#is this a quote? it seems strange to me that no one has already said this.

[ineffable-suffering]

The Jane Austen Ball and why it was never about Nina and Maggie

Otherwise known as (*takes a deep breath*): A completely inflated close-up look at various dialogues and events of Season 2 that prove that the Whickber Street Traders and Shopkeeper's Association Meeting Cotillion Ball was supposed to be Aziraphale's confession to Crowley

Look, the point's been made before but that's never kept me from making it myself again, still. In fact, even I made it before, at the end of one of my other metas. But I feel like it's absolutely worthy enough to get its own soppy, way-too-long post. And I do love it so very much to write ridiculously long essays on something that could easily be condensed into a short paragraph.

So, here we go! Snuggle up, get cozy, settle in and, most importantly:

(Word count: 3.177 | Reading time: ~13 minutes)

As I already said above, I laid out a similar case in my meta about why Aziraphale is somewhat of an unreliable narrator. I'll try and recycle it here briefly, so I can further make my point.

When Aziraphale arrives back in London from his Edinburgh journey, he seems oddly happy and giddy for the fact that he just had a rather odd and threatening encounter with Shax. I explain in my other meta that this is because he just spent the last hours of his drive reminiscing on the thrilling and romantic magic show adventure of 1941 and also the fact that he just found out that Crowley has been replaced by Shax and no longer works for Hell.

Ergo: We have a hopelessly lovesick Principality at our hands, who's practically swooning over his serpent who saved him, his books and his magic show all those years ago.

Ergo:

✨This✨

Realistically, Aziraphale should probably be a tad worried about the eery encounter with Shax, in which she definitely had the upper hand on him. But well, if you spend many-a hours driving across the serene countryside (Edinburgh is about an 8-hour drive from London), pondering on one of the craziest, sticky-sweet romantic adventures of your not-life life, well ... things tend to turn a little rosy around the edges. Head in the clouds and all that. Light shades of grey!

Alright, onwards: Once the angel, filled to the very brim with fond memories and butterflies, gets out of the Bentley, he's kindly met with a face full of verdant plants and a very in-character-grumpy Crowley.

Fhwack! Way to burst the rosy bubble.

Seriously, the absolute lightning speed with which Crowley storms out to vacate the bookshop the very second Aziraphale arrives makes me giggle every time.

Let's make a first small (who am I kidding) diversion into analysing the following conversation in unnecessary detail ...

... simply because I enjoy quoting dialogue as an accurate reference in my metas. I'll also highlight certain passages I want to comment on in individual colours so I can back up my thoughts with them below. Alright, their little chinwag goes as follows:

Crowley: "They you are! I was worried something might have happened to you." Aziraphale: "No, nothing happened to me. Very uneventful journey indeed. No strange things at all." Crowley: "Good. That's what we wanna hear." Aziraphale: "Um .. everything okay with- ah.." *nods to the bookshop* Crowley: "Oh, yeah, fine. He's singing to himself. I think he must have been asleep. I heard snoring coming from his bedroom–" Crowley, to the Bentley: "Did you miss me? I bet you did." Aziraphale: "... I'm sure it did." Crowley: "So, any more clues from the mystery of the missing archangel?" Aziraphale: "Not exactly. Or, if there are, I haven't yet cracked the case. But I'm certainly hot on the trail of something." Crowley: "I'm sure you are. Oh, by the way, the whole sudden rain and awning thing was a complete washout." Aziraphale: "Sorry?" Crowley: "You know, project making Nina fall in love with Maggie. I failed, it's your go." Aziraphale: "I see. Well then, Whickber Street Traders and Shopkeeper's Association Monthly Meeting, here we come!" Crowley: "You're really hosting the meeting?" Aziraphale: "Absolutely! And I can guarantee you, it will be a night to remember."

At first glance, this has little to do with the plot of this meta but actually, it folds into my point very nicely! However, it's not time for that yet, so we'll just state the facts as they are for now and then bring them back 'round later when we need them. That being said: For the love of Someone, will these two ever manage to simply tell each other the truth of what happened instead of thinking they can protect each other by lying about it all the time? Hrmpf. As a big fan of open communication myself, I'm close to developing a stomach ulcer with the amount of false truths being spewed here. (Then again – and yes, that is another, way larger meta I'm currently cooking up – it plays so very perfectly into the whole Jane-Austen-Pride-and-Prejudice tragic miscommunication theme that this entire Season has, so I understand the point of it.)

Very uneventful journey indeed, Aziraphale, except for the fact that you were ambushed by a demon who told you she was Crowley's successor, knows about the rumors of the two of you being an item as well as what went down in 1941 (that almost had both of you exposed) and also seems to have figured out where you and your demon boyfriend are hiding Gabriel, all in the span of about a minute. No strange things at all, nooo!

And Crowley's "Oh yeah, fine" is a total lie too. Again, we see him make an absolute run for it before Aziraphale can even enter the bookshop. After all, he just once again witnessed Jim have a Gabriel-flashback, speaking of the Second Coming, while Crowley was alone with him. As fumingly angry he is with the amnesiac archangel – he's also absolutely terrified of what might happen (to him and Aziraphale) should Jim regain his memories. So, no wonder he's quick to vacate the premises after witnessing Jim's rather eery memory flashback (and was, just like Aziraphale, threatened by Shax mere moments later, lol).

But no, nothing out of the ordinary happened to either of them. Tip-top. Absolutely tickety-fucking-boo.

Alright, let's get back on track with the actual topic of this meta. Certainly hot on the trail of something, hm? At first glance, it might seem like Aziraphale is talking about the fact that Gabriel was in company of someone whenever he went to the Resurrectionist Pub. (The clue!) However, I don't actually think he is talking about that. Why? Because, and this slipped my mind too at first, he never actually follows any of this information up, does he? Yes, sure, he went to Edinburgh, found the capital-c Clue and then returned to London. But what does he do with it? Nothing. He doesn't keep investigating this hot trail because that's not the important thing he realized during his journey. No, the more important clue Aziraphale found during his trip, is that Crowley no longer works for Hell and that he is also very much irrevocably in love with him and must confess this at the earliest given chance. (The latter part isn't necessarily a new discovery for Aziraphale, but it surely is fuelled by the fact that he just realized Crowley's out of a Hellish job and simply hasn't told him yet.)

This exchange just the perfect indicator for the fact that Aziraphale, at no point during his drive back, was thinking about the Maggie and Nina mission. He has no idea what Crowley is talking about once he mentions it and seems surprised, even, that he would. Even though they just talked about it on the phone when Aziraphale was still at the graveyard. Which is another important piece of evidence because it means that the last status update Aziraphale got of Mission Lovebirds, was that Crowley had sensed an opportunity to make them fall in love – and had then hung up on him. Why is this important? Because it means that until that very point of their conversation, Aziraphale did not know that Crowley's attempt had failed! There would have been just as much of a chance of Crowley's weather miracle actually working out and Maggie and Nina already having skipped into the sunset happily ever after.

So, riddle me this:

Why would Aziraphale spend the entire ride back from Edinburgh plotting "a night to remember" (because clearly, he already had the entire Ball planned out down to a T in his head since he goes into action right away after arriving) if he didn't even know yet that Crowley's attempt had failed?

To be very clear here: We're not talking about Aziraphale driving on the M1 to London, having a silly little idea for putting on some good music, miracle-ing Nina and Maggie to dance to it and watch them confess their love–

No.

He planned an entire actual Cotillion Ball with very particular location design that involves re-arranging the entire bookshop, specifically designed individual outfits for (almost) every single attendee, topped off with a live band, hors-d'œuvre, drinks and an actual choreographed group dance.

During one car ride.

Where's the party planner Aziraphale AU? I'm waiting!

Now, sure, we know that it's still quite important for Aziraphale to convince Heaven of the faux-reason they gave for their accidental ✨25-Lazarii miracle✨. But if we're all honest, this all seems to be a tad much just to make two random humans fall in love, even for that.

Glittery ball gowns and suits? Red and gold wall curtains? A modified language filter? Bloody vol-au-vents?

Talk about over the top ...

