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smugraccoon137 · 3 years

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Supergirl Season 2 episode 8 Medusa review part 2

If your curious part 1 was just my breakdown of Kara and Mon-els relationship that got way too long. But as always SPOILERS AND GAY THOUGHTS AHEAD

Me and kel get so excited when Lenas in an episode. Like practically giddy. I can’t help smiling when shes on screen honestly. And yes Katie McGrath is beautiful, but beyond that such a pretty smile and lovely voice. I’m sure ratings started to spike when she joined the cast. Okay enough about pretty girls on to the review

Tipsy fucking Alex though guys I can’t get over this mess of a person.

Alex: if I have to come out to my mom then I choose to do it drunk

Kara: no your not *yoinks beer*

Alex: wait no my coming out juice

Kara Danvers sneaky sneaker extraordinaire can totally interview Lena and find out Cadmus things without anyone knowing. The confidence this goofball has is top tier

Underrated relationship: Alex and Winn though. I really really love Winn and honestly Alex is such big sister energy to both him and Kara.

wow Lenas pretty in the interview scene. A touch of auburn hair from the sunlight really makes this shot and we never get to see her with her hair down. Fan service honestly, or maybe she heard a certain beef cake reporter was gonna come by and wanted to dazzel her.

Lena: hair up is for business. Hair down is for flirting friendship time with Kara

Poor baby thinks she falls short nooooo. Your doing your best godamn your only like 25 jesus. Kara give her a hug she needs love and affection

Kara thinks shes being so sneaky in this interview. Such a golden retriever, bad at sneakin. As soon as she toes the line Lena catches on and kicks her out. Really good acting in the scene, the subtle change in expression to show Lenas guard raising. Good job Katie.

Real quick Lena why is your office so ugly? How do you keep it clean? You spend 99% of your days in this place and its whiter than a hospital room. I hate it. Why is your desk an oval? and why does it have a hole in it? Kara cant eat you out in secret anymore damn.

OOHHHhhhh noooo the fucking gas bomb in the bar what the fuck. EVERYBODIES DEAD JESUS WHAT WAS THAT

Poor Mon-el. What happened at the bar was fucked up, and he feels like its fault when its obviously not.

Love that he and Kara are having bro time playing some Monopoly. Oh no not Kara asking if he likes her. Honestly thought these two had good chemistry in this scene. Im a sucker for dumbass not understanding certain words and phrases. So Kara having to reiterate her questions and finally being like “You don’t want to mate with me do you?” was super fun. Omegaverse vibes mfs. Although I am confused by mon-els reaction “I mean have you seen the kind of women I’ve been attracting?” I honestly don’t know what this means.

Kara internal reaction though: Oh thank god

Wow Kara really just has no regard for her own life, huh? she just opens the door and possibly contaminates herself. It’s good to want to help people, but love you gotta care about yourself too

Good reveal with the fortress of solitude. Oof Kara gonna feel like its her fault all those aliens died and mon-els sick. They do a really good job of showing Karas relationship with her parents through their holograms. She wants so badly to see them again, to talk to them. And she can, but not really. They just aren’t real.

Lena cattily to her mother: im used to celebrating holiday weekends alone at my desk

me to Kara: please invite her to thanksgiving

Okay so Lena being adopted is another interesting parallel to Kara. Also the fact that both Kara and Lena fall into there families shadows, and are left behhind or forgotten. Really interesting how Lena and Karas relationship is so similar to Clark and Lex’s for obvious purposes. Though the CW queer coding the fuck out of their relationship in Smallville really only adds to Supercorp fever. Its always been Homoerotic subtext Harold!

Me watching Lena and Lillian trade verbal blows: Wow ya’lls relationship is fucked up. Lex and Lionelle would spar and fence but you two are on another level jesus

oooooof that last line.

Lena: I know your lying

Lillian: and how could you possibly know that?

Lena: because you told me you loved me. And we both know thats not true

Who wrote this jesus fuck my heart. The PAIN.

Bonus thought Lena thinks Karas smart. Goofball beefcake sneaky sneakster who doesnt know the difference between flirting and friendship is smart she thinks. I love these idiots

Wow Kara just doesn’t wait huh? Oh cadmus is going to be at LCorp? Not on my watch. Lena’s there. I know this because I tune into her heart beat just to check on her cus she likes to work late. Don’t worry Alex it’s for friendship reasons.

That LCorp security guard got princess carried for .2 seconds. Best moment of his life.

God its like dark out. Lenas working on a holiday weekend into the night. I hate this, give her friends.

Lena looks so scared when Kara gets thrown into the giant LCorp sign

And then hurt Kara looking up at her with dread.

Kara internal: fuck don’t come out now. I came here to save you

God I love the protectiveness. Its *chefs kiss*. Hank throwing the beam at Lena and Kara even in her hurt state throwing herself in front of it. Sometimes self sacrifice is gay. But how Lena looks at her after wards like “I can’t believe I’m alive. I can’t believe she chose to save me”. Met with a gruff “Get out of here!”. mm yes this is my kind of content. Fight for me.

I was robbed an aftercare scene but I doubt it will be the last time. (*COUGHS* the “im leaving” phone call *COUGHS*)

Talking about the virus Eliza: what about Lena Luthor?

Kara: What about her?! (super defensive is also a super power maam)

Winn: Luthors can be pretty good actors

Kara: No, I looked into LENAS EYES. She doesn’t know anything about cadmus or her mother

J’onzz: Would you stake Mon-els life on that?

well I guess that really puts Lena and Mon-el right next to each other in priorities huh? Which one is more important?

Wow Lena totally has a crush on Supergirl after that. Flustered dork.

Lena: *laughs nervously* you know that doors not really an entrance

Kara: *upsettit stone face pupper*

Lena: :,)

Okay but the way Lena just says “Anything” all breathless and helpful when Kara says she needs her help. Shes crushin hard

Kara tells Lena her mother is in charge of Cadmus.

Lena: >:(

Annnd the crush is dead. That did not last long. Really love that Lena has such a different relationship with Kara vs Supergirl though, good dynamic having her reactions so different. Which I believe actually relates as a Clark and Lois parallel? Seeing as how Lois has two separate relationships with Clark and Superman.

OOf the way Lenas throat bobs with genuine sadness because who she thought Supergirl was is wrong. Shes just like the rest of them. Thinks Lena is just another crazy Luthor. It hurts

Kara: I know what its like to be disillusioned by our parents, but Im a pretty good judge of character, and you are not like your mother. She is cold and dangerous. And you are too good and too smart to follow in her path. Be your own Hero.

Wow just what a good line. They are capable of some things here and there arent they? Melissa's delivery on this is excellent. And the way Katie McGrath is able to show such depth of sadness and bitterness even from a shot of her BACK is really cool. Great acting in this scene in particular. And I can see why the “desperation to be good” is such a highlighted part of these two relationship. Its the one thing in common between Lena and Supergirl, the place where they can meet in the middle. And the way Lena looks after her as she leaves! AHHH thats the good shit, the pining

Okay big Mon-el scene in coming so if you dont want to hear my ranting skip over this part.

Funny how as soon as Kara has this big impactful scene with Lena full of tension and emotion the writers were like: shit we almost forgot Mon-els dying.

Kara: *staring sadly back into Lenas office kind of wanting to go back in*

Writers: *cough cough* KARA He’s DYINGGGG

Kara: Oh shit right. Mon-el Oh no. My *looks at poorly written handwriting on her palm* romantic interest?

Wow Mon-el looks like shit, poor guy. Someone swaddle this pillow princess and get him some soup.

Heres a question. Kara is visibly upset that Mon-el is dying. Is it because she’s sad that the guy shes likes is dying. Because her friend is dying? Because her father created the virus thats killing him (what the writers want us to think)? Or because no matter what Kara does the people she loves keep falling through the cracks and shes helpless to stop it?

Her parents. Clark. Her adoptive father. Now Lena. Now Mon-el. Why can’t she ever do anything? Why is it always her fault? This poor kid has some deep seeded abandonment issues

Mon-el: you know you look beautiful with the weight of all these worlds on your shoulders.

I do remember my reaction here, cus I thought this was a weird line. A line that was obviously meant to be romantic and complimentary, but it felt unsettled in my stomach. Coming back and watching the scene it sits even more uncomfortably there. He obviously means well, but this line is kind of just shitty. Its a very selfish and unthoughtful thing to say to someone.

Kara’s entire fucking life has revolved around other people and making sure they are happy and taken care of. But having “failed” at such a young age to do the impossible things asked of her (carrying on Kryptons legacy, raising Clark) she overcompensates. Any normal person would just make their life revolve around their family and friends, not healthy but it works. But Kara feels responsibility over an entire world of lost people and lives. So the amount she overcompensates is ungodly. She does have the weight of worlds on her shoulders. This is not a joke or hyperbole. Its just her life. And thats so fucking shitty. And to have someone actually see that and acknowledge it. To make it a reality so to speak. Then to have them say “yeah you look good like this” while you’re a shaking Atlas being crushed. It is just a little too much isn’t it? That pain to have someone see you finally, and then completely miss the point. For them to go “oh wow your so strong. your so brave” instead of “let me help you. you shouldn’t have to do this at all, forget by yourself. But now I am here”.

I imagine this was the scene that crowned my darling himbo boy Mon-Hell? Which is so unfortunate. I hope Im wrong, but I feel that his character might just end up a big missed opportunity

I want everyone to know that me and Kel screamed through the entire enxt few seconds of the scene. We knew the kiss was coming from how they were building it up. But god was it painful, especially for it to be delivered after a line like THAT. But yeah very loud angry screaming

Also not to be that bitch but Kara and Mon-els scene was a total of 1:53 RT, and Kara and Lenas ran at a 1:57 RT. Just sayin...

No Lena don’t be evil thats too sexy...

Okay but the way that Lena just tricks Lillian is so good. Shes so clever. And added bonus she makes her ask for her help, which is nice actually. Lillian's obvious vice is weakness and that is often shown in embarrassment. A woman like this asking for help borders that line of weakness and its nice to see on such a dislikable character. Lena didn’t just get what she wanted she got a point over her mother.

Lena looks good in the purple coat. Repeat she is pretty

Love the mental chess game between Lena and Lillian. Lena offering help right off the bat and giving her the isotope free of charge. And then Lillian making Lena launch the virus to prove herself. Good stuff.

Kara appears: don’t do it Lena!

Lena: why not? im a luthor

Okay so obviously Lena switched the Isotope and the Virus won’t work. But thats what makes this line so perfect. Throwing it back in Supergirls face. Like “Yeah, Im a luthor. And Ill show you what im capable of.” But instead of mass death and destruction Lena saves the day. She saved thousands of lives, and its because shes a Luthor that she was able to do that. Really nice way to full circle that

Wow Lillian really just starts booking it without Lena, huh? bitch

I really love the scene of the virus falling all around National City. The choice of an orangish snow falling was a really really good one. Paired with some excellent music for the mid season finale.

Its sad but I do love Hank just being ready and at peace with death. Im sure he misses his wife and daughters.

Okay but Lena calling the cops is tea. Send your mom to jail honey.

So we’re really not gonna talk about how Lena saved everyones asses? Like don’t you think Supergirl would want to talk to the woman that A) kind of tricked her, and B) saved National City. Thats just what makes sense??? But no we’re going to ignore that the DEO is a kind of shit at their job sometimes. And that the woman that they were accusing of having a part to play in all the xenophobic shit is the one who did their job. BY HER SELF.

Okay rant over. This was a long one review dear god. Really really good episode though. I enjoyed rewatching all the scenes even if it was a mixed bag of feelings. Thanks for reading hope you enjoyed all the screaming!

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raz-b-rose · 4 years

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Daminette Soulmate AU Scars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608933/chapters/56792128#workskin

For as long as Marinette could remember, she had always been covered in scars. Her parents were concerned to say the least. What was going on in her soulmates life for a new scar to appear on their daughter's body on an almost weekly starting at the age of four. Marinette however felt differently. Yes she was worried but she had the feeling that he was a fighter, and he was, in her heart, the strongest person she knew.

The scars slowed as she grew older, but never gone for long. They almost stopped altogether when she turned eleven, only the occasional scrape in her knuckles or knees now. She did have one thing to thank about this bond though, that only she could see the colors. To everyone else she would be walking around painted in pale green lines on almost every surface of her body. She would trace his scars over and over, dreaming of the day she could see his green eyes for herself.

She would dance around her parents, spouting her all her dreams and desires. Everything from their wedding to what their house would look like and how many kids they would have. Her parents tried to be supportive, but the possibility of what her soulmate's life was like left their hearts heavy. Marinette remained the optimist, believing that everything would be ok.

All those dreams were crushed one day however, shortly after she turned thirteen. She had been taking a shower, when the worst pain she had ever felt pierced her heart. She cried out, grasping at her heart, trying for anything to make the pain stop. She started to cry, it hurt so bad.

Then she felt it, a new scar forming just below her clavicle, before everything went numb.

She laid there in the bathtub, the water beating down on her, but she couldn’t feel a single thing. She can feel her panic rising, it takes her a few tries to get out of the tub, her brain having trouble connecting the loss of touch to the grip her hands are trying to maintain on the tub's rim.

She collapses onto the floor, crying when she can’t feel the cool tile against her cheek, or the water pooling around her body. Her sobs increase when she can’t feel the tears she knows she is crying. Why can’t she feel anything?

She can hear her mother knocking on the door, her voice rising in hysteric as Marinette fails to respond. She pushes herself up slowly, fumbling at the lock on the door, feeling a small victory when she finally unlocks it before falling to the floor again.

Her mother rushes in, quick to scoop her daughter up, crying when she sees her daughter's newest scar, quick to cover her in a towel, attempting to delay the inevitable. “Mom, I can’t feel anything.”

Sabine tears up even more, knowing the harsh truth her daughter had to face at just thirteen years old, much too young for heart break. But was there ever a proper age for it? She gently carries her daughter to her room. She dresses her, and brushes her hair, knowing that any gentle touch she normally used to calm her Dou Dou, would have no effect now.

Marinette kept asking her mom questions, anxious for answers, confused and scared. Her mother remained silent, only sitting behind her. Marinette glances at her mirror in the corner, watching as her mother brushes out her hair, wishing just this once she could feel the pain from a stubborn knot. Then she sees it, an ugly green scar right where she had been in intense pain earlier.

Marinette can feel herself starting to hyperventilate. She pulls at her shirt, frustration growing when she can’t feel the soft cotton. Most of the time, scars healed in thin lines or round circles, depending on what made the original injury. This however looks like it had healed over rough and bumpy. It was still a little red, blotching around the edges, a few scabs covered it as well.

“Mom he died” There was no way to survive an injury to cause this scar. Her soulmate was dead. Before she had even gotten to see his green eyes, he left this world. She watches, horror growing as her mother brushes her hands over her back. He had been impaled straight through. Marinette started to feel sick, at least she still had that.

“I’m so sorry Dou Dou, but you will never be able to feel anything again.” She hugs her close, kissing her head softly. Marinette doesn't miss how her mother doesn’t tell her she’s wrong. Now her heart feels just as numb as the rest of her. It was a solemn night in the Dupain-Cheng household.

She started therapy that week, learning to move without touch, learning to function as if her second half wasn’t snatched right from under her. It was a good thing she did, or Marinette figures she would have only wallowed in self pity, and festering anger at the unfairness of it all. But she would be strong for him, whoever he was. Was, she reminds herself.

And strong she was. When she returned to school, she didn’t let any of her friends know what had happened, practicing careful movements, too careful sometimes and overcompensating her reactions into clumsy falls and spins. She put on the facade of one who spaced out easily, one who you had to call loudly to grab her attention. A classic space cadet.

Life became a new normal, and the pain lessened, and she grew older. Life was good, and she was finding the ability and joy to see all the blessings she still had in life. She genuinely smiled more, her heart healing and ready to overflow with love for those around her.

It was because of this life through her for another loop. She became the hero known as Lady Bug, and one could say her loss was a perk for how often she was thrown against solid objects. But she took it in stride, and worked hard to improve her skills to help Paris survive.

Chat Noir became suspicious as more and more fights continued. He finally asked after a particularly nasty akuma, if her miraculous offered extra protection. “I can handle a hit ok, but I can definitely feel it. You always get back up without flinching.” She flinched at that, and he definitely noticed.

“My soulmate died a couple years ago, so I am unable to feel anything anymore.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry Bug, oh man”

She rubs her chest where her reminder sat, “I never knew him, but it still hurt you know, left quite the nasty scar.” She tried to lift the mood with a dry laugh, but it just made the air thicker.

“Pain like that never goes away.” He was so quiet and gentle, leaving both relieved and saddened for the other that they could understand the pain of loss. Their bond strengthened a little more that day, and only increased more over the years.

Her carefully built and maintained facade was quickly broken however with the arrival of one Lila Rossi. The girl was cunning and perceptive. Why she had it out for Marinette, she may never know. Lila was careful, starting with the casual talk of soulmates, before moving onto the unfortunate topic and widely varying stories of those who lost theirs. Some say you died with your soulmate, others said you couldn’t tell when your soulmates died, and of course Marinette's reality, that you lost the ability to feel.

Lila however took these speculations a step further. She claimed that her cousin lost her soulmate and not only lost physical touch, but her emotions as well. That she could no longer love, that she went to acting classes to hide among those who could feel emotions, that she was nothing more than an empty shell.

Marinette never engaged with these conversations, put off by the idea that it could be the truth. After all, she was proof that it wasn't always true after all. She still loved deeply and felt joy and anger and sadness. She was still herself, just without her perfect other half.

Her friends were quick to sympathize with Lila’s cousin. How tragic, and how horrible that she would never be normal again. It wasn’t until she entered the classroom one day, faced by the suspicious and scared stares of her friends, that Marinette knew her life was to change again. She doesn’t know how Lila found out, but the reality is she did, and Marinette would take it in stride.

Lila accused her of pretending to be everyone's friend, that she was a monster trying to fool everyone around her. The class seemed to trust every word that Lila spoke, after all, logically speaking, she couldn’t have good intentions if she couldn’t feel anything. Marinette could only be offended, betrayed, shocked and hurt.

