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diorsbrando · 2 months

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I’D DIE FOR YOU (AND I HAVE). ( s.a. )

sousuke aizen & black!fem!reader.

cw ━━ ! minors, blank and ageless blogs DO NOT INTERACT. reader is portrayed as a black woman but you do not have to imagine her that way. using this map of the seireitei as a reference (i searched high and low for a consistent accurate one but it was hard). the first half is set pre-ryoka invasion / pre-soul society arc. the second half is aizen-centric (from his pov told from the 3rd person) and set post-tybw arc, years after he was sealed away in mugen, also including mention of events from vol. 1 of can't fear your own world (a light novel that's post-tybw & can be considered canonical); so all this being said: SPOILERS i guess???? of course you're welcome to read if you don't care about spoilers! somewhat based on 'die for you' by the weeknd & even more loosely based on 'dark red' by steve lacy. contains themes of heavy-ish angst, existential crises (?) & inner emotional turmoil within reader + aizen (separately). descriptions of character death, blood and violence. descriptions of manipulation/mind games. aizen is an unkind man. proofread (i did my best).

word count ━━ 11k

notes ━━ ! the way this fic was supposed to finished a month ago...but life once more gets in my way. and the way that it's this long....i anticipated the max being 10k but i greatly underestimated how long it would take to flesh out my idea. anywho i'm somewhat reentering my bleach era again. i’m not sure what it is but character analyses in the form of fanfiction is my jam rn like i really enjoyed writing this (i got tired of the length by like... 7k words lmao) but i like how this turned out. i've watched & read quite a bit of content that provide explanations as to why aizen is the way he is so i wanted to try my own portrayal of that in the context of canonical events. how i characterized him here is partially inspired by a fic i read about him last year so shout out to them for their support :D i hope i've depicted and humanized aizen well ♡. reblogs + commentary are heavily appreciated!!!!!

THE PAD OF YOUR THUMB SLOWLY glided against your bottom lip, the lingering aftertaste of jasmine tea still on its surface and on your breath. The absentminded motion of your thumb caressing your mouth, as if in deep contemplation, continued as you stared at the clock hanging on the wall above you.

It was past eleven, and the midnight hour only continued to draw near as time sustained its temporal march. And there you sat at your desk, floating in the limbo of your mind that was filled with hesitancy and admittedly, budding anticipation.

Your gaze lowered to the now empty porcelain cup, nothing remaining of its contents except the shriveled remnants of herbs and a few wayward drops of the brew.

Your senior comrade, captain Sōsuke Aizen, was correct in his prediction that you'd take a liking to its floral and delicate taste when he gifted you a jar full of the jasmine tea leaves as well as other ingredients.

The captain of Squad 5 seemed to be correct about a lot of things.

His intelligence and foresight, along with his kind and politely witty disposition, were qualities that you found somewhat charming, and gradually drew you closer to him.

Being the current third seat of the 9th company, your barracks and those of squad 5's were relatively close to each other's, so often you'd catch glimpses of and run into Captain Aizen on a pretty normal basis. Over the years, the conversations that bounced between the two of you expanded past the realm of formalities between a higher and lower ranking officer, and instead ranged in territories from literature, to art, to food & drink, and even to the politics of the government for which they were soldiers for.

Sometimes, you found it hard to believe that you managed to befriend a man like him. A man who seems to have mastered the balance between being a gentle soul, helpful to others, but also possessed enough refined power and skills to be named a captain within the Gotei 13.

Especially a man who wasn’t even of your own squad.

Despite the increasingly friendly relations and generally pleasant conversation, there were few moments where Aizen's words didn't feel quite. . . . real━ he didn't feel real. He spoke eloquently, often relying on figurative language to further illustrate his point and to breathe meaning into seemingly plain and meaningless words. But at times those words, his tone felt stained; stained with some substance or color you couldn't quite place. An enigmatic façade was painted over his speech, and it took too much mental capacity to try and find your own meaning in it.

So you'd often brush it off. Your over-reliance on your own reasoning that 'you weren’t able to come to a conclusion because there is no problem a conclusion could be generated from' successfully quieted your mind’s voice. You'd also frequently blame exhaustion, or your newfound hobby of watching human psychological crime shows during your off days for these subconscious ideas you had.

But you feared that the request Aizen made of you yesterday, the source of your current predicament, couldn't be blamed on any of those things. You looked at the clock again before returning to stare at your empty tea cup. For what reason could Sōsuke Aizen wish to meet you outside of the 1st division barracks? Specifically at this hour? You immediately thought of his question as uncharacteristic of him but prevented yourself from jumping to any further conclusions.

Aizen was a reasonable man, and you were sure there was a reasonable explanation.

With a final sigh of acquiescence, you stood up from your sitting position to retie your yukata before slipping a thicker, dark colored haori on top. You were unsure how cold it was this late at night or how long you'd be out, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

You paused for a moment, glancing longingly at your vanity mirror a few times, clearly torn between a decision, before giving in with a soft groan. Grabbing your favorite perfume, you quickly spritzed the spray onto both your inner wrists, either sides of your neck, and stray areas on your clothes. You’d proceed to make sure your hair was in order and your lips were as moisturized and glossy as a pair of tear-filled eyes before making your way to the door and slipping on your sandals.

Meeting with a captain— with Aizen of all people— in the dead of night resembled too closely to forbidden lovers rendezvousing under a fruit tree to fulfill their desires of embracing one another, with no one but the moon as their witness. The comparison alone caused the apples of your cheeks to burst aflame with embarrassment, and you lightly chastised yourself for even indulging in such an inappropriate train of thought. Such a scenario seemed far too deluded to even be considered ‘wishful thinking’.

But those delusions still seemed to make more sense than whatever other conclusion you have yet to reach.

Making your way out of your personal quarters, you activated your shunpo technique, stealthily hopping from one rooftop to the other in an effort to make it to Squad 1 barracks quicker.

After several minutes, your mind mostly engulfed with the 'what if's', the soles of your sandals finally touched ground, and you stood a few feet away from the massive walls and bridges that connected to and from the barracks. Even at night you were able to make out the bold-printed kanji for the number 1 that was painted on the building.

When you arrived, even from a nearby rooftop, you didn't see anyone around. Feelings of confusion and worry began to creep up and flicker to life in your mind.

But, as if your thoughts were as audible, you felt a light breeze of wind behind you, a familiar sound that indicated someone had made their presence known.

Startled, you reflexively reached for your zanpakuto, when you remembered that you hadn't even brought it with you. It still laid against the wall near your bed, just where you placed it earlier when you were relieved of your duties for the day.

You didn't think you needed it necessarily if you were just going to meet with Aizen, hence why taking it with you slipped your mind.

The flickers of concern were swiftly extinguished as your brain caught up with your body upon realizing who just appeared. A relieved sigh left your lips, a breath of air that seemed to release all the tension that had a grip on your heart and wound tight within your muscles. "Ah! Good evening Captain Aizen. You caught me off guard for a moment there."

"My apologies, that was not at all my intention." The Fifth Division Captain sported a dark colored scarf, his long captain's coat and the standard shihakushō all Gotei officers were supposed to wear. In the sash around his waist resided his own sheathed zanpakuto. His tawny hair maintained its usual part but looked slightly tousled, yet still remaining so in a meticulous fashion that made it look intentional.

The state of his hair alone, and his current facial expression made Aizen look more . . . approachable if that’s how you were to describe it. There was a glint in his eyes that you had seldom seen before.

"Thank you, for making your way down here to accommodate my rather. . . . atypical request. I again extend my apologies if I have inconvenienced you in any way."

You shook your head in reply, "It's alright, I wasn't doing anything too important anyway. Just having a cup of tea and delighting myself in a book before bed."

You glanced downwards at the foot or so of space that was wedged in between the two of you. You forced away the murmurs of your lingering thoughts that took note of how the moonlight and shadows danced across the surface of Aizen's face just right, and emphasized his decidedly handsome features.

"But having a complete and good night's rest is important to be fully functional in all areas of one's performance. Wouldn't you agree?"

You couldn't help but chuckle softly. "Yes, I do agree with that sentiment."

Aizen all but hummed in acknowledgement, letting a moment of silence fill the air before speaking again.

"Shall we be on our way?"

You nodded in agreement, following him as the both of you walked about the First Division grounds. From what you could tell based on your position, your aimless nightly stroll drew you closer to where Sokyoku Hill was located. The area became increasingly more grassy and contained less buildings.

Although Squad 1 grounds weren't terribly far from either of your barracks, you still weren't sure as to why Captain Aizen wished to meet out here. Initially you thought that perhaps he was just fond of this particular scenery, but really it could have been anything.

But still, you believed Aizen always had a purpose for everything he did.

After several moments, his warm voice replaced the evening silence, vocalizing your current thoughts. “I assume you are contemplating why it is I have asked you here, and I’m afraid the reason is quite benign. Truthfully, I just wished for your company. I often go on night walks to clear my head after a long day and thought I might invite you to join me this time, and have a conversation with each other."

Your brows shifted upwards, for that was not quite the answer you were expecting. It seemed too . . . simple. “Really? You just . . . wanted to talk with me? Plainly?”

The Squad 5 captain let out a short, soft laugh at the disbelief that was painted on your face. There was an expression of fondness present in his eyes and in the light smile he offered you. “Yes, exactly. I quite enjoy our discussions actually, they’re intellectually stimulating and relatively pleasant. You crossed my mind, and before yesterday, it has been quite some time since we’ve had the opportunity to unwind and talk.”

You hummed an mhmm in agreement, tearing your eyes away from Aizen’s side profile in favor of the hem of his captain’s haori, watching how it danced in the soft breeze. It seemed to be less distracting than the way Aizen peered down at you from time to time.

"I see. I am. . . . truly flattered by your words, Captain Aizen; you're too kind. Forgive me for asking but," you took longer strides so that you could fall into step next to him━ as if to speak to him more directly, "Why at this time? To talk with me, I mean. It couldn't wait until more . . . . . conventional hours?"

He chuckled again, and answered as smoothly as if he were awaiting you to ask him that. "Unfortunately, today's tasks ran a little long today, so I had to stay at my office later than usual." The spectacled man paused for a moment, before setting his soft gaze on you, "And besides, that completely defeats the purpose of inviting you on a night stroll, doesn't it?"

You ignored the heat flaring up in your cheeks again. Your mind refused to move past the fact that you had crossed Sōsuke Aizen's mind enough times━ or the times that he thought about you were significant enough━ and highly enough to invite you into his realm and indulge in these moments with him, when he very much could have done that alone.

A tender smile appeared on your lips, more towards yourself than the man next to you. "I. . . suppose it does."

The ashen-white moon only rose higher in the sky, providing an ambiance of tranquility as the both of you talked about whatever crossed the surface of your minds. Other times, the stillness of the night did the talking, and you'd listen to the leaves, and the wind, and the crickets sing together in harmony. Gradually as you walked and the beaten path grew more narrow, your figures drew closer together, until you could feel the long sleeves of his haori brush against your own.

You hadn't noticed that the two of you eventually stopped walking and paused under a tree until Aizen struck up conversation once more. When he called out your name in that gentle, velvety voice, you swore your heart was going to lurch out of your chest. The sound of your name rolled of his tongue so smoothly, the desire to hear it again grew within you.

"Uh━ yes, Captain Aizen?"

"Are you satisfied with way things are at the moment?"

You stood next to him, perplexed at his inquiry due to its vague nature. "Um, what. . . . things? I'm afraid I don't understand what you're asking."

The wind brushed Aizen's dark ochre tresses across his face as he took a step towards you, like the breeze itself was pushing him towards you. "Hm, perhaps I should be more clear then. Are you content with being a soul reaper? Are you satisfied with being a soldier for the Soul Society?"

With your brows slightly furrowed in thought, you remained silent for several seconds and overanalyzed his every word, trying to predict where he might be steering the conversation now. The longer you thought it over, the stronger that nagging feeling from within your soul became. The one that often told you what he was asking wasn't exactly . . . it didn't quite feel . . . . .

"This feels like a prelude to another insightful discussion on Shinigami━ and by extension━ Seiretei politics." Your words cut off your own thoughts, as if your mind was trying to sweep something under the proverbial rug.

Aizen huffed in amusement, before lightly shrugging, leaving your statement definitively unanswered.

You sighed as you seriously considered his question this time. "I mean sure, I guess. I'm somewhat satisfied with my job and all of . . . this," gesturing your hands in the air around you to emphasize your point. The 5th Division Captain made another humming noise, indicating that you still had his full attention. He inched a little closer into your personal space.

The mere action caused your next words to die in your throat and a quiet chuckle resounded from his, before your thoughts revived themselves again.

"Of course things could always be better but. . . . y'know. This is just how it is." You weren't quite sure if you should voice negative opinions about the Soul Society so plainly to a senior officer, even if he was the one who asked you in the first place, so you treaded lightly.

The same plainly relaxed smile from earlier remained painted across his lips, held in his chestnut irises was an emotion akin to affection. He seemed somewhat pleased that you were expressing your thoughts with him.

“And you? Are you satisfied, Captain Aizen?” You were unable to keep the teasing endearment out of your tone as you returned his gaze, casting aside the notions of Gotei officer seating and ranks for the moment. The air seemed like it shifted━ towards what, you weren't sure of━ but it kind of made you feel like you were adrift, floating in isolation from everything else around you.

It was still hard to process that you were alone with Captain Aizen right now. . . . at night.

A low hum reverberated within his chest, contemplative in nature as he replied, “Perhaps.”

The wind whistled lowly again, erecting goosebumps on whatever part of your skin happened to catch the midnight breeze. You fought the instinctual urge to twitch towards the nearest source of heat, which happened to be Aizen. Now that would be even more wholly inappropriate than the 'lovers meeting at midnight' scenario.

The silence between the both of you was brief, but comfortable nonetheless. Once more his mellifluous voice cut through the quiet, leveled and calm, like still ocean waters.

“Come. I want to show you something,” Aizen reached his arm out towards you, your spine as straight as if someone stuck a metal rod dipped in ice water down your robes.

The captain's movements seemed steady and slow━ it had felt like time itself had hesitated for several moments. You thought he was going to . . . . well you weren't sure what he was going to do, and that's what you made you nervous.

Was he going to touch you? Cradle your cheek? Remove a stray leaf that happened to land on your head? You were left somewhat dangling in anticipation, not daring to flinch backwards because you felt it would be disrespectful or offensive. You hadn't even blinked, subconsciously fearing that this was only a very vivid daydream.

But alas, when his arm drew near it extended past your head, slightly above you, and held a small branch in his palm it like a delicate flower. You released a breath you didn't know you were holding, but that breath drew short again when your gaze was eye level with his lower neck and chin.

He seemed . . . . closer.

“I think that regarding the condition of the Soul Society," Aizen began in a quiet voice, referencing his own reply to his earlier question, "and therefore my thoughts about it, is akin to this set of leaves on this branch."

Snapping out of whatever stupor you seemed to have slipped in, you exhaled softly before stepping back a bit to look at what he was talking about. In his palm he cradled a wayward branch that grew from one of the other sturdier branches of the tree. The green foliage of its arms had started to weaken and dull in color. The cold air due to the seasonal transition to autumn caused the leaves become brittle, nearing closer to the edge of death.

The sound of just how brittle they were resounded in the air when Aizen thumbed the leaves in between his fingertips, observing their texture with pity laced in his small movements.

"These leaves will fall off as it gets colder. And soon, the rest of this tree will be bare as well. When the time comes, when the right circumstances fall into place, the old die to make way and usher in the new; it's simply the way things are. I think of the Soul Society government is structured in a similar manner."

You hung onto his every word, like he were imparting crucial wisdom to you. Even though you were a bit confused on the last part, and on the connection between dying leaves and Soul Society, you still listened intently, waiting for him bridge the gap between the two.

"The Soul Society as it is now can be thought of as a season. And this particular season, this climate has remained so for several centuries. How can nature continue━ how can we continue to progress when the old have yet to be washed away by the currents of time? It defies that of nature, yes?" He directed this question at you specifically, in search of your agreement.

You nodded your head, tearing your gaze away from the branch and directed it at the grass beneath your feet. Your brows furrowed a little as you mused over Aizen's words. He gave a rather ambiguous answer before but now, his words sounded like vague displeasure and muted criticism. Everyone was entitled to their opinion, and on some fronts, you'd sometimes agreed with the 5th Division Captain. The Soul Society was far from perfect, too much emphasis on nobility and status, the government resembled too closely to an oligarchy . . . But you didn't━ wouldn't voice these thoughts, though.

Instead you hummed quietly under your breath. There was that tugging sensation again. This time it told you that there was something deeper to this conversation than meets the eye. But what could there be? Was there anything at all or were you just overthinking it?

The voice-like sensation in your soul was calling out to you, but you couldn't hear it that well or quite make out what it was saying. It's as if someone was calling out to you in a crowded room that had music playing on the speakers: you felt like if you listened hard enough you could make it out but ultimately, the result would fruitless.

"And when that happens," Aizen continued, "sometimes nature has to be gently nudged back on track to keep things moving smoothly. That may require . . . shaking the tree. Pulling a few harmful weeds from one's garden, so to speak."

"Weeds?" You echoed. You felt like you understood this analogy and therefore what he was trying to say, but at the same time you didn't. Or was it . . . . you didn't want to understand what he was implying?

Because if you were interpreting his words correctly, if he were inconspicuously comparing the higher-ups and the government itself to dying leaves and harmful plants that needed to be removed, then . . . .

"You, dear child, are a mere weed in this scenario."

Wait, what did he just━

Your thoughts were cut short when a gush of air that smelt strongly of Aizen━ warm oak, vanilla, and a kind of musk that you weren't sure how to describe but was still pleasant all the same━ brushed against your face and took you by surprise.

But there was another aroma that arose, steadily becoming more apparent alongside the increasingly painful throbbing feeling you felt in your abdomen.

It smelt metallic. And it was something that you've smelt all too many times before.

It was blood.

Your gaze that was initially narrowed in confusion lowered as it followed the source of this pain. Your eyes slowly widened in as you struggled to comprehend the blade that was currently ran through your torso.

Aizen's blade.

"Actually, instead of weeds, a more accurate and befitting analogy perhaps would be blades of grass. You unfortunately have to step on them in order to reach the weeds you want to remove."

You couldn't really focus on what the captain was saying, because your brain was still struggling to process what the hell just happened. Your hands slowly rose from their sides and shakily grazed the zanpakuto, wanting to believe that if you touched it, it would pass right through your fingers like mist. But no, the sensation of cold steel was as real as the robes you wore on your back. You only just now are processing the muffled squelching sound of his sword impaling your flesh.

You wanted to scream, to cry in pain, to vomit, to push him off━ something. But all you could do was stand there, stunned, words completely failing you. "Wh. . . . what? Why did . . . . you . . . . "

A cough replaced your attempt at a comprehensive sentence, and you tasted iron in your mouth.

Fuck....was this really happening?

"Please don't push yourself trying to talk," His voice was like an index finger to one's lips, similar to a parent's gentle caress to quiet and sooth their child, "You'll only hasten your death. And I'm sure you wish to know the reason for my killing you, yes? You'd have to be alive for that."

'Killing me?' 'My death?' The certainty that rang in his words chilled the blood in your veins, and they confirmed the one conclusion you hoped wouldn’t come true: that you were going to die.

The frigid embrace of fear and dread engulfed you from behind and you shivered, causing the blade snugly lodged in your organs to shift. The pain of that foreign object moving even a little bit shot through your entire body, causing a groan to emerge from your throat.

Desperate to conserve your energy and the oxygen that was becoming a little harder to take in, your breathing became uneven and a little wheezed. Even then, you couldn’t bring yourself to meet the gaze of Captain Aizen to confirm if this was really happening or just an extremely realistic and vivid nightmare. The sight you might be greeted with could be more frightening than the actual impaling of his sword.

As if his betrayal couldn’t actually or figuratively cut you any deeper, just then there was a noise that grew louder and louder within a matter of seconds until it was almost deafening. You’ve distinguished it to be the sound of glass crackling.

Your surroundings formed cracks everywhere on its surface, like it was just an oversized window. Even on the grass you stood on, or what you thought was grass, began to crumble away.

A dumbfounded but panicked look was plastered on your face when your world literally shattered around you, the only remnants of it being you and the Captain.

What was underneath the mirage━ or you should say, the fact that it was a mirage at all━ only disturbed you and increased your perplexity.

Slightly hunched over and breathing heavily, it took a minute to process where you were, but you noticed that now the two of you stood in a formal room that looked like it was used for important meetings. The lights in the room slowly started to brighten, most likely due to motion sensors. Even with Aizen's scent lingering in your nose, you could still pick out a rather stale aroma that hung in the air like dead fruit that hadn't fallen off the tree.

"Is . . . this Cen . . . tral━ "

"You are correct. Where we currently stand is the assembly hall for Central 46, the judicial power of the Soul Society. All judiciary as well as legislative trials and proceedings are held here."

All around the room were seats with partitions, the kanji for 1 through 46 printed on them. In the seat for the 19th member, your gaze caught onto something on the translucent barrier. It was a little farther up so you had to squint your already blurring vision to see it properly.

You saw, and your heart promptly sank as a result, eyes widening once more.

