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missnight0wl · 2 years

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I recently finished the chapter with Burke and MC's confrontation and it's so odd in a way that makes me think. 🤔

Healer Burke: If you... if you'd only try to understand. MC: Understand what? What are you talking about? Healer Burke: Understand 'R'. You'd see what we're trying to do, and you'd come home to us.

What did he mean by 'come home to us'? Why specitically make it italic and not bold?

We find out MC's father is a part of R later, but quotes make it clear he wasn't active in MC's upbringing. Memories are far and few between. So if Burke is trying to say Peregrine is MC's 'home', well, that's just not correct based on what we are told.

But what if, once upon a time, it was the case?

This is where this becomes a cross of fiction and speculation:

Both of MC's parents were in R. Peregrine wasn't the leader yet, but still a high-ranking member. Both MC and Jacob were born into R, and grew up within its headquarters, among its members. At some point, the leadership noticed the kids' immense power and decided to groom them into becoming the future leaders. MC was especially favoured because they were the stronger of two.

MC's mother, by that point, had grown jaded to the group's goals, but them trying to use her children and Peregrine letting them was the last straw. Around this time, the First Wizarding War was in full swing, so she took advantage of the chaos to take her children and run away, deciding to raise them in utter secrecy (thus explaining the strict rules MC talked about and why they were ignorant of many daily aspects of wizard life).

She decided to erase some parts of MC's memories since they were young enough that their mind was more mallable (they would be : she created the currect narrative of memories MC talks to Peregrine about. Jacob was too old for his memories to be tampered with safely, but he agreed to keeping their past a secret from MC.

At this point, I don't know how to continue because of Jacob's character.

His pre-appearance history makes me think he was completely blackmailed into helping R and at some point, they kidnapped him and replaced him with Fauxcob.

His post-appearance history makes me think he was a willing accomplice from the start and he is working with Peregrine to lure MC into their folds, however successful their efforts are.

Anyway, this is what I imagine Healer Burke to mean. That once upon a time, R was MC's home, their family, and they should realize it and come back to them. If only they would stop and think why they are so adamant on trying to lure MC toward them willingly, when they could have kidnapped and brainwashed them from the start! Why they are being treated so gently and preciously (by their scales) compared to the horrors they could have been subjected to! But MC is adamant on not using their braincells, much to their despair.

This is a very interesting idea and I really like it. I do have some remarks, but I definitely feel you might be onto something.

Alright, so, first and foremost, I believe that Burke meant rather a metaphorical home. I actually discussed this scene in the past, for example here (much shorter version) or here (much longer version). And while I still think that it’d make more sense if Burke didn’t belong to R but to a different group, I assume it is all about the siblings’ connection to the Cursed Vaults.

(Also, just to be clear: I don’t hope that JC will explain the Cursed Vaults properly, but I imagine they’re still taking from the original source.)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to dismiss your idea entirely. In fact, I think your proposition could totally coexist with my take on it. But I do believe that this connection has to be included. I mean, it’d make a lot of sense from the storytelling point of view, in my opinion. And on top of that, we actually have some clues for this claim within the game. The Vault of Fear showed it the best, probably. Like, notice that MC entered the vault with their companions, yet it was just them who was influenced by the boss Boggart.

Why? Maybe because the vault recognised that MC is the only one who matters. Then, there’s also Snape’s mysterious line from the scene before we learnt about our Legilimency:

Of course, Rakepick might’ve chosen them simply because they’re both born Legilimenses, but I don’t know… I always felt there’s more to that.

Moreover, if there is indeed some magical aspect to all of that (like a prophecy or something), it’d explain nicely why R insists that MC will be their leader, and Verucca even straight up talks about “destiny”:

Another thing: I mentioned in one of my fairly recent posts a possibility that Peregrine chose the Mother based on a prophecy or something like that. And we learnt in Y7Ch43 that he was apparently always interested in legends and whatnot:

So… who’s to say that that’s not how he discovered the Mother and her lineage? That he chose her indeed because of that? And maybe then, he convinced her that they both should join R? Of course, she wouldn’t know what’s really going on at first. The rest could go pretty much as you described it.

Honestly, I was never too bothered by the Mother being strict with magic outside the school etc. Because technically, it is not allowed, and I actually can imagine people like Percy Weasley, for example, being serious about it. I also read once the suggestion that the siblings might simply live in a Muggle neighbourhood, so being strict about not using magic would be pretty understandable here. But if it was actually about hiding, and from someone from the wizarding world… I could totally get behind this idea.

By the way, I just had a very random thought, which is not really related to all of this, but also kinda is, so I can’t ignore it now: what if the Mother is unable to use magic for some reason? At first, I wanted to say that she might be a Squib, but it wouldn’t work because Peregrine revealed that she was in the same House as him. But what if there was some kind of an accident later on? Possibly involving Peregrine and/or R?

Why I’m thinking about it? Because it could be an additional explanation for her strict rules. I mean, if Jacob or MC destroyed something and they wouldn’t be able to repair it yet (because they’re still children), that’s it: they have a broken thing. She would be restricted in helping them if they were in a dangerous situation related to magic. It could even give more meaning to her decision of leaving MC at Hogwarts, even though she was worried that they might end up missing like Jacob. She knew that her children are potentially very powerful, and she knew that she literally couldn’t teach them to control their power at home. As I said, it’s a spontaneous idea, but I think it’s quite interesting.

Finally, let’s address MC’s memories. I think it’s possible that the Mother modified MC’s memory, however, I don’t think she created memories of Peregrine we see recently. I suspect that it’s Peregrine who’s actively filling those blank spaces.

All of it happens in one scene. I don’t know… Maybe JC repeated these lines simply to fill the screen time. Or maybe it’s not a coincidence at all.

ANYWAY… Yeah. It kind of starts to add up, or at least it could if you put some thought into it. However, I just don’t feel that R in general would be this sentimental about it to talk about “home”. I suppose it’s more about destiny and whatnot. That being said, some members might view it in a more… romanticised way? And Burke might be one of them.

#long post #hogwarts mystery #hphm #hphm spoilers #hphm mc #hphm jacob #jacob's family #hphm peregrine #hphm r #eustace burke #verucca buckthorn #theory #hphm theory #ask #anonymous

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ghostcradle · 3 years

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ok so i thought something looked oddly familiar about this scene where mikage is lying in bed, specifically the background and bed itself don’t mesh with the animation— they look like something taken from a painting.

the first thing i thought of is a common theme in painting across history of women lying in bed. yk what i’m talking about

Sleeping Venus — Giorgione (c. 1510)

The Birth of Venus — Cabanel (1863)

anyway there’s different contexts to a lot of the Lying Down paintings but i was hooked on the venus ones because i’m intrigued by the idea of mikage as a venus figure— an idealized persona of beauty, frozen in time, unable to come to grips with his own human impermanence. BUT after i did some more digging i saw this painting

Olympia — Manet (1863)

and this is so obviously what the scene was alluding to. i’ve never seen this painting before so i decided to do some research (the context and critical reception of this painting is pretty interesting)

Venus de Urbino — Titian (1538)

Olympia is modeled after the painting above (fun fact: Titian is thought to have completed the Giorgione painting i included above after Giorgione died), but it’s important to note that olympia is not a venus figure, at least not in the way that classical painters depicted venus. this painting shocked the french public for its rejection of the “classical” depiction of nudity. classical nudity was demure, perfect, and most importantly antiquitous. modernity was not considered beautiful or desirable, and so it was not painted. olympia, however, is evidently a prostitute and she confronts the viewer in a way nude subjects never did. the reception at the time was that olympia was too modern, too vulgar. manet intended the piece as a rejection of the past.

there’s also the obvious racial and colonial element to the piece (which for some reason, articles were reluctant to discuss in detail hmmmmm. there is a section about it on wiki page though). there’s apparent controversy about what exactly the maid watching over the prostitute is supposed to symbolize. i personally like the (more modern) interpretation of the maid as a figure of the oppositional gaze; the wiki article cites an essay which talks about how critics of the past have ignored this very aspect of the painting and thus erased her prominent role within it.

back to rgu, the allusion to a painting that is an explicit rejection of past tradition is such a funny piece of foreshadowing (if you can even call it that) to mikage’s end. “mamiya’s” role in that scene is particularly interesting, since his position is initially as peripheral as olympia’s maid is often viewed as, but the camera zooms in on him as the scene goes on. and as the camera zooms in, he further covers his face with the bouquet, almost like he doesn’t want us looking to closely at him. which of course fits in with the fact that he isn’t mamiya at all and doesn’t want us to break the illusion.

#WOOH this got longer than i meant for it to #honestly i’m not reading this over so there’s probably typos #rgu #long post #nudity #also my interpretation of the painting is very… unformed. don’t take it with more than a grain of salt there’s like whole essays about #this pairing

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tumblezwei · 3 years

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I went off on this on Twitter a minute ago, but I've begun to realize at an increasingly high rate that most people who complain about localization of games and anime have actually no clue what localization even means.

Like, yeah, there have definitely been moments where the English localizers have added phrases or changed dialogue that shouldn't have been changed in that way, but those few instances have created this complete misunderstanding of what the purpose of localization is. It's not just meant to be straight translation, it is, quite literally, about making the translation local.

Sometimes certain phrases or idioms don't make sense to people from a completely different culture, and the point of localization is to translate those phrases into something that that audience can grasp while still understanding the original intent. And if people would look past the fact that the words are different, they would realize that most of the phrases they complain about do contain a similar meaning to the original language. They've just been changed to better suit the values and nuances of that particular culture. It's not like, a deliberate evil decision to erase Japanese culture (and yes Japanese bc you know that most people complaining are weebs) from the things they created.

Like, here, I'll give an example. This morning I saw someone complain that the phrase "you're being too tsundere" changed to "you're being too shy"

On the surface? Sure, they have different meanings. But do they?? Really?? What does tsundere mean? Well, for modern day English speaking weebs at least, it means someone that's soft on the inside but doesn't want people to know that, so they act rude or aggressive to cover up their embarrassment. And think about what happens when someone from our culture acts rude or aggressive to cover up their embarrassment. What's a common phrase we use to joke about it? "Oh they're just being shy." It's really not that different, y'all just have to stop being such fucking weebs and act like you know a different culture better than your own.

And like, the fucking Nagatoro discourse that happened on Twitter a while ago (if you don't know, stay ignorant. It's not worth it). Have y'all ever thought about how her dialogue is cringey in English because she comes off as cringey in Japanese? Or that she's just a cringe character in general and the localizers decided to focus on that aspect? Just accept that your smirking loli waifu uses dumb gamer slang and move on. It's not some earth shattering problem that destroyed her characterization.

And all of this isn't even going into how some phrases in another language take a different amount of time to say. English is notorious for sounding slow to other non English speakers, and trying to directly translate a phrase from a language that takes less time to say might not fit into the time frame the localizers have to work with. So the only real solution is to change the phrase to make it fit while trying to keep the original meaning. Does this not work sometimes? Sure. But again, it's not some deliberate ploy to ruin your fun. This is something that so many localizers have stressed when talking about this, but for some reason it doesn't stick in your thick heads.

I could go on about this more but if I do it'll start heading into territory I have less confidence on, so I'll just stop here. Bottom line, can y'all use critical thinking skills for once in your life instead of screeching at Funimation on Twitter every time your waifu doesn't say oniichan?

#rambling #discourse tag #long post #part 2648 of ''things you didn't know Tumble was passionate about''

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henqtic · 3 years

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Hi, can I request a Draco x reader in which they are best friends and reader is narcissistic, so when Draco starts to change in their sixth year, reader gets angry with him and ends their friendship until Draco tells her about his dark mark and reader realize how she is and try to improve. With a happy ending in which after winning the war both confess their feelings. im sorry if it's confusing

I can do better - d.m.

- word count: 2.2k

- warnings: mentions of scratching skin, please contact me if theres more !

- a/n- I’ve never really had an encounter with a narcissistic person and I don’t exactly know how to write them out so I did sort of switch that part up but everything else is the same <33

- masterlist | draco malfoy masterlist | gif creds | taglist form |

Countless years of friendship, down the drain all because he had been acting differently. Ever since your sixth year had started, Draco had been off. Quitting quidditch when he was so close to becoming captain— something that he had been determined to do ever since he made his way onto the team in your second year.

