#every year I am compelled to reblog this
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convection currents ; yuuta x GN!reader
“Am I important to you, Okkotsu-san?”
God, he can’t stand it. The way you look at him, the uneven lilt in your fragile, quavering voice; it makes him want to bury himself alive inside of you.
“Yuuta,” he says. “Just ‘Yuuta’ is fine.”
word count: 7.6k
warnings: horizontal hanky panky, obsession, possessive tendencies, unhealthy relationships, codependency, semi graphic descriptions of violence, major character death
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likes + reblogs appreciated!
Yuuta wants to like you.
And he does – like you, that is. He really, really does.
But there have been some moments that give him pause.
Don’t get him wrong! You’re sweet, kind, doting, attentive, and very clearly an anxious bundle of painful self-awareness. He finds comfort in the kindred connection between your loner spirits. Training is made infinitely easier when he steals a glance at the gentle flash of your sweet smile, the soft flutter of your hair in the breeze, the twinkle of your laugh, floating through the air as a windchime’s ephemeral melody serenades the breeze. Everything about you seems to be perfectly enveloped and embedded within his daily reality at Tokyo Tech; natural, easy, right. That is what it feels like, to be at your side.
The budding affection between the two of you kicks his foolish, stuttering heart into overdrive. How long has it been, since the blood pumping through his veins was motivated by a sensation other than mortal terror?
You make him want to envision a reality wherein he’s embedded into the fabric of the living, breathing world, rather than continue to occupy his perch as a pariah, perennially scapegoated to the periphery.
Each sidelong glance thrown your way is accompanied by the erratic twitch of his clammy hands, as he tries and fails to pay attention during one of Gojo’s rambling, nonsensical lectures. The light in his eyes revives when you call his name. Innards undulating in and out of place, he tracks your body’s every movement, your muscles contorting fast as quicksilver during scrimmages, lethal and alluring all at once.
These are some of the objectively positive aspects of his attraction to you; the things that pull him from his bed in the morning, calling to him like the abyss compels a creature of the night to rise from its coffin.
And then, there are the more…er, complex moments.
“Did you just come back from a mission, Okkotsu-san?”
Like today, for example. Yuuta had just arrived back on campus after a fun afternoon spent with Toge traversing around Tokyo, patronizing various cafes and konbinis. You were lingering at the entrance of the dormitory, back to the front door, effectively coming between him and his bed.
“Ah, no. I was with Inumaki. We were hanging out for a bit.”
“Where?”
“Just in the city…”
“What did you do?”
He stills, uncertain. “Um…that’s…”
“I’m sorry.” Your head ducks in shame, hiding your face from his quizzical glance. “It’s been hard adjusting to student life as a mid-year transfer. I keep up well enough in classes, and on missions, but I don’t think any of the other students like me all that much. Forgive me, Okkotsu-san. To be honest, I’m jealous of how easily you get along with Inumaki-san and Maki-san.”
Of course. How could he assume anything different?
As a non-lineage sorcerer, you were haphazardly discovered by one of the senior sorcerers on a mission gone south and roped into the jujutsu world without prior knowledge of its existence. From a firsthand perspective, he of all people should be able to understand how isolating that must be.
Kicking himself for his judgemental first reaction, Yuuta forces his skeleton to release the tension it harbors. “No, don’t worry. Have you been sleeping well? Did you eat dinner?”
Sheepishly, you shake your head.
This is how he finds himself alone, with you, in a secluded alcove on the outskirts of campus. The afternoon has matured into a thick, syrupy evening, the sky bruised with a smattering of warm hues. You sit on the grassy bank as a pair, shoulder-to-shoulder, your union celebrated by the rhythmic thrum of the cicadas’ song.
“Here, take it.” He offers you the last flavored onigiri leftover from his spoils of konbini adventures.
You protest, waving your hands in front of you. “No, no, no. I’m fine with just a plain one. Please. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble.”
“Plain is my favorite,” he lies. “I don’t even like yaki.”
“...Then why did you have one in your bag?”
“Haha! That’s a great question! I don’t know!” Beet red, Yuuta scratches the back of his head.
Out of mercy, and perhaps pity, you graciously accept the yaki onigiri. Munching in companionable quietude ensues for several minutes, as you both watch the sun impale itself on the dark horizon, bleeding out across the sky in dark, inky tones.
Without sitting face-to-face, it’s easier to speak to you, somehow. The insistent pressure on his chest lifts long enough for some words of actual substance to slip forth. “It’s hard, the first year.”
You remain silent.
“My first year was hell, too. Although that’s probably because I was being haunted.”
“By who?”
He blinks, your question knocking him off balance. Not by “what,” but by “who” had he been haunted? You’ve always been observant. This is why you’ve survived for so long.
“Um, it’s a long story… I’ll tell you in full one day. For now, I’ll just say that there was someone very special to me when I was a child… and it was hard for her to let go of me, when push came to shove.”
“Ah. I see.”
Although August has yet to conclude, the air around him is significantly chillier than what is characteristic of Tokyo’s late-summer hazy heat. Yuuta shivers, pulling his knees up to his chin.
“Yeah. But, um, anyways. If you need someone to talk to…to be by your side… I would like to be that person for you.” He utters your name like a prayer, too concentrated on not stuttering to be embarrassed at the earnest tremble in his voice. “I wish I had a confidante when I first got here. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“A confidante? But didn’t you have your friend?”
Your reply jolts him into looking at you. The expression on your face tells him that you truly mean it as a genuine inquiry.
“Well, um. I was being haunted…and Rika – er, she didn’t really listen to me. She actually got a little overprotective, I think.”
“Do you think she was evil?”
“No!” The denial explodes from his mouth before Yuuta can even fully process the nuance of the question posed. “No,” he repeats, at an appropriate volume, this time. “She was clingy, and protective, and possessive, and honestly violent, but she wasn’t evil. I loved her. I think a part of me always will.”
Love? What is he doing talking to you, alone, at night, about love? How embarrassing. He hadn’t meant to say all that!
Quickly, he stuffs his mouth with the remainder of his onigiri. No more talking. Just chewing.
If you are perturbed by his sentimental ramblings, you show no sign of it. If anything, your face remains impassive, serene, undisturbed like the surface of a tranquil pond.
“You loved her for that, then. Was she haunting you if you were in love?”
After he finishes choking down the final, sticky remnants of his dinner, Yuuta frowns, mulling over your words which are heavy by the virtue of their implication, yet hang and sway in the air as an empty noose dangles from the gallows.
“...I don’t know.” Yuuta says, at length. “That’s what I was diagnosed with when I came here. And it was hard for me to function, back when Rika was still here. I didn’t have any friends. And people close to me got hurt a lot.”
“It sounds like she was always trying to protect you… even when you were apart. I only wish one day, I find someone who would have the capacity to care for me like that…”
“You want that?”
“I do.” Not an ounce of hesitation in your firm, forthcoming reply. “I’ve spent my whole life as something worth less than notice or acknowledgement. Always feeling invisible, never having anyone – not even one person – who cared about me. Up until this point, I’ve lived life wanting to die every day.”
For lack of a better reply, Yuuta simply asks: “What changed?”
“...I met you, Okkotsu-san.”
Oh, wow.
It’s kind of funny – where other people describe feeling hot, Yuuta has always been chronically, terminally cold. Your words induce a rapidly onsetting deep-freeze which permeates every layer of his skin, every molecule of his bones, every wretched atom of marrow lying dormant inside of him, all of it, every fiber of being rooted to the spot in an indescribable emotion.
“I–I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I apologize for making you uncomfortable.”
That’s wrong. “No, you didn’t! You didn’t, I swear. Just… um, I’m also a person who is lonely, like you described. So I’m not used to, err, being, ah, important. To people? I guess?”
“Oh… I see.”
Clearly, the higher function of critical thought has abandoned him; this is the only explanation for how he reaches to grab your hands, sending the half-eaten yaki onigiri tumbling down to the dark earth beneath your anxiously shifting feet. He squeezes you, tightly, and is delighted in a morose sort of way to find your digits even colder than his.
“Let’s teach each other. How to be important to someone else.”
“Am I important to you, Okkotsu-san?”
God, he can’t stand it. The way you look at him, the uneven lilt in your fragile, quavering voice; it makes him want to bury himself alive inside of you.
“Yuuta,” he says. “Just ‘Yuuta’ is fine.”
;
Field missions have been a part of his daily life as a sorcerer since the day he arrived at Tokyo Tech. Battle has always been challenging for all the obvious reasons, but never before has Yuuta had to deal with the added hardship of fighting alongside you.
This, of course, is not meant to imply that you aren’t able to hold your own; on the contrary, your physical and cursed prowess has granted you the rank of semi-special grade despite this being your first year enrolled in any kind of formal jujutsu schooling. Your cursed technique is innate to your personality and sensibilities, which helps. But even if that weren’t the case, you would still be one of Tokyo’s top-performing students.
Missions are difficult because, despite all of this being true, Yuuta is powerless to curb the instinct to protect you during fights.
It manifests in small ways, at first: insisting to be paired up with you for assignments, always volunteering to partner up when splitting from the larger group during an investigation– things like this.
His behavior starts to stray into problematic territory the longer he is allowed to get away with it, unchecked.
“After Ijichi casts the veil, we’ll sweep the building. Inumaki and Yuuta, you two take the upper levels. We’ll do the bottom half,” orders Maki, gesturing between you and herself.
Immediately, Yuuta objects. “No. I’ll do the bottom half. You and Inumaki should go up together.”
“What?”
“I have a phobia of heights,” lies Yuuta, shamelessly. “It will impact my performance.”
“I have literally never heard you talk about being afraid of heights before.”
“Shake sushi,” agrees Inumaki.
You remain silent, pupils trembling, bottom lip severed between your teeth in a display of bashfulness reserved only for Yuuta’s blatant favoritism, which he wields frequently, in hopes to catch a even a single glimpse of you just as you appear now.
“I’m self-conscious about it,” he laughs, scratching the back of his head. “Thank you both for understanding.”
“Wait! Okkotsu, we didn’t–”
And with that, he grabs you by the wrist and pulls you away with him, sprinting into the abandoned love hotel before Maki or Inumaki can prevent you from absconding.
The two of you are laughing, tickled as usual at the effects of pissing Maki the hell off. Consequences will rain down in due time, no doubt, but for now, it feels best to bask in each other’s presence.
Once through the front door, Yuuta halts to an easy jog, guiding you past the cobweb-covered front desk, around the decrepit scraps of the once-ostentatiously decorated lobby, all the way to the far back corner, where a solid, heavy metal door obfuscates the emergency stairway.
“Oh, it looks jammed… Should we–”
Your stumped musing is cut off by the ricocheting cacophony of Yuuta’s boot violating the door. The metal itself bends and warps, caving in on itself in a hurry to make way for the unstoppable force of the sorcerer’s impassioned blow. He didn’t have to activate any cursed energy.
“Let’s go!” Chirps Yuuta, cheerfully.
In another context, maybe, it would be appropriate for his pulse to spike, for his hands to clam, for his breath to quicken, at the prospect of being alone with you. However, the reality of the current situation is that Yuuta is dragging you down into some dark, unknown depth, where neither of you will be disturbed. As you descend the concrete flights, visibility is increasingly hard to come by, and this, too, excites Yuuta. He is now forced to rely more heavily upon his other senses, which naturally prioritizes the scent of your sweat; the sound of your rabbit-paced heartbeat; the feeling of the paper-thin skin of your inner wrist; the taste of his own desire.
The cursed spirit they’re looking for has been wreaking havoc on the surrounding commercial strip, to the point where several businesses have had to draw their shutters in the wake of the love hotel’s primary foreclosure. Evidently, recurring, unresolved muder-suicides did not bode well for business.
“Um…if we’re supposed to be searching for the curse behind all of the couples’ deaths, shouldn’t we be looking in the bedrooms?”
Your voice echoes, tinny, in the thick, humid air of the emergency stairwell. They haven’t hit the bottom yet.
“Eh, maybe. This doesn’t feel like that kind of case, though.”
“Huh? How do you figure?”
Although moving swiftly, at the speed of light, your footfalls make barely a whisper against the aged concrete steps. Still, it’s enough for Yuuta’s hypersensitive ears to pick up on. Deprived of the sight of you, he drinks in the intimation of your existence, greedily.
“Heat rises,” he says, slowing pace as they approach what can only be the door to the boiler room, which has been left ominously ajar. “Cold sinks.”
“...Um, I’m not sure I follow.”
Stealthily, he slithers inside the slender crack between frame and the door itself. The angle of its opening doesn’t even waver. He pulls you along with him, replying as he moves, “Crimes of passion carry a kind of hot, frenetic energy. Panic, impulse, instinct – all of those things have lots of, hmm, friction? Like an explosion. Really hot at first, dangerously hot, and then it fizzles out into nothing.”
Unfamiliar pieces of enormous machinery tower in the dark. As much as you are able to while crouching so low to the floor, you take care not to trip over any errant pipes.
“So this isn’t a hot curse?”
“No,” Yuuta confirms. “The curse–” murder-suicides in a love hotel, how on-the-nose could it be? “–is premeditated by nature. Obsession solidifies over time. To act on that is a calculated choice.”
He stops short. You would’ve crashed straight into his shoulder blades if he weren’t painfully cognizant of your whereabouts at all times. He preemptively steadies you on your feet before you can even begin to stumble.
“At some point in this building, someone,” says Yuuta, quietly, as he cautiously eyes the opaque blackness before them, “spent a lot of time thinking about their beloved.”
“How can you tell?”
“Cold sinks,” Yuuta repeats.
Violence explodes, seemingly, out of nowhere. The curse attacks all at once, aiming perfectly towards you as though it had been lying in wait, stalking your every move. Yuuta always takes point whenever you pair up together, because he always insists on taking the first hit. It is this presupposition that leaves you wide open, vulnerable for attack from behind.
“Yuuta!!” You shriek, desperately dodging the grotesque appendages reaching out to you. Your body hits the floor just seconds shy of what would have been a gory fatality.
When you lift your head to identify the exact form of the curse, you still in uncomprehending terror.
“...Yuuta?”
How can this be?
Not even seconds prior, Yuuta had been a whole, living, breathing, intact person, guiding you as solidly as your own personal anchor. Why, then, does he appear to you now as a corpse, brain matter spilling down his temples, bloated limbs belying days of decay, flesh pale and tender and loose around the bone.
No, no, no. Had you been too late? Had the curse gotten to him first? Are you next?
Despair fills you, overflowing your sensibilities with the intrusive desire to rid the world of your miserable existence. How could you have let him slip through your fingers? How could you be expected to return to any semblance of a life, with Yuuta gone? You don’t deserve a future without Yuuta – you don’t even want to imagine one.
You’ll do what’s right, and offer your life in penance that you failed to protect his own.
Cursed energy welling within you, threatening to tear you apart at the very seams, you are about to implode with all the conviction of an abandoned lover– but a familiar, desperate cry of your name halts your ministrations.
That was Yuuta’s voice calling out to you.
But there he is, lying before you as nothing more than a desecrated body.
Unless…?
Yuuta calls your name again, sharply, this time in a tone adjacent to something scolding. The fear of disappointing Yuuta outweighs all else. It’s enough to snap you back to reality, to clear your clouded faculties and reveal to you the real Yuuta, who stands on guard just a few paces away, living, breathing, sweating, crouching, preparing for action.
“The curse,” he calls, eyes never leaving the thing in front of you. “It’s the curse. Don’t worry, it’s not real. You’re alive.”
“I’m alive?” You parrot incredulously. “That’s your corpse over there!”
“...Huh? My corpse? But I see yours–” He cuts himself off, face going eerily blank. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Close your eyes. Don’t flinch.”
In your defense, you try your best.
Remaining sightless and motionless is difficult as the rest of your senses are inundated with the disgustingly explicit soundtrack of slaughter. The sound of flesh forcibly sliding apart on the edge of Yuuta’s cursed katana is familiar, at this point, but no less gut-wrenching to bear witness to. When he deals the final blow, the evidence sprays all over the front of you, drenching you from head to toe in what should be the curse’s blood.
And yet, the liquid is frigid. Like you’ve been assaulted by the waves of the cruel, immortal sea.
“You can look now.”
Hesitantly, your eyes flutter open. You’re met with the sight of Yuuta, also covered head to toe in the viscous liquid produced by the corpse’s demise. Now that the exorcism has been completed, the preternatural heaviness is lifted from the building. But still, you struggle to breathe.
“Why didn’t you let me fight?” Something horrible announces itself, crowing from an ugly, dark corner of your mind best kept away from public view. “Was I going to slow you down?”
He sheathes in katana without sparing the gory weapon another glance. The space between your bodies is quickly extinguished, as Yuuta crosses the space in a matter of heartbeats. Blood roars in your ears, drowning out all which does not consist of Yuuta’s fixed gaze, Yuuta’s shaky breath, Yuuta’s pallid, sweaty skin, Yuuta, Yuuta, Yuuta.
“No.”
A large, wet palm meets your cheek. The soft squelch should be repulsive. Your stomach flips for entirely unrelated reasons.
“Why do you think all those murder-suicides happened?”
The question catches you off guard, but you answer, nonetheless. “The curse.”
“What do you think the curse made people see, for them to do something like that?”
You want to ask what the hell this line of questioning has to do with anything, with the mounting intensity in his stare, with the firm hand on your face, calloused thumb rubbing miniscule half-crescents into the crux of your jaw where the bone and flesh is pliant and breakable, could crack open like the shell of a creature already cooked alive, prepared to be split open for gluttonous consumption–
And then, rudely, the memory of mere moments prior hits you:
You’ll do what’s right, and offer your life in penance that you failed to protect his own.
“Oh,” you whimper, pathetically. “They see– the curse makes them see, um, someone special to them.”
“Not just ‘special,’” Yuuta corrects. From this close you can see the faint trail of blue-green veins spiderwebbing their way from his eyebags, metastasizing every which-way, just underneath his skin. “What is a curse?”
“The coalescence of negative energy secreted by human non-sorcerers.” You rattle off the elementary answer without second thought.
“What kind of curse was this?”
The moisture evaporates from your mouth. “A cold one.”
“Why?”
“‘Obsession solidifies over time. To act on that is a calculated choice,’” you mimic back.
Although, your tone doesn’t quite replicate the self-assured way by which Yuuta had originally imparted the information. No, your voice shakes apart, just as disjointed as the rest of your body feels at this moment.
“What did you see when you looked at the curse?”
He already knows. He wants you to say it. You want to plead for mercy, if only to savor the eroticism of begging for something you know will not be spared for you.
“I saw you, Yuuta.”
The curse’s blood is bitter and cold, like soured juice, when it is thrust upon your tongue. Yuuta is uncaring of the gore coating the both of you, the time-sensitive nature of this mission assignment, the way your knees sway and buckle as the adrenaline begins to leak from your body, replaced by a new, even more exhilarating sensation.
Opaque darkness still shrouds the boiler room; and yet, it isn’t enough to prevent your souls from recognizing one another. Hands wrestle with buttons, fingers grapple with zippers, teeth gnash into flesh, and the two of you take each other apart not with the reckless abandon of lovers under the duress of a transient liaison; no, you are methodological, thorough, all-consumed by the well-marinated desire that has been fertilizing from the moment you first came into contact with one another.
Yuuta throws you down to the floor and moves his body at a preternatural speed so that he beats you there, his hand cradling the back of your skull before it can strike the concrete.
“I saw you too,” he huffs into your mouth.
“You were d-dead…” The way you struggle to say the word is cute. You’re so fucking cute. God, he’s no better than a fucking curse.
It’s impossible to curb the temptation to sink his teeth into your neck, eagerly feeding off of the intoxicating effects of your pained, thrilled squeal. “You weren’t,” he murmurs into the abused flesh, pressing a kiss where he’d just gnawed. “You looked close, but you weren’t dead.”
“...Huh…?”
Can you even think right now? Do you understand what he’s saying to you? How could you possibly grasp the implications of what is transpiring, right now, when you’re laid out on the floor, snow-angeling in the blood and guts and gore of a murdered curse, delirious off of a heady combination of lust and adrenaline and fear?
“You were just barely alive. On the edge.” He moans, rocking the hard line of his body into your own. “Do you know what you said to me?”
“Tell me.”
“You asked me to finish the job.”
Back arching off of the grimy, gritty ground, every fiber of your being reaches out for the fingers that tear at the cloth of your uniform as though it is nothing more than some cheap costuming. “You know what? I knew it wasn’t the real you, when it said that. ‘S not like you.”
He’s monologuing to himself, it seems. You are far beyond the hope of verbally communicating in anything other than your strained, hoarse whines.
“You’d never ask me to do that. You’d stay with me until the very end, wouldn’t you?”
Desperately, hopelessly, you nod, your fingernails carving your intentions into the meat of his shoulders. When had his shirt come off? Did you do that?
Are you the one tearing away the last bits of offending clothing, or is that him? Do you growl in stoked desire as he breaches your entrance, or does that inhuman noise come from the both of you?
When Yuuta is buried inside of you, he feels like he’s finally been laid to rest. There is the warm, comforting embrace often described as death – but instead of an eternal bliss found at the conclusion of his life, Yuuta is able to access this euphoria by burying himself inside of you. You are his headstone, his tomb, his coffin: all of you exists to house the death of all of him, and without him inside of you, you would live on in aimless unfulfillment, anxiously awaiting the day a beautiful boy will come to die under your care and linger with you in eternity.
