#not everyone knows how to draw a salt line

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Chapters: 13/? Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Cor Leonis & Nyx Ulric, Crowe Altius & Libertus Ostium & Nyx Ulric Characters: Nyx Ulric, Cor Leonis, Libertus Ostium, Crowe Altius, The Kingsglaive (Final Fantasy XV), Luche Lazarus, Tredd Furia, Sonitus Bellum, Axis Arra, Pelna Khara, Titus Drautos | Glauca Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fae AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, selkie!Nyx, shape-shifter!Cor, Galahdian Culture (Final Fantasy XV), Galahd (Final Fantasy XV), Cultural Differences, Worldbuilding, headcanons, I Blame Tumblr, Fihrie are the Fae of Galahd, Me messing around with fantasy languages, Other Additional Tags to Be Added Series: Part 1 of Fae AU Summary:

Nyx had thought he had found his place in Insomnia. Amongst humans and fae alike. He misses the home he had been forced to leave behind, like all of them did. But the fihrie - the fae of Galahd - are unwilling to let things stand. They want their people back. As the only fihrie to flee Galahd, it falls to Nyx to be the bridge between two parts of the world, he had never thought could be connected with each other.

#ffxv #fae au #not everyone knows how to draw a salt line #cor leonis #nyx ulric #libertus ostium #tredd furia #my fics #geist writes #finally the next chapter is here!!!

[saiidahyunie]

you in my heart 

chou tzuyu x f!reader 

synopsis: if i can keep myself close to cherish you, then my heart will forever be in your hands. 

warnings: fluff ; angst ? ; friends to lovers ; clc elkie and sana appear!

a/n: this fic is my creative writing lifeline soooooo :P

chou tzuyu doesn’t like idiots. 

in the many years of her glorious friendship with you, tzuyu has watched, in all scopes, just how damn impatient you were about your decisions. she’s seen it all - whether it’s simply put in which you threw caution to the wind and helped tzuyu ditch school just for a quick detour to the beach as a way to cheer her up after the argument she had with her parents. 

(might to add, that happened in the one week of getting to know each other.) 

or, whether it would be the way tzuyu saw you drawing, once and decided that the route of art was the destination. better yet, the slight hitch of breath of your decision - last second- of moving in with tzuyu, on the day her lease was up for renewal. 

these many things between the fine lines of dumb and stupid could not have prepared tzuyu for this: 

you being settled on the floor with a dark red shirt that had a white minimal graphic with the name of the brand being something from your dad’s work, hair set off neatly off to the side with a hint of fringe peaking at the top, an apple juice box in your hands washing down the ritz crackers you swiped from the box, without knowing how it fans the flames in every one of tzuyu’s nerves. 

you look at tzuyu, holding your gaze, jaw moving with two chewed crackers in your mouth, before averting your eyes to the crushed juice box next to you. 

“tzuyu,” you say, fingers fast on the wrapper fishing out another cracker. “you’re not gonna eat?” 

tzuyu says nothing, only shaking her head before settling back against the leg of the sofa, crossing her arms against her chest. 

“tzuyu,” you whine, grabbing her wrist that had pinches of salt all over your fingertips, “why are you not saying anything?” 

as if tzuyu can ever ignore the constant pull that she feels towards you. 

“what’s going on?” tzuyu asks you now, knowing that nothing positive ever comes out of your mouth when she’s soaking in this tone that you’re presenting, voice breaking high and towards the end, as though you wouldn’t be able to breath right if tzuyu does not talk to you, or look at you. 

“you’re a girl right?” 

tzuyu blinks once, doe eyes out in the open space while she’s unable to guess the trajectory that this conversation might go. 

“yes, and?” 

you smile, bright and warm, tzuyu nudges closer until her knee touches your thigh. 

“cool! me too!” you say. “well, i don’t know, actually. but, the point is that i’ve never dated a girl before. have you?” 

tzuyu’s sexuality has been acknowledged, conveyed, and accepted between the both of you without any real sense of words. you had always been perceptive, and when tzuyu’s eyes wandered on only at he women in the movies that she used to watch together with you during high school, you knew that your best friend was a lesbian, and squeezed her hand firmly to let her know that. 

it was never really discussed after that, until now. 

your sexuality, in tandem, has been acknowledged, conveyed, and accepted between the both of you devidating your realization through a sudden urge to declare the moment out loud on a random day. you tumbled your way onto tzuyu a week ago, holding her hands tight, screaming about how you barely realized that you were bisexual and how “everything makes so much sense to me!” 

ever since that day, tzuyu had to witness the only person she has loved even before she knew how to love someone else flirting with nearly everyone. she could only be supportive of her best friend’s journey up til this point. 

“i haven’t,” tzuyu replies. 

your face lights up, eyebrows arched and eyes wide open. “well, have you kissed another girl before?” 

tzuyu suddenly feels like she is neck deep in water that she’s not used to swimming in, struggling to keep herself afloat in her mind. “i…have.” 

your face beams more brighter than before it diminishes into the stark emptiness of the night after the flames on a bonfire slowly wither away. “hey,” you say. “you didn’t tell me about that, tzu! we’re besties, aren’t you supposed to tell me everything?” 

tzuyu scoots herself over to put a hand on your shoulder. “it was a long time ago,” she says. the world of sapphism was something beautiful to be apart of. seeing the pride parties to be an enlightenment of sorts while also pulling the heart in a more wrenching way. she wanted to belong there with the vast crowd of people but was also aware that she doesn’t want to put herself into that space, if it meant leaving your side. 

“it doesn’t really matter now.” 

“hey.” you say, scooting closer to match her. tzuyu’s hand lingers on your shoulder before letting go. “of course, it does. was it any good?” 

tzuyu doesn’t recall much from those separate experiences, let alone want to remember any from long ago. “yes, i think so. but it was like years since then, so it doesn’t matter.” 

“what makes you say that? why did you stop yourself? are you going to be kissing girls when we go to that pride party next week?” 

“i told you, y/n. it doesn’t matter. why are you even asking about this?” 

you have another smile spread across, hands moving up and down tzuyu’s arm, causing a ripple effect of goosebumps rising on the crook of her neck. “i have something to ask you.” 

when you pull your hands away, picking a cracker from the new stack you just opened, holding against tzuyu’s lips. 

when tzuyu makes no move to open her mouth, your encourage her by nodding despite becoming more and more doting and impatient (which was on brand for your antics). 

tzuyu merely holds it against her teeth, unwilling to take a bit nor choke on the bit after your request. 

you take a deep breath, and twine your hands with hers, looking into her eyes steadily. 

“i want you to kiss me.” 

these several plus years of friendship that tzuyu will never get enough of, tired was also out of the question. nothing could’ve prepared her for the opportunity of hearing those words that deeply carve out one of the core instincts that she has been fighting to keep within. 

the cracker falls out of tzuyu’s mouth.

you, on the other hand, face full of optimism and hope immediately replaced with frowns from the fallen cracker sitting on tzuyu’s lap, picking it up. your fingers brush against her hip bone, and tzuyu suppresses a gasp. 

also, you’re oblivious to tzuyu’s inner crisis, looking at the cracker before biting it, in the same spot more than a third of the cracker is caught between your teeth. 

“what are you saying?” 

“i want you to kiss me.” you say, seriously, after chewing the last part of the cracker that will haunt tzuyu’s dreams for the coming decades. 

“why?” 

“do people need a reason to kiss each other, tzuyu?” 

“when the people in the problem set are one’s best friends, then of course.” 

you sigh, troubled. “fine,” you say, not willing to look up from where you fidget with the ripped wrapper of the cracker stack. “you got me. i have a date with a girl this weekend and i have never kissed a girl, ever. i want it to be good for her. you’ve kissed a girl, and i want you to assess me.” 

“assess you?” 

nodding to tzuyu’s question. “i want it to be good for her, tzu! besides, you’re one of the few people that i trust the most. i want you to kiss me and tell me how it is. now are you gonna help me?” 

a few seconds of silence pass that the weight of it envelops every fabric and cell of their being, you begin to fiddle with the hem of your shirt, a habit that you procured in times of nervousness. 

“forget it,” you say abruptly. “i know that sana has kissed girls before. i’ll ask her—” 

“no!”

“no?” 

“no,” tzuyu says, holding your face between her soft hands. “i’ll do it,” she says. “i’ll help you with this.” 

—

you taste like a wintergreen mint. 

tzuyu tilts her head up, one hand spread across the back of your neck, the other, holding your chin so that she can deepen the kiss, until tzuyu herself begins to taste the minty aroma and feel like stardust. 

tzuyu also should’ve been keeping an open ear to the cautionary tune her heart laid out in front of her. her mind should’ve also said the same thing the way her brain racked the sole idea of kissing you for practice. nothing good would come out of this. you will kiss another girl sometime this weekend and many other girls after that, but tzuyu is weak and in love and can’t fathom not kissing you, not when you asked it yourself. 

your arms are coiled around tzuyu’s long neck, pulling her closer than ever before, even though the meters between the two of you now are only separated by the thin layers of clothes. gently trailing her fingers from your chin to your neck and waist, tzuyu hauls you up until you settle on her lap. 

the both of you break apart for a second, your eyes with a glint to them, dazed, glossy pink lips still parted, bodies molding together oh-so perfectly. 

it was you who kissed tzuyu for the first time, so tzuyu takes it upon herself to press your forehead with hers, chasing your lips for more. the kiss itself is less frantic and more gentle, taking her time skimming her hands across your back, tilting your head towards her, trailing your hands every single spot possible in the hopes of grasping something. eventually, you fingers are in her hair, taking apart the ponytail and running your fingers through it again. 

love me, tzuyu mouths out while she kisses you. love me, only me, no one else, just me. 

tzuyu’s lips find your jaw, feathery kisses until she meets the fork where your ear and neck meet. you let out a small noise from the bottom of your throat and tzuyu wants to have it all, to revel in it, keep it close to herself in her heart for the eons of years to pass. she finds her way to your neck, and the idea of marking you, to show the mystery girl that you’ll see know that she was here first, and with the premonition that she’ll stay with you forever–

under the crook of your neck, in the palms of your hands, hooked on your ribs as if the set numbers were like lifelines; anywhere, wherever you see fit. 

when you two finally break apart this time, you open your eyes, blinking rapidly to erase the remnants of the daze that was clouding the both of you, smiling softly that tzuyu thinks she’s in a dream. although, it wouldn’t be the first time that she’s dreamt something dangerously real, can’t accept the facts. 

but your body is warm between tzuyu’s palms, floral scent draping all of her sense. you were as real as you can be. tzuyu feels nervous with the pricks

of sweat coating her neck, heart rate struggling to keep calm inside her chest, threatening to break free from the cages. 

in her dreams, your eyes wouldn’t suddenly widen in disbelief, you wouldn’t clutch onto tzuyu’s shoulders, not willing to meet tzuyu’s eyes after that. 

a block forms, tugging from the depths of tzuyu’s chest. 

“y/n,” tzuyu asks, voice horse. “did i go too far?” 

you snap your eyes towards tzuyu, in fact not meeting her eyes, rapidly shaking your head. “no, not at all.” you answer, tone shrill. “but a–, that was—was really good.” 

finally meeting tzuyu’s eyes, your face swept in a vibrant pink. 

“that was?” 

you, in a flurry of sudden actions, pat tzuyu’s hair to flatten it, pinching her cheek, before breaking apart the bubble of a minty fulfilled dream that just happened a few seconds ago. “is that even a question?” you ask, licking your lips. “kissing girls is so different from kissing boys,” you say. “i liked this a lot. was it, um, w-was it good for you?” 

“what are you talking about?” tzuyu laughs, seeing a smile on your face. “you’re a good kisses,” she says, trying to be as objective as she can. this was a test, an experiment after all. not an outcry of feelings. “you know what you’re doing, so it won’t be bad for you this weekend when you go. i’m sure of that.” 

standing up, you pat down your shirt and sweatpants, saying, “okay good, i’m—i’m happy that it was good for you because it was good for me, clearly, and i–shoot—i should probably—” 

you don’t spare tzuyu another glance, running off to your room, the slam of the door echoed through the walls. 

tzuyu just sits there, back against the leg of the sofa, the half-eaten stack of crackers and empty glasses of water on the table, enthralling her attention as if they were people who just witnessed something out in public. her head hits the cushion behind her, clenching the scream wanting to be unleashed from inside her. 

for the reminder of how reality works in this world, things will–not remain the same between her and you. the air was already heavy with tension, anchored with tzuyu’s feeling, suspended in time with the words captive in the nooks and cracks of her body. 

tzuyu will have to learn how to live with the knowledge of how you taste, the small noises you make, the way your face shapes when her mouth is on yours, eyes closed as you chase tzuyu’s mouth like it was the last thing you had to do. 

she doesn’t know how to recover from this information. 

—

the two of you don’t talk about it. 

few days pass, and tzuyu leaves her pottery class. you arrive a few hours after you were sure that tzuyu was asleep. 

(she wasn’t asleep. in fact, she was waiting for you to come home. only able to fully rest when the sound of the door opening and closing, the soft sounds of your feet hitting the wood in and around the house.)

you and tzuyu have a thursday class together in music theory, sharing a shaken look between each other when the paths cross to the living room.

“you wanna leave together?” you ask, strangely nervous with a pensive look on your face. 

tzuyu nods her head, and that was it. 

you two don’t talk about it still, because there’s nothing to be discussed. 

after dinner, tzuyu finds herself going along to being kissed by you again. more practice never hurt anybody, or anyone for that matter. 

tzuyu slides in her bed with a heavy heat, lips aflame with the phantom stir of yours on them. 

it’s okay, she thinks. it’s gonna be okay. i’ll be okay. 

—

“you’re leaving?” tzuyu asks you on saturday, realizing in a manner that your date was today. a date, the whole reason you kissed tzuyu. 

you look dashing, transcendent beyond existence. tzuyu loves you so much. 

nervously, you start messing with the flimsy fabric of your dress pants, “i am,” you say, “did you want something?” 

“no,” tzuyu lies, heart clogging her throat. 

you take a step closer, breaking the bubble around tzuyu. “did you want to say something?” 

“no,” tzuyu lies again, heart in her hands. 

“okay then.” you say, “i’ll be going now.” 

“okay.” tzuyu replies. “have fun on your date.” 

something omniscient falls over the ever-constant glow on your face. “i will, i’m sure of it.” 

tzuyu feels her pulse accelerate, hands clenching and unclenching in succession. there’s so much that she wants to blurt out. so much that will ruin the close friendship that she has with you. but being selfish isn’t the way to go, the risk that is carried by making her feelings your problems too. 

it’ll be fine, tzuyu tells herself. this will pass too. she’s fine, she’s okay, she’s breathing—and if she keeps beating it down her being, maybe her heart won’t feel like it’s being trampled on. 

everything will be okay, this will all work out in the end. 

—

“something is wrong,” sana begins, eating her french fry, the same evening when she invites herself to tzuyu’s home with a bag of food and snacks. “you’re not okay.” 

“everything is great!” tzuyu says, chasing down her words with half of a boba drink. “and, i am okay.” 

sana’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “it’s not really you to lie in front of my face.” 

“i need you to stop prying.” 

“is it because y/n’s on that date right now?” 

“sana, i’m fine.” 

“shut up, it is, isn’t it?!”

“sana!”

“okay, i’ll stop,” sana says, raising her hands in surrender. “i believe you. everything is okay and you are doing fine.” 

—

you don’t offer more information about your date other than just saying, “we should go watch that one movie together, tzuyu.” 

tzuyu doesn’t even bother asking either. 

two days after, you come bearing another tempting proposition that steals tzuyu’s breath away—literally. 

“that one barista from the cafe we regularly go to asked me out,” you say, already straddling tzuyu’s lap. “i didn’t kiss that girl from saturday and i think i’m a little iffy about my–technique. can you help me with it again?”

tzuyu tears down the banners of doubts in her mind, providing her mouth pressing against yours, feeling like the can finally breath now after not being able to for so long. 

she doesn’t bother asking you about it, again. 

—

more and more kisses are being shared in the days leading up to your date. always in the evening, an hour before going to bed.

tzuyu finds out all the different ways in which you like being kissed. even though an unspoken boundary between them is crossed past the point of rational thinking. she finds herself putting up a boundary before it becomes all too much, too fast. like her soul feels like it’s being robbed of once those walls are up, but it’s okay. 

tzuyu tells herself that it’s okay. she will live through this. 

she’s fine, and everything’s gonna be okay. 

—

when you come back from the date, drunk, the sleep is immediately left from tzuyu’s body, and she’s alert, awake on the sofa. she puts her book and the small blanket back in their places, walking over to help you remove your shoes and find your way back into the house.

you look at tzuyu with a blearily smile, holding onto her waist tightly. “hi,” you say, grinning. 

“hi,” tzuyu greets back, holding onto you as you’re sliding on the floor, head lolling back on the head of the sofa. “are you alright?” 

“amazing!” you answer, giddy. 

“how was your date?” 

tzuyu blinks one eye open, grinning sarcastically. “oh? you didn’t ask me how it went the last time. this is a sign.” 

