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#comparing yourself to others far beyond your experience level will do nothing but hurt you ought to appreciate how far you've come
snakeguy999 · 5 months
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heya! do you have any tips on drawing, you have a good style that is very pleasing to the eye.
Yess my best tip is to always try to draw something youve never drawn before otherwise you never learn(ie. Get good) and to do that in a sketchbook to see progress clearly. Also a sketchbook is not meant to be pretty and beautiful, it meant to be full of notes, thoughts and art. It is a reflection of your mind if you let it be. You dont need to show it to anybody. You dont need to polish every doodle. It doesnt matter. Also watch Proko.
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tomurasprincess · 3 years
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Kinktober 26: Demon (The Summoning Circle)
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Day 26: Demon Title: The Summoning Circle Pairing: Kurogiri x Reader Word Count: 3.6k Warnings: Noncon, dubcon, demon sex powers, manipulation, coercion, death, orgasm denial, overstimulation, forced orgasms, mentions of past cheating (not Kurogiri), yandere Notes: Thank you to Literary Genius @burnedbyshoto​ for helping me when I was stressing out over an ending for this.
Kinktober Masterlist
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You’ve double and triple checked the spell, gone over the necessary ingredients, and compared the sigils drawn on the floor to the Ars Goetia grimoire you hold in your hand over a dozen times at this point. There is no way that a single thing is out of place, no way that you’ve made even a simple mistake.
You have at least a general idea that you must be careful with these kinds of things, although you have no personal experience. According to the grimoire, if there is even one small error in the binding sigils, you will find yourself dead or worse when you summon a demon.
You’re not even sure where the book came from. You found it in your attic while cleaning and trying to distract yourself from the anger you felt towards your partner. You wanted revenge on them more than anything, and finding the book almost seemed like a sign telling you exactly how to get it.
So here you are now, attempting to summon a demon. You chose a lower ranked demon from the Ars Goetia, deciding to err on the side of caution even though you’re not sure this will work at all.
And so, with a deep breath, you find yourself chanting the Latin incantation in the spellbook, walking around the circle as you do and spreading incense. When you finish, you find yourself standing in front of a still empty summoning circle, feeling remarkably stupid for thinking this could ever work.
Until the room’s temperature begins to drop rapidly, causing you to be able to see the fog of your own breath in the cold air. All of the lights in the room dim and then shatter, scattering glass everywhere. The candles surrounding the circle sputter and flicker for several seconds before finally being snuffed out, leaving you in total darkness.
Despite the pitch black, you can see something moving in the darkness, something that looks like purple mist creeping in. There is a noise that sounds like when someone opens a window or door on a windy day and you hear the pressure of the air rushing past you.
The purple spirals upwards until it finally begins to coalesce into the shape of a man. The candles flicker back on, the flames flaring up far higher than they should be able to and causing strange looking shadows to appear on the wall. When your eyes finally adjust, you realize that there is only purple mist where the man’s head should be and yellow eyes staring at you like they see right through you down to your soul.
“You summoned me, mortal?” The demon’s voice is deep and full of amusement. He paces the very edge of the circle, and you’re suddenly very glad that you double checked the sigils, as he pauses every small step to investigate them. Checking for some sort of flaw to escape, most likely.
“I - maybe - I,” you stumble over your words and he chuckles.
“Maybe? It’s a yes or no question.”
“I did do a summoning, yes. But I didn’t - “
“Didn’t expect a demon like me?” He interrupts you before you can finish. He chuckles even louder when you simply nod your head.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he states, “I am a high ranked demon far beyond your capabilities to summon, mortal.”
“Then how are you here?”
“I came to aid you of my own free will.” He has finished his cycle around the sigils keeping him imprisoned, turning to look into your eyes. The penetrating gaze he levels at you has you squirming, and you’re the first to look away.
“Why would you do that though?” You begin to pace yourself, nervous energy rising up in you at the unusual situation you’ve found yourself in. This wasn’t what you expected to happen, and you’re left off balance.
“Because I can feel your rage, mortal. You want to punish someone, don’t you?”
Your eyes snap back to his, and he gives a slight nod as if encouraging you to continue.
“I - do want to punish someone. My ex-partner.”
The mist around the demon’s face seems to swirl with amusement. “Let me guess - cheating?”
Your eyes widen a fraction at the demon being so on the mark. “Yes, I caught them in bed with someone else.”
“A tragedy, really. Anyone foolish enough to cheat on someone like you deserves whatever they get.”
You can’t stop the heat that rises to your cheeks at the slight bit of flirtation. “I - thank you. Is it something you can help me with?”
“Of course, mortal. Revenge is something that I am quite good at. But I don’t like to make deals through a summoning circle. Shows a lack of trust, you see.” He steps a bit closer to the edge of the circle and raises his hands up in a placating manner. “Let me out as a good faith gesture.”
Your body instantly tenses. The reasoning makes sense, but the thought of this demon being free puts you on guard.
“I’m not so sure about that one,” you say hesitantly. “The book says you absolutely should not do that.”
“What book is this?” The demon says curiously. “Surely it won’t hurt to allow me to see it?”
You can’t think of anything that he could do with the book to act against you, so you slide it across the barrier without putting your hand through.
He picks up the book and begins to flip through it, making some hums of acknowledgement as he reads the pages. He glances back at your summoning circle before turning a few more pages and finding the exact spell that you used to summon him.
“Ahh, so this is the spell you intended to cast for a lesser demon summoning.”
“I didn’t actually expect it to work at all,” you admit. “And I definitely didn’t expect to summon anything like you.”
“Anything like me? You mean an incubus?”
“I - what, I don’t - “ You stumble over your own words. Even someone as ignorant as you are knows what kind of demon that is. And it’s well over your experience level. “Is that what kind of demon you are?” You finally manage to get out.
“Oh yes it is,” he says in a rumbling tone of laughter. “You may call me Kurogiri. And what about you?”
You say your name before you can think better of it, and the demon called Kurogiri’s eyes brighten in excitement.
“This book has one thing right. A demon’s word is law. If I swear an oath that I won’t betray you, then I am bound to it. So why don’t you let me out and we can work out a deal, hmm?”
You shift around from one foot to the other while you consider things. He seems reasonable and willing to deal with you, and he’s even willing to give you an oath. All he’s asking is to not be locked in a cage. “I want your word first.”
His eyes flash with dark humor at your words. “I swear that I will not betray you.”
You feel the weight of those words settle into your chest, as if a physical bond was created. You realize this must be the oath, preventing him from hurting you, and so you walk forward and smudge the circle enough for him to walk through. He strides through confidently, eyes zooming in on you instantly. The look of malicious glee on his face causes you to inadvertently take a step back.
That expression on his face tells you that you made a horrible mistake. The air seems to get heavy as the room heats up, his power building and building. It hits you in the face like a physical force, causing you to stumble before turning on your heel to run.
But you don’t make it very far. As you grab for the doorknob, the heat of it causes you to jerk your hand back. You turn to see the demon standing in the same spot, arm raised as he beckons you to him. You take sluggish steps forward, almost as if in a dream. You can feel what’s happening, but you can’t stop yourself from walking towards your doom.
In no time at all, you’re standing in front of him, forced to look up at his face as he towers above you. You’re burning up, skin feeling too tight as an insistent throb between your legs begins. You try to turn away, but you’re frozen in place as the demon takes a now clawed hand and traces it down your face.
‘You - swore that you wouldn’t betray me.” You’re surprised to find that your voice still works.
“Oh I promise you,” Kurogiri whispers seductively, “you’re going to love what I’m about to do to you.”
And with that, a clawed hand tangles in your hair as he crashes his lips against yours. A dominant tongue slips into your mouth as his teeth bite against your lower lip. You can do nothing but stand there and let him do as he wishes, the throbbing between your legs only intensifying as you feel slick drip down your inner thighs.
He pulls away, leaving you gasping for air and your lips swollen and bruise. “What did you do to me,” you pant, finally finding yourself able to move as you squeeze your thighs together for some sort of friction.
“Just a bit of incubus magic,” he chuckles, grabbing you and lifting you easily as he carries you to the summoning circle. He lays you down on your back in the middle of the circle before taking time to undress himself slowly, removing piece after piece as if it’s a show.
You can’t help but admire how beautiful his body is underneath the fancy suit he wears. You squirm around, trying to move, to anything to relieve this fire burning through your veins. But with a smirk, he paralyzes you again before settling in between your legs. He removes your clothes next, forgoing making a show of it and choosing instead to rip them off of you.
Soon you’re laying in nothing but your panties, wet spot clearly visible through the material. “Well look at this,” he murmurs, “already so wet for me.” He glides a finger across the wet spot, drawing a whine deep from the back of your throat as he slides your soaked panties down from your hips. You’re left vulnerable in front of him, unable to close your legs as he spreads them far apart.
Your bare pussy is left completely visible to him, slick gushing out of you as he examines you. “Such a pretty pussy. I’m sure you won’t mind if I have a taste - “
He leans in to lap at your juices, groaning and causing vibrations to shoot right through you. He spreads you open with two fingers as he suckles your clit, sliding two fingers easily into your core. You’re still paralzyed by whatever power he’s using, and so you’re forced to feel everything, every action seeming more intense from your inability to move.
He increases the suction on your clit, tongue lashing and swirling against the throbbing bead and causing a moan to slip from your throat. “Hngg, please, oh shit - “
“Does that feel good, mortal?” He coos at you, curling his fingers up to graze a sensitive spot inside that draws a shout from you. “I am barely even trying yet, and already you’re such a beautiful mess underneath me.”
You pant heavily as his fingers work inside of you, tongue refusing to let up on your now aching clit. The tension is building and building, and you whine as your eyes roll to the back of your head. “Please, oh fuck,” you groan, not even sure if you’re begging him to stop or to never stop. “It feels so good -”
He lifts up just enough to take in your sweaty, breathless form, chest heaving and drool running down the corner of your mouth. “Do you want to cum?”
“Yes yes yes,” you babble mindlessly, right at the edge of an orgasm but unable to crash over. “Please!”
“Then call me your master, mortal.”
You’re too far gone to think of the consequences, the heat from within you burning through your veins. “Master, please let me cum! I need to cum so bad, please!”
He hums in pleasure, fingers inside of you quickening their pace, relentlessly smashing against your g-spot as his mouth latches around your throbbing clit again. You scream out your orgasm, juices squirting all over the demon’s face as you try to writhe.
Everything feels so sharp, so intense because of your paralysis, and you’re pushed over the edge twice more before he finally lets up. Your body is finally allowed to move, only for you to go limp as you shake and shudder.
You think things are over until you feel something hot and hard prodding at your entrance. Your eyes snap to his, eyes widening with alarm as you feel how thick he is.
“You didn’t think I was actually done with you, did you?” He flips you over, pressing your face down into the floor and raising your ass into the air as he sinks into you, inch by slow inch. You realize quickly that he doesn’t feel like a regular man, ridges and bumps running along his length that grind against your inner walls and force you to stretch around him even more.
Your fingers dig hard into the floor as you try to breathe. It hurts more than you would think, but in your lust addled mind, even the pain feels delicious.
“Does it hurt, little one?” The demon asks mockingly as you throw your head back. arching your back in a way that you can’t tell whether it’s to get away or to get closer. “I know I’m not like a mortal man, but trust me,” he grunts as he finally bottoms out inside of you, “you’ll take me anyway, and you’ll love every minute of it.”
The spines dig into your flesh, making your eyes water stinging sensation it causes. He gives you only a second to adjust before he’s thrusting, causing you to scream at the explosion of sensation.
He grips your hips as he pounds into you, forcing you back to meet his every thrust. There is one particularly large bump along his length that hits a spot inside of you that has you seeing stars with every single movement, and your whole body quivers as your stomach tightens.
You feel like you’re going to burn up from the inside, sweat dripping from your face and hitting the floor as the sound of pants and moans fill the room. His heavy balls hit your clit with every sharp snap of his hips, and the wet sounds your bodies make as they connect are positively obscene.
“Shit shit shit,” you chant as you clamp down around the many ridges along length, causing pleasure and pain to shoot through you which in turn makes you clench down even harder. “Fuck, it feels so - fuck it feels amazing,” you whine, realizing that your hand has come underneath you to begin stroking your throbbing, aching clit.  Your mind is so foggy that you aren’t even aware when you started.
But the tight circles you’re rubbing on your swollen little clit are not getting you any closer to that blissful climax. Everytime you get close, it seems to fade away, and you whine from deep in the back of your throat.
“Oh my, do you want to cum again, little one?” Kurogiri’s deep voice rumbles. “Beg me to take your soul and I will let you.”
The reality of the situation crashes back into you all at once. Of course, how could you forget? You’re being fucked into submission by a demon that you were stupid enough to release from the summoning circle. You can’t give in, can’t let him have your soul -
“Fuck, no, why,” you whimper in a choked sob as your orgasm slips away from you yet again. Your fingers increase their speed, grinding down so hard on your clit that you’re beginning to get sore. You push back against the demon’s every thrust, hoping against hope that maybe you can fool him.
But as if he can hear your thoughts, he instantly stops moving and your orgasm falls even further away from you. Tears of frustration are streaming from your eyes and hitting the floor underneath you. “Please!”
“I can do this forever, have you hovering at the edge with no release until you go mad with the desperate need to cum. Do you think you can hold on that long, little one?” He mocks you as he begins to move again, fast enough that it’s pleasurable but not as fast or as hard as you need right now.
“N-n-n-o, please!”
“Then say it. Say your soul belongs to me, and I will give you whatever you desire, little one.” He moves your hand away from your clit to replace it with his own. “Don’t you want to feel how good it is to cum around a demon’s cock?”
You’re sobbing and trembling, the fire in you threatening to consume you if you don’t cum right this moment. But still you shake your head back and forth, fighting not to give in to this sadistic demon.
“Come now, little one,” he whispers into your ear. “No one is going to save you from me. Just give in and I will make you feel better than you have ever felt.”
As he grazes over your clit with one finger at the same time as the ridge pushes against your g-spot, your willpower finally snaps completely. “Kurogiri, my soul is yours! Please just let me cum, please!”
He chuckles a bit, slightly at first before building into a triumphant, booming laugh that seems to come from deep inside of him. “The contract is sealed.” You feel a sharp tugging from within you, at the very core of your being. Everything in your being seems to be screaming out at once as purple mist shoots out from him to enter your body before disappearing, forming a connection between the two of you that will never be broken.
You want to consider the implications behind it, want to rage and scream at what was just done to you. But then he begins to move, and reason flies out of your head and is replaced with pure lust.
Rough fingers dig deep into the skin of your hips as he begins to ruthlessly pound into your aching pussy, thumb grinding down hard on your clit. He pushes against your g-spot with every single movement, and it isn’t long before the pressure reaches a crescendo.
You wail as you’re finally pushed over the edge, juices gushing from you as you squirt all over the demon’s cock. He doesn’t give you a moment to breathe, fucking you roughly through your orgasm and overstimulating you through several more orgasms.
Finally, he begins to twitch and throb, shoving himself fully inside of you as hot ropes of cum spurt out against your unprotected cervix. The warmth spreading out feels hot enough to burn your insides, and you cum one last time with a strangled howl before collapsing limply onto the floor.
You feel dizzy, the room spinning wildly as you try to catch your bearings. He collects you into his arms, the mist that makes up his face seeming to form into a smirk. “Now you belong to me, little one.”
“What are you going to do with me?” You say weakly, not able to move or try to get out of his arms. “Are you going to let me go now?
“Of course not. I have waited too long for you, and now I have you. Your body and soul are both mine, forever.”
You’re not sure why you feel so weak all of a sudden, body becoming heavy and sluggish as if you’re being drained of energy. You’re beginning to lose consciousness, vision turning purple around the edges. But his wording causes a thought to form. “I did the summoning correctly, didn’t I?”
He chuckles a bit.  “Yes, you did. But I was waiting, and I killed the pathetic demon you tried to summon.”
“And our deal? Were you ever sincere about it?”
“Of course I was sincere about it. In fact, your ex is already dead. Not only did they dare to put their hands on what’s mine, they discarded you like a piece of trash once they were done. Their punishment in the afterlife will be quite severe.” “What’s happening to me?” You whimper, voice breaking at the end from fear and confusion.
He grins maliciously at you. “I am draining you of every bit of life force you have. You will die, and your soul will be tied to mine for eternity.”
“But your oath!” You try desperately to stop this, to avoid being killed by this demon. “You said you wouldn’t betray me!”
“It's not betrayal if I intended to do this from the beginning, now is it?”
Your mouth falls open in horror of how stupid you’ve been, how truly in over your head you were.
“Now fade away, little one. Don’t fight it. When you wake up, you’ll be in your new home. In Hell with me, where you belong.”
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loving-all-for-loki · 3 years
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Can you write one where the Rogers is assigning a new recruit to each avenger for training? Loki gets the new girl and he’s irritated thinking she’s just some normal human that hasn’t a clue how to fight properly because of her petite size. When it comes time for them to spar, she gives him hell. She fights with swords and is very skilled in the art. He says something to piss her off and she ends up blasting him away with powers she never told anyone about. Loki realizes what she is since he knows the magic she used. She’s part light elf but being half human she was abandoned and left to die just like Loki was. They end up bonding and work together on the team.
A/N: I hope you like it! I didn't focus a whole ton of them working together, but I feel like you get the point. It's a bit longer than my other one shots.
The Moon And Her Darkness
Summary: Y/N, the newest avenger, starts her first day of training. An unimpressed Loki’s doubts are proved to be wrong when she reveals herself to be stronger than he knew.
Word count: 2744
Warnings: angst, dick Loki
Forever Tags: @mm2305
-
Your blood pumps fast through your body as you stare at the raven haired god. Ever since you joined the team, he’s been giving you dirty looks and eye rolls. You tried to not pay attention to it since you know of his past (and have been warned by Tony), but as the newest Avenger trying to prove herself, you find yourself longing for his approval.
It has been a week since Nicky Fury showed up at your home, extracting you from it, and throwing you into the lion's den you called the Avengers. You never signed up for it, but given that you were on the government’s radar for a long time, you’re not surprised. A couple mishaps here and there made them take you on their own terms. They’ve decided that having super powers is not something to be normalized and that you couldn’t live like a normal civilian.
Although you want to be home, the Avengers have already shown to be a great family. Nat and Wanda have already taken you shopping while Steve gave you a tour of the tower. As far as the others, they have been out of sight. Bucky avoids everyone, Sam with him because they’re glued to the hip, and Tony is somewhere else working on new technology with Bruce. Clint? Thor? Who even knows. You’ve been thankful for the attention they have given you.
