#if you also are frustrated by the current arcs feel free to reply with your opinions!
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How do you feel as a CielDoll shipper with recent chapters
this just reminded me that a new chapter is out and i just read it and i'm in the brain dimension. throwing this ask under a readmore bc it got long but it basically just sums up my opinions on the series as a whole rn:
my feelings on kuroshit have been complicated the past few years ngl! more than anything i'm very frustrated with how the story's been paced since the twin reveal, and i've found it very hard to stay engaged as a fan with how slow things are progressing. but that's also not what you asked so i won't rant about that LOL
I have very mixed feelings on this current arc - it's what finally got me back into reading bc DOLL! MY FAVORITE CHARACTER EVER! IS HERE AND I WAS RIGHT THAT SHE'D BE RELEVANT AGAIN!!! I'd really, really like it if Doll lives past this arc and is able to confront Ciel again. I think I might actually drop the series entirely if she dies here because it feels very pointless to me after all these years to bring her back if her whole point was just to [207 spoilers]. I'm really interested to see Ciel's reaction to her rebirth, esp if after coming clean about his true identity that he's able to be honest about the guilt he harbors over killing her. (SINCE YANA PUT DOLL AND JOKER IN THE SAME PANEL AS MADAM RED, CIELS PARENTS, AND R!CIEL IN CH 100, OVER 70 CHAPTERS AFTER NOAHS CIRCUS, ID GO CRAZY IF IT DIDNT MEAN ANYTHING)
I've always seen Doll as being one of if not the most significant character into understanding Ciel - his sympathy for her in Noah's Arc shows that despite how emphatic he is that he's forgone his soul, he does still care about people underneath it all. I'm pretty sure Yana's even said that if circumstances had been different (plot wise and also wealth wise), they could have been really good friends. I think Doll as a foil for Ciel reveals a lot about him - the biggest being her double-identity and reveal, as well as her playful, childish side vs. her cold, killing side (which even then, Doll doesn't want to kill - she just has to. I think deep down, Ciel is the same way). Same with Doll discovering Ciel's brand and having that empathetic moment with him over it, they don't go too deeply on it but Doll's backstory prior to living on the street is that she was abused by her parents and they scarred her face. She knows better than anyone else in the story what that permanent mark of abuse means for Ciel, and that's why she's so sorry she accidentally exposed his brand.
I've never shipped Doll/Ciel in a "canon" sense (like it just wouldn't make that much sense post-doll's "death", she despises him for killing her family, and after knowing what the circus did, she's nothing but a child kidnapper to him, criminal scum that's not worth anything). Their dynamic to me is so much about the "what if things had gone differently?" - which I also apply to Ciel's other friendships, particularly with Soma, Lizzy, and Alois (though season 2 is it's whole own discussion LOL). So much of Ciel's characater arc is about how he was willing to throw his own life and soul away thinking he had nothing after his parent's and r!ciel's deaths, as well as his own disgrace, but kuroshitsuji has shown us time and time again that there are people who deeply love and care about ciel, and if things had been different, if he hadn't sold his soul to the literal devil, he could have lived for them. i love Doll for him in this regard, because she's someone who doesn't know what happened to him. I think a big crux to Ciel's relationship with Lizzy (ignoring the incest aspect because of the period accuracy, but also because of the incest aspect I obviously do not ship them in a romantic sense) is that she knows more than most people about what happened to Ciel and his family, and that humiliates him. Pity and vulnerability humiliate him. This is a huge reason why he can't be honest with Lizzy about what happened - he doesn't want her pity, it only makes his reality that much worse. When he meets Doll, she's a stranger. And despite knowing nothing about him, she worms her way in and tries at every angle to befriend him. Also, given that his betrothal to Lizzy was by force (esp with how he steals her actual fiancees identity lol), I think if Ciel had been able to choose his own partner, he might have chosen someone like Doll.
ANYWAY - that's why I'll be really disappointed if they don't reunite at some point. I have some vague hope, since this is the last of the servant's arcs, maybe we'll get back to Ciel soon and Doll will get the confrontation she deserves. I actually really wasn't expecting [207 spoiler], that changes a lot for the character dynamics in this arc. I unfortunately haven't been a huge fan of Doll's actions in this arc, it feels horrifically out of character for me to believe that after her moral values are laid explicitly clear in circus arc (she feels guilty for kidnapping children and doesnt want to do it, but fears her older siblings retribution and fears Kelvin and feels an obligation to keep her family safe above all else), that she'd be willing to both make connections with the children at this orphanage as well as let them be used to keep her body alive... for what? To kill Ciel? Obviously she was brought back by Undertaker, but I doubt that Undertaker's true intentions are to kill Ciel, given how important the Phantomhives are to him (I think he's probably way more after Sebastian, but that's another thing entirely). So, why did Undertaker bring her back at all? Why is it Snake and Finny that find her, and not Ciel? Her personality once Snake and Finny discover the truth too is just all over the place, I don't particularly buy it.
I've felt that Yana's writing has seemed rushed and lazy since the twin reveal, whether it's her shifting her focus onto TWST, or that she's just trying to wrap up the series as fast as she can, while also still attempting to churn out monthly chapters (if you compare recent kuroshit volumes to old ones, old volumes had maybe 4-5 chapters, while new ones fit about 10 chapters at the same pagecount, so it's also waaay shorter chapters each month that don't quite move the story along). It's obvious to me that now that R!Ciel is out of the bag, the servant chapters have been a way for Yana to finally write plotpoints that she's had on the backburner since early on in the series (Meyrin, Bard, and Snake's backstories) - but IMO, terribly integrated. Finnys backstory in witch-arc is still some of my favorite parts of the series - because the arc itself is incredibly written, and Finny being highlighted fit in so well. It feels like with these mini arcs that Yana's just like oh shit what kind of plot should X servant's backstory come up in, and none of the newer plots/characters have felt deserved (i.e. the maids in meyrin/ran mao's story). Same thing goes for the characters in this arc, the children dressed like the phantomhive servants are just so weird and out of place to me. Why is this a thing??? An orphanage dedicated to making children act like ciel and sebastian and others and then sacrificing them as blood for Doll????? Why???? The whole scenario is weak and far-fetched IMO, I would've rather Doll's reentry (as well as Meyrin/Bard/Snakes backstories) been introduced in a more natural way, it genuinely feels like Yana is throwing all her cards on the table to wrap the series up without any loose strings.
SO, I don't have like, a TON of hope for Ciel and Doll's story to be wrapped up in a way I personally find satisfying for their character arcs, I'm vaguely hopeful that they'll at least just meet again, but as you can read I've had very mixed feelings on the direction that the series has taken for years now (servant backstory arc has been going on since MARCH 2019 LMAO..), so I'm sorry that your very simple question turned into a rant HAHA but this is like, the crux of my relationship with Kuroshitsuji atm.
Kuroshit has had its fair share of problems, many of which I'll be the first person to go out of my way to critique. I've been able to rationalize being a fan by touting just how good the manga's story is. Nowadays, really not so sure I can stand by that opinion! However, Doll's also like... is The character of all time for me. I've even been contemplating getting her tattooed lately LOL. So, regardless of the direction the series takes, even if it just absolutely tanks, she'll always remain incredibly special to me, as will Ciel and all the characters I've loved over the years.
#blackbutlerfandomnerddomain#asks#SORRY THIS GOT WAY INTO OTHER OPINIONS BESIDES CIELDOLL but my feelings on cieldoll = my feelings on the state of kuroshit as a whole#i kinda wanna tag this but i dont know what to tag an analytic kuroshitsuji post.#if you also are frustrated by the current arcs feel free to reply with your opinions!#cartyrs.txt
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Hi there! I'm back after a few days of doing missions and farming and everyone is now level 50! Well, almost everyone, I still have three more that needs their ascension materials but I have to wait for a bit after I poured out all trailblaze power to get exp materials. How are you? Seems like self-aware au is becoming your new agenda. Once I saw your three updates, I couldn't be anymore excited and look forward to some more. There is so many things you can think about when it comes to self-aware au, based on experience alone. I would love to write them, if only I had much motivation to do so.
After reading the fic about logging in at ungodly hours, I felt bad of all those days that I did not bother to sleep just to finish the Belobog arc and jump to Xianzhou. Not to mention the number of times I had to repeat to defeat Bronya and the Ebon Deer. It was 10 times for Bronya and the Ebon Deer was around 15 or 16. The Doomsday Beast only took me 3 times. My frustration during those times were at peak that I ranted over my friends about it. They don't even play Star Rail. And those sleepless nights still continue until now and I bet Stelle would have already bonk me with her bat. So it's super relatable and not to mention, cute. Probably before Dan Heng passes out, he makes sure that you had log out completely. And whether it reaches or not, he mumbles some good night and rest well to you. If Blade were able to do it, he would give you a playful flick on the forehead while sternly telling you to sleep already. He watches you as you log out and then he breathes out as a sigh of relief now that you are resting finally. Gepard would want to get out the system just to take care of you. Mr.Cold Feet is Mr. Cold Feet, man has many things up his sleeve, of course, he'll be up with you. And please someone help sleeping beauty ╥﹏╥
Mr. Luocha just arrived yesterday, and I keep getting Qingque, help. Hopefully, I'll get him or maybe Miss Yukong on the next pull (I'm so into being delusion that I start giving honorifics to fictional characters). I also read your Blade fic and also the one with Dan Heng. I really would like it if Blade joins my team but I don't know about Dan Heng. What if he doesn't come home like I may have run out of time or ran out of stellar jades? Delusional—what if Dan Heng sabotages each pull or Blade would avoid joining my team at all cost by dodging my pulls? Manifesting that we could get them at the next pull and we could also get the upcoming characters too.
aaa i'm sorry for getting back to you so late, i really wanted to take a moment to sit down to form a proper reply instead of coming up with something rushed, but i was kinda busy ;_; also this is a super long post because i added your other asks as well in order not to clog up the dash so i added a cut!
ooh good job! that's pretty neat! i have to admit that i don't even bother to level up all my characters. i bring them to lvl 20 and ascend them for the free warp but that's about it lol. but i miiiight lvl them up at some point because i've been hearing pretty good things about some of them and i kinda want to try them out too, you know? for example i used qingque in a trail and she did some pretty amazing numbers? so i feel like she's worth it to lvl up and build her! so yeah i'm currently prefarming to lvl my most-used characters to lvl 80 because i'm about to reach equilibrium lvl 5, but after that i might start working on my other characters! okay that was a whole story i'm sorry shdhfh.
that aside, i'm doing pretty good! as i mentioned before, i'm kinda busy but i try to find moments to write and relax so i'm holding up hehe. and yeah apparently? self-aware au is super fun to write and brainrot about and now i'm getting a lot of requests on it too! come to think of it, you're kind of the one who started this all! so thank you for that hehe.
to be fair, i'm procrastinating the trailblaze missions so i haven't encountered the ebon deer yet, i'm still somewhere around the part where we interrogate kafka lol. i'm sooo behind i know >.< maybe i should catch up? but i have like, zero motivation to do so help. and ooh that's so relatable. none of my friends play hsr so i have no one to talk to : ( i guess that's why i always go all out replying to your asks because i'm so happy that i get to ramble about dan heng and the game in general fjshdhd.
oh yes i can imagine stelle doing that! and aaa dan heng, he's secretly so worried about our sleeping schedule and the relief when we log out to sleep is real lol. also i can perfectly hear his tired goodnight y/n and it makes me really soft :< and yes gepard!!! he would totally get so frustrated because he can't get out to actually see you off to sleep, he's such a doting sweetheart :3
ooh congrats on getting him! i'm still hesitating whether to get him or not because i really want blade, kafka AND dan heng il, and i'm not sure how to pull that off without spending my entire bank account shfhdh. and well as i said before, i think qingque is actually pretty good? i hope she will come in useful for you! i'm solely pulling for miss yukong (miss yukong sounds great, i'm gonna use that hehe). i mean i think she buffs imaginary damage and i don't have/use any other imaginary characters but i just love her (and tingyun!!) so much that i had to have her. i have her at e1 now and i'm just hhhh i love my foxian ladies >_<
let's just hope dan heng and bladie can put their rivalry aside for our sake, because i dearly love both (okay if i have to pick one it will always be my beloved dan heng but hhh). but yes indeed, manifesting getting both!!
realistically speaking, it would be best to prepare for the worst when it comes to dan heng il, but i'm so attached to my boy, i don't want him to leave the crew.. what if we never see him again?? don't even wanna think about that >.< let's just hope hope hope it won't be that bad and that he gets to stay with us :< if not i will riot shfhdh.
i've been building her a little and so far she's doing okay? i mainly started using her because i needed a physical dps but then i saw her ult where she summons a massive angry chicken and i laughed out loud let me tell you that lol. she's far from completed yet, though, she's still a work in progress but i keep getting distracted by other characters oops?
hehe yep! you just inspired me and besides, i really appreciate you stopping by in my ask box so i just wanted to do a little something! i'm glad it made you happy :D
and yes of course! welcome to my lil' anon family!
aaa smiling dan heng?! i couldn't find the artwork sadly but that sounds lovely, his smile melts my heart >_< especially since it's so rare because his face is always so stoic. and oh i'm guilty of doing that too hehe.
hoyo knows what they're doing and it's not ok. now i not only have to save for dan heng il but also for his signature light cone ;_;
i saw that on tiktok !!!! and the way i gasped !!!! it's so insanely cool they're treating dan heng il like some kind of deity and i'm loving it, our man deserves this (i'm just not sure if my heart is ready to love this man even more?!!)
that can only mean one thing, right? he's getting close aaaaa i'm not prepared and i'm not sorry for the person i will become when he officially drops 3:)
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Finest
Logan Howlett x Reader
(Word Count: 1628)
“This exercise requires you to be self reliant in order to escape. While we are a team in and out of the field, each of you must be comfortable and connected with your gifts, individually.” You called out.
All of your students seemed to be a mix of over confidence, no confidence, or outright fear. You frowned.
A demonstration would be best.
“Pay attention everyone, when the test starts you’ll be on your own.” You told them.
Concentrating on the potential energy around you, you tapped into it with a stream of golden light. You collected a portion of it in your hand, and willed it into a broadsword. The energy hummed through your body as you moved with it, slashing in a downward arc through the air.
“Make your gift work for you in the moment,” With a swift motion the blade morphed into a shield, and then With a breath, you let the energy dissipate into nothing at all.
“And know when not to use it. You’ve got two weeks to prepare. And I’ve opened up office hours everyday up until then. Got it?”
The kids gave enough yeses and nods for you to dismiss them early. Once they were gone, you heard a drawn out huff from the back of the room.
“Logan!” You broke out in a wide smile and ran over to him. You knew better than to hug him, so you opted for a light hit on the shoulder.
“Charles didn’t tell anyone you were coming!” You exclaimed.
“Didn’t tell him.” Logan explained. You rolled your eyes because that was such a Logan thing to do.
Taking him in, you noticed his hair was a little shaggier than the last time you saw him, and his clothes looked like they’d been worn completely down by cold weather. He’d probably been up in the wilderness for all this time.
“I brought you booze. Most people say thank you.”
That was how you and Logan ended up drunk off your asses in your bedroom before dinner.
As a teacher you were given some grace with your room choice, meaning a larger room far away from students. You were free to do whatever and whomever, so long as you kept to yourself.
That was also the reason why you were dancing on Logan in a t- shirt and panties with the music blasting in the background. You felt his hands roam all over your body as you whined to the beat.
He was currently the one with the bottle, too. You drunkenly swirled around and took it from him. The liquor burned down your throat, but the feeling dulled when Logan slammed his lips on yours.
You felt like your body was on fire. Partly from the alcohol, partly from Logan’s hands and his kisses. He had you pinned against the wall farthest from the door, and you couldn’t concentrate on anything but Logan nor he you.
...
You woke the next morning to a hard body intertwined with yours.
Your room was an absolute mess, but you settled on resting your head on Logan’s bare chest. You’d get up later.
Your hair was matted in the back and the hair around your perimeter had reverted back to their coils in spite of the gel you used the day before. Plus, drunk you didn’t wear bonnets.
“Morning.” Logan said. His rough voice was throaty and tired. A pounding headache made you close your eyes and nestle in closer.
You were grateful not to see the two of you together anyway. It was never for long and never more than a fun way to spend time before you went your separate ways.
You and Logan were tumultuous at best.
The last time you saw him you were cussing him out and leaving him stranded in the city after a night out. That was two months ago. Last summer you decided to try dating, but the truth was if it wasn’t one thing, it was another, making the two of you very touch and go.
“I have a class in an hour.” You admitted.
Logan peered down at you. The corners of his lips were down turned, and his eyebrows were knitted together.
“The rug rats can live without you for a day.” He said, pulling you on top of him. You yelped at the sudden movement, but guessed that was an appropriate response to the naked girl lying in bed with him, telling him she was leaving. Even if it was for kids.
“I don’t use sick days on anybody but my mama, my daddy, and my brother.” You explained. You pecked his lips and got up.
“I fit in one category.” Logan said with a satisfied grin. You scoffed at him as you gathered your shower stuff.
“I don’t use sick days on you, Logan. Never have, never will.” You replied with a sarcastic smile.
A frantic banging on your door made both of you go quiet. Logan sniffed the air and snarled.
“It’s pretty boy.” Logan growled out. You huffed in annoyance––between him and Scott (and Jean for that, matter) nothing ever got done unless you did it. It was one of the many reasons Logan was a recurring guest at the mansion and not an occupant.
You swung the door open to a wide eyed, modest Scott, who quickly turned into arrogant, incensed Scott at the sight of a very naked Logan in your bed.
“Not now. What’s going on?” You demanded. Something wasn’t right if Scott was coming to you so early.
Bobby’s name was all he could say.
...
The scene that awaited you at the front door was heartbreaking.
Bobby was pacing up and down the balcony freezing anything he pointed at as he walked past. Blasts of frost shot from his hands in all directions. It was wild and uncontrolled. By the door, what looked like his parents and a brother were shouting his name in frustration. Bobby wasn’t the type to lash out for no reason, he just wasn’t that kid.
“I’m not leaving! This is my home!” Bobby cried out.
You sighed and cut your eyes to the professor, who was ushering children and staff away. A warning would have been nice, Professor.
I do apologize, this was...unexpected.
His voice rang out in your head, and you resisted the urge to roll your eyes. Beside you, Logan drew his claws, but you put a hand on his chest. Bobby’s parents were clearly afraid of mutants and Logan was a walking stereotype of a scary mutant. Definitely not helpful.
Stepping forward, you used your powers to create a bubble around you and Bobby. Nobody needed to get hurt accidentally.
“Bobby! I need you to listen to me,” You started. The boy looked up at you tearfully, and you could see them freeze as they fell.
You took his hand, that along with the rest of his body fluctuated between ice and flesh, and held it. The cold stung, but he needed to feel your human hand.
“They’re taking me away!” He hollered. You narrowly dodged a blast of frost from your head. You held on tighter.
“I know that isn’t fair, Bobby! I know! But you have to calm down. Breathe, Bobby.” You pleaded with him. The less his parents saw him so out of control, the less likely they would send him to some camp or home for wayward mutants.
You took a deep breath, and Bobby did the same. One after another. In and out.
Slowly, his human form stabilized and his body temperature was so cold you could see his breath. You gave him a hug when his ice hand had fully reverted back to his human one. The boy clung to you for dear life, and you felt horrible for him.
“Bobby, don’t forget what you learned here, and keep in touch. When you need any of us, we’ll be there.” You said softly, pulling out a small coin and a business card. Bobby took it, confused.
“Whenever you don’t feel safe, call the number and the place they tell you to meet, then show them the token. Emergencies only.”
You walked Bobby down to his parents and they left shortly thereafter.
Watching them go sucked all the air out of you, enough for you to lean on Logan. In public. The Professor was next to the two of you.
“You are one of our finest, Y/N.” He said.
“Maybe, but it wasn’t enough.” You countered. You didn’t feel like an educator. You felt like you were fighting a losing battle and not too many of your kids would make it out unscathed.
“Social services could get ‘em.” Logan suggested.
“They might bite if they see a white boy, but the second he goes full icicle, all bets are off.” You lamented the fact that there were very few people looking out for mutant children, and you weren’t going to put Bobby on anyone’s radar unnecessarily.
The Professor nodded, before heading off to deal with the fallout with the student body. It was never easy losing a student in such a way. You weren’t prepared to do that just yet, so the two of you went back to your room.
You stayed in Logan’s arms until dark. It was the first time you and him had a rational understanding about what each of you needed in the moment.
“When I head through the city, I’ll stop by and check on the kid on my way out.” Logan said. You side eyed him.