Once we start S2E5, Crowley is still surprised at the mere fact that Aziraphale is actually planning to organize the Monthly Meeting – and he doesn't even know yet that it's gonna be the most extravagant ball-boogaloo that the Whickber Street Community has ever seen! Aziraphale wanting to organize the meeting alone, is enough to render Crowley incredulous, because Aziraphale never mingles with the other shopkeepers. He usually actively avoids them and any sort of social encounters as much as he can because he doesn't care about the bloody Christmas lights, alright?

These things seem mundane and uninteresting to him, obviously, since all he really cares about is hoarding his book collection in peace like the little hedonist he is and drawing as little attention as possible to his none-business business.

Oh, right, speaking of books:

Let's take another unnecessarily detailed look at the whole Whickber Street invitation scene:

Aziraphale realizes very quickly that he's not the only one who's quite unenthusiastic about the blessed Chritsmas lights. And despite his very persuasive methods of temptation ...

... he has to take some more drastic measurements. And those are?

That's right: Giving away his books.

I'll repeat it again, slowly: Aziraphale is willingly (!) giving away or lending his books to pretty much complete strangers to, allegedly, make two other humans strangers fall in love.

Seriously, who is that angel and what has he done with our prim, fussy, hedonistic Aziraphale that protects his books with the vice grip of an eagle carrying his precious prey?

Believe in the importance of Mission Lovebirds as much as you will, but we're talking about Mr. A.Z. Fell here who, over the past millennia, has pretty much spent every day actively working out methods to stop people from purchasing as much as a single paperback from his holy shelves.

And yet: the 1965 September Dr. Who Annual? Given away. The first edition of Expert at the Card Table that was S. W. Erdnase's personal copy? Lent away to grubby human hands to fondle around with.

Let's do another coloured dialogue diversion (don't worry, it's not as extensive as the last one):

Crowley: "You just did what I think you did?" Aziraphale: "I'm not prepared to talk about it." Crowley: "You gave away a book." Aziraphale: "I had to! Maggie and Nina are depending on me. They just don't know it yet."

Crowley backs up my point: This is a huge deal. Aziraphale does not sell his books – let alone give them away for free. We're all shocked! Flabbergasted!

And the explanation Crowley and us get just ... doesn't satisfy. Something and someone sure is depending on this Ball and doesn't know it yet. But it's most definitely not Maggie and Nina, folks.

You know for whom Aziraphale would give away his books in the blink of an eye, though?

Mhm, that's right.

This pretty old serpent.

I want to take a minute to show you the reaction again that Aziraphale has upon entering the very same magic shop him and Crowley went to in 1941 to acquire the Bullet Catch:

You ... you need a minute there, angel? You're sure looking a little ... affected.

And I mean, well, no wonder. He reminisced about that very memory four hours last night. To him, this shop is where the most turbulent, ecstatic, adrenaline-fuelled and romantic night of his life began. And it shows.

I've made my point in my other meta series about how Aziraphale is an incredibly nostalgic character. He romanticizes so many things in his memories – especially the parts that feature Crowley. So, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that he's once again willing to loosen the tight grip he has on his book collection to get the successor of Will Goldstone's Magic Shop, the shop that started it all for him, to come to his fancy Ball.

As we watch Aziraphale and his little lap dog demon pat around Soho, I'd like to take another second to point out that he goes to seven or more establishments before he even invites Nina.

... and he only does so because she starts talking to them on the street. Almost like he'd forgotten about it. Why not ask her at the very beginning? To establish whether or not he'd have to book-blackmail her too?

"Perfectly ordinary invitation with no hidden agenda of any kind", except that he's using you and Maggie as a pretence to resolve his own clusterfuck of a relationship-miscommunication Jane-Austen-style so that he can then hopefully confess his undying love to his demon not-boyfriend boyfriend.

Marvellous!

You'll forgive me another short diversion but my God, the whole exchange at the Marguerite's restaurant with Crowley literally cat-call-whistling Aziraphale over to him (and Aziraphale checking if he meant someone else first, I–)? I am weak. So, so weak and

However, this is also when we get a snippet of Crowley finally revealing the truth in place of his "Oh, he's fine"-lie earlier and telling Aziraphale that he's actually pretty scared Jim might turn back into Gabriel and smite him altogether. And Aziraphale's response is, in a cosmic sense, (remember the pink paragraph now) so hilarious:

"Have you thought of just talking to him?"

Yeah, have you? Have any of the two of you? Just thought about talking? To each other? About anything?

'pparently not. But hey, it's all good because remember what the ultimate remedy for star-crossed lovers simply misunderstanding each other is?

Bish, bash, bosh, problem solved!

Back at the ballroom bookshop, Aziraphale sends Crowley to invite Maggie in order to, in my opinion, not spoil the Ball-y surprise for him. (Inviting Maggie only now?! Wouldn't she be one of the only two guests who really should attend? Why the short notice? If she's really that important for the Ball you're planning, hm?)

On top of this, we see Nina almost not attending the Ball meeting after her partner broke up with her and Crowley being the one who coincidentally runs into her and ushers her into the bookshop before Shax and her "legion" of demons start creeping up on them. Again, if this hadn't happened by pure coincidence, Nina would have left to go home and this whole Ball would have taken place without her, rendering the apparent sole purpose of making her fall in love with Maggie useless.

Why doesn't Aziraphale care more for both of them to attend and be there? Why is he instead busy fussing over everything looking perfect and wonderful and doesn't even seem to notice that both Nina and Maggie are really late to the meeting?

Well. Well.

The answer's in the title, babes.

Alas, Crowley safely gets Maggie and Nina to join them, Mr. Brown is the only one who doesn't get a miracled outfit (fussy, petty angel, you just don't like him, do you?), Jimbriel stuns with glamour and flirt (and whatever sexually suggestive thing he does with his cheeks) and the Whickber Street Ball is a-go!

Sorry, I just had to chuck this in again because Crowley's face here absolutely kills me every time. He looks so confused, I am hollering.

And the heart eyes Aziraphale is making at Nina and Maggie now that they're actually here?

Oh, bless it, angel.

He's all like "Oh look, it's working! Jane was right! It's all going to be resolved, all the misunderstanding and quarrels! Crowley, where's Crowley–"

Ah yes, there he is.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an angel who is not listening to a single word being said right now. No, in his head, Aziraphale is already down on one knee, pouring his heart out to Crowley after they just danced the night away.

Oh, yes, right. The dancing.

Parallel much?

But well, as marvellous and beautifully romantic as her stories tend to be, it turns out that Jane Austen isn't always right after all. Because before we know it, the perfect night shatters into many-a tiny pieces (literally).

And once again, fhwack:

... the rosy bubble bursts.

Let's take one more deep breath so I can make my final point:

In S2E2, Aziraphale explains to us very exactly what Jane's Balls (hrhr) used to be about: Solving miscommunication and confessing love to one another.

During his car journey back from Edinburgh, Aziraphale:

doesn't know Crowley's Mission Lovebirds had failed

remembers 1941 and just how badly he's in love with Crowley

and also realizes that they seem to have been wildly miscommunicating for quite some time now. (Crowley didn't even tell him he basically got let go!)

So, what does maddeningly strong love plus a want to resolve all the miscommunication equal? That's right: A night to remember! A Ball to change it all! A dance, a vol-au-vent, a confession. And, ideally, a happy ever after. Because:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man angel in possession of a good fortune Jane Austen collection, must be in want of a wife demon husband.”

The Ball was never for Nina and Maggie. As a byproduct, maybe, yes. But the whole rest of the glimmer and glamour, the careful, romantic planning and set up of it all, the book-bating the other shopkeepers– that was for Crowley and Crowley only.

And oh, if only it were as easy as in the books.

*whispers* I'm sorry, I had to.

***

Your honour, the tinfoil-hat crackpot defence rests. Feel free to share thoughts (and prayers) if you want to!

