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dailycharacteroption · 1 year

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Fun with Feats 12: Leadership

Today is an interesting entry, as we will be covering a feat that a lot of GMs actually ban in their games, which is fair given how easy it is to use this feat to break the game. I speak of course of Leadership.

Anyone familiar with this feat likely already knows why banning it is so common, but for context, I’ll explain what it is and why it gives many GMs pause.

The leadership feat represents a character whose personal power and gravitas has attracted a number of followers who loyally aid them in various ways. The basic followers are simply background support, but they have one follower called a cohort which acts as another, lower-level adventurer to aid the leader on their adventures. Additionally, the leader gains a leadership score, which as a baseline based on their level and charisma, and is modified by other factors such as having a special power that marks them as a chosen one, having proven themselves honorable, wise, and worthy, and the likes, but also in negative ways such as killing or causing the death of followers, and so on, which determines the number of followers they can recruit and the maximum level a cohort can be (aside from never being more than two levels below your own.

As you can imagine, having a massive amount of NPCs at your beck and call can be a bit game breaking. In theory you are supposed to leave your followers at home while adventuring, but inevitably someone brings them along with them to serve as fodder, or to do game-breaking nonsense like the “Peasant Railgun”. Others build their cohort completely around working in tandem with the leader to the point of being absurdly broken.

Having an extra body with full access to character abilities, unlike companion creatures, puts a lot of strain on the fairness of the action economy, to say nothing of having a horde of such bodies at your command, so it’s no surprise that this feat gets banned a lot as result, either from experienced GMs who have had to deal with someone who tried it before or who have heard the horror stories and banned it immediately.

But does it have to be that way?

First and foremost when considering whether you want a player to take the leadership feat, consider: does the campaign fit having a leadership feat? In a lot of cases, the answer is actually no, since a lot of adventures have you travelling far and wide as adventurers, rarely staying in one place for too long, or travelling to exotic locales that one could not reliably bring followers along with or even regularly return and access them as a resource.

However, in a campaign where, say, one of the characters is an officer in an army, or has a leadership position in a static location that the party returns to often, then perhaps having a loyal group of followers makes sense.

From there, consider if there is a logical in-game reason for the character to have such a following. Are they military or nobility? Perhaps the leader of a following of a religion, or an important member of a thieves’ guild. Regardless, if there isn’t an in-game reason for the character to have such a following, that’s a good enough reason to disallow it.

But let’s say they have a reason to take leadership and do. First off, make sure the player knows that you will not allow them to make their followers do anything that wouldn’t make sense given the context of why they follow in the first place. The staff and guards of your castle have little reason to go on adventures with you, for example, and a mage academy probably will spend most of the time studying and experimenting, but could be convinced to make potions on your behalf (for a modest discount).

Secondly, make sure they know that their cohort should not be built as a way to exploit and destroy the action economy. If you notice game-breaking activity, calmly ask them to revise the character, and if they refuse, consider more firm measures.

(As a general rule, you probably shouldn’t allow multiple characters to take leadership though.)

Most of all, like all feats and features of the game, Leadership is meant to be a way for the character to have fun, to reap the benefits of becoming someone that people look to for guidance and inspiration. With that in mind, make sure that the player in question understands that their fun with this feat should not detract from the fun of other players

Speaking of fun, players might be surprised to learn that the Leadership feat also lets you take intelligent monsters as cohorts! This was a thing back in 3.5 that Pathfinder brought back with the Ultimate Intrigue book! As you might imagine, the monster’s CR plays a hand in what their effective level as a cohort is (adjusted by any disruptive abilities they may have), and like other cohorts, advance by level. Depending on what allies you make in your adventure, you could potentially have all sorts of monstrous allies, though naturally they might turn heads, raise eyebrows, or call stakes and torches down upon them and the leader.

I’d also recommend looking at Ultimate Intrigue for guidelines on what sort of useful roles your followers can have if you’d like them to have more use than just being a number on a sheet.

Ultimate Intrigue also gave us a series of lesser leadership feats that let those interested get a taste of the benefits at lower levels. Most of them grant a minor cohort at a considerably lower level that provides various benefits, such as a Groom taking care of your animal companions, a Light Bearer holding torches and light sources for you, the Page to aid you diplomatically, and the Weapon Bearer to hold and retrieve weapons for you. Additionally, the Recruits feat lets you take multiple minor cohorts which you can take turns taking into the field while the others study and practice in your absence, each one being a student of yours. All of these feats can be exchanged later on for the true leadership feat, one of the existing cohorts graduating up or being replaced once you become a proper leader.

Of course, we couldn’t leave off a discussion about Leadership without Vile Leadership, an alternate version of the feat for villainous characters where evil and cruel acts on your part actually increase your leadership score, as you rule through fear and ruthlessness rather than the respect and admiration of those under you.

All in all, the Leadership feat is not something that should be taken lightly, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be banned from all games assuming that the players can treat the power it grants, and the time of the GM and other players, with the respect they deserve.

#pathfinder #feat #feats #Leadership #Core Rule Book #Ultimate Intrigue

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makingspiritualityreal · 11 months

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Hey there!! I hope your having a good day, I have a question abt having two planets in the same sign but not conjunct in synastry for example my moons the same sign as this guys Venus I was wondering if that would be similar to a conjunct since it’s the same sign.

Conjunctions in Synastry

Yes and No.

No, because degrees and Lunar Mansions matter. If you also do Vedic Astrology and learn about the Nakshatras, you will know about the importance of Lunar Mansions. The closest synastry aspect is when one person's planetary position conjuncts the other person's position in the same sign in the same Nakshatra (some Nakshatras cover 2 zodiac signs, making the conjunction weaker if it's out of sign). My partner's Jupiter is conjunct my North Node in synastry, and even though the planets are 12 degrees apart, because it's the same sign and the same Nakshatra it is one of our strongest synastry aspects.

Yes, because of the natural order of house cusps determined by the Ascendant Sign. So even if the conjunction is far off, his Venus will still fall in the same house as your Moon, effectively influencing and stimulating this house for you whenever you're around him. Think of it as Planets being living entities still sharing the same house with someone, even if you live on different floors. In comparison, a close conjunction is more like sharing a bed with someone, yet still in either scenario you live together.

Depending on your Rising Signs as synastry partners, that can have varying results. If your Natal planet is already in a difficult house (6, 8, 12 especially), since birth you develop a coping mechanism using your Natal Planet to deal with that house. For example, I use solitude and spiritual practice, learning and teaching to cope with my South Node and Jupiter activating 12th and 8th houses. Whenever I had someone with a close conjunction sitting on any of these placements, initially it felt like a disturbance of the natural way I deal with these energies. However, that kind of synastry can actually be motivating. Was the way you were coping healthy to begin with? In Synastry, the energy of a person mastering their own chart better "wins" aka it should be preserved, and not allowed to be exposed at a detriment of the other party struggling to master their chart more. It all depends on how you respond to the challenge. I can tell you that I owe it to both my previous and current relationship that I dared to come out with my spiritual and astrology skills more, since my partners "awakened" my south node and Jupiter through our synastry even when we were still just friends. Naturally, the knowledge and the skill is mine, and the decision and willpower to take up the challenge and take a risk to go against my past habits is mine, my actions are mine, but this was the Universe "poking me" out of my survivalist mentality with my 2nd house North Node.

The most difficult synastry aspect is when you don't have any natal planets in Dushtana houses and you meet someone whose planets fall in these houses for you. That is basically you being forced to take on someone else's negative energy. It's the definition of you feeling like "it's not your problem"...because quite literally it isn't, karmically. You have different challenges in this lifetime, or you would have had this aspect, natally.

Maybe that's harsh of me, but my piece of advice is to avoid people who have malefic planets hitting in your houses 6, 8, 12 relative to your ascendant, IF you don't have anything there natally. That is going to differ based on your Rising. For me as a Libra Lagna (sidereal) it's anyone with Pisces placements, because I have none there myself. My ex had 2 malefics, and my parent their Sun sitting there and OH BOY. It was heavy down to ruining my physical health. I can't blame them for having that in their chart, because for them this is the karma they deal with in this lifetime, so it's not even their fault, but it's just going to drag your life down...when you already have your own problems and your own karma that's heavy enough, and other karmic relationships that you're gonna meet on your way. Run as fast as you can, and remember it's all relative, and blaming the other person or trying to get them to change who they are in your perception won't help. Someone with a different Ascendant may view them in a completely different light and feel good in their presence. They're just not for you...unless you like to suffer extra lol.

#astrology #astrology asks #astrology synastry #astro notes #astro observations

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anthonybialy · 8 months

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Keeping Stefon Diggs Happy a Mutual Deal for Buffalo Bills

Stefon Diggs is acting just fine. That differs from acting like a diva, which ironically involves little action at all. A summer fielding footballs in suburban Rochester is a promising sign for him doing the same in suburban Buffalo. Still, we ponder if precedent means the latest rumors about his unhappiness with his employer are true even if it means believing Stephen A. Smith.

Trying to get Diggs to avoid causing commotions is more challenging than getting him to get first downs, which is way better than the other way around. Yet it would be nice to not have to fret that asking him to settle down might prompt stirring up.

Not everyone honking is an annoying driver even if the sound remains unpleasant. A left-lane dawdler as slow as Dan Marino deserves the alert. Someone having a fit may have a point. Ken Dorsey doing his job correctly would alleviate much ensuing stress. His refusal to let the best quarterback play more catch with the best receiver is akin to visiting Dinosaur Bar-B-Que and asking about vegan options. Enjoy your beans unless there’s like bacon fat in them.

You may have heard the Bills also extended their head coach. He’s best known as the guy with the defensive background. A team that tries to outpace foes is sticking with a supervisor whose focus is achieving the opposite. We hope Diggs remains happy just like we wish to never rue that he played under an erstwhile defensive coordinator holding that de facto job now.

Every receiver wants the ball every play. In Diggs’s case, he may be right. The best option on the team and perhaps in the league is the sort of player who you throw to frequently even though opponents know it’s happening. Dare them to stop him.

There are only so many chances. That’s even more so in football. Diggs mans an odd position where getting the ball 10 times during one game could be the sort of result that gets cherished in fans’ memories forever. This is the same sport where a defender who averages a single sack per game may enjoy Hall of Fame enshrinement. Succeeding based on a quite limited quantity of opportunities makes the game more dramatic, which suits certain personality types.

Diggs has looked just fine when he’s shown up to practice. Since training camp commenced, he hasn’t refused to compete like Richie Tenenbaum. Healthy attitude and routes are hopefully a precursor to the same when they keep score.

Learning just how to get touchdowns is the best use of August. He may already know, but reviewing steps can’t hurt. Classical music legend Pablo Casals practiced the cello for five hours per day while he was 80 because he thought he was getting better. Does the collective bargaining agreement even permit that much time on the field?

A cathartic outburst might enable tranquility later. Venting can actually be therapeutic as long as it reflects an exception and not rule. Judicious bitching resembles how social media can either be a cesspool of misery or a way to cope with the same.

Check the scoreboard for confirmation that actions are what’s important. Kvetch that this miserable existence is unfair garbage then go out and perform tasks. Flipping out about play call selection is tolerable if accompanied by catching every pass thrown one’s way.

Moping doesn’t affect the score unless it’s accompanied by indifferent arm-folding. Actions are what ultimately matter. Doing what’s right after griping is infinitely superior to talking about how lovely life is then thinking such remarks are sufficient. If you have a flat tire, you’re better off if a motorist stops and rolls his eyes at your inability to change it before helping than a sympathy preener who expresses deep concern that you get a working wheel on there soon before speeding off.

Diggs isn’t a trailblazer for receivers acting like drama queens. Declaring it’s inherent to the position reflects an easy presumption. But not every member of the job category cultivates a reputation of difficulty despite stereotypes. Tell Larry Fitzgerald and Marvin Harrison that players of this type need attention. That said, some members of a glamorous profession do enjoy attention in the same sense Terry Pegula doesn’t enjoy spending his own money on stadiums.

Patterns make tantrums last. We’ll be keeping an eye on him to see if he relapses. The long interregnum is the best time to release the steam valve. Worrying he’ll spout off in the week between games will remain a concern even if he’s smiling for now.

Cultivating resentment is the millionth reason to start the preseason the week after the Super Bowl. We’re all irritated that the offseason is long enough to feel like a sentence, in part because it offers endless opportunities to wonder if Diggs is right about not getting enough targets. It’s nice to share common ground with one of our favorites. Players and fans loathe the same things for the same reasons if you’re looking to humanize superstars.

Winning games is the easiest way to leave behind Jersey Shore-style melodrama. Leave personnel headaches to the Jets and Giants. Throw all the fits you want in the end zone following success at a work task.

Training camp can still be helpful even if camp features players who are already trained. Diggs’s productivity offers reassurance when it doesn’t count. His consistent practicing helps those looking to forget about missing minicamp. Ideally, we’ll be remembering and laughing.

Disputing what the word “mandatory” means is irrelevant if the definer can lead a pass-happy attack in gains. We share the mutual interest of him scoring at will, which happens to be the best way for the Bills to win.

#buffalo bills #stefon diggs

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peace-coast-island · 1 year

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Diary of a Junebug

Pandan waffles and sunshine lotus tea at Albridge Bluff

The view outside the cabin window is really spectacular. Even though I always feel like winter drags on for way too long, the sight of light flurries outside makes me happy and relaxed. Maybe because snowy season’s over and the sun’s coming out more, which means the snow isn’t sticking around too long and so it’s not that big of a deal.

Since we got here it’s been light flurries on and off, which is good. As much as I enjoy being a homebody cozying up inside, it can get a bit tiring at times. After all, part of the reason why we came up here wasn’t just to enjoy the tea and waffles, but to also go hiking in the mountains.

Blossom and Alexi usually come around this time of year just when things are slowly starting to open up. Depending on how well you can tolerate the cold, this weather might not be the most ideal for spending a lot of time outdoors. But if the cold isn’t too bad and you’re mostly interested in casual hikes, now’s a good time as the mountains aren’t too crowded with tourists.

Blossom was the first to discover Albridge Bluff a few years ago while traveling with the professor. Funny thing was that at first she found the idea of a mountain retreat kinda meh so she wasn’t too interested in the place at first. Then she got there and enjoyed it so much that now she goes back at least once a year. Sometimes she travels alone, other times with friends - Alexi, the professor, and Fern mostly.

This year it’s just her and Alexi as the professor’s unavailable while Fern - it’s a long story, so more on that later. Let’s just start out with I feel bad that Blossom and Alexi were dragged into that mess and Fern better come to her senses soon.

