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animemensblog · 11 months

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Bad side

Toxic!Toji x reader

Pt.2 pt.3

Summary; Toji has finally found someone he would kill, no, die for. He'd give up everything to have y/n, except she already gave up everything for him. So what does she get in return?

Warnings; angst, very small makeout session, Toji is kinda toxic ngl, cussing, hints at a panic attack, mentions of cheating, alot of arguing, happy-ish ending

You were thinking about how you and him met when you were interrupted by a text

Unknown number

Is this y/n?

You

Who is this?

Unknown number

Hi, I just wanted to let you know Toji is asking some of his fan girlies for a fun night out if yk what I mean

*blocked*

How often do you even see these? You wonder to yourself while making your way to the white board, adding another line next to the other 10.

"Hm, 11 now. And I thought I wouldn't make it past double digits" you laugh at yourself, then went to sit back down on your bed, resuming your show waiting for Toji and his friends to arrive. You let out a sigh when you settle against the pillows and fluffy blankets.

You begin to doze off, the singing from the TV wasn't helping but it was too soothing to change channels. Not long goes by before a knock comes to the door, then your doorbell going off. None of which you woke up to; resulting in your door being busted open.

"Y/n?! Where are you?" A worried, yet furious, Toji yells out

"This isn't the warm welcoming we're used to! I'm a princess who needs my princess treatment!" Gojo jokes, earning a chuckle from Geto.

"Shh she could be sleeping, you two need to calm down" Geto says as he walks to the bedroom, hearing your soft snores as he approaches. He peeks around the corner, then Toji joins, and lastly Gojo. All 3 were tilting their heads past the frame just to see you clearly sleeping.

Toji loves watching you do anything, whether being hyper focused on dinner or when you're out like a light, drooling onto his chest. You could trip over cracks on the sidewalks and he'd fall in love all over again. He's that whipped.

Gojo and Geto, however don't find everything you do to be a miracle. So they ran to jump on top of you while Toji moves behind trying to grab them before they land. Unfortunately for you, he's a little too late. You jolt up at impact as Geto let's out an 'oomph' and Gojo, a squeal.

"What the fuck is wrong with you" you spit out as they have their laughing fits, holding their stomachs as steam flows from your ears. Can't forget about Toji, who snuck out the second they landed, knowing you are far from an angel when you awaken from your slumber.

He's out relaxing on the couch, pretending he didn't know what was going on, sipping a beer and scrolling through his phone. Next thing he knows, Geto is jumping over the couch, planting right next to Toji.

Geto was panting like he's been sprinting for miles, you could practically hear his heart. "I see she got you" Toji says with a grin as he points to the victims arm, highlighting the already bruised mark.

"She's got a mean swing dude" Geto says, covering up his wound and pouting

"What about Gojo?"

"He's still.. still in there"

"Awfully quiet don't you think?"

"She was smothering him with a pillow, last time I checked" Geto whispers as he leans back

Toji only let's out a chuckle, then fell silent. Hoping to hear the fight in the other room. Then, Gojo walks out, head hanging low, plopping inbetween Geto and Toji. They both turn to him, ready to hear the story.

"She's scary, Toji" he speaks softly, as if you're still sleeping

"What happened?" Geto asks

"She- she made fun of me.."

Silence is what Gojo receives, it lasted a few seconds as the other two process his words. To Gojo, it felt like hours. They started laughing, while Toji was smacking his back.

"She knows you well, went straight for your core" he said as he shook your latest victim.

You come walking from your room, in clean clothes and your usual bright smile, "Hey guys!" you say with a wave. Heading towards the kitchen for coffee. Toji following suit,

"Hey baby", he wraps his hands around you grasping under your shirt "how'd you sleep?" He places a kiss to your cheek.

"I slept great", you turn to kiss him back.

"Mm tasty as always" he hums while bringing his hands higher, slightly groaning when he stops at under your breasts.

"Mwah MwAh MWAH", you hear Gojo and Geto mocking you two from the couch, 'pretending' to rub their hands on one another. Toji pulls away with a sigh and pats your hip,

"You're fucking perverts" he yells while reluctantly pulling his hands from you, heading back to the couch with you in tow.

As he sits, he yanks you to his lap, taking your coffee and setting it aside. "You can have that later, I wanna nap right now" Toji mumbles against your shoulder. His confidence when he acts and talks like this in front of people.. is astonishing. He's groped and grinded on you in a room full of strangers, with no music. Just rubbing against you like a dog.

"Um no, I need this. I have a busy day ahead, remember?"

"Hm"

"That was a yes or no question, dear" you say as you drink your coffee

Gojo and Geto spin to you, noting how Toji is unbothered by your remark. If anyone else said that, they'd lose their tongue. Naturally, watching Toji act like an obedient boyfriend is entertaining to them.

"Yes, I remember" he says dramatically, dropping his arm over his eyes while fake crying- you, remain unfazed. Only shocking your guests more. He's pouting and you're not bending to his will?

"Alright, knock it off" you pat his thigh and stand up, "I'm making breakfast, would you guys like some?" All of them nod and follow you into the kitchen.

As you cook, the 3 watch you gently flip the eggs, then curse at the bacon when grease splashes you, then go back it being gentle.

They can only think, 'this is some emotional roller-coaster Toji deals with', but when they look at him, he's in awe. He giggles when you cuss at objects and food, he thinks it's adorable.

Then several buzzes come from your phone, you ignore it but Toji picks up. "Hello?"

"Who is this?" The random person asks

"I think I'm supposed to ask who you are, Mr. Unknown number"

"It's miss to you. And I'm looking for y/n."

"She's busy right now, bye"

"Wait- is this Toji?"

"Why?" He grumbles

"Oh. My. God. How are you?! How's the girlfriend?"

"She's great, as always" he watches you slide around the floor with your socks, completely ignoring the words flying from the girls mouth.

"Hey, you remember that one night, Toji?" She finally asks in what sounds to be, a slutty tone? You hear her question and slow down to listen in.

"What do you mean?" He asks

"I mean, the one where you got plastered last weekend.. you came home with me and.. held me like you used to."

Finally, it clicks for him. His ex. It's the only explanation why you seem a little more hesitant with him, somewhat distant. You weren't inviting him over as much, or out on errands and parties.

"Last weekend?" He askes before you spin around to meet his gaze, eyebrows furrowed. Gojo and Geto turn to Toji, whose eyes have gone wide. He's confused as well, because like she said he was black out drunk kind of level. Enough where he missed your birthday party the next day, then somehow the following day when he said he'd make it up to you.

Knowing how he's been treating you so nicely for the last week, you didn't suspect anything. You genuinely believe he got too drunk to move for 2 days. But that nice treatment started almost 2 months ago.. no way he was fucking other women every weekend when he got drunk, right? And then coming over to kiss your ass, to make up for his mistakes?

"Don't you remember, daddy?" The girl asks, and your angry expression fell. When Gojo and Geto heard, they immediately stood up to defend him. Saying he was knocked out at their house the entire day, except not the second day Gojo added.

You left the room, as the two tried to follow you swatted them away, "I need a minute" then shut the door.

"Cmon y/n, open up" Geto speaks, Gojo is long gone trying to stop Toji from interrogating his ex, to focus on you. His woman.

Gojo tosses the phone, but only after a quick prayer it won't break, he'd rather Toji be the only murder victim today. Pushing him to your bedroom, and shoves him against the door.

"Baby? Cmon let me in, please? I swear I didn't see her last weekend or ever" he pleads

"What about the other weekends, huh?" You cry

"What about them?"

"I've gotten 10 texts saying the same thing in the past couple months, that you're out searching for women. 2 of them were even the same person" you scoffed, pinching the bridge of your nose.

Toji remained silent. Was he guilty? Absolutely not. Was he shocked you'd believe some hoes? Yes.

"I don't know what they're talking about baby, I really don't. We go out drinking then I pass out at these asshole's place. I promise." He plants his head against the door.

Geto, being even closer to you then Toji is, decides you acknowledging them isn't enough. "Would you say he's tough enough for an ass kicking?" Geto asks Gojo

"I'd say so, he at least deserves it for worrying her". Geto accepts that answer and bodyslams Toji, using him as a cushion to break the door open (yes, they did that earlier when you didn't answer).

When you turn, Gojo is laughing and Geto is smiling up at you while laying on your boyfriend. "How you feeling?" He asks, legs kicking back and forth, his hands holding up his chin.

"I'm fine, angry with him, but fine otherwise!" Toji feels a chill run down his spine at your words. 'Shit' he thinks. Geto steps all over him to stand, then Gojo walks over him to sit with you. Leaving Toji all alone on the ground.

"Are you sure?" Geto asks, grabbing your chin and forcing you to look in his eyes, trying to provoke your boyfriend. Of course Toji notices, and pulls you to the edge of the bed collapsing on your lap. He was spilling apologies and running circles against your legs.

"I'm not happy with you Toji." You push him off and walked out of the room, once again leaving him all alone on the floor.

"Soooo, did you really fuck other girls?" Geto asks

"I really didn't, but I've turned down alot of girls" he knows he's popular around town for being a slut, but it all stopped for you. Since then he finds himself only craving you, being tempted by you, and all you need to do is breathe the same air as him.

Toji stands with a grunt, turning to his friends. "Give me a minute, would ya?" They nod and he walks away, chasing after you.

"Baby? Where'd ya go?"

"..."

"Sweetie?" He approaches your figure sitting by the window

"..."

"Love of my life?" You scoff at that, making him physically wince. He's never gotten on your bad side before, ever. You've always forgiven him or come to an understanding before it got worse.

"I know I've said this already, but it's all I can say to defend myself. I promise I haven't been with anyone but you since we've met."

"Can't even keep up with your own lies, huh? Don't you remember? A week or so after meeting, we ran into each other when you were walking home with her."

"That was over a year ago baby, it didn't take long for me to fall for you and only you. You know that"

"Do I.. know that?"

He reaches for your hand, you let him take it just so he'd feel you shake. Feel your anger and sadness radiate off you, he needs to feel how insecure and unstable this relationship makes you feel.

The second he grabs it, he pulls you in and holds you. He takes a deep breath and you hear him shudder, how uneasy this is making him. "I don't know what they've been saying but they're lying, I promise. I swear I'm telling you the truth, y/n."

He wants you to cry or something, just anything but this.

"I just.. don't believe you, Toji"

He could feel the tears building, and he still wishes they were yours. You seem emotionless, like you've been thinking about him cheating for a while, like you're prepared.

"Why don't you?"

"Gojo said Sunday you weren't there, and you didn't respond to me all day. She didn't specify the day. We both know you were drinking both days, because Monday you were severely hungover. Friday's hangover wouldn't carry over that badly, that long."

"You're right about that" he chuckles, making up you sit up and seperate yourself. He's really laughing right now? "I mean, the last part. I was drinking Saturday too which is why I couldn't-"

"You mean, wouldn't."

"Right. Why I wouldn't come over like I said I would on Sunday. Then I drank more Sunday too."

"Regardless, where did you stay after blacking out? On the street? Inbetween your exes thighs? You definitely weren't at Suguru's. But you definitely were cleaned up Monday morning when you came over, so not the street. Hmm" you brought your finger to your chin, mocking him.

He simply couldn't think, he doesn't remember. He couldn't, he drank too much. He was getting frustrated and being made fun of like this is pushing it. "Fine. If you're not going to believe me, just break up with me. I can find someone else." Big mistake.

"Oh I'm sure you can. Can't even go out without asking for pussy, apparently."

"God you're such a child" his voice started raising, "you can't even listen to me! I've said sorry, I don't know how many times. Just accept it!"

"Exactly! That's all you've done. You aren't making an effort to think where you could've gone, you can't even try to prove them wrong. You're just excusing those 'lies' with a sorry! I'm not expecting you to stop the earth from spinning and rewind time, I'm just wanting you to think. At least try to convince me they're wrong, without saying 'I promise'." Toji knows your right, he does, but his tongue won't allow him to say it.

"Easy for you to say, when I thought you were cheating you didn't try either. You left me to solve it! Like I said, you're a child who's too scared to grow up. To take responsibility, to do something with their life. It's fucking ridiculous! I wonder sometimes, why.."

"Why what, Toji?"

"Why I stay with you" he yells.

"You know, it'd be nice if we could talk about your issues without covering it up with mine. Regardless, I did stop my world from spinning and ran with you. I left family, friends, even my fucking dog Toji, because you couldn't stand the idea of sharing a town with my ex fiancé."

"You know he wanted you"

"Yeah, maybe 4 years ago when he asked to marry me, you know he cheated and ran off with her."

"Then explain why he was all over you when we ran into him", why was he still yelling?

"You were there! He felt obligated to flaunt his already pregnant, soon to be wife, I begged you to stop the conversation and leave. You ignored me, Toji."

"You're such a fucking liar, that's not what happened" yes it was, why is he saying this "you can try to twist the narrative all you want but I saw what happened, the way you looked at him, the way you smiled." That's wrong, he knows you weren't happy. He felt it.

"If you think my faces and reactions then was love for him, then maybe this past year and my move was unnecessary. You should know my genuine smile because you see it every day. Besides the fact I've explained this to you and you've reassured me that you understood, we're moving off the current issue. You and-" your voice was still soft enough where his shouting completely blocked it out.

"Have you always been this insecure or is this a new thing? It's so stupid you can brush off your cheating but can't forget mine." An even bigger mistake.

"Oh so, you admit you did see her" your head drops, and a tear falls. Finally he comes to his senses, he feels like he's succeeded all because you're showing an emotion. While he's lost in his ego, you stand there crying. He's content, and you're crying alone. Reminds you of the weekends you spent without him, thinking about which girl will text you on Monday claiming he stayed with them.

Geto realizes Toji's yelling has stopped, but it's too quiet. He makes his way out to find you there silently crying, while Toji is standing a few feet away looking.. happy? He walks behind him and flicks Toji's ear, then goes to you. Using his sleeve to wipe off your tears and you gripped onto his shirt as he hugged you.

The scene in front of him sets Toji off, he knows why Geto is comforting you- it's because of him. Though it doesn't stop his next accusation,

"Seriously? Geto of all people? I'm disappointed in you y/n." You lift your head up and meet his glare, and his heart shatters at seeing you. You looked stressed and like you've been crying for hours when it's been minutes, you're shaking and clearly having problems breathing.

"Baby, I-" he's stopped when your shaky hands tells him to.

"I don't wanna see you, God I wanna throw up just looking at you." You left holding your stomach and shut your bedroom door, with Gojo inside. He immediately engulfed you in his big arms trying to calm you down, as Toji tries to make himself leave you be, but he can't. He goes towards the hall before Geto stops him, "nah you don't get to see her after that huge stunt."

Geto drags him back to the couch and babysits him until you come out. Surprise; you never did. You ended up crying yourself to sleep while Gojo told you the dumbest and longest story you've heard. He was sitting on the floor while you laid on your side with your head slightly off the bed, as he tried to learn how to braid.

Gojo texts Geto telling him you passed out not long after, plus sent him all the pictures of the different braids he successfully did (they ended up going home and Geto had Gojo braid his hair).

"Hey, she fell asleep" he nudged Toji, he doesn't hesitate to come back to you. He walked slowly and sadly into the room, but smiled when he saw your peaceful figure.

"You're a bitch Toji" Gojo said as he braided your hair one final time.

"I know"

"You don't deserve her"

"I know"

"But she wants to believe you"

"Of course she does" Toji sighed, laying across from you but trting to avoid touching you. "I want her to"

"It is the truth, right?" Toji nods before bringing his gaze back to your face.