He’d rant on and on between lessons of how you should be honored to be talking to Slytherins future star player and quidditch captain.

There also weren’t any more occurrences where he’d stay up countless hours with you as you as you went on and on about the different aspects of astronomy— something that you had been overly interested in ever since you took the course as one of your electives in third year because you didn’t want to take ancient runes.

That was the same year you started to see him differently, maybe in a way that friends shouldn't have. And you played it off as something small, it’s not wrong to think your best friend looks good a few days out of the week, it’s just something friends do.

Well that was what you were telling yourself as you got used to finding even the smallest things he'd do cute. But it seemed that you weren't the only one having those feelings, that he had seemed just as interested as you were, so you grew comfortable with the situation and the attention.

The comfort of it all had grown even more when you were the first one he asked to accompany him to the yule ball without a second thought and you didn’t hesitate to say yes.

And even after everything that had happened last year with his father getting thrown into Azkaban, he hadn’t pushed you away but you were the first shoulder he came to cry on, and shamelessly at that. He wasn’t embarrassed in the least because he trusted you that much. Why wouldn't he?

It hurt that those were no longer the circumstances but that they were now almost the complete opposite. The shock of no longer having him and being his main source of attention scared you, it made you irrationally jealous at the thought of maybe he had moved on to someone else.

And while all of that was wrong, you couldn’t see it because your focus was on what you had lost and were no longer getting. So you were the person to end that friendship.

When you had told him that you no longer wanted anything to do with him, he seemed like he didn't care, almost like he wanted you to let him go and it made a deep pit form in your stomach.

It had only grown as you’d watch him from across the dinner table, bags prominent under his eyes and as days passed, he started to look more and more sickly.

To say the least, you had been riddled with guilt and thoughts of if you even should be— if you thought about it, you only hurt him before he could hurt you. But for some reason, it feel that way.

You decided to talk to him again, not as an apology but more of a deal that you could just move on and not think about because. It’s like when your parents call you to dinner instead of saying sorry for yelling at you, thinking that food was a piece offering.

So now you were roaming the halls in nothing but your pajamas and school robes remembering the times where Draco would be here on your side.

It was almost a daily thing for you both. You’d get tired of all of the homework that was required by the professors so you’d go and run around to try and get your ‘creative juices’ to come back. And while all of that did pain you, you were almost certain. That everything would go back to normal and things would be fine.

Your thoughts were interrupted by a cry sounding through the wide halls and you quickly realized it was a very familiar cry. And instead of just ignoring it, curiously took over, persuading you to follow to the source of their sounds. Moaning myrtle's bathroom.

You hadn’t a chance to ask what was or had happened before the ghost gave you a look of deep sympathy and floated into one of the nearby stalls. A splash followed, alerting you that she had gone down the toilet leaving you time to carefully step through the open space.

You tried your best to approach the person without disturbing them completely, but when you identified them, it was much harder.

“Draco is- is that you crying?” You asked, catching sight of the boy on the ground, left arm clutched to his body as if he had just burned himself.

“It’s not like you would care l/n,” he scoffed, trying to wipe his face and pull down his sleeve before you could get completely in front of him.

The last time you checked the clock, it was three in the morning and for some reason he still had his uniform on. The only sign of comfort was that his tie was a little loosened— had he not gone to sleep at all?

“Why can’t you just tell me what’s wrong,” you huffed, once again getting irritated that he wouldn’t tell you anything going on. The thought not coming up into your head that maybe if he didn’t want to be so open about this topic, maybe it was for good reason.

“You’re the one who said you didn’t want anything to do with me so, I’m good thanks.” He wasn't anywhere as upset as you were, more hurt if you will.

“You didn’t seem to care much when I did tell you,” you countered, making him exhale deeply and run hands through his hair.

“It was for your safety. Don’t you understand that?” Your face scrunched in confusion of what was so top secret that he couldn’t even tell you to ‘keep you safe.’ He was already tired of the argument and decided to not answer you, in words at least.

His hand swiftly went down to the end of his sleeve to reveal to you his, what should have been bare arm, but there was a mark, a dark mark. Your eyes stayed on his arm for seconds you didn't take the time to count.

Not only was the mark of the dark lord staring at you but so was the amount of irritated skin around it. There were scratches, old and new, liked he thought the actions would erase the marking.

Your eyes slowly shifted to look into his glossed over ones, staring down at the spot that you previously were, But instead of the stare being out of shock, it was a mixture of shame and disgust. “I am sorry Draco. I didn’t even think that you would—”

“I didn’t have much of a choice, it was either this or my family gets killed,” he revealed, disgust lacing his voice.

Had you been that blind? Now that you're thinking of it, you hadn’t even asked him once if he was okay but complained about him never having time for you now.

And it was pretty obvious that a sixteen year old death eater being in Hogwarts couldn't mean anything good. He was probably under so much stress and you, someone who was supposed to be there for him wasn’t.

“Draco I—”

“I don’t need your poor try at an apology,” he said harshly, moving his arm out of your hold.

“No, really I—,” you choked on your words as if you didn’t have the ability to mutter a simple apology. Wait, had you always been that way?

“I am so sorry for everything and I know that I should've been so hard on you. I can’t imagine how horrible this year has been for you. I don’t even know how I completely overlooked you.”

You hated the way you made him feel, you hadn’t even thought your actions were that harmful seeing as you had always been that way. And that's when the realization hit, you had always been that way.

There were probably so many other occasions where you put yourself over others without a second thought and all the friends that you had, that had distanced themselves from you weren’t for no reason, but it was for that one.

You were suddenly pulled into his body, strong arms finding their way around you. The embrace wasn’t desperate, no, it was more of a silent plea that you’d stay and at least try to change your ways.

And you were going to do so much better than that. Your arms moved to hug him back, a sense of security coming over you both, enough so for him to let go and crumble into your arms once again and simply, cry.

After that night, your relationship slowly rebuilt itself, even though the first few days had been awkward seeing as he hadn’t truly accepted your apology, and understandably. But that only made you so much more determined to change, to improve not for only yourself but for the people around you.

And that’s just what you did, re-become the shoulder that was always available to cry on and the ears that were always open to listen when he needed to vent about not being able to fix the cabinet and how stressful it was.

Not to mention when he was done with it, he didn’t know how he wouldn’t mess up on the task of killing the headmaster.

But that also led to you trying your best to make him laugh again, and even though it wasn’t about seeing a boyish smirk come over his face as he jinxed unsuspecting students it was still something.

It was enough for you to see a sliver of a smile come over his even if it was from you tripping over the things in his room.

And when you finally did successfully make him let out a genuine laugh you were over the moon, you didn’t remember what it was he laughed at because immediately after you started cheering, that mission make Malfoy smile again had been completed.

That was probably the day that you realized that those feelings of more than platonic friendship were coming back.

That didn’t stop the crying you both did the night before he had to leave Hogwarts because while it does sound selfish, you wish he could've stayed that he didn't have to leave because you were going to miss him.

You even went to the extent of trying to convince him to let you join him but he immediately shut you down, not even entertaining the idea.

The manor wasn’t anything like it had been through your childhoods, but now it was stuffy and riddled with death eaters at every door. And there was no way he was going to willingly put you in that situation so you stayed at the castle.

Months later he was back at the school and of course, desperate to see you again. The last year had been hard for everyone and it was probably one of the worst for Draco. Not only did he figure out that his third year crush on you wasn’t so simple anymore but he had also realized it was so much more than that.

Standing by your side, on the side of Hogwarts only reinforced that idea. And as his parents beckoned for him to join them, he didn’t want to.

He wanted to choose the side that had been screaming out to him ever since he had become a death eater. And you were the one to not push him to stay or leave. But the slight squeeze to his hand was letting him know that whoever he did choose, you would be there right by his side.

And now as he watched Voldemort's body deteriorate, chipping and floating away like a piece of paper, a feeling of relief came over him, it was all over.

But that wasn't the only feeling that came over him because now he was determined, determined to tell you just how he felt and that’s what he did, hands still tightly weaved together as he pulled through the ruble.

You beat him to it though, confessing how much you loved him. And how throughout your years of Hogwarts he had always been such a great friend to you and how much you adored him even when he had his flaws. How you appreciated how he gave you a second chance, one to grow and one to improve on yourself.

And soon after that, he realized that you were in the same condition that he was and it wasn’t sickness but love; giving his own sappy take on confessing his feelings, you hadn’t only felt love Darco and he hadn’t only felt love for you but it was the feeling of being in love.

Draco Malfoy was completely and utterly in love with the girls standing in front of him at this moment and you felt the same for that boy standing in front of you.

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Reading what you said re: it's not wrong to change a plan, as long as you properly adapt to it and build off cause and effect in a natural meaningful way

The classic MKEK fall-back of "this was planned from the beginning" always feels bad to me, not only because of the ready rebuttal of "if it was, then why was it set up so badly," but also because limiting yourself to a pre-determined plan from the start is actually incredibly stifling as a creative, and ultimately detrimental to your story.

You mention How I Met Your Mother as a good example of how "sticking to the plan" can be bad; so I just want to mention a show that thrived on "let the chips fall where they may," The Office. The actresses who played Pam and Angela have a podcast where they delve into each episode, talking about the behind the scenes aspects, trivia, writing choices, plot points, etc. and one thing that really stuck with me about it is that they didn't plan the ending. Even the famous romance between Pam and Jim was never 'end game' to the writers; they wanted to let the story and characters develop naturally and see where things went, and it felt more real because of it. There are scenes in the early seasons that exist solely because "that was back when they weren't sure if they would redeem Roy and have us get back together or not," or "that was back when they thought maybe Angela and Roy might get together," or "that was when they were thinking that Jim might move on once and for all and be with Karen," and that sort of thing. Pam and Jim is heralded as one of the most well-written romances in television, and it was not planned from the beginning. Another example of a great ship that wasn't end-game from the start is in Parks and Recreation between Leslie and Ben. This absolutely could not have been planned from the start, because Ben wasn't even introduced as a character until the finale of season 2.

I think you're right that a show should be allowed to develop naturally and change their minds about what they do, and I agree 100% that one of the problems with RWBY is that sometimes they'll let the story grow, but then they invariably erase that growth so that they can force in some long-outdated plan that no longer works for the story.

"It was planned from the beginning" is a terrible excuse to ruin your own story and characters, especially if your story is one in which the best parts happened because you went off-script.

All of this. There’s a lot of talk in writing circles about the planning camp vs. let the chips fall camp, but in reality any long-running story is going to need both. One of the challenges is that this combination looks very different depending on the type of story and the type of author(s) involved. There’s perhaps more wiggle room for letting the chips fall in a semi-realistic, character driven comedy series than, say, in a plot-driven action series. “I don’t know yet what sort of relationship these characters will have in three seasons time” is very different from “I don’t know what the situation with the Relics is going to look like in three seasons time.” Whether Pam and Jim get together or not, you still have a good story about their relationship, whatever that may look like. If the Relics are, say, dropped from the show completely, or retconned, or brought together and the characters have to go stupid to not do anything with them because the writers didn’t plan ahead... that’s more of a problem. So it’s this balance between what you’ve thought ahead to and what you need to accommodate. “It was planned from the beginning” can be a horrible way to treat your story if you’re introducing new elements (How I Met Your Mother), but it can also be a fantastic way to treat your story if you’re following that original path (The Good Place). Unplanned elements can be an excellent addition if the author is willing to run with them (Sasha and Tim in The Magnus Archives), or a terrible hinderance if the author is not (Maria and Pietro). Any author needs to be willing to put in that work of figuring out what elements need to be planned, when they can allow the writing to be organic, and once that organic approach reveals something, ensuring that it comes to mean something.

RWBY feels like it’s failing on both fronts right now. The story as a whole doesn’t feel like it’s appropriately sketched out, like we’re just meandering through new plot points until it’s eventually cancelled, not navigating a broad - but still reliable - structure. We tossed out the school structure post-Volume 3, tossed out the Final Boss Salem structure with her arrival in Volume 7, and now (presumably) have tossed out the Relic structure in Volume 9, falling into a void instead of heading to Vacuo. Yet at the same time, each now plot point that’s introduced has just as much chance of getting tossed aside too. It’s not replacing A plot point with B plot point, it’s replacing it with C, then D, then E F G, sometimes within the same volume. We’ve often said that RWBY has too many cool ideas and that’s a huge part of the problem.