“Play nice.” You warned. Sometimes cases required a delicacy Logan didn’t have, but his willingness to do it was a new thing for him. Far be it from you to stop him from doing something good. He finally saw how important your job was and how much you cared for your students.
You planted a kiss on his lips. And his nose and his ear and neck, among other things.
“That means I’ve got you at least one more night. Better make it count.”
#logan howlett#black!reader#poc!reader#logan howlett x reader#Logan howlett x black!reader#wolverine#x men fanfiction#x men
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The Only Thing I Got Right
Pairings: Ace x Y/N
A/N: I just finished watching the Marineford Arc and I cried so much so I wrote this on a whim. Sorry in advance if there are grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. It's the tears' fault, I swear! 😭 ((I just desperately wanted Ace to survive, you know? 😭))
This song reminds me of Ace, idk why.
You’re shaking. It would’ve been nice if it was because of the cold or if it was from excitement, but this isn’t the case. You’re shaking from fear, from anxiety. Today, Ace, the love of your life, is going to be executed and you didn’t know if you’d make it on time. You barely got out of Impel Down alive with the help of Ace’s little brother, Luffy.
You hate the fact that you got thrown there with Ace courtesy of Teach, or should you say, Blackbeard. You hate the fact that you couldn’t save Ace from Blackbeard no matter how hard you tried fighting him. It was frustrating, but if a Devil Fruit user like Ace had no match for him, what more of you? You have no powers like that, the only thing that you have is your knowledge on Rokushiki and daggers.
You got imprisoned at Level 3 of Impel Down while Ace was rumored to be on Level 5. Being thrown on a relatively lower level was understandable, even if you are part of Whitebeard’s crew, you are no commander like Ace. Still, even if you are weaker than Ace, you desperately wanted to go get him out of there but it was impossible. Or so you thought.
When you saw a Straw Hat on a male running around with two others on Level 3, you instantly knew it was Luffy. It seemed like god was in your favor because apparently one of your cellmates, who you came to learn was Mr. 2 from Baroque Works, was Luffy’s friend. When he got Mr. 2 out of the shackles, you begged to come with them, telling him your relationship with Ace. Luckily for you, Luffy needed all the help he could get so he easily got you out with the help of the other prisoner he was with. It was all chaos after that.
You’re currently hiding in the crow’s nest of the Marine ship you helped steal alongside Crocodile, Mr. 1, and Jinbei. Your body is already aching from all the running and fighting you did just to escape Impel Down. But even before that, your body had already been tired from the lack of nutrition and of sleep. How could you even dare to sleep knowing Ace was somewhere else, probably beaten to a pulp? And if that wasn’t enough, the sudden knowledge of him being executed in a few hours added more strain and tension to your body. You didn’t want anyone to see you in such a state. You didn’t want anyone to pity you.
But if you’re hurting this much, then it must’ve been so much harder for Luffy. You make a mental note to talk to him before crashing to Marineford. For now though, you need to rest — not only for your body, but for your mind as well. You have to be ready, the worst is yet to come. When you closed your eyes, you welcomed sleep like an old forgotten friend.
Your sleep didn’t last long, however, because of both the nightmare of Ace reaching out for you with bloodied hands and of the waters that suddenly rocked the whole ship. Before you could even get down the crow’s nest, the ship abruptly stilled and the air chilled. When you looked down, you clenched your teeth at the sight of the sea that turned into ice.
A mental clock was ticking like a time bomb in your mind. How were you supposed to save Ace now?
As if hearing your question, Luffy started gathering the people in the ship about his plan. At this point, you would do anything just to get to Ace so you didn’t hesitate to help him in his plan on freeing the ship from the ice. But the next thing you know, you were falling after kicking the thick layer of ice as hard as you can.
Just as you looked down to where you’re supposed to land, you realized that it was Marineford and the war had already started. With a little tilt of your head, you see Ace in the scaffold, shackled up. Worry was etched on his face, his focus on Luffy. You could almost hear him saying how stupid his little brother is.
Was it wrong to smile at the sight of him at a time like this? But how could you not? He’s still alive! You have a chance at saving him. You release a sigh of relief.
You try not to draw his attention to you. He already has a lot to worry about — namely, the Whitebeard pirates, the allied pirates, and Luffy. It was a good decision that you didn’t change out of your prison clothes, it was easier not to get noticed by him this way. For all he knows, you’re just one of the many escapees Luffy helped. You want to keep it that way. At least for now.
There’s no time to waste, so when you landed, you immediately head off to the direction of the scaffold. After seeing that Ace was still alive, you feel yourself get pumped up again. You fight each and every Marine who tries to stop you.
No matter how hard each blow you receive, no matter how painful each swipe of the swords you get, no matter how many times you get knocked down, you keep on fighting. You keep on standing up. There’s only so much your Tekkai could do when you’re severely outnumbered. Nevertheless, you keep on going. Nevermind the multiple cuts and bruises you have. There is only one thing in your mind and that is saving Ace. Even at the expense of your own life.
From the way Luffy fought at Impel Down, you know he’s incredibly strong and tenacious so you find yourself backing him up. You don’t go near him, knowing Ace’s attention was on him, but you guard him from your side. Not a single Marine was able to pass through you from your side of the battlefield. But you can’t cover every area for him. Despite that, he managed to take down anyone who was in his way.
Your ears are ringing from all the overlapping noises of guns being fired, screams of agony from pirates and Marines, swords clanging, and hurried footsteps. At one point, you block all of the sounds while you focus on your own breathing as you run.
Even when everyone stopped moving to watch as Pops descended the Moby Dick and made his move, you continued running. You have to keep up with Luffy. There’s no way you’d let Ace die.
The only moment you actually stopped running was when Luffy unconsciously used the Conqueror’s Haki. So he can do that too, you thought.
That was also the moment you actually got to look at the surroundings properly and realized that Pops had been stabbed. Your knees buck from the sight and you fall down. Regret immediately flooding your body. You’re so focused on trying to save Ace that you didn’t notice Pops needed help too.
The Marines took this opportunity to attack you. Just as a sword was about to hit you, McGuy blocked it.
“What are you doing, Y/N? Snap out of it. This is war. There’s no way we’d be able to rescue Ace if you don’t get your bearings straight!”
The harshness in his tone brought you back to reality. He’s right. Pops ordered everyone to lend their strength to Luffy, and that’s exactly what you’re going to do.
You, along with everyone else, push yourselves to your limits to help Luffy. He did not disappoint. He even punched his own grandfather, Garp, just to be able to reach Ace and free him.
The moment the scaffold collapsed, you almost collapsed with it. Tears start falling from your eyes as you see Ace finally free from his shackles. A smile has finally graced his face as he fought side by side with his brother. At that moment, you think that he’s at his brightest when he’s with his sworn brother. You couldn’t be any more happier.
Now that he is free, it’s time to figure out how to escape. Everyone’s running towards the ships but you stop after noticing Pops wasn’t making the same movement.
“The order I’m about to give will be my final captain’s order!” Pops announces. “You and I will be parting here.”
Your breath hitched at the declaration.
“All of you, make sure you survive, and reunite with each other in the New World!”
You don’t listen to whatever he says next. You refuse to. You stand your ground. You’re not going to abandon the man who warmly accepted you into his family without hesitation despite knowing all of the crimes you committed.
As if sensing your refusal, he turns slightly to your direction, “Are you disobeying your captain’s orders?!”
Stupid old man, he should know by now that you’re no good at following orders.
Ace is one of the last persons to follow his order. You turn away from the conversation they are having, knowing it was a private matter.
When they’re done talking and Ace finally starts running towards the ship, Pops turns to you. He doesn’t talk, he just looks at you.
Shame suddenly overcomes you. You didn’t get to stop Ace from coming for Teach. When he left, you begged Pops everyday to allow you to set sail, promising that you’d bring Ace back. When he finally allowed you, you didn’t waste any time. But even when you found him, you couldn’t bring him back, it was too late and you were just too weak. It was your fault this happened. “Pops, I’m sorry I—”
“I did this. This is all my fault.”
“But—”
He shut you up with his stare.
“Let’s leave here together,” you plead.
But he doesn’t reply. With his stare, you can tell that he isn’t backing down on his order, no matter how much you persuade him to. You release a shaky breath. With tears streaming down your face, you gave one last bow and one last thank you.
And then you ran.
The others are already further away from you but you notice a group of them stopping in their tracks. There in the center of the commotion is Akainu and Ace, seemingly discussing something.
There’s no time for this, you thought.
“—In other words, Whitebeard is an eternal loser, who will never surpass Roger. That’s all he is. Everything I’ve said is the truth,” the admiral says. “He reigned the seas for decades, yet he never became a king or gained anything.”
You clench your jaw at the bullshit he’s spouting, after everything Pops had done to save you, you’re livid to hear him be deduced as a loser. But regardless of the anger rising in front of you, you know this wasn’t the time to get riled up.
The thing is, Ace gets easily riled up. It’s one of his flaws as a person. So when he starts walking to Akainu’s direction, Izo is first to shout, “Don’t fall for it, Ace! Turn back!”
But it’s no use.
That’s when you let your presence known, you shout at the top of your lungs, “Just turn back, Ace!”
Everyone whips their head at the sound of your voice, except Ace and Akainu.
Even you, who are usually able to keep Ace in check, couldn’t snap him out of his anger.
It’s too late.
They exchange blows. Ace falls down, magma is far greater than fire, after all.
“The Pirate King, Gold Roger. Dragon, the Revolutionary. These two men’s sons being stepbrothers is quite a frightening thought.” Akainu says.
When he looks over at Luffy’s direction, you immediately know what he plans to do. You don’t even think twice. There is no second to waste.
“Soru.”
The sound of your voice finally reaches Ace. His eyes widen in realization of what’s going to happen.
“Wait!” He pleads.
But before he could even stand up, you already placed yourself in front of Luffy. “Tekkai.”
But the admiral’s strength and power is far greater than your ability. His fist goes through your chest.
“Y/N!” Ace shouts.
The rest of Division Commanders are in shock.
Akainu clicks his tongue at the sight of you and detaches his fist from your body.
You slump, Luffy catching you in the process. “Oi, Y/N-chan... What did you…? Why did y-you d-do that?” He asks.
In no time, Ace comes to Luffy’s side. “Y/N…”
You smile sweetly at the two men and then you turn to Luffy. “You’re Ace’s brother, silly. Of course I’d do this for you.” You cough out blood and then hiss at the pain.
“Stop talking!” Ace demands.
While Luffy and Ace are distracted, Akainu makes his move once again. But the slight motion didn’t go unnoticed by Jimbei and the Division Commanders. Even if you aren’t a Commander, you acted like Ace’s right hand. To the crew, you’re as important as Ace is. There’s no way they wouldn’t fight for you. So altogether they start covering for the three of you.
You feel your body shutting down on you. You could barely hear Ace calling for a doctor and Luffy desperately asking Ivankov to help you. But you know it’s no use. “I… can tell my body is at its limit,” you whisper.
Ace doesn’t agree, then he gently takes your body from Luffy. “No, I’m going to find someone else who can help—”
“Ace…”
“—you. There’s got to be someone who—“
“Ace… My organs have been burnt. I know this’ll be the end of me.”
“No, don’t talk like you’re dying, Y/N!”
“But I am…” You say. “Look Ace, don’t worry, okay? I was prepared to die when I came here. I was ready to die just to get you out of here.”
“Why would you…”
“Because I love you,” you whisper. “You know… when I take a look at my life and all of my crimes, you’re the only thing that I think I got right.”
Ace hides his face on your neck as he hugs you. With the little strength you have left, you give a comforting squeeze on his shoulder. “Don’t go around disobeying the captain’s order and don’t go around breaking your promise to Luffy. You said you won’t die, right?”
You feel Ace nod at your words.
“Go to the ships and take everyone else. Please don’t follow me too soon.”
Ace hugs you tighter, panting as he continues to cry.
A small smile reaches your lips once again. At least this time he’ll listen, you think. “I can’t raise my voice anymore but please tell Pops and everyone else, even Luffy, they made my life worthwhile. I’m sorry if our journey ends he—”
You didn’t even get to finish your sentence because darkness had consumed you.
#one piece imagine#one piece scenario#one piece x reader#ace x reader#portgas d. ace x reader#portgas d ace x reader#one piece x you#one piece x y/n#portgas d ace x you#portgas d ace x y/n#portgas d. ace x you#portgas d. ace x y/n#portgas d. ace#portgas d ace#one piece imagines#marineford arc#ace lives#portgas d ace lives#portgas d. ace lives
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It Happened One Night: Chapter 1
T/N: Takes place after the Scandal in the British Empire arc (Chapters 17-23 of the manga).
Baker Street was full of people as usual. But in contrast to the hubbub, the entire street was enveloped in a vaguely unnatural, lonely atmosphere.
It looked like it was going to rain. That was what John H Watson thought as he walked down the street, gazing up at the heavily clouded sky.
“We should get back quickly, Sherlock.”
Saying that, he looked at the man beside him — Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock squinted and sniffed the air, as if trying to detect the smell of rain, and agreed with him.
“Right. And I also have some things here I don’t want to get drenched.”
Then Sherlock looked down at the items he was carrying. They each bore a large paper bag, stuffed to the brim with food and other sundry goods.
John furrowed his brows.
“Sherlock, haven’t you bought too many personal items? We’re even more broke than usual, you know,” he reminded.
But Sherlock wasn’t perturbed.
“They might be useless to you, John, but to me these are necessities of life. Please overlook this just once.”
“It’s no use, huh……”
It was better to avoid cigarettes at times like this, but John knew it was pointless to say that — hence instead of going on at length, he just gave a small sigh. Somehow, it felt like the bag in his arms had grown heavier.
As the two men walked on like this, they eventually drew near the flat where they lived. 221B Baker Street. This was the very place from which the great detective Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, John H Watson, unravelled Britain’s mysteries.
However, they walked past their lodgings, not once slowing down. As they passed by, John glanced toward their flat.
There, remained the scars of appalling destruction. The building itself had retained its original structure, but the flat in which they’d lived had its windows all blown out; from what he could see through them, the walls and ceilings had been scorched to a miserable crisp.
They’d been unexpectedly drawn into the “Scandal of the British Empire” case, in which Sherlock had devised a bold strategy — blowing up their own apartment — in order to save Irene Adler.
They had achieved their goal, but at the cost of losing their home for the time being. As such, Sherlock and John, together with their landlady Miss Hudson, were staying in cheap accommodation a little ways from here until the apartment repairs were complete.
As they headed to their temporary lodgings, John’s shoulders drooped.
“Although all of us had agreed on it, in the end, it’s still tough to see the place you’ve gotten used to living in become like that.”
“Sorry about that. I had no other option back then.”
Sherlock kept his eyes forward as he apologised with sincerity. To that, John smiled gently.
“I don’t really mind — In any case, I’ve been put through many reckless situations like this before……. Oh—”
Right then, a drop of water splashed on his palm. Just as he registered that icy sensation, more raindrops came pouring down.
Sherlock looked at him.
“It arrived earlier than I thought.”
“Yeah, let’s run for it.”
Then, carrying their bags with both arms, the two men half-ran to their hotel.
When they arrived, they shook their heads slightly to rid the water from their hair, then walked past the front desk to their room.
After putting down their bags and opening the door, they found Miss Hudson standing in the doorway.
John tilted his head in confusion.
“Miss Hudson, what brings you here?”
As it would be improper for them to share a room with a lady, the two men chose to rent out a separate room despite the steep cost. Hence, John thought she would be in her own room now — why was she in theirs?
She smiled back awkwardly.
“Mr Mycroft’s here.”
“What?”
Instantly, Sherlock’s face morphed into one of displeasure. Without asking the details, he took up his shopping and walked into the room. Seated on a chair near the wall was his older brother Mycroft, looking out the window.
“……Damn you, Mycroft. Coming all the way to this hotel — what you do want?”
Distinctly uncomfortable dealing with his own elder brother, Sherlock spoke up first, his tone sour. But Mycroft simply turned to look at him, and responded without haste.
“That attitude again as always, Sherly. How about subverting my expectations sometimes and acting like a gentleman for once? Or rather, is it that you’re so frustrated by a case you forgot your manners?”
“Ugh……”
Mycroft looked around the cramped interior as he spoke, and the corners of Sherlock’s mouth twitched as he let out a groan. He didn’t regret blowing up their apartment itself, but hearing Mycroft’s calm, pointed comments forced him to remember his own helplessness back then.
“……Did you come all the way here just to make a fool of me?” he retorted, trying to defend himself. But Mycroft simply shrugged his shoulders in resignation, and got straight to the point.
“If you’re having trouble with accommodation, there’s a country house in the Cotswolds I can introduce you to.”
“……What’s this, all of a sudden?”
Country houses were often built by nobles and wealthy landowners as status symbols on their own land: it was ridiculous to suggest that someone would simply lend theirs out. Sherlock raised an eyebrow in suspicion.
“Isn’t it natural for an older brother to want to help his younger sibling in his time of need? Furthermore, although I’m sure they’d agreed to your plan, it pains me to think how Dr Watson and Miss Hudson have been caught up in it.”
“We don’t need your concern. We’ll do what we want, so just get the hell out of here.” Sherlock made a shooing motion with his hand, in a bid to chase Mycroft out, but was soon admonished by John, who’d entered the room afterward. John then calmly turned to Mycroft, seeming eager to listen.
“Do you mean that, you would be willing to lend us an apartment? Thank you very much for your offer — could you tell us more?”
Mycroft was smiling as he nodded.
“Actually, an acquaintance of mine — a noble — intends to stay in London for a week. They’re looking for someone to look after their mansion in the meantime, hence I thought it would align perfectly with your situation, Doctor.”
John nodded in understanding.
“I see. However, if that’s the case, why not ask their employees to stay behind?”
“From what I’d heard, they felt it would be a good opportunity to give their hardworking employees a vacation as well. Although if you aren’t able to accept, Doctor, they did say they would ask some of them to remain in the house……”
“In other words, if we were to take up the offer, then their employees would be able to take a break. Moreover, the three of us would be in charge of the mansion’s upkeep during our stay.”
“Not exactly,” Mycroft clarified, “They said you won’t have to concern yourselves with the maintenance and such. As long as it stays reasonably tidy, you are free to enjoy yourselves while keeping an eye on the house.”
It was a very generous offer, so generous it invited suspicion of an ulterior motive; however, since it came from Mycroft, perhaps it could be trusted. John wanted very much to accept — he couldn’t say he was entirely pleased with their current arrangement — but he knew his partner didn’t view it that simply.
As expected, Sherlock tutted in disapproval.
“This place suits us just fine: I don’t want to live in some boring mansion in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to take on clients when I’m away.”
Sherlock himself did harbour some guilt at making the two of them endure their present lifestyle, but following his brother’s opinion was simply anathema to him. As such, he couldn’t help but bite back in reply.
John understood that, but admonished him regardless.
“Sherlock, you shouldn’t talk to your own brother like that. Mr Mycroft was just looking out for us when he made that suggestion.”
“Pay no mind, Doctor. He’s been like this for a long time.”
Mycroft gave them a wide smile. Then, he directed a question to Miss Hudson, who had been keeping an eye on them from behind.
“We’ve heard what my little brother thinks, but how about you, Miss Hudson?”
“Eh? A-Ah~……”
Having suddenly been addressed, she responded in a faltering tone.
“Well, um…… To me, I think, it would certainly be helpful.”
In an effort to consider Sherlock’s feelings on the matter, she ended up replying in a roundabout way — but it was clear that she was in favour as well.
Mycroft turned to John.
“How about you, Doctor?”
For a moment, John was at a loss for words, but when he heard the floorboards creaking underneath his feet, he made up his mind. He looked at Sherlock as he nodded slowly.
“I think, that the country house might be more pleasant, compared to our current circumstances. Moreover, we could always receive clients via post.”
“…………”
Both of them had answered in the affirmative. Now, only Sherlock remained.
Despite the apparent obstacles being cleared, he still had his reservations. But eventually, Sherlock looked at the ceiling in resignation.
“Ah, bollocks. It would just be selfish of me to refuse at this point, now wouldn’t it? Alright. Please let us stay at that country house until the apartment is fixed.”
At that reply, Mycroft smiled in satisfaction, and Sherlock turned away to hide his frustration from those eyes.
The three of them drew up some agreements on their new living arrangements, and with that, until the flat at Baker Street was fixed, they would proceed to stay at a noble’s mansion out in the country.
