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thirstyforcharacters · 3 years

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Bar Fight (Din Djarin/The Mandalorian x fem bounty hunter! Reader)

Part 1 of 2 of The Bounty Hunter and the Mandalorian

Summary: When a bounty hunter attempts to get her quarry, the ensuing battle with a mysterious stranger takes an unexpected turn.

Notes: Hello! This is meant to be the prequel to Rendezvous, (which you can find here) it's the scene that was briefly described in one of the beginning paragraphs. It can also definitely be read as a standalone, though! I know my updates definitely haven't been as frequent because finals are getting close, but I'm still trying to write because it's one of the only things keeping me sane. Hope you enjoy this Mandalorian story! PS: Thank you for 50 followers 🥰 I know that doesn't sound like much, but I honestly didn’t think that anyone would actually read my content, so thank you for giving me serotonin! (use of she/her pronouns, no y/n)

Warnings: smut! 18+ only! a bar fight (duh)/canon-typical violence, finger-fucking, hand jobs

WC: 2.8 k

Another day, another bounty. That’s what you were thinking to yourself as you flew Freya, your trusty ship, back to Nevarro. Solonoe Carslit apparently owed some money to the Hutts, and of course, being one of the best bounty hunters in the guild, you were able to get the job done. Dragging Solonoe back to Tatooine wasn’t much of a problem once you knocked him unconscious and froze him in carbonite, and the Hutts payed you well, giving you enough money to make a much needed repair to your hyperdrive and get enough fuel to last you for a few weeks. You even splurged on a new pair of boots, since your old ones were torn to shreds. Now, you were headed back to Nevarro; Greef Karga said he would have some more jobs by now.

You touched down on the planet, landing in the open space just outside of town. You strode your way down the streets, and most who were in your way practically leaped to the side as you brushed past. You usually had this effect on people, your stoic expression, dark and practical clothing, and the blaster rifle, which you took off the body of a Stormtrooper, slung across your back, the blasters hanging from your belt, and the knives tucked snugly in their thigh holsters usually intimidated those who weren’t like you. You swiftly entered the cantina in which you knew Karga would be located.

And there he was, sitting at a booth, tucked in the corner of the bar, glancing around for anyone interested. And interested you were.

You sat in front of him, folding your hands on the table and giving him an intense stare.

“Ah, you’re back,” he acknowledged, “I’m sure the Hutts paid you handsomely.”

“You could say that. But I want a little more.”

He chuckled, “Always on the move, you are. You’re lucky, I think I have something for you.”

He took one of the familiar pucks from his pocket and turned it on. A human woman appeared on screen with bright green hair, which was shaved on one side, and eyes to match.

“Isahei Haradde is the name. Apparently, she stole a sizeable sum from a rich Imperial family. Rumor is that she’s hiding out somewhere on Bespin. They’re offering a pretty sizable reward for the one who catches her. In beskar.”

“Beskar?” your eyebrow raised, “that could be enough to buy myself a new blaster. Or make some new armor.”

“Indeed. I’m sure you’re up for it, you’re one of the best we have. Though, I will tell you, there are multiple other bounty hunters gunning for her as well, given the size of the reward,” warned Greef.

“I can handle it,” was your short reply.

Karga wished you good luck as you snatched the puck and jumped up from the table, eager to move to your destination. You made your way back to Freya. You were quite proud of her; she was an old, beat up Republic gunship you found in a scrapyard that you had fixed up yourself. The heavy armor and multiple guns you had rebuilt meant that almost no one could take down your baby. You had gotten her pretty beat up a couple times, but you always made sure the dings and bumps were taken care of.

You punched in the coordinates to Bespin and off you went. You launched into hyperspace and put the ship on autopilot, choosing to focus your attention on the job instead. Bespin was a mining planet, which mostly appeared clean from the outside. But you knew where all of the shady spots were, the seedy bars, the dark alleyways, the mine shafts that were used as hideouts for criminal masterminds, etc. Knowing the type of personnel you usually had to deal with, you figured you’d probably start in one of the bars.

Before long, you had arrived on the planet. You landed on one of the landing strips more on the outskirt of the city so that you could be a bit more inconspicuous, and wandered through the city until you found your destination.

Cloud City Cantina wasn’t exactly a creative name, but the drinks were cheap and there was plenty of activity not meant for the faint of heart. You could already hear some commotion from the inside when you approached the door and peaking inside confirmed your suspicions. Four people were standing by the bar, one you immediately recognized as your quarry. The other three were a Togruta female, Rodian male, and someone dressed head to toe in beskar armor, so you couldn’t tell exactly who he was, but you recognized him as a Mandalorian. Though you couldn’t see his face, he was alluring; while the other two were arguing loudly, he just stood there, observing through his helmet. He was casually leaning against the bar, one of his hands propper up his head, and the other was holding his blaster. The trio were obviously bounty hunters who were “discussing” who was going to get the bounty. You decided that you would decide for them, and you strode over to them.

“Sorry to interrupt,” you snarked, clearly not sorry, “but I’ll be taking that bounty.”

Before any of them could react, you swept the Rodian’s legs out from beneath him. He squawked in surprise and the other two lept into action. The Togruta shot at your head, and you managed to duck just in time. During the confusion, Isahei sprang from her seat and made a run for the door, but the Mandalorian launched a whipcord from one of his vambraces (which you didn’t see coming) and it wrapped itself around her, causing her to topple to the ground. The Rodian staggered up from the ground and threw a punch at your head, which you skillfully deflected. You reached behind you and grabbed a beer mug and promptly smashed it over his head. He dropped to the ground once more, definitely at least unconscious. You turned your attention back to the Togruta, who shot at you again. You took out your vibro-knives and ran at her, slicing first at her blaster wielding arm, then at her face. She jumped back, expecting the charge, but you still managed to clip her arm, making her hiss in pain. She brought her elbow down and slammed it into your stomach, making you groan in pain. You slashed back at her in retaliation, and blood soon tinged her thigh from the deep cut you inflicted. She dropped to the ground as well.

You looked around for the Mandalorian, and barely saw him dragging the quarry through the crowd. Without really thinking, you hurled one of your knives at him and it sunk into one of the gaps in his armor, jst above his elbow. He dropped the quarry with a grunt of pain and whipped around while yanking the knife from his arm and throwing it on the floor. You assumed he locked eyes with you, making you smirk triumphantly.

“Couldn’t let you get away with that,” you called to him, stepping through the crowd, which parted for you, “I’d like that reward.”

“Well, you’re not getting it,” came his reply, which was sort of staticky through the helmet.

Even so, the deep timbre of his voice made a strange flipping feeling make itself known in your belly. Being attracted to your competition wasn’t going to help you in this situation, especially seeing as you were now practically face to face.

“Really? I beg to differ.”

“I’m the one who restrained her. That bounty should go to me.”

“Well, I’m the one who started the fight in the first place, and you wouldn’t have been able to restrain her without that. So technically, you couldn’t have done it without me.”

He didn’t say anything after that. You thought that maybe you had gotten to him when he suddenly took his rifle off of his back and swung it at you. You ducked out of the way and took out your own. You were in too close of quarters to be able to shoot at each other, so you used your rifles as bludgeoning weapons while Isahei, your quarry, just layed there.

After a long bout of fighting, it became pretty clear that neither of you was more skilled than the other. You both leaned against the bar, out of breath, staring at each other. You were sure that his stare was meant to be intimidating, if his body language told you anything. But yours was also a bit more of a sensual nature. You couldn’t help it; he was a strong fighter with a sexy voice. You could tell that there was muscle upon muscle underneath his armor, and you were able to see the way his pants hugged his massive thighs. You did your best to be subtle, but that was kind of difficult in such close quarters.

“I saw we just do rock, paper, scissors and call it a night,” you joked.

He chuckled, “I think I have a better idea, especially since you can’t keep your eyes off of me.”

You flushed slightly at being caught, but hoped that the dim lighting of the bar covered it up, “I’m just trying to be intimidating. This usually works.”

“Yeah, because staring at my thighs is extremely intimidating.”

Oh. Well, you couldn’t play it off anymore.

“To be fair, I can’t say I’m entirely innocent in that regard, either.”

Oh. He was attracted to you, too. That was news.

“I see. So what’s this idea of yours?” you questioned.

He leaned in close to your ear and whispered, “Whoever makes the other come first gets the bounty.”

Your eyes widened comically. He was asking for what you had been thinking, and in pretty explicit terms, too.

The soft laugh near your ear sent shivers down your spine, “At a loss for words? Or are you not up for the challenge?”

“No,” you said immediately, “I’m up for it. I like to think I’m pretty good with my hands.”

“I’m sure you are,” he murmured, picking up your knife and tucking it back into your thigh holster, purposefully brushing his fingers along the inside of your thigh, “but so am I.”

The two of you dragged the quarry to a small, unassuming inn and snuck into one of the empty rooms. You left the quarry outside of the room, attaching the cord to a bannister, knowing that it was a very small chance of her escaping. Once you closed the door, the game was afoot. Almost immediately, he pushed you onto the bed; you should’ve known you were fighting a losing battle then, but you were determined to get this quarry. He draped himself on top of you and teasingly pinned your hands above your head.

“That’s cheating,” you snapped, “how am I supposed to get you off if I can’t use my hands?”

“Get creative,” he replied while his hips slowly began to grind into yours.

Though he was playing it cool, you could feel how hard he already was through his pants. Maybe you had a shot at this, as long as he didn’t know that you were already dripping. Every grind of his hips against yours made it more and more difficult to keep the moans that were threatening to spill from your lips at bay, but you managed to keep them in. Until one of his hands travelled from you wrists down your torso to the small strip of skin showing between your now-untucked shirt and your pants. His fingers slipped under the band of your pants and somehow almost immediately found your clit, rubbing vigorously. You couldn’t help but moan softly at the feeling.

“Maker, you’re dripping. Sure you’re gonna last?”

That was enough for you to spring into action. You pulled your wrists out of his one-handed grip and trailed them down his armor-clad torso. You removed the armor that was blocking your path downwards; though it was difficult without his assistance, you managed. You were about to dip your hand under the waistband of his pants when he ran one of his fingers through your slit, making you whimper and temporarily forget what you needed to be doing.

“Shit,” you breathed when his finger pushed into your dripping cunt.

“That’s it, sweet girl,” he murmured, “bet you’re gonna cum soon with how wet you are.”

With all of the self-control you could muster, you grabbed his wrist to still his movements and used your other hand to finally reach into his pants and grab his rock-hard member. A soft groan crackled through the helmet, causing you to finally see through his put-together facade.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” you crooned, starting to move your hand, desperate for him to cum before you.

You saw him nod jerkily, then he used his free hand to pull your hand from his wrist and begin his movements in earnest.

“It does,” he started, “but I need you to come first.”

“Not a chance,” you said through gritted teeth, twisting your hand around his dick, “that bounty is mine.”

Only moments after you said that did he add another finger, making you clench around him. He curled his fingers inside of you, making a soft “fuck” fall from your lips as you continued to jerk him, brushing your thumb across the tip. He cursed as you brought your thumb, covered in his precome, to your lips and sucked.

“You taste divine,” you whispered, batting your eyelashes enticingly.

“Glad you think so,” he snarked, “Maker, you’re just gushing around me, aren’t you?”

You couldn’t deny it; this was the wettest you had been in a long time. You knew that you weren’t going to last much longer; your legs were trembling and you were barely holding back your orgasm, making you redouble your efforts. You increased your pace, making him moan out in pleasure. Just when you thought that maybe you had him, his thumb rubbed against your clit, and you were done for. Your orgasm washed over you and you whimpered as he fingered you through your high. You tried to continue to jerk him through your orgasm, but you lost your grip on him as the pleasure overtook you.

You came down from your high and you could almost feel him smirking.

“Guess I won.”

“Guess so. You may have won the bounty, but I could just leave you on edge with no way to get back down. Not much of a winner now, are you?” you sassed back, pulling your hand out of his pants.

In a flash, his hand grabbed your wrist and pulled it back in, “Now that would be rude, wouldn’t it?”

“So is taking my bounty.”

You attempted to pull your hands away, but he grasped them both in his own. You knew that he was stronger than you, but you tried to break free anyway.

That is, until you heard him whisper, “Please.”

You looked into where his eyes would be in the helmet and you felt your resolve break. You knew you couldn’t just leave him high and dry, even if he did just take your bounty.

“Okay,” you replied, and he released your hands.

Your hands returned to their former position, wrapped around his dick. Now that you weren’t worried about getting off, you focused your attention on him. His dick was pretty, hard and absolutely leaking. You knew he was close. His body language was tense, like a bowstring that was too tight.

“Cum for me,” you purred, “I can tell how close you are.”

A sound akin from a whimper fell from his lips as one of your hands moved to toy with his balls. It wasn’t long before the bowstring snapped, and the white liquid covered your hands. You wiped off his release on the inn’s sheets, knowing that someone would probably clean it sometime. You both got off of the bed and got yourselves together. You exited the room and the Mandalorian took hold of the quarry. Disappointment began to settle in at your lost bounty, though you tried not to show it on your face.

You must’ve failed though, because he meandered back over to you and placed his hand on your shoulder, “You’re a really good fighter. You’ll get another one.”

“Thanks,” you replied softly, though you were still pretty frustrated.

“At least you got a pretty decent orgasm out of it,” he remarked.

A small smile spread across your face at that, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Here, give me your holo,” he requested.

Your quirked up your eyebrow, but handed it over. He punched something in and handed it back to you.

“If you ever want to do something like that again, let me know.”

He dragged the quarry behind him then, and before long, he was out of sight. When you couldn’t see him anymore, you took out your holo and glanced at your contacts.

Mando.

That’s what he had saved himself as. Your small smile grew wider. Perhaps you’d be seeing him again. For now, though, it was time to get your next job.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian smut #the mandalorian x reader smut #din dijarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin smut #din djarin x reader smut #star wars #x reader #x reader smut #x reader oneshot

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tthankstoyou · 3 years

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Platonic hevans how would Sam and Kurt comfort each other after all their breakups on glee

I love this omg thanks for the ask! It’s all under the cut cus this got kinda long. Sam deadass dated like every girl on the show 💀

(I’m not doing Samchel bc I didnt watch any of their scenes. I feel like I shouldn’t talk about a ship I know nothing about haha)

Fabrevans breakup: Kurt isn’t at McKinley but he overhears Finn on the phone with Puck bragging about how he got Quinn to make out with him after school even though she’s with Sam. Kurt is like ‘HUH?’ and subtly asks Rachel and Mercedes about it at their next sleepover, which Fabrevans broke up earlier that day. Mercedes and Rachel tell Kurt all of the drama, including how they had a date to Color Me Mine planned for that night that Sam was looking forward to.

Kurt is looks at the time and see’s that there’s still two hours before Color Me Mine closes. Without much thinking, he gets changed into his clothes (since they’re wearing pajamas) and starts texting people for Sam’s address. Mercedes is like “and where are you off to?” Kurt says “I feel bad that Sam isn’t able to go to Color Me Mine anymore, I’m gonna ask him if it’s okay if I go with him.” Mercedes raises her eyebrows and Kurt is like “As two friends who love painting ceramics.”

So he pulls up to the Evans residence. Sam is surprised to see Kurt at his door. He asks what Kurt is doing there and Kurt is straight up like “To take you to Color Me Mine.”

Sam is dating Santana, so Sam says “I cant go on a date with you if I’m dating Santana. Although I think she’d be okay with polyamory if you give me a second to ask her.” Kurt is like “NO! I don’t want to date both you and Santana. I heard that you and Quinn were planning on going to date to Color Me Mine before you guys broke up... and I wanted to know if it would be okay if I took you... as friends.”

Sam says “A bro date to Color Me Mine. I like that. Let me get my jacket and I’ll be right back out.”

Samtana breakup: Sam wasn’t too broken up about their breakup, he honestly saw it coming. He didn’t even realize they were broken up until he saw that Santana was now dating Karofsky. He didn’t care that much, they barley hung out to begin with. But Kurt cared a lot, he wanted to make sure that Sam wasn’t feeling like he was cheated on.

On a night that Kurt was coming over to Sam’s hotel just to drop off clothes, he also decided to bring his laptop and lots of snacks. Sam was surprised to see Kurt bringing all of this stuff, but he wasn’t complaining. Kurt popped in a DVD of avatar that he bought on the way there and they spent the night under the blankets.

Samcedes “breakup” #1: I use the word breakup really loosely as they were never dating the first time around, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t love each other and ending things wasn’t painful.

Sam is living with the Hudmels at this time so Kurt can hear Sam crying from his room. Kurt knocks quietly on Sam’s door. Sam doesn’t answer so Kurt let’s himself in. He see’s Sam bundled under the covers and notices that he’s eyes are bloodshot from all the crying. Kurt sits on the edge of Sam’s bed and tells him that he’s always there for Sam as a friend. Mercedes may be his best friend, but that doesn’t mean he cares about Sam and his happiness any less.

Sam crumbles at this and sobs into Kurt’s shoulder. He tells Kurt all about how Mercedes sing Whitney Houston to him as a way to tell him that she couldn’t do this even though she loved him. Kurt tells him that everything will be okay and that this heartache won’t last forever.... which is true seeing that Sam and Mercedes go to prom together soon after that.

