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liliansun · 1 year

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BEHIND THE SCENES 🎬 : EPILOGUE

wc. 0.9k

warnings: just cute cringy shit also hope this was worth the wait bc I literally just wrote it in a mc donald’s parking lot 💔

You felt sick as you sat in the car, palms sweaty against your dress as the motion of the car kept you in a daze. All you could think about was your manager’s words and how real it all felt when you sat back and looked at it. You and Sunghoon weren’t meant to continue on in this fake relationship and the both of you knew that the day it was announced. You both knew it would come to an end and neither of you expected for it to turn out the way it did. Sure, you had your fair share of problems on set and off, I guess that just means everyone who believes in the enemies to lovers trope has their cards in the right place.

“You look pale, are you okay?” Your eyes flicker over to Yeji, your plus one for the night, who gives you a concerned look. “Yeah I’m okay.” You mumble, sucking in a deep breath as you look out the window and see the lines of fans and photographers that lined the streets as you near the carpet for the premier. Yeji reaches across to you, giving your hand a gentle squeeze. “You know it doesn’t have to change, you two were just all smiles and giggles the other day.” You knew she meant well and that her heart was in the right place, but nothing she said could shake the feeling that was in the pit of your stomach.

You think back to a couple days prior, when you and Sunghoon were caught at the convenience store near your apartment. He paid for your snacks and the two of you laughed the entire night while watching videos of animals on YouTube or reminisced about how embarrassing the two of you were at the start of both your career and the movie. After he had bid you a goodnight, you felt like nothing could take that skyrocketing feeling away from you, but you were immediately knocked off your feet minutes later.

Now, you’re staring out the tinted windows as the cameras flash and people yell over one another as they try to guess who was in your car. You felt like you were going to get sick and really just wanted to get inside as soon as possible. Yeji got out the car first, slicking parts of her hair down while waiting beside the open door for you. You followed out behind her, adjusting your dress as she shut the door. Since she wasn’t exactly a person of interest, your manager escorted her behind all the paparazzi and to the entrance of the building where the premier was being held.

You start to slowly walk down the carpet, not noticing Sunghoon had arrived almost immediately after you did until people started asking for you two to take pictures together. When you did finally notice him, you were taken aback by how beautiful he looked. His hair was slicked back and the black on black tux he wore had your heart soaring. When you two locked eyes, he seems so focused on you that he completely ignored everything around him and joined your side. People seemed to love that, snapping pictures of you two as you exchanged loving and longing looks.

“We should talk when we get inside.” He stared deeply into your eyes, one hand on the dip part of your back as the two of you walked down and posed together. If you’re honest, hearing his voice after what felt like forever was refreshing. Thankfully for you, the carpet walk was quick and by the time you entered the building, it was fairly quiet. Sunghoon had pulled you aside, resting his hands on the sides of your arms. “How are you holding up?”

You shrug, looking down at the floor to avoid his gaze. “Did I do something wrong?” The hurt was evidence in his voice, catching your attention to look up at him. Shaking your head, you could feel the tears in your eyes from as they started to sting. “Then why are you crying, baby.” The pet name was the cherry on top to your unfazed façade crumbling like cake in his hands.

“I’m scared because this is it hoon—we’re not working together anymore and everything seems to be falling apart and after everything I feel like I’ve lost, I don’t wanna loose you.” Sunghoon seemed surprised at your sudden confession, cupping your face into his hands as the tears fell down your cheeks. “Hey, shh don’t cry, hey you’re not gonna loose me y/n.” You started to sniffle, trying to get yourself together while calming your racing thoughts. It wasn’t until his fingers slipped between your own when you really felt like the world had regained its focus.

“If anything, us not working together gives me more reason to surprise you with cute dates and take you ice skating, like a real boyfriend should do.” The feeling of his hand on your cheek made you feel even more shy as he started to get embarrassed a little himself. “Right, ‘cus you’re my real boyfriend now.” He laughed, lifting your head to place a kiss onto your forehead. “Damn right I am, no more behind the scenes, just me and my real girlfriend.” You felt an overwhelming sensation of relief wash over you as he lead you to your seats, watching the show the two of worked so hard on play in front of you while wondering how the rest of your life would play out with him by your side.

🎬 SYNOPSIS: Sunghoon was at the top of his game, staring in every major romance drama to hit the big screen. When he met you, he expected to watch you swoon over him like his previous co-stars, but you’re not so impressed when meeting in person. Modeling is looking at lot better than acting right about..now. ACTION!

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griseldabanks · 6 months

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11, 13, 34, and 41

11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

Well, obviously I tend to write the most about my favorite characters, and my favorite characters tend to be brothers (like the Elric brothers) or at least in a brotherly sort of friendship (like Steve and Bucky). I think a lot of that comes from my brother being my best friend growing up. There are a lot fewer stories about a brother-sister duo rather than two brothers, for some reason, so those are the characters I end up falling for most of the time. I just love the camaraderie and selfless nature of sibling love, two people who have known each other their whole lives and would literally die for each other.

Within brother duos, it's usually really hard for me to pick a favorite, but now I'm wondering what the result would be if I did a study to see whether I end up writing one POV more than the other. Without taking the time to do so (because that would take forever), I would guess I've written more from Ed's POV than Al in my FMA fics, mostly because he's the main character (so he's the one things happen to most often), and because my Parental!RoyEd 100 Themes fic skews things away from Al. In my MCU fics...that's harder to say. I might end up writing Steve more, but with the focus still usually being on helping Bucky through various issues. Probably because that's really what I'd want to do if I were there.

You know, that's interesting. In both of those duos, my first impulse would be to say that Ed and Steve are the ones that I identify with less, but they're the POVs I end up writing more. If, indeed, that is the case.

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

Ugh, I hate answering questions about tropes, because I always end up feeling like everything is a trope or nothing is -_- I've never particularly cared for the main tropes people talk a lot about, like "enemies to lovers" or "only one bed" or "high school AU" or whatever. The closest I can think of is that I read a lot fewer sickfics than I used to? After a while, they all start sounding the same unless you do something different with them, because there's only so many ways a person can be lying in bed, sick with something, while someone else takes care of them. I wouldn't say I categorically dislike sickfics - I've written plenty myself - but I think I pass more of them up these days than I used to.

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

Other than the very occasional dream-based fic or something, it's mostly the small details that worm their way in. Like how I have Steve hardly ever use his voice when he cries - I'm the same way. Or my OC Leyla, who has a cat named Simon who is based on this lovely cat who hung around my college campus one year, who would yowl angrily at you until you sat down and made a lap for him to curl up in (we named him for Simon's Cat). Or any number of books and movies that get referenced because I like them and want to get a chance to talk about them, even just briefly. And...well, I haven't written it yet, but let me just say that when I finally get to the point of writing Steve and Sharon's wedding, the mishap I'm planning for their special day is based on the mishap from my parents' wedding ;)

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

There are so manyyyyyyy @_@ I don't know how to pick just one, because I tend to think that whenever I read any halfway-competent fic. I'm pretty confident when it comes to grammar and wordsmithing; I know I can write a coherent story with nothing egregiously wrong. But I always feel like everybody else is so much better at characterization - both at understanding what really makes the character tick, and in conveying that to others. I'm also pretty bad at writing humor (or at least, it takes three times as much effort as writing anything else), so any time I read something that makes me laugh, I think, "I wish I could write like that."

But I have to pick something, so I'll pick the first fic I thought of that fits both of these criteria: "Silver Bullet" by @x-rainflame-x It's an FMA fic in which Ed becomes convinced that Mustang is a werewolf, and it is a hilariously, beautifully written piece of almost-crack XD I long for the day when I might be able to put someone in stitches as much as I was when I read it, while still being so true to the characters even in such an extreme situation.

Fic Writer Asks

#ask and you shall receive #a2on1break #ask games

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somethingsupwithdrac · 2 years

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No letters from Jonathan, Mina, or Lucy today. :(

Poe Daily number three is here, though, and it’s another of my favourites!

The Oval Portrait is short but decidedly not sweet, although quite effective. It’s another of Poe’s “death of a beautiful woman” themed works, which pops up a lot because he thought that it was the most poetical topic in the world. We stan a gothic king.

This one inspired elements of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (if you have not read it, go read it, please I love it), but they’re used in a different way. You have the supernatural portrait there, but it reveals something about the subject and not the artist. Buuut I’m not here to talk about Dorian Gray, so.

I like how this is framed as an unnamed narrator who, having been injured in some way (fun fact: there was originally a slightly longer version of this story that explains exactly how but it got cut for relevance after the initial publication), holes up in an abandoned mansion in Italy with his valet. Honestly, exploring creepy old mansions and finding dark secrets therein is such a classic and fun horror trope. My favourite versions are ones like this, where the people telling the story break in, find it apparently very recently abandoned, and still go “hm, yeah, this looks like a great place to bed down/explore. Surely there is no horrifying reason it looks like the owners ran for their lives in the middle of the night.”

So we have our narrator, a bit delirious with blood loss, and his valet, making themselves at home in this great abandoned mansion, and finding himself transfixed by the paintings on the walls and the conveniently placed guidebook to them. He spends hours looking at them and reading about each one and then...one he hasn’t seen before catches his eye, almost like it’s calling to him and specifically drawing his attention to it. And of course, it’s a portrait of a beautiful young woman, so radiant and lovely as to almost seem alive, and it’s this strange lifelike quality that soon disturbs our narrator enough to go looking for its explanation in the book, and oh, boy, what an explanation it is.

She was the artist’s wife, to her own eventual misfortune, and from the very beginning of her marriage had a rival for his affections in art. There’s something very sad about all of it, truly. This: “hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover” is such a great expression of her grief and frustration at always coming second to her husband’s first, greatest love, art. (I was going to say “paints such a picture” but that felt a bit on the nose.) His desire to paint a portrait of her should be an expression of his love for her, that he wants to capture her forever, but she’s still coming in second for his love, as he ends up obsessively painting day after, oblivious to the way that his single-minded fixation is sucking the life out of her, figuratively and literally. She says nothing because she loves him, despite growing weaker and more despondent with each passing day, and yet he doesn’t even notice her suffering until it’s too late because he’s too fixated on the art and not the human, and in the end she pays the price for his obsession, much to his sudden horror.

And that’s where it ends, our unnamed artist staring aghast at his painting and the corpse of his wife, with the implication that he has only realized, after that last brushstroke, that his painting Life itself into the portrait has literally drained the life from the real woman he loved. (We don’t get any further reaction from out narrator, but I think it’s safe to assume he didn’t get much sleep that night.)

There’s something to be said here about the view of the relationship between art and death and art and life, and how Poe though of poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty in words, and the ways that idea translates into other art forms. Mostly though, there’s something to be said about the effectiveness of such a short story at creating an intensely creepy atmosphere and a shocking ending that packs a punch.

( Also, apropos of nothing I’m just gonna say right now: Fuck Rufus Griswold, the miserable envious bastard. All my homies hate Rufus Griswold.)

#Poe Daily #not dracula daily #dracula daily #more rambling about 19th century gothic lit #edgar allan poe #the oval portrait #getting indignant on behalf of a man who's been dead since 1849 #but seriously fuck rufus griswold #i don't set out to write long posts they just keep happening

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lilyharvord · 2 years

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Hiii 🙂I know you're really busy right now, so you don't have to answer if you don´t want to, but i still wanted to ask this question. What are your top 5 favorite RQ ships?

OOF this question is like telling a kid in a candy store that they get to pick 5 candies and every single one is amazing and they can pick imaginary candies too. But alright I'll try.

MARECAL (period. No one else comes close. They are literally lapping people in Mario Cart and finishing the race before any of the other ships even leave the starting line. I used to hate the "prince falls in love with the commoner" trope/ship UNTIL these two just did it so stupidly well. You think I'm kidding but I actually used to pull stars on reviews if authors used it, now I'm using it in my own damn trilogy because I want to write my own version of Marecal.)

Fade (these two hold a special place in my heart. As time goes on, they grown on me more and more. The more I mature and have my own relationships, the more I realize I want what they had. They appear a lot in my modern fics where they get to stay together forever because it's what they both deserve)

Evalane (these two shook me to my core. I realized my sexuality as a bi woman right about the time King's Cage came out and these two got to have page time. I remember reading about them and crying a little bit under the covers of my bed because I felt so closely connected to Evangeline and her struggle. They come in hot at number 3 because I don't like that they didn't get as much page time as I would have liked, and I'm scared to write them because that involves looking in at myself as bisexual woman and exploring a part of myself that I am still to this day struggling with.)

GisaxCameron (this is my unicorn ship. I love the idea of these two. They give me sun and moon vibes and I LOVE that for them. I also hate the Victoria didn't give it to us, when it was clearly right there. They get number 4 cause they're not canon and we did not get enough Cameron for me to really write about her in love with another young woman.)

Elara and a bed of nails? a torture room? a cold, decrepit grave? eternal suffering? I'm just kidding. Well, not really, but in all seriousness... Number 5 is Maven and Thomas. NOW before you all jump my dick and come for me screaming about the fact that I NEVER write about Maven and I NEVER talk about him and "oh my god lily for real? You picked the bury your gays ship?" I will say that this ship has so much potential and if I actually find the will to continue writing Song of the Pheonix you will get my full digest on them and how Elara destroying Maven's love for Thomas lead to his inherent need to latch onto Mare, and how that "love" turned into an obsession with wanting to get what he had with Thomas back. Unfortunately, I think I have lost the will with SotP but I may yet find it again.

#(*ask lily*)#(*shut up lily*)#red queen #glass sword #war storm #broken throne #post broken throne #(*lily talks heroes and villains*)#marecal #fade #evangeline samos #elane haven #gisa barrow #cameron cole #my writing #listen these are 100% my opinion #please dont just my dick

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farglefarf · 3 months

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Guys, am i allowed to be depressed and sad on here? What? Oh, this is my house? Cool:

Every day I am plagued with the question of "when will I stop feeling this way?" And that's such a hard question to answer. One day I will probably stop feeling this way, but until then, I have to feel this way every day. I try not to burden my friends with it, but it's always on my mind. Hopefully I am not part of the population that dies alone and unfulfilled. But how am I supposed to know that for sure at this point?

Sometimes it feels like people being in a relationship is fake and forged and just a concept because no one has wanted to act that way to me. Seeing people be a couple is almost like "wait fuck that actually happens in real life?" Type of feeling. Not in the asexual "wait yall are actually fucking on each other?" Joke but like "this could happen to me at any time and it hasn't yet?" Type of way. Cause here's the thing; I want to do the things I see people doing. I want to hold hands and cuddle and talk to someone all the time and have someone who cares about me so unwavering. I want to kiss people and touch people and be touched, but it has been so absent in my life that it is jarring to see it actually happen, I guess. Every couple of months I have a moment where I remember that people actually kiss on each other and that could theoretically happen to me and it's not just a trope used in movies.

It's also hard not to feel this lonely while living in the world. Love is literally everywhere except in my arms and that sucks. I love music, and love is everywhere in music. Down to the love and craft the artists put into their art. It's always being talked about in tv and movies and socially. My friends are in love with people and I get to be around them lots. "Stop looking for love and it will find you" girl stfu if I stop looking for love I am just going to rot away in a cold empty room forever. Not to mention the love that exists within myself. I will not be able to escape the effects of love on the world, so I guess that means it will never find me.

It's also hard to not be lonely when I Live Every Moment with myself. I am intimately aware of how infrequently people touch me. I know all about looking around and wishing someone were here with me. My friends are great but so many of them are dating or married and then I go home and Be Alone. I live in my brain and i am consious for every waking moment. The running tally for people that have flirted with me is like 2 (one of which happened in middle school and I didn't realize he liked me that way till college a decade later 😭). Fun related fact: the only people who have ever asked me out have been drug dealers. What am I doing for that to happen? What about me makes drug dealers the only people willing to ask me out. (It's only happened like twice but still).

