#but yes like it doesn’t mean you can ignore flaws or that the relationship still doesn’t need work to be beautiful

[thornpixie]

I am Team Jeremiah, but that doesn’t mean I hate Conrad. However, I find it very hard to feel any sympathy for him: an essay.

I truly hope Conrad finds happiness. I just don’t think he and Belly are right for each other. And no, I haven’t read the books (you can read my feelings on that argument in another post I’ve done lol), so I’m just going off the show.

I am Team Jeremiah, I make no secret of it. But that’s because he is just the better choice for Belly. Not because he is better than Conrad, full stop. They both have their flaws. Should Jeremiah have made out with his brothers ex girlfriend like that, without at least talking to him first? Hell no. But come on - the guy tried to resist. He tried so hard. Belly kept pushing. And let’s remember what Conrad said to Belly at the start of the season after they kissed - ‘Do you want to be with him?’ ‘Being with you is all I’ve ever wanted.’ ‘Okay so be with me then.’

Belly choosing Conrad over Jeremiah was all that mattered back then, not how it affected anyone else, even though she was quasi-dating his brother for most of the summer. He didn’t give a fuck about Jeremiah and if it wasn’t for Belly saying no, he would have flaunted her immediately, even knowing she had kissed Jere a few times. When he asked Jeremiah for his blessing, I don’t believe he did that for any other reason than Belly would continue to distance herself from him until she believed Jere was over it. Conrad did not go to Jeremiah to make sure he truly was okay. He was ticking a box for Belly. Jeremiah was quite obviously not okay with it but Conrad chose to ignore that because he wanted Belly. We saw that in what he told Belly about it afterwards. He took the parts of the conversation that suited his narrative and the outcome he wanted, and he ran with it. And it worked. Jeremiah got hurt, and Conrad didn’t care, because he had Belly.

Their relationship wasn’t this epic love story. I still don’t understand where it came from. I understand Belly’s crush. But when and how and why did Conrad start loving her? The writers of the show seemed to just say ‘he just does’ and we are supposed to say ‘okay yeah sound makes sense.’ I just don’t understand the timeline. Besides that though… Look, I understand and empathise with the fact that his mom was dying while they were dating, and that he was struggling with his mental health. It was a lot for an 18 year old to deal with. (Of course, Jeremiah was dealing with it, too, but Conrad stans conveniently forget that). But Belly suffered in that relationship because of it, and no one should have to do that. To me, it seemed like she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for him to pull away. Scared. Maybe Conrad wasn’t going to break up with her at prom, and she jumped the gun, but it says a lot about how she was feeling that she immediately assumed that. A relationship shouldn’t be like that.

Jeremiah, though… from day one he was open and honest with her. He asked her straight up if she could ever love him like she did Conrad and she said YES. Belly said herself - Jeremiah is always there when she needs him. That’s what you need in a life partner. And fuck me, the passion they have. A perfect blend of supportive and passionate. Tie that man DOWN. He is supportive, he defends her, he speaks his mind, he is honest and reliable (the only time we saw him ‘let her down’ in any way was when he missed the dance at the Deb Ball and jeez, he had a damn good reason so no one can blame him). He makes her laugh. They can have fun together, but can also have the serious conversations. I married my best friend and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s honestly amazing to know you have that person who truly sees you, loves and supports you. Who is your comfort. Jeremiah is that for Belly. Honestly, I could go on and on about how Jeremiah is the perfect match for her - and the chemistry between Gavin and Lola definitely adds to it, but it isn’t the only factor - but everyone has probably given up reading by now…

Both boys have been dealt a shit hand, losing their mother. Both boys have made mistakes and have flaws. But they both have incredibly good qualities, too. Personally, I just think that Jeremiah is more suited to Belly, and they will have a happy, healthy relationship.

Also, the way she kissed him back in that episode… I’m sorry but there’s no way she’s not jumping his bones when they start officially dating. It wouldn’t make sense to me. She was smiling against his mouth and knotting her fingers in his hair, and it was ‘Wattpad level hot’, as Taylor would say. Considering she’s already done the deed, I can’t see any logical way for the writers to incorporate a ‘no intimacy’ storyline for them. Especially after that scene in particular, but also their first kiss in the pool back in season one, and the booby fondling in the car - WHERE BELLY STRAIGHT UP SAID SHE WAS NOT NERVOUS BECAUSE IT WAS JEREMIAH. Sorry, but let’s be real - there’s not a chance in hell those two are not banging the brains out of each other. And good on them. So I hope that is a change made to the books. Furthermore, show-Jeremiah cheating? I cannot see it happening. I really really hope it doesn’t.

IF Bonrad must be endgame, then please, Jenny Han, I beg of you to right your wrongs and not assassinate Jeremiah’s character to reach that ending. There are better ways to do it. But I maintain that the better choice for Belly is Jeremiah. And Conrad should meet someone new who is more emotionally mature and able to deal with his very obvious mental health problems. Someone he feels he can open up to about them. Because, as a sufferer myself, you need that support. Belly doesn’t provide that for Conrad and, as a result, Conrad doesn’t give Belly what she needs either.

One last parting thought - what the fuck happened to Jeremiah and Steven’s friendship? Jeremiah told Steven how much he cared for Belly in season one. Why did literally no one listen to him? And how did no one see it in the way his entire personality seemed to shift in season two. He’s lost his sparkle. YES most of that is because of his mom, but is everyone really that blind to him? No one notices that poor guy. He’s completely overshadowed by Conrad in every aspect. Everyone just expects Jeremiah to roll over and let everyone else have their happy ending while he gets trampled on because he’ll ‘just get over it’. Come on. WRITERS - DO BETTER. There is too much phenomenal acting talent in this show to let bad writing and tropes ruin it.

In conclusion, I haven’t written this much on one topic since I did my degree and I am obsessed with this show. Goodbye.

#belly conklin #jeremiah fisher #the summer i turned pretty #tsitp #belly x jeremiah #tsitp conrad #conrad fisher #team jeremiah #j

[that-ari-blogger]

The Cooler She-Ra (Huntara)

Let me clear something up.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power doesn't get good, and it doesn't go places. It is good, and it has been in those places since day one. The first story discusses the cost of war with considerable nuance, lest we forget. Yes, the quality of the writing, animation, and debatably the acting increases as the series goes on as the crew finds their feet. But the themes of this series are explicit from the jump and do not change. 

Reading that back, that was a bit more confrontational than I intended, so let me try and phrase it a different way.

For a lot of episodic stories, good and bad, the overwhelming vibe is of acceleration. The themes start out slow, then get piled in over time. Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, for example, starts with the basic idea of friendship and secrecy, but matures to discussion of family, history, and legacy over time. This isn’t a flaw with the writing of Mystery Inc. at all, it’s just a way of writing.

Watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is like being in a single roomed house with a few small windows. You can see the outside world and the story through those windows, its clear enough to know there’s something interesting, but you can’t see the whole thing.

Then in season three, the walls start falling down and you start to realise where you have been the whole time.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power)

I’m going to start with something small that isn’t particularly related to the rest of the post, but I think it’s of equal importance and can’t be ignored. Huntara is gay.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it kinda reframes the rest of the series. Because up until this point, the queer coding we have seen has been a few background characters, and Spinnarella and Netossa, who have an implied relationship.

That’s just what it is, coding. They are coded together, but it isn’t dwelled upon. If it had only been season one that got made, I guarantee you there would be eejits online who would argue that they were platonic friends.

But Huntara explicitly flirts with another woman in a bar. This is a named character, who is casually queer, and that is what sets the precedent retroactively. Now it can no-longer be argued that this series isn’t interested in showing queer stories. Now Spinnerella and Netossa’s relationship is essentially confirmed, as the series has made itself and its stance abundantly clear. This is a show with queer people, it isn’t subtext, and it hasn’t been subtext this whole time.

Let me be clear, I am not arguing that Spinnarella and Netossa aren’t married in the first season at all. They are together, end of argument. But on a literary level, it is coding in that season, and it stops being coding retroactively.

The reason for the coding angle is actually linked to the casualness of Huntara’s sexuality.

Unfortunately, in popular culture and mainstream storytelling, the idea that a character is straight unless proven otherwise is a general attitude. This often means that a queer character isn’t queer unless proven so.

But Huntara establishes a different precedent, casualness. Huntara is just gay, there is no fanfare about it. The episode doesn’t dwell on it. But at the same time, it’s undeniable. This is a series where people are just queer, there doesn’t need to be confirmation, you can assume.

Anyway, Huntara, the episode, is still early on in season two, so it is still setting up what ideas the series will focus on. I mentioned earlier that the series as a whole has themes that it has been discussing from the get go, and I stick by that, but every season and every episode has to zero in on something (with exceptions) for clarity’s sake. In this case, Huntara centres around the idea of revelations, hence this post. Nothing in this episode is what it seems.

Worldbuilding is a key storytelling concept that is rarely dwelled upon except by Game Masters for TTRPGs, and Necrit. But it’s actually one of the most important elements of any work of fiction. Stories are based around vibes, and the easiest and most effective way to set up a specific feeling is to evoke that through the setting.

For a few key examples, Bloodborne is a story about injustice, horror, and monsters hiding in plain sight, so what better place to put it than the false civility of Victorian London? Similarly, The Magnus Archives is a story about injustice, horror, and monsters hiding in plain sight, so it is set in modern London. As a contrasting example, Robert Galbraith’s series, “Harold Pots and the Magicky Magic Stuff”, is about how the status quo is fine, actually, and that any attempts to change that is tantamount to murder, so it is set in a British boarding school. I disagree with the premise of one of these stories, can you tell which one?

The Crimson Wastes is an area where nothing is what it seems and everything wants to kill you. The ground could easily be quicksand, or deadly bushes, or a pile of snakes.

The opening scene is a phenomenal way of establishing the new territory. Not the dialogue, but what it shows you. Enormous skeletons of creatures that couldn’t handle the environment litter the ground, fossils that stand as a testament to life that had to adapt to survive

A bird drifts past the characters, landing on a plant. It’s peaceful. Then the bird literally iced, and falls from view, leaving the camera to focus only on the plant itself and all of that terrifying glory. This is telling you a few things. One, look twice at things before jumping in, not everything is as it seems. Two, this story is dangerous, and not even a cute little bird is safe from death. Three, nature and magic are one and the same. I wonder what that will mean going forward.

Also, there is a reason that the Horde hasn’t managed to conquer this area. I think praise needs to be given to the sound design of this episode. The scratching noise that accompanies the skeleton is unsettling, and it exists to make you remember that image. This area is dangerous in a different way to anything you have seen before. Not even the villains of this story can reach you here.

However, there is humanoid life here, which comes back to the theme of revelations and things not being what they seem. Making a living in the Wastes is possible, and that bar being literally inside an enormous skeleton is about as blunt of a metaphor as you are going to get. Surrounded by death, there is life.

Enter Huntara’s eponym, and let's take her apart, starting with her character design.

Huntara is practical, first and foremost. She carries a weapon that can double as a stick to poke things with from a distance (remember this), in case they turn out to be dangerous. She is dressed in simple clothes, not too heavy as to cause her to overheat, but enough to protect her from the sun. She is partially armoured (remember this too), and wears the exact same shoes as Adora, hinting at her background, although she has reinforced and repaired them, again, she’s practical.

But there are two things that I’m missing, and they are the two most obvious things about her. She’s built like a brick privvy, and she’s cool as all hell.

The coolness thing is partly based on her sense of self image. This is someone with a distinct sense of style, utilitarian as it may be. She has styled her hair, wears clawed earrings, and has that tattoo across her head, as well as the torn crop top. Despite her surroundings, Huntara has taken effort to make herself look good. She’s confident in herself.

The strength thing, on top of being the other seventy percent of her coolness factor, leads me into something weird about her design: she looks like Adora. Bear with me on this one.

This isn’t exact. Don’t get me wrong, the designs aren’t a one-to-one thing. Her design just has the same energy as Adora’s. The short jacket, with its jagged collar, kinda matches Adora’s jacket. But where Huntara’s is open (remember this too), showing off her strength and confidence, Adora’s is closed in, restricting her and keeping her polished and refined. I mean “polished and refined” here in less of a mark of quality, but more in the sense that she has a lot holding her back and holding her down. 

Similarly, Adora has those shoulder pauldrons, making herself look bigger, like a prey animal with false eyes. But Huntara has boxy shoulders that form a shape language, as she has actually developed the defences Adora pretends to have. In that way, she acts as a more completed version of Adora, which is interesting.

Finally, there is that hair, which is put up in a similar way to Adora’s, not the same, but alike enough to make the silhouettes echo. The shot below is about as much proof I have for this crackpot theory.

