, what’s a little more bared skin? “So you just– you just settled for being with that person even though you knew it was wrong, and the only thing on your mind was the other person you really wanted to be with?”
Without hesitation: “Yes.”
“I think that’s the only type of relationship I’ve ever had. Although, the other person hasn’t really existed – just – just something I’ve thought up in my own head.”
“I accidentally called her by the other person’s name. She never spoke to me again. It was terrible– terrible of me.”
“I want to touch you so badly,” you plead suddenly. Unable to hold it in anymore in the light of all he’s shared with you. Your voice cracking and begging. “I want you to touch me, so badly.”
“I know.” Yes, he does. “You want me to fuck you.” All you can do is let your eyes flutter shut, try to continue to breathe, nod your head. 
“Why was your mother cruel to you? What did she do?” You feel like crying now. 
“Many things… I had terrible night terrors as a child. Scared her half to death. I’d scream and cry and sleep walk. For years. She didn’t know what to make of me. Some sort of demon come from her very womb to possess and haunt her house. She hated me – would lock me in a closet furthest from her bedroom to keep my howling away from her.” 
The blazing heat of anger floods your cheeks, your eyes filled with tears, and he clicks his tongue, smoothes his thumb over the slope of your cheek. “None of that, sweet girl.”
“You were just a little boy – she should have– she should have comforted you. Helped you.”
“It wasn’t in her nature. You cannot fault a thing for not being what it was never made to be. She was a killer of soft things – within herself, within me too, I think. Or she tried, at least. She tried to kill everything soft she came into contact with. But she did love me. In her own way – a wrong way, but she did. That comforts me immensely.”
“That she loved you even if it was the wrong way?”
He nods, “And that I loved her – despite all her flaws.”
“Why?”
“I… I appreciate the idea of being a bad person, and still being able to find someone to love you.”
“You’re a killer.” It is not a question for you already know the answer – you can see it in his eyes, it is his inheritance. You know that either way, it won’t make a difference to you. 
“I am, indeed. But, are you?.” The soft curve of his cunning smile is so incredibly beguiling. The most tempting thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life. You shake your head, you’re not, you never have been. You think it must be very obvious at first glance, for the patronizing look he gives you as he asks anyways. 
“Sometimes I can be very bad,” he whispers slowly, drags the tip of his finger over your shoulder, down the swell of your breast, stopping just shy of your peaked nipple, circling the point. 
“What do you do?” your voice is breathless, beseeching. 
He smooths his thumb over your bottom lip, pushes between to get inside, presses down on the hard edge of your bottom teeth to inspect the wet gleam of your tongue. “I steal beautiful things for myself–” His voice is like smoke – his confession fortuitous, on the verge of disappearing. His mystique enshrouds the both of you. You hope you disappear alongside him. 
“Is that what you’re doing now? Stealing me?”
“Yes.”
“I think I like being stolen.”
-
He wakes, very late into the night, or very early in the morning, the confounding blue hue of the outside world seeping in through the heavy drapes over the tall windows. Shielding the two of you from the real world.
Your body is entirely draped over his own. You’ve invaded him in your sleep, taken over all the space and air and thought he’s ever possessed. The soft weight of your breasts presses into his chest, your head tucked in the hollow of his clavicle so that he can feel each pass of your damp breath wash over his throat and chin. He expects to feel overwhelmed, uncomfortable, perhaps even disgusted, so much skin, so much heat, your legs intertwined with his – but all he can focus on is the fullness of your tits pressed up against him, the hot wet apex of your cunt against his thigh. You’re wet in your sleep for him – he can feel your dampness seeping through the silk of your extra panties. 
One of your hands is curled over his shoulder and he brings it to his mouth, presses a kiss to the soft, small palm. His hand dwarfs yours, swallows it whole. He sucks each one of the tips of your fingers into his mouth, bites down as gently as he can. Your hips start to shift over him, needy cunt trying to unconsciously rub up against his thigh. 