Salem is here! But Ironwood is the enemy! The gorillas are back! But they don’t do anything! Ozpin is back too and Oscar is upset about it! But torture is the actual problem! Team JYR are here to save him! But that doesn’t matter! Emerald and Hazel are bad guys! But now they’re not! Redemption is compelling! But now he’s dead and she’s a fixture of the group already! Ren is upset about their choices! But now he’s got a semblance upgrade! Nora cares about the people! But now she cares about Amity! Yang fights with Ruby! But now she’s upset about Blake! Penny is framed! But now she’s the Maiden! But now she’s hacked! But now she’s human! But now she’s dead!

There. is. so. much. going. on. A desire to let the chips fall where they may still requires restraint on the author’s part and a willingness to follow each thread once it reveals itself (unless we’re talking about a story deliberately meant to be meandering, episodic, etc.) As said, there’s nothing wrong with a lack of planning... but that sort of work does require an experienced, talented team to manage. And there is something wrong with making the story so organic that you’re coming up with new ideas every few episodes, not bothering to keep track of what came before this because it will be replaced in another few episodes too. Meanwhile, claiming that it was all “planned from the beginning” in a misguided attempt to make the whole project seem better than it actually is. At this point, RWBY is a revolving door of disjointed, unexplored ideas, held together by confident writers and a fandom inclined to carefully select the parts that do work, ignore/headcanon the rest, and claim that these pieces amount to the whole, planned, ingenious story.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas #plushchrome1212

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princeescaluswords · 2 years

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Just finished Dreadful as the Storm and Lightning 💛💛💛💛💛💛 Yet another FANTASTIC story my friend 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 I was so hype during THAT scene where Kira reforms her sword and confronts Theo and Liam. It was spectacular. And oh, Kira seeing Ken and how he's gotten sick was heartbreaking. It was very authentic, the fear of children watching their parents grow old and sick. When Kira basically said "You don't get to say what he did is in the past and then use what happened to him as an excuse" to Liam I applauded. I loved Melissa and her interactions with Kira.

Thank you for your kind words. This was a commentary about my Kira-centric story, Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning.

I had to include that line you quoted, because nothing drives me more feral than the argument that characters like Peter, Derek, Deucalion and Theo must be treated as if they are completely rehabilitated because of actions they took after they were defeated and, in some cases, punished. This applies to both the creators and the fandom. (It can also apply to the real world. It's a frequent and annoying inconsistency popular among people with agendas -- they are more than comfortable using historical events that support their agendas while unethically ignoring others. We can argue that certain aspects of the past are more important than others -- and we should have that argument -- but we can't pick and choose the past events that count.)

This story was written to memorialize what the character of Kira had gone through and what she was facing. Too often in stories featuring Theo, the consequences of his Season 5 actions are minimized if not simply ignored. The fact that Theo decided to risk serious injury and his life to help Scott in Blitzkrieg (6x08) and Liam in Memory Found (6x09) is somehow supposed to erase that he risked serious injury and his life to help Scott in Creatures of the Night (5x01) and Liam in Ouroboros (5x08) under false pretenses, that he used heroism to cover his sinister intent. I've seen too many stories which somehow attempt to turn the McCall pack into the bad guys for not automatically accepting that this time, Theo really meant it.

I also wanted to address the way 'good guys' are treated in the fandom. How many times have you seen Scott or Kira or Deaton or Mason pilloried for how they treat reformed villains? Scott, who despite having absolutely no reason to treat Peter kindly seeks out his aid when Derek is in trouble and has continued hope for Peter's rehabilitation, is constantly attacked for treating him differently than Deucalion or Theo, when it can be easily argued that he didn't treat them any differently than either of them, Peter just decided to be an asshole once again. Deaton is suspected of being the one true evil because he didn't care for Peter's justifications and doubted Derek's competence openly, which in any white teenager would be considered 'banter.' Mason, when he isn't reduced to being the Leader of the Thiam Chorus, is attacked for being critical of the man who wanted to murder him for power.

And what they say about Kira. They're so angry at her for sending Theo to the Skin-Walkers' punishment realm (when they're not blaming Scott for doing it) that they forget that if she hadn't made that deal with Skin-Walkers, Mason, Liam, Scott, and Argent would be dead at the hands of the Beast and she might have become something just as terrifying. This story was written in part to explore the fact that Kira has a right to be angry, to be resentful, to act for her own benefit, even if she is a hero. Theo's supposed rehabilitation means nothing to her, because she was trapped for far longer than he was.

You see, they do this to many heroes, but especially heroes who are minorities and/or women. They grumble about how the world isn't black and white, but then they become furious when the characters whom the story teller has designated as the good guys act as if the world isn't black and white. But that doesn't mean there's not a difference between Scott, Kira, Liam, Mason, and Deaton and Peter, Derek, Deucalion, and Theo. Both deal with moral complexities, both had success and failures, but one side decided to cope with what the world threw at them without hurting innocents, and one side did not.

But I've seen it time and time again. Fandom complains about the good guys being presented as 'perfect' when I have seen very, very few stories that present the heroic characters as perfect. I think when they scorn good guys -- especially minority and/or female characters -- as 'perfect' (and therefore boring) what they really mean is 'prominent.' Because they will turn right around and nitpick every single error, every single mistake, every single selfish indulgence as disqualifying for the very position they hate so much.

I wanted this story to make it unequivocally clear that Kira was the heroic protagonist but that didn't mean -- that it never meant -- that she had to put the needs of others constantly before her own, that she could be angry with those who hurt her, and that agency doesn't just mean responsibility but also authority over her own life.

Thanks for reading.

#kira yukimura #kira yukimura appreciation #fandom problems #teen wolf fandom problems #scott mccall defense squad #fandom racism #teen wolf fanfiction

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adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy · 4 years

Text

Supposedly

A/N: this was a request sent in that inspired me a lot for some reason and i figured i’d do it cause i haven’t done any demon!h and demon!reader in a while so i gave it a go and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out :D enjoy!

Anonymous: This may be too cutesy for them, but do demon!harry and demon!reader ever cuddle after they fuck? Or they fall asleep separately but wake up in each other’s arms and just try to play it off awkwardly

word count: 4.5k

content: some angst but nothing major, fluff, mentions of nudity, and some cocky asshole demon!h because that’s his Brand laidese and germs!!

///

Despite the emotionless, unattached agenda demons tend to uphold, let it be known that Harry didn’t really mind what was happening at the moment.

On the surface level, from an outside perspective, this definitely doesn’t fit the bill for what is expected from his kind. Cuddling is an action reserved usually for real couples that have a sentimental bond, which he and Y/N are very much not. He’s not even quite sure what they are, really. Their relationship— if he can even call it that— was born out of three very important, adequately limiting notions: a mutual understanding, the desire for a convenient warm body, and sheer boredom.

Nothing more, nothing less.

The mutual understanding was that neither of them wanted a genuine significant other, given what they are, so it was established that feelings were to be kept out of this arrangement completely. Emotions lead to complications, complications lead to a falling out, and a falling out would be inexplicably messy considering that they’ve shared the same friend group for well over a decade now and neither are willing to let a booty call mishap ruin that. Feelings stay dormant, end of discussion.

The desire for a convenient warm body is pretty self-explanatory— Harry and Y/N had known each other for a while now so there was no annoying getting to know you phase, they both agreed that they found the other attractive, and they both live relatively close to one another so it was a pleasant set-up with minimal issues. Harry could shoot her a text at three in the morning and she’d be at his place in less than five minutes, or vice versa. There was no spending hours at a bar trying to pick someone up, no time wasted learning what the other person likes and dislikes, and certainly no fretting over birth control tactics to keep up appearances— they were both dead, which is a morbid advantage but an advantage nonetheless. It was easy access, easy fun, and easy clean-up.

The sheer boredom aspect was just that. It had started on a drunken night out with friends, where— by a series of fortunate events— Harry and Y/N had ended up together post-bender, sitting in his car in the parking lot of a club. They had been waiting for him to sober up to drive them home and she had made a passing comment about not wanting to turn in for the night quite yet. He’d blinked at her sluggishly, absentmindedly reaching over to tuck a rouge strand of hair behind her ear because he was getting secondhand irritation from it tickling her nose. He’d spoken up, voice numb and thick from the alcohol. “What do you wanna do, then?”

Y/N had glanced over at him, eyes half-lidded as they had raked down his lean tattooed chest, his unbuttoned silk sheer shirt leaving very little to the imagination. When she’d pinned her gaze back up to his, her eyes had inked black as they’d flitted to the palm of his hand for a second, a suggestive glint washing across their reflective surface as the corner of her pretty mouth had quirked. “I have a decent idea of exactly what I wanna do.”

And now here they were, with many restless, heated nights, ruined bed frames, and rumpled sheets littering their past, as well as their immediate future.

And here Harry was, slowly blinking awake after one of those said nights, cruel scratches itching across his back as they finish up healing, an empty content still bubbling at the pit of his stomach.

His lashes flutter open as he inhales a large sigh, flinching at the bright sunlight filtering its way through the lightly swaying curtains. The only sound in the room is the soft thrum of the air vent at the far corner of the ceiling, alongside Y/N’s soft, rhythmic breathing.

In his barely conscious state, Harry goes to do what he always does the morning after he’s spent a night doing Y/N’s back in: he goes to stretch. He does most of the work more times than not— courtesy of his dominant tendencies— but she always gives him a run for his soul. Anything he dishes out, she usually returns with the same amount of energy and will. Last night hadn’t been any different and the ache at the bottom of his spine and along his inner thighs proves it.

Harry instinctively goes to lift his arms above his head, reaching for the top of the headboard to use it as support. He is stopped cold when he realizes a foreign weight is keeping one of his arms pinned to the bed.

He knuckles at his eyes with his free hand, ridding them of the last residues of sleep, and then drags his palm up his face and through his mussed curls to comb away his disorientation. He cranes his sore neck to the side and downwards, eyebrows jolting up in surprise when he’s met with a wall of fluffy, tangled, mandarin-scented hair.

Harry lifts his head up slightly, neck straining to see over the back of Y/N’s wild halo to make sure that the image before him isn’t some type of exhaustion-induced mirage.

It’s odd for her to be so near him— she usually likes her space; says that being too close in proximity for too long is irritating. It’s why she usually sleeps with her back to him at the other end of the bed, and why he’s gotten accustomed to giving her the majority of the mattress space. Despite the fact that it’s his flat, she’s stubborn, hard-headed, argumentative and frankly, he’d rather just forfeit the extra leg room instead of bickering for thirty minutes just to end up losing anyways. It’s gentlemanly, in a sense. Minimal, but it’s something.

Given Y/N’s general disgust for excess contact, it’s no shock as to why Harry is utterly baffled right now. He’s about ninety-eight percent sure she’d fallen asleep all the way across the expanse of his sheets so how did they willingly end up here? How did they end up with her bare back pressed to his chest, her legs intertwined between his, and his arm wrapped almost protectively around her waist, wedged between her hips and the bed.

Harry would never outright admit it but...he’s not necessarily mad about it.

As he lays there for a few more seconds, absorbing the situation with an expression of pensive dismay pinching his face, he slowly comes to terms that he’s actually starting to enjoy this.

The warmth of her smooth skin gradually undoes the knot of confusion between his brows. The sensation of her back flushing against his chest as it rises and falls with her breathing erases the unease dipping the corners of his stinging mouth. The way she’s started to unconsciously rub her calves gently up and down his own makes the last traces of unsettlement melt off his face, replaced by an appearance of subtle affection, lips parting in blank wonder.

Harry relaxes back into the plushness of the mattress, eyes remaining glued to a blissfully ignorant Y/N. His thoughts are scurrying around the inside of his skull, attempting to get accustomed with this new experience, having a difficult time arranging into place. He’s aware that he seems to be taking easily to what’s unfolding, but there’s an unsteady bubble inflating in his chest. He knows that if he lets himself dwell in this too much, it’ll end up biting him in the ass later, most likely as a wave of undealt emotions and crippling loneliness; that’s baggage he’s spent too many years compartmentalizing for it to all just come bursting out.

All those decades of locking away his issues are in danger of resurfacing, and all for some harmless hugging? Doesn’t seem like a fair negotiation, and he knows plenty about negotiations.

