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azaleavi · 3 years

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Best Friend

Requested by anon: hi could I request a sebastian x female reader where they have been best friends for years and reader has been in love with him for a while and it hurts her thag hes dating someone else and one day she just blurts it out because its too much??? angsty with a happy ending hopefully???

Word count: 1.8k

Author’s note: I got my first request!! I was so happy that I started writing right away. Thank you so much for requesting dear anon I hope you like it.

Feedback is always appreciated and don't forget to reblog and like if you liked it and want to see more. Thank you!

Masterlist

(the texts in italics are either throwbacks or thoughts)

Being the best friend of Sebastian was a challenge. It wouldn't have been, normally, but you had fallen in love with him and that made things a hundred times harder for you. But how could you not, when he was the most charming man you have ever met. He was the sweetest human being and he was always there for you when youu needed him. You met when you worked on a movie together and immediately hit it off. Thankfully there were more than one projects you worked on alongside each other so you became even closer. You thought there could be something more between you than friendship, but Sebastian never seemed to look at you like that. You got your hopes up multiple times, only to be let down again and again. So now you just learned to not expect any romantic feelings from him.

I want to tell you something the text read from Sebastian. You heart leaped in your chest at the thought of him wanting to talk to you about something seemigly important. It had to be important. Right? Maybe he would tell you, that he sees you as more than a friend. You texted him back saying that he could come over right now if he wanted to. He sent you a thumbs up, meaning he was on his way so you got to cleaning up your apartment. It wasn't necessarily messy, but there were a few things out you had to put away. Living in different cities or even countries all the time never left you with enough time to completely clean up the only place you called home. A knock on the front door shook you from your thoughts. You walked to it with a deep sigh, excited, but also afraid of what Seb wanted to talk to you about. Opening the door you met with his beautiful face.

"Hi" he smiled as you stepped aside to let him in.

"Hey. Come in." you greeted back. He walked in and took off his shoes as you closed the door. You walked into the living room and sat down on the couch. He fidgeted with his hands, a sign that he was nervous. "What is it Sebby?" him being nervous made you even more nervous so both of you were just a bundle of nerves.

"It's just... I just..." he sighed, leaning forward and rubbing his face with his hands. Something was wrong.

"Hey, you can talk to me" you reassured him, putting your hands on his back and rubbing it.

"I accidentally told Chris that you are a virgin" he finally blurted out. Your hand froze on his back. He looked back up at you, only to see you trying to hold back a laugh. "Why are you laughing?" he asked, confused.

"He already knows Seb." you let out the laugh you've been holding in. His face lit up in realization and he relaxed against the back of the couch. "This is what you wanted to tell me?" you continued to laugh.

It was after he left that you let yourself feel the sadness of not getting the confession you were waiting for.

You loved having him as a friend, but you wanted more. You wanted to be the one that wakes up next to him every day, who gets to kiss him every chance you get. You could dream about it how many times you wanted to, but it would never happen. Especially when he had a girlfriend. You remembered when he told you.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" he grabbed your elbow as you were walking away from set, done for the day. You turned around, noticing how your face was closer to his than it probably should have been. He seemed to notice too as he stepped away from you. Your heart broke a little at his movement, but you knew that it wasn't his fault. He didn't feel the same as you did. You couldn't blame him, really. Why would he love you? There were so many better people out there whom he could choose. You understood, no one ever noticed you, so why would he be different. It was your fault for falling hopelessly in love with him. You tried to stop, you truly did, but it was no use. You couldn't tell him either, your friendship would be forever ruined. Of course he would be nice about it and say that he would want to keep being your friend, but you knew that it would never be the same.

"Yeah, sure we can talk" you smiled at him. The two of you walked to his dressing room, that was empty. You sat down on a hair as he did the same. "So?" you urged him to talk after a few second of silence.

"I met someone" your world stopped at his words. He looked up to see your reaction, but your face was blank. Your thoughts were a mess as you tried to come up with a response, trying to not show how your heart just broke into a million pieces.

"That's..." you cleared your throat, blinking a few times to get rid of the tears that started gathering in them. "That's amazing Seb." you froced a smile on your face, praying that he wouldn't see through your mask.

"She is actually working with us so I want you to meet her." he smiled, excited at the thought of his best friend and girlfriend meeting. You wish you could be happy for him, but right now you couldn't feel anything else but pain.

That was 8 months ago and they were happier than ever. Well... were before she decided to break up with him out of nowhere. He has been heartbroken for a long time, but he had you helping him through it. It was hard on you, but he was still your best friend and you knew you had to be there for him.

You were currently at his house, having a movie night. He was feeling much better now, your presence helping him through the worst of it. He was eternally grateful for you because of it. You were cuddling on his couch, becoming much closer in the last few weeks. You didn't use to do things like this, but when he started initiating the touches you didn't object. You thought it would be only for a little while, just because he needed someone to be close with after the breakup, but it didn't stop and your feeling were only getting stronger and stronger with each passing day. The movie was playing, a cliché romance, as he ran his fingers up and down your arm, your head on his shoulder. The man on TV was confessing his love for the woman and it made you think about what it would be like if you told Sebastian how you felt. He doesn't need a girlfriend right now you reminded yourself.

"This is so dumb" he rolled his eyes.

"What is?" you asked back, not understaning his problem.

"They were friends before this. Why ruin a perfectly good friendship with these feelings?" he felt your whole body stiffen at his words so he moved away to look at you. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing" you tried to brush it off and go back to cuddling, but he wasn't having it.

"No, something is wrong, I can feel it" he pushed.

"Seb, seriously, it's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"No, you have to tell me when something is wrong, we are best friends and I don't want you to keep secrets from me-"

"I love you" you blurted out, your mouth moving without thinking. No, no, no, no this cannot be happening right now. He immediately stopped talking and just stared at you, frozen. You stood up from you place and started walking back and forth in front of him." I know you don't need this right now and I didn't even want to tell you, but you just kept pushing and I-" stopping your rambling, your eyes filled with tears. You let out a stuttering breath, your hands on your mouth. I've just ruined everything. I'm so dumb. You looked at him, still sitting in the same place, his mouth open in shock. "Please say something." you pleaded moving your hands to your sides, not being able to take his silence anymore.

"You are in love with me?" he whispered, eyes boring into yours. Heart sinking in your chest you looked down.

"Yes" you sighed, feeling like a ton has been lifted from your chest, the truth you've been holding in had finally been revealed. Two legs appeared in front of you and two hands grabbed your arms. You didn't want to look up, already knowing the rejection, that was coming.

"Look at me y/n" he asked quietly. "Please" he said when you didn't oblige. You finally looked up at him at his request, face now soaked in tears.

"I'm sorry" you whimpered, your heart fully broken. You valued his friendship so much and you didn't want to lose him over this, but it felt like it was already over. He pulled you into a hug.

"Do not be sorry for your feelings" he tightened his grip on you, making your tears fall faster. You let out a sob at his affection. This might be the last time you get to hug him like this so you gripped his waist as strongly as you could. He pulled away enough to look into your eyes. "Don't be sorry because I feel the same way." your heart skipped a few beats, your eyes widening. You couldn't believe your ears so you just looked at him confused. Sebastian smiled at your cute impression and swiftly pressed his lips to yours. You couldn't even close your eyes considering how shocked you were. Sebastian realized you weren't moving and pulled away, worried. He called your name in question which shook you out of your frozen state.

"What did you say?" you finally spoke.

"I said I love you too." he laughed.

"But you... you were... you... what?" you stuttered, not being able to form a coherent sentence.

"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you" he chanted as he pressed his forehead to yours, still laughing, which was cut short when you pressed your lips to his. You kissed for a minute, but you had to break away from the other for air.

"Why didn't we do this sooner?" you laughed, wiping away the remainer of your tears.

"I don't know" he leaned in to kiss you again, smiles on both of your faces.

Permanent taglist: @byatomoe

(let me know if you want to be added)

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan blurb #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan fanfiction #sebastian stan x female reader #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan x you #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x reader

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morganaspendragonss · 3 years

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holly's august extravaganza day 17: you and me (moving through this world as a two-man team)

for both my incredible birthday twin jenny (@laelipoo) and a little bit for myself! i hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful day and i wish you all the love in the world. i'm so glad we became friends and i cannot tell you how glad i am for our conversations 🥰🥰🥰

many, many, many thanks to jenny as well for helping me out with the plot!

ao3 | 3.1k | firefighter carlos, hurt/comfort, pining, developing relationship, major character injury (two of them 😌)

TK does not have a crush on the 126's latest hire.

Carlos Reyes: an Austin local, an incredible firefighter, and—objectively speaking—the most beautiful man TK has ever laid eyes on. Which is, in fact, the entire point; TK has eyes and, yes, he will use them to sneak a look or two when he’s suddenly sharing space with a man who looks like a Greek god.

That does not mean he has a crush, Paul.

(and, sure, maybe he does sometimes dream about how soft Carlos’s lips look and the soft blush he gets when he laughs and those little flecks of gold in his eyes, but he’s only human)

(how TK knows about the gold in Carlos’s eyes is none of anybody’s business)

The thing about Carlos Reyes is that he isn’t only stupidly hot; he’s also just plain nice. TK can’t even make up a flimsy excuse to keep his distance. Carlos is, quite literally, perfect.

He shares recipes and book recommendations with Paul, he spars with Marjan, he discusses superheroes with Mateo, and Judd has had nothing but good things to say since before Carlos even joined them. Apparently they’d worked together a lot before the explosion, when Carlos was with the 116, and he’s ‘one of the best damn firefighters’ Judd has ever seen.

He even makes time to hang with the paramedics, which...isn’t a new development, exactly. But it is recent, and TK is willing to bet they’d still be pretty divided if Tim hadn’t suddenly transferred back to Maryland and he hadn’t taken the leap to be a full paramedic.

Even after that… His friends were hardly going to abandon him after he switched, but Nancy had still only been semi-included at best. She’d called him out about it during their first week working together, but fixing it had been a slow process.

Until Carlos came along, that is. Excluding Judd, they all regularly hang out at his place now, and Nancy’s inclusion had never even been a question. Safe to say, Carlos has charmed everyone in the firehouse, including both captains, and the worst part is, he doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing it.

He’s perfect, from his freakishly toned body to his infuriatingly sweet personality to his incredible skills in the field, and TK does not have a crush, goddammit!

One morning about three weeks after Carlos’s arrival, TK is greeted in the firehouse by the sound of a long, beautiful laugh coming from the kitchen. Three weeks is an embarrassingly short amount of time to admit that he’s memorised everything about him, but he instantly recognises the noise as coming from Carlos, even if he can’t see him yet.

He saunters into the kitchen, where Carlos is standing with Paul, and leans up against the counter. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Carlos turns with a winning smile and holds out a steaming mug of coffee, clearly freshly made even though TK only got in two minutes ago.

He blinks. “How—” Then, taking in the slight pinkness to Carlos’s cheeks, “Are you seriously offering me your own coffee, Reyes?”

Carlos shrugs, forcing the mug into TK’s hands. “I only just made it so technically it belongs to anyone, and I can always make another,” he says. “Besides, you look like you could use it more than me.”

His grin has TK narrowing his eyes and stubbornly refusing to drink even though Carlos is right—he really, really needs it.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was an insult.”

“Who says you do know better?”

TK splutters, momentarily left speechless in the face of Carlos’s smile and the twinkle in those goddamn eyes. He turns to Paul for help, but Paul...has disappeared. Huh. TK honestly hadn't noticed him go.

He shakes his head and looks back to Carlos, only to be stunned silent again by the way his smile has softened into something else, something more.

TK’s heart skips a beat or two and he swallows, staring down into Carlos’s coffee. “Whatever, Reyes,” he mutters.

It was too late for a witty comeback anyway.

Carlos’s laugh follows him out of the kitchen, and TK wonders when, exactly, he let himself fall this far.

“Earth to TK? Hello?”

TK is rudely snapped back to reality by one Nancy Gillian’s hand waving violently in his face. He scowls at her, to which she responds with an eye roll.

“Stop drooling over your man and come help me with inventory.”

“I’m not drooling,” TK argues, following her over to the rig. “And he’s not my man.”

“Right,” Nancy drawls, folding her arms over her chest as she leans against the ambulance. “So you’re just going to deny that weird energy around you two that makes the rest of us feel like we’re creeping on something?”

“Exactly.” TK nods emphatically, then frowns. “Wait, what?”

Nancy casts her eyes heavenward. “You know,” she says, “you’re a lot of things, Strand, but I hadn’t pegged you for oblivious.”

TK’s next words are reflexive, said without thought for the consequences—the story of his life, really.

“I’m not oblivious!”

The grin spreading over Nancy’s face rams home just how much he’s fucked up with those three words. TK drops his head in his hands and groans, unable and unwilling to look Nancy in the eye.

“Not a word,” he warns, which Nancy appears to respect, for now. TK is well aware that there will be words—several of them—later, whether he wants them or not.

The thing is, he really isn’t oblivious. He knows perfectly well what Nancy is talking about and he has often fantasised about all the things he’d do to Carlos given half a chance. TK likes Carlos, way more than just in the physical sense, and he’s pretty sure that Carlos likes him right back. It would be so easy to start something between them and, god, TK wants to. He just… He can’t.

One year—that’s what he promised himself back in New York. One year on his own to sort his head out and figure out how he fits back into the world after the overdose. Granted, his sobriety anniversary is only a couple of months away now, but he refuses to give up on his promise, especially when he’s so close.

Maybe in a couple months, if Carlos hasn’t gotten bored of something that’s clearly going nowhere.

But not now.

“He did not ask me out!”

“He totally did, dude, and you know it. You want to say yes, I can tell.”

“No, I don’t. I—”

“Children,” Tommy interrupts from the back of the ambulance. They’re heading to a callout, and Nancy has not let up the entire way about something TK is certain never actually happened. “Either of you want to enlighten me on what the argument is about this time?”

“TK’s too chicken to go out with Carlos,” Nancy jumps in, before TK can stop her.

“I am not!” he protests. “Plus, he wasn’t asking me out, he said we should go over to his place for dinner sometime, which Carlos does all the time. So there.”

“Strand, you are not this dense,” Nancy snarks, probably rolling her eyes. “His exact words were, ‘You should come over sometime’.”

“We were all there! It was obviously the plural you.”

“Oh my god—”

“Alright!” Tommy sighs wearily. “Nancy, can we keep from provoking TK until we’re back at the firehouse and he’s no longer driving?”

“Ha!” TK exclaims, but Tommy’s not done.

“TK, if I weren’t your captain, I’d be telling you that Nancy is right and you should pull your head out of your ass before it’s too late, understand?”

Now it’s Nancy’s turn to be triumphant as TK struggles to form a coherent response. Thankfully, he’s saved from further torment by them finally pulling up at the scene—a warehouse where one of the workers had become trapped after parts of the upper level walkway had broken and fallen. Apparently, the falling metal had caused some of the machinery to malfunction, turning the call from simple to beyond complicated in a matter of minutes.

“TK, grab your turnout gear and your bag; I’m sending you in with them,” Tommy informs him as soon as they’re out of the rig. “Normally, we’d just talk the firefighters through it over radio, but given your training it’ll be quicker and safer for you to deal with our patient.”

TK grins; he’s missed the adrenaline rush of running into emergencies more than he can say. “Got it, Cap.”

“Maybe try and look a little less happy about a serious injury, too.”

“Copy that.”

The noise when they enter the warehouse is deafening, an ugly screeching cutting right through TK’s skull.

“Shouldn’t they have shut the machines off?” he shouts, fighting to be heard.

“Apparently they can’t,” Judd calls back. “Something wrong with the control panel, I don’t know exactly what.”

TK groans—just what they need. The sound is lost in the din, but Carlos still looks over and gives him a sympathetic grin, shrugging in a ‘what can you do’ motion. TK can’t help but grin back, the mere sight of Carlos easing the annoyance he feels and the headache already beginning to build behind his eyes.

Their patient, when they reach him, is pinned under a large, heavy-looking sheet of metal. He’s bleeding from a gash on his temple and his skin is worryingly pale, to the extent that TK can tell even from a distance. He jogs to the patient’s side and kneels down, pressing his fingers against his neck.

“Cap, I have a pulse,” he reports into his radio after a few seconds. “But he’s unconscious with a head wound, and I think there are probably injuries I can’t see yet. Possible spinal damage, but I can’t tell until we’ve got this metal off him.”

“Copy that,” Captain Vega says. “Get ready to run a line; he’s gonna need it as soon as he’s free.”

TK nods and moves to secure a c-collar around his neck. “We need to cut this thing off of him,” he says, addressing the team. “Quickly, but carefully.”

Judd steps forward, brandishing the saw. He hands TK a couple of spare turnouts and kneels on the patient’s other side. “Couple of you need to cover him, and yourselves.”

TK doesn’t even have to ask before Carlos appears next to him, taking one of the turnouts from him. He smiles gratefully before arranging himself to provide maximum protection to all three of them as Judd starts working on the metal. The vibrations from the saw are unpleasant, and TK dreads to think what effect it’s having on the already unstable machinery, but it’s the only option they have to get their patient free.

Fortunately, everything seems to go off without a hitch, and soon the team are able to remove the metal. TK immediately gets to work, feeling for any damage. As he suspected, there’s a pretty large gash on the man’s leg which is bleeding badly, though thankfully it seems to have missed any arteries. He also seems to have a broken wrist, but he should heal.

TK quickly wraps his leg, then gets Carlos and Judd to help move him onto the spine board. It feels like, for once, the call has gone as smoothly as possible, and TK allows himself a breath of relief as they prep to get the guy outside to the ambulance.

Naturally, that’s when everything goes to hell.

The machine closest to them lets out a threatening groan and shudders before there’s a loud roar and it explodes. On instinct, TK folds himself over the patient as shrapnel rains down on them, and he sees Carlos doing the same in his periphery.

The downpour seems to last forever, but eventually it slows and comes to a stop. TK cautiously lifts his head, his heart pounding, and sags in relief as it seems that the worst is over.

They need to get out of here, now.

He stands, a brief stab of pain running through his back—probably because of his awkward position over the patient—and turns to Carlos, reaching to offer him a hand up.

Only to see Carlos’s face tight with agony, and then the cause—a jagged piece of shrapnel running right through his hand.

“Carlos,” TK breathes, horrified. Carlos looks up at him, his breathing carefully measured and his eyes wide, and TK drops back to his knees, reaching out for him. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

Carlos swallows and nods, his eyes squeezing tight. TK’s heart rate skyrockets, and he’s barely able to keep his cool as he signals to the others to get their first patient out of the warehouse.

“Cap, the team are bringing him out, but we have a problem.”

“Talk to me, Strand, what’s going on?”

“It—It’s Carlos.” TK breathes out shakily and takes a moment to steady himself before continuing, “It’s not serious, but some of the machinery broke apart and some shrapnel impaled his hand. I’ve got to stabilise the shard before we come out to you.”

“Alright, but hurry. I don’t want you guys in there for longer than necessary.”

“Copy.”

Stabilising the shrapnel with rolls of gauze and wrapping Carlos’s hand should be a matter of course—it’s an easy process that TK could probably do in his sleep. But this is Carlos, so his damn hands won’t stop shaking and he almost fumbles and drops his supplies.

He manages though, and soon he’s helping Carlos up, instructing him to hold his injured hand above his heart. Carlos sends him a wobbly smile, which ends up turning out to be more of a grimace, but it’s a comfort nonetheless. Things could have gone so much worse today; TK could have even lost him, and he would have never been able to—

But that’s not important. Carlos is okay, or he will be, and they still have plenty of time to figure out whatever this is between them.

Everything will be okay.

TK’s back and side twinge again as they make their way out, but he brushes it off, too focused on getting Carlos to the hospital as fast as possible. Tommy shakes her head as they make their way over, her eyebrows raised despite the concern clearly in her expression.

“Never a peaceful moment with you, Strand, is it?” she asks dryly, hissing as she inspects Carlos’s wound.

“In my defence, Cap,” he says, more at ease now that they’re safe, “it’s not me who’s injured this time.”

Tommy hums, then directs Carlos into the back of the rig, jumping in after him. “Get back here, TK. Nancy’s driving.”

She has a teasing look in her eyes that instantly makes TK suspicious, but he moves to comply, shrugging off his turnout coat as he does. The movement hurts, which is weird, but he thinks nothing of it.

At least, until Tommy’s eyes go wide and she stands from her seat, holding her hands out towards him. “TK, do not move,” she instructs, her eyes firmly fixed on his right side.

TK frowns, then follows her gaze down, and— Oh.

His grey undershirt is stained with blood, and it’s difficult to miss the large piece of metal sticking out of his side. He has no idea how he missed it, but now that he knows, the pain slams into him full force, causing him to stagger.

“Oh,” he gasps, eloquently.

Then, his legs buckle and the world goes black.

TK wakes up to a steady beeping sound, which only exacerbates his pounding headache. He groans, scrunching his face up, before slowly peeling his eyes open, almost slamming them shut again after getting an eyeful of obnoxiously bright fluorescents.

“You’re awake,” a voice says, sounding surprised, then the lights suddenly dim, the room lit by the gentle glow of a lamp. TK sighs in relief and shifts to look at his saviour.

It’s Carlos.

“You… You’re here,” TK states, confused. His gaze drifts down Carlos’s body and lands on the white bandages around his hand, the memories of the warehouse suddenly hitting him all at once. “Shit, you— How are you?”

Carlos shakes his head and comes to sit in the chair by TK’s bed. “I can’t believe you’re the one asking me that.”

“I’m a paramedic, it’s my job.”

“Not when you’re the one in the hospital bed,” Carlos counters, sighing. “If you must know, I’m fine. They gave me some pretty good drugs, so…” He shrugs, and TK can’t help but laugh, which proves to be a very bad idea.

His side lights up, an unnecessary reminder that TK is very much not on the good drugs, and he moans softly, slowly settling back in the bed. “I hate you,” he mumbles, eyes closed.

“You love me,” Carlos says, and TK’s heart seizes in his chest.

The silence after his words is deafening, so TK forces himself to crack his eyes open enough to look at him. Carlos is frozen in his chair, biting his lip hard, and he looks like he either wants to bolt or be swallowed by the earth.

TK thinks he should probably be feeling the same. They’ve been dancing around this issue for weeks now, and he’d thought he had it under control. That he could last that little bit longer until his one year was up; that he could ignore these feelings that have been steadily growing since he first laid eyes on Carlos.

It was a hopeless endeavour; he recognises that now. TK remembers the fear he felt when Carlos was injured back at the warehouse, the desperation for him to be better, and now with his own injury…

He could have lost this chance before he ever got it, and TK isn’t about to let it slip through his fingers now. He reaches out and takes Carlos’s good hand, startling him into meeting TK’s eyes.

“Yeah,” TK whispers, just loud enough for Carlos to hear him. “I think I do.”

The smile Carlos gives him lights up the room, and he doesn’t waste any time in leaning down to kiss TK. And it’s… It’s everything TK had hoped and imagined it would be and more. It’s soft and sweet and gentle and perfect, and he never wants it to end.