There were splatters of a dark colored substance on the partition━ undeniably blood. And the lithe, bony fingers of an older man laid lifeless, peeking out from the side of the screen like the appendages themselves were trying to escape from the body they were attached to.

That man . . . was dead. That stale aroma you smelt was the stench of death.

It was only after that unsettling epiphany did your eyes dart frantically around the room and realize that every member of Central 46 was dead.

The disturbed expression on your face only intensified as your stare was pulled back down to where Aizen's blade still resided in your body.

" Cap.....Aizen," you uttered, swift to correct yourself. All the moisture in your throat dried up like water underneath the unrelenting rays of the sun. You kept gulping your saliva in an attempt to assuage the sensation, but relief only last for a fleeting few seconds. "Did you ━ you killed them . . . didn't you?" Your question was laced with shaky hesitance and swelled with apprehension, fearing that you already knew his reply even before he answered.

There was a moment of silence and a hum before he replied. "Smart girl."

The muted mirthful tone in his voice sounded like sarcasm, and it was enough to finally draw your attention away from everything else and directly look at him. Almost instantly, you regretted it.

His umber tinted gaze was colder than you remembered. You couldn't find anything in his eyes that hinted that all of this was just a big misunderstanding, or a dream, or that Aizen had a secret sense dark and complex humor.

This was your first, and apparently your last time, that you have ever felt a fear such as this. Your mind was struggling to comprehend this was the same Aizen that spoke with you so gently, full of encouragement and wisdom. The same man that recommended you books to read and gifted you tea to drink and gazed upon you like . . .

Well, none of that mattered now. In this moment, Sōsuke Aizen wasn't the same man anymore. This Sōsuke Aizen was someone else, and it frightened you.

"When?" you croaked, your voice no longer sounding like your own. Nothing felt real anymore. "W-When did you . . . . . how? Why?"

Another noncommittal hum resounded from the spectacled man as he closed his eyes, feigning the action of thinking of an answer. When he reopened them, his narrow gaze returned to you.

"Everyone in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads was previously aware that the ability of my zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu, allowed me to confuse the enemy using bodies of water, mist and even moisture in the air in order to attack. However, that is not my zanpakuto's actual power; there is more to it than just simple confusion. Kyoka Suigetsu's true power is Complete Hypnosis. Essentially, when someone looks at my blade, I am then able to take control of that person’s five senses, causing them to believe that something is real ━ or that something isn't real. In a way, once glancing at my unsheathed zanpakuto, that person forfeits their sense of existence to me. Kyoka Suigetsu is quite flawless in its deceptive abilities."

A heavy silence, aside from your uneven breaths, endured in the space between both of you. You didn't need him to spell out what he was trying to say.

It was all . . . . an illusion. A convoluted, premeditated illusion. And you walked right into it without even knowing or considering, that it was all fake.

The Fifth Division Captain inwardly smiled at the despair clearly written on your face as he watched you mentally put the pieces together. He took your lack of reply as a sign to continue. "The members of Central 46 have unfortunately been dead for quite some time now. And as for your question of why......"

The taller man stepped towards you which inadvertently (or purposely, you began to fear), drove his sword deeper into your abdomen without warning and slight force. You bit down on your bottom lip hard to stifle your exclamation of pain. In an attempt to somehow resist him, with the little strength you had left, your hands automatically took purchase in his oversized sleeves, but it did nothing. You found it ironic that you could feel how warm Aizen was underneath his robes, but his soul was anything but.

" . . . . I believe I already mentioned it earlier, yes? All flowers die eventually and the weeds......must be removed."

At that moment you remembered that tugging sensation that told you something felt off in some instances whenever you talked with Aizen. This must have been what it was. Damn it all. You still didn't understand exactly what bad things Central 46 and the Soul Society have done to cause his actions, but based on what you've been told and your current position, it must have been heinous. Again, you actively swallowed the urge to vomit.

"You . . . you lied. I can't believe━ how could it have all b-been a lie?" Another nasty cough rattled your body, followed by a shiver and a groan.

The brown-haired man slightly tilted his head, like he was truly confused. "Lied? Hmm, well. I suppose you could put it that way based on your limited knowledge of the circumstances, but I wouldn't put it that way. Besides, this isn't really about truth or lies. It is, and always has been, only about the reality of what is. And what is, is that you were unable to anticipate my deception. No one could, because it was outside the domain of your thoughts. What is, is that the current way the Soul Society operates is tainted, and I shall be the one to remedy it."

You drew another shuddering breath and looked down at the ground with a grim expression as your blood continued to pool at your feet. Briefly, you even considered unsheathing yourself from his blade and take the chance to make a run for it, but the chances of you making it to the outside world, let alone coming across someone before you bled out and died were slim. Besides, it was clear that you couldn't even trust your own senses anymore after Aizen demonstrated that he had complete control of your reality.

Which reminded you of something else.

" . . . when?" you asked the same question again, but much quieter than before, despair palpable in your voice. 'When and how did you subject me to your zanpakuto's Complete Hypnosis?', is what you were really asking. And being as intelligent as he was, the spectacled man understood.

Abruptly, with a large palm on the small of your back, Aizen used his gentle hold grip to pull you towards him in order to close the remaining distance, causing him to drive the remaining length of his zanpakuto all the way through until the tsuba of his blade rested against your stomach. You looked like a skewered piece of meat.

You didn't have the willpower to hold back the piercing shriek of agony and physical anguish as tears sprung forth from your eyes. You could no longer tell if your blurry vision was due to your tears obstructing your sight or if it was from being a step away from death's door.

"Do you remember . . . the first time we met?"

The hand that rested on your lower back slowly glided upwards until his fingers found your jaw. With a tenderness that reminded you of a time before his betrayal, he lifted your chin and guided your gaze to look at him directly. His thumb moved to graze your bottom lip just as you've done mere hours ago━ as if he knew that, as if he watched you do it. His thumb was dangerously close to slipping inside your mouth and that both excited and scared you. Your breasts against his, your breaths synchronized with his, your body and his were fully pressed against each other and it made focusing on his question more difficult.

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. The first time . . . we met? Sure, with a little bit of effort you could easily recall the first time you formally met Aizen. It was sometime in the spring, and you remembered him running through combat formations with his lieutenant and the rest of his squad. But why d━

A silent gasp left you. Another epiphany, another figurative blade piercing your heart.

Battle formations, and he . . . offered you to join them . . . his zanpakuto . . . . .

Confusion crumbled away, and was replaced with vacant horror and sadness. It seems you've already been defeated, for many, many years now.

Aizen seemed to murmur something under his breath, a pleased sound you couldn't quite decipher. His mouth brushed over yours, rendering you literally speechless, before he closed the distance and brought your lips together. You could barely process what was happening.

It was ironically tragic how soft and skillfully gentle his lips were against yours. The kiss felt longing, like a departure between two sweethearts and their last meeting together. It also felt heavy and final, making you want to cry.

And you did. Silent tears streamed from your eyes and rolled onto the fingers that still held your face so affectionately. The captain reacted by guiding your chin up a little further, dipping his head a little lower, so he could deepen the kiss. You weakly scorned yourself for thinking about how the two of you must really look like lovers now, sans the sword sticking out from your back.

Oh, how cruel this was; how cruel he was. It was cruel for him to kiss you like this, hand still splayed on your back like he needed to touch you stay sane. And how cruel it was that still managed to enjoy it, even as you stood there dying. Your lips moved together in tandem, slow and almost passionate, all while tears stained the apples of your cheeks, drying up the plush youth that once resided in them.

Aizen's tongue had slithered its way into your mouth, and you suddenly felt like crying harder. There was a tart, sweet flavor lingering on his tastebuds, and you absently wondered what is was. Perhaps hibiscus from tea, you surmised. And he too tasted the sweet jasmine and citrus that clung your tongue and lips. At this, he chuckled quietly into your mouth, humming before retracting from you by a few inches so he could speak.

"I knew you would like the tea. It's sweet and flavorful, isn't it?" You hated how low his voice was, how its timbre pleasurably vibrated and rumbled against your lips, and you hated that lidded stare he gave you. You again thought it unfair that you couldn't even revel in the rare sight of Aizen's lips slightly wet because your lips were intertwined with his.

"I have to thank you for humoring me and my recommendations. I really appreciated it. And I also," you winced loudly and cried out in affliction as Aizen finally began to withdraw the sword from your body, "must to bid you farewell now. It seems you don't have any more time left, and this has dragged on for longer than it needed. I'm not surprised you've held out for this long, as I already knew you possessed commendable strength. But alas it wasn't enough. I am sorry that you have to die; it's rather regrettable that you happened to be that blade of grass that ended up underneath my foot."

Another wail was yanked from your chest as he steadily removed his sword from your abdomen. The pain was becoming excruciating, you would have collapsed by now if the taller man weren't holding you.

You saw two things before the light in your eyes had all but faded away. The first were the colors of faux pity and apathy that swirled in Sōsuke Aizen's irises, spiraling like a storm that was certain to wreak havoc in its wake. His gaze was devoid of any regret or remorse; the final metaphorical nail on the coffin. The second was a small smile.

But this wasn't one of his smiles you were familiar with. No wait . . . . the one you knew was simply a veneer of what is.

This smile was slanted, the corners of his lips tilted upwards and was sharp. Sharp enough to cut open your already gaping wound further and completely tear you apart, spelling out your demise. It looked insidious as if it were hiding razor-edged fangs. This was what is; Aizen's real smile.

"I. . . I see. Aize. . . ." were the last words you were able to manage. You didn't have the strength to be upset or hurt any longer, so you gave in to the exhaustion.

Your body permanently relaxed, long lashes veiling your now empty eyes as your arms lifelessly dropped to your sides. The captain found a disturbing amount of pleasure in his name being the final word you attempted to speak before succumbing to the sleep of death.

And even after the fact, the facade of doomed, star-crossed lovers persisted as your body slumped backwards. Aizen's strong forearm wrapped tightly around your waist being the only reason you didn't fall to the ground in a puddle of your own blood.

That day was the last anyone saw of you, your zanpakuto still laid idly in your room, its spirit destined to forever wander in the afterlife between worlds alone, eventually fading from existence without ever feeling the presence of its master again.

They had declared you missing by the end of the next day. Lieutenant Hisagi was probably the most perturbed about your sudden disappearance. Days, weeks passed, and they never located you. The Gotei 13 was left unsettled by the lack of progress, but ultimately had to rule your case inconclusive. Some believed that you were simply killed by a stray hollow, or even ran away from your duties because of the stress.

The news of what happened spread like wildfire across all the squads, that a high-ranked officer just up and vanished without a trace. The spirits and morale of the thirteen companies dampened, sorrow and worry swelling like a festering boil.

And that boil burst when Ryoka infiltrated the Soul Society, and when it was revealed that all of it was carefully orchestrated by Sōsuke Aizen.

Like a blade of grass that somehow snuck into one's sandals or in between their toes, during his time in Hueco Mundo, images of you flashed in his head at unexpected times when his mind was quiet. He'd remove the grass, tossed you aside, and moved on with his day. There was no room for you in the grand scheme of things. Such reminisces were beneath someone like him.

And yet.

He'd always find another piece of grass from the greenery he stepped on whenever he advanced a step in his plans. There you were again.

It was common knowledge that if you kept repeating the same action over and over, it will eventually wear you down.

━━━━━━ 鏡 ━━━━━━━

It was dark, and there was nothing.

There had been nothing for quite a long time now. Utter darkness and the abyssal shade of black engulfed every inch of Aizen's body and surroundings.

He saw nothing, the seals over his eyes too opaque to let anything through. And even if they weren't obscuring his vision, he would barely be able to see three feet in front of him; there was seldom a few lanterns in his cell to begin with. He felt nothing but the bindings that kept him imprisoned in one of the deepest pits of the Seireitei. At times it felt like even his internal organs had stilled in their functions. He heard nothing but the unrelenting quiet of his cell within Mugen's maw. The only thing that served as proof that he hasn't spontaneously grown deaf yet was the occasional muffled noise that originated from outside of the entrance. And even then, he could hardly hear much of anything.

Such is an ironic fate for someone who, with a stray thought and a glint of his blade, could control someone's senses and take away their free will to experience those senses in their reality. And now, he was stripped away of all of his in nearly every capacity.

Sōsuke Aizen was rendered stationary and stagnant, qualities he detested and were the antithesis of his ambitions and plans, perhaps even his existence.

Aizen had always believed in being in control of your own destiny and making your own choices; if you had the opportunity and the power to change something━ especially if it was something that was wrong, unfair or immoral━ then one should be able to move towards that goal by making change, even if by force. The former captain had always been intentional about his actions and his desires right from the start.

And yet, here he ended up.

Spending years strapped to a chair in this dark, cloistered hole, Aizen had nothing but time to reflect the reason for his arrest: that orange haired Ryoka boy, Ichigo Kurosaki. He had nothing but time to admit to himself and settle on the conclusion that his last battle with the substitute Shinigami . . . did something to him.

Fighting the Ryoka boy ignited something inside him that he previously believed would forever lay dormant.

The thrill of a challenge.

Adrenaline was injected into his veins with each clash of their swords, spreading far and wide across every inch of his body. It no longer reacted in the measured, calculative manner he had programmed it to, but with unadulterated, pure instinct and raw power━ all in an effort to not only withstand such potent spirit energy from his opponent, but to come out on top and win.

It made him feel alive.

Aizen's desire to be the victor in battle and in his philosophy━ to prove himself right━ both fueled him and consumed him so thoroughly it led to his own downfall. That was a rather difficult fact to acknowledge; so much so his head started to pulsate intensely whenever it crossed his mind one time too often.

All of it unfolded right in front of his eyes and yet . . . he didn't really see it happen.

As time passed during his perpetual incarceration, with hooded eyes, the former captain spent an unfathomable amount of time tossing and turning every single event that led him to this underground prison, even pondering his temporary release by the Head Captain Kyōraku to fight in the war. Scenarios both minor and significant displayed itself in front of his mind's eye as if he were watching a film.

Every so often, a blurred visage of your image would make a brief appearance, like the flickering sparks of a match before they were able to come to light, fading away into the void and were overshadowed by his other thoughts. It was as if his own consciousness and intentionally muted any manifestations of your existence in his memories. As if he wasn't able to or allowed to see them━ to remember you for too long.

Mentally reliving moments from the last several months, years, decades, centuries━ trying to analyze each moment and decipher where it could have went wrong━ turned out to be quite an exhausting task. His mind and body would grow heavier with inertia, and eventually he would succumb to the alluring pull of slumber. After some time he would rouse from his sleep, and continued from where he left off.

These were his daily activities day in and day out (even though he had trouble distinguishing day and night in his chambers) for years. He saw a positive side to it though. He'd instead think of it has him getting stronger because he had spent so long . . . thinking. Ruminating. Contemplating every possibility in the past, present, and future. His mind would become as sharp as his zanpakuto.

Aizen had always been intentional about what he did, what he said, and how he conducted himself. He was sure in his abilities to orchestrate an image━ a belief for others to have faith in, and act on it in order to further his goals. He was always sure in that image, knowing who he was and what he stood for.

Or at least, that's what he thought.

Aizen wasn't consciously aware that his certainty in this crafted image had already begun to waver. He could not and was unable to anticipate how severe these small fractures had become until after a certain lieutenant paid him a visit outside his cell of confinement, right before he was scheduled to be thrown back into that dark hole of the Mugen.

Lieutenant Shuhei Hisagi was quite emotive when he burst through the doors. His expressions were contorted in volatile mixture of frustration, anger and sadness. His emotions were every which way, directed at everything that has happened so far, including himself. He was especially emotive at Aizen specifically for what he did to former captain Kaname Tosen and 'corrupting him with his twisted ideals.'

Aizen found amusement in that.

Before he was rolled away by the punishment force and therefore out of earshot, a particular set of Hisagi's words caused the small, content smile on his lips to uncurl ever so slightly. "Everything . . . and everyone that has ever gotten themselves involved with you has been trampled on by you and your ideals one way or another, and they all end up dead. If you think what you did to Captain Tosen was justified━ to call it mercy . . . . . then there is truly no justice in this world. You will . . . forever be the enemy in my eyes."

There was a trembling anger in his voice. Pain that wanted to cry out and be set free but, the thin lid of reason prevented it from doing so. And after a moment of silence, the corners of Aizen's lips curved upwards once more. A little bemused, a little more wolfish this time. He maliciously imagined Hisagi's reaction if he ever discovered the true reason for your disappearance.

But instead, all he said was. "What an interesting thing to say, Shuhei Hisagi. Your conviction is admirable." Any evidence of emotion that might have been reflected in his sepia irises was swallowed up and obscured by the darkness of the Mugen's jaw.

The cracks in Aizen's sense of self, in his beliefs, in the image he invented started to cave under the weight of Hisagi's words before he himself realized it was happening. They were like stains in the fabric of his mind that refused to come out.

What puzzled him more, was that with each attempt to figure out just why Hisagi's words echoed in his mind, they all lead back to you, the third seat of the 9th squad. Annoyingly so.

The tattooed lieutenant hadn’t said anything particularly profound ━ at least, Aizen didn't think so. Your name didn’t even fall from his lips. So why were memories of you and your likeness the only clear thoughts he could make of Hisagi's speech? Was it because he was aware of how close the two of you were? He doubted the reason were that trivial and insignificant.

His thoughts grew more discordant by the day, his soul a little more weighted than usual. Perhaps these new seals that Urahara had fashioned actually had an effect on him, Aizen thought. It made sense. His intellect, other than his own, were the only ones capable of creating such effective restraints.

After a while, he had a revelation. This was a different kind of weight.

This heaviness, the closest word he knew to describe it as . . . . was loneliness.

Time taunted him as it seemed to drag on━ Aizen grew even less sure of how much━ when he came to this realization. Hisagi's words were a clear mirror to the loneliness that echoed within him after what happened to you and to Tosen. It was so . . . potent, that it seemed to strike some chord in Aizen he had never heard before.

Such a chord, this sound of loneliness, it was strange and uncomfortable; he wasn't very fond of this sensation. He'd try to scrub it away, but it was all for naught.

His eyes had slid shut at some point, his ruminations leading to dead ends and wearing him down. And, almost as expected, there you were again, in all your translucent glory. The hem, the sleeves, and even the smell of your yukata slowly dragged across his dreams, haunting his thoughts like a lonely wraith.

And Aizen hardly dreamt of anything.

When he regained consciousness he was plagued with yet another epiphany. An additional reason behind this newfound depth.

Aizen's own loneliness. Guilt. Much to his own quiet horror.

How foreign and unusual a thing like guilt is. It was like looking into a mirror and not recognizing something you had never noticed before, but wondered if it had always been there.

But the thing Aizen did recognize, how lonely he actually felt, was something he had hoped would never resurface again. It was a notion he hadn't had the time or regard to consider━ 'loneliness'. Its only purpose, if any, was solely to serve as a motivator. At times though, it was more like a hindrance.

Something akin to nausea slowly started to bubble up in the pit of his stomach, but he suppressed the sensation before it became any more intense.

What of his previous actions did he need to feel guilty for? He hadn't felt it then, so why would he feel it now? Again he ruminated such a question endlessly into oblivion.

The former captain had no doubts that his plan to remove the Soul King, and therefore the Soul Society's sins, were necessary.

Nor did any hesitancy about removing the opposition or dead weight━ whether shinigami or arrancar━ existed.

He certainly had no reservations against killing Kaname Tosen, for he knew the man well enough to know that Tosen would have been so thoroughly appalled with what he had become, it would have drove him mad.

So what was it, then? Why were such useless emotions as guilt and loneliness being amplified n━

"Y....know, S....."

Even covered by the seals, Aizen's eyes widened and his brows were slightly furrowed in distress. Had his mind finally tipped the scales of sanity and madness, to the point where he was hearing things?

It was quiet for several moments longer, before his senses caught onto the sound of water dripping onto a hard surface.

One drop at a time.

Its cadence a little too rhythmic to be natural. And for a second time, he heard that soft, ominous sounding whisper. Its voice a little clearer this time.

"You...know.....Sōsuke."

In the second it took for his eyes to flutter shut behind its seals to blink, when he reopened them, he was no longer sealed to the walls and floors of the Mugen, nor was he surrounded by every shade of darkness imaginable. His limbs and senses were finally freed to breathe for the first time in what felt like ages.

That relief was short-lived when his senses absorbed the unending landscape of water underneath his feet, water lilies lifelessly floating on its surface, and the dim sky illuminated by a full pale moon.

Aizen was in his inner world, and now he was aware of how he got here, or rather who brought him here.

"You . . . already know the answer to that question, Sōsuke." The voice was even more clear, its sentences more comprehensible. And it sounded it eerily like you.

Why the voice was impersonating your likeness had caught him off guard for half a second, but he realized it was only the work of his zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu.

An illusion it may be, there was an untouchable quality about your voice and how you spoke that even Kyoka Suigetsu couldn't replicate.

A few feet away from him, the water was disturbed by a being emerging from the depths. Ripples formed around a manifested version of his zanpakuto, who took the form of you, smiling ever so gently. The smile felt airy, and it didn't seem like the same one that haunted his dreams and every waking thought as of late. It felt....knowing.