He’s going to fuck you now. His cock is hard, aching, leaking, balls heavy – has been for ages, but finally, finally his mind has caught up. Thank fuck. 
He passes his palm down the smooth line of your back, pushes his t-shirt you’re wearing up your back to get to your skin. This lovely smooth back he’d spent almost an hour staring at in that gallery. He feels a terrible, unfounded curl of jealousy, once again, that anyone else in the world has ever gazed upon the magnificence that is your skin. He wants it to be only for him, he wants you to be only for him – to own you.
His hand moves down to clutch the full swell of your bottom, pushes under your panties to take a handful of your bare flesh. He bends his knee slightly to put more pressure on your core and starts to roll your hips over him. You let out a soft little moan, sleepy, so sweet. 
“It’s time to wake up, Sparrow. I’m going to fuck you now.”
“Ezra–” you murmur, coming to. Your body seems to take stock of the situation before your mind does, little cunt suddenly grinding down more firmly onto his thigh. You let out a moan that goes straight to his cock. He grips your hips and flips you over, settling between the spread of your thighs, slotting his length into your wet cleft, he starts a slow rock that has his head pressing up and into your clit. 
“Tell me how you want to be fucked.”
Your eyes are glassy, dazed and confused. He says again, “Tell me how you want to be fucked, or I will decide for you.”
And then your soft little voice, grabbing him by the balls and showing him that as sleepy or drowsy or small as you may appear, you’re still aware of the power you hold over him: “I think I’d like you to decide for me, please.”
Fuck– he deepens the pressure of his thrusts so that his tip presses into your opening over your panties. Your jaw is hinged open, panting wet breaths as you moan for him. 
He sits back on his heels then, pulls his t-shirt up over your head and then slides your panties over your hips and down your legs, grips your knees to spread your legs wide for him. 
He was right, your cunt is the same color as your nipples. Beautiful. 
It’s drooling, begging for him, and oh, how that fills him with pleasure – for such a beautiful thing to desire him, as much as he desires it. He ghosts the back of his knuckles over your slit, using his thumbs to spread your lips wide – he bends for a taste, moans deep and long from his chest. 
“Fuck, you’re so sweet. Do you want me to feed your cunt, baby?”
“Ezra, please – yes – I want it so bad.”
“I know, I could see – all night, I could see how hungry you were. I’m going to eat you now.”
Please, please. 
He settles between your thighs. Soft little licks to your swollen clit, then down to thrust his tongue into your hole. He grips the back of one thigh to press it up and back into your chest, uses his other hand to press down low on your pelvis, gives you more pressure as he sucks your clit back into his mouth. He can feel the clench of your pussy around his tongue, the shake in your thighs. Your keening moans move through him, have him grinding his aching cock into the mattress. You’re going to come in his mouth, he can feel it, taste it, your slick running from you, sweet and musky, all for him. 
Your hands clutch at his curls, pulling and tugging hard as you arch your back and start to orgasm. Ezra, Ezra, Ezra. It’s a litany, a benediction. You are a work of art come to life to sing into his ear. 
He gentles his mouth over your quivering sex, laps slowly at your pulsing entrance. He wipes his mouth over the tender slope of your inner thigh and goes back to his knees, licks his palm of your wet as he watches your gaze on him. 
He cradles your small foot in his hold. He likes the thought that he can grasp that which has carried you through your life, in his hand. For some reason, it fills him with immense pleasure, the feel of your soft foot, the thought of you walking through life, walking through the world, towards him, to find him. Always him, only him. 
There is a wound in him, dark, and putrid, overwhelming his existence always. It was only through the cathartic fulfillment of holding a beautiful thing in his hands that he felt reprieved of the terrible thing. He feels that reprieve in this moment, with the delicate weight of your small foot cradled within his palm. 
He brings it to his mouth and digs his thumb harshly into the elegant arch, forcing a moan out of you, deepening the curve of your spine, then drags his teeth along the instep, presses a soft kiss to your first toe. He can see the clench of your little hole at his ministrations, the flush of your skin from the peaks of your breasts to your cheeks. 