"Alright then, you better work your ass off when she wakes up" Gojo says as he stands, "we'll head home and we can have dinner movies and games another day, huh? It'd be best if you spent the rest of the day together anyways."

"Sounds good. Sorry I ruined all our days, didn't mean to."

"Wow! Toji Fushigiro apologizing to me without being forced? My luck day" he ends with a loud laugh. "Text me when you wanna come back, if you make it out alive." With that, he waves goodbye and leaves.

After a while, Toji fell asleep still facing you, but not until after he cried. A couple of hours go by and you wake up from a nightmare, opening your eyes to find a wet faced Toji. The blanket underneath him was damp from his tears, and you could tell his nose was stuffy, causing him to breathe through his mouth.

You place your hand on his cheek, wiping it dry. He slowly opened his eyes and faintly smiled upon seeing you.

"Hi baby" he says as he kisses your hand

"Hi", he sighs against your palm. Content you're talking to him, touching him and looking at him. All are a win in his book.

"I'm sorry for saying all those things, I didn't mean a single one" he places a hand over yours, "just so you know I will stop the world from spinning and rewind time if it'll prove myself to you. I should've just said that instead of losing it. I'm truly sorry y/n."

"It's okay babe"

"Do you forgive me?"

"Fuck no, you're gonna have to work for that"

"Understood" he smiles and kisses your palm, "first I can go finish cooking. This time when your ex calls, you pick up the phone" he jokes.

"Not funny" you pull your hand away and roll off the bed.

"Awe too soon? And here I thought you got me" he chuckles

"Not too soon, you're just a bitch and all your jokes have lost their humor, for now." You kiss his forehead and head towards the bathroom.

"So she's gonna forgive me eventually, what'd you know" he says to himself before moving to his stomach, taking in the smell of you on your blankets. He hopes this never gets taken from him, and hes gonna do everything he can to keep you, for starters he's getting you a new phone and number.

A little longer than expected🥴 also debating how I like it haha, hope you enjoyed it though <3

#toji x reader #toji angst #jjk toji #jujutsu gojo #jjk geto #toji x reader fluff #toji x reader angst

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claymorexpunisher · 11 months

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First Kiss (Ch.1/2) (18+ Fic)

Pairing(s): Rhea Ripley/Fem. Reader

Summary: Rhea and Reader are an on-screen couple. So of course, Reader "jokingly" offers to “practice" their kissing for if the necessity arises.

Tags/TWs: first kiss, flirting, onscreen relationship turns very real.

Word Count: 1,061

As Hunter spoke, I tuned in and out of the conversation. My brain went numb at the words ‘Rhea’ and ‘on-screen couple.’ I couldn’t quite believe my ears. I didn’t know if I wanted to jump for joy at the prospect of working that close to Rhea or beg the ground to swallow me as she sat next to me, not saying a single word for what felt like hours.

She’s hot. Okay? Easily one of the sexiest human beings on planet earth and yes, I wasn’t necessarily mad at the idea of going to war with Dom for her -pretend- affections. But it seemed like her brain had melted as much as mine over Hunter’s blindsiding suggestion.

We didn’t dislike each other but we weren’t exactly close. We shared a locker room just like everyone else, were cordial, stayed out of each other’s way, and that was that. Up til this point, we hadn’t even had a match against or with each other.

Rhea took a few more seconds to seemingly mull the idea over in her head before I watched her nod through my peripheral vision. My heartbeat quickened at the sight. I fully expected her to say flat out ‘hell no’, thinking that she was more than content with how her storyline with Dom has been going thus far. But… clearly, I had been mistaken.

“I think it’s a great idea. It’ll spice things up a bit.” She smirked. My breath caught in my throat as I was brought back down to earth by Rhea’s lingering touch on my arm, shaking me lightly.

“I guess we’re girlfriends now, babe!” Rhea joked and laughed. I returned it a little shakily and I nodded before Hunter spoke up again.

“Figured it was time to do something with you two and see where it goes. I think it could be something really awesome. And it could be something that the non-straight fans will enjoy as well.” Hunter said, looking between us both with his hands clasped in front of him at his desk.

“I… I think so too, actually.” I finally spoke up. Of course, I knew Hunter looked at it from a business standpoint more than anything else, but the sentiment and the opportunity to reach a fanbase that was so important to me was still touching, nonetheless.

As we were walking back toward the women’s locker room, Rhea and I started to get to know each other a bit. We talked about the things that we enjoyed, what we wanted to get out of this storyline, our families. Random shit. I couldn’t help but notice that our steps had slowed down the more we spoke. It seemed as if this new proposition that was brought up to us by Hunter had opened up an opportunity for us to finally get to know one another and to realize that we in fact had a lot more in common than we thought.

And honestly? Unless I was reading things completely wrong, Rhea was absolutely flirting with me. Whether it was just her nature, I didn’t really know. But I felt like there was definitely something there. At least we were warming up to each other, which was important if we were going to be working closer with one another.

We walked practically shoulder to shoulder and our banter gave me the courage to wrap my arm around Rhea’s waist and look up at her through my lashes.

“Soo… now that we’re gonna be playing girlfriends, we gotta make sure our kissing skills are top notch. We don’t wanna go out there and make everyone think we hate each other or something,” I laughed. But I was only half joking, truth be told.

Rhea looked down at me for a moment, both her brows raised up to her hairline before she let out a surprised laugh.

“Ballsy… I like that. We could practice now if you like.” She smirked, her voice lowering ever so slightly. I almost swallowed my tongue at the sound of it.

Oh shit, I thought. Wait. Is she- was she serious?!

“I mean I… I was totally joking; we don’t have t- I mean we don’t have to kiss.” I stuttered out, looking at anything but Rhea. “You and Dom don’t kiss. Do you? And it’s just pretty much established that you two are dat-” My words got cut off as Rhea lightly held my cheeks and she slowly backed us into a secluded hallway, away from prying eyes. The steel of the silver rings on her fingers felt cool on my warm skin and I let out a shaky breath as Rhea’s eyes bore into mine.

“Were you, sweetheart? Were you joking?” Rhea asked and her words almost sounded like a challenge. Daring me to lie to her when she so easily already knew the truth.

So, seeing this window of opportunity for what it was, I rested my hands lightly around her waist, bringing her closer.

“No,” I replied, my tone breathy with bubbling need. If Rhea didn’t kiss me in about two seconds, I swore I’d di-

Her lips felt soft on mine. We both sighed softly through our noses, swallowing hums of pleasure as our tongues slowly met in a light dance. My fingers moved up and ran up and down her wrists, over her hands and they worked their way back down toward her waist, gripping the hem tightly as our mouths continued their exploration.

Now, this was by no means my first kiss. But it was my first kiss with Rhea…

And you know how some people describe their first kiss with someone as this Disney World fireworks display type of moment, where sparks just fly uncontrollably and it’s like there’s no other place they’d rather be?

Yeah… yeah that was definitely happening now. And clearly Rhea felt the same.

“… We should practice some more.” She whispered, her eyes never leaving mine as we let what just happened sink in.

“Yeah.” I nodded, harsh pants making my chest rise and fall rapidly. “Just practice.”

And so, we did.

Whether Rhea and I stayed in our little corner of the arena, memorizing the taste of each other’s mouths for 5 more minutes- or twenty, or if we made our “practice” sessions an almost daily affair… that was nobody’s business but ours.

Next Chapter

#rhea ripley #rhea ripley fic #rhea ripley x reader #rhea ripley x female reader #rhea ripley x fem. reader #rhea ripley fluff #wwe fluff #wwe fic #wrestling fic

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moghedien · 8 months

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ok so i was genuinely unsure about how I felt about the way Lanfear was revealed in the moment, but there are three main things that are really selling it for me:

1: It immediately sets up the threat of going up against a Forsaken:

So far we haven't really gotten much of an indication from the show about what the Forsaken really are, who they are, and why they're any different that a regular darkfriend. Obviously there's still a ways to go in explaining it, but Lanfear provided an immediate visual explanation

Because for example, we've already seen one darkfriend innkeeper who had a thing for Rand (or pretended to) take a knife through the throat

We've even seen Rand stick around and linger by her body and its very clear that absolutely nothing happens.

We get a lingering shot on her bleeding out and she is very clearly actually dead in this moment. Its not even really a question.

But with Lanfear we kinda get the exact opposite of this moment. We see her take a knife to the throat and clearly go down, then there is no lingering by the characters.

The camera goes back to her and we see the saa very clearly moving in her eye, then she blinks and breaths in.

And by this being the opposite of Dana, I mean that with Dana there was no question that she was actually dead. With Lanfear, there is absolutely no question that she's still alive.

Dana was also a darkfriend, but this is very clearly showing non readers that Lanfear is something DIFFERENT. We're told she's a darkfriend of some kind, then we're seen that she actually apparently cannot die by normal means. This coming AFTER the reveal that she is definitely a channler of some kind, and if we now know she's a Forsaken, then we know that Moiraine clearly said the Forsaken are the most powerful channlers ever, more powerful than any Aes Sedai.

And now apparently they can't die.

2. Its foreshadowing.

Moiraine was able to take out Lanfear (if only temporarily) with a physical attack because Lanfear was so fixated on Rand.

The above is also a spoiler for the climax of a certain book.

I'm not gonna get into it, but its clearly like showing that there's a course of action and there is a playbook that works here.

3. NOW we have Lanfear

Before we had Selene. I'd argue there were even moments where we had Mierin, but the only time Lanfear has really come out before this was when she went into Rand's dream and threatened him in episode 3.

By this I mean that while Selene was always obviously an act Lanfear was putting on, it stopped us from really seeing how manipulative and obsessive Lanfear could be and was currently being. If we didn't know she was Lanfear (and non readers shouldn't) then there's no reason to realize the lengths to her manipulation. We still don't know that the man she was telling Rand about was Lews Therin. We still don't know that Lanfear even knew Lews Therin much less would want to rekindle any kind of lost romance with his reincarnation. Because even when Lanfear was being honest as Selene, she was keeping herself back. She wasn't latching onto Rand and telling him that he was hers. She was very clearly holding onto the memory of Lews Therin, but there has yet to be any clear indication that she 100% buys that Rand and Lews Therin are the same person rather than Rand just being his reincarnation.

So while Lanfear was definitely getting some joy out of sleeping with Lews Therin reborn, there is no real indication that that is what she wanted. She said she wants Lews Therin. She tells Rand she's more or less settling for him. Let's assume that was 100% honest for the moment (because I believe it mostly is to a point), I don't think that's the case after this episode. Because Mierin Eronaile suddenly got the one thing she'd always wanted:

If you watch the moments immediately before this scene and immediately after, there is a shift in how Lanfear is acting here.

Before she was very clearly putting on an act. She was playing up being afraid of Rand and didn't seem at all concerned about keeping him here. The most she does is ask him where he's going to go, and even that is said in a weird tone unless you know that she's probably going to use this information to keep tabs on him and report it/follow him herself.

But Rand does the one thing he absolutely shouldn't have done with Lanfear and told her that he loves her.

So now I think is the moment where Lanfear is willing to accept that Rand is Lews Therin. Because if Rand is Lews Therin, then Lews Therin just said that he loves her.

And her entire tone shifts here. You can see she's visibly shocked in the moment, and then smiles and flips the scene to her being afraid of him, to her reassuring him and telling him that he should have told her and telling him that he didn't do anything wrong and he was just acting in his nature. Before she was bringing up the inn and was clearly trying to make him feel bad. Now she's clearly trying to reassure him and keep him around. Absolutely manipulation but I think she didn't really need him to stay until he indicated that he loved her.

So what this means is that we now have Lanfear, who is established as being unkillable and one of the most powerful and oldest being in existence, NOW becoming obsessed with Rand al'Thor and thinking of him entirely as Lews Therin. And not only that, but now she's PISSED because he just left her and was taken away from her by Moiraine exactly when she finally had him back after thousands of years.

She finally got everything she's wanted and it was immediately taken away, and I think that's frankly terrifying, so yeah, I think I do like this reveal now actually.

#also like #the books make it prettty obvious who she is #like if you don't suspect Selene is who's being talked about in that creepy poem from the moment she talks then idk #I think it was best to withhold that info until it needed to be revealed #there's few Forsaken reveals that I find like actually surprising or satisfying in the books #and surprise surprise the only one I can think of that I genuinely like is Moghedien's reveal to Liandrin's black ajah group #mostly because it scared the Black Ajah shitless when they realized the maid girl they'd been abusing was a Chosen #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot book spoilers #wot show spoilers #lanfear #long post

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loveinhawkins · 1 year

Text

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 ao3

When the doorbell rings, it isn’t Lucas. It’s Erica.

“Lucas is coming,” she says, hopping off her bike and picking up a plastic bag that’s looped around the handlebars. “I told him to give me five minutes.”

“Sure,” Eddie says. He tips from concern into something approaching bemusement as Erica throws the bag at him; when he catches it, he feels the coldness of it, opens it up to find two tubs of ice-cream.

Erica side-steps him into the hall, calls over her shoulder, “Hurry up, Eddie, or it’s gonna melt.”

Eddie laughs. “Hi to you, too.”

When he reaches the kitchen, Erica has already opened the freezer to clear a space, Steve watching her from the counter with a look of benign amusement.

“I’d better be compensated for this,” Erica is saying. She points at the space she’s made, and Eddie dutifully slots the tubs inside. “This goes against the you supplying me with free ice-cream for life deal.”

“You literally ate my ice-cream,” Steve says. “Besides, I kinda figured that contract was null and void when Scoops went kaput.”

Erica shuts the freezer door. “I didn’t have a contract with Scoops, I had one with you.”

And she stops. “Have,” she corrects quietly.

No longer able to focus on putting the ice-cream away, her hands fall to her sides. Her little smile drops, and all at once, Eddie is reminded that she’s just eleven years old.

Steve’s face softens. “Why’re you really here, Erica?”

“Lucas,” Erica starts, then pauses—but that’s an answer all of its own, Eddie thinks. She collects herself, looks Steve directly in the eye. “He might not… get it all out.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Steve says.

“He was…” Erica glances down. “I don’t wanna see him like that. Ever again.”

“Hey, look at me.” Steve’s tone is gentle. “I’m sorry.”

Erica sighs loudly; Eddie can hear the frustration and hurt in it, but mostly the love. “You don’t have to—that’s not why I’m telling you,” she says. “I don’t…” Her eyes widen a little. “I don’t know why I’m telling you.”

Steve smiles at her, lifts up one arm in offering. He makes a beckoning gesture. “Help a guy out? I don’t have travelling by bar stool down yet.”

“Was that meant to be funny? Pathetic,” Erica replies, but she’s heading over to him as she says it, lets herself be pulled into a hug.

Steve whispers something in her ear—Eddie half-hears it as a crack about her ice-cream preferences, and she giggles a bit, does a more dramatic sigh and says, “Nothing can cure your poor taste, Steve.”

She settles into the hug.

Eddie thinks of the slip up she made. Had, have. Past, present. Hates that she was forced into thinking of Steve in the past tense—for even a second is a second too long.

As Erica heads out, she turns to Dustin, who’s sitting out on the driveway, waiting for Lucas to show up.

“Look after him,” she says with an intensity that might’ve been funny if Eddie hadn’t known all that had caused it.

Dustin chuckles slightly. He jerks his head back to the house, where Eddie stands at the front doormat. “Which one?”

Erica grins, looks a little lighter. “I meant Lucas, but guess you’ve got your hands full. You’re the babysitter now.”

As she gets back on her bike, Eddie calls after her. “What, don’t I get any orders?”