Still, the former captain couldn't be bothered to maintain eye contact with his sword spirit, so he turned around and opted to keep his unreadable stare trained on the vast expanse of water and white lilies.

"It's been quite a while since I have stepped foot into this realm. There must be something you want . . . Kyoka."

The zanpakuto chuckled, it sounded like the way you would softly laugh at one of his clever quips. But this wasn't you.

He didn’t want to admit that something about that fact didn’t sit right with him.

"Judging from your tone, would I be correct in assuming you don't want to be here?"

Silence rang out within the soul scape, before Aizen interrupted it, his gentle voice colored a shade darker, and a little rigid. "And I fail to see the reason why you must take that form when you revealed yourself to me. Is your aim to get a reaction out of me? Or something along those lines?"

Your eyes━ the eyes of Kyoka Suigetsu━ narrowed at its master's back, as if they were trying to create concavities in his skull. But the expression was washed away the moment it appeared, the serene smile from before was back in place.

"You know . . . it's considered quite rude to not look at someone when you're addressing them. That, and when you deliberately ignore things they say. Your manners have been deteriorating, Sōsuke. Tsk, tsk."

Kyoka-dressed-as-you suddenly appeared before him, as if they had teleported. Even when they were in his peripheral vision, Aizen still maintained his stare off into the distant nothingness.

"Unless, you can't find it in yourself to look at me. . . that's correct, isn't it? It's because I look exactly like her, right?" The zanpakuto continued to provoke him, taking a step closer into his personal space.

With an exasperated sigh, his eyelids fell shut for a second, using that time to gather the strength he didn't know he needed, and directed his gaze to meet his spirit's. Aizen's face gave nothing away, but his heart lurched about his chest when his bronze eyes met with yours, or what was made to look like yours. The undesired affect it had on him was all the same.

"If you wish to chastise me about manners, I suggest you take your own advice. You didn't answer my first question, either: what is it you want? Why am I here?" Again the former captain chose to not address the other parts of Kyoka's statement. For the sake of his sanity and his thinning patience━ or was it to preserve his resolve?

Its smile widened a bit, moving another step closer to their master. God, Kyoka even smelled like you, mimicking your signature honeyed scent that Aizen didn't realize he found so intoxicating until this very moment.

"I called you here to save you from yourself."

Aizen remained silent, only narrowing his eyes in speculation. "Meaning?"

"Didn't I already say it earlier? I think you already know what I'm talking about, Sōsuke. You've always known."

Fate's pairing of Kyoka Suigetsu with Aizen was a match crafted from the spindles of heaven, but also a maddening curse pulled from the depths of hell, for they complimented each other a little too well. The zanpakuto was too perfect a reflection of Aizen and his soul, looking at it started to hurt his eyes.

His sword spirit insisted that he already knew the reason for his coming here, and perhaps he did have an inkling the moment the light of epiphany was shone on his profound loneliness and guilt. But that couldn't have been what it was referring to . . . . could it?

"You cannot feign ignorance here, my dear Sōsuke, however I do find it rather humorous you bother trying. If you'd like, I don't mind humoring you by spelling it out for you. I'd be glad to unearth the truth that you have buried in the most neglected corner of your heart."

"When you were . . . . subjecting yourself to such mental torment, it had an affect on this world as well. The ripples, the waves in this scape become quite . . . tumultuous." The nuances in your voice were perfected by his zanpakuto, but the way it talked sounded like a fog that was gradually closing in from over the horizon. The uneasy feeling that resided in his chest traveled down to his stomach, but Aizen's face remained steely, even when Kyoka Suigetsu took that final step to close the gap in between them. "And the reason for that, the reason why Hisagi's words rattled you so is because you regret killing that woman."

The creased line in Aizen's brow grew more prominent as he stared down his sentient sword spirit. With its breast pressed against his, they placed a hand on his clothed chest in a tantalizing manner, but he felt nothing. There was no warmth from its palm, much unlike when your hand touched him. There wasn't even a cool sensation either. Even minutes before your death, your touch brought a soothing heat that permeated through his shihakusho and penetrated his skin.

Kyoka's face grew nearer, their smile━ although still tender looking━ grew cold at its edges, nearly resembling that of a predator eager to see despair reflected in the eyes of its prey. It didn't fit the graceful allure of your face at all, and seeing this expression deeply unsettled the former captain more than he would like to admit.

"You regret . . . killing me."

A chill tore through Aizen's body, the weight of Kyoka's words adding onto the heaviness that still hasn't been alleviated from his heart; he was hardly able to suppress the involuntary shiver.

Without warning, Kyoka's mouth suddenly became dangerously close to their master's, its lips brushing against his in a provocative manner. Aizen's expression darkened when he realized that it was reenacting his last encounter with you when you were alive. His mouth started to grow uncomfortably dry, despite his soul scape being full of moisture, and there was a taste on the back of his tongue that's been lingering there since he arrived.

The lilt in Kyoka's tone continued to taunt him. "That is the reason for your guilt: regret. You have been in denial. And in the spirit of unearthing truths, I suppose I can admit that perhaps . . . . I've been . . . . encouraging said delusions, adding drops of fuel into the flames of your emotions and ambitions. But after all that's happened, when it comes down to it there's no point in continuing this hallucination any longer. I've grown tired of this game, so it's time to for you wake up now, Sōsuke. I've brought you here to release you from your own illusion, to completely shatter it."

Aizen's back was as stiff as a board, not moving a millimeter when Kyoka's lips grazed his again. They were breathing softly onto his mouth, but he hardly felt any puffs of air.

The former captain was having a rather difficult time processing the fact that his zanpakuto had its own agenda and had been manipulating his emotions without him noticing. Specifically the emotions he felt towards you.

He never truly believed that such a thing was possible, one's own blade having such a deep-rooted influence━ no, control over their master. Or would it be more accurate to say that he never expected himself to be controlled to such a degree? He that prided himself on being freed from the marionette strings of fate that were tied to his limbs and mind, he that relished being able to do what he wanted, think what he wanted, feel what he wanted━ or what he didn't want━ it was hard to believe that none of that mattered in the end.

Kyoka Suigetsu's deceptive abilities were indeed undeniably perfect. No one, not even Aizen himself could have anticipated that Kyoka's most absolute and complete hypnosis would be enacted on himself.

"Do you know now, Sōsuke? Do you understand?" Kyoka's voice was as soft as a whisper, but it couldn't hide the edges of its tone that were still sharpened from finding amusement of seeing the truth flash across its master's face. "You had destroyed the solution to your existential question of loneliness, before you could fully understand the question itself."

Yes . . . . . Aizen understood now.

He didn't bother acknowledging what Kyoka had said. His grim facial expression━ still, tinged with dolor, and paired with an indescribable, distant look his eyes━ said all that it needed to. His silence was as much as an admission as any.

Kyoka-dressed-as-you leaned forward again to fully close the gap between their lips and Aizen's. Tenderly, like the intentions of a lover, it spoke against his nearly closed mouth. "Have you figured it out yet?"

Nothing but quiet could be heard between them, as Kyoka's mouth moved about their master's face and placed something like kisses upon its surface, but not quite.

Aizen's cocoa-shaded eyes slide down to stare at his sword spirit pressed up against him. His gaze was hard, and yet something swam underneath its surface that his zanpakuto had never seen before. Melancholy, it guessed? They weren't quite sure.

Kyoka pressed on when Aizen remained quiet. "The taste in the back of your mouth. Have you figured out what it was? You know it quite well....."

Aizen's tongue grazed the roof of his mouth, sensing the rather unpleasant taste that has coated the inside of it. And within a moment, because he was faced with the current circumstances, Aizen had finally placed a name associated this particular taste. How unfortunate this was.

Upon his realization, Aizen's head lowered, and his brown tresses hung freely over his lashes. Perhaps it was so Kyoka couldn't properly see whatever remorseful expression painted their master's face, but it mattered not. Even from here, the sword spirit could already sense exactly what it was he was feeling.

And they loved it.

"It's a sweet and flavorful taste, isn't it? Quite lovely." Kyoka Suigetsu mimicked the exact words he uttered against your lips all those years ago when he tasted jasmine tea on your tongue, and sealed your death with a kiss. "It's too bad you don't seem to enjoy it anymore."

Aizen's chest continued to rise and fall calmly, and the hands of his sword spirit that rested there glided upwards to cup his strong jaw, caressing his skin with its thumb. Its phantasmic touch did nothing to stir their master.

"Sōsuke, do you know what the jasmine flower from that tea symbolizes?"

Aizen's lips were slightly parted, but again he didn't say anything. Instead, its corners twitched and lifted upwards by an inch, and he huffed softly.

Kyoka Suigetsu grinned in reply. "Good."

The next time Aizen blinked, he was plunged in darkness yet again. The restrictive feeling that swallowed his being whole had returned, and was an indicator that his zanpakuto had released him from his inner world. He was consciously back in the Mugen, back in this abyss they called a prison cell.

Kyoka was indeed as much as a formidable force in its own right, as much as, if not greater than Aizen himself.

The conversation he had with his sword spirit would be cemented in his head for all eternity. When he grew senile and began to physically wither away, the one thing that would remain vital like a young heart, was this epiphany that he had. This realization that he actually . . . .

As the chains of despair bound him tighter to the bottom of the metaphorical pit, regret and his loneliness corroding his flesh and spirit like metal exposed to moisture, a stray memory of his time in Hueco Mundo flashed in his mind. He recalled having tea prepared for meetings with his Espadas and he could not pinpoint when, but at some point, Aizen developed an aversion for jasmine flavored tea. For one reason or another, he no longer found its taste appealing; whenever he drank it, it always tasted bitter.

Now that reason had become painstakingly clear.

The binding on his mouth muffled a rueful chuckle at the though, and it trapped the flavor of jasmine on his lips.

(#) @soaringmirror @stygianoir @ryukenzz @blkjupiters @chrissie2003 @nymphoheretic @dejwrld @triangularz @souyaszn @kuujo @honeybleed @valentineluvu . let me know if you’d like to be apart of my tag list ♡♡.

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f4irycafe · 2 years

Text

𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 - 𝒂𝒐𝒕 𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒔

⤷ summary: aot boys wth high maintenance girlfriends.

⤷ characters: jean, armin, connie, eren,

⤷ content warnings: suggestive themes, fluff, black!coded reader, college!au.

⤷ notes: my MEN.

PLEASE REBLOG

𝐣𝐞𝐚𝐧

baby boy is obsessed with you. like the biggest simp outta all of them fs.

jean isn't rich, but he's worked hard for all the $$ he has.

and he def doesn't mine spending all that shit on you okayyyyyyyyy.

he knew you liked to keep up w yourself, new nails and lashes every few weeks, new wig/braids/locs every few months.

he was just soo in awe of your presence for a while he didn't even consider how much that stuff costs.

"baby how much does your hair cost?" he asks you one day as ur just chilling on the couch in your dorm.

"couple hundred, why?" atp he knows all abt your hair care n stuff so this isn't no invasive ass question.

eyes = dropped out of his head.

he tries to play it cool like, "oh alright," but inside he's like, i've been letting her pay hundreds for her hair ALONE this entire time.

now whenever you mention you wanna go get ur lashes refilled, or ask him to pick a color, his first question is,

"how much is it?"

i feel like there is one or two services he chooses to pay for consistently, like braids and nails. he got money, but not that much so he can't be wildin out for you.

you get the biggest heart eyes when he does tho. sometimes you don't even have to ask and you get a veno notif on your phone.

"$250 from jean" - get the white tips i like.

cause yuk know, he likes to watch em when you ... yeh yeh u get it.

supportive, love to spoil you, but will act so nonchalant abt it.

𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧

rich boy armin? rich boy armin.

he lives a high maintnence lifestyle as it is, tailed clothes, designer book bags, shoes, glasses, family homes in europe. your typical trust fund baby.

honestly, that was the first thing he noticed about you. the nice but still lowkey car, the sleek bags, the perfect professional looking wigs and braids, even the smells you wore just exuded an air of confidence.

he loved it.

being a boy tho, he didn't realize just how much money went into upkeep with your look per week.

he was shocked, sure, but your finances barely made a dent in his pockets.

the type boyfriend to just hand you an asswad of cash at the beginning of the week and say "go crazy,"

at first you wanted to test just how much you could get out of him. a new white tie dress for some elite school event, the new apple watch that just dropped, wigs that cost upwards of $500 for you to only wear them for a week.

when you finally realized that this boy would do any and everything for you, you toned it down a bit.

but now, he pays for all your shit. eyelashes, hair, nails, perfume.

you still be paying for your phone, car, rent etc, but all that personal shit, yeah its his.

𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

hehehe. y'all know this is my husband quit playingggggg

while armin goes after the pretty rich girls, eren goes after the ones that do this shit just cause they can.

you be working for every inch of hair on your head trust and BELEIVEEEEEEE.

thats one of the things he admires about you, how hard you work for the stuff you want. even if that shit seems superficial to others, you can fr do anything you put your mind to.

another trust fund baby. (i hc grisha as a world class surgeon and carla as a lowkey fashion designer)

he just thinks ur so pretty. like jean, worships the ground you work on.

one night you're trying to set up an appointment for these fancy ass locs that almost touch the floor but you're stressin tryna figure out when you can fit another shift in at work between studying, classes and your extracurriculars while on ft w him.

he's quiet and contemplative on the phone, not really giving answers outside of "i'm sorry bae :("

in the morning you wake up to a venmo notif.

"stink-a-link paud you $600 - hair app. get those nails you've been wanting too."

at first you kinda freak out cause 600??? aint no one treated you like this before.

he just smiles when you try to call him, asking him to take it back.

"i got money to spend, and ik how much this style means to you. if you're happy i'm happy pretty girl."

the sweetest.

plus he gets bragging rights. cause who tf elses girl is looking this damn fine? right , no ones.

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞

CONSTANCE

if you've been here for a while you know its rich drug dealer connie or nothin.

yall probably got together cause he was ur plug and gave u a lil too much free weed lmaooooo.

but he been payin for your shit from the start.

the only catch - u gotta get what he wants.

its never wack or emberassing, our boy got taste and an eye for fashion, trust he does u right.

he be putting the description in the venmo tag LMAO

"buss down 30in. honey brown beach wave ..."

LIKE BOY HOW U KNOW WHAT THAT ISSSSSSSSS? U THE OPPS OR SOMETHIN

sometimes he'll just give you like a color for the nails and hair. he don't be knowin much about lashes tho, but he likes the cat eye ones the most.

everyone is always thirsting after you fr.

makes him so proud. maybe a lil too proud HAHA

but he'll drive u to all ur appointments. he doesn't care how long they are he'll wait. or go home and bring u food if its a long hair day.

hypes u up so much when u get in the car talkin bout "you so pretty babe".

can't stop looking at you.

elles rambles: i - love them so much. biased w eren as always. but i want these boys to spoil me. specially connie :))))))0

4K notes · View notes

ichorai · 8 months

Text

hell, yeah ; roman roy ; part five (m).

pairing ; roman roy x f!reader

synopsis ; pain was an old friend for the both of you.

words ; 10.9k

themes ; angst, fluff, drama, slowburn, smut, childhood friends to lovers

warnings / includes ; depictions of mental and physical abuse, mentions of death, a lot of sexual/suicidal jokes and general foul language, a lot of business talk, unprotected penetrative sex, roman’s implied demisexuality, dick pics and weddings

a/n ; and that's the end of s3!

series masterlist. main masterlist.

Roman had gotten into the habit of sending you pictures of his dick every now and then. Apparently, having sexual intercourse with Roman also entailed an afterparty consisting of dick pics and filthy messages. Not that you weren’t enjoying them, he really had a pretty cock—but you were growing increasingly paranoid that people, maybe hackers, maybe curious coworkers looking over your shoulder, were going to find out about the salacious pictures and texts he’d been sending you. And how bad would it look to have people find out your boss was sending you pictures of his penis?

Maybe it was his way of getting you to stay. Really, it just translated to: Hey, look at my dick! Remember this? We fucked, do you remember that? Do you like it? Please tell me you like it.

You found it strangely endearing, in a way. A lot of emphasis on strange.

And now, as you were just settling into the lovely, spacious room in Italy for Caroline’s wedding, your phone buzzed in your pocket.

Another dick pic. How lovely. You smiled down at your screen as you replied with:

looking great ro :)

A second later, you asked: you going down for welcome drinks?

Yup, he texted back. I’ll come by.

Not three minutes later, he swung your door open without bothering to knock, peeking his head through. He was dressed in rather casual attire for a wedding event—pale blue slacks, a white shirt, and an unbuttoned canary-hued top.

“You dressing down as a way to tell your mom you don’t approve?” you queried as you smoothed down your own pantsuit, a soft shade of purple over a cream turtleneck.

“Fuck you. You look great, by the way. Like a jizzed-up grape,” Roman snorted, linking your arm with his when you stepped out. “I need to talk to her about getting a prenup—this Munion character is a walking fucking sinkhole. Shiv is being an avoidant bitch about it.”

A hum fell from your lips as the two of you began making your way downstairs and out to the gardens, where the event was taking place. “Shiv’s always been more prickly when it comes to Caroline. It’s a warped mirror to her, you know?”

“She’s my mom, too. I get it,” Roman said with a shrug. He didn’t, not really.

The two of you spotted Caroline chatting with Peter, and you nudged Roman into their direction. After pleasant greetings were exchanged (well, less pleasant on Roman’s end), you excused yourself from the rather tense atmosphere to go walk around and grab a few drinks and bites of food. You knew Roman would be confronting Caroline on the prenup and his distaste for Peter, and you really didn’t want to be around for that hot mess.

Instead, you found yourself engaged in a lovely conversation with a pretty, raven-haired woman about the last book you’ve read, genuinely interested in what she had to say. The joy was short-lived, however, because Shiv stormed up to you, only barely apologizing to the woman before dragging you away.

“What? What’s going on?” you asked, incredulous.

“Check Matsson’s Twitter. Jesus. What the fuck is going on, do you know? Is this a move of some sort?”

Pulling out your phone, you quickly opened up his profile, reading the latest tweet.

Going to Macau. Feeling lucky.

You narrowed your eyes. Soon enough, Gerri and Roman appeared, the former looking apprehensive and the latter in more denial.

“It could be nothing,” Roman said, which made Shiv narrow her eyes. “Fucking social media fireworks.”

“He’s always been one to tweet bullshit when he’s high off his ass,” you tried to reason, reading the five words over again. “Remember that time he said he was going to release his sex tape? That blew over in a few days.”

Clearing her throat, Gerri argued back, “Well, yeah, it could be bullshit. Or it could be him trying to up his price.”

“Is he just rocking the boat or is he trying to blow up the deal?” Shiv asked.

From behind his wife, Tom chimed in, “Maybe he’s just going to Macau, and he just happens to feel lucky.”

Roman stepped away to leave Matsson a voice message, because none of his calls were going through. You sucked in a breath, wondering if you wasted an entire evening at Kendall’s disaster of a birthday party just for Matsson to fuck you over the ass.

God, you hated him.

After sending a few messages, Roman popped up beside you. “I don’t know, he’s a fucking trickster. It’s nothing.”

“Mmkay, so is he going to steal our watches and saw the fucking deal in half?” Shiv deadpanned.

“Hm. Maybe,” Roman reluctantly drawled.

A frown pinched her lips thin. “You’re supposed to be inside this, Roman.”

“I am inside this. Leave it. Why don’t you go find someone else’s dick to tug on? Oh, sorry Tom, didn’t see you there.”

They were bickering like children, as they often did. Tom blinked in mild confusion.

“Hey, okay, why don’t we get in contact with his PR team instead of him? They’re supposed to be working with us on this. None of this should be leaking onto personal accounts until the deal is met,” you calmly said. Gerri nodded, sending message after message to Karolina to get on their asses.

Though, it was far harder to stay calm when Kendall approached the group, face sullen, his phone held out to show Matsson’s twitter. To your surprise, his head was now shaven.

“Matsson going nut-nut, huh?” It was said as if it was supposed to be a joke, but his voice was monotonous, and his exterior cold. “Keep a hold of that shit, bro.”

“It’s all under control, motherfucker,” Roman hissed. “And where are you off to? Going to go score some junk in Naples?”

Kendall didn’t show any reaction to that. “No, just our mother throwing me out of her party.”

“Oh,” Roman replied. “Nice.”

“Where are my kids?” Kendall asked, before wandering off to go search for them.

Rolling his eyes, Rome snickered, “What a surprise—Ken doesn’t know where his kids are.”

“SEC is going to be all over this,” Gerri said, shaking her head.

“Ooh, gummy love bite from the fucking toddlers. I’m so scared,” Roman scoffed. “I think he likes us, I do. I can feel it in my gut.”

Pulling a sour face, you told him, “I really don’t think we should be banking the future of the company on your gut, Rome.”

It was then that Matsson tweeted again. This time, it was just three emojis: a game controller, crossed fingers, and an eggplant.

“He’s fucking us,” you muttered, which made Roman’s head jerk in your direction.

“Nah, come on. Don’t be so paranoid—we’re good. I think we’re good!” Roman insisted.

Brows raised, Shiv asserted, “Yeah, well if he blows this deal, then who is left for us, exactly?”

