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heartpascal · 11 months

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is it freedom?

▹— spiderverse (future) found family x platonic!reader

▹— summary: after losing everything, you struggle to accept the one thing you needed all along.

▹— a/n: ok i have been enabled by exactly two (2!) people. (thank you both) SO dare i start a spiderverse series??? IF YALL WANT MORE OF THIS… I WILL DO IT. this is really just a set up thing idk but i feel like arachnid has potential for further parts and ACTUAL found family!! also haven’t tagged people on my general taglist bc idk if you guys want to be tagged in ALL works or just all pedro works :(

▹— warnings: slight across the spiderverse spoilers, not really found family yet, injuries, blood, treating own injuries, stitches, fighting (canon-typical violence yall), dead parents (mentioned a LOT), a whole lot of angst (it’s a spider-person so what do we expect), reader has a whole lot of bad thoughts, loneliness, isolation

masterlist PART TWO

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Had you known what this, this thing, would lead to, you would have never started it. Not that you had done so purposely, at least to begin with, more so happening as an event of pure chance. You were in the right place at the right time, and since then, you had been addicted.

But if you could go back, look at yourself just a year younger than you are now, tell that kid what would come if you went through with saving a life for the first time, you wondered. It was a question that scratched deep in your brain, sending you off balance the more you thought about it; would you have still done it? Would you have saved that person’s life, knowing it would lead to your own falling apart?

You would like to think yes. In fact, you know that back then, when your eyes were bright at the prospect of helping people, when you still marvelled at the world like it was good, you would have been certain that it would be worth it. Why should that person die, just to save you? It’s a harrowing realisation. A conclusion that makes your fingers tremble, your voice shake. Now, you’re not sure you would do it. You don’t think you could bear to face that decision knowing what you know of the world around you now.

It’s something cruel, really, that the spider that bit you gave you these powers, and nothing to go back and fix your mistakes. Your perceived victories. Your losses.

But the worst has already happened, and the only one left to die is you, so you carry on. You don the suit every day, you sew up your own injuries on the top floor of the abandoned offices that you’ve claimed as your own. Each day, you wake when you choose, you sleep when you want to, and you work yourself down to your very bones with nobody to object.

The hollow feeling in your gut is a pain you have no choice to ignore, to smother with assurances that this is freedom. What else could it be? You do whatever you so please, you spend your time swinging through the streets of New York rather than doing schoolwork at home, you eat all the junk you could ever have wanted.

It’s freedom. It has to be.

You tell yourself that you don’t miss the home part of having to do schoolwork, promise your heart that you don’t miss home-cooked meals as opposed to greasy food that leaves you unsatisfied. You swear that you like having nobody to tell you what to do. There’s no other choice, after all.

And each day, when you spend a little bit longer out on the streets, getting yourself into needless fights that the police could certainly handle, you tell yourself it’s because you’re protecting the city. You convince yourself that it’s not because of having an unending rage to satiate, or a permanent feeling of breathlessness when you leave police to handle anything, as if you could relive the moment your father, the captain, was left to handle something he couldn’t.

So, you’re almost relieved by the appearance of something… strange. Something dangerous. This is what you live for — this is your job.

You crouch against the wall, fingers splayed and suit itching where you had crudely sewn it back together across your ribs at an almost too-close call. You hold your breath, you watch. The lenses over your eyes shield your sensitive sight from the harshest colours of this new opponent, who looks almost… unreal. Too different to be a part of reality. He yells out, seemingly glitching? A distorted scream of what is apparently pain, accompanied by flashes of colour that are unfamiliar to you.

“Well, that doesn’t look good.” You comment, eyebrows raised beneath your mask, and the strange looking guy snaps his head towards you, long hair slapping across the goggles over his eyes. He bares his teeth at you, something almost resembling a grin marring his face.

“Spider-man!” He yells triumphantly, cackling as he wipes the hair away from his face, tendrils unfurling from behind his back and lifting him into the air.

“Not quite!” You call back, dodging below the metallic arm that shoots towards where your head was, crumbling through the wall. You try to think back to the jokes you used to tell to rile up whoever you were facing, but find your mind is blank. Instead, all you can think of is questions. “Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

The man follows you as you spring from wall to wall, heading towards the center of the building where it tunnels up for about forty floors, balconies overlooking the fountain below. “A new spider, eh? Well I’ll take you down just as easily as I have the other!” He tells you, though you’re immediately suspicious of his statement. You’re the only Spider-related hero around, and even if you weren’t, you doubt this guy could squash a worm, let alone you.

“Sure thing, man.” You say, sighing, already exhausted by the repetitiveness that comes with every fight. Your opponents always say they’ll beat you, kill you, squish you, take you down, and yet you always get back up at the end of the fight, and they always remain defeated. When you started doing this, you never would have thought you’d get so tired from winning all the time.

And yet here you are, slipping further and further up the building with the octopus-looking guy chasing after you, metal arms crumbling walls and bannisters on his way up. He falters once more, another one of those glitch-like movements sending him down a few floors, but he’s quick to recover. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

You crouch down on one balcony, somewhere around the thirty mark floor-wise, peering down at the guy as he shakes lingering pain from his body. He charges upwards, aiming to reach you quickly with an almost predatory smirk on his face. Before he can even get close to you, however, you’re back on the move, setting a trap for him that he doesn’t even seem to notice.

It’s only when a group of late workers emerge on what you’re pretty sure is the twenty-first floor that you become more anxious about this fight. You don’t like when civilians are involved.

There’s about a dozen of them crowding the balcony, looking up to where you’re facing off with octopus-man above, some having begun to descend the stairs to the next floor before catching on to your presence. You try not to draw attention to them, but their pointing and whispering sets the Spidey-sense off, ringing loudly between your ears, almost deafening in its intensity. Maybe you underestimated this guy. The flash of a camera sends the last hope of him not noticing down the drain, and he grins at you as he switches targets, climbing down towards them with some semblance of caution.

You’re much faster than he is, dropping down and using a web to catch yourself rather than having to climb. It’s hard to stop yourself from yelling at them, cursing them out for being so damn foolish — who in their right mind would stick around a very dangerous fight to take pictures?

Instead, you choose to yell, “Get out! Go, go, go.” And usher them down the stairs, but it’s not difficult to realise that this guy is going to get to them before they manage to descend to the bottom. You shouldn’t be surprised, really. Nothing is ever as simple as it could be, not for you.

The split second decision to drop down and form a net-like web low enough to catch the workers worked out for you in the end, as you swung back up and pushed the workers off of the balcony and stairway just as the octopus man was reaching them. He cursed at you, refocusing his efforts on you as you vaguely noted the workers clambering down after their screaming had stopped. Honestly — did people really have so little faith in you? Had you ever sent anybody to their death before?

“You are just as pesky of an insect as Spider-man!” He growled out, teeth gritted, and came after you with renewed force. He kind of reminded you of that doctor you faced not long after getting your powers, but this guy looked completely different. The doctor you faced — aptly named Doc Ock — had turned himself into some form of a mutant, he had reinforced tentacles which sprouted from his back. Was this guy some kind of copy cat? Maybe he was just delusional.

“I don’t know who Spider-man is, man!” You shout to him as you ascend the building again, trying to figure out the best way to take this guy down. His tentacles seem electronic, so surely you could disable whatever machinery resides on his back?

“That’d be me.” A voice came from above you, two floors ahead of your position. Your head snapped towards it, seeing a man in a blue and red suit, framed by a burst of orange behind him. He didn’t linger up there long, instead moving to leap down to the guy who had turned his attention to the new guy. The closer you looked at this new guy, the more similarities you saw to yourself — his webs looked remarkably similar to your own, the pattern that went across his suit matched your own, even the wide white lenses that shielded your eyes on your mask. Who the hell was this guy?

The octopus man grinned widely, shaking greasy hair from his face. “Ah, finally! The real Spider-man. Got yourself a new protégé, I see.” He drawled, dodging this new guy’s hit straight off of the bat. You tried not to get annoyed at being referred to as a protégé, considering as far as you were aware, you were the only Spider-person around. Where was this guy when you were holding a bridge full of civilians together? Where was he when you took down villain after villain, never once failing to get the guy? No — you were the real Spider-man, if anyone.

“I don’t know who you are, man, but I’m handling this just fine.” You call to the guy, swinging down to rejoin the fight, webbing the villain’s metal tentacles to the wall behind him, before dropping down to kick him towards the wall.

“Oh, so you know how to send this guy back to his own dimension?” Spider-man asks you, eyebrows raised beneath his mask, and as if on cue, the guy glitches once more, ripping his arms away from the wall and just about catching himself on a balcony below before he could fall into your net.

You gape at the new guy, glancing back up to where the burst of orange remains opened, and is that a portal? Is this Spider-man from another dimension? Is that why you’ve never heard of him before? God, if your mother was alive, she’d kill to find out about this. Inter-dimensional travel was something she had spent her life researching. If you didn’t remain so bitter toward her even after her death, you might’ve been sad she wasn’t alive to see this.

But you were bitter, and it made the experience all the worse.

Because you’re pretty sure that that bitterness takes the place of grief within you. It’s hard to understand why you crave to feel that pain, that grief, as opposed to the aching resentment that floods you with the thought of her. It’s such a sharp contrast to thinking of your father, your kind father, the man who threw himself into a battle he couldn’t have hoped to survive, just on the off chance he could save somebody. You hope you take after him.

“Wait— you’re from another dimension?” You question anyway, eyes flickering between the battle and the looming portal above. In fact, you’re so distracted by finding out about that tidbit of information that you miss octopus man aim a tentacle for you, and it snatches you around the ankle. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—!”

The man waves you around like some kind of rag doll, and you try not to be too bitter about being caught off guard. You should probably learn that getting caught up in your little pity party always ends up badly, always distracts you from that renowned Spidey-sense. You formulate a plan in your mind when the drip of blood around your ankle draws your attention back to the battle at hand.

You web the wall opposite and hold on tight, pausing the movements and letting the dizziness that had come over you fade away. The man growls out in annoyance, and gets closer to cut the webs with another tentacle, which is exactly what you planned for. The tension from the webs launches you towards him when you let go, and in his surprise, the metal tentacle releases you. You wrap around him, and start webbing up the machinery embedded in his back as Spider-man distracts most of the tentacles, keeping them from pulling you off.

His tentacles start faltering, clearly not obeying his movements, and you wrap them up where they emerge from his back, continuing along until the movement is so limited that he has to use them all to clutch onto the nearest balcony.

You crawl up the tentacles in the very same spidery manner that you’re known for, and crouch, watching the octopus man struggle as Spider-man observes from the balcony opposite. “You wanna finish this one off, Spider-man?” You ask, unable to hide any bitterness from your tone at his mostly unhelpful actions throughout the battle.

“Hey, not bad!” He praises, and it annoys you. You’re good at what you do — for the most part. You manage without help constantly, and that’s the way you prefer it. “You’d make a good addition to the Spider Society!”

Now, you don’t know what the Spider Society is. But honestly? You don’t care. You don’t need help, and you prefer working alone, and you certainly don’t like feeling patronised.

“Whatever, man. Just send him back to whatever dimension he came from.” You tell the guy, and drop down as you hear sirens outside, landing on your injured ankle and just about stopping yourself from cursing. Through all the adrenaline and fighting, you’d forgotten about the way the metal had ripped into your skin, drawn blood. It’s just be another place you’d have to sew up your suit with itchy, uneven stitching. “Officers,” You greet as they open the doors, guns drawn, radios murmuring. “All taken care of. Civilians okay?”

“Shaken up, but fine.” The leading police officer says, immediately relaxing and holstering his weapon. You wish it reassured you that the police trusted you now, but it didn’t. Nonetheless, the other officers follow suit. “Thank you, Arachnid.”

The name your world has bestowed upon you has yet to grow on you, but you nod your head regardless, and salute them as you make your way out, swinging across the city, trying to put the existence of the multiverse and inter-dimensional travel out of your mind. Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy when you have a busted ankle to fix up.

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You’re halfway through stitching up your suit, having already sewn your skin back together with as much skill as you possessed in the matter — which was, not much. But the bleeding has stopped, and your stupidly slow healing will take care of it within a few days. You know that the itchy stitches on your suit will just irritate the injury, and though you wouldn’t lose anything if your identity was revealed, it doesn’t feel right to go out into the city with any part of you on show.

