#AS JUST AS DANGEROUS JUST GOES TO SHOW HOW HOLLOW AND STUPID ITS MESSAGE IS

[velvetmel0n]

No More Than a Name For Yearning

Summary: It’s a late night at the office when the tension becomes too much.

Rating: Explicit

Word count: 6.5k+

Warnings: Alcohol consumption, vaginal fingering, a threesome (tag teaming?? idk man they take turns), Javier and Carrillo being competitive? penetrative sex, multiple orgasms, egregious use of italics and em dashes, exhibitionism and voyeurism? little bit of dom!Carrillo, Javier smoking as per usual, mutual pining, angst 

A/N: let’s hope I didn’t overhype this lmao. Special thanks to @tintinwrites and her knowledge of musicals for the title💕

@damerondjarin @mandoplease @tintinwrites @poeticandors @darksideofclarke @futzingorchids @pascalplease @glowingpena @ollypopp @yougottakeeponkeepinon @bisexual-space-slut @agentpike @mylifeliterally @pedropasscals @huliabitch @winters-buck @hystericalmedicine @watsonwise @1zashreena1 @chelsfic @halfwaythereroyal @leahsafae @qveenbvtch @maxlordd @acomplicatedprofession @bobafvtt @propertyofdindjarin @milleniumvalcon @the-bird-suit @girlpornparadise @okay-murdocks @slfreya @aellynera @duamuteffe @ah-callie @bookshelvesandteacups @woakiees @himbopoes @shadow-assassin-blix @thedevilwearsvibranium @littleferal @veuliee2 @mserynlarsen @lesqui @softpedropascal @writefightandflightclub @catfishingmorales​

“I’m done.” Steve’s voice, all Southern hospitality and exhaustion, breaks you out of the haze you’re in and have been in for the last two hours, English and Spanish swimming before your eyes and you smile up at him reflexively, grateful for the distraction, however small it is. It had been a bad day for everyone, bad intel and a bad raid and now you’re stuck shifting through mountains of files, looking for where you went wrong and the next plan of attack. “Do you want a ride?”

“I’m good, I want to work on this a bit more,” You say confidently, trying for a tone and an expression that says ‘I’m staying because I want to finish this, not because I don’t want to be alone yet’ while his blonde eyebrows knit together high on his forehead. Your smile doesn’t crack under the weight of the energy he’s putting out, brotherly and almost concerned as his eyes flick towards the only other people in the office with you; Javier and Carrillo. 

“I’ll be fine, I promise,” You snort when Javier waggles his eyebrows dramatically at you over a stack of his own files to go through. “Javi’ll take me home,” You say because he will. You don’t have a car, having wanted to save money and not fully grasping the inherent dangers of being a DEA agent who relies on public transport in the middle of Escobar’s territory before you had moved here. 

You’d started saving the second week of living in Colombia, but somewhere along the way it had become less of a pressing issue and more of an afterthought as you fell into the rhythm of jumping into Steve’s car as he swung by on his way into work or pounding on Javier’s door, just down the hall from your own with some sort of baked good in your hands as the customary bribe. 

“You sure?” He’s giving you another chance, another out, because it’s late and it’s hot and his nerves are probably still frayed just like everyone else’s who aren’t showing it and he no doubt thinks you need a break just as much as he does.

“I’m a big girl, Steve. I’ll be fine,” You turn a page, sending him the message that yes, you’re staying. You’ll wait Javier out, promising him some muffin or cookie you’d picked up from the store, crumbly and too sweet but he gobbles them down anyways.

“Oh—kay,” He drawls out, sounding unconvinced but he’s picking his jacket up from where it’s been laying on his desk. “You crazy kids don’t have too much fun now,” He digs his keys from his pocket as he walks out and the hollow slam of the door shutting behind him doesn’t shake anyone.

And it takes a moment for the gravity of what you’ve just done to sink into you, how you’ve just stranded yourself on a desert island of paperwork and intel. How you’re trapped between the two men you think about late at night when you’re alone and hungry, now hunched over one singular desk with them and your mouth goes dry.

Your skin prickles and some part of you thinks that this might be better; better than the stress of the day and the frustration that rises in your blood every time you have to ask one of them to translate for you because cartel slang isn’t taught in any class and at least Carrillo tells you. You’ll tilt the paper at him and point and he leans close, brows heavy over his sharp eyes and he’ll say it once in English, only once and his tone is equal parts exhaustion and frustration but it’s enough.

Javier is more of a bastard about it. The way he smirks every time you ask him for anything, smooth and suggestive and asking what you’ll do for him as payment and as much as it gets on your nerves you can’t help but rise to it, batting your eyelashes and threatening to do one thing or another which of course never fazes him. It helps soothe the more ragged edges of your nerves, falling back on the familiar rhythm of your friendship, the push and pull wrapping around your shoulders like a security blanket.

You both know that you’ll each fall apart in your own way as soon as goodnights have been said and your apartment doors have closed, but that’s a problem still hours away. It’s a problem you’ll deal with alone in your bed, hugging your pillow and wishing you had someone warm and solid sharing your bed because you could attach yourself to them somehow you think. Anchor your body to theirs, to reality, so you don’t float off into nightmares.

Carrillo seethes beside you, quiet and his mouth set in a hard line but you still find yourself wanting to reach out to him. It’s stupid but you want to reach out and smooth your hands over him, want to bleed the tension form his body because he carries too much of it and he can’t bury it under innuendos and harmless flirting like Javier can, like you’ve learned to. 

You think about it sometimes, what might happen if you acted on your desires with the Colonel. You know what will happen with Javier if you ever take him up on the offer, one that’s stood since your first week here. You’ll know that he’ll treat you right, that he’ll take you out of your head and take you apart piece by piece. Maybe he’ll even put you back together again and you can’t deny that you’ve been thinking about it more and more lately. 

But Carrillo is a puzzle and maybe that’s why you keep thinking about him as much as you do, maybe you want to take him apart just as much as you want Javier to do the same to you. You want to know what it’s like to have all that energy focused on you, intense and bordering on obsessive. All consuming. 

The next exhale is shaky and you realize you need to stop before you start staring at them, at the way Carrillo’s shoulders fill out his uniform or catch Javier’s profile out of the corner of your vision, the way his mouth twists with displeasure underneath his mustache. You need to stop before you start thinking about what that mustache will feel like against your skin or how tight Carrillo’s grip on you would be. 

You try to bury yourself back in the files and grainy photographs, trying to ignore the ache between your thighs and you realize that you were wrong, that this is worse.

The next hour passes in a haze, steeped in frustrations and stress and an insidious kind of tension, the air plucked taut like a bow string. You’ve untucked your blouse and have already undone the first button but you’re reaching for the next two barely ten minutes later and you don’t know if you’re overheated from the weather or the look you’d seen Javier give you when you reached for your collar the first time, thick eyes slid over to you and following the motions of your fingers. You think Carrillo might be watching you, too— see his head tilt from the corner of your eye, see his fingers still as they turn a page. You keep going, slipping the buttons from their closures and maybe you make more of a show than you should of opening your collar. Of fanning yourself and slipping your hand underneath your shirt to rub your shoulder.

No one says a word and you keep your eyes fixed on the ones in front of you, absently kneading your own shoulder as you wait for their eyes to slide away, for the moment to pass because it feels like it’s clogging your throat. 

“Need a hand?” Javier raises his eyebrows, points his chin at the one you have stuck up your shirt, your fingers squeezing at the knot that’s formed and you snort. It splinters the tension enough that you can breathe.

“In your dreams, Peña,” Because the last thing you need right now is for him to touch you, the rasp of his fingers over your smooth skin with Carrillo watching the entire thing, less than three feet away. Your stomach clenches at the thought, a traitorous thrill forcing its way up your spine and you dig just a little too far into the tendon and a noise slips from your lips. 

You expect Javier to call you out on it, on the way the sound just...flows out, low and keening but pitched up towards the end and you don’t breathe. You don’t know if anyone breathes because it’s like you’re the only three people awake right now. The only three people alive and the glow of the streetlights outside is pulsing and hazy as it slips through the cracks in the blinds and it’s making you feel like you’re in a fever dream, like suddenly all the consequences of bad decisions, of feeding the monster in your gut are going up in the smoke that bleeds from Javier’s cigarette.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t and neither does Carrillo and your breath shakes itself out of you, your fingers smoothing over the tendon you had just curled into and you have half a mind to go home, to try and call Javier off the hunt so you can curl up in your own bed and try to sleep off the stress and the heat, the thoughts that keep rising to the surface.

The sound of Carrillo yanking a drawer open drags you out of the daydream that’s trying to coalesce and you see him pull the bottle out; think that the frustration must be getting to him. You can’t blame him for it.

“I hope you’re planning on sharing, Carrillo,” 

Because there’s something to be said for warm alcohol and the way it burns the whole way down like it’s holding a grudge. You don’t know what it is— it’s something clear and biting that smells like window cleaner when Carrillo unscrews the cap and passes it to you, the bottle half drunk already and the thought is dim in the back of your mind that the Colonel himself must’ve done this dozens of times before, that your lips are wrapping around the very same rim as his must have as you swallow a mouthful and try your best not to grimace. Your lips tingle on contact and you know whatever it is it’s strong, probably enough to fuzz your better judgement.

You’re already passing it to Javier when you see him reaching for it, fingers hungry in the way they wrap around the bottle. He gulps, bares his teeth at the taste and holds it out to Carrillo who swallows a mouthful of what you suspect to actually be paint stripper without blinking. Rinse, repeat.

The alcohol loosens your tongues and before you know it Javier is cluing you in on the things that are said behind your back, when you’re not in the room. Warning you about a young agent who’s been making noise about asking you out, maybe getting you in bed and you can’t help it.

You chuckle and the words rise unbidden to your tongue, spurred on by a combination of alcohol and stress, of sleep deprivation and the oppressive heat. You don’t realize your mistake until a second after the words are out of your mouth and you can feel your stomach drop to the floor.

“I’d rather fuck you grumpy bastards,”

Because it’s just as much about the wording, how you said it as much as it’s about the fact that you said anything at all. You’d rather fuck them. Not either, not one of. You’d rather fuck them.

“What was that?” There’s a change in Javier’s voice, some new chord resonating in the air and it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Carrillo drinks slowly from the bottle and you can see his throat working, his Adam’s apple bobbing and he’s looking at you with intent. It makes you want to squirm. 

“I— I just mean if I had to choose, between you and Miller I mean, I’d— I would choose you,” You fumble it and you know it. You’re not looking at either of them, eyes staring down at the files still on the desk because you feel warm and prickly all over, trying to keep your breathing even because you’re spiraling. You’re afraid; afraid of their reactions, if they’ll snort and reject you after all and afraid of what will happen if word gets out. The fear tangles with arousal in your gut, as exhilarating as it is confusing and no one is saying anything.

You see motion out of the corner of your eye, a large hand gripping the back of your neck a moment later and he almost pulls you out of the chair with his urgency to crash your lips against his own— Carrillo. You melt into the kiss, welcome his tongue into your mouth and you’re abundantly aware of the fact that Javier is just on the other side of you, that you’re being watched.

Your breathing shallows and it’s like you have a fever you’re so hot, drinking down every bit of attention that’s being lavished on you between Carrillo’s mouth on yours and Javier’s hands, sliding around your middle and squeezing your sides before you feel him crowding further into your personal space. It’s already verging on too much for you, too many things happening at once and not going to stop until you’re boiled down to a creature of lust and sensation and nothing else. 

Carrillo keeps one hand in your hair while he eats at your mouth, keeping you in place for him while his other drops to your thigh, palming it before he slides his hand down to your knee and holds, stopping you from creating any friction for yourself before you could even try. You whine and Javier’s even closer than before, covering your neck with kisses now and his mustache tickles enough to have you trying to recoil from it, chills sweeping throughout your body and his chuckle dark in your ears. 

Carrillo’s teeth drag over your bottom lip at the same time Javier starts to unbutton the rest of your shirt, his hand deft and seeking as it slips underneath the fabric, his other mirroring Carrillo with the way it grips the meat of your thigh. You whine, trying to grasp Javier’s shirt in an effort to ground yourself or to pull him closer you aren’t entirely sure because all you know is their hands on you and the ache that’s burning you up inside, the taste of the alcohol on Carrillo’s tongue as it sweeps through your mouth. 

Your shirt flutters to the floor in a soft heap and Javier’s attention stays on your chest for what feels like ages, palming your breasts through your bra while Carrillo’s head dips, mouthing along your jawline and down your throat, and in that moment you want nothing more than to feel his teeth. To have him suck marks into the fragile skin that you can look at in the morning to make sure this isn’t some fever dream brought on by the heat and frustration because you feel like you’re being melted down between the two of them and reshaped into something new, something hungry and aching and empty.

A hand trails from your chest and down your stomach while teeth scrape along your neck, your shoulder, and you almost hold your breath when you feel the button of your jeans being fiddled with. A whine builds in your throat, a sharp sound undercutting it and sending a jolt through your body when the Colonel smacks Javier’s hand away before he could slip it inside your pants. Your eyes flutter open for the first time since this all started, just in time to see the way Carrillo’s jaw clenches, hostility or just plain competitiveness you can’t be sure belying the heat in his eyes as he glares at the other man.

It shouldn’t turn you on— you know it shouldn’t, having him snapping over you like that, like you’re a new favorite toy he’s loathe to hand over but you can’t deny the way you squirmed, either, heat curling in your gut at the thunderous look on his face. And then Javier is huffing and for one insane moment you’re afraid that he’s going to give up without a fight, that he’s going to stop.

But then he’s turning your head towards him, wrenching you away from Carrillo so your chest is pressed against his own and he can have his fill of your lips. His kiss is different from Carrillo’s— the bristles of his mustache tickle and it’s less like an onslaught but no less heated, his groan sinking right down into your bones.

Carrillo’s fingers make quick work of your jeans and you almost leap out of your skin at the first touch, thick fingers slipping underneath the band of your underwear and dragging through your soaked folds. 

You moan into Javier’s mouth, the sound ripped from the back of your throat and you hear one of them chuckle— self satisfied and almost mocking and you want to snap at them and call them names, want to regain the edge you maintain so carefully in this line of work but you can’t. You can’t because Javier’s teeth are scraping along your jawline now and his hand is working its way underneath your bra to start thumbing over your nipple, the edge of his nail against the sensitive skin making a chill skate through your body and Carrillo— he’s— he’s rolling the rough pads of his fingers over your clit, using enough pressure to make your thighs jerk and the insults wither on your tongue.

Then it’s your hands that are moving, unclenching from their shoulders to follow the lines of their torsos down, down, down and the scrape of chairs across the floor is loud and disjointed as they’re yanked closer. Half of you wants to take your time, to explore the both of them at your leisure and finally have your fill of each, to run your hands along their bodies and kiss each of their scars but the other half of you is louder. The other half of you is greedy. Impatient. 

You smooth your palms along the front of their pants, reveling in the feel of their cocks twitching through the fabric and how Javier’s breath hisses through his teeth, how Carrillo drops his head to your shoulder and squeezes the inside of your knee, his fingers stuttering against you. It’s heady, knowing that they both want you like this and holding evidence of their arousal in your hands and you can’t help but stroke them, biting down on a grin when a moan works itself from Carrillo’s chest. 

Javier recovers first and pulls you until your body is fully facing him, hunching over you with his fingers working at the closure of your bra, mouth trailing down your throat. Carrillo huffs behind you but he doesn’t pull you away, not yet. Instead he shifts closer, close enough for you to sag into the solid mass of his chest because his fingers are moving again, slipping lower and teasing your entrance, circling and only barely dipping the tip of one inside. At the same time Javier’s mouth is engulfing one of your nipples and sucking, teeth glancing off of it and you don’t know whose name to moan, writhing between the two of them and trying to get a grip on Javier’s hair. 

Your other hand is still over Carrillo’s cock and you squeeze, a whine bursting from your lips because of course the bastard was waiting for that, waiting for just the right moment to slide one of his thick fingers home while Javier laves across your chest, licking and sucking at your tender flesh. “Fuck,” Your voice is high and reedy and you feel like you can’t breathe. It’s the first word you’ve spoken during this entire thing, whatever it is, whatever it’s going to turn into, and you think you feel Carrillo’s lips pull into something sharp that might be a grin against your cheek when he starts to move.

The angle means the heel of his hand is bumping into your clit and his pace is a cruel thing; dark and twisting and somehow it’s too much and not enough all at once and your head is spinning from it. You hear him in your ear, speaking low and soft and his praises are clogging your throat. Encouragements, teasing when he asks you if you want more, can take more because he knows you can, that you want it because you’re good for him, aren’t you? For them?

And Javier is murmuring his agreements against the pillow of your breast, dragging his teeth along your nipple and you think if it’s possible for a human being to go up in flames you would right at this moment, trapped between the two of them with no buffer, with nowhere to go. 

“Need more already?” Javier’s voice is thick like honey, almost gloating as he picks his head up from your chest, taking in how it rises and falls in time with your rapid breaths, shining from his mouth underneath the fluorescent lights. His eyes drop lower and he can’t see you, not with Carrillo’s hand in the way and the thick denim of your jeans still biting into your thighs, but he can hear you, slick and obscene with little whimpers falling from your lips like you’re trying to stay quiet because you are. It’s not working, but you’re trying.

“Javi—” Your voice tilts up at the end, high and whining and you don’t know how much more of this you can take. You feel like you’re melting down, burning up from the inside out and you can’t remember if you’ve ever felt like this before. If you’ve ever felt this on edge, coiled up tight and vibrating with this much tension, if it’s because you’ve been wanting each of them for months now, if it’s because they’re both here with you. Both watching you, both stringing you out further and further and pulling you in different directions. Each trying to get their fill of you before the other. 

And maybe you’re asking for Javier because Carrillo is cruel, working you with his fingers but never giving you quite enough, working you up and up and up. Like he wants to see how far can push you, if he can make the need swallow you whole. You know he can, that for all your wanting to take him apart piece by piece he can do the same to you, is doing the same to you just as you know Javier will show you more mercy.

Javier reaches for you, curls his hands in your jeans and pulls them down over your knees and maybe he meant to pull them off, to get you naked in the middle of the office but his eyes catch on the way Carrillo’s finger is sinking into you over and over again. The way he gives you another and how you still when he does, your breath stuttering.

You almost don’t feel the way Carrillo hooks his chin over your shoulder to watch for himself because you can’t think over how his fingers feel, thick and heavy and buried up to the knuckle and you whine. You whine because he’s just holding them there, seemingly content to just feel the way your cunt is squeezing around them, the way your thighs are shaking and listening to you crying in his ear. 

You hand fists in the material of his pants, your other digging your nails into Javier’s shoulder and you use them for leverage, rolling your hips on Carrillo’s fingers. Someone groans, ragged and strung out and for terrifying seconds you think that they’re going to leave you like this. Leave you to fuck yourself on his fingers without any help.

But Javier doesn’t last that long.

Javier doesn’t last that long before he’s reaching for you all over again, pulling you away from Carrillo and you almost protest, almost call him a bastard for cutting off what little stimulation you’re managing to eek out for yourself but then he’s pressing you up against the desk and you forgive him.

You try to brace yourself on the desk, hands slipping on file folders and you look back, over your shoulder because you can hear his belt jangling, loud against the background of hurried breathing and arousal-softened voices. You don’t see it but Carrillo leans back in his chair, sucking your slick off his fingers and thinking about eating you alive even while he watches Javier line himself up with your weeping cunt, the way his head leans back as he pushes in, the way you go still. The way your chin drops to your chest and how you rock your weight onto your hands, spine curving when his hips meet yours. 

Javier isn’t moving, not yet, and Carrillo almost feels sorry for you because another of those whines is falling out of your mouth, soft and needy and you lick your lips before you speak, begging him to move and so he does. They both do. 

