I put myself through the shooting again to see what I missed and here's what I came out with (IT'S A LOT):
Jesus Christ the way Eddie looks at Buck immediately
That shot of them just staring at each other before Eddie falls
The way Buck just stands there, completely frozen, doesn't even try to protect himself
HE ABSOLUTELY DOES REACH FOR HIM. HE REACHES FOR BUCK BEFORE HE PASSES OUT
Buck crawling to him and saying "Stay down, I'm gonna come, I got you."
"Hey just...just stay with me, okay?"
Eddie's first and only question is "are you hurt?" to Buck...brothers I am in shambles
Buck like actively cupping Eddie's face and saying "I need you to hang on."
The way Buck almost like collapses when a firefighter bumps into him...
Also INSANE that his first thought on seeing Taylor is "no comment" YIKES!!!
God Oliver Stark...I am in awe of you always
You can tell Buck is trying SO HARD to keep it together for Chris. Like he doesn't want to make things harder on him but it's like everything hits him all at once and he just can't keep it in because telling Chris makes it real. And makes him think that he should have been the one that got shot
"He's a fighter" while wiping away his tears...oh my love
Him breaking down is a relief cry, he drops his phone and just collapses in on himself out of relief
"It's gonna be okay, Buck." I just...love Chris and Buck so much. I love them so so much.
All the tubes sticking out of Eddie I'm sick to my stomach
And Buck takes such effortlessly good care of Christopher, of course Eddie would make him his guardian
"Buck snores...loud." Chris my king
"I'm fine. I'm not the one who got shot." Well it's clear you wish you were babe and that freaks me out!!
It's so interesting the way the rest of the crew doesn't even seem to...clock that Buck isn't just being reckless. Like he's actively trying to die. Daring the sniper to take him out
The fact that Taylor just leaves, playing into every insecurity he has but he doesn't even TRY to fight her leaving when he sees Ana calling...I have nothing to say to this it writes itself
"He doing okay?" "Better than me." BYE!!!
When Buck says it would have been better if he had gotten shot you can tell Eddie is like...stunned at what he said, but he IS recovering from a, oh that's right, major gunshot wound, so it's not like he can say anything about it.
Okay sorry the comparison between Buck telling Eddie "I'm here. I got you." and Athena telling Bobby THE SAME THING after he got shot???????
"Because Evan." I think it's the only time I've heard Eddie use his given name. It means something when he does. In this case "you aren't disposable you bonehead. Not to Chris. Not to me."
Genuinely insane experience. 10/10 would recommend
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I’ll probably edit this one*
Just some Everlark fluff
enjoy💝
It’s been almost a month since Peeta came back to 12. We spent that time with each other, it was healing but hard at the same time.
I try to understand my feelings for Peeta. I know I love him, but I don’t know if I’m ready to be in a relationship. How could I think about that when so many people died? I’m ashamed for the way I feel when I see Peeta in his garden, his blonde curls covering his forehead and a little part of his temples. I’m ashamed of how much I love the way his blue eyes flicker whenever I compliment his cheese buns… And now, he’s lying next to me, mouth open, his face squashed against the pillow.
Without even realizing, I put my hand in his hair and play with it. Peeta murmurs something without opening his eyes, so I let myself study the boy with the bread a little longer.
“Katniss, I can feel you staring”, he says, smiling.
“No, I’m not”, I reply, suddenly greeted by the blue eyes I know so well. Peeta raises an eyebrow and I groan:
“So what if I was staring?”
“Nothing, it’s nice. I like when you stare at me.”
His hand wraps around my waist, bringing me closer to the warmth of his body. I could stay like this all day, Peeta’s chin on the top of my head, my fingers tracing circles on his clavicle…
“Hey, who’s Naomi”, I ask.
A few days ago, a blonde girl came to Peeta’s house. She was tall, slim and had the aspect of a healthy person- her cheeks rosy red, her skin a little pale. I can’t say I was jealous when I saw her talking to Peeta, or when Peeta opened the door, smiling at the sight of her, or when she went into his house and spent almost 2 hours there… fine, maybe I was a little jealous, but I’d never admit it to him.
