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qslovebot · 3 years

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Midnight Escapade: Spencer Reid

Summary: Spencer Reid and the reader have been crushing on each other since they met, but neither of them cared to admit it. When doubled up in a hotel room for the night, reader tries to convince Spencer to go with her at 12:30am to get frozen yogurt to cheer him up and it turns into much more than a snack run.

Pairing: Spencer x Fem!Reader

Warnings/Includes: Swearing, mutual pining (a long time of pining leads up to this fic), food, mention of Sept 11, 2001, self-doubt, fluff, kissing

Word Count: 4533

The case was solved, closed, and finally, your eyes could rest. The case you had just finished was particularly stressful to not only you, but your fellow BAU members as well. You all hadn't slept for nearly twenty-nine hours and Hotch decided it was best you all got the rest you deserved at a nearby hotel.

The ride there, you struggled to keep your eyes open, but Spencer Reid was on another greatly interesting rant about a show he liked, so you figured you would try to stay awake to hear it. You always listened to him because a lot of the time, the rest of the team dismissed him and his oddly accurate monologues. They grew tired of Spencer talking so much about things they didn't understand but you were rather the opposite- and that's probably because you liked Spencer so much.

The two of you met when he was introduced to the BAU. Praised for his mind, he introduced himself to you with a shaky voice and a meek handshake. You instantly admired him from his geeky personality outwards to his tall, thin self with a face sculpted by artists. Little did you know he did the same, but immediately thought of you as out of his league, so he stayed quiet.

You had been friends since then, pairing up on cases as your minds seemed to work like a perfectly oiled machine when together. Like Penelope and Derek, you two were known for the science jokes no one understood and shared looks of adoration that the both of you somehow didn't recognize as romantic. But everyone else saw it.

Derek Morgan teased a lot. He talked to Reid about working with the 'pretty girl' every day, poking him in the side and messing with his hair. The geek and the girl who was smart as hell, but didn't make it her dominant trait.

A doctor and the outgoing agent who matched the loudness of Penelope Garcia at times at karaoke night. You brought more liveliness to the BAU- more music, more spinning, more levity in dark cases. Spencer was always trying to hide a smile when you walked in, trying to pretend he hadn't been waiting for you to bring him coffee each morning. You didn't need an eidetic memory to remember his order and that, for some reason, always sent him over the moon.

But you were here now, listening to him wrap up his story as you fought the sleep that was looming over you as the car came to a stop outside the hotel.

"-And that was the end of it all. I think it's so fascinating how they wrapped everything up into this intricate timeline of interactions and moments and backtracks. We should, uh, watch it sometime." He said as he hopped out of the back, holding his small bag and yours.

You sleepily hopped out after him, hoping you didn't look like you felt, because you truly felt like hell. "Yeah, I'd like that," was all you could really mumble out. He passed you your bag and you smiled your thank you.

Emily held you up by the shoulders as Hotch sent through the check-in information. "Some case, huh?" She laughed as you rubbed your left eye. "I suppose we can't make this a girl's night of post-case celebration if you're dead asleep."

You groaned, "You wanted to do that? Damn it, Em, I'm sorry-"

"You need beauty sleep, (Y/N). I'm not mad or anything, I'll just take a bath and pull out an adult romance novel." A smirk played on her lips as she raised her eyebrows. You chuckled tiredly. "Seriously, no worries."

"Did I hear talk of a romance novel?" Derek shuffled over. "Which one are we reading? 50 Shades of Grey?"

Spencer stepped in, "Did you know that 50 Shades of Grey is actually fanfiction written about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga? If you go further back, Stephanie started Twilight as written alternate universe fanfiction where the emo-slash-hardcore band My Chemical Romance were all vampires. But My Chemical Romance was started by musician and comic book creator- who published a series of comics called The Umbrella Academy in 2008, unrelated, his name was - Gerard Way, who created the band to make music that expressed the trauma he was given from witnessing the twin towers falling on September 11th, 2001."

Emily looked at him, jaw open. "So Nine-Eleven essentially created a badly-written and toxic sex novel, years later?"

Spencer nodded, eyes flickering to you for a brief moment. Derek grinned at Emily, "So you have read 50 Shades of Grey, huh?" He teased. She swat at his wiggly fingers away as Hotch walked over, brow furrowed.

"Rooms need to be doubled up tonight. Morgan, you can come with me. As much as you may hate it, I feel like (Y/L/N) here might collapse on the spot, so we can't go anywhere else." He handed Spencer and Emily a key, expecting them to make their own choices. Of course, Emily knew exactly what she needed to do when Hotch walked off. You were about to turn and go with her, but she bolted off, reaching for JJ.

You looked up at Spencer Reid who had his mouth in a shy, straight-lipped smile. You both knew what this meant, but you were glad you'd get to crash somewhere, floor or not. The room was on the fifth floor, so you took the elevator with Spencer in silence that you were sure he was granting you until you reached the door of your room.

"I will... take the floor tonight," he said, sticking the key in the lock. "You're tired and I'm just going to get dinner and um... read."

His watch read 4:34 pm- it was so much earlier than you had thought, but you were almost collapsing. "I'm sorry," were the last words you could reply with before you walked into the room, got into the bed, and you were out, cold.

You had never had such a fulfilling sleep. You woke up feeling clean, fresh, renewed and restored. There was no groggy feeling that you had accidentally travelled to another dimension while asleep. The room was dim, except for the lamp that was on in the right corner.

When you peered over the edge of the bed, there was Spencer, laying on his stomach with few pillows under his chest and elbows, a book in his hands. He looked peaceful, quiet, calm. "Spence," you whispered. He practically jumped out of his skin and you couldn't help but laugh. "Oh my god, I'm sorry." You grinned.

He smiled sheepishly, setting down his book. "You're awake."

You nodded back, "How long was I out?"

"Since 4:34, so... 8 hours and 20 minutes. It's only 12:22am." Spencer sat up and against the wall while you adjusted yourself to sit cross-legged. You were still in your clothes from earlier and it surprised you to see Spencer in less preppy clothing.

Well, less preppy for him. No cardigan, no dress shirt, just a t-shirt that read 'math is as easy as pi' with the pi symbol made of cherry pie and his regular khaki pants. "Aren't you tired?" you asked, smiling from his shirt, back to him.

"No, uh, I actually got about four hours in the middle of your eight. I usually don't dream anymore but I actually dreamt I was falling, which is a sign of..." he stopped himself, but he was with another profiler, what was the use, you could already fill in the blanks. He continued, "Which is a sign of insecurity and inferiority, but I don't believe in dream analysis..."

You furrowed your brow, watching his eyes look down at his hands. "Are you feeling insecure and inferior, Dr.Reid, because need I remind you that 99% of the time, it's your brain that leads us to solve the cases."

He shook his head, "Thinking myself over, I'd-I'd say it doesn't revolve around work." The stutter was back. He hadn't talked to you with a stutter in months, you'd assumed it was just because he wasn't as comfortable around you then, but now it was back. Spencer Reid needed to be cheered up, something was wrong.

"Well you know you can tell me anything, right? I've kept secrets about my friends since grade one, I can keep yours." You slipped off of the bed and walked to your bag on the table in the far corner. You could feel Spencer's eyes on you as you went, so you shot him a smile over your shoulder. He reverted back to looking at his hands.

Through situations and being friends, you knew Spencer was insecure. He was bullied constantly as a child, some going as far as to strip him down and beat him. Disgusting, self-esteem-ruining acts you wished you could remove from his eidetic memory.

You took off your button-up blouse to stay in your white t-shirt that lay underneath. You hadn't the time to remove it before falling asleep. Thinking about that- you probably had bedhead too. Your balled-up shirt was shoved into your bag and you pulled out a brush in exchange, to get the knots out of your hair.

"I could really go for frozen yogurt right now," you said, running the wooden brush through your hair. Spencer narrowed his eyes at you, a little confused. "I haven't eaten dinner."

"It's nearly 12:30 am..." Spencer said. It looked like he was running through his vast mind to find a scientific explanation as to why you might have wanted frozen yogurt at half-past midnight. You let him, a teasing smile on your lips as you pulled the top bit of your hair up. "Are you pregnant?" He asked, out of the blue, entirely serious. Seemed like the only logical explanation he could find. You nearly choked on the air.

"No, Spencer, I am not pregnant!" You laughed. His face tightened as he went back to searching his mind. "I just want frozen yogurt. Regular cravings, not... pregnancy cravings. Are you coming?"

He looked at you, oddly surprised he was invited. "Why?"

"Why not?" You picked up his jacket from the hook and tossed it to him. "Nobody has to see your cheesy math shirt."

He smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck, but went right back to being analytical, a mumbling rant with hand gestures.

"The average half-cup serving of frozen yogurt alone has about 17.3 grams of sugar and plus various toppings, the sugar is upped to at least 25 grams. But, versus a half-cup serving of vanilla ice cream, the sugar is only about 14 grams and with toppings can be upped to about 22. Fat-wise-"

You interrupted him because this was seemingly the only way to lift his mood and he was making excuses to stay here and wallow. "Come on, for once, let's be able to act like the youngest members of the team. Once, Spence. I don't need a play-by-play on how much sugar is in it- though I did find that interesting-I just want frozen yogurt and I would like you to come with me. I'll pay for yours if you want any, just... please?"

He met your eyes with a curl falling down his forehead and quickly looked back at his hands. You'd been friends for nearly a year and four months and he still couldn't look you in the eyes for long. He really wasn't good at refusing you at all, either.

Spencer nodded and you practically beamed. Maybe this would help to take his mind off of what was bothering him, even if the distraction was brief. You jumped on the spot and slipped on your own jacket and grabbed your wallet, ready to go and by the door.

He had a small smile when the two of you stepped out, his hands behind his back. You locked the door behind you and the two of you walked silently to the elevator, careful not to accidentally wake anyone else in case they decided to peer out into the hall.

In the elevator, you turned and looked up at Spencer who was fiddling with his hands. "You look nervous, Spence. It's frozen yogurt, not a pretty girl."

"Well I'm with-" he stopped himself again and actually started laughing his breathy laugh, squeezing his own hand so hard his knuckles turned white while his cheeks and nose went a little pink. "You..." He finished, rocking on his heels.

You scrunched your nose, shaking your head. Though you mentally disagreed with him sometimes on your appearance, you smiled and looked back up at him. "Thank you. You're pretty too."

He shrugged himself further into his jacket, hands still wildly fidgeting. "Thank you..."

You both stepped out of the elevator the moment it got to the ground floor, looking for air that wasn't filled with odd tension neither of you could explain. You two walked through the lobby and into the cool midnight air outside, where things were open, dark, and still.

You shut your eyes for a moment and opened your arms to face the gentle, cool wind that blew your hair and hit your face gently. Inhaling deeply, you opened your eyes again to Spencer in a similar state, but much less relaxed looking. Instead, it looked like he was trying to calm himself down.

"Spence, you look out of it," you said, folding your arms over your chest. You had gotten him outside, now maybe instead of distracting him from whatever it was, you could help him through it. It was part of being a friend- profiling wasn't needed to see he was thinking long and hard over something that bothered him. "You can tell me what's wrong."

He started walking down the street toward the neon lights that shone bright with the word 'fro-yo', you stepped quickly to follow. "If I like a girl.. h-how am I supposed to go about telling her?" He asked, not even looking at you. His forehead was creased and his hands in his jacket pockets.

So this was about a girl he liked. Spencer Reid had a crush. Of course, you were oblivious it was you, but Spencer Reid was romantically interested in someone!

Yay?

An odd feeling of happiness came with finding this out and there was an uprising feeling within you like the first drop on a rollercoaster, but it lingered... and it was much less happy. You ignored it, of course, letting your outer emotions display themselves.

"Dr. Spencer Reid, the human encyclopedia- have you finally found a girl that puts you at a loss for words?" You teased, pressing the back of your hand to your head for dramatic effect, struggling to keep up with him.

His mouth twitched, "Maybe."

"Well, to be honest, Spence, just... tell her. Just go at it- ask to kiss her, maybe, then confess after. Or... or, you could confess, see how she takes it, then you can see if you should or shouldn't kiss her based off of if you get rejected or not." You told him, catching him by the shoulder to get him to slow down at the entrance of the frozen yogurt place.

He was much taller than you, so that came with him being that much faster, but that didn't matter now, he had stopped. Spencer looked at you, concern in his eyes, panic. You smiled kindly, "She won't reject you. I don't know any girl who would even think of it." Reassurance, because he needed it.

His eyes trailed to the ground and he ran a hand through his hair, opening the door for you. "And w-what do I say?" Spencer asked when you both went inside. You were the only two there and the cashier must have been in the back room.

You hopped over to the flavours, "I mean, whatever feels right, Spence. If you feel like going on a long, romantic, poet-written rant about how much you like her, do that. If you're afraid to bore her, you can wait for her to speak, but the truth is if she can't listen to you rant, she probably isn't worth going for."

He evaluated your words while you casually got yourself vanilla frozen yogurt. He also scanned the flavours, probably mentally shaming the company for marketing this as somewhat healthier. You giggled watching him try to figure out how to get the yogurt out of the machine as you put raspberries in yours.

"(Y/N), uh..." he said quietly, gesturing you over. The genius's mind was scrambled enough to miss the lever in front of him. You took his cup from him and pulled the lever, to which he made an 'o' shape with his mouth and nodded comprehensively.

"Chocolate mocha," you smiled, handing it to him as he stood there sheepishly again. "Good choice."

You spun back to your yogurt, adding a bit of honey over the top of it all. He followed, choosing raspberries as well, silently adding them. He still didn't seem at rest with the girl thing, you noticed by the way he was failing to open the scoop-box of cookie crumbs. He had long fingers, usually nimble ones, but not so much right now. Spencer was too stressed to work properly. Error in the system, you may have joked if things weren't so bad with him.

When you were both finished, Spencer tapped the little service bell on the desk and a little woman, maybe mid-30s came out wearing the merchandise of the shop. You both placed your cups on the scale and she weighed them for the price, but both you and Spencer pulled out your wallets.

He put his card out faster, so you swat his hand with your card and paid while he mumbled "Ow..." Of course, you checked to see if he was really hurt, but he had his small, crooked smile back on his face. He was okay, maybe he was feeling better?

Saying good morning/night to the lady, you both stepped back into the midnight air, starting to walk, but not back toward the hotel. You'd think with what cases you two had worked on you'd be a little warier, but with each other, you both felt safe. You walked a few steps, eating your yogurt, before Spencer spoke up again. "Is it a bad thing I'm so clueless as to what women like? Everything I know about women is scientific. Chocolate releases endorphins, flowers are associated with beauty and love, but... other than that... I don't know anything."

You swallowed your bite as Reid took his, waiting on your answer. Just as you always listened to him, he always listened to you. He probably valued your opinion over Derek's at times. You waved your spoon in the air when you spoke, "I wouldn't say bad. Everyone starts somewhere for everything. If anything, a man who is willing to learn is more attractive than one who wings it and doesn't ask comprehensive questions to up the relationship quality."

"Asking questions, got it. Should my confession include a gesture, though?" He spoke with his mouth full. Spencer really wanted to get this right- it was admirable. But there came that uneasy feeling again. It was more like an ache this time. Perhaps it was the awkward hours of sleep throwing you off?

You sucked it up, shoved the feeling down. "Really, Spence, it depends on the woman. Do I know her? Maybe I can help- that is unless you want to profile her to get her interests? I can help with that too-"

"No, I-I don't want to profile her, I want to stay away from that, we do that on a near-daily basis."

"We?" You questioned. Reid froze, but kept walking, looking a little petrified. He put more frozen yogurt in his mouth, maybe to shut himself up. You grinned, "We as in you and her are both profilers or we as in you and I profile others together, so you don't want to profile her with me?"

"I don't want us... to profile her," he cleared his throat. "Yeah..."

You sighed with a breathy laugh, "Good, because I was starting to think you were after Emily."

He chuckled, "Oh, no, not Emily. She's too scary for me anyway. Uh..." He swallowed hard, the way he always did was he was anxious or nervous. I saw in his face he'd come to some sort of conclusion. "Don't... don't yell at me for this, alright?"

"Yell at you? Spence, I wouldn't..." You were confused. He set his frozen yogurt down on the bench he had stopped in front of and stood back in front of you, pushing his hair behind his ears. He looked at you with his doe eyes and the wind blew his curls back in front of his face, he looked to the ground. His forehead still creased between his brows, but his eyes were soft and sweet, his nose was slightly scrunched and his mouth was twisted to the side as if he was once again mentally calculating something. You granted him back the silence from earlier, wondering what was going on in that mind of his. That was... until his eyes met yours and he looked so desperately lost and longing and like he ached inside... and you no longer wondered.

You let out another long sigh. She was you.

This girl that he was trying to understand how to win over, she was you. He asked you because he needed to know what you wanted. He was nervous because he was practically confessing to you and you, a profiler, were too blind to see that.

He watched your face for your reaction, waiting for something good, but you were too shocked to react right. He unfroze, hands flying to the roots of his hair and he spun away from you. He started rambling, obviously thinking everything had gone wrong. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, (Y/N). That- that wasn't how I had things planned and I was so certain that maybe you-hm- liked me too."

His words made it true. This was, in fact, happening at 12:56am in the middle of a foreign city. Your words spilled out, stern, focused, serious. "Kiss me then."

He spun around again, "What?"

"Confess, then kiss, remember?" You recounted carefully, looking directly at him, stepping closer.

"But I didn't get to do my whole monologue thing-" He was grinning pretty hard now, all signs of stress removed from his face. He looked brighter than the neon froyo sign, in happiness and disbelief right down at you. You were pretty sure you looked similar as all the pieces fell in place in your mind. It all fit.

"I don't care." You beamed back. "Do it after."

So without wasting another second, he grabbed your face and kissed you. He kissed you with a year and four months' worth of frustration, lust, confusion and past jealousies. His hands holding your jaw, his fingertips in your hair and your hands on his chest, holding fast to jacket. The kiss was a little messy the first two seconds, but every second after it was enjoyable and sweet and oddly powerful. He also tasted rich, like chocolate mocha, but you knew where that came from.

He pulled away first, which surprised you, but he didn't move very far, in fact, he mumbled against your lips as he tucked your hair out of your face. "I think I've liked you since you and I first met. You didn't hate my science jokes and instead of being annoyed with my informational rants, you listened to me. I wasn't expecting you to be so involved with me since you're, well... you're you and you're loud and fun and sweet and beautiful, but we worked so well together how could I ignore what I felt?"

His hand was a little shaky still, but his fingertips on your cheek were gentle. He continued to quietly ramble, "I decided maybe I'd do something with myself that wasn't devoted to the BAU so I thought maybe I'd- I'd tell you this. That I think you're beautiful and smart and talented and maybe you'd understand and feel the same way and now that I know maybe you do, I feel oddly put back to how I'm supposed to be. And... I think I'm supposed to be with you. If this is too soon or... ruins our friendship, I'm sorry and I'll slow it down, but I won't stop liking you."

You couldn't believe that in a three-minute span you had gone from painfully oblivious to so extremely wide awake. But it was in the best way possible after a year and four months of you also being painfully crushed by your secret feelings for Dr.Reid.

"It's fine, Spence," you said quietly, smiling at him with the most happiness you had found in months. "More than fine, I can't believe this is real."

He tucked the other side of your hair behind your ear, "You might have DRC, then. It stands for dream-reality confusion and is a difficulty or inability to determine whether an event or experience occurred during the waking state or whether it was part of a dream. I can assure you that you aren't dreami-"

You reached up and pulled him onto your lips by the back of the neck, smiling into it. This would be the first time you've ever shut him up. He welcomed it by kissing you back again, softer this time. Now that he was sure you wouldn't hate him for it, it felt a lot more natural, a lot more at ease. His passion was still there, as was yours, but this was how things were supposed to be. There was no longer a rush.

The two of you started laughing after it all. Both of you laughed at how painfully oblivious you both were and he went on a small explanation as to why we don't see our own tells and how feelings of romantic relation cloud the judgement. You went over every time the rest of the team had made a comment you both secretly loved or some you dismissed because it was an ache to hear.

Spencer opened up about his fear of rejection and you did the same and that too resulted in more laughing because here you were, so afraid, but you had both been in it for so long. You deserved to have each other after all this time not only because you fit, but because everyone saw it too, far before either of you did.

An innocent, fun, midnight escapade to cheer Spencer up turned into him finding a truly happy state of mind. You took that as a win and success as you tossed frozen yogurt containers in the garbage and found your way back to your room where you told Spencer it was okay to sleep in the bed as long as he was nice.

So he let you turn out the lights and lay next to him, your head on his chest in the way you had done before when it was only an achingly platonic move. He played with your hair, stared at the green walls, ranted about the history of the colour green and soon after, the both of you went right back to sleep, entirely happy.

Tagged: @ellyhotchner @softhairedhotch

#spencer reid #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #criminalminds #emily prentiss #dr spencer reid #criminal minds fandom #spencer x y/n #cm #aaron hotchner #mutual pining #romance #spencer reid fandom

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vidalinav · 3 years

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I think the reason why I abhor the Inner Circle now has nothing to do with Nesta, but the way that they have no consequences for their actions, regardless of Nesta.

