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thewriteblrlibrary · 4 months

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A Step-by-Step Marketing Guide so we can spite traditional publishers (and make people cry).

~ This is a guide specific for fiction/writeblr. All of this is for free and there is little social media posting/ads involved (unless you want to venture into that). ~

Within the writeblr spheres, there's this underlying hope that our stories will find their audience. Perhaps we'll have a fandom full of fanart and video essays, or maybe we'll be an instant classic and sit on collectors' beloved bookshelves. Our stories could sit within the deepest corners of someone's heart and maybe they never tell a soul about what's so special to them. Maybe our stories become those 'underrated masterpieces'.

Or we just want to see people ugly cry over our writing.

Whatever your hope may be, marketing is an important path to venture on (especially because traditional publishers are rejecting diverse books in favor of ones that are already famous + the whole sub-par machine thing they seem obsessed with.)

And thus, my childhood marketing obsession will hopefully be of use to you. This is all for free (unless you want to spend money) and you don't need to figure out social media platforms (unless you want to, and this guide works if you decide to take that route too.)

Step One: Characters

Marketing spheres will define these fictious people as 'avatars' or 'the target audience'. You could also call them characters. Because that's what they are: fictional people.

For this step, you shall create characters that would love your story.

And here's some great news: You've already done this.

Perhaps you wrote your story to comfort a prior version of yourself. Perhaps each character in your story holds an aspect of your personality. Perhaps you were ridiculously self-indulgent and made the story you would've loved to read. These are all possible characters you can reuse for marketing.

Write down 2-4 quick archetypes for these characters. You'll chose an aspect of your story (characters, themes, or the younger-self that you wrote it for) and write a thumbnail sketch. (Main issue, fears, wants, personality traits if they relate to the main issue.)

I'll do it for my story (the Land of the Fallen Fairies) down below:

Anuli-like (my MC): Overthinking and aloof. Wants a happy ending but thinks their current personality/character isn't good enough for one. The present stales in comparison to the past/the childhood they lost. The 'gifted theater kids'. Kamari-like (side character): Postpones happiness in favor of creating a perfect schedule/getting accomplishments. Heavy masking. Creative but doesn't create anymore. Promises themself they'll enjoy themselves later, when they've earned it. Workaholics. My younger self: Wanting a fantasy escapism to embody the traits they wish they had in real life. Dissatisfied and worried about reality. Perfectionists. Self-indulgent: People who love plants and forests and fantasy worlds far away from reality/humanity.

Great! Now it's time to find these characters.

Step Two: Setting.

(Let's assume you're using the internet for your marketing. But a similar method works for real life too.)

Where do the characters live?

In order to figure that out, we need to discover the characters' interests, what they watch to solve their problems, and who they find #relatable.

(You can do this for each character or for all the characters at once.)

For example:

Anuli-like -

interests: Stories. Analysis videos. Fantasy escapism. Things that remind them of their childhood. (so nature, warmth, comfort, play, imagination and the times they would actually enjoy learning.)

Places to look: Nature quotes, ambience videos, children's shows and fairytales (comfort shows). Fandom culture - fanfic video essays, fan art.

Solving problems (the problem being wanting a 'happy ending' but feeling that their personality/lifestyle/characteristics aren't right for one): Mindfulness things. Self-healing. Quotes and meditations and candles galore. Slow living. Nature vlogs. Self care. All that 'live in the moment' culture.

Places to look: Slow living. Nature vlogs. The 'softer self-help' (spirituality stuff. Magic/ overnight answers). Witchcraft. 'aesthetic nature' places. Guided meditations.

#relatable: Burnt out gifted kids. People who think so much that their life passes them by. Storytellers and creative who create to make sense of the world. People who like dark, gory things in spite of who they want to be. People who don't like reality.

Places to look: Those 'learn better and remember everything' places. (The 'burnt-out gifted kid' recovery places.) Stop overthinking spots. Those quotes on Pinterest from poetic people who think too much /aff. Storyteller places. Dark academia. Classical music. One off quotes/ poetry.

Okie dokie. Once you have this, find channels, social media accounts, blogs, songs, books, etc. that fit with the categories you wrote down. (They should appeal to the characters) You can search up some of the terms you listed into searches and see who pops up. Bonus points if you find people that overlap with multiple sections.

I know I didn't include booktube or booktok in here. You can if you want too. But those can be a bit... 'consume these 500 books'. You also want to find other places where people who would like you story live, even if they don't follow booktube or booktok.

Congrats! Now you know where your characters live!

Step Three: the scary part

Take everyone you found on your search for the settings and write them down a list. Make sure you get an email/contact info. (they usually list them somewhere under 'for business inquires') Also feel free to watch their content and get to know what attributes these settings have.

And now... we talk to them. about our stories. You can do it. I believe in you.

This called 'pitching your product' in marketing spheres. But you can be informal about it.

I know it can be difficult to talk about your work, so here's a tone to have:

'I made this thing I like and I think you'll like it too'.

What you'll do is send an email (or dm) that goes like this (inspired by Creative Hive on youtube):

Hi [name],

[Genuine compliment]

[Quick sentence or two about your story. Include the themes and who it appeals to. If you have a logline/sentence summary, include that. But I find that the underlying themes and 'who's it's for' is more engaging.

For my story, I might say something like.

I've written a story you might enjoy, since you like [interest]. It's called the Land of the Fallen Fairies. It's a nature-themed commentary on the pursuit of happiness and fixing yourself to deserve that happiness, told by an overthinking, unreliable, houseplant narrator. It was supposed to comfort me when I got frustrated with myself and my happiness chasing, and I hope it can comfort others too.

(That's probably a bit long and I can trim it down a bit.)

You can phrase it like a gift if you want too.]

[Call to action.

'If you like it, I'd appreciate a mention on your [platform].

I know this part may be difficult to mention (imposter syndrome is not fun.) But I promise that if they do like it, they'll be happy to mention it.]

If they don't respond within... four-ish days? (A week at most). then you can include a follow up. For this you can include a template with info about your story. This way it's easy for them to talk about your story.

The template:

title

genre

blurb

Author

where to find the book

Bonus points if you have an additional, physical thing to send them.

Congrats! Now do this pitching process a few times until you've covered most of your bases. (Pitch to as many people as you can. It will get more comfortable as you do it. Play your favorite song and don't let yourself think too hard about it.)

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The benefits of this process are that you find people that are already interested in the themes and vibes of your story (in comparison to to ads, which get shoved in everyone's faces.). Someone your audience already trusts will talk about it, which means you don't need to do all this trial and error to find your audience and make content for them.

It's basically a bunch of people talking about something they like!

AND you diversify your audience across niches, but with an underlying theme/interests. Booktok/booktube must appeal to everyone, so it's a hit or miss for recommendations. (Unless there is someone that specifically does one genre/type of story.)

From here you can do fun little things to build up hype and make the book launch feel like this fun event. (I love it when that happens so here's my thoughts about trying to create an event with your story... although that may require another post entirely.)

preorder goals

charity goals

Arg's and puzzles

fund with side plushies and trinkets

Book blog tour

book boxes

as many memes as you can make

rewards (like bookmarks or posters or smth) that people can get for supporting

Talk about the process of creating your story. I know this one channel called 'Dead Sound' that creates 'making of' videos for his short films and they are some of the best videos on youtube.

Okay dear storyteller! Now go forth and share your story with the world!

Additional resources:

Creative Hive <-- a youtube channel that goes through the pitching process.

This video is also very good <-- Haven't watched the rest of the channel but I assume it's also good.

One of the best marketing channels on the internet (the videos are actually entertianing to watch.

Seth Goldin <-- I read his book and took the parts I liked and modified for storytelling marketing.

Dead Sound <-- propaganda to watch the short film series he has (he did the whole 2-d 3-d style wayyyy before spiderverse did... and he's one person making these. One person. It's amazing.

Glitch <--- If someone can figure out how The Amazing Digital Circus was marketed then I will pay you money. It seems to be a lot of memes and funny things.

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amethystfairy1 · 4 months

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✨Hello hello!✨

I'm Amethyst (she/her), and I'm your local fanfic gremlin. I've written a lot for a lot of fandoms, right now I am caught in the Hermit/Traffic/Empires brainrot, and if that's how you've ended up here, welcome welcome!

Right now, I have two WIP AUs!

Through the Sky-Blue Cracks 🌤️

My Hot Guy/Cute Guy, Over-City/Under-City AU that has a lot more going on in it now, it's grown pretty big and is organized in chronological order, not by publishing order, so I write up and down on the timeline filling in parts and pieces as I go!

TTSBC takes place in a modern/slightly sci-fi AU with superheroes, biotech, secrets to hide, trauma to unpack, and as much humor as I can attempt to fit in as well!

Features the local superheroes crushing on each other, anxious writer meets intrepid reporter, the drama professors who can't keep their hands to themselves, penpals gone wild, resident middle-aged married couple who happen to be a mobster and a mad genius, the local cottagecore lesbians, bad boy butterfly and cat lady, protective big sister, Zom-Mom and Sentient Glowstick, a very tired Guy-in-the-Chair with a permanent headache, and more yet to be added! I've got lots of plans left for this AU, so if you're interested, please come check it out!

Tags for the AU are:

#through the sky blue cracks

#ttsbc au

#ttsbc ficlets

Traveling Thieves 🪽

My dark fantasy AU! This one has some heavy themes going on, so I'd encourage reading the tags carefully before jumping in! I'm very proud of how it is turning out, dealing with breaking out conditioned headspaces, survival in a sick system, negotiating power imbalance, the power of friendship (no, really), and of course we've got elves, mercenaries, magic, swords, sorcery, rogues, redstone, and lots more fun stuff like that! Also lots of adorable birbs, one traumatized fiery boy, a mer with an attitude, a good doggo, and hurt/comfort galore! Giving everyone a chance to believe that they've all got a shot at getting lucky.

Tags for the AU are:

#traveling thieves au

#traveling thieves ficlets

Amethysts Scribbling Corner 📝

A little side project of mine to try and stretch my writing style!

Once in awhile, I will be running a poll with prompts that have been sent in via reblogs, replies, asks, and messages! Please send some in if you have any ideas!

Whatever prompt wins the poll, I will write and add to the series!

They can be as broad as a simple one-word prompt, or you can even give a brief description of a couple of sentences! Last thing: Feel free to request where you want the fic to take place! Especially when we're talking Hermit/Traffic/Empires stuff, if you want it to be within the Minecraft server world of that specific series, within a certain one of the Life Series, a modern AU, a fantasy AU, or even TTSBC or Traveling Thieves if you have ideas for them! Just know that if anything requested for TTSBC or Traveling Thieves contradicts or maybe overlaps with any future plans for those AUs, I might not be able to accept them 😓

As far as rules go...I do not write NSFW. I am happy to write romance and let things get a little spicy 🔥 but keep in mind I'll always end up fading to black...also no heavy gore, violence, body horror, things of that nature. I am very much a fan of writing whump and hurt/comfort though, so please send those ideas my way!

Tags for the series are:

#amethysts scribbling corner

I think that's all that going on with me right now...so yeah! I use this blog for my scribbling corner prompts as well as asks about any of my AUs or writing projects! I love getting the chance to ramble about my worldbuilding, so by all means, give me an excuse and I will make entire posts about that sort of thing!

Thanks for coming by! 💖

#intro post #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #hermitcraft #traffic smp #through the sky blue cracks #hermitshipping #worldbuilding #trafficshipping #life series #empires smp #traveling thieves au #amethysts scribbling corner

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gffa · 3 months

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Hi :)

I'm a pretty new SW fan, not because I didn't like the movies/hadn't seen them but because I grew up thinking it was extremely nerdy and would often feel awkward trying to bring up anything related to SW.

Fortunately I've finally reached and met awesome people who love SW just like I did but I feel like I lost A LOT of important stuff and there's so much content to the saga that it's extremely overwhelming for me to even think about diving into the whole SW universe and catch up.

I've been following you for a bit and your posts are just extremely interesting to me but again, sometimes I'm a little confused about certain things and so I wanted to ask you if you had any recommendations about where to start catching up (besides the movies which I will be binge watching soon hehe)

Hi! Welcome to Star Wars fandom, I hope you're having a good time! And around here we embrace being as nerdy as possible--I mean, fandom is such a mainstream thing these days, but I still like to embrace being a nerd about things because it leads to a lot more happiness, to just be silly and having a good time with the thing that tickles our brains.

But, yes, it is pretty overwhelming when you're first arriving, I still remember when I first came back to SW several years ago, having really only watched the movies as a kid, and there was All This Stuff and it seemed impossible to ever reach the deep end of the pool, and that was before the last seven years of books, games, movies, comics, etc. came out! I will hopefully set your mind at ease with this, though: The vast, vast majority of content that Star Wars puts out isn't anything I would consider "essential". It's wonderful, fantastic stuff! But a lot of us have just been around so long that we're combing through the finer details of supplementary material, rather than those being absolute Must-Read/Watch To Get A Feel For Star Wars.