But she’s not exactly a good role model, is she? She’s duplicitous, which harks back to those ideas of revelations and second glances that I mentioned earlier. But she’s also standoffish, at which point I will bring back those elements of her design I said to remember, the spear, the partial armour, and the open jacket.

Huntara isn’t emotionally healthy, she has just dealt with PTSD in a different way to Adora, she has run. She has adapted to keeping things at a distance, and not letting people get close, exemplified by the polearm that doubles as a long range weapon. She is also terrifying, which also helps her stay isolated.

This all covers up for the fact that she has very few emotional defences. She is only partially armoured, and despite her best efforts, she has nothing protecting her heart. Adora brings up something that is a little too close to Huntara for comfort, then asks her about it, and her only reaction is to make a threat.

She does this twice in this episode. She feels emotionally vulnerable, and immediately pins the cause of that vulnerability to the closest wall. It's as if it's a stock reaction.

“Huntara doesn’t run from anything. I want to be here.”

I call bollocks on that. It’s a mantra, a myth, not an actual response. It’s like saying “haven’t you heard the legend”. But I actually want to talk about the vernacular a bit here.

The second sentence is reminiscent of a character not yet mentioned in this episode. She has intellectually acknowledged that things are bad, but she has convinced herself, emotionally, that this is where she wants to be. She wants this, this is her life, she cannot be out of control. Similarly, if things go wrong, it’s what she deserves, because she wanted this. If the phrasing of that and the need for a feeling of control doesn’t sound exactly like Catra, I don’t know what does.

On a different note, the third person thing isn’t done by many other people in this series, but isn’t it a funny coincidence that two of the people who do it are in the same place at the same time? Who could have foreseen this?

Putting it mildly, Adora, throughout the series, has an identity crisis going on. She cannot decide if she is Adora or She-Ra, and it leads into a true Jeckyl and Hyde plot that I discussed in more detail in this post, which manifests most acutely as her referring to herself in third person. When she is most powerful, she is She-Ra, and Adora is a different person. But when she is feeling weak, she is Adora, and She-Ra will save her.

Although, in another weird twist of fate, Huntara knows more about She-Ra than anyone else besides Razz and Light Hope, because she has heard of the legends and has studied what Mara left behind, she gives us a summary of what this whole She-Ra thing is, through all the biases of Adora and Mara. So don’t think this line escaped me:

“She-Ra is a person?”

From everything that Huntara has seen and heard, nothing has told her that She-Ra is an individual. Instead, it's a thing to be revered, a concept rather than an identity and this is… correct?

She-Ra isn’t another person who Adora becomes, it isn’t an identity for Adora to assume, its something to be, like a hero, or a friend. It’s a facet of Adora, rather than her whole being. But Adora can’t see that, because of the aforementioned identity crisis.

I mentioned in my last post that season three gets as close as this series gets to evading the tragic format without actually breaking free, and I think that the talk of identity is a good place to explain where Adora fits into this.

Adora’s tragic flaw is also her greatest strength. She thinks incredibly quickly. This makes her a phenomenal tactician in the short term but causes her to be incredibly shortsighted. This is in contrast to Catra, who is always about ten steps ahead of everyone, ut can’t see the forest for the trees most of the time.

So, Adora internalises things quickly, and a majour side effect of this is that she doesn’t always complete things rationally. Her identity problem isn’t so much this incarnate as just this problem exactly.

She has been given a magic sword and told a bunch of things about it, and she has taken that at face value and moved on, internalising this in a way that isn’t accurate. She is She-Ra, but that doesn’t remove everything else about her.

Adora has been tossing up the idea of giving up her past and embracing this new identity that she has been given, and season three presents her moving away from that idea. Huntara is an example of that extreme, and it isn’t enviable.

But at the end of the season… well, you will just have to wait for more of my blog to see how that works out.

Or you could just watch the show.

Lastly, I would like to talk about Hordack and Entrapta, because their scenes in this episode are both really cute and really thematic.

The reveal of Hordack’s frailty plays into that idea of revelations that I have been talking about, but it also plays into his and Entrapta’s themes of failure and self worth and sets up those themes in Horde Prime.

Stylisation is something that this series plays around with a lot when it comes to backstories and asides (I conveniently have a post talking about this idea in detail), and that comes back for Hordack’s flashback.

This is simple, incredibly so. There are simple shapes, and very few colours on display. It is flat, but in a way that is very clearly intentional. Hordak has an extremely simple worldview. He isn’t a two dimensional character, but like Glimmer, he sees the world in an overly reductive way.

The colouration also sets Horde Prime out from the rest of the scene here, holding him up on a pedestal. Hordak and everything around him is a shade of red, orange, or yellow. It’s warm in tone, but also blends together with the purple to make Hordak look at home, and one with his surroundings. But Horde Prime stands out, and the eye of the viewer is drawn to him because of that abrasive green. He is at the centre of Hordak’s mind.

The flashback does this multiple times, using that green like a highlighter to focus the viewer's eye on the most important part of the image.

Also, this looks like a political poster, doesn’t it? It’s propaganda, and Hordak has taken it, hook line and sinker. That actually serves to explain the flat stylisation, it’s conveying simple ideas. Horde Prime doesn’t get any detail to what he actually looks like other than “he probably looks like Hordak” and “he’s got a cape and that collar thing”. This is the idea of Horde Prime, not the actual guy. We are looking at the pedestal this character stands upon, rather than the character itself.

That collar thing is actually a neat little character design element that is reflected in Hordak until this episode. Entrapta replaces it with her armour, and I think its important that Entrapta and Horde Prime are immediately presented as opposites.

The literal only thing we learn about Horde Prime’s personality in this episode is that he doesn’t particularly like individuality. Failure, defects, and deviations are all worthy of being killed for. You have to prove your worth, instead of it being assumed. And even then, I am inclined to doubt whether Hordak will be able to prove himself, no matter what he does.

Entrapta is villainous, kinda. She is aligned with a machine of war and death, which isn’t the most ethically sound of activities. But, she opposes the main villain of this story on principle.

“Everybody needs help sometimes. And you shouldn't be upset that you're not perfect. Take Emily! Her programming is glitchy, the left leg sticks, and she's loud. Emily's got quirks, but that's why I like her. Imperfection is what makes scientific experimentation possible. Imperfection is beautiful. At least to me. … And you're really too obsessed with this whole failure thing, I mean, I'm a failure... I don't fit in. I became friends with Adora, but she abandoned me. Then, I became friends with Catra, but she doesn't talk to me anymore. But that doesn't mean I give up. I scrounged up a few more pieces of First Ones Tech, and I can't think of a better use for it than this.”

Imperfection is beautiful.

There is also the scientific aspect of Entrapta, which I think hasn’t been discussed that much. She-ra makes a point of equating the natural with the good, and the artificial with the bad. But Entrapta is a scientist and an inventor, where does she fit into that?

Curiosity. Science is the study of the world. It is a means of learning more about nature, and to create things from that nature. She experiments, and understands. Imperfection is beautiful, and if there is one thing nature is good at, it’s variation.

Entrapta doesn’t exist in contrast to nature, but parallel to it. All she does is express the natural aspect of this story in a different way to everyone else.

Final Thoughts

The sound design of this episode is unrivalled so far in the series, and it will get better over time. The sting at the start with the skeleton is perfectly unsettling, and the ambience of the Wastes is superb.

Also, the cinematography of the fight in this episode is really well done, filled with motion and dynamism and tactical expressions of character. The sword duel is cool, and the fact that Glimmer is out for blood isn’t really dwelled upon, but it's notable that both of the goons she fights survive the experience through sheer force of luck.

However, Huntara figuring out Adora was from the Horde because of how she fights was a little weak to me. “I recognise that training”, really? Not the boots? Not the fact that she keeps bringing up the Horde? Ok.

Next week, I will be looking at One Upon A Time In The Wastes, so stick if that interests you.

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#rants #literary analysis #literature analysis #character analysis #what's so special about...? #she ra and the princesses of power #spop #she ra #she ra princess of power #she ra and the princess of power fanart #she ra adora #she ra spop #adora #she ra hordak #she ra entrapta #she ra horde prime #spop adora #spop hordak #spop entrapta #spop huntara #she ra huntara #huntara #fuck jk rowling

[h-worksrambles]

It kind of saddens me how much Asgore’s character just gets boiled down to ‘funny divorce man who pines over Toriel’. There’s so much more to his character as far as I’m concerned.

Asgore is quite possibly one of the most tragic characters in the entire game. He’s such a genuinely sweet and compassionate person. He’s a great dad. He loves his people and will do anything to keep them safe and happy. And those positive traits are exactly what lead him to commit himself to do something awful. And it’s painful to see how trapped Asgore feels by his past mistakes, so that showing him there’s another way and that he isn’t as beyond redemption as he thinks he is feels really cathartic. Toby Fox managed to give him so much nuance in such few scenes. And yet, Asgore gets scraps of fan content compared to the other major characters. And when it does, he’s often reduced to a clingy ex.

This is especially irksome when you go back to the game and remember that he’s not…actually very clingy at all. Yes, Asgore still loves Toriel, of course he does. But let’s go back to that scene where they meet again in the Pacifist ending. Asgore is delighted to finally see her again at first. But the second he sees that Toriel is (understandably) still furious with him, he backs off. He takes full responsibility for what happened between them and understands that, even if he misses her, he has no right to demand the relationship that he basically threw away. I feel like people who write Asgore as desperately wanting Toriel to forgive him kind of forget that Asgore can’t even forgive himself for what he’s done. He’s actually painfully self aware of his own flaws to the point of self loathing. He was fully prepared to lose the fight against Frisk and die because he felt he deserved it after all he’d done. And do I need to mention what he potentially does if you spare him on repeat playthroughs?

And I don’t even necessarily say this to tear down the ‘Asgoriel’ ship. Truth be told, I actually like this ship quite a lot. As I’ve already somewhat touched on in my Post Pacifist Headcanons, I actually think there’s a lot of compelling story potential in seeing two people who were deeply in love and happy, wrenched apart by tragedy and poor decisions, unpacking their complicated history and figuring out how to be around each other again. Especially if they both become parental figures to Frisk. With or without the shipping aspect, and regardless of if they actually get back together, that’s a great dramatic hook that can be really interesting if written well. And I have seen it written well. But execution is everything. It’s all too easy to flanderise the two by making Asgore too clingy, Toriel too mean-spirited or just generally downplaying how messy their past is to speed up what should be a long, difficult process. Again, I like this pairing, but not when it’s mishandled in a way that ignores why I liked these characters to begin with. And that’s to say nothing of when Asgore’s supposed clinginess is used to make him the bad guy to ship Toriel with someone else, which…(sigh).

And if this was all purely in fan content, I wouldn’t really care that much. It’s not like I have to read it if I don’t want to. But this is actually my one fear about Deltarune so far. Don’t misunderstand me, Deltarune has been fantastic so far. But the way it’s used Asgore has left a really bad taste in my mouth. So far, he’s been little more than a punching bag who’s situation is comically pathetic. And the way he still chases after Toriel irks me. Now he is doing the clingy ‘Tori take me back!’ routine and I really don’t like it. This doesn’t feel like a character who’s self aware of his mistakes, and takes too much of a burden on himself. This is someone treating his mistakes like they’re fixable, pushing the responsibility for that onto Toriel in a way I don’t believe Asgore would do. It feels like fandom misinterpretation leaking back into canon. I’m still interested in hearing what the history of the Dreemurr family is this time, and how it links back to Dess. I trust Toby Fox’s writing enough to believe this is being done with the intention of building a character arc. But I can’t deny that so far, it feels like an overly mean-spirited and out of character take (though a lot of that is born out of my personal attachment to him).

I’m not even sure what my point was with this. I guess I just wanted to respond to a fandom trend that leaves me with sour taste in my mouth. I don’t really wanna tell people making memes about Asgore being ‘the most divorced man ever’ to stop having fun. Nor do I care to get into shipping debates. I just wish the discussion of this character was a little more nuanced, because I think he’s well written enough to deserve it.

#asgore dreemurr #characterisation #character analysis #undertale #deltarune #undertale spoilers #cw death mention #cw sui mention

[rosepetalgold]

the art of saying goodbye

Summary: Remus expects a lot of things from the Queen Anne Victorian house he’s just purchased—a restoration project to occupy his time, some peace and quiet from nosy neighbors, a chance to brag about being a homeowner before his goody two-shoes brother.

What he doesn’t expect is for the property to come with a very real, very curious ghost. But what is he supposed to do, just ignore the spirit? That'd be nothing short of rude, especially considering that the specter's fascination with modern science and penchant for hijacking Remus' technology proves unfairly endearing.