Before Roman could reply, you all caught sight of Logan making his way through the crowd, Marcia hanging off one arm and Kerry trailing behind the two of them.

“Jesus. He really doesn’t give a single, solitary fuck, does he?” snickered Roman, gaze following after his dad.

Caroline wove through to stand in front of you and Shiv, inviting the two of you to the bachelorette party. Shiv fumbled with protests, but Roman had insisted she went. When Caroline looked to you expectantly, you nodded your head and told her you’d be there, but not without a reluctant glance in Roman’s direction, who rubbed your back in an almost consoling manner.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be spying on you guys with a pair of binoculars,” he leaned forward to whisper.

“Not creepy at all, Roman. You sure know how to charm me.”

Nearly an hour later, the bachelorette party set off a little ways away from the hotel. There were drinks, there was gossip, and there was laughter. By nightfall, the party began to fizzle away, and you were more than ready to head back to the hotel. Find Roman and rope him into sleeping next to you, like he often did.

Though, as you descended down the stairs of the building the bachelorette party was occupying, you weren’t all that surprised to see Roman leaning against the bannister, a rogue smile on his lips.

“Have fun up there?”

“Mhm.” You kissed his cheek once, then another time for good measure. He smelled like limes and expensive cologne. You liked the limes more than the cologne.

“Not too much fun, I hope.”

You snorted. “Were you waiting for me here?”

“No, I just really like loitering around Italian streets at three in the morning.”

There was a warm sort of feeling simmering within your chest. “It’s only eleven o’clock, Roman.”

“Close enough.”

Roman rather liked the way your hair had gotten a little more tousled as the night passed on. You muffled a yawn, leaning against him as the two of you set off for the hotel.

“Matsson?” you asked tiredly, voice hoarse with overuse.

“He left me a message—said the tweets were just fucking around. You were right. As always. Lawyers gave him the spooks—he’s flying back to Switzerland.”

You hummed again, pleased. “Good. You did good, Roman.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you told him, soft. “And what about your dad? How’s he taking it?”

“Gerri says Dad thinks Matsson is trying to fuck him. I don’t know. He’s just gotta ride it out,” Roman said, shrugging. “They want me to go save the deal. Go see him.”

“You’re leaving me alone in Italy?” you crooned, laughing slightly.

Without hesitation, Roman offered, “Come with me. Can get you away from Mumsie and her nosy little fingers.”

You pulled a wince. “Mmh, no thanks. Didn’t like the way Matsson eye-fucked me the entire time I sat near him at Kendall’s party. Don’t want a repeat of him getting distracted.”

“Good to know I didn’t just imagine that,” Roman murmured. His head drooped, hair dropping over his forehead.

There was a moment of silence, interrupted only by a few people passing by, cheering in broken Italian. Drunk party guests, you assumed.

“What’re you thinking? Like—is Matsson… is he good for us?”

“No,” you said, much quicker than Roman had expected. “I don’t like him. He’s a flight risk. But he’s big—it would be a huge fucking deal acquiring GoJo. As in, change the company fundamentally, kind of a big deal. Could be good for the company in the long run, maybe. I don’t see us working well with Matsson, though.”

Roman studied your side profile, eyes roaming the bridge of your nose, your drooping eyelids, your parted lips. It was dark, but the moon’s glow seemed to light up the most beautiful parts of you. Or maybe it was just the Italian air.

“Well, I guess we’re just gonna have to see.”

“Yeah.” You yawned again.

“Okay, yeah, come on, sleepy. I don’t have the arm strength to carry you there.”

Matsson wanted a merger of equals. You should’ve guessed, with how he was talking at Kendall’s party, not wanting another man’s shadow looming over him. And… asking about Logan’s death.

“I hate that guy,” you mumbled to Roman as the two of you walked to the meeting room, where Logan had called for everyone to assemble. “The nerve of him…”

“I think it’s off the table but… Gerri’s pressuring me to push the deal forward. I’m already so stressed I’m jerking dust.” He rolled his shoulders and frowned. “Think Dad’s gonna eat it?”

You spared him an unsure glance. “I mean, what other choice does he have?”

With a heavy sigh, Roman swung open the glass door and the two of you filed into the meeting room. Logan waved for you to take a seat. Around the table was Gerri, Kerry, Shiv, and Tom—Karl and Frank were on call, displayed on a big screen TV. You sank down beside Gerri, with Roman across the table from you.

“Now, before we get the whole circus here, I wanna get a sense of what’s going on,” Logan announced. “Is he a Twitter panty-flasher? Or is he a serious person?”

“Uh, well, he is a serious person,” Roman said, which earned him a disbelieving scoff from Shiv. “But, Dad, he thinks there’s value that hasn’t been priced in yet. He’s gunning for a merger of equals. So I guess that kills it, right?”

“What? A merger of equals?” Shiv parroted, staring at her brother as if he’d grown a second head.

“Well, yeah. He’s got, like, twelve of the prime Asian sports leagues under GoJo’s belt, and he’s gonna fold it all into the platform. Live sports, games, betting—it’s a fucking growth bomb.”

Narrowing her eyes, Shiv hesitantly broached, “Okay, but… fifty-fifty board, all stocks? Dad, what, splits control?”

“Yes, Siobhan,” Roman exasperatedly said. “That’s what he wants.”

Everyone looked to Logan, who was silent for a few moments. There was a contemplative look to his gaze.

“But the guy isn’t a fuckhead?” he asked Roman.

“Oh, no. The tweeting was a move.”

Logan leaned forward, resting his large hands on the table. “He’s not some big baby who shits for clicks?”

“No, Dad. He’s, uh, he’s—I know people, Dad. I’m a fucking people sniffer.”

Shiv was glaring at her brother, and you pursed your lips.

“Because I can win any round with a boxer fuck, but I don’t know how to knock out a clown,” Logan deadpanned.

“He’s not a clown, he’s a tough motherfucker,” Roman insisted. “It’s what you would’ve done, right? He just maximized his leverage.”

Still not happy with the whole ordeal, Shiv shook her head. “Yeah, but merger of equals? That sounds ridiculous!”

“No such thing,” Logan gruffed.

Tom, by his right, nodded in agreement. “Always a top dog.”

“Family stake will be seriously diluted,” Karl warned, his voice crackling on the call.

“Could be just an on-paper thing,” you added. “Real control rests on the family if we negotiate who gets board seats.”

“Yeah. We could still be the puppy-fuckers here,” said Roman. “I think Matsson would let us craft it so that we keep balance of the board. He just wants the freedom and the status. GoJo Royco, I mean, who gives a fuck? Let him have the logo, we take the wheel.”

Sensing her father was being swayed, Shiv finally caved. “I mean, it would be real-scale. It’s a legitimate way of staying relevant.”

Frank and Karl weren’t happy, seeing as a merger of equals would threaten their positions with newer, better replacements. You almost laughed upon seeing Frank’s pixelated, unsure features.

“Dad and Gerri, you guys would stay with your hands on the tiller. Their price rise is real! It’s a proper fucking streamer. Would save that sector of Waystar completely. The future is really boiled down to: movies, TV, music, games, sports, eSports, VR, AR, betting—fucking everything for everyone, and Matsson can get us there,” Roman argued.

With a slight dip of his head, Logan said, “We can’t afford to walk away now. This is our crutch. Must be worth a conversation, son. Call in the team. Let’s get the banker fucks on this.”

Roman grinned victoriously, his eyes meeting yours.

You smiled back, pulling out your phone to shoot him a text.

you’re a fucking champ rome

The GoJo bankers began to file in, and you put your phone away. Roman’s buzzed on the table, and he glanced down at the screen, beam unwavering. He shot you a sly look, before tapping his keyboard a few times, deciding now was a good time to send you the picture of his hard dick he’d taken early in the morning, while you were still asleep.

dinner to celebrate? eat this, fuckface

He watched you expectantly, but you were busy greeting one of the bankers, shaking her hand. And then, his father’s phone buzzed. Logan slid on his reading glasses, clicking on the new text notification from his son.

Dread sank down to the pits of his stomach once he realized what he’d done.

Oh, fuck.

Logan stared angrily at his son, who sunk further down on his chair. You were still chatting to the banker, but halted the conversation when Logan suddenly stood up.

“I need five,” he said.

And with that, he was gone. That was the quickest you’d seen him walk in a long time.

Shiv shot you and Roman a confused look, before following after him.

You excused yourself, too, rounding the table to put a hand on Roman’s shoulder. To your confusion, he seemed to jerk away from your touch.

“Hey, what—? Rome, what’s going on?”

He sucked in a breath, letting you pull him out of the meeting room. The two of you stood in the hallway, just a few feet away from the conference room Shiv and Logan had disappeared into.

“I maybe might have sent Dad a, uh, a picture of my dick,” Roman nervously said, scratching at the back of his head. His arms seemed to shake.

“Oh,” you replied, far too stunned to say anything else. “Were you… was it for…”

“Yeah. It was for you. Fuck.”

The two of you stared at each other.

“Will he… oh, Rome. Fuck.” You didn’t know what else to say. Logan wouldn’t hurt Roman with GoJo right in the next room, right?

But you weren’t so sure.

Inside the conference room, Shiv winced to her dad whilst handing his phone back, “Yeah, he sent you his dick by mistake.”

“Well, that was pretty obvious.”

“It was meant for Y/N,” she said. “He calls her fuck-face all the time.”

Logan’s brows furrowed. “Y/N?”

“Yeah, they’re… they’re weird with each other. Everyone knows. Frankly, I think it’s fucking disgusting.”

“Yeah? They fucking?”

Shiv spluttered for words. “I don’t really—I don’t—I mean—” She shook her head. “Regardless, this… this is grounds for a potential lawsuit. Boss sexually harassing his employee kind of situation.”

Logan took his glasses off. “Isn’t this Roman just being Roman? They’ve been good pals since babies.”

Shiv chose her words carefully. “No. No, Dad, I think this could be a potential problem. This could be bad for us, you know. Y/N could use this as blackmail if she wanted to. And Roman, he’s… he’s a loose canon. People say he used to get jerked off by his personal trainer.”

It was then that Logan bellowed Roman’s name so loud, the very walls seemed to shake. Roman flinched, and you gently patted his arms, urging him to go.

“Put in a good word for you,” Shiv told her twin as he hurried in.

Roman twisted his hands nervously, only barely managing to catch the phone that Logan angrily slid over.

“Are you a sicko?” Logan asked, voice harsh. “What is this? Why do you send them?”

“Jesus, Dad…” Roman sucked in a breath. “It’s just—you know, we’re… it’s like, here’s my dick, or whatever.”

His brows cinched. “What? Like a ‘fuck you’?”

“No, it’s just… people send each other pics of their dicks. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal?”

“Yeah, it’s fucking normal. You ever heard of dick pics, Dad?”

Rolling his eyes, Logan retorted, “Well we do publish a number of popular newspapers, so yes, son. We probably invented the fucking words. But why?”

Roman’s mouth opened and closed. He shrugged. “I don’t know, Dad. It’s just something people do.”

“You have a problem, son?” Logan asked, watching Roman like a hawk would its prey. “What happened to that nice piece of tail you were with?”

“Uh, Tabitha? Yeah, she’s… she’s not really in the picture anymore. We had a few issues.”

Logan frowned. “She wasn’t messy. Y/N is messy. She’s a good girl, don’t get me wrong, but she’s messy.”

“Well, uh…” Roman shrank under his father’s glare. “I like her.”

“Oh, you like her? Fucking solves everything, doesn’t it? It’s one thing for you two to be plastered all over gossip tabloids. It’s another thing entirely for it to be real. And I don’t like things going on that I don’t know about.”

It didn’t go past Logan’s notice when Roman’s voice cracked a bit. “It’s all fine. Nothing’s going to happen. We’re… we’re friends.”

A terse second of silence. Roman worked a hand over his jaw.

“Go on. Fuck off.”

Roman made his way to the door. “So, what’s… what’s going to happen?”

“You end it. Or you fire her. Whichever is easier for you, son.”

A pained look crossed Roman’s features. “Well, uh, I’m not a radical feminist or anything, but I think, maybe, we shouldn’t fire her for getting pictures of my dick?”

“Then you end it.”

Roman cleared his throat. He lingered by the doorway as if he had something else to say, but he eventually turned on his heel and left the room.

Meanwhile, Shiv had beckoned you out of the hall to sit in a different room, her expression contorted into one of false security.

“What’d he say?” you asked her. “Is he… did he get a—?”

“Yeah. Roman’s dick. Real classy,” she replied, before beckoning you out of the hall to sit in a different room. “So… I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

You tilted your head. “Uh, yeah. It’s fine, Shiv, really.”

“Uh-huh. Has this kind of thing happened before?”

You studied her, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. Can’t really remember.”

“Right, yeah, of course. But if it did… did you ask him to stop?”

Fed up, you held your hands out. “Listen, Shiv, I’m not going to give a statement to you. I wouldn’t jeopardize Roman or the company like that.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you were welcoming these, right? Because that would be… an abuse of power on Roman’s end, wouldn’t it?”

You drew yourself back. “Roman and I are friends. Nothing happened.”

“Okay. Yeah, sure. Things are just really delicate right now. Can’t afford to fuck up, right? Do you want to make a formal complaint about this situation? You’re the victim here, Y/N.”

“Woah, uhm… can I have some time to think about it?”

Humming, Shiv nodded. “Of course. Just know that… you should really report this to HR. It’s a big deal, this.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Shiv.” You hesitantly turned away, biting down on the inside of your cheek anxiously. You stood out of the meeting room for a second, trying to compose yourself. Plastering on a professional smile, you swung the door open and stepped inside.

Late that night, long after the meeting had ended, Roman slipped into your room, making sure nobody was around to see.

He kissed you then, fingers cradling your face as if he was expecting you would crumble away right in front of him. When you pulled away, hands lightly pushing at his chest, he mumbled that he needed this.

And so you let him pull you apart. Kissing you, touching you, holding you.

Your clothes were gone at some point—you hadn’t even registered taking them off, and he guided you over his lap. You rode him then, slow and steady, his hands roaming over your sides. Your foreheads were touching, the both of your moans muffled into kisses.

It was much more intimate than the last time the two of you had sex—Roman shook beneath the pads of your fingers, rife with fear. Sex was fine, but intimacy… that scared him more than anything. But he felt safe with you. It felt right with you.

And, this time it didn’t feel like Roman had a point to prove.

He came first, his lips wrapped around one of your nipples, teeth sinking into the flesh of your breast, panting wetly against your skin. You were close to follow, shuddering against him, your hips slowly rocking to a grinding halt.

You left to clean yourself up a minute later, and came back to Roman sprawled over the bed, half-asleep.

You laid down beside him and brushed the hair away from his forehead.

“Dad told me to fire you,” he mumbled, almost slurring his words. “If I didn’t want to break up with you, that is.”

“Break up?” you echoed. “But we aren’t together.”

“Right. Sure, yeah.” He sounded hurt, but he wrapped his arms around you, nonetheless.

With no hesitation, you curled your leg up over his. “You gonna fire me, Romey?”

“No. You’re the only thing that makes sense in this fucking shitstorm.”

“Okay.” You pressed a chaste kiss to his forehead. You were never really worried on that end. “Then I guess we’ll just have to be less… open and affectionate in public. It’ll blow over eventually. We’ll fade away, and nobody’s going to care.”

Roman squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay.”

The two of you fell asleep like that, entangled in each other, dreaming of tooth necklaces and strawberry popsicles.

The next morning, you heard from Shiv that Kendall had nearly drowned himself in the pool while everybody was at the meeting, and he’d stayed over at the hospital overnight. At your worried expression, she reassured you that he was fine. One too many limoncellos, apparently.

To make matters all the worse, GoJo’s market cap had overtaken Waystar’s, and they were apparently also considering other options. Roman and Logan were off to go see Matsson to make sure he wasn’t pulling the plug. You mumbled a low good luck to Roman, not wanting to do or say anything else with his father watching the two of you like a vulture.

Hours later, when he returned, there was a slightly panicked look to his eye. He pulled you into the gardens, where it was mostly empty, save for an elderly Italian couple sniffing the roses a good distance away from you.

“No more merger of equals,” Roman hurriedly whispered to you, which made your eyes widen. “Matsson insinuated that GoJo eats Waystar—and he stays top dog.”

Your brows cinched. “What did your dad say?”

“Nothing. Told me to leave. But Matsson said he’d go with a handsome settlement.” The distress was clear across his features. “And where does that leave us? Fucking—kicked out to the curb with bread crumbs and cardboard boxes.”

“Jesus,” you breathed out. “Well… did he offer you an out?”

Roman ran a hand through his hair. “No. Just—just don’t tell Shiv, okay? We’ll stick to the merger of equals story.”

“Okay.” You placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing in what you hoped to be a comforting fashion. “C’mon. It’s time to face Mr. Poseidon. Shiv and Con are already waiting.”

“Poseidon, huh? And who does that make me? Hades?”

You arched a brow. “Hermes. Duh.”

The two of you made your way out of the gardens, to the fancy little tables Caroline had set up. Shiv and Connor were sitting near the balcony, bearing a particularly breathtaking view of the Italian countryside. Rolling green fields and slanted, multi-hued rooftops. It wasn’t too bad of a place to get hitched, you wistfully thought, shooting Roman a glance. If Shiv had noticed anything between the two of you, she didn’t say anything. To that, you were grateful.

He was explaining the merger of equals situation to his siblings (save Kendall, who still had yet to appear), and Connor grew angry with the fact that he wasn’t informed. He didn’t like Matsson, but for a wildly different reason than you.

“Okay, well, if you guys don’t mind, I’m a little churned up about my big brother trying to kill himself, so I can’t really think about that shit right now, thanks.” Roman made a high-pitched noise, before leaning forward and snatching a piece of garlic bread off of Connor’s plate. “I’m fucking starving. Can we get some more food here?”

“It’s a buffet, you dipshit,” Shiv told him.

Before Roman could get up to grab food, Kendall turned the corner, stiffly making his way to his siblings, and you. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of expensive, brown-tinted sunglasses, doing a great job of hiding the bags beneath his eyes. He hadn’t slept a wink at the hospital.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello,” Roman chirpily greeted. Only Roman could somehow make the word hello sound sarcastic.

Kendall’s hands twitched at his sides. “So, what is this?”

“Take a seat,” Shiv said, and Connor patted the head of the empty chair beside him.

Kendall scoffed, but sat nonetheless.

“So,” Shiv started, looking awfully uncomfortable being somewhat emotionally open with her brother, “we just wanted to get together and let you know that… we love you.”

A soft breath, and a tilt of his head. “What?”

Connor nodded. “I love you straight up.”

“We care about you, Ken,” you added, feeling mildly guilty that the last time the two of you spoke, you were yelling at him about something as stupid as a popsicle.

“I suppose I don’t want you to die,” Roman lamented, pouring himself a glass of wine.

“What is this, guys? What’s the angle?” Kendall asked.

In a placating tone, Connor said, “No angle. We were just worried that you… consciously or subconsciously tried to… you know…”

“Are you trying to shut me down?” gruffed Kendall.

“Uhm, you kind of tried to kill yourself, dude, and that’s not cool?” Roman inputted, avoiding eye contact.

“I fell off an inflatable.”

Clearing your throat, you gently said, “You were drunk. And your kids were there. Comfrey had to fish you out. I heard that Soph was crying behind the rose bushes, Kendall.”

At his daughter’s name, Kendall’s face seemed to twist with an unmistakable sort of anguish. “Is this a fucking intervention? Why do you guys get to do an intervention on me?”

“Seriously?” Roman asked.

“No, well, maybe you need an intervention.” He gestured to Shiv. “You need an intervention, Con. You two need one, too.”

“Yeah, totally, but, like—you’re kind of the top of the pile, right now. We can do me tomorrow, yeah?” Roman said.

Shiv pursed her lips in agreement. “Suicides kind of jump the line.”

“I fell off my fucking floatie!”

“You’re an addict,” Shiv stated plainly. “You’re addicted to booze and to drugs and relationships and sex and work and family drama.”

The siblings decided to argue a bit more, until Connor, fed up, exclaimed that he was the eldest son, and that he loved all of you, and he’d proposed to Willa and nobody even bothered to congratulate him. Your face fell with guilt, but you didn’t try to stop him as he stormed away. The conversation died out after that, with Roman complaining that he was too hungry to think straight, leaving for the buffet table, and Kendall straight up leaving without even saying goodbye.

Not wanting to be left alone with Shiv, you shot Roman a message saying you’d be in your room, and left the table.

The wedding started two hours later. You’d managed to squeeze in a nice nap and a quick shower before, meeting Roman at the lobby with a refreshed smile.

“You look great,” he told you, genuine. His hands seemed to reach out for you, but he winced and pulled himself back. “Now that we’re not supposed to be all over each other, I suddenly have this inexplicable, caveman urge to raw dog you in front of everyone.”

Your lips twitched in amusement. “You are so romantic, Roman.” Careful not to draw attention, you bumped your hip into his, and the two of you began walking to Caroline’s wedding.

Shiv met you at the entrance, pestering Roman on where Logan was (which he clearly didn’t know himself), and also making several incessant japes about Roman’s lost chance to marry his mother. A part of you wondered if she was amping it up because you were there, as if to try to goad a reaction out of you.