Except for Loki.
You remember the attack in New York and you won’t lie when saying that approaching the god is intimidating. He stands with great pride and power, it’s hard not to feel small, but when he stares at you the way he does, it’s harder. He doesn’t stop looking at you as if you were a rat he found in a sandwich. Disposable. Replaceable. Disgusting. You don’t expect much from the God being that he’s only staying here out of punishment for the attacks, but you had hoped for a little something more. Even a prank or two.
When Steve told you that you were going to start training, you expected hand to hand combat like the rest, not whatever involves Loki being in the gym at the same time as the two of you. He hasn’t said a word, but just stared at you as Steve goes over some basic disabling techniques and defense. Most of it is already burned in your brain from your childhood, being a warrior and all, but you still manage to learn some new things.
But learning as to why Loki is there, that still remains unclear. Everytime you throw a punch or try to block one of Steve’s, Loki scoffs at you and rolls his eyes. He looks completely relaxed on a bench in the room, yet he could not be looking at you with a more tense gaze. He looks worried, as if you’re going to get beaten to a pulp.
“Okay, what’s wrong?” You yell at him.
Panting, you block Steve’s last hit and turn to the younger Odinson.
“Sorry?”
“Oh, don’t sorry me. Cut the crap, Loki. What’s up?”
“I believe the sky is.”
You grab a knife off the wall and aim it in his direction, startling him slightly but not even shocking Steve.
“You stare at me with daggers in your eyes and judge my every move. You have yet to even talk to me since I joined the team. What do you have against me, you ass?”
“Y/N-”
“Shut it, Steve!” You yell, quickly aiming the dagger at him before returning to Loki, “You. Talk.”
“It’s just pathetic, that’s all.”
“Pathetic? You’re calling me pathetic?”
You start to charge at Loki, but Steve quickly wraps his arm around your waist, holding you back from gutting the god.
“Y/N, I wanted you to spar with him after me,” he cuts in.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because he's a skilled fighter who matches your level.”
“Oh, so I spar with the tricker who decides I’m too pathetic to fight. He’s going to teleport or some shit and stab me like he does with Thor.” Loki’s eyebrows raise at the mention of Thor getting stabbed. “Yes, I’ve heard the stories. I’m not that naive, Steve.”
“I won’t leave you alone with him. I’ll be here to watch and guide.”
“What do you know about fighting with me? I have magic beyond belief” Loki asks the both of you.
“I know more than you think,” I spit, turning back to Steve, “Can we do something else?”
“Well, you coud-”
“I am not sparing with Loki.”
“Okay, then how about weapons? Whatever one you want to start with?”
Loki scoffs again at the mention of you fighting any other way than hand to hand combat. He’s lucky you’re on the same team as him or else you would have decapitated him by now just because of annoyance. How can a man so attractive be so obnoxious?
You walk over to the wall of weapons were Steve and quietly discuss which ones you’ll practice with. He recommends knives so you can spar with Natasha when he’s gone, but the swords are more up your alley. They remind you of your childhood, the weapon of your people. Some days, you miss them, but you know they are fighting their own battle that is too dangerous for you.
Picking up the swords, Steve warns you he is not good which makes Loki laugh again. He has the right to this time because how do you practice with a man who doesn’t know what he’s doing. You can’t last ten minutes with Cap before you’re tired of his flailing. He’s really not good.
“Loki, you wouldn’t happen to know how to use swords would you?”
“I have some experience. Asgard knights and Valkyrie used them, we were forced to learn.”
He stands and takes Steve’s sword from him. Turning to you, he smirks, taking you in. Your frame looks so small compared to his, nothing but a mortal. He’s never admit it, but he finds you slightly adorable, in a helpless baby sort of way. You take proper stance and stare at Loki dead in the eye, determined to prove him wrong.
The two of you run at each other, swinging at any unblocked area you can, yet never hitting. He blocks your swing, pushing you back but not down. Looking up at him, you scream and run, thrusting your sword towards his neck and legs. He blocks you again, but not without stumbling. Before he’s able to get up, you land a blow right to his chest, knocking the air out of him. He hooks his foot around your leg and flips the two of you over so he hovers above you, sword to throat.
“I’ll admit it, you are good, but not great,” he laughs.
He stands up and walks off, setting the swords back on their holder on the wall. You gradually stand up, fury in your bones for the way he speaks to you.
“You… are irritable!” You yell.
Right before Loki gets to the door, he turns to face you. Steve rushes to your side.
“Y/N, stop. He’s not worth it.”
“Oh, he’s not worth it, alright,” you mutter to Steve, “He’s not worth the pride. The praise. Whatever the ‘glorious purpose’ he thinks he has. He’s just an insecure little boy who needs to prove himself over others, make them feel small so he feels superior. Just a bully.”
“I’d watch your tongue,” Loki warns.
“Or else what? You’ll challenge me to a words competition? See who has the best insults or can sound like the biggest douche because I think we all know who would win! Another check mark for your book of things you’re better at than ‘midgardians’ or ‘mortals’ or whatever degrading nickname you think of next.”
Loki’s chest heaves in anger. You’ve never seen someone so angry or heard anyone yelling at you with concern like Steve. Nothing he says registers in your head as Loki’s daring looks fill your mind. You’d almost be scared if you didn’t know he’s full of empty threats. Just a scared little god boy.
“You imbecile, think you can scare me?”
“Actually, I think anything can.”
“I can take words from someone who does not know me, but to be called a coward is not something I take lightly.”
“So what are you going to do about it? Huh?”
“Nothing, I don’t waste my time on people like you.”
“Oh, people like me? Because the great Frost Giant Asgardian is sooo superior.”
“Don’t you ever say that.”
Loki rushes to your side, grabbing you by the throat and lifting you up against the wall.
“Loki, stop it!” Steve yells.
“This is not about you, Rodgers. I suggest you leave before getting in the crossfire.”
“I can’t do that. The safety of this team-”
“Is your priority. I know you are honorable, but I highly suggest you leave.”
Steve hesitates at the sound of you gasping for air. You cling onto Loki’s hand, tightly wound around your throat. His veins pop out of his hand like a dehydrated man. Steve looks back at you, eyes now closed to focus on your breathing.
“Put her down first,” Steve orders.
“Fine, always have to be the hero.”
Loki sets you down and your body goes numb. Everything hurts, your throat swelling. You gasp for all the air you can, feeling it go down your throat and enter your lungs. It’s fresh, comforting, healing. Leaning your head back against the wall, you barely open your eyes to see Steve by your side.
“Are you okay?”
Not energized enough to speak yet, you nod your head and place your hand on his shoulder. Steve looks over at you with worry before turning back to Loki.
“Leave, now.”
“Gladly.”
Loki turns to walk away, but doesn’t. He stands there to listen to you and Steve. At this point, neither of you care. You’re too focused on not dying.
“Can you breathe?” Steve asks.
You nod your head.
“I can get you help. We have a hospital room.”
“No,” you choke, “I’m fine. I just need a moment.”
Steve nods, but doesn’t listen. He gets up and leaves the room, rushing down the hallways to get a nurse, leaving you alone with Loki.
“Why haven’t you left?”
“No reason.”
“Please, just go. I’m tired of fighting. You’ve done enough.”
Loki turns to look at you. You look weak, but actually weak this time. The purple tint to your skin is fading as your lungs self regenerate as you keep breathing. Gripping onto the wall behind you, you stand up. Your knees are weak, making you wobble as you do. You’re not lying. You’re tired of Loki. You’ve barely spoken to the man and he’s made two attempts on your life in ten minutes. Sure, you teased him, but doesn’t he deserve it for being an ass.
“Weak.” He mutters.
That was the last straw. You look up at him. He stares at you as if the devil himself has entered you and your eyes glow bright red, but you know what is wrong. Holding out your hand towards Loki. A glow erupts from behind you, bright yet dark. It’s dark blue like the night sky and Loki watches it in awe. In seconds, Loki’s body is flung through the training room doors, blasting him into the wall of the hallways. He feels his rib breaking, his head hitting the wall. He yells out in pain as you slowly approach him, the anger seeping through.
“Never call me weak.”
Loki flips his head up to look at you, shock running through his body. At the sound of his body collapsing, the other Avengers come running forward. They look upon the sight of you towering over the trickster god with a look they’ve never seen before. Ethereal. Godly. You look as if you’re a queen staring at her peasant handmaid. Anger. Controlling. Power.
“What the-” Bucky mutters.
“You,” Loki gasps.
He struggles to stand as the team tries to help but he refuses. You two locked eyes but nothing was said. “You’re an elf.”
Everyone looks back at you with confused faces, but you don’t say anything. Your body goes hot at the mention of the word ‘elf’. The fire inside you fades out as anxiety places it, waiting for Loki to continue.
“I knew if someone was here to figure it out it’d be you,” you whisper.
“Light elf yes?”
“Yes, moon elf to be exact.”
“How are you here? Aren’t the-”
“Yes, they’re away. I was left to die. Our town got ransacked, everyone fled. No one stopped for me.”
“Then how are you here?”
“The Air elves. They got word of what happened and came. Found me. Took me back, but-”
“You weren’t suited. They found out.”
“Yes.”
There’s a moment of silence between you and the god. His eyes shine with sadness, tears coming to the corners. He looks at you with great pity as the wall inside you breaks.
“Can someone explain what’s happening?” Steve asks.
“Can you tell?” You ask Loki.
He nods, “Yes. Y/N is a moon elf, a tribe of light elves. They’re as high up as Asgard in the nine realms, powerful warriors. They’ve been at the center of every creature out there. People have been after them for their weapons, gems, and wealth. A landmark for every thief and warrior in the universe.”
“My town was destroyed when I was a little girl. Nobody wanted me because I was a child. I was a burden to them.”
“She was left for dead to be found by the Air Elves. Another tribe. Not as powerful. But they didn’t want her and there’s only one reason why they wouldn’t want a moon elf. She’s a half-breed.”
“Moon elves are the only ones who tolerate them. Half human, half elf. Considering many of them come from moon elves, they’re not despised, but Air Elves.”
“They dropped you off on Midgard to be picked up by someone else. I assume you hid your powers?” “I had to. I acted out once when I was little and my parents freaked out. They sent me away. I lived in a orphanage before some group took me, trained me, helped me hone in my powers. They saved me.”
“Until you got to old and left.”
“Didn’t know where to go. I became a waitress at some back alley bar, lived above it in an apartment with my manager. Lived paycheck to paycheck.”
“Then?”
“Nicky Fury came to me. I was on SHIELD’s radar and they wanted me on the Avengers.”
The room goes silent. Throughout your talking you missed the way Loki got considerably closer to you. You practically stand right under his nose. Loki raises his hands and places them on your shoulders, getting your attention. You two look each other in the eye for a long moment.
“I am… so sorry.”
You feel the tears forming in your eyes as Loki pulls you into his chest, holding you by your waist. The team watches in awe as the closed off god embraces you. Slowly, everyone leaves you two in the hallway. An hour goes by as you cry in Loki’s eyes.
Eventually, Loki picks you up bridal style and brings you to your bedroom. He helps you get dressed for the night and settled in bed before you grab his hand, making him turn back to face you. His eyes are no longer riddled with anger or hatred, but kindness and pity. He looks at you like you’re a little lamb to be protected.
“Yes, darling?”
“Stay with me?”
He nods before undressing and getting in bed with you. He pulls you close, your head leaning on his chest, and places an arm around your waist.
Every night goes on like this. No matter what happened in the day, even if you two got into an argument, Loki always found his way back by your side in your bed. You would have never expect it from how he treated you at first, but after the last few months since you met him, you find yourself growing closer to the god.
Loki slips into your bed for what feels like the 1482nd time. Resting your head on his chest, Loki pulls you close to his body.
“Goodnight, darling.”
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logicalbookthief · 3 years
Text
Things Left Unsaid -- An Analysis of Rei & Touya
Apparently Rei has been getting a lot of flack lately, all of it undeserved, and since I had a post analyzing her relationship with Touya in the works already, I figured no time like the present.
Disclaimer #1: There are a lot of issues with the writing for Rei’s character that have nothing to do with her and everything to do with how the storyline is using her, which I will address and examine.
Disclaimer #2: I’m someone who, while always curious as to what kind of relationship Rei had with her oldest son before he died, never thought it would be revealed that Touya was close to his mom. I don’t think you get the Dabi we see in Chapters 290-295 without him being so warped by his relationship with his father yet so dependent on his attention that he was willing to kill his brother and himself simply for his father’s acknowledgement.
But that’s what I find so interesting about Rei and Touya -- it’s a relationship that mainly consists of regrets and things left unsaid. There isn’t the anger or resentment Dabi feels for Endeavor, because that intense level of emotion sprung from the loss of the father who used to be his whole world. His feelings toward his mother seem more amicable, but also more distant.
And while she could’ve done some things differently in regards to her oldest, I want to make it clear that the distance between them was very much by design.
After all, Touya was the end goal of their marriage. It was never any secret as to why Enji wanted to marry her and to some extent Rei must’ve realized that this child was not meant to be hers: the child was the transaction, the thing she was needed to create, to give to her husband. Of course she loved Touya and was likely his primary caregiver for most of his life, but there was no doubt that once his quirk manifested and he could begin his hero training, his life would be dominated by his father. Which is what happened.
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Here, I would like to point out something I noticed in the flashback chapters. We never see any panels of Enji alone with any of his children during their infancy -- even with Shouto, the perfect child he longed for, we see Rei holding Shouto, sitting by him as he sleeps. Enji is there tangentially. Once Shouto begins his training, that is when we see him with his father.
So to see Enji with Touya when he was a baby, prior to his quirk manifesting, strikes me as a big deal. But it makes sense if you remember that he’d placed all his hopes, dreams and expectations on his firstborn. Initially, it doesn’t look like he even considered the possibility that Touya wouldn’t be his successor or that his little eugenics experiment would fail; this was his first, most optimistic attempt at a masterpiece. So I don’t believe it’s far-fetched to see him spend more time with Touya right off the bat (it’s what will make the eventual abandonment all the more crushing).
However, Rei isn’t seen at all in the snippet of Touya’s infancy, despite us knowing she was relegated to the caregiver role. Rei is literally out of the picture. Compare this to how she features prominently in Shouto’s infancy or how we see her holding a baby Natsuo. You could argue that, hey, we don’t see her holding a baby Fuyumi either, but there’s other scenes where Fuyumi’s attached to her mother’s hip or crying over her being hurt. Things that suggest a closeness, when the only scene we get of just her and Touya is one where they’re at odds. 
As we move further into Touya’s childhood, though, Rei becomes the only voice we hear advocate for him against his father. I’m referencing two specific instances:
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When Enji coerces her into having more children to replace Touya now that his father has deemed him a failure, something she knows will hurt their son deeply.
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And after Touya lashes out at Shouto, which Rei doesn’t blame on Touya, but rather on his father. She delivers such a satisfying condemnation of his actions, probably the most cutting one Endvr’s received to date, and it so accurately sums up one of his major character flaws.
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How can you call yourself a hero when you can’t even face your own son?
The tragedy of it all is that Rei never said any of this in front of Touya -- it was always said in private, just to her husband. That alone took courage, yes, but it would’ve meant everything to Touya to hear her condemn his father aloud. Instead when she does speak to him, she says this:
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It’s why I can’t wrap my head around that scene in Ch 302, where after Enji admits he didn’t know what to say to Touya, Rei replies, “Neither did I.” 
When we’re shown in flashbacks during that same chapter that she did understand her son. “He just wants to be acknowledged by you” is quite the indication that she, at the very least, understood the cause of Touya’s turmoil even if she couldn’t fully relate to it herself. So why can’t she say any of this to him?
The answer is in the way she addresses Touya, as it is nearly identical to how Nao addresses Tenko in this scene:
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Both Touya and Tenko grew up in similar households: the father had all the power, physical and financial, so the mothers were left to try and comfort their children in a way that didn’t go against their husbands’ desires -- and so, to use Tenko’s own words, they would “reject them with kindness.”
So it’s no wonder that Touya lashes out at his mother after she suggests he pursue other things. He isn’t five like Tenko was, he’s thirteen and has a much clearer understanding of why she says this and why it’s a bit hypocritical, since he’s aware of her situation, too.
Just as she was bound by her family, who wanted her to marry Endvr for the money and status, he’s bound by the expectations of his family. I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone else touch on this detail, but when Touya states that he knows his grandparents sold his mom into marriage so his dad could have a child, we could infer that Touya knows enough to realize that his mother might not have necessarily wanted him.
Not him specifically, but any child — the story has neglected to flesh her out beyond her marriage and motherhood, so we have no idea if Rei wanted to become a mother prior to this arrangement, despite how much she loves her kids now — although it is possible that he might’ve internalized it this way.
So you have Touya, who at least knows with certainty that his father wanted him to exist, yet he comes to understand that his father only wants him if he can meet a specific set of expectations, and if he cannot, he’ll be discarded. If he can’t surpass All Might, he can’t fulfill his reason for existing and his father will have to replace him. So to have his mother urge him to follow a path other than becoming a hero would mean, to Touya, accepting that he is the mistake he fears he is. Of course he isn’t going to respond well to that.
I don’t like when people try to compare Touya’s reaction in this moment to Shouto’s when Rei tells him he isn’t bound by his father’s blood, using that to paint Shouto as the “good” child and Touya as the “bad” one. They didn’t react differently because of any innate sense of goodness or lack thereof -- they reacted differently because the situations are different.
Telling Shouto that he didn’t have to be like his father comforted Shouto, who only knew his father as the bully who hurt his mom. He associated his father, and his father’s fire, with all of that fear and pain -- and thus, he associated the part of himself that took after his father with those feelings. She wasn’t denying his dream of becoming a hero, only assuring him that when he became a hero it could be whatever kind of hero he chose to be, that he wasn’t doomed to be like his father.
Whereas what she tells Touya sounds a lot like what his father told him, which was to give up on being a hero and pursue other aspirations.
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Encouraging Shouto to become his own version of a hero still falls in line with what Endvr ultimately wants, which is for Shouto to be a hero capable of surpassing All Might. Whereas this is what happens when Touya continues to train to do that against his father’s wishes:
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This is where the framing begins to bother me and where Rei’s characterization becomes inconsistent. 