But even as their unlikely friendship grows, so too do the questions swirling in Remus’ mind: Why is Logan still haunting the place he used to live? Who is the mysterious Janus he refuses to talk about? And what will it take for the ghost to finally find peace with the life and the love that were stolen from him so long ago?

Relationships: Platonic Intrulogical, past romantic Loceit, background romantic Prinxiety

Warnings for this chapter: None!

Word Count: 7000

Notes: My fic for this year's @sandersidesbigbang, aka another angsty tale that inexplicably grew out of a single fluffy scene, aka a prime excuse to procrastinate by poring through countless photos of beautiful Queen Anne houses my beloved. I hope you enjoy this ghostie story as much I enjoyed writing it! A big shoutout to my wonderful beta reader @dragonsaphirareads for all their feedback on this fic, and don't miss the amazing art by the incredible @casart and @onthevirgeofdestruction—you can check out their pieces here and here! (Seriously, even if you don't read the fic, go feast your eyes on their work because it is straight-up stunning. Go look, you'll see.)

Read on Ao3 Masterpost

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start (you’re here!) - next

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“This place is definitely haunted.”

Remus snorts, giving his brother a friendly sock in the arm.

“Oh come on, Ro, you scared of a few ghosties now? Afraid a floating white sheet is gonna jump out and yell boo?”

Roman doesn’t answer, just eyes the Queen Anne Victorian home in front of them with the amount of trepidation he usually reserved for any time Remus started a sentence with ‘I have an idea.’ The house does give off distinctly spooky vibes, Remus has to admit, what with its boards in desperate need of a new coat of paint and its broken window in the attic, not to mention the porch that looks liable to send someone plummeting to the ground if they take a single wrong step, but what was wrong with any of that? It all just added to the building’s character, and the risk of falling through the veranda was a delightful way to keep visitors on their toes, in his superior opinion.

And besides, he couldn’t turn his nose up at the property’s many flaws when they made it dirt-cheap. He wasn’t exactly a millionaire.

He grabs Roman’s arm, tugging him forward.

“C’mon, there’s some wicked spindlework on the back you gotta check out.”

His brother makes a sound of protest, dragging his feet as Remus hauls him onward.

“Aren’t we going to go inside?”

“Nah, I don’t have the keys yet. Everything’s still pending or whatever.”

Roman shifts his incredulous gaze from the house to Remus.

“You made me come all this way just to look at the outside of a house you haven’t even officially bought yet?”

Why yes, he had. He was such a good brother.

“Don’t act like it’s such a burden to drive twenty minutes out of the way to get here, especially when it means you’re twenty minutes closer to a booty call with Virgil.”

Roman splutters, face flushing a splendidly scandalized shade of crimson, and Remus cackles. That was more like it.

“Now c’mon c’mon c’mon, the sooner you ooh and aah over all my cool house shit, the sooner you can get some of that good di—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence,” Roman interrupts, slapping his hands over his ears, but he doesn’t protest as Remus pulls him around to the back of the house and points out the expansive if overgrown backyard, the plethora of decorative elements adorning the home, the leaded glass windows that have survived well over a century.

“I don’t get it, though,” Roman says as he eyes the tower gracing the corner of the house, something Remus would swear is a hint of jealousy in his gaze. Made sense. He knows for a fact his brother would sell his soul to be Rapunzel. “If this is such a nice place, why has it sat empty for so long?”

“Dunno. The realtor just said it stayed in the family of the guy who built it for a while before changing hands a bunch. Apparently every time it’s been on the market it’s taken ages to find a buyer, but she didn’t really say why no one wanted to live here for too long.” Probably just her trying not to scare him away from what was clearly a substantial restoration project so she wouldn’t lose her commission. Either that or there was some kind of toxic fungus in the walls that had taken over all the previous residents’ brains and turned them into zombies and Remus was about to become its next victim.

What a delightful gamble to find out which one it was.

“Can we please go now before some serial killer comes charging out of this place and we both end up on the news?” Roman asks, already edging back towards the front of the house.

“Sure, if you really want to give up your one shot of having your fifteen minutes of fame in the media,” Remus replies, dancing away with a grin as Roman aims a kick at his shins. “Fine, fine, we’ll go. I wouldn’t want to keep you from a hot date and some—”

Something catches his attention, a flash of movement out of the very corner of his eye, and he pauses mid-stride, doing a double-take at the second-story balcony overlooking the backyard.

Nothing. Not even a curtain blowing in the non-existent breeze.

“What?” Roman questions from where he’s also stopped a few yards ahead of him.

Remus looks a moment longer, searching for anything out of place, but all is still.

“Nothing. Probably just a bat or something. Wouldn’t that be cool as shit, to have bats as roommates? Hey, maybe they have rabies if they’re out in the daytime. Did you know…”

He launches into a spiel of the most gruesome and fascinating facts he knows about the disease, joyfully watching his brother’s face grow increasingly horrified with each one as they make their way back across the yard, and by the time they reach the driveway, the flicker of movement is barely a blip on his mental radar.

Just a trick of his eyes, surely.

It wasn’t like houses could actually be haunted, after all.

---

Home sweet home.

Or home rundown-and-slightly-musty-smelling home, as the case may be, but who was Remus to nitpick?

He fits his shiny new key into the lock and steps inside, letting the door click shut solidly behind him as he pauses just over the threshold, taking a moment to survey the foyer. His foyer now, in his very own home. The sale had been endless offers and counteroffers and a mountain of paperwork so large he’s positive he could have buried himself beneath it and never been seen again, but the place is finally his.

Him, a homeowner. Who’d have thunk it. He’ll be rubbing this in Roman’s apartment-renting face every chance he can get, thank you very much. It’s the least he can do, really.

He unceremoniously deposits the cardboard box in his arms on the floor and wanders further inside, trailing his hand along the smooth wood of the stair banister as he passes. He’s supposed to be meeting some of his friends back at his old place shortly—or now, actually, but that was wholly irrelevant—to start moving all of his worldly possessions into his fancy new abode, but he hadn’t been able to resist the temptation of taking the first load of boxes alone just to have the place to himself for a bit; he could use a few minutes to enjoy the space in peace before it’s filled with Roman and Virgil squabbling about the worst Disney movie heroes or whatever argument they were bound to get into.

Despite its well-worn exterior, the house is in surprisingly good condition inside, he muses as he roams through the empty rooms. There’s clearly extensive work that needs to be done if he wants to restore the place to its Victorian glory, an ambitious undertaking he knows will be neither cheap nor easy, but the bones of the structure are all solid, especially considering how many years it’s stood empty.

He finishes his meandering loop around the first floor and heads up the stairs, the tread of his steps entirely too loud for the pervasive quiet as he continues his exploratory wandering through the second story rooms. He pauses as he reaches what is clearly the master bedroom, surveying the original fireplace, the century-old hardwood, the attached balcony that was just begging to be used to pour water onto his unsuspecting brother’s head. Shit, his new house was cool as fuck.

It’d make the most sense to start hauling his load of boxes here, considering that’s where most of his crap is going to end up eventually, but the longer he hovers in the doorway, the more something feels … off. Just the slightest tingle prickling down his spine, and not the good kind. He steps inside and the temperature drops noticeably, a chill raising the hair on his arms.

“The fuck?” he mutters, raking his gaze over the windows in search of damaged panes letting in a breeze, but everything is intact.

He advances another step on impulse and the pinpricks dancing along his vertebrae only grow stronger, now accompanied by the distinct feeling he’s being watched. He scans the room again, slower this time, but there’s no furniture, no closet, not so much as a nook or cranny for anyone or anything to hide. Even the ceiling is empty when he turns his gaze upwards on the off chance he really does have some bats hanging around that he’s somehow missed on his numerous pre-sale walk-throughs.

Nary a beady eye to be found and still the sensation of being in someone’s sights doesn’t lessen. Not that it’s a threatening feeling, exactly, just distinctly unsettling, like there’s someone behind him no matter how many times he glances over his shoulder and finds nothing but empty air.

But that was crazy. He’d read the final sale documents until his eyes had been about to start bleeding and he’s absolutely positive that the house hadn’t come with any roommates. He’s probably just imagining the feeling, the result of watching one too many horror movies in the last week or his brain making things up in an attempt to liven up the empty space.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, yanking him out of his thoughts, and he rolls his eyes without even looking at the screen, already able to see the text from Roman in his mind’s eye: where you at?? i’m not packing up all your crap for you followed by an absurdly long string of emojis that basically constituted their own Roman-specific hieroglyphic language.

Time to face the moving-day music before Roman got annoyed enough with waiting that he rescinded his promise of free manual labor, then. Any investigations of potential invisible voyeurs would have to wait, no matter how titillating such a prospect sounded when he put it like that.

“You win for now, house,” he says into the quiet as he turns to leave, an edge of coldness still dancing along the goosebumps on his skin. “Keep your secrets. I’ll figure ‘em out eventually.”

---

The afternoon passes in a blur of hauling entirely too many heavy boxes and unwieldy pieces of furniture to the new house, and by the time night settles onto the horizon, Remus is utterly exhausted. He flops back on the couch, too tired to even think about putting his bedframe together, and he’s out in minutes.

He wakes disoriented, mind scrabbling blankly for a moment before the darkness coalesces into the still-unfamiliar contours of his sitting room. He just lies there for a moment, trying to figure out what’s roused him, but all is still. Just his brain deciding to deprive him of some tantalizingly horrifying nightmares, unfortunately—

Tap tap tap.

Remus bolts upright at the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the hardwood upstairs, adrenaline surging in a dizzying rush. There hadn’t been any signs of a squatter all day, and surely he’d remembered to lock the doors so no one could steal all the crap he’d just spent a whole day of his life lugging around. He waits for a moment, holding his breath as silence falls, and just when he’s about to pass the whole thing off as his imagination playing tricks on him, the steps start up again, slow and rhythmic like someone is pacing on the upper level.

Fuck his luck. If someone is secretly living in the attic of his fancy new home, he’s not going to be pleased.

He rolls off the couch and snatches his phone off of one of the plethora of boxes waiting to be unpacked, debating whether to risk turning on the flashlight before deciding for it; he might give away any element of surprise with the beam, but he’s certain to give it away if he starts banging face-first into walls or cracking his skull open falling down the stairs. His eye catches on a glass paperweight on the coffee table, a characteristically pretentious housewarming present from Roman, who apparently thought Remus had so many papers flying about that he needed to corral them with a glorified rock, and he seizes it on a whim.

Makeshift weapon was a much more useful purpose for the thing than its intended function anyways.

He edges around the scattered boxes towards the stairs, careful to keep his steps light and his hand shielding the light from his phone as the footfalls continue overhead, and makes it all the way up the steps without so much as a creak to give him away.

Flawless. He knew all those times sneaking up behind Roman to scare the shit out of him as kids would pay off someday.

He pauses on the landing to triangulate the noise, then creeps down the hall towards the footsteps as the sound grows even more distinct. The master bedroom again? What the actual fuck was going on with that room? Had he really managed to miss someone in there when he’d investigated earlier in the day? No, he couldn’t have, but then how had someone managed to get past where he’d been sleeping on the couch? Unless he really did have somebody living in the walls—

A floorboard squeaks underneath his foot, deafeningly loud in the quiet of the night, and the footsteps abruptly stop. Remus swears under his breath. Traitorous piece of wood. Now or never, then.

He lunges forward into the doorway of the master bedroom, raising the paperweight and howling a war cry as he swings his light across the room to reveal—

Nothing. The space is as entirely and utterly empty as it had been that morning.

Well, shit. There went any element of surprise he had left.

He darts back into the hall, racing to search through the rest of the rooms on the upper level one by one, but they’re all just as vacant as the first. He even hauls himself into the attic, bracing himself to be clubbed over the head by whoever is lurking, but with the exception of innumerable shadows billowing away from his flashlight, the space proves equally empty as the rest.

Unease stirs in his gut, creeping in alongside the lingering adrenaline as he makes his way back down the precariously rickety ladder into the main house. Surely there’s no way someone could have gotten past him, not when he would have heard them in the hall or going down the stairs.

And yet, as far as he can tell, besides a few mice tucked away in the attic, there isn’t another living soul in the house.

He stops in the doorway of the master bedroom again, staring inside. He’s positive this is where the footsteps had been emanating from, lack of proof be damned. Something weird was going on with this house.

Good thing Remus had just made the biggest financial commitment of his life to buy it.

Nothing for it now but to hope some elusive, wall-dwelling ax murderer doesn’t give him the chop in his sleep, he supposes, although he has to admit that’d be a badass way to go.