Bram breakup: Sam would, once again, be a sobbing mess. I feel like Sam would be super out of himself, Blaine and Tina are doing their part to cheer him up as their best friends, but Kurt feels like he should do something too seeing as he’s at home when it all happened.

Kurt takes Sam on a bro date, reminiscent of the one that they went on when Sam and Quinn broke up. Kurt takes Sam to see some movie that just came out that Sam has watched the trailer for like 50 times. Kurt almost falls asleep during the movie, but Sam is having the time of his life. It’s the first time that Kurt has seen Sam so happy recently. They leave the theatre and take a short stop to get ice cream. While eating the ice cream, Sam raves about the movie and how amazing it was. He’s already talking about bringing Tina and Blaine to see it with him the next weekend.

Samcedes breakup #2: Sam didn’t see this one coming, they were doing so well. He thought for sure that Mercedes would be the girl he married (spoiler alert: he does marry her, he just doesn’t know it yet).

Before Sam goes back to Lima, Kurt takes Sam out for brunch to talk about how he’s feeling about everything. Sam tells him that he feels like he gives so much love, but the world doesn’t want him to be happy. He tells Kurt that he had a plan for his future with Mercedes. He could see it all so clearly, she was the first person that Sam has dated that he could imagine getting married, raising children, and growing old together. Sam says that feels like he should just give up at love, because it obviously is never going to work out.

Kurt listens to Sam talk in detail about this all for a hella long time, only adding in comments here and there to make sure Sam knows he hasn’t tuned out.

At the end of Sam pouring his heart out, Kurt says “I know my best friends, which are you and Mercedes. I can see how in love you too are and how hard you tried to make it work. From what it sounds like to me, this isn’t a forever breakup. It’s an ‘until we meet again’ breakup, meaning that your story isn’t over. And don’t you give up on love Sam Evans, you are one of the most lovable boys I know. And I promise you that Mercedes hasn’t stopped loving you ever since the summer you guys had your little fling.”

Klaine breakup #1: Sam is in Lima consoling Blaine after the breakup, but he also can’t help but wonder how Kurt is feeling.

One night, Sam calls up Kurt on skype and asks him how he’s holding up. Kurt lies and says he’s fine, but Sam can see right through it. Sam says, “You’re not fine. You don’t have to lie to me” which makes Kurt break out into tears. He tells Sam how much it all hurts and how he never thought he’d have to feel pain like this. Kurt mentions how he feels like he’s not allowed to be sad because he has to help keep Rachel’s spirits up, but it’s just so hard. All he wants to do is have his best friend huh him and help him through his heartbreak.

That gives Sam the idea of visiting New York for the weekend. Sam buys plane tickets with money he’s saved up from working at the tire shop and shows up outside of Kurt’s door on Friday night, completely taking Kurt by surprise. Sam immediately gives Kurt a huge ass hug and tells him that he’s there to help keep his mind off of things.

They have a great weekend, Kurt takes Sam to places in New York that they didn’t see at Nationals two years prior and also takes Sam to all of his fav hidden spots in the city. One of them being a cute little bakery that he spends his mornings in when he doesn’t have anywhere to be.

Sam and Kurt spend Saturday night watching musicals, while Kurt tries to hold back tears because they remind him of Blaine. Sam notices this and makes Kurt turn it off and instead put on Avatar. Kurt is like “Excuse me?” but Sam says it’s because that’s what Kurt did for his breakup with Santana. They might as well make it a tradition.

Klaine breakup #2: Just like with the previous breakup, Sam skype calls Kurt. It’s something they’ve been doing regularly, it helps keep Sam up to date with Mercedes and helps keep Kurt up to date with his dad and Carole.

Sam logged onto this call knowing that they’d already broken up, he got the info from Blaine (since they’re besties). Unlike last time, Sam isn’t able to easily take a day few days off to fly to New York for Kurt. Things at school are ramping up and he’s been needing to work longer hours. So all that he can do is give his support through the computer screen. They stay up all night talking about anything and everything.

Kurt is trying to skate around the topic of the breakup, but he knows that he has to mention it at least once that night. Before the call ends, Kurt let’s Sam know how he’s doing with it all. He tells Sam that it’s painful knowing that the man that you love isn’t the man that you will marry. Sam knows exactly know he’s feeling, as he felt the same way about Mercedes. They fall asleep while on call, Kurt wakes up first and smiles at the sight of Sam’s sleeping face.

#holy crap this got long #asks #greyhound30 #hevans

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brokenbeskar · 3 years

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Babysitter

Chapter Two of Memories Reforged ( Din Djarin x F!Reader )

Word Count: 7.8k

Summary: Instead of landing to collect your bounty’s reward like you had expected, the mysterious mandalorian you’re traveling with leaves you to babysit his wrinkly green child-- a job you definitely don’t feel cut out for.

Warnings: no real warnings in this one! let me know if there's something I missed!

A/N: I hope you all like it! as always let me know if you see any mistakes or anything! I know nothing crazy happens in this chapter but I hope it’s still entertaining and fun! afterall who can resist Grogu shenanigans? Also there may be some more hints about your past in this one so 👀

You hum lightly as you adjust in your seat, slowly blinking your eyes open as you gain consciousness, only to jolt upright at the unfamiliar scene of the cockpit around you. You had completely forgotten yesterday’s events in your sleep, so when you woke up initially you were expecting to be back in your old ship. Maker, you hurt all over. You don’t even remember falling asleep, the last thing you remember was the discussion you had with that stranger mandalorian. You quickly look to the pilot's seat next to you, suddenly remembering the armored man you were hitching a ride from. It's empty. He must have set the ship to autopilot while you snoozed away. How embarrassing. You usually wouldn't let yourself fall asleep in front of a stranger so readily, but after the events of yesterday--you must have been more exhausted than you thought. You stretch your shoulders back with a grimace, being sure to keep a hand on the helmet in your lap so it doesn’t fall. Kriff, you feel like you got swallowed up by a sarlacc pit and spit back out. The soreness from the crash yesterday has set in completely. You can feel the bruises lining your entire body, and all your muscles ache at even the slightest movement--not to mention your pounding headache.

You’re pressing the base of one of your palms to your forehead to try and relieve some of the pressure when the cockpit door slides open. The mandalorian you met yesterday striding in, the babbling green baby in his arms.

“Good, you’re awake. We’ll be landing on Corellia soon.” He explains as he sets the baby in the seat opposite to yours, buckling him in as he coos sleepily.

“Corellia? Your guild outpost is on Corellia?” You squint up at him questioningly, palm still pressed to your head. Marker, the stars reflecting off his armor is making your head hurt worse.

“No.” He doesn’t bother to look at you as he settles into the pilot’s seat. “No? What do you mean ‘no’? Why the kriff are we landing on Corellia then?” You lower your palm only a little off your head, as you continue to squint at him, growing irritated with him already. Can one person be any more frustrating? Maybe you're just in a bad mood because you're sore and tired…

“I have another bounty to collect.”

“You--you what?!” oh no, your pounding headache has nothing to do with this. What the fuck does he mean, another bounty? This wasn’t part of the deal.

“I have four pucks, I need four bodies. We’ll head to Nevarro after.” He tilts his helmet in your direction without looking at you while he explains.

“You didn’t think to mention this before?” You’re glaring daggers into the side of his helmet, you couldn’t be more pissed off at this guy--

“You didn’t ask.” Nope. You were wrong, you could definitely be more pissed, and that response alone has almost sent you over the edge. “You’re more than welcome to find your own ship and meet me there if it’s a problem.” What an asshole. What an absolute fucking asshole. Maker, you hate him. He’s not even worth responding to. Turning back to stare out the cockpit window angrily, just absolutely seething as you sit there.

The two of you don’t exchange another word as you drop out of hyperspace and descend into Corellia’s atmosphere. The mandalorian lands you in a remote forest area. You’ve taken more than your fair share of bounties on Corellia before. Honestly the planet is a shithole. Riddled with crime, and polluted to all hell. When you notice the mandalorian getting up to leave, you sigh and stand up yourself. You're sliding your helmet on, when he stops to turn to you, “What are you doing?” You tilt your helmet at him confused, “What do you mean? Aren’t we leaving?” your voice comes out through the modulator of your helmet in a higher frequency than your natural voice, distorting it, making it sound tinny and strange. It always takes a minute to get used to it when you first put it back on.

“We?” He tilts his helmet back at you.

“Uh? Yeah...didn’t you say you had one more bounty?”

“Yes, but I don’t ever remember saying I needed your help. I need you to stay on the ship, watch the kid.” He notions over to Grogu still buckled in his seat, watching your conversation intently.

“What? Ohhhh no! No way! I’m a bounty hunter not a fucking babysitter! You can’t surprise me with a pit stop, then expect me to watch your kid while you fuck off to do whatever. Give me your puck, I’ll go get the quarry, and you can watch your own child.” You hold out your hand expectantly for his bounty puck, but he doesn’t move.

“You’re not doing my job for me. I’m not splitting anymore bounties with you. Watch the kid, make sure he stays safe.” He leans down and unbuckles the child, handing him to you, but you don't take him.

“We’ll get this over with faster if we both go, I don’t want to be on this shithole longer than we need to. He’ll be okay by himself for a little while, won't he? That’s what you would have done if I wasn't here isn't it?” You cross your arms over your armored chest. How dare he? Make a surprise pitstop so he can run errands and just expect you to watch his kid for him without even asking you first. He’s still holding out the baby for you to take, like an idiot.

“This planet isn’t safe and this quarry is dangerous. He’s an escaped convict and has been evading hunters for far too long. I’m not risking it. Stay on the ship, watch the child, or you can find your own ride.” he takes a step forward pushing the child into your arms, and this time you reluctantly take him. Not that you have much of a choice in the matter. Oh but the child is thrilled, babbling happily and reaching up to pap the edges of your helmet.

“Whatever asshole,” you hiss out, “just make it quick.” And with a nod, he turns and heads out. Maker, he is absolutely insufferable. Maybe you should just steal his ship and head off to Nevarro without him. Cash in his bounties, and leave him stranded. You chuckle to yourself at the thought of that shiny dumbass returning to find his ship is gone. You imagine he would panic, what an idiot he would feel like realizing you got the best of him. You’re snapped out of your daydream by the kid squealing at you excitedly as he lightly taps your helmet with his tiny hands. You can’t help but smile down at him under your helmet and offer your finger for him to hold.

You realize, suddenly, what an actual dumbass that shiny wall of metal actually is. You 100% could steal his ship, and his quarries, but also his son. He’s trusting you with his child, after only having just met you the day before. You’re a bounty hunter, that fact alone makes you inherently untrustworthy. Let alone the fact that you’re wearing beskar armor. Armor which according to him belongs more to him than it does to you. What in the galaxy was he thinking? You look down at sweet little Grogu in your arms. If this was your child, you would rip apart the whole galaxy to find him if he ever went missing. You would reign war on anyone who dared touch him. There's no way you would dare to ever bring harm to any child--let alone this one. What an idiot...he got lucky this time.

“Alright you little bean,” you move the child to your hip and make your way out of the cockpit to the ship's hull, “What should we do while we wait for your idiot dad to get back, hmm?” You boop his little nose gently with your finger and he giggles at you, grabbing onto your hand with his tiny fingers. “Lets see…,” you look around the hull for some toys or something--anything remotely looking like it belongs to the kid, but...there's nothing. In fact, if it weren’t for the child cooing on your hip, you wouldn’t know a baby lived on this ship at all.

“Weird...where are you toys, little bug?” You cock your helmet at him, then decide to set him down on the ground. Maybe he knows where they are, and will help himself. When you set him down though, he just stands there at your feet, staring up at you with the biggest smile on his face, his little hand holding onto the side of your boot. Kriff, this kid is cute. “Alright buddy, we can look together. Lets go!”

You start searching through the crates scattered about the hull. There's a lot of...junk? Some of it is important: Spare parts, tools, that kind of thing. You can’t even tell what some of this stuff is though, why the hell did he have so much junk on this ship? And better yet, why was there nothing for the baby? You search through everything, the child happily running around while you toss things around to search. There's nothing. A pit forms in your stomach, did this child really have no toys? What on earth was that mandalorian thinking? You’ll have to bring it up with him when he gets back. If it weren’t for the fact you were on kriffing Corellia, you would have taken the child to a market yourself and gotten him anything he wanted.

You realize it's probably not on purpose. He was a mandalorian after all. If what the mandalorian you once knew told you was true, then the stranger mandalorian you met yesterday probably didn't have much of a childhood of his own. Mandalorians aren’t raised as children, they're raised as warriors. As if they came out of the womb with daggers for teeth. They're raised to be fierce and aggressive, for the whole galaxy to fear. You look down to the child happily clanking away with some tools on the floor, he’s so precious. He deserves more than that. This child is no mandalorian, in the same way you aren’t. You’ll definitely have a discussion with his father about it, nothing can change your mind now.

You scoop him up in your arms and swing him up, lifting him into the air, and he squeals loudly at the sudden movement. His squealing turns into bursts of uncontrollable laughter while you swing him down and back up again, making a dramatic “Woosh!” through your helmet. He fails his arms up like he's on a rollercoaster, and you can't help but let out a chuckle and squeeze him back into your chest. Maker, he's so precious. You plant him on your hip and begin dancing with him, holding his little hand with yours, opposite to the one holding him on your hip as you waltz around the hull dramatically. His laughter is absolutely contagious, the both of you giggling while spinning around the hull like fools. You get carried away, and get a bit dizzy, having completely forgotten about your head injury. You trip over your own heels and fall unceremoniously straight onto your ass with an ‘oof’. You had made sure to fall in a way that wouldn't hurt the baby, but you immediately check on him first to make sure he’s uninjured.

“Oh shit, little bug, are you alright?” You hold him out in front of you, to get a better look. He seems surprised at first, but then breaks out into the biggest, most heart melting grin, and starts squealing and giggling happily like you falling was the best thing he has ever seen. His smile makes your heart swell warmly in your chest. It almost hurts how cute he is. You chuckle out lightly back at him, then collapse the rest of the way on the floor, Grogu sitting happily on your chest.

He crawls up and peers deep into your visor, while your head is resting on the floor. His little hands resting on the hollows of your helmet’s cheeks. You smile at him. You completely forgot you had it on. You lift your head slightly, and gently pull it off for him, setting it next to the both of you. His smile only grows wider, something you didn't think was possible, and he presses his hands to your now exposed cheeks. He must find you fascinating, the way his tiny hands explore every part of your face. He touches your lips and your eyes, seeming to love how you squeeze them tight with his uncomfortable pokes, he touches your eyebrows and the hair falling around your face, he grabs onto your nose, and you gasp dramatically, just to get a reaction out of him, before you're both giggling again.

This child deserves nothing but the best, you think to yourself as he nuzzles into your neck. You bring a hand up to gently stroke the top of his fuzzy head, your other coming up to tweak those big ol’ ears. His little body is so warm, you can feel his tiny heart beat against yours as your snuggles into you. You don’t yet know how the mandalorian came upon this child, but you understand why he took him in. How could anyone resist those big bug eyes, or his expressive ears, or his wrinkly green skin, soft as a peach. You’re kind of glad you got stuck as the babysitter today.

You turn to look at the helmet resting next to you on the floor, and you feel an ache in your chest when it hits you. This is the most you’ve smiled since he left you. You can’t even remember the last time you laughed, a real laugh, since he left you, alone. You’ve been nonstop on the move trying to distract yourself after he passed. Taking bounty after bounty never stopping to rest. The baby squirms a bit in your arms, and you pull him closer to you, squeezing him ever so lightly. You push away your sad thoughts as you press your face to the top of his fuzzy head and take a deep breath. Savoring the moment with this precious child.

------------------------------

You should have appreciated that moment more while it was happening. You had no idea how much of an actual nightmare this child could be. He was running you ragged, you couldn’t keep your eyes off him for two seconds without him trying to either break out of the ship, or getting into trouble somewhere on it. At one point he even snuck behind the control panel and was hiding in the wires, poking at things he definitely shouldn’t be. It took you a full hour to coax him out of there, terrified the whole time he was going to electrocute himself, and you would have to explain yourself to his beskar adorning father. Whatever precious being you thought he was earlier? Long gone. Grogu was a monster, a demon in disguise. The most terrifying creature in the galaxy.

“What do you have?” you call out to him, when you notice he has something he probably shouldn't in his hands. He breaks into a full on sprint, running to hide from you, popping whatever it was into his mouth. “NO!” You yell so loud as you launch yourself at him and tackle him reaching in his little mouth to grab a piece of--you don’t even know what--and take it away. He struggles against your grip and takes off again hiding somewhere in the hull. You spend the next 30 minutes, at least, looking for him. The worst game of hide and seek imaginable.

