#believe it or not there was more but. the post is already too long.
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One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.
(Buckle in. This is a long one.)
In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.
As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.
Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.
This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.
I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.
But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.
So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.
But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.
But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.
It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.
He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)
So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.
But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.
(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)
#something something hope is a weapon hope is a discipline hope is a garden to cultivate!!!#HE'S SO GOOD HE IS TRULY EXEMPLAR OF THE WHOLE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEIN AND I DO NOT THINK THAT'S AN ACCIDENT#truly just like. enormous proponent of letting trust and curiosity into your heart regardless of the horrors.#it's hard and it makes you more vulnerable and sometimes it hurts so so much but it will also save your fucking life!#cr spoilers#critical role#essek thelyss#cr meta#I was gonna apologize for the length but I'm not sorry. I'm also not sorry for being insane about him but he's so special to me.#head in my hands he's so GOOD HE'S BEST BOI! GUIDING LIGHT NORTH STAR!!! LOOK AT HIM!!!#also truly if i had two nickels for a span of time with no essek sightings where I wrote a lot of fic#with deliberate personal acknowledgment that I was writing some pretty maximal arcs for him in terms of character growth#and then end up getting essek for half an episode and having to go OH WE'RE GOING THAT FAR ACTUALLY. FUCKING INCREDIBLE.#yanno. two nickels. but good lord I am thriving that it's happened twice#augh this is ONE of the pieces I need to write this week. we're not gonna talk about it
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Make a Home Out of Hurt
Rating: General
CW: Death of a Grandparent, Mourning
Tags: Post-Season 4, Post Canon, Grief/Mourning, Established Relationship, Alternate Universe — Future Fic, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Sad Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Has Absent Parents, Steve Harrington Mom is Okay, Steve Harrington's Dad is an Asshole, Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, Eddie Munson Takes Care of Steve Harrington, Moving in Together
Had an evil little thought. Also, all these Fenton bunnies I mention are real! My nana collects Fenton. (She's alive, don't worry, but I thought about her the other day and it spiraled into this.)
🏡—————🏡
We’ve already seen this neighborhood, Eddie thinks, but won’t say.
Even though they have. They’ve driven by the same three houses. Yellow, pastel pink, and navy blue. White door, white door, brown door. Bushes and bushes and a bushel of red roses. One garage, no garage, no garage but large driveway. He’s seen them. Over and over and over.
And each time they pass the last one, the leather of the steering wheel squeaks. And each time, Steve makes a muffled sort of noise. And each time, Eddie wonders if resting his hand on Steve’s shaking shoulders would anger him or mellow him. And each time, the car gets just a little slower as Steve loses his control more and more.
We’ve already seen this neighborhood, Eddie continues to think, but knows he’ll sit here with those words. He’ll sit in the passenger seat. Window cranked as far down as it’ll go—half-way since Dustin busted the actual mechanism. Beemer’s been through a lot, so it’ll be here for Steve’s end all breakdown, too. With the radio volume low, playing the same double-sided tape on repeat, flipped by Eddie because Steve’s hands have been shaking: The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra. Because it was her favorite. Nana’s favorite. Nana Harrington’s favorite.
On the fifth drive through, Steve finally parks the car. At the end of the long, slow winding driveway. He looks out the windshield, hollowed and not quite here. With limp hands in his lap. Messy, greasy hair he couldn’t bother to style. Eye bags so heavy, Eddie barely believes he can hold them on his face.
Eddie can follow his line of sight. To the edge of the white picket fence, worn down a little with age, scratched up from the curled nails of an old brown dog, carved with her son and daughter-in-law’s initials, and eventually stained with yellow handprints from baby Steve. Yellow because, as Steve has echoed, “Lello, Nana. Lello like your dress. Your favorite!” Well, Steve’s favorite too, he just won’t acknowledge it’s because of his nana. Eddie knows that the paint has faded a bit since then, given that it’s been fifteen years since Steve’s had hands that small, but Eddie can see him. In his little white and red striped t-shirt, hidden by a pair of nicely pressed denim overalls, white sneakers, and his mom’s bobby pins in his hair—something she did because it just wouldn’t stop growing so fast and thick. Or so Eddie’s been told.
He’s been told a lot in the last week. Since the call came through the landline of their apartment. Since Steve had gone silent and collapsed to his knees and wailed, screamed even. Since he dressed himself in a suit that fit well, but looked out of place on his curled in body. Since…since the obituary was finally in his hands at the funeral, and he got so sick in the church’s restroom, Eddie had to drive them home in a daze—a quarter worried, a quarter tired, and half hanging by a thread. He thinks he’s heard everything, but what is love if not more than everything? If not all the words in every language, all known objects and unknown, every species and race and sexuality and identities combined?
He’ll hear everything. Until their old and grey and forgetting everything.
“There used to be a tire swing on that tree,” Steve states flatly, pointing at the weeping oak in his nana’s front yard. It’s crooked like it’s been kissed by the wind. A lot withering because the weather’s been harsh on her. Grey against the navy blue of the house’s siding.
I know, sweetheart, Eddie wants to say, so soft it gets lost between them. Instead, “Yeah? Bet it was a good tire, too,” he coaxes, still soft, all sweet. Even if he’s heard it each time they’ve passed by.
Steve nods once in his peripheral. Sniffs. “Yeah,” he states wetly, “one of the expensive ones. She didn’t want it to pop under me. Didn’t…She didn’t want me to stop using it.” His head dips down, looking at his fingers, where they’ve begun to absently trace the seams of his jeans. “I stopped,” he whispers shamefully. “You think she got mad because I stopped?”
“No, baby,” Eddie answers honestly. “I think that she was happy you used it at all. Think she was always just happy to see you, Steve.”
A sharp intake of breath next to him. “I used to come over here when my parents were gone. Or when they’d scream at each other. Or when…when they’d forget I existed,” he relays, quiet as a mouse. “When they’d forget, Nana would open the door and kiss my cheek and make me something to eat. I was always too skinny. So she made me casseroles,” he explains, a wisp of a smile. Gone in the blink of an eye. “She’ll never make ‘em again, though. She won’t—”
“Steve,” Eddie calls gently, a small warning. A siren before the tsunami.
“—Love me again,” Steve sobs, “Nana won’t love me again.”
“Oh, baby,” he breathes. Eddie steps out of the car, rounds over to the driver’s side, and yanks the door open. Carefully, he unbuckles Steve, scoots him so that his legs dangle over the side, and pulls him down into a gentle hug. “Baby,” he coos. “Just get it out, honey. I’m right here. We’re right here. I’ve got you.”
And Steve cries. Again; though Eddie’s lost count. He squirms against Eddie’s chest. Head nestled to his neck. Crying big sounds that sound too large, even for his adult body. Sounds that carry boats, that poison with oil spills, that home orcas. He slobbers onto Eddie’s skin, grand globs of hot spit that gargle in his throat before launching from his mouth. His unshaved stubble scratching at the side of Eddie’s face—where his skin is sensitive and smooth and will most definitely be raw with Steve’s aching.
He sobs until there’s no more tears. Until he’s a whimpering, shivering mess on Eddie’s chest. Bunched up and small and fisting Eddie’s t-shirt like a lifeline. Squeezing the fabric in his hands like two lemons.
Eddie runs his hands up and down Steve’s spine. From the small of his back to his hunched shoulders, squishing him. He sways them ever so gently like the rustle of the old oak tree. Hums something incoherent and unrecognizable. If only to get Steve to stop shaking.
“Eds?”
“Hm?”
He takes a long, slow breath. Breathes out, “Why’d she give me the house?”
Eddie pulls them apart. One hand on the middle of Steve’s back, the other cupping his left cheek. Swiping at the tacky tracks from his tears. “I’m not sure, baby. Maybe she loved you so much that she wanted you to have it? To always be safe there?”
“Shouldn’t she have given it to my dad? I don’t…” Steve’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion, his mouth frowning. “I don’t deserve her house?”