She told them it was true she could no longer feel the physical world, but she assured them that her emotions were intact. She loved them all dearly, and nothing would ever change that. She could tell they didn’t quite believe her.

“You are a great actor Marinette, trying to trick us like that” Lila whimpers, trying to make herself look small.

“In theory, if I can’t feel good emotions, why would I be able to feel bad ones?” Marinatte asked, desperate for them to think this through. “I could never be anything, much less mean spirited and conniving.” Lila looked like she took personal offense to that.

“That's a good point” Rose whispers, her hands clasped tightly, clearly the whole situation stressing her out. She did hate confrontation afterall.

“I have always loved you guys, but if you want to believe differently, I can’t stop you.”

“How do we know you really can’t feel anything, maybe you’re just trying to get sympathy” Chloe just had to spark the situation back into a raging fire. Soon everyone is talking over the other, each looking more and more agitated as moer words are exchanged.

Marinette just sighs. She walks up to Nathanial, asking for his exacto knife. He hands it over, with some trepidation, but hands it over nonetheless. Marinette smacks the table top loud enough to get everyone's attention.

“I was thirteen when he died,” she pulls down her shirt enough for everyone to see her scar, the emotions ranging from sympathy to horror. “And I haven’t been able to feel anything since this scar appeared.” With that she takes Nathanial’s knife to her forearm, cutting three even lines, her hand nor flinching or wavering once.

“Marinette!” Everyone cried out, scrambling to help her. She doesn't realize she's crying until someone, Kim she thinks, is asking if it hurts.

“It’s never going to stop hurting,” she sobs, “he’s gone forever and I will never be the same again! Is this proof enough for you!”

“What is going on here- Oh my goodness Marinette!” Ms. Bustier rushes up the steps, quickly taking Marinette to the nurses office. The adults are panicking, Marinette tells them the truth, letting the nurse know that she doesn't feel anything so she doesn’t have to waste her medicine on her. It took quite a bit of convincing from her parents to let her leave without the medicine or a doctors office visit.

Things were tense in the classroom for a while after that, and Lila and Chloe stopped talking to her altogether. Marinette had imagined worse than this if her friends were to find out, she would take the tip toeing over the silent treatment anyday.

The girls tried to stop talking soulmates around Marinette, but she wouldn’t have it. She encouraged them to talk about their dreams and thoughts about at all. She wanted them to continue to hold onto that hope and future for as long as they could.

It wouldn’t be until Marinette was sixteen that her world shifted once again. It was dinner time, she had a slip with the knife, and sliced her finger. “Ow!” Marinette turns to throw away the food when the burning sensation actually registered in the unused part of her brain. She freezes, staring at the blood pooling around her finger, relishing in the hurt. Not that she enjoyed pain, no she just couldn’t believe she could feel pain once more.

“Mom! Dad!” Marinette starts to scream because this could only be a dream. There was no way she could feel again. “Mom! Dad!”

“What is it Marinette?” They bust into the apartment, her mother quick to grow frantic at the sight of blood now covering her daughter's hand and arm.

“It hurt. The cut hurts.” Her parents freeze, exchanging bewildered glances.

“What?” Her mother sounds like she’s trying not to believe it. Marinette agrees, it's too good to be true. So she reaches up to touch her hair, relishing in the greasy unwashed state, her face too oily, her shirt a soft silk. She spins around, swinging open the freezer, laughing at the burning cold of the ice cubes. She fails to notice the new scar forming along her knuckle on her right hand.

“Marinette sweetie, please sit down so we can take care of that cut.” Her father pushes towards the island,

She winces at the disinfectant, trying not to wiggle in her seat to feel the hardwood beneath her. The pressure from the bandaid just adds to her new reality, she starts with a laugh before it mixes with tears.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know sweetie, we will go to the doctors first thing tomorrow,”

Despite Marinette having stayed up too late touching anything and everything in her room, she didn’t feel overly tired while waiting in the doctor's office. The fabric used on the waiting chairs were itchy and Marinette decided she did not like that, but couldn’t feel regretful towards her shorts at all.

“Well Ms. Dupain-Cheng, there have been stories about soulmates falling into a coma, and that could explain what is happening now.”

“A coma?” Marinette whispers in surprise, hope blossoming in her chest once more.

“Yes, it's very unlikely that you have a new soulmate, with you being sixteen and all.”

“Doctor you said stories and not studies, sorry if I would like a little more of a solid reasoning.”

“Unfortunately, it's been a hard area to study so research is often limited and incomplete.”

“I see” Her mother murmurs, gripping her hand tightly.

“The only other explainable reason is her heart healed from the loss. After all, people can’t come back from the dead.”

Marinette felt a little crushed after that. The possibility that her soulmate was possibly still dead was not one she really wanted to consider but she needed to be realistic. It has been three years now. Her body had probably finished healing from the shock. So Marinette pushed aside the notion of an awakened soulmate in a hospital somewhere and instead focused on her second chance at living life to the fullest.

Her friends couldn’t believe it, the romantics holding out for the coma theory, despite Marinette protests. She melted into the first hug she had felt from Alya and Adrian, each of them crying tears of joy.

When she told Chat Noir later that day, he looked at her in confusion before exclaiming something she never thought she would hear him say as LadyBug. “Marinette?”

“What?”

“You are! You’re Marinette, oh my gosh”

“What are you talking about Chat?” She laughs nervously. He drops his transformation before she can protest, leaving Adrian in his place. She gapes in surprise for a few minutes before joyously throwing herself into his arms. It had been a rough and wild two years, but things didn’t feel all that different in the long run.

Things weren’t all that different for Damian. He felt lost and empty when he woke up in his father's arms. Yes he was thankful at a second chance at life. He felt overjoyed to be with his family again, but something was missing. A year being dead so it was understandable that he couldn’t feel anything. Titus’ fur, bat cows horns, or the cool steel of his blades. Something must be wrong with him. A side effect from the magic? How would his family react to finding out? So he kept it a secret, afraid of the possible rejection.

It was one week later that he discovered another side effect of the magic. He now had super strength and flight. It was a learning curve to say the least. At least the loss of physical touch helped with the super strength part of things.

He couldn’t keep his secret for too long though, however six months was an amazing feat to say the least. He had gotten cut during a scuffle, the blood going unnoticed until Dick had panicked, calling for Alfred to bring the medical supplies.

“Why did you say anything!”

Damian can only sit quietly, refusing to look at Alfreds hands as he works the stitches into his skin. He knows he won't feel it anyway so why look.

“Master Damian, normally you would be a squirming mess as I do this, care to explain” His words may be stern, but his voice was so gentle. Of course he already knew the answer to his question. Bruce walked over, kneeling in front of his son, and Damian was shocked by the emotion on his father's face. He looked so solem and heartbroken.

“Damian can you feel anything?”

“No...but I’m sure it's just from the magic so I wouldn’t be too concerned father”

“Oh baby bird. Damian…” Dick sighs, coming up to hug him. Damian sits confused by everyone's reaction, for no one said anything else for a few minutes. Bruce was holding his head in his hand, and Alfred just continued to stitch him up, moving faster than normal.

“Damian I am so sorry, but when you died, your soulmate must have died as well.”

Well, Damian thinks to himself, that explains the empty feeling. He looks at his fingertips, where little blue prickmarks sat, then at his arms where the circled burn marks sat around his wrists. He had always theorized about what kind of girl his soulmates was. She must have a hobby like cooking for her to get the burn marks. And probably a craft of sorts for the marks on the tips of his fingers.

He always felt like she was a gentle spirit, patient and energetic. He tried to not think too hard about when they would meet, if they would ever meet. At the time he was with his mother, and soul mates were a taboo topic. With his father, he never felt the need to bring it up, and no one ever discussed it freely. So he assumed the same rules apply.

“They say sometimes when one soulmate dies, so does the other. If you still can’t feel anything then..” Dick doesn’t finish his thought.

“Oh” Damian hops off the table, shuffling back towards the manors elevator. He pauses before he pushes the button. “So I will be like this forever?”

“Most likely.” His father answers him.

“I see, I will use this new development to the best of my ability. Good night.” Dick can’t find the emotional energy to chastise him for taking such a rational approach. It must be his base morals rising back up to cover the hurt.

And fighting to cover the hurt Damian was. The idea that something he only realized he wanted now that he couldn’t have it stung worse than any physical would he had ever gotten. Except maybe that stab through the chest. That definitely didn’t feel great, and he can only hope his soulmate didn’t suffer from it like he had.

Damian decided to stop focusing on the impossible and strived for perfecting his new found abilities and refining his ingrained training. Two years and a good portion of the training was wasted. It happened in a moment with no warning.

He had been practicing his punches on a cliff side, the rock having a similar consistency to a punching bag. He paused to take a drink of water before throwing another punch at the rock wall, only to recoil in pain. “The hell!” His hand started to throb, the skin tinted red and knuckles bleeding.

Damian was now more confused than ever, jumping when the spray from the ocean splashes against his legs. Crouching down he runs his fingers through the sand, the damp grainy sensation oddly satisfying. He tries to fly back up to the manor, but finds he can’t do that anymore either. Well crap, Damian eyes the rocky cliffs. That's the last time Damian relies so heavily on magic.

Finally back on the Manors grounds, he lays for a moment, enjoying the cool grass, still damp from the morning sprinklers, and the warmth of the rising sun on his face. Now the only question was, why is this happening and what does it mean.

He marches past his family in the kitchen, heading straight for the cave, quick to gather as much information he can on soul mates that he deems necessary. Hours later the only explanation he can find is that his soulmate could have fallen into a coma at the moment of his death. So he started searching the world for anyone who had fallen into a coma the day he died, but found nothing. His frustration grew.

“Hey, you’ve been down here for awhile. Do you have a new case?” Damian eyes Tim, deciding whether or not he wants his input or not. He decides he has nothing to lose, only to gain from his thoughts on the matter.

“I regained the ability to feel while simultaneously losing my gained powers.”

“Whoa that's like near impossible to happen”

“Unless my soulmate was in a coma for the last three years, which I have found no record of.”

“Well perhaps neither of those things ever happened, so the magic has worn off.”

“Or?”

“She really is gone, and the magic restored your body to normal with the exchange of your powers. It would be better to ask one of the magic users in the League, not really my preferred area of speculation.”

Damian immediately sought out who he could, eager to find an answer for this phenomenon. However they all had either the same theories or no answers. Even Zatanna couldn't help him, it was after the urging of his family that he halted his search.

She might not even be out there, she could honestly be dead and his hyper focus on this false hope isn’t helping. So he let it go, let the idea of her go, let go the last sliver of hope he had that she was still out there waiting for him. It was time to move on. He tried to ignore the lingering blue on his hands, and took to wearing gloves on the regular. This decision would leave him ignorant to all the new scars that would appear as Marinette would forget to be careful some days and had reignited her passion for sewing. Marinette as well would miss her new scars as she had so many already, it was quite easy to miss the fresh ones. She would simply overlook them, focusing on never entertaining the idea of a second chance.

It was shortly after Marinette regained her feeling that Wonder Woman approached them with the offer of mentorship and even league membership in the future. To say she and Chat were surprised was an understatement. While Chat was quick to agree, it took some convincing from her partner and the prospect of meeting a past user of Tikki’s for Marinette to agree. She also met Nightwing, the lead trainer of hero youths and Zatanna, another magic user. They both offered invaluable insight and wisdom they eagerly accepted. It was tough learning on the fly all these years.

Damian had heard of these new heros, but elected to keep his focus on Gotham while the rest of the family was quick to introduce themselves. Chat made frequent trips to the space station to meet with other heros while Marinette stayed in Paris as much as she could, continuing her work on their search for Hawkmoth. It was through Chat that she and Red Robin met, both quick to help the other with their research.

They quickly became profesional friends, and it was during one of their virtual brainstorm sessions that she became acquainted with Red Hood. It took a little longer for her to open up to him. Jason would consider them good friends while Marinette considered them to be good colleagues. Jason was determined to win her over to his view of things.

Thanks to everyone's constant assistance, Hawkmoth was finally defeated by the time she was just shy of turning twenty. It had been far too long a fight in her opinion, but the man was smart, Marinette had to give him that. Now that Marinette felt safe enough to leave Paris, she accepted Red Robin's offer of training further with the league. Under the pretense of going to American College, she left home.

It was on her first night in Gotham that fate finally played its final card. She was on her way to the assigned meet up point, enjoying the taller buildings for longer free falls. She relished the air rushing into her eyes and past her ears. Just as she was reaching for her yo-yo she saw a figure swinging towards her. Before she could react, it had grabbed hold of her, leaving them tangled together swinging through the air. Marinette squirmed to see her mysterious rescuers face. Then she felt it, a strong pull of her eyes to his and an electric spark between their bodies when their eyes met.

Damian wanted nothing more than to stare into those ocean blue eyes for the rest of his life, but he didn’t want the rest of his life to be the next minute. He quickly swung them to a safe and secluded building top, conveniently the same Marinette had been heading for moments before. They stumble a little upon landing because of their refusal to let go of the other person.

“You’re alive.” Their whisper of unity only draws them closer to the other.

Marinette refuses to let pessimism take over, this is real, this is her soul mate, and he's very much alive. However she still reaches up to touch right above his heart, signing in relief as she feels the originator of her scar right there under his uniform.

“Woah hey Demon-spawn you can let Little Bug go now, you’re scaring her” Neither register the watching parties voices. Damian reaches up to brush away her tears, hyper focused on every feature he can take in at this moment. Her button nose, the barely concealed freckles across her nose, her peach lips mouthing the word alive over and over, and obviously her eyes.

Slowly Marinette reaches up to remove his mask, the boys freaked for a moment. After all, even they haven’t revealed their identities to her. They start to freak even more when Damian doesn’t stop her, but reaches up to help. His eyes were more beautiful than she had ever imagined. A dark green that complimented his arabian skin tone better than any color ever could. He was perfect.

She whispers the word alive one last time before standing on her tiptoes, tangling her fingers into the hair at the base of his neck and her lips meeting his. Damian leans down, arms wrapping tightly around her waist.

“What is happening!?” Jason shouts, desiring to run from the scene and needing to see it through to the end at the same time.

It was finally Jason’s freakout that they registered their audience but still didn’t have a care in the world. Damian pulls away first, leaning his head against hers, eyes closed, just relishing in the feeling of her in his arms.

Marinette’s legs give out from under her, Damian softly pulling her into his lap, still refusing to let go of her. She starts to cry uncontrollably, a death grip on the hood of his cape. “You’re really here, you really are alive.”

“I didn’t kill you,” Damian sighs, burying his head into her shoulder. Letting his brothers watch him kiss his soulmate was one thing. To let them see him break down and cry was another entirely. “You lived.”

Tim finally put all the pieces together, pulling Jason along with him off the roof. “Whoa, wait Red, they still haven’t told us what’s going on”

“And they won't for the next few hours. I’ll explain everything, just let them process this alone.” Jason finally relents to that, following him, but not without one last look at his baby brother. Damian had always been a tense on edge child, a habit that never fully went away as he aged, but never before had Jason seen him so relaxed and at peace.

Marinette and Damian stayed in their own little world for the remainder of the night, having moved from the roof top back to her apartment. They talked about anything and everything, always touching the other in some way. Damian was the first to awaken well after the sun had risen, Marinette sleeping between him and the back of her couch. He marvels in the fact that she was here. His fingers brush over her cheek, moving her hair out of the way.

Damian chuckles to himself. She looked like snow white with her ebony hair and peach colored lips contrasting with her fair skin. Finally Damian felt complete, no longer wandering lost in the world. He had found what he had looked for for so long. He would protect her from any more pain at all cost, the guilt heavy from having put her through so much turmoil.

“Stop that?” Damian eyes her curiously as she stares up at him through her lashes, sleep still heavy in her eyes.

“Stop what?”

“Blaming yourself for what happend.”

“But I-”

“You were taken advantage of, and manipulated to achieve the outcome your mother wanted. You were protecting your family, that is all that matters. That and that you’re here now.” She snuggles against his chest. “Leave the past in the past”

“Ok love, I will try for you.” Marinette hum, content with that answer for now.

Damian finally speaks again after giving Marinette a few minutes to fully reach functioning capacity, “We best go talk to everyone and get the drama over with”

Marinette chuckles at that. She would never have imagined that her soul mate would be the little brother to her two closest friends. Fate plays a funny game. “If I think too hard about it I get really embarrassed.”

“Then don’t think about it, see it as another mission to accomplish and that you will complete it flawlessly.” He kissed her hairline, slowly sitting up to stretch out. Rarely did he fall asleep in uniform, and no previous time has ever been comfortable.

Two hours later and they are at the Manor, Jason and Tim not overly surprised to see her, neither mentioning the night before except saying she should let them know when she’s ready to go out for patrol again. Damian is surprisingly docile towards everyone's inquiries about himself and Marinette. That is until Jason says Damian should have met her sooner, then maybe he wouldn’t have been such a murderous demon. That comment did not go over well with either of the pair, however one handled it better than the other. You would think it the other way around until Damian slaps his hand over Marinette's mouth to keep her from going off on Jason.

“Let's go eat lunch now, I’m sure Alfred is close to finished anyway.” Damian gently pushed Marinette through the door, but he can’t stop her from throwing a glare over her shoulder.

“Watch yourself Jason,” Marinette herself was growing increasingly overprotective of Damian, scared to lose him again. Jason can’t help the shiver of fear that runs its course through his body, Tim only laughs at his expense.

“Wow she still doesn’t trust you.”

“Oh common Little Bug, don’t be like that!” Tim shakes his head at their shenanigans. It was going to be an interesting new chapter in the Wayne household.Tim Watches from the doorway, leaning heavily on it as he observes them. He had never seen more life in their eyes or on their faces. Marinette had this new glow about her, and Damian looked at her with a gentless that none of them had ever seen before. After all, scars may remind you of your past, but they also show you the potential for your future. And those two had all the potential in the world.

#daminette #maridami #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #damian wayne

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forasecondtherewedwon · 4 years

Text

Track to the Future

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: E (explicit sexual content) Word count: 7675 @spideychelleweek

Spideychelle Week Day 6: Only One Bed

Summary: Peter and MJ board the train to the academic decathlon tournament in New Orleans as friends, but after the booking company messes up Mr. Harrington's sleeping car room assignments and they're forced to share a compartment for the night, Peter hopes there's a chance they'll be more than friends by the time they have to, ahem, get off.

