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#and the fact that they found something this meaningful to do together and are equally nervous about it
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Astarion Jealousy Part 2
The graphic extension to this but a lil less serious and definitely not sfw.
CW: Jealous spawn astarion who is still a sweetheart, but the drow twins get under his skin. graphic sex scenes, oral, relatively tame honestly. The sex part will be under the cut btw which is m/f. Also vampire man drinks blood. mentionable incorrect language for sex workers
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It was odd, being home in Baldur’s Gate without the threat of Cazador always looming. Odd, but equally as wonderful. It had been so thoughtful, if not a little idiotic for Cazador to end up being your first stop in the city. The fight itself had been a blur, a barrage of intense emotions and bloody violence. Astarion had come so close to losing himself back there, losing everything that made him better than the man who almost ruined him. But then… you stopped him. You saw something more in him, a chance for a better life. A more meaningful life, away from the shackles of vampiric power obsessions. 
He was officially free. Now he could exist without any fear of his disgusting master’s retribution. He could just… be. Well… not including his darling’s own myriad of enemies that seemed to follow them about everywhere. And there was still the matter of defeating the elder brain, and lord knows if any of you made it through that alive. But at least his personal demons were slain and out of the picture.
Every little step counted after all. Perhaps some of your delusional hopefulness had finally started to rub off on him, but Astarion was actually starting to look forward to his future. Your future, together. All he had to do was get through a few more perilous adventures and then he’d really have you all to himself. 
All that said, Astarion could really go without the frequent visits to the local brothel. Was it the best place in the city for gathering information? Yes. It seemed that every walk of life in Baldur’s Gate found their way into Shar’s Caress and if you were going to find alternative passage to the underworld, this would be the best place to find it. But that didn’t mean he had to like it. For one there were the unwelcome advances to his own person, the concept of grace and personal space apparently left at the door. He was so very close to breaking the hand of the next person who thought it was appropriate to grab his ass. And if they could afford to get kicked out he would have by now. Your verbal, angry tirades in his defense could only scare off so many. 
But as terrible as his own discomfort was, it was nothing in the face of how often you were being fawned over. What was it about you that seemed to drive everyone mad? Yes you were objectively attractive, but this was frankly getting out of hand. First there was the green skinned druid doing something sensual to your mind, then there were the general stares and whispers as you walked by, and now a pair of gorgeous drow twins trying and failing to proposition you. 
It was getting tiresome. There were only so many times a man could take his lover being offered “free” services before he snapped. 
On one hand, he could respect the dedication they had to the craft. He could be considered something of a hired whore himself in his time, the old, “the first one’s free” was a tried and true trick. And he also knew, vaguely, that no one was actually trying to steal you from him. But on the other, he couldn’t help the fact that he wanted to claw their eyes out for looking at you so brazenly.
He hadn’t expected the eyes of the woman to wander over to him, like she was just noticing the possessive arm he had wrapped around your waist, “Is that your partner with you? How would you both feel about having a little fun?”
Absolutely fucking not. Maybe the old Astarion would have smiled and nodded, ready to do whatever was asked of him. But the man from that wretched era had died, or at the very least was dying. And he would be damned if he let you lay with another, never less participate in it. 
Astarion interrupted your overly-polite attempts stuttering of a refusal. He glared at them both, a sneer painted on his face, “We’ll be passing on that. You’d think the first no would have sufficed, but I suppose it’s not fair to expect everyone to have basic language comprehension. Now as illuminating as this conversation has been, we have places to be. Excuse us.”
Then he was pulling you away, happy to ignore the offended huffs of indignation he had left in his wake. 
“We’re supposed to be investigating, remember?” You said with a giggle, not even questioning him as he dragged you to the second floor, “Being rude is not the way we’ll find travel to the hells.”
“I highly doubt they would have been of use,” Astarion said as he pushed you into the first empty room he could find. He felt off, maybe even a little crazed as he turned to you, “Tell me darling, what is it about you that makes you so irresistible, hm?”
He crowded you against the closed door, ducking his head into the crook of your neck to breath you in. You smelled heavenly, you always did. He could trace the barest whiff of your blood from beneath your skin, always calling to him. You were the sweetest thing he ever tasted. Delicious even, for more reasons than one. 
“T-They just wanted my coin,” You gasped when he started to suck bruises into your skin, “That’s all.”
“I think they wanted a bit more than that,” Astarion bit out as he shoved his thigh between your legs, “What will it take for others to realize you’re mine.”
His hands were wandering, resting low to grip your hips. He was using them to move you, forcing you to grind against his thigh. You grasped at his shoulders, trying to bite back a moan as you stared at him with wide eyes, “You want to do it here? Does that door even lock?”
It looked like it didn’t, not that Astarion cared. Maybe walking in on him ravishing you would finally start getting the point across of who you belonged to. Astarion shrugged, "There are less appropriate venues than literal whore houses."
“But-”
“But I can tell you want it,” Astarion interrupted with a smirk, his hands barely working to move your body anymore. But that wasn’t stopping you from rubbing yourself all over him, “Just look at you darling. Desperate little thing. But if you really don’t want to…”
Astarion made a lazy attempt to step back, laughing out loud when your desperately pulled him back, your desire finally winning out over your common sense. But you were glaring at him, obviously annoyed that he was so good at riling you up. He had seen that look before, the one that just screamed that you were scheming something. 
He just hadn’t expected you to drop to your knees in front of him, huffing as you started to undo the fastenings to his pants, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bit of a shit?”
“Maybe,” Astarion said with a strained laugh, his breath catching when you pulled his half-hard cock out, “But it seems to keep getting me the things I want.”
You rolled your eyes before licking a wide strip up his cock, like you weren’t directly proving his point. You looked amazing own there, you’re half-hearted glare morphing into a blissful haze. 
Gods, how were you real? Astarion wasn’t quite sure why you were such a fan of getting him down your throat, but he knew that he was a lucky bastard for it. 
“Sweet girl,” Astarion sighed, letting a hand drift down to tangle in your hair, “Sweet girl with a perfect mouth. And you’re all mine, aren’t you?”
You made a small, affirmative noise around his cock, taking him in deeper as you clutched at his thighs. You were so good at this, so well-trained after months of being together. He loved the soft, wet sounds that would escape your lips as you swallowed him down, the pretty way your eyes would water as you encouraged him to fuck your throat, how you would squirm in place on your knees, no doubt ruining your panties with how wet you were getting. 
And no one else would ever know. No one would get to see you like this again, feel you like this. Needy, desperate, and his. Oddly enough, that thought was what sent him over the edge. He came down your throat, groaning as you eagerly swallowed around him. 
You pulled off of him slowly, panting while you smiled up at him. There was the smallest string of spit mixed with his come, connecting from the head of his cock to your lips. You licked it up, still clinging to his thighs as you hazily stared up at him. Sweet enough to make his heart skip a beat, and his dick give a valiant twitch.
He pulled you to your feet, not wasting any time in smashing your lips together. He spun you around, pushing you towards what he prayed was a clean bed. 
He pushed you back onto the sheets, making quick work of tearing your pants down your legs as he grinned down at you, “Your turn.”
He kneeled in front of you; spreading his hands over your splayed thighs to peel off your underwear. The core of you was already glistening, slick enough to make Astarion’s mouth water. He licked his lips as he spread your legs further apart, shameless as he feasted on you with his eyes. 
You were shaking in his hold, biting your bottom lip when you whined, “Stop staring already…”
“But you’re so pretty here my sweet,” Astarion cooed, tracing a single finger over the seam of your cunt, “And you’re dripping. Poor thing, have I kept you waiting too long?”
You nodded excitedly above him, your hips bucking when he let his fingers dip in further between your pussy lips. He lightly traced your clit, softly laughing at the way the simple touch made you whine.
It was his own fault that you were so needy, a fact that brought a smirk to his lips. You always got so wet after you had him down your throat, soaked and gorgeous. 
Astarion dove right in, loudly moaning as he licked into your folds. He dragged his lips upward to suckle on your clit, basking in all the cries and whimpers escaping you.
He licked back down, teasing your hole with his tongue as your legs quivered around his head. He let the sharpness of his fangs scrape against you as he started to fuck you with his tongue, threatening your most intimate places.
He knew you liked that; little minx that you were. The slight risk of pain that was always looming. It made him want to sink his fangs in you for real, a hunger that he'd sate after he had you gushing into his mouth.
You were already close, he could tell from the way your cunt was tightening around his tongue; too worked up from the thrill of being in public and the taste of him still lingering on your tongue. Astarion trailed talented fingers up to rub against your clit, his tongue still curling inside of you as you cried out. Finally falling over the edge. But that wasn't stopping him from continuing to play with you.
You had to tug on Astarion’s hair for him to finally pull away, too over sensitive to handle his talented tongue. You were still trembling by the time he leaned back, licking his lips. He rested his head on your thigh, obviously pleased with himself as he grinned up at you. He could feel your heart racing against his cheek, the sound of your blood pumping singing through your veins. It had his mouth watering for a completely different reason. 
He let his fangs drag against the delicate skin of your inner thigh, looking up at you through his lashes, "Can I?"
A superfluous question. Not when he already knew the answer before it escaped your lips.
“Y-yeah," You mumbled, lovingly gazing down at him. He would never tire of seeing that look on your face, "But be gentle? Please?” 
"Of course my love," Astarion murmured, before promptly sinking his fangs into your flesh. He had to hold you down from the way you were still trembling, your quivering only getting worse at the pleasure mixed with pain. He didn’t let himself go rabid, just enough to get a taste. He was pulling back too soon, smiling to himself at the little whine you let out. He gently licked over the wound before standing, not yet swallowing the last drops on his tongue.
Instead he leaned forward to kiss you, more than happy to share the sweet taste of your blood as he slipped his tongue into your mouth.
“Thank you my dear,” Astarion sighed as he pulled away, “That was exactly what I needed. Now I think that’s enough investigating for one day.” 
You sighed, taking the time to card your fingers through his hair, “Agreed. Though you might have to carry me out of here now.”
Wasn’t that a wonderful idea?
Astarion hummed as he pulled your clothing back on, “I think I like the sound of that," He didn't give you time to respond, too busy sweeping you up in his arms with a grin, "I'll be taking you up on that."
You squeaked when he hefted you up, bridal style, “I wasn’t being serious!”
But it was too late, Astarion was already kicking the door open. He shrugged at you, completely shameless as he winked at a few onlookers, "Then you shouldn't have suggested it."
You groaned, hiding your face in his shirt as he happily took you outside, “I’m going to get you back for this. I hope you know that.”
Astarion laughed as he kissed the top of your head, “I’m sure you will.”
It was a childish stunt, borderline on par with a jealous tantrum, but gods, did it feel good. Good enough to sate Astarion's obsessive tendencies for an impressive amount of time. Under normal circumstances. 
But what about your lives were normal?
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noxnephilim · 9 months
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Hello M! slashers for a crazy boy s/o ♡
Not sure what you meant, but enjoy
PRETTY LITTLE PSYCHO
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Your personality attracted them. When society deems you a problem, a danger to its very foundation, they are there to praise the very soil you walk in
You aren't afraid of the unconventional, quite the opposite. You look for it, never shying away from the gruesome facet of reality.
Hannibal is one such admirer: he knew from the first time he met you at the library that you were different. It took just a glance. Predators knew each other after all. In your eyes he saw a dangerous curiosity. He knew you knew who he was, yet you held such fondness that he could not help himself. He longed for you, deeply. And it made his heart beat faster when he found sculptures dedicated to him. A declaration of love, bathed in the blood of the lambs. Pure and unconditional love.
You were like a God walking amongst the proselytes, and he was your fervent disciple. You grace his presence with love and blood, and he can't help but offer you more of his arts, hoping to declare in the most candid way what he felt. Love was ablaze, and the heart he served you was the loudest form of love you have ever been graced by
Jesse knew you were different, in fact you never questioned why he had so many snuff films or why he had to go away on business trips so often. Nor the numerous and quite impressive collection of knives. He told you one night what he did and you only shrugged, asking him what he wanted for dinner instead.
