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pineapple-lover-boy · 3 years

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Can- can I just talk about the Victuuri relationship? Pretty please?

I just…. I’ve never seen a healthy relationship that starts from idolization and a need to get out that has ended in a satisfying way.

Let me elaborate:

We all know that Yuri idolized Victor. It’s why he was so nervous in the beginning and why it took time for them to build on their relationship, he saw Victor as a god.

Victor? He was depressed. He loved the ice so much but he longer found excitement in competitions. He didn’t have any worthy opponents that had a chance of beating him (sorry Chris).

I believe Victor “fell in love” at the banquet. He was attracted to Yuri but, even though he lost, he also saw potential in him. That night was probably the most exciting night for him in a long time. I think he felt genuine affection for Yuri but also saw a way to get out of his predicament.

Then, of course, Yuri didn’t show up the following season (a year had passed before the present timeline). He was most likely annoyed that someone who had gave him excitement didn’t show up. Did he think Yuri had a chance of beating him at first? Probably not. Did he see potential or at least someone he could have fun with during the season? Hell yes!

And then when he saw the video of Yuri skating Stay Close To Me, something that awarded him a gold medal. That’s all he needed. He saw how Yuri not only skated it perfectly but I bet he thought Yuri skated it better. Let’s not forget that emotion is a huge part of skating. If you don’t skate with the passion your supposed to hold for whatever theme you have, your performance can almost seem futile. Victor obviously won because he perfected it but if it was based on how he presented it alone, he would’ve lost. He saw someone worthy of skating an gold medal piece while also having the heart to do it. That’s talent.

Anyways, because of this, their relationship doesn’t hold well in the beginning. He’s passive aggressive towards Yuri because he doesn’t see his own talent and Yuri is just going along for the ride because holy shit it’s Victor fucking Nikiforov.

As they get to know each other and Yuri opens up more (plus Victor getting info on Yuri from the others) Victor starts to see Yuri as an actual person and not someone he can use to project himself onto and then later skate against. And Yuri starts to see him as an actual person too.

I saw on another post talking about how we didn’t see them during the summer and how the end credits of every episode suggest they got to know each other better as both in the credits and in the show they (Yuri) are able to touch each other more. I 100% believe this.

I also believe they might’ve had an argument or two on this topic. It’s not easy to switch from inadvertently seeing someone as anything but a person to an actual person with emotions and feelings. I believe Victor would’ve tried to back away from this subject but Yuri wouldn’t let him. It wasn’t big arguments like in episode 7. It was probably little quarrels that annoyed them both but after having a long conversation they finally started to become more comfortable with each other.

Yuri started letting go of the notion that Victor was a god like creature and Victor saw him as something other than a pawn. Yuri stopped getting as embarrassed with Victor touching him and Victor stopped trying to seduce him as much just so he could see the man from the banquet.

This most definitely leads the way towards a healthier relationship but episode 7 was inevitable. Yuri’s anxiety was at an all time high when he comes out on top. The fact that he needs to stay on top and not mess up is getting to him. As a person with anxiety, it’s pure hell. The thoughts of failing won’t get out of his head and even as he turns off all the monitors he can still hear everything.

Victor takes him away from prying eyes and has no idea what to do. Despite an obvious change that would’ve had to include some emotions from both occurring over the summer, he still has no idea how to help someone in distress.

Then he makes his first mistake. Yuri is visibly shaken by someone’s scores (can’t remember who) and Victor, who is at his wits end, yells at him to stop listening and puts his hands over Yuri’s ears. This tells Yuri how nervous Victor is too and despite knowing that Victor wouldn’t leave him now it shows to him that Victor doesn’t have faith in him (even if he does).

Victor tried to shatter Yuri’s heart. He must’ve expected Yuri to maybe sign heavily but tell him that he’ll do everything in his power to win (probably something that’s happened with him and Yakov). Instead he see’s the consequences of his carelessness. Yuri rightfully lashes out at him and even through all that Victor stills says “should I kiss you?”. Idk what Yuri was thinking but if I were him I would be extremely offended that Victor would try and use me like some doll he can play with and can assume that physical affection and love can fix everything, which was probably what Yuri was thinking.

There’s something off about Yuri and Victor when they emerge but Yuri is surprisingly better now. Cathartic crying can do wonders, kids. There’s also my favorite part of the entire show (couldn’t find a gif):

*head jab* “Hey, fuck you.”

*more head jabs* “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I know you don’t like this you unempathetic dicknip.”

*head pat* “You’re forgiven.”

We all know what happens next: Yuri ends his love story with Victor’s signature move and Victor kisses him out of joy and the need to one up him (with love, of course).

I’m gonna get a little sloppy here with the timeline because I have the memory of a female protagonist that needs to go back to work to get something only to accidentally bump into the jerk CEO of which she will develop a toxic relationship for fan service, so forgive me.

Gonna skip ahead to the scene where Yuri tells Victor that he’s leaving skating, and basically Victor too. (At this moment I realized I’ve been spelling Viktor with a c and not a k which is really fucking with my brain but it’s too late to go back). Victor starts crying and realizes just how Yuri felt when he was rejecting him.

I believe Yuri found some light in the situation because of that fact, which Victor was not having. They’ve been closer than ever now. They’ve kissed, they’ve also announced they they’re getting married, so what the hell?!

Yuri, as we know, feels he’s keeping Victor from the ice. Victor, while he misses the ice and wouldn’t mind being competitive again, has found meaning and if he’s going to be Yuri’s coach to stay where he is than so be it.

He wanted to coach Yuri because he wanted a worthy competitor and while he still wants that, what matters most now is his relationship with Yuri. If he stops being Yuri’s coach and Yuri goes off the ice he knows it will be the end. Yuri loves the ice too and I’d bet he’d try to distance himself from Victor as to not feel regret from leaving without actually knowing that he’s doing it.

They’ve grown so much at this point. But that doesn’t mean it’s over. After all they’ve been through Yuri doesn’t realize that consequences of parting from one another. While being too dependent on your spouse isn’t good, it’s what they both need right now. They are what caused the other person to be happy again and while I hate those types of storylines this one executed it perfectly.

I find Victor’s silent plea to Yurio absolutely heartbreaking. He knows it’s bad to put pressure on people but now he’s doing that to a 15 year old boy. He’s putting his relationship and his life into this child’s hands because he knows there’s nothing else he can do.

I do think Yurio had a crush on Yuri but even if he didn’t: Yuri has taught him so much. He, although being an ass most of the time, has really come to love Yuri as family. It’s clear that Yurio was always lonely (Otabek being his first friend and all) but once he came to Japan and lived, truly lived there, he wasn’t lonely anymore.

Yurio wins, Yuri gets silver and all’s well that ends well.

I guess my point of this was to show how well the relationship in YOI was. I could’ve included some more detail on some points but I usually write stuff in one take (it’s very hard to revise without my mind shutting on itself).

I just love how an implicitly toxic relationship can come out so healthy. They don’t do any of that miscommunication bullshit and when they do it’s because the characters don’t know what to do or how to handle something. Like humans do!

They could’ve easily made this the hot famous guy thinks the kawai girl boy is just so adorable and the kawai girl boy is absolutely infatuated with the hot guy. Hijinks ensue which includes the kawai girl boy thinking the hot guy is in love with someone else. She He gets pushed into thinking that she’s he’s more independent in the end and happily ever after for the couple that will divorce in less than five years! Yay!

Seriously, I thought that was what was going to happen but YOI subverted my expectations so much. They are people that grew from their bad mindsets. And you know what? Yuri still has anxiety! Victor is still bad with handling emotions! And that’s ok! We don’t change that quickly. It takes time and hopefully another season.

I’m definitely using this show as a template for healthy relationships. It’s so hard for me to properly write them when I’ve never been in one and I’m not given the chance to see it happen in different environments (when searching it up all I get is “they trust each other. They blame each other. They’re compassionate.” Like ok but can you show me how?)

Yuri!!! On ice…. I love you so much. You have done so much for my mental health and my writing. Thank you.

#yuri on ice #yuri katsuki #katsuki yuri #victor nikiforov #viktor nikirofov #please tell me if you want me to elaborate on some sections #long post #yurio plisetsky #yuri plisetsky #healthy relationships

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jiminrings · 3 years

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they're interactions would prob be always in campus like at the library, class or even in a café or sth cuz i don't think stem!koo is the type to go to parties eXCEPT he's dragged invited to a party and approaches y/n since they share classes and are kinda acquaintances

stem koo isn’t for the party scene and absolutely doesn’t know any better

cold senior!y/n x stem major!koo masterlist :D

jungkook wants to go anywhere but here

literally ANYWHERE

he’d actually enjoy studying on a friday night than to be here, a party, where he doesn’t know anyone besides jimin

JIMIN WHO ALREADY DISAPPEARED AND LEFT HIM?!??]%^{]!

it hasn’t even been a full hour since they arrived???

how the fuck did that guy even manage to talk him into accompanying him into this party :O

oh right

“i think i have a friend who has a friend that makes your lunches. it’s jUST a hunch but-“

jimin didn’t even manage to finish his sentence and jungkook already agreed

jungkook doesn’t care for the party scene at all. he doesn’t.

but that doesn’t mEAN that he doesn’t care for what other people think about him

he cares about your input pLS don’t say it to his face when it’s negative :((

uhhh he doesn’t exactly have party clothes

by party clothes, he doesn’t have what jimin has in his clothes

jeon jungkook does not own a sparkly sheer black long-sleeve shirt :D nor some leather pants :D or even a button-down shirt that in fact, does not have any buttons :D

what kook DOES have is a new red hoodie that he hasn’t worn before

it’s a red hoodie and that’s the equivalent of him dipping his toes in lava!!!

it’s spicy enough as it is

the only other change he’s gonna make is how the fuck he’s gonna tackle his myopia

he traded in his glasses for contacts tonight!!

they’re just clear and he might’ve had to struggle for thirty minutes to try and pop them in,,, inclusive of pep talks,,, but it’s still new!!!

(his glasses case is in his hoodie pocket)

that should be enough

the only thing that jungkook is lacking now is a familiar person

..... a familiar person.... who is in turn a safety blanket..... a comforting figure anongst strangers...... in a completely different environment

god there hAS to be a way that jungkook can find jimin so he could get home with ease, while simultaneously (passive-aggressively) chewing him out for abandoning him

easy!!! just easy breaths!!!!

it’s just like navigating a circuit that you made that you know the schematics of!!

only difference is that you didn’t make this circuit and there are no instructions!!!!!!!!!

<3 he’s doomed <3

jungkook bumps to numerous people and at some point, someone stopped him, nodded, and gave him a cup

what’s he SUPPOSED to with it????

alright think

a couch!!! yeah!!!!

jimin could be there and could be sitting because who doesn’t love sitting? right? why do people in parties not sit on couches exactly

“pick up, please. just pick up...” he keeps muttering under his breath, peering urgently to wherever his eyes could land on

OH MY GOD

IT’S THE BLONDE HAIR!!!!!

that must be jimin

“man, that was not cool! how could you-...”

jungkook immediately claps his hand to blondie’s back, even squeezing the flesh when he realizes that.... oh? why is the fabric not as coarse as what a glittery sheer shirt would be?

.... holy shit

that is definitely not jimin.

?!/!/!!/%]^]^[^^]

it’s his senior!!!!

his senior who’s blonde and looks intimidating and soft at the same time but dEFINITELY looks intimidating rn

d-did he just clap min yoongi’s shoulder

yoongi looks the furthest thing from pleased and it’s his sharp eyes that make jungkook’s impossibly wider

“i-i’m so sorry. i am so, so sorry-...”

his senior only casts a look to the person beside him, deciding to stand and completely walk away from jungkook

he is so.,,., lost

yoongi looks at you from beside your seat beside him and only pinches your thigh, making you knit your brows in irritation

WHAT WAS THAT FOR

did he literally just walk away from you

what was that about ://

you turn your head for what could be yoongi’s old trick, only seeing a face you clearly did not expect to be here

jungkook recognizes you before you could recognize him, chest immediately deflating

“y/n!!!!!”

oh that’s him alright

you sigh slowly, “jungkook.”

the boy wastes no time in eagerly yet shyly sitting beside you, occupying yoongi’s deserted spot

the cushion’s still warm tho

“thank god you’re here. i-i don’t know anyone in this party.”

your eyebrows raise at that, clearly finding no thought to it. “you should leave if you don’t know anyone here, jungkook.”

“b-but you’re here, so i’m good!” jungkook nods, correcting his statement, “i came here with my friend but he’s missing now.”

what???

that’s unsafe!!!!

who is this friend and why do you feel like giving him some stern words >:|

“i mean, i am here but you don’t want to be here.”

right

.... you’re right

jungkook clearly glosses over to what you just said because you are eXACTLY right

yeah sure he found you but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to be in this party

it’s nice he found someone familiar but it doesn’t mean he wants to stay!!!!

you could only chuckle under your breath, drinking from your cup and planning your route to find yoongi throughout

“you should probably go home, jungkook.”

the boy visibly mulls over that option but he looks nervous, his knee bouncing up and down then that you can’t help but notice

“or are you gonna wait for your friend?

did you just give him an even bigger dilemma

jungkook swallows the lump in his throat, a nervous giggle coming out from him even before he could restrain it

“i-i can’t find him anyway. but that’s okay, right? jimin always comes home one way or another.”

OH SO IT’S JIMIN

you’re gonna pulverize him when you drop by yoongi’s chess club again ://

“then go home.”

your affirmation makes jungkook nod resolutely, making his mind up

he stands up rather unsurely, sheepishly nodding to you before he takes two steps away from you

FUCK IT

jungkook turns to you almost nervously, eyes wavering that you only then realize that he isn’t wearing his glasses, seeing his bambi eyes a bit more clearly

“i-i’m very sorry to ask, and if it’s not too much trouble, a-and you don’t have to if you don’t want to but uhm — can you uh, can you walk me home?”

you’re pleasantly surprised from what jungkook’s asking of you, head tilting that he misinterprets and tries to backtrack

“i-it’s just that i feel safer with you. b-but i completely understand if-“

huh

that’s nice

you stand up abruptly, leaving your drink by the table because it might seem a little funky to walk down a street with a blatantly red cup lol

“okay.”

he hears you reply simply, seeing you walk ahead of him with your hands in your pockets

:((

jungkook is so grateful for you

you only share some classes here and there, and he’s only properly interacted with you once, and he doesn’t even have your number — but here you are, walking him home from a party he can’t stand to be in and is too anxious to walk away from alone

at some point, jungkook placed himself beside you so he could tell you where his apartment’s at,,

and also for the reason that he feels safer beside you and not behind you

you’re a warm presence if that makes sense

you’re team captain of your soccer team and you’re yoongi’s right-hand woman (and he’s your right-hand man slash nemesis) and he feels like everyone could count on you if they needed to

you’re not exactly outgoing nor warm nor approachable,,,, but jungkook doesn’t exactly mind

jungkook doesn’t mind because his senior is walking him home and he’s never felt more comforted before.

he starts tearing up at the edges of his eyes and it’s with a faint sniffle that you only turn your eyes at him, narrowing at the sight

you don’t even ask but he explains anyway, pointing in front of him

“nothing. just the wind. a-and i’m wearing contacts!”

you only nod curtly, continuing on walking when jungkook sees you pull out a goddamn bottle of eyedrops from your pocket, offering it to him like it’s no big deal

:(((((

his eyes ARE scratchy

“how did you-“

“i carry it around. yoongi and i have dry eyes.”

you don’t exactly stop when he drops them to his eyes, but you do slow down in the slightest

jungkook finds himself in front of his apartment complex soon enough, almost disappointed that the walk home was quick

you turn without even waiting for a thanks from him, completely surprised when he yells out for you and tries to jog in an attempt to your retreating figure

“t-thank you so much, y/n! it means a lot and i-i probably would be still in that party crying or whatever until i could find jimin. i’m so sorry still and i hope i can make it up to you and-...”

“good night.”

you only flash a small smile, similar to yoongi’s :] before leaving jungkook in front of his complex

he’s still a little perplexed but he doesn’t question it

jungkook’s still holding your bottle of eyedrops in his hand, the only thing reminding him that his senior did walk him home

he’s gonna return this to you

he will

#longest drabble in this series so far!!! :D #stem koo #jungkook imagine #jungkook oneshot #jungkook drabbles #jungkook x reader

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krappykawa · 4 years

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the haikyuu boys & how they convey anger

oikawa argues in a quiet but petty anger. he’ll put up a front around others, acting as if nothing’s wrong, and it’ll work for the most part. but there’s a tension there, and everyone knows it. he acts on passive aggression when he’s arguing with you. maybe a small dig about something pertaining to your argument, or he’ll purposefully wait just a few minutes before entering the school because he knows that you might be waiting for him. he knows it’s petty, but he does it anyway. if he does choose to walk with you, he won’t speak to you. he doesn’t avoid you though. he purposefully stays in your vicinity because he doesn’t want to apologize first, but he wants you to know that he still cares and secretly wants you bring up the argument first. he always did have that damned petty pride.

kageyama argues with silence. after a particularly bad argument, he won’t speak to you for a dubious amount of time. he’ll ask others about you though, like “how are they?” or “are they okay?” or “do you think they’re still mad?”. he doesn’t understand where he stands with you after an argument: has he messed up like he did with his teammates back in junior high? or is this like an argument with hinata where you might still forgive him? he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know how to ask. so he doesn’t speak to you for weeks and hopes that you’ll give him a sign that he hasn’t messed it all up.

kenma argues with distance. if you walk to school together, he’ll walk without you. if you eat lunch together, he’ll stay in a classroom during lunch just so he doesn’t have to see you. if you’re in the same room with him, he’ll pointedly act as if he’s engrossed in one of his electronics, and will make sure that you don’t know when he’s sneaking glances. he loses every game though, because his eyes keep looking up to check on you to try and see how your body language is. he hopes that maybe he’ll be able to tell from your body language if you’re still mad. after a while he’ll stop avoiding you, and will fall back into regular routines with you as if nothing even happened. the first time he walks with you after an argument, he mumbles “i’m sorry” so quietly that you think that you might’ve imagined hearing it.

akaashi argues in subtle ways. he’s dealt with bokuto for such a long time that it takes him quite a bit to become angry at anything. he doesn’t show it when he’s mad, and if he does, it’s so subtle that you might not even notice. when he does show it, it’ll be in the form of a small clench in his jaw, or just a hint of anger in his eyes. he keeps his anger mostly to himself and works through it himself, so sometimes that anger will go away without you ever having to talk to him. this kind of anger can be dangerous though, because it creates rifts and lack of communication. if this goes on for too long, you might not even notice that your relationship is broken until he out of the blue tells you that it’s over.

atsumu argues with his whole heart. if he’s angry, you’ll know it. this causes lots of arguments, yelling matches, and days where you ignore each other despite living under the same roof. he pushes you to certain limits with these fights, forcing you to tread on thin patience almost all of the time. he doesn’t quite understand that all of these arguments can push you away, because you’re one of the first people to accept him while knowing of his shitty attitude and harsh words. so he doesn’t tread lightly when arguing, because he believes that you’ll always come back. he always apologizes first after an argument though (after he’s spent some time alone to clear his head), because while he does believe that you will always forgive him for his angry outbursts, there’s a part of him that knows that you might not.

osamu argues with cutting words. he’s always been blunt and not entirely afraid to be honest with you. so he argues with you using quiet words that can cut deep. sometimes he doesn’t notice that the words have hurt you until you start crying, and he has to pause because he isn’t quite sure what he could’ve said to make you cry. his unapologetic honesty is something that you had gotten used to even before you got into a relationship with him, so he doesn’t know why it’s starting to hurt you now. he’ll sit with you when you cry, but he won’t apologize. instead he’ll ask “what did i do wrong?” because he knows that his words hurt now, and he doesn’t want to make the mistake of hurting you again.

iwaizumi argues by drowning in his own anger. much like akaashi, he bottles up his anger and tries to sort through it on his own because he doesn’t want to show his vulnerability to you. but in contrast to akaashi, his anger is easier to read. he’ll keep pretenses around you, but he’ll ignore you when you sit next to him or sometimes go as far as making sure to sit as far away from you as possible. he doesn’t know how to convey his anger to you, so he sits quietly and brews in it, growing more frustrated with himself and with you. if you try to ask him about it, he’ll deny it, because he doesn’t know where to start. his kind of anger starts with small, minor arguments until the bottle is too full, and you end up with an argument that has you wondering if this might still be worth it.

kuroo argues by making it feel like he’s not even angry at all. he’ll still walk with you, and talk to you as if nothing’s wrong, but it’s there. that anger. he does this because he doesn’t think arguments are worth it, and he’d much rather just wait for the anger to pass rather than start something with you that could create a riff. even in full-blown arguments, he still makes it seem like he isn’t angry. instead of arguing with you, he’ll ask you questions that have been bugging him, trying to keep calm and under control. even when he’s angry, he knows that his love for you is above any of that anger, and that much is clear to you.

tsukishima argues with a double-edged anger. he knows that he’s angry with you, but he will find a way to blame that anger on something wrong with him. if you’ve done something to make him angry, he’ll believe that he’s only angry because of something within him that he needs to sort out privately. but he’s also rational, so sometimes he’ll realize that it isn’t his fault, and direct that anger to you in little ways that hurt more than any kind of yelling he could do. during these times, he’s a little more blunt with you, is much more withdrawn, and his words will lose that soft edge that he’s developed around you. he’ll act so nonchalantly that you might start to forget that you’re in a relationship in the first place, because he’s beginning to put up walls again. with every argument or bubbling anger with you, he builds and he builds until not even you might be able to knock them down.

taglist: @ramseysass

i might do a part 2 to this lemme know which characters to do :)

EDIT: part 2 is here!