Au revoir! 💗

#good omens season 2 #good omens #gos2 #go2 #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens s2 #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #my own meta #the bloody vol-au-vents made me do it #aziraphale has balls #truly #jaune austen ball #it is a truth universally acknowledged that this show is going to drive me out of my mind #azi just wanted his silly little love confession #but then he had to surrender the angle #bummer

[fangirlfrom-hell]

Exciting ||Jay Halstead x Daughter and reader

Jay has to take his daughter to work for the first time and he’s not excited about it.

For the one that voted Jay x daughter on the poll (this is not a Christmas story though)

Jay wasn’t comfortable with the idea of taking his 4 years old daughter to work, but seemed like luck was not on his side. The girl was on vacation, Y/N was on a work trip, the nanny got sick, Will was on shift and the little girl’s grandparent’s couldn’t take care of her all day long, so he had no choice. He called Voight, who with his raspy voice and without any problem said “Bring her.”

He sighed, “Ok, baby girl. You are coming to work with me today” He notified his little daughter who was sitting with her short legs hanging from the couch.

“To the police station?” Her eyes were shining bright out of excitement.

“Yea”, her dad chuckled. “Mommy will pick you up later, when she comes back home from her trip, ok?”

“Okay. I am excited!” Excited was the last feeling she learned in school and from then on she would use it for everything.

“I am excited too”, he lied, he was more nervous than anything. “Go get your backpack”, he ordered and when she was gone he muttered to himself, “I’m already running late”

It wasn’t common to take one’s son or daughter to the bullpen, but is wasn’t so strange either. Voight and Al had done it in the past with their kids; Burgess and Adam had done it with Malayla too, even Kevin had to take his little sister from time to time. This was the family Hank talked about.

Jay went upstairs with a small pink and shinny backpack with unicorn form on his arm, making a funny contrast with the gun hanging from his hips.

“Where’s the baby girl?” Adam said when he saw his friend arriving alone.

“Platt stole her from me”, he answered. He would have arrived even later if he had waited for Trudy to give her back to him. Kim smiled at the image.

“We haven’t seen her in a while”, Al peeked his head from his hidden desk to participate in the conversation, “A bit of her cheerfulness will do good to this place”

“Well, she is, and I’m quoting, “very excited” to see you all”, the proud dad smirked.

But as much excited as she was, the baby Halstead was very shy to even say good morning to them. As soon as Trudy Platt carried her upstairs, the girl ran towards her father as fast as she could.

“Why are you crying?” Jay asked in a very low voice, while sitting her on his lap.

But the one answering the question was Platt, “She started to worry when she noticed you weren’t around downstairs and then silently started crying”

Ashamed, the little Halstead girl hugged her dad’s neck and buried her face on his shoulder. A chorous of “aw” was heard around. This wasn’t what she expected, visiting the police station didn’t make her feel excited after all.

“It’s alright”, Jay kept whispering into her ear. It was only after a few minutes later that she calmed down, but even when she was acting as if nothing had happened, she was still embarrased.

Al passed by from the coffee room to his desk and handed a coockie to the girl. She hesitated on accepting it, she first turned to her dad who nodded in approval and she stretched her tiny arm to take it.

“Precauted girl. Good”, Olinsky smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Why don’t you take your colors and get to work in your coloring book, hm?” Jay said more like an order as he put her down. He couldn’t really advance in his work if she was there right beside him.

They walked to an unoccupied desk right infront of Adam. The girl climbed the chair as her dad took her belongings out of the unicorn backpack, “There you go. I’ll be right there if you need me. Remember to…”

“…be quiet, shhh” his daughter completed.

She stayed there for a while, coloring different pages. The detectives, specially Kim, would praise her artistic work whenever they had to walk by her side. She liked Kim, that woman was funny, but she couldn’t really take her eyes off of the man who had gave her the cookie: Alvin Olinsky, but he was too busy to noticed.

“Daddy”, she silently stood up an whispered, trying not to distract the people around, “I don’t want to color anymore. I want to draw”

“Uh, let me check if I have something for you to—“

“I have some white sheets in here”, Hailey opened a drawer and handed a bunch to the Halstead girl. She liked Hailey too, she had a bright smile.

“How do you say?” Her father encouraged her before going back to her place.

“Thank you, Hailssss”

She was immersed in her own world, drawing, coloring and cutting. She stood up to get closer to Adam and touched his leg to call his attention.

“How do you write ‘I love you’?” She asked the detective.

“Oh!” He took a notebook and a pen, “Very easy, let me just show you”

Jay looked up to witness the scene, altough he couldn’t hear any word they were exchanching, “Hey, sweetie”, he called out, “Let Ruz work, ok?”

“No big deal” His collegue said handing her the sheet.

A few minutes later, the little girl stood up once more to go with her father. She stretched her hand to hand him a very colorful circle of paper.

“Wow! Is this for me?” Jay exxagerated his emotion, and then melted when he read the phrase ‘I love you’ followed by a crooked heart.

With excitement, she explained it was a cup holder: “Yea, you can put your mug there”. Following orders from such a smooth voice, Jay placed his mug over the gift.

“Just what I needed” He kissed her head. When she withdrew of his side, Jay immediatly took the paper with the witten phrase and placed it in a spot where he was able to see it all the time.

Before going back to sit on her chair, the girl passed by Al’s desk and stood next to him staring, until he finally noticed.

She took him by surprise, a cute surprise, “Hey, you scared me!” That made her laugh.

“What do you like the most?” The kid asked wothout any other introduction, “Ducks or unicorns?”

Detective Olinsky took his time to answer the question. He observed that Halstead’s daughter was wearing a T-shirt full of unicorns, her pink shinny backback also had the shape of a unicorn, so he went by that, thinking it would be the correct answer.

“Unicorns, I love unicorns”

But she didn’t had the reaction he expected, instead she sadenned, “Oh! I was going to draw a duck for you”

Being in a space close to Olinsky, and paying attention to what his daughter was doing all the time, Jay listened and couldn’t help to smile to the reaction of his parter.

“Oh, well, I love ducks too!” Alvin tried to amend his error.

“A duck, then?”

“Yea, a duck!”

And she moved her tiny legs as fast as she could. Both detectives shared a look and laughed.

It didn’t pass a lot of time when the girl was next to Olinsky’s chair again, but this time he noticed. Without speaking, she handed to him the drawing of a duck happily swimming in a lake.

“What? Is this for me?” She nodded. There was something peaceful in his voice that she liked. “Thank you very much! I really love it. What’s this?” He pointed to a brown circle tha was close to the animal. The answer make him smile showing his teeth.

“A cookie”

“Well, this masterpiece deserves to be in a special place” The detective took a bit of tape and pasted the drawing where it could be seen by everyone.

Little Halstead ran to his father to tell him what just had happened.

“That’s not fair!” Adam teased her later on the day. “I want my own drawing too! I showed you how to write that phrase, you gotta remember that!”

“It will have to be another day”, Jay intervened. “Time to pick everything up, your mom’s on her way to pick you up”

“Mommy’s back?” She asked with the same bright eyes she had when realizing she was going to the police station.

“Yeah!” Her dad smirked.

“I am excited!” She stated while putting her stuff back into the backpack.

“Say goodbye, time to go. Mommy’s downstairs”

She waved her little hand to everybody in the bullpen, “Bye bye”. She even peeked her head into Voight’s office, “Goodbye, Serge”

“You are leaving already? Goodbye, little one” Hank said in a very friendly tone, “Come back soon, whenever you want”

She laughed at the idea, “I will”

It was a bit hard for her to walk down the stairs. “Do you need help?” Jay asked with his arms opened to carry her and she jumped to him.

As soon as she spotted Y/N at the desk with Trudy she yelled at her. Jay put her down on the floor when the stairs were over and his baby ran towards her mom, who picked her up in a tight hug.

“Mommy!”

“Ugh, how much I missed you” Y/N said covering their daughter in kisses.

“Me too!”

“Did the detectives threated you good?” Trudy asked, “How was your day at daddy’s work, hm?”

Wothout hesitating and with a lot of emotion, the girl answered “Oh! It was exciting!”

#jay halstead #one chicago #chicago pd #jay halstead x daughter #halstead daughter #jay halstead fic #kim burgess #adam ruzek #hank voight #alvin olinsky #hailey upton #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead x wife reader #jay halstead x y/n #jay halstead x reader!

