#also the eraser refused to let me live

[rjalker]

Dear people who aren't physically disabled who plan to write fantasy settings:

[ID: Several images taken from the Geordi La Forge yes and no meme format, with Geordi holding out a hand disapprovingly for the no section, then pointing in approval for the yes section.

The first image is the meme:

No: "Saying the existance of magic in your setting means there are no disabled people (this literally just means disabled people are killed. AKA eugenics)"

Yes: "Having disabled people who use magical mobility aids and other assistive devices. Realizing that someone is still disabled even if their prosthetic arm is made of magic instead of plastic."

This is followed by four more panels of yes section:

"Geordi la Forge is still literally disabled. His visor helping him does not erase his disability and make him magically abled."

"Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender is still literally disabled even though her Earthbending helps her. It does not make her disability ~magically~ go away."

"Having your disability be accomodated does not mean the disability goes away. Having a prosthetic hand, even one that's made of magic, does not mean you're not disabled."

"Magical mobility aids do not mean disabled people don't exist. It just means they use magical mobility aids instead of plastic or metal ones. A limb made of magic is still a prosthetic even if it's made of the soul of the universe instead of plastic and metal."

Then another no panel: "'There's no disabled people beacuse magic'".

Then one last yes panel: "'Magic helps disabled people in a variety of ways'".

End ID.]

This also applies to science fiction; just because Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand is super advanced doesn't mean it's no longer a prosthetic, or that he's not disabled. Same with Darth Vader - just because he has a suit that lets him breathe and walk around doesn't mean he's not disabled. (And Star Wars' propensity for making the villains visibly disabled while the heroes disabilities get covered up by super advanced prosthetics is a topic that deserves its own post, especially with how ableist some of the authors of the books are. Troy Denning is especially ableist)

Edit:

Because people keep being fucking obnoxious and ableist in the tags, yes,,, motherfuckers, if you refuse to have disabled people in your setting, that does make you fucking ableist. If you say that the magic is used to cure all disabled people and that's why they don't exist, that's fucking eugenics.

You cannot ""cure"", more like remove all disabilities without fucking eugenics. Magically automatically destroying disabled fetuses (a very fucking popular trope!) is eugenics.

The only way to fucking "cure" autism is to fucking kill all autistic people, also known as eugenics!

What about people with PTSD? Do you just fucking brainwash them so they aren't traumatized anymore?

Do you force all Deaf people to be able to hear? Do you force all blind people to be able to see? Do you force all anosmics to be able to smell?

Do you magically force everyone with a speech impediment to speak to your standards?

Do you force everyone born with bodily or facial differences to live up to your fucking standard of beauty?

You cannot fucking say "disablities don't exist in this universe because magic cures everything" without inherently saying that eugenics exists in your fucking universe.

Not all fucking disabilities need a cure. If you ""cured"" my autism I'd just be fucking dead. You'd literally just be changing me into what you think is fucking acceptable.

Stop fucking arguing in defence of ableists on my fucking post so you can pretend that eugenics has never been written about in magical settings when it is extremely fucking prevalent.

And while we're fucking at it, let your gods damned characters become disabled over the course of their story, and call them disabled within the fucking story. I don't care if they're a robot. I don't care if they have magic. Not all fucking damage can be fixed. Curses exist. Hardware can go out of fucking date and no longer be manufactured anywhere.

Let your characters become disabled and do not magically fucking cure them back to brand new every single time they get hurt. The only thing you accomplish by doing that is destroying any chance of ever having stakes.

No, "magical healing leaves scars on the mind from the memory of the injuries though!!!!" is not fucking good enough. Let your characters have scars. Let them become disabled. Stop being fucking ableist cowards.

Edit number fucking 2:

No, motherfuckers, you do not get to comment "if the disability was caused by magic it's not ableist to cure it with magic". You are the ableist this post is about. Shut the absolute fuck up, stop treating being disabled as the worst possible outcome, and just admit you're a fucking ableist. If you don't want your characters to become disabled, then don't fucking make them disabled.

[ID: The Garfield "you are not immune to propaganda" meme, now edited to read:

"If your first thought upon reading this post is, 'Oh, but it's okay to magically cure disabilities caused by magic!' Congrats…you are the exact sort of ableist jackass this post is about."

End ID.]

Edit number fucking 3:

Autistic people exist! People who are born with disabilities exist! You cannot create a setting where disabled people do not exist because we're all "cured" or "fixed" and not inherently say that you are killing disabled people as soon as they're born, or fucking aborting us as soon as you figure out we'd be born disabled! That's fucking eugenics!

There is no way to "cure" autism without eugenics! There is no way to "cure" people with body differences without eugenics! There is no way to make disabled people nonexistant in your setting without eugenics! Thinking you can and should "cure" and "fix" all disabilities IS EUGENICS!

Also:

[ID: A character shouting at the camera, now edited to read: "Shut up about Dungeons and Dragons! Shut up about Dungeons and Dragons! If the rules of Dungeons and Dragons are ableist, then fucking change them! It is your fucking personal responsability to be a better person than your bigoted society wants you to be!". End ID.]

[ID: White text on a dark brown background with white and black borders around the edges, that reads:

"I don't fucking know or care about Dungeons and Dragons.

This post is not about Dungeons and Dragons.

Do not fucking throw the rulebook of Dungeons and Dragons at me like it's some sort of 'Gotcha!'.

You will literally just be blocked like the rest of the ableist assholes who've already tried it.

If you play dungeons and dragons, it's your responsability to make your games not be ableist, even if it means breaking the rules.".

End ID.]

I do not fucking care what the ableist rules are in Dungeons of Dragons. Do not fucking throw ableist rules for a game I have never and will never play at me on a post I made so that people could learn how to make their settings less ableist. If the rules in Dungeons and Dragons are ableist, then fucking change them. If you don't want to change them, then stop fucking playing an ableist game.

Disabled people deserve to see ourselves represented in fiction just like everyone else, without any fucking requirements that we be "cured" or "fixed" before the story ends.

How the fuck would you feel if a trans and gay character's whole story revolved around going on a quest to become straight and cis, did so, and only then was allowed to live happily ever after?

Why do you fucking think suggesting people write stories about disabled people going on a quest to be cured because it's the only way they'll ever be happy is any less fucking offensive?

Also:

This post is NOT a place for you to talk about how disabled people in fiction should have the option of curing their disabilities. It's just not. That's the fucking default for this society. That is not a revolutionary concept. It's not novel. We fucking know this society wants us gone. A post about how disabled people deserve representation is not the place to talk about how "Well, actually, in fiction disabled people should be cured!" Like that's not the fucking universal default???????????

Edit #4:

Everyone needs to stop tagging this singing praise for Fullmetal Alchemist. A story that uses disability as a punishment and the characters are on a quest to cure their disabilities is not the amazing representation you're all claiming it is just because the character who is only disabled because of DIVINE PUNISHMENT uses prosthetics.

Read this post, and this one. Fullmetal Alchemist is a hell of a lot more ableist than you people are letting on.

guess what you can now find a PDF version of this post on the web archive.

Edit #5! August 23rd, 2023!

A) Everyone. Disabilities that can only exist in the magical setting are still disabilities.

Trying to cure the younger brother's magical disability of being a soul floating around in a magical suit of armour is, in fact, going on a quest to heal a disability!

It doesn't matter if the older brother doesn't want to get his limbs back when they're going on a quest to heal the younger brother's disability! Especially when they BOTH get magically healed at the end!

Magical disabilities that can only exist in that setting, but not real life, are still disabilities, and it's not okay to magically heal them either! What part of the Garfield meme on this post did you all choose to ignore?!

B) When you leave tags on a post you are reblogging, the original poster can see them! When you leave tags on this post, I can see them!

If you think this post is ""too aggressive"" then simply do not reblog it! Don't fucking tone police me on a post I've had to edit five times now due to the constant ableism people have been commenting since I made it!

I have been called the R slur by multiple people in response to this post! People have literally reblogged this post to defend eugenics abortions! You can't see these comments or replies anymore because I blocked the poster!

If you think minorities are being too aggressive by responding appropriately to bigotry, you're a bigot! And you should either not reblog the post at all, or at the very least, shut the fuck up and not tone police us!

Do not fucking put tags on this post complaining I'm being too aggressive! That's called tone policing and you're a bigot if you do it! Don't fucking do it on anyone else's posts either! They can see your tags too!

C) When I fucking say Harry Potter fans are banned from this post, yes, this means YOU!

Either stop supporting a billionaire who's literally using the profits from her bigoted shittily written books to fund REAL FUCKING GENOCIDE, or fuck off!

By continuing to support the Harry Potter series, you are literally giving JK Rowling free fucking advertising! You are encouraging more people to read the series and watch the movies, spending more money and giving her more fucking money with which to LITERALLY SHAPE A COUNTRY'S LAWS TO COMMIT GENOCIDE. She is literally fucking fighting to make being trans illegal! She is literally fucking fighting to have even more of autistic people's rights taken away!

You cannot fucking be a fan of the Harry Potter series in 2023 and call yourself an ally to all the minorities harmed by JK Rowling and the bigotry baked into her shitty series!

Read another book! The Web Archive has tons you can read for free! Literally every single book on gutenberg.org/ is free! Including audiobooks for some of them!

If you write Harry Potter fanfiction, simply fucking get rid of the names and identifiable features and start writing original fiction instead! It's literally free!

Not supporting a literal fucking genocidal billionaire costs LITERALLY NOTHING! And if you refuse to fucking stop supporting JK Rowling, which is what you are doing when you support the Harry Potter series and squeal over her OCs, you are not an ally to any fucking minority! No! Not even if you're trans yourself!

= = =

Edit again Nobember 28th 2023 because this comment is just. such a perfect example for all of you that think this doesn't happen.

butter-whore2 said, two hours before this edit:

kind of a fan of tumblr's slightly more algorithmically elements for reminding me of the hell's other people construct for themselves but this one hits like five of the boxes. How do people do this to themselves? it's such a bizarre way to act over media I genuinely do not believe is capable of stirring an emotional response the metaphysics of disability here are unintentionally really funny but disability is not a coherent ontological framework, it's a vague descriptor for literally thousands of different things none of which lend themselves to categorizing Moralizing over fiction is incredibly lame.

Liking harry potter is also incredibly lame, it's not morally wrong nor transphobic and you do not get to decide that lol. people literally do get "cured" of their disabilities all the time, many of them have a positive experience in doing so. this is not what eugenics is.

the anti abortion stuff lol

Literally how do you live like this? you guys don't even read real books I don't get it.

Archived version of the comment for posterity.

So yeah, lofl, block this fucker.

#long post #described images #fantasy #writing #writing tips #writing advice #fantasy writing #writing fantasy #scifi #science fiction #also applies to scifi #Luke Skywalker's not magically abled because his prosthetic hands advanced #disability #disabled #physically disabled #neurodivergent #<- so more people see it #and beacuse a lot of just neurodivergent people are really fucking ableist towards physically disabled people #especially people who only have ADHD or are just Autistic #and if me saying that pissess you off guess what? You're probably the exact sort of person I'm talking about. #Newsflash: I'm autistic. I have ADHD. I'm also physically disabled. #And I constantly see people wiht ADHD and autistics being ableist as shit #to both physically disabled people and other neurodviergent people. #You are not immune to being ableist just because you're also disabled.

[vashtijoy]

have you seen the commentary from the p5r artbook going around? the shuake part of my dash is losing it a bit at the implication that their wishes were mutual!!! that seems to be what some people are getting from the commentary at least… amy insights?

Hi! I have been through the artbook. It's great, isn't it? :D

The image above is called "One Ending", and the creator caption (by illustrator Akane Kabayashi) reads:

When I think about how Akechi's wish was to play chess after school with the protagonist, I almost want to call him out with "You liked him after all, didn't you!"

Look at that. We're told about Akechi's wish, and what it included. We're as good as told outright that he likes Joker—and this isn't the only time, there's also this:

—There are a whole lot of things we can imagine, based on how the protagonist was depicted as someone special to Akechi. Those are more or less the exact emotions represented during Akechi's confidant. (Mumon Usuda, chief designer)

"someone special" here is 特別な存在 tokubetsuna sonzai—literally "a special presence". It means a special person, and more than that; it describes someone you find compelling, someone you can't look away from, someone who becomes one of your most important people, the centre of your world. It's another term that is often romantic, but isn't necessarily romantic.

(In the same way, I think Kabayashi's suki jan! is more tongue-in-cheek than it is a cast-iron confirmation that Akechi was canonly in love with Joker. The language there is teasing, it's ambiguous, it's baity; Kabayashi is joking. This is a rank 6—as they say, if you know, you know. But it is of course ultimately up to all of you.)

There's another mention of this image, down in the creator interview:

Out of all the Maruki ending illustrations, it was Akechi's that stuck with me the most. It made such an impression to see them opening up as friends, having a fun, peaceful time together like high school students should. (Mumon Usuda, chief designer)

What really strikes me in all of this is the emphasis the creators put on the fact that this is Akechi's illustration, Akechi's wish. Because I've thought for a while that we know Akechi has a wish. You can see him struggling with his refusals to Maruki in the first week of January. And you can hear his wish spoken—when Maruki repeats it back to him, during the boss fight, on 2/3:

Maruki {F1 81}君たちとなら、君も過ちのない道を歩めるかも知れないじゃないか！ {F1 81}-kun-tachi to nara, kimi mo ayamachi no nai michi o ayumeru kamoshirenai ja nai ka! If you're with {F1 81}―kun and his friends, you could begin to atone for what you've done! Think about it! With [Amamiya]-kun and his friends beside you, you could choose a path with no mistakes as well!

So this wish has several parts. First, there's that kimi mo, "you also"; it's tempting to read this as Maruki also wanting his new world to erase his past mistakes. Second, there's the first part, "if you're with [Amamiya]-kun and his friends". Where to even start here?

Being with Joker and the others is a prerequisite for the second half of Akechi's wish. It doesn't just coexist, it enables the rest of it. Just like his words in the engine room, "I wonder why we couldn't have met a few years earlier, [Ren]..."

Remember, Akechi's whole arc is about his rejection of trust and friendship, and his insistence on doing everything himself. This is precisely what Futaba calls him out on—"you trusted no one", or "you played life in single-player mode". This is what he unlearns at the climax of the engine room, when he realises he isn't prepared to let the others die—and follows through to save them.

Akechi is nothing without others, and he knows it. Without their support, which he believes he has no right to, he has no hope of living a better life, even were he to be given the chance—and he knows that, too. He has learned, and he has grown—and yet he knows the things he needs and wants so badly are forever inaccessible.

And his wish is about all the Phantom Thieves, not just Joker. There are many tiny references to this end—not least the original Japanese rank 10 line for his confidant, where he sacrifices himself for all of you. Joker is his compelling presence, his someone special, but he's formed small bonds with the others too, God help him.

and then there's the crime thing

The localisation frames Akechi's wish in terms of atonement, but that's not what's on offer. You cannot, after all, atone for things you never did. We see Akechi's wish put into practice, in the Maruki ending, where he appears with his friends beside him, wholly innocent and with unstained hands. And we see it in the first week of January, after he has finally met Maruki and spoken to him:

Akechi: Ah, that reminds me—there was one more thing I wanted to tell you. Akechi: About the reality Maruki's put us in... Akechi: It seems that Okumura and Wakaba are both considered alive by all accounts. [Ren: They're not dead anymore? / What do you mean?] Akechi: They aren't mere illusions, or cognitive beings—they truly are alive and existing in this world. Akechi: In fact, their deaths seem to have never taken place at all in this reality. [Ren: What happened to Shido?] Akechi: Shido was the only one arrested on the crime of attempting to overthrow the government... Akechi: It seems the Phantom Thieves were causing a stir in this society as well, but there's no record of your arrest now. Akechi: Basically, in this reality, you and I haven't committed any crimes.

While Akechi still remembers his crimes, they never took place. They have been undone, and only his lingering memory—and Joker's, at this point—speaks to them. He objects to this on countless levels, he summons all the strength he has to refuse it, but don't make the mistake of thinking that means he doesn't want it. This is Akechi's wish in action.

People are often very certain that Akechi's resolve in the third semester is like iron—that he rejects Maruki's offers right away, is never tempted, never wavers. But that can't be true. We know he's afraid to die. We know about the bad end where you don't complete the Palace, where Akechi says nothing and stares at the floor, seemingly blaming himself internally while all the others blame themselves aloud, for being unable to say no to Maruki's temptations. We know how he responds to this assertion of Maruki's—Maruki, who has perfectly summed up what we know all the other PTs wanted, and who (even if Word of God hadn't just confirmed Akechi's wish) we have, honestly, no reason to doubt.