He fell hard, and he asked you on such day to marry him. Blood reflected off your shirt, making you an ethereal sight. An angel of war, born by steel and blood. His own little psycho. He loved you, so much that it hurt. And the little piggy you gifted him for his anniversary? If he ever had doubts about your dedication, they vanished that day. Killing together had never been so intimate and meaningful
Asa studied you. A teacher of taxidermy was so unlikely that he had to understand you. You were like him: you kept to yourself, never going out of your way to be a social bee, and yet when you taught how to preserve dead bodies, your eyes gained a different shine. They glowed in the dark. He wanted to see for himself the difference, he attended one of your classes. When your gaze locked, he felt a shiver go down his spine. Impossible. He was a killer, he was cold and tough, yet a mere glance from you put fear in his heart. But something hidden behind it told him something else.
He had to know you better. He knew he had been recognised, he felt it in the way you talked to him, almost like you knew what he did as a hobby. But he didn't expect to be asked out in the most macabre yet fascinating way possible. A new addition to the hotel was left for him, in the form of one of his favourite arachnids. Only you knew that one, and only you could do something like this.
He had never been more glad to be married. He didn't have to hide with you, he could talk with excitement about the projects he had for the hotel, and you would stand there smiling, admiring the man in front of you with such fervent regard and passion. He had found his equal, his partner, his own little butterfly.
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full-of-malice · 5 months
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wow. alright. just got through loki season two last night. here are my thoughts
alright so first and foremost. the ending was bullshit.
something something pretty imagery pain and suffering godlike potential and he wants to be a good god. i just. gods there are so many other ways you could've done that in a way that didn't reaffirm that loki would suffer alone forever. that he would be burdened with a glorious purpose til the end of time. he doesn't deserve that. loki has been through enough and finally deserves something akin to peace and happiness.
don't get me wrong as a norse mythology nerd the imagery in this episode was nice. some concepts were lovely. the time travel tie together of a lot of stuff at the end i appreciated it. but loki didn't and doesn't deserve pain and suffering. one of the points of the show is that you are not tethered to fate and that you can try and make your own choices and destiny and is fighting back against the predetermined.
i will also be bitter that we as a fandom got queerbaited. again. don't come over to me crying but serena a romance subplot would've been rushed it wouldn't logically have worked, oh serena not everything has to have romance. well sure. i know. but i also call bullshit. if the writers can cram in a drawn out uncomfortable ai x romance scene then i'm pretty certain that they can make two characters who already have chemistry kiss. it could be like. a five second scene. a quick kiss on the cheek. anything to confirm that they. were actually together. it wouldn't have taken much considering the characters already have chemistry unlike some which they somehow managed to squeeze in there [coughing sylki cough coughing]
queerbaiting in the fact that we as a fandom were robbed of our potential loki genderfluid representation, along with barely given the Concept of him being bisexual before instantly forced into a seemingly straight relationship that resembled a selfcest fic. [the scene where loki said if he won't come back and was going to say something to mobius before time slipping was queerbaiting and you can fight me on that] loki using he/him in the mcu is why i am primarily using those pronouns for him. pronouns don't equal gender, he can still be genderfluid and use only he/him pronouns. or if his character were to come out and prefer different terms those pronouns would be used. either way i'd be thrilled because finally genderfluid rep
okay um flashes mythology nerd badge lets get into some imagery that i enjoyed despite not. like. enjoying the end of the finale.
yggdrasil. in the norse mythology is a giant tree that all of the nine realms exist upon. this giant tree is ruled over and protected. okay yeah most people who know anything can see that imagery in the end of the show. this matters even more but i'll get to that soon.
the imagery of the throne reminds me of odin's throne in norse mythology. it was a grand all seeing throne that no one else but the king of gods was allowed to touch [that didn't stop of lot of people though]. and while my memory of this is a bit fuzzy it does remind me a lot of the throne used.
it even more reminds me of the punishment that was used against loki in norse mythology where the god was chained to a rock with a snake dripping burning venom of their face
alright back to yggdrasil imagery. the branches of multiverse and the like are pretty obvious meanings. but what really stuck out to me was rather the fact that in the first captain america movie with the red skull, the tesseract was found in a carving of yggdrasil.
loki then proceeds to fight over and chase after this tesseract desperately as one of his motives. only to end up in the tva. and for fate to have destine for him to destroy the loom and basically restore yggdrasil.
do i like this ending ? no not one bit loki deserves so much better. do i think the imagery is pretty ? sure i do i appreciate the touches but i do think it could've just as been as meaningful without loki being sent to eternal suffering.
don't get me wrong the show to me was enjoyable. i was excited for it each week, but it was hard to watch due to a lot of wasted potential, unneeded moments, scenes that made no sense, and so forth. and also the fact that it feels like they don't seem to care about a lot of the characters ? maybe that's just me but yk
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lesbian-kyoru · 1 year
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What do you think of Akihito Sudou as a character? His relationship with other characters? He's my second fav character in chihayafuru but i don't see anyone talking about him that much anywhere🤧 plus I wanted to read some fanfics about him but couldn't find any good one,so if you don't mind,any recs?👀 Thank you,have a nice day😊
oh i am a big sudo fan! he was a character that i initially didn't focus on a ton, but rather the more i read of the manga, the more i really came to appreciate his character, to the point where i'd probably list him in my top 5-6 chihayafuru characters….. he started out as more of a background rival character (i think i didn't like him at first because he was mean to chihaya amshd;falkhsd), but with sudo, suetsugu did one of the things she's best at as a character writer: taking characters that fit neatly into archetypes at first, and over time fleshing them out beyond that point. all of her characters, even supporting or background ones, end up feeling like fully realized people; she accomplishes something similar with characters like suo, shinobu, and even taichi.
building upon this idea of archetypes, what makes sudo so compelling to me is the fact that at first he seems like a sadistic karuta player who will bring adversarial tension to karuta tournaments, nothing more—but there's a lot more to him than that. over time, we as readers and the characters around him start to see that sudo is a sadist, but he's not a cold-hearted or uncaring person. he truly loves karuta, and his sadistic, intense nature as a player is how he displays that passion and love for karuta. (in a way this acts as a precursor to arata’s internal struggle, where even though he doesn’t want to, playing karuta ruthlessly turns out to be the truest way to show respect to his opponents as his equal—with sudo, he has already reached the point where he’s comfortable going to that place in karuta, because he has internalized that that’s how his passion for it comes through.) he shows an unwavering passion for not just becoming the meijin or the top player, but a desire to stay involved in karuta his entire life because he loves it that much. even among a cast of characters who are literally all obsessed with karuta, sudo is special to me in that way because our perceptions of him as a player shift so greatly over time.
sudo also cares deeply about the people around him—his team, suo, even his rivals like taichi and chihaya. i think this second point is something very striking about him. there's actually a quote in the manga fruits basket about how every person's kindness looks a little different, how it takes a different shape, and for a lot of people you have to look harder to recognize that innate kindness—because it doesn't look the same as what we imagine “kindness” will look like. for some reason, sudo is always the chihayafuru character that makes me think of that quote! i found it really impactful to see a character like sudo, who at first glance appears mean and malicious, turn out to be one of the kindest characters in the series, one who loves karuta in a truly uncomplicated way. the way he shows affection for other people is more complicated by his hard exterior, but he genuinely has a very big heart. obviously his relationship with suo is a standout and probably what made sudo a favorite for a lot of readers, including myself. there’s something really special about watching sudo do everything he can to keep suo in the karuta world—and when he cried for suo, mountains were simply moved! it’s just clear to me that sudo is in love with him loves him a lot even if he doesn’t say it directly, and their bond is quite meaningful to me.
aside from this obvious one, i also love sudo’s friendship with chihaya so much!! i never really expected to, but i was obsessed with their little challenger/qualifier training arc together! the way they play off of each other is very fun to read. i think their dynamic is also interesting because chihaya typically hates people who play karuta in a “nasty” or mean-spirited way, but i feel like she’s able to reach a common ground with sudo because his sadism is so deeply rooted in a love for karuta, which chihaya can understand. i also really love sudo’s scenes with taichi and desperately wish they had more scenes together. the way sudo teases and simultaneously pushes and motivates taichi….. it’s good. specifically, i think the interplay of suo-sudo-taichi is fascinating and no one talks about it enough. it isn’t lingered on a ton in the text, but sudo must have been feeling immense jealousy when suo started focusing all of his attention on taichi; i love fanworks that dive into that aspect of his character and his relationships with suo and taichi. (there’s a lot that can be said about how those three characters intersect and are juxtaposed to each other—suo and taichi drawn together by their common “apathy” towards karuta while sudo is “left out” as someone who truly loves it; taichi who appears to love karuta but secretly thinks he hates it vs. sudo who loves karuta in such a warmhearted way that’s obscured by his harsh exterior….. however, that’s a far more complicated post; i genuinely feel like i could talk about those three forever, so i will rein myself in!)
i haven’t read a ton of fics with sudo featured, unfortunately! most of the ones i’ve seen are chihaya/sudo, which i don’t ship, but if you’re looking for something to read there are several on ao3 that you could check out! my favorite fic portrayal of sudo, however, is definitely how he's characterized in perfectly still in the dark by bloodletters. while suo and taichi's relationship is the main focus of the fic, sudo has the most striking scene with taichi—even if you are not a gay sudo truther like myself, it's so worthwhile to read just because of how expertly and subtley he is characterized. now that i think about it, i think that fic might've actually been what jumpstarted my love for sudo, but i digress LMAO. tl;dr out of all the chihayafuru characters, sudo for me is the closest to being canonically gay, and he should be celebrated more for that reason alone 🤍
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emperorsfoot · 1 year
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For the ask box game:
I want you to know that an older fic of yours about Evil-Lyn’s parents, Fall of Zalesia, had some of the most fascinating, meaningful, & sensible societal worldbuilding I have ever read.
The Ram & Shepardess roles as well as the customs between them & everything else about their community in the aftermath of war was something so richly made but with no equal that I have found before or since.
The polyamorous/polygamous(?) nature & rules of their relationships as well as the existence and acceptance of those who do not partake was…brilliant.
I do appreciate the portrayal of respect, concern for safety & consent, & devotion in sympathy with healthy open relationships the characters portray. It is written so well and conscientiously to the many perspectives therein. It’s so honest and refreshing.
((This next part is a bit tmi but, an ex admitted cheating on me & in the same sentence excused the action as stemming from polyam desires. I was blamed for not mending the situation by agreeing to an open relationship. The funny thing is that, before the fact, I would have been open to try & my ex knew that, but after…I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
I would never hold it against polyam ppl & their relationships but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t made me sensitive to related topics. I have since moved on and hardly recall that past pain anymore when consuming content with polyam themes.))
Fall of Zalesia invokes an unmarred sense of wonder & curiosity to see & understand how others live & love that I had not fully felt since before I was hurt. Thank you for sharing your work so that I may indulge in this experience again. I feel like I have gotten a piece of myself back. :’))
You are a phenomenal writer. 🌻❤️🌻
(P.S.: I know there are many dark and serious themes in this story. I don’t mean to romanticize, I’m just in awe of how cool and thoughtful your writing is. Take care!)
Anon, your story is so moving, I am near tears. I stopped writing "Fall of Zalesia" because I thought I was the only one who was into it. I had no idea that someone else was not only enjoying it but being affected so deeply.
Yes, my headcanon of ancient Zalesia was a sex-positive society and part of sex-positivity is accepting those who don't want to participate in sexual acts, as well as accepting and making space for those who want to explore multiple partners. Rules are build into their society specifically for poly relationships.
The Shepherdess is the head of her household and hold authority over her husbands and sons, as well as he daughters until they achieve the age of adulthood and gain their own independence. If two or more people who do not have a formally recognized union want to sleep together, they must seek permission from the Shepherdess(es) that are the heads of their respective households. (This is why Maligna tells Nick that if he desires another Shepherdess he should tell her before the communion orgy so she can "negotiate" with the other woman and agree on the boundaries of their couplings.)
Before I stoped writing, I also had plans to explore gender identities within Zalesia. I don't recall if I even put it in or not, but in an earlier chapter when I explain that Nick's uncle was Ace I say something along the lines of "Bash-Or is a mischievous goddess and likes to put people in the wrong bodies". I was planning to have one of the younger Rams who returned from the war with Nick, now that the war is over and all the soldiers finally have time to consider other things besides just survival, that they would realize they're not really a Ram, they're a Shepherdess and Maligna would take her on as an apprentice.
I still think about this fic more often than you realize.
Now that I know someone else is interested and it means something to someone, I might try and go back to it. (I hope I can still find my notes.)
Thank you so much for sending this Ask. It really means a lot to me!