My recommendations for How To Get A Feel For Star Wars is basically, start with the animated series and the live action series, they're the second layer of foundation in the Star Wars building, all the comics and novels and such will be built on them, and in this order: - The movies, this is the foundation on which everything else will be built. - The Clone Wars, season 1-6 are part of George Lucas' story and they're pretty essential (at least in this corner of SW fandom) to understanding wtf anyone is talking about or even watching many of the live action series. (Season 7 is fine and should be watched! It's just not part of Lucas' Star Wars.) - Star Wars: Rebels, starts off light-hearted but really is one of the best developed shows and does a lot of connective work between the prequels and the original trilogy. - The Mandalorian, set 9 years after Return of the Jedi, this show just massively blew up and while each season is slightly less well-done than the previous one (imo), it's well worth watching for wtf fandom is talking about half of the time. (The Book of Boba Fett is somewhat optional in this corner of fandom, but imo worth the watch. Generally, it should go Mando s1-2 --> TBOBF --> Mando s3.) - Obi-Wan Kenobi, because this corner of fandom lost our goddamned minds about it and still haven't gotten them back. - Andor, which is a really great show and, as long as you've watched Rogue One first, you'll follow along just fine. Does some solid connecting the dots between the prequels and the originals, but not as much as Rebels did. - Jedi: Fallen Order, you can look up a "movie" version on YouTube for the story of this game, which is a really good plot, has some great new characters, has some genuinely effective cameos, and will be referenced fairly often in other materials/in fandom.

If you're not feeling overwhelmed by All The Star Wars You've Consumed, I would personally suggest going for the comics next, over any of the novels. The novels are great! But the vast majority of them are self-contained and meant to be supplementary material even more than the comics, which get to tell bigger, more connected stories. I always suggest starting with: - Star Wars 2015 by Jason Aaron + Darth Vader 2015 by Kieron Gillen, both of which are really, solidly fantastic stories about the timeframe just after A New Hope, like there are so many absolutely banger lines that came out of these comics. I won't spoil them, just know that I think these were legitimately good comics, not just legitimately good Star Wars comics. (The first six issues of each series are meant to be read concurrently, but after that, you can just pick one and read in that specific title.) - Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith 2017 by Charles Soule, which is set in the immediate aftermath of Revenge of the Sith. If Gillen's Vader keeps the mystique of the originals Unknowable Darth Vader, then Soule's Vader is more about the absolute BATSHIT DRAMA that is blending Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. This series is BANANAPANTS in the absolute best way. - Obi-Wan & Anakin 2015 by Charles Soule, which is a five-issue mini-series set between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and is both stunningly beautiful art and a solidly good plot that survives fairly serious analysis of. It's got some great worldbuilding details, but even more I like it for the look at why a young Anakin chooses to stay with the Jedi Order.

The one book I will recommend--for a list aimed at getting you caught up on what fandom is referencing--is the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover, that book is quoted constantly, and I'm not sure any other SW book has ever been as good as it is.

I feel like this is the best set of reading to get you familiarized with the source material that tends to come up the most! There's lots more that's really good, but once you get through the above, you can let me know what era or characters you're most interested in or if you have a specific question about something and want to see where it comes from!

But there's one thing to address and you're kinda going to have to figure out how to approach it on your own. 😂 There is a ton of stuff in SW fandom that's ostensibly from a book or a comic, but the version in fandom often comes from those who never actually read the books/haven't read them in a long time or are just picking them up from other fic and meta.

For example, the AgriCorps or Melida/Daan get referenced in fic and in posts all the time, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading the Jedi Apprentice series (I mean, I'm not your mom, feel free if you want to!) and often times how they're used in fic is not how they were used in the source material. Or the clones speaking Mando'a comes from the Legends books by Karen Traviss and she is a whole big can of ugly worms (both what she wrote and her IRL politics), as well as much of what she wrote was overwritten/discarded when The Clone Wars came out, but fandom likes the idea and so they put that into their fics (as they should, if they like it!). The idea of Mace using the lightsaber form of Vaapad is from Legends sources (the best source probably being the Shatterpoint novel by Matthew Stover, I'd guess?), same for his ability to see "shatterpoints" in the Force, which aren't part of Lucas' continuity or Disney's continuity, but fandom enjoys using them to flesh out Mace's character. This will get you started and, if you're looking for something more specific, feel free to ask, I enjoy these kinds of question--and don't feel you have to stick with any of the above if they're not fun for you. This is meant to be enjoyable, it's meant to have a good time, there's no wrong way to consume Star Wars media! <3

#lumi.txt #star wars #novel recs #(eh that's my tag for this kind of thing)

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almostgenerallyalways · 1 year

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cross my heart

Pairing: Jake Seresin x fem!reader (pilot!reader - callsign: Savannah) Category: smut / NSFW (18+), fluff because I want everyone to be happy always Word count: 3,6k CW: language, allusion to past bad sexual experience (non explicit), me not having any idea how the navy works, literally googled “aircraft carrier diagram”, don’t expect any actual details about the mission lol Author’s note: first time writing tgm and went a lil off the rails. shoutout to @callsignvalley @seasonsbloom @ohcaptains @clints-lucky-arrow @steadfastconviction and like, a lot of other amazing writers in this fandom whose fics I obsessively read in October Summary: On the eve of what may be the biggest mission in your naval career, the answer to your problem comes to you in the form of Lt. Jake Seresin

Squeezing into the squad galley at a quarter to nine on the eve of the mission, Jake is surprised to see you sitting at the steel high-top table, still in uniform. Days on an aircraft carrier generally start early and end early, and considering the stakes of tomorrow’s mission, the rest of the squad retired to their bunks immediately after dinner.

“Hey, Vanny, still up?” He enquires, noting the way you’re slumped over the counter, head in your palms. He flicks the switch on the electric kettle sitting on the small counter.

After a moment, you look over at him. “So are you, Seresin.”

He gestures to his outfit, sweatpants and a white t-shirt. “I tried to sleep, still too wired. Thought I’d come make myself an herbal tea.”

That makes the corner of your mouth twitch, to his relief. “Can you make me one?”

He sets to work, and a short while later, sits down on the stool next to you, handing you a steaming mug. You mumble a thanks, and both of you sip chamomile in silence for a minute, before you apparently grow tired of Jake staring a hole in the side of your head.

“What?” you glare at him.

He smiles, amused. “Just wondering what’s keeping our unflappable Savannah up the night before a mission. Nervous?”

You stare at the wall. “No.” You take a sip of tea, then concede: “Yes. I guess. In a way.”

He goes a little soft at the way your cheekbones color slightly, and tentatively reaches out to rest his hand on your wrist, still holding your mug. “It’s okay, you know. I know you haven’t done as many of these as some of us, but don’t think anyone flying tomorrow isn’t feeling nervous. Or scared.” He rubs his thumb over the protrusion of your wrist bone, soothingly, he hopes. “I still get scared.”

He wouldn’t say that to just anyone on the squad, and he thinks you know it. In preparation for this mission you two were paired up often, and there’s a trust between you that can only come from eight weeks of preparing for life-or-death together. You’re a good pilot, a great one: not as much of a risk-taker as some of the squad, but solid and dependable, immaculate in your execution, and a stealthier flyer than anyone there. The number of times you snuck up on him and had him locked on your radar before he even realized you were anywhere in the vicinity is, frankly, a little embarrassing to him.

Though you didn’t know each other beforehand, you having been a few years behind him at TOPGUN, he feels like he knows you now – what makes you tick.

So it’s all the more flooring when you turn to him, and after a moment of seeming to examine him, brows furrowed, you ask: “Seresin, will you have sex with me?”

He chokes on his tea, a little, takes a deep pull of air and pulls back his hand from your wrist. He must have misheard you, so he asks, in a tone much higher-pitched than he would like: “Excuse me?”

You don’t seem bothered by his reaction, continuing to fix him with those big eyes, jaw set in a determined look he’s come to know all too well over the past weeks, on the tarmac, in your jet. Never here, in the cramped squad galley past bedtime, looking at him like you’ve made up your mind. “I asked if you’ll have sex with me. Tonight, to be clear. Now, ideally, considering we’re up at 5 AM.”

He turns towards you more, opens and closes his mouth once or twice, before settling on: “Vanny, I need a bit more context here.”

Feels a little like he should kick himself for not just saying yes, Savannah, please, lead the way.

You turn away your gaze from him again, and the color in your cheeks heightens, but he’s not sure he likes it this time. He watches you swallow, before you speak, not sounding as sure of yourself as a minute ago: “I’m not scared, exactly, for tomorrow. Or maybe I am. In any case, I don’t have any illusions about what’s at stake. I know we might not come back.”

And there it is again, the determined set of your jaw: “And for some reason, and trust me – I know it’s ridiculous – for some reason the idea my brain is stuck on is that the last time I had sex was fucking terrible, with my fucking terrible ex who made me feel small and worthless, and I just… don’t want his to be the last hands on me.”

And if that doesn’t fucking break his heart in two, because you deserve – so much more. Everything, Jake thinks, one hand somehow already on your thigh, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from tangling the other one in your hair straight away, from burying his face into your neck, because he needs to know one last thing: “Vanny, why me?”

You’re silent for a beat, and his eyes snap up to yours. He doesn’t know what you see in his face, but it must be good – you smile that wry smile of yours, the one that always feels like a reward to him. You reach out and run the back of your fingers over the side of his throat, and he swallows hard. “Well, Seresin, I’m not going to lie – First of all because you’re here, and I thought you might say yes.”

Then your eyes soften a little, and if he had any hesitation before, you wipe it out altogether: “But mostly because I trust you. Completely. And if you said no – which I would totally understand – I know you’d still get it. That you won’t hold it against me.”

You can’t know, he thinks, how much that means to him. You weren’t around for his more volatile Hangman years, rarely even use his callsign. He’s matured a lot since then, has learned to put the squad before his ego, but still – his reputation follows him. But you never – never held that against him. He started with you from a clean slate.

“Alright, jeez.” He says, grinning, trying to keep his tone light, probably undermined by his now desperate grip on your thigh, the urgent way he’s already pressing an open-mouthed kiss to your jaw, the fact that he feels his sweats straining against him. “Could’ve bought a guy a drink first, but fine, Savannah, I’m in.”

* * *

You stumble back to Seresin’s bunk – as a higher-ranking officer, he has private quarters, while you share with Halo and Quicksand, who are hopefully long since asleep. You try to make as little noise as possible, in the narrow, echoing steel hallways, because you don’t need anyone finding out about this: fraternizing is strictly off-limits, even more so within the same squadron, and your CO would boot both of you off the mission without a second thought.

More likely they’d just boot you, because Seresin’s got double insignia to your single, and he’s a man; this is still the Navy, and you’re a realist. So you try to be quiet.

But it’s real goddamn hard with Seresin’s hands under your shirt, burning trails up the side of your ribs, and his body flush with your back, nose pressed behind your ear. You fumble with the doorhandle, and you feel, more than hear, his hot chuckle as he nips at the skin over your pulse point. “What’s the matter, baby girl, do you need help?”

You shoot him a glare over your shoulder, but it cannot be convincing, at this point. The latch finally clicks, and he scoops you up, depositing you in the cramped, windowless room.

He locks the door behind him, and for a second you just stare at each other, by the low light of the reading lamp left on over his bunk. The carrier creaks around you, the sounds of its merciless progress through the high seas ever-present, seeping up from the engine room three decks below, reminding you that every minute brings you closer to the inevitability of tomorrow’s mission.

All day it’s been making your skin crawl, but right now, with Jacob Seresin looking at you like that, you think you wouldn’t notice if you were down in the engine room itself. Or standing in the middle of I-5.

One more beat, and it’s like someone’s fired a starting pistol: his hands cradle the side of your face, and he’s bearing down on you, finally kissing you in earnest. Your brain blanks out for a hot second.

Somewhere in the back of your head, it occurs to you that you’ve never been kissed like this before, and it would almost be sweet, the way he’s pressing his forehead to yours, roughly tangling his fingers in your hair, if it wasn’t for the hard length of his erection pressed into your abdomen.

He's talking to you, cursing incoherently under his breath, and of course he’s a talker – of course he never shuts up – and you have to grin, pull back for an instant. “Damn, Seresin. If I’d known you’d be so into the idea, I’d have asked you back on base.”

He chuckles darkly, hands never leaving your hair. “It might surprise you to learn, Vanny,” he presses another kiss to your mouth, to your throat, “that I’ve thought about this a fair amount. I mean, I’m willing to bet every guy on the squad has, but I’m definitely bringing up the average.”

It makes your knees weak, thinking about him thinking about you, and you need to take back some semblance of control, so you make quick work of the buttons on your shirt, shrugging out of the fabric. You’re just wearing a black sports bra, because everything on the carrier has to be functional, not pretty, but still Seresin seems to come up short for a moment, eyes drinking you in.

As if snapping out of it, he groans. “Baby girl. You gotta give me some warning before you pull stuff like that.” He kisses you again and guides you back, insistently, until the back of your thighs hits the edge of the bunk. His calloused hands roam the planes of your exposed skin, your arms, your stomach, your sides.

“You’re so beautiful, Vanny,” he’s murmuring into your ear, seemingly almost trembling as your hands find their way under his shirt, travel up the solid muscle of his back. “Tell me what you want, sweetheart. I’ll give you anything you want.”