I have been working on myself a ton throughout college and I really like who I am starting to become. I almost feel resentful that no one has ever thought I was cool enough to crush on. I try my best to be cool and nice and accepting and loyal and funny and chill and no one wants me as their partner? She has been working so hard for this, you know? It's hard not to let chronic loneliness and touch starvation lead me to be down on myself. I just have to trust that the reason I'm single isn't the way I look or my personality, both of which are really hard to change. I've fought these feelings of "why not me?" Since highschool at least and while they have never gone away (cause I've been single the whole time)I have just had to trust that I'm doing my best to be a good person and the right person will like what I look like

Don't even get me started on the "right person" debate. At this stage in my romantic development (see: none) I am not sure I want my forever person right now. I literally just want to be treated like I'm wanted for more than my friendship. To feel wanted is so undervalued. I know I should logically think about those I have a crush on more, but i don't know what to look for. I've never been in a relationship. I don't know what I do and do not want/like. Literally anything is more than nothing.

I also don't know how to socially initiate a relationship, or even just making out with someone at a party or something. I've never done this before, idk what I'm supposed to do! One day I told that to my friend and then followed it up with the one time I asked a guy out (didn't end well, he told me he liked me back but wasn't looking for a relationship, ghosted me, and got in a relationship with one of my classmates 2 weeks later :/) and her gut response was "I've NEVER asked someone out!"........ bestie I've never been asked out (in a normal way, by non-drug dealers) what am i meant to do? And she was like "oh...😧" yeah girl. Tell me about it.

My own mom has pittied my love life which is totally something i don't think about a lot. One of her friends told me not to get pregnant and I said "a lot of things have to happen before I could get pregnant" and she asked what I meant and I told her I haven't even had my first kiss and her AND MY MOM BOTH "awww 😟" at me???? Yeah that totally makes me feel like a regular person who is living life normally. Thanks guys. One time a guest at my regulars table said "if I were still a virgin I would kill myself" ????? Huh??? 😵 hey guy what do you mean?? Real shooting deflection meme moment:

Like I'm certainly not suicidal about my reality, but I am definitely unfulfilled. Thanks for reminding me, guy.

Maybe one day I'll learn how to flirt and initiate touch but for now I am doomed by the narrative.

That friend who's never asked anyone out before also thinks that my standard for those u have a crush on is not picky enough. Which is fair, it's not. I have crushes on weird little bi men and problematic men who I ultimately would not want to date and women who don't know I exist. I am an enjoyer of the medium ugly. She thinks I have no standards and have too many crushes on people who aren't good for me. Here's the thing tho?: Still single. The bar is on the ground, and still no one wants to cross it. A tragedy.

Last semester I almost found someone but they were moving and being really ghost-y and looking back, it almost feels like they didn't actually like me they just liked the attention. But he was my one and only romantic interaction all of college 🤪🤪 thank you to everyone who told me to "wait until college. You'll find someone in college" and thank you to those who "wait till hoghschool, you're too mature for these guys anyway" too 🥰 could have never done it without you! (And a special secret thank you to all who have started "but surly once you're a professional wrestler"ing me ♡♡)

I downloaded some dating apps at the start of this year, as I promised myself i would a few months ago. I really don't think I will like the expierence of using them, the idea kinda stresses me out. It'll be a learning curve to that I bet. I can't use it yet because this semester I have so much shit to do I am not willing to extra stress myself rn.

If you're reading this and you know me irl thanks I guess. Saves me saying it out loud I guess. I'll be okay. I hope. Just lonely about it all. If you're reading this and you have a crush on me- hello, I can't read people, please tell me.

#thanks for listening #delete later #i did that #you know its not a good time when marvin starts making sense #“anyone understands all i wants a kiss” headass #to be wanted #sorry about that #who said that #also trinas story :((*#“i never wanted to love you i only wanted to live and not be blamed” frrrr #like im saying!!!

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bmpmp3 · 3 years

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i really liked that ship dynamics trend that was going on a few months or years ago (because im a sap and i like romance) but im especially happy it seems to have slowly morphed into a general appreciation for hyper-specific archetypes and tropes and character dynamics because there’s nothing i love more than talking about trends and patterns in narrative fiction

#my hobbies: pattern recognition #for real i literally want to talk about tropes all day and forever until the end of time #you probably noticed in the past couple years ive been letting myself slowly talk more about this stuff. im a trojan horse #you thought i was a normal blog. but im actually. really annoying about hyper specific archetypes i noticed in shoujo manga #one of the things i like to do is write out different kinds of trends ive noticed in certain genres or other stuff #like common scenarios i see in stories that i like or overly specific subgenres i think are neat #all in lists on my phone's notes app sjdnkmfssfsdf #maybe i should sort them out and compile them somewhere some day (my notes app is the wild west jkdfjsfds)#i will say i dont really know much about fanfic tropes sorry. i dont read much fanfic orz #nothing wrong with fanfiction its just not something i really seek out usually #ive read the occasional ikesen fic because of recommendations and i spent an entire semester in highschool #reading a comically large amount of warriors fics (but only about OCs and fanclans lol)#i also read a lot of el tigre stuff as a kid #actually ive noticed i really only read fanfic if im dissatisfied with a piece of media that i got really invested it #and i guess thats why i dont read that much lol its not often im unsatisfied with something that i really like #like el tigre was cut off so short. and warriors. you know what warriors is like #but most of the time with most properties like even something i really like or wont stop talking about #i dont really have much of a desire to see a continuation of the story or more of the charcaters in different scenarios #hell even with sequels i tend to not really seek em out for sometimes years jskefasfkd #or ever....................#i think it might be something to do with how i think about fiction in general. things tend to stay very contained for me #plus as ive mentioned before im obsessed with analyzing media patterns and because of that characters are like. weirdly contextual? for me?#so when im done with something im like fully done and i tend to want to look at something with new characters and universes?#i dunno if that makes any sense fdksfdjgrfkds #but i will say. this is fucked up and evil but i read wattpad as a kid. for the original stories #i didnt even know it was used for like 1d fanfiction until i was like 16!!!! i used it to read peoples original paranormal ya romances #maybe a contemporary romcom. plenty of high fantasy romances also #anyway. fanfic writers. the stuff you do is very good and cool and i love you. im sorry i dont know how to read

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ifmywishescametrue · 3 years

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i don't know if you're still taking prompts (so please ignore this if you aren't) but i cant stop thinking about your recent buckytony fic (and how much i love breaking up and making up as a trope) - so i was wondering if you'd be up for doing smth else w that trope for buckytony?? maybe they re-unite at a mutual friend's wedding?? and it brings up emotions about their almost wedding?? idk i just really love breaking up and making up as a trope and i really love your writing :))

thank you!! I'm very much up for doing another buckytony break up/make up, plus you deserve nice things for finishing law school - congrats on that!🎉🎉hope you like this one 😊

There's a ring on Bucky's finger.

It's the first thing Tony notices when he walks into the bar for Natasha and Sharon's joint bachelorette party. He stands there in the doorway, frozen and staring until someone clears their throat pointedly behind him, and he mumbles an apology as he moves out of the way.

He thinks about turning around and not coming back, just ditching the event entirely and maybe even the wedding tomorrow, but he tosses the ridiculous thought the second it comes. He promised Sharon when she asked him to be her man of honor that he could handle Bucky being Nat's. Living on the other side of the country afforded him to miss the rest of the events and planning along the way, and he could deal with one day of being cordial to his ex, even if the day comes with walking down an aisle together.

But now there's a ring on Bucky's finger.

The silver catches the light, and it's on prominent display with his left hand wrapped around a beer bottle. It shouldn't be possible for him to have moved on that quickly. Eight months shouldn't be long enough to bury three years of memories. Three years of hopes and dreams and plans for a future built together. Years of love so blindingly intense that it burrowed into Tony's soul to make a home and refused to be evicted just because it was supposed to be over.

Tony wonders what the timeline is. Did he find someone new while Tony was still just beginning to pick up his own scattered pieces? A first date for him while Tony was barely getting out of bed. When was it that he replaced Tony as the last person to have his heart? And how did he find forever in someone else so soon after losing the one he used to call his soulmate?

Natasha notices him first, still hovering near the entrance, and she raises a single eyebrow that calls him a coward. He rolls his eyes at the accusation, though it's accurate. She elbows Sharon to catch her attention, and before he knows it the entire small group is turning their heads his way, giving him no choice but to join them.

It's less bachelorette party and more pre-wedding celebration with the crowd they've gathered, all mutual friends of both brides with no regards for gender traditions that usually come with this night. Tony used to fit in well with them all, back when gatherings like this were just a typical Friday night. But he made himself an outsider between the move to California and the breakup with Bucky. All he has now with most of them is a dead group chat that hasn't been used in months. He wonders which one of them made the new one without him in it.

Sharon is the first to pull him into a hug, then Natasha follows suit. He gets a nod from Sam, a wave from Clint, and what might pass as a smile from Steve. Bucky stares so intensely that Tony can feel his eyes with his back turned, but when Tony looks his way, he pretends to be interested in the floor.

He had a plan before the ring threw him off. Step one should have been the entrance. Head held high, shoulders square, perfect outfit that shows everything off and compliments the Malibu tan he has now. Step two should be nonchalance. A light hearted greeting to everyone, accompanied by an easy grin and relaxed body language, and catching up with subtle brags slipped in. Show them all that he's doing better than he ever was, sitting on top of the world these days, even if most of the time it feels like he's barely above rock bottom.

Step three in his ideal scenario involved Bucky breaking down and begging to get him back. Some versions even had him on his knees for it, with tears running down his face. Others required it to be raining outside, and the cloudless sky ruined that before the ring on Bucky's finger did.

With steps one and three out the window, he tries to salvage step two.

“Hey,” Tony starts, a little too loud. He swallows the lump in his throat and tries again, “Hey, Bucky. It's good to see you.”

Bucky nods, a strained, jerky motion. “Yeah, you too. How, uh, how have you been?”

“Good. Really good, actually. Company just had its highest sales quarter yet, so it’s been a little crazy around there, but good.”

“Good,” Bucky repeats, and there’s a long awkward pause.

“And what about you?” Tony asks, and then because he can’t help himself, he adds, “I see you got engaged. Or, hell, I guess it could be married, even.”

Bucky freezes with parted lips and wide eyes for the briefest of moments, like he wasn’t expecting Tony to know about it or bring it up, and his eyes shift to the ring on his hand and stay there.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Engaged. Last week.”

Tony ignores the ache in his chest and plasters on a smile like he’s happy for him. “Congratulations. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t know him. Steve introduced us. They work together.”

“So he’s at the museum then? I thought you used to say that you hated all those stuffy guys and Steve was the only one worth knowing.”

Bucky smiles, a fond thing that widens the crack in Tony’s heart. “Yeah, well, I guess I was wrong. Felix is a great guy.”

Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes. Stupid name that probably matches a stupid, punchable face.

Some masochist thing pulls at him to make him keep digging for more information, a twisted need to know even as each word pushes the knife in deeper. He aims for casual, leaning back against one of the high top tables as he asks, “So how long have you been together?”

“Just a couple of months. Kind of fast, I know, but when you’re sure about something, it doesn’t really matter, right? Why waste time waiting?”

“Right, of course,” Tony says, a little flatter than he intends. “So why isn’t he here tonight? Hope it wasn’t to spare my feelings, because it’s really not necessary.”

Bucky falters, “It’s not? You, uh, you’re dating someone, then?”

Tony nods, and he wishes he had grabbed a drink before this so he could hide behind it as he lies through his teeth. “Only a few weeks, though. A little too early to be a wedding date, but I’m sure your guy will be there tomorrow right?”

“Oh, um, yeah, definitely. Why wouldn’t he be, right? There’s no reason I can think of,” Bucky says, stumbling around it. “But tell me more about your thing. Your person. How’s that going?”

Tony shrugs, and he finally pulls off that easy smile he’s been trying for. “Well, it’s not get engaged in a couple of months good, but it’s been really great. We’re taking it slow. Trying not to rush anything and just get to know each other first. I think it could really be something, though.”

“That’s good,” Bucky mumbles. “You deserve something good.”

He isn’t meeting Tony’s eyes anymore, almost like he’s upset that Tony moved on, and the vindictive part of Tony wants to be happy about it, but another part wants to be angry because it isn’t fair. It’s not fair to act like Tony should stay stuck in time, forever longing for him when he already moved on with someone else first. It’s hypocritical and selfish, even if Tony is lying about there being anyone else.

“Well, I’m gonna go get a drink,” Tony says, pushing down every feeling. “Should catch up with everyone else, too, while I’m at it. I’ll talk to you later.”

He heads over to the bar and isn’t surprised when Sharon joins him a moment later, right after he orders a double shot of whiskey. She puts an arm around his shoulder and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Tony laughs, running a hand through his hair. “My ex is engaged to somebody else and apparently doing really fucking well. Meanwhile, I’m making up fake boyfriends that I’m taking it slow with, because last week I went on my first real date in eight months and cried in the bathroom in the middle of it. And then, at the end of the night, he literally told me to my face that he didn’t think a second date was a good idea. We weren’t even talking about it, Sharon. He said it unprompted when we were still ten minutes from his apartment, and I was driving.”

Sharon nods slowly as she processes the rant. “He told you he got engaged?”

“Yeah, thanks for not telling me, by the way. It was really fun to get blindsided by it.”

She ignores the complaint to ask, “What else did he tell you, exactly?”

“Oh, just the whole line about how you know when you know, and Felix is such a great guy, and all that bullshit.”

“Felix,” Sharon repeats.

Tony knocks back the rest of his drink and orders another. “Please tell me he’s not better looking than me. Tell me it’s a downgrade. Don’t lie, because I know I have to meet him tomorrow, but please give me something that will make this better.”

“Well, I can guarantee he’s not as attractive as you. But he’s a little too perfect, you know? Like how could this guy possibly be real, he’s so unbelievably perfect,” Sharon says.

“I told you to make me feel better, not worse.”

Sharon shakes her head with a smile, the arm around him tightening into an approximation of hug. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I don’t think they’re going to last. He’s kind of flaky, too. Always cancelling at the last minute and all that. Bet he won’t even show tomorrow.”

The amusement on her face that she’s failing to hide confuses him. He’s starting to feel bad, though, for making the night about him when it should be about her and Nat.

Resolving not to dwell on it anymore, he squeezes the hand on his shoulder and says, “Alright, enough sad drinking, and definitely enough about me. We’re celebrating you and Nat and a lifetime of sickeningly wonderful happiness for both of you.”

Sharon grins, “Hell yeah, we are.”

“Shots?”

“Is that even a question?”

_____________

He wakes up with a headache and hazy memories. Shots of tequila that turned into shots of vodka when Nat got involved, then Clint’s terrible suggestion to try a shot of every liquor they had to offer. He vaguely remembers the round of toasts and drunken impromptu speeches from everyone, locking eyes with Bucky and failing to look away on both their parts. There’s a blur of wandering hands and heated, messy kisses. A bathroom stall turned into a cab ride which turned into his hotel room. He knows what he’ll find next to him when he opens his eyes, and guilt comes in full force.

“I know you’re awake,” Bucky says, voice still rough with sleep. It used to be Tony’s favorite sound in the world. “And I know we’re both sorry about what happened, but pretending to be asleep isn’t fixing nothin’.”

Tony shifts over to his back, and if there was any question before about what happened between them, the all too familiar ache in his body would answer it. He stares up at the ceiling to avoid the acres of bare skin on display next to him.

“You should probably leave,” Tony says to the walls. “I’m sure your fiancé is wondering where you are.”

“I doubt it.”

Tony puts an arm over his eyes, partly to block out the light that makes them ache and partly to hide his face. “Just go, okay? It was a mistake, and it won’t happen again, and we don’t have to talk about it.”