[fearnesbells]

so about that laudna-has-no-future 4sd chat...

marisha ray has throwaway lines and that is her god given right like anyone else and truly this may mean nothing

BUT

me personally i bluescreened when marisha said "what does laudna have to look forward to, she's dead" in response to a question of would laudna rather make contact with her future or past self.

i think laudna and her evolving worldview over the course of this campaign is sooooooo interesting so thoughts under the cut

"the worst thing that’s ever happened to me has already happened."

we all remember this! this is the response that laudna gave to orym when he softly pointed out that laudna seemed like she had the most positive outlook of the group. it was a central tenet of laudna's character up until that point, that despite the darkness that coated her soul, she was probably the one with the most zest for life.

she tended to believe the best in npcs that the party encountered. she had a rat marionette that got boners and made her laugh. she was wholeheartedly devoted to imogen and never, never believed that the end was the end.

and then, when orym asked her how she accomplished that, she responds in a framing of perspective.

she was murdered by the briarwoods at twenty years old. how can anything seem awful in comparison to that?

she died, and then she got to join an adventuring party. she died, and then she got to use her strange, eerie powers for good. she died, and then she met imogen.

she has hope because she's seen the lowest possible point her life can come to, and can only climb upwards from there.

she had a hope for a future, because of this. a good future. at least one that was better than the worst thing that had ever happened to her. and that future included imogen—

"can keep you from that. can keep us from that."

she had hope.

we all know this quote. this quote is the cottagecore lesbian life that marisha spoke to in four-sided dive. but i think to look at where laudna's at now, and to understand "what does laudna have to look forward to, she's dead", we have to look at the quote in greater context.

laudna is speaking to a possible future here. but in her words she's also saying that she understands that that future might mean abandoning what they feel called to do by the gods. in this moment, she's not guaranteeing a future, she's explaining to imogen that they have a choice.

and as of now, episode 82, arrived on the moon, they've made that choice. they're orpheus. they've descended into hell, and they can't look back if they want to make it out.

it's important to note that laudna wasn't lying way back in heartmoor when she was talking to orym. the worst thing that could ever happen to her had already happened. but she was operating then on her very human understanding of the world.

since then, she's died (again), been resurrected, seen magic beyond comprehension, and surrendered herself over to the spirit of her murderer that lives in her head.

there are no rules anymore. and laudna has learned that there is always something worse.

the quiet life she talked about with imogen might have been taken from her forever. the narrative has grown teeth and it has sunk them into both her and the woman she loves.

"what does laudna have to look forward to, she's dead"

she's orpheus, yeah? we know how this story ends. her love's been called to the hell planet by fate. she won't get out without losing something.

maybe—maybe—there's still hope for that cottage together somewhere. i don't mean to rule it out entirely. but i think that laudna herself, the character, has lost all belief in that possibility at this point. and that presents such a foil to the laudna that we met in episode 1.

sometimes the tragedy comes built-in.

even if. even when.

(all quotes pulled from critical role wiki's transcripts page)

#critical role #imodna #imogen temult #campaign 3 #laudna #imogen x laudna #bells hells #laura bailey #marisha ray #liam o'brien #critical role spoilers #4sd #4 sided dive #4sd spoilers #four sided dive #orym of the air ashari #cr orym #jackie holds gently #jackie loves the lesbian witches #southern gothic #southerngothic

[topaz-mutiny]

I think the fans are underestimating how differently people can process things.

I am consistently seeing posts say "Ashton/Tal were repeatedly warned the shard was not for them/will 100% kill them", when this was absolutely not the case, and, more importantly, it is very likely for groups of people to completely misinterpret the warnings. Even if they've known each other and loved each other for a decade.

I certainly thought the warnings were not clear or frequent enough so I was shocked like lightning in the latest episode that they were meant to be absolute death flags.

Please note that I'll mostly refer to the fictional characters, I don't want to bring the people behind the characters too much into this.

First, I would like to point out, the show takes place over weeks and months with plenty of breaks and interruptions. That is plenty of time and opportunity for memories to get faded, muddled, crossed-over with other memories, etc.

The "warnings" happened two weeks to a month ago. And even when they were fresh on the cast's mind, here are the warnings verbatim (bold is my emphasis):

But be warned, holding the strength of the two in one vessel might sunder it. You bear the dormant strength of the empress. Find and bestow the might of the emperor.

- Evontra'vir, episode 74, aired October 5th. The conversations move on to unrelated things with no followup.

Ashton: He also said it might be dangerous for these two shards to intermingle. Or he didn't say dangerous, he said that-- it could destroy me. Orym: --A chance the vessel could break. Laudna: --The vessel <air quotes> could break. Fearne: Wasn't there something if you put them together with the right thing that it'll be okay? Ashton: It might come together and be okay, yeah. -- Dancer: Maybe if it were to meet one of its own ilk, it could awaken. Allura: What you said as a point of warning likely is true. To have both within a singular vessel, it's possible one could survive, but it's also highly possible that it would rend you into a thousand pieces. -- Allura: We're in a strange area of experimentation and unknown knowledge. -- (after finding out Ashton has a fascimile of a Luxon beacon in their brain) FCG: So he's got two things in him or them? Allura: It would seem, which is why I'm a bit--Well, you're either the greatest weapon we could hope for in this time, or will be our end. I couldn't tell you. Orym: Boy, maybe we don't add a third thing. Ashton: I was put together by bits and pieces. This was not an intentional thing and it, I honestly shouldn't have survived it. It was, literally, I was put together with junk. Allura: In an odd way, your fragmented nature might be what keeps all of this in check. ... Perhaps we don't put another powerful entity within your form.

- Various, episode 76, aired October 19th.

To me, these warnings were not clear in the slightest.

To me, these warnings were interspersed with so many words like "possible", "might", and "chance" that I completely misinterpreted the situation as "For Ashton it is dangerous but doable" instead of "The Game Master is telling you Ashton's character sheet will be ripped up."

This is the problem with using in-character voices and using descriptors that imply chance or flexibility. They can drastically weaken the meaning of a phrase such that people like me will mistake it for something else.

Because that's how my brain works. "May", "chance", "perhaps" suggest to me a reasonable set of odds for an action and does not come across as the grave warning a game master would want.

And as a reminder, these muddled warnings were weeks apart and weeks away, which can make remembering the meaning even worse if you've already misinterpreted them. That's why I was 100% on board with Ashton taking the shard. It seemed reasonable but dangerous, so when Matt said "I warned you." in that grave tone and with that grave look I was thrown for a loop. I went "oh no! those were serious warnings!?" and the panic started setting in.

Also a contributing factor was the pressure and lack of communication from Bells Hells.

Fearne did not want the shard, and finally stated that thought aloud to Ashton. For Fearne and Ashton, that meant the only choice left was Ashton, because, for one reason or another, the 5 other people in Bells Hells repeatedly assumed and pushed the shard onto Fearne and wrote themselves out of the equasion. FIVE characters absolved themselves of being active participants. Once the idea of Fearne came to mind and this Emperor Fearne/Empress Ashton/Callowmoore shipping dicotomy, Bells Hells just stopped talking about it and never once considered if any of them should take the shard should Fearne refuse.

So... yeah that's how my brain works.

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #c3e77 #ashton greymoore #fearne calloway #bells hells #evontra'vir #taliesin jaffe #matthew mercer #communication breakdown #tl;dr Bells Hells needs to talk to each other more instead of just assuming how things will be #do you want explosions and dead PCs? that's how you get explosions and dead PCs. #people will think differently and can misinterpret what you say #even this loving group of 8 people can misinterpret each other despite being together for like a decade #tbh I thought the shard going to Orym would've been ideal #I might repost this for the Monday crew idk

[thesiltverses]

I don’t know who types up the ask answers on this blog but to whoever’s reading this: how do you all feel about being alive and sentient? What keeps you going, what purpose propels you through this chaotic void? What do you think (or hope) waits for you after your inevitable end? What do you think constitutes a life well lived?

I'm going to answer this in the most wayward and stupidly overlong manner possible, because the previous ask had me thinking about puppets, and I was already mid-way through writing up a book recommendation that's semi-relevant to your questions.