To anyone curious, this is the fic we're talking about:
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saevus-brutalis · 1 year
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fine you get more, gay
should I ask about fights or differences again and then get mad at you for it? yes, but I'll go with 2 and 4 🤲 feed me
coward [ship tag game]
2. do they like each other's friends? do their friends like them?
neither Vince nor Ragan really get to meet each other's friends and if they do, it's not often for a long time. both Vince and Ragan are from two very different worlds thus they have completely different assortment of friends.
Vincent's inner circle of friends is rather small, and most are not friends with each other or are fond of one another. those with whom he has more of a professional relationship — Dino and Jefferson — don't really give a shit about his private intimate life; it's not their business hence why they're neutral towards Ragan - if they even know of him. Reginald — Vince's ripper and an old friend from the army — ain't too fond of Ray and their relationship in general; he fails to see the good in him and only recognizes how much pain Vincent went through because of him. he thinks he makes Vincent too soft which will end up killing him in the long run. he does nothing however to ruin their relationships, but doesn't fail to voice his doubts.
when it comes to Ray's friends Vincent is pretty neutral, a bit guarded though. he doesn't have anything bad to say about them but he doesn't make an effort to be super friendly with them or get to know them more. they're a part of Ray's clan and he treats them as such, helps if needed around the camp, drink a beer or two when Ray isn't around; crack a joke maybe, but in the end he doesn't really care. if Ray likes them, Vince will make sure to be nice towards them.
Ragan generally likes Vince's friends, although he has to admit Vince's choice in friends is rather questionable. his old pals or work friends make him a bit uneasy and he personally wouldn't be too thrilled to be around them alone. they just don't match Ray's vibe - too cold, too rude, too city-like. they haven't done anything to Ray for him to have a bad opinion about them, so he doesn't really have much to say about Vince's friends.
Ragan's friends are really confused and feel conflicted about Vince. they're a bit scared of him in fact, intimidated for sure. they look at their relationship with a dose of skepticism, but eventually manage to warm up to Vincent and treat him as equal.
4. how do they compare to each other's exes? are they the same "type" or an upgrade/something different?
after they separated in 2038 Vince had a few flings after he came back from the army, lots of one-night-stands, and one more serious relationship of 5 years with a rockstar, which eventually ended up in a mutual break up. Vince's type are rockerboys and nomads, so neither were really an upgrade nor downgrade, both were just from two different worlds, with two different backgrounds. Vince never really got over Ray, and while he did love Kerry when they were together it jus wasn't the same type of love Vincent had and has for Ragan. neither relationship was better or worse; both had some bad moments, but with Kerry Vince and him wanted different things from each other, and Kerry had a tendency to try and mold Vince into someone he wasn't. meanwhile Ragan doesn't try to change Vince while still calling him out on his bullshit. he accepts all the imperfections about him and who he is on the outside and the inside.
after Ragan got stood up by Vince he threw away all his feelings for him - or at least he tried - and started sleeping and dating around with whoever he pleased, trying to fill the hole in his heart left after Vincent. when he met Dante - leader of a clan he later joined after being on his own for over 2 years, he thought he finally found someone he can start something meaningful with. Dante was a really great friend, warm and funny, outgoing and loud - with him Ray didn't really have time or space to think about Vincent and dwell of what could've been. while Dante had so many green flags and seemed like a perfect guy he was a bit too perfect for Ray. many people would consider Dante an upgrade when comparing him to Vince, but Ragan thinks otherwise, and when Vincent eventually came crawling back it didn't take much for Ragan to take him back - his unpolished, uncut, rough diamond.
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fortunescaling · 2 years
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1, 3 and 12 :)
What made you pick the character?
I’ve always had an interest in the Quincy since their introduction with Uryuu. I felt very intrigued by their implied grim backstory, the stark contrast in their rather straightforward power to the more intricate Shinigami’s, Uryuu’s strong pride in his heritage, the clashing stances in his family...
When TYBW got out, I originally had a bit of a hard time connecting with the Quincy as individuals as they did not get a lot of focus, in terms of backstory or build up. But Jugram’s backstory absolutely won me over. I never expected him to turn into such a compelling character. 
I generally lean towards writing characters who have a very different mindset to mine, who offers compelling, relatable flaws and nuanced to work with. All the better if they come from a complex world/ in-story culture or sub group that gives me a variety of theme to explore; characters’ environment actually plays a pretty big role in whom I pick to write. Jugram fit the bill in all of my criteria. The more I explore his character the more I find interesting elements. 
What’s the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.?
The world building. I think Kubo did a remarkable job at building such a rich, complex and nuance world, where even the characters are little words of their own and every detail, up to the characters’ names (which are usually the bane of a lot of writers’ existence lol), is carefully thought out. On top of the many reflections its nuance offers to the audience, where nothing is at it seems and twists in surprising way. 
I believe that’s what makes Bleach so immersive for us fans and readers; at the same time an aspect of Bleach Kubo really doesn’t get enough credit for as an author, in my opinion. He’s obviously done a lot of research on a variety of topics and references, is very knowlegeable, and must have spent an equally tremendous amount of energy to turn it into a story and make all fit together. Many fans even gladly forgive him for the rather frustrating learning curve and other story flaws. I think it says something. 
 It’s pretty rare to find authors who are both proficient at world building as well as writing compelling characters and stories, even though Bleach has a great many flaws, gotta give credit where it’s due. 
What would you say is the most unique trait about your character?
This one is a tad difficult to answer, because I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a unique trait? But one element I found pretty unique about him is how Kubo managed to write a passive character in a way that felt both interesting and intriguing, twisting & playing around the theme of the wheel fortune. 
Jugram, through the arc, never really make active or impactful decisions or choices that stems from an strong individual will. At the beginning, he doesn’t do much but follow Yhwach and wherever the plot drives him. 
When he gets more focused, when his backstory is revealed, most of his meaningful choices look more of the result of circumstances, the odds playing against or in his favors, than active choices of his own; I doubt a kid could have said no to a Quincy god when told he’ll be his right-hand man, then when Bazz confronts him it’s clear he doesn’t want to fight him, in fact, never had any intent in it. And so on. 
Characters who are not active in a given story, never make choices or decisions that impact their characters or the plot in meaningful ways, rather get carried by the plot than carry it themselves, can quickly fall as boring and irritating. Which is how I actually felt with him at the beginning. Prior to his back story, that’s exactly how I felt about him. 
Yet I found Kubo managed to twist it in a pretty clever way. In spite of very much disliking the As I Lay On My Deathbed Grand Tirade trope, I absolute love the irony of Jugram’s death monologue about making meaningful choices and considering the significant impact said choices can have on your life. 
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feministdragon · 2 years
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Okay gyns.   I’m reading what’s become my new favorite book (and hopefully I don’t get let down partway through)  And in order to absorb what I’m reading I’m going to write some summaries after each chapter.  (haha although let’s see how far I get with that.)  Anyways, since it’s no fun just to write for yourself, i’m gonna post it here.   Feel free to share your thoughts!  I will certainly be looking at the tags and comments! Hoping to hear responses!  Feminist reactions!   Graeber is likely a male-class traitor, he seems to have somewhat of a feminist consciousness anyways, so i’d love to hear comments and criticisms. 
Also, my purpose in reading this is that i’m always trying to find a new way to conceive of human beings and our story, and by ‘human beings’ I mean women.  And by ‘trying to find a new way to conceive of human beings’ I mean, “find a way forward through the wreckage of the present towards a more interesting, playful, and meaningful future.”
Alright, let’s get the party started with chapter 1, Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood.
>>The human history of the last 200,000 years is mostly lost to us. Most likely a lot of really interesting things happened, but we don’t have any way of knowing.
We tend to have a kind of theological debate about humans: were we always like that, or did something go terribly wrong?
The popular version of the story, largely based on Rousseau’s 1754 essay, Discourse on the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind, is that once upon a time we were hunter-gatherers, in a state of childlike innocence, living in tiny bands. Then Agriculture happened, creating Civilization and The State, which meant development of human thinking, but also Patriarchy, Mass Death, and Bureaucracy.  The only alternative to this view is Hobbes, in whose 1651 Leviathan we have the founding of modern political theory: humans are so bloodthirsty and difficult that we must have a repressive state, courts, & police to keep us under control. 
Our authors, David Graeber and David Wengrow, have three objections to this narrative: These ideas
1. simply aren’t true
2. have dire political implications
3. make the past needlessly dull.  
So, point the first. Evidence accumulated in archaeology, anthropology, & other sciences have new research from all over the globe showing a much different picture, but the problem is that no one is willing to write a generalist text pulling all the new information together, and so much of it is locked away in obscure corners.  The world of hunter-gatherers before agriculture was one of bold social experiments, a playful parade of political forms. 
The prevalent ‘big picture’ view of history has almost nothing to do with the facts, but to understand it we not only have to see it, but change our conceptual frame. We have to revisit indigenous critique of European civilization, without turning them into sock-puppets or playthings of some inexorable law of history. 
Point the second. Hobbes assumes that humans are nasty and base their decisions entirely on selfish calculation, and at best can only be controlled by building better systems.  Rousseau’s story of a fall from grace seems more optimistic but is usually used to convince us that the best we can do to improve things is just reduce inequality a little bit. 
Social reform has long been framed as ‘doing something about inequality’, but this framing in fact implies that there’s no meaningful solution to our problems. At what point do you know you’ve solved the problem?  When are we ‘equal enough?’  There’s no real vision of social transformation here.   Instead we just tinker with numbers, but it doesn’t address the reality that people use their unequal wealth to have power over others, while others are told their needs are not important and their lives have no worth.    When we talk about hunter-gatherers, it’s implied that they had equality because everyone was equally poor, obviously not a desirable condition.  So if we want a chance for material wealth we apparently just have to accept a little (or a lot!) of ‘inequality’. 
It’s bizarre to imagine that during the vast stretches of time that humans have inhabited this planet we humans did not experiment with different forms of social organization.  Also, isn’t the capacity to experiment with social organization a quintessential part of what makes us human?  Humans are beings with the capacity for self-creation and freedom?
The ultimate question of human history is not equal access to material resources (land, calories, means of production) but our equal capacity to contribute to decisions about how to live together. 
What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures?  What if instead of asking how we fell from some idyllic state of equality, we asked how we came to be trapped in such tight ideological handcuffs that we can not even imagine the possibility of reinventing ourselves?
In his books, 'The Better Angels of Our Nature', and 'Enlightenment Now', Steven Pinker argues that today we live in a world that is overall far less violent and cruel than anything our ancestors have ever experienced.   (This seems a contradiction to what we see on the news these days.)  He describes tribal societies as caught in a repetitive cycle of raiding and warfare, always only a few steps from violent death. He claims we have escaped it because we have been willing to concentrate the potential for violence into states, laws and police forces, and by reasoned debate and self control thanks to an European civilizing process. 
In fact, the idea that our ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are products of the ‘Western tradition’ (read: white tradition) would actually have surprised Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire.  When they wrote about these ideas, they nearly always put them in the mouths of foreigners or ‘savages’.  The word ‘democracy’ may have been invented in Europe, but nearly nobody wrote about it in a positive light before the nineteenth century.
Whatever bad things went on before, now we can be optimistic and happy about the path our species is on, Pinker says. Sure, we can do some poverty reduction stuff, but on the whole what we have now is a spectacular improvement. (unless you’re Black, or live in Syria, or you're a woman nearly anywhere in the world)
But have we improved things?  How do you decide?  The only dependable way to know if one way of living is better than another is to have someone live both ways, and then let them choose.  It turns out that historically, there have been a number of situations in the Americas where Europeans have been kidnapped by tribes, or encountered accidents that led them to live with tribes, and also many examples of people from tribes joining European society and becoming 'educated' etc.  In all of these cases, nearly unanimously the person chose to go over to living the indigenous way, and have often left written explanations of why they did so.   Even Benjamin Franklin wrote about several cases of people making this choice.   The most common reasons expressed were the freedom they found in indigenous societies, including sexual freedom, but also freedom from the burdens of work.   They also talked about that no-one in indigenous society was poor, hungry or destitute.  However the most common reason was the intensity of social bonds they experienced:  qualities of mutual care, love and happiness that they found impossible to replicate in European settings.  
Security takes many forms.   There’s the security of knowing you’re much less likely to be shot, and then there’s the security of knowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply about if you are. 
Point the third.  It’s so fecking dull. Everyone in the narrative gets reduced to cardboard as we simplify the narrative.  Are we selfish, violent?  Kind, cooperative?  Haven’t we been people the whole time?