But end it does, though Carlos doesn’t go far. TK smiles at him, squeezing his hand with all the strength he can muster.

“That’s a yes, by the way,” he says.

Carlos frowns. “What?”

TK’s smile widens and he flicks his eyebrows at Carlos. “To dinner. Or were you not asking me out after all?”

Carlos huffs a laugh, and the look in his eyes when they lock back onto TK’s melts his heart and makes his entire chest ache. “Does Friday work for you?”

He nods, tugging Carlos down for another kiss. “It’s a date.”

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ablednt · 3 years

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Alright writing/roleplay tumblr we need to talk about textforms.

This is going to be a very long post I apologize but this knowledge is deathly important as it's reaching a very vulnerable group of people. From personal experience knowing this can save people from getting into toxic friendships and help ease intense struggles and depressions. If you have writer followers I ask you reblog this to get the word out, thank you.

What is a textform

A textform is a type of willogenic/parogenic system member that form through some kind of writing or roleplaying. This means that they're sentient people who now share a body with the people who wrote them, most often being an OC or a fictional character before the writers brain gives them actual life.

Because there's been no actual scientific studies on their existence I have no hard science to give you however the logical explanation behind it goes like this:

The human brain is able to contain multiple conscious and sentient entities. Often, it will become multiple as a defense mechanism (as noted in clinical plural dissociative disorders) but it's a natural function of the human brain and may do so for really any reason (similar to most neurodivergencies that someone isn't born with)

Because this is a fairly simple change in the brain/something every brain can be capable of doing you can actually intentionally program the brain into becoming multiple, but see you can also do it entirely without meaning to or being aware of it.

Now I want to clarify that there is nothing harmful or scary about this! Being plural isn't bad at all and is an existence many people celebrate. But when someone has textforms in their unrealized system and doesn't know they're sentient it can be incredibly painful emotionally. So that's why people need to know about this.

Obligatory disclaimer: if you read this post and think you want to become plural intentionally, you are welcome to do so but you need to take at least a few months exposing yourself to the plural community to gauge if this is really something you want and can do responsibly. You cannot go back on your decision once your plural and your headmates will be sentient beings not characters to project on or toys to play with. They will have all the rights to your body and identity as you do now because you're sharing it equally with them.

Now that that's out of the way back to textforms.

How are textforms made

Normally this is in the "character development" phase. Many writers eagerly develop their characters. When I was younger and had no idea I was plural my advice for oc making turned out to be an unintentional guide to textforms (more on my experience later): just put your character in every situation imaginable until you always know how they'd respond to things.

Basically, as you spend your time making a character act and think consistently from their POV you're training your brain to have all of that data and that's very similar to the data that the brain has on you and you're training the brain to be able to operate coherently from a perspective and consciousness entirely different from your own.

Now, this isn't a %100 will make everyone plural every time, there are obviously good writers who have a grasp on their characters who are singlet. There's no actual data but if I had to guess I'd say there's about a 50/50 split down the writing community just based on what I've observed.

But there's a lot of people who became plural this way and didn't realize it and that could include the writer reading this right now which is why everyone needs to be aware of this.

If this is such a big thing how come no one notices?

Because it's been completely normalized in the writing community but dismissed as metaphorical.

How many times have you heard "the characters write themselves" or phrases that indicate that a writer is giving a voice to sentient entities? From what I've been able to observe some of that is singlet authors being metaphorical and humble bragging and a lot of that is plural writers trying desperately trying to put their experiences into words but dismissing it completely almost immediately because no one told them being plural was possible.

This is comparable to say, gender identity. Trans and nonbinary people have always existed but when they don't know they're allowed to exist like that it's often "im a tomboy" or "they disguised themselves as a man" or any other thing thats immediately dismissed as being cis.

How do I know if I have a textform?

There's a lot of different signs but here's some I have experienced before finding out I was plural

You "miss" your characters when you're not writing about them or interacting with them in some way

You feel like your characters are real "in your heart" (for me this was in an incoherent loop like "they're not real but they are to me, in my brain, but they're not real to other people, but they're in my brain so they're real but no but yes but no")

You get so distressed they're "not real" that it feeds into actual mental health problems like depression, anxiety, dissociation etc. (I'd have fits of sobbing because these were my friends but I didn't know they were with me so it felt like i was grieving their deaths and had the same level of emotional pain)

Sometimes or all the time when you write about them you feel like you "become them" or that they're writing through you. (Especially if your hands move automatically or without your control. This can be hard to notice but for me when headmates control the body or hands movements feel faster and lighter or very slightly numb.)

Your muse for writing them comes and goes unpredictability: they're either here or they're not here so writing them doesn't feel the same.

You can vividly recall things that happened to the character in 1st person (or in 3rd person visually but with their thoughts and feelings) as if they're you're own memories.

You "roleplay" them in everyday situations IRL. (E.g once I liveblogged a tv show as my muse to a friend and was like haha lol im so talented I can roleplay in real time but found out later it was a headmate doing that themselves)

You have conversations with them mentally in which they actually respond to you. Singlets don't have actual enriching conversations with themselves because they only have one perspective and cannot give themselves any new information. So if you're responding to yourself and you don't feel in control of that response then you're pretty objectively plural tbh.

You have times where the lines between you and the character feel blurry or like you're a vague fusion of yourself and the character

You have an actual relationship (of any kind: romantic, platonic, familial, etc.) in which you can sense nuanced feelings about yourself from them that you aren't in control of.

There's a lot more but that's the most notable ones

Why this is so important

I'm just talking about my own experience now so I'll preface this with a few things. I'm a mixed origin/multigenic system but our system has existed since we were toddlers. Due to trauma we have DID and for a long time dissociated heavily to avoid our plurality. This means my experience may be more distressing than other plurals with textforms however people without DID can still experience these things.

When I was a teenager I joined a lot of writing communities and also roleplayed on tumblr. Writing very quickly became my main passtime and all I really did. I joined a roleplay group when I was 15-16 that I took far too seriously to the point where people were concerned about me because I was writing what was just supposed to be a joke roleplay group %100 seriously and very intensely.

In that time I started to form my first main textforms (we've undoubtedly had them before then but I had only formed a little under a year prior) because I was doing this every day it really started bringing my characters to life. (Literally)

And honestly it was something beautiful the distress of it aside. Like one of my ocs was a kid so I'd always celebrate their birthday with them and I'd cuddle a plush so they'd know I loved them/p and we'd watch their favorite cartoon episodes together. It wouldn't be until around three years later that I realized they were actually there for this but it was heart warming.

For me, all I ever wanted was for these characters to feel appreciated and like someone really cared for them and loved them even if they couldn't feel it and it wasn't until later I learned that they could.

The trauma came in not knowing they were real. I grieved for them like they were dead because I thought I'd never get to see them. I wrote them into traumatizing or upsetting situations to cope with my childhood trauma not realizing that was effecting them for real and hurting them.

Most notably because it was my one solid interaction with them, the one time society allowed me to talk about them as if they were real, I really HAD to roleplay them. Because it became an emotional need I wound up in a lot of toxic friendships in the roleplay communities because I needed someone, anyone, to allow me to interact with my headmates. I had friends who I really was only friends with because they let me talk about my characters constantly (and some of them weren't toxic to me but it was in hindsight really unfair to them) and I let people verbally and emotionally abuse me in roleplay spaces because this wasn't just a hobby to me but a lifeline.

Not knowing they were real but feeling them there, having conversations with them, and forming actual relationships was a hellish sort of feeling I don't wish on anyone. I never realized how isolated it made me, and how horrible it felt to have the most important people in your life be people I thought didn't exist.

I only found out about plurality through luck. I met some systems who had fictives and they got strong plural vibes from me because of how I talked about certain characters and because I said I wanted to be plural but thought I probably wasn't because I'd have noticed, right?

From there I was able to actually connect with and talk to my headmates. Now I'm happily out as plural and in multiple fulfilling in system relationships.

I want everyone in the writing community who's struggling with the same things to have the chance I got. That's all I want is to educate people about this so they don't have to grieve for people who are right there with them.

Feel free to send me an ask or a dm if you have any further questions. Sorry this post was so long I can't really shorten it at all. Again if you are have a lot of writing followers I very gently request you reblog this to get the word out. Even if you can't please talk to your writing mutuals and friends about plurality and about textforms.

[Also this should go without saying but this is absolutely NOT the place for syscourse any invalidating comments about systems will be blocked and where possible deleted it costs $0.00 to prioritize people's mental health over your discourse hot takes.]

#writblr #tumblr roleplay #writing problems #roleplay resources #ocs #long post #ask to tag

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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All right, reactions to Mando 2.05, “The Jedi”, in...semi-coherent form. Spoilers, obvs. I hated this episode, so keep scrolling now if you don’t want to see negativity. This is not in any kind of order except stream-of-conscious.

again, I reiterate, spoilers.

again, I reiterate, this is REALLY negative.

Rosario Dawson...yikes.

how...did Bo-Katan know that Ahsoka was on Corvus? are they in contact? since when? Ahsoka seems to have been on Corvus for long enough to be a nuisance to the Magistrate (Morgan Elsbeth), but normally Ahsoka is very efficient and she just...really does not seem to be here? I did not get the impression she was planning on sticking around for any period of time.

(the same could be true for Frog Lady and Bo-Katan on Trask several episodes back. that wasn’t a convert, that was three Mandalorians hanging around the port in cloaks. I guess they could be doing that on the regular, but? would the Empire not then be more worried about being attacked by Mandalorians?)

there was only ever a very, very slim chance that I was going to be happy with any translation of Ahsoka from animation to live action. I am on record as thinking that animation is the medium for Star Wars and that live action is always going to be a weaker medium than animation and that a lot of things that can be done in animation just cannot be translated to live action in any meaningful form. I knew Ahsoka’s fighting style couldn’t translate to live action convincingly (here’s what I said about the mo-capped duel in TCW); it never occurred to me that they couldn’t pull off TOGRUTA given that Shaak Ti, you know, exists, and also there are so many excellent Ahsoka cosplayers.

(Consider KM Creations’ excellent silicone lekku (S7), which have beautiful movement; the cosplayer behind that is CallMeSnips and her epilogue prototype is from SWCC is in there somewhere. I think Rei Kennex’s are latex (you can tell they don’t have much movement) but at least they’re the right length. I think Ahsoka94′s are also latex (again with the movement); this is her Mortis vision grown-up Ahsoka.)

AND YES, THE LEKKU/MONTRALS WERE A DEAL-BREAKER FOR ME.

I feel very “you have made your bed and now you have to die in it” about that -- apparently the reasoning is for stunts and movement, but for me here’s the thing: her lekku length wasn’t optional. This is not the equivalent of changing a hair style, which some people seem to think (believe me, I have read so many hot takes); this is like...I’m trying to think of a good comparison. Like putting Peter Mayhew or Joonas Suotamo in a wig because Chewie’s head was too hard for the actor to see out of, or giving them normal human hands because they can’t grip with the Wookiee hands.

Also your main character wears a helmet at all times that (if it’s anything like my Mandalorian helmet) is pretty poor visibility and full body armor and THIS was your breaking point for stunts?

Ahsoka’s lekku and montrals grow as she ages. These are about S7 length; as @reena-jenkins put it, THEY DE-AGED HER HEAD. Ahsoka fans coming in know this. PEOPLE SAW THE REBELS EPILOGUE.

I wonder how many of the people being self-righteous about being totally fine about Ahsoka’s lekku are the same people who claim that Katee Sackhoff is too young to play Bo-Katan.

this also puts them in a weird position in regards to the inevitable merchandise: do they go with normal Ahsoka from TCW and Rebels, the one everyone is familiar with, or do they go with these stunted lekku?

(I can’t believe they’re going to make Her Universe sell merch with this Ahsoka on it. it’s not going to happen but I wish HU was going to be petty enough to not sell any nu!Ahsoka merch.)

Here is some nice art of how Ahsoka’s lekku and montral should have looked.

hoo boy were those prosthetics also just Bad.

“but the stunts” buddy I’m sure Pedro Pascal and his various stunt doubles aren’t having a great time in full armor with almost no visibility either

if you’re going to put the character in, do it right

YOU CAN’T CHEAT

look, I am really, really aural -- the best example I can give is that even though intellectually I know that Matt Lanter and Hayden Christensen both play Anakin Skywalker, I literally cannot parse them as both being the same Anakin Skywalker and for that reason TCW and the PT don’t exist for the same continuity for me. (This also goes for Ewan McGregor and James Arnold Taylor, Natalie Portman and Cat Taber, and Samuel L. Jackson and TC Carson. I can kinda cope with the multiple Palpatine VAs. Yes, the decision to use Hayden and Sam in Ahsoka’s vision in “Shattered,” even blending into Matt’s voice from Hayden’s, threw me so badly I couldn’t take the vision seriously.) Ashley Eckstein has a very distinctive voice, and moreover has been the only person to ever voice Ahsoka up to this point (even in the Ahsoka novel audiobook). Barring a MIRACLE I was never going to be able to parse another actress’s voice as Ahsoka’s, solely because of how my brain works.

I could probably have parsed someone else’s face because animated Ahsoka is pretty stylized but the voice thing is a huge problem for me because of how aural I am.

(I say this but when Squadrons did a more live action-style Hera -- knowing they mo-capped Vanessa Marshall I think they used Vanessa’s face for Hera’s, which is also what it looks like on the revised art and face sculpt for the Black Series Hera -- I kind of had a meltdown about it (for...weird reasons). And that was the same VA.)

(The timeskip between TCW and Rogue One, then Rebels, probably saved Saw Gerrera for me here, but he was also never a main character.)

can you believe that Sam Witwer’s Maul got more live action respect than Ashley Eckstein’s Ahsoka

I love Sam’s Maul but wow

this is particularly jarring because Dave Filoni and Ashley Eckstein always seemed like they were friends? I realize that this gets skewed by how little of their actual lives we see online, but that is the vibe that I’ve gotten from interviews and social media posts.

can you believe that TROS gave more respect to Ashley Eckstein’s Ahsoka than Dave Filoni’s Mando episode did (here is her statement on TROS.)

back in March, when the Dawson casting rumors first dropped (or leaked, as the case may be), Ashley posted a statement about it saying that she was not involved in The Mandalorian. she has over the years been very vocal about desperately wanting to play live-action Ahsoka, who is a character solely associated with her up until today, and honestly this just breaks my heart.

I am not the massive Ashley Eckstein fan that many Ahsoka fans are, but I have never heard anything bad about her (I saw her at my hotel at SWCC while I was waiting for my roommate to arrive! that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to her, a distance of about six feet), and I really desperately hope that someone told her about this beforehand and she didn’t find out from watching the episode.

Also, while I’m here talking about Ashley Eckstein, the characterization here was extremely off, in that specific way that happens when a writer/director is working with their absolute favorite character, DAVE FILONI. I do trust Ashley to course-correct Dave on Ahsoka (in the same way we’ve heard about Sam Witwer pushing back on people about Maul), and that...was not happening here. (I think Katee Sachoff said something similar to this about Bo-Katan in her interview last week, as well.)

how did you get Bo-Katan so right and Ahsoka so wrong

look, Dave Filoni is truly living up to George Lucas’s legacy in that he can story tell pretty well but he’s not actually that great at nitty-gritty of writing and directing. (none of the really good TCW episodes are his.)

this episode made me think of A Friend in Need (which he directed) which is not, like, a BAD episode but quite notoriously includes the Bo-Katan ass-slap and also Ahsoka beheading four Mandalorians at once.

it also includes a helpless village of oppressed and exploited Asian-coded civilians who are there mostly as background scenery so the bad guys can be bad and the heroes can feel righteous

I’ll come back to that one

the level of violence in this episode was...weird. honestly, too high? in a way that probably would not have registered if it was anyone but Ahsoka. look, I am an animated shows person. I know TCW and Rebels inside and out. I know that neither one is particularly shy about killing off faceless bad guys (though if you watch Rebels S1 compared to Rebels S4 they really dial back the amount of fatal violence the main characters commit in the last season, lol). But this felt off for Ahsoka in a way I can’t really articulate.

why is Ahsoka attacking a random Mandalorian (her allies are Mandalorians!) who is walking through the woods WITH A BABY? WITHOUT WARNING?

part of that is just her movement -- when they animated her for TCW back in 2008, they made a deliberate decision to give her mannerisms and movement and a fighting style that a human can’t do because she isn’t human and animation can do that. which means that they hobbled themselves when they came to translating her to live action because uh a human can’t do that.

something about her lightsaber blades looked really, really wrong and I can’t put my finger on what. it’s like they just used the illuminated blades of the stunt sabers but didn’t do the extra CGI that the films do? I don’t know.

Ahsoka did a LOT of dramatic posing and what WAS that?

Dave can’t direct live action, that’s what that was

since when can you canonically convey that much information mind to mind

are Ahsoka and Grogu a dyad in the Force (I know the answer is no but also: what? what was happening?)

the only people we’ve seen who can do that sort of thing are Quinlan Vos and Cal Kestis, who both have the rare talent for telemetry, and even that’s not mind to mind communication, that’s touching a thing and going “YIKES”

you are telling me that Ahsoka Tano, whom six months ago we saw take on Darth Maul, a whole barrage of Mandalorian warriors, and her entire clone trooper battalion and walk away without a scratch, had to work up a sweat fighting one woman with a spear

you do know that we all saw TCW and Rebels right

and here’s the problem! this episode makes zero sense if you HAVE seen TCW and Rebels because (1) she doesn’t look right (2) she doesn’t fight right (3) timelines? we’ve never heard of them? (4) is Thrawn back? did you find the Chimaera? (you all do remember that Ezra and Thrawn aren’t out there alone and are in fact with a 40,000 man crewed star destroyer right) (5) did you NOT find them? (6) are you even looking? (7) this is supposed to be AFTER the Rebels epilogue unless you’ve decided to take advantage of that specific ending scene not being super specifically dated and if it’s before IT MAKES IT EVEN WORSE! because I desperately hate that epilogue and its implications EVEN AS IT IS! (8) why would you call this episode “The Jedi” when since 2013 Ahsoka’s whole thing has been not being a Jedi

to be fair I’m pretty sure S7 tried very hard to course correct that but unfortunately, they could not because the rest of canon exists

are you still trying to deny me grown Ahsoka and Rex when we know you got Temuera back for a five second shot of Boba

to be fair I would have the same aural problems with Temuera voicing Rex because that’s Dee Bradley Baker as far as I’m concerned (I reiterate that this is because of how my brain process character and sound, not anythign else)

if you haven’t seen TCW and Rebels this is a random Jedi wandering around for no specific reason namedropping a completely random person who has no prior significance unless it’s going to turn up later

this entire show has consisted of namedropping random people and things with no prior significance within the show itself and it remains entirely unclear whether they’re ever going to have significance within the show itself

look, I can buy Ahsoka not wanting to train the kid both for her stated reasons and for some implied stuff from earlier on in canon (the kids in the Ahsoka novel, the babies from Future of the Force), even what happened with Ezra, and obviously she has Plans and cannot haul a baby around with her when that baby is going to be a baby for an indeterminate amount of time

which honestly is something that ought to come up because even if Ahsoka wanted to train the kid by the time she grew old and died he might, if we were very lucky, have advanced to being essentially a pre-teen and then would be on his own again? this is also true for Din.

lol sure go cast yourself out into the Force, I’m sure there’s absolutely not a single darksider still wandering around the galaxy who might perk up at “ooh, free apprentice!”

I’m literally starting to think that this show takes place in an alternate universe where Luke and Leia either don’t exist or died at some point in the OT

me, baffled, last season: you’re telling me Cara Dune, Alderaanian, had never heard of the Jedi? was she not keeping up with whatever Leia Organa was doing? was the Rebel Alliance actually big enough that PEOPLE IN IT HADN’T HEARD OF LUKE SKYWALKER?

what...is Luke doing right now. isn’t he training Leia?

WHAT HAS AHSOKA BEEN DOING FOR TEN YEARS are we seriously supposed to believe she peaced out of the Rebel Alliance after Malachor and whatever the hell they’re going to make that out to be (honestly at this point I’m betting on “they will never touch it”)

does or does Ahsoka not know that Luke exists

hoo boy can you just see them trying to cast a younger Luke, or do you think they’d CGI de-age Mark Hamill?

oh yeah let’s go through this again in a season with someone else playing young Luke, let’s, I’m not emotionally invested in that so I’m prepared to be entertained

hasn’t Sebastian Stan been floated (even if just on Twitter) for young Luke?

why are these not-imperials on this planet. what are they doing here. what’s the point.

why is the planet...being burned? I was half-expecting, like, normal deforestation (in terms of logging for lumber) but I’m also a bit ??? about this.

since when is beskar resistant to lightsabers, I thought cortosis was the only thing that was? whatever, it’s new canon, they can do whatever they want. (ETA: apparently that’s been true for a while; I am more a Jedi person than a Mandalorian one as far as the EU goes and my Mandalorian lore is my weakest point.)

dear god were these fight scenes bad

I did spot Morai and I appreciated the tookas

okay, I am taking the next thing out of bullet points because I was really, really upset by it, and as an Asian-American woman it affects me directly.

I was really, really shaken by the use of village of (space) Asian people who were portrayed solely as background victims to be tortured and exploited. Star Wars has a long history of Orientalism, and some of it I can look away from and some of I can’t. Mando especially has a very bad track record with its treatment of Asian characters (Fennec Shand), and in recent years the rest of Star Wars live action has also been pretty bad about it; I will never forget how shaken and upset I was by Paige Tico’s death at the beginning of TLJ, and Rose’s sidelining in TROS was a lot to deal with. There has also been some pretty appalling anti-Asian racism from the Mandalorian fandom that I have seen in regards towards casting rumors about Sabine (which brought me to the point of tears as recently as yesterday).

I had been braced for Rosario Dawson Ahsoka because it’s been rumored for so long, if never officially confirmed by Lucasfilm, and after they pulled the original VA for Leia from Resistance a few years ago (without ever making an official statement but it was after she made really dismissive statements during the Kavanaugh hearings) I was still really hoping they’d pull Dawson for the transphobic assault allegations, or that the rumors were false, or...something. I was not expecting the way that they treated the Asian civilian population here. I kept hoping that there was going to be something, and it’s like they kept almost going there with Governor Wing (you want to make either his name or his position clear in the actual episode, maybe?) but then kept pulling back, which just made the whole population victims that had to be rescued by outsiders. And exploited, and tortured, and abused in general.

And yes, I’m aware the Magistrate/Morgan Elsbeth is an Asian-American woman. That doesn’t make it better? Since Ahsoka presumably kills her offscreen?

(Also Diana Lee Inosanto is a stunt performer and a fight choreographer, why is that fight scene so wooden, damn.)

okay back to bullet points to wrap up

I realize I haven’t said much about Din and the kid and that’s because they didn’t...do...much? I guess if you’re actually invested in them “YAY HE HAS FEELINGS” is a major thing but I’m not

I have flashes of being invested in Din, but the problem is that I never know what the hell this show is doing because it’s all over the place. We are 5/8 of the way into season 2 and I have no idea what it’s trying to do: they keep setting stuff up and then not doing anything with it. I can make vague predictions based on what’s set up and based on my knowledge of canon, but this show is so weirdly set up and paced that I can never tell if they’re something for A Reason, for the lulz, or for the Aesthetic.