“Was it a mistake?” Bucky asks. “It didn’t feel like one to me.”

He doesn’t answer, and it’s soft and broken when Bucky says his name. Too much for him to handle.

Tony pushes back the blankets and searches for Bucky’s clothes in the mess they’ve made. He finds the shirt first and throws it at him. “You’re engaged, which means it was a mistake.”

His boxers are on the back of the couch, jeans right in front of the door, and they join the pile on Bucky’s lap. “You promised the rest of your life to somebody else, and I’m pretty sure fidelity is supposed to go with that.”

He tosses a shoe in the general direction of the bed, and it hits the nightstand with a loud thud. The second shoe is still in his hand when Bucky gets up and walks over to him, taking it and letting it drop to the floor.

His eyes hold a level of intensity that Tony has spent months dreaming about, and Tony couldn’t look away or move from this spot even if he tried.

“Felix isn’t real,” Bucky says. “I made him up when you asked, because I didn’t want to tell you the truth that I haven’t moved on in the slightest. That I’m so pathetic that I’ve spent the last eight months wearing an engagement ring that I bought for a guy who doesn’t love me anymore because I don’t know how to let him go.”

Tony stops breathing. “What?”

Bucky slides the ring from his finger, holding it between them so Tony can see the inscription. Always yours. He can’t remember the last time he heard the words get spoken.

“When?” Tony asks hoarsely. “When did you get that and why didn’t you ever ask me?”

“About a year ago,” Bucky says, slipping it back on his own finger. He sits back on the edge of the bed and stares down at it, twisting it around. “I thought about doing it on your birthday, but Nat and Sharon had just gotten engaged the week before and I didn’t want to take anything away from them. You were working a lot of late nights after that, and I thought it would be better to wait until things slowed down. You were so tired all the time, and you deserved a better proposal than when you’re falling asleep in the middle of dinner. It never slowed down, though. And then you got that big promotion and somehow we fell apart instead. If I’m honest, I still don’t really know how. One minute I’m getting ready to come with you, and the next you’re telling me not to bother.”

Tony sits down next to him, shoulders touching, and he pulls Bucky’s left hand into his. “You didn’t really want to go.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky says, but Tony shakes his head.

“All you talked about was how much you would miss New York. How much you’d miss your friends and your family and your job. Every day, everywhere we went. Even the fucking hot dog stands got sonnets about them. It really didn’t take a genius to figure out that you weren’t exactly looking forward to leaving.”

“I still would have gone for you,” Bucky argues. “I told you I would go anywhere with you, if it was what you wanted.”

“And then what? You move with me, and you’re miserable all the time, because my job never slows down so I’m still not around as much as you want, except now it’s compounded because you’re in a city that you hate with no one else that you know. You resent me for making you go, and the outcome is the same in the end either way.”

“Or I move with you, and I finally ask you to marry me like I’ve wanted to since almost the day we met. I find new friends and a new job, and even if it’s not perfect, it’s still worth it because at the end of the day I have a husband coming home to me.”

Tony runs his thumb over the ring and murmurs, “I wanted you to be happy. I didn’t think I could do that for you anymore.”

Bucky cups his cheek, tilting his head up to meet his eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but baby, you’re an idiot.”

“Oh, thanks,” Tony laughs.

“You’re my idiot, if that helps.”

Tony smiles, still fragile but growing more hopeful. “Am I?”

“Always have been,” Bucky says. “Always will be if you stop assuming I’m going to leave you all the time. Let me decide for myself what I’m willing to sacrifice for us.”

Tony nods slowly, then says, “I’m sorry for ending it like that.”

“I’m sorry for making you feel like you had to.”

Tony climbs into his lap, circling his arms around his neck, and Bucky pulls him in closer with his hands on Tony’s hips. The ring is strange to feel against his skin, but also completely right. He wants it to stay there and to mean what it was always supposed to. Wants one of his own to match.

“We can fix it, right? We can be us again?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, and Tony’s heart sinks for just a moment. “Is your boyfriend as real as my fiancé?”

Tony laughs again in relief, “Yeah, they’d be a good pair.”

“I knew you had to be lying. You’ve never taken it slow in your life,” Bucky grins.

“Do you want me to start now?”

Bucky flips them over in one fluid motion, and he kisses up his throat as he murmurs, “Absolutely not.”

#my writing #my fic #winteriron #buckytony #winteriron fic #prompt fill #ad1thi

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dennishater69 · 3 years

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bro i been thinking abt that (the one up there that one great post big fan) post theorizing that dennis is meant to be a twist on the “jim halpert” kind of a leading man thats standard on sitcoms. and how all the characters are like that yanno? historically successful, funny, and loved tv tropes put into an unforgiving and realistic world? like it’s even funnier when you think about how it’s almost as if the gang (ESP Den) /knows/ that they should be getting rewarded for all their antics and scheming. that’s what happens on tv. on tv jim knew from day one that he was the man for pam, he /knew/ he’d get her and (so) he /did/! he didn’t even have to try!! but in philly dennis “knows” that he’s the man for (caylee, mac, literally anyone) but it comes off as creepy not charming thus hes often rejected and humiliated.

dee is the female voice of reason (yeah ik the origin of kaitlins dee shut up let me talk), and yet her schemes and beliefs are just as titled as the boys. now look at this: lisa simpsons job wasnt to actually convince her dad or brother that their idea was dangerous. lisa’s job was to call attention to just how fucking stupid the male leads r. plus she’s a chick and implicit lesbo so she doubles as a punching bag. just like dee. cept dee isn’t super smart or musically inclined, the only thing she really has going for her is the gang. and the fact that she’s probably the best off in terms of not destroying her own life. which lets her have this unearned sense of superiority similar to dennis’ because she ~knows~ that she’s the voice of reason. what she doesn’t know is why even after she’s proven that that’s not who she WANTS to be anymore the guys still refuse to treat her like a real member of the gang even though she so obviously is. even tho the guys know she’s just as good (bad) as they are. lisa simpson, the chick from seinfeld, and lois griffin are all fine and good and are funny because deep down lois CHOSE to marry peter, lisa explicitly LOVES her family DESPITE their flaws. but dee is UNLOVED. there’s no point in her being there other than to contradict, not cos she necessarily wants to but the gang actively avoids giving her attention for anything else. so now you’ve got the voice of reason trope desperately trying to prove their own unreasonableness in an attempt to be liked. the boys resist. she acts up. they give her enough of a nod for her to stay for another drink. meanwhile the gang is getting into increasingly stupid and dangerous schemes because the voice of reason prefers not being shit on. almost like how a real person would react to being forced into that position. huh.

charlie and mac r sort of make up one; they’re the gang (ik ik) they’re dennis’ gang. the chandler and the other one. the “leading mans” sidekicks who are happy to go along with whatever plan, happy to let him get the girl, happy to remind him of how perfect he is when he’s down. (which obviously mac and charlie are NOT happy about ANY of that and HATE that dennis treats them like they are.) It’s also maybe important to note that usually the “leader” of the group is the one who brought the three friends together. dennis just crashed mac and charlie’s twosome one day and never left. mac and charlie support dennis but only out of annoyance or in macs case sometimes something deeper. either way, it’s out of trope. really they shouldn’t be able to function without dennis telling them how to. but at this point it seems like they’re better off without him around.

but charlie is also his own trope. Cause the thing is…charlie works as a lovable goofball, the slob with a heart of gold, socially awkward sure but deep down he wouldn’t hurt a fly. except. he would hurt a fly. he is a self-proclaimed “rat-basher”, hes the only character to explicitly say the n word, he stalks and assaults the waitress (her trope is p obvious. perfect girl that the loser drools over, she rejects him.) to the point of her actually breaking and agreeing to HAVE HIS KID (need a whole new post abt those beans jfc)

NOW. i ask you…what usually happens in tv shows with the charlie/waitress dynamic? typically i’d say that throughout the course of the show the audience realizes that the supposed “perfect girl” is actually a bitch and that it’s actually the unassuming, more natural looking, lead girl who should get together with the charlie character. depending on the show, maybe she’s the girl who’s been helping him chase his supposed dream girl. or she’s the girl who is, up until the big reveal, his lesbian-coded best friend who is SICK of hearing about this girl. or maybe shes just always been there, but he’s never considered her because they’ve been friends for so long, they’ve known each other since they were kids, maybe she isnt even on the table and she’s dating his friend, or she was dating his friend, or maybe…because she’s the sister of his friend. his friends TWIN sister. see where i’m going with this? it’s dee. dee and charlie are the b couple. the dwight and angela. they’re the obvious couple.maybe you didn’t see it at first but once it’s suggested you can’t unsee it. and when they DO get together. it’s like they always were. they’re the caring, devoted, consistent couple that the audience can lean on when things get messy in the other characters relationships. and yet. dee and charlie already DID get together. and apparently they hated it. hated it so much that charlie (the poor guy trope) wanted to stop and dee (girl next door trope) FORCES him to finish. not to mention neither of them seem all that interested in a caring consistent relationship. at least not with each other. why would they be?

and what would a B couple be without an A couple? but how do you even go about satirizing an A couple? they’re meant to stay in a “will they won’t they” for at least five seasons, and when they inevitably do get together it’s full of cheating and lying and breaks. cause thats what makes an A couple interesting to watch. they’re “meant to be” and yet still have to work through the issues that all relationships face. and if it’s a sitcom this is usually funny because all the audience and characters have ever wanted was for the A couple to be official, but now that they are there’s somehow even MORE conflict within the show. sound like anyone? macdennis. but dennis (leading man) wasn’t prepared for a SECOND leading MAN. no one ever told him he was going to be expected to share the limelight. he assumed he’d meet his girl and he would know and so would she and then she’d happily stand behind him forever. not next to him. she certainly wouldn’t ever try and step IN FRONT OF DENNIS. like mac does. now remember that none of the characters, except possibly dee, know that they are filling out a trope. but dennis is the golden god. of course he knows. and that is why he is or was or whatever actively ensuring that he and mac would never be together in a way that could potentially over shadow denniss “guaranteed” leading lady, and more importantly dennis. and even more important. leading men. are not. and have never. been gay. (debatable but i digress)

so a couple b couple who cares? i cares. cause taylor swift doesn’t rape the guy at the end of “You Belong With Me”. b couples exist as a more palatable A couple. meant to be without the drama. so this is extremely out of trope for chardee. yk what ELSE is out of trope? macs coming out. yeah we’ve all touched on how fucked that must’ve felt from dens pov but here’s the thing. by coming out, mac was able to confirm that the A couple, in fact, WILL. and most likely already HAVE. but he did this alone. he and dennis didn’t come out together, mac doesn’t think about dennis at all in find his pride, mac being gay is his. and that leaves dennis with…the knowledge that he and mac ARE the A couple. not only that, but apparently mac can satisfy that trope all by himself. macs outness is obnoxious. it’s like he’s bragging about it. showing it off. it’s how everything was, but. worse. he doesn’t even need anyone to do the annoying A couple stuff, the parade around, the delusion that no one could have possibly known. he doesn’t need dennis. but it’s pretty clear that at least some part of mac still WANTS dennis. and was expecting dennis to too. but that’s not real life. imagine you’re in a “will they won’t they” for DECADES and then, out of nowhere, ur partner says “yeah no we will.” and everyone believes them. they don’t even need to spare a glance at you because they’ve always kinda known and now thanks to “your other half” they always will know for sure. no matter what you do. now there’s an expectation.

and (full circle u guys) dennis’ trope doesn’t usually call for meeting expectations. he’s attractive and charming, he’s supposed to be able to coast until he looks up and realizes he gs everything he ever wanted. but now he’s 44. and he has everything he never wanted. his abusive (not)father is best friends and the father of? HIS highschool best friend, his other best friend is an asshole who is somehow an asshole abt: being gay, dennis being gay, being gay for dennis, dennis not validating that when he expected him to. and his sister, who has been firmly planted against him since they were kids. hes starving and he’s a legit alcoholic, the gross kind, and all he’s ever done is get a diagnosis that makes his friends treat him weird and abandon his son who is named after a stranger to everyone. and i’ll prolly make a king post abt it but dennis has been showing subtle signs of edging towards (another) extreme breaking point and idk what it’s abt (fingers crossed mac uwu ihatemyself )but i’m just saying that dennis’ mentality has kind of always directed the group in a direct way (whether dynamics, psyche, finances, lives, time, etc) so that’s innerestin

and so now i say the most cracked out part of the post. this theory is giving me untapped amounts of hope that the only way the show can end is with the gang finally settling and finding happiness or they all commit group suicide. and idk abt u but those are the only two endings i’m interested in seeing.

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fairestwriting · 3 years

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slams open your door/ one angst request for a childhood g/n reader with deuce, ace, jack, ruggie and vil coming right up! "if we're still single by 30, let's get married! (for housing benefits lol)" it was a childish promise made in jest, but the boy never forgot. in the end, it ends with unrequited/pining feelings from one/both sides that cant be returned due to bad timing/prior engagements/etc when they reach of age (go hogwild with the scenarios lis!!)

(slams my hands on the table) yes yes yes yes YES i love this trope

+ if you like my writing, you can buy me a ko-fi to support me!

Deuce Spade

You make the promise to him after you confessed to your crush sometime in 7th grade and got rejected, left to cry by yourself behind the school. Out of all your friends, only Deuce came to comfort you -- And so you, in your dramatic childish glory, feeling like you’d never find anyone to love, tell him the two of you should get married if you’re single by 30.

Deuce remembers every detail of that event down to how your eyes gleamed with the tears, how the light of the sunset casted that golden glow on your hair -- It was when he knew he loved you. It took him a while to find the right words to describe the feeling, but he’d been feeling it for a long time.

He doesn’t pursue you because he feels like he’ll grow out of it. You go to NRC together, the two of you against the world, and it’s like everyday he falls in love a little more. You support him through his attempts of being a honors student, and on the day of your graduation, the first thing you do is hug each other tight, cheering about how you made it, you finally made it.

You don’t lose contact with each other even after school. Deuce and you are basically attached to the hip, meeting up every other week to talk about college and then your jobs. Through all of this time you’re friends, both of you go through a handful of relationships each, but none of them are really serious. As you approach 30, Deuce remembers that promise from back then.

When your birthday comes up, you’re sort of gloomy over recent breakup, and Deuce, naturally, is the first one to be there for you. He shows up in the morning with a gift and makes you breakfast, your dear best friend warming your heart once more. You rant about your latest partner and exchange anecdotes about how last week went before everything goes silent, and suddenly his hand is hesitantly on yours.

“D-Do you remember, um.” He begins, face flushed. “That promise we made in middle school? That if we were single until 30...”

You blink. Really, that? It felt like so long ago -- It was hard to remember even. You can barely catch what he was going to try to say before you laugh your middle school self off, snickering at how naive you were -- Something in Deuce seems to shatter, then, and his hand retracts. It’s so fast you can barely tell what’s happening.

And he stays with you through the birthday regardless, of course he does. He’s your dearest friend, isn’t he?

the rest is under the cut cause... its long

Ace Trappola

You hated Ace, initially. You met in kindergarten and he was the worst, literally. Always pulling pranks on everyone and acting just so infuriatingly cheeky, your 5 year old self learned real rage through that little redhead boy who always hid your things just to get a rise out of you.

One day you decided to prank him back, causing massive trouble in the classroom that ends with the two of you getting intensely scolded, and that’s how, somehow, a beautiful friendship blooms. Ace gets this sparkle in his eyes when you’re done getting yelled at, and says that the two of you should be friends and work together on doing this to other people.

Since then you two became inseparable. You’d never stop bickering, but you also never left each other’s side. The two of you were a menace, an absolute terror to your teachers -- Whether you were a good kid before meeting him or not didn’t matter, Ace is great at being a bad influence.