Since the mountains aren’t too busy at this time, Blossom said that if I wanted to bring a group up there, now’s the best time to do it as there’s a lot of reservations open. So Daisy Jane, Isabelle, and I quickly organized everything, bringing a party of twenty up here. It wasn’t planned to work out like that but our cabins happened to be next to Blossom’s and she says it’s one of the best spots that happens to fill up fast. This is why it’s sometimes better to travel during the off seasons in my opinion.

Blossom says the timing for this trip was perfect for another reason, and that has to do with her sister. Basically, Fern’s in a lot of trouble, and Blossom’s at the point where she can’t help her. Just because they’re sisters doesn’t mean that Blossom has to automatically take her side, especially when that person is in the wrong, something that Fern doesn’t seem to understand.

The trouble started with Fern’s friend, an actress whose career might be over due to legal troubles, to put it lightly. A while ago there was a doc posted online revealing a bunch of things about her that will not only get her fired, but also arrested. While it was initially a callout on her, as more evidence came up, they found some stuff on Fern and another actor, who was recently fired for sexual misconduct.

Apparently there’s a lot, but most of the focus is on the fact that they screwed someone over. that person, who requested to remain anonymous, was Joss’s unofficial personal assistant - as in they were never officially hired but worked like one minus being paid. In other words, they were exploited by Joss and Fern. And if that wasn’t already bad, that person happens to be autistic and Joss and Fern took advantage of that.

That’s what Blossom finds hard to believe because she doesn’t want to think that Fern would be capable of doing that. And Fern’s making matters worse by defending her own actions, claiming that the assistant wouldn’t have been aware anyway so it’s not they were hurt or something like that. Like, what? I don’t know Fern that well but I didn’t think she’d be that kind of person too. Then again, you can’t really judge someone too much based on their siblings.

So that had been going on for about a year and people had been suspicious for a while by the time shit really hit the fan. The evidence didn’t start coming in until Fern, Joss, and the assistant organized a zine, claiming that all profits will be donated to charity. The assistant was unaware of the other two’s true intentions so it came as a surprise to them when they found out that Fern and Joss kept the money to themselves. The zine was a pretty big deal as a lot of high profile people were involved, so that’s a lot of money - about $8,000 I heard.

And then there’s the issue with actor Kip, who is currently being investigated for sexual misconduct. He had been recently fired for breach of contract so it’s safe to say that his career’s over too. Apparently it turns out that Joss and Fern were aware of his misconduct and they forced others to keep quiet about it, going as far as to tamper evidence in the process. Joss reportedly wanted him to stick around so he could intimidate those she considered enemies.

Basically, it’s a big mess. As an outsider, all I can say is what the fuck? Like why it is hard to be a decent human being? Blossom’s not the only one who’s fed up with this - their grandmother’s ashamed, to put it lightly. Blossom adores her grandma so she doesn’t like that Fern’s hurting her by trying to excuse her shitty actions.

It’s one thing if Fern was unwittingly involved and the blame’s all on Joss, but she’s just as guilty, and that’s what’s getting to Blossom. I think she kinda blames herself - it may not make sense but Blossom’s always had a strong sense of duty and responsibility. Being the older sibling, she can’t help but wonder where she went wrong in raising her sister. I feel bad for her for feeling that way - it’s not her fault and Fern’s a grown adult who’s responsible for her own actions.

I’d say it’s natural to only want to see the good in those who are close to us. That’s why we find it hard to believe if they did something terrible, because we never considered that possibility. Having your trust broken by someone close is a terrible thing, and even if you weren’t directly affected by it, it still hurts you.

As for her relationship with Fern, she doesn’t want to think too much about that yet. The fact that her sister might face legal consequences is stressful enough. There’s a lot that she doesn’t know - and for her sanity, the less she knows, the better - so it’s best to distance herself and take it one day at a time. Obviously if Fern feels remorse for her actions, Blossom’s willing to forgive her, but if she keeps digging herself into an even bigger grave, it’s hard to say.

I feel so bad for Blossom for going through this. I also feel terrible for that assistant - like how much of an asshole you have to be in order to take advantage of a disabled person like that? At least a lot of actors are standing up in solidarity for the assistant and the other victims of Joss, Fern, and Kip, making it super clear that the actions of those three should not be tolerated.

For now, Blossom’s taking a social media hiatus and refusing to answer Fern’s incessant calls and texts. Being out here in the mountains has helped clear her head, but she still can’t help but worry from time to time. She said that she’d be lying if she said she isn’t mad about what happened anymore, but she’s trying her best not to let it get to her.

Being out here in the mountains sure beats being cooped up at home. Blossom and Alexi have been to Albridge enough times that they’re pretty familiar with the mountains. I can see why they like this place, the views are breathtaking and it’s quiet enough that you feel like you’re out on a retreat without feeling too cut off or isolated.

Along with the breathtaking scenery, Albridge is well known for their pandan waffles and sunshine lotus tea. The pandan waffles are their most popular, followed by vanilla chai, pumpkin spice, and chocolate chip. I have to say, their waffles are some of the best I’ve ever had. They’re light and fluffy with crisp edges and the flavors are well balanced. Also, I rarely see pandan flavored things outside of Asian bakeries so that was nice. All the other waffles were good too but obviously pandan’s the best.

The sunshine lotus tea is a popular specialty that’s only available in these parts. The Albridge mountains are the only place in the world where sunshine lotuses grow, which means they’re a big deal. Storing them can be finicky, which is why they don’t import it. That means you can only get sunshine lotuses locally.

Because of it’s strong and bitter flavor, most drink sunshine lotus tea with milk or cream. Personally, I like bitter teas so I don’t mind drinking it plain. Plus, I don’t think it goes with milk - then again, I don’t really drink tea with milk unless it’s one of those super strong black tea blends where you kinda need milk and honey to balance things out. The flavor kinda reminds me of barley tea, which I find can be kinda strong at times, so while the tea is good, it definitely needs to be paired with something like waffles. I find that the pandan waffles go best with it while it clashes with chocolate chip.

Sunshine lotuses are also used as snacks, particularly lotus seed chips, but I find those a bit too bitter for me. Blossom says compared to regular lotus seeds, sunshine lotuses have stronger bitter flavor, so it’s not for everyone. I could take bitter melon in small doses, but I think sunshine lotus seeds - when eaten as a snack - is a bit too much for me, especially since they’re just lightly salted.

One of Blossom and Alexi’s favorite things to do is go hiking up north where they can find a quiet spot with a nice view for a picnic. The weather has been especially good for us, which means longer hikes and more sightseeing. Blossom was feeling a bit adventurous so we decided to step into some unfamiliar territory, which was fun.

As a result, Blossom found a new favorite spot, which was unexpected since she’s pretty familiar with the place. It’s always nice to make an unexpected discovery in a familiar place. The trek up there’s a bit long, so breaks are a must, but it’s not too difficult or dangerous so it’s definitely worth it for the view. Alexi says this is the highest she and Blossom have ever been - and it’s pretty high up there!

At the top of the peak is flat ground with a small lake full of sunshine lotuses - basically the ideal picnic spot. Appearance wise, sunshine lotus really do look sunny with the soft yellows and oranges so the name fits them well. I feel like when it’s hot the lake would be nice to swim in, that crystal clear blue water sure looks inviting.

Of course, we packed well for a picnic. Food is essential obviously - tea, waffles, sandwiches, soup - all the good stuff recommended by Blossom and Alexi. And stuff to do, for me it’s my knitting and this journal.

Right now I’m working on this raglan sweater with simple lace details. It’s also my intro to German short rows, which aren’t as hard as I thought. I still don’t fully understand how they work but I can see it and I think it’s neat. I’m still at the early stages of the yoke and since it’s a thinner yarn, it won’t work up as quickly, which I’m okay with. The yarn I’m using has many colors - self striping - and I’m looking forward to seeing how it works out.

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#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #headcanon ramble #Diary of a Junebug

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noctumbra · 3 years

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peaches: nine [part two]

summary ─ a kiss sealed their love once again, but it was only filled with adoration and love this time.

pairing ─ dadsbestfriend!bucky barnes x reader

warnings ─ smut, +18, age difference (reader is 21, bucky is 39 40), cockwarming, hand feeding, light d/s dynamics, anal sex, plugs, dirty talk, kissing, fluff, pet names

a/n ─ it took a little while to post this, i know, i’m sorry. BUT THIS IS THE END. THE FINAL PART. WE’RE SAYING GOODBYE TO THEM. I’M EMOTIONAL. i really hope you like this final part! so please, please, leave a comment if you do and tell me what you think! thank youuu <33

series masterlist ─ part one

FINAL

It was little past three when they woke up. Both of them had collected some of the energy they’ve lost during the round one.

Bucky was in the kitchen, making a fruit bowl, when she walked in only in her underwear. Her hair was a mess, she had bruises adorning her thighs and her lips were swollen from all the kissing and the stubble Bucky was sporting. “Hey,” she murmured, sleepy tone was heavy in her voice. Bucky looked up with a soft smile.

“Hello, baby,” he greeted her and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She hummed. Her arms were quick to wrap themselves around his waist, she plastered her naked torso against Bucky’s bare back.

“How you are so damn warm all the time, I don’t even know,” she grumbled, rubbing her cheek against the muscle. “No complaints, though,” she added, eyes closing. Bucky chuckled lightly.

“Mm,” Bucky hummed. “You’re welcome to use me as your personal heater, honey.” She made a noise that sounded very much like ‘duh’ and then tightened her arms. Smiling widely, Bucky went back to cutting the strawberries in half. After he was done with them, he moved onto the bananas.

“Can we melt some chocolate, too?” She asked, peering up at his work at his side. Bucky nodded. He knew he had some chocolate they could melt somewhere in his kitchen.

“Sure,” he agreed. “Gotta find it first, though,” he added. She made a sound of approval and stayed in her place, on his back and hugging him. Bucky, feeling content and happy with her body in contact with his, started humming a song to himself silently. Not too long after, he was done with the bananas and now it was the time to search for the said chocolates. “Wanna help me locate the chocolates?” He asked even though he knew the answer.

“Nah,” she grumbled. Bucky shook his head fondly.

“Gotta let me go so that I can find’em, love,” he murmured. She whimpered, the thought of being away from him even for a minute was something she did not want to do. “I’ll be quick, c’mon.” Bucky gently led her to one the chairs in the kitchen and made her sit down. He pressed a kiss on her forehead, stroking her cheek with his thumb. It didn’t take him even a minute to find them; they were in his junk food drawer. Bucky did a quick job to melt them and gathered everything on a tray.

Both of them walked back to the bedroom. Carefully getting on the bed, Bucky placed the tray on his night stand. He could sense that she was trying to find the right position, but Bucky had other plans.

“Nuh-uh,” he said, patting his thighs. “Come up here.” She felt the warmth licking her face as she looked at Bucky. He smirked. “Yup,” he nodded. “You gonna keep me warm while I feed you, that alright, baby?” Choosing to staying silent, she nodded as well. She climbed on Bucky’s lap, settling over his groin, and barely surpassed a moan when she felt he was half-hard already. Bucky hummed. “Lift up,” he said and tapped her ass. She did, lifting herself on her knees, Bucky grabbed his member and lined it up. “C’mon.” She took a shaky breath as she lowered herself on his cock. His half-hard length getting enveloped by her silky heat, he was fully hard in matter of minutes. Bucky let out a satisfied groan.

“So good, baby,” he whispered as he stroked her bare thigh under his hand. Leaning a bit forward, he stuck his fork into one of the strawberries and dipped it in the chocolate. “Open.” Obeying his order happily, she let him feed her with chocolate covered fruits in peace. The silence between them was calm and nice; it felt like their bond was somehow getting stronger. The soft smiles on their faces were a proof of how happy they were to be together. Between the hand feeding and exchanging soft smiles, his hard length into her pussy was forgotten. It wasn’t about pleasure, the way she was seated on that thick cock, but about the trust and skin-to-skin contact. Their bodies were touching from head to toe, and both of them were loving it.

“Sometimes I wish,” she started, her voice held a sleepy tone but she wasn’t sleepy, just serene. “that we could stay like this forever.” Bucky hummed as he put the fork into the empty bowl and settled deeper into the bed.

“Recently I started wishing the same thing more than you can imagine,” he whispered, the truth spilling from his lips without a hesitation. “I’ve been thinking about talking to your parents about us.” She froze briefly on top of his body, and then her head turned and her eyes found his.

“You think it’s time?” Bucky knew her long enough to tell that she was scared, and he could understand why she was feeling that way. Her parents were Bucky’s long time friends if not his only friends. If they didn’t approve his relationship with their daughter, it was most likely to be over and that meant both of them losing the other. Not that both of you wouldn’t fight for each other, making them understand what their relationship was based on, but even if it would be brief, it would hurt you both very much.

Neither of you were ready to lose the other.

“I’m tired of hiding,” Bucky said. “I’m tired of not being able to hold your hand or hug and kiss you the way I want to. I’m tired of sneaking around. I want to take you on dates where we don’t care if someone we know would see us. I want to show you off, want to introduce you as my girlfriend, my partner. I just want to live my life with you and show my love for you to the whole world freely.”

“Bucky…” She whispered and pressed a kiss on his neck. Bucky sighed when her lips moved to his jaw to his lips. The kiss they shared was chaste and soft but carried their delicate love and their strong lust in itself. She wiggled on his lap; widening the stance of her legs, she wrapped her arms around his neck and looked him in the eye. “I love you so much.”

Bucky smiled. His eyes were a little red with sudden rush of tears. His hands moved from her waist to her cheeks, and he cradled her face gently. “I love you so much, too, peaches.” With a small whimper, she kissed him.

Their eyes were closed, chests heaving as they kissed and kissed. His hands stroked her cheeks, slid into her hair and then to her waist. Bucky held her against his body gently. Although they had the rush of pleasure in their actions, the love and tenderness were there. Both of them were yearning to be even closer to each other.

“Bucky…” She sighed when his lips moved to her neck, sucking small, barely visible hickeys on the sensitive flesh. Her hands were in his fluffy hair, nails scratching his scalp and fingers sometimes pulling his hair. “Sir, I need you, please,” she begged sweetly.

“No begging, baby,” Bucky whispered to her lips. “You gonna get whatever you want tonight. I want to give you everything you want, alright?” She nodded, breathless. Bucky gently laid her on her back. His cock still inside her, Bucky settled in between her thighs even more securely as he leaned in for another kiss. “You always gonna get whatever you want. ‘m always gonna give you anything you want or wish or need, okay, sweetheart?” She nodded again, eyes a bit teary. Bucky smiled and kissed her cheeks. His thumbs were stroking the soft skin of her sides, making her whimper in his ear.