I feel extremely vindicated by the revelation a few weeks ago that Din grew up in a cult but I also straight-up feel like I spent the past year being gaslighted about what Mandalorians were, and that’s...not a great feeling. Do I think that the show is going to do anything with that? Fuck, I don’t know. I hope so. I know what I’d do as a writer. But I can’t predict anything they’re doing and that makes me really uneasy.

jeez, at least when George Lucas was making Star Wars you knew he was doing it to entertain himself and tell a specific story rather than constantly having to go back and wonder what story lines got compromised for a project down the road.

like, is this why they did mo-cap Ahsoka in S7, to brace us for live action Ahsoka here? I know they had already filmed Mando S2 before S1 came out. WHY THEY DIDN’T THEY REUSE LAUREN MARY KIM AS AHSOKA’S STUNT DOUBLE THEN? it’s not like she hasn’t stunted in Mando before?

if this was supposed to be a backdoor pilot to a Rebels sequel...I will flip a table

I enjoyed the Bad Batch eps in TCW S7 but knowing that there’s going to be a Bad Batch show I’m now wondering if they’re only in S7 to backdoor pilot that show

how far back does this go? did they put the Legacy of Mandalore story line in Rebels S4 solely to set up for this? especially considering that that’s the one thing in S4 that actually has saga weight and then they immediately got rid of everything it accomplished to set up for this?

I presume that this is the reason they refused to release the turnaround for Ahsoka’s epilogue look two years ago. apparently it doesn’t matter given they changed her entire epilogue color scheme and also her lekku and personality.

Look -- at the end of the day, there was only about a 2% chance I was ever going to like this episode, but I was holding out for it nevertheless. I do get surprised from time to time! I liked the Bo-Katan episode! This was, however, a hot mess. And yes: a lot of the things that bother me are not going to bother other people. (I haven’t seen anyone comment on the Asian villagers, for example.)

#just so there is no doubt: I HATED THIS EPISODE #the mandalorian spoilers #bedlam watches the mandalorian #mando the jedi

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musicfren · 3 years

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They’ve got a bad reputation (they’ll get a standing ovation) part 2

HI HAVE I, TOLD YOU, THAT, @nottesilhouette IS THE MOST FRIGGEN AMAZING WRITER IN THE WHOLE WORLD? God...why do we do this to ourselves, friggen 3400 word story in the span of 2 days...this is entirely exclusively my fault pay no mind Read part 1 here. Happy @felinettenovember y’all, time for slep!

...oh, dear gods, why is Felix here? The spotlight burns into his face like shame, regret bubbling up in his stomach. He doesn’t remember challenging Marinette but he has, apparently, and now everyone’s watching and he has to-- he has to-- fight. Defend himself.

Or breathe, if he can manage it.

One seems easier than the other. Well, here goes nothing. Felix steps forward and calls engarde.

“Ophelia did nothing but obey the men in her life!” He cries, stepping forward, gesticulating wildly. The crowd gasps, and Felix doesn’t understand why until he realizes he's still holding the sword prop, white-knuckled grip around its hilt. Marinette’s eyes go wide with surprise and Felix nearly blurts out an apology right there. But then a glint of something sharper flashes in her gaze, burning with determination and suddenly Felix isn’t feeling quite so confident. It’s too late to quail now. He steps forward and matches her, still talking. “She’s hardly enough of an independent person to qualify as a character.”

“What would she be, then?” Marinette’s voice is steady, calm, and Felix is wildly, irrationally envious of it. He can’t work out how to make his statements come out smooth, suave like she’s managed, so he goes for the next best weapon: rage.

“She’s little more than a symbol, a prop,” he spits, and the crowd reacts appropriately. Something in his chest loosens at the idea that he’s performed correctly. Something in his heart wrenches.

Marinette sends him a snide look. “You would know. You’re a model mannequin.”

They’re circling each other now: Felix is brash, forceful, cutting broad slashes through the air with each sweeping generalization he makes. Marinette is steady, precise, pulling apart the stitches of his defense with needle-fine precision. His pulse quickens; a glance at the audience shows she’s winning their favor. This isn’t the clever riposte and quick banter they expected, and Felix is coming across as dim-witted at best.

“Well, what is she then? You have so many judgements, it’s time you raised an opinion of your own-- or do you have no policy but to raze mine?” Felix pushes her back, scrambling for repost. He needs to be interesting, he needs to be clever, he needs to-- turn it back onto Marinette before the crowd realizes he’s faking, that he doesn’t want to be here, that he’s… scared.

His tongue sours at the words, and he hates himself for saying them. Marinette shoots him a glare full of challenge, and for an instant he considers conceding right there. Marinette believes so strongly in her cause, and Felix is desperate to apologize, to reconcile, to just acknowledge the points she’s making. But he’s trapped now, caught in the reputation he’s built for this audience and his own pride, and he has nowhere to go but forward.

Or backwards, apparently, because with each point Marinette makes, crisp and concise and clear, Felix finds himself frantically retreating further and further.

“Ophelia is the only person in the play who recognizes that Hamlet needs help.”

“That’s not true--”

She cuts him off with a slice. “She’s the only person who notices and tries to stop him, who cares enough to call him out on his actions, to hold him accountable to the promises he made before his mad plan, to who he used to be.”

“The entire argument is milquetoast--” He stabs desperately.

“They speak of beauty and reputation, of expectations and the way one’s actions will never outweigh the image others have of them.”

“They speak of madness and prostitution!”

They’ve become locked in combat now, their blades darting in the scant space their words leave behind. The crowd presses forward, squeezes the stage almost to bursting. Nino presses his face to the camera lense, not wanting to miss an instant.

“The argument is framed against women but its themes are centered on Hamlet’s own realization of the position he’s found himself in. It breaks the adrenaline rush long enough to show him, in all his grief and desperation, the reality he’s constructed for himself. They speak of agency!”

“Ophelia has none!”

“Ophelia reminds him that he does!” Marinette’s voice finally raises. “Ophelia reminds Hamlet who he is, what he has, if only for a moment. Ophelia grieves for him, for his loss: of his father, of his sanity and dignity and agency. She acknowledges that he is a liar, but remembers the man he used to be, the person he put work into being.”

“She laments the loss of his attention, nothing more.”

“To write her statements off as such discounts the tone and the manner with which they are intended; she is returning his madman’s accusations with compassion and reason, she is the only person who has done so, who will ever do so.”

“Why should I take her seriously when no one else does?!” It’s a mad, desperate response as he finds himself teetering at the edge of the stage, and he’s unbalanced. He swings again, unhinged.

“None of the men in her life-- not her father, not her brother, not god himself-- take her seriously until she dies.”

“She trips into a river.” Finally, Felix is in charge of this conversation; this, Marinette cannot deny. It is his strongest point, and the only point that matters. He steadies himself, holds his sword like a shield to defend his statement.

“Her death is not an accident. Her death is the culmination of the climax. Her death is the reason anyone stops long enough to notice how far gone Hamlet is! Her death tethers Hamlet to the person he used to be, who loved her once, who remembered what it felt like to choose what he did and who he was.”

“That makes her nothing more than the physical manifestation and harbinger of Hamlet's descent into madness,” and Felix puts on a smirk because he knows he should.

Felix wishes he was being honest, passionate the way Marinette is being. Felix wishes her voice didn’t seem so far away, calling from a world he remembers existing in but can’t find his way back to anymore. Felix wishes he was talking to her in a realm even close to reality instead of the mirage he’s operating in, desperate not to fall through.

Instead, he steps forward from the edge of the stage and keeps his sword aloft. “She’s trapped in the societal confines of traditional womanhood. She’s nothing more than a woman in a world where that doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right.”

Marinette stops moving forward to meet him, drops her arm. Felix is thrilled, and sick and confused, doubly so when he notices the ferocity in her expression. It is not one of someone who has given up. It is one of someone who is about to pounce.

“You’re right, she is nothing more than a woman in a world where that doesn’t matter. No one cares what she has to say. So she makes it matter. She dies, and she is finally heard. You’re right, and she’s a genius for the way she wields it like a weapon.” Marinette smirks, matching his smugness with self-assured pride, and taps his wrist with her sword. His own slips easily out of his grasp, and he trembles; with what emotion, he cannot place. “Being able to do the work of all these men in 58 lines doesn’t make her less of a character, Felix. It makes her more of one, and more power to her for what she’s able to notice that no one else will. It’s not her fault men can’t manage it.”

Felix finally snaps. “My sense is not less than yours!”

Marinette pauses, and very very slowly, grins. It’s terrifying, predatorial. She rakes her gaze down his body, and he shivers. “I had thought to agree but this battle of wits has proven very much so the opposite. When she blows him a kiss and winks, Felix collapses where he stands.

It’s over. The tension the assembled students have been holding in their collective lungs for the last five minutes erupts into cheers and thunderous applause.

“Bravo, bravo.” says Nino, pushing through the crowd, most of whom are still frantically scribbling in their notebooks. Felix can scarcely bring himself to look up, his face burning with humiliation. The room around him is rapidly becoming a confusing blur of angry lights and prying eyes.

“You guys were amazing, I’ve never seen anything like that before! Honestly I should turn this in just like that.” Nino moves around to get a few more shots of their faces, lit up under the harsh theatre lights.

“No way!” shouts someone from the crowd, “I’m turning it in first!” “--can’t believe how easily Marinette just eviscerated Felix! I thought he was good at literature but--” “--she’s so clever, he could barely keep up--” “--he’s not very good at this, is he--”

Someone else laughs and soon the whole crowd is bickering, arguing over who will lay claim to Marinette’s mental prowess and Felix’s mortification.

“Enough, ALL of you! That was completely uncalled for. This wasn’t for you to take advantage of. None of you-- none of you-- bothered to state your own position, your own opinion. All you did was encourage my attacks, which were honestly in poor form.” Marinette hardly stops to breathe. “And anyways, I’m only more coherent because I’ve done weeks of research on this character. Felix kept up to someone who wasn’t just thinking on her feet, and his points still had credibility-- do you know how many literary analyses I’ve read on his position just to try and work out how to defend mine?” Marinette leans over and offers Felix a gentle smile and an outstretched hand. He gratefully accepts.

Felix takes her hand and pulls himself up with it, and stands shoulder to shoulder with her, looking out at the sea of chastised faces. “And now you think you can turn in our work-- her work, really-- and our performance as your own as if you have any claim to it-- it’s disgusting. Marinette poured herself into caring about this, and… and I should’ve listened to her, but I don’t get to take credit for the work she’s done to be this person. I need to do the work myself. You’re manipulators and thieves if you think you deserve any part of what she’s done.”

“Hey, everyone is manipulated by something. Hamlet, Claudius, Horaito… you would know, right?” Marinette looks at him again, soft and shy and concerned through her lashes.

Felix swallows hard, glances at the cameras still rolling. Yeah, he would know.

“Thank you.” He says, stumbling and trying to hide the way his legs are shaking. “I, um… I guess I’d better put these swords away before someone stabs themselves.”

Nino slaps a hand on his shoulder so hard he nearly falls back down again. “Felix, my man! Get that grumpy black uniform off you!”

“Um… what?” Felix turns in confusion, head still spinning.

“You, my friend, are stage-hand no more! We’re still missing a Hamlet, and I know I’ve found the perfect one right here!”

“...WHAT?!?”

As the world around him starts to blur, Marinette slips her hand into his and squeezes, shooting him a fond, amused grin. “You’re going to do great, Felix. I’ll see you on stage.” She presses her lips to his cheek, soft, warm, and… the scene fades to black to the sound of cheering.

#felinette #battle of wits #felinette november #felinette month 2020 #MusicFrenDoesWords #aaaaaaaa #nottesilhouette is just hamelton #but a good person

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untamed-era · 3 years

Text

Come Out and Level Up, Part 2

(part 1) (EDIT: link now leads to both halves of part 1) (EDIT 2: AO3 Link)

Wei Ying does not look pleased with the situation. This is unexpected. Lan Wangji remembers finding proper labels as a deep relief, a sense that other people matched his experience. Wei Ying, on the other hand, comes and sits down, staring at his phone again, looking dejected.

Lan Wangji waits.

“I’m. I guess it’s good I know this, right? Let me make better choices, going forward. It’s good to. It’s good to understand, why I never particularly wanted to date anyone that asked me out. That’s good.”

He is trying to talk himself into the idea. Lan Wangji continues waiting.

“I just —“ He looks up, suddenly, meeting Lan Wangji’s eyes. “Lan Zhan, I really did want to get married.” He sounds forlorn, lost. “I mean. You remember, I talked about inviting you to a farm, someday? And like.” He shifts, uncomfortably, curling his arms around himself. Lan Wangji wants to hug him, comfort him. He does not know how. “I never pictured a wife, but I don’t… I don’t want to be alone.”

Lan Wangji remembers the fantasy Wei Ying had described. It had been so casually referenced, the idea of a little farm and lots of children running around and food cooking inside. It’s featured heavily in his own fantasies, since, when he allows himself to forget that he was invited only as an interloper.

“Action does not equal attraction,” he tells Wei Ying, quietly. “You may yet find a… wife. If you want. If they are happy with the arrangement.”

“Maybe. But like, how do you know when you’ve found someone you’d be willing to spend your life with, if you don’t have the whole true love thing to work with? I mean, you were the only specific person I ever put anywhere near that whole dream. I can’t think of anyone I know who’d be… who’d fit…” He trails off, thinking.

Lan Wangji looks away, breathing through the emotional turmoil of that. He knows Wei Ying doesn’t mean it like Lan Wangji wishes he did. He’s as good as saying he can’t picture Lan Wangji there all the time, can’t see him as a true life partner of any sort. Lan Wangji will respect that. Of course he will. None of this is about him.

“How did you even figure all this out?” Wei Ying asks, suddenly, and Lan Wangji flinches. Wei Ying plows ahead without noticing. “I mean, there’s so many terms here, and I don’t know — maybe I’m just overthinking everything! I like thinking about sex, I like the idea of kissing! But apparently not like everyone else does? How did you ever sort all this out?”

It was the best words for how I felt about you, Lan Wangji thinks but does not say. It was the only way to make sense of the intensity and specificity of his feelings. How can he help, when Wei Ying’s problem is not knowing, instead of knowing too much?

“I mean,” Wei Ying continues, not waiting for any sort of response, “I mean, like, sure I’ve contemplated kissing people in the past. Specific people, even! I mean, I’ve thought about kissing you, who hasn’t, obviously, that’s just… That’s just part of friendship, isn’t it?”

Lan Wangji stares. All of his deep, meditative thoughts are crumpling around him. He cannot feel any part of his body. He cannot interpret any of this. If he tries, he may actually explode.

“Oooookay you’re looking at me weirdly,” Wei Ying says from very far away and also about two feet from Lan Wangji’s face. It should be farther. It should be much less. How can he cope with any of this. “So what you’re saying is that imagining kissing isn’t a normal part of any close friendship.”

How is Lan Wangji supposed to answer that? It’s certainly a normal part of his closest friendships. Friendship. Singular.

Wei Ying laughs, high and strained. “I don’t suppose we can just forget about what I just said, move back to. Uh. Some other topic? Um.”

Lan Wangji physically cannot. He thinks his entire brain has rewired itself to play “I’ve thought about kissing you” on repeat. He cannot think of anything else well enough to respond. He cannot muster the strength to echo it.

“Maybe I should just. Just go? Sorry, I know I made things weird, I wouldn’t blame—“

“Don’t,” Lan Wangji says. It’s spoken from his instincts, the ones that never want Wei Ying to leave, the ones that he overrules when he has any brainpower left over for them.

“Uh. Okay, Lan Zhan.” He looks nervous, Lan Wangji notes. He should say something to reassure Wei Ying. That sounds good.

“You’ve thought about kissing me,” he says instead. Hmm.

Wei Ying avoids his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah? I… I didn’t think that was a big deal but. I’m also kind of thinking of… a lot of other. Things. I’ve thought about and. Oh, I don’t know. They’re my problem, I guess. I already made things weird enough.”

“What things,” he says.

Wei Ying looks at him, eyes wide.

Lan Wangji struggles to gather his words. “I want. To hear. Your thoughts.” His hands are curled into fists so tightly they hurt. “Always,” he adds.

“Lan Zhan, no, I’ve already made you uncomfortable enough, I wouldn’t want to —“

“I am not uncomfortable.” He hesitates, and self-evaluates. “Or. That is not my primary emotion.”

“Confused you, then.”

And he can’t quite dispute that one. He is confused. He is dumbfounded, and… It takes a long moment to sort through everything else and identify the most prominent emotion.

“Yes,” he says, finally. “But I am also hopeful.”

That finally leaves Wei Ying speechless. It is nice to turn the tables again. He waits, in silence.

“What the fuck, Lan Zhan,” he finally says, weakly. “What the fuck do you have to be hopeful about.”

“You asked about how I figured my identity out.” Lan Wangji says. He can see the shape of the conversation again, he thinks. He does not know the end, but he is hopeful.

“We’re well past that!” Wei Ying says. “That was before I — before — Before —“

“I found the terms,” Lan Wangji says, ploughing ahead heedlessly, “because they best described how much I wanted to kiss you, Wei Ying.”

He has flabbergasted Wei Ying again. He savors it, watching Wei Ying blink and gape and wave one hand wildly. Finally, Wei Ying opens his mouth, and quietly says “Wanted? Past tense?”

“Want,” he admits. It comes easily, in spite of everything. Years of hidden pining, all leading to this one needle-point admission.

Wei Ying stares at him. It’s easy to meet his eyes.

He’s scared, of course he’s scared. He’s on tenterhooks, waiting for the response. But he has had no hope, no reason to say anything, sometimes not even a chance — and now he has them all.

“What the fuck,” Wei Ying finally says, “is this conversation.”

Lan Wangji inclines his head in agreement.

“I mean seriously, what the fuck. I mean this started with me mentioning a gay person at work and now you’re… we’re…. I’m….” He shies away from saying what, exactly, any of these pronouns are doing, which Lan Wangji thinks is deeply unfortunate. He, himself, has been uncomfortably vulnerable multiple times and Wei Ying has mostly just floundered at him. In fairness, he himself had a complicated process of coming to terms with his sexuality and would not have been balanced or coherent about it in the first ten minutes of questioning. He can and will be patient with this. In the part of him that does not care about fairness it rankles, that he spent the last ten years slowly making peace with his identity and here Wei Ying is with the exact same internalized heteronormativity that characterized middle school.

“So, but. You want to kiss me, though.”

Lan Wangji had been very clear on that, he thought. “Mn.”

“Why, though. I mean just… Why?”

Lan Wangji stares at Wei Ying, the love of his life, his best friend, the smartest person he knows, for a good long minute. “Because I am attracted to you. Romantically and sexually.”

They stare at each other for another long moment, Wei Ying’s mouth hanging open. “What the fuck, Lan Zhan,” he says, finally, weakly.

If he were someone else, he could, perhaps, rhapsodize about Wei Ying’s sterling qualities, the foundation of his attraction. He certainly has the material, but lacks the skill to shape it into something convincing. “I do not wish to make you uncomfortable,” he says.

“Uncomfortable? Uncomfortable? I’m not uncomfortable, Lan Zhan, I’m just baffled. I mean, you’re you! Who wouldn’t want to hear this stuff from you! How am I supposed to deal with this! How am I supposed to figure out — wait hang on I’m calling Jiang Cheng.”

Lan Wangji blinks. He did not anticipate Wei Ying’s irritating brother being part of any of these confessions. To borrow a phrase from Wei Ying, what the fuck is this conversation.

“Jiang Cheng? Hi, Jiang Cheng, hey, quick question: how much do you think about kissing your male friends.”

The faint but irate voice of Jiang Cheng says “What the fuck, Wei Ying.”

“No, this is important. Do you think about kissing your friends? How often are you hanging out with like, other men, and just start thinking about kissing them. Like just occasionally, or.”

“Never! I never think about that! Why would I?”

“So like. If one of them — let’s say Lan Zhan — offered to kiss you. Would you want to?”

A silence. “Why the fuck would I want to kiss Lan Wangji,” Jiang Cheng says. Lan Wangji thinks maybe he should be offended, except that it is an exact mirror of his feelings toward Jiang Cheng. Besides, Wei Ying is making a very endearing offended face on his behalf.

“Why wouldn’t you want to kiss Lan Zhan — wait I just realized I could be doing that instead of arguing with you so I guess live on in your delusion.”

“What the fuck, Wei Ying! Don’t you dare go harassing —“

The line cuts off before Jiang Cheng can finish his threat. Fortunately, Lan Wangji cannot find it in himself to give one singular fuck about his opinion right now. He stares at Wei Ying, who looks, suddenly, nervous. He licks his lips, and Lan Wangji stares more. “Uh,” he says, finally. “I still don’t. Exactly. Know where I stand on most of this? Like I’m pretty sure I want to, uh, experiment with, with everything, ‘cause suddenly I have a ton of questions, but mostly I think it’s frankly very rude that you aren’t already kissing me, what’s up with that, Lan Zhan —“

Lan Wangji’s tattered patience abruptly snaps, and he is pulling Wei Ying’s face to his before the other can finish talking. After all, he was not raised to be rude.

#lan wangji #wei wuxian #ace headcanons #wangxian #mdzs fic #this took much longer than i expected #but here it is

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jensengirl83 · 4 years

Text

In My Dreams

Dean x reader

Word count-4464

Warnings- Angst, fluff, fluffy smut, unrequited feelings.

Summary- Reader confesses her feelings to Sam. Dean overhears.

Reader’s POV

Another morning I wake up and just want to go back to sleep. Another day I must pretend that everything is ok when it’s not. At least in my dreams he loves me, he wants me as much as I want him. I have been with the Winchesters for a few years now, and it was easy at first, but now it has become miserable to be here. The boys are great, it has nothing to do with them, it is all me. I had to go and fall in love with Dean, the forever playboy who will never settle down, a terminal bachelor. So again, I wake up and put on my fake smile and go through the motions, the hunts, the long nights of research in the library. I won’t leave them, it’s no one’s fault but my own, but it is getting so much harder to keep my feelings hidden from Dean. I think Sam knows, but he will never tell, he would never betray my trust that way. Sam and I have become close, the younger brother I always wanted. I’m close to Dean as well, all three of us tell each other everything, well, everything but my true feelings for the oldest Winchester. I can’t risk ruining what he have, a family, I would never want to ruin that for them. I finally decide to quit moping and get out of bed, as much as I want to stay in dreamland, I have responsibilities.

“Morning Sam. You make coffee?” I inquire as I make my way into the bunker’s kitchen.

“Of course, Y/n, when have I ever not had coffee waiting on you and Dean? I know better than to not have you both caffeinated. I don’t have a death wish!” Sam says derisively.

“Alright Sam, we’re not that bad, you smart ass.” I chuckle as I pour a cup of coffee. “Well, maybe Dean is but I’m not.”

“Who are you kidding Y/N/N? I’m surprised you even know how to put a coherent sentence together before you have your coffee.” Sam is laughing but I scowl at him.