She glances at him over her shoulder, one foot on the pedal. Her gaze lingers for a couple of beats, and he thinks of her staring him down at Hellfire, sharp and analytical. But now there’s a softness there, too.

“Keep doing whatever you’re doing, I suppose,” she says, and her lips twitch into a smile that’s just pretending to be sardonic, and Eddie feels his heart swell.

Dustin sits with him on the stairs. When Lucas arrived, he barely said a word, not even to Dustin, instead heading through the hallway like someone marching towards the gallows.

They stay put, giving a semi-illusion of privacy—voices can travel far in this damn house—but they can hardly hear anything right now, just the soft rumble of speech, the rise and fall of a question, then silence.

“Can I tell you something?” Dustin mumbles haltingly.

“Sure,” Eddie says, and means Of course you fucking can. Always.

“It was my fault,” Dustin says into his knees, “with… Max. When I was—Lucas, he came to get me when you, um. When you drove away.”

Eddie doesn’t know what his face is doing, but he feels a pang of guilt which Dustin must notice, because he nudges Eddie’s forearm.

“I was kinda… freaking out. A lot, actually. By the time we got to the house, Max, she—she’d already stopped listening to her tape. I… I gave her time to think about it, you know? If we were quicker, we might’ve…”

Stopped it. Eddie’s all too familiar with that sentiment.

“You know, like with Steve. He… he must’ve thought about—about it for ages when he…” Dustin clears his throat. “When he saw the clock.”

Eddie doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Steve had made his decision in a split-second, like it was inevitable; like he’d already committed to it long ago, stared that awful option down and came to the conclusion easily, if it meant everyone else would be safe.

“This is stupid,” Dustin announces after another five minutes have passed without them overhearing anything, not even the whisper of a voice.

He’s down the stairs before Eddie can even think about stopping him. Even if he had been quick enough, he’s not sure if he would’ve decided to stop him in the first place. Shit, he’s not all that sure about anything; there’s no guidebook for this.

He follows Dustin into the kitchen, sees him standing by the fridge; Lucas is sitting at the counter, holding a glass of water Steve must’ve instructed him to take.

Steve is speaking with a quiet urgency, his eyes pleading as he considers Lucas searchingly. “You don’t—don’t need to be nice to me or anything, dude. I can take it. Don’t, like… tread on eggshells on my account.”

“It was my fault,” Dustin interrupts.

Lucas frowns, shakes his head.

And Eddie and Steve speak in unison, a firm rebuttal: “Dustin.”

They jolt in surprise, glance at each other—and then Dustin snorts and says, “Holy shit, that was like a sitcom. Did you, like, practice that or are you just losers?”

And that makes Lucas laugh into his glass of water.

And then… maybe it helps, the echo of laughter in a room, even if it’s only for a moment.

Because suddenly Lucas just launches right into it: how he ran back inside, Dustin in tow and, still catching his breath, it had taken him a few seconds to realise that he couldn’t hear Max’s tape playing.

“Erica noticed first,” he stays, staring into the glass of water. “Her voice went all strange and—I’d never heard her like—like that before. Then she pointed, and I saw… Max had taken her headphones off.”

He grips the glass tightly. The back of his hand dashes away the tears at first, but then he just lets them fall—slow and sluggish tracks, like he’s not even aware that he’s crying anymore.

“Steve, she was… She was begging. For—for him to…”

Steve breathes out, passes a hand across his face. “Jesus, Sinclair, I’m—”

“I love her so much,” Lucas whispers with a certainty that’s much greater than his years, “but I c-couldn’t reach her. It was like she—the only thing that stopped her was…”

“When everything went to shit,” Dustin says when it’s clear Lucas can’t go on.

And it’s like Eddie can hear it, suddenly—that oppressive silence. Feeling like there was no air left to breathe, that there never would be again.

“Steve? Steve.”

Steve’s eyes, glassy and gone, no light behind them. The awful stillness of his chest.

The world ripping apart.

Eddie presses a finger hard to the inner corner of one eye, a vain attempt to block out the image. He thinks of the kids being thrown to their knees with the force of it, a window shattering—and as the rest of Hawkins screamed with no understanding, they would know exactly what it meant.

Lucas and Dustin look like they’re reliving it, too, their faces drawn.

Eddie thinks back to the RV, when Nancy first laid out the apocalyptic vision that had been forced upon her. Eddie, once again a silent watcher in the crowd, his eyes drifting over them all, noticing every twitch, every grim set to their mouth—a horrifying sense of resignation. Eddie thinking yet again that Jesus, they’re used to this.

He had thought that he’d reached his breaking point with Chrissy’s death, and then…

But the others, they’ve had years of this, stretched thin like elastic. Eddie remembers as they began the drive back to Hawkins, as the rest of them gradually dropped off to sleep. Remembers thinking, right before he caught Steve’s whisper, How much more can they take?

It’s Steve’s voice that brings him back. He starts a little at the sound.

“Lucas, you… you would’ve reached her, okay? You’d have brought her back, I know that you…”

There’s a look that passes between the three of them, Steve, Dustin and Lucas: some shared understanding. They’d barely talked about what happened when Vecna’s curse took hold of Max, apart from the song that saved her. The most Eddie is aware of is that it happened in the graveyard.

The rest is not for him to know, he thinks.

“Look, I’m not—I’m not in her head, but I don’t think she wanted to—to—” Steve says, and he stumbles a bit over the words, voice growing a little thick with emotion. “She was… scared. Really scared. And that’s—that’s on me, man.”

For barely a second, Steve’s eyes flicker over to Eddie’s. Then he looks away.

“I’ll talk to her,” Steve says, and it sounds like I’ll fix it, I’m sorry, I swear. His shoulders tense, and Eddie can practically feel it, another load this fucking selfless boy takes on like it’s as natural as breathing, and he kind of wants to cry.

He doesn’t.

Max doesn’t ring the doorbell, opens the front door so quietly that Eddie only notices when a gust of wind shuts it behind her.

After a grateful phone call from Steve, Claudia Henderson had given Lucas and Dustin a ride home; the emptiness of the house is now all too apparent as Max stares Eddie down in the hallway.

“Hey, Red,” Eddie says, aims to be soft enough to soothe, not too much for fear that it’ll get her hackles up. He can feel the tension within her, can almost hear the grinding of her teeth. He can’t fuck this up. One wrong move, and she’ll run.

He gestures through to the living room. She clips him with her shoulder as she barges past him, and that’s fine; if it makes it hurt a little less for her, he’ll take more than that.

She stands in front of the couch where Steve sits. She wraps one arm around herself, a move Eddie recognises. Unconscious self-defence. He thinks of her voice over the walkie, still managing to laugh at Steve’s movies. Marvels in a horrified sort of way at how long she’s been pushing everything down.

“I’m sorry,” Max says. She looks down at the floor.

Eddie moves slowly, stands at the end of the couch, not too close to Max. Steve turns to him very slightly, eyes flitting between the two of them.

Eddie doesn’t need to hear it to know what Steve means. Be careful.

Eddie barely moves his head in a nod. I know.

“I’m not staying long, so just.” Max raises her chin, and her eyes are burning—and people who didn’t know any better might call that defiance. Eddie doesn’t. “Just tell me.”

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it. He glances down at the coffee table, where the cracked tape still lies.

“Tell you what, Max?” he asks, so quiet, so worried—like he’s scared that with just one word, he’ll ruin everything.

“What I did wrong,” Max says. She scrubs at her eyes, blinks up at the ceiling, and Steve’s face falls.

“You didn’t—”

Max sighs harshly. “I’m not stupid. You can—” She turns to Eddie, and he watches in horror as she squeezes her eyes shut, bracing herself, like Eddie might crack first, might give her the judgement she’s desperately searching for. “You can say it.”

“Max,” Steve says.

“I fucked up the plan. It was meant to be me. There—there must’ve been a reason that he—”

“No,” Steve says, and the word is strong, his resolve clear. “Max, listen to me. No.”

But Max shakes her head. “I must’ve done something, I know I did, I made him get in your head—”

“That’s not how it works,” Steve says, kind but firm. “Max, it was—nothing is worth you—”

“You’re a fucking hypocrite,” Max whispers. “I was marked already, asshole, he was coming back to claim—”

“Oh my god, no,” Steve repeats. “Max, what? He had no claim on you, you never deserved—”

“And you did?” Max challenges. Her lips are trembling.

“No,” Steve says, gentle. “But… hey, listen, it. It would’ve been—”

“No, it wouldn’t have been!” Max explodes, and she’s shaking where she stands, like she might break apart. “It wouldn’t have been worth it or okay or whatever bullshit you were about to—”

“All right, all right—”

“You would’ve been gone.” And all at once, she goes very still. “You were gone.”

She pinches the skin on the back of her hand, hard enough to hurt, and Eddie thinks that’s enough.

He walks over, as slowly as he can. He doesn’t touch her, but he stands close enough that she could reach out if she wanted to.

God, Red. Please let me help you.

Max snarls as he lifts one hand in offering. “Fuck off,” she breathes, and she strikes out, hits him in the chest. It’s hard enough for him to have to bite back a gasp, but that’s fine; as far as he’s concerned, she can hit him all she likes.

But that doesn’t last long. At some point, her hand clenches around his shirt, and she just holds on.

Hardly daring to breathe, he slowly reaches out and steadies her, both hands around her elbows.

“Easy, I’ve got you. You wanna… walk with me? That’s it, there you—”

Eddie only lets go after he leads her to Steve. She sobs, once, twice, then the dam breaks as Steve sits up, pulls her close.

“Max, I’m so sorry,” he says. “It wasn’t fucking fair. Shh, hey, hey, there was nothing you could’ve—oh, baby.” His voice fades away for a moment, the barely held back tears audible. He kisses her temple. “Oh, Max, I’m so sorry. I’m here, okay? Shh, shh. Hey, we made it, huh? We’re gonna be all right.”

She cries it out for a while—eventually, all Eddie can hear is her stuttering breaths, slowly evening out.

“Oh,” Steve sighs shakily, and he strokes Max’s hair off her face, catches Eddie’s eye and mouths over the top of her head: She’s asleep.

Eddie gets a blanket from the arm of the couch, tucks it around her—knows that Steve won’t be moving one inch, not even when the angle he’s sitting at is bound to make his leg ache.

“I’ll call her… mom?” Eddie says, cautiously.

Steve thinks about it, then nods. “Yeah,” he murmurs, presses another kiss to Max’s temple when her chin dips down in sleep. “That should be… Lucas said that they’re both staying with his folks for a bit.”

As Steve’s speaking, a tear falls down his cheek. You’d never have known, Eddie thinks, not unless you were looking for it.

On impulse, he runs a hand through Steve’s hair before heading to the phone, and hopes that it says enough.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Steve says dully. He’s fiddling with one of his pills, rolling it back and forth on the counter.

Eddie pauses, mid-taking a can of Coke out of the fridge. It’s just the two of them again, an exhausted Max picked up by her mother, who somehow barely batted an eye when Eddie answered the door and led her to her still sleeping daughter; Dustin picking up schoolwork—of all things—from his house.

“Like what?”

Steve swallows the pill dry, which makes Eddie inwardly wince.

“I hoped it wouldn’t be like this,” he corrects, not answering the question.

Eddie leans against the counter with his hip, opens the can. Waits.

“It’s just… I spent some time thinking about it, you know? Well.” Steve laughs humourlessly. “Not like I had that much time to… weigh it all up, but…” He sighs. “I thought they’d be okay, if…”

Eddie sets down the can before his hand can shake.

“It’s just. Like. I know you weren’t there for it all, but I guess I kinda… got used to them bouncing back? Sort of. Um, we all needed to.” He swallows. “I had to think that they’d be okay,” he whispers. “That was, like, one of the only thoughts that kept me from…” Steve shakes his head, eyes far-off again, and for a moment they’re in the RV, and Steve is saying, gaze fixed determinedly ahead, Listen, I can see a clock in the middle of the goddamn road, okay?

“From losing it,” Steve finishes.

There’s a tremor to Steve’s fingers as they drum on the counter, uneasy taps.

Eddie reaches over, gently stills him—two of his fingers resting on Steve’s knuckles.

“They bounced back from monsters, Steve,” he says slowly. “Not from… not from losing people.” From losing you.

Steve covers his eyes with the hand Eddie isn’t touching. Breathes in and out. Shudders.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, choked. “Just… ignore me for a second, Eddie.”

At first, Eddie tries to, because that’s what Steve had asked, but then Steve’s hand moves on the counter, until he’s gripping onto Eddie’s hand tightly; and Eddie holds on as Steve’s tremor moves up through his arm, his chest, until it’s all of him.

Do you see the gaping hole you would have left? Eddie thinks. Bites down on his lip to keep from crying, because this isn’t about him. Do you see how much they would have missed you?

Do you get it now, how much they love you?

But as Steve weeps for his family, for himself, Eddie can’t hold back the thought, as inevitable as the tide going out.

I would have fucking mourned you forever.

Sometimes in between the afternoon and evening doses of medicine, Steve drifts off into a kind of waking sleep—he’s still there enough to be roused if someone asks him a question, but his head nods sleepily more often than not, half-caught in a dream.

In the quiet, Dustin returns, finds a gap in the couch so he can sit next to Steve without jostling him—then sets about doing homework, and Eddie can’t begin to imagine how he’s focusing on it. But then again, Dustin has the kind of mind that once wanted to solve a Russian code for kicks in the summer vacation.

It’s peaceful.

Peaceful until Steve’s head jerks up with a ragged gasp.

And before Eddie can even say anything, Steve grips Dustin by the shoulders.

“Oh, you’re—” Steve exhales, chest catching on it. “Oh.”

His eyes are wild, darting all over Dustin, face cracked open with a vulnerability he’d never show if he was fully awake. His hand reaches up, moves through Dustin’s hair, searching, searching.

“Steve,” Dustin says, but it’s not a question. Like he kind of knows, understands just enough without being told.

And as Steve cups the back of Dustin’s head, Eddie gets it. He’s looking for blood.

“It wasn’t real, Steve,” Dustin says, with a clarity and kindness that makes Eddie think oh, I fucking love you, Dustin Henderson. “We’re good. Okay?”

“Y-yeah,” Steve answers, hooks his chin over Dustin’s head and hugs him. -

When the phone rings, Eddie picks up quickly; Dustin and Steve are both fast asleep, heads lolling onto the back of the couch.

It’s Wayne—and he doesn’t sound all that surprised to hear Eddie answer.

“How’d you know I was still here?” Eddie asks.

“Made an educated guess,” Wayne says. He sounds fond. “That and Joyce Byers called.”

Oh, Eddie thinks. And then, of course she did.

“We’re on the list,” Wayne says, “to get re-housed. S’going quicker than expected. Reckon that they,” he stresses the word like it’s a capital They, “don’t wanna give folks too much time to complain.”

He says it with such ease, and Eddie’s suddenly thrown back to him arriving at the trailer, small and angry and afraid, and Wayne just looking at him, saying gently, “Well, kid, we’ll make it work.”

Eddie sighs into the receiver. “I’m sorry—”

“Ed, shut the hell up,” Wayne says through an obvious smile, and Eddie chokes out a laugh that’s slightly wet around the edges.

The phone rings again, and this time it’s Jim Hopper.

“Look alive, Munson. Got a number for you.”

“Oh, uh.” Eddie runs about for a notepad and pen. “Okay?”

Hopper fires off a number which Eddie copies down and underlines, just because it feels like that’s the kind of thing he should do.

“That’s a private number, got it? Ring if there’s any trouble.”

“Um, sure,” Eddie says. “I’ll, uh. I’ll tell Steve.”