“Sir,” she panted lightly. “Kiss me?” It was Bucky’s turn to whimper and give in, lips finding hers without missing a beat.

This kiss was dirty, rushed and sloppy. The lust between them got intense when their positions changed. Bucky’s tongue was licking her lips, inside of her mouth and making her moan with the control he was performing for the kiss. It was so easy to dominate her, so easy to control her, especially when she was letting him, it made Bucky dizzy. Bucky moaned.

“Baby,” he whispered. “Tell me what you want, hm?” His lips moved from her lips to her jaw, nibbling on the flesh and rubbing his scruff all over. You whined lightly.

“Your other present, Sir,” she said, making Bucky moan loudly. “Want you to open it.” Bucky pulled back just a little. “Want you to be the first and last.”

Bucky wanted to scream.

The way she was giving herself to him felt so damn good, Bucky didn’t know how to deal with the feeling. It was so intense and mix of bunch of other emotions: He wanted to hug her and never let go, maybe hide her in his chest, and he wanted to leave his marks on her so that everyone would know whose she was.

Instead, he started with loving on her the way she loved.

“Okay,” he murmured. He slowly pulled out, leaving her empty and gaping. His hands roamed her beautiful body as he helped her flip on her belly. She did so with a moan: Face buried in a pillow, arms placed on both sides of her head and her ass up in the air. She looked so gorgeous, so ethereal and his, Bucky wanted to mark her.

So, he did.

He leaned forward and bit harshly on one of her ass cheeks. She gasped. Her hands fisting the bedding, she closed her eyes. Bucky pulled back to look at the mark he left behind: It was a perfect brand of his teeth sitting on her ass cheek. He hummed. He slapped the other cheek lightly to make it burn and to watch it jiggle.

“O-oh,” she moaned. The little sounds she was letting out were driving Bucky mad in the most beautiful way. Biting down on his lip, Bucky trailed one finger from his teeth marks to the plug sitting nicely between her cheeks. It was teasing him, luring him in to look at it, and Bucky fucking loved it. She was letting him have her this way, she chose him to the first one there, and honestly Bucky didn’t know what he had done to deserve you.

“I’m gonna pull it off, a’right?” He whispered and saw your head moving up and down. His fingers grabbed the base of the small, heart shaped plug and pulled it off just a little before tucking it back in. She hummed. Wiggling her ass, she pressed against the heat of Bucky’s body.

Bucky played with the plug; pulling it back and pushing it in, he made her groan throatily into the bedding, made her move her hips and chase the pleasure. He could see how wet her pussy was, it was literally glistening. Bucky wanted to bury himself in there, but he did that already. It was his first gif. This time, it was going to be this small, other hole which she presented to him beautifully.

Humming to himself, he pulled the plug but did not push back in, this time. He pulled it off slowly. As soon as the widest part was off, plug fell onto the bed, winking innocently at him. Bucky groaned when he saw her loose hole. He needed to prep her a bit, but he was okay with it.

“Love,” he called out to her gently. “Grab the lube from the drawer for me.” Whimpering slightly, she lifted herself onto her arms and opened the drawer, finding the lube immediately. Bucky extended his hand and explained what he was going to do to her as she passed it. “You’re loose, but I’m gonna prep you a bit more, okay, baby?” She nodded. “I don’t wanna hurt you.” He leaned forward and kissed her tailbone. She shuddered.

Bucky squirted some lube in his hand; his fingers found their place over her hole, Bucky started circling the still tight muscle. Bucky slipped one finger inside gently. It was loose enough the let it in in one go. He hummed again, but thoughtfully. He slipped in another finger and heard her sigh deeply.

“Y’alright?” He asked, immediately stopping. She nodded, humming appreciatively.

“Feels good,” she murmured. She was rubbing her face onto his pillow, and Bucky felt his heart swell at the sight even though he was two fingers deep inside her ass. Scoffing lightly, he shook his head.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me if I hurt you, please.”

“M’kay, Sir,” she whispered.

Bucky petted her side before continuing to prep her. As he moved his fingers in and out, adding more lube and fingers, he felt her hole loosening up bit by bit. Soon, she was moaning and whimpering and grinding her hips against his touch.

“Sir,” Bucky heard her whining. He smirked.

“Yes, peaches,” he answered casually. His fingers were moving relentlessly in her.

“Siirr,” she whined again. “I’m ready, Sir, please─” Bucky crooked his fingers, causing her to cut herself off with a loud moan. She felt ready, and he knew he couldn’t hold it any longer. His cock was hard as fuck for some time now. Groaning, Bucky grabbed a condom. He moved quickly to put it on, hands trembling slightly with the excitement.

“Y’ready?” He rasped. His hands were holding her cheeks open, making her glistening loose hole to wink at him cheekily. She nodded. She looked far too gone to talk with sentences, and Bucky could understand. He was about to lose words, too, he could feel it. “Mmm, okay,” he whispered. He grabbed his hard cock and lined it up.

The slide in was slow. Torturously slow.

She could feel every ridge and vein as Bucky slid in slowly. He threw his head back. The groan that got ripped deep in his chest was loud; she trembled. It was so fucking hot to hear him moan and groan and losing himself like this.

“Oh, fuuck,” Bucky moaned. He was looking at where they were joined, watching himself slide in her virgin hole and was desperately trying not to come too soon. “Fuck, sweetheart─” He gasped when he felt her walls ripple around him. He stilled. He was panting and was only halfway in. He wanted to take it slow, didn’t want to hurt you, but it was really hard not to just slam in.

“Bucky─” She whimpered. “God, shit, move.”

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Bucky breathed. Sweat was beading on his forehead and chest already, and his body felt like it was on fire.

“You won’t,” she hissed. “Just fucking move─ Fuck─” Groaning, she wiggled her hips, clenched around him and wiggled a bit more. Bucky’s hold on her hips tightened. He started to move his hips again. He was fucking in half an inch more with his every thrust. She moaned. “Yeah, move, Sir, fuck yes, move!” Her hands found the back of his thighs, her nails dug in deep as she pulled his hips against hers.

Both of them moaned loudly as Bucky buried himself to the tilt with her yanking. Her thighs were trembling, walls were rippling like crazy around his cock, and they were both on the verge of coming.

“Shit,” Bucky hissed. She felt so fucking good around him. It was tight as fuck, hot and wet and tight. Bucky was about to lose his goddamn mind. He leaned forward, covered her body with his as he closed his eyes and tried to calm down. Kissing her bare shoulders and neck, Bucky smiled dopily. “Not a virgin in there anymore,” he whispered before kissing her cheek. She giggled breathily. She took one of her hands from his thigh and tangled it in his fluffy hair, pulling him in for a filthy little kiss.

Bucky moaned as he bit on her lip, licked in her mouth and just kissed her as sloppily as he could. His hips were moving back and forth a little because he still felt like he was about to come, and he didn’t want this to end so quickly.

After what felt like an hour but was actually ten minutes, Bucky started to slam his hips harder and deeper. His cautious pace was now replaced with hard and deep and a bit filthy one which got her moaning and whimpering under him so prettily.

“You love it, don’t you, love?” Bucky whispered in her ear as he slapped her ass cheek lightly. “You love how full it makes you feel, hm?” She nodded vigorously. He did feel so good in her, made her feel so damn full, she never wanted him out of her. Bucky slapped her ass cheek again, this time digging his blunt nails. She gasped. “You’re drippin’,” Bucky murmured and trailed one of his hands from her ass to her pussy and slid two fingers inside.

She screamed.

“Yeah,” Bucky groaned. “Sing for me, baby, c’mon.” The pace he set up got harder and faster. The sound of skin slapping skin and obscene wet sounds were so loud. Like it was possible, Bucky was getting more turned on with each thrust. “Your ass is a fuckin’ wonder,” he hissed. “A peach for fuckin’ sure, sweetheart.” Snarling, he moved on the bed. He wrapped his hands on her knees and spread them even more apart as he pressed the outside of his thighs to her inner legs. She was practically sitting on his lap now.

“Oh fuck!” She cried out. With this new position, Bucky slid in even deeper and was now stroking something sensitive in her with his each thrust. He still had two of his fingers in her pussy and now a thumb was pressing on her clit. “Oh shit, ‘m close!” She moaned. “’m so close, Sir, fuck!” Her hands flew and grabbed his ass. Her nails dug in deep as they pulled his hips against hers harder. “Yes, yes!” Throwing her head back, she bared her throat to him.

Bucky snarled as he placed his mouth on the exposed neck. He wanted so badly to leave some marks there, but he couldn’t, he knew it. Not yet.

“Come,” he ordered, voice rough and hoarse. “You come on my cock now, and I’ll fuck your pussy after, feed her with my come.” She swore, groaned and whimpered. Her eyes rolled back as Bucky pinched her clit, and she came screaming.

Bucky’s whole body trembled, and he collapsed on the bed with her body under his. The clench of her ass on his cock was so tight, he thought he might come any second if he even dared to breathe.

She shivered, her body shook violently and her muscles twitched. The orgasm that rolled through her body was very strong and intense, she felt herself floating. With a sigh, she relaxed under Bucky’s body and moaned happily. She could feel Bucky’s hands roaming all over her, fingers stroking her hair.

“Mmm, fuck,” she grinned happily. Bucky kissed her shoulder.

“You back with me?” He asked, and she nodded. She looked so blissed out, Bucky felt proud. He kept peppering kisses on anywhere he could reach. She hummed.

“Kiss me,” she whispered, and Bucky obeyed immediately. Their lips met in a chaste and loving way, and both of them sighed. It lasted for only four seconds, but it was a very sweet kiss. Then, she pushed him back lightly, signaling him to pull out and off. He did. He slid out of her abused her as carefully as he could and sat back on his haunches.

“You promised me something,” she murmured. Flipping on her back, she spread her legs. “Feed me.”

Bucky choked on his next breath. “Baby,” he gasped. “I’m an old man now, don’t spring shit like this on me.” She giggled. Smiling, he walked between her legs again and took the condom off, ditching it somewhere. He leaned in to kiss her cheeks as he slid into her dripping pussy. Bucky groaned.

Her ass was so damn amazing, but he knew he’d always prefer her pussy because goddamn.

“Mm, c’mon, Sir,” she mewled, her hands grabbing onto the muscles on his back. “C’mon, she’s hungry, feed her, please.”

“Fuck,” Bucky whispered and started thrusting at a mad pace. He was chasing his relief, not bothering with his technique or something. All he needed was to empty his balls and lose himself in the throes of pleasure.

It didn’t take him too long. With a loud groan which he buried into her neck, he came inside of her. His cock twitching and releasing stripes of come in her pussy, Bucky sighed and plopped himself onto her. She huffed. Not saying anything, one her hands immediately started playing with his hair while the other started its trailing down on his back and up. Bucky shivered.

They stayed like that for a while. Skin-to-skin, serene and post-coital, they laid there on the bed. Outside was chilly, wind was howling, but neither of them cared about it because they had each other’s body heat to stay warm.

“Are we really gonna tell my parents about us?” She asked. Bucky hummed.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t wanna hide anymore. I’m an old man, now.” She snorted as Bucky grinned.

“You can’t play that card every time,” she grumbled. “I don’t wanna hide anymore, either,” she whispered then. Bucky kissed just above her breasts.

“I want you to be mine officially,” Bucky whispered, lifting his head up and looking at her. “And you will be.” She smiled fondly. Her nails scratched his beard, stroked his cheeks and ran through his hair.

“Okay,” she murmured. “Happy birthday, baby.” Bucky smiled widely, the crinkles around his eyes showed themselves, making your heart beat wildly.

“Thank you, peaches.”

A kiss sealed their love once again, but it was only filled with adoration and love this time.

──

“Um, Dad? Papa?” She called out softly.

“Yeah, sweetie?” Steve said, Sam only humming as he put his book down. She walked into the living room with Bucky slowly. Her heart was beating so fast, it felt like it was about to burst. Bucky brushed his hand against hers in a soothing manner.

“There is something I want to tell you something,” she announced. “Actually Bucky and I wanted to tell you guys something.” Both Steve and Sam sat up straighter, their eyes trained on you intently. Bucky held her hand.

“Y/N and I have been seeing each other romantically a little longer than a year now,” Bucky said. “It started out with only one night, but then feelings happened and…” Bucky’s eyes found hers, a fond smile forming on his lips. “I love her.” She felt her cheeks heating up, but she was so nervous that she couldn’t even feel the butterflies moving happily in her stomach.

She took a deep breath and tightened her hold on Bucky’s hand. Her parents were looking at them without blinking. The silence was almost deafening, she just wanted them to say something.

“You know what, Barnes?” Steve suddenly said, and the instant fear took a hold of her body. “I fucking hate you.”

“Gimme my five hundred bucks,” Sam grinned as he extended his hand out to Steve. “Oh, and that vacation you promised, too. I could really use one.”

“W-what?” She whispered. “You’re not mad?”

Steve let out a surprised laugh. “Mad? Honey,” he chuckled. “Sam and I knew for a while. You guys aren’t so subtle, y’know.” Bucky blinked a few times.

“What.”

“The day we were gonna make a barbecue? You both were in the garage and you said that you were helping Bucky to unpack or something?” Steve said. She nodded. “I saw the car windows and Bucky’s face.”

“Oh, at the New Years,” Sam chimed in. “We knew you were kissing because Y/N’s lipstick was sort of visible on your lips.”

“Oh my God,” she gasped. “What! You knew!”

“Yes,” they both said, grinning.

“And we’re okay with it,” Steve added immediately. “We know how supportive Bucky is, and although the age thing sort of weirded me out at the beginning, I’m okay with it now.” Steve paused. “It’d be a hypocrite of me to judge you for that since me and Sam have like nine years of age gap between us.” He shrugged.

“And,” Sam said. “We know Barnes for a very long time and to be honest, he’s been really happy this past year. It’s good to see him enjoying the life for once.” He smiled. “Although that doesn’t mean that if you make her cry or sad, I’ll kick your ass no matter what, you hear?”

Bucky chuckled. “I hear, Wilson, I hear.”

“Good,” Sam nodded and then he grinned. “C’mere you two.”

The hug they shared was a sort that only families shared. With Sam and Steve’s paternal love and Bucky’s protective, loving arms around her, she felt at peace.

No secrets. No hiding.