Because Akechi never refutes this wish that Maruki describes. He never says he doesn't want it. He just rejects it—like all the others, who so desperately want what Maruki could give them. Futaba's mother, Haru's father. Akechi's life, and his innocence. And the people who might have been his friends, if he could dare, one day, to ask.

Akechi is tested just like the others, and the price he pays for his defiance is perhaps the highest of all.

and finally

[The Maruki ending illustrations are] of Maruki's world, where everyone's wishes are granted and they seem happy. The scene shows their actualised wishes, which were never granted in the real world. (Mumon Usuda, chief designer)

We shouldn't forget the price Akechi pays for his impossible wish. Sure, the vision of himself being altered like Sumire clearly haunts him, and I'm sure it made the choice easier—but I don't think it made it that easy. Instead of taking the dream Maruki offered him, Akechi chose to face up to what he'd done, and who he'd become; at the very end, in the third semester and in the engine room, he always makes the right choice.

And that choice was taken away from him. Agency over his life and death, his own acts, and who he would even be—Joker and Maruki take it all away from him and make him a puppet, just like Shido.

Maruki's ending isn't pretty.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/03/29)—first published.

#asks #persona 5 #p5 meta #things i translate #japanese language #word of god #shuake #goro akechi #takuto maruki

[stolemyspoons]

Stranger Things and Netflix are trying to capitalize off the Holocaust.

No, this is not a joke. This is not a stretch of the imagination. And no, I’m not putting a read-more on this post because it deserves a full look-through. This is happening in Lithuania, right now, where Netflix has turned a former Nazi prison into a Stranger Things themed hotel.

Yes, you read that right. Just a quick Google search will confirm its existence. The Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, Lithuania is a former Nazi prison. In a country that already tries to erase it’s involvement with the Holocaust (I’m still talking about Lithuania), this offense is particularly egregious.

Here’s the change.org petition that @chaosklutz​ sent me that first alerted me to this abhorrent, insensitive bullshittery: https://www.change.org/p/hold-netflix-and-stranger-things-accountable. 

Copy-pasted below is the description from the petition.

It has come to the attention of the Jewish and Rroma community that the new season for Stranger Things was filmed in the Lukiškės prison in Lithuania. Though having functioned as a prison centuries before, it became notorious during WWII for it's Nazi involvement and the kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture of about 100,000 Jews, Rroma, and political prisoners.

To make matters worse, Stranger Things and Netflix have both agreed to turn Lukiškės into a fully functioning hotel, ran by Airbnb, where visitors can spend the night in themed cells, tour the Stranger Things themed building, and make waffles. The price ranges from about €104-114 a night and it was said to start it's function June 4th.

Fans of Stranger Things are now getting numerical tattoos on their arms because they are inspired by the show, the Stranger Things Instagram has even reposted photos their fans have submitted; thus encouraging their behavior. Not only does this mock the shared trauma of the Jewish and Rroma community, but it further desecrates the living memories of Holocaust survivors (a significant portion are alive today) and their descendants.

Lithuania is already known for their outright denial of their participation in the Holocaust and their allyship with the Nazis. Lithuania turned Seventh Fort, a concentration camp responsible for one of the worst mass killings in Lithuanian history, into a wedding venue. A Nazi prison where Jews, Rroma, and political kid prisoners were kidnapped, starved, imprisoned, and tortured is now a wedding venue.

We refuse to let this continue.

We, Jews and Rroma, call you to sign this petition and hold Stranger Things and Netflix accountable for their Holocaust erasure. Money earned from this season should be put back into the Jewish and Rromani communities of Lithuania as reparations for the damage this season is causing and a public apology from Airbnb, Netflix, and Stranger Things should be issued immediately with a full understanding as to how this adds to the erasure of the victims of the Holocaust and the ongoing persecution of Romani communities.  We also demand the immediate shut down of the Airbnb.

We will not be erased. The Holocaust is not for the entertainment industry to build wealth off of and turn into theatre. It is our genocide and for Rroma it is ongoing.

We hope to reach out to current Jewish and Rroma communities in Lithuania in hopes of help for accountability. Either way, sharing this petition, signing it, and donating to the Jewish and Romani organizations and charities below would be a great help! Thank you!

TO CONTACT US PLEASE EMAIL: [email protected]

WAYS TO SUPPORT THE JEWISH AND RROMA COMMUNITIES:

LIETUVOS ZYDU (LITVAKU) BENDRUOMENÈ (Lithuania Jewish Community): donations accepted! https://www.lzb.lt/en/

ERRC (European Rroma Rights Center): A perfect tool to learn, volunteer and donate http://www.errc.org/get-involved/donate

Domari Society: Rroma in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip! Donate, learn about them and support their businesses! https://www.sunbula.org/en/article/10/Domari-Society-of-Gypsies-in-Jerusalem The Jewish Center for Community Development: https://www.jdc-iccd.org/#about

ERGO (European Rroma Grassroots Organization): donate, learn, volunteer, and support their projects! https://ergonetwork.org

Memorial Museum of Holocaust in Lithuania and Vilna Ghetto: https://www.jmuseum.lt/en/about-the-museum-3/i/220/memorial-museum-of-holocaust-in-lithuania-and-vilna- ghetto/

Again, here is the petition link: https://www.change.org/p/hold-netflix-and-stranger-things-accountable.

Please sign and share the petition, and donate if you can. The signature goal is 7.5k - they’re almost there! We can surpass that goal!

This kind of behavior is utterly disgusting and those at fault need to be held accountable. If your blood isn’t boiling after reading about this, read again.

#serious post #change.org #petition #we need to stand up for our jewish and rroma friends #if not now then when? #please sign

[hikarry]

Badass Aziraphale is fun. We love to see him with all the divine wrath and playing the protector he was meant to be, blinded by love and duty. Eyes everywhere and flaming sword at hand ready to smite or confront anyone that dares step his way

And that's the version we see the most in the fandom. Vengeful angel Aziraphale Guard of the Eastern Gate raining righteous fury over anyone who dares harm Crowley

It's beautiful. Poetic even. I love it

BUT

There is nothing in this whole fandom that's more powerful and gorgeous than protective Crowley

That man knows what is like to lose the love of his life. He has lived it, for as brief as it might have been. All the despair, the lost of hope, the absolute loneliness. He has been there and that's a place he refuses to go back to

All the fear turned into rage. Ready to burn down Heaven and flood Hell to protect his angel. He might not be the strongest and he might not be a match for more than one archangel at a time, but he would rather die than let anyone take Aziraphale away from him again

He would become so blindsided by terror he wouldn't stop to think about the consequences. His only target is Aziraphale and Aziraphale only and he would pull any stunt to make sure he was safe and, do you wanna know the best part? This is canon

We have snippets of protective Crowley all throughout season 2 but this scene? Oh boy, this scene

Crowley doesn't trust Gabriel. He tolerates him because he promised Aziraphale he would help, but he is on high alert

As soon as Shax shows up and threatens Aziraphale, he redirects his fear turned rage towards his main target: Gabriel. Because this is his fault. Beelzebub is looking for HIM. They/Heaven indirectly threatened Aziraphale with being erased from the Book of Life because of HIM. If something happens to Aziraphale because of this stupid charade he got himself involved with because he promised to protect Gabriel, Crowley will hold no punches

He's already full to the brim with the stunt Gabriel pulled during Aziraphale's "trial". Oh no, Crowley hasn't forgotten his words and his righteous smile while he condemned the man he loves to death even though some years have gone by and he is still furious about it

He is a wrong step away from exploding and destroying everything that presents itself as a threat to Aziraphale in the moment.

He is so scared of everything (Gabriel, Beelzebub, Shax, Heaven in general, the Book of Life) that he spends most of the season compressed like a spring ready to pounce at the minimal real show of danger

The only reason he leaves Aziraphale with the demons in the bookshop to go and try to figure out what the absolute fuck is going on is exactly because the demons can't enter said bookshop and he trusts everyone present not to be stupid enough to let them in (I'm sorry, Maggie. I still love you babes)

The worst part is: all his fury, all his rage and fear are useless in the end because Aziraphale walks into the danger willingly and Crowley would face anyone that tried to hurt his angel, but the angel himself

Don't get me wrong, he sees the danger. Maybe a tad to late. After the demons are gone and so is Gabriel and Beelzebub, he let's his guard down and allows himself to truly relax, planning their little breakfast at the Ritz

Because he thinks it's over. He was completely blindsided by Metatron. He himself says "Go angel. No problem. Can't get weirder than whatever the fuck just happened". Oh my poor sweet summer child

But he does see the danger eventually and goes on high alert again, but it's too late. He would never hurt Aziraphale, but he pulls all the weapons on his arsenal to try and stop him from going where he can't follow. Where he can't protect him

And he fails. Like he always feared he would. Not only showing his hand to Aziraphale in a desperate attempt to protect him but also losing him in the process with nothing he can do about it but watch his angel go until the very last second

#im feeling angsty today dont @ me #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #david tennant #michael sheen #anthony j crowley

[groceryreceiptss]

hii! could you do peeta melark x reader? just some domestic sunday morning cuddling :) thanks so much!

'cause it's gravity, keeping you with me

peeta mellark x reader | word count : 0.9k | requested

a/n : hii!! to be honest, i wasn't really sure on how to write this so i'm really sorry if this wasn't what you had in mind, but i tried my best, and i hope you'll enjoy reading it either way! :) thank you for the request < 33 (also yes, i know the picture i chose doesn’t quite match the theme of this fic but look at him!! and look at that golden light on his face!!!)

contains : baddd writing. fluff -> soft intimacy!! but a bit of angst too if you squint. you know, longings and a sense of vulnerability. feelings of hopelessness and despair in the past. let me know if there's more!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

the soft morning sun drifted its way to your face, resting its warm light against your closed eyes. you were just about to give yourself an excuse to sleep in a bit later before you subconsciously remembered that, today is a sunday. no business in waking up early then, you thought, as you pulled the blanket closer.

you shifted a bit and shuffled in closer to peeta’s body next to you. His breathing met at the same pace as yours and his heartbeat the same thrum as the one you had going.

peeta mellark. you knew it was silly to dwell on what could have and would have, but every day, each morning, as you woke up to his comforting presence next to you, you couldn’t help but wonder, what would your life have become, if he hadn’t been there to keep it going?

the war had destroyed everything, leaving trails of loss in its path, wider than the land itself. you didn’t know what you would have done, if you hadn’t seen him again. if he hadn’t come back to your life and reminded you that there were still reasons to live and try to heal for.

and every day you woke up feeling more grateful than the day before.

you didn’t know if an hour had passed, or had it been merely minutes later, when you felt peeta’s arms on your waist, pulling you back onto his chest, engulfing you in more of his warmth, his comfort. his head nested on the crook of your neck, his messy golden blonde hair on your cheek.

in response and out of habit, you brought your hands to his curls, smoothing them softly.

“y/n, sweetheart?” he muttered, and you could feel his lips on your shoulder, sending vibrations onto your skin and bone. it was crazy how he could still make your heart skipped a beat like it was the first time.

“hm?” you responded, still not ready to part with sleep too much to say anything else.

his lips lost touch with your skin and moved on to your ear, whispering, “turn around, look at me please.” 

and so you slowly did. with your eyes still refusing to open, you felt his fingers playing with your hair, pulling them off your forehead. 

“morning, sleepyhead.” he chuckled, and you could tell that he was playfully rolling his eyes. he kissed your temple slowly, and you let your eyes flutter open. 

rubbing your eyes in an effort to erase the sleep out of them, you mumbled, “how are you already awake? it’s sunday.”

“old habits die hard,” he’d answered before you felt his hands on your wrists, stroking them softly with his thumbs. 

you placed your arms around his chest, and as if on cue, he pulled you closer to him, earning him a soft sigh. “do you think it’s physically possible for us to get any closer?” he wondered aloud with a way too cute smile on his face.

still not entirely conscious, you muttered without thinking, “maybe once our bodies have withered into skeletons." oh, you caught yourself. “oh wait, that's dark.” 

he let out a light laugh at your scrunched up eyebrows. “i love you.” 

you looked up at him, into his deep beautiful blue eyes. his eyelashes are so long. “i love you too, peet.” 

and you did, you really did. you told him that everyday, but you never did think it was enough. it was so dramatic to actually utter it, but you truly didn’t think there was enough variety in the english dictionary to fully capture this. this thing that passed between you and him.

as if hearing your quiet thoughts, maybe your eyes had displayed a moment of fragility in them, he responded saying, “i know, love, i know.” 

the grip on your waist held on tighter, like it was scared if it faltered, then it would lose. you mirrored his gesture and snuggled your head further into his chest, the top of your head touching his chin. 

“you want to get some breakfast?” he mumbled into your tousled hair. 

you thought about it for a second, but then shook your head. you looked up at him, a wide smile etched onto your face. “no, i’m good here.” 

you didn’t want to leave this yet, this sacred place. one where you could feel his signs of life all around you, one where you could shut the entire world all around you and its bleak reality and made it only consist of you and him. peeta mellark. 

was it possible to fall further in love with the same person every time you heard his name in your head? was it possible to have the same name echoed through your head over and over like a promise?

you saw his lips formed into a bigger smile, his fingers played with the strands of your hair. 

maybe you knew, maybe you didn’t, but all he could think about  at this very moment was how he had gotten so lucky. to have you here beside him, letting him love you and and letting him show it to you. he looked at your face, with that big smile on it, eyes still bleary from sleep. you were so beautiful, my god. 

he nodded, agreed. he didn’t want to leave too. if he could stay here forever, he would. it would be like having lived a lifetime itself, he thought. “yeah, me too." he said softly as he planted a kiss on your forehead. 

#this is literally the first time i have ever posted any of my fics on... anything so sorry if it's bad <3 #thank you for reading!! #peeta mellark x reader #peeta mellark fluff #peeta mellark angst #peeta mellark #the hunger games #thg #my writing! #requested

[inf3ct3dd]

ellie headcanons pt.5!!!

warnings: nada

content: loser!ellie x reader headcanons

authors note : ellie dug a hole into my skull and moved in

⁃ against bags for no reason. like her pockets are constantly full of things. random receipts, money, headphones, EVERYTHING. she takes her pants of and they jingle cuz they're filled with COINS.

⁃ knows how to do a back bridge and just HAS to let everyone know. you're watching tv and she's just on the floor like "look"

⁃ i feel like shes the type of person to just start fully eating an orange in the middle of class. like ur listening to the teacher talk and you're just hit by the most aggressive wave of CITRUS from behind you

⁃ constantly fighting the air... like she's just in the kitchen punching and kicking at NOTHING just because. she's always coming up to you and like take punching you and doing her own sound effects like “PWAH PWAH WAM WAPOW"

⁃ jar hoarder 😞😞 every time you buy anything that comes in a jar she's keeping it. literally won't let you throw them away!!! you guys don't even have cups anymore, its just jars and mugs.

⁃ speaking of mugs, ellie has just as many stupid mugs as she does stupid tshirts. absolutely has a lot of garfield mugs be she LOVES GARFEILD

- would buy a dry-erase board for your fridge and leave u little notes and drawings

⁃ "Every single time I see you, I become horny like a triceratops" with a little drawing of a triceratops"

⁃ breaks into incoherent ramblings when shes sleepy... like insane hypotheticals

"what if our bed just completely exploded right now"

⁃ whenever ur on facetime and it gets quiet she just breaks out into song. not even like good, trying singing but BAD SINGING.

⁃ she does that whenever it's quiet !!!

⁃ is listening to music CONSTANTLY. her headphones are actually attached to her ears like all DAY she's listening to something.

⁃ HATES THE BIG LIGHT (iykyk) she lives for low/ natural lighting definitely has so many lamps and led lights

⁃ can never sit normal.... like she is not beating the gay ppl sitting weird allegations she sits so ODD

⁃ will spend literal hours in the pool. doing flips, pretending to be a mermaid, 'making up' her own tricks, she lives for it & !!!

⁃ refuses to dress right for the weather. it'll be like 90° outside and shes in a whole hoodie and jeans.