“you didn’t tell me anything either,” tzuyu also points out. 

you sigh, slumping your head on tzuyu’s toned shoulder. “true,” you mumble. “i guess it was okay.” 

“just okay?” 

tzuyu feels you nodding your head. “i am so tired, tzu!” you whine, nudging your head closer. tzuyu suppresses a shudder as she feels your eyelids fluter closed against her neck. “i’m gonna fall asleep right here, okay?” 

“that’s okay,” tzuyu says, pressing her fingertips into your scalp, just the way that you like it. 

“you’re the best,” you mumble again, sounding half-asleep. “do you know that? you’re the very best, tzu.” 

tzuyu doesn’t know how to respond without revealing the very depth of everything she feels about you. 

“i guess,” your whisper is like a knife through the curtain of silence between the two of you. “i guess the problem is that no one is you. they don’t kiss the way that you do.” 

tzuyu’s heart stops. “y/n, what do you mean?” 

…

“y/n?” 

…

a lack of a reply prompts tzuyu to thread her fingers through your hair, gently tapping your shoulder. “y/n.” she softly calls. “don’t you know to not say things like this to me?” she whispers too, confident that you were asleep. your breath steady, head heavy. 

you mumble something closely incoherent, and your head sags into tzuyu’s chest. 

despite the tumultuous beat of her heart, tzuyu finds herself smiling, as she cradles your head, hoping that laying on her lap would be more comfortable for you, and drapes the blanket over your legs. 

“that’s the issue with me, too.” tzuyu says while palming your hair. “i guess i stopped kissing other people because they weren’t you. i wish i could stop looking for you in every person that i meet.” 

—

it’s not like tzuyu was not aware of the happy hour event that’s regularly held at that one bar that the friend group usually ends up in at a night like this, but it’s just that she didn’t care enough about it, especially after living for about three months in a new city. 

two days after you realized that you were bisexual, you looked at the poster that announced the party for the lgbtq community happening on a friday night well off into the new semester with a newfound excitement. “we should go here!” you shrieked while pointing at the poster. “i didn’t even know that this was a thing.” 

“it’s a thing alright,” tzuyu answers, resigning herself to the fate of ending up at that party, especially a few weeks before happening. 

“have you ever been to a party like this?” 

“not a lot, but a few.” tzuyu replies. “they’re interesting.” and unfamiliar, because they’re loud and crowded. the heavy bass of music blasting through the speakers, making her heart match to the beat of the rhythm. 

“well, you should show me around then!” you had said, and that was it. 

now, about a little over three weeks or so after tzuyu first made out with her best friend only to help you practice for dates with people that weren’t tzuyu, standing in front of the said best friend, trying to obviously leer at your appearance. 

you were wearing a white crop top shirt with ripped jeans layered with a black leather jacket. this outfit in particular had been printed in tzuyu’s brain since she saw you wear it for the first time—and a one piece dress

you catch tzuyu looking and wink. “what? i look good, don’t i?” 

‘good’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, but tzuyu nods, nonetheless. 

bounding up with tzuyu, arms interlocked together. “thank you!” you exclaim. “you have to look great too! when did you buy this blouse?” you ask, gesturing at tzuyu’s outfit. “i have to borrow it one day,” you say, as you make your way outside the house, head resting on tzuyu’s shoulder.

“okay,” tzuyu readily agrees despite it being her favorite blouse and your tendency to not return her clothes after ‘borrowing’ them. 

the club is crowded by the time you reach there—full of people that tzuyu recognizes the way gay people tend to recognize each other across the campus, and those she does not. 

your face is set with an ever-present grin, taking in the clamour and infecting excitement of energy that’s radiating of all the people here. all eyes were on you and you just seem to bask in it, but your eyes were on tzuyu. there’s a low glo to you. the only person glowing in a sea of people. tzuyu is so in love with you that it aches, it aches, and it aches. 

“let’s dance!” you yell over the sound of the booming music. 

tzuyu is pulled into your arms the minute she agrees to it. sinking into your arms as though she always belonged there should be weird, tzuyu thinks. it’s supposed to be weird, especially because you and her couldn’t even look at each other until a few days ago, until you came back home drunk and slept on tzuyu’s lap. 

but it isn’t. this feels as natural as breathing, normal like your heart beating, the sun rising, the world turning painstakingly slow. 

colorful lights dance on your face as you pull tzuyu close, hands curling around her neck. tzuyu, helplessly in love, holding you by the waist and sways with some sense of rhythm to the music. 

you pull tzuyu closer, so that her ear is met with your lips. “is this how it always is?” 

“i think so,” tzuyu replies. save for a few strobe lights, the night seems the same as it always does. it must feel different for you though. “how do you feel?” tzuyu asks, resting her chin on your shoulder. 

“good!” you cheer. “like, i didn’t even know that there were so many of us here! i truly believed that it would be less crowded. in fact, it is more.”

tzuyu nods, clutching her hands tighter around your waist. 

you sway and dance together, sometimes following the rhythm of the songs blasting out of the subwoofers, and the other times creating your own rhythm entirely, but that doesn’t matter. 

what matters to tzuyu—at this moment and all the others that have happened and will—is this; your bright smile reserved only for her, your warm hands around hers, your feet falling in step with her, your laughter when you dip down into her, or the high pitched call of her name that makes her twirl in her mind, the gaze fixated on her lips, the grasp on her heart: for now and always forever (in hope) will be you. and only you.

you and tzuyu break apart when you loudly demand that you’re thirsty and need a drink. tzuyu, helpless to do anything else, clutches your hand and makes you follow, even though she can’t wade through the crowd of strangers by the bar. 

tzuyu is grateful that the thump of the music in this area is a lot less, deciding on standing a few feet away, looking at you valiantly finding her way towards the bartender, jumping only when she feels a tap against her shoulder. 

elkie, one of the other friends that tzuyu is very familiar with, perhaps a year her senior, stands across her with a broad smile on her lips. 

“it’s been so long since i saw you here,” she says, stepping closer. “how are you doing?” 

“good,” tzuyu replies with a smile. “how bout you?” 

the music picks up in volume where they are, causing them to stand closer which isn’t entirely ideal, but it’s alright. elkie is good company, and tzuyu doesn’t mind. 

“are you looking for someone?” elkie asks, when she notices tzuyu look into the crowd of people at the bar station trying to see someone in a black leather jacket. “do you want me to help you find them?” 

“just my friend.” tzuyu replies, turning towards elkie. “she went in to get drinks for us and hasn’t come out yet.” 

elkie laughs. “she’ll come back, i’m sure. but tell me about you, tzuyu. are you dating someone?” 

tzuyu darts her eyes away from elkie. “i’m not actually, no.” 

elkie eyes brighten. “well, if that’s the case, call me if you want? you do have my number, right?” 

tzuyu blinks, before the realization dawns on her. “oh,” she says. “no.” she replies, turning towards elkie. 

“elkie, i—” 

elkie’s eyes widen with an understanding. “ah, you’re not seeing someone, but you do like someone,” she infers. tzuyu doesn’t say anything, only turning sideways to the crowd in which you have disappeared to. “yeah,” she replies, looking back at elkie.

she nods, gently holding tzuyu’s shoulders. “i get that,” elkie says. “i hope you figure it out, whatever that may be.” 

“thank you.” 

elkie smiles back, and plants a kiss on the corner of tzuyu’s mouth. “i think i saw someone i didn’t want to see, so i’m gonna run now,” she says. “don’t be a stranger, okay? let’s meet up for some lunch sometime—as friends, of course.” 

tzuyu smiles, patting her back neatly. “i will.” 

elkie excuses herself, walking swiftly past tzuyu, vanishing into the crowd. 

out of a bad habit set in the last fifteen minutes or so, tzuyu looks sideways to the crowd that you had ventured into, only to meet your distraught face. 

your face even turns furious when tzuyu meetes your eyes, but the undercurrent of hurt is open and raw. tzuyu instantly takes a step forward by instinct, wondering what caused it, relizing that you must’ve seen elkie kissing her cheek for this anger to be directed at tzuyu. but it shouldn’t bother you as much as it did—because why would it, it’s not like you to be jealous, because that would imply that you like—

huh. 

“you were here with me.” you shout over the music, steamrolling over close enough for tzuyu to see the shimmer on your skin. “we came here together.” 

“y/n—”

“if you dont’ like me back,” you start, shoulders dipping down in defeat. 

well, shit. 

tzuyu’s body breaks at that. 

“if you don’t like me back, then just say it instead of making me witness whatever the hell i just saw,” you say, drinking the entirety of the fizzy orange behemoth of a drink that was in your hand in one swig, and slamming tzuyu’s shot glass on the table. 

—

tzuyu finds you leaning against someone’s car, staring up at the sky. 

she wordlessly covers your exposed shirt with the leather jacket you dropped on the way out of the club. 

“that was elkie,” tzuyu breaks the silence. “she’s one of the few people that i know from coming to these parties. i guess we somewhat keep in touch now. we don’t like each other romantically. never, no.” 

you blink, while looking at her, nodding while fixing your leather jacket to fit it more better on your shoulders. 

“tzuyu,” you say. “what i said before—”

“is it true? tzuyu asks, urgency seeping in her words by the millisecond. “do you truly like me?” 

you look at tzuyu, broken. “i wore this outfit for you,” you say again. “i hate stiff leather.” 

tzuyu looks at you again, out of depth completely. 

“i hate this jacket but i love the way you look at me when i wear it. so i wore it today, with you. the only person i could see in this crowd today was you, tzuyu,” you say. “i came up with a silly, stupid excuse to kiss you. so you tell me if what i said was true or not.” 

“a stupid excuse?” 

“i didn’t have any dates,” you laugh without levity. “i had people asking me out, yes, but i couldn’t agree because they’re not you, tzuyu. the only person i want to go on a date with. the only person i want to kiss and be kissed is by you. so i lied to your face and told you that i wanted to practice. i made up with a terrible excuse to kiss you that doesn’t even make sense because i thought you could, maybe like me back too! and it really felt like you did, but then i see that and-”

“i like you.” 

you stop your train of thought from the sentence that just came out of tzuyu’s lips. “what did you say?” 

“i like you too,” tzuyu says, as rushed as she could say. “i like you so much. so, so much. it’s—” 

“you…what!?” you jolt with unbridled astonishment, crying, turning to grab tzuyu by the shoulders.

“why do you think i kept kissing you?” tzuyu asks with ardor. “i liked you too much to say no. i just—i couldn’t. and i wanted to go on dates with you and kiss you without having a reason, but i just couldn’t.” 

a bitter laugh leaves your lips, head hung down while you kick your sneakers into the asphalt. 

“you could—you could have,” you say, nodding in fervor. “you could have. i really, really wanted you to.” 

“i just didn’t know,” tzuyu says, regretfully, cupping your face. “and i’m sorry that i didn’t.”

your eyes flutter shut. “well, you do now.” you say. “you know that i like you. i like you so, so much, tzu.” 

“you know that i like you too. so, so much.” 

your eyes open again, teasing a glint quite apparent. “so, what are you going to do with this information, then?” you ask.

tzuyu, with her heart fluttering endlessly in her chest, brings you closer. with eyes closed, you meet tzuyu in the middle. 

you taste like beer, candy blossoms, and heaven. you taste like everything that tzuyu wanted, everything that tzuyu could ever want or need in her life. 

i love you, tzuyu mouths into yours as she kisses you. i love you, love you, love you. 

when you eventually break apart, a smile sprays across your lips, leaning in close, foreheads pressed together, one of tzuyu’s hands on your chest, right where the heart is patting frantically. “i love you, tzu.” 

another kiss is shared again, this time more slowly as the both of you took in the taste of exchanging lips, not wanting to ever pull away. it’s just you and tzuyu, entrapped in that silly little world that you and her have built around for so many years, now elevated to a new echelon. 

chou tzuyu doesn't like idiots.

but there was something about being with you as an idiot that makes it tolerable to deal with, and she doesn't mind that.

brushing your lips against tzuyu’s, you’re giggling and she follows. 

“i’ll embrace you like this, forever.” 

#twice x reader #kpop x reader #hyunie #twice imagines #tzuyu imagines #twice tzuyu #chou tzuyu #tzuyu x reader #twice fluff #tzuyu fluff #chou tzuyu x reader

[sourpatchys]

My personal Shigaraki Tomura Headcannons that I will defend with my life

—

He’s actually pretty shy. He keeps to himself, he’s not going to tell you about his interests unless he trusts you with his life, he won’t even so much as share his favorite foods with you if he doesn’t know you well enough. Not because he’s afraid you’ll make fun of him for it— he just genuinely finds opening up to be embarrassing and prefers not too if he can help it.

He never lost his love for video games and he still thinks about strategies with a lot of the terms in mind. Being the leader of the league of villains and losing the original hide out made him pull the break on his hobby’s.

He likes to draw. He figured out at an early age that art doesn’t take all five fingers. It started as something silly he did when he didn’t feel like paying attention to kurogiri, and steadily over the years it’s become something he relies on to help with stress

He wears all black because he’s too lazy to figure out what looks good. He does care about his appearance, but not badly enough to go through multiple outfits.

He’s actually really self conscious of the scars on his face. He thinks they make him look weak, unkept and disgusting. If he could change anything about himself he’d get rid of them in an instant.

Due to his self conscious nature regarding his looks— he’s super on top of everything else. As a kid he was so worried about looking the way he does and smelling, that he actually had to be temporarily banned from using cologne and body spray because of how overwhelming it got for everyone around him.

He has insanely good handwriting. It’s actually really alarming to see for the first time.

His internal dictionary is also pretty well established. Shigaraki is not afraid to use big words, and he tends to use extremely well put together sentences, both verbally and otherwise.

AFO made sure shigaraki had a proper education, even going as far as to hire private tutors, which is why his vocabulary is so top of the line.

(Sometimes while speaking the league will stop him midway through and ask him to use ‘normal people’ words)

He does have manners— some might even say he has an annoying amount of manners. And he will get pissed off if people don’t follow his footsteps, especially if the situation calls for it.

That being said he has never— and will never— sit in a chair properly. His legs are all over the fucking place and that’s how he likes it.

Growing up he wore mittens to bed to stop from absolutely disintegrating his mattress because he’s a stomach sleeper.

He sleeps with his mouth open, he drools AND he snores.

Contrary to what you may think, he’s not going to be an angry spiteful boyfriend.

He takes everything to heart because he hates everything, that’s who he is and that’s what he does! But he doesn’t hate you. So he will learn to take things with a grain of salt when it comes to you.

He’s not going to be a confrontational type of guy with you, he knows it wouldn’t solve anything if he came in with guns blazing. He doesn’t want you to ever see him that angry as long as he can help it.

He’s not going to apologize if things go wrong on his end though— at least not vocally. Honestly he doesn’t even know how to apologize, so you’ll just get a gift or some tighter cuddles that night compared to usual.

He’s afraid of spiders. He thanks the universe every single day that there isn’t some weird ass mutated spider hero that he has to deal with.

His “rebellion phase” was just him trying to overcome his murderous thoughts. (It didn’t work)

This man loves loitering. It’s the stupidest crime there is and he genuinely cannot get enough of it.

It took him an embarrassingly long time to understand that not everyone had endless amounts of money. Growing up he could order or buy whatever he wanted, so he just assumed that’s how the world worked for everyone until his early teens

If he were to start developing feelings for you, he wouldn’t know what the hell was going on. “Love” and “attraction” are not emotions he’s familiar with.

He will absolutely test out his theory by building a life with you in the sims.

Shockingly enough he’s not opposed to having kids. It’s just not something he’d ever think about unless you were to bring it up.

He has a My Chemical Romance hoodie tucked into the very back of his closet.

He collects vinyl records

He doesn’t like animals but if he had to choose between a dog or a cat he’d choose a cat.

Yes— he does own a pair of pink fuzzy bunny slippers, your suspicions are correct. (They’re so comfortable but he’d never been caught dead wearing them)

As a kid he collected bottle caps, he still has one he carry’s around with him as a good luck charm

He constantly forgets to tell you where he’s going and how long he’ll be gone— and he’s never on his phone so don’t expect him to answer your texts or calls if you’re worried.

A Domesticated shigaraki is just like having an old man as a pet. He complains— is a little too good at playing chess— is always wearing some kind of pajamas and smells like aftershave

Has the largest sweet tooth you’ve ever encountered. This guy could eat an entire cake in a single sitting and not get nauseous.

He either won’t eat at all and then gets pissed because he’s hungry or he’ll eat too much and get pissed that he’s full

He keeps a small sketch book on him at all times and 80% of the pages are of you

He’ll eat anything once, including shit he finds on the floor

One of his front teeth is fake, the adult tooth literally just never grew in

He hates hero’s but sometimes in order to get ideas he reads old marvel comics

He’s a green goblin stan

He has a “shoot first ask questions later” mentality that no one can take away from him. He simply does not gaf what your reasons are

He’ll kill anyone regardless, but he goes a lot harder on people with outdated opinions

#shigaraki x you #tomura shigiraki x reader #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki imagine #mha shigaraki #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura #tomura shiragaki #mha #my hero academia #bnha #boku no hero academia

[hellsenthero]

Sweet and Salty.