Your breath is hitching, breasts quivering with your gasps. He bends to lick into your mouth, thin ankle still held in his grasp, finally, finally taking the taste of your tongue onto his own and you moan, wanton and desperate, your legs wrapping around his waist to bring him closer. 
“I’m going to give you my cock now,” he presses into your skin, open mouthed kisses to your throat, your neck, your breasts. He nips a gentle bite to one swollen little nipple. 
He grasps the base of his cock, passes his hand slowly from root to tip once, twice, and then presses the flushed head to your clit, grinds there for a moment, you jerk, then moves down to your hole, feeds you just the tip. You cant your hips, try and take him deeper, but he holds back, pulls out and moves back up to circle your clit again, and then back down again to press inside. “No, no, no, Ezra, please – I need it so badly – so badly.” He watches a tiny tear, track down your temple and back into your hair, and he gives you the entire thick length of him at that, fucks inside, all the way to the end of you. 
“There? How’s that?” He presses a kiss to your breast, sucks it into his mouth. The taste of you is godly. “Is that better, needy thing?”
“So good – so good,” you sigh. Stretching your arms high above your head, arching your back to let him in deeper. 
“Fuck, yes–” he groans. He sits back on his heels, grips your hips and starts to give it to you hard. The strong swing of his hips causing the soft jiggle of your tits with every thrust. Your eyes are closed, lashes fluttering, soft mouth open and wet. So fucking beautiful. 
“Will you let me fuck your ass too?” Your head is already nodding, all rational thought currently being fucked out of you. “You will, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes – anything you want.”
“Good girl.”
He changes the angle, fucks up into that spongy devastating part of you he plans to own after this is done, and he starts to feel the tight pull of your inner muscles working to suck him deeper. “That’s it, beautiful, just like that. Taking me so wonderfully.” 
“God– I– I’m–” you press your palms to his belly and he brings one of your ankles up to his shoulder, presses a kiss to the bone. 
“God isn’t here right now – just me–” He grits his teeth, gives it to you harder. He can feel his orgasm start to pool, hot and liquid, at the base of his spine, balls drawing up tight. 
“Give me another, Sparrow, one more. Need to feel it around my cock,” spit through clenched teeth. 
“Oh, fuck – that’s so good,” you moan, and then you’re milking him, pulling his come out of him with the tight wet clutch of your muscles. 
“Fucking perfect, yes – just like that.” He lets his head roll back on his neck, hand grasping your ankle as he fills you. 
-
He watches you eat your pain au chocolat. Sitting in the warm morning sun of the observatory. Tiny bites of the flaky sweet bread, dollop of chocolate sitting at the corner of your mouth that he plans to lick off in a second. He is mesmerized. He knows, empirically, he probably looks like a fucking creep, staring you down as he is, but he can also see the subtle preen in your gaze when you glance up at him every so often. You enjoy this part of your play as much as he does, so it seems. The watching. 
“Will you let me take you somewhere today?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Brazil? I’d show you the farm.”
You swallow, the most guileless eyes he’s ever beheld, shining in the light. “Brazil? Really?”
“Of course, treasure. Or anywhere you want. Your happiness is mine to watch over now. I would do anything for you.” As he says it, he can tell, you did not lie when you said you’d like to be stolen. 
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regular-gnome · 2 months
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Through many AUs I've been through, yours are the one I like the most, because it's a more realistic one.
I can see that the "cruelty" of other Collectors are not like that they are evil.
For a being that is older than universe, they are like the Gardeners of Stars, as a gardener you have to cut it out what is dead, you have to treat the soil, prepare it for a new tree, now with planets it's kind the same, they visit, they watch, and so they decide if some species is worth to keep and if they are not worth for keeping.
