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axelsagewrites · 6 months

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Hello, dear reader. I'd like to make a wish for Rhaenyra's little sister, maybe a year or two. And she never liked Alicent, who after marrying the king tries (along with Otto) to demote her to bastard status (but Viserys loves his little girl too much to do this to her). Of course, things get even worse when Rhaenyra's sister gets engaged to Harwin...

Thank you for your attention, I like your stories 🫶🏻. Another thing, can I stop by more often? I wish I had more of my ideas adorned with your writing

Harwin Strong*Suitable Match

Pairing: Harwin x f!reader

Word count: 1320

Warnings: Step parent hating step child, secret relationship, kind of implied smut

a/n: ahh thank u sm for being so sweet and ofc request as much or talk however much u want. sorry i didnt reply sooner i just didnt want to lose the request x

Masterlist Here

A life of a princess was something to envy. Well so many had claimed however after the death of your mother life felt like an ever falling spiral. Your sister began to grow closer to Alicent after the death and while you were happy for her to have a friend Alicent had always been unkind to you.

It had started small with her asking Rhaenyra not to let you join in their games to her unpicking your needle work whenever you would wander off to stretch your legs. Soon you gave up on even trying to be nice to her. anytime she was invited to dinner was met with loud sighs from you.

“Why does she hate me?” you pouted one night as Rhaenyra upbraided your hair.

Your sister rolled her eyes as she began to brush your hair out, “She doesn’t hate you. she’s just not used to a little sister,”

“She’s mean,”

“Cmon she isn’t that bad?”

You didn’t want to say I told you so when Alicent was betrothed to your father but the look on your face said it for you. at least Rhaenyra was able to marry and move away. you were instead stuck living at court with your evil stepmother and her spawn. Well, the children were kind to you, but Alicent constantly used them to get under your skin.

She’d send toddler Aegon running over with pretend crown shouting that he was going to be king. Or she would have a 2-year-old Aemond claim he was your husband. She tried to make Helena spill wine on your dress one time, but the poor girl burst into tears and confessed to you instantly.

Instead Alicent settled on insisting that your chambers were given to Aegon. Something you managed to convince your father against from at first but soon you were moved to a wing of the castle usually just for guests. You would’ve complained about longer if you hadn’t realised your new chambers window overlooked the kings guard training ground.

From your window you’d pretend to be doing needle work while secretly watching break bones fling any man that challenged him like a rag doll. Eventually Harwin caught onto your staring and would send his own glimpses up between sparring. It was also handy that your chamber was only a short walk from the guards’ sleeping quarters and Harwin soon became a frequent private guest of yours.

“Ser Barros is coming to court next week,” your father told you over a family dinner, “and I heard his son is looking for a wife,” he said, shooting you a hopeful glance.

“I heard he’s a fine man father,” you said kindly knowing full well it didn’t matter. Somehow every match they tried to make for you was sabotaged. The tall dark Baratheon boy was ever so keen for weeks for your hand then one day disappeared like a ghost. The gorgeous Lannister man that would bring you fine jewels suddenly decided a dornish match was of more importance. Even the Tarly boy you had courted had inexplicitly decided to join the nights watch. Every time Alicent wore the same twisted smile.

The only ones she didn’t send running were the incredibly old and decrepit looking men from minor houses, but it wasn’t hard to convince your father they weren’t suitable matches. “Perhaps we should set up a luncheon to great the boy,” Alicent suggested making your father smile widely. She really had twisted him around her finger.

“I wish I could stay here all day,” you pouted as you lay your head on Harwin’s bare chest.

His chuckle vibrated through you as his arm wrapped tight around your waist, “Me too princess but I have my duties and you have yours,”

“I thought your duty was to serve me,” you sighed dramatically, pretending to try get away.

Harwin laughed, his arms moving to cage you against the bed as he moved to lay over you, “I think I serve you just fine princess,” he said, his lips moving to kiss along your jaw.

“Oh yeah?” you asked and Harwin hummed in response as his kisses grew lower.

As expected Borros’s son went running after only a week and now you were in another awkward family dinner however unluckily for you the children all had the cold so now you were sat in stoney silence with just your father and Alicent. “You should really think about your future dear,” she said with a fake sweet smile, “We worry for you,”

Instead of replying you grabbed your wine, drinking a hefty sip of it. Viserys sighed, “Alicent is right dear. You must marry. At this point we’re going to have to start considering marrying you to a tree!” he said, flinging himself back in his chair. “Honestly what even happened between you and the boy?”

The days that followed were awkward to say the least. Alicent walked around smug as all hell and your father continued to sulk. You decided enough was enough and when Alicent went out to the sept you decided to track your father down. Unsurprisingly you found him staring over a model of the city.

“Father?” you greeted, walking closer to the tired looking man, “May we talk?”