You meet his eye, but find you suddenly can’t get the words out. You don’t know if you’re just getting shy (and how inopportune that would be, right now, with Jake Seresin’s thumbs hooking under the stretchy material of your bra, your nipples responding immediately, goosebumps appearing on your skin), or if it’s the intensity of his gaze that has you at a loss for words. You open your mouth, close it again.

“I’ll tell you what I want then, Vanny,” he says, kissing you again, hard, one hand traveling down to grab your ass. “I wanna make you forget anyone else ever had their hands on you. I wanna make you feel so good you won’t remember ever feeling small.” His hands fumble with the button on your khakis, and your head buzzes with the feeling of him, face pressed into your neck, speaking directly into your ear. “I wanna make you cum so hard you won’t remember that guy’s name, alright, Vanny? Is that what you want?”

You already feel like you’re about to explode, but you manage to wrench his face into your field of vision, meeting his eyes. Standing your ground. So he knows you really fucking mean it when you say, “Yes, Seresin. I want all of that.”

The devil himself couldn’t slap away the smirk that spreads over his face, as he looks down at you, his hand finally dipping into your soaked panties. When his fingers make contact with your clit, your knees buckle, and his other arm wraps around you, holding you up. “Alright, baby girl.” He inhales deeply, into the skin of your throat. “But you’re gonna have to call me Jake.”

* * *

You lose track of time shortly after he makes you cum on his tongue. You think you may cry, you’re not sure, because you feel like your brain is on reduced capacity as Jake comes up to grin down at you, as he rubs his thumb over your cheekbone, kissing you tenderly as if he didn’t just make your entire body short-circuit. “You taste so good, baby girl,” he’s saying, dragging his mouth along your jaw. “You look so pretty coming for me, Vanny, I wanna make you feel good always, wanna hear you say my name-”

“Jake,” you interrupt him, holding him by the back of his neck, forcing his eyes to focus. Your hand goes to the front of his sweats, where there’s a dark stain of pre-cum, and your brain doesn’t know what to do with that information.

You trace your palm down his length, impossibly hard, and he groans, closing his eyes, so you call him back to attention: “Jake. Please tell me you have a condom.”

And of course he does, you wouldn’t have expected otherwise. He stands up to get it, takes the opportunity to step out of his sweats. Your mouth goes a little dry.

His pupils are fully blown as you nudge him back onto the thin mattress, move to take him into your mouth, but you barely get the chance to run your tongue down his length before he’s pulling you up by your hair, gently, restrained: “Baby girl. Vanny. I’m not gonna last three seconds if you do that right now.”

He takes the condom from you, tears it open and rolls it down his cock, and for the first time since you crossed the threshold into this room you have a second and a half to really look at him, to think, and you think:

Fuck.

Because somewhere between your proposition in the squad galley and this moment, right now: you sitting on Jake Seresin’s thighs, watching him laying down before you, glistening with sweat, looking up at you like you’re the only thing that could possibly matter in the world, something changed. You know it. You can’t bear to let yourself wonder if he knows it.

Then he’s pulling you in towards him, almost dragging you down for an open-mouthed kiss, and you’re gripping the base of his cock, letting yourself sink down onto it, going slow to accommodate the stretch of him.

All the while, he’s speaking lowly, frantically, directly into your mouth: “Vanny, Vanny, Vanny, fuck, baby girl, my girl, feel so good, feel so –”

Cuts off when you bottom out, and the expression on his face would make you laugh if it wasn’t for everything else that is happening right now. As it is, your heart does a funny little jump, and all you care about right now is making him feel good, make him feel like he’s made you feel.

You tentatively roll your hips, and he groans, so you keep doing that, supporting yourself with a hand on his shoulder, finding your rhythm, and it’s not long before his fingertips are digging into your hips so hard you think he may leave marks, and you want that, want to go up into the sky tomorrow with his fingers printed on your skin; proof that this happened, that for this moment deep in the cavernous steel halls of this Nimitz carrier, Jake Seresin made you feel just like this.

“Vanny.” He’s saying, and you brush your hand over his jaw, feeling like this whole ship could sink right now and you wouldn’t care. “Vanny, beautiful girl,” he brings his palm to your clit, presses his fingers between your bodies, “You’re doing so good, Vanny, I can’t fucking – I’m gonna – I need you to come, baby girl, you’re so good for me, you feel so good on me, you look fucking perfect on top of me, I can’t –”

“Jake.” Your voice breaks, and you’re there, right where he wants you, right where you want to be, and your whole brain stutters and whites out, and you’re kissing him desperately as you come, emotion high in your throat.

Feel his shaky hold on your hips, fucking into you erratically now, any sense of control gone. It’s only a few more moments before he’s groaning into your shoulder, a guttural sound that hits somewhere deep in your chest, and you ride him through it, burying your face into the side of his, telling him how good he’s been, how perfect.

It takes a minute or two for either of you to breathe anywhere near normally again, and then you’re drawing yourself gently off him, and he takes a second to wrap the condom in a tissue before he’s pulling you back down to his chest, pressing kisses to your temple. “Holy shit, Vanny,” he rasps, and he seems delirious with it, and you’re glad it’s not just you – you feel absolutely stupid with it.

You prop yourself up on one elbow to look down at him, and you can’t help the grin that breaks out across your face at the sight of him. You wipe a bead of sweat off his brow, leaning down to kiss the hollow of his throat, his mouth, his cheek, murmuring thank you, thank you, thank you.

He wraps his arms fully around you, so you collapse against his chest again, groaning: “Knock it the fuck off, Savannah, I swear to God if you say thank you one more time –”, but the rest of that sentence is forgotten as he buries his face in the crown of your head.

“Stay a little while.” You hear him say, muffled. “I know you have to wake up in your bunk, but just… don’t leave yet, baby girl.”

And you’re fairly fucking sure you’d give him anything he wanted right about now, so you stay, letting him rub circles into the skin of your back. After a while he murmurs, voice heavy with sleep: “I’m glad you’re not my wingman tomorrow. I don’t think I could’ve done this, if…”

He trails off into nothing, but you get it, understand what he’s trying to tell you, and you wrap your arm around his waist a little tighter, keep on laying there listening to his heartbeat until its slowing rhythm tells you he’s fallen asleep.

* * *

The mission is fucking terrifying, but you do what you do best: shut the non-Navy part of your brain off and fly like you’ve been trained to. Don’t think, just do.

“Hell fucking YES, Halo!” You shout, as you clear the last danger zone, heart in your throat, and she laughs, exhilarated. You and her are a well-oiled machine, completely in tune, playing off the beat of each other’s actions and reactions.

It’s intoxicating as always. There’s something about being up in the air, hitting every mark exactly as planned, then abruptly changing gears, accounting for the unaccountable – it makes you feel larger than life. Makes you feel like you were born to be up there.

You take a few seconds to enjoy the feeling, now that you’re safe to do so, and follow your lead fighter in the direction of the carrier. Clear skies all the way there.

It’s also fucking exhausting. By the time you climb out of your jet and hit the searing tarmac of the flight deck, you’re exhausted, drenched in sweat. You feel like you’ve used all the available adrenaline in your body, and you’re ready to keel over.

Then Jake’s wingman comes in, closely followed by Jake himself - the very last jet to land.

Always with the penchant for the dramatic.

You chug water, waiting for him to emerge, trying to calm the frantic beating of your heart. People are excited now – the last pilot safely on deck, minimal damage. Mission accomplished. There’s something charged in the air, relieved, exhilarated even.

You watch Jake take his helmet off, his eyes immediately searching the throng of people around him, before he spots you.

When he starts towards you, pushing past engineers and pilots and LSO’s with the widest fucking grin you’ve ever seen on his face, you know you’re in deep trouble. Your stomach swoops. It doesn’t stop your own smile from spreading.

He comes to a halt in front of you, too close for propriety. The proximity makes your skin flush, which is a feat, considering you’ve just spent the better part of an hour roasting in the cockpit of a Super Hornet.

“Seresin.” You look up at him, telling yourself you can’t kiss him. You really can’t kiss him right here in the middle of the flight deck, if you have any sense of self-preservation left for your career, you remind yourself; but the point is moot when he lifts you, extra fifteen pounds of flight gear and all, into his arms.

You let out a surprised laugh, and over Jake’s shoulder, you see Halo giving you a look, like: really?, but after another second passes, the corners of her mouth twitch up, and she nods at you almost imperceptibly.

And Jake, his sweat-drenched face pressing into your neck, is whispering: “Alright, Vanny, seeing as how you’re still alive, will you still need me?”

So you slide your hands into his damp hair and look down at him, grinning, hoping your face conveys all the things you can’t yet say: “You better count on it, Jake.”

----

omg thank you bb for reading if you made it this far

almostgenerallyalways’ masterlist

#top gun: maverick #top gun: maverick fanfiction #jake hangman seresin #jake seresin x you #hangman x reader #jake seresin x reader #hangman x you #jake 'hangman' seresin #jake 'hangman' seresin x reader #jake 'hangman' seresin fanfiction

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criticallyacclaimedstranger · 6 months

Text

Into It [werewolf!Frankie x f!reader]

Read on Ao3

My Frankie Morales masterlist

Fandom: Triple Frontier

Ship: Francisco “Catfish” Morales x you (cishet f!reader)

Warnings: Frankie is a werewolf (but not really), corn maze, jump scares, Benny is a clown in more ways than one (and a bit of an arse tbh), public sex, unprotected piv sex, Frankie has a knot on his dick and believe you me it goes inside you, you like it rough, dirty talk, a bit of praise (him to her), creampie, implied cum eating and cunnilingus.

Summary: You are lost in a corn maze where ghosts and ghouls roam, and you are being chased by a werewolf named Frankie...

Words: 3,489

The moon hangs low and when a few clouds obscure it, your eyes strain to see the path before you. The wind sweeps through the corn stalks, and the hushed rustling of the leaves makes the small hairs at the back of your neck stand. It's so quiet, apart from that faint sound, but you know that you're not alone, you've seen the glowing eyes and dark shapes, heard the quick footsteps disappear around a corner.

Getting into this corn maze was a bad idea, you knew it from the start. What harm would it do, you had thought. All the harm, you now realize. You could die here. You could get jumped, you could...

Your breath gets stuck in your throat when a caped figure appears before you and stares at you through the dark, before dismissing you and slipping away in another direction. Your red cape isn't warm enough, and you suddenly feel chilled to the bone. You want to go home, away from all this danger, get warm and comfortable and not lost in a goddamn corn maze, like you are now. Screams behind you put you on edge, and two witches run past, cackling like maniacs. Witches are nothing to be afraid of: you know there are worse things in here. You follow the witches, but by the time you turn the same corner, they're already gone. More screaming is heard in the distance, chilling screams of fear. You walk faster, almost start jogging, turning a corner and finding it a dead end. A howl close by sends chills down your spine.

Huge, clawed paws land on your waist, a low growl reverberates into your core. You yelp as you get pulled against the wide frame of a werewolf.

"Roarr, I'm going to eat you!"

You break into relieved laughter. "Dammit Frankie!"

Turning around, you see the werewolf with its latex sneer take off its head, revealing a cheekily smiling Frankie with tousled hair underneath.

"Did I scare you?"

"No, but those plastic claws are going to rip my dress!"

He wraps one arm around you, the dark grey fur of his wolf costume warming you immediately.

"Oh, this dress is going to be ripped tonight..."

Unabashedly, he gazes into your cleavage as his paw slides down to your ass. You roll your eyes.

"Slutty Little Red Riding Hood, how tacky isn't that?"

"Terrible tacky," Frankie replies in a way that tells you in no uncertain terms that he is incredibly happy with your mini dress with plunging neckline and short, ruffled skirt. The bodice, laced tightly to push your tits up even more, and thigh high stockings crown your outfit, and Frankie couldn't be happier.

"It's a good thing I'm in this lumpy costume," he murmurs against your cheek. "I'm so hard right now, if anyone saw, they'd think I was a perv."

"You are a perv," you tease him, "but you're my perv."

"Excuse me, Miss Hood," he rumbles, now nipping at your earlobe. "I seem to remember that the conversation about our plans for tonight went in a way that actually points you out as the perv."

You just scoff, then turn your head to allow him access to your neck. He scatters little kisses and love bites all over your skin, pausing only to grunt and curse when you find his stiff shaft and rub it through the tight front of his jeans.

"Little girl," he hisses, "Let's go find grandma's house."

"You don't want me to suck your big bad cock right here...?" you suggest leerily, and Frankie exhales in a hushed Fuck.

"We'll be seen."

"We could find a dark corner."

"Jesus..." His paw caresses the roundness of your buttock, coming to a rest just where you ass meets your thighs, pushing you into him.

"We don't have to - " you start, sensing his hesitation. Frankie may be a beast in bed, but that's in the comfort and privacy of your own home. Laughing and screaming in the distance underscores how public this place is.

"Let's do it," he rules, and you both turn around to try and find a secluded enough spot.

A wild-eyed Pennywise jumps out right in front of you, screeching in a way that shouldn't be humanly possible. You scream, startled and scared at the sudden attack, your blood going ice cold for a moment, panic rising when the clown grabs your arm.