Footnotes:
[1] The Cotswolds is a large hilly area to the northwest of London, further than Oxford and dotted with villages. (Wikipedia)
T/N: After the angst from the last story, I just remembered how much I love the Baker Street gang 😉
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I Like You A Latte- Gavin ☕️
Happy blog birthday to @cheri-cheri. Another gift would like to present itself to you! 💙
“The exam is officially over,” you sigh.
All those years of studying and recurring late nights pouring the blood, sweat and tears for you push towards the finish line were all worth it.
You are now free.
Kind of… but not really.
For once, you were outside not catching the train to go university, heading off into another library or exam room. You had thought to savour this rare time to yourself before heading off to find a job. Thankfully, public transport is convenient enough to take you just about anywhere in Loveland City.
With only your phone, wallet and keys in hand, you stroll along the all too familiar building blocks near your home, pondering on where to go for the long awaited first day out by yourself. Should you go for some udon? Bingsoo? Pudding, perhaps?
While breathing in the sweet air of freedom, you admire the city that you grew up in, absorbing the view from down below and up at the infrastructure that the city was so renowned for.
The height, distance and those buildings haven't changed. But you- the stages of your life, experiences and perspectives have. The city almost seemed a little bit more… brighter. More alive. Or maybe… would it be for just this once?
This, you fear.
The glare of the sun continues beating down, its light reflecting off the glass buildings passing its judgement on the entire city. The heat is suffocating and you long for a cool drink or nice air-con to rely on to keep you sane.
A vision suddenly intrudes, presenting the clean pastel coloured store-front of the café that had just opened up nearby. You remember that you had power-walked right past the “WE ARE OPEN” sign on your way home from a past exam to prepare for the final one a few days ago.
You know you rarely enter any cafés at all, but your love for coffee and urge to explore someplace new begin to steer your legs into the walking direction of where you had remembered it to be.
As you soon reach the entrance, the sign you saw from the peripheral of your memory greets you.
“BRUNCH CAFE. WE ARE OPEN.”
You push open the heavy glass door, instantly entering a world of relief. Still in between the two opposing temperatures, you hastily swing the door back and encase yourself in paradise.
You take a moment to briefly scan your surroundings. The café, although it claims to be open, has everything but the barista. It wasn’t as big as the Starbucks down at the shopping centres, but it was humble enough for its size and able to fit all the requirements a café needs.
Soft instrumental music starts to reel you in further, like a siren hypnotising a sailor. You feel... peaceful. Though you wonder if you were hearing the non-diegetic music of the film occurring right in front of your eyes instead of your almost-dream café.
The minimalist designs, the ambience, and the extremely posh and elegant windows that you didn’t admire enough the first time strikes your appeal. You also confirm with yourself that this was the café that you would choose to break the cycle of drinking instant coffees everyday.
Just this once.
On the left side, those posh windows were flaunting on display, and to the right had little cubicles laid out perfect for providing spacious privacy. You marvel at what a genius idea the store owner had to create such a comforting and unique interior for a café. There was not a thing out of place.
Except of course, the barista.
You head over to where the cubicles were waiting and as you turn into the corner, you almost trip over something that looks like… a foot?
Following the coffee-stained sport shoes, your eyes slowly drift up on its owner, locking on a sleeping figure on the seats of the cubicle.
A young man with a soft aura.
You squint in confusion.
The poor cubicle clearly wasn’t big enough to fit his entire body. His hair seems to have fallen into place like dominos having slightly covering his eyelids, and appears to be breathing in a gentle rhythm with his chest following in sync. Your eyes also end up emphasising his jawline as you continue to stare.
His chest- wait.
A little badge on the right corner of his shirt immediately becomes the salient object.
So, he is the barista.
Barista… Gabin?
You lean closer at the words printed out on it.
No, it’s Ga-vin.
Apart from how attractive he looks, you question yourself- why is the barista sleeping during opening hours?
The man’s eyes slowly crack open, like a shell opening to display the pearl from inside, and you finally see his eyes of beautiful amber squinting back at you. Though, you can’t tell if it was because of the bright lights inside the cafe, or if he was solely observing you- and why you were so close to him at this very moment.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” you cry, instantly retracting from your forward-leaning position. Your brain tries to racks up reasons why you two were in this situation incase he asks.
“There was something on your face” or “your foot was in the way” could work. No- “sorry, I’ve never seen another human being before” sounds a lot more believable.
Gavin, the barista, furrows his eyebrows in confusion then seemingly in frustration.
Your body tenses.
It’s coming.
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep…” he sighs softly.
You do another quick scan and take that only the two of you were in the cafe now, unless there was another sleeping barista somewhere else you didn’t notice.
“If you're here for coffee, it’s on the house. An apology for what you saw just now…. Just don’t tell the boss if he’s here,” Gavin lightly coughs.
“Oh okay... Thank you. A latte please,” you say, rather not wanting to question it further. For now. But free coffee made by this gorgeous barista? How could anyone refuse this offer? All you did was stare. In that case, you would gladly do it again.
You settle your belongings on the table and catch Gavin rolling up his sleeves, putting on the display of his toned forearms. Luckily, your cubicle entrance was facing the direction of the workbench allowing yourself to watch him set up.
You start to wish for your coffee to be as hot as him.
Scalding hot.
Gavin steadily handles the jug and effortlessly pours the milk into the latte glass with the espresso already inside. Despite your sight of his expertise, he still can’t hide the subtle droopiness of his eyes and the slight furrow of his eyebrows again.
You figure it would be better if you come up to him instead so he wouldn’t have to travel the whole way to your cubicle with his current state being like this.
You gingerly make your way to his workbench while fumbling for a topic to break the awkward silence in your head.
“Is it just you working here today or…?” you ask.
“Is there another hot sleeping barista I should know about?” you continued in your head.
Gavin hands you the transparent cup accompanied by the saucer, a little spoon, a packet of sugar and a complimentary ginkgo-shaped cookie on the side.
The art displayed formed a symmetrical heart with perfect one centimetre foam to present the perfect latte.
“There’s the chef who’s actually the boss of this place but sometimes he dashes in and out. Especially when there’s no customers as of late. I have no idea where he goes, actually. Right now is no exception,” he replies, sweeping the remains of the coffee grounds into the knock box.
“And you do all the work for him? That doesn’t seem fair. Does he allow you to make your own cup of coffee at least?”
“Well, not exactly. I just work over-time till late. Plus, I think my body is practically immune to caffeine by now,” Gavin laughs.
"Me too," you comment.
As tired as he looks, he still has the energy to light up a smile, even with a stranger. His mouth forms an effortlessly handsome arc and you feel something emerging from within your heart, so subtle that you almost think that you could have mistaken yourself as the protagonist in a romance novel.
Though working overtime till late… at a brunch cafe?
You don’t question him any further. You take a whiff at the single delicate-looking plain ginkgo cookie and have a bite. This moment of peace and serenity was offering the much needed break from all that tension and pressure you were under- apart from Gavin being here, though he didn’t seem to mind your presence.
You lean forward to place your elbows on the counter and stare at the coffee in front, frowning a little at the reality of ruining the beautiful heart. You rip open the sugar and pour in half, then give it a stir with the spoon. The foam is perfectly silky and frothy, fusing with the crema like a starry galaxy.
You remind yourself that "it was okay" because this moment would forever remain in your own heart instead. Delicious, creamy arabica coffee.
Like those ginkgo leaves dancing in the wind that autumn day.
You smile at the memory before multiple begin to overlap with another. Ones where you had passed by the senior classrooms catching a glimpse of a boy staring out of the window or down in a random alleyway on your bicycle.
You didn’t think much of it back then either, but he had always looked familiar and seemed to be everywhere you were too. Crossing paths in hallways and even at the library, reading. That upperclassman boy named-
“-Gavin?”
He looks up.
“From school?”
You wonder why you hadn’t realised.
His facial features are now more defined, sharper, and still a head taller than you. Who would have thought the hot barista was actually an old schoolmate. You put your coffee down and internally scream.
“You remember me?” he softly asks.
“Just a little bit. Wait, do you know who I am?”
“Just a little bit.”
Gavin smiles.
You break eye contact and continue drinking, not wanting the coffee to get cold during this exchange. But even now it tastes different than before.
“So, what brings you here?” he asks.
“Taking a break before I find a job. See if any place will accept me…”
“Of course they will. You’re brilliant at what you do. I have no doubts that you will be successful.”
You smile in response, taking in the last of the remaining coffee.
“How do you know? We haven’t seen each other in so long. And I don’t think we’ve ever interacted this much in the past."
“I just do… Trust me.”
You look back up. His eyes light up with so much sincerity that could power a whole entire city’s electricity.
"I never thought I'd see you again," you say.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. You seemed like... you were just so difficult to figure out, especially for people like me who don't know you that well. So I never gave it a second thought either. And now here you are, making my coffee. Anyway, this is probably not making any sense..."
"No, I understand," Gavin states. "In your opinion... what kind of man am I?"
Before you could formulate a proper response, hot heat suddenly finds its way in, corroding with its cooler counterpart and signalling the entrance of another person.
Your eyes catch sight of a tall and handsome man, his aura so dominating that the heat you feel could just be from him instead.
“That’s the boss,” Gavin whispers.
The boss saunters his way in straight towards you two. His black hair matches his suit and tie, making him appear more like a CEO than of a chef.
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to the back to restock some things, I’ll be right back,” Gavin says, shooting you a comforting smile.
While trying to process all of this, your eyebrows are the ones to furrow now instead. How could this boss treat an employee like this? Working overtime without proper breaks? This to you was appalling and certainly see this as an act of injustice. Being the good and lawful citizen that you are, you decide to treat this like one.
“Excuse me.”
Before he enters the kitchen, he turns, offering his full attention to you. You thought you had a good grasp on what you wanted to say, but it seems that your head had disconnected from your voice box.
“Your employee…” you begin, “he seems very fatigued. I think you should be sharing the workload equally instead of leaving the cafe. Haven’t you ever heard of a collegial workplace before?”
His eyebrow lifts- in amusement, mockery or consideration, you don’t know. After all, your words carrying the “sense of justice” did sound a lot better in your head.
“I don’t interfere with anyone’s personal lives,” he said, his deep voice shattering your “prosecution”. But before you could have another go at him, he retreats into the kitchen.
Gavin returns with takeaway cups and lids and sees you standing flabbergasted at your interaction with the boss.
“You okay?”
You reply back with a little “humph” at the direction of the kitchen then turn to Gavin restocking the items on the cup warmer of the coffee machine.
"I-it’s nothing."
After all, this was your first and last time here, and maybe you shouldn't have acted so impulsively on a situation like this. Plus, how would Gavin react if you push the topic further?
You sigh. Hopefully the plan to have a drink and catch up with an old friend later in the night will settle the agitation you feel.
A soft ding is heard from your phone reminding you to get ready to leave.
Perfect timing.
As you reluctantly pack your things, you glance at Gavin’s way, who looks like he’s about to end his shift for the day as well.
You don’t want to be supporting a business owner who treats his employees like this, but yet seeing Gavin this way made you feel helpless. It’s a shame that you won’t see another handsome barista like this again. Or see him again. Or probably enter another cafe at all after this.
“I have to go.”
Your voice interrupts his workflow, and he frowns.
“Now?”
“I have somewhere to be, unfortunately.”
Gavin takes a moment to process this.
“Why don’t you wait till I leave? That way, I can see you off. It will only be a minute.”
More like a minute's time to sob about this man who could have been your boyfriend in a parallel universe. But as long as you won’t be late to meet up with your friend, you agree to wait for Gavin to finish up.
You linger by the entrance, not wanting to intrude his workspace again and steer clear from the awkwardness that could arise from watching him up close.
But after that literal minute, he steps outside with you and the heaviness in your heart starting to simmer back up again. The air already seems to have to cooled down, providing a thankful comfort to your surroundings.
Looking at him now, you almost change your mind. You could maybe see him again when you have time in the future. To... catch up.
Just maybe.
“Thank you for today," you say. You remind yourself to not get too attached, having really not know if you would be ready for all of that, especially for what was to come in the future.
You slowly walk backwards into the direction of your home, back where you need to get ready for the night out again.
“Thanks for coming. It was nice meeting you again,” he replies.
As you turn to leave, in your peripheral vision Gavin tracks forward to cover every step you took away from him, pulling a hesitant arm up to say something more.
But by then, you were already turning the corner and out of sight.
-And after all this time, your thoughts keep returning to those moments.
A couple of hours pass and your mind still orbits Gavin and that café. You wonder if there was something more you could have done or said. Hopefully he didn’t mistake your hurried steps for something else.
You soon arrive at the venue that you and your friend unanimously agreed on, though as you tippy-toe your way through the crowd to spot her, it seems that she hasn't arrived at the agreed time yet.
As you wait, you fiddle with the side of your dress. You decided to go with the classy minimalist look- a black dress and simple ginkgo drop earrings you bought recently. You didn't want to draw any attention to yourself, but you were satisfied that you were well-dressed enough to feel glamorous for the night. However, wanting to avoid the additional heat of the weather sticking on your body like a tattoo, you decide to head in first.
The music gradually becomes clearer and definitely louder as you weave your way through the hallway entrance towards the heart of the club, with the lights dimly lit and its walls enclosed for the darkness to rule.
You haven’t been in a place like this for so long, especially when you got used to the quiet and calm environment of libraries, the home, and the café earlier…
You could feel everyone’s body heat from a good healthy distance away, even at the seat of the bar. You don’t plan on getting drunk tonight, but you know your alcohol tolerance is so low that you figure it would be best if you should order a little fruity mocktail first instead then perhaps have a real drink with your friend when she arrives later.
You give a quick text notifying her of your location and place your phone back into your purse, ready to order.
Darkness continues to stir as you struggle to locate the bartender.
What kind of bartender is this person if they’re not at the bar?
Lights rotate and blind its way in every direction. For a fleeting second, it lands on the person across from you, illuminating those unforgettable eyes and smile of its owner.
His eyes are just as wide as yours.
"It's you."
The barista- no, bartender, was Gavin.
#I had so much fun with this one#happy birthday Cheri#I CANT WAIT FOR YOU TO READ THIS SIDISJSJS#3k words!!#THIS WAS THE SPECIAL POST I WAS TALKING ABOUT#mlqc#mr love queens choice#love and producer#恋与制作人#gavin#mlqc gavin#mlqc fanfic#Gavin week
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DGM Pairing - LaviLena - Part 2
it takes so much time but here is the second part of why Lavi deserves Lenalee the most & why I think Hoshino sensei setting them up as a couple, I hope you enjoy this post. also, you can find part1 under LaviLena tag in my blog:
Part2:Noah's Ark Arc:
· So we started this arc with Lenalee getting sucked by Lero into the “Noah’s Ark”, as everyone falls on top of her she was unconscious the first person to go to her & pick her-up is Lavi, just look how he is protectively\closely holding her. (CH90- EP76).
· As they were fighting Debito & Jedero, Lavi told Allen to protect Lenalee and the other “Chouji” until he found the real key (CH100 – EP82).
· After that the crew leaves Krory behind Lenalee wanted to go back to him, Allen stopped her & kind of share a cute Allena moment but Lavi has to ruin it for them, Lavi is probably jealous of how Allen is holding her & how close his face to Lena face isn’t he?. (CH105-EP83).
· Allen was helping Lenalee to climb the stair he is holding her hand and then Lavi commented that “he wants to switch place with Allen”, Allen reply was “your real motivate is so obvious Lavi, he just wants to hold Lenalee’s hand”, After Lenalee letting her thought out loud, Lavi teased her about never finding a lover if she “didn’t think more sexy thought”, which makes her angry & replied to him “its none of your business Lavi” & Lavi’s answer was “it’s none of my business but…”, Lavi seems so lost to put any other word as he was also blushing & frustrated so he had to change the subject, from the way Hoshino sensei drew this scene I think it will return in the future arc you can see Lenalee noticing Lavi blushing toward her in the below right panel with a “?”, maybe she will have a flashback related to this scene in the future. (CH110 – EP84).
· After receiving the bad news about Kanda & Krory, Lenalee was terrified\worried but Lavi reaches out to her squeezed her hand & told her to get a hold of herself, at this point “I love how Lavi knows her personality & how will she react then he just act accordingly to comfort her. (CH111-EP85).
· Lenalee & Chouji are Locked-up, Lavi is the one to fight to free these two & manly to free Lenalee you can see Lenalee apologizing for Lavi as this fight is on away for her sake. (CH112).
· Lavi is shifted into Road dream world, but what Road exactly used to prepare the worst opponent for Lavi, worst dream by reading his record & peering into his memory, his opponent was his former self “Deak” & an interesting conversation started between the two\bookman, this is the important dialogue stated between the two:
· Deak to Lavi “the place of your heart doesn’t exist in this world, no matter whose heart let you in you can only watch them that’s is your punishment”, after this dialogue Lavi reply “I already know that” which is incorrect he doesn’t know as Deak answered him I wonder? Then it just happens that Lenalee appears in the next panel with this text “your eyes of the past were never lit with that weak light” as if it indicated that “Lenalee is currently Lavi’s light” (CH114-EP86).
§ But let's not forget Road real purpose is to break him mentally & for that she used Lenalee by sending her inside a coffin knowing how Lavi will react, perhaps after reading Lavi memories/record she discovers Lavi feelings for Lenalee which at this point “Lavi himself still doesn’t know his feeling yet”.
§ After he saw Lenalee he jumped & rushed to her side & he holds her closely “just take a look at how Hoshino sensei drew Lavi facial expression, how much he is so terrified”, also didn’t Lavi said a while ago this is just a dream/an illusion created by Road Kamelot yet he reacted this way toward a fake Lenalee “Lavi just can’t think rationally when it’s involving Lena” (CH114-EP86).
· We had a flashback when Lavi first joined the order & his first meeting with Lenalee, again Hoshino-sensei choice for drawing Lavilena encounter is too beautiful, first, she gives us an overall view from the top just to showcase “there are a lot of people on the area”, but Lavi’s eyes set on Lenalee & on the same time Lenalee look at him while crying. “it’s like this is a girl & a boy encounter by fate, Lavi was so far away, yet they look at each other in the same time.
also regarding his encounter with Lenalee I believe it’s related to an answer which Lavi provided in the discussion room here is the question “Does Lavi have a thing for a cute girl with big breast” Allen answered “he’s a menace”, where Lavi had to stop him and answered “Hey, hold on! People think I only care about looks, but I'm pretty picky about personality too, “sometimes you see a girl and it just hit you” & just after this question Lavi stated that he is interested in Lenalee.
We also seen Lenalee sitting beside him in the cafeteria, she looks comfortable with him even though he is a newbie she even pats his back.
· After breaking Lavi mentally Deak takes over his body, a fight started with Allen, Lavi was ruthless & powerful as the last hope Allen used “Lenalee is crying” hoping to influence Lavi emotionally & bring him to his sense, but why “Allen used Lenalee name, perhaps he knows that Lavi has a feeling for her, he is weak against her tears? “I will write about this in part 3”, anyway instead of influencing Lavi positively, it seems that “Lenalee name triggered him to punch Allen even harder, “just look at Deak gaze when Allen mentioned Lena name”.
why he seems pissed? This is just an assumption but “as Deak is the one taking over, he was furious because the reason why Lavi is changing is Lenalee, he knows Lavi is falling for her isn’t he? otherwise why using Lenalee as the main person to break his heart on Road dream, why Lenalee is one to appear in the flashback, why he is trying so hard to convince Lavi “she is nothing more than a small piece of history?”, falling for her will interfere with Lavi recording as he stated while Lavi’s holding Lenalee “don’t let your heart distract you & interfere with your record”, meaning whatever Bookman clan trying to achieve is at risk as we saw “Lavi breaking his bookman role multiple time for Lenalee sake on the previous arc, this arc & the upcoming arc as well.
· Then Road stated something important I do think this will also be used on Lavi’s arc “if we ever reach there hopefully” once he becomes the bookman, which is “bookman are just onlookers for the sake of his record, he just walked alongside you guy” “those are that kid’s true feeling, you notice that Hoshino sensei put the text on Lenalee panel, even the anime version when Road said those words the frames were on Lenalee”
first, you see how these words affected Lenalee just look at how Hoshino-sensei draws Lenalee eyes she looks broken/desperate “Perhaps for the first time Lenalee was terrified from Lavi as a person”. after Lavi burned himself, Lenalee was also desperately hitting her leg wanting to save Lavi but unfortunately she didn’t have her innocence, once Allen & Lavi are out from the petrified fire she goes to “Lavi first”, instead of sharing a touchy moment, she gives him her Iron fist of love, but why Lenalee punch him in the first place I know Lavi was reckless, but it’s the same for Allen he was reckless against Tiki he didn’t get a punch, you may call me a biased but “Lenalee punching Lavi seems an act a girlfriend will do when the boyfriend had done risky thing & it’s a different vibe from when she hits Allen in the next chapter ”.