Written by: hellsenthero

Joel Miller X FemReader

Warnings: Language, smut. (1.6K words.)

The people of Jackson know you and Joel are a packaged deal. Unfortunately, the new guy in town doesn't get the memo.

_______

The people of Jackson didn't really understand it, how it worked, the dynamic.

You were young and soft and sweet and kind. You wore sundresses that showed off your pretty legs and made flower crowns for all the children. 

Joel was the complete opposite. He was older, had salt and pepper hair and wrinkles around his eyes when he'd squint up at the sun. He was rough, had calloused hands and a gruff voice. He wasn't some kindly Saint like man that crafted with flowers in his free time for children. Hell, Joel could hardly get a damn comic for Ellie when he really worked for it.

You were glowing, always, like a vibrant sunrise on the horizon. Joel blended in, and when he did stand out he was like a jagged rock among sand, sharp and dangerous and not quite right. 

Despite your many obvious differences, the one thing that the people of Jackson did understand was that you and Joel were a packaged deal, you didn't get one without getting the other. 

But, it seemed that the new guy in town didn't get the memo. 

"Let me get you another drink," Ken, Kevin, whatever his name was said. You didn't particularly care about the man, his name, or his drinks. 

"No thanks, I can get my own." The wave of your hand does nothing to stop Kyle in his hopeless pursuit of getting in your pants. 

"Two more." Carter says to the bartender. After you get your second, free, drink Calvin gives you a wink and you have to draw the line. 

"You see that man standing in the corner-there-over to your right?" You point your finger over to Joel who stands with a firm scowl on his face, his arms crossed as his dark eyes stab into Cody. "That's my husband," you go on and you can't keep your smile off of your face, "and he's about one minute away from dragging you out of here and breaking your legs." Kit looks between Joel, then you, then Joel, then back to you, his smirk no longer plastered to his face. "And I like watchin' him get rough, so if you don't want to-" you didn't even finish your sentence before the man was standing up and stumbling away from the bar, his hard up in the air in surrender before hightailing it out of the bar. You're left alone for only a brief moment before a warm, hard chest presses up against your back and you smile into your drink as you take a sip. 

"What'd you say to the bastard to get him runnin' like that?" Joel's gruff voice sounds from behind you. 

"Hmm," you hum as you suck on the ice in your drink. "Nothin' that ain't true." 

Joel chuckles as he lays a hand on your shoulder, giving you a gentle squeeze as he leans in close to your ear. "Atta girl." 

You're quick to finish your drink before turning and grabbing hold of your husband's belt buckle, a clear claim of mine to everyone in the bar. "Let's go home." 

Joel's eyes flick between your eyes and where you grab hold of him. "Tired?" He asks, already knowing the answer. 

"You know damn well I'm not tired, Joel." 

Joel smirks before taking a step back and throwing an arm out towards the bar door. "Lead the way, ma'am." You roll your eyes but do as he says. 

You pull Joel into your front entrance before slamming the door shut. Joel opens his mouth, no doubt ready to call you out on your aggressive behavior, but before he can get a word out, your lips are pressed to his, and your hands are grabbing onto him.

"Needy girl," humms Joel once you break for air. You can't help but laugh and nod along. 

"Just for you." You admit and that has Joel growling and grabbing onto your hips. 

"You better start makin' your way to the bedroom before I fuck you right here." Joel nods to the floor of the entryway and you have half the mind to just let him take you on the floor right there, but you know you'd both prefer the comfort of your own bed right now. 

"Fine," you grumble with one last kiss before you make a quick getaway to your bedroom. You begin peeling off your dress and bra on your way there, and you can hear Joel's chuckle as he admires your trail of clothes. "Common, slow poke!" You call out behind you.

"Commin', just admirin' the view." 

When Joel enters the bedroom, his t-shirt is gone, leaving him bare from the waist up. 

"You got too many clothes on." You complain. 

"Funny," Joel drawls as he climbs up on the bed and over you. "I was just gonna say the same thing to you." You don't get a chance to answer before Joel's peeling off your underwear and tossing them somewhere on the floor. "I can already see how wet you are baby," Joel drags a finger through your center and you bite your lip in pleasure. "All this for me?" You nod, past talking, but Joel's having none of it. He pinches your clit and you squeal, your legs clamping around his hand. "Words, baby, use your fuckin' words."

Your legs open up again and Joel rubs circles over your clit and you rush out with an admission. "Yes, Joel, it's all for you. Fuck, baby, you make me feel so good." 

"Good girl." Is the last thing Joel says before he dives into your center. His hands hold your legs apart as he feasts on your center, licking, sucking and fucking you with his thick fingers. You're so lost in the pleasure of him that you don't realize his clothed cock is humping the bed in desperate relief. 

"Fuck," you cry out, "fuck me, Joel." 

Joel's dark eyes meet your own gaze as he pulls away from your center for a moment. "I'll fuck you like you want once you come in my mouth." 

"Fuck," you breath, absolutely loving the filth coming from his mouth. "Don't stop." You beg. Joel didn't bother answering before his mouth was on you again. Your hand grabbed into his gray laced locks of hair as you fed yourself to him, rolling your hips as much as you could under his firm grip of you. "Yes,yes,yes,yes,yes," you chanted as your climax climbed higher and higher, nearly reaching its breaking point. "Please, Joel, please," you begged, not really knowing what you were begging for. As Joel added another finger into you, you reached your high. "Fuck, yes Joel! I'm coming, fuck, don't stop!" You broke off in a loud moan and if you weren't experiencing a fucking fantastic orgasm, you would've been incredibly embarrassed at how loud you were being. Joel ate you out your entire climax, only stopping when you went to push his head ahead from your sensitive center. Joel's head came up from between your legs, his lips and facial hair covered in your juices. He licked his lips once before he pressed his mouth to yours and you could taste yourself on him. "Now, Joel, please, fuck me now." You begged again. 

"Well," Joel drawled, "since you asked so nicely." Finally, Joel took his pants off. The sound of him undoing his buckle and zipper had more wetness pooling at your center in anticipation. Right as he lined himself up with your center Joel kissed you and you moaned into his mouth as he pushed his cock into you. 

"Fuck!" You exclaimed as he gave an experimental thrust into you before drawing nearly all the way out of your center. Your legs wrapped around him, urging him to push back into you. "Common, Joel. You said you would fuck me." 

Joel's only warning was a nip at your ear before he began thrusting all the way into you. His cock hammered into your center, hitting that spongy spot in you that had you nearly screaming in pleasure with every thrust. 

"Fuck," Joel groaned as pleasure crawled up his spine. He was trying to hold back on coming too early. He wanted you to have another orgasm first. "Fucking take it,"

"Yes!" You cried out as he hit that magical spot on you once more and it had your toes curling. "I'm coming Joel, holy, oh my God," Your legs squeezed Joel tightly to you as your second orgasm rushed through you. You threw your head back and Joel took the opportunity to suck one of your nipples into his mouth while one of his hands grabbed the other. 

You let out a small squeak at the oversensitivity of Joel pounding into you, but you could tell by his sloppy thrusts that he was on the brink of coming. 

And sure enough, one, two, three, thrusts later, and Joel's stilling above you as his hot come fills you up. Once his last spurt is done, he remains still for another moment before he thrusts one more time into you.

"Good girl," He praises before rolling to the side and pulling you on top of him. You laugh once you realize his plan for the evening. 

"Want me to cock warm you?" You ask, already knowing the answer. Joel's rumbling hum is answer enough. "Okay," you sign in pleasure and let your eyes drift closed, uncaring of the swear and coming sticking to your body. You feel Joel press a gentle kiss to your collarbone, and then you're drifting into the darkness.

#joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #joel x reader smut #the last of us #tlou #joel miller smut #joel x reader #joel miller #joel x female reader #joel x f!reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fluff #joel miller x female reader #tlou fanfiction #joel x reader fluff #tlou game #tlou show

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Napoleonville [Chapter 6: The House Of Salt And Scales]

Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, smoking, infidelity, Evangelical Christians, kids, parenthood, Willis Warning, (Mis)Adventures With Aegon, Targ family dysfunction, bodily injury, blood, alligators, ANGST!!!

Word Count: 7.5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @dr-aegon @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @libroparaiso @bluerskiees @herfantasyworldd @elizarbell @urmomsgirlfriend1 @fudge13 @strangersunghoon

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 🥰🧁

“Did you hear that Willis is single again?”

Ugh. “Yes, Mama. I heard. You told me already.” You linger in the doorway with a white bakery box in your hands: your mother’s favorite, grasshopper pie, straight out of the 1960s. She allegedly ate through two a week when she was pregnant with you. Cadi has already dashed inside and made herself at home; she’s probably jamming the movie she got from Blockbuster—Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Amir recommended it—into the VHS player. “You told me, Willis told me, all his deputies told me, Cadi told me, my mailman told me, the checkout ladies at the Piggly Wiggly told me, literally every resident of Napoleonville has informed me in no uncertain terms that Willis is single again. And I could not possibly care less.”

Your mother sighs and presses a hand to her forehead, wounded and incredulous, like she’s just watched a 60 Minutes segments about a tsunami or a genocide. “I just don’t understand it. In my day, people married for life.”

You glance back longingly at your Chevy Celebrity. “Yeah. I know they did.”

“When your father, and God rest his soul, when he was young, he was a hellion,” your mother says, as if you don’t remember it, as if you weren’t there. “He’d get his paycheck every Friday and stay out all night with his buddies, sometimes he didn’t come home the whole weekend. I’d lay into him when he finally showed, I’d say, ‘Rene, how on earth am I supposed to put dinner on the table if I don’t have any fish in the icebox?!’ Once he punched a hole in the kitchen wall and I had to cover it up with a picture of President Eisenhower! And I never even thought about leaving. How could I have done that to you? Forcing you to grow up in a broken home? Mothers and fathers living apart, whoever heard of such a thing? It’s unnatural.”

You’re brainstorming recipes to distract yourself. Caramel pretzel cookies. Banana chiffon pie. Cheese Danish cupcakes with diced cherries and a hint of vanilla. “Everyone draws their own lines, Mama.”

“But it’s not just about you,” she implores, her eyes shimmering with sympathy she never had for other women. You remember what she said on the rare occasions you confided in her about your frustrations with Willis: Of course a man isn’t going to want you bothering him with your feelings when he’s had a hard day at work. Of course a man—after you’ve had his baby, after you almost died to do it—is going to be crossing off days on the calendar until you can have sex again. He keeps a roof over your head and he never hits you, what more could you ask for? “What about Cadi? What if she grows up thinking that her marriage vows don’t mean anything? It’s the foundation of society, marriage. If that goes, everything goes.”

It’s the foundation of a lot of coercion and unfairness and misery, that’s for sure. “I wouldn’t want Cadi to stay in a situation that makes her unhappy. Would you?”

Your mother throws her hands up, like you’ve told her you’re converting to communism and catching the next flight to the USSR. “Life isn’t just about happiness, sweetheart! It’s about commitment, it’s about responsibility! If everyone did what they wanted all the time, no one would stay married!”

“Maybe that speaks to the value of marriage as an institution.”

“And morality is already falling apart in this country,” your mother continues, ignoring you. That’s what she does when she can’t refute facts, logic, evidence. “Young people living together, women having babies with two or three different men, people doing drugs, people on Welfare, people shooting and stabbing each other, sex shops everywhere, naughty magazines at gas stations, men wanting to marry other men—”

“Okay, Mama. I really have to go now.”

“Alright, I’ll shut up. I will, I will, I swear.” She makes peace with a brisk kiss to your cheek like a stamp on an envelope. “Enjoy a nice quiet night to yourself. Do you have any plans?”

Well, Mama, I’m trying to resist the temptation to call my engaged dominant oil tycoon not-boyfriend and tell him to come over for kinky adulterous sex. “Not really. I’ll probably take a bubble bath and then watch something Cadi would think is boring, like 20/20.” You hand over the bakery box, and your mother’s face lights up.

“Grasshopper pie?!”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. You know it’s hard for me to make it myself anymore. This rheumatoid arthritis, it’s got me all twisted up.” She nods down to where her fingers grip the box, knobby and increasingly useless.

“When’s your next appointment?”

“I’ve got one in…oh…about three weeks, I think. I’d have to check my daybook. All the way over in New Orleans with some specialist that Dr. Cormier recommended.”

“Okay. Want me to go with you?”

“Yes, that’d be fine.” It would be more than fine; she wants you to go, though she won’t say it. You aren’t sure if she doesn’t want to impose or doesn’t want to admit how reliant she’s becoming upon you, like growing up in reverse.

“Mawmaw!” Cadi shouts from inside the house. “Hurry up! I want to watch Predator!”

“You quit your hollering, I’ll be right there!” Then your mother looks to you and offers one last piece of very unsolicited advice. “Just be kind to Willis, alright? Give him a chance. I don’t think he’ll ever find a woman he likes as much as you. That’s what everyone says.”

“Mama, he has no idea who I am.” And he’s not interested either.

“Sure he does. You’re the mother of his child, and you always will be. Maybe you’ll find your way back to each other.”

“I’ll think about it.” You definitely won’t. “Goodnight, Mama.”

“So long.” She shuffles into the house, and once she’s shut the door you hear her muffled voice: “Arcadia, come on over here and help me slice up this pie…”

You drive home with the windows down and blasting St. Elmo’s Fire. There’s still an hour or two of sunlight left; the world is painted in gold and blood orange, the soybeans, the sugarcane, the grass growing tall and wild, the Spanish moss swinging from the trees, the earth ripening as its revolution hurtles towards the apex of summer. Cadi is out of school until August. Amir will be announcing his looming departure to San Francisco. Aemond will be getting married.

The adolescent alligator that Aemond is so afraid of is in the far corner of the front yard, basking in the last of the daylight. You walk into your room, flop down on the bed, lie there staring longingly at the pink phone on your nightstand. You reach to pick it up, then stop yourself. Aemond hasn’t fucked you, hasn’t kissed you, has rarely touched you at all since you found out about Christabel. But he stops by your house and invites you to his; he stitches himself into your life like someone somewhere once sutured his face back together.

I can’t. It’s wrong. He’s engaged.

Aemond doesn’t know you’re home alone. It’s Friday, and usually Cadi would be here with you until tomorrow morning.

Maybe it’s not really cheating until he’s married. I mean, if Aemond and Christabel aren’t sleeping together, if they almost never see each other…is it even a real relationship?

Wistful thinking, yes, denial, yes; but with each passing minute your resolve not to pick up the phone weakens.

We don’t have much longer until the wedding. Our time is slipping away.

He’s a robber baron. He’s arrogant, he’s delusional.

And I want him. I still do, and I can’t stop.

The phone rings. You sit up, startled. It’s not Aemond, you tell yourself so you won’t be disappointed when it isn’t him. But it is.

“Hi,” Aemond says; he sounds out of breath. “I’m really sorry to bother you.”

“No, it’s okay, Cadi is actually having a sleepover with my mom. They’re watching Predator. My mom has no idea what it’s about, she’ll be clutching that Bible she got signed by Jerry Falwell a little extra hard tonight. What’s up?”

“This is going to sound random, but…you haven’t seen Aegon, have you? He hasn’t shown up at your house, he hasn’t called? You don’t know where he is?”

Aegon? Why would I know anything about what Aegon’s doing right now? “Um, no…?”

A long exhale, a lull that’s full of dread.

“Aemond, what’s going on?”

“He and my father got into it a few hours ago. They were screaming at each other, kicking furniture over, which isn’t all that unusual, honestly. But then Aegon ran away.”

“Wait, like, he’s gone…?”

“He stormed out the back door, went down to the lake, and then headed north into the trees. And I assumed he’d be back by now, but it’s getting dark and he’s not here. He never came home. His Porsche is still sitting in the driveway.” There is a pause. “I think he’s out there.”

“Out where?”

“In the woods,” Aemond says, shellshocked, terrified. “In the bayou.”

Your eyes dart to the window; the golden daylight is dwindling. “Aemond, he can’t be alone in the bayou. It’s dangerous. He could die. There aren’t just alligators, there are wild boars, cottonmouths, copperheads, snapping turtles, brown recluses, fire ants, I don’t think there are any black bears this far south but it’s always possible, he could drown, he could get trapped in quicksand, you cannot let Aegon spend the night out there.”

“I don’t know what to do.” You’re not used to hearing this in Aemond’s voice: the panic, the vulnerability. “No one else seems worried. They said he disappears all the time, and that’s true. They’re convinced he’s found his way to a strip club or a Waffle House or something and will drag himself home eventually. No one will listen to me. My father has forbidden me from getting anyone else involved. He doesn’t want gossip getting around town and overshadowing the new rig project or…you know. The wedding thing. My wedding. And I can go over his head, sure, I can make calls, but when investigators show up here to start searching my father is just going to tell them to leave. How is it even possible to find Aegon? At night in a fucking swamp? Is anyone going to be willing to go out there before morning? Do I need people with bloodhounds or a helicopter?”