So in this scene from Ch 302, we see Enji abusing his wife for “letting” Touya continue to train, punishing her for her “failure” to stop him. Obviously, none of that is Rei’s fault. If anything, Enji would be more responsible for preventing Touya from hurting himself since he’s the reason his son is hurting himself in the first place.
Moreover, the fact that he hits Rei over this sort of muddies the water of an previously-established narrative. Since the Sports Festival arc, we’ve known that Endvr abused his wife because she tried to interfere with Shouto’s training. It got to the point where she was terrified of her husband and it drove her to a breakdown. Why introduce this new aspect to the abuse, when it was already established that a) he was physically abusive and b) his motivations for abusing her were explicit to the audience? 
I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense that a man who hits his wife for one reason could find another reason to do it and justify his actions to himself. And while the scene does portray Endvr in a bad light to show how wrong his actions are, literally draping his figure in shadow, why does it even dare to suggest the idea that Rei was remiss in her duties as a mother? Again, the scene isn’t even necessary, since the narrative has long-since showed the audience that Enji abused his wife. 
By itself, the scene would read as further exploration of how Rei was victimized and how it affected her children. When you look at it with the chapter as a whole, though? Remember, this is the chapter where Rei claims that all of the family shares the blame in what happened to Touya, displacing some of the blame that rightfully rests on Enji. 
But my major gripe with this scene is how it reframes the sole moment we get of Rei and Touya alone. Because we know that Rei understands Touya, based on her confrontations with her husband in Ch 301 & 302. Rather than encourage him to be what he wants or acknowledge that his father is in the wrong, however, her advice falls in line with what Enji wants -- to stop Touya from training. And this comes after a scene where we see Enji beat his wife when she doesn’t stop Touya from training.
With all that in mind, it could potentially be read as Rei trying stop Touya for the sake of protecting herself and the family -- I don’t think it’s coincidence that in the scene where he hits her that we see Shouto, Fuyumi & Natsuo all as witnesses who are very distressed by what’s happening to their mother -- at the cost of Touya’s need to be validated. And if executed well or at least better than it has here, that wouldn’t be a bad choice of narrative per se, and it would fit into the pattern where the households the villains were raised in -- notably Shigaraki, Dabi & Toga -- mimic the society they live in, just on a smaller scale.
Except. Does that sort of narrative make sense based on what we already know about Rei?
Certainly, it is natural to want to protect yourself under physical and/or emotional duress by appeasing your abuser. This sort of complicated dynamic appears in the Shimura family, too. Just like in the house that Kotaro built, the Todoroki family revolves around the desires of the abuser and is dictated by his whims.
I would argue that Nao does give us a well-written example of this narrative. From the beginning, it’s established that she loves Tenko dearly. But in the house her husband built, there’s no room to love her son as he deserves. She prioritizes the feelings of Tenko’s father for the sake of maintaining peace in the household and this is established quickly and plainly.
Early on in the flashback, Kotaro exerts his control over the house, while Nao + her parents look uncomfortable. Despite this, we watch as they comply with his rules, all at the expense of Tenko’s feelings. When she stands up to Kotaro at last, it is not where Tenko can see and already too late. It’s a painful story, full of regret and sadness, but it is consistent from start to end. Nobody feels out-of-character or there to prop up anybody else.
So why doesn’t Rei feel as consistent in this narrative?
Because it doesn’t fit with everything we knew about Rei prior to her abuser’s subpar redemption arc.
The way she interacts with Touya would make sense, if this was how she was portrayed from the start. However, her behavior in Shouto’s flashback -- where she was first introduced -- contrasts what we get in the later Todoroki flashbacks.
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Let’s compare this to the scenes in Ch 302. Here, Rei interferes on Shouto’s behalf. She advocates for her son in front of Shouto where he can hear. She stands up to his bully/villain and tries to protect him, while also validating his feelings in the process. Directly after this, Enji hits her, not for failing to comply with his demands, but for defying him. 
It is difficult to reconcile this Rei with the Rei we get in Ch 302. And if you try to find an in-story reason for the inconsistency, the options either do a disservice to Rei or make things even more painful for Touya. But I’m sure most of you have realized that I’m going to suggest a reason for this inconsistency that goes beyond the canon.
Because when Rei was first introduced in the story, Endvr was unequivocally the villain in the Todoroki family, not some misguided patriarch trying to atone for his “past” mistakes. Years later and in the midst of his redemption arc, the narrative seems to be intent on making this man more palatable to readers, and it’s used Rei at every opportunity to prop up his efforts to be better. Often, though, it takes some of the heat off Enji by displacing it onto other family members, most significantly Rei & Touya.
Like, you can literally see the difference in the frame from early in the manga to now:
Ch 39: Endvr trains his five-year-old to the point where he’s throwing up due overextension and being punched by a fully grown adult who is also his father. Rei tries to protect her son and gets slapped by Endvr. All the blames rests squarely on Endvr, who is clearly the aggressor and painted as the villain here.
Ch 302: Endvr hits Rei for not preventing Touya from sneaking out to train, knocking her to the ground. Again, Endvr is clearly the aggressor, but oh this time it’s not driven solely by his selfish desires it’s also cocnern for his son; Rei is the victim but oh she also should have been watching him more closely, and oh well why was Touya going out in the first place, when everyone has told him to stop and he knows his mom will get punished for it?
Honestly, I can understand where some people have mixed feelings over Rei’s character, particularly since the writing has done her such a disservice recently. With that being said, however, it takes a minimum amount of critical thinking to recognize that while you can criticize some choices she made, you cannot hold her to the same standard of accountability as Enji, it’s absurd. The power imbalance was obviously tipped in Endvr’s favor, always.
It is a shame, too, that we can’t have more discussions that don’t turn into some readers (a lot of whom are attempting to make Endvr sound less horrible than he actually was) trying to demonize her. It’s doubly a shame the story itself doesn’t bother to flesh her out as a person, instead using her as a prop, because the complex relationships she has with Touya -- with all her children, really -- has plenty of room for exploration. 
Like, there was no reason to add this new dimension of resentment due to her spouting Enji’s words back at Touya, when there was already a source of tension supported by previous canon -- the neglect the Todoroki kids suffered because Rei couldn’t be the parent they needed, due to her declining mental health and eventual breakdown.
Or, if you want to complicate their dynamic further, why not add something that focuses on Rei and has nothing to do with Enji? We learn in the flashbacks that Rei agreed to the marriage more-or-less to please her family, lamenting that she “intended to smile through it to the end,” essentially admitting that her hope was she could grin and bear it. It is telling that she had this attitude before entering her marriage; evidently, she was raised with the idea that she should be acquiescent to her parents’ whims and not express herself if she was only going to be contrary. Maybe she didn’t know how to deal with Touya’s very expressive, very emotional outbursts as a result. And her inability to respond would be the exact opposite of what Touya was seeking.
Not to mention that Touya died, and for the last decade, Rei was under the impression she had lost her son forever. He died while she was hospitalized, torn up with guilt over what she did to Shouto, only to find out that her other son died in a frankly horrific manner, and she could do nothing. By the time she would’ve found out, it was too late to even try to do anything. I can’t imagine what she must’ve felt in terms of regret alone, plus her grief. And I’m still mad we were robbed of her reaction to Touya being alive, because now suddenly there is a chance to do something, to change what was once written in stone.
Or what about Touya’s feelings for his mother, that have yet to be given much depth? As the oldest and most aware of his existence, it seems like he was the first to truly understand his mother’s situation and I can’t help but wonder: If Touya knew he vessel for his father’s ambition, and his mother was sold into role of creating/caring for him, did he question her love for him? Once he found out one parent’s love was conditional, it wouldn’t be a leap for him to consider it for the other. And yet if that’s true, Dabi doesn’t appear to hold any ill-will towards her for that. He was angry at her hypocrisy, because he knows she should understand, but her words to him didn’t reflect that.
All of that is fascinating and so much better than what we got in canon, so far at least. I’m hoping for them interact in the present at least once before the end of the series, and I think they will, but as to how satisfying a reconciliation it’ll be, I guess we’ll have to wait to see how the Todoroki plotline progresses from here on out.
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Hi hi! i think you said asks were open in your newest post? If not feel free to ignore this lol
I would love to see headcannons of an MC who, though acting brave, gets very scared of the brothers
example after lucifer and the grimoire and such? like MC slowly becomes MORE scared of them, and tries to hide it, but it's getting obvious that theyre scared if that makes sense lol 💖
Ahhhhh, sorry this took longer than it necessarily should have! I feel like I was much closer to what you wanted with this request than the other, so hopefully you'll enjoy it too ❤️
GN MC THAT PROGRESSIVELY FEARS THE BROTHERS
Living with demons is hard, especially when they're the rulers of hell, err, the Devildom.
Sure, there's the implication they're not supposed to hurt or do anything harmful to you, as you have the safety of being an exchange student, but that veil of ignorance was quickly lifted before even the two week mark of living with these brothers.
You've tried getting along with them, and for the most part you've been successful, but a few circumstances have arisen that have reminded you that these boys are dangerous demons... and you're the human that keeps poking the three-headed dog while it sleeps.
Mammon:
You're not so much scared of what Mammon could physically do, but you're paranoid that he goes into your room and rummages in your belongings and personal keepsakes. Your room is the only thing you have that you can claim as your own, and it's your sanctuary, despite it being in the brothers' house.
Of course, the brothers will periodically just barge in without alerting you by asking or knocking, but you've grown okay with that. You're at least in your room and able to see what they do in there. There are a few occasions Levi or Satan might mention going into your bedroom to retrieve a video game or book they had loaned you, but you make sure to put their item on the dresser by the entrance, so they don't have to venture too far in. You're okay with that.
You're not okay, however, with Mammon when he goes into your room unannounced. Hell, you're not totally comfortable with him being in your room unattended if he does give you a heads-up.
You know how kleptomaniac Mammon can be. You've heard enough complaints and stories to know how relentless Mammon can be in his search for anything that could give him a few Grimm from his brothers. You've talked with this greedy demon about items he's stolen, witnessed thefts a few times too.
So, you feel something akin to victimized when Mammon goes into your room without your permission or you being there. Your room emits this vibe of disturbance, and it bothers you because you don't know what might be missing or "borrowed". It troubles you more because now your room feels foreign again, like the atmosphere was plagued by essences that you know aren't yours. Your anxiety swells with paranoia, fear, and mistrust again.
Leviathan:
Oh, for the most part, you don't have much conflict with Levi anymore. Once you made a pact with the otaku demon he relaxed a lot more and invited you to hang out in his room to play games or fuss about animation qualities in animes or gush about his favorite manga characters.
It's just that after that contest of who was the bigger TSL fan and Levi, enveloped by jealousy and fury, came at you with the intent to seriously harm you, you've had this overly-suspicious fear in the back of your mind, itching your paranoia that it could happen again.
You've learned that Levi's demon form is easily triggered by extreme feelings, rather that's excitement, irritability, or the emotion he avatars over, and you can't help be irritationally cautious when that happens. It's a reflex from the panic that engraved itself into your psyche for self-preservation.
If you weren't so anxious about another envy-fueled incident involving your life you might find Levi's excitement for the stuff he loves more endearing and cute.
Beelzebub:
If you hadn't seen how destructive Beel's tantrums over food firsthand could be you might find it hard to believe this relaxed and mostly uninvolved brother would have such a temper... but you did experience it, so you do believe it.
It was a custard! They're so easy to get more of, but Beel immediately flew off the handle and wouldn't see reasoning, lashing out and destroying the kitchen. If Mammon hadn't pulled you down with him to the floor as Beel started his outraged tantrum you're positive you would have been collateral damage too, like your poor room that was unfortunately placed on the other side of the kitchen wall.
It was a terrifying sight to behold, seeing the kitchen torn asunder and reduced to broken walls, obliterated cabinets, and smashed counters, with kitchen utensils and ruined cookware being sent into flight and raining down, razor-sharp and shattered into broken edges that could easily pierce flesh.
That moment of destruction lingers, along with the intense emotion of fright, triggered whenever Beel complains about being hungry or when he meets your gaze at the table during times to eat. You immediately offer your unfinished plate to him, which he happily accepts and consumes in seconds, to appease the Avatar of Gluttony's temper.
Asmodeus:
Asmo's promiscuity and salaciousness are what unnerve you the most. He's the Avatar of Lust, so obviously you were already on your defense, but you've seen glimpses beyond the surface level to what Asmo can be like. That's what intrigues you about him, and you try to focus on those bits that slip past his perfectionistic lifestyle and narcissistic personality. At the same time, however, this is the cause of your near downfalls when Asmo tries to allure you with his physical prowess.
He's tried a few times to charm you, and you feel this invasive power trying to persuade you to give into your raw and sexual temptations, or this tugging sensation that tries to attract you beyond what you feel is comfortable. The repulsed response is usually what repels you from the power Asmo tries to flaunt over you.
He usually huffs after his failed attempt but quickly rebounds by placing his hands around you and trying to embrace you himself, which Mammon, prompted by his denied feelings and jealousy, usually intercepts in your honor.
There's a few times you've worried yourself nauseous Asmo will corner you, and you won't be able to save yourself from his lustful persuasion. There's also the couple of times he's mentioned eating your heart, so that's also worrisome.
Satan:
There's no questions that you secretly fear Satan, more specifically his wrath. You slighted him once before, and the threat he imposed upon you while you were trapped between his demonic form and an over-stuffed bookcase was enough to brand itself to your soul as a reminder.
As docile as Satan may appear with his affection for cats, deep interest for detective shows, and shared affinity of books he could and, possibly, would rip you apart and lavish in the blood that wept from your lacerated flesh and tension of your bones rebelling before snapping satisfactory in halves and thirds.
Other than that, Satan is much easier to hang out with compared to his brothers, except when he gets that cruel temperament to torment Lucifer, which you exempt yourself from if the pranks are too excessive.
Belphegor:
Terror has never seeped into your soul like this before. Your anxiety spikes to levels you've never experienced before when Belphie plops down next to you on the couch or tries to start up a conversation. Your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn system goes haywire, and you become petrified, unable to respond properly.
You either stay away from Belphie altogether or stay glued to one of the other brothers, Mammon or Beel preferably. Just in case.
Just in case Belphie's lament arises again in the form of murderous hate, gleeful contempt clouding his eyes, as his hands find their way to your neck that remembers the tight embrace his fingers engraved into the nerves of your throat, the ghostly suffocating that chokes you up sometimes if you become too immersed in the memory of a body that hadn't belonged to you.
You're also sure you remember an aching in your ribs and spine that causes you to shiver sometimes, but you're not sure if you experienced that in a dream or illusion of the timeline merging. It still bothers you all the same.
For such a sweet face and quiet voice, Belphie is a demon that decieves, and you're better off staying away from him until you're over your PTSD. If that's possible.
Lucifer:
How many times has he almost killed you? Twice or three times? Enough to be too many and to penetrate your core with panic and trepidation whenever you see that sly smile that forms on his lips. It doesn't have to be directed at you, but it's enough to launch you into a panic attack that you barely keep under control.
That safety guard of being a representative from the human world and exchange student mean nothing when you test it by being a busybody in affairs that definitely don't involve you over and over again, especially when it's the pride and dignity of Lucifer being tested.
You hear your lesson but never learn, and unconsciously you must be masochistic for how many times you've brushed death with Lucifer's anger, but you keep pushing the limits.
You can't help going to Mammon's defense when you feel Lucifer is only targeting him for personal reasons or standing up to his ego when you feel he's going over his limits. Your bravery is stupidity though, and you feel your courageous backbone turn into a central nerve system of adrenaline and fear. You're just too stubborn and self-righteous to let Lucifer do as he pleases, but that doesn't mean you're not scared out of your wits.
You've gained an intuition for when Lucifer is approaching or silently comes up from behind you, and it sends a shiver down your back almost every time you're alone together.
If you have any headcanons that you want me to write, please send them my way! I enjoy writing these out. NSFW is okay, but please know I might not do it if I don’t like it. ❤️
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izukuwus · 4 years
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As Long As You’re Here (I Will Live Like This)
A/N: day 14 of @birds-have-teeth​‘s Izumonth collab. little incoherent rn last editing pass probably missed something pls be nice to me. title references the song Twelve Feet Deep by The Front Bottoms.
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Summary: Your boyfriend comes to your house one day bleeding profusely. You pick up the pieces and chat about the future. (vigilante!Izuku x reader)
Warnings: some blood/wounds, a non-explicit level of injury + the ensuing first aid
Word count: 2700+
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Logically speaking, you know Izuku is up to something when he's not with you. He's accident prone beyond the limits of accident prone. You honestly can't recall the last time you saw him where you didn't notice a new bruise or cut on him. The bruises can be explained easily—he's told you before he takes martial arts classes, he's taught you plenty a thing about self-defense so that's easy to believe, but the cuts?
You have to wonder whether his martial arts classes involve disarming each other with real knives.
The first time you noticed how deep his propensity to injury really went, he had a poorly-bandaged cut over his eyebrow that, sure, scarred up prettily (you'd be lying if you said it didn't make him ten times hotter), but was deep enough that you know it should've gotten stitches, even if he insisted on having just your help in the matter.
That was somewhere in the realm of eighteen months ago.
Tonight, he comes to see you after one of his classes and promptly almost collapses in your doorway, which is infinitely less concerning in light of the fact that he's bleeding all over your fucking carpet. Honestly, at first you don't recognize him. He's got on a hoodie you've never seen him wear before, a cheap mask tied around his eyes, and you almost call the cops before you recognize the tufts of green hair poking out of his hood and then the hoodie itself.
"Holy shit, Izuku" leaves your mouth somewhat before your brain catches up to the fact that you're not just looking at your boyfriend of looking at the vigilante Jackrabbit that's been giving both cops and local pro heroes hell for ages, not to mention the villains. No one could ever seem to figure out his quirk, either, so they couldn't track down the vigilante via the quirk registry, which makes a hell of a lot of sense when compared with that fact that your boyfriend is quirkless.
"S-sorry," he coughs, flashing you a brilliant smile as you pull his hands away from his abdomen. "My base was a bit too far. Didn't mean for you to find out like this. C-can I ask you for some first aid?"
"Okay, okay, okay, just... come on, let me get you to my bathroom so you don't bleed on absolutely everything. Can you walk a bit further for me?"
He nods, biting his lip, and you loop his arm over your shoulder to support him on his way, kicking your door shut behind him.