You are–warm, hot, burning up, self-immolating beneath his fingers. Every thrust forward threatens to scald his hips on your molten flesh.
“Fu-fu-fu-fu-fu–” you stutter, body shuddering to life, rising from the ground, seizing and contorting in strange shapes as you struggle and fail to cope with the insurgence of pleasure coursing through you. “Yuu–ta–”
“Promise me.”
“Wha–”
“Promise me,” he hisses, hands coming to your throat. “Promise you’ll stay. You’re too important to me, I c-can’t lose you too, hnnnnn–”
Promise you, I’ll never leave you, is what you are able to only mouth, breath and voice held captive in his unrelenting grasp. Because you cannot voice it entirely, you pour all the contents of your heart and soul into the sentiment. Fingers rising weakly to clasp onto his, you tighten his grip on your windpipe and take comfort in the drowsy haziness that cradles your consciousness.
When he comes, he holds you to him like he’s afraid you’re going to crawl off and die somewhere else if he doesn’t keep you right where you are, crushed against, his shivering frame, so tightly bound to him that he can hear your diaphragm contract and expand, over and over and over again, each breath cut short by a wheeze or a sob.
Through it all, he cradles you. Naked, bruised, and forever scarred from the sight of not-Yuuta’s rotting corpse, you cling to him and release your sorrows into the dark, empty abyss of the boiler room.
Back and forth, he rocks your body, soothing your nervous system into an illusion of safety. There is no such thing as “safety,” not for jujutsu sorcerers – but together, with limbs intertwined as one, this is the closest you can come to fooling yourselves into hoping, one day, for a safe place. A safe person, even.
“Shhh,” he simpers, thumb swiping your cheek, which is damp from an unholy mixture of cursed blood, sweat, spit, and tears. “We’re together. It’s all okay.”
“T-together…”
“Yeah. Just you and me.”
;
“You don’t think that’s an issue?”
“I’m not saying there isn’t an issue. But we should tread lightly, here. We don’t know what could happen if we interfere.”
“If we don’t interfere, the newbie might die.”
“It won’t get to that point. I won’t let it happen. Oi, don’t blow smoke in my face. That’s unladylike.”
“Don’t lecture me on what’s ‘ladylike,’ cocksucker.”
“Wow! That burns!”
“Come here, I’ll show you what else burns.”
Lingering outside the door to the infirmary, you shift your weight from foot to foot, unsure of the appropriate course of action to take. Clearly, Gojo and Ieiri are in the middle of a conversation that is not meant to be heard by prying ears – not that you can make heads or tails of what they’re talking about, anyways.
All you wanted to do was come see Ieri for your weekly check-up, as was customary following the love hotel mission. The adrenaline must have numbed your pain receptors in the moment, because as soon as you’d arrived back on campus, your entire body felt like you’d been through a grinder.
You were kinda confused, at first, because you didn’t even engage the curse in combat. In due time, of course, you remembered what–or who–had actually bruised your ribs, broken your skin, sprained your joints, left you carrying the contours of his wanting.
Why were they talking about you dying, anyways? Yuuta saved your life. Nothing was going to happen to you as long as he was by your side.
“Hey.”
Jumping out of your skin has started to feel good, kind of. You look forward to Yuuta’s unceremonious greetings as he creeps up on you in silence, futilely waiting for you to detect his concealed presence.
“H-hi,” you demure. Why are you shy? He’s been so far inside of you he practically fused into your skeleton. Blushing because he caught you unawares is ridiculous.
“Aren’t you going to go in?”
Wondering how he knows what you’re here for is pointless. Equally as useless is trying to deduce how he was able to figure out your recurring appointment time. He’s Yuuta – it’s natural for him to acquire knowledge about you, as easily as one picks low-hanging fruit from a tree.
“Umm, I think they’re talking about something.”
He frowns. “About what?”
You hesitate. Should you tell him what you heard? “Ah, I don’t know...”
“Are you sure?”
You remain silent, unsure of how to proceed. Part of you wants to bare your innards at all times, whenever Yuuta is around. It feels natural, like a rabbit’s cowering. On the other hand…
Somehow, the thought of telling Yuuta the truth–yeah, Gojo-sensei and Ieiri-sensei think there’s a chance I might die soon–would not end well for anyone involved. If there was something you truly needed to know, you’re sure your senseis would tell you.
Right?
“Please trust me,” you whisper, only feeling a little guilty. You’re doing it to protect him. If something dangerous is going to happen to you, Yuuta shouldn’t be involved at all. He must live. You must make sure of it.
Reluctantly, he acquiesces, although he insists on accompanying you to your check-up that week. Strangely, neither Gojo nor Ieiri seem surprised that he is here with you, and make no effort to question why. Yuuta is allowed to linger at your sides as Ieiri takes your vitals, reviews the status of your various injuries, and even holds your hand when she scans your cursed energy levels. Thankfully, you are on track to make a perfect recovery.
In fact, not only are you replenishing the strength and ability that had been impaired during the love hotel mission–you are regenerating cursed energy at rates which exceed your natural capacities.
When Ieiri relays this to you, Gojo, who has been lingering in the infirmary for some unknown reason (you suspect it’s simply to annoy Ieiri with his very presence) speaks up: “Do you know what that means, kid?”
“Um…” You start, nervous. Everyone’s eyes are on you. It feels like you’re under a microscope. “I’m moving up a rank?”
Gojo bursts into a fit of giggles, doubling over at the waist. “Wow, what an opportunist! Haha, maybe in the future, if your cursed energy continues to compound exponentially. I’m asking you about the cause. Any idea why you’re suddenly overflowing with power?”
“No.” Your answer is as truthful as it is anxious.
“Typically, a dramatic increase in output like this only occurs after a Binding Vow. Make any life-or-death promises, recently?”
It’s supposed to be a joke, the way Gojo says it. You can tell because his crow’s feet dip down just far enough away from underneath his blindfold that you can tell whenever he smiles with his eyes. And he is smiling, after he cracks the joke. You’re also able to intuit when he stops smiling, as the depressions on his face smooth out into a careful blankness. You are thirty seconds too late to the punchline. Instead of laughing along, you remain damningly silent, and Yuuta shifts uncomfortably at your side.
“Okay,” says Gojo, clapping his hands. “Alright.”
Although you’re fully clothed in your school uniform, it makes you feel chillingly exposed when what feels like all Six of his Eyes bore into the collection of dark marks ringing your neck in a brutal, makeshift collar. Those were not, in fact, the work of a curse.
Yuuta fidgets with the flimsy paper lining the examination bed. You kick your feet like a child in time out.
“You owe me seven thousand yen,” Shoko deadpans.
“Hey! Didn’t we say forty-five?”
“Don’t kid around.”
Am I in trouble? The terrified plea swells to the front of your mouth, begging to escape. You force the words to sit, stay, and curdle on your tongue.
“Can we go now?” Asks Yuuta, uncharacteristically direct.
Given the odd gravity in the room, you don’t expect Gojo’s easy wave of his hand, dismissing the two of you with a flippant hum. Not having to be told twice, you hightail it out of the infirmary, grateful to be released from the constant invasion of privacy and security that is a prolonged existence within the reach of Gojo’s Six Eyes.
Finally alone once more, the training grounds are a welcome reprieve for you and Yuuta, who crash into the grass clearing hand-in-hand, heartbeats synced.
“Did we make a Binding Vow? When we…you know…”
Yuuta’s voice trails off, lamely.
“What if we did? Would you regret it?”
“Huh? No, of course not! It’s just…well–”
“Well, what?”
“That’s kind of permanent,” Yuuta whispers, dark pools of obsidian sorrow holding your gaze in its cruel, captivating clutches. “And we don’t know what will happen if it breaks.”
For one second, the rawness of it hits you. Fear washes down your back, prickling your flesh, raising goosebumps, locking your spine rigidly into place. The two of you had certainly made a life-or-death promise, infused with cursed energy and blood and…other…bodily fluids. To inadvertently perform a Binding Vow meant that the sheer intensity behind both of your wills was purely, wholly devoted to the promise.
Which is why you take a step closer to him, voice steady. “I didn’t make that promise with the intention to break it. Ever.”
He sucks in a sharp breath. “Don’t…you can’t be sure of that.”
“I am.”
“You won’t be able to guarantee it.”
“I will.”
Familiarly calloused hands grab your shoulders, jostling you with charged intention. “You don’t get it! My favorite person in the whole world already left me once. If that happens again, I can’t… I don’t know…”
“Yuuta.” You don’t have to lay a finger on him for his entire body to stand at attention, drawing tall and taught, when you call his name. “I will never leave you, even if I die.”
The ensuing kiss tastes like metal.
Despite the passionate fervor with which he devours you, his mouth his cold, and his digits even more so as they dig into your cheeks, your throat, your waist, your chest, groping and pulling and kneading your flesh to loosen the rigor mortis that has arrested your willingness.
“D-don’t, ah, make any m-more marks…”
Your protest is, at best, unconvincing, the person least of all convinced being yourself, as Yuuta’s teeth and tongue on the tender flesh of your neck make you feel like you’re about to leave your body. “Hnng–Gojos-sensei already knows, I think.”
“Good.” He’s crazed, nipping and slurping at your sensitive soft bits like a man starved. “Let him know. Everyone should know. I shouldn’t even–” he kisses “–have–” he bites “–to say it–” he licks you in between speaking, as though it goes against the grain of his being to part ways with you for more than just a few jagged inhalations.
The ground hits you hard, reprimanding you for your clumsiness with a firm impact on your backside. Yuuta pursues with haste, hands slamming down on either side of your head, ripping the grass in retribution.
“Yuuta,” you hiss, hands flying to his dark mop of hair, trying to reel him back – in vain, of course. “We are outside. In the middle of the day. Anyone could walk by!”
“Don’t care.”
His eyes are glazed, half-lidded, pupils blown wide and deeply dark as a gunshot wound, uncaring of your anxiety as he attempts to dive back into you.
“Wait! What if someone sees me?” Now, he rears back. “I don’t want anyone else to see, Yuuta… only you get to see me like this.”
Even the ants traipsing across the clearing stop dead in their tracks, rendered motionless, silent, at the abrupt onslaught of highly charged cursed energy that washes through every living and non-living thing within a five-mile radius.
“Okay.”
Wordlessly, your world upends as you are thrown over a wide shoulder clad in spotless, wrinkled white. You’ve always thought it was funny – how Yuuta’s uniform never managed to permanently stain itself with any of the gore he frequently encountered, and yet, there was always a noticeable depression in the seams, ever-lurking, complicating the otherwise flawless expanse, evoking a sense of pity.
Even when the shirt flies off, abandoned to crumple sadly in the corner of his bedroom, you can’t get its image out of your head. That spotless white. Those gleaming gold buttons dripping in iridescent rivulets down the front of the garment. Only within the intricate designs etched into their surface is one able to glean the barest hint of blood, staining the metal a pale crimson. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t notice it.
But you have always sought out his ugly, twisted parts. Even when he tries to hide. Even when he might duck from them himself.
That’s okay.
That’s why he has you.
When he bites you so hard that the wound draws blood; when his palms squeeze around your windpipe so deftly that you lose vision; when pins down your bruised hips, ignoring their wriggling avoidance; when his unquiet nature makes itself known, eclipsing the carefully bashful performance he puts on for his peers so that he might be liked, or loved, even–that is when you feel most connected to him. That is when your affections burn brightest.
And during the comedown, as he holds you close and rocks your brutalized body back and forth and back again, you are well aware that it is he himself who he seeks to soothe.
He doesn’t know, you realize, broken out of your post-coital mental haze with a pointed moment of clarity.
Yuuta has no clue what lurks inside the haunted catacombs of his soul.
What does it say about you, then, that his naivete only serves to further incense your want, smoldering like an inferno brewing at the base of a pyre, threatening to engulf your sorry corpse in entirety?
;
As third year trudges on, instruction takes less time in the classroom, or on campus. More frequently, you find yourself out on missions from sun-up to sundown, running around Tokyo-to and even surrounding prefectures. The grades of the curses you go up against only increase with time, and so, to, does your proximity to mortal danger.
Through it all, Yuuta is present. Indignantly so. Despite your rank as a semi-special grade sorcerer, you have yet to embark solo on an assignment. The pair of you are one combative unit, at this point so intertwined in sentiment and instinct that rarely is it necessary to reach for verbal exchange while engaged in battle. It is as though the reserve of cursed energy you draw from is a pool shared between you, a combination of your innate abilities plus an additional overflow, supplied by the Binding Vow you had consummated all those months ago.
So close are you, now, that Yuuta grows comfortable – confident, even – with your hold on his proverbial leash. These days, he is less neurotic when you inquire as to his whereabouts. Your prying questions provoke within him nothing other than a deep-seated sense of reassurance. He no longer doubts where he stands with you, as he once did when you were still a fresh-faced, mid-year transfer adjusting to life at Tokyo Tech.
In retrospect, he recognizes that he should never have let his guard down.
It’s his fault, really. Entirely his fault. The extra strength provided by the powerful effects of the Binding Vow deluded him into a false sense of security.
He shouldn’t have been so careless with your life. He shouldn’t have strayed so far from your side. He shouldn’t have let you out of his sight. He shouldn’t have left you alone, even if it was only for a split second–not even.
Once again, he has failed to save the most important person in his life. Somehow, losing you is worse than losing Rika. He is no longer a child. He possessed both the skill and ability to save you.
And yet, he had been absent in your time of need.
The one time you’d been off on a mission without him. The one and only time. Principle Yaga’s sorry excuse was that the higher-ups found it strange that you, as a semi-special grade, had never completed a solo assignment. Apparently, your rank was being threatened if you refused any longer to display independent capability.
Well. Now there’s no rank for you to claim, anymore.
After news of your death reaches him, he roams campus like an aimless specter, as though he is the one who has been robbed of life.
In a way, he has. Half of his being has perished. He limps, lopsided, dragging the phantom weight of your body with him wherever he goes.
It takes a while to get used to the absence of your physical, living, breathing manifestation. As a fellow sorcerer, you have been wholly eradicated from the fabric of his reality.
But as a spirit…?
Death is not enough to break a Binding Vow – this, Yuuta knows better than anyone. He retains his augmented cursed abilities, along with your presence. The two of you join once more in battle, as he summons you to protect and guard him in life as he failed to do for you. Your selfless nature has never been more clearly evident. Not a single call goes unanswered, not a single need of his unmet.
Is this a haunting?
No, he doesn’t think so.
When the two of you had still been skittish and shy around one another, nothing more than a pair of innocently covetous children, you’d dared him to reflect on his relationship with Rika. What had been translated to him as a haunting, you reimagined as something more corporeal, something genuine, something worthy of gratitude, and love.
This is how he chooses to think of you – the both of you, together, still joined in perfect union. No matter the fact that you will watch him age, change, develop, and eventually die, one day, should he be so lucky. You do not haunt his waking hours. You do not terrorize his dreams.
You love him in a way that transcends the bounds of space and time.
He has not been cursed. Rather, he has been blessed with your unconditional love.
To earn true forgiveness, he must show you his, as well. You must occupy his every waking thought. You will invade his every intention. You are at the forefront of his mind when he rises with the dawn, and the memory of your breath against the shell of his ear whispers to him good night. You dress him. You urge him to sustenance. You machinate his combat. You heal his wounds. You wipe his tears when he sobs, alone, terribly alone, sobbing into his knees after each time the life of a friend meets a senseless, violent conclusion.
You are still there when he wraps a rough, harried palm around his throbbing arousal, thrusting up into an elusive, now long-gone pleasure. You guide his hands’ journey across the hazardous dips and valleys of his rib cage, the grotesque concave of his stomach, the sharp blades of his hip bones. His skeleton threatens to crawl outside of his flesh. It yearns for something beyond this senseless cycle of bloodshed, grief, and rage.
Never does he feel closer to salvation than when he is on the precipice of ecstasy, dehydrated, underfed, delirious, heart beating so fast that it limits his vision, his lung capacity. When he occupies this liminal space, it is not the brink of orgasm which he straddles. As he approaches climax, he yearns not for an explosion of wet heat, but for the euphoric embrace of a final ending: your arms around him once more, real, tangible, warm.
Until then, he will trudge onwards. Miserably alive. Cold inside and out. Numb to physical pain, constantly inundated with the wounds inflicted on his spirit, his sentiments, his soul.
Solace finds him in the fact that you committed to remain by his side, forever. How could he wallow in total despair when this remains true?
You chose this, after all.
You chose him.
You did.
Didn’t you?
#okkotsu yuta#okkotsu yuuta#okkotsu yuuta x reader#okkotsu yuta x reader#yuta x reader#yuuta x reader#okkotsu yuuta x y/n#okkotsu yuta x y/n#jjk x reader#jjk x y/n#jjk ao3#jjk reader insert#jjk fic#jujutsu kaisen reader insert#jjk smut#okkotsu yuuta smut#jjk reader insert smut#my writing#mine#fics
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For NaClYoHo you recommend putting on a 20 to 40 minute podcast episodes to clean to. Can you make any recommendations? The majority of mine run well over an hour for each episode.
I feel like podcasts have kind of gotten longer in general, is that just me? Maybe it's the pandemic, or maybe just my tastes shifting. In any case, a lot of mine run long now too, but looking at my playlist here are some shorter podcasts I recommend:
PEMcast -- put on by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, they cover a wide variety of artistic and local cultural topics (their latest is about the bats the museum is hosting!)
99% Invisible -- about "invisible" designs that shape our world. "Used To Be A Pizza Hut" is a great episode, and their partnership with Articles Of Interest about Hawaiian shirts was brilliant.
Criminal -- True crime reported on by an extremely smart woman with a beautiful voice. It's not the typical true crime podcast in that she approaches it more like longform journalism, and sometimes the crimes themselves are very whimsical. She also does "Phoebe Reads A Mystery" where she reads one chapter of a public domain mystery novel each day; I recommend Dracula and The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, although there's a variety of lengths on those.
Bridgewater -- A fiction podcast featuring Misha Collins as a skeptical specialist in mythology who delves into the mystery of his father's death many years before. I stopped listening after season one, a bit disappointed in the denoument, but most of season one is great and I am actually going to try to listen to S2 as part of NaNo.
"City Cast" Your Local City -- not every city has them, but City Cast is a locally hosted show in most major cities about what's happening. City Cast Chicago is EXCELLENT.
Mailin' It -- the official podcast of the USPS, which sure is....something. It's fascinating to listen to in an anthropological sense, but also the subject matter is occasionally quite compelling. I especially like episode 7, "Stamps, An American Obsession".
The Allusionist -- all about how words shape our lives. I got into it with 145, "Parents", about gender identity and pregnancy/birth, which informed both Infinite Jes and Royals/Ramblers.
Levar Burton Reads -- Levar Burton reads SFF short stories charmingly. (This is on the longer side but most are still under an hour.)
Cautionary Tales -- Tim Hartford looks to history and what it can teach us; I run hot and cold but I stick with it because of gems like "The Art Forger, The Nazi, and the Pope", "Wrong Tools Cost Lives" and most recently "Photographing Fairies" (about the Cottingley Fairies and how Elsie Wright was, actually, the photoshop genius of her day.)
Mob Queens -- I will forever recommend Mob Queens, a single-run series about Anna Genovese, who dunned in her mobster husband, took over some of his business, and lived a queer and fabulous life with her butch partner as a gay nightclub doyenne in midcentury America.
Also most don't include lengths but the Participation Form Results Sheet has a spot for "what media are you going to use" and people have been putting suggestions. Readers, feel free to add your own suggestions in comments or reblogs. (Remember, I don't repost asks sent in response to other asks!)
Happy listening everyone!
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We’ll Finish This Later (Daemon x Reader)
So as we all know I have put on pause Daemon for a while but I am however opening the requests for Otto Hightower (shut the hell up I don’t want to hear it) and of course all the others are also active, also comments, likes and reblogs are deeply appreciated I want to know what you guys think of my imagines. Enjoy!
Queen Alicent loved all her children, truly and fiercely, however, she adored her daughter (y/n), the princess had a way with people, she was quite the diplomat from an early age, and her beauty and graciousness took her a step further, everything she did was just added details to any plan she had carefully created in her head.
The flower amongst the dragons as she was called, painted herself as a kind girl, gentle and rather gullible, it couldn’t be further from the truth, she had inherited her grandsires cunningness, the firstborn from queen Alicent, the favorite grandchild of Otto, (y/n) was always tending to her father, asking him to join her in the garden, became the cupbearer for his meetings, the perfect daughter.
(Y/n) was the beacon of hope for the greens, a princess that was noble for the common folk, she took great pride in perfecting her duties, she appeared to not possess an ounce of a flaw as she strolled around the castle, hair that went right over her breasts, a tall figure, plump lips, and dark purple eyes, a true Targaryen beauty.
“Such a grim day isn’t it mother? Poor lady Laena”
“Indeed my dearest”
“I feel bad for her two daughters, I do not know what I would do if I lost you”
Alicent felt a tug in her heart at her daughters' vulnerable confession. Compelled by her emotions the queen wrapped one arm around her daughters' shoulders to bring her close, while the other brushed her hair behind the young girl's shoulder.
“I am not going anywhere my sweet”
“Father is talking with prince Daemon, I should go over to profess my condolences”
“That would be a lovely idea, go on my love I must speak to your grandsire”
(Y/n) simply nodded before she left her mother's side with the next target being her father and Prince Daemon, fortunately for her, she was quicker than her half-sister who was lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right time to approach was not going to work when another was also on the prowl.