No way, you think as soon as the idea hits you. But it’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do. “I can think of someone who knows their way around the bayou.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s just after 7 p.m. when Willis arrives to pick you up: grinning smugly, mullet fluffed, Plymouth Gran Fury hauling his brand new 20-foot jon boat. He’s dressed for night fishing in boots, camo-colored waders, and a grey hoodie with SHERIFF printed across the front in black letters. You climb into the passenger seat wearing sneakers, denim shorts, and a blue raincoat over your Pepsi t-shirt. You haven’t been fishing since you were married to Willis, and you’ve never missed it. It’s a grisly business: hooks through lips, hooks through eyeballs, hooks swallowed and tangled up in some doomed creature’s guts.

Aemond is waiting at the mouth of the Targaryens’ driveway, just out of sight of the mansion they call The Last Desire. He gets in the back seat and sits there testily with his arms crossed, lips pressed into a thin line, glaring out the window as an indistinct blur of primeval vegetation passes by outside. He has on his Marlboro jacket, light-wash jeans, and Adidas sneakers. You hope he doesn’t ruin them; although you suppose he can always buy more. He could buy a hundred more, a thousand more, and it wouldn’t make a difference. You can’t fathom what it’s like to live that way. It seems to conflict with all the laws of man and nature.

Aemond speaks grudgingly to Willis, a quick flat statement that invites no conversation. He didn’t call Willis to explain the situation, you did. You’re afraid to leave them alone with each other. You aren’t sure who would be more likely to end up a corpse decomposing in the muddy silt at the bottom of Lake Verret. “Thank you for agreeing to help with this.”

Willis chuckles warmly, either oblivious to Aemond’s prickliness or unbothered by it. “Bien sur! It’s my job, son. We’ll hunt your brother down.” Then he glances over at you, smirking, prying. “So, sugar…how’d you two make each other’s acquaintance?”

“Amir and I baked the cakes for his engagement party.”

“Engagement party, huh?” Willis looks at Aemond in the rearview mirror. “You gettin’ married?”

Aemond is still staring out the window. “Obviously.”

“So you ain’t single?”

“Legally, I am in fact single until the day the marriage license is signed.”

Willis returns his attention to you. “So he ain’t the petit ami you’ve been so secretive about.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, Willis. I really can’t be more clear than that.”

“Oh, I know you got one. I know all your looks, sugar. Some days you come ‘round my office lookin’ lovesick, like you’re just a-floatin’ on a cloud. Other days you’re real mean, like you don’t want me takin’ none of your time, like you got somebody more important to spend it on. And then sometimes you just look…” He smiles, mischievous. “Well, how can I put it? Satisfied. The cat who ate the canary. And I recall exactly what that looks like on you. It’s been a while, sure. But I remember.”

From the back seat, Aemond sighs irritably. You say to Willis: “Can we please focus on finding Aegon?”

“Sois calme, sois calme. That’s why I’m here. We’ll be in the water in ten minutes.”

There is no more discussion; the only sound is the radio, Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler. Willis turns onto a winding dirt road that leads to a boat launch about a mile from the Targaryens’ property. He spins his Plymouth Gran Fury around and backs it down the concrete ramp towards the rippling, slow-moving currents of Lake Verret. It’s difficult to see from the driver’s seat—most people would have someone get out to guide them—but Willis knows the way by heart. He’s been on boats since before he could walk; Willis’ daddy knew the bayou, and his daddy knew the bayou, and his daddy did too, all the way back to before the Louisiana Purchase. Your family are newer arrivals (relatively speaking), having only been in Napoleonville for about 100 years and keeping mostly to the town. You remember your 11th grade science teacher saying once that alligators have been around since before the dinosaurs went extinct. Maybe that’s what Willis is: a relic of a distant time and species, afflicted with a cunning ruggedness that won’t allow his kind to go extinct.

When the trailer is mostly underwater, Willis gets out of the car to unhook the straps that keep the boat moored to it. You go outside to help and Aemond follows, though he doesn’t know what to do. He’s never handled a boat this size and it shows; perhaps a yacht would be more his speed. He stands aside and watches, frowning, hands buried in the pockets of his Marlboro jacket. His lack of expertise riles him. He’s not used to being the incapable one. He hates not having control.

Willis already has a tow rope tied to a metal handle at the bow of the jon boat; he lifts it out and gives the free end to Aemond. “Hold onto that, will ya? Don’t let her get away.”

“Sure,” Aemond replies ungenerously. Willis returns to his Plymouth Gran Fury to finish backing the trailer into the lake until the boat floats. Standing on the shore together, you and Aemond stare at each other, unable to speak honestly, unable to decide what you’d say even if you could.

The jon boat bobs in the water, and you show Aemond how to pull it away from the trailer using the tow rope. Willis drives the trailer back onto dry land, parks his car in a flat area near the boat launch, and then joins you and Aemond by the water’s edge. He walks to where the boat is floating just to the right side of the concrete ramp and, with some difficulty, clambers inside as the boat rocks under his weight. Then he stands in the middle of it and gestures for you to approach. “Let’s get goin’, sugar.”

You take Willis’ hands when he reaches for you and let him help you into the jon boat. When you stumble over a bench seat, he steadies you with a hand on your waist, familiar but in no way erotic; not for you, at least. Still, from where he is standing on the lakeshore with the tow rope, Aemond glowers venomously.

“Your turn, son,” Willis calls to him, winking. “And I promise not to get too sweet with ya.”

But Aemond doesn’t need any assistance to board the vessel. He has long limbs, good balance, and an ironclad determination not to let Willis see him falter. Aemond sits at the bow of the boat. You claim a spot in the middle. Willis takes a seat at the stern, starts the outboard motor, and guides the boat into the treacherous swampland that lurks like a stalking animal at the edges of Lake Verret.

In the bayou, the water is sluggish, currentless, thick with vivid green salvinia and duckweed. Towering bald cypress trees grow out of the opaque depths and are adorned with greyish, anemic bundles of Spanish moss like spiderwebs. Mangrove trees with their myriad of semi-submerged roots are sanctuaries for catfish, turtles, baby alligators. Larger gators—as big as the female that lives in your yard, and some up to seven or eight feet—prowl with only their nostrils and ancient yellow eyes peeking out from under the water. Great blue herons tiptoe along the shallow shoreline and stab at fish that unknowingly flit between their long skeletal legs. Cicadas shriek in the trees so loudly they almost drown out the hum of the boat’s motor. When the last of the daylight vanishes, Willis tells Aemond to turn on the spotlight mounted to the bow, and the water becomes a soupy, greenish, primordial witch’s brew beneath its glow. Aemond lights a cigarette and puffs on it as he ponders this alien corner of the world that he’s found himself in.

Willis has a number of items stowed on the flat aluminum floor of the boat, you notice now: nets, paddles in case the motor fails, bottles of water, ropes, fishing poles, flashlights, hunting knives, a few sturdy wooden walking sticks. He’s wearing his sheriff’s pistol on a belt fastened over his waders. This makes you uneasy, though you can’t recall ever seeing him use it. It seems wrong to be able to end a life with so little effort.

“Aegon!” Aemond shouts from the bow, using a flashlight to look to the sides of the boat where the spotlight’s luminescence doesn’t shine so brightly. You grab your own flashlight to help him search. “Aegon! Where are you?!”

There’s something burning in your nose and throat as you lean over the side of the boat to peer into the shadowy wilderness. Salt, you realize, but that doesn’t make any sense. Lake Verret is a freshwater lake. You turn towards where Willis is steering the boat with the rumbling gas-powered motor. “Do you smell that?”

“Yup. Sure do.”

“But…how…?”

“One of the rigs mighta hit a salt dome while they were drillin’, I figure,” Willis says. “There’s been talk for years that we got salt domes under the lake. But that don’t stop these oil companies.” He stares meaningfully at Aemond. Aemond glances back, rather abashed. “And ya know what that means. If the water turns brackish, most of the fish’ll die. And who’s got to live with that for generations to come? Not the Targaryens or the Rockefellers, that’s for sure.”

Aemond resumes shouting for his wayward eldest brother. A dark snake, perhaps six feet long, slithers down the length of the boat through the murky water. “Aegon! Aegon!”

“What did he and Viserys argue about?” you ask.

Aemond is cagy. “It’s…kind of personal.”

“Personal like he got a stripper pregnant or personal like he murdered someone in a drunken hit-and-run?”

“Neither. But closer to the first option.” Then he roars into the darkness: “Aegon!”

“Maybe the bon a rien already found his way back home,” Willis says. “Maybe—”

And then there is an echo through the bayou, faint but vaguely human, a ghost, a phantom. “Aegon!” Aemond shouts back. “Where are you?!” Willis cuts the boat engine so you can hear the reply.

Faintly, very faintly, his disembodied voice drifts out of the trees. “Over here! Help me! Quickly! Seriously, really really quickly!!”

“Keep talking!” Aemond yells. Willis is listening intently, trying to pinpoint a direction. His thick, dark eyebrows are knit together in concentration that is rare for him.

Barely audible over the screams of the cicadas: “What the fuck am I supposed to say?! Just get over here and save me!”

“We’re trying to figure out where your voice is coming from, so don’t stop talking!”

“Help me! Come help me!! Right now!! My arms are getting tired!!”

“What? What are you doing with your arms?!”

“I got him,” Willis says. He restarts the motor and steers the boat down a narrow corridor of the swamp. The path is only about ten yards wide and bordered by mangrove trees with nests of exposed, labyrinthian roots. The water is probably relatively shallow: five feet, ten feet, just deep enough for secrets. The breeze is cool and wet, almost chilly. On the shore, you spy a snapping turtle the size of a golden retriever. Its long prehistoric claws are coated with mud and green blades of marsh grass. It ogles you as if to say: What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. This is where the dinosaurs that survived the asteroid live.

“Aegon?” Aemond calls.

“Here! Over here! I can see you, I see the lights! Oh my God, I’m not gonna die! Thank you Jesus!”

Aemond laughs in relief. “I didn’t think you two knew each other.”

“Shut up and save me, you muppet!”

And then you see Aegon—the spotlight hits him, he is illuminated in a stark white glow—and your stomach plummets, your blood goes cold. In an alcove of the bayou, right where the water meets the shore, Aegon is up in a bald cypress tree. He’s about five feet off the ground and standing on top of a branch just thick enough to hold his weight. It’s too narrow to balance comfortably on; he is hugging the trunk to ensure he doesn’t fall, and a fall would be catastrophic. Sprawled on the muck surrounding the base of the tree are a plethora of alligators, all approximately ten feet in length. That’s big enough to be lethal humans. That would be big enough to kill a bear, a horse, a shark. When the spotlight shines on them, the gators begin to squirm and hiss, glaring with soulless reptilian wrath at the boat. Willis shuts off the motor, and the boat bobs placidly.

“Oh, fuck,” Aemond says.

“Yeah, exactly!” Aegon pitches back. He’s wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and tiny turquoise blue shorts. He is barefoot. “So what’s the plan?! By the way, hey, cake lady.”

“Hi, Aegon.”

Aemond says: “How the hell did you get up there?”

“I was pissed off about the dad thing and I was walking for a long time, then I realized I was probably in the wrong neighborhood for someone with two legs and no desire to get eaten. I tried to find my way back but then these pig-looking things started chasing me and I freaked out and climbed up here to hide until they left. But as the sun went down, alligators started showing up. And the more time went by, the more alligators there were. And that’s the whole story, can you get me down now?!”

Aemond asks Willis, petrified: “How do we get him down?”

Willis surveys the scene for a moment, thinking. “Alright. Here’s what I reckon. We can toss him one end of a rope and he can tie it to the branch above him, right at the base where it’s real thick. Then we’ll hold the other end of the rope, and he can kinda shimmy on down it into the boat.”

Aegon says: “But what if right before I get to the boat, when I’m like four feet above the water, an alligator jumps out and bites me?”

“They don’t usually do that,” Willis replies.

“Usually?!”

“Look, we don’t have a lot of options,” Aemond tells his brother. “We can do the rope plan now, or we can leave you here, backtrack all the way to the boat launch, get the car, get some help, and hope they magically have a better solution for you. Or you can wait up there until morning to see if the alligators leave. You pick.”

“Isn’t that the hick sheriff guy? Can’t he shoot them?”

“Gators got brains ‘bout the size of a walnut, son,” Willis says. “And if I don’t hit ‘em where it counts, I’m just gonna make them angrier. That ain’t good for any of us.”

“Okay,” Aegon concedes. “Throw me a rope.”

Willis grabs one from the bottom of the jon boat, hands an end to Aemond, and tosses the other to Aegon. It takes the eldest Targaryen boy four attempts to catch it; the rope keeps falling and smacking the hissing alligators in the face before Willis lugs it back to the boat to try again. Once he finally obtains the rope, Aegon knots it—double, triple, quadruple—around where the branch above him, just barely within reach if he stretches as far as he can, meets the massive trunk of the bald cypress tree. Willis tells Aemond: “Now ya gotta hold the rope real tight. No slack at all, or it’ll dip and he’ll end up in a gator’s lap.”

“Yeah, Aemond!” Aegon says, his voice shaky. “No slack!”

“Got it.” Aemond loops his end of the rope around his waist, makes a knot, and then grips it with both hands and tugs it until it forms a straight diagonal line from the tree to the boat.

“Ya sure you wanna do that?” Willia says softly, nodding to Aemond’s waist. “If somethin’ goes wrong and he ends up in the water, you’ll be goin’ in with him.”

“I’m sure.”

“Alrighty.” Willis grabs one of the heavy wooden walking sticks from the aluminum floor of the boat. “If a gator tries to cause a problem, I’ll whack ‘em good. Don’t let ‘em get their jaws ‘round ya, not an arm or a leg or nothin’. If they get ahold of ya, they’ll roll and rip your bones right outta the sockets.”

“Awesome,” Aegon says from the tree. “I’m so glad you told me that. Yeah. Great. Any more super helpful alligator trivia, Sasquatch?”

“Yes sir. If one chomps down on ya, poke it in the eye with your fingers. A whack to the snout or a poke to the eye is the best way outta a gator’s mouth.”

Aegon gulps and clutches the rope, steeling himself.

“What should I do?” you ask Willis. “Should I get a stick too—?”

“Nothin’. You don’t do nothin’. You just sit down right in the middle and keep the boat steady. And if your petit ami starts goin’ overboard, maybe try to snatch him. But don’t ya fall in. Ya don’t want to be in that water. If there are gators above the water, there are gators below too. I guarantee it.”

You sit in the precise middle of the boat, using your weight to reinforce the vessel’s center of gravity as Aemond and Willis stand at opposing ends. Right before Aegon begins his descent, Aemond snags your attention. He makes a motion with one hand, a slicing, a prohibition. Don’t do anything insane, he means. Don’t risk trying to drag me back into the boat if I start going over.

“Whenever ya ready, bon a rien,” Willis says. And no one else but you knows that what he’s calling Aegon is a good-for-nothing.

Aegon begins scurrying down the length of the rope, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the bobbing jon boat. He passes above the hissing gators congregating at the base of the bald cypress tree and then over the water, where there are ripples that multiply out from epicenters and flashes of movement just beneath the surface but no homicidal alligator activity. When Aegon nears the boat, Willis seizes him and helps him into it; and then Aegon ruptures into hysterical giggles.

“I almost died, can you believe that?” he asks Aemond, who is untying the rope from his waist and beaming, the first real smile you’ve seen from him tonight. “Because I ran away from Viserys?! What an idiotic way to go. I’ll never let that bastard convince me to off myself. I gotta outlive him. I gotta do Jello shots on that motherfucker’s grave someday.”

“Yeah, you do,” Aemond agrees, squeezing Aegon’s shoulder.

“Goddammit,” Willis grumbles. He’s using his walking stick to jab at the water near the rear of the boat. “We’re hooked on a mangrove root or something.”

“Do you need help?” Aemond asks, headed towards him.

“Yes sir, if you’d be so kind. I don’t…I can’t see…what the hell is it stuck to?”

“The motor…? The blades of the motor?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re right. Yup. There it is. We musta drifted into it while we were preoccupied. Okay, we gotta push the boat off the root and then we can get movin’ again. Grab a stick, let’s start pushin’.”

“Should I get a stick too?” Aegon says, joining them. “I can hit stuff with sticks. I really want to get out of here…”

There’s a bit of a commotion at the back of the boat as the men try to propel it away from the mangrove tree. Willis is complaining that the water is too deep to touch the bottom with his stick. Aemond’s stick keeps slipping off the mangrove roots when he tries to get leverage. You aren’t sure what Aegon is contributing, if anything. The boat has begun to rock.

You look to the tree where Aegon had been imprisoned. The alligators are fully awake now; they are headed into the water and disappearing there, unseen, unheard, and yet all around you.

“I think we need to go now,” you say, but no one is listening to you. They’re still wrestling with the mangrove root. You rise, taking a few steps to the left to offset the boat’s listing towards the right. “Guys, we need to—”

The boat is freed from its organic jailor and lurches sharply towards the left. As the men cheer triumphantly—completely unaware of what’s happening—you are jolted off your feet and tumble backwards over the side of the boat.