He reluctantly makes his way back downstairs and shoves a pile of boxes at the foot of the stairs to trip any nefarious intruders coming down, then retreats back to the couch, all the while keeping his ears primed for so much as a whisper of sound above him.

But even though it takes him a long time to drift back to sleep, the house around him remains as silent as a grave.

---

The whole thing must have been an impressively lucid dream, Remus decides the next morning. A second investigation in the light of day doesn’t reveal anything out of place: no shoe prints on the floor, no critters, certainly no people. It was probably nothing then, he tries to convince himself, just his overactive imagination needing an outlet after being a bit too jittery from all the excitement of moving.

But he finds himself pausing in the master bedroom again, something drawing him back to the space. First the chill and the strange feeling of being watched, then the mysterious footsteps? Two separate coincidences, or something more?

God, he sounded about as paranoid as Virgil. Next thing he knew he was going to be inventing his very own conspiracy theory to explain a few bumps in the night.

It really was nothing, he tells himself, shaking off any lingering unease as he tromps back down the stairs. If he starts jumping at every little noise in his old-as-shit house, he’ll be long dead before he gets the property restored. If he starts seeing glowing red eyes in the dark, he’ll start to worry. Until then, he has a mountain of boxes to unpack.

Unfortunately, said mountain does not pull a Beauty and the Beast and begin unpacking itself, leaving Remus to spend a dreadfully dull afternoon doing it instead, only the allure of building a fort out of all the empty boxes keeping him from living out of cardboard for the rest of his life.

By the time he’s finally finished unboxing most of the downstairs and getting the tv and wifi set up, most of the day has passed him by, afternoon sunlight splaying golden fingers across the hardwood.

Break time, then. He’s earned it, if he does say so himself.

He collapses onto the couch, flipping on the tv and surfing through the channels until he finds a rerun of some low-budget horror film from the eighties. Perfect. Nothing like a bit of mindless tv to rot his brain just that much more. Settling back more comfortably into the cushions, he pops open the bag of chips he��s snagged from the kitchen and pulls out his phone, beginning to scroll through his notifications.

Modern multitasking at its finest, truly.

But he’s barely a minute into atrophying his mind via social media before the tv starts flickering, volume dropping precipitously before ratcheting back up, the picture jumping to the weather channel, then a British cooking show, then the news with Spanish subtitles flashing in and out at the bottom of the screen.

Remus freezes with a chip halfway to his mouth, staring at the remote where it’s very definitely out of his reach on the coffee table, all by its lonesome. He’s no expert, but he’s pretty sure technology was not, in fact, supposed to suddenly start functioning by itself without any human input. Was his new house secretly sitting over some freaky radioactive waste? That would certainly explain why no one had wanted to buy it. Or was this some EMP disaster? Had someone decided to take out the whole country’s power grid, starting with Remus’ shitty tv?

He sits up, reaching for the rogue remote, only to pause as a chill moves over him, then past him like it’s heading for the tv, and the screen crackles, static beginning to fuzz both the video and the audio as the picture continues to leap wildly between programs.

Fuck the remote, then. Whatever freak accident has descended upon his living room, it’s time to go straight to the source.

Abandoning his snack, he stands, striding to the outlet and yanking the plug out of the wall. Silence falls immediately, the screen fading to black, but there still lingers a noticeable chill in the air, cold energy palpable against his skin and all too reminiscent of the feeling he remembers from being in the master bedroom.

“What the hell,” he mutters under his breath, casting his gaze around the room. Empty, just as upstairs had been the last three times he’d checked. He takes a step backwards, then another, and the strange chill decreases. On a whim, he pulls out his phone, scrolling through several apps without even paying attention to them, and sure enough, the hair on his arms raises as the temperature falls again, that sparking feeling of energy growing more intense as his phone begins to flicker on its own.

“What the actual hell,” he whispers again. Roman can’t have been right—this place can’t actually be haunted. There’s absolutely no way there’s a real, live—or dead, technically, he supposes—ghost in his living room right now playing fuck-up-the-electronics.

But if there is…

“Hello?” he calls, and the flickering abruptly stops, chill retreating once more. Shit. One word in and apparently Remus has already fucked things up. “Hello?” he tries again. Did this maybe-possible-potential ghostie even speak English? “I’m Remus,” he says, feeling more than a little crazy for introducing himself to his empty living room. If Roman ever knew of this, he’d die laughing and then Remus really would have a ghost haunting his ass.

He wracks his brain for something to say. If he were a ghost and a stranger started moving all of their shit into his home, what would he want to hear from them?

“Um, cool house you have here. I’m not gonna like, fuck it up or anything.”

Silence.

“I’m planning on restoring it bit by bit as I have money so if you could tell me the original paint color or wallpaper patterns, that’d be dope.”

Still nothing. Apparently the ghost is not amused. Time for a different tactic, then.

“What’s your name?”

Not even a cricket chirping. Jesus fucking christ, Remus is really blowing this.

“That’s the tv—the television,” he explains, gesturing towards the device that had seemingly either fascinated or enraged his new housemate, he can’t quite tell which. “It works by… well, I don’t really know how it works. Something with waves and frequencies or some shit? But you can watch recordings, people acting or baking or doing dumb reality dating shows or whatever, so if there’s something that you wanna see…”

He trails off, surreptitiously scanning the room for any ethereal presences, but the house is quiet, the ghostly feeling fading bit by bit. Great. An actual paranormal experience and he’s gone and shoved his foot so far in his mouth he can practically feel his toes wiggling in his small intestine.

“Alright, that’s cool, no worries. Just lemme know if you change your mind.”

He waits a moment more, hoping for a disembodied voice to speak or an object to start moving on its own or his body to suddenly become possessed, but there’s nothing. Snagging his leather jacket off the back of the couch, he beelines for the door, forcing himself not to run as excitement begins to grow with every step, bubbling up around his bones. He has a ghost. A ghost, an actual fucking ghost, and he hadn’t even had to pay extra for it. No way he’s not going to take advantage of the universe handing him the sickest housewarming present in the world, never mind the fact that he might end up a walking meat suit for the spirit.

He pauses as he reaches the edge of the yard, then thinks better of it and pivots, heading for his car instead. Who knew how far ghost range was, and he doesn’t want his new roomie overhearing. He’s practically vibrating with energy as he makes his way down the long, winding drive, and he only makes it a few miles down the road before he’s pulling over onto the shoulder, hopefully well out of spirit range.

His first call rings through to voicemail, but Remus doesn’t bother leaving a message, just hangs up and tries again, only to be met with the same result. The third time, though, proves to be the charm.

“What,” the voice on the other end spits, cheerful as ever. “Fuck you, Remus, I’m in the middle of—”

“You’re still into all that weird stuff, right? Like the cryptids and the creepies and the ghouls and ghosties and all that?” Remus interrupts. He can deal with Virgil’s wrath another time—he has information he needs and he needs it pronto.

A pause, so long he’s sure Virgil has hung up on him and he’s going to have to keep calling until the emo answers his question.

“Yeah?” the distrustful reply finally comes, anger blunted by obvious wariness. “Why—”

“I need to pick your brain,” Remus cuts in again. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

---

Plan Contact The Resident Possibly Unfriendly Ghost Who Might Possess Him, or CTRPUGWMPH to be short and snappy about it, is officially a go.

Unfortunately, it isn’t off to a promising start.

Virgil’s knowledge had turned out to be more spirit lore than specifics about how to get a ghost to actually appear, although he’d been infinitely more helpful than Roman, who’d just stared at him and asked if he’d had the house checked for carbon monoxide poisoning. Remus had soundly ignored him and had left Virgil’s apartment with his head swimming with theories about why ghosts haunt particular places and an extensive lecture from Virgil about how to find any potential objects or reasons tying a ghost to the house that might provide a potential talking point to engage said ghost in conversation.

But despite digging into every crack and crevice on the internet, emailing the local historical society, even calling his realtor to ask again about the history of the property, Remus comes up with precious little. The house had originally been built in the 1880s by a local merchant, everyone seems to agree, and had been inherited by his nephew soon after, but beyond that there’s frustratingly scant information available, and he can’t find so much as a whisper about anyone dying in the home. His ghostie could be anyone, then: A Victorian builder who’d taken a tumble, a flapper girl who’d partied a tad too hard, a hapless victim of some modern serial killer who’d taken advantage of the place sitting abandoned for years to do a bit of light murdering. 

With precisely zero context clues as to his new housemate’s identity, then, Remus embraces his remarkable talent of keeping up an entirely one-sided conversation as he works around the house the next few days, rambling about anything and everything related to the property he can think of, hoping something will pique the ghost’s interest. But besides a few more cold spots and flickering screens, the house remains stubbornly quiet. Maybe his ghost just needed a bit of help in communicating, though; drifting around an empty building with no one to talk to for the past god-knew-how-many years can’t have done good things to their incorporeal vocal cords.

Which brings him to Plan B: The infamous Ouija board, favorite tool of grifters and bullshit paranormalists everywhere.

And yet despite the makeshift, very high-budget seance he conducts with the two dollar board and the zero dollar candles he’s lovingly stolen from his brother, there’s once again no reply from beyond the veil besides a chill in the room that somehow radiates disapproval. Apparently his ghost isn’t a fan of pseudoscientific games any more than he is. At least they had standards, whoever they were.

But Remus is a stubborn bastard if he does say so himself, so on to Plan C it is. The used EMF meter he snags off of ebay has definitely seen better days, given the prominent crack across its screen, but the thing had been cheap and still seemed to work, so Remus wasn’t complaining.  Fancy equipment was for fancy people, after all, and of all the things he’s ever been called, he’s positive fancy isn’t one of them. He sets up the device behind the tv, which still seems to intrigue his ghost every time it’s turned on, puts on the first show he can find, and forces himself to walk away. His little trap is set. Now all he has to do is bide his time pretending to busy himself unpacking a box of books in the next room—

He barely has the chance to register the tv screen flickering out of the corner of his eye before an ear-splitting shriek is rending the air, startling him so violently that he promptly drops a hefty tome on his foot.

“Shit,” he breathes, surging back into the living room, but the noise has already stopped just as suddenly as it began, replaced by a frigid chill permeating the room. Maybe he should have thought twice about scaring the resident phantom without first hiding any of his valuables. Hopefully he won’t wake up tomorrow to find his tv shattered. “It won’t hurt you,” he calls, though the EMF meter indicates a distinct lack of any supernatural presences. “It just makes noise to let me know when you’re nearby, yeah? Totally harmless.”

No response, but for once he doesn’t mind, not when there’s excitement dancing white-hot across his nerves. There really is a ghost or spirit or demon or something here, and he hasn’t just been imagining things.

Fuck, this house is single-handedly the coolest thing that’s ever happened to him, even if he does now have to worry about his haunting buddy getting a bit of revenge on him in the middle of the night.

But Remus survives safe and sound into the next day without so much as a supernatural scratch on his skin. Bloody payback didn’t seem like his ghost’s style anyways, not when their favorite activity seemed to be pressing as many buttons as possible on the tv remote at once. Curiosity is still nipping impatiently at his heels though, urging him to explore this latest avenue of potential communication more, so he sets up the EMF meter again, this time in the master bedroom where the spirit seems most inclined to spend time if the continued pacing in the middle of the night is anything to go by.

A brilliant plan, only minorly ruined by the fact that the device is nowhere to be found when he goes searching for it the next morning.

“Are you disappearing things, ghostie?” he asks the empty bedroom. “Gonna zap me into another dimension next?”

 He’s joking, but as his hunt through the house reveals neither hide nor hair of the EMF meter, he can’t help but wonder. Had the ghost really just yeeted the thing into the ether? Or maybe it was right where he’d left it in the middle of the bedroom, but had been turned invisible like the spirit themself? What kind of ghostly superpowers did he even have, if any—

He comes to an abrupt halt as he emerges out the back door onto the porch, a laugh spilling past his lips as he surveys the myriad bits of metal and broken plastic strewn around him. Looks like he’s found his EMF meter. Apparently his ghost wasn’t nearly as endeared to this technology as he was anything with a screen. He glances up to the master bedroom window over his head, shading his eyes from the sun.

“Fair enough,” he calls, still fighting down amusement despite himself, and there’s the faintest shimmer in the air above the balcony, reminiscent of a heat mirage despite the cool morning air. “No more screeching little boxes.”