“Sweetheart,” Eddie sighs. “She chose you for a reason. You, Stevie. Not anybody else. Just you. If she wanted to give it to her son, she would’ve. But she didn’t. She thought of you, put you in the will, and now it’s yours.” When Steve doesn’t respond, Eddie gives him his moment of silence. Running his palm up to Steve’s shoulders. Pressing his thumb into his supple skin. “You may never know her intent, but she probably had a reason. It was a home you came running to, where you felt safest, where you felt…loved. Grandmothers always have this air to them, like they just know things about you before you say ‘em. Maybe she just knew you needed her and her space before you even realized.”
Steve sniffles. His eyes are still wet. Bloodshot and tired. Rumpled all the way around, exhausted and quiet. “She used to play with me in the yard.”
I know, Eddie thinks once more. He goes with the topic change though, if that’s what Steve needs.
“And when we played hide and seek, she always made sure to look until I was found. Because she didn’t want me to feel forgotten, her words.” Steve’s fingers are fidgeting with one another again. Picking at his fingernails, peeling at hangnails. Eddie moves down and takes them, rubbing soothing circles into their backs, just so Steve doesn’t harm himself on top of everything. Steve continues, hushed, “When I’d stay the night, she would sleep with me. Hold me close to her. Scratch my back and scalp and tell me stories…all the way until I fell asleep.”
“Kinda like I do, huh?” Eddie asks.
Steve nods. “Yeah,” he croaks. “Think that’s why I feel so loved and safe with you.”
And Eddie hasn’t cried, not really, not yet. But this may be it. Because he knows, beyond everything, that Nana was special to Steve—so special that just one negative comment, one complaint, one little fuss about her was enough to get you shunned by him. He’s seen it play out with Dustin, he’d been banned from coming over for two weeks. And with El, who didn’t understand quite yet, but had lost conversational abilities with Steve for two whole days—ergo, the Silent Treatment.
This means something. It means everything. Eddie kind of wants to cry about it.
But he reigns himself in for now. Because Steve needs him like water. For somebody to just be there and be present and be patient. Through it all.
“You wanna head inside,” Eddie offers, “I’ve got the key in my pocket.” He gestures loosely to the inside of his vest, the safest pocket near his heart. When Steve nods, Eddie leads them inside silently. Opens the door first, per request made by Steve days prior. Sets his shoes by the front door—not told to, but just out of respect. Hangs up his jacket, his vest. Takes Steve’s jacket, too. Unties his Nike sneakers. Smacks a quick kiss to his cheek. And then he waits by the front door for Steve to say or do something.
The first thing he does is gasp. Eyes roaming the hallway, the living room, and the fireplace that connects the kitchen and living space together. He takes a few tentative steps before stopping in front of a tall, full China cabinet.
“Her Fenton bunnies,” Steve breathes.
Eddie slowly approaches behind him. Wraps an arm around his waist, tugging him into his side a little. “Are these the ones your mom was talking about on the phone?”
“Yeah. I just…Didn’t think my mom was telling the truth,” Steve murmurs. “She told me Dad didn’t want these. Takes up room or whatever. But they’re so pretty here, how could you not want these?” His left hand reaches for the knob of the cabinet. Twisting it gently as to not rattle the glass shelves. With the doors swung open, the bunnies under the cabinet’s lighting are free to touch. And so Steve picks one up, carefully in his hands like it’s alive. Maybe it is, Eddie thinks for a moment, alive with her spirit.
He breathes silently by Steve as he investigates the glass item in his hand. Running his thumbs over the ears. Down the smooth back.
“Satin glass,” Steve states, “It’s like touching the fabric, which is so weird. Nana used to talk about it all the time, but I never believed her. She never let me touch. You wanna?” He holds the bunny up to Eddie’s face. In offering, for him to pet. So he runs a slow thumb down its back. And sure enough, soft as silk, cold to the touch. “All of them are here.” He replaces the silk, purple bunny on the shelf. Picking up a chromatic shifting one next. “Carnival glass,” Steve explains, “it’s heavier than the other one, feels like. But so shiny. Think Nana used to say it was amethyst or something, but that might be what the color shift is called?”
“You sure listened to her well,” Eddie murmurs, “know a lot about this.”
Steve chuckles, a little choked to Eddie’s ears but he makes no comment. “Yeah, I guess I did. Mom used to say that I had selective hearing. That I listened when it was something I cared about.”
“And you cared a lot about Nana,” Eddie concludes.
“Yeah,” Steve whispers, “cared a lot about Nana.” He sets the carnival glass bunny back on the shelf. Standing idle in front of it all, taking it all in. “She has one upstairs, in a different glass cabinet. It glows green under the special blacklight upstairs. Said it was radioactive.” He chuckles again. “I gave her that one. As a gift for Mother’s Day in…I think ’77? Mom helped me pick it out—she was nice about the bunnies, about finding this stuff. She loved Nana, too. And she…” He laughs low in his chest and Eddie blossoms a little at the sound, unheard in so long. “Mom would pull out the long box of tissue paper and gift bags from the crawlspace. She’d unfold the prettiest gift bag—this one was a little brown one, covered in peach colored peonies. Stuffed some off-white tissue paper in that one. Wrapped the little yellow—well, it was supposed to be yellow—Fenton bunny in bubble wrap, covered it up with a bunch of caramels. Gave it to Nana, and she squealed! Apparently, she already knew it was radioactive? Thought it was the best gift ever. Which, ouch Nana, I gave you other bunnies for Mother’s Day, c’mon.”
Eddie snorts. “Maybe that’s what earned you the house? That radioactive bunny was probably the key to her heart,” he jokes. Though his stomach turns at the possibility it wasn’t appropriate to make.
Steve laughs loudly, though. Shaking his entire body with it. He slips his hand into Eddie’s back right pocket, sighs, and leans against him relaxed. “Dad should’a tried harder if he wanted Nana’s heart,” he comments, “all it took was a damn bunny.”
“Among other things, I’m sure.”
“Probably,” Steve sighs. “I think she was just excited to have a grandkid. She had a weird relationship with my dad. They didn’t get along very well. So maybe she was sorta…trying again?”
“Stevie, I think she just loved you. There doesn’t have to be some grand, deep meaning behind it. I think she just loved your company. How your laugh fills a room and your smile is seen from across the yard. And how you’re always polite, despite having reasons to not be. Maybe because of your terrible puns and how awful you are at quoting Shakespeare? You charm everybody, Steve,” Eddie monologues. “There’s not a reason to not love you.”
For a moment, the room falls completely silent. Distantly, there’s the slow tick of a wall clock. A few birds singing out in the backyard, where the bird bath probably is—only known through Steve’s memories. A slight hum from the radiator. The cars passing by on the main road just around the corner. Hawkins is quiet when there’s mourning; maybe it’s felt through the whole town, through the soles of Steve’s socked feet, from the beating of his ever love absorbent heart.
She died November 7th, 1993. Just a few days ago. Maybe it’s the anniversary of Will Byers going missing that Hawkins is feeling. Maybe it’s just tragedy. It’s love persevering—even in the most dire of situations. Where Joyce Byers was screaming about where her son may be, all those mismatched theories, and the ways in which the town thought she was crazy—even when they believed her and cried over her son’s body being pulled from the water. Where Will is actually thriving now. Where Sandra Harrington no longer is, though she was a fixture in several communities and families, Steve’s own being included.
“How’s your boy doing?” Wayne asked the day after her funeral. Eddie had shrugged, admitting he wasn’t sure because Steve had gone terribly quiet and sick. “Tell him I’m sorry. That he has a home with us. That he can come over and cry and I’ll make him hot cocoa. Alright, Ed?”
God, even Wayne knew. And there was silence after his condolences.
There is so much silence.
Until, finally, Steve asks, “Will you live with me here?”
“Wh—What?” Because surely he didn’t hear that right.
“Live with me here,” Steve repeats, a little more urgent. “I don’t think I can handle this place alone. And…I know how to use her gas stove. I can make you the spaghetti dish she used to make. And the casseroles she used to bake. We can open up her recipe box and I’ll teach you how to make her apple pie—the one she gave me for your birthday two years ago?
“And we can read your Lord of The Rings books on the porch on the bench she has out there? Grill in the backyard when we have everybody over. Robin can have the room that used to be my nursery. We can…We can live our lives here.”