The shock of hitting the water stuns you. It is cold and impossibly dark; when you open your eyes to try to find the surface, the boat, you can’t see anything. You paddle blindly. Something brushes your leg, and you scream bubbles of mute terror. You can’t breathe, you can’t think, you are picturing those ten-foot gators slinking into the water that you’re now thrashing wildly through. You swim towards what you think is the surface and strike unyielding metal—the underbelly of the boat—hard enough to put stars in your skull like the flashes of lightning bugs. You get turned around and don’t know where you are again. Something glides past your arm, and you gasp before remembering that there’s no air. Dark water—salt and silt and decomposition—surges into your lungs, your stomach, sinking you like an anchor from within. There is a whirlpool of motion around you and muffled shouting. Then something closes around your wrist.

The eyes! you think frantically. I have to poke out its eyes!

But the vice around your flesh has no teeth. It’s not a reptilian jaw, you realize now, but a human hand. It leads you and you obey.

When you break the surface, you cough bayou water from your throat and blink it out of your eyes. Willis is leaning over the side of the boat and stabbing at gators with his stick, shrieking at them in French. One lunges at him from the water, jaws snapping. Willis whips the pistol off his belt, aims it squarely between the creature’s eyes, and fires. The boom is deafening; the bleeding gator sinks into the water. Aegon is kneeling in the boat and offering his arms to help you climb up.

You look beside you. Aemond is barely keeping his head above water. “Go!” he orders you. “Get in the boat!”

With Aegon’s help, you heave yourself over the side and collapse to the aluminum floor, lungs aching, skull pounding, heart thudding mercilessly, soaked to the skin. Then you force yourself to your hands and knees to see where Aemond is.

“Aemond?!” Aegon is yelling. “Aemond, where are you?!”

He’s gone; you don’t see him in the water. You try to scream for him too, but the water still in your throat strangles you. Your hands close around the edge of the boat, and Willis grabs your raincoat to yank you backwards. “Other side!” says, pointing. “We’re gonna capsize, we need weight on the other side, go there!”

You scramble to the opposite end of the boat, sobbing now, still hacking up muddy water. Where’s Aemond?? Where is he??

Both Willis and Aegon are grasping for something. They’re shouting and stabbing into the water with their walking sticks. And then they’re hauling him into the boat: Aemond, blood pouring down the left side of his face, a gash by his temple, another on his forehead; something bit him or clawed him. He’s wearing only his jeans and a white tank top; he ripped off his Marlboro jacket before diving in after you. You don’t see his Adidas sneakers anywhere. They must have been kicked off in the water. His glass eye has been knocked out and lost in the muck. What’s left in its place is a void, gaping, pink; it’s difficult to look at, you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t. It has the visceral, gory quality of organs never meant to be seen. His fingertips go to the socket to feel for his prosthetic. When he confirms it isn’t there, he covers his face with his hands and moans.

He saved me. He jumped in after me.

You crawl to him. “Aemond—”

“No!” He pushes you away, and you see that there’s blood and ancient silt from the bayou in his empty eye socket. It will have to be cleaned out. Willis watches, astonished, bewildered. For once, he is at a loss for words.

“Aemond, please…” You’d do anything to help him. You don’t know how to help him.

He saved me.

Aegon reaches for Aemond. “Hey, hey. It’s not that bad. Hey…” He drops to his knees, presses his forehead against Aemond’s, stains himself with his brother’s blood. And when Aemond tries to pull away, Aegon doesn’t let him; he’s got his fingers tangled in Aemond’s wet hair. “Thank you for saving me. I’m always almost getting myself killed and you’re always saving me. What would I do without you, huh? None of us would be okay without you. Thank you, Aemond. You hear me? You’re not gonna get this again anytime soon, so listen up. Thank you. Thank you.”

“I’m just so—”

“I know.”

“I hate that I’m like this.”

“It’s not a big deal. You’ll order a new one.”

“You know what he’s going to say.”

“Fuck him. Why do you care what he thinks? Because you think he’s the one who gets to decide what you’re worth? He isn’t. He’s not qualified.”

Aemond nods, but he doesn’t seem to be convinced. He still doesn’t look at you. He turns so the left side of his face—bloodied, eyeless—is angled towards the water and out of your view. Willis goes to the motor, starts it, and begins guiding the boat back towards the launch where he parked his Plymouth Gran Fury.

Aegon glances over at you. “You okay, cake lady?”

“Yeah.” But your voice shakes. The rest of you is shaking too; now that the adrenaline is wearing off, you can feel that you’re shivering in your wet clothes.

“Put it on,” Aemond says softly, and at first you don’t understand. Then you see that he’s pointing to his Marlboro jacket, left hurriedly flung on the floor of the boat. You unzip your dripping raincoat and don Aemond’s Marlboro jacket instead. It smells like him: smoke, cologne, effort, secrets.

“Thank you,” you tell him, wanting to say more. Aemond doesn’t answer. He stares into the murky water, greenish under the glare of the spotlight, and says nothing to anyone all the way back to the boat launch. Wordlessly, he helps Willis re-hitch the jon boat to the trailer. He remembers the steps. He’s a fast learner. The blood on his face is drying; his right eye won’t allow itself to look at you. The only sound on the drive to the Targaryens’ mansion is the radio of the Plymouth Gran Fury, which Willis turns up to cover the silence: In A Big Country.

At the end of the cobblestone driveway, lights are on in the vast house called The Last Desire. Everyone gets out of the car. Willis shakes a rather puzzled Aegon’s hand, then turns to Aemond, who ignores him. Willis chuckles, more curious than offended.

“So ya are the man who’s been givin’ her that satisfied look. I knew it. Yes, I knew what I saw. What’s your secret, son? Ya must really know your way around a woman if ya got her so mad about ya with a face like that. Ya look like the Rougarou got ahold of ya—”

Aemond grabs Willis by his hoodie, yanks him off his feet, jacks him up against the side of the sheriff’s vehicle. Immediately, you and Aegon are shouting and trying to break them apart.

You plead: “Aemond, don’t!”

“Aemond, he’s got a gun!” Aegon screeches.

Fortunately, Willis isn’t grappling for his pistol. He holds both palms in the air, open and empty, like he’s surrendering; but there’s still a smile on his face. Aemond doesn’t act like he’s heard anyone. He leans in close to Willis, his voice low and dark and snarling, his sole blue eye glinting. “You had so much in your filthy fucking hands and you just threw it away.” Then he slams Willis against the car one more time, tears away from him, and strides up the porch steps and into the house.

Aegon hurries after him, casting you a quick glance and a beckoning wave. It’s an invitation. You coming? Aegon mouths, and then vanishes inside.

Willis peers up at the house: stained glass windows, immense white columns. You don’t see any signs of Vhagar the Great Dane. Willis speaks calmly and without looking at you. “I think he’s in love with you, sugar.”

Improbable. Impossible. If he was, he couldn’t marry someone else. “He’s not.”

Now Willis’ eyes flick to you. “All I’m sayin’ is that I’ve been fishin’ on that lake since as long as I can remember, day, night, sun, storms, and nothin’ on earth would have gotten me to jump into that water. Not even Heather Locklear herself.”

“Just go, Willis,” you say, exhausted, heartsick. “Thank you for what you did tonight. But please go now.”

“How ya gonna get home?”

“I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me.”

“Of that, I am incapable,” Willis drawls. Then he climbs into his Plymouth Gran Fury and is gone. You sprint up the porch steps in your soggy sneakers, searching for Aemond.

In the white-and-gold foyer, Viserys is just arriving. He struts across the marble floor until he is close enough to his two oldest sons to embrace them, to hit them, to extract their teeth with his knuckles. The others pour through the doorways—Alicent, Criston, Helaena, Daeron, Otto—but while they gape in horror and fascination, they don’t speak in anything more than murmurs amongst themselves. Viserys steals only a glimpse of Aegon, swift and disinterested, then examines Aemond: wet clothes, no shoes, grime and blood, dazed fury. When his cool, pale gaze reaches Aemond’s empty eye socket, Viserys flinches and looks away.

“So you lost another prosthetic,” is all he says. His face twists into a grimace. And you expect Aemond to do something, to jab back, but he doesn’t. He’s frozen, he’s paralyzed. His right eye is misty. He’s biting his lips so they don’t tremble. And suddenly you hate Viserys Targaryen, you hate him more than you can imagine hating anyone. You think that you could watch his entrails unspooled from his body without feeling a thing. The Targaryen family patriarch hasn’t spoken to you; you don’t register to him at all. You might as well be an oriental vase or a house plant.

“You’re the one who did it, Viserys,” Aegon says, stepping in front of Aemond seething and sharp like a blade. “You remember that part? I do. I remember. The North Sea, 1968. I remember him trotting around after you, always so desperate to prove himself, always doing anything you asked, anything you could dream up, worshipping you like you were God. And where were you when he was getting his eye socket debrided at Moorfields Hospital? In fact, where were you when he got his hands caught in a winch when he was eleven? Where were you when he fell off a pipe deck and broke six ribs because one of your idiot employees forgot to close a safety gate and he couldn’t see it? Where were you then? Where are you now?”

Viserys scowls down at him—revolted, repelled—but he doesn’t reply. He feels no instinct to defend himself. He is unable to internalize shame; it rolls off him like raindrops.

“You’d love me so much if I was dead,” Aegon says, grinning, baring his teeth like an animal. “How sick is that? You can love bones in a box, but not someone standing right in front of you. You love Aemma, a ghost. You love Baelon, and you never even knew him. You’ve got nothing for me. That’s fine, I don’t care, I’ll be alright without you.” He points to Aemond. “But you’ve got nothing for him either, and he’s everything you always wanted. You’re disgusting, you’re broken. You belong in a box too. The part of you that was human is gone. I don’t give a fuck about what’s left.”

Aegon shoves Viserys, hard, and then storms past him. As he crosses into the kitchen, Helaena grabs for his wrist. You can hear her whisper: “What the hell happened?!”

Then Aegon remembers one last thing. He whirls around and bellows at Viserys, his voice reverberating off the vaulted ceilings: “And I’m not getting my vasectomy reversed! You can’t make me! It’s bioethics! I asked the lawyer!” He stomps off and disappears, Helaena in tow.

Alicent shoots Viserys a hateful glare and then flees from the foyer, her long auburn ringlets streaming out behind her. Viserys goes in the opposite direction. Daeron and Otto share an awkward glance and then depart as well. Only you, Criston, and Aemond remain in the room, surrounded by treasures that might as well be handfuls of earth, flour, swamp water, salt.

Cautiously, Criston lays a hand on Aemond’s shoulder, on his right side where he can see it. “Aemond…”

“Don’t touch me,” Aemond says as he wrenches away. He leaves like a hurricane, like a flood, receding until there remains only wreckage and memory.

Criston sighs deeply, and then he asks you: “Do you need a ride home?”

You don’t respond. You haven’t decided how to yet. You stare at the place where Aemond stood, a void like a star that died out. Do I follow him upstairs? you think.

Do I?

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond one eye #aemond x reader #aemond fanfiction #aemond

[looneyleyle]

waves ~ f. odair

synopsis: a look into the healing mind of a tortured champion

warnings: angsty, hunger-games typical trauma, some hurt and comfort, mentioned forced prostitution

words: 1916

first person pov

waves.

that was what the doctors told me to focus on. well, they told me to focus on something calming. something soothing that i could draw upon from my life before the capitol, before the games, before the trauma.

so, i thought of waves. not the big flashy ones far out on the horizon. i thought of the small ones that ripple just barely onto the sand line at night. the ones that would lightly wash over my bare feet during my nightly strolls with finnick.

finnick. another constant from my life, but not before the trauma. we were raised in the same district, but i didn't know him before the games. he would always be out in the water, spearing fish and weaving baskets, whereas i sat in the shop, drying up ocean plants and grinding up chunks of sea salt. i knew of him during his games, of course, but i never met him until i was reaped myself. it was a couple of years after him, five to be exact. my family was one of the poorer ones of the district. our shop didn't bring in much money, as most families collected and made their own herbs and spices from their time in the water. we mainly sold to the older folks who couldn't go out themselves, or when families needed something in a pinch. that was why i had my name in so many times. it was my last year of being eligible for the games, so i applied for a tesserae for each of my family members. rarely anyone else in the district applied for it, but there were a few other kids who did the same, coming from the same poorer part of the district as i did.

and so, as fate had it, i was reaped for the seventieth hunger games, and came to know the capitol's darling, finnick. he was a charming boy, everyone in panem knew that. by the time of my games, he had sprouted into quite a handsome young man, at the ripe age of 19. i was only a woman, of course i recognized it. in fact, i savored it. i knew i had no skills to win the games, i might as well drink in the sights before the end.

miraculously, i survived my games. survived was... a word you could use, i guess. the neverending trauma, the waking up in cold sweat, the sound of screams ringing in your ears never feels like "surviving", but that's what it could technically be called.

this is the part where i tell you that finnick was there to comfort and guide me through these times, except it's not. in fact, something in my games set him off so badly that he hid himself from me. during my victory tour, he locked himself up in his room, only showing his face during the speeches. instead, mags comforted me, being the wonderful woman she is. she waved off finnick's behavior with a sad glint in her kind eyes whenever i brought it up.

instead, it was me who comforted him. i was sitting in my room in the capitol, waiting for the party the following day at snow's mansion, when i heard a loud thunk outside of my door. when i opened it, i saw finnick, leaned up against the wall, in a daze. i immediately ushered him in, his body moving lethargically through the apartment. he all but fell onto the couch, eyes dragging along the surroundings until they finally honed in on me. when he locked eyes with me, his expression faltered, and his eyes began to water. i didn't know what was going on, the ever so cocky and charismatic man was in my victory tour apartment, almost sobbing.

"i won't let them take you, i won't let them." was all he was able to say. he muttered it over and over again, i started to seriously worry about my safety. who was 'they', and what did they want with me?

he later explained the predicament, how the capitol would take "desirable" victors and sell them to the highest bidder for the night. he told me about his 'friend' who had gone through it, but even as the word 'friend' left his lips, he knew that i saw right through him.

when my victory tour officially ended, i returned to district four with a new house and all the riches in panem. i offered my parents and sister to live with me, but they insisted on staying in the shop. they wouldn't take the money i got from the games either, but i managed to pay off a fair few of their bills before they could realize it each month.

so, i was the sole occupant of an overly extravagant house, no need to work, no need to fish, no need to lift a finger. my job was to sit there on the couch and rot away.

after one of his particularly long stays at the capitol, finnick and i found ourselves in a very similar situation to before: him, leaning on my door, broken, looking for some form of real human connection. i, of course, let him in, and just sat there and talked with him. he began to get antsy, pacing my living room. it was still fairly warm outside, so i decided to take him on a nice, calming, late-night walk on the beach. we let the little waves nip at our feet as we talked about small things, nothing too serious. it felt like everything in our lives were entirely too serious, and a break was much appreciated.

this became our routine. every time finnick got back from the capitol, he would show up on my doorstep, and we would take a long walk on the beach. finnick once told me that it was the only way he could get through those stays there, the thought that he would soon be walking among the waves with me.

waves.

when finnick got reaped for the quarter quell, it felt like the air was knocked out of me. it was finnick and mags, and while i stepped forward to volunteer, i was held back by one of the other victors. finnick had talked to me about it a few nights before, lying in bed with me. he made me promise that if one of us was reaped, the other wouldn't volunteer. it would do us no use if we were both in there. there was no chance of the capitol allowing two victors to make it out of the games alive again, not after the chaos that followed katniss and peeta's victory.

as soon as finnick was transported off to the capitol, i locked myself in my house. my bedsheets still smelled like him, and i bunched them up in my hands and cried into them.

i battled with myself, wondering if i should even watch the games. on one hand, i'd know for a fact if he was alive. on the other, i don't think i could bear the sights of him being maimed, mauled, or mutilated. ultimately, to keep my peace of mind, i decided against watching the games. one of the other victors watching was to inform me if he died, and nothing else. i instead spent my days weaving, something finnick taught me over the years. it was his way of focusing his mind, calming the thoughts. when i weaved, it was like he was there right behind me, arms wrapped around my torso as he whispered into my hair the directions.

i didn't know how many days into the games it was, but one day, at some late hour of the night, i heard knocking at my door. my stomach dropped. i could only assume the worst, that someone was here to tell me that finnick had died. i rushed down the stairs and swung open the door, only to be met by a mob of peacekeepers who violently dragged me out of the house and knocked me unconcious.

i don't remember much of what happened to me whilst in the capitol, and the doctors say that's good. they don't want me dwelling on whatever torture they might have put me through. but it freaked me out. according to the doctors, i was there for months. months of my life were just casually blank in my memory, and that freaked me the fuck out. this would be the point where i would start hyperventilating, and the doctors would tell me to focus on the waves.

waves.

the small waves that would hit the sand back at home. the waves of golden hair resting on my chest when i would wake up in my house in victory village. the now bronzer waves that i would see during my daily visitor hours. the lack of sunshine in thirteen really paled out finnick's appearance, though i've been told it was worse when he knew i was still in the capitol. they knew i was precious to him, they knew taking me would be the ultimate revenge towards him. as to how they knew about me and finnick, i had no clue. we weren't officially anything, though i suppose it was a bit incriminating when he moved over half of his belongings to my house a year or so after my games. after all, snow had eyes everywhere.

after a month or so in the medward of district 13, i was finally cleared to roam around on my own, provided that i came in for weekly check-ins. as soon as the words left the doctor's lips, finnick was at the door to my room, arm poised to help steady myself as we walked around. the doctors suggested that we head down to the cafeteria to get me socialized, but finnick seemed to have other plans. i didn't know my way around thirteen, but i knew that a latch in the ceiling certainly could not be the way into the cafe. instead, it took us outside. it was night out, and much colder than the nights in four ever were. finnick simply looked back at me, hand extended towards me with a question lingering in his sea green eyes. i took his hand with no hesitation, letting him pull me up and into the grass. the fresh air filled my lungs, after months of being locked up in stuffy rooms, both in the capitol and in thirteen. we walked in silence, me taking everything in, finnick's hand never leaving mine. eventually, i felt the texture of the ground beneath me change. looking down, i watched as my feet were swallowed by sand. my eyes quickly surveyed the area around us, and quickly spotted a calm pond fed by a small stream. the stream caused the slightest of ripples in the water, which just barely made it to the sand.