No, you wear the suit for a reason. You keep every part of yourself covered because nobody can know it’s you underneath the suit. Not because you had anything to lose, no, you had already lost everything. It was because then you could never make a mistake, you would have to be absolutely perfect, flawless, to make up for the fact that it was you underneath the layer.

So, you settle with a sewn suit that will itch and make the stitches on your ankle sting.

However, when there’s a burst of orange across the room, you have no choice but to forgo the suit, to simply drop the needle and thread and hover your fingers over your web shooters. You wait, nervously, for some other villain to appear. You’re not sure if Spider-man appearing would be better or worse.

But when a foot steps through the portal, it’s nobody familiar. In fact, it’s a suit you have never seen before, made up of dark blues and bright reds, sharp edges and long claws. It’s… unnerving, and considering the silence coming from the person wearing it, you’re not entirely certain of what they’re here for.

A moment later and another person steps through, a woman, with bright yellow lenses across her eyes that filter her irises into an amber. She steps forward, standing beside the person who had stepped through first, and if she hadn’t showed up, you would’ve been tempted to attack. With that being said, you remain on edge, but there’s something… comforting about her presence. Like her presence softens the man’s jagged edges.

She says your name, and then adds, “Arachnid.”

You furrow your brows and curse as you glance back at the suit so crudely laid out on the floor. Still, it doesn’t explain how she knows your name. Was it an inter-dimensional thing?

“Spider-man told us about your work in capturing Doc Ock earlier.” She tells you, as if that explains their presence. You did what you were supposed to do, which was take out the bad guys. “We’re here to offer you a place in the Spider Society.”

You can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of good cop, bad cop thing. She presents an offer which doesn’t sound too bad, and then her sharp-edged companion presents all the drawbacks and the catches. They don’t seem like the type to take no for an answer, either way. You still don’t even know what this Spider Society was! Was it some kind of multi-dimensional cult?

“I already told Spider-man that I wasn’t interested in joining whatever cult you’ve got going on.” You practically hiss, though you didn’t exactly tell him in such blatant words. You were more dismissive earlier, so you’d have to be clear now.

“It’s not a cult,” The man speaks, voice harsh and sharp much like the blades that branch from his forearms. “We work to protect the multiverse from anomalies that threaten to destroy it.”

The woman glances at him in a way that you translate as being vaguely annoyed, like he wasn’t approaching you in the way she had wanted him to. “He means to say that it’s a big job, and we need all the help we can get.” She says, softer, but only in comparison to the man’s harshness. “Listen, kid, you’re good at what you do. We need that kind of talent.”

“You’ll have to find it somewhere else.” You say firmly, because why would you want to leave your universe? This was a lot to think about when you had only learned of the multiverse existing mere hours ago. Regardless, you weren’t about to abandon your city just to go across the multiverse to help other heroes who couldn’t keep a leash on their own villains.

The two of them shared a look, a mere glance, before the woman heaved a sigh. “Look,” She sighed, heavily, like whatever she was about to say was something she didn’t want to be voicing. “Before you make your choice, you should know, your Green Goblin is currently terrorising another universe.”

You couldn’t work out if this was some kind of recruitment tactic, or something. That just wasn’t possible. You had put Gwen Stacy in the highest security prison after all antidotes to her goblin-tech failed. She was stuck in there — permanently. There was no way she had gotten out, let alone gotten out to another universe.

…Right?

It’s hard not to think of the memories at the mention of her—Green Goblin, not Gwen Stacy. Never Gwen Stacy. You wonder if this is where your fear comes from, the terrifying fact that you are remembered only for your mistakes. Because before she was the Green Goblin, she was Gwen. She was everything to you. She was the sun you orbited, the stars that charted your path. And it hurts, it hurts that you can only remember the blood and the dust and the destruction when you think of her.

People aren’t born as monsters, are they?

Like the spider that bit you, that invertebrate that so many fear, it was born the way it was. It was born with those fang-lined maws, with those eight legs and dozens of eyes. It was made into the monster it became, artificially crafted to deliver a venom that changed you forever. But it wasn’t born that way.

Surely, Gwen wasn’t either. She was kind. You remember that about her. You can remember her soft hands that used to hold your own, the loud laughter that always ended in a snort when she laughed at her own jokes, the gentle eyes that stared into your very soul. But those eyes are the very same ones that let her see through your mask, let her see exactly where to hit you to make it hurt. Was that what she was born as? Or is that what she was made into? A killer. A monster.

“Show me.” You say, because what else could you possibly respond? If what they’re saying is true, if the Green Goblin is loose once more, then people will die.

You can’t let her get fresh blood on her hands. Not when somewhere, deep inside your chest, so far down it’s almost unreachable, you have hope for her. You have an innate desire to look for the best in her, even when the Gwen you knew was the first life that the Green Goblin took.

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If there’s one thing you’ve taken from being Arachnid, it’s to expect the unexpected. And you go through the orange portal after Jessica Drew and Miguel O’Hara with that exact mindset about you, staring at where an orange watch-like device is wrapped around your wrist.

It’s in your nature to be suspicious, and these people weren’t an exception to that.

In fact, their presence only heightened that behaviour. After all, what were you to expect from two Spider people, who supposedly came to you for your help?

You weren’t blind, you saw the aged lines of their faces the moment you got close enough to see them clearly, away from the dim lighting of the building. They were adults, adults who had clearly been doing this type of thing a lot longer than you had. You, who was barely bordering on adult, who had fought enough battles already to last a lifetime — so why would they need you?

It didn’t feel right.

And when this Miguel person summoned Lyla the moment you walked through the portal, it felt all the more wrong. She was a hologram of some kind, much higher tech than the kind of thing you saw on your earth. But then again, you had never really been in high tech labs back in your earth. Still, it unsettled you. “Lyla, get me the location of Green Goblin, Earth 5011.” He commanded, and they argued in hushed voices for a moment, before a wider hologram appeared, stamped at Earth 3899.

“How did she get to another universe?” You ask, then, because it doesn’t make sense, and you’re shaking underneath the thin material of your suit. You’re hyper aware of each drag of stitching against the wound on your leg, each patch of fabric you had sewn on in hopes of the suit lasting you just a little longer, because you didn’t have the resource to produce a new one.

“It’s an anomaly.” Jessica Drew tells you, her tone softer than you’d heard it, as if she was attempting to reassure you in some way.

It didn’t help. But how could it? The last time you had faced Gwen Stacy—Green Goblin— you had lost so much. It had been the beginning of the end of everything good in your life. The explosion she had caused at your mother’s laboratory was the very same one that killed her, the very same explosion that sent you and your dad miles apart all while living in the same home. And still, you found a way to hope that there was something to salvage within Gwen.

But not only had you lost your mother, and not long after — your father, you had also lost your closest friend. The one person you had confided in, who knew you from your surface to the deepest level, and she had used that against you the moment the Goblin had taken over.

It had taken everything in you to beat her, back then.

And that was on home turf! How did these people expect you to do that a second time, in a completely unfamiliar place?

“Specifics aren’t important right now. Jessica, you take Arachnid. Lyla, send another one of the teams.” Miguel instructed, dismissing your questions right off the bat. It was frustrating. They were leaving you completely in the dark, and sending you to fight the worst enemy you had ever faced, and they were sending you alongside others like you from different universes. It was like asking you to bare your soul in front of them, to reveal your secrets, your deepest regrets, everything that you wanted to stay buried.

You knew Green Goblin. You knew that’s exactly what she would do. She would undermine you, she would lay your life out in front of you like tiles on a scrabble board. In the end, none of it amounted to much.

Jessica Drew made her way out, glancing at you and nodding for you to follow along. Your moment of hesitation had drawn Miguel’s attention, and he called out to you after a moment of hesitation. “We’ve all faced one like it, kid. It’s easier with others.” He told you, though he held a pained expression on his face all the while. Instead of admitting to the way he had hit the nail right on the head, you simply nodded and followed after Spider-woman.

It was a whirlwind from there.

Meeting up with others. Travelling the length of the so-called Lobby to wherever it was that Jessica was taking you. When you finally arrived, she offered an empty glass box with a mannequin inside, bare. She gestured towards it like it should’ve been self explanatory, but soon realised she’d have to spell it out for you.

You shouldn’t have been so upset by the offer of a new suit.

But you were.

This suit was your life. You had nothing outside of it, not anymore. You couldn’t just throw it away, as if it meant nothing, as if every rip and patch and wonky stitch didn’t mean anything. These were proof that what you were doing was real, that it was worth something. Each stitch proved you had value. You weren’t about to throw all of that away, especially for whatever overly technical suit these people would provide.

You had everything you needed.

And so Jessica led you to the next destination: Earth 3899.

The moment you stepped through the portal, it was like you were hit with a wave of familiarity. And not in a positive, slightly nostalgic way, no— this was chaos. This was the state your world had been in when Green Goblin ran riot, unchecked. She had torn apart buildings, blown up parks, she had set New York City aflame. And she was doing exactly the same here.

It was more contained here than it had been on your earth, and you had to assume that was thanks to the Spider-man already on site, coordinating police, ambulance and fire responses to douse the fires as quickly as she set them. If only the police in your city had trusted you so much, back then.

“Where is she?” You ask, the moment you get close enough to speak to the resident Spider-man of the universe. He looks at you as if you’re familiar, but doesn’t comment, instead just pointing a finger toward a skyscraper just a short way ahead. You’re gone the moment he tells you where to go.

She had the uncanny ability to stay quiet. It had freaked you own back on your own earth, but it was even more terrifying here, where things were ever so slightly different.

“Arachnid.” Gwen’s voice called, and for a moment, you could forget. You could forget every horrible thing the Goblin had done, and you could remember your friend, your Gwen, who had called out to Arachnid more than once without knowing it was you behind the mask. Whether it was for a story or to provide information on your most recent opponent, the voice calling your alias was familiar. But then there was that crackle of laughter, an unnatural gurgle in the way it left her throat, and you turned to see the green-tinged pallor of her skin. “I was so hoping you’d show up.”

You didn’t know how much her appearance would effect you, until you were stuck to the side of the building, staring at what had once been your best friend. You’re so choked up that you can’t even formulate a response, because you want that to be Gwen so badly, but you know it isn’t. The more you look at her, the more Goblin you see, the more you know that the Gwen you love is never coming back.

“Nothing to say?” She asks, and then says your real name, the name she used to say down the crackle of a phone line, or across the school hallway, and she smiles. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“You should’ve stayed in prison, Gwen.” You say, your voice unsteady as you say her name aloud for the first time in what must be forever. She seems to relish in the tremble of your voice, and you have to curse yourself for being so stupid, for already showing the vulnerability she was so easily able to pick out.

The Green Goblin tutted at you, stood atop her glider, but the smile you saw didn’t belong to Gwen. “You’re pathetically predictable, you know. You’re like a moth to the flame.” She tells you, and you fear that she’s right, that you’re the same person you were back when you fought her, back when she almost won. She sighs, like something heavy is weighing upon her, but it turns wistful in the blink of an eye. “I’m just glad your dad isn’t here to see this. He’d be so disappointed.”

“Arachnid, focus.” Jessica’s voice interrupts, before you can spiral down that rabbit hole. How did Gwen even know about your father? She was in prison long before he died. It didn’t make sense.

“Maybe,” You say, that familiar tremble around your words. “He did always hope for the best for you.”

She bares her teeth at your words, the only visible reaction before her mask is slipping over the bottom of her face, stretching out up to pointed ears, all metallic and tinted a murky green. Then, she’s attacking.

It’s muscle memory, mostly, you think.

If you don’t think too hard about it, it could be like playing a game with a longtime friend from your childhood. You know the moves to make, you know how she’ll respond. It’s a constant push and pull, a balance which leaves only destruction behind, the path of the Green Goblin’s wrath tangible in each battle scene the two of you leave behind. You can’t beat her like this.

It’s her glitching that gives you a slight upper hand — and you send her careening off of her glider to the ground below.

Your heart squeezes suddenly in your chest as you watch her fall, her eyes wide in what could almost be perceived as fear. If you didn’t intervene, would she die? Would you have put an end to her story, once and for all, when you secretly hope there’s a cure out there for her? You can’t bear the thought of finding out, of watching her die, and so you foolishly dive after her.