I can admit that Nesta has flaws, but Nesta has suffered the consequences immensely, whether she deserved all of them or not, because she was painted as a “bad” character that “belonged to Hewn City” that was “a waste of life,” that was “embarrassing,” who needed to straighten her attitude, because she was ruining relationships or not gaining them by being mean or verbally aggressive or pushing people away, regardless of the trauma she had. At some points it was a healing arc, at some points it seemed more like a retribution, which largely depended on what other characters were present. Like that was her accountability. Eris, because he’s treated as a “villainous”/ morally grey character, has consequences. Because no one trusts him even when he actually does okay. Because he suffers in silence. Because people hate on him and that he has no one. Tamlin, even has consequences, because again he’s alone. He’s bitter, he’s having an emotionally hard time. He doesn’t have a court anymore. All things that he may or may not have caused himself, but he was painted as the bad guy and so he suffers like the bad guy. Lucien, who didn’t really do anything, but like once in ACOMAF, suffers consequences, because he’s not welcome for a time being anywhere, and now he’s sort of roaming. Jurian, has consequences, because well... everything that happened to him, which you know personally is not really deserved because you know human slavery. So all of them, have or had consequences for their own actions. Other characters, namely the IC, thought of them badly at some point or still do, and they were ostracized in such a way that they paid or are paying essentially for their “crimes.”

Which to me is perfectly fine, IF, the people who are “good” but did “bad” things also have to suffer consequences. Even narratively, like feeling bad... showing remorse... feeling guilty... other people yelling at them... making them understand the other POV... cosmic punishment... something awful happening to them because they did this... other people not thinking well of them. Anything!

BUT THEY DON’T. And this is where the imbalance is very noticeable, and unfortunately to me makes the IC look really bad, even in the narrative’s pursuit of pushing this idea that they’re very good.

Which you know might be a POV thing (or SJM’s favoritism but I digress), but Rhys for example is a trash ruler. He may not be bad to Feyre. He may be caring to some people. He may want to put his family first. He may care about the little city he lives in, but on a regular basis he wants to burn Hewn City down. Why he still has that city? Idfk. Why everyone in that city is painted to be a bad person? I don’t know either. He may have outlawed clipping, but on a regular basis there’s still a shit ton of crimes against females. He has a city and a temple full of proof, and the explanation for that is that well... there are consequences. But what are they? And also, why are there not more infrastructures to stop this? Like I understand that the Illyrians are a traditional people, but is that the excuse we’re going with? Which of course, he’s only one person, this is not his fault, but now he’s literally trying to have a whole ass country sign a peace treaty for what reason? Is there a reason he’s not focusing on the problems of his OWN court like they don’t exist? His own inner circle have so many problems, and what is happening with them? Why the hell did he make that promise to die with Feyre, but also why didn’t he tell anyone about it just in case. Because he’s literally the ruler of a court. Let’s not forget that instead of being just a strong-willed High Lord who’s just and fair and who’s trying to do what’s right by his people, he’s still putting on an act. Why? He’s the most powerful person, they say ALL THE TIME. He clearly is not. Let’s not forget that he has done so much crime, and what really were his consequences? Like if Nesta can’t be excused by her trauma, Rhys CANNOT be excused by his trauma, except Rhysand’s actions were in the range of murder and Nesta’s was being mean lol. So I think it’s hilarious that to the IC at least he’s fucking fantastic. Like okay.

Amren, as another example, basically works in the same way as Nesta. Where she is harsh, but people put up with it. But again, Nesta is looked at very harshly, and Amren is not??? Even when she’s sort of a tyrant and she’s a... little bit of a colonizer and she doesn’t really give people respect. And she’s shown to be a bit of a... do as I say type of person by any means necessary even deceit and manipulation which is not frowned upon even with “friends.” What are her consequences? Even in Nesta’s POV she takes a knee. Does that make sense?

Going even into just inter group dynamics, Mor for example, is not very... should I say? Honest. I hate to villainize her like the whole thing is her fault, because it’s obviously not. But... she literally is playing with a man’s feelings and knows she’s playing with a man’s feelings, but she doesn’t tell him because??? Like she doesn’t even have to tell him why, but she hasn’t told Azriel she doesn’t like him? And then she also got Cassian involved... I mean, it’s Cassian’s fault for that, you know, cause she didn’t force him, but... uhh. And then, let’s not forget that Mor was awful to Nesta in ACOWAR, when Nesta was actually pretty decent to Cassian. They had many moments. She saw those moments. And Mor was not nice AT ALL. Cut the crap, of saying oh Mor was just protective of Cassian because Nesta was mean. No she wasn’t! Or you’re forgetting an entire fucking book. She may seem like that now, but that was a change of character to be honest, I don’t know where that came from, because in the beginning of that book she was an awful person, and in ACOWAR she was not a benevolent person either. But where are her consequences????? Actually she has a bit, because you know Eris points it out a lot, that she’s a liar. Nesta says she’s a hypocrite. She’s dealing with her father, she has to hide who she is to fit in the group which is sort of changing her narrative. So, I count that as some form of consequence, which is probably why I don’t hate her too much. I understand her a bit, but damn... she was not that bright and bubbly and who’s really going to call her out on that?

Sigh... Onto the next one. My love. Cassian.

I know he’s loving and very sweet. But he has his head so far up the IC’s ass, that I’m like ugh...Mostly my critique with him is that he gets to say everything he wants even when it’s horrible and down right dramatic, to a girl who already hates herself, and who he learns hates herself and if he was smarter he could have connected those dots way earlier and that she was suffering thoughts of not wanting to exist because she obviously was by her ACTIONS, and still he says the most horrible things. Sure, he offers remorse, but like... we didn’t even see him apologize. Like I hate that Nesta can say horrible things, and omg Nesta’s mean. But Cassian says horrible things, and it’s like omg Nesta what did you say? I mean that’s how the narrative was structured. Nesta said something about Rhys it wasn’t even that big, “everyone hates you.” Nesta offers some anxiety about the mating bond, “I’m shackled to you.” Like... yikes. She doesn’t want to accept his gift, “I don’t understand why your sisters love you.” Sigh... I love Cassian but damn, he literally has no consequences. No one is calling him out, no one thinks bad of him, nothing. He’s the sweet, lovable guy and nothing else. Psssh. I mean, he mostly says this only to Nesta, but Nesta isn’t going to think bad of him, which is not right. Because he sucks sometimes, and what? Nesta needs to learn to take the pain of his insults. Okay.

Elain, is not technically an IC member, and tbh I don’t know who the hell she is or what she feels, so I can’t talk about her too much. Except for the fact, that she is also not the greatest person in the world. I know that you cannot expect your sibling to hold the world for you, but as people have pointed out, Nesta was not asking her to help her with her own trauma, she was asking for time to heal, like Nesta had done for Elain. Because Nesta protected Elain’s ability to heal. And when Nesta tells her this, she just doesn’t understand and doesn’t seem to care about understanding her POV, and cries and once again Nesta is the bad guy. And then you know she offers that “you only care about what my trauma did to you.” Another lack of understanding, because Nesta is fearful of the cauldron, and her own sister doesn’t stick up for her when the IC are obviously trying to push her into something she’s saying and showing she’s not comfortable with. I don’t see how you cannot see this scene as a manipulation, when it is outright said that they would use Elain later to do that. And tbh if Elain really wanted to do something she could at any moment, no one is stopping her. I mean Nesta may put up some fight, but if Elain wants it she can have it. She’s not an uwu baby. But the scene did show that no matter what Nesta feels, once again Elain is the victim and Nesta is the one in the wrong. And then later when Nesta is trying again when she goes to solstice, which you know based on logical reasoning, would have been probably hard for her, Elain is like “Did Feyre pay you to come? Be nice.” Sigh... And still, Elain is the sweet one and Nesta is the one who deserves that. Even in her own narrative, Nesta doesn’t deserve anything. What are Elain’s consequences? I certainly hope Nesta and Elain are not close to begin with in the next books, because I honestly feel that Elain now has proven twice that she is not helpful. Just like Nesta didn’t help Feyre, Elain didn’t either, though Nesta paid for that a lot in other people’s opinions of her, which they did not hold against Elain. But now she also didn’t help Nesta. But both Feyre and Nesta have helped Elain, and they’re both now considered to have “coddled” her like what wack shit? Isn’t that just another way that they excuse Elain for not taking accountability of her own life? Is that not also making her a victim of other people? When again, if she really wanted to fight or go somewhere or do something, who would stop her? The perspective on Elain is very weird. Anyway.

I’d also say Azriel doesn’t suffer any consequences. For obvious reasons, because he seems to torture people and no one bats an eye, but also because he seems to have such a weird mindset even it’s not outright stated. Again with the whole Mor situation, how has no one told him that holding onto this crush is fucking creepy and counterintuitive to the mindset of family they’re trying to create? Like you visibly made someone obviously uncomfortable, and nothing? No one calls you out. No one thinks bad of you, even Mor, the one uncomfortable. So weird!!!

But basically what I’m trying to say, is not that I hate these characters, because they’re very interesting to read, even if the quality of writing is so-so compared to other SJM’s series. They’re not totally bad or villains but they definitely do some stuff that should probably be recognized as something wrong, because all of them are morally grey characters. Just the lack of understanding they showed Nesta should be something that is called out, the lack of understanding they don’t really show each other for those who call themselves family. No one had to be accountable in this book, except Nesta. Which is odd, I think, because there’s two POVs, and Nesta has a problem with everyone which are not entirely her fault. Because the opinions of other people, at their core, are the responsibility of the other people. They could have chosen to be more understanding, but they didn’t. They could choose to be better people, but they don’t. And I’d say that the lack of accountability that the IC have contribute to them never changing. Now, this may change with more books. But at least in this book, this idea is not promising. We got no scenes of the IC talking to Cassian or Nesta like they understood or empathized or changed their mind about anything, none that made them seem like they felt guilty or wrong. Even Rhys went into Nesta’s head and saw all of her trauma, and then still said he wanted to kill her because of a situation he, himself, created. This book was a mess. But they’re messy characters which might be because of poor plotting, but could be on purpose. Idk.

But the point I’m trying to make is that the more the idea is pushed that the IC are these good, benevolent people, who do no wrong, who are the saviors, the more I think they’re horrible people. Because all of things they do that are wrong don’t get held against them. They don’t have to pay for that crime. And if they did have to be accountable for those mistakes, for their own thoughts and actions, I would hate them a lot less. But I think this is also why I tend to like SJM’s “villains” or “asshole characters” more than her “good” characters because the assholes get to grow and the good characters just get more annoying. But it remains to be seen I guess. I certainly hope they have some more development, but not holding my breath... Just my opinion, which I don’t know if I articulated well. So... Anyway

#it is what it is #anti sjm #anti inner circle #nesta archeron #nessian #long post #anti rhysand #to be safe #all antis

115 notes · View notes

ka-writes · 3 years

Text

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Notes: READ WARNINGS!!

Please I really want you to be safe.. anyways, this is mainly a set up for the next chapter.. it has a shit ton of angst prepare yourself.

Also am very sorry it is late!! ‘‘Twas very hard for me to start writing it, btw I started another AU please go check it out, thank you <3

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Warning: Torture I go into detail, gore, cussing manipulation, characters lose sense of reality.

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In case you missed:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 6:

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Inspired by:

Humans are Space Velociraptors

By:FreshRoses_InMyGarden_NeedTheRain

Some kids come from storks, others come from crashed spaceships

By: mmmajora

Home Again, Home Again

By: teeth_eater

All works can be found on Ao3

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Ao3 link for this work:

And my other AU:

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Change 7: This is a dream… right?

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He was back where he started this whole thing.

In a cage.

One cage over from the door and now in the middle of the room. It felt empty and bare, yet full of an uncomfortable sense of dread and fear, though he would never admit that aloud.

This time there was only one other cage in sight. The room had changed as well. It was no longer covered in grime, or smelled of blood. Instead it was a sickly white and smelled of rubbing alcohol. Which caused his nose to burn with the overwhelming scent of the cleaning supplies, making the entirety of the room feel more and more like one of those horror stories in hospitals, the only difference being that this one was real.

The thing that replaced the other cages and humans was an operating table with vials and tools that Tommy couldn’t identify.

There were no lights currently, except for the same small door window, which was the only thing that really stayed the same.

It was cold, it felt empty. There was no description fit for the amount of dread Tommy felt. It was built up after laying in the dark for so long. It burned his gut and made his head swirl with thoughts of what would happen next.

He wouldn’t ever admit he was scared, but the situation kinda explained itself.

Without warning the door swung open. No squeaks like last time, just a smooth motion allowing the room to be basked in yellow light from the hall.

Then the lights turned on, immediately causing Tommy to shut his eyes. His head started throbbing and every fiber in his body screamed at him to run. The lights turned into blurry blinding blobs that lit everything in a white fire, making it apparent that the room was indeed scrubbed of any stains or blood. Once his eyes finally adjusted, his migraine caught up to him, making the entire thing unbearable.

“Hello there!” An alien stepped in the room. Their features were outlined in white and their skin wasn’t even recognized, simply because it looked like a shadow. They had claw-like hands and wore glasses over their white to red eyes. They had a black doctor’s coat and wore black pants with white knee high boots. They had a devilish tail along with devil horns and a floating white halo. Their fangs poked out from a blinding white mouth, which was curved into a practiced smile.

“My name is BadBoyHalo, but you will refer to me as Dr. Halo.” They finished with a sickly sweet tone and a side smile, “My pronouns are he/him, and I will be taking care of what happens while you’re here.. not that you will ever leave of course.”

His mind was racing. Everything told him this was real, but he couldn’t help but pray that it was all a sick dream.

“Now we will start off easy and move onto the harder stuff later! Please refrain from trying to run, we have a shock function attached to your translators.” This caught him off guard. Why was he using plural tenses?

He looked towards the other cage, that’s when he noticed the strange bee alien also wearing a petrified expression. His eyes didn’t wander to the other cage, only watching Dr. Halo.

“Now who do we start with?” The doctor asked, even though he clearly already knew. A twisted smile shone on his face letting the light catch the awfully amused glint in his eyes, “Let’s start with the droneling!”

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There was no explanation for where the two went.

They simply vanished. No traces to follow or reasons to run.

The only logical explanation was Dream catching them. Which meant Techno would have to ask around for where the ship was harboring. The only problem being, he was awful at talking to people.

“So what do you wanna know?” A tall Wollylock person asked, she was the only known person to know anything about Dream, being his mother and all.

“Er- information on the Dream Team Ship.” Techno stated rather awkwardly.

“Why?” The captain asked, impatience clearly visible with her expression.

“They took two starlings from my crew.” At that the captain practically fumed with furry.

“I will help. After all, that boy needs to learn some manners.” The captain stated, her determination was infectious. “What is your craft’s name?”

“The SBI Craft, piloted by captain Philza.” He said robotically.

“Course it has to be Phil. That man has what, four kids he claimed to his crew..”

“Technically, I am not a kid, neither is Wil- Er our scientist, so really he’s only harboring three kids, now one since two were taken..” Techno decided that was the best explanation he could come up with, though there was really no point.

The captain chuckled and brushed off the other’s attempts at defending the crew. “Just send me the ship’s cords and your captain’s contact and I will be in touch.” With that the captain slid a communicator over the table and walked out of the sketchy bar.

Techno made his way back to the ship and delivered his captain the news. He tried to ignore the gut feeling that everything was wrong…

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(The next section has graphics depictions of torture and gore, please skip this section if it could or will trigger you in any way, there is a summary at the end. Thank you <3)

The world moved unbearably slow. The cage opened ever so smoothly, making him want to throw up. It was the sign that everything was going to go to hell.

That’s what this has to be right? A hellish nightmare that wasn’t real..

No that wasn’t right..

Did it matter?

A hand yanked his wrist out of the cage and into the blinding white room, that felt like fire surrounding him as he stepped to the operating table.

Needles and scalpels were set neatly on a silver tray. The restraints were heavy and felt like they burned his wrists and ankles. He was pushed onto the table as the ‘doctor’ slapped on gloves. More restraints were clipped over his waist and thighs.

Then something pinched his leg. He felt the blood rushing it’s way down to the cut, as a scalpel carved out a rectangle. He could hear scissors cutting something, and distant screams… were they from him?

He didn’t know at this point. More agonizing cuts on his legs along with a couple of needle pin marks.. a couple snaps of an illusion disk and a bit of writing, on both his skin and paper..

He couldn’t really feel anything after the first one, only simply knowing that his body was reacting to the pain yet his brain hadn’t quite caught up with reality.

It was like he wasn’t exactly controlling his body, just simply existing in the dream-like state. Time didn’t exist there, neither did recognition of the pain. Emotions ran wild. Turning all of his thoughts sour as he attempted to remember what happened.

It wasn’t until the doctor un-clipped him and put him back into the cage that he noticed the other.

That’s who did this to him. That’s the person that pushed him through pain.

The human wore a terrified expression as the doctor took him out for his turn.

He couldn’t help but smile at the other’s pain. The other deserved it..

Right?

(If you skipped this, Tubbo got tortured and blamed Tommy for the situation.)

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“IT’S BEEN A FUCKING MONTH! And you still haven’t found your son’s damn ship?!” The man on the other line was furious, and rightfully so.

Puffy undoubtedly understood the anger the man had. I mean she had been in the situation before when her youngest was kidnapped by another crew of pirates. The only difference in this situation was she was fighting against her son, her duckling… when did her duckling turn sour?

“You’re right about that, Phil. I can assure you Niki is doing everything in her power to track them down, along with Jack.” Jack joined the team after Puffy met Niki.

She must admit that having someone working in the ISF had its perks. Though no one could fully trust him. For good reason of course.

“Ponk is ‘talking’ to Sam, he sure as hell ain’t cracking yet.” She finished bitterly, “Like I said Quakity is waiting for his monthly letter from his fiancé, which would hopefully give us a clue at where to look.”

“I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that it’s been a month.. Wilbur said the humans barely last a full week if they aren’t treated..” The worry was lining his face and causing the bags under his eyes to look more like nasty black eyes. His face was sullen making it apparent the man hadn’t been eating properly. His wings ruffled at every noise and he seemed to be running purely on coffee. Puffy wanted nothing more than to return the man’s unofficial sons back to him.

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Everything was great!

The plan worked perfectly, and Sam hadn’t cracked yet.

Meaning he could easily start on the next faze. The only issue would be he’d have to gain both of the starling’s trust.

Even if the present was a bitter reality lined with things that would annoy him, the end result would be worth it.

Having a human and a nuke expert by his side would allow him to have everything he ever wanted.

Power.

Not just power, but all the things that came with it. He wouldn’t be questioned again, and everything and anything he said would be the final word.

It would be hell for those who crossed him, and even worse for those who abandoned him.

Wilbur, Sam, Ant, Quackity, Foolish, and even mother dearest, Puffy. They would all pay for their disloyalty. Once this is all over, they would never cross him again.

I mean he did give up everything to gain this life.

There was nothing to lose and everything to win, and he’d be damned if he didn’t win.

I mean he sold his soul for this!

It was all worth it.. right?

Of course it is. Stop doubting me child.

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28 days of torture, and now they were sitting with their captors playing house.

It was wrong. So utterly wrong.

“Eat your food Tommy.” The captain commanded.

Tommy complied not wanting to go back in the cage. Every day he woke up there, more things were shoved into him and more pain was given.

“You too Tubbo.” The command was given and the other complied, the same fear visibly shown.

“Reports.” Dream stated sternly, the rest of the crew compiled without hesitation.

It was a bunch of regular reports of how no one knew where they were, what supplies needed to be restocked, the current condition of the ship, and any developments with the news. A bunch of boring bullshit. He bit back any sarcastic remarks that threatened to spill, but refrained in fear of what they would do to him.

The crew was dismissed leaving Tubbo, Tommy, and Dream alone.

“I want both of you to listen.” Dream started his tone raising all hairs on the back of Tommy’s neck, “Phil and his crew led you to us. They didn’t comply the first time and poisoned your minds. We did the right thing, and fixed you. Now, there are some rules you have to follow. You may not wander the ship, only go anywhere with one of the crew members. You will both share a room and follow the same schedule. Anything you do that is not an order deserves a punishment, for it is proof of what the other crew poisoned you with. Now! Go to your room, it has a black door.” With that the man finished and the pair headed towards their room.

The speech sounded right, yet felt wrong. But everything was justified, therefore it was fine. Plus the worrying was just a problem for future Tommy, maybe that’s what Dream meant by the other crew poisoning him.

The other said nothing as they entered the room, only fixing Tommy with a bitter gaze which turned into something of confusion. Neither one slept, they couldn’t bring it in themselves to sleep, especially since Dream hadn’t told them to.

Instead both of them settled into a silence as they lay on their bed, only getting up when the man told them too. This was all they could really do as they faced their new reality. Slowly but surely their brains began to believe every word of the speech. Finally when the man asked to join him, a bubbly sickly joy gave them the grace to finally help their rescuer.

Six months after the initial capture, one month of torture and five months of vigorous training, consisting of fighting, weapon design, and hours of studying blueprints, they were finally able to go on their first mission with their rescuer, not questioning anything any of the crew said at this point. Sick months of training and they became living weapons ready for whatever the cruel world threw at them…

This is a dream.. right?

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Chapter 7- End

Words: 2221

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Notes:

Hahahaha I am in pain from writing this... please bare with me.. ;-;

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Dream is being a manipulative bastard... I mean the character. More specifically my take on Dream’s character in this situation... ahhhhh

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I hope you’re staying safe, don’t forget to take care of yourself!! <3 also likes are appreciated but reblogs are always better! <3

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mionemymind · 4 years

Text

Death of the Foolish

Summary: (Hermione x Female Reader) This was the life of Y/n after she was forced to break up with Hermione for reasons out of her control. But there really was no life after it.