“Of course, sweet child,” he said, nodding for you to sit beside him before sighing, “You know I worry for you?”

“I do father, and I do appreciate it,” you lied but did your best to look sympathetic to your clueless father, “but I was thinking. Well. I found another match you see father,” you spoke, and his head perked up as he waited for you to finally spit it out, “He’s sweet and kind and his family is well respected. You even like his father, and I was just thinking- “

“Out with-it child,”

You took a breath before finally asking, “Have you considered Harwin Strong yet father?” Viserys sighed, his eyes turning away but you continued, “Think about it! I’d be able to be at court and help Helena with her studies. Plus, you have four more children so four more matches. You already have the Velaryon which secures the crownlands. Harwin and I would secure the Riverlands. Then after you betrothed Helena, Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron you will have six of the seven kingdoms on your side. Your reach will go far especially if our children do the same,”

“You want to dilute the blood of old Valyria?” he asked, sounding exhausted as he spoke.

“No father, only strengthen it,” you said, moving to hold his hand, “Besides there is no other Targaryen or Velaryon to wed unless uncle daemon is brought back from exile- “you said but your father raised his hand to hush you.

He paused for a moment before nodding, “I will think about it. but for now, leave me. I have a lot to consider,”

“Thank you, father,”

Apparently Alicent must have missed this chamber meeting because somehow the news came back finally in your favour. Harwin would be your husband. You were so happy when your father told you that you instantly hugged him before rushing to find Harwin however that night at dinner Alicent shot you many dirty looks.

Finally, you had undermined her. you’d won. Well, that’s how it felt at first, but her glares began to sink into your skin till it itched. As the dinner ended, she tapped her cup with her fork, “A toast to my dear sweet daughter,” she smiled at you making your father beam, “May she have a marriage like ours,” she said, holding his hand tightly but you felt your stomach flutter.

“Here, here,” your father said, standing to kiss your cheek.

Alicent did the same, her arms twisting round your back into a bony hug, “Do not forget yourself darling,” she whispered sweetly in your ear, “You don’t win that easily,”

Taglist: @clairacassidy @valeskafics @starkleila @jacesvelaryons

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mariacallous · 1 month

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Salman Rushdie has just published Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. In August 2022, he was giving a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, rushed the stage and stabbed him 15 times. It was astonishing that Salman survived. He lost the sight in one eye and sustained terrible injuries, but he’s still with us and he’s still writing, and unlike Hadi Matar, he’s still worth hearing.

We think of fanatics as stalkers with an obsessive knowledge of their targets. Like the antisemites who compile lists of Jews in the media or the homophobes who so focus on the details of gay sex they might almost be closet cases

Most terrorists and bigots are not like that. They are like soldiers in an army who kill and hate for no other reason than tradition or men in authority have told them to kill and hate. If we were less fascinated by the pseudo-glamour of violence, we would see them for what they are: dullards and jerks.

In Knife Salman is almost as angered by the sheer lazy stupidity of his wannabee assassin as his violence.

“I do not want to use his name in this account. My Assailant, my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation … I have found myself thinking of him, perhaps forgivably, as an Ass.”

The ass “didn’t bother to inform himself about the man he decided to kill. By his own admission he read barely two pages of my writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos”.

That was enough, apparently, along with a little light indoctrination in the Levant.

We know from Matar’s mother that her son changed from a popular young man to a moody religious zealot after visiting her ex-husband in the Hezbollah-controlled town of Yaroun in Lebanon, a mile or so from the Israeli border.

“I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead, he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot. He didn't say anything to me or his sisters for months.”

Salman quotes a wonderfully perceptive line from Jodi Picoult

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

Rushdie is openly contemptuous, as he has every right to be.

“I see you now at twenty-four,” he writes, “already disappointed by life, disappointed in your mother, your sisters, your father, your lack of boxing talent, your lack of any talent at all; disappointed in the bleak future you saw stretching ahead of you, for which you refused to blame yourself.”

This has always been the way. Readers old enough to remember 1989 when the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Salman’s execution for writing a blasphemous satire of Islam’s origin story in the Satanic Verses,will know that Khomeini had not read it. Nor had the furious demonstrators in the streets or the regressive leftists and Tory ministers who upbraided him for the non-crime of causing offence.

Those of us who had read the book pointed out that it was a magical realist fiction which contained sympathetic accounts of the racism Muslim immigrants in the UK suffered. Indeed, the Tories of the day loathed Salman, we continued, because of his confrontations with official racism.

But after a while we fell silent. Pleading with his enemies felt demeaning. It gave them undeserved credit, as if they were reasonable people, who could be swayed by evidence rather than just, well, pillocks.

In Knife Salman attempts an imaginary conversation with his persecutor.

OK, he says, Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, holds that man is not made in God’s image. God has no human qualities, it says.