A web to her midsection allows you to grip her before she hits the ground, and you set her down with a far more gentle hand than you would ever admit.

She says your name, then, a whispered version of it that sounds like Gwen. You think you can see her in those wide blue eyes, in that stare, and you approach with some caution. “Gwen,” You say, more of a question, “You with me?”

“I’m with you,” She answers, as you reach her side, as you resist the urge to pull off your mask. You’re so preoccupied staring at her expression that you don’t see the blade until it’s too late, your Spidey-sense failing you as you wallowed in your search for someone who was gone. “You sweet, predictable bug.” She spits then, twisting the blade she had sunk deep into your side, and you writhe, trying to move away from her.

“Arachnid!” Jessica Drew calls out, drawing the Green Goblin’s attention, allowing you to pull away from her slackened grasp. You leave the blade where it is, knowing your only slightly enhanced healing wouldn’t make up for the onslaught of blood that would pour from the wound. “I think that’s enough, Green Goblin.” Jessica says, riding a motorbike that you swore she didn’t have earlier. Nonetheless, she uses it to put even more space between you and your villain.

“You need a hand, kid?” A new voice asks, and a gloved hand reaches out for you where you had knelt against the tarmac. You look up, seeing a new Spider-man, but this one has his mask up, showing off his aged face and the bags underneath his eyes. You wave him off, staggering up to your feet, and clench your jaw as you stare at Green Goblin, watch as she pulls bombs from her waistband, barely the size of a chocolate bar, but capable of causing irreparable damage. “Get back to HQ, Arachnid, we can handle this.” Spider-man tells you, in what you suspect to be a fatherly voice, but you ignore him.

Time flies, slips out of your grasp, and you don’t know how long you and the others spend fighting Green Goblin, but she proves to be just as difficult of a foe for them to face as she was for you. Each time the three of you manage to get the drop on her, she slips away before she could be caught. It’s frustrating, and you can even see the way irritation thickens in the air, tangible.

Spider-man, or Peter, as Jessica had called him, is with you, focusing on trying to take Green Goblin down, whilst Jessica Drew is focused on damage control, blowing up Gwen’s bombs before they could hit their intended targets. You’re pretty sure the resident Spider-man is around here, too, pulling any lingering citizens out of harms way before Green Goblin could end them. You’d admit, it works better than you had done alone back on your own earth.

But it doesn’t work well enough, and more than one building is damaged almost beyond repair, and in the dust and rubble, Peter was distracted by the few citizens poking their heads out of the gaping hole in the side of their apartments. He didn’t see Green Goblin coming until it was too late, until she had thrown two of her bombs, one towards him, and one towards the already wrecked building.

Your throat dries up as you try to figure out what to do, who to go for, but in the end, you don’t have to choose.

Beams of glowing orange webs shoot into the bombs where they arc towards their victims, blowing them up and leaving both Peter and the civilians in the apartments without a scratch on any of them. Well, nothing that wasn’t already there before. You see him then, running alongside Jessica Drew, none other than Miguel O’Hara — who clearly didn’t think that the three of you were capable of handling Green Goblin.

“We’ve gotta end this.” Peter tells the three of you, glaring over at Green Goblin after coming so close to one of her bombs.

“You distract, I’ll go in.” You say, the only plan that makes sense. The only plan that’ll work. You wouldn’t be much use as a distraction, not with the blood still pooling around the blade hanging from your side, but you could beat her. You knew you could.

Peter nodded, and he, Jessica and Miguel went in one after another, landing hits on Green Goblin before she could even think to withdraw another bomb, or land a hit of her own, whilst you made your way behind her, swinging as high as you dared to go in your state. She was getting angry, you could tell, a distinct flush rushing up the back of her neck, a tell that Green Goblin shared with Gwen.

It was only when she was starting to turn the tide that you jumped down from your spot against the side of a building, looking for your opening.

She sent Jessica Drew tumbling off of her motorbike, which was your chance.

Green Goblin heard you only a moment before you were on her, not giving her a chance to make a countermove. Instead, you were curling your arms around her, as tight as you could, holding her hands away from her waistband. You gripped the blade in your side and yanked it out, holding it to her chest, breathing heavily through the pain as you bared your teeth at her, her face beside your own.

“Don’t make me kill you.” You say, and try not to hear the pleading in your own voice, the distinctive tone of a beg. You may have the upper hand on her, but as always, she had the power. “Don’t.” You repeat, because you can feel it in your bones that you would do it. If it was the choice between her or the hundreds that she would kill on this world, it would be those hundreds. There was no doubt about it, no questions to be asked.

You may have resented your mother, but she wasn’t the only one who died because of the Green Goblin. You wouldn’t let that happen again.

Perhaps she heard the plea in your voice, the giveaway that you weren’t bluffing, because she went still in your arms, still enough for the other Spiders to approach with some caution, eyes on her hands where you held them away from any weapons, using your forearm connected to the hand holding the blade to her chest to keep her left hand from grasping anything.

“I won’t be asking again.” You tell her, which is as much of a threat as you can muster. Or, more so, a promise.

As Miguel pushed you back with a firm hand, throwing a machine at Gwen’s feet, you think she understands. If the two of you are ever in that position again, there will be no hesitation about it. You will kill her.

“Good work, kid.” Peter says as Miguel and Jessica get to work with getting your Green Goblin through a portal to the HQ. He glanced down at where your hand is now pressing into your side, blood pouring steadily. In your other hand, you still hold the blade that had pierced your own skin, that would have killed Gwen Stacy had she not surrendered. He winces as if it’s him who got hurt, and guides you through the portal after the others. “C’mon, we’ll get you checked out. You not got enhanced healing?” He asks, though you suspect he doesn’t expect you to answer, and you’re glad.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

“I can do this myself, you know.” You sigh, wincing as a Spider-man — who apparently is also a doctor and works in the Spider Society’s infirmary — stitches up the wound on your midsection. It’s uncomfortable, though less painful that when you do it yourself. Still, it’s uncomfortable to accept help from these strangers.

“Ooh, shouldn’t say that to him.” Peter B. Parker laughs, one of the many Peter Parkers of the Society, but the same one who had fought Green Goblin with you. “He’ll lecture you on proper healthcare for days if you give him the opportunity!”

The Spider-doctor glares at Peter, or you assume he does, from the slight squint of the lenses of his mask. He kisses his teeth under the mask, tutting, muttering about “Spiders and their complete disregard for their health. Lucky you haven’t died ten times over from infections.” But he doesn’t say anything that requires a response from you, and he soon finished up the stitches. He goes to offer to fix up the injury on your ankle, but you’re up on your feet before he can even get the words out.

“Now, I gotta get back home to the wife, but Miguel wants to see you. He’ll take you home,” Peter tells you as he walks out of the infirmary by your side, but he stops you in the hallway with a hand on your shoulder, surprisingly gentle. “If that’s what you want.”

Your eyebrows furrowed before you could stop them, and the confusion over his words must’ve been written all over your face.

“Why wouldn’t I want that?” You ask, defensively.

Peter opens his mouth, but nothing escapes. Instead, it’s his expression that tells you everything he’s thinking. The crease between his brows screams pitying, or sympathetic. He’s talking about the way you live back on your earth, about the life you lead, Arachnid by day, and by night. With no room for you, no room for your secret identity. He’s thinking of the way you’ll be returning to a world with nobody awaiting you, with not a soul to look out for you, to stitch you up after a battle. Nobody but yourself, anyway.

You pull away from him, brows furrowing further, into an almost angered expression, and you don’t watch the way his hand falls away from your shoulder back to his side. He sighs when you turn away, scoffing as you make your way through the hallways of the Lobby towards where you think Miguel will be.

It’s overwhelming, all of these people. They all believe that they know you, that they know your circumstances, your story, but the truth is that they don’t. Nobody does, and that’s the way you prefer it. You don’t need a Society of Spiders surrounding you, breathing down your neck, telling you they’re sorry, or not trusting you to handle yourself in your own fights, because you can handle yourself. You’ve spent the last year of your life trying to prove that, trying to prove that you can do good things, that you’re worthy of the title Arachnid. You certainly shouldn’t need to prove that to a whole Society of people like you, most of which had been doing the job a lot longer.

You’re capable and you’re content.

You don’t need a life as your secret identity to be content, in fact, it’s better without one. You don’t have to tell so many lies, don’t have to worry about hurting the people you love, because there are none of them left. There’s nobody to hurt, and there’s nobody to lie to. Why would you want to change that?

The hallway ahead looks familiar, and you follow it until you enter a room where Miguel stands, looking at orange tinted screens on a platform halfway up the room. You enter with the absolute certainty that you want to return to your own earth, and you’re not going to let anybody stop you.

“I’m ready.” You tell him, expectantly.

He scoffs, saying nothing, still staring at the screens in front of him. For whatever reason, the reaction makes you angry — inexplicably so. You’re slinging up to the platform before you can have a second thought about it, and you’re pushing his shoulder so he’ll face you, so he’ll acknowledge you.

He stares at you, unimpressed.

“Send me back to my earth.” You press, brows furrowed beneath your mask, but you’re sure he can see the anger in the way your shoulders tense up.

“Sure,” Miguel said blankly, staring at you as if you’d suddenly change your mind or something. “But you know, there’s a lot more like her.” He added on when you said nothing, waiting for him to send you back to your world so you could give him back the stupid watch still wrapped around your wrist.

You stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “There are no more like her.” You respond, feeling that hot press on your chest. You don’t want to talk about Gwen Stacy anymore than you’re sure he’d like to talk about whatever he had gone through in his life. Hell, you don’t even want to think about her, but you know that nobody else you would ever have to face would hurt you in the way that she did. In the way that having to see her as an enemy, rather than your friend, had hurt. So, yeah, there was nobody like her, not for you.

Miguel seems ready to let you go for a moment, but then he’s shaking his head at you. “You have a place here. You can be with people like you. You don’t have to do this alone, anymore.” He says, and you think that is ironic, because you don’t see anybody else in here. To you, it seems like he is doing exactly that; doing the job alone. You can practically see the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I prefer being alone.” You tell him, and it has to be true. It has to be.

His jaw sets, acceptance, you think, and he nods. He glances past you, to where a portal was open on the floor below. Considering that you hadn’t seen him set up the portal, you’d wager that his AI Lyla must’ve listened in and done it for him. You pull the watch off of your wrist, relishing in the way your very atoms seem to sag with the weight of being in another dimension.

“Thanks.” You say, and drop down, landing on your sore ankle but not murmuring a word about the pain. You walk back to your world with your head held high, despite your tattered suit and multitude of wounds that would take days to stop hurting.

Miguel stares after you as the portal closes, eyebrows furrowed. He barely acknowledges Jessica Drew’s arrival in the room, already having known she had been lingering in the hallway, listening in. “Well, that went well.” She comments, glancing between where the portal had been and where Miguel stands, brooding. She knows how much pressure he puts on himself, and she knows that he cares about each and every Spider-person in the multiverse. It doesn’t take a Spider-sense to see the way in which you struggle. It’s a familiar struggle, sure, but there were so many Spiders across the multiverse who had a shoulder to lean on in their hardest times. Who did you have? There was no Aunt May for Arachnid, or Gwen Stacy, or Harry Osborne, or, well, anybody.

Jessica thinks that if anybody were to know exactly how that felt, it would be Miguel.

#heartpascal writes #across the spiderverse spoilers #atsv spoilers #spiderman atsv spoilers #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x you #miguel o’hara x platonic reader #jessica drew x platonic reader #peter b parker x platonic reader #peter b parker x reader #spiderverse x reader #spiderverse x platonic reader #spiderverse x you #spiderverse imagines #spiderverse one shot #spiderverse imagine #spiderverse angst #miguel o’hara angst #struggling idk how to tag with a new fandom shhh

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hearts4juzi · 23 days

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Tessa fucks me up dude can I just talk about her for a sec? Yeah? Yeah.

She loved those drones. She loved them because they were what she had. She felt sympathy for them when nobody else did. And I like to think there was a little bit of loneliness motivating her as well.

Her mother hated her. She was nothing to her. When her mother scolded her by saying "seems you still can't follow simple orders" her respone was "No, no no! Please!" BEGGING. Begging her mother to believe in her and be kind to her. She got chained up in her room (multiple times btw. At leas tthats implied. the hand she winced at and rubbed is the same hand the chain was on, which means shed be chained up long enough for it to rub her skin painfully. long enough to leave lasting pain.)