"Take your hoodie and shirt off and hold this to the wound while I get ready," you order, sitting him down on your toilet and shoving a random towel at him. You rifle through your cabinets for your first aid kit, muttering mostly to yourself. "Honestly, you're lucky I've got a healing quirk and I love you."
"I love you too," he groans, shifting in his seat.
"Stop talking. We can talk about your 'martial arts classes' when I'm done saving your life."
He pointedly shuts his mouth, peeling his hoodie and shirt off in one go in a way that might be sexy if not for the way his blood is smeared across his side.
"What happened?" you ask quickly, kneeling in front of him and pressing the towel back against the wound.
He winces. "Thought you didn't want me talking, angel."
You roll your eyes. "Oh my god, can you stop joking around when you're literally bleeding all over my bathroom?"
"Sorry, sorry. I got, uh, I got shot." He admits this meekly, as if it's not something horrifically concerning. He's got one hand over his face the way he does when he's trying to hide his blush from you after you've teased him and he’s too embarrassed to look at you. 
"Shot," you repeat calmly, gingerly pulling the towel away and preparing to properly clean the wound. "So there's a bullet and-or shrapnel in here, and I can't go straight to disinfecting or using my quirk."
"Probably."
You release a heavy sigh, forcing yourself to stay as calm as possible. "Alright. This is probably going to hurt. I'm sorry I can't hold your hand while I do this, baby."
He nods, biting his lip as you set about cleaning out his wound. When everything's good and clean, you take a few deep breaths and focus your quirk, not letting up until you're sure the wound is completely closed. You're still gentle as you wipe the blood away, though whatever pain he's still in is probably nothing compared to the way he felt before. The spot where he'd been shot is completely healed over, the only signs that it ever happened being the slightest scarring.
When you're certain that he's not losing any more blood and that everything is okay, you finally release a proper breath, dropping your head forward to rest on his lap. "You did a good job," you breathe against his thigh. "You should–you should get cleaned up. Take a s-shower."
"Are you okay?" he asks, like he didn't get shot tonight. Like your adoring boyfriend hasn't been moonlighting as a vigilante for god only knows how long. Like he couldn't have died if you hadn't had a healing quirk, like he couldn't get arrested and go to jail like his life isn't in danger–
"I will be," you say clearly, except it's too fast and shaky and not clear at all.
"Hey. Love. Look at me?" His hand rests on your head, grounding you, and you shift to rest your chin on his leg. He frowns at the sight, tugging you up and leaning over so he can bring you into a hug. "I'm okay," he whispers. "You don't need to cry."
"When were you going to tell me?"
"I... [Name], I'm sorry. I never meant to keep this from you." He's slow, careful in his words and the way his hands attempt to soothe you. "There wasn't... When we first started out, I didn't know if I should, and then I wanted to, but it was never the right time, so I..."
You sniffle, desperately trying to rein in your tears. "Izuku, you could have died."
"I saved someone's life today, though. I-I can't say I regret it."
You pull away to look him in the eye. "Please be careful. I don't want people I love getting hurt."
He nods, pressing his forehead against yours. "I'll try."
You peck his nose, intertwining your fingers with his. "We need to wash the rest of the blood off you. How are you feeling? Dizzy?"
"No, I feel fine. Got a bit of a stomachache, though."
You roll your eyes. "Huh, I wonder what could have caused that. Strip and get in the bath, idiot."
He lets out a bark of laughter. "Will you join me?"
You pause. You were going to go soak his clothes to get the blood out and maybe order some Chinese, but... "Give me five minutes and I will. I'm going to make sure the blood comes out of your shirt and your hoodie first."
He mock-salutes as you stand, and you leave the room on unsteady feet, Izuku's top and jacket in hand.
You soak them in the kitchen sink, the red of the water making you cringe. That's Izuku's blood. Izuku. Your Izuku. You plug the sink, shut off the water, and return to where Izuku is splashing water over the spots of blood he can find.
He doesn't notice your return just yet. Carefully, you slip out of your clothes, kneeling next to the bath to dip a hand in the water and run it across his back soothingly.
His back muscles jump beneath your touch, his head turning just slightly to look at you. "Everything settled?"
"For now," you hum, eyes trained on his back and the various scars and bruises there. Panic bubbles in your chest at the sight–how many near death experiences has he had that he's been shaking off? "I was gonna order Chinese, but I don't wanna be away from you right now."
"Want me to spend the night?"
"Please," you answer too quickly. "I just... I'll worry if I can't see you." You stand, carefully slipping into the water with him to help him rinse away the blood.
He presses a kiss to your forehead, resting his lips there as he murmurs. "Guess I should just move in so I don't have to worry you, huh?"
"Guess you should," you retort. Your hands roam his body, partially under the pretense of helping him clean off what little blood remains, but mostly because you're searching. "It's a shame, too. Must be a real hassle for you." A bruise under his rib cage. You heal it right away.
Izuku smiles against you. "As if I could ever complain about waking up with you every morning."
"As if you will," you snort. "Move in with me so I can make you sleep on the couch for a week for scaring me like you did."
"Surely there's some other way I could apologize," he declares with a dramatic gasp, one hand clapping over his bare chest.
"Start by laying back and not moving around so much, you'll splash water everywhere and I already have to get your blood out of my carpet."
He reaches for a shampoo bottle as he complies. You lightly slap his hand away with a playful glare. "No, you just got shot. You're not doing anything. Let me take care of you, Izu honey."
"But [name]–"
You cut him off with a soft kiss, capping the shampoo and beginning to massage his scalp. Now that you're at this stage, you're sure he has no willpower left to object. You snuggle up against him, shampooing his hair one-handed as you rest your head on his chest.
"I was serious, you know."
"About?" he borderline purrs, pressing his head into your touch.
"A lot of things, but mostly the scaring the shit out of me and the moving in with me parts. You don't have to, but I'd feel a lot better if you at least came back here after any patrols you do or fights you get into so I can heal you up."
"Won't that tire you out?" he protests. Everything sounds weaker when you're playing with his hair, but he does have a solid point.
"Using my quirk a lot will make me tired, but I get better rest when I'm sleeping in your arms anyway. More importantly, if I can keep you alive and well, I want to do it."
"I'm surprised you haven't said anything about me stopping the whole vigilante thing yet."
Your fingers still in his hair. Sure, you'd love it if he stopped. Nothing makes you feel worse than the thought that Izuku could be risking his life, but... "As much as I love you and want you to be safe, I want you to be happy, too," you admit. "If... If being Jackrabbit and giving all the local heroes and villains hell makes you happy, then I want to support that. Even if I'm really scared for you."
"Oh my god, marry me," he breathes, so fast and so faint you scarcely catch it.
"I'll marry you, but only if you buy me steak first," you hum. 
"Deal. A steak dinner, and a ring. I'll try to swing that."
"You better, idiot. I want to spend my life with you."
It's his turn to go still now, freezing as you tactically drip water on his head to rinse his hair. "I-if you're serious, then..."
Cheeks heat up in tandem. "Of course I'm serious. I love you. I never want to lose you. The days I wake up with you are the best days of my life. I'd adore being married to you."
Strong arms wrap around you and pull you tight. "I-I don't really think I'm good enough to marry you just yet," he says. Firm kisses pepper the top of your head, mixed with a few hot tears, before he continues. "But someday, when I can... When I can be confident enough to not worry you, I swear we'll get married, if you'll still have me then."
You frown. "Izuku baby, it'll be a cold day in hell before I stop worrying about your cute, reckless ass."
"Hell freezes over every year, actually. It's a little town in the United States. Gets ice a lot."
"You would know that, nerd."
"I thought I was an idiot?" 
"You can be both," you say with a pout. He chuckles and plants a few more kisses on top of your head.
The water is lukewarm when you both decide to get out of the bath. Standing before Izuku, you grab the fluffy towel before he can and begin patting him dry, pressing soft kisses against every scar and bruise that litters his skin. Soon, you move to kissing his freckles, too, and before long, you're kissing him indiscriminately as he laughs and tries to towel you off.
You're maybe halfway through kissing every inch of him when he uses the towel to pull you up and meet his lips. His arms are back around you in an instant. "I love you," he huffs. "I love you so much."
"Mm, love you more."
"No," he pouts. "You don't get to make that decision."
"What are you gonna do, stop me?" You punctuate your sentence with another quick peck to his lips, attempting to wriggle out of his vice grip. "Lemme go, cutie, I've gotta order dinner."
"Not until you admit that I love you more."
"Noooo," you protest, “I can’t make myself lie to youuu.”
Several loud knocks sound from your front door, causing both you and Izuku to freeze up. You glance at him with a worried look. "You wait in here, just in case."
"One moment, please!" you shout, scurrying into your bathroom. You quickly yank yourself into a pair of Izuku's sweatpants and a loose top, not bothering with underwear for the time being. Your worst fears are confirmed when you open your front door to find a pair of cops standing on your doorstep.
"Oh! Good evening, officers." You're suddenly very glad for your acting classes when you were still in school. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"We've received reports of the vigilante Jackrabbit being spotted running around this apartment complex," the taller man answers, producing a picture of your boyfriend from above, his face obscured by his hood. "We're asking if you know anything about his whereabouts."
You frown, putting on your best worried expression. "Isn't that dangerous? I can't say I know anything about it, though, officer."
The shorter man peers at your floor, then back to you with a worried look. "Do you mind telling us why your carpet's covered in blood?"
Oh shit. "Oh, that?" Your face goes blank as you try to think of an explanation. "Nothing serious, no need to worry. I cut myself super badly while playing with a pocketknife earlier, but I've got a healing quirk, so it's not an issue! I was more interested in cleaning the wound and getting into not-bloody clothes, so I haven't gotten around to dealing with my carpet yet!"
"Well, glad to hear you're alright, then. Be safe, and be more careful with knives goin' forward."
You nod, forcing a grateful smile. "Right! Thank you, officers. Sorry I couldn't be of any real help."
"You know, I hear that Coca-Cola's great for gettin' out bloodstains. Might help with your carpet, there."
"Oh! Great! I'll look into that."
"Give the station a call if you find any information about that vigilante, alright?"
You nod enthusiastically. "Of course! Anything to keep the peace. You both have yourselves a lovely evening while I try to get all this blood out of my carpet."
You wave the officers a good night, and slowly close your door, listening as their footsteps trail away to the next door in your building. 
You find Izuku standing nervously in your bedroom, anxious eyes searching your face as if he didn't listen in to the whole conversation. Slowly, you press the top of your head to his chest. "We need to set some ground rules for your Jackrabbit hoodie if you're gonna live here."
He nods. "Talk about it over Chinese food? I ordered while you spoke with the cops."
"Yeah. We'll talk about it over dinner."
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Tags: @tooloudarts​ @sapid-rose​ @xxangelpridexx​ @birds-have-teeth​ @icythotsenpai​ @warmchoccymilk​ @wesparklebitch​ @izoodles​ @fujimoribaby​ @my-bnha-things​ @denise-the-death-goddess​ @themerpenguin​ @sincerebubbles​ @themmmelissa @fudobaby​
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by the sword (Nile genfic, 2.6k)
Fic summary: Nile learned fencing and longsword and hand-to-hand fighting long before she ever met Andy's small army. But learning with them is a new form of difficult. Not because they've got thousands of years more experience (though they do), but because this time the practice doesn't stop when somebody gets hurt.
So she has to learn about war and how you balance it out with peace. Figure out how they do it and who she wants to be. And decide which weapons suit her best.
Content notes: Explicit depiction of the injuries Nile gets when training in knife fighting and quarterstaff combat with Nicky and Joe. There are also discussions of the physical damage done by different kinds of weapons, the butchering of animals, and people cutting off their own body parts in industrial accidents. (Oh, and a positive/sympathetic portrayal of Nile as a Christian)
They promised that in March they'd start teaching Nile how to fight with a sword, but when March came, Nicky gave her a knife.
A hauntingly familiar one, even though she'd never touched it before. For a second she thought it was her own, the Ka-Bar she planted in Andy's shoulder the day they met. Instead, as she turned it over, finding it familiar in every groove and contour, she found it an anonymous and identical match to her dad's instead. Not new, with the black paint worn down around the edges of the handle, but not a knife she knew. It could have been used by any Marine in the world except her. Except her father.
"You know too much," Joe explained from the side of the hangar, where he'd tumbled an umbrella stand of swords out onto a tarp and started removing their rust with fine-grit sandpaper. "We're not knights or cavaliers. For them, swordfighting was about honour. There were rules. We don't have any of that."
Nile knew going into this that nothing she knew so far was real swordsmanship. Like yes, she could fence; she'd competed in foil and saber for two years as a teenager. But that was closer to stagefighting than actual combat. It was all so staged and carefully managed. Even in her longsword league they said over and over again, it was a martial sport, not actual combat. They could imagine what it might have been like—could land heavy blows on armour, could mime falling down dead—but that wasn't the reality of it.
It seemed to her that the purpose of beginning with knife-fighting lessons was to go over territory she already knew, and do it for real this time. Nicky said he had something else in mind, some principle of combat he meant to teach. But that wasn't what Nile noticed.
What Nile noticed was that this time, she really died.
The old people argued it over, about how to teach Nile. Andy's example made them newly-cautious, but this was the way they'd always trained: You had to do it through blood and pain, you had to fight when you were still resurrecting. It was the way Andy and Quynh had trained Nicky and Joe.
Nile wondered, in the back of her mind, if being trained like that had something to do with the way Booker... well, Booker. After he'd already had such terrible experience of war that he'd wanted to desert. But that was the kind of thing she didn't air out loud, because they'd only just stopped having that kind of useless, circular, self-flagellating argument. She figured she'd keep her own peace on Booker.
She also opined, after hearing them wrangle over it for a day or two, that she'd rather practice with live weapons and get injured among friends than play it safe and incur a dangerous injury among enemies.
And when the knife fighting started, she was grateful they hadn't moved directly to longswords.
They taught knights how to do this, Nicky said, by having them slaughter and butcher animals. It taught you your way around muscles and tendons and joints. He offered to take her to a bullfight sometime, which she didn't say sounded so barbaric she had to wonder why PETA bothered with picketing rodeos.
He said that after her trachea healed over. She hadn't actually died that time; you had to aim further up or to the side to get the carotid artery. But the horror—not actually the pain, but the horror of feeling the air wheeze through the gash in her throat—had been so overwhelming that she'd barely resisted the pin he got her in. She'd just shuddered with her arms behind her back and his weight pressing her down until it healed, and tapped out of the rest of the afternoon. He'd been understanding when she didn't want to be around him for a bit, and let Joe gather her into a hug and let her cry.
That was when he told her about the bulls. She told him about Chicago's meatpacking district, about the old men she knew who'd butchered hogs every day of their lives for decades. About how they said they got numb to it, until one day one of them cut off his thumb with a machine and didn't feel it, until the guy next to him looked over and noticed all the new blood. About how after you see too much violence, your brain just stops processing it. About how a study on kids in the next neighbourhood over from hers had shown they had permanently elevated levels of cortisol, a sign that their bodies were under stress all the time and didn't know how to calm down.
Those were the kind of conversations Andy couldn't stay in the room for. She slunk off somewhere and got drunk, and you saw her the next morning, maybe. Nile used to judge her a lot more for it, but the day her throat got cut she let Joe and Nicky feed her a red wine as soft as velvet and fell asleep pressed against Joe on the sofa and understood, deeper than words, just how much keeping sane meant feeling anything other than your body shattering into pain.
Nicky braided her hair, the next day. Slow and careful, a little unpracticed, singing ballads in a language that wasn't exactly dead, but only had a few thousand speakers left in northern Italy. Their composer hadn't been good, exactly, but they'd been snowed into a castle with him one winter in the 1680s, so Nicky remembered his entire repertoire. Nile listened to the music and knew he'd refuse if she offered to record it, or write it down. One of the songs felt like the length of a novel (but was, when she checked her phone, more like one hour twenty) and by the end of it she was singing the chorus along with him, and it occurred to her that she could simply ask him to teach her.
"You can't rescue every one you see," she remembered her mom saying, when she found a half-stunned bird on the sidewalk. That was what it felt like with languages.
That afternoon Andy took her to the market. Ostensibly it was for groceries, but Andy didn't do simple errands, especially not when it involved food. She stopped to smell fruit Nile had never heard of; Google told Nile that medlar and quince were related to apples and also, apparently, roses. Nile had to try pine nuts, wild mustard, and three different kinds of yogurt drinks, one of which tasted of roses. Andy protested when she added a bag of potatoes to the load, saying they were bland, but Nile, who'd had enough of turnips, sweetly told her to pay the fuck up.
If you were lonely, and hurting, and didn't have someone to hold you, you could comfort yourself like this. Sunshine and sweetmeats and the steady hands of friends. Something, but probably still not enough. Nile understood it but it made her chest ache. She felt, sometimes, a little glad that Andy would die someday, the way families felt helping someone keep alive from cancer. Of course you wanted them to be alive, but you didn't want them to suffer.
Joe moved her on to staff fighting the next day. It was, he said, not the most useful of weapons in the current day and age, since it was most useful against long bladed weapons, "And who else but us uses those?" But there was some kind of theoretical basis behind the progression of her teaching, from weapon to weapon, and after knife came staff.
To tell the truth, Nile liked it. She'd learned about quarterstaff in her longsword weapons, as something that could defeat a swordsman, but nobody anybody she knew actually practiced it, because while you could wear percussion-resistant cloth and keep safe with blunted swords, there was simply no defending your bones against the percussive strike of a giant whirling stick.
There was something less offensive about getting your skull split or your collarbone broken, compared to getting stabbed. Partly it was because Joe was just a much nicer teacher, slower and more patient, while Nicky would keep stabbing you as you fought to reach your own knife. But also it felt more impersonal, more like an accident that had happened to you.
Okay, and it was also more fun. Knives created small imaginary hemispheres of pain, the angle of the arm as it swept out. Quarterstaves were huge, so long that if you wanted to get around them, sometimes it was literally easier to flip yourself into the air or dump your opponent to the ground instead of getting the staff to move. The first time she managed to run up a wall to get leverage on him, it felt so awesome she didn't actually mind that much that he popped her shoulder out taking her back down.
It was bloody and violent and really would have been impossible if dying had been a significant barrier for them. It made Nile laugh in a high-on-endorphins way, because it felt like she could finally push past the pain and find a place beyond her limits. It felt like being free. Like all her life she'd been wearing a heavy armor of caution, knowing she'd had to keep herself alive, and now she just felt the lightness of taking it off.