Javier’s hands curl around your hips and he starts to thrust as Carrillo stands, rounding the desk and his lips might pull into something crueler than a smile but pleased nonetheless when you reach for him, a moan on your lips. He lets you fumble with his belt and untuck his shirt with shaking hands and his chest swells with a twisted pride, that you can be filled with another man’s cock and still reach for him.

It goes to his head a little bit while he watches you, glassy eyes fluttering and your hands slipping. Your head drops to his shoulder with a high pitched moan, your hips rolling back, and that’s when he grabs your face, his fingers pressing into your jaw, lifting your head and forcing you to look at him. 

It’s too much, you realize, trying to remember how to breathe while you stare into Carrillo’s face. His nostrils are flared and his eyes are swallowed up by his pupils, and he’s not looking away. Your breath is puffing into his face and you’re trying to keep your eyes open, you are— but Javier’s cock keeps dragging through your walls, catching on something bright and sharp and it’s almost enough. 

You don’t realize that you keep closing your eyes until Carrillo is almost throttling you, tightening his fingers on either side of your jaw, the meat of his palm pressing against your windpipe and tomorrow you’ll feel embarrassed at the pathetic sound that leaves your throat. How you sway towards him, his "look at me” ringing in your ears, soft and biting all at once.

Javier hunches over you then and you feel his teeth in your shoulder, feel the rasp of his mustache on your skin. Carrillo’s shoulders move but you don’t look, don’t let yourself get distracted from the way he’s looking at you like— like—

You don’t know because Javier’s hand is moving, slapping Carrillo’s away before he can touch you and you see the muscle in his jaw tick before you crumple, would have spilled across the desk if his grip wasn’t holding you up because Javier is slipping his hand between your shaking thighs.

Your hands fist in the material of Carrillo’s shirt, your quest to get his belt undone long since falling by the wayside and being replaced by focusing on the way your nerve endings are lighting up under Javier’s fingers, buzzing and firing and the knot in your belly bursts, thick and sweet like syrup. You sob into Carrillo’s shoulder, bearing down on Javier’s cock and he groans behind you, ragged and grating. 

But he doesn’t let you enjoy it, not really. Because the next moment he’s pulling away from you and you feel so empty you could almost cry, shaking yourself apart against Carrillo’s chest, dense and warm and the part of your brain that’s still functioning wishes you could feel his skin on your own. You don’t get the chance to dwell on it, on Carrillo’s hands and his arms, the feel of his torso through his shirt because the next thing you know liquid is splashing across your lower back, hot and dripping and you shudder right down to your bones.

“Fuck,” Javier sounds as wrecked as you feel and you can hear him pant, the air whistling over his teeth but the ache between your thighs isn’t fading away. If anything it’s getting worse as you try to pull yourself back together, trembling against Carrillo’s body because you don’t necessarily trust yourself to stand on your own quite yet and apparently neither does Javier, rolling his forehead on the space between your shoulder blades. 

After a few moments he straightens and you feel his eyes on you as clearly as you do his hand, stroking down your side and squeezing your hip. He starts digging through the desk then, opening and shutting drawers until he finds what he’s looking for, wiping his cum from your skin with what you assume to be an extra shirt Carrillo keeps in his desk, always prepared.

Your fingers unclench from the shirt he’s wearing, sliding over his stomach to pull on his belt because you aren’t satisfied, won’t be until you know what it feels like to make him fall apart right along with you. You mouth at his neck, slipping your palm into the front of his khakis after you conquer the buckle and zipper. 

“You’re breaking my heart, baby,” Javier sits back in one of the abandoned chairs, his voice hoarse and colored with exertion, and if you didn’t know any better you might think he’s serious, that his feelings are well and truly bruising with your efforts to get in Carrillo’s pants, still greedy for more after he had his turn with you. 

“Fuck off, Javier,” You say it without any real venom against Carrillo’s skin and the other man might have barked out a chuckle, bared in his teeth in something that might have been a grin, but the only thing you can focus on is the way Carrillo groans when you close your fingers around his cock and stroke. You want to hear it again and again, want to have it vibrate through you while he’s pressed impossibly close. 

He’s a sight as he pulls himself away from you, his uniform shirt stretched across his broad shoulders, unbuttoned now and his undershirt wrinkled from your fingers, his jaw set and you have to turn, all loose limbed and soft as you seat yourself on the desk, able to finally peel your jeans the rest of the way off and spreading your thighs in blatant invitation. He takes it, slotting his hips between your knees and wrenching you to him and you’re able to wind your arms around his wide shoulders like you’ve been craving to.

You rub yourself against him, your breath catching in your throat from how your sensitized cunt slips across the coarse fabric and it almost hurts, sharp and corrosive in the way it floods through you, dissolving in its wake. But you can’t stop, chasing after the pleasure with a whining moan because he’s just watching you, eyeing the slowly growing wet spot on the front of his underwear because of it and you squeeze your thighs around him, trying to spur him on. 

"Horacio,” The name slips out unbidden, tinged with something you can’t describe and it’s the magic word. He huffs as if he’s coming back to himself, as if he’s realized that he can move, that you really do want this despite the circumstances. Despite Javier watching with rapt attention and a fresh cigarette.

He doesn’t make you let go of him, doesn’t make you pull him out because you’re clinging to him so sweet and nice and purring for him that he can’t imagine it and you’re grateful. Actually grateful that you can keep yourself wound around him, touching and tasting like you’ve thought about for months now, raking your fingers through his short hair and arching against him until you’re balancing on the very edge of the desk, his arms the only things keeping you from slipping right off.

And then you’re being split open. 

You warble something that might have been his name, choking on it and you scramble at his shoulders for a better grip. He groans deep in his chest, rough and filthy as his head drops to your neck and it’s overwhelming. You want to blame it on the fact you’ve already cum, that you’re still overly sensitive from Javier because he’s making you feel better than he has any right to as harsh as he is, as stone faced. As mean.

But then his hand is slipping between your thrusting bodies and he’s anything but, unerringly finding your clit and it’s almost embarrassing. It’s almost embarrassing how hard your body jerks, grinding into his calloused fingers while he breaks you apart, your cunt pulsing around him as he keeps up the onslaught, hips snapping into yours. 

You cling to him, fingers digging into his shoulders, his back, as the pleasure sweeps through you, glimmering and razor sharp and you say his name again, only this time mewling and shattered. And it’s the combination of everything that does him in; your cunt fluttering around his cock, your voice in his ear saying his name like that, you trying to pull him infinitely closer. He grunts as he spills himself within you, the sound strangled and you can’t help but gather his face in your hands to pull it to your own, slanting your lips against his and drinking it down.

Your thighs are quivering as you pant into each other’s mouths, Carrillo almost languidly stirring his cock in you as you both come down. You didn’t expect it— didn’t expect any of this to actually come to fruition, to exist somewhere outside of your mind and the four walls of your bedroom but here you are. The smoke from Javier’s cigarette hangs in the air and Carrillo— Horacio, now, is nosing underneath your jaw, staying right where he is and kissing the salt from your skin. If an ache wasn’t blooming between your legs, in your thighs and your hips you don’t know if you’d believe it happened at all, letting the memories turn hazy in the sunlight that’s only a few short hours away.

But it is and when you blink your eyes open you see Javier looking at you with an unreadable expression, flicking his eyes to Horacio and back again and a different heat starts to suffuse your body, this one prickling and bordering on uncomfortable. That’s when you unlock your ankles from behind Horacio’s back, your heart slipping into a nervous rhythm and you don’t want to press your palms into his shoulders and apply pressure, telling him to move without so many words but you do because you can’t take it.

Can’t take the way Javier is looking at you, can’t take how much you want Horacio to stay, to wonder and find out if he stays as gentle as this when the fog clears from his head. 

You can’t take the way he’s looking at you either as he shifts, following the directive of your hands and you swallow the gasp that tries to burst from your mouth when his cock slips from you. You weren’t expecting this either, how bereft you feel without him filling you up, without him in your arms if you’re being honest with yourself. You can’t even blame it on the alcohol, not really. None of you had drank that much, the bottle still not empty after being passed between the three of you and now on its side, knocked over at some point from your combined haste but miraculously unbroken as it lays there on the corner of the desk, liquid pooling on the linoleum below.

Javier is the one who sees it first and throws Horacio’s crumpled, used shirt on the caustic puddle while you’re pulling your jeans up, dressing as if your clothes could become your shield from the emotions that are trying to flay you alive.

“Are you okay?” It’s Horacio who asks how you are while you button your blouse, his voice gruff and threaded with something that’s going to haunt you.

“I’m good, I promise,” You try for a light smile, like you’re not turned inside out, like you won’t keep thinking about this for the rest of the night and maybe into the day when you have to pretend like everything is fine, that nothing has changed. 

Javier throws the shirt onto the desk then and it hits with a wet plop that makes you cringe. You see Horacio’s mouth thin, any traces of the softness from just moments ago bleeding away and you want it back. 

But it will have to wait for another time, maybe a better time or none at all because Javier is crushing the end of his cigarette into an ashtray and picking his leather jacket off the back of a chair, looking at you expectantly because he knows you can’t refuse him, not without revealing anything. “Ready to go?” And maybe Horacio has some inkling about the arrangement, gleaned from comments that have piled up over the weeks and months but maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he thinks you’re going home with the agent, not bumming a ride to the same apartment building because you were naïve and are now complacent.

You nod, looking again at Horacio and running your eyes over him, as if you don’t want to forget how he looks in this moment despite everything. His uniform a mess, cock tucked back into his pants but his belt staying unbuckled for the moment and for one second, one harebrained second, you think about kissing him. Just kissing him, just a peck— just enough for him to maybe know.

But you don’t. 

“Goodnight, Horacio,” Your lips wrap around the syllables, turning his name into something gentle as you drift towards the door after Javier.

The Colonel nods and you think you might see his lips part but the shadows make it impossible to tell and you don’t know what’s in his eyes either, just know that they feel heavy on your skin. Javier calls your name and you finally look away before you do something even more stupid than anything else you’d done tonight.

The door closes behind you and he knows you can’t hear him but he says it anyways, alone and looking at the door like you’re going to walk back in.

“Goodnight.”

#javier pena x reader #horacio carrillo x reader #javier pena x reader x horacio carrillo #javier pena x you #narcos smut #narcos fic #horacio carrillo x you #if you listen closely you can hear my hs english teacher screaming at all the run on sentences

[ariainstars]

Thank You, Disney Lucasfilm… For Destroying My Dreams

Warning: longer post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So… I watched The Rise of Skywalker on Disney+ a few weeks ago. Again.

Sigh.

I guess it has its good sides. But professional critics tend to dislike it and even the general audience doesn’t go crazy for it. I wonder why?

  The Fantasy

When his saga became a groundbreaking pop phenomenon in the 1970es, George Lucas reportedly said that he wanted to tell fairy tales again in world that no longer seemed to offer young people a chance to grow up with them. The fact that his saga was met with such unabashed, international enthusiasm proves that he was right: people long for fairy tales no matter how old they are and what culture they belong to.

“Young people today don’t have a fantasy life anymore, not the way we did… All they’ve got is Kojak and Dirty Harry. All the films they see are movies of disasters and insecurity and realistic violence.” (George Lucas)

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for more than thirty years. I love the Original Trilogy but honestly it did not make me dream much, perhaps because when I saw it the trilogy was already complete. The Prequel Trilogy also did not inspire my fantasy.

The Last Jedi accomplished something that no TV show, book or film had managed in years: it made me dream. The richness of colorful characters, multifaceted themes, unexpected developments, intriguing relationships was something I had not come across in a long time: it fascinated me. I felt like a giddy teenager reading up meta’s, writing my own and imagining all sorts of beautiful endings for the saga for almost two years.

So if there’s something The Rise of Skywalker can pride itself on for me, it’s that it crushed almost every dream I had about it. The few things I had figured out – Rey’s fall to the Dark, Ben Solo’s redemption, the connection between them - did not even make me happy because they were tainted by the flatness of the storytelling reducing the Force to a superpower again (like the general audience seems to believe it is), and its deliberate ignoring of almost all messages of The Last Jedi.

Many fans of the Original Trilogy also were disillusioned by the saga over the decades and ranted at the studios for “destroying their childhood”. Now we, the fans of the sequels and in particular of The Last Jedi, are in the same situation… but the thought doesn’t make the pill much easier to swallow. What grates on my nerves is the feeling that someone trampled on my just newly found dreams like a naughty child kicking a doll’s house apart. Why give us something to dream of in the first place, then? To a certain extent I can understand that many fans would angrily assume that Disney Lucasfilm made the Sequel Trilogy for the purpose of destroying their idea of the saga. The point is that they had their happy ending, while every dream the fans of the Sequel Trilogy may have had was shattered with this unexpectedly flat and hollow final note.

I know many fans who dislike the Prequel Trilogy heartily. I also prefer the Original Trilogy, but I find the prequels all right in their own way, also since I gave them some thought. However, it can’t be denied that they lack the magic spark which made the Original Trilogy so special. Which makes sense since they are not a fairy tale but ultimately a tragedy, but in my opinion it’s the one of the main reasons why the Prequel Trilogy never was quite so successful, or so beloved.

Same goes for Rogue One, Solo, or Clone Wars. They’re ok in their way, but not magical.

The sequel trilogy started quite satisfyingly with The Force Awakens, but for me, the actual bomb dropped with The Last Jedi. Reason? It was a magical story. It had the spark again that I had missed in the new Star Wars stories for decades! And it was packed full of beautiful messages and promises.

The Force is not a superpower belonging solely to the Jedi Anyone can be a hero. Even the greatest heroes can fail, but they will still be heroes. Hope is like the sun: if you only believe in it when you see it you’ll never make it through the night. Failure is the greatest teacher. It’s more important to save the light than to seem a hero. No one is never truly gone. War is only a machine. Dark Side and Light Side can be unbeatable if they are allies. Save what you love instead of destroying what you hate.

Naively, I assumed the trilogy would continue and end in that same magical way. And then came The Rise of Skywalker… which looks and feels like a Marvel superhero story at best and an over-long videogame at worst.

Chekov’s Gun

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

(Anton Chekov, 1860 - 1904)

If you show an important looking prop and don’t put it to use, it leaves the audience feeling baffled. There is a huge difference between a story’s setup, and the audience’s feeling of entitlement. E.g. many viewers expected Luke to jump right back into the fray in Episode VIII, because that’s what a hero does, isn’t it? The cavalry comes and saves the day. And instead, we met a disillusioned elderly hermit who is tired of the ways of the Jedi. But there was no actual reason for disappointment: in Episode VII it was very clearly said (through Han, his best friend) that Luke had gone into exile on purpose, feeling responsible for his failure in teaching a new generation of Jedi. It would have been more than stupid to show him as an all-powerful and all-knowing man who kills the bad guys. Sorry but who expected that was a victim to his own prejudice.

A promise left unfulfilled is a different story. The Last Jedi set up a lot of promises that didn’t come true in The Rise of Skywalker: Balance as announced by the Jedi temple mosaic, a new Jedi Order hinted at by Luke on Crait, a good ending for Ben and Rey set up by the hand-touching scene which was opposite to Anakin’s and Padmés wedding scene. Many fans were annoyed about the Canto Bight sequence. I liked it because it felt like the set-up for a lot of important stuff: partnership between Finn and Rose whom we see working together excellently, freedom for the enslaved children (one of whom is Force-sensitive), DJ and Rose expressing what makes wars in general foolish and beside the point. So if we, the fans of Episode VIII, now feel angry and let down, I daresay it’s not due to entitlement. We were announced magical outcomes and not just pew-pew.

The Star Wars saga never repeated itself but always developed and enlarged its themes, so it was to be expected that delving deeper, uncomfortable truths would come out: wars don’t start out of nowhere, and they don’t flare up and continue for decades for the same reason. In order to find Balance, the Jedi’s and the Skywalker family’s myths needed to be dismantled. Which is not necessarily bad as long it is explained how things came to this, and a better alternative is offered. The prequels explained the old political order and the beginnings of the Skywalker family, and announced that the next generation would do better. The sequels hardly explained anything about the 30 years that passed since our heroes won the battle against the Empire, and while The Last Jedi hinted at the future a lot, The Rise of Skywalker seemed to make a point of ignoring all of it.

  The Skywalker Family Is Obliterated. Why?

Luke was proven right that his nephew would mean the end of everything he loved. The lineage of the Chosen One is gone. His grandson had begun where Vader had ended - tormented, pale and with sad eyes - and he met the same fate. Luke, Han, Leia, all sacrificed themselves to bring Ben Solo back for nothing. Him being the reincarnation of the Chosen One and getting a new chance should have been meaningful for all of them; instead, he literally left the scepter to Rey who did nothing to deserve it: merely because she killed the Bad Guy does not mean she will do a better job than the family whose name and legacy she proudly takes over.

I do hope there was a good reason if the sequels did not tell “The New Adventures of Luke, Leia and Han” and instead showed us a broken family on the eve of its wipeout. It would have been much easier, and more fun for the audience, to bring the trio back again after a few years and pick up where they had left. Instead we had to watch their son, nephew and heir go his grandfather’s way - born with huge power, branded as Meant to Be Dangerous from the start, tried his best to be a Jedi although he wanted to be a pilot, never felt accepted, abandoned in the moment of his greatest need, went to his abuser because he was the only one to turn to, became a criminal, his own family (in Anakin’s case: Obi-Wan and Yoda) trained the person who was closest to him to kill him, sacrificed himself for this person and died. And in his case, it’s particularly frustrating because Kylo Ren wasn’t half as impressive a villain as Vader, and Ben Solo had a very limited time of heroism and personal fulfilment, contrarily to Anakin when he was young.

The impact of The Rise of Skywalker was traumatic for some viewers. I know of adolescents and adults, victims of family abandonment and abuse, who identified with Ben: they were told that you can never be more than the sum of your abuse and abandonment, and that they’re replaceable if they’re not “good”. Children identifying with Rey were told that their parents might sell them away for “protection”. Rey was not conflicted, she had a few doubts but overall, she was cool about everything she did, so she got everything on a silver platter; that’s why as a viewer, after a while you stopped caring for her. Her antagonist was doomed from birth because he dared to question the choices other people made for him. It seems that in the Star Wars universe, you can only “rise” if you’re either a criminal but cool because you’ve always got a bucket over your head (Vader / the Mandalorian) or are a saint-like figure (Luke / Rey).

One of Obi-Wan’s first actions in A New Hope is cutting off someone’s arm who was only annoying him; Han Solo, ditto. These were no acts of self-defense. The Mandalorian is an outlaw. Yet they are highly popular. Why? Because they always keep their cool, so anything they do seems justified. Young Anakin was hated, Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen attacked for his portrayal. For the same reason many fans feel that Luke is the least important of the original trio although basically the Original Trilogy is his story: it seems the general audience hates nothing more than emotionality in a guy. They want James Bond, Batman or Indiana Jones as the lead. Padmé loved Anakin because she always saw the good little boy he once was in him; his attempts at impressing her with his flirting or his masculinity failed. Kylo tried to impress Rey with his knowledge and power, but she fled from him - she wanted the gentle, emphatic young man who had listened to her when she felt alone. Good message. But both died miserably, and Ben didn’t even get anything but a kiss. Realizing that his “not being as strong as Darth Vader” might actually be a strength of its own would have meant much more.

The heroes of the Original Trilogy had their adventures together and their happy ending; the heroes of the Prequel Trilogy also had good times and accomplishments in their youth, before everything went awry. Rey, Finn and Poe feel like their friendship hardly got started; Rose was almost obliterated from the narrative; and Ben Solo seems to have had only one happy moment in his entire life. Of course it’s terrible that he committed patricide (even if it was under coercion), but Anakin / Vader himself had two happy endings in the Prequel Trilogy before he became the monster we know so well. Not to mention Clone Wars, where he has heroic moments unnumbered.

The Skywalker family is obliterated without Balance in the Force, and the young woman who inherited all doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson from all this. The Original Trilogy became a part of pop culture among other things because its ending was satisfying. We can hardly be expected to be satisfied with an ending where our heroes are all dead and the heir of their worst enemy takes over. What good was the happy ending of the Original Trilogy for if they didn’t learn enough from their misadventures to learn how to protect one single person - their son and nephew, their future?