"Knock it the fuck off, Benjamin!"

Frankie shoves the clown away, and it starts to laugh.

"Oh my God, your face!"

You're still shaking, but fear is slowly being replaced by rage.

"Benny, you asshole! You know I hate jump scares and clowns!"

"That's why it worked so well!"

"Not cool," Frankie growls, pulling you into him as if to protect you. "Let's go, baby."

"I'm sorry!" Benny shouts after you when you walk away. Your legs are a little wobbly, but Frankie's warm, secure presence makes you feel better.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just got startled," you reassure him. "It's fine."

"I'll have a talk with him tomorrow. He's too drunk right now."

"You really don't need to, let's just forget about it."

A few monsters and ghouls run past, but now it all feels like adults in costumes to you. A shudder runs through you, and Frankie stops to kiss your head.

"You wanna just get out of this maze, have a mug of hot cider, and then leave?" he suggests. Truth be told, that's an attractive suggestion. You don't feel like blowing him in public anymore.

"That sounds perfect."

Frankie, with his military training, seems to have a mental map of the maze, because he leads you with confidence out of the maze like he's walked it a hundred times before. Just as you exit, you pass by Santi who looks like an East European nobleman, his fake vampire teeth grazing the neck of a young brunette dressed as a slutty Harry Potter character.

The cider warms you up and calms your nerves, and by the time you've finished your mug, you're feeling up for erotic adventures again.

"Can we leave?" you ask Frankie as soon as the mug is empty.

"Home?"

"To our spot."

"Oh. You still wanna - "

"I do."

His velvety gaze rests heavily on your skin when he leads you to his truck.

"Our spot" is outside of town. Off the highway, along a smaller country road, then off on a narrow dirt road with grass growing between the tire tracks. There are fields all around, and smack in the middle of them is a small hill with a huge, old oak. A distant cousin of Frankie’s owns the surrounding fields, and they don't mind you using the land. You and Frankie often come here in the summer when the oak provides shelter from the sun. You've been here in the fall, too, stargazing from the bed of Frankie's truck.

And now you're here to fulfill a fantasy.

Frankie has prepared the truck with blankets and pillows, and even a small string of fairy lights. He's still in his werewolf costume, the paws and head are off, but his torso is still covered by fake fur and a half-torn plaid. As he rolls out the bedding, you walk to the oak to find the carving he put in its bark the first time you came here. You find it immediately, having seen it countless times before. Your initials inside a heart, simple and sappy. You trace the letters with your index finger, and you hear a low growl behind you, so you turn around.

Werewolf Frankie is standing by the truck, eyes fixed on you. Your heart skips a beat when he crouches a little and starts towards you.

"No," you whisper, moving around the trunk of the tree, trying to keep it between the two of you. Frankie, however, is quicker on his feet, and with just a few long leaps, he reaches you and has you caged against the tree.

"Smells good," he grunts, catching your wrists and trapping them against the bark above your head. "Pretty and sweet..."

He nuzzles your neck, the latex nose cold on your skin in the October night air.

"Please," you breathe, and his large paw runs down your leg and settles over your sex. You buck against him, making him chuckle.

"Needy, pretty thing..." His voice, muffled by the mask, has dropped one octave and is delightfully raspy.

He pushes up against you, letting you feel his hardening cock. Your arousal bleeds into your panties and the chilly air immediately chills the wet fabric, but your insides are on fire. You whimper, struggling while also rolling your hips against his, seeking that stiff outline of his cock in his pants.

"You want that, don't you?"

The sound you produce is pitiful and Frankie's low chuckle turns you on even more.

"You'll have it."

He drags you with him to the truck, maneuvering you roughly, yet not without care, to a bent over position.

"Spread your legs."

The cool night air feels even colder on the wet insides of your thighs, and a shiver runs through you when Frankie grinds his erection against your clothed core. The plastic claws aren't sharp, but they still make you hiss when he draws them down your thighs. His denim-clad leg touches your bare one when he kneels between your spread legs, and then his growling wolf face pushes against your pussy. He draws in your scent in loud sniffs, and you moan at how the teeth-baring mouth of the mask feels against you. Shamelessly, you push back, wishing the mask came with a live tongue as well.

Frankie sinks the claws into the flesh of your thighs and rumbles low as he rubs the mask against you. The friction is delectable, and you keen loudly, your lower lip trapped between your teeth, hands fisting into the blanket in front of you. You start to push back, move your hips like when you're riding his face, and that's what you're doing now, too: you're riding his face, the wolf face that he put on for you when you suggested that you'd go to the Halloween event as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, and that he'd ravage you in the back of his truck later. He was game: Frankie was always game for whatever you suggested, even if he was against the more violent expressions of your suggested roleplay, like hunting you down and fucking you on the ground while you screamed for help. Truth be told, after the stunt Benny pulled in the corn maze, this is exactly the right amount of excitement you need. And this mask, with its wrinkled nose and bared teeth, is doing wonders for you pussy, but it's not going to be able to make you cum. For that, you need more direct stimulation.

"Frankie," you keen, "I need more, please, I can't stand it!"

Frankie stops, goddamn him, he stops. You moan out a protest and Frankie snarls at you. He shoves up your skirt, grabs your panties, and tears them off you. The fabric rips and he shoves you forward.

"Get up."

You crawl onto the bed of the truck, shivering with your ass bare in the evening air. The suspension dips momentarily when Frankie gets up behind you, pawing your ass and tracing a claw between the cheeks down to your dripping core. You push back a little, swallowing when you hear him chuckle.

"So eager... so wet... You need a big, stiff dick to fill you up, don't you?"

"Yes," you manage to answer, head light with anticipation. "I need it, please give it to me."

The belt buckle rattles, then the fly zips open. He lets out a low rumble of relief and take a moment to get himself ready. You know what he's doing: he's putting on the sleeve, that latex thing you ordered online and almost shyly presented to him. The werewolf sleeve with a knot at the root, so insignificant when you measure and tried to imagine it before ordering, so huge when you saw it in person and realized that it was supposed to go inside you. Frankie had been skeptical - he was big enough on his own - but he was also curious, and he loved the fire he saw in you when you suggested that he'd fuck you like an animal. That you wanted to try to take the knot.

You're practically drooling now, knowing that you'll get it soon.

Frankie's paw in between your shoulder blades, and he pushes your chest down onto the bedding. His cock drags between your swollen lips, bumping into your clit before the head slips in, teasing you with the promise - or threat - of how well he could fill you, but doesn't just yet. You exhale in a whine, and Frankie replies with a similar, albeit lower moan, before sliding in, all the way up to the knot.

"Fuck," you keen into the blanket that your face is resting against, "fuck, that's good, that feels so good..."

He pulls out slowly and slams into you anew, drawing a shout from you. He then repositions himself, comes off his knees and onto his feet with bent knees into bulldog, and starts to batter you with his stiff cock. Hands on your upper back, he's pressing you down into the blankets, and you bite into the fabric to keep from getting too loud as he thrusts hard into you, again and again. The truck bed creaks and rocks, your bodies make the music of lewd, wet slapping as he assaults your pussy, and you grip the blanket until your knuckles are white.

"So wet and tight," Frankie pants above you, his furry werewolf torso plastered over your back as he rails you mercilessly. "So desperate for my fat cock, you wanted it so badly, didn't you?"

"Yes!" you cry out, each thrust into your core stealing away a little bit of your breath and brain. Your chin feels cold, and you realize that you're drooling, but you don't care if you look like a cock-hungry slut because that's what you are and you're loving it.

The knot keeps jamming against your slick opening, but Frankie doesn't seem willing to try to cram it in just yet. Your legs are shaking and giving way underneath you, and you almost slide down onto your stomach, but Frankie pulls you back up.

"Stay on your knees!" he snarls. "Don't you dare lie down!"

You gasp something to let him know you're listening, you're compliant, you'll do anything he tells you to. The plastic claws scratch your thigh, and you brace yourself on the soft warm blankets underneath you to stay on your hands and knees.

"Good girl..."

He moves in you just right, he knows what you want and need, and he's giving it to you.

"I'm a good girl," you keen, and his big paw strokes your back. Your pussy clenches, slick and heat pooling as your body sets into a higher gear.

"You are such a good girl," he confirms, breathless voice muffled behind the mask. "So good for me, taking my big cock like this..."

The praise zaps out your brain, and you start to push back on his thrusts.

"Harder, fuck me harder, I wanna cum!"

He knows just what you do, and when you're wailing out your orgasm, arms and legs shaking, he pushes you down on your stomach, ass still up.

"The knot, the knot, gimme the knot!"

The pressure is nothing like you expected: sharp and agonizing as the knot slowly presses into you. You only realize that you're holding your breath when you hear Frankie murmur "Breathe, sweetness, just breathe, you can do it" behind you, and you exhale with a shrieked Oh my God!

"It'stoo much," Frankie frets, pulling out, but you push back.

"Nonono, do it, I need it, do it, please please please!"

Once again, the mass inches into you, and this time you meet it halfway, jamming your ass against Frankie's hips, swallowing the knot and once again losing your breath at how full you are, full to the point of tearing, a string of Oh my God oh my God oh my God fuck fuck fuck spilling from you as you fist the blankets to hard that your knuckles go white.

Through the searing burn, you start to feel the adrenaline. Fuck, that's big, but you got it. You have it all in you, you're doing it, oh my God that's tight but you got it, even if it burns, you got it, and you start to relax and Frankie moans somewhere near your ear, and you flex your walls around him and he moans again, deliciously.

"Fuck me," you beg, "Frankie, fuck me now, with the knot, fuck me and fill me up, I need you to cum inside me, take me, just fuck me!"

He covers you, the polyester fur warm and itchy as he takes you with slow, almost lazy yet deep rolls of his hips, the knot pushing easier into you now, arms with furry, clawed paws around your shoulders and neck, and when he pushes in one last time to empty himself in your core, your eyes roll back and you sob with relief that it's over.

And still, you never want it to be over.

Frankie is still buried in you, has you buried under him, shielding you from the increasing coolness of the October night. It's not until he carefully inches out of you that you realize just how cold it is, and your whine is a protest both against that, against him pulling out, and an expression of your soreness. Frankie immediately throws a blanket over you, then takes off the werewolf head.

"Goddammit, this thing's cooking me alive!"

You open your eyes and try to focus, finding the werewolf snarling right beside you. A pleasurable shiver runs through you, and then you feel the burning heat of Frankie's breath on your neck.

"Are you okay?"

You can only hum, dazed as you still are. Frankie shoves the werewolf head out of the way and lies down next to you, his face just inches away from yours.

"Talk to me, baby."

"Can't," you mumble throatily, and he chuckles.

"Okay."

In the light of the stars and fairy string lights, you see that his face is red and dripping with sweat, his disheveled curls wet and plastered onto his head. His breathing is still labored, and the puffs of air are hot against you.

It's so fucking sexy.

Your pussy is still throbbing, slick and sloppy as his cum oozes out and stains your thighs. You've never felt so filthy, and you're loving it.

Finally, you draw a deep breath and open your eyes to Frankie's attentive gaze.

"I'm good," you tell him, and are immediately rewarded with a smile.

"You liked it, then?"

"Liked it?" you scoff huskily. "Fuck, Frankie... it's the best sex we ever had."

"Not better than that time we..."

"Okay, not better than that," you smile wryly, knowing what occasion he's referring to. "But top three, definitely."

"Really?"

"Frankie... I know you weren't into it from the start but I'm so grateful you decided to give it a try."

You scoot closer and kiss him softly.

"It means so much that you wanted to give this to me."

"I want to make you happy," he whispers against your lips. "And I did like it. You were so fucking hot, baby. When you took the knot, you were... feral. I've never seen you like that."

His hand slides in under the blanket, finding a plump breast straining out of the bodice.

"The costume works for me, too."

His hand travels up your chest, neck, and stops by your cheek, his big thumb dragging over your lips.

"And your lipstick is all smeared out. It's really fucking hot."

You chuckle, flushed from his praise. Frankie kisses you again before letting his lips wander down your cheek and jawline.

"Now that we've done what you're into... can we do the thing that I'm into?"

You bite down on your lower lip, but the giggle still finds its way out.

"Which is?"

Frankie continues to kiss his way down the exposed parts of your body, moving blankets and himself until he's settled between your legs. He collects his spend from around your cunt before pushing it back in with two fingers, lips latching onto your clit.

Your back arches and you see stars, literally, along with the lights strung up on the back of the cabin. The discarded werewolf head grins at you from a corner, and you smile back before your eyes fall shut and you give yourself to pleasure once more.

#frankie morales x you #frankie morales x reader #francisco catfish morales #francisco frankie morales #triple frontier fanfic #my fic

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castielslostwings · 10 months

Text

A Eulogy and Obituary for Dagny Ayn September 13, 1978 -- February 2023.

I am devastated beyond words to share that the wonderful Dagny Ayn (who you may know as daynz or meta_castiel on twitter) is no longer with us. Her sudden passing is a shock and the urge to speculate on details is understandable, but I hope we can focus on her light instead, because Dagny doesn't deserve to have her life defined by how it ended. Dagny did not receive the recognition of her life and memorialization of her existence that she deserved out in the real world, so I thought to give it to her here, as well as create a place for those of us who loved her to come together and grieve, to share about her memory as we should.