“Prince Daemon, I am sorry if I interrupt but I wish to offer my deepest condolences”
“Thank you dear (y/n), you are very kind”
“I must admit it is pleasant to have you back, father talks about you every day”
“Does he?”
“Of course, it is almost like I grew up with you after countless hours of listening to my father recalls stories of your adolescent years”
Daemon chuckled as (y/n) leaned closer to her father. (Y/n) had the greatest relationship with her out of all her siblings, every morrow she would be the one to wait outside her fathers' chambers so they could walk together and break their fast, she had even named her horse after him.
Daemon was amazed by the woman that was standing before him, last time he had seen her she was a mere toddler, now she was an elegant lady, a true princess. Her dress clung onto her as Daemon's gaze started to work its way down, although he quickly looked away to mentally cursing at himself for even entertaining such thoughts for the daughter of Viserys.
“I shall leave you two be, I am sure you have a lot to catch up on”
(Y/n) took only one more step before she hesitantly came to a halt, her arms slightly stretched towards the mourning prince, Daemon picked up on her body language as he straighten out his back, (y/n) slowly wrapped her arms around his neck for a brief embrace, once she felt Daemons arms snake around her waist it was when she pulled away.
The moment of physical touch was enough for him to be engulfed by her sweet fruity scent and her soft, delicate touch, once she was out of his grasp her eyes captured him, round and bright like the finest of jewels, and a smile danced along her lips while her cheeks appeared to be painted the slightest of red from their intimacy.
“I will be expecting to see you for supper father”
-
(Y/n) was too smart for her good, she had prepared every detail accustomed to what she wished to achieve, Daemon was certainly a man that enjoyed indulging in the sweet taste of the wine so he had started to drink early in the day.
(Y/n) had managed to wait so she can “coincidentally” meet him on the way to the dinner table, innocently she had requested for him to take her to the ocean.
“I have heard so much about you, yet we have never been properly acquainted”
Daemon had thought nothing of it and agreed, brushing it off as just curiosity for a distant family member.
As dinner came to an end Daemon did as he promised and walked with her to the shore if he was honest (y/n) was pleasant to be around, her light-hearted attitude occupied his mind for a minute, and she guided his focus away from all the drama.
“Did you love lady Laena?”
“We were content within our marriage I suppose”
“Judging from your character that is not something you would be looking for my prince”
“What do you mean?”
“A man like you is not made from the same cloth as my father, you are a man of passion, tension, a dark and lustful desire”
Her voice was slow and erotic, their goblets and two now empty carafes of Dornish wine lay next to them in the sand. Daemon did not have time to react when he realized (y/n) had thrown her leg over him and was now sitting on his lap, her chest touched his, and her legs brushed against his outer thigh.
Daemon's life had done a full circle within a few days, his consciousness could not quite rest as of late, his minding racing with how different his reality would be now.
(Y/n) smirked, the princess had countless attributes however she was known to be stubborn, whatever her heart craved she must have no matter what. Daemon was somewhat baffled, like a deer that was met with its hunter.
“(Y/n)”
“Yes”
She breathed out, her voice only audible to his ears, (y/n) slowly leaned in until her lips met his earlobe, and her hot breath tickled him in the best way possible. Daemon felt her fingertips caress him from his wrist up to his shoulder until he finally gained the willpower to grab her wrist with his one hand and slightly push her away enough to meet her eyes.
“Tell me to stop, command me to leave and I’ll do it, do you want me gone Daemon?”
Her voice was so melodic, as the ocean of waves complimented the sound that escaped her lips his eyes wandered down to them, she was breathtaking, a young, beautiful woman.
Daemon's grip loosened from her wrist and went up so he can allow his thumb to brush over her bottom lip, her sparkling eyes filled with lust, and her breath was hollow while she never broke eye contact, she was challenging him.
Her lips parted and with a blink of an eye, she felt his lips collide with hers for a passionate kiss, he had mastered all his courage and finally let her push him off the edge.
For a maiden (y/n) was quite a sight, she did not seem to care if anyone were to stumble upon their coupling. Daemon only needed to pull his trousers a bit down to earn a hiss from her once he entered, she remained seated on his lap while his one had grabbed a fist full of her and the other wrapped its way around her waist.
“Move like the ocean love”
He guided (y/n) through it, the amount of pleasure she was experiencing made her uncontrollably shake, and her moans danced around with his while their bodies collided, he held on to her for dear life as she as well, her nails dug into his biceps and his pleasure mixed with the pain brought him to a place of ecstasy, the adrenaline of getting caught rushed through both of them.
“Daemon”
“It’s alright love, let it wash you away”
And just like the waves, the sensation of relief with built-up arousal washed through her leaving her completely dry, a mess of a woman that fell in Daemon's arms like a rag doll.
Daemon cackled at her inability to control herself, he could do this all night.
And he did, oh how he thoroughly enjoyed her enthusiasm and thirst for sensual encounters, he kept going until his eyes could not be kept open no matter how hard he tried, the wine had run its course and the tiredness of the act forced him to fall asleep in the sand. (Y/n) saw the first rays of sunshine when she decided it was time for the next part of the plan.
-
Daemon was placed in the eye of the storm the moment he was awoken by the guards his brother had to send for him.
Stupidly he just considered there was a ruckus due to him going missing for a long period, he could not have been more wrong.
The servants report the princess disheveled, tears streaming down her eyes when she burst into the room, lord Corlys, the hand of the king and her father were all there when (y/n) fell on her knees in front of her father.
“I’m so sorry, father please help me”
“What is wrong dear? What has gotten into you?”
“I-I”
“Leave us”
The king instructed. Gently he helped his daughter to sit on a chair, he waited patiently to hear what has caused such despair to make his daughter beg for forgiveness.
Viserys was furious, his brother took advantage of his daughter once again, he had defiled her, and ruined her reputation, he was certain that within the girl's delirium, she did not consider the whispers of the servants that had crossed her path on the way here.
He could not stay upset at his daughter, the girl cried with such intense hiccups that made Viserys worry about her losing her breath or going into hysteria.
“Please father does not execute me”
“Of course not, I will make this right, go to your room and everything will be fine”
Daemon was oblivious to such an event, so when he sauntered into his brothers' room per his request he was met with a goblet flying at him. Thankfully for the prince, he was quick enough to duck as the goblet graced the top of his head, the sound of it being crashed to the wall was deafening, Daemon's eyebrows raised at his brothers' anger, Viserys was never a man of aggression, to tease such a reaction out of him meant that something horrible had taken place.
“How fucking dare you! With my daughter, again!”
“What?”
“Do not play the fool with me! (Y/n)! at your wife's funeral! Have you no shame?!”
Daemon's blood froze, were they seen? Was she alright? Questions raced through his drunken mind causing even more damage. Viserys wanted to kill his brother on the spot, he had exiled him last time when Rhaenyra swore that nothing had happened between them, and now (y/n) was worried for her own life, he brought his flesh and blood to tears, the image of her burned in Viserys brain, he had crossed the sacred line.
“Brother!”
“No! I do not want to hear your empty excuses, you are a vile man. You will make this right”
“What will you command me to do this time?”
“Your wedding will take place within a fortnight”
“Wedding?!”
Daemon exclaimed shocked which only caused Viserys to be outraged. Viserys slammed his fists on the table as he rose from his seat, after that he pushed his chair away making it crash to the ground, Daemon was reminded of their last encounter, the scandal with Rhaenyra, the knife Viserys had pulled on Daemon's neck, he wisely grew silently as his brother panted.
“We will fly to the red keep and you will wed her, you will rectify your folly and wed her like an honorable man, it is the least you could do after such inappropriate behavior”
-
(Y/n) was on cloud nine when her mother announced the news, she had listened to the whispers of Alicent and Otto about who will the princess wed, it terrified her when she found out some of her grandsires suggestions were incredibly old and ugly men, Daemon was a prince, a handsome man and eligible for a princess.
A knock interrupted her preparations for the ceremony, her mother had accompanied her with her ladies to make sure her daughter was perfect for her wedding, Alicent despised this decision, her precious little girl was marrying a man of such ill behavior, yet she did not express such worries to (y/n), she simply smiled away the pain and did what she owed to do for (y/n)s special day.
“You may enter”
Rhaenyra appeared to everyone’s surprise, most of her family had already paid their respects to congratulate (y/n) for her wedding match, Rhaenyra had grown silent, confined in her chambers or anywhere that was away from her half-sister.
(Y/n) looked beautiful in her wedding gown, which found Rhaenyra like a twist of a knife in her bleeding wound that was created in her heart once the wedding news was announced to her.
“Sister, what a surprise”
“May I have a moment with the princess? Alone”
Alicent waited for her daughter to nod to her before she escorted the servants and herself, once the two sisters were left alone (y/n) took a step down her stool to be closer to Rhaenyra.
“Came to congratulate me?”
“No, I have not, I came to see a mastermind of evilness”
“I do not follow”
“I knew you were capable of a plethora of things, although I would never have guessed you were this desperate”
“Desperate? Sister, you are being cruel for no reason”
“Do not play the innocent act, everyone else has fallen for your acts but you cannot fool me, you were the one that initiated it weren’t you? What did you tell him? Did you promise him that no one will know? Did you strip yourself of all clothing in front of him”
(Y/n) smirked as Rhaenyra was losing her cool composure. Even though the princess was dressed in a wonderful gown (y/n) could spot the dark circles under her eyes, her cheeks sinking in from what she guessed was a loss of appetite.
(Y/n) been at odds with her sister for years now, she did not play the game, she merely paraded herself around and do whatever she wanted, scoffing at strategy and protocols, (y/n) viewed her sisters as utterly dim-witted when it came to life, “you will never win the game if you do not appear to be playing by the rules, be observant, be patient and be careful, then you will be given the crown of the winner”
Her grandsire had once bestowed that advice in one of their lunches that they had privately.
“Oh please, Rhaenyra I am undoubtedly aware of how you wish that all of those vile accusations were true. You cannot fathom the idea that I was just simply better than you”
“Daemon never loved you, he never will, he simply fucked you and then was forced to marry you”
“Is that so? Well then, how do you explain that Daemon paid a visit in my chambers last night, only to give me this lovely present”
(Y/n) had tirelessly worked for the past days to get in Daemon's good graces, to grant him the woman he deserved, a wife that cared for him, a lustful woman that sneaked her way into his chamber to remind him of their heated encounter, the thrill of a worthy opponent with a mind of her own, he was left to only be mesmerized by her, so the night before the big day of their official union he offered a symbol.
When (y/n) opened the small box Rhaenyra was puzzled, for (y/n) that was even more entertaining.
“Princess Alyssa’s hairpiece, prince Baelon had gifted her with it on the night before their wedding, Daemon told me he held on to it until he found his love match”
Daemon was a man that enjoyed freedom, though there was only a handful of people that knew his deepest desire, that was a loyal companion, a trustful confidant.
(Y/n) could be that for him, the salvation in a form of a princess, the balm to soothe his family's wounds, she could offer him everything ever wanted, a family of his own, a life that he was seen as the protector of his offsprings.
“Where did you get that? Daemon would never give this to you”
“I understand your uneasiness about the fact that I won but let us be honest here, you never loved him, you barely even like him, all you care about is that he goes against father's wishes and how you could selfishly make him your puppet so he can do your dirty work, to whisper things in his ear to get him riled up and hide behind his anger, you have been given everything on a silver platter but I would rather die than let you destroy him”
Even though she was whispering her tone was harsh, her face so close to Rhaenyra while her eyes burned holes in her older half-sister. Rhaenyra wanted to get physical, slapping her forever talking to her like that though she knew she would lose the fight immediately if she raised her hand to the princess.
“He will never be happy with you, he will figure out your vile schemes and despise you for it”
“What vile schemes are you accusing me of sister? Daemon is a man grown he wanted to lay with me, our wedding is taking place a fortnight after the incident he could have already escaped to one of the free cities, he is choosing to stay. Daemon is a lot of things but he is not an imbecile? He knows I will love him, I will give him the sons and the family he wants, do not worry my dear, I will make sure I name one of our daughters after you”
Rhaenyra was about to respond when a knock was heard, their heads snapping to the direction of the door before (y/n) called for the person to enter.
Daemon, completely unaware of what has been happening in his future wife's chambers entered to find the two sisters in the room, he grinned at the sight of them having a moment before the young sister would walk down the Sept.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all, I just wanted to share your gift with my sister, could you please place it on my head Rhaenyra?”
Rhaenyra was put between a rock and a hard place, Rhaenyra always felt like Daemon was slipping through her fingers and now she had to watch him get married to her little half-sister while she rot in a loveless marriage with a man that was not even interested in women making her reside to the arms of the commander of the city watch.
She mastered up the courage to put her pride and mighty yearning for Daemon aside to ever so gently place the beautiful piece of jewelry on (y/n)s head, bitterly she recalled the time that Daemon would bring her all sorts of stuff from his travels, however, none of them were from his mother, “what does (y/n) have that I don’t?” She thought as tears welled up in her eyes that she batted away.
“You look beautiful, I should give you two some privacy”
“No it’s alright, I just wanted to take one good look at my bride before the ceremony, if I stay here for any longer I don’t think I will be able to restrain myself”
He joked making (y/n) giggle. The bride simply forgot Rhaenyras existence in the room when she marched for Daemon's arms, his hug felt like the safest place on earth to her while Daemon could swear he was wrapping his arms around the most valuable thing in the world as he exhaled with her wrapped around him the entire weight was lifted off of his shoulders.
“There are probably looking for me, I must go”
“Alright, we’ll finish this later”
“That we will”
He promised in a hushed note before placing a kiss on the top of her head. That’s when Rhaenyra felt it sink in, (y/n) was right, she had won.
Requests are open!
#daemon targaryen x y/n#daemon x reader#daemon targaryen#daemon x y/n#daemon targaryen fanfic#daemon targaryen fanfiction#daemon#daemon targaryen x reader#daemon targaryen fic#daemon targaryen headcanon#daemon targaryen imagine#daemon au#daemon targaryen x oc#daemon targaryen x you#hotd daemon#daemon prince#hotd fanfic#hotd#hotd fic#hotd imagine#hotd x reader#house of the dragon#house of the dragon imagine#house of the dragon x reader#hotd season 1
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The Sun Will Rise
Wake Up, Chapter 8
Series Masterlist Next Chapter
pairing: Matt Murdock x fem!reader
summary: In an attempt to stop the advances of an unwanted suitor, Matt Murdock accidentally condemns you to being his fake girlfriend.
warnings: sexual assault themes and descriptions, if non-con themes trigger you please do not read. other warnings: swearing, misogynistic language, violence
This chapter is very intense. I tried to keep the S/A stuff as not graphic as possible to avoid triggering people but it is very much there and the violence is more present than any other chapter.
a/n: Today has been a fucking DAY yall. My new cat got sick (he’s ok he just ate too fast and then got sick on me and my bed which was gross), I am having issues with pay equity at work, and trying to deal with utility issues in my house. I am very sorry for the late update. PLEASE let me know how you feel about this chapter, your comments and reblogs literally make my day every week.
w/c: ~4.5k
Four years ago, you’d been desperate for a change. Despite spending thousands on a fancy degree, you had gotten nowhere in the legal field and your job waiting tables at a diner in Queens barely paid the bills, though you were grateful for the work.
Pouring coffee and taking orders wasn’t the worst job you’d ever had and the majority of customers during your shifts were sweet. You played the role of “cute, friendly waitress” well, making even the grouchiest patrons appreciate your soft smile and quick response time. Maybe this persona you’d adopted in your efforts to avoid your crippling anxiety was the reason he started looking your way. Perhaps it was your obvious desperation to be liked. Whatever it was that drew his attention, it was your eventual disinterest that kept it.
The first day you met James Lannister was a shitty one. You’d worked a double shift, meaning you had been less than perky towards the end of it, leading to stupid mistakes and screaming customers. Emotions were running high when he took a seat in your section, so his calm demeanor and attentive smile drew you in.
He’d only made pleasant conversation with you the first few visits. Asking about your day, your week, your hobbies, your interests, your family, your aspirations. Anyone would’ve been eager to spill their guts to him, he was quite charming. The way that his green eyes pooled with fascination as you spoke was almost reverent. No man in your life had ever made you feel that way, like nothing else in the room mattered.
Which is why the red flags zipped right by you without triggering your internal security system. Day after day, he’d visit your place of work after his own shift at the Pro Bono Association. He’d ask his questions and encourage you to ask your own, which led to a standing invitation to sit with him when there was a lull in traffic at the restaurant. Your shared interest in the legal system and his willingness to share a slice of that life with you compelled you to take him up on the offer.
Next came the gifts. Little things, at first. Large tips, suggestions for weekend entertainment complete with a gift card or fully funded ticket, books to further your legal studies after work. It was strange, but the attention was divine. He wasn’t an ugly man, and you’d never felt noticed like this before.
Eventually, he’d goaded you into joining him and his wife for dinner at their house. Mrs. Lannister was beautiful and cunning. On the surface, she was always polite, reassuring, more than willing to host you or have you join them in public, but there was an ominous undercurrent that you never could place. The way she looked at you when her husband turned his back was almost murderous, but you were so caught up in the idea of being wanted that you glossed over the tension between the two of you.
You were lonely, sure, but you never wanted romance or…other things…from Lannister. To you, he was a mentor, an idol. Someone to live vicariously through while in a transition period in life. But after accepting all of his kindnesses, you’d unknowingly crossed a line.
Before it all fell apart, it almost seemed like universal intervention. During a seemingly mundane conversation, Lannister clasped his hands over yours with a giddy expression. It seemed that there was an entry level position opening up at the PBA office in Queens and he thought you’d be perfect for it. Not only would it be a substantial pay raise from your current position, but there were opportunities for growth and he would be your boss.
At the time, it felt like a miracle. Your ticket to the next stage of your life. And it was, but letting your guard down for that shark ended up being the biggest regret of your life.
Transitioning into your new role wasn’t seamless, but you took it in stride. Your eagerness to take on complex projects and expand the mission of the organization impressed the more seasoned employees. Lannister began taking you to lunches, galas, drinks, anywhere that he could introduce you to his network of attorneys. It was thrilling to be thrown into the world you’d always dreamed of and received with such open arms.
For a few months, it was pure bliss. Until the night you placed your first case.
Placing the case itself was unproblematic, you were happy that you fit into the role so well—and you expressed such sentiments to Lannister who invited you over to his house to celebrate. Arriving with a bottle of your favorite wine, it was immediately clear that something had changed. The once cozy house was in absolute disarray, riddled with empty liquor bottles and boxes of feminine clothes. And, although Lannister had implied there would be others there, you found him alone.
Lannister noticed your wandering eyes and explained that his wife had left him. He told you not to worry about that and to focus on your personal success. The two of you enjoyed some good food and cheap wine, the older man drifting closer by the glass. Eventually, you felt your eyes growing heavy and he insisted that you stay over given the late hour.
That night, you dreamt of a large shadow, looking over you while you slept, warm touch dancing over your clothes. You tried to protect yourself, but your arms wouldn’t respond to the commands your brain sent. When you woke up, you found your skirt unzipped.
It got blurry after that. Lannister’s very public divorce led to inopportune inebriation, massive hangovers in the office, lewd comments, and wandering hands. While you still accompanied him to events, he began claiming you in public in increasingly repulsive ways. Holding you by the waist, kissing your cheeks, stroking his fingers over your neck, using that disgusting pet name. My little Princess.
You only tried expressing your discomfort once before it escalated. You’d approached him in his office after lunch, when he was likely to be more sober, and hesitantly asked if he would consider pulling back. You’d been met with the most terrifying display of anger you’d ever seen. You hazily recall books being thrown, hits landing along your arms and torso, insults being hurled at you.
He had made you. You would be nothing without him. You were ungrateful and whoreish and conniving just like his wife. While the memories faded, the scars from your skin splitting over the hinges of his office door still shone in certain lights.
After that his actions were deliberate. His lingering touches scalded you. Being alone with him meant sentencing yourself to torture. When he was angry, he’d call you into his office to “talk it through.” To your absolute horror, these talks often involved a locked door and drunk hands groping your trembling form.
For weeks you endured his abrupt switches between calculated insults, physical abuse, emotional manipulation, and inappropriate contact. You were barely alive, going through the motions and slowly convincing yourself that you deserved it. You’d fallen out of contact with your friends, were so emotionally fragile that a stern look from a stranger could send you into a panic attack, and you found yourself so nauseous that the first few hours of each day were spent hugging a toilet.
It was clear you needed help, but Lannister was your boss and his threats terrified you. He’d made it clear that if anyone found out about his behavior, it would cost you your livelihood. As an incredibly well-known attorney with an impeccable record, there was no way you’d win in court, he had too many friends on the force or the bench. Not to mention how new you were to the organization. Despite his growing alcoholism, your coworkers were as enamored with Lannister as you used to be, the chances of them believing you were minimal.
So, you stayed, trapped in a nightmare of your own unintentional creation. Until a position opened up in Manhattan.
Applying on a whim, you’d kept your application a secret, not expecting to even get an interview. But, apparently the managing attorney across the East River had heard your name through the grapevine because she reached out within the week to schedule a lunch with you.
The heavy weight that hung over your shoulders like a shadow has lessened considerably in the days leading up to the lunch. The possibility of escaping the hell you were living in quickly appeared like the light at the end of the tunnel.
Manhattan was beautiful and the employees of the PBA office in Midtown were ecstatic to meet you. It was the best day you’d had in months, until you got back to your own office.