Now, he's wailing, screaming out in a shrill, terrible cry in your arms. Maker, if you didn't know any better you would think he was dying. As much as you were judging the mandalorian’s parenting earlier, you admit, you have no clue what you're doing. You’re a bounty hunter, you don’t know how to care for a child--a baby! You’re bouncing him helplessly in your arms, shushing him lightly, “It’s okay little bean, everything is okay shh...it's alright…” but it's not working. If anything he's crying even harder now in your arms. Maker, you're at your wits end. You’re exhausted, and so sore. You thought you hurt when you first woke up? Oh boy, nothing could have prepared you for how you feel now after running around after this child all day. His screeching is only making your head pound harder than it already was. You sigh raggedly and slump to the floor in the corner of the hull next to where your things are still laying, Grogu still wailing in your arms.

You tiredly turn your head to look in the direction of your bags. What could you possibly want? What can you do to help him? Maybe you just have to wait it out...wait a minute--wait! He's probably hungry! Oh maker, how did you not realize it sooner? Neither of you have eaten all day. You quickly start digging through your things with one arm, Grogu sobbing helplessly in your other. You’re a fool, you could have saved you both so much suffering. You find what you brought of your rations as quickly as you can. The baby’s crying immediately settles down to a couple weak hiccups and sniffles when he hears the wrapper of a ration bar in your hand.

You settle him down gentle in your lap, facing him forward so he can lean back against you. He reaches his little hands out impatiently while you unwrap the ration bar for him, “hang on little bug, it’s coming. I'm sorry you're probably so hungry…” you finish unwrapping it and break off a piece to give to him, and he swallows the whole piece immediately. “Whoa little guy, don’t eat too fast, take it easy.” you let out a laugh as you break off another, smaller, piece and feed it to him. You take a bite for yourself too. You don’t have much of an appetite to be honest. You’re not sure if it's because you're so sore from the crash or what, but you make sure you eat anyway.

He eats 2 whole ration bars himself, it's pretty impressive. As soon as he was done eating, he turned around facing you and reached up with his little grabby hands to be held. When you held him in your arms, he almost immediately fell asleep. Nap time, thank the maker. You stand ever so carefully as to not wake him, and head to the little alcove on the other side of the hull. You assume this is where the mandalorian sleeps, you wouldn’t think it's big enough for a man of his size, but the pillows and blankets lining it tell you otherwise. There's a hammock on the inside, you assume that's for the baby, it's perfectly his size. You set him in it and wrap him tightly in his blanket. You let out a sigh of relief at the sight of him sleeping peacefully, instead of reigning anymore terror on you and the ship. He was probably acting up because he missed his dad. You stroke his little head gently a couple times with your thumb, he's back to being the most precious creature in the universe. You press a button on the wall besides the alcove and a metal door slides down enclosing the peacefully sleeping baby so he won’t be disturbed.

You stretch your arms over your head, then twist your waist to let out some of the tension. You feel like you got absolutely steam rolled. You decide to head to the fresher, just to splash some water on your face, something, anything to help with the utter exhaustion your feeling. When you step in, you’re surprised just how small it is. It's cramped in here for sure. You sigh as you lean over the sink, your arms barely managing to support your weight as you lean into it. When you look in the mirror you're shocked at your own reflection staring back at you. You’re a mess. You have a huge bruise across the left side of your face, which must have been from when you hit your head on the console yesterday. You didn’t even realize how tender it was because of how much pain you're in altogether. Your fingers brush over your swollen cheek. Maker, your hair was a mess too. You pull it out of your ponytail and smooth it down the best you can.

You glance at the miniscule shower next to you. The mandalorian wouldn’t mind right? Y'know what? Who gives a kriff! He's the one who made you babysit his child without warning, he owes you this shower. You leave the fresher momentarily to grab some fresh clothes, before returning and starting the water, filling the tiny fresher with steam. You begin the tedious task of removing all your armor. You’ve gotten much quicker at it, and with each piece of beskar you remove, you instantly feel relief, your body no longer having to support all that weight.

You think back to the first couple times you put the armor on. You had the hardest time with it, all of the different fasteners and magnetic pieces, you couldn't figure out what went where. Not to mention everything was way too big on you, so you had to figure out a way to layer underneath it so it would fit. You looked so awkward the first few times while you went through trial and error, figuring out what worked for you and what didn’t. And taking it off? You don’t want to be reminded.

You’ve come so far since then, easily stripping down all your layers, your beskar now a pile on the fresher floor. You look back to yourself in the mirror, seeing all the dark purple and blue bruises lining your whole body. A clear ‘X’ across your chest from your seatbelt in the crash. You definitely took quite the beating. No wonder you were so sore. Stepping into the hot water was instant relief against your aching muscles, and you savored every minute of it. Nothing beats the feeling of hot water running through your hair. Maker, a shower has never felt so good.

You make a point to get out quickly, in case the baby gets up. You definitely didn't want to, but you had to be practical. You dry off and change into new under clothes, before armorning back up fully, and exiting the fresher. You check on the baby, he's still sleeping soundly, so you close the door to the alcove again to allow him to finish napping. You grab your helmet off the floor where you left it and climb up to the cockpit, settling down in your respective seat. You hum as you lean back, you feel so much better. You’re tempted to get a nap in yourself, but you can’t. Not until the mandalorian comes back and you leave the surface of this planet. He was right when he said it wasn’t safe. Corellia was absolutely crime ridden, polluted, and dangerous. You dreaded coming here every time, but you know you’ll always have bounties to grab that will bring you back here.

You really hope he doesn’t take too long grabbing this quarry. You’re not sure how long you can handle watching this child. Grogu was adorable, but after today you’re dreading the thought of being alone with him again for much longer. You groan remembering you chased a bounty for two weeks once--and how he mentioned this bounty was an expert evader. You shudder at the thought of being alone with this child for two weeks. No way, you wouldn't be able to handle it, you would be taking more from his cut of your bounty, it's not worth the 50/50 split at that point. Suddenly it dawns on you, you're paying this asshole five thousand credits to watch his kid for him! He should be paying you!

“Asshole!” Your voice rings out through the cockpit, with no one but you to hear it. You’re glaring out the front window when you notice movement, you sit up straighter and peer out more intensely hoping for that shiny beskar to reveal itself through the trees, but it’s not him.

----

Oh the relief he feels when he sees your seemingly abandoned ship in the woods. “Thank the maker…” He breathes out to himself, then hurries up to it. He’s been stranded on Corellia far too long, he ended up here on complete accident and had no way off. He felt extremely lucky the underground gang rings on this planet were keeping the bounty hunters busy.

He walks up and is surprised to find the ramp to the ship is already lowered, “hah, morons!” he chuckles to himself as he happily boards the mysterious and worn down ship. It's old, but as long as it can get him off this planet, he doesn't care. Should be easy enough to hotwire at least. A quick look around and he can see just how much junk is in here. Crates everywhere. “Jackpot…” he knows he can find some idiot to sell all of it to, and he’ll be walking away with not only a new ship, but a pocket full of credits too!

Lost in his daydream of what he’s going to spend his future credits on, he heads up to the cockpit and sits in the pilot's seat, “alrighty...let’s see...how do I---” he’s cut off suddenly by the feeling of cold metal to the side of his head. He gulps audibly as the sound of your safety flicking off echoes through the cockpit. “l-listen--I….I don't want any trouble okay? I’m just--just trying to get a ride out of here...”

“Oh, you’ll be getting a ride out of here alright.” Your voice modulated and tinny as it runs through the highpass filter of your helmet. “You picked the wrong ship to board my friend…” Your voice lowers to a threatening level, “who are you?”

“C-cadan Vamma...please...I’ll leave right now, no trouble! Like I wasn’t even here!” He turns his head slightly to look at you, his hands held up in surrender, and you allow it. The gasp he lets out at the sight of your visor fills you with satisfaction. He starts rambling in his panic, “L-look! I...I dont---I dont know how much they’re offering you--but--but I can...I-I can double it!”

Suddenly you have an idea of what's going on here, was this the big bad bounty the mandalorian was hunting? The one he said was so dangerous? You want to laugh, but not with the quarry himself in front of you. “Get up.” You snap out at him and nudge him with your blaster. He immediately shoots up without hesitation, hands still out in front of him in surrender.

You nudge him towards the exit to the cockpit, towards the hull, “move it!” You press your blaster into his back to encourage him forward, and he complies, easily. There's no way--nooo way this was the bounty the mandalorian was talking about earlier. This guy is a joke, trembling as he moves to the hull of the ship. You force him to make his way to the middle, right in front of the ramp.

“Sit.” You command, blaster still at his back. He complies without any hesitation, it makes you smile under your helmet. This was easy, you could do this anyday. You stand next to him and stare down at him, squaring your shoulders to try and seem as imposing as you can. He stares into your visor, absolute fear written all over his face. You don't even have to try, you almost feel bad for him. You grab a pair of cuffs from your belt and toss them down at his feet, “put those on.” You can’t help but smile under your helmet as he does. His trembling hands struggling to do so. You take a seat across from him, not moving your visor off him for a second. Simply to mess with him. You know he won’t run, but you’re having fun making him squirm under your stare.

“Uh...what--uhh...so what now?” He has no idea what your plan is, why you haven't thrown him in carbonite yet is an absolute mystery to him.

“Shut it.”

“O-okay no problem.”

You both sit there in absolute silence. You don’t move the gaze of your visor off him, and he’s trying to look anywhere but. Lets see how long it takes that moron of a mandalorian to get back here.

“Can I use the fresher? I haven’t gone since earlier today and let me tell you--” “I said,” you tilt your helmet and point your blaster back at him, “Shut it.”

You both hear footsteps come up the ramp, then halt suddenly right at the entrance, and you see Cadan’s eyes widen in horror. You finally break your gaze from the quarry, “ahh finally you made it back.” you quip at the armored man towering at the entrance. You see the shiny mandalorian just staring at the quarry, sitting in the middle of his ship, cuffed, and you can tell he's confused. His visor snaps to you, and you nod to confirm. That's the bounty he's been looking for all day, waiting for him at his ship. You almost wish he could see the shit eating grin on your face right now. This whole scene is hilarious.

“Guess I didn’t have to come with you after all!” You shrug

Cadan finally shakes from his horror, “They sent not one, but TWO mandalorians after me? For some petty property theft? Is this a joke?”

You lean back from where you’re sitting on the floor, relaxing your whole stance. Oh this just keeps getting better. “Oh man, property theft huh? One hell of a criminal.” You’re not even looking at Cadan, instead you’re tilting your helmet mockingly at the mandalorian in the doorway with your words. He just stares back at you in silence. Oh he's mad, you realize. Doesn’t like being mocked in front of his bounty apparently. You can't help the light chuckle that escapes you for just a second.

The quarry snaps his gaze to you when he hears you, “Are you--are you laughing at me?!” He seems beyond offended, and that makes you want to laugh more. The mandalorian suddenly strides over to the quarry and lifts him roughly by the collar. “H-hey! Hey! Okay come on now--you don't gotta be like that--we can work out a deal or something?” The armored man says nothing as he walks Cadan to the carbonite chamber.

“I don’t bargain with quarry.” He spits out finally through the modulator of his helmet as he hits the button, filling the carbonite chamber with gas, freezing Cadan Vamma in a permanent state of fear. Now you laugh, like really laugh. You can’t help it.

“So that was your super dangerous bounty? The one you’ve been hunting all day for? The one who just wandered onto the ship like a moron?”

“Where's the kid?” He’s clearly not finding this as hilarious as you are, which only makes it better.

“He's sleeping.” You nod towards the alcove, “Don’t wake him, he's been a nightmare.”

“Figured he would be.” and with that he's making his way up to the cockpit, closing the ramp behind him. You decide to follow him up after a moment, you have to relish in this a little longer.

By the time you make it up he's already sitting in his seat, and you bounce over to sit next to him. Oh you are in a fantastic mood now. You pull off your helmet and take a deep breath in, you turn to look at him only to find he's already looking at you.

“What? Sorry, did I embarrass you too much in front of the bounty?” you tease lightly, but he just looks away from you and back to the control panel in front of him, already starting up the engine, saying nothing in return.

“Aww,” your tone only growing in its mocking nature, “Got nothing to say big guy?”

“Nope.”

“Ooo...,” You pretend to wince at his short response, “I must have really embarrassed you then,” and you can't help but laugh a loud hearty laugh. What a fool you made of him back there. “Escaped convict,” you continue to chuckle to yourself, “Evading hunters for for too long,” you mock and continue to snicker.

“You done?” He finally turns his visor to you, and you can’t help the shit eating grin still smack dab across your face.

“Oh don’t be such a stick in the mud, shiny!” He deserves to be kicked down a couple pegs, it's what he gets for being such an asshole earlier. He just shakes his head with a distorted, modulated sigh, and continues takeoff.

The two of you sit in silence while you break through the atmosphere and into the familiar darkness of space. He sets the autopilot, punching the coordinates for Nevarro into the nav comp, before standing and making his way out of the cockpit. You take the moment alone to get comfortable, slouching in your seat, pulling your knees up and resting them against the dashboard. You pull your helmet in close to your chest and take a deep breath in, gazing out at all the stars. The sight still takes your breath away.

You thought by now you would be used to it, but you couldn’t have been more wrong. Everytime you see the beauty of starlight surrounding you, you fall more and more in love with the sight of it. And now, the stars hold a whole new meaning for you, every single one of them, the sight of them clustered and beautifly scattered around, the sight of them blurring past you in hyperspace, no matter where or how they looked, they all remind you of him. You let your mind drift off to a memory, the first time he whisked you off in his ship and through the atmosphere of your home planet.

*** You squeezed your hands to the arm rests of your seat as you ascended through the atmosphere, clenching your jaw tight. Maker, you were absolutely terrified. You hear his laugh cut through the roaring engine of the ship as he catches sight of just how scared you are. You want to yell at him, be angry with him, how could he be laughing at you right now? But you can't, Your stomach is in knots, and your grip tightens on the seat. You’re too scared right now to form any sort of retaliation at him. The rattling of the ship is so forien to you as it rushes to break through the planet's gravitational pull and into space.

“Relax, sweetheart!” He looks back to you for just a second, touching his hand to yours, which is still desperately gripping the armrest for dear life. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Not really!” You admit, your voice coming out as just a squeak through your tight lungs. You swear you haven’t breathed since the ship left the surface. He lets out another hearty laugh at your honesty, turning his attention back to his flying.

You get the feeling he can definitely fly smoother than this, he must be showing off, trying to impress you. It’s not working. You clamp your eyes shut, not being able to keep them open while the ship rushes into space.

Suddenly though, the whole ship settles, relaxes, and everything is calm, you can barely feel the ship moving anymore. The engine beneath you now reduced down to a low hum. You open your eyes and--

“Maker!” You gasp out, lifting out of your seat as much as you can with your seatbelt on. The sight that hits your eyes through the cockpit window is unlike anything you have ever seen. The faint twinkling of thousands of stars stretching over and painting the darkness of space in front of you. You’ve never seen anything more beautiful, it swells in your chest, and you feel tears begin to well up behind your eyes. You’re barely breathing, but for a whole different reason now.

“You like it?” His voice is so soft, barely above a murmur, as he stares longingly at you. The way you’re totally mesmerized by it fills his heart in such a special way, a way he doesn't quite have a word for yet. You can’t even respond, you’re so blown away by the beauty in front of you, unable to find words to describe the stunning sight in front of you. He turns completely towards you and carefully takes your hand in his.

“This is-- I…” You reluctantly take your eyes off the view from the cockpit window, and into his visor, “I’ve never-- It’s...it’s beautiful…” You wistfully stare back out the window unable to focus on anything else. You want to soak it all in, commit every single star to memory, and store it away so you can dream of them every night.

“Not nearly as beautiful as you, cyar’ika…” He squeezes your hand lightly, taking in every detail of you, in the same way you are the stars. You can’t help but break your gaze to look back at him again. Hearing the endearing term in his mother tongue never fails to make your heart race. He just continues to stare at you, visor tilted, while he gingerly runs his thumb over your knuckles.

“Pick one.” He nods out to the sea of stars before you.

“Huh?” You once again look to the stars, “What do you mean, pick one?”

“Any one of them,” he scoots to the edge of his seat and grabs your other hand in his free one, leaning closer to you, “Just point, point to any of them, and that's where I’ll take you.” There's a sort of excitement in his voice, some kind of...something you can’t quite place.

“I...What are you saying?” You can't help but laugh lightly at how ridiculous he’s being. Suddenly he stands from his seat, unbuckles your seatbelt and pulls you up with him. He walks you up so the both of you are pressed against the control panel, as close to the front of the ship as you can possibly be. He wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you in close, squeezing you to his chest, and turning to the side so you can still admire the view with him.

“Come with me, mesh’la.” He leans forward resting the front of his helmet to the top of your head. You look up at him, surprised, not quite understanding. “Come with me, and I will take you anywhere you want to go.” He rests a finger under your chin to pull your gaze even farther into his, “Come with me, and these stars will be yours to look at every single day. Let me take you to see every single one of them, until you can’t bear to look at another star ever again.” He pauses to take a deep breath, spilling his heart out to you is making him breathless, “I want to show you every planet, every moon, I want to show you the most beautiful things this galaxy has to offer…I want to travel the galaxy with you by my side, mesh’la. No one else.” He slides a hand up to cup your cheek, stroking his thumb gently over it.