But isn’t language a human quality? To have language, God would have to have a mouth, a tongue, vocal cords and a voice, just like a man. The terrorist’s understanding is that God cannot be like a man, however. So, God could not have spoken to Gabriel in Arabic. Gabriel must have translated his message when he came to the prophet.

The angel made it comprehensible to Muhammed by delivering it in human speech which is not the speech of God.

Thus, the version of Islamic instruction Matar received in his basement when he switched from playing video games to listening to Imams was an interpretation of a translation.

“I’m trying to suggest to you that, even according to your own tradition, there is uncertainty. Some of your own early philosophers have suggested this. They say everything can be interpreted, even the Book. It can be interpreted according to the times in which the interpreter lives. Literalism is a mistake.”

For a while, Rushdie says he wants to meet Matar again at the trial, as if he wants to have the argument in the flesh.

He tells a story about Samuel Beckett, which could only have happened to Samuel Beckett.

Beckett was walking through Paris in 1938 when he was confronted by a pimp named Prudent, who wanted money from him. Beckett pushed Prudent away, whereupon the pimp pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest, narrowly missing the left lung and the heart.

Beckett was taken to the nearest hospital, bleeding heavily. He only just survived.

You will never guess who paid for his treatment. James Joyce, of course, he did.

Anyway, Beckett went to the pimp’s trial. He met Prudent in the courtroom, and asked him why he had done it. This was the pimp’s reply: “Je ne sais pas, monsieur. Je m’excuse.” (I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.)

But the more he thought about it, the less Rushdie had to say to his enemy. The idea that you can have theological arguments with a man who wants to kill you for writing a book he hasn’t even read felt ridiculous.

Although popular culture is full of stories about murderers, and true crime podcasts top the charts, killers and fanatics are nearly always less interesting than their victims. More often than not they are just thick. Nasty and vicious, but thick first of all.

We are about to see the stupidity of fanatics deployed on a mass scale. Two thirds of Republican voters (and nearly 3 in 10 Americans) continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that Joe Biden was not lawfully elected. They think it because that is what Trump told them to think.

Islamists told Matar that Salman was an apostate, and that was all he needed to know. Trump told Republicans the election was stolen and ditto.

If Republicans were consistent people, they would not vote for Trump in 2024. What would be the point? They would have every reason to fear that the deep state would rig the 2024 presidential election as it rigged the 2020 presidential election.

But they will vote for him because, once again, that is what he tells them to do.

In the end there is a limit to how much attention you can pay the vicious and the stupid.

They are not interesting enough, as Rushdie concluded with marvellous disdain as he contemplated the life sentence Matar will face.

"Here we stand: the man who failed to kill an unarmed seventy-five-year-old writer, and the now 76-year-old writer. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I have very little to say to you. Our lives touched each other for an instant and then separated. Mine has improved since that day, while yours has deteriorated. You made a bad gamble and lost. I was the one with the luck… Perhaps, in the incarcerated decades that stretch out before you, you will learn introspection, and come to understand that you did something wrong. But you know what? I don’t care. This, I think, is what I have come to this courtroom to say to you. I don’t care about you, or the ideology that you claim to represent, and which you represent so poorly. I have my life, and my work, and there are people who love me. I care about those things.”

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 8 months

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History Repeating Itself 💔

Joe Biden’s Role in the Yom Kippur War

Joe Biden had his first meeting with an Israeli leader, Golda Meir, on the eve of the Yom Kippur war, right after meeting with officials in Cairo. During the then junior senator’s meeting with Meir, Biden suggested that Israel make a unilateral withdrawal from settlements for peace, criticizing the settlement policies of the Labor Party, and suggesting they represent a form of “creeping annexation.” Though Biden assured Meir that Egyptian officials were convinced of Israel’s military superiority, 40 days later, Sadat initiated a surprise attack against Israel.

This is the gist of a bombshell tweet from Israel’s Channel 13 reporter Nadav Eyal containing excerpts from a classified memo from an Israeli official who attended that fateful meeting. While it may have been the first meeting between Biden and an Israeli prime minister, it was certainly not the last. In subsequent meetings with Israeli prime ministers, Biden threatened Menachem Begin with withholding U.S. aid, and publicly upbraided Benyamin Netanyahu because it had been announced in a town council meeting that 1600 homes were to be built in future in the Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo (more about this here).

Joe Biden paints that early meeting with Golda as something precious that cemented in his mind how important Israel is to the Jewish people. It is clear, however, that Joe Biden has always been against the Jewish people settling their indigenous territory. The very thought of Jews planning to build homes in Jerusalem makes him furious. Therefore, contrary to the love fest with Golda he has often described, Biden used the first chance he had to meet with an Israeli prime minister to broach the subject of unilateral concessions.