Realizing you’d forgotten an important file you needed for a clinic the next day, you walked briskly through the quiet building, hoping to get in and out without running into your supervisor. Unfortunately, the world was not that gracious.
As you rummaged through your desk, the overhead lights turned on making you flinch. Your hands stilled over the file cabinet, your breath catching on your throat.
“You little bitch.” Lannister was furious if the rage dripping from his tone was any indication. “Tell me, Princess, why did I receive a call from Midtown about how happy they were to have finally met my assistant?”
You couldn’t speak, your throat constricting as if wrapped with fabric. Frozen in place, you heard him approaching and you cowered.
“Thought you could go behind my back? Leave me high and dry without a warning? You owe me, little princess. After all I’ve done for you…”
Whether from fear or something else entirely, your brain blocked out the rest of his actions that night. You came to shaking on the floor, bloody and partially undressed, but you weren’t alone. Lannister had disappeared, thankfully, but your coworker stepped into your office with a shaky inhale.
Erica was a young attorney who’d started a few weeks before you. Your emotional state had made it difficult to grow close to anyone in the office, but she’d always seemed sweet. And, fortunately for you in the end, she’d heard the commotion your boss had caused before storming home.
As your wonderful coworker helped you clean yourself up, you tearily confessed the secrets you’d worked so hard to hide. Disgusted, Erica had encouraged you to speak to HR and you’d submitted a complaint later that day with her assistance.
You owed Erica a great debt. Over the period of the investigation, she’d become a fixture in your office, making sure to keep you at a distance from your abuser. Without your prompting, she’d offered the committee looking into the allegations her full testimony. You were quite certain that her statement is the reason Lannister was fired.
In the weeks following his termination, you felt like a new woman. You’d moved to a cute little place in Hell’s Kitchen and begun your new work as a volunteer coordinator. While you still struggled with crowds of lawyers and the taste of alcohol, a good therapist and a decent amount of time had helped you heal a considerable amount.
Enough to open yourself up for the possibility of a relationship, which you weren’t sure you’d ever want after everything you’d been through. Meeting Matt had changed that though, turning ‘never’ into a ‘not right now’.
Sweet, considerate, adorable Matt who had brought you more comfort than you ever thought you deserved. Who was probably still furious with you for falling for him, but you couldn’t help but plead with the universe to send him anyway. Please, Matty, please come for me.
As the muggy van rumbled over potholes and uneven roads, you pictured his beautiful face. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. How his brow furrowed with concern over the most minor harm that had befallen you. The beautiful way his lips melded with yours as a single kiss made you feel weightless. You regretted not kissing him one last time before ruining what you had.
I’m sorry, darling. Please don’t let them take me from you. I’m not ready to let you go just yet.
As Matt neared the 4th floor, a knawing pit of dread grew in his stomach. He could smell your tears, newer than those that had fallen after he’d left, but your heartbeat was nowhere to be found. Frantically pacing the hallway, he quickly noticed your suitcase abandoned a few feet from the door to your shared room. Crouching down, he tilted his head, evaluating the scene. The scent of your fear coated the floor, walls, and fabric of your bag. You must have been terrified for it to penetrate your surroundings to that degree. Underneath your pheromones, Matt shuddered with rage as the sickly saccharine fragrance of Beatrice Snyder’s reached his sensitive nose. Mingling with her perfume was a different smell, smoky and dark.
You’d been cornered by Snyder and an unidentified man, he was sure of it. Fumbling to find the right end of his key card, he threw open the door and stripped out of his suit. Given that he’d intended to share the night with you, he’d intentionally left his body armor at home. A black long sleeve tee and scarf around his face would have to do tonight.
Stepping back into the empty hallway, he fled to the stairs. While the scent of your fear only fueled his dark anger, it was strong enough to leave a trail down the stairs and out the back door into the cool night air. As inconspicuously as possible, Matt navigated through the building, dodging employees and guests successfully until he reached the loading dock behind the kitchen. Your scent stopped here, replaced by the smell of gasoline.
No, no, no. Where are you, angel? What happened to you?
Matt growled in frustration, spinning around desperately searching for any sign of you, he ripped his phone out of his pocket and pressed your speed dial, hoping that you could still reach your phone.
Receiving nothing but your voicemail message in return, he felt his fists clench. “It’s going to be ok, my beautiful girl. I’m coming.”
Replacing the phone in his pocket, he took off in the direction of the strong scent of auto fuel, praying to God that the most recent vehicle would lead him to you.
The van jolted to an abrupt stop and you slid along the dirty carpet into a seat in front of you. Your back ached from the jostling you’d gotten on the ride to whatever destination you’d apparently arrived at, and you could feel the imprint of thousands of plastic carpet strands that had melded with the flesh on your cheek during the drive. The sound of car doors slamming and the heavy footfalls following made you strain against your binds one final time.
A large, rough hand snatched your ankle, yanking you towards the night air at the tail end of the vehicle. Kicking your legs wildly, you flopped like a dying fish along the carpet as you were slowly pulled outside. The fingers at your ankle moved to wrap around your throat, forcing the airway to constrict. Struggling fiercely against your captor, you heard a familiar, rasping voice from behind you snarl, “Shut her up, you idiot!”
Lannister’s goon pressed a sharp implement against the soft flesh of your stomach. “Keep movin’ and you’ll lose a lot more than your man, bitch.”
As your squirming died down, reality set in and tears began flooding down your face. It was over. He’d won. All of the efforts that went into putting distance between the two of you were meaningless. He’d found you, and Snyder was going to take Matt from you because of it.
You were roughly stood on your feet and forced to move in the trail of Lannister and his other goon. Eventually, you were forced into a cold metal chair, binds attached to the stiff bars of the furniture. Your blindfold was ripped off, though your gag remained. James Lannister’s ferocious grin appeared in your line of vision, making you flinch. “So glad we’ve been reunited, Princess. We’re gonna have some fun.”
The group had taken you to what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. There were broken wooden palettes and scraps of steel scattered around the floor. Holes in the sheet metal walls allowed cold, winter air to blow crisp waves of wind through the space, raising the hairs on your neck. A gaping hole in the roof above you showers you in moonlight, illuminating a small s circle around you and Lannister.
A knife glinted in your peripheral vision and you whimpered, squirming involuntarily. Lannister grabbed a fistful of your shirt, yanking you forward with a growl. “The more you squirm, the more damage I do, little princess. I’d hold still if I were you.”
With that warning, he slashed a jagged cut in your top, nicking the skin along your collarbone. A hand ran over your hair, grasping the strands and tugging so that your face was turned towards your captor’s once again. “There’s my obedient little pet. Was wondering where she’d gone.”
Bile rose in your throat as Lannister stroked his massive hands along your face, planting heated, bourbon-soaked kisses along your neck and down your chest. Prying away your torn clothes, he turned to face the goons. “Is it ready?”
“Yes, sir.” One deep voice responded from the shadows of the warehouse beyond your visible surroundings. “Before I have my fun,” Lannister stepped aside, revealing a tall dark shape topped with a blinking red light. “I’d like to record a confession, dear. For my sanity, and for the board to know the truth.”
Raising his barely slurred voice, he turned to the camera.
“State your name, for the record.”
“Please don’t do this. I don’t—“ Your pleading morphed into a screech of pain as the point of the blade ripped a gash in the exposed skin of your shoulder.
“Wrong answer, pet.” Lannister took a swig from a practically empty bottle of liquor that had seemingly materialized out of thin air. A trail of blood wormed its way to the cement floor, pooling at your feet. You stared at the river of red liquid for a moment before stammering out your name.
“That’s a good pet. What’s your relation to me, my dear?” Chucking the now empty bottle aside, it shattered at your feet, spraying you with cheap alcohol and pieces of glass.
“I worked with you. In Queens.” A smaller knife plunged into the meat of your thigh and you screamed in agony. The larger of the two goons shuffled into your wavering vision, smiling as he wiped your blood from his hands.
“More specific, Princess.” Lannister spat at you.
“You were my boss.”
“That’s right. Now tell us, how did you get me fired?”
You sobbed, “I didn’t, I wasn’t—“ Grasping the knife still planted in your leg, Lannister twisted it, grabbing your throat.
“Yes you did, you miserable bitch. You ruined my fucking life. I lost my divorce settlement, my job, my house, my reputation. All because I took an ungrateful slut under my wing.” Ripping the blade from your body, he hurled you to the ground.
“TELL THE TRUTH!” Lannister roared, sending a brutal kick into your chest and knocking the air from your lungs. “Tell them that you seduced me for months and then used me to land a promotion. TELL THEM THAT YOU TOOK MY ENTIRE LIFE FROM ME AFTER I’D GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING!”
Stomping over your body again, he stumbled backwards allowing you to cough out a response. “I—I took everything f-from you. I was un-ungrateful.”
Lannister cackled, pulling you from the ground by your uninjured arm. “Turn the camera off. They won’t want to see this next part.”
The goons stepped forward to follow your former boss’s orders, but a piercing sound from outside halted them in their tracks. A horrific shriek, the sound of metal grinding on metal, echoed through the warehouse. All three men froze, looking to each other as if expecting to find the cause of the noise at the hands of their fellow assholes. Dropping you hard onto your shoulder, Lannister turned towards the source of the creaking and your head lolled after him.
As the door to the warehouse slammed open, you cried in relief as your weak gaze made out the black clad figure against the night sky. Daredevil. Your devil. He came for you. Tears poured down your cheeks and your limbs tensed, Matt’s presence drawing you in like a magnet.
Lannister huffs out a laugh. “The fuck do you want, shadow man? Don’t you have robberies to stop?” At his sides, the other men shuffled nervously, knives gripped firmly as they awaited their next command.
Matt stalked forward into the warehouse, his body stiff as it held his rage back, visible tension like that of water building against a dam. Fists clenched, he prowled an arc around your three kidnappers. “Step the fuck away from her.” His deep timbre was pitched exceedingly low with pure fury and it sent ripples of goosebumps across your bare skin.
Drawing the handgun from the back pocket of his slacks, Lannister stepped towards you once more. “Do your worst, Devil. She’s not leaving here alive.” The world slowed, as if the air around you was suddenly thick as molasses. Your eyes were processing as much as they could as dread settled in your stomach. The barrel of the gun moved across Lannister’s body and pointed at you as his meaty thumb cocked the weapon.
Simultaneously, Matt’s athletic form rocketed forward, skillfully dodging the swings from both of your unnamed assailants and leaping at Lannister. A gunshot rang and you traced the bullet as it soared towards you. Suddenly, your vision went white as pain seared through your body following the pointed metal cylinder as it tore through your abdomen. Screaming in anguish, your ears rang with a high pitched tone, the flash of white across your sight fading to black. The only thing you could focus on was the burning agony as the puddle of your blood seeped into your torn clothes. Forcefully shutting your eyes, your inhales turned shallow, and you prayed to your beloved Matthew that he would get you out of here before you took your last breath.
Matt’s skin was alight with rage as he maniacally tore through the three brutes to reach your collapsed form. The head captor’s words barely registered in his ears over the deafening sound of a gun being pulled. No. Do not let it be her, take me. The safety was undone as Matt ripped one man’s shoulder from its socket, using the falter in his steps to knock him unconscious. He needed to be faster. He had to reach you. Planting a hefty kick into the next guy’s stomach, he brought his billy club up to meet the force of the man’s own body weight bringing him down. A hollow thud of a body on cement meant there was one attacker left. And then came the gunshot.
As the bullet escaped the barrel it was encased in, Matt roared, the devil inside him fully consuming his consciousness as tackled the shooter. Knuckles connected with a jawbone, then the softer cartilage of a nose, then the lumpy space of a rib cage. Matt poured every emotion he had into this criminal, each punch holding seeds of guilt and regret and desperation.
The smell of your blood cascading over the dirty floor broke him from his trance. Dropping the battered body of your captor to the floor, he dove beside you, hands hovering over your body as he assessed the damage.
Sobbing in relief, he cupped your face as gently as he could. “It’s ok, angel. You’re gonna be ok. They’re not gonna hurt you anymore. Just breathe with me, please sweetness, breathe.”
Your shallow pants stuttered as your hand weakly grasped his shirt. “Ma-Matty?”
“Yah sweetness, it’s me. I’m right here. Gonna get you out of here, ok? Just hold on.” Ripped a strip of fabric from his shirt, he pressed it over your largest wound, biting back a pained sound of his own when you hissed. “I know, I know, angel. I have to stop the bleeding.”
The soft smell of salt melded with the metallic odor of your blood. You were crying, holding on to the fistful of his shirt like it was a lifeline. “Y-you came for me? I’m—I’m so-sorry”
Stroking your face lightly before he dialed 911, he cooed. “Of course I came, lovely. I’ll always come for you. Always. Now you just focus on breathing. In and out, sweetness. Good girl, just like that.”
At the operator’s greeting, he spit out a rough command for police and an ambulance, giving a brief description of the events that had happened. Next, he pleaded for their help. There was no way he alone could get you to a hospital in time.
“They were holding her hostage. She’s been shot, stabbed too. Lost a lot of blood. She’s still alive but she needs medical attention, please hurry.” He spit out the approximate location, scrubbing tears from his face as he pocketed his phone.
Pressing his forehead to yours delicately, he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my sweet girl. It’s going to be ok. I’m so sorry.” Your hand raised shakily to cradle his nape.
“Matty,” Your voice was weak, but determined. “I—I need you to know—“
“Hey, this isn’t one of those moments, sweet girl. You can tell me later, when you’re healing. You focus on—“
“No, please.” You begged, he fought back a choked cry so that you could say your piece.
“I love you. S-so much.” You heaved a breath. “I’m sorry that I ruined—“
“Shh, you didn’t ruin anything.” Matt chided gently, tears slipping faster after you'd confirmed his previous mistake. “I love you too, my wonderful, sweet girl. I won’t let them take you from me. I won’t.”
“I’m sorry.” You choked out, and then you fell out of consciousness.
Matt collapsed against your chest, clinging to the sound of your weak pulse as his body trembled with sobs. He planted soft kisses to your hair and cheeks, stroking lightly over your skin as he willed God to save you.
The distant sound of sirens forced Matt to pry his face from your pummeled body. As the sound of vehicles approached, he made sure to alert the paramedics to your presence before taking back to the shadows. Hearing the clamor of attendants around you, he made a promise. “I’ll be there when you wake, angel. I’m sorry.”
Taglist: @maladaptivedaydreamingbum @scoliobean @harperdoodle @mattkinsella @leikelle @sweetbee0108 @dark-night-sky-99 @fallen-angels2213 @will-delete-this-later-probably @cheshirecat484 @thornbushrose @vernon-dursley
#matt murdock x reader#daredevil#matt murdock#matt murdock x you#marvel#charlie cox#human disaster matt murdock#daredevil fic#daredevil fanfiction#daredevil fanfic#matt murdock fanfic#matt murdock angst#matt murdock fanfiction#matt murdock fic#matt murdock fluff#matt murdock my beloved#daredevil comics#daredevil mcu#wake up#mm#my writing
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Space Opera AU dashboard simulator 2 (but there's plot if you squint) (probably worse than its predecessor)
🚀 renthepilot
HAPPY BITRHDAY TO ME!! I TURN 7!!! :D :D :D <3 <3 <3 RD
❤️ falsewell
Happy 7th birthday Ren! :)
🚀 renthepilot
Thank u FalsE!!!!!! :DDDDDD >.< RD
🍵 cinnamontea Follow
... Why is my 17yo ET1blr mutual talking to a 7yo on Sunblr. I came here for analysis posts but apparently she's babysitting her cousin or perhaps a strangely intelligent dog??
❤️ falsewell
I mean, I would be worried if a 7yo was piloting the glider I race in 🤨
🍵 cinnamontea Follow
WDYM THAT GUY IS YOUR RACE PARTNER? OMFG I AM SO SORRY
🍀 et1vision Follow
Chat do you remember when we found RK and QoH's Sunblr accounts from when they weren't famous and were just two kids in illegal races. Because it was hysterical. Hands up if you thought falsewell was someone's canon url and not QoH herself.
🪓 handoftheking
That interaction was pretty cute to be honest. Ren's still 7 the last I checked.
🪸 hoes4redking Follow
[deep sigh] littlewood at the scene of the crime as always
#WHYYYYYYY is he chronically online #he needs to be stopped and locked up #i bet he scrolls through the treebark tag every day #he knows Too Much #do you think he brings up sunblr during dinner #and etho and bigb look at him like hes insane
7,207 notes
🔥 yaoihell Follow
save me queen of hearts
🔥 yaoihell Follow
queen of hearts
🔥 yaoihell Follow
queen of hearts save me
🏐 apollos-dodgeball 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀 Follow
Congratulations on the prophecy!
[Beep boop, this is a gimmick blog!]
🔥 yaoihell Follow
what the actual fuck.
🌼 fast-and-bifurious Follow
i think i hauve the plague
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🫐 toxicblueberry Follow
hi babes the demons in my head won so new fic!!
i'm your biggest fan, i'll follow you until you love me, pa-pa paparazzi
pairing: the red king x blue stalker (they/them) (exterra 1 rpf)
summary: why are you as a bounty hunter so intent on hunting ren down? what do you want to do with him? pin him against a wall and kiss him until he's breathless and melting like putty in your hands?
word count: 10.1k
tags: enemies to lovers, angst, hurt no comfort, whump, ust, no actual smut, making out, blood, slight knifeplay, submissive rk, open ending
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🏹 queenofheartsfanclub Follow
Listen, I don't do RPF, I can handle Treebark (because I have eyes), but this is crossing a line. Especially after the accusations by RK. I think his evidence is pretty compelling.
🫐 toxicblueberry Follow
dead dove do not eat. i am aware this is a fucked up dynamic but it's fictional. it's not like the real blue stalker has a toxic codependent attraction to the guy they're assigned to kill (btw i mained qoh so i completely understand where you're coming from)
🫐 toxicblueberry Follow
oh.
🏹 queenofheartsfanclub Follow
hey
so do you wanna kiss before the haters get to you?
🫐 toxicblueberry Follow
of course. can we get married
#love can be found on the battlefield in more ways than one #fave post #annoying treebark fans fuck off!!!!!!
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🌹 fyeahroseduo Follow
Coming out as a falsedog shipper is harder than coming out as gay
🦇 starshipspachelbel Follow
TEN YEARS????
Time is not real
🌃 nightpatrols Follow
I had vivid flashbacks. I feel faint. This post caused so much drama omfg. I need a treebark equivalent on my desk by 8am sharp next morning
🪓 handoftheking
Coming out as a Treebark shipper is harder than coming out as bi
🌃 nightpatrols Follow
WHAT THE FUFHUBFBFUOUOFFUCK
#HES IN OUR WALLS #HE STARTED THE SHIP #this is gonna sweep the next unhinged moment poll #??!?1!?!???!?!?! #HATE THIS LUMIAN GLOWY ASS #btw for non et1 mutuals: this man is literally bi #yeah hes really gay for his pilot. yeah we all know #theyre always holding hands and shit #edit: DID HE REBLOG THIS AT 7:30AM #IDK HOW PLANETZONES CONVERSATION WORKS #*conversion #listen i failed school 2 years in a row ok 😭
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🎵 daily-music Follow
Music video of the day is: R8cer Boi by Avril Lavigne!
🎵 daily-music Follow
who the fuck is renn dog
🎵 daily-music Follow
who has little wood
🎵 daily-music Follow
why are y'alls twink racers larping as royals from medieval era planet earth
🎵 daily-music Follow
sorry for calling the queen of hearts a twink. im sorry women
#im so done with yalls bullshit #who are these people #why do they show up in my tags
898 notes
#space opera au#i feel delirious. i think i hauve a stomachache#dashboard simulator#treebark#trafficshipping#hermitshipping#long post#unreality
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I would like to thank everyone who pays The Lost Prince any attention or appreciation (those I suppose you're all sick of hearing about it by now 🙃) and to that end, I want to pay love forward to some special WIPs I've been allowed to appreciate over the year. I'll pick a few and if anybody wants to do this, feel free to reblog because nothing makes a writer's day than something to keep them going.
@veneritia I am in love with the WorldBuilding of When Comes the Dawn and the relationship between Fernice and her lil bro, is drama I always enjoy hearing about. Charles and Ambrose, ma'am!
@trapped-inadystopianovel for engaging characters (Sola my son) whom I always love to hear about and wonder what they're up to often.
@serpentarii it's the intriguing plots and complex characters for me, the never ending roll call of acceptional posts. And my star-crossed boys.
@surroundedbypearls Every WIP post is always so beautiful, it's like the art the sky makes just before it takes a nap.
@writingamongther0ses the sheer abundance of the writing you manage to produce never fails to impress me. Like girl, you're singlehandedly pushing me to get off of Tiktok and write. Your wip posts always make my day.
@lottieiswriting for my darling Macro and your beautiful wip, Kill the King
@ccorpsidious Adrian Skylar, the one and only, most precious boy who needs a good mom and a warm blanket.
@eluari the absolute beauty of the accompanying art!
@dameschnee123 for Priestess of Light, for the hardhittibg lines that just stock with you. You know the one I mean!
@writerjodie for a Protagonist like Nessa Herrik, whose complex motives are as compelling as the plot! I really can't wait to see more.
@residentofthedisc for all your works! Every one is utterly amazing, you have the range, darling!