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regrettablewritings · 4 years

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Hopefully I got here in time! If I did, could I please request some general headcanons from the headcanon thing for Clark kent please?

Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?: You both did, in a way. Much like with his water-breathing Atlantean colleague, the two of you respectively just seemed to seep into the position of dating. Unlike Arthur and his partner, however, you and Clark were much more aware of the path you were taking. It was more or less just quietly agreed that this was what you both wanted. After all, there are only so many dates, so many texts, so many late-night phone calls (due to both of Clark’s schedules), so many homemade dinners, so many coy smiles, so many walks to the park, and so many initial brushings of the hand-turned actual hand-holding that two people could do until it becomes obvious that there’s a desire for a more openly romantic relationship. However, because you and Clark are very private people, it still made either one of you blush whenever one referred to the other as their significant other. But other than that? The transfer from acquaintances to friends to romantic partners went surprisingly smoothly, given that neither of you is one to make a fuss.

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?: If you consider the apology dinner you treated him to, then yes, you did have a first date. Granted, first date or not, it was a rather awkward one, given that you were still vibrating with embarrassment and guilt for nearly getting him killed. You were more than thankful with Clark’s patience and gentle nudging towards other, better conversation topics besides how sorry you were for your conspiring. Otherwise, it’s hard to plant the title of First Official Date on anything the two of you have done together because of the near seamless manner with which you both fell into the relationship. The closest you could get to an anniversary was just the day you called him your boyfriend out loud and even before that, it was mainly just an unspoken understanding. Not that either of you particularly mind it: No amount of trips to the park for ice cream or visiting the local sculpture garden could ever replace the uniqueness of dinner in a restaurant courteously rented out by one of the richest men in the world. All because he tried to, at one point, kill one member of the party while the other member helped him do so.

What was their first kiss like?: You like to joke that you had two first kisses: You had a first kiss with Clark, and you had a first kiss with Superman. And both were about as anyone would expect from either figure, if they didn’t know that they were one and the same. While the shyness of his civilian form was more so an act Clark put on, he’s still not necessarily the coolest cucumber in the barrel. More like a cucumber whose consistent gentlemanly behavior means that taking the initiative to kiss a gal will probably not go too smoothly. Of course, he meant for it to play out as they do in the movies: It’s during an impromptu movie night at your apartment. Originally, he had just been invited over for dinner but at one point the conversation topic turned to movies and he mentioned not seeing one of your absolute favorites. He didn’t mind you gently tugging him over to the couch to watch it; how could he mind spending more time with you? And the moment was perfect: You were relaxed, leaning against him, the tone being set on the screen was mellowed and quiet . . . Even in his usual hesitancy for such an occasion, Clark knew that the time was right . . . Unfortunately, his glasses didn’t get the memo, judging by the way they clashed with your forehead. But technically, the kiss made its landing, however sloppily. You still found it cute, giggling as you gingerly removed the eyepiece to try for a much smoother, more expected kiss. You spent the entire rest of the evening feeling as though you could speak bubbles and butterflies into the air, feeling like a schoolgirl all over again. Maybe he’d learned better by the time the “Super Kiss” happened? Maybe just being Superman instilled him with a sense of confidence? Whatever the case, it was certainly a 180 -- down to the fact that you were literally walking on air. You thought he was joking when he offered to take you out flying one evening. But as you found yourself clinging desperately as you rose high above the ground, you realized you were dating a complete mad man. The entire while, you were zig-zagging between spewing curses and keeping your mouth closed to keep bugs from flying in. Hell, in your frantic state, part of you debated on whether or not you wanted to stay with him for pulling this type of crap. As far as you knew, Clark wasn’t telepathic. But then again, maybe he was: His abilities seemed to be infinite and increasing in numbers by the day, and maybe that might’ve explained why, after flying to the bay, he came to a stop. Just long enough for you to register everything, but differently: The breeze was gentle, and the air carried that aquatic quality that all freely-running water does. In spite of your fear, you couldn’t help but feel compelled to crack your eyes open just for a bit. Just to see what it looked like . . . You did not regret it: Who knew that hovering above the bay could allow you to witness such a gorgeous sunset? Clark, apparently, as he wasn’t as focused on it as he was your reaction to it. The obvious amazement in your expression told him all he needed to know: That you were impressed, that you forgave him, and that you were in a much better mood with this once-in-a-lifetime scenery before you. In short, he would’ve been a fool not to take advantage of the mood. Even if you weren’t floating high above the water, the way the romanticism of it all zapped through you could’ve made you shoot to the sky all on its own.

Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?: He was the first non-human you’ve ever dated, so that’s got to count for something.

What’s their height difference? Age difference?: Clark stands at the handsome height of 6′1″, so apply that as necessary.

What’s their relationship with each other’s families?: It should go without saying that Martha adores you. She admittedly might’ve been unenthused after learning about your part in the plot to kill Superman, but you had long since made up for it. (Not even the distance between Metropolis and Kansas could stop you from delivering an apology basket of fruits and candies to her. In person.) You’re smart, you’ve proven yourself to be loyal and loving, you won’t endanger her son again, and you own up to your mistakes; she’s proud to have you dating Clark. Meanwhile, your family hasn’t had the chance to meet Clark in person due to “your job keeping you in the city constantly”. However, the video calls have been going well enough for you to confirm that your family adores Clark. And how could they not: A handsome, strapping young man who treats you well? They’d take twelve if they could! Sure, he’s a little more demure than the usual guys you introduced them to, but maybe that’s a good thing: They’d never seen you this happy with past boyfriends. If you two were to even so much as go on a break, you would probably be hounded about how you didn’t lock him down! The only downside is that you’re in a constant state of anxiety that they might notice that your delightful boyfriend bears an uncanny resemblance to the red-caped alien who’s always zooming around, trying to save people.To your knowledge, they haven’t caught on yet (thank god for dodgy Wifi and pixelated video calls). But just to assure they don’t, Clark makes sure to come off especially shy, mussy up his hair just a bit more, and unfix his posture.

Who takes the lead in social situations?: It’s like a card trick, because many would assume it’s you 25/8, given how shy Clark comes across. But the reality is that Clark is more than capable of taking the lead in many situations. Sure, he’s tall but to most people, that just makes him a tall pushover: He’s still sheepish and clumsy and constantly slouching. Or is he? For one, those baggy clothes hide those muscles of his, which keeps many aggressors hassling you from knowing that he can possess a pretty firm and potentially devastating handshake. And for another, his ability to appear unassuming means that nobody knows for sure if he’s being passive aggressive or not, but many would rather not take the chance. Even in more positive situations, though, Clark will sometimes let his public confidence from the Superman persona seep through. Just to assure nobody gives you grief over anything. But for the most part, so long as neither of you can sense any injustices or anything directed at you specifically, it’s understood that you’re more than capable of handling things. Though don’t be afraid to ask him for help if you need any: Clark is more than happy to help!

Who gets jealous easier?: Neither. Clark isn’t the jealous type. And although you know Clark is a catch, nobody else necessarily seems to, much to your constant confusion. He’s sweet, he’s handsome if nerdy, he’s smart, he’s caring -- In a bizarre twist, you wished more people saw him as you do! He’s definitely a partner to get jealous feelings over. Some days, you just want to scream from the rooftops what an absolute babe Clark Joseph Kent is but at the same time, that might mean more people discovering his alias. And besides: You don’t have the super powers necessary to fight everyone off of your boyfriend. So for now, he’s your sweet secret. Frustratingly perfect as that is.

Thank you for your patience!

#clark kent x reader #superman x reader #superman imagine #superman imagines #clark kent imagines #clark kent imagine #dceu x reader #dceu imagines #dceu imagine #regrettablewritings #character ship meme #character ship headcanons

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

Text

You’re The One I Want To Go Through Time With

Day one of HWOL is finally here!! So excited to share all I’ve written! For today I chose the prompt Neighbors AU!!! You can read this on ao3 also as part of the collection as well!! Hope y’all like it!!

Word Count: 11,952

Rated: G

It finally happens when he’s 15 years old. It’s not like he hasn’t seen it coming, but Steve gets kicked out.

In the very beginning of a particularly brutal Hawkins summer, he had decided to invite Tommy over to smoke weed in the pool house. He thought nothing of it, but the neighbors complained about the smell, and, coupled with every other act of his deemed irresponsible, immature, disgraceful, by his stuck-up parents, a couple of blunts was apparently the last straw.

They tell him the Harringtons had a reputation, an air of elegance and respect they had to upkeep, so they couldn’t just let him bring drugs onto their property. He thought it was ridiculous, considering that they were allowed as much wine aging in the cellar and expensive whiskey propped up on a hutch as they wanted, but when he’d brought it up he’d gotten nothing but a stern look.

They’d been through this a thousand times over, how worthless and terrible a son he could be, grounding him for bringing too many girls home, taking his car away when he failed a class, so he knew to expect a punishment.

This is obviously the next step, the throwing him out on the street thing, for years he could feel the neglect and tension starting to build up and boil over. Sometimes, they’d even hang threats of it over his head, so now that was told he had to be out of the mansion by the end of next week or there would be consequences, it couldn’t be too much of a shocker.

Though at some point, he’s got to wonder if they ever really thought as far ahead as consequences, or if they just knew they trained their boy well enough that it never got that far. If only he had more of a spine.

Now, as unsurprising as the scenario may be, Steve was still absolutely in no way, by any means ready to be thrown out on the streets before he even had his driver’s license.

In the case of emergency, like the time Stephen Sr. got just a little too rough and popped his wrist out of place, or when they’d left him alone for a month at age 9 and he went three days without food because he didn’t know how to turn the stove on, he had his aunt, the thankfully much more compassionate counterpart to his mother, who lived over in California.

The minute they’re gone, having passive aggressively hurried off somewhere, probably the country club or something, to complain about how disappointing their son was with their rich friends, Steve grabs a suitcase from the closet and gives his Aunt Margaret a call.

Before he knows it she’s got him a flight booked, a written agreement from her sister that proved taking him in was legal, and a set of luggage. Three days later, he was flying first class towards the rest of his life.

~~~~~~~

Touching down in San Francisco has got to be the most surreal thing he’s ever done.

He’d never even left the Midwest before, his farthest ventures being into the three states surrounding his home state, so to be charted off to the west coast? It’s an experience alright.

Aunt Margaret is there waiting for him, her jet black permed hair a few inches above the rest, her brown eyes sparkling with the kindest smile he’s ever seen as she runs up to hug him.

She takes all of his bags, swatting his hands away when he tries to carry even one, and makes him sit in the car while she shoves it all into the trunk.

He wasn’t used to not being the help, since that’s all his parents ever really saw him as anyways, only valuable as their son if they got something out of the time they spent with him. It’s got him feeling weird the whole drive back to the Margos apartment, like he’s in some alternate reality where people are nice to him for a change.

She lives in one of those shared places, a duplex where the house is divided into two halves for two different renters, the very kind his mother would’ve turned her nose up at despite having been raised in one herself. Margaret told him there was a mother and son who lived in the other half, but they’re quiet enough, and polite.

Just pulling up outside of the house, Steve already knows it’s everything he’s ever wanted.

The house itself, painted a pale shade of peeling yellow and missing the majority of the shingles off of the roof, is actually a reasonable size, a direct contrast to the mansion he grew up in, fit for a dozen but occupied by one most days.

Brutal summer heat has dried up the lawn and the garden so they aren’t perfectly tailored, not trimmed by underpaid staff or watered by automatic sprinklers. All across it there’s a scattering of ornaments, like colorful pinwheels in the front garden, and plastic flamingos standing guard by the mailbox.

There’s even a rickety old fence, all mossy and broken up to mark the edges of their property, so different from the white vinyl fence in his backyard at his parents house.

It would seem too that the garage was only big enough for one car, not three like he was used to, and that the makeshift gravel driveway leading up to it was at max capacity with only his aunts Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais, and a dinged up old Karmann Ghia the same color as the house parked in it.

Basically, there were none of the telltale signs that a neglected rich boy lived there, and from that alone he already knew he belonged here.

His aunt hurries him into their section of the house, theirs is the right side, so he can get to resting off the jet lag before he starts unpacking, but he’s far too distracted taking everything in to worry about being a little drowsy.

The rooms are small and the ceilings are low. Where there would’ve been beige and white and other sophisticated tones, there was a rainbow of colors in Margos apartment, from the curtains to the carpet, the Afghan on the back of the couch to the little trinkets in the entertainment center and windowsills.

He notices that, to accommodate for the heavy summer heat, there was a fan spinning in the corner, and all the windows were left wide open. His parents had the windows painted shut back home.

It might’ve been overwhelming, being thrown into a place like this so suddenly, but in his heart he knows this was what he was made for: a cozy life with someone who treated him with the bare minimum of respect.

~~~~~~~

Eventually Steve does fall asleep, the switch from Eastern Standard to Pacific time just being too great for his body. He doesn’t really mean to, he thought he’d just lay down for a minute while he was putting his clothes away in his new dresser, but he ends up sleeping until it’s almost dark out.

He goes looking for Margo when he realizes the house is empty, an irrational pit of dread growing in his chest at the familiarity of being alone, and finds her out back.

The yard also seems to be shared with the other house, a wispy line of barely showing through grass separating the two where a divider had once been, but had since been ripped up.

His aunt is with another woman, a blonde lady who he assumed was from the next door apartment, were sitting in mismatched lawn chairs, cigarettes glowing as the sun got lower and lower in the sky.

Margaret beckons him over once she notices him, and shows him off to the woman. It’s not at all like his mother would’ve done it, none of the flaunting him to make a good impression. This is more like her wanting to introduce him because she genuinely cares.

In a way, it almost makes Steve more uneasy. He could handle all the fake stuff with only the slightest hint of discomfort at being gawked at, because most of the time he’d never have to see those people again, but this was astronomically different.

“Maria, this is my nephew Steve.” Deep blue eyes seem to take him in, accompanied by a polite smile that makes his stomach drop for no good reason.

He panics, shifts into the role of the perfect little socialite he’d been working on his whole life. Without thinking, he extends his hand for her to and produces the generic response his mother’d trained into him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Ms..”

She takes his hand, but looks a little surprised about doing it. “Hargrove. But we don’t have to do formalities.”

“Right.” It feels awkward to Steve, but judging from the laid back attitude of the women, it’s not a universal sentiment. That only makes it more embarrassing, to be the only one bothered by it.

His aunt leans back in her chair, tapping the ash of the end of her cigarette and tells him, “Go ahead and grab a chair Stevie.”

He straightens his back out and scans the yard, expecting a chair to already be propped open somewhere. The confusion must be apparent on his face when he finds nothing but grass and more grass, because his aunt specifies, “By the shed, kiddo.”

His parents always told him they weren’t allowed to have lawn furniture except the pool chairs cemented to the ground, because they said it didn’t fit the lifestyle they tried to lead. Even the concept of a shed would’ve been insulting to their tastes.

He's done enough growing up to know now that they were just afraid to look too much like they were people who lived in rural Indiana instead of in true big city luxury. They couldn’t risk seeming too much like they weren’t in the upper middle, it would be a disgrace.

The contrast between that and just sitting out there and not having his guard up is so, grounding. Not having anything at all to do but just, sit and appreciate instead of performing and worrying, it’s a lot to take in at once.

He was so nervous the whole way up, even though it was his aunt and he already knew she was nice, that they wouldn’t get along, since that’s the way things always were with his own mum, and lord knows he hardly ever even spoke to his father.

But it’s really not tense at all, actually, it’s sort of the opposite. For once in his life he feels free of expectations, and takes the moment to just exist. Ruthie and Stephen Sr. had long ago made sure that was a concept he could barely understand.

It’s not too long after that that the screen door to Maria’s side of the house swings open, scaring Steve so bad he almost tips his chair over as he startles.

There’s a boy who he’s guessing is about his age leaning out the door, but from the distance he’s at and with how dark it’s getting, Steve doesn’t see much else about him. “M back momma.”

“Okay baby.” The screen door clicks shut again in the next moment, and Maria offers Steve an apologetic smile “You’ve gotta excuse my Billy. He’s not too good with other kids.”

“No, it’s alright.” He assures her, like a polite social butterfly should.

Maria goes in a little while after that, and Margaret and Steve follow suit, since the sun’s almost all the way down.

But Steve’s curious now. He wants to know more about the boy, Billy, he thinks was what Maria called him. It’s only right to wonder, being that they’re neighbors now and all.

It gets brought up later that night, when they’re watching TV on the couch, a thrifted, feather stuffed thing he thought was simultaneously the most hideous and most comfortable thing he’d ever sat on.

“I didn’t know you had neighbors.” He’d been trying to work himself up to talking about it, sitting in the corner of the couch in a little ball and picking at his nails as he worked up his courage.

It was funny, being so nervous over casual conversation, but he guesses he could blame his parents for that one.

His own mum wouldn’t have even paid him any mind, at most pretending to listen while her eyes stayed trained to the television or magazine or coworker in front of her and hummed a non committal response, but Margo turns her whole body on the couch to face him while she answers him, with a complete sentence even. “Oh, people used to come and go all the time over there.”

“How long have they been here? Maria and her son?”

She thinks for a moment, a little surprised at her nephew's interest in the topic of their neighbors. “I don’t know, probably about a year or so now.”

“What’re they like?” He comes across as maybe a little too eager, and his aunt notices.

“What’s got you so curious?” There’s a teasing bit of reprimanding in her tone, just enough to suggest that she knows he’s being a nib-nose, but doesn’t mind it.

And he feels himself flush, because he is being nosy. To try to save face just a little, he comes up with an excuse that isn’t quite a lie. “Nothin’, just knew all my neighbors back in Hawkins, I guess.”