Left with zero information about his ghost’s identity, a useless Ouija board better repurposed as a doorstop, and the remains of his one piece of official ghost-hunting equipment, Remus concludes his only option is to embark on Plan D. Said plan isn’t so much an strategic approach as it is a wild hail mary to find any way to communicate with his ghost that didn’t involved hurling objects from balconies, as much fun as such an activity was, but then again, Plan D did sound delightfully dirty, so he’ll take the trade-off.

The internet, of course, is the place to turn to for highly questionable ghost advice, and it only takes a single google search to find message boards teeming with it. Half of it is clearly bullshit, he quickly discovers as he trawls through post after useless post, and the other half is baseless theories without any semblance of evidence to back them up, but just as he’s about to call it quits and move on to whatever the hell Plan E is, an old thread catches his eye.

‘Old Ghost Caught By Photography?’ the title reads, and Remus skims through the post, intrigued despite himself at the detailed claims the author had been able to capture the image of a Victorian spirit by using an antique camera and photography methods from the end of the nineteenth century. He pores over the attached images, searching for the slightest hint of photoshop or manipulation, but everything seems legit. And it made sense in some weird, probably illogical way, he supposes, that ghosts might only be spotted by using technology from their day and age—historical continuity in the metaphysical realm or some shit.

It’s the best lead he has after hours of searching, and really, he’s just spent a very hefty chunk of change buying a whole-ass house; what was the harm in dropping a few more dollars on some vintage photography equipment?

Which is precisely how he finds himself crammed into his makeshift darkroom in the tiny closet under the stairs several weeks later, holding his breath as he carefully begins to look through the latest batch of negatives he’s just finished processing. It had taken an obscene amount of research, a healthy dose of trial-and-error, and more than a few failures to figure out the intricacies of the dry plate photography process, but he’d gotten there in the end, even if the most he has to show for it is a few suspicious blurs in a couple of images.

Maybe this whole idea of capturing ghosts in photos was just as bullshit as the others, he muses as he examines yet another empty picture of the dining room, or maybe his ghost wasn’t from the same era as the camera he’d bought. Maybe his ghost simply didn’t want to have his photo taken, or maybe—

His train of thought abruptly derails as he picks up the next plate.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

The image is still a negative, the reversed colors lending a certain eeriness to the picture under the red darkroom lights, but there, right smack in the middle of the photo—a figure. An actual human figure, clear as day, looking right at the camera. Remus whoops, nearly knocking over a vial of chemicals with his elbow as he dances backwards in pure giddiness. Oh fuck yes , there is a ghost haunting the place. His ghost, now that he owns the house. His ghost who is…

He pauses, forcing himself to focus on the figure in the photo even as he feels like he’s about to vibrate right off of his bones with excitement. Spectacles, clean-shaven, dark hair neatly styled. Neat trousers, white shirt, trim waistcoat, and a decidedly fancy ascot, the whole ensemble distinctly old-fashioned. Victorian, then? Or Edwardian? Or some historical reenactor who’d met an untimely demise in costume? And it does seem to be an untimely demise; the man looks to be in his mid- to late-twenties, unless he’d found some ability to look whatever age he wanted in the afterlife.

Regardless, he can’t make himself focus on fashion for long. He has a ghost to talk to. Fighting his way out of the cramped closet, he bounds up the stairs, forcing himself to slow to a respectable jog as he darts into the master bedroom. He stops in the middle of the still-bare room, trying and utterly failing to keep his hopes in check.

“Hello? Ghostie?”

No response.

“Mr. Glasses and White Shirt?” 

His skin prickles, the hair on the back of his neck raising. Aha. There he was. 

“Hey, what’s up?” He turns in a slow circle, searching for any sign of his specter, any flicker of light off a spectacle lens or a flash of a shirtsleeve, but the room is as empty as ever.

“I have a photo if you’d like to see it.” Could ghosts not see themselves in mirrors or was that only vampire lore? And if he couldn’t see his own reflection, did the ghost even remember what he looked like?

He raises the picture, proferring the negative to the vacant room, and holds his breath. Nothing, for several long moments, and then the chill edges closer. Remus bites his lip, barely able to keep himself from bouncing on the balls of his feet at the prospect of a ghost being within arm’s reach.

“I wasn’t trying to be creepy or anything, I just wanted to see if you were real or if I needed to go check myself into a padded room, you know? I’m Remus, if I haven’t said that. What’s your name?”

Several more excruciatingly long moments that Remus is sure has to be the longest span of silence in history, then—

“Hello.”

The voice is thin and slightly hoarse, quiet enough that Remus has to strain to make it out, but it’s as unmistakably real as the form that flickers into existence right in front of his eyes, identical to the man in the photo. He’s distinctly transparent, the edges of him not quite defined, fuzzing out around the edges like the ambient glow of neon signs, but he’s here and he’s real and this is so fucking cool that Remus could keel over right here and now from excitement and join the ghost in wandering around the house for all eternity.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, because if there was ever a time for swearing, by god this is fucking it, and the spirit withdraws slightly, already guarded expression closing in further. “No no no, it’s good,” he rushes to assure him, resisting the urge to reach out and try to touch him. “Good holy shit. Complimentary holy shit.”

The ghost doesn’t seem entirely appeased, but he tilts his head slightly, something like curiosity sparking in his eyes as he evaluates Remus.

“Why are you not frightened of me?” he finally asks, and Remus has to fight back the absurd laugh bubbling up in his chest. He’s being questioned by a century-old ghost in the middle of his haunted home. Life really was delightfully freaky.

“No offense, man, but you’re not exactly terrifying. I mean, I’ve been here what? A solid month? And you haven’t even tried to pluck my eyeballs out or anything.”

Another unreadable pause. Is he just giving the spirit ideas? Were his eyes about to be forcibly unmarried from his skull à la eagles tearing out Prometheus’ liver?

“Do you want me to be afraid of you?” he asks after a further absolutely unbearable five seconds of silence.

“No,” the ghost admits after a moment of clear hesitation, “but previous residents certainly have not appreciated my presence here.”

Remus scoffs. “That’s their problem. Some of us are smarter than that.”

The other man’s head tilt deepens, something akin to puzzlement furrowing his brow, as if he can’t fathom why having a ghost is actually the most badass shit on the face of the planet.

“Can I ask you some questions?” Remus asks, exhilaration still racing along the underside of his skin so intensely that he can barely stand it. “You can ask me whatever you want, too.”

The ghost nods, although he still seems cautious as one hand fiddles absently with his ascot. “I suppose that would be alright.”

Twenty questions with an undead spirit. Remus’ life really was getting better by the minute.

“Did you used to live here?”

“I did, many years ago.”

“Did you own the place?”

“At one point in time, yes. It was truly a beautiful house in its day, and a wonderful place to reside.”

Oh fuck yes. If having an old-timey ghost who can give him historically accurate advice about restoring the house isn’t the coolest fucking thing that’s ever happened to him, he isn’t sure what is. He has half a mind to start grilling him on paint colors and wallpaper prints and the original hardwood, but—

“Did you die here?”

The words are blurting out of his mouth without even bothering to detour through his brain on the way out, burning curiosity eclipsing any thought that perhaps asking about death isn’t exactly acceptable ghost etiquette. He barely has time to register the change in the spirit’s expression, the visceral upset written across his features clear as day, before he’s gone in between one breath and the next, vanishing back into whatever thin air he’d come from and leaving nothing but a biting chill in his wake.

Shit shit shit. He’s finally gotten the ghost to trust him enough to show up and talk and then he’s gone and ruined it within the span of two minutes all because he had all the self-control of a sieve trying to retain water.

“Wait,” he calls, casting about in vain. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.” Well, apparently his subconscious had, but that hadn’t been his intention. “Please come back. You can ask me as many invasive questions as you like.” Nothing. “You can haunt me for revenge, if you want.” Utter silence. “Are you gonna hurl me off the balcony like my EMF meter?”

There he goes again, giving the specter ideas, although really, being yeeted out of a window by a ghost would be a damn cool end if he does say so himself. He lingers in the room for several long minutes, forcing himself to keep quiet lest he miss the spirit’s hushed voice, but there’s nothing but the faint sound of a bird twittering outside.

“Alright,” he finally relents, disappointment pooling in his stomach as he glances down at the photography plate still in his hand, the negative serving as indisputable evidence that the encounter hadn’t just been a fever dream. He’ll find a way to make things right with the ghost somehow, one way or another. He has to. “Just come spook me if you change your mind.”

-

Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!): @darth-does-stuff

#thomas sanders sides big bang 2023 #tssbb2023 #sanders sides #ts remus #remus sanders #ts logan #logan sanders #ts roman #roman sanders #ts virgil #virgil sanders #intrulogical #loceit #ts fanfic #the art of saying goodbye #my fic #rosepetal writes

[brianwashere]

Ahhhhh I’m so sorry I fucked this up 😭 I accidentally posted the draft then panicked and deleted it and thus deleted the official ask. It’s ok tho bcc I took a screenshot of it so we’re good

Ask: (aos anon again hi:)) i know you usually do romantic or parent/son relationships but imagine reader and fitz are brothers and fitz finally gets to see him again while taking a break from working at shield… reader helps convince him to confess to gemma (fitzsimmons is real and it Can hurt you) also just them being silly little brothers because fitz deserves a break

Hadhsjsfjsjdk ahhh I love this

**I do not own any characters or part of the franchise from Marvel or Disney or Agents of SHIELD**

Pairing: older brother!Leo Fitz x younger brother!reader

Genre: family shit let’s goooo

Summary: look at req

Tw: implied bad childhood

Homecoming

It had been a long time since Leo—Fitz—had come home. You still weren’t used to calling him by your last name. You found yourself excited to see him again after what seemed to be decades of not seeing each other and minimal contact. You knew his job kept him busy but sometimes it felt like he was purposely ignoring your family.

The doorbell rang and it pulled you from your racing thoughts.

“I’ll get it!” You yelled to your parents from upstairs practically tripping on the stairs to get to the door.

You took a deep breath and pulled open the door. You grinned at your older brother.

“Fi..tz.” Your enthusiasm turned to surprise.

He looked so different than he did the last time you saw him.

He looked stronger. There was more muscle on his arms and he now wore a leather jacket instead of his usual sweaters. Not to mention he had a whole beard now.

“Woah…” You gaped and blinked several times.

Fitz’s eyes brightened at seeing his younger brother.

“Hey, Quizno!” Hey laughed some.

You just kept staring at him in surprise.

“You look…different.” You hesitated.

For a second he looked startled then his brow hardened.

“Well I could say the same for you, you’ve got twice as much acne as when I last saw you.” Yup there it is.

You sputtered a laugh suddenly, wheezing and hunching over. He opened his arms and hugged you and you hugged back; a rare tender moment between the two of you.

“So am I gunna get to go inside or am I being forced to stand here in the cold?” Fitz asked.

“Well I was thinking at least 20 more minutes out here before I let you in.” You playfully shoved him off but stepped out of the doorway to let him in.

He took one step in and sighed.

“Something wrong?” You looked to your older brother.

“No no it’s just…strange to be here again. Been so long since I’ve been here….” He trailed off.

You nodded.

“So what’s that sick ass job about? I heard it was for some American agency.” You nudged him with your elbow, trying to get him out of his own head.

“Ya know, I’m not supposed to talk about it. And it’s not American.” He stated with a high lilt in his voice.

You rolled your eyes.

“Is your boss American?”

“Well, yes, but—“

“So then yeah it’s American.” You used your flawed logic just to mess with him.

“What? That doesn’t even make sense—!” Fitz continued to argue how just because his boss was American did not mean that the agency he worked for was.

You just smiled to yourself, knowing you distracted him from the not so good memories of this house.

“Oh look at that! Mum says it’s time to eat!” You interrupted your older brother suddenly.

Fitz hesitated then straightened himself, bracing to see his parents again. You noticed his anxiety.

“Hey, it’ll be fine. You’ve got a good job and a…major glowup.” You nudged his side with your body to which he shoved you back to the other side, grinning again.

“Ready for the mine field that is a family dinner?” You smiled light heartedly at him.

He sighed, nodding and brushing a hand through his hair.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

After dinner went smoother than expected you and Fitz migrated up to your room. You were hanging upside down from your bed, arms wresting on your stomach while your older brother was laying on the ground, throwing a ball into the air and catching it.

He’d asked you about any school crushes to which you’d blushed and told him about someone you were interested in but weren’t sure if you wanted to be friends or lovers.

“So what about you? You got a special someone back at your fancy job?” You questioned.

That seemed to take your brother by surprise and the ball fell on his face. You immediately burst into laughter while he rubbed his nose and shot you a playful glare.

“You’re a little wanker you know that?” His nose was turning red.

“So? You never answered the question.” You persisted.

He groaned dramatically.