Everyone (but especially people who've enjoyed The Silt Verses and all the folks on Tumblr who loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke) ought to seek out Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

Riddley Walker is a wild and woolly story set in post-apocalyptic Kent, where human society has (d)evolved into a Bronze Age collective of hunter-gatherer settlements. Dogs, apparently blaming us for our crimes against the world, have become our predators, hunting us through the trees. Labourers kill themselves unearthing ancient machinery that they cannot possibly understand.

A travelling crowd of thugs led by a Pry Mincer collect taxes and attempt to impose themselves upon those around them with a puppet-show - the closest possible approximation of a TV show - that tells a mangled story of the world's destruction, featuring a Prometheus-esque hero called Eusa who is tempted by the Clevver One into creating the atomic bomb.

Riddley himself, a twelve-year-old folk hero in-the-making surrounded by strange portents, ends up sowing the seeds of rebellion and change by becoming a conduit for the anti-tutelary anarchic madness (one apparently buried in our collective unconscious) of Punch 'n' Judy.

It's a book in love with twisted reinterpretation, the subjectivity of interpretation, buried or forbidden truths coming back to light (the opening quote is a curious allegory about reinvention and cyclical change from the extra-canonical Gospel of Thomas, which is a good joke and mission statement on a couple levels at once) and human beings somehow stumbling into forms of wisdom or insight through clumsy and nonsensical attempts to make sense of a world that is simply beyond them.

It rocks.

The book starts like this:

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later.'

Riddley's devolved language - a trick which has been nicked/homaged by many other works, most notably Cloud Atlas and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome - is a masterwork choice which may seem offputting or overwhelming at first, but which has its own brutal poetry and cadence to it, and ultimately which makes us slow down as readers and unpick the wit, puns, double-meanings and playful themes buried in line after line.

(Even those first five sentences get us thinking about cyclical change, ritual and myth in opposition to the dissatisfactions of reality, and 'tern' to paradoxically indicate a rebellious change in direction but also an obedient acceptance of inevitable death.)

In one of my favourite passages in literature and a statement of thought that means a lot to me, Riddley has been smoking post-coital weed with Lorna, a 'tel-woman', who unexpectedly declares her belief in a kind of irrational, monstrous Logos that lives in us, wears us like clothes, and drives us onwards for its own purpose:

'You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.' I said, 'What thing is that?' She said, 'Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its lookin out thru our eye hoals...it aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and shelterin how it can.' 'Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatise it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tel you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.' I said, 'Lorna I dont know what you mean.' She said, 'We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.' I said, 'Whats it afeart of?' She said, 'Its afeart of being beartht.'

While Hoban is, I think, deeply humanistic to his bones and even something of a wayward optimist, the notion of human beings as helpless and ignorant vessels, individual carriers - puppets, if you like - for an unknowable and awful inhuman power-in-potentia and life-drive that lacks a true shape or intent beyond its own continued survival (even when that means destroying us or visiting us with agonising atrophy in the process) conjures up the pessimism of Thomas Ligotti, another big influence on our work and a dude who was really into his marionettes-as-metaphor.

Let's go to him now for his opinion on the thing that lives beneath our skin. Thomas?

Through the prophylactic of self-deception, we keep hidden what we do not want to let into our heads, as if we will betray to ourselves a secret too terrible to know… …(that the universe is) a play with no plot and no players that were anything more than portions of a master drive of purposeless self-mutilation. Everything tears away at everything else forever. Nothing knows of its embroilment in a festival of massacres… Nothing can know what is going on.

Curiously, both Ligotti and Riddley Walker have appeared in the music of dark folk band Current 93, whose track In The Heart Of The Wood And What I Found There directly homages the novel and ends with the repeated words,

"All shall be well," she said But not for me

These words, in turn, hearken back to Kafka's* famous reported conversation with Max Brod:

'We are,' he said, 'nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that rise in God's head.' This reminded me of the worldview of the gnostic: God as an evil demiurge, the world as his original sin. 'Oh no', he said, 'our world is only a bad, fretful whim of God, a bad day.' 'So was there - outside of this world that we know - hope?' He smiled: 'Oh, hope - there is plenty. Infinite hope, just not for us."

So, we walk on.

We carry this thing that's riding on our backs, endlessly bonded to it, feeling its weight more and more with every passing day, unable to turn to look at it. Buried truths come briefly to life, and are hidden from us again. Perhaps they weren't truths at all. We couldn't stand to look the truth directly in the eyes in any case.

If there is hope, it's for the thing that looks out from our eyeholes, which thinks us but cannot think like us. We'll never get to where we're going, and the thing will never be born. There's no hope for it. Perhaps we don't want it to win anyway. It's nothing, and the key to everything.

The Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas says:

'When you see your own likeness, you rejoice. But when you see the visions that formed you and existed before you, which do not perish and which do not become visible - how much then will you be able to bear?'

Kafka, writing to his father, begins by expressing the inexpressibility of his own divine terror:

You asked me why I am afraid of you. I did not know how to answer - partly because of my fear, partly because an explanation would require more than I could make coherent in speech…even in writing, the magnitude of the causes exceeds my memory and my understanding.

Kafka concludes that while he cannot ever truly explain himself, and that the accusations in his letter are neat subjectivities that fail to account for the messiness of reality, perhaps 'something that in my opinion so closely resembles the truth…might comfort us both a little and make it easier for us to live and die.'**

It doesn't bring comfort to Kafka, whose diarised remarks both before and after the 1919 letter make it clear that he views his relationship with the things (people) that birthed him as an endless entrapment that prevents him from attaining any kind of self-actualisation or even comfort, since he cannot escape their influence or remember a time before them:

I was defeated by Father as a small boy and have been prevented since by pride from leaving the battleground, despite enduring defeat over and over again.

It's as if I wasn't fully born yet...as if I was dissolubly bound to these repulsive things (my parents).*** The bond is still attached to my feet, preventing them from walking, from escaping the original formless mush. That's how it is sometimes.

Samuel Beckett returns again and again (aptly) to this pursuit of a state of true humanity and final understanding that is at once fled and unrecoverable, yet to be born, never to be born, never-existed, endlessly to be pursued, pointless to pursue. From the astonishing end sequence of The Unnameable:

alone alone, the others are gone, they have been stilled, their voices stilled, their listening stilled, one by one, at each new-com- ing, another will come, I won’t be the last. I’ll be with the others. I’ll be as gone, in the silence, it won’t be I, it’s not I, I’m not there yet. I’ll go there now. I’ll try and go there now, no use trying, I wait for my turn, my turn to go there, my turn to talk there, my turn to listen there, my turn to wait there for my turn to go, to be as gone, it’s unending, it will be unending, gone where,where do you go from there, you must go somewhere else, wait somewhere else, for your turn to go again

I’m not the first, I won’t be the first, it will best me in the end, it has bested better than me, it will tell me what to do, in order to rise, move, act like a body endowed with despair, that’s how I reason, that’s how I hear myself reasoning, all lies, it’s not me they’re calling, not me they’re talking about, it’s not yet my turn, it’s someone else’s turn, that’s why I can’t stir, that’s why I don’t feel a body on me, I’m not suffering enough yet, it’s not yet my turn, not suffering enough to be able to stir, to have a body, complete with head, to be able to understand, to have eyes to light the way

From Thomas' Jesus:

When you make the two one, and you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the above as the below, and if male and female become a single unity which lacks 'masculine' and 'feminine' action, when you grow eyes where eyes should be and hands where hands should be and feet where feet should stand and the true image in its proper place, then shall you enter heaven.

Tom's Jesus makes a particularly Gnostic habit of both insisting that the hidden will be revealed and demonstrating the impossibility of attaining a state where the hidden ever can be revealed. Contrary to C.S. Lewis, we will never have faces with which to gaze upon the lost divine and the mysteries that shaped us, and crucially, as Christ puts it, we would not be able to bear the sight of ourselves if we did.

We will never become the thing that's riding on our backs.