But she wasn’t upset with him, it wasn’t her intention to get him to shut up, like it would’ve been had he heard the same thing from one Ruthie Harrington, so she answers that question too. “I don’t know, they’re nice, sort of reserved, but I’ve never had any problems with them.”

~~~~~~

The two boys are properly introduced for the first time the next morning, when Steve goes out to fetch the mail for Margret. It feels like the least he can do for bumming off of his aunt.

Stepping out on the porch just shy of 8 in the morning and not seeing dewey grass, or the early sunshine muted behind rolling fog and dreary clouds is something he’s going to have to get used to.

Summers in Hawkins were always muggy, full of thunderstorms and unpredictably dreary days. San Francisco is so bright, so different, and such a relief.

While Steve basks in it, the already warm breeze and the sun shining bright, the neighbors’ door opens up and Billy comes out to do the same, standing on his tip-toes to reach up into the mailbox beside the door, holding a traveler's mug of coffee in the opposite hand.

When he turns around to go back inside, Steve, staying true to wanting to get to know the other boy better, has taken a few steps closer, and has extended a hand for Billy to shake, the same sort of introduction panic he’d felt last night.

But, Billy, seeing that his hands are a bit preoccupied by a stack of bills and a cup of coffee, just offers a sheepish smile.

Steve settles for a formal introduction without a handshake, though it’s still too stiff an interaction to really get to know him beyond the awkward new rich kid in town. “Hi. My name is Steve Harrington. I’m uh, I'm your new neighbor.”

“Pleasure to meet you Steve Harrington. M’Billy” They stand there, neither of them making any move to do anything but just look at one another. Billy clears his throat and shakes the coffee cup towards Steve, sensing that maybe this was the place for hospitality. “You want some? My momma always makes too much.”

“No thanks. I’m uh, allergic to coffee beans.”

“Huh.” He seems amused by that, scrunches his nose up like he doesn’t believe it, and Steve wants to curl up and disappear. “I’ll see you later then, Steve Harrington.”

He watches the other boy turn back to leave after that, and still sort of just stands there before his brain comes back on and he realizes he should say something in return. “Right, uh, bye.”

It’s just a moment's passing, but Steve can’t get the interaction out of his head.

He chalks it up to being nervous that his new neighbors won’t like him, the fear that Aunt Margo will send him back to his parents if he can’t get along here, and that makes logical sense, except, what he’s caught up on is Billy’s crooked smile, and his blond curls that lay just past his ears, messy from just waking up and bleached from the sun, and the spatter of dark freckles across his nose.

First full day in California and he has a crush on the neighbor kid. He can’t believe himself.

There isn’t very much time to mull that fact over though, because, over breakfast, what his aunt calls her ‘special occasion breakfast’ of cinnamon rolls with ice cream, she tells him she’s going to do some errands today.

And that’s alright, he tells her he’ll be fine all by himself, and he is, for the first few hours, but the more time she’s gone, the worse and worse he starts to feel. It’s that worry again, that deep rooted fear that he’ll be left alone forever.

Experience has taught him to try to calm himself down, to catch his breath and try to focus on the fact that he knows he’s being irrational, but those techniques don’t cut it, as they often don’t, and he’s sending himself further into a panic attack trying to think too hard about it

Sitting inside, he gets stir crazy, feels suffocated by everything that had before been inviting to him, so he goes for some fresh air out front. Watching the road for so long, just waiting for the Oldsmobile to pull up, he starts to feel antsy again, so he goes out back where it’s quiet instead.

There’s a glider on the porch back there, an old rusty thing that squeaked every time Steve rocked it forward or back, but the calming motion of it is probably the only thing keeping him from spiraling too far.

He doesn’t really know what time it is anymore, only that he’s hungry, and that the sun’s going down, and that he’s been sort of zoned out back there for a long while. He feels hot and cold at the same time, and he’s lost in his head.

The sound of a screen door gently tapping against the side of the house brings his eyes up from the spot on the ground he’d been staring at with tears in his eyes, but it isn’t his aunt Margaret coming home, it’s just Billy.

With his hands stuffed in his pockets, leaning against the wall between the back doors, he says real quiet like, “Momma told me to ask if you wanted some of the dinner she made.”

He shrugs. “I’m alright.”

“I figured.” Billy looks at the floor while he tries to figure out how he wants to approach this. For a long moment, neither of them say a word, no sound between them but distant field crickets, until Billy asks, his voice quiet enough it barely registers in Steve’s mind. “You okay?”

If he’s being entirely honest, Steve doesn’t really know if he’s okay. He trusted his aunt enough to move all the way across the country with her, and yet he can’t manage enough trust to believe her when she said she’d come home from some errands? Doesn’t sound too okay to him.

But he’s not in Hawkins, he’s away from the people he knows for sure wouldn’t be coming back for him unless it was to pull something like they had and treat him like garbage. So in a way, he guesses he’s better than ever.

Unable to think of any words that might convey what he’s thinking, Steve just shrugs again, but Billy seems to get it. He sits down next to Steve on the glider and plants his feet so it won’t move, and so Steve’s attention will be on him.

Knowing he’s got Steve’s focus, since he looks over at him with glossy eyes, Billy tries to reassure him, “Your aunt’s a good lady. She wouldn’t leave you.”

“Who said I thought she would?” It sounds pathetic, wet and stuffy with the remnants of tears he hadn’t known were falling, but there’s a vulnerability he couldn’t hide behind even the toughest of masks that reveals he isn’t being honest.

“The way you watched for her car said enough.” It makes Steve feel exposed, having a total stranger see right through him, but Billy explains himself. “When my momma went out looking for this place, I was sure I’d never see her again.”

“Why did you guys move here?” If he was going to psychoanalyze Steve, he felt it was only fair to ask Billy a pressing question back.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me.” He deflects it back onto Steve in a way that might’ve seemed cocky, but it's obvious he’s just trying to avoid the question.

Steve won’t let him win this one though, maybe just to save his own ego, or pretend like he hadn’t been caught crying by someone he met that morning, or maybe it was just because he had asked first, but he wants Billy to answer, so he tells him, with the slightest hint of a bashful smile playing at his lips, “You first.”

“Stubborn.” He cracks a smile back though, and goes ahead and goes first at the other boys insistence. “My dad’s a real nasty s.o.b. Would get drunk and mean for no good reason, so momma took me and we high-tailed it before he did anything too drastic.”

He didn’t know what he was expecting, why he even felt like it was any of his business, and he doesn’t know what he should say to that.

For lack of a better response, he gives his own little life story summary. “My parents were rich. They didn’t want me, so they have the time of day for me. No matter what I did they punished me for it, grounded me, hit me, sent me to Christian school, until they just got sick of me, I guess.”

“That sounds pretty shitty.” Billy offered.

“Yeah, yours too.”

After a while, Billy, sounding for a moment like he’s a lot wiser than any 14 year old has the right to be, says “What matters is we’re here now.”

Steve feels so touched hearing that. It was so simple a thing for the other boy to say, but coming from Billy after he’d just shared what he did, it means a lot more than just basic condolences.

Hardly anybody had ever been that genuine in anything they said to him. Steve can hardly force a response out of his shocked mouth. As he looks over at Billy’s face, still turned up towards the sky, he sees all that meaning there illuminated by the stars, and he's able to mutter a breathless, “Yeah.” in response.

They both jump when the door flies open, and aunt Margo comes running over to Steve. Frantically she explains that she’d been trying to make sure everything was legal, only to find that some of Steve’s papers were missing, and they had to try to track them all down and get some of them faxed, and it ended up taking way longer than expected.

It feels nice to be understood. Just a few years ago his parents left for what was supposed to be a three day trip to Indianapolis, only they didn’t come back for what was almost two months. Once they were home they didn’t even mention it, just continued going about their business as usual until it was time to leave again. His aunt taking the effort to explain herself was already a vast improvement from that.

He lets her pull him into a big hug, accepts her apology as the air is squeezed out of his lungs, and when he pulls away from her, Billy’s gone.

~~~~~~~

Finish reading on ao3! You can find this posted under the same title by ej_writer or as part of the hwol collection over there! Sorry tumblrs word limits deemed this too long!

#harringrove week of love #billy x steve #harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove #story by ej!#this is both a neighbors au and a billy lives with his mother au!#and there's no upside down!#you can also maybe probably read this as autistic billy! it wasnt intentional but that happens sometimes #if its a fluffy fic chances are 90% of the time someones going to end up neurodivergent bc my autstic brain can’t help it #disclaimer I think tumble deleted a paragraph or two from this so if it doesn’t make sense just go ahead and find it on ao3 lol #can y'all tell I've never left the midwest and was sorta just guessing what california is like #the closest experience I had to what I wanted the vibes to be like was growing up on my mawmaws property in the country #and thats deffo not even a little bit the same but hey. work with what ya got!#out of all of the prompts I think this'n turned out to be one of my favorites to write #its kind of all over the place but that's okay lol #lord knows I never intended it to be this long either #this is barely edited because i stayed up literally all night to finish this because I procrastinated it too hard haha

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ruby-whistler · 3 years

Note

(quicksandblock) hi! I just left you a giant wall-of-text response on your Dream post, and though I think it came across well enough, I just want to state my lack of hostile intent over here as well lol. I know stuff like this that people feel strongly about can get very tense so I just wanted to make doubly certain you know I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything. it kind of sucks that I feel like I need to clarify that but that's fandom culture for you sometimes :P

also, I would love to talk to you about Dream characterization. I think I disagree with you on a lot of different points and I love his character, so I'm very interested in understanding your perspective!

hey, hello! found a c!dream enthusiast/enjoyer, that’s cool, hi! :]

[copied part i put in front of each reply, hence different capitalization]

Alright, so first as a quick disclaimer, I’m going to put a summary of the original post’s points, just to ensure that we’re on the same page;

The post does say:

- don’t dehumanize c!Dream because it continuously hurts people who relate to and/or sympathize with him, also dehumanization in general is an inherently wrong mindset

- don’t attack people who sympathize with him because he’s a victim of abuse besides other things

The post never says:

- you cannot hate c!Dream and not sympathizing with him is wrong

- the things c!Dream has done are to any degree excused

- don’t dehumanize c!Dream because he’s a good person

- people who dehumanize c!Dream are real life abuse apologists

If you read the post and didn’t get these points from it, i advise you to reread it as I made pretty much all of these abundantly clear.

[end of disclaimer]

i never said anyone could infringe on his human rights! i… literally never said that! i said “they ignore” when characters do it, but that was a run-on sentence, i get how that might’ve been easily misunderstood. but yes, he’s a fictional character, i’d never said people could actually hurt him or anything in that sense.

the thing is, i still find them saying they enjoy it… wrong? the people yelling in tommy’s chat for c!dream to hurt him more were freaking victim blaming pricks, and if what they did was the widespread fandom opinion it would be hurting actual people with trauma. i ask people to look at the c!dream situation with the same severity, because it’s actually happening and it’s highly disturbing, not just from principle, but because of what it leads to within the community.

sorry for comparing his situation to c!tommy, but narratively i believe the prison arc is a deliberate parallel to exile, and comparing his situation to someone they’ve not dehumanized seems to be the only way to knock sense into some people.

i am happy you don’t seem to be one of the people who dehumanize him. you’re not the target audience of this post - neither are abuse victims who project onto him. i know people who c!tommy reminds of their abuser (because of personality traits), or even c!quackity, that’s fine. they’re totally free to hate their respective character, of course, without being,, actually right about them. that being said, majority of this fandom is dehumanizing c!dream and being mad at people sympathizing with him “on behalf of the abuse victims”, not actual victims themselves, and by doing this they are unknowingly hurting other people rather than helping anything, and spreading misinformation as well as making a lot of fans in general uncomfortable. i believe this is something that needs to change in the community.

hating him is fine, but group-based dehumanization in my mind is not. if you go on twitter and search “c!dream” and see 100 people saying they wish the abuse victim you project onto is hurt more (this is not a twitter thing, c!dream tag is the same thing, a majority of the crit is untagged but it,, doesn’t really matter because even tagged hate riles up more people) that freaking sucks and is something that the community needs to work on, not shoved under the rug and pretend it wasn’t there because some people tag it.

“the abuse victims who are hurt by people saying they should be sympathetic towards Dream are in fact just as hurt as the abuse victims who relate to Dream and are hurt by people saying his evil.”

this is not wrong. it’s right actually, but i’m not talking about this fandom calling him evil/unable to be sympathized with/irredeemable. i mean, that’s hurtful dehumanization as well, but this community doesn’t “say he’s evil” it “says he deserves to keep being horribly abused and/or die”.

and… i wasn’t talking about/saying abuse victims should sympathize with him either? i’ve said like five times that people can hate him as much as they want, but dehumanization is another thing. it’s the majority of this community (this post wasn’t targeting abuse victims in the slightest) taking away his positive human qualities, hence believing he doesn’t deserve human rights, and turning him into some sort of punching bag or personification of evil, which i find deeply disturbing since he’s being related to by abuse victims, and also blatantly incorrect to the character.

so, you’d be right, if the situation was what you described. it… really isn’t. the dream smp fanbase isn’t populated by abuse victims in any corner. it’s two small groups, one of them hurt (undeservingly) by a few and the other one hurt (no more or less undeservingly) by a majority of the fandom without anyone batting an eye.

and this post isn’t even about abuse victims in the first place; it’s about dehumanization. while its impact plays a big role in why i wrote this, things like these being widespread in the fandom makes so many people uncomfortable or pressured not to sympathize with a recently made sympathetic character that they might (but could not) relate to. relating to him myself, i might not have a say in this, but my compassion in general made me switch over to the c!dream sympathetic people, not anyone in the community or projection.

the results i relayed here weren’t the only results of the survery. people mentioned pandora’s vault as their reasons for being dream apologists,, over and over and over again. a lot of them mentioned the fandom response specifically.

it’s making the fandom not only unsafe to a small group of traumatized people, but also fans in general, who are equally as important to feel comfortable. hell, the reason dream apologists are such a tight-knit community that accepts little to no outside feedback is because of the hatred that is endlessly nurtured outside, that makes people feel anxious or not safe just for sympathizing with a victim of abuse.

i myself find this a problem that people should attempt to change beyond using crit tags more. feel free to not agree with that, but a lot of affected people do.

i agree the disc finale was actually cathartic! well, that’s a lie, i used to hate c!dream’s guts before that but that was the very instance where i saw a person behind the mask and went “oh, this is a whole mess isn’t it”, but it was,, cathartic to a lot of other people that didn’t use to have intense empathy to inanimate objects as children djskdjsk (i was a weird kid and still am, don’t mind that)

do you know what is cathartic? when a dog terribly bites a child, gets kicked away and gets put in a cage. do you know what isn’t cathartic? …that dog getting repeatedly beaten, starved and abused while trapped in said cage. even in fiction, and i say that as someone who was terribly bitten by a dog.

i don’t mind fictional characters suffering - frick, angst is my jam, i’ll write a character dying over and over again and have fun, but people justify that or make fun of people who don’t by saying openly that they enjoy it,, because he’s done bad things.

here comes the double standard. the exile arc wasn’t cathartic just because tommy burnt down a house, because hell, that wasn’t fair retribution. same goes for dream.

there is a difference between enjoying dark media (something i do frequently and is something i like doing) and open dehumanization and often normalized harassment of people who don’t do the same or condemn that. that is something that in my mind shouldn’t be a mainstream thing in the community.

to be fair, people saying an abuse victim no longer being hurt is “bad writing” or “insensitive” as i’ve seen people say would probably piss me off, but i’m,, not going to harass them. maybe a passive-aggressive vague-post if enough big accounts do it, but i think that’s justified. feel free to disagree - i still respect abuse victims who wouldn’t like that, but people who just don’t want the writers to humanize a character they’ve dehumanized will probably grind my gears.

this community,, isn’t working like this. i wrote this because people are repeatedly being hurt by the community or feel bad in it because of widespread opinions and dehumanization of a character that is as of late written to be sympathetic to the audience. that’s not a disagreement, the people who are actually sympathetic are a minority in the fandom, which would be fine with me, if they weren’t constantly invalidated, triggered and harassed as a direct result of the dehumanization discussed in this post.

besides the fact that the principle of dehumanization applied to c!dream is wrong - and if people find themselves doing that, it’s good for them to find a way to realize that, such as this post, because projection =/= dehumanization, and this post is targeting one, not the other - this is why i wrote this post. i still believe my points are valid and important for this fandom to consider.

you know, we could talk about the characterization right now - but after this i’m going onto a two month long hiatus for the sole purpose of studying the character. i’m not joking, this is what i’m dedicating my summer to. since i’m also closing my asks because of this, i can write this down and @ you when i’m done? :D i’d love to talk about him but i’m going to have so much more evidence after this, so maybe we can put this off for a while if you don’t mind! of course feel free to continue the dehumanization debate in a string of reblogs since it’s pretty much a different debate entirely.

( @zrenia @caketexturepack just tagging some people who responded to your response and might be interested in the continuation of the debate - also curious anon i saw your two asks i was just busy djsjdks please don’t spam about people who replied to me, i have a bad memory but i write this stuff down, actually )

#my asks #discourse #tw dehumanization #tw abuse #tw torture #tw animal abuse #long post

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keets-writing-corner · 4 years

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Analysis on a scene from RWBY

Been a while since I’ve done any meta, and even longer since I’ve done meta just for me and not for a class. I’ve been on a RWBY kick recently, and I’m once again obsessed with Qrow Branwan and thought I’d do a little analysis from Volume 6. Of course there will be spoilers for volume 6 but also a little for volume 7, so I’m gonna put a cut

So I’d like to talk about the scene where Qrow’s trust in Ozpin is completely shattered. It’s quite famously memed. You know the one. (Quick Disclaimer, this is not meant to be a dunk on Ozpin, who’s one of my favorite characters, this is just an analysis on Qrow’s POV)

Jinn pops out being all naked

And Qrow’s all AVERT EYES

You know the moment. The whole “oh haha the local gay-leaning Bi-man got enough tiddie for a lifetime now” Or maybe it’s just respecting Jinn’s privacy. Whatever, but in actuality this little moment is less about Jinn herself, and more about Qrow’s entire image and pedestal of Ozpin is being shattered into pieces.

Let’s look at how much Ozpin really means to Qrow. We all heard Qrow’s little speech at the end of V6E3. How Ozpin was the only one who actually wanted Qrow’s help, trusted him with things, help and things that people likely spent Qrow’s entire life pushing him away from, in addition to making likely more than one scathing comment. Sure, in Volume 4, Jaune might’ve been a bit over emotional at the time, but the first thing he says when Qrow explains his semblence is to passive-aggressively MOCK him, and Qrow just bows down his head and takes it. This is likely something Qrow has heard his entire life and believes about himself. Aka the whole, the only thing he’s good for is for making everything worse. So of course it would make sense that when Ozpin comes knocking at the door, aka the prodigious cute headmaster of beacon academy, and then tells Qrow he can be MORE than just his semblence, MORE than just bad luck for others, that he can actually HELP with Oz’s cause, that Ozpin trusts him, more than other people around him, it’s small wonder Qrow hyper fixates his loyalty on Ozpin, and raises him on a pedestal. Qrow is aware that Ozpin keeps secrets, Qrow even helps him keep those secrets hidden and justifies Ozpin’s decisions, but he never once thought that Ozpin would hide something from him. No not him. Ozpin hides things from others sure, but not Qrow, right? Ozpin trusts Qrow. Ozpin is the only person who completely and whole heartedly trusts Qrow in a way no one ever has before.

Qrow’s loyalty to Ozpin is so great, that our first introduction to Qrow can arguably be considered an outlier in his usual behavior. Most of the time, Qrow has repeatedly proven himself to be chill, intelligent, patient, and someone who at all times tries to de-escalate the situation, knowing that agitation will attract more grimm. When we meet Qrow? What’s the first thing he does? Get angry-drunk waiting for Winter’s ship to show up, provokes her into starting a fight with him to make her, Atlas and Ironwood look bad, and then proceeds to sass, snark, and call out the ever living hell out of Ironwood. All of this because he was thoroughly pissed off at Ironwood disrespecting Ozpin’s trust. Something Qrow knows Ozpin does not give easily, and something Qrow considers sacred. Qrow only ever shows his brash, impulsive and aggressive side to him when someone is directly challenging Ozpin. Another great example being back in Volume 5, when Qrow is upset at Lionheart for not following Ozpin’s orders and not being even remotely helpful to Ozpin’s cause.

Aka, this man who will take jabs at his insecurities lying down, and tries to de-escalate situations, will straight up pick fights and throw hands with anyone who dares challenge Ozpin. The conversation between Qrow and Raven back in Volume 4 also implies that this loyalty to Ozpin could have been the very thing that caused him to completely abandon his family in the bandit tribe (along of course, with a shiny new and better set of morals). Qrow has demonstrated remarkable loyalty towards his new family in Tai, Yang and Ruby, and despite his disagreements with Raven, and disapproval at her life choices, he still hangs onto loyalty to her to a degree. Qrow is easily one of the most loyal people on RWBY, and Ozpin trusting him managed to get him to change his tune about his origins with the bandit tribe and become disloyal to them. That is how much Ozpin means to Qrow. That is how large the pedestal Qrow built for Ozpin is. I’m not going to get into shipping here, and quite frankly, it doesn’t matter if it’s platonic, romantic or just idolization, Qrow seriously loves Ozpin, just as much as he loves his nieces and his family.

Which leads me back to Qrow getting his loyalty to Ozpin shattered in Volume 6.

Qrow’s doubts about Ozpin started far earlier than that single moment with Jinn. It starts back on the train when Oz reveals that the grimm are attracted to the lamp. Qrow’s reaction is for the most part innocent, and he might be used to Ozpin revealing information on a strict need to know basis only. Still the surprise on his face that Ozpin withheld information from him is undeniable.