· Lavi lent his coat to Lenalee as she was revealing to much skin, just look how cute she is on Lavi’s coat, also isn’t Lavi acting like he is the perfect boyfriend, not to forget he showed a proactive side toward Lenalee being in a room with the womanizer Cross he had to rush to her with the other boys. “Lenalee are you sure he didn’t do anything to you?”
· Personally, this arc was my favorite because I got attached to Lavi’s background & his suffering, I also know on this Arc that Lavi is hopelessly in love with Lenalee & not to mention through the years Lavi changed his name 48 times and all the previous persona are the same but Lavi differ before he was disappointed on the human race, didn’t get attached to anyone, he was only concentrating on recording, but all that changes once he encounters Lenalee, Lenalee changed him, did Lenalee changes Allen persona in any way? I don’t think so, we all know what motivates Allen it’s his promise to mana, so I do hope she gives Lavi a chance, but also Hoshino sensei put some elements which make this ship Impossible to Happen, which make me ship them more T_T.
· I will be happy to receive any feedback positive or negative are all welcomed, BTW Part three is already finished I just need to do the final revision, but I haven’ really thought that it would be the longest one ^_^, what you all think shall I tried to delete some part or keep it long as it’s, I mean I have put extra thing such as why I support this ship, what I hate about it, my point of view about Hoshino sensei writing, an example from different Manga related to couple-endgame…..ETC.
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Sides (1/2)
Leviathan x poly gn!MC x Mammon
Words - 4999 (total)
Content warnings - lots of angst, but also lots of comfort, platonic polyamory
Prompt/Inspiration - none
Summary - You work to navigate the complexities of friendship with your two favorite demons.
AKA - That time Mammon misunderstands you and gets jealous of Levi.
It’s like a buy one, get one free sale on soft bois.
AO3
Levi had a really rough day.
He had gotten stuck with a public speaking assignment (that they would not let him out of despite the fact most of his classes were online) for RAD and he completely flubbed it.
Ordinarily he’d turn to his favorite anime for a distraction, but he recently learned that it was cancelled and they weren’t going to finish the current season so it only depressed him more whenever he tried to watch it. And he also couldn’t even pick up the latest manga he had been hooked on because his favorite character just died, out of nowhere!
Feeling like absolute crap, he curled up in his tub and just waited for you to come back from RAD for the day. He already struggled enough with his own negative thoughts daily, and this added stress was really getting to him. But you always told him how you’d be willing to listen to him if he ever needed to talk, so he thought this would be as good of a time as any to try to take you up on that offer. He just hoped you got back before his own self doubt convinced him that it wasn’t even worth trying to talk to you because he was just overreacting and you’d surely be annoyed that he wasted your time for something so trivial.
“Levi? I’m back. Are you ready…”
When you opened Levi’s door to join him for your scheduled anime marathon, you were shocked to see he wasn’t in his room. Or at least that’s how it appeared initially. But after you took a few steps inside, Levi lifted his arm up just enough to be visible and waved you over to his location in the tub.
“Hey, what are you doing in here? You feeling ok?”, you asked, kneeling beside the tub, before crossing your arms and resting them on the edge.
“No. I feel awful. Everything is awful. It’s not fair…”
“Scooch,” you instructed him, standing so you could climb into the tub to lay down next to him. Levi was a little startled at first by the sudden request, causing him to blush, but he did as you said and made a space for you to lay beside him.
Laying on your side, you tucked one arm under a pillow, adjusting its position so you were as comfortable as possible given your current location. And with the other arm you reached out to brush Levi’s bangs from his eyes so you could get a better look at him, before taking hold of one of his hands and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
“What happened? Is this about that school project?”
“No...well yes...but that’s not the only thing…”
“Then what are the other things?”
“You’ll think it’s stupid. I know I’m overreacting and just being a lame otaku.”
“Levi, you know that’s not true. I told you that you could talk to me, so talk to me.”
Levi thought for a moment about how best to approach this as he played with your hand, rubbing his thumb along your fingers. He wanted you to understand how big of a deal this was for him, but the thought of saying it out loud was...well, scary. He didn’t know what he’d do if you told him to get over it. But, after taking a deep breath, Levi decided to just trust you, and started to explain.
“It’s...you know that new anime I started? Well it’s not new new. It’s been out for awhile. But I just started it?”
“Umm, I’m not sure if I do, but continue,” you said, giving his hand another comforting squeeze, smiling at him softly.
“Well...it’s...well...they canceled it. And they didn’t just cancel it like not renew it. They CANCELED it. They won’t even be finishing the season. And how could they do that? Don’t they know how invested people get in their characters? Who gave them the right to just decide their fans don’t deserve an ending? The least they could do is finish the season! I can understand if they don’t finish a story arc, but a whole season?!”
Levi froze. Without even meaning to, he had slipped into pure otaku mode, ranting about his problems with fiery passion. His cheeks flushed as he averted his gaze, “S-s-sorry. I got carried away. You probably didn’t want to hear about all that stuff…”, he said, shrinking in on himself.
“It’s fine Levi,” you replied, laughing softly. You gave his hand another squeeze before continuing, “I like listening to you talk about your stuff. You know that. And you listen to me rant about my stuff too.”
Realizing Levi wasn’t going to look at you on his own, you let go of his hand and gently cupped his cheek, tilting his face up so you could look him in the eyes, “It’s ok Levi. I promise. So finish your story.”
You were looking at him so tenderly Levi wasn’t even sure how to respond. He could tell you were concerned for him, and even though you didn’t know what he was talking about, you were still listening intently. He really liked that about you. It was one of the many things he thought made you such a good friend, and he was so thankful you were his friend right now.
He gave you a small smile, and closed his eyes, holding your hand to his cheek while he continued. “There’s also this manga. I don’t want to say which because you’ll probably want to read it later. At least I think you will. I’d want you to.
But anyways, there was this one side character that I really liked. He was just so fun, but he also stood up for his friends and was just really cool. But...they...they...they killed him off! Just out of nowhere. There wasn’t a warning. Nothing that happened made you think he was in danger. You just open the volume and BAM he’s dead. Page one.”
Levi grew silent now that he’d gotten everything off his chest. Just talking to you made his heart feel a little bit lighter. Not that he was back to feeling 100%, but at least he didn’t feel quite as hopeless.
“So just too much bad stuff going on all at once, huh?”
“Y-y-yeah. After that...torture...at RAD I couldn’t even relax and unwind because everything else just made it worse! It’s not fair. Why did this all have to happen today? They couldn’t have spaced these things out by a couple weeks or something?”, Levi asked, with a huff of frustration.
“Come here,” you said, as you moved the arm out from under your pillow to slip it behind Levi’s neck and pull him into a hug. He didn’t put up any resistance at this point because he was pretty sure he was about to cry and didn’t want you to see his face. He simply cuddled into your shoulder as you started running your fingers through his hair.
“Thank you for talking to me. It makes me happy to know you trust me that much,” you pressed a small kiss to his forehead. “I’m sorry you had such a rough day.”
Levi just pulled you closer, letting your legs tangle with his. He used to think he hated being touched, but for some reason he never got tired of having you close. Your presence and your warmth just soothed him, melting away the knots of anxiety. He loved the feeling of your fingers combing through his hair too. It was always at a nice, slow, steady rhythm that was easy to focus on when he needed to keep his mind from wandering where it shouldn’t.
The two of you laid together like that in silence for a while, and it didn’t take long before you both had fallen asleep, with just the gentle hum of electronics as white noise in the background.
————
That night at dinner, Mammon couldn’t help but notice the little glances and smiles you had been exchanging with his brother. It annoyed him immensely that you had been even the least bit distracted by Levi while he had been talking to you, even if you were still able to actively participate in the conversation. He had thought about calling you out on it, but didn’t know how to do that without causing a scene and making himself look jealous.
He was surprised when he heard a knock on his door and discovered that it was you paying him a visit. He thought for sure that you had slipped away to Levi’s room.
“Hey Mammon, do you have a second to talk?”
“I s’pose. But ya better make it quick because I have somethin’ planned later,” he said. He most certainly did not have anything planned later and would happily talk to you all night if you wanted, but he didn’t want to make himself appear too desperate. At least not now while he was still mildly annoyed with you.
“Thanks. It won’t take long, I promise.” Mammon led you over to his sofa where you both took a seat and you turned to face him, “You know how whenever your brothers manage to take the seats next to me before you get a chance and you make up whatever reason you can for why you get to force yourself in between us so that you’re next to me?”
“....no.” Of course, Mammon knew exactly what you were talking about, and the deep blush on his cheeks betrayed him, so you continued.
“Well, for a little while at least, do you think you could not do that anymore with Levi? I think he’s having a pretty rough time right now and I just want to be able to spend a bit more time with him.”
Mammon blinked at you a few times, not fully understanding what you were saying. You didn’t want him to sit next to you? And you wanted to spend more time with Levi? He thought he had done a good job concealing his jealousy at dinner, but he started to wonder if maybe you noticed. Is that why you didn’t want him next to you? Because he annoyed you? You finally got tired of him hanging around all the time and constantly dragging you places? And now you were here to tell him you didn’t want him anymore. You didn’t need him.
“Umm, Mammon? You okay?”, you asked, examining his face in concern. You didn’t think your request had been that big of a deal. You just asked him to leave Levi alone for a bit. Why did he look so upset?
“Uhh...yeah...sure. Got it,” he said, turning away from you.
His response really puzzled you, but he didn’t leave you long to think about it, “That all? I told ya I had things to do.”
“Oh right, sorry. Thanks for talking with me. I’ll see you later, yeah?” you said as you stood up and headed towards his door to leave. Mammon gave you a grunt in acknowledgement, waiting until you were gone before collapsing on his back on his sofa.
Mammon wasn’t sure what to make of that conversation just now. Pretty much since you made your pact with him, you two had been inseparable. Wherever you were, he wasn’t far behind. It didn’t matter what his brothers tried to plan without him, he always found a way to involve himself. You never complained about it though, in fact you always seemed to be happy to see him, smiling and laughing at whatever flimsy excuse he gave before inviting him to join you.
But maybe he had worn out his welcome.
He knew you had been getting closer to Levi lately. Which wasn’t surprising really. You had so much in common with each other after all. Half the time he couldn’t even keep up with your conversations anymore. It didn’t really bother him though. He liked seeing your eyes sparkle when you were talking about something you loved, and he liked knowing that his brother had finally found someone he could relate to. And since you both made sure to include him often in your game nights or movie marathons, he never felt left out.
He started to wonder though if you perhaps had wished that he wasn’t around quite so often. Were you just humoring him? Knowing that he’d whine and complain if you said no, you decided it was just easier to let him tag a long? His chest tightened painfully at the thought. He didn’t want to think you’d do that. He didn’t want to think that all those bright smiles you had given him when he’d show up unexpectedly were fake. But he wasn’t coming up with any other explanations at this point for why you were suddenly asking for space. At some point, he had simply become nothing more than a nuisance.
CONTINUED IN PART 2
#gn!mc#poly mc#platonic polyamory#platonic levi#platonic mammon#platonic relationships#obey me#obey me shall we date#obey me levi#obey me mammon#mammon x mc x levi#mammon x poly mc#levi x poly mc#obey me fanfic#levi fanfic#mammon fanfic#obey me angst#levi angst#mammon angst#obey me comfort#mammon comfort#levi comfort
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For the end of year asks. You’ve answered 10, 8, and 3, so I want 1, 2, 4-7, and 9... don’t shoot me please... 😘
Of course, if you’ve already answered some of the others, you can skip those too...
😲. I’m... not sure that's how you play the game?? But okay, buckle in.
1. What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year?
I’ve written a lot of things I liked this year. Unlike previous years I don’t think there’s anything I don’t feel good about. I think for favourite I’d have to go with ...and held her in my arms, because it turned out pretty much exactly as I envisioned it and I like the intensity of the pining, and The Bend of the Arc, because it was such a stretch for me and I really like the end result. That and the comments on it were just so lovely.
2. What’s your least favourite thing you wrote this year?
As I said above I’m happy with everything from this year, but I guess the one I'm least happy with is where none intrudes. I kind of feel like my head wasn’t quite in the right place and I wrote it too quickly. It could have been better if I'd taken more time. Ironically, it is my most popular Tumblr post ever.
4. Which of your fics this year was most successful?
On Tumblr, it was where none intrudes which still continues to get random notes. On AO3 (and I'm discounting Moonlight here because that started last year) it currently stands at Error 404 by a single kudo over the stars through our souls.
5. Which of your fics do you wish was more successful?
I guess that depends on what successful means? I wouldn’t have minded more people reading A Uniquely Portable Magic because I think it’s some of the best descriptive writing I've ever done, but the ones who did read it gave such amazing feedback I consider it a success. The Fire of the Frost had the worst reception I’ve ever experienced on Tumblr, which I kind of expected because sequels are always less popular than the original and Moonlight was also a dud on Tumblr. But I’m still disappointed, I had thought it would do a bit better than it did. Like I thought it would flop but maybe not leave behind an actual indent in the ground.
6. What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?
Oof. I’m sure I'm overlooking something, but one scene I really like is this one from The Bend of the Arc. There are a couple of good exchanges in that fic I think but this one is where we really see the connection between them. Putting it below a cut as it’s long!
Emma popped the last bite of soufflé into her mouth and resisted the urge to lick her fingers. Instead she sipped her champagne and looked around for another tray. One passed by bearing what looked like tiny donuts and she almost dove to grab one. Biting into it, she found that it was savoury and filled with a feather-light truffled chicken mousse. She closed her eyes on a moan of delight, and when she opened them again Killian Jones was standing in front of her, watching her with an expression she found deeply objectionable.
“Well, darling, I do hope you’re not here for me this time,” he said.
Emma sneered. “I’m not.”
“Learnt our lesson, have we?” he replied with a smirk.
She ground her teeth. “I’ve simply got bigger fish to hook,” she said.
“Indeed. Considering that I am an entirely innocent man.”
She snorted.
“That infuriates you, doesn’t it,” he observed, smirk deepening. “That I walked free.”
Nearly a year’s worth of frustration and righteous fury bubbled up inside Emma, bursting forth before she could stop it. “It’s not right!” she exclaimed. “It’s not justice!”
“No, it’s just not perfect justice. Though one certainly could argue that a decade spent under the thumb of a madman is more than enough punishment for whatever crimes I committed.”
Something in his voice troubled her, a pained sincerity that niggled at her conscience. She ignored it. “Rationalise it all you like, if it helps you sleep at night,” she retorted.
“Oh, I have no trouble sleeping,” he said, stepping closer and leaning into her space, hips first. “Though occasionally I do forgo it voluntarily, in favour of more… enjoyable activities.”
“You’re filthy.”
“I certainly can be,” he purred. “If that’s what you want.”
“I want nothing from you.”
“Well love, we both know that’s not true.”
“Oh do we?”
“We do. You’re something of an open book, you see.”
She rolled her eyes. “I am the opposite of that.”
“You’d like to be. But for those who know how to look, your tells are obvious.”
“Bullshit.”
He shifted, standing straighter and observing her with blue eyes that went, between one blink and the next, from flirtatious to coolly assessing, sharply analytical. She felt a flare of alarm in her chest, and the worrying suspicion that she may have underestimated him.
“The relaxed posture,” he said. “That’s one. You’re a woman of action, rarely still. If you stop moving you start thinking, and you, Emma Swan, hate nothing more than being in your own head. You’re tense all the time unless you’re pretending not to be, as you are now. Playing the role of carefree society girl, perfectly at home in these glittering surroundings where you are in actual fact deeply uncomfortable.”
She attempted a laugh. “Maybe I’m just having a good time.”
“You’re holding that glass so tightly you’re in danger of snapping the stem, and you’re digging the heel of your shoe into the floor. It takes a lot of effort to maintain that outward calm, which is why you don’t normally bother. You hate artifice, bullshit as you would call it, and your plan tonight is to get in, get your mark and get out. After you’ve eaten your fill of the food, that is.” The corner of his mouth curled into a half-smile. “Do correct me if any of this is wrong.”
“It’s all wrong,” she snapped.
“Now, love, don’t you start to bullshit.”
Emma’s fingers clenched tighter on the champagne glass and she deliberately forced them to relax. “Why don’t you just leave me alone,” she hissed.
His eyes softened, and heated with an expression that made her belly clench. “Because you intrigue me,” he murmured.
“Well you disgust me.”
He laughed. “Liar.”
“How dare you—”
He brushed a lock of hair off her shoulder, his fingers close enough that she could feel the heat of them but not their touch, and when he spoke again his voice was rough. “You’ve a delightful pale pink flush all across your skin, your pupils are dilated, your breathing shallow. And your pulse—” His hand glided down her arm and wrapped around her wrist, fingertips pressing gently onto her pulse point. “It’s racing, love. I don’t require any special skills to pick up on these tells.” He caught her gaze, his own heated and intense. “Would it help if I confessed that the attraction is entirely mutual?”
“No!”
“Pity.”
She tried to pull her arm from his grip but he held fast, leaning closer still to murmur in her ear. “He’s over by the fountain.”
She wouldn’t look, thought Emma. She wouldn’t. She closed her eyes as Killian released her and the heat and intoxicating scent of him moved away. She didn’t want his help, didn’t need it. Resented it. But she couldn’t stop herself from looking and of course there he was. Her mark, standing in front of the fountain at the centre of the room.
“How the hell did you know—” she spun around but Killian was gone.
7. What’s your favourite piece of description or narration?
Unquestionably the beginning of Portable Magic.
He’s not sure what draws him through the door. The look of it, perhaps, the twisted grain and the knotholes, polished to a patina by centuries of wind and rain and hands upon it. Some hands much like his own and others very different. He finds comfort in that, as he places his hand on the door. His hand.
His only hand.
On the other side of the door is a bookshop. He knew that of course, from the sign in the window, another thing tempting him inside. It’s far too long since he read a good book, too long since he let himself get lost in stories other than his own. He’s not quite ready for what he sees.
The shelves are made of the same wood as the door. Carved from it, it seems. Hewn might be the word. The knobbly, knothole-y wood that even his limited carpentry knowledge tells him could not form straight shelves. It doesn’t, yet they hold the books. Row upon row of them, dizzying rows. His head spins when he tries to look at them, like a kaleidoscope or a funhouse mirror, too many things, too many angles, too little space.
He blinks, and everything is fine again. It’s just a bookstore.
“It’s just a bookstore,” he tells the cat in the window, a huge grey tabby with long, silky fur and pale blue, unblinking eyes.
“Of course it is,” the cat replies. “What were you expecting?”
“I—what?”
“Meow,” says the cat.
...and this paragraph
He sits at the table and opens the book at the top of the pile, glances into it, and is absorbed. It’s the tale of a lonely man, a wanderer without a home who finds his place in the hearts of those he meets along his travels. It grips him so entirely that he fails to notice Ruby as she sets a pot of tea before him, with a mismatched cup and saucer and a plate bearing a thick slice of cake, fragrant with lemon and dotted with plump blueberries. Absently he prepares his tea—a splash of milk, no sugar—and sips it as he reads. It has a bright, floral aroma but a rich flavour that reminds him of the Earl Grey his brother favoured, and he has to pause for a moment to allow the ache to pass. It does, faster than it once did, and so he risks another sip and sighs this time in pleasure. It’s delicious. He settles deeper into the chair and the book, sips the tea and nibbles the cake and doesn’t notice either one disappearing or the afternoon sunshine fading into twilight beyond the windows until Ruby comes to clear the table with a clatter of silver on porcelain.
9. If you could go back and change something about one of the fics you wrote this year, what would it be?
I have a difficult relationship with all the perfect things (that I doubt) because part of me loves it and part thinks maybe I should have made some different choices. I guess it’s just that there are so many options for that scenario and I kind of want to write all of them (but also there is NO TIME, so don't get any ideas, woman!).
-
um, I would say send me an end of year ask, but Krystal has ASKED THEM ALL
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More love for Semi please? Anything will do, your writing is exquisite in any form anyway :D
» Word Count: 1,857 wordsCross-posted on AO3
SORRY THIS IS SO LATE :(( I actually wrote three chapters’ worth of content for him already and you can read the whole thing on the ao3 link.(NOTE: This is based on the current events of the final arc of the Haikyuu manga. I tagged it as a spoiler but I won’t really go into the specifics of what’s going on. Semi is our main focus here ^__^)
—
“Please?”
“No,” was your flat reply.