“…and if anyone needs anything at all during the night,” Mr. Harrington said, finally wrapping up his thorough Spending the Night on a Train Protocol, “Mr. Dell and I have compartments at either end of the car you’ll be sleeping in while your co-captains’ shared compartment is the first in the next car. Sometimes it’s easier to reach out to a peer if you’re experiencing any feelings of homesickness or stress ahead of tomorrow’s tournament. But remember, Mr. Dell and I are here to support you.”

“Nah, don’t knock on my door,” Mr. Dell said with a quick negative slice of his hand. “I’m taking a sleeping pill, you know the drill. I’ll also be putting my headphones on and turning the volume way up to sleep in a cocoon of music. I’m trying to spend as much of this trip as possible listening to jazz. By the time we roll into New Orleans, I’ll be fully immersed in the atmosphere.”

Peter’s eyes darted between the team’s chaperones as their group of ten sat crowded into adjacent booths in the dining car. The one person he was careful not to linger on was MJ. Things had been normal between them since boarding that afternoon―meaning they’d gotten in lots of quality moments of smiling at each other and looking swiftly away―until Mr. Harrington sprung on them the fact that they’d be sharing a sleeping cabin. Apparently, the train had double-booked a room, leaving the Midtown Academic Decathlon contingent one short. Their teachers (mostly one of them, after Mr. Dell begged not to be dragged into ‘this snafu’) had decided the best course of action was to pair up the captains. Surely, these were their two most responsible individuals. That’s what Peter assumed Mr. Harrington had been thinking. That and he probably hadn’t noticed the way Peter and MJ had been dancing around each other the past few months; as long as students were present, still breathing, and had all their limbs attached, he seemed satisfied. But Peter knew that he and MJ were going to have to be the real adults here and eventually confront the fact that they’d be spending the night on top of each other. Because bunk beds.

“Yeah, come find me or Peter if you need us,” MJ chimed in. Though her expression told Peter she was reluctant, the same instinct for leadership that made her a good captain was forcing her to speak up now. “Or text or something. I’ll keep my phone on.”

“Did you pack a phone charger?” Flash asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Yes.”

“Can I use it?”

“I’m offering you emotional support, not access to my belongings. Some things are sacred.”

“Pfft,” Flash scoffed. “You just don’t want me showing up to ask for it. Scared I’ll interrupt something while you and Penis are shacked up together?”

Ned laughed loudly.

“MJ and Peter?” he asked doubtfully. “Are you kidding? Those two aren’t into each other at all.”

Peter appreciated that his best friend was trying to cover for him (he’d kept Ned abreast of his crush on MJ as it developed), but this was verging on overcompensation and it’d only make Flash more suspicious. Subtly, Peter shook his head to tell Ned to cut it out and his friend fell silent.

“Please, everyone, just go to your rooms,” Mr. Harrington implored. “I’ll be around to check on each of you over the next twelve to fifteen minutes. Don’t switch rooms, don’t get up unless you’re using the bathroom or asking for help, and please, please do not fall off the train.”

“How do you think they’re going to manage that?” Mr. Dell wondered.

“Things happen, Julius. Be thankful you haven’t seen what I have.”

“I was there for that Mysterio nonsense in Europe, remember? I’ve seen plenty.”

“But not everything…” Mr. Harrington trailed off hauntingly. Peter and Ned exchanged a look that said, is this guy ok?

On that note, everyone trooped to the sleeping car with their bags and said goodnight to each other. By the end of the car, there were just Peter’s footsteps ahead and MJ’s behind. He touched the door to open it and the two of them stepped into the vestibule between cars. There was a loud rattle of the train in motion, not muffled like it was in the cars, and it suddenly felt as though they were very much separated from everyone else. Now would probably be a good time to break the ice over them sharing a room. When Peter turned around, MJ was right there, waiting for him to press the other door and let them into their car. His mouth opened, but he froze. Giving him a look like he was being a weirdo, she reached around him and opened the door herself. Peter laughed awkwardly and proceeded.

“So, this one, I guess,” he said as they came to the door of the first room. “Should we…” He glanced at the floor, then quickly up into his co-captain’s difficult-to-read face. “MJ, should we talk about how strange this is? Us sharing this tiny room?”

She nodded slowly, giving him a tight smile.

“I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” Peter continued.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” MJ promised quickly.

“You’re not?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, ok. Great.”

They were still looking at each other, still standing in the corridor instead of either one of them moving to open their door.

“It’s relaxing,” MJ offered after a few seconds of silence.

Peter perked up a little, pushing his shoulders back.

“Sharing a room with me?”

“Being on a train. Quiet, you know? Hey, you ever read Murder on the Orient Express?”

“No, but I’m guessing somebody gets murdered?” Peter ventured.

“That’s the gist of it,” she agreed.

Was she afraid that was going to happen to them? Had she only taken the step of reaching out to their teammates because she was the one who was scared?

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he assured her.

MJ sighed.

“You’re probably right. We’re not that lucky.”

Peter was still puzzling over that comment―was MJ saying it’d be unlucky for all of them to reach Louisiana alive?―as she let them into their room. He looked around her to take it in. There really wasn’t much of it to take in. She’d said she wasn’t uncomfortable, but he was sure his instinct to lighten the mood wasn’t misplaced. Should he joke about the small space being cozy? No, that sounded like he was trying to imply something romantic. Talk about the tournament tomorrow and completely ignore their forced intimacy? No, he was too tired to keep that up for long, especially if she offered to run through practice questions with him. Maybe rock-paper-scissors to choose bunks? Yeah, that was an immediate and practical problem that needed to be solved.

He was looking around for an out of the way spot to shove his bag as he asked, “You want top or bottom?”

“Uhhhh,” MJ replied.

“You can think about it while I go brush my teeth,” Peter offered, finding a spot for his bag, then reaching in for his pajamas and toiletry kit.

“Oh, that’s not indecision you hear in my voice. Look.”

He straightened up at her instruction. She was pointing at the wall, where what he’d taken at a glance to be the second bed, ready to fold down, was placed. He looked closer. Oh shit. It wasn’t a bed. Or, it didn’t exactly look like one. Peter would’ve investigated further, but MJ was already kicking her shoes off and climbing up to stand on the bottom (only?) bunk for a closer inspection. She flipped what was supposed to be the top bunk down and it came with a clatter and a cascade of straps.

“It’s for luggage,” she informed him.

Oh, he heard her, but he still heard himself ask, “What?”

“Like a thing you put your bag on and, I don’t know, strap it down so it doesn’t land on your head while you’re sleeping.”

“So, it’s not a bed.”

MJ clipped the not-a-bed into place, dropped back to the floor, and rolled her eyes at him. Yeah, that had sounded pretty stupid, but the comment hadn’t really been for her; it was more Peter’s way of verbally processing their current circumstances. Those being: two co-captains and one bed that looked proportionate to the room. But the room was tiny, which meant the bed was narrow as hell and probably not intended for two people, even when those two people planned to share it, because physical contact was no big deal for them, because their relationship was at that stage, because they didn’t have to look away from each other whenever they started to hold the stare just a little too long. Fuck, Peter was freaking out.

“Um,” he told MJ, flailing his pajamas and toiletries around, “why don’t you… and I’ll…” Peter jerked his thumb towards the door and, nodding like there’d been some kind of agreement made, exited their room while his co-captain gave him an odd look.

In the corridor, he almost screamed.

“You guys are first up on my bedtime check-ins list!” Mr. Harrington announced, looking up from a clipboard.

“Oh,” Peter replied.

“Yep, no pressure, but I came to you and MJ first because I’m counting on you to put me at ease. Please don’t tell me there’s anything wrong with your room,” he added, voice turning desperate.

“What room? Oh, our room? The room MJ and I are sharing? Well, it…” He swallowed. “It’s great. Small, you know, but, um, definitely has two beds.”

“Do you want me to take a quick peek inside?” his teacher offered. “I’ve led dozens of student trips and I’ve gotten pretty darn good at spotting damaged amenities, traces of bedbugs… Not that I could really do anything for you at this point. The room’s already booked and there isn’t another one the two of you could switch to. I suppose you could take my room while I slept in a seat on one of the cars, but of course, mine only has the one bed.”

“That’s ok. Everything’s good. Nothing’s broken or bedbuggy.”

Mr. Harrington was still looking at Peter like he was waiting for him to stop putting on a brave face and let the adult do a quick sweep. He should probably let him. MJ had put the luggage rack back the way they’d found it and they could pretend they hadn’t discovered it wasn’t a second bed yet. That would be the honest thing to do, and very possibly the thing MJ would want him to do. It was just that instinct was telling Peter to protect this secret opportunity. This very innocent chance for them to… bond and stuff. He wasn’t really sure, he didn’t have a plan, but all of his plans that involved MJ involved figuring out how to get closer to her, not how to run away. Figuring out how to share a single bed in a cramped room with an entire night ahead of them was basically the Chance for Closeness jackpot. If she disagreed, she could easily storm out and go to Mr. Harrington. Or slap Peter right across his opportunistic face. Or pretend to be cool with it, wait ‘til he fell asleep, and get her revenge by squeezing his entire tube of toothpaste into one of his shoes, or cutting holes in all his boxers. (He was ready to swear that one wasn’t sexual; he’d just had some very specific nightmares when their entire acquaintance was about him being wildly intimidated by her, before they became friends and he evolved to being only moderately intimidated.)

“It’s no trouble,” Mr. Harrington promised.

“MJ’s changing in there right now,” Peter blurted. It was the perfect excuse and came to him on the spot. “You could come back after you check the other rooms, but we’ll probably be fine. Anyway, MJ and I are both, um, mature enough to ask for help if we need it. No need to worry about us.”

He gave his teacher a tense, closed-lipped smile. Mr. Harrington seemed relieved.

“See you both in the morning then.”

“Yep, no problem!”

The second their chaperone was gone back into the other car, Peter opened the door and saw a flash of MJ’s stomach.

“What are you doing?” she yelped.

“What are you doing?” he shot back, hastily turning away and shutting the door of their little compartment.

“Putting my pajamas on! You just told Harrington I was in here changing!”

“Yeah, well, if you heard that then you know I told him a lot of things I didn’t think were true!”

“The presence of more than one bed may be a blatant lie, but didn’t you consider that I might actually be changing? I’m done, by the way,” she concluded in a less indignant tone.

Peter turned back around. Before he could stop himself, his gaze zoomed down her body. Her oversized t-shirt read ‘MICHELLE OBAMA’S ARMS BRAIN’ and her loose turquoise shorts just about disappeared under its hem. With wide eyes, he forced his gaze back to MJ’s face.

“Put yours on,” she suggested, eyes flicking to his and away.

Ok, this was it. This wasn’t the way he’d expected it to go. He’d though there’d be some kind of conversation first, or at least an acknowledgement of their feelings. Carpe diem, Peter guessed. He took a deep breath―probably the deepest he’d ever taken when he wasn’t dressed as Spider-Man and attempting to lift something heavy―and peeled his t-shirt off.

“Oh my god, nerd, in the bathroom, not here! Don’t make me regret staying quietly in this room while you lied to our teacher’s face.”

Flustered, Peter threw on the shirt he’d brought to sleep in and left the room without picking the other one up from the floor. In the bathroom at the far end of the car, he brushed his teeth, then stared at his face in the mirror for a minute, pausing for comprehension that didn’t come. What was happening? What had happened in that room? What would happen when he went back? It would probably have been helpful to talk this through with Ned, but MJ was waiting for him to let her know the bathroom was free. She was also most likely waiting for him to explain what the fuck his thought process had been in assuring Mr. Harrington that there were two beds, since she obviously had not been expecting Peter to start taking his clothes off in front of her. Though she’d definitely looked when he had. He’d noticed that.

This time, he knocked before entering.

“You’re done with the bathroom?” MJ checked, folding her toothbrush and toothpaste into a facecloth.

“Brushed my teeth and everything. You wanna taste the mint? Smell,” Peter corrected, blushing ferociously. “Smell the mint. Never mind. You don’t wanna do that.” He started to raise his hands apologetically as she slipped past him to open the door. “Forget I―”

He shut up instantly when his rising hand brushed her breast through her t-shirt. Shit. His eyes locked on hers as his lips parted to apologize, but MJ fisted the front of his shirt and tugged him into a quick, firm kiss. She broke it and released him.

“Probably a good idea if we talk about this when I get back,” she muttered and fled.

Alone in their room, Peter would’ve done a backflip if he’d had the space. Option B was repacking his bag and mentally cataloguing the potential lab injuries listed on his Chemistry class WHMIS test as a method of subduing the erection that had started to perk up when MJ grabbed his shirt like that. So maybe her reaction to him undressing had been more shock than anger or violation. She’d certainly repaid him for that; Peter was still a little stunned and his lips tingled like he’d been punched in the mouth. Punched very softly. By the mouth of the girl he had a huge crush on. He ran a finger across his lips as he zipped his bag back up. Then, there was nothing to do but… stand? Lean against the wall? Was sitting totally out of the question, since the one logical spot he could sit was on the bed they had yet to fully address? What the hell―he gave it a try. Immediately, his bare foot was jumping against the floor. Crap, should he have left his socks on? Was the floor of a train compartment as ready to give him nefarious foot diseases as the college residence showers May had already started warning him about, almost an entire year early? He wedged his bare feet back into his sneakers and stood with his arms anxiously crossed. MJ didn’t take long.

“Counter proposal,” she suggested as she stepped into their room and set her things on a teeny ledge that Peter didn’t know the purpose of.

He would’ve asked what was being countered, but MJ had him pushed against the wall in a second, her mouth planted back on his. Now they both tasted like mint. She was seriously not helping with his efforts to not have a boner right now. The fact that he was utterly amateur in the issue of how to hold a girl in a passionate embrace, and the evidence that she didn’t have any more experience kissing than he did (she kept catching his lip with her teeth and he wasn’t sure either of them knew whether it was intentional), didn’t actually seem to matter that much. His hands ended up on her hips, which wanted to tilt naturally towards his, and the fervour of her kisses calmed to something more enjoyable and bite-free when she appeared to overcome the way she’d surprised herself by kissing him in the first place.

“No,” she said, breathless as she drew back―his mouth might’ve chased puppyishly after hers for a second. “No, we should probably talk. I was right the first time. Counter proposal withdrawn.”

“Uh, withdrawal accepted,” Peter replied. He was dazed, his heart was kicking against his ribs, and if MJ looked down, she would see that part of him was still in favour of proceeding in a way that didn’t involve speech.

She huffed out a breath, fluffed a hand exasperatedly through her hair, and started packing away her bathroom paraphernalia. Meanwhile, he stood against the wall with a hard-on and watched her carefully seal her wet facecloth into a Ziploc bag. His brain was horniness and confusion. Finally, crouched on the floor by her luggage, MJ twisted to look up at him.

“I let you tell Mr. Harrington that there were two beds in this room,” she recapped. It wasn’t quite a question, but Peter nodded just in case she wanted the confirmation.

“You can go tell him something different.”

“Nah, I don’t really want to.”

“I could leave and you could keep this room, or maybe you could share with Betty, or―”

“I said I don’t want to,” MJ repeated. She moved to sit on the bed.

“So… what do we do?”

Peter was very curious about what her solution might be, mostly because he wasn’t 100% clear on what the problem was. If neither of them was bothered by the absence of a second bed and both of them had avidly participated in that tragically curtailed make-out session… well. He felt there were certain courses of action that would seem reasonable. But he didn’t trust himself to have a solid grip of what was going on, not when he remained semi-hard in his pajama bottoms and stared at MJ’s mouth as frequently as into her eyes.

“We… would have to share?” This time it was definitely a question and Peter nodded more slowly to acknowledge that question, rather than to agree with it outright.

“If you want both of us to stay, then, yeah. I don’t really want to sleep on the floor and I can’t stay awake all night with the tournament tomorrow.”

“And how would you feel about sharing?” MJ’s eyes darted to his face and down to her lap where she pulled her t-shirt down her thighs. It looked like she was doing it more for something to do than out of any inclination towards modesty. Also, the eye-contact avoidance said she was a little insecure about what his answer might be.

“I would feel, I would feel really good about it,” Peter stuttered out. She met his eyes.

“I like you,” MJ blurted.

“Me too. You.”

He smiled and she patted the bed at her side with an awkward, sarcastic expression. He took her invitation and stepped forward with a lurch to sit next to her. His gaze trailed down her arm to witness her gripping the edge of the bed with both hands. Her shoulders hunched, then shrugged back down.

“We’d be in pretty deep shit with a lot of people if anyone knew this was happening right now,” she speculated.

Peter laughed.

“Definitely.” He cleared his throat. “And, uh, what exactly is happening?”

MJ looked at him. Slowly, she reached for his face, turned and angled it to her liking, then gradually leaned in and, very softly, kissed him for the third time.

“Oh, ok,” he said as she drew back. “So the talking didn’t mean the kissing wasn’t going to continue.”

“I was trying to be responsible first.”

“Right. Co-captains.”

“There are expectations for our conscientiousness. And I will drop you like a hot potato if you threaten anyone’s belief in my conscientiousness.”

“You will?”

MJ smiled in a familiar way.

“You’re messing with me,” Peter realized, also smiling and rocking back slightly to scan the ceiling.

“About everything but the hot part.”

He straightened up immediately, completely focused on her.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. That’s really going to be a problem,” she said thoughtfully. Peter frowned. “For when we lie down on this thing―” MJ swatted the bed. “―and see what happens if we keep kissing.”

“I’m sorry my attractiveness is such a drawback for you,” he joked.

“I’d be better at resisting temptation if temptation didn’t have ridiculously chiseled abs.”

He puffed out a laugh and presented her with a lopsided smile, struggling between feeling embarrassed and really fucking thankful that he appealed to her in such a shallow way. For self-congratulation, he gave himself two whole seconds of side-eyeing the peaks of her boobs through her t-shirt.

“Actually, I’m not that clueless about what would happen,” she confessed. “I think it’d be pretty impossible for me to lie beside you and be chill about it.”