Jesus again:

The disciples ask Jesus, 'Tell us how our end shall be.' Jesus says, 'Have you found the beginning yet, you who ask after the end? For at the place where the beginning is, there shall be the end.'

The Unnameable:

I’ll recognise it, in the end I’ll recognise it, the story of the silence that he never left, that I should never have left, that I may never find again, that I may find again, then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place, the silence, the end, the beginning, the beginning again, how can I say it, that’s all words, they’re all I have, and not many of them, the words fail, the voice fails, so be it

The final passage of The Unnameable, which often is hilariously shorn and misinterpreted as an inspirational quote about how if you don't succeed, try again:

all words, there’s nothing else, you must go on, that’s all I know, they’re going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they’re going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on. I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know. I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on. I’ll go on. †

We bear this thing that's riding on our backs. We'll never get to where we're going, and the thing will never be born. If it was born, it'd be too terrible for us to bear. There's nothing riding on our backs.

It will never speak us into being.

We keep on calling out into the silence, we keep trying to explain or understand the thing that's riding on our backs, searching for a way to birth it before we die. Our words about the thing are crucial, and they're meaningless, and they're all we have, and they're nothing at all. We cannot name it and we cannot express it, but we cannot stop trying, and we will keep turning back to our words about the thing, obsessing over them, tearing them to pieces, putting them back together.

I'm fumbling at something I can't think or say, but fumbling is all we're capable of. There could be beauty and meaning and comfort in the fumbling, but it's also vain, and foolish, and pointless, and we're lying to ourselves about the beauty and the meaning and the comfort, and we're indulging ourselves pointlessly by going on and on about the pointlessness of it. Nothing can know what's going on. We will never get close enough to understand without being destroyed.

Thomas' Jesus again, warning those who seek to reveal what's hidden:

He who is near me is near the fire.

Riddley Walker, reflecting on the Punch puppet's inexplicable desire to cook and eat his own child:

Whyis Punch crookit? Why wil he al ways kill the baby if he can? Parbly I wont ever know its jus on me to think on it.

If you got to the end of this, congratulations: but the above is honestly the most appropriate patchwork of what I believe, what propels me, what I feel.

As for what comes after life, I think it's fairly straightforwardly a nothingness we are tragically incapable of fully knowing or accepting - it's Beckett's unimaginable and unattainable silence, a silence that his characters' voices keep on shattering even as they cry out for it.

-Jon‡

*I can't remember if Kafka makes prominent reference to Czech puppets in his work, which is interesting in its own right given the thematic relevance (the protagonist in The Hunger Artist is perhaps a kind of self-directing puppet show?).

However, Gustav Meyrink - who some unsourced Google quotes suggest was pals with Czech puppeteer Richard Teschner - did write a strange little story, The Man On The Bottle, about an audience watching a 'marionette show' who are too wrapped up in performances and masks to interpret the reality that they're actually watching a human being suffocate to death.

**Thomas Ligotti: "Something had happened. They did not know what it was, but they did know it as that which should not be.

Something would have to be done if they were to live with that which should not be.

This would not (be enough); it would only be the best they could do."

***Beckett's Malone Dies actually kicks off with a related sentiment:" I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there...In any case I have her room. I sleep in her bed. I piss and shit in her pot. I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more."

† I don't necessarily align myself in humour with Ligotti on a lot of this stuff but I imagine he would recognise both Beckett's writing and Kafka's frustrations re explaining the causes of his hatred for his father as sublimation: finding artistic and philosophical ways of sketching the inexpressible horror and uncertainty of our existence in order to reckon with it at a remove without destroying ourselves. A higher form of self-deception, but self-deception nevertheless.

‡Muna's more of an anarcho-nihilist, I think.

#long fucking post just to say 'i don't know'

[r0semultiverse]

Mr. 6 made you do a good show to be released?? 👀 um....

This is already giving serious eye vibes.

A whole show dedicated to public humiliation?

The Mr. Bonzo suit started moving??? 👀 Serious stranger vibes. 🤡

"It actually became a sort of ritual"

I've seen people being like "don't cross tag" but buddy... the writing cross tags itself here I mean c'mon! 😂 Something something ritual of the stranger- okay, I'll keep listening!

Hey, what's with the music?? Hey, who is Terrance Menki???👀

"The police said there were eleven bodies in total and his wardrobe was full of all sorts of homemade costumes." BRO IS ACTUALLY MAGNUSPOD WILLIAM AFTON-

"It certainly had a profound effect on the Mr. Bonzo brand." Oh I'm sure it did, holy fucking shit. 👀

Oh, me using this image is rather ironic now.

"In a lot of ways I’m more his prisoner now than I ever was on my show." WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT? 👀

"The witness statements from three murders over the last five years that claim a person in a Mr. Bonzo costume was at the scene? Do you think there could be a copycat?" Has the fear of clowns manifested as an actual clown-guything?

"Don’t contact us again." "Us?" "Why am I still trapped dealing with all this this- Why won’t he let me go?! Why-" So Mr. Bonzo is absolutely a clown cryptid of sorts with some sort of hold over Nigel.

Oh no, Gwen's about to fuck around & find out, isn't she? 👀

Hey, is Colin still himself & is he supposed to be back?

Hmm, okay, I guess that's him (hopefully).

"Maybe don’t tell them I’ve been on their terminals. They’ll only get the wrong idea." "If Lena asks, I wasn’t here." Seems like everyone's got their own little secret investigations going on, fun! This can only go well! 🙃

One of the episodes absolutely no one shows up to work except Lena is there & is like "where the fuck did everyone go?"

"Time to get some new hires again I guess."

Let's go!! Ruin exploration gang!!

"Like, it’s Saturday night and I’m choosing to hang out in a hole with you. A wet hole. And not the good kind either."

Alice with the absolute best quotes. lmao

That sounds like something with giant wings like a bat or some sort of cloth flapping in the wind. Let's hope it's the latter!

Oh a rusty old filing cabinet! Wait tetanus- 😭

"That carved floor in the big atrium – I don’t know what’s going on with that." Ah so we're just gonna breeze past that then. 😶

These are probably the remnants of old avatar creation test areas like mentioned in the Gerry & Gertrude episode. I'm just assuming here.

A key? Big find! Let's go!

AS I WAS SAYING-

Gwen, it was nice knowing you. 🫡

"Now get out of his house."

Archivist! 👁👄👁

"symbols of ancient otherworldly power"

Wait could this be a timeline where this universe's Jane Prentiss actually did manage to invade the building & succeed? I'm thinking out loud.

21:10 that sounds like critters, insects specifically 👀

"I have memories of weird stuff I saw here, but no context. I want to know what was happening, why they chose us… why they didn’t choose me. Maybe find the bit where everything started to go wrong." I am so captivated & intrigued please recount said memories to us- I mean Alice so we can learn more. Please. 👀

EXCUSE ME, WHO THE FUCK WAS THAT?!? WHO IS "[ERROR]?"

WHY DO THEY SOUND DISTORTED AS FUCK?? ARE THEY FROM THE PRIME TIMELINE OR IS THIS A NEW THING?

ARE WE GAZING OUR EYES UPON A WRETCHED THING FROM THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES?!

edit:

Is Lucia Wright an avatar of The Flesh now (in this universe or from the original timeline somehow)? Because it sure fucking sounds like it! 👀 Well, at least that key was put to good use! 😂

Also, supposedly Mr. Bonzo is a reference to Mr. Blobby.

Gwen, I'd be quaking in my boots too. That thing is terrifying!

Late observation but this universe & story seems to focus a lot on the cryptids & I like the direction it's going in! Loving this plot of cryptid hunters, childhood avatar experiments, a strange institute where our main character has past trauma, & just all of it is so good! 💜

Amazing episode, 10/10, I was at the edge of my seat the entire time! 💜 That Bonzo scene & the sound design were absolutely horrifying, thank you! The ending too! 🔥

#nigel dickerson if you need help from mr. bonzo or mr. six please blink twice omg #what if bonzo & six are actually the same creature or entity of sorts? #someone keep an eye on Colin; I'm worried about him #that carved floor in the big atrium is gonna come back into importance I just know it #so Lena uses mr. bonzo as a hitman crytpid of sorts... & now Gwen is exposed to the occult #this episode is a lot... holy crap #these episode do not miss; oh my gods; hit after hit; every time! #worm tracks made me think of jane prentiss; I just made the connection #did lucia wright become an avatar of the flesh & invade this world or is she a left over experiment of the magnus institute #I can only hope Gwen Bouchard will tell the others about wtf she saw (likely against Lena's wishes) #tmagp liveblog #mine #op #tmagp 10 #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tma spoilers #tma #the magnus protocol #the magnus archives

[anjuyn]

I remembered another interesting thing, so.