“Well, I’m just worried about the prenup,” Roman hotly defended after Shiv made fun of him for not liking Peter Munion.

“She has a prenup, Rome,” Shiv said while rolling her eyes. “She had her lawyer look at it because she wants to keep the London flat Dad gave her.”

“What if he poisons her? Or pushes her down the stairs to get this flat he so desires?” Roman quipped, crossing his arms.

Shiv snorted. “Oh, yeah. And what if worse—he fucks her with his dick. Fucks her so good that she dies?”

A group of giggling children passed by, and you muttered a quiet apology to the parents glaring at the three of you.

“We should get going,” you told the twins. “Must be starting any minute now.”

They halted their quarreling for the time being, and followed you into the building.

The ceremony was delayed around half an hour—you suspected it was because Logan hadn’t shown up, and Peter Munion sure wanted to brown-nose some more—but it carried on without him. You wondered if Logan wasn’t here because of what Roman had told you.

GoJo eating Waystar. That would make headlines for a good few months.

After the ceremony came a lovely little banquet, decked with long white tables lined with sweet-smelling flowers, beautiful flutes of champagne and wine passed around. Waiters flitted to and fro like busy worker bees, serving up course after course. There were seventeen dishes total, you counted. Roman said there were actually eighteen—you missed one when you briefly disappeared for the bathroom.

“You don’t have a fucking clue where Dad is, do you?” Shiv prodded at Roman’s shoulder, and he shrugged her off.

“Just relax, will you?”

Connor came up to the three of you then, a wary smile on his face. You and Shiv took turns apologizing to him, wearing guilty expressions. He’d always had soft spots for the both of you.

“No, no, it’s okay. Forget about it.”

“Mhm,” Roman said. “Forgotten.”

“So, guess who’s getting married to the greatest gal in the world?” Connor announced, a wide smile overtaking his features.

You grinned, congratulating him with a hug, Shiv and Roman slapping their older brother on the shoulder. When you pulled away, Connor pulled up a shriveled little brown bulb out of his pocket.

“Oh, ew. What is that?” you asked, narrowing your eyes.

“It’s a dried penis from one of the great men in history, correct?” Roman postulated, poking it before wiping his hands onto you.

Pointing at it, Connor said, “This is maca root. It’s for Dad’s smoothie.”

“Mhm?” Shiv asked, not quite getting it.

“He’s working on his baby batter!” Connor reiterated. “Maca root, almond butter! Dad’s putting together a more adhesive, potent gloop.”

“Ew,” you said, grimacing. “He’s eighty fucking years old. The baby practically pre-ordered the daddy issues themself.”

Utterly confused, Roman asked, “Are you fucking with us right now? That’s disgusting!”

“No, I’m not! Look at all the walnuts he’s been munching! He’s gonna be rocking sperms like a little catfish.”

“Oh, my fuck. Dad’s scrambling the fighters,” Roman guffawed, batting away Connor’s hand when he waved the maca root closer to his nose.

With a final laugh, Connor clapped Shiv’s shoulder, before bidding adieu, in search of his now-fiance.

“We gotta find a way to kill this baby,” Roman muttered.

“Yeah, finally you’ve got a worthy adversary,” laughed Shiv.

It was then that Tom made his way to the three of you, his arm curled over her waist. You eyed the fluid motion, wishing you could have something of an open relationship like theirs. Though, you weren’t sure comparing yourself to Tom and Shiv was the best way to go.

Tom let it slip that they were planning on having a baby, too—but by freezing an embryo.

“Congratulations,” you told the two of them, though Shiv didn’t look all that happy.

Roman chortled and made a few jokes about how Tom would have to poop out his own baby, and you nudged him harshly.

“That’ll be your niece or nephew, you know. Just don’t be that weird, creepy uncle they avoid at family gatherings.”

“Can’t make any promises,” Roman whistled, though he fell silent when Gerri strode up to the three of you.

It was just as you thought. She’d heard Logan and Matsson were meeting with financiers—which meant Logan was going through with the flipped deal. GoJo swallows Waystar, Logan leaves with his pockets full, and everybody aboard the sinking ship is left to fend for themselves.

“Why would Matsson need financing for an all-stock deal?” Shiv asked, though she was beginning to get an inkling of what was truly happening on her own.

Gerri suggested splitting up to cover more ground. Roman would get Kerry, Shiv handled Marcia, Gerri tackled Frank, and you were left to call in a few of Roman’s lawyers to see if they could rifle through anything that could block Logan from plowing into GoJo full-steam.

“I think Frank and Karl are in Europe,” Roman told Shiv, his phone pressed to his ear. “It’s got the fucking Euro ring.”

“What?” Shiv demanded. “Rome—are we being fucked right now?”

Roman hung up once Karl lied straight through his teeth that he was in America. Just before, he’d seen Gerri and Kerry speaking to each other in hushed tones, before Gerri quickly walked away. Was Gerri knifing him, too?

He turned to stare at you, speaking to his lawyers on the phone about voting power for the next CEO.

“Okay, well, I should probably tell you,” Roman said, scratching at the back of his head. “Matsson did float, just as an idea, that maybe they’d buy us.”

There was a momentary pause. Shiv’s eyes flared wider, her lips pinching tight. “Right. And what did Dad say?”

Roman shrugged. “Fuck off!” he said, in his best Logan imitation.

“Mhm. And he stuck around?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

Abruptly, Shiv shoved him so hard that Roman stumbled back into a table. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this earlier?” She stomped off then, making her way to Kendall, moping by the edges of the gardens.

You hung up the phone, walking back to Roman. “Dead ends. They’re going to have to look through fucking everything—signing heir contracts, settlement conditions, the divorce clauses. Might be something there that gives the three of you a hand on the steering wheel.”

“Great.” Roman sucked at his teeth, hesitant. “Hey, as it turns out, I don’t think I can trust Gerri.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and—I can trust you, right?” He scuffed the grass with the heel of his expensive boot, anxious.

The two of you stared at each other for a long moment. Man and woman, microphone and stand, dog and chew toy. You ran your tongue along the back of your teeth.

“I love you, Roman. You know that,” you told him, swallowing the lump in your throat.

“Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I trust you.”

“Hurry the fuck up!” Shiv yelled, startling the two of you away from each other. She began making her way around the building, towards the deserted back, where nobody was around to hear what the four of you were discussing. Slow on her heels was Kendall, dragging his feet along glumly.

You and Roman were only barely able to exchange comforting glances, before hastening after her.

“Okay, so—Dad is doing us dirty, right?” Shiv said, a tad too loud for your comfort, seeing as there were wedding guests only around the corner.

“Can you not make it a whole thing?” Roman protested, nose wrinkling. “We actually don’t—we don’t know anything yet. Matsson pitched to Dad the idea of them eating us, but I think he was just flying a kite.”

“Financing wouldn’t be there if it was just Matsson jerking off. Karl and Frank wouldn’t have bothered unless it was real. You know that, Roman,” you said.

The man merely raised his tense shoulders, kicking at a rock on the sandy ground. “Dad kind of shut it down,” he replied.

“He kind of shut it down?” pressed Shiv. “A moment ago, you were telling me that he told you to fuck off!”

Frowning, Roman told his sister, “Well, I didn’t keep track of the exact number of expletives he used, Siobhan. Okay? I’m not a fuckometer.”

There was a crackling silence for a few seconds. Kendall wasn’t facing the three of you, opting to stare away into the distance, hands propped on his hips.

“Our market caps have tipped,” Shiv vehemently put forth. “The local town’s been bought out by a new set of advisors. Something has flipped!”

It was clear that Roman was the only one still clinging onto his father’s leg. He watched you and Shiv with scrutinizing eyes. “Dad would never sell, would he? Hey, asshole, Dad would never sell, right?” Roman directed the question to Kendall.

Kendall’s shoulders moved just a tiny bit, barely a twitch. “I don’t know,” he muttered.

“I see him doing it if the buy-out settlement is large enough,” you said, expression grim. “A handful of billions in his pocket, and he’d walk off satisfied.”

“But Dad… he…” Roman itched at the back of his head. “What about us?”

“Okay, yeah, the question is—would we get fucking protection?” Shiv demanded, as if the three of you had answers to give her.

Kendall looked up at the bright Italian sun. He was feeling thirsty.

“Can you guys just do this without me?” he asked, voice dejected. “I can’t—I don’t really wanna get into it.”

Narrowing her eyes in suspicion, Shiv hurled out an accusation, “Wait a minute, Ken. Do you—you have an angle on this? Are you speaking with Matsson?”

Kendall laughed. He paused for a second, thinking on Shiv’s words some more, before laughing again. Then, he sank to the sandy ground. There were sharp rocks poking his legs, a fine layer of dust coating his ass and the back of his thighs.

“Is he okay?” you whispered to Roman, who just shook his head and murmured something you couldn’t quite catch under his breath.

“Ken, can we just talk?” Shiv asked.

“Shiv, I’m not here,” he said. His knees pulled up to his chest, and his head rested upon them.

He wasn’t okay, that was plainly clear. Tentative, you took a step forward, exchanging uneasy glances with Shiv. The redhead crouched down and soothed a comforting hand over her older brother’s back. You kneeled in front of Kendall, uncaring of how dirty you were getting your pants. Lingering a little farther back was Roman, stressed out of his mind, studying the three of you contemplatively.

“Hey, you okay?” Her voice was far more soft this time around.

Kendall shook his head, a heavy exhale slipping past his slightly-chapped lips. The familiar sting of salt welcomed the corners of his eyes.

“Talk to us, Ken,” you said, your shoe nudging his.

His mouth trembled. “There’s something really wrong with me. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.”

“Uh, well… it’s okay, Ken…” Unsure, Shiv looked up to you.

“I just—I’m not feeling very connected to my children or my endeavors right now. And, uh, I can’t get one thing right with another, you know?” His voice broke near the end. A warble, a shake, a lilt.

Roman stepped closer. To anyone who didn’t quite know him, he looked as if he was angry. But you knew—you knew that that was concern splayed across his features. He was worried for his big brother.

“Kendall, we can get you help,” you tried to reassuringly say.

“But I can’t,” he replied, on the verge of tears. “I don’t know what happened. I tried to do something. I tried, I really did. Really.”

For better or worse, Roman attempted to diffuse the tension by saying, “I know, man. You fucked it.”

You and Shiv glared at him, while Kendall merely laughed. It was painful and grating. His throat ached.

“I took a shot, but it’s like it didn’t matter,” he said.

“It’s just business, okay?” Roman told him, trying to downplay the situation. “We’re all fucked. Everything just sort of got… mixed up.”

When Shiv stood up, her legs aching, Kendall’s eyes slid shut. “I thought I had an out. I could see it—I could see the way markers, and I thought I could, out of all our shit, I thought I could take us all out of it. I tried, guys. I did.”

Roman hummed. Shiv stayed silent. You watched him, pensive.

“I don’t know,” said Kendall. “I’m not a good person.”

“Well, whatever,” Roman said, miffed. “You’re… fine.”

“I’m… I’m bad.”

A few tense, sparse chuckles. Roman shot you a confused look, as if to say, is he for real?

“Lighten up, glum-glum,” Rome said.

Kendall blinked down at the sand. “I killed a kid.”

“Hm?”

“What?” you quietly asked. What was he talking about?

Shiv laughed a bit, wondering if this was all an elaborate joke. After all, it was hard to take anything Kendall did seriously after his disaster of a birthday party.

“I killed a kid,” Kendall repeated.

“Like… metaphorically?” you queried.

“No, I… I killed a kid. And, yeah, they’re… they’re coming for me. They’re gonna come for me.”

Your mouth fell open and shut, shocked and uncertain of what to do, what to say.

“Is this—?” Shiv looked around wildly. “Is this real? What the fuck?”

There was a sharp inhale. A warm breeze blew by, and Kendall found himself swallowing around what felt like dust. Glass shards. All the same.

“At your wedding,” he said.

“What?” Shiv asked, voice hardened.

“Horseshit,” said Roman, though he knew it, deep down, none of it was horseshit.

Rapidly, Kendall blinked. “The kid. That kid.”

“Uh, you mean the… the waiter kid?” Shiv clarified.

A soft, nearly horrified exhale slipped from you. “That was you?” you asked, voice much smaller than it had been only minutes ago.

“I was high,” he began to explain, miserable. “I was trying to score, and I was drunk, I was fucked up, and I drove. He saw something and he snatched at the wheel. We went into the water.” His voice trembled. “And then I left him in there and I ran.”

“Uhm, okay, we gotta… we gotta get you inside,” Shiv started, but Kendall’s shoulders began to shake.

His head lowered further. “It’s fucking lonely,” he quietly sobbed. A tear fell down his cheek, slipping into his mouth. “I’m all apart.”

You weren’t quite sure what to do, so you reached out and kept a steady grip on one of his knees. It grounded him, in a way, because his sobs seemed to dullen after a few seconds.

“I mean, if it pleases the court,” Roman began to say, which made your stomach roil in fear of what other abrasive comment he might spit out, “it sounds like you didn’t really kill him. Sounds to me like… he killed him.”

Your brows cinched. Kendall ran away from the kid and drove under the influence, which made him largely at fault. But you also knew it wasn’t… wholly on his shoulders. It was an accident, first and foremost. Besides—what choice did he have than to keep quiet, with his tail pressed beneath Logan’s thumb?

“Rome, I’m a piece of shit, man,” Kendall sniffled, shaking his head.

“The road and the water killed him,” offered Roman. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“What he’s trying to say,” you interjected, voice slow and placating. “Is that it was an accident.”

“Yeah, seriously. You crashed, and then, what? You ran?”

“No, I mean… I tried to get him. I dived a few times.”

Roman spread his arms out a bit. “See? That… that sounds like the story of a hero to me. That’s more than I would’ve fucking done. Seriously, I would’ve been out of that water like a tabby cat from a bath.”

Pained laughs from Kendall filled in the space between the four of you, which dissolved into cries. “Don’t, man. I’m… I’m a killer.”

Scoffing, Roman groaned out, “Fuck you. Come on, bullshit. At worst you’re an… a fucking irresponsibler. Okay? You’re bigging yourself up.”

“I don’t know, you guys,” Kendall hiccupped. “I’m blown into a million pieces.”

“Okay, uhm, we gotta get you out of here,” Shiv said, rubbing his shoulder.

“We could bring him back to the chapel,” Roman offered. “Stuff him into a confessional. That might fix him.”

It was then that your phone started ringing, the lawyers calling you back. You gently apologized to the siblings, before stepping away and answering. Not long after you, Shiv’s phone began to ring with Laird’s caller ID, and she pulled off, as well. Leaving just the two brothers.

Roman sank down to sit beside him. He tried, and failed, to comfort him. But he succeeded, too. Somehow.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall croaked.

Wincing, Roman said, “You know, one waiter down makes a bit more sense. Took me forever to get a fucking drink at that wedding.”

“Please, man, I can’t—”

“Yeah, no, I’m just saying. Who’s the real victim here, you know? I waited three quarters of an hour for a gin and tonic.”

Both you and Shiv hung up your calls at the same time, making your way back to the brothers.

“You first,” you told Shiv. “What’s Laird know?”

She nodded. “He was inside the deal, then got cucked out of the lead. He’s bitter and bleating. GoJo buys Waystar. They pay a premium, Dad cashes out—cash and stock, maybe a title and a few assets, but it’s Matsson’s fucking board.”

“Can we trust that? Is that even real? Laird is a fucking prick. I know this—I was stuck as a hostage with him pissing buckets next to me,” Roman spat.

“Look, Kendall, I know you’re in a tough spot right now, but we have to talk about this now. I’ll call the car. Let’s just get the fuck out of here,” Shiv said.

The eldest of the four burst into another raucous sob. Roman got up from the ground and placed his hands on his brother’s shoulders, squeezing. Shiv palmed his buzzed head. You took your previous spot, crouching down in front of him and patted his kneecaps.

No more words were exchanged about the accident. It was time for war.

“What’s your news?” Roman asked. “My lawyers?”

You offered them a small, bitter smile. “There might be a gun in this knife-fight.”

In the car, you explained to them how the lawyers had found a clause in the extensive divorce settlement between Logan and Caroline: the kids would have veto power to any changes in company control.

If all the kids objected, there was legally no way Matsson could buy Waystar.

The siblings were reunited on the same side for the first time in what felt like decades. Despite this, Roman still felt uneasy about the whole ordeal.

“These are still all just rumors,” he said from beside you. “So I’ll have to talk to Dad alone first.”

Indignant, Shiv scoffed. “You think you’re close to him? You’re just his little rat fucker.”

“I’m just saying, as a matter of fact, that Dad and I have been working closely lately and I don’t want to go in too aggressive,” he heatedly defended. “I’m not busting in there crying Team Shiv, okay? We don’t know how this is going to play out yet.”

“You think Dad is protecting you?” Shiv hissed. “No, we let Matsson take control, that is Dad slamming the door! It means he doesn’t think that we will, can, or should take over.”

“All this time he’s spent braying about family,” you whispered, staring out at the rolling Italian fields flashing past. “And he’s the one who drives the knife in.”

Roman bit down on the inside of his cheek. “I just don’t think we should be aggressive. Can we even actually stop him with this one clause?”

“Yes,” Kendall said. “A change of control needs a super majority in the holding company. He’d need us to agree to it.”

“Exactly,” you said. “Just one of you, it wouldn’t work. That’s why he wasn’t threatened when it was just Kendall. The three of you, though… that’s the golden goose.”

Roman nodded, uncertain. “Right, well. I’m not sure I want to pull a move like that. Maybe I just… I stick with what I got.” He looked at you, expecting your support on this, but you pointedly pursed your lips.

Shiv gritted her jaw. “Which is what, exactly? A hard drive full of dick pics you send Y/N? Where exactly do you think we fit on Matsson’s new org chart, Rome?”

In a calmer voice, Kendall said, “He’ll gut you like a pig, Rome.”

Roman’s brows knitted together.

“Rome, you know Dad is never going to choose you because he thinks there’s something wrong with you,” Shiv said. “I’m sorry, but maybe it’s time we said these things to each other. Instead of just airing it out to Vanity Fair.”

There was a roll of his eyes, but you could tell that her words hit close to home. A home he never felt safe in, perhaps.

“Hey, Rome,” you said, taking his hand, uncaring that Shiv and Kendall were there to see. They’ve seen far worse, after all, and you were nearly certain they already knew what was going on between the two of you. “You might not have a place beneath Matsson. You know that, right? And… and neither would I, I don’t think.”

This seemed to tip the scales over for him. The thought of not having the company to keep you close by his side anymore—to tether you to him—made him far more scared than he cared to admit.

Finally, Roman tentatively broached, “The holding company move… if we do that, that’s real?”

“He can’t sanction a deal without us. That’s legal fact,” Kendall said. “Block him and he’s fucked.”

With an air of finality, Shiv said, “Okay, we just rip the band-aid right off. Push him out. Get him on his own, say it was his urinary tract at the shareholder meeting—say he’s out of it. He’s fucking a twenty year old, and he’s planning for babies in jars. He’s gone loopy, and he’s tried to sell the shop while fucking his assistant. If we tell the board all that, he’s toast.”

“Burnt,” you agreed.

“Full coup,” Kendall said.

“Yeah. We have, say, Ken, chair? Rome or me, CEO? The other, COO, or whatever they want—studios, movies, TV. Equal.” There was a hopeful glint to her eyes. “Y/N takes CFO, maybe director of operations, maybe president of relations. Whichever floats your boat.”

You were quite happy with your quaint little title as general branch manager, but you nodded along to Shiv’s words, not wanting to argue with semantics.

“Okay, but really equal. Like, actual equal. If we do this, I don’t want you two cunts trying to big-brother me out of my fucking piece, okay? And I want the dick pic stuff with Y/N cleared. We do shit like that. We like each other, alright? Deal with it.”

Shiv eyed you warily, but found herself in no position to turn him down, especially not with him in such a precarious position. You shot Roman a flattered smile, squeezing his hand. This was the most open Roman’s been about his relationship with you… ever.

“We can fight all the details out,” Shiv reassured. “It’ll… it’ll be fun.”

The siblings laughed, genuine and chesty.

“Oh, fuck,” Roman breathed out. For a second, it seemed like his eyes seemed to glass over, but it was gone with his next blink. “I do think that, even though this literally makes me want to vomit and I wanna kill you both every day and it’s all going to end horribly… I do think that we—puke—could make a pretty good team.”

“So how do we feel about killing Dad?” Shiv asked.

Kendall smiled. “Pass me the fucking shotgun.”

By the time the four of you reached Logan, the sun had only barely set, and a heavy sort of darkness started stealing away the clouds. The rooms were full to the brim and bustling about with a frantic atmosphere. Lawyers and financiers and other powerful figures from the companies flitting to and fro.

Logan, however, was in a separate room. Empty, save for the few people at the very top.

He called for the four of you to come in, all false smiles and honeyed tones.

“Hey. Hi, everyone,” Roman greeted, high-strung. “We’re just feeling a little out of the loop, Dad.”

“Oh, of course. Things have moved very fast, yes. Sit down, all of you.”

None of you sat down, but Roman stood across the table from his dad. “So, yeah, we’re, uh… we’re hearing some rumors about GoJo?”