#Wip appreciation#Because every writer needs to be told they're doing a good job#You all are doing a good job and it would take me ages to note you all down#Your plot is bulletproof#Your characters are loveable#You're writing is complex and interesting
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HOO BOY I am capital F Fucking Mad about the ""twist"" near the end of Near Light. What the actual shit were the writers thinking? This reads like some soap opera shit where they need to find a narrative twist to propel another season. Nearl is infected and I categorically refuse to engage with the boneheaded as fuck decision to suddenly make it canon that Margaret lied to everyone close to her and just pretended to have the struggle of everyone else around her. It turns her fight with the Blood Knight from an amazing battle of ideals where neither side is wrong and both are necessary for the future to improve into Margaret stolen-valoring her way back into her privilege while inspiring exactly 0 infected because they all should be rightfully mad at her for doing that shit.
I refuse to let such a compelling genuinely Lawful Good positive character, whose spice comes from the contrast she makes against a wide world of greys and necessary evils that make up living on Terra, become just another fucking Neolib who "really understands the struggle she swears". Anything I write in this setting, including my planned fic with her as a main character, will have her Infected as a plot point just like most of the Rhodes cast, and I absolutely refuse to acknowledge otherwise.
EDIT:
adding this thought I had so my thought is not lost along the reblog chain:
To make a further point here, I think it literally makes an unrecoverably-large plot hole if Nearl is not infected.
This means she knew the Blood Knight would eventually gas out due to his Oripathy and let it happen without saying a word.
This means every time another operator confided in her after a hard day, she was lying to them if she said a single word in shared understanding.
This means that the character who is said by everyone to be stubborn as a mule and straightforward has actually been perpetuating a conspiracy for several years on end.
I don't know about y'all, but that literally does not sound like Margaret Nearl. I think that ruins her to the point that all positive impact of hers is offset across the entire narrative. That all previous characterization of her was a front, a show to make sure that no one found a reason to question her. And I respect her way too fucking much for that to be how she goes out. So Margaret Nearl is infected, and the writer of Near Light made a mistake.
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as someone who wasn't around in 2014....can you tell me what it was like? (stucky) can you give me a taste of the gardens of babylon etc
what was it like...this is such a fun question i want you to know i gave serious thought to my answer and also discussed it at length with my 2014 friend last night and i know already it's gonna be so long. sorry that i answered your ask at fuck o clock in the morning i am scheduling it to go up later and also at the time you sent the ask in to make sure you see it
ok so like. i mean, you're on the fandom website, right, so i assume youve been in fandoms. idk if youve ever been in a really, REALLY big fandom, at the same time that said fandom was also producing content (even if the source material was not). think d*stiel post nov 5, or undert*le circa late 2015/early 2016, or z*lda after totk came out, or h*rry p*tter as the seventh book was being released. (i'm censoring to avoid a false positive of anybody's blacklist except in the case of the last one, which i am censoring out of <3 disrespect.) like there's something REALLY luxurious about being in ANY large and active fandom and it's mostly the power of crowdsourcing. st*r tr*k 2009's tarsus iv headcanons. the storm trooper lore re: the f*rce awakens before the second two movies came out. everyone just kind of agreeing that dean w*nchester was a teenage hooker. you know?
like, that's "just fanon," sure, but part of the beauty of it is that no one person makes up fanon, we all gather in the biggest writing group in the world and collectively go insane and bat ideas back and forth. there are a hundred THOUSAND fics about bucky barnes on ao3 and that's just the people who were writing, not even counting artists and gifmakers and meta-writers and people who just reblog stuff. i can't possibly begin to put an accurate number to how many people are in any given fandom at any given time, but imagine (on the low end, i'm sure) there are THOUSANDS, perhaps tens of thousands, of people going nuts about stevebucky at all times. tens of THOUSANDS people doing "yes and" with each other on the internet 24 hours a day seven days a week. it's just like being in any fandom, you log on to your dash and see what the mewchies posted while you were gone, but in a fandom so huge and so active you were getting bombarded with idea after idea after idea every single second, so if you don't like one you're spoiled for choice in what you engage with next. it didn't even matter that cap3 was two years away or that it sucked when it finally got here because we collectively wrote cap3 a million times over. like, genuinely, it was a mass creative exercise. it's the biggest writing group in the world. for better or worse, we were shaping our own version of that universe, without any input from or regard to the people who actually created the characters and movie, in a way that compelled most strongly to our own tastes and demographic.
what made this particular movie/fandom special though was a few things. firstly i still genuinely believe it was ahead of its time...marvel shit pre disney was allowed to be political in ways it is ABSOLUTELY not now. like, cap2 could say "the government is secretly full of nazis and they all need to burn" in 2014 two years before the 2016 election and 7 years before jan 6. like you just couldn't say that now. "war bad" is an oldie but goodie, but "our entire government is corrupt and needs to be torn into flaming pieces and cast into the potomac" is um. pretty radical. so is, by the way, "men as victims" and "men having emotions" etcetc. like, not in fandom, fandom all but invented that shit, but as far as dumb superhero movies go. i can't tell you the number of metas i read AND WROTE discussing steve rogers and masculinity and how all that was portrayed, intentionally or not, in that fucking film. i had entire separate universes built up in my head for steve who was born a cis girl and steve who decided later in life that "nonbinary" or "trans woman" was a better fit and then steve who was born as a cis boy and remained a man his whole life but felt weird and different ways about being queer which clashed with the weird and different ways BARNES felt about being queer. i'm not saying the film (or the fandom! good lord) was perfect, it was a product of its time, but it was also WAY ahead of its time too. it was weird to expect the next film to come out and actually, like, be good. it wasnt, but we fully believed it would be and that wasn't delusional behavior because the last one had been. i would never have that kind of faith in a marvel project now because they've been bought by disney.
oh yeah and that's the other thing too like. speaking of queer people. gay marriage wasn't legal in the US on a federal level until 2015, and you couldn't just flip on your TV and see them whenever you wanted. ten years doesn't seem like that long ago in the grand scheme of things but like, we lived on glee and cw/mtv queerbait (disclaimer that i personally only participated in cw queerbait) and that was it. we had crumbs. and like when people write gay characters theyre Just Gay, but if you decide to be crazy stupid in a slash fandom you can decide these layered characters are gay and that's even better rep than um whatever was going on in other pieces of media. these guys are both so lonely and out of step with time and lack other people with "shared life experiences" (girl what the hell was that) and their connection w each other keeps them afloat in a world that doesn't want them so like of COURSE it seems like it's supposed to be romantic. and like, i could and did make myself and my tumblr buds crrrazy (and got made crazy by them) thinking about:
how steve's size when small and again when big interacted w his gender identity and his sexuality and how that sexuality manifested. barnes's identity As A Man hinging on his ability to go to war for his country bc Thats What Men Did but now he's no longer fit because theres worms in his brain. loss of bodily autonomy which usually happens to women and natasha being later in that journey than steve and bucky are and so close to being at peace with it but not there yet. stigmatization of seeking treatment for mental health issues lessened by the presence of sam who could have been a Macho Tough Guy but actually gives off strong Talk About Our Feelings And Be Soft vibes. don't even get me started on the relationship (predatory) between steve and rumlow and how it parallels the one between barnes and pierce (and if any of you motherfuckers BREATHE a word of that h*dra tr*sh p*rty shit in my direction i will END you) and the stigma that comes from being preyed on when vulnerable As Men. steve's depression and ptsd and him getting triggered by, yes, the fucking ALS ice bucket challenge. the collective belief that he was conscious when he was frozen even though nobody said that so that he and barnes could have that in common too. the headcanon about barnes having roma heritage - shoutout to not easily conquered my beloved, and the 14k smut coda i wrote for it✌ speaking of smut, i would be remiss also not to mention there was a STRONG element of collective lust involved. i'm immune to 99% of it bc im ace but the winter soldier was uh. VERY graceful. you know? i didn't write 14k of porn because i was uncompelled. we were on one. we went fucking crazy. fandom in general but especially big fandoms have a kind of nonstop endless well of creative energy born from obsession that is the absolute envy of people like my mortal enemy grrm. we NEVER quit.
also, HISTORY (and other vaguely educational subjects). we were all so desperate to know how steve and bucky would have lived in the years we couldn't see them it sparked a sitewide interest in 1940s american history. there was a thing about bananas tasting different now because of a plague. m&ms being invented as wartime candy. stuff about how shoebox apartments looked and how rations worked. 1940s recipes and radio shows. the 1940s queer movement and how it interacted with ballroom dancing and private drag get-togethers. how amputations work and how prosthetic limbs work in real life so we could extrapolate it to fantasy. how to hand-draw that fucking arm in photoshop. why soldiers are trained to say their serial numbers when captured. what ww2 was like. what dog tags are for. what did they get in the ration packs. what brand of cigarettes did they smoke. what brand (and i am being so serious, i STILL own a tube) of LIPSTICK did peggy carter use. caloric intake of someone with a 4x speed metabolism and how much famine peanut butter he'd need to eat daily to keep from starving to death. oppression of irish immigrants and their children/grandchildren back in the 1940s. the difference between conservatives and fascists, back when there was a difference. what activities generally took place on these mysterious but ever-present new york city docks. just exactly HOW many terrible movies and tv shows has sebastian stan been in ranked by his resemblance to james buchanan barnes in each one. (i personally went through his entire imdb list at the time and then made a venn diagram.) electroswing! teachers and professors would have killed for their classes to have the kind of enthusiasm a bunch of mentally ill teenagers and 20-somethings on tunglr dot edu were showing about this one very specific set of subjects. this film also sparked my love of fight scenes. if you've read this fic or this fic and liked the Big Fight Scenes in them, you can thank cap2 for leading me down that path.
and then yes there was also discourse. my personal most hated thing was the above mentioned h*dra tr*sh p*rty (DO NOT GOOGLE THAT, i will just tell you it's nazi rape porn🤢 and i hope everyone involved is having a bad day today) and also the fact that SOME FUCKING PEOPLE can't understand "don't be shitheads about a fanfic where the author can see you doing it." but then ofc people were also sexist about nat and racist about sam and minimalizing those guys (and every other character besides tony really but sometimes him too) for the two white male leads was a whole thing. and on the funnier side of things you had (justifiably, i suppose) bitter st*ny fans who HATED what those two got in avengers and got real mad when stucky started outpacing them on ao3. and people complaining about the characters being too uwu soft. and then other people arguing whether or not barnes counted as disabled when he was missing a Whole arm. and THEN discourse about was it ethical to remove the arm and build him a new one ESPECIALLY without his consent (if people don't know they're being ableist in their fanfics hypothetically is it still ok to kill them with hammers?) and why was tony doing it if that guy killed his parents and is it ok that we keep making tony not that mad about his dead parents is it not enough that barnes stole his limelight as the guy who gets shipped with steve but what if all three of them fucked but can you really fuck the guy who offed your folks but ACTUALLY isn't it cringe to like tony anyway since RDJ and gwenyth paltrow are bad people and who says chris evans are sebastian stan are such good people etcetcetc. and let us not even get started on the plausibility of the avengers tower fanon after age of ultron came out and it turns out nobody became friends and they all still hated and mistrusted each other. and whether or not the avengers could be considered found family if the other characters were constantly getting shafted into being barnes's little support animals. and then ofc every once in awhile one of the actors of people involved creatively would say something ranging from mildly controversial to absolutely horrible on the internet and we'd all fight about THAT for awhile like a dog with a bone. i mean. typical infighting of any fandom tbh.
but i was very happy. it was all the most enormous thought experiment and creative endeavor (and semi-educational adventure??) that we all participated in daily for like two-ish years without stopping ever. i loved doing it. AND, when you click with a piece of media like that, you also click with other people who clicked with that same piece of media, so in addition to the sheer level of dopamine going into my brain at all times i also formed decade-long friendships that will certainly last the entirety of my lifetime, and when we're in our 90s in nursing homes i will be able to say, "we are friends because i wrote 14k of smut for your fanfic" or "we are friends because i couldn't get enough of your gifsets" or whatever because you know, we quite literally went to stucky together.
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I really enjoyed your blog, until I realized that you were trying to force enmity between Charles and Carlos when it's clear that they clearly like and respect each other as teammates. You don't seem to support the team, but rather Charles or Sebastian (who, wow, has had less interaction with Charles than with Carlos, but swears they love each other), which you should make clear when entering your blog that you don't like the team but have a preferential fanaticism for Charles.
Anyway, I respect what you think, but the way you always put Carlos in the wrong and guilty of everything is totally ridiculous.
Byee ✨
It's been a while since I got one of these 🤔
You don't relate to my content and don't agree with my opinions, which is fine, to each their own. However, I have to point out that I never exactly concealed my preferences, and, with all due respect, if the url, icon, header, sidebar gif, sidebar description and pinned post on my blog aren't enough to give me away, then I really don't know how to make the message any clearer. Furthermore, I don't support Carlos and I never have, even long before Ferrari was on his radar. I have never hid that either, and the lack of solo posts about him, lack of fan edits, or other reblogged content from Carlos fans should indicate that.
As for supporting the team and how "valid" your fan experience is based on who you support, because apparently that's been a trending topic for a while now, certainly within the self-declared Tifosi circle... I've followed Ferrari in one way or another for 8 years; I've witnessed three different lineups in that time, and I've formed my opinions based on what I've seen and how I've felt in reaction to that. I am under no obligation—and this applies to everyone—to like or even support a driver just because he signed on to drive for the team for a certain period of time. Obviously the ideal situation is liking both drivers and being equally happy when either of them succeeds, but let's be honest, how often does that happen? And I'm not talking about people who follow a team regardless of the lineup, because that's a slightly different kettle of fish.
F1 as a sport places so much emphasis on the driver as a person—and this notion has only been amplified in recent years. The human aspect of F1 is equally as important and compelling as all the technical elements. Hell, the whole idea behind the Driver's Championship is to crown a champion out of the drivers on the grid. And I think for most people that championship brings more excitement and is more keenly followed than the Constructor's one. Even the whole idea of teammates functions differently here than it does in most team sports, with the inherent rivalry aspect. I'm sure many of Carlos's fans migrated from McLaren to Ferrari when their favourite driver did—if we're painting everyone with the same brush, then where is the scrutiny regarding the other side? I don't believe every Carlos fan is automatically also a devoted Charles fan, because frankly that's statistically impossible. Or is one only a "fake Tifoso/a" if they have a preference for Charles? Is there just one fixed "valid" way of being a fan?
On a lighter note, I'm glad it wasn't all bad all the time and that, at one point, you did find something you enjoyed on my blog. I hope you manage to find like-minded people who run blogs that reflect your opinions 👍🏻
#replies#anonymous#idk if the merc or red bull or [insert team name here] have the same level of drama about the validity of being a fan#or failing in your fan duties if you have a preference for one of the drivers over the other - or *gasp* dislike one of them#but it's sure been a point of contention in the ferrari sphere#other than that i'm not sure what else to say i mean. this is tumblr and a part of how the website functions is venting and shitposting#it's like that warning you get on ao3 about how if you continue it means you're basically agreeing to see such content#we're not entering a binding agreement you can backspace out of here at any time
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Today is a day of joy. A day of happy tears. A day ten years in the making. There are so many people that have a personal journey connected to the love shared between Blake and Yang. A fair number of my mutuals have heard this story from me, but I feel compelled to tell it again and again. Because Bumbleby truly lives in the deepest depths of my heart and has helped me become the person I am today.
Story under the cut because holy shit: long.
I was presented the first two volumes of this show by a roommate my sophomore year of college. She pulled me in with an interesting premise and cool fight scenes/weapons. I remember sitting in our shitty basement apartment trying to design my own rwby weapon, so consumed by the flashier details at the beginning that I couldn’t see an inkling of self discovery I’d find along the way.
Watching volume three was a joy. There was so much to love about a good old fashion tournament arc, up until the moment it all went wrong. I cried for Pyrrha (my favorite character at the time). It’s a testament to how dense I am that I didn’t get the :eyes: emoji “gay?” moment until Blake reached for Yang’s hand and sobbed an apology on the concrete outside a smoldering Beacon. At that point in my life I still thought I was straight, at most “bi-curious” as I used to call it. Regardless I was not pulled into the ship at the time and looking back I am sad that I wasn’t. It could have made a lot of things easier.
Volume four and five left me wanting - for more story, for more action, for more everything. With time I found the things I loved about those volumes, but at the time it just left me let down. So I unfortunately let life sweep me away and I forgot to look out for the volume six drop. Without going into too much detail, I had a lot going on with work and it made it easy not to remember much outside the walls of my workshop.
Then in the spring of 2019 I remembered that RWBY existed and decided to dive back in. And I can’t thank myself enough for it. Watching Bees vs. Adam was a reckoning. It unlocked something in me that I had never let myself see. I realize that sounds corny, but it really did take Blake and Yang holding hands and facing down Adam for me to realize I had denied a part of myself for twenty six years.
I’ll spare everyone the super personal details, but finishing volume six sent me into a year long deep dive into who the hell I am. I wasn’t ready to let go of who I was.
By the time volume seven was halfway through, I was writing fanfic and reblogging every bumbleby thing I could. I read fanfiction the way people around me drank water; constantly. Then I joined the first bumbleby big bang and I made friends that I will never be able to thank enough for their unfettered support. They taught me how to be proud, how to be comfortable, how to be myself.
As all of that self discovery happened, the pandemic hit and kept hitting. My life changed in countless ways over the next year. I left a seven year long relationship, lost what i thought was my dream job, moved back home, the list goes on. Watching volume eight was the joy of my week, the thing I looked forward to even when it was hard to look at anything else. Keysmashing about stolen glances and the ‘yeah...Ruby’ of it all really helped lighten that time of growth and change.
And now today. Volume nine took so long to get here and the wait was more than worth it. Getting to wake up at 7:30 this morning with my girlfriend to watch Blake and Yang confess their love for each other will be something that I remember for as long as I have memory. It’s a gift. It’s something I have waited so long for and it was worth every bump in the road.
To crwby - the animators, the writers, the VAs - Thank you. Truly, Thank you so much. I wouldn’t be here today without each and every one of you.
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responding to @levitatingbiscuits reply here because this post is already way too fucking long and I am not subjecting your dashboards to all that, but I do think this conversation is interesting enough to continue it (albeit under the cut):
I agree that roach work’s comment was annoying, and if you were responding to that, I get why you said what you said. this person regularly adds replies to my posts that are completely unrelated to the original point I was making, effectively derailing my argument and getting a bunch of reblogs from their followers who don’t have the common sense to ignore their pointless (and in this case, editorializing) additions. but everyone reblogging my post with your addition attacked me in the notes, as if I had said/implied all that you were arguing against, when I quite literally did not. and they said some quite nasty things, as if I couldn’t see their comments! I don’t go seeking out ppl saying shit about me ever, but if you do it in my house, we’re gonna have a problem.
as for your points...
I 100% agree that defending katara against people who unfairly vilified her, especially during the [vomits] atla renaissance (netflix you will rue the day...) is justified! I quite literally said aloud just last night, “anyone who hates katara can die,” and I fully fucking meant it. I don’t know why you seem to think we don’t agree here. maybe because I don’t think the solution to combatting idiotic, racist & misogynistic fans is by extolling katara to the point where you can’t appreciate her for her flaws. her flaws make her who she is as much as her virtues, and I would never negate the depth of her character just because I love her. I don’t “stan” katara, I appreciate her as a character who inspired me as a child for her strength and growth and brilliance, who is stunningly well-written and compelling.
meanwhile, the older I get, the more I’ve come to appreciate sokka. yes, I too was obsessed with katara the moment she came onscreen, especially when she showed the full depth of her anger over sokka’s misogynistic comment. I’d literally never even seen misogyny addressed before, let alone been given permission to be angry with it. katara knows her worth, and that makes her so fucking important!!! and yes, I know what it’s like to raise misogynistic brothers; it’s a thankless job!
katara was immediately inspiring to me, but appreciating sokka and the full depth of his character has been something earned with time. i think it's incredibly easy to misread him, dismiss his underlying motivations, and just generally discard him for the sake of the more exciting and shiny characters (in my case katara, azula, toph, iroh. truly appreciating aang has also been something i needed to grow older to do, but i think the more my maternal instincts develop, the more i want to pinch his baby cheeks and wrap him up in a big hug and kiss his forehead and put him in my pocket... i digress). i have come to forgive sokka for his sexism, and even excuse it. does that mean i think katara isn't in the right to challenge patriarchal ideas? of course she fucking is! just because sokka was deeply misguided in his gender essentialist views for logical reasons (before meeting suki, that is) it's not like katara should excuse him for it. katara has every right to get mad, every time she gets mad, and i love that her anger is treated as a virtue, because it is! her anger is righteous and sympathetic and revolutionary. she is so fucking important.
by "delicate touch" i didn't mean "sokka isn't acting like an airport dad" because i would never deny his grumpiness. sokka can be a massive cunt most of the time, and i love that about him. he is a miserable, neurotic, curmudgeonly little freak, and frankly, that rules. i think we need more teenage jewish grandpa representation always.