She is very connected to these drones, to the point where she kept all the error drones aroud because she LOVED them. She spent time digging them up. HELL SHE TOOK A FAMILY PHOTO WITH THEM DUDE...

Even when Cyn was creepy and scary, she kept her around. She'd rather lock Cyn up than get rid of her. and when n points it out, shes apologetic and hesitant. But we know WHY she did that. Even if it was kind of a sucky move, it was because she didnt wanna have to throw cyn out. and in the end that killed her.

Also she knows J well enough to know what sets her off (enough to. bite the shit out of a chain). She knows them. and she loves them.

I wish we'd gotten to know more about her an N. why is he so clearly her favorite? but thats not relevant ig

also her saying "I've only ever yakked to robots, J!" She has NO human friends. she has nobody to support her other than these robots. these robots who get treated like garbage by her family.

and then she has to watch these robots turn on her. Not just THESE ROBOTS but the three that she loved most. (also im going off what wouldve happened in ep 5 WITHOUT uzi, where n doesnt get out of the swamp, and nobody goes down to the basement)

V first, then Cyn, then J. And we KNOW she loved these three+N especially bc she took a family photo w them, interacted with them more often, and generally just seemed much closer with them.

and what does she get for it? killed. And also its implied by this screenshot that she wasnt ACTUALLY killed by cyn right then

(the scientists, the sword beside her, the footprints, the way shes sitting against the wall, the expression she has. she totally just saw all that shit)

and she cant have been skyn bc the scientists wouldve known. the skinsuit wasnt exactly. hm. pretty.

which means she DID see her whole family+more slaughtered in front of her while she was powerless to stop it. She DID see J violently kill everyone around her. She DID see Cyn kill everyone. And she just has to. Deal with that. And despite all her efforts, the solver took over and cyn killed her. (im assuming tessa died somewhere around when n's mineshaft flashback was like i mentioned b4)

and all the while she was convinced shed lose N, id assume. based on the state of the other drone out there.

And honestly, i think what she got was worse.

also i am team "N knew Tessa wasn't the same Tessa he knew back on Earth"

The way he looked at her, and the way he was suspicious of her. He knew HIS Tessa would never treat a drone like this. Cyn has been known to have relatively shitty recreations of people at times (like Thad in episode two) But even so there was no way he could believe it was someone else (like. who would it be? he saw her blood he heard her voice like...) which is why he was so stressed after killing her (when he leaned on his sword and was breathing heavy, yk?)

he loved her and she loved him and now shes dead. just like everyone else he loved.

this isnt about n but like. idk if tessa could see him now i think shed cry. she loved him and all of them

#tzu rambles #i just. she was a kid dude #she was a stupid hurting abused kid #she was treated like shit by her mother and probably her father too #and all she had were those drones #the ones that killed her and her family #the ones that ruined her life and destroyed earth #the ones that MIMICKED HER TO THE PEOPLE SHE LOVED MOST #THE “N!!!” SQUEAL. THE PETTING HIS HAIR. THE DISMISSAL OF J #FUCKING SICK AND TWISTED #Bc i genuinely believe that if Tessa HAD come to copper 9 alive she wouldve been like that #maybe a little more sympathetic to uzi. like if she knew abt the patch she wouldve used it. i know that #but otherwise i think shed be like that. silly. silly like that.#(esp kicking that computer monitor. we all saw her chuck a glass at the floor for no reason)#child abuse #abuse tw #tessa james elliot #murder drones #tessa elliot #tessa md #md tessa #tessa murder drones #murder drones tessa

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strawberrystepmom · 5 months

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gojo x f!reader are in a semi established relationship aka idiots in love. reader is a teacher/sorcerer. reader is referred to as future wife in jest. angsty to start but gets sweet at the end. italics indicate reader’s internal thought. this is v self ship coded bc a girl has been Experiencing. wc 1.2k

divider thanks to @/cafekitsune

Why did I agree to stay and do this job in the first place?

The thought ricochets between the walls of your skull like a speeding marble, rolling so quickly it’s nothing but a technicolor blur that will settle wherever it wants when all is said and done. You don’t have the luxury of a distraction tonight and after a terrible day, your confidence and what feels like your sanity is in splinters. It has felt like this for months if you dare to be honest with yourself and now the unavoidable wall of your own mind is in front of you.

The too hot shower you just finished that left you breathless and warm cheeked didn’t rinse away anything except for the external grime. Your brain itself still feels thick and heavy, temples pounding while you shrug the robe wrapped around you to the tile floor below. It is far from your favorite thing to shower on campus but you had the intention of washing all the misery off and leaving it here rather than dragging it back to the currently empty apartment you share with Satoru. He’s off on another mission hours and hours away from you and your bed feels like a labyrinth when he isn’t sharing it.

A little voice in your head convinces you he’s taking these missions solely to get away from you in this state and you can hardly blame him. As hard as you work to keep a smile on your face, you fail more often than you succeed. The weight of said failures and struggles makes your head even heavier, resting atop your neck like a crown of thorns.

It’s late and you haven’t even bothered to think about how you’re going to get home from campus, still decompressing from your first solo mission in a while after being looked at by Shoko for minor bruising. The mission was completed successfully but it merely added to the weight of the loneliness and hurt you’ve been feeling. Being responsible for ending suffering you didn’t create is a heavy burden.

Your phone pings on the wooden bench in front of the lockers near the shower and you grab it, sniffling. Glancing at the screen, you gnaw your lower lip and a tear streams down your cheek. You’ve cried so much lately it never comes as a surprise when you start again.

Satoru: call me?

Normally his message and the use of the winking cat sticker in addition to the words would make you smile but you can’t find it in you to do that tonight. Of course, he’s already heard about your failures. You’re certain your employer, friends, and community keep him on speed dial to come and gather your pieces when you can’t keep them together. You have doubts about how well meaning their intentions are; everyone loves a downfall after all and yours feels closer every day.

You: still at the school and can’t talk. love you, be careful.

Someday I’ll push him away and it will stick.

One day, soon you imagine, Satoru will decide everyone was right about you all along. You’re avoidant and selfish, a mess on a good day. Your bones are good but the flesh that covers them is rotten as a discarded plum, falling from the branches of the only home it has ever known, at the end of spring. You are no good. Not like him, even in his shades of light gray morality. Not like your fellow sorcerers. Not like your students.

Your phone pings again.

Satoru: why are you making me suffer???

Satoru: please please please please please~

You place the device face down and focus on changing into the extra set of clothes you always keep in your office. Sorcery is messy work and your shaking fingers fasten each of the buttons on the simple white top.

Why do I keep doing this?

Vibrations make your phone move across the wooden bench and you jump, picking it up with a sigh.

“What?”

A chuckle from the other end, one that instantly makes the tension in your shoulders relax, isn’t as unwelcome as you assumed it would be when you refused to call him. You picture his smile when he laughs, the dimples you love to press your thumbs into. Even your tortured mind conjures memories of the delicate crinkle of his nose when he grins and the cleft in his chin.

“Someone has her sassy pants on today.”

Sighing, you let the world roll off of your shoulders. Finally.

“Technically I don’t have any pants on right now.”

“Without me?” He sighs and then remembers you said you were still on campus. You hear him shift wherever he’s at and you sit down on the bench, preparing to put your pants on, holding the phone to your ear with your shoulder. “Why are you pantsless on campus? Is there something you need to tell me?”

A snort escaping in response, you smile for the first time in what feels like days. Truthfully it has only been a few hours, you’re a pro at keeping up appearances at the very least, but each has felt more and more forced.

“Nope, just had to wash off some gore and didn’t want to bring it home with me. They’ll probably ask us to break the lease if we start washing curse chunks down the drain.”

He chuckles again and you want to be frustrated with how carefree he seems but find it difficult to hold his good nature against him.

“Aren’t you considerate?”

Sliding your pants on, you stand in a fluid motion and hop to settle them in place on your hips, fastening the button.

“Something like that,” you mutter. Sitting back down on the bench, you cut to the chase. “When are you coming home?”

“Why? Miss me?”

“Terribly.”

You respond flatly and suddenly your phone chimes, a request to video chat coming through from Gojo. Answering it, you don’t bother to hide the wistful smile on your face and he grins at you from your bed at home.

“Well come home then, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You could have led with the fact you’re there.”

He twists his mouth to the side and shrugs. Rolling your eyes, you smile back at him. It’s impossible to stay mad at someone you love so much it threatens to tear you into pieces when he’s gone for too long.

“I wanted to surprise you and it looks like I still managed to do it.”

“Yeah, you still manage to do that a lot.”

“Oh stop it, you might make me think that my future wife actually likes me.”

Giggling, your face warms at the insinuation he’s making. He can tell you’re feeling better now that his eyes are on you and the relief he feels is immeasurable.

“Hurry, I’m getting bored and you know what happens when I get like that.”

You know better than anyone that a bored boyfriend spells nonsense so you pack up the last of your things, ready to leave your troubles behind on campus just as you intended to start with. Self doubt, suspicion, distrust - it’s all gone as soon as he gives you his grace to carry on.

“Don’t get antsy, I’ll be there soon.”

Another irresistible chuckle comes through your speakers and you feel lighter than air by the time you disconnect from the call and prepare to head home.

He’s the moon that guides you through the darkest nights and tonight is clearly no exception, his cool and disarming light shining through all of your cracks to remind you things are brighter than you think.

#gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #satoken #kendall writes

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grapejuicestyless · 8 months

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Mad Woman

Conrad Fisher x fem!reader

Angst to less angst???

Summery: Out of his own jealousy, Jeremiah decides to take the one thing Conrad has always wanted away from his brother in an attempt to finally have something over him. He never meant to hurt anyone, but in doing that, he hurt everyone.

Jeremiah is a total douche in this(I love him it’s just bc I needed a mean character.)

“You can have her, I won’t get in the way. But I will not watch you climb over people like her. She might be your girlfriend now, but she was my best friend first. Whatever you do, I will not defend it.” He was seething in anger when the news broke. Chest heaving unevenly the moment he had to watch as my lips captured hers. How my hands had a home in her hips. I was the one who got to worship her. I hope it killed him to know I finally had something he didn’t. I won the girl, not him.

He left the room, leaving behind the lingering shadow of a storm that brewed between us. A tension that was caused solely by his own jealousy. Conrad had always been older, stronger, smarter. The better brother. I hoped it killed him to know that even if all those things were true, he still couldn’t get the one thing he so desperately wanted. I felt giddy about it, in contrast to him.

I had the warmth of a childhood friend to crowd my bed on the chilly summer nights. Company that would only be for me, she was all mine.

Of course, Y/n was completely oblivious to the rift being created from this scandal. She always was so blind to what people felt for her, too nervous to see if her instincts were true. She never wanted to feel like an idiot if she was wrong, so she ignored them.

She would’ve never let me kiss her, hold her, have her if she’d known what Conrad felt for her. She didn’t want to see anyone hurt. So much so, she would rather live a life of misery and loneliness than to pit two friends against each other, much less brothers. And if that wasn’t enough to point out her stupidity around the topic, it was painfully apparent the way Y/n and Conrad shared glances. Like he was the only boy in the world. She didn’t idolize him, she had too much pride to put a boy over herself, but the love she felt for him was overflowing in a way that seeped into everyone else’s lives. Always trying to push the pair together.

Now, Y/n was mine. I could call her my girlfriend, my own. Conrad had finally lost, I had something over him. It wasn’t like I didn’t like Y/n. I thought she was the most beautiful girl in Cousins, maybe even in Pennsylvania. I hadn’t been, but I could assume that she was.

The relationship started slow, easy. I still remember the first night we spent together. I hadn’t touched her more than my arm slung around her shoulders so she could prop her head up on my bicep. I didn’t push for her to give me affection. She never hinted that she wanted more anyways. It was never rushed, we were always able to enjoy the closeness of our company, never needing more. Just being close was enough.

Sometimes we’d kiss, my hands in hers, eyes fluttering shut. Mostly, I did it in front of Conrad. I believed it felt better when it was more than just a kiss, but a way to rub salt in the wound that Conrad wore shamefully on his sleeve. Sometimes he would clear his throat, start talking to break it up so he could save the last bit of composure he had left. More often than now though, Conrad just walked away. Not willing to fight for her attention anymore. Not strong enough to even try.