Semi heaved a long sigh, mouth twitching into an irritated grimace. You returned his reaction with a sassy look of your own—one, finely penciled brow quirked as bright, red lips rivalled the adamance that Semi brought about. While you were in no position to tell him to just go back to his cubicle and get today’s work done (you, sadly, held the same position in office), you at least had the right to turn him down. Your department had a monthly financial report coming up. Why on Earth did he want your help writing a song?
“Come on,” he groaned. “You know I’d eat my fist first before asking for your help, but our manager really digs your old pieces from college.”
Your eye twitched.
“Way to beg for someone’s aid in a time of dire need,” you bit back sarcastically. “Go do it then.”
“What?”
“Eat your whole fist.” You gave him a pointed look, even making a show of paying attention by putting your pen down.
Your co-worker let out a frustrated groan, fingers carding through his messy, ashen hair. The gesture made the tattoos on his chest visible for a second, before disappearing again behind his barely done button-up. It was a mystery, how a man like him made it as a public servant—with his flamboyant piercings and tip-dyed hair—but you supposed you should learn to look past physical appearances. The agency allowed it, so why should you make a fuss?
Ah, right. Semi Eita was the most hot-headed man in your department, and he had a knack for picking fights with you.
“If you get the balance sheet done by five o'clock, I might reconsider,” you told him, not really meaning the words, as you directed your attention back at the paperwork on your desk. Balance sheets are the toughest to fill out, since the data needed had to be collated from different sectors of the city. You highly doubted that Semi, with his thinner-than-a-strand-of-hair patience, could finish it in one sitting.
“Deal.”
Your gaze hardened as you looked back up at him. “Come again?”
“Are you deaf?” he asked, folding lean arms across his chest. “I said it’s a deal.”
You couldn’t help the snort that made its way past your lips. Whatever his reasons may be, it was painfully obvious that he was desperate. But still. You knew that he wouldn’t be able to carry out the deed in your given deadline, but instead of talking him out of his own agreement, you merely shook your head in acceptance.
Semi eventually stalked off to his cubicle; the one just in front of yours. There was a divider that separated each employee’s workspace from the others, and it at least granted some semblance of privacy from outside gazes. You’ve been to Semi’s cubicle a couple of times—more to coordinate paperwork than engage in conversation, really—and he decorated his personal space exactly how a part-time rock band vocalist would. Though he didn’t exactly put up posters and painted the walls black, he added his own flair to his desk with guitar figurines, neon stickers on his desktop, and a photo of his bandmates enclosed in a sparkly picture frame.
The only reason you bothered looking so closely was the fact that you also went to the same university together (under the same degree, too!) You’ve always been keen around him, with his loud way of living, as opposed to you, who’s always chosen to live simply and without pretentiousness. Sure, the disparity between your lifestyles had caused you to be at each other’s throats since freshman year, but it was still a surprise that your synergy was top notch. You would, as Semi put it so delicately, eat your fist first before admitting to the fact, but it’s a given that you preferred to work with him instead of other, unfamiliar people.
You sighed, brandishing a bored look at the bleak document in front of you. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to help him out…
But when you recalled every time he’s talked over you during board meetings, sneered at you when he got a higher score during exams, and his distateful behavior in general, you steeled your resolve.
Either he’s going to get that balance sheet over with or he’ll keel over. If he wanted your help, he’s going to have to work for it.
—
You were in the middle of fixing your belongings when the sound of a stack of papers hitting your desk rang in your ears.
“There,” Semi said breathlessly, making you look up at him in surprise. He even tossed a flash drive on top of the papers he deposited, where you saw the city hall’s heading printed in full color. You reluctantly checked your phone for the time. 16:57, it said, in a mockingly bold typeface before shoving it in your pocket.
The damn guy really did get it done before five.
“The electronic document is saved in there, in case you lose the print.” He was panting at this point, and you had a vague idea as to why he looked like he just ran a marathon. The one printer in your department (this year’s budget was cut) broke down a few days ago, and the nearest functional one was at the Logistics office three floors down.
Still refusing to believe it, you peered at the documents he just brought in. You scanned each of the entries printed on each page. That’s when you realized that Sendai City’s expenses have skyrocketed since the new year because the list of expenses occupied a whole page alone. A worried sigh made its way past your lips, but at least the liabilities were cut down to a minimum. You heard that the governor of Miyagi was going to pledge a few hundred thousand yen for the city’s founding anniversary, too.
You paused. Blinking, you rearranged the papers neatly back into its pile—biting back the urge to clutch your wounded pride. Semi was looking at you expectantly, like he wanted you to praise his flawless bookkeeping.
In actuality, his determination was beginning to freak you out.
“Why do you want me to help you so badly?” you asked, voice almost trembling. “Seriously, dude. I thought we hated each other. Quit acting out of character.”
“I told you, our manager really liked the songs you composed back in senior year,” he drawled, tired of having to repeat himself.
Your face twisted in confusion. “Who even is this manager of yours?”
There was a half-second delay in his response, but before you could paint a reason for his hesitation, he immediately replied with, “Saito. Saito Makoto.”
You stiffened, gaze going rigid at the mention of that name. “Oh.”
“Yeah. If I manage to give him a piece by the end of the month, he’ll help us sign a contract with a big-shot record label,” Semi explained, oblivious to your discomfort.
“But haven’t you been writing songs since high school?” you wondered aloud. “That’s what you said during our Pol-Gov class ice breaker.”
He frowned. “You still remember that?”
Okay. You kept forgetting that your sharp memory wasn’t always a praiseworthy thing. You gulped, feeling the heat creep up your face. “Um, anyway, the point still stands. You’ve been writing songs for God-knows-how-long, and while I’m not one to dish out compliments especially to you, I’m pretty sure they’re okay if you managed to gather a decent fanbase.”
He rolled his eyes, leaning against the divider of your cubicle. “We’re a rock band. I write rock songs, but Saito wants me to write a goddamn love song.”
Typical Saito. Though he looked like a rugged high school delinquent, he was awfully sentimental when it came to music. He was the one who inspired you to write the songs Semi was pestering you about all day after all…
“Fine,” you relented. “I never go back on my word and since you did a…good job with this, I’ll help you out.”
His light brown eyes lit up for a moment, but Semi managed to mask his relief in a split second—containing his excitement in a single nod. “Are you free this Saturday? You can come by my place and we could start getting to work.”
Well, that was forward of him. You expected to work on the song in a coffee shop or something, but he went on ahead and invited you to his own humble abode anyway. You parsed through your weekend plans in your mind, and once you confirmed that you were free, you scribbled down your phone number on a sticky note. Almost five years of acquaintance and you’d never bothered giving it to him. Huh.
“Just text me the time and place,” you told him, pocketing the flash drive as you slipped the balance sheet in one of the empty folders in your organizer. “You better not pull anything funny and lead me to a secluded alley or something.”
Semi scoffed, folding the piece of paper and sticking it inside his trousers. “As if.”
You then slung your bag across your shoulders, grinning insincerely. “Glad we’re on the same page, then.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
With that, Semi exited your cubicle, leaving you no room to wonder why he didn’t even spare a quick ‘thank you’.
Just as you were smoothing out the creases on your pencil skirt, your phone began buzzing in the pocket of your blazer. Brows raised, you fished it out and unlocked it.
From: Makohey, wanna grab some dinner? its on me :3
Speak of the devil. You swallowed the lump in your throat, fingers shakily managing to type a coherent reply.
To: MakoYeah sure. Where to tho
From: Makocan we get some italian? ik u love the udon place across the street but akane’s having dinner w her friends there
From: Makocant have her seeing us together now do we
The way he put that so casually made your chest constrict with a too-familiar sensation. You heaved a deep breath, pursing your lips into a thin line as you sent a quick “Ok” text to end your conversation. Saito replied with those iffy heart-eyed emojis that he only ever used when he wanted something from you, and you had to compose yourself so you wouldn’t burst into tears right there.
“Oi.”
You almost jumped at the sound of Semi’s voice as he peered inside your cubicle once more. He clutched his suitcase in one hand, eyeing you curiously.
“What do you want?”
“You’re headed uptown, too, right?” he asked, and you nodded reluctantly. “Thought you’d want a lift.”
“Semi, just because I’m helping you achieve your dreams, doesn’t mean you have to be nice to me.” You laughed softly, tension easing from his uncalled for kindness.
He, however, looked unconvinced. “Do you want a ride or not?”
You raised your hands in defeat, managing a genuine smile. “Alright, fine. It’ll be a hellish commute anyway.”
You liked to think that that’s how you started becoming friends with your odd, hot-headed co-worker.
#haikyuu!!#semi eita#semi eita x reader#shiratorizawa#hqscenario#haikyuu headcanons#haikyuu fanfiction#haikyuu spoilers#hq headcanons#hq!! headcanons
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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.
fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.
tagged by: stolen from @dansiere
tagging: @ghiassan, @deathsreflection, @altuspavus, @windrunnerrs (velanna), @hopewrought, @willbeshot, @seahaloed (iron bull), @asterfed (noctis), @ anyone who wants to steal it! also multis feel free to choose a different character
My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated (i’m open to roleplaying with non-dragon age characters, and have AUs for other fandoms)
Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. solas is both wildly popular and wildly hated. he’s been more consistently popular than the controversial women in the series, like sera or vivienne, who have only recently begun to get to the point where their tags are less vitriolic (although i’m sure it’s still out there), but there’s still a sizable hatedom that can’t have his name breathed in their vicinity w/o them talking abt how much they hate him. even if you’re currently cosplaying him!
Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. again, you have ppl who are super into him and ppl who think he’s ugly. my personal opinion is that i think he’s weirdly pretty, and wish ppl would commit more to his unconventional features rather than try to chisel him into sb more traditionally attractive and that ppl who don’t find him attractive would maybe chill w/ calling him ugly. find him unattractive by all means, but lets embrace the fact that inquisition let their love interests have skin flaws etc and accept that some won’t be our cups of tea.
Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. its hard to deny at this point tbh.
Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK. frustrating as the hate in the tags he has enough fans that i couldnt say he’s underrated w/ a straight face.
Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO. he’s the reason the game starts with a bang and not the inevitable dissolution of the conclave b/c the sides are disparate.
Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. regardless of solas’ relationship with the inquisitor, there are parallels and contrasts in their stories and he also is the reason they survive inquisition.
Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. fen’harel is well-known and revered, if feared, among the dalish, yet at the same time he’s not remembered for a lot besides locking the gods away-- and the context of that decision has also been lost. as solas he’s relatively unknown until inquisition and especially trespasser.
How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. again, polarising!! he has loyal agents and people are willing to speak well of him despite everything, including his enemies sometimes (depending mostly on the inquisitor).
How strictly do you follow canon? — generally i try to have a canon basis for my interpretation, even if i interpret the text differently than the author.
SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — solas is an immortal who is simultaneously jaded and very much invested in the small moments of life. far from being weary of the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, it is systems and orders he is most tired of. he walks an interesting line that feels far less misanthropic than other immortal characters i’ve experienced, yet still he’s quite cynical. as a character who has fought against religious based tyranny before, but in a completely different era, he is in a unique position where what he sees around him is both horrifyingly familiar and yet completely new. it allows an exploration of the wrongs of thedas’ society from an outsider’s perspective. his motivations are complex and multifaceted, often condemnable and yet also understandable. his character arc in inquisition (if befriended, or regardless in the case of my solas) takes him from a dispassionate, disconnected antagonist to someone deeply invested in the people of thedas, deeply conflicted and actively hoping he will be proven wrong again. i think his story is a testament to human (or elven, or dwarven, or-) connection and how even when we resist we can’t resist creating bonds with the people in our lives. i personally see this bond going beyond the inquisitor hence why i play low-approval solas as conflicted as high-approval, if not when it comes to the inquisitor.
Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — solas is selfish and motivated solely by revenge, he’s clinging to a past that clearly no longer exists, if you ignore all the people from it who are still alive. he’s totally unaware of all his flaws and never owns up to any mistakes ever. no, i haven’t listened to a single word solas has said in my life why do you ask. he’s also critical of my faves which means he’s #cancelled, there is clearly no validity to what he’s saying. ksjdf no but in all seriousness i think a lot of reasons ppl don’t find solas interesting are just... weird readings of his character that sometimes have no basis in the text of inquisition, but also there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to not find him interesting. usually those ppl don’t like... talk abt how much they don’t find him interesting constantly tho. they just chill and aren’t invested in this particular villain. for one thing i think the game missed out on opportunities for exploring how someone who may not have even had a body at the beginning of his existence would feel about gender and sexuality, so making him presumably straight and cis was a boring choice. i also think that the dragon age games being very protagonist-centric hurts solas’ character, there’s no real reason why the inquisitor is the only one who can throw his plans into question but making the player the center of the universe means he’s not allowed to change due to the effects of other companions or NPCs. thank god this is rp and i do what i want.
What inspired you to rp your muse? — i have a history degree so when the inquisition companions were being teased, solas describing bias in primary sources from the memories he’s seen got me interested in him. but my first playthrough i didn’t actually take him with me all too often, i think my main party was dorian-blackwall-varric. i liked him, and i think he or dorian were my first friends in skyhold, but my initial interest was in other characters. between his dialogue that appealed to the historian in me tho and how his spirit opinions sort of turned everything i’d felt about spirits in the last two games on its head, i started vibing with him more the farther i went in. like merrill set me up for the “spirits are people” thing and solas hit it out of the park. then temple of mythal happened, and i did bring solas with me there. i found his dialogue fascinating and also suspicious, i’d just finished masked empire like the day before da:i came out so i definitely thought solas was an ancient elf in the same vein as felassan. it was after temple of mythal that i actually decided to make his blog, although like as one idk linchpin to cement my status as solas trash... i was hit BAD by the banter bug on my first playthrough, probably got like a dozen banters total. but then at some point late in the game i took solas to the forbidden oasis and he wouldn’t stop talking to people, and i really loved his banter with the rest of my party at the time.
What keeps your inspiration going? — replaying inquisition, new DA content when the bioware gods deign to grant us a lifeline, but the biggest thing is my rp partners. i wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the people i write with, new and old. my activity of late hasn’t been the best, work and the summer heat has really been sapping me of energy, and does even during years when we aren’t going through a pandemic. but it’s the thought of my rp partners and love of solas that keeps me coming back.
Some more personal questions for the mun.
Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.
Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? i have my doubts sometimes, but i think i do ok.
Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO / SORT OF? there is no headcanon too small for me.
Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO. but not lately * gestures to the low activity * i’ve been in this cycle where i get anxious abt late replies, so prioritise them, then burn myself out and can’t write the fics i want. i’ve had two i’ve been DYING to write tho i just... need to find the space in my brain to let myself.
Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. i mean it depends on the day. if i work closing shifts at my store it gets very quiet and boring around 8:30 so i spent the next 90 minutes thinking about character stuff.
Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF?
Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO / SOMETIMES.
Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO / SORTA.
Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — i’m going to say ‘no’ because like, i don’t ask for criticism. this is a hobby based on my interpretation of a character, if you think i write solas too soft then you’re welcome to think that, but i’m happy with the balance i’ve struck with his internal versus external behaviour and how he changes based upon who he’s speaking to. if you think i’m erasing straight people by making solas pan then ksjdfs. ok.
Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — yes!!! even if they retread ground already trodden, a) my interpretation may have adjusted since the last time i played or b) a reminder is nice. if it’s new stuff then it’s fun to think about.
If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — it’d depend on why they disagree. if they just disagree on a subjective opinion about what i took from a certain line, then they’re welcome to their opinion but i don’t necessarily care to hear it. if it is unintentionally hurtful then i would like to know. although rather than a comment i’d rather a non-anonymous message.
If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — same as the above.
If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — if they’re vocal about it i typically just unfollow / softblock if i was following in the first place. people can feel how they want about solas, but i’ve found over the years that if people really hate solas ooc it can often bleed into their ic interactions. it’s really weird seeing your character being brought up repeatedly in threads with others specifically to dunk on, for no reason other than i guess solas is living rent free in their heads, so at least we have that in common. but anyway unfollowing is just the best choice to avoid getting kinda pressed if i’m having a bad day.
Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — roleplay is the wild west of writing, so i think it’d depend on what the error was. coming at me like “you shouldn’t start a sentence with a preposition” would get a laugh, but i don’t edit my replies much if at all and mistakes will 100% happen. pointing out typos is chill so long as you do it politely.
Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — it depends! i’ve learned that being too easy going actually just means i’m subjecting myself to negative emotions to please people. so i’ve gotten less easy going as the years go by. how does one define “easy going” anyway? does asking that question mean i am objectively not easy going? the longer this thought goes on the more the answer seems to be “probably not,” but i like to think it could be a lot worse.
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LMH ~ The Deep End
Lee Know x LittleSister! Reader
As always, we dying like MEN. #NotProofread LMAO
Also, I’m so BAD at coming up with titles EKK
NonIdol! AU
Genre: Angst
~
Lee Minho is the best big brother ever.
But if you had told him that now, he wouldn’t believe you.
“LET ME GO!” Minho yelled. His arms flailed as he pushed away at the people that’s trying to grab a hold of him to calm him down. His hand jerked upward colliding with the metal tray. On said tray was a bowl of piping hot soup, that went flying directly onto the woman before him ripping out a scream from her.
“My sister! I need to save her...” Minho trailed off as he slurred his words, sobbing profusely.
Minho and his sister had always been close. Ever since you were born, he doted on you. He so desperately loved his sister ever since your small body was placed into his arms. Dare he say, he held you more than your parents combined. He absolutely adored you, so much so where he would spoil you to death (and he would get grounded for spending all of his allowance to spoil you). Ever since you were a small toddler, after Minho would finish school homework he would take you out of your child safe pen, gently put you on the floor in between his outstretched legs clapping his hands cooing at how adorable you were.
As you grew older, Minho never left your side. He often complained about how he couldn’t do all the things he always did with you anymore. At first it was cute how Minho would bathe with you when you were a toddler, but now as you’re older it isn’t as acceptable due to the different genders. Minho would huff and pout as he waited on your bed until you emerge out of the shower. Once the door would open, Minho would smile wide with outstretched arm. His heart would feel all warm and fuzzy when you run up and jump into his embrace.
“Big brother look! Baby is all clean now and baby did it herself,” you would beam with a toothy smile.
“Yes, you did. Big brother is so proud,” Minho would coo with an equally toothy smile.
You both would literally do everything together: play together, eat together, sleep together, even when you’re not doing anything, you’re together. You could be silently playing with blocks or taking a nap and Minho would be in the same room doing homework or something. He would especially love dancing with you. He would play an upbeat song as you stood between his legs on his feet as he held onto your small hands and sway you side to side.
It was no secret that Minho wanted to be a dancer. When he started college, he joined the dance team and would go on competitions to perform. You loved to tag along to all his recitals to cheer for your big brother. However, this meant he would spend less time with you
He became close with the eight guys on his performance team. With the close friendships plus multiple competitions and performances along with classes and homework, Minho had less and less time to allocate. This meant hardly any time would be spent with you.
But you were understanding, you knew how busy your big brother was and you would do anything within your power (which isn’t a lot) to lighten his load. Whenever he would practice in his room, you would sneakily open the door so he wouldn’t notice you and place down a fresh water bottle. You would do the same for dinner as well if he was caught up on too much homework. Whenever he would shower, you would climb into his closet and grab whatever clothing you wanted, leaving them on his bed and he would wear them without fail even if the clothes you picked out were an absolute fashion disaster.
But that didn’t mean that you didn’t miss him. Every time you walked up to him, pulling on his shirt, he would wave you off.
“Not now, baby. Big Brother is busy. Maybe later.”
But that was what you always say.
Minho was currently on break so homework wasn’t exactly a problem. However, he did have a recital coming up, so he allocated all his time to it. You sat quietly on his bed as you watched him practice. You were always amazed and in awe at how amazing your big brother was. You were amazed how fluid his body movements were as he moved perfectly in sync with the flow of the music until he missed a step.
“FUCK,” he exclaimed out in frustration.
You flinched at his loud tone.
“Big broth-”
“Not now,” he snapped, going over to his phone to replay his song.
Minho went at it again. You didn’t like how Minho was overworking himself. He went several nights with a few hours of sleep for the past few nights practicing for the upcoming competition. His frustrated exclamations and the music playing kept you up as well. You would curl up into a ball with your pillow pressed between your ears wishing your big brother would come into bed with you.
Minho made another mistake. His body was wracked with fatigue and the endless practice was taking a toll on his mental state as well.
“Big brother,” you called out again.
“WHAT?!” he seethed whipping around to face you. “It’s always ‘Big Brother this’ ‘Big Brother that.’ Don’t you know annoying you are?!”