^ literally sokka
i think by delicate touch (again, i wrote this post like 3 years ago, i don't even remember writing it) i just meant that as much as he does kvetch, he also knows how to engage them in a way that gets them to do what he wants. when he makes them go to the library, he frames it in their terms, as if he's taking a vacation (frankly, taking a vacation to a library is something i've actually done, and it was awesome, but we all know how their library excursion turned out, so, yknow). or just how the only time he ever actually even reveals like a fraction of his insecurities is in "sokka's master," because as much as he complains, he never actually wants to burden them with his internal problems (which is not why aang bottles up his shit, and i think we all know that). as much as he complains, he also tries as hard as possible to preserve their innocence whenever he can, especially when it comes to aang. he could've been way less indulgent of aang's antics, but he isn't, because he knows how important it is for aang to be a kid despite the enormous loss he's suffered. anyway, since i know how hard it is to wrangle twelve year olds and try to convince them to do something when they'd rather do something else, sokka is fucking jesus on the cross for that, and you can't change my mind.
and by "de facto chief" i don't mean that sokka was the one taking care of the whole tribe. obviously kanna and the other adults were the ones in charge of making sure the community functioned smoothly, because again, sokka was like thirteen, and thirteen years olds are fucking useless. what i meant was that sokka took what hakoda said to heart, and thus considered himself the first and last line of defense should the fire nation ever return. it's not remotely a reach to think sokka was prepared to die for katara, because a) his mother literally did and b) his father all but told him to? maybe he was just trying to placate his kid, because i really doubt hakoda would actually be in favor of letting his son get himself killed, but it's clear that sokka took that to heart in the way in which he prioritizes katara over everything else. also, it's clear that hakoda does respect sokka a lot. he calls him a "great warrior" and a "genius," and it's not in vain, sokka is those things! hakoda sees his son better than he sees himself.
and i would never claim that katara talks about her issues for attention or sympathy from others. that's absurd. anyone who does so is plain wrong. but empathizing with others isn't emotional labor, it's healing for her, it's cathartic. when she talks to haru, jet, zuko, hama, aang, etc. about her trauma, she's doing so from a place of healthy emotion and vulnerability wherein she is exchanging empathy between them, receiving comfort and comforting in return. sokka doesn't know how to do that, which is a shortcoming to be sure, but the fact that katara is so open about her trauma does signify that she never felt a need to bottle it up the way sokka clearly does. (i would argue sokka's arc in the entire "swamp" episode is about the spirits all but taunting him for being so repressed about his trauma, but that's for another post.)
sokka wanted a bag to carry supplies in, not because it was fashionable. he enjoys that the bag matches the belt he got from the earth rumble tournament (he had no intention of purchasing such a belt), but katara is the one who shows an interest in fashion. and to be clear, i'm not saying that sokka would immediately know how and what to forage in unfamiliar terrain; foraging is fucking hard, and that's when you already have any kind of guide. katara is definitely the one buying the groceries, i won't argue that. whenever sokka is in the vicinity of a grocer while wearing blue, they tend to dismiss him with outright hostility, while being much more sympathetic to katara. it's a running joke that throughout the earth kingdom adults are far kinder to katara than to sokka. but this isn't actually an issue when they're hiding out in the fire nation and both disguised in red, curious! i wonder why adults fed imperialist rhetoric their whole life might internalize the idea that a young water tribe girl is harmless whereas a water tribe boy is a threat to be treated with hostility... but yknow, it could also just be vibes. katara does generally have a more pleasant attitude. it could just be that. who can say!
as for "jet," as i've already stated, i don't think the gaang has a leader. but katara does grow to trust sokka's instincts more and more over the course of the show. and sokka only tells katara not to trust jet once he has evidence! he tells her that he beat up a harmless old man, and katara still takes jet's side, even though he's obviously lying. as for aang, i really don't think sokka's instincts not to trust a person who for all intents and purposes should not currently exist and suddenly waltzes into their life while ignoring their current reality are that contrived. katara thinks she's in a story that she is the narrator and hero of (which, metatextually speaking, is true), but sokka thinks he's in a war and is thus suspicious of magical little manic pixie dream boys. and not for nothing, aang does set off the fire nation flare that alerts zuko to the location of their village, so sokka's instincts were actually correct here, even if aang is of course an angel.
and katara calms aang down from the avatar state, what, twice? and once she's literally just talking to him from behind a rock. her act in "the desert" is 100% a testament to her bravery and the unique bond she shares with aang, i'm not denying that whatsoever. sokka simultaneously shields toph in this moment, which granted is far less dangerous than what katara does with aang, but is also a subtle moment that demonstrates the nature of his bond with her (i don't really have a point here, i just love aang & katara and sokka & toph's relationships). i don't remember katara comforting aang for burning her, i just remember her reasonably telling him that he can't let his guilt get in the way of learning firebending, and showing him that she's healed to calm him down. and the comics are stupid, so i'm not even gonna address this point. anyway. sokka does come to trust her to fight her own battles as the show goes on and she gets demonstrably stronger, but he still worries about her whenever she's in trouble, and would do anything to protect her. he's still her big brother.
katara's idealism is inspiring & beautiful & heroic. but yes, it is also naive. that's not even a bad thing! katara fighting to preserve her childhood wonder and innocence in the face of incalculable loss is deeply moving to me. aang and katara show sokka and toph how to become more awe-inspired and vulnerable over the course of the show. sokka never would've suggested a beach party in "sozin's comet" if not for aang and katara's influence. that's growth. but that doesn't mean that katara was right to trust zuko in the crystal catacombs, or that she was right to trust jet, or aunt wu, or hama. i understand why she trusts these people (especially jet and especially hama), and it's hardly a bad thing to see the potential good in everyone, but zuko's betrayal hits her so hard because she had mistakenly put so much faith in him right before he turned around and helped azula kill aang. of course she sees potential in both aang and zuko, though. she's the heart of the show, and they're both mirrors to her character in significant ways. sokka is not a part of this central thematic triad, and he doesn't care that he's in a story, he just wants to make sure that his friends and family don't get murdered. they have different narrative priorities, but katara's are admittedly much prettier.
also, of course sokka wouldn't say he sees himself as a sacrificial lamb. even if he realized this about himself (which i also don't think he does), he wouldn't say it. saying it would negate the entire point. but i do think it's justified by the text. katara clearly carries the guilt of knowing kya died for her, and it's what inspires her to try and be her own mother for herself and her family, and to be the best waterbender in the world. sokka doesn't have that guilt. while katara feels it her duty to remember, to carry on her mother's legacy so that her sacrifice was not in vain, sokka feels it his duty to repress, to tamp down any shred of humanity that is not relevant to the war and to making sure his sister isn't killed for who she is. i don't think it's a reach for him to want to emulate his parents in this regard, since he clearly idealizes them and their bravery in defending their home, their culture, and their family.
no, i don't think sokka acts like a mom or a dad or even a wacky uncle (a grandpa, maybe). my point was to illustrate how neither of them are parents. they may try to emulate their parents in many regards, but they are still both very much kids, who happen have both seen far too much for their years. and katara mourns kya differently (more, as she claims, which i believe to be true) because her death was deeply personal to katara, in a way that it just wasn't for sokka. like i said, sokka represses his trauma. he claims that he thinks about yue all the time, and yet he barely ever talks about her. a defining moment in his life, which is hakoda leaving him behind, is only revealed to us in a flashback that occurs while he's sitting quietly by the fire watching over katara and aang as they sleep. katara's way of mourning kya was to try to become her in her guilt over her sacrifice. do you really think sokka doesn't understand the implications of this?
sure, he dismisses the domestic labor she does, which sucks of him for sure, though i'd argue it's just as much his cerebral stem bro attitude that prioritizes ideas and theory over those little manual tasks as it is straight up sexism. but yeah, it sucks. i know very few men who appreciate the work that goes into those "feminine chores," and it's absolutely because what is categorized as feminine is devalued by society. but yes, i think if the binary established is between "mom" and "servant", sokka sees katara as someone who is simply better at feminine labor, and that's not great of him, but katara does enjoy being feminine, so i understand why he'd make that assumption, seeing as the only thing she doesn't seem to enjoy is doing his laundry for him, which, yknow, checks out. do your own laundry, sokka.
again, katara has a more personal connection to the events surrounding kya's death. it's why her saying "you didn't love her the way i did" is both deeply hurtful, and something she clearly believes to be true. what she really means is, "you didn't grieve her the way i did," and it's because sokka doesn't feel like his very existence was responsible for her death. "the southern raiders" is a deeply personal episode for katara, and zuko is the one who understands her trauma, more intimately than sokka can, because kya did not sacrifice herself for him, but ursa did with zuko.
and yes, katara's seemingly throwaway line about how she's lost her childhood innocence hits really hard. it's why she's so immediately drawn to aang. because she wants to have fun again, but no one is there to encourage her, certainly not her depressed as fuck brother who only cares about being a better warrior. aang and katara inspire each other to preserve their innocence and they get to be kids together, which is what makes their friendship such a beautiful thing.
katara has a lot of skills and roles sokka doesn't. he can't midwife, he can't heal (obviously), he can't shop for groceries in the earth kingdom without being abused by vendors. he could probably cook and sew if he set his mind to it (we never actually see katara clean, but we do see sokka clean appa) but katara seems pretty confident in those areas, so why step on her toes. but sokka also has a lot of skills and roles katara does not. he reads maps, makes schedules, strategizes in battles, helps invent new technology, is able to fight without bending, is able to sense red flags that katara refuses to see, etc etc. they balance each other out, both emotionally and practically. considering that they basically raised each other, and didn't have parents to do things for them, it makes sense that they each have their own skillset, and function as a codependent team.
"the desert" puts her in a new situation to show that she's the group's heart. not just the group's heart, but the show's heart. she is the narrative center. that's what i mean by "the desert" being a trial for katara. it's not that no one else will step up, it's that they can't. aang is in the first stages of experiencing an immense grief, toph is feeling guilty and scared and lost, and sokka's attempt to quench their thirst put him out of commission for the rest of the day (though granted, he was trying to be helpful). katara is always there. she will never give up on people who need her. that's a core tenet of her character, and it is what makes her not only so kind and giving, but also a revolutionary leader. it's why i think she should go on to be chief, because while sokka wants to be like hakoda, he's not actually a warrior at heart, but katara is an inspiration to many, and her connection with people and the way she sees the best in them is what makes her the pride and joy of her people, just as much as her waterbending skill.
toph and katara are both in the wrong in the chase. katara comes from a communal society where everyone pitches in, so she sees toph as a spoiled brat for not helping her. toph came from a family that acted as if she was useless and helpless, so she thinks by letting every member of the group carry their own weight, she is affording them the basic respect her parents did not afford to her. it's a classic miscommunication, which escalates because katara and toph are both very loud, assertive middle schoolers who don't enjoy compromising their beliefs. they eventually do, which we see illustrated in the spa episode. but katara clearly wants to go to the spa and enjoys every second of it, she's just taking toph with her because she thinks toph needs a shower. for the most part, they both have a good time, katara because she enjoys feminine activities and relaxing, toph because she likes mud and spending time with her friends, and both of them because they got to do violence to some mean girls.
aang also gets mad at toph because he's prone to take katara's side in arguments, and also she insults appa, which is the final straw for him, even though toph is fully right about appa's shedding being how azula tracks them. toph leaves because she thought she was joining people who would make her feel respected, but they don't. katara literally mocks toph for being blind. i also got bullied for being disabled when i was their age, and i don't blame toph for not taking that shit. it's downright cruel. iroh helps her adjust her perspective, but ultimately sokka is the one who makes her feel most welcomed and seen, and while she loves katara and aang, it's clear that sokka is her best friend. he's also the only one who doesn't interfere in their fight in "the chase" (because he knows there's no winning against two extremely stubborn, sleep-deprived powerhouses).
katara didn't sacrifice her childhood for the sake of her family, her childhood was robbed from her. there's a crucial difference. she doesn't sacrifice her own emotional needs to comfort others, she engages in fruitful dialogues. the only person she actually sacrifices anything for is aang, you're right, and i do think that's extremely important as an aspect of her character. she believes in the power of the avatar, and she loves aang deeply. it's why if aang is the soul of the show, she is the heart.
zuko isn't a dad to aang, that's just a ridiculous thing to say, sorry. i don't think sokka is a dad to aang either, if anything they're brothers. zuko acts as a brother to aang and katara too. he's their older, grumpy, kind of an airhead, kind of a jerk brother. sort of like sokka 2: electric boogaloo, except unlike sokka, he's a wide-eyed idealist just like they are! idk where i was going with this. my point is i love this trio. lol
you're right to criticize what roach works said, but you were wrong not to specify the target of your criticism. just because someone adds a dumbass comment on my post doesn't mean i endorse it. and just because i make a post appreciating sokka doesn't mean i don't love katara. i mean, i think it should be pretty obvious that i love her a lot. it seems like we grew up in fairly similar circumstances, and while i know what it's like to grow up with a cerebral math bro misogynist brother who gets far more credit for doing far less work and is utterly fucking useless at taking care of himself, that doesn't mean i resent sokka, a fictional character, for whatever commonalities they may share.
katara and sokka are both flawed, multi-dimensional, well-written fictional characters, and i've given a lot of thought to their motivations, nuances, and the unspoken symbolic undertones of their dynamic and its relation to the themes of the narrative. we don't have to agree on what every unspoken detail signifies, but i don't appreciate being misinterpreted, and i especially don't appreciate the implication that i don't love katara, because i absolutely fucking do, with my whole heart, and anyone can see that. she means a lot to me!!! her virtues, her strengths, her flaws, and her failures. she doesn't have to be perfect to be amazing. in fact, if she were perfect, i doubt she'd be amazing at all.
#analysis#katara#sokka#katara&sokka#aang&katara#katara&zuko#might turn a lot of these points into longer analyses eventually#since this is really scattered considering it's just a response to a response to a response of some annoying mf#who loves leaving annoying ass comments on my posts#pour one out......#(to be clear im talking abt the roach guy. not the biscuit guy)#literally read this reply at 7 am and then spent the next 4.5 hours responding to it????? procrastination is a hell of a drug.......#also being-right-itis. which i do need to be cured of. but not today!!!!!!#anyway im putting this under the cut so hopefully no one sees this and takes it as incentive to harass this person???? which shouldnt need#to be said but i do have way too many followers on here statistically speaking some of u MUST be freaks#sigh.#anyway i hate how widespread the term headcanon is even when what ppl really mean in that context is 'interpretation'#headcanon =/= interpretation#and anyway it seems like we mostly agree#so i think this convo should end here on a cordial note in which we agree on most things and agree to disagree on notes of interpretation#because otherwise we're just going in circles#and there's really no point to that
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It's been a month since the lives of every Jew around the world was changed and I know that I for one will never fully recover from this. I'm sending you and everyone I know in Israel so much love and support because I know that at least I can live relatively untouched by what's happening.
I desperately want to talk to my non-jewish friends about what's going on but I honestly still have no idea how to do so because the situation is so unbelievably horrific that without having actual family and friends involved (or living in Israel), I don't think it's possible for anyone to appreciate how fucking terrifying everything is.
The news broke today of an American Jew dying after being attacked at a pro-palestine rally and there has been zero coverage of this outside of Jewish circles. I still check behind me when I commute because I'm afraid someone is gonna push me under a train because I am Jewish.
I joked, in the dark way that a lot of us do, that would I have to die for the gentiles to take the Jews' fears seriously and now someone has, it's clear that is being murdered in broad daylight (and not ok Israel because apparently it's clear that being in Israel invalidates your right to life in a lot of people's eyes) isn't enough to even get people to listen to us.
I just don't know what to do anymore.
Hi, love! Sorry it took me a moment. I'm doing my best, but I hope you know that my heart is always with you!
I feel exactly the same. My life will never be the same. Everything feels different. And we will heal, but scars this deep, they don't disappear. They will always be there. We have been forever changed. And I think that's... I think that's a Jewish experience that many former generations had, and we fooled ourselves to think the generation of the Holocaust would be the last one to go through this.
IDK what advice to give you on talking to your non-Jewish friends. I can tell you I've had many who reached out to me, and it's been so heartwarming. I've had three that I reached out to, but pretty much because I saw them spreading hate filled posts, and I thought they could, and would want, to do better. That didn't really work out, but then I guess if they were extreme enough that I felt compelled to reach out to them, maybe this attempt never really stood a chance. All I know is that I do feel better for having tried. But if you have friends who are not that far gone, yet they haven't been talking to you about this, then maybe an option would be to tell them that you need to share your feelings and thoughts. People often shy away from politics, but if they're really your friends, then they would listen to you sharing these more personal aspects of what's been going on.
Yes, the news about Paul Kessler's homicide were horrifying. A 69 years old man shouldn't have to be scared to go out expressing what he thinks in a free, democratic society. Please, do be careful! What this world should be, it clearly isn't.
I'm gonna be honest, after everything our people had gone through, I'd rather Jews be alive and hated, than spoken of compassionately, but dead. If the world had shown full empathy for every single one of the massacre's victims, I would still give all of that empathy away to have our people back, alive and well, unharmed. What's insane is that even dead Jews no longer get any empathy, not in Israel, and not outside it, as you've pointed out. So many people who claim to be reblogging anti-Israel posts, because they value human life, have failed to reblog anything condemning the massacre, or the rise in antisemitism, or mourn Paul.
IDK what we can do other than be there for each other, and speak up as much as we can, and where and when it's safe for us. I am sending you so much love, and the softest of hugs, okay? Please do let me know how you're doing, if you feel like it. xoxox
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
#ask#classical-memeician#israel#israeli#israel news#israel under attack#israel under fire#israelunderattack#terrorism#anti terrorism#antisemitism#hamas#antisemitic#antisemites#jews#jew#judaism#jumblr#frumblr#jewish
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I still feel like nobody sees my posts, but I know that’s not true, because my follower count has tripled at least twice since the moon landing post took off, and I do get way more notes on my reblogs and stuff even though my level of interaction on this site hasn’t changed.
So, I need to be very clear, for both new and old followers:
I am Jewish. I am anti-Zionist. I support Palestinian liberation, and Israel should not and should never have been a political state.
There is no wrong time to speak out against genocide, and I think that during Pesach, a time which celebrates our liberation from an oppressive regime, is an especially relevant time to address the ongoing horrors of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
From its conception, Israel has oppressed the Palestinian people. They have reduced civil rights. Their homes and property were taken from them and given to white Europeans whose citizenship was deemed more valid under discriminatory laws. They have been forced to live in contained and highly policed areas, restricted in their movement, made to carry identification papers, they have been kidnapped, tortured, beaten and humiliated for the entertainment of Israeli troops. This should sound familiar to you. It’s utterly reprehensible under any circumstances, to anybody, and the hypocrisy of any Jewish person who can bring themselves to support this or to turn away from it horrifies me. I feel very strongly that my Judaism is part of what compels me to stand against the tyranny of Israel, and I cannot fathom an experience of Judaism that would drive someone to support the rising death toll in Palestine.
The bombings and shootings and raids and murders happening every day in Gaza are unacceptable. The aid being restricted and blockaded from entering the area is unacceptable. I cannot possibly sit here and continue to list every war crime Israel has committed, every hospital they have bombed, every child they have killed, every parent or grandparent or brother or sister or neighbor who is starving or dying of thirst or wounds or lack of medical care. It is unacceptable to anyone with an ounce of compassion in their body. There is no excuse, no justification for these attacks. This is not a war. This is a massacre.
I don’t have a thesis, or a point, I can’t synthesize this better than many, many others have done before me. In the past two days in my real life I have once had a stranger attempt to recognize me as a fellow Zionist, and once had a fellow Jew accuse me of insensitivity and antisemitism. I won’t stand for that. You, reading this, will not misunderstand me. You are free to disagree, but you will do it elsewhere. I am proud to be Jewish. I will not use my Judaism as a bludgeon against the oppressed. My Judaism is for justice, and that justice is for Palestine.
I am not Yisrael. Safety for Jewish people does not lie in an ethnostate; safety is in diaspora. Next year in Jerusalem, may Palestine dwell in peace. From the river to the sea.
#mine#personal#I should probably schedule this for the morning so I can have a look at the interaction settings#I’m pretty heated right now (obviously) but not so much that I’m going to be entirely stupid about it.
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About prison thing: seems cruel to not want child abuse survivors to have a physical guard around their abuser
(the above was a follow-up to this reply made on my post:
First off: in my post, I was calling out saneism. I should be able to call out saneism—i.e. someone saying “psychopaths” are all “people who need to be kept away from other humans”—without being derailed, badjacketed, or having the original person’s saneism basically repeated to me/approved of (i.e. now associating “psychopath” with “person who just hurts other people/rapes/murders for fun,” another common saneist caricature of those of us with ASPD). I am frustrated that as a marginalized person and as a survivor of sexual violence and a survivor of years of child abuse I am almost never given space to discuss already-extremely-underdiscussed bigotry and harm which impacts me without being complained at, tone-policed, implied to be advocating something thoughtless/unreasonable/endangering, as if I obviously must not know anything at all about these topics, as if I owe everyone who stumbles across some post I reblogged to immediately drop everything and “genuinely answer” for all their comprehension gaps. As if I have not heard these “genuine fucking concerns” dozens, hundreds of times over and over. As if I don’t fucking know what I as a survivor want or need for my own safety—to the point of being “cruel”!
I’m sorry if this seems harsh, but for some context, I am already very anxious, stressed out, exhausted, and constantly overworked; I am also very emotionally exhausted all the time because of vast amounts of trauma; I don’t fucking appreciate being cast this way, or others trying to tell me (yet again) what they think I’m Supposed to want or feel or believe as a child abuse survivor, like the category must obviously be distant from me.