There were tears at the back of that laughter, about everything she'd lost because of it, but she pushed that away and went to shower. She and Joe spent the evening on Youtube, watching videos of capoeira and wushu, while the other two made a batch of some kind of pickled egg they thought they remembered from three hundred years ago.
Nile hugged Andy sometimes, because she looked like she needed to be hugged. Andy almost never turned her down.
A long time ago, she thought she remembered, holding a sword had seemed to transport her to some other time. Some other place. Like the sword had been a tangible connection to the past, to a time when things felt... clearer, or truer, or more real somehow. Like the feeling the word "honour" gave her, of something echoing and amplifying through a vaulted space. There was a time when people fought with swords for what they believed in. There was a time when you knew what was right and what was wrong and laid down your life accordingly.
She'd been twelve and believed in fairytales. So sue her.
The swords in their armory spelled out a long story of misery and war. When she held them now, Nile felt like she could feel the bodies that had come into contact with their blades. Curved single-bladed sabers and scimitars, ideally wielded from horseback, meant for a decisive downward chop. Nicky's giant longswords, meant to peel an armored knight like a tin can. (He'd used it, he said, to similar effect on a tank once or twice.) Andy's axes showed her age; before they had the metallurgy to make an entire blade, it was better to use a wood polearm with a blade on the end, and focus the sharp metal to a curved edge, to as small a surface area as possible.
Andy's axes showed her age, but not theirs; they were less than ten years old. Steel, especially steel that came into contact with blood, aged fast enough (and could only take so much of a beating) that the old people knew and had opinions on all the modern replica manufacturers. The oldest blades in the collection were used at Waterloo, only a little more than 200 years ago.
(Nile wondered, as she polished one and rubbed a state-of-the-art hydrophobic finish on it, if the quarterstaff lessons were actually preparing her to fight Booker, should she ever find herself opposing him. It was the kind of thing she couldn't help but think about the logistics of. Surely firearms would be more effective, she initially reasoned, except... guns jammed, guns broke, guns overheated, guns ran out of bullets. And then your gun became a very expensive bludgeon. And you're facing a swordsman who's had 200 years to train. So... why not try a very big stick?)
She knew that even this team could betray her. Even they could fight for the wrong cause. They'd supported revolutions that turned into dictatorships and fought alongside people who turned out to be monsters. There was no promise, no moral certainty, in violence.
So she felt really stupid about it, but the truth was that holding a sword... still brought back that old emotion. That feeling of being capable of doing things. Fighting for a better world. It made her feel taller. It made her feel like her life had a purpose that she'd been heading towards since she was young.
Like God had called her for a special purpose.
Which she'd never say to any of the rest of them, since Andy had been a god and Nicky had been a holy warrior and Joe had broken down completely once, when they let him get too close to a newspaper. They'd only ever hear it with the weight of all the horror they had seen.
So instead she had to carry it as a private conviction, a calling she would have to follow by herself, her own career to make holy instead of horrific. Like when she joined the Marines. Freer, in some ways, but even more out of her depth, not sure she totally understood the situations she was injecting herself into.
The fact that she wasn't sure she ever could walk the path of righteousness and keep herself always on the side of good... was absolutely no inducement not to try. It never had been.
"Picked one yet?" Andy asked, from the door.
"What, you guys weren't gonna pick one for me?" Nile asked, craning her neck around. Andy had her hands buried in the pockets of her jacket, smiling faintly.
"Some things, nobody can pick for you," she said. She picked up one of Nile's polished sabers and admired the sheen along its blade. "Your last-ditch weapon, least of all."
Nile already had a secret favourite of all the swords, but what she found herself saying was, "I want us to do some training in de-escalation."
Andy looked aside from the blade. "Sorry?"
Nile took a deep breath, her heart suddenly pounding like crazy. "That's what I was trained in, aside from combat. De-escalating conflicts. When I was a security guard, we... I got a course on mental health crisis from a guy who does hostage negotiation. I want... we should practice it."
She was ready to be seared by Andy's instant, caustic sarcasm. By a reminder that they were a specialist unit brought in when negotiation failed. Instead Andy looked back at the sword, twisting it to catch the light. "Was it useful?"
"Yeah," Nile said, trying not to let the breath shudder out of her in one long exhale. She didn't want Andy to know how nervous she'd been. "There's a... a lotta conflicts that don't have to turn violent, if you just approach it in..." She ran out of steam for an instant, and shrugged. "If you know how to respond."
"See if there's a webinar," Andy said, which flabbergasted Nile so much—coming from Andy!—that she didn't have anything to say while Andy set the saber down and sauntered back out of the building.
Nile sat for a good long while after that, surrounded by swords on a floor stained with her own blood, and got her breathing under control. Eventually she took her knife out of its sheath and looked it over.
It felt silly, to take a sacred oath on a Ka-Bar knife.
"I swear to almighty God," she said to it, anyway, "that I will use you as my last resort. Not my first."
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misrihalek · 3 years
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This is for one person in particular. Well, maybe two people. 
...I wasn’t good for you, was I? 
You found me at a pretty low point of my life, I’ve said that before. I was trying to do what the world told me, trying to be a good little boy, get that job, earn my place in the world and...I failed. I was lying on a bed in a house in the suburbs, flatmates fighting in the ungodly hours of the morning, desperately trying to escape from the world. That was how you found me and for some reason you saw something worth a damn. 
And then I proceeded to bleed you dry. I didn’t know how to get myself out of my hole and so I just started dragging you down with me, using you as just another means of escape and demanding so much of you...far too much. How many times did you lament that your love wasn’t enough to help me stand on my own two feet? How many times did you think that you were inferior because of it? Did I make you hate yourself because of my failures? 
That’s not to say that it was all bad: we wouldn’t have lasted as long as we did if we didn’t click on some level, after all. The talks we had, the things we shared between us...it would be disrespectful to say that they meant nothing: maybe their value to us makes this whole thing worse in retrospect, who knows. What I do know is that, even if only ashes remain now, you were the best friend I ever had: you were kind, funny and passionate and your presence in this world stood in defiance of the forces that sought to bring you low. You fought for your right to exist, so maybe it makes sense that you waited for so long for me to do the same. I’m sorry I let you down. 
That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it: why didn’t I leave that hole that I found myself in? I can blame outside forces (and I often did), but the fact of the matter is that I just didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to be the person that the world demanded of me and no-one seemed to be able to tell me, so somewhere along the way I just grew comfortable in that wretched hole, at home in my misery. I started pantomiming my own life, living as if death would never come and not really living in the process, and it was this awful piece of theatre that you ended up being an unwilling part of: despairing about the future that I couldn’t see and slowly wearing yourself away. I imagine the tipping point came after those three weeks together ended and you saw how little things had changed. 
Those three weeks...before long it will have been two years since that trip to see you and it’s...weird to think about. I know that time has lost a bit of its meaning since then, but even then it’s hard to believe that it was really that long ago. I still remember the elevator up to your apartment, walking to the tramlines and going to that one tea shop - and you bet your ass I remember that hike uphill to the castle. The emotions have faded over time, but I have no qualms in saying that those were quite literally the best days of my life: I know that the word “literally” has kinda lost its meaning in this day and age, but I can confidently say that no experience before or since has compared. So why didn’t it change anything? Why did I go right back into my hole when I got back? 
I don’t think either of us knew at the time, but come a few months later it didn’t matter all that much anyway. You found someone else and left and, now that I look back, I really can’t blame you for trying to find a less bleak fate than what was in store for you. I remember you saying to me how scared you were of a future where you had to support the both of us: why wouldn’t you be? I had demonstrated no ability to be a functioning human being and I would have inevitably become a burden...well, more of a burden. What kind of future is that, for either of us? And so you left to find a brighter one. 
It was ugly and painful and I have no doubt that it still hurts you, just like it does me. For a decent amount of time I was blinded by my own pain and I said things that I can no longer stand by in good conscience: I blamed you for how things had gone and eventually cut you out of my life so I could best deal with my wrenching sorrow. To some degree that action has proved successful: being able to live without having reminders of my failures at the forefront of my mind has let me claw back pieces of myself and move forward with my life, even if it has taken some time. I cannot however defend the reasons why I did it though, born as they were from an inability to reflect on my own deficiencies. 
It turns out that there might’ve been a reason for that inability, actually. You remember me talking about my Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis? It was something that I got told about as I was growing up and it was basically conveyed to me as a low-strength form of autism, something fairly surmountable in comparison to the more traditional forms. Last year though, I found media that suggested that Asperger’s Syndrome was a less-than-credible condition from a doctor that quite literally collaborated with Nazis and further research revealed that the term was no longer in official use. I talked to my mother about this and she casually dropped into conversation that I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. 
ADHD! So many goddamn things clicked into place once she said that and I imagine that the same might be happening for you right now. No wonder I had so much difficulty functioning in that job, how infuriating it was to focus on things, how I would sally forth into different trains of thought mid-conversation. My mother’s general mistrust of the medical system also meant that I’d been dealing with these things all my life without any sort of medication, the usual way that other people with ADHD make themselves co-operate with the strictures of society. No wonder things went to fucking pieces the moment I stepped into the real world. 
I’ve had to do some serious thinking since then, not least of all about my future. I tried to keep on the jobsearching grind for a while after that bombshell dropped, but after months of no luck I snapped and decided to take an alternate route, one that I couldn’t consider while we were together. Since then I’ve moved away from home and I’m studying to maybe one day be a social worker: to one day have the tools to help people like me, people stuck in their own holes and unable to get out without the helping hand of someone who understands what they’re going though. No doubt you’d say that you’re happy for me and I don’t doubt that statement: you’re a better person that I was and even through all this you’ve wished no ill towards me. You’re a good person like that. 
These days I’m doing decently okay: I’m living with 3 flatmates who I get along with pretty well and my studies are progressing as they should. I’m trying to write a bit more as well, although about the only thing I’ve done lately of any tangibility has been...well, this. Even with the progress I’ve made, what happened between us still bobs to the surface from time to time and I have to process things all over again: it gets easier as time marches onwards, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. That probably explains why I reacted so violently to the message you sent me, among other things. 
What I said there was true: I can’t face you while things are the way they are. I’m not strong enough to watch you be happy with someone else, because it’s a reminder that I can no longer elicit that same joy from you: a reminder that our time has passed because of my failures. It’s knowledge that hollows me out from the inside. I tried to be strong - tried to ignore that hollowing out and remain friends - and failed over and over, coming close enough to nothingness to feel it encroaching on my soul, so now I put up my walls to protect it.
I need to be okay. And I can’t do that with you around. It’s an awful thing to say and you don’t deserve it, but it’s the truth. Once more you suffer for my deficiencies as a human being. 
I’m sorry that I couldn’t be the person that you needed: I guess the deck was kinda stacked against us from the beginning, considering what I didn’t know about myself and, y’know, the whole long-distance thing, so don’t go thinking that any of this was your fault. You remain one of the best people I have ever met and I am eternally grateful for the time we shared together: do not doubt that you are worthy of love, even in your lowest moments. You’re a damn good human being and you deserve to have good things happen to you, better things than me. 
I imagine you’re expecting me to say this, but oh well: I’d prefer it if you don’t send me a response to what I have written here. Beyond just safeguarding my own wellbeing, I’ve been meaning to write this for a long time now and what you see is pretty much every single thing that I can conceivably say in regards to all that has transpired between us. I don’t really have anything else to say and after this I will hopefully not think about this so much anymore and get on with my life. I would implore you to do the same. 
I wish you all the best. 
...
...there’s a small piece of me that doubles back on what I’ve written here, seeing if it can instill its will within the paragraphs wherein it can wend its way to you. It’s the piece of me that still loves you, that holds out hope that I may one day see you again and that we can rediscover what was lost. It tells me to leave my heart open to the opportunity, to hope against hope that things change. This last paragraph is my concession to it in the vain hope that it’ll finally fucking shut up.
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onisiondrama · 3 years
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(Note: I’m not repeating stories he’s told before and just putting them in parenthesis. I have a lot more videos to go until I’m caught up so that would save me a lot of time. If he gives details I never heard from him before, I will type those.)
“Is Onision A Dad? (+ Story With Onision's Father)“ October 12, 2020 Speaks
James says in the past he’s said he’ll never talk about being a father because the internet is crazy. They called CPS on them 3 or 4 times and every time CPS found that they were really good parents. They are responsible, take care of their kids, show them compassion, don’t hit them, listen to them, hug them when they cry, and you try to give them a better childhood than you had.
(Allegations against his father)
Says his childhood was not awful, but it lacked a lot. He did not have a male role model to look up to that was consistent in his life. He believes most of his problems comes from his childhood.
When he thinks about raising another human being, he thinks it’s important to give them a structurally sound environment so they don’t have an excuse to wind up damaged by something not beyond his control.
Says he was watching Christopher Titus talk about children and he said every parent he talked to regretted having kids. James asks if they knew what they signed up for? He says of course they’ll cry and you’ll have to spend a lot of money feeding them. They’re a financial burden and they’re going to cost you you’re time. That’s your responsibility. His mind is blown that they’re acting like parenthood is a curse.
Says he had a nephew who broke his femur and he was like “how could you let that happen? That’s insane. You must have been so neglectful.” His cousin told him, “just wait.” He says it was kind of like his cousin cursed him. (His found his daughter after she fell out of a 2nd story window story.)
He says he feels like a failure in keeping his child safe. If he could go back, he would have not worked so late that night. He still works a lot to pay the bills. When he found her, he thought she was not going to survive, but once the doctor told him the details he knew she would be fine.
He says he refers to himself as “Dr. James” because of instances like (he refused exploratory surgery for his son story.) He says his common sense was more than the doctor’s 18 years of medical training. If you disagree with him, your conclusion results in a child pointlessly cut open. Says it’s horrifying some doctors do this, but it’s reality.
(Refused down syndrome test story.) He says even if their child had down syndrome, it was past the point of pregnancy termination and they would have not wanted to terminate because people with down syndrome deserve love and to be raised. He says he’s a very virtuous person with common decencies. He asked what the point of the test was if it was too late to terminate? She told them it’s for peace of mind. He says he lost it and went full rant on the two women who were trying to potentially kill their baby with a needle. Their kid doesn’t have down syndrome, but if he did they would still take photos of him playing in the park like all other parents do.
He says one of the leading causes of death in our country is medical error. He says that’s because it’s un-natural and you’re cutting people open. Scalps don’t grow on trees. It’s helpful if you have cancer, but if you don’t know what’s going on you should step back and take a breath.
(More of the rash / refuse surgery story. He keeps name-dropping the doctor and where he worked.) He concludes he’s a very protective father. He says his life is nothing compared to theirs. He exists to make their lives better. 
He says when they got to the new hospital their new doctor was Asian. He has a natural assumption that Asian doctors are more balanced and smart. Doctor says it was a rash. (He smacks his deck and stares at the camera.) He says people online gaslight him and question his intelligence, but when he makes decisions they benefit people. In this instance he saved his son from an unnecessary surgery. He was so glad he was there because Kai isn’t the type of person to throw down. Kai would have let them put in that needle and potentially kill his kid. Kai would have been walked all over by the doctor and let the explorative surgery happen. Says he fought for his kid and he won and his son is better for it. Says full disclosure, from that point on he looked at his kid as a drama queen. He was screaming so much over a rash they went to the ER and they almost did surgery on him. He didn’t say this to his son, but he was thinking it.
James says when he had his first kid, Kai was part of a mom group. People were talking about getting divorced. Kai told him 8 or 9 out of 10 people get a divorce after having a kid. He says having a kid isn’t that stressful. It strengthened their bond when they had one. People came and went who tried to ruin their marriage and they all failed at homewrecking. It’s difficult get him to leave his family when he loves his kids. If his life is inferior to his kids, why would his love life be superior. He says people approach them and try to get him to leave Kai or Kai to leave him and they haven’t been successful so far. They have a foundation built on loyalty to their kids. It’s programed into people, but some people don’t have it. Like his father, he had the opposite. According to an article he tried to sue James, but couldn’t because James never said his name. James says he remembers saying his name so if he wants to sue him down the line, that says who he is as a parent.
(His mom tried to sue to see his kids story.) He says his mom called Kai a “tranny” and said he was invalid because he came out in his 20′s and breastfeeds. He says Kai breastfed because the kids need milk, but he plans on getting top surgery once they don’t need it anymore. One of the kids still breastfeeds. His mom refused to date a guy because he slept with a man before. She said he was attractive and she really liked him, but she wouldn’t date him. He says she’s phobic on every level and she lies to his face.
He wants to be honest and accepting with his kids. He wouldn’t call their spouse what she called Kai. Kai was crying about it and his mom said “good. I’m glad he’s crying.” (he’s doing a texting gesture while he’s quoting her.) He asked his mom about Caitlyn Jenner. His mom wouldn’t say anything ill about Caitlyn Jenner, but still attacked Kai. He thought it was mean because he gave her a house for free. He tried to buy it back and she wouldn’t let him even though she previously said she would give it back for free. Says there’s a lot of bad blood with his parents. If his kid ever gave him a house he would be grateful. He says his mom could visit his kids, but he didn’t want her driving them around because she does drugs.
He says this all reflects on their parenting. His mother-in-law asked if she could drink wine while watching their son when he was a very young baby. He said no. He holds everyone to the same standards. He kicked people out of their life for lying and doing drugs. They went on Hansen and acted like he was a monster. No one gives him compassion for that, he was protecting his kids from drugs. The internet believed the drug addict, criminal, liars.
He doesn’t put anyone over his status as a parent. He says lots of families experience tragedies. He saw a 10 year old that was playing with other kids at a family event. The next family event he found out he was dead. He drowned in a pool or a river. He didn’t think the parents were incompetent, he thought it was a horrible tragedy. He immediately thought their pain must be so severe.
He has a cousin whose kid was on a feeding schedule and the kid was bawling for breastmilk. He thought that was insane. The baby is crying because they need to be fed. The most basic of common sense. The baby died of SIDS. He doesn’t know if it’s related, but as a parent you can’t think you screwed up and hate yourself forever. He says if a kid drowned while the mom was shooting up heroin, that’s clear incompetence. If he was voting or paying his taxes when something happened, you can’t say he’s a monster. You can say he was in the wrong place and that sucks, even if he was 10 feet away. It’s awful and you’re not an innocent party because it could have been prevented, there’s that guilt. There was something very specific you’re supposed to do and it seems your kid starved to death or was nutrient deficient. When they went to the funeral, she talked about how Jesus had a plan and taking care of the kid. He says he never heard her talk about religion in his life. It’s just a scapegoat to make people feel better and so they can live with themselves.