His initial reaction is to check in and confirm with Ozpin. While he is gentle, there is a bit of reproach to his tone when he says “Are you serious?” He is clearly unhappy in this moment. It’s important to note that Qrow also crosses his arms here, and remains with his arms crossed for the rest of the scene. Crossed arms can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. Oftentimes it’s a sign of a person become defensive, either by physically closing themself off to others, or because they’re suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

Of course, he doesn’t get much time to dwell on this at the time because Ruby rightfully points out “HEY, WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING RIGHT NOW, WORRY ABOUT THIS LATER”. This is mostly aimed at the others, who were more vocally upset about Ozpin withholding information, but Qrow remains cross armed in the background.

Qrow is just as unhappy at this as the others.

Of course, later is when things start getting real for our poor bird man. After everyone’s crashed, we’re shown flashbacks of Ozpin explaining the relic of knowledge to the group and by extension Qrow, showing us exactly what Ozpin told them, including but not limited to what the lamp does (not how it works), and that it has no more questions left to answer currently (which we later learn to be a big fat lie on Ozpin’s behalf, like an actual straight up lie). First thing Yang does is complain about their situation, to which Qrow’s immediate response is to tell her to knock it off because they don’t want to attract more grimm, aka trying to deescalate the situation so that they can focus on the least amount of problems as possible.

Of course, Blake points out that that might not even be relevant since apparently they’ve been attracting grimm that entire time due to the relic’s presence. At this point everyone agrees. We don’t see Qrow’s reaction to this, but he doesn’t vocally disagree with it either.

This might be a good place to remember that Raven encouraged Yang to not take anything Ozpin said at face value and to question him constantly. Which she absolutely does. It should be important to note that nothing Ozpin told her when she was questioning him for the first time back in volume 5, surprised Qrow. Qrow already knew everything, or at the very least, he thought he already knew everything, which further reinforced to him that Qrow was the person Ozpin told everything, and never lied to. He never had any reason to doubt Ozpin before Yang started bringing these things up on the train and he realized that Ozpin maybe was not being entirely honest with Qrow too.

While the others are confronting Ozpin after the crash, Qrow is pretty silent, but he can be seen reacting in the background.

He’s staring at the ground, listening to what the others are saying, probably thinking about it too, and then he looks at Oscar, wanting Ozpin to explain himself. Once again, Qrow is not jumping to Ozpin’s defense. Hands on hips also has a myriad of meanings in the world of body language, but it’s especially notable for when a person is getting ready to be assertive, aka preparing for some action. I don’t know for sure what Qrow was subconsciously preparing himself for, maybe he didn’t know himself, but he could feel a confrontation coming in which he’d have to pick a side.

While the team are questioning Ozpin at this time, Ozpin is openly and freely admitting to a few of his lies, and explaining his reasonings behind him, both to the ones the team knew about, and the ones that they had only just discovered. Qrow is still only listening quietly, not really taking any sides yet, but judging by his reactions to the conversation, he’s not liking what’s happening.

He seems almost in disbelief, and as if he’s currently unsure of who it is he’s supposed to listen to, or who he’s supposed to be defending right now. He’s not defending the girls, but he’s most definitely not defending Ozpin either (something we’ve seen he’ll easily go up in arms to do). By this point, his loyalty to Ozpin isn’t completely shattered, but it’s in jeopardy. He doesn’t know what he should do. These girls aren’t Ozpin, they haven’t trusted him the way Ozpin has, they haven’t told him he can be more than just his semblence the way Ozpin has, they haven’t told him that he can do good in the world despite of the entirety of his life and what other people have told him. But Ozpin is admitting to lying, coldly justifying his own reasons, and while Qrow was aware of many of these lies and in on them, he’s starting to see some flaws in that reasoning.

Then of course Ozpin gets distracted at the absence of the relic which is when poop REALLY hits the fan. He had just openly admitted to additionally having even more secrets, and now didn’t want anyone to hold the lamp, which as the others point out, is awfully suspicious if it’s supposedly useless at this time, and how it technically doesn’t matter who carries it since they’re all trustworthy, right?

Then cute boy Oscar starts taking control of Ozpin from the inside, realizing Ozpin is trying to keep even more secrets from the others. This is the first time Qrow says anything in all of this and it’s just a single questioning, “Oz?”

He still doesn’t seem particularly happy at how this conversation is going down, and he also hasn’t picked a side yet. He saw a man he was intensely loyal to suddenly act strangely and be under stress. He’s never seen an Ozpin host fight Ozpin before. Despite voicing his concern for Ozpin, he’s clearly still trying to process everything that’s happening, given that his eyes don’t stay solely focused on Ozpin and drift a little before he refocuses back to the moment.

Then Oscar reveals that to get the lamp to work you have to say Jinn’s name. Qrow did not know this, he seems as puzzled as everyone else when Oscar tells Ruby to say Jinn’s name.

And again, he’s waiting and watching quietly. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what side he should be on. For now, he’s just waiting and listening, and getting increasingly more and more uncomfortable with all these revelations. Then Ruby calls Jinn’s name, and everything freezes.

Qrow is the first to react beyond just looking up like everyone else. “What?”

Qrow didn’t know this would happen. Ozpin never told him this would happen. Ozpin never told him that time would stop when you used the lamp. Ozpin told him instead that the lamp was currently on a questions cooldown. His “what” was more about the shock of time stopping which he had no idea what happen, but it was also about realizing that Ozpin had straight up lied right to Qrow’s face and hid something from him.

And then Jinn comes out.

Then comes the shot I put way at the beginning of this meta

Qrow had exactly 0 clue this is what was going to happen if you used the lamp. He had no idea. In this exact moment, he’s not thinking about the large, mystical, blue, naked woman floating in the air right in front of him. He’s thinking “Ozpin didn’t tell me this...” Or maybe “Oz lied to me?”

Jinn then introduces herself, and while she does so, we can see Qrow still being in complete shock in the background

Jinn is about to tell them how many questions she can STILL answer this century, when Ozpin interrupts her trying to get her to stop talking, aka very clearly with no room for doubt he is intentionally trying to hide things from everyone there, including Qrow.

Qrow is one of the first people to turn around and stare at Ozpin when Ozpin tries to hide more things from them. What’s notable about Qrow’s position here, is that Qrow usually slouches. Maybe it’s a depression thing, maybe it’s a self-loathing thing, maybe it’s a tired thing, maybe it’s all of the above. Qrow is not slouching. He’s standing straight, and even looks like he’s leaning back a little, as if he’s so appalled by Ozpin that he’s trying to create more space between them without stepping away.

Jinn then reveals that she can still answer two questions this era. Earlier in this episode we were given a flashback of Ozpin telling everyone that all the questions had been used up. In this moment, it becomes crystal clear just how blatant Ozpin has been in his lies, and even worse for Qrow...

He realizes that Ozpin lied to HIM to his face with a smile.

Ozpin, the one person who had believed in Qrow, told him that he wasn’t just bad luck, that he could do some good, granted him the ability to turn into a bird, trusted him with secrets, supposedly was the person Ozpin trusted so much that Qrow was tasked with carrying Oz’s staff until he reincarnated... Ozpin had lied to him. This is truly the nail in the coffin for Qrow. He’s now chosen his side and is not going to support Ozpin.

He’s feeling betrayed by Ozpin, and in all likelihood, is also feeling used. He turns to say something to Ruby. What it is he was planning on saying we’ll never know because the others immediately jump on him the second he opened his mouth.

We can hardly blame them since, as I’ve previously established, Qrow is known for picking fights and throwing hands on Ozpin’s behalf despite usually being calm and level-headed. It’s usually the only thing that can get him to act out. Still, I highly doubt by this point that he was actually going to support Ozpin. I think he wanted actual answers just as much as everyone else, and was actually going to suggest to Ruby to ask Jinn exactly what she did in the episode. However, when the others threaten him, Qrow instead aims for de-escalating the situation, calmly putting his hands up, not even questioning the others’ threats, and voicing his support for Ruby.

As I previously stated, Qrow will, on average, aim to deescalate a situation above all else. The only exceptions have been when it was unavoidable (such as fighting Tyrian) or when Ozpin was being disrespected. This is something that has been very consistent with his characterization throughout the series. The fact that at this moment, Ozpin has basically been dragged through the mud and berated by others right in front of Qrow, and not only did Qrow not do ANYTHING to help Ozpin, instead just listen quietly, trying to determine what his own actions should be, he also did not lash out aggressively at anyone, instead aiming for his usual, deescalate the situation. This says absolute volumes for him to do a complete 180 on what’s been established to be his usual behavior in regards to his loyalty to Ozpin.

Of course, as we all know, Qrow is trying to be the bigger person, in this situation, but when Jinn starts telling everyone exactly what Ozpin was hiding from them, it pushes Qrow past his patience.

He had absolutely no clue about any of this. He was just as confused and lost as everyone else

Which, again, I know this is a highly memed moment because Qrow is essentially checking Ozma out, but consider for a second that he’s genuinely trying to understand what is happening, trying to come to terms that this man here is the real Ozpin, the real man he came to know, love and trust. And here he was not knowing anything about him, unable to even recognize him.

Most of V6E3 is focused on Ozma and Salem, while occasionally showing everyone else’s reactions. While I’m not going to sit here and analyze why each character was chosen specifically for each scene, but I will point out that probably the reactions we saw were deliberate and personal for each character. Qrow only shows up in this moment right here, when he’s introduced to the OG Oz, probably because out of all the characters there, he was the one who was closest to Ozpin, and narratively was seeing him with new eyes, which then was represented visually by the real original version of Ozpin, aka a new person he didn’t know. Qrow isn’t even present for the reveal that Oz can’t destroy Salem, because to him the information and revelations themselves matter less than the fact that he spent all these years believing that Ozpin trusted him like no one else ever had, and believed in him like no one else ever had, only to discover that not only had that trust, and vulnerability been increadibly one sided, but that Ozpin had straight up lied to Qrow. The person Qrow looked up to and trusted the MOST, LIED TO HIM, and not just about one little thing, about almost literally everything.

Qrow can’t even bring himself to look at Ozpin after the reveal of everything, he has his back turned.

The others are just further interrogating Ozpin at this point, upset at how much he had hid from them. Qrow is the only one not speaking. As a matter of fact, Qrow’s first immediate reaction is to give Ozpin a solid punch to the face before lamenting how Ozpin hurt him personally. He didn’t yell at Ozpin, except for the punch, he was pretty non-aggressive, aka the quiet type of upset, disappointed, and angry. In a way, Qrow’s softness almost hurts more than it would’ve had he been yelling at Ozpin. It shows just how far his trust and loyalty to Ozpin has been broken.

Now, I don’t think Qrow was particularly in the right to just dock Ozpin because that also means he’s landing a solid blow to Oscar, who’s barely figured out how to use his semblence as a shield, and was trying to HELP them this whole time. However, given everything I just explored, it does make complete narrative sense. Qrow was feeling very hurt and very betrayed by likely the person he trusted the most. He was acting pretty passively up until this point, and I think that his breaking point when he could no longer contain himself was seeing for himself everything that Ozpin was hiding, but especially that Ozpin didn’t have any real plan to defeat Salem. Ozpin was constantly telling Qrow that he could do good in this world, despite his semblence. That he could save people, make lives better, and then he finds out that Ozpin can’t defeat Salem, which could make that previous sentiment feel pretty manipulative and deceitful in order to gain Qrow’s alliance and loyalty. In short, Qrow feels used, betrayed, and that he’s been wasting his time doing absolutely nothing worthwhile that could help. That was his one thing that helped him keep chugging through everything. “At least I can do some good” but it turns out, even that’s a lie.

All of this is so devastating for Qrow, that he reacts the only way he knows how and falls even deeper into his depression and alcoholism, and spends the entire rest of the volume being The Load on the team. This “betrayal” has messed him up, shaken him to his very core. While it was uncool of him to further shut himself out from people who were trying to help him like Ruby, and to isolate himself and sulk, it is understandable. If it’s true that Ozpin was the person Qrow valued and trusted the most, and was likely the person closest to Ozpin besides Glynda, then it would make sense that Qrow had also been emotionally vulnerable with Ozpin. It can take a while for a person to bounce back after an apparent “betrayal” of someone they used to be so close to, and being emotionaly vulnerable with others, might lead them to reminisce on a person they don’t want to think about. Which would explain, that despite how much Qrow loves Ruby and Yang, that he couldn’t bring himself to open up to them. Instead going for the trying to not deal with reality by being black out drunk “coping mechanism” (someone please get this man some therapy and a new liver)

This post was pretty bash-y on Ozpin, so in Ozpin’s defense, I don’t necessarily blame him for his secrecy. As Ozpin pointed out, he’d been betrayed multiple times throughout his lives, he’s experienced many things, he’s likely tried multiple different approaches, which has led him to his current conclusion that he must play things close to the chest and keep information on a need to know basis only. However, when Ozpin was first explaining his cycle of reincarnation, one of the first things he says, “I am changed”. Given how badly keeping secrets has backfired on him in Volume 6, and how Oscar keeps being resident good boy, I do think Ozpin will grow and change in future volumes.

In addition, as many people have pointed out, Ozpin only retreats back into Oscar, AFTER Qrow calls Oz out and tells him how much Ozpin hurt him. Ozpin did genuinely care about Qrow, and was devastated when Qrow finally turned on him. Ozpin trusted Qrow to be the one to carry his staff until he reincarnated, that says a lot. Ozpin spent a lot of late nights chatting with Qrow during Volume 5, and just spending time together. Qrow’s insane loyalty to him probably didn’t go by unnoticed either. Ozpin genuinely trusted Qrow a lot, and valued him as a person. While Qrow certainly doesn’t view it this way, Ozpin did 100% believe that Qrow was doing good in the world by helping him, and even gave him some magic as a gift. He also gave that to Raven, who ultimately left, and this is one of the driving points of conflict between Qrow and Raven, BUT STILL. Ozpin trusted Qrow enough to give him magic. Ozpin probably spent a lot of time is Oscar’s head reevaluating what his secrecy has done TO Qrow, and also to his relationship with Qrow. The series makes it very clear that Ozpin gives people choices and doesn’t judge them on their decisions, Qrow had the choice to leave at any point in time, to leave Ozpin, just like Raven, but he didn’t. Even though Qrow feels manipulated and used by Ozpin, that doesn’t mean that that’s what Ozpin was doing. Everything about their relationship Qrow probably chose. It’s unfortunate that Ozpin was going around with half-truths and secrets that led to this moment. I wonder how this Oz-Qrow relationship will further develop in Volumes 8+, especially considering Qrow’s currention emotional and mental state and Ozpin’s return.

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aileysmirnov · 3 years

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Loki x Ailey hc! part 1

I was watching Thor Ragnarok with some friends (over zoom ofc) and then It popped up in my head a conversation that I had with @melyaliz and Alex (ig: shir.0_guru) a while back, and I couldn't shake it off my brain as I was trying to write some other thing. So hopefully writing this down would apace my mind.

TW: Arranged marriage, depictions of emotional/psychological abuse

Summary: Eris and Odin find a solution to what's been threatening their domains, an alliance between 2 of the most powerful families, but Ailey and Loki don't seem so keen about it.

Disclaimer/notes: Ailey is my OC! You can learn more about her in here!

Ailey has finally been reunited with most of her family and entered the realm of gods in this AU.

Samaras is the last name of the Eris family, they are rulers of Thera (Eris kingdom) and each member bears a royal title.

Ailey is the only demi-goddess in her family, Demigods are seen as shameful in this AU and usually they have a birthmark and a weakness that distinguishes them as such. In Ailey's case is her golden rose hair once she transforms in her god-form and her weakness is her allergy to gold, it practically burns her skin, debilitates her magic and herself, is like kryptonite for her.

◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

The only reason they even know about the other, is because of their parents: Eris had been in conflict with Ares lately, and one of his recent attacks greatly debilitated her army and Odin had trouble with a few of the realms under his command forming complots against him and the safety of Asgard.

Both rulers found themselves in need of the other: Odin had the greatest warriors and military at his service, and Eris being the goddess of discord could easily rise or disipate any conflict that may come her way (except for Ares ofc), an easy way in or out of war.

And so, they decided to form an alliance; But Odin being the wise men he is, knew better than to trust blindly in the goddess of chaos, after all...Eris was known for being a backstabber who acted only to beneficiate her own interests.

To prevent that, Odin decided to make the alliance under the condition that one member of the Samaras family must marry the second son: Loki, God of mischief. And so, Eris agreed and offered her youngest daughter: Ailey goddess of ruin and folly.

God it was an absolute mess since the beginning!

Frigga was the one to inform Loki, who immediately went to Odin to protest, but like always his father ignored him, shutting him down by comparing him to his brother and how he would do anything to protect Asgard but Loki was being selfish.

Ailey in the other hand was kept ignorant of such decision and only knew about it a few hours before the engagement party began and only because a servant accidentally told her.

She was furious and much like Loki tried to protest but Eris couldn't care less about her daughter's opinion.

Ailey could rage all she wanted, Eris wasn't even paying attention, the only thing she was accomplishing was in making her angry.

—Child, I think you tend to forget your place in this world, you see: among humans you might be...special but in here... you're just an idiot with too much privilege—Eris had a way with words that could make them feel like poison, creeping in to the insecurities of one's heart.

—If it weren't for me and your brothers, you would be Hera's new toy, so please remember, dear. You not only owe me but to your brothers and this kingdom as well.

Ailey headed back to her room feeling ashamed and angry, she felt her mother's words had some truth in them, seeing as how different she was viewed here in comparison to the human realm.

When the time came for the engagement party and for Ailey and Loki to meet for the first time, is fair to say neither of them were in a good mood.

Even though deep inside they knew both of them didn't have any say in the matter and were pretty much in the same situation; they still felt irrationally mad at each other, that's why since the moment they met to the end of the ceremony they would throw little passive-aggressive remarks at each other.

She viewed him as a pretentious asshole, and He saw her as a spoiled brat.

Almost near the end of the celebration and no announcement had been made so Eris took it upon herself to throw them into the spotlight.

—I believe you two have something important to share with all of us—her face was smiling but her eyes were threatening.

Ailey bit the inner side of her cheek, rolled her eyes as she turned to face Loki who only gave an exasperated sigh before speaking in a monotone voice

—Do you want to marry me?—he didn't even bothered to get on one knee and just extended the ring for her to take.

Ailey felt tempted to say "no" and walk away gracefully but doing that would probably have a negative impact on Thera, so after a long pause she answered.

—Whatever—and put the ring on, herself.

Clearly a good start :) .

I think they didn't saw each other that much afterwards and when they did it was mostly for wedding arrangements in which they continued with the passive-aggressive comments but this time about everything the other would pick.

The mood was so uncomfortable every time they were together everyone around them was like:

I think that sometimes they would have moments where they realize they had been too harsh with the other and would tone it down a little but treating each other like that was the only way of protest that was allowed for them.

Specially for Loki since he constantly had to travel to Thera bc for some reason unknown to him Ailey refused to go to Asgard, which only made his negative opinion on her grow.

In his mind, it was probably because she thought she was too good for Asgard but the reality was: Asgard is practically a death sentence for Ailey since 90% of every building in there was made of gold.

But she will never tell him that.

I think their first "moment of closeness" came to be purely out of the realization neither of them had any option other than get married or see their domains destroyed.

So, they decided to call it a truce: both would play along with the whole marriage fiasco for a while until things died down and then they could divorce and pretend they never even met.

And so, the passive-aggressive comments slowly died down, not that they started acting like lovers all of a sudden, instead they acted like they were just... co-workers or something.

They would greet each other in a formal manner and then only talked about the arrangements and left, nothing else.

But then, inevitably they started to get closer.

It was something so gradual none of them really knew how it happened.

It started off with small comments about decoration ideas for the venue, it turns out they both had quite the interest in interior design.

Eventually those small comments became lengthy conversations about which combination of colors would look the best.

When it came down to learning about the nobility attending the wedding on each side, both would spend a little more time together. Studying the proper way on how to address them and their interests all for the possibility in forming new alliances.

But I feel like instead they would roast the hell out of them, like they would be going through a list of the Asgardian nobility that were to attend and Ailey would just point at a picture of a random Asgardian noble and go: "Oh. My. God. what is he even wearing?"

And Loki would try to force back a smile or a laugh but eventually he would just give in and start joining Ailey in the roasting.