“Yes, ok? There is someone I’m interested in.” He admitted.

You perked up immediately.

“Who? Are they smart? Are they attractive?” You questioned in rapid-fire.

Fitz let out another dramatic groan, cheeks turning red.

“Her name is Jemma…” He let out.

“And?” You pressed.

“And she’s smart and kind and beautiful and way out of my league.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

“Oh I wouldn’t say that, c’mon you work with her right? That must mean you spend a lot of time together. Has she ever friend-zoned you?” You questioned.

“No but…I just—-it’s hard, ok?” He sounded exasperated and frustrated. Not with you but with himself.

You quirked an eyebrow.

“Well you should shoot your shot.” You stated matter-of-factly. “You never know what may happen, especially in your super-duper classified line of work.” You shrugged. “I say you do it.”

Your brother stared at the ceiling, thinking. He knew you were right. His work was dangerous; Jemma’s was too. He couldn’t keep hiding from his feelings.

“Yeah…yeah ok. You’re right…” Fitz said quietly.

“Damn right I am.” You grinned at him. “Tell me how it goes next time you visit.” Your grin melted to a smirk.

Your brother just rolled his eyes and threw a pillow at your face.

#leo fitz #agents of shield #agents of shield x reader #agents of shield x male reader #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d. #agents of shield x brother reader #brother reader #x brother reader #older brother Leo fitz #Leo fitz x reader #Leo fitz x brother reader #male reader #x male reader #marvel x teen!reader #marvel x male reader #marvel x brother reader #marvel x reader #fanfic #fanfic writing #marvel

[thestobingirlie]

Hey!! So I was scrolling through your blog and I completely agree with your opinion of Nancy. I can not tolerate Nancy in the show at all and I acknowledge some of that is due to the fact that the show writers and the some of the fandom paint her as perfect. (The other part is that she reminds of people who didn’t treat me well in school.)  She's not. She has flaws. She's selfish. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's the one I have. And that’s fine to start out with but the second they started making it seem Nancy was in the right all the time, they doomed her character. Like when Steve apologizes for being a bad boyfriend, there just isn’t any evidence for that? He goes to dinner with Barb’s parents with Nancy, and it’s clear that he adores her. And also, do people really think Nancy didn’t cheat? She makes it quite clear to Murray that she’s in a relationship with Steve and then later that day she sleeps with Jonathan. She strings along Steve for a year only because she was waiting for Jonathan to be ready. And Nancy never apologizes! For any of her mistakes. She makes them! But no one treats them like problems! I just can’t like her character, the Duffers intend on writing her as this perfect character and everyone treats her as such in the media, which feels unnatural and just makes me so mad. And that has trailed over into the way I perceive material about her. And maybe her character is still redeemable, but with the way the Duffer Brothers are taking this, I don’t it will be. I think Nancy could have been a compelling character, like the way Steve is, but the Duffers messed it up.  ~@thestrangerthingsmeadow

the sad thing about nancy is that i think i totally would’ve liked her if she’d been written better. as it stands, she’s never even actually had a character arc (because no, giving a girl guns doesn’t count).

and yes, though the show doesn’t want you to think it, nancy does have flaws. she’s very single minded, once she’s gotten her mind set on something, nothing can dissuade her, which means that she isn’t particularly empathetic, and she hurts people without thinking. and she’s been this way since the very beginning.

now, like you said, this wouldn’t actually be an issue, if she’d ever learnt from it. as it stands, she’s never had to apologise when she makes mistakes, in fact, the show doesn’t even present them as mistakes!

it is very clear that nancy cheats on steve, she literally says she loves him like an hour before she sleeps with jonathan. but because nancy can do no wrong, the show pretends it doesn’t happen. steve has to take the cheating graciously to show how much he’s grown (he’s not even allowed to be mad he got cheated on!) and no consequences for nancy. and yes, we have to believe steve is a bad boyfriend, because otherwise what nancy did was out of line, and fucked up. steve deserved better than to be someone’s back up. to be used so nancy didn’t have to wait alone until jonathan finally asked her out.

but one example that really annoys me is nancy and jonathan’s argument in s3.

so, first, this argument happens because nancy put the blinkers on, and refused to consider anyone else’s opinion. they’re both in the wrong in the fight, both say things they shouldn’t. but we see nancy talk it out with her mum, who totally supports her. and yet we never see anything similar for jonathan. he gets no opportunity to have someone on his side, to back him up. and this is a key example where the show so obviously wants us to side with nancy. to ignore her faults, and support her wholeheartedly. we aren’t supposed to think she’s done anything wrong.

and that’s why i can’t like canon nancy. a character making mistake and having flaws isn’t a bad thing, but it is when those mistakes are never acknowledged. when the show actively pretends they don’t exist, that makes a character intolerable.

obviously nancy has her good sides, and there are parts to her character that i like. but i’d like her a hell of a lot more if the show acknowledged her faults, and gave her the space to grow and change as a person, rather than stagnating.

i don’t think the duffers will be able to totally save nancy’s character by the end of the show (especially after s4. i had hoped them bringing up barb would mean we’d get something, but no. it seems her dead body was just used to scare nancy) but i do hope we get at least a little development.

#stranger things #nancy wheeler critical #asks #thestrangerthingsmeadow

[dear-wormwoods]

omgggg yes i wanna ask u every one haha

6 13(Kyle n stan) 12 17 :0000

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

I don’t thiiiink so? The pairings I hate are pretty set in stone. The closest I can think of is that I never really cared for Bunny that much but then some cute art made me go ‘well sure why not’ and now I love that Butters was basically Kenny’s sugar daddy in Post Covid as he was getting off the ground. But I never hated the pairing so I don’t think that counts.

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

Actually yes! I… I like Season 20. I know it’s not the best season but I genuinely do enjoy the Skankhunt arc and how the Broflovskis were the main characters for once. I like that it expanded on Gerald and confirmed that he plays favorites and actually resents that Kyle takes after his mother. And I loved Kyle and Ike versus Sheila! I also really like the Cartman/Heidi plot, with the seeds of manipulation and abuse being sewn in that season and then expanded upon in 21. I just think their whole relationship was well done and confirmed a lot of things about how Cartman would act as a boyfriend - love bombing, isolating, jealousy, paranoia, etc. I also love how when Kyle brought everyone together to troll, Stan was like “for what” and Kyle was like “NO TIME JUST DO IT” and Stan just goes “okay!” and runs off because he will literally do anything for Kyle. So yeah, unpopular opinion but I enjoy Season 20 even with all its plot holes and flaws.

13. Unpopular opinion about Kyle and Stan?

Kyle: I think this is less an unpopular opinion about HIM and more an unpopular opinion about how fandom treats him, but I really dislike the constant debate about masc/femme… it’s been going on since at least the 2000’s when I started watching the show and it just goes through the same cycle over and over with people doubling down on their preferences and going to extremes that result in the character being sometimes unrecognizable on both ends of the spectrum. Personally I’ve never been a fan of super masc interpretations or, like, Jersey Kyle being a thing, but I don’t think Kyle is particularly femme either. I think the show does a good job of portraying a well rounded character who has both ‘masc’ and ‘femme’ traits, though I think Matt & Trey lean more heavily on character tropes that are often filled by girls (such as being the nag, the wet blanket, the nurturing family oriented one, the one needing saving, even the fiery redhead trope) for whatever reason. The best versions of Kyle I’ve seen or read have always been somewhere in the middle because then he comes off as more multifaceted. It’s the age old Fingerbang argument of tough vs sweet… he’s both! He’s always been both and I try to achieve that balance in my own interpretation.

Stan: Also an unpopular opinion about fandom rather than the character… Stan is both a sports guy and an animal guy. He’s also a board game guy and a music guy. He’s a multifaceted dude with a wide range of interests! Being into football doesn’t mean he can’t be into the other things, and people saying he’s into football doesn’t mean they’re ignoring the other stuff. Humans are typically into multiple things, and Stan is no exception. He can be a dork and a jock at the same time. He can be big and buff and also empathetic with a soft spot for animals. He can be a quarterback and still like metal music. He can be masc and sensitive at the same time. So I guess this complaint is similar to what I said about Kyle in that I think shoving Stan into one box, regardless of what that box is, is doing a disservice to his character.

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

Pretty typical answer, but instead of shifting the show’s focus onto Randy and Tegridy Farms I would have gone back to the roots and focused on the boys. Everything about the show is better when it’s about the kids being kids. Randy is best when he’s utilized in moderation.

#asks #south park #ask game

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Idk but it was supposed to be the opposite, Alex fell in love with Henry *after* knowing Henry, the real Henry. He knows Henry so well be even writes a whole list down even when he's gonna call Henry because he knows Henry likes having things written down. And then just flipping over that whole dynamic and making Henry feel unseen by Alex (nvm they made Alex completely ignorant of his depression too so, yay!). Alex in that fight (in the book) knew that Henry didn't want it either, their goals were the same, he was fighting for them, asking Henry to make a choice.

But they made Henry feel Alex doesn't know him at all and forces him to be someone else , that's a toxic relationship where one person feels suffocated by the other, and what I loved about firstprince was that their relationship was so healthy and sweet.

Meanwhile I wouldn’t call it toxic (they clearly love each other and care deeply about each other) I wouldn’t call it completely healthy either.

It felt a bit like one of those high schools relationships where, yes, they like each other and want the best for the other person, they’re not toxic, but like, their communication levels and knowledge about each other and real connection are kinda limited.

Idk I kinda feel like in the movie they don’t even know each other that well. And while this is a time issue not a director’s choice, it’s still there.

Alex didn’t even know about Henry’s depression?? Like, if they just deleted his depression that would have been disappointing but not surprising since Henry didn’t really show it anywhere in the film, made no mention of it, but then have Henry have it, and Alex not know about it until after the lakehouse confession feels a bit?? Like, he’s confessing his love for him and he doesn’t even know about it, which is an important thing. Alex has adhd (canon) and Henry has depression, both of them have this things than can be a bit “hard” for other people to deal with when dating them (not actually hard, but they might think it is—bad responses from past partners, or the people around them, etc etc), Alex mentions how Henry lets him be “annoying” and doesn’t complain and Alex doesn’t care to hide, and Alex talks about how he’s attracted to Henry no matter his mental health, and idk it just felt like such a beautiful bit, they love each other, and they love each other more and more the more they know each other, even if their whole life they felt the need to hide, than people wouldn’t actually like them if they were themselves.

And don’t get me started on the erasure of “I love him on purpose” and changing it to the “I can’t help falling in love” song. The meaning the book line had, how Alex loves Henry not despite the bad parts but with them included, because of it, on purpose, he makes the choice to love him because he’s so so worth it (and then we have Henry who didn’t believe himself worthy of being loved—shut up I’m crying). Also bea dwelling more into Henry’s mental health. The “I can’t help falling in love” song is the opposite, these two statements contradict each other. Alex doesn’t make the choice to love him despite everything, because of everything, but Alex simply loves Henry cause he can’t help it. That’s like saying “you have your flaws but I love you regardless because I can’t help it” instead of “you have your flaws and I choose to love them just like I love every other part of you.” They’re not really flaws, but i don’t know how else to explain it.

I kinda went off the point but you get me.

Also, the Kensington fight (movie) felt incredibly underwhelming. The way they immediately went to the v&a, instead of the next morning, the way they don’t really talk things through?? Where’s the communication, where’s Henry bringing breakfast and talking about his morning and seeing Philip and realizing he didn’t want to have his life, than Philips life was fine, but than he wanted more.

#and the lake confession??? #where’s the feeling the true betrayal and hurt and just how bitter it was for Alex #it’s not Henry going and Alex taking it as ‘oh he doesn’t love me then’ like in the movie #in the book it’s worse #is Henry going while alex opens up his heart for him #talking about his tendency to focus too much on the future and have a fire under his ass and learning to slow down and everything #and on top of it falling in love with Henry who also helped him through this process #idk idk #rwrb #casey mcquiston #red white and royal blue #firstprince #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #red white & royal blue #rwrb movie

[lo-leetah]

So many people use the words “love” and “in love” so interchangeably not really knowing the meaning or difference between either, but then again no one really asks themselves what love actually means to them to begin with.

Because asking that question challenges what we think love is, we then have to face how deeply flawed our inherited or acquired perceptions of love are; if we progressed past them firstly and from the need for our parents to love us. Are we healed from our painful encounters with and beliefs about love? And finally, are we ready to be loving? In all the idiosyncrasies and inconveniences engulfed within the very definition of love. This is not about relationships. This is about our relationship with love. Do we understand it? Are we curious enough? I’ll go here and say most of these people you see and interact with everyday are incredibly too afraid of love to be curious about it. They have made million masks to hide their collective subconscious fear of love. And they want to believe they can thrive without acknowledging the dire human need for love. Yes, the will thrive, they will succeed and they will smile everyday. But will they thrive spiritually? Will they not feel like they have an emptiness that won’t go away?