For a long time, I also thought that the saga was about Good vs. Evil. Watching the prequels again, I came to the conclusion that it is rather about Love vs. War. And now, considering as a whole, I believe it to be essentially Jedi against Skywalker. The ending, as it is now, says that both fractions lost: they annihilated one another, leaving a third party in charge, who believes to be both but actually knows very little about them.

Star Wars and Morality

After 9 films and 42 years, it still is not possible to make the general audience accept that it is wrong to divide people between Good and Evil in the first place. The massive rejection of both prequels and sequels, which have moral grey zones galore, shows it.

It is also not possible without being accused of actual blasphemy in the same fandom, to say the plain truth that no Skywalker ever was a Jedi at heart. As their name says, they’re pilots. Luke was the last and strongest of all Jedi because he always was first and foremost himself. Anakin was crushed by the Jedi’s attempts to stifle his feelings. His grandson, too. A Force-sensitive person ought to have the choice whether they want to be a Jedi or not; they ought not to be taught to suppress their emotions and live only on duty, without really caring for other people; and they ought to grow up feeling in a safe and loving environment, not torn away from their families in infancy, indoctrinated and provided with a light sabre (a deadly weapon) while they’re still small. A Jedi order composed of child soldiers or know-it-all’s does not really help anybody.

The original Star Wars saga was about love and friendship; although many viewers did not want to understand that message. The prequels portrayed the Jedi as detached and arrogant and Anakin Skywalker sympathetically, a huge disappointment for who only accepts stories of the “lonesome cowboy” kind. The Last Jedi was so hated that The Rise of Skywalker backpedaled: sorry, of course you’re right, here you have your “hero who knows everything better and fixes everything for you on a silver platter”. The embarrassing antihero, who saves the girl who was the only person showing him some human compassion, can die miserably in the process and is not even mourned.

Honestly: I was doubtful whether it would be adequate to give Ben Solo a happy ending after the patricide. I guess letting him die was the easiest way out for the authors to escape censorship. (I even wrote this in a review on amazon about The Last Jedi, before I delved deeper into the saga’s themes.) The messages we got now are even worse.

Kylo Ren / Ben Solo

A parent can replace a child if they’re not the way they expect them to be. A victim of lifelong psychical and physical abuse can only find escape in death, whether he damns or redeems himself. An introspective, sensitive young man is a loser no matter how hard he tries either way. A whole family can sacrifice itself to save their heir, he dies anyway.

Rey

Self-righteousness is acceptable as long as you find a scapegoat for your own failings. Overconfidence justifies anything you do. You can’t carve your way as a female child of “nobodies”, you have to descend from someone male and powerful even if that someone is the devil incarnate. You are a “strong female” if you choose to be lonely; you need neither a partner nor friends.

In General

Star Wars is not about individual choices, loyalty, friendship and love, it is a classic Western story with a lonesome cowboy (in this case: cowgirl) at its centre. Satisfied? 

The father-son-relationship between Vader and Luke mirrors the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, saying that whoever we may want to kill is, in truth, our kin, which makes a clear separation in Good and Evil impossible. The “I am your father” scene is so infamous by now that even non-fans are aware of it; but this relationship between evil guy and good guy, as well as the plot turns where the villain saves the hero and that the hero discards his weapon are looked upon rather as weird narrative quirks instead of a moral. 

In  an action movie fan, things are simple: good guy vs. bad guy, the good guy (e.g. James Bond may be a murderer and a misogynist, but that’s ok because he’s cool about it) kills the bad guy, ka-boom, end of story. But Star Wars is a parable, an ambitious project told over decades of cinema, and a multilayered story with recurring themes.

A fairy tale ought to have a moral. The moral of both Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy was compassionate love - choose it and you can end a raging conflict, reject it and you will cause it. What was the moral of the Sequel Trilogy? You can be the offspring of the galaxy’s worst terror and display a similar attitude, but pose as a Jedi and kill unnecessarily, and it’s all right; descend from Darth Vader (who himself was a victim long before he became a culprit) and whether you try to become a Jedi trained by Luke Skywalker or a Sith trained by his worst enemy, you will end badly?

Both original and prequel trilogy often showed “good” people making bad choices and the “bad ones” making the right choices. To ensure lasting peace, no Force user ought to be believe that he must choose one side and then stick to it for the rest of his life: both sides need one another. The prequels took 3 films to convey this message, though not saying so openly. The Last Jedi said it out clearly - and the authors almost had their heads ripped off by affronted fans, resulting in The Rise of Skywalker’s fan service. It’s not like Luke, Han and Leia were less heroic in the Sequel Trilogy, on the contrary, they gave everything they had to their respective cause. They were not united, and they were more human than they had once been. Apparently, that’s an affront.

The Jedi are no perfect heroes and know-it-all’s and they never were, the facts are there for everyone to see. Padmé went alone and pregnant to get her husband out of Mustafar - and she almost succeeded - although she knew what he had done and that he was perfectly capable of it (he had told her of the Tusken village massacre himself) because she still saw the good little boy he had been in him; Obi-Wan left him amputated and burning in the lava, although he had raised Anakin like a small brother and the latter had repeatedly saved his life. But Padmé was not a Jedi, so I guess she still had some human decency. Neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda lifted a finger for the oppressed populations of the galaxy during the Empire, waiting instead for Anakin’s son to grow up so they could trick him into committing patricide. Neither Luke nor Leia did anything for their own son and nephew while he became the scourge of the galaxy, damning his soul by committing crime after crime. On Exegol, Rey heard the voices of all Jedi encouraging her to fight Palpatine to death. After that, they left her to die alone, and the alleged “bad guy”, who had already saved her soul from giving in to Palpatine’s lures, had to save her life by giving her his own. The Jedi merely know that “their side” has to win, no matter the cost for anyone’s life, sanity, integrity or happiness.

Excuse me, these are simple facts. How anyone can still believe that the Jedi were super-powerful heroes who always win or all-knowing wizards who are always right is beyond me. Luke, the last and strongest of them, like a bright flickering of light before the ultimate end, showed us that the best of men can fail. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. But it is wrong and utterly frustrating when all of the failure never leads to anything better. If Rey means to rebuild the Jedi order to something better than it was, there was no hint at that whatsoever.

  And What Now?

The Last Jedi hit theatres only 2 years before The Rise of Skywalker, and I can’t imagine that the responsible authors all have forgotten how to make competent work in the meantime; more so considering that Solo or The Mandalorian are solid work. Episode IX is thematically so painfully flat it seems like they wanted us to give up on the saga on purpose. The last instalment of a 42-year-old saga ought to have been the best and most meaningful. I had heard already decades ago that the saga was supposed to have 9 chapters, so I was not among who protested against the sequels thinking that they had been thought up to make what had come before invalid. I naively assumed a larger purpose. But Episode IX only seems to prove these critics perfectly right.

The last of the flesh and blood of the Chosen One is dead without having “finished what his grandfather started”?

Still no Balance in the Force?

And worst of all, Palpatine’s granddaughter taking over, having proven repeatedly that she is not suited for the task?

Sorry, this “ending” is absurd. I have read fanfiction that was better written and more interesting. And, most of all, less depressing. I was counting on a conclusion that showed that the Force has all colours and nuances, and that it’s not limited to the black-and-white view “we against them”. That’s the ending all of us fans would have deserved, instead of catering the daddy issues of the part of the audience who doesn��t want stories other than those of the “lonesome cowboy” kind. I myself grew up on Japanese anime, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I can’t stand guys like James Bond or Batman and why I think you don’t need “a great hero who fixes the situation” but that group spirit and communication are way more important.

It was absolutely unexpected that Disney, the production company whose trademark are happy endings and family stories, would end this beloved and successful saga after almost half a century on such a hollow note. Why tell first a beautiful fairy tale and then leave the audience on a hook for 35 years to continue first with a tragedy (which at least was expected) and then with another (unexpected one)? And this story is supposed to be for children? Like children would understand all of the subtext, and love sad, cautionary tales. Children, as well as the general audience, first of all want to be entertained! No one wants to watch the legendary Skywalker family be obliterated and a Palpatine take over. The sequels were no fun anymore; we’ve been left with another open ending and hardly an explanation about what happened in the 30 years in between. If you want to tell a cautionary tale, you should better warn the general audience beforehand.

The Original Trilogy is so good because it’s entertaining and offers room for thought for who wants to think about its deeper themes, and also leaves enough space for dreams. Same goes for the first two films of the Sequel Trilogy; but precisely the last, which should have wrapped up the saga, leaves us with a bitter aftertaste and dozens of questions marks. 

We as the audience believe that a story, despite the tragic things that happen, must go somewhere; we get invested into the characters, we root for them, we want to see them happy in the end. (The authors of series like Girls, How I Met Your Mother or Game of Thrones ought to be reminded of that, too.) I was in contact with children and teenagers saying that the Sequel Trilogy are “boring”; and many, children or adults, who were devastated by its concluson. There is a difference between wanting to tell a cautionary tale and playing the audience for fools. This trilogy could have become legendary like the Original Trilogy, had it fulfilled its promises instead of “keeping it low” with its last chapter. Who watches a family or fantasy story or a romantic / comedic sitcom wants to escape into another world, not to be hit over his head with a mirror to his own failings, and the ones of the society he’s living in. Messages are all right, but they ought not to go at the cost of the audience’s satisfaction about the about the people and narrative threads they have invested in for years.

This isn’t a family story: but children probably didn’t pester the studios with angry e-mails and twitter messages etc. They simply counted on a redemption arc and happy ending, and they were right, because they’re not as stupid as adults are. I have read and watched many a comment from fans who hate The Last Jedi. Many of these fans couldn’t even pinpoint what their rage was all about, they only proved to be stuck with the original trilogy and unwilling to widen their horizon. But at least their heroes had had their happy ending: The Rise of Skywalker obliterated the successes of all three generations of Skywalkers.

If the film studios wanted to tease us, they’ve excelled. If they expect the general audience to break their heads over the sequels’ metaphysics, they have not learned from the reactions to the prequels that most viewers take these films at face value. Not everybody is elbows-deep in the saga, or willing to research about it for months, and / or insightful enough to see the story’s connections. Which is why many viewers frown at the narrative and believe the Sequel Trilogy was just badly written. This trilogy could have become legendary like the Original Trilogy, had it fulfilled its promises instead of “keeping it low” with its last chapter. As it is now, the whole trilogy is hanging somewhere in the air, with neither a past nor a future to be tied in with.

The prequels already had the flaw of remaining too obscure: most fans are not aware that Anakin had unwillingly killed his wife during the terrible operation that turned him into Darth Vader, sucking her life out of her through the Force: most go by “she died of a broken heart”. So although one scene mirrors the other, it is not likely that most viewers will understand what Rey’s resurrection meant. And: Why did Darth Maul kill Qui-Gon Jinn? What did the Sith want revenge for? Who was behind Shmi’s abduction and torture? Who had placed the order for the production of the clones, and to what purpose? We can imagine or try to reconstruct the answers, but nothing is confirmed by the story itself.

The sequels remained even more in the dark, obfuscating what little explanation we got in The Rise of Skywalker with quick pacing and mind-numbing effects.

Kylo Ren had promised his grandfather that “he would finish what he started”: he did not. Whatever one can say of this last film, it did not bring Balance in the Force. What’s worse, the subject was not even breached. It was hinted at by the mosaic on the floor of the Prime Jedi Temple on Ahch-To, but although Luke and Rey were sitting on its border, they never seemed to see what was right under their noses. It remains inexplicable why it was there for everyone to see in the first place.

We might argue that Ben finished what his grandfather started by killing (or better, causing the death of) the last Jedi, who this one couldn’t kill because he was his own son; but leaving Rey in charge, he helped her finish what her grandfather had started. The irony could hardly be worse.

Episode IX looks like J.J. Abrams simply completed what they started with Episode VII, largely ignoring the next film as if it was always planned to do so. We, the angry and disappointed fans of The Last Jedi, may believe it was due to some of the general audience’s angry backlash, but honestly: the studios aren’t that dumb. They had to know that Episode VIII would be controversial and that many fans would hate it. The furious reactions were largely a disgrace, but no one can make me believe that they were totally unexpected. Nor can anyone convince me that The Rise of Skywalker was merely an answer to the small but very loud part of the audience who hated The Last Jedi: a company with the power and the returns of Disney Lucasfilm does not need to buckle down before some fan’s entitlement and narrowmindedness out of fear of losing money. And if they do, it was foolish to make Rey so perfect that she becomes almost odious, and to let the last of the Skywalker blood die a meaningless death. (Had he saved the Canto Bight children and left them with Rey, at least he would have died with honor; and she, the child left behind by her parents, would have had a task to dedicate herself to.)

The only reason I can find for this odd ending is that it’s meant to prepare the way for Rian Johnson’s new trilogy, which - hopefully - will finally be about Balance. We as the audience don’t know what’s going on behind the doors. Filmmaking is a business like any other, i.e. based on contracts; and I first heard that Rian Johnson had negotiated a trilogy of his own since before Episode VIII hit theatres. Maybe he kept all the rights of intellectual property to his own film, including that he would finish the threads he picked up and close the narrative circles he opened, and only he; and that his alleged working on “something completely different” is deliberately misleading.

Some viewers love the original trilogy, some love the prequels, some like both; but I hardly expect anyone to love the sequel trilogy as a whole. What with the first instalment “letting the past die, killing it if they had to”, the second hinting at a promising future and the third patched on at the very last like some sort of band-aid, it was not coherent. I heard the responsible team for Game of Thrones even dropped their work, producing a dissatisfying, quickly sewn together last season, for this new Star Wars project and thereby disappointing millions of GoT fans; I hope they are aware of the expectations they have loaded upon them. George Lucas’ original trilogy had its faults, but but though there was no social media yet in his time, at least he was still close enough to the audience to give them what they needed, if not necessarily wanted. (Some fans can’t accept that Luke and Leia are siblings to this day, even if honestly, it was the very best plot twist to finish their story in a satisfying way.)

I’m hoping for now that The Last Jedi was not some love bombing directed at the more sentimental viewers but a promise that will be fulfilled. “Wrapping up” a saga by keeping the flattest, least convincing chapter for last is bad form. Star Wars did not become a pop phenomenon by accident, but because the original story was convincing and satisfying. Endings like these will hardly make anyone remember a story fondly, on the contrary, the audience will move to another fandom to forget their disappointment.

On a side note, I like The Mandalorian, exactly for the reason that that is a magical story; not as much as the original trilogy, but at least a little. Of course, I’m glad it was produced. But it’s a small consolation prize after the mess that supposedly wrapped up the original saga after 9 films.

We’re Not Blind, You Know…

- Though Kylo Ren (Ben Solo) has Darth Vader’s stature, his facial features are practically opposite to Vader’s creepy mask. This should have foreshadowed that his life should have gone the other way, instead of more or less repeating itself. - As a villain Kylo was often unconvincing; by all logic he should have been a good father figure. (Besides, Star Wars films or series never work unless there is a strong father or father figure at their center.)

- Like Vader, Kylo Ren was redeemed, but not rehabilitated. Who knows who may find his broken mask somewhere now and, not knowing the truth, promise “I will finish what you started”. - The hand-touching scene on Ahch-To which was visually opposite to Anakin’s and Padmé’s should not have predicted another tragedy but a happy ending for them. - The Canto Bight sequence was announcing reckoning for the weapon industry and freedom for the enslaved children. It also showed how well Finn and Rose fit together. - Rey was a good girl before she started on her adventures. Like Anakin or Luke, she did not need to become a Jedi to be strong or generous or heroic. - Rey summons Palpatine after one year of training. Kylo practically begged for his grandfather’s assistance for years, to no avail. Her potential for darkness is obviously much stronger. - Dark Rey’s light sabre looked like a fork, Kylo’s like a cross. - The last time all Jedi and Sith were obliterated leaving only Luke in charge, things went awry. Now we have a Palpatine masquerading as a Skywalker and believing she’s a Jedi. Rey is a usurper and universally cheered after years of war, like her grandfather. - The broom boy of Canto Bight looked like he was sweeping a stage and announcing “Free the stage, it’s time for us, the children.”

Rey failed in all instances where Luke had proved himself (so much for feminism and her being a Mary Sue): - Luke had forgiven his father despite all the pain he had inflicted on him. She stabbed the „bad guy”, who had repeatedly protected and comforted her, to death. - Luke never asked Vader to help the Rebellion or to turn to the Light Side, he only wanted him back as his father. She assumed that you could make Ben Solo turn, give up the First Order and join the Resistance for her. She thought of her friends and of her own validation, not of him. - Luke had made peace by choosing peace. Rey fought until the bitter end. - Luke had thrown his weapon away before Palpatine. Rey picked up a second weapon. (And both of them weren’t even her own.) - Luke had mourned his dead father. Rey didn’t shed a tear for the man she is bonded to by the Force. - Luke went back to his friends to celebrate the new peace with them. Rey went back letting everyone celebrate her like the one who saved the galaxy on her own, she who were tempted to become the new evil ruler of the galaxy and had to rely on the alleged Bad Guy to save both her soul and her body. - Luke had embodied compassion when Palpatine was all about hatred. Where he chose love and faith in his father, she chose violence and fear. - Luke had briefly fallen prey to the Dark Side but it made him realize that he had no right to judge his father. Rey’s fall to the Dark Side did not make her wiser. - Rey has no change of mind on finding out that she’s Palpatine’s flesh and blood, nor after she has stabbed Kylo. Luke had to face himself on learning that he had almost become a patricide. Rey does not have to face herself: the revelation of her ancestry is cushioned by Luke’s and Leia’s support. Rey is and remains an uncompromising person who hardly learns from her faults.

This is cheating on the audience. And it's not due to feminism or Rey being some sort of “Mary Sue” the way many affronted fans claim. Kylo never was truly a villain, Rey is not a heroine, and this is not a happy ending. The Jedi, with their stuck-up conviction “only we must win”, have failed all over again. The Skywalker family was obliterated leaving their worst enemy in charge.  Rey is supposed to be a “modern” heroine which young girls can take as an example? No, thank you. Not after this last film has made of her. Padmé was a much better role model, combining intelligence with strength and goodness and also female grace. The world does not need entitled female brats.

Bonus: What Made The Rise of Skywalker a Farce

- The Force Awakens was an ok film and The Last Jedi (almost) a masterpiece. The Rise of Skywalker was a cartoon. No wonder a lot of the acting felt and looked wooden. - “I will earn your brother’s light sabre.” She’s holding his father’s sabre. - Kylo in The Last Jedi: “Let the past die. Kill it if, you have to.” Beginning with me? - Rey ends up on Tatooine. - The planet both Anakin and Luke ardently wanted to leave. - Luke had promised his nephew that he would be around for him. - Nope. - Rey had told Ben that she had seen his future. What future was that - “you will be a hero for ten minutes, get a kiss and then die? (And they didn’t even get a love theme.) - “The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead.” On a desert planet with a few ghosts. What of the ocean she used to dream about? - Ben and Rey were both introduced as two intensely lonely people searching for belonging. We learn they are a Force dyad, and then they are torn apart again. - Why was Ben named for Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first place, if they have absolutely nothing in common? - The Throne Room battle scene in The Last Jedi was clearly showing that when they are in balance, Light Side and Dark Side are unbeatable. Why did the so-called “Light Side” have to win again, in The Rise of Skywalker, instead of finding balance? - Luke’s scene on Ahch-To was so ridiculously opposite to his attitude in The Last Jedi that by now I believe he was a fantasy conjectured by her. (Like Ben’s vision of his father.) - Anakin’s voice among the other Jedi’s. - He was a renegade, for Force’s sake. - The kiss between two females. - More fan service, to appease those who pretended that not making Poe and Finn a couple was a sign of homophobia. - We see the Knights of Ren, but we learn absolutely nothing about them or Kylo’s connection with them. - Rose Tico’s invalidation. - A shame after what the actress had gone through because for the fans she was “not Star-Wars-y” (chubby and lively instead of wiry and spitfire). - Finn’s and Rose’s relationship. - Ignored without any explanation. - Finn may or may not be Force-sensitive. - If he is: did he abandon the First Order not due to his own free will but because of some higher willpower? Great. - General Hux was simply obliterated. - In The Force Awakens he was an excellent foil to Kylo Ren; no background story, no humanization for him. - Chewie’s and 3PO’s faked deaths. - Useless additional drama. - The Force Awakens was a bow before the classic trilogy. The Rise of Skywalker kicked its remainders to pieces. - The Prequel Trilogy ended with hope, the Original Trilogy with love. The Sequel Trilogy ends on a blank slate. - “We are what they grow beyond.” The characters of the Sequel Trilogy did not grow beyond the heroes of the Original Trilogy. - The Jedi did not learn from their mistakes and were obliterated. The Skywalker family understood the mistakes they had made too late. Now they’re gone, too.