Stunned, Eddie gapes momentarily. Before gripping harder at Steve’s waist, drawing him closer even when there’s no more room. Two solid bodies connected from shoulder to foot. “Are you sure, Steve? You don’t wanna—“
“You’re my family, Eds. I have loved you since that bullshit in ’86. We have seen each other through our absolute worst. Of course I’m sure. Of course I want you here,” Steve swears. “I know what I’m getting into. Even if it hurts to look around here right now. But you’ve been here by me through one of the worst heartbreaks I’ve ever experienced. I want you here—preferably always.”
“Stevie,” Eddie breathes. He reaches out with his free hand and cups the right side of Steve’s face. Swipes over his glistening cheekbone. Under his shadow beaten eye. The tickling brush of Steve’s bottom eyelashes on the tip of his thumb. And he kisses him tenderly, with every word he could ever imagine to say, all emotion he could ever feel, with an intensity seen in atomic bombs. He pulls back to see Steve’s eyes closed. Flushed and bright in the cabinet’s full white lighting, doors still open, and fragile glass bunnies as witnesses. Promises, “I want to, Steve. I want to be here with you. Through it. All of it. As long as I get to love you.”
And on his thumb there are fresh tears, gone cold but skin scalding. Steve’s lips trembling with silent cries. His eyelashes fluttering. Him and him and him. Beautiful and raw and open. Gentle like flowers and strong like wind. Aching and romantic and with a heart the size of the universe itself. Because Steve Harrington is everything—
Or so his nana has said. But Steve doesn’t know. And that’s Eddie’s own secret.
“Okay,” Steve mutters, “make a home with me, Ed.”
🏡—————🏡
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2, 9, 24! Any or all!🌻
Thank you so much for the ask, dear! (Reverie ask game)
2. What's one minor moment your character regrets? A small mistake, but something they "can't erase"?
This is an interesting question because we're only talking about minor mistakes.
In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t change anything, so we can count this as a minor thing, but Bucky regrets telling Gale he lost the old Bucky (chapter 6). He thinks about it often in the first months after the war. He thinks that saying that out loud made it true and that it put the idea in Gale's head even though he might not have thought so otherwise.
Gale regrets that in that moment, he responded with "I may have already lost him. But it feels like I'm losing my best friend now." He regrets it because he thinks this confirmed the mistaken idea to Bucky that the new him is not as good for Gale as the old him was.
They both have bigger regrets than these.
9. Is there anything that scares the main characters about their friendship/relationship?
Gale is scared of the possibility that he’ll be the reason why Bucky gets hurt in any way. That's why his first thought after Algeria was to start working on the barriers between their minds. In the stalag, he’s scared that his failure to re-establish their bond drives Bucky to insanity. Similarly, post-war, he’s scared of being the one who gives them away as a gay couple.
Bucky is sometimes scared that he won't find the right words or do the right thing in pivotal situations. It also scares him how much his love consumes him in his worst moments during his post-war recovery. The coping method he developed in the stalag, which is thinking of Gale as the only reason why it’s worth staying alive, doesn’t go away that easily.
24. Does their view of themselves differ from their partner’s view?
Yes! Gale sees himself as someone who’s unlovable without conditions, and he thinks everyone wants something from him. Combined with how long it took Bucky to stop denying his feelings, it’s hard for him to believe that Bucky loves him. As we see in the fic, he comes to finally believe it at one of his lowest points in the stalag. But it's one thing to believe and another to understand what that means for himself and to live with it. It's going to take years before his view of himself starts aligning with the person Bucky sees, someone who has been deeply hurt but who’s precious and deserving of unconditional love.
Bucky's view of himself used to be close to Gale's view of him before the war, but loss and captivity damaged Bucky's self-esteem and confidence. He feels like he’s useless and he can only focus on his failures. He’s more prone to bad moods and has a mean streak that doesn’t align with Gale's view of him as a warm and loving person. He thinks he’s not worthy of Gale's love and that he made too many mistakes in his life. To recover from this takes years of steady reassurance. 💔
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i was wondering if you could do Duece, Leona, Ruggie, Azul, Jamil x Christian S/O headcanons? like reader used to be a preacher back at their world, and still kinda preaches in twst (i think rollo believes in God?) like they do all the things Christians should do but still kinda chaotic? their very respectfull and kind yk? sorry for making this a bit long and confusing lol
twst's relationship with religion is so vague and complicated and yet. I cannot imagine rollo as anything BUT catholic. look at that guy. so I believe there's some kind of similar belief systems happening there
summary: religious reader
type of post: headcanons
characters: deuce, leona, ruggie, azul, jamil
additional info: platonic or romantic, reader is gender neutral, reader yuu, short and not proofread
author's note: writing these on the basis that religion does exist in twisted wonderland and parallels religions of our own. I am catholic and admittedly unfamiliar with preaching to others, I think that's more of a protestant thing, so I kinda just winged that part?
𝐃𝐞𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐝𝐞
if there's anything for him to admire, it's your dedication
I mean, you're sticking to your beliefs and passions in an entirely different universe
with a bunch of strangers, no less!
whether or not some version of your beliefs exist here, you're committed! and quite knowledgeable, too
it's pretty impressive to him
Deuce's family doesn't seem particularly religious, though he probably just enjoys hearing the stories
the narratives of change and redemption catch his eye
𝐑𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐡𝐢
he's big into all those "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" verses
even if he doesn't necessarily believe in all that heaven stuff... it's a little funny
(he might use that one in the future, actually...)
if religion which parallels our own does exist in Twisted Wonderland, I can imagine his granny being religious
she seems like someone who'd cover the walls in symbols and art
maybe (likely) not Christian in origin, but enough for him to recognize that what you're going on about is a similar deal
he's practically used to it already
𝐋𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐚 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫
literally just falls asleep while you're talking
it's not that he doesn't care, it's just that...
wait, no. he doesn't care
sure, he participates in traditions and such with his family, but that's more for looks
Leona doesn't really see the point in blindly following something that hasn't helped him out at all
and hearing about miracles and blessings just annoys him
but, hey! you make for a great sound machine
these are basically all just bedtime stories for him to doze off to, anyway
𝐀𝐳𝐮𝐥 𝐀𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐨
merman religion is... tricky, to me
the existence of Hades in implies (confirms, even, if we take into account Yuu's dreams) the existence of Poseidon
but, like King Triton, these figures aren't necessarily worshipped. they're depicted as monarchs, not gods
but, then again, our knowledge on Coral Sea culture is limited
in any case, Azul might tolerate preaching
he really sees no use for it, and he's a busy man, but he doesn't really mind the company
if anyone, it's Jade who would be really interested in hearing alllll about these human stories
Floyd might tag along, too
and, suddenly, Azul finds himself wedged between the tweel's shoulders on the floor while they eagerly listen to you
...there goes his afternoon
𝐉𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥 𝐕𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐫
to me, Jamil is not religious or superstitious by any means
he doesn't mind listening, but don't expect him to change his mind about any of that
(especially while Kalim is begging for more stories)
though, even he admits that having you around is as refreshing as it is entertaining
you're just always so... hopeful
and it's much different from Kalim's version of optimism (in his eyes, at least) simply because, in this world, you're at the same disadvantage as Jamil is
your autonomy is constantly in question, you're living at the mere goodwill of others...
and yet, you're hopeful!
it's strange, but Jamil can't help but crave that presence in his life
#twst x reader#twisted wonderland x reader#queued#deuce spade x reader#ruggie bucchi x reader#leona kingscholar x reader#azul ashengrotto x reader#jamil viper x reader
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Hello everyone!!! This is the first fic I've ever posted!! I don't know if it's any good, but I had a lot of fun writing it, and it's inspired by real life events too lol.
I had a large battle with a small jumping spider a few nights ago, and I lost, terribly. It did inspire this, so I hope someone will enjoy it as much as I did while writing it. While also completely freaking out about the real life events... Sorry Wars (and Mask), you get to deal with this now 😁
Also, I wanted to thank @crazylittlejester for listening to all my rambles about the spider fight, along with encouraging me to write this fic. Thanks Jes! You're literally the best!!!
Sorry for any mistakes! This was written by me at like 1 am on Saturday, I believe, so yeah... Enjoy!