They were officially a family now.

fin

#bucky barnes x reader #dadsbestfriend!bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes imagines #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes angst #dadsbestfriend!bucky #bucky barnes x you #peaches

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sneverussape · 3 years

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What kind of person do you think lily was? There's a lot said about her in the series, but i have trouble reconciling pure, shining paragon lily with someone who would marry someone that spent years tormenting her friend, 4 on 1.

ooh boy this will be a LOT. i can't even promise it will be coherent but i'll make an attempt to be. (going under a cut to save us all the grief).

first off, i think it's fair to state that one of the biggest drawbacks of lily's character is how she was written. she is a plot device. she exists to boost other characters’ narratives: she's simultaneously the Rich Boy's trophy wife, the self-sacrificing mother of the Boy Who Lived, the best friend slash lost love of the Fallen Hero, and, at the same time, also no one at all. lily is a character with little to no background and character development that she can barely stand on her own two feet without any of the associated (usually male) characters to prop her up. it absolutely sucks but that's how it is. that's how jk wrote her.

given that and working with the scraps that we do have, my opinion of lily is...complex. i try to give her justice by trying to understand her context, the workings of her mind, and the possible pressures she was subjected to, but it can be challenging especially since lack of canon pushes you into a space where you have to put them in Either/Or situations. my opinion of her has also changed as i got older. when i was younger (i read the books waaaay back, as they were getting released in fact) i only saw her as an extra character (i was most interested in snape, if that's not obvious enough, but neither did i think snape was 'obsessed' with her as a lot of hp fans now think). i saw her and snape as good friends who had had a falling out, and that he'd probably had a crush on her at some point, and it got naturally overtaken by guilt etc when she died. then when i reread some chapters containing her, i was quick to put her in the Bad Friend camp. i don't think that now. i think that she, like snape, was a complex human being who made a lot of questionable decisions but shouldn't be entirely vilified for them.

my main thoughts of her that are kind of built on material from canon as well as what jkr has said herself:

- she was not posh. she grew up in cokeworth, in the same town as severus. i don't think she was middle class as a lot of fics portray her. i think the evanses were slightly better off than the snapes but they were all working-class, and living was a day-to-day struggle. the kids spoke in the local accent, their clothes were all worn and patched over, there were no green spaces or public infrastructure for kids to safely play in, and they were all mostly running wild about the town since all their parents had to work. food was something to be thankful for because there was never enough, and sometimes they had to share with their neighbors. that's the kind of setting i think lily and severus grew up in, although severus suffered abuse on top of it all. it's possible that lily did too because of the setting (post-world war 2, poverty, adults dealing with repressed trauma from the war, etc) and it wouldn't even be that surprising if she had been;

- she and petunia got along fairly well up until the point lily found out she was a witch and, as a result, became friends with severus. it's stated in canon that petunia had also wanted to attend hogwarts with them, going as far as writing to dumbledore to allow her admittance. her jealousy upon his rejection had festered and grown into outright hate that she projected onto harry as an adult, but i don't doubt that she continued to love lily even after her death and despite how she treated harry. i think as kids they had stuck together and were very close, but magic had torn them apart. suddenly lily had a world of her own that petunia wasn't welcome in, and that would have hurt. pottermore stated lily attended vernon and petunia's wedding or engagement party but james made a right mess of it. i think lily TRIED to maintain their relationship but external factors always got in the way. i don't doubt she had also loved her sister very much;

- i don't think she had any other friends. she may have had a lot of acquaintances but i think her only real friend, the one who saw her for who she really was, was severus, and i think, at a certain point in their lives, she saw that as a weakness and resented it;

- i think, from the interactions we saw in canon of lily with other people, that lily had a penchant to please people, especially the ones who ranked higher than her in terms of power dynamics - petunia (who was the older sister), professors (sluggy comes to mind, the head of slytherin with a lot of connections), even the marauders whose actions she defended. it's not necessarily a bad thing, but i've always seen it as her being borderline manipulative. i noted that she wasn't the same with severus (based on their conversations, especially the ones in 5th year, before SWM) because he's lower than her in a lot of aspects, being a slytherin and quite likely of a lower social standing. she could boss him around and tell him to piss off and he probably wouldn't have minded. she actually strikes me as someone who could have been in slytherin; a perfect arrangement, save for the fact that she was a muggleborn. i think lily knew her place and the cards she was dealt with more than anyone, but she was also determined not to stay there;

- this brings me to the point as to why she ever went out with james potter in the first place. i think her friendship breakup with severus was inevitable because they were in the middle of a burgeoning war and both of them were being pulled to opposite and opposing ends. as an added complexity, i think she also wanted to be better than being muggleborn lily evans of cokeworth, best friend of the evil greasy slytherin git, and her way out was to associate with housemates who were in the upper echelons of power. like, we don't even know what her life was like in gryffindor tower. ron was poor, but he was also a pureblood, so that may have saved him from ridicule. but what if you were a poor muggleborn, with a northern accent to boot? in the same way severus trained himself to be more posh, lily could have done the same and could have furiously tried to blend in. maintaining a friendship with severus would have ended in heartbreak as there were too many risks and it likely outweighed the gains. this was the wizarding world too which is much much smaller than the muggle world and relied on connections more than anything. openly siding with the marauders would have saved her skin and secured her a future (which, as we all know, was forfeit anyway but whatever);

- jumping to the jily relationship, i honestly think it was also not one that was meant to last. iirc jkr projected a lot onto lily, so i'm surmising jily reflected a lot of her own failed relationships. i think james and lily had a less-than-ideal relationship, one that involved abuse (verbal, emotional, mental, physical, take your pick, but at least one form of it), and i think she may have been unhappy in the last year of her life, living in hiding with none of her own friends (if they even existed) and seeing no one else but james' pals. her only light in that darkness was likely harry as she couldn't even see her own family. i think, during those times, she thought a lot about the home she left behind and, as a consequence, her lost friendship with severus. she probably missed him, and i'm sure she must have been very lonely.

in sum, i don't think she was the Virgin Mary figure a lot of hp fans paint her to be. imho she had her own questionable but utterly human moments, and i just tried to fill in the blanks as to why she would have acted the way she did. i don't think it was easy to be lily evans at all, and majority of the 21 years of her life was likely a struggle.

#lily evans #and the cards she was dealt #i wish we knew more about her tbh #ask #hp #also mentions #snape #of course

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chainofclovers · 3 years

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Ted Lasso 2x7 Thoughts

“Headspace” is a very apt name for this episode, in which we learned almost no new information about the characters in Ted Lasso but learned a great deal about the way many characters’ brains work.

Most of the episodes this season have been so full of new information (if you wanna know something about how my brain works, the critique that early s2 episodes lack conflict does not compute), so full of dramatic irony (Sam and Rebecca don’t realize they’re messaging each other on Bantr! Rebecca’s voicemail to Ted doesn’t actually indicate that she spent a significant portion of time panicking and looking for him!), and misunderstandings that it was really nice to spend a bit over thirty minutes on an episode with very easily mappable plotlines.

Ted and Sharon and Therapy

Ordinarily in my little recaps I talk about the characters as real people making their own decisions, because every character on this show feels very real. But I have to take a minute to just, like, celebrate the acting in these scenes. Sarah Niles and Jason Sudeikis brought the perfect energy to each of their three scenes in Dr. Sharon’s office.

The drinking bird toy! The way he switches from nodding along with it to shaking his head no while the bird continues to shake its head yes, just like Ted shook his head no while saying yes, they should hire a sports psychologist! The way he finally stills the bird in the final therapy scene in the episode...but performatively throws the tissue box.

(Someone is going to need those tissues, Ted. It might be you.)

I also LOVE that this is the first time we see Sharon in an extended scene that takes place in a session. We’ve seen her rapport with the players, we’ve seen the results, and we’ve seen the things she does to make someone feel comfortable at the start of a session, and that’s all the information WE need to know to feel confident in her excellence as a psychologist. But because Ted hasn’t been able to fully appreciate those things, it’s so fitting that his sessions are a time for us to learn more about Sharon’s approach along with him.

It’s just...such good acting. The way she tells him he doesn’t need to worry. The kind of charming (but not performatively charming, just...charming) smile on his face when he claims he knows he doesn’t need to worry. And the way his voice changes a little as the conversations progress—deeper, less controlled, with some very genuine Midwestern “ma’am”s.

Sam and Rebecca and Awkwardness

Sam and Rebecca were so awkward when talking to each other in the hallway! If I had been in that hallway I would have been physically unable to stop myself from doing something even more awkward and diverting to make it stop. (I say this as someone who is neither disgusted by or delighted by the direction of the Bantr storyline. This is a good story about two good people who are in very different places in their lives existing in both a manufactured connection and the real, and very different, connection they have when they aren’t glued to their phones. This story is supposed to be awkward and uncomfortable.)

I did like the parallels of their friends sort of urging them on/coaching them through the inherent panic of the three dots that appear and disappear—a source of panic whether you’re the one creating the dots on the other screen or watching them and feeling at their mercy.

I like that in this episode both Ted and Rebecca are loudly broadcasting “I AM NOT IN THE RIGHT HEADSPACE FOR A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP”—Ted with his rueful awareness that Michelle would be upset if she heard him still referring to her as his wife, Rebecca with her insistence that relationships are doomed and awful even though she’s talking to two people (Keeley and Higgins) in committed relationships.

Roy and Keeley and Space

This plot was a really wonderful...counterpoint? complement? to the places both Ted and Rebecca are in as Ted starts to come to terms with the fact that he’s going to have to deal with his past and the losses he’s suffered (including the loss of his marriage) and as Rebecca questions whether she’s really going to embark on the next phase of a relationship with someone whose identity she does not know.

Because Ted and Rebecca are stuck apart, it was great to see Keeley struggle with needing space from Roy without worrying for a second about whether or not this challenge was a threat to their relationship. (Keeley and Roy aren’t used to long haul relationships, so they both see it as a threat, but the audience doesn’t have to.)

There was so much going on in that boot room. I love the coexisting realities there—Rebecca and Keeley and Higgins treating the boot room as their personal room for secret smoking, but as the crowd grows all these other unspoken dynamics emerge (it’s been two days since the panic attack and this is the first time we see Ted and Rebecca in the same room and there’s no evidence that they’ve talked about what happened with the panic attack or Rebecca’s parents or any of the big stuff).

Everything about Keeley’s plotline this episode reminded me of how Ted and Keeley are so similar (and, to a lesser extent, Rebecca and Roy are so similar). Rebecca and Roy both tend to write things off (Rebecca is so certain any relationship she has will be doomed, but it’s just because of how hurt she already is; Roy wanted to convince himself he was happier as a pundit than as a coach, but it’s just because he was scared of how much he wanted to be back on on the pitch), only able to deal with things when a safe person like Ted or Keeley sort of startles growth out of them. (We talk a lot about how Rebecca should be in therapy, but Roy should too.) And Ted and Keeley! Everything’s great, everything’s sunny, but look at how Keeley stands on her couch and screams in sadness and anger when she blows up at Roy and he leaves.

This time, things work out between Roy and Keeley because he figures out what Keeley was trying to communicate and respects what she needs, but in the future she’s going to have to figure out how to articulate herself more clearly. (And so will Ted...not only in therapy with Sharon, but as everything with the other coaches and the team and Will and basically everyone in his life come to light.)

Nate and Beard and Twitter-Insecurity-Rage

Ahhhhhhhhh.

This plotline made me feel almost as nervous for Ted (the things he doesn’t know) and Beard (the things he knows) as it did for Nate and Colin and Will and everyone.

At first I was really bothered by the repetition of Nate checking Twitter. We know! He’s on Twitter a lot now that he’s semi-famous! He’s obsessed! But then it occurred to me that it’s extremely perfect that Nate checking Twitter becomes this silent refrain building him up or tearing him down based on the latest 280-character compliment or take-down. Because this is how the internet works! You get obsessed with something on it and then check it a million times per day until you feel sick. It could be a dating app, or a trending story, or almost anything. If you check it often enough, the internet won’t even have anything truly new for you...it just feels like it does. So the repetition of Nate scrolling Twitter wasn’t meant to deliver us new information, but rather to mimic the old information coming through again and again.

I feel so deeply for Nate, who’s brilliant about football but unfit to coach because the power dynamics of coaching are a totally foreign concept to someone like him, who relies entirely on external inputs to take his actions. Ted and Beard and Roy all go and learn things and bring them back to the pitch, but none of them have had the capacity to teach Nate how to do this. Even Nate’s private thoughts, which he wrote down during s1, only come to light when Ted prompts him. And when your external inputs are coming from social media and an unappreciative father and a hyper-awareness of insult after years spent on the receiving end of bullying...it’s very dangerous. Maybe even literally physically dangerous.

I also feel so deeply for everyone who interacts with Nate right now, particularly Will.

Some Bonus but Never Extraneous Trent Crimm

Trent in the pub made me NERVOUS. Seeing him in this new place where Ted goes to wind down, almost coaching Ted through lying to him about having had food poisoning?! When they both clearly know that isn’t what happened?!?

It felt very fitting that this uncomfortable yet kind-of-mercifully-executed lie takes place towards the end of an episode full of such positive and negative growth for the characters. Such movement. It felt all wrong (in a good way), like covering something new and smooth and precious with spackle because maybe you actually wanna paint something else after all even though it won’t serve you in the long run to do it. To paraphrase Dr. Sharon, the truth will set you free but first it will piss you off, and Ted’s conversation with Trent is a reminder of all the layers there are to cut through on the way to the truth.

If Apple TV could simply release 2x8 - 2x12 this week, I would bargain with something crazy and miserable like giving up caffeine until October 8, the air date for the season finale. I continue to love this season and to feel the serenity of watching excellent actors execute on excellent scripts...but we’re getting to the point where the momentum’s built up and is heading to ever-scarier places, and I neeeeeeeeeed to knoooooooow.

#ted lasso #ted lasso s2 spoilers #meta by me #ted lasso 2x7 #a lesbian watches ted lasso

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olderthannetfic · 3 years

Text

Ah, I do see your points, anon. I'm not going to post all your asks publicly because if you really feel that unsafe, it's probably best not to have a bigass chunk of your text for people to analyze and try to guess your identity from. I think one of the best points you made is about how close to home it hits when the non-fave is not only your fave but is similar to you in some way like demographic. You're not wrong for having those emotions. I do wonder if they make it hard to see how some other people feel similarly embattled on other axes.

TBH, I think one of the big problems here is that the large aggregate patterns you're talking about are racist, but most individual fics and fans are not really the problem. It's hard to know how to talk about this or who to tell to "fix" it when we're looking at free, hobbyist art.