Warning: Angst, Death, Blood

Words: 2172

A/N: This is for Emma (@idont-knowrn)and her 300 writing challenge! I’m really sorry that it’s late, I was quite slow on what I was signing up for. But I hope you love it and also congrats on 500, you deserve it!!

When it comes to the foolish, they tend to sacrifice everything in order to save the ones they love. The decisions often multiply in recklessness and impulsiveness, but it was all for the sake of their love ones. At least, that’s what Y/n tells herself as she sat in deep thought in the Great Hall. She didn’t hear the loud chatter about the upcoming Quidditch match beside her or the latest teen drama, what was louder was the Dark Lord’s task for her and Draco. It echoed so loudly and the only person she could even confide in was the same person she hated so much.

Across the Great Hall, sitting at the Slytherin table, was Draco. In the same position as Y/n, all he could think about was the deadly task placed upon him, to kill the greatest wizard known to wizard kind. What made it worse was the guilt of adding Y/n into the mix of his drama. She was the only person to have found out about the mark of the Dark Lord, all because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. To risk being exposed, he quickly spoke to his parents. It was Lucius’s idea to tell the Dark Lord. This quickly grew messy and complicated. Now with the threat of her parents’ life, Y/n was forced to become a death eater.

Both students had sunken faces, eyes lifeless of color, and with the weight of the world on their shoulders. Seeing as her next class was canceled, Y/n got up from her spot at the table and walked out the Great Hall. This only caught the attention of one person, Hermione.

She had excused herself from the table and walked in a hurried pace to catch up to Y/n. There were many questions replaying in the bright witch’s mind, and all can only be answered by Y/n. You see, Y/n and Hermione had recently broken up. It was strange as well as harsh. It certainly was unexpected on Hermione’s end since they were coming close to their third-year anniversary. One minute, the two were fine, next minute, Hermione had tears in her eyes as Y/n had broken up with her. Hermione was not given a single explanation for their separation and she was certain as hell to get it.

Turning right, Hermione saw you standing at the end of the hall. Not even caring how desperate she looked, Hermione ran up to you until you were a foot away. With a defeated voice Hermione called out, “Y/n.” At the sound of her voice, Y/n had tensed up, but was quick to reply with, “What do you want?” Y/n didn’t mean to be as harsh, but it needed to be done. Hermione was hurt to see Y/n not even bothering to turn around, but with still a lot of determination, she walked in front of her. “Why are you being like this?” Rolling her eyes, Y/n childishly turned around to avoid looking at Hermione. Rather than feeling hurt, Hermione grew frustrated and walked right back in front of Y/n.

“Stop acting like a child and talk to me.” Y/n’s eyes remained everywhere besides Hermione. “You know,” Hermione took a deep breath and shook her head, as if she was contemplating something. “You’re so bloody stubborn. It’s excruciating talking to you.”

Y/n was quick to fire back with, “Then stop talking to me.” Y/n started to walk away from Hermione, in the general direction of the Great Hall, but Hermione was just as stubborn as Y/n. She needed answers and she needed them now. Without much thought, Hermione grabbed Y/n by the shoulders and shoved her up against the wall. For the first time in while, Hermione locked eyes with Y/n and saw how empty they looked. It was like the color was drained and there was no soul behind those beautify eyes. It was obvious as night and day. Hermione’s thoughts only faltered for a little bit before saying, “Would you stop being such a bloody prick and tell me why we broke up? You gave me nothing and after everything we been through, I at least deserve that.” Hermione’s blood was boiling as her breathing sped up. “Did this relationship even mean anything to you?”

Y/n just stood there and took a good look at Hermione. She noticed the small eye bags appearing as well as the slight loss of color on her skin. She was a bit smaller, but not a lot of people would notice, but Y/n noticed. She noticed all the changes that happened to the girl she was very much in love with you. And all she wanted was to tell her the truth, but the less she knew, the better. Y/n grabbed Hermione’s hands and had ripped them off from her robes. She glanced towards her left and saw Draco leaving the Great Hall. It was time. Without any words, Y/n left Hermione standing there. And before she could walk out of ear shot, Hermione said, “No matter how many times you hurt me, I still somehow come back to you. But remember this, one day I will leave and will never come back. So, don’t bother chasing…I won’t ever let you back in.”

Y/n didn’t have time to focus on her heart breaking even more or the tears forcing their way into her eyes. She had to focus on other matters and had met Draco at the astronomy tower to deal with their task.

-Time Skip-

It was dark, night was falling in Malfoy Manor. As cold it was outside, it was nothing compared to the inside. There were fireplaces in amongst every room, but it didn’t matter. The manor felt icy cold, lifeless, and dark as those who lived in it. This was also the place Y/n happened to stay after the fall of Dumbledore. It wasn’t like she had many options to choose. Lucius had wanted to keep a close eye on the girl to make sure she didn’t ruin any of the Dark Lord’s plans. The Malfoy’s were already punished for Lucius actions and any good news he could bring to the Dark Lord, he would tremendously try.

Y/n was in of the many rooms, trying her best to distract her mind from the many thoughts it occupies when she heard new voices in the common room. She peaked around the corner and the sight made her blood turn cold. There she was, Hermione Granger in a place where she was never supposed to be. Hiding back in the hallway, Y/n murmured disagreements and lies as if this whole thing was fake, but when she looked again, there she was in the flesh.

Wracking up her brain, this was not part of the escape plan she had in mind. Everything was quickly going south and there was no time to think. She looked back again and saw that Peter was dragging the boys downstairs, leaving Hermione with Bellatrix. “That gives me time.”

Working her way around, Y/n called on the only person that was prepared to help. “Dobby, I need you now. Apparate to the cellar and help everybody escape. Leave Ron and Harry to me.” Y/n knew it was only seconds before Dobby could get the message. She made her way downstairs and saw Peter opening the gate. With a quick spell, Peter fell forward with no mobility at all. Before going down, she heard the terrifying screams that emerged from Hermione. And as much as she wanted to save her, she needed to be logical first.

Making her way downstairs, she was meant with two pairs of eyes that were filled with rage. With her wand up, Y/n said, “Upstairs. We don’t have much time.”

“Why should we listen to you?” Y/n hesitated and didn’t know quite what to say. The duo was given too many reasons now to doubt her, but she needed all of them to be safe. “You have no choice. Just do as I say.”

Slowly, they walked upstairs and made sure to stay out of view. Y/n saw Hermione laying on the floor, and it killed everything inside of her to know she was tortured. Her screams were already echoing in her mind. “I’ve had enough of this.” Ron walked out of cover and yelled, “Expelliarmus!” Harry reached in the air and caught Bellatrix’s wand.

“Stupefy!” Lucius flew back as Ron and Harry quickly fought against Draco and Narcissa. But it quickly ended at the sight of Hermione having a knife against her throat. “Drop your wands!” Ron and Harry looked at each other with desperation to get out.

“I said drop it!” The boys followed the command and dropped their wands. “Draco, pick up their wands.” Draco quickly followed orders and stood back. Y/n was still at the stairs and had yet to be seen. “It’s time to call the Dark Lord.” Bellatrix said with a heinous laugh following after it.

Lucius pulled up his sleeve revealing the mark of Dark Lord. Before he could call, Y/n whispered a spell, dropping the chandelier. The distraction had made Bellatrix jump out into safety as Hermione ran forward to Ron. Harry grabbed their wands from Draco’s hand without much of a fight from Draco. “Stupefy!” Once again, Lucius was sent back as the trio and Y/n stood next to each other.

“Stupid girl! You’ve could’ve hurt me.” The next thing they knew, Dobby was right behind them, ready to apparate the group out the manor. With one last cold look, Y/n said, “I wish I did.” Dobby then proceed to apparate the group to the designated location. But what they had failed to see was the knife that flew in with them.

Arriving at the beach, Y/n laid flatly on the sand. She could feel an aching feeling in her stomach and had tried to glance down, but that was proven to be difficult for the witch. A couple feet away was the trio and Dobby. They were having a small celebration, to finally be out the manor, when Dobby noticed Y/n.

Pulling on Harry’s clothes, the elf pointed at the injured girl that was quickly losing blood. Harry was about to run to her when Hermione was the first to break out of shock. She kneeled before the girl with tears already prickling her eyes. “Y/n?”

Y/n slightly moved her head in the direction of Hermione. Things were getting blurry, but she knew it was her. “You’re g-g-gonna be okay.” Hermione placed Y/n’s head on her lap as she yelled at Harry and Ron for her bag, but it was all faint mumbles to Y/n. The world around her was growing cold again when she was so close to being back with Hermione.

Knowing this was her end, Y/n reached out for Hermione’s hand. The small movement caught Hermione’s attention and she immediately locked hands with Y/n. The tears were already falling down as her lip quivered at the sight in front of her. Y/n was losing blood badly, something that needed professional help, which was nowhere for miles.

“I’m sorry Hermione.” While wiping her tears with her free hand, Hermione replied, “Please save your energy, we need to get you help.” No matter how smart Hermione was, there was no possible solution for this problem. “I-” Y/n was cut off with a severe cough, blood was trickling out her mouth. “You do mean everything…to me.”

“What?” Hermione looked at Y/n with a ridiculous look. “Stop talking non-sense, we need to find help.” Hermione gave a pleading look to Harry and Ron, but they knew much as well that Y/n’s life was coming to an end. Dobby stood beside Harry with tears falling.

“Please Hermione…please save my parents.” Still, Hermione was clueless to Y/n’s words. She didn’t even know that Y/n’s parents were in danger. “And Hermione…I still-” Y/n coughed up more blood and whispered her last words, “…love…you.”

In within a heartbeat, Y/n was gone from this world with Hermione clutching on to her body in hopes of getting her back. It took several tries from Ron and Harry before they agreed to bury her body close by. It was when Hermione took one last look at Y/n did she notice the large mark on her left forearm. And suddenly, everything clicked. All her questions, pleas, and mysteries were solved with just that mark. Hermione broke down again as Harry and Ron placed the sand on to Y/n’s body.

Hermione was the last one to leave when she said these final words, “I love you too.” And with no time to grieve, the trio were back to fighting the war. Y/n would always be on Hermione’s mind. And when they would win, Hermione would find ways to honor her first love’s name. And whenever she had those sad days, she would sometimes wish Y/n would try to come back in her life. For this time, she promised, she would let her back in.

#hermione granger imagine #hermione granger x reader #hermione x reader #hermione x you #hermione granger x you

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pi-creates · 3 years

Text

Top 5 Aasim Moments

Is anyone surprised that when CJ asked if people wanted to collaborate on a Top 5 post about a character that I’d choose my favourite pyro?

This was quite fun to talk about and I know everyone else who collaborated on this idea shared the sentiment. If you wanna check out some other lists:

@stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale talks about Louis @kaylee-wolf talks about James @taurusicorn2400 talks about Violet @akemi-rose578 talks about Ruby

Though in all seriousness, Aasim is probably one of my favourite characters from the whole series, and I feel like even as a side-character he has some very good moments that reflect well on who he is as a person. And while most of what we see are only small details, I like what those little details could mean if they were expanded upon.

So yeah, here are my personal Top 5 Aasim Moments from the Final Season.

5. “Aasim was the third.”

“Aasim said you knew how to survive. He could just tell that the school would be safer with you there. I voted for you because I liked you, but his reason, it was better.”

This is one of those things that I think sums up a lot about what kind of person Aasim is. He is thinking about the big picture and the long term consequences from a logical standpoint rather than a purely emotional one. Violet and Tenn have more emotional reasons for wanting Clementine and AJ to stay – and that is all fine and dandy, but I personally like the distinction that Tenn makes which implies that Aasim is trying to consider the future of everyone at the school.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been really nice to him or horrible, he sees Clementine and AJ as people they need to keep around if there’s some guy in the woods who has already taken some of the kids from the school before. It is simply a smarter move to keep the people who know how to survive close by when there may be an impending danger creeping around.

And I think it’s also really telling that he’s only known Clementine and AJ for a few days at the time of the vote, and he’s already gotten a read on their skills. It seems a little counter-intuitive given his sometimes awkward social abilities, but he’s clearly observant and using those observations to inform his decision making.

Plus on a personal level, I like that this shows Aasim as like a middle ground between Violet and Louis. Violet seems to vote in terms of Marlon deserving punishment, and therefore AJ did nothing wrong and shouldn’t receive any repercussions for his actions - whereas Louis just lost his friend and knows that AJ is a threat, and he’s voting from an emotional standpoint where he’s hurt and isn’t focusing on the future because of it.

I find both those mentalities realistic and in-character, but too extreme - Aasim is upset by the death of his friends, he acknowledges that Marlon had made some bad decisions, but he still votes for the pair to stay. He feels like the only character who is listening to the explanations and processing things clearly.

Overall, I really like the way that Tenn tells us about this moment – I just wish that maybe this revelation came earlier in the plot so that we could potentially bring up the discussion with Aasim and thank him, or hear more of his thoughts overall.

4. Going hunting for rabbits

The only pure, one-on-one interaction you can have with Aasim. And I just wish there were more moments like this.

I like that Aasim will ask Clementine if she’s a good shot – and he will take her word for it and let her help without any undercurrent of doubt. And if you do well, he’s quick to say that it’s thanks to you that they’ll end up with more rabbits than expected today.

It’s just nice, ya know? It’s an acknowledgement that we are making an effort and it is appreciated.

And it once again gives you more insight into his priorities – he cares about the group and is hoping that Clem shares his mentality of prioritising the group’s wellbeing and survival first. That she is ok with putting the work in to make sure that they not only get through today, but tomorrow and the next.

Perhaps this is all down to personal preference – but in this series I really really like meeting characters with that mentality. There are too many groups that we meet who don’t have long-term plans, or their plan is essentially to make it up as they go along, take what they need and screw the consequences.

Forward thinking is a really good quality to have in the environment they’re all stuck in, and this scene cements that. I just wish there were more scenes where I could reciprocate having this mentality and potentially find a way to corroborate ideas on where the school is heading.

3. Standing up for Clementine and AJ during the Marlon drama

This is technically spread out between two parts – how Aasim deals with the twin revelation, and also how he deals with the aftermath of AJ shooting Marlon.

It is a very tense situation, emotions are running high, everyone has just learned some unhappy secrets, they are trying to process that Brody has just died, and a gun is being passed around like a hot potato and pointed everywhere. A lot of the kids are confused and unsure if what they’re hearing is truth or lie.

And naturally, since Marlon doesn’t want the truth to come out like that, he isn’t trying to clear things up. If he doesn’t let Clem explain either and simply paints her as the threat and the liar then it is easier for him to gloss over the details. And in reality, no one wants to believe someone they trusted would hide something so heavy from them – and some people would rather continue to trust them because that feels better. That makes us feel like we haven’t been betrayed.

But Aasim doesn’t do that. He wants to hear the story, and he makes sure he shuts Marlon down in his attempts to stop Clementine from explaining herself. Keep in mind, this is also at a time when Marlon has the gun, and is threatening to shoot Clem if she doesn’t shut up. To speak up at all in this moment is dangerous, especially when you are siding against the person with the gun.

I know that the main point of this scene is to appeal to either Louis or Violet – but we shouldn’t forget that we didn’t need to appeal to Aasim for him to stand up for you in his own way. He does that for himself because it’s the right thing to do – you let people explain themselves when something happens. He might not get in the middle of the fight like Louis or Violet, but I still appreciate that he picks up that something is wrong and gives Clem the opportunity to speak up.

Yet of course, we know what happens at the end of that episode regardless of how we play this final scene.

Marlon gets shot. AJ doesn’t understand why everyone is angry. Violet pulls her cleaver out and tells Clem and AJ to go inside, while pretty much everyone else is stuck somewhere between wanting to punch someone and bursting into tears.

While everyone is stuck in this limbo of anger and sadness, Clem leads AJ back towards the dorms. And Mitch isn’t pleased in the slightest and pulls his little knife on the duo. And this is the second time in this whole drama that Aasim steps in to deescalate.

If you choose the silent option [...] or let the timer run out on this choice, Aasim will tell Mitch off, telling him to stop and that what he is doing isn’t helping.

It’s a little thing, but if people have seen me comment on argumentative scenes in these game, I don’t like when characters don’t know how to deescalate. So having a character blatantly point out how fighting fire with fire sometimes just causes a bigger fire and burns everyone – yeah, I appreciate that. Any character who deescalates is a good thing in this series.

2. Watching out for his friends on the boat

Imagine being on that boat, being scared and hearing your friends in clear distress, when suddenly someone appears to break you out – and instead of simply saying “great, get me the hell outta here”, Aasim and Omar wait for Clem to attend to Louis/Violet first.

They know that the highest priority at that moment isn’t them, it’s their friend who has received more direct attention from Lilly.

But then of course things get worse and Clem gets caught too. And Regardless of who is captured, the first thing Clementine hears when trying to find an escape is Aasim asking her if she’s alright. Thanks for checking in, Aasim, that’s a good friend move there.

And that’s his whole thing with the boat – he is watching out for everyone else there. He watches out for Clem who just got there, and in the escape from the boat he is either being the shoulder for Omar to lean on, or he beelines over to Louis to support him after his ordeals from being captured.

He just... aaah, he’s being a good friend and trying to help. It isn’t self-preservation that drives his actions, it’s the preservation of the group as a whole. After everything that happened on that boat, I don’t think we could blame the characters if they wanted to hightail it out of there without thinking. Aasim doesn’t forget about his friends in spite of how scared he tells us he is. How can I see this and not think he’s just an incredible friend to have in the apocalypse?

1. Protecting Willy from the raiders

This is another point with two parts.

The first part is obvious – Mitch has just been stabbed in the throat, and Willy is prepared to run out there into the thick of things. It is only Aasim being quick to grab a hold of him that stops the boy from meeting a similar fate.

And it’s awful to think about – Mitch was a friend to both of them, they’re both probably shocked, hurting, and they don’t have the time to do anything about it. They can’t save him, it’s too late, and they can’t mourn him or do anything. Somehow, Aasim can at least keep his head clear enough to stop Willy from getting himself hurt too. And I can’t help but feel how bad that must hurt emotionally too, to be forced to hold everything back because you have to prioritise everything else over your friend who is dying.

Yet they don’t break. They keep moving. It takes a lot of inner strength to not crumble, and these two manage.

But then there is the second part to this point – and hear me out, we’re entering speculation territory.

The raid continues, and the kids carry on with their plan and fall-back to the admin building. They set off their traps, end up stuck up stairs, and Abel decides to throw a molotov towards them. In the next moment Clem and AJ go into the headmaster’s office, and Aasim and Willy turn and move somewhere down the hallway.

We don’t see either of them again until Clem is outside and given the choice to save Louis or Violet. And when we do see them, it’s seeing Aasim unconscious in the back of the cart, and then Willy suddenly appears behind Clem as he exits the admin building.

…

How?

Aasim and Willy were together when we last saw them, and yet somehow Aasim got caught and Willy stayed in the admin building somewhere?

It doesn’t make sense to me. Aasim had been shown as the one who would be less likely to get caught out of the pair. And surely if they managed to get Aasim they should have been able to more easily get Willy too, right? So why didn’t they?

The most logical answer I can come up is that Aasim got caught while attempting to keep Willy hidden from the other raiders. Whether he was playing distraction and got caught in that task, or if he simply didn’t have time to hide/run after Willy got somewhere safe, in either case I feel like that’s a huge risk to take to save someone else.

But he does that, and I think it’s an incredibly selfless move to make. And I really do believe he will do that - I believe he cares enough to go the extra mile to keep his friends safe.

And I want the details. I love everything that is implied in these moments, but I want those details solidified.

That is the thing about me adoring Aasim as a character - there’s less concrete information to latch onto, but what is there is good.

Are there any other things I missed that you guys love? Let me know - always happy to talk about the pyro.

#twdg #twdg s4 #twdg talk #twdg t5f #twdg aasim

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violetlunette · 3 years

Text

Something’s been on my mind for a bit, so I decided to get it out. I’m going to talk about the fight Bakagou vs Uraraka at the sports festival, the effects on the story and his arc, and whether it would have been better if he lost.

Below isn’t exactly Bakagou bashing, but there is some Bakagou critical, though no harm is meant here. Still, if that’s not your cup of tea I would move on.

Before we get into the meat of it all, I want to talk about something that irked me; the out of nowhere gender inequality. Where did the hell did that come from? Even Tenya is like, “surely Bakagou will take it easy on a girl!” What the hell? Before this point, there were no gender discrepancies whatsoever. Lady heroes such as Mt. Lady, Midnight, and Miroku were all on the same level as their male counterparts, so where the hell did this come from?

This is just a trope that I hate in general. Unless your story is actually talking about and dealing with gender inequality and you’re willing to go all the way, don’t even bring it up. It feels like it’s only there so Aizawa can give his “why Bakagou is awesome speech” (ugh) which they could have fit in another way if they wanted it in so bad. I think almost everyone could agree that gender thing wasn’t needed and is annoying.

Anyway, time to dig into why you’re all here; Why I think Bakagou should have lost against Uraraka.

First off—HOW did he win? I can accept Bakagou winning against Monoma as it’s established in-universe that the hero teachers are willing to bend the rules for creative thought, even if it’s unfair. (Makes sense as they’re training these kids to fight villains who don’t play fair at all.)