In a way we do have to simplify things down to one or two elements, in order to pull out patterns that otherwise couldn’t be seen, even if it makes it slightly ridiculous: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Claude Lévi-Strauss.  Sometimes you have to simplify the world to discover something new about it.  The problem comes when people continue to simplify long after the discovery has become common sense. 
Ever since Adam Smith, people trying to prove that the existence of market trade is rooted in human nature point out what they call ‘primitive trade’, evidence from tens of thousands of years ago, of precious stones or shells being moved over enormous distances. All these authors are really saying is that they have no imagination as to why people would carry things around.
In reality, we have things like the ‘kula chain’ of the Massim Islands off Papua New Guinea, where men take dangerous trips in outrigger canoes just to exchange precious heirloom arm-shells and necklaces for each other, only to hold it briefly, then pass it on again to a different expedition from another island.   Or Iroquois in the 16th and 17th centuries would travel for days to bring back some object, trophy, crystal or even animal that they had dreamed of acquiring.  You could even demand your neighbor’s kettle to satisfy a dream quest.  Women in many indigenous North American societies were inveterate gamblers, women of adjacent villages would meet to play dice or a game played with a bowl and a plum stone, and bet their shell beads or other objects of personal adornment.   When we only guess at what’s happening in a culture or place, it’s invariably going to be less interesting than what was really going on. 
So in this book the authors are presenting a new history of human kind, and also inviting the reader into a new science of history, one that restores our ancestors to their full humanity.  Rather than asking how we ended up unequal, we will ask how it was that ‘inequality’ became such an issue to begin with.  If humans did not spend 95 percent of their time in bands of hunter-gathers, then what were they doing?  If agriculture and cities did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination then what did they mean?  What was happening in those periods we usually see as being 'the emergence of the state'?  
The authors have been collaborating on gathering evidence for 10 years, and had enough material that they planned four books.  Unfortunately David Graeber died last year, so maybe we just have this book.  
This book begins by tracing the historical roots of the question, ‘what is the origin of social inequality?’, back to a series of encounters between European colonists and Native American intellectuals in the 17th century.   The impact of these encounters upon both the Enlightenment and our basic conceptions of human history is more subtle and profound than we usually care to admit.    Revisiting them has startling implications for how we make sense of the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.   
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existentialmagazine · 4 months
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Review: Shades of Oleander offer a dreamy alternative-rock haze of sound within ‘Room to Improve’, comprised of both warmth and pain
Like many other acts, Shades of Oleander found themselves birthed from the aftermath of turbulent times, rising from the pandemic and its isolation with a desire to reconnect and create. Crafting a narrative of resilience and artistic brilliance, this three-piece converged to create something extraordinary, meeting audiences of thousands with just their first singles alone. Now returning for the first time since 2021, the trio share their newest offering ‘Room to Improve’, an expansion on their already distinct sound with more of an overarching dreamlike concoction of lulling instrumentals.
Leaning into a hazy sound that’s akin to the wistful but beautiful longing a summer sunset can evoke, Shades of Oleander take you through an auditory journey within ‘Room to Improve’ that’s undeniably created to make you feel, to make you yearn for something you cannot even describe. With an intro of deeply reverberated guitar strums and a slow riff, the open-aired sound feels vast and intangible, lingering in isolation that leaves you feeling torn between serenity and solitude. The verse introduces steady drum beats, an easy-going sway accompanied by continued guitar twangs and newly added rich piano keys, together continuing to draw-out their light emphasis for effect. It’s hard not to resonate with this tender sound, wrapping a warm nostalgic air throughout every instrumental choice and the scarce amount of evolution throughout, a continuation that’s made even more poignant by the fact we cannot live through our memories in the same state of continuity. The gently sung vocal lines are filled with a breathy sort of raspiness, never harsh but always emotionally infused as each line clearly displays an interlinking personal connection, channeling the song’s melancholic downbeat styling with an equally sombre delivery.
Adhering to their staple passion for storytelling, ‘Room to Improve’ is just as meaningful as everything that Shades of Oleander have released, if not more. As they explore a connection between two lovers, the words of this enchanting single delve through the nuances of being in partnership when often things are clouded by the expectations of perfection. Opening with the haunting line ‘come on, my love, your hand in mine’, the sweet sincerity of their connection is established instantly, a sense of safety and familiarity in their touch with one another. Continuing ‘sweetly you sing; softly you sway’, Shades of Oleander explore how the mundane becomes so beautiful when you find yourself adoring someone’s every being, completely mesmerised by every little thing they do. The chorus hook pulls back from this bubble of rose-tinted perception though, leaning back into the past through the line ‘step on over remember the compass you made‘, an acknowledgement of how things once were and the good and bad that’s come since. Asking they reminisce, it’s clear they deem these memories cherished, still just as in love as ever before. Following with the line ‘give me room to improve on the path that we take’, the trio look into what others often neglect - the need to grow within your relationship. As many expect things to continue as easy and dreamily as ever, when in reality relationships are stability through turmoil and co-operation even in disagreement, together working through every bump in the road. It’s also clear that their path is now one conjoined, a separation from the visions they both had of their future, instead uniting on a journey together both beautiful and unknown. The next verse adds much more hesitation, lingering on lyrics like ‘rest if you must but it’s never the same’, illusive but carrying a tension that the rest of the song does not. With plenty to interpret and the realities of a union spoke about without sugarcoating, ‘Room to Improve’ is a gorgeous insight into a real and heartfelt love.
Check out ‘Room to Improve’ for yourself here to appreciate the trio’s aching lyricism and serene, tenderness of sound.
Written by: Tatiana Whybrow
Photo Credits: Unknown
// This coverage was supported and created via Musosoup, #SustainableCurator.
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catboyaesthetic · 7 months
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An Intelligent Person
I would like to consider myself an intelligent person. It’s not necessarily the case, but still, I’ve certainly been told often enough that I am by many people of varying degrees of closeness.  While I have always suspected that I have secretly been an idiot waiting to be revealed all this time, it has yet to happen and so, it’s something I’ve chosen to believe about myself.
My estimation of myself as an intelligent person is due to nothing but the ridiculous - but nonetheless sincerely held - belief that, due to the fact that my thoughts occupy a lot of my day-to-day existence, I simply must have considerations and insights so vastly more important than others, I must know better. As such, I’ve often fallen into the trap of thinking that I could simply think my way out of any problem presented to me. Or rumination, as my therapist has called it. This, of course, has never been the case but I have nonetheless believed it to be so since I was a child. Subsequently, I have developed an ego off the tail end of this train of thought – as I believe everyone who considers themselves to be an intelligent person is wont to do. In my experience, anyone who considers themselves an intelligent person - such as myself - do love to think of ourselves as so marvelously intelligent that we must clearly know better than other people. Our perspective is definitive, our reasoning airtight. What else is there to consider?
Alongside this same pattern of thinking has been the sincerely held belief that just because I have suffered tragedy in my life, I am somehow owed the world’s understanding. That my adversity somehow separates me from a normal person. That my pain makes me special. This is, of course, not the case. Everyone has suffered, is suffering, and will suffer in the future. Indeed, it is such a common thread in the existence of so many, that it has been firmly solidified in humankind’s history and culture through poetry, literature, song, paintings, and the well-intended commentary of parents the world over. Gilgamesh wept for his dead friend and suffered from his absence. Jesus wept for humanity and suffered on our behalf. My mother wept for having married my biological father, who lacked any understanding and seemingly could not manifest any meaningful connection with us over their 22 years of marriage.
In the novel “The Dispossessed”, Ursula Le Guin writes
“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood.(…)”
Suffering unites us through a common bond of what feels like a sacred understanding of the world. Not all pain is made equal of course, and it is through this that I found another foothold on which to precariously balance my ego. But even in my experience of adversity, there are those who have suffered as I have. Worse, there are millions – if not billions - who have suffered more. Whose pain is so far beyond my comprehension and experience, that the way they are hurt, I cannot possibly imagine due to my own privileges and circumstances. As I heave under the weight of social expectations of living within capitalism, millions suffer to make the clothes I wear, the electronics I use, the food I eat, the ones who package the vast things I consume, the ones who have their water poisoned for the production of food, the ones who can barely feed their families due to slave wages, the ones who facilitate, suffer and die for the infinite array of small luxuries I am afforded for existing where and when I do. To dare say that my pain, however agonizing, makes me special is petulant to say the least. Who am I, then, to claim supreme authority over suffering? To instate myself as the final arbiter of pain? It is a perspective so ridiculous as to be abhorrent. It is a child’s perspective, a view informed by a similar narcissistic self-absorption a child is ultimately taught to overcome by exposure to the world and everyone in it. No, my pain doesn’t make me special. It makes me like everyone else.
Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean to dismiss my – or indeed that of any intelligent person’s - experience of pain and suffering by extending my perspective towards a macro level and say the dreaded phrase of parents everywhere; “There’s kids in Africa who are starving.” Neither do I seek acknowledgement for this most basic of observations. More than anything, it’s what I believe to be the ultimate check of the ego of the intelligent person. Again, I cite Ursula Le Guin:
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
Since encountering these words, I feel as if they have been carved into my skull. I have often enjoyed, and indeed written, great works of writing involving pain. Where pain was the driving motivator. Frankly, for a large part of my life, it had the only constant in my life. I knew only to recreate it. Be it in my relationships, in my art, in myself. I knew only some of the infinite ways a person can hurt another. The wordless look of questioning the audacity of your presence in their vicinity. The tone of masked disappointment. The sighs which set your blood rushing through your system in fear. The tentative interest of another person, so easily exchanged for someone who isn’t you. The seeming lack of interest in the things that delight you. And ultimately, the silence – preferred to your company. All painful. All equally common.
As an intelligent person, I naturally concluded that people were not worth it. That it was better to learn to be on my own, to shut out all that hurt and let in only that which didn’t. I concluded that life was cruel and unfair and unjust, forgetting that justice is a construct thought up by us. As is fairness. As is cruelty. As an intelligent person, I was capable of being taught that life can be structured, that it adheres to the confines and principles we attempt to impose upon it. A notion as ridiculous as taping a cat to a wall and expecting to come out of the ordeal without injury. Experience – and admittedly a not insignificant amount of therapy -  has taught that we can control what we do, but we cannot control what the result of that might be. So naturally, as an intelligent person, I went about the business of controlling this uncontrollable mess of a life by receding into myself. To withdraw and concede all that which made life worth living. The experience of emotions, the courage to hope, the responsibility for my own actions. As an intelligent person, I could recognize that my emotions are imposed upon me and are obstacles to be overcome. Similarly, hope was nothing but a roadblock, and it was better to approach all things with a certain distant cynicism. After all, you can either be right or pleasantly surprised. As for my actions, there are always a myriad of factors at play and an uncountable amount of ways we could end up at a dead-end. So if nothing is guaranteed, what is the point of attempting, then? After all, when taken from the most macro perspective, I am nothing but a speck of dust on a football. Once kicked, there is nothing I could do to stop it. An intelligent observation, informed by cold facts and ironclad logic.
To reach out and fail. To stumble along, following the path of connection and growth, and find nothing grows here. To learn to suffer and bear it for reasons entirely your own. To know that all of it makes you human, and to come to know the infinite spectrum of emotion and experiences that life presents you in no meaningful order or reason. That’s what life is all about. Not surviving or enduring, but accepting. To know yourself as frail and brittle, to feel as if you are seared to your core and still choose this infinite, untamable labyrinth with its cavernous, bottomless beauty. To experience the world alongside another and spend your time in beautiful connection – not harmony, connection – and choose the infinite possibility of pain for the chance of shared laughter. To present yourself, battered and vulnerable but not defeated, and come to be accepted for the person you are. To know the delight of moments. To find new perspectives. To hear words, songs, jokes, noises, from so many others in so many different ways from those who know pain but are not defined by it, just like you. To find comfort in them and find the countless ways they fuel their strength. To find a home within their company, like they will within yours. As an intelligent person, you know you’re going to get hurt anyway, as pain is a constant in every life. But perhaps we must have something more than intelligence in order to grasp that which makes life worth living. Or perhaps only attempt to reach for now. There are no guarantees of success. Only this, whatever this is.
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0613magazine · 1 year
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201226 The Atlantic
The Astonishing Duality of BTS
In 2020, the world’s biggest band proved that it excels equally at massive spectacle and small-scale intimacy.