I want to be curious about that. I always called myself a curious person but I often felt like my curiosity was always turned outwards. I constantly felt a sense of misdirection like my efforts and skills were not directed properly. I did therapy and I still felt that. I thought I tried analyzing and solving it but eventually when I didn’t find a solution to “fix” that I thought maybe I’m just paranoid. I now I believe I simply never got curious enough about how I felt, feel or will feel. I sometimes think I know how I feel but I either dismiss, judge or ignore it. My self is out here trying to be seen and I shut her down. My ego shuts her down. The ego is a powerful force. It’ll just be there trying to protect us in the most primitive and chaotic of ways.

Getting closer to ourselves means letting go of what we need to let go of even if it’s scary. It is scary. Imagine throwing away a comfort item. A childhood stuffed animal maybe or an old blanket. There’s a lot of nostalgia and resistance towards what is familiar. But familiar doesn’t always mean good now does it?

Let go. Understand you can’t expect to commit to the act of loving yourself without being able to let go, when your self needs it. In letting go, you’ll feel the freedom that truth tends to bring alongside. It might be scary and lonely at first, but you will be powerful. You’ll be protecting yourself from a place of empowerment not fear.

[sebastiankeepsbustingmyballs]

I keep asking for more and more from you so ignore me if you want 😅💜 I also keep asking in the wrong spot for things! I swear I’m getting too damn old to understand technology. I was wondering if you could elaborate on my other matches from my match up? Undertaker/MeyRin/Finny? I really liked reading why you thought it would work vs why you didn’t pick it for some other matches. A really nice extra tid bit to the matchup! Please and thank you! Hope you are doing well 🥰

Of course! And I’m doing well. I hope you are too. I’m going platonic with Finny because I forgot that this boy is sixteen. Also, platonic Mey-Rin depending on her sexuality. I had some trouble with the flaws of the relationship so it’ll be shorter.

Mey-Rin!

Why it would work:

You like spooky things? So does she. Mey-Rin would love how you work with people during work and also really respect you for the job you have. Going off the fact that you’re a Virgo and some other things you mentioned, you seem like you’d be a very understanding person when it comes to other’s mistakes or mess ups and trust me when I tell you that she needs that. I believe that she’d love your relationship with people to begin with. Your competitive side would also be one of Mey-Rin’s favorite things about you.

Why it wouldn’t work:

Now as kind and understanding as you are, you would (as anyone would) lose some patience when it comes to how many messes this sweet woman makes. Yes she’s lovely but that doesn’t mean she’s not prone to making mistakes so it’s very likely that it will cause some bickering. She’s also extremely protective and as much as she may appreciate you, it can get a little too much. You mentioned being a mom friend and on top of being a Virgo, it’s fair to assume you tend to worry about others quite a bit and due to Mey-Rin’s line of work, the amount of worry is very high which won’t be good for either of you.

Finnian! (Platonic)

Why it would work:

The first thing that would catch his eye is how well you work with others. He’d also love how seriously you take your work and be happy about you being the mom friend. I can also see Finny liking your competitive self. He’d really like the idea of you talking about your favorite books as seeing you happy, would make him happy too. He’s also not the best at work so he’d feel a lot better when it comes to your kindness about it all.

Why it wouldn’t work:

Also very protective but a bit more than Mey-Rin. Trust me, if he’s more protective than Mey-Rin then it’s pretty overwhelming. He’s also yet another person who messes up a lot. Yet again a person to worry a lot about and although he’s strong, it can still be rather troubling when he gets reckless in a fight (which is often.)

Undertaker!

Why it would work:

You had him at funny. Not to mention your competitive and silly side will pull him in all the more. Undertaker would really like how you handle your work as well. Baking? He’d love that as the possibility of experiencing someone baking treats for him would bring him so much joy. As for your relationship with kids, he’d find that absolutely adorable.

Why it wouldn’t work:

Overly protective number three though this one has it a bit worse. It’s also quite interesting to find out all the little experiments he does so he will be very secretive which will not turn out so well. He’s the kinda guy to not fully appreciate a mom friend type s/o if we were to bring up the worries that come with such a title so a worried s/o to a man as secretive as he can be quite troublesome to experience.

#mey rin #finnian #black butler finny #undertaker bb #black butler matchup #black butler #kuroshitsuji

[nowis-scales]

Hey Koto!

For the Awakening Ask Game, how about 7, 30 and... rolls random rumber

...16?

This post is in regards to this ask set.

I took forever to answer this, I’m sorry I blame my education stealing all my free time in November

7. “What stuck with you after finishing this game?”

There is no way of saying this without making myself sound corny as hell, but what stuck with me after enjoying Awakening was that it was just dripping with love. I’ve heard people call it “lazy” in the past, and while I won’t lie and say it’s always elegant, I think conveying that they didn’t care about the game is just plain ignorant. I find it incredibly easy to tell when a work has been loved, and the people who made Awakening loved what they were working on. It’s honestly part of the reason why I think it can get away with some of the things it does with less elegance. For example, some aren’t so fond of its three-act structure. Personally, I actually found I quite liked it, because it gave a sense of really being involved with the world. The conflicts were unique, but still managed to build off each other, as did the characters that we met as we moved further through the story. They don’t just do away with Plegia the first time you’re done with them and just bring them back later; they keep a hold on them the whole time around to keep the threads pulled together. Chrom and Robin’s relationship is another great example of this because it never has to deteriorate for the sake of a plot point. Hell, Robin and Lucina’s relationship never loses anything for the sake of a plot point, either. Even when Chrom’s demise seems as if it’s written in the stars, they never give up on each other. The importance of those relationships carries throughout the game.

I think that the fact that it’s the entire game that’s loved is something that really sticks with me, too. The three games that succeeded it are all games I love, but their deepest passions don’t necessarily attach to the story equally. Fates, Echoes, and Three Houses each rather obviously proclaim a special love for a particular character or place, for example. While I won’t deny that Awakening is more so biased towards Ylisse, it can be easily seen as more of a perspective issue. We really aren’t let in on Valm or Plegia that much beyond the conflict, but I think that’s purposeful. The game wants you to think for yourself about what Chrom’s doing and how this influences the places around him, rather than just dismissing everything he does as right because he’s the hero. After all, his flaws are very front and centre, and Gangrel and Walhart both get dialogue with him confronting his perspective.

Compared to all of the dialogue surrounding Three Houses where we act like there’s more moral greyness than there is to conform to bias, Awakening is much more pleasant. I actually like the idea of Chrom being permitted to not always be in the right in regards to moral conflict, but I think it’s good for us to have to think about it for ourselves. The story doesn’t attempt to send mixed messages about who’s right based on who they think will be the most marketable. They could just tell their story and let things progress from there. Yes, Chrom is right to be angry that Plegia is trying to steal the Emblem and killed Emmeryn. Yes, Plegia is right to be angry about Chrom’s father’s crusades, and about him offering little connecting support after taking out Gangrel (Hoshido and Nohr, per the end of BR/CQ, show even less animosity than this, and they have thousands of years of feuds). The game isn’t outright hammering you over the head with whatever the characters themselves might want you to think, but they are presenting it as is for you to form the idea. In essence, we know that Chrom is a good guy, but he can still be a good guy who does some bad things. 

That’s not all I have to say, of course, but those are just a few things that I love about it. It’s by no means a perfect game, but so much of Awakening seems to have been done just for the love of it, and that’s a power that should not be underestimated.

30. “Freebie! Talk about anything Awakening-related that's on your mind🔮”

There are not really characters in Awakening that I actually dislike, which I would consider a win, but there are a larger handful that I am just… indifferent to, I guess? I try to be a very positive person, so if I had to sway either way I would probably say that I like them, but I must admit… some of them just don’t speak to me? It’s probably not the most profound of thoughts, but my indifference to them always makes me surprised because others aren’t.

Take Cherche for example. I don’t inherently dislike Cherche — she’s pretty, she’s a good unit (as far as my casual derrière knows), and her personality is nice as far as I know. She just… doesn’t quite speak to me! It could be just from my own indifference, but I did not find her to be intriguing enough for me to want to learn more. She felt quite attached to Virion at first, and I didn’t really feel like I got much from her to lure me in to make me want more. It’s a similar case with Virion as well, and even Miriel, too. I know it’s definitely a product of the game only having so much time to focus on certain characters and wanting to devote energy to the ones that matter to the story, but I find that the lures we are given to try and attach us to them don’t always work for me. For some, like Virion, it’s a nuisance to unlock their support conversations because he’s practically made of a single stick of spaghetti, and for others it’s just not feeling like you would get the most of your efforts. None of these characters are bad by any means, but I always do wonder... what is it about them that attracts other people to them? Is there a way for me to get some of that flavour?

After all, as I said, I don’t actually dislike anyone in Awakening’s playable cast. I would love the opportunity to find a place in my heart for characters like Cherche, Virion, and Miriel. I just don’t quite know how to do that yet.

16. “Favorite platonic relationship?”

You see, the problem with me is that I’m one of those people who is usually concerned with character dynamics first and foremost. If I ship something, I usually like their platonic relationship first, and then it becomes a struggle for me to think of ones I like purely platonically because... well, they can be good in so many iterations! It’s a problem. Seriously. Chrom and Robin? Maribelle and Lissa? Nowi and Ricken? Cordelia and Sumia? The characters are just a little too shippable in Awakening, and that’s a problem. 

In the interest of fairness, I think one I could say that I truly do like as non-romantic is Inigo and Owain. The fact that their support conversation can just be described as “two losers arguing over who the biggest loser is” is hilarious, but I like that you can see the genuineness in their interactions as well. At first Inigo cements himself as a bit of a bully, but it turns out to be part of his own vain attempt to be cool. After all, by the end of the support conversation, he’s agreed that named weapons do really move cooler, that Owain’s personal skill (game-style) would be useful, and that his categorization system for weapon names is actually kind of fun. You kind of get the sense of their relationship being a mutual, “he’s an idiot but he’s my idiot” kind of thing, and I really like that. The fact that we get to see even more of that in Fates is great, too!

#fire emblem awakening #fe 13 #fe inigio #fe owain #fe chrom #unsuspecting-person asks

[jacobscharacter]

Interrogate your Character

and their World.

Jasper's 20 questions:

1 How old is your character?

15

2 What's their relationship with their parents? (if their parents are dead then detail the story and their past relationship if you can find it) (if they have a different back story again, then enter that here)

Very close especially with dad. Grew up at home with parents till this point in his life when the illustration is based. Currently finding not having his parents around is quite a difficult aspect of his life.

3 Who raised them (ignore if listed in 2)

Mum and Dad (Ella & Criag)

4 Do they have any siblings? - If so, describe them and their relationship(s)

Yes brother and sister both younger. They all get along. Spend lots of time together doing farm chores. Due to Jasper being a big time skier his younger brother is the more common Owaka resident and is said to be next in line to take over the family farm. While his sister is tough as nails and has never needed help standing up to any local school boys trying to pick on her.

5 What is the main thing, or some things that challenge them?

The pressure he puts on himself to make next year's Olympics as well as the added aspect of not being taken seriously due to his young age.

6 Describe two or more relationships with other characters – what characterizes those relationships?

Dad, his best mate and a man who will back his son to the hills. They both get along like peanut butter and jelly and are a hard duo to separate once together.

James Jameison, a skier who he’s competing with for the wild card spot in the Olympics. He can’t be forsure but after a few weird happenings he suspects he may be the the reasoning for a crash Jasper had at a recent event. Their relationship can be described as a developing rivalry.

7 Does your character have children – if so, how does your character relate to them?

No kids

8 Does your character have a mentor?

His Dad would be his main mentor in life, whilst in skiing he’s heavily influenced by Henrik Harlaut.

9 How has your character’s upbringing shaped their view of the world?

He comes from a small town where you're expected to do what you ask and get on with things. In saying that it’s still a nice community. Jasper hasn’t been exposed to any big ongoing problems other than Gary who everyone has to prevent from driving home from the pub on a regular basis. This means that Jasper views the world as a place where you must work for what you get and nothing comes easy. This helps with his dedication to his sport.

10 Does your character have chosen accessories / clothing / tools / weapons 

He’s very regularly in ski gear. So his common accessories are things such as a helmet and goggles while for clothes he wears a Wu-Tang clan hoodie, ski gloves which in his case are mittens, baggy ski pants, ski boots and a balaclava which he regularly wears in durag form. For tools he has his skis. 