However, where’s the logical explanation in his fight with Ochaco? How did he manage to make that big of an explosion? If I’m understanding his quirk correctly the size of his explosions coordinates with the amount of sweat he produces. That’s what the grenades are for; they basically collect his bomb sweat and his palms light the spark to set it off. In the fight with Uraraka, he doesn’t use anything to pool his sweat. So how did he release the explosion that size? It’s never been established that he could make a boom that big just with his palms. And if it was his first time, then he should have been injured at least, had some side effects as he’s not used to an attack that size. It wouldn’t take him out of the tournament as Recovery Girl could heal him, but it all would make more sense. (Not to mention take away Gary-Sue points.)

The biggest irritant though is that there was a perfect workaround that could have been used; HIS SHIRT. Bakagou could have torn off his shirt at the last minute and used the sweat collected to create the blast! Not only would this be a decent explanation for his attack but it would have shown Bakagou’s resourcefulness and cunning. (Such a simple solution!) If he did that I would easily accept that he won on his own merits. As is though, I need a legit in-universe reason to accept his victory was won by anything other than the narrative being unfair.

Another reason Bakagou should have lost is that it would have been an interesting twist to his arc while staying inline with it. All his life Bakagou was a big fish in a small pond. As a result, all his victories came easy leading to constant praise. Now he’s at UA where he’s finally fighting people on the same level as him, some even higher. However, the only people he sees as a threat are Izuku and Todoroki. The rest are nothing. He doesn’t see Ochaco as a threat at all. In fact, before their match, he looks down on her. If he lost to Uraraka it would have been a huge hit to his pride while opening his eyes. Bakagou made a big speech about how he was going to defeat everyone, yet he was beaten during his first match against someone he never even considered a challenge.

This works better in the story as well. Now Bakagou doesn’t want to face All Might head-on because he’s a cocky prick nor is he charging the villains because he’s being an arrogant idiot. Bakagou is doing it because he thought he was hot stuff, yet he keeps losing—to the Sludge Villain, to Deku, to Ochaco. Then his one victory only happened because he was forced to work with someone else. Even though he was always the best, always the winner, always being praised for every little thing. This causes conflict with the narrative he’s created in his head all his life. I’m the best! So why am I always losing? Out of desperation to prove something to himself, Bakagou charges headlong into the villains, not because of his pride. It’s still an idiotic act, but the reason is more sympathetic, to me anyway.

That being said, I would miss what originally happened; The only reason the villains took an interest in Bakagou was because of the way he acted after Todoroki lost. Without that, they would have no interest in capturing Bakagou and we would lose what’s arguably Bakagou’s best arc.

This is a rare moment where I gush about something concerning the boy, but I love everything to do with this;

Bakagou was so arrogant and bloodthirsty that despite knowing he was the target, he charged the villains. This leads to the obvious, “what did you think would happen moment” where he’s captured.

The events that follow aren’t necessarily Bakagou’s fault, but they did happen because of his actions. Long story short, All Might fought All For One leading to an amazing fight that ends in All For One getting captured—but also to All Might losing his powers. This means that All Might can no longer be a hero. As such the crime rate goes up by 3% and new villains appear.

Let me be clear; it’s NOT Bakagou’s fault All Might lost his powers. Nor is the crime rate going up. I am absolutely not blaming him for those. All of this would have happened anyway eventually, whether or not Bakagou got caught. And before anyone says it I am NOT saying Bakagou deserved to be kidnapped by the League of Villains. Of course, he didn’t deserve that! However, the fact is all that happen because of Bakagou’s choice and actions.

Bakagou was warned that HE was a target, yet rather than being smart and getting to safety, he decided to fight. This not only placed him along with his classmates in danger but also got himself captured.

Bakagou made a choice and he paid for it, along with others.

THIS is what I live for—no, not Bakagou suffering! The arc has the right amount of setup with EARNED angst and drama. Not only that, but there’s finally a lasting consequence for Bakagou’s actions (society’s as well, but that’s another post). Most of all Bakagou realized he was wrong and tried to learn from it (till later, but I digress). This arc, plus another event, lead to him having a break down with Izuku that could have led to him finally realizing the error of his ways in a narratively satisfying way. (Before Chapter 120 fucked it up, but I digress yet again.)

None of that would have happened if he lost to Uraraka and that would have been a damn shame.

So, what do you all think? Whether you like or dislike the angry porcupine, which path do you think is better for the story and Bakagou’s arc? Would it have been better if he lost to Uraraka and had his pride damaged to the point where he charges the villains to prove himself?

Or is better that he won and was then punished for his arrogance by thinking he could take on a group of villains? Or do you think the villains would still be after Bakagou even if he lost to Uraraka? Or maybe the villains wouldn’t have turned up at the camp at all as they wouldn’t think to kidnap Bakagou?

(Please try to set aside personal feelings for the character as much as possible if you decide to reply, and answer honestly.)

#bakugou critical #just a little #bakugou bashing #not really but it may come off that way #Bakagou vs Uraraka #sports festival #bnha #mha #ochaco Uraraka #however you feel about the fight can we agree that gender thing was a waste of time?

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bluesfortheredj · 3 years

Text

Different eyes.

Not. You.

The gist of the conversation you’d had with Gwilym moments before had basically been that the person he was fond of was undoubtedly not you, and now you were heading into the arms of someone comforting and familiar to try and heal your slightly wounded heart… and ego.

“There she is!” he grins as you walk towards his outstretched arm.

You wrap your arms around his torso tightly as you press your cheek against his shirt and close your eyes with a sigh, then he looks down at you with a slightly concerned frown and hugs you firmly as he leads you out into the garden away from the party.

“I’m gonna need a cigarette,” you huff once you’ve been pulled down onto a bench and tucked into his side.

“You haven’t smoked in years,” he says with a shake of his head, “I’m not going to let you ruin that.”

“Actually I had one a couple of months back so you wouldn’t be ruining anything,” you point out as you hold your open hand at the level of his chest and wait for what you wanted.

“You’d better not be lying to me,” he frowns.

You place your other hand over your heart, “I promise I’m not lying Rufus.”

“Fine,” he tuts, fishing the packet and a lighter out of his pocket and dropping them into your palm, “so what’s the special occasion then?”

“Uh… being surrounded by too many happy couples.”

“Well in that case I’ll be joining you.”

You and Rufus had become firm friends after he joined The Darkness what with you being their officially unofficial seamstress, and you barely left one another’s side when you got together like this. Your friendship had only grown when you were hired in the costume department of Bohemian Rhapsody, but you’d also got close to a certain tall brunette who had shot you down only moments ago, and of course Rufus was the first person you wanted to see after such a blow. He holds you tight, knowing you needed comfort for something but not quite sure what, and he keeps an eye on you as you inhale your cigarette; a sight he wasn’t used to seeing these days.

“So I heard about you and Gwilym...”

“Me and Gwilym?” you scoff, “trust me when I say there is no me and him.”

“That’s not what I’ve been told… apparently you two have been seen getting cosy together on multiple occasions and he’s quite vocal with his adoration for you,” Rufus explains as you sit up to face him after almost choking on your last drag of the cigarette.

“What?!” you laugh, “I literally just spoke to him about what his type is and I could not be further from the woman he’s looking for!”

“As if!” Rufus protests, “he must be fucking blind.”

You chuckle at his insistence that there must be something wrong with the guy then stub out your cigarette and slide your arms around his waist as you lean in and kiss his cheek.

“It’s the only logical explanation,” he continues as he flicks his own cigarette butt onto the floor before stepping on it firmly and returning your hug, “how about we move our deal forwards a little then?”

“By how many years?”

“Well, we said if we hadn’t found anyone by 40 we’d get married, so how about we change it to 30?” he offers.

“That’s next year!” you laugh.

“Fine,” he huffs playfully, “35.”

“Okay, deal,” you nod.

You shake your head with a smile as you think about what it would be like being married to your best friend, but unbeknownst to the two of you your tight embrace is being watched carefully by two people from the patio doors.

“So you were going to tell her how you feel and now she’s on a bench with Rufus looking very close…” Ben observes, “how did you fuck that up so badly?”

“Since when did she smoke?” Gwil asks absent-mindedly, completely ignoring Ben’s question.

“We shared a ciggy on a night out once but she doesn’t smoke regularly,” he explains, “...I need you to tell me exactly what you said because that should be you out there, not him.”

“It doesn’t even matter, I’ve fucked up and missed my chance. It’s too late. I’m gonna head home I think; I don’t want to see those two getting together because of me,” Gwilym huffs.

“Would you just answer my question?! What the hell did you say to her?!”

The tall man sighs and his shoulders drop before he turns to his friend and explains, “we were just chatting, it was going well I swear, and then it got a bit awkward. The conversation had finally got around to what we look for in prospective partners and I was basically describing her, or so I thought anyway,” he pauses as Ben nods to urge him on, “kind heart, witty sense of humour, blue eyes-”

“Blue?”

“Yeah…”

“They’re green you idiot!”

Gwil’s face drops at the sudden realisation that yes, yours were definitely green just like Ben’s, and he slaps his hand to his forehead, “I’ve totally fucked it haven’t I?”

“Not necessarily… but it’s gonna take some explaining to get out of this one.”

“Oh this is just bloody brilliant isn’t it? I’ve just thrown her into Rufus’ arms. Shit. Fuck. Maybe it’s for the best, I don’t know. Why would she want to be with me when she’s got him? He’s her age, and I’m guessing from all the staring at her he definitely knows what colour her eyes are.”

“Stop putting yourself down, they’re the same age as me and I’m not being funny but men mature a lot slower than women so trust me when I say she needs someone your age. Seven years is just the right amount I’d say; you’re more mature than him but still have that young sense of humour and can laugh at a poo joke.”

Ben looks over to his friend who smiles at his comment, but he sees it fade just as soon as it appeared.

“That’s it, we’re going in,” Ben states, dragging Gwil out of the house and across the green.

“Ben!” he whispers, “Ben! No!”

He lets go of Gwilym before carrying on over to the bench and striking up a conversation with Rufus who is soon peeled away from your side and guided back inside the house thanks to Ben’s natural gift of easy conversation, and you’re left sat out in the cold with no one to keep you warm until a familiar figure takes a seat with his coat clasped between his hands.

“Here,” he says, draping the warm jacket over your shoulders, “bit chilly isn’t it?”

“Thanks,” you say quietly, relishing in the feel of his lingering body warmth on the clothing.

There’s a slight pause as you wait for him to say something, and you pull the jacket around you a little more as you sit back to give him the impression you are more relaxed than you actually were feeling.

“So, uh, I realise I’ve been a massive twat,” he begins, pausing for a second just in case you wanted to confirm his finding, “and I just wondered if you could do me a massive favour?”

You frown a little in confusion, “okay...”

“Could you just ask me the question you did before? When we were sitting on the stairs inside?”

“Uhm… right… so, what do you look for in a prospective partner?” you ask, unable to face him just in case it still wasn’t you.

“Well, funny you should ask actually (Y/N), because what I look for is someone who has a kind heart, a witty sense of humour, green eyes, and someone who gives the most comforting hugs I’ve ever felt,” he looks at you and you slowly turn your head to meet his gaze, “and what do you look for? Please don’t say plays drums, has long blonde hair, and is related to Roger Taylor, because I will be devastated.”

You let out a chuckle at his last statement, “well that ruins my first answer… better go with plan B then… I guess my second choice would be tall, brunette, someone who can make me feel safe with just one look, someone loyal, trustworthy, and plays guitar would be a slight bonus.”

“Second choice?! That cut deep,” he groans, grabbing his shirt over his chest and grimacing.

“So did blue eyes...”

“I deserved that,” he nods, “that will go down in history as the absolute stupidest thing I’ve ever said out loud.”

“I take it you told Ben what you said?”

“Oh yes, and I will never hear the end of it from him either, trust me… so, uh, what happens now?” he asks almost nervously, his eyes moving from yours to his lap.

You couldn’t lie, you really wanted to kiss him; you’d watched those lips so carefully during every conversation you had, wondering what they’d feel like against yours, then against your skin as his slender fingers pressed into your body, trying to feel all of you at once. As if he could hear your thoughts his hand suddenly but gently lands on your thigh and you place one of yours on top of it until your fingers fall through the gaps between his and you’re interlinked.

“Maybe we could just stay where we are and…” you wave your free hand to suggest no plan in particular and Gwil smiles before rubbing your thigh and leaning over to kiss your temple.

His lips linger on your hair as you hold your breath then he moves down to your cheek where his lips press against your warm skin slowly, and finally he pulls back by only a matter of millimetres to wait for you to turn your face towards him so he can capture the lips he’d pined after for such a long time. You move slowly, savouring every second of the sensation of his breath against your skin, and when you connect in your first kiss it’s embarrassingly cliched as you feel, and even see, the sparks appearing between you both. The grip you have on one another’s hands tightens along with the kiss then when you reach maximum hold the kiss ends and you’re left breathless on the bench.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for that,” he whispers.

@winnielinleigh @queenslandlover-93 @excellentbecca @lovemarvelousfics @lovemelikeyou1997 @readinghorn @godohammers @timeandpixiedust @lv7867 @fuckyou-imspiderman @aynsleywalker @the-baby-bookworm @chlobo6 @drivenbybri

#gwilym lee #gwilym lee x reader #gwilym lee fluff #gwilym lee x you #gwilym lee imagine

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ichigo-daifuku · 4 years

Text

「 Shall We Date?: Obey Me! ☆ Masterlist 」

Updated: 16 October 2020

♡ — contains mature/explicit themes ❀ — multi-chapter

Lucifer

Biblical Sense ♡ Lucifer/Succubus Frustrated with the state of affairs surrounding his father’s rule in the Celestial Realm, Lucifer the Archangel descends to the human world with a purpose: to commit a transgression against the Most High and soil his virtuous hands. There, he meets a succubus who leads him to engage in a different kind of corruption altogether, one defiling the virtue of chastity.

Nocturne Lucifer/GN!Reader You don’t believe anyone can know Lucifer, kiss him, and not fall in love.

Ardor Lucifer/GN!Reader Lucifer names the new genus of rose he developed himself after his beloved human.

Mammon

Mammoney ♡ Mammon/F!MC After a series of incredible material and financial opportunities going in her favor, she finds herself questioning the root of her luck and what she did to deserve them all. In the most ludicrous way possible, she is reminded that where money is involved, the Avatar of Greed is.

Lucky Mammon/GN!Reader Mammon has always considered himself an unlucky demon, but now that you’re in his life, things have changed for him.

Leviathan

Harbor ♡ Leviathan/F!MC In true normie fashion, she convinces Leviathan to be her date on the anniversary celebration in honor of the Hell’s Navy.

Azuki-tan Leviathan/GN!Reader Your trip to Anidaemon wasn’t the same without Leviathan.

High Five Leviathan/GN!Reader If he were an application running on a computer, the pop-up window with the message, ‘Leviathan.exe has stopped working,’ would have already appeared on the screen.

Satan

Affection Satan/GN!Reader For a change, it’s you who invite Satan on a date.

Asmodeus

Tickled Pink ♡ Asmodeus/GN!Reader Lust and love. Mind, body, heart, and soul. You are his as he is yours.

Beelzebub

Mon Chéri Beelzebub/GN!Reader One afternoon, you tell Beelzebub about a human custom of tying cherry stems into knots with one’s tongue. He shows you just how skilled he is.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Beelzebub/GN!Reader Beelzebub thinks you’re upset with him because he wasn’t able to control himself and ended up eating the chocolate chip cookies you left in the kitchen.

Belphegor

Lullaby Belphegor/GN!Reader Belphegor likes it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it.

Diavolo

Desiderium ♡ Diavolo/F!MC As the exchange program comes to an end, she spends her final evening with Diavolo, the demon she has become enamored by, the man she shares a romantic affair with, and the one she is most reluctant to leave. With both of them disinclined with her departure, she states the condition which will make her stay: a pact with him, the Devildom’s Prince. But how can a human he has known for a mere year compare to the legacy passed on to him that is worth thousands of years?

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil ♡ ❀ Diavolo/F!Reader During a confrontation between Diavolo and a certain witch who harbors unrequited feelings for him, he declares his intention to ask you to stand beside him in reigning over the Devildom someday. You conclude only one logical explanation for the insanity he uttered: this is his way of discouraging the witch from being so persistent. Although clueless, you play along and become ‘lovers’ with him. Inevitably, your existing attraction for Diavolo grows, but the distinction between truth and lies, the crisscrossed lines of the right and the wrong, and the question of what’s real and what isn’t, begin to plague your mind and stir trouble for your relationship with him with each passing day. Entangled within the woven threads of soulmates and a royal prophecy, this is the story of the Demon Prince and his future Queen: you.

#obey me #obey me!#obey me fanfiction #obey me fanfic #obey me fic #obey me: one master to rule them all #obey me imagines #obey me scenarios #shall we date #shall we date: obey me #swd #swd obey me #masterlist #masterpost

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imagine-that-one-thing · 3 years

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Styles. || 15

Authors Note: Hey everyone!! I know it has been a while since I have updated, but I wanted to pop in and say hi, I am back. I intend to do my best to start writing again and to start where I left off at. I have missed Elise and Harry’s story so much, but I needed the break. With that being said, I am back and doing my best to get back to writing their story. Bare with me as it has always been hard for me to end stories, hence why this one is still kicking. I have a strong connection with the story and I just want to keep writing, so here I am. I hope you all love their story as much as I do. Anyway, I hope you are all well and continue to read my work. xx

For previous chapters, click HERE.

First. Book : Styles and Co

Second Book : Styles’ Towers.

Third Book : The Rise Of Glory.

Styles & Co. || Extras.

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Wouldn’t It Be nice.

My apartment is quiet as I type away at my laptop, attempting to stay focused on my essay with a pounding headache. I have hardly slept the last few nights, and I have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Balancing school and work have proven to be extremely troublesome, but I do not regret my decision one bit to take up Jamie’s proposal. I am incredibly appreciative of the opportunity, even if I manage to get an hour or so of sleep a night.

I landed Jamie the clients and completed the meetings as requested, and successfully redesigned one of the portfolios— it has all been worth it. It will one day pay off to only sleep a few hours.

I massage my temples before the sound of my apartment door opening takes my attention. I turn around immediately, almost plummeting to my feet before nonchalantly recognising it’s Elise and not my worst nightmare. Ever since my father appeared at my apartment that one night, I have been on edge, not to mention I also don’t want Logan coming to my apartment. “Hey,” I half-smile towards her as she closes the door behind her and propels me the apartment keys.

I catch the keys in my hands, “Good to know you’re alive, Harry,” Elise’s commentary takes me by surprise as I kiss her cheek, and she moves away from me.

She’s exasperated.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?” I immediately challenge, “What’s with handing me the keys?” I dangle the keys in my hand.

Elise raises her brow and crosses her arms over her chest, “What’s wrong?” Elise scoffs, “Harry, you haven’t spoken to me in two weeks, not sure if we are even together.”

“What? Sweetheart, I called you the other night before I fell asleep.”

Elise shakes her head, “You haven’t called. I got a text from you, but it said my name, and that was all,” Elise responds, showing me her phone, proving that she is, in fact, correct.

Fuckity-fuck-fuck.

“Oh,” I trail off, feeling like a horrible person… “I’m so sorry.”

And the award for worst boyfriend, once again, goes to me. How wonderful. At this point, I may as well keep an honorary speech on hand. Damnit.

“Harry… if you don’t want to be with me—“

“Darling,” I begin, “I thought I called you the other night… I swear I even texted you today when I woke up,” I assure her, clutching my phone from my table and clicking her messages.

The messages are somewhere here. I know there’s some sort of logical explanation. I remember distinctly. I texted her.

My heart drops, and I shake my head, dissatisfied with myself, “I uh… I never hit send… I never realised that the texts I did send never delivered,” I show her my screen of undelivered text messages and a message from this morning I never sent. “I look like an ass.”

Elise snickers and nods her head, “What else is new?” She jokes, and I can’t help but playfully roll my eyes and grin at her. However, she may be joking; deep down, she and I both know that there’s some truth to the joking matter. I’m an ass, and I can openly admit it.

“I know it is no excuse, but I’m dead tired and busy. I wasn’t trying to blow you off or forget you. I genuinely thought I had called and texted you… Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“You still want to be with me?”

“I’m sorry you even doubt my intentions. Of course, I do. Not sure you feel the same about me.”

It has never been my intentions for her to have to doubt whether I want to be with her. I want to be with her, one-hundred and ten per cent. She’s the woman I aspire to spend my time with. It’s too early to say this, but I want to spend my life with her. We aren’t ready for marriage, but she is the one I want to come home to every night. She’s the one with who I want to grow and build a life.

“I know you’re tired and swamped, but I did feel like you didn’t want to be with me,” Elise confesses.

I nod my head, considering her feelings and how I may have made it seem like I don’t give a damn. “That’s me just being an ass who is struggling to get everything done. Can I make it up to you?”

“How?” Elise demands.

I can imagine she is tired of hearing whether I can make it up to her. I’m tired of hearing it, too. I sound like a broken record, which isn’t my intent, but I am doing my best. My best isn’t good enough, and I know this, but I will do better. I will do what it takes to make her feel valued. I don’t want her ever to have to question my intentions or love for her.

“Stay the night with me. I’ll go to work and come back at around eight before you have to be up. I’ll bring coffee and breakfast… if you like?” I suggest, unsure of how to make things up to her. Dinner and flowers are too cliche, and I have already promised her that. Right now, all I can do is breakfast, and I physically don’t have time for anything else until the weekend.