  P.S. While I was watching The Rise of Skywalker my husband came in asked me since when I like Marvel movies. I said “That’s not a Marvel movie, it’s Star Wars.” I guess that says enough.

P.P.S. For the next trilogy, please at least let the movies hit theatres in May again instead of December. a) It’s tradition for Star Wars films, b) Whatever happens, at least you won’t ruin anyone’s Christmases. Thank you.

#star wars #disney #disney lucasfilm #star wars sequels #the force awakens #the rise of skywalker #rey palpatine #kylo ren #ben solo #reylo #bendemption #luke skywalker #anakin skywalker #darth vader #marvel movies #finn #rose tico #george lucas #obi-wan kenobi #yoda #the mandalorian #rogue one #clone wars #han solo #leia organa #anton chekov #read more #the last jedi #sw

[ponett]

Welp... it’s over. After nine years, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is over. I just got done watching the series finale with Anthony and, just like I knew I would, when the credits rolled, I cried my eyes out

I should probably say something, huh. I’ve been sharing thoughts like this mostly on Twitter lately, but I started using Tumblr to blog about MLP, so I don’t think it would be right to post this anywhere else

I have a complicated relationship with MLP:FiM. It’s a show that got really hit or miss after the second season, and it has a fandom so toxic and so full of edgy libertarians that it scared me off from formally participating in fandoms for the rest of my life. But it’s also probably my favorite TV show of all time. There are other shows that are much better written, that have more to say, that are more consistent, even including several other cartoons from the same decade. But I think I’d be lying to myself if I said it wasn’t my favorite show

No other piece of media has had as massive of an impact on my life as My Little Pony

I grew closer to some of my closest high school friends because of our shared enthusiasm for the show. I started PonyPokey with Jake and Derek and made a bunch of bad videos and got invited to be on a wildly disorganized BronyCon panel with Jenny Nicholson in 2012. (We went on stage immediately after Lauren Faust’s panel. I barely said a word due to stage fright.)

After years of being too afraid to share my art online, I started putting more effort into learning digital art so that I could draw ponies. It started out rough, but with the drive to improve, I quickly got better. I started Fluttershy Replies. For the first time, I had an audience. I had people who cared about my work and supported me. Even as times have changed, many of you have been following me since way back then

Around the time I came out as bi in 2012, I got really into MLP shipping. Writing sappy comics and drawing sappy art became an outlet for my years of pent up feelings, and helped me sort out a lot of stuff. My Little Pony also completely changed the views on femininity that had been beaten into my skull since childhood. Suddenly, it wasn’t this strange, alien thing to be afraid of. MLP, at its heart, is a show about how there’s no wrong way to be a girl. That’s an incredibly powerful message. Rarity wasn’t a vapid snob. Fluttershy wasn’t a background character who got made into the butt of the joke. Pinkie wasn’t a ditz. These were characters written to be empathized with. And writing about my own feelings from the perspective of Fluttershy felt... right. It took me a few years to fully process those feelings, but eventually, I realized the truth. I was a trans woman. And a cartoon about horses was the first step on my path to realizing this

In 2013, one of the roughest years of my life, I decided to download RPG Maker on a whim to give myself a distraction. Naturally, my first instinct was to make a game where Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash kiss. What was initially supposed to be a short, Fantastic Game-esque playground of silly little jokes spiraled out of control and became Super Lesbian Horse RPG, a game that I poured my heart and soul into over the course of a year. And then, a couple years later, my desire to preserve the ideas from my copyright-infringing fangame also spiraled out of control, as all my creative projects do, and became SLHRPG’s successor: Super Lesbian Animal RPG. SLARPG isn’t really a reskinned MLP fangame anymore--it’s more like a new game inspired in part by my old project. The story has been drastically rewritten, the characters changed, the levels and gameplay redesigned. Most of the cast of the new game wasn’t in the original project in any form. There’s much, much, much, much, much more new content than old left in the game. And the original game had already strayed so far from the canon anyway. But I’m also not sure it would exist without MLP

I made a bunch of friends online, including close friends I still have to this day. I met the people like Bee and Thomas who I’m still working with on SLARPG. Most importantly, because we both blogged about MLP and had some mutual friends, I met Anthony, the love of my life. We’ve been together for five years now and supported each other through good times and bad. This is the lamest, corniest, stupidest thing I will ever say in my life, but he’s the Rainbow Dash to my Fluttershy

...

So what about the finale itself? (spoilers, obviously)

I have... mixed feelings on the finale. There were some things that really annoyed me in there. But also, like I said, I cried, so I think it’s safe to say they did good overall

I think the thing that stuck in my craw the most was Discord. Which I guess shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve been saying for years now how I hate Discord, how he spits in the face of everything the show stands for. He’s an obnoxious elderly manchild who constantly causes problems on purpose and torments his so-called friends the second they stop paying attention to him. But they have to put up with him and give him infinite second chances, because he’s a god and Celestia said they had to reform him

The overarching plot of the final season is that Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Tirek, and Cozy Glow (a Darla Dimple-esque filly villain from season 8) had teamed up with Grogar, a “new” villain taken from G1. While this goes on in the background, Twilight is making her preparations to become Celestia’s successor, as we’d known would be her destiny since the day she got wings six years ago. The villain team-up stuff was genuinely fun, and a highlight of the season for me. But then, in the three-part finale, it’s revealed that Grogar was actually Discord in disguise, and that he’d been intentionally trying to orchestrate a big attack on Twilight’s coronation so that she and her friends could save the day and get a big confidence boost going into her reign as princess. This is like... one of the most bafflingly stupid plot twist of all time. It’s literally the end of the show, and Discord has learned nothing. He’s “nice” now, but he’s still intentionally causing huge problems and putting everyone’s lives in danger to solve his problems. He freed four different villains they’d already defeated just so Twilight could beat them again, and in the process they literally blew up the goddamn castle in Canterlot and nearly killed everyone. And yet... they still forgive him, because they have to

I did, however, think that the last two-part adventure episode was fun overall. It tied a nice bow on much of the series, bringing back a bunch of old friends (including cameos from the movie cast!) to band together and save the day. Of course, in the end, they beat the bad guys with a big rainbow laser and sealed them in a statue. You know, even though a previous season finale was all about how solving their problems with a friendship laser and sealing the villains away never worked. Also, Cozy Glow might be evil, but she’s still literally a child? And now her petrified body is on display in the center of Canterlot? What the fuck????

I’m complaining a lot, but again. It was fun overall. It was nice to have one last big adventure, and to have the mane six reflect on how they’d grown since Twilight moved to Ponyville

...

And then we got the actual final episode. And boy did this one hit me HARD

I’m so glad that they ended on a quieter episode about the main cast’s friendships, because that’s what the show is actually about. The two-part adventures to save Equestria every season are fun, but that’s not the real show. We all came back every week for Twilight and her friends

There are things I can complain about here, too. Spike being a buff adult dragon with the voice of a child is fucked up. I’m still not used to seeing Twilight be Celestia’s size. But more than anything, I was always worried that we’d get a Harry Potter ending, where all the characters are paired off into arbitrary marriages so they can all have kids. Thankfully, this didn’t really happen. The only one who had a kid was Pinkie, who apparently got married to Cheese Sandwich (Weird Al’s character) at some point. Like, they literally shared two episodes together, with no hint of romance? But then they got married and had a kid off-screen??? What the fuck???? A lot of people also think that Fluttershy ended up with Discord, and I know I’m massively biased against that ship, but... I mean, they teased the FlutterCord shippers, but there wasn’t really any actual textual evidence that they were any closer than they had been previously. Y’all weirdos who ship Fluttershy with an obnoxious elderly man can interpret that as being “canon” if you want, I guess, but it’s not

The other relationship that shocked everyone in the finale was Applejack and Rainbow Dash, who... appear to be a couple? It’s definitely hinted at. I have... very, very mixed feelings about this. I mean, okay, obivously I’m the big FlutterDash fangirl. But I think AppleDash is cute, too! The problem is that, like... they’ve barely interacted in years? Like, they had a lot of episodes together in the first two seasons, but then the writers barely ever had them interact past that point. I can’t even remember when the last time we got an actual episode focusing on them was. And no, the one where Rainbow takes Granny Smith to pony Vegas doesn’t count

Like... yeah, it’s cute. It’s a nice gesture. Lyra and Bon Bon getting married in the background was also cute. But we can do so, so much better in 2019. We have so many explicitly canon lesbian couples in cartoons. Couples that actually kissed, or got married, or showed feelings for each other. Rainbow and AJ barely even fucking talked to each other in the final few seasons. I dunno, it just feels very hollow to me. Even the Equestria Girls crew admitting they were pushing RariJack felt more substantial to me, because at least they were given on-screen chemistry and lots of canon interaction

But in the end, complaints aside, the finale was about Twilight moving back to Canterlot, and worrying that her friendships would fade because of it. Honestly, I think this is what the finale of the show always would’ve been. It was the perfect story to end on. And boy, it hit really close to home

And then the last song happens, reflecting on how things have changed, but how they’re all still friends. And we see all the other friends they made along the way. And the camera zooms out, and the book from the opening of the very first episode closes, bringing the entire nine-year saga full circle

And then I started sobbing really hard in Anthony’s arms

...

I dunno. I just got done nitpicking a lot, but I still think that the last episode was a good and very emotional ending for the show

I’m going to miss this show dearly. I know it will be back in a new form, and that the leaks indicate that it’ll still star slightly different versions of the Mane Six. I’m also used to shows like this getting rebooted. Hasbro cartoons are honestly lucky to last past three seasons. FiM, on the other hand, got over 200 episodes, a theatrical film, a few specials, some shorts, a bunch of comics (which I still need to read), and a spinoff human AU series that was also really great. There’s no shortage of content, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to the series for years to come. I’m also glad that the show managed to go out on a high note

But still. It was a constant presence in my life for nearly nine years. Even as the quality got really hit or miss, even as they took the premise in strange directions, even as the crew of the show grew more and more dominated by men, it was still a show I could rely on to always be there, 26 episodes a year. I’ll miss it. I hope what comes next is just as good, if not even better. I also hope it’s gayer

I was going to end my ask blog, Fluttershy Replies, around the time the show ended. I’m not sure if I’ll do that just yet. I don’t know. I think that might be a bit much for me to process emotionally. Too many doors closing in my life in quick succession. But I do want to do more with it. These characters will be special to me for the rest of my life

I mean shit, I haven’t even drawn StarTrix yet. I’ve still got a lot of work to do with these horses, folks

#bobby thinks about horses

[luminara]

Soukoku

A Love Like War by psychncislover (37,883 - ongoing)

The city of Yokohama was maintained by two Mafia Families. When an enemy targets the Nakahara Family, they find their only hopes lies in an alliance... with their greatest enemy, the Tsushima Family. But their help comes with a price - a marriage between the two heirs! Will both sides survive not only this enemy, but each other?

Only Human by TheGeatCatsby (62,143 - complete)

Shortly after the defeat of Mimic, Dazai Osamu leaves the Port Mafia. Wanting to take advantage of the situation, the government sends Nakahara Chuuya to gain his trust.

carve your love into my skin by Dont_Wake_The_Writer (64,820 - ongoing)

Chuuya looks underneath Dazai's bandages without his permission. What he finds underneath changes everything.

can the city forgive by erytheia (27,658 - ongoing)

Chuuya knows he’s so so close, fingertips just barely brushing the possibilities between them. But Dazai’s the one calling the shots again, and he’s yanking it away, out of Chuuya’s grasp, taking absolute control before Chuuya even knows he’s given it up. Every single facet of their relationship is one-sided, both of them too blind and too stubborn to stop for a second and consider what’s on the other side of the wall between them before they try to tear their way through it.

A Dandy In The Underworld by idontevenlogic (72,606 - ongoing)

Dazai presented the white candle with one hand and stretched his other hand out towards Chuuya. “My life to defend until your bitter end! Through the fire and iron of Hell, I order you to walk with me! I name you—”

Dazai’s eyes fluttered open as a tired smile spread across his lips at the sight of Chuuya’s impossibly stormy eyes widening with the realization of what specific spell the executive was performing. Nearly falling, the Wellspring altered his course in an attempt to flee from the range of the spell, but the power of the sigil’s pull had already latched onto him like a noose and began to pull him back towards Dazai, despite his wounded hollering and ceaseless writhing.

“—I name you, Nakahara Chuuya, my familiar!”

* * *

Or: Nakahara Chuuya returns to Yokohama and is forced into aiding the Port Mafia in helping them capture a mysterious, dangerous hacker from a checkered past. Along the way, he has to adjust to his new life as the familiar to the most infamous warlock in all of Yokohama: the one and only Dazai Osamu.

of bells, coffees, and love in between by KyuBaisu (40,398 - complete)

Chuuya just wants to eat with his sister, but he ends up wearing a gown, make-up, and high-heels in a fake wedding.

Dazai just wants to see the girl from the advertisement he did years ago, the girl with the ginger hair, blue eyes, and a never disappearing annoyed expression.

A Collision of Fates by dgalerab (83,603 - complete)

Dazai Osamu has always known his fate - to become the vessel of the Hollow God, a god hellbent on reuniting with Its lover, the Tainted God, and wreaking havoc on the world.

But that doesn't mean he can't try going on a last ditch effort of a quest trying to stop it from happening.

hide the truth by writingfromtheshadows (24,611 - complete)

When Chuuya wakes up in the middle of an ongoing fight without any memory of how he got there or what happened to him, he ends up turning to someone saved as 'bandage-waster' in his phone. Somehow, it just feels like the right decision.

Gifted by TheGreatCatsby (28,863 - ongoing)

The government's experiments with genetics to induce "gifts" in children is a well-kept secret. Dazai is sent to infiltrate one of the facilities and gather information. He is assigned to be the nurse of one of the facility's oldest and most successful experiments.

Message Received by hellosweetie17 (26,579 - ongoing)

Late for work, Chuuya collides with a stranger on the sidewalk. A stranger who happens to be annoying, frustrating, flirtatious, and even worse—gorgeous. Thanks to a tricky sleight of hand, their encounter leads to Chuuya texting the wrong number.

Dazai Osamu begrudgingly finds happiness (It's a long road) by BlueFlameSakura (34,810 - ongoing)

Dazai Osamu had never even dreamt  about this happening to him, not even his worst nightmares could compare to this. To being married off to some stupid alpha prince as a mockery of a peace offering.

North- and South-Yokohama had been at war for several centuries now, and as much as the brunette would like a bit more of the tranquility peace between their nations would provide, couldn't it have been done with someone else? Or in another few decades?

Well, apparently not.

How to Hornswoggle Death by SecretlyACatLady (20,544 - ongoing)

This wasn't what Chuuya had in mind when he hoped for a big haul. ----- In which Chuuya is a fisherman with an adventurous past and Dazai is a merman who tries to bully Chuuya into killing him.

keep you alive, set you on fire by flyby (23,574 - complete)

Dazai steps out in a dress and heels for a mission, since the gown won't fit Yosano. He's only supposed to spend an hour or so leading their targets on a dance around a charity gala, but the unexpected arrival of a certain Port Mafia Executive threatens to disrupt all his plans. And when he and Chuuya find themselves finally face to face, they end up entwined in a tense game of mutual provocation...

bad enough for you by Maristella (28,555 - complete)

There are two reasons why Chuuya tolerates Dazai: 1.) The god inside Chuuya hates him; 2.) Chuuya definitely hates the god more than the stinking demon mackerel.

Or, alternatively, that one time Dazai and Chuuya swaps abilities, and Arahabaki was never the same.

360 degrees by setosdarkness (11,060 - complete)

Chuuya gets cursed by an Ability that forces him to eternally live out his biggest regret. Unlike the other victims who end up killing themselves or hurting others, Chuuya goes into a coma.

For his biggest regret is—

[groundhog day AU with a twist, where Chuuya relives the day Dazai leaves the Port Mafia over and over and over and over]

black /// reciprocity set by setosdarkness (3,363 - complete)

Soulmate AU where your soulmate mark will only appear on your skin once you’ve fallen in love with your soulmate.

Chuuya has Dazai’s name on his neck while Dazai’s skin is bare of any names.

partners by setosdarkness (27,746 - ongoing)

Chuuya realizes that he’s been married to Dazai since they’re 15: The Fic.

Featuring: wedding fairs, faked marriage registries, angry calls to newspaper agencies for unsolvable crosswords, fake leather couches, love epiphanies and falling in love, not necessarily in that order.

This Way Lies Madness by setosdarkness (41,338 - ongoing)

It’s supposed to be simple. Go in, hand over the questionnaires, wait a few minutes, take the answered questionnaires, get the fuck out. Chuuya should have known, with his shitty luck, that nothing’s ever going to be simple for him.

(—the one where Chuuya inadvertently catches the attention of quite possibly the worst serial killer in history, Dazai) (—police-trainee!Chuuya, inmate!Dazai)

our hearts steeped in hate by setosdarkness (10,202 - ongoing)

Needing to kiss your soulmate to stay alive sounds romantic in context, but absolutely shitty in reality if you’re bound to someone you despise with all your heart and soul.

The act of being human by purplesan (31,457 - complete)

‘This is Chuuya Nakahara, your new caretaker.’ his mother stated. Dazai’s eyes only widened in shock.

‘A robot?’

‘Kind of a degrading term, but yes; a robot.’

Dazai’s glaring only intensified. ‘I don’t need some pathetic excuse of a toy as a caretaker. No one can replace Odasaku anyway. Couldn't you have gotten me a pet instead?’

Chuuya didn’t seem to be affected by Dazai’s insults, which only showed how very non-human he actually was.

‘Stop behaving like a spoiled brat! We could have sent you to a clinic the moment you decided to behave like this, but instead we spent a lot of money on getting you this expensive solution.’

‘You could have spent more money on getting protection for Odasaku.’

(In which all 7 year-old Dazai really wants is to get back Odasaku, but gets Chuuya instead. Though in the end, perhaps the hatrack isn't all that terrible)

chuuya is red hot and dazai is so not by toriosaurus (12,040 - complete)

Dazai couldn't wrap his brain around it. How could the student population think that Chuuya Nakahara was more attractive than him? And, alright, sure, maybe professors shouldn't get caught up in petty drama. But to Dazai, this wasn't just drama. This was war. A war in which he was not going to lose.

The wooing art by holdinglucy (20,940 - complete)

The one where Dazai ended up with more tattoos than he intended to. Or:

Dazai's attempts at wooing the very hot, very dangerous tattoo artist he's just met.

Wrapped up in You by quinnlocke (100,935 - complete)

Chuuya just wants to get through his day as a reptile expert, but there's a bandaged lunatic in his reptile house trying to get murdered by his snakes.

Saving the man's life is a courtesy, taking him home is just asking for trouble.

still still still by toriosaurus (112,578 - complete)

Finally, Chuuya eloquently said, “I don’t want to date you.” Dazai huffed. “Yeah, well, I’m not too thrilled at the idea of having a crazy rockstar boyfriend. But you got us into this mess, you need to help us get out of it.” Had Dazai gone insane? Nakahara Chuuya and Dazai Osamu, dating? Had Chuuya not made it clear through the dozens of direct and indirect meetings that he despised Dazai with every fiber in his body.