(clicks post, throws phone, then runs away screaming)
Along Came a Spider
Word count: 1,100
It had been another long, strenuous day out on the battlefield. Link’s body ached and he was so sore, it was hard for him to even make it back to his tent for the night. He was so completely and utterly exhausted.
Link had never been more ready to go to sleep.
He had finally made it back to his tent and he couldn't help but let out a relieved sigh. He walked in to find both his brothers already inside on their cots. Tune was fast asleep and looked like he had been for a while. Mask on the other hand, was wide awake.
“What took you so long?” the boy asked irritatedly. “Everyone else came back hours ago.”
“I got held up to help with battle strategies.” Linked answered quietly, to not wake their other brother.
“Couldn't they have at least let you sleep some first. What person could come up with battle strategies right after they had literally been fighting in one all day?” Mask asked.
“It’s war, Mask,” Link sighed. “We don't have much choice.”
“Well, get some sleep now. You look like you really need it,” the young boy huffed, and without another word, turned away from his brother and closed his eyes.
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Link huffed to himself with a small laugh.
After he finally finished getting ready for bed, he went over to the lamp to turn it out. As soon as his hand was about to make contact with the knob, a strange movement caught his eye. Looking down, Link gave out a loud gasp at what he saw.
A small, brown spider was standing directly on the lamp, just above the knob, and looked to be making a web. Link was at a standstill. He so wanted to go to bed, but there was a literal spider on the lamp! He certainly wasn't going to touch it, that's for sure. Maybe he could just turn off the lamp and leave it there? It should still be there in the morning if it was making a web. He could have Wind deal with it tomorrow.
With that in mind, Link slowly lowered his hand to the knob. As soon as his finger touched the knob, the spider, without a moments hesitation, jumped at his hand.
Link screamed and quickly ran to the opposite side of the tent. The two boys who were once asleep in their cots, were quickly awoken at the sound. Both Tune and Mask quickly grabbed their swords, thinking their older brother was in danger.
“What is it?!” Shouted Tune as he quickly made it to his brother's side, Mask not far behind.
“THERE’S A SPIDER!!!! And it tried to jump on my hand!” Link yelled, and pointed, with a shaky hand, over at the lamp.
“A spider?” Tune asked confusedly, while Mask screamed at the same time, “A SPIDER?!?!”
Mask quickly jumped behind his oldest brother and yelled “KILL IT!!! KILL IT!!!”
“I'M NOT TOUCHING IT!!!” Link yelled back to the boy that was literally hanging off of him.
“You're the oldest!”
“Oldest doesn't mean bravest, Mask!”
Tune shook his head. “Oh my gosh, guys. It's just a spider. It's not going to hurt anyone.”
“Have you seen those things?!” Link shouted at Tune.
Tune sighed and headed over to the lamp, but upon looking at it, he found nothing. “Uh, Link. There is no spider over here.”
“What do you mean there isn't a spider over there? I saw it with my own eyes. It literally jumped at me!” Linked yelled exasperatedly.
“Well, there isn't one now,” Tune said as he looked around the lamp.
“Yes there is,” Linked detached himself from Mask and ran over to his other brother.
He looked around for the spider at a distance, and was shocked when he didn't see it. “Oh no. Nononononon. I can't believe we lost it!”
“Link, calm down!” Tune tried to reassure his brother.
“Don't tell me to calm down. We lost a spider!” was the young man’s frantic reply.
Mask, who was still standing behind Link, stiffened. “Ummm. Link…”
“What?”
“Look at your arm..” Mask answered worriedly.
“What about my arm?” Link said. He quickly looked down, and then he too, stiffened.
A loud scream ripped through his throat when he saw the spider running down his arm.
“GET IT OF!!! GETITOFFGETITOFF!! HELP!!!” Linked screamed.
Tune quickly grabbed his brother, trying to get him to calm down. At the same time, another figure burst through the tent, large sword at the ready.
“What is happening?” Exclaimed Impa as she ran over to the three boys, all while Link was still screaming.
“There’s a spider on Link!” Mask exclaimed.
Impa quickly rushed over and grabbed Links arm, quickly swatting the spider off. “I thought someone was being assassinated!”
“Uhhhh, yeah. Sorry about that,” Link smiled sheepishly as he took many deep breaths to calm himself.
“After everything you've been through, everything you’ve fought, and seen, you were screaming over a tiny spider?” Impa asked incredulously.
“How does me, doing any of that, have to do with my fear of spiders?” Link asked back defensively.
“Yeah,” Mask agreed. “Spiders are a whole different category of scary. Don't judge him.”
Impa shook her head, and then quickly scooped up the spider that was now on the ground, and left the tent. What no one noticed was how hard she was trying to keep from laughing at the situation. That was definitely not what she was expecting when she had heard all the commotion.
Back at the tent, Link finally got to sit down in his cot. Letting out a big sigh, he flopped down on the cot. Right before he fell asleep, he heard giggling coming from a different side of the tent.
“You know,” Mask said through his giggles. “I'm sure the entire camp heard you screaming over a tiny spider.”
Link groaned. He did not need to think about that. “If I rember correctly, you were also screaming over said tiny spider.”
“Yeah,” Tune agreed. “You guys also almost succeeded in giving Impa a heart attack.”
“Poor Impa,” Mask said. “She doesn't deserve that. Imagine if Impa died because of us and a tiny spider.”
“Well, no one died from any tiny spiders tonight, so we can thank Hylia for that,” Link joked. “Also, what happened in this tent, stays in the tent. Got it?”
“Yes sir!” Tune saluted.
“Goodnight guys,” Link said.
“Goodnight,” Mask replied.
“Don't let the spiders crawl in your bed tonight,” Tune chuckled mischievously.
“TUNE!!! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?!?”
#linked universe warriors#lu warriors#lu mask#lu tune#tw spiders#I ACTUALLY POSTED A FIC!!!#I'M SO PRIUD OF MYSELF!!!#i'm also so terrified though
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MY CHILDHOOD DRAGS BEHIND ME LIKE A DEAD BODY.
— a study in serena & olivia benson.
bell hooks, communion: the female search for love / law & order: svu, slaves / joe bousquet / law & order: svu, abuse / mitski, cop car / law & order: svu, bad blood / anne carson, glass, irony & god, ‘the glass essay’ / law & order: svu, intoxicated / gregory orr, the caged owl; “some notes on shadows” / law and order: svu, hammered / denise levertov, life in the forest; “soul-cake” / law and order: svu, payback / lidia yuknavitch, the chronology of water / law and order: svu, taken / gillian flynn, sharp objects / law and order: svu, bad blood / bethany webster, mother wound healing: why it’s crucial for women.
#svuedit#olivia benson#serena benson#tvedit#law and order svu#svu#web weaving#multi#txt*#mygifs#believe it or not there was more but. the post is already too long.#fav*
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I understand why they didn't introduce Michael in the past but I think we needed more people suspecting MC was Not From Here™, they should have played More with the idea that anybody could unmask MC/Solomon true motives and Michael already knew, It would have been better for him taunting MC with the idea of telling the truth to everyones else unless they stop making pacts with the brothers (Bcuz y'know, thats what Nightbringer wants, Right? And whatever he wants must be... Not good?)
In earlier seasons the tease the idea of two Rings of Light existing in the same timeline, can you imagine the interactions?
Michael: Wow MC! that's a pretty ring you have there!
MC: ... Yeah...