And so, this process of leaving a juvenile collector in a planet till the dominant species dies is kinda a hardening process, in order for them to grow mature and to not let feelings intervene in the decision process, like being a doctor, you must put aside the fear of hurting the patient in order to heal the patient.
But in TOH things got different, they found a species that represented danger to themselves, so they used another species to kill the titans and the little collector paid the piper.
Im very glad you enjoy the AU:D
The concept is rooted in the idea that generally, people or characters don't choose evil simply for the sake of being evil. But nobody is omnicent, they react to whats happening, trying to figure out what might be "best" as they go without really a way to know for sure if its a right call. Having power to destroy a planet with swipe of finger rises the stakes for literally everyone. When the Collector was releashed during King's Tide the game changed. If Belos had managed to control them - nobody would have been able to challenge him. Even Odalia tried to suggest totally reshaping the isles. Seeing anyone as mostly/ only dangerous power sources creates power imbalance, something that can evolve into very shaky and actually dangerous relation when the other side realises they were never really considered a equal person and having the ability to revange. There is a lot of implications and possibilities when someone possesses such power with no oversight and unlimited time but also is a person that doesnt want to be alone:D
If involvement with mortals ends in some kind of complications the collectors will be around to see the consequences, even if they don't directly experience them so sort of desensitization toward the very life they are trying to preserve is bound to happen. "They live for so short and can cause so much change in their own system, its best to control the situation" type of mindset. Also thinking of ecosystem like gardens that need work on makes it easier to deal with, especially since with the scale of galaxy they cant just spend unlimited amout of time in one place full of creatures that do not want to be preserved. Their actions come from a place of care but there is inherent cruelty in their concern
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Sooo yeah, its the perspective that might develop in that kind of situation and might end up with leaving one of their own alone for eons. But who knows, this AU is a lot of theories in a trenchcoat and i dont want to defend their actions. Killing all titans? yeah thats bad. It's more about theorizing why anyone would consider that a reasonable option while also not being evil just cuz
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bluegumballmf · 2 months
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lately ive realized i DESPISE the way the witch is treated in the stp fandom. Like,she's playful and guarded, not some uwu cat girl. She was created from a betrayal of trust and she shifts her personality both as a trauma response AND because the player’s perception of her shifts
Like shit we can see changing personalities as a trauma response IN THE WITCH
She is TRYING to confuse the player so that he doesn't hurt her anymore cus she trusted him and then got stabbed in the back like shes not just a uwu catgirl im so mad she just gets reduced to that. Also like- adaptability is a necessary feature for humans to have to survive.
And the princess's whole thing is adaptability, so ofc she shifts when someone who she trusted stabs her in the back like
Aughhh i hate it when characters are reduced to stereotypes
But like i could go on for hours about how the princess is boiled down to certain traits about her in the stp fandom because it irks me so bad
Aughhh let her be a deep character for one second.
AND ALSO FOR YOUR ACTIONS HAVING CONSEQUENCES BEING THE ENTIRE PURPOSE IF THE GAME IT ISNT ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE FANDOM NEARLY AS MUCH AS ITS NEEDED TO BE.
Im biased for the thorn route because it shows that gaining back trust is a mutual process that invloves both of you adressing that you hurt the other
The princess herself reminds me of a trauma response actually; Using adaptability to stay alive, always becoming what you expect her to be. Its how she survives, and its a really good parallel to abuse victims or victims of any kind
Goddd im so normal about this game and its metaphors
NO BC GOING BACK TO THE THORN ROUTE-FORGIVENESS WHEN ITS ACTUALLY EARNED AND RECIPROCATED IS SO GOOD
GRRER
you have no idea how long this rant has been stewing in my autistic little head
Ijust
I think the stranger route is the best example of someone right after receiving trauma
Scrambling to figure out what happened-why did they fracture? Why did everything change? who are they now? (edited)
They're scrambling for answers and overwhelmed with emotions and so so confused and so scared, because this trauma-as little or as large as it may seem, will affect them
It reminds me of some people ive known who've reacted similarly to trauma and thats a thing i love about stp
It doesnt shy away from being realistic and raw and ugly, Because thats what humanity is. And even gods can be human, even gods can be ugly.