“How do you know…”
“I heard you talking to her last week. I had my window open and yeah… Not like I was spying on you!” I wasn’t completely lying. Naomi’s high pitched voice was what drew my attention.
“Oh, she’s Rye’s wife… was”, Peeta replies, a sad smile on his face, “I try to be nice to her since, you know, she has no one but her baby and her brother in law.”
I feel stupid for asking. How could I believe Peeta would be seeing anyone else? After all we’ve been through, he wouldn’t leave me…would he? We’re not officially together, so he could be seeing someone else and I’d have no right to judge him. The thought of not sleeping next to him and another person feeling the warmth of his strong arms drives me insane.
“Why? Are you jealous?”
I look up to see the blonde boy smirk. It’s better than seeing him sad, but I still roll my eyes:
“Yeah, right”, I blush and try to bury my face in his neck so he won’t notice, but his fingers bring my chin up so that I’m looking into his eyes again.
“Oh, my God, you are! You’re blushing”, he laughs.
I sit up straight and hit him playfully:
“No, I’m not!”
Peeta raises an eyebrow and I can’t help a little smile:
“Shut up.”
“Come here”, he says amused, now sitting up and pulling me into his lap, “It’s adorable when you’re jealous.”
Our faces are so close… too close. I can’t give in, I can’t do this to Peeta, I don’t deserve his love. He saved me so many times and all I did was hurt him.
“No one else ever called me adorable, Peeta”, I barely whisper, closing my eyes, so that I can’t be tempted by him. God knows I can’t keep myself together when he looks at me with those puppy eyes.
“No one else really matters”, he says, his warm breath lingering over my lips, making me lick them without realizing.
“Peeta…”
And it happens. I can’t control myself, my hands around his neck, I bring him even closer to me. It’s the hunger I’ve felt before, the hunger that makes me behave like a selfish animal. And I am selfish for bringing him into this, for not letting him get the life he deserves with a normal girl, not a fucked up 19 year old that’s been through the Games twice and started a revolution… but God, did I miss him on my lips.
“Katniss”, he pulls away, gasping for air. I take the opportunity to look at him again, like I did this morning: his curls are even messier than usual. This satisfies me because it was my hand who did that. His cheeks are flushed, his lips swollen, his chest going up and down, trying to get more air. I can’t help but imagine Peeta with nothing on, lying in my bed in the morning. My cheeks must be burning like crazy and I mentally scold myself for thinking about it.
“Did you hear me”, Peeta asks amused, bringing me back to the present moment.
“What?”
“Kiss me again?”
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Once again it's Regal appreciation hour by which I mean day by which I mean year by which I mean lifetime.
I was very much prepared to not write any fanfiction this year, but I cannot divorce myself from how awesome my favorite Symphonia blorbos are and so I am writing yet another stupid fanfic. I feel feral about these characters in general but Raine gets quite a lot of attention (because she's wonderful, obviously) so I don't want to focus on her too much. Regal, on the other hand, has been underappreciated in the ToS fandom since the game's release day, so I must advocate for him.
I've been RPing as him for the last year or so, and together my RP partner and I have written about 320,000 words of a story. I'm having a blast, and a big part of that is because Regal is, despite the flaws in the storytelling of ToS as a whole surrounding him (and how all of the Tethe'alla characters kind of fall flat), a rather well-conceived and implemented character. Yeah, his clothes are dumb (I'm happy to retcon that outfit with zero regrets) and the game blows through his story at such a breakneck pace he doesn't get the space or the arc he deserves (he should have taken his shackles off as part of his 'sacrifice' to fight the angels), but he is a genuinely fascinating character who feels, just like many of the others do, as if he belongs very specifically in the world he was created for.