You feel like you’re shaking, your tears are threatening to spill out any second at the beautiful confession laid out before you. Your words are stuck in your throat, you can’t respond. You just stare wide eyed into his visor, your heart practically beating out of your chest. You can’t say anything, your words caught in your throat. “Will you come with me?” His voice is so quiet, so caring, so genuine. He tilts his helmet slightly and touches it gently to your forehead, and you close your eyes at the gesture, wanting to soak it all in.

You pull away from him just enough that you can turn back towards the window of the cockpit in front of you. He’s confused, his hands holding onto your waist as you take a moment to stare out at the vast amount of stars in front of you. You can feel him nervously grip you the longer you stare out without saying anything, worried you might reject him, but then you shoot your arm out and point out the window, taking him by surprise, “That one.” It’s truly all you can manage, and you hope he understands. You know he does, when he steps behind you and leans his helmet to your level, right next to your ear.

“That one? Are you sure?” His voice is barely above a whisper at this point, but you can still hear the smile in his voice.

“I’m sure,” You turn your head to smile at him, “that's the one.”

***

You’re suddenly sucked back to the present when you hear the mandalorian make his way up the ladder of the cockpit, Grugo tucked in the bend of one of his arms. You lower your knees and sit up in your seat, as he lowers into his, setting the sleepy baby in his lap.

“You woke him?” You question. Doesn’t he realize what hell you went through to get him to sleep? “He was fussing when I got out of the fresher.” He gently strokes Grogu’s wrinkly green skin with his thumb and you can’t help but smile. “He missed you.” You tilt your head and boop the baby gently in the nose. He’s so sleepy he barely reacts. Back to being the most precious creature in the galaxy. “Oh yeah, that reminds me!” The mandalorian turns his attention to you, so you continue, “Please tell me I just wasn’t looking hard enough and you have some toys for this child.” You give a firm glare to the visor.

The armored man just reaches out and unscrews a metal ball from the top of a lever on the control panel, “He likes this.” The baby immediately coos and sleepily reaches out for it as the mandalorian drops it into his tiny hands. He...he can’t be serious?

“I...you’re joking right? That's not a toy! That's a hunk of metal!” you groan exasperatedly and run a hand through your hair, trying to keep your cool. For someone so shiny, he was pretty damn dim in the head. “As soon as we get to Nevarro, I’m getting this kid some toys, and it’s coming out of your half of the cut!” You point at him sternly. “Stars, you really don’t know what you're doing do you? He’s a baby! He probably wouldn't act out so much if he had something to do!” The mandalorian doesn't say anything, just watches the baby in his arms while he sleepily plays with the smooth metal ball in his hands. You aren’t sure why you were expecting more of an argument from him, but maybe you were right. You get the feeling this mandalorian truly had no idea what he was doing at all, just trying his best to take care of the baby, alone, the best he could, while turning in just enough bounties to get by. It must be hard for him. It was hard enough for you all alone, you can only imagine how much harder it is with a child to care for.

“How’d you find him?” Your tone has softened significantly. As much as you don’t like this guy, you feel for his situation.

“He was my bounty.” He only lifts his gaze to you when you audibly choke on air, nearly shooting out of your seat.

“He what?!” You don’t mean to shout that loud, but that was definitely not the answer you were expecting.

“I turned him in, but I had to go back for him. Didn’t feel right. We had the whole guild after us for a while. I couldn’t let them bring any harm to him.” There's a certain softness in his voice that you haven't heard from him before. “So I took him in, a foundling, just as I once was, until I can get him back to his kind.”

“You’re a foundling?” The question came out quicker than you meant it to. You aren’t super familiar with mandalorian culture, but you know some, and the concept of a foundling was one you knew. Mandalorians that are adopted, rather than born into the culture. Orphans, picked up and adopted by mandalorians and raised as their own. The shiny wall of beskar next to you only nods before returning his attention to the child. The baby is barely able to keep his head up, using all of his remaining willpower to clutch the metal ball between his hands as he nods off.

“Looks like it's time for someone to go back to bed,” you reach out gently stroking the child's cheek with the back of your finger. The mandalorian slowly stands, careful not to disturb him, and starts to make his way out of the cockpit.

“We have a ways to go before we make it to Nevarro. You should get some rest.” He calls out to you before descending the ladder to the hull.

“You too, shiny!” You return, but don’t get a response. You shift in your seat to get comfortable, resting your head on your shoulder as you bring your knees back up to where they were earlier. You hold your helmet on your hands and peer into the visor, letting the familiar gaze comfort you with old memories, until you drift to sleep.

*** Previous - MASTER - Next

#the mandalorian #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin x reader #din x reader #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin x you #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #the mandalorian fanfic #the mandalorian fanfiction

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derireo · 4 years

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A3! And What Sports They’d Play ↦ All Troupes

So.. I was talking to a friend about the sports we used to play in the past. I loved sports as a kid and thinking of Haikyu also pushed me to do this. All troupes are included, and individual characters gets their own sport and my take on how well I think they’d do in it!

Kind of went off on Autumn and Winter Troupe;; sorry.

Uh, E-Sports, of course. He gets absolutely winded from walking, so sitting down and competitively playing a game he loves is his dream. On particularly intense matches, he breaks a heavy sweat and needs a lot of water and snacks to keep himself focused and in the game.

He's a popular player and a great one as well! Sometimes he gets asked to host little bits of the tournaments he attends because he has such a big fanbase and he's awesome at entertainment despite his normally deadpan tone with jokes.

He has a lot of energy, so I think running in track or doing marathons would be good for him. Afterall, he's one of the first to run after Tsuzuru in the prologue of the game. He isn't the best nor is he the fastest runner, but his stamina is impressive and lets him outlast many of his competitors.

I also see him doing kayaking? Not competitively, but he definitely loves the thrill of crashing down small waterfalls and regaining his balance right after. The flow of the currents is exhilarating and he has a good sense of balance, so he'd rarely overturn in a kayak (which is absolutely dangerous by the way).

He wouldn't do any competitive sports, but skate/longboarding is something I can definitely see him doing. If he needs time to himself or just simply wants to chill, he'll go out and enjoy the breeze as he boards down the bike lane in the park or on the road, hands in pockets.

He becomes a bit of an attraction at skate parks though. He's always seen there on his board, headphones donned and hands in pockets like I said; effortlessly performing tricks that a lot of other skaters would struggle doing. People are very attracted to the sight, and he lures them in whenever someone finds out he's at the park that day.

He's already suffering so much and is always tired— I wouldn't put it past him to play shuffleboard. It's not a laborious sport, and he can play with anyone like his siblings or any elders who need the company. It's a slow paced sport and is great for sleepy Tsuzuru who needs a break from scrip writing. I don't know if there were any canon stories of him actually being involved in a sport at some point, but I think he'd be pretty okay at tennis or table tennis.

Tennis is a very intense sport so he didn't play it for long because practice cut into his studying, his part-time jobs, and his babysitting. Table tennis is similar to tennis with it's concept, except you can just kind of stand in one spot and don't have to run around as much. It's a fun game to play with his siblings since they enjoy it so much, and they always run after the ball so he doesn't have to do much other than play along with them and clean up when they're done.

I honestly have no idea with Citron. I don't remember any canon details of Zahra (I think that's where he's from?) so I don't want to assume what kind of environment he was in that would influence his choice of athletics, but I think he would enjoy swimming! In the beach event, he ran into the water happily with Kazunari if I can remember, and I'd like to think he had a good body type for water.

There's also another part of me that thinks he'd love skydiving! The thrill of jumping out of the helicopter and letting the winds beat against him as he soared down towards the ground below would be awesome. He's practically shouting for joy as he glides down and loves the look of the city from above. Impressively enough, he can do flips in the air and loves twirling around, much to the dismay of other skydivers as they fear for him.

He's not one for actively moving, but ballet seemed interesting to him and he wanted to try it out. He had no idea how intense ballet was, from strict teachers, to getting blisters on his ankles and feet, Yuki actually almost quit. What prevented him from doing so was probably watching a performance where his seniors were giving the juniors an extravagant scene to watch and they inspired Yuki to keep going.

I would have said acrobatics/gymnastics as well, but Yuki's arms aren't very strong and he doesn't like doing flashy things like that anyways (no offense...? I don't know, I haven't watched videos of this sport in years). If he did pursue acrobatics/gymnastics, I'm not sure if he'd be amazing at it, but he would definitely be decent! He's got the flare;;

Running! Since he was in track for a while and was rumoured to be great at it, he would definitely be doing marathons and track alongside Sakuya. He had great speed and a stamina to match so he's a terribly good opponent to go against if you like to get pushed past your limits. If he kept pursuing track he would train during late nights and early morning with Tasuku, who has his routine jogs at those times.

Absolutely adores the sport too! His team of runners were basically second family to him, so if he chose to return, he would have the time of his life growing as a sportsman with them. He would grow into a fine and very popular runner! Hitting his growth spurt would only make him an even more fearsome competitor as his legs would get longer and his intense training with Omi and Tasuku would get his stamina maxed out.

He has no time to do sports since he's always acting, so I honestly can't say what he'd do. He isn't the best runner either and extreme sports is out of the question since he's a bit of a scaredy cat. I guess he would enjoy a casual game of table tennis though? But despite liking the sport, I'm going to say that he kind of sucks at it. He understands the rules and everything, but his rhythm is off and he never manages to hit the ball back.

He's good at receiving a strike back though! He's always lucky at standing in the right spot with his paddle in the correct position to receive a smash hit, and that's basically the only time he wins a point because he catches his opponent off guard. It doesn't happen often though, so he still gets absolutely destroyed during a game of table tennis.

I believe Misumi would be amazing at track & field. He runs extremely fast for one, and he does parkour like no other; he would definitely place first in sports like long jump, high jump, pole vault, and sprints. He doesn't have a particular favourite event to do though, but always does his best when someone gives him an incentive to do his best.

Izumi and Omi offer him triangle onigiri? He's going to run as fast as he can! Jump as high as he can and as far as he can! No one will be able to stop Misumi. But then again, competitive parkour is a thing, I'm pretty sure, so he can just do that sport for fun and still place in the top 3 at least. He would be terrible awesome at Ultimate Frisbee, but the disc isn't a triangle, so. :p

Him? Sports? No.

I'm kidding. Do not know at all what sport he would enjoy playing, but billiards is something that suits him in my opinion. It doesn't have to be competitive, but he's greatly skilled at handling a cue stick, and his aim is impeccable. He's real lucky with trick-shots too, so don't go and start betting money with him; you'll definitely splurge all of your cash on him within seconds.

Sigh. It's super annoying that he's good at everything, and sports are no exception. He plays futsal with Omi and Tasuku the most, and is very light on his feet. He's so good that during competitive games he'll do a trickshot and score, or will play around with his check and do something like dribble the ball between their legs when they're at their most vulnerable.

I'm sure he would fall in love with ice hockey, though. Ice hockey is fast paced and is a contact sport so Banri would feel free on the ice rink. Good thing is that he's pretty good looking, so he's a fan favourite player. The cold air biting into his skin as he pushes himself across the rink to get to the puck is exciting and he loves body checking opponents into the walls (this also makes him a controversial player since he plays rough and dirty).

He'd be a monster at competitive martial arts. Taekwondo especially, considering his kicks come in hot and fast. His spinning kicks are ones to avoid if you go against him, but he's so quick on his feet and can kick higher than his head so you might get a quick KO if you can't read his body language fast enough. Judo is also high on the list despite it being more of a grappling and throwing sport, but Juza's quick reflexes make him a difficult opponent to beat. Normally wins a match using jiu-jitsu grappling techniques on the floor.

He would also be great at ice hockey. His large figure and quick feet would make him a great player, and his posture is always low to the ground so it wouldn't be easy to knock him over on the rink. Not exactly the best at dribbling the puck though, but give him a one-timer when he's open and he'll send that thing flying through the net. No one tries to pick fights with him on the rink though lol, he's notorious for one hit ko's.

Taichi gives off the chaotic vibes of Nishinoya from Haikyu, but he would suck at volleyball so I'm giving him badminton cause height doesn't matter too much I think as long as he's quick on his feet and is able to read the body language of his opponents well. His form would be perfect though and he's super agile so getting to that shuttlecock is no problem for him. He's got a bit of muscle too so he can send those babies flying!

Doesn't really use strategy most of the time, so he'll just keep hitting and receiving the shuttlecock however he wants until his opponent tires or until someone messed up a smash. No one else in Mankai plays badminton so finding him a coach is a bit difficult. He eventually learns other ways to hit the shuttlecock, so when he learns how to slice or do drop shots, he's a little monster on the court!

Oh, the sports he would play.. Obviously, he plays futsal with Tasuku unless you haven't seen his card where he's playing as goalkeeper! With that information, he would absolutely destroy volleyball teams as a middle. Now I don't know if calling middles 'middle blocker' and outside hitters 'wing spikers' is like.. a cultural thing, and I know that's what they call the players in Haikyu, but it definitely catches me off guard and really confused lol. So, yeah! Omi would be amazing as a middle in the front since he's so tall and can shuffle fast on his feet to block a front row opponent. He's like Tendou in a way where he's great at reading people, the only thing is that he's better than Tendou (no offense, I'm serious) because he doesn't need to guess. He already knows. UGH, I want to go off on volleyball (both indoor & outdoor), but this part is getting long. Lmk if you want to hear me talk more about A3! & volleyball.

American football/rugby. Don't tell me I'm wrong please, I'll cry. Both of these are a full contact sport, and looking at Omi's past and his physical structure, you can't tell me he would not obliterate everyone on the field. He is either the offensive guard or the tackle. He will not start offensive plays, but he will end defensive plays. He stops any player from tackling their centre and tackles those who try to hit a blindside. I don't know much about rugby other than it is just as rough as American Football, just with less protective gear. I'm stopping here because I'm thirsting too much for Omi rn.

HOO, baby! When I looked at Sakyo, I just knew he would be able to do something with swords, so I chose kendo/fencing. Keno is a traditional martial art stemming from Japan and is practised with wooden swords. I won't say I know much about the sport, but it is definitely tense and is very noisy. Noisy because kendokas/kenshis shout whenever they strike, this is to show their spirit. Sakyo kind of hates shouting during the sport, but it definitely lets off some steam and gives him more momentum when he strikes.

I also think fencing because there are swords involved here too, it's just that it seems to be more of a European sport and has some sort of specific footwork involved. The piste may seem a bit narrow as well compared to kendo where they have a whole floor to themselves, so Sakyo doesn't practice fencing as often. (The clothing he's required to wear for this sport is also quite stifling as well.)

I'm ngl, but I didn't know what sport to give Tsumugi, omg, so I ended up giving him cup stacking. You know, you remember; I feel like you should do some research if you don't though because cup stacking was a huge thing in the early 2000's (?) and kids were setting world records here and there non-stop. Tsumugi uses his hands a lot for things like gardening, tutoring, bouquet arranging, etc, so he's deft and talented with them.

As long as he puts his mind to it, cup stacking is a piece of cake for him. He doesn't play anymore, but every now and then he'll look at his old kit in the corner of his room and will set it up with Tasuku in the lounge room for everyone to have a go at it. He loves the thrill and the way his adrenaline runs through his veins as he focuses on trying not to mess up the stack down.

HOOOO! Okay, so we already know Tasuku plays futsal so I'm not going to bother, but man.. He would be the same as Omi in volleyball; an absolute monster of a middle player. He's well rounded in the sport, so his coaches/team actually refuse to switch him out with a libero/defence specialist. His digs are almost on point with the setter, and he's always at the right spot when receiving, making sure no one gets an empty spot on the court.

When he's in the front blocking or hitting, he's almost always successful, and since he trains a lot with different drills and regimes, he perfects a lot of things like tipping, tooling, slicing, and even setting. His height added along with his vertical makes it almost impossible for opponents to block him, and when he's feeling good in a game, he'll start doing things like float serves and jump serves. If he's feeling any better, he'll play around and start doing slide hits at the front or will hit from position A on the back court (left corner facing the net). He'd also do swimming!!!!!!!!! BUT THIS IS GETTING TOO LONG

Definitely would do archery/darts. He's got impeccable aim if you take evidence from his outside work chats with Banri and has no problem pulling the string on a bow. Archery is difficult and I am not lying. Pulling the string until it's taut takes a large amount of strength and it digs deep into your fingertips, leaving calluses after one or two pulls.

Figuring out the trajectory and weighing in the factors of weather (if you're outside) takes a lot of skill and practice, and Hisoka always manages to hit the centre of the target with no hesitancy with his release of the string. His hands are all rough from the string digging into his fingers all the time, showing you how long he's been practising the sport.

I don't think Homare was very athletic growing up. I'm saying this only because his body type is quite lean and he's a poet after all who seems to stay inside more often than not if he isn't meeting with an editor/publisher. I think figure skating would suit him very well as it is an elegant and cold weathered sport. I also think he would fall in love with the suits if Yuki made them as they'd sparkle brilliantly and show off his flare as a skater.

He figure skates as a casual hobby rather than competitive, but he definitely makes a lot of famous friends in the community due to his whimsical personality and beautiful posture.