It was a pattern like this, Y/n and I having small intimate moments behind closed doors, saving the steamy things for the couch cushions or the poolside mid-afternoon. Our dirty laundry was aired out in the open, allowing the mind to not only imagine what we were doing, but have physical proof of it.

Part of me felt bad, horrible inside. Y/n was the best of all of us. The kindest, the bravest. The second oldest. While Conrad struggled to keep us all safe, she was always his helping hand. Keeping everyone content and satisfied. Truly, I did really like her. I loved being with her. I’d always had a little crush on the girl, how could I not? Everything about her was so perfect. She was a dream. But deep down I always knew that what we had together had only started through some sort of twisted competition I held with my brother. The burning desire to have something he never would.

Maybe that’s when I started to push her away, because even if I had once been able to convince myself that I was with her out of my own feelings, I knew better than that. I knew I was doing it out of pure selfishness. What was so new and vibrant in June was rusted and unwanted by the following spring. Our long history together only making the shine turn into a matte finish, something old and worn out. I no longer had any pull towards her. I no longer imagined how her soft skin would feel under my fingertips. How her lips melted against mine. Our closeness, even in the most intimate moments felt dull. Sparks that once flew hiding away.

I began to try to pull away without a reason. Only that I was bored. Conrad seemingly felt better about it, coming to terms that maybe this was the end of his little daydream he always imagined he had with Y/n. So the competition felt useless. It was no fun anymore, I didn’t care. And with that dying down, so did the excitement. The thing that had sparked the fire burning between us in the beginning.

………………………………………………………………………………….

“Hey, Jere.” Her voice was like honey, smile so infectious as she waited for me by the front door. Summer had begun again and still, I strung the poor girl along instead of just cutting the ties. Slowly wrapping my noose around her, slowly breaking down her confidence. I watched her genuine kindness turn into a cover up for the scathing anger underneath it.

“Hi, Y/n.” I brushed past her, shoulder bumping, I expected her to follow. She didn’t.

Her frame was still at the door, hands clenching and unclenching quickly. I heard her sigh out of irritation. Finally then, she turned on her heals to meet me in the kitchen, elbows leaning on the counter, eyes killing me slowly with her deadly glare.

This was some form of punishment that was aimed directly at nothing. Only due to the fact that I didn’t have a single care about her anymore. Not even her darkest moods had any affect on me.

“What? What’s got you so upset?” I almost wanted to tease her further, knowing fully well that what I was doing was getting under her skin. I swear she almost broke, but her mouth was sealed shut.

“I’m not upset.” She breathed out evenly, putting on a false smile. Just once I’d like her to get mad. Freak out on me, end it so this whole game could be over.

“Really? You seem mad.” Looking away from her, I went to focus on anything else more interesting in the kitchen.

“Well, I’m not.” Her voice was raised, but she didn’t scream. She never did. She would never let anyone see her upset, always wanting peace. So instead of taking out her frustrations on me, the person who was the source of them, she left. Walking away to find where her head had gone.

“Who do you think you are?” His voice was harsh, like a slap to the face. Conrad never put his hands on me, but I almost wished he would’ve. A punch would’ve ended much quicker than this long argument that was about to ensue.

I shrugged.

“You have someone you don’t deserve at all, someone who stands by you even at your worst and you treat her like that?” Conrad was always the more mature out of the two of us. To describe him as more levelheaded would be untrue. We both had our moments, lost our cool on multiple occasions. But out of the two of us, he usually made the better choices. Did the right things. It would’ve been the right thing to let her go after that. It should’ve been a wake up call. But instead all I got out of his small outburst was the confirmation that even if he downplayed it, deep down he was still hurting. He still wanted her. So I would continue to play the game.

Not because I wished to hurt my brother, or Y/n for that matter. But because I just wanted one thing in my life that Conrad did not have. It was cruel, and twisted but I could not see that. It was like some sort of tunnel vision was casted down onto me and I only had one goal. Excluding the fact that I was hurting two very important people in my life.

………………………………………………………………………………….

It was early August by now, and it was a long time coming. This summer, unlike all the previous ones, seemed to drag by. Tensions high each day, only growing worse and worse with each passing hour until a fight broke out. The magic that once put us all in a trance had slipped off, revealing our darkest colors. To say that my relationship was strong, holding up through this would be a lie. It would’ve been a lie since July.

Because in July, I had not only been distancing myself from Y/n, but I had taken an interest for her younger sister. Belly. To compare the two, Belly was a little louder. A little shorter and her hair was longer. Y/n and her shared the same traits other than that. Not appearance wise, but personality wise. Both having some driving force pushing them into an intense competitive state. Both overly kind and caring for others. It was like newer version of the girl I already had, it was irresistible.

Even in my worst behavior, I could see it was wrong. So wrong to have let Belly trap me in the kitchen. No, even I wasn’t that naïve to blame it solely on her. It was wrong for me to kiss Belly. Even in Y/n and I’s roughest patch. She had never done anything to hurt me, always trying her hardest to be the best girlfriend someone could be to someone like me.

Glass shattered on the floors, a soft gasp being swallowed whole by the suddenness of the sound.

Belly and I pulled away with a pop, scrambling to fix ourselves, to downplay our mistake.

“Y/n.” I was utterly shocked to see her standing there, hair pinned up, the shirt she wore was ironically her sisters. She had glitter by her eyes and lips reddened, bitten raw. She looked like something out of a movie, even at her worst. For the first time I’d known her, she was speechless. The worst part, however, was the matching expression painted on the face behind her. The smile fading slowly into a familiar expression mixed with shock, hate and disappointment. Maybe even disgust.

“Y/n…” I tried again, trying to make it sound more pitiful. I reached out to grasp her hands, hold her. I wanted to hold her. It was odd. In the entire situation, I’d never really longed to hold her like this. I’d never felt my heart beat so fast. Shit, was I really? I was in love.

“No-don’t.” She warned, backing away, hands raised as a warning. She couldn’t even look at me, let alone Belly who was now hidden behind my shoulder, sinking down into herself.

“Y/n, hey, no please.” I begged again, not really sure what I was begging for.

She wiped away her tears with the palm of her hands, sucking in a breath. She tried to collect herself, but she couldn’t. It was only a matter of time before shit hit the fan. You can only put on a fake smile for so long before you are driven mad. And no one likes a mad woman.

“Fuck you, forever.” She stormed out before I even had the chance to speak, gone like an early autumn breeze. I could see she was angry, steam practically blowing out of her ears. But she didn’t yell, or give it to me like I had hoped. Our flame simply faltered out. Silently, slowly.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Words I had heard one too many times in the past year. Ones that sometimes I wondered myself.

Truthfully, I didn’t know. I had her, right in the palm of my hands, but I poked that bear, I caused the end of this beautiful situation we found ourselves in. I had no real explanation for it. I just did it because I wanted to. I wanted Belly more than I had ever wanted her, or I thought so. No, Belly was just a crush. Now that I had lost her older sister, I saw her as my other half. Something that I should’ve loved completely from the very beginning.

I expected to hear his rants about how shitty of a boyfriend I was to her. How I’d taken away his one true love only to break her heart.

“You might be my brother by blood, but you are no brother of mine.” It was as quiet as a mouse coming from him, almost as if he didn’t believe such words could come out of his mouth. The venom that was laced within them told me that even in the guilt he felt while confessing it, he meant it. And if it wasn’t obvious in his scathing rage, I knew he had meant it for awhile. I didn’t expect him to leave without even a second look after that. Chasing after the beautiful woman I left behind.

I never meant to hurt anyone. I never wanted to. I was just so blind sighted I hadn’t even noticed how negatively I was impacting everyone’s lives. How I was just fucking up consistently until there was nothing left to mess with. All over some stupid jealousy. A war between two brothers that didn’t exist to Conrad, but only to me. And in trying to win, I had hurt two of the most important people in my life.

………………………………………………………………………………….

“Y/n. Y/n, Wait!” I chased after her like my life depended on it. Even the tightness in my chest couldn’t stop me. The quickness in my steps, and the length of them making it easy to catch her in just mere minutes.

“Go away.” She held her hand up, looking away. By the shaking in her voice, I could tell she didn’t mean it.

She was hurting. But she wasn’t sad. No, the tears that were so obviously glistening in the golden hour light weren’t of despair or even a faint sadness. They were hot, angry tears. And she had every right to be.

She should be mad, she should be scathing like me. Her face was contorted into a frown, eyebrows furrowed. I could tell she wanted to scream, wanted to, but no one likes a mad woman. Not even she did, but it she couldn’t help it. He made her like that.

I knew there was no getting through to her, no talking to her when she was so upset. I could only offer my shoulder for her to lean on. And as her tears soaked through my thin sleeves, I held her. I would continue to hold her until it was all okay. Until my brother was nothing more than a distant memory, one that felt more like a fever dream than reality.

So standing there, on the hill that led down to the beach, we sunk into the sandy grass. Hiding away from the world.

“I’m sorry Conrad. I’m so sorry. I was just so stupid. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She apologized over and over, and for some reason my mouth couldn’t move. I could only sit there looking at her and hope that she could read my mind.

#conrad x reader #tsitp conrad #conrad fisher angst #conrad fisher #jeremiah x reader #tsitp jeremiah #jeremiah fisher

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sgdlr-asdfghjkl · 4 months

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Link Click Musical lyrics translation ✨🎶

@chocolatexiaoshi brought to my attention that Qiao Ling's actress, Cai Lu, posted a video from rehearsal where she's singing a part of QL's solo song that doesn't appear in the encore, only in main plot (rare!). Here's the video:

And by courtesy of chocolatexiaoshi, here's the full translation (plot context below the lyrics) 🙏🌟

M11 尼克和马修 'Nick and Matthew' sung by Qiao Ling

七岁那年遇见一个倒霉朋友 When I was seven years old, I met an unlucky friend. 我的笑料都来自他出丑 I get all my laughs when he makes a fool of himself. 没穿过耐克 (He) never wore Nike. 自己画个倒钩 Drew himself a barb (tick line, to pretend to wear Nike). 羡慕同学有爸妈开车接送 He envied his classmates when their parents drove them around. 他吹牛家里游艇正在维修 He bragged that his family's yacht was being repaired. 这个蠢货幻想有两个朋友 This douchebag fantasizes about having two friends. 一个叫尼克 One's name is Nick. 另一个叫马修 The other is Matthew. 还以为是他国外的笔友 I thought they're his pen pals from abroad. 所谓的朋友全都是他虚构 He's making up all his friends. 尼克是狮子 Nick was a lion. 马修是条狗 Matthew was a dog. 用秘密威胁他做我朋友 Threatened him with this secret to be my friend. 他提了个要求 He made a request. 家长会我爸 PTA meeting with my dad. (PTA - routine meetings between the parents and teachers of students, to discuss a child's progress at school) 装他大舅 Pretend to be his great-uncle.

Here starts the part Cai Lu is singing in the video (and it's 😭💔):

尼克马修其实是孤独的魔咒 Nick and Matthew are actually a curse of loneliness. 若有人陪伴怎会如此荒谬 How can it be so absurd if he has company? 所有的情绪靠幻想找个出口 All his emotions find an outlet in his fantasies. 喜怒哀愁去和故事书交流 He'd go to a storybook for his sorrows and his joys. 自我欺骗才能排解烦忧 The only way to get rid of them is to lie to himself. 这个倒霉蛋我认识十五年之久 I've known this unfortunate man for 15 years. 你是除了我以外，他唯一的朋友 You're the only friend he's got besides me. 看过了彼此的伤痛 You guys've seen each other's pain. 应该更宽容 You should be more forgiving. 别被情绪左右 Don't let your emotions get the best of you. 一起向前走 Let's move forward together. 如果我是尼克 If I'm Nick. 你来做马修 You'd be Matthew. 他渴望的两个朋友 The two friends he craves. 你和我送他拥有 You and I will give him the two friends he longs for.

The clip ends here, but there are a few more verses 🎶

尼克和马修他童年的缺口 Nick and Matthew, the gaping hole in his childhood 填补了他的梦 Filled his dreams. 你我别放手 You and I, don't let go. 尼克和马修吹过最离谱的牛 Nick and Matthew is the most outrageous thing he's ever bragged about. 能不能和我一起 Will you join me? 将他心愿保留 To keep his heart's desire alive

ಥωಥ yeah.