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BTS has spent enough time in the pop-music stratosphere that it can be easy to forget, or surprising to learn, about the years they spent at the basement level. Back in 2014, for the first anniversary of their debut, the group’s seven members celebrated by cleaning the tiny dorm they shared and cooking a nice meal. They recorded a video of themselves for fans, soaking seaweed for a traditional Korean birthday soup, blowing up balloons, vacuuming the living room, and decorating a cake. Their then-19-year-old leader, RM, attempts to peel an onion. “Man, I wonder how my mother did this every day,” he says, sounding embarrassed. “The members always tell me not to drive or cook for the sake of world peace.”
Unbothered by the cramped quarters, they seem giddy about reaching a career milestone together. Watching this video now—six years, seven studio albums, and a mountain of broken industry records later—isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia for the early days of RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook. It’s a reminder of how the world’s biggest band became so popular in the first place, an object lesson in making the most of what little you have.
Humility was useful in 2020, a year that brought the entertainment industry, as well as the world, to its knees. The coronavirus pandemic led to canceled tours and closed venues; when musicians performed, they did so from home or to empty seats. This new reality could’ve hurt BTS, an act known for putting on spectacular, high-energy live concerts. (Last year, they sold out a show at London’s Wembley Stadium in 90 minutes.) Used to thriving on elaborately designed stages before tens of thousands of people, they suddenly found themselves recording TV appearances from their practice space and executing grandiose comeback routines with only staffers cheering them on. But although BTS is no longer a ragtag rookie group from a tiny label, their modest beginnings prepared them to succeed during a year that would have had them shrink their ambitions.
Originally, 2020 promised a world tour for Map of the Soul: 7, the group’s most sophisticated album to date and one that fans hoped would land the pop stars their first Grammy nomination. “We’ve struggled this year,” Jin told me in a recent email interview with the group. “Most of the plans that we arranged two years ago have vanished, but in the midst of this, we worked hard and … did something meaningful.”
For BTS, something meaningful is getting nominated for a Grammy months after performing at the Grammys—and being the first Korean group to do either. They released their fifth Billboard Hot 200–topping album in a row with BE. They landed three No. 1 songs on the Hot 100, including their first English-language single, “Dynamite,” and their dark-horse hit, “Life Goes On.” Although “Dynamite” is BTS’s biggest song thus far, RM said the latter achievement made him feel “double the joy because, as you said, it was a Korean song. It’s a title given to us by our fans.” Unlike “Dynamite,” “Life Goes On” received virtually no radio play, so purchases and streams by fans pushed it to the top of the chart, making it the first Korean song to get there.
The hyperbolic language that surrounds BTS today (global phenomenon! K-pop sensation! First Korean act to …!) can obscure the fact that the group doesn’t need big stadiums or epic set lists to reach audiences. They’re comfortable talking to fans via impromptu live-streams in their PJs and posting stripped-down song covers on Twitter. And unlike many idol groups, the members of BTS have always addressed the subject of mental health in their lyrics and in their lives. That candor resonated this year in particular, as they’ve spoken about feeling angry, helpless, and depressed.
For his birthday earlier this month, Jin released a solo track called “Abyss,” along with a note explaining that he wrote it after experiencing severe burnout and seeking counseling for anxious thoughts. When I asked whether he found this honesty difficult, he demurred. “I don’t know if it was hard to share this,” Jin said. “I think music is just another form of expression. If I hadn’t written the text on the blog, I think people might have only guessed I was in such a state.” Moved by his words and the song’s delicate beauty, fans shared their own struggles on social media. “If you know how to deal with your mental health, it’s fine to keep it to yourself,” Jin said. “But if you don’t, I think it’s good you open up because you might have someone around you who knows how to handle it.”
This week brought a duo of surprise SoundCloud releases also intended to comfort: Jimin’s “Christmas Love” and V’s “Snow Flower.” Jimin, to accompany his bright, nostalgic track, wrote a message about feeling joy despite the social scripts of adulthood: “Instead of dismissing your feelings as ‘cringey’ or ‘childish,’ as we often do, I hope the day will come that we can all happily enjoy these emotions together.” In his note for the sweetly jazzy “Snow Flower,” V wrote, “This year felt like time stopped, and I think there will be many people who feel more anxiety and depression as the end of the year approaches. For at least today, I hope the white flowers come down to your hearts and you feel even just a little bit of warm comfort and happiness.”
Against this backdrop of vulnerability, BTS also offered audiences solace through eye-catching stages. With their tour postponed indefinitely, they reconfigured their songs for online consumption. A cozy summer performance, and a two-day fall concert attended by nearly 1 million, tested the boundaries of virtual live shows. “I don’t think our music or performance has been limited, but it’s just the way we deliver the best performance that has changed,” V said of the group’s pandemic-era work. In 2019, one of BTS’s best performances was a 37-minute set for South Korea’s Melon Music Awards, featuring live horses, seven solo stages, a lung-busting dance break, and a sea of extras. In 2020, many of their best performances were much smaller but no less memorable. For The Late Late Show With James Corden, they sang “Life Goes On” while walking (thanks to editing trickery) through the same room over and over again, conveying the claustrophobia of quarantine life.
When BTS returned to the Melon Music Awards this year, they wowed not with scale, but with precise choreography. Jimin and Jungkook performed an exquisite and technically difficult pas de deux during the song “Black Swan.” And the group unveiled an endlessly rewatchable Michael Jackson–esque dance break for “Dynamite.” “To be honest, I think that performance was close to perfection,” j-hope told me. That means a lot coming from the group’s famously meticulous dance leader. “It wasn’t something that could be done by myself, but everything was in sync—the costumes, lights, choreography, camerawork, and the [other] members.”
Sometimes, putting on the “best performance” meant no dancing at all. For their NPR Tiny Desk Concert in September, BTS did the whole set (mostly) sitting down. And “Life Goes On” is their first title track to not have official choreography. “We think the song’s emotion goes better without any choreo,” SUGA said of the understated single, which feels as though it was written not from idols to fans, but from one human to another. The rest of BE comes across that way too—raw and personal, like a mixtape designed for your closest friends. In his “Life Goes On” verse, SUGA references a gorgeously introspective song from his latest solo mixtape called “People,” whose lyrics are similarly about taking an optimistic view of life’s vagaries. “The message of ‘People’ was something like ‘so what, life still goes on,’ so I wanted to extend that message,” SUGA said.
At the end of 2020, as vaccine distribution begins, the notion that life goes on might sound more plausible than it once did. For BTS, as for everyone else, next year looks blurry, but it at least has a clear starting point. “2021 begins with the Grammys,” j-hope said. “They say that the first step [of the year] is important, so I hope we have good results there.” BTS is nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Dynamite” and are expected to perform, although many fans were disappointed that Map of the Soul: 7 wasn’t recognized. “It would be such an honor to earn a nod for our album some day,” the group said.
BTS hopes that the rest of 2021 will bring with it the possibility of live concerts. “I want to show our fans our ‘On’ performance,” Jung Kook said of their most extravagantly choreographed song. “If fans want to see ‘Louder Than Bombs,’ of course we can perform” it too, he added. The year ahead is also expected to yield more solo work, including highly anticipated projects from V and Jung Kook. “This year has been packed so I couldn’t find that much time to work on it. I will try to perfect it next year,” V said of his mixtape. “When I revisit the songs I made, I am not fully satisfied. So I honestly don’t know just yet!” Jung Kook said of his record’s release, though he has written or produced multiple songs this year, including the dreamy ballad “Still With You.”
Whatever happens at the Grammys, the nomination of “Dynamite” is a huge deal. As Jimin put it in a recent Vanity Fair interview, “Worldwide, when people look at us, they might not know what country we’re from. They might not know what little rural town us bumpkins came from. And yet, there we are on the highest stage, in the running to win an award.” That symbolism of the Grammys stage, the legitimacy it confers, is real. But BTS’s humble past is ever present. They seem, at all times, to remember where they came from, even as they seek to not be confined by the label of K-pop. “Producer Bang [Si-hyuk] once told me that I was ‘local,’ and I think that’s something that describes me accurately,” RM told me, referring to the founder of BTS’s label, Big Hit Entertainment. “I am also aware that, as millennials, limiting ourselves to a certain region is not desirable.” With BTS, the only constant is their duality—they’re “local” yet global, industry outsiders on the inside, equally skilled at intimacy and pageantry.
This year might have looked very different for BTS if their bond hadn’t been forged in the crucible of those early years. “When life gets tough or it’s hard to find motivation in life, what keeps me going are the relationships and the energy I get from them—our members, the people around me and our fans are all so valuable,” Jimin told me. His sentiment is illustrated in the BE track, “Skit,” which documents the group’s reaction to learning of their first Hot 100 No. 1. The members yell and joke about skipping dance practice to grab a drink. The track ends with RM asking j-hope, “Hope-ah, don’t you think this is what happiness is like?”
Six years ago, BTS gathered for a quieter sort of celebration. At the end of their first-anniversary video, they sit on their dorm-room floor around a table piled with delicious food, laughing. They sing “Happy Birthday” to themselves. Then, together, they begin to eat. It looks like happiness too.
Source: The Atlantic
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helion-ism · 3 years
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this was only chapter 25 and they were already acting like an old married couple
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175 notes · View notes
chloelucia13 · 3 years
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Made of Ashes
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x female!reader
Prompt: Faking your death wasn’t an easy thing to do, but SHIELD said that it had to be done. But you couldn’t stay out of the life you were born to have, even if it was risky. Even if it brought you face to face with the people who still believed that you were dead. Based off of “My Tears Ricochet” by Taylor Swift
Warnings: ANGST, a teensy bit of fluff, language, violence, gore, discussions of death (obviously)
Word Count: 5.1k 
A/N: We did it, boys, we’ve found another hyperfixation. Let’s see how long this lasts. Anyway, my tag lists and requests and DMs are always open! Hope you enjoy!
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Death was never a foreign thing to you. It seemed to linger, its presence permeating every interaction and movement as if to remind you that you never know what could happen. 
Just because it wasn’t unfamiliar didn't mean that it wasn’t miserable, though. You’ve lost so many friends, family, and everything in-between and it never seemed to get any better.
You knew how painful it was, but you could never imagine the pain that you felt when you witnessed your own funeral. When you watched the people you love grieve over you while you were only feet from them but couldn’t comfort them.
You had watched their tears streak down their faces as they stared ahead at the closed casket, their cheeks glistening under the rays of sun that shone down on them. You watched their hands tremble as they showered individual roses onto the gleaming mahogany lid before returning to their seats with their heads bowed low. You watched the light sheen of sweat build on their skin that made them wonder if this heat was comparable to what you had felt.
They were told that you were caught in a building that Hydra had bombed, pinned underneath the falling debris as the flames rose as engulfed you. They were told that your body couldn’t be found, that it was most likely hidden under all of the rubble or turned to ash. They had to bury an empty casket.
The word had spread fast, and the wake that they’d planned on being a small gathering became flooded with familiar faces from around the galaxy. Basically everyone was there, eyes damp and hearts heavy.
In a car tucked away from the wake but still in view of it, you and Maria Hill watched their grieving in silence. “This is all for your safety,” she had explained to you, but the guilt of what she had to do was still lingering. You had nodded along to her word, but your mind was in another place. 
It was stuck in a whirlwind of panic, hurt, and confusion as you stared at the man who kept his distance from the crowd of Avengers, but his shoulders still shook with sobs as your casket was lowered into the ground. The man who gave you heaven and gave you hell. The man you swore you’d love until you died, even if you were already dead to him in his mind.
And to him, it was true.
You and Bucky had met when he was still the Winter Soldier, when he had dragged Steve from the water and dropped his limp body directly at your feet. You remember staring at him in a panic, unknowing of what he would do to you. He had stared you directly in the eye and gave you a nod before walking past you, leaving you with a seemingly-lifeless Steve.
That small, but meaningful, interaction had led you on a manhunt of sorts, devoting your free time to finding this “Bucky” that Steve spoke so fondly of.
After a couple of months, you came across a reported sighting of the Winter Soldier in Bucharest, though the man was not hostile. Immediately, you booked a flight there and, without telling another person, snuck off to find this supposed Winter Soldier.
You found him at a small market in the middle of town, your eyes locking with his as he lifted his gaze. The panic he felt from being seen was evident, but that panic seemed to melt away as a smile grew on your lips. He was still on alert, though, as you crossed the street and walked over to him. It was clear that he recognized you, but your gentle demeanor gave him a strange sense of comfort.