Kyudo (Japanese archery) was a sport that popped into my mind for Azuma, despite the strain it puts on the skin of his fingertips. His skin is very delicate with how much he takes care of it, so he wears a glove on his dominant hand to protect him. Kyudo seems to be more of a peaceful archery, and with the sight of Azuma in the kyudo uniform, the scene in front of you would be quite serene and calming.

I also think he would be great at figure skating since his body is lithe and he has lovely facial features that would complement the body suits that Yuki would create for him. His long hair flowing in the breeze he creates as he glides throughout the rink would be gorgeous along with the way his body looks as he does an axle in the air. His performances on the rink are always mesmerising, and he'll receive a few claps from fellow rink goers when he's in the centre just casually practising.

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lesbian-fabray · 4 years

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quinn fabray is a lesbian - season one

1x01: pilot

in the first scene we see quinn in that isn’t a quick shot of her cheerleading, quinn has specifically taken time out of her gym class in order to not only watch rachel’s video and mock her, but be the first view on the video

when we finally get a name for quinn in the form of finn mentioning her, we see a scene in which finn and quinn are kissing and when he tries to push for more, she physically removes his hands and forces him to pray with her. while this does fit in with quinn’s commitment to celibacy, it is the first time we see a hint that quinn does not really have any physical attraction to men

1x02: showmance

in the scene where her and finn are arguing at his locker near to the beginning to the episode, she offers up a sexual act as an incentive to get him to quit glee club. this is one of the first instances we see of quinn only showing interest in sexual acts with men when she thinks she can get something as a result of it

in this same scene, quinn says that people will see her as finn’s “big gay beard.” later in the show, we learn that the writers define beards as two gay people of opposite genders who date to hide the fact that they’re gay. while this is just her acknowledging what people may think, it also shows that people thinking she is gay is a legitimate and significant fear of her’s

in the celibacy club scene, quinn forces santana to spin around and show off the cheerio’s skirt, then says “god bless the perv that invented these.” i don’t really think i need to explain this one

also in the celibacy club scene, quinn looks absolutely SHAKEN when rachel says that girls want sex just as much as guys do

while it’s a pretty minor moment, quinn kind of gasps (not audible because the song is playing over the scene, but you can see her gasp) then has to compose herself after brittany strokes her arm at the end of “i say a little prayer”

1x03: acafellas

when rachel first brings up dakota stanley and criticizes will’s choreography, quinn is shown looking incredibly sad and expectant when rachel looks over at her for reassurance

when quinn and santana are updating sue on their sabotage of glee club in her office, quinn repeatedly sneaks little glances at santana when she thinks no one is looking

during the dakota stanley scene, when the unholy trinity turns to look at the rest of the group, quinn’s eyes go not to the group, but to santana’s chest

1x05: the rhodes not taken

when rachel comes in to essentially save the day between songs during the invitational, we see quinn look at rachel, then at the floor, then at finn, then back at the floor. it looks as if she has to remind herself that finn exists and is her boyfriend

1x06: vitamin d

ALL OF THIS IS IN THE HALLWAY SCENE

admits to drawing “pornographic” pictures of rachel in the bathroom stalls

after rachel tells quinn that she doesn’t hate her, quinn is genuinely confused and feels like she deserves rachel’s hatred. at this point it almost feels like she has been trying to get rachel to hate her. it is also incredibly obvious that she feels bad about the way she treats rachel

as rachel walks away, quinn stares after her with what i can only describe as a longing look

1x07: throwdown

quinn doesn’t care if finn cheats on her. she only cares that he doesn’t do it with rachel. this feels different from her general hatred of rachel. i think you guys know where i’m going with this one

throughout “no air,” quinn is found staring at rachel a handful of times. it’s nothing special, just standard quinn shit

the fight with rachel seems super gay but i can only really point out a couple things. one of these is the fact that quinn quickly looks away from rachel, breathes out, then sets her sight back on rachel after rachel says she helped cover up quinn’s pregnancy because she had “ulterior motives.” it honestly looks like quinn is reminding herself exactly who those intentions are regarding

also in the fight, when rachel says, “you obviously have a lot to express,” qunn responds with “oh, you have no idea.” after this, quinn goes into a dream sequence type-thing where she sings “keep me hangin’ on,” which i’m pretty sure is considered a love song, while surrounded by women in revealing outfits dance in a sexual manner around her. at the end of the song, she looks deeply embarrassed by the fact that it even happened

1x08: mash up

this one could just be choreography honestly, but at one point during “bust a move,” quinn is part of the group singing the line “you want it, baby, you got it.” quinn looks directly at santana during the “baby, you got it” part. normally i wouldn’t add this, but considering the turn their relationship takes, i’m including it.

1x09: wheels

at the end of “proud mary,” quinn sighs then rests her head in her hands and looks at rachel with a loving look

1x12: mattress

when rachel is nominated as team captain, quinn quickly and covertly shoots her eyes down to look at rachel when no one can see her do so

quinn forces sue to give glee club a page in the yearbook even though the only person who wanted this was rachel. everyone else is vehemently against it

1x13: sectionals

quinn is in no way mad at rachel after she told finn the truth about quinn’s baby, despite the fact that rachel could have put her into a very dangerous situation by doing so

1x14: hell-o

quinns seems to be staring at finn and rachel when the two are talking by her locker, but her eye line seems more focused on rachel than on finn

at multiple points during “gives you hell,” quinn is fangirling over rachel’s performance harder than anyone else in the room, despite the fact we’re supposed to believe she hates rachel

1x15: the power of madonna

draws a caricature of rachel with inexplicable hearts all around it

quinn is visibly excited when rachel starts talking about dating, but looks disgusted and voices said disgust when rachel describes making out with jesse

despite supposedly hating rachel, quinn is VERY excited when rachel started singing “express yourself”

1x17: bad reputation

quinn put santana higher than puck on the glist, despite the fact they were briefly romantically involved

quinn deliberately put the glist on rachel’s locker, as if she was trying to prove that she didn’t think rachel was attractive

1x18: laryngitis

when talking to mercedes about puck, she shows absolutely no interest in him or anything about him

1x20: theatricality

when rachel went to go introduce herself to shelby when they were spying on vocal adrenaline, quinn literally is distracted by rachel’s ass before she tells her to come back

quinn seems VERY impressed by rachel’s slightly revealing lady gaga outfit that shelby made

1x22: journey to regionals

quinn seemingly checks out rachel while moving closer to her during the choreography for “anyway you want it/lovin’ touchin’ squeezin’”. at first i thought her facial expression may just be part of the routine, but no one else had an expression remotely similar

#raven quinn fabray is gay #quinn fabray #lesbian quinn fabray #quinn fabgay #quinntana #faberry

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angelmichelangelo · 3 years

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i’m about five years too late and nobody asked for this except me and i need to just get this out of my brain because it’s 2am so here’s a list of things i wish happened on glee that didn’t HERE WE GO:

- new directions being actual teenagers. just them hanging out. going to group sleepovers. giant study sessions (because school exists in this universe?) like remember in tpp when they were eating lunch together ? that’s what i wanted MORE of. just them being actual friends. a sleepover episode is all i wanted imagine all the abba songs we could have gained from that episode

- a halloween themed episode. the closest to this that we got was the ‘thriller/heads will roll’ mashup which YES was iconic but im greedy and it’s not enough. my idea for a halloween episode is that the gang gets trapped inside the school after staying behind to idk rehearse? or something? and then things get progressively worse as they start to go a little mad, thinking the school is haunted and they split up into pairs trying to find an escape and they think they’re seeing ghosts/someone lurking around the school and they’re getting real spooked but it turns out it’s just sue fucking with them lmao

- kurt and finn being brothers. THE POTENTIAL WAS THERE and sadly after furt we are left with crumbs. why ?? WHY?? little moments like finn saying that he’s driving back home with kurt or them saying they can’t do something because they have a family thing would have been good enough. more scenes of them hanging out in their home with their parents would have been *chefs kiss* but alas. it never happened because glee writers are bastards

- based off my last point: sam actually living at the hudson-hummel house because he actually did live there? but nothing is ever said like what’s the dynamic there why weren’t kurt and sam and finn close if they all lived together for what? like a year? was sam living in the mf shed? did he ever get close to carole and burt?? where tf did he live when everyone went off to college did he just stay in their house lol who knows not me LMAO

- blaine dealing with his trauma ? mental health was never dealt with very well on this show. emma’s ocd was just ignored after she got married or whatever and blaine mentioned his trauma once and then it was ignored until it was mentioned in passing a few seasons later and even he just brushed it off and it was never brought up again like wtf. i have no idea how they wrote a whole episode about hate crime in bash and they never once thought to have blaine and kurt have a single conversation together, let alone a conversation about how they’d both been victims of a hate crime. AND THE ONLY TIME BLAINE DOES MENTION IT IS IN TESTED WHERE ITS JUST USED AS A REASON FOR THEM TO FIGHT AAAAAAAA no wait im calm it’s okay. i just would have liked to have seen kurt and blaine have an emotional moment together in that episode that didn’t include blaine singing and kurt being knocked tf out. just sayin.

- kurt dealing with HIS trauma !! again, glee gets bad points for talking about mental health and it just is crazy that they had so much potential with kurt, ie: depression, anxiety, ocd (kinda?) his bullying, being literally assaulted (i see u ryan murphy taking that whole plot line so loosely mmhm) and then shoehorning in the fact that he was suicidal AT THE SECOND TO LAST EPISODE when they had a whole episode about suicide and they could have mentioned it at any time but ofc they didn’t because the writers just wanted to shove in as much as they could in the flashback episode AYE AYE AYE the potential!!!! oof.

- literally just more tina. jenna ushkowitz is a fantastic actor/singer/preformer and she was criminally underused. i like the episode props because of two reasons: one. everyone switching characters was amazing. and two. some actual tina scenes. even if she.. technically was rachel but also herself or something? either way. i digress

- this is just in general but MORE ABBA AND ALSO THE CARPENTERS and also some sound of music songs would have worked GREAT but they already had like a million songs and as the show progressed they veered away from old songs and more towards popular songs at the time to help chart numbers blah blah blah whatever it’s cool. but also how did they only do a few abba songs that is criminal

- a more fleshed out ending that wasn’t so rushed. like rachel won a tony and everyone else is just? there? why is sam at mr shue’s house ??? how did artie get up the stairs? did quinn graduate from yale? and where tf was kurt and blaine’s child during ‘i lived’ because burt and carole are vibing in the audience and rachel isn’t pregnant so like? is the baby just?? alone somewhere in the wings?! lmao where are u bby girl!! but once again i know they didn’t have the time to do it so idk it’s fine what they did it just sucks we didn’t get more! but again. fanfic exists so yah im all good

- more of blaine’s mum. or mom, in this case i guess. why cast gina gershon and then give her ONE line like ? ik there was a whole deleted script that explained why she was there but i love that up until that point blaine seemed like he genuinely murdered his parents, lived in their big house all alone and when people got suspicious he just told them that they were “out of town” :) either way pam is great i love her and i wish she had more to do in the one episode she was ever in. not even a moment with blaine?? wasted.

- more of cooper anderson, matt boomer is so fucking funny everytime i think of the emotion tornado i bust a lung laughing like it’s so fucking stupid but oh my good i love it. (and if you haven’t watched the special feature of cooper’s transformers audition tape please please watch it because it’s just so funny.) ik he was just a special guest but i wish they got him back for at least the wedding ep but guess my mans was just busy. boo ;(

- going back a couple of points, i wish they’d done a whole episode like props. every actor here just shines when they’re impersonating each other. finn and puck as kurt and blaine is beautiful and quinn and sugar is incredible. also idk why they refused kevin the right to wear the cheerios skirt; they could have put a little more effort into some characters but that’s glee for ya lmao but yeah. a whole episode like that would have been so much fun

- they should have let chris colfer write more episodes. purely for the fact that he wrote with his own bare hands the whole scene where lea michelle’s character gets dragged down a road by dogs. this guy. it’s a shame he only got to write one since he actually did a really good job! i would have loved to have seen what other episode ideas he had :)

- glee in the summer! obviously it only was centred around the school year but after season 3 who honestly gave a shit about the glee club and mckinley lmao i wanna see them in SHORT SHORTS and POOL PARTIES but nope we just got september - june so like rip all my hopes and dreams

- WHAT HAPPENED TO DALTON? bitch just burst into flames ?? and for WHAT?? oh yeah plot convenience smh this is so sad i wish they’d either written something better than “we need the warblers to team up with new directions so uhhh the school burnt down” like. it’s a private school. if the school is gone and they’re just staying at mckinley what are the parents paying for? they’re just cool with sending their kids off to public school now? every adult in this universe has been murdered by these kids, haven’t they? they’re just doing whatever they want jfc

- a wedding was a good episode. ish. and yknow, huge kudos to them because gay marriage wasn’t legal in the us at the time so im less harsh on the fact that they definitely threw up the rainbow flags and made it less about the characters getting married and more so “we have gay characters and look they’re getting married what a concept” but i do wish we could have gotten some more married!klaine since they don’t really have much to do after this understandably but a little moment alone together after the wedding would have been nice :) IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE IM TELLING YOU

- get rid of the hummelberry friendship and send mercedes to new york instead. i have nothing else to add to this other than the fact that i mourn the fact that kurt and mercedes went from bffs to just. school mates. this is tragic this is traaaaagic !! and all for more of the rachel berry show smh

- every day i wonder what was going through carmen tibideaux mind when she watched the kurt hummel preform not the boy next door and was like :) and then watched rachel berry have a breakdown on stage and then proceeded to give rachel the spot at nyada and kurt gets payed literal dust. and THEN she had the nerve to tell him it was because his performance had no heart. AND HOW DID ADAM GET IN THIS BABY GOT BACK MOTHERFUCKER?! nyada is a circus school oh my god !!!!! kurt deserved better im telling yall he deserved so much better

there’s so much more i could rant about but im going insane im so tired and i need psychological help after watching glee so im gonna leave it here and say peace out homies it’s been fun but i need to sleep so bad

#this is insanity #how did this happen #glee #tw hate crime mention #tw suicide mention #tw mental health mention #this was from my drafts lmao

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curls-cat · 3 years

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Who we Grew to Be

HAPPY HOLIDAYS @vertdegrece!!!! You asked for grown up Daphne/Pinocchio, so you got a lot of vaguely purple prose leading up to adult Daphnocchio! I haven’t written for this ship in a while, I forgot that I like it!

also posted on AO3

Daphne and Pinocchio do not grow up together. That would be too easy. Daphne stalls out for a little bit at eleven, when she gets her first zit, but besides that, she grows like any human child: straight through.

Pinocchio, on the other hand, grows in fits and starts. He’s been cursed that way, because the Blue Fairy, his absent mother, takes as much as she gives. All her blessings have a little bit of the monkey’s paw about them, so he only grows as old as he acts, forever cursed to act his own age.

The upshot of this is that they don’t spend much time together in childhood. Daphne is much closer to Red, who grows at the same pace she does. Pinocchio, too, is closer to Red. They live in the same house, after all. And Red may be aging at the same pace as her best friend, but she’s got a sort of ageless quality about her that makes it easy for Pinocchio to spend time with her no matter how different their ages are, physically.

Oh, they see each other nearly all of every summer, when Henry and Veronica pack up their rarely-used car to make the drive up from NYC to Ferryport Landing, towing their children with them. Summers are nice. Daphne likes summer, when she has her whole family together in Granny’s newly-renovated ramble of a house for two entire months. Even Puck and Uncle Jake are nearly always there.

But they don’t hang out. Daphne out-ages Pinocchio for the first two years, the growing difference between seven and nine not nearly as much of an impediment as Pinocchio’s snobby brattishness. Then he makes a leap forward, catching up and almost outstripping her to ten. They leapfrog their way through childhood, only matching up briefly every few years. Then he makes a final jump from sixteen and moody to somewhere much closer to twenty, and he’s off to university while Daphne is still sixteen herself, and he throws himself into the kind of universities that he now looks old enough to be a student at.

Sixteen is a weird time. They’re the same age, for once, and they’re together in Granny’s house, for the last time, it’ll later turn out. Pinocchio spends a lot more time with her than usual, but he’s grumpier than he’s been since he was ten, demanding her attention one minute and then scoffing at her the next. Sabrina rolls her eyes and tells him to get his act together, but she’s mostly too busy hate-flirting with Puck to explain what she means, even though she gives Daphne knowing looks whenever pressed.

Then Granny dies, and Daphne’s family shatters.

Puck and Uncle Jake disappear to opposite corners of the globe. Sabrina and Pinocchio go back to school and if Daphne didn’t drag her sister home over the weekends, she’d never see her. Her parents start fighting, both of them either at work or at home but not present. Mr. Canis is so heartbroken that Red is spending all her time, nearly, with him, trying to make him eat or sleep or smile. Basil is furious and heartbroken by turns, begging Daphne for hugs one moment and screaming at her the next. Daphne feels like she’s alone, pulling at a dozen different strings that are all tied to people running as hard as they can in opposite directions. Like she’s being drawn and quartered by her own grief, by her own desire to keep her family together.