Michael: It looks identical to the one I have here, see? *Flashes His own Ring of Light to MC*
MC: Ah... *Gulp*
#obey me#obey me nightbringer#see I don't like how everyone believes that MC is just a normal human from the human world and nobody questions this#Like I know Barbatos has his moments when he's like 'I know what you are ;) '#but It's not like he's did give you away to Diavolo or anything. so it feels a bit pointless#I wish they gave more tension with this Idea... like they could catch you if you messed up too much with the timeline#like I want people breathing down my neck... Barbatos. Michael. Nightbringer IDC I just want the tension#this post was in my drafts for a long time for like a theory post but like... we're already back in the present... it's pointless now#feel like if they wanted to do time travel fuckery they should have gone all the way. go crazy idc...#we should have seen two solomons. maybe that'll fix me
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watched the musical demon show (don't wanna name it so this post isn't in the tags) at the behest of an IRL friend and i can already tell this is going to be a piece of media where i absolutely cannot stop thinking about it, not because i really love the show as-is, but because it has so many individual components i really like and find incredibly fun or compelling, and i'm so frustrated that it doesn't come together for me
i think the main thing i can say about it as a show, setting aside some of the insensitive choices that were made that i really don't feel qualified to tackle or talk about, is that the entire thing sort of gives off this vibe of someone really excited to show you every single oc they made in high school and college and i very genuinely mean that in both the best and worst ways possible
there are some good hooks for season two though so i will absolutely give them that
#the vibe is just like... they are just soooo excited to get all their ideas out that it becomes... messy and badly paced#like there are so many moments that are cool or fun or emotional in a vaccuum but they don't connect fully y'know#because this arc or character was JUST introduced so there isn't proper build up. everything moves too quick#and it's frustrating because you can TELL that the people making this show love their ideas and characters#and i more than get thta! i am also someone with a lotta ocs i love to blab about#but i think they have been working with them so long that they#a. assume we are already just as attached to them as they are without always doing that work#b. assume we've seen all the supplemental material which. i have not#and i don't think that a professional show is the type of thing where there should be a barrier of entry that involves like#podcasts and comics and twitter threads and IC instagram posts about characters to do that emotional/lore legwork y'know#i love lore and supplemental stuff obviously but this should still be like#a satisfying experience for me a person who saw the pilot however many years ago and then has not interacted with the show or fandom since#idk man stuff felt rushed and messy and i wish i liked it more#it needed more slow moments i think. the two scenes where the group all drinks together (minus one awful joke in the bar scene) are like#the best in the show to me becase i actually believe these guys are FRIENDS. i wanna see them hang out more!#i wanna see them actually really grow to like each other organically!!! i wanna see them build connections and grow better slowly!!!#songs absolutely slap though. soundtrack is probably gonna be in my spotify unwrapped 2024#i love me a musical and that inspiration is on its sleeve which i love#also imo the humor isn't great usually. it's very juvenile imo and sometime that works but it often doesn't#(for me at least humor is obviously SUPER subjective)#also tonally they have this 'have your cake and eat it too' issue which bugs me. it's exemplified by the v's (one in particular)#actually i could go on a whole rant about the v's if anyone is interested because god i have some Thoughts#and i think my issues with the v's (namely one v) encapsulates many issues i have with the show#despite all this rambling i actually did enjoy a lot of my time with it. i just don't think it was well-written if that makes sense
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heyo this is your resident rambler bringing you updates from sapphic filipino twitter: darlentina has been featured on the "for sapphics" twitter account twice and both posts are racking up a lot of views and likes. it's been a week filled with a rollercoaster of darlentina content and we're already breaching the international sapphic stage that is the "for sapphics" twitter account. even more clips and shitpost edits outside of that are amassing hundreds of thousands of views. everyone, this is our pinoy queerbaiting era ala supercorp except that through the power of sheer gay spite, we are very rapidly pushing the production crew to a corner in the hopes that international queer pressure will make them drop the dude cop love interest in favor of what could be one of the most revolutionary twists in philippine mainstream media: making darna and valentina, canonical archenemies, the main romantic pairing and partners in crime in fighting against very thinly-veiled allegories to philippine political corruption
#i am all in for this truth be told#like WE ARE MOST PROBABLY HEAVILY QUEERBAITED NOW BUUUUT#tv shows in the ph have changed the endings and the endgame parings before based on what the fans want#so with all of twitter pushing the production team to a corner with international queer fanfare and exposure#alongside the actresses and writers themselves liking and engaging with the darlentina tweets#i believe that there could potentially be a chance that this might actually happen#i mean THEY ALREADY ARE HEAVILY CRITIQUING THE GOVERNMENT AND POLICE FORCE HERE#SO WHAT'S ONE MORE CONTROVERSIAL THING RIGHT? AND IT'S ACTUALLY A GOOD AND REVOLUTIONARY CONTROVERSIAL THING! so pretty please#also in the long run it really wouldn't do well to pursue the love triangle with the cop#because...copaganda...and given how shitty the police force is here...and given that regina (valentina's civillian self) points that out..#yeaaaaaaaa i hope they pull a korrasami#like i'm still being very wary of being queerbaited here because This Is The Philippines And We Don't Get Mainstream Queer Romances#BUT I'M HOPING. ALSO THE PRODUCTION CREW POSTED THEIR OWN CLIPS AND USED THE DARLENTINA SHIP NAME TOO. SO. PRETTY PLEASE.#darna#darna 2022#darlentina#jane de leon#narda custodio#janella salvador#regina vanguardia#abscbn#philippines
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Hm ok what's your favorite or a really cool worlbuilding thing you've done? For any fandom or original or even an unimplemented idea
Hmm well at least in the past decade, my big worldbuilding projects have mostly come down to three-ish stories: Other Side of the Gun, Adventures of Gæilo and Ethon, and Just Desserts
OSG was an Invader ZiM fancomic concept I started around 2013 to justify every single Irken headcanon I ever came up with lol - I never finished it, or even really started it, but I put a lot of time and energy into its roughs back in the day :)
^A stick figure recap of Ch. 1, inspired by - what else - the Vargas stick figure recaps lol
One that you can see over here is all the work I did for my DnD campaign, AGE! (Though its sideblog hasn't been updated in a while haha - the AGE tag over here works just as well) I basically homebrewed a pantheon and had an absolute blast designing all the gods and their forms before they became gods and even things like architectural differences in their churches and the BBEG and his motivations and just ah <3 Such a fun project :D
It also laid the groundwork for things like Pokemon Homestyle, specifically all my papercrafts! You can really see how I leveled up haha
And my latest has been Just Desserts! Even with less time under its belt, it's still pretty expansive, as evidenced by my icon and theme and the backlog lol, and it's the one I have the most AUs of! (Though OSG does come close actually haha) There are still some thorny details I'm trying to iron out, especially to do with the magic system, but all the characters and creatures and the fact that I made my own fighting minigame, ah, pleased! I've never been so happy with a sona before Charm! ♥ From the very beginning it's been so fun to work on and I still want to improve!
#Long post#There have been others of course - things like BunBonBop and TMatM and quite a handful of original species lol#I was also involved in an IZRP that got very in depth which is where Bar comes from actually!#As well as my brief stint into being a TGWDLM askblog lol soz to everyone over there ouq#And little stories like Karera no Kotogara and Yanderapy but those mostly set in cartoon-reality y'know?#No magic or sci fi there haha#Man looking back through the OSG stuff kinda makes me wanna unstore Ch. 0 - I've grown a lot since then!#To the point where it almost doesn't feel ''mine'' anymore haha - it has been almost ten years! Maybe to celebrate its anniversary :)#Also yeah if you look hard enough I've been in love with and inspired by Vargas for as long as I've known about it haha#AGE was so much fun <3 I would like to get back to it someday but picking back up after so long is hard!#I still hold all of them fondly of course ♥ Mar especially since they were the tipping point for me loving spiders :D#It's hard to believe Just Desserts is already four years deep! It still feels so new to me haha#I know I big up Charm and her design a lot lol but for me it really is exactly what I want <3 It's my perfect :)#I still really want to get into 3D modeling to make her as I originally envisioned her!#If I had the funds I'd absolutely commission someone but tbh I don't know many names on that side of art haha#I've also heard about people who give advice/brainstorming sessions for magic systems and I've been intrigued ever since :0#I'd love to sit down with someone and hash out Exactly how their magic works! It feels like it just needs a few more pushes!#Then again that's what I said about the TVAU outfits too haha ♪ Maybe it would all fall into place!#To the base question tho: I never know how to qualify ''implemented'' - does just putting it out there as a concept count?#Writing a story? Making a comic? A series? Polished? Completed?? Where's the line haha#I'm always so full of ideas but focusing on anything long enough to make it ''pretty'' is so hard for me still#I just keep creating never stopping haha
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Been poking around a WIP I said I wouldn’t write yet and using the characters within for a prompt list. And I said I’d try to share more excerpts after that poll, so!! Have a lil snip from a short that shows just how friggin weak I am oopsies
“Ki— Princess Kiara!”