🌟Context: after the earthquake arc dive, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang have a fight where CXS says he doesn't want to see Lu Guang anymore. Qiao Ling tries to ask LG what happened but doesn't get an answer. Then she goes to comfort CXS:

Eventually LG goes to sulk on a basketball court:

Qiao Ling finds him and tells him about Xiaoshi's childhood (her song starts) :'>

These are drawings of Nick and Matthew (tho they seem to change, you can they're different in pics above^). QL shows them while singing:

My dear shiguang nation... how are we feeling about QL and LG stepping into Xiaoshi's life filling a place of his imaginary childhood friends born out of loneliness? Bc I-

Again huge thanks to @chocolatexiaoshi for basically translating everything and adding context to this song 🙏 I just checked english grammar and helped to put it together 🤝 We're keeping in touch and they've actually seen LC musical live, so if you have more in depth questions about the play or specific actors, let us know 😘

#link click #shiguang dailiren #link click musical #qiao ling #text post #song lyrics #english translation #lyrics translation

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blorb-el · 26 days

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Psssst does the au superbat fic exist bc I waaaaaaaaant it

I want it too 😭 tragically it only exists in about........4.5k scattered scenes which I try to poke at in between working on my main project rn!

misc worldbuilding scraps that are currently rotating on the back burner:

(omegaverse) human instinct relies on scent > hearing > taste > sight to find compatible partners, kryptonian instincts lean on sight > hearing > scent > taste, hence the mating markings

omegaverse humans have a much higher degree of face blindness than we normal humans do lmao

helps clark pass, the more he pulls his scent back the more it fades away, clark kent smells so dull/insignificant/mild that it seems like he's got a medical condition (hypomyrodia). jonathan kent had this. when jonathan and martha found bby kal, he was scared and tried to match scents to the two humans who found him, which caused his kryptonian scent to quickly fade. a hypomyrodic pup would probably face high abandonment rates and low adoption rates, so it was probably a relief that two willing parents brought the pup in

kryptonians all pretty much exist along a relatively smooth spectrum of sexual characteristics and can transition somewhat like clownfish if there's a hormonal imbalance in their community. having zero (0) other kryptonians around does things to clark before he grows the fortress and is able to synthesize hormone stabilizers

humans meanwhile have ten major sexes because betas can be true beta, alpha-leaning, or omega-leaning depending on their recessive genes

poison ivy is x100 more horrifying in any omegaverse world. she only manages to zop clark though bc the pollen is enchanted. however it's enchanted to induce primal alpha hindbrain, which means something very different to lone kryptonians than packbonded humans

it would have been the norm on krypton to have one's facial markings out. kryptonians would pull them back if they were sick, or perhaps terrified... primal hindbrain clark looking around and seeing nothing but non-glowing faces, and it coming across as everyone around him fucking terrified of him

for the first few months of their acquaintance clark is like. im not sure what gender batman is and at this point i'm not sure its ok to ask (he can smell past the concealing patches to bruce's strong omega scent but the patches could also be doubling as, like, the equivalent of binders, could be that batman's gender is null, but he mixes in diluted alpha cologne, but that could just be for concealment/intimidation....???)

sun-powered kryptonians have a strong, distinctively alien but somewhat alpha-smelling scent (when they're not pulling it back) but barely leave any on people they try to scent with, and scents barely stick to them. when clark politely explains this to bb dickie hes just like well i guess ill just have to scent you for longer! and clark goes 🥺

at this early point in the timeline barry is the only known omega superhero so the tabloids are huge into superflash

anyway all that's just kind of fluff/details... the core theme i've been rotating around is overcoming real and genuine barriers to intimacy. the loneliness of knowing you're a square peg in a world of round holes, the necessary compromises of sanding away your corners, the joy of meeting someone who will stretch to meet you where you are. there's a fair few excellent fics of bruce uncomfortable in an omega's role and body, i want to come at it from a perspective where a xenomegaverse clark has to define what gender means to him, in the heightened roles of the omegaverse. we are looking also at layers of passing. when parts of your closet become your armor that protects but encumbers you, and other parts become your exoskeleton, which grow into who you are. we are looking at that comic about the orchid that has the pattern on it meant to appeal to an extinct species of bee. we are looking at compromise made of love and compromise made of fear. and we are looking at tentacles baby.................

#OR WE WOULD BE LOOKING AT IT IF I HAD THE BRAIN SPACE FREE TO WRITE IT DOWN!!!!!#once wsbf is done. and the various pwps. and the kryptonian superbat au..... god that one's been on the back burner over a year lmao.......#reddest-x #thanks for the ask :^)

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crepe-of-wrath · 2 months

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insane levels of wish fulfillment (soft dom Aizawa x very insecure f reader scenario)

mdni; again this is just absolute wish fulfillment and not a how to/guide for anything; Reader has major esteem issues bc Reader grew up in an environment that heavily stressed conventional feminine beauty and attitudes toward aging and it left a mark; if you personally grew up in an environment that was more open about those things and so this Reader's insecurities don't vibe with you, I'm sorry--most of my other x Readers are not like this but I'm just kind of in a place rn i guess; in case it wasn't already obvious, reader is skirting even closer than usual to "author self insert;" consider this a continuation of THIS

It's your first time together with Aizawa since you and he officially agreed to your dynamic. When you two had been discussing things to see if you would be a good match, you had stressed the need for cuddling after sex, explaining you were scarred by an encounter where your lover had basically pumped and ran, leaving you cold and alone on the mattress.

At first you were elated when Aizawa explained that, for your first time together, all you were going to do was cuddle. Without thinking, you settled into his arms, nuzzling his neck, playing with the tendrils that cascaded down from his ponytail, shivering with delight as his fingers lightly danced over you.

But then doubt set in. "Are--are you sure, Sir?" you had asked, so timidly (one day you hoped to call him Master, but that seemed like such a big and scary and heavy step, so you had both agreed on Sir for now). "I--I don't want to be, you know..selfish, I guess? I mean...shouldn't I have to do something to earn affection like cuddles?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, wrapping you up tight. His arms and chest were so muscular; he was so handsome--why had he chosen lowly you when there were so many younger and prettier subs who wanted him too?! You were about to spiral into self-doubt when his baritone voice reached down into the depths, caught you and pulled you back up to the surface, where you could breathe again.

"Angel," he explained, "what we've agreed to is a mutual exchange of service and protection that is supposed to make us feel extra special. Everyone"--here he smiled and stroked your cheek--"even little angels who have been too harshly treated by this world and don't value themselves like they should, fundamentally deserves affection. You never have to earn that--"

Whatever else he had to say was drowned out by your very, very loud sobs. They came out of nowhere--eruption, tsunami, tornado, no destructive metaphor seemed to quite suffice for how they simply overcame you, leaving you completely incapable of stopping them. The tears that flowed out of your eyes carried the sediment of literal decades of pain and loneliness and sorrow caused by your internalized belief that you just weren't pretty enough, weren't worthy of being cared for, were somehow even more wretched than you had been in your supposed bloom of youth now that you had reached your expiration date, and all other sorts of nasty things that part of you had always known weren't true, but that a more insidious part of you could never shake.

Aizawa just held you in those unwavering arms of his, murmuring little hums and nothings in that voice of his for heavens knows how long before you calmed down.

"Good girl," he said. "You're such a good girl. You lie here for just a second and I'm going to go get you some water. I think you'll need it." Exhausted, you let yourself fall into the comfortable mattress and pillow. You heard him pour something from the pitcher, and then you heard the faucet. He walked in with a glass and a towel draped on his shoulder. He handed you the water and began to gently clean up your face.

You felt so warm and fuzzy inside; being cherished, even a little, was more dizzying that even your wildest dreams. Without thinking, you said, "Thank you, Master." Then, you gasped a little, but not in a bad way. It had felt...exciting to call him that.

Aizawa drew you into his lap, and you put your arms around his neck. "Angel," he said, "I would be a liar if I didn't say that hearing you call me 'Master' is"--here he sighed again and you thought you felt something twitch in his lap--"extremely alluring. But, I also know that you had said you weren't 100% comfortable with that title yet. It's been an emotional evening and on nights like this sometimes good girls who just want to make their Sirs happy will push themselves too much and then be scared later because they want to take a step back. I promised to take care of you, sweetheart, so I don't want that to happen. So, you will call me 'Sir' for the next week--that's an order--and at the end of the week we'll have another discussion to see if you're truly comfortable with 'Master.'"

"I understand, Sir. And...thank you for taking care of me."

"I wouldn't be worthy of the honor of hearing 'Master' fall from your sweet lips if I did otherwise, Angel."

All you could do was beam at him and try to hold him as tightly as you could.

"You're so pretty," he said softly. "Why don't you give me a little kiss?"

You felt your face warm up and quietly said, "Yes, Sir," before giving him a peck on the lips.

#aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta

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theghostbunnie · 10 months

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Guys do you remember when I made a whole post about how David's care for the camp over the seasons went from being about the legacy to attachment to the actual campers themselves instead do you remember that guys

⚠️Spoilers for new episode ahead ⚠️

All of the campers are assholes in varying ways they ALL rag oh each other I've been saying this for forever but they all still have a baseline of being friends and this is showcased well in the butterfinger effect by Max specifically he refers to all of them as his friends. Yes not all of the campers are BEST friends, obviously, some of them even having a distinct annoyance with each other (Max and Ered specifically) but they all still have a FONDNESS for each other regardless

Neil and Nikki have been bullied before, as brought up in the episode the flower scouts are introduced and the one Jeremy is introduced. They have a history of not only being outcasts and not included (like 90% of the campers there) but being OUTRIGHT DISLIKED. This is why in foreign exchange campers they both have a PANIC over the thought Max is replacing them bc he's most likely their very first friend!!!

I don't believe Max has been bullied before as he just distances himself from people. He creates walls. He's experienced loneliness more. (To protect himself bc he "finally had something to lose" in the camp corp episode he calls them temporary to their faces and Neil blinks away a tear. He obviously was emotionally attached to them but didn't want to admit it or get emotional and instead denied it so it would hurt less for himself not caring in the moment if it hurt them)

and that is really reiterated this whole episode. While Nikki and Neil are the ones panicking way more over being hated in the first half (Max even telling them at one point they shouldn't care) Max is the one upset more in the SECOND half at the thought of not seeing them again.

The "I'm not sad I'm livid" IS SO MAX SO MANY PPL MISCHARACTERIZE HIM AS A CRYBABYYY NOOOO HE'S PISSSEDDD, HIS FIRST RESPONSE TO THINGS HE CAN'T EMOTIONALLY HANDLE WELL IS TO BE MADDDD OR RUDE OR IN DENIAL okay sorry back on track

This episode and the camp corp episode really really reiterate it is not camp campbell itself that makes the place great. It's the people. The people are the heart of it. Things got better when they brought themselves together. To help David with the bonfire because Max cared about David's emotional wellbeing not hitting the ground floor. To help raise money to save the camp from shutting down. To give up spending the rest of the summer doing their individual hobbies they got SCAMMED OUT OF and instead spend time WITH EACH OTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Neil saying goodbye to David and basically saying for a science camp that basically didn't have any fucking science it sure was great.

Gwen saying THANKS FOR NOTHING CAMP CAMPBELL 🖕 and then immediately after saying "and thank you for everything, David"

CAMP CAMPBELL ISN'T ABOUT THE CAMP IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE IN IT

Why else would Max still be okay if the place physically burnt down? BC He'd be HAPPY TO DO IT WITH HIS FRIENDS. HE LOVES MAKING PLANS AND AND SCHEMES AND CAUSING CHAOS, WHAT HE LOVED FROM THE VERY FIRST SEASON NEVER CHANGED. HE JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO LET HIMSELF BE OPEN TO CARING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE NOT NATURE OR A HOBBY.

He's mad he finally let himself care, that he let that wall down in the camp corp episode, that he grew attached to Nikki and Neil and even admitted it to them later and now it was all being "taken away from him." For a moment he thinks it would've been better to have never known happiness and friendship at all then to have known it and lost it. """You'll maybe be happy again at some point, kid ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯""" that's what he thinks he's being told and of course he's mad as hell over it until David and him have a heart to heart.

Max didn't want to leave, Max learned to love being at camp, BECAUSE OF THE FRIENDS THERE!