"it isn't anything like four, but it's the closest we have here. i would come out here almost every night while you were in the capitol, right there, hoping that i would get to take you here sometime, or better yet, to take you back to four." he told me. i looked up at him, my body aflame from his words. my heart was heavy, knowing how much he suffered while i was there, but knowing that we were here, right now, helped wash away the pain, like the waves hitting the sand.

#finnick odair #finnick x reader #finnick x oc #hunger games #mockingjay #fanfic

[eunaithne]

House of Cards - K. Scaramouche

synopsis: Married to the house of Kamisato truly bears a balance of advantages and disadvantages, after being accused of attempted murder you found yourself captive of a short-tempered harbinger.

note: mentions of unrequited love, cheating, abusive society, violence, and more

also ayato is out-of-character only for the fsnfic, please note that this is a work of fiction and his behavior is not what he really is in-game. Thank you!

Prologue: Bitter Vows

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𖥻 Kamisato estate

As dawn hits the island of Narukami, townspeople all gathered and talked amongst themselves. Chatter in every corner can be heard in the island as the new inaugurated head of the Kamisato Clan was announced to be wed. Fabrics and fast footsteps of servants is heared in the Estate of Kamisato as everyone was busy preparing the wedding of their master; Kamisato Ayato. He is to be wed to the Fukuoka Clan's heiress — Fukuoka Y/n.

The folks all wondered why he would choose to take a girl from a clan who's experiencing bankruptcy as his bride when he can choose all different girls from more established ones to strengthen his hold on his own.

Yet, he only smiled when the question is shot at a table. To those who hear it, it's a love story they all read about from the books in Yae Publishing House, fables and flowery words thrown at each other.

But in reality these are just bitter vows, this marriage only rubs salt to his injury. He can't marry the girl he truly loved. He was forced to take on his father's legacy for his sister's sake and those who depend on the Kamisato. Words do really mean nothing when you don't understand it, perhaps it's like telling someone "I hate you" in a language they don't understand which similarly can draw a silver lining between hate and love. His bride, his marriage, the vows — they are all meaningless. He thought.

With their parents passing away the weight of carrying a whole clan downed on his shoulders. From a distance, he could only watch the the servants busying themselves in dressing up his bride with expensive silks with golden embroidery that compliments her complexion as a noble daughter. In contrast to his perplexion, she wore a smile; a genuine one, and he knew it's because she is happy to be married to him. After all, when different clans heard about his intent on marrying someone they all sent him a letter endorsing their own daughters like its red light district. But he chose the Fukuoka Clan instead knowing they are less ambitious than most of the clans.

Alas, the hour of the ceremony has finally come. He snapped away from his thoughts and smiled showing his degree of status alongside with posture. He took her hands, she wasn't nervous at all instead her squeezed his hands hoping it will calm him down, that's when he realized how fumbling his fingers are.

The wedding was smooth, everyone congratulated the newly wed. Even though he tried to smile in the crowd, his eyes looked lonely and in agony. He didn't realize his — now spouse was looking at him in her peripheral view the whole time while greetings the guests. Her smile from earlier dropped slightly when she saw him staring at a particular person from a distance. Without words or evidence she knew exactly who it was. Eyes spoke louder than mouths will ever do anyways. She loosened her grip on his arm and promptly excused herself to have a chat with her parents.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𖥻

Once they arrived back at the estate, she was greeted by his cold attitude. He didn't mean to behave like this but his emotions, his heart was in agony seeing that the girl he so longed for wasn't the one he married. After all, what would society say if he were to marry a commoner? Some officials still insist that he's just a boy without any knowledge on how to handle the Kamisato Clan and marrying someone who's a shrine maiden won't help a bit on the situation.

"We shall leave seperate lives, I won't meddle yours and you won't meddle mines." He spoke.

Before she could answer he left the room, guilt on his eyes but it washed away as fast as it came. So she sat on the bed, still in her wedding gown and looked down. She've admired him for so long now, she didn't know if he could still remember how he helped her up when other kids laughed at her. Perhaps a part of his inner child does but they don't really last do they? She sighed, wiping a tear from her cheek and she silently waited for the servants to knock on the door.

Rushing servants came in to help her removed the balloon of a gown and she put on a fake smile so no one would notice her shoulder of sadness. Laying down the bed she wondered how long will this type of arrangement last?

"If; the time comes he doesn't learn how to love me. Then, the lantern shall blow away with the wind." She spoke silently, looking out the window in preparation for how many years and nights can she handle being alone. Day after day she tried and tried to make him open up, although he makes sure to give her attention only when his sister - Ayaka is around so she won't feel anything out of order, she's still young after all. Soon, the people started to adapt to their new first lady at the manor. Y/n tries to make her husband be more responsive even for daily questions. When she did managed to take a response out of him, feels relieving and the goals achieved.

Smooth, life was smooth. A year, after a year, after another year, and a new year have passed. They developed a respectful relationship. All was well. But, life is boring isn't it if everything runs smoothly, conflict will arrive. It's inevitable.

Her hair is straight and like crystal, she wore a pink headress that compliments her maiden outfit. Y/n could only stare at the girl in question as the news of her residing at the estate befell. Ayato never mentioned this when she asked, and yet, it's as if all the efforts washed away like it was nothing in the first place. Perhaps, she thought, he can't really manage to call this as his home without her. Afterall, in their story, she's just a side character that hindered in the way of someone else's love story.

"Pleasure to meet you, Lady Y/n." The maiden greeted and she bowed her head as well to show respect.

"Welcome to the estate, although Ayato has never mentioned anything—." She was cuttee of by ayato who cleared his throat.

"She will be staying here for good, please mind your attitude when talking to her." He warned, although it's spoken in a flat tone, the idea was there 'don't make her upset' that's what it says.

Days later, it's like she's an invisible individual on the estate, her servants, all catered for the girl her husband took into their estate without even thinking of her. She was left with her personal maid; Even the officials won't acknowledge her anymore. Now that his seat as the head commisioner is sealed, no one would dare question their relationship.

"Did you hear that? The Lord Kamisato just took home the love of his life!" A fan draped over the woman's mouth as she talks alongside her friends.

"Mhm! I heared that he never really loved her wife, can you believe it? It's a shame we all thought they are in love with each other." Another voice also exclamed as she walked on the streets to purchase daifuku because she's craving it.

"Are you okay m'lady?" Chūso, her personal maid asked her. She just nodded in response.

"I'm fine, Chūso. You should not worry about me. Your mother is still sick, why don't you go visit her at Kondu Village for a while? I won't mind." She smiled, tapping Chūso's palm.

"Really!? M'lady you're too kind!" She exclaimed squeezing back her lady's palm back while her other hand hold's the umbrella.

"Yes, I'm thinking about, leaving Narukami for a while.. to think about something. It's been 5 years, yet you're the only one who notices my shortcomings and my problems, the one who cares for what I feel. So you deserved it." Y/n smiled at her and Chūso smiled back. They continued chatting and soon they are back at the estate.

The maids are in rush, and some of the officials are there as well. Y/n looked around for what is happening and yet like invisible wall, no one answered. Ayato looked like he could murder anyone at the moment and the elders looked at her with disappointment.

"Ayato? What seems to be the prob—"

Yet she was caught of guard when he grabbed her tightly.

"Ayato! It hurts!" She was trying to make him let go but he wouldn't budge.

"Why did you do it?" He asked her, voice dropping and furious. "Did what? I didn't do anything! Let go of my wrist—!"

"Don't lie to me! The servants saw you putting something on Maya's drink! Couldn't you think?! She could've died from what you did! She and my child!" He shouted at her face. She flinched, so all this time, that's why he suddenly brought her here, that's why all the maids are treating her like she's fragile glass. All this time. Y/n, the fool with the slowest and greatest heart. First to be blamed, last to know.

"What.. But! I didn't put anything in her drink! I didn't even know she was pregnant! Why would I even do such thing!" She also shouted back.

"You don't know? Oh I know! Perhaps because you are afraid your little clan will be in shambles once Mr. Kamisato decided to divorce you. Now you have to be a desperate little cunt to put pills to kill the baby on lady Maya's stomach!"

One of the elders pointed out their finger at her, she shook her head and told them that she has nothing to do with it but no one listens.

"Don't lie, a lot of servants saw you! Go on, ask them yourself." A chief told her.

She turned to the servants and asked them lowly. "Did you.. saw me? Trying to kill Maya?" She spoke slowly.

They all nodded in response, and her shoulders fell as well as tears beginning to form in her eyes. "Even if that's not the truth.. huh? I guess.. I wasn't generous enough? Or, you can feel that Ayato never favors me, and you decided to side the latter who received more attention?" Y/n told them. Wiping her tears and they all looked down on the floor. If the walls of the estate could speak, it could tell how much kind she was with them and yet, with a little bribery, they all turned their backs.

"I see. To think I was still in the wrong position when my husband got someone else pregnant wasn't an issue makes me think, I wasted 5 years for treating people nicely." That's all what she said, then the guards dragged her out the estate for good. She knew this would happen, but she didn't expect that they would accuse her of murder. That's something she would never do.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ៹ 𖥻 Chinju Forest

She sat down on one of the rakan statue, looking back at her life, everything faded. She laughed bitterly

"I guess, this what happens to those who hope, is this my sin? Taking someone else's place in that wedding, taking someone's heart that doesn't belong to me?" She asked, after minutes the exhaustion downed on her and she fainted in the forest. Amidst the blackness, she could hear footsteps and a soft jinggle of bells.

Kami-sama, have you decided to send someone to properly bury my body?..

━━━━━━ ៹ 𖥻 CUT !

- this is my first fanfic lmao 🥹 idk if the things I said made sense but hopefully it does 😭. I've been wanting to make a fanfic about this because I don't see one that's why here I am! Please don't be afraid to correct my grammar, I'm more than happy to receive opinions since this is my first. The blog is a little plain, I'll try to make more designs in the future :>>

signing out!

#wanderer smut #kamisato ayato #genshin impact #scaramouche smut #scaramouche

[wannabe-cartoonist-blog]

Last Game hair style fixes, in order of who needed it most.

I've never liked the canon hair styles in Last Game. They're either hideous, or just simply don't fit the characters/style of the main series. I get its a (mostly different) art department and meant to age the characters up, but most of the time, they simply just look off-model to me. I know I'm not the only one who's got issues with the hairstyles in this movie too, so I did my best to fix them up and give them styles that I personally think suite them. Originals below cut as well as my explanations! Important to note, these are my preferences/headcanons for them so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt.

**Akashi isn't here, because believe it or not, I actually think his hair looks the best out of everyone in LG.

I wouldn't change it. I like to draw him with neater hair/his bangs pushed out of his face when I age him up, but for the summer after the Winter Cup - when LG takes place - the canon hair is exactly the sort of style I think he would/should have. I like the allegory that the rough chop is something he did when his mental health wasn't good, so now as his mental scars heal, it's growing back out. ❤️

Midorima

A neater/shorter hairstyle does fit Mido's character/personality, but the LG hair simply just doesn't look like the same hair type we see in the main series. Mido's hair has got the slightest wave to it (which I tend to over-exaggerate whenever I draw him).

With this in mind, I went and gave his hair some more body/volume by extending the sides. (You'll see a lack of volume/body is the key issue with the other LG hairs as well).

Murasakibara

Mura's hair in this movie looks so so flat and greasy. Now I didn't do the best job fixing it up, but this is basically how you'd go about doing it; just add more flowy strands. His hair is pretty pin-strait in canon, but there's lots of flowing strands, even when he's not moving much, which give it a clean-look.

When it's all just one limp form, like the movie does, it appears unclean as opposed to just long and sleek.

Momoi

Another victim of the lack of body/volume. The style they gave her is also simply bad, like she just took a pair of scissors and cut in a straight line. There isn't even really any style to it. Its kinda just laying there on her head, which is not what her hair usually looks like in the main series. There's always strands/some lift to it. Also Momoi has always had some sort of bangs/framing pieces in her face, so for her whole forehead to be out was just a tiny bit jarring.

I think the style I came up with is a little more mature while still having personality and life to it. Plus, LG takes place in the summer, so a shorter hair style would be more comfortable in the heat.

Kise

Kise I don't think I did a good job of fixing to my liking either. It was hard to edit it without making it look bad in general, because I really don't think this choppy sort of style suites him like at all, so it was too much to change. Now his hair is one of the better drawn ones in this movie for sure, but it feels more like a Kagami hairstyle than a Kise one to me. I just don't think his modeling agency would let him have such a choppy, hard-to-style haircut. I also think a more polished look fits his handsome, princely sort of appeal that makes him popular with girls.

Aomine

Alright, now its time for me to be playful and silly with some out-there hair styles. Aomine (and Kagami's hair) in Last Game I don't mind. After Akashi, I would say Aomine looks the best. BUT. We have NEVER seen Aomine with long hair, even in flashbacks when he's a child.

So for him to finally decide to grow out his hair - in the SUMMER HEAT - just feels like a weird move to me. Feels out of character. He strikes me as someone who likes his hair out of his face when he plays ball and just wants to roll out of bed and not worry about brushing/styling it or anything. The animators also aren't consistent in this movie and sometimes his hair looks particularly long in the front and back, which again, I don't think he'd like. This picture below and the ones above are from the same movie/take place within like a week of each other, yet look so different.

He looks cute and it definitely gives him a more youthful look; which is a weird choice, because they want to age up everyone else but Aomine in this movie. So, I think a fade would really suite him (I don't think I drew it that well tho). Keeps his hair short and out of his face but also ages him up a little more with a mature style.

Kagami

Alright, Kagami's look here is pure indulgence. @knbposting said "Kagami with a mullet" and I haven't stopped thinking about it. Sue me. His LG hair isn't bad and makes sense for his character and the time of year. But its just sorta plain. Honestly, Kise's hair style in this movie would probably suite Kagami more. I always liked how in the main series, Kagami's hair is a little scruffy in the back so I really wanted to lean into that.

Is a mullet suitable for the summer heat/something he'd like? Well, maybe not but I think it ages him up while also seeming like something he'd get at some point in his life. So here we are. I will end this with saying this is probably the longest he'd ever let his hair get.

Kuroko

Finally, we have Kuroko, whose hair I've barely changed. Now, the animators/artists do a really bad job of keeping his face on-model (eyes too beady, features too sharp) but that's a whole 'nother issue, and I managed to find a scene where they kept him on-model lol. I think a shorter, neat style is good for the summer and suites him, but a main feature of all the hair throughout the main series is the spikes/strands of hair on nearly every character - Kuroko especially - so I just added a tiny bit more here.

And that's the end! If you read all the way to here, thanks for coming to my insane-person rant.

#kuroko no basket #kuroko's basketball #knb last game #kagami taiga #kuroko tetsuya #aomine daiki #kise ryōta #akashi seijuro #akashi seijurou #midorima shintaro #midorima shintarou #murasakibara atsushi #momoi satsuki #kise ryouta #generation of miracles #kiseki no sedai #wannabeartw0w #wannabespeaks

[ot3]

I recently played the trilogy and haven't made it to the forth game yet (I don't know if I should because no Maya and I feel bad for him for losing his badge), could you please tell me what happens with Phoenix and alcoholism? (only if you feel like it)

definitely at least give aa4 a chance! its not for everyone but imo its got a ton of merit

gonna try and make this shortish because im not feeling super hot today and also because ive already said a lot of this. but essentially in AA4 there are bottles of what very heavily looks like wine but in both the english and japanese are referred to as bottles of grape juice

In AA4, stuff is pretty rough for phoenix. he's not in a great place, and he works odd hours at a russian bar/restaurant where he plays piano and poker. So he's regularly in a location where frequent exposure to alcohol is par for the course. Later on, in the game's second case, there's this interaction that occurs in the hospital when you investigate this bottle in his room.