The familiar cry made me turn, blinking owlishly. I saw Lethen standing on the path below, still in his training armor. He must have come to find me right away after being released for the day.
“Lethen!” I cheered, swinging my scarf like a trophy. “How did you know I was out here? You’re just in time! I’ve just staged the daring rescue of a particularly slippery article of fine silk.”
He didn’t look as amused by the joke as I’d hoped. Just a little panicked.
He was such a worrywart.
#writing#rai writes#Sea/Queen WIP#The Silent One#title is up in the air because I REFUSE to give it anything it doesn't thrust into my hands right now#if I dont engage with it long enough itll get bored and let me go back to Eye in peace#(......in theory)#((yeah I don't believe me either))#(((the plan is still to do more Eye for Camp NaNo tho so this young monarch better CHILL)))#Im already in love with this WIP tho#who doesn't love queens and sea monsters and queens potentially being in love with sea monsters...and also their bodyguards....#sometimes you throw your ruling monarch into the sea to be claimed by the waves. and the waves.....claim her >.>#I'll probably post the entire short at some point too hehehehe
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okay im enjoying getting these dialogues i previously missed so much. literally astarion when you ask what? will you miss me: "HA!
why not!!!"
#yea dont look at me i started a new character and felt like shit going through all the stuff that i just walked past on my beloved character#so i just made my og character the exact same again and im doing the exact same route with him again VDKFJDJDJDKF#but now im gonna actually do all the stuff in the game bc before i didnt understand the game so i missed so much#i was gonna explain everything i felt but it got way too long so ill just say this instead:#im already getting so much fuller of an experience and i couldnt be happier#and i wanna play my new character (who i like) when i dont feel misersble doing it#im not someone whos precious abt their games like when its over thats it thats the canon story so this way works for me#i build it meticulously until im satisfied!#im still gonna make the same decisions. hes still gonna be the same deceitful little rat with delusions of grandeur#but now i just play out all the massive amounts of stuff i didnt know existed bc i didnt understand how to navigate the game#its gonna be tough to eat the tadpoles again and be cool to the dream visitor bc i HATE the emperor hdjdjdjf#but like i said first time around its absolutely what he would do bc hes convinced he can control it#to get back to the post itself LMAO im obv so happy to get all the astari0n dialogue i missed bc just with this one dialogue i missed#(bc i didnt know how to long rest well) im getting a much more fleshed out picture of his manipulation and its so great#im on tactician now so im hoping it will force me to long rest more so i miss less camp dialogue#anyway can you believe my previous attempt at these tags was even longer? lmao bye im off to enjoy the game however i please!
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I’ve still only recevied one comment on my new fic................. even after I talked about it Heaps beforehand (not to like promote it or whatever I was just saying what was on my mind but. heaps of mutuals knew I was working on it and that it was coming hah.)
I am. really glad that I’m not in a more depressive mood right now or I’d be handling this a lot worse lmaooooo
#tbh it's not even just. working hard on something and not getting a response.#I do that heaps!!!!#i mean it weighed on me caring abt this one ship more than anyone else for so long#but that's not a big deal right now#it just. fucks with me A Lot#when I intellectually believe that a fic will do a certain amount of well#and then it just. doesn't. at all.#like how come I still keep getting this wrong#ugh I am OVERREACTING the comments might still be coming!!!!!#it's a long and heavy fic!!!!!!!!!!!!!#remember that one time I wrote a gen christmas fic and posted it like. dec 24th.a#and then wa sooooo upset that it took weeks for a comment lmfaooo#of course!!! everyone was busy!!!!!#why did I post it then???????#but in the time since then Ive gotten some really nice comments!!! its been a well appreciated fic!#idk id just like this one to be too because I thought it would and I trust my judgement little enough already lmaooo
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the jailbird (2)
prisoner!simon 'ghost' riley
part 1 | original text post
cw: (former) prisoner!simon, civilian!reader, romance & fluff, smut, size kink, sane and consensual, roleplay, rough sex, spanking, bondage & gags, tattoo kink, dom!simon, sub!reader
bunny says: love the fic? leave a comment! really love the fic? suggest your own! reblogs are encouraged!
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living with an ex-convict was interesting. he still woke up at the crack of dawn, and as a result you were up too. he didn't know where anything was in your apartment, he hated that he had to wake you up but he didn't know where the spoons were.
you were happy to help him and spend some extra time together before you went to work. the more you were around him, the more you realized how big he was compared to you.
even his hands were much larger than yours. he loved to wrap you up in his arms and hold you while you were making yourself some breakfast. those strong tattooed arms around your middle as you flipped eggs.
sometimes he'd bury his face in your neck and visibly relaxed. he was still dealing with his fair share of trauma from the previous events of his life. and while it often left him stressed, he found comfort in you.
"you're my anchor, love." he said within the first week of his return to society.
you simply smiled and tried not to blush too hard as you said, "well, si. i'll happily be your anchor, as long as your mine."
"you're anchor, your rock, your foot solider, your lover." he said as he kept his gaze on you. since he had been living with you, you found his expression had softened a little. he could relax here.
"my husband." you reached out for him. he took your hand and kissed the top of it before he held it for a moment then returned it to you.
simon had a long road ahead of him, being on the inside for so long was going to cause some problems. but, he knew even if he had nothing. he had you.
it was almost five months into living together and he managed to get an interview working in small parts manufacturing. while it was tedious, they didn't need to look at his criminal record. which greatly excited him.
when he came home from the interview, he told you that it went well. that they seemed to like his dedication and were impressed when he mentioned his time in the military. he said, "got the whole 'thank you for your service'." as he held you and kissed you deeply.
it felt like your little lives were coming together. but the one thing you hated to admit to yourself. you sort of had a dark side, it wasn't anything too aggressive or 'evil'. you thought that simon was the perfect boyfriend, he'd never hurt a hair on your head.
but the idea of being with a criminal sort of had a sexy ring to it. to be with the bad boy. you almost felt embarrassed to admit it when he'd come home with flowers for you, or when he smiled at you. or when he held your hand when you went out. with you he got to be a person with love.
deep down you wanted to know the depths of your boyfriend. you wanted to know what a man like him, with his skill set, was capable of. you wanted it to burn, ache and hurt.
it took a lot of courage, you communicated with your boyfriend about a little make believe. while hesitant at first, he slowly started to warm up to the idea. you knew he was open to it when he came home from one, actually the first day at his job, with a bundle of bondage rope.
"the blue looks good on you." he remarked as he finished tying you up on the bed. he had your arms behind your back with you on your side and one leg tied to the bed post.
you looked at him, those eyes of yours were so alluring. you tried to move your leg but was stuck to the bed. he smiled down at you and tapped the ball gag in your mouth.
"but it doesn't matter what you want. right?' he asked, "i've searched a long time for you. you're not an easy woman to catch." he got between your legs, and hiked one leg over his shoulder as he started to aggressively lick your cunt. it was already dripping from the act of him tying you up.
there was no escape for you, even if you somehow got out of the bondage. he was almost twice the size of you and could do some damage if he wanted to.
you squirmed and whimpered around the ball gag as he took long, hard licks against your clit. he wanted to make sure his girl was wet enough for his large cock.
"maybe i should breed ya. bring you back to the boys all fat with my brats.' he purred, "i don't think they can throw ya in the can if you're pregnant. but who knows, you got pregnant by a thief." he continued to lick your sweet cunt. he was in heaven.
he really was so much bigger than you. he overpowered you, he could keep you down and fuck you until he had his fill, and there was nothing you could do about it. you were bound and gagged like a good girl.
he kept at it, he even teased your hole with his thick fingers until you were squirming more with your moans getting louder. he slapped your ass and gave you a stern look over your pussy. he gripped your leg over his shoulder. "shut up." he growled, "i don't need ya causin' a scene. i'd hate to go back to prison because you can't keep your trap shut up."
you hole clenched and he chuckled. he patted where he smacked and grabbed at the flesh before he went back to his feast between your legs. it didn't take long before the slick between your thighs got all over his face.
he pulled away and sat up on his knees. he stared down at you with your thigh wrapped around his waist. he was going to fuck you at a weird angle, but it was the only way he could keep his little prize tied up. he wiped is face, "you are the best thing i've caught." he said, "stolen a lotta loose change, but they're nothin' to the sweet taste of your cunt." he got his cock out his sweatpants and started to rub it against your slick pussy. he let out a harsh sigh from the sensation, "they should be keepin' ya behind the vault door." the tip slipped in for a moment and you clenched around it.
you whimpered and tried to pushed yourself down on his cock, but it was hard to do that when you were so tied up, he pushed the hair out of your eyes, your leftover wetness got on your cheek from his movements.