However, he can’t seem to make himself pull away.

Especially not when Y/N suddenly shifts in her sleep, turning onto her other side so that she's now facing him, snuggling deeper into his body and tucking her head into the junction between his neck and collarbones. Her annoyingly soft, hot lips smear against his throat, settling into the dip at the center where a pulse would normally be present. The feeling of her exhales washing across his cold skin sends a wringing down his spine, a hushed “fuck…” escaping his dry mouth as the warmth behind the gesture spreads upwards, spilling redness into his cheeks and along the shells of his ears. Her hands come up as loose fists, pressing between his pectorals lightly, her own naked chest flushing against her forearms.

Surprisingly enough, her supple chest isn’t at the forefront of his mind at this instant. Instead, he’s focused on the intimacy they’re sharing in this moment, unbeknownst to her and stressfully beknownst to him.

Harry’s free hand acts of its own accord, coasting upwards towards her face and moving her chin over a bit until his palm can comfortably nurse her jaw. He rubs the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip slowly, every ridge and bump sending miniature shots of electricity surging through his veins, his eyes falling shut at this strange form of pleasure he hasn’t felt in ages.

Y/N just looks so beautiful like that, in such a vulnerable state that he knows for sure no one else has ever gotten to witness— at least not in a very long time.

No one else has gotten to see the way her lashes sit atop her cheekbones so delicately, her face soothed by sleep, not a wrinkle or grimace in sight. She looks as if she were made of porcelain, her features nothing short of perfect. No one has gotten to witness the way she mumbles a handful of incoherent, groggy words, her mind lost in a meaningless dream, or the way her nose twitches in the cutest manner as a draft from the air conditioning runs across it, causing her to sniffle. No one has seen the way she gives into his touch, her face cradling deeper into his hand, chasing the uncommon gentleness behind his demeanor and it hadn’t occurred to Harry that maybe— just maybe— she’s craving this type of innocent bliss, too, though he’s certain she would never confess to it if she were awake.

Harry runs his hand down the slope of her bruised neck and across the curve of her shoulder, tracing the teeth marks he had left the night before. The tip of his fingers follow down the incline of her torso, wriggling around her side, his wrist resting upon the faint dip of her waist. He cups her lower back with his large hand, borrowing a moment to appreciate the way it fits flawlessly. He then leans forward some to give his reach more length, his digits carefully trailing up the middle of her spine, the action timid and tranquil.

He looks down at her from over the tops of his colored cheeks, chewing on his bottom lip nervously as he continues to lull his fingers up and down her back. Y/N releases a shy whimper of gratitude, her whole body bathing in a light shiver. She does like it.

Harry swallows thickly, moving away a few locks of hair off her shoulder with the tip of his nose, glassy jade irises studying her facial expressions to make sure she’s still asleep. He puckers his tingling lips, pressing a bundle of chaste kisses to the fading bite marks on her staticy skin. If his heart still beat, he feels like it would be glowing right now.

He tilts his chin up, settling it on top of her head and sighing in satisfaction as he feels her steady breathing wash across his Adam’s Apple, her flyaway hairs tickling his nostrils.

He decides to stay like that for a while, just basking in her company within this tender setting that he knows he probably won’t receive again anytime soon. Harry lays there, limbs woven between Y/N’s as his black-polished nails scratch gently at her back, swimming in his numb thoughts.

After what feels like hours— but is realistically just ten minutes— he goes to gingerly shift the arm stuck beneath her body, trying to regain some circulation. Y/N stirs, resulting in him freezing in place to prevent a mishap, his mouth finding her warm forehead and placing a lingering kiss between her brows. It eases her.

Harry waits five minutes before trying again.

He manages to escape this time around, lifting his arm above his head and twisting out the cramp in his wrist, then folding it behind his head. He allows his eyes to shut once again, intent on spending a bit longer milling in this bubble of domestic peace.

His plan is shattered to pieces by an alarmed, angry sentence.

“What the fuck?”

His eyelids fly open, ice materializing across his entire nervous system.

Shit.

Y/N launches upwards, sitting up rigidly with her face contorted in startled repulsion, clutching his blood red sheets to her chest as her hair stands up in tousled tuffs. “What in Lucifer’s red, barren hell are you doing?”

Harry now has two distinctive routes to pick from: confess to partaking in the unorthodox cuddling, or fake it and say he was asleep as well and that it had all been an unintentional mistake.

It’s hardly a choice.

He flings his arms away from the other demon’s body as if sickened, shooting up into a seated position and slouching back onto his palms, a look of agitated horror plastered across his sleepy, handsome features. “What do you mean what am I doing? What the fuck were you doing?”

Y/N blinks at him as if he’d just stabbed her between the eyes with a demon blade, irises momentarily flitting black with nerves, the area under her waterline webbing with dark veins. “What do you mean what was I doing? You were the one with your arms around me!”

Harry narrows his sight at her pointedly, thick brows furrowing with faux resentment. “You were the one with your head snuggled into my neck and your hands on my chest!”

“You were the one kissing my forehead!”

“You were the one rubbing up on my legs!”

“Because you were close to me!”

“Because you rolled over here!”

“No I didn’t!”

“Oh, so what?” Harry snaps sarcastically, drawing forward and crossing his arms over his chest adamantly. “Did an angel sneak in and place you there? Because as I recall, you always sleep on the left side of the bed, so what were you doing on the right?”

Harry’s accurate counter renders Y/N speechless, her mouth parting quizzically as if waiting for a response to magically appear. Her eyebrows cinch down begrudgingly, the gears in her head spinning on overdrive, trying to piece together an appropriate rebuttal. Her grasp tightens on the blanket covering her bare body. “Well, I...I don’t know—I don’t think I—”

Harry cocks his head to the side expectantly, loose curls falling across his forehead as he shrugs his brows with a condescending air. He mimics her with a high-pitched voice. “Well, I— I don’t know— I—I don’t think I—I—I—”

Y/N’s face goes sour as heat floods her cheeks, fire threatening to spark across the tips of her sizzling ears. She yanks the sheets off of him, holding them with one hand as she uses the other to begin crawling across the bed towards the edge, a haphazard defense thrown over her shoulder. “Shut up! It wasn’t on purpose!”

Harry scoffs in dark amusement, not even bothering to cover himself up. He bites into his cheek to keep from exploding into a round of triumphant laughter; he can’t believe he managed to turn the tides so quickly. “Oh, so you admit it was you, then?”

Y/N dismounts the atrociously tall bed, stumbling over the long linens as she desperately searches for her clothes. “No! I’m just saying that whatever happened, it didn’t happen intentionally!”

“Obviously.” The brunette demon snorts, shaking his head for subtle emphasis, crossing his ankles offhandedly and returning both arms to the place where one had been prior— tucked behind his head casually. “What do you think we are, mortal?”

“Of course not.” Y/N agrees quickly— a little too quickly, which hints to Harry that she might be trying to cover something up. Perhaps she wasn’t as disgusted by this as she had led on…

He watches as his friend— he uses the term lightly— shuffles around his room, peering at the floor in an determined quest to find her jeans, underwear, and black lace blouse. Or maybe she’s just hellbent on avoiding eye contact with him.

“Y/N…” His tone has lost its arrogantly mocking edge, softened by what she can only decode as...guilt?

She ignores it and doesn’t answer, nearly passing out in relief when she spots her panties and bra hanging off the doorknob to his closet. She snatches them swiftly, panning her gaze around the rest of the room for her leftover clothes, spotting them in a pile sticking out from underneath the opposite corner of the bed. They’d probably gotten kicked there in the heat of the moment.

Harry repeats himself a little louder, adding onto his comment to try and stifle some of the embarrassment radiating from her. “Y/N, you don’t have to leave. You usually stay for breakfast.”

Y/N scoops up her outfit, settling it into the crook of her right elbow and squaring her shoulders as if ready to brace a hellhound. Their gazes lock and he feels his stomach flop when he sees the vulnerability she’s obviously trying to hide. She’s good at it, he’ll give her that, but if he stares intently enough, he can just make out the traces of conflicted longing leaking into the disinterested facade around her pupils.

“It’s fine, Harry.” She sighs heavily, her tone drastically different from the unkempt girl that had been floundering about just seconds ago. She’s now calm, cool, collected, and scaringly so. “I have somewhere to be later. Meeting someone to close a deal.”

She shrugs one shoulder indifferently, grabbing a handful of the sheets arranged around her figure and pulling away, dropping the bedspread at his feet and leaving herself completely nude.

And there she is, the Y/N he so well knows. The same one that uses sex appeal as a shield.

She’s managed to spackle the cracks that had appeared in her typical barrier of heartlessness, her confidence and ease leveling off once again. She places her clothes on top of the crumpled sheets, picking out her cheeky bright red panties from the heap and working them up her tempting legs. Harry can’t help but notice the hickies covering her inner thighs, as well as the finger prints staining her hips.

Y/N catches him ogling, smirking to herself now that she has her composure back in order. She hooks her index finger around one of the straps in her bra, lifting it up and bouncing the lace lingerie in front of him teasingly. She raises her eyebrows at her lover provokingly, a sultry air pouting her lips. “Think you can help a girl out?”

Harry licks at his slightly chapped lips thoughtfully, eyes flickering between the article hanging off her hand to the sly grin decorating the edges of her pretty mouth. When he speaks, it’s low and thicker than usual, accent heavy. “Of course, pet.”

His legs thunk emptily off the bed and onto the floor, a small grunt catching the back of his throat as he pushes himself up onto his feet. He is most definitely sore.

His footsteps are soft against the carpeted ground, faltering as he rounds the corner of the mattress.

Y/N eyes his every move, suckling her bottom lip at the way his muscles flex and contract under his sun-kissed skin. She doesn’t let herself wander below his waist though; she’s never one to pass up flaunting her power of will.

Harry stops about a foot away, taking the bra from she is offering and holding it out for her to slip into. She does so at a mind-numbing pace, her toes curling as she feels his warm fingertips running the material up her arms and onto their designated spot on her shoulders. He tugs at the hooks gently, pinning them into place and tucking the tag in, exactly how he’s seen her do countless of times before.

He then runs the palms of his hands up her arms, sighing softly at the silky sensation of her skin and giving her shoulders a dismissive squeeze. “All done.”

Y/N turns on her heels to face him, looking up innocently through her lashes, lips quirking into an easy smile. “Thank you. Such a gentleman.”

Her playfully seductive personality is unbearably contagious, seen in how Harry returns her action with a coy scoff and a simper of his own. “For you, always.”

“Well…” Y/N turns her lower half to the side, showing him her ass for significance, which is covered in the unmistakable print of his hand and rings. “I wouldn’t say always.”

Harry’s pursed lips break into an even wider shit-eating grin, his cheeky laughter echoing across the walls of the apartment, his arms absentmindedly folding across his broad chest. “Yeah, well, you can’t say it’s one-sided, can you?”

He points towards his neck, stretching his chin upwards so that she gets a good view of all the fading love bites she’d left there the night before.

Y/N’s giggles match his. “Touché.”

Harry rummages through his drawers as she finishes getting dressed, shimmying into her tight jeans and throwing her shirt on, finger-combing her hair into a decent state. He comes up with a pair of maroon briefs, slipping them on as he walks back towards her, letting the elastic band snap into place against his lower abdomen.

The two demons with benefits stand before each other, Y/N with her braided black sandals swung over her shoulders and Harry with his hands fixed on his hips nonchalantly.

“You really can’t stay for breakfast?” Harry inquiries one last time, lifting his eyebrows curiously. “I’m making those cinnamon bun waffles you like so much.”

Y/N sighs grandly, clutching her chest dramatically as if it physically hurts her to decline his offer. “I’d love to, but work is work. Don’t really have a say.”

Her friend nods in understanding, well aware of the truth behind her words. “It is what it is, then.”

“However...” Her sudden continuation makes his head perk. She reaches up, carding her fingers into his messy curls and combing them back from his face, tucking a handful of rebellious ringlets behind his small ears and giving him one final self-assured smile. “Do y’think you could maybe save me two and I can come pick them up tonight?”

Harry cranes his head to the side, placing a slow peck to the palm of her hand and then biting into her skin jokingly, a certain lewdness painted all over the deed. “I think that can be arranged.”