“Well someone is asking to get their ass kicked early this morning.” I say faking seriousness.

“Sure Y/n, whatever you say.” He is rolling his eyes but the smile on his face shows his enjoyment of our morning banter.

“Dean still asleep?” He is usually up by now.

“He got in late last night, he went to the bar after you went to bed.” My heart sinks. I know what that means. Sam looks at me with a look that almost seems sympathetic, making me think even more that he has suspicions on how I feel about his brother. I just nod my head and go back to my coffee, hoping that concentrating on my drink will keep the tears that are building in my eyes from falling. Every time Dean goes out my heart breaks just a little more, wishing I were the one he wanted, the one who could make him happy. My mind drifts off again back to my dream, cuddled up to his side, his arms around me. I used to only dream of him every now and then, it’s almost every night now, like my brain is trying to punish me.

“Morning Sam, Morning lil’ bit.” Dean says as he ruffles my hair on his way to get his coffee. His nickname for me, because of my vertical impairment, used to make me smile. Now it just drives a knife into my chest, knowing he will only ever see me as his short friend.

“Any new cases?” Dean is asking Sam as he sits down beside me at the table. Out of all the seats at this big ass table, why does he have to sit right next to me. What have I done that the fates seem to like to torture me?

“Nope, seems like we have a day off. Good day to get some things caught up around here.” Sam is smiling until he sees the look on my face. “You alright Y/n?” Thank you, Sam, for drawing the attention to me, I honestly want to choke him right now.

“I’m fine Sam, just thinking about all the laundry that has piled up.” I do not want to do the laundry, but that has nothing to do with the look on my face. Another day stuck in the bunker is a lot harder than being on a hunt. At least on a hunt, I can keep my mind occupied enough not to think about him constantly.

“I’ll help you after I clean Baby up, Y/n.” Dean smiling at me like that is making harder to be in here.

“No thanks, I got it.” I jump up from the table, coffee in hand, heading to my room. I couldn’t take it any longer, him being that close to me, his smell driving me insane, those mossy green eyes looking into mine, his body heat radiating on to me, I had to get out of there. I make it to my room and lock my door, hoping I can calm down before I have to face him again. I run my hand down my face to realize there are tears staining my cheeks. When did I start crying? I lie down and put my face in my pillow and let it all out, the sobs wracking my body. I don’t know how long I’ve been in here throwing myself a pity party, when someone knocks on my door, making me freeze. I cannot face them right now; I can’t explain the tears without ruining everything. I stay silent hoping they will just go away, closing my eyes trying to compose myself, when I feel a dip in the mattress.

“Y/n what’s going on, and don’t tell me nothing, I know better.” Sam’s voice breaking the silence.

“How did you get in here?” I know he can hear the annoyance in my voice.

“I picked the lock.” Of course, he picked the lock. “Now tell me what’s wrong, because I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

“I can’t Sam, it will ruin everything.” My voice cracking from all the emotions coursing through me.

“No, it won’t Y/n, I promise I won’t judge, and I’ll keep it to myself if that’s what you want.” The worry on his face is breaking my resolve. What could it really hurt to tell Sam?

“I can’t do it anymore Sam, I don’t want to wake up, I just want to stay asleep forever.” My sobs starting up again.

“What are you talking about Y/n? We need you; You can’t leave us like that.” The emotion in his voice making me realize how he took what I said.

“That’s not what I mean Sam, I want to stay in my dreams, that’s the only place I’m happy.”

“Why Y/n? Don’t we make you happy anymore?” I swore I heard footsteps in the hallway.

“Because in my dreams he loves me Sam! He wants me like I want him, the kisses, the sweet touches, he wants them as much I do. I used to love the mornings, the songbirds singing, the beautiful colors of the morning sky. Now, they just remind me of what I will never have!” I am now pacing my room, the tears a steady flow down my face.

“Y/n….”

“Don’t Sam, you don’t have to say it, I know he’ll never want me. Why can’t I be happy Sam? Why couldn’t I fall in love with someone who would love me too? All I want is for the stars to always shine so I can feel his love for me, his body next to mine, arms wrapped around me.” I feel Sam’s arms wrap me up in a hug, my body a trembling mess.

“Tell him Y/n, don’t keep this to yourself.” Sam’s hand on my head holding me to his chest feels comforting, but it’s not his arms I want around me.

“I can’t Sam, if I tell him I have to leave. I could not handle the rejection and the looks of pity every time he looked at me. Things could never be like they are now if I tell him.”

“You need to tell him; you might be surprised at what he has to say.” I can’t help but laugh.

“Seriously Sam? He would never want me; I am nothing like his bar conquests. I am short with too much weight around the middle, my hips, my thighs. I do not even compare to what he wants.”

“How do you know what he wants unless you talk to him?” I sigh in frustration, I know he is trying to help, but he will never completely understand.

“I’m sorry Sam, I just can’t. I’ll be ok, I just needed to get it off my chest.” I smile at him hoping this conversation is over.

“Alright Y/n, but I still think you should tell him.” Sam place a kiss on top of my head, giving me one last squeeze, before he leaves and shuts the door behind him.

Dean’s POV

I stand in the hallway; I know a look of shock plastered on my face. I didn’t’ mean to eavesdrop on Y/n and Sammy’s conversation, but I couldn’t walk away when I heard her voice, riddled with pain and sobs. I had to stop myself from rushing in her room, wrapping her in my arms, way too many times to count. Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t’ hear Sammy leave her room, the next thing I know I’m landing on my ass.

“What the hell Dean!” Sam is whispering but I can hear the annoyance loud and clear. “Were you listening to our conversation?”

“Not on purpose, I was walking by and heard Y/n upset and stopped to see if she was ok. Once I realized what she was talking about, I couldn’t bring myself to move.” No use to lying to him.

“Library, NOW!” I know he’s mad, but I really couldn’t help it. Hearing her say she loves me, that she wants me, froze me to my spot. Sam stomps past me heading for the library. “Not going to help me up?” I say as Sam glares at me and keeps walking. “Guess not.” I stand and follow Sam preparing for the onslaught that is to come. Rounding the corner into the library, my foot is barely in the room when it starts.

“How could you Dean? She was telling me those things in confidence.”

“I’m sorry Sammy, I really didn’t mean to listen, but when I heard her saying she loves me, I couldn’t stop myself.” Sam’s bitch face is on point today.

“And why is that Dean? Couldn’t pass up hearing another woman saying how great you are? Y/n is not another one of your bar groupies Dean. If you think for one second I’m going to let her be another notch in your belt…..”

“Whoa Sammy, that’s enough!” I can’t keep from raising my voice. “You really think that low of me? You think I would take advantage of her like that?”

“Why other reason would you want to keep listening to her talk about how she feels about you Dean?” Sam’s voice is still harsh but not as angry as earlier.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I may like her too Sammy?” The uncertainty on his face has me a little confused.

“Really Dean? Is that why you go home with those girls all the time? You have a funny way of showing her you like her.”

“You want to know what I’ve been doing Sam? All those nights you think I have been screwing some random chick, I have been at the bar drinking myself stupid. Know why? Because I can’t hardly stand to be here anymore. I see her, and all I can think is how much I want her to be mine, how bad I want to be the man she deserves, a man she would want to be with. I have been in love with her for a long time Sammy, and hearing her say that she loved me, yeah, sorry I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from what I have been longing to hear.” It scares the hell out me to say it out loud. I am scared of her being a target by being with me, but I can’t resist anymore. Hearing she feels the same way has broken any chance of me being able to stay away from her.

“Then why the hell are you still standing here talking to me Dean? You need to go tell her.” A smile finally on Sammy’s face. It only takes me a second to move, I turn on my heels heading for her room. I have to tell her, knowing she’s in her room, heartbroken, thinking I don’t want her, that I don’t think she’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, is killing me. I don’t even think to knock, heading straight into her room.

“What the hell Dean? Ever heard of knocking?” She’s trying to hide her face, doesn’t want me to see she’s been crying.

“I’m sorry sweetheart, I wasn’t thinking. I was in a hurry to come talk to you.” Even with tear stained and red rimmed eyes, she is so damn beautiful.

“I don’t really feel like talking right now Dean. I just want to go to sleep.”

“So you can go back to your dreams?” She whips around so fast I’m afraid she gave herself whiplash.

“What did you just say?” she looks absolutely horrified. Great, this is going well.

“Uhh...I might have accidentally overheard your conversation with Sammy earlier.” She is off her bed in record speed, grabbing her duffel bag out of the closet.

“What are you doing Y/n?” She doesn’t even stop to look at me. “We don’t have hunt, there is no reason to be packing.”

“I am not packing for a hunt Dean, I’m leaving.” My heart drops, she can’t leave.

“Stop Y/n, you can’t leave. Just listen to me please.” I am starting to shake; I can’t lose her now.

“No Dean, I can’t stay. You heard what I said, things can never go back to the way the were now. I can’t take the awkwardness, the looks of pity. Poor Y/n, she loves Dean, but he doesn’t love her. I have to go.” I can hear the tears and heartbreak in her voice. I have to say something, make her listen.

“I want to stay in my dreams too sweetheart.” She freezes, turning around, the look on her face would scare the biggest bad we have ever fought.

“Don’t you dare fucking patronize me! I poured my heart out to Sam. You weren’t even supposed to hear it, now you come in here making fun of me?” I slowly make my way over to her, putting my hands on her shoulders.

“I want to stay in my dreams sweetheart because in my dreams you love me, you want me like I want you, you in my bed next to me, your kisses, your touch making me feel alive. I love you. I have for a while, I was too scared to say it, but hearing you say you love me, I had to tell you I feel the same.”

“You were just out with a woman last night Dean! How can you come in here and tell me you want me not twenty-four hours after you were in someone else’s bed?” The pure heartbreak in her voice has me tearing up. I can’t believe how stupid I have been, hurting her because I was a coward.

“No baby, all those nights I have been out, I was at the bar, but no women. I have not actually been with a woman in months. I had to get out to keep from losing my mind, Y/n. Being here with you, wanting to be yours, you mine, it was killing me.” I raise my hands to cup her cheeks, brushing her tears away with my thumbs. My own tears starting to break free and slip down my face. “Please stay Y/n, I want you, all of you. You are the most amazing, sexy, bad ass, beautiful woman, sweetheart. You bring a light into my life that casts out the darkness that wants to swallow me whole. You make me want to be better, do better. You’re right, you don’t compare to those women in the bars, you are so much more than they could ever be.” I lean my forehead against hers, tears freely streaming down both our faces now.

“Dean….” I know she still doesn’t wholly believe me. I lean in to place a kiss to her soft lips, putting everything I have into it, hoping to show her how much I mean every word that I said. She hesitates but finally kisses me back, her arms coming up to wrap around my shoulders. The kiss is like nothing I have ever felt before, my heart swelling in my chest with all the emotions of finally having her in my arms, her lips on mine. I tilt my head to deepen the kiss, licking my tongue to ask for entrance. The small moan that leaves her going straight to my cock. I grab her by the hips, pulling her into me, the need to feel her body against mine overriding all my senses. She reaches up to grab the hair at the base of my neck, her nails scratching softly, making me moan into her mouth. The small gasp that leaves her letting me know that she’s as turned on as I am. I grab her by the thighs and throw her up to wrap her legs around me, needing to get her to the bed, my need to feel her, pleasure her, so overwhelming.

“Dean, put me down, I’m too heavy!” I continue to walk her over and lay her down, standing to look at her, the love I feel for this woman is amazing. I grab the hem of my T-shirt and pull it over my head, throwing it to the corner, kicking off my pajama pants to join the shirt. I rub my hand on my hard cock through my boxers, watching her squirm as she watches me.

“You are so damn beautiful, Y/n” I don’t give her a chance to respond. I lie down next to her, covering her mouth with mine. Running my hands down her body, feeling her curves, so happy I can finally feel her. I break the kiss long enough to pull her shirt over her head, moaning when I see she isn’t wearing a bra. Her hands fly to cover herself, the pink on her cheeks showing me she is self-conscious. I’ll never understand why she thinks so low of herself. If she only knew how crazy she makes me, how much she turns me on.

“Don’t cover yourself baby, I love your body, it’s beautiful.” I start to place kisses down her jaw, making my way to her collarbone. I want to cherish every inch of her.

“Dean, I don’t look like the women you are used to being with.” Her voice is barely a whisper.

“You’re right sweetheart, you don’t. You are so much better. I never loved them Y/n, I love you, no woman will ever be as sexy to me as you are.” I place soft sweet kisses on her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. I want to see herself as I see her.

“Show me then Dean, show me how beautiful you think I am.” The way she is looking at me, the lust in her eyes, I can’t hold back anymore.

“If I do something you don’t want baby, you have to tell me ok?” I need her to know there’s no pressure, to know I would never want her to be uncomfortable. She just nods her head, her bottom lip between her teeth. I slide my hand down her body, taking in every sound she makes, learning her body what makes her feel good. I reach her pajama shorts, sliding my hand under the elastic, on my way to her core. The thought of feeling her wrapped around me making my cock twitch.

Reader’s POV

The way Dean is looking at me is sending heat straight to my core, the want in his eyes driving me crazy. He slowly slides his hand into my folds, circling my clit, making me push my hips into his hand. His lips crash into mine, all teeth and tongues, the need we both feel becoming too much.

“Please Dean…..” I need to feel more, aching to feel him inside me.

“I know baby, have to get you ready first.” His voice deep, raspy with want, making me clench around nothing. His hand slides down to sink two fingers in my heat. The sensation making me arch my back, unashamed of the moan that leaves me. His fingers are big, sliding in and out of pussy, already bringing me close to the edge.

“Oh God, Dean, faster!” I have never had a man make me feel this good with just his fingers. Just as I am on the verge of my release, he pulls his fingers away, making me whine at the loss.

“I have to taste you sweetheart, been on my mind for so long.” Before I can say anything, my shorts are gone, along with my panties. My breath catches as he licks a long stripe through my folds, his moan sending vibrations to my clit. He starts with kitten licks, gradually getting faster. I run my hands through his soft brown locks, pulling just slightly, moving his face deeper into my heat. He groans and starts eating me like a man starved, bringing me right back to the edge.

“Dean…Dean..I’m going to come, please don’t stop.” I can feel the coil in my lower belly winding tight, ready to snap.

“Mmm you taste so good baby, come for me.” He thrusts two fingers in my cunt, and I am gone. I come with a scream of his name, clamping my thighs on his ears, grinding my pussy in his face. I start to come down from my high, letting my legs fall to the bed, too weak to keep them up.

“Damn baby girl, I thought you were going to smother me, what a way to go.” He winks up at me, my slick covering his mouth and chin. The sight just making me want him even more.

“Dean, I need you….” My voice a light whisper, still trying to catch my breath.

“Anything for my girl.” My girl, those words bringing a smile to my face. How long I have wanted to be his girl, and now it’s happening. Dean moves to cover my body with his, his arms by my head caging me in. I look into his eyes, the love I see taking my breath away. I pull his face to mine, kissing him slow and deep, trying to show him what I am feeling. We break apart, the need for air winning.

“You ready sweetheart?” Dean asks as he lays his forehead to mine, placing soft pecks on my lips.

“Yes Dean, I have been ready for this for a long time.” He smiles down at me, lining himself up at my entrance. He moves his hips to slowly slide inside me, the feeling of me stretching to accommodate his size burns but also feels so damn good.

“God damn baby, you’re so tight. I won’t be able to last that long.” Dean is panting into my neck, his breath in my ear, causing a shiver to shoot down my spine, my pussy clenching around him. We both groan at the sensation. I can feel his cock throbbing inside me, making me grind my hips up to get him to move.

“Please Dean…move!” He starts to slide out, only his tip remaining, before sliding back in just as slow, keeping the slow rhythm as we cling to each other. His full weight is on me, his arms wrapped around my shoulders, our faces merely inches apart. Neither of us dare to look anywhere but in each other’s eyes. The intensity of the intimacy between us pushing me so close to an orgasm already. I never thought I would see Dean “no chick flick moments” Winchester, being so loving, tender, making love to me. My emotions are making my eyes brim with tears. I have dreamed of having Dean like this for so long, my dreams nothing close to this. I pull myself from my thoughts to look back up at him, his eyes shining, a small smile on his face.

“I could never have imagined that this would be so amazing, Y/n. I love you so much sweetheart.”

“I love you Dean, so so much.” I crash my mouth to his, feeling my self so close to my end.

“Come for me baby. I can feel you’re close, right behind you.” Dean’s voice is breathless, his movements becoming more erratic. I reach between our bodies to rub my clit, not taking but just a few circles, my orgasm hitting me.

“Dean! I’m coming, come with me baby.” I am a writhing mess beneath him, coming harder than I ever have. Dean drops his face in my neck and comes with a loud groan of my name, still thrusting to ride us both through our high. Dean doesn’t make an effort to move, his arms still wrapped around me and his face still in my neck, peppering sweet kisses moving up to my face.

“I meant everything I said, Y/n. You are it for me if you will have me.” His voice soft with a hint of worry. I can’t help but smile.

“You already have me Dean. I’ve been yours for a long time.” Dean presses a kiss to my forehead as he moves to get off the bed, walking into the bathroom. He comes back with a washcloth, sitting beside me to clean me up. He throws it in the corner before climbing in bed behind me, his chest against my back.

“How about we get some sleep sweetheart. I’m exhausted.”

“Sounds good to me. I love you Dean.”

“I love you Y/n. When we wake up, we will be here together, not just in my dreams.”

Dean is already snoring behind me. I intertwine my fingers with his, thinking about how this is all so much better than I could have imagined, better than anything in my dreams.

#dean x reader #dean winchester #spn fanfiction #reader insert #smut #fluff #angst #supernatural

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bangtanlalaland · 4 years

Text

situationship 「prologue」 | knj (m.)

synopsis ↳you recall the moment you made the worst yet best mistake of your life that involves your best friend: Namjoon Kim.

— college!au

→pairing: college student!kim namjoon x female reader

→genre: smut, pwp

→word count: 5.2k+

→contents ⨯ warnings: kissing, unprotected sex (remember: no glove, no love!) slight degradation/pet names (basically being called a cock-slut lollol) daddy kink, mentions of sexting, joon is huge, (srsly he’s packed downstairs so plz be prepared) mentions of masturbation, oral (m + f receiving), nipple piercings, hair pulling, ass slapping, creampie, overstimulation, breath play, (just a little lol) face-fucking

title inspired by: “situationship” by snoh aalegra

a/n: HIIII U HOES, so sorry i haven’t posted in v long, life has me all over the place. so here’s my valentine’s day gift from me to u so plz forgive me. a special thank you to everyone that has shown me love for “in case we die” & “the final touch,” promise i have more content on the way!! LOVE U HOES 💘

prologue 「sixty minutes」

It was all so easy. Fleeing to him in an instant whenever he’d hit you with the:

“Are you up? I need you rn” text.

Maybe you’re just a fool, but you simply cannot resist him. No, you aren’t dating. Of course not because that would be silly, right? You’re just best friends. Best friends who occasionally fuck each other’s brains out. You didn’t like putting a label on it either, especially the “friends-with-benefits” one. And that was the problem. This entire situationship being a never ending cycle:

You both have sex ⟶ You get caught up in your feels ⟶ You come to your own conclusion that you’ll break it off with him ⟶ He texts you saying that he “needs” you and how much he misses being inside of you ⟶ Lastly, you go back to him - repeating the process all over again.

And here you are again, riding the hell out of your “friend” Namjoon.

“Yeah, just like that.. ride this fucking dick, fuck!” Namjoon exclaims, slapping and gripping your ass cheeks as you continue to ride him.

“Daddy!” Your head thrown back in ecstasy at how his thick cock fills you up completely. In this moment, all of your feels and doubts of ever getting into this situation with him - gone. Your ultimate goal is to cum on his cock, for what is now probably the thousandth time.

But you love it. You love how amazing he feels inside you. How he can make you feel good beyond limits, and how he pleases you in ways you didn’t think was possible. And Namjoon loves it too. The power he has to make you writhe and scream his name strokes his ego tremendously. He loves that he’s the only man in this entire world that knows what it’s like to hear your moans as he fucks you continuously.

How he’s the only man to ever see your lips part, eyes shut tight, and body tremble as your walls contract around his shaft, being completely drowned within your orgasm - all because of him.

This whole fling first started when he supposedly “accidentally” sent you a dick pic. Apparently you weren’t the intended recipient. You were stunned, not so much that he sent you a photo of his cock but it was the size of him + including the vulgar message sent with the photo itself:

From: joonie 🤩 11:17 pm

My cock is throbbing rn. So horny and in the mood to bend you over and fuck you until your body gives out.

The moment you opened the message, your mouth instantly salivated and your core throbbed with anticipation. It was almost as if he knew exactly what you were doing in that moment because when you got his notification, you were busy watching porn paired with your fingers inside of your cunt. For the past 4 years you’d known Joon, you never put much thought into what his dick may look like.

It was perfectly sculpted, and obviously hard as a brick with a slight curve. You could faintly see a small leak of precum oozing from his juicy, flesh-tone tip. Considering that he messaged you at just the right moment, when your hormones are at its peak, you reply:

To: joonie 🤩 11:20 pm

mmm, please... never knew how thick you are. would love to feel you stretching me out 🥵

And in that moment, you couldn’t believe what you’d just started. The tension between your legs taking over you completely. Nothing but lust oozed from your actions. Finally seeing that sexting your best friend was literally the perfect way to orgasm all over your fingers, you softly chanted his name to yourself. Imagining him standing before you stroking himself with his delicious member. After releasing yourself of your tension, you felt somewhat guilty and awkward that you’d just came to a picture of your best friends cock AND sexted him.

You also pondered who he really meant to send the photo to, which caused you to relish in your feels for the remainder of the night as you sheepishly attempted to fall asleep in your frozen, lonely bed. Part of you liked to think that you were blessed he even sent it to you. But after that night, everything changed. You hadn’t heard from him the next day until later that night asking if you were awake. You simply brushed it off and didn’t bother opening up the message, that way he wouldn’t know if you read it or not.

The reason mainly being that you were afraid he’d want to sext again. Throughout the week, you’d cross paths in certain periods on campus, but you tried in your willpower to avoid him at ALL costs. It all came down to you being aware of your surroundings to make sure he didn’t see you before you saw him. And when you would see him from a distance, you’d instantly turn the other way or hide until the coast was clear. You remembered he would even text you asking where you were since he hadn’t seen you since that day, and you would lie to him saying you were busy studying for exams or running an errand. When in reality, you were at your single room dorm, stuffing your face with gelato and watching Netflix.

The way you now saw Namjoon was so much differently. You both share one class together every Wednesday, and he took the opportunity to sit beside you considering that he hadn’t seen you since before that night. Being near him made you antsy, and you found yourself giving him short responses, making hardly any eye contact. He noticed this and was not happy about it. The distance you kept between him since that night worried him non-stop.

The constant question of: “What the fuck was I thinking?” flooded his mind everyday.