Featuring: drunk tweets, falling in love, horrendous song writing, cheesy interviews, learning how to "fake it," and Chuuya getting over the headache that is Dazai. Not necessarily in that order.

where your loyalties lie by writingfromtheshadows (163,126 - complete)

Loyalty is the foundation of the yakuza code, something that was drilled into Chuuya at an early age. However, his lessons did not cover how to manage a political marriage with his organization's oldest rival.

color theory by setosdarkness (2,469 - complete)

Soulmate AU where your heart glows whenever you’re with your soulmate. The color of the glow depends on your feelings for them.

(the one where Chuuya and Dazai make sure to wear layers and layers of clothes and/or bandages just so they can hide their feelings.)

A Heat of Convenience /// A Mark of Inconvenience by dgalerab (19,902 - complete)

PART 1: Yosano won't give Dazai suppressants unless he can prove he's having a healthy amount of heats. Dazai tries to outsmart her. He fails. Chuuya picks up the slack.

PART 2: Dazai gets used to his new arrangement with Chuuya as his heat partner by forcing Chuuya to claim him. It works both better and worse than he expected.

centrifugal/centripetal by TopHat69 (154,138 - ongoing)

[No Summary Available] A/B/O Dynamics

A Catspaw in the Wolf Court by dgalerab (58,357 - complete)

Prince Dazai, a single werecat in a court of wolves, is to be married off to Prince Chuuya, a fox in the kingdom that accepts everyone. He's given one instruction: bring back a defector to the wolves and topple Chuuya's kingdom from the inside.

Things, of course, get more complicated than that.

Counting the Days by Neiro Gin (Neiroa) (23,575 - complete)

How will a certain bandage-wearing ex-Mafioso detective react to hearing that his former partner-who-is-definitely-not-more-than-that has…

…a girlfriend?

“He has been all lovey-dovey with her ever since they came back together!”

“No way! How could any girl fall for that short hat rack?”

“I heard she’s glued to him every single minute of the day. He seems to really like her as well! I’ve never seen him so sweet to anybody!”

“Even if—and that’s a BIG if—she loves him, he’s not the type to just fall in love after only knowing someone for a short amount of time.”

“She’s French.”

“…”

“D-Dazai-san? Dazai-san?!”

Countdown by setosdarkness (31,175 - ongoing)

Eternally-single Chuuya is dared by his friends to date someone. Chuuya eventually agrees, but adds a condition: if the guy he chooses breaks up with him within 10 days, it will suffice as proof that Chuuya’s not meant for dating and therefore his friends will stop nagging at him about his non-existent lovelife.

Thinking that it’s an easy win, Chuuya chooses to date Dazai, his asshole childhood friend who’s known to be a serial womanizer.

Chuuya... is very wrong.

don't you ever tame your demons by writingfromtheshadows (108,592 - complete)

Every year, a handful of children are born with the ability to command supernatural powers. Thousands of dollars and dozens of trained specialists are tasked with identifying, tracking down, and labeling each one as Deviant. Once identified, they have no rights other than those that are permitted to them, and disobedience is a crime punishable by death.

Chuuya has never known a life outside of the routine he's forced to follow, but when the boss of Yokohama's Port Mafia offers him a chance of freedom, Chuuya is not prepared for the rebellion he's stumbling into.

Chuuya Nakahara and the Falling Camelia by Anonymous (12,628 - ongoing)

A new year begins at Hogwarts, and between a nervous wreck of a first year Chuuya met over the summer managing to become Akutagawa's arch enemy upon their first meeting, a pair of second year's younger sisters' complicating things, and leftover tension with Tachihara, Chuuya is in for a hectic term.

Things take a turn for the worse, however when there are rumors about a man eating were tiger, Dementors -- unspeakable creatures who bring back horrible memories and can steal your very soul -- surrounding Hogwarts as wardens and watchmen, and a murderer breaks out of Azkaban, a high security prison in the wizarding world.

Especially when that murderer is dead set on getting his hands on Dazai.

Chuuya Nakahara and the Chambers of Draconia by Anonymous (51,820 - complete)

After a first year full of questions, Chuuya barely gets a moment to breathe before his second year proves the last to be gentle in comparison. With tension among friends and the looming threat of an unknown danger, he'll need all of the clues he can get -- not just for the safety of the school, but for the strength of his friendships.

Madder Aubrieta by hypermoyashi (21,790 - ongoing)

Flowers bloomed, rain fell, and the whims of nature dictated all. This was the status quo that Chuuya knew, and it was a surprisingly delicate order. Change came in the form of a mysterious man he found, woken from an ageless sleep by none other than Chuuya himself.

Margin of Error /// Scale of Success by izanyas (31,416 - complete)

PART 1: After a failed assassination attempt on his person, Dazai finds himself recovering in an unfamiliar place: a hospital where criminals abound, staff and patients alike, and Dazai's own doctor is a little too attractive.

PART 2: Dazai makes due on his promise. Chuuya has to revise his.

#lumi's archive #bungou stray dogs #bsd #soukoku #dazai osamu x nakahara chuuya

[nie7027]

Super5 headcanons pt 2

Edit:    Part 1    Part 2     Part 3    Part 4   Part 5

Minegishi can only stare

"Where the fuck have you been?"

"What do you care?"

"Why are you here?"

"I was bored"

Shimazaki could be here to kill him for betraying him but Minegishi is too tired for this and there are dishes to wash.

In the time it takes him to do the dishes and calm down his plants, shimazaki falls asleep so he goes to the living to room to get a better look at the man

Shimazaki looks almost the same except maybe a bit thinner and with possible hollower eyes. The crooked nose is definitely new. A crooked nose?? Did he broke his nose at some point?? He is even wearing the same clothes as last time. His precious jacket ripped at the edges. Scorching marks and bullet holes here and there.

With a long sigh he takes out his phone, turns off the volume and opens the super3 chat(the too spicy for Seris innocent eyes). The messages start to come in rapidly

Minegishi: Shimazaki is back

Hatori: what

Hatori: what do you mean Shimazaki is back???

Shibata: how did he find us? Did he try to fight you?

Minegishi: i mean he is asleep on my couch. No, he just ate all of my cereal.

Shibata: what the fuck?

Hatori: what the fuck?

Minegishi what the fuck indeed

Shibata: did he say what he wants? Do you know why is he here?

Minegishi: He didnt talk and I dont know

Hatori: what do we do?

Minegishi:

Minegishi: i dont know.

Minesishi: i cant make any calls or else he could wake up and seri isnt logged in so can someone call him and tell him whats going so they can take the necessary precautions

Shibata: im on it

Shibata: hatori is freaking out in his room anyway. I think he is begginin to build a security system.

Minegishi: ...

Shibata: yeah yeah ill go calm him after i talk with Seri.

Minegishi stares at his phones and then at the man on his couch, he cant blame them. Shimazaki is a really dangerous person and they dont know what he is doing here. Minegishi just wanted to do the dishes, water his plants and go to sleep.

The super5 will never know but Shimazaki wasnt lying per se. He WAS bored.

After he ran away from the fight against seasoning city espers he hid here and there taking his sweet time at recovering and once he did(his nose still felt strange but he ignored it) he started to look at what to do.

He joined many criminal organizations, afterall a teletransporter was very valued in the underworld. But not matter how petty or big the crime was, he got bored. So he ended leaving all of them. he even left some in the middle of a important job, not caring whether his employers got caught or not( it was their fault for being stupid and not having a backup plan anyway)

After some months of this he realized he was bored of normal criminals. He was bored of normal persons with narrowed mindsets who conformed with just comitting stupid crimes. HE HAD BEEN PART OF A PLAN TO TAKE THE WORLD and now he was trafficking some drug?? Lame.

Most of all he missed the thrilling sensation of being surrounded with persons that could actually put a fight against him. So he searched for something alike to claw, an organization of espers.

His search turned out fruitless and he decided then he should return to where all started. Claw. It was time to pay a visit to his expartners.

It took him just a week to locate them. It would have took him just a day but he was finally having some fun and god he was gonna drag it all he could.

So here he was in a tiny empty apartment, the crazy amount of plants with a certain aura being the only indication that it belonged to Minegishi...WHERE THE HELL WAS HE? Oh well. He had been waiting for a year. He could wait a little more. In any case in his hurry to get here he forgot to eat and he could hear a fridge running.

Shimazaki, still on the sofa, wakes up the next day at the sound of a blender. He is being held in place, bounded by lots and lots of thick green vines and sturdy roots from which he easily frees himself. The moment he does so the noise at the kitchen stops and an annoyed minegishi steps out. Shimazaki can feel him tensing, preparing for an attack and that makes him smirk .

Until an alarm clock goes off that makes Minegishi mutter a curse

"If you are gonna do something do it now. I have better things to do and i have to go now"

"Better things to do?? What can possibly be better than this??"

"I have work so if you are gonna just stand there and smirk be my guest"

"Work?"

"Yeah, work. you know? That thing you do for a living and that contributes to society? Fuck it.You probably dont. Anyway i gotta go" Turning his back on shimazaki is probably the worst idea but he couldnt sleep at all, he is late and he hasnt had breakfast so if shimazaki wants to kill him he will gladly accept it.

He miraculously manages to exit his apartment and make it to his work. He only hopes theres an apartment to come back later.

Shimazaki can only stare increduously to where minegishis used to stand. 'Work'? 'Contribute to society'? THE FUCK WAS HE BABBLING ABOUT this was completely unexpected and he doesnt know what to do until he notices theres a smell coming from the kitchen where Minegishi left his untouched breakfast. Well he supposes he can muse how to proceed over breakfast.

Hatori isnt allowed to use his phone at work but he is too anxious to care and he has powers to do it without anybody noticing

Spicy3 chat

Hatori: how did it went?

Minegishi: ...well...i guess?? I am alive and my flat was still in one piece last time i saw it

Hatori: he didnt try anything?

Minegishi: he woke up when it was time for me to go...so i just kinda left

Shibata: you just left? He didnt try to stop you???

Minegishi: no

Minegishi:but i think...

Hatori: WHAT

Shibata:what

Minegishi: i think he is...tired.

Minegishi: I bound him while he was sleeping and he never woke up nlr stirred. He didnt notice.

Hatori: weird

Minegishi: i know. Worst of all i couldnt eat and i have 2 hours more left until my break.

Shibata: i can pass on my way to gym and sneak you something

Minegishi: thanks

Hatori: if you want you can hang in our apartment for the time being. We still need to know what he wants

Shibata: yeah, and if he shows up we can fight him together💪

Minegishi: if Seri asks, everything is under control

It takes a week for Shimazaki to finally show up. Meanwhile Minegishi has to use Hatoris and Shibatas washing machine to wash his work uniform daily(it can get very dirty when you work in a flower shop) because his other sets of uniform are back at his place trapped with Shimazaki. So is his money and he has to lend some from Hatoris and shibatas and ask his boss for an advencement in his payment. He hates Shimazaki more now.

They cant do anything but stare blankly when he suddenly shows up in the middle of the living room where they were eating pizza holding an empty box of cereal and says "Theres no more food back there and i want more of these but i cant see how they are called" while pointing at the box.

Sometimes its very easy to forget he is actually blind. Hatori weakly says the name of the branch of cereal he is holding and Shimazaki dissapears again before anybody can say anything.

"Did everybody saw what i just saw right??what the fuck? What the fuck?" shibata exclaims

"...my food"minegishi laments

Its not until an hour of wondering what was that and wracking their brain for an asnwer after that shimazaki returns, a brand new box of the cereal in his hands. He picks up a slice of the forgotten pizza and sits besides Shitaba.

"You didnt pay for that did you?" asks Shitaba

Shimazaki just turns around and stares st him with his hauntingly empty eyes "you too?"

"PAY? WORK? CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY? THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU"

"Weve changed"

"Yeah we have jobs and stuff, we help peopl"

"YOU HAVE SUPERPOWERS! WHY ARE YOU EVEN WORKING?"

"TO NOT PARASITE ON OTHERS HARD WORK LIKE SOME PEOPLE IN HERE" finally explodes Minegishi

The man frowns and rapidly done with the conversation teleports away.

Minegishi finally returns to his place, his web of plants telling him Shimazaki isnt there anymore. Re stashing his fridge and cabinet is a pain in the ass.

Shimazakis plan had been to either find his expartners and form something alike to Claw with them or just antagonize them until he gets the fight he so much craves. None of that has happened because all of them had turned to a bunch of weakling pussies and he cant even find Serizawa.

He could still try to fight them but he bitterly realizes he wont get any satisfaction of beating them if they keep acting like that, restraining themselves and trying to be civil as if they werent the same persons that destroyed this very city a year ago. It would be like punching flowers!

The point was to get rid of his boredness and now he is just angry!

He needs them to drop the act.

Thats when a plan starts to form in his head and he smirks. He is going to show them what they are missing on.

Thats how he finds himself back in minegishis apartment.

"Im just saying you could probably grow tons of weed, good quality of course. And i take care of the transport i know a bunch of people-"

"Weed? Are you serious? Is this why you came back? To start a drug trafficking bussines?"

"Im just saying with my teletransporting abilities and yourplant thing we could save lots of money in transport and become richer than-"

"No"

"AREN YOU TIRED OF THIS? OF SHITTY CUSTOMERS GETTING YOU IN TROUBLE JUST BECAUSE THEY DONT KNOW RAINBOW ROSES DONT NATURALLY EXIST?"

"WHERE YOU SPYING ME AT WORK?"

"MAYBE SO"

"DONT DO IT AND STOP EATING ALL MY FOOD"

He then tries with shibata, approaching him during one of his morning running routines. Teletransporting every 2 meters at his side while he keeps running clearly ignoring him

"With your force, not that i need it, we could terrorize all the bussines of a whole prefecture and force them to pay for protection. We win, they win"

"Not interested"

"Why not?! It would be so easy"

"I dont want to"

"Could you stop running? This is important"

"No thanks"

"You arent even listening!"

"Good"

He finally tries with Hatori thinking he would be the easiest of them

"You hack the system and we force all those politicians to pay us to not release all their dirty secrets"

"I am busy"

"No you are not. You are playing mario kart. I can hear Yoshi"

"Ive changed"

"Have you? Really???" at this point Shimazaki raises an eyebrow, he is so done and he wont keeo with this bullshit "because everywhere i have been, and i have been everywhere, the interpol, cia, you name it HAS BEEN AFTER ME whereas you three can waltz into a store like nobodys bussiness. WE COMMITED THE SAME CRIME. WE DESTROYED THIS CITY so how come im the only one being persecuted? Huh? You think I DONT KNOW WHAT YOU DID"

Hatori pauses the game and glares at him. Good, he is finally getting a reaction.

" i did what had to be done and i wont let YOU of all people tell me-"

"Me? Of all people? You believe yourself so grand and high when you are nothing but THE SAME AS ME" immediately shimazaki feels hatoris aura flare. what must have been his console shifting and changing into something new. Whatever it is, he is sure he can block it.

"Really? You are gonna fight me? I want to see you-" a horrible sound like nothing he had ever heard before pierces his ears making him howl in pain and he teleports away.

After that accident shimazaki never mentions Hatoris dirty secret again but that doesnt stop him from keep trying to get them to commit felonies again.

He thinks he once "saw" Serizawa on the street but his aura was quickly eaten by the aura of the person by his side. He didnt stayed to find out and quickly teleported away.

And this goes like this for 3 months, his proposals becoming more and more desesperate until one day he just... gives up.

Shimazaki should have left or killed them months ago but for some reason he prefers to stay here. He wont admit it but hes having more fun living on their couches annoying them than what he would have had they accepted his proposals.

He takes special delight in annoying them when they had hard days. (Minegishi comes home covered in something stinky and almost strangles shimazaki with his own hands after he comments this wouldnt have happened if he had accepted to traffick weed in a yacht with him)

...besides he has noticed that now in both apartments there is always a box of his favourite cereal (hatori sweared it was the cereal what placated Shimazaki given how docile he was whenever he was seen eating it, shibata and minegishi just liked it)

The super3 cant believe it themselves but they have now gotten used to the constant presence of Shimazaki in their lives (which isnt surprising given they spent at least 3 years together).

Well constant is a way to put it because the man still has the habit of dissapearing 3-5 days every once in a while and reappearing like nothing happened

But they know this cant keep going like this and thats how minegishi finds himself texting the super3 chat one day he comes to an empty apartment

Minegishi: is shimazaki there?

Hatori: yeah, hes playing smash with shitaba

Minegishi: playing smash??

Hatori: its seems he learned the patron of my movements by observing me and now hes kicking Shitabas ass as princess peach

Minegishi: ?

Hatori: we told him he was playing bowser

Minegishi: whatever, tell him to bring his ass back. I need to go grocery shopping and i need his help

"Why would i help you grocery shopping?" says shimazaki suddenly to his right

At the same his phone sounds 2 times

Shibata: hatori said something to him and he just teleported

Shibata: is safe to assume he is with you?

Minegishi: yea, im taking charge from here

"Im teaching you to do grocery shopping"

"I dont need you to teach me shit"

" yes, you do if you want to keep eating that cereal you like and that you finished this morning"

Shimazaki raises his eyebrow, teleports and after 5 min returns with 5 boxes of the damn cereal in his arms

"There. Its done"

"DID YOU JUST ROBBED THEM? YOU CANT KEEP DOING THIS"

"WHY NOT? ITS EASIER"

"THATS NOT THE POINT"Minegishi stops, breathes amd tries again "Shimazaki you cant keep doing this and i dont mean just the whole robbing, i mean i dotn know what you do when you dissapear for days but when you are here you just eat our food, wait for us to come home from work and then annoy us?"

"So? I can do whatever i want"

"Do you realize how pathethic it sounds?Is this really all you want to do? Do you even know what you want to do?"

Shimazaki doesnt wanna hear anymore of that and teleports

He ends teleporting to a random alley where he passes the night

The next days his mood isnt any better and he spends them sleeping, terrorizing random deliquents he finds in his way and kicking bags of trash until one day of the "bags" lets out a yelp.

Its shibata who finds him some days later during one of his running routines when he follows the sound of a hurt dog

Expecting to see a bunch of nasty kids terrorizing a poor animal he steps up to confront them only to find his missing "friend" glaring at poor dog and screaming "STOP COMPLAINING ITS YOUR FAULT FOR NOT MOVING I DIDNT EVEN KICK YOU THAT HARD"

He texts a quickl "Found him" to the group chat and marches up to him

"You shouldnt be kicking random things in the first place"

"Get lost"

" are you sure you didnt kick him hard? He is limping and we both know your kicks arent exactly soft"

"If i had wanted, a limp would be the least of its problems" still he makes a face as if he isnt sure

With a sigh Shibata carefully picks up the dog and motions to shimazaki "theres a vet nearby. You kicked him so you own him that at least. Dont worry ill pay" he doesnt wait for Shimazakis response and walks, relief overflowing him once he hears footsteps behind him

The consult is quick and the vet gleefully hands shimazaki "his" dog while she explains to shibata the treatment they should follow the next three months

Shimazaki...had never in his life pet a dog, much less carried one. His fur feels dirty and is tangled everywhere but the vet said it just needs a bath. It is warm and he can feel and hear his steady breaths. His mental eye allows him to perceive the flowing of his blood, the currents in his brain, the beating of his heart...all what makes a living being held in his arms. Things he has always perceived but never payed attention. The fact that the dog starts to lick his hands doesnt go unnoticed and he feels strangely calm. His grip tightening.

They are about to exit the clinic, shibata saying his last thanks when a woman and a girl enter. That very moment the dog starts to squirm in his embrace. And he doesnt know what to do

"Hey are you alright? I can hold it if you want" asks shibata noticing his turmoil

" yeah, its just the stupid dog WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HE CANT WALK"

The girls who shibata notices has red puffy narrows her eyes and yells "DONT CALL HIM STUPID YOU ARE THE STUPID" before turning to look at shimazaki, whatever she was going to say next is forgotten as she stares with wide eyes.