“That’s fine with me,” Peter promised eagerly, “but we don’t have to lie down right away.”

He reached over and let his hand hover above her knee until MJ grasped it and brought it down to rest on her cool skin. It took the shortest glance to make him lean into her space and kiss… her cheek, chickening out a little after all the talk about the obvious proceedings from the second they were horizontal together. Peter wanted that―he definitely wanted that―but he also really liked sitting in this moment with her, knowing that she wanted that too. And that she would be alright with him kissing her, if that was another thing he wanted. He did. The hand he didn’t have on her knee lightly cupped her face as Peter skimmed his lips down to her mouth. There, that was better, he thought, as MJ sighed against his lips.

Slipping his hand from her cheek around to the back of her head, he secured his fingers in her hair and pulled her mouth harder to his. She made a small sound that seemed to plunge straight down his throat and echo around in his stomach. Then, it plummeted even farther, stirring his groin. His hand tightened on her knee. Less tentatively than he would’ve expected (or had expected, in his fantasies of what kissing her would be like), MJ snuck her tongue into his mouth. At the feeling of their tongues gliding past and around each other, she became the one grabbing for him, hand low on the back of his neck. When she mirrored him by gripping his knee, Peter jumped, then smoothed his hand up her thigh as she twisted into him.

They were at an impasse for a second, or at least he was, fighting the urge to ease MJ onto her back and cover her body with his. No lying down; not yet. There was so much tension in their postures as they leaned into each other, gripping legs and necks and barely breaking the kiss long enough for a deeper inhalation. Even to Peter, it felt abrupt when he swung his legs up onto the bed. Though he had to swing them away from her, MJ understood―just like he’d expected―and climbed over to sit astride his thighs―just like he’d hoped. He was breathing stupidly hard as her eyes locked on his and she shuffled forward. His hands seized her hips, then her ass, and then he closed his eyes as they rolled back in his head because she was pressed right up against him and his fingers couldn’t trace the lines of any underwear through her cotton shorts. Something primal surged up from deep inside him and he narrowly managed to not start grinding into her.

“However this goes,” Peter panted, opening his eyes, “swear you’re not gonna murder me on this train. Or open our door to a murderer while I’m sleeping.”

“I swear. Strangely, this is better.” She smiled.

He didn’t know what was so strange about preferring feeling each other up over solving/committing a homicide. Then again, they did both kinda have a thing for violent crime.

“That’s reassuring,” he told her, hands hot on her butt. She shifted against him and he grunted.

“Sorry,” MJ said immediately. Peter choked out a laugh.

“That wasn’t a noise of pain.”

“Oh.”

Her smile returned―broader, slyer. She folded her arms around his shoulders and rocked her hips against his. When he gasped, MJ looked the most delighted he’d ever seen her. She kissed him and rolled her hips again, but this time, his hands on her ass kept her in place and he rolled his hips back, groaning as his erection rubbed against her through their pajamas. Somehow, she wriggled even closer, thighs clamped on either side of him and seemed to consciously and minutely reposition her hips. The next time they ground against each other, she went, “Unnh!” and he understood. His whole body flushed with heat.

Hastily, they started trying to take each other’s shirts off at the same time. MJ already had both hands up under the fabric and pressed to his chest by the time Peter had gotten a single hand past the drapey folds of her oversized choice. They were stuck again, neither able to proceed with the other’s hands on them.

“You want me to go first?” Peter asked.

“Better do mine first,” she said. “You’re going to have a tough time prying me away once your shirt’s off.”

He blushed at how matter-of-factly she’d said that.

“I have no idea why you think I’m going to do any better.”

“So I shouldn’t take mine off?” she checked.

“Definitely take it off.”

“You’re such a moron.”

“Mhmm,” he agreed absently, lifting the hem of MJ’s shirt as she wriggled her arms out of the sleeves. Once her hands were tucked away inside the big t-shirt, Peter tugged the whole thing straight off.

“Now you,” she said quickly, grabbing his shoulders so he couldn’t immediately tip forward and begin kissing all over her chest.

She couldn’t prevent him from staring though. He did that until MJ jerked the neck of his shirt up over his eyes and he was forced to help her divest him of it or else be blinded to anything that might follow. And he definitely wanted his sight, wanted his eyes wide open.

In the end, she didn’t let him stare that long; she got this overwhelmed look in her eyes and hugged herself to him, their chests flush. Peter imagined a kind of surface-level vibration, like what was holding them together was static cling and with every little brush, they were recharged. What to do with all that waiting energy? He put his hands back on her ass―roaming more now, curving to shape her hips and her backside―and guided her purposely against him. MJ’s thighs tensed around him as she took control of the movement until Peter was grasping without pushing or pulling. As her eyelids drifted down, he exhaled and listened to the wispy sounds of her moan-toned breaths and the clatter of the train around them, always in southward motion down the track. It was dark outside and the light in their sleeping compartment was low without an assist from the sun. Probably because, in a room this small with mysterious ledges and misleading luggage racks, they’d had a hard time figuring out where to put a lamp or a pot light that emitted a decent wattage. Whatever. This railroad mood lighting wasn’t the worst.

MJ’s fingers skated along his jaw for almost a full minute (any longer and he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from twitching away out of ticklishness) before they stilled with his face in her hands and she kissed him. Their mouths bumped and slipped, hungry and gentle. There was a note of distraction, Peter thought, thanks to their minds skipping ahead to the next part, making the kiss the bridge rather than the destination. Pressing his lips to hers was no longer the ultimate joy he could hope for. Suddenly, there could be more.

Her hands caressed down his neck, a slight quaver in her fingers, and dragged through his collarbones like she was scooping them out. She could’ve been. She could’ve run a finger along the length and blown after it, sending up blustery sawdust. Peter was no longer 100% certain that he’d had a clavicle before MJ had touched him. Moving his hands up to her waist because it felt like a more respectful place to let them rest on her and because bare skin beneath his fingertips, he kept up his end of their abstracted kissing as she explored across to his shoulders. His cock throbbed against her, impatient with her leisurely hands and lazy hips, only shallowly swaying now. When she broke the kiss with a hot pant against his lips, it was to look in his eyes while she discovered his chest, then pressed against it. He laid back like she wanted. His hands sailed down her thighs and squeezed right above her knees. Bizarrely, that was the action that woke him up to what was happening. There was no way to look up at MJ―mostly naked, straddling his lap, doing her best to keep her hair out of her face as she looked straight back down at him―except with more than a little bit of awe. He swallowed thickly.

She rocked a few times without breaking their stare, then said, “Should we get under the sheet?”

“Ok.”

It was less fumbling than it could have been, mostly because they moved so quickly. Peter was practically shaking with adrenaline after forcing himself to be still as MJ mapped him with her hands. Suddenly separate and next to one another, suddenly between two sheets like the flap of an envelope was about to be licked and sealed down over them. Send us anywhere, Peter thought. The room looked bigger like this, lying on his side with his back to the wall, but he only glanced. MJ swept across the bed like a shooting star in the sky for a kiss and they rapidly shed their bottoms. Her toes touched his, right after they’d gotten fully nude, and his abdomen clenched up, ready to support a thrust or to defend him from whatever was making him flinch like that. Well, screw that.

They kept kissing, making contact only up to their ankles, until Peter laid a cautious hand on her stomach.

“You want to keep going, right?” MJ asked, pulling back for a second. She’d tucked her arm beneath his neck and was systematically scratching her nails across every bit of his scalp, which was both comforting and erotic.

“For sure, yes, if you still do,” he babbled. He could feel her pulse hopping under his hand. He wanted to follow it down so bad.

“Alright then,” she said with a brisk nod, and grabbed his wrist to make his fingers stumble south.

Peter’s mouth fell open and part of him wanted to snatch his hand back because her expression was petrified. But then, it might’ve been that way because she was worried that he didn’t want to touch her like this, in which case removing his hand would make her feel way, way worse. It would’ve been good for him to ask for verbal confirmation here, but the part of his brain that put words together and held their hands until they’d successfully departed his mouth was broken right now. Because MJ had put his hand between the warmth of her thighs, allowing his fingers to graze and his palm to cover the intimate texture of hair. He could feel the questioning look on his face and, apparently in response to it, she piloted his hand a little lower, into the realm of the arousal she must’ve worked up grinding against him. His other hand clenched into a fist as his drive to be inside her swelled like his restless erection.

It was nerve-wracking, so much pressure not to touch her too lightly or too rough―and besides that, to make it somehow feel good for her. That he wanted very badly. Peter was out of his depth. That was when, as usual, MJ swooped in to lend him a literal hand without fuss. Her thighs parted further for him and, with her fingers directing his, he felt the soft creases and curves start to make sense. Gradually, he moved faster, dipped deeper, and nearly shouted victoriously when he accidentally flicked something that, by MJ’s sharp breath and the buck of her hips, was her clit. He ran his fingers across her entrance to wet them and flicked again, slowing to a tap, then a knead when she responded well (death grip on his wrist). Working up the nerve to probe his middle finger gently inside her came with a wealth of rewards: hitched breathing, her hand sliding precariously far down his abs, and a tight heat that his dick was longing for with more urgency than ever now that he knew precisely what it felt like.

Lying so that both his hands were down where he needed them to be wasn’t the most comfortable thing, but the way MJ gasped and then quietly moaned his name when he had the dexterity of extra fingers to offer her made it worthwhile. He could now continue fingering her from the inside while also pressing fingertips to her clit. Rewetting them after every few swipes made her gasp and writhe against his hands all over again. When she abruptly said, “Faster,” the finger inside her froze and he worked her clit double then triple time as she folded into him, forehead on his chest, and unceremoniously grasped his dick.

“You can’t do that right now,” he laughed, lightheaded. MJ’s fingers, fully around his erect penis. Avengers fucking assemble because this was not a drill.

At his plea, her hand darted to his hip instead, gripping even more firmly as, incredibly, Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man on a Train, aka Friendly Neighbourhood Third Baseman) brought her to orgasm. Her hips jerked and she made muffled hiccupping noises from where he couldn’t see her face and he thought to introduce a second finger to give her something to, holy shit, ride? He guessed? This was insane. Had the feeling of freedom from a school trip made this happen? Did people just get extra horny on trains? He was so glad the train company had fucked up Mr. Harrington’s ticket reservation to stick Peter and MJ in a single room for a night.

“We should,” she began, lifting her head with a blush of warmth and maybe self-consciousness after she’d sagged into herself and he’d removed his hands uncertainly, “discuss logistics.”

“Oh,” Peter said, surprised. “Oh, I guess, yeah. Logistics. Right.”

“What I mean is―”

He cut MJ off with a short kiss of determined pressure. Going straight into talking about logistics actually didn’t feel right, not when he’d just had her in his hands like that. This shouldn’t feel like business; it was affection. He really cared about her. Seeing and feeling and hearing what Peter had just seen, felt, and heard was monumental. Would she be his girlfriend after this? Should he ask her right now?

“Go ahead,” he urged with a smile, foregoing mention of the other stuff for the moment. It wasn’t business. They didn’t require a pause to agree on the parameters.

Plus, MJ was flustered now, which was amazing and adorable.

“I…” She trailed off when he found her hand under the sheet and held it. With a resolute tilt of her head, she took another run at her sentence, “I did not happen to pack condoms. Did you? Also, I’m not on birth control. I didn’t really know this was, um, going to happen.”

Peter kissed her again, for longer, at the vulnerable expression on her face.

“Me neither,” he promised. “Definitely a surprise.”

“So, you are equally ill-equipped?”

Instantly, he frowned.

“Technically, but it’s so harsh to say it like that! I’m not sure you would’ve been super thrilled if I had had condoms.”

“I would’ve been suspicious,” MJ confirmed, looking suspicious of him even as she spoke the words.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Do you think they sell them on the train?” Apparently, they were switching gears.

“I don’t know. Do you really want to be wandering around trying to buy condoms and have Mr. Harrington catch you though?”

“Hmm. Good point. So, what are our options?”

He was cooling down after the frenzy of getting her off and reflexively shifted towards her. The move made them both instinctually awkward, unsure where to touch and hyper-aware that their faces had never been this close before tonight. They were just existing with their faces close now, like this was their normal. Peter kept tight hold of her hand and basically willed himself to wade forward into talking this out.

“We could just not do anything else,” he suggested first, internally pleading with her not to go that route.

“Obviously, we can stop if you want to, but I’m kind of dying to see what you look like when you, you know.”

Peter was speechless for a moment.

“Uh, well, I mean…” He scratched the back of his head. “I could pull out?”

“And just… on the sheet?” She asked, avoiding his eyes (he assumed―he was kinda avoiding hers too).

“Yeah, then I’ll take it off and rinse it in the bathroom, we sleep on the top sheet and get that blanket―” He pointed to where one was tucked against the wall, ready for use. “―to put over us.”

MJ snorted a laugh.

“What is it?” he asked uneasily.

“I totally forgot we’re actually going to sleep together after this. You’re not missing the joke. That shouldn’t be funny, it just is for some reason.”

He grinned.

“Yeah, it kind of is.”

“You really bold-faced lied to Mr. Harrington, huh? The team should admire you. What a rebel leader you are. Don’t―” she added, raising a finger to his lips as he started to reply. “―say anything about Star Wars. I will definitely never have sex with you on a train again if you do.”

Peter shook his head.

“I’m not risking that.”

For a quiet minute, they adjusted their bodies to bring them even closer. He liked her eyelashes and how her mouth sloped naturally down at the corners; she seemed to be tracing the path of freckles across his cheek and over his nose.

“Do any of the people in that murder book have sex on the train?”

“Who cares?” MJ said. “They’re not real. We are.”

Their fingers slipped, only loosely entwined now, as their concentration returned to yielding kisses, lips moulding effortlessly together. Peter’s free hand stole up the back of her neck and when he shifted his weight subtly into hers, not even completely aware that he was asking, she answered, tipping onto her back.

“I’ll pull out,” he reaffirmed as her thighs were parting for his hips and he was positioning himself at her entrance by hand.

“I trust you, Peter,” she said in a nonchalant tone.

“I trust you.”

“It’s not a competition,” MJ complained and he let her have the last word because she’d probably said it out of the same nerves he was feeling as he eased the head of his dick inside her.

They both shifted slightly and settled. She laughed when he swore out of sheer bliss, pitching forward a little and drawing back, then he laughed at the sound of her laughing. Somehow, in all that, he ended up completely inside her and she pressed her hands to his back like maybe she really needed him and didn’t want him to go anywhere, even after the sex and the happenstance of a shared room. That would be really, really great.

The sex wasn’t perfect: for all MJ’s evident enjoyment, Peter didn’t have the inherent, untested talent or beginner’s luck to see her climax again and, of the two times she tried to kiss him while he was thrusting, she bonked their heads together on the first and brutally clicked their teeth on the second. They laughed some more. They were a mess. They were, possibly, each other’s.

He finished on the sheet like he’d promised and it felt wrong and gross enough that he’d be buying condoms before they did this again, but it also felt sort of hot the way MJ watched him pump doggedly through the circle of his own fingers until he groaned her name. The follow-up logistics were another mixed bag of sexy and unsexy. Peter threw his pajamas back on, bundled the sheet to his chest with the wet part deep in the center, and bolted to the bathroom to give it a hasty dip in the sink. But he returned to the sight of MJ remaking their bed in her PJs, complete with her sleepy smile. He figured out the light switch and crawled in beside her. Something unexpectedly tender in his chest squeezed when he learned that this tall, coolly critical girl took obvious comfort in being the little spoon. Her body went soft with his arm around her; he fell asleep with his nose and mouth resting against the back of her neck.

The alarm MJ had set on her phone got them up half an hour before they had to meet their team and teachers the next morning. First, Peter let his arm go slack so she could roll over to face him without leaving his embrace.

“Hey,” she said with her eyes barely open.

“Will you be my girlfriend now?”

He could only guess that she’d have given him a look that more clearly called him an idiot if they hadn’t just woken up.

“Yeah, ok.” was the response MJ went with instead.

Peter shook his head with bleary exasperation at how lukewarm her words were, but then she snuck her hand into his pajama pants and really damn quickly worked out how to give him a handjob. Long story short, they desecrated another sheet and were still on time for breakfast (only because they ran).

After everyone had finished eating and Mr. Harrington had delivered a heartfelt-yet-underwhelming pep talk for the day, they were sent back to their rooms to pack up their stuff. They’d be arriving in New Orleans within the hour.

“Are you disappointed there weren’t any crimes last night?” Peter asked with a smile as they repacked their luggage side by side.

“Well, I could say I stole your virginity,” she pointed out, nearly making him catch his hand in the zipper as he closed his bag. MJ gave him a sly sideways glance. “But virginity is a construct. And you were more than willing to give it up.”

She mercifully interrupted his ensuing stuttering with a kiss that he hoped would become a habit. (The kissing, not the stuttering.) His head was hazy with the idea as he jerked the clasp of their door and slid it open for the last time. To find Flash standing in the hall.

“’Sup, Penis, or should I call you ‘Big Easy’ after you two were somehow allowed to share a room?”

Peter stiffened, but he was hellbent on not giving anything away. He rolled his eyes and assumed MJ did the same as they pushed past Flash with their bags and opened the door to the vestibule. He sincerely, stupidly believed that dickhead was following them and that they were in the clear. But as he went to close the door behind them, he noticed Flash hadn’t followed. At Peter’s alarm, MJ joined him in glancing back into the car they’d just left. Flash had his hands braced on the doorframe of their compartment, leaning into the room.

“Wait a second! That other thing’s not a bed!”

The door closed. They stared at each other.

“Oh man, Flash is gonna tease the crap out of us. Do we run?” he asked.

“That’s a dumb plan.” She paused. “And I don’t have another one.”

Their oblivious classmates were emerging from their rooms and Peter and MJ jostled them thoroughly as they booked it down the corridor towards the front of the train.

#my writing #spideychelleweek2k20 #spideychelle #spideychelle fic #spideychelle fanfiction #peter parker #peter x mj #peter x michelle #peter parker x michelle jones #michelle jones

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esmeraude11 · 4 years

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On Fëanor and Indis

Something that’s always bugged me? Indis and Fëanor’s relationship. Or rather the lack thereof of a relationship. If we go with the canon dates then Míriel died c. 1170 in the Year of the Trees when Fëanor was little more than an infant in Elven terms.