That first meeting had slowly built up to monthly visits that lasted for days at a time, the two of you nurturing a relationship that was kept hidden from the word, especially the Avengers.
The day that Bucky’s past life came rushing back, the two of you were on one of your monthly “dates,” as you’d jokingly called it.
The blue of his eyes had drawn you in for a moment too long, prompting a chuckle from him. You rolled your eyes and pursed your lips, turning your face from his so he couldn’t detect the blush blooming on your cheeks. “What, I can’t admire the beautiful sight before me?” you defensively hummed in Romanian, crossing your arms over your chest as your examined the baskets of fruit in front of you.
“I never said that,” he teased, playfully bumping your shoulder with his before turning to the woman running the fruit stand and asking her a few questions.
The woman handed Bucky a bag of plums and you both thanked her before walking down the street. “Plums?”
He nodded, shrugging slightly. “I figured we could make something with them.”
“I think there’s still some phyllo dough in the fridge.” He nodded, but his attention was clearly elsewhere. You followed his line of sight and saw a man sitting in a newspaper hut staring worriedly at Bucky. You touched his right arm and the two of you exchanged a glance before making your way over to the man. The moment he noticed the two of you stepping towards him, he retreated back before running out of his hut.
Bucky pulled the newspaper the man was reading off of the surface it rested on and held it out in front of him.
“Winter Soldier Cautat Pentru Bombardmentul Din Vienna”
“Bucky,” you spoke slowly, forcing yourself to tear your eyes from the paper so you could look up at his visibly shaken face.
“We need to go,” he grumbled, placing the paper face down and gripping onto your forearm.
The two of you walked at a hurried pace down the street that led up to his apartment, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible despite the fact that you both were shivering with fear.
After climbing the multiple flights of stairs with no one in sight, the tension slowly began to dissolve from the naive belief that they may not have tracked him down yet. His grip had loosened on your arm, as well, signifying that the fear had began to die down in his mind as well. The two of you silently slipped inside and closed the door behind you, letting out a soft sigh of relief when you could see that the apartment was empty. That breath hitched in your throat, though, when a pair of heavy footsteps echoed through the stairwell just outside the door. 
You nodded towards the bathroom door and he quickly pulled you into the small room, closing the door and tucking your form behind him. The creaking front door swung open and shut, and a shadow passed across the crack of the bathroom door. You gripped tightly onto the arm of Bucky’s canvas jacket and he placed his hand over yours, giving you a gentle nod. He led the two of you out of the bathroom and into the open space of the studio apartment, keeping your eyes trained on the familiar figure standing at the fridge that made your stomach turn.
After speaking out to what was most likely a voice in his ear, he turned on his heel to face you two.
You could tell from the look of pure bewilderment on his face that he absolutely was not expecting you to be there. “Y/N?” Steve questioned.
You gave him an awkward smile and a wave. “Hi,” you hummed with a simple nod.
A wave of emotions crossed over his face and he let out a sigh. “We don’t have time to talk about this right now.”
After the chase that led you, Bucky, Steve, and King T’Challa in prison, and the prison break that took place afterward, Bucky had kept his distance from you. He became cold, calloused to you. You figured that it was due to the stress of being framed for a crime he didn’t commit and the man who did commit it trying to tap into the Winter Soldier, but that didn't mean that it didn’t hurt. You’d spent months working on a relationship with this man who you loved more than you’d care to admit, all for it to be gone within moments.
But it didn’t go away, even after everything was taken care of and Bucky had came back to you.
The bright smile on your face couldn’t be suppressed when Steve and Bucky had came into view, both of them clearly exhausted from everything that had occurred. That exhaustion was tucked away, though, when Steve saw you standing there, and he quickly headed over to you and pulled you into a tight hug. You took his affection gratefully, the two of you chatting with equally wide smiles.
After about a minute or two, Steve told you that he had something to do before quickly slipping out of the room, leaving you and Bucky alone. Bucky stood a good distance from you, avoiding your gaze and keeping his stance rigid. It was obvious that he was still hurting, but you figured that your presence could cheer him up.
“Bucky,” you sighed, hurrying over to him and reaching out for a hug.
He turned away from your embrace, keeping his eyes on the ground and his face emotionless. 
“Buck?” You dropped your arms to your sides, brows furrowing in confusion as you attempted to search his face. He gave no expression, and you gave up on his face, instead glancing at his robotic arm that was no longer there. “Oh my god, your arm.”
“It’s fine,” he huffed, stepping away to stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the landscape of Wakanda.
He was shutting you out, acting more rigid than he did when you two first met. Your lips pressed together as you walked over to the windows, keeping a few feet of distance between you two. “It’s beautiful here-”
“God, do you ever take a fucking hint?” 
You jumped from the tone of his voice, giving him a look of shock while his face, still, stayed flat. “What?”
“I don’t want you here. I want you to leave me alone.”
His words made your heart sink to your shoes, but there was a pestering itch in the back of your mind that made you push him further. “You don’t mean that.”
He stepped forward until you were backed up against the glass, placing an arm on each side of your body and caging you in. “Don’t I?” He let out a huff, eyes trained on yours which were brimming with tears. “You’ve ruined whatever chance I had at being normal. You found me, you led everyone to me, and you got me sucked back into all of this bullshit.”
You shook your head. “I just wanted to help.”
He scoffed. “You sure helped a lot.”
You blinked back the tears and clenched your jaw, giving him a look of spite. You averted your gaze for a moment, eyes catching on the small black cord that peeked out from his shirt. The cord that was so familiar because it was a necklace you’d gifted him. You let out a huff before shoving his arm out of your way and stomping away down the expansive hall.
On your way to your room that T’Challa had given you the key to earlier, you ran into Sam, who immediately noticed the anger and pain radiating off of you. “Whoa, whoa, cool it on the stomping there. You might just smash through the floor,” he teased and gripped your arm with a smile, but it fell when his eyes searched yours. “What’s wrong?”
“Go ask Bucky, because I sure as shit have no clue.”
Months after you’d left Bucky in Wakanda, your “funeral” had taken place, and it pained you that you were never able to resolve the issues that had divided you two. 
You tried your hardest to live your life as normal (well, as normally as you could while staying as underground as possible and basically living a completely different life than the one you previously had), but that plan had crumbled and turned to dust like half of the planet. You’d lost Hill and Fury, the  only people who knew that you were still alive and were actively working to keep you safe. At first, it was horrifying to know that no one would be watching your every move as you’d grown so used to it. But as time went on and you realized that you had to be somewhat present in society, you had finally felt the freedom that you’ve been held from for years.
You lived life under the new identity that Hill and Fury had previously given you (Sandra McMahan, 27, unemployed, living in Boston, Massachusetts), but you couldn’t give in to the normal life that was at your fingertips, so close yet so far away. Instead, you launched yourself headfirst into researching all of the people who turned to dust. It was clear that it was a result from something that the Avengers fought due to the multiple sightings of spacecrafts that were documented on Stark’s databases, but it proved to be much more devastating than you could’ve guessed.
All of your friends were either dead or missing, and you couldn’t help but feel the immense guilt from the thought that you could’ve saved them.
Five years had come and gone in a haze of misery and loneliness, each day blurring into the previous day and the next day. You tried your hardest to participate in a society that was struggling to cope with the devastating loss that had occurred, but most days you had failed to get out of bed.
You still vividly remember the day of the blip, when the billions of people who’d vanished into thin air had reappeared just as quickly and in the same exact state. You remember the amalgamation of cheers and cries as people were reunited with their loved ones, all while you watched them from your 10th floor window in your dingy little apartment.
All alone.
The databases were updated at that point, displaying who had come back. Of course, there were still a few people whose status never changed, and no matter how long you refreshed the page in hopes that it would switch from “missing” to a blank spot where that word once sat, it didn’t. Instead, it changed from “missing” to “deceased.”
Hill and Fury had tried to get back in contact with you, but you ignored their messages, instead choosing to look deeper into the reappearance of one man.
You’d watched Bucky from a distance, lingering in the shadows as you went along with all of daily activities. Going to the grocery stores, spending Wednesdays at an asian restaurant with a man you didn’t recognize, and attending this weekly therapy appointments. His routines were, well, routine, until the day that he and Sam traveled to the Raft to break out the man who nearly landed Bucky in that same prison. They’d escaped successfully, and their movements brought you to Madripoor, a place that instantly settled a heavy weight in the pit of your stomach. 
The dress you wore in that dark and musty bar was itchy and the stares you earned from it made your skin crawl, but you bit your tongue and kept a straight face as you tucked yourself away into a dark corner. The doubt that itched in the back of your mind of how the three men would show kept growing stronger and stronger, only for it to shift into pure terror as Bucky and Sam walked in with that bastard. 
Bucky’s face was as still and hollow as it was the first day you met him, that hauntingly empty look that made your insides churn. But that churning was incomparable to the bile that bubbled in your chest as he attacked men at Zemo’s word, his actions harsh and merciless.
Silently, the three men were led into a back room by an armed man, and once the trio disappeared into the room, you overtook the man and disarmed him. You gripped the gun in your hands and stood just outside of the room, still lingering within earshot.
Zemo and who you assumed to be Selby discussed some sort of contract that had to do with the super soldier serum, of which he offered Bucky as payment for information on where to get the serum. The discussion was cut short by Sam’s phone ringing, which snowballed into a situation much bigger than they were expecting.
As Selby ordered for them to be killed, a gunshot rang through the air and Selby’s words were cut short. After attacking the guards that surrounded the room, the three men escaped out the back door, and you followed them. The road leading out from the bar proved just as treacherous as another spray of gunfire sounded from all around, and you all sprinted down the narrow street and into an attached back alley.
You shot down the two motorcyclists that had followed them in and stepped out of the shadows, gun trained on Zemo as your hands shook with fury. “Disarm him,” you spat, finger hovering over the trigger.
“Y/N?” Sam spoke, voice laced with shock.
“Power him down, Zemo,” you continued, ignoring the shocked looks from Sam and Bucky. “I will not hesitate to blow your fucking brains out!”
“Drop the gun” Bucky roared, making you jump. 
“Well, this is too perfect,” a woman’s voice echoed, standing in the space next to you and aiming her gun at Zemo. “Drop it, Zemo.”
Zemo slowly lowered his gun to the ground and held his hands in the air, retreating back as the other two men walked forward. “Sharon?” Bucky spoke.
“You cost me everything.”
“Sharon, wait-” Sam pleaded.
The four of them bickered while you stepped back and lowered your gun to your side, trying to catch up with everything that was going on while also trying to comprehend why Bucky was with Zemo, why he acted like he was the Winter Soldier.
Sharon’s offer of refuge seemed to draw everyone in, but as they all began to walk, Bucky turned to you and gripped both of your biceps in his hands, forcing you to drop your weapon. He backed you up into the brick wall and tightened his jaw, the rough material scraping against your exposed back. “Bucky,” you cried out.
“Who are you?” he hissed, pulling you close to him before swiftly slamming you back against the wall, knocking the breath from your lungs.
“Bucky, it’s me. It’s Y/N. Please.”
“Y/N is dead.” Sam appeared behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “Who. The fuck. Are you.”
“Bucky, we don’t have time for this!” Sam snapped. “She’s coming with us, let’s go.”
You silently pleaded with Sam but he walked away, allowing Bucky to wrestle both of your arms behind your back and walk you to the car.
*** As Sharon and Sam and Zemo conversed, Bucky dragged you into the first room he saw and threw you inside, locking the door behind him.
You let out a hiss of pain as you pushed yourself up into a sitting position, glancing dow nat the rug burn on your palms before looking up at Bucky. “Buck, come on, it’s me,” you begged, watched as he leaned against the wall that faced you.
“Don’t call me that,” he hissed, lips pursed tightly. “Who are you and why are you here? How did you find me?”
You spoke slowly, “Bucky, it’s Y/N Y/L/N. We met in Bucharest, we were... We were best friends, until...”
“What, until I went to Wakanda or until you died?”
“They made me fake my death, Buck, it wasn’t my choice. They made me hide away from everybody for what they said was my own safety. They said that I could be used by Hydra to get secrets about everyone, about you.” You let out a trembling sigh. “I’ve been hiding for seven fucking years. I’ve been alone for seven years.”
He looked away from you, gliding his tongue over his bottom row of teeth before pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. 
“You cut your hair,” you spoke after a moment’s silence.
“You came back from the dead.”
“So did you.”