It doesn’t come to a head at any one point. It’s several smaller heads, a million little breaks, separate scenes where Daphne begs each of her family members to come back to her one by one. Most of them do. Puck and Pinocchio don’t.

And she gets it. She knows, from the way Mr. Canis and her dad look at her sometimes, that she’s the most like Granny out of all of them. She’s got her grandmother’s righteous indignation and need to help everyone, her rigid moral compass that even she knows is a little shy of true north, her big, enormous heart. Of course it’ll hurt to come back to her. Of course it’ll be like looking at the little imperfect shadow of the woman they’ve lost, the woman who loved them when nobody else would.

It doesn’t make her any less furious at them. And, for a year or two, she’s almost glad they’ve stayed away, her hurt turning into anger.

Fast forward again, to Sabrina’s wedding. By this point, Pinocchio has sort of been back in her life, by virtue of being back in Red’s life. He’s halfway through a doctorate in history, and Daphne’s learned through Red that he wants to get more, in anthropology and archaeology, among other things. He wants to get all the doctorates, from the sound of it.

Sabrina’s wedding goes strangely. Daphne may have meddled a little bit. Just a tiny, tiny bit. But it’s not her fault Sabrina kept moping about Puck. It was super obvious. And Bradley’s a nice guy and all, and Daphne knows Sabrina loves him, but it’s not gonna be a happy marriage if they don’t at least get all the Puck baggage out in the open. So she meddles. Finds Puck, pulls him out of his five-year mope, and throws him at the wedding.

It’s a mess, obviously. There’s a huge scene at the wedding, it sort of falls apart, a lot of forgetful dust has to be spread around. At the end of it, Daphne’s left standing, exhausted, with an empty bag of forgetful dust, watching the last of the guests leave. Or, at least, she thought it was all the guests.

“Are you cleaning up as penance?” someone says behind her, in an absolutely gorgeous voice.

“Come again?” She turns, and there’s Pinocchio, in all his dark academia glory. He’s grown into his nose, though it’s still a striking centerpiece to his face.

“For turning your sister’s wedding into a fiasco,” he clarifies. “I assume that was you.”

“Maybe,” she says, trying for teasing. It comes out a little more flirtatious than she meant it. What? He’s cute, okay?

“How—how have you been?” Pinocchio asks.

He could’ve asked her that any time in the past five years. Any time. She’s honestly kind of surprised he came to the wedding. She will not give him the cold shoulder, though. She won’t. She’s better than that now.

“I’m all right,” she says. “In college. You?”

“Also in college,” Pinocchio says. He gives her a small smile.

She smiles back. It’s all very awkward. She starts gathering up wedding decorations.

“I, uh,” Pinocchio says after a minute. “I think I owe you an apology.”

Damn right he does. She doesn’t say that, though. She does look at him expectantly.

He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, not making eye contact. “After—Well. You know. I shouldn’t have run away like that. I was hurting, and spending time around anyone who knew your grandma just made me think about how much I hurt. So I ran away. And that wasn’t fair. Because you were all hurting, too, and I know you, especially, wanted everyone to stay close.”

“Very nicely said,” Daphne approves. “Did Red coach you on it?”

“Only a little,” Pinocchio admits. “But I mean it. All of it.”

“All right,” Daphne says. And she takes a deep breath, the way she’s been practicing with Cindy, and she lets the anger go. “I forgive you. But only if you’re done hiding.”

“I am,” he says, and he smiles at her.

They keep in contact after the wedding. Pinocchio still has a tendency to bury himself in books and forget about other humans, but if she texts him, he’ll text back the same day. Usually. She tells him about the weird things going on between Puck, Sabrina, and Bradley. Occasionally he’ll send her an unprompted message ranting about something she has only the vaguest understanding of. She’ll patch it together across the pages her phone’s divided it into and have wikipedia open for reference as she reads. They go out for coffee at least once a month, sometimes with Red, sometimes without her.

Daphne refuses to ask him for help with her homework. Getting a degree in social work requires a lot more of the hard sciences than she’d anticipated. It’s frustrating, but it’s worth it. She’s gonna be able to help people, when she’s done with this. Everafters and humans alike. Oh, Sabrina’s got her child advocacy law thing going on, and that’s great, but Daphne’s determined to help people before they get to the point where the courts have to get involved. And she��s not going to do it by depending on Pinocchio for help. She can do this on her own.

But as she moves from her bachelor’s to the postgrad degree it’s apparent she’s going to need if she wants to actually get a, y’know, job in her field, she does start complaining to Pinocchio more. They’re at the same university, Pinocchio now well into an anthropology degree, so they hang out at the library pretty often, their noses buried in separate books or laptops.

Pinocchio’s funny. She’d forgotten about that, or never really learned it. He’s got a dry sense of humor, and he’s sarcastic like you wouldn’t believe. He’s fun to be around.

“I had a crush on you, you know,” he tells her one day, apropos of nothing, as he stretches in his chair, taking a break from whatever he’s working on right now.

“What?” Daphne pauses, not sure she’s heard him right. She’s been pretty intent on putting together a case study review.

“When we were, oh, sixteen or so,” Pinocchio says. It’s too casual to be anything but feigned. He knows exactly how old they were. “G-d, you were so—friendly. Overwhelmingly so.”

“Am I not friendly anymore?” Daphne asks, but she’s teasing. Friendly. What a reason to get a crush on someone!

“Nope,” Pinocchio teases right back. “Downright unpersonable. I must be rubbing off on you.”

“If Sabrina couldn’t turn me into a grouch, you’re definitely not gonna manage it,” Daphne says with an easy grin. “This new ‘unpersonable’ thing is all me, baby.”

“The world has worn on you,” Pinocchio says with a melodramatic sigh. “You’ve finally lost your childlike joy.”

“Only took twenty-three years,” Daphne says with a grin. The conversation dies for a minute, then Daphne brings it back. “Why bring it up now?”

Pinocchio shrugs. “I was just thinking about it. Thinking about back then. It was nice. I miss it.”

“You barely talked to me!” Daphne says with a laugh.

Someone two tables over glares at her, and she gives them an apologetic wave and a smile.

“I was shy!” Pinocchio protests. “I didn’t know how to talk to someone I liked! Let alone someone who was in my house the whole summer!”

“Fair enough,” Daphne agrees. “I hope you know this is teasing fodder for forever, though.”

“Oh no,” Pinocchio says, deadpan again. “What will I ever do. You’ve never teased me before in my life. I don’t think I can handle it.” He pauses, then says, “You don’t seem surprised. That I liked you.”

“What can I say?” Daphne winks at him. “Nobody can resist my charms.”

“Fair enough,” Pinocchio says, giving her a shrug. Then he goes back to studying.

Time passes. Daphne graduates, can’t get a job through normal channels, but gets herself employed working for Faerie. Pinocchio teases her about nepotism, but listen. If there were anyone else qualified, she wouldn’t need to do this job. She and Pinocchio don’t spend all their time together in the library anymore, but they do meet up for lunch, and dinner, and sometimes breakfast. Someone has to make sure he remembers to eat, after all.

Several months into seeing each other nearly every day, by choice rather than by ease, something occurs to Daphne.

“Are we dating?” she asks.

Pinocchio chokes a little. “What?”

“Are we dating?” she repeats, emphasizing each word a little more clearly.

“How would we be dating?”

“We see each other almost every day,” Daphne starts, ticking her points off on her fingers as she goes. “We go out to dinner together, just the two of us. We watch movies together. We hang out in each other’s apartments. I text you almost as much as I text my brother and sister, and more than I text Red. When I have news, you’re the first person I want to tell. You leave your little nerd fort to hang out with me.”

“I mean—” Pinocchio splutters. “You’re— Dating usually involves a certain amount of intent, doesn’t it?”

Well, yeah, okay, there’s that. But Daphne’s stumbled into relationships before, only realized what they were partway through. Love is messy like that. But, well. Pinocchio likes things to be clearly labeled. People don’t come naturally to him the way they do to her.

“Would you like this to be dating?” she asks.

“Would you?” he counters, still spluttering and blushing.

Would she?

She thinks about all the things she listed, about how she wants to spend time with him, about the way he’s comfortable. About his dry sense of humor, about his stupid handsome face, about the way, every time she sees him she’s struck, a little, by the sight. About how it makes her heart beat faster. She’d put it down to his being one of the hottest men she’s ever seen, but that should probably have worn off sometime in the past few years, right?

“Yes,” she decides. She would like to date him.

“Oh,” Pinocchio says. His blush deepens.

He says nothing else for a long minute, and Daphne starts blushing too. “If you don’t—I mean, I—listen. It doesn’t. I’ve gotten crushes on friends before. If you don’t want to date me, that’s fine. It doesn’t have to change anything. We can forget this whole conversation!” Because she’d rather keep his friendship than anything else.

“No!” Pinocchio rushes in. “No, that’s not—I just—I mean—” he’s stumbling over her words, now, the two of them talking over each other to explain themselves, when he says, “I like you too!”

“Oh,” Daphne says, stopping abruptly. “You do?” She smiles at him.

“Yeah,” Pinocchio says. “I think I never really stopped.”

“That,” Daphne says, reaching a hand forward to grab at Pinocchio’s, “was downright romantic, you handsome sweetie.”

Pinocchio gives her a dopey, lovestruck smile. Then, after a long moment, he says, “So are we dating then?”

Daphne laughs, twines their fingers together. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, we are.”

#sisters grimm #the sisters grimm #daphne grimm #sisters grimm holiday exchange #sisters grimm secret santa

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aros001 · 3 years

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First time read through light novel vol. 8. Random thoughts.

...So...does anyone else feel a little uncomfortable with that cover image between Reinhard and Felt? I mean, I know he's not going to do anything sexual to her and she's not as young as I originally thought she was (I think vol. 1 said she was 15, while ever since the anime I thought she was like 10 or something), but she still is underage, being forced into wearing and doing something she doesn't want to by a grown man, and I think just the way he's got his hand holding her bare thigh makes it feel more sexual than it should be.

Also, is Wilhelm floating? The heck is he sitting on?

Subaru was afraid of death. Dying constantly trashed his life with an unbearable sense of fear and loss. He thought it was like that for everyone; he assumed that was how it had to be. Subaru, who had experienced death more than anyone via Return by Death, didn’t want anyone else to know what it was like.

I'm definitely seeing more similarities between Subaru and Ferris here than I did in the anime. I like how they both have a more unique perspective on life and death than most people would; Subaru from his Return By Death and Ferris from being such a powerful healer (to the point he can even regenerate himself from near death, I guess). Again, for a series where death can be undone so easily, it really knows how to use that premise to show just how weighty and serious death is. While the two will and do kill, it sits with them more than it does for others because they know just how awful death can be.

Something I've really enjoyed when reading through various LN series after watching the anime first is that I end up liking certain characters that I didn't in the anime. I didn't hate Ferris but the cutesy way he talked really bugged me and I didn't focus on him much. Here though I'm definitely getting a better feel for his character, especially with how much he values life, cursing at the suicidal witch cult members for tossing theirs away so easily. He and Subaru's back and forth makes the ending feel that much more heartbreaking when Ferris has to mercy kill the possessed Subaru.

Also, just to clear up any confusion I have, is Ferris in drag or does he identify as a woman? I don't have any problem referring to him from now on as a "she" (I never had that problem with Magne in My Hero Academia) but I'd prefer to get my facts straight. Ferris also makes a joke about Subaru swinging over to his side of the fence but I'm not sure if that means he's gay or not. It's a little hard to tell how far his affection for Crusch runs, for example.

Similarly, there's Julius, a character I never disliked in the anime, but I can definitely see more of a path to him and Subaru becoming friends here. It is funny that a comment from Ferris got me thinking how something to two have in common is how easy it is for them to get others to immediately dislike them just by talking. For Subaru it's because he too often talks without thinking, shoving his foot into his mouth, and for Julius it's how unintentionally snobbish and "better-than-you" he can sound. It's also nice that the story is getting Subaru to try and work through his issues, acknowledging that he's being unfair towards Julius, whom really has done nothing wrong aside from unintentionally pricking at Subaru's inferiority complex.

Like Subaru, I thought demon beasts and monsters were just so common in the world that a barrier around a lord's domain was a very common thing. But from how the other characters in-story are talking, it sounds like Roswaal deliberately put his domain and the village in the center of (or at least nearby) a demon beast habitat. Even in the anime I always believed he knew more than he let on but here he feels like a straight-up mastermind with everything he's been pulling behind the scenes and all the things he's done that, as of yet, have no explanation or reason behind them. Just what is he up to?

One thing I'll say about this series in comparison to some others I've seen/read; the dark magic here, like with the Witch of Envy, Return By Death, the White Whale, and the Unseen Hands, really feels like DARK magic. I've seen series that have their own version of dark magic that'll make bad things happen or summon demons or sacrifice people, but this? Everything to do with the witch feels creepy and unnatural, like it's not or should not be part of the world. With how much suffering it's caused, the mystery behind the gospel, just how unhinged Petelgeuse is and his body jumping, it all feels like stuff you should really not be messing with. Even at the end with Subaru running off and Julius finding him, getting no response at first from Subaru, feels like something out of a horror movie.

Subaru keeps getting asked if he's Pride, to which I'm assuming they mean if he's the one to become the Archbishop of Pride. Personally, my theory is that because of how much the witch seems to "favor" him, Subaru is Envy, like, well, the Witch of Envy and the only one of the seven sins they never mention to have an archbishop, given Satella destroyed the other witches. If that's the case, I can only imagine how much that's going to piss off all the other archbishops, that after all their shows of devotion some schmuck came to their world out of nowhere and became Satella's favorite.

“Lending one’s strength does not mean merely swinging one’s sword. It means challenging the same foes, worrying over the same obstacles, sharing the wounds and the weight of the burdens. This we can do. This is the lesson I learned in the past.”

Obviously this is meant primarily for Subaru but I can't help but think it can apply to Rem and Emilia as well. With the exception of Puck, Emilia tends to go out of her way to avoid involving others in her problems or having them feel they owe her anything when she helps with theirs. Rem dedicated a good chunk of her life to live as her sister's replacement after Ram lost her horn and tried to kill all the demon dogs on her own after Subaru was cursed saving her. They both seem determined to bear the weight of their burdens solely on their own, like they're the only ones who need to suffer. Subaru goes back and forth on how much he involves others in his problems, but while he's more than willing to help ease the burdens on others, his problem for the longest time was that he was so fixated on "swinging his sword", as he thought fighting and strength was the only way to help (probably because strength would honestly solve a decent chunk of his own problems).

“Two days ago, the forest around the mansion became unnaturally calm... to the point that even my eyes could catch nothing. Thereupon, an armed group appeared bearing the crest of the House of Karsten, which had declared war with the blank letter... Surely you cannot blame my little bird’s heart for being on the verge of breaking?”

Ram, I had no idea how much I missed you until you came back.

Namely, that someone out there had swapped his letter of goodwill, aiming to turn Emilia and Crusch against each other.

I don't think a line or speculation like this was in the anime, which it probably should have been. Without it, it just seems like Subaru's an idiot and made a stupid mistake, but now it seems like someone is directly manipulating events behind the scenes. Personally, I'd say my money's on Roswaal if I didn't have terrible luck when it comes to gambling.

“Silence! Cease your prattle! Give that book back, right—”

“Hey, don’t shout. If you get too angry, you know—your brain’ll shake.”

...

“G...gah...! How dare you, dare you, dare youuuu! My disciple of love!!”

“Don’t gimme that, you’re the one who mixed us up! Tunnel vision! What, are you lazy?!”

HA!

Overlord was the first light novel series I read (the only other LN I'd read before was Death Note: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases and that was years ago), so naturally it's the series I tend to make the most comparisons to for the other series I've been reading. In this case, something I really like about both Ainz and Subaru is that, despite how they're presented sometimes, neither is actually stupid (though they too often suck at reading the room). They're both just in situations way over their head and they have no frame of reference for how to deal with these fantasy world situations. Subaru, like with tricking Sloth into getting attacked by demon beast or figuring out what was up with the flowers, has plenty of times where he shows he can come up with decent plans or quick thinking that can pull off a win. His flaws are based more in his own immaturity and need to grow more as a person.

Honestly, Ainz and Subaru are fun to compare because, of the LN MCs I've read so far, they both seem to get every break the other doesn't. Ainz is obvious. He's got actual power, tons of resources, and numerous people whose faith in him is absolute, while Subaru has almost nothing save for the curse and the clothes on his back and has to continuously struggle to make any difference. On the other hand, Ainz has no one in his life he can relate to or be his real self around, making him feel incredibly empty and lonely, while Subaru has attracted a surprisingly wide web of people around him whom, despite some hiccups, do genuinely believe in the real him.

I am 90% certain Emilia and Puck fighting Sloth wasn't in the anime. Well, no wonder anime-only fans have trouble liking her when you cut out nearly all of the character's best sh*t! [Edit: I was wrong. Another post pointed out it was at the end of ep 23. Like I said, it's been a bit since I saw the anime and I remembered none of this fight. Though I still stand by that LN Emilia is better than anime Emilia] Like I've said before, it's not like anime Emilia could just be replaced with a sexy lamp and nothing would be different, but compared to the LN version she really didn't get a lot to do in the anime outside of the first arc. She wants to be queen and sometimes heals people. Otherwise she was mostly off-screen or serving as Subaru's object of affection (and sometimes obsession). Just being able to fight isn't everything but Emilia here certainly feels like she has a lot more fire to her personality and does more when she appears. She's not just a nice, pretty girl for the MC to fight for.