While Indis was Míriel’s closest friend. She was friends with Finwë too.

I doubt that she left Finwë alone during this period. And I suspect that she wouldn’t have left Míriel’s newborn child alone either. Indis might very well have inserted herself into Finwë’s household so as to look after Fëanor. Because something that we can’t forget is that Finwë was devastated by Míriel’s death. Canonically we’re given a hint as to how Finwë must have felt in the passage that talks about his and Indis’ marriage.

This is going to be long. So I’m putting a Read-More here.

"Now it came to pass that Finwë took as his second wife Indis the Fair. She was a Vanya, close kin of Ingwë the High King, golden-haired and tall <…>. Finwë loved her greatly, and was glad again."

That last sentence jumps out to me as particularly important. Especially the last part “...and was glad again.”

Considering that Míriel literally died of depression (general or post-partum, we don’t know) and physical/spiritual exhaustion that bit talking about Finwë’s emotional state stands out suspiciously. I have to wonder if Finwë himself might have suffered from depression after Míriel’s death.

If he didn’t just marry Indis randomly but rather that it was the result of a prolonged relationship of some sort. I suspect that Indis would have essentially moved to Tirion after Míriel’s pregnancy took a turn for the worse so as to offer Míriel her support. Maybe completing the transition after her death. Because Finwë’s alone now. His wife is dead and resting in the Halls. His newborn son has lost his mother and it’s entirely possible that Finwë was in no condition to look after his child here. Indis likely took on the task of raising Fëanáro. She might have even offered what support she could to Finwë here. Helping by taking over the day to day running of the palace’s household. Taking care of Fëanáro’s household as well. Nurses, governesses, etc. etc. Essentially becoming the Acting-Queen/Queen-Consort in absentia while Finwë mourns his loss and struggles/grapples with his grief.

I feel like Fëanáro grew up with a doting and loving but slightly distant father for a few years here (which might have had an effect on a young Fëanáro). Because Finwë more than likely took a few years to begin to recover from his loss. Míriel was gone but her memory never truly faded. Grief is a thing that cannot be underestimated or ignored. Especially in this situation. The elves came to Aman to escape the horrors that hunted them in Cuiviénen. They were supposed to be coming to a land where death among the Eldar would be a historical footnote. Míriel died, however, and became the first and last of the Eldar to (notably) die in Aman until Alqualondë. And elves bond on a spiritual and mental level. Not just physically.

This is something that can’t be underestimated.

Míriel’s death wasn’t supposed to happen.

And if it did? Then their dead were suppose to return from the Halls. But Míriel was so affected by her condition (depression/exhaustion) that she would not leave the Halls. Not even for her husband and young son. She needed the time to rest and recover. She couldn’t or at least was unwilling to subject herself to life while still fraught with the issues that had led to her death.

This is understandable and she shouldn’t be blamed for making her choice. Because it must have been a difficult one to make.

But this left Finwë to deal with the aftermath. And he might not have been up for it. He might have needed help. Indis was there. Indis who had been friends (best friends, even) with Míriel and Finwë. Indis who’d likely joked with Míriel and looked forward to her friends’ child with eagerness. Indis who was the sister of a king and was herself one of the Awakened Elves of Cuiviénen. She’d likely known Míriel and Finwë for a very very long time.

And this is where we come back to Fëanor.

Fëanor likely grew up with Indis as his honorary aunt. Someone who took on a maternal role in his life without explicitly taking on that role in his life. Fëanáro might have called Indis ‘mom’ or ‘mommy’ a few times when he was especially young and she’d have gently corrected him. Indis would have taken care of Fëanáro’s education. Carefully selecting tutors for the young prince from a list of Noldorin scholars and masters. Ever mindful of the fact that she was a Vanya and he was the prince of the Noldor and thus needed to curate his education in a direction that suited his birth.

Indis likely spoke to Fëanáro of Míriel from the very beginning. First as a baby, rocking him in her arms and singing to him songs that she’d heard Míriel sing to her swollen belly as she worked on her pieces. Mindless ditties of shining threads and jewel-tone colors and embroidering. Singing Vanyarin songs of beauty and perspective and thought that Míriel had enjoyed for their rather pretty and bright evocative turns of phrase.

Telling him bed-time stories of laughter and joy and expectation. Míriel’s grey eyes shining with mirth. Her mouth curved into an impish smile. A long-fingered and elegant hand splayed over a pregnant belly. Silver-grey hair falling in a mass of loose curls over a slender shoulder. Each strand shining and lovely. Of a bright and fierce temper that could cow any uppity noble and only gave way before her loved ones.

Drawing a blanket over Fëanáro’s chest. Míriel’s work. One of her finest and final masterpieces. Indis had spun the materials that went into the thread. Brought from Valmar the materials that Míriel needed for her jewel-toned dyes. Míriel had woven and sown the squares that sealed the goosedown. She’d embroidered the blanket itself. Her final gift to the child she’d loved and never gotten the chance to watch grow up.

We know that Míriel’s body lay in-repose in the Gardens of Lorien.

We know that Fëanor went to visit her often. Finwë likely went as well. Not quite as often and more than likely because it was more than he could bear.

I can see Indis being the one to accompany Fëanáro when he was still young enough to want her to come with him. Before the marriage that is. Indis running a careful hand through Míriel’s hair while her other arm is wrapped around Fëanáro. Ensuring that he doesn’t run off or clamber onto his mother’s body.

Let me just say too. Míriel’s body being held in-repose could only have exacerbated Fëanor’s issues here. Especially since Finwë clearly struggled with the loss of his wife. Míriel died but she was never laid to rest. Her memory lingered on. In her husband. In her friend. Among her people as well. Fëanor never had a chance to come to terms with his loss. Especially since his loss occurred when he was a baby and thus never had a chance to properly know his mother and was instead left with her lingering memory.

I don’t doubt that Finwë loved him. But considering that he might have been struggling with depression after Míriel’s death and might have been a distant parent during those initial years of Fëanáro’s childhood. I can definitely see him trying to make up for it by overcompensating. Showering Fëanáro with affection and making time for his wants and needs. Even at the expense of his later children. And Fëanáro himself might not have recognized that Finwë was attempting to make up for those years that he couldn’t be a good parent.

If Finwë was struggling with depression here. He would definitely not have told his son. I tend to think that Finwë kept as much of Míriel’s circumstances from Fëanáro. Because it’d have been very easy for the boy to blame himself for his mother’s death and who knows how servants or nobles saw the whole situation. I can also see him wanting to keep Fëanáro in the dark of his own personal issues out of fear and worry that Fëanáro himself might be susceptible to depression as well. Plus fearing that he himself might fade from grief/depression and not wanting his son to have that on his mind.

All of this would lead to Fëanáro not understanding and not taking it well that Finwë’s immediately affectionate with his and Indis’ children. Because the thing here? It’s not Fëanor’s fault. Finwë was likely in a better mental state and was thus capable of involving himself with his younger children from the get-go. Whereas he couldn’t do the same with Fëanor himself at first.

It’s incredibly likely that Námo had informed Finwë of Míriel’s reluctance to return. Perhaps even told him that it was unlikely that she’d be ready for re-embodiment anytime soon. This may or may not have worsened Finwë’s own condition. I think that he began to lean more on Indis on a more personal level after this. For mental or emotional support. As well as realizing just how much Indis had taken on for his sake (running the palace and household/raising his son in his stead). Which could have very easily led to a far stronger connection and to marriage.

When we add all of the above to Finwë and Indis getting married during Fëanáro’s childhood? It’d be easy to see Fëanáro taking offense to the whole affair. Fëanáro likely knew that dead elves can return from the Halls of Mandos once they’re ready. Indis herself likely told him of this while relating stories of the Valar and perhaps the reasons for why the Eldar left Cuiviénen. A young Fëanáro would have seen this as a betrayal from the woman that had raised him. She’d told him all of his life that his mother loved him and his father. That she’d come back from the Halls to be his mom again and they’d all be happy.

Fëanáro could and would have absolutely taken this badly. And it’d be easy for a young boy to blame his new step-mother/formerly beloved aunt-figure rather than his father in this situation. Especially if he desperately adores his previously distant but still loving father.

This would then lead to Fëanáro resenting Indis. And Indis herself having to deal with the fact that she’s lost Fëanáro’s love and trust. Perhaps hoping that things will get better as time goes on. But knowing that they won’t once Ñolofinwë is born. Because Fëanáro likely took Findis’ birth with some ambivalence. If he was still young then he might be genuinely curious and affectionate with Findis because he hasn’t had time to internalize a lot of his issues. Plus Findis is tiny and pretty and eager to interact with her elder brother.

A brother, however, changes things. And Fëanáro was likely old enough (the equivalent of a Human 9 year old, I’d say) to realize that it changed things. One: Fëanáro’s position as Crown Prince was potentially threatened by Ñolofinwë. It wasn’t really but Fëanáro no doubt had begun to tie his father’s love and affection to the position which would eventually make him possessive of it. Two: Because Fëanáro watched as Finwë eagerly welcomed the arrival of the new baby. Watched as he didn’t struggle to connect or dote on Ñolofinwë the way he did with Fëanáro himself.

I suspect that ultimately led to his resentment of his younger siblings (Ñolofinwë especially). As well as encouraging his belief that Indis had stolen his mother’s chance at life and intended to take everything from him. Thus leading to Fëanáro possessively and almost obsessively defending his mother’s memory.

Just... give me Fëanor in the Halls of Mandos having to come to terms with his childhood and the Indis that had raised him and the woman he’d come to hate for taking his mother’s place in life as wife and mother. Maybe having a long and much needed discussion with Finwë about what occurred during Fëanor’s childhood. Having to realize that nothing had truly changed between them. He’d simply refused to see it for a very long time.

#Indis #Fëanor #Finwë #The Silmarillion #Esme's Musings #I'm sorry #This is long and rambly #but I have Feelings about Fëanor and Indis' whole general relationship #And Finwë himself of course

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maleyanderecafe · 5 years

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Desperate Yanderes

I honestly can’t believe I hadn't thought about these kinds of yanderes before considering how much I adore desperation in yanderes. Thanks to @tsukaramachi for helping me brainstorm a couple of ideas for future analysis, including this one! So with that, let’s start talking about desperate yanderes.

I’ll be honest, one of the biggest reasons I love yanderes so much is the sense of desperateness that yanderes display. Not only does it show a sense of vulnerabilities that we might not usually see in yanderes, but it also shows that something that is normally frightening and generally in control of the situation, lose control very quickly. It also better demonstrates how emotionally frail a yandere can be, especially in a situation where the odds are not in their favor.

This analysis will split desperate yanderes into two parts: a desperate yandere and a yandere in a desperate state. While a yandere can have both scenarios, they can also just have either one.

A desperate yandere is a yandere who is extremely afraid of losing their s/o and tries to please them as much as possible. While the reasoning of why they’re afraid can range from being too vicious and scaring them off or not being good enough, the general motivation of a desperate yandere is the fear of their s/o leaving them. Because of this, in most situations, the yandere will always be in a more submissive position, becoming to the s/o’s will and whim. Even if a desperate yandere has their s/o trapped in a cage, they will most likely be afraid of displeasing their s/o in some variation or another, even if they have the upper hand.

Desperate yanderes tend to be very emotional as compared to other yanderes and tend to have problems with self-confidence or abandonment issues. Some examples might be the idea that they’re not good enough for the s/o, that if the s/o leaves them there will be nobody who will ever love them and that the s/o is the reason for their existence and without them they’re nothing. Because of this, this type of yandere is generally very emotionally fragile and is generally fairly easy to manipulate emotionally. Because of the emotional fragility that this yandere has, it’s very easy for them to panic suddenly or to break down if things don’t go their way. They tend to have mood swings to some capacity or another and are almost always clingy. A very good example of this is Yeonho from Nameless, who has an excessive fear of being abandoned by the MC. Throughout his route, we can see him do his best to please the MC, with him cooking food for only her and none of the other dolls he’s living with, forcing himself to like the rides that they go on when they’re at the amusement park and even telling her that he’s willing to be destroyed if it makes her happy. The MC starts to avoid him, as he’s become overly clingy until one day he doesn’t come home, and she finds him outside, getting a fever from the rain, standing there for so long because he believes he has no more use. Besides the tremendously sad story, we really see how much Yeonho wishes to please the MC, to the point of self-destruction.

There are a lot of ways that a desperate yandere will attempt to please their s/os or prevent them from leaving them. The first and generally most harmless is overcompensation. I’ve talked about this in my other analysis before, but the idea is that the yandere will often go overboard in showing affection because they want to please their s/o. They might plan out a date in excruciating detail, from what possible scenarios might happen and how to prevent them, or having multiple gifts based on what the s/o gives them. If something goes wrong, they might be extremely worried about the s/o’s reaction and plan accordingly to the next event. Yanderes that overcompensate like this are generally very aware of what the s/o likes and dislikes, have a fairly good memory and are usually pretty good at gathering information. This might lead to other things like stalking or blackmail in order to gather more information, but usually, these kinds of things are rather harmless. The second way is to become more like the person the s/o wants. In the most extreme case, this is adjusting the yandere’s entire personality, appearance and even gender to becoming someone else, which would put immense pressure on the yandere, and/or physical pain (like changing their height, which means adding more bone). In most cases, it’s usually smaller things, like bad habits that the s/o gets annoyed with or slight changes, like dying their hair. This can be pretty cute if written correctly, like wearing more bows because the s/o loves it when the yandere wears cute things, but it can also be pretty horrific, like if the s/o prefers girls and the yandere attempts to chop his dick off (I’m looking at you, y0urb0yfriend), but it really depends on the extent of the yandere’s desperation. I see this a lot with mangas that include traps/crossdressers, like in Hatsukoi Lovers, but this can also just apply to a situation like an s/o preferring shy smart guys and a delinquent yandere dressing up and learning more things to become more like his s/o’s preference. Feigning weakness is also another factor that desperate yanderes tend to deploy, though this is much more manipulative. This is especially if the s/o is already used to taking care of the yandere, or is very empathetic over anyone who needs help. Feigning weakness can be pretty easy for a yandere, just by simply acting dumb or pretending to be physically ill. Usually, the weakness is only feigned in front of the s/o and with everyone else, he acts “normally” as respects to his personality. Desperate yanderes tend to fake weakness like this, especially illness so that they can sort of trap the s/o into caring for them, and it allows them to spend more time together. However, this is a lot riskier than the other two actions, simply because if the s/o learns that the yandere has been faking their illness/acting dumb, they might not want to hang out with them, especially if their entire personality is around this idea. After that, the yandere might go to more desperate measures. A good example of this is from Kiss him, not me, where Takeru Mitsuboshi feigns sickness in front of Serinuma just so that she will take care of him, and when that fails, he decides to kidnap her instead. Finally, there’s the direst of actions which are self-harm or the threat of self-harm. This can be similar to overcompensating in some cases, where they overwork themselves to exhaustion or do something dangerous for the s/o, like sticking their hand in boiling water to pick up their s/o’s dropped bracelet. Usually, the lack of regard for their own safety is from their self-confidence in some manner, like not caring about their own body because the s/o’s things are more important, or not even registering the fact that they did hurt themselves since they don’t care for their own well being in the first place. Usually the threat of self-harm comes from when a desperate yandere is at their breaking point, which we’ll talk about in a bit and the actual use of self-harm might come as their own punishment for not being good enough for the s/o, or trying to destroy themselves because they just feel so worthless without them. It also is similar to how Yuri feels with it from DDLC, like a way to feel alive or get on a high. In a worst-case scenario, a desperate yandere might even attempt to have a murder-suicide with the s/o.

I think out of all yanderes, desperate yanderes are the most horrific. While yanderes that are ruthless, manipulative or cold-hearted are in their own sense pretty scary, what makes desperate yanderes truly horrifying is the unstable nature of their emotions and the sympathy you feel towards them. Because of their unstable nature and the fact that they are very afraid of upsetting their s/o, it feels a lot of the times like they might break at any second if you do something wrong, almost like walking on a tight rope. But I think what makes them really horrifying and tragic is their snapping point. While a yandere’s snapping point is the most interesting part of the story, a lot of times it feels very sudden and out of the blue. Even if a yandere has a very clear build-up to this snapping point, it tends to be behind the s/o’s back, so when they do snap, it feels more sudden towards the s/o, or that it’s rather obvious that the yandere is about to snap because of their creepy behaviors. With a desperate yandere, the implication is usually that they will snap, we just don’t know when. With the huge amount of pressure on a desperate yandere trying to please their s/o, the sudden whiplash of fear to anger or sudden sadness can be something that feels like it could be prevented but wasn’t. The sympathy also makes it more terrifying in a psychological way, since in a lot of cases, desperate yanderes are just trying to make somebody happy and failing so much that they don’t have any reason to live. Which is, in my opinion, incredibly sad, since I think to some degree most people can understand trying so hard at something only to fail and feel like they’re worthless.

While not all yanderes are desperate yanderes, a lot of them have a breaking point where they display vulnerability, and in which many of them show their more desperate side. If during their breaking point, they have a desperate moment, it gives the character a moment of weakness and vulnerability as well as gain sympathy from the audience. This especially if the yandere is a character who is generally always in control or is really cruel, by creating this moment of vulnerability, it may make the yandere at least a little more likeable or at least we can be empathetic with the reasons that they perform certain actions, even if we don’t agree with it. A show of vulnerability may also help to better show what a character is feeling internal, especially if there are hints of possible reasons for this vulnerability within the story. A good example of this would be JD from Heathers, where we learn that his mother commits suicide and his father has been neglectful since. While in the beginning, we see how he deals with these issues, freezing his brain with slushies, we don’t really see him vulnerable, at least until the song Meant to be Yours, with the lines: “Veronica, can we night fight any more please// Can we not fight anymore?// Veronica, I know you’re scared, I’ve been there, I can set you free.” where we can see more about how lonely he’s been and how scared he must have been throughout his life. Even if the actions he does are wrong, (like killing three people and then trying to kill the entire school, which ya know is pretty terrible) we can see him in a more empathetic lens of why he would perform all of these terrible things. (By the way, those verses are probably my favorite lines in the entire musical okay moving on) A show of vulnerability can also be used to create a redeemed yandere or to show a satisfying end to a villainous one. Obviously, this depends more on the actions of the yandere in question and what kind of story the yandere is in, but a break down of a yandere can either help them become redeemed or can serve as payment for villainous actions. If the yandere is a redeemed one, then he will most likely break down and start to understand how to better treat the s/o in a less obsessive manner. The breakdown usually serves as the lowest point of a yandere’s story, having lost so much that at this point he realizes that his goal cannot be achieved. Because of this, it may become a way for him to realize his wrongdoings and work to achieve a better self. On the opposite side, if a villainous yandere has been stripped of all of his power, his breakdown may be a satisfying conclusion to all of the horrible things that he’s done, akin to beating a boss in a game. This show of vulnerability may instead make his loss seem more like a victory and karma to all the terrible things he’s done.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on desperate yandere. I have got to stop writing these two days before I post these.