One wonders how much clout the young senator wielded at that time. Not to mention the timing of subsequent events, with the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt occurring just 40 days after Biden’s meeting with Meir. Is it possible that Golda Meir incurred wider U.S. displeasure by refusing to entertain Biden’s suggestion of unilateral concessions? Was Egypt perhaps emboldened by this state of affairs to attack Israel without fear of American intervention?

During its years in office, Israel fought the 1956 Sinai War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Labor agreed to UN Resolution 242 and the notion of trading land for peace. Nevertheless, successive Labor governments established settlements in the disputed territories and refrained from dismantling illegal settlements, such as those established in 1968 at Qiryat Arba in Hebron by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, and others set up by Gush Emunim. By 1976, more than thirty settlements had been established on the West Bank; however, their population was fewer than 10,000.

"TODAY’S BLOG:

Joe Biden’s Role in the Yom Kippur War

In January 1973, Joe Biden was sworn in as Senator from Delaware.

September of that year found him in the Middle East on a trip to Egypt. Shortly thereafter, Biden was in Israel in a meeting with Israeli PM Golda Meir.

In that meeting, Biden convinced Meir that Egypt would not attack Israel by convincing her that Egypt thought that Israel had absolute military superiority.

The meeting was documented on October 2, 1973 in a secret letter (below) written by Israel Foreign Ministry official Gideon Jordan. Four days later Egypt attacked Israel.

Foreign Ministry official Gideon Jordan summed up Biden’s words as follows: “Of all the personalities (in Egypt) he (Biden) met, he heard that there was not one of them who disbelieved in Israel’s perfect military superiority and therefore stated that it is not possible for Egypt to go to war against Israel now. According to the people he spoke to Egyptians, time will take its course and when God wills, he will find the solution.”

What this letter calls into question is Joe Biden’s extreme misreading of Arab “personalities” and their intentions. His misreading–and that of Israeli intelligence–had disastrous consequences in the Yom Kippur War. One cannot help but think of similar Biden misreadings when it comes to Iran, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

Gideon Jordan later notes in the secret document that Biden was interested in more than Egypt: “The senator repeatedly said that Israel should do a unilateral act, that is to withdraw from some territories, of course not from those territories of strategic importance such as the Golan Heights, Sharm el-Sheikh and the Gaza Strip–but to withdraw without even any negotiations or an agreement with the Arabs.”

Jordan remarks that Meir immediately disagreed with Biden about unilateral withdrawals without achieving true peace. Again, one cannot help but think about the disastrous Biden unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the unilateral concessions that the U.S. has demanded from Israel in the current Lebanon “agreement” talks.

The secret letter is below for those of you who read Hebrew:

When Biden met Meir: Joe Biden advised Jewish PM to trade land for peace - The Jerusalem Post

Biden meeting between Joe Biden and former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, described in a memo published by Israeli reporter Nadav Eyal, sheds light on the former Vice President's thought process at that time, and what he believed Israel should do shortly before the Yom Kippur war broke out. The meeting took place following his return from Egypt where he discussed with Saadat several things, roughly 40 days before the surprise attack that would turn into the Yom Kippur war.

https://www.jpost.com/us-elections/when-biden-met-meir-joe-biden-advised-jewish-pm-to-trade-land-for-peace-646732

#Joe Biden #israel #elections have consequences #heartbreaking 💔

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janearts · 7 months

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what would be Roisia's reaction if Astarion had accidentally killed her and had to get Withers to help her get up the next morning?

This is such a good question!

Roisia would have been angry at Astarion, of course, both for the act and for demonstrating a pitiable amount of remorse. But her anger toward Astarion would be pretty shallow because Roisia would be able to hear with utmost clarity the irate tone of her mother, a retired Necrobane, upbraiding her for being so unthinking as to let a starved vampire spawn anywhere near her. It is in a wolf's nature to bite, so how can she rage against a wolf when it bites? What did she expect to happen? What was she thinking?! So the majority of her anger would be directed inward.

Roisia would ultimately mark the experience—Astarion's shoddy apology aside—as a learning opportunity, and a rare one at that. She experienced death! And popped right back. That gives her first-hand insight into her undead father's experience and, in Roisia's mind, an edge in figuring out how to complete the process of restoration. After all, she knows what True Resurrection feels like now, shouldn't she be able to recreate it?

#Baldur's Gate 3 #BG3 #Astarion #Astarion Ancunin #BG3 Roisia #sikri

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reverphic · 2 months

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‹𝟹 even death can tell a lie — blade x gn!reader syn. a wounded blade returns home, and of course like a kindhearted individual you are, you treated his wounds. cw. semi fluff, not proofread, 1.3k words, fem reader ( no prns mentioned ) maybe ooc. a continuation / sequel to the archfiend

the odor of antiseptic wafts thickly through the air, bandages are securely coiled alongside blade, he winces slightly at the sting of the antibacterial ointment poured over the open gash in his arm. a fresh bruise was planted on his forearm, vivid purple swelling proudly.