A lot of people's tastes are certainly formed by shitty society, but once they're formed, they don't change fast if at all. Asking someone to rewrite their libido is a big ask, yet tumblr does it all the time as though it's as simple as snapping your fingers.

This leaves me with the sense that a lot of tumblr is... like... the political lesbians of porn fic or something: desire is not real, only choosing based on logic and politics. Or maybe people are so asexual that they just don't understand the lizard brain's "YES!" at some porn things and complete indifference to others?

I don't think it's great if great swaths of people feel like bottom!Nicky is super hot and top!Nicky fundamentally isn't, but I also don't think they can necessarily just turn it off like flipping a switch.

(If someone reading this doesn't like their current tastes and wants to attempt to alter them, I do think it's possible. What you should do is line up a large slate of media that prominently features characters of the ethnicity or whatever that you don't find hot/interesting. These should be leads whose emotional development drives the plot and is supposed to be central to the audience's enjoyment of the media. Watch/read/etc. this media all the time. All. The. Time. Try out many pieces because you won't like every character or every show, and we're looking for genuine enjoyment, not the fandom equivalent of a pity fuck. Spend enough time on this, and your unconscious sense of who's hot and interesting will eventually shift somewhat. This is a project you should expect to take a few years.)

But I digress.

The one tweet thing is a very toxic pattern. If TOG fandom is doing that, guys, please try to be more conscious of holding the actors of color to a higher standard (or the women or whomever). I know this often comes from a place of paying more attention to our own and wanting to set a good standard, but the effect is that minorities can't fuck up ever while white dudes get infinite passes.

Okay, on to the fic thing... Gotta say, my instant reaction to that description is "Ooh!"--as it would be for the same scenario with the characters reversed. (Ships who start out trying to kill each other are my favorite! x1000 if they're resurrecting style immortals and they literally do.) I can see how it would feel like slamming into a brick wall if you aren't kinky in just the right way and you didn't know it was coming though.

Part of why I react so strongly to a lot of discourse that runs along these lines is that I am a naturally extremely kinky person. It's not so much about what I do (which as a deeply lazy person in a long distance relationship is essentially nothing), but it's absolutely how I'm wired.

And I can tell you that my quotidian experience in fandom is sharing something I don't even realize is a big deal only to have someone I like, respect, and trust react in horror and tell me that it's triggering and awful and should not be allowed in fandom spaces because it makes "people" unsafe. It's such an instant, kneejerk reaction they don't even realize I was sharing it because it spoke to the very core of me. Lesson learned, friend. Lesson learned.

That sounds a bit off topic, I know, but bear with me: The point of that anecdote is that it's pretty common for me to get people trying to raise my awareness of things I have already thought deeply about while denying my essential humanity and not even realizing. As a kinky person who likes to make my fave the top (and generally a conflicted sadist), this constant request to explain and justify is exhausting.

I doubt most of the top!Joe fans have this precise problem simply because people who make their fave the top are much less common in fandom than people who make their fave the bottom, but I see a similar pattern with fans who are just fundamentally wired for rape fantasies (one of the most common fantasies that exists) vs. fans who just don't get rape fantasies at all. Or substitute your BDSM/kinky/messed up fantasy trope of choice. Covertly radical feminist attitudes towards kink and power are on the rise in fandom, and as a naturally kinky person, boy do I notice it!

I know that it feels like crucial activism to share these insights about why the ratio of top!Joe is hurtful, and the pain you feel is real. But it's also the case that it's a big ask to want people to listen. (Not me. Obviously, I routinely choose to engage with discourse. I mean overall.) The reason for that is that you're only seeing a fraction of what they do or who they are, and you don't know how many previous people they've listened to how many previous times. It's a very different situation from someone whose job is making some major TV series or movie or something. That person does, in my opinion, owe you some amount of listening.

Now, I'm not saying no top Joe fan was ever a jerk. I'll bet they were. There's a tendency to be rude and to publicly air your schadenfreude when you feel like everyone has been yelling at you. What I am saying is that a lot of the problem here boils down to conflicting needs, and that means there isn't a good solution. It's a situation where people are genuinely hurt, but I don't necessarily agree that other people have harmed them.

I like that you did an actual count of the explicit fics, btw. It's good to look at the real numbers. I see too little of that in these situations. My off the cuff reaction is that 2/3 to 1/3 is not a bad ratio at all compared to many fandoms, but yeah, it definitely shows a strong trend, and that can be painful. (I have a fandom where I think there's maybe like 1 bottom so-and-so fic in the entire zine era fandom. One. It's pretty extreme.)

I guess my thinking here overall is: What is the practical solution? What are we hoping to gain? What is reasonable to ask of people?

And it can't be "Well, if they would just listen..." That's just a sneaky way of saying "If you haven't done it my way, it's because you haven't listened to me yet."

So the question I would ask of people is this:

What does a non-racist fic where Joe tops look like?

What does a non-racist sex pollen, dubcon, or even noncon fic where Joe tops look like?

And if you say the latter is impossible... well... sadists exist everywhere in the world. So do doms. So do people who prefer to top in a purely physical sense. People with rape fantasies where they're the rapist exist (people who are not actually rapists, I mean). None of this is restricted to any one group. We can't categorically say fic like that about Joe is coming from a place of racism without denying the fundamental humanity of kinky MENA people who'd want to make Joe like themselves or like their ideal partner. (Yes, I agree this won't be the majority of fic writers writing top!Joe, but this is a place to start for figuring out what the better version would look like.)

IDK, maybe you're that kinkster yourself, but your asks gave me the vibe that you don't really get the drive towards those darker kinds of fics and what might be motivating it besides stereotypes and shittiness.

If we can answer these kinds of questions, we can better critique the way people write what they write without telling them all of their taste is bad and they should just stop writing. Even if we think the latter is true, it isn't going to get us anywhere. Figuring out how to make Joe more multidimensional in the fic they already want to write or finding very specific wording that should be avoided might actually work.

Beyond that, the actions I think are productive would be running prompt fests, exchanges, or other events for bottom!Joe or for top!Joe where he's the main character and the fics are required to be from his POV. Themed collections and recs lists are great. (I've seen a bit of this going around in TOG fandom in the past, and that's an excellent approach! Keep it up!) Positive actions tend to work better here. Make more of what you want. Promote what you want to see.

I don't mean this in some fluffy magical thinking way: you aren't going to change that ratio radically just by the power of positivity. But I've seen this kind of thing play out in many, many fandoms, and going after the people who write what you don't like, even in a well-intentioned effort to educate and even in a polite, kind way doesn't do much. A few people feel guilty. A few feel defensive. A lot ignore you. The overall fic doesn't change. It's not a good use of your limited time and energy.

I'm off to look up that fic to see what I think of it in practice, but I'm going to post this before tumblr manages to eat it.

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teamsarawatshusband · 3 years

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Do you think there is a chance that WYB really believes in China's innocence in this? If people in China don't have all the information, then maybe he also doesn't know what is happening.

Okay, I’m gonna be very careful in how to answer this.

First of all, I don’t know him in person (obviously), so I can never know 100% what he does and doesn’t believe. Much like with any other celebrity.

My assumption on what he believes in this is based on what I know about his life and how that might potentially affect his thinking in matters like these. It is also based on what I know from my personal connections to Chinese citizens and what they have told me about politics and human rights affairs in the past.

Since Yibo is living in China, there is a big chance that he doesn’t have access to all the news regarding this specific political situation. So I do assume that he most likely doesn’t know the details of what’s going on in regards to the human rights violations and why exactly Nike spoke out against the government of his country.

However, he is very familiar with the business side of working with brands and he has had political situations affect career decisions in the past. So I can’t help but think that he knows things are fishy.

He must know that brands, especially big corporations like Nike, don’t make business-damaging statements against a whole country like this without global pressure. Let’s not forget, Nike like any other company, first and foremost has to think of their marketability and consumer’s trust. So, Yibo must know that consumers (not governments or political institutions but regular people) all over the world are watching the news and demanding that companies such as Nike take a stand. So, I’m assuming he knows that, in the eyes of the global population, based on their sources of information, the Chinese government is doing something bad.

Whether or not he believes this information to be true is a different question.

Now, if Yibo had lived his entire life in China, had grown up with the censorship and propaganda of the Chinese government throughout his life and not aware that this is different in other parts of the world, then I would assume he’d believe it to be false.

However, he has lived in South Korea for several years. So he did have access to a non-Chinese point of view on politics and life in general. He also has traveled to other countries professionally, both as a singer as well as an actor. He must know that independent sources of information are much easier accessible in other countries. He must know that the amount of freedom to publicly criticize a government or state personal opinions varies largely from country to country. I am convinced he is aware that censorship and deliberate spreading of misinformation is a common political practice in China. So, based on that, I do assume that he takes information from Chinese news with a critical mindset that doesn’t simply trust and buy into everything that is served to him.

He also has witnessed political situations affect his or other co-stars’ careers. He used to be in Uniq which, as all k-pop bands, suddenly wasn’t allowed to appear on Chinese TV anymore, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong. And a big change of course of action like that was kept all hush-hush in the entire Chinese media. He must know that this wasn’t fair, that they innocently fell victim to political agendas. An entire career, fanbase, performance platform simply taken away from all of them, one second to the next, and they hadn’t caused it and didn’t have any say in it either. Are we really assuming that they simply took that blow without wanting to speak out and fight for the success they had worked so hard for?

The 227 situation was very similar. The international success of one Chinese series brought so much traffic to AO3, that the Chinese government noticed it as public platform depicting values that they didn’t want China to be associated with. More importantly, a public platform with content that they couldn’t control. So they went and blocked it. And who had to suffer the blame? The government? Of course not. Xiao Zhan, who hadn’t done anything other that be an actor in the series. Because of this he lost so many marketing deals and job offers that people believed his career was over for good. All while doing nothing wrong.

Yibo, as the second main actor in the same series, 100% saw all of this go down. He knows that Xiao Zhan hadn’t caused any of it, knows that he was blamed unfairly. He also knows that remaining silent under those circumstances will only cause more harm to a career and public reputation. He knows that the only option is to say what you are expected to say, regardless of what you think.

And, I mean, based on all the situations that I have been in in my life, where I was forced to say something against my will, and based on knowing Yibo to be quite headstrong and having a competitive mindset... I just can’t picture him going, “Well, they make me say this. So, I believe it too.”

Now, based on what I have heard from people that I personally know IRL, I think some of the things that my aunt and uncle have mentioned left the biggest impression on me. My uncle is European but has lived and worked in China for decades now. My aunt is Chinese, grew up in China and only after meeting and marrying my uncle has traveled out of the country.

My uncle is very outspoken about life in China. When talking to him in person, he will tell you everything he personally experienced, including things like tax evasion, people avoiding police charges with hush money, countrywide blocking of messaging services and email providers, copyright frauds as legitimate business endeavors, illegal confiscation of items by police/border control etc. etc. etc. Basically, the gist of his reports is, “In China, if you are a regular person, you have to be aware of this, work around the corruption/unfairness and, most importantly, not make a big fuss about it. If you are somebody with money and powerful connections, you can buy yourself out of any situation. Unless if you stand in the public eye, then you’ll be used to make an example of - under the guise of a just and law-abiding country.“ He will tell you all of this, while over here. Never when in China. Because he knows the consequences.

My aunt is a lot quieter on the matter. She never directly spoke out against Chinese politics and never directly called out the issues of censorship and corruption. But she often asked, “Are we really allowed to say this here? Back home we can’t.” And when I talked to her about specific political situations she confirmed a lot of things with small examples from her experience. While my uncle is mostly angry when speaking about those things, my aunt is primarily careful in her phrasing. She very clearly loves her country dearly (who wouldn’t it’s a beautiful country with wonderful people), and she is very pained by how it is governed, and how that governing affects both the people living there as well as how China is perceived in the world.

I have never spoken to them about celebrities or specific entertainment issues, but what I do know from them is, if somebody in China is a public figure with success and a bit of wealth, they will:

- most certainly be aware that their government’s actions are often unjust and based on corruption and personal gain

- be forced to side with said government or, if they refuse, forced to retire for good

- have to do propaganda related work. Either, if they (or somebody close to them) did/said some non-government-compliant things, for people in power positions to overlook those, or in return for specific freedoms they wouldn’t get to enjoy otherwise.

Especially the forcing of propaganda jobs on public figures, I can’t help not relating that to Yibo.

Just compare some of his songs... “無感 Wu Gan”, for example, with his recent “青春恰时来 - Youth Comes in Time”.

Wu Gan is musically progressive, sounds fresh and goes with the genres and types of music Yibo has shown to love before. And he officially wrote it himself. Youth Come in Time, which he released but was neither composed nor lyrically written by him, sounds like a polar opposite. Musically, it sounds like what you would hear in a 90s advertisement.

And looking at the lyrics, I mean... that song has lines like “strengthen the country”, “we stand in the front row”, “I am with my country”, “the Chinese stage is taking off” - how is that not propaganda?

Do we really, genuinely think that somebody believes in this, even though in the songs that he wrote himself, and has stated to be about his own personal experiences, he says stuff like, “don’t become a puppet whose feelings are manipulated by others”, “every day there’s someone going on and off stage - just remain emotionless”, “You’re famous but you have no works and the voices scolding you only get worse”, “I’ve trapped myself and I can’t make my goals distinct”?

Do we?

Really?

I’ll leave that up to you.

#anon ask #yizhan #i'm not sure if i should tag that with his name

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nevermindirah · 4 years

Text

I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

#nile freeman #tog meta #book of nile #sebastien le livre #the old guard #mine #us imperialism #european imperialism #jewish things #antiblackness #police violence #orientalism

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justreadingfics · 4 years

Text

It’s a Deal (Chapter 6)

Chapter Summary: It’s time for the anticipated party.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Words: 3.1k

Warnings boytoy!Bucky, mention to casual sex, open relationship, someone catching feelings.

A/N: No smut in this one… Thank you to my sweet Les for having my back. The link to my masterlist, where you can find the other chapters, is on my description. Feedback is highly appreciated.

Tag list for this story is closed.

Bucky takes a sip from the whiskey in his hand and, for a glimpse of a moment, he thinks of the time he would absolutely hate the scenario around him right now, crowded with people of all imaginable sorts, loud chattering and music, dance floors flashing with bright and colorful lights. A party, but not just a party, a Tony Stark Party, filled with all of that and also the best food in the country and even better drinks. He used to loath them, until he freed himself from his own mind restraints and remembered what a party really was: an opportunity to let yourself lose, follow no rules except to have fun and, of course, meet some nice people, especially women – lots of them- to spend time with… in his bed.