They also have a very similar sense of humor, but Ailey is just more blunt and open about it while Loki isn't, I feel like most of the time he has genius comebacks to stupid comments people make but he's a gentleman and normally just keeps it to himself or would only say it in a polite but slightly aggressive manner, so when Ailey just bluntly says something similar to what he was thinking he can't help but laugh a bit (he won't admit to it though)

Other things Ailey and Loki have in common is their love for drama and spectacle, while Ailey is more of a ballet/dance-based plays person, she understands Loki’s enthusiasm for theater and books even sharing some of it herself.

Not only they enjoy these things, but they also found comfort in them: For Ailey ballet began as something her mother forced upon her but transformed in an outlet for her emotions and a way to connect and control her powers.

For Loki theater was a form of escapism since he was a child, every time he felt like he didn’t belong he found a safe place in countless stories of the misunderstood heroes.

This only makes their bond grow deeper; up until this point they never had anyone to talk to about their interests in such depth, so now they talk all the time about it, sometimes they would surprise themselves looking forward to the next meeting just to gush about a new play or book they just saw or read.

I feel like Loki might’ve even lend Ailey some copies of his favorite books and Ailey as a “thank you” decided to sneek out with him to the human realm to watch "Tristan und Isolde".

Everyone is able to notice the change in attitude of these two, especially Thor who only had heard about the girl but could tell how happy she made him every time Loki would mention her.

And he was happy for his brother but felt curious about his soon to be sister-in-law.

So, it was only natural when Thor asked Loki if he could tag along the next time he went to Thera.

He said no.

Thor went anyways.

When Ailey met him, she could only think about one thing: "he himbo" which she thought was cute btw.

Thor could see why Loki liked this girl so much, they were practically the same, which he found sweet yet amusing.

—Lady Ailey, a pleasure to meet you, mi brother has told me a lot about you!—he stated.

—Really?!—Ailey questioned directing an incredulous glance at Loki.

—He asked—Loki tried to defend himself by downplaying his brother statement.

—No, I didn’t.—Thor retaliated with a mocking smile, he could tell his brother felt embarrassed so he decided to tease him a bit more.

—In fact, he won’t shut up about you.

—That’s not true, he’s just..

—No, he’s all the time saying Ailey this, Ailey that. It peaked my curiosity and so here I am…

—Brother, Could you shut up?—Ailey could only smile and hold back a laugh at the brothers spontaneous quarrel.

Truth is she thought it was sweet of Loki to talk about her with his brother. And teases him about it afterwards.

I think Thor might talk privately with Ailey and would ask her to take care of his brother.

—I know Loki can be a bit…difficult, but have patience with him, I can tell he really likes you.

And Thor was correct, Loki really did like her. But it might take a while for him to come to terms with his feelings, and would only manifest in small gestures towards Ailey, like: tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, subconsciously offering his arm for her to take as support when walking down the stairs, placing a hand on the small of her back as guidance whenever they were in a crowded space, sneaking small glances at her, etc.

Overall, he starts acting a lot softer with her, a lot more caring.

Ailey might be a bit oblivious to this (since she’s only used to overly sexual advances and has a difficult time understanding genuine affection), but she appreciates it none the less.

And both might even find themselves thinking that maybe…just maybe spending the rest of their lives together isn’t a bad idea after all.

#ailey #oc #dc #dc comics #oc edit #loki laufeyson #loki imagine #loki headcanon #loki hc #loki x reader #loki x oc #loki x ailey #yulia rose #tom hiddleston #loki

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twdmusicboxmystery · 4 years

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TWD 10x16: A Certain Doom

Hey Everyone! What did you all think of the TWD episode? Unfortunately, no Beth, which sucks. But I noticed a lot of encouraging things. Today, I’m going to talk about broader ideas and symbolism that I noticed. Tomorrow I’ll do details and dialogue. And on Wednesday, I’ll talk about episode 1x01 of The World Beyond. Sound good?

By the way, sorry if this feels a little loopy. I should have done one more read through/editing pass, but I had WAY too much going on this weekend. So it just didn’t happen. 😉

***Spoilers abound below. Don’t read any further until you’ve watched!***

4 Pairs Pushing Through the Walker Hoard

So, for the pairs walking toward through the walker horde. The first time, I wasn't entirely zoned in on what was going on. Just one of those things where you're watching to see what happens and not really analyzing things. But I was thinking about it before I re-watched, and I had a lightbulb moment.

I realized there were four pair who walked through the hoard. The pairs were Daryl/Kelly, Carol/Beatrice, Jerry/Magna, and Luke/Jules. And the more I thought about it, the more I started to fall down a rabbit hole. Here's what I'm thinking. In a very broad, thematic sort of way, I think these four pairs represent the four death fakeout couples.

First of all, we had lots of Bethyl symbols going on in the scene. The one that will jump out at you most obviously are that Luke and Jules hold hands a lot like Beth and Daryl did in Alone. To be fair, they don't actually interlaced fingers, so that's different. But it looks the same. They’re walking side-by-side and the camera pans down so that we can only see their arms from the elbow down and they clasp hands. So of course I instantly thought of Bethyl there.

Now, when I watched the first time, before it occurred to me about four death fake out couples, I kept thinking Kelly was really close to Daryl. I mean, she's practically on top of him the whole time. Almost pressed up against his back. I registered that without drawing any conclusions about it. But now I'm thinking that if he and Kelly represent Daryl and Beth, this might almost be a representation of the Sirius piggyback.

And I even tried to play devil's advocate, wondering if maybe all the pairs were doing that. Because they are definitely staying close to one another to watch each other's backs and keep from being separated in the hoard. But I watched really close the second time, making note of what each pair did, and none of them are doing that except Daryl and Kelly.

Luke and Jules hold hands, but they’re standing side-by-side. Magna and Jerry are actually pressed pretty closely together, but again, it side-by-side. It almost like their shoulders and the sides of their heads are mashed together, but he's really not walking behind her in the same way Kelly is behind Daryl. Beatrice does walk behind Carol, but once again, she's not pressed up against Carol's back. She's like 18 inches behind her. So it really only Kelly and Daryl who are doing this. So, the idea is Kelly as a stand-in for Connie, who is a stand-in for Beth. LOL. I get that starts to sound like 6° of Kevin Bacon thing, but there it is.

The next reason I think this represents the four death fake out couples is that three out of four of them make it through the hoard without a problem. Daryl and Kelly, Luke and Jules, Jerry and Magna. And what do I keep saying? Three out of the four death fake out couples will make it to the end of the show and be happy together. Bethyl, Richonne, and Carzekiel. The one that doesn't is Glaggie, because Glenn died. So that means Carol's pairing with Beatrice represents Glaggie. One half of the pairing is killed, and doesn’t make it to the end/other side.

Lydia’s Role:

Luke isn’t creating a bomb as early spoilers predicted. He's just putting together the radio that will blare the music. So, the plan is to get the radio, powered by batteries, to the wagon which will be drawn by two horses. Then blare the music from the wagon and use it to draw the walker hoard away from the hospital and toward the cliff. So, it's very similar to what they did in 6a in leading the walkers away so that everyone lives.

At the beginning of this episode, when expanding this plan, they say that they have to go through the walker hoard surrounding the hospital in order to reach the wagon and horses. That's why the four couples are going through the herd to begin with. These are the eight people (eight is a baptismal number by the way) who volunteer to do it.

They put all the parts to the radio and battery that Luke has into these black backpacks. We see them all carrying the black packs through the horde. When Beatrice goes down and dies, she tries to give Carol the backpack, but Carol doesn't get it. And I have a feeling people will hate on Carol for this part because it does kind of feel like she's leaving Beatrice behind. I don't think that's actually what they're going for in the show, though. If Carol had gone back for it, she would have been eaten, too, so she simply couldn’t.

But it would've been a really bad thing to lose Beatrice’s pack because they needed the parts that were in that backpack to make the radio work. So, my first thought was perhaps the black bag being left behind could be a parallel to Beth's black bag being left behind in Alone. And maybe it still will be on some level. But then something changed.

After the bag gets left behind, we see a hand grabbed it. At first, I thought it might've been Beta picking it up. But it wasn't. It was Lydia. She and Negan originally stayed in the hospital, but when things started to go bad, both of them put on Whisperer masks and made their way into the horde to help. So where Carol didn't get the bag, Lydia made her way through to where Beatrice dropped it and picked it up. She brought it safely to the other side with Carol.

I think this is very significant. While I do think that Carol and Beatrice as a pair represent the fate of Glaggie as a couple, throwing Lydia into he mix is interesting.

I think she represents Beth. Think about it this way. Lydia was originally left behind in the hospital (literally, the Grady Hospital), but she sort of escaped on her own (down through an elevator shaft with Negan) and showed up to bring something to help team family. She brought them "something they needed” in order to save their people.

So I think it goes very well with what we’ve theorized about Beth in the past. She will save everyone somehow, show up to be a weapon to help TF. And on top of that, throughout all the last episode in this episode, Lydia is dressed in a pink hoodie. And then there's the fact that that what Norman posted last night had Emily wearing that bright pink jumpsuit with blue flowers. Just saying.

Lead the Walkers Away with Music

I thought about this thematically. And it’s not anything we haven't discussed before, but I was just thinking about it in more depth. They lead the walkers away and eventually to a cliff where they go over the side and into the ocean. So obviously, the water is a big deal. But I was thinking that we have a situation where they're basically trying to neutralize the walker threat that is about to kill the group, right?

Well, the music they're blaring becomes sort of a passive aggressive weapon to take out the walkers. It's not direct and aggressive as a knife or bullet would be. But they're using the music as a weapon to lead the walkers away, which will end up saving the group. And obviously Beth equals music.

So, it's kind of an overall theme that we've seen before. It also occurred to me that we could compare this to Rick's speech in 5x10. His whole, "first we have to survive, then we get to live." Especially when the four pairs are going through the walker hoard, it's kind of like Beth and Daryl going through the graveyard. They’re sort of straddling the line between life and death. And if they can survive it, then they get to live. So that's what I was thinking about there.

Now, the plan doesn't really work. It gets dark while they’re leading the walkers away and we see a full moon. But the remaining Whisperers ambush them. They manage to throw some sort of metal wire across the road and it kind of kills the wagon. In fact, the wheel comes off.

Side note: there are two blatant examples of wheels falling off in this episode. The first was with Eugene at the beginning when he has biking accident. The second is this part with the wagon. The camera focuses very obviously on the wheel falling off in the road. (This is a theme we’ve seen A LOT around Bethyl symbolism.)

When it does, the group has to abandon the wagon and make a run for it. I actually watched closely the second time because I wondered what happened to the two horses that were leading it. After the wheel falls off, we simply don't see them again. The camera doesn't focus on them. I'm assuming they got eaten by walkers, though, because Daryl’s group definitely didn't stop to rescue them. They just run into the woods. Then we see walkers converge on the wagon, so I'm assuming they ate the horses. Kind of like Buttons.

The problem is, once they don't have the music to lead the walkers away anymore, they know the Whisperers will turn the hoard around and take it back to the hospital. So the only thing they can come up with to do is to go back into the horde and hunt the Whisperers so they can’t do that. This is what they do. And this is where Beta is killed.

In fact, it's kind of interesting. Negan gives Lydia Alpha’s skin mask. It definitely looks different on her than it did on Samantha Morton, but she's walking through the horde looking like Alpha. I didn't entirely register it first time, but Beta sees her wearing Alpha’s mask and tries to kill her. He doesn't get very close or anything, but he goes after her and that's when Negan shows up. So Negan basically saves Lydia from Beta. But then Beta gets the better of him and has him on the ground and is about to stab him and that's when Daryl shows up to stab Beta through the eyes. I got a screenshot of that. Apologies in advance. It's kinda gnarly. But we see Beta actually pulled the knives out of his own eyes. Yeah, that's gotaa have some symbolism behind it.

After that, we see Lydia leading the horde toward the cliff. Carol whispers to her and tells her to go back and that she'll take care of it. And Carol really does try to commit suicide here. So, in terms of the stupid shippers, at least we could argue that Carol really isn't very devoted to Daryl. Not only was she going to leave him again, but her suicide would've absolutely devastated him. She was gonna do it anyway. But Lydia pulled her back.

Now, I said this was really powerful and I think it was. I think it’s significant that it was Lydia who saved Carol, not Daryl. Daryl can't save her. Not really. She either has to save herself, or the other thing that I'm starting to realize is that the children can save her. I wouldn’t have thought Lydia would take on that role. Lydia definitely has a child/adult relationship with Carol, but she's not a little kid. And this is someone that Carol will forever associate with Henry.

So, you wouldn't think Lydia would be able to save Carol. But here, she very obviously does. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. Carol starts to cry and says “thank you” (really want to relate that to the Glenn/Nicholas thank you) and the two of them hug each other pretty fiercely on the side of the cliff. It was very powerful and touching, but the point is, it wasn't Daryl that saved Carol. It had to be Lydia.

After that, they had back, and this is where we get some reunions. Everybody's hugging, Maggie is introduced to Gracie and then hugs Judith. And this is where Carol and Daryl talk and hug as well. I'll give you the dialogue in a minute. I was pretty close to what I said before, but my wording wasn’t exact. The one thing I want to say right now, though, is that when Carol says the line, "we still have things to do here," it immediately cuts to Connie's scene.

Connie’s Appearance

Now, there's a lot of interesting things about Connie's scene I want to talk about. But the fact that Carol says that, and then we see Connie feels really on the nose to me. It felt like the writers hinting that some of the stuff they still have to do has to do with Beth’s return. Because Connie is very obviously a proxy for Beth at this part.

For Connie’s scene, we first see what looks like a disembodied walker hand. It’s unmoving and caked with dirt. But it starts to jerk and then move and then the camera pans back and we see that it's Connie's hand. She has basically face planted in the dirt and she's covered with dried mud and leaves. It's obvious that she's injured, weakened, and probably dehydrated. I also noticed that she has a trail of blood down her face. Which means it must come from head injury somewhere up near her hairline. Not unlike Eugene’s, actually.

Now, we already know Connie is a Beth proxy. Just to review, she went missing, was presumed dead, and Daryl doesn't know where she is currently or even if she's alive. And that’s on top of everything else we’ve seen throughout the season.

Now we have Connie alone, injured, stumbling through the woods, maybe from head injury. I couldn’t tell if she had any injuries to her legs or ankles. It really might've been weakness and dehydration that made her stumble, but it did seem like she was limping a little bit. I'm even reading into the fact that she was sort of hugging the trees. I mean, she’s actually using them to stay upright and not fall down. But she’s practically running into them and wrapping her arms around them. Visually, it reminded me a lot of Beth having her back up against the tree in Still.

Finally, Connie loses her balance and basically face plants in the dirt again. Then we hear horse hooves and that's when Virgil approaches. I told you before, I didn't think we'd seen the horse. And we didn't see the face or body, but there's a part where Connie is in focus in the foreground and we see the horse approaching, out of focus, in the background. So basically just the legs/fetlocks. And the horse is sort of a brownish-red in color. Then Connie looks up at Virgil and he down at her and that's the end of the scene.

Some thoughts on Connie here. TD has always had theories that someone might've saved Beth and taken her back to Grady, right? For a long time, I was convinced it was Morgan. And it still might be. I’ve moved away from that theory somewhat, but I haven't completely ruled out. But whether it was Morgan or not who saved Beth, I think we have representation here of someone finding Beth staggering around in the woods and saving her life.

In this case it's Virgil saving Connie, and we can also deduce that this happened somewhere around Oceanside. So that's important too, but again, it's very obvious to me that she's a Beth proxy here. Missing, presumed dead, head injury, stumbling around, and then someone finds her and saves her life. So it will be very interested to see where this goes.

And then there’s the whole Dante/Divine Comedy angle.

Okay, I’m gonna stop there. But there’s tons of dialogue and details to consider and I’ll go over them tomorrow. Stay tuned!

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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ravenbrenna09 · 4 years

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Safe - Chapter One

AO3

...

Hey, everyone! I finally got around to posting the first chapter of Sander's POV of Unattainable. When I asked at the end of Chapter 3 of Unattainable, a lot of people wanted it so I decided to go ahead and write it.

Now, I'm letting everyone know that it will be a bit heavier than some of Robbe's story with one main point being (if you saw the tags) that there are mentions of past abuse. Please do not read this story if you feel uncomfortable with these topics or it's too triggering.

Also, this chapter was soooooooo long and it was only HALF of what I originally wanted to be Chapter One, so the entirety of the chapter is on AO3 now. I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

...

italics = receiving; bold = sending

...

Sander wasn’t for sure the last time that he felt remotely safe.

The use of the word was foreign to him, but the only time that Sander could pinpoint a moment that he might’ve felt safe was at the warehouse, the one that he was headed towards now, the purr of his motorcycle vibrating his legs as he drove. It had been a staple of his high school, so much so that he still remembered the route to take, the knock on the garage door. He hadn’t been here in years, not since his final year, before his mother had packed up him and Camille and took them with her to Paris for a job, to get away from his father.

As if the mere thought of the man that was equivalent to a sperm donor had summoned it, his scar lit up like an uncomfortable burn, like an old would that was reopening.

Back when he was younger, back when his father’s passive-aggressive comments and the way he held them too tightly when he got angry had been considered how he showed love, Sander had been nothing but obedient to him (sometimes, even now, he wished he could turn back the clock, back before the harsh reality of his father’s words fully sat in, because he missed the man he thought his father had been). He listened to his father’s every command, dodged his wrath endlessly, and remained on guard, so much it seemed normal. But, then, he realized it was wrong, the way his father showed love, and so he fought back. His mother would try and divert his father’s rage, but Sander would fight back against him harder, unable to see his mother be the only one getting hurt anymore.

(The first time he walks into school with a black-eye, he claimed that it was a fight that he had won in an attempt to divert attention away from his mom, not wanting to get her in trouble. His high school art teacher didn’t buy his story and his French teacher pulled him aside, giving him makeup to cover it up, which he took, and encouraged him not to fight… but if Sander was being honest, she didn’t believe his story either.)

Part of the reason he snuck out to the warehouse was to spite him, but Sander admitted that he kept the events of the warehouse to himself. His father was a cop, rigid in making sure that Sander didn’t embarrass him by getting arrested. When Sander had been caught smoking with spray paint on his fingers, he was blessed with a broken arm, a bruised eye, and a scar on his chest (his tattoo covered the scar from sight, only able to be seen if someone knew where to look). The events leading to him in a hospital had been something of a blur, but his mother had enough, grabbing her children and all the important things and charting them on the first flight to Paris.

It was how Sander had met Eliott, who was his friend before Sander became Instagram Famous and Eliott became an established director, and, through him, all of his friends.

But, after moving back to Antwerp, Sander hadn’t been back to the warehouse, partially because of Britt (his now ex-girlfriend), partially because he didn’t have the time, and partially because he was afraid that his father might show up and break his arm again for even thinking about going to the warehouse. He knew the fear was largely irrational because his father had denounced all claim and moved to the Netherlands (but, no matter how irrational his thoughts were, he knew his therapist would insist that his feelings were valid).

Over the horizon, he spotted the warehouse. It still looked the same, maybe a little bigger, and there were a handful of bikes and cars pulled up outside, partially obscured by the shadows of the trees around them. It might’ve been something of a miracle that it had never been found before now, by the police or anyone, because there was surely something suspicious about cars and bikes and, now, a motorcycle pulling up to an abandoned warehouse surrounded by trees.

Sander directed his bike beneath a tree, using his foot to balance as he pressed down the kickstand, cutting off the engine, and pulled his phone from his pocket. Without thinking, he pulled up his helmet, just enough to uncover his face, and sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, tilting his head back. When was the last time he had been out of his apartment? Living in his new apartment, even surrounded by unpacked boxes that weren’t getting emptied quickly enough for his inner, meticulous satisfaction, Sander had finally started feeling normal again.

Now, outside of the warehouse and the unknown family that he missed so much, he felt a little exposed, a little nervous, like he had changed too much from the person that he had been before.

His phone buzzed in his hand and he glanced down.

noor.bauwens sent a message.

We’re on our way. I know you’ll probably be taking tons of pictures. But come say hi :)

Sander smiled, unable to contain his smile.