I know a lot of people like to write him as this sad sack of shit just absolutely lost in the grief sauce (see the part about how he didn't get the arc he deserved), but I think that's a mistake. See, the biggest bump in the road for Regal was his lack of understanding of what was happening and why. When you think about it, he was faced with having to kill Alicia seemingly out of nowhere. Like one day he's just minding his business and the next Alicia is gone and very quickly after that she's a monster trying to kill him AND HE HAS NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. He has no answers. All he knows is that he killed her, and his autistic* brain latches onto that detail because it's all he has.
You have to think, too, about the fact that the game gives him nobody. His parents are dead. George, the only person even remotely close to Regal--someone he's known his *whole life*--betrayed him. (George didn't mean for things to go Like That and he's sorry he did it, but HE STILL DID IT.) Regal doesn't have friends and the extra material makes it clear that he was literally raised, specifically by his father, to be a workaholic. Do you think anyone came to see him in prison? He fought in a coliseum for his life for YEARS. He was on friendly terms with some of the other inmates but the guy had eight years to just sit there and get stuck in the loop of knowing he killed the one person he'd let himself get even remotely close to.
Which is something else people always downplay for some reason. The shit with Alicia isn't just "guy is sad because he killed his girlfriend." It's very much, "guy was born and bred to take on the family legacy" except in this case the family legacy is a company, an island, a noble bloodline, and also the absolutely insane idea that work and profit is all that matters. Everyone else is out to get you. Keep the workers dissatisfied but keep them hooked just enough that they'll never leave. Take no time for fun or friends or merriment. Everything in your life is a business transaction. Don't ever forget it. It's us vs. them. You're alone and you have to make this your entire life or it'll all fall to pieces and it will be your fault.
The drama cd in particular really honed in on that way of being raised and it makes his entire character make complete sense. At a relatively young age his father died and he ended up on top (though it's stated he had to work as a CEO before he was elected via a board to the position of President). Having no other guidelines other than what he was taught--and what George himself adhered to--Regal followed that path...until he ended up miserable, because, despite the way he was raised, he's a goddamn empath**.
After literal YEARS of occasionally running into Alicia and talking to her, he starts forming a connection to her--which is important because he's never allowed himself to do this before. And at one point he realizes he doesn't even know her name...which comes as a surprise to him...and brings with it shame. After this, he starts living for himself. He listens to his employees--something his father never did. He starts enacting rules to protect his employees, particularly from things that would hurt them in the field, because part of what was making him so miserable was wrestling with the empathy of their terrible working conditions on top of just hearing his father's manta repeating itself in his head all the time.
I cannot stress enough how important this is. Alicia, despite being a love interest and someone he was interested in seriously dating and perhaps someday marrying (the details of their relationship are never known but it's almost more tragic if they were just starting to be serious), WAS STILL HIS EMPLOYEE.
He was supposed to protect his employees. He was doing so much to ensure his employees would be safe. And then he killed Alicia.
Alicia, the one person he allowed himself to get close to.
Now, consider the fact that he was raised as a tool and not a beloved son; he was not allowed to have friends and not allowed to make merry. He was under his father's thumb until his father's untimely death--a death, by the way, that only surprised him with its suddenness; he did not grieve that man!! Regal, as a 25-year-old man, had ZERO coping mechanisms. All he had was the truth he was raised under and the fact that he went against that truth AND WAS NOW BEING PUNISHED FOR IT. How can someone like this think of anything except that they are the reason George was put in a position where he had to get rid of Alicia? That the only reason Alicia was experimented on and turned into a monster was because of her connection to Regal?
IT MAKES ME FEEL SO FERAL!!!
The events of the game open his eyes to the ACTUAL truth, to what actually happened AND WHY IT HAPPENED TO ALICIA. In the end he learns he had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. If he had not befriended and started falling for Alicia, she still would have died--it's just, if she hadn't had a more direct connection to Regal, who knows where she might have met her end. Alone, forgotten? At least someone knew her as she was; at least someone can tell Presea the kind of person her sister was.
The ToS fandom has always loved joking about how Regal's just into punishment as a kink or whatever (and I'll never forgive the shitty non-canon-in-my-heart sequel for leaning so hard into that angle, fuck you fuck you fuck you) but let's be serious about it for a hot second. Yes, I think learning this information puts him on a better path, but you can't erase 8 years of self-loathing and fear instantly. Did you guys really think this man would just forget about the darkest years of his life and start frolicking in fields of flowers?