“Psychopaths” (generally considered to be an outdated term for ASPD) are not a separate species to whom different standards apply. “Psychopathy” does not uniquely compel a person to uncontrollably harm others. There is no uniform biological characteristic which can be blamed for violence. The myth that there is one is the product of centuries of eugenicist propaganda from the state and psychiatric institutions which have caused immense suffering and abuse for the marginalized, as well as misled victims of violence into scapegoating an underclass, believing misinformation about the actual causes and motivations and functions of abusers, and pursuing ineffective strategies for preventing harm. These are facts and I would appreciate if I could discuss them without being aggressively strawmanned.
how someone who just hurts people for fun should be treated? Someone who rapes, gets released, rapes over and over should be treated? People who don’t rape and murder deserve a safe society.
Note: I’m not approaching this issue from the POV of some sort of policy-maker who passes down mandates that will be put into place from above. I don’t have that kind of power, I will never have that kind of power, and I reject the notion that the optimal way to start change is through such top-down methods. These are only some reasons and suggestions; in every case of violent victimization, it is still the survivor(s) who generally know best about what to do for their particular situation.
Also note: I don’t believe “people who hurt other people for fun” are a particularly unique category among any people-who-victimize-other-people. Many people-who-hurt-other-people are not doing it for fun, but will still do it repeatedly and will not be deterred by a temporary prison sentence.
These questions are operating off several problematic assumptions. Here is some missing context:
Rapists and murderers are already pretty safe in this current society, relatively speaking. Plenty of cops, soldiers, killing numerous people daily, receiving little to no consequences (legal or otherwise). Extremely high numbers of rapes occurring daily. Most rapists are never reported to law enforcement. Most rapists reported to law enforcement will never spend a day in jail.
Likewise for murderers of queers, people of color, etc. Also see the epidemics of intimate partner violence and (trans)femicide and how little they overlap with imprisonment.
And especially for child abusers.
Police are the serial rapists, murderers, and child abusers (and child rapists) alarmingly often. It hardly matters what some random civilian thinks about whether or not they should get longer sentences because they are not being imprisoned in the first place, and the idea that it could possibly happen is so unlikely it is nearly unthinkable.
Many victims of rape, assault, child abuse, and attempted murder are in prison for fighting back against their attackers. Many more for less direct responses to abuse.
Massive amounts of rape, murder, and child abuse occur to inmates in prison, especially by prison guards, who have virtual impunity.
Prisons have never actually done much of a job containing rapists or child abusers for the safety of survivors, and that has never been their intended purpose in the first place.
Prison abolitionists additionally argue that these faults are not incidental, but inherent to the structure of imprisonment itself. Here are some crucial questions:
What are the steps involved in the building of a prison? What resources and social/political mechanisms are required? What are the steps involved in acquiring the ability to mandate and enforce the imprisonment of a person?
What are the precise steps which would lead to a person being imprisoned/contained?
Which exact factors are allowing for an unimprisoned abuser to harm their victim(s) without being stopped?
Which exact mechanisms are preventing a victim/survivor from leaving, resisting, or being safe from their unimprisoned abuser?
It’s not just pure physical distance, is it? Many nonincarcerated people in a relatively close location to someone else are obviously not in a position to abuse, rape, or murder them. An important factor is power—social, economic, not just with regards to spatial access.
A common sociological definition of the State is an entity which has acquired a monopoly over the usage of legitimized violence over a certain geographical area—the establishment of a particular imbalance of power, of the rulers over the ruled. Similarly, a police force is the arm of the state enforcing its monopoly on legitimized violence. The police decry civilians “taking justice into their own hands” because you are supposed to call the police when you’re threatened or you’ve been harmed, you’re supposed to let them handle all of it, and they maintain their power to be the sole actors capable of legitimately defending a victim of violence through an imbalance in material resources.
And yet. The police and the jailers don’t really protect (people), do they? They seem far more focused on the preservation of capital and the state. They rarely give a damn about actual victims of abuse. When they do show up after a call (rare), they tend to harass and victim-blame (if they aren’t just asking aggressive, invasive questions); if they do do something useful, it is almost always too late.
There’s a lot of red tape involved in official processes. Lots of difficulties and inconveniences and risks for victims, especially those of us who are marginalized. Then you maybe take the perpetrator to court. Your status as a victim and the perpetrator’s status as an abuser are put up for debate. This judgment is not permitted to occur in any other setting because innocence/guilt has to be judged by a court of law—the courts monopolize the right to legitimately determine the truth of a situation. Survivors questioned invasively. Victim-blamed. Gaslit. Put down for being disruptive. Unable to fight back against inaccurate framings because the judges hold the epistemic authority in the situation. The process is often traumatizing for survivors.
Maybe they go to prison. What then? They’ll be raped/tortured by other inmates or the guards or they’ll rape/torture other inmates or both—people even more disempowered, more trapped in a situation they cannot leave. They’ll circlejerk with other imprisoned abusers about how abuse is great and valid and justified. Maybe they die or they finish serving their sentence and get out maybe so traumatized/facing unemployment/homelessness they’re no threat anymore or maybe with even more patriarchal/authoritarian attitudes after a slap on the wrist so they go right back to abusing and ignore restraining orders and whatnot because they only work if the cops care to enforce them, and I do not want survivors’ safety solely in the hands of authorities. Maybe they will choose to help, sure. But maybe they won’t. (they usually won’t). The fact that we have to rely on them happening to decide in our favor in order to be safe is already a problem!
And power imbalances like these are what’s allowing abuse to happen in the first place!
When I think about police response to abuse I don’t first think about successful arrests and incarcerations of abusers. I think about cops showing up and arresting the victim. I think about the abusers taking their victims to court for “false accusations” and winning their lawsuits. I think about how many abusers/harassers/stalkers online have threatened and/or tried to report me or one of my friends to the cops to shut us up and get us further abused, and how lucky we’ve been so far. I think about how utterly laughable it is to imagine someone like me calling the cops over the abuse or sexual violence I’ve experienced here because there is no possible world where they would not demonize me and level violence at me if they respond at all, because I am nowhere close to being a “perfect” victim, and none of my stories have been clean or clear-cut. I think about everyone who has harmed me deeply over the course of the years and how though I can try to move on I will never achieve anything near genuine justice and they can all forget because to them it was just another Tuesday and overwhelming social forces have stacked the deck against me everywhere. They will likely go to their graves thinking everything they did was perfectly in the right, with everyone around them nodding and laughing along.
I think about my primary abusers as a child threatening to call the cops on me if I hit back. Feeling extremely unsafe each time. I think about them asking me to just call the cops on them if it’s really so bad, if I think it’s “abuse,” and see how they judge it—a rhetorical question; they know they’re safe and I’m not.
About safety I think, instead, about how I’ve slowly worked to cut ties with and escape the toxic and controlling people I was trapped with, both offline and online. I think about what my friend circle here has tried over the years. Not perfect, but trying our best, and getting better. We’ve always known that the police and courts and prisons have nothing for us; no one has really cared for us or tried to keep us safe before; we protect us and defend each other. Trying to get the ball rolling, fighting to deplatform abusers and force them out of positions of power and cutting them off from the leverage they hold over victims’ heads. A lot of failures. A few gains. I think about how many times I’ve seen someone—in the news, or somewhere closer to me—who stood up and tried to fight, after being failed over and over by institutions; speaking up, trying to get their stories out, working to dethrone abusers from their political and social clout; doing what the police won’t do.
There are people already who are organizing against rapists, serial murderers, and child abusers in their communities IRL. I don’t know a lot about the current state of these efforts right now because this isn’t something you hear about much in official news, mainstream media. But from what I’ve read, some are thinking about these issues already. Survivor defense can include getting together with some friends to physically threaten one’s abuser should they start threatening you again. Getting armed (especially if marginalized); keeping an eye out during high-risk events (like what some are doing around queer gatherings right now); cop-watching (not as popular nowadays unfortunately); general deterrence. Friends helping rescue friends in dangerous situations. Calling out abuse and trying to pressure institutions/organizations/events/communities to drop an abuser using their platform to harm. Violence. Lots of options! But the key point is that these must be grassroots and autonomously managed; if law enforcement gets their hands on any of it, you can be sure that it’ll be co-opted and rendered useless or harmful. The point is to take back our control of our bodies and our lives—both from our abusers and from other cops.
#ask#iris-sunflower#ASPD#anti-ASPD saneism#saneism#ableism#antipsych#abuse#ACAB#prison abolition#anarchism#direct action#ok to rb
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Secondhand Origin Stories, Chapter 9
Here's this week's chapter! Reblogs welcome!
For those of you just joining us, I'm posting a chapter a week of my free near future scifi/low neon cyberpunk YA/NA novel, Secondhand Origin Stories, which has been described as
"-a character driven, compelling story full of family, queerness, corruption, brain altering nanites, secretly teen parenting AIs, and taking aspects of the superhero genre to their very human and rarely-explored natural conclusions."
For content warnings and more, check here:
You can follow along by following #SHOSweekly
Chapter 9
Martin’s voice in the elevator was enough to put Opal on edge again. The unexpectedly plush chairs of the clinic waiting room weren’t enough to fix it. The staff here all seemed so grim, somehow. And up this high, the sound of the storm blanketed every other noise with the static, as if it was keeping secrets in the constant shushes of rain and the grumbles of thunder.
She’d settled on calling her mom. Mom’s ridiculous sheep-patterned pajamas and her enthusiasm for Shani’s history project helped. Apparently Opal would be getting a lengthy account of it whenever she managed to reach Shani between summer sleepovers.
“Everyone still treating you all right?”
Opal smiled, trying to get comfortable. “Aldis and the guys have been great. You got the pictures I sent you of the VIP suite? Oh! Did I tell you Capricorn said he thinks I have grit? And Helix agreed with him.” She couldn’t mention the rest of it-- not here, at least. She couldn’t make up her mind what she really should say.
“Oh, baby, I’m so proud of you. Are they as handsome in person as on TV?”
Opal laughed. “Mom. They’re all like, 40 and up.”
“And that might as well be a hundred to an 18-year-old. Yeah, yeah.”
“Hey, have you--”
“I still haven’t heard from your dad. I promise I’ll let you know the minute I do. But you know how this goes. Any little thing.” And they’d revoke his phone “privileges.” It’d been months, once or twice before. Then he’d reappear, looking a little older, a little less steady, chastising Opal for having worried. She hadn’t gotten any letters, either. It was never good when he couldn’t even send letters. But she’d sent hers. She hoped he got them.
She glanced up as a familiar figure ghosted through the edge of Opal’s line of sight. “Jamie?” Jamie turned, looking haunted. “Hey, Mom. I’m sorry, but I’ll call you later, OK?”
Martin had said there was a family emergency. If Jamie was down here, it must be a bad one.
Jamie was, impossibly, paler than usual. She seemed almost blue. Her posture was hunched, as if she was expecting to have to bolt at any second, with her elbows pulled in tight against her body. She also seemed to be by herself. “Hey, are you OK?”
“I’m trying to find Issac’s doctor, but they just keep telling me to go wait with…I need to tell them what happened with Issac. I’m the only one who was there.”
A nice, straightforward request. Opal stood, flagging down the nearest medical professional who didn’t seem to be rushing. She put on her most professional tone. “Excuse me. Ms. Tillman-Voss needs to speak with the treating physician for Issac Tillman-Voss right away. She has important information relevant to his condition she needs to share.” Hanging around Mom’s job when she was little had given her a few tricks, at least.
The woman nodded, and led them to a nurse’s station before disappearing to find the doctor.
“Ms. Tillman-Voss?” Jamie asked under her breath. “I think they think you’re my bodyguard now.”
Bodyguard? She’d been going for PR intern. “Whatever works,” she muttered back.
Jamie’s smile was tiny and wobbly. “You do look really grown-up in that.”
“You look like you’re going to faint. You’re not, are you? My mom’s a nurse, but I am very much not.”
“No. I need to talk to the doctor.”
“Are you going to faint after that?”
“I hope not. They won’t treat me here. I’m not altered.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure if LodeStar’s kid faints in their waiting room, they’ll pull something together.”
Jamie muttered under her breath, “Not sure he’d care.”
That didn’t sound good. The doctor showed up before Opal could ask, and then she was too busy keeping up with the story Jamie was telling. Every bit of which sounded 100% illegal. By the end of it, Jamie’s voice was painful to even listen to, it was so high-pitched and breathless, but Jamie pushed through. She even brought them a copy of a thesis Issac had written on the subject. It’d be impressive if it wasn’t so horrifying. Brain-changing nanites? You didn’t have to try to think of all the ways that could be misused.
The doctor rushed off as soon as Jamie was done.
Opal was hit with more doubt than she’d ever had before. What and who had she gotten mixed up with? OK, the Sentinels as a family struggling to cope, she could understand. But a family that attempted to cope by developing more and scarier technology, and testing it on themselves in secret?
Then again, that was how Bion had started. But that was back before altering tech laws had been around. Issac must have known what he was doing was illegal. He should even know why it needed to be illegal. His family took down people conducting illegal alterations all the time.
But maybe those rules didn’t apply to their son.
She shivered. Exactly how many rules didn’t apply to them?
Jamie didn’t notice Opal’s existential crisis. She was staring down the hallway towards the handful of private waiting rooms like she was expecting a firing squad. She took a tiny, unconscious step backwards, towards Opal.
And all Opal could remember was Jamie’s comment that nobody would even notice another couple of bruises on her. All three of the kids seemed incredibly isolated. How many laws could the Sentinels get out of?
Opal put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. Leaned in to ask quietly, “Are you OK?”
Jamie didn’t look at her. But she pressed her lips so tight they almost vanished. Her eyes were pink. She shook her head, still staring down the hall.
Maybe it was nothing. Jamie’d had a terrible morning by anyone’s standards.
Maybe it wasn’t nothing.
Jamie started, looking at Opal. “My dad! He needs a doctor, too. If he’s in the waiting room, then they must not know. His collarbone’s broken.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“Yael.” Jamie said, flinching as she realized too late that that was bound to beg questions. “There was a-- xe was afraid he-- but that doesn’t matter. He needs a doctor!”
This time it was even easier to get someone’s attention, but Jamie was a lot lighter on the details. She didn’t even mention Yael. Whatever had happened, she was less likely to explain it than she was Issac’s breach of international laws. Nobody pressed her for more details. Doctors rushed to help the injured superhero, and Opal and Jamie stayed put.
Neil Voss passed by a few minutes later, escorted by a nervous-looking medical person and Capricorn. Capricorn looked grim, and had a hand on LodeStar’s arm. LodeStar ignored Opal completely, his attention stitched tightly to his daughter as he passed. Neither of them said anything to the other.
Jamie watched him with her own intensity, and a disquieting stillness. LodeStar looked half possessed. His eyes burned blood-red where the whites should have been. His steps were unsteady and slow, but the muscles in his shoulders were coiled, prepared to strike, his hands working themselves into huge metallic fists. Flexing again. Stretching, as if he was imagining grabbing something. Opal had never seen anyone more terrifying in her life.
He was cordoned off in another room after what felt like an eternity. The two of them both exhaled at the same time.
Oh God. Opal was in a Gothic novel. And the head of the house was as powerful and utterly unhinged as any she’d ever read. And she’d spent the last...more than two weeks now, trying to move into his house, work under his orders? This was not going to work. She could never trust the orders of someone like that. She could never hurt or arrest anyone on his say-so. She didn’t even want to be in the same room with him.
She’d go home. Go back to Detroit. Save up, and try another team, later. They couldn’t all be like him, could they?
Jamie sat suddenly, barely catching a chair instead of landing on the floor. She was struggling to catch her breath.
Shit. None of the doctors had even looked at Jamie. No one was going to check in on what was happening in LodeStar’s home. What made Jamie look like that? What drove her brother to experiment on himself, rather than have something he might see as a vulnerability in that household?
Opal reached for the only failsafe she could think of close by. “Hey, maybe we should go find your mom?”
Jamie cringed, but nodded, dragging herself back upright. Opal followed close behind, hoping to find some kind of resolution.
* * *
Issac drifted in and out of consciousness several times. Reality had turned slippery, and even awake, he couldn’t seem to grasp hold of it. This time, when he woke, the ground under him felt a little more solid. Time felt a little more linear.
He kept his eyes closed, trying to shut out reality. Trying not to notice what he couldn’t detect. He tried to focus inward. His mouth and tongue hurt, as if he’d cut them. A seizure, he remembered. Someone had told him he’d had a seizure, one of the other times he’d been awake. He must have bitten himself. His mouth tasted like blood.
He shifted his attention again, but his body was no refuge. His pulse was speeding; his back hurt like hell. There was a needle in his arm. His torso was canted upwards. Another hospital bed.
More missing monitor noise.
His mind had never been good at silence. He’d never been able to get it to shut up. To stop noticing.
Then again, at least it was still working right. At least he did still notice things.
At least he’d woken up.
Tears pricked at his closed eyes. He’d failed. Air escaped his lungs unevenly, and he sucked it back in, straining against ribs that whined about it, just like the last time.
Whoever was in the room with him-- there must be someone-- didn’t notice his tears or any unwanted noises. There was no touch to his hand or face. No anything. If he wanted something, he’d have to signal it. He’d have to open his eyes and face whoever was there.
He pried open crusty, itchy eyes. This time, his vision landed first on his own paper-clad lap.
There was a card in his hand in unfamiliar handwriting. Issac - you have had a seizure. Some confusion is normal. It will go away in a while. Please stop trying to remove the monitoring equipment. Your family will return soon.
Soon? None of them were even in here with him? He looked up.
There was a man in the room. He was wearing a three-piece suit in brownish gray, with graying, sand-colored hair, and a severely bleached smile plastered on his face. He was sitting in the chair between Issac and the door with his ankle on his knee. As if this was a perfectly normal way to meet someone.
This was not a doctor.
Issac gasped as his vision developed sudden spots. Black fractured the image in front of him.
It was text. Good afternoon, Mr. Tillman-Voss.
Issac was wearing contacts. Revulsion rolled through him. He wanted to pull them off. He couldn’t stand the thought of touching them. Either the stranger knew he had them, or he thought Issac could hear. The man stood, still smiling. He reached into his blazer pocket, producing a little slip of paper. He walked the few paces between them, holding it out. A business card. Before Issac could read it, more text crowded the image out. I’m Frank Lasansky of Lasansky Security Technologies. Sorry if I’m catching you at a bad time.
A bad time? Issac wasn’t even wearing pants. How did these contacts end up on his eyes? Where was his family? I heard a while back about what happened to you and I think that’s a shame. Just a real shame. Still smiling. Issac would have punched the guy if he was more confident in his ability to stand up without falling down. There was something off about him-- a fakeness that went beyond his over-bleached teeth. Issac took the business card, but kept watching the man’s face.
It didn’t move right. Some kind of partial paralysis?
And I thought, there’s a young man I’d like to meet. And my lucky day, I come to find out you’re in this very building when I am! Well, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that, could I? Huh? Right?
Issac didn’t know what else to do, so he shook his head “no.” Did this guy not know Issac lived in this building? How could he possibly not know that? It was Sentinel Plaza.
Lasansky. That name was familiar.
The weird smile stretched wider. Great! Glad to hear it. Because I am just dying to chat with you about those nanites of yours. Issac went cold. The nanites. He must be from the APB? Maybe he was here to take Issac away. Issac felt an irrational urge to check to make sure all his arms and legs were still attached. That they hadn’t been replaced with weaker models. He knew better, and he was being watched. Now, I already heard that this trial didn’t work out. That’s why I took the liberty of providing you with some hardware to help us out in our little chat. He tapped the space next to his eye, looking pleased with himself.
Issac recoiled. He would have assumed that either his parents or a nurse had put the contacts on him. That would have been bad enough. But to think that this random businessman had been touching Issac while he was either asleep or too out of it to have a say sent a spiky, electric chill up his spine. OK, he had his legs, but it felt that much closer to Jenna's fate, all the same.
Lasansky continued, either oblivious to Issac's alarm or electing to ignore it. But hey, these things happen. You can’t get it right on your first try every time, right? Issac wondered whether he was supposed to shake his head again, but this time Lasansky didn’t wait. I want you to know I’m not going to judge you for that. You know? I want you to hear that it’s not your fault. You didn’t have backup. No support. No team.
Issac's horror ebbed a little, and he tried to shove it down faster. Don’t think about his eyes. This was obvious, and well-thought-out, flattery. This total stranger knew exactly what Issac wanted to hear. The polar opposite of what he’d be forced to sit through whenever his parents showed up to replace the stranger.
Why was he flattering Issac?
Issac studied the man. The suit was high-end, and almost perfectly tailored, but cut a little too big in the shoulders. There was the smallest of silver roots visible at his hairline. His hands looked noticeably older than his face.
Ah. His face. He’d had too much Botox, too many face-lifts, or both. That’s why his expressions seemed off. Everything about him was pretending.
Lasansky. Lasansky. He knew that name.
But a little birdie gave me some good news. Word on the street is, it’s your biggest birthday today! He leaned in conspiratorially. Issac leaned in, too, as if it mattered what volume the man spoke at. You’re a free man, Mr Tillman. The world is your oyster.
A free man. So, not arrested, anyway. Lasansky stood. Now I know this is irregular, God knows it’s not usually how we run things at Lasansky Security International, but you, young man, are special. I couldn’t run the chance of them squirreling you away in the attic all alone without my having spoken to you, first.
Of him being sent away like Jenna.