Near the end of 4th grade, you begin hearing about how one of your classmate’s single parent was getting married again. This sparked a big conversation between your class, somehow, with everyone declaring who they wanted to marry. It was a silly childish thing. When your turn comes, you proudly announce that when you grew up, you’d marry Ace if you hadn’t married anyone else by 30, ‘cause no one else would choose him but me! You snicker after making the comment, amused at how mean you were being, but somehow your snarkiness seems to fly over Ace’s head.

It’s a thing that happens that you two never really talk about again, but it ticks in the back of his mind for his whole life as you two grow up. Even entering middle and then high school, he always remembers it when he goes through some sort of romantic disappointment. You really were the only one who always stuck around, after all...

Years go by and somehow you’re still by each other’s side. Every birthday that passes Ace thinks about it a little more, he wonders if that promise from ages ago was true. When your 30th birthday comes up the promise is constantly in his mind, he’s driving himself up the wall with expectation. And he doesn’t even know why he’s feeling like that, really, you two are just childhood friends, right? There’s no reason for him to be feeling so... like this.

Eventually, he just blurts it out, a couple days after said birthday. You two are probably just hanging out and ranting about work when he goes “Hey, you remember that stuff you said in 4th grade? About, uh, us getting married?” And you go silent for a beat. His heart races as he wonders what the hell he’s doing, even.

But you laugh it all off. What, that stuff about marrying you? Yeah, I was such a dumb kid. I was right, though, look how you’re still single, you joke, and it feels like a punch to the gut to Ace. He laughs awkwardly with you. Yeah, sure, how foolish the two of your were for thinking of something like... you two... being together like that...

Jack Howl

Jack was, before everything, the scary boy in your 2nd grade class. Beastmen weren’t exactly common at school, especially wolves like him, so he ended up sticking out quite a lot. Most kids, your friends included, thought he was far too scary to approach. And Jack himself seemed to be fine with that, not really interacting much with anyone.

That was all he was for you until, one day, an older kid gets mad at you during lunch for bumping into them and staining their shirt with juice. They’re about two or three years ahead and so much taller than you, you’re genuinely scared -- And who would know that in a moment like this, the one kid in your class you weren’t very fond of would stand up for you, convincing the bully to go away.

Afterwards, Jack asks if you’re okay, you two end up eating together, and the rest is history. You find out he was actually really sweet, despite seeming so tough, and you get comfortable with it. Jack was always a reliable, loyal friend, someone you knew you could count on.

This included when your friends started being weirded out by you for getting close to the scary boy in class. They get it in their heads that you have a crush on him and tease you for it, which makes you upset, but Jack stands up for you again. This was enough for you to be pretty starry eyed at the age of 7, so you declared that, hey, who cares about what these mean kids are saying! Maybe you and Jack should be together anyway. Actually, if you two got to 30 and you were still single, you should get married! Jack gets just as starry eyed as you, and you seal a pinky promise that day.

What you never knew, though, was that he wouldn’t grow out of it -- Because as time goes by and you two grow up alongside each other, it ends up slipping your mind. You meet new people and learn new things, getting into some relationships here and there, and though you’d taken the promise seriously for a bit when you were a kid, it was just something you laughed about now.

You don’t even remember it on Jack’s 30th birthday. You’re one of the first people to show up to the small gathering, naturally, you had known each other since forever. You’re teasing him about how he was so perpetually single even now, that you were reaching “marriage age”, and this seems to fluster him a bit.

“Well...” He starts, his ears going slightly limp. “I wanted... to keep that promise, you know. From when we were kids.” His voice is quiet, uncertain. It’s different from how you usually hear him talk, and you have no idea what he’s talking about. You question him about it, and he’s wide eyed when he realizes that you actually forgot.

He questions you about it. How could you forget? You two actually made a pinky promise about it -- But you’re just confused as to why he’s bringing this up, saying that of course it wasn’t a big deal, you two were just kids when it happened! Was he really expecting something from that? And when you ask him that, he’s silent.

Needless to say, the birthday is soured. Jack asks for you to leave, it’s a mess. You don’t know what you did wrong, exactly, just like you’re not sure how you could possibly fix this.

Ruggie Bucchi

“Partners in crime” was the only possible way to describe what sort of relationship you had with Ruggie. It starts in elementary school, you’re walking around in a farmer’s market near the slums and you catch him taking a handful of apples from a stand, without paying. Your eyes are wide as you remember who that boy was, a classmate of yours, and despite what your family had taught you about stealing, you walk up to the person taking care of the stand, and start chatting with them to distract them.

You’re not sure what really made you want to help this boy you barely knew, but it turned out to be the one thing in your life you’re the most grateful for, because the next day, when he sees you again in class, he runs up to you to thank you so many times in a row. And since then, you two started spending time together.

And you got along so well! Ruggie got along with most of the other kids and you had some friends of your own, but nothing was compared to how close the two of you were. You two scheme your way in and out of trouble through your school days, and at one point you can barely imagine your life without him.

Sometime mid 6th grade, your classmates start talking of crushes and dating and such, which gives you a lot to think about. You’re a bit upset that you seem to be the only one who isn’t in on the new fun, so one day, when you’re hanging out with Ruggie, you complain about feeling like you’d be single forever. Ruggie laughs and says that if no one wanted to be with you, then no one would want to be with him either. You still wonder what that meant.

In a fit of childishness, you say decisively that if you two were single until you were 30, you’d get married. Looking back on it, you can’t tell if you were kidding or not, but Ruggie and you shake hands mid-laughs, like you’re sealing a deal.

So time goes by. You don’t think too hard about that promise and Ruggie... doesn’t seem to, either, you actually wonder what’s going through his head often, because he rarely tells you what he’s thinking. You end up going to NRC together, to both of your families’ joy, and that just ends up making you closer, as two kids from the less-privileged side of the Afterglow Savannah in such a prestigious academy...

Your bond ends up really fire-forged after those four years, so it’s no surprise to anyone that you’d still be close even after you graduate, even as adults. Nothing could break a friendship like this.

You think about it on the day of your 30th birthday, when you’re out for drinks with Ruggie to celebrate. Really, how the hell did you stick to each other’s side for so long? You ask him as you loop an arm around his neck, and he grins. “Well, maybe we should get married like you promised then, y’know... when we were brats.” He says, a little quieter than your previous conversation. There’s a hint of some kind of different feeling there that you don’t catch at the time, scoffing at him and going, yeah, in your dreams.

The rest of the night goes normally, though you don’t hear from him for a couple days afterward... and when you do, he barely looks you in the eye. You wonder if anything bad happened, if you did anything wrong.

Vil Schoenheit

When Vil Schoenheit moved into your town, everybody was talking about him before he even really set foot into the classroom. Everyone had seen him somewhere -- The poster boy of villainy in all your favorite movies, a kid with a pretty face and a haughty aura.

You’re as curious as everyone else to meet him, though you don’t really share that strange vindictiveness the other kids seemed to have, angered at Vil himself for what his characters put others through. It’s so stupid, you thought, isn’t he just the actor? He might actually be nice.

When he arrives into the classroom, people are about as annoying towards him as you expected. Their disdain towards Vil bothered you, he’d barely said anything to others and yet they were already pegging him as a mean, arrogant person. So stupid, you repeat to yourself, and you decide to talk to him normally, and that’s how your ages-long friendship came to life.

Vil wasn’t like anyone you’d ever met. You come to find that he’s rather haughty, yes, and very strict with pretty much everything, but he was also very kind deep down, and willing to help you with anything you needed. He was a good friend. He was also, as you came to find out as you grew a little more, astoundingly pretty. With people disliking his “villainy” or not, by the time you’re starting middle school, he already consistently gets confessed to.

You’re a bit jealous. Not because you wanted Vil for yourself, no, he was just a good friend, but you wished people would find you as attractive as they found him, sometimes. You express that to him when you’re walking home together one day, and he laughs it off, saying it wasn’t as good as you thought it’d be. Still, you make him promise that if you were single by 30, he’d have to marry you, because if he just let you die alone, he’d be a bad friend. Vil seems strangely mesmerized by that, but he agrees.

Time goes by, you get to watch each other grow. Even with all the people going in and out of Vil’s life, he seems to keep you closer to his heart than everyone, and you never really lose contact with each other. Even when he’s busy, with movies or modeling or school, he still makes time to check up on you, and you see each other often.

When you’re actually nearing 30, Vil has reached a sort of stardom that burned your eyes just looking at, and you were so goddamn proud of him it was real. Somehow, he still makes time to show up for your birthday, after about a month of not really seeing each other -- And he spoils you to death on that day, the two of you spending all of it together and talking until it was late at night.

As the sun is about to rise, though, Vil’s chattiness subsides. About as sleep deprived as you, he says, softly “So since we’ve gotten there, and we’re both still single... maybe we should fulfill that promise from years ago, shouldn’t we?” You take a moment to process it, it’s tough remembering exactly when you made such a promise, but eventually you do. You feel like that should’ve been a joke, but the way Vil looks at you isn’t saying joke at all.

You sort of laugh it off either way, though. What, that silly promise? You ask, are you rubbing it in that you’re prettier than me? I can still find a partner looking like this, y’know. You think it’s funny, but Vil suddenly falls completely silent.

He then sighs, almost wistful, and says “Sure you can” before the conversation progresses... you’re not sure what happened, but life goes on after that like nothing happened. Deep down, Vil is feeling stupid for having taken the promise to heart, like he should have known better... but if you never really meant it, then what could he do but give it up? Even though it was the thing he wanted to do the least... he valued your friendship too much to do something that could possibly ruin it.

#twst #twisted wonderland #disney twst #disney twisted wonderland #twst headcanons #twst imagines #twst x reader #deuce spade #ace trappola #jack howl #ruggie bucchi #vil schoenheit #deuce spade x reader #ace trappola x reader #jack howl x reader #ruggie bucchi x reader #lis writing

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lady-literature · 3 years

Text

I rewrite Sky High

okay so, disclaimer: sky high was actually pretty damn good for it’s time and a lot of the plot twists/tropes used in it were still just starting out and not as commonplace as they are today. so 10/10 really good movie.

Also as i was writing this, it turned into half analysis of what’s already in the movie and half things I would change about the movie so,,, yeah. enjoy!

***

So the point about Sky High is that and the way the school and hero society as a whole works, is that you, as the audience, are supposed to look at it and know that it’s a flawed system. We’re supposed to see it as an injustice that kids are sorted into hero or sidekick- Sorry, I mean ‘Hero Support,’ on your first day of school based on something you can’t even control.

(This movie was my hero academia-ing it up before it was cool.)

Anyway, the movie calls a lot of attention to it in the beginning, but then doesn't actually give it the resolution it deserves in the end. Which, not cool guys.

The Hero/Sidekick debacle is, on the whole, a very thinly veiled metaphor for the problems minorities face. Specifically, those of the alphabet mafia, or LGBTQ, as we’re more commonly known.

There are a lot of examples for this so I’ll speed through the big ones real quick:

Will’s nerves regarding not having attraction to girls superpowers?

The way he tries to fake having an attraction to girls superpowers to get approval from his dad?

Being literally outed in front of his whole class (by someone named Boomer no less) and then immediately trying to hide it from his parents as long as possible?

The constant references to being a ‘late bloomer’. Doesn’t it remind you of the common phrases: ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘don’t worry. You’ll start liking [opposite gender] eventually.’ ?

The scene in the kitchen, right after Will introduces the Sidekick Squad (and yes, that is what I’ll be referring to them as for the rest of this essay tumblr post). Will is so obviously trying to gauge how his dad is going to take his friends being sidekicks and also him being a sidekick. I just, this is so blatantly a coming out scene? How does anybody not see it as that?

(also the dad talking so offhandedly about bigotry and the hatred his own father had for sidekicks??? Who else has been there?)

Will telling his dad that he doesn’t care, that he’s proud of being gay to be a sidekick is just,,, *chef’s kiss*

With all of this backing behind Will and him growing into not being ashamed of his lack of powers, My first change would be that Will does not, in fact receive his father’s super strength. It’s just such a cop out! The movie had all this amazing build up, and this brilliant metaphor it could have used and, instead, they threw it all away.

The sudden acquisition of powers and immediate acceptance by his peers, feels too close to someone being ‘fixed’. That Will wasn’t good enough the way he was and had to be better, had to be his father in order to be good enough.

So, no. Will remains powerless.

Instead of the revelation of ‘he’s strong’, we get to let the Sidekick Squad shine.

Lash and Speed still cause a fight between Warren and Will, but when Will is under the table, the sidekicks actually do something.

Will knocks the table over (not, like, lifting Warren up but something closer to pushing him off. I mean, even I could push upwards from underneath a table fast enough that if someone is standing on it, they’d lose their balance and fall to the ground) and that starts things.

The Sidekick Squad all grab forgotten lunch trays or cartons of milk or something and throw it at Warren. It isn’t long then that the whole scene devolves into a food fight (Zach, at least, does not have good aim and probably hits a bystander accidentally, drawing more people in, until the whole cafeteria is involved.) The fight turns into something more playful, but still with that bit of an undertone of trying to actually hurt each other.

Ethan melts at one point and (accidentally) causes Warren to slip and land on his back, Magenta probably punches someone (not Warren) and Zach is just mouthing off to anybody who gets close enough. Near the end, right before Principal Powers shows up, Layla finally gets the right idea and just fire extinguishes the shit out of Warren.

(Side note here: I am very much also nixing the Layla crushes on Will plotline. I love best friends to lovers just as much as the next person but… no. Let kids see boy/girl friendships!

Instead, I will be inserting a Layla/Warren love story and you can consider this the first scene on the road for that.)

Anyway, the whole Sidekick Squad plus Warren ends up in the detention room and all of them are covered in food. Right after Principal Powers leaves, the Sidekick Squad is immediately talking excitedly to each other about how cool they just were and what they did. Basically it’s very wholesome and they’re all hyping each other up and then one of them, Layla or Will, excitedly turns to Warren and goes, ‘and that thing you did with the fireballs? God! I don’t think Lash is going to have any eyebrows for a month’ and the tension between them all but drops.

Warren, of course, tries to push them away and not get involved with their ridiculousness, but the Sidekick Squad is stubborn and by the end of detention, everyone but Warren is in agreement that he’s a part of the Squad now. They will not leave him alone. They also start hanging out at the Paper Lantern all the time just to annoy/make fun of him in that loving way friends do.

(I just want Warren to be a part of the Squad guys. Will calls him his best friend at the end but what did the movie actually do to show they were friends? Nothing, that’s what. I want that fixed.)

So the cafeteria fight boosts the whole Squad’s reputation, right? People think those sidekicks are pretty cool, and they get their fifteen minutes of fame. Only… Will gets a little hooked on the feeling of being popular. He doesn’t want to be a capital-h Hero or anything! But, well… he’d be lying if he didn’t like people thinking he was cool.

The others don’t really care all that much about being cool, but Will does. He hates that he does but what is he supposed to do? He can’t change how he feels. So he starts trying to make himself more popular and sometimes tries dragging his friends into stupid schemes.

And then enter stage right, one Gwen Grayson.

I prefer Gwen being Royal Pain’s daughter, actually. A girl who would’ve had no stock in this fight but her mother, who is sickly and weak and survives mostly because her daughter takes care of her, practically brainwashes Gwen to do her bidding.

Gwen is a minion here, and also, perhaps, a victim.

At first, she follows her mom’s orders and charms Will into dating her. She also feeds into his desire to gain popularity but can’t, in this world, break him from his friends. Actually, Will brings Gwen along to the Sidekick Squad hangouts and, slowly, she becomes a part of the group too.

She starts to doubt her mother. Starts to care for Will and the Squad.

She throws the party, and the Squad is all invited (trying to break them up isn’t conducive to the Plan her mother has anyway and wouldn’t work besides) but she lures Will away to make out and… other things, and he brings her to the Sanctum for privacy just like before. She still steals the pacifier (or whatever death ray equivalent you want idk) but she and Will don’t break up at the end of the night.