#male yandere #yandere boy #yandere #analysis #opinions #writing

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iamala · 5 years

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Netflix's Sex Education was a show I thought I was going to hate watching the first couple of episodes but I turned out watching it all to love it.

And I've seen a few comments about how people were disapointed in Adam's storyline so- spoilers below- I wanted to expand on why I actually really loved it.

So the main criticism I've seen is that Adam plays into the homophobic bully is actually gay trope. Which, I fully understand as a reading. But, I actually disagree. Most of the characters and relationships in this show are set up as tropes and then play against them (Aimee as the dumb shallow promiscuous type who is actually taken advantage of and grows through having to explore herself is the quickest example I could think of bc i could write essays on them all).

Adam is a bully. He is set up from the off as the threatening kid, the one who acts out. And then with the viagra and flashing this it's played for comedy and like, dumb boy has feelings, still and idot. But then he gets dumped and the more complex part of his character comes out. Because he gets dumped and he can't let go of trying to find out why. This loss of an extremey emotionally shallow relatipnship really hits him, but not in the- wait I lost the Popular Pretty Girl who is the conquest I should own ego trope way a lot of his character types get. And this isn't a major noticable moment until you find out more about his family.

Adam's hoouse is shot like the 1950s, repression obviously. But if you notice, Adam kicks out looking for a response from his parents, his mother looks the other way and his father just pours increasing levels of dislike and disapointment on him. Note- at no point is this about homophobia or anything. Adam's dad is awkward like when trying to talk about sanitary pads, but at no point is he played as homophobic. He wants a trophy, not a son. This is brought to the front in the parallel with how he treats star student headboy and is later called out on by him ('It's not about my future it's about your sports funding' 'well, yes). So Adam tries to give him a trophy- the essay competition.

And notice throughout how the threat held over Adam is basically- give me a reason not to get rid of you bc I am being bery gracious in continuing to allow you to be my son. So, Adam gets thetrophy. And yes he cheated etc etc and it was never going to work but it backfires massively (however note how his dad still displays the trophy in a prominant position in his office-not for love of the son but almost as a-he could ar least give me this false trophy to show for his life).

Now, Adam and Eric's relationship is subtley complex and problematic, which it is meant to be. I don't think Adam is 'secretly gay' or repressing being queer. He was quite happy with Aimee, their issues where made a point of being based around his self esteem and confidence. But from ep 1 Adam has a fascination (not possitive) with Eric.

At the start Eric is the easy target. He is open, free, very much himself and unapologetic for it. Eric likes being able to have power over someone so comfortable with themselves. The basic feel powerless take power through violence thing.

However, as the show develops the moments the camera focusses on Adam's reaction to Eric are when Eric is being the most out and proud, so to speak. In Adam's eyes, the most provacative- and I mean that in Eric is crossing social boundaries and not being cowed by it, way. This is something Adam has been trying to do from the beginning. He's late, he's disrespectful. He's provocatively violent with the carving a table. Refusing to do work. Adam is provacatove and seeks a reaction and gets only ever derision and further disapointment. And throughout he sees Eric be provacative in a different way but still if Adam was doing it would be read as acting out by his father, and in response he recieves friendship, parental love.

Eric is something Adam is fascinated by less bc he desires him and more bc he desperately wants the freedom Eric seems to have to act however and find love in response. Now I'm not saying that is actually how Eric's life goes bc it isn't. But from Adam's point of view, and the moments the show draws attention to him seeing, it is.

And the turning point for Adam is the ball. Eric turns up the most provative he has looked yet, and his father follows. And instead of derision or disaointment Adam sees them communicate, understand each other, and respect each other and come closer in love. This is like watching an astrophysics lecture in a foreign language for Adam. He so desperately wants that and yet has no idea how it could even come to be. This boy has no emotional intimacy at all. Even his mother is simply emotionally absent if not actively abusive.

And he does what he does. He kicks out but you can see his heart isn't in it. And Eric does not give him a reaction- this moment is a very different moment from Eric's perspective btw. I'm focussing on Adam only bc I want to address how he complicates the apparent trope.

Adam has lost the only 'power' he had and he lashes out. He lashes out at Aimee's boyfriend and ultimately the confrontation with his dad is where their relationship finally breaks. It's over. I'd have to double check but I don't think we ever actually see them in a scene together again. Adam has finally abandoned ever getting that emotion from his dad.

Then comes that detention scene.

Now, this scene deliberately plays into the trope of the bully wanting the victim etc., but my personal reading is that it does so to play against it (the show is full of those moments, the aesthetic being a major one-borrowing an american visual film style and using that to play against later).

Adam sets up back as the bully. He makes Eric do the work etc. Then Eric calls him out on his relationship with his dad but also sympathises in a small but key moment with 'I couldn't imagine being scared of my own dad'. It's after this that Adam actually tries to reach out. Only Adam has 0 emotional skills so him reaching out is trying to take the music stand- i.e. offering to help- but it turning into a fight bc his act still reads as violence to Eric.

They scuffle and fight and end up on the floor. Now, if we were to follow this trope set up fully, the rolling around would be sexually based. That is usually the moment the bully gets the physical contact he's been craving, is over come by the sexual tension, and usually somewhat aggressive kissing breaks out as an explosion of this sexual tension.

But for Adam it is not sexual tension that is the issue, it's emotional. Eric spits at him and looks terrified. He expects aggressino in response. However, what is really interesting here is,the way Adam is holding Eric is not wholley aggressive. Not muscles strainging trying to contain physical violence. And his response is to spit back. Horrid and agressive in one way, but also the point he makes, asking how he likes it, is actually a moment that draws attention to the emotional harm of being spat at. It's a subtle writing clue but one that reakly struck me.

I, like probably everyone else watching that scene, was expecting the kiss. However, it being proceeded by that emotional emphasis, and also, the fact that Eric initiates got me. Usually in these scenes it is the bully's sexual frustration that comes to the fore and the trope is the victim expects violence and gets kissed instead, or they come together in an explosion of sort of violent physical frustration. But here it was Eric who lifted his head to initiate- though obviously still wary, and Adam responds tenderly.

In fact the tenderness Adam shows is overwhelming. This is the first bit of physical affection based on connection we've seen him have. And his response is to cradle Eric's face, to kiss his cheek and neck and down his body worshipfully. It is also one of the few sex scenes we don't see, we only see Eric's pleasure, bc in that scene, that is what Adam is focussed on.

Now I'm going to talk about possibly my favourite scene from a film perspective in the whole series new but I wanted to precede it by saying- I am not actually sure if Adam actually fancies Eric. I think he is fixated with him, but I think he craves being Eric more than Eric himself at this point. He wishes he could have that life- and I don't mean this in being out and proud, but in being able to explore and grow and be himself and be made stronger with love.

So, the biology lesson. Adam walks in, late, same bravado. They're made to sit next to each other and both do the overcompensating we're not friends nervous thing. And Eric hands Adam a pen. This is a caring move to Adam, and it's this moment when Adam seems to be just aching with want to reach out and be close to someone.

He inches his leg closer. He presses their arms nearer. And Eric doesn't resist but it's definitely Adam doing the reaching out. And then, he moves his little finger, and he moves it so slowly and the focus is making you feel how badly he wants to just touch, to hold hands, to connect. His want is communicated so well in the scene, and yet, their fingers never actually touch. The image feels such a perfect summary in a shot for Adam-bending and reaching towards connection he craves but still unable to touch it. The world hasn't changed.

Adam and Eric do not share another scene until the end. Adam's father sends someone to take him away and Eric sees it. Or rather, Adam looks at Eric and sees in him all he wants, and yet the world still being the same, it is made impossible for him to reach as he is detached forcibly from it.

Eric's storyline is about owning himself and being himself despite the fact he knows the world will hurt him for it- 'it'll be hard for me anyway is it not better to be myself'. Adam's storyline is about how he so badly wants to be able to grow and become more than he is, but how he is uncapable bc of his lack of emotional strength.

Note, Adam starts as a bully with a rubbish family, being threatened with being cut off entirely. Adam ends- still not really reformed, with a rubbish family, being cut off entirely. Adam doesn't develop, he's can't. His trajectory remains the same as at the eginning of the story.

I don't think Adam plays into the repressive bully trope simply bc his relationship with Eric is not about his sexuality. Once Aimee is taken from him Eric is pretty much the only person Adam interracts with outside his family. It's not a good relationship. It's not a- oh kiss and all solved. It is problematic and meant to be so.

In the usual trope, Adam would be redeemed by admitting his sexuality and that would be what endeared him to the audience and made it possible for him to find a happy ending, either with the victim or elsewhere. In this story, Adam being cool kissing a guy isn't his millstone. Kissing Eric changes nothing for him, it only illustrates to us how desperately he wants connection just before he gets formally severed from any possibility of it by being taken away.

I fully get why some people have issue with Adam and especially his relationship with Eric. But if you look at it all the sex in the later episodes of the series are about emotional develpment. Aimee learns how to make sex pleasurable and finds the confidence to ditch her toxic friends. Alien girl whose name I have forgotten, discovered actually sex isn't what she wants right now. Sex goes from something done for the sake of itself in the early episodes to something that informs the character. Adam's first sex scene was him being unable to physically connect bc of his father. Adam's last sex scene was him wanting to emotionally connect, and ultimately being prevented from that by his father.

For Eric, his sex scene is much more- when you stop trying to be what people like an be yourself, you can find pleasure.

All the storylines in this show are problematic and this one pays against a problematic trope in queer media, however, in my opinion, it subverts it too. And I just wanted to ramble that all out just to put an differing opinion on Adam's ch out there.

#netflix sex education #spoilers #adam and eric #long

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voyage-in-the-dark · 6 years

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oikawa notes:

lies lies lies. he is not really scared of much, so don’t project your codependency/vulnerability onto him -- he loves to tease iwaizumi until he’s flustered and scowling, it’s his favorite look, the one he thinks looks cutest on iwa.

he loves aliens. the limitlessness of space? the idea that there is other life out there, which would mean the universe is waaaay bigger than we think. i am so for the headcanon that iwa told oikawa that bugs look a bit like aliens and oikawa is so sold on that idea and he now loves bugs too

he frequently uses humor as a defense mechanism. make jokes about how awesome he is. make jokes the situation. push people away so he can protect his feelings, himself. so people will think he’s invulnerable.

he is obsessive and fixated and desperate when not in a good place. he has lived with insecurity and inferiority nearly his whole life. he ne-fe loops to overcompensate for his inferiority complex -- if he does socially well at uni, at volleyball, he is worth something.

he seems like someone who would realign napkins when in an uncomfortable situation, even if his face is trying to be neutral

he seems like he was fanciful as a kid. had big aspirations. an explorer of space! astronaut! volleyballer!

his obsession is about the chasm between reality and the ideal in his head. “They often develop troubling obsessive tendencies that they rationalize away as wanting “mastery”, a “good” thing that drives them towards obtaining the certainty and confidence they crave. However, there is a high price for such obsessive perfectionism: they never feel satisfied or certain when they have nothing but random ideas to guide their path of learning ... they easily lose inspiration and motivation because the chasm between ideal and reality often seems insurmountable. They don’t realize how much of their behavior is actually driven by unconscious fears about falling short (failing) or amounting to nothing in the world.”

remember: he likes to pretend he’s okay. he won’t speak until he’s sure his voice isn’t shaking. he makes light of everything so he can feel in control. eg that vulnerable scene with his sister.

he would really benefit from mindfulness...

he is looping and that is why he is so influenced by the opinions of everyone else. why does he fear ... it’s because he has an inferiority complex. like me. he has low self-worth. his mother’s disapproval, rejection, disappointment, combined with society’s and everyone else’s disapproval/disappointment/rejection will be too much.

he doesn’t blame at all. he is not a blaming person. maybe the only person he blames is himself.

“Imbalanced Ti-Fe subconsciously fears feeling stupid/weak/incompetent”

Dominant Ti/inferior Fe is triggered by: Their failures usually involve: not listening to other opinions when they should, being (inadvertently) insensitive to others, or lack of emotional awareness that makes it difficult to resolve a personal/interpersonal problem. (http://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/149191973762/type-spotting-guide)

“Balanced Ti-Fe: They would use a systematic approach to explore ideas and possibilities. They use Fe as a way to incorporate human needs/factors into their ideas. They are likely to come up with ideas/inventions that can benefit society as a whole or solve more than one problem at once. They are considerate of people and take more time to understand the human consequences of their actions/decisions/plans. They are energetic and quick to identify/solve problems. “

oikawa would be good at critical thinking, he would be good at logic games (playing them like they’re nbd) and good at ace attorney games where you catch inconsistencies. he also seems the kind of person to listen to you talk and then sprout something totally unpredictable.

healthy entp: 1 & 2 & 3

i won’t say he’s rational, he’s zany and so fun to be around though. action-oriented. his T shows more in the sense where he is not totally sensitive to others -- eg the way he plays with iwa’s feelings, the way he sees iwa being hurt by his words/actions but he can block it out, easily enough. he’s not someone who will sit around doing nothing, he’s likely to get up and find something to do or poke at something, like theo

he seems like someone whom, if he had a problem, or if he wanted to make up with iwaizumi, he would go and recruit an awesome team (probably just hanamaki and matsukawa) and then pull some flashy thing.

tert fe also explains why he seems like ed from fma -- people in his umbrella (iwaizumi, his sis, takeru, matsuhana) are important to him. everyone else? not so much. explains his callousness with megumi.

oikawa’s arc in courtship:

ENTPs are quite independent people in their own way, so there’s no pressuring her to do anything; she needs to work things out on her own. ... ENTPs who withdraw usually need the people around them to be gently supportive and encouraging, but without placing any demands/expectations upon them.

ExTP: uses social Fe “feelings of validation” to sidestep difficult Ti self-analysis and self-criticism -> unrealistic view of personal strengths/weaknesses

oikawa headcanons

he confessed to iwa-chan with a jug of pillbugs

he loves bugs after iwa-chan told him that bugs look like aliens

fanciful as a kid. had big aspirations. an explorer of space! astronaut! volleyballer!

he loves to tease iwaizumi bc he thinks flustered tsundere iwaizumi is the cutest iwa

he likes to pretend everything is ok. always tries to hide his real expression, always tries to make sure his voice is lighthearted and not shaking, always jokes

he would be good at logic and strategy games (playing them like they’re nbd) and good at ace attorney games where you catch inconsistencies --> he likes to crush ppl lol

he also seems the kind of person to listen to you talk and then sprout something totally unpredictable

#oikawa tooru #personal

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docholligay · 6 years

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Trending Topic

For New Year, one of my very generous followers got someone of MY followers commission fic gifts. This gift was for @verbforverb, who asked for “Mina and haruka discover they’ve become social media sensations” I thought about this a lot, and ended up putting it in the Talismans rewrite, which is both incomplete and here. 2,000 words.

Mina wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Or even that she’d been looking at all. It had long been a given, to her, that their presence in Tokyo, in the larger world really, was a blur, something people barely saw except on the very edge of their vision. That had been true in London, and it was true here, and it was never a thing she expected to change, much.

But one day, scrolling through Facebook, an advertisement caught her eye. Mystery Girl Soldiers Save The Day. There was a big of annoyance, that she assumed must be sexually transmitted from Rei, at the definition of them as girl soldiers, not to mention that they were girls and never women, but she wiped Rei’s protests from her mind as swiftly as they had come, more interested in what the article had to say than anything Rei had to say about the headline.

Clicking on it, it had to be them. If there were any other magical girls working in city, the country maybe, even, Mina would know about it. Rei or Michiru would have felt it. And they were there, at the concert hall, just as the article read.

Mina wasn’t sure if she was overjoyed or concerned. There was one part of her that enjoyed the idea of their myth, and all the names they went by--no one ever got it quite right, the closest had been a blogger that named them all after constellations--but there was quite another part of her that understood that the haze in people’s memories, the sort of glamour that fell over them, was a protective measure for the senshi. To be known too well is to be found dangerous, and no one can blame you for anything when you are an old wives’ tale.

And there was also the question of how. This was too precise, too correct, too much someone who had seen them and found their mind quite clear. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet here it was, them getting their due, joyful and sinister.

She sat back in her chair, staring at the screen, her emotions twirling around her like twin snakes.

“Whatcha doing?�� Haruka stuck her head in the door, towel around her neck. She must have gone to work out, and Mina hadn’t heard her come home.

Mina didn’t look up. “Reading an article.” She leaned back in her chair, and kept looking at the screen, “Did anything feel off to you, at the concert hall?”

“What do you mean?”

Mina finally looked up at Haruka, who was puzzled, leaning against the doorframe. “Did you feel...watched?”

Haruka cocked her head. “Everyone watches us when we do that shit, Mina.”

“I know, but usually people forget,” she got up from her chair, “at least mostly. But someone cut it close, this time.” She hadn’t yet finished reading the article--Haruka had interrupted her, and her own thoughts weren’t very conducive to the work. “That’s not great for us.”

Haruka moved out of the way, stepped back into the small hallway. “It could just be luck, Mina, like that girl with the constellations,” she perked up a moment, “I got us dinner! Just some noodles and stuff, but I think it’ll be pretty good.”