“i keep telling you to stop stumbling into danger, i’ll be the one responsible afterwards”

blade doesn’t respond, only a miniscule twitch on his brow is perceived. you glanced upwards, descrying your knight’s displeased expression, a tinge of guilt qualms inside your core.

“but those imbeciles are targeting you, how can i let that type of situation slide?” he says.

blade asserts the word imbeciles with every enmity one would have harbored for their worst enemy. you pause abruptly, emitting a sigh. blade is the embodiment of an obsessive lover, for sure, and you do not have the right to substitute that outcome. he is not your lover, naturally, but you are doubtful if blade perceives it that way too.

you knew that blade is head over heels for you, but you have no capability to reciprocate his love, saying that you are impotent in such feelings. he ceased to believe, however, and continues to believe that one day redamancy will eventually present itself.

excluding the pester, you are thankful that he came home safely, although a few scars and a severe wound are intended, at least your soldier is back.

but his abiding adoration with manslaughter — you are the one at fault. if it weren't for him enshrouding his true identity, you would've ended up in the hands of the guards authorities. you have maimed that soldier with vengeance, concocting a blight that costs his unalloyed soul. your madness birthed a demented warrior, that's what you discern at least.

“i will kindly force you once again to stay safe during unwanted combat, understand?”

ironic it was for you to say the word kindly, for it was humiliatingly apparent that you were crossed that blade was injured. it is not a form of romantic love whatsoever, merely a form of that you care regarding his physical condition.

“every combat costs at least a scar, otherwise it doesn’t have the right to be called a combat” he says, crimson eyes pierce through yours.

"and i can't stand seeing someone ignoble touching what's mine"

...there it is, the concept of possessiveness sprouting

you declined to respond, however. blade knew you noticed his words, and you were lucid enough to empathize with his desire to convey them. to him, you are fragile, akin to a subdued rain.

he knew you were only honest when the night was hushed; there is a poem latched onto the walls of your throat, and nights like these, sincerity crawls from your flesh, like a scourge, a miasma. if blade is by your side, you never dither to let the viciousness of your words slither down your lips, because he understands you are mourning, mourning what could have been, what will not be, and what you can’t save, thus far you go on hoping.

today was unusual, your lips quiver as it begs to spill out the words you crave to elicit, yet no words seem to leave.

“i don’t want your pity, blade. i'm not your treasure, yet merely a filthy human seeking for solitude” you upbraided, tethering his arm with another veneer of bandage.

you never wanted to scar blade further, because you were the one who scarred him first.

blade winces, “and why must i change my mind?”

rage is something you've learnt to wear. however, blade's anguish folds your spine and resides behind your ribs. you are taken aback by his presence. you’re here? the question remains as a lump on your throat. and now that you think about it, you've never been kind to blade either.

how did he get so close that you have to dissect him out from under your skin?

recollection is a deathbed. remembering is a grave. the recollection of him is like a scab that you keep scratching till it sears. a burn, a keepsake, or something to grasp at that returns the favor.

you refuse to be plagued by anything less.

how have you turned brittle love into such devastation? so much greed? you insisted you didn’t love him, and you never will, yet a sun-sized ache pulsates deep within the bowels of your palpitating heart. the sight of him injured, drenched in mortal blood, in spite of your lusterless eyes deceiving you to neglect his situation, something shifts your perception to extend your arm to embrace his suffering.

terrible, terrible person assumes that tyranny and love are interchangeable.

your heart knew no name more ferociously than his. a passage that burns under your tongue.

you shift from the bedsheets, a packet of bandages still in hand as your heart is burdened by uncertainty. the malice in your tongue will forever be an obscenity, hence why you never spoke truthfully.

“my work is done here, do you crave anything?” you ask as you feign insouciance.

“[name]”

blade’s baritone voice reverberates across the vacant room, where he is seated on the insalubrious bed, tousled and soiled. something fervent exudes down in that icy tone he has. you shiver in fear, a grasp suddenly latches onto your wrist.

“do you need something?” a response slips past your lips.

blade slides his arm as it rings around your waist, fingers gradually lacing with yours. with hesitance and a hitched breath, you stepped forward only for your stomach to be pressed against his broad chest, earning a gasp.

fingertips run over the temples of your forehead, moderate enough to spare you from pain. a steady tenderness soothes you, irises swelled tenfold. the burden surges.

“you’re pale—discombobulated,” he says, his distinctive icy tone slowly thawing.

“why do you worry so much?” you shift back to steer clear of his proximity.

“...”

blade scowls, a crease forming on his eyebrow. your avoidance of his touch riles him, he just misses you, can he not? even if he lends a helping hand, you avoid him regardless. he avows that he has known you well for decades, but the censures hitherto left unsaid leaves him reconsidering that if he sincerely does.

so he hoists you up onto his lap, the facet of his thumb dight your cheek. reluctantly, his face inches closer to you, foreheads swept against each other.