Noor Bauwens had been an old friend of his, back in art school. The two of them got along swimmingly and were interested in more of the same stuff. Aside from Sander’s intense love of David Bowie, the two of them had the same music taste, the same interest in art, a certain fascination for well-done tattoos, the warehouse that he was at. In fact, it was through her that Sander had met Britt (whether that was a good thing or not was still undecided), but it increased the frequency in when they saw each other. When Britt and Noor had a falling out, Sander felt like he lost Noor too. Their uni classes were on different blocks and they always promised to meet up, but they never ended up following through.

Now, though, they had a chance to reconnect. Sander missed having friends outside of Britt and her friends from uni. Since their breakup over a month ago, Sander had come to the shocking realization of how lonely he had truly been. The fact that Amber was always with her boyfriend and his friends, his sister was out of the country on a friend-vacation, and his mother was in America had really sobered up his realization of how controlling Britt had truly been.

Sander returned his attention to Noor’s earlier messages. When she had messaged him earlier today, Sander realized, quite suddenly, that he no longer had anyone stopping him from going to the warehouse. His father used to sit and watch him until he went to sleep, angry when Sander’s restless mind prevented him from slipping into sleep. Britt had condescending words, often treating him like a child in need of guidance and Sander had gotten used to her words and passive-aggressive comments, wanting to avoid an eventual fight.

Hey, Sander. Are you still into photography? If so, can I ask for a super big favor? My boyfriend and mine’s four year anniversary is coming up and I’m doing a piece at the warehouse. But, obviously, we can’t have the mural forever so I was hoping that maybe you could take a photo? And, then we’d be able to have the photo with us forever?

Of course, I would pay you! Whatever the cost.

Nonsense. I don’t need to be paid to do a favor.

Sander, I’m paying you.

Nope. Not going to accept it. I don’t need any money. I get paid enough with commissions so you don’t need to worry. Just let me do this for you. As a friend? Use the money and go out to a nice restaurant or something.

Are you sure?

Yes. Absolutely.

Okay, fine. I’ll be at the warehouse later. I HAVE to finish tonight. Busy week & no time to go out and finish. I might bring my boyfriend. He likes keeping me company.

Awesome! Knock still the same?

Yep. I’ll see you later tonight!

Yup, can’t wait to meet this boyfriend of yours.

Lol, yeah, I usually bring him around. If not him, then I might bring my friend, but I think he’ll come tonight.

Returning his phone to his pocket, Sander adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder. His camera weighed down inside of it and his apartment keys dug into his thigh, practically cutting through the fabric of his pocket. He quickly replaced his motorcycle helmet with a black mask that covered his nose and mouth, pulling his hood over his head to obscure the rest of his features. The last thing that he needed was for someone to recognize him as earthlingoddity here in a, probably illegal, spray-painting ring.

That was another reason that Sander stopped feeling safe.

earthlingoddity was his Instagram handle. Before he had gotten that commission for Eliott’s Polaris, before he quickly gained enough followers to rival some other art Instagrams, he had simply posted what he wanted to and showcased his art. Once his followers reached a certain point, they wanted to know more about them and Sander was willing to give some piece of his life, of who he was, because he loved each and every one of his followers that supported him and loved him. He loved being recognized in public and hearing from his fans in person.

But, since he returned home with Camille, bickering over what to eat, only to find a brown-haired girl (who, he later learned at the court hearing where he was granted a restraining order, was named Estelle) that he had seen almost everywhere he went in his living room, a set of keys with his front door key on her keyring, he couldn’t help feeling unsafe and not wanting to be recognized. He packed up his things within a day, moving back in his mother’s house, but he didn’t feel safe there either with the memory of his father lurking around, so he found a new apartment, one with higher security, one where only residents could get in with key to the gate outside or a specific combination that was lengthy, and moved there. It was part of the reason why he stayed home so much.

If he went out and looked over his shoulder and saw Estelle there, he was afraid that he would never feel safe anywhere ever again, forced to only live in a space that was only halfway safe.

Letting out a sigh and whispering, you’re okay, to himself until he believed it, Sander rose from his motorcycle and moved to the warehouse. His knuckles rapped against the metal of the garage door, echoing slightly. The knock was still ingrained in his mind, beat out with his fingers as he sketched, forcing himself to remember the beat of the knock. Once the rhythmic tapping was complete, the door was rising and Sander quickly ducked beneath it so they could lower it back down.

He didn’t recognize the eyes of them right inside the warehouse, but one approached from further in. He was older and taller, his hands shoved in his pockets, and Sander didn’t know his name, or remember the code name he used to use, but he recognized (vaguely) his grinning green eyes and the patch on his black jacket. He quickly moved to embrace Sander, grabbing his hand and patting him on the back, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t our own camera boy! Where’ve you been man? It’s been years!”

Not wanting to go into a long story, Sander shrugged and quickly changed the subject, “Around. Mind if I take pictures tonight? One of the others asked me for a favor.”

“‘Course! Been a while since we’ve had someone here to document it all. Always nice to see the progress you know? And, besides, you know that you’ve always been welcome. Just promise not to disappear for years after tonight, yeah?”

Sander laughed, real and genuine, the first one that he’s had in a while. “Yeah, course, just a lot of things happened all at once and I couldn’t get away. Should be here more though after tonight.”

“We’ll catch up later, okay?”

Sander nodded, fairly sure that he had been winked at, but he simply rolled his eyes, moving further into the warehouse and digging his camera out of his bag. Compared to all those years ago, there was at least twice the number of people. More artists talked to one another from behind masks, combining and collaborating on spray-painting masterpieces around the room, on the walls, on trucks and pillars and any surface that would allow for some form of expression.

It was addicting and fascinating.

Without fully realizing, the camera was level with his eye and he began taking pictures of anything and everything and everyone around him.

He took so many pictures that he had to switch out memory disks. He had used whatever remained on the one in his camera, which had only really been half full. Luckily, he had thought about grabbing his extra memory disk and switched them out. He knew that he would never be able to post these photos on his Instagram, or even display the more detailed ones outside of his apartment. But, seeing this environment, experiencing it, sent a thrill up his spine that he had missed desperately. He missed being here.

It had been too long since Sander had been able to capture this atmosphere without having to worry about getting home to Britt to avoid another fight.

Over the past years, he had fallen into the comfortable lull of being in a relationship with Britt.

At best, their relationship was fragile, switching back and forth from good to bad like a light switch being flipped, a relationship bounded out of necessity, not of love. At first, it was nice, the sex was good and she was good to him. But, then, once she found out about his episodes and his medicine and everything else that had happened, everything that Sander ever did was a byproduct of his “mania”. Sander wanted to shout that it didn’t work that way, but that would only be a result of his mania too.

However, as much as Sander didn’t want to admit it, he needed Britt more than he cared to admit. He wanted to be loved, but Britt’s love for him was all he might ever get, might be the only love that he would ever get in this world. She was controlling and Sander gave in to her demands if only to prevent a useless fight that he would never be able to win. She spoke to him like he was a child and she was his mother. But, through everything, through all the breakups and him getting with others, she had stayed around, been with him through his episodes, and, in her own way, loved him.

But, following yet another breakup and yet another hookup after weeks of Britt’s passive-aggressive avoidance, she had reached up, slapping him across the face and shouting at his face for him to “be normal!” and he had enough. At that moment, Sander had finally come to the conclusion of what he was doing to himself and he had enough. Sander wanted to be loved, but he had seen what had become of his mother in the shell of his father, and he deserved better than that. So, he snapped and kicked her out, leaving a shocked ex-girlfriend standing outside his front door.

He didn’t deserve that.

No one did.

Looking through the lens at the arts around him, Sander realized that he didn’t have to be Britt’s “abnormal” boyfriend anymore, the boyfriend who dragged her through rough times, the boyfriend that caused her to complain to her friends, the boyfriend who pretended that he didn’t hear her friends say that she was “so strong” to be with him. He could be anyone that he wanted to be. Next week, he’d be another artist, spray-painting the walls in an explosion of color. But, tonight, he would only be an observer.

So, Sander took pictures of anything and everything and then some. There was a couple in the corner, pulling down their masks down to kiss, running their fingers through their hair. An artist stood in the middle of a section of the floor, his masterpiece coordinated off by the backpacks of the other spraypainters. There was a man with his hair tied back in a bun, a mask over his face, with a can of spray paint in one hand, a used paintbrush behind his ear covered in bright green paint, and a palette balancing dangerously on his knee, and Sander kneeled to snap a photo of the delicate balance.

After snapping a photo, Sander turned to try and find a new person to shoot and found Noor on the other end of the warehouse.

She was at the side of the warehouse, towards a wall that hadn’t been touched all night and a half-finished piece plastered on the wall. She wore a black shirt, her jacket was wrapped tightly around her waist, and a deep red skirt. He could tell from the way that her masked moved that she was talking to someone, moving away from the wall towards a pillar where there was a set of legs.

As Sander moved his lens and moved to take a photo of the wall, to depict the progress of Noor’s work-in-progress, should Noor ever want it, through his camera lens, she caught sight of him.

There was a man that sat against the edge of his pillar, leaning up against the untouched pillar of a quiet warehouse. He was sitting on the floor with his phone in his hand, his jacket two sizes too big tucked behind him. He was beautiful, dressed in a pair of denim jeans and a sweater that was a size too big. His hair, brown, was all messed up and ruffled, like the wind had been blown through it, and the tips curled upward. The bright blue moonlight bathed down on his shoulders, accenting every part of his face that Sander could make out from this way.

The mask on his face hid half of his face from Sander’s, but through the camera lens, he could see that he had brown eyes that scrunched up when he laughed. The mask obscured the majority of his features and locked them away from Sander, but there was a knowing twinge in Sander’s stomach, in his mind, his soul, as if everything in his life had simply been leading to one, singular thing…

Him.

Sander blinked in realization, his heart swelling in his chest.

Was this what Senne had talked about all these years ago?

Senne had been one of his closest friends and his roommate for almost two years before he moved back in with his girlfriend at her apartment. Then, life had gotten in the way. Senne had been in desperate need of a place to live now and Sander had been in desperate need of a roommate now. So, Amber had traded their information and they had quickly moved in together. For the first two months of their roommateship, Senne would stumble home drunk, curling in his bed and clutching at a gray blanket. Sander would always grab him some medicine, leaving it by his nightstand and pull his blankets over his shoulders.

It was after two full months later, as Valentine’s Day approached, when Senne came home drunk, wasted beyond relief at only midday, barely able to stand and leaning against Sander as he guided him into the bathroom, that Sander learned why he was drinking so much. It ruined his plans with Britt, who was annoyed that Sander would cancel their plans to take care of the drunk, wasted Senne, but Sander didn’t care. Senne needed him. As Senne bent over the toilet and Sander rubbed his back, Senne choked out, “I thought she was the one. I thought that… I had finally found someone who would always be there and then I went and fucked it up completely.”

It’s nearly six months later before Sander found out what happened, everything that happened. How Senne’s brother had taken advantage of Zoë, how he had tried to get between Senne and Zoë, how it was almost worked in tearing them apart. But, Senne had been there for Zoë, going with her to the police station, urging her to testify so she could seek justice, trying to do what was best for her. In the end, she needed space and had ended their relationship. Senne couldn’t blame her at all, but that didn’t make the pain hurt any less.

Even drunk, wasted beyond belief, Senne had been so sure of what he was feeling.

He was right.

By the next Valentine’s Day, the two of them were back together. Sander would receive messages to avoid the house so they could have some privacy and Sander would tease Senne because he would never let Sander meet her, but Senne would laugh, saying he didn’t mean anything by it. By the time that Senne moved back in with Zoë at her apartment, he had only met Zoë had a handful of times, only in passing as he entered the apartment and she left it. They made promises to meet up, to hang out sometime, but Britt kept him away from his other friends, claiming that he never spent time with her. Sander would agree with her, only to avoid fights that he couldn’t win, but that never seemed to work out for him.

Yeah, this was that feeling. It had to be, Sander thought, staring at the man with Noor, playing on his phone and chatting with her. His eyes were squinted like he was smiling. He was the one. It was only once Sander took a half-a-dozen photo, knowing that the camera and the photos wouldn’t be able to properly capture the sight in front of him, that he remembered Noor’s message from earlier. His stomach dropped and he fetched his phone from his pocket.

I might bring my boyfriend. He likes keeping me company.

His stomach flipped, jumping around in his gut.

Fuck.

It had taken Sander hours to work up the courage to go over there. The entirety of Sander’s fresh memory card was filled exclusively with pictures of Noor’s brown-haired company (well, almost, he needed some room for Noor’s masterpiece), still playing on a phone, his head down, his head up, looking around the room. His heart thundered against his chest. He’s the one. But… if this man was Noor’s boyfriend… He had to know. If he was happy with Noor, if he had been happy these past four years with Noor, would Sander be doing more harm than good? Could he walk away, pretend that it had all been a fluke and that he didn’t have this deep emotional sense of knowing, if it meant that he would be happy?

As Sander walked over, as Noor stood on her toes and hugged him tightly, as the man’s big brown eyes rose to meet Sander’s green ones, a look of indifference and confusion on his face, as his heart fluttered at the look of innocence on his face, Sander hoped that he could. Because, if he was happy, it was going to hard to walk away. As Sander moved to respond to Noor’s question of how he was, the phone in her hand vibrated and she turned towards the man beside her, extending the phone.

The man looked away from Sander, down to the phone, and took it from her grasp, whispering, “I’ll be right back,” and walking away. Sander watched him go, spotting the look on Noor’s face. Worry and concern covered her face as she watched after him.

After a couple of seconds, Sander broke the silence, commenting, “He’s cute. Your boyfriend.”

Noor turned towards him, chuckling. “No, he’s not my boyfriend,” she replied. Sander tried to control his breath of relief, and probably failed. “He used to be, but we ended up becoming friends afterward. My boyfriend had to go home. He’s got an important meeting with his mom in the morning.” She glanced towards him again, Sander followed her gaze to him, he had pulled his mask down to talk on the phone, and Sander felt himself breathe a little heavier. “So,” Noor spoke up, nervous and drawing Sander’s attention back to her. “What do you think?”

Beautiful.

Oh, she meant the mural.

“It’s amazing, Noor. You put so much work into it,” Sander informed her, turning back to the mural. “I’ll definitely get a lot of good pictures. We can meet up and you can pick out the best one. Once I can edit it for clarity, I’ll print it out and frame it for you. Just let me know when to bring it.”

Noor nodded her head. “Thank you so much, Sander.”

“You’re welcome.”

For a heartbeat, they’re quiet.

“I’ve missed you,” Sander spoke up.

Even from behind the mask, Sander could tell that Noor was positively beaming. “I’ve missed you too.” She threw her arms around him in a hug, holding him so tight that Sander had to squirm to get her to loosen her grip. But, then she pulled back. “We’ve definitely got to meet up. Outside of the picture stuff. We haven’t been able to properly hang out since before you and Britt got together. I miss when it was just the two of us.”

“Me too,” Sander confessed.

Noor smiled, beaming. “I wish I could stay here longer. But, we need to get back to our apartment. The rest of our roommates have already gone to bed and I’m likely going to be woken early up in the morning by my boyfriend. Maybe we can meet up sometime next week?”

“Of course,” Sander replied.

Noor grinned, bending down to collect the remains of the man’s things and rushing over to him. Sander watched her go, holding up his camera to take multiple photos of the mural. There was so much that he had loved about it and he knew that there must’ve been some form of special connection to Noor and her boyfriend. She had been meticulous about every detail, the blending of colors on the wall, the detail of the stars in the night sky. Sander turned to find them talking, the man’s mask still at his neck, and without thinking, he reached up, snapping a photo of the man as he talked to Noor.

Then one more.

Then another.

And, then, Noor took him by the wrist and pulled him towards the exit. The man followed easily as Sander turned towards the mural again, taking a couple more. He wanted the photo and the frame to be perfect for Noor, for her boyfriend, because Noor was important to him, still, after all these years. But, still, he couldn’t help turning and watching them go, out the warehouse door and into the abyss outside.

Once the man was gone, Sander left soon afterward, letting out a breath, his shoulders lighter than they had been before.

His Instagram story, a photo of himself, his features shrouded in darkness, and the white text across the photo, slanted in a diagonal across the screen, his words reading: Do you ever see someone and just know that they’re the one?

His phone had blown up with texts, comments, likes, replies, and direct messages. While he had disabled notifications on the majority of his social media accounts, his phone had been slammed with them as soon as he opened his app. That also hadn’t stopped Eliott, and Lucas through his boyfriend’s phone, from sending him over a dozen text messages. He had made the post on a whim, like he did everything else, but he didn’t care because he had to get it out, confess it to the world. That was him. That was it.

And, still, hours later, even though Sander hadn’t responded to the original screenshot from Eliott or Lucas’s follow up messages when he didn’t answer, he was still getting messages from the couple through Eliott’s phone.

Sander.

S-A-N-D-E-R.

Answer your goddam phone.

We need answers. (-Lucas)

Hey, Sander, it’s Eliott. Take whatever time you need. Lucas is just concerned.

No, answer back right now. I need answers. (-Lucas)

And nosy.

As you can tell.

Sander laughed, typing out.

Eliott, calm your angry hedgehog.

I NEED ANSWERS, SANDER (-Lucas).

Get home safe. I’m taking the hedgehog to bed (-Eliott)

...

READ THE REST ON AO3

#sander driesen #robbe ijzermans #sobbe #rosander #my fic #wtfock fic #sobbe fic #rosander fic #safe: an unattainable spin-off #tw: past abuse #past abuse #i'm sorry once i saw this theory i haven't been able to move away from it #so i'm sorry #brief appearance (through text) of elu #noor bauwens #this thing was 12k words

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gaycrouton · 5 years

Note

Since you already told me you have an idea for this, I need to read the “Mulder accidentally takes Viagra and Dr. Scully needs to help” fic pretty please! The hotter the better of course.

HEY BOO! Guess who finally got around to finishing it! I’ve had this idea for so long it’s ridiculous, and not to toot my own horn…but it’s really hot. It ended up being super long so I’m going to split it up in two parts while the latter half is in beta. Part two will probably be up in the next few days!

As always, thank you to @admiralty-xfd for her beta and her endless support.

Clinical Detatchment

msr / s7 / UST to RST

To say this case had been stressful would be a colossal understatement. They’d been clashing with the police department since they got here; they were flagrantly sexist and rude to Scully and they thought Mulder was insane and, in their words, ‘a pussy’ for listening to her. To top it all off, after a week of intensive searching, the case ended with the police burning down the barn that the ‘creature’ they’d been looking for had been lurking in resulting in a pile of ashes and some unidentifiable bones, much to Mulder’s irritation.

She couldn’t even take joy in the fact that the case was over. After the barn burning, they had to go to the police station to give a final statement and, aside from being offered coffee which Mulder had all but devoured, the police were outright disrespectful. Not that Mulder wasn’t acting similarly to them, after he’d downed the drink he’d talked separately with the officers before storming out of the office, telling her they “were leaving, now.”

She didn’t know what they’d said to him that’d offended him to this point, but she knew something was off.

Now she was at the shitty restaurant attached to their motel, sitting across from Mulder who seemed to be in one of his moods. As soon as they’d gotten there he’d stormed ahead of her, not bothering to hold the door open or even see if she was following him. It wouldn’t be strange if it weren’t for his usual tendencies to be a gentleman, but now it just seemed passive aggressive. All in all, a shitty day.

He’d been quiet since they left and when she asked him anything he’d just give her short answers. For some reason it felt like he couldn’t even look at her. She could only take so much before she called him out. “Mulder, have I done something to piss you off?”

He stopped playing with his glass of water and looked at her timidly before looking away, pretending to find interest in the food that remained practically untouched in front of him. “No,” he muttered.

“Are you sure?” she asked, impatience coming through despite herself.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

She let out an irritated sigh and slouched into her seat. Her movement resulted in her leg grazing Mulder’s and it caused him to jump away from her like she’d burned him. “Are you kidding me?” she snapped.

“I’m-”

“Mulder, I’ve had to deal with people treating me like shit this entire case. I really don’t need it from you too,” she lamented.

Finally he looked at her and she started to feel a little guilty for lashing out. In this moment, looking at him face to face, she realized he looked ill. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes were glassy, and she could see sweat gathering on his brow. “Scully, I’m sorry. I’m not mad. I don’t mean to be short, I just- I don’t feel good.”

“No, I shouldn’t have snapped. I didn’t realize you were sick,” she apologized.

“I think just the stress of the case finally caught up to me,” he shrugged.