The trauma he's endured goes so much deeper than "I killed the person I loved," and boiling it down to that really does the character a disservice. The "born for a specific purpose, not allowed to exist outside of that purpose" bit is also given to Colette and Zelos, but while their role is being a sacrifice whose only use is dying or procreating to continue the line to have more sacrifices (absolutely also traumatizing btw), Regal's situation feels a lot more like indoctrinated religion and, very specifically (and no I am not kidding), religious trauma. Again, he endured that very controlled lifestyle complete with a mantra from birth into his early 20s, and the MOMENT he broke away from it too far, his life came crashing down around him in a very painful and traumatizing way.
Now, you might think the religious trauma parallel is unfounded, if not also the indoctrinated religion aspect of it, it could just as easily be a parallel for an abusive and controlling relationship, right down to the betrayal from someone who is supposed to have your best interests at heart the moment you step outside of that control to the feelings of shame and self-loathing and "you did this to yourself."
So whenever I see people joking about what a sad sack of shit he is or whatever, I'm just astounded, especially if it's coming from someone who loves literally any other character in the game. Like, you'll definitely have your blorbos, and I totally understand if Regal just ain't it for you, but I find it really disconcerting that someone might find (for example) Yuan's trauma deeply meaningful but see Regal's as stupid or silly.
I'm pretty sure I started this post to talk about how easy it is for me to RP as Regal because he's just such a great character to sink into and write about, particularly because I like to imagine that, starting in the post-game, he deeply regrets some of the choices he's made in his life, and, rather than lean into the things that have already transpired, he seeks to do what he can to better the world around him with the resources and power that he has.
It's like the ultimate fuck-you to the way his father raised him. He's not wasting the skills he's developed, but he's also not using them to hurt people or for personal or Lezareno profit.
I think most of us love writing about characters who have to work through their trauma, but there's an extra layer here that I particularly enjoy with Regal. With Raine I'm all about her inability to trust easily and her struggle to feel truly comfortable around other people, but with Regal I think it's maybe specifically related to the fact that he has had a lot handed to him that he didn't necessarily want, and his self-sacrificing nature lends itself to him feeling obligated to take it. I fully believe Regal would be happier and better off stepping away from Lezareno and from his family's toxic ass legacy*** (or at least not working it full-time as the acting President) but I can't ignore the fact that...these things are all he has and all he knows. So writing about him attempting to get back into the swing of things, maybe struggling to find time for himself, falling into workaholic patterns by mistake, learning to set boundaries between his private life and his job...all while not being fully satisfied and finding more fulfillment in charity work and other pursuits, just makes him feel like a very well-rounded character. Like...it's believable that he would continue to work a job he didn't particularly love specifically because not only does he not know anything else, but he knows with this position of power he can make a lot of things happen that would be impossible if he just twiddled his thumbs on the sidelines--like financial assistance going to Palmacosta, or his duties as a nobleman to try to get better laws passed in Tethe'alla, etc.
This was a pretty clumsily-written post and for that I am truly sorry. I've just been absolutely insane lately thinking about Regal and I had to get some of why I think he's such a wonderful character out into the world.
:)
*this is just my headcanon but a lot about Regal screams autism to me.
**this is canon as far as I'm concerned. I wrote him this way far before I ever heard the drama cd, and the drama cd just solidified it for me tenfold.
***there's a scene in the hotel with Lloyd I think where Regal says his family's legacy on Altamira started when Tethe'alla flipped over to being a flourishing world last, which means they were in a position of power great enough to build an empire on Altamira already at that time (800+ years ago). I don't want to get into how awful this probably was or how evil the family was because I think you can all imagine that for yourselves. Also, nobody ever mentions the fact that Regal is the last of his family line, but it's a very convenient built-in control tactic to guilt someone into doing as they're told or risk bringing shame to a family that's been going strong and unbroken for over 1,000 years.
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