He shot a glare at you, standing up straight and walking over to sit in a chair on the other side of the room. Hesitantly, you rose to your feet and walked over to him, leaving about 10 feet of distance between you two. “How did you find me?”
“Stark’s databases. They said that you were getting court-mandated therapy in New York City, so I went there, and I guess I just followed you from there.”
“Why...” He cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Well, first of all, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to risk you getting hurt because of my selfishness.” You sat in the chair adjacent to his. “And I figured that it would be best that I stayed away from you since you despised me.” 
He let out a sigh, mouth opening to defend himself. 
You shook your head. “Do you know how much that hurt me?” you cried out, lower lip quivering. “I-I thought that you cared about me, but you didn’t, did you?”
“I can say the same fucking thing about you!” he snapped. “When I came back from the blip, I saw you everywhere! I thought that you were haunting me, that my guilt was just making you appear, but it was actually you!”
“I didn’t want to do that, okay.” “What, you didn’t want to haunt me? You made me miserable!”
“That’s just what you said the last time I saw you.” You pushed yourself out of the chair and faced away from him, not wanting him to see you cry. “You were one of the only people I had. After you left, I wanted so badly to go see you. I could’ve gone anywhere, but the one place I wanted to be was with you. And then I had to hide away from the world, and I had no one. And I had to live with the fact that I would never be able to fix things between us.”
“You’ve really got some balls to say that shit.” He gripped your arm and spun you around to face him. “Fuck you, Y/N. Fuck you and everything you did.”
You yanked your arm from his grasp and stormed away. “I don’t think I’m the one to blame here, Bucky.”
You slammed the door shut behind you and walked past the room where the other three were gathered. “Hey, where are you going?” Sharon shouted.
“Outside,” you grumbled, walking out into the open courtyard in front of the house. 
Sobs bubbled in your chest and past your lips, collapsing onto the front steps with your head held in your hands. Your shoulders shook and though you tried to keep the noise to a minimum, you couldn’t hold back the hiccups of air that you tried to breathe in.
Heavy footsteps clicked on the pavement behind you a few minutes later, and you hastily swiped away the tear tracks that soaked your cheeks. “Sam, I’m fine. I’ll be in in a minute and you can interrogate me all you want,” you choked out, wrapping your arms around your knees.
“Not Sam,” Bucky’s gruff voice rumbled behind you, his form settling beside you on the steps.
You pursed your lips, eyes trained on the concrete path ahead of you. “Why did you go to the wake?” The words tumbled from your mouth before you could stop them.
“What?”
“I... I saw you at my wake. Why were you there? I thought I was dead to you.”
He shook his head. “You were never dead to me. You... God, you were the only thing keeping me going. You were all I had.”
You finally lifted your gaze to his face, locking eyes with him. “Then why’d you hurt me?”
A sigh left his lips. “After that chase in Bucharest, I... I guess I realized that you being with me wasn’t safe. And then when Zemo was able to get the Winter Soldier to come out...”
“So you hurt me to keep me from getting hurt.”
“Y/N-”
“What, am I wrong? God, when you push people away you really go for the heart.”
“It’s not like it was easy for me! When I saw how badly I hurt you, it felt like a part of me died inside.”
“But you still had every goddamn piece of me in your hands. Was that not enough for you?”
He stayed silent, searching your eyes for a moment before directing his gaze to his shoes. You scoffed and pushed yourself to your feet, turning on your heel to leave.
Bucky reached his left arm up, the cool metal curling gently around your wrist as he also stood up. In one fluid motion, he spun you around to face him and pressed his lips into yours. You froze in shock, but before you could even decide how to feel about his bold actions, he pulled away and searched your eyes. 
You let out a shuddering sigh, trying to gather your composure as quickly as possible. “Bucky, I would’ve died for you.”
“That was the last thing I wanted. It still is.” His cool fingers loosened their grip, delicately gliding along the back of your hand. “And when I found out that you died, I blamed myself. I told myself that if I hadn't hurt you, if I was with you, then you would’ve lived.”
“Bucky-”
“My therapist, she made me create a list of people that I need to make amends with. I-I’ve gotten through most of it, but there’s a few names that I still need to get through.” He dug in his back pocket, fishing out the small pocketbook and turning to the last page. “I wrote your name down. I-I knew that there was no way I could ever make amends with you, but I felt like I had an obligation to.”
You stared at your name scrawled out on the page in his messy handwriting. It was the only name on the page, placed right in the center. Tears welled in your eyes and you let out a shaky breath, unable to find the words to say.
“You don’t have to forgive me, and honestly I don’t expect you to, but I just needed-”
“Bucky.”
He closed his mouth, his sweet blue eyes following your movements as you closed the book in his hands and settled both of your hands on his cheeks. You could see the stress melting off of him as soon as he felt the warmth of your touch, his shoulders dropping slightly and a hint of a smile threatening to crack on his lips.
“Bucky Barnes, you are the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” you sighed, giving him a small smile. “And I know it’s because you’ve been hurt more times than you can count, but if I can take away some of that hurt, I’d do it a million times over and never regret it.” The tip of your nose brushed against his, and you heard his breath hitch in his throat. “I forgive you.”
With a gentle tilt of his head, his lips bumped against yours before quickly locking together. Your fingers drifted down his cheeks and his throat before clasping together behind his neck.
He stole a few more quick kisses before pulling away completely, his tongue darting out to wet his lips before permitting a smile to rest on his face. You mirrored his smile and carded a hand through his hair. “Y’know,” you breathed, “I really dig this haircut.”
He arched a brow. “Really, I thought you liked the long hair.”
“I did like the long hair! It just... This is more you. Not the Winter Soldier, not HYDRA. You.”
You felt his arm pressed against your body as he tucked his book into his jacket pocket before both arms tenderly snaked around your waist and pulled you close to him. He pressed a chaste kiss, then two, then three onto your lips before letting out a small sigh.
“I’ve got clients coming in half an hour and I’d prefer not having people with targets on their heads making out on my front step,” Sharon shouted from the front door, giving both of you a pointed look before stepping back inside.
“I should leave,” you hummed, dropping your hands to your sides and beginning to wiggle yourself free of his grip.
“Y/N,” he breathed, fingers catching onto yours and weaving together. “Stay. Please. I... I just got you back, I don't want to lose you again.” Your eyes locked with his and he held the stare for a few moments before clearing his throat and shifting his gaze to the ground between you two. “Besides, I think Sam and Zemo might kill me if I don’t go back in there without you.”
You giggled. “Oh, that’s the reason you want me to go in there with you?”
“Yeah!” His voice was nearly drowned out by your laughs, but he persisted. “I swear to god, if looks could kill, I would’ve died before I could’ve even gotten out here to talk to you. Fucking Zemo even said something about ‘when you’ve got a woman like that, you should never take hurt them.’”
You grinned. “You think he’s wrong about that?”
He shook his head fervently. “No, no, not at all! I just... I guess I’m out of practice with this whole... talking thing.” He let out a breath and squeezed your hands. “I need to catch up on the seven years that I’ve spent without you, and there’s no better time to start than now.”
You bit down on your lower lip to suppress the smile that was close to splitting your face in two. “I don't know, Bucky, but that sure sounds like some good talking to me.”
He rolled his eyes, but a smile finally began to settle on his lips. “Shut up.”
You pressed a final, sweet kiss to his lips before slipping from his grasp, giving yourself a moment to admire the purple light that caressed his skin. “Come on, let’s head inside before Sharon loses her shit.”
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hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole
hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.
the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.
like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.
basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)
i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:
moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor
rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.
this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.
incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.
like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.
this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.
and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.
moffat hates women
he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.
girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!
its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.
not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.
does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.
genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.
moffat hates permanent consequences
steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.
the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.
rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”
basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*
*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.
i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.
and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.
it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.
so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.
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Crimson Ties (Bela Dimitrescu/Reader, Soulmate AU) Pt. 4
Fandom: Resident Evil: Village Rating: T for language Warnings: None for this chap Genre: Hurt + comfort Summary: Sure, your soulmate may be a vampire (of sorts), but there's nothing that love can't conquer, right?... Maybe it's time you learn a little more about the odd circumstances of your soulmate's existence- and the fear that lies beneath the surface. Notes: If the last chapter was "hurt" followed by comfort, this is "comfort" followed by hurt, also known as the part where the story's central conflict comes into play. Features an appearance from Daniela, who reminds us that Cassandra's not the only one with a sharp tongue around here. Previous Chapters: 1: Stem the Flow, 2: Tangled Strands, 3: Rumbling Thunder
4: That Which Burns
“Of all the stars, the fairest,” Bela murmurs in your ear, keeping her arms wrapped loosely around your waist, before giving you a gentle kiss on the cheek. If you hadn’t already been blushing, you certainly would have now done so. You’re leaning into her touch, face flushed as can be, loving every moment of this. For a while now you’ve been curled up with her, while she reads excerpts from her favorite works. Although both of you would have preferred to do this outside, enjoying the view of the stars, you figured it would be best not to push your health too much. After all, you had lost a huge percentage of your blood. Well, temporarily, but it was still better to be safe than sorry.
“That’s probably my favorite line from Sappho,” you chimed, fondly remembering some of your schooling. “Though the one about being remembered always stands out to me. I’m not sure I remember it correctly, and I’m sure it’s been translated a few different ways over the years… but I think it’s ‘someone, I tell you, will remember us in another time’. Might have gotten that backwards, actually.” Giving an awkward little smile, you sheepishly rub the back of your head with one hand. “Either way it feels so romantic. To think of a love so strong that it echoes throughout time, fondly remembered for generations… it warms the heart.”
“Mhmm, most definitely, my dear. Many aren’t as lucky, however,” Bela laments, an odd expression crawling onto her face. There’s the slightest waver to her lower lip as she speaks. Concerned, you turn in place to get a better look, gently reaching out to caress her cheek. Is there something I’m missing? You think, wondering what you should say. “I’m alright, I promise. Merely distracted by a fleeting thought. Let’s read another, yes?” Before you can protest, she’s already turned to another page, starting to read as if she already knew which one was next (which would not, at all, surprise you).
Love shook my heart, Like the wind on the mountain, Troubling the oak-trees
“Oh, if only I could speak Aeolic Greek, so that I could serenade you with tender prose, all the days of your life… just as it was originally written. Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Bela offers, once again smiling wide, as if nothing in the world was wrong, at least not when you were by her side. Though you are not keen to ignore her earlier stroke of misery, you are equally reluctant to put a damper on her current upswing. Now what were you to do? Little comes to mind, other than the simplicity of human warmth, and so you lean once more into her embrace, head held aloft on the strength of her shoulder.
“Here, as I am now, is more than lovely enough. Your voice is soothing in any language, sweet as sugar, relaxing as can be,” you reassure her in your softest tone. Heart fluttering, she finds herself easing back into the comfort of the moment, forgetting all about her earlier woes. “Shall we read another?” Nodding, Bela again turns the page and begins to read:
He’s equal with the gods, that man Who sits across from you, Face to face, close enough to sip Your voice’s sweetness
And what excites my mind, Your laughter, glittering. So, When I see you, for a moment, My voice goes,
My tongue freezes. Fire, Delicate fire, in the flesh. Blind, stunned, the sound Of thunder, in my ears.
Shivering with sweat, cold Tremors over the skin, I turn the colour of dead grass, And I’m an inch from dying.
“Does that make me equal to the gods, then?” You ask, as soon as the last line is given its moment to shine. A small hum comes from your soulmate, who seems equal parts intrigued and confused. “I look in your eyes and my lungs light on fire, my heart ricochets around my chest, and I hear the chorus of angels singing your holy praises. The fact that I can manage to speak at all is confounding. Maybe the muses have seen fit to lend me their artistry, so that I might make conversation worthy of your existence, my dear.” With that said, you find yourself being squeezed gently, Bela placing another kiss against the top of your head. Now, it seems she is the one without the ability to speak. “The divine witnessing the divine, yes?... Let me read the next one, and we’ll see if my voice could ever compare to your own.”
It’s innocent enough, your choice. A turn of the page, just another poem, selected for nothing more than respect for chronology. Yet something drains from the space around you as you begin to read, so subtly slow that you hardly notice.
Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed Muses’ lovely gifts, for the clear melodious lyre: But now old age has seized my tender body, Now my hair is white, and no longer dark
How were you to realize that the great shadow of fear loomed over your soulmate, when she had refused to name it mere minutes ago? How were you to know to halt your reciting, when the aching of her heart rendered her throat dry, and she could not bring herself to call out to you? Words poured like poisoned wine from your lips… your soulmate having no choice but to drink up every last drop.