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randaccidents · 1 month
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Is the heartless au just cccc without heart /silly
Anyway explanation for the au because.
hehehe oh you gave me permission to RAMBLE you don't know what youve done (also hiii youre somehow my first ask ever on this blog XD)
SO the most basic thing that my dream laid out is one concept: What if Heart, after getting sent into Apathy, just... doesnt wake up? That whatever happened in there, he is no longer the Emotional Side, but the heart the muscle that beats the pump that pushes blood through the body. And it is entirely self-inflicted, because Mind can win alright? He'll be efficient and functional and emotionless, except emotions are what gave him life and without it hes just a pump.
(This AU also comes with a lot of guilt from Mind and Soul who made decisions and actions that pushed Heart to devolve into function, as well as eventual healing for Heart and permanent consequences)
I've written a lot of like. The Details down somewhere haha but thats the main gist idea that came from my dream. The developed version is like;
Heart gets an extended stay in the Apathy Hole, and that betrayal combined with Mind insulting him leads him to invite in apathy and essentially kill half of himself so that all he is is the muscle known as the heart. Mind and Soul eventually discover this and try to wake him up and get him back. When they do they have to deal with the consequences of what they pushed him to do, because until they do Heart will fight them to return to emptiness, where he didnt have to feel hurt and betrayed and cold. (Heart's physical condition is directly tied to his function, so until hes willing to accept being the Emotional Side again he backslides rapidly at all times, and Mind and Soul are selfish)
As a little treat, in this AU they also change their names to reflect their new roles:
Heart: Heart (changes the least, essentially frozen in time until he wakes again) 
Mind: Perseverance
Soul: Guilt (EDIT BUT I CHANGED HIS NAME TO PENITENCE)
I will say that I really enjoy making it so that, in scenarios where HMS change drastically from their established roles, its considered a loop ender. So the consequences of Heart devolving into function ends the loops permanently, and Perseverance and Guilt have to deal with the consequences forever instead of having them be erased.
It's called Heartless because Heart technically isnt there anymore, but emotions always finds a host. :)
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theerurishipper · 2 months
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I think a reason why I'm a little critical on Marinette/Ladybug is because she doesn't think too hard on how her lies impacts others she's fine listening to others request without at least thinking too damn hard on her own if this is right or not as in the case of Fu and Gabriel. I'm shocked again because how in the world would you take a request from someone who has tormented the city people grief and hurt a lot of people and not throw them in jail?
I know it's weird to compare myself and her since it totally unrelated but like she's way too different from me to even consider the potential consequences of the future. I get she's 14 but how long will she keep this up I wish the writers bothered to at least give her a guilty conscious or contemplate the way s5 ended because how did she not freak out or be guilt ridden of lying to your boyfriend like she can't actually think she can keep this up can she?
I ain't mad I get she's nothing more than digital pixel it's more the writers that just get me annoyed if you understand because they're portraying her happily. She's smiling kissing her boyfriend while I'm just sitting down in the couch watching all this unfold and ask... Wtf was that happy ending for exactly she really allowed the bad guy to get away with no moral repercussions? I don't even care about the damn ship no more because this is more urgent the hero recklessly crossed a line and she gets a happy ending wtf?
I bet next season there's just going to act like it was a teeny weeny tiny mistake and she's sorry and Adrien the pitiful puppet will forgive her as the writers want.
Fourteen year old do know better i'm a little annoyed how people downplay their intelligence that or use it to justify everything she doesnt within the series are they making her become a villain or something. Like how much does she need to fumble the bag so hard she ain't worthy to be a guardian nor a leader from what I saw from the series after s4 and post s5.
Maybe I'm wrong is so i'm fine with being corrected. Rant over. Thank you for reading.