Elise nods her head and agrees, “Can you maybe try to remember that I’d like a text or a call, so I know you’re alive?”

“I’ll do my best. I’m sorry, baby, I am,” I step closer and kiss her cheek before giving her a warm hug.

I need to make it up to her, and I need to show her I care and want to be with her. She deserves better than a boyfriend who forgets to press send on a text message. It may not be a big deal to some, it was a genuine mistake, but I feel horrible for not realising I hadn’t spoken to Elise. I feel as though I neglected my duties as a boyfriend to make sure she is okay and feel valued and wanted. It is the small things that can make a difference in a relationship.

Elise hasn’t asked for much; she wants my time and effort, which I will give her to the best of my ability.

❈ ❈ ❈

I feel a tender touch to my shoulders, and I draw myself away from my sleeping state. I open my eyes and groggily glance around. Fuck, I fell asleep on my laptop. “You fell asleep,” Elle informs me, her hand massaging soothing circles on my back.

I nod my head and sigh. I touch my fingers to my temple and rub them slowly, “I have the worst headache, and this is due in an hour,” I gesture towards my computer screen that is only making my headache graver.

“Would you like me to finish it for you?” Elise kindly offers.

“Do you even know what I am writing about?” The words leave my lips without me thinking twice about how they sound.

“Don’t be a condescending ass, Harry,” Elise mutters.

I heavily sigh and nod my head, “I’m sorry. Do you know about this,” I motion towards my laptop that has my composition mostly completed? I am not sure if I am nearly finished or not.

“Harry, I can use the literature as a framework to sum up your essay, unless you don’t trust I have the intelligence to do so?” Elise answers, annoyed with me still.

I do not blame her for being irritated with me, After all, I have unintentionally blown her off, and now I am making her believe she is not intelligent, which was not my purposes. I know she is brilliant. She may not be as into the business world as I am, but she is one hell of a writer. Elise is excellent with essays and literature. “And don’t forget, I have to take business, so I do know the basics,” Elise notifies me, and I bow my head.

“Again, I am sorry, Elle,” I apologise, “Be my guest, have at it,” I move my chair, and Elise rests beside me, immediately beginning to read what I have written.

“For someone who is great at business, you have a lot of errors,” Elisse chuckles, nudging me lightly. I nod my head and hum.

“Business major, not an English major, also wrote that with a headache and no sleep,” I mumble before I rest my arms on the desk and place my head to lean in my arms, closing my eyes and falling in and out of sleep while Elise types away. “Harry,” Elise taps me.

I hum my acknowledgement, “Hey, what is the main conclusion you want to be emphasised?”

“Baby, I don’t care,” I murmur tiredly, “Just write whatever sounds good, just don’t fail me,” I continue.

“Great, so I will conclude on valuation and whether to rely on an algorithm or on an ad-hoc analysis,” Elise confirms.

“Sounds good,” I admit, grappling with concentrating, my eyes stinging and my head spinning. “I trust you, darling,” I drowsily mumble, prompting to rest my head on her shoulder, closing my eyes again and drifting off to sleep.

❈

It isn’t long before I am woken, and it feels like only moments have passed where I was put at ease and managed to get a few moments of relaxation. “Hey, Harry, hey, sweetheart,” Elise gradually and benevolently tears me from my sleep, and I lift my head off her shoulder, brushing my eyes as I attempt to focus on her. “It’s done; you need to just go to bed.”

I groggily come to terms with my surroundings, regarding that Elise has finished my paper, “What time is it? I still have work to do,” I shake my head, remembering the collection of work I need to finish. I need to establish a fundamental algorithm for one of my clients, and I still need to figure out a way to balance Elise’s sister’s portfolio that was due the weekend of her wedding. Still, Jamie put it on hold due to her antics and marriage. With Elouise getting married, there is a chance she could venture to combine assets with her husband, but if he is intelligent, he won’t let her encounter any of his assets. I would not combine anything with her. There is a time and a place to consolidate things, and a new marriage is not the time. They have not established boundaries, nor have they demonstrated the true meaning behind the wedding. I think Elouisa married for money, point-blank.

“It’s one, and we are going to bed. You’re not working yourself to death,” Elise informs me, closing down my emails and shutting my laptop.

“Elle, I have to send it and —“

“I already sent it. You owe me, by the way,” Elise smiles, standing up from her position and taking my hand, dragging me with her.

Elise and I wander towards the hallway, “Add it to my tab,” I chuckle, “Tell ya what… I’ll get breakfast in the morning, and this weekend I’ll take you to a nice dinner,” I inform Elise, aware that she deserves more than what I’ve given her lately. I’m not sure how she hasn’t thrown in the towel and told me to go fuck myself.

“That would be nice,” Elise accepts as we step into my bedroom, and I waste no time taking my shirt off and launching it to the corner. This is the earliest I have managed to crawl into bed, and if it weren’t for Elise, I’d still be awake, perching at my computer and making my headache ten times worse.

“Thank you for finishing my paper,” I grasp a t-shirt from my drawer while Elise draws back the covers of my bed, “I appreciate it,” I assure Elise, handing her a t-shirt for her to wear to bed.

“Ignore me again for a week or two, and I won’t be so nice,” Elise responds, taking the shirt from my hands. I nod my head, and I don’t expect her to be friendly and forgiving when I fuck up and act like an arse. I need to be held accountable. Elise leans up and kisses my cheek before caressing her hands to my chest, “You’re hot.”

“Thanks, but I’m not in the mood for compliments.”

“Moron,” Elise rolls her eyes, “You’re warm,” she caresses her hands to my cheeks, “Your cheeks are flushed.”

“Mhm,” I hum, “I get migraines after a long period with little sleep,” I shrug my shoulders, not too concerned about things, “It happens like once every few months.”

“Has it ever occurred to you to sleep?” Elise challenges with a touch of sass to her tone of voice.

Sleep would be delightful, but I have too much on my plate.

“It has,” I laugh, “But I don’t have enough time for that.”

“How are you not miserable right now?”

“I am,” I respond, “I just know I have to deal with it. Are we going to continue talking about my lack of sleep and terrible migraine, or are we going to sleep for a few hours?” I question, moving to my side of the bed and crawling between my sheets.

In all fairness, I am miserable. I feel like utter shit, my head is pounding, any sort of light burns my eyes, and it feels like I’m just being clobbered with a club.

“A few hours?” Elise seems surprised at my comment.

I only have a few hours to spare, nothing more, nothing less.

I nod my head, “I have work at six, so yes, a few hours.”

“Surely you’re not getting up?”

“I have to, Elle,” I sigh, “I can’t afford not to.”

In all honesty, I don’t want to get up in a few hours, I’d love nothing more than to sleep in and allow my migraine time to dwindle off, but I can’t. The world doesn’t stop because I’m unwell or for any reason. My mother’s bills still necessitate to be paid, meetings still need to take session, and my school work still needs attending. I don’t get sick days. I don’t get to sleep in. It’s nothing against Elise, but I’m not lucky enough to get to have a few additional hours of sleep as she can.

“You’re wearing yourself too thin.”

“I have to.”

“Can’t I help?”

“You have; you finished my paper for me. That’s more than enough.” I smile towards Elise, kissing her, sweetly, “Thank you for your help.” I kiss her again before stepping away and moving to my side of the bed.

It is not Elise’s responsibility to help my situations. These are my problems to deal with, and she has enough to worry about on her own. I do not wish to burden her with my issues, nor do I wish for her to have to deal with anything more than she already needs to. I don’t want to scare her away, and I don’t want to risk letting her help me and then leaving me because it is too much to handle. I can handle things on my own… I think.

❈ ❈ ❈

The drive to Elise’s parent’s house has been nothing but full of anxiety. I have no reason to be anxious, but I am. I haven’t stepped foot back in the house since the weekend I met her parents. Ever since, I have kept all meetings with the parents in public places. The gates to the private estate open, and I drive up the driveway, parking next to Elise’s car before turning my car off. I sit in the driver’s seat, taking a deep breath as I take in my surroundings. One day I will be able to afford such an extravagant house like this, but for now, I will settle with my tiny apartment and non-glamorous lifestyle.

I get out of my car and close the door. I make the short walk along the perfect cobble pathway towards the door. Everything about the estate is immaculate, from the gardens to how the Autumn door wreath sits flawlessly aligned. Although the leaves are shifting to magma-reds, hot-oranges and fever-yellows, not a single leaf is on the ground— the groundskeeper but be astonishing at his job. The barbecue-red leaves hang soundlessly on the trees, and I can't help but glance up and watch in awe, curious as to whether one will fall and wreck the pure aesthetic the Cartier’s have going on. I shake my head and chuckle to myself before walking up the steps. I stand before the double doors and adjust my shirt, making sure my collar is suitable, and my shirt is not creased. I take a breath and knock on the door.

After a few moments, the door opens, “Well, it’s about time you show up,” Conrad, Elise’s dad, comments with a grin, “I thought you were bringing the liquor?” Conrad questions as he opens the door wider and allows me to step into the house.

I shake his hand, “Hello, and no sir, I did not bring the liquor. Next time I will bring you a bottle,” I respond as we shake hands.

I was unaware that it was now customary for me to bring liquor. I shall be prepared for next time. Hopefully, this time, I will not feel as though I do not belong here or that I am not good enough for Elise. Although our last gathering at the house was far from what I had hoped, ever since that day, her parent’s and I have gotten closer and gotten along. Conrad has realised I am not here for the money, and I do not want any special treatment in the business world. I want to make it on my own with my name, not theirs.

“Elise is at the kitchen table, finishing another essay.”

“She has had quite a few to do,” I nod my head.

“While she finishes, care to have a drink with me?”

“Uh, sure,” I agree, following Conrad into the living room and standing by him as he picks up his decanter set and begins to pour a glass.

“Question for you… Would you consider working for me?”

I shake my head, “All due respect, no. You’re my girlfriend's father, and I do not want to make things awkward. I am also quite happy at Jamie’s company.”

“Damnit, Jamie got a good one. Okay, fair… Well, I would like to have lunch with you and talk business one day this week, just to get to know you more.”

“I can do Thursday?” I suggest, “I leave Thursday night to travel with Jamie.”

“I guess that will do,” Conrad nods his head, “Where are you going?”

“We are going to LA.”

“My brother and I need to talk more. I am leaving for LA next week. We could have tag-teamed clients.”

I chuckle and shrug, “That is between the two of you. Do you not worry about competing with each other for clients?”

“No, we have boundaries.” Conrad shakes his head just as Elise wanders in and welcomes me.

She kisses my cheek and beams towards her father, taking a prompt sip of my drink before asking us about our conversation, and of course, rolling her eyes at me when she is told we are discussing business.

❈ ❈ ❈

After a brief moment at Elise’s parent’s house, I was enlightened that we would be setting sail on the River Thames. I had no idea that today's adventures entailed such a journey. I was under the impression it would be a relaxing day at the house— I was mistaken. I did not anticipate spending part of the day on a yacht. I did not know Conrad owned a yacht.

I knew Elise’s family was wealthy, but I did not think they were this prosperous. Elise doesn’t show nor act that she has a very elite lifestyle. She never once mentioned that her father had a yacht. It makes me wonder what the fuck else they have that I have no clue about. After all, Elise has an investment that is almost worth a million dollars— and somehow, she is still asking me for investment help and assistance with the stock market.

“Harry,” Conrad begins as he hands me a glass of some sort of alcohol, “I believe I owe you an apology,” Elise’s Dad begins, taking me by surprise.

I look at him and nod, waiting for him to give me some sort of explanation. I am not sure what he owes me an apology on, but I am willing to listen to him. “I didn’t give you a fair chance when I first met you months ago. I thought you were hanging around for a business opportunity. I know that way of thinking was wrong. I should not have assumed.”

I don’t blame Conrad for not being open to his daughter dating someone who does not come from the same upbringing as she did. I didn’t have a gorgeous house with perfect gardens. I didn’t have the luxuries she had and still has; I grew up with everything I needed and not much more. My mother couldn’t afford luxuries, and she still can’t. One day, I do hope to give my mother the amenities she deserves. I want to be able to fix her house up the way she wants it and buy her a nice car that she doesn’t need to worry about, whether it will break down on her drive to the grocery store. I didn’t grow up anywhere near close to the same lifestyle as Elise, so I understand the judgement on Conrads end. Every father wants the best for their daughter, and I might not have much money or much to offer her materialistically, but I can give her my time and love— I personally think that is better than anything anyone could buy her. One day, I will buy Elise the things she deserves. One day I will buy her the bracelets and the necklaces, all the things women love to receive. But for now, all I can offer Elise is my devoted time and love.

I accept Conrad's apology, “Sir, I want nothing more than to give her all the great things she is used to, but for now… All I have is myself. I can’t give her expensive dinners and diamonds. I can barely get her flowers, I will be honest, but I can give her my time, effort, and love. I care for your daughter a lot… To be honest, I am in love with her,” I begin to speak sentences before thinking about them. Part of me wants to stop sounding so soft, but the other part knows that Conrad needs to know my true intentions with Elise, “I may never be able to afford a yacht like this,” I gesture to the space around us, “And I may be dirt poor, but I will never be the man my father was, and believe me, that means more to me than anything materialistic I could give her. She will never have to worry about whether I love her. She will never have to worry about where her next meal will come from or whether she will be alone… I will put her first, I will put her before myself, and I will treat her the way a lady should be treated.”

Being a man and being the complete opposite of my father is what I strive for in life, aside from being a CEO. I have learnt what a man is and what a man is not. I have learnt the difference between a deadbeat husband and a real husband. I will not be the man my father was; I will worship the ground Elise walks on, and I will do everything in my power to make sure she is taken care of in every way. Like I have said, I might not ever get to give her mansion with the most beautiful art hung on the walls she could imagine, but she will know that every time I walk through that door, that I am coming home to her. Elise knows that I am the one she can call at any hour with any problem, I will always be there for her, and I will support her in all her decisions. I am aware that we may fight and argue over stupid shit. Hell, we will even fight over things that aren’t stupid, but I wouldn’t want to fight with anyone else at the end of the day. We will have our moments where we want to strangle each other. I know the time is coming, and I know there will be times she won’t want to speak to me or times where I have fucked up, but that is the beauty of a relationship— you grow together, and you learn.

I don’t plan to give up when the going is tough. I will not leave her in the dark and call it quits because things might not get any easier for us financially. I may run from many things when it gets tough, I may bury myself in work in school when I don’t want to deal with personal issues, but I will do my best not to run from her— from us.

“You don’t speak of your father. May I ask why?”

I grow withdrawn for a moment, unsure of what to say. I have managed to avoid my father’s issue for most of the relationship with Elise, but I know at some point I will have to tell her a few things. I would much prefer to discuss how Conrad succeeded in his business to the point he owns a yacht and can sail on the River Thames with a skipper and crew. I wonder if he even bought the dock as well that he docks at. I shake my thoughts away, remembering I have been asked a question about my father. “He isn’t in my life.”

“You mentioned that,” Conrad nods.

“My father is not what I would call a man. He is just someone who is a waste of space in society.”

“That’s a bit harsh, Harry.”

I lift my shoulders into a shrug, “All due respect, but that is nothing compared to the things he has done and said to my sister and myself,” I respond, not trying to sound like a prick. I don’t like having conversations about my Father. He is not worth my time or energy. I should have just told them the has is dead. In all fairness, he is dead to me. “He was an alcoholic. I don’t like to get in detail about him.”

Conrad nods his head and respects my decision of not wanting to speak much of my father. Conrad takes a sip of his drink, and I finally do the same, allowing the whiskey to give me a sense of ease. “Elise told me that you had been the one paying to keep your mother’s house?”

I nod my head, “Yes, sir… Mum lost her job and my sister…. Well, she is going through an emotional breakdown and struggling herself,” I admit, unsure of how much detail Elise has told her parents.

“I have a lot of respect for you, Harry.”

“Why?” I curiously ask.

Conrad leans forward and places his drink down at the table, “You are helping your mother and working night and day plus doing your masters, and you have not complained once.”

“I think I have complained,” I shake my head.

“Elise has said otherwise. You’re a genuine and modest gentleman, and you seem to put others first… I respect a man who can do his best to provide and not make excuses.”

I am not sure what to say. If I didn’t go to work and do what I do, my mother and sister would be on the streets. Someone had to step up and do what needed to be done. I would never forgive myself if my mother lost her house. The house may be small in comparison to what Conrad has, but it is still a home. It is the place my sister and I grew up in. It is the place my mother worked hard to maintain to the best of her ability. “I’d do it all over again if I had to,” I shrug, not really in the mindset that this is something that I should be praised for. I don’t need praise for stepping up. I just want my family to be happy and healthy.

“You’re a good man. I see that,” Conrad nods, finally cracking a small smile, “I don’t think I would want my daughter dating anyone else.”

I stifle a laugh and shake my head, “Give it time. I am sure Elise will tell you I am an asshole.”

“We all are assholes at some point. It’s more so common with people like us.”

“People like us?”

“We are businessmen, and we are born to lead and be assertive. Sometimes that crosses over into being an asshole. Do you know how many times my wife has called me every name under the sun? Or how many times she has told me I am being a CEO and need to walk out of the house and adjust my tone before walking back in?” Conrad questions in all seriousness, and I can’t help but chuckle. I can see Elise doing the same thing in the future. “Cathleen does not take my shit, and I don’t think Elise will take it either. She will call you an asshole, and all you can do is learn where the line is drawn between CEO and boyfriend or husband.”

“Elise has already called me an asshole,” I confess, “I deserved it.”

“Half the time, we do deserve it. It’s in our nature, but again, we learn to control it. We better get back to the ladies before they think I have killed you,” Conrad stands to his feet.

I stare at him and raise a brow, “Was that your initial plan, sir?”

“No, but it will be if you call me sir one more time,” Conrad laughs, “My name is Conrad,” Elise’s Dad corrects me, not wanting me to be as formal. I nod my head and stand up, taking my drink with me before we climb the stairs, leaving the cabin area and stepping back out into the crisp air, Conrad and I parting ways and walking to opposite ends of the yacht.

I make my way around the yacht, amazed by how big the fucking thing is. I know this thing had to have cost more than I can imagine. I smile to myself when I see Elise sitting on a blanket at the yacht’s foredeck with a book in her hand. I watch her for a moment as she is clueless to the world around her, her hair is blowing in the breeze of the slow sails, and her eyes are cast on a book with no intentions of looking away. Most people would be taking pictures or drinking on their father’s yacht. Instead, she is content, reading a book on her own and paying no attention to the rest of the world.

I step closer to where she rests, “Elle,” I call her name from her behind, not wanting to startle her as I walk closer. Elise turns to look at me over her shoulder and smiles that gorgeous smiles of hers.

“I see you made it out alive,” Elise chuckles, keeping her finger in place on her book.

“I did,” I nod, “I see you have your nose in a book.”

“I do,” Elise shows me the cover of the book.

I cock my head to the side and look at the title, “Haven’t you read that before?”

Elise nods and hums her response, “And you are rereading it?” I question.

“It is a good book, Harry. Do you have something against the Great Gatsby?” Elise asks, sounding shocked, almost as if I have insulted her but asking if she is rereading it.

I am not the kind of person to read books twice. I read them the first time, watch the movie and then call it a day. I have never been interested in reading something over and over again, just for the fun of it. I know the ending. I know the plot. Why reread it?

I sit down beside her and drape my arm around her as I kiss the top of her head, “Eh, I won’t lie. I found the book boring.”

“How so?”

“It’s a story about elite society.”

“Is that what you got out of the whole book, Harry?” My response does not amuse Elise.

“No, I don’t like how the book was portrayed. Not one of the characters were good. It isn’t like To Kill a Mockingbird where the book manages to display both the good and the evil inside people.”

“It’s the writing style that makes the book so great. It’s the pros.”

“Yeah, not a literary person, love,” I shake my head, “Anyway,” I trail off, “I have to go to LA for work on Thursday,” I finally tell Elise that I have a business meeting in LA that will take most of my time next week.

“Damn it, Harry,” Elise huffs.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Now, who is going to help me study?” Elise chuckles, causing me to roll my eyes at her.

This woman is something else, that is for sure. “Do you keep me around just to help you study?”

Elise shrugs her shoulders and closes her book, “Also for your good looks, but seriously, I need some help with my China and globalism course.”

“I assume you have a test?”

“Indeed,” Elise nods, “Can I get some help?”

“Sure, we can before I leave, or if you want, we can facetime while I am in LA to help?” I offer, unsure of when the best time will be for her to study. “China Globalism is a blast. You will love it,” I sarcastically add, very aware of the fact that Elise will hate the course. She may be knowledgeable,, but this will be the course that tests her in every way. The fucking course broke me at one point, it was a horrible experience, but it has come in handy with Jamie’s clients. However, I do not foresee this course helping Elise. She doesn’t want to get into this side of the business. She doesn’t even want to be in the business world. Elise has a true passion for English. I know she wants to do something with writing and is only pursuing business for her father.

“I already hate it,” Elise mutters, “So, you will be able to help?”

“Of course,” I agree, “I don’t know why you think I won’t help,” I kiss her cheek as she places her book down on the blanket.

Elise looks at me and pushes her hair behind her ear, “I know you’re busy; that’s why.”