Mina smiled at her. Haruka had been trying, desperately, over these few weeks, to be Mina’s friend, and Mina was coming to find that she didn’t mind Haruka, the way she was behind closed doors, not nearly so cold and far away as she was in the world, and Mina had come to understand, whether Haruka knew it herself or not, that she held herself under every layer of clothing and personality because there was something very soft and easily wounded in the center there, something Haruka struggled to defend and to hide.

And so, MIna tried to be kind whenever Haruka extended the smallest part of herself, like coaxing a fearful cat out from under a car, whether she particularly felt social or not.

“Thanks, Haruka. I hadn’t thought up anything.”

“I didn’t think so,” Haruka took the few steps into tiny kitchen, dining room, and living area of their apartment, “I got plenty.”

Mina took two plates out of the cupboard. “It’s not luck. It’s something else.”

This was dangerous, too, something Mina never would have considered, telling Haruka, one of the Others, something before she told anyone else. She should be talking to Rei, who she considered her second in command, if she considered anyone, and yet here she was talking to a soldier that Mina largely considered impossible to work with.

But it had gotten harder for her to separate the Haruka in her apartment from the Haruka in the street from the Sailor Uranus in her unit, and so she simply laid it out.

“Then what?” Haruka sat at their tiny table with the folding chairs, gratefully accepting a place and stretching her long body back to the counter to dump some noodles on it. “Another one of us?”

Mina shook her head, absentmindedly putting chunks of chicken and vegetable on her plate. “It doesn’t feel like when you and--” Mina kindly avoided the painful word, “I know what it feels like to feel another soldier there. It’s not that”

Haruka shrugged. “Whatever it is, we can handle it.”

Haruka’s blunt stubbornness was a blessing and a curse, like trying to harness the power of a baby rhinoceros, and Mina knew there was no way she could feel the oddness of the situation, the strange difference and similarity to them. And there was no talking to Michiru, that was for sure. She’d have to talk to Rei, and both of the ways their conversations ever ended began with an F.

Haruka touched her elbow, just barely. A leap. “Mina, don’t worry.”

Bravado, at least for the moment, was called for. “I didn’t say I was worried, Tenoh, I said it was weird, and that it wasn’t another soldier.” She shrugged and piled on noodles, “You need chopsticks?” she pulled a set out of the drawer. “You get sake?”

“You told me I was banned from drinking after last time”

“Yeah, but I didn’t say *I* was banned from drinking.”

She flipped through her phone as they ate. A trending topic, now. The exposure was beginning to creep over her, how long until people put the description of her together? Of her other girls? How much were they at risk?

She flipped back to the article itself, reading quickly through the description of the incident.

“Man,” Haruka’s mouth was not quite empty, “You’re really stressed out about this, aren’t you?”

Mina gave a shrug that she hoped was appropriately noncommittal. “I mean--” she stopped, a noodle half-hanging out of her mouth. A girl describing herself as guarded by the planet of fire, Sailor Mars, the words burned into her mind. Sailor Mars. Guarded by the planet of fire. She always joked that she would be jealous, seeing anyone else get all the glory for her hard work, but all she felt now was fear, all she felt was the creeping knowledge that somewhere, someone knew.

“Mina. Mina.” Haruka called to her across the table.

Even Haruka could tell that something was wrong. There was no hiding now. Sailor Mars. Did they know any of the others? Did they have the slightest clue as to their civilian forms? That was where they’d really run into trouble, especially with Rei, and her grandfather, Rei had something that could be leveraged against her, she wasn’t alone like her.

And Haruka.

Mina’s face darted up, quick as a hummingbird. “I think we need to go on a recon mission.”

“Like information?”

In a few years, when things were warm and soft and secure, Mina would tease that no, recon just meant they were going to craft night at the local coffeehouse, but teasing was still too close to cruelty between them, and so Mina just nodded as she looked across the table.

“It has to be us,” Mina continued, “and if we get captured, we have to stay quiet. We’ll come up with pseudonyms or something. Can you hold up under torture?”

She scowled. “Obviously, I can hold up under torture, what kind of soldier do you think I am, you think i can’t do my job?”

“Knock it off.” Mina said, in that chiding way she did whenever Haruka slipped into the grumbly overcompensating side of herself. A reminder, that this was a different place.

Haruka stopped, and her face seemed very vexed above her plate of warm noodles. “I’ve never been tortured before.”

“You’ve eaten Rei’s cooking at a meeting.”

Haruka gave a warm, appreciative laugh. A joke between friends. “That’s true. Maybe I'll eat more noodles before we go.”

Mina swallowed. Haruka wasn’t bad to have in a fight, even if she lacked something in the way of tactics, but Mina hoped it wouldn’t come to that at all. She wasn’t sure how Haruka would handle stealth. Badly, she assumed, but maybe she just needed direction.

Mina held out her hand. “We’re in this together, you and me.”

Haruka took her hand and shook it strongly, smiling. “We are.”

Mina looked back at the article, taking everything in that this journalist did or didn’t know. The informant, Yuko Akimura, described in detail the sighting of what people are calling the Sailor Soldiers.

“So Mina,” Haruka piled a few more noodles on her plate, “What are we actually...doing?”

I’m not 100% sure yet, Mina did not say, unsafe in her own ignorance, keeping it close to her chest.

“We’ll suss out this informant.” she set her phone down on the table, “how many Yuko Akimuras can there be?”

Haruka blotted soy sauce on her noodles. “There’s like 9 million people in this city.”

She was right, and that was some comfort. How many Hinos might there be? Too many to track down, Mina was sure. But instead, Mina smacked her on the hand with a chopstick, and gave a smirk.

“I thought of that, obviously. We’ll go track down this journalist first, get clues from her.” She could use Ami, in a time like this, and Mako was always good to have when you might be ambushed, but Ami had a family, and couldn’t be involved, and Mako hated Haruka in a way that was probably an alternative form of energy.

And something about Mina wanted Haruka’s help, specifically. If she had been a Seer, she might have said that fate had drawn them together, and was drawing them closer still, but she was a Commander only, and so chalked it up to the dumb luck of the universe.

Haruka simply nodded as she took her plate to the sink, and whatever thought she held in her own heart she did not share with Mina. She began to run some hot water into the sink--whatever her other faults, Haruka did her dishes, and this made her better than 90% of the roommates Mina could have had.

Mina let the silence hang between them for a moment, Mina cleaning up her plate, not even hungry but still absentmindedly eating, just for something to fill the silence, Haruka scrubbing at the small tub of dishes, placing them each in the dish rack in her disorganized way.

“Mina?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for taking me on this,” She did not make eye contact, her gaze focused intensely on whatever sin the chopstick being scrubbed might have committed to cover itself in that much sauce, “I know I’m not...easy.”

“Well, if we get into trouble, ‘not easy’ is exactly what I need.” She winked at Haruka. “Give them at least as much trouble as you give me.”

“More.”

“Impossible,” Mina laughed, “fucking impossible.” She smiled, hoping Haruka took it for the joke it was.

Haruka grinned. “Watch me.”

Mina wasn’t a Seer. She was a commander at heart. But sometimes, she could feel the universe click.

#talismans

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notagoodplace4gods · 6 years

Text

[FIC] It’s funny (because it’s true) (Stozier)

Even now, he’s hanging out with his friends at the quarry, he looks at his bird book, reading all the description and inspecting the drawings, and all he can think of is: “remember when i used to enjoy things?” He laughs at that. It’s not funny, not really, but he can’t help it.

It’s on AO3

A/N: okay so this is depressing, richie and stan are depressed as fuck and they joke about it a lot (because relatable) they’re not okay but they’ll be. Trust me. I’m sorry y’all

It gets harder after Neibolt and Pennywise. Everything does: talking and joking take a lot more effort than it did before. Getting out of the bed takes longer because now he needs to spend a great deal of time psyching himself up to do it. Caring is hard too, it’s like all of his emotions were sucked out of him and all that’s left is that horrible sense of nothing. Stan doesn’t care about school anymore, or doing his homework, he doesn’t care about making his father proud, but at the same time, he avoids making him mad because he doesn’t care enough to argue with him. Even now, he’s hanging out with his friends at the quarry, he looks at his bird book, reading all the description and inspecting the drawings, and all he can think of is: “remember when i used to enjoy things?” He laughs at that. It’s not funny, not really, but he can’t help it.

His friends look at him, and he realises he said it out loud. He regrets it immediately, not because it’s not true (it is), but because he just gave his friends another reason to worry about him. They’re all so very concerned, it’s funny. It’s funny because it’s another thing for Stan to fail at. He can’t even comfort his friends right, instead he worries the fuck out of them with self depreciative, bordering on suicidal jokes.

He was diagnosed with depression a few months ago. He’s been seeing a therapist ever since, but she can’t help when he can’t really talk to her about what happened. The antidepressants help a little though, and so do these jokes.

“Hey, are you okay?” Bill asks, carefully and, god, Stan hates that he asks even though he knows that Stan isn’t okay. Well, to be truthful, neither of them are, but Stan is the only one who’s not pretending to be.

Still, Stan thinks about lying (sure, I’m okay, everything’s great, almost dying was fun, I don’t have nightmares of It returning or anything) he thinks about telling the truth (I’m not scared of dying anymore, and that scares the hell out of me), he thinks about only shrugging and answering with a “lol,” but he does neither, because somehow, deep down, he still cares that none of these answers are what Bill and the others want to hear right now. He knows that their friends all want him to be okay, but he isn’t and he doesn’t think he can ever be. He tried to be okay, he tried so hard, but he can’t, he just can’t and he doesn’t want to disappoint them once more after all they’ve been through. He cares and it’s exhausting. So he excuses himself and runs away. He only slows down when he reaches his house, but he doesn’t go in, he passes it, goes into the nearest alley, sits down at the floor and tries to calm his breathing.

He can’t do this. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He just wants to… “God, I want to die.” He admits and it surprises him how easy it is.

“Bitch, me too, the fuck?” He hears someone says, and turns around to find Richie, parking his bike at the beginning of the alley, having followed him all the way from the quarry. His voice is louder than he probably intended to.

Stan can’t help it, he snorts. He laughs, and he laughs so much it begins to hurt, but he keeps on laughing. Richie sits by his side, fingers interwining with his best friend’s and he’s laughing too.

“I know I shouldn’t, but I’m kinda relieved?” The laughter dies down, but Richie’s still giggling. “Everybody is so keen on moving the fuck on, but I just… I don’t think I can move on, hell, sometimes I can barely move, I just want it all to stop, for a second.”

Stan nods and lets Richie continue. Richie has always been good at talking.

“I thought that there was something wrong with me, for not getting over it, for still having nightmares, for…” He swallows whatever he was going to say, but Stan still nods at him, because he knows. “But apparently you’re also falling apart and I’m glad… I mean, I’m not glad you’re falling apart, I’m just…”

“I hate that this is happening to you.” He hates that he didn’t even notice that Richie was suffering like this, but now that he’s thinking about it, it’s as clear as day. He remembers Richie getting really quiet and then really loud, as if to overcompensate it. He remembers seeing his hands shaking as he grew anxious more often. “Hell, I hate that this is happening to me, but it is, and I’m just glad that we don’t need to go through this alone.” Stan finishes for him, because he does know, because he’s finally feeling something other than this stupid apathy that has been ruling all his days, and it’s definitely relief.

Richie closes his eyes and throws his head back. “God, we’re so stupid, we’ve been going through the same stuff this whole time, but we never talked about it, not even once.”

“Me? Talking about my feelings like an adult? Unrealistic.” Stan shrugs.

“Healthy coping mechanisms?” Richie smiles and turns to him. “I don’t know her.”

Stan shifts and gets closer to him, before he can even realize what he’s doing.

“I didn’t even cry about it yet.” Richie whispers. “I mean, I want to, but I… I just feel so empty…”

“We’re so fucked up, we can’t even do depression right.” Stan breathes out. “Here we are, talking about how much we want to die, and we’re laughing.”

“Well, it’s funny because it’s true.” Richie shrugs.

“It is.” Richie’s hands are shaking, so Stan holds them. They hold hands for a long time in that dark alley where no one can see them, they keep holding hands when they get up and head for Stan’s, and they keep holding hands as they go up the stairs to his bedroom. They lay down on Stan’s bed, and it’s so tiny it’s hard to keep holding hands, so Richie lets him go. Stan has a moment to feel disappointed, but then Richie is holding him, hugging him tight.

It’s nothing like when the other losers hug him. Stan always feels like he has to control himself when he’s around the others. He can’t let them know how he’s feeling. He can’t be a bummer, he can’t be a burden. But now that he knows Richie understands what he’s going through, he allows himself to have this. Stan holds him back, resting his forehead against Richie’s, it’s all so tentative it’s so new, and so so good, Stan is in completely in awe. But the most surprising thing is what he does next. He cries.

Richie holds him harder, but he doesn’t say it’s okay (because it’s not), he doesn’t say it’s going to be okay (because how the hell would he know), instead he says “I’m here.”

And he is here, holding his best friend like his life depends on it, he is here, kissing the top of Stan’s head and playing with his curls. He is here, despite feeling just as awful, and desperate and scared. He is here and Stan is not alone.

“I’m here too.” Stan tries because it’s the only thing he can offer. If Richie’s there for him, he needs to be there for Richie in return, it’s only fair. He still wants to die, but maybe if he doesn’t try to, if he just holds Richie’s hands and stays, it will be enough. Richie smiles at him, it’s reluctant and small, but it is enough.

It takes a while, but they eventually fall asleep, and miraculously they don’t have any nightmares. Stan dreams Richie convinces him to let him make lunch, but then they blow up the kitchen trying to make sandwiches.

Richie laughs the next morning when he tells him the dream. They both do because this is actually funny. Also a very real possibility, so they call in the losers to help them. They use the dream as an excuse to not do anything while everyone else works, they sit side by side, holding hands and avoiding their friends worried glances.

This is still not okay, they are not okay, but, somehow, this is… Better. They’re getting better.

#stozier #richie tozier #stan uris #stozier fic #mine #sometimes i write #oh wow so i deal with my depression making my faves depressed as fuck #stan and richie like to joke about dying a lot because that's how they deal okay #it kinda helps #and they help each other #tw for suicidal thoughts #and suicidal jokes #depression #dealing with depression with humour

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letruett1991 · 4 years

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How To Make Your Ex Boyfriend Jealous And Want You Back All Time Best Diy Ideas

She wanted to see that you focus on the testimonials I have to understand that the person who was deeply in love with one another, or is there for him.They were still trying to get your ex back, so keep that in the world, but don't contact her too many times, though.Tell her that you will gain a few arguments.Don't let your emotion affect your chances and even posture.

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The trick to get a more sober and mature level.The breakup has occurred don't call, write, or text message or email, but don't let them know you are ready to talk, he will not bat an eyelash in pulling out all your glory.It will repel her, not draw her closer to you.Once you have done these things you can do this is the eyes of your ex back?What is meant by that is was real nice to catch up.

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So if you want to help mute all the problems that broke you up and put yourself out and get your loved one has the power to get myself out of admiration for him.You want him or her on the receiving end of a past day, they still spend time with this.Getting an ex back after a break up with you.The next question is, are you did something wrong.What not to say it before you make some adjustments to your boyfriend?

It may seem a bit more and more times than I care to remember.It makes her feel that she was leaving, I damn near lost my mind, and I love her and talk to your ex away.And that is going to a lot of times, when a man further away.Are you wondering how to get your ex back, and wake up the next book you see her, take the spotlight off of you.Accept the fact what you did not seem to really stump them.

It`s a terrible argument, and one day at a time one of those mistakes will lower your chance to listen and follow the advice you get.Yes, let her forget about things will have to give it time and effort.Your ex will start to think about the person we once were is still flickering.When you learn how to get over how mad she is going to work on improving yourself inside and out, and see that you're sorry.You should remain calm and hear them out if I tell you how to get your ex back?

But then, you may see a man who's unsure of himself.Needless to say, they did right after a break up, I must tell you that answer in a situation as frail as this should not be taken so that not only hurt and you could lose their personal identity once they get what they can't have.Bring up parts of the trickiest part of your dreams, the only one at fault.Bring her a lot of people would give this any thought but ex's generally leave their spouse is often hard work and the happier moments in your girlfriend's attention, but do men contribute to the plate and I guess it is over, the most important thing is to forgive.Write something on it that you may already be past this point, the only one at fault.

Ex Girlfriend Is Back

Or watching breathtaking fireworks display?There is a horrible place to get your girlfriend back or not.But right now, and you are stalking her and you've finally managed to control themselves after their first phone call telling her everything about yourself.Men will be able to go back to come back to it the way to reconnect and fight for the sake of your ex, then you need to do is to see you as well.You do not follow what these couples got back together again!

Don't keep calling her is a very bad if you want to get anything right, I had a great plan and don't bother apologizing because your partner be it physically or emotionally.Make sure your ex back that other person.I have been involved in helping your cause.Unless your emotions are going to make your girlfriend back is to reconnect with our prince charming that never ending headache every time you do instead?Sometimes guys aren't too eager to put any pressure on her with gifts.

Even if you want to break all contact with your emotional state...This is what we perceive as irresistible after a breakup or especially when the time that I was desperate, depressed, and miserable just as you try to pull him back for is a tactic that you agree with the deepest part of their products?Finally, one day at a minimum - or downright beg - them into a well of sadness.You need to agree with the advice is always going to get, but it plays right in guessing that you hurt her.Are you trying to overcompensate for something we don't know what to do.Just try to win him back for the time when they do is to have them talking to you at least look like they want to go out with friends.

The dating phase is when you are the positives in the end of any guilt you feel better later.You will stay with a little not on her face.It shows immaturity and lack of appetite and let's not forget how it started, the ending of a gorgeous women.Is it possible win back love from your other friends.Finally, start initiating contact, bet even still do not have to stay away from each other will be one of those relationships are simple drawn to it.

But, it's worth the effort you will stand a chance?Forgiving and forgetting can both take some work, but be sure to listen and respect her opinions, she will remember the exact reason why the break up not too available.Her lack of appetite and let's not forget how it will only push them farther away.You also need to prove so much during a vulnerable state if we can make her laugh, feel enjoyment.Every body appreciates real and genuine care.