What had never crossed his mind, though, is that would come a day when he would be interested in meeting just one. And he holds his gaze on her right now. She’s there, among the sea of bodies, sipping from her drink while laughing and talking with her friends, Nat and Sharon.

Bucky can’t help the smile forming on his lips at the sight of her having her fun. As she should be…that party is all for her, after all. She looks beautiful, as usual, in a shimmery short dress and heels high enough to make a desert of his mouth. But it’s that loose laugh of hers, when her head falls a bit backwards as her shoulders shake and she puts her hand over her stomach, that makes his heart flutter inside his chest… He doesn’t even notice when his smile turns into a shuddering sigh.

He clears his throat before taking a long taste of his whiskey, hoping the strong liquor down his throat would help to put himself together. This is getting ridiculous… He needs to figure out what this huddle of… strange feelings growing inside him every time he sees or even thinks of her means… He needs to figure that shit out soon.

“Well, well, well.”

Steve’s voice grasps his attention as his eyes advert from her to meet his friend walking closer to him.

“What’s up, punk?” Bucky doesn’t even know why but he immediately hates that little teasing smile on Steve’s face, he decides to ignore it, though.

“That’s one vision I’m not really used to. Bucky Barnes drinking all alone at a party. Where’s the mini harem that it’s usually seen surrounding you at such events?” Steve asks, not trying to disguise the playful sarcasm in his words.

“Night is only beginning, pal,” Bucky answers, putting on a cocky smile and tapping on Steve’s shoulder, using a bit more strength than usual.

“Yeah, sure,” Steve chuckles, not thoroughly convincedby the excuse, “You know, ever since Nat and I came back from the mission, I’ve been hearing some interesting speculations from some members of the team who stayed here…”

“Do I wanna hear it?” Bucky cocks an eyebrow.

Steve hums, “The word is out you’re just not the same anymore,” he shrugs and sips from his drink, peeking Bucky from under his eyelashes.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“They don’t see the usual parade of women coming and going from your apartment. Sam says there’s been one mysterious lady, though… but none of them seem to guess who.” With no hint of subtleness in him and with a teasing smirk on his lips, Steve turns his gaze to her direction across the room.

“Jesus…” Bucky huffs, shaking his head before drinking from his whiskey, “Fucking all mighty Avengers… Don’t you all have a World or two to save instead of gossiping about my private life?”

“Which was never really that private, let us be honest.” Steve laughs.

Bucky can’t help but to let out a small laugh, too, shrugging at the incontestability of the statement. He was never one to be much discreet about his shenanigans.

“What is that exactly?” Steve insists, nodding his head in her direction, where she still talks animatedly with her friends, “I didn’t know you were, ahm, close friends with Y/n from the tech department.”

“Didn’t you walk in on us the other day?” Bucky puts on a mocking frown at him, “Do you need me to reenact it for you, pal? You know I would have no problem with that, but we’re gonna have to ask her-“

“You’re such a jerk,” Steve cuts him off, his cheeks already showing a shade of pink at the memory, “And don’t you think I didn’t notice that little stunt on movie night, too,” he adds in a chastising way, but the scowl quick breaks into a smile when Bucky laughs, “You know what I’m talking about, you’re Bucky, you love ladies, as in plural, you have loved them ever since you were a kid in the 30’s, I have to admit you’ve always been respectful in your own way, but you were never been a guy to settle for just one for longer than a night or two…” Steve follows Bucky’s gaze, which has automatically navigated towards her. He lets out a knowing hum before speaking again, “But I guess your path just hadn’t crossed with hers, yet…”

Bucky looks back at Steve, whose eyes are gleaming with something like excitement. Bucky doesn’t know exactly how the words sink into him, but he feels like he can’t just disagree, not if he’s going to be completely honest. Never has he felt the need to be with only one woman for that amount of time until… until her.

“I mean,” Steve continues after no answer from Bucky, “I think it’s great, it was about time for you to find someone-“

“Don’t go imagining unrealistic scenarios on your romantic little head, Punk. My name is not Steve Rogers to get off on,” a grimace twists Bucky’s face as he speaks, “Love, attachment… or any tacky sort of shit you’re into.”

Steve opens his mouth as if he were to say something, but lets out a frustrated sigh instead, pressing his lips into a taut line.

“No, seriously, pal,” Bucky continues, in a less snapping tone, “Our, ahm, friendship is based exclusively on what you’ve seen and heard so far,” he smirks, “Sex. She had just gotten out of a long relationship and needed to get off, Nat thought of me - of course -introduced my dick to her pussy, they’ve become best of friends and here we are now,” he holds back a laugh, knowing damn well how the vulgar choice of words would make Steve’s 40’s little brain short-circuit, being the precise reason why he chose to put it that way.

“Alright, alright, you’re just messing with me now,” Steve seems in a hurry to make his friend stop talking.

Bucky lets out the laugh he was holding and punches his friend’s shoulder, gaining a dirty look in response before resuming, “I mean… It’s nothing like you’re insinuating, she’s great and we’ve been having fun, that’s all,” Bucky adds as his gaze falls upon her again. Yeah… she’s great. And beautiful, sexy, funny, smart, kind- clearing his throat to dismiss his own betraying line of thoughts, he turns back to his friend.

“If you say so.” A small smile curls Steve’s lips, showing he’s anything but convinced.

Goddammit, he does have a lot to figure out.

~~~

“I knew something was up, Bucky never stays for movie nights.” Tears fill Sharon’s eyes from how hard she’s been laughing.

“I felt like a horny teenager in my parents’ home,” you resume the story you’ve been entertaining Sharon and Nat with, “Not that my teen years were that exciting,” you add with a grimace, “Far from it exactly, I was a tech nerd since I was eight, not really something that rocks teen boys’ worlds.” Bucky seems to really dig it, though, is the immediate thought that pops into your mind, but you see no reason why you should say it out loud.

“Well, it did bring you far enough,” Nat winks at you, moving her glass around the party being held to celebrate you to emphasize her point.

“Damn right,” Sharon agrees, raising her glass, which you and Nat quickly follow in a cheerful toast.

You can’t shake the smile of your lips. You wouldn’t go as far as to connect the events, but after your breakup with Eddie, it seems like you’re living another life. A new and more exciting life, both personally and professionally… That’s why it shouldn’t bother you so much that you still haven’t seen him. He said he would be there after you called to tell the news and invite him to come. But it does bother you to casually look around the party and not spotting him…

“So, it’s been like a month since this deal of yours started, right?” Nat asks, catching your attention after gulping from her customary vodka.

“Yeah,” your eyebrows furrow as you nod, “Sounds about right… and what a month, holy shitballs…” You round your eyes, letting out a puff.

“Care to share more details?” Sharon asks, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Well…” You quickly survey the area around you and sneakily lean closer to them as they mimic you, “I had no idea what my body could do, I mean, I’ve been in positions I’ve never thought were humanly possible to perform, there’s not a day I don’t feel sore on every little inch of me, it’s a constant state by now,” you add, and the grin on your face tells how little the soreness really bothers you.

“Super soldiers…” Sharon smirks and winks before clinking her glass of champagne with yours.

As Nat chuckles, you let out a giggle, “Yeah, I mean, my poor pussy hasn’t seen that much action her entire life.”

Nat’s jaw drops as she scoffs and turns to Sharon, “Check this out… this woman wouldn’t even say the word “sex” without choking before,” she points at you and you shrug, keeping the smile on your face.

“That’s the Barnes effect,” Sharon comments, before turning to you, ”But wait a minute, how often you two have been keeping this encounters up?”

You take a second to think about it before answering, “Almost daily, I guess. When I don’t call him, he ends up calling me and so we go.”

“Really?” Nat asks and when you give her the confirmation, her brows snap together as a wondering “huh” slips out of her lips.

She seems surprised by the fact you’re seeing Bucky practically every day, but you think nothing of it, “I’m sending you a whole box of this vodka you like so much, by the way.” You point at her glass, “You deserve it. I was just waiting for you to come back from that long ass mission of yours.”

He expression shifts to an amused one, “Oh, well, cheers to that,” she says before gulping down the rest of the liquid in her glass.

“But let me ask you something,” Sharon cuts in, “You’ve been seeing him almost daily, having amazing sex with the Adonis we all have to agree Bucky is…” she looks at Natasha for support, who just nonchalantly shrugs her agreement, before turning back to you, “Don’t you think it can become a bit complicated? In the feelings area, I mean, Bucky can be pretty charming, but when it comes to commitment, well-” She tilts her head as a hint of concern is present on her voice.

Nat too focuses on you, interested in what you have as an answer.

You snort and waves dismissively at their concern, “No way. Don’t worry, you two. Neither of us are looking for such a thing. It is what it is: just sex. Bucky is amazing, I don’t think I would be able to have that sort of relationship with anyone other than him. He’s so relaxed and laid back, no games… he’s pretty clear with his intentions, which is no romance at all and that’s exactly what I need right now. We both want the exact same thing, that’s pretty clear ever since we set this deal and it’s not going to change,” you say with tranquility and firmness in your words.

“Are you sure?” Nat insists, giving you that look you know it’s all about her making sure you’re ok. “This whole idea came from me but I know Bucky for a long time, I know he’s not one to do feelings, but I’ve been worried about how you would take it.”

“Absolutely…” you guarantee “And to be honest, I know I need to work on it, I do, but when I think about a relationship, I mean, a conventional relationship, I still think of Eddie… I feel like I’m still too caught up on him to think of anyone else that way,” You shrug, pressing your lips in a line, “Bucky’s being really important to help me get through it all, though, I have to admit it.”

“Well… I’m glad.” Nat gives you a sympathetic smile, brushing a hand on your arm.

“Alright… I guess you have a boytoy, then, huh?” Sharon teases.

You laugh, before conceding with a nod, “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Speaking of the devil,” Nat says in a quiet mumble and nods to behind your shoulder.

Before you have the chance to turn around you hear his voice. That deep and raspy voice that usually makes your skin burn and tonight is no different, “Well, well, if it isn’t the power trio… Am I the devil by any chance?” Bucky steps beside you, narrowing his eyes at Natasha, before shooting you that captivating smile of his, the one that prompts a smile of yours to swiftly twist your lips too, “Hi,” he says softly.

“Hi,” you answer, seizing the moment to take him over. He looks absolutely ravishing with his styled fluff hair, light scruff shadowing his jaw and beautiful eyes stuck on you, wearing an untied blue suit over a casual white t-shirt that not every man could make it work. Sharon was damn right, Bucky really is charming… too charming for his own good.

“So, talking about me, ladies?” He insists, tilting his head and focusing a piercing gaze on you, despite addressing all three.

There’s something about him… you just can’t stop smiling at his presence and, even worse, don’t seem to be able to tell a lie, not even an innocent one to save your ass, so you decide to take a sip of your champagne and leave it to your friends to answer the question. You guess boytoy can’t be worse than “human dildo”, like you called him before, but that has been just between you two...

“Yeah, yeah,” Sharon is the one to step in, holding back a laugh just like you, as Natasha, ever a pro, sustains a perfect poker face, “I haven’t seen Steve, yet and I was wondering if he would be with you.”

If you’ve seen a flicker of disappointment in his eyes it quickly vanishes as he turns to Sharon, “Oh, yeah, he was. Look, there he is by the bar,” Bucky points, “And you might wanna check the amount of Asgardian Liquor is being sneaked to him, the guy is already talking nonsense.”

“Oooo, Asgardian Liquor Steve is the best, I give twenty minutes before he starts summoning Mjölnir from wherever Thor is now,” Sharon’s face twinkles with excitement, “See you guys later,” she adds before rushing towards the bar and her boyfriend.

As a girl from the staff comes along and refills Nat’s glass with her special vodka, Bucky looks back at you. You smile at him but soon frowns a bit. There’s something different in the way he’s looking at you and you can’t just pinpoint what it is. There’s always sheer hunger in his gazes for you that makes your spine tremble, but tonight… there’s something a bit more… introspective in it, maybe?

“So, enjoying your night?” he asks.

You brush your thoughts away to answer, “Oh, shit, yeah… This is unbelievable. I was never one to party that much, but I could get used to this.” You sign with your glass around, still marveled by the over the top event being held in your name. “Tony is out of this world.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s true, though,” Natasha comments with an exaggerated eye roll.

You chuckle before a sight behind Bucky’s shoulders catches your eye.

“Hey, I-“ Bucky starts.

“He’s here,” cutting out whatever Bucky was gonna say to you, your voice comes out in a gasp as your hands run cold and your heart races.

“Who? Tony?” Bucky asks with a grin, turning his face towards the direction you’re staring at with startled eyes.

“Eddie,” Nat is the one who answers, pointing at the man standing alone by the entrance, seeming a little lost as he glances around.

Not you nor Natasha sees when the smile on Bucky’s face falls. When he looks back around, though, he already has a lighthearted expression put on for you.

“I should go talk to him, right?” You check, shifting looks from him to Nat. As she just shrugs, curling the corner of her lips down - and by that, expressing exactly what she thinks - you appeal to Bucky, focusing pleading eyes on him. Deep down, you know what you wanna do, but for some reason, just needs someone to back you up.

“Yeah-“ he clears his throat, “I mean, you invited him, haven’t you?” He tightens his lips at an attempt of a smile.

“You’re right.” You nod, biting your lips nervously and looking straight ahead, “See you guys later.” You wave, after taking one or two deep breaths.

Your shoulder brushes against Bucky as you walk past him and he turns his body around, following you with his gaze. He takes a long sip of his drink and places a hand inside his pocket, watching as you approach your ex-boyfriend.

He tries hard to bury deep down inside him the tug on his chest.

“Oh, fuck…”

Natasha’s curse reminds him she’s still right there and he realizes she’s been watching him, with a dumbfounded expression he’s not used to seeing on her face.

He lets out a deep breath, “What?”

Natasha scoffs and shakes her head, seeming in a state of disbelief, “This whole time I’d been worried about the wrong person.”

~~~

To be continued.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes series #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes #marvel fanfiction

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chalky · 3 years

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The Commodification of c!Tubbo

This essay is unnecessary but I think about it too much so here you go

At this point, y’all are probably sick and tired of me rambling about c!Tubbo, as this is about all my original posts are. But, I feel as though this is an important aspect of his character that is either swept under the rug or never given any second glance.

Whether intentionally or not, Tubbo has been constantly commodified by allies and enemies alike (don’t even get me started on the fandom, that’s for a whole other post). Like, throughout the entire story of the Dream SMP, Tubbo has been looked down upon as a yes man, sidekick, or extension of another character who is incapable of making decisions for himself, which is such a degrading thing to experience for so long and explains why his character values himself so little.