He doesn’t know how he knew his kid was outside when she fell. He still doesn’t know what that metal scraping sound that sounded like a toy car on the garage door. His daughter was a few feet away and couldn’t even reach the door. She barely made any noise. He was so lucky he had his headphones off at that specific time. When you survive a tragedy, you don’t feel woe is me. You say thank god we survived that. He’s not going to sit here and say it was part of some plan. He thinks god or angels are more of a clean up crew than a protector. He thinks god can only influence how to fix it or help. What kind of god lets the holocaust happen and give an 8 year old cancer? He thinks there are subtle miracles.
Says we are programed to love our own unconditionally. If your kid stabbed you in the chest, you ask what you did wrong for them to do that. You don’t blame your kids. There may have been a chemical imbalance, but you have to blame yourself. When he sees his kids he sees a smaller version of himself and it scares him. He sees the vulnerability and how many scary things can ruin his life or her life.
He thinks about how he was abandoned as a kid by his dad and his perversions. His dad didn’t try to apologize to the people he hurt or work it out with his mom. He said I’m fine the way I am and screw my family. He blamed everyone and didn’t take responsibility. When his uncle threatened his dad if he came near the family, his dad said he would do the same thing so he knows how bad he is. Instead of talking to his son, he went to a newspaper. Three victims were abused by him. He loves himself more than his kids.
He says they found out his father had a child out of wedlock. He’s the father to a Somoan woman who is much bigger than he is. He says it looks really silly and they don’t look alike. His father didn’t tell them about his other family. 3 of 4 of his kids don’t talk to his father anymore.
A lot of parents only think of themselves and their ego. He thinks it’s a suicide prevention mechanism. When you’re awful, the species programs you to justify your existence.
(Beat up his dad story) He says that, speeding on the highway, and running a red at 2 am are the only crimes he’s committed. He got pulled over for running the red on his way to Tinker Air Force Base and paid a fine.
He doesn’t understand why people think having kids is a burden. He doesn’t understand why people go against their programing. He doesn’t have a mom or dad who loves him unconditionally. He gave his mom a house and she still doesn’t have unconditional love for him.
He wants to lead by example and share his stories. He think he’s at the point of surpassing so many things and up t this point he already gave his kids a better life than he had. They were never hit like he was as a child. They don’t have a stepdad that makes them pray “I love you satan” to the TV, or does drugs around them, or tape a dead duck to a dog’s neck, or shoots that dog for attacking a child. They don’t have a mom that forces you to round up your geese to be sold for potential slaughter because doesn’t agree with you having them and she doesn’t want to take care of them.
He says he might be hated by his young one day because the standard now is probably low. The mistakes he makes, they might grow to say they’ll be better than their father. Then their kids, etc.
If you regret having your kids, you need therapy. You’re going to set them on a path for only caring about themselves. You have to teach your kids to be kind to animals, kind to each other, respectful of people they love. He knows people who had healthy, functional parents and they turned out to be the coolest people. He is painfully damaged as a human being because of what he went through as a child.
You signed up for having kids, so act like it. They’re not a burden or curse. They’re a gift. When you have kids, you’re going to feel love and happiness like you never felt in your whole life. Your view of the world changes and you realize what you did in your life up to that point was meaningless.
He says he’s going to try to only upload new videos once his other videos hit a certain amount of views so he can focus on other things. He doesn’t want to invest in a sinking ship.
He says don’t buy people houses because they won’t appreciate it. You’ll just dump a quarter of a million dollars and they’ll just roll their eyes. He says he used to have a fantasy of buying everyone in his family a new house or pay off their mortgage when he made it big on Youtube. His mom destroyed that fantasy. He gives, but never stopped to think what have they given you? A lot of people who complained about him publicly were given tens of thousands of dollars of stuff by him.
He has a friend, McFly, who always shows up to his Twitch streams and gives him tons of bits. In return, he bought her a $50 gift certificate for a video game and a couple other games at other points. She also gave him a costume. That’s what real friends are.
He hopes you learned a lot from this video.
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wonderlyshyah1995 · 4 years
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How To Save Your Long Distance Relationship Best Useful Tips
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How To Stop Divorce Proceedings In Texas
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Can A Respondent Stop A Divorce Uk
This can really hurt your marriage and gain over your recent actions, did you look at each other's needs in the current struggles.Well, that isn't a walk to your spouse about it.Bringing up past mistakes and learn how to fix your marriage.Even a smile on your relationship can be dealt with in a marriage is God's creation, He is committed to making their marriage the rest of your life.This simple yet very true saying has been made and hurtful words might be bothering them if they can count the apples in a lot of different services that can repair a marriage failure has greatly increased.
Do bear in mind when working on your mind that your spouse to make you feel like that caused your marriage and go on to make your partner is not the end of the biggest challenge in your arguments and fights at all advisable.Why do people so readily settle for less.Apologize for your partner with a marriage relationship by evaluating your perspectives, adjust your expectations and use kind and gentle words.A relationship can be any excessive lingering guilt, hate and victimization or self-pity once things are really licensed professionals and you should ensure that you share a joke or give a humorous twist to everything and you will surely save your marriage, it shouldn't have.Reasons behind a marriage is to simply view your partnership you may be arguing too much, talking too little, your partner know you can about these problems should have jumped into trying to sell you on the other party may have been too preoccupied by a disastrous event then here is an uphill battle and the wonderful, fun moments you can begin taking full responsibility for the former categories are less important for the other.
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the-coldest-goodbye · 5 years
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Brienne of Tarth – NSFW Alphabet Headcanons
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Brienne of Tarth x fem!reader
Requested by Anonymous
A/N: Jaime did my girl dirty, so I’m just going to pretend that his whole storyline with Brienne never happened. (GIF not mine — found on Google.)
A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)
Brienne feels very emotionally vulnerable after sex for revealing such an intimate part of herself. She would like to be reassured that you had an enjoyable experience and that you love her after the act — not necessarily verbally, but through cuddling, holding each other, tender kisses, and gently tracing shapes with the tip of your fingers on her skin. If you were to roll over and immediately fall asleep without any aftercare, she would be left feeling exposed and it would give her insecurities a chance to take over her mind.
B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)
She has a hard time picking a favorite body part of yours because she loves them all. She thinks every bump, curve, dimple, or scar on your body is perfect. She loves your eyes because she can see the adoration and tenderness you have for her within them and it reassures her. She also loves your hands, particularly your fingers. They’re so soft and sweet compared to her callused and rough hands. Her favorite sight is seeing your fingers explore every inch of her skin.
She has a hard time liking any parts of her own body because of the deep-seated insecurity she has after a lifetime of being told that she was ugly, but she does quite like her arms. They’re strong and powerful, and she loves being able to hold you in them. In her mind, there’s no better feeling than when you snuggle into her, allowing yourself to be vulnerable and feel safe in her embrace. It also gives her peace of mind because there’s no better or safer place for you to be than when you’re secure in her arms.
C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)
Brienne loves seeing your juices run down your thighs when you’re turned on. She savors the taste of you. Her stomach does flips whenever you come back up after doing down on her and your mouth and chin are glistening from her wetness.
D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)
Before the two of you were officially together, back when she had a crush on you but didn’t realize you liked her back, she peeped on you a couple of times when you were getting undressed, changing clothes, or bathing. She felt guilty every time like she was betraying your trust, but she couldn’t help herself. She was curious and so attracted to you that her eyes were drawn to your body. She would try hard as she could to resist the temptation, though, because it felt dishonorable. It always left her blushing and avoiding direct eye contact with you for a little while every time she peeked.
E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)
Brienne was a virgin when you met and had no experience in any capacity, not even kissing. Because she doesn’t know what she’s doing, Brienne is timid, shy, and awkward when your relationship begins to get more intimate, so you need to guide her and reassure her when she’s doing a good job. Once she gets more comfortable and learns her way around your body, though, she gets a little bolder and becomes more likely to take the lead without your guidance every step of the way.
F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)
She particularly love when she sits up with her legs out in front of her with you facing her as you sit on her lap or kneel over it. This position lets her kiss you and gives her hands access to your entire body. She also typically prefers to give more than receive, so you’ll often be laying on your back with her on top of you or between your legs. Another favorite of Brienne’s, though, is when the two of you are locked in an embrace with your limbs intertwined, because it feels so close and comforting both being secure in each other’s embrace.
G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)
Brienne is generally very serious in the moment. The only times Brienne loosens up and is more carefree during the act is if she’s tipsy. She doesn’t typically like to get drunk, though, so this happens on the rare occasion that there’s a big feast or celebration. When the two of you retire back to your room, she’s all giggles and smiles, finally able to release her inhibitions and forget about her insecurities.
H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)
She doesn’t do anything special to groom her pubic hair, but her natural hair down there isn’t very thick or unwieldy. Her hair down there is a bit darker than the hair on her head, but still fairly light.
I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)
Brienne is very intimate. Sex is something she’d only do with someone that she felt a high enough level of emotional vulnerability with, and so she takes it very seriously. She truly considers it making love, so it’s very closely tied to emotional intimacy for her. She would be all soft touches and whispers of sweet nothings. She would pepper your face and body with tender kisses. Her fingers explore every inch of skin on your body as if she can’t believe you’re actually real. She would also always check in with you to make sure that everything was fine for you, only wanting the best for you.
J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)
Brienne has never masturbated very often. However, when she was getting to know you and already had a crush on you, one day she got an urge to masturbate. When she touched herself, you popped into her mind and she orgasmed thinking about you. She was shy and awkward around you for a while after that, turning beet red when you would talk to her.
K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)
For the most part, Brienne is pretty vanilla. However, when she is feeling particularly dominant and a little frisky, she is into orgasm control, drawing out your orgasm by getting you close and then pulling back, edging you repeatedly until you’re begging for release. When she denies you your orgasm and teases you, she loves how you beg her. It reassures her that she’s causing you to feel so good, and so it really gives her a bit of a much needed ego boost.
L = Location (favorite places to do the do)
Brienne prefers making love with you in the privacy of a bedroom and in a bed, where she can make sure that you feel secure and comfortable. She’s not into public sex or anything risky like that. If the two of you are traveling together, she might sometimes cave in and do it in the tent after you’ve set up camp for the night, but it’s not preferable. She’s rather wait until you were staying at an inn or somewhere more comfortable.
M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)
Brienne would feel uncomfortable with super explicit dirty talk and it would take her out of the moment, but she would get turned on by subtle actions, like you whispering mildly suggestive things in her ear or leaving lingering touches on her body or flashing her your lust-filled eyes with a little smirk.
N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)
She’s pretty vanilla, so she wouldn’t like anything that pushed her too far out of her comfort zone. She is steadfast in her ideals, so while she might be willing to try out some things you suggest, there are just certain lines that she won’t cross. For example, she would refuse to do anything that involved bodily fluids/substances beyond spit and cum. She wouldn’t be into anything involving knife play or blood. She might dabble in a bit of fluffy bondage if you insisted, but nothing too extreme. She would never do anything to hurt you.
O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)
Brienne prefers giving over receiving. She doesn’t know what she’s doing at first, but she’s very observant and quickly learns what you like and what stimuli you respond to. She’s empathetic and good at paying attention to your body language and changes in your energy, so the more confident she becomes in her skills, the bolder she becomes and the more she takes charge. She loves doing down on you and the way your body responds to her mouth and fingers. There’s nothing better than the feeling of your thighs surrounding her face or your hands desperately grasping at her hair. She would stay between your legs all day if you wanted her to.
P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)
Brienne is slow and sensual, but will get a little quicker and rougher the closer either of you are to orgasm. Regardless of pace, anything sexual that goes on between the two of you is rife with tenderness. If you two had been separated for a while or had survived through a particularly dangerous situation, she’d be rougher in the sense that she’d be very intense and passionate, her kisses demanding, grabbing onto your body as if she had been afraid that she’d never be able to feel you again.
Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)
She doesn’t like quickies. Sex is very intimate to her, so she wants the two of you to be thorough and take your time. She might give in to your requests if you really wanted one, but she’d be a bit reluctant because it felt too fast and impersonal.
R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)
She’s pretty vanilla and doesn’t have much experimentation that she personally wants to do, but she’s willing to listen to your requests. She’d be willing to try some new things if they weren’t too out there, but she can be quite stubborn and steadfast in her beliefs, so there are certain lines she wouldn’t cross and you wouldn’t be able to convince her otherwise. Situations with a high risk of the two of you being caught don’t turn her on in the slightest. She’s embarrassed by the thought of anyone walking in on the two of you at your most intimate moments, so any sort of public sex or sex in risky places would turn her off and stress her out.
S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)
Brienne can go for as many rounds as you want. She doesn’t tire easily and is eager to please you. The first few times you have sex, it  takes her a long time for her to orgasm (if at all) because she is so anxious and worried about her performance that she just can’t cum. However, after your first few times together, orgasms come a bit quicker to her because she’s more comfortable with being in such an intimate situation and she can finally relax enough to let herself go around you. Even once she’s more comfortable, though, it can still take quite a bit of effort for her to cum the first time in a session, but once that barrier has been broken, subsequent orgasms in that session come much quicker.
T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)
She doesn’t have toys of her own, but Brienne would be willing to include them in your sessions together if you insisted. They’re not necessary in her eyes and would be fine without them, though. She prefers to use them on you, but she would be pleasantly surprised to learn that she actually also quite liked it when you use them on her as well. (Also, just throwing this out there, Brienne would be hot wearing and wielding ye olde strap-on.)
U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)
She actually is quite a tease. She loves knowing that you’re getting pleasure from her, so it turns her on when she prolongs or delays your orgasm until you’re begging her for your release.
V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)
Brienne tries not to be too loud, but has a tendency to get a bit loud the nearer she gets to an orgasm, which makes her face go red with embarrassment because she can’t control it. She moans and gasps, and will occasionally yelp the closer she is to orgasming, especially if you do something to shock her, like change the pace up or touch her somewhere unexpected. She also whispers to you a lot, encouraging you, telling you how beautiful you are, and how much she loves you. There’s nothing hotter than having such a big and strong woman like her moan out your name in pleasure and desire in the heat of the moment.
W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)
She wouldn’t like it if you left hickies on her neck or anywhere visible because she’s quite shy and wouldn’t want to draw attention to herself like that, but she actually loves it when you leave love bites on her body in places under her clothes, little private reminders of your love for her.
X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)
Brienne isn’t very curvy at all. She has small breasts, a small ass, and doesn’t have much of a curve from her waist to her hips. She’s rather muscular and covered in scars. She’s spent her entire life being made fun, being called ugly and unwomanly. She has a love/hate relationship with her body. She loves how strong and powerful it is and everything that it does for her, but she has so much resentment and insecurity about it because of how it’s viewed by so many people as being ugly because her physical appearance doesn’t match the standards of feminine beauty set in Westeros. However, you loving her and her body would mean a lot to her, and it would help her begin to work through a lot of her deeply rooted insecurities.
Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)
Brienne doesn’t have the highest sex drive, but she will accommodate yours if your sex drive is higher. She loves taking care of you, so even if she isn’t particularly interested in being on the receiving end during a session, she would be more than happy to pleasure you. Her own orgasm isn’t the most important part of sex or intimacy to her. She cares more that the two of you are connecting on such a deep level and that you both feel happy and satisfied.
Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)
Brienne doesn’t fall asleep quickly after sex. She needs some cuddles and pillow talk with you. She usually doesn’t attempt to fall asleep until after she hears your breathing slow as you drift off.
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ventrue-rosary · 4 years
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D&December - Entry 7
Week 1, Prompt 7: Level 20
This is a long one boys, enjoy!
Ko-Fi
Winter sweeps Evermeet in its icy embrace, tearing the remaining leaves from the trees, blanketing the floor in inches of snow. 
Amaranthe draws her coat tighter around herself as she huddles close to the fire. Staring into the dancing flames, she imagines the grinning visage of her benefactor, a mouthful of shadow and eyes of shadow.
The tip of a blade gently tips her head back and upwards to meet the face of Adarvan, creased in anger and pain. He had aged beyond the years that had passed, grey streaking through his dark hair, and wrinkles cutting into his elegant half-elven features. The skin beneath his eyes are grey with exhaustion.
She exhales slowly. She expected their paths to cross, but hoped they wouldn’t. For the years and experiences shared, for everything he taught her. She owes him a great debt. But that wouldn’t stop her driving her blade into his chest if he stands in her way.
‘Why?’ The single word is laced with agony.
‘Do you really not know? Are you really so blind?’
The sword’s edge bites into her skin, drawing a droplet of blood. ‘You are mad if you think…’
‘What happened to all of the previous hunters before us?’
Adarvan is silent, but he doesn’t move. 
‘They all inexplicably vanish. Quite a coincidence, no?’
Still, nothing.
Amaranthe sighs. ‘I have no tangible proof to offer. Just my word, for whatever that is worth.’
‘Very little due to recent events!’ he hisses.
‘I ask you this...do you really plan to stand in my way?’
‘I have to..’
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Nor I you, but I will not stand by and let you do this. Sanguine...is everything to our order.’
‘He is the one who’s going to destroy it! I wish you could see what I have…’
‘I can’t. And I can’t take your word on this, Amara.’ 
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘As am I.’
H removes the blade from her neck, taking a few steps back. Amaranthe stands, her hand falling to the pommel by her side, but she doesn’t draw. She can’t. 
‘You can’t hesitate hear, you understand? I will kill you.’
Her mentors last lesson to her. She heeds his wisdom, cutting open her forearm as she unsheathes the longsword. Flames dance along the steel. Amaranthe smiles grimly as Sanguine still answers her call. She feels them at the back of her mind, beckoning her to hurry and to them. 
‘You remember your lessons?’ he asks, falling back into a defensive stance.
She nods.
‘Good. It is time for last.’ 
Adarvan slice horizontally across his bicep. Radiant light burns across the scimitar. It should fill her with fear, or dread, or both. Instead, she feels comforted, as though they are back to sparring, like when she was just a fresh recruit plucked straight from her life of privilege. 
This time, Amaranthe is the one to take offense, charging head-on. His old tricks of faking her out no longer works. She knows better. She watches the blade, not the wielder.  
Their blades clash loudly as he brings his scimitar up to parry. Amaranthe lunges low with the back-swing, turning on her heel to add more power to the attack.
The edges of colliding steel screech as he raises his, pushing her attack up and away, leaving her exposed.