My heart’s heavy, my legs won’t support me, That once were fleet as fawns, in the dance I grieve often for my state; what can I do? Being human, there’s no way not to grow old
A shaky breath from age-old lungs, exhaled into tense air, forced out past a trembling jaw. Say something, Bela tells herself, any poem but this. For a split second you pause, and she wonders if her thoughts have found new light in your own mind. But you break the momentary silence without much care, simply having been unsure of your pending pronunciation of an old name, perfectly unaware of your partner’s panic.
Rosy-armed Dawn, they say, love-smitten Once carried Tithonus off to the world’s end: Handsome and young he was then, yet at last Grey age caught that spouse of an immortal wife
At last her ordeal was over. The final words hang heavy in the air, weighing down her shoulders, but they are done. Her fears had been dragged out from the pit in her stomach, now waving about like dirty laundry. There was only one way for her to avoid this happening another time: Tell you the truth. By now her silence had earned your attention, with you turning in her lap again, concerned gaze meeting her hollow one. Gently, she gives you a reassuring squeeze.
“I… am not one to balk at the nature of things, however painful the truth. Yet I hesitate now, with the very person I am bound to with crimson ties… How cowardly of me,” Bela all but snarls, anger clearly not directed at you. It’s clear in the way that she holds herself that she has more to say. There’s not much you can do other than wait, though you do tuck an arm around her waist, beginning to rub soft circles against her back. “Allow me to drop the pretenses. You are not immortal, but I am. We’ve only been together for a day and a half, and already I’m worrying about your lifespan. It’s safe to say that this particular poem was an unfriendly reminder of our situation.”
Oh. How exactly were you supposed to respond to that?... Your girlfriend- your soulmate- was immortal. Hmph, as if her essentially being a vampire hadn’t already been enough to freak you out. Now this? Well, maybe it wasn’t too much farther of a stretch from the last revelation, even if you were still recovering from that one. Even then, something told you that this was equally hard for Bela- both to say, and to simply feel. As if she needed more stress surrounding her partnership with you…
“Of all the ways for us to mimic legends… I don’t even know what to say, my dear. I… I suppose that I can only reassure you that we will make the most of every moment we have. However much time we are destined to get, we’ll make sure it is filled with bliss,” you reply, slowly, making it up as you go. An ache builds in the center of your chest as you talk, an internal yearning for greater confidence. Although words were your “weapon” of choice, you were not always a master in your use of them, too human to be infallible. “Maybe we should set aside the poetry for now, shift our focus to something, ah, less meaningful?”
“That would be for the best,” Bela agrees, already shifting like she was going to stand up, before you even had a chance to get off of her lap. Something strange had fallen over her expression, an invisible veil, putting an uncomfortable distance between the two of you. Inside your chest, a thundering heart threatens to go still. Had you done something wrong? Did you commit some unspoken sin? Together the two of you rise, in sync yet more separate than before, a thousand questions and anxieties rendering both of you silent...
—————————
Across the room from you, a pair of bright eyes watch your every movement, peering out from over an open book. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought that the “ruse” was intentionally poor. But for all the five hours you had known her, Daniela Dimitrescu had done nothing other than prove herself odd, clumsy, and quite possibly… overconfident. Admittedly, that still made her undeniably more pleasant than Cassandra. If you had to be stuck alongside someone other than your soulmate, well, ‘twas best that it was this strange redheaded gremlin. Even if she had expressed an unfortunate interest in eating you.
Gods, what is wrong with this family? You think, frowning a tad, unable to stop yourself from making eye contact with Daniela. Instantly she’s looking away, pretending to be engrossed within her book. The very same book that had remained open to the same page for half an hour now. I do hope Bela is having more fun right now, with whatever “business” called her away so unexpectedly. She hadn’t seemed happy to have to leave your side, earlier tension notwithstanding. Coming here to the library had been her suggestion, though you doubted she knew that Daniela was there, or at least hadn’t anticipated her sister’s unnerving behavior. Already the redhead was looking back at you, even less subtly than before.
Sighing, you decided that you could only put up with so much of this tomfoolery.
“Are you in need of something? Or is there something on my face?” You ask, setting your own book aside as you do. There’s a few moments of silence, as Daniela glances around the room, as if you might actually be speaking to someone else. When no scapegoats teleport to her rescue, she very awkwardly clears her throat, then moves to sit at your table. Though you are loath to admit it, your heart starts beating faster as she approaches. Not out of attraction, hell no, rather fear. Perhaps getting her attention hadn’t been the wisest choice after all…
“I just think it’s funny,” Daniela chimes, trailing off just long enough to run a finger down the length of your arm, “that Bela abandoned you so quickly. You’re so… fragile. Cassandra told me about the fun little introduction you had to our family- the blood loss, being chained up, the fear you felt when you got caught in our territory.” Suddenly she’s devolving into a fit of giggles, hand resting not-so-gently on your wrist. When you try to pull away, her nails dig in, and her gaze snaps back to your own. “But you don’t remember that part, do you? If you did… oh, we’d have to lock you up, like the little pet you are, to keep you from running away. I’m sure Bela wouldn’t mind seeing you in chains.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” You snap, uncharacteristically furious. While it was true that you couldn’t recall exactly how you made it into the castle’s dungeons, you refuse to accept Daniela’s implications about your soulmate, or her assessment of your dedication. A brief second passes where you think she’s about to lunge towards you. Instead, she withdraws her hand, moving it to prop up her chin instead. Then, her lips slowly drag upwards into a wicked grin, wide eyes filled with dangerous amusement.
“So you’re more than a wannabe Shakespeare, after all? A bit more teeth, a touch more vulgarity, maybe a twinge of bloodlust, and you might actually fit in around here. Not enough to get our family’s ‘gift’- our secret to a long, happy life- but enough that Bela won’t grow bored of your sappy poems,” she teases with another string of laughter. Before you can question her about this ‘gift’, she’s all but jumping to her feet, stretching out her arms as she does. “I can’t wait to update Cassandra about you. We’ll be betting on how entertaining you’ll end up being. Try to keep from bailing on my dear sister too soon, alright?”
Just like that she’s disappearing into a swarm of flies, leaving you more confused (and angry) than ever. Taking a deep breath, you try to focus on what you need to do next: Find Bela. Talk to her. Get some goddamn answers.
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You ever think about how rare Air x Water relationships probably were, even before the war? Like, I haven't read the Kyoshi Novels yet, so idk if they ever mentioned an Air x Water pairing, but I'm not surprised to hear about an Air x Earth pairing. Cause ofc the Air Nomads would be traveling around, going to visit different locations big and small (not sure if that's how Kyoshi's parents met specifically, but regardless), and I'd imagine the Nomads' voyages would be pretty reserved to the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. Those are the "mainlands" of the Avatar universe.
Meanwhile, unless for some specific reason, I wouldn't really expect that the Air Nomads headed over to the Water Tribes too often. Because of geography and climate and maybe even the amount of supplies they'd have to bring along, since it seems the majority of Water Tribe food is caught. I also think of Aang’s initial reactions to Bato’s setup in Bato of the Water Tribe. 
Likewise, I'm not sure how often people from the Water Tribes would've left their homes to travel other parts of the world. The Water Tribes are known to have a deep sense of community that strengthens their ties to the land and the people living there. The NWT seems like it stayed completely out of the war unless to hold off invasions. Idk, they just appear to be usually isolated communities when they can help it. And for those who did leave their homes, as I’m certain some did, I'm not sure how likely it would’ve been for them to cross paths and fall in love with an Air Nomad.
Part of me suspects that Aang hadn't even been to a Water Tribe before he froze himself. I know his near-immediate line "Will you go penguin sledding with me?" suggests that he’d done it before, like how he might've ridden the elephant koi of Kyoshi Island before, but consider how Aang didn't question the fact that he recognized no one from the Southern Water Tribe. He didn't appear to wonder why the heck the village of the same location from where it'd been 100 years ago had become so small since the last time he was there. And maybe it's just me, but asking "Do you guys live around here?" the way he did sort of gives off that he himself was unfamiliar personally with communities in the South Pole. Like, I think he'd figure they came from the once-large village, if he visited there before, even if he didn’t recognize them. So I'm skeptical Aang traveled to the SWT despite not living too far from it.
Also, I wouldn't call this evidence, more like support, but Aang didn't know how to catch penguins, either. The apparently common tactic was to have a spare piece of fish on you, and I don't imagine Air Nomads would have caught fish for penguin sledding. Maybe they would've accepted fish like how Aang did from Katara, or used some other method, but Aang asked if Katara would "teach" him how, which sounds like he really didn't have any prior knowledge from watching other people do it.
So, after all, maybe Aang had only ever heard of penguin sledding. Maybe going with Katara was his first time. Again, since he didn't live too far from the SWT, I'm sure somebody would've mentioned the penguins to him. Or maybe the above paragraph is null and there's an explanation I don't know about, but my point is that it's very possible he never met someone from the Southern Water Tribe in the era before the iceberg.
And then it’s pretty clearly shown that Aang had never been to the NWT. The NWT probably doesn't look exactly how it did 100 years ago, but given how long-standing and traditional it was, older than the SWT, it wouldn't look so unrecognizably different, and Aang seemed pretty in awe when he went there with Katara and Sokka. Also the fact that, before he knew 100 years passed, Aang said to Katara, "There's another Water Tribe up there, right? Maybe they have waterbenders who can teach you." Obviously that sounds speculative.
Aang mentions in The King of Omashu and The Blue Spirit how he used to "always" visit his friends Bumi and Kuzon, from the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. But he never mentions a friend from the Water Tribes or what the Tribes looked like in the previous era. Thus, if Aang had gone to the Tribes, it was few to no times, and it seems the Air Nomads didn't make trips there like how they did to the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation.
That's all to say, Air x Water probably wasn't a common relationship. And it's kind of cute to me to think how Aang very likely had the first set of grey eyes Katara ever saw, and, with the aforementioned in mind, it's possible that Katara had the first set of blue eyes Aang ever saw. But what’s much greater is how this realization about Air x Water’s rareness makes their coming together all the more significant, the joining of these two cultures through Aang and Katara, survivors of genocide, that much more powerful. Because even though they probably wouldn't have met under normal circumstances, fate had something different in mind for them.
The Water and Air cultures and how they went about day-to-day life appear drastically different. Water Tribes mostly hunted, Air Nomads grew and gathered. Water Tribes stayed mostly to themselves, Air Nomads traveled the world. Water Tribes are like one large, heavily-connected family. Air Nomads sought detachment and free spirit. But even when they have such contrasting traditions and approaches to life, their values have more in common with each other than at first glance. They're both loving, spiritual cultures, embodied in beautiful, fluid, life-giving elements that probably didn’t bend together often, but when they do, they work in synchrony, in equal amount to make something more. 
It gets to me so much how the cultures Aang and Katara come from turn out to be so valuable and fulfilling to each other. Both of them have an anomalous inclination to the other person’s culture. In Aang's case, through Katara especially, the Water Tribes are like his second home. He lost everything he’s known, and the Water Tribe just seems like such a perfect community to welcome him with open arms, deem him a member of their resilient family, and encourage his connections with the people he’ll be protecting as the Avatar. For Katara, the Air Nomads lived a lost way of life, representing a peace within the world and themselves, that she’d been hoping and fighting for from a young age. Through Aang, that perspective and lifestyle is breathed back into this era, and he shares it with her firsthand. Really, it’s like there’s a bit of Water inside Aang, and a bit of Air inside Katara.  
They lived such different lives at such different times, but they both came from the South, which would allow for Aang to keep close over the next century. Despite living those different worlds, they were nearer than they realized. Their cultures involve such different customs, but resonant essences. They’re more complementary than they appear, like Aang and Katara, and they keep balance that way, accepting each other wholly, not discouraging either one’s beliefs or history but instead learning and growing from those. 
Air x Water feels so special to me, so representative of Aang and Katara and them joining forces to change the world, to confront their pain, to find their personal triumphs despite the tragedies unleashed on their cultures that few others can relate to. And after the war, they’d rebuild those cultures. Make new memories, start new legacies. Have a family together. Their relationship is SO important and meaningful. They found each other out of their harsh pasts, an Air and a Water meant to connect when their ancestors often did not, meant to help each other when they’d lost so much, and created something totally new, unique, and beautiful.  
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