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raidenenthusiast · 2 months

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obviously fu hua n otto's partnership is completely transactional on the surface but i really like to think about it in different emotional lights bc it's just so. yeah.

hua is an incredibly straight shooter, in part due to how long she's been alive, n she lives with this constant aching loneliness n the burden of immortality she must shoulder alone. regardless of whether she makes friends in her time in the current era, she knows she will always lose them eventually, doomed to outlive them and continue marching forward. her duty is most important to her, but that doesn't mean her heart is made of stone. although she's been alive for almost 50,000 years, she was only seventeen when she initially stopped aging.

n then u have otto. a flawed, corrupted, flippant mortal who only stumbled upon the means to prolong his life in hopes to eventually use the experience gained to return kallen to the world of the living. every word he speaks has a different, secret motive behind it, every deal he cuts hides an ultimatum. selfish n arrogant, juxtaposed against hua's selfless nature. his active attempts to bury his own feelings (unrelated to how successful they are) prove his dedication to his cause; a cause he would do anything to achieve. a cause he CHOSE.

although they have so many oppositions to each other, there's a lot of similarities, too. a long life that acts as a means to an end. a deep, unbearable loneliness n grief. loss at the hands of the honkai.

i think otto n fu hua's relationship is so interesting bc of how they interact with each other through their respective narratives. hua, the chosen celestial, the immortal heralded to guide humanity into their next phase of existence. vs otto, the false savior, self appointed and with selfish motives, imposing himself upon humanity in order to bring to them what he believes will be their salvation (kallen).

i also think despite hua's maturity n experience, otto can see beyond that. not for any positive reasons; i'm confident that her identity deep down being that of a lonely, vulnerable girl made it all the easier for him to rope her into his scheme. it comes down to his ability to assess the people around him and use them as he sees most beneficial.

but, despite everything behind a business transaction between these two, there was a moment in time in which fu hua trusted otto, in some way, as well as one in which otto respected fu hua.

parts of them are SO similar, but they're fundamentally different at their cores. hua has a duty to humanity, n otto has a duty to one human woman. mind u, he sees all of humanity in her, but that's not the point.

n ironically, everything otto did led to kiana n the others ultimately gaining the power to face finality n shatter the samsara. the intentions vs the outcome; otto saved kallen, but lost his life. hua fulfilled her duty, but lost her friends.

especially, when u think about the fact that, at the time of his defeat n death, kevin was the only known flamechaser still living. despite hua's memories being constantly muddled, the principle of being the only survivor on top of the fact that the very act required to protect the current era as duty dictates ends in MAKING yourself that sole survivor.

this started n ended in very different places n i'm just rambling now but i just really love n appreciate how fu hua reacts n contrasts with SO many different characters in this game. i love her.

#hi3 #fu hua #mika.txt

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 11 months

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Do you think that Malleus would’ve had a different/harsher reaction to someone other than Silver being “awake”?

Also on a less serious note, that entire interaction gave me the vibes of an older sibling getting mad at a younger sibling for playing a game “wrong” which is odd bc I don’t really see Malleus and Silver as having that dynamic usually. I doubt it was purposeful but it was all that was running through my mind when reading the translations.

On the contrary, I feel like Malleus is madder that it's Silver who is "awake" and openly defying him than if it were anyone else doing it. (Yes, Yuu and Grim are also present but it is Silver and Silver alone who willfully turns down Malleus's manipulative tactics to get him to stay there in bliss and also "wakes" Sebek to join his cause.) I still think Malleus would be upset and try to force anyone else that was awake back into a slumber (as we see with Malleus attacking Silver, Sebek, Yuu, and Grim at the end of part 3 update), but the fact that it's Silver confronting him hits a particular nerve.

Firstly, Silver is someone that Malleus has known for years (even if it's a relationship of a prince and his knight), so it hurts close to home that this person with whom Malleus shares a bond with is disagreeing with him on such a big issue. It feels like a betrayal, especially considering that knights are supposed to be loyal to their masters. And even more importantly, Silver has also known Lilia--the character that triggered Malleus's initial anxieties regarding loneliness and the loss of loved ones--for years as well. In this way, they are all connected in a “found family” sense. Of all people, Silver should be the one who understands how Malleus is feeling and would theoretically support him, yet Silver instead denies and actively opposes Malleus's way of thinking, calling it "just a bad dream". Consider also that Silver rarely, if ever, raises his voice--so when he does yell, it's significant and big deal. Yeah, he'll raise his volume to like, call out for Malleus if he's looking for the young master, but Silver does not usually shout to the point where his voice breaks. The only other instance I can think of when Silver gets legitimately upset and yells is during Endless Halloween Night when he was concerned about the safety of Malleus and Lilia and also rightfully mad that it turned out to be an elaborate trick. The second instance is here and now, in book 7. In the scene where Silver rejects the happiness of being able to stay in his childhood home in the forest with Lilia forever and ever, he becomes a foil character to Malleus, the metaphorical light to his darkness. Both Silver and Malleus have a personal connection with Lilia and are deeply saddened by Lilia's departure (and potential death). The difference between them is that Silver is accepting it as an inevitability even if it hurts his feelings and he'll miss his father greatly... whereas Malleus stubbornly refuses to accept it. At that moment, Malleus is looking at a "mirror" (a common motif in Twisted Wonderland) of himself, at someone who IS able to deal with reality, no matter how cruel or harsh it is to them or what joy reality deprives them of. They are both fiercely demonstrating their love for Lilia in just as fierce(ly) opposing ways.

Here is Silver, staring his master right in the face and declaring that the dream Malleus is forcing on them is twisted and wrong, and that he won't have Malleus violating the final request Lilia made to them: to see him off with a smile. This dream isn't what Silver's father wanted, so he's willing to defy even his lord and make himself go through saying good-bye to Lilia to see that the wish is fulfilled. The nature of Silver’s UM even stands in direct opposition to Malleus’s. Silver is, quite literally, the sword to Malleus (the dragon).

WHAT'S CRAZY IS YOU CAN HEAR SILVER'S VOICE CRACKING BEFORE HE REJECTS THE DREAM'S VERY TEMPTING OFFER. Silver even confesses that he would like nothing more than to take Lilia's hand and to live out the rest of their lives together. It would be so, so, SO easy for him to embrace this convenient world where all his dreams come true and his father never leaves. But Silver would rather take the hard route and live "awake" being aware of life's difficulties and experiencing pain than live in denial and blissful ignorance (a route which Malleus has chosen to pursue). That's the thing with book 7; Malleus may technically BE "awake", but in reality he's (metaphorically) still dreaming, because he's constantly averting his eyes away from the truth, from reality, and from genuinely "waking".

... Anyway, that was all to say that I think Malleus is more upset that it's Silver--someone whom he has an established relationship and extensive history with, someone who is so alike him yet also different in very glaringly obvious ways--opposing him instead of another person.

#twisted wonderland #twst #Diasomnia #Lilia Vanrouge #Malleus Draconia #Silver #Sebek Zigvolt #disney twisted wonderland #spoilers #twst analysis #twisted wonderland character analysis #twisted wonderland analysis #twst character analysis #question #notes from the writing raven #Yuu #Grim

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meraxesmoon · 1 year

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Yandere Rhaenyra HCs

note: alicent version coming soon 👀

warnings: yandere content, rhae loving her siblings aw, mention of rhaenyra and harwin, darling is a nanny, nyra using daemon for political reasons bc I hate daemyra, afab darling is hinted at, forbidden relationships, a lil nsfw at the end but it's not too bad, this is sort of long, I was rambling ha ha, she's so mother

Rhaenyra

♡ Rhaenyra, who at her core, tends to feel isolated in Kings Landing after her friendship with Alicent fell apart. She's alone, more alone than she's used to being, and she just feels lonely. This loneliness is what leads her to developing a type of bond with the quiet nanny of her little brother. Alicent holds Aegon when it's necessary or when her postpartum isn't slowly killing her, so Aegon is mostly seen with this one nanny.

♤ Despite what others would imagine, Rhaenyra loved her brother. He's her family, and Rhaenyra doesn't have much of that left in the Red Keep. She likes to visit Aegon in her free time to spend some personal time with him (when he's not in the presence of Alicent). Rhaenyra acknowledges that it feels good to hear Aegon's happy toddler gurgles when he sees her enter the room.

♡ These meetings with her little brother are where she gets to know Aegon's personal nanny. Many children had several, but Aegon gut fussy with the others, so it was just her darling who tended to Aegon. They're friendly with Rhaenyra, happily telling her of Aegon's few words that he's learned and how he just loved when she came to visit.

♤ Rhaenyra develops a sort of dependence on this nanny for comfort after her marriage to Laenor. She loves him, in the platonic sense, but it's hard to be in a marriage when you feel so unwanted. Rhaenyra finds love with Ser Harwin Strong. However, she panics when she realizes that she's found herself pregnant. She confides in her darling, who she now considers a close confidant and friend, about her fears of giving birth. They're there when Jace is born, and they move from serving Queen Alicent to serving Princess Rhaenyra in no time.

♡ Rhaenyra, after the death of Harwin, finds a different type of comfort in her darling. Just the thought of her darling tending to her newborn Joffrey makes Rhaenyra's heart swell. She's found that she's a little more interested in the nanny than she should be, but Rhaenyra has never abided by the traditions of Westeros. She wants to hold their hand like a husband would with his lady wife, and Rhaenyra knows that her feelings for her darling are no longer strictly platonic.

♤ She may have been able to get away with having three illegitimate children, but Rhaenyra knows she can't be as open with her darling as she'd like. Alicent is pious and wouldn't let that slide. So, she uses her marriage to Daemon as a sort of cover for her relationship with her darling. It's objectively a wrong thing to do, but Rhaenyra has never been the most morally pure person in Westeros.

♡ Rhaenyra is sort of devious in her attempt to bring her darling into her bed, too. They're loyal and sweet, even when Rhaenyra has ripped them from Kings Landing all the way to Dragonstone, away from the only life that they had known. They love Rhaenyra. They devote themselves to her service wholeheartedly. However, she knows that this doesn't mean that they'll immediately jump into being her lover.

♤ At the end of the day, though, they don't really have a choice. Rhaenyra has had many years of suffering, and she feels entitled to the happiness she knows she'll get from sharing intimacy with her darling. She wants to kiss them softly and run her hands down their soft body. All she needs is their cooperation. Rhaenyra, who has all the control in her marriage, sends Daemon to another part of Westeros just so she can shimmy her darling into their shared bedroom.

♡ She just loves them so much, and Rhaenyra has always been a sexual being. The nights she spent wishing she was bedding her sweet and soft darling instead of her uncle-husband were uncountable. Rhaenyra wanted them so badly, and although she feels bad about the manipulation she has to use to them into her bed, it's all worth it once she has them there.

♤ Rhaenyra is a dedicated lover, and Daemon often finds himself away from Dragonstone more than he'd like...

#yandere rhaenyra targaryen #yandere hotd #yandere house of the dragon #yandere headcanons #yandere imagines #yandere #kay writes #rhxegal

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this-is-lovin · 2 months

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snippet from a mobius/loki fic i was gon make but stopped bc i couldn’t even fathom changing the ending of the actual show 💀

“Do you know I once dreamt of death?” The voice comes out gently, breathlessly, as if they don’t even understand the need to explain a hidden section of themselves to someone.

They are sitting on a curved bench. The wood is rotten— planks fall against the cold sand.

The water’s breeze carries a piercing chill with it. He moves closer to the water’s edge; waves collapse inwards on themselves. Foam accumulates at the border, slipping back into the undertow.

The moon reflects on the lapping surface, and the lighting dims at night. It offers a simple moment of escape. Of what would be stillness.

“Why?” He asks as if he does not know.

“Have you ever heard of the notion that someone ill wishes to grow worse as proof of their ailment?” They answer. The sand plunges beneath their feet as they approach him. Their dark hair blends into the sky—even the stars do not compare to its pitchness.

“I wished for a change in fate. For the attention I so unbearably craved. All that resulted was further loneliness. When you are born of Norse gods, you have far fewer deities to pray to. I’d pray to myself.” Loki answers, staring at the expansive space of the water. How endless it seems.

“Do you regret it?” Mobius watches the God, how his expression lowers into something indistinguishable.