Somehow, he’d died again. He’d probably lost it all once more.

He surrendered everything to the abyss. This was the familiar embrace of failure after he pathetically lost his life.

Look back at the world.

Look back at your failures.

Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Do not forget.

Ferris’s tear-filled voice. Wilhelm’s lament, shaking with regrets. Julius’s resolve and remorse, so great he probably gnashes his teeth over it—Don’t forget, ever. No matter how low you are, don’t ever let go.

Is this Satella saying this to Subaru? I'd assume so since it ends with the "I love you" line Subaru's been getting before he RBDs. But if so, why is she saying this to him? One theory is that she has her own regrets from her life and is giving Subaru a chance not to have the same. That assumes she is a good person and that the stories around her are wrong. Another theory, given the Witch of Envy title, is that she's insisting Subaru never let go of what's his. It's his (and hers, since he is hers) and no one else can have it. I mean, that applies more to greed than envy, I suppose, but stretching a bit you could say she'd be jealous of a world moving on without her.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Re_Zero/comments/gwjfwy/novels_first_time_read_through_light_novel_vol_8/

#re:zero #random thoughts #reddit repost

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belleandkurtbastian · 3 years

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Glee Season 1 rewatch recap

I just want to get some general thoughts out. I thought about liveblogging every episode, and I did tweet sporadically, but I think I've said most of what I have to say about Glee specifics over the past 12 years. I'm going to pull some thoughts from Jenna and Kevin's podcast "Showmance", too, as I listened to that alongside the season.

Season 1a

I don't think this is a controversial opinion: Season 1a is Glee at its purest and most consistent. It's not perfect by any means, and I'll get into that in a moment, but the purest distillation of the messages of hope and, yes, inclusion are in this first half-season. The characterisations are at their most consistent, especially as it pertains to the adults, and the overall arc felt focussed, if a little bloated at times.

But yes, it's not perfect. My main complaint about Season 1a, which WAS mostly fixed in the second half of the season, is the sheer amount of ableist language.

The tone of S1a was more dramatic than the rest of the series. Yes, there was still levity and comedy, and yes Terri and Sue were both absolutely ridiculous characters... But fundamentally, the tone was set by drama, not so much by the comedy.

Which comes back to the ableism. And other language, but the ableism is the one that sticks out the most. In the first four episodes, we get multiple uses of the word "cripple" to refer to Artie, and Rachel even uses the phrase "chomosomally challenged" at one point to refer to the football team... This turns around mostly by the time of Wheels, but I feel that RIB were leaning more on the shock factor and feeling "maybe we'll get around to actually addressing this" rather than proactively addressing it at all.

But overall, I think the tone of S1a was reasonable... And it's also the ONLY season where Will really attempts fairness in the club. Half the season is devoted to the ongoing Rachel arc of "Will don't give me everything I want", which continues through the rest of the show. But in S1a, she's actually right. Will isn't bowing to Rachel's every whim, while in the later seasons he DOES.

Season 1b

Season 1b is an interesting one. It's certainly not as polished as S1a, but it's also not gone off the deep end like the show really does by S4. I'd say it's pretty much halfway between S1a's heightened drama and S2 starting to lean more towards comedy. It's just a pretty pure dramedy, but with the usual heightened absurdity brought by Sue and the rest of the adult characters.

Tonally, it's pretty consistent. Plot-wise, I don't think it really holds up. They kind of wrote themselves into a bit of a weird corner. They set up basically every S1b plot thread in S1a. Vocal Adrenaline, Will's divorce, Will/Emma, Quinn's pregnancy... They basically left all the hard work for the second half of the season, and had to find a way to turn it around.

And I think on that backdrop they actually didn't do a bad job of it. The second half focusses much more heavily on the kids, and moves focus away from the adults, but it also suffers a little for that, because the writers weren't quite confident in their ability to write for those characters yet...

I think that of the first three seasons, 1b might be the weakest run. Maybe I'm misremembering S3, but I feel like as absurd as S3 could be, it was at least relatively consistent in its absurdity, while S1b had a lot of moments where you go "That doesn't quite work." Kevin and Jenna had the same opinion, roughly, too. There are just a lot of times in S1b where it feels like they're scrambling to tie things together.

Some more specifics overall:

Kurt and Burt

It's always the highlight of the show, and I think the fear I had was that the Kurt and Burt stuff just wouldn't hold up 11 years later... But honestly, I think it still worked.

I'm not going to pretend that everything Burt did was perfect (I've always been one of Burt's bigger critics in the fandom, from what I've seen), but my GOD Chris and Mike both sold the heart of that relationship. I had completely forgotten how well their scene with Finn in Theatricality went over, too. Burt wasn't hiding from his own past, and he was owning up to using words like "faggy" and "retard" when he was younger, but he really sold that scene.

It's tempting to think that time has marched on, but honestly... the rawness of the Kurt and Burt stories has not aged, and it is still as relevant today as it was in 2009 when it first aired.

Terri and Sue

This is basically me cribbing straight from the Showmance Glee Recaps, but Kevin and Jenna are absolutely right: Jessalyn Gilsig SET the tone of the show. Don't get me wrong, it's ridiculous and Terri's plan makes no sense... but if you watch it from the right angle, you get what Emma says about how you can feel for Terri's worries throughout the season.

But Jane also sells her part so well. It takes a little while for Sue's role to really cement itself, but by the time Jessalyn leaves the series it feels fine because Jane has really grown into the larger-than-life outsider role in the cast.

Rachel and her love interests

Rachel gets around in this season. It's not a slight against her, it's just a little jarring because so much of her plot over time is about how people don't like her... But she has three boys in just this one season. Yes, Puck was a brief thing, and she and Finn never really got going... But she has both of them AND Jesse at different points.

Of which speaking: it has been LITERALLY ELEVEN YEARS and I am still mad that they cut "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love" from 1x14 Hell-O. It's not that they needed another Rachel number on the show, or even that they needed another Jesse number. It's that I think that scene really SELLS the Rachel/Jesse relationship, and without it the relationship feels a little hollow. Which is weird, because it's Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff. That relationship is barely even acting! It just needed the background to it.

Shelby, VA, Quinn

Anyone else noticed that Shelby feels... underutilised and a little forced into this season?

The whole "Rachel finds her mother" storyline just felt a little rushed... They gave Idina several numbers in the season, because if you've got Idina Menzel you fucking USE Idina Menzel... but there was a lack of organicness to them.

This problem would ABSOLUTELY have been worse if the original episode order had been retained. 1x20 and 1x21 Theatricality and Funk were originally the other way around, and that absolutely would not have helped here. The distance from the acceptance and departure in Theatricality to the final episode, Journey, already feels like there wasn't time to let it sit in between, but if those episodes were back-to-back it would have been worse. Honestly, I think Theatricality could have done with being moved up another episode, to x19, so that the Jesse departure stuff would make more sense in terms of timing, without the whole thing feeling rushed.

Speaking of Jesse... They really shoehorned Vocal Adrenaline performances into the show, right? Like, I'm not complaining... it's just that not all of those VA performances had real plot justifications :P

And finally, Quinn...

I would have liked to have seen the Shelby/Quinn interaction play out a little longer. I think like so much in the back few episodes, it could have done with another episode of buffer. It would have been a nice bookend for the season if Quinn and Puck AGREED to give Shelby their baby BEFORE it was born, and with Rachel's blessing, rather than their one interaction being stormed through.

On to Season 2, I guess?

#glee #glee meta #glee season 1

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hockeylvr59 · 4 years

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Knight in Shining Armor || Seth Jones

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no

Authors Note: So I had this concept in my drafts to write for like a year for another player (coughcoughSeguin) but since he’s not on my good list right now and I’ve been wanting to write about Seth for a while, I decided that the concept would work great for him. This is mostly platonic but there’s kind of an underlying current of more so let me know what you think of it.

Warnings: shitty ex-friends, lingering grief

Word Count: 2,868

______

Most days you were in love with your job. Being one of the few female television broadcasters for a professional sports team was a major accomplishment and you tried to never take a day of it for granted. You were setting the stage for women in the future and that was a source of tremendous pride for you. You got to watch a sport you loved and see players that would someday be in the hall of fame take the ice. You got to travel to places that you’d probably never visit otherwise.

While the perks were numerous, there were also things that sucked.

Though most of the time the travel didn’t bother you, sometimes you found yourself sick of climbing on planes, sleeping in hotel rooms, and living out of a suitcase. Then there were the emotionally draining things like constantly being criticized by male fans because of course, a woman couldn’t possibly be competent enough to do color commentary for a major sport. Finally, there were the late nights.

Tonight was one of those days where you weren’t quite so in love with your job. You were two cities into a six-city road trip and it was that time of the month. In your haste of packing, you’d forgotten to replenish your supply of feminine products and so you’d had to rush to a drug store while praying that you didn’t bleed through your pants. After putting out that fire, you’d gotten yourself ready for the game before heading over to the arena with your co-anchor. Running behind had meant that you’d missed dinner, however, and press box food wasn’t your favorite. Setting into your seat after touching up your hair and makeup you waited for the puck to drop between the Jackets and the Sabres.

By the first intermission, the lack of food and mother nature’s wrath had left you with a burgeoning migraine. You’d searched your bag for a bottle of Advil, only to find it empty. A quick inquiry with the rest of the media during a commercial break also turned up empty. While the roller of peppermint essential oil you did have took a little bit of the edge off, no matter how many times you had reapplied it you wanted nothing more than to go lay down by the time the final horn sounded.

Usually, you stopped down at the locker room to congratulate the team, however, tonight you just needed to get back to the hotel while you still had the faculties to do so.

Once back at the hotel you changed and crawled into bed, laying in the dark in hopes that a lack of visual stimuli and quiet would make the pain lessen. You’d been laying there for roughly half an hour when there was a knock on your door that caused you to groan. When the knock sounded once more, you pried yourself out of bed and padded over to the door, peering through the peephole. Standing on the other side was Seth Jones. Curious as to why the Blue Jackets defenseman was there you flipped open the security latch before opening the door.

“Hey,” Seth whispered and your eyes furrowed both from confusion and pain. With the latter suppressing your filter words filtered out of your mouth.

“What are you doing here?” You inquired, running the hand not holding the door through your hair.

“Missed you in the locker room after the game. Saw the second intermission report and thought you could use these.” He mused, his eyes taking in your appearance more fully. It was only then that you glanced down to see the pill bottle in his hands. “Snatched these from the training room.” He admitted with a smile.

“You’re a saint Jonesy.” You admitted, your body language softening at the prospect of actually getting enough relief to sleep. Taking the bottle from his outstretched hand you sent him as much of a smile as you could muster.

“Anything for my favorite broadcaster.” He responded shrugging. “Need you back in top form for the next game.” He teased. “And migraines aren’t any fun and you look like you’re suffering pretty bad.” He added, his hands now drifting to the pockets of his suit. “Anyway...take those and get some sleep huh?” He instructed and when you nodded he turned to walk away.

“Hey, Seth…” You started. “Thank you.”

~~~~~~

After leaving Buffalo, the team had dipped up to Ottawa before flying down to Boston for a game against the Bruins. The team had a day off between the two games however and had decided to go out for the night, have a few drinks, and just relax before a tough game the following day. You’d been invited by a bunch of the younger guys and though the club scene really wasn’t your thing you’d agreed.

Dressed in a pair of form-fitting jeans and a flirty blouse you made your way through the crowd to the bar for a bottle of water. You’d been dancing with Pierre but you’d sent him to chase after a woman who had caught his eye and now you were parched. It wasn’t until you were leaning against the bar trying to flag down the bartender that you noticed that someone you really didn’t want to see was just a few spots down.

Ducking your head you prayed that he didn’t notice you, but of course, despite being short, he was suddenly at your side, calling out your name over the crowd.

You’d known Jake in high school, had been close friends and something else that you could only describe as awkward. You hadn’t dated, he’d had other girlfriends at the time but you’d definitely toed the line of appropriateness regarding your conversations. He’d hurt you badly a few years ago and you hadn’t spoken since. Honestly, talking to him now was the last thing you were interested in. You’d known he was living in Boston but what were the odds he’d be at this club the one night you were in town.

As he stood beside you, his hand fell to your arm that was resting on the bar and he was asking if he could buy you a drink. You wanted to tell him to go away, you wanted to shove his hand off of you, you wanted to insist that you were good and to go shove the drink but suddenly you couldn’t speak and you couldn’t move. In that moment you felt beyond vulnerable.

And then suddenly a warm arm draped itself around your waist and you were tugged into the side of a firm body. The second the scent of his cologne filled your nose, you relaxed against him and glanced up to see Seth’s figure hovering over you.

“Hey sweetheart, I have a bottle of water for you at the table.” He declared, tone soft as he directed the words at you but with enough volume that your unwelcome company was certain to hear it. “Josh has a story he refuses to tell until you’re there.” He added, giving you every excuse to step away from the bar.

“Uh...yeah...coming.” You agreed, turning back toward your former friend for just a second. “Sorry gotta go...the gang beckons.” Not giving him a chance to respond, you let Seth lead you across the club to the table that your group had claimed as its own. Cam Atkinson was the only one present at the table, nursing a beer as he typed furiously on his phone.

Pulled in beside Seth, you found that there was indeed a sealed water bottle waiting for you and you sighed feeling your body relax now that there was some distance between you and Jake.

“Thank you.” You murmured. It was the second time on this trip that you’d spoken the words to Seth after he’d saved you.

“Don’t worry about it.” Seth insisted. “You looked uncomfortable and no one deserves that. Do I need to go back up there and kick his ass?” He inquired and though you were certain Seth could indeed kick Jake’s ass there wasn’t any need for that.

“No, it’s okay.” You assured him, relaxing against his body as his arm settled around your shoulders. “Just a former friend that I didn’t expect to see...nor do I ever want to see again.” You sighed. Seth didn’t pry into that statement, but his fingers tracing patterns over your arm expressed that he was willing to listen if you did want to talk about it.

For the rest of the night, Seth didn’t leave your side, going as far as walking you up to your hotel room. Having Seth by your side made you feel safe and as you opened your hotel room door, you once again expressed your thanks.

~~~~~~~

The last stop on your long road trip was Winnipeg. You’d arrived around 2 in the morning and had fallen into bed almost immediately upon reaching your hotel room.

Around 4 in the morning you were jolted awake by a shrill piercing sound. Checking your phone you saw group messages from the boys saying that you all needed to evacuate the hotel immediately. With the timestamps being nearly four minutes earlier, your heart raced and you threw on the nearest clothing items you could find before sliding on your slippers.

Of course, a Jackets hoodie, thin tights, and indoor slippers were no match for the Winnipeg winter. But you didn’t realize that in your panicked state until the harsh wind whipped right through them as you made your way across the sidewalk to where the rest of the team was standing. Tucking your arms around yourself tightly, you stopped by Torts to see if he knew what was going on and how long you’d have to be outside in the middle of the night. He didn’t have any answers to give you and you sighed nodding, a yawn slipping from your throat.

Around you, all of the guys were grumbling, but you quickly noticed that they’d all had at least enough foresight to throw on more substantial clothing. And those who hadn’t...well they were Canadian and probably didn’t feel the cold anyway.

Shivering, you tried pacing around to keep the blood flowing so that maybe you wouldn’t feel the cold but it wasn’t working well. Passing a group of the guys you felt an arm reach out and tug you closer and when you looked up, Seth was gazing down at you.

“C’mere.” He mumbled, his voice showing that he wasn’t exactly happy to be woken from sleep either. “Someone forgot Winnipeg was cold.” He teased and a slight blush covered your cheeks. You could play it off as the cold though if anyone noticed, thankfully. Now stopped in front of Seth, you watched as he unzipped his coat and pulled your body against his before rezipping it as much as he could around two bodies.

With your chest pressed to his and his arms wrapped around you along with the coat, you were suddenly filled with a comfortable warmth and you burrowed yourself into his body as much as you could.

“Better?” He asked and feeling you nod he chuckled softly. “Good. Can’t have you freeze now can we?”

Thankfully all of his teammates were too sleepy to even really notice your intimate position because if they had they certainly would have chirped both of you to no end. Standing wrapped in Seth’s jacket until the all-clear was given and you were permitted to return to your rooms you couldn’t help but notice the rhythm of his breathing, the sound of his heart beating, and the way your body fit against his in spite of the height difference.