It’s not actually until two days later, right before the dance is going to start, does Gwen decide she can’t stand back and let this happen anymore. She spills the whole plot and her betrayal to Will when he comes to pick her up for the dance. She’s crying and apologizing and basically expecting to be hated forever by the only people she thinks ever actually liked her.

And, well. Will is furious at her for lying but there’s more important things to deal with at the moment. They’ll talk more about this and he’ll be angry, but that’s all going to be later. Right now they have a school to save so he grabs her hand and starts running to warn the rest of their friends.

Things happen mostly as canon from that point with minor changes.

It’s Warren who pulls Layla into a kiss before they all split off into groups, telling her to kick ass and stay safe before sprinting off after Speed. There have been scenes throughout the movie where the two are very obviously getting closer and are into each other. And then, before the dance, while Gwen and Will we’re technically going as a couple, the whole Squad was going as a group.

When Warren and Layla saw each other all dolled up, it’s very cliché. Warren says she looks nice and Layla visibly gulps at his outfit of a button down and suit pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows (because homeboy does not wear a full tux you can fight me on this).

And also, Will doesn’t fight Royal Pain by himself. Instead, Gwen is there with him and they don’t fight with super strength. Gwen’s been helping Will build an arsenal of gadgets a la Batman and the two face off against her mom together, Gwen with her powers, and Will acting as half support and half as a watered-down Batman who still needs some more training before he’s totally polished.

The school falls from the sky, but Gwen buys them time by keeping the anti gravs working through sheer force of will, while Will holds off her mom from attacking her while she’s vulnerable and concentrating. Magenta eventually kills the EMP or whatever it was, and the day is saved.

Gwen passes out, cause ~drama~ but she ends up okay so don’t worry. She’s just exhausted.

The sidekicks get their recognition and then immediately bounce because dances suck and they all agree that they should go to the Paper Lantern instead to celebrate cause they’re tired, alright? Saving the day is hard.

So it’s all of them, a little battered and bruised and exhausted, crowded into this corner booth and laughing and being kids. The camera does it’s fade to comic book page thing, and the narration is something more along the lines of:

“Royal Pain and her cronies got locked away. Gwen and I talked things out, and she’s getting help for all the stuff her mom did to her. We’re taking things slow in the meantime.

The school is undergoing a lot of changes to the curriculum and getting rid of the whole ‘hero/sidekick’ divisions. (Mostly at the urging of my parents… and Layla). Next year is going to look a lot different, I think.

But it’ll be a good different, just like we are. None of us were what we were expected to be, and, I think, we’re going to keep defying expectations. There’s a whole world out there that needs changing.

And I can’t think of a better group of friends to do it with.”

THE END

(just give me found family saves the day by being themselves rather than somebody else, give me them saving the day because they care about each other, give me them fighting for what’s right and fixing things. please i am b e g g i n g.)

***

Additional nitpicks that are small but Very Important to Me

Coach Boomer is still called coach Boomer because there is no way I am missing out on the ‘okay, boomer’ jokes

Layla stays like Layla, but i’d like for the movie to stop trying to make her seem annoying for her beliefs or like she’s wrong to be so vocal about them. Her caring about things that are wrong ends up as the butt of too many jokes and i… do not like that.

Why so many dad/son scenes? Why this janky imbalance parenting dynamic between the Strongholds. Knock that shit off. I want happy functional family thank you very much

Mr Boy and the mad scientist are very obviously in a relationship

Wait, actually: mr boy, mad scientist and Boomer are al in a poly relationship and are ridiculous about it

I’d like to see more of the sidekick classes going over like, ‘the boring’ parts of the job, and teaching the kids how to deal with the aftermath of the heroes heroics, just to hammer in the fact that the system is fucked up and that it’s messed up that the heroes get all the recognition while the sidekicks are left to clean up the mess

Use actual 14 year old actors? These kids look like seniors.

Or, if you want more ‘mature’ characters make it so sky high is like,,, a finishing school or smth. Something kids 16 and over go to.

(What the fuck kind of parent thinks that their freshman child dating a senior is a good idea?? An almost adult coming onto a fourteen year old??? Are you trying to make Will’s parents (particularly the dad) seem like irresponsible assholes??)

Gwen is, at most, a year above Will in this rewrite, kay?

#my typewriter #sky high #disney #warren peace #superheroes #lgbt

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ranboo5 · 3 years

Note

whats 'the clip' and knifetrick?

Augh. Under the cut for shipping discourse and p/dophilia ment (nothing graphic or specific). Gets long bc I discuss my thoughts on DSMP shipping in general. You are setting me up fr anon

Some quick vocab -

intimacy here is used to refer to. Well. Any kind of intimacy between characters, of any sort, as an umbrella term /r, /p, and /qp here are used as shorteners to denote "romantic," "platonic," and "queerplatonic," both as adjectives And as verbs ("to /r" = "to portray romantically") shipping here is used to refer to any focused examination of intimacy between characters

And some clarity that Should follow from the essay next but may not - """anti-antis"""" and RPF writers delete forever

The Clip is from one of if not the? most recent Discord stage(s) Mr Live has done (which I missed when it was live RIP) wherein he issues a hard ban on shipping him ("do not ship me, in any way, with anyone!") which would less influence c!beeduo (which has been portrayed/stated to be romantic AND nonromantic both conflictingly for a while until being confirmed unconfirmed several months ago, that being the last was heard) without its direct invocation if he hadn't also cited for the reason as being underage ("'Cause, one, it's straight up pedophilia") which is! a) immediately applicable to At Least his DSMP character, Partially and b) while not Strictly True (should b obvious that portraying a relationship within the bounds of what it is in canon and in a nonsexual way is not That, and /r-ing c!beeduo etc was possible to do Appropriately again by remaining w/in the bounds of canon) is Clearly Indicative of the fact that baggage-wise it IS associated with people being fucking creeps

This Really complicates things bc like okay the apparent solution is "lol just don't /r it" but it's really like. A Worse issue than that bc like.

Okay the reason shipping in terms of fictional characters is a Different Bar is bc it's an examination of Intimacy and certain lines exist in certain dynamics of intimacy that Isn't Shown (which is the whole Within The Bounds Of Canon thing) which is important in a medium like DSMP because of the smaller gap + more personal relationship b/w character and streamer. Examining intimacy beyond th bounds of the consent that has been established in that regard is Weird at best and Violating And Creepy more often and, As Mentioned In Ranb's Stage, Literally Evil at worst

Which is why writing abt like. QPR or platonically intimate Techno and Philza (characters) is smth that is fine because that's smth that has been shown and repeatedly stated onscreen; it's in the bounds of canon n thus within th bounds of what the streamers've consented 2 be done with their characters. But writing T3chza making out or whatever is fucked up because it's smth that's beyond those consent barriers

And the thing is right

Slapping a /p on T3chza makeout doesn't. Make it less violating

Like what you CALL romantic is not the measure or whether it's past those barriers yk? And if it's indistinguishable, if it's in extrapolative territory that is Past The Bounds, it Does Not Matter how much you /p it EVEN IF IT IS TECHNICALLY PLATONIC y feel? Like at the end of the day placing a moratorium on some/all forms of shipping is placing a moratorium on certain examinings of intimacy

And okay 2 go back to Mr Live and his character. What it implies taken in context w/ older portrayals of c!beeduo and said by invoking smth that both evokes Really fucked up baggage (that does unfortunately exist btw I'm sorry if you didn't know that but People Really Do B Fucked Up Abt Beeduo) AND applies to his character is a revocation of consent to examining deep intimacies:tm: with his character, which is gonna apply regardless of the nature of that intimacy (even if nonromantic)

Like I don't /r c!beeduo myself, do not, never have, but I talk to people who have and have consumed content where they r background /r; I also don't think it matters. Like I don't Actively /r it and I don't Actively Not /r it because imho w/ the intimacy regarding c!beeduo that is plot relevant and character important whether that intimacy is /p /qp or /r doesn't really matter. I don't consider myself Less of a c!beeduo shipper than someone who /rs them because that would be dumb as hell and while none of the content I've made* is Intrinsically or Intentionally /r it certainly can be read tht way as much as it can be read /qp or /p. It's be dumb and hypocritical of me to like, dunk on ppl for /r-ing c!beeduo when I'm also invested in these two and my tonetags r not gonna suddenly Delete the picking apart I've done of the dynamic @ hand

Which Has Been. Within Bounds Of Canon. It's been what's been shown (sometimes to my great distress. There is a reason that the :canon_beeduo: emote looks the way it does) Directly Onscreen and in general keeping with the tone n intensity/directions of what they've Done With The Characters

HOWEVER

As mentioned up there. Revocation of consent

It makes. Full sense 2 me that Mr Live wants to place a moratorium or fullon ban on shipping his characters perhaps where he wouldn't have before because of the Unfortunately Very Extant trends of people being Fucking Weird about shipping his characters AND of using them as a Thinly Veiled Excuse to ship HIM, which. I should not have to explain why shipping real people is fucking abhorrent

THIS creates a problem which is a. Bit of a vacuum in interacting with what is a facet of c!Ranboo's arc, decision making, and character. Like you CAN have c!Ranboo w/o cbeeduo but you Can't Really have his plotline without examining c!beeduo. And as I mentioned earlier: even if your examination of c!beeduo is fully platonic, the significance of it To the plotline means that any examination of it and its relevance to the plotline and characters IS gonna be an examination of intimacy, which. Regardless of it's platonic, Is Still Shipping

Unless some HARD retconning happens it leaves this like. Hole in an aspect of c!Ranboo's arc and decisionmaking and it's very. Uncertain? God. Fucking months ago I was already kind of :huh. Does he know what the fuck he's doing: irt c!beeduo and desperately wishing for things to be cleared up and now it's only That Much Stronger

NOW. KNIFETRICK, FINALLY

Knifetrick (or, as it’s actually listed, Bishop’s Knife Trick) is a fic about "Ran and Jackie from The Pit TFTSMP" in a "canon-typical ambiguously romantic relationship." As you can tell from the scare quotes, especially if you've seen me vague, both of these are, to put it politely, Doubtful. I've read the fic; I will not be sharing my opinions because that would be neither productive nor responsible (I will just say I can't recommend it and leave it at that) but I WILL say the following that Is relevant to the conversation:

Ran's and Jackie's characterizations respectively have very little to do with characterizations from The Pit, and bear a dollar-store-version resemblance to tropes and personality motifs found in ESPECIALLY fanon c!beeduo, especially later in the fic. I would not go so far as to say they are Intentionally Literally Ranboo and Tubbo but they are transparent expies and were clearly written at LEAST unintentionally w/ c!beeduo in mind (esp since. Ran and Jackie barely interacted in The Pit), and for a readerbase that, as far as I can tell, is HUGELY dominated by /r c!beeduo shippers. Like. Sorry. This is off-brand c!beeduo.

The dynamic between the two is pretty unambiguously romantic, also; despite what the fic's white knights claim, romantic tropes and implications/motifs/imagery from at LEAST chapter two, and is very much explicitly romantic by the most recent chapter.

FROM CH1:

"And now, with raised eyebrows and a pursed lip, the newly named General Jackie observes Ran in such a way that makes the enderman’s skin crawl. Ran reminds himself that this kid, as short and harmless as he may look, is trained to kill. [...] Jackie narrows his eyes and tilts his head a little, as if he’s trying to read in between every one of Ran’s imperfect scales."

FROM CH2:

"It makes Ran’s skin itch with discomfort. [...] 'That actually doesn’t explain much of anything at all,' complains Jackie, and he pops a few croutons into his mouth with one hand. 'Tell me what you’re thinking, pretty-boy.'

"Ran feels his face flush, no doubt mildly glowing green.

"Yes, that was the other thing. The unnecessary compliments to his physical appearance.

"They don’t happen very often, and don’t seem to have very much meaning or intention behind them— Jackie often speaks like an unthinking kid— but when they do happen… they’re embarrassing. [...] It’s annoying how the rug is pulled out from under his feet in these moments when he’s 'embarrassed'. Like the conversation see-saw has temporarily shifted weight in the general’s favor."

I am not going to include excerpts from Chapter 6 because it's just the entire chapter.

I WILL SAY, HOWEVER, STEPPING ON THIS SCORPION BEFORE IT STINGS: they are not written in an RPFy manner and I don't think there's any grounds, including Vibes, of accusing Knifetrick of being like. Closet truthing or whatever. Also, while I think there's certainly Some Weirdness ESPECIALLY around the reaction, the romance itself is Not written in any way I'd call weird or problematic pre-clip; it's nothing inappropriate or like Weirdly Fetishy or whatever. Knifetrick is not #problematic or anything and I don't have beef with like the concept of liking it intrinsically; if I thought it was like. Abhorrent I wouldn't be sharing excerpts lmao dhjfnhdsbvdnfjh. Hence: if anyone uses this post or anyth like it to send harassment or bad faith ANYTHING to anyone involved with Knifetrick I will hunt you down in the fucking night even if it WAS #problematic that'd be the LITERAL OPPOSITE of productive and as it stands it's Literally Not. Essentially: Knifetrick is a (questionably-written /mean) fic using Ran and Jackie from The Pit as a vessel for a large chunk of the dynamics and headcanons of fanon /r c!beeduo in particular

And again, I would not call it problematic in any way (aside from the disingenuity of the insistence that it's TOTALLY UNRELATED TO BEEDUO and TOOOTALLY WASN'T INTENDED TO BE ROMANTIC GUYS like own your shit please)... IF it weren't for the advent of The Clip, which is calling in2 question the Entirety of the problem of /r-ing any variant of c!beeduo or any of Ranboo's characters at all

I really do not have an answer for this tbh. I genuinely wanna hear from the streamer on this more specifically because I like,,, I got no clue where 2 go from here? Do I just consider an arc retconned? Was it an issue of speaking abt a troubling subject kneejerk wise and I'm reading too much in2 it?

I just. I dunno

Tl;dr (AT LONG LAST)

- The Clip is a clip of a Discord stage where Ranboo (streamer) loudly explicitly decried shipping in a way that implicitly applies to characters he plays - This would be all well and good but is rendered complicated by the plot relevance of c!beeduo, which does not stop being shipping if it's /p'd due to it still necessarily being an examination of a particular intimacy in a way that is in canon hard to distinguish the /p, /qp, or /r nature of - Bishop's Knife Trick is an AO3 fic centered around using TFTSMP characters as /r c!beeduo expies which is not a bad thing in and of itself unless it also is covered under this moratorium - Things remain unclear until and unless we get clearer word from streamer, but considering Mr Live seems to be allergic to clarifying anything abt c!beeduo this is doubtful

*very little if any of the content I personally have made 4 c!beeduo has been posted publicly, for related reasons. You May have seen it if you're in servers w/ me, depending on Which Ones

#dsmp fandom critical #kind of?#jic #ask to tag #I am technically defending Kn1fetrick on this post #I am not nice to it but I am defending it technically. If people start being rude abt it I am going to set myself on fire #this IS ludicrously long but I have tl;dr'd it as I do with all my ludicrously long posts. I think I have salient thoughts

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shirtlesssammy · 3 years

Text

Anger and Love

I can tell you this. I still hurt over the ending of this show and the reasons roll into each other, like tangled yarn tossed in a bin. (In this metaphor, I am the bin.)

Castiel

The BURY YOUR GAYS trope. My GOD when will this show learn. (The answer is never. Never, because it’s over.) In 15x18 Cas confesses his love and then dies. Guess who else dies in this episode? Charlie and Stevie! The writers said, “Who will hurt the most to lose? Ah, yes. Charlie in the new and terrified bloom of love.” We can ASSUME that Charlie and Stevie come back, but we don’t get to see it or hear about it. And we get the barest throwaway line that Cas comes back in 15x20, but not seeing him physically return after over a decade on the show feels like a blow that just won’t stop.

More EMOTIONS below the cut.