“My wish of dying, or loneliness?” He tilts his head towards the other, smirking slightly—his lips thin under the night.

“Neither.” He doesn’t know what he is asking.

“Do I regret not dying?” Loki questions. “Most days, I fear yes, but I don’t. If I were to die, I wouldn’t be as I am now.”

Mobius turns, “Away? A tree?” He doesn’t mean for his words to sharpen into a territory of hatred.

“Yes. I gave those who didn’t have a chance, a possibility of living.” He shreds a single smile at Mobius. “I gave you an option.”

“What if I didn’t want one?” He begins. He is acting on desire; it’s deflection. “I was happy with how things were.”

“Nothing would go as it was without me shattering the loom.” He turns. “You often have to leave something when you grow an attachment to it. I thank you for staying near me throughout the advancement of your life.”

Mobius scoffs, “You are stuck at the end of time while I live.”

“That’s how I wished for it to be.”

At the end of time, there is an absence, something void— silence that develops into pure noiselessness. Murmurs of life developed within a hazy video capture. Loki is in a state of isolation, yet he doesn’t feel alone, unlike the emotion he felt while growing up.

He has one single strand woven around his neck, twisting down his body in tendrils. The fiber of the branch is constant; the color is vibrant. And he hears the discourse within it.

It eases what would be unbearable isolation; he listens and becomes a factor in life in distant and crucial ways.

He has two sons, both with such distinct and apparent characteristics that there’s a struggle to balance them. One outperforms the other, expanding quickly further. There’s a constant battle for harmony in the house—his home.

He works as a salesman, selling jet skis. He’s known around the block as the poor mourning father whose wife suffered from a severe illness, the one who held a loose budget for babysitters. The one that would run from his house in pitch dark, wearing only his underwear in a futile pursuit to retrieve his sneaking child.

The tired father.

And god, did he love it. It was something he never knew he longed for, and once he had it, he couldn’t displace the sudden emotion of suitability.

This was undoubtedly his life.

Loki listens to the prayers of the children and the discussions of parents. And he learns from it. His chest aches from the tautness of his muscles. He sits, and he waits.

It all becomes suddenly worth it when he hears the expansion within Mobius’s life. How his daily life alters and changes from day to day. It’s beautiful the instability it holds.

#mobius #loki laufeyson #loki series #lokius #fanfic #oneshot #mobius dad parenting #loki season 2 #loki odinson #loki #mcu loki #sillyposting #this makes sense to me

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thoughtfullyrainynightmare · 8 months

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I saw this about William and... Okay, let's talk about it a bit.

I think that BC as a manga/anime has at its core the concept of people being complex beings who have much more complicated reasons behind their actions than simply "I am good!" and "I am bad!". At least when it comes to those who are at the centre of the series itself (Papa Silva, Papa Yami, and Auggie I will throw a shoe at).

And I think William is a great example.

Now, my very biased self, wouldn't still condone William's betrayal, but it gains a whole new dimension if you look at it from the point of view of him having wanted to protect the soul/being/friend that he had known since childhood. And he had wanted to protect him (Patri) ever since he (Will) was a child.

Sure, William felt less alone, but the line of "I needed to protect" is very powerful in this and it gets overlooked.

Think about it. He has had to protect someone, his friend, for over 2 decades and when it's layered upon years of loneliness and devoid of love and/or attention from others, aside of Julius later on as a kind of a father/mentor figure, it... can be understood why William was turning a blind eye to Patri. A silent agreement of a kind.

Remember when Patri slashed his sword to Julius?

Patri told Julius that "even now he can't decide between you and me" (I'm paraphrasing a bit), but the message was that Will couldn't choose between the people he has cared about, but also not being able to choose between the humans and the elves, his past hardships and the new life he has been given as a MK Captain, a lot of things, symbolically, if you think about it.

Will is not able to choose, because he has had to protect Patri for all his life, and how he's... Supposed to "betray" the only friend he's had and whom he has had the compelling need to keep safe? So he leaves the choice to Patri, and is guilty of coercion.

I think William is a very tragic, complex character, and is a great example of how BC as a piece of media can offer so much depth, and shouldn't be taken with only face value. For a shounen series I think it's quite demanding, actually. (Just my personal opinion)

#black clover #william vangeance #Just my two cents at 1 am

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dumping-ideas · 6 months

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hihi!! i've been wondering whether tsukasa had known the sekai existed like wayy before the wxs main story (but he forgot abt it for some reason) idk mainly bc of the vs version of 88☆彡?? it really seemed like miku and kaito were singing to tsukasa (or younger tsukasa) maybe the sekai had been formed when tsukasa was only a child when he was suffering from loneliness and kaito and miku kept him company then!! just wanna hear your thoughts (,, . ̫. ,,)

I'm sorry for the late reply! (/□＼*)

AND THANK YOU FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO LET ME GUSH ABOUT 88☆彡!!!

Nothing has been confirmed about when a sekai is created (including wonderland sekai), but it's a popular fancanon in both EN and JP fandom (that I also agree with) that wonderland sekai is created since Tsukasa was young. And 88☆彡 is also added as another evidence like you said. And I also agree that they want to snuggle the lonely Tsukasa with warmth just like Tsukasa did with Saki and Toya (and later on WxS)

Anyway, I agree with you that 88☆彡 is a song from WxS!Miku and WxS!KAITO for Tsukasa, both the younger and older him (because I think Tsukasa still had some "habits" from his childhood). Well, my headcanon is WxS!Miku is the imaginary childhood friend, a cheerful and fun big sister to cheer up young Tsukasa. When Saki's hospitalization keep getting longer and Tsukasa felt the absence of their parents more (specifically middle school), WxS!KAITO appeared as the imaginary adult proxy, a gentle and dependable big brother that young Tsukasa admired to be (because WxS!KAITO appeared at the half-end of the song).

The shot of Miku standing alone before a lone piano and empty theater hall in the beginning is shown with the lyrics of "You smile/laugh". It kinda feels like Miku is seeing the old lonely Tsukasa, isn't it? I think I have written in this blog before how the piano is a symbolism/metaphor of the loneliness and sadness Tsukasa felt. And just like Tsukasa, Miku is the "pierrot" who never wavers to make everyone smile. Even if there was no one to hear her music, she could keep smiling.

Another shot of the VS' backs, but this time Miku isn't alone! It feels like with age and experience, Tsukasa's world has expanded. And with it, another VS appears--KAITO, the troupe leader that embodies who Tsukasa wants to be. The lyrics "This isn't enough, right?"/"Of course, it's not." / "He can go further, right?" Just feels like the both of them have a conversation that wonderland sekai will keep expanding and they'll be watching over it with anticipation.

But the piano is still standing alone in an empty theater hall, so Miku the pierrot brought KAITO the chairman to that place. Now we see KAITO to be the one to play that piano, to fill the emptiness and the silence just like Miku did. The older Tsukasa didn't want nor need Miku's childish tricks anymore to cheer him up anymore. He needed guidance and advice from a reliable older figure to move forward towards his dream. The stage is brighter, yet the seats are still empty like it was before. While we were shown how Miku smiled when she heard KAITO's, KAITO's face wasn't shown here, unlike Miku. I wonder if he could smile as well... What did he feel about the hidden loneliness and melancholy? KAITO embodies Tsukasa's feeling to keep moving forward, so I wonder...

When we see his expression when he's playing the piano, he's smiling. However, the piano isn't in the dark theater hall anymore--it's in the middle of the colorful world that was born from Tsukasa's feelings. In Dazzling Stage, Tsukasa remembered his how lonely and sad he felt, yet he brought out those feelings to be able to reach for his dreams. No wonder we can see KAITO smiling here. He's happy that Tsukasa's loneliness isn't tucked away somewhere no one could see anymore. Tsukasa has grown enough to realize that he needed those feelings in his world.

And then this sequence appeared.

All this time, Miku is always shown to be smiling. Whether she's alone, with KAITO, or seeing how the balloons fly freely to the sky, there's always a smile on her face. Yet the only time she's not smiling, the time her "pierrot" act breaks is because she's surprised that something that she's been "waiting for" finally "makes an appearance". And then she smiles again. There's always a fragile happiness to her smiles all throughout the MV, but her smile at the end is at first gentle, carrying a feeling of "he'll be okay", and then joy as she reached out her hand for the sun and the bright future now that those loneliness and pain are freed from isolation.

Just compare that sequence and the sequence with the same lyrics.

She smiles when she knows whoever she has been waiting for makes an appearance, but the shot is kinda blurry---not everything has been in the open yet. The future was still filled with so much uncertainty. After all, she and the piano are still alone in that theater hall. But it's fine. When she opens her eyes, the shot isn't blurry anymore. She's the pierrot, so she can keep smiling even though the light that she reached out for were artificial... Only an imitation of the brightness of a blue sky.

...But talking about WxS!Miku song and its relations to Tsukasa, did you know about the the songs in SEKAI no Oto? Showtime x Audience is the WxS!Miku's image song and there are some interesting lines in it that maybe kinda hinted that Wonderland SEKAI has been around for a lot longer, one of them are the 2nd chorus (with a kinda rough translation):

最初っから全部わかってたのに　思い知らされて (Even though [I] know from the beginning, [I was] reminded)

一緒に面白がってくれた友達も　“卒業”して居なくなった ([of] the friends who shared their fun together and has "graduated" and gone too)

続けることが一番難しくて　諦めたこと、たくさんあるよ ([I] have given up on a lot of things because keep going on is the most difficult [thing] to do)

後悔する時間もないステージだ (This is a stage where there is no time for regret)

It's a song about Tsukasa obviously, which I think span across from before the main story to Sky's Edge/Phoenix, but what of the friends who "graduated" and gone? Thinking of the song, this part is probably related to Dazzling Stage, and we know that it's the closest event where we know (a part) of Tsukasa's struggle in the past.

Most likely the things that Tsukasa used to make a show for Saki. I still didn't understand how he "had given up a lof of things to keep moving forward", but maybe because remembering them too much is painful?

Some of the things in that sekai are the things Tsukasa had forgotten about like Usa-chan, some of the posters, and most notably the song the flowers like to sing that KAITO had said to be important for Tsukasa but when Nene asked him he said he didn't remember. He did remember some things, but there are also things that he had no clue about. So where did his strong feelings are related to those things came from? Well, the most probable answer is his childhood.

He was surprised at first when he remembered Usa-chan, but when he remembered some of the things in sekai he didn't look and sound surprised anymore, he was... upset? Definitely an unusual reaction. But it also tracks with the next line about how he "didn't have time for regret". It somehow tracks with how he forgot how lonely and sad he felt back in middle school and focused on wishing Saki to get well soon and cheering her up. He "gave up" on feeling lonely (among many things) so he could keep moving forward. Maybe the items in his sekai are related to those he need to discard to be able to presevere back in middle school.

L/N still remembered how some of the items in their SEKAI are related to their fond childhood memories together, so no wonder those items were there in Classroom SEKAI. But Tsukasa didn't. The most likely thing is that young Tsukasa cherished those things so much so they appeared in wonderland SEKAI but as he got older he forgot about them. The older Tsukasa clearly didn't have strong feelings for them anymore, so it's unlikely those items just appeared when he's a high schooler.

(My headcanon is that the plushies and other items/song keep Tsukasa company, but because those things reminded him of the lack of Saki & their parents at home he decided to throw/put them away to be forgotten. Or maybe there was a big cleaning time before Saki was discharged from her long-term hospitalization and Tsukasa threw them away cause they're old and might compromised Saki's health no matter how fond he was to them. Or maybe they are somehow related to bad memories at the end like maybe Tsukasa thought Saki was forcing herself to smile when he performed for her with thoae items and he felt like a huge failure because of it.)

.....and I'm rambling again lol.

So, yeah! SekaHaji, 88☆彡, and now Showtime x Audience kinda hinted that maybe, just maybe, Wonderland SEKAI is the oldest SEKAI (while the newest one might be Street SEKAI because they need Kohane to gain access/complete it).

#pjsekai #project sekai #proseka #hatsune miku colorful stage #ask #tenma tsukasa #tsukasa tenma #long post #thank you for giving me the opportunity to ramble about 88☆彡 #snyway kohane is bursting with so much emotions and passion #she just haven't found “it” yet until she heard An's singing #so that's why with her addition the street sekai is complete #it's not enough with only an akito and toya

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