“We heard that we might be the target now,” Shiv said in a far colder tone in comparison to her brother. “Is that right, Dad?”

Logan nodded once. “Okay. I’ve been looking at a few options.”

“Right. We might be affected with our positions, so we just wanted to get some clarity,” Shiv said.

A harsh glare was sent in Kendall’s direction. “Absolutely, but do you mind not with him in here giving me the fucking doggy-evils? Can you take him out, Romulus? I’ll fill in your sister and give you the angles.” Logan gestured vaguely at his second-eldest son. “I don’t trust him.”

Roman swallowed uneasily, unmoving.

Logan stared at him expectantly. “Roman?”

“You can tell us together, Dad,” Kendall said.

“I thought we had this figured out,” Logan deadpanned, fixing his angry glare onto Roman instead of Kendall.

Five different emotions seemed to flash across Roman’s face at once. “Yeah, no, we just… it might be better. If all of us heard.”

A steady breath. Finally, Logan acquiesced. “Okay. The market capitalizations of our firm have been on the move. Ours is a declining business. There’s a wave of consolidations happening, and that means this is the optimal moment, in my opinion, to make a deal with a serious tech operation like GoJo. That’s what I’ve been exploring, okay?”

Shiv stiffly put forth, “Okay, so, I would like to say, on behalf of all of us, can you ease up and let us in? Stop this until we see how exactly we’re impacted?”

“No, it has to be now,” Logan said.

“An hour to negotiate positions wouldn’t hurt,” you said, far icier than you were anticipating to be.

Logan leveled his gaze with you, simultaneously curious and angry. “Aren’t you supposed to be fired? Or did Romulus have the balls to fucking sever things?”

You reared back a step, teeth gritted. Roman sucked in a cold breath.

“Why does it have to be now?” Shiv demanded.

“Because I can feel it in my bones,” said Logan. “And, at the end of the day, it’s all I fucking got.”

Shiv angrily narrowed her eyes. “Well, you know that’s bullshit.”

“Look, this is the best moment to sell. If I don’t do the best deal at any given point, what’s the point of anything? I don’t get out, I leave five billion on the table,” the father explained.

“Come on, Dad. What are you gonna do with the five bil?” Kendall prodded. “Huh? Put it on your pile with all your other fucking bil?”

Logan frowned and nodded. “Mhm. Probably.”

“And what are we supposed to do?” Kendall asked.

“Make your own fucking pile,” hissed Logan. Then, after taking a pause to collect himself, Logan continued, “I know this is an adjustment, but our blood’s in the water and I need to make moves fast in order to control the situation and get myself and all of you assurances in the future.”

“Assurances?” Shiv echoed. “Once Matsson is calling the shots, we’re fucked!”

A dismissive wave of his hand. “No, nah. He rates you. And this is an opportunity for you kids to get an education in real life.”

“With you at the top, we can take over, but without you, we’re fucked,” Shiv said. The brothers stood side by side, quiet.

Abruptly, Logan stood up from his seat. “Come on, Roman. Let’s get away from these Jacobins. I’ve got you. We can discuss this.” Roman looked to you, and Logan clocked the exchange. “Y/N, my dear. We’ll work you in, of course. You are such a valuable asset to the company. The glue, as I recall all the papers we publish calling you.”

You stepped closer to Roman, putting a hand on his elbow.

This spurred him into saying, “Hey, look, Dad, I know what Matsson said, I was there. But, uhm, with Matsson calling the shots, we’re… we’re strung up in the town square.”

“No!” Logan asserted, making his way closer, standing less than an arm’s length away from Roman. “He likes you! You have my word. This is an opportunity son. A bit of fucking grit. Adversity, like me. You can trust me.”

These days, Logan Roy’s word seemed to mean very little. It was his money that held the power.

“You can’t trust him,” Shiv said, voice straining.

Roman’s hands shook. “Uhm…” His voice went all soft, almost a husky whisper. “We’re here to say, to ask, please… do not do this.”

Logan tilted his head. “And what if I decide not to listen to you?”

“We can stop you,” Shiv said. “And we will. Blow this up.”

“Kids have voting power over company control,” you told your godfather. “From the divorce.”

“Yeah,” agreed Shiv. “You need all of us. You need a super majority, and we can kill it.”

This time, Logan yelled, voice bellowing. “You’re playing toy fucking soldiers!” Roman flinched back into you, and you rubbed your thumb along the inside of his forearm. “Go on! Fuck off, all of you! I have you beat! You f—morons!”

Nose twitching with contempt, Shiv protested, “Well, no, because you need a super majority—”

Logan roared out a mocking imitation of Shiv’s voice, somehow still terrifying. He sighed then, pulling a hand over his weary features. He turned, asking Kerry something. Something you didn’t quite catch.

Then a phone was being pulled out, and you heard Caroline’s voice crackling through the line.

A heavy pit sunk down your stomach. It clicked for you before it clicked for the siblings—mostly because they were probably in such heavy denial.

Caroline had renegotiated the divorce agreement, effectively robbing the children of their say. Their voices. All three of their faces fell, crestfallen, as the weight of the realization slammed into them.

Shiv seemed the angriest of them, muttering expletives and yelling angrily at her mother through the phone. Caroline apologized, saying it was for the best, but she wouldn’t hear a single word of it. The call was hung up a second later.

“Dad,” Roman said, disrupting the eerie, tense silence. “Please?”

He was a child asking for a dog again. He was a teenager asking to come home from military school again. He was a young adult asking for his dad to stop hitting him again.

“Please?” Logan parroted, almost disbelieving.

“Please,” he repeated, voice breaking.

“The seat sniffer gets a fucking leg up,” his father scoffed. “That’s a deal. What have you got in your fucking deck?”

“What have I got?” Roman asked. He reached back so the hand you had rested on his elbow laced with his. “I don’t know. Fucking… fucking love?”

When Logan repeated that word—love—it sounded so childish on his tongue. So frivolous and fanciful, as if it couldn’t possibly exist.

“You come for me… with love? You bust in here, guns in hand, and now you find they’ve turned into fucking sausages. You talk about love?” He worked a hand over his jaw. “You should’ve trusted me.”

Tears filled Roman’s eyes. “Dad, why?”

“Why?” Logan swept his gaze over his children, his goddaughter. “Because it works. I fucking win.

A beat of unbearable silence. Your nose stung, a familiar sensation.

“Go on, go on. Fuck off. You nosy fucking pedestrians.”

A wave of nausea rolled over Roman. He called out for his father as Logan stormed off, disappearing behind the doors. Then, he rushed over to ask Gerri to help them out, as Shiv stressed on who had tipped Logan off that they were on their way to see him.

Gerri dismissed Roman, brushing him off as if he were a bread crumb on her jacket. Tom arrived then, asking if his wife was okay. Shiv seemed to piece something together that you didn’t quite understand yet.

Roman sank to the ground, and Kendall put his hands on his brother’s shoulders, just as Roman did for him hours ago. You sat down beside him, your side pressed up against his.

“I want to go home,” Roman muttered. “This was all for nothing. It meant nothing.”

“Okay, Rome,” you whispered in return. “We’ll go home.”

#roman roy x reader #roman roy fanfiction #roman roy smut #roman roy fluff #roman roy series #roman roy ff #roman roy angst #roman roy x you #roman roy fanfic #succession roman #succession roman x reader #roman roy #succession fanfiction #succession x reader #roman roy imagine

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ginariima · 7 months

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Chimata is pretty neat :) SO I just want to talk about Chimata for a lil bit because I think she's pretty cool. First off is her design, it's a rainbow design which most of time can look really ugly. Due to a lack of color consistency making it really hard to focus on the character. However, Chimata's design circumvents this by using colors' natural values.

Some colors are just naturally darker (or have lower values) than other colors. Chimata's design uses these natural values. Just in case if you're a bit confused, I have all the colors all the way to the top right, yet, some of them are still darker.

Our eyes naturally tend to look at what is the lightest. In this case, you're going to look at Chimata's center, her face and her white coat. Then they're going to travel downwards to the yellow, portion, then to the blue/green, then to the purple. Then again from chimata's center, your eyes travel to the orange, and then to the red of her arms.

This is such a clever way to do a rainbow design and I love it so much cause of that. It might still look off to some people though because of the really high saturation, which is why some artists desaturate her colors just a teensy bit. Ok now i wanna talk about her theme, "Where is that Bustling Marketplace Now ~ Immemorial Marketeers", specifically the Rainbow-Colored Septentrion version of the theme. Unlike most Touhou final boss themes, these theme feels desperate and powerless. The closest theme that I think gets to the feeling of desperation this theme has is Sukuna's theme with it's final part. Zun described the song as being split into two halfs, a 'wailing' section and a 'upbeat' section. The trumpets that appear 50 seconds into the song which really emphasizes that wailing part, they're slow and completely cut off the climax that the song was building up to at that point. Then once more, it builds tension up and up again, but once more it fails to capitalize on it and goes into THE BELL SECTION (my fav part !) A calm before the storm before the actual climax with a cool fast piano! This part always feels like a last resort, I know to many it sounds upbeat but to me it always sounded desperate. It has barely any long notes, and is a super frantic. The melody also has this funky lil shape I like Picture from chronondecay's transcription of Chimata's theme

The melody is constantly going up and down in fast sucession. The stops within it, especially with the zunpets, feel like gasps of air to just barely continue. Until it falls down again into a repeating zunpet part that sounds like it's trying to recapture the feeling of the previous section, but just can't. That thing this song does, of rising to a climax that just doesn't come is so cool in my opinion. It feels so desperate and confused as to the direction of where it has to go. Showing Chimata's feelings during the incident where she is completely at a disadvantage due to the pandemic of the outside world, and being a newcomer to Gensokyo. She's trying to survive, but doesn't know how to go about it. Well thats my best try at an analysis of a song 😎 since my knowledge of music just comes from looking at midis lol. I'd like to talk about some of her story stuff too, like the incident and her relationship with Megumu that get's explored in Lotus Eaters but I AM TIRED. Instead of doing my homework thats due in 5 hours I did this for like an hour so I'mma stop for now. Hope you all like Chimata a bit more!

#touhou #touhou project #東方 #東方project #東方イラスト #myart #touhou18 #unconnected marketeers #chimata tenkyuu #she's really cool trust me.

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tenthgrove · 1 month

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Reverse Engineering the OIAR Tagging System: Part 2

I've had another look at things and I have managed to create a more concrete theory for how the tags work, though at this stage I would be very surprised if it were all correct.

A reminder for the unfamiliar- every TMAGP statement comes with a long code, consisting of a CAT (category?), R (rank? - two statements do not have this), a four digit number which seems to be totally random, and the dates of both the statement's origin, and when the episode is set.

I've created this theory by identifying patterns between the CAT and R values and the themes, characters and dates of the statements. It is clear we need some more statements to be sure, so I will update this as new episodes come in. That said, here is my theory.

CAT = Is the Monster an External and/or Being Actively Taken Advantage of by the OIAR?

CAT 1 = Yes. CAT 2 = No, but there are plans to acquire it. CAT 3 = No, and there are no plans to acquire it. CAT 23 = The monster possesses some special quality which the OIAR would like to take advantage of, but currently has no means to do this (hence making it both a CAT 2 and 3 in a sense).

Our only confirmed external, Mr Bonzo, is a CAT 1. The two other CAT 1s are monsters that could very well function as OIAR assassins. Granted, Needles seems to be killing for his own pleasure and seems very ‘green’. BUT- how in the living hell did he murder a man on the streets of London and it wasn’t national news? Maybe, just maybe, Needles was recruited as a result of that incident and the OIAR pulled strings to clean up his mess. Additionally, two of the CAT 1s are delivered literally days before we learn of them. One is older but refers to Bonzo, who we know for a fact is still active. The other was delivered in May 2022. All these statements are live matters, referring to beings who are almost certainly still out there making body counts.

Moving down to the lower rankings, the current CAT 2s are plant guy, Vouyer, the charity shop volunteers and the backrooms service station. These are all statements that leave huge question marks. None of them are delivered by a primary source. They are all 1-15 year old statements. This could mean the OIAR is trying to locate the beings within the statement to potentially take advantage of them, but have not yet tracked them down.

The current CAT 3s are InkSoul, the violin guy, and the bone dice guy. Violin and dice guy are both dead, and the dice were presumably lost in the destruction of the Magnus Institute. It’s clear why the OIAR wouldn’t be interested in them. Now what about InkSoul? Well there are a number of reasons why the OIAR would not want to recruit them. Maybe their power is not reliable? After all, it seemed the effect they had on their victim in the statement was linked to her being an artist. Maybe they’ve already tried to recruit InkSoul and it didn’t go well. Or maybe InkSoul has become inactive since the statement in 2022.

Now, what about CAT 23? I’m really not sure about this one (there are only two CAT 23s so far, one of which is the Red Canary statement) so my theory here is a stand-in. I previously suggested CAT 23 could refer to dimensional cracks and it’s possible that is also the case. It could be that CAT 23 IS the ‘Magnus Protocol’, and that ‘Magnus’ doesn’t specifically mean ‘pertaining to the Magnus Institute’ but ‘pertaining to the Magnus Institute or similar known cracks in reality, of which the Magnus Institute is the one we know most about’. It could be that the OIAR has an active interest in manipulating dimensional cracks but hasn’t yet figured out how, and CAT 23 is created to reflect this.

R = How Useful is this Monster to the OIAR?

A = Frighteningly powerful, possibly equivalent in its impact to the rituals. AB = Between A and B value. B = Pretty useful, but not going to massively improve the OIAR's position by itself. BC = Between B and C value. C = Not especially useful for the OIAR's purposes. Unranked = Value either not investigated or pending investigation. We have no Rank As thus far, and the only rank AB, the Red Canary statement, is widely believed by fans to be the most crucial piece of the puzzle so far to the wider mystery. I believe the first rank A statement is going to be truly massive.

Current Rank Bs include Bonzo and Needles, as well as the bone dice and the Voyuer movie. Bonzo is a known OIAR assassin and as above, Needles very well could be/could become one if the OIAR wanted that for him. However, they can't exactly take down society. Equally, the dice and the movie have limitations that only allow them to target one person at a time - the dice only affect the person who rolls them and the movie relies on only having one audience member to customise itself for.

The Rank Cs are, so far, just the charity volunteers and the ship tattoo. I admit this may be the weakest part of the theory as it's not clear how these two are 'useless', especially if CAT 23 means what I theorise above. Maybe Rank Cs are useful to study but not important to the main goals of the OIAR, whatever they be.

The two unranked statements are the plant guy and the violin. The violin statement could be unranked because it is just that old, and the plant guy could be unranked for a number of reasons. Maybe he is CAT 2 because the OIAR want to study him, but they don't actually have a use for the anomaly that sired him.

Conclusion

As you can see there are various weaknesses to the theory and I would be very surprised if it turns out to be entirely right. The biggest gap right now is the rank C/unranked theories which are not entirely apparant why they're so low. If Protocol is anything like Archives, almost all these monsters will be revisited, so reasons for their placements could still be revealed to us. I am fairly certain the OIAR already knows more about most of them than is let on. I will revisit this theory as more information becomes known.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp theory #tmagp thoughts #tmagp speculation #the magnus protocol spoilers

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circyexistforcontent · 1 year

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Re: Paperwork Post

Oof. The paperwork post is so good. Combining the paperwork post with the time dilation post, I imagine would not lead to good things. I imagine in SAGAU, it would lead to a workaholic reader with little to no time with the acolytes. If the reader isn't working on the mountains of paperwork for days on end, then they're sleeping for days on end. Rinse and repeat for eternity, I imagine. I wonder if the reader would ever get sick of the routine, since it would end up being a neverending job at this point. What do you think?

SAGAU CONCEPT: ACOLYTES AND TIME DILATION

❀ synopsis: don't you want devoted followers? Who leaves their families for you? Give their money to you? Give their bodies to you? Give up their lives for you? Consider you God? And will kill for you?

❀ tw: religious themes, cult au, human sacrifice, panic attacks, reader is very tired and overworked.

Yeah, sagau reader is going to be equivalent to a zombie with how they're living. There is no harem anime life, only a workaholic reader whose blood consists of 90% caffeine. Readers' harem wouldn't be helpful (ok maybe a little bit helpful) since they cause more cons than pros. The most troublesome type of yandere is the ones that lead you away from your work (Traveler, Wanderer, Venti, Kazuha) and especially the ones that sacrifice to you in your name (Zhongli, Childe, Dainsleif, Razor).

some people would blame you for killing them in the shadows, and it doesn't help that the same person who accused you disappears the next day. It will cause people to doubt your judgment and it takes several of your followers to ease their opinions (Ganyu, Barbara, Jean, Kaeya, Ayato, etc).

There might be a group of people trying to kill the reader since those who were killed might have close ones, but y'know, their side characters. Their npcs. The acolytes immediately shut it down by threatening them while the defectors were on the brink of death (Diluc, Xiao, Gorou, etc). So to get straight to the point, sagau is basically a normal yandere genshin au on steroids. There is a lot of murder and manipulation on the civilian's end since some yandere's have to cover for the other yandere's who can't control their murder boner. And you have to take care of the two seperate parties or else things might go out of hand

On time dilation...

Let's be honest, Zhongli was the one who most likely saw you sleeping on your desk. When you didn't wake up after 2 days everyone will panic. Some will blame themselves for overworking you and not helping you while some will insist on giving you medicine that might wake you up. The traveler is the clingiest one out of all your acolytes since the two of you have been together since the beginning.

The archons are hysterical the moment you fell into a deep sleep. They're in a constant state of panic and frequently visit to check up on you. Venti likes to play songs when you're sleeping in hopes that you can hear them through your dreams. Zhongli likes to hold your hand and feel your warmth to reassure himself that you're still alive. Ei has this fascination with your holy figure. Every curve, every vein, every single hair on your body is perfect.

It doubles when you fell into a deep sleep. Seeing your body in perfect condition after months of being asleep makes her adore you even more. You really are eternal, you are everything Ei aspires to be. But to be honest, she prefers you to be awake so she can adore you even more.

But yeah, its not a fun time for you once you wake up :(

(sorry this was short, I really want to add more)

#🍒sagau #sagau brainrot #sagau x reader #sagau venti #sagau zhongli #genshin cult au #self aware genshin #genshin impact x reader #genshin self aware #genshin x reader #yandere genshin x reader #yandere genshin au #yandere genshin impact #sagau cult au #cult au #sagau ei #archons x reader

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gffa · 9 months

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Hi Lumi. This year I’ve watched The Clone Wars, Rebels, Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, and Tales of the Jedi and I’m watching Ahsoka as episodes are released. But I feel like I’m missing some context as to why people are wary of Filoni. What things should I know so I’m caught up, so to speak, in the fandom discussions?

Hi! That's a lot of Star Wars to watch in a year, I hope you're having fun with it all! And I will gently remind everyone that Filoni is not the be-all-end-all of Star Wars creators--Henry Gilroy was there for TCW and Rebels, too. George Lucas was holding writers' meetings years after the show started (at least into 2010!). The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett are far more Jon Favreau's shows. The Bad Batch is Brad Rau and Jennifer Corbett. Resistance was developed by him, but was run by other producers. It's just that Filoni tends to get the most camera time and has become the face of Star Wars creators. That said, the issue with Filoni is kind of two-pronged, though, they overlap. 1. He's done a lot of interviews where he's said a lot of anti-Jedi things that have drifted from reasonable critiques in the beginning to eventually "Qui-Gon Jinn was the only true Jedi. [blatantly wrong citations]" This has put a lot of people off him as a creator, because we love the Jedi Order that Lucas talks about and established, which Filoni has actively contradicted over the years, despite being promoted as someone who follows Lucas' themes. And it's hard not to be aware of his interviews when watching his shows and it's hard to enjoy shows that do your faves dirty, you know? 2. His writing has become weaker over the years for a lot of us--Rebels is a show most of us love and found to be incredible. Many of us really love The Clone Wars, which he was heavily involved in/was probably the central voice after Lucas started phasing out. But his biggest story told over the course of those series--basically, the story of Mandalore's history and fall to the Empire--has been extremely thin for a lot of us. And a lot of us get frustrated at his inability to be objective when it comes to Ahsoka's character, that we love her as a character very much, but it hasn't felt like Filoni really knows what to do with her character arc and yet almost everything he writes is centered around her. His final season of The Clone Wars? Gave her the walkabout arc and the Siege of Mandalore arc, both of which often did not hold up well under scrutiny. His episode of The Book of Boba Fett? I actually really loved it, but it absolutely just stopped the pacing of that show to focus a lot on her. More on Luke, but he couldn't resist putting her in there, either. Tales of the Jedi was half devoted to Ahsoka and so much of it wasn't even about her time as a Jedi! We're frustrated because he doesn't set things up well anymore--Morgan Elsbeth is a Nightsister?? Why wasn't that established in The Mandalorian instead of pulling out randomly in Ahsoka? Why does Sabine Wren suddenly so badly want Jedi training, when they barely even had a conversation in Rebels?? There's a lot of good that Filoni has given to Star Wars, I think he genuinely cares about the Force and what it means--he's very consistent on how it's not easy and how it takes discipline and control, that he has been consistent on how anger and fear are paths to the dark side, even his episode of TBOBF had Ahsoka saying, yeah, attachment is a path to the dark side, because the Jedi mean "attachment" in a more Buddhist-aligned way. A lot of his writing for the character of Ahsoka is actually pretty good, like I've been enjoying her being a prickly, traumatized hot mess in the show! It's just that I kind of hate all the interviews he gives and I think he's a lot less objective than a lot of fans and media coverage that would hold him up as a perfect writer/interviewee about all things Star Wars, and it all comes together to make him kind of a hot-button topic.