“Mhm,” I hum, “I am going to have to go up to my mother’s sometime soon. Would you like to come with me?” I softly offer, not wanting to make the dreaded drive to Chesire on my own. I don’t want to go up there, but I have to. My mother deserves to see me, even if it is for a few moments.

Elise rests her head on my shoulder, “I would love to,” Elise responds cheerfully, far too cheery to be going to Cheshire. I wish I had her happy demeanour about Cheshire, but I cannot. I can’t even attempt to fake it.

My phone goes off, and I reach into my pocket and grab it. I look down at the screen and bite the inside of my cheek when I see ‘Logan’ pop up on my screen.

I don’t want to deal with him, and I thought I made it quite clear that I want nothing to do with the spawn of satan. My hatred for Logan will probably never subside, so we should have minimal contact, but for some reason, like my father, Logan is determined to cause havoc on my life in every single way possible.

I quickly read the text message, much to my bitter distaste, “Harry, I know you didn’t want to hear from me so soon, but if it’s a 999 situation. — Logan”

I place my phone back in my pocket and stare out at the water in an attempt to find my thoughts. A 999 situation with Logan can only really mean one thing. Blood. The last time it was a 999 situation, I had to swallow my hatred towards him and give him blood. I am not sure why he doesn’t just go to our father for it— but I can’t be petty and scoop to the level of declining him what I believe is primary care. I may hate him, and he may be what I consider the worst thing to happen to my life, but I can’t sit back and not help him with this. Ever since his mother passed away, I have been the one to donate blood to him when he needs it. I don’t remember our ages well, but I know that at around sixteen, his mother died, and up until that point, she was the one who would help him when his health got too poor. Now it is up to me. I could be an asshole and refuse to help him. I could tell him to fuck off and go to our father… But what kind of man would I be to deny someone essential health? What kind of man would I be if I didn’t help someone in need? Most of all, what kind of man would I be if I didn’t put my anger and resentment to the side to benefit someone else?

To answer my questions, I would be a selfish prick like my father, and I refuse to be anything like him.

I pull myself back to reality and remind myself that today was meant to be a day of not stressing about things I cannot change or fix. I cannot change the predicaments that happen. I am not in control of them. I am only in control of what I do. When I am done with Elise and her family, I will see what needs to happen with Logan and do what needs to be done.

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arlingtonpark · 3 years

Text

SNK 137 Review

I can't unsee it.

-rubs temples-

Ok, I know I’ve been absent the past two chapters. I’ll get to why and what I thought of 135 and 136 in this post, but for now…jeez, this chapter.

It was badass and dumb and sometimes both at the same time.

Where do I even start?

-sound of pages being leafed through-

Ok, then.

I actually really like Zeke’s character. He is unironically my second favorite out of the cast.

When we first see Zeke, he’s in his beast titan form. He’s lumbering, hulking, unsettling.

He’s a titan that can talk. He’s a titan that can control other titans!

And he wiped out humanity’s second strongest with ease. I forget his name. It was Mickey, right?

Worst than that, actually. He ordered his titans to kill Mickey with all the gravitas of ordering a side of fries at McDonald’s.

Iirc fans were wondering if this new character would be the main villain of the series.

He went on to wipe out the Survey Corps at Shighanshina, and after that we learned he singlehandedly foiled his parent’s right-wing conspiracy when he was a kid.

Zeke was a mastermind who shouldn’t be taken lightly…right?

Welp, the more we saw of Zeke, the more obvious it became that he wasn’t actually all the impressive.

He wasn’t very good at being a warrior. Honestly, it seems most of his high marks comes from his unique royal blood powers, and the good will be built with Marley when he turned in his parents. TFW cronyism.

He foiled the restorationists plot, but really he was just an abused kid who wanted to get away from his parents.

He killed Mickey, but Zeke was a King Kong sized titan and Mickey was caught off guard and unarmed, so…yeah, ofc he won that fight.

Zeke has royal blood powers, but that doesn’t say anything about his intellectual prowess or anything.

The Survey Corps was wiped out at Shighanshina, but the circumstances of that fight strongly favored him. The Survey Corps were trapped in the city, so all Zeke had to do to win was sit on his ass and do nothing.

And he almost died anyway.

Levi got the drop on him because of his own incompetence. He let himself get distracted, which created the opening for Levi to strike.

Throw in his gullibleness towards Eren, his bumbling demeanor, and his totally emo philosophy, and the true nature of Zeke Jeager became undeniable: this guy is a fucking moron.

Like.

A real fucking moron.

And that’s why his character is unironically so great!

Zeke’s character is such a brilliant subversion of audience expectations.

We were all made to believe that this guy was a Big Fucking Deal through what turned out to mostly be circumstantial reasons.

In reality, he’s an idiot who’s been failing upwards his whole life.

Zeke got as far as he did because he’s really lucky. That’s all he has going for him.

I liked the more fleshed out version of his world view we got here. It is appropriately emo.

My read on Zeke has always been that if he existed in real life he’d be an extremely online philosophy bro, so seeing his outlook on life being effectively copy pasted from 4chan was just delightful.

Zeke is 2deep4(chan)u.

Life exists to multiply. All actions are explained by this singular drive. As such, life is hollow and we’re better off dead.

Imagine that is how you see the world.

Life sucks. It’s an existence of suffering driven by a desire to ensure more people are brought into this world so that they can toil away ensuring that yet more people are brought into this world to toil away ensuring people are brought into this world.

On and on and on and on.

To Zeke, this is the cycle of violence.

Not war which begets war which begets war, but rather life itself.

One suffering existence that begets another suffering existence that begets yet another suffering existence.

That is the context from which the euthanasia plan came from: it was an extension of this broader world view.

Everyone gets a dose of pain in this world, but Eldians especially get shafted. If anyone deserved release from this nihilistic existence that is “being alive,” it’s them.

Hence, Zeke’s plan to sterilize Eldians so they can die out peaceably.

…

It’s hilarious how easily Zeke is disabused of this notion.

I’m not sure if it works from a storytelling perspective, but it tracks perfectly with what usually happens when emo philosophy bros like Zeke have their beliefs challenged.

The emo bro will go on a self-absorbed rant about how nihilistic life is. For sake of example, let’s say the reason is because morality is just an opinion and nothing is objectively wrong.

The n the guy he’s ranting to will drop a critique on the bro so devastating that they’re left speechless:

“What about murder? Isn’t murder objectively wrong?”

Emo bro: -surprised pikachu face-

I swear to God this happens a lot. I don’t know if transplanting that into this pivotal storytelling moment works, but I sure as hell enjoyed it.

But, yeah, while we’re talking about philosophies, let’s look at some others.

Armin thinks there is beauty in pointless moments. Moments that are meaningful only for the people who partake in them. They’re an expression of the love they have for each other. Those moments are worth cherishing and protecting.

He’s right, but you know who also thinks that way?

Eren does.

Superficially, anyway.

When Eren starts rumbling the world, he thinks of his friends and the fun they’ve had together. He’s doing it for them.

Of course, he’s hurt them instead, but that’s still his logic, however deranged it may be.

What separates Armin from Eren is their sense of boundaries.

There are places that Eren is willing to push on towards that Armin is not.

For that, Eren thinks Armin is weak. All Eren had to say to him when they spoke at the restaurant was how useless Armin was.

Armin can’t go the distance. He can’t do what’s necessary. He takes options off the table too easily. He wanted to negotiate instead of seeing the truth that war was inevitable.

To Eren, that’s weakness.

In reality, it’s empathy.

Armin cares about people. Even people who hate him.

Eren doesn’t. If you’re his enemy, you’re dead to him, period.

Eren has no soul.

He may have slept under his enemy’s roof, ate his enemy’s food, and saw the good in them for himself, but he’s still killing them.

I don’t care if he’s crying on the inside. I don’t care how many times he said he’s sorry to Ramzi.

That actually makes it worse.

Eren made the calculation, the conscientious decision, that the lives of billions of people across multiple civilizations were worth less than that of his race.

Not even his whole race; just the subset of his race he was most familiar with!

Eren and Armin represent two widely similar, yet subtly different philosophies.

For Eren, the world is beautiful, but you have to do cruel things to protect that beauty.

The world is cruel because it is beautiful.

For Armin, the world is beautiful, but it is plagued by cruelty.

The world is cruel, but also beautiful.

SNK made the right choice. Armin was rightly depicted as the superior worldview.

(I have some gripes about how endemic the series seems to think cruelty is to the world, but we’re ignoring that now.)

Ymir is more of a wild card than I thought she’d be.

It seemed straightforward.

Ymir had been beaten and enslaved her whole life, so when Eren offered her freedom and treated her life a human, she sided with him.

That still looks to be what happened, but it seemed like Ymir also genuinely wanted to destroy the world with Eren.

The world treated her with cruelty, so of course she’d want to burn it all. Makes sense, right?

But Ymir, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than that.

She was beaten, enslaved, raped, hunted like an animal, and after all that, she still believed in this world.

She saw two lovers together, and that embodied what made the world worth getting attached to.

Those two lovers were her conquerors. Her oppressors.

She saw the love between two of her slavers, and instead of resentment or jealousy, she simply knew it was beautiful.

If people threaten his freedom, Eren wishes death upon them.

When Ymir is literally enslaved by them, she still acknowledges the beauty of their romance.

It’s a cool layer of complexity to add to their dynamic. They’ve been through similar shit, but they couldn’t be more dissimilar.

My guess is that Ymir is sympathetic to Armin and everyone came back to life through her help.

I know Armin Zeke the credit for that, but…that makes no sense?

Eren defeated Zeke when Ymir sided with him and he started the rumbling.

Eren, via Ymir, is in control, not Zeke, so it makes no sense for Zeke to be able to do any of this.

The only explanation is that Ymir broke from Eren and now Zeke is her new best friend.

…Yeah, this is the part where I talk about the bad stuff with this chapter.

The exact mechanics of how all of this went down is very underexplained.

Zeke being able to reveal himself like he did can be chalked up to Ymir’s power, but if it’s true this was purely Zeke’s doing, then…how?

How was Zee able to do that if Eren is in control? Why would Eren even put Zeke there instead of encasing him in crystal and keeping him physically close by?

This whole final battle has been very underwhelming for me, which is why I didn’t do a review for the last two chapters.

The premise is pretty bland.

The Alliance’s main opposition in this fight are mindless drones. The titans they’re fighting have no humans inside them, they’re just puppets. NPCs.

What drama there has been here has been the same fucking crap we’ve been dealing with for the past few volumes.

Yes, Mikasa, Eren has to die.

I know this is hard for her, but my patience has run out.

Eren told her to her face that they had to kill him if they wanted to win, and then when the Alliance is riding on Falco’s back, they make the final call to kill Eren and this is the face Mikasa makes.

Like this is the first time she’s heard it.

This is the face you’d expect from a child, not a grown ass adult.

That was the moment I became convinced Mikasa would probably die in this fight.

Her head is too far up her ass as this point.

She is utterly incapable of processing the obvious fact that Eren hates her.

Yes, he’s theoretically destroying the world partly for her, but he’s also deranged and too self-absorbed to see that he’s hurt her. He has no real regard for her.

It is beyond annoying that there has been almost zero progression for her character on this issue.

If by this point in the story, she had accepted that Eren had to die, but was still visibly coping with that, then all would be well.

What’s frustrating is that just when it seems like we’ve progressed past that stage, we learn we haven’t.

I also feel that a lot of the major beats of the fight were pointless.

A major point in the battle comes when Armin gets eaten by the Okapi titan, and Mikasa, Annie, and the rest have to rescue him. But Armin didn’t seem to be in any danger of dying, and him being sent to P A T H S was actually a good thing in the end because he was able to win over Zeke.

The whole deal with the explosives around Eren’s neck was also pretty badly handled.

You’d think the hard part would be getting the explosives to the neck and securing them to it, but nope. Pieck took care of that in a couple of panels, and the real meat of the fight is doing the very last thing they need to do to win.

It’s very tedious and contrived.

Instead of a fight that’s interesting because they have to wrestle their way through titans while carrying the bombs, we get a totally generic fight because the story breezed through the hard part and all they have to do now is push a single button to win.

But in the end that entire sequence was pointless because Armin decides to blow everything up anyway.

Jean’s shining moment?

A total waste.

Reiner’s shining moment...wrangling that worm thing?

Also a total waste.

Armin was going to blow it up anyway. There is no way you can say that Eren would have survived Armin’s explosion but for Reiner and Jean’s efforts.

It just defies all common sense.

So yeah, this whole battle was a pretty lackluster climax.

Looking to the future, I think this is it.

There’s only two chapters left, so we need to start wrapping up. My guess is Eren’s likely dead and next chapter starts the epilogue.

Tally-ho.

---

I made a post about all the character’s chances of living or dying by the end of the manga. I figured I’d update those death ratings here.

Eren: Likely Alive --> Lean Dead

Historia: Likely Dead --> Toss Up

Mikasa and Reiner: Lean Dead --> Lean Alive

Annie: Lean Alive --> Likely Alive

Jean and Connie: Likely Dead --> Lean Alive

Pieck: Toss Up --> Lean Alive

Zeke: Lean Alive --> Ded

You’ll notice I’m still rating most of the cast as having a significant chance of dying.

While I do feel that this is probably the end of the battle, I’m choosing to be cautious in my choice of ratings.

Mayhaps Eren will pull a come from behind victory.

Ya never know.

#shingeki no kyogin #attack on titan #snk spoilers #snk 137 #snk chapter 137

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artsy-hobbitses · 3 years

Note

ok. i’m sure you’re getting a lot of asks right now. if you get the time/patience to answer this, i’m trying to educate myself on this whole IDW thing. for context, i’ve never read it all the way through, i’m currently only aware of the general plot line and specific events. and when i did read it, i was an ignorant teen that came from a place of privilege and saw hardly anything wrong with the (painfully obvious) fascist/problematic themes in the comics; other than of course, they were shitty things the characters had done in their past — now as an ameteur writer that doesn’t know what the fuck they are doing in terms of character flaws and backstory, im trying to learn what is ok to place into one’s content to create those dimensions and morally gray areas many of us love, and what is not. — my question, albeit stupid and deserving of many o’ eye roll, is this: where does the line stand? what could have been done differently in the comics to keep that dimension but not create something so poorly handled as Coptimus, the tangled mess that is the autobot faction, or otherwise? ~thank you for your time.

Oh man, uh, this is definitely quite a heavy ask! To be honest I’m roughly in the same boat as you ie. I haven’t read the this series all the way through and mainly know of the setting/worldbuilding and pre-war shenanigans.

I feel like I might not be the right person to give you a concrete answer on this but I can try and explain what I think went wrong at least in the very early stages of trying to build the entire Autobot/Decepticon societal dynamic, at least from what I know. Like a very basic explanation, I’m gonna keep it under this cut cause I might get long winded.

IDW 2005 introduced some key concepts I think? That sort of set everything in motion as to why the war started: Cold Construction, Functionism, Beast-mode transformers being seen as a pariah class and the idea of a disposable class. None of it is good, all of it is clearly made out to be horribly oppressively on multiple levels.

So you’ve got two sides, you want to portray the good guys as good guys BUT you also want to give your bad guys more depth/make them more human or relatable which is a good thing!

So how do you do that? All the oppressive stuff I stated above which plagued IDW’s Cybertronan society is like, I’d say the morality baseline. Your readers know This Is Bad. People are suffering. That’s how you’ve written it

You make your Big Bad a member of the underclass who undergoes multiple challenges due to his station in life, things about himself he cannot change---he’s beaten down, persecuted, he’s empathetic to every one else’s suffering, he’s angry and wants to do something about it. He’s proactive about it.

LOGICALLY, because your future bad guy is all these things any sane person would be ROOTING for, you want your future good guy to actually be starting from somewhere of the same point; a good guy who also suffers, goes through major challenges and sees these injustices and wants to do something about it.

Like Magneto and Charles Xavier are generally good examples---they’re both persecuted against in a way we can all emphasize with, they’re not blind to these issues, and they both want to make things better. The biggest divide between them is that they’re going around it in very different ways.

In trying to keep both sides starting from the same morality baseline, imho IDW failed horribly; The major Autobots are not shown, pre-war, to care about what’s going on. Ratchet and Nightbeat seem to be the closest it comes to barely questioning the system (excluding Prime who is implied only got it after reading Megatron’s writings, and even then is too trusting of a system the reader and many others in-story can see is not working). They’re not shown proactively taking steps to fix issues that are affecting everyone who isn’t above a certain class. Most of them come from relatively middle to high stations in life ie. scientists and doctors, who we are told will always have more rights than manual workers, miners, etc, even in life and death situations. More so, the underclass (beast mode transformers, cold constructs, victims of Empurata, the working class in general) is woefully underrepresented in their ranks. They’re very, very clearly privileged and nearly all of them have some degree of power/social standing that the Bad Guys do not. This is, somehow, the group we’re suppose to identify with.

Instead, it’s the Decepticons who are shown to have to fight to get basic rights. It’s Megatron starving himself when he has so little already to save Terminus whose rations have been cut because they can’t work anymore and are seen as worthless. It’s Laserbeak (or Buzzsaw? It wasn’t clear) telling Ravage to not anger a Senator by refusing to serve them their Energon, because “They’d remove your spark for that!!”. Their ranks are made up of people who would be killed for simply questioning their station in life or forcefully ‘rewired’ to conform with the status quo. Their ranks are made up of people we have been told are suffering the worst underneath all these injustices---Megatron and Starscream are Cold Constructs (as are Prowl and Blaster but we don’t see Blaster’s side of things and Prowl is accepting of what he is because he was made in a higher station in life---a cop), Shockwave is an Empurata and Shadowplay survivor, Ravage/Laserbeak/Buzzsaw are Beast Modes (Autobots Steeljaw and Ramhorn also are of course, but they don’t have major roles pre-war and we do not see how they’re affected by all this). This is, pre-war, the group we’re told are suppose to be the Bad Guys.

Orion Pax is portrayed as a cop, one we’re told is very dutiful but also one who rushes to fill jail cells and is clearly more preoccupied with order than anything else. He’s, as good as he likes to try to be, is a cog of the system and he doesn’t do anything proactive to really fix it earlier on outside of shouting in the Senate. If he had been proactive after reading Megatron’s writings ie.a cop fighting the system, tried to be more empathetic to the people in his district? If he had left the police force and tried to make changes by himself? Maybe readers would have accepted him better. All I keep asking is “Why the hell didn’t you do something sooner? Why did you, as a good man, let it get this far even when you knew it was wrong?” Megatron is portrayed as a working man who suffered police brutality for speaking out in his writings and he keeps writing, keeps fostering a revolution to fight the oppressive system. Megatron is the fire, the lead figure here early on who has actual chartable growth, the one who wants to change things even if it it meant violence because that was how the system dealt with him---maybe readers don’t agree with how he goes around things, but who else was really challenging or doing anything to fix it? Why would anyone want to root for Orion Pax over Megatron in this situation?

TLDR: The morality baseline in this entire backstory pre-war was “Fight against societal oppression” which should have been really easy to get behind. Both sides should have started from that baseline. The Decepticons did. The Autobots did not.

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cicada-bones · 4 years

Text

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 9: Training

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Once again, all sound ceased as Rowan descended the stairwell and entered within view of the kitchens. Emrys’ soft singing and the mindless chatter from the young male – Luca, he remembered – cutting off abruptly. The girl was hunched over a washbasin, slowly scrubbing at a dish. Just the sight of her was enough to turn his slowly burning fury into a raging inferno.

Rowan hadn’t realized that he’d been hoping to find the girl suffering, moaning and groaning about doing such menial, servant work. But she just seemed to have been steadily laboring, quietly in the corner.

“Let’s go.” Rowan said, his voice hard.

As the princess moved to join him, Rowan caught Emrys looking at him with a new kind of fear in his eyes. A fear for others, for this girl.

Rowan clenched his teeth tightly, grinding them together. Something about Emrys’ worry on the behalf of this arrogant, insufferable, worthless princess was beyond aggravating. She did not deserve any pity, or affection.

Rowan led the girl through the small interior courtyard and out into the forest. It was now nearly midday, but the light and warmth of the sun’s rays couldn’t really pierce through the layers of mist shrouding the moss-covered oaks. It chilled Rowan’s bones, and he could hear the princess’ teeth chattering behind him. Good.

They slowly made their way up the rocky ridge and into the highest reaches of the forest, until the foothills were left far behind them and green fields stretched before them.

After the speed and surety of his flight that morning, treading along at a mortal pace was agonizing. The girl seemed to barely move, their snail’s pace making this short trip into an hour-long slog.

Luckily, the princess kept silent, and they both avoided throwing gasoline onto the flames simmering between them. But not for long.

Rowan was leading them to an old temple of the sun goddess, Mala. It was now a ruin, but he could still feel the warmth of the goddess’ power echoing in the stones below as he crossed over them and paid homage to the goddess who favored him.

Then the girl spoke up from behind him, her voice a crackling whip through the misty silence. “Do your worst.”

Rowan turned and gave her an obvious once-over, cataloguing her mist-soaked clothing, the bruises on her face and body, her loose muscles, the positions of her feet and arms... She wasn’t ready for a fight, and she knew it.

He breathed through the fury. This girl was going to be the death of him. “Wipe that smarmy, lying smile off your face,” he snarled. Rowan had no patience left for her ridiculous antics today, not after the morning he’d had.

She didn’t shift a muscle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” If anything, the antagonism in her voice had only increased.

Rowan felt the muscles in his body stretch and expand, filling with a violent intent and a ravenous desire for action. He stepped forwards, his chest now less than a foot from her body, and flashed his canines at her.