“you have a burden, yet you refuse to tell me”

“i don’t.”

“your face tells otherwise”

“...i'm not that tight-lipped”

“i doubt that, you conceal almost everything”

“must i repeat myself again?”

blade’s scowl deepens, an obvious expression of worry is omnipresent, which you can’t neglect so easily.

“stop looking at me like that with your pity in your eyes” you exhort with crass inflection. “just… tell me what should i do to make you… feel better, instead of you taking care of me”

amusement laces his grandeur, the shimmer in his crimson eyes vacillates; you admit that the countenance he is wearing right now is hilarious.

“well," he begins with a hum, reaching his hand to the contours of your defined jawline. “kiss me, and i’ll be alright.”

he exchanges a reticent smile, his lips chiseled upward in a way that makes both men and women sigh dreamily.

you heaved a sigh in defeat, acceding. merely for the sake of saving yourself from the headache; otherwise, he would keep pestering you until you gave him a response. he may be pushy when he wants to.

your fingers dug in blade’s underjaw, half-lidded eyes stare into the chasmic depths of his visage, slowly slinking closer.

…ah, this feels strange

warmth burgeoned in blade's chest, flames aflame as you drew in closer, lips brushing contact prudently for the first time. the lingering stench of your fragrance; the sweet, fragrant aroma of your hair, left him lightheaded, as butterflies waltzed in his stomach. warmth encapsulated him as he slumped into the kiss, your lips unfathomably soft against his.

being able to breathe isn’t supposed to be that hard, especially if you are deep inside a passionate kiss. you shouldn’t comply with blade’s offer, but the insurmountable worth of devotion beckoning inside a kiss that felt loveless... it was beyond comprehension. being able to breathe isn’t supposed to be that hard, especially if you are deep inside a passionate kiss. you shouldn’t comply with blade’s offer.

yet, you think that sometimes accepting his offer isn't a bad choice either.

#hsr x reader #x reader #honkai star rail #blade hsr #blade x you #blade x reader #fanfic #fanfiction #hn⠀﹐⠀‹𝟹

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spiderlandry · 8 months

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upbraid — ethan landry

Description: Upbraid—To upbraid someone is to speak to them in an angry or critical way in response to something they have done wrong—in other words, to scold them.

Or: You hate that Ethan has been careless while wearing the mask.

Pairing: Spider-Man!Ethan Landry x GN!Reader

Warnings/Tags: descriptions of wounds/bruises, some angst

Word Count: 1.9k

Author’s Note: a little writing exercise for me, i took merriam webster’s september 3rd word of the day (upbraid) and built a plot out of it :] finished it about a month later LMAO

It was after a night out with some friends that you discovered that your best friend since high-school, Ethan, was the same man dressing up in red and blue and patrolling the streets every night. You came home slightly drunk, and the vigilante was passed out on your fire escape, battered and bruised. You hadn’t known it was him yet. It was when you had to stitch him up—while he was unconscious—and you saw a birthmark on his side that you got suspicious. When he took off the mask right in front of you was the confirmation.

You’d been taking care of him since then. He insisted that you didn’t have to, but sometimes you figured that patching him up was more for you than him.

Things didn’t change much after that incident except for that Ethan comes to you every night for his wounds. Outside of that secret shared between you two, there was no change in your relationship whatsoever.

Working regular shifts at a local coffee shop ensured you heard whatever the news stations were saying about Spider-Man that week due to the television always playing, albeit at a low volume. Over the last few months, you learned how yo tune it out in fear that you’ll one day hear that Ethan was dead.

But your coworkers couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Which, at first, you didn’t care, but now that you knew it Ethan, you shut down any words about Spider-Man.

All it took was one day, on your break.

There were no customers, so you lounged in the main sitting area scrolling through your phone.

“Holy shit,” Mindy, the only coworker you considered a friend, grabbed the nearby remote and turned up the TV volume. “Look.”

Seeing as she wasn’t usually the type to care about Spider-Man, your instincts trusted that whatever was on the screen wasn’t about him. But you were so, so wrong.

It happened quickly.

The headline caught your eye first:

LIVE: SPIDER-MAN FIGHTS GREEN GOBLIN

The green goblin. That’s what the media had been calling the bad guy of the week. Well, more like two weeks. Ethan assured you that he had it under control.

It was clear as day that he, in fact, did not have it under control.

Your spine went rigid.

The camera zoomed in on Spider-Man, a large gash on his calf and holding his arm close to his chest, assessing the situation while civilians ran for their lives.

You grabbed the remote from Mindy’s hand, turning off the TV and earning you an irked ‘Hey!’; however you didn’t hear much more than that because you were bolting out the door in the next second.