Both the moms and shimazakis replies are drowned by the girl scream of "UESAMA! MOM ITS HIM ITS MY DOG"

For some reason shimazaki feels his blood run cold and lifts up the dog even more when the girl comes clashing at his legs desesperately trying to grab her dog

Shibata who noticed shimazakis earlier expression cant believe what hes seeing (please god, please tell me he isnt gonna fight a girl over a dog) when the vet decides to come out to see what is happening

"Im sorry, my little girl believes those boys over there have Uesama"

"ITS HIM"

"Uesama?..." the vet stares some seconds in confusion before her eyes grow wider "Oh how didnt i notice it before! Im sorry sirs but it seems you have found this little girls dogs" the vets looks expectantly at shimazaki

Shimazaki who has been holding a very squirming dog and listening to the screams of a girls is starting to get very annoyed. The tempation to teleport away with the dog too big to ignore. Hes about to do it when he hears the dog crying again.

With a huff he hands it to the very thankful mother and exits the clinic as quickly as he can.

Shibata follows suit "I saw your face before they arrived. I can tell what you did"

"Shut up"

The walk home is strangely quiet but at least he is back.

The joke on the spicy chat is that the super 3 are dumb and believe they are protecting oh so pure Seri when in reality they just share dumb penis jokes while Seri is actually riding Reigens dick.

And yes as his last crime Hatori threatened with realeasing all the state secrets of all the goverments and provoking a worldwide crisis if they didnt allow them to try to live normal lives

I just noticed this is more of a fanfic than a list of headcanons now but meh. What i wanted to actually be part 2 is gonna be part 3? 4? I didnt even get to write the prank the super5 were gonna pull on shimazaki but now you have something to look up next time.

Im not that happy with how the second half turned out but maybe im just tired.

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #minegishi toshiki #hatori nazomu #shibata hiroshi #shimazaki ryou #should i tag animal violence? #manga spoilers #mp100 spoilers #super5 headcanons #nie's writing

[zenosanalytic]

THE SACRED TEXTS!!! EPISODE 3

I just finished the 3rd season of Clone Wars(2008) and I have Thoughts!

s3 is typically where I’ve seen ppl saying Clone Wars gets gud but, for the first half of the season, I was pretty skeptical. Until ~ e11 the season’s dedicated to filling in holes from the earlier seasons which, frankly, didn’t really need to be filled? Like: I’m not really sure WHO, in the audience, would be sitting around wondering “gee, I wonder what’s going on with Mandalore’s trade-policy during all of this?”?? Or “was a Republic Army sent to help Ryloth when it was first invaded, and what happened to it?”??? And most of this not only felt pretty unnecessary, but was also pretty Meh (:T There were good bits! Like, I didnt ACTL mind the Ryloth ep, and it acts as a declaration of sorts that it’s now both open-season on Jedi(yeah, technically Kit Fisto’s ex-padawan Vebb died in Lair of Grievous, but he was very much An Outlier), and more broadly open-season on named&faced humanoid characters.

To give an example: not ONLY does Domino Squad from Rookies in s1 get a fleshing-out backstory(which is... very Pat and derivative and convenient, but the characterization is ok given they’ve only got one 22min ep to do it in. & I liked 99′s whole role as basically surrogate dad to all the other clones), but pretty much ALL of them, I think, end up getting killed off during the season? Like I said it’s a clear statement they want to break with the past while building on the “hey fans: CLONES ARE PEOPLE! THEIR SITUATION IN THIS WAR IS MONSTROUS!!” message the series has been soft-peddling from the beginning, but I feel like they didnt really commit to it enough. Like: IF they had stuck with the Domino survivors throughout the season, if we’d gotten to see them in episode after episode, gotten to know them better alongside the other members of Rex’s ARC battalion, gotten to see them face dangers and survive them, only to watch, agonized, as they, and the rest of the Battalion vets, slowly get picked off in the increasingly dangerous missions of the second half of the season, then that would have made the message MUCH more effective, AND made the Citadel and Padawan Lost arcs much more tense.

And really all of the impactful deaths of the season sort of feel like that. Like: we get one episode to know Mina Bonteri(a human, of course) and her family before she’s killed off(though i did Dig how unceremonious and unsentimental it was; that really got across the stakes involved and the sorts of scumbags Amidala, and the audience, are dealing with). We get even less time with the Jedi killed by Oppress; a few seconds at most(and btw it’s kind of HILARIOUS how he just... bulls in there and wrecks em like it’s nothing, after two seasons of ep after ep of uneventful cat-and-mouse. Of course that’s undermined by him&Ventriss, then, utterly failing to be successful against Dooku, purely because the plot demands it |:T) Same with Master Piell. Ziro we know much better, but he was also a fairly annoying caricature and his final eps went out of their way to use him to introduce EVEN MORE annoying caricatures so, while his getting gunned down is successful in showing violence and violent death as sudden, unsentimental, and pathetic rather than heroic and worthy, we dont really care. And that’s further undercut, pretty seriously, by his being a caricature; pathos is hard to pull off with an object of laughter/scorn as it risks just making their suffering funny to the audience(which... is the OPPOSITE of what you want to accomplish). This isnt helped by having the Jedi who find him basically shrugging at his death before racing into a Cool Fight. The “Force Wielders” in the Mortis arc suffer from the same problems(and also: Force Dualism&”The Chosen One” Talk: BLEAGH!). The only one of these they manage to get right, to me, is Kalifa’s death in Padawan Lost which, due to us getting more time to see her sitch and hear her&the other younglings talk about it, genuinely ends up having an emotional impact(if still feeling super-convenient and a bit improbable)((also I love the inclusion of a predator ep, even if they’re cheap dime-story predators)).

The same goes for all the non-death falls and endangerments. The corruption of the Mandalorian Prime Minister falls flat because we barely know him, and he’s never been portrayed as sympathetic or, for that matter, as anything other than a factotum. The only Pantoran we know in Sphere of Influence is Senator Chuchi, and more than half the episode is dedicated to the Prime Minister, his Son, and his(interchangeable) daughters(and we never see any of these characters again in the season); the ep comes off as nothing more than an excuse to reference Greedo(and Im annoyed by him speaking common all of a sudden. Who watching CW would have a problem with subtitles?).

BUT! They’re trying!! They’re moving in the right direction!!! I’m happy about this ^v^ And the later half of the season, while I have my problems with certain episodes, and the continued non-human stereotypes, and the convenient writing, and the not-great(tho getting better!) dialogue, is actually kind of entertaining, and attention-bearing. Arc Troopers, the 2nd ep of the season, is Solid! The Mortis arc is good, overall! The Citadel and Padawan Lost arcs are Compelling!! I like the Witches of Dathomiir, even if their Arc is “Meh” because the series IMMEDIATELY undercuts their cool concept(aside from the laser-bows which are LEGITIMATELY Stupid. I’m sorry; I will not argue over this they’re Dum) by having their plans, and all the implication towards deep plots&cunning manipulation, turn out to be empty and fruitless(ie, Dooku totally should have been terribly wounded by all this, which would have also been cool re: Sidious, as it’d imply THAT WAS HIS PLAN ALL ALONG! TO WEAKEN THE GROWING POWER OF HIS APPRENTICE AND DRAG THE WAR OUT EVEN LONGER!!) Also: the Witches, rather than being “magic users” drawing from the “unique power” of their ~evil planet~(a swamp, of course, following long-established Magic the Gathering tradition u_u) should have just totally been a non-Sith(possibly Pre-Jedi) sect of Dark Side Force Users. I really like the idea of Non-Jedi/Non-Sith(since they’re literally just two sides of the SAME tradition; the Sith are literally Jedi Heretics) Force Traditions being out there in the galaxy, and this was a good chance to build on that which I felt they didnt do enough with, and hope they WILL do more with in future(I especially like the ideas of force-attuned poison? Like what if they could “poison” or “curse” people THROUGH the Force? That would be sweet as hell :3).

Another improvement is in the action in this season. It’s not at a level I’d call “thrilling” or anything, but it feels much less like stiff, rote, weightless FLUFF than it has in the two previous seasons. Frankly I think a lot of this is just their engine and how ppls joints just sort of SNAP into position during fights, and also the excessive acrobatics of the prequel-style, both of which makes it feel unnatural, predetermined, and performative rather than deadly and vital(like excessively practiced and robotically acted choreography, basically). But, having said that, you see ppl make mistakes, you see consequences FOR those mistakes, and thus there is SOME sense of danger and weight to it that makes it more compelling than it has been in the past, and this should be praised uwu

And I like that the Politics are a lot clearer and more forefronted in this season than previously! While the Corruption Arc on Mandalore did feel rather hollow, rushed, and After-School-Specially(and, I DEEPLY resent its peddling of offensive and baseless anti-Ophidian tropes >:( ), it’s core message abt the dangers of profiteering and the corrupting influence of profit-seeking(ie Capitalism) on politics and society is a good one and clearly delivered. The Amidala episodes in this season Knock it out of the park consistently, and especially on their messaging ^v^ ^v^ Also, I DIDNT MIND the very fillery C3PO and R2 ep! Yes: it was essentially a waste of an episode since Bane was working for the Hutts to spring Ziro in s1′s Hostage Crisis & there’s basically NO WAY they wouldnt have been able to provide him with a set of plans for the Senate building(and the prison, for that matter), but WHATEVER: it was Kind Of Fun and I like seeing those two be an old bickering married couple and C3PO freak out over getting praised; IT WAS FINE!

So, while there werent any standout ep that I REALLY ENJOYED like Trespass in s1 and R2 Come Home in s2, and I very much didn’t like the 1st half of the season, I think I do have to concede that s3 is An Improvement, overall. I’m actually a bit excited over moving on to s4, given the upward trajectory this season ends on quality-wise owo

Oh: and the Ahsoka redesign? Neat uwu uwu(if untentionally Hilarious since they havent been changing her model over time so she just... grows three feet and bulks out in, like, a single night, presumably. Togruta Puberty must be HELL :p :p :p)

#Star Wars #SW: Clone Wars(2008) #Clone Wars s3 #Long Post #zA Opinions #zA Reviews #TV Shows #Summaries

[boleynns]

“For the Throne” Album - potential clues to S8

I somehow just noticed that the entire “Inspired by Game of Thrones” album was released (they had only release the first 3 songs when I checked about 2 weeks ago), and I listened to the entire thing while taking notes. TLDR take-away: strong evidence that artists were given plot-points for S8, strong evidence of a betrayal for love, lots of fire, and (I think) major arrows towards Danni’s journey for the rest of the show.

Disclaimer: confirmation bias exists, and I love the idea of Danni burning down King’s Landing, so I can’t help but read into that. If the idea of that plot point bothers you, this might not be the lyric analysis you want to read!

Kingdom of One by Maren Morris

This was one of the ones released after (I think…) ep. 1, though it does have some hints to future events.

“First light, sacrifice” (Melisandre dying)

“Bird’s eye, saw the signs” (Bran)

“All you can give, all you can bear, all that you longed for, nothing compares, but nothing is sacred, no one is safe, so you wanna play God? Is that all you got? Would you sell your soul, burn it all, everything that you love, finally become second to none in a kingdom of one?” If this chorus is in-line with the rest of this song, this to me screams: Danni lost nearly everything in the Battle of Winterfell - Jon (parentage reveal), potentially Rhaegal (not that he died, just that he’s kinda Jon’s dragon now), the Dothraki, most of the Unsullied, and her most trusted advisor and friend in Jorah, and now there’s no point in not just burning everything down.

If I squint, the chorus could be about Cersei (everything she’s loved before doesn’t matter next to power, she burnt down the Sept and once Jaime left effectively became a “kingdom of one”), but overall it doesn’t seem to emotionally fit her as well, and Cersei has no involvement with the other Winterfell characters alluded to - nor any involvement in the battle. Also the song ends with even more fire (“burn it all”, “ash to ash, dust to dust”).

Power is Power by The Weekend

I know this song has had a lyric video, but I think it’s still worth examining. “Power is Power” (those words, not the song itself) is obviously a Cersei line, but the first verse seems very Night-King-oriented (“I was born in the ice and snow, with the winter wolves, in the dark alone”)

The chorus though then goes into something that could fit Cersei or (probably) Danni as well (“A knife in my heart couldn’t slow me down, cuz power is power, now watch me burn it down”). There are many, many, many “burn it all” references through this album, and while Cersei did use wildfyre on the Sept, Danni’s whole thing is “Fire and Blood” so it just seems inevitable that it’s her burning the Red Keep/King’s Landing.

“I die looking up at your face…Only love could kill me, God bless” Could again fit Cersei (with the theory that Jaime kills her) or Danni (betrayal for Love)

“Heavy is the crown, but never for a queen” Again, both Cersei and Danni, but again the song ends with “Now watch me burn it down”.

Nightshade by The Lumineers

Pretty much about the collective group in the S7 excursion beyond the wall. The second verse is interesting and very specific — about a single rider who saw the Army’s footprints, who swore an oath and with their life would pay, and also mentions “80 miles from home”. Seems like it’s about Benjen who was a rider, a Night’s Watch member, and a Stark from Winterfell (not exactly 80 miles, but I’m assuming that number was more chosen for rhyming purposes).

The 3rd Verse (“We were surrounded and the ending was near, all of the sudden, a ranger arrived, a savior appeared - made it to safety, but the devil was here”) again about Benjen (ranger) arriving to the S7 fight beyond the wall.

Originally I thought the chorus wasn’t really thematically relevant to the rest of the song (each chorus ends with “It was all for the throne”), and it seemed more like a general allusion to the marketing for the season, but also could be that the whole Beyond the Wall excursion was literally only to gain Danni a temporary truce in her perusal of the throne.

Hollow Crown by Ellie Goulding

The song overall is about a House of Cards (“paper castle”, “hollow crown”, all things that are flimsy and won’t last) and again mentions “burn it down”. And again pretty clearly seems like a Cersei & Daenerys song about the other being the fake queen and how it’ll end with Dany burning the Red Keep.

The first verse is all about paranoia (“Is there anyone you trust ‘round here”, “Keep a knife under your pillow”, “You got everyone against you somehow”, “It’s become an obsession, look at your refection, look who you’re becoming right now”): while this could still fit either of them, the “look at who you’re becoming” seems more Danni-relevant as Cersei has always been this way.

Baptize Me by X Ambassadors and Jacob Banks

Perhaps about Theon? A lot of water imagery, mentions of redemption and praying for a savior, but overall of all the songs on the album this one is the most vague and generic country-rock. Maybe I’m being stupid for not getting who this song is about, as it doesn’t even completely fit Theon completely, and just doesn’t sound like any character we know specifically. I’m really not into this song, and ends up just sounding like a guy in our world singing about God instead of a Game of Thrones character.

Too Many Gods by A$AP Rocky & Joey Bada$$

Overall about a lot of wars, a lot of gods, etc. Good song! Definitely specifics about the show (thrones, ravens, etc.) that could be about Jon, but kind of mainly about the futility of war and all the pain it brings. Some interesting single lines:

“It’s just too many laws” - reminds me of Jaime’s “They make you swear and swear” speech.

“Strange screams down the corridors” — Arya running through Winterfell’s halls

“I had a dream I woke up a king in a peasant body” — Jon post-parentage feelings, not feeling like he should be a king?

“Still and silent, writing papers, flying ravens with a message about me” — Anytime I read/see S8 stuff mentioning raven scrolls all I can think of is Sophie Turner saying she was given a raven scroll from S8 as a souvenir, and I want to know what it means. So that is all I can think of with this line.

Turn On Me by The National

Musically, this is my favorite song on the album. Great lyrics, great atmosphere. The lyrics seem to point to the song being about Jon from Danni’s perspective. Starts off about the rhythm of the ocean under the moon (boat!bang), and specifically mentions “And your mother’s angst the day you were born, the day you cut her down” (Lyanna dying in childbirth). For a bit I thought it could be about Tyrion, but the rest of the song is dealing with the betrayal of an intimate relationship which doesn’t really fit with him.

The second verse is a total mystery to me that may be solved in retrospect, but its very poetic (“Do leaves fall in perfect sentences? Do maggots crawl your name?”).

“Do mirrors laugh at you behind your back?” — this is the second reference to mirrors, after the line in “Hollow Crown”

“Does your family think you’re too far gone, do you wonder if they’re right? Are you different than you used to be? Are you alone somewhere tonight?” — Danni & Jon post-parentage. The Starks clearly not interested in Jon taking on a Targaryen identity.

“I’ve gone too high, I’m way too far, I’ve no idea where you are. Will I see you when you turn, when you turn on me? When I turn around will you be there, at the center of the world like you promised to be? Will you suddenly seem like a stranger? I can’t tell anymore what you want from me.” — Again, whatever Jon and Danni had in Dannie’s eyes has been ruined by the reveal, and her worry is that he’ll turn on her.

From the Grave by James Arthur

“crown of roses in your hair”, potentially about Rhaeger and Lyanna? A lot of “I’m far away, but I miss you and want to come back”. Not to mention it’s called “From the Grave” and they’re both dead, and within the song it sounds like the singer is speaking from the grave. Another vague song.

Me Traicionaste (“You Betrayed Me”) by Rosalia

It’s in Spanish so I had to google translate the lyrics, but the sound is very haunting and it’s literally called “You Betrayed Me” HELLO.

“I came to meet you even though I knew, Oh, you designed it, Bye, you betrayed me, Oh, love you do not see it”- Which is straight-up Political!Jon in one stanza. You can squint and see Tyrion or Varys betraying her, but she’s not in love with either of them so seems much less likely.

When I Lie by Lil Peep

“Stick that needle in my eye, just lost my peace of mind, I’m not evil be design, but I feel dead at times”.

“All my friends are really dead, still hear their voices in my head”.

This one is hard to pin down, as the lyrics are very specific but somehow vague at the same time. I’m wondering if “needle” is Arya’s Needle, and potentially this is about Cersei? Or someone else that Arya will kill with Needle? The song uses “lie” as both “not telling the truth” and “laying down”.

Love Can Kill by Lennon Stella

“I wasn’t thinking when I told you to stay, it was just too hard to push you away, you don’t know that you’re in over your head, I’m afraid I’ll push you over the edge” — Another mystery song! The rest of the song is about this relationship that needs to be let go of even though they don’t want to, and how one of them is not safe because of it. 

I thought about it being Danni & Jon, but I don’t think it makes sense. 

The only thing that has already happened in the show that fits the lyrics is actually Tyrion and Shae - him saying he needs her to leave even though he doesn’t want to, her being in danger, the consequence being life or death...but that relationship was a long time ago and doesn’t really feel important enough to merit a song, so who knows.

Wolf at Your Door by Chloe and Halle

Just from the title I immediately though of Jon at Dany’s door on the boat, but this song actually encompasses all of the remaining Starks (though mostly focuses on Arya).

“A wolf creeps softly in the snow, a knife between her teeth she roams, for she is now a stranger” - Arya using her faceless man skills to sneak into the Godswood with the Catspaw Dagger.

“Chasing a fairytale, chasin’ a lie, but everything changes, and everything dies. You preyed on my innocence, tried to bury my name, but now there’ ice in my veins” — Sansa wanting to be a princess in a fairytale that wasn’t real, her family dying, being used by everyone as a pawn, but coming out the other side.

“There’s a wolf at your door, there’s a hound at your heels, there’s a snake in your bed, tell me how does it feel?” — Maybe about Jon — the wolf at your door, and he’s sleeping (or was sleeping) with a “dragon” (might be a stretch to snake, but whatever). Or he’s the snake in someone’s bed?

“When you let the wolves in, you let the wolves in. When you think that it’s over, I swear, we’ll be there” - A Time for Wolves bitches!

“Up from the ashes, run through the fire, Down by the blade that bled us the same” — clearly about the Catspaw Dagger being used against the Starks and then Arya using it to protect them. 

I’m lit by this song’s lyrics.