Dagny was here. Please read and celebrate her life with me.

To do it online seems right. I truly believe Dagny would approve. The online Supernatural fandom (and especially the Destiel-friendly spaces), served as her community, her chosen family. Like so many of us, fandom was her life vest, her social circle, her escape from the harshness of the non-virtual world, and the source of most joy in her life. To anyone who knew her, it was no secret as to how much Dagny loved this little corner of the internet.

On a personal note, Dagny was one of the first people I connected with after joining the fandom, and we immediately bonded over our mutual love for Buffy and Supernatural. Especially Willow/Tara, Misha Collins, Castiel, and Destiel. We shared many similar life struggles, from past trauma and complex parental relationships to mental health and disability challenges to a lack of IRL support and chronic loneliness.

The friend group I shared with her and @coinofstone was one of the safest places I have ever known. Talking to Dagny never failed to leave me feeling heard and understood. I hope I was able to do the same for her.

Dagny was strong. Despite the many obstacles life constantly hurled in her direction, she was always looking forward and moving towards the future. She saw the best in people, even those who failed her, those who didn't deserve her grace and forgiveness. She loved her mother more than anything in the world, and Chelsea, her cat, a very close second.

(she would definitely want me to show you Chelsea!) When Dagny's mother and main support system passed unexpectedly in recent years, Dagny was handed a new armful of struggles and asked to face an uncertain future without the person she loved most and with barely enough resources to survive. She was uprooted from her home and moved clear across the country, losing so much in the process and dropped in a precarious situation. Despite all of that, she had big goals for herself. She was working hard to build the life she wanted despite a major lack of family & IRL support as well as her own demons.

Dagny was amazing at appreciating the simplest things. A free coffee at Tim's, some stickers in the mail, or a small windfall that allowed her to purchase a meal kit from the grocery store would brighten her entire week and she would gush about how happy she was for days. When she first moved cities after losing her mom, she talked about how thrilled she felt to have big windows and a view of the city, as she'd lived in a basement walkout for years. Her enthusiasm for those things, even in the face of great struggle, was always humbling and contagious.

Dagny was easy to love.

As for fandom, Dagny especially loved Misha, Castiel, and Destiel, and did so fiercely. She read tens of thousands of words of fanfic every day, frequently messaging me from the bus to complain about rowdy passengers "interrupting her gay porn". One time, she lost her phone and worried to me (from her laptop) about losing her entire collection of fanart, 100+ AO3 tabs, and the SPN-related photos she had saved, unconcerned about the actual phone and her ability to contact IRLs.

With what little extra money Dagny had (and how infrequently she could be convinced to treat herself), she enjoyed collecting fandom merch, especially items made by her favorite fan artists. She ALWAYS had a Destiel case from redbubble on her phone! Her Ace pin from Stands was a treasured item.

Dagny greatly admired Misha's missions and charity work very much, following GISH closely and always striving to share and his boost campaigns and those of other cast members. She would often express that she wished she could do or donate more, even while she struggled to provide bare essentials for herself. Dagny was selfless like that.

As full as her phone was with saved memes, cast photos, Castiel/Destiel art, and fanfic links, it was equally brimming with people who loved Dagny herself. She often expressed how happy and connected seeing notifications on her social posts made her feel, how loved she felt by her friends and fellow shippers.

Discovering the Ace spectrum through fandom empowered Dagny to feel confident in expressing her identity, allowing her to name and define a feeling and concept she could never quantify before. She felt very strongly about wearing her Ace pride on her sleeve. We spoke many times about the power of fandom and online community to turn shame and confusion into confidence and love, and Dagny truly embraced that concept. She was a wonderful role model for embracing your true self.

Dagny had many hopes for a bright future. She was trying to find a job and gain more financial independence, and she had a whole plan to do so. She was smart and motivated. She was also haunted and wrestled constantly with demons that just wouldn't let her go.

We talked frequently about finally meeting at an SPN convention, once she was able. One of Dagny's dreams was to have a photo op with Misha as Castiel, and we spent many nights planning excitedly for a theoretical day that we hoped would come. Since then, she fell in love with Heartstopper and dipped into other fandoms and was living her best online life. Dagny had so much room in her heart.

So many things, not the least of which were time and borders, kept us from ever meeting in person, but our friendship was no less real for those barriers.

To Dagny: family doesn't end in blood. Jen and I both love you and choose you back. We know you were here. You made an impact and we'll never forget you. This wasn't supposed to be the end of the road, but you taught me that sometimes life has other plans and there's nothing to do but roll with them.

Until we meet again, my friend. thank you for being you.

If you would like to do something to honor Dagny, her life, and her passions, she would want you to donate to The Castiel Project. It's particularly fitting, as besides being a beloved project to her, Dagny also deserved a happy ending that just wasn't in the cards.

Please feel free to leave your memories and/or love for Dagny here.

#in memoriam #destiel fandom #spn family #dagny ayn

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smolweeblets · 5 months

Text

Taters

Karlach x Reader/Tav

A/n: I live temporarily. Back with another fandom. Small ramble note at the bottom.

Winter was just around the corner, causing the night air to chill as of late. You used to hate the cold, it reminded you of… less fortunate times. However, these days you've found yourself slowly being able to see the beauty of it, reason being your beautiful girlfriend, who’s kept you perfectly warm every night, safe and protected against any unsavory memories.

The amazing tiefling who's stolen your heart has kept you company for countless evenings, with each one feeling as special as the last. But this time you find yoursef pondering, a memory—or rather a word—that you couldnt quite shake off.

Taters.

It was just such a bittersweet moment for you both. You thought her family using words just for them was such a cute thing to do, it seemed to make Karlach so happy. It kicked some gears in your brain into motion, so much so that you happened to mindlessly utter it out.

“Pardon, love?” Karlach craned her head to look at you atop her chest.

“Oh– nothing, was just lost in thought–”

“Ah, well taters, either way” She grinned from below you.

Your heart melts a little inside of you. How was anyone allowed to be this cute? Yhe universe is unbelievable.

“Yeah… listen Karlach, ive been thinking about something” You trail off slightly, not quite sure on what you actually want to say.

Karlach tilts her head slightly to the side. A worried frown painting her features. “Something wrong?”

“No, I just… happened to think about your family… The language you had together, you said you were the last remaining speaker. I want to change that.” You held her hand as you talked, both for her reassurance and yours. You mindlessly toyed with it as you spoke.

Karlachs eyes widened.

“You want to kill me!?” She gasped incredulously. “I knew it was only a matter of time… I wouldnt mind if it was you though, make it quick” She stuck her bottom lip out and wiped a fake tear from her eye, while the other hand held yours to her chest.

You snatched your hand from where she held it and lightly bopped her on the forehead, looking only mildly amused.

“As if.” You scoffed lightheartedly.

Karlach grinned. “Of course, so what about my parents?” There was a faraway look in her eyes. Shes told you that she loves talking about her parents, but being a little sentimental about it was unavoidable.

“The uh… the language you had together, what other words did you guys have?”

“You want to know about the gibberish we spoke?” Karlach smiled, unsure.

“Yeah, it was a big part of your childhood, I want to make more good memories with those words… maybe with a family of our own.” You sunk your face into the firm muscle of her shoulder, partly because it was comfy, but partly to avoid looking at her, in case she didnt agree.

“I cant believe you just brought up the idea of a family before I could. How dare you.” The pitch of her voice raised towards the end. She narrowed her eyes at you.

“Oops” You giggle, face still smooshed against her skin.

“Hmph.” She scoffed. “Give me a moment to remember, im sure I can dig up some of them.” Karlach gazed at the ceiling, mind drifting back to her childhood.

“Lets see… chess… chess meant a kiss… Yeah, I think I remember being grossed out because I saw my parents giving each other ‘chesses’.” Karlach chuckles softly at the memory.

“Chesses? Thats… oddly fitting for a kiss.” You smiled. “What else?”

“Sheesh just give me a moment” Karlach pouts. “Cant let a woman think for shit in here” She huffs.

“So dramatic. Just take your time.” You rolled your eyes.

Karlach scoffs, but otherwise stays silent for a moment, collecting little anecdotes from her childhood.

“Hmm… Blankets were called ‘warmers’ I think”

“Simple and straightforward, I like it.” You grin

“Right?” Karlach laughs, a beautiful sound. You cant help but snuggle up impossibly closer into her. And she holds you just a little bit tighter.

“Then…” Karlach trails off slowly, hand unconsciously starting to pet your head. “Hm. Sorry soldier, cant remember any more right now.” Karlach sheepishly smiled.

“Thats okay, we can try again tomorrow. I think let's just sleep, i'm tuckered out”