She slid out of her side of the booth and moved to sit next to him. “I-I’m sure I’m fine though, Scully,” he stammered, sliding away from her.

“Mulder, you don’t look fine,” she admonished, reaching for his face. She put the back of her hands on his cheeks and forehead and frowned when she felt how hot he was. “You’re burning up.”

He swerved his head, effectively moving out of her hands, and hunched over. “It’s probably just a passing bug, Scully. I promise I’m fine,” he rambled.

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. This wasn’t like Mulder to be so unreceptive to her medical attention. She gave him another once over and realized how abnormal his posture was. “Mulder, why are you sitting like that?”

“Scully,” he stated firmly. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine then sit up,” she countered.

“I don’t want to,” he whined with near exasperation.

He looked like he was grabbing his sides while curling in on himself.

“Do you have pain in your abdomen?” she asked. Appendicitis? Stomach flu? Hernia? IBS?

“No,” he muttered childishly, avoiding eye contact.

“How long have you been feeling ill?”

“Please, drop it,” he pled.

Suddenly, testing him, she reached out and grabbed the arm nearest to her, pulling it away from his body. He let out a hissing sound between clenched teeth, his whole body lurching before he moved away from her. “Mulder, you’re obviously in pain. Stop trying to hide it.”

“Scully, please leave me alone,” he begged. “And please stop touching me so much.”

The intensity of his request hurt her feelings, but she tried her best to keep it from showing. Part of her thought about giving up and meeting him with equal stubbornness, but it’d felt like they’d been getting closer as of late and the harsh rejection stung more than she wished it had. “Why won’t you let me help you?” she asked softly.

He must’ve heard the hurt despite her efforts and he turned to look at her. When he did this, she noticed his eyes were unnaturally dilated and her concern grew even more. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he pressed.

She might’ve given up, but this case had been taxing on them both and she knew he had a tendency to forgo taking care of himself in the midst of a stressful investigation. “Mulder,” she rolled her eyes, grabbing at him again. “Please just let me give you a quick examination to see if anything’s alarming.” She put her hand on his thigh and he gasped ‘fuck’ before grabbing her wrist harshly, causing her to let out a little gasp of surprise.

He winced and was silent a moment before whispering, “It’s embarrassing.”

“What is?” she asked.

With some strain, he sat up straight and let go of her wrist, taking the other off his lap to reveal an impressive erection straining against his dress pants, tenting the material away from his lap. He gestured to it in aggravation as if it needed any sort of introduction.

She looked at it, he looked at it, he looked at her, she kept looking at it.

“Oh,” she squeaked, removing her hand from his thigh but not leaving that side of the booth.

“I-” he mumbled, covering up again as she struggled to tear her gaze away.

She interrupted him with a raised hand. “It’s fine, Mulder. I know it happens. It doesn’t bother me. I’m sorry I embarrassed you-you shouldn’t be embarrassed,” she rushed, her sentences choppy in her own mortification at bringing attention to it.

She wasn’t lying - she knew it happened quite frequently, just never to this extent. Usually he adjusted it, calmed down, or left the room by the time the slight hardening in his pants turned into anything that he’d think she noticed. She figured Mulder thought he was being discreet, or maybe he assumed she never glanced at that area of his body, but she noticed enough to know that Mulder was a very healthy man.

It sometimes became a game to her: determining what the cause of any given erection was. Sometimes she thought it happened when the wind blew too hard, it seemed to happen so easily. But slowly, this time, she realized she seemingly had a role in it. All too often it seemed he needed to readjust or take a deep breath or leave immediately following something she’d done. Like a cause and effect but the causes were things she thought were mundane, like standing near him, smiling, laughing, touching, sometimes just looking at him.

She’d just never called him out on it.

“No, Sc-wait. What do you mean you know it happens?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

“I just-it’s a natural bodily occurrence,” she explained, subverting her true meaning.

They locked eyes for a moment, both fully aware she wasn’t convincing enough, but luckily he chose to move on. “They, um, they slipped me something,” he mumbled.

He shifted in his seat and her gaze flitted down to the area in question, a glance that didn’t go unnoticed by Mulder who started unconsciously bending forward again to hide himself. Feeling a surge of embarrassment for her unabashed ogling, she cleared her throat and registered his words. “Wait, who slipped you what?”

“Sheriff Flannery and his merry band of misfits, they said they gave me viagra,” he murmured the last part so softly that she’d barely heard him.

For a moment she was sure she’d heard him wrong, but he was wearing his earnestness on his face and she knew he was telling the truth.“Why on earth would they do that? Not to mention the fact that’s extremely illegal,” she balked.

He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “They said it was so I could ‘man up’,” he admitted. She was about to make a comment about how ridiculous that was, but he spoke up before she could. “Apparently they had some viagra in the back from some guy who retired, yadda yadda yadda, but they slipped it into my coffee while we were in the hallway talking.”

As he said this, she unconsciously licked her lips and his gaze flickered to the motion immediately before his eyes shot back to the opposite side of the booth while his nostrils flared and he shifted his hips. It was a motion she found undeniably attractive.

“How much did they give you?” she asked, her attention snapping back to the matter at hand.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged.

“How long have you been erect?” she asked, cringing and looking around when she realized her volume.

Mulder did a look around as well and sighed in relief when no one was eavesdropping on them. “Um, I don’t know, maybe two hours.”

“Have you tried…” she made an odd gesture with her lap with her hands as he stared at her with raised eyebrows.

“Did it look like I tried the past two hours we’ve been together?” he asked sarcastically before immediately apologizing. “I’m sorry, this is just the icing on a shit day.”

“It worries me that we don’t know the dosage,” she confided, stopping altogether when the waitress came by to take their plates and drop off the check. Neither of them missed the skeptical once over she gave them for being huddled together on the same side of the booth like teenagers.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Scully resumed, “I’m worried they gave you too much.”

“I’m sure it’ll go away when we get back to the motel room.” Catching himself, he clarified, “When I get back to my motel room. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Unless it doesn’t go away in the next two hours,” she added, getting out her wallet and laying cash down on the table for the bill and the tip.

“W-what do you mean?” he croaked.

She looked at him with a skeptical brow as if to say ‘you don’t know’ to which his visible gulp replied ‘oh god what?’

“Do you know why Viagra commercials warn against erections lasting longer than four hours?” she asked, stuffing her wallet back into her purse.

“Lightheadedness…” he answered with timidity that told her he knew his answer would be wrong.

“No, do you know what priapism is?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted.

“There are different types, and I won’t go into full detail, but in bad cases the blood trapped in the penis is deprived of oxygen. Erections that last too long can cause the oxygen-poor blood to begin to damage or destroy tissues in the penis,” she explained.

“Destroy?” he repeated.

“Some untreated priapisms can cause erectile dysfunction.”

She might as well have told him he had two hours to live with the look of panic that came across his face. “W-what do I need to do?” he stammered.

“Let’s go back to your room so we can assess the situation,” she stated, trying to sound calm.

She slid out of the booth, but as she was about to walk away, she felt a hand grab her wrist. “Wait,” he whispered.

She turned and saw him scooting closer to the edge of, but not coming out of, the seat. He glanced around before looking at her nervously. “There are people here,” he told her in a low voice.

She looked around and saw the once empty restaurant was bustling with customers. “But we have to go, Mulder,” she whispered back, not wanting to cause him further embarrassment but not seeing a wormhole for him to crawl into opening up anytime soon.

“Can you walk right in front of me to hide it?” he asked. Mulder usually didn’t care what people thought of him, but he did care when across the room was a children’s birthday party.

With a sigh of resignation, she nodded and turned around in place as he stood up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders to keep her in front of him. There was space between them, but barely. They were both walking as briskly as they could, but she could feel the warmth of him radiating on her back.

Then, unexpectedly, a waitress passed in front of Scully’s path with a quick “Sorry, coming through,” and the motion caused Scully to stop in her tracks. Which, of course, resulted in Mulder crashing into her and jabbing his hard on straight into her back. She gasped and he squeezed her shoulders tightly and let out a soft, strangled moan, causing a few patrons to abandon their food to glance up at the pair.

“I’m sorry,” Scully whispered breathlessly. Whether to the interrupted customers having to witness their misfortune, or to Mulder for stopping so suddenly, she wasn’t sure. All she knew as she continued moving forward was that Mulder’s cock had just touched her. It wasn’t skin against skin, wasn’t intimate in any real sense, but her partner’s penis had touched her and it was hot, hard, and he moaned.

And fuck if it didn’t turn her on.

As soon as they were out of the eyeline of the prying customers and halfway across the gravel parking lot to their rooms, she took a quick step forward, consequently freeing herself from his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Mulder lamented immediately. Truth be told, she didn’t need to be so dramatic with her movement, but she’d rather have him think she was frustrated with him than realize she was getting flustered. But she regretted her action at the absolute guilt that was evident in his tone.

She turned to look over at him and took pity on the sight of a dejected Mulder crossing his hands in front of his pants. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pull away so abruptly. Let’s just get to your room.”

She stood by his side and didn’t say anything more as Mulder unlocked the door and let her in. They’d only been there a few days, but Mulder had sprawled all his stuff about and made himself at home. She heard the lock snick behind her, and putting on an air of complete professionalism, she turned around and faced him. “Okay, let’s take a look.”

He still hadn’t moved more than a foot from the door, the only signs of life were the widening of his eyes and his stammering. “I-I don’t, I can’t-”.

Well, if he was going to be like that. “One of the methods of curing a priapism is to make an incision-”

“Scull-ee,” he whined, his brows furrowing in distress.

“Mulder, I saw more penises in med school than the actresses in all your tapes combined,” she deadpanned.

“But this is different,” he explained, not elaborating beyond that.

He was right. It was different. She’d seen it before, but it was usually a brief glimpse in the midst of dressing him because of another injury, never was it the main focus of an examination. That, plus the issue that it would be erect and she’d most likely have to come in contact with it for a full examination.

Letting out a long sigh and cursing the fact that nothing in their lives could be easy, she ran her hands over her face and offered, “You’re right. You’re right. Um, how about you go into the bathroom and take a look. Let me know if anything looks abnormal.”

He seemed relieved at that prospect and did as directed, making his way to the bathroom and quickly shutting the door as if to get out of her line of sight. She listened from the other side of the door as the teeth of his zipper came apart and his pants dropped down to the floor. He coughed nervously and called out, “Okay, uh, it’s-it’s out,” he stammered.

There were a few moments in her life, specifically since her time with him, where she couldn’t help but be shocked at where she’d ended up. This was one of those moments.

“How does it look?” she asked.

“Um,” he paused. “Normal?”

“Does it look different than when you’re usually erect?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

“What do you mean?” he called out.

“Is it swollen or red?” she explained, images from med school textbooks dancing around in her head.

There was a pause and she realized he was misinterpreting her. With a sigh, she added, “More so than normal?”

“N-no, I think it looks normal, but I’ve never had one for this long and it kinda aches,” he explained. She frowned, she didn’t know what to do when half of that information was comforting and the other half was cause for concern.

“This isn’t working,” she called out. In what world could a doctor assess a patient with a blindfold on? Rarely were patient assessments ever accurate in the first place, let alone when they were in distress.

“Do you have to?” he sighed in acquiescence.

“Mulder, just let me look. I just want to help,” she reassured, trying to take a gentler approach.

She heard some more sounds of fabric rustling and realised he was stepping out of his pants and shoes. Soon enough, she heard the door unlock and saw a tuft of brown hair and hazel eyes peer from the side of the door. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he joked lamely, trying to lighten the mood and his own discomfort.

She rolled her eyes and gave him a small smirk. “If I ever need an emergency medical exam, I’ll make sure you’re the first person I call.”

“Is that a promise?” he asked, taking a step out and revealing he’d also removed his dress shirt, leaving him in his t-shirt shirt and boxers as he continued to cover himself with a hand towel.

She took a few steps towards him to meet him halfway and the room became tense again, neither of them speaking for a moment as the awkwardness overtook them. “I promise to be clinically detached,” she blurted out. “I know this is uncomfortable, but as soon as it’s taken care of, I promise we can pretend this never happened.”

He let out a long, reluctant sigh and nodded, “Okay. Thank you.”

“Sit on the bed,” she commanded.

He teased her about her bedside manner, but they walked back into the bedroom and he did as she asked anyway. He only started making a fuss again when she began to get closer.

“Wh-what are you doing?” he asked, scooting away from her as she started easing herself down on her knees in front of him.

“I’m looking, Mulder…” she trailed off. Surely he didn’t think she was going to…

“I-but-can you,” he stammered never fully forming a single one of the thousand thoughts swirling behind his eyes right now.

“Mulder, are you genuinely confused or just stammering? I don’t mean to be blunt, but in this situation, the difference matters,” she sighed, righting herself to look at him. Faltering memory. Confusion. Slurred or stammered speech.

“Scully, this is embarrassing,” he whined, so pathetically that her heart went out to him.

But time was of the essence, and they were running out of it. “Fine,” she stated sternly, pretending to grab her bag. “We’ll just have to go to the hospital then.”

“No!” he called out, and if she identified the sound correctly, he even stamped a foot.

She turned around to face him again and demanded. ��You’re going to have to be honest with me or we will be going, okay?”

He was giving her puppy dog eyes right now and she had to bite back a smile at the juxtaposition. He looked like a kicked dog, yet was sporting a massive erection. Mulder pulled her out of her thought process by his mumbling something, but doing it under his breath so that she couldn’t hear. “What was that?”

“I don’t want to accidentally come in front of you… or on you,” he muttered.

This is my life. My partner just said those words out loud to me. She was at such a loss for words that he took it as her not understanding. “I just-I’m afraid seeing you, um, like that-” On your knees.

She held up her hand to stop him from saying anymore. “Lay back and close your eyes or look at the ceiling.” He nodded and lowered himself slowly onto his back, letting out a tense sigh. She wished she had those hanging mobiles like they do at the OBGYN, but he instead just raised his forearms to cover his eyes and she took that as a sign she was good to go.

Without his prying eyes on her, she mouthed a silent fuck to herself as she lowered herself on her knees and in between his legs, giving her a better vantage point to see. The hand towel didn’t do much to cover, but it was enough for her to be nervous about removing it entirely. No going back now.

She cleared her throat and decided to be as Dr. Scully as she possibly could. “I’m going to remove the towel.”

There were no words of affirmation or recognition, but she knew he heard. He was probably just trying to mentally dig a hole to crawl into. With her index finger and thumb, she grabbed the corner of the towel and lifted it off, setting it down gently at his side. Her thoughts were as follows:

Mulder is hung.

How does he walk around with this?

It’s amazing how humble he is for how cocky he easily could be.

My face is a few inches from Mulder’s leaking cock.

“Does it look like a pr-prasi-”

“A priapism,” she clarified. She looked at the pink swollen phallus and didn’t immediately see any of the usual red flags. “No visual indicators.” Dr. Scully left for a moment as Flustered Dana mentally screamed, but she stifled her hesitation and confidently said, “Is it alright if I touch it for a physical exam?”

He was silent and, unlike last time, she couldn’t continue without his permission. She sat there, his penis hard as a rock in front of her face, as he contemplated his fate. Then, she heard a softly muttered, “Okay.”

Being as delicate as she could, she scooted closer, her forearm grazing the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. He jumped like she’d shocked him and she breathed out an apology and continued to lift her hands, gently grabbing the shaft with the tips of her fingers.

She ducked her head slightly to look at the scrotum and noticed nothing looked out of the ordinary. Just perfectly dropped, engorged, healthy balls. She righted herself and tested the skin’s give by tugging down lightly with her fingers on his shaft, dragging the skin down and revealing more of his head, and she was relieved to see there was some movement. So he’s not swollen to the point of danger.

As she conducted her test he took a sharp, shaky inhalation between clenched teeth. Risking a glance over to him, she saw his arms still firmly planted against his face, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. “Um-” she spoke, not even sure what she was about to say, just wanting to break the silence. “Does being touched hurt?” she asked, settling on a perfectly analytical question.

She saw him swallow thickly before answering in a husky voice that shot straight to her core, “No.”

He didn’t offer any more information and she figured he was trying to spare his pride. Using her fingers as delicately as she could, she moved it around from side to side just to check mobility, but her motion apparently wasn’t as delicate as she’d intended. He lurched away from her, his erection going out of her grasp and bobbing violently in the air at his harsh jerk. “Okay, that was a little rough, Scully.”

“Sorry,” she exhaled before taking the cloth and covering him. At the unexpected sensation, he concaved his hips into the bed and released his arms to look down at her before immediately subverting his eyes.

Using his knees as leverage, she stood up and cleared her throat, taking in the sight of Mulder actually blushing and wishing it wasn’t such an uncomfortable situation.

His attention was drawn by her near-declarative cough and he glanced back at her as he eased himself up on his elbows. Now it was her turn to look away. There was something incredibly sexy about a casually reclined Mulder with an erection while she apparently possessed the ability to arouse him.

“It doesn’t look dangerous right now, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet. I want you to, um, take care of it and then tell me if the swelling starts to go down,” she explained.

“What happens if I can’t?” he asked nervously.

“I thought you were well versed in that arena,” she teased before seeing the look of panic in his eyes. “Mulder, I’m sure this will all blow over. People snort cocaine and have had two hour long erections like this and they live. Let’s focus on the positive. If you can’t, we can always go to the hospital,” she comforted. Correction- she tried to comfort. She said the H word again and she could see the worry brewing in his eyes.

“Don’t think about it, just think about - whatever it is you normally think about,” she stammered, moving towards the adjoining door. “I’ll be next door if you need me.” Then, at his raised brows, she added, “If you have a medical question or um, you know.” Putting herself out of her misery, she walked into her room and shut the door.

#gaycrouton #my fanfiction #x files fanfic #mulder #scully #msr #smut

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thekidultlife · 4 years

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Aww yall are the sweetest! Missed u too! 🥺💖 Can u guys do leanne's illicit affairs and hyeri's jihoon steampunk au for the wip game if you haven't already? (im a sucker for mafia aus they're so 🥵🌶) Don't forget to stay hydrated and smile today 👁👄👁 Thanksies! 🤸‍♀️

HELLOOOO, ANON! Thank you so much for asking for this!!! "Illicit Affairs" will probably come out in November or December (no promises--the number of WIPs I have is astronomical, I kid you not, and I don't know how to get to them all in time LMAO), but this is a snippet of what you will see in this fic! Also, please look forward to "Run, Run, Baby" and "Protect" (snippets of Hoshi's arc) as well, because they are parts of one big Mafia AU using different members' arcs and perspective. So, yeah, "Illicit Affairs" and "Run, Run, Baby" are parts of a Mafia AU! 😊

“We are currently searching for the gunman and one other confirmed accomplice who pretended to be the wedding officiator. As of now, however, we have no solid leads, no clues at all—we…we are still trying to get our bearings and are as of this moment figuring out a way to make sense of this attack. We are also confirming that we are taking into consideration the possibility that this might have been an inside job,” Chief of Police Kang Sejung states during the press conference held earlier this afternoon. “It is one of the most plausible theories that we have right now as to how the gunman and his accomplice could have entered and left this place without a trace.”

When asked about whether this case might have ties to the infamous Brotherhood, of which Congressman Shin’s family has long been suspected of having ties to, Chief Kang tersely responded, “The City has been safe from such violence for years now. There is no more Brotherhood. There is no more [mob-related] violence. Our City has never been safer than in our times today. This is an isolated case with possible designs of an inside job. And as we thoroughly investigate this tragedy, I am confident that the leads and results will show as such. That is all. Thank you."

More in-depth reports about this case will follow as details become clearer.

⧪

As the Officer pushed away the very thin case file, he closed his eyes and leaned back on his chair.

Many things have happened tonight. There were too many questions and too many uncertain answers. But there was only one thing on his mind that rang true.

"Fuck you, Kang Sejung," he growled underneath his breath as images of bodies mangled by fire and bullets flashed across his mind. "Fuck you and your lies. The Brotherhood is very much alive, and I say fuck you once more for trying to cover that up." He slammed his fist onto his desk. Pictures of the cathedral which had burned to the ground flew around him.

Breathing heavily, he got up from his seat and walked around the empty room of the Heinous Crimes Division. Computer screens lit up occasionally with the insignia of the City Police Department.

He was alone.

He was the only one who was truly searching for answers.

But he should have known that he would not find it within the databases of this City.