“Here’s your first lesson, girl: cut the horseshit. I don’t feel like dealing with it, and I’m probably the only one who doesn’t give a damn about how angry and vicious and awful you are underneath.”

Her jaw clenched. “I don’t think you particularly want to see how angry and vicious and awful I am underneath.”

“Go ahead and be as nasty as you want, Princess, because I’ve been ten times as nasty, for ten times longer than you’ve been alive.”

Rowan’s words, or at least the aching, primal challenge within them, finally reached her. She pulled her lips back from her teeth in a feral grin. He snarled in response. “Better. Now shift.” Maybe if her pissed the girl off just enough, he could find a way around those iron bars in her mind.

Her voice was vicious. “It’s not something I can control.”

“If I wanted excuses, I’d ask for them. Shift.”

She didn’t even try, didn’t reach within herself. Instead she snarled right back at him. “I hope you brought snacks, because we’re going to be here a long, long while if today’s lesson is dependent upon my shifting.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re really going to make me enjoy training you.”

She plowed on, heedless of the violence promised by the set of his jaw and the shape of his body. “I’ve already participated in a dozen versions of the master-disciple training saga, so why don’t we cut that horseshit, too?”

His fingers twitched, voice becoming quieter, more lethal. “Shut your smart-ass mouth and shift.”

She set her jaw, tensing her muscles. “No.”

And Rowan lunged.

Somehow, she dodged his first blow, sidestepping the fist he sent flying to her face. And then she twisted enough in the opposite direction to blindly avoid his second strike to her left side. But even with her years of training as an assassin, she wasn’t fast enough to evade his third blow, a swift kick to the backs of her legs.

She thudded to the ground gracelessly, slamming her already wrecked face onto the weather-beaten rock. The princess rolled to the side, groaning, her breathing ragged, as Rowan effortlessly pounced and straddled her chest, effectively rendering her motionless.

She tried to unseat him, but her movements were ineffective, fluttery things. They lacked strength, or any real conviction.

“Shift.” Rowan hissed, shoving all the menace, all the anger and hate and vitriol that he possessed into the command.

She just laughed at him, an emotionless, cold thing. Like a dead fish.

It was as if her every action, her every breath, was perfectly designed to piss him off. Rowan didn’t think it would have been possible for him to be more furious, more insanely angry than he had been when he hit her last night, but he had been dead wrong.

“Nice try,” she chuckled. “You think you can trick me into shifting by pissing me off?”

Rowan snarled viciously, his canines inches from her throat.

“Here’s an idea: I’m rich as hell. How about we pretend to do this training for a week or so, and then you tell Maeve I’m good and ready to enter her territory, and I’ll give you all the gods-damned gold you want.”

Rowan nearly exploded with rage. Bribery? The girl thought to placate him with her blood money?

For the first time in two centuries, Rowan was filled with the desire to hurt another being. To make her suffer. To make her feel pain.

“Here’s an idea,” The words escaped from deep within his throat, cracking his ice-covered heart with the fiery hate they were bathed in. “I don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing for ten years, other than flouncing around and calling yourself an assassin. But I think you’re used to getting your way. I think you have no control over yourself. No control, and no discipline—not the kind that counts, deep down. You are a child, and a spoiled one at that. And,” he paused, deliberating, finding the words that would hit her the hardest, “you are a coward.”

The word sank into her like that blade it was, and she struggled beneath him, her eyes alight with fury. He let out a low, malicious laugh.

Then Rowan took the blade and twisted.

“Don’t like that word?” He leaned closer still, now close enough to rip out her throat without barely moving. “Coward. You’re a coward who has run for ten years while innocent people were burned and butchered and tortured because of you. Because you fled, because you abandoned them – ”

Rowan’s voice cut off as he saw the utter, complete blankness in the girl’s eyes. It was like she was dead, like his vicious words had killed her and sent her to the Afterworld.

But her heart still beat and her chest still moved, so she wasn’t dead. She was hiding. Hiding away where the truth couldn’t touch her, where she didn’t have to deal with her reality, or face her fears.

Well, if anger couldn’t bring on the shift, perhaps fear would. The princess could do with a healthy dose of fear.

“Get up.” Rowan stood, setting the princess free. She didn’t move. “Get up.” He snarled more viciously. Slowly, the life returned to her eyes, but she still didn’t move a muscle.

Rowan’s nostrils flared. He reached down and pulled her up by her shoulders, her thin body light as a willow wand.

“Pathetic,” he spat, releasing her roughly. “Spineless and pathetic.”

The girl just looked back at him, her face blank and pale, as he turned and strode into the woods.

···

Rowan led the princess back down the wooded slope and through the oaks, but he was not taking her back to Mistward. No, he was angling towards the barrow field mounds, and the wights that nestled within them.

Rowan knew that this was a stupid, dangerous idea. He was just too furious to care.

He wanted the princess to get a taste of the creatures waiting out there, a taste of the wideness and depth of a world that she had barely seen a fraction of. He wouldn’t actually let them kill her, no matter how much he wanted her gone. He just needed her to get a taste of real fear, of the inescapable panic brought on by powerlessness. Maybe it would even force her around those iron bars. Force her to shift.

Rowan didn’t really care either way. He was so angry at this girl, this child, that he could barely see straight. Yet again, he had surprised himself, Rowan hadn’t wished death on another thinking being so desperately, so violently, since the years after the death of his mate. The years where he slowly took his revenge, and then aimlessly wandered the earth, purposeless.

There was no reason for him to hate the princess that much – no logical explanation for it. It didn’t make sense, but Rowan with still too furious to give a shit. He just wanted the girl to hurt. And to wipe that arrogant smirk off her face permanently.

The pair of them approached the barrows, Rowan drawing his sword and dagger cautiously, then he turned to the girl and spoke.

“I had planned to wait until you had some handle on your power – planned to make you come at night, when the barrow-wights are really something to behold, but consider this a favor, as there are few that will dare come out in the day. Walk through the mounds – face the wights and make it to the other side of the field, Aelin, and we can go to Doranelle whenever you wish.”

Her eyes were cold and hard as she regarded him. She had to know that this was a trap, that there was no way she could face the wights without control of her magic and still live. Had to know that Rowan was using her mortal impatience against her.

The scent of fear drifted from her on the wind’s back, while her posture spoke of a hesitant wariness.

The corners of Rowan’s lips curled into a smile as he noticed her eyeing his weapons. He shrugged his shoulders, “You can either wait to earn back your steel, or you can enter as you are now.”

A quick flash of temper. “My bare hands are weapon enough.”

Rowan’s smile widened as he turned and sauntered through the hills, leading the girl to the center of the field where he knew that a wight had been freed.

Each of the barrows were sealed with heavy, iron doors that were bolted into stone foundations, locking up the beasts within. There were dozens of them, ancient tombs of kings and princes long since passed. And they all breathed – the air around them moving in strange, twisting currents as the creatures within slept.

But as he and the princess walked past, the earth yawned, and the barrow mounds were filled with the rustling of awakening things. But still they walked on, the princess remaining close behind despite the fear steadily pumping its way through her blood and pulsing into the air around them. Her fear excited the wights, pulling them out of their niches and from within their lairs.

They reached the center – the oldest barrow in the field. It rested in the middle of a circle of dead grass, and the stones of its threshold had been broken – torn asunder by the tenacious fingers of tree roots and gnarled bushes. And the iron door was gone, nowhere in sight.

“I leave you here,” Rowan said, carefully keeping his feet outside the ring of dead grass. His smile was deadly. “I’ll meet you on the other side of the field.”

The girl looked like she was about to bolt. To run and run and run until she was as far away from him and this field as she could get. But instead of giving in to the impulse, the foolish girl steeled herself, inclined her head to Rowan, and walked into the dead grass.

She moved slowly, steadily, the way one does when they’re trying not to spook a predator. Not realizing it wouldn’t make any difference.

But for some reason, the wight didn’t attack. It remained hidden within its barrow, completely out of sight as the girl made her slow approach and turned to walk around to the other side of the mound. It was…afraid. But not of them. Wights were not afraid of the Fae, no matter how powerful.

Rowan took off, sprinting to the other side of the field. Could luck, blind, foolish luck get the girl out of this completely unharmed?

Frustration bubbled deep in Rowan’s gut as he reached the other side of the field, eyes searching intently for any sign of the girl or the wight. But when the central mound came into view, only darkness met his gaze.

Rowan stopped suddenly, his whole body tensing yet again. But it was a completely different kind of tension than he had just experienced in his brawl with the princess. Then, he had not actually felt any danger, any threat. The girl was only a mortal – a well-trained one, yes, but a mortal nonetheless. She posed no danger to him or any other Fae.

This however, was something different. Something wrong.

The blackness was not of the wights’ making. It was different. Entirely other. And the creatures were hiding from it.

The darkness cloaked the barrow-mounds like a black cloth, thicker and more impenetrable than smoke. It was like a brick wall of inky night had been erected in the middle of the field, and from within, Rowan could barely sense a thing.

He could just barely smell the princess’ terror and pain, but those scents were almost entirely masked by the overwhelming scent emanating from the dark wall itself.

It was of dust and carrion, and something else – something indescribable. It was almost like the scent that had obscured the body of the demi-Fae male, but different somehow. Shifted. The way scents varied between individuals. But still wholly wrong. Not human, not Fae, and not animal. Not even skinwalker or faerie or dragon. It wasn’t alive, had no pulse or emotion or essence the way all living beings did.

Rowan could just barely hear the girl gasping, “This is not real. This is not real.” Her voice was desperate and panicked, and Rowan was surprised to be feeling…fear. Though the emotion was barely a flicker, it was still there. He was afraid.

Rowan rallied, and considered his options. There weren’t many.

He could either wait for the princess to appear out of the darkness, for the black curtain to dissipate on its own, or he could enter into the black void and discover for himself what was within.

His entire being shied from that path. The darkness and whatever created it was wrong. Not of this earth. And…when he looked too long in its depths he could see things…hear Lyria’s screams…feel her body in his arms…

And then the princess was running, lurching and stumbling and falling over herself. Desperate to get away, to escape the blackness and whatever lay within it. Rowan moved forwards to meet her, to pull her away from the void, shoving that aching, screaming part of himself deep inside and locking it behind walls of ice.

A gasping, shrieking noise was leaking from somewhere deep in her chest. Her face was bone white, and her clothes were soiled, covered in vomit and piss and bodily fluids.

She stumbled and fell at his feet, still retching, though now only a small stream of bile trickled from her mouth, her stomach emptied.

Rowan gritted his teeth. No matter the ferocity of the darkness, or the strength of the malice it radiated, the girl should have more discipline, more self-control than she was currently demonstrating. The princess was weak, and self-indulgent. She had no control over her emotions whatsoever, and instead gave herself to them, letting them do what they would.

The terror and grief and pain coming from her was so strong, so intense that he could taste its metallic tang on his teeth. It coated his mouth like bile.

And then, finally, she began to shift – the fear so strong and all-consuming that she was forced through those iron bars and into her other form.

Maybe this had been worth it.

But there was only a flash of canines and pointed ears and then she groaned, returning to her mortal form – but there was another flash of light and the girl shifted back to immortal, her face contorting in agony.

The shifting was completely uncontrolled. Her flesh rippled like water as she flipped between her two forms, mortal and immortal, fast as the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. She was stuck in the place between, tangled up in those iron bars separating her from her power.

The girl’s magic surged around her, cradling her in its blanket of fire. But instead of relaxing into its embrace, she choked on it, gasping, screaming –

And then she passed out.

Rowan sighed in exasperation.

While he had been focusing on the princess writhing on the ground before him, the darkness had slowly dissipated, leaving behind no trace of its existence, or of what had created it.

The wind whispered to him of a fast-moving body, some kind of creature, whipping through the tree branches to the southwest.

Rowan longed to go after it, to track it back through the barrow mounds and into the forest beyond, to follow it back to its lair. But he couldn’t leave the girl at his feet on her own, alone and weak and vulnerable in the middle of a field of wights. Wights that were quickly recovering in the absence of the dark creature, and stirring once more in their hollows.

Rowan groaned his frustration, and then gingerly grasped the disgusting girl’s shoulders and dragged her into the safety of the forest at their backs.

He dumped her a few hundred feet into the safety of the canopy, then sprinted back towards the barrows, shifting midstride. He circled the fields and the surrounding woodlands, scanning for any sign of the darkness or anything that could possibly be the otherworldly creature that had created it. But there was nothing.

Nothing strange, nothing that stood out. And no trace of that awful, wretched stench.

Rowan curved back to return to where he’d left the princess, fuming. If only she had more self-control, if she could have run into the safety of the trees without completely losing it, he could have gone off and pursued the creature. Maybe even discovered what had killed the demi-Fae male, and removed a threat from Doranelle’s lands. Protected the fortress.

But the spineless princess had prevented him from doing so.

Rowan sat on a rock next to her prone form, waiting for her to return to consciousness. He idly threw a dagger as he stewed, his anger slowly bubbling and murmuring in his blood.

Eventually, the girl awoke, her eyes slowly sliding open, sore limbs stretching.

He didn’t wait for her to recover. “No discipline, no control, and no courage.” She turned to look at him, eyes glazed over. “You failed. You made it to the other side of the field, but I said to face the wights – not throw a magical tantrum.”

Her fury blazed to life, overwhelming the exhaustion and lingering fear. Rising to match his own writhing temper. “I will kill you. How dare – ”

“That was not a wight, Princess.” Rowan interrupted, his well of patience dangerously close to running dry. He definitely didn’t have enough left to listen to her go on another arrogant tirade. He barely had enough to speak at all.

Their eyes met, and he mentally shot towards her, That thing should not have been there.

Then what in hell was it, you stupid bastard? she shot back, without hesitation.

Rowan clenched his jaw. Even completely silent, the girl’s tone reeked of arrogant disdain. “I don’t know. We’ve had skinwalkers on the prowl for weeks, roaming down from the hills to search for human pelts, but this…this was something different. I have never encountered its like, not in these lands or any other. Thanks to having to drag you away, I don’t think I’ll learn anytime soon.” He looked pointedly at her deplorable state. “It was gone when I circled back. Tell me what happened. I saw only darkness, and when you emerged, you were – different.”

She looked down at herself, frowning in disgust. “No. And you can go to hell.”

He pressed. “Other lives might depend on it.”

“I want to go back to the fortress,” Her words came with a very great effort, her breaths shallow and labored. “Right now.”

Anger burned even higher within him, reaching to claw at his throat. Selfish brat. “You’re done when I say you’re done.”

“You can kill me or torture me or throw me off a cliff, but I am done for today. In that darkness, I saw things that no one should be able to see. It dragged me through my memories – and not the decent ones. Is that enough for you?”

The girl’s voice was different, altered by her encounter with the creature. This time, her ferocity didn’t come from arrogance, or aggression, or narcissism. Instead it was the sound of a desperate, small, trapped person. Someone who had run from pain for so long, that they no longer knew how to face it any other way.

Rowan spat out a sharp sound of frustration and anger. Nothing could excuse her refusal, her unwillingness to provide potentially crucial information. He was right, the girl was a coward – through and through.

Rowan stood, and led her through the woods and back to Mistward, completely failing to ignore the fury pounding its way through his limbs as he brooded.

The iron bars in her mind were made of fear. A terror so large and great that she allowed it to control her, to cripple her and prevent her from being herself. From accessing the other half of her identity – her Fae form.

The princess would have to overcome her own fear and cowardice in order to learn control. The question was – how to make a coward face their fears?

They arrived back at the fortress, the girl turning away from the entry guards as they passed, trying to hide the horrific state she was in. They noticed anyways, disgust and anger and fear wafting from them as they took in her rank stench and beaten body. And the sentiment was reflected by all of the many workers and soldiers they passed, though none voiced their worry or discomfort – all too intimidated by the force of Rowan’s presence, or by the girl’s own hostility.

He knew the reputation he already carried with the fortress residents, as well as the wider world. Knew that this would do nothing at all to endear them to him. Would maybe even make the girl a figure of sympathy.

He didn’t care. There was nothing to be done about it regardless.

Rowan was desperate to leave, but before he dumped her, he managed to say, “These are the female baths. Your room is a level up. Be in the kitchens at dawn tomorrow.”

And he strode down the corridor without a second glance – relieved to escape the fiery torrent of her presence and fall back into the waiting arms of his cool, icy indifference.

···

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Why I don’t believe in God

Epilogue

Life happens. Coronavirus happens. Loss of substance and things happen. And we hold onto hope like it’s there- we give our 10%, we go to church, we make friends only in the Christian community, we save sex for marriage, we believe in a future partner, and we trust our leadership. Then what happens when it all falls down? The 10% you gave to avoid paying bills doesn’t do nothing but take your money- and then your account is overdrawn $300 by bills you didn’t even authorize. No one greets you at church unless you look churchy and aren’t covered from head to toe in tattoos and wear articles of clothing that show everything. The friends you made only love you when you’re Christian and if you make a mistake- be it cussing, cigarettes, drinking, or drugs they will judge you, tell you you’re in sin, that you’ve broken the law and God called on them to do it. They will always point out your sins, judge you, and say God sent them.

The Christian friends you made turn their back on you as soon as you’re going through something but you are constantly encouraging and helping them. As soon as you backslide, they will be the ones to say something and judge you. So you are helping them but when are they ever helping you? Real friends are hard to find but if all a Christian does is judge you for your cussing, what’s the point? You save sex for marriage until you’re 40 years old, being celibate and all you’ve been able to find are men in the church who use you for sex or try to get sex out of you.

The leadership you need won’t hold you accountable or mentor you, but they’re quick to judge and point out your flaws. And that’s all they do. As I said, they’re there when you jack up, but when you’re doing right, they say nothing. As you can probably tell, all of this is a recipe to blow your brains out and that’s itzactly what I did six months ago.

I took my father’s gun from out of his house, a rifle, and I proceeded to point it to my head and pull the trigger. I was tired of life, I was getting no encouragement, my husband left me and I was being told by all Christians that if I ever got with someone else, they would leave me because look at my track record. Funny because these were people that I did not even know, and when I reached out for help after my suicide attempt, there was no one to say anything.

No matter how friendly I was, kind, and caring, no matter how I poured into the Christian community, I received no help, no encouragement, no mentorship, no position in ministry- just a bunch of negative people saying negative things and they will continue to say negative things when they read this book yet when I blow my brains out where are they?

My father who is a pastor yelled at me profusely while I was in the hospital after TRYING to shoot myself saying if you don’t like being in there, you shouldn’t have done what you did. All the while I was being kept from calling my family or calling anybody, sleeping on a bed with no sheets sometimes the floor, being denied food, and other horrible and abusive withholding patterns. I could tell you about my life but you wouldn’t be able to handle it.

My mother was the only one left praying for me to her God who I gave a simple $300 to while I had $1000 in the bank and I found my checking account overdrawn the next day by bills, fraud, fakers, pretenders for money that I did not owe and should not have had to pay. Where did my money go, you onstar account was deactived from lack of payment, yet I just had $1000 in the bank where did it go? And you’re saying you overspent your money, you dumbass. But what happened was (and this is the honest to God truth), I got frauded $300 that I did not owe, bills I said I did not authorize and could not pay right now, the TITHE was over $200, I was charged 5 times for a Legal Shield membership when I should’ve only been charged one time if that because I cancelled it, and I stayed in a motel for 1 night, yet was charged 4 times for it. No matter how hard I went to the banks, I could not get rid of these transactions.

All this while I HAD FAITH and confessed and prayed and believed for hours and days that GOD was going to somehow work it out and mysteriously bless my finances by putting money in the bank and I don’t know where it come from. NUTS. Christians are absolutely nuts. We believe in this principle- if you just give 10%, God will pay all your bills. If you save sex for marriage, you will never get hurt. If you would just stop sinning, you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in. So does that mean we go our entire lives without having sex? All the way up to 40, maybe 50? Yet if you enjoy sex, you’re in sin. If you don’t wait till marriage or do it with 1 person, you’re going to have your heart broke. But heartbreak is non-discriminatory, it happens to everyone whether you wait or not.

I’m writing this book because I believe I can help others to escape the LIES and live their life in peace, harmony, freedom, and most of all BLESSED. If God’s going to take your money anyway, there’s no point. If you hang out with a guy friend from church, and he tell you you have 3 holes you ought to use them and we’ve got to work on having a 3 some, there’s no point. If people in the church don’t even bother to encourage you when you reach out for help after trying to kill yourself, there’s no point. If friends are only there to be “friends” to tell you you’re messing up you’re in sin when you’re messing up and in sin, there’s no point.

There’s must be encouragement, love, support, and friendship out there right? There must be a decent man out there right? I’m telling you, not only is there no God, there is no hope. There’s no hope if you don’t work a job and MAKE money happen yourself, there is no hope. There is no hope if you truly believe this guy you saved yourself and waited your whole life for is going to make a difference, be a good man to you, and never hurt you. There is no hope if you believe women who’ve had abortions are going to hell. No hope if you only make friends with people who don’t really care and aren’t really there for you.

The hope, the trust that you have, is in yourself. You must believe in your capabilities to do things because no one is going to do it for you. You must stop hating and condemning yourself because you’re imperfect and have flaws. Most of all, you should stop being friends with the wrong people

This book is meant to help, encourage, and transform you into that person that can do things on their own and makes things happen. This is not for the Christian broke ass poor still believing God’s gonna come through. It is not for people free of sin, doing everything right. It is not for people that are going to judge me and say horrible things simply because I’m writing what I’m writing now. You’ll find there is more support, more love out there than with Christians and you’ll find that support and love does not come from Christians. The best thing you can do in life is love yourself and also be friends with people who will not judge.