⁃ has the WEIRDEST subway order. probably puts banana peppers on her shit 😭😭 she swears its the best thing ever

⁃ love's campy comedy movies, esp lesbian ones and horror movies (but im a cheerleader, bottoms, scary movie, etc) also def loves coming of age movies

⁃ has a letterbox account and makes extremely thought provoking reviews

literally her

⁃ always taking candids of you, and they're literally her favorite pictures

⁃ every time she sees two things next to eachother she's like "oh my god it's literally us!!"

⁃ one time she crashed her car and it literally fully flipped over and she just crawled out of the trunk and called you like "you would NOT believe what just happened to me."

- absolutely a waffles girl she needs the texture she likes the CRUNCH

⁃ but like she also loves bacon pancakes. like she's obsessed w adventure time and she makes bacon pancakes ALL THE TIME and she sings the song while she makes them

- eats trail mix like all day....she buys the giant jars and you make fun of her cuz she "likes eating nuts"

⁃ the most secret swifty ever. like she refuses to let it be known but she fully sobbed when she listened to folklore for the first time

⁃ obsessed w those baby sensory videos. like she will literally be entertained for hours

⁃ LOVES the lego movies, esp lego batman

⁃ the MOST honest shit talker ever like you'll be like "yeah she's just a really bad person" and she'd be like "she's also like disgustingly hideous...

⁃ her search history isn’t even weird or gross its just…random. like she’s definitely googled “how do cotton candy machines work” before

⁃ family guy enjoyer.....

⁃ her cf story is like insanely long n its filled w random memes she reposts and insane ramblings

taglist!!!! if ur name is crossed i can't tag u :((

@syrenada @dinaissoprettyoml, @kingofmylastkiss @as2rid @greencacty @melissabarrerass @bratydoll @lov3lylotus @forelliesposts @echostinn @f3r4Ifr0gg3r @r3wbeef @leatheredhearts @mousymaven @mina-281@princessguardian444 @calystas-morning-tea @horror-whoree @slutshies @bearieio @mag-mfm @bubs-world @paran0id0blivi0n @sawaagyapong @bbygrIshelbs @gayh0rr0r @p|9ys @ellieslilsIvvt @dollietes @elliesmellsbadd @ibloom4u @ddreabea @beestar120 @brunettedolls-blog @girlwonderchloe @elliesgflol @maris-koffin @emonopolyman @iloveeyousblog @fr3sh-tragedies @ilovaffles @certifedcrybunny @elleatethat @baldph0bic @clouded-whispers @4rt3m1ss @saggykneecaps @swtsuna @ellesslutt @minixmel @yuyans-stuff @owmoiralover @thecowardwrites @lunascerebro @elliestrwbrry @iwantsoda @teeveegirl @dinasmoon @urnewghostfriend @k3ym4ra @bratzboydoll @ungodlyvenus @lav3nd3rhaze @scokslvoer @iloveunrealpeople @realwinehouse @nehemiahlicious @onedeaddreamer @teawithnosugar @r4t1ku5 @villainousbear @mentallymarriedtonatasharomanoff @gay4tiddies @uraesthete @lil-elliesgf @neighborhood-houseplant @sagessensationalstuff

#ellie williams x reader #loser!ellie #ellie x reader #ellie x y/n #ellie tlou #ellie the last of us #ellie williams x you #ellie williams tlou #tlou part 2 #tlou fic #tlou headcanons

[snowviolettwhite]

I just need to rant about the antisemitism in leftist spaces and the erasure and re-writing of Jewish history and heredity from people who claimed to be for marginalized and oppressed people. Because I have no where to let it out. I feel betrayed by the leftists and libels, like I can no longer trust them or feel safe around them, they claimed to care about me and Jewish people but they lied and are out for violence.

You can be for a free Palestinian without antisemitism. Some people are being disgusting with their hatred for Jewish people and wanting the annihilation of the only Jewish state. You can be against corrupt governments but innocent people shouldn't suffer.

People are using what is happening as an excuse to be vocal about their antisemitism. What is more upsetting is the fact the people who consider themselves goodhearted and for the oppressed being disgusting to Jewish people and refusing to see them as human than the right wing conservatives. Because at least I know they are dangerous and they are not hiding behind fancy words and trying to erase and rewrite Jewish history and identity.

The only reason Jewish people are considered "white" is because for thousands and thousands of years the been forced to leave their homes, forced to convert, be raped or be murdered. Another reason is to erase the historical oppression which has been going on for over three thousand years.

Jewish people have not even been considered white for hundred years and depending on where you live in the world Jewish people are still not considered white. In their legal documents it was literally listed that they were Jewish, not Russian. My parents are not even old, they are only in their early 50s. My family is from Soviet Russia and immigrated to the USA in the 1990s. My parents were not considered white in Russia, they would sometimes experience hate crimes and bullying because of their Jewishness multiple times a day. One of the reasons my parents moved to the United States was because it was one of the safest places for Jewish people. After the collapse of the soviet union the violence and antisemitism was a lot worse.

Your blatant antisemitism in the free Palestinian movement is scaring Jewish people away from it and the from left. Fyi, after Black Americans, Jewish Americas are the largest group to vote democrat and be involve in activism according to statistics and history. People are not calling Black American people or Native American people white or mixed even though Christian Europeans did similar things to those groups as well.

Frankly, I personally feel conflicted when I have to check white in a box because it means European descent, my family has no European ancestry. It is most Middle Eastern, West Asian and North African.

Also, we can talk about how Christian Europeans stole the term Caucasian. The actually Caucasus region is in West Asia and Eastern Europe.

Also I want to state Judaism in a ethnoreligion. People who convert to a different religion can still experience antisemitism. People who have Jewish ancestry but raised as a different religion can still experience antisemitism. Non practicing Jewish people can still experience antisemitism. You can change religion but you can not can your ethic background and your family history.

More than one group of people can be indigenous to a certain place.

Jewish people can not talk about just being Jewish without antisemitic comments, recently saw someone claim an anti-Jewish protest was actually a pro-Palestinian protest despite the the leader of the event literal said it was an anti-Jew protest. A pro Palestinian group wanted to hold a protest at the Holocaust Museum and the antisemitism has been on the rise for years.

My grandparent are Holocaust survivors my grandpa was almost killed by a Nazi in his hometown twice, my grandma almost died from the same thing the killed Anne Frank, I had family that was buried alive.

It has not even been hundred years since the holocaust happened, so stop claiming their is such a thing as Jewish privilege. Jewish people are still being murdered and bombed and all these terrible things for being Jewish.

#jewish history #antisemitism #jewish #leftist antisemitism

[tomlinfonda]

Inside me there are two wolves.

One who thinks that the writers are either stupid or cruel, and that the finale was so incomprehensibly bad that I shouldn't try to make sense of it. And that I should move on.

The other one is a subtext-and-metaphor-hungry beast that is manically obsessed with finding a reason, at least subtextually, for the incomprehensible mess they made out of these characters, especially Ted, in the finale.

Everyone is so right to point out that Ted in previous episodes would not have acted like this. I think the reason for the sudden regression in his character is Dottie.

That morning, full of smiles, in a good mood, Ted starts his walk to work.

He cheerfully strolls through the streets, saying hello to his neighbors, making chit-chat with them. He is (as Trent said it in 1x03) out there in the community. He is, more importantly, part of a community. Until suddenly-

"Mom?"

Dottie's arrival changes everything. Ted gets worse and worse throughout the episode. In the hotel room in Manchester, the football anthem "Blue Moon", with the haunting lyric "You saw me standing alone" plays over Ted's lonesome figure, in the shadows, depressed.

Juxtapose that with his first scene: the lively neighborhood and daylight.

At the end of the episode, his conversation with his (manipulative) mom hits him deep. He feels immense guilt over not being there for Henry. And he's been torn over this for the entire season.

His mom, and the way she acts, and the way she manipulates him, push him in the wrong direction: Kansas.

I think Ted has disassociated for most of the finale. But I also think that he is intentionally pushing people away. Maybe he thinks that this will make it easier for him to leave, maybe he thinks that this will make it easier for them to let him go. Maybe he just hates himself so much that he cannot accept their help. Maybe he feels guilty that they're showing him so much love, when he knows he will abandon them.

Either way, he quits. Something that he would not have done, even in season 1. So his regression goes farther than the first episode, deeper into his past. He goes from:

to having doubts on the plane about leaving without winning the whole fucking thing

but leaving anyway.

And this is one of the most curious things to me. Rebecca offers to bring Henry to him in England by helping relocate Michelle:

And yet, he refuses. So, sure, this is about being there for his son. But given the choice between his son with his beloved community, and his son without his beloved community, he chooses the latter.

I've heard the argument that we don't know for sure that Ted doesn't have a support system in Kansas. But from a narrative perspective, it's important that we haven't been shown that hypothetical support system at all. And given that he actually returns to Kansas without the one person who we know supported him before coming to England, it comes across as a terribly isolating situation.

So why would Ted choose to part from his found family, even though bringing his son into that family would be an option? My theory is that he just really fucking hates himself. I think he wants to punish himself, maybe for being away from Henry for so long, maybe for something else. I don't think he believes that he deserves love or even credit for how he helped the club.

I mean, Rebecca and Trent offer him exactly that this episode: credit for what the did for the club.

And he rejects them both, choosing instead to remove himself from their lives, to erase himself from the narrative.

I think he's lower mentally than we've seen him for a while.

I think he's in his dark forest.

So the plane departs and then lands. And Ted is back in Kansas, driven through the prosaic, picket-fenced, isolating, depressing American suburbs to the house where Henry and the ex-wife who doesn't love him are waiting for him.

And the light might be golden, and he might be reunited with his son. But as we close in on the last shot of the show, you can see his smile try to fight the sadness in his eyes and you know.

He's not happy.

#ted lasso #ted lasso spoilers

[astarions-wife]

I can’t believe it’s come to the point of analyzing Cazador for all of you, but considering the amount of “Cazador can be redeemed!” And “Cazador x reader” I’ve seen, I feel like i need to make this.

So you feel pity for Cazador because he also suffered at the hands of his master. Good. That’s the point. You should feel something for Cazador, he also suffered abuse, and was dragged into the cycle of it by Vellioth. It’s awful, it’s terrible, but it doesn’t mean he’s redeemable.

Very much so, when Cazador kills Vellioth and chooses to start the cycle of power and abuse over again, he was too far gone. He made the choice, the conscious choice to be the same as his old master. Of course he’s suffering internally, somewhere is the soul of someone who lost everything, and became something awful. However he doesn’t even say he wishes for a reset. He wishes for death. Only in death is he free of the cycle of abuse, for his role in it is too far gone at this point.

“Orin and Gortash have apologists!” They do, but they’re also under different circumstances. It’s also justifiable to absolutely hate Orin and Gortash (believe me, even as someone who believes Gortash could’ve been better, I killed him in my initial run). Specifically as the Dark Urge, you can tell Orin that she’s being used just as Kethric and Gortash were. She’ll even break down as if she’s realizing that all this death she’s done in the name of her father/for her God, has been her being taken advantage of. Though she never gets a chance to be better, because she’s forcibly transformed in this ending, it’s just a sneak peak of what could have been. She was being used, and while it doesn’t erase or justify ANYTHING she did (and you’re well within your right, and should hold her accountable), it at least gives the player insight on to what could have been.

Likewise with Gortash, a victim of abuse at the hands of Raphael, with canonical lines on how he was beaten in the House of Hope as a little boy. His own parents sold him out, and he ended up being so desperate to be bigger, to have more power, that he also let himself be used, and in turn lost everything he worked hard for (and sold out Karlach, which is absolutely unforgivable of course). However he wasn’t too far gone. You can see his loyalty to you depending what options you pick, and although death is his inevitable end, it still shows that there was still a person inside.

There wasn’t a person in Cazador anymore. He was trapped behind the wall of abuse that he continued, and refused to even acknowledge it, or try and see reason. Perhaps it wasn’t possible for him, but ultimately his actions brought him here. Those that say Ascension for Astarion would free him of those chains, are simply wrong. Why does Astarion deserve to live, anymore than his siblings? Or the seven thousand people who were turned against their will? Of course Astarion is more, controlled in his hunger—but so are his siblings. Even speaking to them after the fight they’ll all vow and attest that they can control themselves, and they’ll even help the others if brought to it.

Ascended Astarion picks up the abuse cycle, killing thousands of people with just his first command. Ascended Astarion no longer speaks to you, but instead at you. You’re his “favorite” spawn, but then again Cazador had favorites didn’t he? And all of them suffered just as badly as the rest. Ascended Astarion even mentions “covering the world in darkness for his spawn”, which shows him continuing the abusive cycle that got Cazador in the first place.

Cazador dying, and spawn Astarion choosing to break the cycle is the significant ending. The best ending for Cazador, the only one for him, is to let him die. He’s a horrible, cruel, bitter man, and any sense of his humanity died long ago. Only in his dreams is there anything left, and he’s too cut off to even reach them anymore.

We also know that the Szarr’s had family. There are relatives to Cazador (see his niece), and clearly it wouldn’t have been wrong of him as a vampire to have a family if he so chose. But he didn’t seek out a partner, like some of his other (vampire) relatives did. He chose to only live by his spawn, whom he considered his children, showing that he truly didn’t see a need for a partner. Themes of family are a vital part of his story, but the element of a romantic partner never has been.

TLDR—Some villains in this game are understood, and potentially redeemable if given the option. Cazador is not one of them.

#I am VERY much a Cazador hater btw #but analysis is the only thing people understand #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate #astarion #bg3 astarion #astarion bg3 #baldurs gate iii #baldurs gate astarion #astarion baldurs gate #vampire spawn bg3 #cazador szarr #baldurs gate 3 cazador #cazador #cazador bg3 #bg3 cazador #anti ascended astarion #ascended astarion #orin #orin the red #lord gortash #gortash

[mari-lair]

Let's talk about terukaneaoi! I love them too much to be normal, so expect everything to be based on canon but without the polish of a 'proper analysis'

Let's start with something simple: Aoi is scared of thunder, Teru can create it.

Teru's presence puts her on edge when he uses his powers, but slowly I can see him make her get used to lightning.

Teru's bracelet already gives her a connection between lightning and protection. She seems troubled when she uses it, but she does appreciate this protection, to the point she wears it in school even on her play outfit.

The more she gets used to Teru lightning, and the more her fondness for him as a person grows, the stronger this association will become, and with time I can see her fear of storms disappearing. She associates Teru with a big doggy after all, it's not a very scary view.

Akane will stop being worried about Aoi every time it storms, and start associating lightning with something that makes his partners happy.

Speaking of which, Teru and Aoi have similar interests: Aoi likes shark movies, and teru is cool watching horror movies with people he treasures. Aoi likes sweets and games, Teru likes arcade games and places that sell sugary sweets.

Teru has a more 'out of home/extreme' version of Aoi's hobby.

Teru would force her out of her comfort zone which can be wonderful, specially with how gentle he is with Aoi but I can see him getting too excited when he have fun and going overboard.

Thankfully Akane is the kind of guy who will take bullets for Aoi, so if Teru carries the Aois around like he does with Kou and Nene, Akane would either offer himself a sacrificial lamb so Aoi can rest or protect her from his more extreme ideas. Protecting Aoi is like an instinct for Akane at this point.

(unrelated but Akane calling Teru 'sir', and Aoi always holding to Akane's sleeve when she wants to get closer to him is very cute to me)

Now let's talk about something that would make their relationship a tad complicated and all the more interesting: their view on romance.

Aoi and Akane have jealousy issues and are too proud to admit when they are being possessive.

The romance in their head is super old-fashioned, they don't do casual dating, and if there is romantic interest involved they expect a marriage: Akane immediately imagines Teru and Aoi getting married when teru threatens to ask her out on a date in chapter 59, and Aoi's excuse not to date Akane is that she can't marry a guy that will make her be named Aoi Aoi.

Teru can fix this issue by making the two adopt the Minamoto surname, erasing Aoi's best excuse and likely forcing the poor coward to take a step.

However, if the Aois eventually cave in to Teru barging into their lives, and include him in their hopelessly romantic standards they would gain a problem, a very annoying problem called "Teru has a lot of fans and he actually likes the attention and doesn't wish any harm on them, so Akane can't hit his admires with a baseball bat like he does with Aoi's ." cause teru wouldn't like that and Akane is the kind of guy that would get horrified if he learns he is hurting a loved one and immediately try to fix it.

With nothing else to be done, the two would be very salty about it.