You waited about an hour in anticipation at your apartment, med kit on the counter, sitting there blankly and watching if your phone got any texts from Ethan. You repeatedly ignored the texts from Mindy or your manager asking where you had gone—none of that was important now—Ethan had to be your priority.

The loud bang on your window finally signalled his arrival, and you hated that you were relieved. The pit in your chest grew deeper every time, and yet every time, it meant he was alive.

The room was eerily quiet.

Ethan winced as you wrapped up his arm. Whenever you patched him up like this, it was always quiet. But this time—this time was different, somehow. It was tense. Something hung in the room and it left a tense note, an unfinished symphony; he was in the dark.

It hit him that it was the look on your face which made him fill with dread.

Your furrowed brows accompanied a seemingly permanent frown on your face, and your eyes were everywhere but his own.

He knew how much he worried you. You said so on the first day he landed on that fire escape, but you always started every visit with an, ‘I’m glad you’re okay,’ or at least some variation of it.

This wasn’t that. At all.

“Can you at least talk to me?” He broke the silence, a glass shattered.

You looked up at him, “No.”

The air left his lungs. “What?” Maybe it was the end. “What—what do you mean?”

“You wanna talk?” You haphazardly shoved things in the med kit, zipping it up and walking away with it to put it back where it belonged.

Ethan only nodded hesitantly.

“I’ll talk.” When you came back to face him, you looked down. “You’re fucking careless.”

He could only part his lips in hopes that words will come. Maybe they will. But nothing did, he didn’t know if he truly could’ve spoken at that moment because you were elaborating what you meant soon enough.

“You just—you come in here and expect me to fix you every single time,” he heard your heart beat faster with every word. “And then you go out there and do it again.”

“I told—“

“No!” his jaw shut tight when you raised your voice. “I’m tired, Ethan. I really am. I see you getting hurt every day—I have to see that, Ethan, because you’re everywhere! Then you come to me and I have to pretend like thinking about you dying doesn’t keep me up at night.”

Ethan’s heart plummeted into the abyss. He wanted nothing more than for the ground to swallow him whole along with it, as the shame and disgust at himself hit him all at once. He had nothing else to say. There were no words for you, because you were right. And that’s what hurt the most.

He had nothing else to say except, “I didn’t know I hurt you like that.”

“Ethan—”

“I told you that you didn’t have to do that for me.”

“If I don’t do it, nobody else will,” you sighed.

“I’m sorry.” Ethan had been so lost in protecting others that he lost sight of protecting you. In turn, he hurt you—used you. “I’ll go.”

He stood up in haste, shuffling past you with his eyes glued to the ground.

“Ethan,” God, even the way you say his name wounded him. So much that he’d already forgotten about his physical state. He winced as he put his mask back on and opened up the window. “Don’t.”

But that was a good sign. Don’t meant you wanted him to stay. Nonetheless, he still had to protect you. Protecting you was his priority.

“I can’t—” he coughed. “This isn’t…good. I’ll go.”

There was a beat of silence when he looked back before leaving.

“You know what?” You added. “You’re right. Just leave.”

And so he left.

Days passed.

You ignored the screens, though it always made its way back to you.

SPIDER-MAN: ABANDONED NEW YORK?

Spider-Man was gone. For three days, at least. Yet the world felt his absence. Your world, however, was at a complete standstill. Waiting with bated breath in anticipation of either hearing about the death of your Ethan or his resurfacing. You hoped it was the latter.

Your mutual friends even sensed your unease, but because of college and finals, it was really only Tara who took note of the blankness in your eyes when someone brought up Ethan.

Thankfully, Spider-Man showed up. The city rejoiced in being protected once again. But you were still missing Ethan in your life. Through Chad, you checked on his state, who always responded that his roommate rarely spoke to him these days. It seemed that Ethan was letting you have your pick of friends, almost as if it were a divorce and you got what he had. Even if the idea of you and Ethan getting ‘divorced’ made you laugh at its absurdity, in some ways it did feel like that.

Weeks passed. It was days before finals. You had dealt somewhat well with Ethan’s absence by losing yourself in your day-to-day life. You studied harder, even picked up extra shifts which made Mindy question your motive. You hated work.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though the all-nighters finally caught up to you.

It was dawn. You hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, and you knew Ethan would be out patrolling at this moment. You banged on the door of his dorm, waking up an angry Chad, but you couldn’t think about that now as you headed straight for Ethan’s room and sat on his bed.

You figured it was too long. Weeks too long. You should have talked to him the day after, but his insistence on leaving your apartment that day made your heart constrict in ways you didn’t think possible. Maybe you hurt him too much with what you said.

The sleep came easily.

A light touch of your arm woke you up.

Upon rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, you were faced with Ethan. Your Ethan. His mask was off.

The instinct to stand up to wrap your arms around him was as easy as the sleep that came to you hours before. It was long overdue.