Your bottom lip quivered as tears welled up in your eyes as Minho yelled at you, dumping his frustration on you, but that didn’t stop him.
“My performance is THIS Saturday and you couldn’t leave me alone!” Minho paced back and forth waving his arms around in emphasis.
“Baby just wanted to play,” you replied meekly as your voice quivered and cracked.
“Play? PLAY! Of course, you do! ‘Big Brother play with me.’ Grow up! You stupid annoying brat!” Minho fumed. Tears now fell freely down your cheeks as you hopped off the bed, running out of the room and sobbing loudly.
“YOU DIDN’T EVEN CLOSE THE DOOR!” Minho’s voice echoed through the empty house as he slammed the door shut. The loud impact vibrated loudly through the house as the walls shook violently from it.
Minho slumped in his bed rubbing his face roughly with his hand. His head was pounding and throbbing painfully. He quickly popped a painkiller and chugged down some water passing out on his bed.
The music was still blaring loudly.
You sniffled to yourself as you sat in the soft grass in your backyard. Your small hands reach up and wiped away every stray tear. You couldn’t really blame your big brother. The dance recital was important to him after all. He and his eight friends spent so much time perfecting their routine. You stood up with wobbly legs as you walked forward to pick up your red cherry ball. You looked up to the sky, your little arms blocking out the sun from your eyes. It was extra hot today and you didn’t want to play in the sun, but big brother told you that you couldn’t play ball inside because there are stuff that can break.
You looked at the shaded portion of your backyard. The large tree provided the perfect cool spot for you to play ball in. The problem was it was right by the large pool your family owned. Your big brother and his friends like playing in the pool. Every time your big brother would tell you to not play by the pool or you might accidentally fall in. So big brother’s friend, Mr. Woojin, would pull you off to the side to play ball with you.
You didn’t want to disobey your big brother, but it was too hot to play in the sun and you really wanted to play ball.
“Baby be careful,” you nodded to yourself proudly. “Baby big now.”
You giggled to yourself as you rolled the ball towards the shade, your little legs running after it. You really enjoy throwing the ball up in the air and running to catch it. Sometimes you would throw it towards the fence giggling how it would bounce back towards you. This time however, when you threw the ball up, you wanted to see how high you can throw it, so you can show your big brother how big and strong you’ve gotten later. You threw the ball upwards with too much of an arch, the ball not coming back straight down at you. The ball travelled in an arc as it bounced and rolled into the pool.
You whined seeing your ball in the water. You wanted to call for your big brother to come get the ball for you, but you didn’t want to get yelled at again. You stood a couple steps away from the edge staring at your red ball assessing the distance. You tilted your head slightly underestimating how far it really was.
“Baby can get it,” you whispered. “Baby big.”
You kneeled down at the edge of the pool as your small fingers reach for the ball. You leaned as far as you could, but the ball was just out of reach. You leaned forward, cheering gleefully a bit when your fingers brush against the ball. Your celebration was cut short as you lost your balance falling into the deep end of the pool.
Water surrounded you as you flail your arms in desperation to keep your head up above the water.
“BIG-” you choked and sputtered as water enter your mouth.
Panic wracked through your small form as you continue to sink. Your dire efforts merely hastened your sinking. Desperate for air, your body inhaled-- the water rushed into your body through your nose, through your mouth filling your lungs. Your lungs burned and your limbs get heavier as your world becomes dark.
Minho groaned as he stirred in his sleep. Multiple knocking could be heard echoing through the house. The knocking were firm and in a frenzy. Minho sat up, rubbing his face his headache now a dull ache. Minho rolled off the bed as the knocking persisted.
“Alright, alright. I’m coming,” Minho called out groaning out loud.
Minho trudged down the stairs yawning to himself when he felt himself sobering up from his fatigue when he heard faint sirens outside.
“Why are the authorities here?” Minho whispered to himself.
Minho opened the front door as the knocking continued, his free hand combing through his bed head. Before him was an officer.
“Can I… help you?” Minho gulped as unease wracked through his form.
“LET ME GO!” Minho yelled out punching and kicking at the men holding down his arms and leg.
“Sedate!” One of the men called out. “Sedate him!”
The nurse in the background panically grabbed at a syringe and a bottle.
“STOP! I need to save my sister!” Minho sobbed, tears falling freely down his face. He could hear the water splashing in his ears, he could hear you screaming for help, he could see your small body being taken under. “I need to save...I need to save her.”
Minho felt his heart shatter and get crushed to fine dust. His stance noticeably stiffen as his breath hitch. His eyes were wide as he stared directly at the officer in front of him.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he started off giving his condolences patting Minho’s shoulder. “But your sister was found dead in your backyard po-”
“YOU’RE LYING,” Minho accused in his face, leaning forward. His face soured as tears came out in waterfalls.
“Sir-” the officer started, trying to calm down sobbing man.
“You’re lying,” Minho’s voice now weak. “You’re lying...Baby is a good girl, she wouldn’t be by the pool.”
“I’m sorry, but it appeared she tried to reach for her ball.”
Minho fell to his knees, his entire body wracked and shaking with sobs. You loved your ball. But, Minho still in denial that you would go by the pool even though he told you many times not to. The officer crouched down to try and give the poor boy some peace of mind, only for Minho to grab at the officer’s collar roughly.
“You’re lying,” Minho accused. “This is some sick joke, isn’t it? Well it isn’t funny,” Minho dryly chuckled.
“Sir-” the officer grabbed at Minho’s wrists.
“Who put you up to this?” Minho threatened, his spit splattering the officer’s face. “Was it Jisung, hmm? Where’s Seungmin?”
Minho released the officer and stood up abruptly side stepping him.
“COME OUT! I know you’re hiding somewhere recording this, Kim! I’m going to fuck..ing,” Minho trailed off as he took a good look at his surroundings. Police cars and an ambulance were at his front door step with the paramedics and other officers looking at him in pity. Straight ahead, dead center was a gurney with a child sized body bag with your mom curled up on the sidewalk sobbing as your father stood above her rubbing her back sobbing as well.
“No...” Minho breathed out as his voice failed him.
That’s when he realized. It was not a joke.
It was reality.
I’m so sorry.
Minho sprinted forward towards the bag, pushing aside his parents who’s trying to consolidate him. Your name tore through his throat still holding onto his denial that you were gone. He needed to see if it was really you.
It’s all my fault.
Minho ignored the shouts telling him to stop, that he wouldn’t want to see it.
But he had to know.
With trembling hands, he reached up for the zipper and hesitantly pulled it down revealing your soaked figure. Despite being drenched to the bone and your skin paled of the life you once had at you, your unmoving figure looked to be at peace.
That broke Lee Minho completely.
Minho belted out an ugly scream filled with despair and raw emotion of heartbreak and regret and self loathing. Minho sobbed as he collapsed over your deceased body with his head resting on your chest. Your cold unmoving chest as your heart would never beat again.
It’s all Big Brother’s fault.
I killed you.
#stray kids#skz#stray kids lee know#skz lee know#stray kids angst#lee know#lee minho#stray kids imagines#not proofread#today we die like MEN
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Hello there! I couldn't help but notice that salty anon asking about your stance on Levi so I'll ask again because it sure sounds interesting! Do you mind telling us how you feel about him?
Okay, so the original question from a dumb hater was how I could even support a romantic ship between Eren and Levi if I am not a Levi fan*.
*If a ”Levi fan”, like that idiotic anon meant, is someone who excuses all of Levi’s bad behaviors, then no, I am not a fan.
Premise no.1: I’ve loved Levi for so many years, he’s been part of my twitter handle in the past, is in my Tumblr url, icons on various social media, I have a lot of merchandise and not only for “the sake of the ship”. I genuinely used to love him to the point that he was my favorite character alongside Eren, I couldn’t pick one. So I guess I am a bit of a fan, after all.
Premise no.2: I am a gigantic bag of salt about this topic so tread carefully if you’re easily offended. I won’t sugarcoat my VERY BIASED opinions, and if you strongly disagree, that’s perfectly fine. I won’t change my opinion with the information we currently have, because this isn’t a gut reaction I spent two seconds on, I actually soul searched (lol) for the reasons as to why I felt so negatively about Levi. He was my fave, and I felt deeply hurt and confused and frustrated, so I thought long and hard about it. I am open to change my mind if anything else comes out of him in the future.
Also, I have already spent a lot of words on how I feel about Levi’s character as of late, here, here, and here, here, here and here for example, also here and here (I haven’t exactly been silent about it lol) but let me reiterate it into one incomplete post. It’s really freaking long, and a wall of text at it. I don’t expect people to put up with this messy rant, but suit yourself if you want to.
@ the people who sent these new questions almost a month ago, I’m sorry this isn’t the reply you hoped for. If you guys want a more positive take on this, just look through my ereri meta tag.
Levi as a character can be simplified in 3 points, in my opinion: 1) the deep, caring feelings he has for his comrades and as such the responsibility he feels for them and their deaths; 2) his violent side and how he resorts to violence to solve situations. These 2 merge together into 3) what used to be his main goal, free humanity. He lent his strength (that at times he uses for violence/to get his way) to the cause: helping in freeing humanity inside the walls because the sense of freedom is worth everything.
So, harsh opinion: I believe he has lost sight of his goal – as Isayama has stated in the past even though I didn’t wanna believe it because it made zero sense and cheapened everything I loved about Levi – and he has fallen back into his worst behaviors. Add to that a lack of active presence and engagement in the actual story, and you get this predictable, background character that I can’t for the life of me enjoy currently. Because apparently, he forgot how to live on his own without Erwin’s guidance (and here I’d have another bag of salt to pour but this would get too long, and I don’t have the patience to word it in a way that wouldn’t bring me the ire of his fans).
I don’t know if Levi is really supposed to be seen this way, but at least to me, the focus has been mostly on this: his anger/violence/flaws, and his lack of involvement.
I never liked the way he resorted to violence to “resolve” not life-or-death situations or simply to vent his frustrations, in the first place. It’s something Eren had to let go of, he was rewarded when he used his wits, abandoning pure rage for the sake of revenge, and it’s always been Isayama’s intention, imo, to show as much with the story in general and with Levi as well, as Levi has never been rewarded for it either.
So, witnessing his character revert AGAIN to kicks and straight-up sadism, as a fan, has been a big disappointment. Then, the shift of his goal because “saving humanity” wasn’t Erwin’s goal, after all, has been another point of disappointment – but this happened way before the current arc. His obsession with “making the dead soldiers’ sacrifices worth it” can be commendable, but the way he’s going about it is totally blind and dictated by anger and loss of hope, in a way, so I don’t see it as something positive either. He lacks vision, he lacks a voice in the things that are happening around him as if he doesn’t care whatever happens to all of them, as long as he can make Zeke suffer and kill him. I know it’s not totally the case, because we have seen (and I want to believe) that he still cares about his comrades who are still alive, as seen during the battle in Liberio and his reticence at following direct orders to kill Eren, but at the same time, the obsession with “repaying the lives of the dead” is making him being absolutely heartless for the sake of his “hope” (like, I’m paraphrasing here but he literally went “let’s go to war again and let Historia become a shifter if she so wants to, who cares, more deaths, yay”), though he himself doesn’t seem to care about hope and freedom and all this stuff that much anymore, or he would’ve spoken up about the mess Paradis and Hange were throwing themselves into, like Eren did.
Another point of dissatisfaction is that it seemed to me like he was forming stronger bonds with the 104th and he was becoming better at voicing his opinions without becoming violent, but I guess he either regressed, or I always read him wrong. His violence in 114 was downright revolting to me, I felt nauseous and, in a way, I’m glad he got k.o’ed. It put a stop to his metaphorical downfall, at least — I see post-timeskip Levi as a cheapened, worsened, “hyperfocused-on-just-one-side-of-him” version of the Levi I used to love in earlier arcs and he was only getting worse, imo.
And, as a special mention re: his violence and his relationship with Eren… It was interesting to observe how he slowly changed in regards to Eren, learning how to lift him up and get the best out of and for him, caring about and paying attention to Eren’s emotional state when no one could or would. It was also very interesting how he opened up to Eren just because he wanted to help him, always, from the beginning. THAT’S what really made me fall for the ship and for Levi.
Also, he thought that violence wasn’t the answer with Eren, and I guess I can excuse him for his behavior in Shiganshina because it was a charged challenge of sort for every character. But he really did think that nobody could make Eren submit with violence, yet he’s the one who tried to do exactly that as soon as they met again in ch.105. I was so disappointed that their relationship seemed to have regressed so much, I kept being hopeful only because of his face/words after the kick: he felt betrayed and saddened by Eren, so it meant he still cared deeply about him. And yeah, he does, but the reasons are also partially…bad.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe he cares about Eren as a person, the boy he met and decided to protect all those years ago, but now saving Eren has become deeply intertwined with saving his last remaining goal: making it up to the dead soldiers (and I’ve already explained why I think it’s not a “positive” goal). And it’s unfair and a skewed view, imo, because Eren really didn’t have much to do with every single death. But I think it’s Levi being desperate about it all, he clings to it or he’d lose it if he had to, um, reconsider his current mindset. He’s like…grasping at straws, I feel. Like he was doing with Erwin when Erwin revealed his true colors. Levi ended up reconsidering his own ideals and goals, back then, but in a bad way (he had no goals of his own, he just blindly followed Erwin, who cares about humanity, right? Even though he seemed to care oh so much before).
I guess it’s the downfall of the “Hero”. @/Isayama, was this necessary? Is this entertaining? I am personally not a fan of this, there were so many ways to challenge Levi’s belief & trust in Eren, and to still have Levi be an active player. This just feels like a cheap way to get him out of the picture and turn him into a really secondary character. He doesn’t feel like a main player in this arc.
So long story short, I’m very disappointed in his development. I was willing to go along with it in the hopes that it would be leading us to something very interesting and it seemed it could go into a good direction as I stated here. But when he seemed to be confirmed basically dead (literally, or anyway when it comes to his importance in current events), I’ve kind of lost all hope in regards to his character, and I felt so done about it. He is either gonna stay this way, or there’s gonna be some small, cheap, background-ish closure (though atm I fail to see how, seeing as the story is about to end) and if that’s the case, I fail to comprehend the purpose of his arc, then. I don’t think his is an unreasonable development, I just fail to see how the direction Isayama has decided to “develop” him in has any relevance to the story and its themes, as he used to be a major player with some good-ass, relevant presence in the story. As I said in some posts I linked above, Isayama may have lost motivation to develop Levi any further and dropped it from the “main players” roaster, probably when he decided to change Levi’s motivations halfway through the story (because yes, the problems I have with Levi started towards the end of Uprising).
I used to be a great Levi fan, if my username and icon are anything to go by, and I still like him when I reread some parts as I stated elsewhere, because I really, really love when he interacts with the 104th or like, with his subordinates or even Hange. It’s fun to watch and even cute, when he’s not being a violent arsehole. So it’s really a shame that it’s come to this.
And yeah, I’m sure some people may have noticed already, but the ereri content on my blog has become quite scarce, S3 and the shitfest that went down there in regards to Eren&Levi parts also dampened my hype for the ship, my dissatisfaction with Levi’s character and the way his interactions (or lack thereof) with Eren went recently just pissed me off. But I loved this ship for like 5 years, I’m attached to it, and I am capable of separating the good parts of it from the bad ones (though it’s become increasingly difficult). And most importantly, I still love the way their canon relationship was developed up until before the serum bowl. Almost nothing has happened with them since then, so that’s why I was still really hyped for the next 2 years, but recently, and with Levi’s return, I’ve just grown more frustrated and bored with it.
After all, I fell in love with the romantic fanon ship BECAUSE the canon relationship was so interesting, had potential, and seemed to be going some incredibly cool directions, as both the characters seemed to be similar, had the same goals and understood each other on a basic level. It turned out to be almost nothing in the end, but alas.
So, how can I ship them if I don’t like one of them?
I still like Levi, especially when I reread the early arcs. This doesn’t mean I have to accept the worst sides of him that have apparently taken over his whole personality. His violence ISN’T a flaw I - or anyone, imo - should accept. Snoring IS a flaw we can/have to accept if we love someone. Violence is something that must be overcome. My annoyance with people implying they are better fans because they accept and embrace and excuse him and his violence, compared to those who don’t like that, is also a factor in my frustration. Understanding why exactly he’s the way he is is part of being a fan of a character, wishing for him to become a better person and ultimately letting go of toxic (yeah) acquired behaviors, imo, is better than defending and hyping them up. Some people even LOVE and WISH that violence will be his downfall because it’s violence for the sake of avenging [redacted] so it’s sooo romantic. lmao, ok. And I won't even get started about the ones who SERIOUSLY say that adult characters don't need to change, because I'm gonna start laughing for 3 hours straight. Dudes, there's not an age where you stop changing. If you stop trying bettering yourself at age XX, then I already know you're a shitty adult irl, goodbye.
Anyways, back on track. As I said in another post I may have linked above, I thought his encounter and resolution with Kenny would have amounted to something in this regards, since Levi used violence to get acknowledgment and to feel like he was “worth” something, imo, but it was only a set up for serumbowl. Wasted chance.
And I get it that violence is the way he was taught to deal with things, but 20 years have passed since then and he had a whole character arc in Uprising about opening up, trusting, feeling trusted in return, and feeling good and grateful and happy about that BECAUSE he was open with his squad and learned that it was better to use words rather than fists. So I thought he had grown out of it at least a bit. But I mean, there are other characters who have regressed or haven’t changed at all after their supposed character arc, and that dampened to a great degree the enjoyment of such characters for me (Historia, Ymir, Reiner), so whatever I guess? I can definitely see it’s something of a “cruel” way of storytelling Isayama really seems to like, maybe because he wants the characters to suffer. I guess you can’t have a story if all of your characters become better people and overcome their flaws…well, actually you can, but I guess Isayama doesn’t want this to be that kind of story.
But anyway, just to be clear, it also ties in with wanting the characters you love to better themselves and let go of things that ruin their lives or that have roots in trauma. Wouldn’t you want that for someone you love, even and especially in real life? So, if his violent tendencies have been portrayed as “wrong”, Bad Coping Mechanisms, and rooted in childhood trauma, why is it so frowned upon in this goddamn fandom to wish for him to let go of them, since it’s something that has caused him and characters around him pain or distress or downright failure. Overcoming these flaws would mean he’d feel better about himself, and others, and his past, etc. Why is it SO wrong to wish him the best? Lmao, I don’t get it.
So when his “real fans” be like “Levi’s violence is a part of him, you don’t love him for real if you can’t accept that part. anyway he’s perfect the way he is”, I’m like…that’s actually bullshit. I just want him to be a better person, just like I wanted to be a better person when I had detrimental (for me and for the people close to me) behaviors due to mental health stuff.
It’s not even on the same level of wanting him to stop being rude, that’s part of his charm. Violence…is not a cool personality trait, and it’s something you should want him to get over.
–
I still love lots of things that were shown in the manga in regards to Eren and Levi, so I don’t get why I should justify myself for liking them together just because I don’t like some parts of one of them. I still think some of Levi’s best personality traits came out when he interacted with Eren, and I like the Levi who cares about Eren the most. Hence why I ship the goddamn ship. That’s all there is to it, really. Here I talked about what I loved about their relationship, though now I feel like a bit of a hopeful fool.
#nobody will read this 10k words long rant but whatever#shingeki asks#salt#Levi#unnecessary post but it was a good chance at venting#I feel like I haven't even touched one of the main big reason#but I don't want to talk about e*win tbh#arekupacific
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With Great Power - Chapter 8
Title: With Great Power - Chapter 8
Word Count: 3474
Fic Summary: Thomas Sanders is just a regular social media personality. But when he gets bit by a spider during filming one of his YouTube videos, his whole life is about to turn upside down—whether he (or the aspects of his personality) want it to or not. Platonic LAMP/CALM + Character!Thomas. Spider-Man AU.
Catch up or Read on AO3 here!
Chapter Warnings: arguing, science that isn’t real science, arguing, violence/robbery/hostages mention, a couple of OCs make an appearance this chapter, let me know if I forgot anything.
A/N: It’s been a minute on this fic. Sorry for the delay! Always a joy to work on this fic, but real life was pretty busy for a while there. Special thanks to @creativenostalgiastuff for helping me out so much with this chapter. The science of this chapter is based in the lab notebook page we get a glimpse of in Spider-Man: Homecoming for Web Fluid 3.0. I found a picture of it online and used that as my baseline for the science of their development of this formula. I am not a chemical engineer. If you are, I beg for suspension of disbelief. Also.... please let me know what ya think! We’re starting to get more and more into character stuff, and I’m always interested in knowing how it’s coming across. ^u^ Love you all.