I realize this book will get a lot of hatred and criticism from the Christian community. Bring it on.

CHAPTER ONE

As I’m writing this, I’m reminded of a suicide attempt I made months ago with my father’s gun. I don’t blame my father. He was hurt so much and he was just hurting me because that’s all he’d been given. But I thought surely if I do this, my family will finally love me and we’ll be a family again. Wrong. It got worse. It got worse because the way to get my family to love me is to sow love into them until I get it back and reap a harvest of blessing.

My father quit talking to me afterwards. Why? Because it hurt them so much to see their baby girl going through so much and it doesn’t end and she’s still going through things. What did they do wrong? What could they do? These were the thoughts going through their heads and they became angry.

A normal, human reaction. Yet if you believe in a God that doesn’t exist, you’re angry at God because they’re not giving you the love you deserve. Unrealistic expectation. People criticized my father for not loving and helping me more, but he was just being human. People tried to get me to turn my back on my father and mother. I never did.

Yet if you go to church, you’ll feel like you’re not getting something you missed out on. And you will get angry. Let’s try to think rationally and sensibly about this. Maybe your family is mad at you and put you out BECAUSE THEY CARE SO MUCH and want you to get it together. Maybe your husband does love you, but you’re thinking about him all wrong. We’ve got to change weird ideas and thoughts to believe that it is OURSELVES giving us this life and it OURSELVES giving us all we’ve been given. I hope this book helps you because it helped me.

There’s no God. There’s no devil. IT IS US. When you reach out for help and can’t find it, call me because that day will come. THIS IS meant to give others hope. I want to help you. And that’s why I’m writing this book. No one is perfect. We all have flaws and emotions. That’s called being human. So if they are not being a friend DELETE them, a logical mental explanation.

Not everything is spiritual or the devil, if it were we’d all be dead. IT’S US. What are you giving yourself? Are you giving yourself love? Are you loving others in a relationship? Are you with someone who genuinely loves you and living a good life? Most of all, are you working, going to school, making money happen? THIS is how to live a good life and give a good life to yourself, not this nutty God business that says everything is spiritual.

For some reason, when I pulled that trigger, the gun did not go off. I was still alive and it was the most miserable feeling that I had to live life on this earth and stay alive. Why? I believed in God. When I was 15 years old, I asked God to put me through the trials of Job and then bless me with the blessings of Job when I asked for it and had had enough later. Well, according to my mental mind, I went through these trials up to the age of 37 and no matter how much I begged, pleaded, cried, got prayer, fasted, worshipped, believed, prayed I NEVER GOT THE BLESSINGS just kept going through these trials. That was when I realized I’M NUTTY.

Everything bad in life that was happening was happening “because I’m a Job” and there was no end, no let up to my pain in life, the loss, the bad things happening to me. Why? I WAS MAKING IT HAPPEN MYSELF. My belief that I was meant to go through nothing but bad things came from Christianity. God wants you to suffer. That’s life. It’s just not time yet for you to be blessed.

I believed the same about a mate. Even up to the age of 37, I was mostly celibate because I did not want to use anybody or have anybody us me, yet everyone uses each other, married or not. I waited and waited but the man of my dreams never came and the praying did not end. That’s when I realized. I’M NUTS. I could be making this happen on my own, making life be good to me, and FINDING myself the man of my dreams instead of believing in a God that is magically going to do all this stuff for you. Life is not Lucky Charms and it’s not Burger King- you can’t have it your way.

Life is rough, hard so we must appreciate the bad times as well as the good times and we must have bad as well as good. People say “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”- well, maybe you should have faith! Faith in yourself that you can do things to give yourself a good life. So if you want the blessings of Job you go out and get it and make it happen. And if you’re still going through crap, that’s life just accept it, but give yourself good times too and good in life so that life is not miserable and shittty. Whatever life you have now, it’s because you created that for yourself.

Sounds simple enough right? Yet millions believe in this nutty spirituality that says it’s all God or all the devil. God is in control. God won’t let anything happen outside of his will. So if I get raped is that God or a person’s choice? So if my father and mother don’t love me, and my bank account is overdrawn, is that God trying to see if I’ll trust him and love him no matter what and still serve him, or is that NUTTY Christianity again saying we deserve to be punished and go through things and suffer because Jesus did.

I’m trying to help you and I think this book will help. CUT the Christians out of your life and things will get better. Your life is what it is because you made it that way. Now make it something else. Don’t be afraid of hell and the afterlife and what happens in the afterlife, if you go to heaven, you go to heaven, if you go to hell, you go to hell, it’s all God anyway right? WRONG. If there was a God that cares, he would’ve made my life easier when I pulled that trigger. He would’ve stopped people from abusing me sexually. He would’ve gotten me off the street.

Yet no matter how much you cry out, this God that you so delicately believe in is not there, he does not rescue you, nothing happens, nothing changes. So if there is hell, I welcome it. But I believed if I shot myself I would go to heaven. Why? I was a Christian and wanted a better, happy life. I did not turn my back on God, he turned his back on me. I knew that once I died, I’d finally be happy and be in eternity with him, and that was better than being on earth.

What’s the point? If all life is suffering? If God just wants us to suffer? If we’re here to suffer like Jesus and Job and just wait till you’re 40, 50, or your whole life is over to FINALLY get those blessings of Job or what if they never come? This nutty theology that God’s in control is NUTS. I was forced to live after my suicide attempt, FORCED. I could not buy a gun anywhere and because of my son and my mother, I was unable to kill myself and do that to them.

You just don’t believe in God enough. You just don’t love God enough. This is what we’ll hear from the Christian community. Yet if you want to buy or sell anything, you’ve got to take the 666 on the right hand or the forehead. Well I don’t want to be in an apartment broke, with no food, no man, no furniture, no money, no job, no gas, no car, and HOMELESS so what do I do? Most people will sleep with people for money BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IN GOD SO MUCH or strip or whatever it takes to get money, get with a rich man, whatever. YET THEY’RE JUDGED WHEN THEY DO IT.

They’re sinners. They’re evil. Why? They’re trying to make life happen for them and weren’t given parents that gave a shit. SIN. Go on and judge me but I am here to help THEM not you. You weren’t there when I tried to kill myself and you won’t be there when I die. The reason I was spared is I’m meant to help YOU so that you’ll see the truth……………and finally to the best of your ability live a good and happy life, at least the best that you can make it because it’s in your control and your power ONLY. So if I’m going to hell, I welcome it.

Anything’s better than life being nothing but shit on this earth. So if me being friends with non Christians is a sin BRING IT ON. If me marrying somebody who’s rich and loving them the best I can for money BRING IT ON. If standing up to you on my facebook when you condemn me for my sins is sin BRING IT ON. Because I don’t want your strange, Jesus mafia life, that says suffer bitch and believe God-

even when it never happens, you just believe in God and don’t give up.

This lie that our lives are meant for suffering has gone on too long. Make life the best you can make it. God and people won’t love you. That is why YOU MUST LOVE YOURSELF.

CHAPTER TWO

This phony philosophy that there’s a God is just as crazy as there’s a devil. If something bad happens, it’s the devil doing it through you or to you and that’s with everything. Family. Finances. Relationship. We just have to pray and get rid of the devil. Yet what if the devil doesn’t go away and things stay bad? Then you don’t have enough faith or there’s something you’re doing wrong.

Just pray and keep binding and they’ll go away. What if they don’t? Then you don’t have enough faith. You’re not a good enough Christian. YET I BELIEVE if something goes bad even if it’s severe and all the time and trying to kill you it’s because you done fucked up or someone else did. It is your choices or someone else. GOD had nothing to do with it. THE DEVIL had nothing to do with it. They are not in control of life.

The only person that’s in control of our lives is us and it’s up to us how much we love and how much love we receive. There is no God looking out for us all and there certainly is no devil making it all happen. If that were the case, everything on earth would be bad and hellacious. I hate to tell you, but that little man with a fork is not that powerful. And there are not minions attacking you trying to stop you from what you’re doing. Shit happens because literally SHIT happens. It happens to everyone. And these are because of our choices or the choices of someone else. Blaming it on some evil force won’t work. It’s your life.

Yet people believe they can do witchcraft and the devil can give them what they want or they can worship the devil and finally have a good life. That is ridiculous. The devil doesn’t care anymore than God does and he’s not that powerful. You cannot do deals with the devil to make your life better. It only becomes better because you made it better.

You cannot do evil, witchcraft, or worship the devil in order to make things change or get better. If that were the case, we’d all worship the devil. We’d all do evil acts for him to do big for us. Anything ANYTHING to make life good. But I am telling you. The “devil” does not care. The “Lord” does not care. The only one who cares is you and others. And that is IT, my friend. So you can believe in the nuttiness all you want it isn’t going to change things. It won’t give you money, possessions, fame, OR the right choices and everything in life is made up of choices- yours or somebody else’s, so what choice are you going to make?

If all your life is made up of choices, the right choices will get you to the right things. The right CHOICES will make your life good or better or great. The CHOICES in others is what makes things happen or prevents things from happening. If something bad happens to you, it’s not God. It’s the choice of someone else. Abuse or mistreatment is because of a CHOICE. So get around and let happen to you the right choices from others.

Don’t allow the wrong choices in others to get to you or cause you mistreatment of yourself or someone else. There are some people’s choices we can do nothing about but most of the time we need to TRY to get around and make happen for us good choices from others, not bad choices from others. If you apply this to your life, you’ll see that I am correct.

Now you’re saying WOW the devil is going to attack you non-stop now (laughter) you won’t last long the devil is going to beat you down and take everything from you and attack you until you’re dead- you won’t last with that belief long! Well what if he does? I can either make life better for me or continue making it shit, continue believing God’s gonna save me, help me out, get me out of this? I can think I’m being attacked by the devil ALL THE TIME.

But that is not going to change anything anymore than a belief in God will. I don’t care if every devil in hell attacks me, it’s still my choice to make my life what it is. Nutty spiritualism and Christianity will get you to believe everything’s a devil. In fact, any bad thing that happens is the devil. This just isolates you even more, puts you through suffering, and makes life bad.

“God” can do nothing about people treating you bad. “God” can do nothing about your finances. You can. The devil can make 1,000 people hate you and make you hate you, but so what? Who really fucking cares about some devil and millions of demons? This theology is meant to bring you down, break you down, and again believe that life is suffering every second, every moment and there’s no getting out of it unless you worship him.

Yet even people that worship him have bad shit and even more bad shit happen. I’m famous and because of my witchcraft I’m famous. You’re famous because you worked hard, met the right people, and made the right connection. There ain’t no devil and no demons making you famous. If God is not the powerful, the devil is not that powerful. The only powerful entity is yourself. Yourself is your best friend or your worst enemy. It is important to love OURSELVES more than any person, job, business, or significant other. If you love yourself first, all things will work out.

But Christians hold a grudge that someone did them wrong, they were abused, that’s why this is all happening to them. Yet if you’ll think back to your life it is YOURSELF doing it. YOURSELF is itzactly why you are where you are today. Did you go to college? That means no money. Are you around healthy people? You will not be healthy. Are you in a healthy relationship? You will be unhealthy for others. Like duh Christians. IT IS YOU. Not no God, not no devil.

The last time I went to church, they talked over and over about how on the way there, the devil was active because the police wrongly accused them of almost running over a dude on a bicycle and they almost went to jail. Of course, it was the devil attacking them so they wouldn’t make it to church. Everyone talks about the devil and how he’s attacking. So easy to blame the devil instead of THE COP MADE A DUMBASS CHOICE and people are crazy and have psychological and mental issues. Instead of believing it’s PEOPLE there is some spiritual force at work.

This can make you crazy because if you’re around people all the time (who are ALL jacked up by the way) things can be jacked up all the time. Shit can be happening 24/7 and it’s not some “devil” or demonic entity. It’s people. The cop made a mistake or the bicyclist was nuts people are HUMAN give them some credit they are not perfect.

When they got to church, the sound system messed up for 10 seconds, and even though they fixed it it was the devil. Why? Why can’t you just fix the sound system (which only takes 10 seconds by the way) instead of giving attention to some devil that we now all got to think about and hear about instead of just ignoring it, fixing it, and move on? Why do we need to sit here and awknowledge to devil? What a waste of time! You could just fix the physical gitch and problem and move on.

Now you have a persecution complex that it’s the devil and every time something bad happens you’re thinking it’s the devil. So what if it is? Why give him any awknowledgment? Just makes life worse. If I’m able to fix it, move on. This is nutty to think that there is a devil all the time or even at all. There just simply cannot be a demon in the dishwasher. Fix the dishwasher.

It’s raining outside right now. I could say “That’s God making it rain now I can’t get my stuff- thanks” or I could say “that’s a demonic spirit now I have to pray” but it really is just rain. Just life. Accept it. If everything is a demon, we’re stressed out, worried, and suffering all the time. If everything is God, he gets blamed for every bad thing there is. God’s in control. He made it happen. NO. People’s choices are something “God” can do nothing about. He cannot change people. He cannot make them make choices.

Life is not all spiritual. It’s all mental. And it’s up to you to break the mental war. I recently had a therapist of 4 years and another of 1 year quit on me. They told me I was too dysfunctional and they could not help me. I could sit here and think that’s the devil or I could think well, more dysfunctional people on the planet, there’s so many people on the planet jacked up in the head. Thinking it’s the devil makes me have a persecution complex. NOW bad shit is happening all the time and you’re programmed to now accept bad all the time because it’s “God”.

Now it’s God doing it because he’s just allowing bad shit to happen in your life. This also programs you to where everything’s bad all the time. And this is the way of Christianity or any belief in anything spiritual. Instead of understanding that we as humans are ALL flawed and ALL in need of love and forgiveness and every last one of us EVERY LAST ONE screwed up, God and the devil get blamed for everything. This also makes life shit. If my computer messes up, is it the devil? Who cares! Fix your computer.

If everyone hates me and talks bad about me, is it the devil? No, there’s just that many jacked up people. If my father doesn’t let me in the house and I’m outside with my kid escaping an abusive relationship, is that the devil? No, your father is jacked up! And we’ve got to realize EVERYONE is jacked up and dysfunctional. There is not one healthy person on the planet. We all have flaws, have evil, have anger, and have mistakes. If you LOVE and FORGIVE and UNDERSTAND everyone your problems will go away. Try it sometime. They may not change but your life will.

We’ve also got to realize that there is no love in the world. The world is jacked up. If everything that happens is because God let it happen then again we are subject to God and how he wants our lives to be so if everything’s bad he must want everything to be bad and our lives to be bad so therefore our lives are bad and we just accept it ACCEPT A BAD LIFE and that life is bad. If everything’s good then God must want our life to be good and we are better than others. If everything’s good it’s because God wants it to be good so if he wants it to get bad again it can. More recipe for failure. Again. God and the devil get blamed for everything.

If everything’s the devil and an attack of the devil then humans are not jacked up or seen as flawed people with mistakes, problems, and mental difficulties- they are these superhuman, superspiritual powerless entities that anything can happen through. People are not that dumb and that powerless. People are PEOPLE. It’s because of our view of people that we think they’re these vessels God or the devil happen through. We also don’t give people enough credit.

We think they should always love us, always give to us, always be kind to us, never hurt us, never be abusive, and just these entities that operate in love all the time. Yet when we see people as HUMAN is the only time our lives change. NO ONE is going to always love you, give to you, be kind to you, never hurt you, and never be abusive to you. Human beings are incapable of such. So if that’s true that people will always love us, always give to us, always be kind to us, never hurt us, and never be abusive to us, we give people too much credit. Now we are mad at them and others or everyone and the world around us. More recipe for a bad life, so what’s the point of being on earth?

If ALL humans are capable of abuse, hurt, anger, lust, envy, greed we stop putting people on such a high pedestal and become realistic that we are ALL this way we are ALL human so forgive everyone. Love everyone. Be good to everyone. This is a recipe for a good life and all you really need to make your life good. There isn’t a human on the planet that hasn’t been abusive at some point.

You scream at your wife because you’re at your end and about to lose your job. You’ve never done it before but you have a moment where you snap – this is called verbal abuse and now you’re a bad person because you’ve verbally abused your wife. Yet everyone has yelled at someone and been pushed to their limit at some point or another. Everyone has gone off.

Have you ever got mad in traffic? You’re a human with emotions. Of course at some point in your life you’ve gotten mad. Now let’s take it a step further. Everyone is coming at you at all sides. You’re being bullied at school and beat up every day. No one will leave you alone. Everyone is rejecting you, talking bad about you, and mistreating you. No psychology is involved in this. If you shoot everyone and snap, you’re an evil murderer condemned to hell for eternity. Or if you snap and fight back, let’s say the principal finds out and you’re expelled- now what happens? You hate yourself. You now have a bad life. You lose all your friends and have to move and now you’re just angry all the time.

What has happened? This person was not given enough love. Instead of forgiving everyone, we say those that beat him up are evil when really THEY weren’t given enough love. Love is the universal answer to everything and every situation. It’s really quite simple LOVE LOVE LOVE the abusing attackers and LOVE LOVE LOVE the victim. Why? Because we are all humans fatally flawed and make mistakes.

To think of it any other way, you’re seeing life now as you powerless to do anything about it. If you’re the victim because those people are EVIL you’re still getting beat up. If you’re the abusers, you don’t change because you’re still able to beat on the victim and THINGS STAY THE SAME. Until our thought patterns begin to change. Anything else is a recipe for a bad life.

If you love and forgive both sides, you now have a recipe for the greatest life ever. Why? You walk in love and forgiveness. Love says we are both character flawed and make mistakes and are human whether we’re verbally abusive, physically abusive, or sexually abusive- we are just giving what we’ve got, we are character flawed imperfect human beings.

Let’s take it a step further. A man is physically abusive to you and you think he’s an evil piece of shit. Now you are angry and in an abusive situation and need recovery. Now life is shitty. A bad life. A bad mindset. Yet what if you believe he’s just giving to me what he’s got, doing to me what’s been done to him. We give humans some credit and understand hurting people hurt people and hurting someone physically is just as bad as the verbal yet we have scales of bad, good and worse this sin is greater than that sin this thing is greater bad or worse than that thing. Yet if it’s all the same from small to extreme extent of abuse, EVERYONE is flawed and now we’re not thinking a person needs to be judged by their actions. More healing takes place in these relationships because LOVE CONQUERS ALL and we don’t hold everybody by some global scale, realizing all humans make mistakes and are capable of giving pain as well as receiving pain. When you judge on a scale of perfection, you realize some people have it bad some people have it good. Some people are rich, some people are poor. Yet we can all have it the same.

We can all have it good. We can all be rich. It’s a mindset. You can think “this person is abusing me”, “I’m abusing this person” or you can think man, I need mercy and grace and forgiveness that’s the only way to end it. Hate breeds more hate. Love breeds more love. Lack of understanding creates more lack of understanding, anger breeds more anger, everything breeds itself whether good or bad, no matter what it is.

You give to someone love, you get love. You give to someone hate, you get hate. Eventually, you will get back what you gave. I’ve never seen hate end hate. I’ve never seen abuse end abuse. Have you ever tried it the other way? Have you ever seen a boxing match? Both are hitting each other. Yet eventually if one person stops throwing punches, he will get beat down and the match will end, somebody will win. This ends the match. Yet if both remain fighting, one person will always win. That’s the game we call life.

So what happened? One person decided they would let the other person win. What really happened. Well hitting is physical abuse. Not doing anything is love in any situation. To sit there and take it and eventually lose is love. The other person will give up and have to quit at some point. This is how we solve our life’s problems. If someone is abusing you physically, emotionally, sexually, or verbally and you do nothing, what happens eventually at some point it will have to end. It can’t go on forever. They will either begin to sow love or leave the relationship. Both are good things which just leads to my conclusion hate breeds more hate, love breeds more love.

What if you did nothing but act in love and kindness for 30 days, surely not everyone would react the same, but some people would love you back, they might even pass on the love. Now what if you do nothing but hate and act in hatred for 30 days (a character decision)??? A lot of people would hate you back, they might even pass that hate on to others, but some people would actually give up. They wouldn’t want to fight you or deal with you, they would just give up.

IT’S ENDED RIGHT THERE. Now you have a recipe for a great life. If love breeds more love and hate breeds more hate doesn’t it make more sense to love and not to hate? If everything is going to multiply itself, which would you rather have? The same is true with abuse. Abused people abuse people. Hurting people hurt people. Unabused people unable others. Love breeds more love. If you unabused, eventually it will go somewhere. If you make the choice to abuse, the other person will react the same way or spread it on to someone else. It’s so simple. Just do good and make right choices.

If something bad happens to you, you can’t do anything about it but eventually you will be powerless. Because we are fatally flawed humans with mistakes. If we judge off of mercy and love saying THIS PERSON IS A HUMAN BEING and ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE THIS WAY it takes the standard of perfection, which is unrealistic and never works anyway because we have all been abusive at some point in our lives there is no perfect unabused or unabusive person on the planet we’ve all done it at some point, and GUESS WHAT love and mercy and forgiveness has been sown and you can’t do nothing about it. It’s there. It has to go somewhere. It has to either come back to you or spread so what are we sowing in our world? Hate or love?

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