“No, kid, that’s for you,” Hopper says before abruptly hanging up.

When Eddie sets the phone down, Steve is sitting up, Dustin stirring and grumbling a complaint. He hears Steve laugh under his breath: “That’s what you get for trying to do math right now, dude.”

Eddie sits cross-legged on the floor in front of them. Thinking.

“You okay?” Steve asks.

“Jim Hopper’s fuckin’ weird,” Eddie says distantly.

Steve snorts. “Wow. And that’s coming from you.”

Dustin giggles himself awake as Eddie flips him the bird.

Jonathan Byers comes round just as Dustin heads upstairs to use the shower which—okay, sure. Eddie’s getting used to the whole people coming and going thing, and in theory he knows that obviously Jonathan’s been around for this since the beginning, but it’s another thing to see it in person.

It’s like an annoyingly stubborn part of his brain is still stuck on high school, looking at Jonathan and Steve in the same room, whining: But that’s not right—your kind don’t mix.

Jonathan’s polite, Eddie will give him that, but it’s obvious from the outset that he’s just here to speak to Steve.

Eddie leaves them to it in the living room, but it’s hard not to overhear, even when he’s doing his best to concentrate on the hum of the microwave as he heats through casserole.

“She’s staying in her room a lot, and you know what her mom’s like, Steve, she won’t—”

“Yeah, Robin said she tried to call, got no answer.”

“The most I could get her to talk was when she was with Holly. It’s like she doesn’t want to leave her alone.”

“Yeah, I… God, I don’t know. Wish I knew how to…”

“Me, too. But you’ll… you’ll call right, if she…? Fuck, it scares me sometimes, she’s so quiet. Don’t know if she’ll even turn to anyone.”

“Yeah, Jonathan, ‘course I’ll… Look, it’s just. It’s just been a lot, man. For all of us. She just needs some time, I think.”

“Yeah, I—sorry. I just worry.”

“Me, too.”

Eddie punches the buttons, sets the microwave on again before it can screech at him.

Jonathan leaves soon after that, gives Eddie a slightly awkward but sincere smile, bids goodbye to Steve with a, “Look after yourself, Steve.”

There’s a weight behind those words.

“Wheeler okay?” Eddie asks, once the front door has shut.

Steve sighs. “Hope so.”

The silence is heavy, and because Eddie can’t leave well enough alone, and apparently has a compulsion to put his foot in his mouth when it comes to this pair, blurts out, “Yeah, I kinda thought you two were a sure thing, man.”

Steve gives him a sideways look that Eddie can’t quite read. “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

Steve shrugs. “Like… imagine other people’s futures.”

It’s not said, but Eddie can hear the instead of your own loud and clear.

The embarrassment is expected. What isn’t is how he strangely welcomes it—no-one’s seen him like that before, cut right down to the core of him.

It’s his turn to shrug. “Kind of? It’s… you know what this town’s like, man. People and, like, how it’s all gonna turn out… some folks’ lives are easier to imagine than, uh. Others.”

It was a bit like solving a simple puzzle piece: it had been easy to imagine Nancy and Steve together, to picture them as they were back then, young and sweet in the school corridors… using the belief in them as a sure thing to try and keep himself from losing it in a world turned (literally) upside down.

Steve’s lips twitch at the corners into a little smile. “Thought your whole thing was how people can defy expectations, or whatever.”

“Yeah, well. Even I’m not immune to hypocrisy, Harrington.”

Steve huffs a laugh. Hums. “I think I was always meant to love her,” he says, slow and thoughtful, “just… not in that way.”

“…Oh.”

Steve’s smile shifts into something melancholy. “I think we were both lonely, y’know? And, like… too similar. We both got trapped in our heads whenever shit went sideways. So if we needed, like, help or just… we couldn’t… couldn’t reach each other. Does that make sense?”

Eddie nods faintly.

“Eddie, can you promise me something?”

Eddie nods again, holds Steve’s gaze. Anything.

“Nance, if she—if she comes to you, just… be there for her?”

Eddie opens his mouth, but Steve keeps talking.

“I mean, ‘cause, you’re a good listener, man. And you’re kind. You can… see people.”

And Eddie suddenly has to hold his breath. He knows what Steve is referring to, thinks of how he recounted his meeting with Chrissy in the woods, as the group hiked from Skull Rock. I don’t know, man, I just knew something was up with her. Like, something was really wrong.

But the way Steve speaks to him—there’s more underneath the words. Kind of sounds like You can see me, too.

Eddie swallows through the burning in his throat. “I will,” he promises.

#the self sacrificial steve agenda #steve and erica #steve and lucas #steve and max #steve and dustin #steddie fic #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie #erica sinclair #lucas sinclair #max mayfield #dustin henderson #eddie and erica #steve and nancy #eddie and nancy #eddie and max #steve and jonathan

293 notes · View notes

sapphire-drawings · 6 months

Note

Hey Sapphire! In your adult Webber/ Wendy au, could you please describe and talk about Wendy’s statues. Because, not all the survivors know her, and that is like the way they see her beyond the radio’s voice. And, I imagine, she portrays herself different from how Maxwell portrays herself, because she isn’t seeking fame and its greatness. Also, your Au is great, and I pretend to write about it, so, do you have any problems if I post it?

Quick-ish reply cuz you got me thinking and the truth is... I've no idea what's Wendy's role in the Au

But first

Anyone's free to write, to draw or whatever they please with this Au. I'm not the owner of the originals, this is just something I came up with for funsies and obsession

Just don't put things in my mouth for "what's canon and what's not" and tag me so I can see it!! ^^

Although if I like someone's idea I'll ask to make it canon lmao

Now get ready for some random nonsense.

Or don't read it and just enjoy the drawing, whatever please your eyes

The original idea was for her to be a magician just like canon Maxwell and Abigail would be her assistant. Carter Sisters' magic show or something

But my Au is weird and not planned at all

Abby is also Jack and Will's mother (weird, I'm aware) so, How is she the assistant/Next-Constant-Queen and mother mourning her "dead" sister and children?? (well, Jack is the only one dead for real)

...I'll be rambling from this point forward, sorry but not really

Abby HAS to die thanks to something Wendy did

What if... Wendy's show is the medium type? She "contacts" spirits and fortune telling stuff. She's a failure until the codex appears. By this point she lost contact with the family, (hence why William and Jack don't recognize her at first glance (A simple "she looks like mom but not quite")) focusing in what the canon says, fortune and glory seeking evolving into greed.

Then Abby goes after her??? For some reason???

They reunite and Wendy is too stubborn to go back and then They cause an accident that takes Abby's life but as far as she knows it was Wendy's fault??

And her last act before everything goes down to hell is an attempt to bring her back through the codex?????

Or something different I can't think of??????????

...

...................

...Few on the only things I know is that I want Wendy to still be involved in spiritualism to decipher the Codex while baby William got into dark arts as an attempt to bring Jack back. "Why would you? that doesn't makes sense" you may think

1.- None of this makes sense so shut up. I can't think that far

2.- I want William to still being able to create shadow puppets cuz I have a comic idea where he spawns one by accident and Jack haunts it and "gains a body". Mr. Webber puts a painful stop to it to prevent any possible danger or corruption and blah blah blah-

Ssssoooooooooo yeah

Everything's a mess but I'm glad you guys are enjoying the ride

I'll update you if I ever come up with a "canon" timeline)? and what not (I won't get mad if you come up with ideas to help either.....)

#ok so how do I tag this monstrosity??#And I still have to do other characteeeeeeeeeeeers #someone said something about Wanda swapped with Wortox and I'm also thinking hard about it #dst wendy #dst au #dst adult wendy #dst #dont starve #dont starve together #Remember all of this started for 1 ask I replied??? This is your fault All. of. you. .......... Thanks!

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writing-for-life · 4 months

Text

Sunday Mourning—About Dream Entities and Stars

Why Head-Canons Are Wonderful, But Forcing Them On Creators Isn’t

And as always: Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

First of all: I don’t want to take anyone’s head-canons away from them, it’s what fandom is partly built on. I support them, I love them, I have plenty of my own. The Sandman very explicitly tells us about “books never written” in Lucien/ne’s library, and we can be sure ours is in there.

But that’s not quite the same as harassing both creators and other fans in an attempt to make fanon canon, and that’s what partly sparked this post. So if a super-long meta exploration of “Sunday Mourning” (and there is a lot in this post) that also contains a bit of fandom criticism (feel free to skip that if you just want the meta) isn’t your thing—this is your warning 🤣

Also: Massive spoilers ahead…

The theory that Morpheus forever lives in Hob’s dreams (and with Hob) as a dream entity regularly makes the rounds. And it’s a nice theory, and I get why people like it. I also get that “The Wake—Sunday Mourning” is maybe ambiguous enough to consider it a possibility (which then goes into head-canon territory). All good so far.

What’s problematic is when fans begin to leverage their head-canons/theories as “true because Neil gave it a like”, and then proceed to present them as canon.

Neil likes posts, yes, but he said *several times* and *very explicitly* that’s never endorsement of anything, but rather valuing that people put thought into stuff and engage with his stories critically (and he also said that it’s sometimes just a slip of his finger, but that just as an aside, you’ll find one example here).

So if Neil liked a happily-ever-after-dream-entity post, that means he supports your head-canons as head-canons because he always does (or his finger slipped—I guess we’ll never know). He is awesome that way and always was. Again: In a way, it’s even an integral part of The Sandman. It also means that he likes the fact you engaged deeply with the source material, in either a heartfelt or critical way.

What it *doesn’t* mean: Head-canon is the same as canon despite both being valid in their own way. He said all of this a million times in a million posts.

Let’s explore that particular theory and start with an ask:

His endorsement goes as far as acknowledging that “it’s never only a dream,” and that “dreams are where the stories are.” And we need to stop pretending it’s anything more than that, even if he likes a few posts here and there (posts that go in all different directions, btw). Neil used his own experience with grief and mirrored it 1:1 in how Hob handles Morpheus’ death in The Wake and Sunday Mourning.

Here is a quote from the Sandman Companion:

NG: […] Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.

HB: It also makes me think of Hob's dream in part 3.

NG: That was something that actually happened to me. [1]I dreamt about a friend who'd died six months earlier, woke up completely upset that she'd died, [2]and then realized I'd simply had a dream and felt enormously relieved... [3]and then I woke up all the way and remembered that she really had passed on.

[numbers and bold by me]

And then remember what happened to Hob:

1. He found out in a dream Morpheus had died and woke up upset and crying in The Wake, Chapters 1-3 (#70-72).

2. Then he had another dream that somewhat gave him closure and a sense of relief (Sunday Mourning, #73).

(Can I also just point out where Destruction’s fingers are pointing here and then contrast it with what he told Daniel in The Wake about “walking amongst the stars”, or Morpheus actually turning into a star?)

(What might the end of the story be? Who knows, but once again, have a look where Destruction’s fingers are pointing.)

3. Then he woke up all the way and felt peace (also in Sunday Mourning).

Make of that what you will, but to me, saying that scene was based on his own dream is basically Neil confirming that Morpheus has “really passed on.”

Will Hob remember Morpheus? Of course he will. That’s what humans do. Does Morpheus live a happily ever after in Hob’s dream with Hob? And would that be in character? And would he want his memories to be intact to make that happen? Would that truly be passing on?

I will explore why canonically, we don’t find much to support that notion, and why it would seem OOC. But if you believe it, it’s your personal truth. Should we call for the ending to be changed though to make our personal truth that of the author?

Life and death are our own, and it’s never just a dream

Destruction was in Hob’s dream (when Hob never really knew him), and Destruction walked away from it all. As did Morpheus. They’re both free. It was very likely (and I'm phrasing this carefully on purpose) a dream gifted by Daniel!Dream (who had a very long talk with Destruction during the Wake) to give Hob closure, and it seems straightforward enough if you read The Wake not just single-mindedly focused on one thing. Daniel!Dream is not in the original panel, but he is in the background of concept art of that panel for a movie pitch by Jill Thompson and Neil Gaiman, so we can probably assume it was always the intended subtext.

And what does Death say in Façade? Or what does Morpheus say to Orpheus, or to Delirium after he killed Orpheus? That life and death are our own.

Destruction’s life is his own.

Morpheus’ death is his own.

And Hob’s life AND death are his own.

The three of them are the literal embodiment of that sentiment:

One walked away and chose life.

One walked away and chose death.

One chooses life for as long as he sees fit and can choose death if he stops doing so.

It makes sense to put them in a panel together at the end for that very reason (and a few others of course).

That, right there, is already “more than just a dream.” It is the story, not just a metaphor. It is canon, and it is fairly explicit.

Would Morpheus ever want to be a dream entity with all his memories intact?

From this point onward, we get more into interpretation based on canonical character traits:

Morpheus living forever as a dream entity *tied to Hob’s dream* is canonically antithetical and OOC. There, I said it. He wanted to be free from the Dreaming, he even said so to Death (“But even the freedom of the Dreaming can be a cage, of a kind, my sister,” in #69).

But existing as a dream entity WITH ALL HIS MEMORIES INTACT (that alone should make people say, “He would never want this in a million years” because it’s the very source of his pain—he wanted punishment for Orpheus’ fate/death—Nuala called him out on it) would forever tie him to it. Plus, it would make him Daniel’s subject in a way. It would be, again, very OOC.

Also: Dream had very strong feelings about the dead NOT belonging into dreams/the Dreaming permanently, or the living building their lives around them. WHY would that apply to Hector, but not to Morpheus himself? Again, it makes no sense in continuity.

But Destruction was in that dream…

Destruction visited Daniel!Dream during the Wake. They talked about a lot of stuff that’s very relevant, I recommend a reread if you’re not certain (this is long enough as it is, so I’ll skip it at this point). And it makes narrative sense to anchor that in Hob’s dream for reasons already outlined (they might not make sense to Hob, but they make sense to us, the reader, if we are willing to see that “it’s more than just a dream” isn’t equal to two people riding off into the sunset together, as nice a head-canon that might be). What I *do* want to point out though is that Destructions talked about “walking amongst the stars” and again, where he points in Hob’s dream.

Someone said this somewhere else and drew parallels to Stardust: Morpheus *does* become a star (or returns to them, who knows), it’s all over The Wake. That star is in literally *every* panel with a window/sky after his barge has transformed. And what becomes of him as that—who knows, since we all know stars have some sort of sentience in Gaiman’s universe, and that “oblivion is not an option” if Death took your hand to lead you into the afterlife. Again: Head-canon territory…

Head-canons are beautiful

No one is trying to take them away from us. Let’s knock ourselves out in fanfic and fanart, it’s comforting and healing. The Sandman is a story about stories. Our stories are our own, and they are true for us, that’s the whole point. And Neil will *never* tell you your head-canon is not real, because for you, it is, and that’s all that matters. But the constant need to elevate fanon to canon really gets exhausting at times, especially if it involves pestering the creators, constantly being on their blogs/tagging them and trying to get them to confirm what we want.

And to those that insist we will undoubtedly get a happily ever after because “Hob’s dream says so”, and think the writers somehow should “read the room” and provide fan-service (side-note: What is it with this entitlement in fandom? The creator tells *their* story, not yours):

One of the main messages of the story is (already in 24/7) that stories only have a happy ending because we know when to stop, but that they ultimately *all* end in death. No matter how much people say that “the show is so much more hopeful”, that very line has already been brought into the show. They didn’t take it out. It will have weight at some point, I’ll put my money on it.

But show!Murphy isn’t comics!Murphy...