Three days later, Thomas makes his way down the hallway of the third level of the engineering building of his old college.
It had been a little odd being on campus so long after graduation. So much had changed from when he’d thought he’d be a chemical engineer; he’d gotten famous on Vine. He’d started YouTube as a full-time gig. He hadn’t done any chemical engineering work since his first job out of college, and he’d only done that for a few years. Thomas remembered the late coffee-fueled nights of studying in the library, the stupid adventures with friends for donuts at midnight, the tears shared over failed tests and where their lives would be going …
So much had changed for Thomas in the years since his graduation. The campus, however, seemed to be exactly the same except for a few updates to the old brick buildings he’d spent four years walking past.
Thomas approaches the lab down the hall and can hear music floating from under the wooden door. He’d sent the email to his old engineering professor, Dr. Washington, the same night that the Sides had given him the idea for the suit and webshooters. She’d responded the next morning, telling Thomas that she’d be doing research work with her lab assistant most of Wednesday and to drop by whenever he was free. Thomas spent most of the day in-between working with Logan to come up with some ideas for the formula, however incomplete it clearly was. At least he would have notes to give Dr. Washington as a starting place.
As Thomas raps a knuckle against the door, he can make out the suddenly familiar song. “And they’re gonna see what stop the presses really means! And the old will weep and go back to sleep—”
Thomas opens the door, smiling. “You’re listening to Newsies, Dr. Washington?”
The lab is relatively spacious; black tables are filled with various vials, beakers, and equipment that takes Thomas back to his own lab assistant days. The tiled linoleum floor reflects the fluorescent lights above. On the other side of the room, Thomas sees Dr. Washington—in a lab coat and goggles—look up at the sounds of his entry. Beside her is a man with blonde hair and glasses with something like a laser pointer attached, who looks a few years younger than Thomas, seated in an electric wheelchair.
She grins, sliding the goggles up over her cropped hair. “I told Andrew he could choose the music today.” She nods to the man beside her. “As long as it wasn’t Les Mis.”
Thomas laughs at the affronted look on Andrew’s face. He looks at a board attached to his wheelchair, and Dr. Washington leans over, reading. “I S-T-- still don’t know what you H-A-- have against L-E-S Les Mis.” She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Nothing, the first eighteen times we listened to it.”
Thomas smiles. “Only eighteen? Then you’re fine. When you get into like, the thirties is when you maybe consider listening to a different musical.”
Dr. Washington points a finger at him. “Don’t encourage him, Thomas. Having one thespian in my midst is enough. I feel outnumbered now.” Andrew looks at the board again and she leans over to read. “I like him. He G-E-- gets it.” Dr. Washington rolls her eyes. “Of course you do.”
Andrew and Thomas grin at each other.
Dr. Washington screws the lid onto a petri dish and scribbles something on it. She sets it aside. “I can’t win.” She pulls her gloves off and tosses them into the wastebasket underneath the lab table. “So what brings you in, Thomas? Your email was pretty vague.”
“Right. Well…” The internet personality swings his backpack around from his shoulder and unzips it, digging through it for his notebook. “I have a question about a hypothetical formula.”
“H-Y-P-- hypothetical?”
Thomas pulls the notebook out, flipping through it for the pages he’d been working on with Logan. “I—yeah. I was wondering if I combined salicylic acid, methanol, carbon tetrachloride, touline, H-heptane…” Thomas trails off as he flips through the pages before finding the one with the partial formula he’d been working on, stepping up to the other side of the lab table and setting the notebook open in front of them.
It’s a long moment as Thomas watches both them glance over his notes. Andrew furrows his brows in thought as Dr. Washington flips the single page back and forth. She looks up at Thomas.
Thomas jumps in before she can say anything. “It’s incomplete. I know it is. I’m just not sure what’s missing.”
“Well,” she says, tilting her head slightly as her dark eyes flit over the page, “that depends on what you’re trying to get this substance to do.”
Thomas rubs the back of his neck as he walks around the table to stand on the other side of Andrew. “I was wondering if it’s possible to create a flexible but strong adhesive… thing.”
Andrew’s looking at him with curiosity. Thomas glances down as Andrew uses the communication board, reading his question aloud. “Like a G-L-- glue?” Thomas sighs. “Not exactly. I… was hoping for something a lot stronger and more flexible than glue.”
Dr. Washington hums, tapping a pencil to her mouth. Her brows are furrowed in thought. “I may have an idea. But you’d need to add carbon tetrachloride and ethyl acetate to the list you’ve got here.”
Thomas nods, scribbling that under the list of other chemicals, not picking up his pencil as Andrew adds on.
“S-O-D-I-- sodium T-E-T-R-A-B-- tetraborate could work as an A-C-T-I-V-activator.”
Dr. Washington and Andrew spend the next ten minutes bouncing ideas off each other. Thomas scribbles down as many notes as he can. Dr. Washington starts bustling around the lab, grabbing chemicals and starting equipment up as she goes. Thomas studies the new list and equations they’ve developed, and he can feel Logan’s presence at the forefront of his mind like a comforting weight.
Add CC14, K3Co5 and C7H6O3 after you’ve boiled it, Logan tells him suddenly. It’ll help the consistency prior to adding the sodium tetraborate.
Thomas jots that down.
The three of them make themselves busy. Thomas grabs a lab coat and pair of safety goggles from the cabinet near the door. Dr. Washington hands Andrew an iPad, and he pulls up a software that Thomas isn’t familiar with and inputs a series of chemical equations. Dr. Washington swirls a clear liquid in a flask as she crosses the lab.
The hours pass by in a flurry of scientific trial and error. Andrew runs simulations on the iPad before they adjust the formula each time fails—something that Thomas is especially grateful for when the simulation for one particular change involves a small explosion. It hardly absolves them of error, every slight change resulting in something different. In some ways, it serves to remind Thomas one thing he loved about chemistry: it had always been precise and measured. One small change could lead to a very different reaction.
Even when Thomas can feel his frustration rising, Dr. Washington and Andrew make him laugh. Andrew’s nerdiness rivals Thomas’s own, and Dr. Washington’s sarcasm seems to have continued in the years since Thomas had her for class. While they waited for the current fluid to boil, he and Andrew swapped opinions about Kingdom Hearts 3 and Marvel (with a healthy debate about Captain America’s arc in Endgame) and musicals.
“It’s a shame that Dr. Washington is a musical hater,” Thomas teases, being sure to speak loud enough that it was obvious he wanted the professor in question to hear.
Andrew shakes his head, tapping a few things on the iPad in his lap. Through the speakers in the lab, Thomas hears a familiar song that’s a quick change from the music of The Prom that they’d been listening to a moment ago. It’s Hairspray. Specifically, “Run and Tell That”.
Dr. Washington’s eyes flicker up across the room to the two of them. “Andrew, I will forever regret telling you that.”
Thomas raises his eyebrows. “Tell you what?” Andrew has an amused glint in his eyes as he meets Thomas’s gaze, then looks to his board. Thomas leans over. “She told me she was M-A-Y-- Maybelle in a C-O-M-M-- community theatre P-R-- production.” Thomas looks at his old professor. “Wait… really?”
Dr. Washington shoots a mock glare at Andrew. “Traitor.”
Andrew laughs before Thomas reads his reply aloud. “If any of us are a T-- traitor, it’s you. You hate L-E-S Les Mis.”
Dr. Washington pulls the pencil out from behind her ear and points it at him. “Of all the musicals we can agree on, Andrew, you’re going to get hung up on one that I just happen to think is overrated?” Andrew shakes his head sadly. Dr. Washington snorts.
“That’s amazing,” Thomas replies. “I never knew you did theatre.”
Dr. Washington opens her mouth to reply, but sharp ding cuts off her response. The timer signals the need to add the activator and start the de-gassing process. It’s a sudden, sharp reminder of what he’s here to do.
…
Thomas blows out a breath as he spins the office chair in a lazy circle. It’s nearly 7 in the evening, and Dr. Washington had gone with Andrew to pick up some dinner for the three of them. Thomas had offered to stay behind and watch their current attempt slowly heat in the flask. The internet personality had written in his notebook that this was trial fifteen.
The empty lab is suddenly quiet, too. Andrew had given Thomas the iPad to play music, but he hadn’t selected anything. Instead, Thomas listens to the quiet gurgling of the fluid in the flask on the table in front of him, the whirring of the AC unit, and a distant, muffled voice of a professor giving a lecture in a nearby room. Not for the first time today, it takes Thomas back to his own time as a student and lab assistant. It felt like such a long time ago.
He’d always been interested in the environment and helping the world on such a big scale. Throughout high school, Thomas used to read articles about scientists engineering new biotechnology that could help slow deforestation, or developing alternative substances to harmful pesticides, or creating more environmentally-friendly methods of gas consumption. He’d always found it interesting, and though he was generally a pretty average student, he’d done well in chemistry.
He remembers talking to his Aunt Patty before he chose a major, during his senior year of high school. She was an elementary school librarian, and she’d been doing that for as long as Thomas could remember. When he asked her how she knew what she wanted to do, she told him to find where his passion intersected with his ability and to pursue it.
But it hadn’t always been that simple, either. Thomas was as passionate about performing as he was about the environment at the time. There was greater job security in an engineering job than trying to make it as an actor, so Thomas had chosen chemical engineering and decided that he could keep performing as a hobby. It had seemed like the most practical solution at the time.
But then he was introduced to Vine, and what started as goofing around on a social media app quickly turned his life around. In a few years, Thomas decided to make performing and social media his full-time job once he realized he could actually make a living out of it. It had fixed the practicality issue, and his fans were so incredibly kind. He realized that, maybe, he could make a positive difference in the world this way, too.
Thomas sighs, standing up to stretch.
Making a positive difference in the world was really his biggest hope with anything he did. It was true when he was a chemical engineer, and it was true now.
Now.
The thought stops Thomas short suddenly. The video he’d watched the other day flickers through his mind again. The card. The entire reason he was here in the first place was to help others, right? But he thinks again about the video—the footage, the threat—and feels something uneasy settle in his stomach.
“We’re in way over our head, Thomas.”
Thomas jumps slightly. “What?” He’d been so lost in his roaming thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed that Virgil had risen up by one of the tables to Thomas’s left, in his familiar hoodie and a black shirt underneath. “What do you mean?”
Virgil shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, scowling. “I mean this isn’t our fight. Not really.”
Thomas blinks, taken aback. “I—”
“Look, Ekko made a threatening video but there are people in place to protect everyone. Police. Military, if it comes to that.” Virgil shakes his head, looking away from Thomas. “You just got these powers a few weeks ago. You can’t even control your sticking ability. And you really think you can just… take on this kind of fight?”
Thomas holds up a hand, his brow furrowing. “Virge… where is this coming from?”
“Common sense,” Virgil snaps. “Apparently, I’m the only one who has any of it.”
Thomas opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t know what to say. Maybe Virgil has a point. They don’t even really know what Ekko is capable of, or where to find her, or what she’s planning. Meanwhile, Thomas can’t even fully control his own abilities. He’d been getting better, sure, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet. Maybe not in time.
And there were people in place to help protect others. Thomas was just one guy.
He’s pulled out of his thoughts at the sound of another one of his Sides rising up. Patton appears on the other side of the table, his arms crossed over his chest and a vaguely disapproving look in his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas thinks he sees Virgil roll his eyes.
“Kiddo,” Patton says to Virgil carefully, even as he casts a quick glance at Thomas, “you’re coming across kinda harsh there.”
“But I’m right,” Virgil replies insistently. He huffs a frustrated sigh. “Listen, all Thomas is doing is putting himself in harm’s way when he doesn’t even need to. Why not leave this up to the authorities?”
Patton’s expression softens slightly. “Because Thomas has the ability to do something. He should use it.”
“Why? Just because someone can doesn’t always mean that someone should, Patton.”
It’s another good point. Thomas still doesn’t quite understand why Virgil was coming forward with these arguments now as opposed to earlier, but he supposes it doesn’t much matter. Maybe because Virgil felt that the web shooter formula made the whole thing feel a lot more real and sudden. Thomas certainly felt that way. Maybe that feeling was stemming from Virgil.
“It does if it means doing a good thing,” Patton insists.
Virgil seems to bristle slightly. “If a cat is stuck in a tree and you don’t know how to climb a tree, what do you do? You call the fire department. You don’t risk hurting yourself in an effort to get the cat yourself when you aren’t qualified to do it.”
“But Thomas can climb a tree.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“I know, but even in the metaphor. Thomas has abilities, Virge.”
“So that makes him qualified to get involved?” Virgil stops for a moment and takes a deep breath. Some of the edge is gone from his voice when he speaks again, but the underlying frustration hasn’t left. “Thomas is in over his head. And I don’t want him to get hurt tackling a fight that isn’t his in the first place. Sometimes you have to pick your battles, Patton. Why does Thomas have to choose this one?”
The question is met with silence.
Thomas slips his hands into the pockets of his jeans and glances down at the linoleum floor between his feet. He studies the specks of blue amidst the white as if it will distract him from the tension in the room. The web fluid gurgling in the flask on the table between the three of them is the only sound for a long, uncomfortable moment. Virgil’s question seems to echo in Thomas’s head.
When Thomas finally glances up, Patton is looking at Virgil with something soft in his eyes. “Because it’s the one given to us. Maybe we don’t get to pick the battles, kiddo. Maybe… we lost that luxury when Thomas got these powers.”
“That’s not fair.”
Patton sighs. “It’s not. But with great power, comes great responsibility.”
Thomas swallows and nods. He speaks quietly, despite the weight he can feel settling in his chest. “And it’s my responsibility to do what I can to help. I… have to at least try.” He glances up at Virgil. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t give it that much.”
Thomas can see the tightness in Virgil’s jaw; something he can’t place flashes quickly through his eyes. “It’s not just Thomas at stake, you know. If he gets involved, he puts everyone he loves at risk. None of us want that.”
The reminder squeezes something in Thomas’s chest. “That’s why we’re making the suit, Virgil. To protect me and my loved ones.”
Even as he says it, though, he realizes Virgil’s point. The suit would only do so much. He looks around in the lab and realizes suddenly that he was putting Dr. Washington and Andrew at risk by involving them like he had. He’d almost asked Dahlia about advice on his suit construction and no matter how vague he’d been planning to keep it, it was still involving her. It was still putting her at risk, putting everyone at risk.
He had to stop. Nobody could know his identity, but nobody could be involved in this fight, either. Not unless Thomas was willing to risk his friends’ lives, and that… that wasn’t a price Thomas would ever be willing to pay.
“This… is my fight,” Thomas says, his voice tight. Patton and Virgil both look over at him. “But it’s mine alone. After today, nobody else gets involved. I can’t…” Thomas thinks about the look of raw fear in the hostages’ eyes during the bank robbery and the tearful, desperate reunion between Mikey and his mother. “I can’t take that risk.”
He sees Virgil opens his mouth but he’s cut off by the ding of the timer beside Thomas. The host blinks a second, forgetting for a brief moment what the timer had been set for in the first place. Then his gaze focuses on the flask in front of him. Right, Thomas remembers suddenly. Web fluid.
The timer meant that he needed to take it off the heat. Cool it down—which would occur quickly—filter and wash with C12H8O2, then add silica gel to purify the substance and… theoretically, it would be complete.
The rest of the process would take about five minutes. And then, well… Thomas could leave. He could keep Andrew and Dr. Washington from knowing the final product and maybe that would help protect them. When Thomas looks up again from the flask, Virgil and Patton have both left.
Thomas stands alone in the lab and keeps himself busy for the next several minutes walking methodically through the rest of the process. He can’t help his quick glances at the clock and the door, silently pleading that Andrew and Dr. Washington are at least longer than five minutes away. Thomas works in silence, but he barely realizes it. He just wants to finish this and get out as fast as he can.
He adds the silica gel and stirs it quickly with a glass rod. He can’t help the bubble of disbelieving laughter that bubbles in his chest as he watches the fluid react to the purifying process and oxidation, attaching to the glass rod as he pulls it out. The substance forms a cloudy-colored web of adhesion. It stays attached as Thomas tries to pull the glass rod out. It’s strong. So strong, in fact, that Thomas can’t pull it out.
Thomas grabs the other flask of the same substance that they’d had on stand-by (in case Thomas had been wrong about the filter liquid or the silica gel), and pours it into a vial with a stopper. He stashes some silica gel and C12H8O2 in separate vials. He shoves them into the outside pocket of his backpack before quickly shedding his lab coat.
Before he races out of the lab, he leaves a note and enough change to cover the dinner he wouldn’t be eating.
Had to rush out. Thanks for the help. -Thomas
...
WGP Tags: @captain-loki-xavier, @human-dictionary @the-peculiar-bi-tch
@mining-pup @band-be-boss-blog @asexual-trashbag @samathekittycat
@why-should-i-tell-youu2 @theobsessor1 @always3charcoaltea @changeling-ash @logical-princey @crimsonshadow323 @flickering-raven @smokeyrutilequartz @dontbugmeimantisocial @liz-a-bell @black-king-white-knight @soijusthavetoask @analogical-mess @marvelfangeek09 @dolphidragon @thelowlysatsuma @approximately12lbs-of-ducks, @princelogical
#sanders sides#sanders sides au#sanders sides fanfiction#platonic lamp/calm#spider-man au#with great power#tw arguing
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Hi, I'm the anon who wrote the 5 asks about the Dany plotline and GRRM. I'd like to apologize to u for lashing out, it was uncalled for and u have every right to state those opinions regardless of what I (or anyone else) think. Feeling hurt by the show wrt Dany's story made me react badly to the idea that it was actually acceptable, especially coming from someone whose ideas I appreciate so much and have spent hours invested on. You can answer them, delete them, idk, I just wanted to say sorry.
No need to apologize, anon! I’m currently on semi-to-full hiatus and that’s why I’m being so slow at answering messages—and yeah, I understand the frustration completely, and I don’t blame you for it. ;))
I’m going to answer your ask anyway. Long reply after the cut:
I hope this doesn’t come off as offensive or confrontational bc that’s not the point, I’ve enjoyed reading your ASOIAF/GoT and TB metas for years and would not reply to them if I weren’t invested on them. That said, I’d like to ask why do you insist on 1) arguing that Dany’s dark turn was reasonable if you don’t hate her and 2) defending D&D and blaming GRRM for what happened on the show. When it comes to 1), sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented (in that she had the choice to not kill anyone but did). You argue that that direction was valid of because of the recurring theme of how power corrupts, but then I’d argue, what if it were Sansa, another character very much involved in the world of politics? Would you be ok if people argued that it’d make sense for her to give up her ideals and become just as power-hungry and cynic and bitter as Littlefinger? Probably not; what’s the point if those characters become their worst possible selves? Dany was made a villain, was implied to be mad and was called “your satanic majesty”. I really can’t see how you could call those writing decisions valid. When it comes to 2), I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.
The reason why I maintain that the show’s ending is a (badly written) version of GRRM’s ending is that I can 100% see Martin’s blueprint in the climax+anticlimax structure of the season. The way it twists the audience’s expectations and delves into what happens AFTER the final battle is won, the way it subverts the most reliable narrative conventions and, instead of building up in a crescendo towards a final spectacle where the heroes would sacrifice their lives to save the world in a blaze of glory, it shifts gears almost unpleasantly, slows down to show what happens to them once their heroic purpose is fulfilled and zooms in on their identity crisis, their depression and isolation and sudden lack of purpose… it’s all too deliberate, and IN MY PERSONAL OPINION it’s done with a vision in mind—something I don’t believe d&d would spontaneously put any effort in, especially not if GRRM had already served them a perfectly fine, crowd-pleasing endgame involving Dany’s heroic sacrifice against the Others.