“Great.” Y/N quips happily, wrapping his curls around her knuckles roughly and hauling him in for a sloppy, dirty kiss that leaves his teeth numb and his face buzzing.

Once she breaks their mouths, lightly panting with her skin a darker shade than before, he has to blink three times in order to reign himself back in. His ability to form coherent sentences right now is about as useful as alphabet soup; he just gives her a jerky nod instead.

Y/N wipes at his swollen lips with the pad of her thumb, giving his cheek a playful pat. “I’ll see you then, H.”

Harry can’t tear his eyes away as she leaves, his bedroom door clicking shut behind her, the soft, distant thunk of his front door accompanying the sound a bit later.

Fuck, that was something is the first comprehensible thought that registers in his mind.

It was absolutely something and who knows how differently it would have gone if he had admitted giving into the weakness they had both sworn off of.

That notion haunts him for a while— the idea that he could have driven her away for good if he had confessed that his emotions had bleed through their arrangement. Sure, it had only been this once, but Harry has a horrible gut-wrenching feeling that he’s unlocked a box deep in the back of his skull that won’t easily be chained down again.

He thinks this over again and again as he prepares his morning meal, the looming uncertainties of it all causing him to check out of reality here and there, resulting in a few burn marks across his hands and two charred waffles in the bin.

As Harry finally sits down to enjoy the food that had nearly not made it to his plate, he finds himself mentally running through the awkward encounter he and Y/N had faced this morning. He can’t stop himself from dwelling on the expression he had seen crack through her eyes earlier— one that showed she seemed to be feeling the same kind of emotional turmoil he was. It opens too many unanswered questions for their future and he hates himself for being so worried when nothing had truly happened. For all he knows, it could have just been a trick of the sunlight that had been streaming into the room. He’s getting himself out of sorts for nothing.

However, as he goes in on a forkful of his cinnamon-glazed pastry, one pesky detail suddenly launches him into a coughing fit.

It was so minuscule he had missed it the first fifty times he had run through the events, but it had decided to prick him in the brain now, the weak dam of reassurance he had built crumbling to ashes.

After Y/N had woken up, saw what was happening, and their fight had ensued, she had made a comment about how Harry had kissed her forehead.

On the surface, it had seemed unimportant because yes, that is exactly what he had done. The problem arose when he remembered that she had been dead asleep when he had done that.

Supposedly.

He had gone to remove his arm from below her body, she had fussed a bit, he had pressed his lips to her forehead to ease her, and she had remained asleep for a while longer until he decided to finish removing his arm. That final motion was what had awoken her.

Supposedly.

If she had been unconscious the whole time they were cuddling, then how did she know he’d kissed her?

#demon!reader #demon!y/n #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fic #harry styles one shot #harry styles imagine #harry styles dirty one shot #harry styles dirty imagine #harry styles dirty fanfiction #harry styles dirty fic #harry styles #harry styles au #writing au #demon au #one direction one shot #one direction fanfiction #1d one shot #1d fanfiction

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picturejasper20 · 3 years

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Steven and White Diamond parallels

Many fans in the Steven universe fandom have talked about how Steven and Jasper share many similarities in Future, such as their refusal to get help, lacking purpose in Era 3 and being rejected by someone. (Lapis in Jasper’s case and Connie rejecting Steven´s proposal in Together Forever).

Yet something I haven´t seen covered very much is the parallels that Steven and White Diamond share and how they are both foil of each other. In this post i´m going to point out a few parallels I have noticed while watching the series and reading others Steven universe fans´ posts.

An year ago @dippingpines made a post with gifs pointing out the similarities between this two characters: Both grow pink when they are confronted about their hidden feelings and want ¨to be better¨.

¨I can't tell Pearl how I feel, 'cause she'll blame herself, and spiral outta control, and I'll have to pick up the pieces. And- I don't want any more 'high and mighty' advice from Garnet. I just want to know better for once- Steven in Prickly Pair

¨But I'm not supposed to be like this! I'm supposed to know better, I'm supposed to be better, I'm supposed to make everything better!¨ White Diamond in Change your Mind

This is one of the parallels that is easiest to spot: Both Steven and White Diamond have an unhealthy tendency of burying their feelings in a way no one would be able to find out there is something wrong with them. This is motivated by their desire to be perfect and be a ¨good person¨ which involves knowing what it is best for others and not having any flaws.

They both take their selflessness to extremes, ignoring their own issues and considering thinking about themselves as a very selfish thing to do. When someone tries confronting them about this issue, they deny it and pretend to be fine.

Aside from them burying their feelings, they both often lack identity: Their own self is usually defined by what they think they should be and not what they really want to be. This leads them to go through an identity crisis when realize they don´t have to be what others expect from them.

When White Diamond found out she had a flaw, she completely broke down because, according to her, a diamond can´t have a flawed. They need to be perfect, they need to have zero weakness and they know what is best for the rest of the gems. It got to the point that her entire personality was only defined by being perfect that she didn´t know who she was supposed to be if she couldn´t be a diamond.

¨This can't be happening, I can't have a flaw, I'm supposed to be flawless! If I'm not perfect then who am I? If you're not Pink, then, who are you? Who is anyone?¨ White Diamond in Change Your Mind

In Steven´s case for a long time he tried to be like his mom. Once he accepted he could be his own person and that Rose only wanted him to be himself, he didn’t know who he was really supposed to be. What´s more is that growing up his relationship with his friends and family was defined by helping them with their problems that lead him to feeling lost in Future when they didn´t really needed his help anymore.

¨This beach,it never changes. I mean, a lot has changed. I'm trying to be cool about it, but it feels weird. Everyone's moving on, a-and I should be too¨

¨They're better off learning from Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl. I used to be helpful, but the Gems don't need me anymore. Agh! Why do I need to be needed? Steven, pull it together!¨ Steven in Prickly Pair

Another aspect that both characters share is assuming they know what best for another person. They both have this need to control and telling others what they think they need instead of just asking or considering the other person´s feelings first.

In the episode ¨Prickly Pair¨ this characteristic is when is most evident: Steven creates this space in where he can have control his plant ¨friends¨ who aren´t going to leave him and need his help. Steven started carrying out this little experiment as a way to cope with how all his friends were leaving and how he felt things were changing too fast for him.

In this specific situation Steven behaved in similar way White Diamond did when she was stuck in her own ship on Homeworld: Telling everyone what to do and what they should be, ignoring other gems´ agencies and feelings. With White Diamond it is more notice because of her gem powers allowing her to control other gems and her dialogue in ¨Change your mind¨.

Now I want to talk briefly about how Steven and White foil for each other.

According to Wikipedia a foil is: ¨A character who contrasts with another character; typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist.¨

In this post I already mentioned how Steven and White are selflessness and want to help other gems. The thing is there is a big difference on how their methods when it comes to helping:

Steven allows others to be flawed and grow in their own pace. He doesn´t force them to change and accepts that people are not perfect. He wants to help people to recover but at the same time he understands he can´t tell them what they should be. He knows each person has they own feelings and thoughts and there is a line you shouldn’t cross.

White Diamond thinks that the gems are an extension of herself and thus she thinks she knows what is best for them. She wants to erase the gems’ flaws instead of letting them grow in their own way. She uses her powers to ¨help¨ them to be perfect without realizing she is forcing herself in other people. White wants to help but only as long as others do what she thinks is best for them.

¨Please stop helping them. You'll only make things worse. That's what you do. I make things better. Here. There we are! I've removed their flaws. Now there is nothing to hinder my white light from sparkling through them.¨ White Diamond in Change Your Mind

To put more simple: Steven lets others to have flaws and be their own person while White forces others to do what she thinks is best for them, often using her powers to erase things she considers character flaws.

In conclusion: Steven and White Diamond are two characters that share similarities despite being so different. They both want to ¨fix¨ people with their own methods and often neglect their own feelings. White acts as good foil to Steven thanks to all these parallels which are emphatized when they two finally confront each other in ¨Change Your Mind¨.

Credits to Steven Universe Wikia for the gifs used

#Steven universe #Steven Quartz Universe #White Diamond #SU Analysis #character analysis #Change your mind #Prickly pair #The diamonds #SU parallels

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retrievablememories · 3 years

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this is me trying | lucas

title: this is me trying pairing: lucas x black!reader genre: angst request: “Hey do you think you can do a sequel about Lucas’ No manners like an aftermath of what happened after he hung up on her and what she’s been up too all this time. And what Lucas decided to do.” word count: 2.1k warnings: mentions of infidelity, mentions of an abortion, relationship problems, cursing a/n: that banner is boring af, but photoshop is a bitch who didn’t save my previous file and i don’t have time to play all night

the sequel to no manners. okay... i decided to go for a different type of ending here since i tend to make the couple break up/stay broken up in these angsty stories...and i know people tend to like endings where things are resolved...though EYE personally would not recommend this irl 💀

It’s been a few months since you’ve seen Lucas on any video call, and even longer since you’ve seen him in person. These couple months alone have seemed even longer and more tiresome than the previous duration of time when you were kept apart from him.

You haven’t heard from him in that time span, either, which makes you feel...it’s hard to know how to feel, especially with how you yourself froze him out to avoid admitting the truth. It’s easy enough to know what he’s doing through WayV’s posts on YouTube and Instagram and wherever else, but you don’t enjoy knowing next to nothing about how he’s doing—like you’re merely another fan when you’re actually his wife.

You also understand, though, that maybe you don’t have much room to complain with your previous actions. That doesn’t make it any less painful. Especially with him ignoring your small attempts to reach out to him.

Despite Sharia’s earlier advice, you decide to stay at your job and continue avoiding Daniel at all costs. Staying at home and having nothing to do during this conflict would only make you slip further into depression, which is the last thing you need right now. You’re in no state of mind to be trying to find another job and doing countless interviews, either.

Luckily, Sharia doesn’t mind helping you stay away from Daniel or create the perfect facade that your marriage is still doing fine despite it being the exact opposite. Everyone at your job still thinks things are as they have always been, and you’re relieved for that.

That’s about the only point of relief in your life, though.

You’re reaching the end of your limit with how much you can endure of staying in that same house without Lucas, being reminded of him in every corner of every room. His clothes in the closet, his side of the bed, his favorite coffee mugs in the kitchen. You’ve already tried hiding some of his things out of sight so you wouldn’t have to face unwilling memories, but it’s too difficult to completely erase a presence that fills every aspect of your home. And that’s not something you really want to do, anyway—which makes you feel more downtrodden and unable to let go.

You decide you need to get out, get away, change your surroundings. It’s wearing you thin to keep coming back to this empty house everyday, drifting around the space like a misplaced ghost. If you stay here another month, you think you might lose your sanity once and for all. So, eventually, you start packing. Sharia doesn’t mind letting you stay over for a little while, and you are grateful for the welcome distraction and comfort that being in her company will provide.

On a day when you’re making the last few preparations to leave for Sharia’s place, you hear a car pulling up in the driveway. You’re confused for a few seconds, as you weren’t expecting any visitors and today isn’t the day Sharia is supposed to come over. However, your heart kicks up in its rhythm when you go to the window in the kitchen to check. It’s Lucas’s car.

For a few moments, you’re unsure what to think or how to react. You’ve wanted to see him for so long, but now that he’s here, you want him gone again. What will he say when he sees your things packed? Will he even care? Most importantly, what has he come here for, after all this time?

You don’t have much more time to think about these things before Lucas is getting out of the car and walking up to the door. You stand in your spot in the kitchen, frozen as the key turns in the lock.

Lucas walks into the house cautiously, as if he doesn’t know how to properly approach this environment after being gone for so long. When he catches sight of you through the kitchen entryway, he stops in his tracks, still standing in the living room.

Both of you stare at each other for a few long and agonizing seconds. His eyes are still weary and hurt like they were the night you told him the news, but there’s a question floating there, too.

“You’re not…?” His eyes drop down to your stomach, the front of your shirt, and it looks the same as he remembers it being months ago, before he left for China, despite you telling him of your pregnancy. If there’s one thing he remembers, it’s that.

“No,” you respond quietly, “There’s no way I could go through with it.”

Lucas pauses, then nods, though he doesn’t say anything else for a few long moments—nothing to explain his sudden appearance, nothing to comment on the decision you made.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks at the ground, shifting his jaw.