Mr. Tillman, I am here to make you an offer. Because the problem with working for the family business is, you have to work for your family! You have to be the baby at work and at home. Have your boss at the dinner table. Be constantly surrounded by people who have what they think are your best interests at heart, but who, deep down, can’t appreciate you for the adult that you are! Now the fact that you had to run this all by yourself tells me that they already gave you the vote of no confidence. They only see Issac the boy, not Issac the man. But I have seen your patent list, and I am ready to give you my full vote of confidence. I believe in your tech. I believe there’s a need for it, and I believe that with the right support, you can deliver your gift to the world. I am prepared to offer you just that support.
This stranger-- this fake man in a thousand-dollar suit-- understood. Had grasped the whole dynamic of the situation without ever even meeting Issac. Issac glanced down briefly, thinking, and his eyes landed on perfectly shined shoes with a subtly higher-than-average heel. Trying to look tall.
Lasansky was the head of what had to be a huge, heavily politically-connected company, but even he had to pretend to be taller, healthier, younger than he was. No wonder he could understand Issac’s need to fix himself. Even Lasansky wasn’t high enough in the hierarchy to risk exposing even the smallest, most irrelevant weaknesses, like wrinkles or narrower shoulders.
Well, even Mom wore tall shoes and sought the occasional nip and tuck, didn’t she? She just wore it better, or maybe invested more.
If even the people at the top-- everyone who wasn’t altered-- had to protect themselves with artificial health and height, where did that leave someone with an actual weakness?
Lasansky approached the tilted hospital bed. Issac had to crane his neck back to keep watching him. He smiled down at Issac with gleaming teeth. Mr. Tillman, how would you like to join the Lasansky Securities family?
* * *
Time bled by Yael at an agonizing crawl. Xe didn’t know how long xe’d been sitting on the cool tile floor of xyr bedroom, not really seeing anything. Xyr back was still against the door, where it was easiest to hear Papa not coming after xyr, not trying to argue through the door. Xe’d let xyr mind go blank, listening to that silence.
When xyr phone went off, Yael jumped so hard xe banged xyr head against the door. Xe grabbed the phone out of xyr pocket, answering to stop its intrusion. Xe forgot all about Papa for a moment when xe realized it was Issac. Or, at least, Issac's phone.
“Hello?” xe asked cautiously, not sure who to expect on the other end.
Issac himself answered. “Yeah. Uhm. Hi.”
Yael's head dropped back, hitting the door with another bang. “You’re OK. You’re OK, right? Oh my Gosh, can you hear me? You’re on the phone!”
There was a pause. “I…no. I have translation software. I can’t hear you.”
“Sorry it didn’t work.” And xe was, a little. Mostly, xe was happy he was conscious, coherent and alive. Now they just had to get through the fallout with the APB. Nodiah wasn’t going to be happy.
Issac didn’t even try to hide his discomfort, which was refreshing. “Yeah.” Yael looked behind xyr, as if xe could see through the door. Xe had no idea where Papa was, if he was hearing all of this. “I need your help.”
Yael crossed xyr legs, straightening. Trying not to think about how “helping” him this morning had gone. “What do you need?”
“An escort? I, uhm. I got a job. Just now.” Yael pulled the phone away from xyr ear, and stared at it, baffled. Was Issac actually coherent? “I know that’s weird. But it’s this guy who works with the APB, and he actually believes in my research. Wants to use it to help people.” Official approval! Thank heaven. Issac would be safe, now. Problems were knocking themselves out left and right.
“I’m eighteen. I can move out, any time I want to. They can’t stop me. But it’s like… I’ll have to live in just like…a place. Just standard security systems. I’d feel better if you came along, too. You’re almost eighteen. Can you?” A flicker of hesitation. “Will you?”
Yael rushed the phone back to xyr ear, glancing back against the door again. Hopefully Papa hadn’t heard that.
Xyr first impulse was to tell Issac “no.” He was hurt. He needed his family. He needed to be protected, here at home.
Except now, home wasn’t safe, either. He needed safety and family. Maybe Yael really was his best bet for both. Papa wasn’t listening to Yael-- maybe none of the others would, either.
“On one condition. We have to bring Jamie, too. We can’t leave her here.” Xe hoped Melissa would protect her, but if nobody but Yael saw the danger--
“What? I. But. I mean. If she wants to…You think she would? But she’s sixteen.”
“We have to try.”
“Uh. Sure. Try away.”
“Is…Your mom isn’t with you, now.”
“Obviously.”
“You’re alone?”
“I…I guess they came in earlier. I don’t remember.”
“Have you seen Neil?”
“I guess.”
“Jamie?”
“I don’t remember, OK? Seizures can do that. Just…pack up. I’ll get home when I can to do the same.” He said his goodbyes, which Yael echoed in a haze, then hung up.
Moving out? Xe’d never planned to leave. Xyr room had always just evolved with xyr. This was Yael’s home.
But a home wasn’t such a big thing to sacrifice for your brother and sister.
Xe heard shuffling outside. Papa’s normally light footfalls were slow and plodding, either because he was just that tired, or to warn xyr he was coming.
The handle beside xyr head turned, and Yael looked over at it as the door tried to shift inward. Yael was more than heavy enough to keep it closed.
Papa’s voice was muffled, but only a little bit irritated. “Yael, I’ve bought you a very large bed, two futons, and an office chair. Why do you insist on sitting on the floor?”
Xe didn’t even bother to pretend to be angry. “I’m being a barricade.”
“Well, stop being a barricade and go back to being my daughter. I need to talk to her.”
Maybe it was just because xe was so upset about everything else, but xe was suddenly annoyed by his misgendering, and didn’t watch xyr tongue. “I’m not your daughter.”
Shit! Yael’d said it before thinking, then realized how Papa would hear it. Xe scrambled to xyr feet and threw the door open.
He was standing there, half turned from the door, his expression a broken attempt at stoicism. He met xyr eyes with a piercing, angry gaze and a mouth that tugged down at the corners, obviously hurt.
This time xyr blurted words did better. “I didn’t mean it like that! I meant-- ugh. You’ve heard Jamie and Issac use non-gendered pronouns for me for five months now. Take a hint!”
The pain in his expression cleared, some, replaced by sincere confusion. “You never asked me to call you that.”
“I thought it would be obvious.”
“I didn’t want to assume. Sometimes siblings have things they don’t want to share with-- I was trying not to intrude!” He shook his head. “This is absurd. Yael, aren’t we having enough fights today? Let’s put this on hold.”
Surprisingly diplomatic of him, even if he was sidestepping something important to xyr. Xe tried to stay calm. Xe crossed xyr arms. “All right. Which fight do you want to have first?”
Papa replied with an exasperated, but not entirely unamused sigh, and stepped forward. Xe let him in. He paused. “How about the one about how your room looks like you’re afraid of drawers, closets and boxes?”
“Really?”
He shoved over a pile of hoodies and sat on one of the futons. “No.” He rubbed his face.
The silence stretched out. Papa was lost in thought. Yael collapsed onto the opposite futon, toying with the corduroy.
Finally he looked to xyr. “Which do you want to start with?”
Yael spread xyr hands helplessly, shaking xyr head. Xe had no idea how to untangle all of this. But xe didn’t want him to leave.
Xe didn’t want to leave.
To xyr amusement, he pulled out a coin. He looked at xyr. “Heads, your fight with Neil, tails, the…the other thing.”
Xe nodded, and he flipped the coin, catching it and slapping it to his hand. “Heads,” he announced.
They looked at each other, bracing for a fight neither of them wanted to have. “Tell me what happened. I won’t say anything until you’ve finished. Just this once.”
Too good an offer to pass up. “Issac was following in his father’s and Jenna's and Drew's footsteps. He decided to fight his limitations directly, and he had the science. He limited the MARTIN sensors and used his nanites to try to repair his audio nerve.” Xe refused to look ashamed. “Jamie and I helped him, and kept his secret. And I am not sorry we did.” That was much easier to say now that xe knew he really was OK. “He has the right to try to better himself.”
Xe couldn’t read Papa’s reaction, so xe just kept going. “But he had a seizure, Jamie used the failsafe, and we called for help. The EMTs got Issac, and Drew went with them, and as soon as Neil and Jamie and I were alone, he started shouting at her, and then he lunged for her. I intercepted him and tried to make him back off. He wouldn’t. That’s pretty much when you came in.”
Papa might not have interrupted, but now he was shaking his head. “You misinterpreted. You were upset and you misunderstood.”
“How would you know? You weren’t there!” xe challenged.
“Neil wouldn’t. He adores Jamie. He loves all of you kids.” Yael shook xyr head, glaring daggers at the floor as he continued. “You’ve known him your whole life. You know he would never hurt any of you.”
“I’ve been trying to believe in that, and in him. This whole time I’ve been trying. But he’s not the man I grew up with. That man would never abandon Issac for days at a time like this. Not for any reason. And today-- I’ve seen enough film of your missions to know he can kill with less rage than that. I wouldn’t let anyone looking like that near Jamie or Issac.”
Xe readied for arguments and shouting yet again. Instead, Papa looked distracted and troubled.
Deep down, part of Yael wanted to be wrong. Even hurting Neil unfairly would be better than Neil being a real danger to Jamie. Neil would heal. If he was the person Yael thought xe remembered, he would even forgive.
But Papa had stopped arguing. Xe couldn’t imagine a more hollow victory.
They sat in painful silence for a moment.
“I…I’ll talk to him. And Melissa,” he promised.
“There’s more.”
He looked horrified. “More? How could there possibly be more?” Realization dawned. “The phone call.”
“It was Issac.”
“Well then, that’s good!”
Xe nodded, hesitantly. “Yes, that’s good,” xe hedged. “You know it’s his birthday.”
“What a birthday.”
“He’s eighteen. He called me to say he’s not coming back, except to pack his things. He’s moving out. And he sure is Melissa’s son, because he’s somehow landed himself a job since this morning.”
Papa’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious.”
Yael threw up xyr hands. “It wasn’t my idea!”
“Well, tell him not to!”
“When has that ever worked? At least it’s APB-backed, so he won’t get arrested for this morning.”
“He can’t just go out there, alone.”
Here it was. “He won’t be alone.” Yael gulped, but raised xyr chin. “I’m going with him.”
Papa rocketed to his feet.“The hell you are!” All his bombastic energy was back from before. “This is absurd! We had a fight! That is no reason. No. Reason.”
Yael didn’t have it in xyr now to fight about this. Instead, xe kept xyr voice low, which had the surprising effect of making Papa pause. “I know. I’m not going to get away from you. I’m going to protect him. Because he shouldn’t go out there alone.”
“I forbid it.”
“Then be prepared to fight me with real force every single day. Be prepared to break my legs faster than they can heal, because that’s what it’ll take.”
Papa was visibly repulsed. “This is no time for dramatics.”
“I’m being sincere. I know you don’t have a lot of recent practice with honesty, but try and remember what it sounds like. If you’re not willing to go that far, then you won’t keep me here. And you don’t want to.”
“Of course I want to! You’re my--” Xe had to hand it to him; he stopped before ‘daughter’ this time. He was trying. “Family. And you belong here.”
“Do you want to leave Issac unprotected? Out there? He’s your family. He’s hurt. Are you going to abandon him?”
“This is madness.”
“I told you that I’d defend them. From anyone and anything. I meant that.” Not a hero’s oath, but the one that came from xyr heart.
“What about Jamie?”
“I don’t know yet. But you’ll protect her, won’t you?”
Papa sank down on the futon, hands over his eyes. “There is nothing about this that I don’t hate.”
“But you will.”
He scowled at the ceiling from behind his hand. “Yes, of course I will.”
Silence swallowed them up, and Yael noticed the rain for the first time. Rain was supposed to cleanse. Yael didn’t feel cleansed, but at least some things between them were out. The inside of xyr head felt a little cleaner for it.
Eventually Yael commented, “I think that was the quietest fight we’ve ever had.”
“I think I lost.”
* * *
“Ms. Tillman-Voss? Your brother would like to see you.” The nurse looked at Jamie and Opal, and all the empty chairs in the private waiting room. “Is your mother not here?”
“She went for coffee,” Jamie answered automatically. That had been three hours ago, but it still stood. Jamie had no doubt that wherever Mom was, she’d have a cup of coffee with her. Jamie explaining the morning to Mom hadn’t gone well. Jamie stood, then hesitated, looking back at Opal. “Can you--?”
“I’ll wait here,” Opal assured. It helped. Opal had been sitting with Jamie this whole time, even though Jamie was too full of waiting to be any kind of good company. She’d spent most of the last hour giving Jamie entertaining summaries of Gothic novels with unflattering appraisals of characters’ decision-making abilities. She’d kept it up, even though Jamie didn’t have it in her to laugh at anything right now. They made her almost smile and kept her partially occupied, and that was more than Jamie could have asked for.
Jamie glanced back over her shoulder as she followed the nurse out, getting one more sympathetic smile and encouraging wave from Opal before following the nurse down the same hall her dad had disappeared down three hours ago. She hadn’t seen or heard from him, since. She told herself it was because a broken bone could take a while to treat.
Issac was sitting up, awake and lucid, when Jamie slipped quietly into the room. The nurse shut the door behind her, leaving the two of them alone. His lips weren’t blue. His eyes were focused, if bloodshot. He had on two medical bracelets and a white paper card in each hand. One large, one small. The sensors were still on his forehead. He watched her with trepidation, licking his lips.
Jamie almost tripped over her shoes crossing the space between them. She wrapped both arms around him and pulled him close enough that she could tell that he was warm, that he wasn’t shaking. She tried to make out a heartbeat, but her own heart was pounding too hard. He put one hand on her back, hesitantly. The hand didn’t shake or jerk. It was steady.
She took a deep breath, pulling away, and grabbed his pillow from behind him. She cataloged all the sensors on his head, his sternum, and his wrist bracelet. She aimed for his forearm and stomach, and hit him with the paper-wrapped pillow almost as hard as she could. “Never! Again!”
Issac raised his arms, trying to fend off the unexpected attack, but neglecting to grab the pillow. She gripped it, dragging it off the side of the bed, glaring at him with stinging eyes. Even if he didn’t know what she’d said, he should be able to work out why she was mad.
He was still for a second, hands still raised defensively, not sure whether she’d strike another fluffy vinyl blow. That was fair; she wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to hit him again. She was gratified to see him frantically searching for an appropriate response.
Tentatively, he reached out a hand, and that was enough invitation. She grabbed him in another tight hug, dropping the pillow back on the bed so she could grab him with both hands and be sure she could feel him breathing. “You jerk. I threw up four times because of you. If you ever try that again, next time I’m just going to let you--” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t even finish the thought. Didn’t want the twitching, blue-lipped vision it conjured up. She realized belatedly there was no way he could hold a tablet, because he was actually hugging her back this time. She was just as happy he hadn’t heard her threat. She sniffed hard, trying not to get snot on his paper pajamas, and squeezed him again.
He answered anyway. “I promise not to ask you to do something like that again. Sorry.”
She muttered with her head on his shoulder. “You better not. Practically gave me a heart attack.”
“Liar. Your cardio system is like the only thing on you that halfway works right.”
Jamie startled, letting go. “You heard me!” Oh thank G-d, it was over. Whatever came next, it would all have to work out. Issac's gambit had paid off. Mom and Dad would have to forgive them for it eventually, now. She was almost lightheaded with relief.
“No. I’m wearing the contacts.”
Shit. She could see it cost him to even say it. But seeing him turn red in the face was good. Red wasn’t blue.
“Oh. Well. I’m glad you can use those now. I can’t even tell the difference!” He couldn’t hear her tone, but she was pretty sure it was still unconvincing. Not because it wasn’t true, but because of everything she knew would come with it. She gripped the paper of his hospital gown. “So…are you OK?”
He didn’t look at her this time, watching his own hand tap the sheets. “Well, I’m not dead. There doesn’t seem to be any more brain damage. Still can’t hear. So, mostly the same, I guess. My back hurts,” he added offhandedly. Jamie’s gut flipped, remembering the unnatural looking way it had bowed off the bed. “But I guess…mostly the same.”
He turned his hand over. There was a handwritten notecard in it, in an unfamiliar handwriting. You are in the hospital due to a seizure. Some confusion and soreness-- He closed his hand around the card, then looked at the other card, which seemed to be a business card. He didn’t turn that around, so she couldn’t read it.
“So uhm. I guess my experiment got someone’s attention at the APB--”
Her hand clenched around the paper of his shirt again. She looked down at his wrist. He wasn’t cuffed to the hospital bed or anything. Looked around the room. No sign of any security measures beyond the default.
Issac was OK, but would he stay OK? Would they ship him off to some hellish prison in Detroit? Issac couldn’t make it in a place like that-- hearing or not.
Jamie couldn’t protect him from that. From anything. “We’re at the APB,” she interrupted. He paused, then looked around the room, realizing it was true. “MARTIN called them,” Jamie added furiously. Stupid super-intelligent security system didn’t understand the risk it was putting Issac through.
“Oh. MARTIN.” He was quiet so long she had to squish the urge to bend over and check his eyes, to make sure they weren’t rolled back. Then he took an expansive breath. “Anyway, this guy who works with the APB is interested in my research. He offered me a job.” His eyes skittered up to meet hers. “And I took it.”
They stared at each other. He had the good sense to look a little hangdog. Finally, Jamie spoke, trying to sound as even-keel as possible. “I don’t want this to sound mean, but I think they should scan your brain for injuries again.”
Issac looked supremely unimpressed, but pointed at a monitor with a display that meant nothing to her. “Read all you want. I have.” He held up his phone. “I even got some notes from them.” He shifted, sitting straighter and warming to his subject. “Look, this is what I need. Just…some space to figure things out. Some backup so I can work without…” He gestured at the machinery behind him without actually looking at any of it. Jamie's eyes skimmed along them. There were a lot of them. A lot of things the doctors were worried about.
Legal protection. That was worth a lot. Was it more than their family could provide?
“But you live with Mom,” Jamie attempted to reason. “She owns everything in your lab.”
He frowned. “Well, obviously I’m going to have to move out. That’s fine. I’m old enough.”
Jamie thought of Mom’s torn up cuticles and the cracks in the dark glaze on her nails. This morning, the cracks had been gone, and the plum glaze traded out for a less obvious nude color. Tidied up, but with the expectation of future chips.
“I was going to move out soon, anyway. What’s a few months’ difference?”
“Mom’s going to see a difference.”
“Well, then that’s her problem,” he answered with attempted glibness. Jamie’s heart sank. “Yael wants you to come. With us. Xe’s moving out with me. As a bodyguard kind of thing. I don’t mind. If you want to.”
She made up her mind in an instant. She’d failed Issac once already today. She couldn’t quit now. She nodded, just once, and he seemed both pleased and surprised.
She’d figure this out one way or another.
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22-25 for the end of the year reading asks!
(In response to this ask game which I reblogged Several days ago lmao)
22. What's the longest book you read?
By page count it's pretty close to tied between Iron Gold (Pierce Brown) and The Will of the Many (James Islington)! Iron Gold is the fourth book in a sci-fi series that I read a while ago—since this summer I’ve been slowly rereading/listening to the audiobook versions of the first five books because I learned that the sixth one was being released in July after a several year wait and couldn’t remember enough about the plot to jump straight into it. Working my way through the fifth one right now which is even longer (34 hour audiobook!)... hopefully I'll finish it before the end of the year so I can finally start the new one. Meanwhile The Will of the Many is the recently-published first in a planned trilogy and it's all about Gary Stu's adventures in the fantasy Roman Empire with a magic system that's a somewhat-clunky, hilariously unsubtle satire of trickle-down economics. I had fun with it :)
23. What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?
I think the full-length novel that I went through the fastest is probably Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera, which I read in a sub-24 hour period (picked it up at the library on a Friday afternoon and was done before Saturday evening). My feelings on that one are somewhat mixed—it’s a quick read (lmao) and a fun concept (2/3 ex-members of a washed-up English glam rock band get forcibly conscripted to represent Earth in its first inter-galactic Eurovision analogue after first contact with aliens; if they lose humanity is deemed unworthy of entering the cultural conversation and the planet gets destroyed) and months later I am still compelled by the relationships between the main two characters/their narrative-haunting dead best friend, and there are a few specific sentences I could quote word for word because I liked the prose so much—but also the prose is just So Fucking Much. My god. Valente read the Goodreads quote page for Hitchhiker’s Guide and said “I’m going to write a book where Every Single Sentence reads exactly like all of these” and by god she fucking did it! Kind of grated on me after a couple of chapters tbh and also I can’t decide whether I think the ending was strong or not... I'd recommend it though if you're a fan of Hitchhiker's and/or Eurovision and/or rock band drama!
24. Did you DNF anything? Why?
I think the only things I got properly invested in (as in, read more than the first few pages) before setting aside for an extended period of time and don’t plan on finishing before the year ends are House of Leaves and The Crying of Lot 49 - and both of them especially House of Leaves are books that I actually would like to finish, but realized partway through that I absolutely did not have the bandwidth at that point of time to give them the time/attention they required. But one of these years I will actually sit down and read a Pynchon novel from cover to cover I swear… and I should be able to get to House of Leaves in 2024!
25. What reading goals do you have for next year?
I want to read more short stories! I got pretty into the speculative fiction short story scene this year—bits and pieces of various anthologies, finally subscribed to some magazines like Clarkesworld, etc.—and I’ve been having a really good time with it, so next year I’d like to keep that energy up. I’m also hoping to finish House of Leaves as previously mentioned!
#thanks for asking! sorry it took a while to get around to answering… so many things have been happening in my life the past few days#but fortunately the horrors are now at an end so i am back in full force!#also i know it’s been a minute since i reblogged the game in the first place but if anyone else happens to want to send an ask feel free :)#ask game
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