As the two of you parted, you moved to thank him but Seth just pulled you into a quick hug before retreating down the hall. It was evident that you were both too tired to say the words but that he knew you meant them all the same.

~~~~~~

Arriving home from the road trip was such a relief. You were ready to sleep in your own bed, ready for a day off. Still, as the boys chatted about what they were going to do with said day off as a group of you walked across the tarmac to your respective cars, the significance of tomorrow’s date flooded into your head and you froze.

“Y/N…” Boone stated, trying to snap you out of your haze.

“Huh?” You responded.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” He asked.

“Um...probably just running some errands…” You said, your voice cracking as you spoke. “And a stop at the cemetery.” None of the boys knew much about your personal life, certainly not nearly as much as you knew about theirs. At your admission, no one knew what to say and you said goodbye to them as you tossed your bag into your car.

By the time you’d gotten up the next morning, had cleaned yourself up and gotten dressed, had started a load of laundry, and placed a grocery order for pickup it was almost 11am. Since the forecast showed rain in the afternoon you knew that if you were going to stop at the cemetery that you needed to go now.

Heading down to your car, you paused seeing someone leaning against the hood. Anxiously stepping closer, you let out a soft breath recognizing Seth’s frame and mannerisms. Beside him was a drink holder with two cups inside and you adjusted your purse on your shoulder as you approached him.

“What are you doing here?” You questioned. Seth shrugged for a moment before shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Thought you could use some company…” He expressed, reaching to grab a cup, handing it to you. “It’s hot chocolate.” He explained and though you weren’t sure why he wanted to tag along, how long he’d been standing there or a multitude of other questions, you took the cup from him, taking a sip and letting the warmth of the drink flood through you.

Unlocking your car, you watched as Seth folded himself into the passenger seat. The drive across town was quiet, only the radio playing softly providing background noise. As you pulled your car into the cemetery, already you could feel your throat getting tight and you forced yourself to breathe, using the mental task of navigating to the right part of the cemetery to distract yourself.

With the car in park, you opened your door, turning back to reach into the center console for a stray hockey puck. Though Seth climbed out of the car as well, he just stood leaning against it as you made your way down the hillside.

It took a minute for you to find the appropriate plot, but once you had you knelt down on the cold ground, your fingers brushing over the lettering of the marker partially buried in the ground. No matter how many times you were here, this never got easier and tears quickly started streaming down your cheeks. With the ground solid beneath you, you settled to sit by the grave, your hands laying the puck down on it gently.

For the next few minutes, you talked about work, the games on this latest road trip, how you’d gotten the puck you’d brought, and what you were looking forward to with the rest of the season. At some point, you started whispering about Seth and how he was slowly invading your life, questioning whether any of your family up in heaven had thoughts on that they’d like to share.

Though you didn’t want to leave, you knew you needed to and so you said your goodbye, your until next times, and a soft ‘happy birthday’ before picking up the puck and pushing yourself to your feet. As you made your way up the hill, sobs racked your body and tears flooded your cheeks. Reaching the car, you barely even noticed Seth’s open arms as you stepped into them, his fingers tangling in your hair as he held you close. His other hand gently rubbed your back until your breathing steadied again and when you pulled back, he was offering you a handkerchief to wipe your tears.

“Do you need me to drive?” He whispered softly, not trying to push you into it but needing to ensure that you were truly alright.

“Can you?” You requested and after handing over the keys, you traded spots, sliding into the passenger seat. Seth had barely left the cemetery gates when his hand drifted down to wrap around yours and you couldn’t help but watch him as he drove. You’d never met someone who was so silently supportive, who always seemed to know exactly what you needed, and who made your heart skip a beat when he looked at you.

He was your knight in shining armor and an angel in disguise, making all of the hard things a little easier and the good things even better. The future was unclear but you were quickly learning that you wanted to face all of it with him by your side.

#seth jones #seth jones imagine #columbus blue jackets imagine #columbus blue jackets #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #hockey imagine #hockey imagines #cbj #028

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richincolor · 3 years

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Title: The Iron Raven (The Iron Fey: Evenfall, #1) Author: Julie Kagawa Genres: Fantasy, Romance Pages: 336 Publisher: Inkyard Press Review Copy: eARC provided by publisher Availability: Available 9 February 2021

Summary: You may have heard of me…

Robin Goodfellow. Puck. Prankster, joker, raven, fool… King Oberon’s right-hand jester from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The legends are many, but the truth will now be known as never before, as Puck finally tells his own story and faces a threat to the lands of Faery and the human world unlike any before.

With the Iron Queen Meghan Chase and her prince consort, Puck’s longtime rival Ash, and allies old and new by his side, Puck begins a fantastical and dangerous adventure not to be missed or forgotten.

Review: I loved Julie Kagawa’s The Shadow of the Fox series, so I jumped on the chance to read another of her books. THE IRON RAVEN was my introduction to the Iron Fey world, and even though it is apparently installment #8 in the series, it’s a solid entry point for new readers. Kagawa is careful to give enough backstory that a new reader can understand the basics of the world and the relationships without being lost, and the few flashbacks we did get were helpful in building the contrast between the past Puck and the current Puck.

A lot of your enjoyment of the book is going to hinge on whether or not you like Puck as a narrator. Personally, I was fond of Puck’s brand of snark, so his sarcastic humor and occasional foray into viciousness only added to my enjoyment rather than detracted from it. I liked his sharp banter and the dark moments where he revealed just how cruel he used to be—and still could be.

One of my favorite parts of any fantasy series is watching an author have fun with the world they’ve created, and the different realms that Puck and his companions passed through were all memorable and, like the many creatures and people inhabiting the Nevernever, often dangerous. As for danger, it can be difficult to write tricksters in battle, but Kagawa did a great job of showcasing Puck’s creativity and power whenever an action scene came up. I’d love to see some of these fights animated, honestly.

As a new reader to the series, I found the characterization outside of Puck a little on the shallow side; I’m certain long-time readers of the series gleaned a lot more depth in the character interactions than I did. We got a few references to more emotional moments regarding Puck and Ash’s rivalry or the past love triangle between them and Megan, which was helpful and gave context to some of Puck’s behavior and thoughts in the second half of the book. As it was, the characters were serviceable, and I had enough information to figure out what I needed to.

I do wish we had more time devoted to Nyx—I rather liked what we got of her and craved more. Her burgeoning romance with Puck had an interesting foundation, but it was difficult to get to know her at times. Then again, a big part of her character is the loss of her memories as a Forgotten and her tenuous connection to existence. I do hope that she will get more screen time (and more time with just Puck) in the rest of the series now that we have a lot of the getting-readers-back-up-to-speed out of the way.

Recommendation: Get it soon if you are a fan of the series or are looking for a faery adventure story. Puck is an entertaining, snarky narrator, and his adventure through the faery realm is filled with memorable locations and exciting fights. THE IRON RAVEN is a pretty good starting point for new readers, and I’m curious enough about where the plot is headed that I’ll keep my eye out for the next book.

Extras:

Twitch launch party on February 9th

Julie Kagawa talks characters: Puck

Closeup on: Julie Kagawa’s The Iron Raven

#the iron fey #the iron raven #julie kagawa

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anxiousdepressedintrovert · 4 years

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Otome Thursday

IT’S BRAM!!!!

Y’all, you have no idea how excited I was for this route/series to start. I wasn’t a big fan of Ravi.

ANYWAY

Bram Route

Episode 1 (The free one 😉)

-I really dig the beginning of the route.

-Like a land hidden from even the Elves? Nice

-Also also, I like that this series, Love and Legends, AND Reigning Passions all take place in the same universe and it makes sense. Unlike the more modern series where the crew just sticks characters in the stories to say “Hey, look, notice these characters”

-Sorry. I’m ranting

-Focusing now

-I named my MC Mari Rya

-She’s beautiful

-She’s got a little, sprite/fairy/thing named Ness

-I love them

-I only know the name of the new land because I played the Ravi short but it’s called Tallav

-Mari’s got a reputation as a researcher.

-But this is also a lifelong dream of hers.

-Ness doesn’t speak (what I’m going to call) English, but Mari understands her anyway

-Ness uses They/Them pronouns. RESPECT IT

-Magic time!

-Ness magic time!

-Mari can feel all the living things. I feel like that’s not a human thing.

-But I will reserve judgement

-She’s had a rune stone since she was a baby. Yeah, she’s def not human.

-Holy shit a bear!

-…with a shield and a spear on it’s back.

-Subtle

-The way these sprites move are fucking hilarious

-Mari said “Nope not today”

-Can’t out run a bear. What does this bitch do?

-Drop down to play dead. Cause that’s totally gonna stop a bear from chewing on your spleen

-the “bear” is able to turn her over to her back (duh)

-it turns into a man and…oh what a man

-this CG is so fucking cute!

-he’s like “Is she alive?”

-She’s like “the fuck is he doing?”

-I’m like “Squeeeee they’re both so stupid rn”

-Oh those eyes…

-I haven’t been this in love since Razi. Or Renzei.

-Oh no! headbutt. Gives me a headache just reading it.

-Fuck look at those abs.

-LVS really knows what they’re doing with these character designs

-And Mari’s being thirsty too. It’s not just me

-Whew chile, the way she describes this man. Girl,

-Thank you, Ness, someone has their head on properly

-Never mind. They’re just as thirsty

-I still wanna know how Mari can talk to them

-He knows she’s a human cause she’s wearing clothes. Good lord this series is gonna be a riot in the first couple seasons

-Oh Mari…you’re sounding very Colonizerish

-I don’t like that

-Though it is kinda cute how she nerds out

-I can see her doing this with any thing she comes across.

-Thank you, Ness. Time and Place Mari!

-Invasive is one word for it

-Not much to write.

-She’s gushing. He’s listening. They’re both hot

-oh no, not an eyebrow lift!

-from both of them!

-I can’t do this.

-This bitch just walks away from a question ‘cause she got caught staring!

-I can’t! This is me. Running away from all my problems

-Bram follows cause, y’know, stranger in the woods

-Bram likes Ness. It’s adorable

-Anthropologist=Skald? Maybe.

-Apparently rune reading is impossible, so is befriending a Puck (Ness)

-Mari is def not a human. At least not fully

-See, I feel like if she showed Bram the rune stone she carried with her, that would help bridge this gap.

-But y’know. Whatever.

-Oh they are two bull-headed people

-He’s got (understandable) prejudices against humans/bipeds

-She’s like “MY RESEARCH”

-I’m like “Girl, they’re living people. Respect their boundaries. And Dude, Learn a little”

- She’s very forceful with the fact that she ‘needs to do her research’

-It’s very Colonizerish and I don’t approve.

-Mari, You can’t prove that the Duke who hired you only wanted you to do pure research.

-Ha, Bram called her pretty

-Ohhh Mahuwin Villiage

-Cue Victor from Underworld: “YOU MUST BE JUDGED!!”

-damn he called her insidious

-Mari…honey. Going to a village, you’ll get to see how they live and see how the justice system works. Calm down.

-Of course, no one’s ever been so unwelcoming. You’ve been dealing with other humans and elves.

-Girl!

-I’m judging you so hard rn

-Whew chile that took a lot outta me

Episode 2

-Awww I do feel bad for Ness tho

-They’re scared too

-Bruh, Bram JUST said he doesn’t know what an anthropologist is. You barely related it to a Skald. Showing him your notes means nothing.

-Bram, dude, I get you’re supposed to protect but you’re seeing enemies in the wrong people. Though I get why you’d suspect her.

-The Dinae have no secrets between their tribes (I’m assuming) so there’d be no need for an anthropologist to go looking for old history.

-Also he called her cute (again)

-Ohkay. I draw the line at you accusing Mari of torturing Ness.

-Only a heartless monster would lay hands on Ness.

-I need you to think baby: WHYY WOULD NESS STAY? If Pucks are magical creatures, surely you don’t think that Ness would be foolish enough to stay with a powerless human.

-Oh. Don’t make me insult your intelligence

-Oh don’t make me

-Mari. Don’t do anything stupid. Please. He’s actually being nice. In a weird way. Taking you to be judged. Someone else would’ve just killed you

-Mari…you can’t do your job in someone else’s country without permission. To get permission, you need to go to a village.

-I’m starting to question your intelligence

-Oh good. The bull-headedness is back

-No shit it’s more than just a job! I think you would have gathered that from the fact that to enter Tallav you had to pass a BEAR statue

-Oh no not the sad face

-I know LVS is gonna use that face to get money out of me in future scenes

-Mari, you’re both stubborn. And if I had it my way, you’d’ve gone with him already

-MARI! HE’S NOT A SOLDIER!

-ARUGH

- Not the type of roleplay I thought I’d be reading in this story but sure. Have some hearts

-I wanna smack her so bad and the first season’s not over yet.

-Usually the urge to smack doesn’t kick in until at least season 2.

-She’s a record setter

-Uh oh Bram, you called her an interrogator.

-And he STILL doesn’t fix it!

-They’re both so rude

-Ok, so he gets the why.

-We’re making progress

-This woman can’t let her thirst rest for five minutes.

-I mean same but come on

-Ah! Progress on both sides!

-Still don’t like how forceful Mari is about her job. How would she feel if her job put people in danger?

-You kinda did Mari. You kinda did say “I’m going to do what I want anyway”

-Not in those exact words but enough

-My point!

Bram: You ever think that if we wanted to be bothered by any kingdoms, we would have officially contacted them

That’s my point

At the same time, Bram and his fellow Dinae have their fellow prejudice against bipeds. As I said, mostly justified but they act that they can’t adapt or change

-Mari, interest isn’t always flattering…we aren’t in high school

-Now she’s running away. From a guy that can turn into a bear

-I’m very much questioning her intelligence now.

-Cause she dumb dumb.

-And thus begins an infuriating game of human and bear

-Oh yeah Mari, cause you can totally break the hold of a guy WHO CAN TURN INTO A BEAR

-As Mari is kicking and screaming, Bram: Am I hurting you?

-LMFAOOOO

-Awww Ness trying to help.

-Bitch. He puts you down and you climb a tree. Like bears don’t climb trees?

-Thank you Ness for talking some sense into this stupid girl

-Why is she so defensive?!

-Why can’t they just give me the option of “Fine.” FOR ONCE

-Seriously Mari? If you had stumbled upon a village during your wandering that really HATED humans, the chances of them killing you are SUPER fucking high. Doing it this way is arguably a lot safer

-YO WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!!!

-That looked like a swamp deer monster from It Lives Beneath

-FUCK THAT

-RUN BITCH…FUCKING RUUUNNNN

-Why is run never an option when we are clearly outmatched?

-Oh god why does it have to look at the screen!!!

-I don’t like that

-and ewwwww they did detail on the muscles

-Yeah no shit it’s targeting Mari, Bram!

-I think that’s pretty obvious!

-Thank again Ness for saving One Stupid Bitch

-We…we get to RIDE Bram?

-I can (and will) make so many jokes about that

-I’ve already restrained myself from making Bear jokes. So, you’ll deal with that

Episode 3

-Hehehehehehehhehe

-We rode him

-Hopefully this won’t be last time

-and the next time won’t be in bear form

-Ohkay. I’m back. The chapter’s loaded

-Wait one more

-And we can use that rope for something else too

-Idk how to do the lenny face so……just imagine it

-Ok. NOW I’m done.

-Finally, a decent option. THANK YOU, BRAM

-Yeah Mari get that through your thick fucking skull. He’s a defender. He defends.

-Awwww Bram isn’t comfortable with praise. I’m gonna take every opportunity to do it now

-Mari, this is why we don’t talk shit up.

-Hehe still riding him

-Ewww that thing is back.

-Plus side?

-FIGHT SCENE

-Oh nooooo Bram’s hurt

-MARI CONTROL YOUR THIRST THE MAN IS INJURED

-Thank you, Ness! I swear they’re the only character I haven’t been pissed at

-Mari begins to nerd out over plants. Honestly same

-OMG HIS BLUSH

-GUYS. HIS BLUSH

-The stuff of nightmares was an Abberation. I like my name better so it and all its freaky brethren will be called The Stuff of Nightmares

-And Bram’s back to being suspicious. Sigh. And we were having such a nice time

-The Dinae don’t have pets and that’s the saddest thing I’ve read all day.

-Mari just realized that Bram’s been naked this entire time.

-Lol

-Oh so, if Bram trusted Mari, he’d happily tell her everything she wanted to know.

-Hmmmmmm

-I certainly can’t say no to that face. So neither can you Mari. Here. Have some hearts

-See, they say fur covered thigh, all I hear is, cuddling for the winter.

-OMG SHE COULD SQUISH HIS PAW BEANS

-IF SHE DOESN’T SQUISH HIS PAW BEANS WE’RE GONNA HAVE A PROBLEM

-Mari stahp being so thirsty. There’s a stream next to you. Go dunk your head.

-Ness is adorable and I want a plushie of them

-Oh NOQOOOWW she has a problem with riding him

-…Ok, I mean…her explanation makes sense.

-See, every Dinae does it!

-Bram is so tired of her. It’s so funny

-WAIT. THERE’S WOLVERINES

-….is one’s name Logan?

-I’ll leave now

-I’m so glad they’re starting to understand each other more. Cause I was ready to jump through my phone screen.

-Things are still tense, of course.

-Wait a fucking minute. Going through a patch of brambles saved you a fucking DAY of travel? WTF

-I’m very interested in seeing how this plays out as opposed to Ravi’s route.

-Let’s meet Chieftain Mael!!

#lovestruck #lovestruck voltage #tales of the wild #bram #adi blog #otome days

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