Now, whether or not the game has any evidence for phoenix being an alcohol depends entirely on whether or not you interpret grape juice as being euphemistic for actual wine, or just a sight gag. I'm not sure how much the inclusion of alcohol boosts a game's rating.

i will say that none of the ace attorney games were M-rated until dual destinies. So it's entirely possible that they just called it 'grape juice' to avoid any sort of concern over that. however, i do remember reading that shu takumi's favorite drink is grape juice, which is why he wrote that in there, although I can't find the source for that now that i'm looking for it so take it with a grain of salt. I do think it is entirely plausible within the tone of ace attorney's humor that 'grape juice bottles that look exactly like wine and are just juice' is a gag they'd go for.

but the truth is, i kind of don't consider this debate relevant at all? you don't have to take the extreme of either interpretation. it is entirely possible that phoenix is a character with a fondness for grape juice who also struggles with alcohol. Maybe phoenix drinks wine when he's at the club and juice when he's at home.

It's a matter of public information that shu takumi drank pretty heavily while working on these games, including at the office if he worked nights or weekends, and it's also been well established that takumi based phoenix a lot on himself. so i think interpreting phoenix as a character with an addiction problem has a lot of merit. On the other hand, I do understand that that's not how some people view him, and that's totally fine. My big problem comes in when people try to act like it is impossible, ludicrous, or somehow harmful to the character's integrity to portray him as an addict.

I think when people try and 'disprove' the headcanon it's always a pretty shitty thing to do, given shu takumi's history. why can you enjoy something written by someone w/ alcohol issues but you draw the line at any of that making its way into the story, even euphemistically? yknow?

#ace attorney #worth noting in aai there is also some Grape Juice in turnabout airlines that is Very Clearly Wine as well #but that game came out after aa4 and was also not written by shu takumi so it might just be an aa4 callback

[silovsmenot]

Flowers from Ostrava | JJ Peterka

Requested by @creativewritersposts...

Maybe JJ Peterka x gf! reader. You're sad because you're for Latvia and Germany kicked their asses in the world championship. So he sends you a bunch of flowers and is cheesy to cheer you up because he can't be home?

WARNINGS: Unless you're as depressed about the LAT-GER game as we are, none at all. It's pure fluff, maybe some slightly suggestive bits but only implied if you think like I do. PAIRING: JJ Peterka x f!reader. NOTES: I didn't realise how cute this guy was until today. I might have missed some typos so please forgive me. WORD COUNT: 1165

The summer break had rolled around, and with Buffalo missing out on a playoff spot, you knew that JJ would be jetting off to Czechia for the IIHF World Championships. You tried and tried to get the time off work to go with him, but you had no luck — you’d have to watch from your home in Buffalo while he played in Ostrava.

You kissed him goodbye at the airport with promises of daily phone calls and text messages, for it would be the first big trip that he made without you since you first got together. You knew it would feel like an age as you watched his games from your couch, with only your dog to keep you company.

A few games had passed, you’d sat and watched everyone. You’d both made some playful bets on his games, those harmless ‘if i win, you do this’ sort of bets — things that you’d both pay up on when he returned. Though you were seriously down on your luck, as you’d lost them all to this point. And playful bets were turning a little more serious when it came to Latvia. They’d grown into a bit of a comfort team for you after last year, you didn’t quite know why but you did support them over the others — even Germany, much to JJ’s frustration but you both enjoyed the competition.

Just before 9am, you rolled out of bed with your dog following close behind. Still yawning, you made yourself a cup of coffee and some breakfast before taking your usual place upon the sofa with the pre-game stream just beginning. With your newest bets on the game placed the night before with JJ , you’d already sent your ‘good luck but lose please’ text to JJ, but you couldn’t help but send another teasing ‘i’ll be so mad if you win this 😉’.

As the times lined up, the smile stuck to your lips as it always did when you saw JJ on the tv. The realisation truly setting in about how you missed him already, and knowing it was another week at least until he’d be home with you.

The puck dropped as you took a large sip of the coffee, holding the mug close to your chest as you watched with your breath held. It was barely five minutes before Kahun would open the scoring, the familiar mixture of excitement and disappointment as the German celebrations began. You did not want to lose another bet and did not want to see Latvia lose either.

The first period was nearing its end, you were so sure it would end 1-0 and Latvia would come out with their heads held high still — but with Wissman’s weaving through the crimson and white jerseys, the German fans broke into celebration once more. An audible groan parting your lips.

And things only slipped further down hill as the second period began. Two German goals in quick succession, followed by JJ scoring from the right wing to rub salt in the growing wound. Your arms were crossed upon your chest, the remaining coffee had gone cold upon the nearby table. At 4-0, things looked dire for your bet and for team Latvia. Dire would become a painful loss as JJ pocketed the seventh goal for team Germany before the end of the second period, your head in your hands as you covered your eyes. Hope was gone, you’d lost your bet again.

There was a small peak of pride as Michaelis fired a shot between the posts before the horn blew for the second intermission, but you knew there was no coming back from this score line. One more German goal in the third and the game would draw to a close, the German team looked elated in comparison to the deflated Latvians. And from your couch, you pouted into your fresh cup of coffee.

Things were always silent for an hour or so after JJ’s games in Ostrava, you’d wait patiently looking at your phone for his text. And, usually, it would be a teasing statement or a winky face for you’d lost another bet.

Needless to say, he was excited to get home and for you to pay up.

You were a little confused as you heard the doorbell ring after about an hour, you’d heard nothing yet from your boyfriend and you’d been sat watching daytime rubbish on tv. Hushing at the barking of your dog, you strode to the door and opened.

Just beyond stood a young woman with a large bunch of orange and red flowers in hand — the look of confusion that had been etched upon your face dissipating immediately, for you knew who’d send flowers in those colours.

“A last-minute order from Ostrava?” The woman queried with her own look of perplexity; this certainly was not her everyday order.

With a short sigh and a nod of your head, hands accepted the large bunch with your gaze immediately caught upon the small card that rested atop the bunch. Thanking the woman, the door was closed, and you wasted no time in freeing your hands to read the card.

‘I’m very sorry that you’ve lost another bet, please don’t hate me. I love you and I miss you, your JJ xx’

You glared down at the card for a moment, but you couldn’t ignore the fluttering in your chest. Fuck, you missed him.

Almost perfectly on queue, you heard your phone ring. You didn’t speak as you answered the phone, not at first — but you could almost hear him grinning.

“Do you forgive me, Liebchen?” JJ spoke with his usual cheeky tone, and you’d be lying if you tried to say that you weren’t grinning from ear to ear. You could never stay mad at him, especially when he started with the little nicknames.

“I’m absolutely furious,” You lied, somewhat poorly and he knew it. You could hear him dramatically hiss in thought as you stifled a small giggle. “You did really well today, JJ.”

“I just wish you were here to see it; I hate being so far away for so long.” He softly whispered. And so did you, but it felt good to hear him say it. “I can’t wait to come home to you, you've got a lot of bets to pay up on.”

You rolled your eyes, playful and excited at the mere thought of him being home with you again. A soft laugh into a phone that made his lips curl even deeper into his smile. He missed that laugh everyday that he didn’t hear it.

“Just finish this tournament out, do your best. I’m proud of you, JJ.”

He went silent for a moment, a slight pinkening to his cheeks that he’d never admit to nor would you see. He could only have been happier if you were there with him in Ostrava.

“I love you too, y/n. You’re the best thing that has happened to me.”

#jj peterka #jj peterka x reader #peterka #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #nhl oneshot #nhl x reader #nhl blurb #hockey imagine #silovsmenot writes

[boreal-sea]

I studied American & British government and politics at a level, and the first thing we covered was electoral systems because they are so *so* awful.

The way I try and explain it to people who are struggling to understand FPTP is imagine a group of 10 people are deciding on a snack.

Your choices are:

Packet of ready salted crisps.

Packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

Packet of peanuts.

3 people pick ready salted crisps. 3 people pick salt and vinegar.

4 people pick the peanuts.

So 60% DONT pick peanuts, that's less than half. But EVERYONE gets peanuts. (And what if someone who voted crisps is allergic to peanuts? Tough. That's what everyone gets)

The electoral system is fucked. But if we replace the Dems with salt and vinegar, an Independent with ready salted, and Republicans with peanuts. It shows how Easy the Republicans can get a seat if you Don't vote blue.

I hope this helps people who struggle to get why not voting blue is a vote for the Republicans.

In my country (UK) the Conservatives (that's like your Republicans) don't have a majority of votes even though they have the majority of seats in Parliament.

(This doesn't take into account your absolutely fucked electoral college that doesn't make sense, sorry,,, I struggled to wrap my head around that)

Yeeeeaaaaah our electoral system is so, so fucked on LITERALLY every level, which is why it's so god damned important that we vote blue no matter who and that we don't do anything to damage people's willingness to vote blue. Republicans make sure the system is incredibly stacked against marginalized voters, because marginalized voters know that voting blue is the only way we get to cling to rights. We literally cannot afford to lose even a single blue vote.

On the bottom level, on the basis of the voters, Republicans use our system to fuck them over in many ways.

Restrictions against individual voters

Many states having difficult voter ID laws designed to prevent marginalized people from voting. These voting laws are implemented by Republicans. So there's a bunch of Democratic votes that never get cast.

Next, each state and city run by Republicans often do things like removing voting locations, making it harder for marginalized people to vote by making it harder for them to get to polling locations and making the lines in those locations longer. Marginalized people are often lower class, and it's almost impossible to get a whole day off to stand in line to vote, therefore, these people often have no choice: they can't risk their job to go vote. So there's more blue votes that never get cast.

Also, many of those states have restrictions on absentee voting, which could be a solution for folks who can't take time off to vote, but because absentee voting is made purposely difficult and confusing, it again restricts people from voting. More blue votes lost.

Those are just the harms done to individual voters by Republicans. We haven't even gotten to voting districts yet.

Voting Districts

So the way the electoral college works is that everyone's individual votes are first funneled up to voting districts, and then those districts are tallied to decide who won the state. The problem is, human beings draw those districts - and Republicans like to drawn them in very shitty ways that ensure marginalize people's votes don't count as much.

Look at this. That third diagram is what happens in states all across America. Anyone who thinks the USA works on a "one person, one vote" system is wrong. You do not directly vote - your vote is tallied as part of your district, and that total is what determines who wins the state.

And then you have what happens at the state level, because the system continues to fuck over voters.

The Electoral College

You thought it couldn't get worse? It gets worse. Each state has officials called "Electors", and they are the people who actually cast the true vote for president. Now, legally, in many states, these Electors are legally required to cast their vote for the candidate selected by the districts in the state, but in some states they technically could just vote for whoever they want. They don't, because they'd never win reelection, but still.

So, ok. How many Electors does each state get? Is it based off something logical, like population maybe? Kind of. Every state gets 1 for each Senator (so a total of 2) and then 1 for each congressional district - and the number of congressional districts a state gets is based off population.

This system, unfortunately, ends up giving more "weight" to voters from less populated states. Some people claim this is good, because it means those states will still have their opinions expressed in government. Other people note that land doesn't vote, and it's completely unfair a small number of voters get to basically override the choice of a majority of voters.

So, a candidate has to win 270 of these electoral votes to win the election. Notably, the electoral college results do not always match the "popular vote" - that's the 1:1 vote of the people. There have been several situations where the majority of individuals in the USA voted for candidate A, but because of how the electoral college works, candidate B won instead. The last two times this happened, it was Democrats who lost. Most recently, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over three million votes, but lost in the Electoral College, so we ended up with Trump.

Summary

If any of my followers are confused, I get it. But hopefully, you will also see now how incredibly stacked the system is against minority voters specifically because they're more likely to vote Democrat. Maybe now you will see that Republicans basically have to cheat at every stage of an election to win, and that if we actually had fair elections in this country based on 1:1 votes, Republicans couldn't win.

And maybe, hopefully, this will make it clear why it's so fucking dangerous to tell people to not vote for Biden. We are walking a razor thin wire across a chasm of jagged rocks, while Republicans laugh and throw fireballs at us. They don't want the system to change, because it benefits them! Every voter we successfully get to the polls is a win for us and a lose for them.

Please vote. Please vote blue. Please vote for election reform.

#uspol #us election 2024

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Welcome Home, Please Stay

Okay, so, I'm looking through my notes on the Not Everyone Knows How To Draw A Salt Line fae au story (yes, that'll be the next story I'll post a chapter for) and I got an idea. Which is a truly dangerous thing to have sometimes.

What if, the evening when Broek tells the story of the Devastation, Nyx and Whisp didn't do their escalating sleep spell? And instead of the resulting fihrie-fae drama, all of Little Galahd just... vanishes during the night?

Like, our little Whisp did not just kidnap a Bog on its own to prove something (spoiler for Salt Line, I guess?) but all this was a communal effort with the other flickerings. So what happened was the every single Will-o'-the-whisp on Galahd came and just took the people back. As you do. Not a trace of them left.

All of Insomnia wakes up the next morning to a few ten thousand people missing. Their things are still there. It looks like they just vanished into thin air literally.

Can you imagine the resulting panic and fear? What happened? Where did they go? Why did no one notice anything? Is it only the Galahdians? Did they do something? Was it the fae? Why? The Niffs?

Investigations are launched. Some Insomnians went also missing. As did children in the system and some adopted kids. (Investigation proves all those kids were of Galahdian descent. (The other Insomnians weren't targeted, but ended up being in the woring place at the wrong time.))

And

Maybe a week later every single thing that was ever made by a Galahkar or ever belonged to one, vanishes as well. There are suddenly entire empty lots where houses used to be. Art and valuables held by the Insomnian nobility go missing. Ancient relics from Lucis's conquest days just go poof.

The panic escalates.

What is happening?

Then Niflheim grows strangely quiet.

#ffxv #fae au #not everyone knows how to draw a salt line #welcome home please stay #here I go again #XD #please help #just the insomnian pov of what's happening #the fihrie took the galahkari back home #as one does #the galahkari had to convince the fihrie to go get their stuff as well #some adopted kids and those in the system are in for a shock #the fihrie know who's of galahdian descent #they can literally smell it #the poor insomnians that just got taken with #geist writes

[juliedrawz]

I saw some old posts where people addressed Héctor's flaws. I got stomach aches reading them because I think they got it totally wrong! I couldn't get it out of my mind, so here I am, putting my salt into the soup!

~

First things first, EVERYONE's got flaws! Nobody is perfect. Everyone's done and is doing mistakes. And with Héctor, we need to look very carefully, consider 1. His character and 2. His situation.

Right off the bat, what some see as flaws are actually GOOD character traits merely tending to bring trouble because the world is dark and twisted most of the time! Héctor is one of the most selfless and altruistic characters ever! He'd give everything for those he loves and this immense love also makes him reckless sometimes.

Let's beginn with the first flaw pointed out by others.

"Héctor let himself be persuaded to go on tour with Ernesto. He should have said no."

Yes, Ernesto talked Héctor into his idea, BUT, they were best friends! As close as brothers! Héctor came along because 1. He loved Ernesto and 2. He wanted to provide for his wife and daughter! Even if that meant he had to do something he was slightly uncomfortable with. Ignoring his wants to stay at home, he took the chance! He took the risk. If being away for a while meant more money and hence a better life for his family, he gladly make that jump! It is absolutely selfless but also admireble! Like, that's what a good father does! He couldn't have know how much Ernesto would change during that time, nor that he would eventually snap and get him killed. And Héctor did stand up for himself! He's not a weak, idiot who let's himself get pushed around! Most of the time he's just peace seeking and slow to anger! Which, are RIGHT traits according to God! And to me too! It might get you hurt and some people might take adventage of your kindness but what exactly is bad then? Your kindness, selflessness or those mean people? Aha, see what I'm getting at? Nobody should change their positove traits or harden their hearts just because others are in darkness! It's a whole different thing to draw lines and stand up for yourself. And Héctor does!

"His irresbonsibility"

*big sigh* Ok, there are 2 reasons mentioned to put the stamp irresponsible on Héctor's forehead and it get's me mad!

The thing about him lending things and losing them all! Well, Héctor tried desperatly to cross the flower bridge for decades! He tried everything to cross. Lending himself stuff and noz being able to return them wasn't because he's careless and irresponsible! He just couldn't bring them back! Take a look at his broken bones, his knocked out teeth, his scratches and THINK for a second! All the horrific accidents he must have gotten into. He surely aimed to bring each and every item back but they all got lost or destroyed in the process. And I don't think Héctor made an attempt to cross with it most likely failing at the back of his mind. He just went for it! Remember how he bolted forward once he was through the check? All his mind is focused on is "I need to get to and see my baby!" And before that it was "I need to get to and see my wife and baby!"

If Héctor had the chance to bring the items back, he would have! He wanted to take the Frida costume back but who forbit him to do so? The officer! (Joke's on him though because it'll be Ceci giving him hell later"

He was being irresponsible with Miguel ...