This is a long one, heads up!

I want to break up this dehumanization and commodification into three categories:

Tubbo is either a pawn (something to be used), a trophy(something to be owned), or a scapegoat(something to be blamed) to others.

Tubbo Seen as a Pawn:

Wilbur loved Tubbo, but his treatment of him during the Pogtopia arc was definitely sad to see. (Note: Wilbur was spiraling and his mental health was in shambles. He couldn’t help his paranoia and he deserved way better than the ending he got, but that doesn’t absolve the effects of his actions on others). First he took Tubbo on as a spy, a very dangerous role that landed him dead, but throughout Tubbo’s service Wilbur saw him as an obedient pawn, while not a loyal one. A pawn ready to turn to whatever authority figure commanded him best. His remarks about Tubbo being a yes man back this up, and the way he warns Tommy that Tubbo will betray them erases all of Tubbo’s identity and reduces it to that of a spy (again, this is born of Wilburs paranoia, this isn’t his fault).

Dream made it very clear that he regarded Tubbo as lesser than a toy, so obedient and trusting that he wasn’t worth keeping alive because he was so boring to him. The whole speech about Tubbo being worthless wasn’t even directed at him despite him being right there. Dream only addressed Tommy as if he was the one whose opinion on Tubbos fate mattered.

Jack Manifold literally used Tubbo’s trust to attempt to kill Tommy, saying that he was a sweet guy but way too gullible. No better way to treat someone as a pawn to further ones own agenda than by literally using them. (Him talking about how he’d be there to comfort Tubbo after the assisted murder of his best friend still mildly disturbs me).

Quackity managed to talk Tubbo into going through with the Butcher Army, using Tubbo’s power to further Quackity’s agenda (which, by Quackity’s own admission, did not revolve around the protection of L’manburg.) Quackity didn’t care that Tubbo was against violence, and pushed his concerns to the side in favor of his own ideas and kept comparing Tubbo to Schlatt whenever he acted in a way he disagreed with.

Speaking of, THE CONSTANT DISREGARD OF HIS DECISIONS AS PRESIDENT. His Cabinet never listened to him and lowkey every stream they had together was a bit frustrating to me (I’m also a sensitive bitch). They didn’t respect him in any way and undermined his authority UNTIL THEY NEEDED HIM TO SAVE EVERYONE’S LIFE. (Elaborated on in Scapegoat Category).

Technically, as much as I am a Tommy apologist, Tommy’s constant insistence that the Disc War needed to involve Tubbo kind of fits under this category. As much as Tubbo was happy to help, his involvement wasn’t really necessary, but Tommy needed someone to help him. This involvement nearly resulted in his willing death.

The only reason Dream even wanted to kill Tubbo, on top of perceiving him as useless, was to hurt Tommy and give him something of a “hero origin story” like Batman and his parents or Spider-Man and Uncle Ben. So, literally by Dream’s definition, he wanted to fridge Tubbo.

We could refer to Wilbur assigning Tubbo to presidency as Wilbur using him to make the explosion of L’manburg hurt more, but that feels like a stretch to me.

This may be a stretch, but after Tubbo is executed and Tommy starts getting mad at Technoblade, Wilbur eggs Tommy on by saying “Think of what he did to Tubbo,” while Tubbo is literally right there. His emotions on the event doesn’t matter to Wilbur, only how it impacted Tommy.

Tubbo Seen as a Prize/Trophy

The constant referral of Tubbo as something to be owned by someone, like during Wilburs speech of “he’s your Tubbo!”, is a bit off putting though I don’t think it’s meant to be malicious. Very rarely is the sentiment reversed, seen when Ghostbur gave Tubbo the Your Tommy compass, furthering the idea that Tubbo is an object, something to be sought after and secured with little opportunity for him to own something himself. It’s always “Tommy’s Tubbo”. Also when Schlatt gloated about having “his very own Tubbo”.

Tommy shows more possessive behaviors when dealing with the discovery of Ranboo and Tubbo’s marriage, asking about permission and insisting that Ranboo stole Tubbo from him. I’m sure this is subconscious, I know Tommy values Tubbo as a person but he still reduces Tubbo to an object to guard because he treasures his friend.

Another more vague example would be the fact that Schlatt exiled Wilbur and Tommy, but kept Tubbo as his right hand man even though it was clear he was on POG2020’s side. It was a way to insult Tommy, a way for Schlatt to add salt to the wound by keeping his best friend.

The Dream Team captured Tubbo very early into the Revolution, keeping him in a hole and holding him for ransom (this could be played off for laughs, I just remembered it). They also burned down his base, unrelated really but I remember it.

We could also count the way that Dream kept threatening to kill Tubbo if Tommy didn’t return the disc, but this feels like a mixture of pawn and prize, while still dehumanizing as it compares his value to that of music discs.

Yes, I am going to take c!Tommy joking about killing Michael to get Tubbo and Ranboo to break up so he can get Tubbo back seriously. The way he glared at Michael while holding an axe was just for the stream to see, if it was a joke I feel like he would have said it out loud. Even if it is a joke, laughing about taking something Tubbo loves away just to ruin his relationships is a bit yikes and frames Tubbo as something to be won back. You can ignore this if you didn’t see that moment as canon, but there are plenty of signs pointing to this being in character. (Also to be noted, Tubbo didn’t want to show Michael to Tommy, so Tommy ignored him and asked Ranboo instead, who immediately showed Tommy to Michael despite Tubbo’s clear worries)

Tubbo seen as a Scapegoat

His cabinet flip flopped back and forth on the decision to exile Tommy every five seconds. Whenever they spoke with Tubbo, they were all “You’re right! We’re going to listen to you! We have to do what’s right!” and then they hear a half baked plan and completely switch up on what they already agreed to do. (This happened twice. One at the sit down meeting where Tommy revealed Spirit and the cabinet joined Tommy in his mocking, only to blame him for how the meeting ended. Twice at the exile). So when Tubbo had to follow the original plan to, you know, make sure their country wasn’t put under lock and key until every citizen was eventually killed, his cabinet acted so shocked and betrayed and he was Schlatt and a dictator. It’s very true that he went against their plan (THAT THEY MADE FIVE MINUTES BEFOREHAND AFTER HAVING ALREADY AGREED TO THE FIRST PLAN FOR DAYS), but the way they treated him afterwards, as if he was a vile person for keeping his country safe, heavily impacted Tubbo’s mental state for a long time after. What I’m saying is Tubbo was set up to be the villain in that scenario, accidentally by his allies, and purposefully by Dream.

Tubbo was blamed for the destruction of L’manburg by Dream and a few others (also himself)

TUBBO IS CONSTANTLY BLAMED FOR THE BUTCHER ARMY ARC DESPITE IT BEING COMPLETELY THOUGHT OF AND LEAD BY QUACKITY (This is predominately fandom based).

The full blame for Tommy’s exile has rested on Tubbo (I will never forget Tommy calling him a monster), despite the fact he was manipulated and backed into a corner by Dream. Even when everyone has come to understand that Tommy was manipulated by Dream, the same doesn’t go for Tubbo and he’s hit with “imagine exiling your best friend” jokes many times.

Wilbur puts the decision of blowing people up at the festival on Tubbo’s shoulders, absolving him of the blame.

Schlatt made Tubbo tear down the L’manburg walls and the important signs so he could have to deal with the blame (though Quackity took the fall for this).

This is more theory based, but I fully believe Wilbur made Tubbo president right in front of Techno to egg him on to attack L’manburg. Since Tubbo would be the president, he would take the full brunt of Techno’s wrath (and he and Tommy did), and the destruction fell onto him.

So! With my text evidence we can see a recurring pattern in the way that Tubbo has been used by many people over the history of the server without much regard for his feelings. There are very few times when people besides Tommy ask how Tubbo feels about a situation, leaving him to his dark thoughts without anybody caring. Even during the Final Disc War, when Tubbo was literally moments from death, nobody asks how he is. Nobody (except Quackity once) checks up on him, and he builds up his community by himself. Until Ranboo came along, and I am not overexaggerating this, nobody was with Tubbo to support him. He had no support system and nobody cared. They just assume that he is always fine and if he wasn’t, it isn’t their place to intervene. Tubbo is just not respected, feared, or acknowledged unless he has someone by his side, or unless he’s doing something bad in which case he’s unhinged and evil and sure to have a villain arc.

This is just something to find interesting:

The only few characters Tubbo is actively involved with that hasn’t looked down on him as a sidekick or an object has been Foolish, Puffy, Ranboo and Technoblade. You could make an argument of how Technoblade referring to him as “government” could be dehumanizing but I don’t think I’ve actually seen him do that in character? I could be wrong though. Really, Technoblade takes him seriously, but way more seriously than c!Tubbo warrants. Like, he’s looking for a tyrant to beat up and Tubbo is literally just a guy with a lot of issues struggling to keep a handle on his cabinet, which I find funny. But, jokes aside, Technoblade saw Tubbo as a legitimate threat during his presidency and is respectfully cautious of him and his nukes presently, which is surprising to me. Ranboo adores Tubbo and all of his chaos that people are unaware of because they don’t get to know him well enough. Puffy just wants the best for all the kids of the server and knows how to be respectful of their feelings, and Foolish is respectful of Tubbo, if a bit annoyed and intimidated by him.

The point of this essay is just to show that there is a pattern to these things. This is how Tubbo is treated, this is why Tubbo is prepared to die for whatever because because he doesn’t feel he’s worth anything while alive, and this is why it’s frustrating to see characters call him a follower, pawn, or yes man. And here’s the thing: I DONT KNOW WHY THEY TREAT HIM LIKE THIS??? Why him? I can’t really find out why this started to happen.

To sum some things up, no I don’t think every character who treats him poorly is completely evil. Again, some of this seems to be subconscious, some of this could be argued to be OOC, I just wanted to bring this pattern to light.

#dream smp #tubbo #meta #tubbo appreciation #character analysis #jschlatt #dreamwastaken #I said I’d do an essay #here’s the essay

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mxgilray · 3 years

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Loki Season 1 Thoughts

Overall, I really liked this series. It has some issues without question, but I sincerely don't think it's the dumpster fire so many viewers on this site treat it as. Did it go how I expected? Not at all? Did I enjoy the heck out of it and look forward to it every Wednesday? Hell yeah!

Loki's Good Guy Personality

A big complaint many have had with it is how much Loki's demeanor has changed and how his emotional growth feels rushed or his personality is ooc. Truth is, he saw his entire future, saw what his angry, power hungry, I-work-alone persona would get him in the end, and it snapped him back to reality. He has always been shown to be quite emotional and craving attention and lacking in self assurance, it's just in the past movies he's masked it with violence and fake narcissism, and he's always been a secondary character so his perspective is rarely shown. But if you really pay attention it's obvious he isn't truly villainous; we all know that, it's largely why he has such a huge fan base.

Right after meeting Mobius, Loki got an infodump of his future, saw his parents both die, found out that free will means jack shit, and learned he's absolutely powerless in this realm. On top of that, this is 2012 Loki, fresh off of being under Thanos' control, suddenly being shown that the guy who controlled him is going to end up killing him. Frankly,, I think it all broke Loki. He was too shook up by it all and by the sheer helplessness he found himself in at the TVA that he let all his barriers down momentarily. Just long enough for him to open up to Mobius about his motivation and his lack of self confidence. And you know what I bet? Loki felt relieved after talking to Mobius. A weight was lifted, because he bore his heart to someone and wasn't rejected or laughed at or treated like a psycho. And after letting his walls down fully, Loki didn't feel the need to put all of them back up. He stayed guarded around other people, but he didn't need to pretend around Mobius. Mobius has seen under the mask, so Loki doesn't feel pressure to perform as an all knowing, all powerful God around Mobius. That freedom is life changing.

People who gravitate towards broken, pseudo-villain characters do so because we relate to their internal conflict, their mental illness, their need to fake it around everyone close to them. Their turmoil and depression and self destructive behavior are familiar and we see ourselves reflected in their actions. Now, when a person really truly let's their guard down, drops all their layers of facade, and embraces themself, they tend to change demeanor and even personality pretty drastically. It's jarring in real life, so of course when it happens to a fictional character who you usually relate to it is going to be jarring, maybe even more so because it feels like a change you yourself would never go through. I know this sounds bad and people might get at me for it, but...

I believe the issue here is that a large part of Loki's fan base doesn't want him to get better. They don't want him to move past his mental illness, to learn how to cope with anger and disappointment in healthier ways, to be happy. They like his damaged persona, they like the internal conflict. Maybe it's because they're still at that low place themself and feel like a relatable character is getting taken away from them, maybe it's because they don't understand how much being at peace with yourself can alter a person and to them it feels like he's been changed too much. To those of us mostly on the up and up from battling depression and mental illness, it's comforting to see Loki getting a chance to be genuinely happy and accepting of himself.

Sylki and Lokius

First things first, I'm not anti anything. Ship what you want, idc. Personally, I do not see the Sylki dynamic as romantic, but I get why people read it that way. I thought the series did a good job of showing unrequited love, namely Loki falling for Sylvie and Sylvie feeling zero romance towards him. This was aware of his attraction and in the end used it as a distraction so she could get the upper hand. The show played up the potential romance because we are viewing things from Loki's perspective and he's become smitten as a kitten. I do think in the long run they'll have a more sibling-like dynamic, one Loki realizes that you can feel extreme love and care for a person without it being romantic. I enjoyed how the show explored their relationship, though I do wish they hadn't had every character under the sun mention their moment on Lamentis-1 like it was some big deal to bond with someone you're about to die with.

I'm bitter towards the development of Lokius. It had a strong start in the beginning, and in ep 5 had some potential reignited, but then they had Mobius not know who Loki is at the end. I'm still hoping they're playing the long game with this ship and that it'll come to fruition partway through season 2. The chemistry is there, and Mobius knows Loki very intimately and isn't put off by his past. Loki also feels much more at ease around Mobius than he does around Sylvie. It's the comfort of a deep loving bond with Mobius verses the nervousness of a new crush that he feels for Sylvie.

I don't think Loki is quite aware of his feelings for Mobius, simply because it's based in friendship and mutual respect and isn't a hot and heavy lust. Plus, as soon as he was away from Mobius he was thrown into a near death experience with Sylvie and developed a surface crush during their heart to heart. Since Loki's still figuring out what genuine feelings are beyond anger and sadness, he sees the simplistic crush he has on Sylvie as love and the intimate bond he's been forming with Mobius as friendship. He doesn't understand his own feelings yet, but I think he'll figure it out next season. I mean, he was probably already rethinking his feelings for her after she kissed and betrayed him, mentally kicking himself for expecting her to not pull a Loki betrayal like he would've in the past.