I agree. It's not the fact that she makes mistakes, it's that the narrative bends over backwards to justify her and pretend it's actually a good thing. She doesn't learn anything, she doesn't grow, and she doesn't change. It's a writing issue that spoils the whole show, I'm afraid.
Thank you for your ask!
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kingcunny · 1 month
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i think she heard he was sick and shouldn't be bothered at so she didn't go see him, the first time she saw him was when he appeared in the Throne Room and she saw how horrible it was. i don't think rhaenys hates viserys like people are pointing out, sure its his fault, doesnt mean rhaenys didnt love him as a cousin, shes clearly affectionate with him in episode 5
episode 5 was also before laena and laenor died 💔
but of course rhaenys loves her cousin. shes known viserys since he was born. they grew up under the same roof. he was her little buddy. her best friend, but its been a long time since then. hes no longer that little boy and shes no longer that little girl.
and whether viserys meant it or not, hes hurt her. he stood by silently as she was humiliated and her birthright stolen twice. first by his father and then himself. he refuses to deal with problems that her family must then suffer the consequences for. (stepstones, laenor, the silent 5, vaemond. whichever version were going with.) all while giving rhaenyra and daemon free reign to do as they like.
im sure when rhaenys got back to the red keep she was conflicted. of course she wants to see viserys. she doesnt want anything to do with viserys. when she does finally ask about seeing him people shift uncomfortably and glance at each other and tell her shell have to talk to otto or alic- fuck that. fuck him. she didnt want to see viserys anyway. rhaenys wants to get this over with and go home and see if she still has a husband or not.
rhaenys knows viserys has been sick, but probably didnt realize how bad things had gotten until she sees him for the first time in the throne room. theres that one shot where she looks upset after seeing him, but what does this change for her? shes still there for the same reason. to settle corlys succession and go home. its upsetting to see how badly her cousins deteriorated, but they havent been close in years. and after all that goes down during the succession hearing, i dont think rhaenys would be exactly itching to see viserys afterwards.
then he dies that night. their last interaction was as king and subject.
of course rhaenys loved her cousin. but she loved the boy she grew up with, not the king he became.
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calamarispiderart · 3 months
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your interpretation of heart's blindness is so cool and true. giving heart that agency benefits both his character and the overall story so much. something about either mind or soul somehow having the authority to afflict heart like that just rubs me the wrong way tbh. like a big part of the story is they're all one and the same, can't survive without eachother. there's like 3 lines in the soul eclectic about soul's tridential authority being pretty surface level, the only way for him to hurt heart and mind is to hurt himself, so why should it be different when it comes to blinding heart
thank you, yes!! i have a lot of gripes with the way hearts blindness (and heart himself honestly.....) is framed and depicted in some spheres of the community.... im sure its unintentional but i feel a lot of people forget heart has just as much agency, power and control as the other two. him being blind doesnt change that whatsoever and the consistent framing of his blindness as a punishment or some kind of... karmic consequence is just.... yeah. rubs me the wrong way too
...i feel theres definitely some ableism coming into play whenever people frame heart as like... the weak beaten down one thats always abused by the other two, or maybe he just sucks at everything because 'ohh he cant see so he bumps into stuff and is always confused!!!' (which itself holds a fundamental misunderstanding of how blindness can work and manifest), or just framed as otherwise lesser than the other two in a variety of ways ....im sure you can imagine what im talking about. its very much a problem which i hope people realise they need to correct.