Here's how other characters of the game describe Sakuma Rei in the plot and events (well, the ones I remembered):

Hokuto Hidaka said that next to him, he involuntarily relaxes and trusts him, because Rei reminds him of his grandmother (it's both cute and funny heheh)

Midori Takamine mentioned that in the presence of Rei, he feels calmer than usual, and "I have high hopes for you" from Rei does not make Midori feel burdened, but, on the contrary, inspired.

Ogami Koga (do I even need to talk about him lol) considers Rei his main role model, Koga has literally partially adopted his old manner of speech and behavior, carries with him a guitar that Rei gave him once (and will protect it with his life). Despite the disappointment that Koga felt when he saw exhausted Rei in the third year (it was not disappointment, but concern, in fact), he still admires him and looks up to him. And Koga is also afraid of Rei, when Rei in anger. For the most part, none of this was said out loud, but the most important and only idol for Koga is Rei and it will always be so.

Kaoru Hakaze calls Rei strangely helpless in everyday life (and he's right!), but, in addition, he once expressed his concern about the fact that Rei seems to be wasting his limitless abilities to work as an idol, although he could work in absolutely any field and achieve great success everywhere.

Adonis Otogari deeply respects Rei, although he finds that he sometimes does very strange things. Adonis is also grateful to Rei for taking care of him when he was forced to change his place of residence, as well as for the fact that Rei explained many things to him, helped him with the flight, with adaptation to a new place and did not leave him alone.

Aoi twins are very grateful to Rei for staying by their side during their most difficult times and, always smiling, allowing them to be in the music club without demanding anything in return. And Yuta also uses Rei as a reference to describe a "cool" person.

Hibiki Wataru considers Rei his best friend (i'm crying, platonic WataRei rule the world) and deeply admires his abilities. He also resented (jokingly) Rei for always being kind of easy on their competitions, because he often won.

During the War, Eichi Tenshouin said that Rei loves people too much, that he would be "poisoned and killed by love", trying to please and help all the people around. (What he says about Rei at the moment, I can't say, despite the fact that they are roommates. I know this character so poorly, please forgive me ˙◠˙).

Hasumi Keito described Rei as a very charming and beautiful boy (as a child), whose intelligence was able to make adults trust him, that he could easily and easily refute and explain any idea or assumption as if he had known about it for a very long time. It was as if Rei was "nullifying" the abilities of Keito and others, as if Rei shouldn't have lived so long, because he already knew more than any adult since childhood. And also, both as a child and now, Keito cannot fully understand Rei's train of thought, although he tries.

In general, to summarize, a lot of people mentioned that they were grateful to Rei for what he did for them, and also said that at first he created a frightening impression, but later they began to feel very calm and comfortable next to him.

Basically, this is because Rei is interested in the inner world of every person he meets (that's his quote, by the way), he consciously strives to understand and know everyone he talks to and never wants anything bad to anyone, even on a subconscious level. And he is always sincere when he compliments and honestly accepts someone else's gratitude.

Well, as you already understood, this is just another post "love Sakuma Rei, please. He is the kindest, nicest person in the world".

#ensemble stars #enstars #rei sakuma #i love him so so so much #*sobs* #I'm so proud when someone says something nice about him♡ #my boy deserves it

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

wait when has yoko mentioned it was one sided :OOO srry im a bit new to the fandom has this been verified?

Don't worry about being new, anon! However, the fact you happen not to know this is.... Interesting to me. (as in it may be indicative of how certain quotes are presented)

Here's the full infamous "immoveable heterosexuality" passage from Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life (2008):

As mild and oblique as the comment* was, it seemed to cut John to the heart. On top of the questionnaire inside the McCartney album and the lawsuit, it was like the tipping point between a divorcing couple that turns love into savage, no-holds-barred hostility. Indeed, John’s wounded anger was more that of an ex-spouse than ex-colleague, reinforcing a suspicion already in Yoko’s mind that his feelings for Paul had been far more intense than the world at large ever guessed. From chance remarks he had made, she gathered there had even been a moment when—on the principle that bohemians should try everything— he had contemplated an affair with Paul, but had been deterred by Paul’s immovable heterosexuality. Nor, apparently, was Yoko the only one to have picked up on this. Around Apple, in her hearing, Paul would sometimes be called John’s Princess. She had also once heard a rehearsal tape with John’s voice calling out “Paul … Paul …” in a strangely subservient, pleading way. “I knew there was something going on there,” she remembers. “From his point of view, not from Paul’s. And he was so angry at Paul, I couldn’t help wondering what it was really about.”

*referring to the lyrics "That was your first mistake / You took your lucky break and broke it in two" from Paul's song Too Many People

Caveat: Yoko does not know everything and obviously had a much better window into John's feelings than Paul's, but I struggle to understand why she would make this specific point if she believed Paul had reciprocated. It's not clear to me what chance remarks John actually made so it's possible that if he for example just said "Nothing happened" Yoko then concluded Paul didn't feel the same way. A lot is possible here, since we don't know what John said that indicated this to her.

(Also it's strange to me how the immoveable heterosexuality line is sometimes talked about as if Paul is the originator of that phrase. Either Yoko or (IMO more likely) Philip Norman coined that.)

#ask #anon #jp speculation #yoko #jpy #ref

[projectcaramel]

He Finds Fanfic Of Himself You Saved - Obey Me! x Reader

Lucifer

You can feel yourself burning up as you look at Lucifer’s figure, curiously scrolling through the fanfiction you’d left open on your trip to the bathroom. 

“Lucifer!” you call, and the eldest demon brother barely flinches as he turns his eyes away from the fanfiction you’d been reading to direct them towards you instead. “Is that your D.D.D.? No, I don’t think it is, so return it.”  You hold out your hand, and, blissfully, he returns it without a word. You ache to ask him what on earth is going through his head, but at the same time, you really don’t want to know. 

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that we’re planning on taking a day trip to Arcadia Park in a few days. Afraid my curiosity overtook me when I saw my name.” He smirks, and you nervously swallow as he steps forward. “Don’t look so anxious. I already knew that you had a crush on me.” Inexplicably, you have the strong feeling that he’s lying. “I don’t particularly care what you read in your free time, but,” He pulls you close, his eyes dancing with a sadistic mischief. “If you want me to do all those things, then ask me. And yes,” he chuckles. “That does include your NSFW collection.” 

“Wha— I was only gone for a few minutes! How did you—” 

“I read very quickly,” he says sweetly, giving you a lasting squeeze with his arm before he leaves you, alone and flustered, in your room.

    

Mammon

“Er... Mammon, whatcha got there?” you ask the avatar of greed, and he quickly hides your tablet behind his back as he turns towards you, his fingers noticeably tightening on his drink. 

“A smoothie?” he says, pointedly avoiding your eyes. “Wh-What’s that look for? I didn’ do nothin’ wrong!” 

“Mammon,” you sigh. “Were you going to sell my tablet?” 

“O’course not!” he protests, although his embarrassed flush betrays him as he scratches the back of his head. 

“You saw the fanfictions, didn’t you?” 

“W-Well, it’s only natural that you would fawn over the Great Mammon!” he replies, scratching his cheek. “Of c-course you have a few fanfics of me saved on your account!” Although he’s putting on airs, you can’t help but feel that he’s actually touched—maybe that’s because his ears are flushed and he seems even happier than usual. Adorable tsundere idiot. 