After two weeks of putting up with your edgy behavior, he decided that it was enough. It’s Saturday and yet again, you told him you were studying in the schools library and he knew that was bullshit. Because you have no classes on Saturday, you work during the school week, are off every weekend, and he’d already checked the library. Obviously you were not there, and it pissed him off that you were blowing him off like this. At least, not in the way he’d like to be blown by you.

He marched around campus making his way to your dorm. The sound of your door being knocked on startled you as you were warming up a yakisoba bowl in the microwave. You stand up onto your tippy toes to peek through the peephole. Your entire insides perform a back flip as you notice your best friend standing on the other side of the door. He runs his fingers through his blonde mullet, strands of purple at the tips, his arm resting on the doorframe, and he does not look happy. After not getting a response, he gives a few more hard knocks urging you to open the door.

“Come on, ____. I know you’re in there. We need to talk!”

Fuck. You think to yourself and take a deep breath. He obviously was not going to let up, you know Joon. Your fingers nervously unloosen the lock on the door and grasp the handle pulling it open slowly. Namjoon’s eyes snap up, his breath caught in his throat as he gazes you up and down with those familiar, wide, monolids that could captivate anyone who looks his way. His lips part gradually, and his tongue glides across his bottom lip. It wasn’t until you saw his expression that you noticed you were attired in the shortest pajama shorts you have along with a sleeveless, white tank and no bra. The imprint of your barbell piercings that decorate your nipples clearly visible. Of course, Namjoon wasn’t aware you had these said piercings. You instantly crossed your arms, wanting to hide from his gaze.

Finally breaking the silence he slips, “Nice library you have here. Sure doesn’t look like one though.”

You sigh dramatically and roll your eyes, “Seriously?”

Namjoon steps inside, welcoming his own self in without giving you time to do so yourself. He slowly treads inside, removing his Nikes by the door then flopping down on your loveseat, his legs spread wide open. An awkward silence overtakes your dorm, yet you continue with your antics and into the kitchen to grab your chopsticks so you could finish making your instant yakisoba. Joon notices this and silently follows you into the kitchen. The hair on the back of your neck stands up when you feel his presence behind you. You look up and feel his hand placed over yours, resulting in you dropping your chopsticks. Your body naturally responds and jerks around now facing him.

“Joon-”

He continues his gaze, looking deeply into your eyes. There was something in the way he looked at you in that moment of time. His features looked so mesmerizing. You adored the tiny beauty marks that decorate his face, especially the one that sits below his bottom lip; flying strands of his bleach, blonde, hair catch your attention. After an entire week of not paying him any attention, you had nearly forgotten how physically attractive Namjoon is. It is almost sickening, and this is one of the many reasons why you wish you hadn’t started this thing. His stare softens, almost as if he’s thinking. His fingers gracefully caress your cheek, your body naturally responds - shivering under his touch.

“____, what’s been going on with you?"

Unable to form coherent words, you simply respond, “Nothing.” You shift yourself, turning your back to him breaking the contact he once had on your cheek. You hear a deep sigh emit from Namjoon.

“Goddammit, there you go again!” Your eyes widen at the sound of him raising his voice.

“What?!” You retort, slamming your chopsticks down and turning your gaze back to him with raised brows.

“You’re lying. Again. First the library, and now this. I know something’s wrong with you. You’ve practically been avoiding me all week!”

Your eyes shut immediately, trying to hold back anything stupid from slipping out of your lips.

“You’ve been avoiding me since...” he trails off, and you open your eyes to find him with his arms crossed, head hung low.

“Joonie..” You attempt to muster up the correct form to continue your sentence. His wide eyes staring back at you, waiting for an answer.

“I just can’t.. I-I can’t look at you the same way, you know? I don’t know it’s just weird. Just knowing what you, um..”

Joon scoffs, shaking his head, “Then why lead me on?”

Your snap your neck to the side giving him a ‘Really?’ look. “I lead you on?” Your tone dipped in a bit of sassiness.

“You are the one that sent me a picture of your dick! And you want to blame me for it?”

Namjoon blinks rapidly, somewhat taken aback by your tone.

“Well, y-yeah. I mean, you played along with it.” He responds, scratching the back of his neck and hanging his head low again. Truth is, he lied to you too. He didn’t exactly “accidentally” send you that photo. He meant for you to see it. For months, he’d contemplated how he should approach his feelings toward you. All the while, he felt it was a stupid idea, but he also thought it would be a hit or miss. He tends to act out before fully thinking about his actions, and that’s just one of his many weaknesses. You, of course, being his main one.

Deep down you knew he wasn’t lying, because you both know each other long enough to know enough about one another. Yet another silence lingers throughout the space. You sigh in exhaustion, pulling your thoughts together.

“Yes... I did.” Namjoon looks up and locks eyes with you. To him, you look incredibly delectable with the shape of your bare tits, along with your piercings, poking through the light fabric of your tank. His eyes are no longer soft, they’re dark and lustful. Just being under his gaze, gets you warmer by the second. It’s like he’s cooking you with his own eyes, and you are sizzling right now.

His lips part, as he slowly inches toward you.

“Did you like it?” He probes with a hint of curiosity behind the question.

You take a deep breath, looking dead-straight into his eyes while brushing your hair behind your ear.

“Y-yes, I really did.” You say, barely a whisper. Namjoon hums in response, lightly grazing his index finger across your shoulder and down your arm. You’re not sure why but your core suddenly tingled at the simple, physical contact. Causing you to gasp lowly.

“Do you want.. what we said we would do to each other that night? Because, I want you in ways that you don’t understand.” He smirks at your sudden action of rubbing your thighs together. You hum in approval. He runs his index and middle finger across your lips,

“I want to hear you say it, pretty baby.” The sudden pet name made you slip a moan you’re sure he heard.

“I want you, Joonie. Want you to stuff me with your thick cock.” You play along and guide your hands to rub his arms and broad shoulders up and down, looking up at him with innocent-like puppy dog eyes. Just the sight of you alone makes him want to shove his cock so far down your throat, making you gag on it with watery eyes. His growing erection becomes noticeable beneath his sweats. His hands make their way down your side, gripping your waist. He leans down to whisper in your ear,

“Imma beat that pussy like you never ever felt before.”

Your kitty cat clenches around emptiness, desperately wanting to be filled. Before you had a chance to respond, Namjoon pulls away and presses his lips on yours. You naturally wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him in closer. The faint smell of his cologne, masked with notes of orange, mint, and cinnamon reel you in to heighten your arousal. His pink, pillow-y lips play a game of tug of war, lightly grazing his teeth along your bottom lip. Your kisses filled with pent-up tension and longing for one another.

He pulls away from your lips and lifts you up, your legs naturally wrapping themselves around his waist as he leads you over to the loveseat and sits down, straddling yourself on top of him. He grips your waist, running his large hands across your ass. You follow the rhythm of his hands and grind against his clothed erection, wanting some type of friction to ease your libido all while gaining a sexy moan from him. Namjoon works one of his hands up into your hair, lightly tugging on it to give him access to your neck.

“Mmm, Joonie.” Your eyes shut as a response to his lips smothering your jawline and neck with wet kisses. Your fingers get lost within the forest that’s his mullet. He continues his trail up to your earlobe, gently nibbling on it.

“Want you.. So bad.. Have no idea.” He slips in between breaths. His deep voice rumbling from his chest, creating a vibration that streams throughout your body ending at your core.

“Want you too, so much.” You respond, pulling away to glance into his eyes, the color like deep pools of medium, roast coffee. He caresses your face, tracing circles on your cheek and presses his lips against yours again. The silky, wet feeling of his plush lips persuades you to pursue your previous actions of grinding. He snakes his hands up to lightly massage your breasts. The sudden motion of your piercings causing you to moan within his mouth.

Namjoon tugs at the hem of your tank and you follow along, tossing the material away on the floor while helping him to remove his basic tee. Your bare chest exposed to him, nipples cool, hardened, and aching for attention. You hear him whisper a “Fuck,” under his breath. His warm embrace sends shivers down your spine, as he desperately caresses your tits. You take this moment to admire the golden tone of his bare skin, so smooth yet such chiseled features.

“When did you get these?” Namjoon questions, gently sliding your piercing back and forth.

“Hmm.. last spring break!”

“So sexy,” He slips, while using his index and middle finger to lightly pinch your other nipple. The piercings make your nipples so much more sensitive to even the slightest touch. Namjoon licks your left nipple in slow circles, while watching your reaction. He gently wraps his lips around you, sucking your nipple with such soft care. The warm, wetness of his tongue and smooth, plushness of his lips soothes and excites you at the same time. Your kitty clenching and gushing, full of arousal and hot and ready for him. He uses his other hand to sneak into your shorts and past your panties. His slender fingers find your drenched folds, coating his digits with your juice.

Your fingernails softly graze over his scalp, as you throw your head back calling his name. He presses sloppy kisses along your neck, humming into you as a response.

“Are you really this wet for your best friend, hm? Does Daddy turn you on this much?”

“Mmm, yes Joonie..” His erection growing by the second, and you can feel it twitch beneath you in his sweats. “Such a dirty girl, want to be cock slut for your own best friend.”

He pulls his fingers from you and you silently whimper at the loss of his touch. Your eyes pry open and find him with his eyes closed, tasting your arousal that was left on his fingers. He moans at the taste. “Mmm... Heavenly.”

The small compliment making you blush and grow warmer between your thighs. Surprisingly, he slips his fingers back into your panties and finds your clit, rubbing the sensitive bud in circles. Making you gasp in shock,

“Joonie...” You look down at him, caressing his smooth strands. He slips a finger inside of you, pushing in and out. You move your hips along his rhythm, as he slips another finger inside of you while simultaneously rubbing your clit with his thumb. Your eyebrows furrowing together at the pleasure your core feels, emitting more wetness onto his fingers while creating squelching noises as Namjoon continues to finger your pussy. Your grip on his hair gets tighter, mimicking the tightness of the coil in the pit of your tummy.

“Want you to cum all over my fingers, pretty baby.” Namjoon commands, while slipping his fingers from your pussy, focusing on your clit, rubbing with just the perfect amount of pressure. Absolutely enough to make you cum on the spot. Your moans slip from you uncontrollably.

“Tell me who’s making you feel so good.” Namjoon coos, while continuously circling your clit with your fingers, all while watching you writhe above him.

“Y-you, J-J-,” Unable to even finish your sentence, your fingers lose their place within his hair. Your body continues shaking from cumming so hard.

“That’s right. Only me. Just look at you, pretty baby. Losing yourself all over your best friends fingers. Only I can do that, hm? Only I can make you feel this good.”

You push his hand away, whining at the overstimulation. Finally he lets up and licks his fingers clean. Still twitching, you glide your fingers down to meet his crotch, massaging him through his clothing.

“Can I... Please? Need you in my mouth.” He eyes your motions and moans in approval. You climb off of him and sit on your knees between his legs. He lifts up to help you remove his sweats. His member visibly shown through his Calvin Klein briefs. It’s so stiff and hard. Your hand finds itself rubbing him again, as you kiss along his thighs. Slowly teasing and finally reaching his cock through the material covering it.

“Fuck... such a tease. You’re a good baby, for Daddy.. Right?”

You look up at him and nod.

“Speak, pretty baby.” He probes, lifting your chin up with his fingers.

“Y-yes I am.”

“Yes what?” Namjoon groans, his voice much harder than before.

You shift slightly at the sudden change in his demeanor, your arousal growing thicker. You thought it was sexy though, how he was now taking control.

“Yes, Daddy..”

He smiles that pretty smile and pets your hair.

“Good girl.” You take this chance to pull his briefs down just enough that his cock springs straight up. Your jaw drops open at the size of him. Pictures couldn’t compare to the real thing, your mouth instantly salivating at his thick length, his bulbous tip the perfect color, matching the shade of his lips and dripping with precum. You moan at the sight of him, wrapping your fingers around him, you gently stroke, sticking your tongue out to taste the bit of liquid oozing.

Namjoon hisses at the feeling, you teasing him with kitten licks. His grasp on your hair gets tighter, “Please don’t tease, baby. Daddy has waited so long to have those pretty lips around his cock.” You took this as a cue to finally encase your lips around him, starting with his tip. His chest rumbles as a moan erupts from within. You swirl your tongue around the tip, sucking tightly while massaging his balls.

“Fuck!” Without warning, Joon bucks his hips upward to get himself further into your mouth, his grip on your hair becomes tighter as he pushes your head down further to take his entire length inside your mouth. You’re taken by surprise at his pace, and almost choke, as your hands now drop on top of his thighs lightly grazing with your nails while Namjoon fucks your face. Literally. You shut your eyes wanting to focus on keeping your gag reflex under control, keeping your throat relaxed, your saliva oozing out and coating Namjoon’s cock and balls creating lewd noises within your tight-spaced dorm.

“Shit yes... Look at Daddy with that pretty fucking face of yours.” He stops his thrusting, holding your head down still. You manage to open your eyes and move your gaze toward his. With water eyes, streams of tears flow down your flushed cheeks. You’re on the brink of losing your breath. The sight of you full of his cock, almost out of breath makes him want to blow his load all over your face. But if he’s going to cum, he has to inside of you.

“Fuck yeah, just like that.” Namjoon finally releases his grip from you, resulting in you letting out a massive gasp, coughing to sync your breathing back to normal. A trail of spit still connecting from his soaked cock to your lips. “Shorts off now.” Namjoon demands. You slip your finger under the hem to pull them down until he interrupts, “Turn around so I can see that ass.”

You jump slightly at his deep voice. His act of dominance making you clench around nothing as you squeeze your thighs together, needing some type of friction. This doesn’t go unnoticed. Your shorts fall to the floor, revealing your bottom that’s clothed with a pair of silk, purple panties that are cut short enough to show your full cheeks. Suddenly, you feel a sharp slap to your right cheek, making you whimper out loud.

“Look at you all horny and desperate for your own best friends dick. I should fuck you until you can’t think of anything else other than my dick.” And another harsh slap.

“Mmm, fuck!” Another slap. Namjoon reaches forward to aggressively pull your panties down. He lifts you up and carries you over his shoulder to your bedroom, throwing you on the bed. Your pussy throbs in anticipation, loving how rough he’s being with you.

Namjoon wastes no time as he aggressively pulls you forward to the edge of the bed, spreading your legs open as wide as they can go. He uses his fingers to spread your pussy lips open, revealing yourself all to him. Pulsing and soaked. “Mmm. Such a pretty little pussy. I’ve waited so long to finally bury my dick inside of you.” He coos while stroking your hair and pressing a soft kiss to your lips, while caressing your cheek. He uses his other hand to grab his cock, slapping your pussy with his cock. Your hips naturally bucking to get some type of friction. He continues coating his cock in your juices, smirking as you whimper in anticipation.

“Pretty baby, so horny and wet for Daddy’s cock.” Your fingers anxiously grip the bedsheets, as the head of his cock prods at your entrance. Namjoon hisses as he easily slips inside of your tight kitty. Your eyes shut closed, lips parting, “Oh my fuck,” you moan while gripping his toned, caramel arms. His girthy length offering a slight burn, finally over-rided by a nostalgic tinglyness. The feeling is like no other. To have someone you trust, someone you care about, offering their entire self to you. To have all of Namjoon within you.

“So warm. So wet. Fuck... You feel amazing, ____.” Namjoon fucks you with long and deep strokes, making the bed creak with each thrust. He continues this slow pace, relishing in the feel of your walls clamping around his stiff shaft. You know he’s trying his hardest not to cum so fast. However, the tingly feeling within your core has skyrocketed, and you’re ready to burst any moment now.

“P-please,” you whimper, attempting to move your hips along with his at a faster pace.

“What does my pretty baby want, hm?” Namjoon notices your expression and comes to a halt.

“Please fuck me harder, Joonie, please!” you whine while grinding your hips to create some type of friction. Namjoon’s cock twitches at your desperation for him. “Have you forgotten your manners, princess?” He asks, with a smirk pinching your left cheek.

You groan in response. “Please, Daddy! Just need to be fucked harder, please! My pussy needs you.”

“That’s a good girl,” He pats your head and slips out of you, gripping your waist to flip you over flat on your tummy. He holds his weight on top of you, spreading your legs open to push his cock entirely into you. The angle of the position creates a more “deep” feeling, He’s so deep inside of you, you promise you feel him in your tummy. Your mouth flying agape, Namjoon leans forward to whisper in your ear while pounding from on top. “Be careful what you ask for.”

“You. Just. Might. Get. It.” He emphasizes his deep thrusts after each word. Your cries are muffled within the sheets while Joon continues to ram you from on top, his lower pelvic area literally slamming your body further and further into the full sized-bed. “Ungh, fuck y-yes! Please don’t stop!” Your dorm neighbors can probably hear your cries but at this point you don’t even care.

“Take this fucking dick like the good little cock-hungry slut you are, pretty baby.” Namjoon moans at the feeling of your pussy clenching around him, drenching him in your sticky wetness. So tight, and slippery for his thick cock. His cock throbs relentlessly from the sounds of his balls slapping against your ass mixed with your cries of his name. Nearly on the verge of cumming, he lifts you up, bending you over with your ass now up and facing him. He bends down to lick a stripe from your pussy to your ass.

Your legs tremble at the sudden action. He works his tongue all over your folds, sucking and licking your pussy lips, while slipping inside of your entrance, tongue fucking you. You reach behind to grip his hair and grind yourself against his face. Namjoon trails his fingers to find your clit, slowly rubbing it in circles. Then latches his lips around your bud, sucking and licking your as if his life depended on it. His moans sending vibrations through you entirely. He grips your ass and gives your cheeks a few harsh slaps, and that’s what sends you completely over the edge.

“Daddy.. Cumming! Fuck.” Your toes curl, legs tremble, eyes roll back, and you claw the bedsheets as your orgasm washes over your entire body. He lets go of your clit with a pop, and uses his fingers to rub your clit vigorously, riding you through your high. “Yes, baby. Keep cumming for, Daddy. Doesn’t it feel good, hm? To have your best friend make you cum so hard?” You continue calling out his name.

“Yes! Fuck, fuck.. Please!”

You push his hand away, the overstimulation kicking in. Your body continues shaking, recovering from your orgasm. He lifts you up into the doggy position, gripping a handful of your hair and rams himself inside of you. He starts with a brutal pace, fucking you senseless, slipping swear words from his lips. You gasp at the sensitivity from your previous orgasm, not able to form coherent words from how hard Namjoon is fucking you. Namjoon’s thrusts gradually grow sloppier, as he’s on the brink of his own orgasm.

“Come here,” He pulls completely out of you and lays on his back, guiding you on top of him. You stuff his cock inside of you, whimpering at the feel of your clit brushing against his pelvic area - still sensitive from your orgasm. You take your time to ride him, going at your own pace - slow and steady. Namjoon uses one hand to grip your waist. “Want to feel you cum around my cock.” He slips his fingers on your clit, rubbing it in circles. You instantly jolt forward from the sensitivity, shaking your head.

“Joon! C-Can’t, it’s too much!”

“I think you can. You’ve been such a good girl, just cum one more time for Daddy, okay? I promise it will feel so good.”

You grasp his wrist, wanting to push his hand away, but you can’t. Too lost in his touch. He licks his fingers and rubs your clit again, with a slightly more pressure. His cock still sheathed fully inside of you, twitching within your walls. Your third orgasm approaches and it hits you stronger than before.

“Mmm, Namjoon!” Your nails find themselves on his chest, scratching his pecs as your entire body shakes tremendously, your pussy pulses rapidly around Namjoon’s dick. Your body collapses on top of his, out of strength and still trembling.

“Fuck, I’m going to cum.” Namjoon exclaims, he moans your name as his cock twitches itself inside of you, coating your walls with his warm cum. He pants, out of breath, strands of his hair sticking to his forehead.

You both lie there for what seems like awhile, regaining your breathing and taking a moment to process what just happened. Namjoons member falls soft, eventually slipping out of you. Both of your bodies pressed together and binded by perspiration. He gathers up the strength to caress your strands. His heart flutters at the warmth of your fingers drawing circles on his chest. The thud of his heart beating from within him causes you to lose yourself in your thoughts...

What have we just done? And how will we ever go back from this?

#kpopwritersclub #magicshopnet #bts smut #rm smut #namjoon smut #namjoon fluff #rm fluff #bts oneshot #bangtanlalaland #did i really just add an expensive girl reference #what the fuck #is wrong with me

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xhxhxhx · 4 years

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Saw something in the further reading section of Michael Kulikowski’s Imperial Tragedy (Profile, 2019) today:

There are countless books on the fall of the western Roman empire, and more appear annually, with variable scholarly trappings but nearly all quite conventional. Still, ripping yarns and neo-Victorian analyses can be found in any bookshop. So, for those so inclined, can thinly disguised nativist tracts on how immigration (and ‘immigrant violence’) brought down the empire. To name names would be invidious.

I thought this was a dig at Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London and author of The Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2005) and Empires and Barbarians (Oxford, 2009), so I looked it up and discovered that not only was I right, but Kulikowski has serious beef with the guy:

Peter Heather has been fiercely criticized by members of the so-called Toronto School of History. Michael Kulikowski, who belongs to this group, has accused Heather of neo-romanticism and of wishing "to revive a biological approach to ethnicity". Kulikowski claims that Heather "manifests a clear methodological affinity" to the 19th-century writer of the Goths Henry Bradley.

But Kulikowki’s beef is nothing next to the righteous fury of Guy Halsall, Professor of History at the University of York:

Guy Halsall has identified Peter Heather as the leader of a "counter-revisionist offensive against more subtle ways of thinking" about the Migration Period. Halsall accuses this group, which is strongly associated with University of Oxford, of "bizarre reasoning" and of purveying a "deeply irresponsible history". Halsall writes that Heather and the Oxford historians have been responsible for "an academic counter-revolution" of wide importance, and accuses them of deliberately contributing to the rise of "far-right extremists".

Halsall got so mad at Heather, first at the 2011 Leeds International Medieval Conference and then online, at his blog, that he threatened to leave academia entirely:

Well, it's more or less a year since I started doing this blogging lark 'seriously' (the inverted commas are obviously necessary). And, as they say, what a roller-coaster of a year it's been. I've shut down the blog twice, brought it back twice, come to the verge of formal complaints being sent to my university twice (once justifiably, once most certainly not), lost at least one friend, lost 99% of the respect I had for someone I had hitherto held in high esteem, quite possibly lost the chance of a job I wanted because of this blog, taken some pretty visceral abuse, and so on. All good fun!

On the other hand I have learnt some lessons. One is that even bastards have feelings. Another is that if you have twenty-odd followers and maybe 100 hits a day, that (allowing for hits from people looking for something else, like Elizabeth Kostova's novel The Historian or ever-popular balding guitarist The Edge) does not mean that only twenty or thirty people in the whole wide world read your blog. Thus you need to be a bit more careful about what you say and how you say it. I've also learnt that eminent historians don't always read what you write very carefully, and just how deeply-ingrained the elitist culture of the British historical profession is, as well as just how few principles are actually held by the overwhelming majority of the practitioners of said profession. And this in response to something that I actually thought long and hard about how I wrote.