So, a lot of people LOVE Filoni's work, a lot of people are frustrated by it, a lot of people are casually fine about it, a lot of people HATE Filoni's work and it can be a fun mix of any of the above or even other issues that come up. (And that's all fine! I have my views on Filoni's work, but it's fine if others hate it more than I do or love it more than I do, there's room for us all, all of it is valid.)

But I think if you want to understand some of the roots of this corner of fandom's frustration, two (admittedly long as heck) homework assignment reads would be:

- My own rebuttal to Dave's behind the scenes Mandalorian Gallery talk (this is jokingly referred to as "Davegate" because I refused to take it too seriously) - @david-talks-sw's collection of comparisons between Lucas' commentary on the Jedi and Filoni's commentary on the Jedi

This response itself is more focused on laying out the problems a lot of people have with Filoni's writing, but also honestly I still have my giant collection of Jedi source material citations that quotes his commentary, I still bring up Filoni's quotes in current meta a lot, I still talk positively about the things I enjoy from his shows, so overall there's equal amounts of both praise and criticism here. So, as short as I can make it (which isn't very, shut up, I know! XD), that's basically what people mean when they say they're wary of Filoni.

#star wars #dave filoni #meta

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thegreatwicked · 2 months

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Writing Resources Part 2

My first list was so long I decided that I reached the character limit! So we have a part two! I'm going to try and keep them a bit more organized too! Hope these help you all in your writing endeavors and if you happen to use any of them try to give the original source some love!

Also, apologies if I've tagged you more than once and it's annoying! If I reference your material more than twice I will just link your whole Tumblr. I really do want to make sure everyone gets their credit and spotlight!

General Information and Research:

The Fantasy Guide to Royal and Noble Marriages or anything by @inky-duchess Her blog is extensive and is a wealth of information regarding things like royalty/nobility/Period social politics and is a fantastic resource, go check her out! Ink I do appologize I might be tagging you more than once!

@type1diabetesinfandom This blog is an amazing resource if you are interested in writing about characters with any form of diabetes or similar health issues. It was ana amzing find when I was writing my character Belladonna Black from Shadows of Deception who is hypoglycemic. What an amazing source!

How to Cook in a Medieval Setting: by @alpaca-clouds Food is the best way to know a culture and this particular blog post is a trove of information for your fictional foodie set anywhere in this spectrum of time or a great find for a fictional setting! This post obviously gets a chefs kiss!

The Symbolism of Flowers by @novlr Yeah! Leopold knew what he was talkign about, every flower has a meaning and it is entirely possible to send some a bouquette that translates to 'Fuck You' btw it consists of geraniums (stupidity), foxglove (insincerity), meadowsweet (uselessness), yellow carnations (you have disappointed me), and orange lilies (hatred). it would be quite striking! and full of loathing. THE MORE YOU KNOW. This blog is also a fantastic source for writers.

Writing About Body Pain by @slayingfiction I just came across this gem of a blog and if you're one who likes to make your characters sufffer than look no further, also, how ya doing? You ok? Just checking. This blog is also a fantastic writing resource.

How to Accurately Describe Pain in Writing by @hayatheauthor kinda piggybacking off the previous source but nevertheless lets make sure we make these characters suffer realistically? I'm ok too, if you're wondering. This is another great blog that focuses on the aspect of being a writer.

How to Use Canva to Make Mood Boards by @saradika I did not know much about mood baords but I'm telling you they are a gaem changer! They bring a life to your story in a way that is just so stunning and saradika has been so lovely as to make this helpful guide! She's also a very talented writer and is quite the Star Wars Fan! GO check out her stories!

Researching as a Writer by @so-many-ocs Research is a tricky topid to delve into and sometime sit hard to know where to start, this blogger has been so kinda as to make a bit of a roadmap to help you narrow down what you need to research and how. Wonderful blog! Very helpful!

Resources for Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters by @thecaffeinebookwarrior THIS! This right here is a gem and the only reason I don't write these types fo characters is because I've never known how to do so respectfuly and realistically! Not a problem anymore! Also a wonderful artist!

How to Write and Research a Mental Illness another gem from @hayatheauthor again if you're going to wrote a character with a mental illness lets make sure we get it right!

@namesforwriters It's little but a wonderful source of unique names for your story! Including mythology and music themed names!

Nightmare Disorder vs Night Terrors by @redd956 Some great clarification from a blogger who is diagnosed! So happy I found this as I was wondering about the distinction myself for a little while!

Types of Gemstones by @blueboxbeagle and brought to my attention by @keffirinne

More will be added to this post as I find it and if you find anything that fits the general research on broad topics or specifics please let me know so I can continue this collective writing resource! And make sure to give some of these wonderful writers and bloggers some love!

#writing resources #writing research

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demiaroacejolynekujo · 22 days

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The Amazing Digital Circus Episode 2 Review

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the second episode of The Amazing Digital Circus. If you haven't seen the episode, please skip this post and watch the episode before reading this post.

This post also contains critical commentary about Vivziepop. If you're a Vivziepop stan, please do not interact with me. Critical fans and antis are welcome to interact. Reblogs on this post are turned off to prevent Vivziepop stans from interacting with me.

If you're a Vivziepop stan and try to interact with me by sending a PM or tagging me in a post, you'll be instantly blocked. Any asks sent by Vivziepop stans will be deleted.

I didn't find out that TADC had another episode out until Saturday night while I was preparing for my morning shift at work. I decided to watch the new episode before bed and wasn't disappointed at what I watched.

The episode starts with Pomni having a nightmare before Ragatha woke her up. Poor girl can't catch a break after what she went through in the first episode.

And now, for the main event of the episode. Caine assigned the crew to a mission to return the maple syrup that was stolen for a candy kingdom by a small group of gummy gator bandits. I also got some nostalgia feels for the episode as I grew up watching Adventure Time, and the candy themed kingdom reminded me of the Candy Kingdom from Adventure Time.

The chase scene was extremely hilarious, and I felt bad that poor Pomni had to try to keep the bandits from going away. If only Jax actually did something instead of antagonizing her. Gotta say that Jax is one lovable prick.

It made me sad that after Pomni and Gummigoo had their little bonding moment, Caine was like, "nope" and Thanos'd Gummigoo from entering the circus. But after that episode, I wonder what Gooseworx has planned for Caine. Will he end up being the big bad guy in the show? His role is to be some sort of ringleader, after all. I'm looking forward to the future episodes to come.

To end my thoughts about the new episode, I did like that the ending shows Pomni slowly starting to get comfortable with the others. I know Gooseworx said that she doesn't plan on shipping the characters, but maybe she might reconsider it with Pomni and Ragatha. But either or is fine. Gooseworx has the right to do whatever she wants with the show.

I've also mentioned at the very beginning of the post that I will add some critical commentary about Vivziepop. So I might as well address everything now.

I believe I've said this in my post about my thoughts on the first episode about The Amazing Digital Circus, which is that Gooseworx doesn't rely heavily on excess amount of swearing to make her content funny. I still got a good laugh out of watching the new episode. I also like how Gooseworx hired indie voice actors for the show, and it shows that you don't need voice actors who have been in the industry for years to get people to consume your work. Also, last time I checked, the new episode got over 30 million views on YouTube.

Another thing is that I really like how the characters are designed. I'm curious if there is any significance for the roles the TADC crew will play during the future of the show. For example, Pomni is in a Jester outfit, and I'm curious how it will affect her role in the show. And it's obvious that Caine, being the ringleader of the crew, by having him wear a suit and top hat to show that. Meanwhile, Vivziepop seems to rehash similar character designs for the rest of her characters, which, in my opinion, makes her characters look dull looking. Viv has the potential to create really well designed characters as shown with her past work. And I wish she could improve that in the future.

Lastly, the writing. I know The Amazing Digital Circus only has two episodes, but the writing is far better than Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss combined. The Amazing Digital Circus stays consistent to the plot by showing the crew going to various parts of the universe they're in to complete their missions. I will admit that the plot of Hazbin Hotel is somewhat consistent as it shows Charlie trying to redeem sinners on top of the threat of Heaven. My biggest concern with Hazbin is that whenever Season two comes around, I'm worried that Vivziepop will sideline Charlie's mission to redeem sinners and help maintain the population of hell to either filler episodes or deter the main plot by focusing heavily on heaven or things that are not significant to the plot of Hazbin Hotel.

And then there's Helluva Boss. The show was promoted being about a group of imp mercenaries doing kill jobs. It wasn't until Viv decided it would be a "brilliant" to show that the main plot aside to focus on Stolas and Blitzo's "relationship" (even though I don't consider that a relationship due to how predatory Stolas is towards Blitz and something similar to Angel Dust and Valentino).

To close this post, I would like to say that The Amazing Digital Circus is what both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss could be, despite TADC only having two episodes. If Vivziepop hired indie voice actors, worked more on her character designs, rethink how she writes both Hazbin and Helluva Boss, and works on giving her female characters the character development they deserve, then maybe I'll rewatch them in the future. However, the problem is that Viv doesn't really handle criticism well and relies on her fans to protect her. She's a grown woman, and she doesn't need other people to fight her own battles. If she can't handle that as a content creator, then maybe she should either step down from her position as the lead of HH and HB or consider taking a hiatus and have her work on herself.

But anyways, that's was I gotta say. The second episode of TADC was a fun watch, and I'm looking forward to what Gooseworx has in store for her viewers.

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #gooseworx #anti hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel critique #anti helluva boss #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critique #helluva boss critical #anti stolitz #anti vivziepop #vivziepop critical #vivziepop criticism #vivziepop critique

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antiquarianfics · 9 months

Text

Taken pt. 7

If Bucky Barnes could time travel, he would go back to that morning. He would hold you a little tighter in his arms, and he would kiss you a little deeper. He would pull your daughter in between the two of you, letting her giggle as loudly as she wants whilst her parents kiss her cheeks and tickle her belly. If Bucky Barnes could time travel, he would have told you not to go to the park—to go anywhere else. But Bucky Barnes can’t time travel, and his wife and daughter are gone.

a/n: we’re halfway through!! I’m sorry this part is shorter, but things are about to pick up!

warnings: swearing, blackmail, mention of murder, themes of conspiracy, canon typical violence.

note: I do not own the character Bucky Barnes or any other Marvel affiliated characters. Any and all characters are a work of fiction and any likeness to real persons is wholly unintentional.

You do not have permission to copy, translate, or repost my work; however, feel free to like, comment, and reblog.

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previous part | series masterlist | next part

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“What do you want me to do”

Morozov grins, pulls a paper out of a manila folder next to his laptop, and slides it across the table to you.

“This list contains the names of people who are keeping HYDRA from its full potential.

“Eliminate them.”

You cautiously pick up the paper Morozov slides to you, letting your eyes wander meticulously over the list of names presented. Your eyebrows shoot up in surprise as you read.

John Atkins, President of the United States of America

Elizabeth Fitzgerald, U.S. Secretary of Defense

Antonio Smith, U.S. Director of Homeland Security

Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD

Phil Coulson, SHIELD

Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America, Avenger

Your head begins to ache as you try to comprehend the names in front of you—the targets you’ve been given.

“You’re insane if you think I’m going to kill these people for you,” you say, bringing your attention back to the monster sat in front of you.

Morozov sighs dramatically.

“Again, Mrs. Barnes, I remind you HYDRA has eyes on your family. Each of our undercover operatives are trained snipers and combatants. Do you really think I’m bluffing when I say I’ll have your daughter killed? Your husband? Your friends?”

You purse your lips tightly.

“The names on that list belong to the people who consistently prevent HYDRA from realizing its mission. If I am to accomplish what our forefathers couldn’t, I need to eliminate any potential threats.”

“And what are you trying to accomplish?” You ask petulantly.

Morozov stands, letting his hands rest clasped together behind his back.

“I thought you’d never ask!” He sings out. “You see, eons ago, the ancient inhumans banished the all powerful inhuman HIVE to the planet Maveth. HYDRA has lost its way over the years, but our purpose is to bring HIVE back to Earth so that he may purify it.”

You scoff and Morozov glares at you.

“Steve Rogers, SHIELD, and the American government have foiled HYDRA’s attempts to bring HIVE back to Earth too many times. The HYDRA leaders who’ve come before me didn’t have the gall to eliminate such prominent leaders. That’s why I will be the one to bring HIVE home!”

“I reiterate, you’re insane,” you spit. You can hear the venom in your own voice.

“I reiterate,” Morozov mocks, “I will have everyone you love killed.”

Morozov presses a key on the laptop and a camera switches to whom you assume is one of the undercover HYDRA agents at the Compound. Morozov hits another button and speaks.

“Agent 0412, go to standby.”

You watch as the agent nods subtly before pulling out a gun, turning off the safety, and walking towards the Avengers living quarters. You suck in a breath. While you’ve been acutely aware that Morozov isn’t joking around, you hadn’t quite felt the weight of your own choices until this moment. You note that every choice you make will directly impact the next choice Morozov makes.

“Fine,” you concede. “Call him off and I’ll do it.”

Morozov grins before calling off the guard.

—

You’re sitting on a jet heading back towards the states. You wish you were headed home, but you choose to take some comfort in the fact that you’re at least leaving Siberia.

You check your gear, taking inventory of each gun and knife you have hidden in your suit and strapped to your body. Then, when you’re comfortable enough with your gear, you pull out a crumpled piece of paper that has the names of Morozov’s targets. You’ve chosen to move down the list so that you’ll start with President Atkins and end with Steve. You only hope you manage to break free from HYDRA before you actually have to kill anyone.

“Agent Barnes,” a gruff voice states, and you look up to meet the burly man speaking.

Ever since you formerly agreed to Morozov’s conditions of your family’s safety, you’d been treated more fairly and addressed more respectfully.

“Hmm?” You hum, having taken to speaking as little as possible.

“Hold out your arm, please,” the man says as he comes to kneel beside you where you’re sat. It’s then that you notice the metal case he holds.

Cautiously, you hold out your arm, and you watch as he pulls a large syringe out of the case. The man picks up a small device and loads it into the syringe. He then rolls up your tac suit sleeve and injects the device into your arm. You grimace. It hurts going in, and you can see a bulge in your arm.

“The fuck was that?” You ask incredulously.

“Your tracker,” the man responds dryly. “Dr. Frost asked me to remind you that you’ve nowhere to run. One move in the wrong direction and he orders the kill shot on your family.”

With that, the man leaves and you sit in silence for the rest of your flight towards DC.

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ko-fi

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Tags: @just-henny @jasminocano @browneyedgirl22-blog @barnesboo1967 @matchat3a @unkasworld @qwertyb2577 @raajali3 @yoruse @iilsenewman @alysianc @fairytalegirlofurdreams @marvelxlevram @casa-boiardi @buckybraneslover111 @hhiggs @smolracoon25 @questionableratatouille00 @heytheredemonsitsyourgirl @thearieunhinged @sebastianstansqueen @middaystarlight @talesofadragon @killerwendigo @ozwriterchick

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #marvel x reader #bucky x you #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader fluff #bucky barnes x you #bucky x fem!reader #bucky barnes angst #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky fic #bucky x female reader #bucky x reader angst #bucky barnes x reader angst

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bakuhatsufallinlove · 1 year

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I love your translation posts, they give great context to some moments! I’ve seen chapter 348 translated with Toga’s confession as almost being narrated by Bakugou but I’ve also seen it translated as a more generic voice. Is there a correct version?

This is a complicated question, so let me put it this way: while there is less uncertainty in Japanese about who is narrating 348, that doesn't mean there is no uncertainty. In general, I think English audiences are responding with much more scrutiny to something that is not particularly notable in Japanese manga.

We don't have a lot of information about the narrator that refers to Izuku in the third-person. "Midoriya Izuku" is not how Izuku narrated the story when his internal voice was dominant, he always used first-person pronouns to tell "the story of how I became the greatest hero."

In the series, there are inner monologues that convey what the characters are thinking in the moment, and then there is "framing narration." Framing narration positions the story in the past tense, implying a future person is relaying this event with more knowledge about its conclusion than the audience has.

Inner monologues have distinct clarity both in visual cues (who is on-screen) and how they speak.

Ochako's inner monologue during 321 is indisputably Ochako; the opening words are placed over her image, and the Japanese audience is already familiar with the fact that Ochako calls Izuku "Deku-kun" and uses the personal pronoun watashi (私), so when she says "we," it's watashitachi (私たち), pluralizing her own pronoun. If this were Shouto's monologue, we would have had Midoriya and orera (俺ら) or oretachi (俺たち) instead. The audience would have understood the distinction, although the visual cue centering Ochako would feel a little odd, like Shouto is looking to her while thinking this.

Framing narration, of course, has little-to-no visual cuing, so we have to rely on speech patterns, and thus end up with subjective interpretation and predictions.

348's framing narrator uses kare (彼) to refer to Izuku as he. This is not a pronoun we have ever seen Katsuki use for him. Katsuki exclusively refers to Izuku in the third-person with aitsu or soitsu (あいつ or そいつ), both of which mean "that guy" in a rude way consistent with his typical speech pattern.

There is the possibility that the audience is supposed to be surprised by the use of "shitty nerd" following the pronoun kare, because the two contradict each other, and "shitty nerd" is put at the end of the sentence like a zinger. This might imply that, sometime in the future, Katsuki starts using kare for Izuku, and that really would be a shocking change, because it is extremely polite and non-confrontational compared to how he normally talks. I don't think that is what is going on, though, for the following reasons:

In manga, framing devices are not always explained or particularly thought of as noteworthy. Some series use a framing device at the beginning, and then completely abandon it by the end. Some series have very inconsistent framing devices, sometimes due to the intense workload of weekly chapter output and sometimes because the author just wants it that way, and they use the inconsistency as a way to be poetic, develop story themes, or conveniently convey information.

English language media, especially in recent years, has much more strict rules and expectations about framing devices. I don't think Japanese audiences are as concerned about who this narrator is because the expectations are different.

That said, from both a writing standpoint and the experience of the audience, Katsuki's words being brought up in the middle of a love confession is not meaningless. The literal identity of the narrator may not be that important in the end, but what the narrator conveys is absolutely still important.

There are a lot of ways you can interpret Katsuki's words being brought up here, but it is undeniably intentional. If he wanted the "nerd" meaning without connecting it to Katsuki, Horikoshi could have just called Izuku an otaku, since that term carries an implication of "indifferent or ignorant to human relationships" in Japan. If this were just about how oblivious Izuku is, he could have said that Izuku 空気を読めない (kuuki wo yomenai, can't read the room).

But he chose the words Katsuki alone uses for Izuku--words that were historically derogatory but, as their relationship has improved, could almost be read as friendly or affectionate.

I personally feel like it is foreshadowing, but we'll have to see how it shakes out!

#bkdk #bakudeku #mha spoilers #bnha spoilers #translations #asks #mha 348

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boywifesammy · 7 months

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im sure everyone’s seen the argument by non-wincest shippers that canon weirdcest moments can be explained off as particularly close brothers. i’ve seen wincesties respond by straight up denying it, but honestly, i see where they’re coming from. they do TECHNICALLY have a point, yet still, it fundamentally doesnt sit well with me.

if you isolate all of these little incidents they could be perceived as purely brotherly. its got me thinking about what exactly makes wincest so appealing, and why i as a wincest shipper immediately have an exasperated reaction to people insisting that sam&dean are purely platonic.

i also see this argument frequently bundled with the stance that “weirdcest isn’t a justification for shipping wincest” (which is a whole other can of worms altogether— the puritan culture of ship culture rn), but you gotta take a step back and just ask yourself… why am i so intent on seeing these characters as platonic?

the prevailing argument ive seen is that siblings CAN be terribly close without being incestuous. this is totally fair. i’m not saying that if you are particularly close with your siblings in a sam & dean type manner that you are incestuous. obviously relationships between family is vastly complex & changes with the culture you grew up in.

the only problem here is that people try to go so far to explain sam&dean’s relationship as to not paint it as romantic. if they weren’t related, it’d be insane to think they weren’t romantic. they are consistently and repeatedly put in situations and exchange dialogue that’s used to convey romantic tone in western media. my point here being— the writers know that they are doing. and they are doing it INTENTIONALLY.

yes, certain cultures find extensive physical touch and kisses between siblings platonically acceptable. yes, you can be very close to your siblings without wanting to fuck them. but that is such a reach given what you are being presented with. you are missing the fundamental thematic point of supernatural: family horror!!

by so steadfastly arguing that sam&dean cannot be read as romantic you are purposefully ignoring the the text. you are glossing over the repeating themes of generational trauma and incest that are touched on time and time again, with john’s father abandoning him, mary’s parents being hunters, the struggle she went through to get out of the life but how family trauma & the past permeates itself into your being. you are ignoring the benders, the ghost pregnant with her fathers child, and the time azazel KISSED MARY in HER FATHERS BODY.

supernatural pushes incestuous themes SO HARD. it purposefully plays with & explores the double-sided blade that is family. it touches on a REALLY TABOO subject without being overwhelming or heavy handed. of course its going to attract people who enjoy these themes. OF COURSE we’re going to look at the two homoerotic brother leads and see something between them! it’s intentionally placed in the script! its a valid reading of the text!

this is why i get frustrated when people say that wincest shippers are twisting canon for the sake of shipping, because we’re not. when people say this they are taking a piece of media that is intriguing in how it handles a socially unacknowledged part of the human experience and forcing their viewing of it on others. they are saying that you aren’t allowed to enjoy those themes because it is inherently wrong or shameful to EXPLORE THE TOPIC. i dunno. that sounds pretty authoritarian to me.

it’s totally fine to be grossed out by incest or avoid wincest because it makes you uncomfortable. what ISNT okay is to say its an exaggerated reaction to canon, because it really isnt. in fact, its a pretty normal & sane conclusion to come to after seeing those two. the fact that they aren’t explicitly incestuous might even enhance this idea. it touches on the unspoken secretive nature of family trauma and the complicated, messy reality of crossing boundaries with blood without being cliche or overdramatic.

im going to incite occam’s razor here: yes, they could just be brothers. yes, you can explain it all away as particularly close siblings. yes, you can argue that it isnt explicitly canon. but really, why would you do all that when the show incessantly implies that they’re more? and more importantly, why are you so quick to say that a topic cannot be explored because it’s complicated? is that really the sentiment that we as a society want to hold regarding media?