People point out that show!Morpheus is different from comics!Morpheus to justify we will get a different ending. Making Morpheus a bit softer around the edges seems, at least to me, a move to make him likeable as the protagonist, because it would be very hard to like early comics!Morpheus, to be frank. The fact that he brought Gault back from the darkness—I saw that as giving show!only fans a nicely wrapped end of the first season, because we didn’t even know if we would get a second one at that point. It also shows us that he is capable of change—a thing I am near certain he will repeatedly deny as we go on (he already did). So no, I personally don’t think it set him on a different path. There are even scenes in the show that very heavily foreshadow The Kindly Ones (the cracks in the window are overlayed onto his face in such a way that they heavily hint at the scar he is going to receive).

So yes, by all means, let’s have a bit of ambiguity in Sunday Mourning for the people who don’t like the tragic ending, but let’s also focus on more than just making everything about the ship. Their relationship is important, and even more so because it isn’t romantic—that’s why it grows and lasts (unlike Morpheus’ romantic relationships). But it’s only the tiniest fraction of what The Sandman is about.

I write fanfic. I give Morpheus happy endings, too. I get it, I want him to be happy, too. But no matter how much we write him in character, we will ultimately break character the moment we make him do things that lead to a different outcome. In canon, he is the way he is. And I am afraid to say:

I personally think he is also like that in the show, even if they softened him a bit around the edges and shoved certain messages down our throats that people who know the comics didn’t need, but newbs to the Sandman did (“I’m listening now…”)—it was a good move, and all of that made sense for show-narrative reasons. But not once did I have the feeling that he wasn't exactly the same Morpheus underneath it all, and we already had too much foreshadowing to think that we would really get a different ending.

Why chemistry isn’t confirmation of the ship

That’s another one: To turn one (!) show-writer’s comment that Morpheus’ and Hob’s chemistry was a thing, and that they allowed that type of ambiguity, into, “Their romantic relationship is canon.” These two things are not the same. And Neil said that Benton’s comment did not make Dreamling any more real/canon, but people conveniently forget that. He also didn’t deny it, he just didn’t confirm, because, again: He doesn’t confirm or deny head-canons. They’re ours. Let's please stop pestering the man to confirm our head-canons and fantasies, but that just as an aside.

It shows one thing, however:

How conditioned fandom is to make everything about romantic relationships (ideally m/m), even if they have nothing, and I say nothing, to do with the main message.

And it’s okay the wish for these relationships matters to some people, but they don’t have to matter to everyone else, to the extent that we expect the actual story to change. Why try to twist his arm into changing his own story, and the way he wanted to tell it?

So again: Head-canons are beautiful. Trying to get them confirmed by creators and foist them upon everyone else (to the extent that people get harassed) is not.

And if I'm proven wrong on this, I’ll still die happy, but I'm putting my chips down right now and say:

Morpheus will die in exactly the same way as in the comics. And if we get The Wake, we will get a scene in Sunday Mourning that can hold ambiguity for processing our grief, just like the comic can. And the shippers will say, “He’s with Hob, yay!”, and the non-shippers will say, “Nah, not what I saw.” And Neil will get a million asks and answer each single one with:

“What do *you* think?”

#the sandman #neil gaiman #dream of the endless #morpheus #hob gadling #sandman #sandman meta #sandman spoilers #sandman comics spoilers #the wake #sunday mourning #façade #sandman book club #sandman bookclub #canon vs fanon #harassing creators and other fans is never okay #neither is constantly creeping into their inboxes to get your head-canons confirmed

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ngmn2002 · 1 month

Text

Ch 112: Random Thoughts

Now, after what happened in ch 101, let's see what we got...

Nene and her plant pot, what a nice way of summarizing the hardships she went through until this point.

Her "past present", the "uncool" plant with the "rotten root", that got Nene to face too many hardships with the damaged pot to keep it, No.1 took it, gave her the chance of replacing it with a nice flowery plant of the same kind, representing this "ideal present" they want to set. Yet, she doesn't want it and shouted they give her "her plant" back, and the bigger picture "old present " back. Even if the ideal is nice, flowery, and the old one is full of hardships, we still want it and won't trade it.

We can also present Hanako-kun and Tsukasa-kun into the picture as well.

So, I'm looking forward to see Nene-chan fighting, struggling to have things back to how they used to be, to have those special to her back into her life.

Haha, look at Nene-chan posing. ~ I don't doubt her mega strong punch, or strength all together. ~

Wooh, sweet girl. ~ seriously, that's Tsukasa she "smacked!" His face gets me in there. lol feel her wrath, Tsu. ~ don't get on Nene-chan's nerves, you'll regret it. ~

Kay, so we meet the 2 girls in Tsukasa's assistant's class, the class seems to be going with a "hunted house" instead of "a maid caffe". Kou's class activity in the past present. Tsukasa's assistant doesn't seem to be a part of that class? Good for the 2 girls I'll say.

Hmm, in a sense, I wonder what came of her and her servant in this ideal present. How does her master not being there impact her?

Where are the 2 of them? How are they doing? Does she need to be pretending to be a student in this ideal present? Same maybe goes to her servant. What shape do they take in this setting?

Regardless of that, I assume she is one of those who aren't affected by what the keepers did. She has 3 days to make a meaningful move to get things back in her favor, huh?

Can she make any move? All they've done with the rumors, etc. is erased. As I assume, the first move she took into really getting into what she wants, was "meeting" Tsukasa and making a wish to him. I do wonder "when" that happened exactly. Anyway, in this setting, she has to start from point 0? But for some reason, a bond as powerful as one a human shares with a supernatural, Tsukasa to be specific, needs to be special, for some reason I don't think it's "really" erased, somehow. Maybe that can come to her help, maybe too, whatever position to have her stuck in school in the first place. Even though, would her special lady kannagi or whatever rule come to light this arc? Hmm... kinda doubt it?

If she will be brought to light, she will have to rely on Nene's abilities like always I assume? So? Don't go have a chat with Nene, kay? Nor send your dog to fetch her or whatever. I will be surprised if she can swing "alone" and on her own. No Tsukasa, no Nene (who might not remember her at all), and oh, if we were to imagine no nat, what can she do... hmm... how far can she get...

Luring Nene into doing stuff for her is no surprise coming from her. In the p.p arc, she was so chill knowing Nene won't choose that perfect world, that if Nene chose to stay within will be a problem for her, and would want the usual world back, destroying No.4's yorishiro, what she really needs Nene for, to do that. Same goes here really, maybe she won't have to interfere so much, that in mind.

If destroying No.1's yorishiro is the only thing she wants out of this mess, she gets it no sweat. Nene on her own free - will, will do that to ensure the usual present is back. Now, I wonder, will Akane be handing the yorishiro to Nene like No.4 did, too?

Uh, thinking of him, this feeling within me is funny, while a good part of his fans are freaking out he is "not there anymore", I go imagining various scenarios of Mr. time issues of his own, but never one of "OH! HE IS GONE!! WHAT!! NOOO!!! HE NEEDS TO BE BROUGHT BACK!" I see him chilling in the red house room, nowhere space... and having a cup of tea. severance Tsukasa-puzzle vibes I go: well, it already was a gift to have Tsukasa there for like... 8 chapters straight. THAT'S INSANE! oh, so now it's about time we're back to the Tsukasa is no where to be found era again? cool. last time he was gone for a year, the one before it almost 2 years and a half, I wonder how long he will take this time until he comes back. Hmm, should I start a count down? even if something bad happened to him with how the keepers went, easy, things will be back to normal again, after a while. so really, nothing to worry about too much. I'm so chill. I doooo wonder if Tsukasa's "always so relaxed" charm got to me, actually.

I see various possibilities with 12 y.o Tsu and yorishiro Tsu... the best one being the 2 of them working together, having Nene dancing elegantly between them, the worst one is oh, the keepers really managed to get around him somehow, did a number on him, but hey! that's only temporarily! At the end, we will be back to how things were, and voila! he is there again! so no need to worry too much.

I wonder what can they really do about Tsukasa, or rather, what's inside of him. But then again, I think maybe we need to also keep in mind, from what we know so far, Tsukasa, regardless of what's in him, was killed by a kitchen knife. Pretty simple, eh? He is still "Human" in a way. At least, I don't know, that's how "simply" it took Amane to kill him gets me. Tsukasa then what? Became a supernatural? Amane's yorishiro... still kept what's inside of him... hmm... this boy is so confusing. How am I supposed to think into that thing regarding him?

Anyway, having No.1 going after "what's in him", knowing what they are doing, they seem to have a solid plan on how to deal with "Tsukasa" in general.

Continuing with what we have to show the present based on Tsukasa not being there, Mei is alive! What a surprise! The one to really shock me! The other characters, I can get how things changed for them, but then Mei? What does she have to do with Tsukasa? Then I remember No.4's wish, that by the end of it Mei chose to die and... oh? Maybe that's it? I don't know how to feel when I think about Mei walking confidently to her death, and assume it might be a thing Nene will do one day, in the same manner...

Mei was already being cured in a hospital and was said to die soon, right? In this present, she recovered up well? Maybe her illness wasn't really that serious and she recovered easily... ...

She drew No.4/her other self as a thing so she could live. Hmm, in this ideal present it seems she didn't need to do that? Or she did, but the difference is that she meaningfully recovered and lived. No.4's wish to Tsukasa didn't exist. Is this again, one of the scenarios where the reason of your death is the person you love?

Hmm... does... Mei's other self exist or not in this "reality"? And, speaking of No.4... what was the price she paid to Tsukasa, really?

Kou, seems to always meet Nene with the same behavior. Pretty cute. But oh, as expected.. they don't know each other in this present.

Mitsuba being alive, really reinforces his death wasn't that simple one of "he died getting potatoes". We're having a present based on not having Tsukasa there. So, it seems the photo Mitsuba took of the red house means more than it looks like.

But wow, have to say I was yet again surprised by Kou and Mitsuba naturally being friends.

Come again? Mitsuba didn't need to die, become a ghost, or anything for Kou to pay attention to him? Become friends with him? Kou did that naturally? Wow. No really, wow.

Having Aoi calling "Minamoto-kun" as "Teru-kun"... you sure this is a nice present for you, guardian of the present, Aoi Akane? How is your relationship with Aoi going?

Now, now... Nene's "popularity" is...

She took the rule of Dorothy instead of twister no. 4. She seems pretty well-known and admired...

Ahem, going by the pattern again, a present based on Tsukasa not being there... excuse me but... what does he have to do with her being popular or not? ^_^

Unless, it was No.1... trying in a way to give her a "present" she won't say no to? So she won't try to change? So she will accept the flowery plant? I don't mean to be rude in any way, Nene is so gorgeous, but... it seems her ankles problem doesn't exist in this present, despite her still having them the way they are. people are nice in there, unlike in the usual present.

The same I know. My heart. 💜🩵

Uh, seeing Nene performing Dorothy on stage, not only in front of Hanako, while actually wearing the dress... awww....

And, she imagines seeing Hanako there, only for him to disappear later... sad. But no worries girl! It will be alright. Things will be back to normal. p.p arc, severance vibes. ~ Hanako.. really looked like his father, in his and Tsukasa's 4th birthday. the same image. I always find that cool when I can see parents represented in their children.

Now, to the scene of the guy who made sure to "lock" the door before her goes all out... more keys for us to see apparently, because clearly we haven't seen enough already.

...on someone.

Seems he was waiting for the chance to come to have a payback. His threat was somewhat real, Akane. ~

So yeah, Akane speaks of the butterfly effect, he mentions some stuff. Will Teru end up liking this present or will he reject it and join Nene in getting back the usual one? For some reason, his mother, that was brought up in the red house arc, a possible wish for Kou to make... came to me. It's a wild thought within me but... can she be "alive" in this present? The Minamoto grandmother, too? I mean, she didn't have to use all her power to seal "Hanako-san". The man in the shrine 4 y.o Tsukasa talked about didn't die...? so now... how is Nagisa doing? He is not the one in charge of the shrine now if that man is still alive, is he? Hmm, he came to the festival with Tiara, did that change in the ideal present?

Anywaaaaaay, it's cool we'll be back to the usual present in 3 days, huh? Let's enjoy what will happen during them. ~

Tsuchigomori! And here I was wondering how he's been doing. Thinking the supernatural in charge of the records can't be affected easily. It seems that way.

Greetings, teacher! ❤️

Oh, so we got to see young man Amane. But, right now, he needs to be around 60 years old. Where is he? Is he still alive, or died along the way? or went missing? For how many years did he get to live/be around if that was the case?

Hmm... how did his close relationship with Tsuchigomori start in the ideal present I wonder... Yugi was an old colleague of his he said... hmm.. maybe a student of his, too? Maybe some kind of "incident" brought them together?

Yugi Amane always entrusts Mr. Tsuchigomori with things, before he does something "crazy" usually connected to... Tsukasa... a moon rock, now a watch. Hmm... what did this boy do this time?

Tsukasa x time... Tsukasa x time x Amane = ? hmmm.....

He was trying to get the big clock to move again.... gave Tsuchigomori a watch... both stopped moving at some point... now I wonder... what "some point" it is exactly... Why do I keep flashing to this... I have no idea...

Too manny stopped things... deals with time...

We can also add the big clock that stopped moving at some point, if I were to get ahead of myself, I would say it stopped the time Tsukasa left the red house.

I will add another similar small calculation for fun...

Tsukasa x knife... Tsukasa x knife x Amane= the usual present.

Ahem, the 2 means/calculations by the end, seem to be ones of Amane fighting to keep Tsukasa by his side.

Let's stop here.

Based on what we've seen so far, Tsukasa is so life changing!! ALL of these futures of people are back to ........... Mr. Root!!!! I'm interested to get to see more into this "supposedly" ideal present, before the time comes for us to say goodbye.

****

For some extra dive in... see this reblog of the same post.

Thanks for reading. Till next chapter.

#ch 112 #jibaku shounen hanako kun #toilet bound hanako kun #jshk #tbhk

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luvskyxx · 1 year

Note

Can i request rafe as a dad maybe?

WATCH YOUR MOUTH

RAFE CAMERON X READER

Warning: fighting, swearing, and fluff.

Summary: a fight with rafe based on your parenting skills ruins dinner.

It was late in the afternoon. Rafe just got home from work eager to get out of his suit he rips off his tie once he was through the door.

“hey honey,” he spoke softly kissing your head as he walked into the kitchen taking samples of the food you were cooking.

“hey” you warned holding up the knife you were using as a threatening tool. he only gave a smile back as he knew you would never hurt him.

“Daddy!” your kids ran over to rafe begging to be lifted. which he gladly did with a loud huff as he pretended they have gotten too heavy for him.

“Hey kiddos” he smiled as he lifted the two kids up. “how was hanging out with mommy all day?” he waited for a response but they were too excited that he was home to even answer. “huh?” he smiled at you before looking at the kids again.

“Mommy said we can have cookies” your son pointed to the jar of cookies that sat in the middle of the counter far enough so no little hands could grab the jar.

“after dinner” you warned as you continued to cut up the food.

“after dinner” Rafe looks at his son with a sad face before he sets them back down. wines both let out as their little feet hit the floor. “I’ve got to change then we can play I promise” he tries to explain but they didn’t care what he was wearing he could still play.

“let daddy change then he will play with you guys,” you told them as they wined more. disappointed that they had to wait this long for him to come home now he has to change? it was unfair. the kids eventually gave in walking back over to the living room where they forgot all about the conversation you just had with them.