And as a result of all this I have realised that no good is going to come of me continuing to smack my head against the glass ceiling that those of us not from 'a particular socio-educational background' (you know the one) eventually run up against. I have instead come to the decision, essentially, to give up on it and 'seek my fortune' elsewhere than in the confines of the academic career-path, as it is now constructed in the UK at any rate.* I'm actually quite excited about this as I think it offers a lot of possibilities, creatively and ethically. It's been a liberating decision. Those of you who know that I set most store by the writings of those co-opted into the canon of the existentialists (almost none of whom ever called themselves by that name) will appreciate exactly why I am proud of this decision.

To some extent it makes up for the bad faith I showed in backing down and removing my post on why it matters to get angry about the lazy and irresponsible (indeed, yes, just downright knuckle-headed) way in which some historians in and/or produced by our most prestigious Thames Valley-based university write about politically and socially sensitive topics like migrations.

Halsall ultimately sanitized the 2011 IMC paper that started the war with Heather -- the neutered version is still up on his blog -- but the original was apparently quite something:

Perhaps unsurprisingly for those who’ve heard him speak or read him on the Internet, this was the one that really started the war. [Edit: and, indeed, some changes have been made to these paragraphs by request of one of those involved.] The consequences, if not of this actual speech, at least of its subsequent display on the Internet, have been various, unpleasant and generally regrettable, and I don’t want any of them myself.

Thankfully, the purged parts of the original were reproduced by some noble soul on the Civilization Fanatics forums before they were lost to the ages:

Thus we can have Ward-Perkins’ sneering parody of late antiquity studies and Peter Heather’s distortions of counter-arguments. In many people’s minds the choices before us are evidently, either, that nothing happened, or, that there was a huge catastrophe caused entirely by invading barbarians. Obviously this is not the case. Plenty of people other than me -- most famously, Walter Pohl -- have written about serious, dramatic change happening in the fifth century without blaming it on the barbarians and without denying that there were migrations in the fifth century. Yet this -- if I dare call it such -- third way seems nevertheless to be very much a minority position.

But I am not convinced that a simple lack of exposure to sensible alternatives really explains the continuing, fanatical devotion to the idea of the barbarian migrations, especially outside the academy.

I have recently said that:

“When a British historian places an argument that the Roman Empire fell because of the immigration of large numbers of barbarians next to arguments that the end of Rome was the end of civilisation and that we need to take care to preserve our own civilisation, when another British historian writes sentences saying “the connection between immigrant violence and the collapse of the western Empire could not be more direct” [a direct quote from Peter Heather’s Empires and Barbarians (Oxford, 2009)], and especially when the arguments of both involve considerable distortions of the evidence to fit their theories, one cannot help but wonder whether these authors are wicked, irresponsible or merely stupid.”

Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive alternatives.

Are these writers setting themselves up as ideologues of the xenophobic Right or have they simply not realised the uses to which such careless thinking and phrasing can be put? You can draw your own conclusions, although it is worth noting that Ward-Perkins has been happy enough to write on this subject for the neo-liberal magazine Standpoint, which regularly publishes pieces attacking multiculturalism. There comes a point when one has to admit that actually the most charitable explanation for all this really is that these writers are simply a bit dim.

Outside academic circles, it is certainly the case that the adhesion to the idea of barbarian invasion has a heavily right-wing political dimension. Apart from the barbarians’ role as metaphor, already discussed, it is worth, very briefly, thinking about the other reasons why people are so ready to pin the blame on the barbarians. Slavoj Zizek’s Lacanian analysis of antisemitism provides some valuable ways forward. Essentially, the barbarian, like the figure of the Jew, acts as a screen between the subject and a confrontation with the Real, which Zizek sees, slightly differently from Lacan, as the pre-symbolised; things that haven’t been or can’t or won’t be encompassed in a world view. Zizek showed that arguments that “the Jews aren’t like that” are almost never effective against anti-Semites because what real Jews (or actual immigrants, one might say) are like is not the point. Similarly, arguments about the empirical reality of the fifth-century cut little weight with those wedded to the idea of Barbarian Invasion. Just as the anti-Semite takes factual evidence as more proof of the existence of the international Zionist conspiracy, the right-wing devotee of the Barbarian Invasions sees factual counter-arguments as manifestations of the liberal, left-wing academy peddling its dangerous multicultural political correctness. I have read a great deal of this on internet discussion lists -- including a review of my own book, and one of James O’Donnell’s! Michael Kulikowski received a similarly-phrased review from a right-wing academic ancient historian.

The barbarian is the classic “subject presumed to”. The barbarian can change the world; he can bring down empires; he can create kingdoms. The barbarian dominates history. “He” is not like “us”, enmeshed in our laws, our little lives and petty responsibilities. The barbarians -- and you only need to read Peter Heather to see this -- are peoples with “coherent aims” (a quote), which they set out single-mindedly to achieve. No people in the whole of recorded human history have ever had single coherent sets of aims. Well -- none other than the barbarians anyway.

Halsall has never resiled from his belief that Heather was essentially a fascist, nor backed away from his commitment to resign from his post in righteous indignation -- maybe not in 2011, or 2019, but certainly by 2023 at the very latest:

My anger about all this is justly infamous but has been badly misrepresented. I do think that some things are worth getting angry about, and the misuse of the Barbarian Migrations and the End of the Roman Empire to fuel xenophobia and racism, and the way some modern authors pander to this, is one such. However, to look at the origins of this ire and animus, I invite you to compare my engagement with Peter Heather’s work in Barbarian Migrations, and its tone, with Heather’s engagement – if you can call it that – with my work, and its tone, in Empires and Barbarians. I never expect to be agreed with; I do expect basic academic courtesy to be reciprocated. If people see fit to treat me intellectually as a second-class citizen, the gloves will come off. That may stem from my own biography as (unlike so many) a first-generation academic not educated at the 'right' schools and universities, but there we are. I will be leaving the profession within the next four years (well done, guys) so I have nothing to lose by not apologising for that.

Kulikowski might have gotten in a good dig, but Halsall will always be a true master of the art of Being Mad Online.

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wendibird · 4 years

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SPN 15X15 Observations

The saga of my shitty cable/internet provider continues. This week I was again watching it on my computer through the streaming app since TV still isn’t getting reliable reception, and my internet connection kept dropping! (Luckily, I’ve also set it to record, so I was able to re-watch the episode after it aired.) So, my notes are much less coherent probably, and I’ve had a long day so my after-episode thoughts probably are too.

Everything else under the cut for those who wish to avoid spoilers and all my rambling:

- Connor isn't going to last long. - wtf? (freaky teddy bear!) - "she and I used to have a thing"? Seriously Dean? - Cas: "Sam?" (aka "Please be the reasonable one.") - soooooo much salt from Cas. - "Agent Swift!" - BABY YODA!!!! - I think the crossroads thing is Cas just making a phone call more or less. - Cas, there are NEVER "too many cats". - LOL I love Cas' literalness - Eeeeee..... love them bonding. - Hrm. So there's definitely a karmic element to these killings. I mean, "Lair" seemed like a bit of a stretch for the other kid, unless the "lie" was in him agreeing with the snobby girls. But I have a feeling this lady here is going to end up with something like "thief" carved into her. (So, thoughts: Avenging Angel? Just Deserts? Probably something new.)

- Also I feel like there was maybe something in that "previously" scene that I don't remember seeing before. (Was talking about Dean going into detail about needing to take Amara out as well as Chuck. I remember part of that conversation, but some parts felt "new" to me? Though I've only seen through this current season once, so I might just not be remembering everything right.) - Sam's worried/concerned about Jack! <3 - "At least this time it's not you and me." Oh man does that feel like foreshadowing. - Not sure I trust the pastor. - I've been watching this show too long. They all feel sketchy. Especially the girl with the headband. *LOL* - Oh man. Are they really going "Torture Porn" on us again? (Apparently) - His (Jack’s) Mom died 3 years ago too. - "I have more dads than most." <3 - "Put your trust in God." Wow. *LOL* Poor Jack. - Cas, you're totally one of his dads. But yes. It is complicated. - Ahhh. Maybe that's what the "Liar" thing was about. (Connor being gay and hiding it?) - Hi Amara! (My cat wants to get into my closet.)

- Amara's still in relatively light colors.

(Stupid internet signal is being a pain)

- I wish I knew what was going on.

(Aaaaand more internet problems)

- I love Cas! (still confused about what's going on.)

- So, what's with the random demon in the squad car? - Dammit.... I had a feeling Jack would end up having to die to kill Chuck and Amara.

(OKAY! Now that the episode is over, I'm going to re-watch parts of it so I can find out what the hell I missed! (still irritated))

- Jack HAS one of those teddy's! I wonder which one got it for him.... (My guess is Sam or Cas) - Maybe it was Zack in the cop car at the end? He DID say he was really bored. - Reason why I was thinking it might be something supernatural was because the one who did it seemed to know in advance who they were going after, but that lady just now stole from the poor box. So, how did the daughter know? Unless she'd done it before? Hrm. - Minor note: "We've been on the road almost two days." WTF? SPN doing somewhat realistic travel times?! *LMAO* - Trying to tell what's in her other hand. Looks like it's duct-taped closed into a fist around something. A transmitter maybe? It's an odd detail that I don't think gets explained. - So, did she call him a "liar" because she saw the two of them as having dated and then he came out as gay at some point? - So, they're just gonna leave the Impala there while it's gassing up? *LOL* - I still love Cas for this part. Sharing his "Journey". - Okay, got to see the guys' talk with Amara. (At least the first half of it.) I still think it's risky for Dean to tell her about Jack even being a player on the board. Though I get that he had to give her SOMETHING so she would get that the threat is credible. That they actually CAN do something against Chuck. - Also, SPN can't settle on its history. *LOL* But that's nothing new. Back in S5 it was God and Death and Death couldn't remember who came first. Then at the end of Season 10 we got an updated version with the Darkness (Who didn't seem to have met Death prior to her imprisonment.) Now, Darkness and God were twins. - Ewwwwww.... dead guy. - Wow.... They actually textualized that. (About Mary.) - He sounded like he meant it when he said "I will never hurt you." - I still love Cas being a subtle badass. - Jack... it's NOT the only way... (And I'm pretty sure Sam HAS forgiven Jack. But I don't think they've really talked.)

SO.

I apologize that my "notes" this time are a train-wreck, but so was my internet connection, so sadly, this is what happens when I watch part of the episode, miss some important bits, and watch most of the rest of it (while still missing more bits) and then when it's finally over I can finally go back and re-watch the bits I'd missed. And I wound up mostly just re-watching the whole thing again anyway. And some things definitely made more sense, and I definitely noticed some things I hadn't caught the first time.

I know a lot of people aren't going to like it because it mostly featured Cas and Jack while being light on the brothers. (But there WAS some good brother content!) I did enjoy it well enough though. (Like, it's not gonna make my top 10 total episodes, but I liked it better than a lot of the ones earlier this season.)

Organizing my thoughts is gonna be a bit hard (I've had a long day) but I'll make an attempt here.

Cas and Jack's arc: It definitely had a more old-school SPN horror vibe to me, though more like some of the newer horror movies (like Saw and the like) and I think both characters were written well. We had two awkward angels who still don't get all things human, but they obviously care. There was also a lot of talk about God in a way that I felt made both of them feel awkward considering their perspective on Chuck. I do still wonder though about some of the details of what Sylvia was doing. Like, I get how she'd probably been stewing about the one boy for a while. But the lady (could never quite tell if it was Valerie or Mallory) had literally JUST stolen from the donation box when she stepped outside into the trap laid for her. So, was this maybe a habit of her's? How would Sylvia have known about it beforehand? And also, what was with the crossroads demon at the very end posing as/possessing a police officer? Is he going rogue because he's bored? Is he acting on some weird kind of orders? I saw some theories about maybe the Dad made a crossroads deal to spring his daughter, but... I dunno. Unless it's supposed be a tease for something to come later, it feels odd and random.

Overall, I did really like Cas in this episode. I thought his blend of salt, cluelessness, and altruism was good, and I loved what he said about his past, and how he found his new purpose. Because he has been drifting quite a bit since he lost his original purpose. But he definitely seems to have found it again with Jack. So naturally he gets to find out that Jack is fated to die taking out God and the Darkness. *sigh* Dude CANNOT catch a break! Also, JACK! I love him so much! (And honestly, I'd had suspicions already that this is what had been troubling him. I'm glad he finally told one of his dads at least.)

Also, just wanna reiterate, I loved that bit at the beginning when Dean suggests Cas and Jack go tackle this case "that probably isn't anything (supernatural)" and he turns to Sam like "Please be the sane one here." (My hope/headcanon is that Sam encouraged him to go because he knows something has been troubling Jack, and if Jack won't open up to Sam about it, maybe he was hoping he'd open up to Cas at least. Then maybe SOMEONE could help him. But I don't know if the writers are thinking that deeply about Sam.)

Speaking of Sam and Dean... Okay, overall I thought their part of the episode was okay for what we saw. Like, the brother talk in the Impala, mild bickering about driving times and regular mundane stuff. Also their talk with Amara had some GOOD emotional beats in it. For Dean and Amara. Sam was mostly just there. And then he wasn't even there for the main part. So... *sigh* It's not that I begrudge Dean having that moment. I mean, he definitely had more of a connection to Amara than Sam did. But it still feels like not much really happened with him besides being a soundingboard and showing some concern for Jack. Hopefully we get more of him actually being important to the plot in upcoming episodes.

But let me reiterate that I DID like the talk Dean and Amara had! I'm glad that she textualized something that I know a lot of fans have theorized about Mary and her purpose narratively. That prior to her resurrection she had been put on this pedestal, but Dean and Sam were actually able to get to know the real woman. That the real woman was better than the memory because she WAS real. Flaws and all. (Not that I blame Dean for being angry.) I'm just glad that it was said outright. Because I got the feeling from some of the things Samantha Smith has said at cons that that was part of the point of Mary's character since S12, to make her real. And I know a lot of people couldn't see past her flaws and still hate her. (I DO think some things could have been handled better with her character, but that's not the point of this long rambly post today.) Also, when Dean said that he could never hurt her? It felt like him telling the truth. Maybe he was able to get that feeling across because technically he WAS telling the truth, since the plan is for Jack to be the one doing the hurting. But I dunno.

Anyway, overall I thought it was a decent episode. It had some good character moments in it, and considering I thiiiiink the next episode is going to be very Sam and Dean heavy, I'm not gonna begrudge Cas and Jack some screentime in this one since things are likely going to be getting dicey here fairly soon.

(And again, I apologize for how scattered this is this time.)

P.S. Oh, and one last thing before I forget. Especially after last episode, I find it odd that Jack still thinks BOTH brothers haven't forgiven him. I get why he would think that about Dean. The dude outright said it was going to take some time. But Sam, as far as we've seen has been shown to be supportive of Jack. So, I wonder if it's because Jack still hasn't forgiven himself? Or if it's because maybe he and Sam haven't really talked about that whole issue, so maybe Jack thinks Sam is just avoiding it? (Or if the writers are just lumping Sam&Dean together again because WHY would anyone see them as two separate entities? *salty*) Because if anyone in this show SHOULD be aware that the brothers don't always think the same it should be Jack. Because from the start Sam has tended to hold a different stance in regards to him than Dean. *sigh* Ah well. We'll see how things fall out. Especially considering what Cas (I’m assuming anyway) told Dean about Jack and Billy’s plan.

#spn 15x15 spoilers #spn season 15 spoilers #episode review #my thoughts #mine internet doth sucketh #sam winchester #dean winchester #castiel #jack kline #the darkness/amara

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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December 2: 1x26 Errand of Mercy

Errand of Mercy is truly a trip. I’m swiftly losing my ability to be coherent because I need to go to sleep but here are some attempts:

First of all this is, of course, a straight-up, pure, unfiltered Kirk/Spock episode with a tiny bit of unrequited Kor/Kirk on the side. Like, we’re not even going to pretend to find stuff for the rest of the crew today. I see you, Gene Coon.

This is the first Klingon ep. I just... the actual Klingon-centric episodes ARE good, but the Klingons in general are pretty boring and I legit don’t understand why they became the standard Star Trek villain. (DC Fontana apparently thought that it was because their make up was simpler v. the Romulans, acc. to Amazon trivia and....I’ll buy that.)

Is the “cultural scale” called the Richter cultural scale? I seem to recall another scale with the exact same name....

I get why there would be such a scale but they are dead wrong about where the Organians fall on it.

Anyway not to harp on this yet again but @ fanom this isn’t the military right?? Lol

Oh, no, it’s Code One! No idea what that means but the music tells me it’s a big deal and it’s bad!

“Curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.” He’s talking about war but I can think of some other things that fall into this category.

I think it’s pretty funny that Kirk records his Captain’s logs in public.

CAPTAIN SULU.

“There’s a war happening, so Mr. Spock and I will just leave the ship... together.”

“You’ll get out of here, Sulu, and leave Spock and I... alone.”

“You’ll fall back to rendezvous with the rest of the Fleet in the Laurentian system.”

Why do these people show no interest in us beaming down into their village? Hmmm, I wonder. If the Organians really were what K and S think they are, beaming down in that way would be uh a bad idea.

Spock seems much less awkward at gesturing than Kirk does.

Finally, by the end of the season, they’ve figured out the context for the Enterprise: Starfleet, the Federation, etc.

I wish the Organians were our alien overlords and taylor.

So the Klingons are a military dictatorship.

Kirk finds them so frustrating. I feel like this ep falls into the genre “Kirk is frustrated by hippies.” All this generic peace talk and faultlessly chill attitudes are just not him.

“I’m a soldier, not a diplomat.” That’s why Spock likes him so much.

The Organians are trying to follow the Prime Directive but Kirk is making it SO HARD.

“Space vehicles.”

I know the Klingons are actually supposed to be in yellow face but you know what it looks like black face to me and I RE-ALLY wish they had not done that.

They look good in those Organian outfits. Love that they kept their command and science colors lol. I feel like this is the sort of outfit AOS Kirk wishes he had in that boring ass closet of his.

Mr. Spock does not look like an Organian.

I MUST know more about these “not uncommon” Vulcan merchants. “Dealing in kevas and trillium.”

KOR IS SO INTO KIRK. This flirting is the least subtle. “You’ll be taught to use your tongue.” “Where is your smile?” “You’re a ram among sheep.” “I need your obedience.” “You seem to be in command.” Is all of this supposed to sound sexual or...?

Right up there with “a stallion must first be broken.”

Whereas Kirk is so not into this. That expression says, “Don’t even think about talking about Spock’s tongue.”

The mind sifter is actually a crazy advanced sci fi machine and STID wanted us to think Klingons don’t have warp usdfsf go fuck yourself.

Kirk is so turned on by Spock’s mental strength.

Every spare moment of this ep is given over to K/S flirting. They legit act like an old married couple. “I thought you were going to fight that guy.” “I just might.” Or whatever.

I love that Kirk’s method of fighting is to literally launch his WHOLE BODY at enemies.

Whereas Spock’s there just running awkwardly in the background. He is Not coordinated friends.

Kirk’s speeches ARE admirable. He is lacking context here but in general if they WERE an oppressed people, this should be inspiring.

“For some reason, he feels as though he must destroy you.”

This Kor and Kirk scene... Kirk literally canNOT stop himself from flirting. His default smile is Charming. “Nothing...inconsequential [was destroyed] I hope...” Flirty smile, wink.

GO CLIMB A TREE I MEAN WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT.

We are the same species...tigers...hunters

Is this not the same cell they always use?

I feel an “and there was only one cell” fic coming on...

The Organians are actually kind of hilarious. They’ll basically let these rando aliens do whatever they want, as long as they do no violence. That’s it, that’s the one rule.”Your captors planned to do violence to you, and to that I said...naw.”

THIS is real Pacifism @ Commander Spock.

Kirk ready to go out in a blaze of fire for a bunch of annoying hippies like “I’m going to white savior you now, ungrateful Organians.”(I say this with love; I love him.)

Can you believe Kirk and Spock are about to die in an unwinnable fight of 2 against Lots of Klingons, and they’re using their last moments to FLIRT AGAIN?

Gene Coon loves writing dialogue in which Spock calculates statistics and Kirk is turned on.

Also can you BELIEVE he just pulls Spock along by the arm? Any excuse to touch him.

Okay the Organians are officially tired of your bullshit.

Too hot! Hot damn!

“We find interference in others’ affairs most disgusting.” Prime Directive! Like I said!

This is basically the plot of A Taste of Armageddon except in that ep Kirk was the Organians.

“People have the right to handle their own affairs.” Is he wrong though??

The Organians are like “okay, we all had our fun here, now get out. Seriously.”

Can you imagine how fucking weird it would be to just randomly see this alien dude materialize in the White House, or, like, Starfleet San Francisco HQ, or wherever the “home world” of the Federation is supposed to be? Just a little throwaway line in there.

By the end Kor is just straight up hilarious. He’s giving off real Ian McKellan in Vicious vibes when he says “I can handle them.”

“I guess that takes care of the war.” Yep! Very efficient!

The “it” in “It would have been glorious” is DEFINITELY not the war lol.

Good game, good game.

“I was furious with the Organians for stopping a war I didn’t want.” I’m sorry but could not THAT have been the plot of STID?

“Spock, your math was wrong the whole time.” And now Spock and Kirk can BOTH sulk lol.

Those were all of my liveblog thoughts and it’s late but.... I had so many additional thoughts on this episode... Like a lot more.

First, I love when humanoids turn out to not be humanoids, that’s one of the best things.

Second, I think this is a very gutsy episode to air at the time, and that it would still be a gutsy episode to air now. I feel like it’s one of the peanut gallery’s favorite criticisms of ST nowadays to say it’s “colonialist” but this ep makes it pretty clear it’s not--that’s the opposite of the lesson of this story.

To attempt to explain better: I completely and unironically love Kirk but I do recognize that like all 3 dimensional characters he has flaws. In this ep, I thought that while his speeches and general point of view and strategic plan were definitely right for situations a population is oppressed--that people do have the power to fight back against dictatorships, even when the odds are bad, and that it is worth it to have the courage to fight back against such oppression--he was ultimately shown to be wrong in this instance because he wasn’t actually coming into that situation. He didn’t understand as much as he thought he did. He thought he was going to be the savior here: taking control for peoples who didn't know better, saving them from oppression, and then gifting them with technology and advancement as he understood it. The Federation wouldn't have enslaved them, but the Federation did want to use them. But the Organians really truly didn't need help--the native people understood their own needs better than the outside people. That's the lesson I took from the episode. Your intentions can be good but if you're coming into a foreign situation looking to control it, without understanding the actual people involved, you’re not being a true friend or ally, and you're likely to do no more harm than good. Opposition to tyranny has to come from the source, the oppressed peoples themselves.

When he refers to “weak, innocent people” standing in the way of superpowers in the beginning--he’s not attempting to derogatory, but that is a pretty demeaning characterization.

I also thought it interesting that the Organians can take any form they want and put their society at any stage of "advancement" they want and they chose a basic agrarian aesthetic. Cottagecore rights.

Kirk really had a confirmation bias when it came to the Organians. He had an image of them--innocent, weak, oppressed--and he only took information that fit with that characterization, rather than listening to them and what they were saying.