#oc #supernatural #spn meta #dean winchester #sam winchester #wincest #samdean #fandom discussion #anti censorship #<- will not be using the word pr/shp because im not a fan of it #it does the idea injustice because it isnt just about shipping but media censorship & social literacy as a whole #but yeah. this has been floating in my brain and i needed to get it out #if any of you have thoughts pls reply or elaborate in tags!!#this is something thats very important to me and i wanted to put it out there

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sassy-pistachy · 4 months

Text

So, about TMAGP episodes 01 and 02

There's a couple things that got me really worried:

The implications of being able (or not) to leave the OIAR, and

The two main ways the characters interact with the incidents

There’s a strong theme in both episodes about being able to resign or leave the OIAR. First thing we are introduced to, is Teddy leaving for another job. Lena tells Gwen she can leave if she wants, and Gwen tells Sam the same. The only exception is when Teddy tells Colin “you’re never getting out of here”, “you couldn’t bring yourself to leave”. Knowing Colin is currently the one most obsessed with finding out what’s going on, as his job literally consists in closely studying how the systems work… It makes me think this job starts getting dangerous if you get too deep, take it seriously and let it affect you. Is Colin in danger?

Also, there’s two ways to classify the incidents in the OIAR. You either prioritize quantity, or quality. Alice does quantity, she wisely advises Sam to just get over with the incident caseload of the day, don’t read into the incidents too deeply, and move on. Gwen on the other hand takes it more seriously, and gets behind her caseload on purpose, because she classifies each incident correctly, paying attention to them. The question is, which one is more dangerous? Is Alice’s method similar to the way Gertrude kept the Archives messy on purpose, fucking up Jonah’s plans while also protecting herself? In the OIAR, Lena is the manager. You would assume she wants each incident to be read thoroughly and classified correctly, but it seems the opposite. She scolds Gwen telling her she’s behind her caseload again. And Gwen is pissed because no one takes her or the job seriously, and she thinks she would be a better manager than Lena. Is Lena actually protecting the staff? I can’t stop thinking about Gwen fucking Bouchard eventually taking control of the OIAR, forcing the employees to read deeply and research each incident, getting them all obsessed, their minds and wills lost into whatever power is in control…

This is all really bad news for Sam. Poor boy is already showing an affinity for researching, questioning everything, wondering, wanting to find out… He’s even researching The Magnus Institute’s ruins, for whatever connection he has with it. He would’ve been perfect meat for The Beholding. He’s gonna get balls deep into this madness, and fast. But Colin might be the one falling first…

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp 1 #tmagp 2 #tmagp theory #tmagp sam #tmagp alice #tmagp lena #tmagp gwen #tmagp colin #tmagp teddy

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youareabird · 1 year

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can i request something where co-star!reader is always being asked sexist questions in interviews with bella and pedro, and the two of them subtly do things to defend the reader like pedro rubbing his eyes using his middle finger or bella randomly opening a new topic while the interviewer is in the middle of asking the question to reader HAHAHAHA (they got each other's back always and that's kind of cute)

I hope I did your idea justice!

Thanks for the reccomendation :)

Today was a busy day. You're sat in-between Bella and Pedro, an obnoxiously fake forest background behind you. The room was anything but dim, with an interviewer in front of you and camera crew behind a camera. The theme of todays interview was apparently, 'How sexist can they get.'

The interviewer was a man, bright blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. He apparently had the most sexist person confirm his questions or no one did, because the words that spewed from his mouth consisted of only, 'privilege.'

"So this next round of questions is going to be for Y/N." he said strongly, a flashcard full of questions in his hands.

"Sounds good." you smiled lightly. The main questions had been thrown at Pedro and Bella. Asking them about the show, their characters and what it was like to film with the cast. He wouldn't let you answer them.

He looks down at his que cards, "Alright, so, your character wears a lot of clothes. They have you wearing intense pieces that, personally, I wouldn't wear."

"Yeah, I don't think a lot of people would." you laughed.

"Compared to others, how long does it take for you to get ready?"

Everyone became silent, "...Like for the show or... everyday life?" you asked asked confused.

"Both."

Pedro coughed, Bella cleared their throat and you sat there with your eyebrows furrowed. "Oh, well, it took maybe an hour for the show and the same for everyday."

He smiled before continuing, "Well you look like you only take an hour...still look amazing, of course!"

Your eyes widened in surprise, eyebrows raised. The water Bella had grabbed and taken a sip of came back up in a cough. Causing you to quickly pat her back in an attempt to help her not choke.

"...I don't think you're suppose to say that." Pedro said hesitantly, he looked around the room.

"Next question then," he smiled, "Since the show premier, people have been talking about the weight that you gained-"

You threw your head back slightly, catching a glimpse of Pedro reaching up to rub his eye. When he brought his hand up, he pulled down all of his finger except one, his middle, and rub his eye slowly.

"-How come?" he finished. Snapping you out of watching Pedro.

Your eyebrows furrow as you look at him, beginning to open your mouth, Bella interrupts. "You should be asking how they did an amazing job on the show, not about their weight."

"Well, its a question everyone wants to know."

"I don't think it is," you began, "Just because people want to know, doesn't mean they can get an answer. For all they know I could have an eating disorder, or better yet, lost weight for the role!"

"Well, it wasn't my intention to offend-"

"You did." you said strongly, getting up from your seat and striding out of the room. Soft footsteps pounded behind you, coming to a stop when they saw your seated position in the hallway.

The body slid down the wall, holding their knees to their chest as they looked at you. "You okay?" Bella asked.

You smiled, looking at them, "Yeah, people are just annoying." you sigh.

He looked at you with a smile on his face, "You know, Pedro flipped him off." he laughed loudly.

Ducking your head down in embarrassment, you sighed, "I know, I saw."

"He's in there arguing with him."

That sentence made you shoot your head up, eyes widening and you began pushing yourself up. Bella grabbed your hand, pulling you down beside them. "Is he really?"

"Yeah, he's saying things about how to treat people, giving him a lesson on rude comments and sexism." Bella laughed.

In response, you laid you head on their shoulder. Taking a deep breath as you settled into her side. "I love him."

Bella's hand rubbed your shoulder, "I do too."

#bella ramsey fanfic #bella ramsey x reader #bellaramsey #bella x reader #hbo the last of us #pedropascal #tlou #the last of us #tlou fanfiction #joel and ellie

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sneezypeasy · 2 years

Text

Original Script Analysis, Part 2: The Southern Raiders, The Finale, and What I Think About it All

Link to Part 1

So folks, when it comes to literary analysis, there are two categories that textual interpretations typically fall under: the Doylist explanation, and the Watsonian explanation.

Watsonian explanations will contextualise an issue solely within the bounds of the story it is told in, so the answer to any question will be, essentially, “in-universe”. Imagine interviewing a character in the story, and asking them, “why did x happen” or, “why did y character decide to do z”. The answer you get will be a Watsonian answer.

Doylist explanations, on the other hand, are explanations that take into account things the characters themselves wouldn’t “have access to”, so to speak. These explanations often touch on writing concepts like theme, character arcs, tropes, setup and payoff etc, sometimes even referring to “real-world” motivations, intentions, or constraints that the creators were working with (or against). If an explanation or an answer to a question doesn’t sound like anything the characters themselves could have come up with, it’s probably a Doylist explanation.

I’m going to give an example from Titanic that I hope isn’t a spoiler to anybody at this point given how much this film has been memed to shit:

Jack dies at the end of Titanic. Now, why did he die?

The Watsonian says: He died because there was no room on the door.

The more intelligent Watsonian says: No there WAS room on the bloody door you smooth-brained koala did you even watch the fucking movie? They tried to get them both on there, the door just couldn’t hold the two of them because of something called BUOYANCY you fucking idiot-

The Doylist says: Jack died because it was the culmination of his character arc, and because he and Rose symbolise the class disparity of the victims of that tragedy; Jack is the poorer third class, and Rose is the rich upper class. Upper class women were the likeliest demographic to survive the sinking of the Titanic, and lower class men were the likeliest demographic to die. Jack had to die and Rose had to live; it’s symbolic.

Here’s another example: on the r/DeathNote subreddit, someone asked why L fell off his chair in such an exaggerated and dramatic fashion upon hearing that shinigami could be real. The top comment provides a detailed Watsonian answer, followed by a Doylist one:

Basically, Watsonian commentary is consistent with how the characters, in-universe, might explain/contextualise something. Doylism explains how a plot point or character decision serves a purpose beyond what the characters themselves would be able to conceptualise, whether that’s narrative payoff, authorial intent, or even marketing/executive decisions/budget constraints.

Why am I explaining all of this? Because I want to play a game with you guys.

You ready?

The name of this game is: Why, in the original script of The Southern Raiders, is Katara somehow asleep while LITERAL BOMBS ARE GOING OFF AROUND HER(!!!)

Is it:

A) Katara trained herself to sleep through Fire Nation raids and bombs from a young age

B) Katara is just generally that deep of a sleeper

C) Elizabeth Ehasz wanted an excuse (any excuse, really) to force Zuko and Katara to interact (because this is their episode, after all-)

Yeah, maybe I’m just unimaginative but I’m pretty sure it’s C. I’d love to hear your best Watsonian take for this one though (please, go nuts, lmao)

Like all the other changes we’ve seen, nothing has been done to the dialogue, which plays out how it does in the show:

I’m sorry I just can’t get over this 🤣🤣 “Character A and Character B hate each other/are not talking to each other/are currently in the process of biting each other’s heads off, now let’s come up with some ridiculous excuse to make Character A and Character B play nice and help and warm up to each other” is a pretty solid fanfic trope but I think this is the first time I’ve seen “MAKE CHARACTER A SLEEP THROUGH A FUCKING MISSILE ATTACK” utilised for this specific purpose.

Logically I understand why this was changed for the show, but I’m ngl, I’m slightly sad we didn’t get to see this version. 🤣🤣🤣

Interestingly, Katara doesn’t catch Zuko after he gets blasted off the war blimp - the script doesn’t specify anyone catching Zuko, it just says that he “lands safely on the bison” (sorry, I thought I wrote this one down in full but I only wrote down that quote, my bad 💀).

(It does make me wonder though, whether the storyboarders/animators looked at the “Katara sleeps through bombs” bit and were like.... “ok how about no, but we’ll give you ‘Katara catches a skydiving Zuko’ instead, fair trade?” 😂😂)

Continuing on from that, I have to say that even with the voice lines unchanged, Elizabeth Ehasz’s vision for Zuko and Katara’s deepening connection and understanding continues to trickle through this episode at various moments:

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Katara sobbing as she recounts her trauma? Zuko getting teary himself hearing about Katara’s grief and love for her mother? Katara visibly relaxing as a result of unburdening some of her feelings onto him? Zuko pulling Katara back and making sure she’s okay before she ploughs on ahead?

😭😭🥰🥰

And then of course, there are times when Elizabeth’s subtlety is not so subtle at all (here you go, you guys have well and truly earned this one):

Welp. I can tell you I wasn’t expecting to see that - at all. I came to the WGF hoping, maybe, to find some small crumbs - tiny clues that might give a slight nudge to the rumours that Elizabeth Ehasz was a ZK shipper, and that shippy subtext viewers may have picked up in TSR maybe wasn’t entirely lacking in substance.

I wasn’t expecting to find a page where good ol’ Elizabeth had a zutara fangasm all over her own writing 🤣🤣🤣

On the hug itself, Elizabeth’s notes were very brief:

I was a touch disappointed not to see any more fangirling, though after that serotonin boost up above I really couldn’t be too greedy. 🤣

Zuko and Katara’s scenes together in Sozin’s Comet and the Agni Kai are generally the same as what we see in the show, though I thought you guys might like to read the lightning scene anyway:

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This might be a good time to mention that I had the pleasure of working alongside @korranguyen on one of the two days that I visited the WGF. If you found the descriptions of Azula’s downward spiral in the Agni Kai uncomfortable to read, you might appreciate her essays here and here.

Unfortunately folks, we are indeed near the end now. And we know how the story ends:

Wins, eh? Interesting choice of words there. Almost makes it seem like there was a competition? Like there were, oh I don’t know, other contenders?

Now there’s something else which I think some of you may find very interesting about the script of Sozin’s Comet Part 4, and I will get to that in due course, but for now I want to discuss the way the ships were treated by the show writers and creators. As I summarised earlier and as you probably noticed yourself from reading these scripts:

From season 1 up until Day of Black Sun, the writing was heading towards a Kataang conclusion. And development-wise, it wasn’t too shabby! There was a clear and steady progression. Maybe a little subtle, from Katara’s side, but nowhere near as ambiguous as in the show. And again maybe this is just me, but I wouldn’t have been frustrated with it either, if it was shown like that.

After Day of Black Sun, the writing takes a weird turn. Kataang takes a nosedive while Zutara gets a ton of positive development (reconciliation, forgiveness, synchronicity and cooperation* anyone? lmao), which is canon in the show too but it’s… even more pronounced in the script? Aang is more aggro, Zuko and Katara are more tender/vulnerable with one another, they don’t scoot away at the suggestion that they like, like each other – and these are the final drafts? What the heck were y’all writing in the first drafts?? (No that’s not a joke actually, I wanna know 😭)

Kataang “wins”. Wins?!? I thought y’all said there was never even a contest!!**

Okay, time for some speculation/theorising on my part. To me, it seems like, at some point after writing the “Kataang” episodes but before actually animating and producing them, and before writing the later episodes in season 3, and perhaps even right up until the writing of Sozin’s Comet Part 4, there was a collective (if not unanimous) decision to “keep things open”. The question is: why?

Did the writers disagree, or was it just shipbaiting? Or was it some combination of both?

If no-one else, Elizabeth Ehasz is quite clearly a Zutara fangirl; I don’t think anyone can deny that after reading the way she writes these kids 🤣 That paragraph does not read to me like a writer casually (or grudgingly) obeying directions to shiptease because it’s what the producers wanted, it reads like a writer unable to stay professional about how much she loves this one fucking ship. (We feel you Lizzie. We feel you.)

So was there actually some discord in the writer’s room about which direction to take the romance arcs? @zutarawasrobbed pointed out that given the narrative decision to hinge Aang’s internal struggle and character arc around the need to “let go” of an “attachment” to Katara, (some?) writers may have seen a potential in deconstructing Kataang to fulfil this arc. This is especially possible if, after writing Crossroads of Destiny and/or seeing audience feedback to that episode, Zutara was increasingly beginning to appear as a viable alternative.

I mean, even by Sozin’s Comet, it doesn’t seem like they’d figured out how to resolve Aang’s whole “blocked chakra” situation –

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Aang “somehow” just happens to untangle what had previously been set up as an internal struggle, with the conveniently timed activation of some “chi bending nonsense” (and reverse-glowing arrows and “such things”).

Uh huh.

(To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty -)

Of course, the other possibility is that most of the way through writing the script, and maybe about halfway through animating it, the creators simply recognized a clear potential for shipbaiting, and this is at least somewhat to blame for the hot mess that is the romance arcs of ATLA.

My personal theory is that writer disagreement did happen, and is at least partially why we ended up getting what we got. The fact that both ships are specifically referenced and granted “approval” so to speak, by different writers, and one of them ends up explicitly “winning”, sort of cinches it for me. Either way, the show was clearly pulling in different directions at different parts and under different creators, and in my opinion the scripts support these rumours.

One thing is for certain: whether this was just shipteasing, or actual production hell in the writer’s room, it is my opinion that Zutara AND Kataang were both robbed.

Kataang had a decent romance arc written out for it, and even if there may have been issues reconciling it with Aang’s internal conflict set up in the Guru and/or with the over-arching themes of the show, it would have been all right in the end if they had just kept it the way they originally wrote it. I can’t really see any but the most die-hard anti-Kataangers being mad about it, and Kataangers themselves would have loved it. They had a fine romance written out and they ruined it. If they did so because Zutara was being seriously considered as a possible outcome, then it’s just all the more frustrating that Zutara never ended up happening in the end. They put a lot of effort into sinking a perfectly serviceable ship and ultimately it was all for nothing. (Or worse, purely for shipbaiting). Just sad.

So, that’s my thoughts on that. And that concludes this essay- oh wait.

Right... there was that thing I kept mentioning about Sozin’s Comet Part 4. 😈

*Ahem.*

So you know how I said all these scripts were final drafts?

That’s because they are - except for two episodes: Sozin’s Comet Part 4, and Jet.

Unlike the other scripts, which have all been labelled “As Broadcast Drafts”, these two scripts are ADR drafts.

What is ADR, you ask?

According to @lady-of-bath, who works in the screenwriting industry, ADR stands for “Automated Dialogue Replacement” and is used when a script has gone through a process of re-recording or re-dubbing, because for whatever reason, the originally scripted and recorded lines are/were unsatisfactory.

(This is also something you can verify yourself actually, even if you don’t live in the LA area: when you search up ATLA in the WGF database***, even though you can’t access the scripts you can access basic details such as, the date the draft was finalised, the name of the writer, and - whether it was submitted as an “ADR” draft or an “As Broadcast Draft”.)

I even emailed the library to ask about this distinction as well:

So if I understand this correctly, all the ATLA scripts you can find in the guild were first submitted, and then lines were recorded, and then changes were made to the script that didn’t involve dialogue replacement, and then it went through animation and post-production and ended up being what you now see on screen. This is supported by the fact that A) I definitely found some changes, but B) the changes I did find were all in the action lines/shot descriptions etc.

All the scripts submitted to the guild went through this process - all of them, except these two scripts.

These two scripts were not final drafts; I guess they might be more accurately termed “final final drafts™”, because they were submitted after some(!) lines were re-recorded, (changed? added onto? cut?!?) and the script was then updated to reflect these changes that had been made in post-production.

Which just begs the question: what lines had to be re-recorded??

What did the final draft look like before this???

(Might it possibly contextualise why Dante Basco and Mae Whitman apparently both thought Zutara was going to be canon?)

This is conspiracy fodder galore, lmfao. Pardon the dramatics here for a moment, but with enough tinfoil-hatting this could easily turn into the Zutara fandom equivalent of 18½ missing minutes of Nixon tapes. 🤣

Anyway, that about sums up my detective effort on this whole thing. I did find some more tidbits which I’ll likely post in a Part 3/Epilogue type thing - mostly small changes (most of them not really zutara-related) that I found interesting or funny enough to jot down; I’ll be making a compilation of these for your reading pleasure as soon as I can. ^^

One last bonus for you guys: the “I’ll save you from the Pirates” scene:

I must confess, I never really read this scene as romantically framed or “shippy” when I first watched it. But the way it’s written here looks like it’s taken straight out of a fanfic. “Right into the arms of Zuko”? Oh no. (Oh yes.) Oh me oh my. 🤣

*Also, someone needs to write a Mr and Mrs Smith Zutara AU titled “Synchronicity and Cooperation”, I’m saying it now, this is my official decree. Write it, folks. We need it.

**Screenshot taken from: https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Extras_(Book_One:_Water) (Under “Goofs”)

***I hope that link works, if it doesn’t, just navigate to their Library Catalogue and search up ATLA yourself.

Edit: There was a minor typo in one of the passages - it originally read “Katara has a lot of energy and momentum, and Zuko pulls her back and STOPS her before they read the door” instead of what it was supposed to say (“before they reach the door”, lol). The typo should be fixed now 😊

#zutara #atla #atla original scripts #writer's guild foundation #the southern raiders original script #sozin's comet original script #kinda???#tin foil hat bonanza #buy one sherlock hat get one free tin foil hat #lmao #long post #text post #meta #bryke critical #kataang critical #this was fun guys #now go forth and write more metas #and more fics #enjoy!!

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