"but, you need to know." he said, "you're mine to do whatever to. your mommy and daddy aren't gonna save ya. you fell in love with a bad man and now you're lettin' him fuck your cunt raw. what's gonna happen at christmas when you're all swollen with my brats. riley boys are lil hell raisers." he went back to rubbing his cock up against your slit, "you'll be mine forever. my little prize. i should've taken ya a long time ago. just snatched ya up off the train. keep ya to myself." his tongue was getting loose from the buzz of pleasure in his brain.
you whimpered around the gag and almost cried out when he slipped his large cock into you easily. you felt it in your guts and his pace was much more brutal than the other times you've made love. that was the difference, you made love before. this was dirty, primal sex between a criminal and his captive.
the sounds of sex filled the air, paired with simon's heavy breathing. his heart was thumping steadily as he pushed his cock as deep as it would go. he loomed over you as he drilled himself into you. you were a comfortably tight fit around his cock.
you dug your nails into your palms from the immense pleasure and yelped when he slapped your ass. you whimpered when he leaned further into you to get closer into your personal space. his pace was brutal and it excited you.
"i'm a bad man." he said lowly, his voice close to your ear, "my worst crime is tainting such a precious angel." he held onto your calf as he bent your hips the closer he got. his voice was hot, "fill ya right up, make sure no other man has a chance to get ya knocked up." his tattooed hand went to your stomach which he gave a small rub, "my girl carryin' my boys."
your eyes almost rolled back from the heat in your body. you were almost drooling around the rubber gag in your mouth. it was dirty, it was filth. if anyone saw the state you were in, they would be shocked!
your head felt full of lust, you felt your lover so close to him. you knew despite the roughness and the harsh words, the entire scenario was safe. you knew you could get out of this if you needed to. but it wasn't getting to be too much, it was just enough.
the wetness between your legs and the flips in your stomach only excited you. to have such a large man be so domineering. it made you feel small in a good way. it was almost like being bound made you feel protected.
that you could lay yourself over to him and he'd cherish you. even if you were his little 'prize' for the evening. the hottest part was the pace at which his cock was battering your womb.
you whimpered against your gag and felt the heat rush through you. you held onto your palms as best as you could with your arms bound. the entire situation left you spinning, there was no wonder that orgasm crept up on you so easily.
with a loud moan around your gag, you climaxed around his cock. the tightness of your cunt mid-orgasm milked his cock till he was seeing stars. he came inside of you, his seed hit against the back of your womb.
the feeling of being able to do so left him a little slack-jawed. but he kept it together, even if his cheeks were flushed. when he finished, he slowly pulled out and started to untie you. his hands were shaky from the after effects of his orgasm.
he took the gag out of your mouth and pulled you in for a kiss when he finished untying you. he fell into bed with you and laid on top of the covers with you. he held you gently and kissed your face. he gave you gentle praise as he kept you in his arms.
when he looked at you, all was right in the world. you held onto him and pressed kisses against his face. after care consisted of tea and a small snack followed by a shower together, where he washed every part of you.
even though you were capable of doing it yourself, you still appreciated how detail orientated he was in the manner of getting you clean. little did you know that biology was working its magic and simon's seed found home in your cervix.
you better hope that the line about the riley boys being hellions was untrue or you'd have your hands full. it didn't help that when simon's hand grazed your stomach as he washed you that you blushed and tucked yourself closer to him.
mama riley did have a ring to it.
#jailhouse rock au#bunny writes#call of duty#reader insert#call of duty modern warfare#call of duty smut#simon ghost riley#ghost call of duty#call of duty x reader#simon ghost riley fanfiction#simon ghost#simon ghost riley smut#simon ghost smut#simon ghost x reader#simon ghost x you#prison au#call of duty fanfic
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My experience with Luke (Punz)
CW: toxic relationship, racism, dubious consent
I know in the past i said that i would no longer speak about him publicly, and when talking about my experiences with abuse and emotional mistreatment i begged to keep it anonymous but after reflecting on this for a week and seeing so many incredibly smart and strong women tell their stories. they have given me the strength to say his name.
this is really scary to talk about because of the copious levels of harassment i have received from his fans in the past so if this spreads or gets out of hand i will simply log off.
If you read my last post, i nicknamed him 1.
So aside from everything i said there, there were a lot of things i didn’t include because they would’ve made it obvious that it was him and it could potentially backfire on me so, i’m very afraid to post this. but i’m going to do it scared anyway, because it’s not fair that he gets to just go and live his life worry-free as if he didn’t practically ruin mine.
Because I already made a very lengthy post about him, i won’t include everything i said last time to avoid being redundant but if i repeat myself, please bear with me.
In our year long relationship i had to endure emotional neglect, gaslighting, verbal abuse, one instance where there was dubious consent, and much more.
Starting off at the beginning of our relationship, that’s when i was getting copious amounts of hate and harassment from his fan base (warranted or not), he decided that our relationship must be kept private. he said it was to “protect” me from his fanbase when in reality it was to protect himself. it was so he wouldn’t get all the backlash i was getting. this is funny because one of the things i got called out for was saying the B slur (derogatory term used against mexicans/latinos). I won’t get into the nuances of if i could say it or not as a puertorican because that’s discourse that does not pertain to this specific situation. But you know who definitely can’t say it? A white boy from Massachusetts. When i was getting cancelled for this and getting thousands of tweets calling me names, he decided that was the perfect time to say “I mean you are a b***** aren’t you? my little b*****.” Now, he said this completely unprompted. I was in the process of writing my apology and he just said that. I tell you this because i immediately shut him down and told him that there was no universe in which it was okay for him to say that word and especially not one where he could just call me that. While i was reprimanding him, he was smiling and laughing. he apparently found it amusing to call me a slur. regardless, he gave me a half-assed apology and said he wouldn’t do it again. and he didn’t. but this wasn’t the only time he was weirdly racist to me. this was my first time being in an interracial relationship so i was led to believe that this was normal by all the white people around me at the time. But, sometimes my spanish accent would come out and he would make fun of me and the way i pronounced some words. He also refused to visit me in Puerto Rico when i lived there or come meet my family when i really wanted him to because he “didn’t like the heat” or “it’s dangerous there isn’t it?”. Once, while we were watching season 2 of Bridgerton, he implied that the Sharma sisters were “too dark” for him to be attracted to them. This hurt me because they are brown skinned girls. I am a brown skinned girl. Then this, combined with the fact that he told me once he wasn’t attracted to me made me feel like my skin color was unattractive. These are only a few examples i can think of at the moment, but i’m sure there were more. Our relationship ended in 2022 so some of my memory is a bit hazy. But, I do remember feeling inferior to him throughout the relationship because he was white and I was not. I chalk that up to all the micro aggressions i had to deal with because i had never felt that way around white people before.
Another thing i had to endure was him constantly making me feel like he was embarrassed to be with me. Because i was cancelled, he didn’t want to associate with me too much. He did defend me on multiple occasions, I’ll give him that. But, he only did it because his name was getting dragged in the mud along with mine. Excusing my actions made him look better for being around me. In reality he didn’t really care. Because he was such a big content creator and someone i looked up to professionally, I took his advice as law. He told me to tone down my personality, to keep a low profile, to change things about myself to be more palatable to his audience. The same audience that spoke about me like “The pussy can’t be that good punz please stop defending her”. So i changed a lot of things about myself and my content to better suit what his audience liked. He made me feel like if his audience liked me, he would be public about our relationship and stop hiding it. He told me the reason why he wanted to keep our relationship a secret was because he didn’t want to get hate for it. But this wasn’t true. On my 20th birthday he went to Las Vegas for a twitch rivals event. That night i asked to facetime him to say goodnight and he refused because he was at a hotel room with his friends and he didn’t want them to know that we were together. It was as if my mere presence or the utterance of my name was a source of embarrassment for him. And he didn’t let me forget it. It wasn’t just a public thing at that point. He didn’t want people to know we were together, period. This was devastating to me because I would talk to all my friends about him. I was so proud to be with him and I was just one more problem to him. He made me feel so small and insignificant just because his fans didn’t like me.