Aoi would easily be hit the worst. Her whole day gets ruined when Akane gets 1 admirer that he bluntly rejects, refusing to even take the chocolate, much less the girl's feelings.

So dating Teru, who smiles sweetly at his fans and does not care about his class making a pavilion of him with merchandise available, would be her worst nightmare.

Just picturing how she would react to moments where Teru is adored is so pitiful to me, cause I guarantee teru will still have a million fans after they starts dating, he has celebrity status. His fans love him even after they give up on a relationship with him, even Nene, who is far from his biggest fan, takes time to fully let go of her worship with him.

Aoi is also very self-conscious, the poor girl acts like people's perception of her doesn't matter but she is extremely arrogant, she will fight her crush on Teru harder than her crush on Akane because she refuses to believe she is on the same level as his fangirls.

She look down on Teru's fangirls, to some extent, telling people teru is the kind of boy every girl can fall in love with, but making sure to establish he is not her type. She used to only ever mention him to try to connect with Nene, acting so fake it's straight up condescending.

So geting a crush on Teru would give Aoi a gigantic crisis.

Both Akanes love to pretend they aren't the jealous tipe, but since they have no issues looking after each other, they would consistently use each other as excuses to reprimand Teru. So we have both Aois going "I am not bothered, not at all, but think about how much Ao-chan/Akane-kun is affected by it."

I feel like Teru would make the Aois jealous on purpose at first because he likes to torment them, and because it makes him feel special, he adores attention, but when he realizes how much it bothers Aoi he'll try to set boundaries with his fans, while simultaneously calling her out for being overly insecure, something Akane is too smitten to do when not in extreme scenarios.

Teru is not nearly as possessive as the Aois: As of now in the manga, it realistically doesn't matter if Teru likes Aoi, Akane, or the two, cause his chance of scoring a date with either is zero. At the start of the manga, he doesn't seem jealous when Akane gushes about his undying love for Aoi or when guys throw themselves at Aoi's feet. Teru is chill. It's not like anyone is making any progress so why worry?

BUT the second he catches Aoi and Akane near kissing he does not even think about doing the whole 'oh I will suppress my feelings so I do not burden them' cliché, he slams himself into their relationship, while simultaneously pushing Aoi and Akane together.

Teru talks a lot about stealing Aoi from Akane but he has no intention of doing so: He waited until the two resolved their issue in chapter 69 before barging in. He let them have a moment in the tunnel despite knowing it could be Aoi's last day 'alive'. He tries to hang out with both whenever possible. He let Akane go after Aoi in the rescue, and so on. It's not like he wants them away from each other, he just wants to be there with them.

Unrelated, but Teru's shocked "whoa" is so funny to me, cause it was revealed in the relay interview that the one thing Teru has issues with regarding Akane is his approach to win Aoi's heart.

The approach he is talking about here is before the grim reaper arc, when Akane used to tactlessly confess his love everyday and treat her like an untouchable goddess. So the 'male lead of a romance manga' approach Akane has going on in chapter 69 must truly have been a shock to Teru.

"whoa." feels as if he is shocked, appalled, but also reluctantly impressed.

Aoi and Akane are so pretty in Teru's eyes, is insane actually.

In short: I think Teru would not care if people flirt with Aoi and Akane, but he will get jealous and more clingy if Akane gives Aoi too much attention, or Aoi neglects him. The only people he can ever be jealous of are the Akanes themselves.

They all have interesting connections separated too.

Akane bonded with Teru about their mutual duties as student council members, which makes them used to work together, and also bond over their core belief when it comes to human life: both value it, albeit for different reasons, and share a similar kind of hatred for the supernaturals that endanger it.

Akane and Aoi bond about being childhood friends and having the same core belief when it comes to romance. They are fundamental parts of each other's life, witnessing the other grow, how they changed and how they stayed the same. They know each other better than anyone.

Teru and Aoi bond over feeling alienated from their peers. They don't understand each other, and their experiences and reasons for feeling this way are incredibly different, but they understand the feeling of being different better than any other human character.

One of the things the three share in common is that they are all petty with each other.

Teru wants to be a good guide in chapter 70, but both Aois are still salty about the kiss he interrupted and refuse to take his hand. Akane is always delighted to drag Teru down, just as Teru is to bully him, and Aoi looks happy propositionally making Akane jealous.

It combines into the best kind of 'wow they are awful, I love them' interactions.

It's like Teru's mere presence brings the worst out of the Aois, but despite Akane and Aoi's confusion when it comes to Teru a lot of times, they don't hate him. They grow fond of him.

Akane grow to respect Teru. I would go as far as to say that deep down he always admired him a little, because his perception of Teru changes from "a demon" to "a nice husband that would make Aoi happy" in the span of 20 chapters.

The three can be unconventional about their care for each other, but to me, it is undeniable they value each other opinions and well being.

Even Aoi grows a soft spot for Teru, and this strange but prevalent display of care in their actions speaks volumes.

Terukaneaoi can make each other better just as easily as they can make each other worse. They balance each other out while leaving space for a lot of conflicts that can be explored, honestly, they are plain fun, and I adore them.

Bonus: Their height difference is beautiful, just look at them!

#i gtg but this was fun I may write more about them later #tbhk #terukane #aoikane #terukaneaoi #teruaoi #toilet bound hanako kun #jshk #jibaku shounen hanako kun #aoi akane #akane aoi #teru minamoto #character analysis #??

[sleepyboywrites]

Creepypasta Fluff Headcanons for Trans!Male Reader Pt. 1 (Being a boy on his Period)

Because it's nearing that time again and being a boy on his period sucks ass. I'm making this to provide some comfort! For myself as a trans man and hopefully you too. This takes place with established and healthy relationships. Or as healthy as relationships with these characters come.

Tw: Possessive behavior, not necessarily wanted affection, rough contact, references to slight verbal abuse.

Eyeless Jack

• Run. Run right in the opposite direction if he hasn't eaten in a bit/is agitated. You will make him hungry due to his blood lusting demonic nature and he's not very friendly when he's hungry.

• You already aren't feeling great so if you go to him in that state anyways expect to be more uncomfortable albeit supported as a half-apology.

• If he has been satiated and is calm you may proceed to tell your demonic boyfriend that your cycle has begun and you are distressed and dysphoric about it.

• Cuddle bug. Like sits you directly into his lap and burries his face in your neck. Telling you words of encouragement. Think "I'm so sorry Baby boy." and "You're so strong y/n. One of the strongest men I know, I mean other men can't live through bleeding for 4-7 days on average."

• He's a med student so he knows the best ways to help with cramps and the physical pains that come with a menstrual cycle.

• He also gives you high testosterone foods and encourages you to wear one of his shirts and your boxers over your underwear to help with the dysphoria aspect. But he won't let you bind if your chest area gets sensitive.

• Tries to distract you and keep you as comfortable as possible

• Extremely protective during this time. He has a lot of self control but his instincts are still spiking under the surface screaming at him to lock you up/protect you. His emotional attachment to you paired with his constant hunger leave him clinging to your side and glaring at anyone else who approaches/gives you a weird look. Attacking anyone who hurts you emotionally or otherwise.

• Honestly a bit feral in a way akin to nesting.

• Insists on taking walks together once a day.

Laughing Jack

• A bit confused at first in his eyes he has erased any of your perceived biological imperfections.

• Hits you with the "But you are a boy" when you tell him you're feeling dysphoric and crying. "One who's very very important to me as well so please don't cry."

• Gives you your favorite candies and sweets

• Rubs your back when you're curled over in pain and sings you songs to help you calm down.

• Takes you to his amusement park and takes you on all your favorite rides and shows you all your favorite shows

•Always introducing the act as "Dedicated to the best boy in the world/my Favorite boy."

• Essentially his mentality is "I'm going to make sure this boy has so much fun he forgets the torment of having his brain stuck in the wrong body."

• And it fucking works. He has you laughing so hard that you can't tell where the stomach ache ends and the cramps begin.

• He likes to play "dress-up" in the sense where he has an array of gender affirming costumes and each day he insists you choose from the extensive array because even if you don't feel well at the moment doesn't mean you have to be reduced to a puddle of stained oversized clothes. He was always one for theatrics.

• If you say you really aren't up to dressing up he'll bring out an array of hoodies, baggy tees, shorts, sweats, or jeans instead.

• Genuinely just trying to distract and cheer you up

Ben Drowned

• Pretends to not know what you're talking about or why you're so upset. "Bro I assure you no one cares?" Followed by a long silence as he stares at you followed with "We all still view you the same, man."

• Then promptly refuses to leave your side

• Think anything from lurking in nearby electronics to straight up following you around everywhere.

• If a mission comes up he'll take you with him and make up some sort of excuse like he needs your help and your avatar is better abled than you physically. Alternatively if you have a mission he'll grab you and say he's coming with, before dragging you with him.

• Makes sure everyone is careful around you. No roughhousing or insults. Not at this time even if you protest.

• You had to break up a fight with the intent to maim once because Jeff had called you a "Pussy" in an attempt to agrivate you to change your mind about not being up for training today. Ben who had been lurking nearby lunged at him and you had to break the two apart.

• So much Gatorade. This boy makes you drink so much Gatorade.

• He also has a collection of snacks you normally crave and hoodies specifically for you in his closet.

• Let's you bind during your period until you don't take it off on time or act like you're in pain then he will take and hide it until it's passed.

• if you complain about dysphoria he'll roll his eyes as he drags you to his realm where your avatar already matches your gender and have you hang out there.

• Naptimes are mandatory once a day during this week because he knows it takes a lot out of you.

• Reminds you to take showers despite how much you hate having that reminder because you'll feel better afterwards and it helps with the cramps.

Jeff the Killer

• I promise he's trying. He's trying to keep things as normal as possible by being a jokey asshole dick like usual.

• Mans has your cycle engraved in his memory so on the first and worst day when you're at your grumpiest without fail he'll go "Can't you just give me a bloody smile god damn it?"

• You know he's joking and he knows he's joking but without fail you'll mock laugh at him, sock him in the nose, and walk away.

• One time you ran out of products and Jeff went to get them for you he called from the store and went, "Hey man, what size cunt do you have?" You shook your head, called him an asshole, and hung up.

• He tried to apologize by calling and texting and when you wouldn't answer he made you a care basket with hot wheels and various manly items such as boxers and button-ups/baggy tees. He also covered the pads wrapping in dinosaurs. And replacing "girl" with "boss" on the labels

• He's made a habit of getting you one of these everytime your supplies run out.

• Insists on more training and fighting because what better way to blow off steam and frustrations than a good ol fashioned fight.

• One time it went too far and the two of you ended up being patched up by EJ who scolded the two of you and said "If I catch you boys doing this again I will make sure Slender needs two new proxies."

• Always carrying ibuprofen and water. Always.

• Rubs your back if it hurts too much and treats you more gently.

•Will attack and maim anyone who misgenders you.

Homicidal Liu

• Liu is already constantly holding your hand as if he's scared you'll disappear, like the rest of good in his life, so you two are fairly well synced and sometimes you swear he can read your mind.

• You keep him calm, in a way that reminds him of before the incident because of this he knows all of you, obsessed over it and memorized it, including when your cycle is, it's linked in his internal clock.

• You'll often wake up to a warm bath and clean comfortable clothes if your cycle started during the night. While you bathe he'd change and wash the sheets then bring you breakfast to eat together after you finish.

• Tells you he's sorry that your body doesn't match your mind as he nuzzles into your neck. Snaking his arms around your waist and engulfing you in his weight. Sometimes uncomfortable but you know by now if you try to pry him off he'll only tighten his grip and agressively albeit incoherently mumble

•calm and supportive/protective and possessive are how his alters have always treated you. Both affectionate sometimes overly so. Heightened during your cycle due to you being in a more easily hurt and in a distressed mood.

• Think overlap of Liu and Sully's voices, "What did you just say to my boyfriend?" Followed by "You'll pay for that." should anyone so much as look at you funny in a way that'll make you feel worse about your current state of being.

• Said anyone would be carried away in a body bag. <333

• Gets you trinkets as well as anything you may be craving.

• Owns heating pads as well as cold pads at his disposal to help with cramps.

• Water/Gatorade and a variety of pain meds on hand. Always.

• Doesn't want to leave your side out of fear of you running into a less than kind individual without him there to support you and maim your instigator.

Ticci Toby

• You'd have to go to him about it because his ass doesn't know. His brain is on fifteen different topics at any given time. You occupy at least five but he doesn't have much memorized.

• He'll know that something is bothering you but won't know what unless you blatantly tell him.

• Once you do he'll probably try his best to limit his roughness/aggression and increase softer touches/tones.

• Much more pet names a lot less insults. IE: Instead of calling you a dumbass he'll call you pretty boy.

• If he gets frustrated expect said pet name to be said with aggression.

• He owns several weighted blankets he'd offer you to use on top of his own body weight when he flops onto you, should you want that affection. Though he still will with a piss-poor excuse of an apology if you don't and he does. Which he does frequently because you're one of the only people whose touch is gentle with him.

• Bad about carrying liquid. Good about carrying meds. So if you need an ibuprofen he will give you one but you'll need to either dry swallow or find liquid elsewhere.

• Also not the best at comforting you through your pain seeing as he doesn't experience that kind of thing himself. At least not in the same way, so he doesn't know what to do nor what you expect from him.

• He'll pick you up something he thinks you'll like when he goes out during this time but that ranges from "really sweet" to "the thought is what counts." Because sometimes his thoughts cross paths one too many times and he accidentally got you cleaning supplies instead of menstrual or edible treats.

• Think: "This rock made me think of you. Do you like [insert candy], because I grabbed some on my last mission. I meant to grab you strawberry mentos, because of a song I heard that made me think of you but accidentally grabbed menthol instead, I don't know how you'd use it but here."

• Essentially when you tell him he'll say "Okay, don't push yourself too hard." And then continue fairly normally while attempting to be nice.

Brian/Hoodie

• Initial reaction depends entirely on where/how you tell him. If you tell him in public in front of others he will simply look at you and say, "...okay".

• If you tell him in private he'll stare at you for a moment and then he'll give you a few well-thought-out sentences on how he'll be there to help and how you aren't any less of a man.

• If you give him a note or written thing however he will build you a cathedral out of paragraphs telling you that he'll do what he can to make you feel as good as you can, how this aspect doesn't change who you are not how you're received, and everything masculine and in general he adores about you.

• Always has water, meds, and a spare hoodie for you in close proximity.

• Doesn't treat you any differently in public or private.

• Very sweet most of the time, including this, minus his aggressive outbursts.

• It's very much the same old same old. He'll still melt into you and expect the same he'll still yell and throw things when he's having a n outburst.

• He'll still treat you as softly and as roughly as he does the rest of the time.

• Will get you your cravings if you ask but he won't really if he's unprompted.

• He may ask for your hand more often if he notices your distress/squeeze your hand more often.

• Though most of the time he won't he's too busy in his head or in what he's doing.

• Or alternatively trying to figure out what is in your head and what you're doing but not necessarily how you're feeling.

• He cares about you he's just not the possessive type in the way that leads to outwardly or intense displays of affection. Though if you even hinted to not wanting to be around people on your cycle you wouldn't be. He would hole up.with you until its over and be reluctant to let you go.

Tim/Masky

• Throws his reeking bomber jacket at you with a raised eyebrow. "Things like this provide some comfort right?"

• Cocky Bastard knows it's in his god-damn calendar and he likes to inadvertently let you know he knows.

• IE: throwing one of your favorite snacks at your head while you train or work.

• Bringing you water, Gatorade, and medicine to you when all you did is hold your head in your hands for five seconds.

• It's become almost a game of whether or not you can get away without him knowing.

• Mocking you lightly if you ask for help with anything. If you need supplies, or would like one of your cravings, or would like a heating pad anything. And you say, "Hey could you get me [blank] if you don't mind?" Or anything along those lines you will be met with an, "Ah ah ah pretty boy, say pretty please." When he returns with what you asked for dangling it out of reach.

• Also always asks for a kiss as payment for being your knight in shiny armor. When he gets you anything. One time he bought you a bag of chocolate kisses you were craving and when he asked you threw a chocolate at him and he chased and tackled you until you gave him an actual one.

• Deliberately and as a rule of thumb, Masky shows you a playful and cocky side he's created because you respond to it best.

• He rarely gets angry at you but when he does that anger translates to avoiding you and not speaking to you should he be in this state he will give you nothing, not even a hug during this.