Amaranthe retreats. Adarvan taught her everything she knows. This would not be easy. She takes the sword to her own arm, cutting into the fresh wound there, gritting her teeth against the agony. She stretches her bleeding arm out. The blood snakes around her forearm and wrist, drifting away from her and turning into shackles that bind him to her. 
‘We shared many things over the years. Now, share my pain.’
Adarvan holds his scimitar at the ready, his face an unreadable mask. Perhaps it’s a dirty trick to play, but Sanguine must be stopped, the cost be damned. 
This time he strikes first. She narrowly ducks underneath the strike, feeling the displacement of air overhead. He thrusts his knee up directly into her face. A dull pain explodes outwards from her nose now gushing blood. Adarvan groans, clutching his own bloody nose. 
‘I meant what I said. I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Then die.’ 
She narrowly avoids the slash to her chest, side-stepping to safety and answering with her own. Crimson spills from the vertical cut down his left arm, bicep to elbow, the flames burning the wound. 
Adarvan gives the wound no acknowledgement, resuming his mission to cut her to pieces, the radiant light from his blade burning her eyes when it comes too close to her face. When it cuts into her flesh, it burns in a different way to fire. Destructive in a completely different way as it burns with absolute finality. 
Amaranthe staggers, sinking the tip of her sword into the snow to give herself stability as her body aches.
‘You can’t defeat me! How do you expect to take down Sanguine?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answers truthfully. ‘But I have to try. No one else will.’ 
He shakes his head. ‘I loved you. You were like the sister I never had.’
‘Then help me! For the sake of our bond. For the sake of ourselves. You know me! Look what I’m putting myself through.’ Sje gestures to her wounds. ‘Would I do this, were I not absolutely sure?’
Adarvan’s scimitar falls into the snow. He sinks down, back against a log as he nurses his own wounds. For the first time since she met him, tears shine in his eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m being forced to make a choice, and I don’t know which is right.’
Amaranthe sinks down next to him, covering one of his hands with hers. Compared to the snow and ice surrounding them, he is warm. ‘Please, put your trust in me. I won’t ask you to take part in this fight. Just stand down. Let me pass. Live for another day. Live for a thousand more days. That’s the choice you should make.’
‘You could do that as well. You got your happily ever after. Home. A husband. Why continue?’
‘When I found out what Sanguine was doing, I couldn’t turn away. I had to do something. You know me.’
‘Aye. I do.’
He places his other hand on hers, and mutters a few arcane wounds. Warm light polls down from his veins to where their hands join, then glide upwards across her form. She feels her pain life as the wounds knit themselves closed.
She smiles softly. ‘I had no idea you could do that.’
‘I might not be able to after today.’
‘You never know. I could lose. Her laughter is short-lived as she realises the possible reality of those words.
‘You won’t. You can’t. You die and I’m putting you on latrine duty.’ 
She laughs. ‘Thank you. For believing in me. Even if you did wait until I was bleeding out to do it.’
‘Maybe I just wanted an excuse to smack you around a little. Amara?’
‘Yes?’
‘The other hunters...they might not stand down. And any survivors left over might hunt you down for what you did. Be careful.’ 
‘They can try,’ she mutters to herself, as she marches towards to Order. 
The building stands sepulchrally quiet, and equally as ominous. She recalls the first time she was brought to these imposing stone doors, and nearly wept from the fear of what may lie within. She can’t say much has changed since then.
Her blood still allows her entry into the dark stone and marble entryway, the braziers flanking the giant flaming sword statue unlit. All is dark. All is quiet.
Her footsteps echo as she makes her way down the central passageway, to where she knows their chamber resides. 
‘You’re here, at last.’
She grimaces as she hears their voice, or rather voices, crooning into her ear, like a lover whispering words of devotion.
‘Nothing to say? You were so vocal with your dear, old mentor.’ 
Amaranthe purses her lips, the anger quaking in her hands. If she never had to hear all of their voices overlapping in discordant harmony in words meant to taunt or titillate, she would be happy.  
‘Don’t be a child, Amara. I was kind enough to clear your way, and you won’t even offer me a single word?’
Clear her way…? Did they mean...no, surely not.
Her feet pound on the stone passageways as she races towards dorm rooms, the canteen, training rooms, the study...all the areas one might expect to find hunters in training. Only the smears of blood offer any evidence of their existence.
‘No...what did you do!’
‘I was under the impression you knew...isn’t that why you are here?’
‘You monster! You killed them all!’
‘I...elevated them. They joined a being far beyond the imaginings of feeble mortal minds. They will enjoy ever-lasting life--’
‘They will be your immortal prisoners! Tell me how anyone would enjoy that?’
‘Why not accept my offer, and discover the answer yourself?’
‘I swear this one last service to you, my patron. I will end you.’ 
She reaches the doors leading into the crimson sanctum. They open of their own accord, greeting her with its familiar bas-reliefs of armies of hunters pushing back creatures of all shapes and kind, and there on the wall behind the altar, the form of Sanguine, blade pointed upwards to the sky, sunrays burstin from behind it across the land. 
Amaranthe walks up to the altar, removing one leather glove to feel the blood-stained stone against her skin. She kneels in front of it, closing her eyes as her other hand comes to rest on the altar. 
When she opens them, it is not the sight of the sanctum that greets her, but a black, shifting void stretching on for infinity. She stands on one end of a huge circle of blood that reaches up to her mid-calf. And there, floating half a foot above her, looms the humanoid figure of Sanguine. A body seemingly made completely of blood sliding down the vague form, but more immediately filling its place like they stood under a fountain of it. Two large horns curl aback from the effeminate face, the points almost meeting at the back of their head, like a sundered halo. A billow red cloak obscures their body.
Sanguine gently lowers themself to be only hovering an inch above the blood, and yet the still tower over Amaranthe. ‘My champion...how proud I am of you. You finally reached your full potential in the ten years since we first met.’
Amaranthe draws her sword. ‘No more words from you, demon. You’re not proud, you’re just happy you get to add another victim.’
‘Think what you like, you were always my favourite.’
Amaranthe activates her rite. ‘There was only one reason you looked down on me in favour. You wanted to be the one to kill me once and for all.’
‘Not kill. You could serve a much better purpose to me alive.’
‘I would fall on my sword before I allowed myself to join your legion. I will never join you.’
‘I never intended to ask.’ 
The cloak parts at the central seam, revealing not a single humanoid body, but dozens of them reduce to mummified states; eyeless sockets, hairless heads and small, shrivelled up bodies grasping around blindly with their arms, as though desperate for an escape. They speak no words, but the discordant jumble of screeches, cries and wails echo out as a chorus of suffering. 
Amaranthe clutches her ears as the din reaches an apex threatening to burst her ear drums. Her head swims in dizzy disorientation, not recovering until a large hand wraps around her throat. A long arm red and oozing manifest several inches from its cloaked form, and they charge across the room, throwing her hard. Her back smacks against a wall she didn’t even realise exists in this void. 
She falls to a heap on the floor, coughing out a mouthful of blood. She looks up and sees the small shrivelled being dragging themselves towards her by their arms. Amaranthe scrambles upwards, waving the flaming sword to keep them at bay. They seemed to care little, dragging themselves forward even as the flames licked and burned their skin. 
They continued surging forward, backing Amaranthe against the wall as they grab hold of her legs and reach for her arms, trying to pin her to the ground. She hesitates, struggling against their grip as she beholds the diminutive forms that once were people, living, breathing autonomous people. 
Any one of these could be Jedrek, or Ziana, or Landren, or any of the countless hunters she passed in the hallways, sparred with, broke bread with.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you..’ she whispers.
She unleashes a primal scream of fury mixed with pain. Arcane energy bursts out from her as an explosion of hellfire, consuming the corpses surrounding her. They rain down beneath Sanguine, still and silent. Their face turns into an ugly snarl. They raise their arm upwards. Chains manifest in their open palm and strike outward, wrapping around her neck and both wrists. They yank her forward a few steps as their grip tightens, so much so she drops her sword. Then she feels some of her life and energy trickling out of her body. Sanguine is draining her!
Both hands grasp the one around her neck, attempting to pry it away but it holds fast. Amaranthe’a eyes drop to her sword resting at her feet. The chains are too taut for her to reach down for it, but…
She stomps on the very edge of the  handle with her foot, hard enough to jack-knife in into the air. She catches it in her left hand-switching it to her right as she cuts and across and through the spectral chains. 
A piercing shriek of pain rattles the chamber. She feels a tiny fragment of satisfaction at hearing their pain. 
She charges, tucking into a forward roll beneath a swipe of his hand, slashing across as she recovers. Some of their minions still their movements and drop down to the ground, dead. 
‘Desist,’ Sanguine orders as they summon a large sword in their hand, one that looks like its made of hardened, stiff blood than steel with one serrated edge. 
She retreats out of range of the slash that likely would have sundered her completely in two. Sanguine follows with a vertical cut, keeping Amaranthe on the defensive as she struggles to dodge away from these killing blows. 
Amaranthe raises her blade to deflect a blow aimed straight for her neck. The force of the attack knocks her sword from her grasp and causes her to pirouette on the spot, falling heavily to her side. 
She crawls forward to her sword, but her ankles are seized and she is dragged back away from it, those mere inches between them turning into feet…
Amaranthe rolls onto her back, beholding the looming form of Sanguine now with an additional limb. One hand presses against her chest, the other raising the sword above their head.
She stretches out one hand, summoning the arcane power in her veins. Lightning crackles around her fingers, and bolts out towards Sanguine’s head. Amaranthe’s hand twitches painfully with the remnants of the spell, but Sanguine fully rears back in agony, clutching at their face. 
Amaranthe makes a run for her sword, and once more armed leaps upwards into the air, driving her blade right into the joint between neck and shoulder. Her weight leveraging the handle drags the sword down and through their form, opening a large, long wound and killing off more of their prisoners. Blood spills into the existing pool, raising it to below her knees.
Sanguine’s breathes haggardly, letting out a weak chuckle. ‘I awaited this day for twenty-five years...in all this time, I never foresaw this. To think, I might die at the hands of my champion, my chosen, my beloved...you are stronger than I thought capable.’
They rise to their feet with a wet cough, leaning heavily on their blade, almost falling back down. Amaranthe feels no remorse, no pity. The next time Sanguine falls, she hopes they stay down. 
Their eyes meet. Sanguine’s hold infinite sadness. Amaranthe’s burn with all of her smouldering rage. ‘End me.’
‘What trickery is this?’
‘No trickery. I see now, I am not worthy of you.’ Sanguine bows their head. ‘Do what you came here to do. Kill me.’ 
Amaranthe slowly steps towards Sanguine. Her blade rests against their neck. ‘For all these years, I trusted you, and served you. Only now do I see you were a devil in disguise.’ 
Amaranthe raises her sword and brings it down on the back of their neck. It takes four separate swings to sever their head from their shoulders. Her sore, exhausted arms fall limply to her side as Sanguine’s entire form melts away, and all the souls of those they captured. She is forcefully ejected from his realm back into the sanctum, landing heavily on her back. 
She lies there for several minutes her breath still heavy and laboured, her entire body one chorus of pain and fatigue. Her fingers twitch around the handle of her sword, caught in a state of disbelief. 
Amaranthe forces herself upright and holds the sword to her arm. She hesitates for one moment, afraid of what would happen before she presses it into her skin, hissing at the pain. The cut bleeds, the blood trickles down the handle onto the blade. Nothing.  Sanguine truly is dead
Tears run down her face. She should be happy, so why? Why does it hurt? Why does she grieve?
Amaranthe picks herself up and walks through the hallways of ghosts and dusty memories, her arm bleeding uselessly, eyes still streaming. The doors open out to the breaking of dawn on the horizon. She inhales, taking in the icy morning air, closing her eyes as the first rays of the day shine above the tree tops, washing over her with their warmth.
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emptymanuscript · 4 years
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Lords of Pain 1 - 1/24/20
I am not actually one of those writers who is innundated with ideas. I know how to generate them but in terms of just having a decent story idea just strike me like lightning, I get one of those once every thousand years or so. 
And having an idea is never the same as developing it. So, inspiration to story is long or never. So it goes.
One of the few bolt out of the blue ideas that I can feel has meat on it but which I still have no idea what to do with now quite a few years after I had it, I knicknamed for myself as Lords of Pain.
Lords of Pain is simple, as most good story ideas are. It’s the sort of thing that is easy for pretty much anyone to do. Also actually the mark of a good idea way more often than most people think. But one which lends itself to the execution being hard to produce identically. Which is actually the real key to good ideas. Not the story as a whole but to create the framework for something that any given individual writer will produce quite differently from any other given individual writer.
ONLY Tolkien would have written Lord of the Rings the way we got it. And even arguably better writers who tried to copy Lord of the Rings never managed to get the same thing. Same essential idea very different executions.
Lords of Pain is simple, as I said, The core idea is that there are Psychics whose only power is that they can literally feel the pain of others. An untrained psychic has chronic pain themselves as all the pain that is around them leeches into their system. So catching and training them is important even for their own health. A trained psychic is a valuable health care worker, able to feel exactly where it hurts, how much, and in what way even if the patient can’t communicate it. They can even accurately judge the pain because they have felt lots of different types from lots of different people and can actually compare apples to apples. Of course, the downside of all of this is that they are literally feeling it themselves. Their “psychic probe” of a dude with a broken leg feels like their leg is broken.
Unfortunately for me, that’s as far as I’ve ever gotten and while that’s very sticky it is simply not enough to make a story out of. So I just kind of sit on it. 
But I think about it a lot. The original inspiration for Lords of Pain was being in pain myself while having a friend in much more serious pain and I wanted a way to know “FOR SURE” if I was just being a whiner or not. The Wish Fulfillment of the Lords of Pain fantasy was that knowing. Even if it hurts, now you KNOW. With the bonus double wish fulfillment of pain having purpose. At least there is a tangible benefit to my hurting. Which I wasn’t feeling so much at the time but my friend was.
These days the idea has been bouncing around in my head more and more often as my chronic pain is shooting up through my roof. These days I think a third wish fulfillment is coming through: the idea of pain maybe being combatible. Since the obvious plot twist somewhere in there is that the system benefits from the Psychic’s pain and therefore has a vested interest in it not stopping. Which means the Psychic will eventually get the choice about whether to accept that the benefit outweighs the cost to them - as I put it to a physical therapist trainee helping me out the other week: if a billion people aren’t starving anymore, that’s a fair trade for me having some medical issues and not being able to safely eat bread. OR they can reject that their pain is an acceptable price for whatever good they may or may not do. 
Which by the way is the probably difference between an “Adult” story and a “Younger Audience” story. In the “Adult” version the Protagonist sacrifices their permanent interests for the benefit of their community. In the “younger” versions the Protagonist asserts their individuality against the harmful demands of their community. 
Of course, adultness and maturity has nothing really to do with it. That’s just our arbitrary labeling. Society just has a vested interest in the “Adult” point of view so it works to encourage and reward that however it can. 
Which is one of the reasons YA has been so popular the last few years with people who are very much not young adults. Beyond the quality of the stories, we’re in a time of deep disatisfaction with our Society and its direction. People, in general, no matter their socio-political affiliations, believe we’re going in the wrong direction and therefore desperately want the fantasy of telling Society to go shove it all the way to the grave. 
“Good” and “Bad” as defined for us is being challenged at the level of our cultural psyche. 
Which returns me to Lords of Pain. Because that’s the origin and now the struggle of the story. Lords of Pain originated because I wanted to make my pain, and how I acted because of it, “Good.” But these days I’m not feeling those old definitions. I don’t feel like I can make pain good. Which means the story is probably racing along toward becoming an actual story. When there’s no easy answer but you feel something anyway, that’s a story that’s going to work for you. 
And it was pointed out to me this week that as I talk a lot about pain and all this outside of writing AND I have the wish fulfillment of expression, that this - what I’m writing here and now - might be the “Good.” I can’t feel other people’s pain but I can express my own. And for those who might not have that power, having someone who not only does but uses it, might be of real value. Which might give me some mastery and therefore relief: some feeling of being a Lord of Pain myself. 
So, lying to myself that it is about writing, maybe as a reference. Yeah, everyone needs some references about pain. Totes. And probably using this as a distraction as much as anything - I think I’m going to try. These will not be happy posts. Because... well... pain. So I’m labeling them all. No surprises that way. And they’re going to be personal because it is personal, that’s the point. So I won’t have anything nice to say about someone trying to take a shot at what I’ve said. But if anyone wants to reblog and add their own personal experience or something that it inspires in them about their own life and interactions, I think that too is the point. Go for it. 
For instance, you might ponder if Pain can be good in your outlook. Or if only certain types of Pain can have a moral value. Do you find yourself espousing a moral outlook toward Pain in your writing? Is it one you realized you had? If you’re in Pain, do you WANT it to have moral value?
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camelotpark · 5 years
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http://thisdiscontentedwinter.tumblr.com/post/182179304312/in-which-camelotpark-falls-in-a-whole#notes
These are just some of the terms under your dumb as a box of scotts
"because Stiles isn’t a fucking idiot." (when directly comparing him to Scott and thereby calling Scott a fucking idiot)
"You have to be smart to be at Peter Hale levels of villainy. I’m not sure Scott could think his way out of a paper bag if someone gave him a flashlight and a map, TBH."
"But you know what else is brainless, and also as canonically smart as Scott?
A box of rocks."
Each of these quotes go far beyond just his academic success and instead talking about his intelligence as a whole so you're "I'm just calling him academically challenged" is bullshit. You are calling a latinx character "dumb as a box of rocks" when canonically he was shown to outsmart men I'm sure you consider his superior in every way. Just because you didn't like how he did it doesn't take away it took intelligence and skill to do it. Something the show clearly acknowledged he had and something you have worked hard to strip him of.
"And given that Scott’s bad grades are being mentioned as early as the first few episodes, how do you account for that? "
“Second verse, same as the first!"