On Thursday, I said to Boris that it would have been better if we’d never been tossed that crumb about Cas’s love. Why give us this FEAST and then take it away like Chuck poofing away a dog? Many people have pointed to network cowardice, and that’s certainly a possibility. Some people have put forth the theory that exposing Cas’s love for Dean was simply a season-ending ratings move. Either of those could be true, or some mix of them. Listen, I can spin myself around that stupid knot for days and we’ll probably never get the whole story. Instead, I have to look at the core of what Castiel coming out means for me. And the truth of it is, it means A LOT. It means I love him a whole lot more. Cas is mine, he’s ours, he’s one of us. And I’m angry as hell at how it went down, but I’m still glad we got Cas’s side of the story. I have a pride pin on the lapel of my Cas trench, and it’s never felt more perfect.

So I’m angry, but I’m also incredibly glad. Ugh. Knots.

Boris: We’ll never know what actually went down during the production of this season and the hiatus changes or the show’s narrative arc, but I have to believe that Robert Berens was given some kind of go ahead and planned for a lovely and beautiful ending for Dean and Cas. That his story was taken from him at the end (much like Wayward’s eventual ending), is so unfair. Because Cas’s story wasn’t completed. Dean and Cas’s story will forever float out there for us to ponder. Like Natasha, I will cling to Cas’s confession and see it as a beautiful coming out moment for a character I love very much. I’ll be forever despondent that we didn’t see Dean’s story play out on our televisions.

Dean

I didn’t come out as bi to more than three people until my late 30’s. It was something I was first in denial about, and then it just seemed “not relevant” for a large swath of my life (married for 18 years now). Talking about that with my family and friends surprised me - how relieved I felt. How free. As I was working through this, I was also slipping into Supernatural fandom, and watching a show where Dean COULD BE bi. Reader, I projected myself right onto Dean Bean. Maybe he was like me. Clueless, then in denial, then thinking that part of himself irrelevant. So giving us Cas without Dean, given the scenes we watch on the show, feels like a personal affront. I know I’m projecting here, so I’ll acknowledge those feelings and move on to the next…

I am also PISSED about Dean’s story. All his life he’s been “daddy’s blunt instrument” and ready to die bloody on a hunt. It’s spoken about so often that we think surely - at the end - we’ll subvert that. SURELY he’ll survive. The last couple of seasons, he’s fighting for control - freedom from Michael, freedom from Chuck. He finally achieves that freedom and then loses everything anyway. There are no rewards on Earth. He died solving one last case from John’s journal. Daddy’s little soldier to the end. It’s disgusting to me to take this beautiful, complex character who is textually SO FULL OF LOVE and then take a pass on imagining what he might do with a real life on earth. It’s lazy writing, used for a cheap, fast, emotional reaction. The more I unpack Dean’s fate against the rest of the series, the angrier I get.

Boris: I think so many of us confused and discovering things about ourselves later in life see Dean as a character that matters. His story, had it been told fully, would have mattered. I don’t buy his death or his peaceful afterlife. It’s still too raw to process because he deserves happiness in life!

Billie

“I know Supernatural has a history of killing off characters of color,” I told people, “but Billie’s a main character now!” W O W 15x18 is the kick that keeps on kicking. I did actually enjoy Billie’s arc quite a bit, but losing her still makes me angry, in the broader context of the show.

Women

“Supernatural isn’t great with women,” I said. “But we have Mary now! And Billie!” Please picture me as Olaf when I say. “Mary DIES. Billie DIES. Only sad men remain.” Sure, we get some throwaway lines. We know Donna’s alive in 15x20 because of the call to Dean’s phone. Actually, scratch that, we know someone talked to Donna…because this show didn’t want to address that literally no other hunter knew about or mourned Dean’s death so they had a random stranger call Dean’s “Other other phone” for help. Great. Now I’m mad about Dean again.

We can probably blame some of how the final episode shakes out on COVID. Presumably, the final scene in Heaven would have been a party with Mary, the roadhouse crew, original Charlie, maybe Eileen? Kevin? etc etc. Instead, it’s an empty, lonely end on screen.

Which brings me to Eileen. Sam’s romance was laid out carefully throughout season 15, so what the fuck happened here? We assumed we’d at least get some confirmation that Sam ends up with the woman he brought back from the dead and then dated as recently as a couple episodes ago. Instead, there is literally NOTHING. No attempt is made to say that Eileen’s the one Sam ends up with other than his son having dark hair. There are no family portraits. No sign language to the faceless mother by the house. (Standing in a floral dress, like a good housewife.) Is she dead? Did Sam end up with someone else? Even without dialogue, there are ways to show Eileen’s presence that weren’t used. I’m so angry that she was an element of the season and then…hand waved away as irrelevant. The faceless wife MY GOD, SHOW.

Boris: Yikes, I cynically see the reason to not include Cas in the end because homophobiaTM but to not even give us Eileen and Sam? Clearly, they wanted to erase every person that mattered to the brothers from the end. Ugly.

Heaven

The funny thing is that I’m constantly trying to write a “happy eternity in a now-free Heaven” in my own fan fiction. If anyone should like 15x20 it should be me! I’m always trying to argue that it isn’t major character death, because their souls are infinite and now free, blah blah blah. So ultimately, my problem isn’t with peace in Heaven. It’s with Dean’s EARLY DEATH, and how empty Heaven feels. How desolate and devoid of life. Dean leaves the Roadhouse and drives alone until finally Sam dies and joins him. It reads like the ultimate fuck you to the “family don’t end in blood” storyline. If COVID filming got in the way of filling Heaven with life, then we have all suffered a great loss. It should feel ecstatic and full of community. Instead, it just feels wide and lonely.

Ultimately, boiling the season finale into an intimate portrait of brothers should work on paper. It SHOULD, but the show leaves so much unsaid and unshown about the community and family they’ve built along the way, and tells us to be happy with the scraps we’ve gotten instead. It tells us they were never that important, in the end.

The Future

I’m still going to watch the show. I’m still going to enjoy the show and the characters. There are reasons I have watched all along, and they don’t have anything to do with needing the show wrapped up in a neat bow. I’m angry with Supernatural’s conclusion, because I love it. And I’m okay with that.

Boris: I love this show so much, and I know I’ll continue to love it. I need time to lick my wounds and forget about this episode. This show is about the characters and the journey and that’ll never end.

#spn spoilers #supernatural season 15 #spn 15x20 #carry on #spn 15x19 #inherit the earth #spn 15x18 #despair #spn thoughts #about us

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girlgirlgirlnormal · 3 years

Text

Niragi x OC x Last Boss (Part 3)

Sooo, I wrote a third part! Noone asked for it, but I think I´m going to write more parts, just because I enjoy writing these characters and am having a writers block on my other project :/ And maybe I should proofread and edit the other two parts, but here you go!

But hey! This part is not smut but an actual game!

I hope you enjoy it!

part one - part two

“What the fuck where you doing?”, Hina was ripped out of her thoughts as Kuina approached her, whisper-shouting, “What happened?”

“I got laid”, Hina informed her friend, she had woken up sandwiched between Samura and Niragi. At first, she thought that she should be waiting for them to wake up, but it was still dark and they looked both so peaceful. If Hina was being honest, her body was still hurting. A quick look in the mirror had confirmed all the bruises and hickeys she had been feeling, all over her throat, chest, and thighs. Her bikini top only covered the most of her breasts, everything else was exposed. She had stolen a pair of shorts from the drawer, that at least covert the bruises on her butt and the hickeys on her upper inner thigh. She hoped they weren’t going to be too mad about her sneaking away.

“What?”, Kuina exclaimed.

Her eyes widened, as she saw the bruises on Hinas body, “You call that getting laid? You look like you survived your own death.”

“I had worse nights and I´m not even lying about that”, Hina smiled at the pretty girl next to her, “My last boyfriend”, she formed quotation marks with her fingers, as she said boyfriend, “used to do way worse and I still had to dance every night.”

Kuina gave her a sympathetic smile, “Look, I´m sorry about that, but I don’t believe that putting yourself in a situation in which you could easily get killed is going to help with your trauma.”

Hina rolled her eyes, “I did cum twice”, she informed Kuina grinning.

Loudly exhaling through her nose, Kuina shook her head. She was about to say something, but she stopped, grabbing Hinas hand and staring at something behind her. Mustering up a smile Hina turned, finding Niragi and Last Boss approaching them with fast steps.

“Good morning”, she greeted, as soon as the men were in a hearing distance.

Niragi was the first to reach her, one of his hands forcefully grabbing her hair, while the other held his sniper rifle, “Why did you leave?”, he asked angered.

Hina took a deep breath. That was the kind of behavior her old boyfriend had portrayed daily. At least she knew how to handle it.

“I needed to get something to eat”, she gestured towards the bar, her plate was still sitting there, only half eaten, “I didn’t want to wake you. You were both seeping so peacefully.”

“You ran away from us”, Niragi said, Last Boss standing behind him, with his arms crossed.

“I just went to get breakfast”, she said, “Why would I leave you?”

“She deserves a bit of trust after she’s been such a good girl last night”, Samura commented, still not raising a finger to help her.

“I hope its ok that I borrowed some shorts”, Hina said, still not acknowledging her hurting scalp, “You kinda destroyed my bikini panties.”

“They look great on you”, Samura informed her, finally putting a hand on Niragis shoulder, “Come on. She´s just eating.”

Niragi looked her up and down. His gaze lingering over all the bruises and hickeys they had caused. His fingers unwinded from her hair and glided over her throat, amazed by how pretty the purple spots looked on her.

“I’m yours, remember?”, Hina asked smiling, “I won’t just leave.”

“We were wondering when your visa is going to run out”, Last Boss asked, stepping beside Niragi, “We are going to the game tonight. We want you to come with us.”

“My visa ends in two days”, Hina answered, “but it wouldn’t hurt to renew it a couple of days earlier.”

It would hurt. Walking hurt and she couldn’t even sit. Her ass and clit were still throbbing from being abused the night before.

“Good.”, Niragi said, “We’ll see you in the evening.”

With that they left as fast as they had approached.

“Why would you go to a game with them?”, Kuina asked, “What will you do if they sacrifice you?”

“Probably die”, Hina answered, sighing as she saw Kuinas frown, “If they can help me to survive here, I’ll take it. If I die, I die. There is really not much to do about it.”

“Why are you so indifferent about dying?”

“I don’t want to play games forever. I don’t really want to go back to the real world either. I have nothing there.”

She was lying. She had someone. Someone she would never see again. Someone she wasn’t able to have even back in the real world. She would not be able to have him once she got back. Her boyfriend would never allow it.

Hina spent the rest of the day in her room, trying to cool her core to ease the pain and waiting for the gong. The gong always announced that it was time to get ready for the next game. She hoped that it was not a physical game. She didn’t know if she would be able to fight or even run.

“Don’t be stupid”, she whispered to herself, “If you can dance on the pole after he had his way with you, you can run and you can fight.”

They had been nicer to her than he had been. Even the fact that Niragi choked until she had seen black spots dancing in her vision didn’t stop that from being true. He had been so much worse, and nobody had been able to protect her.

Sighing she made her way to the lobby. It was getting dark, it couldn’t take much longer for the gong to go off. Many people seemed to think the same way. The lobby was already fairly crowded as Hina approached. She couldn’t help but notice the lingering gaze of a couple of people, examining her bruises and hickeys. She held her head high. The sports shoes she was wearing were comfortable, but she couldn’t help thinking her dancer shoes would be so much more appropriate right now. She was used to strutting with platform heels, not giving a fuck about what other people thought about her or her profession or all the bruises she had all over her body. She smiled as she saw Samura and Niragi standing in the back of the lobby, talking to some other militants and walked over to them. They stopped talking and watched her move towards them.

“Good evening”, she greeted them, still smiling.

“Hey”, Niragi greeted back.

Last Boss just smiled.

They didn’t start a conversation. Hina did not know what to talk about, with all the other militants around them and the men did not look like they were interested in talking to her anyway. Niragi was back to talking to the others while Samura was still watching her. She looked up at him, still smiling. His tattoos looked nice. She wanted to trace them with her fingers, but she didn’t dare.

“You’re still wearing my shorts”, he said, “Why? You’ve been to your room.”

“I like them”, Hina informed Samura, “They´re comfortable and they are yours.”

“I thought the whole girl steals her boyfriend’s clothes was only a movie trope”, he deadpanned.

Boyfriend? Did he assume they were in a relationship? Did he want that?

Before she could say anything else Hatter was on the balcony, giving a speech about the games and how they all were comrades. Hina didn’t listen. Part of her wanted it to be true. She wanted to be able to go back to the real world. She didn’t want to play games to survive.

She was whisked away to a car with the militants and off to the game before she knew it.

They reached the venue, an old warehouse, in short time and went in. The phones were laid out in a small room in the entrance. Hina couldn’t help but notice how hot it was in there. For once she was happy that she was only wearing a bikini top.

She picked up a phone and let herself be squished between Niragi and Last Boss as the registration proceeded. There were 4 other people as the voice announced that registration was closed.

“Game code: 8 of spades. Game: The floor is lava. Game clear is achieved then players cross the warehouse and enter the safe zone. Time: 15 Minutes”

After the announcement the door behind them opened, unveiling a large warehouse. The floor was literally lava. Objects were floating in the lava, monkey bars and ropes were dangling from the ceiling. A big digital clock was counting back from 15 minutes. Hina sighed, stretching her legs.

So much for protecting me, she mumbled and watched as Niragi attached his sniper rifle to a harness and Last Boss examined the lava.

She watched as turned to one of the women that were not part of the militants and shoved her to the edge.

“What are you doing?”, the woman cried out, “Stop!”

“We need to find out if this is really lava”, Samura only explained, holding the poor women by her hair and shoving face to the edge.

“It cant be lava”, said Hina, all the attention was on her now, “I don’t think that the stuff could float in lava, it would be too hot. It still seems to be pretty hot and I would not recommend touching it.”

It was a thick blubbering substance and steam was rising. If everything she had seen on nationaly geographic was right lava looked different.

“Come on”, she said smiling, “we don’t have much time.”

With that she walked over to the far right of the room and jumped on the table that was floating there. This seemed like a decent starting point. Many other objects were floating nearby and some monkeybars were hanging nearby. Standing on the desk she assessed her next move. The chair, which was placed about a meter from the desk was the nearest object, but it didn’t had enough surface area to land safely. She chose to jump a little bit further and landed on a piece of driftwood. From where she was standing the best jump she could make was to a globe. She looked back. Samura had let go of the woman and was following her. Niragi was standing on something that looked like a sink. She was about to make the jump as a piercing scream echoed through the warehouse. She turned back, the militants all seemed fine, someone was struggling in the lava. The struggle didn’t last long. After mere seconds the person disappeared.

“Maybe acid?”, Hina asked, turning back to Samura.

“You didn’t let me check”, he just said, shrugging.

Hina leapt on the globe, landing on her stomach, barely able to lift her legs enough to not touch the lava. She could hear Samura jumping on the driftwood behind her as she started to lift herself of, trying to stand up, to be able to jump to the monkeybars. The monkeybars were leading straight to a spinning bed in the middle of the room.

“Time remaining: 10 Minutes”, the computer voice announced.

Hina had finally managed to stand up. The globe was slippery, but it wasn’t a far jump to the monkeybars. Once again she was happy about the muscles she had gained while dancing. She managed to grip the first bar. It was swinging back and forth violently, as she realized that the next bar was too far to just grab. She had to built momentum. She leapt, grabbing the second bars.

She heard a loud splash and someone else was screaming. A shudder ran over her back.

“Come on princess”, Niragi was already on the bed.

When did he get there? Taking a deep breath she leapt to the next bar. Only three more there left and she could jump to the bed.

Another scream. She couldn’t look back, but it sounded like a man. Fueled with adrenaline she made the last leaps. She was hanging on the last monkeybar as she felt it swing harder.