• If you tend to be touch-starved during he'll be less likely to fall into that angry rut but if you're touch-adverse he's more likely to get into angry ruts because he'll take it as the front he crafted for you not being enough or attractive to you.

• Despite the fact it has nothing to do him and has everything to do with you being in physical and psychological pain.

#creepypasta x male reader #creepypasta x transmale!reader #eyeless jack #laughing jack #ben drowned #jeff the killer #homicidal liu #ticci toby #tim masky #brian hoodie #creepypasta fluff #or at least most of it #creepypasta headcanon #requests open #multiple/all

[7-wonders]

Hopes, Dreams, and Everything In Between (Morpheus x Reader)

Summary: Just when Morpheus finally escapes capture at the hands of the Burgess lineage and begins to make his way back to his realm, his weak connection to his power disappears completely. Left stranded in a world with no knowledge of what has transpired for over a century, no powers, and no clothes, Dream of the Endless must let down his guard and place his trust in a human whose path he was quite literally dropped in the middle of.

Word count: 10.7k

A/N: So! Here we are, with what is arguably the longest oneshot I've ever written. @glitchmeharder had left a comment on a post I made, pointing out that they wanted more fics of Morpheus getting stuck in the Waking World and needing to live with Reader for a little bit.

My mind took this sentence and RAN with it. Like, I apologize in advance for how long this is. I'm pretty pleased with it though, especially for my first Morpheus fic. I hope you're pleased with it too.

(Also, the POV jumps back and forth between Morpheus and Reader, but it alternates every other section and is pretty clear which POV is which)

(Also-also I've been staring at this fic for so long now I don't even know if it makes sense anymore)

Let me know your thoughts! Likes are appreciated, comments, asks, and reblogs make my world go round! My inbox is always open for you guys :)

*This fic uses she/her pronouns and includes the use of Y/n*

Freedom.

After being held captive for 106 long, painful years, Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares, is on the precipice of securing his freedom. The younger Burgess’s lover had erased a small part of the runes encircling his glass cage with the wheel of the old man’s wheelchair, sending little more than a sorrowful glance back towards the prisoner. So this was how he would attempt to secure his safety, by breaking the circle of runes surrounding him. Barely a scuff, really, but it’s enough.

It’s enough for Morpheus to feel the faintest bit of his power return to him.

It’s enough that it’s all too easy for him to influence one of the security guards, waxing poetically about his upcoming beach vacation, to close his eyes for just a moment.

It’s enough for a dream to form, one of sun and sea and sand. Sand that Morpheus is able to gather a handful of, right in front of the horrified guard’s dreaming eyes.

The guard, lost in his dream nightmare, shoots at what he thinks is Morpheus. In the Waking World, he’s shooting at the orb that he’s meant to be diligently watching. A bullet hits, and a crack forms. Another, and another, and another, even as the other guard screams at her colleague to stop.

The glass explodes, and Morpheus fills his lungs with his first huff of fresh air in over a century. He can’t get lost in the joy that threatens to burst like a dam at finally seeing and feeling freedom. Not when he has a job to do, not when he has a kingdom to return home to.

He steps past the broken runes, now useless at keeping him trapped, and towards the two that are commanding him to stop where he is. He does as they ask, standing still in front of them. When the female orders him to open his closed fist, he is nice enough to listen to that command as well, lifting it to his mouth and blowing the sand in their faces.

A portal forms above him, and all Morpheus can think of is home. The Dreaming. He can feel it calling to him, a kingdom beckoning its ruler back. His power lifts him, and Morpheus welcomes the sensation of traveling through realms.

Then, just as quickly as he had his power, he loses it again.

Like a spelunker who’s just had their trusty rope give out on them, Dream finds himself free-falling with no way of stopping or controlling where he’s going. He tries desperately to clutch onto the tendrils of power that have abandoned him, but they refuse to obey.

He lands harshly on cold pavement, weak and disoriented with no idea of where he is. There’s a flash of blinding lights, the sound of rubber squealing, and then…

Darkness.

•••

It’s late at night, late enough that the few traffic lights that you pass are continuously blinking red and yellow. You hadn’t intended to be out so late, but catching up with friends at a restaurant had led to all of you losing track of time, talking and laughing and reminiscing until a manager politely informed your table that the restaurant had closed ten minutes prior.

Large tips had been left as apologies and your group hustled out of the door, leaving one another with hugs and goodbyes and promises to do this again, sooner than the months it had taken to get together in the first place. You got into your car, locking the doors immediately after, and you were happy.

Still, as you watched those you know and cherish depart with their significant others, you can’t help the pang of melancholy that taints an otherwise-wonderful evening. You’re at the age now where everybody that you know is in relationships, getting engaged and married and settling down and coupling up. You, however…are not. And you’re happy with being single, truly; the best company you can have is yourself. But knowing that you’re going to return home to your quiet apartment, where you’ll go to sleep in your empty bed and wake up to eat breakfast alone before repeating the monotonous cycle that is working a full time job and being an adult in general is making you just a little bitter.

You dwell on this as you drive the deserted roads home, even though you shouldn’t be. Shaking your head at your tendency to mope, you decide to do something about it and turn your radio up with the hopes that something good is playing on the random playlist that had begun when your phone automatically connected to the car’s sound system. Hell, maybe even something bad. Anything to get you out of this thought pattern that is quickly attempting to derail your mood.

“Now here I go again, I see the crystal vision

I keep my visions to myself

But it's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams, and

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell, dreams of loneliness?”

Ironic, considering you were just lamenting your own loneliness, but you’ll forgive Stevie Nicks for almost anything, so you let it slide. Tapping your thumbs on the steering wheel, you hum along to the song and stare out at the empty, rainy landscape ahead.

Empty, until it’s suddenly not.

You don’t look away from the road, you know that you don’t. But in the literal blink of an eye, a white figure appears right in front of your car. Slamming on the brakes with a scream, you watch as the figure collapses ahead of you. You don’t hit whatever it is, thankfully, and after lurching to a harsh stop, you peer through the windshield at what your headlights illuminate.

It’s a person, or at least you think it is. They’re pale, paler than any person you’ve seen before. They’re also stark naked, which, for a number of reasons, can’t be comfortable. Should you get out and help?

You bite your lip as you consider this, stories of human trafficking ploys and hitchhiking serial killers appearing at the forefront of your mind. It’s dangerous, and probably stupid, but something in you knows that this isn’t a scheme to kidnap you. Your eyes were on the road the entire time, and this being was literally dropped down right in front of your car. Grabbing your phone, throwing your hazards on, and unhooking the pepper spray from your keys, you cautiously open your car door and walk to the front of your car.

“Are you okay?” you ask, looking down at the man. 

He’s laying on his side, his face tucked into the crook of his arm. A mop of unruly, jet-black hair covers any other facial features that might have made him distinguishable to you. 

He doesn’t answer, and you swallow harshly. Oh God, is he dead? You thought you didn’t hit him, and your car doesn’t have any damage, but maybe you did.

Crouching down next to him, you take note of just how skinny he is when you lay a hand on his wrist to check his pulse (which is thankfully thrumming steadily beneath his near-translucent skin). No, not skinny. The man in front of you looks emaciated. What happened to him?, you wonder as you move your hand to his bony shoulder and begin to shake him.

“Hey, can you hear me?” 

This time, a muffled groan answers you. Okay, that’s better than before. At least he’s semi-conscious. Still, he doesn’t look well at all, and you should probably get him to a hospital to be checked out. When you voice this thought, you finally elicit a reaction from him. Long, ice-cold fingers grip your wrist weakly, and you stare at him in shock as he mumbles something unintelligible.

“What?” You lean down next to his covered face, trying to hear what he’s saying.

“No…” he mutters. “Please…no…hospital.”

He’s delirious, that much is obvious. Still, you find yourself mulling over his request. He really does need some sort of medical attention, but he managed to muster up enough strength to specifically tell you that he didn’t want to go to a hospital. As you think about it, you also start to come around to the “no hospital” idea. 

After all, what are you going to do? Show up at the hospital and dump a naked, starving man on their doorstep while claiming that you have no idea how he got like this? At best, the authorities would probably be called and you’d be questioned for kidnapping. No, it’s probably for the best to keep away from the hospital.

Logically, you know that you’re so stupid for even considering the idea that you’ve had. But really, what is this man going to be able to do to you? Even if he weren’t in and out of consciousness, he’s so frail that you could easily take him down were he to try and attack you. Against your better judgment, you decide what you’re going to do.

“I’ll be right back,” you assure the man, who you’re not even sure can hear you, before you stand up. “I think I have a blanket in the trunk of my car.”

A quick search through your mess of a trunk does reveal a blanket, hauled around at the insistence of your mother who preached needing an “emergency kit” in your car at all times. Now, you silently thank her as you grab it and hurry back to the man, though you definitely will not mention to her what the emergency kit was finally used for.

You haul him to a sitting position, his head falling back limply as you fix the blanket over his shoulders. “Do you think you can stand? I’ll get you to the car, I just need to get you on your feet.”

He makes a slight movement that looks like a nod, so you move his arm around your shoulder and wait until you feel his light grasp on your shirt before slowly bringing both of you to stand. Once you’re sure that you’re not going to drop him, you struggle with him towards your car. He’s lighter than most adult men, but considering he’s dead weight, it’s still tough to walk with him. You fumble with the handle of the car door, nearly throwing it open so that you only have to let go of him for a brief moment.

You cringe when he falls backwards onto the seats, landing harshly across them. It doesn’t seem to hurt him at all, the only sign that he even felt anything is a groan in the back of his throat. Whispering out a “sorry,” you cover his body with the blanket and make sure all of him is in the car before closing the door and getting into the driver’s seat.

Sighing heavily, you think about your life choices as you glance into the rearview mirror to look at the unconscious man in the back of your car. You’re really going to do this, aren’t you? Taking home a naked man that passed out on the road in front of your car so that you can hopefully wake him up and get him well enough to be on his way without killing you?

Yes, you are.

•••

The first thought that crosses Dream’s mind when consciousness finally returns to him is that his limbs ache. They really, truly ache. It’s not often that an Endless has lingering pains, but it does happen. He stretches his legs out in front of him, feeling his muscles twinge as he attempts to loosen them.

The next thought that crosses Dream’s mind is that he shouldn’t be able to stretch any of his limbs, considering he’s meant to be curled up in a glass ball.

His eyes snap open when he realizes this, and he’s bewildered to find that he’s not staring at guards looking at him disdainfully from the table they’re always perched at, nor is he looking at the wrought-iron bars separating the large, underground room from the staircase upstairs. No, instead, he’s looking up at what looks to be a ceiling fan, spinning lazily around and around.

The events of what happened before he ended up here (wherever “here” is) begin to come back to him in fragments. First the runes being erased, then securing the sand from the guard’s dream. The orb shattering, sand being blown, and beginning to make his way home. That’s where his memory becomes muddled.

There were lights, and a voice. He thinks he remembers the vague sensation of being moved, but he’s not too sure. Whatever happened, he ended up here…on a couch, under a number of blankets. Certainly not in the same basement that he had been in for over a century, with its familiar cold seeping through the very glass he found himself trapped in. No, this room is warm and inviting. Comforting, almost.

Wherever he is, it’s not in the Dreaming. More alarmingly still is that he can’t sense the Dreaming at all. After that small glimpse of his power that got him out of the Burgess basement, his power has completely abandoned him. A not-unusual feeling, considering he spent the last 106 years without it, but being “free” and powerless is not something that he’s used to.

He has had a lot of time to think about what his lack of power feels like. After a few decades, the best he could liken it to is missing a sense or losing a limb. It’s something functional, something that he should have, but that he doesn’t. Cruelly, he was granted a taste of what he should have for a mere second before fate or karma or the universe itself decided to play yet another cruel joke on him.

Dream slowly takes in his surroundings, his thoughts sluggish and confused. There’s a table next to the couch he’s laid on, a glass of water placed on it. A black screen sits on a stand across the room, and he stares at his reflection in it for a moment before the sound of humming draws his attention away.

A figure – the person humming, he assumes – comes through a doorway, eyes immediately meeting his own. Curiously, she smiles at him when she notices this. Dream’s muscles tense, on guard in the presence of an unknown being so soon after escaping Burgess. Has he escaped one prison, only to land in another?

“You’re awake!” she exclaims, as though she’s happy to see this. “How are you feeling?”

He ignores the human’s question. “This is not the Dreaming.”

“No, this is my apartment.”

“I must go.” Dream attempts to stand up, but finds that he struggles to just barely sit up. “I need to return to my realm.”

“You’re not going anywhere, look at you! You’re too weak to even move.”

She begins to approach him, but the glower he sends her way is enough to stop her in her tracks. It does not matter that she was stating the obvious when she said what she did, referencing his physicality. He will not be told what he can and cannot do, where he is allowed to exist. Not anymore. “Do not come any closer, mortal.”

“Okay, I won’t.” 

She puts her hands up in the air, presumably to show him that she means no harm. The move reminds him of what one might do in the presence of a frightened animal. In her mind, he is a frightened animal. 

“Have you drank any of that water? I don’t know where you were before I found you, but you look like you haven’t had anything to eat or drink in a while.”

He looks at her warily, but slowly takes the glass that is apparently designated for him. After over a century, he’s more than a little parched. Though he will not show any gratitude before it is earned, he is thankful that at least one of his needs is being met.

The woman waits patiently for him to make the next move, choosing to sit on a large chair near the couch and tap at a rectangle she holds in her hands. Morpheus appreciates not being watched as he greedily drains the water that he’s been offered. Only after he places the now-empty glass back on the table does she look up at him and wait for him to make the first move.

“How did I end up here?” Morpheus asks slowly.

“When I found you, you basically appeared in the middle of the road from out of nowhere. You were passed out, and you only really came around so that you could tell me not to take you to a hospital.” She nervously plays with her hands, which rest in her lap. “I wasn’t about to leave you out there, so I brought you here.”

“Why?”

It comes out harsher than he intended, but considering the only interaction he’s had for so long with other beings involved threats and pleas for immortality, riches, and power, he isn’t expecting much. In fact, Morpheus is preparing himself to listen to her list of demands before acting. Though he’s powerless right now and unable to manipulate her dreams the way that he did the guards at Fawney Rig, he still has millenia of experience to draw on when it comes to escaping a captor.

Contrary to his belief, she looks at him in surprise. “Why?” When he nods, she shrugs. “I guess…because if I were naked and unconscious in the middle of the road on a rainy night, I’d want somebody to help me to relative safety.”

Ah. It’s at this point that Dream realizes that he is, in fact, very much still naked. Though he’s hardly shy about his form, he is aware that most humans have a more puritanical point of view when it comes to the covering of bodies.

“Are you hungry? You look like you’ve been starved, so I’m guessing it’s been a while since you’ve had something to eat.” The woman stands and takes the glass off of the table, musing to herself as she walks to another room. “We’ll probably have to start you on something light so that you can get used to eating again. Maybe toast?”

She doesn’t stop rambling even as she returns and hands Morpheus another glass of water. Though, even if she were to stop long enough to take a breath, Morpheus doesn’t know what he would say. He’s so bewildered at this entire situation that the Prince of Stories himself is at a loss for words.

He’s been left completely powerless in the Waking World, and he would have to fend for himself were it not for this random human whose path he’s been literally dropped in the middle of. A human who, apparently, has no devious intentions towards him, though he finds it hard to believe that all humans aren’t evil and heartless like Roderick Burgess and those complicit in his captivity. He finds it especially hard to believe that the first human he comes across after the Burgess affair would be the exact opposite of those he’s been around for so long.

Destiny himself must surely be breaking his stoic demeanor to laugh at his younger brother’s misfortunes.

“Seriously, when was the last time you ate something?” After a moment of silence, Morpheus realizes she’s asking him a question.

His attention is brought back to the woman, who’s reclaimed her seat in the chair across the room. Lifting his chin, and with what he hopes is a voice befitting the ruler he once was, he says, “One hundred and six years ago.”

She laughs at what she assumes is a joke, until she realizes that the expression on his face doesn’t change. He can see this mortal begin to make the connections in her mind. His mention of his beloved realm, the fact that he called her “mortal” to begin with, the century plus of imprisonment. The Waking World is so quick to dismiss magic and the supernatural as “fairy tales;” if it is beyond their comprehension, then it therefore doesn’t exist.