“smells good” Rafe spoke giving you a kiss on the head before leaving the room to change. a smile appearing on your face as his little signs of affection were just enough to brighten your day. with simple calls at lunch or little notes if you don’t get up early enough to say goodbye before he goes to work. even the little kisses on your head as he complements you. you loved them all.

it was different once you had the kids. though two boys were not ideal rafe made it worth it. promising to be the best husband and dad he could be. he wanted to do better. it only was proven when he quit the drugs and stopped parting. he changed for you for your family.

“Fuck!” you yell as you cut yourself with the knife. it was the smallest cut yet it hurt like a bitch.

“Watch your mouth!” Rafe came in the room his shirt half on his body as he pulled his arms in.

“fuck you!” you spoke in anger as you held your hand in pain. you walked to the bathroom as you tried not to leak blood all over the floor.

“I keep fucking telling you to stop doing that in front of my kids” rafe follows you into the bathroom angry at the profanity you use. His kids? you looked at him with an irritated look like this argument could not wait till after you stopped bleeding. “our” he corrected himself.

Rafe hated the profanity you used or that his friends did. always yelling at them even if the kids were not around. it didn’t matter if the kids were not once you use it you can stop.

it was one of the things you hated about rafes development. he was so protective over the kids. too much sometimes. you understood that this language was not to be spread around children. much less yours but it still felt good to let out a piece of that anger now and then.

“Do you even think about what they say?”

“Rafe they are 2 and 4 I’m sure that small little curse word blew over their heads”

“And what if it didn’t? What if they start saying it around other kids? Who’s going to look like the bad parent?”

“I’m the one who would look like the bad parent Rafe because I’m the one who is with them 24/7” once your first child was born Rafe made sure you didn’t have to work he hated knowing you wouldn’t be home when he was. He hated going to work. He just wanted to be with you.

So Rafe took a job with his dad making enough money to provide for the family. While you stayed home with the kids. You didn’t mind you liked spending time with the kids. It also gave you more time to find hobbies of your interest.

“It’s because of you they know it!”

“I can’t have this conversation with you anymore Rafe” you walk out of the bathroom as your hand is now wrapped up in a towel.

“No!” He yells following you into the kitchen. “Why can’t you so much as keep your mouth shut”

“Rafe it slipped up don’t act like you never said it before” the argument was brought into the middle of the house. Your boys are fully aware of the argument now.

The knew your fights. The fights would end either horribly with the cops called or fights that would end up with everyone going to bed early.

It wasn’t fair to the boys that your fights had to involve them. You knew that witch is why you hated fighting with Rafe. You hated him being mad at you. Hated how the veins would pop out of his head when he got mad. How he wanted to punch something to relieve his anger.

“I’m not the one swearing in front of the boys now am I?” You tried to go back to cutting the vegetables to finish the dinner but Rafe just kept pushing this conversation.

“Fine rafe” you drop the knife looking at him with frustration as to why this argument had to go on for so long. why when this day was going so well? “Sense you have a problem with it I should just go pack my shit right now. Let you raise the boys how you want” you storm away angrily.

Rafe leaning angst the counter with his head in his hands as he lets out a sigh. Not a relieving sigh it was a frustrated one. He was frustrated with himself more than you. Frustrated that he pushed you away.

It only took about five more minutes before he came storming into the bedroom after you. Finding a suitcases on the bed with clothes shoved on top. His attention was pulled away as he heard the hangers shuffling around in the closet as he made his way into the room.

“Baby please stop!” He begged as he saw you going threw the clothes in your closet. Picking out witch ones you wanted. You knew you couldn’t take all of your clothes. At least not now. Not when you didn’t even know where you where going. My best guess was the parking lot of the grocery store.

“You raise the boys how you feel is fit Rafe you won’t hear me complain” you stated pushing past him as he stood in the door way of your bedroom and the closet. You shoved whatever you could find into a suitcase as Rafe continued to follow you from the bedroom to the closet begging you to stay.

“Where are you even going to go?!” He questioned his hands flying in the air with anger. He caused this he knows that but he did it for a good reason. At least it was until you started packing.

“I don’t know Rafe” you only spoke as it was the truth. You knew anywhere you went Rafe would follow. He knew your go to places. The friends you would hangout with. Where to find you if you when’s missing at the bar. He knew you all too well.

“Just please stop packing” he begged as you continued to pull more clothes out of the closet. It became very clear that you weren’t going to have enough room for all there clothes. Clothes that Rafe would buy you for your birthday or anniversary or even just a reminder that he loved you. The only way he knew how to express his live was threw money. “Y/n!!” He finally yelled as he startled you. “stop fucking packing!” His the voice was raised. High enough for the kids to hear.

“So much for the swearing rule” you grabbed the bags you packed as you made your way out the bedroom. Rafe yelled behind you as he followed you.

“Everything I do is for you!” His hands where out in the open like that was his only excuse. “I work for you for our family!”

“I never asked you to Rafe! Never have I once asked for this!” You turn back to face him. He was a lot closer than you thought making you look up at him.

“You didn’t fucking have to!” You continued to walk into the living room past the boys as you made your way to the front door. “I did this because I love you!”

“And yet you’re still complaining about this! Complaining about a decision you made” you turned your body back around as you continued to yell at him. The boys now looking at you too. As this was more interfacing then tv at the moment. It terrified the boys to see you both fight. Worried if their hands were going to be thrown as they did to each other at times.

“Im complaining because you don’t understand the language you use around these boys!” His hands went from his the sides of his head to pointing at the boys who where across from us. Your eyes look at the two young Camerons before turning to the first Cameron.

“All I do is look after them Rafe for once I just want to go out with my friends. Swear for once!” You turned back around walking to the front door. This time Rafe didn’t follow you. Whether it was frustration or irritation by your actions you didn’t know.

“I never said you couldn’t” his hands fell to his face as he rubbed his face in frustration.

“I can’t Rafe! Ever!” You turn around to face him for the last time. “Your always out! I can’t get a babysitter because you slept with every girl in OBX and you won’t let any guys around me!”

“That's because they always hit on you!” He threw his hands up.

“I’m leaving! You can find whatever whore to take my place I don’t care anymore” you finally walked out the door slamming it in the process. Rafe no far behind you as you head the door reopen.

“Y/n!” He spoke following you to your car. “Y/n! Just get back inside please!” He begged as you got into the front seat. His hands on the door forcing it to stay open. “If not for me for the boys…Please! They need you… and so do I” you just sat in the car you hand holding the keys as you looked out the windshield debating weather to go back inside or not. Debating weather you wanted to pretend this argument never happens and save it for another one in the future or to just drive away.

“Please baby!” You let out a sigh dropping your hand from the steering wheel as you got out of the car. Rafe was quick to grab you as he held you trying not to cry. “I love you so much baby” you wrapped your hands around his neck as he did his with your waist. Not wanting to let go of him. “You're such a good mom to the boys! I’m sorry for overreacting” his voice broke down as he hated how he caused this mess. Hated how one little word changed everything.

“I'm sorry too” you spoke softly hugging him tighter as you didn’t want to look him in the eyes just yet. You didn’t want to admit you were sorry to his face. It was easier this way. You both meant the apology it was just harder to say it with one another staring down at you. Wondering if they meant it. “Your right the boys learn from us they don’t need to be saying that kind of stuff”

You knew he was right from the beginning. You just hated him to be right. It made you feel weak and stupid. But watching your mouth was so important when your around young kids. Kids who love to copy what adults do. Which is why you were cautious around the boys from now on. Not just to make Rafe happy but you as well.

#rafe cameron fluff #rafe outer banks #rafe x reader #drew starkey #obx fanfiction #obx fic #obx imagine #rafe fluff #rafe obx

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the1975attheirverybest · 3 months

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Matty, ATVB, Simulacra and Simulation

responding to a question that someone asked ( which @abiiors has been kind enough to pass on to me). Here’s a brief explanation that I hope makes some kind of sense. ( please easy on my friends yall. Their blogs aren’t means of contacting me🩷)

it’s all very ✨meta✨ and ✨postmodern✨ I’m not really joking this is the kind of philosophy that Matty is referencing when he calls things “postmodern” or “meta.” So, strap in. Grab a snack or a drink or a joint.

ANYWAYS!

The relationship between art/ media, and “reality” has been a hot issue of contention for philosophy going alllllll the way back to Ancient Greece where Plato argued that artists are “liars” who “copy” reality and try to pass it off as real.

This obviously brings up questions regarding imitation, invention, recording, copying, representation, transcribing, etc etc etc.

the book that Matty is referencing Simulacra and Simulation takes up these issues in the context of our current society (postmodernist, late stage capitalist society).

The book argues that we have become sooo obsessed with media that we have replaced “real life” with it. We treat images, recordings, video, memes, etc as real as the things that they are based on (real life).

In this way, what we know now as reality is actually a simulation of reality.

According to the book, this did not happen overnight. It’s something that we moved towards over centuries. The real move likely started in the 1600s and it took until the 20th century to get us to the point where we are now.

“Simulacra” is all the excessive media that we have used to replace the real world. Signs, symbols, ads, billboards, video, sound bites, etc.

simulacra are NOT “pretending” to be real or “hiding” the truth. They have simply BECOME THE TRUTH because we treat them as true.

The book refers to this phenomenon as “hyper reality.” Like more real than the real. The thing that we started off simply recording or copying (“real life”) has turned into “less real” than thecopy of it (the video, picture, movie, insta post, etc).

The book makes a dramatic analogy of this by telling a hypothetical scenario where someone decided to make a map of a giant empire that is soooo detailed and accurate that it becomes as large as the empire itself. So people start to treated as if it ISSSS the empire. Not a map of it.

Fun fuckin fact: this book came out in the 80s lmao. So before social media. Imagine how wild it would be today?

Why is Matty referencing this book?

Well, let’s take a look at his Instagram posts (pause for a moment to consider the irony that he’s posting an Instagram story of a book about how everything is basically an Instagram story of reality. Peak Matty Healy? I think so. )

The first quote that he posted is

Simulating is not pretending: "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms.”

As I said above, simulation is not meant to “trick you” its not covering something real underneath. It IS the thing now. It’s acquired the status of being real. So, if someone goes so far as to act sick, stay in bed, make themselves sneeze, cough, stay up all night so that their eyes are red and they haven’t slept and they’re super tired, they might as well BE SICK. in fact now they AREEEE SICK they’re not pretending.

2. The second quote is

Therefore, pretending...leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the “false,the real" and the imaginary

“Pretending” would be considered lying. Like there is a truth distinct from what you are portraying and you seek to hide the truth by portraying it differently. “Simulation” however doesn’t leave any difference between what’s true and what you show publicly, the two collapse into one another.

What does this have to do with ATVB?

Well, Matty is taking us back to “If it’s method acting but what you’re acting is actually your real life then what’s acting and what’s real?” Right?

There are, of course, other ways to extend this conundrum in light of 2023. That is, what’s rhetorical difference between “Truman Black” and “Matty Healy”? What’s the difference between the public perception of Matty Healy and the “real” Matty Healy? (Is there even such a thing?) If he commits to a joke or a bit AI HARD is the “bit” even a bit anymore? If not, does it lose its effectiveness? Cuz obviously people do acts BECAUSE they’re acts. They’re not reality. Except we now live in a world where all “acts” can and are indeed real.

Furthermore: is there a difference between the first and the second halves of the show? During SATVB NA the answer was no most of the time. Because they blended the setlist. BFIAFL and greatest hits were no longer clearly separated. They played bits of both at the same time.

If all of this is true, what then does it even mean to be “sincere” or “earnest” in a world where everything has an equal degree of reality all the time?

DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE TO ANYBODY AT ALL OR AM I INSANEEEE

#matty healy #atvb #simulacra #simulation #the 1975 #atvb2024 #SATVB #ross macdonald #the 1975 satvb #george daniel #adam hann

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ynmnrmt · 3 months

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You & Me & Rhea Makes Three: Chapter 2

rhea ripley x m!reader x m!reader's girlfriend

word count: 2,629

warnings: explicit sexual content, themes of domination/submission, dubiously consensual nonmonogamy

a/n: More fun with WWE superstar Rhea Ripley and her hopelessly wet roommates. Comments and feedback welcome, fawning praise very welcome.

(Chapter one here)

You arrive home late, delayed by picking up a bundle of flowers and a bottle of Jennifer’s favourite wine, with the vague thought you can actually give her the romantic night you’d intended this time without getting distracted. When you get through the door you catch a flash of studded black leather in the corner of your eye, it’s Rhea wandering into the kitchen, and maybe it’s best she doesn’t catch you with a bag full of date-night. But then she leans on the doorway and grunts in pain-

“Rhea, are you okay?”

She jumps a little, and turns to face you, saying “Didn’t hear you come in”. You drop the bag when you see the purple bruise spreading off the corner of her eye.

“What happened?”

“It’s alright – someone at work hit me with a chair and a ladder.” You’re too outraged for words, the fury goes straight to your head before you remember what, exactly, it is that Rhea does for a living.

“I,” you chuckle at yourself, “I’m sorry, for a second there I was about to swear revenge on them.” And Rhea laughs aloud.

“You’re so sweet. No, it’s alright, I’m fine. It’s just-” She swallows casually from a bottle of pills, easy as breathing. “It’s the nature of kayfabe, it’s all fine, but there’s only so far you can pretend to be smacked with a folding chair.”

“Your poor face, though.”

Rhea laughs again, but this time it has an edge to it. “I’d forgotten about that part.” Before you can react – cry out to stop? No, surely not – she’s popped open her bodice, and you don’t even have the flush of desire that goes with a woman pointing her breasts at you, not faced with the livid purple bruise that stretches from her hip halfway up her ribcage.

“Jesus!” From the regular diamonds of unbruised skin, you figure this was the ladder.

“Don’t worry, I got them back, although,” and there’s a barely-perceptible shift in her register, a sudden slyness in the way she looks at you, “I am very sore. And it hurts to walk. Maybe you could help me shower off?” Now she’s opened her top, it hardly even seems like an odd thing to say.

“I – it’s not that I don’t want to, but, stuff like that, I wouldn’t be comfortable without Jen here,” you say, trying not to let your gaze slide down to Rhea’s chest.

“Aw, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. In fact, you saw how she was, she’d probably get off on it if she knew that we...no, you’re right, we shouldn’t. It’s nice, the way you think of her like this.”

“Right, so, unfortunately I won’t be able to help you shower off.”

“No. Sure. I think we’re in complete agreement.”

The first burst of water from the showerhead catches you full in the face, but you blink it away quickly, a significant part of you not wanting to miss a single glimpse. You rub the soap in your hands fruitlessly, and start to sweat, not wanting to look a fool in front of Rhea, but then as the water gets hotter the bubbles start to come. When you’ve worked it up into a decent lather you run it up Rhea’s torso, over her bruises, gently at first but then she puts her hand over yours and presses it down just a little more, her wince doesn’t kill the warmth.

“I was so worried, when you said – and when you showed me-” you gasp, in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the heat of the water running across you both. You’d be gaping anyway, putting your hands all over her chest. “If you quit, we’d understand. We’d take care of you.” God, where did you pull that from? It sounds too much like her little fantasy of you and Jennifer being a couple taking advantage of her.

“I had,” confesses Rhea, “thought that – I make enough money, if you guys quit your jobs then you could take care of me.” She clutches lightly at your hands as they rove around her waist. “I’m sorry, that’s just, like, some fantasy I had, the kind of thing that would never happen in real life.”

You need absolutely no prompting to kneel and start going up and down her thick, tattooed thighs. Having her standing over you, as the water trickles through the soap suds, feels faintly like it shouldn’t happen in real life either. “Well, um, you have to dream.” The feel of the muscles in her leg makes you dream right here.