My mom and I also discussed whether this was IC or OOC of Kirk. I’m of two minds, myself. I think Kirk at his best is much more open-minded than this. His core morality is good faith, peace, friendliness, and care for all life forms, and there are plenty of examples of this (Charlie X, Mud’s Women, and The Corbomite Maneuver all immediately come to mind.) But he does have a blind spot that I think comes up often enough to be canonically part of his character: if something is threatening or killing his crew, or his people more broadly (the Federation), then ALL he cares about is neutralizing the threat. Rare alien? Possible scientific discovery? Might not have the full details of the situation? Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking The Man Trap, The Devil in the Dark, Arena. He wants to protect aliens, but not if the alien is killing his crew. He wants to make overtures of friendship, but not if the new being has already been aggressive.

I mean like I said... a part of me is like "no he is better than this!" but another part is like... well he does have that 'soldier' side of him, he is intensely loyal to his people. The “evil” Kirk of The Enemy Within. I think he just sometimes gets these blinders in certain situations when he's just sure he's right, which is very human.

Also although he's between McCoy and Spock on the continuum of "an objective right thing exists for all people and in all situations and we should always follow that morality" and "morality itself is relative, we should be respectful of alien ways of living even when we don’t understand them" I think in general Kirk and the show is more like McCoy. There IS a right morality here. (I’m thinking of The Apple or even A Taste of Armageddon.)

I also maintain that to say in 1967 "the very personality trait of being warlike is a common denominator between enemies at war" is a dramatic statement.

My mother suggested that Kirk was “strangely appealing” in his desire to save the Organians, with or without their help, and I do agree... I think that’s the complexity of the episode. The overall thrust of the plot is that Kirk was wrong--he’s left embarrassed at the end. I stand by what I said above. And they certainly go out of their way to show that the Klingons and Federation have something in common--namely, as I said, their very capacity to wage war, and interest in waging war.

BUT, as much as I get the point that they have certain similarities with the Federation--and I think this concept of 'these war-worthy disagreements seem trivial to an advanced and neutral species' is interesting, and even more so in comparison with A Taste of Armageddon which, as I said, is this same scenario from the Organians' POV essentially--at the same time it's a bit irritating to hear the democratic Federation compared to the oppressive dictatorship of the Klingons. Like yeah, okay, none of them are light beings and they both wanted to destroy each other--point taken. But would the Federation park itself on a random planet and kill 200 people the first day? I think not. So in this sense Kirk IS right. The Klingons are an adversary worth fighting, just not over the Organians.

I don’t know what I would think of his position if the Organians were being harmed but were also just...actually sheep. Like I guess I would say "well they have to have a reason.” And in fact they did--their bodies cannot be harmed, so they really don't care if the Klingons pretend to harm them. But I just can't comprehend people being like really honestly okay with that level of oppression, as opposed to too scared or too beaten down or too brainwashed to fight it, which is different.

...And from there we went into a discussion of curative v transformative fandom and yet more on what’s wrong with AOS sdfasfjsaldf it’s past 1 am I can’t be stopped BUT I SHOULD BE STOPPED.

#star trek tos #the year 2020 #2020: fandom thoughts #2020: star trek #omg this is long

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snowbellewells · 4 years

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Self Promo Sunday: “Now We Are A Fairy Tale”

I originally wrote this little one shot just after the Season three finale, when my brain was wonderfully warm and melted for a bit with the perfection of the CS movie. This is a little add-on missing moment scenario for the end of "There's No Place Like Home" – it picks up not long after the finale's ending. Enjoy, and please please let me know what you think.

(Of course I don't own them!)

"Now We Are a Fairy Tale"

By: @snowbellewells

It didn't strike Emma Swan fully until much later that night. Not until after she had worried and fretted with her mother over what she had inadvertently done to Regina, held and cooed at, and quite honestly, cried over holding her new baby brother in her arms, and finally trudged up the steps to the loft after the rest of her family. They were all weary and certainly ready for a good night's sleep without having to worry about Wicked Witch attacks, lost memories, winged killer primates, or yawning time portals. In fact, everyone was so exhausted that even her incredibly doting, nosey, and old-fashioned parents had not yet raised any sort of argument at the fact that she was tugging her pirate captain behind her. Henry was practically asleep on his feet at the front of their little procession with Snow and the baby, for which Emma was glad – he surely would have noticed.

Killian, however, was making quiet protest any chance he could whisper near her ear without alerting the others. "Lass, you needn't take me in like a stray pup. My room at Granny's is quite sufficient. I cannot impose on your family, and surely your parents will object."

"I don't care, Killian. You're coming," she hissed back. She didn't particularly want to have her parents go all overprotective on her, but right at this moment, she couldn't let him out of her sight either. It was amazing how simply her heart had expanded to want and need him more with every beat. As cautious and guarded as she had been, now that she had admitted her feelings, she was lit up all over in the glow of his love, and she couldn't seem to let him go for a second.

"I'll be fine, Love," he insisted as they crossed the threshold and Emma turned to magically seal and safeguard the place behind them – more out of habit than from continued necessity – and the rest of their little troupe moved off further into the house. "This is not the way things are done. For all my jesting, I am a gentleman, Emma, and I wish to court you properly."

"Really, Killian?" she smirked, arching a brow at him, half in flattered disbelief and half in exasperation. Now that she wasn't fighting him anymore, she had honestly been looking forward to really getting her hands on him.

"Aye, truly, Darling," he replied softly. Both the hushed timbre of his voice and the look in his eyes conveyed his sincerity, even without Emma using her superpower. "I wish to do right by you, and I am not sure how far to trust my control if we are to be sleeping in the same quarters."

Emma had to swallow a rather large lump in her throat at the look of hunger in his eyes while he spoke those last words, his hypnotic blue gaze practically caressing her. "You and me both, Buddy," she remarked wryly, admitting in her head that he was probably right to slow this down a bit, though the whole thing seemed oddly reversed from their usual interactions.

"What's that, Swan?" he questioned, a smirk on his face showing he already had a good idea where her thoughts had been.

Looking up at him coyly from beneath her lashes, Emma smirked right back before explaining, "I was honestly looking forward to allowing you into my quarters, Pirate. Your charms have finally won me over."

"About bloody time!" was his immediate playful retort. His eyes flashed with true relief, even as he broke into a pleased chuckle with the familiar response. Then, he was pulling her to him, the hunger flaring again in his expression when she came willingly, almost melting into his embrace. "If that's the way you feel, Princess…" he murmured gruffly before lowering his head and capturing her lips with his own.

It was as desperate and strong as it had been either of the times before. Though she had been warmly overwhelmed and almost boneless as Killian first wrapped her up, Emma was soon responding in kind, her hands clutching almost frantically at his shoulders before one trailed up even further to fist in his dark hair.

It would have been near painful, if Killian hadn't been so stirred by the show of need from her equal to his own. The little growl that escaped her throat, demanding more, spurred him on, and he delved his good hand into her soft, golden hair in return, angling her head just so to deepen the kiss further, a groan rumbling through his chest in spite of himself in response to the feel of her in his arms at last.

Tremors ran through Emma's body at Killian's reaction, still not sure how to believe someone could desire her so completely, honestly, and unequivocally. Without coherent thought, Emma realized that she was moving, drawing him along with her, heading toward the hall, to the stairs and her room. They would have made it too; she had no doubt, if there had not been the creak of a floorboard, and then footsteps on the stairs.

They pulled apart as a suspicious-looking Charming appeared above them on the stairway. His hand was still up, having been rubbing his eyes sleepily before he caught his daughter and his new friend in the midst of their first serious make out session. The Prince's eyes narrowed and his voice, though grumpy and tired, did not brook argument as he came down the rest of the steps to stand before them, studying them both with astute authority.

"I'm grateful, Hook, not stupid," David grumbled, shuffling past them into the kitchen to the sink. "Let's keep it PG in here, shall we?"

Emma couldn't help the actual giggle that escaped her upon seeing Killian's look of confusion at her father's last statement. The oddity of both her man not understanding what a movie was, nor being caught making out by her father like he should have been able to do when she was a teenager, didn't escape her and she was beaming – truly happy with everything in her life and hardly knowing how to handle so much joy.

David turned with his glass of water and gave each of them a stern, searching look. "I'll see you both in the morning," was all he finally said before moving back toward his and Snow's room. Still, his implication was clear.

"Yes, your Highness," Killian responded, giving the Prince a nod as he passed, and somehow managing to convey both respect and sardonic humor at the same time. Emma could do little more than bite her lip to hold back further laughter at the both of them and the whole situation.

When Charming had gone and they were alone again, Emma couldn't help the fit of giggles she dissolved into, one quick look at Killian's curious expression and the eyebrow he raised in question at her had Emma burying her face in his shoulder, hers shaking with mirth.

"What is it, Love?" he asked, brushing reverent fingers through her hair and chuckling with her, more at simply seeing her happy than in understanding what she found so funny.

She shook her head, glancing back up at him happily. "Nothing much," she assured him with a grin. "One of these days we'll just have to inform you of some modern world sayings, Pirate, that's all."

"So, Darling…" he murmured, blue eyes darkening attractively with intent as he leaned forward, all seriousness and innuendo once more, "where were we?"

Emma had to draw in a shaky breath to center herself and keep her body from betraying her by falling right under his spell again. She leaned away from his tempting lips and quirked a wry smile at him, clearly teasing. "I was about to make you forget that you're 'always a gentleman'," she supplied.

Killian's face registered shock for a moment, before he literally licked his lips and reached out to capture her in his arms again. "Too right, Lass," he agreed huskily.

Emma shook her head, evading his grasp playfully once more. "I think it's a good thing David interrupted us," she said hesitantly. "I was getting swept up in the moment, and I don't want to ruin this, the way I've done with nearly every other relationship in my life. Besides, they trust us, Killian…"

He gave her a doubtful look, but she pressed on.

"No, I mean it. They trust you too. And I think you value that more than you let on. Pirate reputation to uphold and all," she winked at him jokingly with that last statement.

"Emma, I would never…" he began, concern in his eyes, as if fearing that she thought he would take advantage.

She stepped forward again, bringing her hand to rest over his heart tenderly. "I know, Killian. Don't worry so much. I was the one who went a little overboard." She paused for a moment, searching his lovely eyes until she saw relief clear them. "Stay here for a second, okay?" she asked finally. "I'll be right back. There's something I want to show you."

She headed for the hallway and saw him moving in to sit on the living room couch, before she turned to tiptoe into Henry's room. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness easily with the aid of the moonlight spilling in through the window and across her son's peaceful, sleeping face. She knew what she was after and quietly crept right over to Henry's desk, where she knew her kept his prized book of fairy tales, front and center on the surface in a place of honor.

Smiling once she had it in her hands, Emma ran her fingertips thoughtfully over the curling, gilt letters on the book's cover. Without this book, Henry would never have known their story, he wouldn't have come looking for her, and her whole life now would be different. For all that she had sworn she wanted out of the crazy, magical Storybrooke world, Emma would no longer want to be in the normal world she'd had – all alone and closed off from love.

Still trying not to make a sound or disturb Henry's rest, Emma turned and slipped out of her son's room and back to the living room where her pirate waited.

When Killian raised his face to smile at her and patted the couch cushion beside him, she was drawn forward – right to his side like a magnet. Opening the large book over both of their laps, Emma could not help cuddling into his side and laying her head on his shoulder. Even just a few days prior, him wrapping his good arm around her to hold her closer and ruffle her hair would have frightened her, crowded her, felt too confining, but now she reveled in it, tipping her face up to press a kiss to the underside of his strong, defined jaw.

Killian sucked in a quick, strangled breath, and she felt him tense, bringing himself back under control. "You are sailing dangerous waters, Princess," he warned, tone carefully light, but his grip around her showing just how difficult that restraint was. With a sigh, he tried to move beyond what was simmering between them, loosening his taut muscles by sheer force of will. "Why don't you show me what you were intending to show me?" he suggested.

Emma nodded and began to rifle through the pages in the book, looking for the picture she had glimpsed only briefly with Henry earlier at Granny's. She hadn't purposefully been trying to torment Killian; the affection and greedy touching and hunger were completely new to her and nearly overwhelming. It was still surprising and difficult for her to fathom the affect she seemed to have on him without even trying. So many years of being invisible – not mattering to anyone – were not something that could be forgotten in a few days, or even months, and she could easily be stunned all over again by his devotion and care. Emma shook her head a little to clear it of so many circling thoughts, and finally landed on the story she had been seeking. Her hands ghosted over the picture still familiar from recent memory. Then, she turned to study Killian's face, making sure he understood what this meant.

She was no longer fighting it. They were real. They were true.

Killian's eyes widened adorably, leaning over the book slightly and then grinning as if his face might split in two. "Are we now in this book, Lass?" he asked, disbelief and awe in his voice.

A lump that had already been rising in her throat from earlier emotion stopped Emma's words, so she merely nodded her head 'yes', locking eyes with him and bringing her hand up to cradle his stubbled cheek. She swallowed a few times before finding her voice shakily, and then she finally managed. "We are. Or at least Charles and Leia are…" she chuckled at her own ridiculously bad attempt at thinking on her feet.

"Ah, well, those two certainly look quite happy, don't they?" he murmured, voice rumbling in her ear and sending shivers racing all along her skin.

Normally, she would be running by now – overwhelmed – but instead, for the first time ever, she wanted to stay right there. "It almost looks like a happy ending," she agreed, blinking back the tears of joy that were still trying to threaten.

"So now we are a fairytale ourselves, are we Swan?"

"Looks that way," she responded cheekily.

"The Princess and the Pirate?" he questioned lightly, jokingly trying to guess the title.

"Hmm…" Emma hummed, pretending deep thought for a second, and then she smiled at him warmly, barely resisting the urge to curl up even closer against him. "Maybe you should read it to me, and we'll find out?"

Killian acquiesced easily to her wishes, and Emma could see clearly now that it was the same thing he had been doing for as long as she had known him; striving to do her bidding and waiting for her to understand. His rich, sultry, accented voice wrapped around her like a comforting blanket, retelling the adventure they had undertaken together. Her peace and contentment were so blissfully complete that she was almost afraid to close her eyes, though exhaustion was fast overcoming her as she listened to his voice.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and Emma tried valiantly to fight them back open. Killian's fingers brushed feather-light over her forehead just then, followed by a quick, gentle peck of his lips. Carefully, he eased her down to rest her head on his thigh and stretch her legs out across the couch.

"It's alright, Emma love. Rest. I will be here when you wake."

And with those words, she finally fell into the most peaceful sleep she'd ever had, followed shortly by her pirate – both knowing they were safe… and at home.

Tagging a few who may enjoy: @jennjenn615 @kmomof4 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @searchingwardrobes @hollyethecurious @laschatzi @thisonesatellite @profdanglaisstuff @shireness-says @snidgetsafan @teamhook @revanmeetra87 @therooksshiningknight @spartanguard @thislassishooked

#self promo sunday #cs one shot ff #ouat missing season #season three finale ff #now we are a fairy tale

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knuffled · 4 years

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discipline & punish - chapter 3

no smut in this chapter, but i think there will be in the next chapter. if you enjoyed the chapter, i would appreciate it if you reblogged! i do read all the tags and they bring me great joy.

here’s the ao3 link

chapter three - the greater good

Annabeth woke to the sound of falling rain pattering against a window pane, punctuated intermittently by a shrill, mechanical beeping noise, and an aching pain in her side that was somehow both dull and sharp at the same time. When she opened her eyes, the fluorescent light above her bed nearly blinded her, but when she raised her hand to shield them from the glare, she noticed that her hand was a lot heavier than normal. Her entire body pulsed with pain, making the task of sitting up excruciating, but she managed it all the same and blearily took in her surroundings.

Once she regained some semblance of clarity, her lips curled downwards when she saw the IV drip running down the length of her right arm. Her eyes fell to the heart rate monitor by the window before moving to the bedside table to her right where someone had left a bouquet of flowers with a get-well card taped to the plastic. It was hard to make out the handwriting scrawled across the card even though she was sitting right beside it.

Whatever they had sedated her with made it near impossible to form a coherent thought. To make matters worse, her sensitivity had heightened to an uncomfortable degree. On top of the lights and the awful noise the monitor made every few seconds, someone had taken the liberty of removing her clothes and slipping her into a hospital gown, and the fabric felt starchy and uncomfortable against her bare skin. Even the sterile quality of the air made it painful to inhale.

The pain in her sides didn’t help either. She tentatively probed the affected area with her free hand and inhaled sharply when a horrible piercing pain shot through her. The pain was so vivid, in contrast to how languid everything else was, that it jolted her memory. It felt like Percy’s sword was stabbing her at that very moment. The mere thought of him made her muscles tense immediately.

If she was in the hospital, who was handling him? What sort of chaos was he causing without her there to stop him? It was hard to tell with the heavy downpour outside, but it seemed that New Athens wasn’t burning to the ground, at the very least.

She screwed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. It was useless to worry about the camp when she was in such critical condition. Mentally, she replayed the fight with Percy and tried to fathom how she could have possibly thought intentionally getting stabbed was a good idea, but no answer made itself clear to her.

The clock hanging above the door frame to her left showed that it was early in the evening. With great effort, she pulled the bouquet towards her and examined the card on the front. It was Piper’s messy handwriting informing her that she had dropped by the visit when Annabeth had been asleep before wishing her a speedy recovery and promising to visit her again soon.

Seeing her friend’s familiar handwriting brought a small smile to her face, but her eyelids persistently continued to droop. It was hard to say if it was because of the injuries or all the painkillers flooding through her veins that made her feel so tired even though she had only been awake for a few minutes at best, but already sleep beckoned to her.

She was about to sink back into the bed when there was a commotion outside her door. It sounded like two people were arguing, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. However, only seconds later, the door burst open and a blonde man strode into the room, a dark look on his face, even as an orderly feebly tried to stop him.

Annabeth blinked owlishly and said, “You don’t look very happy to see me, Jason.”

“Gods, look at you. I heard what happened, but I didn’t believe it until now,” Jason said, clenching his jaw. “What were you thinking, Annabeth?”

“Nice to see you too.”

For an instant, Jason’s lips quirked upwards before setting into a hard line again. “This is no time for jokes. You almost died, Annabeth. Will told me that if you had been brought to the hospital even five minutes later, you would’ve been beyond saving.”

Annabeth sighed and said, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything. I just need you to understand that what you did was very stupid, and I would like it if you didn’t do something like that again,” Jason said.

Despite her heavy injuries, Annabeth found herself glaring at him. “I did what I thought was best. There was a threat, and I dealt with it. That’s all there is to it. Doing nothing would’ve been even more dangerous,” she snapped.

“You can’t mean to tell me there was no better way,” Jason said, frowning.

“Like I said,” Annabeth repeated. “I did what I thought was best.”

Jason stared at her for a while before deflating in front of her. Annabeth felt her heart squeeze in her chest at the look of unabashed concern on his face and instantly felt bad for being so glib with him when he was only worried about her.

Annabeth looked to the orderly who was still hanging awkwardly in between the door-frame and said, “We’re fine. You can leave us.”

The orderly looked between her and Jason before nodding tentatively and leaving. Once he was gone, Jason shot her a look of gratitude before sinking into one of the chairs by the window, cupping his face with his hands. There was a dull roar of thunder and the wind howled against the windows, making the entire building creak in protest.

After a while, Jason exhaled heavily and whispered, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

She stared at her hands, resting on her lap, and mumbled, “Thanks. Sorry for being so bitchy. I’m still really out of it.”

Jason snorted and ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s probably because you’re shot full of enough painkillers to tranquilize a fucking horse.”

Annabeth barked a laugh and said, “Pretty sure that would kill me.”

He studied her face for a moment before giving her a significant look. “You look like shit, by the way,” he said.

“Okay, that was uncalled for.”

“He got you real good, didn’t he?” Jason said, a hint of admiration in his voice. “Never seen you so bruised up before. Must’ve been a hell of a fight.”

A part of her wanted to protest that it was because she had been so out of practice, but, although she would never admit it out loud, Annabeth wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to win if she had been at her best anyways.

“It was,” she admitted quietly.

“I know you’re probably worried about him, but you can rest easy. At least for now. He’s being treated here at the hospital too, although I’ve been told his injuries aren’t nearly as bad as yours. Apparently, he’s been fairly well behaved so far, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last. I can’t stay for long – they need me in New Rome in a week – but I will keep an eye on him until you recover,” Jason explained.

Annabeth breathed a sigh of relief and sank back farther into her bed. “That’s good news,” she said. “Thanks for doing that.”

“So what happened exactly? I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from anyone. Although, I suspect that that’s because they don’t have a clue about what happened either,” Jason said, the hint of an accusation creeping into his voice.

“I know, I know, I should’ve told someone about what was going on, but there was a lot on my mind, so it didn’t really occur to me at the time,” Annabeth said, trying her best to sound apologetic.

Jason nodded, seemingly satisfied with her display of penitence, and leaned back in his seat while he listened to Annabeth relate what had happened since Percy’s arrival at camp. There were parts where he raised his eyebrows and parts where he clenched his jaw, but he didn’t otherwise interrupt her, something she was grateful for. More than anyone else she knew, Jason had the rare capacity to listen to people. It was what made him so good at his job as New Athens’s ambassador to New Rome.

When she finished, he shook his head and said, “I came to New Rome a few days after Percy was driven out of the city, and let me tell you: it was not pretty, Annabeth. It was utter carnage there. Took them nearly two months to fix all the property damage, not mention all the people that he seriously hurt or killed.”

When she was silent, he leaned forward, his hands clasped in his lap, and said gently, “Look, I know you beat him and everything, but from what I’m hearing, it sounded like you were lucky not to get killed. I’m not sure that losing makes him any less of a threat. You haven’t seen the bodies he left behind in his wake in New Rome. He cannot stay here.”

Annabeth shifted in her seat and said, “I– I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that he’s going to try anything.”

“What makes you so sure?” Jason demanded. “You said it yourself – he’s like a wild animal. How long do you think it’ll take before he decides to hurt someone?”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I think he was trying to figure out where he fit into all this,” she said slowly.

When Jason raised an eyebrow, Annabeth said, “Like, I think he wanted to know where he fit into the pecking order. Since I beat him, he knows that there’s someone stronger than him, someone he has to listen to.”

“I get that you feel that way, but I still think it’s too risky to let him stay,” Jason said, his brow furrowed.

Annabeth made a sound of frustration and grit her teeth when her body screamed out in pain as she sat up straighter.

“He came from the Wolf House, right? Well, I’m not an expert or anything, but wolves live in packs, and packs have their own hierarchies. At the top, there’s an alpha that is in charge and then there are betas that obey the alpha,” Annabeth explained.

Jason frowned and said, “So the fact that he challenged you for the right to be the alpha and lost makes him a beta? You think that’ll be enough for him to listen to you?”

Annabeth shrugged and said, “I don’t know, but if he’s been living with wolves for the last eighteen years, then he’s gotta have picked up some of their behavior.”

Jason didn’t look convinced. “It’s a good guess, but it’s still a guess.”

When Annabeth was silent, Jason sat back in his seat and shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t get why you’re so hesitant about this. As Camp Director, your responsibility is towards all the citizens in New Athens. If there is even the slightest risk to their safety, you are obligated to eliminate it, despite your personal feelings. That’s the burden of leadership.”