Yet, even with what they believe to be sound logic, humans just know when they encounter something that they can’t quite explain. Morpheus has always seen it in the way that people back up when he or his siblings or any of the many other preternatural beings that wander this plane walk past. The fear in their eyes as something primal activates within them, something telling them that they are no longer the apex predator.

Even with his lack of powers, he still carries his innate abilities that are woven into his very being. He can hear the woman’s heart beat faster, see her pupils dilate in apprehension. She knows, even if she does not want to admit it.

Quietly, she asks, “Who are you? What are you?”

“I am Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares.”

A long minute passes as she takes in the information he’s given her. She does not run away from him in fright (which has happened to him a couple of times), nor does she call for someone who will attempt to capture Morpheus and use his powers to their own advantage. Instead, she thinks over what she’s heard and nods.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares,” she smiles after saying all of his titles, apparently finding it amusing to be in the presence of a king, “I’m Y/n.”

Morpheus is not used to thanking others, especially mortals. However, this woman’s helpfulness seems to warrant that he learns how to do so, so he nods. “I thank you for offering me aid in my time of need, Y/n.”

“I’m going to get you some food.” He hardly opens his mouth to make a rebuttal before she’s pointing at him accusingly. “Don’t argue with me, you need food. Then after that, we’ll get you some clothes. Sound good?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer before she’s back through the door, presumably towards the kitchen. Though Morpheus is still wary of relying on anybody, let alone a human, he doesn’t exactly have a choice. Not when he’s this weak, and certainly not when he’s powerless. No, he has no choice but to place his trust in this strong-willed woman who was crazy enough to rescue a stranger in the rain.

Fates help him.

•••

So, the random, naked stranger you saved out of the middle of the road turns out to rule the collective unconscious of all of humanity. And he now lives on your couch for the time being (with clothes, thankfully; you had procured a shirt and a pair of sweatpants for him when he had finally agreed to let you help him), because he’s apparently lost the powers that connect him to said collective unconscious. No big deal.

You didn’t want to believe Morpheus at first. After all, just the mere idea of some being who is eons old and is, in his words, “the anthropomorphic personification of the concept of dreams” sounds insane. But the same sense that told you that it was safe to take him home tells you that he’s telling the truth. And as you get to know him more, you find that that sense was right.

From the way that he talks to the memories of empires long gone and the recollections of those great figures of history that he’s met and inspired, all of which he shares with you as the days go by and it becomes obvious that he can’t just ignore you and hope that you go away, you find it very easy to believe him. He hasn’t given you a reason to not believe him, and until he does, you’ll continue to trust what he tells you.

It’s at least a week before your new roommate is strong enough to move easily around your apartment, though he still looks half-starved. On his second day of staying at your apartment, you had offered to help him to the shower. After all, if you had been deprived of showering for 106 years, it would be one of the first things that you wanted to do. After thinking it over for a long couple of minutes, Morpheus had begrudgingly agreed. The moment he attempted to stand, he had been unable to support himself and had fallen to his knees. This left him no choice but to take your outstretched hand.

It was very obvious that the proud king felt humiliated at needing to use you to support most of his weight as you maneuvered him through your apartment and to the bathroom. You couldn’t exactly blame him, because you’re sure that it is humiliating, especially when you’re a being that’s normally more powerful than a literal god who has to rely on a mere human for help walking a few feet.

According to Morpheus, if he had his powers, he would have recovered at a much faster rate. Since he doesn’t, though, and he’s effectively human for the time being, he has to recover as a human would. When you come home from running a couple of errands one day to find him sitting up on the couch without needing to lean on anything for support, reading a book from your collection, you’re extremely glad to see that his “human” recovery is progressing nicely.

As time passes, though, you’ve found an odd companionship with him. He’s slowly become less wary of you, and you of he, which has allowed you both to trust the other and actually, dare you say it, form a tenuous friendship.

It seems like he’d been expecting you to basically tiptoe around him and ignore him throughout the duration of his stay with you. Considering you don’t want to wake up to a corpse on your couch because you abandoned him in his time of need, and because you’re a person with a conscience, you’ve done the exact opposite, much to his chagrin and bewilderment.

You’re in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a soup, still working on building Morpheus up towards being able to eat actual meals, when he actually comes to you seeking companionship. He hovers at the edge of the kitchen, watching silently as you go through the familiar motions. Finally, he moves just a couple of steps closer, like a feral cat being enticed by food from a human who’s determined not to look at them. It’s not that far off from reality, you realize.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Though it’s pretty damn obvious what you’re doing, you decide not to be sarcastic with him. “Making soup.”

He nods, leaning against the counter to watch. You feel a bit like you’re on a cooking show with the way that he’s viewing your actions so intently.

“What’s so interesting?” you ask after another moment of unwillingly being on Iron Chef.

“I suppose I’ve never really watched someone cook before.”

The knife pauses in midair, and you turn to look at him. “I’m sorry, what? You’ve been alive for as long as beings have had consciousness, but you’ve never watched someone cook?”

“It’s not often that I have to eat. If I choose to enjoy food, the palace staff typically prepares it for me.”

Oh yeah. It’s easy to forget that Morpheus literally has a castle when he’s standing in your kitchen with bedhead. You would make a joke about him being spoiled, but you suppose that if you were in his position, you also never would have taken the time to actually step inside a kitchen.

“Do you want to learn?”

“How to cook?” You nod. “Are you sure that you want to teach me?”

“I’m literally just going to have you cutting vegetables,” you say with a laugh. “It’s a pretty easy task, even for you, your highness.”

His lips just barely move upwards, and you stare at him, stunned. Did he just smile at you? You didn’t even know that he knew how to do that. You’re about to try and convince yourself that it was just a trick of the light when he says, “Being that I am a king, it’s ‘your majesty,’ not ‘your highness.’”

He did smile! And he made a joke! It’s such a small accomplishment, yet you can’t help but to feel immensely proud of yourself. Hiding your own pleased grin, you step back from the cutting board. “Okay your majesty, come over here so I can teach you to cut vegetables.”

Morpheus definitely isn’t going to be on any cooking shows of his own anytime soon. Actually, you don’t know that you’d even trust him to be in the kitchen by himself anytime soon. He nearly cuts off a finger a couple of times, and he struggles to figure out how to hold whatever he’s cutting so that it can actually be cut. The vegetables he’s been in charge of cutting are uneven, but you can see how proud he is of having completed this task himself. You’re proud of him too; though you can tease him for having never done something like cooking before, it must be hard to learn a new skill after so long.

After this, Morpheus becomes less of an unwilling house guest who’s only putting up with you because he physically can’t leave and more of a friend. It became inevitable that you would have to spend time together, since he’s living on your couch until he can figure out how to get back to the Dreaming, but it’s become actually enjoyable to be in his presence, and vice versa. Though he can still be cold, distant, and haughty, that’s to be expected. Your relationship has changed, and he’s changed.

It takes a couple of weeks, but Morpheus finally starts to feel well enough to re-enter the land of the living. At least, he’s well enough to insist that he can start researching how to regain his powers or go home. Naturally, you join him. Morpheus has long-since given up on asking you why you help him, finally realizing that this is just how you are. If he wanted to be left alone, he should have landed in front of the car of someone who didn’t care about his well-being.

You’re sitting in your local public library with him, one of your now-regular visits as you search through book after book to try and find answers. The both of you are tucked in a corner near a set of windows, enjoying the way that the sun warms your skin. Books from a variety of subjects are scattered all around you; religion and history, mythology and occult. Anything that could potentially give you an idea of how to help an Endless regain the powers that they were created with. Needless to say, there’s not a lot of material written on this topic.

Yet another book with no answers is tossed to the side in frustration, and you begin to just fire off random ideas off the top of your head. Most of them involve seeking the help of any magic contacts that Morpheus has here in the Waking World, which is made difficult by the fact that Morpheus has no way of contacting these beings. Both because of his lack of powers, as well as the fact that he’s not the most open person for one to make a contact with.

(“You? Not friendly? I’m shocked, truly,” you had said with obvious sarcasm coloring your tone. Morpheus simply sighed, turning the page of the book he’s reading harsher than needed.

“Yes, have your laughs at my expense.”)

It’s more than a little discouraging to have absolutely no answers, and you’re starting to get desperate. You tap your fingers against a book you’ve already looked through, hoping that maybe you’ll learn something through osmosis.

“You could…”

You pause, trying to think of a good idea. Your mind is racing as you turn from logical plans that could actually work to the illogical. After all, if you can’t find something that works, you’re at least going to have some fun. 

“Throw me off a bridge, maybe? That’d surely get your sister to show up.”

Morpheus only looks at you. “That is not funny, Y/n.”

“I didn’t say it was!”

“I know your sense of humor well enough by now to know that you find this suggestion of yours at least slightly amusing.”

Your lips twitch, because he’s right. The mental image of Morpheus chucking you off a bridge and then eagerly waiting for his sister, literal Death, to appear while you’re screaming and falling to your end does make you want to laugh. 

“Well, it’s the only idea I’ve got,” you say with a shrug.

“A terrible idea, truly.”

You roll your eyes jokingly and mutter, “Jerk.”

When you first met Morpheus, he would have taken your words and actions quite seriously and been offended at the perceived insults. Now, he simply rolls his eyes right back at you and smirks. Just one of the many things that have changed between you.

It’s here, on the floor of the library, that things majorly change between you. It’s here that Morpheus kisses you for the first time.

You had taken a solo walk around a few of the shelves under the guise of seeing if you had missed any research, but really you needed to get away from the corner of no answers before you started shredding books out of anger. It helped enough that you were able to return to the research with fresh eyes, and it seems like it’s paying off.

In a book about pagan rituals, you find the first promising information that you’ve seen in the last three library trips. You lay your hand on Morpheus’s shoulder to get his attention. “Wait, listen to this! This book talks about summoning the Fates.” 

You point down to the passage. 

“‘It is fitting to begin December with an offering to the Three Fates, the weavers of destiny. Put out three small cups of red wine, fruit and bread, along with three knives. This is a way of honoring the powers that will bring more provisions during the coming year. Have ready three candles, red, black and white.’ It’s not December, but I would think this could potentially be done year-round? We give them an offering, they recognize who it’s coming from, and they give us some answers. What do you think?”

When you look up at Morpheus, you find him already looking at you with his beautiful blue eyes. He’s told you that, when he has his powers, his eyes resemble two stars. With the way that they always twinkle when they catch the light just right, you’d argue that they already do. You smile at him, unable to stop the awkward giggle that escapes you as he continues to look at you with something you can’t quite name.

“What?”

His eyes look from your eyes to your lips and back again. Your breath catches in your throat as you realize what he’s about to do, a mere moment before he leans in and presses his lips to yours.

Morpheus is a really good kisser, which is to be expected since he’s been alive for longer than you can fathom. He kisses you softly and sweetly, and the butterflies that flutter in your stomach make you feel a bit like a teenager receiving her first kiss from a beau. You sigh against his lips, bringing a hand to his cheek while he places one of his on the back of your neck.

Then, it actually hits you what you’re doing. Though you don’t want to (like, you really don’t want to), you need to put a stop to this. What if the only reason he’s doing this is because he feels some sense of gratitude towards you for saving him in the first place? You can’t take advantage of him like that, even if he is a very attractive man that is currently kissing you.

“Wait.” You put a hand on his chest to put some space between you, though you still rest your forehead against his. “I don’t want you to kiss me just because I’m letting you crash on my couch.”

“Do you think that I am incapable of making my own decisions?”

“No, of course not! I just–I worry that you feel like you owe me, or something. You don’t.”

You can feel Morpheus smile under your touch. “It is chivalrous of you to refuse me because you believe that you are taking advantage of me. However, I can assure you that you need not worry.”

“Are you sure? What about, like, power dynamics?”

“Y/n, I’m eons old. If anything, I have all of the power here based solely on that.” Oh, yeah. Before you can actually beat yourself up over the stupidity of that statement, he continues. “I can promise you that I have my wits about me, and there is nothing clouding my decision-making. I care for you, and I would very much like to continue kissing you.”

“Okay,” you whisper, unable to believe that this is actually happening.

He laughs lightly. “Now, may I kiss you again?”

You nod. “Yeah, you can definitely kiss me again.”

Morpheus is more than happy to reclaim your lips with his.

It would almost be embarrassing, how quickly you’ve fallen in love with Morpheus, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s fallen just as fast. You’ve lived blissfully in your own little corner of heaven with him for almost four months now. Though getting him home is still important to both of you, it’s also become less of a priority as you’ve fallen more in love with each other.

(He’s also very happy to be sleeping in bed with you instead of on the couch.)

Laying in bed with him one night, you’re transfixed with mapping out every inch of his skin that you can touch with your fingers and watching goosebumps form in their wake. You don’t think you’ll ever get over just how unreal Morpheus seems to be. You understand, of course, that this is due to the fact that he’s an Endless, that he is physically more than a human, and thus a human form can not truly contain all of him. But to be up close and personal to such a phenomenon really drives home just how ethereal he really is. You can easily see why he’s been mistaken as a god so many times throughout history.

“What’s it like?” you whisper to him, unwilling to fully break the tranquility you’re experiencing.

In the dim light, Morpheus looks at you. “What is what like, beloved?”

Your heart jumps at the pet name, so sweet and unexpected. Fighting to keep your wits about you, you ask, “Your kingdom. The Dreaming.”

“I don't even know where to begin when I tell you that it is the most wondrous place you will ever lay eyes upon.” He closes his eyes briefly and sighs wistfully. “It has been over a century since I have been home, and yet I can still see it as if I were merely there yesterday.”

“If it’s hard to talk about, you don’t have to.” You should have realized that asking him about the home he currently has no way of getting back to would make him upset.

“It does not make me sad to talk about it. Rather, I love the Dreaming so much that it overwhelms me sometimes. I am the Dreaming, you see. It is a part of me.”

“So it’s perfect, then.” You don’t mean to say that out loud, but the way that Morpheus looks away bashfully makes you glad that you did.

“That is what some believe, yes. It’s a vast plane, considering all the universe’s dreamers use it when they close their eyes at night. The area around the palace, my direct kingdom, is stunning. Imagine the most beautiful landscape you can. That beauty would pale in comparison to Fiddler’s Green, with its orchards and valleys and rivers and mountains.”

“Really?”

“Mm. My personal favorite is a small clearing ringed by trees that make it seem as though you’re completely blocked off from the rest of existence. There’s a waterfall there, too, and I believe you’d quite enjoy the mermaids.”

All of it sounds wonderful, but that last word has your mind sparking with excitement. “Mermaids? Like…actual mermaids?”

“Of course. Mermaids are creatures of dreams. And nightmares. They are subjects in my realm.”

“That’s amazing.” You pause for a moment. “Would I be able to meet them?”

“You will be able to do anything you wish when I finally get to bring you to my realm. Though, it may be difficult to get you out of the library once you’re there.”

“I should have assumed you’d have a library.”

“Yes, and it is my sanctuary in the Dreaming. The library holds every book that has ever been written, every book that will be written, and even books that have merely been ideas in the minds of authors. It is overseen by Lucienne, without whom I fear the library would fall into permanent disrepair.”

“That sounds wonderful.” You yawn, your eyes too heavy to keep open for much longer. Morpheus notices this and pulls you closer to him. “Tell me more about it. Then maybe I’ll get lucky and be able to catch a glimpse of it while I sleep.”

It’s merely wishful thinking, considering dreams since the night that Roderick Burgess trapped Morpheus in his basement have been nothing more than fragments of scenarios. But his voice is so deep and calming, and you can tell that it makes him happy to talk of his home. Maybe tonight will be the night that the Dreaming decides to welcome its king back home. And even if it doesn’t, you’ll enjoy falling asleep in your lover’s arms.

•••

When Morpheus first woke up after his captivity, alone and confused and without his powers, he thought that he would never be able to feel anything except anger. Anger at his situation, anger towards those that had captured them. And for a few days, anger was all that he felt. But slowly and surely, Y/n had managed to chip away at the anger that had threatened to harden around his heart. Though he was not looking for love, nor did he expect to ever deserve love again after everything he had done to ruin every relationship he had been in, he had found it with her. The anger became replaced with an incandescent happiness, happiness that threatened to swallow Morpheus whole if he allowed it.

And he was certainly tempted.

It’s been approximately four months since the night he was freed, but it certainly hadn’t felt that way. Where he had spent the past 106 years counting day after agonizing day, four months with his beloved seemed to pass in the blink of an eye; an impressive feat for an Endless. Morpheus has, dare he say it, enjoyed getting to be a human, learning more about humanity and all that he had missed. Though he still lamented the loss of something so integral to his very being as his powers, his realm, he was able to recognize the gift that he had been given in spending the last four months with Y/n.