ableism aside, while i am biased due to this being my own subjective interpretation of things i do agree and feel heart having the choice and control over his blindness is both just a lot more fitting for his character/themes overall and just....far more interesting for the dynamics of the story? maybe it doesnt hit all the 'dramatic angst notes' in the same way as other interpretations but... yeah idk im just rambling at this point B:•P
im glad u like it!! thank u for sharing ur thoughts B:•]
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dq-avenquire · 1 year
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the bloomingdale arc always got me especially emotional for whatever reason. i think its because there’s like. close to no happiness to be found in it, relative to the other stories, yknow? like most of them have a bittersweet “we’ve lost things but look at what we’ve gained” but bloomingdale just...doesn’t. the only thing you gain is a boat which like don’t get me wrong. the boat is sick i love the music but. emotionally? im still so bothered sometimes like. marion bloome is a lonely, neglected child. i know that after you clear that section of the game it’s clear that she was/is loved by people who aren’t just after her money, but that doesn’t change that statement. she’s an orphan in a house too big for her to grow into unguided and alone. she has a nanny, sure, but by the time we enter town it’s clearly been a bit since they’ve spent time together. the servants genuinely respect and care for her, but they’re servants, and clearly attached enough to the hierarchy to be intent on keeping up that role, even if they’re willing to do it out of love rather than pay. the dollmaker, kind and skilled as he is, can’t be there for her always. he can try to fill the void with the doll, but even that feels like a sad sort of metaphor. like. when you’re a kid with no real power and people who will do almost anything you ask and more money than you can understand it all just feels empty. none of it feels like it has real consequence and that sort of vacancy makes it all like a game. make believe. marion feels the doll is both as empty as her as it is the only thing with any real feeling because it is a mirror of her. personally i like to think that’s also why marionette is shown more to be spoiled and bratty - mirroring the inner child that is upset and hurt, yknow? conversely, marion feels super emotionally mature - which means she ABSOLUTELY knew that people came to “befriend” her out of greed and nothing more. but what else are you meant to do when you’re lonely? it’s the only resource she has. none of this has even touched on the fact that marion died alone. those last few words? that last wish she made? everything in her heart told her that she was going to die alone. if the fygg hadn't landed in her hands, she would have died alone, and her body would've rotted away til she was found - and i refuse to believe that would've happened quickly, given that i doubt marionette would've understood everything fast enough to bury her quickly, and apparently no one noticed that. her last moments in the world are spent rushing greetings and goodbyes and explanations to a friend she never gets to spend time together with for real. i just!! man im so upset on this fictional childs behalf. and it doesnt even really get better, yknow? her wish is such a sad thing like. i wish for you to be happy. i wish for you to find friends and family in the way i lost and will never be able to get back. i wish for you to find purpose. i wish for you to learn things i will never grow up to see. i wish for you to be happy. i wish for you to keep playing. i wish for you to keep playing. and it doesn't even really come true. marionette tries, sure, but she doesn't really...get it? and you can't blame her! she's the wonky creation made by otherworldly power that never should have touched her in the first place, and being human is such a difficult thing even for those born as one. but she tries anyway, even if she's hurt, even if she learnt to love seconds before learning to lose, even if she's navigating grief without a guide. and she makes friends, and learns just as she's told, but it's all...off. the people she "befriends" are more interested in her wallet than the child in front of them, and the things she learns are distorted. and then you come along, and as far as she's concerned you've come to take her like marion was taken, and it's no wonder she's terrified of you. and then she's kidnapped, and that's somehow better. it's all part of the game, right? she hasn't read the rules, so how is she meant to know? and then, when the tyrantula throws her against the ground of course she doesn't understand. of course it hurts her, even if she doesn't know why or in what way. (how ironic that a spider would be the one to cut the puppet's strings) (you save her, sure, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough, not to me) she goes home. her world stays small. she doesn’t make friends, unless we count you. she visits the grave. she gets to say goodbye. she gets to be hurt, and see her friend one more time. and then...that's just it. that's it. she's just a doll. it's not like zere rocks - there will be no one coming to visit her, who will finally understand, and pay their respects. it's not like jona, who looks forward and makes her own future. there is no reuniting in the stars. there's just you, in an empty mansion kept alive by servants who will never know that the person they serve died long, long ago, that it's far too late to say goodbye to any version of her. just a forgotten dollshouse in the back of town, with marionette silent and unmoving on the floor, right back where she started. there's just you, the player. you get to keep playing, at least.
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