Pray by Matt Bellamy

This song uses direct clips of Melisandre’s words while bringing Jon back to life in S6, but then the English says “Pray with me, we can bring her back” which…is someone (Dany? Sansa?) else going to die and then be brought back to life? A woman hasn’t been brought back before in the show (as far as I remember) so it’d need to be talking about in future episodes. Color me curious.

#got meta #for the throne #political!jon #a bit #dark!dany #for sure #a time for wolves #definitely

[missjackil]

A Dose of SPN Positivity!

For those who know me, they know I love this show.... flaws and all! im critical sometimes, but not overly. Bottom line, I am addicted to the story and Im in love with Sam and Dean.  With Season 14 about to start, and we’re all getting antsy, too much negativity has been flying around, so I want to share some things i love most about the show, and maybe make some of you reflect for a moment and think “Yeah, that is pretty great” and smile.  Supernatural has been referred to as “The Little Show That Could” and to me, its such a fitting description. Logically, on the surface, it looks like it just can’t. I mean, how can a fantasy/horror show, survive with such a low budget, light special effects, and not very scary most of the time. I mean hell, they dont even have that many monsters that look like monsters, so why has it lasted longer than a season or 2? Let alone, 14 seasons with no signs of stopping yet. First and foremost is obvious. Sam and Dean and the actors who play them.  This essay will be full of gushing about these boys, so if you dont feel like enduring such a hardship, scroll on past. if that interests you.....

Yes these 2 fabulous men are the life blood of this show. Without them, we’d have nothing. THEY are the reason, this little show can, and does. Even those who like one and not the other, even if they dont realize it, the one they prefer is who they are because of the other. Both of their qualities and flaws can be directly linked to their influence on each other. If for some reason the other was gone for good, the one left will change drastically. As we see when one is dead or in grave danger, albeit temporarily, the other changes. Sam is no longer sweet, laid back and practical, and Dean is no longer funny, charming, and nurturing.  In fact, they both seem to become an amplified version of their brother. When Sam dies, Dean gets quiet, sometimes too quiet. He also gets methodical and focused. You may get lucky and just get shot in the back, but if he chooses to speak, he chooses his words to let you know shits gonna hit the fan. “You have my brother, and you have one chance, just one, to hand him over, and if he isnt in one peice, when I find you, and I WILL find you, I will take you apart” Sam on the other hand is boiling over with emotion. My boy becomes savage. He doesnt always choose a lot of words to say, he gets his whole point across most of the time with “WHERES MY BROTHER???!!!!” This... my friends, is good stuff! These things couldnt be done with such beauty without Jared and Jensen. Their offscreen relationship, whatever it may be, is wonderful. Theres no denying the love and respect they have for each other. They are very supportive of each other, and help make the other better at their job. They’re not typical actors who have a work relationship but otherwise spend time with each other. They genuinely enjoy being together, and this shows on screen. When two people are this good at their jobs, and with each other, you just have to keep watching. Other things I love about the show, are kinda small. Some maybe youve never noticed, but maybe now you will and enjoy them too, like... Brains vs Brawn: At first glance, we all go Sam=brains, Dean=brawn right? But thats not actually the case. Dean is far from stupid, and Sam is nowheres near a wimp. Dean teases Sam about being a nerd, and Sam doesnt mind, he kinda wears his nerdiness like a badge of honor. Dean will never admit to being a nerd, but he is. He’s read Vonnegut, knows every old west cowboy statistic, and likes LARPing. Sam, though a bookworm, is one tough mofo. hes tall and muscular and has shown to be a little freakishly strong. He can also take a great deal of pain. And though Dean is known more to be the fighter, he can be very warm and nurturing. And nerdy Sam can make you shit your pants with just a look if you piss him off just right. I absolutely LOVE this balance!! Its one of my favorite things! Old school vs New; A lot has changed in 14 seasons. The brothers have grown, as well as the story, but their roots are never forgotten. They’re still driving around in the same car. Hell. Baby has become the 3rd lead! Even though they have mom back, they never forgot her, or dad, and both were spoken of often throughout the series. They refer back to old days often, so we can all get a feel of nostalgia when we remember too. Most episodes bring the deep past up in one way or another, I love this! Loss and Death: I know so many of us complain that they die and come back too much, but I have a real appreciation for it, The circumstances are always different, and so are the methonds of coming back. Sometimes the death isnt serious, or they dont “seem” dead, like in First Blood or Dark Side of the Moon, when there may have been an initial “wtf?” we got to see them in heaven, and in first blood, they came right back. However there was deep seriousness in All Hell Breaks Loose, No Rest for the Wicked,  Do You Believe in Miracles, Swan Song, Red Meat and Beat The Devil that you felt the dying brother’s physical pain, and then the emotional pain of the surviving brother.  No matter how many times they die, they still hit these types of episodes out of the park. WE may know theyre coming back, but they dont. it still crushes them and I love this! Sam and Dean’s Sexuality: I love that their sexual natures are different, but theyre both okay. Dean is sexually active, enjoys porn and vocalizes some fantasies, Though Sam can tease him a little, its just brotherly ribbing, its not judgemental or trying to make Dean feel bad. Sam isnt overly sexual, he’s gone many seasons without sex at all. He doesnt appear to enjoy porn, we know he doesnt like strip clubs, and its NOT because he’s unattractive!! Dean teases him but he doesnt try to make him feel bad. When he has heavily suggested that Sam get laid, its just because he wants him to have fun. Dean even said he appreciated that Sam wanted to stay pure and waited. Otherwise, its okay that Sam is (at least kinda) asexual. Neither are shunned or judged because of their sexuality. Winsync: This is one of the greatest things. if they didnt do this, we wouldnt care, we would never say “It would be a much better show if the brothers mirrored each other, or did the same thing at the same time” but for whatever reason, TPTB wanted this, and it works so well! Its an intimacy we can see without the show going OTT bromantic. Its the connection, the closeness, and being soulmates. I LOVE this! Soulmates and Brothers: Normally a show will make soulmates out of lovers. It’s not often they do it with siblings. It helps justify their deep love and devotion. It adds an additional layer to their relationship. It makes them so tied together that they will share eternity in heaven together, and not just in their memories. This was a very good decision made by Kripke and crew, so we will all know they cant live without each other, even if they just lived in different homes. I love this! Meta Madness: Though I dont like all the meta episodes, I do love the fact they can do them, and DO do them. Because the whole premise is the supernatural, nothing is impossible, even AUs and cartoon worlds. Sometimes I might roll my eyes, but its awesome to me that they can experiment this way and see how it goes. I Love this!! The Bros are Oblivious: Sam and Dean have been through basically everything, and have seen and done everything, yet they seem shocked when people say theyre famous, or when they heard people tell stories about them. Occasionally they grasp their importance, like when they tell people they save the world, but they were impressed that Asa fixed killed 5 Wendigo, and had an Angel Blade, and Father Luca met the Pope. I mean God hung out at the bunker and made them pancakes! Their Heads Dont Get Too Big: Every once in a while, TPTB make sure we, and the boys, remember that they are only human. Even if they lock away Satan, kill Death, save God’s life, they’re just men. Remember when Bobby died and Dean was sure he wouldnt because “its just one bullet!” ? I can see how it would seem so silly to Dean, and even to us, that someone who has lived through so much, could die from a stupid little bullet. I think that one of the smartest things the show has done in ages, was to have Sam tortured by Toni and friend. Sam was so bold and cocky (and need I say sexy?) telling Toni he’d been tortured by the devil himself, and what could she do to him... He soon learned Hell torture or not,  cold showers still suck, blow torches to the feet still hurt like hell, and a mortal human can still fuck with his head. And Dean, well he can still be put on the injured reserve list from a jacked up leg. IMO S12 was great for re-humanizing the Winchesters. I love this! Comedy to Tragedy: Some of the best episodes, started out funny and ended in a tear jerker. Mystery Spot, Just My Imagination, and Beat The Devil top my list. I love the emotional rollar coaster, Coming away exhausted from an episode is the bestthing I can ask for! They havent tried it the other way around, tragedy to comedy, and thats good. If you are crying at the beginning and laughing later, it doesnt justify the grief and you may feel let down and hollow after. SPN is great with having some humor in even the most depressing episodes, but they know when using it and leaving it out is best. I love this! Brohugs: My #1 favorite thing, aside from the hug in 6.1, they have all been beautiful. Not once, have the boys lost the love, or even repeated the same hug. Each one conveys a different message, a different emotion, but all say “I love you more than everything” and I wont ever get tired of them! I would do anything for a single hug in my whole life that had such love in it, as any Winchester bro hug! I.LOVE.THIS!! Now I hope if you read this far, you got to smile a few times, and a spark was added to the fire that you fell in love with 14 seasons ago. Here’s to S14, i hope its filled with all of these wonderful things!

#supernatural #show positive #sam winchester #dean winchester #spn forever

[sky-girls]

lutteo prompt: The skin is a map to your soulmate. Whatever you do to your skin appears into your soulmates skin. (Matteo discovers Luna is his soulmate and he is unsure if he should tell her or not.)

This is a mess and I apologize in advance for it. That being said I hope you still like it.

Matteo pouts, there’s another one, another drawing appearing on his arms, he doesn’t like those drawing, and he doesn’t like the flowers and the hearts, he doesn’t like how they appear randomly in places he doesn’t want ugly messy drawings and he doesn’t like this girl, ‘cause of course it’s a girl they are using pink, he hates pink. He hates soulmates, he hates not having control of things, he hates that there’s some random person out there that can write into his skin. And they can’t even write, they try, messy hi’s have appeared on his hand many times, but he always needs to time to figure out what it says. He never answers, why would he, he doesn’t like them, he never will.

He’s looking at her, he can’t not look at her, her presence pulls him,she’s magnetic hypnotizing, he didn’t know it was possible to like someone so much, he didn’t know it was possible for him to like someone like this but Luna just turned his world upside down completely, every aspect of it. And he has zero problems with it, he gets Luna Valente on his life what else can he ask for.

He looks down at the ink splashes on his hands, these dots and stains that are not his fault but live permanently in his hands, his soulmate hasn’t tried to talk to him in a very long time and he’s grateful he doesn’t want Luna to think anything of it. Even if she probably doesn’t care much  it could be dangerous, it could get ridiculous ideas on her head, he only needs her to know how much he cares about her nothing more. And he hasn’t even gotten to this yet.

She looks up and their eyes meet, just like every time a pleasant, warm feeling spreads over his chest as the corners of his lips lift up without him being able to control it, he doesn’t care though, he gives her his best grin and she smiles back, bright and beautiful, making his heart speed up in ways that make him happy and scared at the same time. Matteo winks at Luna and she looks down with a blush and a soft smile he always feels proud bringing to light. Even when Simón comes and sits in front of her the blush stays and when he’s trying to focus on his homework he catches her looking at him out of the corner of his eye. A new mark appears on the palm of his hand, uneven and messy like everything else, he ignores it. Not long ago every new line, every new word, every new doodle would make something crawl under his skin, make a heavy feeling settle on his limbs and on his chest making it hard to breath, hard to think, now he couldn’t care less, he doesn’t care about his soulmate anymore, about what he’s supposed to do or be with her. He has Luna, he wants Luna, this is his choice, his decision and the stupid universe can’t do anything about it.

Sometimes random things show up in more than just his arms and hands, sometimes he wakes to find himself with stains on his thighs, on his lips, on his cheeks. Sometime he wakes up to reminders too, small things, she writes about her homework, to not forget work, or to tidy up her room, she writes once about her father’s birthday and how she needs to get a gift for her best friend. Until just few months he used to wake up with small little messages,telling him to have a great day, a great christmas, to enjoy the sun if there was any and every time he would roll his eyes as Ámbar scrunched up her nose and Gastón insisted that it was sweet. He never answered of course he never answered, his skin kept as a blank canvas, nothing ever tainting it.

These things are gone now, he is almost happy about that.

Almost because for all he can gather she is actually a sweet girl, kind and open and always willing to try to talk with him. It’s almost sad that such a nice person ended up with him as a soulmate, someone who will hate her just for the principle of it. It’s nothing against her, really. He just hates soulmates, all his life has been planned out and thought of extensively by people that are not him, he doesn’t need the universe adding to this shit.

He hopes that this sudden silence means she gave up. Or maybe that she found someone else, someone that makes her heart race, makes her smile without being able to help her, someone that makes her feel at peace, that makes her feel like everything is okay. Just like he found Luna. He hopes both of them get to make their decisions, choose who they want to be with, fight for it. He hopes they get to be happy, because a part of him still wants her to be happy.

Today two notes appear again. On the palm of his left hand.

“Ask Nina for the hw”

“Clean my skates”

He makes a mental not of them, like he usually does with these things, not really paying attention but not caring that much either. It’s interesting that this girl has a friend named Nina, surely a coincidence, it still stays on the back of his mind, nagging at him for some reason.

It’s not actually important though and his phone buzzes, showing Luna’s nickname on the screen, she is asking about physics, then another texts comes asking if he will go to the roller tomorrow, then another one asking if he can help her then, then another one saying that could skate afterwards. His grin grows bigger each time a notification lights up his screen, he waits a few seconds to see if she is done and when she doesn’t text anymore he says that he would be happy to do all of this. She sends a thanks and lots of hearts, she is left smiling like a fool at his phone for almost 10 minutes. He doesn’t even try to stop himself.

When he sees it he almost drops her.

They are skating, trying new tricks and as always he is enjoying it, enjoying having her close,  having her small, warm body pressed against his, enjoying her laughter, such a sweet, carefree sound. He is enjoying getting to spend time with her at her happiest and then he sees the formula written in the inside of his wrist.

He doesn’t fall, no, because he is the king of the rink and such things could never happen to him, he stumbles, and his arms go tighter arounds Luna’s body, pulling her closer by her waist to stop her from hitting the floor because of him. She giggles a soft, breathless sound and her eyes search for his, he must looked rattled because she frowns in worry.

“Hey, are you okay?” She asks softly but he can’t answer, Luna’s messy handwritten on his skin is still burned in his eyes, he can’t forget it, he can’t focus on anything else. “Or is the king of the rink so not used to failing that his brain broke the one time he did?”

Her attempted at joking brings him back, some sort of auto pilot takes over his body, one that it’s only goal is to not worry Luna to take that frown away from her face.

“Of course not, delivery girl.”He feels his lips form a smirk. “I just had one small moment of surprise and I can’t say that I care much about the outcome.”

She looks at him confused and when he raises an eyebrow she finally realises how close they are, she blushes softly, prettily, before she starts stuttering and pulls away from him. He laughs, the sound its hollow to him like he is is far far away, like he is not really hearing his laugh, like someone is inside his body, acting like him but it’s not him at all.

Matteo has only one thought on his mind. Only one thing is clear between the mess that everything has become in the last 5 seconds or less.

Luna Valente could be his soulmate, Luna Valente is probably his soulmate.

How the fuck is he supposed to deal with this?

She skates away calling him and he goes after her, there’s no situation in this whole universe where he wouldn’t go after her.

It feels different now, heavy, it feels like he is doing exactly what he didn’t want for the last 17 years of his life and it weighs on his body.

But damn this is Luna, there’s no way he wouldn’t want Luna. He is head over heels for her, he fell hard and fast and doesn’t even care anymore, so he goes after her and pretends he is not having an internal break down, tries to figure out how to work this out.

He doesn’t look at her wrist, he doesn’t look at his either.

The first thing he decides to do after his mind clears up a little, once he is at home, laying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, is that he should make sure. Maybe he is panicking over nothing, maybe this is just a very weird, very specific coincidence.

Maybe Luna is not his soulmate, maybe she is his decision entirely and completely. Maybe there’s no reason that he cares so much about her besides the fact that she is Luna.

He needs to make sure.

The thing is that he has never actually seen Luna’s handwriting, he has seen plenty of her numbers, plenty of her doodles, but for some weird reason, he has never seen her write anything that’s not her name. He has helped her with math, physics, walked her through countless exercises but he has never sat next to her and see her write.

He has never actually seen her notes either, just small colorful flashes of messy text and margin annotations and way too many highlighters. So now when he wonder is Luna makes the g longer than usual, or if he curls the s the same way his soulmate does he has no point of comparison. He tries to work with what he remembers, how her six and her zero often confuse with each other because he always writes them to quickly, with the way her hearts are always misshaped and uneven or with the way her tiny little flowers always look more like blobs made of weirdly shaped circles than actual flower.

And his heart stops every time he realises he had seen all of those thing son his skin before yet he never realised. He can’t believe he never realised.

Still he needs to make sure, this is not really conclusive, maybe he is just seeing what he wants to see, because he would be lying if he said that a part of him is not jumping with excitement to the idea of Luna being made just for him, of him made just for her. Maybe his brain is avoiding to see anything he doesn’t want to see because he would be lying if he said that a part of him is not terrified at the idea of Luna being his soulmate, of Luna being the person the universe has picked for him.

He needs more evidence, something that he can use to reach an unbiased, objective conclusion if that’s possible. He finds excuses to look at her notebooks pretty quick, offering her help with history, biology. Ane every time he feels like he is lying to her. Like he should just go ahead and ask her to show him, to ask her to please write something on her skin and see if it appears in hers, but he doesn’t dare, the words get caught on his throat so he is left staring at the way she writes, tries to compare it to the many times random messages have appeared on his skin, every time, he is more sure. Luna is his soulmate.

He just needs one more thing to be sure and that might be very difficult.

In a word where whatever you out on your skin appears somewhere else, in someone else, people don't tend to let others write on their skins,it looks bad, letting someone who is not your soulmate mark you in any way, especially when the person you are meant to be with will know it.  

No one goes around doodling or writing on someone else’s skin, even if you are in a relationship, even if you and your soulmate are platonic,there’s this quiet agreement in all parts of the world: Your skin is for you and your soulmate only.

But he needs Luna to let him write something on her skin, he needs her to give him permission and he needs to see if his own handwriting appears on his skin. This is the only way to be completely sure.

He doesn’t really know how to do it wastes days on figuring out the perfect pan, days on looking for the perfect chance, he could just go ahead and doodle something on her skin quickly when she is distracted but this feels oddly intimate and he doesn’t dare.

Opportunity comes when they are studying one day, sitting across each other in table at the Jam&Roller, she is trying to learn a formula but doesn’t seem to manage so he takes her left hand softly, carefully hiding the place it should appear on his own skin.

“Can I?” He asks softly, moving the pen on his right hand so she can know what he means. She looks at him confused for a few seconds before blushing softly.

He almost feels like he is doing something forbidden, especially since Luna doesn’t know what he knows but after a few seconds she nods and he carefully writes the technique he used to learn this on inside of her palm, quickly he takes his hand away, hiding it and Luna doesn’t seem to notice too caught staring at his handwriting on his skin.

For the fraction of a second he stupidly worries she might recognize it but of course that’s impossible, in the last seventeen years he has made sure that it would never happen.

He clears his throat and they go back to studying.

Matteo steals a glance at his own hand, he can see the dark, black lines out of the corner of his eyes, he pretends like he doesn’t for his own sanity.

He doesn’t know what to do. Luna is his soulmate. The girl he is completely and utterly in love with is his soulmate, the same girl he has hated since he has memory.

He doesn’t really know what to make of that, how to make her the same person in his mind, how to untangle these feelings inside of him.

He always hated the universe for assigning him someone he is supposed to spend the rest of his life with but all that it took was for this person to appear on his life and he couldn’t stop thinking about her for a second.

Maybe he has been wrong all of his life about this. Maybe it’s not something that terrible. Maybe if he gets Luna he can live with this.

But does he get Luna? What will she think of this once she knows? Will she ever know? Will he ever have the guts to tell her? Will he ever be able to explain that the fact that they met so many months ago in cancun wasn’t a coincidence? That all of this was meant to happen?

Will she believe it? Will she want it?

What if he is not who she expected?

What if she only wants him as a friend? He thinks he could live with this, as long as he keeps her close, could live through the constant pain of seeing her happy with someone else in a near future as long as she keeps smiling at him in this special way.