Something darker and deeper was at work the moment that gunman burned the cathedral to the ground. Perhaps even before that.

But there was one thing the Officer was sure of: the Brotherhood has not disbanded. And this atrocity was the very proof that they were still, very much alive.

I hope you liked it!!! 😊😊😊

HYERI’S WIP

AS IT TURNS OUT, I HAVE TWO STEAMPUNK AUS FOR JIHOON ASJHDDJFHAD I NEVER REALIZED IT;;; LIKE I TOTALLY FORGOT I WROTE THE SECOND ONE BUT GOOD LORD IM LIKING IT;; PROBABLY SOMETHING I’D LIKE TO DO PRETTY SOON!! so i guess i’ll just put two here skksksks

Steampunk AU 1:

“Knyazhna.” He hissed through teeth, exasperated that you never did try to be as malleable as other girls out there; and you could very well imagine the look of contained rage on his face. “I’m trying to protect you. And please, watch your language.”

“Don’t play mom with me Jihoon. I hear you cuss day in and day out,” you arched a brow, even though he can’t see you. “Besides, I bet you just want to chase crooks around too. Controlling dolls can be as boring as hell.”

Too annoyed to respond, Jihoon cut off the communication. He knew you were stubborn and if it were a normal day, he wouldn’t have any problem with a rebuttal, yet he was unwilling to bicker with his boss especially on an important run. Instead, Jihoon leaned against his seat and ran fingers through his bleached hair. The darkness of the room made his Cyrillic circle enchantment, with its cerulean glow illuminating his cheeks, obvious to the eyes.

He swept his finger in a deft curve along the outer ring; arranging the dolls to form a three-line barricade on your four sides in real time. It was simple information manipulation, but you couldn’t help but widen your eyes at what he did. The lines of dolls made you look like you’re the one needing protection from the criminal you were currently chasing after.

“Jihoon!”

You groaned, teeth gritting because of his passive-aggressive retaliation, unable to do anything but go with it. It was more than entertaining to push his buttons, knowing that he’d rather have you behave like a sweet little girl, which you aren’t; thus creating ripples of havoc in his head. However, you knew more than to childishly fight back; it was important that you catch this guy and you needed your right-hand man for it to be possible. Jihoon can kiss my toes later.

FREAKIN LOVE THIS ^^^^^^^ (Knyazhna i think is ‘princess’ in Russian;; so it’s more like a title than YN’s actual name!)

Steampunk AU 2:

“You don’t look so good.” He sighed.

A voice—slightly annoyed, but mildly worried—reached your ears as you sought where it had come from. Training your head, you saw a figure beside you as he observed your countenance for any sign of major discomfort.

You gazed at him with dazed eyes, and noticed that he had soft platinum blond hair, chocolate brown orbs for eyes and plump pink lips, often in an adorable pout. He had a look of concentration, wrecking his brain for any ideas on how to take care of someone who seemed so weak.

It might’ve worked, you guessed so, as he raised his hand to feel your forehead for any heat way above the usual. You would’ve jerked aback only if you weren’t so uncalibrated and frail.

He hummed. “You don’t seem to have a fever…I guess all you could do now is rest.”

The young man sighed once more and stood up, the sleeves of his white button up shirt falling past his arms, seemingly too big for him. Yet he doesn’t seem to mind, and carried the pail of your vomit somewhere. You watched him go; his back the final image you saw when your eyes fell like heavy curtains.

#wips #svt wips #svt imagines #svt au #ask leanne and hyeri!!!#WE ARE SO EXCITED FOR THESE STORIES TO COME OUT!!! 💗

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amandabe11man · 4 years

Text

a VERY LONG post about Hell on Wheels

YEAH i forgot about this post in my drafts... it’s been like a year since i finished the show now and i feel i’ve barfed everything out into this post (that i can think of), so here it goes (you’ll have to shield your eyes after the spoiler warning if you don’t wanna be spoiled btw. i can’t seem to be able to add a read more-link...) :

SO... i finished watching “hell on wheels” at last, pm half a year since i started. it’s funny because i was under the impression that i’d sOMEHOW be able to binge all five seasons within just one month (reason: i wanted to watch it before my free trial on HBO’s website went out). honestly, that wouldn’t have been possible because it was a LOT more emotionally draining than you’d think at first glance... after being gutpunched three times in a row in season 4, any reasonable human would need a little break.

anyway, it feels-- weird. i’ve never been big on following tv-shows so i haven’t been able to relate to that feeling ppl describe once they’ve finished a show they’ve become so attached to, except NOW i can relate. the show’s not groundbreaking, it’s not perfect, but i’ve had a lot of fun. what a ride it’s been...

looking back, i’d say HOW’s biggest weakness is its tendency to forget or ignore certain plot points. i guess that’s not too weird, with such an arsenal of characters, but still, i find that’s what bugged me the most, if anything bugged me at all. for example--

[SPOILERS for those who might wanna watch it after seeing me go on abt it, idk]:

first off, what REALLY grinds my gears is how ezra dutson’s plotline was handled. it was set up perfectly in the beginning; having him escape from the swede (who promised him that, and i quote: “i’ll find you, ezra! i always do”), the original plan was obviously for ezra and the swede to “reunite” some time in the future so that ezra could tell everyone that the swede killed his parents, thus tying up loose ends and giving some closure to that whole arc. some might say this would’ve been too predictable, but i would rather have that predictable storyline than having it just end unceremoniously like it did, with ezra dying ACCIDENTALLY and off-screen by sidney snow’s hand, simply as a way to further bohannon’s pain and set the stage for ruth’s final arc. this might’ve been fine, if the writers had made it so that ezra actually, y’know, TOLD SOMEONE WHY HE’S AN ORPHAN TO BEGIN WITH. but they didn’t even give the viewer that form of closure, instead just deciding to use him as a plot device for the other characters’ increased angst... bohannon and the others were never even made aware of ezra’s last name, and this is all what bugs the everliving SHIT outta me: the only ones who know, or will EVER know, ezra’s full story is the swede and the viewer, tho after season 4′s end, ezra is never mentioned or acknowledged again-- not by bohannon, and not even by the swede. ezra went from convenient character with a PURPOSE to “nameless” orphan forgotten by history. thanks, writers...

then there’s the whole deal with campbell coming to town to reinforce The Law™, which wasn’t a bad arc, mind you-- campbell and his goons were the most infuriating little shits for a while there-- but the thing is; didn’t campbell LIE to his men about the president giving him the position as governor? i might’ve misunderstood it, but i’m PRETTY sure the president didn’t give him THAT much of an upstanding role, but that campbell just went ahead and took that position anyway? if that was indeed the case, then that’s another plot hole, cause nobody finds out about campbell’s possible trickery to become the governor. nobody rats him out, despite literally no one in “his” town liking him all that much, so they’d have no reason to protect his “secret”. (correct me if i’m wrong on this one though. i might be misremembering things)

then there’s the other pretty infuriating issue of bad guys never getting called out for doing bad shit (unless it’s the swede, who gets all the blame, all the time), for example:

major dick bongbendix(???idk he had a silly name like that) is presented VERY MUCH as a bad guy in the beginning. y’know, just casually beheading natives on all his missions and collecting those heads and taking them to the bar like a fucking nutcase-- those little details. he also seemed to believe in racial biology, so yeah, definitely not a good guy. but by the end, he’s been watered down into some quirky guy who’s ALMOST on friendly terms with the main characters. yeah, uh-- seems everyone (writers included) collectively forgot the whole public display of cut-off heads he had going on...

aaron hatch: started off as a guy too proud for his- or his family’s own good when he shot the police officer, BLAMED IT ON HIS FUCKING SON and then just kinda let bohannon hang the kid even though it was pretty obvious hatch was just shifting the blame away from himself. THEN he reappears with some other mormons and causes a full-on shootout in the town (probably getting some people killed, i don’t remember), TAKES EZRA (also a mormon) HOSTAGE SO THAT BOHANNON WILL COME WITH THEM WILLINGLY and passive aggressively forces bohannon to marry his daughter who bohannon knocked up. somewhere along the line, hatch’s bad side is just thrown to the wind, and bohannon at one point describes him as “a good man”. yeah, ABOUT THAT--

sean and mickey mcginnes: unlike the ones mentioned above, these two started out as seemingly decent dudes, but ended up pm as secondary villains in the end. however, like the ones mentioned above, they hardly face any consequences for whatever crap it was they did in boston, OR the fact that they killed and fucking mutilated/dismembered a man in cold blood (a man who WAS gonna kill them, yes, but HE did it because he thought they had killed his friend, which wasn’t a farfetched idea since mickey DID brag about killing the dude even though he didn’t actually do it). sure, they face their OWN demons as time goes on, they get ostracized, and they start losing faith in each other as well, which ends up with mickey killing sean before the latter can confess(?) his/their crimes. so, while sean was spineless and a creep, at least he thought about finally owning up to what he’d done in the end, whereas mickey lives on to keep doing shady shit, killing people, and getting increasingly more corrupt. he does end up pursuing new goals in the end, but it’s obvious he’s not happy about it anymore. that’s-- really all the comeuppance he ever gets, and the only one who knows about his shady businesses are pm just bohannon, durant and eva (also, personal gripe here-- they seemed to not settle for “just” tarring and feathering the swede and publicly humiliating him, but i’m pretty sure i recall mickey telling bohannon they were thinking about having the swede killed too. keep in mind, this was BEFORE the swede truly lost it and started killing people left and right. apparently, being kind of a douche about taxes is bad enough to warrant being tortured and cast out by the entire community... i’m obviously biased here, but still-- the mcginnes bros’ double standards are amazing to behold)

now that i’ve aired some of that out-- here are some highlights, according to me:

unexpected friendships, like that between eva and durant. i’d say the swede finding that stray dog and fawning all over him qualifies into this category too

durant and campbell fighting in the mud before finally coming to an agreement -- just- durant and his competitors being petty as fuck, honestly. it’s hilarious

bohannon trying to get through to elam by reminiscing about their friendship, especially since bohannon isn’t one to show his feelings often OR get sappy -- in fact, EVERY time bohannon loses his stoic facade is a good moment. when he was gonna bury elam and he just broke down completely for the first time since we were introduced to him... that shit had me in tears as well, but man was it a great scene

jimmy two-squaws

every time the swede opens his mouth (yes, even when he’s spouting some lies and bullshit like that)

ruth’s character development. i admit i didn’t like her at all in the beginning, idk something just felt off about her, but man did she ever grow on me. just-- how everyone kinda relied on her eventually, even though she’s only like in her 20′s or something... she still became a pillar of the community. bless ya, ruth :’ı -- also, her essentially adopting ezra was Pure as heck. I Lov it

the fact that this was the 1800′s and the only backlash the (openly) LGBT characters faced for it was pm just “yeah they’re a bit confused maybe but they’re not hurting anyone”. maybe that’s not very realistic but WHO GIVES A SHIT AMIRITE

mr tao just being a sweet old man

chang’s sunglasses, straight out of Django Unchained

mr toole’s complete heel-turn from racist POS to someone who sticks by his word to turn himself around. that shit was impressive coming from him, tbh

bohannon just calmly running into a buffalo by the train tracks

mei posing as a grown man instead of a boy (which is what she looks and sounds like, oml)

another thing i realized is that bohannon is a classic gary stu. there’s just no getting around that fact after seeing him being revered by most everyone he meets, how he’s somehow the only person able to build the railroad(s) fast and efficiently, and even wooing the literal PRESIDENT and becoming close friends with him-- all this despite his Bold and Brash personality. of course, there’s more to bohannon than these gary stu-symptoms, but i felt someone should bring it up, for the lulz

#hell on wheels #amc

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toonstarterz · 5 years

Text

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #161

Ah, the After-Suspension Party. Nearly everyone expected it was gonna happen to some degree. But just because it was predictable, that doesn’t mean it can’t be meaningful. Specifically, we see the core members of the Tomoko “harem” (I use the term half-jokingly because it’s just easier) progress in ways that you might not have expected them to, but it’s all-the-more welcome simply because of how hard our girls are trying to get their “best ending”.

Chapter 161: Because I’m Not Popular, Things Will Go Back To Normal

Interesting choice to have Hirasawa and her BF on the splash page this time, considering they’re not in this chapter at all otherwise (though it’s not like Nico Tanigawa haven’t done it before). From the looks of thing, Hirasawa is gazing fondly at Ucchi’s compadres, yearning for the female friends she doesn’t have.

Could this be a preview for upcoming developments?

Your entire existence summed up.

There’s something oddly amusing about how Tomoko pointed out the dog while acknowledging Ucchi. Almost like she’s putting them on the same level.

Apology Progress: 21%

For everyone’s else insistence that Tomopup is kind of weird, it’s absolutely fitting that Nemo thinks it’s cute. I could go all pseudo-psychological about how Nemo is projecting her feelings about Tomoko onto the dog, but...

...that would be stating the obvious, wouldn’t it?

Apology Progress: 30%

“Stupid dog! You made her look bad!”

Notice how Tomoko has that extra shading on her when she pops the question? It makes the exchange feel ridiculously dramatic, and if that isn’t the mangaka toying with shippers, I don’t know what is.

Apology Progress: 90%

See? Now that wasn’t too hard, was it, Ucchi? The first step to improving oneself is admitting to your mistakes. You’re lucky that Tomoko doesn’t care that much about you to hold a grudge, but still, it took guts to humble yourself before your crush. Now you can put all that animosity behind you and move ahead to finally admitting your feel–

Apology Progress: -5%

Nah, just kidding. I knew it was going too smoothly. I’d be pissed if I wasn’t laughing too hard.

Oh, wow. Katou is actually giving Ucchi the “How would you like if they did that to you” lecture. As if her mom-level wasn’t already off the charts.

Props to the translator for finding a great alternative to use in place of “yabai”. It’s not the same word, but the reasoning still applies just as effectively as the original.

Nice save, Ucchi.

NOT.

Apology Progress: -10%

Confession Progress (Part 2): 18%

...go on.

This close. We were this close to Ucchi finally admitting to Tomoko’s face that she finds her attractive. It’s taken a mountain of digging and prodding at Ucchi’s psyche, but her inner feelings have finally skirted the surface. Unfortunately, the plot demands that Ucchi’s progress has met its quota for the day.

Hina Nemoto: Professional normie/otaku hybrid, aspiring voice actress, and now, expert wingwoman.

Hey, Nemo...

YOU WANT SOME ICE FOR THAT SICK BURN???

Oh, Katou. Your motherly tenderness transcends the species barrier.

Oh, Tomoko. I recommend you look up the word “projecting” when you get the chance. You may just learn something about yourself.

Oh, Ucchi. Your arsenal of kimoi-based puns knows no ends.

Oh, Yuri. Not so above it all after all.

So Tomoko really did succumb to a bit of cabin fever, after all. I can only imagine how much Tomoko might’ve regressed if she had to do suspension on her own.

Is it weird that Tomoko and Nemo’s passive-aggressive banter makes me nostalgic?

It’s been a while since we saw the two of them go at it like this. One key difference is that Nemo, in her growing admiration for the girl, is subtly complimenting Tomoko for how much she’s come out of her shell since the day they first met.

Take some notes, Ucchi.

Even when she’s a disembodied fantasy head used for narrative purposes, Itou still lights up whenever she gets provoked. It’s amusing how each character has their own quirk like–wait a minute.

Itou Hikari. (hikari = light). Oh...duuuuuuuh.

It took over two years, but what goes around has finally come around.

The fated first meeting between Tomoko and Nemoto may not have meant much for the former, but for the latter, it’s was the spark that made the otaku/normie into the girl she is today. From being the giver of fistbumps to becoming the receiver–it’s astounding how such a simple gesture can sum up their relationship like that.

Hey now, Tomoko. You can’t exactly judge Nemo when you’re the one who introduced it to her.

Take this with a grain of salt, but you ever get the feeling that Tomoko has memory problems? Forgetting Komi-something’s name, her brother’s school application, and now this? You could say it’s just her being a jerk and not retaining info she doesn’t care about, but maybe there’s something more to it.

(Nature documentary voice) “And here, we witness a wild Emoji Girl, commonly known as the “Ucchi”, assume the mating position as she targets her prey.”

You know what? I don’t even think Yuri is being that kuudere here. After their “date” at the recreation center. I’d say she gotten comfortable with not hogging Tomoko all for herself. Good on her, and good on Mako for looking out as always.

“As you can see, the Emoji Girl will attempt to cozy up against the elusive Tomoko by ordering the same beverage as her.”

That’s nothing new at this point, though it’s the first time Tomoko has been surrounded exclusively by the “popular” girls. (Yes, I know Yuri is right behind her, but still.)

I want to make some cheesy comment about how Tomoko and Yuri always have each other’s backs, but that would be...actually, screw it. They totally do.

I’m a sucker for shots like this where you can visually feel the “so near, yet so far” dynamic between two characters. Someone help me.

Rena, you ever think that being a repeat offender may have something to do with that? Or do you and Yoshida (not sure about Anna) have no concept of self-awareness?

Who’d of thought that Those Two Girls would someday be hanging out with Those Two Girls?

Actually, given the direction this manga has taken, it’s not that surprising. At first glance, it’s easy to think that Rena and Anna are a little too rowdy for the likes of Yuri and Mako. Thankfully, we have Yoshida acting as the “test run”, allowing Yuri and Mako to become accustomed to their delinquent atmosphere. Even if they don’t end up the best of friends (Rena, in particular, seems pretty high-maintenance), I don’t see any reason they couldn’t end up respecting each other.

Now these two, on the other hand, were secretly my platonic rareOTP. Anna's the most approachable of the Delinquent Trio, and her easygoing nature feels like it could smooth out Yuri’s rougher edges.

Yeah, I’m a sucker for Sweet Stoner x Wallflower pairings.

–discovered what hentai is!”

First off, Yuri is too freakin’ cute nibbling at her fries like that. They seem to be going for the “big eater” trope for Yuri, and I like how it’s being played with. Improbably thin girls with big appetites are a dime a dozen in manga, but Yuri feels different because it's not that she necessarily loves food. It’s just that eating is her way of busying herself when she doesn’t want to deal with social situations. As any introvert will tell you, it’s a natural habit when you can’t muster up the nerve to speak up in a group.

Yuri may fall behind the pack compared to the others, but what makes her special is that Tomoko will always look back for her.

Just, you know. Give her a week.

Smooth move, Tomoko! Calling Yuri by her first name in front of the others now? May as well have been a marriage proposal!

Nico Tanigawa are making it really hard for me to remove my (Friend)shipping Goggles when they include “long-lost lovers” dialogue like this. (Or maybe I’m the only one who sees it that way...)

Off-topic, but something about the perspective of this shot seems off. I think it’s the chairs’ different-sized legs.

This entire image just gave me Type 1 Diabetes.

There’s no grudge or snubbing that one might’ve expected from Yuri. Instead, Tomoko offered her a sincere–if not teasing–retort, and Yuri responded back in kind. The general hesitation that Yuri has when Tomoko’s being weirdly affectionate isn’t an issue anymore. But the sweetness dials up to eleven when you remember how Yuri flubbed the flirty joke Tomoko offered during the Mouseyland trip. Yuri’s learned how to banter with her, and best of all, she’s enjoying it. If that ain’t friendship goals, I don’t know what is.

You know a friendship has potential when you’re buying extra fries for the table.

If there’s an edge that Yuri has over the others right now, it’s that she’s acquainted with Tomoko’s actual soulmate, Yuu Naruse.

This chapter’s title is really misleading, but not by how it’s normally done by this series. It states that “things will go back to normal”, and back in the early days, it was meant to be ironic. It would suggest that Tomoko would return to her unchanging loneliness, only for us to be hit with the amusing realization that things have changed now that she’s made friends.

But here, it’s a double subversion. That chapter title is now being played totally straight. Everything we’re seeing now–Yuri opening up and being less possessive, Nemo’s “tough love”, and Ucchi’s whirlwind efforts of befriending Tomoko? That is the normal now. Tomoko’s improving high school life is no longer a shift in the series’ premise. It is the series’ premise.

To not be afraid of change without ignoring your roots is the true mark of what makes Watamote stand out as a coming-of-age story.

#watamote #watamote review #chapter 161 #no matter how i look at it it's you guys' fault i'm not popular!#tomoko kuroki #emiri uchi #hina nemoto #yuri tamura #masaki yoshida #mako tanaka #akane okada #asuka katou #anna haruna #reina #review

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