“What...did you come here for?” you finally ask. The words sound harsh to your ears, and you wince internally, but you don’t know what else to do to make some kind of headway.

“Just...getting some things.” Lucas rubs the back of his neck warily, as if he’s not sure this is the right answer. Or maybe he just doesn't want to be here right now at all, having this conversation with you.

“Getting some things,” you echo. “Are you…” You’re not sure what you want to ask right now. “Leaving?”

“What’s the point of questioning me about it? Aren’t you doing the same thing?” Lucas’s eyes shift to one of your suitcases in the middle of the living room, still sitting open.

“Yes, but...you don’t even understand why I’m doing it. You’re just leaving. Are we both just going to abandon this house without even talking it out? That’s just the end of everything?” Now that you’ve found your voice again, the questions keep coming.

Lucas comes forward to step into the kitchen. “What would you like to say? What else is there that I need to know? You were drunk and lonely, weren’t you?” That phrase comes out with a sneer, which makes you wince like you’ve just had something physically thrown at you.

“I’ve spent months agonizing over this shit, Yukhei. I’ve felt completely alone and in the dark here. I had the abortion, I’ve been to therapy, I haven’t even looked at alcohol since then. I’ve seen the error of my fucking ways, believe me, and I still feel no more reassured about any of this.”

“Do you think that’s going to solve everything?” Lucas says, crossing his arms and staring at you from across the room.

“I don’t know! Maybe I didn’t do it for you. I did it because I didn’t want to have another man’s child! I did it for myself, to feel back in control of myself!”

“Y/N, you can do whatever you need to make this easier for you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to come running back to you.”

You sigh heavily and sit down in the kitchen chair, rubbing your hands over your face. “Maybe it’s a mistake for me to hope we can work something out at this point, but I long ago realized that living without you is next to unbearable. Why do you think I’m trying to get the fuck out of here? Everything here is ‘you.’” You don’t look at his eyes during any point of this speech, just instead staring at your hands where they meet on the table. “I see that if you want to leave, I won’t be able to stop you. But at least give me a proper explanation and a clean break like a human being.”

Lucas falls quiet again. You think he might just leave you there to get his stuff and go back to wherever he wants to go, but he sits in the chair across from you. You still don’t look at him.

“I also missed you a lot,” he admits, quietly, as if he doesn’t want to say it where it can be heard. “I didn’t really want to. But. Obviously, those emotions don’t just go away…”

You simply nod, not knowing the right way to respond to that.

“You still wear your ring,” he says it flatly, like it’s an insignificant observation. You can’t tell whether he’s surprised at it or judging you for it, for whatever ridiculous reason.

“Did you not want me to?” you say, irritated. “We are still married. And I don’t need the people at work asking questions.”

He nods as if he’s just understood something and the realization of it has made him even more displeased. “Right, of course, it’s all about looking good. Maintaining the lie, right?”

“It’s not about that,” you snap. “You should know that more than anyone. No one even knows I’m fucking married to you except Sharia. God forbid I don’t want to hear more bullshit from Daniel about my marriage, I guess.”

Lucas’s face is still for a moment, and then his eyebrows crease. “Does he still bother you?” The words leave his mouth tentatively.

“Of course he does, Yukhei. Whenever I can’t get away from him completely. He’s not just going to stop because my life has turned to shit and my husband hates me—which he doesn’t even know.”

Lucas shakes his head and sighs. “Don’t guilt trip me.”

“I’m only stating what clearly seems to be a fact now.” Then you get up from the table, weary of the conversation and even more hurt by the fact that he didn’t try to deny your statement. “Now, if you want to get your stuff, go get it. I won’t hold you up any longer. Though—you should think about preparing for a divorce if you’re really done here.” You walk out of the kitchen before waiting for his response, missing the way he stiffens in his seat.

You sit in the living room fussing over your suitcase for a long while before he decides to walk into the room. “Look...I don’t know how to feel about all this right now, but I’m not sure if that’s what I...want.”

“...What.”

“Y/N. I’m saying, I don’t think I want to...separate.”

“Then what do you want? To keep dragging me around with an empty marriage while you move on with your life? Just file the damn papers or I will.” You’re angry with him now, and a few tears slip out. You feel like you’re being thrown around at this point, and you have no clue what his intentions are. You get even more upset with yourself for crying, though there’s no reason to be.

“I don’t fucking know. Just not...this.” Lucas is deflated and maybe just as lost as you are, though you don’t want to acknowledge that while you’re still upset at his indecisiveness. He sits on the couch with you, and you’re partly surprised that he even still wants to be anywhere near you with how he was acting and talking earlier.

He seems a little shaken to see you openly crying, as if he’s never seen it happen before. Like all of this is once again new to him. Lucas puts his head in his hands, bearing a striking resemblance to the image of him doing the same thing the day you told him what happened.

You both make for a pitiful sight on the sofa like that, sitting as far from each other as possible but hurting over the same thing. Finally, Lucas takes his hands away from his face and, tentatively, as if you might shove him away, reaches for your hand. He covers it with his own, curling his fingers around yours slightly.

You stare at his hand on top of yours, bare without his ring, unsure how to react to it. You look to your side, though he doesn’t meet your eyes at first. There’s another crease between his brows.

“Just let me...figure some things out. We—we could...figure some things out, together. Before we...think about taking that step.” This response is still just shy of giving you a definite answer, but it gives you a small, painful hope that maybe things aren’t destroyed forever.

You nod, wiping some of your tears away. You’re almost afraid to take your eyes from where your hands are joined, as if you’ll discover it was just some mirage or figment of your imagination if you look away.

“Okay...we can do that. If...you want to try.”

Lucas looks at you fully now, his eyes impossibly deep with things he’s already said and has yet to say to you, and nods back—a tiny movement, but it’s there and true all the same.

#lucas scenarios #lucas fic #lucas imagines #lucas angst #wayv #lucas #wayv lucas #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct fic #nct angst #ambw #ambw fic #ambw kpop #ambw imagines #ambw scenarios #ambw angst #kpop ambw

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sir-phineas-lost · 3 years

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Follow-up post

So I got a reply to my comment about the ableism in Ironwood’s character arc by @swapauanon and then they immediately blocked me. Since I am sometimes a petty bastard I decided to make a separate response anyway.

The first thing I would like to point out is that this person does not actually address my points in any way throughout this lengthy rant. My comment was all about the behind-the-scenes comments from the creators and they only responded with in-text examples and their interpretations of them. Those are important sure, and I will talk about those, but they don’t exactly come off as arguing in good-faith right from the get-go.

Okay, so I don’t TYPICALLY acknowledge RWDE’s beyond blocking them, but I think it’s important to separate how Ironwood views himself versus how the writers view him.

Because Ironwood’s entire downfall is his misunderstanding of how humanity works. He denies his own humanity, and sees maiming his vulnerable flesh and replacing it with unfeeling machinery as ridding himself of his own human weaknesses.

Except at the end of the day, he can’t cast off his VERY human soul, and his refusal to acknowledge that he can’t and SHOULDN’T do that are ultimately what leads to his downfall.

I have seen this “Actually it is just Ironwood himself that is ableist” argument before, and I don’t think it holds any water. While it is true that he begins to see compassion as a weakness, he never expresses the views you say he does about his own machine parts. And if you want to talk about how Ironwood sees himself vs how the writers see him you really can’t do so without talking about framing and subtext. When we get scenes that emphazize Ironwood’s machine parts to make him look intimidating or use his passive superpower (described as “hyper-focus” by the creators themselves) to shut off his empathy, that is the writers telling us that these physical aspects of Ironwood makes him less human.

Meanwhile, what V8C12 was TRYING to convey (even if it was horrible in its execution), was that it’s one’s SOUL that defines them, not the body that houses it.

Literally NO OTHER CHARACTER with mechanical parts added to their body views themselves as less human.

[...]

Penny doesn’t angst over not being human, she angsts over being treated like a soulless tool. (Which is why I don’t like that they turned her human. Had they set up that she’d wanted to be human back in Volume 2, it would’ve been one thing, but they don’t establish that Penny wanted to be human until AFTER her mechanical body has been discarded.)

So here they outright contradict themselves. They start off saying that no other character views themselves this way, and then go on to say that Penny does (but only after she has been turned human). And like, points for admitting that scene was bad, but they seem unwilling to consider that maybe the fact that the writers did include that scene tells us something about the way the show at large views disability. They seem to think they can just write it off and move on like this instance of Penny absolutely seeing herself as inhuman can just be ignored. it also disregards that this isn’t just Penny expressing how she feels about herself. When Penny gets her human body she expresses surprise that hugging someone makes her feel “warm inside” even though she has hugged people countless times before. This is not a villain saying that having machine parts makes you less human and being proven wrong, this is a hero saying outright that “wow, my mechaniocal body made me unable to appreciate this simple human interaction, but now that I have a flesh-body I can”. Things like this is why I do not buy the argument that it is only Ironwood who thinks being part machine makes you less human.

Mercury doesn’t angst over the loss of his legs, he angsts over the piece of his soul his father tore out.

[...]

While Yang DOES lose her arm and angst over it, she doesn’t view herself as less human because of her prosthetic.

The closest we get to a LITERAL “cybernetics eats your soul” story is with Cinder, and she doesn’t have ANY cybernetics, just a parasitic leash that’s slowly consuming her flesh and threatens to eventually consume her mind if she doesn’t get rid of it. And if/when she does, I imagine she’ll replace that with a mechanical arm.

(I moved a few parts of their post around here because it made more sense to me to talk about these quotes together)

I feel like this highlights how much this person completely ignores the core argument of what makes the themes in RWBY ableist. They focus way too much on the literal and whether the characters “angst” over their humanity. But like I have said before, thie main issue here is theme and subtext.

Mercury doesn’t “angst” over his legs, but that doesn’t erase the subtext inherent in the fact that he still lost his legs (and presumanbly the piece of his soul) at the same time as he joins team evil.

Yang is probably the best take on a disabled person with a prosthetic in the show. I will give it that. I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with how it has handled this storyline, but I do think it sets a certain expectation for how it thinks a “good” person should handle their disability. Because Yang basically deals with her lost arm by seeing her prosthetic as an “extra”. She creates a distance between herself and it instead of seeing her mechanical arm as actually part of herself. Again, nothing inherently wrong with that but combined with the Penny-nonsense it creates a pattern of seeing machine parts as inherently inhuman and “lesser”.

The point about Cinder is where the argument relies too much on technicality. Sure, Cinder’s new arm isn’t cybernetic, bhut it is still a prosthetic and it is unambiguously presented as evil and corrupting.

So, no, it’s not the fact that Ironwood has prosthetics that makes him less human, they’re simply a symptom of his view of “soft” traits (kindness, empathy, forgiveness, and flesh), as weaknesses to be sacrificed for the “greater good”. Basically, while I know this term gets misused a lot, Ironwood embodies toxic masculinity. The idea that showing any emotion other than rage and pride is “shameful” and “unmanly”. The idea that brute strength matters more than strategy. That taking unnecessary risks to achieve your goal is “brave” and “daring” and not “stupid beyond belief”. Plus, I want to point out that WINTER HERSELF said that Penny (as a robot) was more “human” than her.

Again, this completely ignores how Ironwood and his prosthetics are framed by the narrative. The idea that all of his flaws are based in toxic masculinity and have nothing to do with his disability is just not very supported by the text or by word of God (again, it was the creators themselves who said that losing his arm was “symbolic of losing his humanity).

And Winter’s words to Penny aren’t very positive either. The point being made there is that Penny was always human “underneeth” her robotics, which sounds good until you realize that this still frames her mechanical differences as negative. They are treated as a prison for the “real” Penny and the narrative explicitly tells us that they have made her unable to feel certain emotions.

It’s just that searing off that flesh after breaking his own Aura serves as a good visual metaphor for Ironwood giving up his “softer” traits to accomplish his goals, even if there was a better solution staring him right in the face (i.e. the rings were EXPOSED and he could’ve just nudged them out of alignment to get to Watts).

This feels like a really big reach on their parts to justify their idea of Ironwood as stupid on top of everything else. It relies on assuming things about fictional technology that was never explained in the show itself. I mean, if the rings are so easy to nudge then what is even holding them in place?