“Jump, Niragi will catch you”, Samura said, she could hear him leaping from one bar to the next, making it swing harder.

Hina nodded and using the swing she let go then she was nearest to the bed. Niragi did catch her.

“Nice”, he said, dragging her to the side so last boss had a place to land.

“Its easiest if we go that way”, he explained, after Samura joined them on the bed, pointing to his right, “the objects are smaller but the distance between them is shorter.”

Hina and Samura nodded. Niragi made the first jump. He made it look so easy as he made the second jump and landed effortlessly on his feed on a small barstool. After the bed had spun around two times Samura gave Hina a small nudge, “You first”, he said.

Hina nodded and made the jump, landing on her butt.

“Ouch”, she mumbled, standing up and making the next jump to the barstool that Niragi had already vacated.

Another scream echoed through the warehouse. Hina looked around. Only one of the other militants was left and the girl that Last Boss had threatened to push into the lava was a couple of meters behind them, sitting on top of a piece of driftwood.

She made the next jump. Only a couple more jumps were left.

“3 Minutes left”, the computer voice announced.

“Fuck”, mumbled Niragi, “Come on, princess.”

She jumped. Samura was close on her heels. She jumped again. And again. Niragi reached the other edge and started looking for the door to the safe room.

“2 Minutes left”

“Found it”, Niragi announced, opening a door. He left it wide open and went back to the edge, reaching for Hina, “Come on.”

Two jumps were left, but one of them was another globe, much smaller than the one she had jumped on before.

“You can do it”, Samura said behind her.

Mustering up her courage she made the jump, landing on her stomach. It took some effort to stand up, but the next platform, another sink, was close, so she made the jump. She turned back and watched Samura make the jump to the globe, somehow landing on his feed.

“30 seconds left”

“Come on!”, Niragi screamed, extending his hand to her.

She made the last jump and found herself in Niragis arms. Not even two seconds later they were joined by Samura on the edge.

“Go”, he said, shoving Hina to the open door.

Just as the voice started to count down from 10 Samura was the last of the trio entering the room. He wanted to close the door, but Hina stopped him. She wanted to help the others, but they were too far away.

“3”, counted the voice.

Sighing she stepped to the side, letting Samura close the door.

“Game cleared.”, the voice announced.

She felt herself being squished by two bodies, as Samura and Niragi hugged her while on the other side of the door pained screams erupted. They didn’t scream long.

Their phones beeped, showing that they had earned 8 additional days to their visa.

“Let’s go home”, Niragi said, opening the door on the other side of the room.

Sighing she followed the men out. The cool night air felt nice after the hellish heat inside.

“You were good”, Samura commented as they were seating in the car.

They had lost everyone else in the game. She was wondering why they were not upset over the deaths of their militant friends, but she guessed that it would make sense. She had known that they didn’t really have many friends in the beach.

“Theres an executive meeting”, Niragi informed her, as they reached the beach, “Go to Samuras room, we’ll come as soon as possible.”

Hina nodded and watched them walk away.

“How was the game?”, asked Kuina, who had approached her from behind.

“They did not sacrifice me to find out if the floor was really lava.”, Hina deadpanned, “What were you up to?”

“Just hanging out with Chishiya”, Kuina answered, “Did you just say the floor was lava?”

#alice in borderland #aib #suguru niragi #niragi #last boss #takatora samura #the beach #kuina #chishiya #niragi x reader #last boss x reader

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tatiana-petrovna · 3 years

Note

For the fanfiction writers ask: 16, 21, 34

16. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)?

• Smol x Tol is a requirement not a request

• Arranged marriage AU queen 👑

• No one else challenges me mentally or physically but you

• Bodyguard AU’s (bonus points if her parents are never around and she’s a Poor Little Rich Girl™️)

• We meet in our dreams AU

• Somehow I keep falling into another plane or realm and you only exist there and “we” only exist there and slowly I start to spend all my time and energy on being with you and completely losing my whole life in the “real world”

• Captive/Captor AU’s (think Briseis and Achilles but I’m not above a good old fashioned bank robbery gone tits up I’m an equal opportunity slut for Stockholm Syndrome)

• We had a past life together and we only remember flashes but the energy is still there between us and it’s undeniable - however, being together would completely dismantle our present day lives

• This can’t last and it’s not meant to, but I’ve been through a lot and you’re a very nice resting place for now

• I’m a brat, but vulnerable only with you. You’re an asshole, but soft only with me. I don’t hate anyone else but you. But I don’t love anyone else either.

• We’ve both been through trauma no one else understands so we don’t really know how to trust or love anyone else, but no one would ever be accepting of us being together (yes I meant to google Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia)

• Honestly, anything where the shtick is ‘we’re really not supposed to be doing this’ bonus points for sneaking around and loads of pining angst about it

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!)

I’m about to lose so many followers 🙈

#1 always - AEGON THE CONQUERER X RHAENYS TARGARYEN (ASOIAF)

Max x Audrey (Gossip Girl)

Sarah Cameron & Rafe Cameron (OBX) (yes I know they’re related no I don’t care)

Ciri x Geralt (The Witcher, more the video games and the books than the tv show)

Javier Peña (Narcos) x Helena (Narcos) x Santiago Garcia (Triple Frontier)

Robb x Sansa or Jon x Sansa or Robb x Jon x Sansa (ASOIAF) (who is GoT don’t know her)

Sookie Stackhouse x Jason Stackhouse (True Blood) (watch the first episode again and tell me I’m wrong lol)

Eric x Four (Divergent) (books not the movieverse)

Becca x Lucas (Banshee)

Cassie x Nate (Euphoria) (yes I know it wouldn’t work leave me alone) (all I’m saying is, Nate spent a lot of fucking energy trying to get McKay to NOT date Cassie and Nate would never have made Cassie get an abortion)

Mal x Evie (Descendants)

Elsa x Kristoff (Frozen)

Tink x Hook (Peter Pan universe - more the books than any of the movies) (in the second Peter Pan book she is literally lost to the group and found locked up in the captain’s quarters among Hook’s treasure on his ship don’t come for me Barrie shipped it too)

Freya x Freyr or Freya x Fenrir (Norse mythology)

Morgan x Arthur (Arthurian legend)

Lucifer x Eve or Lucifer x Lilith (biblical mythology NO I’m not talking about Lucifer the show lol I’ve never even watched it and I won’t)

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

From “Through the Lake”, a Grishaverse fic I wrote 5 years ago but never posted (Darkling x OFC)

They’ve begun travelling now. He likes to stay diplomatically relevant. Likes to be known to the kings and queens of lands beyond Ravka. Because the otkazat’sya Lantsov king is weak and stupid. She knows. She’s met him many times. And she met his father before him. She’s dined with their ambassadors and danced with their advisors (Shadow likes to show her off as his little relic. His little stolen child, kept as a pet the same way fairies of old would keep children from her world. It is also a very clear piece on the chess board. Look what I have. Look what she can do. Know your place).

“Lantsov is lucky anyone even continues to acknowledge him as king. If I were a queen, the only diplomat I would sit down with is you.” She’s known her Shadow a hundred years now. She cannot fathom why anyone still bows to the Lantsov king.

“Do I not treat you with all the adoration and reverence due a queen?” He asks in response, ignoring her statement for the moment. Though it strokes something warm and needy inside him to hear her say it.

They’re in Kerch. A disgustingly wealthy merchant’s villa is their home for the night. At his table they dined on sweet-buttered grouse and roasted kale and salted caramel cake.

The back of his ungloved finger traces her neck as she takes her jewelry off and lets her hair down. The touch flares her power with a shivering thrill of electricity. Unable to help herself, Jo flexes her abilities enough to let him know not to push her. The air in the room compresses for a moment until all sound is narrowed down, resting on the pin of a needle and ringing in his ears. Thirty seconds go by. Finally, she lets up and he has to grip the window sill as his lungs drag desperately for oxygen.

“What?” He half snarls, half chokes. Jo is shown more favor than anyone else at his court by far. He’s never lavished another with the same attention and devotion he pours over her. He’s never trusted anyone enough to allow them so close. But he’s careful to keep her loyalties where they belong. Uses her power to keep the other Grisha in check. To keep their eyes fixed with jealousy so they’ll never look upon her with love. So she has no other confessional but him. So she can never hold anything she knows to his throat. Even if she thought to overthrow him and seize power for herself, they would never follow her. They’d wear her bones first.

“You know what. Do not dare to play the victim with me.” They argue as if they’re married. And maybe in a way they are. Promises forever unbroken. Loyalty carried to the grave. Secrets pressed between them for centuries, that no one else could ever unfold.

Swallowing, he swipes away the blood dripping from his nose with the handkerchief in his pocket. Glances out the window, partly guilty and partly annoyed that the girl can even make him feel guilt.

“You know why I can’t let you stay.” They’ve been over this a hundred thousand times. He won’t have her for one lifetime when he needs her power for much longer than that. And perhaps, a part of him needs her to be hungry for him. To know she’s in Duluth salivating at the mouth to get back here. Perhaps he’s scared that if he gives her all she wants of him, of Ravka, she’ll have her fill and go back for good.

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awesome-cookies-and-cream · 3 years

Text

Reki and Langa’s dynamic

It’s speculation at my part and a shameless rant on what i like about sk8 just to get it off my chest I’ve been so fixated help

it’s 5am I’m at uni and i have a shit ton to do, am I really gonna make an essay about sk8 instead? yes abso-fucking-lutely. strap on to your metaphorical skateboards kids. this is going to be long ride

this isn’t to call out anyone lol so in case you get that impression I’m sorry. I understand everyone is out to interpret media in whatever they like and that’s fine, but sometimes i feel like either some missed some points of the story? anyway here are my thoughts tho

alright so what i absolutely love about sk8 is how they didn’t make anyone into a genius.Genius is a mockery of the hardships everyone does to attain that level of skills. And no Langa is not a genius or a prodigy which I will explain later. I’ve seen enough shounen animes back in the day and usually it’s ‘annoying heart of gold beginner vs. calm and collected genius’ they usually hate each other’s guts and bicker all the time though secretly, deep down care for each other but would rather die than admit it dynamic. While I’m glad we’re moving past that, I really thought Reki and Langa would be like that so....

imagine my surprise when Langa was the ‘beginner’ in skating. He has the potential to be a second sasuke here lol. (blue, handsome, cool) but no he isn’t. he’s an adorable idiot, an airhead, head empty only skating dude and i love it.

Reki as well. He could have been the usual protagonist. (sucks at his sport, loud, hardworking, and by the power of friendship he suddenly beats everyone else which i think is pretty overused at this point, don’t you think?) some people complain how Reki despite being the MC isn’t given screentime and hasn’t won a single beef. (and sure that’s true. he should have won some and langa lose some but we only have 12 eps so lol) but he’s not the usual protagonist you know? and sk8 isn’t about winning. if it was, I think they would have focused on the techniques. the hows and the what to do.

Idk if you noticed, but sports anime with winning in its goal would often explain in detail certain techniques. (see haikyuu) but shows like Free and Yuri on Ice isn’t exactly talking about how to win that seriously as Haikyuu did. It’s more focusing on the feelings and how their lives are affected with their passion for this sport. it’s about the character development!!! and i think SK8 is something like that too. It explores the character’s feelings rather than sport. (like what i tell my sister, they use the sport as a character device if that makes sense?)

this was literally in the opening lol. it’s really about the feelings you know?

so anyway it’s been pointed out several times that Reki was already feeling insecure about his skills in skating since ep 1 way before Langa came. But he still likes to skate and despite feeling never enough, he still enjoyed it. (some also pointed out that Reki’s reason of going into a beef against Shadow has been because he insulted his way of skating not because he wanted to be the best) so the show from the get go was already hinting at his self esteem issues.

this also implies that Reki has always been feeling like this in a while, added with his tendencies to bottle things up, it makes sense that he’ll blow up at some point and he’ll need to release all of those feelings. (so yeah i think this is just the right amount of eps for their fall out. i see some people complaining shush. otherwise it would also feel too rushed. this is years weighing him)

and i guess it’s also implied in here he’s had days like these too in the past! seriously it’s an ongoing problem he’s been carrying. i think 3 eps is pretty good enough pace to internalize it

so point: Reki was already down way before Langa came. langa just added to that. And don’t go blaming Langa cause the boy did nothing wrong.

Consider that Langa just lost his dad (i think we need more backstory on this though. please sdsjkdksl i need little Langa and his dad interactions) he just moved countries, and the only connection to his dad (snowboarding) is gone cause it doesn’t snow in OKinawa

though one also argues that Langa hasn’t been snowboarding since his dad was gone.

so for Langa, Reki introducing skating to him was revolutionary. You’re someone grieving over the death of what is probably the most important person in your life, the thing you love the most no longer gives you joy (as was shown in the flashbacks and basically Langa going ‘it’s the same’) and you’re in a new country with a language you barely are fluent. you can’t even read or write, and you barely have friends granted you don’t have much back in the day. it’s horrible.

and then this guy you barely know talks to you, befriends you, helps you get a job, and teaches you something you thought you’ve lost and through that you made more friends??

yeah you see why Langa likes Reki. You also see why he’s obsessed with skating. It’s kind of like a coping, a fixation. plus he’s bad with social cues i guess? the interview says he’s likely to get dumped for being too inattentive lmao and that’s what makes him interesting!

also the thing that really surprised me when they first interacted was how supportive Reki is to Langa. it also got to me with how much Langa thinks highly of Reki. Again a deviation to the ‘i say i hate you but deep down i care for you’ trope. they’re full on supportive and protective. i like that. it’s fresh to me. I thought Reki was going to the tsundere ‘hmph that’s not a big deal’ route at the start of ep 2 but he’s really amazed. (kinda also says he’s been very desperate for someone to share skating with but that’s another topic)

so Reki teaches Langa how to skate. and Langa sucks. Which was interesting to me because I thought Langa would be some flawless prince-like character. But nah. He trips and faints at his own blood lol. He’s so uncool and i love it.

Some people say Langa is over powered with a thick ass plot armor which gets him to win (which is why i see people saying he should have won against Joe and I actually agree that Langa should lose some beefs but again only 12 eps, so little time)

but I still wanna talk about it anyway so it’s revealed Langa was snowboarding since 2. That’s 15 years. I think that should be around the same time Joe and Cherry should be skating. and i think if you start earlier as a kid, your body develops differently. (should Langa, “an amateur” win against Joe a pro? the question falls more on whether you can classify Langa as an amateur) i think it’s like Langa being very used to motorcycle tricks from age 2 then suddenly he’s using a regular bicycle, and sure the feeling is mostly the same but there’s just something off. Your body doesn’t easily forget what you know, especially if it did it for 15 years. and so Reki customizes a board for Langa so it’ll feel exactly like snowboarding

So Langa has a customized board that he needed to get used to before he went pro. He really sucked the first few eps lmao. but that’s more of him getting used to the new rules. he pretty much told Reki in ep 2 that he can’t do a skateboard ollie, but he can do a snowboard one bec it’s attached to his feet.

(i may just want to add that one thing i also like about sk8 is that it really doesn’t care what you need for accommodation? if that’s how you do it best, then go for it. When Langa says to Reki he can’t do the ollie without the board attached to his feet, Reki immediately goes his way to accommodate him. usually people in real life might say ‘it’s not real skateboarding if you need a modification etc. but look at Cherry with a freaking AI board and people are like yeah whatever do what you want man. whatever rolls your board.)

so anyway Langa vs. Joe with Langa winning despite being an amateur? if you can even call him an amateur that is. Plus all his tricks are snowboarding tricks lol. everything he’s done is testament to his 15 years of snowboarding?? We don’t even know how good Langa is in snowboarding. Someone make a post about how difficult the snowboarding equivalent of those tricks Langa has done just to show people it means he’s pretty pro (I’ll even argue maybe Langa’s real talent is his creative ways of going around things which kind of why Adam is highkey obsessed, and calls Cherry who calculates everything to the last second boring but that’s a different can of worms I’m opening later) plus Langa barely won against Joe so there’s not much difference in level i think. Should Langa have lost though?