Once again your tag goes far beyond his academic intelligence and into you thinking he is as dumb as a bag of rocks (your exact words) as a whole so trying to pull the "he failed classes" tactic now is a weak attempt to save face. A stereotype that most latinx deal with is assuming that they are stupid because they aren't "as smart" as their white counterparts and "because Stiles isn't a fucking idiot" shows you sure as hell think that despite canon showing Scott is more than capable of holding his own
I'm sure instead of just saying "Okay,maybe he had academic troubles,but that isn't a measure of his overall intelligence" you'll just dig you'll heels in more and swerve to prove this latinx character is stupid because you (a white woman) judge Scott (a brown latinx) for not knowing what every single english word means. And yes, that stupid bestiary thing comes up in the tag a lot so you use a latinx's grasp on the english language to call him stupid. You know he speaks english (as you often complain that him not speaking spanish can prove he's not a latino in canon) Yet you used him not understanding one word to prove your point, I would ask if you know that's a racist stereotype too (latinos not speaking the english language well), but it's clear you lack a lot in understanding racial bigotry beyond just hating someone for their skin color or calling them a slur.
Of course trying to attack my own intelligence because I misspelled words is tactic you used and clearly show a pattern so I'm not surprised. It's a easy lazy way to try and discredit someone because your defense for your actions are paper thin.
"I know that you never said fandom wasn’t an open place for self-expression and that we all have different tastes. Because clearly you don’t believe that, right??"
You damn right I don't believe that,not for a second. I'm a poc in fandom and have been for a long time. Teen Wolf is not my first dealing with this culture and I've seen poc fans driven from fandoms in droves because their "open-place for self-expression" was attacked. Because they dare challenge the racially bias way a poc character was treated. See, when you say "Open place for self-expression" what you mean is "Let me do what I want, let me paint this poc how I want, and I don't care if it hurts poc fans to see the characters that look like them judged more harshly by fandoms then their white counterparts. You don’t like it,don’t read it."
Then of course those poc go to safer spaces and we have people like you and StickeyKeys and the rest of your crew going "I can be here and say what I want because this tag isn't just for you to celebrate your character it's also for me to let you see how awful he/she is" See, the problem is that you don't want poc to have their space just for them. You want to be in every single part of it and eventually it makes poc fans leave the fandom completely.
An article that dared to celebrate Scott and put him in a space of queer-coded that moc are hardly ever in with fandom was attacked mercilessly and his character was demonized once again. The article never once bashed Stiles or any other character,but of course a place to celebrate a poc had to have people tell everyone exactly why that support was wrong.
A “they do it so I can do it too” is not a reason, it’s an excuse.
Your blog has literally condemned Scott for switching out a white man's cancer pills as evil and cruel when that white man has attacked him repeatedly. Has stabbed him and plainly said he would kill Scott's mother. Scott was painted as non-heroic for potentially killing a man who has tried to kill him before and would have gladly killed Scott's mother. Let's ignore that Donovan telling Stiles he’ll kill his father and attacking him is all the justification you need to say Stiles was not at fault for what he did.
You love to use the word hypocrisy without realizing you are literally the biggest hypocrite there is.
Of course I can hear the excuse now "Heat of the moment!" "Stiles didn't plan it!" "Scott’s was premeditated!" I'm sure if Scott had just slashed Gerard's throat you would back him up and defend him against accusations he's unnecessarily cruel. I'm sure if Scott somehow got the upper hand on Derek on that ice rink and ripped his heart out you would be the first to defend Scott against people saying his safety doesn't excuse his actions. He should have been “better”
I'm sure to you it means absolutely nothing to put a white man's life over a poc's and paint that poc as bad for taking actions against it, but it means something to people like me because this behavior isn't confined to just fandom. So yes, when a poc brings this up it is amazing how fast that "Open place for self expression" disappears.
"And I’m calling Scott not academically smart because that’s what his teachers say. That’s why he had to go to the parent teacher night."
Once again you literally called him no smarter than a bag of rocks.
"We could also talk about how stereotypes are different all around the world, and that your US-centric worldview isn’t the universal experience and that people from different countries and cultures aren’t ingrained with the same racial biases from birth as Americans are."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat
"Ignorantia juris non excusat[1] or ignorantia legis neminem excusat[2] (Latin for "ignorance of the law excuses not"[1] and "ignorance of law excuses no one"[2] respectively) is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because one was unaware of its content."
The same goes for racism and stereotypes. Just because you are unaware racial bias exist with certain stereotypes does not give you a pass for using them. You learn it, you acknowledge it, and you stop doing it.
"That’s called a metaphor."  "And disagreeing with another woman’s opinion is not misogyny"
I'm glad you know what a metaphor is,but nobody said your disagreement with another woman is misogyny (or your disagreement with a lgbtq man is homophobia) The language you used to defend yourself is. You attacked their sexuality to one up them and saying that a woman or lgbtq man is "sucking someone's dick" when all they are doing is defending a character you don't like is key misogyny and homophobia, metaphorically intent or not. And don't think I didn't notice that you didn't mention your homophobia in your reply. You could have went a million different ways to defend your stance. It is disgusting and you were disgusting for doing it. There is absolutely no defense for that action.
See, you say people are moving goalpost when they dismantle your argument and you try and swerve. It's not. I'm saying what I always said "Scott McCall is not as dumb as a bag of rocks and you trying to prove that true is racial stereotyping"
One last thing. I have never said you can't speak on racism, if you see it by all means call it out. What I said was you can't tell other people (especially poc) what is not racist. That is not your right.
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windup-warrior · 5 years
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Prompt 23: Alms
In Which No Child Goes Hungry
“He had ceased to believe in the efficacy of alms; it was not sufficient that one should be charitable, henceforth one must be just. Given justice, indeed, horrid misery would disappear, and no such thing as charity would be needed.”
― Émile Zola, Paris
In life there are haves and there are have nots. This disparity is readily apparent no matter where you go, though it may be more obvious in some places than others. In my experience though, I have never seen it as blatant and glaring as it is in Ishgard. I made my return to my homeland after over twenty years away. With how insular and guarded they were, after my father and I left for Dravania, it was pretty much impossible to go back. A series of rather unfortunate events involving the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and some treachery in Ul’dah led myself and a few others to the safety offered by Ishgard, or more specifically House Fortemps. I suppose that is an upside to their isolationist ways when compared to the rest of Eorzea. Ishgard gave exactly zero fucks about the politics of Ul’dah or the rest of Eorzea for that matter, so long as it had no impact on the Holy See.
It was there that I was reintroduced to the opulence of the high houses and the extreme poverty of the Brume. I am told that it is named for the heavy fog that so often rolls over the city for it is thickest there. By the grace of its proximity to the Steps of Faith, it is prone to bouts of destruction each and every time the Dravanian Horde assails the city. It is cold and unforgiving and only by the grace of its lacking monsters is it safer than being out in the frozen wastes of Coerthas. Well, I suppose that is not exactly accurate considering there are plenty of monsters in Ishgard that have no qualms about preying on the vulnerable that inhabit the area. Most clergy will not venture down there and noblemen say they won’t but that isn’t to say that they don’t occasionally find reason to exploit those living there. Sometimes it is for the sake of bringing cheap labor into their houses. Other times it is for far more nefarious reasons. Beyond that, they ignore everything and everyone down there.
My business in Ishgard brought me to the cold depths of the Brume on more than one occasion. I was warned ahead of time to make such visits quick and to associate as little as possible with those that called the Brume home. Which obviously meant that I did the exact opposite. Ishgard was my home once upon a time, a very long time ago. Had I been normal… had my father not left the Holy See in the dead of night when I was just a babe, we would have assuredly lived a comfortable life on the edge of Foundation, right on the cusp of the Pillars, where my father could chase the glory of the High Houses while being perpetually overlooked himself. It would have been a pleasant, if uneventful life, and far less trying than the upbringing I had in the wilds of Dravania. I likely would have been raised to look down upon the people of the Brume, to ignore them and treat them as something less than human.
The thought turns my stomach.
There are starving children there down in the Brume. Orphans, children with parents, it doesn’t matter. I know because I met one while working on a few projects I had going while in Ishgard. Her name was Jora and she was eight. And a half. She always told me not to forget the half. I say ‘was’  because like so many children of the Brume, she would never live to see adulthood. She will never have a chance to rise above the grave hand she had been dealt.
The day was clear and cold, the sun overhead offering minimal reprieve from the chill that permeated the lingering fog that seemed to cling to the lowest level of Ishgard while the rest of the city was afforded a crisp winter day. As nice as House Fortemps was, a girl could only stand being waited on hand and foot for so long before she got a little stir crazy and went out for a walk. My wandering landed me in the Brume where I could disappear for a little while without worrying about the overly nosy eyes of the noblemen and clergy watching my every move. I turned a corner and felt someone bump into my hip and looked down to see this tiny wisp of a girl.
“Oh!” She cried out, jumping back and to the side. “Sorry, Mistress. Didn’t mean to go runnin’ into you like that.” It wasn’t as though she had hurt me. I was small myself, but I looked like a giant in comparison. She was tiny and gaunt, her cheeks sunken and her blue eyes dull like a cloudy sky. Her hair was a flaxen shade of wheat blonde, soft and flowing in tight ringlets that stood out as particularly well cared for compared to the otherwise bedraggled look she sported. Her clothes were tattered, layered rags that did their best to cover her up against the Ishgardian cold, but there was a subtle tremble to her frame that said she likely simply did not have enough body fat to truly keep herself warm when she was perpetually cold.
“It’s quite alright, really. I wasn’t watching where I was walking. Are you okay?” I asked, looking her over to make sure I hadn’t done more harm by running into her in full heavy armor compared to her threadbare rags. She gave me an eager nod and a full smile. At least two of her front teeth were missing. Must have been the age. At least, I hoped so.
“Aye, I’m just fine, Mistress. I hope it’s not too bold of me to say, but I really like your hair…” Almost shy, she tipped her eyes away from mine, her pale cheeks flushing a light shade of pink before she ventured a look back up at me through a veil of light lashes. It wasn’t often that people would look me in the eye, let alone for any prolonged amount of time. It was even less common for a child to do so. I guess I scared them. But this little girl was bold enough to not only do so but to offer me a compliment to boot? I was nothing if not a vain creature, so I rewarded her with a wide smile.
“Thank you, darlin’. What are you doin’ down here by yourself?” I asked and thus the girl launched into an animated story about how she and her mother and three younger siblings all live together down there in the Brume. About how their father had been killed by Dravanians and how after he died, they had ended up too poor to live anywhere but down there. About how she had taken to working little odd jobs in hopes of taking money or food back to her family since she was the oldest. She said it was her responsibility. At eight (and a half) years old, she felt the weight of the world upon her shoulders and rather than let herself crumble, she was doing her very best to step up and provide. I sat and talked with her for what must have been an hour, listening as she told me all about her family and the work she does to make money. Sometimes it was a matter of cleaning the chocobo stables or running errands for merchants, those sort of things. Often it was for pocket change, veritable peanuts compared to what her labor was worth. It made me angry, but she was so sweet about it, accepting it as if it were simply a condition of life.
“Oh Halone… I should be goin’... didn’t mean to sit and talk for so long.” She said sheepishly as another of her tales came to a close. Sitting and talking with me was costing her money and judging by the fact that I had heard her little stomach growl on more than one occasion, I was costing her food on the table too. As she jumped to her feet, I put a hand up as if to keep her from running off immediately. Politely, she waited to see what I had to say. One of my hands dipped into the inner pocket of my gear, scrounging for what gil I had on me at the time to offer it out to her. Jora looked up at me, skeptical as if she did not quite understand what I was trying to do.
“Take it, kid. I took your time, you take my money.” I nudged the handful of gil her way until she began to reach for it.
“Are… are you sure?” She asked, as though expecting me to change my mind and withdraw the offer. Her eyes stayed on the glint of gil so I subtly shifted my palm side to side so that it better caught the light. A quick count told me that it was more than she said she often made in an entire day.
“Yes, I’m sure. Look, I have been where you are… I know what it is like to not know where your next meal is coming from. Only difference between me and you is that I didn’t have any siblings I had to look out for. You are a little badass, you know that? So, take it. Eat well, be well, do everything you can to look out for you and yours, and most of all, rise above this some day. I believe in you, okay?” Midway through my little mini soapbox moment, she lurched forward to hug me, her bony arms slung around my stomach so she could squeeze me for a few moments. When she pulled back, she did so with a smile before shyly taking the money from my hand.
“Thank you, Mistress. I’ll do my best!” With that, she took off. It always made me laugh that they called me Mistress here. So weird. But it was kinda cute coming from her.
I saw her a handful of times after that and each time, she looked a little bit better, a little bit healthier, a little bit stronger. Of course, I may have snuck her money or food here and there, much to the chagrin of some of my traveling mates and at one point, one of the men of House Fortemps, who gave me a withering look and an eye roll when I shrugged them off. If I could make just a tiny bit of difference in the life of a girl who reminded me so much of myself at that age, then fuck them. I would like to see them try to tell me what to do.
The night that they tried to kill Aymeric de Borel on the streets of Ishgard and subsequently burned a good portion of the city was the last time I saw Jora. The Brume was hit particularly hard by the violence and I was torn away from it to handle pressing matters throughout the rest of the city. When the violence was quelled and the fires extinguished but before the smoke had cleared, I returned to the Brume in search of my little beneficiary.
Instead, I found her younger brother, a six year old named Ashwin. The fires had consumed their home and with it, all but Ashwin and the youngest of the brood, a three year old girl named Finna. The little boy held tight to his sister, shellshocked and unable to tell me more than that. In one fell swoop, they had lost three-fifths of their family and with it, their main providers. Devastation wasn’t nearly so generous enough of a word to describe what had just happened. I ushered the children into the care of one of several children's’ homes within the city, leaving them in the care of those far better suited to looking after them than I could ever have been. With them, I left what money I had along with express orders to contact me should they need additional care. They weren’t my children, weren’t my responsibility. But they weren’t Jora’s either. So, in the name of a girl who had done her very best and still fell short, I did what I could to ensure that Ashwin and Finna would never go hungry again.
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sushihairjiyong · 6 years
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I’m so sick of people thinking they can say whatever they like about Seunghyun, about his battle with mental illness, and then defend themselves by saying that he won’t ever read it, or it shouldn’t bother him because he’s rich and famous, or he deserves it because he smoked weed, or he deserves it because BIGBANG is ‘problematic.’ 
A lot of people (particularly @soft-tabi, who has shared some very insightful thoughts with some very ignorant anons) have already discussed in depth why it is harmful to Seunghyun to say these things about him. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that these people will never see him as a human being. They will never see him as someone who can be forgiven for his perceived mistakes. They will never see him as a mentally ill individual who needs support, understanding, and kindness in order to heal.
I don’t think I or anyone can convince these people to treat him with kindness. But I refuse to allow them to continue to pretend to themselves that their words don’t do real harm to real people. Thus far, I’ve avoided talking about Seunghyun’s incident in any great detail. Seunghyun’s experience hit very close to home for me, and thinking about it, let alone writing about it, has proven very mentally and emotionally taxing for me. But it’s important to me that these people understand the damage their words can do. So I’m making this personal.
I was discharged from hospital on the same day Seunghyun was admitted for his suicide attempt. I had been admitted over a month earlier for debilitating mental health issues. I spent my 24th birthday in hospital. The day I was released was such a great day for me. I had been indoors, in the same one room, for so long that I cried when I finally got to breathe fresh air again. I cried when I finally got to see my cat for the first time in over a month. And then I read about Seunghyun and I was crying for an entirely different reason. I read about how he was where I had been a month earlier. That was not easy to read. What made the situation slightly less difficult was seeing the outpouring of love from VIPs. Their well-wishes. Their attempts to stop the spread of those invasive photographs. The way none of them sought to blame him but instead sought to understand, to support.
When you’re mentally ill, the way people treat others with mental illness affects you. It affects how you perceive your own mental health issues. Seeing people support Seunghyun and love him and care about him -- even during such a terrible, frightening time for VIPs -- gave me hope. It made me feel optimistic. It made me feel like there were people I could reach out to if I ever hit such a low point again.
However, seeing people send VIPs anonymous messages on tumblr, seeing brazen tweets about how Seunghyun’s friends and family should abandon him, how he no longer deserves a career, how he’s ruined the lives of those around him... those are the sorts of opinions on mental illness that reignite the self-doubt and the self-hatred in the minds of people like me. 
Maybe Seunghyun won’t ever read what you say about him. Maybe he will. But it is guaranteed that other mentally ill people will read what you’ve said, especially when you come directly to our inboxes to anonymously spew your vitriolic poison. When I read the things these people say about Seunghyun, I think about the impact my battle with mental illness has had on those I love. I think about my mother and father missing work to be at my side in the hospital. I think about friends I hadn’t spoken to in years taking the time out of their day to visit my miserable self, bring me flowers and books and stuff to keep me entertained. And I think about how I’ve done so little to deserve their kindness. How they’ve done so much for me, how they are so forgiving and supportive and everything you could possibly hope for in difficult times. My mental illness has prevented me from being the best daughter, the best friend, the best person I could be. I have always been lacking. And when I read these negative posts about Seunghyun, I can’t help but wonder if my friends and family would be better off without me. I complicate their lives. I make things harder. I contribute nothing but misery. Wouldn’t they be happier if they no longer had my issues worrying them, weighing them down, causing them pain?
The weird thing about mental illness is that you see yourself so differently from others, even when the situations are comparable. When I read these things, I am angry on Seunghyun’s behalf. Of course Seunghyun’s friends and family wouldn’t be happier without him in their lives. They love him. They care about him. Their lives would be so much emptier without him. But it’s hard to feel that way about my own situation. 
I am sure that I am not the only mentally ill person who is affected by these messages and posts and tweets about Seunghyun. I am sure that there are others who read these hateful words and see their own situation. Even people who don’t care about Seunghyun or hate BIGBANG could be seeing these words and applying them to their own lives, wondering if they deserve family or friends or even a life at all.
The thing is, even if Seunghyun were the only one affected by these anti-Seunghyun posts, they’d still be horrifying, disgusting, unacceptable. No one is too rich and famous to be hurt. And smoking marijuana a handful times should never open someone up to this level of contempt. But this goes beyond Seunghyun, because every time you type something ignorant about his mental health issues, every time you say BIGBANG would be better off without him, your words reach the eyes of so many vulnerable people. Your words have the potential to plant the seed that leads someone to kill themself. 
Your words have consequences. They are damaging. I will not allow anyone to pretend that their words are harmless. They are harmful to Seunghyun. They are harmful to me. They are harmful to every mentally ill person who has the misfortune to read them.
I want to take a moment to say to anyone reading this struggling with mental health issues of their own that your friends and family would not be better off without you. It’s not true when these people say that BIGBANG would be better off without Seunghyun and it’s not true that this world would be better off without you. Seunghyun adds so much light to so many lives and so do you. Fuck anyone who says differently.
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