11 Does your character have any notable enemies? 

He’s starting to form a rivalry with James Jamison, a man who he's competing with for the wildcard spot in the New Zealand Olympic team.

12 Describe your character’s world 

It’s the world we live in yet with an imaginary mountain/resort in the Swiss Alps called Good Mountain but it more commonly is referred to as it’s abbreviation ‘GM’.

13 What are your character’s goals in life?

To win a gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games for Slopestyle Halfpipe Skiing.

14 What stops your character getting towards their goals?

His young age.

Rival competitors

Lack of energy due to overworking himself

Self doubt

15 What personality flaws does your character have and how do they manage them?

Jasper suffers from perfectionism, he feels that he must make the Olympics and is constantly trying to land his ideal run. This means that he slowly starts to overwork himself to the point where he is at risk of injury.

Jasper also suffers from being Impatient, He feels like he has to achieve all his goals right this moment and if it doesn’t happen he’s going to be dissatisfied. This means he puts more pressure on his current self and misses out on enjoying the moment.

Lastly Jasper suffers from being Close-Minded, he thinks that making the Olympics is his only life path and focuses so much so on it he misses out on what is fun and things he originally enjoyed about the sport such as skiing around with friends and family. He thinks that he can’t take a day off or take time off and go home because he will fall behind on his training.

16 What special talents does your character have – were they innate or did they develop them,

The main talents Jasper has are Air Awareness, Acrobatic Skills, Balance and Coronation, Body Control, Fearlessness, Creativity and Adaptability. He was born with many of these skills to a certain degree but throughout his life has improved them. Things such as Air Awareness, Balance and Coronation & Body Control came more naturally whilst through things like trampolining and repetition at a young age gained hi skills such as Acrobatic Skills & Fearlessness. Jasper also worked mentally on skills such as Creativity and being Adaptable to trends and what's popular in the sport by really just being obsessed. He could base his tricks off skiers like Henrik Harlaut and bring his own twist to their styles.

17 is my character a loner.

My character is friendly and gets along with lots of people in his local community. Now being overseas and quite young and frankly a little scared he finds the people intimidating and has pushed himself to be somewhat of a loner due to fear of saying the wrong thing or not fitting in with people on a whole other side of the planet.

Your additional questions

18 Jasper’s favorite food?

KimChi Bowl Noodle.

19 Where doe’s Jasper work?

Jasper works at the Mountain Cafe and Eatery on GM. He works as a dishwasher.

20 How old was Jasper when he did his first backflip?

Jasper was 8 years old when he did his first backflip.

[lizlemonlacroix]

Play something Emo

I've heard it said that you should never grocery shop while hungry. I'm going to guess the same logic applies to writing while hurt and furious.

But whatever.

I am completely sick and tired for being the half of the majority of my female friendships who does the work. Yes, lives are busy. Yes, "out of sight and out of mind" is very real. Yes, maybe connection isn't easy when there's distance or a pandemic (which is still happening and ONE MILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED), but can anyone other than me at least just TRY?

Without goddamn social media? Just because I've stepped away from scrolling all of its toxicity, doesn't mean I don't need connection with other souls. I'm just looking for the same style we rocked circa 2005. It's by texting or talking voice to voice. I know everyone that I'm being forgotten by has a device basically glued to their palm. They just can't be bothered to text me back.

I understand. Life is what it is. I give benefits of the doubt. I shrug and sigh and smile while I'm breaking because it sure feels like the lives I've poured into over the years don't seem to pour anything back my way. I'm so exhausted, taking this higher road, but I have a breaking point. A boundary line. I deserve better.

I'm not without fault or flaws. I've gone through periods where I can't muster replies, too.

But.

I snapped out of it. I woke up. I turned around and apologized. Maybe not every time; but I've at least sent the long foregone replies. I don't just leave forever, completely. Until now.

So, where the fuck are you? All of you? I'm mad. I'm hurt. I'm disappointed. I only see the wisps of these relationships completely dissolving. See, I'm the one who has always intitiated and now it's painfully clear that no one gives a damn. So, you know what?

Texts deleted. Invitations, rescinded. They've already been ignored, so it's moot. I don't have horses or sailboats or the urge to congregate unmasked with thousands because c'est la vie.

I have a family to protect and get from one day to the next. I have preschools to research and bank accounts to balance. I have summer plans to (safely, distanced) arrange and schedule. I have my siser and my most contant friend to text back. She knows who she is and she's also known about my frustrations with you fools since the beginning. I have books to read and write. I have better ways to spend my time than by being sad for being forgotten.

Hurt will fade. The lesson is learned. But I'm done.

[girlfri3nd]

CAN YOU PLEASE RB THIS WITH IF YOU BELIEVE IN SOULMATES OR NOT IN THE TAGS??? (I BELIEVE IN THEM! IT IS TOO SAD TO THINK WE DON’T HAVE SOULMATES)

#i think we have multiple who all serve different purposes in life #romantic platonic etc or even just for a certain time period #it is very dear 2 me #edit: ok i feel a need to elaborate because this is getting notes lols #but i think relationships all take work .. i just think that feeling when you click with someone #when you feel the pull of the universe when you look deeply into their eyes ... #that is a soulmate #but yes like it doesn’t mean you can ignore flaws or that the relationship still doesn’t need work to be beautiful #also doesn’t mean it will last forever .. but perhaps that is not always a bad thing and is instead a sign of growth #EDITING AGAIN BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE BRINGING UP REALLY GOOD POINTS :3 #i think like .. anyone can be a soulmate too.... #like im not saying it is all fate #i think that sometimes things just WORK OR sometimes things have enough work PUT INTO THEM u know what i mean #ok im not gonna edit this anymore idk if anyone is even coming back to this version of the post lols

[sokkastyles]

Toph is highly emotionally intelligent but a lot of people don’t see it because we tend to associate empathy with femininity and Toph is an unfeminine girl who is unapologetic about who she is and what she wants and a lot of people will look at those types of characters and go “unfeeling murder child.”

I mean, she gives advice to Iroh about his relationship with Zuko, despite never having met zuko and despite Iroh being one of the wisest characters in the series who usually gives advice to others.

She cares deeply about her parents, despite knowing that they don’t understand her, and tries to live up to what they want from her and doesn’t want to worry them. WIth the money she was making in the earth rumble, she actually could have left on her own, but she obviously loves them and even after she runs away, she worries about causing them pain.

She was gutted when she couldn’t save Appa, and Aang accuses her of not caring but that’s clearly not true at all. She holds herself accountable for not being able to save everyone and spent most of that episode blaming herself for him getting taken.

She makes an effort to enjoy the spa day with Katara even though it wasn’t what she wanted to do because Katara is her friend and that was what Katara wanted to do.

She takes a “tough love” approach to teaching Aang earthbending but also tries to build up his confidence and is super excited for him when he finally gets it.

Her face when Iroh is hurt

and Jet

The way that she quickly forms emotional bonds with every single member of the gaang and gives them ridiculous affectionate nicknames.

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”

The way that she is the first one to believe in Zuko’s sincerity and defends him multiple times to the gaang even though he burned her because she knows it was an accident.

The way that she comforts Zuko and reassures him that Iroh still cares about him.

The way that she does rely on Katara as a motherly figure but also reassures Katara that she can still be a kid, too.

The way that she clings to Sokka, the guy who wants to be needed and feels like he needs to be the protector of this group of kids, but also has playful banter with him and can rival him for sarcasm.

The way that she gave up her comfortable life to join a fight that she wasn’t even involved in because other people needed her.

Yes, she can be rude and crude (and often does so on purpose), but she also deeply cares about people and forms strong bonds with every member of the gaang. She also has a deep understanding of other people that goes beyond just being able to detect when they’re lying through earthbending. She is really good at assessing people’s flaws and strengths. She sees no problem with cheating a cheater or pummeling some jerks into the dirt, and ignores stuffy social conventions if she sees no value in them, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have morals and doesn’t care about people.

#toph #atla meta #atla #avatar the last airbender

[orchid3a]

I SEE RED - H. RINDOU

synopsis: Rindou is jealous and that’s your fault

pairing: Bonten!Haitani Rindou x f!reader

tw: swearing, mention of sex, implied friends with benefits, jealousy

wc: 786 words

tagging: @etheralyonn​ @eriskaitto​ @ahsrci​

for the request click here!

sfw taglist click here to join!

note: so here we have the second  drabble for the even, sorry for the wait anon, please let me know if you liked it <3

no proofreading

english isn’t my native language

reblogs and comments are appreciated

Haitani Rindou isn’t a jealous man, he doesn’t feel such a petty emotion like jealousy, no he’s too powerful and perfect to even know what that word means.

He doesn’t want to shoot Sanzu, who is too close to you, and splatter his brain on the club’s wall behind him.

No no Haitani Rindou doesn’t want to grab you by your wrist, take you from Sanzu’s lap, kiss your red lips and show the pink-haired man how he can make you run out of air with a simple kiss.

He rolls his eyes after he sees you giggling at whatever Sanzu said in your ear, his grip on the glass tightens, almost breaking it.

“Rin why are you so bothered? You aren’t her boyfriend.”

Ran’s words make him even more angry. His brother is right, you and him aren’t in a real relationship, you two just have casual sex and stop. 

“You are in love, my dear little brother and you should tell her how you feel. It’s quite pathetic seeing you like this”

“Ran are you fucking kidding me? I was the first one to propose this relationship because I don’t want to have problems.”

“You are an idiot, brother.”

Rindou sighs and drinks his glass, turning his gaze towards you his blood runs cold. 

You and that fucking junkie are fucking kissing in front of his eyes.

Ran whistles at the scene, while Rindou gets up and goes straight to them. He rudely grabs your wrist and exits from the room, ignoring your protests and your attempts to free your wrist.

He pins you at the wall the exact moment you two are out, his hands traps your face, one knee is between your legs to prevent you from escaping and his glare shows jealousy and anger.

“Rinnie you are rude, you know” 

“Yeah I know”

You smirk at his reaction, Rindou isn’t the type to clearly express his emotion, preferring to maintain a neutral expression. That's why you wanted to test if he was really in love with you. 

During the past few days you noticed how his behavior changed, he was trying to act more like you two have a normal relationship and not just a physical one.

You were the first to fall in love with him, how could you not? In your eyes, Haitani Rindou is the most perfect human being, even with his flaws, and he has many flaws. 

At first you accepted Rindou's proposal of having a sex-only relationship, because it was better than nothing. It was better than seeing him with other girls. 

But now you are tired, you want to have something other than just have a carnal relation with him, at the same time you don’t want to screw everything and make him leave you.

That’s why Sanzu offered his help. He proposed to help you by making the mullet man jealous so you can see if he is really in love with you or not.

And by how Rindou reacted, it seems that the experiment was a success.

“Still thinking about him?”

“You’re jealous that I was kissing Haru?”

“I don’t like sharing things you should know that, (y/n)”

“But I’m not yours”

“Yes you fucking are. He can’t love you like I can. I know every single thing about you, your likes and dislikes, your favorite food and how you like spending your time. He can’t understand how cute you are whenever you talk about what you like, or how your eyes shine when you eat your favorite dish. I fucking love you and I was dumb to not tell you soon…I didn’t realize it soon because I never thought about losing you to someone else. When I saw you kissing Sanzu, I felt so angry but scared, I was scared to lose you.”

You can’t believe what you just heard and saw. Haitani Rindou, one of the most prideful men you have ever met, is exposing his fears in front of you.

Your hand cups his cheek bringing him closer to your lips, his eyes widen and slowly his lips touch yours.

The kiss isn’t a lustful one, like how you usually kissed, instead it is gentle and chaste. His hands go to your waist and bring you closer, while your arms wrap around his neck.

“It took a while, right Rinnie”

“What do you mean? Wait…You love me ?”

“A kiss made you this dumb” You laugh “I love you Rindou”

“Then why did you kiss that junkie?”

“Revenge is a dish best served cold, Rinnie” you giggle and kiss him again.

“You will be the death of me”

“Gladly”

Rindou smiles a little knowing well you will maintain your promise.

#✒️ - aria writes #🧸- virtus #tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers x y/n #tokyo revengers x you #tokrev fluff #tokrev #tokrev x reader #tokrev x you #tokyo revengers drabbles #tokyo revengers fluff #rindou haitani #rindou x y/n #rindou x reader #rindou x you #haitani rindou imagines #haitani rindou x reader #haitani rindou x y/n #haitani rindou x you #rindou scenarios #rindou haitani x reader #rindou haitani x you #rindou haitani x y/n