He would berate me a lot. Not just due to getting heat online, although he did do that a lot. But in general whenever we would get into an argument or a disagreement he would always call me names like annoying or weird or stupid. He would raise his voice at me if i did something he didn’t like and call me an idiot. And that really hurt, i felt like i couldn’t bring up anything or do anything without getting insulted. If I hadn’t seen him in a few days because he was too busy streaming and i asked to hang out he would call me needy, clingy, and annoying. Granted, he might not have been wrong, but that is not something you say to someone you claim to love. He also insulted me when i was in depressive episodes. I have BPD and at the time i was not being treated properly for it. So, I was all over the place emotionally and he was what i clung to for validation, reassurance, and love. I talked to him when we first started dating about my disorder and told him that if it seemed like something he couldn’t handle that he could opt out of the relationship. I guess he didn’t think it was that bad or something idk because whenever i had really bad depressive episodes, he would tell me I was too sad to hang out with. He said that my sadness was a burden to him. Which would be fair. But, once my mother had a conversation with him about me. She told him that i am someone who needs a lot of love and caring. She said that if he wasn’t willing to put in that kind of effort into a relationship to just leave me alone. He reassured her that he would be there for me no matter what. He told my mother that he would protect me and my heart. He did not. He took all the warnings I gave him and ignored them and then made me feel like I was the problem. And even worse, he would say that i was pretending to be sad to get his attention when he would neglect for days at a time.
There were also some smaller things like the fact that he made me feel really guilty whenever he would spend money on me. Also, he would be really mean about my eating habits. For context, i used to suffer from an eating disorder. I was anorexic and had a really unhealthy relationship with food during high school and my first year of uni. This relationship began when i was recovering from my ED. For me, eating was really hard. So i had certain comfort foods that, while sometimes unhealthy, at least it was something to eat when i didn’t feel like eating anything. He knew this. Yet, whenever i would crave some of these foods he would call me fat. Constantly told me I’d gain weight from eating all that junk food. Saying that to someone with an eating disorder is crazy. Other smaller things were that whenever I would post tiktoks where i was lip syncing or just looking good he would yell at me and say i was looking for attention. Same with Instagram or Twitter whenever i would post photos where I looked hot. He never planned out a single date for us. I would beg him to get me flowers and he did maybe once but i’ll get into that in a bit. He would make fun of me in front of his friends to make himself look better. He let his friends say really degrading things about me in his presence. For example, once when i was showering, i overheard him on a discord call with George and Sapnap and i heard George say “if you don’t go in the shower and have sex with Andi, i will”. Once, when i was really struggling with my legs (for those of you who don’t know, i have arthritis and it’s very painful. at the time i wasn’t diagnosed but i was in a lot of pain) I literally could not walk. I had to beg him to take me to the ER because i didn’t know what was wrong with me. He didn’t want to take me but eventually i convinced him, and while we were there all he did was complain about how long it was taking and that he would have rather been at home streaming. Whenever I would talk about my interests that i was excited about like shows or books he would be incredibly uninterested and say that those things were stupid and he didn’t want to hear about them. I know all of these seem very silly or superficial but cumulatively it was awful.
Now for arguably the most serious thing i’m going to talk about. I want to preface this by saying i am just telling my side of what happened. You can come to your own conclusions about this.
On April 25, 2022 it was our one year anniversary, and i had made a dinner reservation for us. I expected him to plan something throughout the day for us to do. He told me he was going to spend the whole day playing Valorant so I got upset and cancelled the reservation. After a very heated argument, we calmed down and i asked him to come over. He came over about an hour later with flowers and drinks (I was 20 at the time so I couldn’t buy the drinks myself). He brought Smirnoffs and Trulys. For context, I am a lightweight. I always have been. I literally get tipsy on half a cocktail. And that day, I hadn’t eaten anything because i was in distress over our argument. So we get to talking and drinking. I blacked out after my second Smirnoff. Apparently I drank 3 but I genuinely cannot remember anything after finishing the second one. The next morning i woke up naked in my bed. I woke him up and asked him “Luke, why am I naked?” and he said “Because you didn’t want to put your clothes back on.” When I clarified to him that that was not what I meant, he got defensive and said that he didn’t realize how drunk I was. He proceeded to tell me that I initiated sex with him and that i was very enthusiastic about it. He said he didn’t know i could black out on three smirnoffs. He made fun of me for being a lightweight and continued to make light of the situation. Then he mentioned that i fell off the bed at some point in the night and that it was funny how drunk I was. I then questioned him. Because if he thought that me tripping and falling off the bed because i was so drunk was funny, how did he not know that i was too drunk? He responded by saying that i fell off the bed only after we were done. That day I broke up with him. I’m still really confused about what happened that night. I don’t remember anything and all I have to go on is what he said to me. We were in a relationship at the time and he says he didn’t know how drunk I was so I’m not sure what to call what happened. A while after that day, his friend that hmu while we were broken up and I started talking again and i confided in him about that night. He told me to be careful saying things like that because they could get me into trouble. I spoke to some of our other friends about it and they told me it was no big deal and that it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know how drunk I really was. Because I don’t remember, I have been led to believe that this is not a serious matter. You can think what you want, come to whatever conclusions you want. That is just my side of the story.
I want to add that I’m not proud of how I acted after the relationship ended. I felt really angry at all the shit he put me through and I guess a part of me wanted him to hurt even a quarter of how I did. So I started talking to his friend and got involved with him. This backfired on me because his friend ended up really hurting me too so ig i got my karma. But the thing that hurt the most is that because of what I did, some of our friends took his side in the break up. I was told that I did something terrible by getting involved with his friend that he was already insecure about and that he didn’t deserve that. These are the same friends who were witness to the dumpster fire of a relationship we had and all the things he did to me. They turned their backs on me because of this one thing I did. But stood by and watched as he treated me like garbage for over a year.
I will conclude this by saying that while this relationship has been “over and done with” for almost two years now, I carry a lot of trauma from it still. I still talk about him in therapy and have had to put in a lot of work to heal from what he did and i still cannot say that i am okay. I am very blessed to now have a patient and understanding partner who has helped me heal from that trauma and i just want to quickly thank him for that. Nobody deserves to go through what I did. While yes, it was a toxic relationship, and I had a part in that, it does not excuse all the awful things he said and did to me. This is my truth, thank you for taking the time to read it.
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i am totally sleep deprived and with no sleep comes the ability to cry waterfalls so forgive me if it happens but there is just so much to be grateful for.
where would i be without my friends and my family. how do i even begin to thank them for everything they have done for me throughout my lifetime. i feel like im an endless space of love and there is just so so much of it in my heart and i think im going to explode from it. im overflowing with it and there is such little time. what do i do? i need every person i know whenever i spend time with them that it is time well spent and that i love them and that i am cheering them on. truly, i believe this is what we are born for, to love and love and love and love endlessly forever and ever
#personal#aaaaaaaaaaa#i got to see my cousins this past weekend and it wasnt enough#havent seen them in 7 years. seven years!!!#the time is going by so quickly#when will we meet again?#why is there never enough time?#i miss them already#post travel blues i guess#it always ends too quickly and suddenly it's back to reality again#this happened when i went to visit my other cousin last year#i see her more often but i do miss her eternally#and school will be starting back up again soon. i am going to miss my family T_T i dont want to leave#but when i go back i will see my friends so i am looking forward to that#i've missed my friends too#i know i cant have everything but why /not/#anyways this has been the best summer in a very long time#very memorable. i will cherish it#i wouldn't have believed u if u told me i would be this happy again#anyways. the power of love and family and friendship will save the world#give hugs to your loved ones whoever that may be#and give a hug to yourself too. thank you for being here#<3
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