Someone said it would have been easier to just hand over Miguel to the police and have them sort it out! Well, have you seen how Miguel ran from his own family to get his way? He ran from Héctor too once he figured out Miguel had relatives around! Héctor helped Miguel first and foremost because out of desperstion! Miguel was the BIGGEST ticket for him to be able to cross, by letting him bring the photo back. But for Miguel to do so, he had to help him bring him to Ernesto. And that's what Héctor did. He tried hi best to get Miguel to Ernesto as fast as possible. Not to forget, that it was a race of life and death for both.

And Miguel is a kid! And obviously he's acting like one now and then! And Héctor paniced when Miguel ran off. Because he worried for him! If his deal wouldn't work, he would look for another way but Miguel could die! Yes, Héctor might not always make right decissions, but he is giving his best and he always means well! And we also need tp consider his condition! He knows he'll most likely not last the night, yet he still risks that and helps Miguel.

Of course we see Hèctor later on pleading with Miguel one last time that they had a deal but then in the cenote, he caves in. He's getting weaker by the second, the process of him fading has begun. And even through his pain, he is still comforting Miguel.

Him being clumsy and him lying is also often seen as one of his flaws. And while I absolutely agree, that yes, he's a huge clutz and he's both accident prone and sometimes too reckless when it comes to his own health and savety, I wouldn't call his lying a flaw in the classical way. Because, the only times we see Héctor lying in the movie is so he can get as much as a hinge closer to his goal of crossing the bridge. That's how important his daughter is to him! Lying is never good, but he lies out of desperation. (In my book, young Héctor sometimes used his catch phrase "That was a lie! I apologize for it!" as a means of his humor, and, or to calm his opposite. And Héctor is darn humorous!

Now to what I point out in my book, not necessarily flaws but things that get Héctor into trouble often

His kindness

His altruismn, selflessness

Him ignoring his own needs and wants for the wellbeing of others

His clumsiness

His recklessness

His trait to always see the good in people

His stubborness

And while most of those are wonderful character traits, as mentioned above, in a world where such personalities as Hèctor are rare, it's hard to get around.

What do you guy's think?

#pixar coco #coco 2017 #coco hector #héctor rivera

[lansplaining]

u kno on the topic of interview answers/authors notes with mxtx, I tend to take it with a huge grain of salt. Considering how I keep hearing that she once said that wangxian were the only gay characters in mdzs, yet everyone I seem to come across agrees there was nothing heterosexual about LXC and his interactions with JGY. Like which is it.

well, right. I hold the perhaps controversial opinion that authors... can be kinda wrong about their own works. and I swear I don't mean it like that post about losing custody of your characters in court-- I actually think the wangxian/xiyao thing is a really good example of what I mean.

however you feel about xiyao as a ship or the two of them as characters, there is no denying that they are set up to parallel wangxian in a lot of really key narrative ways. just taking a few broad examples:

both are pairings of a Lan brother and someone who was born in a marginal social position but has entered a place of relative outward security and respect

this position of security and respect is rapidly dismantled due to a combination of WWX/JGY's own actions and snowballing rumors and anger based in part of social prejudice, ultimately driven by an individual (JGS and NHS) who wants to see them ruined

both Lans, in defiance of social expectation, try to trust that there is a reason their partner has made the choices they made and to understand where they are coming from (LWJ over a longer span, LXC in a very compressed period in the temple)

there is a divergence, as LWJ decides he will fight and die for WWX no matter what he's done, and LXC has a moment of doubt and stabs JGY

but then they converge again, as both are pulled into a violent final confrontation/climax and make the decision to die for/with their partner, only to be prevented

both are finally left with feelings of regret and a lack of resolution, as LWJ feels like he didn't stand by WWX early enough or fight hard enough, and LXC feels he wasn't given the opportunity to really understand who JGY was or why he acted as he did

to be completely obvious about it, narrative parallels convey meaning. it tells the reader "something about these two events/sets of characters is fundamentally the same." narrative parallels have also been a very common way historically to subvert censorship when it comes to queer content: you parallel a queer person or couple and a straight couple, and let the viewer draw the lines. i'll be perfectly honest, i don't know as much about the history of this trope in China, but you can certainly see it in CQL itself, and the ways wangxian is paralleled to Yanli and Zixuan to draw attention to the fact that they are both, in fact, romantic couples.

MXTX has said this is not what she was trying to indicate! but she did put in these parallels, and a reader cannot be blamed for interpreting them as indicating something-- or for interpreting them as indicating that the fundamental sameness that the parallel points to is that both wangxian and xiyao are and were in love. maybe it was an accident, but it's a very specific, and very specifically crafted literary device that is inescapably present in the story.

#ask answered #happy valentine's day xiyao is canon

[thegreatcaptainusopp]

The Seer

Ao3 link

Summary: Usopp’s embellished stories are a core part of who he is. Everyone who knows him, who’s even met him, could tell that right away. Only the people closest to him know that that most of these stories, no matter how fantastical they seem, end up coming true. When a rival pirate crew catches wind of this fact, Usopp faces the most harrowing challenge of his life. Set pre-timeskip, right after Thriller Bark.

Prologue: A Fire Seen

It begins, like it almost always does, with a story.

It’s different this time, though. Instead of Luffy barging into the middle of a complex personal drama, or Zoro slicing his way through a legend like it was nothing, the story is told and disrupted by Usopp at the back of a restaurant with nobody listening.

At least, he had thought nobody was listening.

Because, well, why would they? Who, when finding themselves dining aboard the famed Baratie, would deign to listen to the mumbled stories of a no-name teenaged pirate, slightly homesick, tipsy, and desperately searching for an audience?

As improbable as it was, this is the situation the highest ranking members of the Vance pirates find themselves in as they finish off their meals, unparalleled, as always, in the Baratie’s fine ornate dining room.

“East Blue may be kind of a whole lot of nothing,” Lark, his first mate says, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. “But damn. They’ve got good food”

“Not just food,” Captain Vance says, carefully setting down his glass on the soft tablecloth. He grabs some of the salt on the table, sprinkling it on his hand and tossing it back over his shoulder. “Entertainment.” He nods towards the table next to theirs, at the ragtag group of kids antagonizing Don Krieg “This is getting interesting.”

“Oh come on Cap,” His navigator, Ranger folds his arms and sighs. “Watching these no-namers get into a fight is entertaining to you? Might as well be watching paint dry, or grass grow. At least that’s good for something. That kid with the straw hat? Completely good for nothing”

And that would’ve been that, had their words not reached the ears of the sniper, knees knocking rapidly, at the next table.

Usopp is not known for his courage, nor for his skills at confrontation. But even now (even then) he is known for not taking it well when someone makes fun of his crew. He’s known them for all of a week, but he still can’t help but submit to the the pull of the words echoing in his head if he thinks it’ll help them.

So, he turns, making quick eye contact with Captain Vance, who gazes back at him coolly. His eyes dart to the rest of them, assessing, trying not to draw ire. He can feel the familiar itch of a story at the back of his mind, and can’t find it in himself to resist, not when they had mocked his captain.

So, fighting back against the ever-present instincts screaming at him to stay quiet, he squares his shoulders before glancing back in the Captain’s direction. “Big talk,” He says, with a voice only shaking a little (a lot). “For a group about to lose their ship.”

Vance’s eyebrows lift into his hairline. “Oh?” He says, amused despite himself.

“Haven’t you heard?” Usopp continues, quailing inside (and out) at the look he receives from the pirate, from the waves of unbothered power emanating from it. “The waves are real bad this time of year. Monsters, you know. Lots of them.”

Zoro, seated at his left, darts a look in his direction, questioning. He looks beyond him, to the group at the other table, narrowing his eyes slightly. He nods at Usopp (you got this) then redirects his attention back to the confrontation Luffy is engaged in.

Captain Vance, despite himself, engages. “Monsters, huh?” He asks. “What, you describing your average day on the Grand Line, kid?”

Katherine, his shipwright, crosses her arms. “What’re you doing?” She mutters. “Stop paying attention to him. He’s nothing.”

Vance ignores her. “Come on,” He goads, sitting back in his chair, pitching his voice a little louder to be heard over the commotion up front. “What were you saying about losing the ship?”

Usopp hears the tone, the mockery, the challenge. His instincts are screaming now, a cacophony of fear and paranoia and restraint. What was he doing? Why even put himself in this situation?

But once the story starts, it doesn’t stop. It’s the story that’s in control now.

“Sure,” He says, sitting up a little straighter. “Yeah, monsters are all over the Grand Line. Of course they are. But no matter how prepared you are, no matter how strong you are, you aren’t beating these monsters.”

Vance’s eyes pinch slightly. “And why is that?” His mouth widens into a grin that’s all teeth.

“Oh, brother,” Ranger mutters into his drink.

“You’re not beating these monsters,” Usopp repeats, clenching his shaking hands into fists. “Because they’re part of the water. They’re dragons. Dragons made of water that spit out tsunamis and sneeze hurricanes. You face them out in open sea? There’s nothing you can do. The seat creates them and reforms them, they can’t die. They haunt the seas, looking for ships to destroy. That’s who you’re up against.”

The story breathes out, then rests. Usopp, released from its hold, collapses back into his seat, shaking.

Vance cocks his head to the side. “Fascinating,” He says dryly, ignoring the prickling feeling under the surface. “Well. Consider us warned.”

Lark grunts. “Want me to take care of this idiot?”

Zoro’s head snaps back to the side, sudden and harsh. Usopp flinches, surprised he had still been paying attention.

“Nah,” Vance says, ignoring Usopp’s yelp at the words. He eyes dart back to the front, to the giant hulking figure in gold and the child with the straw hat, and a smirk grows on his face. “Looks like this one’s about to take care of it for us. Not worth the energy.”

Usopp collapses back in his seat, watching the group wearily as they stand as one and casually walk out. When they disappear from sight, he turns his attention back to Luffy, waiting for his cue to jump in.

He really should’ve listened to his instincts

-

Three weeks later

“Captain…”

“I know,” He says shortly. “I know. There’s no need to tell me. I know.”

His first mate just throws him a look. “That may be the case,” He says, looking around their little dinghy, at the four who remain. “But-”

“I know,” The captain’s fists clench. “Ranger?”

“Yes?” The navigator says, hesitant, from the very back of the small vessel.

“The island was, what? A day’s journey away?”

Lark takes a breath “Captain-”

“Yes,” Ranger interrupts. “I managed to save the Log Pose, it’ll take us a bit longer now but-”

“Good,” Vance cuts in. “Okay. Katherine?”

The shipwright understands without needing to be asked. “I’ll give us a boost,” She says grimly, approaching the sea with great caution.

Lark tries again “Captain-”

Vance’s composure snaps. “Lark,” He says, deadly soft. “If I hear you open your mouth again-”

“It was…” Lark says. Pauses. Takes a breath. “That was…”

Vance sees them in his mind’s eye: great streams of water, rising out the sea, roaring, shooting steam and smashing into the ship until it was nothing more but debris, floating into nothingness.

“Dragons,” He says, looking out in the distance. “Dragons made of water.”

“The kid,” Lark begins, “How did he-”

“Get to the island,” Vance says shortly. “Right now. After that…”

He trails off, staring out at the sea, deceptively calm.

“We’re going hunting.”

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10

#one piece #op #usopp #monkey d luffy #roronoa zoro #sanji #nami #op fic #Usopp fic #speaks

[aihoshiino]

Professor of Hoshino-Ailogy, might you have some tips on how to write the dear Miss genius idol herself? 🙇‍♀️ Been trying to dabble into writing stuff but her character's got me stuck. Been loving your OnK thoughts so I thought to try shooting an ask if that's ok!

Anon I know this is the joke but I am so genuinely moved at the idea of being considered a Professor Of Hoshino Aiology............ It really is all I was put on this earth to do. I immediately changed my discord name to this LMFAO

So! My recommendation would be to go back to OnK and specifically review episode 1 of the anime, as its take on Ai does a lot to flesh her out in comparison to the equivalent manga chapters. You should also check out Akane's little Pepe Silvia bit on episode 7, both so you can pick up on all that info and so you can point at the screen and go "Wow! She is Literally Me right now." (Anyone else? Just me? OK...)

And while everyone on earth has undoubtedly seen it already, take some time to chew on the Idol MV's imagery - the song as a whole and the MV specifically is basically just Ai's whole arc condensed and abstracted so it's good to look at how Ai is portrayed here and really think about why those choices were made.

After that, read Viewpoint B and 45510 side by side and do your best to put them in conversation with each other. What do these opposing views on Ai have to say about her and her motivations? That kind of thing. I also tentatively recommended reading the first chapter of Spica since it's some of our lengthiest unbroken Ai POV content, with the caveat that Spica doesn't always match up with how the main series talks about and portrays the same events so uh. Feel free to cherrypick what you take from it LOL

The Da Vinci interview and Artificial Girl are also both important in terms of getting a look at "Ai of B-Komachi" and seeing how she operates strictly in work mode. The Da Vinci interview also has some important notes about her history and relationships to certain other characters, so I think it's good to chew on in general!

From there, the most important manga chapters to review imo are 131, 136 and 137. 131 expands on Ai's history with her mom & has information about the abuse she put up with. As I've said before, her formative experiences with abuse and neglect and Ayumi's hands basically run through her entire soul like fault lines, so it's important to get a good understanding of that to start unfucking how it affects her behaviour. 

136 and 137 are also really important in understanding the emotional narrative of Ai's life, even if the literal events they portray obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt. We generally only see Ai of B-Komachi as a beguiling presence but 136 gives us a good look at just how fucking frustrating she would be to try and have a human relationship with and how this mask and Ai's general avoidance and discomfort with serious conversations contributes to her social isolation.

137 is, in my totally biased opinion, one of the best chapters in the entire series and so, so important for understanding Ai. It lays out in plain terms the most important foundational keystone of her entire character: that she was a normal, lonely girl struggling to connect and to find happiness and her desperation was taken advantage of so people could turn her into an object.

I think it's possible to get a good read on Ai just from the prologue arc, the rest of this material is important as reiteration and expansion on her core character. With all of it together, you should start picking up on patterns in her behaviour and drawing connections between her actions and the things that inform them.

If you're still having trouble figuring her out after that, here are some points I think are really important to keep in mind that often go overlooked when it comes to Ai:

Ai is neurodivergent and an abuse survivor

Ai is stated at least twice in the text of Oshi no Ko to have a developmental disorder and I think there's enough evidence in the text to say that she's intended to be read as autistic specifically.

On top of that, Ai's formative years were spent on a home environment where she could not rely on her primary guardians to consistently care for her and she was alternately neglected and violently physically abused, to the point of not feeling safe in her own house at night.

This is important to keep in mind because while Ai is pretty good at masking, her neurodivergence and her history with abuse means that she processes information - particularly social information - in a very different way to a neurotypical person.

Ai does not always lie - and her lies are different than you think

I've said this a million times before and I'll probably say it another million but a lot of the really out of pocket Ai takes you see in OnK fandom generally come from people who go to the extreme of dismissing everything that comes out of Ai's mouth as a lie and thus just completely missing out on a majority of her characterization.

Ai's "lie" is her performance - it's the illusion that "Ai of B-Komachi" is her true self with absolutely nothing else going on in her personal life. It's not a case of making shit up, but leaving things out - obfuscation and omission are the name of the game.

Picking up on when she's being honest Vs telling a lie is just something you end up getting a feel for as you get an understanding of her but generally, if Ai directly and plainly states something and it is not in conflict with things we know to be fact, then it's probably true enough.

This isn't a strict binary obviously and there are plenty of times where Ai says something that is obviously untrue but isn't her consciously lying - rather, like any human being, she has biases that affect her judgement, with her own stemming from her history of abuse and rejection and her poor self image.

The fact that Ai lies is less important than WHY she lies

This is sort of a reiteration of what I said above but where a lot of people get stuck on Ai's external behavior (that she lies) and fail to take dig into underlying motivations that actually cause her to behave that way. I know "this character has motivations" is probably like an insultingly baby mode reminder but I really do see so many people just completely abjectly failing to grasp this that I felt it needed saying lol

Deception is not Ai's end goal. Ai lies not because she wants to trick people but because she's been taught over and over her whole life that it's the only way she can be treated with basic fucking decency, and she has internalized this persistent cruelty as being her own fault. She performs Ai of B-Komachi because there is clearly something wrong with Hoshino Ai.

Even with that in mind, this isn't something Ai wants. As she says herself says in 45510, she wants people to know and accept her as she really is, flaws and impurity and all, and as she demonstrates in both Viewpoint B and chapter 1, she's incredibly quick to start opening up to people who seem to have the potential to accept her, or even just who treat her kindly. She is simply that lonely and that desperate to connect.

I hope this is all helpful, anon! I didn't necessarily want to just point by point how I write Ai just because I think that takes the fun out of things, but this is more or less the process I went through in forming my interpretation of her, and the rest is all things I've just intuited or drawn my own conclusions about from writing her - "oh, if Behaviour X, then Underlying Cause Y", that kind of thing. I hope this gives you a solid base to work on for writing her, tho - and please let me know when you're done so I can read it 👀

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk asks #ai hoshino