Even if he is a selfish person by nature he could be good for her, he could be better for her.

If he ever actually tells her.

Truth be told Matteo is scared, he is so scared of everything that might happen now, everything that will happen if he tells her. He hates being scared, he hates being uncertain.

He is supposed to be confident, sure of himself, has spent all of his life learning how to do this.

He need to tell her, he knows he needs to tell her.

He will tell her.

Making the resolution to do something and actually doing it are very different things. He finds himself trying many times, calling her name completely willing to tell him everything but every time her green eyes meet his he loses all courage he had and the words catch in his throat making it impossible for him to say anything, every time his brain hurries to come up with a excuse and he tells himself that it’s not the right moment just yet, he is starting to wonder if it will ever be.

He knows himself, he knows he will come up with excuse after excuse or come up with a way that Luna can find out without him telling her. He doesn’t want this. He wants to do things properly. He wants to tell her himself, he wants to hope this is the start of something new for them, the start of a shift of their relationship. He wants to start this new part of their lives properly and lies and deceit is not the way to do it.

He should tell her.

He doesn’t want to tell her, really. But he wants her in his life.

He needs to tell her.

He needs to be brave enough, for her, for them, if there will ever be a them he needs to be brave enough.

And Matteo feels like today is the day it will finally happen.

He is set on doing it, he is completely done with making excuses, with running away from this. Whatever happens happens, he has no control over her emotion, no control over how she will react and he likes it this way, he likes that he can’t never quite completely figure her out yet understands her completely in some way, he likes that she makes her choices with her heart not with her brain. He loves her. He will tell her that she is is his soulmate. That he is her soulmate and just hope for the best.

He catches her in school, purposefully bumping against her, making it look like an accident like he always does. When he is about to fall he stabilizes, keeps her close as he asks her if she can meet him in the park close to the blake after school, Luna seems confused by the request but accepts. He is a fucking mess the rest of the school day.

When the bells rings he flees out of the classroom not really wanting to risk running into Luna before the arranged time, he spent all morning rehearsing his speech but he already feels the word fading, leaving place for the anxiety to fill his brain.

He is about to take his phone and text Luna that it’s not important any more when she appears. She is walking slowly with a lazy half smile on her face that grows as soon as she sees him.

“Hi, chico fresa.” She exclaims happily. “How are you?”

“I’m your soulmate.” He just...He just spews it, he has no idea how it happens or why it happens but his mouth worked without any input of his brain to say the words. She frowns confused and takes a step away.

This is not the carefully planned, written and rewritten speech he had meant to say.He fucked up.

She is not saying anything, just looking at him in shock and confusion so he does the best next thing, he takes his back and quickly looks for a pencil on it before throwing it to the floor. He quickly writes his name on the back of his hand, messy and hurried, Luna is still looking at him confused so he points at her hand. She lifts it slowly, too slowly, or maybe nothing could ever be fast enough for him in this moment.

She gasps when she sees it and then silence falls over them. He doesn’t dare to speak, she is still staring at her hand, her eyes fixed on his name, the name that suddenly appeared just after he wrote it on himself.

Birds and wind and laughter fills the silence, Matteo is growing tired of it but he doesn’t really know what to say.

Luna seems frozen in confusion, maybe in horror, maybe he is not what she expected, maybe it was a mistake to tell her.

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.”Again the words bubble out of his lips without him being able to control them. “I’m going now, I’m sorry.”

“No!” She stops him loud enough that some people turn to look at them but he doesn’t care, he stays in his place not really looking at her. He doesn’t remember when was the last time he didn’t dare to look at someone in the eyes and now this tiny girl has him turned into a ball of nerves and he can’t handle it at all. “I..”

Her words fade and he takes a deep breath looking at her face.

“I’m happy you told me.” She says slowly, almost like she is thinking every word, assessing every possible reaction for it. It’s a weird, worrying thing coming from Luna. “I just need to process it.”

“Okay.” He nods, there’s nothing else he can say, nothing else he can think of saying and right as he is about to say he will leave again, she speaks again.

“I mean this is such a big thing and you just went ahead and said” She starts in this rambly tone of her and he immediately feels like he can breath easier. “Not that you shouldn’t have told me or anything but right now I’m very confused and have many questions but I don’t really know how to make them or if I should and honestly I’m just very confused, I know I already said that but it’s true, I didn’t expect it and it’s not like it’s a bad thing, I’m actually very happy, this is is just a little bit overwhelming and-”

“Hey.” He says softly, resting his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, take a deep breath, there’s no hurry here, you can take all the time you want to process or whatever.”

“Are you sure?” She asks blinking slowly, for some reason now he is completely calm. He finally said it and she is understandably rattled by it but she said she is happy. She said she is very happy  about him being her soulmate. She can take all the time she needs to think about this as long as this feeling remains.

“Don’t worry.” He says. “Take all the time you need, I will be here waiting for you.”

She bites her lower lip looking like she wants to say something but she just looks down as a soft blush fills her cheeks.

He lets himself kiss her forehead and she doesn’t stop him.

“I think I should be going.” He tells her and she nods but she tangles their  free hands together keeping him there.

“One thing first.” Luna says.

And just like that she kisses him, she kisses him slow and sweet and deep, she kisses him making every inch of his skin feel like it’s electrified, like he could combust in any second. His brain can’t comprehend the intensity of this feeling, so he pulls her closer, it doesn’t help at all but now there’s no part of his brain trying to understand it. He can only focus on Luna, all he cares about are his lips moving against his, her small hand playing with the hair of his nape.

She pulls away and he immediately feels like he has lost all of oxygen but he stops himself from following her lips.

“I still…”She clears her throat, her lips are a little swollen and her cheeks are red, she looks beautiful. “I still need to process this but I’ve always lowkey wanted to do this.”

He nods there’s nothing else he can do, once she turns around he calls her name.

“See you tomorrow?” He asks and she smiles softly at him, in this way that always makes him feel like he could melt in any second.

“Of course.” She nods, eyes impossibly sweet.

“I can’t wait.” He says and she giggles turning around with a wave.

Matteo watches her leave, walk away from him but even then he has this feeling that everything will turn out well for them in the end. Perfect even.

#soy luna #lutteo #luna valente #matteo balsano #mine #my writing #this is such a mess really I am very sorry about that #but I think it's still mostly decent #Anon

[thevesseler]

Superbia, Part 3

Beginning of Story

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter [TBC]

This one’s kind of a long one, sorry.

[The perpetual frown stuck on your face deepens; not only are you finding yourself with rabbit on your plate once AGAIN, but you think the fairies might not be able to recognize you without the goofy grin you always wore around... her.  God.  Every time you think about how you coped with it, you shudder knowing it hit the rest of them hard at least tenfold.  You mutter under your breath.]

MILENAH:  Stupid lack of GPS signal, Stupid Terys for leading, stupid me for following, and thinking I could do any of this again!  But most importantly, stupid Grienburgh being in danger in the first place!

[After being overcome with Shoulder Infatuation, Lauren declared that your party would be spared immediate punishment, and instead treated to a nice “dinner”–if you can even call it that–until they figure out what to do with you.  Since then, they've taken you back to their commune.]

[Time did nothing to Lauren since you last saw her.  She's clearly trying to fill the shoes of the departed eldest the best she can, but you can tell even after the death there's a middle child inferiority complex brewing within.  Iris, on the other hand, gives you the evil eye from across the table.  This should come as no surprise to you; she was always far more perceptive than she was given credit for, and it's always been clear which of your late friend's younger sisters she was closer to.  No fault to Lauren, but she was often a little... in her own world.]

[Terys has already lost interest in trying to seduce her, but she hasn't taken the hint.]

LAUREN: You know, I've never seen a mustache up close before!  Does it ever get caught in anything?

TERYS: …

LAUREN: The strong silent type, are you?  I don't mind, though I can only hope you'll tell me why its color doesn't match that of the hair on your head.  With locks like that, you could be Iris' twin!

[Iris doesn't avert her gaze from you.  Even then, she still has something to say.]

IRIS: No thanks, I'd kill myself if I looked like that.

LAUREN: Hah! Ahahah!  She knows not what she speaks!

TERYS: I don't need your validation, I know how I look.

[Lauren tosses a bone at Iris' head with impeccable accuracy.]

LAUREN: We have guests, sister, please show them some hospitality!

[Iris mumbles something, only loud enough for Sarjane, sitting adjacent to her, to hear.]

SARJANE: Wait, hold up– Who's Macki?

[The tension in the air becomes twice as thick as Lauren tenses up, her knife nearly going through the wood of the table.  It's a unique knife, possibly customized and seemingly too big for eating.]

LAUREN: Iris... why would you bring up Ma–

IRIS: She was our sister.

[Your three friends lean forward in their seats.  You force yourself to zone out, expecting everything to fall apart.]

IRIS: Much like us, she had no interest in letting any human who wandered into our woods go on their merry way.  Except one. Her reasoning... was that she had fallen in love with her.  She passed the teachings of her craft onto her, too...

[She finally tears her gaze from you, looking down at her lap.]

IRIS: There's a wing-hoarding dragon who guards the caves, and sleeps on a pile of wings he's ripped off of other fairies over the years.  Macki wanted to make sure she and the human could defend each other while hunting in the forest.  Then one day, as the human was supposed to accompany her for their next hunt, she decided to sleep in, letting Macki go off on her own.  So what do you think happened next?

[Nobody dares ask.]

IRIS: By the time the she found her in the middle of the woods, Macki had already bled out.  We could've killed that human, but instead, Lauren let her go.

LAUREN: What would you have done?  I think it's what Macki would've wanted.

IRIS: ...Maybe.  How could you know for sure?  You're not Macki.

[Lauren twists the knife further into the wood.]

WYNTRAM: If you don't mind me asking, who was the human?

[Son of a bitch!]

IRIS: Her name was... uhh, M...Mi–Michelle.

[She shoots Lauren a look.]

LAUREN: That's right, it was Michelle.

IRIS: It was definitely Michelle.

[You don't know why the fairies are trying to protect your identity, but they're doing a terrible job of it.  Perhaps they just don't want to start any drama.  Seeing your chance, you decide to be bold.]

MILENAH: Now that that's behind us, what do we have to do to get you to trust humans again?

[Iris' lips tighten, forming a flat line.  You know it's already too late for her to go back on “Michelle.”]

LAUREN: Well, there really isn't anything you can do.  If it weren't for your handsome devil of a friend here, we would've punished you on the spot!

TERYS: You're welcome.

LAUREN: However, I have an interesting proposition.  Other than Macki, there isn't a pair of hands in our commune that can best my good little sister at archery.  If one of you could take on Iris and win, we'll grant you mercy, as well as our utmost respect.

[Your friends all turn to you.]

LAUREN: Of course, if you lose, we'll have to open up the portal to our own realm.  It's a lovely place to visit, but it's not so fun to live there, especially if you aren't a fairy.  Our queen could always use some more court entertainers, though.

[Your heart sinks.  You spot Terys from across the table, his arms instinctively wrapped around his abdomen, knowing what this would mean for him if you lost.  So it's come to this.]

LAUREN: Of course, you could always forfeit right now–

MILENAH: No!

[Iris grins smugly at you.]

IRIS: Oh?

MILENAH:  I'll take you on, I haven't missed a shot in years.  Soon enough, you'll understand the utility of a human!

[Wyntram and Sarjane, who had been holding their breaths the entire time, let out a sigh of relief.]

IRIS: Tomorrow morning, as soon as the sun rises.  I'll send someone to wake you up.

LAUREN: In the meantime, feel free to spend the night in our spare cabins!  We have two, which should be enough to accommodate four humans.  Have a good rest, for it might be your last.

[Time is of the essence, and these assholes are holding your party up by making you stay overnight.  The walk to the cabins is eerily quiet.  Two male fairies, both holding bukkehorns, stand outside the entrances.]

IRIS: They're here to make sure you don't escape in the middle of the night.

MILENAH: Wouldn't dream of it.

SARJANE: Well, I guess this is good-night for now.  And don't worry, we'll be there to cheer you on.  You're gonna be great!

MILENAH: I know, but don't jinx it.

[Sarjane grabs Wyntram's hand and starts pulling him toward the left cabin.]

SARJANE: This one is guarded by a cuter guy.

WYNTRAM: That's... subjective.

[He turns to Terys, who hasn't spoken a word since “You're welcome.”]

WYNTRAM: See you tomorrow, man.

TERYS: ...It healed so long ago... why does it still hurt...

[For a brief second, Wyntram looks considerably worried.]

SARJANE: There he goes with that vague cryptic BS again.  Come on, doc, I wanna see if they have indoor plumbing!

[Night falls, and much to Sarjane's disappointment, the cabins do not in fact have indoor plumbing.]

SARJANE: What do you think fairy shit looks like?

[Wyntram doesn't look up from his phone.  The cabin has no charger, and the battery should run out in a few hours, but that doesn't stop him from looking at the black screen in locked mode.]

WYNTRAM: Who knows?  Maybe flowers.  Like those hydrangeas.

SARJANE:  Noooo! I put those all over my face!

WYNTRAM: Heh.

SARJANE: You were a bioengineer, didn't you ever work on fairies?

WYNTRAM: Honestly?  No.  My town generally thought they were a myth, and anyone who claimed to see them was usually laughed off the mountain.

SARJANE: How many people can be laughed off the mountain before a scientist says “Hey, maybe what they're saying isn't totally made up”?

WYNTRAM: Since I started working, seven and counting.

SARJANE: Geez.  That is, like, five too many.

[Wyntram's message chime rings out in the hollow cabin.]

SARJANE: Looks like you get some service here after all.  Is it Dael?

WYNTRAM: No, it's my cousin.

“Hey DorkFuck 5000, have you watched The Stepford Wives yet?”

WYNTRAM: She likes to send me old movie recommendations that she thinks I'll overanalyze.

[He unlocks the screen to respond.]

“Which version?  I liked the remake better, but you can't tell me Joanna's marriage to Walter wasn't compulsory heterosexuality.  It's like they told her she had to choose a guy to marry, she threw a dart at a board, it landed on a picture of a deflated scrotum that looks like Matthew Broderick and she said 'Him, I guess...'”

SARJANE: That's not over-analysis, that's just fact.

WYNTRAM: Look at your own phone.

[The following silence between them lasts three minutes before either decides to say something.]

WYNTRAM: Man, this sucks.  Why do I always get stuck with you?

SARJANE:  Whoa, wait a minute!

WYNTRAM: No– Shit!  Hold on, that's not what I meant.  It just seems like every time we camp or stay at inns, the two of us always end up rooming together.  Like I get it, we're really good friends, but sometimes, I feel like there's other people I need to talk to once in a while.

SARJANE: Hey, you're not still thinking about what he said outside the cabin, are you...?

WYNTRAM: …

[She crosses her arms.]

SARJANE: Oh? Ohohohoho???? Could it be the good doctor actually has genuine friendly concern for people other than Hard Glass Mazdaki?

WYNTRAM: Yeah, of course!  I'm human!  But please don't call yourself that.

SARJANE: The point is, you say this sucks.  I think I know how to make it un-suck.

[You wish you knew how to make him respond to you.  Anything, even an insult, would do.  If it weren't for the guards outside, Terys would probably leave the cabin to “meditate,” or whatever he claims to do to let off steam when he's alone.]

MILENAH: Big day tomorrow.

TERYS: …

MILENAH: You know, I took another one of your manuscript pages again.  Doesn't that piss you off?

TERYS: ..

MILENAH: Well, in the event that it doesn't, let me show you what I've been working on for you.

TERYS: .

[You slip the manuscript page onto his side of the cabin.  He scans it from where he sits.]

MILENAH: It's supposed to be a resurrection spell.  Our biggest concern was that since we don't have a healer, what are we gonna do if one of us drops dead?  This melody is the answer, the spell is a one-use-per-fight sort of thing, though, so use it wisely.  I call it... “Bring to Life.”

[He crumples the paper into a ball and throws it at you.]

MILENAH: Please don't tell me it's already been done!

TERYS: ….........

[You slam your head against the cabin wall.]

MILENAH: I'm not going to lose, you know!

TERYS: You better not.

MILENAH: I'm no fool!  I know what losing means for you, and I'm not gonna let you go through that again.

TERYS:  You better not.

MILENAH: Don't you have any faith in me?

TERYS: What difference does it make, how much I have in you?  Of course I do, but if you lose to that fairy, what will it even count for in the end?

[You'd normally try to give him some speech about moral support and The Power of Friendship that you only half-believe yourself, but you're interrupted by a knock on the door.  You walk over to answer it.]

MILENAH: Hm?

GUARD FAIRY: You have visitors.

[Behind him is Sarjane standing by her own cabin's guard, and Wyntram off to the side.]

SARJANE: Hey Millie, guess what?  I'm stealing you!

MILENAH: Why?

SARJANE: It doesn't matter, don't worry about it.

[You walk out the door to follow her and the guard, when you notice Wyntram stay put.]

MILENAH: Shouldn't he be following us?

SARJANE: It's fine!  The cabin can only fit two people!

MILENAH: Huh?  But then that means–

SARJANE: It's fiiine!

[As Sarjane approaches the door to open it, the subjectively cuter guard returns to his post.  She shuts the door behind you.]

SARJANE: Sorry I used you like that.  I just had to get those two alone.

[You feign offense.]

MILENAH: I'm hurt.  You don't like spending time with me?

SARJANE: Never said that.  How are you holding up?  Knowing your record, I think that violet-mopped malcontent will be in for a rude awakening tomorrow.

MILENAH: Which one, Iris or Terys?  Depending on who you're referring to, what you said has two entirely different meanings.

SARJANE: Pssh.  

[She causally walks over and flops onto her bed.]

SARJANE: Still, this lady seems pretty sure of herself, and according to the Orange One, their sister was even better.  Do you think she can do that thing where you pin the onion ring to the tree?

MILENAH: No idea.  Macki didn't teach me that one.

[Your blood freezes as you realize what you've just said.]

SARJANE: A-ha!

MILENAH: Yoooouuu!  You tricked me!

SARJANE: I did nothing, “Michelle.”  You just have a loose tongue.

MILENAH:  Die.

SARJANE: Oh, it's not like I'll tell anyone.

[You take a seat on Wyntram's bed, which you guess is yours now.]

MILENAH: Everyone in this commune knows what I did, but none of them will admit it's me.  All of this could have been avoided if we just went left like I wanted.

SARJANE: True, but think how much less I'd know about you if we did.

MILENAH: I don't have a loose tongue.  But I am a hypocrite.  I hold on to all of my friends' biggest secrets and guard them with my life, but then I don't trust them enough to share my own.  Can you blame me?  The incident with Macki wasn't my proudest moment.  It's funny... the day it happened, I swore it wasn't my fault.  I never sleep in, it's not my nature.  That morning, I felt... wrong.  Completely disoriented.  Why was I so tired the night before?

SARJANE: More importantly, the fairies had to hunt in pairs before you came along, right?  So why did she go off to hunt alone instead of asking someone else to go with her?

[You never considered that.]

MILENAH: I don't know her reasons.  I wish I could ask her.

SARJANE: Iris said Macki was in love with you.  I'd kill to hear your side of that story.

MILENAH: I actually never knew for sure.  She spent a lot of time with me, taught me everything I know, and told me how pretty I was, but does that really mean love?

SARJANE: You can't rule it out, I mean, you can't blame her for thinking yo–

MILENAH: ?

SARJANE: Ha!  I just remembered something!

[She's visibly sweating.  You don't think she knows how much louder she's speaking than she was a moment ago.]

SARJANE: Dinner!

MILENAH: What...

SARJANE: You didn't have any!

MILENAH: Well, I didn't want to eat rabbit.  I'll be fine, I can still shoot on an empty stomach.

SARJANE: You say that now until you pass out and impale yourself on your own arrows.

MILENAH: You've got an active imagination.  Now, what were you trying to say before?

[She ducks underneath the covers.]

SARJANE:  Good night!

#The Vesseler #Story