“Sounds great.” She presses a kiss to your forehead.

~~~~~

The conversation is mostly forgotten by her, whose been busy with choosing only the best produce for you both at the market. She left before you woke up, hoping to surprise you, but it seems she got too caught up with haggling with the shop ladies, so that plan was out the window.

As soon as she enters your shared cabin, youre immediately clung onto her.

“Chess.” You peel yourself away from the hug momentarily to face her with a kissy face at her while pointing at your face.

Her brows furrows before they relax and melt into an expression of surprise and awe. She leans down to give you a small peck then envelops you in a large bear hug.

“Gods, have no clue how happy that made me” She grins widely.

“Yeah? Prepare to be happy a lot more then.” You preen at the feeling of being able to make her feel like this.

“Thats going to be difficult considering im already always happy when im with you.” Karlach looks at you adoringly. To an almost painful degree.

The emotions rushing into you felt a little overbearing. Your eyes narrow and your muscles stiffen. “Im getting cuteness aggression.”

“Im honored.” She smirks.

“Stop or else I will actually fall to the floor.”

“I cant, youre too amazing. But don't worry if you fall, ill make sure to nurse you better myself.” Her voice was teasing, but held affection all the same.

“Just stop talking to me.” You bat at her shoulder stiffly as your face sits in a lighthearted scowl.

“Alright, ill lay off from the sweet talk for a little bit. Just for now.” She relents.

“Somehow that makes it even worse. Im going to feed the pets. Bye.” You move robotically, movements restrained from the rush of the pure emotions.

Karlach chuckles to herself, used to your mannerisms. Youll be back, and in the meanwhile, she supposes she’ll be cooking breakfast for the both of you.

“Alright love, taters!” She waves. She takes the produce from the bags and prepares them to be cooked.

Not long after, she hears a loud crash swiftly followed by your voice.

“Im fine!” You hurriedly shout. God forbid she saw the mess you made from recoiling when she called you.

Karlach shakes her head as she continues washing the vegetables. You were one hell of a person, and she couldnt see herself with anyone else.

A/n#2: AGHHH I FINISHED ITTT. Listen I had an idea but I dont know how to actually write it. I guess its still cute but it has strayed from what i have envisioned. Started with the original prompt then turned into a sort of domestic bliss/banter thing? I dont know. Anyway, this became a shameless self insert but its okay because its my fic. also dont ask about the made up words im uncreative.

Sorry for the ADHD rant this is how I am when im supposed to be sleeping, till next time guys <33

#karlach kiss me challenge #karlach x reader #karlach x tav #karlach x you

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protemporescitor · 2 months

Text

"But she ded tho" (a.k.a. the dumbest argument against Clerith) - A rant

To expand on my previous post, in which I posited the crazy, far-fetched theory that in a fantasy setting mayhap death is not the relationship brick wall that it would be in a more grounded, realistic one*, I just want to bring up a few points to further buttress this off-the-wall notion.

"Cloud can't be with Aerith. She's dead!"

We've all heard it a thousand times. It is the argument most commonly levelled against Clerith. It is also the worst (and laziest) one.

It's often delivered in a declamatory and glib fashion, as though it were some sort of obvious conversation ender. Q.E.D. End of debate. The ultimate gotcha. "Checkmate, Clerith fans!" the haters think to themselves, chortling and patting themselves on their backs for this profound insight. (Insert tasteless and juvenile comments about Aerith being "shish kebab-ed" by Sephiroth as desired.)

And all I can think is "That's it? That's your best argument? That's some weak tea, man."

Despite its myriad flaws, this idea continues to radiate throughout the fandom a good quarter century after the original title's release, as though it had never once been challenged. It is a feeble and untenable position, a house built on sand, and one that deserves to be thoroughly demolished. With Rebirth on the horizon, and all the shipping wars nonsense rising from the grave once more as a result, it is high time, if you'll forgive the expression, that we laid this cliché to rest once and for all.

(*Note: Even in a more "realistic" setting lacking any kind of fictional afterlife, this would still be a gross oversimplification of the story's themes of loss, regret, and yearning, as well as entirely ignoring the idea of love transcending death, but we'll set those concerns aside for the time being.)

Lastly, before we begin: This is not an anti-Zerith / CloTi screed. Those pairings both have an undeniable canonical basis. My aim here is simply to demonstrate that the notion that Cloud and Aerith are forever separated by death is rendered invalid by virtue of the type of setting that their story takes place in. (Something that, frankly, one would reasonably assume to be perfectly obvious. Alas, such is not the case. And so I find myself yet again pointing out the glaringly obvious.)

Now, without further ado, let's begin:

Part 1. Before (the Compilation) Crisis

In the beginning, there was the year 1997, and Squaresoft had just released their latest title. And lo, it was good. We spent days and weeks following our favorite polygon people around their embattled little globe. We fought, laughed, cried, and struggled up until the Meteor Crisis reached its crescendo, and the credits rolled. Gosh, what an ending! But what did it all mean? How did things REALLY turn out? Did we get a happy ending at all?

According to some, Cloud lived happily ever after with his childhood sweetheart, Tifa. According to others, he continued to roam the earth in search of his Promised Land to be reunited with his tragic lost love, Aerith. Yuffie swiped everyone's materia (again). Cid finally went to the moon. Red XIII opened a haberdashery in Costa del Sol, or something. No-one really knows for sure.

And so, the fandom began to spread to every corner of the internet in search of answers. Thus began the age of dissension. Opinions clashed across fanzines, blogs, and fanfic country alike. Wild fan theories abounded pertaining to special codes, methods, and blood rituals capable of bringing back our erstwhile flower girl. The fan-made media bubble surrounding the game turned into a lawless land of misinformation and vicious disagreement. None were spared.

A brief digression on why said rumours persisted for as long as they did (CAUTION: Massive spoilers for Chrono Trigger).

One side proposed a simple solution. A way to cut the proverbial Gordian Knot of our fandom. It was quite obvious, really. Just staring everyone in the face. The flower girl was dead, and that was that. Thus, there was only one possible conclusion to our narrative. Cloud's feelings on the matter were, of course, irrelevant. With Aerith out of the picture, the only logical choice left to him was to settle down with Tifa, and that was that. Never mind the themes of doomed, tragic love and the possibility, strongly hinted at throughout the game and outright confirmed during its ending, of existence after death.

Overall, direct evidence for said afterlife was scant, but not entirely absent from the story. As an example, at one point during her childhood, Aerith speaks to Elmyra, trying to comfort her, saying that the spirit of her husband wanted to come visit her, confirming that an afterlife presence did indeed exist. But for some, this simply wasn't evidence enough. And so the war raged on. Which brings us to…

Part 2. Advent Children: The smoking gun

Remember back when a certain portion of the fan base insisted that Gaia erased all the humans at the end of the story, on the flimsy basis that we don't see any during the game's brief post-credit scene? Well, that little theory was neatly undone by subsequent releases in the Compilation, showing regular ol' humans still roaming around Gaia in all their everyday human-ness. Hence, it is rarely brought up these days. Would that the pernicious notion of "but she ded tho" could follow in its footsteps, given that the same film roundly contradicts it in every way possible.

For starters, the film inexplicably bring two characters, Rufus and Tseng, hitherto assumed to be dead, back to life, probably in an effort by Square to shoehorn as many recognizable members of the cast into their animated feature as they could. But that's not all. Next we have three characters that everyone agreed were deader than doornails ALSO making appearances, first in flashbacks, and then directly influencing the world of the living. Zack speaks to and encourages Cloud during his struggle. Aerith reaches out to him (quite literally) from beyond the grave and assists him in defeating Bahamut. And of course Sephiroth pops back into existence just in time for his contractually-obligated boss fight near the end of the film. All three demonstrate quite clearly and definitively that death is not the impenetrable barrier to continuing interactions between the living and the dead in the world of Final Fantasy VII, as a certain segment of the fan base would have everyone believe it is.

To be blunt, I don't know what level of dense you'd have to be to keep up this so-called "argument" in light of this information. Advent Children reiterates what most of us already knew, that our story takes place in a fantasy setting* with a confirmed afterlife existence.

(*You'd think that the name of the series would clue people in.)

The notion that death represents, within the context of said setting, the ultimate end was already softly contradicted by the original game's narrative, and then (because that was apparently too subtle for some people) flat-out annihilated by the existence and events of Advent Children. It should have long since ended this nonsense. But somehow, it didn't. These revelations, obvious though they are, remain ignored for some reason. And so, the cycle of willful ignorance continues.

But we're not done yet. We now move on to more tangential, but still relevant arguments against this line of "reasoning".

Part 3. Stop Hitting Yourself: Why "but she ded tho" is insulting to everyone

And I do mean everyone. Let's examine this, shall we?

It's insulting to Cloud.

To suggest that he loses interest in Aerith the moment she sinks beneath the waters, or that he is obligated to move on simply because she is no longer among the living, with no mourning period, no time to work through his guilt and grief, is to portray him as shallow and uncaring, something that goes against virtually all the characterization that he's been given throughout the story. The line of thinking apparently goes "Well, she's gone. That sucks. She was cute, too. Better move on to the next available piece of meat."

Sounds pretty gross when you write the quiet part out loud, doesn't it?

It's insulting to Aerith.

"Didn't even toss the b@#h a Phoenix Down, just dumped'er in the water LAWL"

I'm sure you've all come across comments like that at some point, usually originating from some errant redditor or blogger. Thinking themselves fine fellows and enlightened, above-it-all gadflies, they provide us at length with this and other prime specimens of 14 year-old internet edgelord "humour" that carries about as much edge as a perfect sphere. Remarks like these serve little purpose beyond confirming my suspicion that our fandom is indeed plagued with illiterates who can't tell the difference between the terms "revive" and "resurrect", and insist on conflating game mechanics with storytelling. And you wonder why some people are confounded by words like "flammable" and "inflammable".

(All right, I'll put the salt down. For now.)

"The party's designated white mage dies, oh no, that's so sad, boo-hoo, life goes on," I hear you say.

But boiling Aerith's role down to one of merely that of a temporary party member who kicks the bucket halfway through the story, never to be heard from again, both cheapens her purpose within the larger narrative and denies the clear effect that she continues to exert, directly and indirectly, on it and the other characters after her passing.

Though Aerith may have departed the world of the living, the story makes it abundantly clear that her influence on it has not ended. There are hints here and there that she still tries to assist her friends from the afterlife. As an example, when the party rediscovers Cloud in Mideel after assuming that he might be lost for good, a villager sums it up best with the following remark: "That boy must have one hell of a guardian angel."

It's only mentioned as a vague hint in the original story, but it is clear that some beneficent force is acting on Cloud and Tifa's behalf, aiding them in their survival and uniting them in the Lifestream in order to help Cloud recover his memories. Later supplemental material confirms that to have been Aerith's doing. If that's not enough to convince you, though, the original game's ending leaves little room for ambiguity as to Aerith's continuing influence. When Holy sputters and fails, she coaxes the Lifestream itself to intervene, burning away the calamitous meteorite, helping her friends put an end to the planetary crisis long after her own demise. I suppose the lesson here for silver-haired godhead wannabe villains is this: Strike her down, and she shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

So the idea that Aerith's participation in the story immediately comes grinding to a halt upon her death is both puerile and easily demonstrated to be false. But even if that were the case, downplaying her lingering influence on Cloud and the other characters in this manner would still be ignoring the creators' intent. Whether one interprets Cloud and Aerith's relationship as romantic or merely platonic, it is clear that her death, the loss of one of his closest allies, is something that wounds him deeply, and scars him forever. Two years on, he still pines for her company and desires her forgiveness for his perceived failures. She clearly occupies a special place in his heart, and her memory and legacy live on within him, spurring him on as he wanders the planet, searching for some way to meet her again, defying the impossible. (Which, as we all know, isn't going to happen. This is, after all, Final Gritty Reality we're talking about here.)

Ah, but all of this is a moot point, you say? Even if he did wish to be with her, preferring the company of the last Cetra over that of his childhood friend… well, too bad. That's no longer an option. We can spout all of this verbiage about "soul pain" this and "star-crossed lovers" that, but at the end of the day, Aerith is still dead, and that's that. At least, that's what ardent CloTi fans will insist, no matter what. So, what is Tifa to Cloud, then, by their own logic?

Which brings us to perhaps our most salient, and most overlooked point, at least as far as CloTi shippers are concerned. If all that wasn't enough for you, you may want to consider that it's deeply insulting to Tifa, as well. Grievously so, in fact. Quite possibly more so than any other character in this whole equation. And the reason why should be plain as day if you stop to think about it for a fraction of a second.

Here's the thing… if you can't articulate why you think Cloud would prefer to be with Tifa in spite of Aerith being alive, then you are essentially declaring her the "winner" by default on no other merits than the fact that she's still sucking down air. Stating "but she ded bro" means relegating Tifa to the role of a consolation prize. I don't think I could ever hurl such a staggering insult towards her as her biggest fans keep doing, without even realizing they're doing it.

Ask yourselves, is that really what you want for your supposed favourite character? To frame her as being doomed to eternally play second fiddle to her fallen friend? Cloud's "plan B"? The "side piece"? Someone who only stands a chance if her rival in love is literally six feet under? I'm sure she'd be thrilled by the high regard in which her own fans seem to hold her. (Hey, you said it, not me. It's not my fault if you don't take the time to actually consider the ramifications of what rolls off your keyboard. But by all means, keep insulting your own favorite character just to put down a ship you don't like.)

In closing, if we unearth the subtext and reframe it to highlight what people are, in essence, saying, it's this: "It's a good thing that she-who-shall-not-be-named bit the dust, because otherwise our beloved Best Girl Tifa (tm) wouldn't stand a chance."

It's a simple enough question: Why do you think that Cloud and Tifa belong together? What, in your mind, makes them a good fit for each other?

"Well, the competish is dead." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for your best girl, now is it?

Part 4. "Heads, I Win. Tails, You Lose": A brief word on hypocrisy

In fandom, it's often the loudest and most obnoxious voices who tend to drown out the more reasonable ones, those of fans who are just minding their own business and grooving on the thing that they like. Which, unfortunately, renders this next part a necessary component of the greater argument that I'm trying to make. Multishippers and sane, reasonable CloTi and Zerith fans may consider themselves exempted from the following harangue.

The rest of y'all, buckle up.

The too-oft repeated refrain of "but she ded tho" entails a twofold hypocrisy. The first part is:

Case of Tifa: Fan hypocrisy regarding death.

Strident anti-Clerith fans, with their usual level of maturity, will often bring up Aerith's demise in a gleeful, mocking tone that can best be summed up as "ding dong, the witch is dead!" And if the shoe were on the other foot? If their Best Girl Tifa (tm) were the one pushing up daisies instead of Miz Gainsborough? Would they be quite so cavalier in their attitudes?