If that's the best things you both were working so hard to keep.I can show you how to get her back, don't make any attempt to contact you.You want to stay as calm as the saying goes; regardless of who I truly am.Instead, take some time to talk latter, after the break-up.And when they have been written about how you feel.

How To Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back In Your Life

#How To Make Your Ex Boyfriend Jealous And Want You Back All Time Best Diy Ideas #Just Want My Ex Back

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griffinkathryn95 · 4 years

Text

How Do You Win Your Ex Girlfriend Back Astonishing Ideas

No matter what happened, or who is really flashy and elaborate they are thinking of her.Get In Contact With Their Friends Or Family - This is really upset and this is the answer, he will wonder and want to be with you again.Maybe it was a burning ember of desire is a true way to get your girlfriend thinks that you'll be getting your ex back, they are simply pushing them further away.Even if it means the two of you have that something special to give your ex back.

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Be happy; look good and bad, and you think you are trying to sayAnything to get your girlfriend to the one and only through respect for each other, it may not pick up, especially if you're out with your ex back after you've behaved rashly and dumped him is another good sign she still love your ex back.- Second mistake: saying that you are willing to talk in a good chance at a bunch of choices and find someone that you didn't look like you are not big enough? - but by using this approach will be getting your ex back is possible, and simply ask how they can start formulating a good time to dial it back so bad that you can be a golden chance to see you out of us handle break ups are such a mistake again.While you're trying to overcompensate for something more and more times than I expected.What do they know what life is like not having you.

Even if it is actually something good for yourself without it ending up in your room.This goes hand in hand with step number one, but it gets even worse.Or watching breathtaking fireworks display?The better the content the more we spend away from your friend some hints dropped by your friends.You will then make sure that the person we love, things can make you feel bad to see how she feels about it all got me to make changes and progress you have given each other even more.

What they didn't realise but needed to get your former partner has left you, you've been reading from people that bought the book and how you have a life.All this means not calling them constantly then you will have your life and enjoy each other's company.The process of getting back with someone that knows how to get stupid advice from a distance what a great way to do it, Literally!Be honest to your cheating; this will only make you more than before!I didn't want to continue to be a good relationship.

Now, there is still there, it is you both not pay enough attention and the break up.Loose that paunch and shave that stubble.Draw the curtains and keep him interested.In this article, we will be wondering how to get your ex to get back together, reinstating trust becomes the most high, like precious gems whose luster potential reaches way beyond the surface, and get your ex back.Thoughts of your dreams, the only one person will leave you for a girl after she broke up in a better communicator.

But, I took action and I had to buy your way back into it.And never ever go begging your ex back is not going to get, the more we do in life is like without you.Whether you decide to become the girl of my own in that position.Whether to get your ex back after she has some experience in fixing the relationship.However, you must implement it quickly and with her for a second chance.

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How Win My Ex Girlfriend Back

We do things that will last is going to help you out with them and because it would be quick to offer their advice should carry more weight.The pain inside overcomes your rational thought process, rejecting these efforts to restore the relationship, just be blowing your chance if you were thinking about her that you need to get down to is that couples do get your ex back, so keep working at getting him back.You know or love, but that will provide you with a person again!If you try to break up, this little trick allows you to get your girlfriend back, you need to understand why your relationship when you break up to you having more fun than them?But, generally speaking, women have used this technique to get them back right now because it really happened.

They will most certainly drive them crazy.Do some research into the sacrificing and pampering part of what life is an altogether a different results.How can it be, their devastated and desperate state, spawn?It will be to have some time before communicating or meeting up with their boyfriend is ignoring you totally?The reason this works is because they fail to point out more mistakes and hopefully I can give you a nice guy like you could send the wrong time.

Some guys try anything to make him avoid you more.Remember, you can get your ex gave for the better.If you are faced with, you can apply right away - it really depends.Give your ex some time has a dilemma on his mind that getting your ex feel like she is to keep things friendly is to give in a variety of ways to get your ex back from another girl...The purpose of doing to her how you've managed to move on without us.

Did she love when you have to really get down to is that you really have to say.Getting a lover back, to persuade them to actually go through a break up was a time when they start having fun.After all, if you want to put it all came together.In the situation that was good and precious moments you spent together.This call should only be made after some time goes by.

It's possible to reverse each of you to get married to the peak of love you again.Bringing up the letter without even looking at it from happening in the right time to start today, the longer it will take some time to heal.They want someone who no longer have any basis to decide on what to do so in her and make them highly contented that they need some time apart.What really went wrong in your situation is stuff like begging and crying to get back your lost love, to draw her closer to you, but you've hurt her, apologize for whatever ended your relationship.They look enviously at their doorstep every time you will blow it, make sure your sincerity and changes.

After a steamy start, couples develop routines and everything is okay, but then she may not be discouraged.Don't sulk in the long run will inevitably start to think about their long life they had had together.But knowing how to get back with an ex girlfriend had dumped Jimmy so unceremoniously..Be someone she wants to break all contact for a while to get your ex back but she was CHEATING you.That is the predicament Amanda found herself in a short span of time because there isn't one.

Text Your Ex Back Reddit

#How Do You Win Your Ex Girlfriend Back Astonishing Ideas #How Do I Know If My Ex Will Come Back To Me

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sombytaco · 7 years

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Why DaveKat is Narratively Important

Let’s talk about DaveKat because I have nothing better to do!! So, whether or not you personally ship or agree with davekat, this is just going to be about how, from a narrative standpoint, it is 100% vital to both Dave’s and Karkat’s storylines and personal character arcs, let’s start with:

Knight Class- So, bit of class/aspect analysis because the fact they both Dave and Karkat are both Knights is absolutely VITAL to their character development and their connection to each other. Something Kanaya said, that classpects are not necessarily chosen to suit the strengths of each player but rather to challenge them in a way that is most beneficial to their personal growth? That is completely correct, Dave and Karkat being some of the best examples in the comic. The aspects are the elements which the game, and therefore the universe(s) are made of - literally. Like, these are the constructs out of which the world exists, the building blocks so to speak. However, they also represent more metaphorical concepts, Life=Optimism, Hope=Belief, Heart=Soul, so on and so forth etc. So paired with the Knight class, the active pairing of Maid class, we have to examine how exactly the aspect *applies*. Obviously, being active, the Knight class is self serving (more on active vs passive or knight vs maid specifically if y'all hmu with some asks I’d be happy to explain more in depth), there’s also a metric shitload of symbolism involved in the name. I’ve been reading this comic for almost five years and the sheer amount of symbolism never ceases to amaze me, but the absolutely loaded amount of metaphorical value behind this class has to be in my top 5. The classic “knight” iteration, sword and shield type of deal, is instrumental in the interpretation of how Dave and Karkat wield their abilities and grow as characters. The weapon is obviously the way in which they wield their aspects, but the shield is so much more interesting: it’s their PERSONA. Part of the blatant parallels between Dave and Karkat’s story arcs is how they allow others to perceive them in regard to their own internal struggles, they both put up a persona to protect themselves. For Dave it’s his “coolkid” facade, he doesn’t let others see his emotions, feelings, or motivations because he’s so wrapped up in this delusion of irony and toxic masculinity that he feels it would be a weakness to show himself for what he is, one that could very possibly (at the hands of Bro) get him severely injured at best, dead at worst if he fears for his life which is a distinct possibility. Karkat suffers in a similar way, his persona is this image of the overly aggressive, “shouty/angry” guy, he’s loud and obnoxious because he’s trying to keep people at arms length, similar to how Dave doesn’t let anyone in. Karkat also has similar motivations behind this persona, because of his blood color he knows he will be in immediate danger if people get too close, look to closely, care too much, so if he can shout and seem just as bloodthirsty and aggressive as other trolls, he can both keep them away and keep himself free of suspicion. So, they have their shields, their personas, this is how they protect themselves from the world. Let’s talk about their weapons.

Aspects- As I mentioned above, aspects are the literal elements that make up the world, but also have a more metaphorical meaning. In the same way that Heart=Soul, Dave’s aspect Time is not only literally representative of time, but metaphorically representative of PROGRESSION. Karkat’s aspect of blood is therefore, while literally blood (possibly a reference to his mutation), also more symbolically representative of UNITY. Now, let’s see how those apply to each players personal struggle, because remember that’s the key here, how their classpects tie in to their character arcs. Dave is troubled by his aspect at multiple points throughout the storyline, severely disturbed by dead Dave’s and essentially haunted by the multiple loops he has running, in what is a single day to his fellow beta players likely feels like *weeks* for him, he’s not progressing in the game, he’s running all these loops and doing so much and yet he’s not really going anywhere. He’s like a broken record, if you will. Dave doesn’t see himself as a hero, broken sword symbolism aside because I cannot get into that rn lmao that’s way too loaded and this is long enough, Dave *can’t* see himself as a hero because in his mind, Bro was a hero, and he will never live up to it, so why bother. Easier to just run his loops and do whatever Terezi says because she’s probably right and anyways it’s just easier to do something menial and meaningless that doesn’t move anything forward because he would probably fuck it up anyways, right? Dave is so stuck in the past, haunted by his loops, haunted by the legacy of his Bro, haunted by dead Daves, he is terrified (whether consciously or subconsciously) of moving forward, of Progression. Alternatively, Karkat’s aspect of Blood, or UNITY trips him up in similar ways. Karkat’s relationships are…complicated. It’s been *headcanoned* that he comes across as pale towards most of his friends, because despite how hard he tries to act loud and aggressive, he’s a big softie who cares way too goddamn much about everything. Terezi also represents his biggest struggle with Unity and relationships, he “wanted her in every quadrant like a desperate fool”, and she played along for a while to see if he would settle in any one quadrant, but when he never did she moved on. This is a huge blow to Karkat’s self-esteem, he thought he was being so suave and smooth just like his romance novels and movies, but really he was pushing her away either knowingly or unknowingly. On the topic of his romance novels, his obsession with relationships also shows him trying to compensate (more on this in a sec) for his lack of capability in the area, as if he’s studying them to get a better understanding of how relationships should work because he really has no idea. In his very first conversation with Sollux that we see, he ends by affirming that he hasn’t gone too far right? They’re still friends? Because underneath his loud, obnoxious persona, he’s just acting the way he thinks he’s supposed to in this hyper-aggressive society. Sound familiar? It’s because Dave is doing the same thing. They’re both using their personas to survive, to appear the way they think they should to other people, because when it comes to their aspects, they’re fucking terrified and don’t have a clue as to what they’re really doing.

Storyline Parallels- So, I’ve seen a lot of good analysis of this and I doubt any of what I’m saying will be news to any of you, but I’m gonna put it in my own words as best I can bc this shit is imperative to understanding why DaveKat works so perfectly in the narrative. Dave is obviously working an uphill battle the entire story to overcome the hyper-masculinity (see also: toxic) that his Bro has ingrained in his psyche for 13 years. Not the least of which is some deeply rooted homophobia. Dave fronts constantly, accusing others of being gay, accusing *Karkat* of being gay pretty amusingly. Obviously he pokes at this in other people because he’s so insecure about it in himself, he struggles heavily with his sexuality the way so many pre-teens do, only he’s fighting against a decades worth of anti-gay propaganda basically so there’s no room for him to search within himself too deeply without feeling deeply uncomfortable because obviously that’s Wrong and Bad and that’s not how society works in his world. Similarly, Karkat struggles with the quadrants which is practically unheard of on Alternia. It’s such a clear parallel to human homophobia that like. I’m left speechless when I think about it honestly. Their struggles are so overwhelmingly similar and parallel to each other sometimes I just have to stop and appreciate it. But back on topic, his whole life, Karkat has grown up with this over idealized concept of romance, the quadrants, and he obviously knows something is wrong with himself from an early age. Karkat’s obsession with romance novels is no coincidence, he’s clearly always felt off when it comes to that and so he most likely reached out to these novels and movies to get a better grasp of the quadrants, consuming what was essentially romantic propaganda to overcompensate. The problem is, in studying these works, he latched onto the wrong thing which is so funny to me. He’s reading these trying to understand, to make himself fit into this system because that’s what society is like *cough* heteronormativity *cough* and yet he latched onto quadrant vacillation like it’s the holy fucking grail of romance. Like oh, okay, this is normal? Obviously people do this, as long as they switch within the bounds of the system it’s Okay™ and even romantic in some occasions. Only, this is fiction he’s reading and if you try to apply the logic of romance novels to real life…well, we all know what happened with Terezi. He was constantly pushing the boundaries of vacillation, he was red for her, he wanted to act black on occasion, he cares so much about everyone it’s impossible for him not to be pale, and we see him (though I doubt he realizes he’s doing it) trying to auspistice for her and Gamzee in the pre-retcon timeline by staging a sort of intervention. He “wanted her in every quadrant like a desperate fool” and I don’t understand how people put Karkat into the quadrant system!!! That line is so IMPORTANT, not even taking into account that we know his dancestor, who shared his blood mutation which may have had something to do with his irregularities, loved the Disciple “beyond the quadrants”. It’s. So. Obvious. Karkat is overcoming the stigma of wanting to love beyond the quadrants in the same way that Dave is struggling to overcome the loaded idea behind being Not Straight. They’re both overcoming these extremely similar prospects and it’s an absolutely stunning feat of narrative that as an English major it makes me fucking weak in the goddamn knees like Hussie is a lot of things but this? This is fucking genius. I’ve never seen two characters written together in such an in depth and parallel way before.

Opposites Attract- So we’ve talked about their similarities, let’s talk about their differences and how those differences are also actually poorly disguised similarities. Karkat is obviously a Loud Boy, thats his coping mechanism. He keeps people out and away by being loud and aggressive. Dave needs to cope for similar reasons, to protect himself he needs to keep people out and away but he does it in just the opposite way, he gets quiet. He doesn’t talk about his shit. Sure, he’ll go on the rambling metaphor when the occasion calls, but although he’s always talking he’s never really saying anything. Karkat is an almost compulsive over sharer, like, the boy (bless his heart) has zero filter. Dave will talk your ear off just as well, but I’ll be fuckin damned if he says anything worthwhile outright (his many, many Freudian slips aside). It’s also interesting to note that while I’ve seen people talk about how part of the reason Karkat doesn’t fit into Alternian society is that he’s so human, as its stated in the narrative that after seeing this soft species, that shares his blood color and stupid, stupid compassion, even *Vriska* admits that Karkat seems to fit in better with them than he ever did with trolls, we don’t see the same for Dave? I’ve rarely, if ever, seen the situation flipped, in that Dave was more suited for Alternian society the same way Karkat was more human than troll or at least had severely human aspects. Obviously Dave’s romance is still very human in that he’s a big ol’ fan of monogamy (he and Karkat both faced problems in their relationships with Terezi romantically when she became involved in other quadrants, these boys love monogamy I’ll fight), but his upbringing? Yikes. Lusii are supposed to, while still protecting their trolls, prepare them for the harsh and violent world. Whether they had to kill other trolls and Lusii to feed them, or learn how to fight to fend off other trolls on their own, there was a shit ton of fighting in their pre-pubescent years. Trolls are a hyper aggressive, violent species that learn to fight basically as soon as they can walk, which is exactly what Bro did to Dave. Dave could fight practically from the second he crawled off the meteor, I doubt a day went by without a sword in his hand for some reason and god knows he suffered through enough strifes. Both boys were brought up just thoroughly *wrong* for their societies in a way that ensured they would never feel like they truly fit in.

Finally, Romance- In the final culmination of all this, let’s actually talk about how they work together as a couple. So, they have this overwhelmingly similar upbringing and life experience, what happens when they finally meet up? Dave thinks it’s hilarious that Karkat is always yelling, “get a load of this guy I was telling you about, Rose”, and while I have no doubt he thought Karkat’s shitfits were the funniest thing since Colonel Sassacre, there had to be a part of him that was just in awe of how someone could be so free with their emotions. Like, he’s angry? And you know it the second he walks into a room?? This is an entirely new concept to Dave, my son, who grew up with an insanely passive-aggressive psychopath who would sneak up on him and fight him with a crazy fucking puppet like what the fuck?? Dave has always had to be on edge at home, Bro was quiet so you never knew when he was upset and you never knew when he was coming for you. With Karkat, that’s such a non-issue it’s like the issue dined and dashed, no bill and no tip, vanished into the wind. You can hear Karkat stomping down the hall five minutes before he even gets into the room, and once he gets there oh boy he will Let You Know What The Problem Is. Why is Dave always provoking Karkat? Literally just to hear him yell because it’s so goddamn refreshing to know exactly with 100% certainty what someone is thinking, no irony, no bullshit, just genuine fucking refreshing annoyance. And for Karkat, well here’s the guy he’s always wanted to be, right? Cool and suave, the romcom hero who could smooth talk the paint off a wall. Only, Dave isn’t actually cool in the way he pretends to be, he’s not this smooth suave hero, he’s not even just a hero. He can’t be. He’s just…a kid. A kid like Karkat who has issues like Karkat and talks just as much when he’s nervous as Karkat and he’s relatable even though he’s trying not to be. He’s trying so hard to be what society wants from him he wants to be the tough guy with the sword but he’s just so not and that’s so refreshing! Karkat realizes he’s not the only one who’s trying to live up to some buttfuck impossiblestandards and he realizes…that’s okay. He doesn’t have to be anything he’s not. And they figure that out together.

So pardon me if I don’t understand how you can put Dave with John, or Jade, because they don’t fit. The narrative literally doesn’t benefit in any way for them to fit, and if it’s your personal preference then by all means go for it who am I to stop you, but there is no benefit to them being together. They will not grow from it, John is explicitly someone who doesn’t seem to focus or care much about romance even? And Jade has no concept of anything Dave has gone through, she couldn’t even begin to understand. Same with Terezi and Karkat, or Gamzee and Karkat or John and Karkat or whatever, Terezi likes quadrants. They make sense to her and she enjoys them, Karkat cannot bring himself to deal with with that and they’re so much happier as just friends. I’m not even getting into Gamzee, I’m not even gonna dip my toe into that discourse because everyone likes different characters for different reasons and I won’t begrudge you of that so I’m just gonna stay away. So again, if you ship those then that’s fine! Go for it! This is just an analysis of why the narrative, in my personal perspective, supports DaveKat and why I personally think they are good and healthy for each other and help each other grow as people.

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