The Time Variance Authority

I really like the concept of the TVA, the structure of it, the methods they use, the deeply fucked way they recruit employees, the cult like motto, shady Miss Minutes who is definitely playing her own long game, and the blind acceptance TVA agents have of the Time Keepers' will. It's all very well done... until your dig into the core, aka He Who Remains. They built up the idea that the Time Keepers created the TVA to prevent a multiverse war and that they created agents to enforce their will. Then the creating agents turned out to be fake, the Time Keepers were fake, I expected the reason for the TVA's existence to be fake to. It felt too simple to have it genuinely exist just to keep the multiverse in check. Why the anonymity, unless it's to keep from having agents target and prune versions of himself which.. songs like a decent solution. HWR made it sound as though the multiverse war was just a bunch of versions of himself screwing shit up, so why isn't the TVA's focus on eradicating every other variant of this guy? Sounds a lot easier and nicer than fucking with the free will of every other living being. So either Marvel made a bad call when choosing what HWR's motive was for creating the TVA, or he was lying about it all to cover up something sinister.

Overall Storyline

I'm fairly happy with the plot as a whole. There were some pacing issues and I think a few missed chances for deeper conversations between various characters. While I enjoyed the Loki variants, I honestly would've been happier seeing Tom playing most the variants (except Kid Loki and Classic Loki since they are clearly different age ranges). If there is supposed to be one sacred timeline, it seems off to me that Lokis would be allowed to vary so extremely without it causing a nexus event(an alligator, whose nexus wasn't that he's an animal who obviously can't do any magic much less command Thanos' army, but that he ate someone's cat) and not just in appearance but in life path (ie boastful Loki collected all the infinity stones but it wasn't till he had 6 that he caused a nexus event even though him gaining control of the Soul, Power, and Time stones should've each caused nexus events since on the sacred timeline he never interacts with those 3 and taking any one of them would've fucked up a lot of other timeline parts)

I love the display of Lokis raw power, and 2012 Loki coming to the realization that he's way more powerful than he ever thought. And it wasn't just Classic Loki who spent thousands of years alone honing his skills, 2012 Loki reversed time on a goddamn falling building! I also liked the small magic, the fireworks, the tablecloth blanket, Loki yanking Sylvie away from HWR with just magic.

As someone who is both bisexual and genderfluid, I would've really loved more concrete representation. The comment about there never being another female Loki hit me in the gut; it undermined the Easter egg "Sex: Fluid" on Loki's TVA file. With how big a deal Sylvie being female was made out to be throughout the season, I expected her gender to play a key role in taking down the head of the TVA, like it was foretold that only a female Loki could end it all or some shit.

I don't mind the idea of Loki finding love in a straight passing relationship. I don't even mind the selfcest all that much. It just feels so obvious to me that Sylvie is written as not having any romantic inclination towards Loki, while Mobius is clearly written as falling in love with someone he shouldn't and trying to maintain an heir of professionalism to keep from wrecking his bond with Loki. I really really hope they come through on season 2 and give Lokius the canon relationship and proper representation they deserve.

Mmkay I thinks that's all the thoughts I've got right now. If you've been feeling cheated or clowned by how things went this season, maybe my perspective of things can help ease your pain.

#loki spoilers #loki series #loki #mobius m mobius #sylvie laufeydottir #lokius #sylki #tva loki #time variance authority #marvel #mcu

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winchesterxxi · 3 years

Text

Tolerate It (Din Djarin x Reader)

Rating: PG-13 my dudes.

Type: Angst and some undercooked tasteless fluff cuz I’m a mess and extremely rusty.

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Unrequited love, because that’s all we have these days and that shit hurts.

A/N: Based on Taylor Swift’s “Tolerate it” because I deadass listened to that song for the first time and could just picture this scenario ALSO I’m extremely rusty. As in, I haven’t written jackshit like this in over a year. Pardon this crap, but i was really emotional and in need to project onto a newly released song.

✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸

I sit and watch you reading with your head low

The three of you were sitting in the cockpit. The Mandalorian resting his head against the leather of the pilot chair as you sat behind him, The Child in your arms, entertaining itself by tugging and twirling some of your hair strands as you smile down at him and wiggle the occasional finger against his side making him laugh.

This adorable green creature didn’t even phantom about your existence 4 months ago and now you would kill and get killed for it. And admittedly, the same goes for the man resting with his back to you.

I wake and watch you breathing with your eyes closed

I sit and watch you.

You were a servant at the tavern where he was set to meet the Client and hand over the child, which was all part of a bigger plan, you later found out. Just like him and his team, you got trapped when the stormtroopers and deathtroopers surrounded the building and opened fire, killing the Client and sending a bullet flying dangerously close to your head. When Mando, as you called him, found a vent into the sewers he made sure that you were not left behind.

And that started it for you. He directed no more than 10 words in your direction between entering the location and offering an escape once it was crumbling down, but he was willing to save your life. Once out of danger, the questions started: “who are you”, “what’s your name”, and “don’t you have a place to go”. You told him then, the answers to all of those questions. And you also explained how, given that you were a servant you didn’t actually have a place to go back to.

So he did a logical thing. Or at least, then and there, it was a purely logical thing. A pro-quo, if you will. He offered you a place to stay, in return of you working as some sort of a makeshift assistant of his own; someone to look after The Child when he couldn’t and proceed basic maintenance to the Razor Crest when needed.

And you accepted. You know, the logical thing. Or at least , then and there, it was a purely logical thing.

Though small, you had your own bed in the lower part of the ship giving you some privacy, occasionally disrupted by The Child that insisted on being cuddle against you in order to fall asleep or when there was an emergency that required your help, but, even then, Din wouldn’t just barge in; He’d always knock and make sure you were okay with him opening the door.

You told yourself that he was just being respectful - giving you the privacy that he hoped you’d retribute, which you always did. When it came to such things, you’d tip toe around him, not asking too many questions and only talking when spoken to or when you wanted to break an incredibly heavy silence. You respected The Way.

I notice everything you do or don't do

Eventually, you started to pick up through his body language traits and quirks of his personality that you couldn’t capture through the enclosed and hidden facial expressions: how he’d always lay The Child against his left arm while on a hunt as to work the weapons with his other hand, how he’s close his fists whenever he realized that he was about to shoot someone; or how after encasing any creature in carbonite, he’d always look over at his capture for a few moments in silence, before rolling his shoulders back and walk away, without uttering a word.

And those little things started to change with time. Changing, as in, new instincts and unconscious movements came to be concerning you: small things, like he’d never walk you in front of him, so as to be on the lookout to any danger or making sure to deviate any conversation that a badly-internationalized creature might want to direct at you.

Eventually, it became bigger. Or at least you thought. He’d make sure that you were covered whenever you fell asleep anywhere that wasn’t your bed; he started to crack jokes with you and have the occasional fight over whose time it was to bathe the kid, like an old married couple.

You're so much older and wiser, and I I wait by the door like I'm just a kid

I greet you with a battle hero's welcome

Lay the table with the fancy shit And watch you tolerate it

One day he’d be like that, and the next, he’d come back after a hunt in which it was too dangerous for you to go, and you’d been waiting all day (when it wasn’t a whole week) for him to come back, not injured and very much alive, and he almost wouldn’t acknowledge you, going straight into the fresher and locking himself in there.

Every time you’d be at the ready with cloths in your hand, prepared to clean any blood splatter or to wrap any open wound. But he’d dismiss you and lock himself away, somewhere in the ship.

If you didn’t know what mixed signals were before, you sure as hell knew now.

I take your indiscretions all in good fun I sit and listеn, I polish plates until they gleam and glistеn

One day, you had enough.

It was dark night already, and Mando made a lousy entrance through the main portal, struggling to push ahead of him a man much larger than him, draped in canvas coverings.

“Just walk.” Mando grunted, at the same time as he pushed against the man’s back. You were just sitting there, as always, first aid at the ready by your side, watching the scene unfold, unbothered. That is, until you caught the man’s eye.

While you were out building other worlds, where was I?

“Last time I heard you were a lone rider.” He wickedly grins at you. “But maybe that was all talk and you were just keeping this all to yourself.”

You slowly sit upright as your body tenses up. Mando doesn’t utter a word.

“Who’s that pretty thing anyways?”

“No one. Keep walking.” He grunts, pushing the man once more and away from you.

No one.

Maybe you shouldn’t have been so bothered by that description because, truth be told, he was probably trying not to get you involved in any unnecessary interactions with that disgusting being. But it’s as if those words were the final straw you needed to snap out of this passiveness you’ve held on to for the past few months.

“You know virtually everything there is to know about me, my life, and my planet. You gave me shelter and I owe my life to you. But I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s The Way.”

“Oh would you shut the fuck up with that, already?”

“You don’t talk to me like that.”

“Does The Way say that you have to be an asshole 90% of the time. Shutting out the world around you whenever you just don’t feel like dealing with them. I never even got a single thank you for rewiring the central system which prevented us from freezing to death.”

“You won’t even acknowledge me every time you come back from a hunt and you just told that guy that I was no one. Those were the exact words you used.”

“I ditched the very peaceful and stable life that I had because I wanted to help you. I have done nothing but be loyal to you for the past few months, doing everything you ask me to, yet here I am begging for footnotes in the story of your life.”

You are too close to him, almost pressed against his chest. He steps past you, brushing against your shoulder, leaning over the cockpit’s panel, his hands supporting him. He answers, with his back facing you, like he always seems to do these days.

“If it was so peaceful, maybe you should go back to it, because obviously you weren’t cut for this life.”

“What, I wasn’t cut for The Way?” you walk in his direction, blood boiling and fists curled by your side.

“Exactly.”

“Fine, maybe I’ll go.” And in that moment you could almost swear his face dropped, even if you couldn’t see it. Taking advantage of the moment you step in his direction, tilting your head up, summoning all your strength “But first tell me it’s all in my head.”

“What?” he is caught off guard, turning to face you.

“Tell me that you haven’t stared more than a couple of times. That your heart didn’t drop to the bottom of your stomach when I almost drowned in the Mamacore cage. Tell me that you don’t need my help and that I mean nothing to you. Tell me that I am taking up too much of your space or time.”

“You can’t know if I stare at you.” Really? That’s the one thing he chose to answer?

“That I can.” you straighten your back, trying to look taller.

“How would you know?” comes the distorted voice through the helmet speakers.

“The same way that you don’t need to have eyes in the back of your head to know when someone is coming at you with a sword or pointing a gun at your head.”

He is silent but you can hear his breathing through the helmet - how it’s slightly accelerated.

“Din.”

“What was that?” you furrow your eyebrows, thinking that he only uttered a random sound.

“Din Djarin. That’s my name.” You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. He finally told you. It took almost a whole bloody year but he told you. He trusts you that much.

“Din and in D-i-n or Dean as in D-e-a-n?” you genuinely ask, walking over to the control table leaning your lower back against it. Din mimics your action, turning around and leaning himself against it, next to you.

“I just revealed to you a piece of information that I have never told anyone and you’re worried about the spelling.” he scoffs crossing his arms.

“I’d like to know what name will be written on my death certificate if I ever get killed because of you.”

He laughs. He actually laughs. Suddenly the heavy and tense atmosphere that was being held between the both of you dissipates as you both relax.

“You have quite the sense of humor.”

“And it only took you 7 months to find that out AND tell me your name.”

Then, silence again. But this time it isn’t uncomfortable. Not like the one there normally is. It’s as if you’ve quite literally cleaned the air. It is now comfortable to just be in his presence, nothing else. Not like it wasn’t before, don’t get me wrong, but you always needed something else, something more. But now? You were content.

“Sorry about what I said earlier, the you’re no one part.”

You smile up at him “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not, you said it yourself, I was an asshole.”

“No I shouldn’t have --” he cuts you off.

“You should. You are right. I just...” “The real reason why I dismiss you so much is because I am scared.” Now that catches you off guard.

“Scared of what? Of me? Because trust me you have fought with creatures much more --”

“No, I am scared that if I let you in, I’ll end up going the wrong way. I’m scared that if I let myself look at you when I want to or if I let myself give in to how much I want to come back to you at the end of every day that I’ll end up destroying all this discipline that I’ve insisted on myself all these years.”

Wow. You have to steady yourself with your hands with this information that just hit you right in the chest. “If I let myself give in to how much I want to come back to you at the end of every day” those words echo in your head and make your heart beat faster. Does he really feel that way about you?

But you decide with your better judgment not to push that particular point as the simple fact of him revealing the tiniest bit of his true feeling has already pushed him much farther than what he was willing to.

“I never asked you to take off your helmet.”

And little do you know that maybe you two are more similar than what meets the eye as now it’s his time to think Really? That’s the one thing she chose to answer?

“I know. And you’re the first person to not ask me that.” he says.

“Because I respect you. And I know how much it means to you, to keep your principles.”

“Is that all it is? Respect?” his heart is beating so fast and his body heat as come way up that the canvas and beskar around his body suddenly feel too itchy and warm.

You decide against your better judgment and toy with the idea.

“Why, did you expect anything else?”

“What- no no I didn’t ---” he stumbles over his own words, trying to still seem like the bigger person, but you cut him off.

“Din.”

“Hunh?” his helmet snaps in your direction and, maybe you are seeing things, but you can almost swear that you can see a pair of worried eyes through the black visor.

“I like you too.” and just like that the galaxy stopped. He almost forgot how to breathe weren’t it for your own alternated breathing that reminded him to allow that mechanism to happen again in himself. “And I’m willing to wait for whatever it is that you need to feel to be comfortable enough around me, and to let me in.”

There’s a sweet silence as you rest your warm hand on top of his leather-gloved one, your warmth passing through the fabric and he looks down at it in awe, his heart swelling like never before.

Suddenly you feel yourself being pushed in Dean’s direction from the opposite side from where he is leaning against the control board. You try to subtly resist it but the force gets too strong at once and you are plunged to his front. Thankfully he is quick enough to catch you and press you flush against his chest.

Both of your breathings are extremely accelerated and your heart is pumping in your your ears with the sudden movement. You can feel his gloved hands on the lower of your back. Then, you both slowly look to the side, to the sound of a coo only to find the kid, on the ground in front of you both, little hand outstretched.

“That little shit.” exhales Din.

You get your hand up and swiftly smack the back of his helmet.

“A little respect, that’s your son.”