Who wants to bet that these fans wouldn't be making this "argument" so loudly if it was their ship that was in question? Consider this scenario: Suppose that the remake trilogy does the unthinkable and has Tifa die in Aerith's place. What then? Would they accept that "but she ded tho" is, at best, a double-edged sword, one that applies equally to their own favourite ship were their fortunes to be reversed?

Something tells me that's not the case.

But if you think that's hypocritical, you ain't seen nothing yet. This first point pales in comparison to…

The Zerith Exemption: Fan hypocrisy regarding the afterlife.

You know what my favourite thing about this whole debacle is? When people inform me that because they are separated by death, Cloud and Aerith have no hope of ever being together again. They will then unironically pivot to shipping Zack and Aerith, two characters who are together in the MOTHERFUCKING AFTERLIFE.

It's wild. How do you even compress that much cognitive dissonance into one skull? We're talking about mind-melting, Olympic medal-worthy levels of mental gymnastics here.

Now, before someone accuses me of being morose, I'm not suggesting that Cloud hop off the nearest cliff just to be with his beloved (Aerith would not approve of him throwing his life away, for one), just that when he reaches the end of his natural life (which may not be too long, given the cells eating away at his body), he can finally be reunited with her in the afterlife.

Many ardent CloTi shippers see themselves as bound by law to uphold Zerith as a shield against the dreaded Clerith plague. But to proclaim, implicitly or explicitly, that the afterlife encompasses one but not the other is not an idea that can be taken seriously. It remains an utterly bizarre blind spot, one that beggars belief.

On a related note, there is the infamous misconception that is…

Part 5. The ZaCloud Fallacy

While this is not directly related to my main point, I nonetheless find myself compelled to address this issue. There is a long-standing confusion that bedevils our fandom, one that has its roots in the Shipping Wars (tm). I am, of course, referring to the ZaCloud Fallacy.

We owe this particular misapprehension to Crisis Core, a prequel/gaiden game that was released ten years after the original FFVII. Already, its existence can mess up the timeline, so to speak, as, strangely, people tend to treat it as a sequel rather than a prequel, and as though it were adding new and vital building blocks to the world of FFVII instead of merely distorting the original story while retreading it with a far less interesting cast of characters. It also retcons major elements of the original story that it shouldn't have (such as the events taking place in Nibelheim five years prior to the main narrative), lazily steals Clerith scenes only to rehash them with Zack and Aerith, and forces players to endure, at length, crimes against literature, courtesy of Genesis.

It's an odd prequel, to say the least, given how heavily it relies on the original story for context. Sequentially, it may take place before FFVII, but it can only be fully appreciated with the original in mind; it cannot be treated as a stand-alone story. The worst thing about Crisis Core existing is that playing it first can outright ruin people's perception of the original narrative by spoiling several major plot elements and even lessening them in the process. Crisis Core's writers are especially guilty of cheapening dramatic moments like Zack's last stand by transforming it from a quiet, tragic, harrowing scene about sacrifice to an utterly over-the-top and emotionally overwrought trainwreck. It all merely serves to add to the confusion, especially for gamers who started with this title instead of the original.

But if that were not enough, Crisis Core's reckless meddling with the story combined with the acrimonious and all-consuming nature of the shipping wars has resulted in one of the most nonsensical misconceptions in the entire fandom. During Crisis Core's ending, Zack implores Cloud to carry on his legacy, thus giving rise to the erroneous assumption that Cloud's behaviour in disc 1 is merely that of him "being Zack". Clerith-hating fans, in particular, pounced on this idea as a way to put a safe distance between him and Aerith, characterizing their interactions, whether platonic or romantic, as merely a case of Cloud utilizing Zack's memories and personality around her (Never mind that Zack and Cloud's personalities are as different as night and day).

It is a fundamental and willful misreading of the story, a gross oversimplification of a more complex and granular truth in service of a fan-originated meta-narrative, one that has been assembled in order to reach the conclusion that Cloud and Aerith's relationship is null and void, and that therefore the romance between him and Tifa remains unchallenged. (Never mind that the story is intended as more than just some playground tug-of-war romance). To maintain this lie is to do violence to the story by destroying Cloud's character arc and reducing him to a virtual non-entity until the very end of the game.

Having already been rebuked in regards to this pervasive delusion, certain fans have tried to hedge their bets by suggesting a second, more advanced version of this idea. ZaCloud Fallacy 2.0, if you will, which states that Cloud is only in Zack Mode (tm) when he's around Aerith. I don't even know what to say about that sort of nonsense. To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an assertion.

I'd go into this in more detail, but YouTube creator LinkOnTheBrink has already covered this topic extensively in their superlative video essay "How Shipping Can Ruin a Narrative".

It may seem like I'm trashing Zack or Zerith here, but I'm really not. That was never my intent. So let me be clear about this: I like Zack. I just hate Crisis Core and what it's done to this fandom. If you prefer CloTi and Zerith to everything else, I don't much mind. Ultimately, this isn't about shipping wars nonsense, but protecting the narrative from such nonsense.

And that leads us to…

Part 6. I Against I: Where the fandom went wrong

We all know that the infamous FFVII Shipping Wars (tm) are as stupid as they are inescapable. Anyone who's spent any time at all within this fandom has inevitably run afoul of them and their detritus at some point, whether they've chosen to participate in them or abstain from the whole debacle. But there's a reason why this acrimonious dispute has raged on for as long as it has. Much like Blade Runner fans would argue until they were blue in the face about whether or not Deckard was a replicant, fans of this story have been squabbling about CloTi versus Clerith for ages for similar reasons. (Zerith got roped in as a "political wedge", I would argue, as much as a pairing in its own right.)

It's more than just a war over shipping, it's a war over canonization, over character motivation and psychology. Of how we ultimately interpret the story and its characters. Given the vagueness of the story's ending, one can't help but wonder and speculate as to how everyone ended up afterwards. (Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus may have offered some answers, but they still largely sidestep these questions in a noncommittal, to-be-continued manner.)

The problem is that, for many fans, it isn't possible to simply say "It's my preference" and be done with the matter. Unlike most rarepairs and bananas pairings like Cait x Jenova, CloTi and Clerith remain hotly contested because they go beyond mere shipping, or even aesthetic preference, or which characters one most identifies with; they lie at the core of how we perceive the story and its inhabitants. In that sense, I don't consider it to be an entirely frivolous debate, just an unsolvable one.

So, what's the answer?

There's this long-standing piece of received wisdom about JRPGs vs. WRPGs, where the latter involves more freedom at the expense of focused storytelling, and vice versa. This idea might hold true to some extent, but it is not some iron law that must be obeyed without question. For a game like FFVII, choices that radically affect the narrative structure would be considered an aberration and not the norm. And yet, it might represent the only way out of this quagmire that doesn't involve throwing half the fandom under the bus in the process.

For me, Mass Effect and similar titles (e.g., Quest for Glory) have already presented an obvious solution: Let the players choose. (There is already some precedent in the form of the Gold Saucer scene, although it ultimately doesn't change the outcome of the story all that much.) It may not be a perfect solution, but I'd argue that it's far better than leaving one side out in the cold. At least this way, everyone gets something.

"Ah, but this is not feasible," I hear you respond. "Not for an Eastern-style RPG, at least. Only one of these pairings can be correct, and one must, above all, respect the creator's vision."

Yeah, look where that got us.

Part 7. As You Like It: Ship whatever you please (just stop this nonsense)

I realize that this little essay of mine has been digressive, rudimentary, rambling, extemporaneous, and scattershot. So let me try to reach some kind of meaningful conclusion here.

Much of this anti-Clerith rhetoric we've seen over the years seems to stem from a place of insecurity, whether it's murmuring "but she ded tho", claiming that Cloud was only ever Zack in disc 1, inventing a fictional sex scene underneath the Highwind from whole cloth, and so on… The thing is, there is no need for it. Clerith and CloTi both exist canonically. Even the game manual says as much, describing Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith's relationship as a love triangle. In other words, the love triangle is what's canon, and the rest is by and large up for interpretation. (Zerith also canonically exists, and we've known this since the OG.)

The true reason why this whole disagreement has gone on for eternity, I suspect, has less to do with any debate over canonicity alone than it does the sheer enmity and pettiness that it has continued to spark for so long. It has metastasized over the years, going from being a mere squabble over which pair is canon to an exercise in holding the other side in contempt. That endless cycle of disrespect and reprisals is undoubtedly where it all went wrong in the first place. (If I had a nickel for every time someone commented "but she ded tho" or "wHy iS zAcK bLoNd iN tHiS pIc?" when someone posts a piece of Clerith fan art, I'd have a pretty nice collection of coins by now.)

Obviously, we should all try to just click off when we encounter content that we dislike, but it's not always easy, especially when something we harbour a strong aversion to is so deeply enmeshed within something that we do enjoy. And so, our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. Before you ask, yes, I'm as guilty of that as anyone else.

Still, I firmly believe that the occasional olive branch can go a long way. So let me simply say that I have the utmost respect for Tifa and Zack. They are worthy characters in their own right. So create and share all the CloTi/Zerith fan works your little hearts desire. Hire a fleet of skywriters to declare Zerith your favourite couple. Throw a giant CloTi parade through the middle of Times Square. We don't mind. Honestly.

As stated above, whether it's CloTi, Clerith, or Zerith, you can stop fretting over which one is canon; they all are. The other three permutations (Zakkura, Zifa, AerTi) don't get much in the way of canon acknowledgement, but they probably should at this point.

In the end, this is about saving the narrative from the shipping wars, as much as anything else. To say that you prefer CloTi or something else to Clerith is fine. To assert that Clerith doesn't exist in any form, however, is where I begin to take exception.

Ultimately, I say ship what you like. All I ask is that you retire this sort of narrative-wasting nonsense. It's time we threw it into the garbage can of gaming history where it belongs. As for questions of motives, character interpretation, canonization, and so forth… if we cannot reach an accord, then let us at least try for a more amicable disagreement.

As for my fellow Clerith supporters, the next time you see the withered old canard that is "but she ded tho" being bandied about in the wild, feel free to laugh and treat it with the derision and contempt that it so richly deserves.

#final fantasy vii #ffvii #ffvii rebirth #final fantasy vii rebirth #final fantasy 7 remake #clerith #cloud x aerith #rant #final gritty reality #but she ded tho #spoilers

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fearlessdevil17 · 1 month

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I FINALLY HAVE A FAVOURITE HUMAN POKEMON CHARACTER!!!!

I've been playing Pokemon since probably 2010, and i've never really had a favourite Pokemon character that was human. I mean i do love some characters like Cynthia and Wally, but i just never saw them as my favourites, and it's been like that for years.............UNTIL NOW!!!!

As much as Pokemon Scarlet/Violet has such a wonderful story, as well as fantastic character development. Kieran's arc is the only thing within the game that legit shook me to my core.

Like there were so many thoughts racing through my head after i finished the Teal Mask, and that post ending!!! That gave me serious chills.

I will never forget that battle i had with Kieran when playing the Indigo Disk. That was the most insane and intense Pokemon battle i've ever had in a long time. I legit felt like i was fighting for my life. I haven't been backed into corner like that for years.

What made it worse was that I found out after the battle that, for the first time in Pokemon history, Kieran canonically surpasses Cynthia. And given how she's left tons of players with PTSD, that's a horrifying title to have.

Kieran is more then just your "friendly rival", and i have no idea how to put it in words. One things for certain is that he is nothing like the other rivals in the other games, Kieran was out for blood, specially your blood.

I already considered Pokemon Violet as my favourite Pokemon game of all time, and playing the DLC and the Epilogue, that just deepened the title.

I'm so happy i bought it, and i'm glad Kieran stays our friend at the end too :)

But to think that this timid little bean would become my new worst nightmare lol

Congratulations Kieran, you are now part of my "favourite characters from different fandoms" collection, you've earned it <3

Here's a close up of the sad sona doodle:

As well a couple of bonus sketches:

Meanwhile:

My sister didn't have the same experience when battling Kieran.

We seem to have different battle styles, as you can see here:

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #i'll never forget the sheer terror i felt when battling Kieran lol #and i have to do it again in Scarlet #yayyyyy!!!#He still a precious little bean tho :3

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icaruspendragon · 1 year

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Please stop making spn posts just let it die please

here’s the thing- i will not be doing that.

you see, there’s so much shit in this world. the horrors. the terrors. all of it. they’re out there. and something that makes the horrors and the terrors and all the other shit a little easier for me to deal with is talking about a silly little fifteen year long collective fever dream. it’s one of the last vestiges of adolescence i have.

when i was being tossed about in the sea of my grief, it was spn that kept me from drowning. it was misha collins dubbing himself my nemesis and participating in the mishapocalypse 2.0 that gave me a distraction i needed so terribly in the early days of me trying to learn how to be an only child. he didn’t have to. he could have ignored the whole thing. but he didn’t. and that’s something so special to me i don’t think i’ll ever have the words to articulate the depths of my gratitude. because the first time i felt joy after my brother dying was at a supernatural convention. it was when i asked misha about the silly comment and he had a screenshot of it on his phone ready to show me to prove he had done it, that was the first time i realized that one day i wouldn’t feel so full of nothing i didn’t have room for anything else. it was the community i made there that showed up for me time and time and time again that made me realize i may be lonely, but i wasn’t alone. and that wasn’t the first time the community around that show had made me feel that. and I’m certain it won’t be the last.

the first time i ever encountered fandom in full force was in 2013. that’s a decade of my life. and it’s because i decided to watch supernatural. and it was in this fandom space that for the first time ever, i felt seen and heard and valued. for the first time in my life, i felt like i mattered. and my thoughts mattered. it wasn’t until i found fandom by way of spn that i realized i had value and worth. it was that show that gave me some of the best friends i could have ever asked for. it is because of the spn fandom that i have been given so many opportunities. that i have a way to make an actual difference.

and it has continued to do that for me. even ten years later. there are people who i didn’t know existed less than a year ago who i couldn’t imagine my life without now. people who have been to my home. people who have become my home. people i have flown across the country to see and people who have flown across the country to see me. people who are my family. and i met them because we share the same level of brain rot for a cw show that caused a great deal of damage to our psyches.