Either way it doesn’t really matter because the message of the scene is the same. If the point is to signal that ironwood is willing to give up his softer traits because he is also willing to give up his soft bady, then that also tells the viewer that being able-bodied and being capable of compassion/kindness/etc are synonymous.

It has nothing to do with the metal, and everything to do with the “Mettle”.

I have no idea why they would bring up the fantasy neurodivergence the writers added in through word-of-God as if it somehow makes the show less ableist. “Mettle” as it is described by the writers, is not a character flaw. It is a chronic condition.

Edit: Seriously, I hope you realize that the hatedom makes it VERY hard for any criticism of the show to be taken seriously when the very VALID cricisms are downed out by “Adam should’ve been an anti-hero!” and “Fascism is good, actually!” leading to those of us with ACTUAL constructive criticism getting lumped in with you lot!

I am curious what they think “constructive criticism” looks like since apparently “Hey, constantly equating robot parts with inhuman behavior is shitty and ableist, please stop” doesn’t cut it.

Anyways, fuck this guy. If they want to be taken seriously maybe they should think about why they had to make such a long-ass rant to dismiss criticism of very basic ableist tropes.

#rwby #rwby meta #meta #rwby critical #rwde

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lady-charinette · 4 years

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Tamaki Amajiki x F!GirlfriendReader - Tamaki working out and getting a late night visitor.

Rated: NSFW

Warning: Mild dirty talk, public sex, cock riding, sex after workout. (I'm an embarrassing beginner at writing smut so...the cringe!)

Not in the Gym

Tamaki Amajiki was one of the Big Three at U.A.

Studious, punctual and with a mastery over his quirk that was on par with a pro's.

Tamaki Amajiki was one of the Big Three and yet he was also the possibly shiest individual at U.A. trying to back out of interviews and press conferences that made him stand out too much as much as his work - or Fatgum - allowed.

That was more of his mentor's thing, Fatgum had always handled the publicity and interviews and questions, even Kirishima from time to time, but Tamaki simply couldn't.

Nevertheless, the possibly shiest individual at U.A. also had a girlfriend.

That had come as a shock to his peers and the younger students. To Mirio and Nejire, it had only been a matter of time. They'd had known for a while the shift in atmosphere between the two of them, whenever his adorable girlfriend would walk next to him and offer silent support during one of Tamaki's staring contests with the wall around crowds.

During or after lengthy, taxing battles. She was there, ready to lend support, to help and protect him.

Lately, villains had started biding their time, their appearances rarer and rarer except for the small fry that tried to survive still scuffling through the streets. Still, schoolwork increased and Tamaki didn't have as much time to commit to training.

Despite his shy demeanor and general usage of his quirk, there was an astounding amount of people that thought him to be weak.

No, not in quirk.

In physical strength.

While his quirk didn't rely as much on strength like Mirio's for prolonged fights or agility like Nejire's, Tamaki still had to train.

It was a thing he'd picked up from Eraser, someone who possesses a quirk with too many cons, should have a trick up his sleeve.

Tamaki's was weekly visits to the gym.

At night.

He was thankful he could use the U.A. gym when either all the students were in their dorms or already asleep, principal Nezu had been understanding enough to offer him a special permit and Tamaki had sent a gift basket in gratitude, too shy to actually confront the small rodent principal himself despite his size.

The weights seemed heavier than they used to the last time he was here, which had been...a while.

It didn't help that his hero agency largely consisted of individuals who loved to consume as much food as possible, it also didn't help he needed to eat large quantities of food himself to utilize his quirk effectively.

It also didn't help his girlfriend being a food lover too, cooking any time she had the chance or buying sweets at a candy shop. Tamaki loved her sweet tooth, while it wasn't quite practical for his quirk, he enjoyed to indulge from time to time.

The question his girlfriend mostly asked was 'Can your arms turn into lollipops? Or your hair?'

Nejire, his far too curious and open-minded friend, had directed the innocent questions into dangerous territory.

'Huh? His arms? Don't you wanna know if he can turn other body parts into a lollipop-' thankfully, Mirio had mercifully dragged the babbling girl away, just to save a very red faced Tamaki the humiliation.

Unfortunately, his girlfriend was perceptive and had figured out very quickly what Nejire had tried to insinuate.

The reaction had been as mortified as his own, if only because they were in public. He wasn't quite sure what her reaction would've been in the privacy of their own home.

Tamaki tried to ignore the burning tips of his ears to the burning in his arms, trying to lift the heavy metal weights above his head.

He could just use his tentacles, but it wouldn't be very effective, especially the small plate of takoyaki he'd ate for dinner. Not that that was the whole reason he was in here in the first place, he needed to build up strength in his own body, not his quirk.

Tamaki panted, gritting his teeth at the strain before he dropped the weights carefully to the mat and moving over to the next equipment, the running track.

Twenty minutes in and his legs were already burning, screaming to stop, but he stubbornly pushed forward, eyes fixated on a point in the wall.

He hadn't even heard the double doors opening or closing.

He hadn't heard the footsteps that slowly padded towards him.

But he did hear the soft voice calling out to him. "Tamaki~"

The clumsy jump and the higher pitched yelp he released echoed within the vacant room as he fell on his butt, hissing at the burning in his muscles "Ow!"

Tiredly, Tamaki glanced up at none other than his girlfriend, an apologetic expression on her face as she quickly kneeled next to him on the floor. "Oh my goodness, Tama, I-I'm so sorry!" her hands squeezed his arms and grabbed his face, thumbs rubbing his cheeks gently.

His cheeks burned, they were already red with extortion from training, but now a different kind of heat filled his cheeks at his girlfriend's soft touch and nice smell he recognized was from her shampoo. She must've showered earlier.

"Y-You scared me, Y/N." he breathed deeply, chest heaving before he shook his head and gently squeezed her hands on his face. "I-I'm fine." she nodded, still with a apologetic look.

"I should've called earlier, I'm sorry. I got worried when you didn't come home yet. Eraser said you'd be here."

Of course, Eraserhead was still awake, that man loved sleep but he was on watch duty for the first years as much as he heard. Some outdoor scuffle or other between two students of class 1-A.

A brief glance at the clock told him it was late, eleven p.m.

He got off the floor with the help of the woman already dressed in her cute PJ's. "I-I'm sorry, I should've told you I'd be late."

It had been almost two years since them sharing living quarters together, it had been nerve wracking for the both of them, especially when they started sharing a single bed too.

That had only been a year ago, but it had surprised Tamaki how astonishingly easy it was to be beside her on the soft bed, talking to each-other until they were too tired to continue or cuddling each-other into sleep.

She shook her head, flashing a brilliant smile at him. "It's alright." she glanced at the sweater he'd shed while working out, becoming far too hot in it. "You did mention you'd work out with Mirio though." She turned her head this way and that but failed to spy their other friend.

Tamaki rubbed the back of his neck, sitting down on a bench and gulping down a generous amount of water. "He...he couldn't come, he had a mission with his agency, something about patrol duty."

She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself and shifting her weight from foot to foot.

Tamaki watched her from the corner of his eye, recognizing her fidgeting.

Nervousness.

"Is...is something wrong?" worry rooted itself deep in his heart and the hero in training waited with baited breath for his girlfriend's answer.

She bit her lip, like she always did when she was worried but didn't want to say it. "Y/N?"

At her boyfriend's prompting, she finally relented. "Um...I was...I uh-" she rarely ever got tongue tied around him, only when people made crude jokes when they were both present, but her behavior now seemed odd.

Tamaki stood up on wobbly legs, placing his hands on her shoulders and rubbing them gently, reassuringly. "You can tell me, you know. Just like you said I can tell you anything."

At that, she seemed to relax, shoulders sagging in defeat, before her gaze met his. "I'm sorry I know you have to train and that ever since work with Fatgum increased and you guys have been on edge because of suspicious villain activity that you just couldn't....really come home as often or have free time and I completely understand if you-" she continued on, lost in her speedy mess of words as she often did whenever she was nervous.

Tamaki adored that aspect of her, they were both shy people, him more so than her, but she was nervous in different ways that channeled his confidence to come out to reassure her.

He cut her off with a tight hug, chin resting on top of her head and arms holding gently onto her waist and upper back. "T-Tama?"

The woman in his arms relaxed into his hold, but he sensed the confusion rolling off her in waves. Tamaki sighed deeply, nuzzling his head against hers. "So that's what you were worried about..." he mumbled into her hair, closing his eyes to inhale the mild shampoo. "I'm sorry for...for making you feel this way, Y/N. I-I should've paid more attention to you and-"

She suddenly broke free of his hug, hands splayed over his chest, a weak glare on her face. "No! No, no, no! I'm fine Tamaki, I just- ugh I'm sorry! I really didn't mean to make you feel guilty, I was just..." she sighed helplessly.

Tamaki shook his head, leaning forward to gently kiss her forehead. "Nonsense. I think I know what you wanted to say...trust me, I've been feeling the same. " he awkwardly gazed off to the side. "Um...I was...I wanted to spend more time with you, but I-I also didn't want to let Fatgum and Kirishima down and classes started p-piling up and..." he finally lifted his intense gaze back down to her and smiled wirly. "I'm sorry Y/N."

His girlfriend sighed but smiled warmly, shaking her head. "I'm sorry too Tama." she leaned forward and nuzzled her nose against his, making him smile at the cute gesture.

The couple stared at each-other for a while longer, until Tamaki's eyes strayed to her lips.

He swallowed, a brilliant blush moving from the tips of his ears down to his neck. His girlfriend immediately noticed the shifting air between them and giggled, a blush of her own on her cheeks. "Y-You...you know if you want to kiss me just do it..." when his head whipped to her at the speed of light, he felt her lips meet his in a light sweet kiss.

A sigh of contentment left both their lips and he felt her arms loop around his neck, playing with his sweat soaked hair. Tamaki's own grip tightened around her back, drawing her closer to him.

He broke the kiss when he felt her hands slowly glide down his shirt. "W-Wait." she froze, eyes wide in fear of doing something wrong. His larger hands squeezed hers gently to calm her down. "I-I didn't shower."

Her boyfriend's embarrassed mumbles prompted a laugh out of her throat, before her gaze turned half-lidded and she looked him from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes. Tamaki only blushed harder at her open ogling, trying to hide himself with his hair, until a gentle hand brushed it back. "I don't mind at all, Tama, besides you... kind of look even hotter after training."

His entire face could've exploded like one of Bakugou's explosions right then and there, but his girlfriend silenced his nervous sputters with a deeper kiss.

Despite his heart racing a mile a minute, Tamaki's hands easily found his girlfriend's hips and pulled her tightly to himself, a groan rumbling in the back of his throat when she bucked her hips against his suggestively.

Wait...

Tamaki panted against her lips, dark eyes drinking in her form hungrily. "Th-The door..."

The mischievous twinkle in her eye made him feel mildly nervous. "Locked." she captured his lips in a searing kiss again, mumbling between kisses. "Thought....you wanted....some privacy."

The hero was too worked up to properly think if his girlfriend had somehow planned this, or simply cared for his desire for privacy.

He staggered back, his legs still burning from training and his girlfriend broke their heated lip lock to smirk up at him with a fierce blush. "Trained too hard?" far too flustered for words, Tamaki only nodded. "...Hmm..." she looked around curiously, a small giggle leaving her lips. "What about..." her eyes lightened up with joy when spying the weight machine with the seat, immediately backing her staggering boyfriend onto the bench with the weights attached to cables behind him.

His eyes flew open once he was seated, a question burning on the tip of his tongue before his girlfriend suddenly sat right on top of him, her legs spread on either side of his hips and directly over his-

"W-W-Wh-!" Tamaki felt lightheaded at the blood rushing through his body, obviously not being able to decide whether to travel south or all up to his head. "A-Are you sure?! Ww-we have a bed and- and-"

The positively excited look she shot him made something else on his body react in excitement and Tamaki hid his face. "C'mon Tama! We never tried it outside before! Besides, everyone's asleep, Eraser's too busy babysitting the first years to care to check on us." she winked, eyes back to mentally undressing him before she actually did.

His whole body shook in embarrassment, embarrassed at his own increasing excitement at the prospect of doing something so intimate outside of the safety of their bedroom.

It seemed like the woman stop him noticed it too, if the sudden jump her hips made and the cherry red color of her face was any indication. "W-Wow, I-I didn't know you'd be this excited Tamaki." her surprised but delighted gaze met the hands of her boyfriend desperately trying to hide his expression.