“I don’t care about the other stuff, it’s just the being taken care of I’m really interested in,” muses Rhea, now running her hands through her hair. “I do feel very lucky. Having someone to wash me up...and wash me down.” And yes, your hands have slipped round the back of her legs now, you don’t grope, you don’t squeeze, but it’s impossible not to feel. She fits nicely in your hands, big and powerful back there, the way she is everywhere else, it’s so exciting you could almost forget you’re face to face with her pussy.

"Wait, Rhea," you say, quickly, to cover the fact your tongue had started to stick out all on its own. "I can't - I want to make you feel good, I want to do that for you right now, but I can't. Not without Jen, I should at least talk it over with her if we're going to do anything."

"Oh God, I'm so glad you said that," exhales Rhea, and drops down to her knees to join you. This bends your erection down when she catches it between her legs, then it pops back up to rest against the edges of her abs, for a second you feel you might come from that alone. She doesn't seem to notice or care. "This whole time, I thought I should, but I didn’t want to, but still - I couldn't do that to her, she's been so nice about all of this." And her grin returns, straight back from that expression of genuine worry and relief. "And so have you." Down here, she doesn't seem so massive. You kiss as the water streams over you.

Jennifer finally arrives as you're working the knots out of Rhea's sturdy shoulders while she lies topless on the couch, which had initially seemed like such a chaste thing compared to what you did in the shower. You leap up and take Jennifer in your arms and kiss her, half guilt, half desire. She keeps kissing after you break apart, eyes closed, lips still moving.

"I'm sorry," she says, dazed, "it's been a long day and I really just want to jump in the shower. Oh my God, Rhea, what happened?"

"Hit by a ladder," shrugs Rhea, looking up with her chin rested on her hands. "Happens all the time."

"I think I've got some pills in the bathroom."

When she leaves, Rhea says "Come on, finish me off."

"Don't say it like that," you say, mounting her again, and she gives a quiet cackle.

"You know," she adds, with a dark bloom, "you'd probably be better getting at some of the muscles from, um, the front," and before you can think she has corkscrewed her way over to lie on her back, and now she blushes up at you, breasts aimed at you again.

"I really don't think-"

"Rhea!" Jennifer's standing in the doorway.

"Yeah?" asks Rhea, in the way she might while fully clothed, without you on top of her grasping the meaty parts at the base of her neck.

"Did you use my towel?"

"No!" All girlish outrage, an obvious lie, even before Jennifer holds up her towel to show the three black stains of makeup that even damp and smeared still look like Rhea's cruel grin.

"You did! That's clearly your makeup on it, and it even smells of you, and-" To demonstrate, Jennifer actually lifts the towel to her face, over her mouth and nose, and then she goes "Oh..." through the material.

"Alright, you've got me," says Rhea. "I'm sorry I used your towel."

"And - and I don’t appreciate you showing off your tits around my boyfriend, either," insists Jennifer, outraged herself now in a fragile sort of way. "You cover up." She lays the towel across Rhea's chest in such a way that her hands are on Rhea's breasts.

"Well," breathes Rhea, her eyes flicking between you both, "full service, huh?"

"I bet you like this," Jennifer husks at you, while Rhea clasps her hands behind her head and enjoys the show. "I bet you're hard for her, I bet you're getting harder for her than you ever have for me."

"No! I-" You lie out of love for her, but there's no point even finishing the sentence when she reaches out and grabs your cock to see for herself, because pressed up against Rhea you are of course rock hard.

"Oh, come on," says Rhea, master of all she surveys as she lies beneath you both. "Don't stand there and try to pretend you're not enjoying this too."

Jennifer hangs her head. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"No, that's okay - to be honest it does add a bit of a frisson, you being all infuriated like that." And this brightens Jennifer's mood a little. "Now keep working my tits."

And she does, massaging them through the towel, the same way you go over the muscles around Rhea's shoulders, even up onto her immense biceps and triceps, the full weight of those incredible arms. Then, blushing and stammering things that were never words in the first place, Jennifer takes her hands away, and gently moves yours onto where they were.

"Could we just go to bed? Please?" she asks, lightly grasping you as you squeeze Rhea's breasts. "Would that be okay? I want to fuck, and then, then I want to sleep..."

You try not to glance down at Rhea. You try not to seek her permission. And maybe it's not her little nod that prompts you to say "Of course we could, I'd love that." And she blows you both a kiss, one each, as you leave the room.

Jennifer fumbles with your clothes, her cheeks flushed and her breaths heavy. It does things to your heart when she's like this, of course it does, same as it always did. And her soft, little body still turns you on, it still excites you to lift her bra from her chest. But now you have visions of Rhea dancing in your head, like a force of nature, irresistible.

"I love you," you promise Jennifer as you lay her down on the bed, and it's true, you do, you care for her and want her to be happy.

"It turned me on seeing you with Rhea," she confesses, vulnerable amidst the bedclothes. "I liked it."

"I would never do it, not if you weren't okay with it," you say.

"I bet you would," she fires back, and lifts her head for a badly aimed kiss that catches the corner of your mouth. You unzip your trousers and her glow of excitement grows. You lie down on top of her, and enjoy this for a moment, still in this position before you start. And then, without hearing the door, you feel weight on your back, arms like sculpted pink-marble pillars slam onto the bed on either side of you, and Jennifer's eyes turn wondrous.

"I was thinking about you two," Rhea husks, the words warm in your ear. "And I couldn't resist."

You penetrate Jennifer and when you do Rhea's hips move too, driving you forward with more force and more urgency than you could manage on your own. Jennifer squeaks and claws at the bedclothes as if she is hanging on for dear life. You pull back, drawing yourself out, and Rhea retreats too, to let you do it. But then the next bump of her hips takes you completely by surprise, and Jennifer squeaks and nearly crosses her eyes.

After a few more thrusts like this Rhea drops her weight onto you and makes Jennifer squeak again. It knocks the wind out of you but simultaneously, to be sandwiched between the two of them, it is fulfilling in a way you had never even conceived of. You keep shoving with your hips as best you can, these little movements seem pathetic and insignificant but Jennifer kisses at you with more passion than ever and tells you not to stop.

Rhea brings her arms into play, even with their mass between you and Jennifer you feel closer to her than you ever have before. One gropes at Jennifer's trembling little breasts, but the other, it reaches down and makes you nervous for where it could possibly be going, with the other she grabs your balls and starts jerking you back and forward that way as well. With three hands all over her body Jennifer pulses on your cock in a way that's unimaginably pleasurable.

You pulse back, to do anything you can to be in sync with her trapped here so helplessly, clenching tight to rush the blood in your cock and get deeper inside her. She’s losing her grip on the bedclothes, her hands flail about madly, and she bites her lip as if trying not to scream.

"Keep fucking her, make her feel good," Rhea snarls, as she rams her body up against yours, "and Jen, you take his cock like a good girl-"

"Ahhh!" Jennifer's cry is so quiet, she hardly has enough breath to give it life. But she herself jolts as if she's got a live wire in her back, and you feel her wetness all over your belly and down your legs. Rhea holds you in place as she sprays you.

Every inch of Jennifer's body still quivers when you feel yourself slip over the edge, and with your face pressed into her shoulder you try to stagger out a warning "Rhea, wait - Jen, I'm going to - please, Jen - Rhea -" Then you explode right there inside her, and the come keeps coming longer than feels possible. All your limbs stiffen with such unwilling force it even makes Rhea loosen her grip a bit.

"Ahh," she sighs, and rolls off you quite casually. "I don’t know about you guys, but I loved that."

"I did too!" Jen follows suit, gazing up at you with hooded postorgasmic eyes.

Rhea shakes her shoulder. "You should really go pee after sex."

"But, but that means you'd still be here and you'd get to snuggle up," Jennifer protests. Rhea shakes her shoulder again, in no way aggressive, in simple friendly fashion, and that's enough to make her wriggle out from under you and skip off to the bathroom.

"She did have a good idea, though," Rhea draws you in. You hang off her side, softening cock pressed to her hip, not much you can do with that. When you touch her stomach, you meet her wrist there already, and with one flash of that smile you follow it down and help her masturbate.

With your fingers entwined in hers, you rub her softest places until she starts to moan. Jennifer crawls back into bed behind you and you roll over to give her some attention, but you do not stop touching Rhea.

"I love you," you say, "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be," Jennifer whispers. Behind you Rhea grunts and gasps out her climax. "I like it when you come in me."

"Yeah," agrees Rhea, and the feeling of simply being in bed between them gives you a warm tingle.

#rhea ripley x reader #rhea ripley x you #rpf #rhea ripley fanfiction #rhea ripley smut

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buffyfan145 · 8 months

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FOF was back today with their latest season 2 "Rings of Power" scoops and we got multiple ones on Sauron and even Haladriel!!! :D I'm really excited too after seeing them but putting behind a cut for major spoilers.

So these scoops center on Sauron and who FOF is calling "the original form". However, it's actually more the Annatar form and since they don't know the name the show is using they're using that or the actor. So for this post I'm just saying Sauron or Annatar.

The first one is that Sauron goes to Eregion as Annatar and has multiple scenes with the elves especially Celebrimbor.

Second, Annatar has also shared scenes with Galadriel, Celeborn (this must be after he's been rescued), Elrond, and Selina Lo's character.

Third, Annatar has also been on the battle sets in black and gold armor. This seems to indicate that the Annatar scenes are happening in the 2nd half of season 2 and that he'll likely pretend to be fighting with them against Adar similar to what he did as Halbrand in season 1.

Fourth, there's a big, dramatic scene with Annatar/Sauron, Galadriel, and Celeborn that is said to be important. Many of us, including myself, think this is when Sauron reveals who he truly is to them and likely switches back to the Halbrand form and Charlie Vickers taking back over the role to switch sides in the battle and lead into season 3. Remember Charlie is still a series regular where this Annatar form is only a recurring guest star and most shows/movies who have a shapeshifter stick with the main form they started with, which is Charlie. We also know Charlie's filmed a lot too, especially in the first half of the season. Morfydd also said she filmed more with Charlie too. This also is likely where we get either the reveal to Celeborn that Halbrand/Sauron tried to get Galadriel to join his side and everything they went through. Unless Galadriel has told Celeborn and the others it is possible she never did. Very curious how this is going to go down.

Then finally in a reply to a fan asking if this new Annatar actor had a chemistry test with Morfydd Clark FOF said as far as they know he didn't. This is very interesting to me as Morfydd did with both Charlie and Calam Lynch and again points to Sauron switching back to Halbrand during the battle as I can't see that scene playing out without it and revealing to everyone that Annatar is Sauron/Halbrand.

So I'm even more excited to see how this all plays out.

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lunanoc · 6 months

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Hey there! Your posts about heihua and xiao hua in particular have made me curious and I've only started book 7, so I didn’t get too much og book xiao hua (I have watched all the dramas though). Would you mind talking about him (and/or them) a little more? I'd love to read that!

And if not, then I hope you still have a great day :)

hi! i'd be happy to talk more about xiao hua and hei xiazi in the books if you're interested in my take on them (which honestly thank you i'm flattered you'd want it tbh 😂) so thanks for asking (sorry in advance for how horribly long this is)

before i say anything though, a few disclaimers:

while i do like him, xiao hua is technically not my ultimate blorbo (that's wu xie) so because the brainrot is less intense i'm not gonna pretend i'm an expert on all things xiao hua compared to some other people i can think of. same goes for heihua, which is a ship i do like but more passively, so again, not enough brainrot to be a super expert

i haven't read everything they're involved in yet, so for complete transparency, i'm currently about halfway through sha hai in my chronological order read of everything, and anything after that point i've read in bits and pieces only (like various extras, bits of yucun biji etc), so i notably haven't read flowery night. as far as heihua goes, the only thing i've read where they directly interact extensively is the beginning portion of what's considered restart part 2 aka the mute village storyline, but to my knowledge they don't really interact in real time before that point or barely. so i won't be talking about flowery night or the dragon vein trilogy that takes place after restart

any quotes will be pulled from merebear's translations of the dmbj books

i won't be avoiding spoilers so spoiler warning

NOW

with that out of the way, let's talk about book xiao hua and a little about book heihua. i'll be comparing to mostly ultimate note in terms of the adaptations but i'll try not to get too much into that, so the tldr of it is just to bear in mind their dynamic and xiao hua's character in that are significantly different in some ways from how they are in the books. if you want a good drama portrayal of book xiao hua imo the best by far is lost tomb 2 xiao hua even if even he isn't 100% perfect either. anyway i'm getting off track 🏃‍♀️

since you mentioned book 7, it's worth mentioning for anyone unfamiliar with the books that canonically xiao hua shows up for the first time fairly late in the story at the start of chinese volume 7, more specifically the xinyue restaurant auction, while hei xiazi briefly features in chinese volumes 4 and 5 as part of wu sanxing's double agent team along with xiaoge, but by comparison you don't get much about him besides that he's mysterious and competent on a scale wu xie equates with xiaoge. wu xie and hei xiazi don't interact much, so he's pratically not there and leaves you wondering what relevance he has to the story, which is only ever answered come sha hai. and more importantly at that point, there's no established connection between him and xiao hua at all, which is the major difference with the drama adaptations, namely ultimate note. you do find out later, both in sha hai and a thousand faces, that they're at the very least acquainted with each other to some extent, but that's information you only get much later. so essentially any heihua content pre sha hai is necessarily canon divergence au, and yes that includes ultimate note

xiao hua as a character then. it's interesting to note that he's fascinating in how eeriely similar he ends up being to hei xiazi in some respects, namely in how they operate, which is why i feel they get along as well as they do, but let's look at him independently first because there's a lot to say about him.

keeping in mind that the books are all, exceptions aside, from wu xie's perspective, xiao hua isn't named until fairly late into book 7. they meet by chance as they cross paths in xinyue restaurant, but he doesn't introduce himself to wu xie who calls him Pink Shirt until you reach a much later portion of the book that's never been adapted simply because ultimate note changed the story too significantly by introducing him early to keep that entire bit, which is terrible in some ways because it's such a fun scene, but we'll get to that later. in the meantime, here's xiao hua's first appearence, which establishes through frequent paralleled behavior that the reader is meant to preceive some degree of similarity between wu xie and xiao hua as well, which i'll also get to later:

Just as I was about to speak, the man saw Poker-face behind me and his face instantly changed. I thought he knew Poker-Face, but when I was about to start asking questions, I saw a man come out from behind Poker-Face. He must have followed us in. The man was dressed in a black suit with a pink shirt underneath and no tie. He was very relaxed. The man went up immediately and asked, “Young Master, the usual?” The man didn’t speak, but looked at me and stopped. I suddenly felt that he was a little familiar. I lived in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, so I honestly didn’t have a lot of chances to meet acquaintances in Beijing. At this moment, my mind was stuck, and I couldn’t remember who this man was, but I smiled reflexively. The man had obviously stopped like me, and was looking at me with a very surprised and puzzled expression on his face before he also smiled. (...) The both of us smiled pervertedly at each other for a long time, but neither recognized the other. Honestly, when I looked at him, I felt as if I had seen him somewhere before. But on closer reflection, that was all it was. I simply felt that he was familiar. (...) The two of us shared a look, but we really couldn’t remember, and were both a little embarrassed. The old fellow with glasses was amused. These old Beijingers were slick and had seen all kinds of things. He gave us a roundabout: “Do the two young masters know each other? Let’s not stand here blocking the elevator door. When you meet someone you know, you’ll remember.” As he said this, he invited the other party in. Pink Shirt shook his head as if it was inconceivable, looked at me thoughtfully, and then turned and walked into the inner hall. He had only taken a few steps when he looked back at me again. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 6 'Auction' & 7 'Auction Part II'

much like hei xiazi, xiao hua is established as mysterious and somewhat unfathomable in a way that niggles at wu xie who can't remember why it is he recongnizes this man he to all intents and purposes should never have met given they don't run in the same circles and live in areas quite far apart. he takes note of how apparently disinterested he is when he notices that xiao hua is sitting across the iron triangle on the upper floor of the auction house, seemingly on his phone utterly bored out of his mind or acting like he's above what's happening really:

I looked carefully and saw Pink Shirt in a box on the left side opposite us. It seemed that he was alone and playing on his cell-phone. (...) Basically, it seemed like this was the only item being sold today, so all these people had come prepared to win. Thinking that, I looked at Pink Shirt, who wasn’t far away. He was no longer playing with his phone, but arrogantly sitting on a western-style sofa, and staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 8 'Feast for Collectors', 9 'Memories Part I

but of course he's very much paying attention, as pangzi points out:

He took no notice at all, and simply wiped it with his hand and continued: “It’s time for a break, and when the second half comes, I bet another two million gets added. Goddamn it, this Fat Master has learned a lot today.” (...) He pointed to Pink Shirt again. “This guy is also very good. He’s been playing with his phone the whole time and hasn’t even raised his head. He rang the last bell just before the break. It seems he’s determined to win and doesn’t even want to compete. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 11 'Lighting the Sky Lantern'

and this is where we come back to how in some aspects he and hei xiazi are actually quite similar in their approach, in a way that's markedly different from how ultimate note sets out to contrast them almost glaringly. both he and xiao hua cultivate a persona of nonchalence with a devil may care attitude, but behind the false ease and approchability, there's a calculating and efficient mind aware of its surroundings at all times. in a similar way, very quickly you also realize that xiao hua, far from the prim and proper young master he's presented as in ultimate note, is quite literally just as unhinged.

from the moment xiaoge jumps into action to fight the restaurant security staff for the qilin seal, xiao hua jumps to fight him too, except contrary to ultimate note, this isn't in an effort to save face and throw huo xiangu off because he's working with wu xie, and again, he shows himself to be calculating and cautious:

Between one thought and the next, Poker-face flashed like lightning from my side and jumped straight down from the second-floor balcony. His behavior left me stunned, and screams could be heard everywhere. I saw him make it to the ground and turn over swiftly before I heard another round of exclamations. I turned to look and saw Pink Shirt had one hand holding the railing of the gallery, while the other hand was in his pocket. He also jumped down and landed in front of Poker-face. On the other side, Fatty gave a loud roar, grabbed a stool, kicked down the screen, and rushed at the hotel staff who rushed in. The scene was a complete mess. (...) A man who rushed up was knocked down by Poker-face, and Pink Shirt was protecting the front of the glass cabinet. The two men looked at each other but hadn't yet come to blows. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 11 'Lighting the Sky Lantern', 12 'Wreaking Havoc in Heaven'

until wu xie finally manages to get downstairs with pangzi, at which point he finds xiao hua, ass handed to him by xiaoge because it's xiaoge, but instead of angry or surprised or any number of appropriate reactions at being beaten up, the maniac is smiling gleefully. and wu xie understandably thinks it's really fcking weird:

When I came downstairs, the glass cabinet with the seal had been broken and the thing inside had been taken out. Poker-face was looking at the seal carefully and had no intention of leaving. Pink Shirt was getting up from the ground, clutching his neck and coughing. It appeared he had already been beaten once. When we walked past him, however, we saw him coughing, smiling, and looking at us as if he were very happy. I went up to the stage and told Poker- face to take the seal and get away quickly. As soon as I turned around, I saw Pink Shirt approach me and say, “Hey, Brother.” Fatty and I looked at him. Fatty lifted the table and Pink Shirt immediately waved, “Wait, wait!” He took a business card from his pocket, handed it to us, and pointed to the imperial seal. “I won’t stop you. Here’s my contact information. When you want to sell the stolen goods, call me.” Damn it, I said to myself, definitely not a serious person. Fatty actually went up and took the business card, and Pink Shirt made a gesture of invitation. I was so anxious that I pushed them aside and rushed out. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 13 'Huo Xiuxiu'

it's at this point we also get introduced to huo xiuxiu (best girl who i could also talk tbh) who's also an absolute gremlin who teams up with xiao hua partly at huo xiangu's behest to test the iron triangle. which is where get into the entire portion of book that couldn't be adapted, and is the part the ultimate note actually changed significantly, because the iron triangle aren't on the run from huo xiangu, she's the one sheltering them. and so xiao hua's real introduction comes in the form of an elaborate scheme between him, huo xiuxiu, and huo xiangu wherein he disguises himself as huo xiuxiu thanks to the bone-shrinking technique, so successfully even xiaoge doesn't detect it until all three of them clue into something being very wrong, at which point he attacks them, gets his ass handed to him by xiaoge again, and once again finds it hilarious and the challenge has made him want xiaoge around clearly:

He staggered but didn’t fall to the ground. At the same time, I suddenly saw him pull a strange dagger from his sleeve, which seemed to be an antique. Holding it in a reverse grip, he rushed towards Poker-face. I immediately shouted “Be careful!” only to see that Poker-face was no longer in his original position. At the same time, a lightning-quick shadow flashed through the air and instantly knocked the man out with his knee. (...) I knew that the real malicious one was this guy, so I didn’t feel an ounce of pity for him as I helped Poker-face subdue him first. When “Xiuxiu” got up from the ground, his whole body suddenly stretched out in a strange posture. He suddenly got bigger, his shoulders widened, his height increased, and the mask was torn from his face. When I looked at him, I immediately recognized Pink Shirt. He was gasping as he laughed: “It hurts way more getting hit when shrunk to that size. No joke.” (...) Pink Shirt rubbed his joints, smiled, and then came up to me and patted me on the shoulder. He turned and nodded to Granny Huo: “Yes, you have a good eye.” Then he pointed to Poker-face and said, “This guy belongs to me." — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 30 'Get Down to Business'

so essentially, all this was a very long-winded way of showing that xiao hua, before we even know his name and identity, is established as unpredictable, ruthless, calculating, faux insouciant, and a particular flavor of playful that wu xie clearly finds unhinged and is extremely put off by for a hot minute, mostly because he's not aware (not is the reader at this point) that xiao hua's entire life has forged him into finding amusement and challenge in unorthodox things.

in the same way, it's directly because of this that contrary to ultimate note (and even any of the other early dramas like lost tomb 2) he's also absolutely not immediately ride or die for wu xie despite knowing very well they're childhood friends. he abandons wu xie, who as per his assessment was in all likelihood dead or dying, to secure his own escape before coming back to find him, which is the point where wu xie finally realizes the single greatest point of divergence between them. up until then, both wu xie and the narrative make a point of establishing parallels between wu xie and xiao hua, and here finally, what divides them is made clear, and the narrative establishes them as two sides of the same coin separated by this one split in personal code of ethics:

He apparently didn’t rush to check on my situation after I fell into a coma, but continued to climb inside instead. He reached the end of the crevice, completed his task, and then came out to see if I was dead or not. I couldn’t help but feel a little upset. I didn’t know whether this could be considered a ruthless or firm mentality, but he obviously didn’t feel burdened by it. I had finally found a difference between the two of us. But since I didn’t have the physical strength and didn’t want to break our tacit understanding, I didn’t bother expressing this emotion. I knew that when it came to this industry, the habit of desperately rescuing your companions didn’t exist. There seemed to be a kind of prior agreement where two people decided to save themselves if both parties were in danger. It was actually very fair if you thought about it. It was true that Xiao Hua was uncertain about my situation at the time, and even I would hesitate to go back and rescue someone if I were him. I couldn’t help thinking of Fatty and Poker-face again. If they were here, the black-haired corpse would’ve had his head cut off before he could scratch my back. Or I would have seen Fatty rush out from those pottery jars and screw everything up. But I would have been saved. At that moment, I felt an extreme sense of insecurity, more than I had felt before. Although we were three people now, I was really only responsible for myself. It was a very disconcerting thought. At the same time, I suddenly understood why Xiao Hua hadn’t been grateful but angry at me for going into the cave to save him. He was used to solving his problems by himself. Before he did these kinds of things, he had already accepted that there wouldn’t be any backup or help. He wouldn’t blame anyone for his own death, nor would he blame himself for others’ death. Was this the Mystic Nine’s mindset? I felt a chill in my heart. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 53 'Snake Bite'

and to be clear, this doesn't mean xiao hua is a bad person, nor does the narrative present him as one. it's simply the point where both wu xie and xiao hua diverge clearly when up until then they'd been presented as eerily paralleled. the difference between lies in where this mentality and stance is one that will eventually cause wu xie much grief and trauma when he's forced to adopt it during sha hai, it's simply one that xiao hua adopted too long ago to function without, and has stopped dwelling on if he ever did. similarly, xiao hua takes even longer to finally look at wu xie and see his use and welcome his presence genuinely, where before he'd still been cultivating the same easily approchable persona, though wu xie poked several holes into it before then:

Xiao Hua gave me a meaningful smile, “I found another reason why Granny Huo asked me to bring you. To some extent, you’re also a knowledgeable little shit.” I grinned, thinking that these words made it sound like he didn’t want me to be here before. — Daomu Biji Volume 7, ch. 55 'Unlock the Password'

from there, once xiao hua begins to truly open up to wu xie as a friend rather than a burden he's been forced into babysitting, he very quickly picks up on their similarities and what divides them as well, and in a show of almost uncharacteristic mercy, tries to spare wu xie from the ruthlessness he's accustomed to adopting to an extent when wu xie is forced to impersonate wu sanxing and confront just how ugly and lawless the underground business is. it's why this particular scene with panzi is incredibly touching in that despite confronting him with the responsability behind his choices, he spares wu xie from having to have literal blood on his hands, and in that way spares the version of himself he could have been had life not twisted him the way it has:

“Tonight is the key,” Xiao Hua said. “We just need a person to ‘cash’ in on our ‘achievement.’ Pan Zi has to come forward to determine how many people are on our side. Then, Wang Ba Qiu and Lao Liu will be eliminated later tonight.” I was completely shocked, “What do you mean?” “Never put something off until tomorrow. This is Master Three’s rule and Wang Ba Qiu knows it very well. He won’t wait for death.” As Xiao Hua spoke, he looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain blood tonight.” I gave him a surprised look, “You can say such terrible words without batting an eye. How do you do it?” Xiao Hua smiled, “My grandfather said that sentence, and my mother relayed it to me. I was only seventeen when I heard those words.” As he said this, he sighed, “Stress is the kind of thing that when you talk about it, it’s gone.” I frowned and felt a sudden burst of fear in my heart. I never thought this kind of thing would happen again. “Must it happen like this?” I asked him. “Why don’t we call the police anonymously and have them kill him?” “Mr. Naïve is a fitting nickname,” Xiao Hua said. “If I were your Uncle Three, I might have found a way to keep you naïve, but I’m not. Little Master Three, let’s face reality. This was your choice.” I was silent as I looked at Changsha passing by outside the car window. I remembered that Pan Zi had said something similar to me before. Indeed, this was my choice. (...) While we ate, I asked Xiao Hua when the evening’s events would begin. He merely smiled without saying a word and kept making me drink. It was a kind of wine I couldn’t identify by taste, but I suspected it was mung bean roast, which was the kind of beverage grave robbers used to drink. Not only did it have some crystallized sugar and medicinal ingredients in it, but it had a spicy flavor and tasted like mung bean soup. After only a few drinks, I got drunk without warning and didn’t even notice when I became muddle-headed. When I woke up, it was already the next morning. Xiao Hua and Pan Zi were lying on the sofa in my room, both covered in blood and sleeping soundly. I looked out the window at the bright sunshine and knew that everything was over. — Daomu Biji Volume 8 Part I, ch. 10 'End of the Act'

looking at all this (and this is is my purely my own opinion, so take it with a grain of salt), my main issue with ultimate note xiao hua (and heihua by extension which i'll get into briefly) is that he's not only in some aspects a little to a lot OOC, he's mostly a lot more one-dimensional where book xiao hua is anything but

as far as heihua as a ship goes, they don't actually interact much if at all until much later in canon, even if you interestingly discover in sha hai that it's implied that hei xiazi is working with wu xie on the sha hai project at xiao hua's behest, and that much of his trust in wu xie and his plan stems from xiao hua's trust in wu xie:

It was really a heavy loss. Why did he encounter such tragic consequences every time he tried to emulate Lei Feng67 and do good deeds, while doing unethical things often made him a lot more money? Was he being cheated by partnering up with Xie Yuchen and Wu Xie? He found it very interesting. He seldom completely ignored the details and promised others he’d do something. If he was part of a certain plan, then he had to know every aspect very well— not only his part but the others’ parts as well This was the only time he was doing something he knew almost nothing about, and the only reason was: “You just have to trust him.” He hoped doing this wasn’t a stupid decision. If this thing failed, then he would blacken the Wu family’s and Xie Yuchen’s credit himself. — Sand Sea Part III, ch. 117 'Fleeing Cockroaches'

there's also a fun bit in part I where hei xiazi, before disappearing to retrieve wu xie and wang meng from beneath the sand in gutongjing, leaves li cu with a backpack and a phone with one number he tells him to call for help, and once li cu actually calls it, you understand it's xiao hua on the other end who's entirely nonchalent about it:

Li Cu trembled as he picked up the phone, pressed the call button on reflex, and put it by his ear. After a while, he heard a voice from the other side say: “Who is it? Who called me just now?” “Well…I’m a messenger.” Li Cu said incoherently. “Someone asked me to give you a message.” He thought that after hearing this, the other party would reply to him and say “talk” or “wait a minute, I’ll find a quiet place” in a very low, solemn voice, but the other party said indifferently: “I’m a little busy now, can you call me back in thirty minutes?” Li Cu paused for a moment and thought, you’re even giving me orders now, before he said, “But this message is very important.” “My business is also quite important. If he’s really in such a hurry, why not come to me instead of asking you to call and give me a message?” The other party continued, “I’ll talk to you in thirty minutes. It’s okay if you don’t call.” At this point, the man hung up. — Sand Sea Part I, ch. 40 'Unique Number'

and it's arguable that much of the vagueness stems from the very real necessity of secrecy that the whole sha hai plan demands, but while much of this reads as "oh? he's inconvenienced? that's too bad, also i'm busy at the moment please call back at a better time", given how his character has been established before, it's safe to say this isn't the genuine annoyance and exasperation you get from him in ultimate note wherever hei xiazi is concerned, he's far too enticed by chaos as a form of vaguely perverse amusement. it reads far more (again in my opinion) as how much of heihua's dynamic that i've seen play out in the books goes, that is to say them prodding at each other in a giant mutual game of chicken where they're both grinning inwardly or outwardly like the gremlin trashmen they are

the entire premise of restart part 2 is the iron triangle and the baby triangle needling xiao hua into gossiping about hei xiazi because he's late to their get together, to which he happily complies because oh boy that's this week's chance at getting a tally on the prod sheet.

i'm not entirely sure this is coherent or at all what you were looking for, and is definitely way too long woops, but uh. that's my xiao hua/heihua word vomit? i guess? book xiao hua and/or heihua enthusiasts are very welcome to add onto or debate any of this, i leave the rest to the real experts 😂

#how is it that the first meta i write is for xiao hua #and heihua #when neither are my brainrot blorbos #i clearly need to do this for pingxie #or general lore #or wu xie #or xiaoge #but those would be actual books atp #please send help #meta #xie yuchen #heihua #dmbj #dmbj meta

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