He’s sitting with her on the couch where it seems as though everything began, reading yet another book in the hopes that he might find a way to regain his powers, while she watches a movie on the television about some sort of battle in space (yet another aspect of humanity that she enjoyed teaching him, modern technology and everything along with it). She had meant to show him this movie, claiming that it was one of her favorites and that she believed every being needed to see this. Of course, it took a total of five minutes before he found himself hopelessly lost among the plot and had turned to the book next to him.

She had pouted for a moment, more to try and make him feel bad than from actually being upset. He had simply smirked in her direction, kissing her forehead before laying his arm around her and drawing her closer to him. Yet another thing that he loves about her, among many things, is that he can just exist in companionable silence with her. It’s rare, at least in his experience, when one finds another where this is possible.

Her head falls against his shoulder, and he smiles down at her when he sees she’s fallen asleep. In moments like these, he wishes more than anything that he was connected to the Dreaming once more. What he wouldn’t give to be able slip into her mind and give her the sweetest dreams that she deserves. As he closes his eyes and leans his head against hers, he imagines that he can feel that link to his realm.

After a moment, Morpheus opens his eyes and jarringly realizes that he can feel it. Her dreams, and the Dreaming itself. After 106 long years, the Dreaming returns to him as naturally as if he had simply blinked. His power suddenly twining through his veins again, something which he had taken for granted nearly his entire existence, has tears pricking at his eyes. Oh, how he has missed this.

Morpheus can return home now to reclaim his mantle and rule the Dreaming once more. He should be thrilled about this. He is thrilled about it. Thrilled, until he looks at the sleeping woman leaning against him and realizes that a decision must be made, and soon.

His power has returned, yet it’s still incredibly weak. Weak from not using them so long, and weak due to his not having his tools–his sand, his helm, and his ruby. Thus, he cannot be at his full strength until he recovers them. Will his power disappear yet again if he waits too long? If he wakes her to relay the good news, to take a moment to say goodbye, will the Dreaming escape from him? If his power does leave again, will he ever have another chance such as this?

It’s something that he cannot risk. And yet, he finds himself unsure, even though he knows what he has to do. This woman, this mortal, has managed to ensnare his heart so completely that Morpheus considers potentially forsaking his kingdom just for the chance to properly part with her in the way that he wants to, in the way that she deserves.

Morpheus takes great care not to wake her up when he moves her off of him to lay down on the couch. His fingers trace the slope of her nose, down to her lips and across her cheeks, mapping out her face. If this is to be the last time he sees her, he wants to remember everything about her. Knowing that he will have to depart without telling her where he is going or knowing if they will be together again grieves him. He has not felt pain of this kind since he helplessly watched Jessamy be murdered in front of him.

He lingers when he kisses his beloved’s forehead, not sure when, or if, he will have the pleasure of seeing her again. If she’ll forgive him for what he has to do, how he has to leave her. He whispers this in her ear, a simple, “I love you. Forgive me.”

Then, he closes his eyes and feels that tug that has always connected him to the Dreaming. He envisions the sandy dunes outside of the Gates of Horn and Ivory, the way they melt into the rolling hills of Fiddler’s Green in the distance. He sees his castle and his library, Lucienne and Mervyn, Cain and Abel, the seas of dreams and nightmares. He places himself there, and when he opens his eyes to see Lucienne leaning over him, when he feels the sands of his realm against his back, he knows…

He’s home.

•••

Waking up on your couch that day with no sign of Morpheus anywhere had confirmed your worst fears. Just as suddenly as he had appeared in your life, he was now gone without a trace. And as the hours eventually turned into days without him, you had to come to terms with the fact that he was really, truly gone.

Life without Morpheus, after having had him as yours for a few glorious months, just felt dull. Literally, it felt as though your senses were dulled now. Colors weren’t as bright, songs weren’t as beautiful, things didn’t taste as good, flowers didn’t smell right, and things that were once soft now felt harsh against your skin. He was gone, and you were alone. Things were as they were before that fateful night when he landed in front of your car.

It’s not even that he left you. Rather, it’s how he left you. Never would you have expected him to just completely abandon you, with no note left behind or anything to explain where he had gone. You assumed he had gotten his powers back, which was wonderful, truly. After all, that was the end game, wasn’t it? But for him to just…leave, after everything you had been through and shared with each other, hurt worse than you could have imagined.

You became intimately familiar with the five stages of grief in those first few days after his departure, cycling through each stage until you would come back around to the beginning and do it all over again. It felt pathetic that you were this heartbroken, but how could you not be? Morpheus had held your heart in his very hands, only to discard it as if the gift you gave him, of your love, meant nothing. You couldn’t even mope for as long as you wanted to, because you just reminded yourself of fucking Bella Swan in New Moon, and god forbid you share any similarities with her.

Eventually, you settled on feeling angry. Angry at him, angry at the circumstances, angry at yourself, angry at the world. You’re so mad, but then you feel like you have no right to be mad, because he got what he wanted! He has his powers and his realm back, which was the only reason he was with you for as long as he was. You both knew that, and still…

You really wish that you could hate Morpheus.

He hadn’t even come to visit you in your dreams, which had really sealed the deal for how little you meant to him. If he had gotten his powers back and returned to his realm, surely he would have spoken to you while you were asleep to at least let you know that he was alright? But no, you didn’t even receive that from him. And so you were left without closure, which made getting over him really difficult.

Still, you try your best to get over him, even though you really don’t want to do so. Two months after Morpheus vanished without a trace, you’re finally returning the last library book from your research sessions with him. You felt silly, holding onto it for as long as you did, but it proved that he had been here, and that what you had experienced was real. It was a tangible link to him; it was your only tangible link to him. Unfortunately, the library has only let you renew the book so many times before needing it back, and today is that day.

You stand in front of the book deposit box in the library, holding onto the book and feeling the cover that you’ve mapped out time after time as you attempt to work up the courage to let go. Let go of both the book itself, as well as the hope that Morpheus will come back to you. It’s obvious that it’s not going to happen, and you’re doing nothing but hurting yourself by continuing to hold out hope that it will. You need to live your life again, even if it means letting go of the best thing to ever happen to you.

Somebody clears their voice behind you to draw you out of your inner monologue, and you realize that a line has started to form. Smiling sheepishly at the grandma waiting for her turn, you whisper “sorry” to her before taking a breath and finally dropping the book inside. The flap of the box closes with a finality that signifies that you aren’t getting that book back. Stepping away from the deposit box to allow the line to progress, you take a deep breath as the finality of the situation hits you.

That’s it. All that you’re left with from your four months with Morpheus now is memories. You were hoping that this would feel more freeing, that you’d feel a weight lifted off of your shoulders and go waltzing out of the library like the main character in a coming-of-age movie as the end credits played to signify that you were turning a corner in your life. Instead, you just feel a pit in the bottom of your stomach, a sickness that this is really it. Now, you have to figure out what to do next.

Even as you turn to leave, you can’t help but think of Morpheus. You glance into the corner of the library that you spent many days with him in, the corner of the library where he kissed you, and you just want to cry. You miss him. You really, truly miss him, and it seems like it’s going to take more than returning a library book to get over that.

You wish you had pictures that you could burn, like every other normal relationship.

As you exit the library, you find yourself making eye contact with the fucking crow sitting in the tree across the street that seems to follow you around now. You’re probably just paranoid, because you don’t even really like birds, but it feels like you see that giant black bird everywhere you go. At first, for a hopeful second, you had allowed yourself to believe that maybe it was a sign from Morpheus. But when you had quietly said hello to it and it just did crow things, you realized that you were being stupid. Of course a random bird isn’t going to be a messenger from the lover that had left you.

Because this is already a terrible day, it gets worse when you harshly knock against someone when you’re walking in the parking lot to find your car. You stumble backwards, nearly falling from the force of it. The only reason that you don’t fall is because the person who you’ve just inadvertently assaulted grabs onto your forearm to steady you.

“Shoot, I’m sorry,” you mumble, squinting against the sun.

“I believe I’m the one that should be apologizing.”

That voice. You know that voice. Could it really be, or have you just finally lost your mind and are imagining what you want to happen?

But then your vision clears, and you look at him, and no. It’s real. He stands in front of you two months after you last saw him, looking down at you like you’re the one that left him suddenly.

Your mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. There are so many things that you want to say to him. After all, how many times have you imagined this exact scenario and all of the things that you would say to him in said scenario? Now you’re here, with his hand around your arm, and all you can think to say is, “Morpheus?”

He looks better than he did even at his healthiest when staying with you, which goes to show just how drained he was without his powers. His lips are lifted just slightly, his version of a smile, and he looks good. His coat fits him perfectly, as though it were made just for him (it probably was). He’s dressed in all black, of course, from the coat down to the black boots he wears. You finally meet his eyes, and you gasp when, for a split second, you see the stars that make up his eyes before you blink and they’re back to the blue you’ve known.

“Hello, beloved,” Morpheus says. The deep timbre of his voice sends shivers down your spine, a side effect of not hearing it every day like you used to.

You want to be mad at him. You are mad at him. He left you with no warning and disappeared from your life without a trace. He had left you so suddenly, in fact, that sometimes in the middle of the night when you were out of tears and hadn’t yet cried yourself to sleep, you wondered if you had simply imagined everything about him. Yet, seeing him again, all you want to do is fall into his arms and tell him how much you missed him. 

When you lunge forward, it’s not to hug him, which is what you always expected you would do if you were to be reunited with him. Instead, you say, “I can’t believe you fucking left me!” and shove at his chest in anger, which, if the look on his face is anything to go off of, he hadn’t been expecting either. 

The shove hardly moves him, but it fills you with satisfaction to be able to physically assert just how upset you are, so you shove and hit his chest again and again. Morpheus, to his credit, just stands there and takes it, hopefully because he knows he deserves it.

Even the patience of an Endless, however, is not endless. Morpheus grabs your wrists with one of his large hands and stops the physical manifestation of your rage in its tracks. You fight him for a moment longer, but eventually the hot tears building in your eyes spill over, and you look up to face him defiantly. If he’s going to make you cry, he’s going to have to see it.

“You couldn’t have left, I don’t know, a note or something? Just to let me know that you were going to disappear without a trace?”

Morpheus looks pained at this, and a sick part of you whispers ‘good, he deserves to feel bad.’ “When I realized that I could feel the Dreaming after you fell asleep that night, I was not sure if that would be my one and only chance to reclaim my throne. I had to make a choice, however difficult it was, to return to my realm through your dreams.”

“But you didn’t think to let me know that you were okay after you made it back?”

“You remember my tools? My helm, my sand, my ruby?” He waits for you to nod. “I had to retrieve those before I could return to you.”

“Don’t forget about the whole ‘dream vortex’ thing after that! Ugh, that was a mess.” You look up when another voice chimes in, only to find yourself looking at the crow that you had been mentally cursing minutes ago.

“Did–did that crow just talk?”

“Raven, and yes.” Said raven flutters down to land on Morpheus’s shoulder, who glances at his corvid companion like he’s a nuisance.

“This is Matthew, my emissary,” Morpheus introduces.

“Uh, it’s nice to meet you, Matthew.” You feel a bit stupid saying hello to a raven, but it’d be rude not to. “I’m Y/n.”

“I know!” Matthew says cheerfully.

“You may return to the Dreaming, Matthew. I no longer require your assistance.” You stifle a laugh at how obviously Morpheus wants his raven, who is apparently enjoying being a third wheel, to hit the road.

“Right, right, you don’t have to say another word. I’m off!” Matthew flies from Morpheus’s shoulder and presumably back to the Dreaming, though you’re not quite sure how the logistics of traveling between dimensions work.

Left alone now, Morpheus stares at you, and you he, for a long moment. He seems to be waiting for you to make the first move, to see if you’re going to react with anger again. Finally, you rip your hands from his grasp and throw your arms around him. “Fuck, I missed you.”

Though slowly, Morpheus returns your hug, pulling you to him and pressing a kiss to your forehead before resting his chin on your head. “I missed you as well. I have ached for you and your presence since the moment I had to leave. Believe me, if I could have taken you with me, I would have.”

You close your eyes, savoring the feeling of actually having Morpheus here and being in his arms. It’s all you’ve dreamed of, for lack of a better term, since he left, and it feels just as good as you imagined it would. You could stay like this forever, and you almost do…until a car honks at you and you remember that you’re standing in the middle of the parking lot.

Sheepishly, you wave at the car and mouth “sorry!” as you grab Morpheus’s hand and pull him towards the actual parked cars. The driver that you’ve now royally pissed off glares at you the entire time that they slowly drive past you, making you giggle nervously. When you look over and see the bewildered look on Morpheus’s face (you would love to know how he would have reacted had you been flipped off), your laughter increases.

Your laughter is cut off when Morpheus leans down and kisses you. Whether that be because he’s trying to get you to shut up or because he actually wanted to kiss you, you’re not sure. Either way, you enjoy finally getting to kiss Morpheus once more.

When you pull away, you look him in his piercing eyes and say, “I’m still mad at you, y’know.”

“You have the right to be so. However, if you are amenable to spending more time with me as I attempt to win back your affections, I would like to show you my kingdom.”

“You wanna take me to the Dreaming?” Morpheus nods, smirking at the way you try to act nonchalant and not excited. “...Can I meet the mermaids?”

This makes him chuckle, a rarity for him. “Yes, you can meet the mermaids.”

The excitement at this prospect wins out, and you grin. “Okay then. Woo me, your majesty.”

•••

Morpheus had feared the worst when he had decided that the Dreaming was rebuilt well enough to receive its (hopefully) future Queen. He worried that Y/n would have taken another lover, or that she would not love him at all anymore. A frequent criticism by his siblings is that he gives too much of himself to romantic relationships, and that very well may be true. But Morpheus knew for certain that, were Y/n to turn him down when he finally reappeared in her life (and he would not even blame her for doing so; not with the way that he left and remained away for so long), it would crush him in a way that no other rejection ever had.

He thinks it would hurt even worse than the Nada affair.

When he finally coaxed his beloved to smile in response to something that he said–a sight which he will never take for granted again–those fears were assuaged. When she agreed to accompany him to the Dreaming, Morpheus allowed himself to hope.

Hope. A word so simple, yet a word that carried so much within it that it could defeat Lucifer themself.

Hope blossoms within Morpheus as he holds out his arm for Y/n to grasp onto so that they can travel safely to the Dreaming, and it turns into a flame when she instead grabs onto the lapels of his jacket and allows him to wrap his arm around her waist.

#morpheus #morpheus imagine #morpheus x reader #dream of the endless #dream of the endless x reader #dream of the endless imagine #the sandman #the sandman imagine

[dazyskiie-luv]

Overblot mc/yuu but...????

TW — mention of vomiting, fighting Crowley and winning (sorry Crowley lovers), past death. I like thinking a lot tbh

not necessarily angst but it is in here! Same with fluff...this was really just me rambling.

* EDIT: WHY DID IT TAKE HOURS UNTIL I FINALLY GOT TOLD I WAS WRITING OVERBLOT WRONG.

I think about MC overbloting a lot and I also think about adding it into my own books because of how??? good??? the idea???? is???????

I genuinely imagine that even from the start MC was in danger of overbloting themself, with the stress and despair of finding out they aren't in THEIR world, away from their (family and/or friends) with possibly NO WAY BACK EVER because of some egocentric crow refusing to do more than he wants to???????

They would obviously be hella upset, stressed, depressed, anxious, etc because they know NOTHING of this world and is practically a BABY among people who lived here THEIR WHOLE LIFE.

So as more overblots happen, the more their OWN overblot is brewing. Bubbling, waiting to enter the game. Especially with the magic always getting slashed onto them. I think the only reason why they HAVEN'T overbloted just yet is because of grim

a more personal headcanon; Grim's fire, when you have a close bond with him, sorta starts erasing your blot and fueling HIS flames, making it more powerful. Essentially, think of when you're close friends with someone... you'll find it easier to fight for them right?? like you have more power to do that??? that's what its like

Now think of when MC is just TOO deep in their mind, TOO deep into their emotions and its the ONE TIME grim isn't there to help. They go to throw up blot and after panicking for a bit they just accept it. They accept that "I'm gonna overblot and probably die" because they're just too tired to worry abt themself

They don't tell anyone and since the overblot is already taking over the entire inside of their body, grims flames can't really???? get it all???? It'll always be there and it'll continue to grow and slowly grim notices that when he's feeling more powerful than ever while MC is showing obvious signs of getting ready to overblot

Grim choosing not to say anything to other people would be like... i guess out of character but at the same time i think In character????? He knows how tired MC is with dealing with everyone and honestly he's tired of it too so YASSS SLAY HENCH-BESTIEEE!!!!!