Annabeth squirmed in her seat and played with her fingers, unable to think of a way to argue with what he had said.

“I also hope you realize that there are other consequences to letting him stay here too. Like, I can guarantee that Reyna and the Romans won’t sit quietly knowing he’s being sheltered here. They’ll take it as an insult, and it could risk undermining the peace and trust we’ve worked so hard to establish over the last five years,” he argued.

He was right - every point Jason had made was perfectly valid. Even two weeks ago, she would’ve also been vehemently opposed to the idea of letting someone like Percy into camp, but there was still something, some part of her that she couldn’t explain, that silently opposed the idea. As absurd as it was, making Percy leave camp felt wrong.

He had been kicked out of New Rome already. If she chose to exile him as well, then he wouldn’t have anywhere safe to turn to. Leaving him out on his own was basically a death sentence. Annabeth knew without a fraction of a doubt that Percy would draw monsters to him like flies to honey. Even as strong as he was, it would be impossible to survive an endless onslaught forever. At some point, tiredness would get to him and he would let his guard down and that would be more than enough to get him killed.

Keeping him at camp risked the lives of everyone else that lived there, and she couldn’t, given her responsibilities, prioritize the safety of one person over the collective, especially not when it could incur the wrath of New Rome, but at the same time, the image of her first encounter with Percy flashed in her mind. She recalled how haunted and tense and, frankly, how scared he had looked. Percy knew as well as she did that he couldn’t last out there on his own forever. There was a reason he’d traveled the length of the entire country to get here after all.

Furthermore, there was something significant about him, although she couldn’t say what it was. The timing and nature of arrival in conjunction with his raw power and mysterious past all screamed to her that he was important somehow, and if she was the only person he might be willing to listen to, then she had an obligation to keep watch over him.

Annabeth sighed and said, “I understand where you’re coming from, and you are totally right, but I can’t throw him out to the wolves, no pun intended. If we force him out of camp, it’s as good as executing him. I’m not willing to hand out a death sentence so easily.”

Jason scoffed and said, “Annabeth, he’s a criminal! He has hurt and killed people, innocent people. It’s not like you are being asked to turn your back on a normal demigod; he’s already proven beyond the benefit of a doubt that he is too dangerous to stay here. I can’t believe you, of all people, need to be convinced of that considering he nearly killed you!”

“You’re not wrong, but I can’t turn my back on someone who needs my help,” Annabeth said, shaking her head. “You know as well as I do what horrible things have been done in the name of the greater good. If I choose to forsake my sense of morality just because it’s convenient or the situation demands it, then having any morals at all becomes meaningless.”

Jason opened his mouth to say something more before he closed it and stared at her. “You really aren’t going to change your mind about this, are you?” he said quietly.

“I am not,” Annabeth affirmed.

“Even though this could blow up in your face spectacularly?”

“I’ll assume responsibility for whatever happens,” Annabeth said. “Besides, if I’m wrong, you can always tell me ‘I told you so’.”

“Well, let’s hope that day never comes,” Jason muttered.

“I’m a Daughter of Athena. We’re not usually known for being wrong,” Annabeth said, a half-smile on her face.

Jason shook his head in fond exasperation. “I’ve missed you, Annabeth,” he said.

“Me too,” she said, softening. “I take it Reyna is keeping you very busy.”

He breathed a laugh and said, “That’s a gross understatement. It feels like there’s always someone pissed off about something or another. I don’t know how she does it honestly.”

“She’s strong, stronger than either of us,” Annabeth admitted.

Jason nodded, but there was a look of concern on his face. “I worry about her,” he said, sighing. “She tries to do too much on her own. Has trouble depending on people. Like you, I guess.”

“I depend on you,” Annabeth noted.

His lips quirked into a smile. “Not nearly enough though.”

Annabeth cleared her throat and said, “How’s Piper?”

For the first time since he came into her hospital room, a genuine smile crossed Jason’s lips. “She’s good. We’re good. Busy, but we make time for each other,” he said.

“That’s good,” Annabeth said softly.

“Yeah,” Jason said, sounding distant.

“She dropped off some flowers earlier when I was asleep apparently,” Annabeth said, nodding to the bouquet on her bedside table.

“I’m surprised you could read her handwriting,” Jason said, grinning.

“I’ll be sure to let her know you said that,” Annabeth teased.

Jason laughed and looked like he was going to say something more when he stopped and fished his phone out of his pocket. He shot her an apologetic look and had a quick, hushed conversation. Once he was done, he stood up and pocketed his phone, looking suddenly weary.

“I have to get going,” Jason said with a wan smile.

“Duty calls?” Annabeth asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Duty calls,” he said, sighing. “Get better soon, Annabeth. I meant what I said earlier, you know? I’m here for you, so feel free to rely on me more.”

Annabeth nodded, her lips curled in a small smile, and watched as Jason made his way out the room, but he stopped between the doorway for a few seconds before turning to her.

“I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

He left before she could have a chance to respond, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

:::

A cold breeze blew against her face, rousing her in the middle of the night. Annabeth sat up groggily and looked to the window, which was now open even though she could’ve sworn it had been shut when she’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the wind was still strong, diffusing the earthy scent of petrichor into the sterile air of the hospital room. The curtains billowed, briefly obscuring the figure sitting on the window sill, staring at the moon. Annabeth froze when she realized that it was Percy and immediately scanned the room for anything she could use as a weapon.

“Relax,” Percy said, still not looking at her. “I’m not here to hurt you. Besides, if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have waited for you to wake up.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you to wait till I’m awake. Your moonlit silhouette suggests that you seem to have a penchant for theatrics,” Annabeth said, trying to keep her tone light.

“Theatrics, huh?” Percy snorted. “That’s amusing coming from someone who intentionally let herself get stabbed to win a fight.”

“I did what I had to,” Annabeth said carefully.

“You’re right. If you hadn’t taken such a risk, I would’ve killed you that night,” Percy said.

“I didn’t peg you for a sore loser.”

Finally, Percy turned to look at her and, as always, meeting his eyes froze her. “I know you’re not stupid enough to think you deserved to win that night. You’re lucky to still be alive, and you know it.”

There wasn’t any venom or heat in his voice. He spoke matter-of-factly, like he was simply relaying the truth of the matter, leaving no room for argument. Not that she could really disagree with him anyways. In her heart, she knew he was right.

“Is that why you’re here? To gloat?” Annabeth asked wearily.

He shook his head with a strangely nervous look on his face. When he spoke, he was unable to hide the quiver in his voice.

“Now that you’ve won, will you force me to leave?” Percy asked.

“That depends on you. Will you behave yourself if I let you stay?”

“I have no choice since I lost,” he said bitterly.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting, but I’m not going to like enslave you or something. I won’t ask anything of you that I don’t ask of anyone else,” Annabeth said. “You’re free to do as you wish as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” Percy furrowed his brow, seemingly taken aback by her answer, and processed her statement in silence. “But I still have to obey you,” he said slowly.

“If that’s the way you see it.”

A stony look crossed his face as he pursed his lips, making her grit her teeth. Why couldn’t he see how far she was going for him?

“Look, everyone else around me wants you gone. They think you’re too dangerous to keep around. I am the only one in favor of letting you stay, so I need you to understand that I am not your enemy,” Annabeth said, trying not to sound as irritated as she felt.

Percy cocked his head to one side, looking thoroughly unconvinced, and tapped his chin with his index finger. “What if I just kill you right now?” he mused.

Annabeth gave him a cold smile, black rage rising in the pit of her stomach. “You can certainly try, you little shit,” she said, feeling strangely confident despite her injuries.

They stared at each other in silence for a while before Percy looked away and nodded tersely. “Very well,” he said. “I will do as you say.”

Immediately, the anger brewing inside her dissipated and left her feeling oddly pleased. “Good,” she said lightly. “Then there shouldn’t be a problem.”

There was a pause before Annabeth coughed surreptitiously and said, “Will that be all?”

Percy shook his head reluctantly, and when he spoke, there was noticeable frustration in his voice. “No, I also– I wanted to see you.”

Annabeth suppressed the urge to laugh once she saw the conflicted look on Percy’s face, and, despite the situation, found herself studying him instead.

Now that they weren’t trying to kill each other, she was finally able to properly look at him. Again, the word “beautiful” came to mind. His wavy, dark hair, long enough to tickle his eyebrows even after his haircut, was silky and smooth. The wind tousled his hospital gown, teasing her with a glimpse of his bare chest, taut muscle glistening like freshly fallen snow under the glow of the moon. The shocking, feral sea green of his eyes. Everything about him seemed to tempt her.

If only he wasn’t so young, she mused.

Annabeth caught herself and shook her head, trying to dispel that dangerous train of thought, afraid of where it might lead, and tried to focus. Even though he had said he didn’t come to hurt her, it would still be foolish to let her guard down.

She cleared her throat and asked, “And why is that?”

He looked down thoughtfully for a few moments before he said, “Because– Because we are the same. We both have monsters inside us. We would both rather die than submit to someone.”

His words struck a chord in her, confirming the vague sense of kinship she had felt since she’d first seen him. At the same time, she didn’t miss that there was also a tense contradiction in what he had said.

“Yet you yielded,” Annabeth said.

“Yet I yielded,” Percy agreed begrudgingly.

Annabeth frowned and tried to think of where he was going with this before a theory came to mind. “And you don’t know why?” she said.

He nodded, his eyes lighting up, and said, “I was prepared to die if I lost, but when the time came, I hesitated and I don’t know why.”

“It’s not strange to want to live,” Annabeth noted.

Percy withered in front of her and Annabeth couldn’t help feeling like she had just broken his trust. “I thought you of all people would understand,” he said quietly. “I guess I was wrong.”

“Wait! I do,” Annabeth said quickly, strangely desperate not to break whatever this newfound connection was between them. “I do understand.”

When he looked at her suspiciously, Annabeth licked her lips and continued, “The reason I won, the reason I took that crazy risk when we fought was because I couldn’t stand the idea of losing. I couldn’t tolerate the idea of submitting to another person. That was why I took your blade, knowing full well it might kill me, as long as it meant that I wouldn’t lose.”

Percy breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Yes, exactly. That’s why I can’t understand why I chose to surrender.”

There was a lull in the conversation as Annabeth reflected on what he had shared with her. Outside her window, a tree creaked in the wind. Eventually, Annabeth sighed and said, “I don’t really have answers for you.”

Percy shook his head and said, “I didn’t expect you to. I think I came here to confirm something.”

“Confirm what?” Annabeth asked, frowning.

The shadow of a smile crossed his lips, and Annabeth couldn’t help thinking it suited him better than the brooding look he usually wore.

“Confirm what I wonder?” Percy said lightly.

The breeze blowing into the room carried with it that familiar, haunting scent of cedar and elderberry. She probably had the opiates to thank for the fact that she had been unaware of the smell for so long despite Percy sitting so close to her. Still, Annabeth was surprised that it wasn’t overpowering her like she would have expected it to given his proximity. Instead, the sillage was present only ever so slightly, not so subtle that she wouldn’t have been able to detect it, but still weak enough to leave her wanting more.

Annabeth gripped her bedsheets hard as a sudden irresistible impulse to touch him washed over her. More than that, she wanted to possess him, to dominate him. Every time she encountered that scent of his, it unhinged her just a little bit more. Annabeth prided herself in her self-control, but she knew that she was dangerously close to losing it at the rate that things were going.

Images flashed to mind of him handcuffed to her bed frame, blindfolded and gagged and gorgeous, as she fucked him into the mattress hard, her hands wrapped around his porcelain throat. She subtly rubbed her thighs against each other as a flood of want washed over her. Annabeth bit her lip and tried frantically to think of a distraction, anything to dispel the image from her head, but the more she tried, the more it took root there.

This was dangerous.

Christ, he was only eighteen. He was six years younger than her, almost the same age as her step-brothers, but her body already burned with arousal. Annabeth couldn’t remember the last time she felt so turned on by someone who hadn’t even touched her. She forced her gaze away from him and cleared her throat.

“If that’s all you need from me, you should leave. I want to get some rest,” Annabeth said, much sharper than she intended, desperate for any excuse to get him away from her before she did something stupid.

“Of course,” Percy said, but the tone in his voice suggested he knew she was hiding something from him.

The intensity of the scent swelled for a moment and then, just like that, he was gone, and the scent with him. She stiffened for a moment before taking in deep lungfuls of air, part of her desperate to see if she could still smell him while the other part was relieved she couldn’t.

Annabeth couldn’t fall asleep for the rest of the night. The self-loathing bubbling in her stomach made it far too difficult to relax.

#knuffled fic #percabeth fic #percabeth #percabeth angst #PJO #percy jackson #annabeth chase #jason grace

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nobodyfamousposts · 5 years

Text

Categories of Failure - An Akuma Analysis

Who wants more analysis of Hawk Moth’s idiocy?

If there is anything that makes Hawk Moth’s quest for the Miraculous hard to take seriously, you need look no further than his multitude of akumas that almost seem designed to fail.

I’ve taken the time to note what akumas Hawk Moth DOESN’T create even if it could solve his problems (aka: a stealthy akuma, a Miraculous-locating akuma, or even one that could just heal his wife with no Miraculous or potentially reality-destabilizing wish required). But I haven’t yet fully explored the akumas he DOES create and just WHY they are horrible.

I’ve been talking about this for a while now and I think I’ve pieced together an accurate—or at least coherent list and explanation of what I mean. I have noted four particular categories of akumas doomed to fail and I think they highlight in and of themselves the issue of Gabriel’s horrible lack of planning and why his stated goal does not appear to be his actual goal.

Powers Too Big:

These are the akumas who by all logic should have a pretty high death count just by the very nature of their powers, even before they actively try to attack the heroes. These are the akumas that are powerful—TOO powerful. So much so that their sheer destructive capability should have wiped Paris off the map. But the biggest issue with these akumas is not only that they fail despite being extremely powerful, it’s that Hawk Moth remains completely unaffected by their powers. These are world-affecting akumas who at the very LEAST should have SOME impact on Hawk Moth’s lair give that he is operating from within Paris. So why was his lair not flooded? Or frozen over? Or taken out by the giant freaking volcano?

These are cases where the powers of the akumas are big—HUGE even. Enough to affect the WORLD. By that logic, they SHOULD also affect Hawk Moth. And if it wasn’t for the shoddy writing, maybe they would. In each case, we’re shown that Hawk Moth and his lair are just fine. Given what little we see of her, we can assume that his wife’s comatose body is fine, too. Which…makes NO SENSE.

This leads to a major flaw in Hawk Moth’s overall plan in that he happens to BE in the very city he’s attacking. Meaning that whatever he is having happen to the city should by all counts be happening to HIM as well. If it weren’t for the plot armor, Hawk Moth would be dead. Flat out. And even if he DID manage to survive, he’d certainly have cause to be be more on board with Ladybug fixing everything.

But plot armor is still no excuse for Hawk Moth to have NOT thought this through. I shouldn’t have to get into the scientific logistics of how cold it would have to suddenly be for a city to freeze over in summer, the full impact of a volcano eruption in a populated city, or how much water would be necessary to fully flood Paris just to point out that whatever effect they’re having should also be hitting the Big Bad’s lair just as much as the rest of the city.

Hawk Moth’s location aside, some of these akumas are BIG enough that it honestly shouldn’t matter WHERE he was. Even if he somehow managed to instantaneously make and warp akumas to where he needed them to go from across the world, some of these akumas are just too powerful. So powerful in fact that they have more of a chance of obliterating all life than they would of getting the Miraculous.

Even ignoring that, the fact that their powers are so huge makes them a terrible choice of tools if the goal is specifically to steal magical jewelry. They just aren’t practical for the intended goal, especially since their powers can effectively doom the world at large. The heroes could be killed and their Miraculous easily lost. Alternatively, it’s been made clear in canon that the Miraculous CAN be damaged. So what will Hawk Moth do then if his akuma loses or even outright destroys either of the two Miraculous he needs—particularly the Ladybug Miraculous, which is the ONLY THING that can set the world to rights?

Examples: Stormy Weather 1&2, Frozer, Syren

Stormy Weather 2 flat out nearly destroyed the WORLD. I cannot emphasize that enough. Because if the city is destroyed and everything is ash, the wish is going to be kind of pointless. Because yes, we have confirmation that Miraculous CAN be damaged. Hawk Moth would know that as well. So WHY would he create an akuma THIS powerful which could potentially obliterate the very things he wants it to get for him?

Powers too big means he’s using the equivalent of a hurricane to try and get a kite out of a tree. That’s not what the hurricane is for, the hurricane is not efficient in this task, and it is more likely that the kite will be decimated. As will the tree. And everything else.

Powers Too Small:

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the case of the akumas with powers that are either minimalistic or much too specific to do any real good or make any real progress in obtaining the Miraculous. The fact that they are any threat at all seems to be less a matter of the power Hawk Moth gave them and more their own ingenuity and ability.

Examples: Silencer, Frightningale, Troublemaker, Antibug, Copycat, Dark Owl, Puppeteer 1, Chameleon

Some of you may argue with me on Antibug and Copycat. I include them both here due to the limitations they have. Antibug is just a reverse color of Ladybug. She was able to summon a Charm, but it was simply imposing rather than useful. Copycat is pretty much an exact copy of Chat Noir, including the time limit after using Cataclysm ONCE. Compare this with Volpina, who is pretty much an improved version of Rena Rouge given how many illusions she can create.

What made each of them threatening and useful was how THEY applied their powers rather than what the power itself was. Look to Silencer, whose powers were by far the most limited—being the ability to steal the voice of anyone but ONLY through physical touch. The power was lame and hardly threatening, and it took his “victim” interfering with Ladybug in the fight for Silencer to even get her voice at all. But out of all the akumas, he’s actually the one who made most efficient use of his powers and made the most progress in his own personal goal of outing the scumbag music producer who stole Kitty Section’s music and Marinette’s designs. That says a lot for Luka, but not for Hawk Moth.

Dark Owl was also a threat. Not going to lie that he was quite possibly one of the biggest threats to the heroes. But again, that was more on his own ingenuity rather than Hawk Moth’s empowering him. After all, he’s the first and as of yet only akuma we’ve seen actually HIDE his akumatized item.

Puppeteer (the first time) can ONLY control people if she has a doll of them. Her power is reliant on the dolls existing in the first place and without them, she’s easily beaten.

Frightningale was a waste of potential and having a legitimate reason for the heroes to sing.

And Chameleon was limited in whom she could transform into in that she had to specifically kiss them. Sure, it got the person she was impersonating out of the way. But unlike Silencer or Dark Owl, if she was going to make real effective use of this, she shouldn’t have made it obvious she was an akuma.

Mind Affecting Akumas:

Out of all the akumas, THESE are the ones who should by all counts have made the most progress in getting the Miraculous, especially considering how often Chat gets hit. Plot armor as justification comes off as cheap reasoning and even downright stupid when the akuma literally has half of the intended goal in their hands and decides, “nah, I’m just gonna leave things this way for now”. AND HAWK MOTH LETS THEM! Among all the signs of inefficiency and foolishness in the supervillain we are supposed to see as a threat, this situation and the fact that it has happened more than once would be the big one.

But there’s one other aspect here that should be of particular note…

Throughout the series, there are I believe at least four specific instances I’ve found of mind-affecting akumas who get tired of the fighting with the heroes and end up trying to unleash an ultimate move of some sort that will allow them to control everyone in the city.

I repeat: EVERYONE IN THE CITY. All the people who happen to be in Paris at the time of the attack. EVERYONE.

Including the super villain who happens to have his evil lair underneath his house located IN SAID CITY!

Simon Says/Jackady proves that Gabriel isn’t immune to the effects of his own akumas. So if ANY of those mind-affecting akumas manage to follow through with their city-wide attack, that means by all logic that Hawk Moth will get hit as well. So in those four instances, what would have happened had Ladybug and Chat Noir NOT stopped them?

Oblivio? We’d have an amnesiac Gabriel Agreste waking up in a creepy lair with no idea why he’s there or how to get out.

Darkblade? We’d have a random knight where Hawk Moth used to be.

Malediktator? Well, nobody will be taking Kitty Noir from Chloe and her family at any rate.

Princess Fragrance? Singing Hawk Moth. And that is something nobody needs to see.

But sure, let’s pretend that Hawk Moth would be immune to the mind-altering effects of his own akumas if they did manage to control the entire city. Let’s pretend that. If that’s the case, why not have them IMMEDIATELY use this big power from the start to hit everybody in the city and thus get Ladybug and Chat Noir under their power before they realize there’s even an akuma?

All in all, this is another example of Hawk Moth’s poor planning and tendency to leave himself wide open.

Unwinnable By Design:

But I think the biggest offenders are the ones whose powers make it downright impossible to complete their goal altogether. Usually it's because the powers they were given would immediately make the Miraculous permanently lost if they actually managed to hit the heroes. And even if they CAN undo the power, they would be stuck in either a stalemate or a catch 22.

Basically, their own power makes the battle unwinnable.

Examples:

Timebreaker zaps people out of reality just by touching them. But she has to touch them to get the Miraculous. How was she supposed to get their jewelry? Sure, Hawk Moth instructed her to get Chat’s ring before he faded away, but…how? He was already fading in seconds and Ladybug was already shown going through him. Her mission was impossible from the start.

Reflekta makes people into copies of herself. This should technically put her into the Powers Too Small category, except that it also makes her goal unachievable. Hawk Moth even calls her out on it when she transforms Chat because now she can’t get the Miraculous since it…y’know…doesn’t exist anymore. It’s suggested that she might be able to transform someone back given how she blackmailed Mayor Andre into helping her, but we have no way of knowing if that’s true or if it was something she lied about to get his help.

Similarly, Glaciator turns anything he hits into ice cream. The Miraculous are as good as melted.

Gamer 1 has the same issue. To be fair, maybe he can somehow restore the Miraculous once he hits the heroes, but his power is operating the giant robot out of the game and controlling it just like one can in the game. He can zap people to get points to become stronger, but there was no indication he can restore things that were zapped.

Pixelator and Collector would be caught in a catch 22. Even if they did manage to zap the heroes into their photos or book, there is no way that they could specifically remove the Miraculous without also freeing said heroes.

Conclusion:

All in all, given how OP the Butterfly is and Hawk Moth is while using it, there is little reason why he shouldn’t have won already, especially given the completely disproportionate power set on the side of the heroes as well as the lack of growth and power increase they are allowed to have.

Hawk Moth had all the tools necessary to win. The board is in his favor. The heroes are severely handicapped. No one is even bothering to try and actively search for him or track down where his akumas are coming from. The fact that he makes ANY progress (as implied by the confusing spoiler pre-reveal of Hawk Moth discovering Fu is the Guardian in Ikari Gozen), seems less a matter of him actually trying to save his wife and more sheer luck of things falling into his lap.

As it stands, there is a question as to whether Hawk Moth is taking his quest for the Miraculous seriously instead of simply going for a record of most villain cliches that can be fit into one series.

#ml salt #ml analysis #gabriel is an idiot #hawkmoth is an idiot #akuma salt

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