we get to curate our internet experience. we get to look at and talk about and post about what we want. and if someone posts something we don’t care for, we don’t have to look at it or engage with it or interact with it. we can scroll. we can block. we can ignore. we each get to carve out our own little space online. we get to build a little home. and my home is full of my love for a lot of things. for avatar: the last airbender and the hunger games and percy jackson and fandom and fanfic in general. my love for poetry and art and words. and yes, my love for a show that ended over two years ago that has haunted corners of the internet since 2005. i have a lot of love for a lot of things. so i talk about and post about the things that i love because i don’t ever want to look back and say, “my god, i should have loved more.” and i’m allowed to do that. because this is my space. i built it just for me.

this silly little show with it’s silly little characters is the one thing i have from Before that has remained unchanged. and even if that weren’t the case. even if i didn’t have all this sentimentality attached to it. even if it was never a lighthouse, a buoy for me. even if it was just something i casually enjoyed. i would still post about it. because it makes me happy. because i’m not hurting anyone by enjoying it. because it’s given me a little blip of light in a dark world. and you don’t have to consume it if you don’t want to. that’s the beauty of all of us living in different houses. we can visit who we want, when we want. and we don’t have to visit the houses we don’t to. how wonderful it is, that we are the gods of this small thing. we get to create and dismantle and create again. as many times as we want. because this is our space to do with what we want.

and i want to post about my love for all things, including hit cw show supernatural. and i can. so i will. because i’m the one living in this house. and no one is making you come visit.

#asks #spn #supernatural #long post

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santacoppelia · 8 months

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Good Omens master post and WARNING

I was happily participating in the fandom when I started noticing some things I will not condone:

Real person shipping and/or expressing hate for real life partners of famous people will gain you a permanent block/unfollow (So you ship actor A and B? And you hate their life partners? Go, die salty, they chose each other and their relationship is not for your enjoyment and none of your business). I do not condone and will not tolerate this behavior.

I reblog so many things, that I needed this sort of index to find the things I've written about the show that I want to find later.

I started with a long meta about how the overarching theme for Good Omens is the concept of "free will"

Then, I expanded on the @irispurpurea meta with my own "moral development chart" analysis...

I had a small emotional breakdown with some concept art...

And said something about how their lifespan and ours are not to be considered the same (4 years is nothing!)

And, somewhat on the same direction, how their communication problems are (and not) derived from being queer-coded.

I went on analyzing the "Crowley swag" from a body mechanics and acting perspective, and a little bit about David doing "mask work" when putting the sunglasses on...

Not really a meta, but some thoughts about a video of Michael Sheen talking about the strength required to be good, in relation to Aziraphale.

And my absolutely ridiculous headcanon about Aziraphale being actually proficient as a magician.

Obviously, the Metatron Meta

A short list of things we know about Maggie... That one day will be a headcanon.

And a short list of things I loved about the season, in Spanish, because it is my native language and I wanted to do it quickly.

Wouldn't it be fun if they had to share a body? (just a small musing)

A meta about angels and angelic nature (and why I feel Muriel will be important in s3)

The notes on serpents' eyesight that reinforce my headcanon of Crowley having bad eyesight (and, of course, it matches soooo well with poor David's experience with the special contacts and the sunglasses 😎)

A mini note about Aziraphale cornering himself

The gifs of my Reverse! Omens headcanon: David Tennant's angelic side, and Michael Sheen being a charismatic demon

The happy finding of rereading the book: there was a mention of a Shopkeeper's Association Dance!!! (oh, how I loved this inside joke)

This is not mine, but I looked everywhere for the screenshot of Neil searching the name for the coffee shop, and here it is. It was "Grounds for Divorce", so...

The tentative playlist, started by @temperance-sunlight, to let Crowley cry in style, like a señora. (Now with a Spotify version)

A little appreciation post to Michael Sheen's acting voice choices.

THE LONGEST META: an analysis of The Final Fifteen, through the optics of this season starting and ending with The Ineffables arguing.

a crack meta about the working conditions on Hell AND Heaven.

Un fic chiquito, en español, sobre las causas de la caída de Crowley. Este fue un regalo para una amiga, que me dio el detonador para escribirlo. The translation to English.

a meta about one of the great new characters from season 2: Shax!!!

Adding some ideas in a repost about Aziraphale having a protagonist-looking arch.

A long, rambly answer to a very lovely ask about free will and Aziraphale.

I wouldn't naturally associate the narrative analysis model with this masterpost, but i teased it and decided to write it in this post, after sensing a "shift in attitudes" towards Aziraphale when the filming of the kiss was discussed during Ineffable Con... So here it is.

I finally started publishing my "bahamut of a fic"! Under the Fold, an AU where A.Z. Fell + A.J. Crowley are human journalists involved in a web of scandals. It starts following the canon (somehow, considering that there is no Heaven and no Hell and the Armageddon is just an exposé) but it will diverge and be angsty but with an eventual happy ending.

Related to the fic, this meta: Ineffable detectives

This essay which is not about Good Omens, but takes David Tennant as a starting point to talk about fandom, aging and social constructs around getting older, fandom and culture.

#good omens #good omens meta #good omens santacoppelia meta masterpost

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gleedyke · 4 months

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Here comes my two cents on anti-Neil Gaiman posting that I hope comes across civilly and that if you choose to interact with you are also polite about.

Everyone has the right to like/dislike a creator and to separately like/dislike their work. I happen to like this particular creator quite a bit, and I do notice that not everyone GOmens posting does, which again, of course, is fine. Disagree with choices made, that's healthy, but the way I keep seeing "us (fandom) vs him" mentality on any type of post feels bad. This isn't a defense of him; I don't fucking know him, nor does he need that. I'm actually quite happy when I hear folks say they simply don't follow/interact with him if they dislike him. That's great energy, but the rest of us seeing it all over is less great. Thought some reminders posted into the void would help lighten up the energy around here, or at least get it off my chest lol.

1. I've been properly queerbaited by media. This is not fucking that. Take a deep breath and heal with me.

2. A lot of vitriol towards Neil, and frankly Michael and David too, seems to be about being straight men creating this. Have we still not learned to mind our business on this front. You don't know them, we don't know them, but everything we've ever seen from them proves they're on our side. You wanna be mad at a straight man for actually fumbling the bag Steven Moffat is right th- sorry I forgot this isn't about him I tried not to bring up Sherlock in point 1 I really did. ANYWAY. I'm not implying anything, but I have learned to mind your business a little when telling someone why they can't create something queer. That's all.

3. This is his story, and it's not over. It took so long for him to get an adaptation made that he actually wanted to do, and he's doing it. I point y'all to Percy Jackson (I know there's some overlap in demographics here) and how much better the new series is just because Rick Riordan is more involved in adapting it. Having an author of the original work handling the adaptation this thoroughly is a gift regardless of how you feel about him. Additionally, he's writing the rest of the story that he and Terry Pratchett didn't tell. In Terry's honor. For himself. For all the people with beat up original copies. For all the people who have just joined because they realized there is something magical here. But above all it's still his. Take a deep breath and remember this is a love story, and if you still are not content in the end there's always AO3 my friends.

TL;DR vent away on your Tumblr if you don't like Neil Gaiman, nobody is gonna like everyone and certainly nobody's perfect. But before spreading negativity against him on every corner of the GOmens tags, I encourage you to remember how essential he is to the work regardless of your opinion. And remember that those who do like him and his work are also doing so with the best of intentions. Aren't we all. Peace and love this new year. Wait and see. Etc.

#good omens #gomens #neil gaiman #i almost didn't tag this bc i don't actually feel comfortable up on this soapbox but i would like at least somebody to find comfort in it

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pretty-restless-insomniac · 5 months

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"You Made Me This"

WORD COUNT: 1554

FANDOM: Harry Potter

Mattheo Riddle x reader

SYNOPSIS: You just hope you'll hurt less once you say what you wish.

WARNINGS: explicit language, mention of infidelity, mention of sex, angst, no happy ending

----------------------------------------

"Oh shit. OH SHIT how are we going to get out of here?"

"Calm down, you screaming like a fucking banshee isn't going to help."

"oh that's fresh coming from you Riddle," you whirl around with an accusing finger.

"You probably planned this, you wretched gargoyle, damn it. Help please somebody! The door is locked!"

Slow irritating clapping came from behind you, "Wow y/n you're a fucking genius. The door IS locked, it's fucking night time! We're in a prohibited area. All the professors are patrolling the lower corridors."

You just glare at him and gesture for him to fuck off. You sigh and lean against the wall to assess your situation. One, you just wanted a pretty isolated place to listen to your music and cry a little. Two, you did not expect to see Mattheo Riddle in your place in the bell tower, clearly smoking whatever he pleases. Stunned you didn't get to wedge a book into the door so it wouldn't lock. That's how you find yourself at number three. You're trapped in the bell tower, after curfew, now very obviously smelling like pot and yay who's your partner in solitude?

Mattheo Fucking Riddle.

He seemed surprised to see you as well but why should he be? You were the one to show him this place, somewhere you two could just exist in each other's company. A place where not even war could bother you both. Before he fucked up of course.

All in good time.

"Maybe instead of being a nuisance you could instead find us a way out then, Riddle."

He drops from the beam he was smoking on and slowly corners you, looking almost confused.

"That's not my name princess," he leans in to grab your hand but you just shake him off. How fucking DARE he. He has to be the most ignorant wizard in the world.

"I am Not your princess, Riddle."

He just stands across from you, folded arms mirroring yours . That stupid smirk back in its place .

"Now when did we decide that? Last time I checked, whose name did you scream last time I had you. Who made you cum till you shook, and gladly licked it clean."

You just stare back humorless, trying to keep your composure.

"You decided that Riddle, you know, the night where you fucked that Gryffindor girl."

He just throws his head back and groans. Your throat starts to feel choked up, holding back the cries you'd pray he'd never see. But now he's getting a glimpse of it

"Princess- y/n I swear to Salazar Slytherin that I did not fuck her. We kissed yes, touched a little but then nothing more I swear."

"Oh thank you Mattheo," you exclaim sarcastically, " that just makes me feel so much better. Please tell me that I did not walk in on you grinding into her when she was naked. Explain to me how the fuck that is loyal in any way!"

You jump up and pace a little anxiously, knowing that this night will be filled with cold hard truths. You just hope you'll hurt less once you say what you wish. Mattheo reached out to you again but you just brushed out of his way and sat on the winding staircase.

"And the worst part is," you take a deep breath praying your voice stays stable ," that was OUR bed. It was where we studied and had movie nights as friends. The bed you asked me out on, and later took my first kiss on. It was," you breathe shakily and are blind by the tears filling your eyes, "it was where you made love to me, for the first and many times after that. It was beautiful."

You're glad you can't see the reaction Mattheo has from your words but he soon knelt down in front of you cautiously.

"it was so beautiful- you are so beautiful my love. You have my heart and I will never again want for someone else. You're my everything. That was my first time making love as well, because I'm so fucking crazy for you."

You can help but laugh with tears in your eyes, "yeah right Mattheo. Riddles don't make love, you fuck anyone you want and toss them aside when you're done with them. That's what our relationship came down to, right? Getting your prick wet."

He chuckles slyly.

"That sex was pretty good- don't look at me like that! Fuck I'm sorry I was joking. Of course it wasn't just about that. I just keep fucking up, I can own up to that. I'm trying to be better, I want to be better. Only for you, y/n. Please for fucks sake, look at me baby."

So you do. And he nearly trips as the storm clouds ravage across your eyes. You stand and push him against the door, somewhat pleased to hear a nervous gulp.

"What's the matter Matty? Don't you want to know why you keep fucking up?"

You take a deep breath before sticking your finger to his chest.

" It's because you NEVER own up to the shit you do. You never fucking learn because you act like you don't know what you've done!"

You're screaming by the end of it, but his dark eyes now match yours. Must've hit a nerve.

"Oh yeah cause it's ALWAYS me? YOU left me! You promised and you lied. YOU promised. Don't put all the fucking blame on me princess. This isn't about some random bed warmer. I did nothing but devote myself to you, so what did I do that's so fucking horrendous!?"

You throw your arms up in exasperation, God damn, he's fucking cruel. You can't hold back the dam anymore, deciding to let all the poisonous shit that's been building up in you these past months out.

"You BROKE me," you shriek as sobs begin to pour out endlessly. You fall to your knees and look up to meet Mattheo's horrified face. You shake harder and try to take some deep breaths.

"Why did you do this to me? To us. Everything was great, I adored you, how was that not enough. Why did you let me find you with her that night? I-" you hold back a gag as you relive the worst night of your life. The boxers you bought him on his hips, hickeys down his neck. His matching promise ring is discarded. And worst, the smiling girl waving at you stark naked from her position on the bed.

Why? Fuck. Why, why.

"When I was with you, you made my life brighter. You were my sun and I held you close to me every night, remember? After every meeting with your father, when he forced the dark mark on you and you came to ME crying. ME. I was good enough then, but not worth it in the end."

He tries to interrupt but you just keep barreling through.

"I couldn't even face you after that. Call me a coward but every time I look at you, I feel sick. You touched her the way you touched me. Your lips fit on hers as they did mine, fuck Mattheo you were even holding her hand."

You start tugging on your hair, probably painting the picture of a psychotic breakdown. That's what made you hate him even more though, the shame.

"I can't believe I let you make me so weak, so willing for you. I fucking adored you, and you HUMILIATED me. You broke my smile. My spirit, my heart. And I will NEVER be the girl I was before I caught you that night. I can't even imagine trying to put myself back together. You killed the me you were once in love with. That is why you're Riddle to me. Riddles destroy."

You bend and put your hands on your knees trying to slow your heart rate. Mattheo just sits across from you with his head in his hands. He doesn't know how to react, what to say, what to do except to grab the key from his pocket and hand it to you, climbing back to his beam.

"You're right. You always are. It was a beautiful thing and I had to have it, even though I knew I would break you. You're just all I ever wanted. But I am only a monster to you, use that key. I got the conversation I wanted. The princess escapes the monster, right?"

He chuckled sadly, not even looking at you as you rushed to open the door. Thank fuck. Before you step fully out, you pause. You turn to look at the boy you would've done anything for, the boy you were so sure would treat you the same.

"I never wanted to be the Princess in your fairytale. I'm not perfect. But I know my fucking worth," you throw the key at him before grabbing the door on your way out. As you lean in to close the door fully, you catch a last glimpse of his eyes.

"You were right about the monster part. It's just a shame you've made me one too."

The door clicks shut, and you don't feel anything walking away. Numb, even to the cries of your name echoing back to you.

#reader insert #harry potter #wizard #mattheo riddle #mattheoxreader #mattheo x you #angst #sad #fanfic #fantasy #hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry #voldemort #the golden trio #draco malfoy #draco x hermione

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