She laughed and pried his hands away, settling them on her hips instead. His eyes refused to look at her, fixated on a point to the side. "Tama~" she called his name in a sing-song voice, fingers gently poking his cheek. "Aw, Tamaki, I'm happy you're reacting this way! You know how happy I always get when you want me too!" Her hips experimentally bucked against the prominent hardness beneath her, her insides clenching pleasantly at the constant pressure on her clothed core.

He took a shaky breath, eyes closing briefly before his purple eyes suddenly stared straight at her.

Intense.

She gently slapped his shoulder. "S-Stop trying to imagine me with a potato head!"

She knew all of her boyfriend's "embarrassment-evading" tactics.

She normally found them adorable, but with her sitting on his cock, craving for her hero really didn't fit in this situation-

"I-I'm not imagining you as a potato..." her eyes flew open when she felt his hands gently begin to rub her hips, her fingers squeezing his shoulders reflexively at the intimate touch.

"W-Wha-" her voice died down when her boyfriend suddenly righted himself, still sitting on the bench but looking down at her intensely, lips trembling just the tiniest bit.

"I-I imagined you in your underwear but-but that didn't really help..." if the throbbing beneath her was any indication, it helped in a different way.

The woman froze on his lap, flabbergasted at the dirty confession that slipped from her shy boyfriend's mouth. "Y-Y/N?" At his confused mumble, she came back to her senses.

She slapped her hands to her red face, turning her head away from the intense stare of her boyfriend. "T-Tamaki! Y-You-you can't just s-say stuff like that and-and oh!" she gasped at the sudden strong grip on her thighs, positioning her higher on his lap, his clothed cock brushing against her clit.

She jumped, legs squeezing his hips and he groaned, looking as red as a lobster. "W-Was that too-" his voice got muffled by her insistent kiss and Tamaki relaxed into it immediately, arms snaking around her body and pulling her closer, lips meshing together in a needy kiss.

His girlfriend's pants and wet tongue tracting his lips never failed to elicit a shiver that ran down the whole length of his spine.

Once his tongue shyly met hers, she moaned into their kiss, fingers gripping his sweaty hair and digging into his scalp.

They broke apart for air, thin strands of drool still connecting them, until Y/N licked her lips. "C-Clothes. Off." her fingers already traced down his chest and stomach to lift his shirt up.

Tamaki released a growl, the sound sending shivers down her spine. She loved her shy and sweet boyfriend, but she also loved the more daring side of him when she was able to make him completely relax and feel comfortable.

His hands slowly slid her shirt off her, her undershirt coming off with it. He licked his lips at the sight of her bra clad breasts, heaving with her pants, her own eyes feasting upon his abs.

She never could understand why her boyfriend ranted on about having to 'catch up' with training.

She was already drooling at the sight of his chiseled chest and the hard ridges of his six-pack, how much more training could he possibly-

"Ahh!" her surprised yelp echoed through the gym hall when her boyfriend's hands threw her bra off to the side. When had he even unclasped it-

She eyed his hand, morphed into a crab claw before it transformed back into his original human one.

Wait a damn min-

"Did you just snap my bra?! Tamaki!" Y/N pouted before an idea struck her. "Hey, wait, why don't you ever use your quirk on m-" her suggestion flew out the window when her boyfriend's tongue in her mouth broke her train of thought and his hands gently kneaded her breasts, drawing moans out of her.

Tamaki himself breathed deeply, trying to control his growing desire. His eyes were drawn tightly together in concentration, but the tantalizing sight of his girlfriend with her eyes closed in pleasure made him curse silently at his weakening resolve.

He groaned when he felt her hot lips trail a searing path down his skin, suckling on his pulse point and biting his jaw or throat.

His own mouth didn't remain idle, kissing her cheeks and mouth and sucking on her neck, more harshly when he felt her hands explore his torso daringly.

The things her touch did to him should've made him embarrassed, but it only fueled his desire for more.

Tamaki had been so absorbed in kissing down further and laving attention to her breasts to notice her sneaky hands working his sweatpants off.

It was only when her warm hand grabbed his hardness through his underwear that he hissed and threw his head back, cheeks pink. "Y-Y/N..."

She smiled, thumb tracing distracting circles on his weeping head. "Feeling good, Tamaki?"

He nodded, not trusting his voice to crack from the pleasurable electric bolts shooting up from his pelvis.

It had surprised him how quickly she'd ripped the rest of her clothing off her body, how intense the delectable musk off her hit his nose and made his mouth water. It was at the insistent tug on her hips that she realized the ravenous look in her boyfriend's eyes. "T-Tama..." she squealed when he surged forward and swallowed her moans in a deep kiss, hands kneading every available surface of her skin.

When his fingers gently began rubbing her trickling wetness that soaked his pants, she tore her mouth free from his. "T-Ta-Tamaki, I-I need you. Now." Her whimpers and the dazed look in her eye was all he needed to quickly take off his pants and underwear.

Once he settled back down on the bench, she climbed back onto his lap, her dripping cunt dragging along his own weeping cock. He hissed through his clenched jaw, guiding her motions on top of him. "E-Easy..." no matter how hard he tried, not even he could stave off the need to be inside her.

His fingers slowly sunk into her up to his knuckles, drawing out a long needy moan from her kiss swollen lips. "Oh-ohhh T-aaahhhmaki, I'm- I'm ready, just-just please." he shook his head, chest heaving as he continued to thrust his fingers into her burning core, his other hand gently pinching her nipple.

It was only when she grabbed his face and kissed him like her life depended on it that he slowly removed his sticky fingers from within her wet walls, watching in mild amusement and embarrassment how her eyes zeroed in on his tongue cleaning her juices off his fingers.

"T-Tamaki, I-I need you...your cock inside me...please." his cheeks darkened in desire and the indigo haired man gripped his shaft in hand, one hand steadying his girlfriend's trembling hips to guide her on top of him.

"W-Wait, l-let me-" before he could finish his sentence, she pushed him back down against the steel pole of the weight machine.

"N-No, you-you're tired from training. Let me do the work." she was flushed brilliantly from his earlier ministrations and he couldn't help but admire the way she spread her nether lips for his throbbing cock and slowly sunk down into him.

They both threw their heads back when the tip of his cock was in. It's been a while since they did this, what with Tamaki's hero work and her own studies.

"Ohhhh T-Tama..." she whined in arousal, short pants leaving her lips as she felt his thick cock spread her open. Her boyfriend wasn't only gifted with his quirk, a small fact she sometimes subtly hinted at whenever she set out to praise her boyfriend in front of others.

'Tamaki? Of course he's great! He's such a strong and gifted hero, you know? But he's also pretty gifted in other areas.'

Nejire wholeheartedly supported her deviant endeavors, with Mirio laughing and comfortingly patting his blushing friend's back.

She shivered when she felt every pulsing vein on the thick shaft entering her gushing walls, moaning when he was fully bottomed out within her.

They paused to catch their breath, Tamaki trailing soft kisses all over her face and neck, his large hands moving to brush back her hair tenderly. "A-Are you okay, Y/N?"

She nodded rapidly, hands resting on his stomach. "I should-I should be asking you that big guy. You were training when I-I- ahhh interrupted." the twitch of his cock within her made her moan, gently rocking her hips against his.

Tamaki panted heavily, fingers squeezing her hips. "Y/N..." he returned the gentle rocking motions, worry creasing his brow as he watched her expression.

She laughed shakily, feet finding purchase on the floor beside the bench. "Y-You know I love it when you stretch me out like this Tama." his cock slowly slid out of her before she moved back down, impaling herself further on his throbbing dick. "Ohhh fuck..."

Tamaki groaned, sweat trickling down the side of his face and his hands gripped her hips harder and lifted her off his soaked lap, before he slammed her down on his twitching length again. "A-Ahhh! Uh-uh oh oh!" The sound of her moans riled him up even more and Tamaki lifted his hips to meet her eager thrusts.

It always took her boyfriend a while before he shed his shy demeanor and slowly but surely grew more confident, especially the louder her moans got. "Y-Y/N, someone will...someone will hear us." he panted, fingers digging into her sides.

She licked her lips, eyes closed at the pleasurable tingles down below. "Nghh...T-Tama, everyone's aslee-oh!" she jumped, a full body shiver wracking her when she felt her boyfriend's hips suddenly surge up into her again, harder and deeper than before. "O-Oh y-yes, Tamaki that-that was good! P-Please again!"

She mewled against him, running her hands appreciatively over his body, trying to keep a shred of control within her.

Face red but eyes hooded with desire, Tamaki gripped her more securely and bucked his hips up again, another louder mewl leaving the woman on top of him. "D-Damn, you just-g-grew tighter around me...." he hissed through clenched teeth, resting his head against the wall and trying to concentrate on bringing her pleasure.

The sensation of her cunt clamping down on his sensitive arousal made him thrust harder into her, ignoring the burning of his arms and legs. "Y-You-you know..."

Her dazed eyes met his intense gaze and she felt another shiver dance through her heated skin. "This...this is..." he groaned and pulled her hips down to meet his upwards thrust. "A-Also...training!" she cried out, gripping onto his shoulders for support, panting heavily into his neck.

Tamaki hissed at the strain on his hips every time they not only lifted up to thrust but lifted his girlfriend's weight with it. "Nghhh!" he groaned at the clamping of her soft, wet walls around him.

She cried out, falling against his chest, breathing as harshly as he was. "T-Tama, t-that's it- just- just a little-! Ah!" she bit the side of his neck, trying to muffle her too loud moans into his sweaty skin, tasting the salty sheen of sweat on it.

His hips stuttered and Tamaki wrapped his arms around his girlfriend, lifting her chin to silence her moans with his mouth. "L-Let's...let's finish...t-together." he bit her bottom lip, soothing the bite with his tongue, fingers digging into her ass as he ground her harder and harder on his leaking cock. "Ngh...I'm...I'm close!"

She tore her mouth away from his, trying to suck in air while also kissing him. "M-Mmm m-me too! T-Tamaki!"

"Y-Y/N...!" His own guttural drawn out moans were muffled by her lips, hips stuttering until he finally released, her own release following shortly after if the wildly fluttering sensation of her cunt around him was any indication.

She shook in his arms like a leaf and Tamaki himself tried to ignore the trembles of his arms and legs. They rested back against the machine, the metal pole wide enough not to dig too uncomfortably into his back, but the surface was still unpleasant.

They panted heavily, trying to catch their breath. She could feel his hot cum slowly trickling out of her, his softening cock still within her sensitive cunt. "T-Tama..."

"Y-Yes?" he sounded even worse than before on the treadmill, as if he ran a marathon.

"U-Um..." she wasn't nearly as nervous and flustered as her loving boyfriend could get, but now her face was on fire. "...I-I think we need a towel."

She felt the heaving chest beneath her flushed cheek freeze, breath catching in his throat, before she slowly raised herself off his torso. Tamaki's entire face blushed a deep red, she probably didn't look any different, when they both watched his cum trickle out of her entrance where they were still joined.

"I-I'm so sorry!" Shy Tamaki was back full force, she mused with a smile.

Tamaki carefully lifted Y/N off his sensitive length, the couple groaning at the action, before he grabbed the towel he'd originally meant to use for a shower later.

Thankfully, the most mess was still on or in their bodies and not the bench, where only a small trickle had escaped. Tamaki didn't think he could ever enter this hall anymore without combusting on the spot from the memories.

He awkwardly glanced at the now dirty towel then back towards his girlfriend, who had shyly grabbed his shirt as a makeshift replacement for her own clothes. "Uh...." both blinked at each-other before they started to laugh. "Oh my goodness...I'm so..." she ran a hand down her face, legs tightly clamped shut. "S-Sorry Tama, I-I didn't mean to um..."

Tamaki cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his burning neck. "N-No, its um, I-it was my fault, I uh- I was the one who-who..." his ears looked like red christmas lights, so red that Y/N feared they would catch on fire.

She suddenly started giggling, hand covering her mouth. "We really did...make a bit of a mess huh..."

Tamaki's expression softened, sweetly pecking her forehead. His face was still dark pink but he chuckled softly, helping his girlfriend clean up and dress so they could go home.

Thanks for reading! :)

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