Sooner or later the others would notice too and it would be a little late to help MC since the overblot is already seeping out of their skin like they're crying. and honestly? their body IS crying. it's crying blot. And even as everyone is screaming and panicking about MC, they're just... sitting there.

Like they're annoyed everyone is making a big deal out of it considering no one cared before, and they're just like "stfu we're in class" and then focus on the teacher going "u can continue im sorry abt that."

And everyone is just??? confused?? because why aren't they going haywire or like.....???? idk..... crying in pain....????? what...........

MC just chilling the entire day while overbloting, even their overblot monster just floating behind them in peace and waving at times when people look for too long while everyone else is wary and giving them (+ grim who's always in MC's hold) a bunch of space while the teachers and dormleaders have their pens/wands/wtvr thr fuck at command just incase

but then everyone just realizes that??? MC isn't gonna???? do anything?????? and it kinda irritates them because why aren't you doing shit its freaking them out.

And lets say,,, ortho... as discreetly as he can... scans you. And it shows that you're perfectly fine??? like you aren't dying or in pain. It even shows the Blot monster being alright too like its just a guy standing there.

And now the confusion is up to 100 because WHAT????

MC and the Blot [+ Grim] just doing their everyday assignments and eating in the cafeteria with their friends being visibly tense and MC just raises an eyebrow like "whats wrong with yall tf" before continuing to absolutely DEMOLISH a burger they got for free. FREE!!! best day ever fr they'll tell you that much

I feel like the Blot would get sorta aggressive/protective when it comes to people who has like hurt MC to the point they had to take a nurse visit (half of the school but its alr we gang fr) but when it comes to crowley....??? They'll see the FULL POWER of a magicless blot monster which is actually more terrifying than the others.

The blot going hulk on crowley is so funny to imagine for me cause he'd just be running away and suddenly gets smashed into a pillar from a literal stomp. just one. and it was relatively weak compared to the Blot AND MC picking up and swinging that SAME PILLAR to smash it into crowley.

All that anger and other negative emotion finally coming out the SECOND they even so as HEAR that crows heartbeat nearby. It gave everyone whiplash but then again they also all collectively thought that he deserved it considering he hasn't truly done anything to HELP the students but just to HELP the schools reputation.

I'm half certain a student died there and he just covered it up and they turned into a ghost that haunts places. (i mean... look at the three ghosts in Ramshackle. they used to be students there I'm pretty sure????? i forgot.)

As MC is beating the DOG SHIT out of crowley the Blot is just cleaning everything up slowly because they realized that they dirted up the place :( and when MC is done they help too as the teachers all circle around a throughly beaten and bruised Crowley who has blood seeping out of his mouth while being half awake.

Of course they help him don't die because they honestly don't want the one helpful person to go to the equivalent of jail in twisted wonderland for committing murder and ykw thats so real.

I feel like as Mc stays in this overblot form everyone thats close-ish to them gets memories of things that's happened to them in the past like how MC did. But it's worse. I want an mc thats traumatized im sorry and i want it to be worse than what half of these guys went through.

I need them to feel guilty even more. Like. "Oh my god I really said that when— holy shit" FEEL BAD!!!!! Grim would already know their past because I know I would be cuddling into Grim's stomach and crying about everything.

When Mc finally stops "Overbloting", the Blot would still be there but as its own person :D How does this work????? it works bc I said it does.

The Blot™ would help MC a lot and vice versa, basically acting like parents now with how worried they get over everyone and the other. Grim is eating the attention up though as both Mc and The Blot cuddle as therapy (and bc they wanna)

Everyone (especially idia) would need time to like... get used to that because there's "NO FUCKING RECORD OF AN OVERBLOT BECOMING ITS OWN PERSON AND BEING....NICE?????"(shrouds words not mine ong) and when they do get used to it its like everyone is genuinely happier because! gasp! they are!!!

kick the crow out the seat. Both the Blot and Mc are the new headmaster contrary to the students voting them when Crowley got demoted from it.

I also feel like....??? Instead of MC goinf back home cause they realize just how BAD it was back home, they choose to have a bridge between both realities so that its their (friends and/or families) choice on if they want to be with them in twisted wonderland or not.

MC & Blot beating the shit outta Crowley as everyone watches (and cheers)

#🪐:maxwrites.exe #♡ #gn reader #x reader #twisted wonderland #◇ #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #♤ #Overbolt MC #Overbolt Yuu #Overbolt #dire crowley #Headmaster Crowley #ortho shroud #idia shroud #The Great Grim #grim twst #☆ #Nobodies really mentioned here besides the one I put tags as.... #also not truly an x reader but still it can be worse if you see it as one #romantic or platonic is up to you! #♧ #long post #overblot #oh my god. #crying i said bolt this entire time.

[logicalbookthief]

With the return of Misaki and the uncertainty over Miri’s custody, I think it’s time to talk about the cat.

Because the cat is a direct parallel, and the reason why I believe things will go differently this time around, since they’ve both grown a lot over the last year.

The argument over the cat perfectly illustrates the crux of Rei & Kazuki’s issues at the start of the series.

Kazuki tells Rei that buying food for the cat isn't enough, you have to be willing to put in the work — and, given that he was gone for one night and comes home to an apartment filled with smoke, along with a pile of take-out and garbage, he was 100% justified in refusing the stray. Genuinely I don’t get why Kazuki taking this stance got the hate it did, any responsible pet owner would look at the Rei of Ep 1 and agree he was not ready for a cat.

However, this is something that Rei grows to understand when he’s left to care for Miri on his own in Ep 7 and Kazuki isn’t around to shoulder that responsibility. Rei realizes that his actions, or inaction, can negatively affect the people in his care, and it gives him a reason to change. I think it also gives him a new appreciation for everything Kazuki does, hence his attempt at French toast.

But I feel we don't discuss Kazuki's reason for giving up the cat enough, because they’re two sides of the same coin.

What he’s saying is objectively true and you can tell he’s speaking from a place of experience with what happened to Yuzuko. However, he is only focused on how what they do can affect the other people in their lives. No mention of how it would feel to lose someone or any lingering on how lonely this life is.

It’s a contrast to Rei, who brings home the stray without a second thought, simply because he wants to, not considering the impact it would have on the cat. Kazuki takes this to the opposite extreme, only considering what’s best for the cat and completely ignoring his own wants and feelings.

So, as we know, the cat is left where Rei found it. Not an ideal situation, no — much like leaving Miri with her mother would be, considering she did abandon her before — but it is the safer option in both cases.

Watch these scenes and tell me he isn’t fond of the cat. And when he realizes it’s cold and comes back with food for the little guy? Yeah, don’t tell me he wasn’t already attached.

But he comes back to an empty box. Implying to Kazuki, and to us the audience, that the cat was taken in by someone who could give it the normal, loving life that it deserves, which is why Kazuki leaves with a smile.

It is interesting to note that despite his disagreement, Rei went along with Kazuki’s decision over the cat, just as he went along with Kazuki’s decisions regarding Miri, whether that meant taking her back to her mom or committing to being her parents.

I always read this scene as Rei seeing how happy Kazuki is having Miri around. And thus he questions if this is really what Kazuki wants to do, resulting in that startled expression on Kazuki’s face. Like he hadn’t even considered that possibility.

Rei is perceptive, recognizing that Kazuki will be sad to see her go, yet he doesn’t argue when Kazuki firmly negates this as an option while looking upset again.

Kazuki has made strides in moving on from his wife’s death, but the idea that it’s okay to move on doesn’t erase the insecurities and tendency toward self-loathing he’s displayed, which were probably there long before he met Yuzuko. Even when he reconciles with Karin, her words of encouragement are, “I bet you can make her [Miri] happy!”

So if he truly believes that Miri will be happier or safer with her mother, Kazuki will absolutely choose to let her go.

And it will be up to Rei to go against his decision for once, because he knows that remaining a family is what they both want.

Here, Kazuki looks sad and resigned. I was always sort of disappointed we didn’t get a scene of Rei & Kazuki during Ep 7 when he was at his lowest and most self-deprecating. Now, though, I wonder if they were saving such a confrontation for this moment right here. Where Rei will have to convince him that his own happiness is a priority, too, and that their family is worth fighting for.

Now, uh. I do think that Rei’s decision that they stay together as a family will result in tragedy — there is too much foreshadowing to pretend otherwise — and that maybe Miri will have to stay with her mother for a bit out of necessity. But the point of this episode I think will be to highlight how much these two have grown because they wanted to be better for Miri and that it isn’t selfish to want to pursue that happiness for their own sakes, too.

#buddy daddies #kurusu kazuki #suwa rei #kazuki kurusu #rei suwa #unsaka miri #miri unasaka #buddy daddies meta

[cardentist]

well ! I figured that was gonna happen, so lets not waste a good essay.

I feel like it's not controversial to say that there is a Lot of underlying transphobia in how people with "weird" gender and labels are treated. but in particular I'd like to highlight how multigender/genderfluid/genderqueer people/etc are expected to "pick a side" based on their agab (or perceived agab).

and this absolutely extends to nonbinary and intersex people as well. people viewing nonbinary people by their agab regardless of their identities, presentation, or real lived experiences (or punishing nonbinary people for not fitting what they Assume those things would be based on them Being nonbinary).

as well as the way that intersex people are erased and refused to be understood. it is, for instance, treated as ridiculous or even outright Dangerous to think an amab person could be trans masc or an afab person could be trans fem. ignoring, of course, that there are intersex people who Aren't treated like their agab. who are visibly read as trans and transition in ways that suit their agab.

and of course, intersex people have all sorts of relationships with gender and sexuality that influence their experiences.

but there's Also just this baseline kneejerk rejection of seeing multigender people as anything different from half trans. or rather, people don't like it when people relate to and share experiences with what they perceive as the "wrong" trans labels.

I've talked about this before, but I've been shuffling around labels for a very Very long time. both trying to find something to fit the way I feel, And in trying to figure out my feelings at all.

I've Always identified with both masculinity and femininity in some way, but for a very long time I've never enjoyed being Perceived As a girl. was I genderfluid, was I nonbinary, was I trans masc and gnc, what was I indeed. why was I comfortable, even Happy presenting femininely in some cases, but I feel antsy when my hair gets anywhere longer than "basically bald."

gender euphoria at the idea of going on T and wearing clothes that hide and change the shape language of my body, but Equally receiving gender euphoria at dressing and being perceived as Feminine without being perceived as a cis woman.

and in much the same way, when I Do present masculinely I enjoy not reading as a Cis man. that visible transness. that duality of masculine and feminine.

in the end I've found that my euphoria with femininity hinges on exactly that. I Want to transition, I want a deeper voice, I want my face and body to change. but I Also want to keep some of those traits that are read as feminine. some of the shape language of my body, my boobs, my presentation.

no matter how I choose to label this feeling, this desired presentation and desired interpretation, what this means for me is that I have shared experiences and desires with many other groups of trans people. trans people Can look and want to present as anything mind. but it is, for instance, not hard to imagine how someone in a dress with visible breasts and a masculine voice and facial hair would be interpreted and possibly treated.

and I think binary people really don't Like the idea of sharing experiences with the "wrong" sorts of people. they don't Like sharing experiences with nonbinary people, with multi gender or gender fluid people, with intersex people.

and I think I think there Needs to be some awareness of this. that trans spaces are always going to be fuzzy at the edges. that there will be men who are Also women and women who are Also men, and that not being a threat to anyone who's one or the other.

and I think there Also needs to be an awareness that this intolerance to people with Weird genders and presentations and labels. Is Transphobia, regardless of who it's coming from.

not to inherently demonize anyone struggling with feelings of discomfort, but to ask people to Examine that feeling. especially before they choose to interact with people who are different from them.

everyone has prejudices, everyone has insecurity, everyone has biases and difficult emotions that they're trying to work through. and there's nothing wrong with that, but there needs to be an awareness and recognition of it. to make the active effort not to react to someone you don't understand with a negative kneejerk.

sometimes things that sound unintuitive make perfect sense to the person it's relevant to, sometimes things that sound intuitive are wrong. you don't Have to understand somebody to leave them be to do their own thing. and if you feel that someone's existence is harmful, sometimes it's a good idea to check that emotion.

#discourse #long post #trans unity #queer unity #intersex #multigender #genderqueer #nonbinary

[geekishfangirl]

I can’t view Batman/Bruce as a real hero

So I’ve gotten into DC recently, or more specifically I’ve gotten into the Batfam, and the more I learn about Bruce Wayne the harder it is for me to look to him as a hero.

I’ll preface all this by saying I have consumed very little DC content, so if something I say is not actually canon pls let me know.

It started when I learned that this man seemingly has an absolute no kill rule. Not a “I try to avoid killing and only do it when absolutely necessary” rule, but a “I refuse to kill anyone no matter the circumstances” rule. I honestly hate this because it’s not effective in any way. Take the Joker for example, Batman has to fight him over and over again because they simply cannot seem to keep that man in prison and Batman won’t kill him or let anyone else do it. I think this is because he wants to believe that anyone can change, and they can, but just because they CAN doesn’t mean that they WILL. People have to choose to change and the Joker has had like 30 chances to do so, yet he continues to kill innocent people. How many innocents have to die before someone acknowledges that the Joker will never choose to be a better person and finally decide to do what’s necessary to protect everyone? They either need to find a way to keep him in jail or just take him out.

This got worse when I learned about Jason Todd. Here you have a poor boy taken in by Bruce, who idealizes him and views him as a father, and when he gets kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by the Joker he dies alone. When he is brought back to life, he’s mad at Bruce, not because Bruce didn’t save him, but Bruce didn’t kill the Joker to avenge him. Because Bruce didn’t love him more than he loved Justice. Hell, even on his grave, “A good soldier”. I’ve seen ppl say that maybe he didn’t say son because he didn’t want to erase their family ties and the kids never took his last name and sure, I get that. But putting a good soldier instead? He didn’t have to do that. Jason wasn’t a soldier, he was a little boy. It seems like Bruce forgets that about the Robins sometimes. (None of this is even getting into my feelings about Bruce taking in multiple children and having them fight crime, literally risking their lives every night but then this rant would be even longer)

And apparently Bruce fucking decks Dick because Dick was asking him why he let him become Robin before he was ready? Bro cannot take any criticism for his actions I swear. I mean, even if he never officially adopts them (I’m very confused on that tbh) he does still view them as his kids. He still helped raise them. After all, they were all underage when he met them and took them in. So to straight up deck your eldest and tell him to get out literally right after your other kid was murdered solely because he questioned you is actually wild.

Then you have the whole batarang incident, which just makes me question his morals more because he’s got the whole “no killing whatsoever” thing going on but then decides, “I won’t kill the man who murdered my son and countless other innocents, but I can and will slit my son’s throat and leave him for dead.” Like, HUH??? Also, didn’t Dick accidentally kill the Joker once and Bruce went out of his way to REVIVE HIM? Honestly feels like Bruce has some weird relationship with the Joker cause he seems to care about him more than anything. LET THAT MONSTER DIE!

I saw someone say that they thought the “no killing” thing wasn’t effective but was accurate to Bruce’s character because his vigilanteism isn’t actually mainly about helping but about punishing himself for what happened to his parents. And if you kill the villains when you need to, you can’t keep punishing yourself through fighting them. Like a self-sabotage thing. I thought that was super interesting but it would also just go along with him not being a truly effective hero, cause he won’t make the hard calls that are sometimes needed.

In conclusion, while I am sure Bruce has done good for people, it’s hard to see him as a truly effective hero (or a good person/father for that matter) when he does stuff like this.

#batman #bruce wayne #jason todd #the red hood #red hood #dc robin #dick grayson #night wing #richard grayson #the joker #dc joker #batfam #batfamily #dc comics #dcu #dc universe #ao3 #archive of our own #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #bruce wayne is a bad father #might get hate for this but this is how I see it #Justice for Jason Todd #jason todd deserves better #Dick Grayson deserves better #all the Robins deserve better tbh #rant post #rant