It took a few seconds for him to reciprocate, and you sighed when you finally felt him release his breath.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”

He pulled back to your dismay, keeping you at arms length.

“You—you shouldn’t be here.”

You almost flinched. “What?”

“No,” he shook his head incessantly. “I’m supposed to be protecting you.”

That was not what you expected. “Ethan, what—”

“Please, just—just leave.”

“Is that what you really want?”

Same like that day, his eyes didn’t leave the ground. Anywhere but your eyes.

“Answer me, at least.” You sounded desperate.

“I can’t hurt you like that again. So, leave.” His voice tapered off, shaken.

“Look me in the eyes when you say that.” You mustered up all the strength you could despite having woke up mere minutes ago. “Tell me that I’m safer without you.”

He shook his head instinctively, “You’re not without me.”

“What?” You whispered, lungs out of air.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been watching me, aren’t you?”

His silence said everything.

You reached to brush his messy curls out of his eyes. His mask had messed them up. He finally turned his head to you, curious.

Yet, you couldn’t look him in his eyes as you said it.

“You hurt me when you’re careless,” you declared. “But it hurts more when you—you…think I don’t want you to be around me. I feel safe with you, Ethan. If you really don’t want to hurt me then…then just—please stay in my life. As Ethan.”

He pulled you closer, and you rested your head against his shoulder.

“What you’re doing as Spider-Man is good. You have to protect people. But you’re Ethan. I fell in love with him first and—and I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

“You’re in love with me?”

He lifted your chin up to face him, the contact surging through your being.

You nodded wordlessly.

He finally smiled, “I think I’ve been in love with you for longer.”

“Nuh uh,” you flashed him a grin back. “I knew when I met you.”

“Then we’re even.”

He kept his hands on your chin, subconsciously pulling you closer. He desperately searched your eyes for unease, but found something he’d always known was there: love.

“Prove it.”

And so he kissed you like his life depended on it.

#ethan landry x reader #ethan landry #scream 6 #scream 6 x reader #scream vi #scream #scream x reader #ethan landry fluff #ethan landry angst

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thefugitivesaint · 24 days

Text

They Are Insecure For A Reason | Defector

"One of the less-amusing ironies of the violent institutional response to the nonviolent protest movement on campuses across the country is that the goals of the people protesting are much easier to understand than those of the variously curdled elites dispatching uniformed violence workers against them. The irony is in the fact that the students, with their specific demands and comparatively disciplined approach, have been cast as somewhere between essentially unserious and actively terroristic. In contrast, the institutions pivoting and pandering and giddily giving themselves over to the incoherent and spiraling political panic surrounding the protests represent principled leadership and forebearance; the gray elites insisting that these protests are actually about their dull abstractions of choice are the voice of seriousness; the police forces, rioting and ravening as ever, are somehow in fact order.

A lot of this disjunction can be explained by the undeniable disparities in power between those two sides, the first organizing toward a legible goal and the second existing essentially to oversee the unending work of saying no. Only one side can effectively call the cops on the other; here, as elsewhere, the impunity that comes with that exclusive access to violent recourse has made those with it not only cynical and lazy and cruel, but also paradoxically insecure and perpetually terrified at the prospect of any erosion in authority. It is, on its face, difficult to make the argument that it is fundamentally unserious to object to dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on a hospital, and much more morally and politically serious to object to that objection on some point of administrative order, or simply because it is too loud." ..... "There is something terribly clarifying in how eager the people in power at these universities have been to betray the trust of everyone invested in those institutions. Institutions that otherwise exist from one exploratory committee to the next will change university policies on the fly so that their local uniformed violence workers will get their chance to thump some young skulls; administrators whose notional jobs are upholding communities of learning and care gladly consent to being upbraided by clownish golf hogs and half-fascist nullities in Congress and then do exactly what they were told to do, whatever the damage to those communities. If the students and professors in these protests, which are now nationwide, have a sort of advantage simply by being the only parties involved that actually care about anything, they are also up against an opposition that is all the more implacable because of how proudly cynical it is." .... "The order they are after is all around us—a Homeowners Association with a S.W.A.T. team at its disposal, a business that grows at a steady rate without making anything anyone could use, a world in which things simply happen and continue to happen, a pristine desolation that is safe precisely because of how empty it is. But what they are afraid of grows even as they starve it, which is why these people, with all their power, are always so insecure. It is why, despite the relentless imposition of their annihilating concept of safety, they can't ever quite feel safe. They know how bad it would be for them to be seen clearly; they are fucking terrified of being treated as they treat others. They know that people can recognize their demands as what they are, and that there are still spaces in which to reject them. And they sense, maybe, that this false and failing security can't last. "The more they try to silence us," a Columbia grad student told the Times last week, "the louder we get."

#David Roth #defector #student protests #columbia university #free gaza #palestine #israel #ACAB

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