I think some have missed the point of that beef in Reki’s pov. and if the Renga reconciliation is done well, it would be worth it.

that beef got Reki to realize he what he really wants! that it’ll kill him if he can’t skate anymore! that he doesn’t wanna only cheer on for others and be a support! THAT HE WANTS TO SKATE BY LANGA’S SIDE WHICH IS THE REASON FOR ALL THIS INSECURITIES if Langa lost, that cathartic realization might not have happened. He might have gone to Langa and cheered him up, brushed off his insecurities and, made up with Langa halfheartedly without addressing his problems

I’m going to go back to Reki’s insecurities. In ep 6 he’s been afraid of being left behind, and sure Langa came back for him but he still forgot until midway. (will that parallel how Langa got too excited with the idea of skating, the same feeling he thought he lost forever. The same thing that he thinks connects him with his dad, and might have left Reki behind, but later remembers and goes back to chase him? hopefully) in ep 4 it’s obvious he’s afraid of the near death experience Adam gave him, and he’s just realized how different their skills were. in ep 5 he worries about Langa, enough to get nightmares about it. mixed with his friend getting hurt. it’s obvious the feelings are very very muddled there.

So he begs Langa not to skate with Adam.

And what did Langa do? say that he wanted to skate with Adam. (again he’s not the most attentive. he probably thinks he’s just skating with his best friend, all is good then boom. Reki leaves. as a person shit with dealing with other people, i don’t blame him at all) he’s trying to fix it though, but his bond with Reki primarily revolves around skating! how else was he going to warm up with Reki? He also doesn’t know that Reki has self esteem issues that’s always been there since the beginning. He probably doesn’t understand it too because he holds Reki up highly. in ep 6 when Reki was going over his board, Langa thinks he’s pretty cool. he didn’t hear what other said to Reki. He’s earnestly having fun with his friend

We should also note that Reki was never angry at Langa’s skills, he wasn’t resentful that Langa was far ahead. Again he’s been nothing but supportive. He doesn’t want to pull Langa down. He wasn’t like Miya’s friends that lashed out at Miya for being better. in ep 7 he tries his best to follow Langa

it feels like he’s mostly regretful that he can’t catch up. he doesn’t want Langa to slow down, he wants to go faster and meet him where he was. So it makes the realization that all he wants to do was be in equal with Langa more frustrating because he thinks he can’t keep up. (and this only ever started when he heard he’s like Langa’s plus one. there’s that daunting feeling about being pulled around. not being his equal)

if you need further proof, when Langa and Joe were having a beef, he wasn’t aggressively hoping Langa would lose. in fact he encouraged him. He worries deeply He calls him out when he was doing badly. Still very supportive as ever. So really the frustration isn’t to Langa, again, it’s all internal. He wants to be better

so he’s feeling shit and Langa goes to him in the middle of the rain, bless langa for trying, thinking talking about skating (what he thinks Reki loves and would probably cheer him up, not knowing that’s exactly his problem) tells him

which is probably the worst he could say.

THAT’S what got Reki mad, not really Reki being insecure though that’s part of it, that’s what they’re fighting about, Reki is angry he’s breaking his promise. He thinks Langa doesn’t care about Reki, that he’ll easily break a promise between them that Reki obviously cares about just so he can go skate with Adam who is way better than him. It blows to the self esteem. Reki probably also think that if only he was better, langa wouldn’t bother skating with someone that dangerous. it doesn’t help at all.

but langa doesn’t know this. he doesn’t see all this. Langa might have been too up the high of skating like in ep 6, he sorta left Reki behind again.

it kinda makes Langa’s mom’s words hit harder though

and he did just that. he got too engrossed.

It parallels adam, cherry and joe’s friendship then probably tadahsi’s too but who knows? reki and langa, and tadashi and adam might parallel too, the master and the student thingy Adam might have gotten too obsessed. So Joe trying his best to make sure Reki and Langa won’t end up like them hits a little harder in my chest ;’)

but Langa won’t be to engrossed i think

because unlike Adam who’s aggressively looking for his ‘equal’, Langa is just looking for someone who makes his heart beat, to make him feel like he’s skating with his dad again, someone he loves dearly. (there’s a parallel about loves here too between Adam’s and Langa’s. but I can’t write it now) and he probably already thinks Reki is his equal anyway. He just wants to have fun. he doesn’t think much about the skills.

maybe at first he does. that’s why he’s drawn to Adam but from ep 9, it was pretty much shown that skills really doesn’t matter from when he skated against Joe

if Adam easily discarded his friends because he think they’re boring (which was why the whole skateboard to the face thing with Cherry), langa doesn’t think like that

if anything Reki is important to Langa because he only has fun skating with Reki, who taught him how to skate and made his board. (his board that was customized to fit his style btw, and arguably the only reason he could skate that well. without it, he might as well be a beginner once again.) so without reki, langa is left with nothing. especially with his broken board

no fun in skating, no way of skating. He’s only manage to get this far because of Reki and he knows that now. All of it would be pointless if he doesn’t have Reki (and either he gets so obsessed in chasing that feeling again, or he stops completely) but in case you haven’t noticed it, Langa’s motivation revolves around having fun with skating no matter the skill or place. And he’s having most fun with Reki.

But Reki obviously doesn't know Langa’s feelings. He thinks Langa was forever looking for someone better. So he’s still caught up in the idea that Langa won’t want to skate with him (even though Langa has never shown this) and he left S entirely, thinking what he wants is impossible. fucking just talk you two motherfucker

(I also wanna point out that Reki has always been shown from episode one to be good at making boards. And that’s amazing? We need some support recognition and appreciation, seriously) I think maybe most who find problem with Reki not winning beefs like the usual shounen protags aren’t used to the nuance and perspective of being someone ‘ordinary’. Reki’s character is relatable because most of us feel ordinary, never enough, surrounded by geniuses, ‘inferior’. And if we’re being realistic since a lot are saying joe should have won because langa winning is unrealistic and you want realism so bad no I’m not salty at all there will always be someone better than you. ALWAYS. but what’s important is for you to have fun in what you love! in what makes you happy! AND even if you’re not good at one thing (in Reki’s part, skating) he’s also good at other things (making boards) so does he need to stop one for the other? no. He’s shown to enjoy skating with Langa, he doesn’t wanna stop it hurts him so much he quit. But he can also hone his skills in making boards as well as skate. He’s equal with Langa in a way he doesn’t even notice when he made that board for Langa, but even Reki’s presence alone makes Langa enjoy skating the way Reki also wants Langa by his side.

So I think the next ep is the best time to confront all these feelings. And how it happens might be what’s tricky. Like romantic or not, i personally can read it both ways though i prefer if they do become canon. (idk if it’s queerbaiting. i guess friends can care as deeply as that but ngl, these shounen bestfriends having deep connections that are written off as friends while also giving us bland af hetero love interests who did nothing but exist and be straight really is messing with my perception of romantic and platonic love irl) anyway their talk better be done really well, or else all those episodes of tension would be for nothing

It’s a nice perspective to give a shounen protagonist this time. It’s new, it’s fresh. How many incarnations of underdog turned the best at their craft can you take? variety is nice! and if you don’t like it, there are always a dozen other animes like that for you to turn to. to conclude, IT ALL GOES BACK TO THE START: WHAT IS YOUR HAPPINESS???! AND FOR THEM IT’S THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP BUT IN A VERY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE. FRIENDSHIP DOESN’T SUDDENLY GET YOU TO LEVEL 100000000000 TO DEFEAT THE FINAL BOSS. FRIENDSHIP IS WHAT MAKES DEFEATING THE FINAL BOSS WORTHWHILE

Anyway tldr; maybe the real Eve is the friends we made along the way :D and idk if I’m making sense but obviously I’m head empty only sk8. Renga needs to talk, i can’t believe they have the audacity to make a recap episode as if i wasn’t head empty only sk8 since february, and if there’s more emotional edging to come, i will burn some of the palm trees outside my house

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dehydratedpool · 3 years

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hello again!! it’s the beginning of a new month, meaning a new fic rec post!! here are some fics that i read this month that are just... exquisite and deserve all the love and attention <3

there aren’t as many as last time unfortunately, since i was quite busy this past month, but i promise next month won’t fall short! ((fics that i’ve reread this month are indicated with a **))

Foolishly Laying Our Hearts On The Table [11k] by runaway_train @runaway-train-works

“You think Harry wants that?”

“Dunno. Maybe. Wanna make him happy.” Harry takes advantage of the red light he’s pulled up to turn and look properly at Louis’ face. He’s not even looking in Harry’s direction though, focused instead on something out of his side window, head drooped, mindlessly playing with the string of his hoodie between his fingers, lost in his own world somewhere. For some reason, it makes Harry’s spine straighten.

“Because he’s your best mate?” Harry questions carefully.

“He’s my boyfriend.”

He couldn’t have heard him right. “What?”

Louis releases a deep breath, still not turning around. Harry wonders who he thinks he’s talking to right now. “He’s so pretty. Want to kiss him all day long. And buy him a big house and give him presents and marry him.”

Or; The one where Harry is in love with his best friend Louis but doesn't think he stands a chance until some wisdom teeth and a rather unusual confession might just change his mind.

--> this is a new comfort fic for me tbh. i got rec’d this after louis tweeted about getting his wisdom teeth removed, and i’m so SO glad i decided to give it a read. it’s so precious and lovely and personally, i found it to be a quick read. it’s the kind of fic that makes me both warm and fuzzy inside but also highly upset that i’m single and will surely be alone forever

Just Let Me [14k] by HelloAmHere

The party was going well. So well, Niall had already sworn undying love to one multi-tiered chocolate cake, two friendly corgi-poodle mixes, Zayn’s hair, and the entire population of Los Angeles. So well, Zayn had only laughed and ruffled Niall’s hair and not even twitched towards a cigarette. So well, nearly everyone had spilled far past the boundaries of the night’s original plans, extracting bottles of vodka from the cabinets and losing a lot of clothes. Harry had proclaimed that he was finally going to throw a small and very grownup dinner party and of course here they were three hours later, fifty people half-naked in the pool. Soon to be full-naked, if Louis had to guess. Everybody in LA loved a heated pool. Everybody loved Harry.

--> ok LISTEN. as some of you know, i just recently got into reading a/b/o fics and this one is definitely at the top of my fave a/b/o fics out there. it’s an interesting take on the trope, almost a bit more realistic in my opinion, and to quote the author’s note, “’what if a/b/o but less biological determinism?’”. i believe i found this one through a masterpost of “touch-deprivation fics”, so if that’s your thing, give this one a chance!

my ugly mouth kept running [4k] by theankletattoo @hadestyles

Another seed, another try except they know what caused the first wilt. They will be careful, they will be kind and together they will nurture it to life.

sometimes second chances are more important than the first.

--> rori, the author, never fails to disappoint when it comes to all of her works. i’ve said it once and i’ll say it again, she’s so incredibly fucking talented it’s unreal. her imagery is so vivid and real it leaves simultaneously everything and nothing to the imagination. as usual, h and l’s dynamic in this is an addicting portion to this fic that has you anticipating how their dynamic will shift and grow up until the end. if you’ve yet to read any of rori’s work, i suggest you add that to your to-do list for the month, and get a head start to her collection with this one!

**As Wicked As Anything Could Be [21k] by whoknows @crazyupsetter

It starts when Louis decides that he wants to lose his cherry and announces that he thinks the best way to do that is by going to a gay club. Naturally, Harry can’t let him go alone, so he tags along and spends the night rating guys with Louis until someone finally catches Louis’s eye.

Harry shoves him out to dance with the guy, and he can already tell that it’s going to be a quick and dirty hook up, so he’s not surprised that Louis and the guy disappear into the bathroom ten minutes later.

It is a surprise when Louis comes out not even two minutes later, pale and clammy, grabs Harry by the hand and drags him right out the door.

Somehow Harry comes to the decision that it would be a good idea for him to be in the room with Louis while Louis gets laid.

It’s a stupid fucking decision.

--> i discovered this fic a while ago on a whim and i have zero regrets. this is absolutely on my top ten fave fics list (that has yet to exist but perhaps i’ll post it one day). whoknows is a well known author within the fandom, so i’m sure i don’t have to say much about their immense talent, but SERIOUSLY, their plot progression, even their use of dialogue is wonderful in every way. as a writer, i envy them lmao. this fic takes me on a rollercoaster every time i read it, it’s yet another comfort fic of mine and never fails to disappoint every time i pick it up again. please, do yourselves a favor this april and read this.

Keeping The Flame Alive [19k] by whoknows @crazyupsetter

Recording with One Direction never felt like this. There’s a couple reasons for that, Harry thinks. One is that they did most of their recording on the road, rushed and in busses and hotel rooms, never in one place long enough to really get an argument going. The other, larger and more important one, is that back then he had the sweetest, meanest little omega around to distract him from all of that frustration.

The first time around, when he’d been recording his debut solo album, it hit him pretty hard. He likes to think he’s better adjusted to it now, but frustration is warring under his skin nonetheless. He doesn’t want to be told what to do most of the time, and he especially doesn’t want to be told what to do when it comes to his music.

What he does want right now is that sweet, mean little omega right in front of him with his mouth on Harry’s cock. Unfortunately, the best he’s got is his own hand and a shared toilet. So. That’s really not going to work.

--> yes, for the first time in dehydratedpoolfics history of fic recs even tho i’ve only been doing this for a month i am rec’ing the same author twice, but seriously, how could i not??? this fic took me on a literal journey like... wtf. i have no words. seriously, i have none, i’m just that blown away, go read it for yourself .

**a trail of honey through it all [27k] by bruisedhoney @yvesaintlourent

The boy in front of him, well really, the man in front of him, was like something out of a confusing wet dream. Built, tall, tan and muscular, his skin glistened with sweat after a long day of working outdoors with his hands. He was wearing a cut up old American football shirt, the bottom hem was torn and the sleeves were cut off to the point where the t-shirt was really just a loose tank top. The shorts he had on had clearly been full length jeans at one point, and were now just crudely cut off above the knee. His white socks were pulled up too high on his calves, and the brown work boots he had on were old as fuck, the leather peeling along the edges of the soles. Curly brown hair stuck out from the edges of his backwards snapback, and there was a smudge of grease wiped along his brow bone. The smattering of hair along his jaw proved that he hadn’t shaved in a week or two, the hair growing in thicker across his upper lip and around his chin. His sinfully bowed mouth was pink and plump, and Louis was suddenly hyper-focused on the way that he chewed at the toothpick stuck between his lips. He looked like he needed a shower. Louis wanted to lick him.

Or, the TPH fic we’ve all been waiting for.

--> okay look. i may or may not have a slight obsession with this fic. i reread it constantly, mostly for the iconic line, “are we fuckin’ or fightin’?”, because how can i not scream over that?? ((also patiently waiting for the sequel)) this is a literary masterpiece, one that defines an entire generation of this fandom i stg. but in all seriousness, hayley, the author, does such a wonderful job of giving the reader a vivid look into “nowhere, georgia”, and as a southern gal myself, i absolutely adore the itty bitty pieces of southern culture embedded into this, the tiny quirks that make this fic authentic. i could probably go on forever on why this fic is so iconic, but perhaps you should read it for yourself instead *wink* *wink*

SO. that’s all for this month!! if you read any of these, first of all, be sure to read the tags and author’s note (if any) before starting, AND please don’t forget to leave a quick kudos or comment, it means more than you may ever know <3

#fic recs #fic rec #yourlarrysource #hlcreators #hljournal #harry styles #louis tomlinson #larry stylinson #fanfiction #writing #march 2021 fic recs

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