I understand my stance might come across as “defending d&d and blaming GRRM”, but I’m really not? I’ve often repeated how I believe d&d messed things up and that GRRM’s version will make infinitely more sense and be infinitely better written, and I’m sure he will avoid the pitfalls of cynical, circular storytelling, because he’s ultimately a better writer and someone who believes in idealism and true heroism even as he deconstructs it. How can the overall narrative remain uplifting & give a message of hope and faith for humanity while still telling a story that ends with Dany’s descent into “true villainy” (but haven’t we repeated ad nauseam that heroes and villains are too reductive categories for asoiaf?), I don’t know, but it’s not my job to figure it out, and I ultimately trust & respect Martin’s vision and ability to tell the story HE wants.
sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented
1) I’ve always conceded that, while I think the gist of the storyline is Martin’s, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the battle of King’s Landing will go as we’ve seen in the show, or even happen at the same point of the story (for one thing, Young Griff & JonCon will probably be involved, and that seems more likely to happen before, and not after, the war for the dawn);
2) That said, what I’m relatively confident of, at this point, is that Dany will NOT die in the WftD as a self sacrificial hero (this is entirely FANON SPECULATION, and people treating it like a fixed point in the universe, something the narrative is “inevitably” building towards, is one of the reasons the fandom seems unable to critically analyze show!Dany’s evolution without going hysterical about it and resorting to no true scotsman arguments. I’ve often complained about the dangers of elevating fan theories to canon status, and trust me I never wanted to go full cassandra about this, but here we are). The details and plot points leading up to this might be wildly different from the show’s version, but I think Dany will survive the WftD, which will leave her directionless and purposeless and doubting the truth of her heroic destiny for the first time in her life after she hatched the dragons, and that she’ll cross the ultimate moral horizon in a hail mary to restore that sense of self, that sense of purpose, completing her parabola from princess in rags, to breaker of chains, to conqueror, to savior of humanity, to conqueror again, to TRAGIC HERO. How can this be a valid writing decision, you asked—well, why shouldn’t it? Is something only valid as long as it pleases the audience? What screams tragic hero more than the hero turning into the very thing she swore to eradicate, and realizing it only when it’s too late? There’s something genuinely chilly in Dany’s “if I look back, I’m lost” refrain. This is the mantra of someone who thinks the only way to stay alive is to cross one threshold after the other. So far this coping mechanism has brought her higher, and higher, and higher. But what if it will be her downfall? “I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell”, indeed;
3) Dany’s burning KL *accidentally* is like Stannis burning Shireen “but only if the circumstances are dire enough / the stakes are high enough”. No offense, but this is typical stan logic: you admit the possibility that your faves might go through a dark phase but you don’t want to have to unstan them, so you want them to do bad things for good reasons, or because there’s no other choice, or because “they didn’t know”. That’s understandable, but I don’t think Martin is the type of writer to give his character free passes or soften the blow of their moral crucibles like that. This is NOT to say that the show did Dany’s dark turn WELL, because it DIDN’T—her motivations were all over the place, the turning point (the bells) wasn’t believable because it lacked connection to her character arc, the narrative backed away from showing the attack from her pov which betrays the writers’ inability to make sense of this psychological downfall from HER perspective, etc. But to say “Dany will NEVER! BURN! INNOCENTS! ON PURPOSE!” sounds very, very premature to me.
(re: Sansa, hasn’t power corrupted her too, to an extent? Hasn’t she lied, schemed, manipulated, spilled secrets, in order to restore & secure the Stark hold on the North? Isn’t she queen, in part, because the rest of her family was scattered at the four corners of the known world? I’m not particularly happy with the way she was written this season, and I think some of her choices were questionable; but at the same time I reject the idea that a character ending up more flawed, or morally ambiguous, or less likeable than they were at the beginning must necessarily be bad storytelling)
I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.
Martin is not responsible of the show’s writing, but he is responsible of the outline he gave to the showrunners, and right now I have no reason to believe they didn’t follow it, at least for the most part. For years I’ve been told that “the show is not the books”, and while that’s certainly true, I can’t, and won’t, separate the show from the books when it comes to book speculation, because the show is still for all intents and purposes an ADAPTATION of the book series, and while it’s irresponsible to expect it to be a 1:1 transcription of what will happen in TWOW and ADOS, it’s also equally (imo) irresponsible to act like the two canons have nothing to do with each other and that it’s stupid to use the show as a resource for book speculation. If people want to pretend the show never happened, good for them, but that’s not the way I think, personally. I don’t blame GRRM for the show’s faults, and my reservations are actually 90% about the EXECUTION of the plot which is ENTIRELY on d&d, but there’s a 10% of my concerns that is about the IDEA in itself, regardless of context and execution—the idea of the story ending with a bittersweet anticlimax involving the death/downfall of the MOST PROMINENT FEMALE HERO OF THE SERIES, who is also the carrier of the most subversive anti-establishment political message in the story.
tldr: I’m not criticizing GRRM for what he hasn’t written yet, but I can certainly criticize him for what I think is a (however botched) adaptation of his outline, if the main selling points of said outline are questionable in themselves. No one can convince me that GRRM told d&d that Jon and Dany would die heroically to save the world and they ARBITRARILY decided to fuck it up for shock value or whatever, and just accidentally stumbled onto a more subversive and provocative ending than what Martin HIMSELF was planning. (that would make them two geniuses, even if the execution sucked, lol)
and if i’m wrong about it, well:
but until then…
#anon#asks#got wank#got asks for ts#got discourse#got finale#got negativity#show vs books#dany discourse#dany**#grrm#asoiaf spec#asoiaf endgame
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BNHA Fic: Blink! Ch. 21
Read Ch. 20 | Masterlist
SPOILER ALERT: This dives into the Redemption Arc and the spar where Midoriya finds something new about his quirk.
With the commotion calmed down three days later, classes resumed as is for the heroes in training. Ren popped by the Support Department after class to pick up her bangles. It took Hatsumei a lot longer to figure out the schematics since it’s not one of her creations. She had to do a lot of research and tweaking based on the upgrades Ren wanted. Loosely grasping her now crimson red with chrome gray striped bangles, her hands shook with excitement in wanting to try them out.
And tonight was a solo training session with Bakugou. He was already in his winter gym uniform and looked irritated upon entering Void.
��Something the matter, Bakkun?��
“Stupid Deku and his–” He immediately stopped and held his tongue, realizing he almost let slip of their secret.
“His…?”
“Idiot asked me to spar and decided last minute he wasn’t up for it,” he covered up. She gave him a suspicious hum of her voice and didn’t press him on it. Adjusting the bangles on her wrist, Ren flexed her hands and stretched them out.
“You got your weapon back?” Bakugou asked while stretching his legs.
“Two point oh beta, baby,” she boasted and flashed the new accessories at him with a toothy grin. “Made some adjustments from the original, but I won’t use all of them tonight.”
“What, you think I’m not good enough for you to use it?” the spiky ash blond boy spoke with a tone of offense.
“Now, now,” she soothed. “You never reveal all your cards in poker, right?”
“I’ve never played,” he flatly answered and crossed his arms.
Ren tapped her bangles together and it formed her usual T-batons. Testing the weight of it, she threw one at Bakugou and caught it successfully. His eyes then widened a bit after feeling it in his hands.
“This has gotta be, what, 11-12 kilograms?” he estimated. “You fight with this?”
“I asked Hatsume to up the weight capacity on it from 4.5 kg so I can hit harder aerial attacks, but not lag my speed when I use my quirk.”
“So you can use gravity and fall momentum to up the damage for you,” he figured out. “Surprisingly clever, even for someone like you.”
“Was that an insulting compliment coming from the great Lord Explosion Murder?” Ren taunted, holding her hand up to her ear. Sero and Kaminari mentioned in passing about their hero names.
“Shut up, dumb ass.” He smirked and threw one of the batons back at her, to which she caught effortlessly. “We gonna do this?”
“Tonight’ll be good practice for you to fight against weapons.”
Ren twirled her baton a few times to get the feel for it and got into position. She put the ends together to form the staff.
Bakugou readied himself by popping off a few explosions in his palm. His opponent launched herself at him as he barely managed to get his guard up on time; his right arm trembling from the impact of her staff. Shaking it off, he knew he had to get a leg up on her in the offensive before she strikes again. Not letting him get the advantage, she lunged at him and the two were locked in close quarter combat, exchanging blows.
As long as they’ve started this sparring deal, the ash blond spiky boy noticed she’s begun to take more of the initiative to get the first hit thanks to his and half-and-half’s constant drilling. Her old hit-and-run style annoyed him to no end only because he couldn’t get a clean hit on her. But when he did, oh boy, did he feel good about it. Not only did she have good reflexes and awareness, she had a foresight advantage over him based on her maneuverability.
In short, Bakugou couldn’t helped but be impressed by Ren.
She was strong.
And a tough opponent to take down.
With Ren coming at him again with another attack, he timed his Stun Grenade in hopes of throwing her rhythm off, only to see her vault above him in an instant with the help of her staff. Smirking from above, she used the smoke from his attack as camouflage and suddenly felt his legs swept from below him with something solid upon the gray veil dissipating. Falling straight on his back with a thud, the R.A. shifted her knee to his chest with one end of her staff pointed at his face. She looked down at him with a triumphant smirk.
“You really know how to make a girl sweat,” she panted out and got off of him.
Bakugou, not wanting to let this chance go to waste, grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her down on the floor. Knocking the wind out of her from her stomach, he managed to pin her down both her wrists with his knee putting moderate pressure on the small of her back in one swift move. Her staff rolled away from reach.
He leaned in dangerously close to her from behind, catching a whiff of the faint green apple shampoo mixed in with perspiration. Dark crimson eyes stared deeply at her side profile.
He softly spoke into the shell of her ear, “If you’re gonna get me down like that, at least finish the job.”
Releasing her from his grip, he got off and reached his hand down for her to grab. Accepting the gesture, Bakugou pulled Ren up with a bit too much strength and ended up having her directly onto his body for cushioning. She could practically feel every developed muscle on his chest. They were definitely much more chiseled than Todoroki’s.
“If you’re gonna cop a feel, at least treat me to some food first,” he teased, prompting her to quickly get off of him with a look that made her press her lips thinly into a line and lightly blushed. Deciding to distract herself from his commentary, she walked off to pick up her weapon to revert them back.
Ren glanced over at her sweaty sparring partner curiously. Feeling her eyes on him, he looked at her in confusion.
“What?”
“Can you… make explosions anywhere else on your body?”
“My quirk can only be activated in the palms of my hands.” He looked down at his left land. “Which is why I have storage items with my hero costume when I need that extra firepower.”
“Oh. I was thinking if you were able to ignite the other sweat glands in your body, your X-Catapult attack would be so much more overwhelming,” Ren thought aloud, remembering when he tried out the new move on her during one of their spars. “Maybe Support can build you an item, like a jet pack to up your mobility?”
“You’re yammerin’ on like target-eyed tech geek,” he noted with a cocked eyebrow.
“Well,” she shoved her hands into her pockets. “I did originally apply to U.A. for Support and General Studies.”
“Huh?” Bakugou’s ears perked up like he was hard of hearing. This person, who he acknowledged as strong wasn’t gunning for the hero course from the start? “You’re joking, right?”
“I was in a different mindset at the time,” she lightly chuckled with an embarrassed expression and scratched her nose bridge. “I thought my quirk would be applied more practically there. But Aizawa-sensei and a few of the examiners got me in the hero’s course through their recommendations based on my exam performance.”
“Because you tried beating up three pro-heroes when were a bratty kid?”
Ren let out a hearty laugh at the memory and lightly shrugged.
“Maybe they saw potential. Who knows?”
Rotating her right shoulder to get rid of a knot, she tapped her bangles again and they formed into T-batons again. She turned her head with a curl of her lips, as if she was planning something devilish.
“Go again?”
“We’re just getting started.”
After another hour of sparring, the two exited the Void and ended up back in Ren’s room. Feeling the cool air hit the sweat of their skin, visible goosebumps could be seen forming on her arm.
“Head downstairs first.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Unless you wanna go together and have the whole class see us all sweaty from doing god knows what,” Ren joked. “I’m sure your buddies will get a kick outta makin’ fun of–”
“Shaddap!” He growled out in frustration and threw her door open with his cheeks tinted pink.
Changing and washing her face, she headed downstairs to see 1-A mingling with 1-B in the common area. She could see Todoroki talking with Midoriya about something in the dining area and Bakugou was already helping himself to dinner.
Ren mingled with the groups without effort, with the exception of Monoma trying to goad her with his insults, to which she immediately shut down with Dark Ren’s threat of “being quite proud to be around strong first years” and wondered if he wanted to see a one-on-one Plus Ultra session with her fists.
Snow greeted the U.A. campus for the first time for winter. Several students of 1-A were super excited to play in it while others preferred to hang in the warmth of the common area. Today was also the last day of the provisional classes for Bakugou and Todoroki. Ren left motivational post-it notes on their respective dorm doors in the morning before heading down for breakfast. With some free time on her hands, she played sous chef to Sato with a cake, smiling to herself. While the pastry was baking off in the oven, she killed some time by working on her knitting.
“Oh, a new one?” Kirishima perked up with excitement. “What are you making this time?”
“A simple scarf...” she replied while keeping up with what stitch she led with in the current row for the moss stitch. “But this pattern’s pretty tricky. I have to remember what stitch I lead off to alternate.”
“I never expected senpai to be so domestic given her temper,” Mineta commented aloud after coming back in from the snow, only to have his footsteps stop midway from a thick aluminum needle sticking up in his path.
“Wanna try that again, Mineta-kun?” she calmly spoke with dark intentions. “Or shall I string your balls outside to a tree and see how quickly hypothermia sets in for you.”
About another hour passed by before the two newly licensed heroes returned, with All-Might behind them. A shout of congratulations were directed at the two, with Bakugou being his usual self-boasting punk. Ren peeked her head up and ran up to the suited teacher. The two exchanged hugs and engaged in conversation about Melissa and David, briefly touching base on what was going on with them currently.
Staying a little longer than he intended to, All-Might said good night to the students and she rejoined them. The cake Sato and Ren baked cooled down just enough for them to decorate it to celebrate the two failures in finally passing the provisional exam.
As everyone ate, the two mentioned fighting a group villains en route back to dorms, much to no surprise to everyone. Kaminari jokingly remarked Bakugou’s presence attracts trouble, to which the latter threatened to blow his ass to Mars. With the cake ingested and everyone relaxed, the resident alien emerged with a soft black bag in her hands.
“Now that everyone is here!” Ashido loudly announced. “It’s time to pick your Secret Santa!”
“And we decided the budget for the present should not exceed 5,000 yen!” Iida dictated. “Please keep in mind of what you buy is appropriate for students! And you must keep the name to yourself.”
“Okay, now line up and grab your name!” the pink girl gleefully hopped around as 1-A grabbed a piece of paper out of the bag. When it was Ren’s turn, Ashido leaned into her ear and said, “Senpai, there’s something I wanna talk to you about after this.”
She turned up with a curious gaze while Ashido’s had one of ulterior motives. She got her paper and walked away to open it.
It was… not a name she was expecting.
Such is the nature of the Secret Santa.
With the names drawn and the celebration finished, Ren headed to Ashido’s room as requested. She happily greeted her senior and invited her in. It was a very surprising shade of shocking pink and animal print.
To her surprise, Jiro, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu and Asui were already there and settled in.
“I call this meeting to start!” Ashido announced happily.
“Where’s Ochaco-chan?” Ren asked.
“Well that’s the thing...” Yao-momo started. “It’s kind of about her.”
“Did something happen?” she asked with a tone of concern and sat on the floor with the group.
“We wanna set her up with Midoriya-kun!” Hagakure revealed.
“And we know he has a thing for her too,” Ashido added. “With the way he blushes when she talks to him.”
“I think… he does that with any girl he talks to,” Ren casually remarked. “He’s a bashful boy.”
“Not with Ochaco-chan,” Asui pointed out. “He always seems… different with her. I genuinely think he respects and likes her, ribbit.”
Ren let out an uncomfortable groan and moved her mouth to one side out of concern, commenting, “I usually let stuff like this happen naturally. Dunno how I feel about setting them up...”
“If we let them take it at their pace, it’ll never happen,” Ashido reasoned with an exasperated tone and rolled her eyes. “We’re just here to... push it along, is all.”
“Fair point. What do you intend to do?”
“All you need to do is get mistletoe,” the pink girl responded with a devious grin. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
“’Take care’ how, exactly?” their resident advisor asked out of absolute interest.
“Our plan is to set up a bunch of games for everyone to play and pair them up ‘coincidentally’,” Jiro proposed.
“That… sounds like a terrible plan. Even shojo manga have better tropes than this.”
“Well, what do you have in mind?!” Ashido blurted out from annoyance. “You talk like you know how to go about this.”
“Ren-senpai is the only one out of all of us who’s had romantic experience,” Yaoyorozu reasoned.
“I dunno how true that statement is, but you can’t make it so obvious you’re trying to set them up. They’ll catch on quickly,” Ren indicated. “You have to let some chaos in there and get their feelings riled up so they realize their own for one another.”
“Damn, that’s a really good point,” Ashido remarked with admiration and cupped her chin. “What do you propose?”
“You let me take care of that,” the pink-haired girl briskly replied with a playful smirk. “I have a bit of a reputation of causing pandemonium.”
“As expected of Ren-Ren,” Jiro happily blurted out. “Can we get any ideas?”
“It’s up to me to know and for you to find out,” she teased paired with a smirk and winked at the earphone jack girl.
“Ohh, I never thought Ren-senpai could be so devilish!” Ashido declared with excitement.
–
With the holidays and the end of the semester around the corner, the teachers were cramming in harder lectures and plus ultra level quirk training. In their mindset, time was not on their side, considering they have zero intel as to what the League of Villains were planning. At the same time, they are still kids and should enjoy whatever peace they can enjoy. Things like that was always a delicate balancing act in U.A.
Catching wind of Todoroki and Bakugou’s heroic efforts 30 minutes after getting their provisional licenses, TV casters came by the Alliance Dorm to interview the two boys. It was basically them being their usual selves: shouting and stoic. The class couldn’t help but look on helplessly at this disaster, considering this was the third do-over. The newscast also interviewed Ren with her recent take down of the quirk boosted villain when she was in Musutafu with the bi-colored haired boy. The pink haired girl calmly answered their questions with enough detail they couldn’t follow up with anything.
In the end, they cut Bakugou completely out by the time it aired, to which the hot-headed blond ground his teeth in anger. Given the disaster of the interview, U.A. decided to turn it into a teachable moment; Mount Lady was invited in as a guest lecturer in teaching the young heroes the fine art of dealing with the media.
With a rare free day between everything, Ren managed to run out to buy decorations for the party with Ashido, Iida and Yaoyorozu. As much as Ashido wanted to buy up all the mistletoe at the party supply shop, Ren managed to convince her one was enough to draw away suspicion and stay within budget. Returning back to the dorms, the resident advisor ran an English tutoring session with 1-A; Present Mic had been increasing the difficulty of his lessons and the students are struggling with grammar and certain usage of phrases.
After study group was over, it was time for her extra sparring sessions; tonight was with Kirishima. The roaring red head was happy to join in to take a break from hitting the books. Tonight’s training consisted of him hardening different parts of his body as he’s being attacked to increase his reflexes and timing in activating his quirk. Ren struck the redhead in several part of his body with her staff and increased the speed as time went on to test him. As time went on, Kirishima couldn’t keep up with her speed and got beaten down.
“You’re activating it based on anticipation rather than instinct,” Ren huffed out and wiped some sweat off her forehead with her arm. “Hardening at this point should feel natural.”
“I know! It’s just… !” He growled out with frustration and slammed his fist on the ground with a dull thud. “My brain knows where you’re moving, but my body reacts too late!”
“In the words of Bruce Lee: ‘Don’t think, feel,’” she advised. “Try reading my movements and predict it from there.”
Repeating her actions from before, the spiky redheaded boy put his full concentration into each of his maneuvers, trying to sense a pattern from Ren. As she sped up, he managed to keep up with her longer than he did the first time around.
“Good!” She encouraged as she increased the frequency and strength of her attacks. “You’re keeping up!”
Gradually, her attacks got quicker and harder, testing his proficiency in changing his limbs to the Unbreakable form. As he got impatient in getting beat down, Kirishima attempted to use Red Counter on Ren, only to have her back away the moment he tried to strike.
“Excellent...” She smirked and withdrew her weapon. “I’ll make you a sturdy shield just yet.”
Her sparring partner panted heavily and squatted down to recover his energy with sweat rolling down his gleaming muscular body. His body heat exuded out in the form of steam.
“Man...” he gasped between breaths. “I never realized how much stamina this takes outta me just hardening certain parts to just guard. If this was a real fight, I would’ve been done for already.”
“Not with me, you won’t,” she firmly stated with a hand on her hip. “We’re just getting started. This is your first step in surpassing Crimson Riot, Kiri-kun.”
His inspired red eyes looked up to meet hers as an overwhelming flood of pride bloomed in his chest.
“Osu!” he shouted with oozing adrenaline.
Reverting her staff back to her bangles, she rolled her shoulders and cricked her neck while she walked to the far end of the room to continue their sparring.
“Kiri-kun, can I...try something on you?” she asked quickly.
“Y-Yeah! Of course!” the boy perked up and got up off of the floor.
Ren turned around and tapped her accessories together twice and formed something different this time.
“You can’t tell anyone about this, okay?” she stated in a serious tone. “It’s a prototype right now.”
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