“Just give me my tablet back,” you request, holding out your hand, and he hesitates before he says:

“Hey, your wish is my command, baby.” He just... You find yourself laughing as you take your tablet back, even as Mammon protests, getting flustered. He quoted one of the fanfics in your library, and while he said it boldly and flawlessly, you can’t help yourself. “I swear to... stop laughin’!” 

“Mammon, c’mere,” you chuckle, and you kiss his cheek. “I’m looking forward to other lines you want to imitate.” 

Levi

Levi has been acting strangely for weeks, being weirdly sensitive to anything you say and frequently jumping whenever you do anything—including simple things like walking into his room asking if you can play one of his games. Frankly, it’s been getting on your nerves. 

So, you finally ask Levi what on Earth his problem is. 

“Well... it’s... um... Do you want to see my new body pillow?”

“Out with it, Levi,” you interrupt impatiently as he looks frantically for something else to distract you. “And don’t avoid the topic.” Levi finally looks back at you and lets out a disgruntled sigh. 

“...Sorry, it’s just... I couldn’t believe it when I saw... in your browsing history...” 

“Wait, wait, you went into my browsing history?” 

“I know, I know!” he rambles. “It really wasn’t cool, but I was so mad when I thought you took over my Zaramela stan account, so I had to try confirming it, but... well...  I ended up finding your x readers instead...” 

“Levi!” you burst, and he turns red with embarrassment. 

“I’m sorry! It’s just... me! Me! Who simps over me!? Who reads that kind of spicy—” You press your hands to Levi’s mouth, and you can feel your own face is the same temperature as his. A muffled “sorry” is mumbled against your palm. “Um... anyway, I didn’t really want to upset you, and I didn’t really know how to react at first, so...” Levi ducks his head, hiding from you under his long bangs. “Wh-What I mean to say, is, well... I saw something you didn’t want me to see, so, like, if you want I can... show you the fanfics I have saved...” Oh Levi... “Uh, also...” He hesitatingly meets your eyes. “We can... um...” The seconds pile on before Levi breaks down into an incomprehensible mess, and you eventually have to let him off the hook as you suggest playing Love X Chori$$. Though, that isn’t before you give him a tentative kiss on the cheek that sends him smiling for the rest of the day.     

Satan

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up,” Satan says, and you can’t help but feel a sense of foreboding as you put down your drink. Did he find out that you’d accidentally torn the page on one of his books?

“Go on,” you prompt, deciding that it’s your own fault if he gets mad. 

“Well, when you showed me that story on your account earlier... I found myself reading through all of the fanfiction you have bookmarked.” You’re glad you put down your drink, because you would have dropped it. 

“That’s— Um—” 

“Wait, calm down,” Satan quickly urges, making a gesture for you to stay sitting. “I realize I’m in the wrong for reading all of them—”

“All of them?” you choke, your face burning, and he nods. 

“They were all good reads, so...” He coughs, a blush sinking into his face, as if remembering something he read. “A-Anyway I wanted to apologize for invading your privacy.” You’re about to wave him off when he stands up, walking towards you as he picks something out of his jacket and hands it to you. It’s a piece of paper, neatly folded up with Satan’s writing on it. “I wrote my own fanfiction,” he explains, his face still pink as you look at the title. “It’s told from my point of view.” 

“Cats and You” the title reads, and you find yourself enjoying it as he urges you to read it. It’s adorable and sweet, and at the very end, Satan wrote: “I saw your secrets, so I thought I’d give you mine.”

    

Asmo

“Awww, you’re so sweet~” You glance up from the fanfiction you’ve been reading, surprised to find Asmo’s head next to yours. “I’ve read that one too, you know; it’s very good. You have good taste.”

“Er... Why have you...?” 

“Hm? Why else?” He plops next to you on the couch, leaning close as he does so. “I deserve my own admiration, don’t I? Besides that...” Asmo takes your phone and searches for another fanfiction you haven’t seen before before he hands it back to you. “This one is my absolute fave. You have to read it.” 

You nod, slightly hesitant, opening the fanfiction, and you are shortly greeted by one of the lewdest fanfictions you’ve ever seen, making you blush from head to toe. Although... you have to say that a part of you deeply enjoys it.  

“I know I’m so beautiful that you might consider me more of an idol than a love interest, hon, but you’re making me jealous,” Asmo whines as you continue despite yourself. 

“Er... why’d you recommend it then?” you mumble, eventually meeting his eyes. 

“Obviously because I want you to admire me~! But you know the best way to compliment me is always to my face, m’kay? You can fantasize all you want, but in the end, there’s just no substitute for me, is there?”   

Beel

“What are you reading?” You throw your D.D.D. in the air out of surprise at the redhead, and both fortunately and unfortunately, the demon catches it before it can fall to the ground. “Beelzebub x Reader... Is this about me?” 

You’re tempted to say “no”, but in the end, you can’t bring yourself to lie to the adorable bottomless pit that continually has you checking the fridge. 

“Yes,” you say, desperately hoping that he won’t be creeped out. 

Of course, that worry was baseless. 

“Really? That’s so nice!” he replies with a huge grin before he picks you up into a crushing hug. “So what does ‘x reader’ mean?” You’re not out of the woods yet, it seems. 

“Um... It means I’m... romantically interested in you.” You can’t believe these words are coming out of your mouth; to think you’d confess like this!

“Really? Thank you!” he replies happily. “But... if you like me, then why didn’t you tell me?” 

For a moment, you stare at him like he’s from a different planet, not quite sure if he realizes the words coming from his mouth before you reconsider this is Beelzebub. 

“...Because it’s embarrassing,” you reply, “especially if the other person doesn’t return the sentiment...” 

“But I like you too,” he replies, and you almost splutter at the unabashed admission. 

“Well... I didn’t know that.”  

“Eh? Really? Sorry; I always liked you. I really like your cooking.” 

“Oh, yeah, it’s my turn to cook tonight, isn’t it...” 

“I’ll help.” 

“Just no eating all the ingredients before they’re in the pot again.” 

“Promise.” 

Belphie

“Belphie, get out of my bed,” you groan, having found the black-haired male passed out on your bed. He really can fall asleep anywhere. Knowing he can’t hear you however, you begin shaking him, trying to wake him up, only to find out he wasn’t asleep as he dragged you into bed with him, covering the both of you with a blanket. “B-Belphie?” He looks mad. That’s not a good sign. 

“Hey, we’re close, right?” 

You’re keenly aware of the fact that you’re on top of Belphegor, practically straddling his waist. “Yes?” 

“I knew it. You don’t feel comfortable around me. That’s annoying.” 

“It’s not like that!” you protest. “I just said yes—”

“Then why are you reading fanfic of me?” 

“Wh—Belphie!? How did you even...!?” 

“Just hurry up and answer the question,” he grumbles, a bit curt.  

“Well, um, I... Look, I’m sorry, but I like you, okay?” 

“I got that. But why fanfiction? Why didn’t you just ask me?” 

“...Isn’t that weird? Like I don’t know if you saw, but there’s kissing and stuff.”

“I saw all of it.” You can feel your face is warm from that comment, although it’s even warmer considering what he’s implying. “So you think it’s weird to actually kiss me. Well, I guess I already saw that coming.” 

“No, I meant weird for you,” you quickly backtrack, and Belphie gives you a somewhat confused look. “I mean you don’t have a crush on me.”  

“You’re bizarre,” he chuckles. “But I guess I’m satisfied with that. Stay here for a while... Honey.” He smirks teasingly when you hide your face as well as you can at the nickname that appeared in one of the fanfictions you’d read. Damn him!   

  

Diavolo

“Barbatos told me about something interesting the other day,” Diavolo says, standing from his desk. “He’s the one who makes sure the students aren’t looking up anything concerning using R.A.D.’s Wifi.” Well, this is news to you, although you suppose it makes sense. 

“Concerning?” you prod. “I don’t think I’ve ever looked up anything like ‘how to destroy the Devildom’...” Diavolo laughs to himself, and you find yourself relaxing at his leisure. 

“You’re not here because I’m suspicious of you,” he replies, his eyes glittering with mirth. “I was just surprised to learn how much fanfiction you read about me.” 

You almost choke. 

“It’s really adorable,” he continues, and you cover your face. 

“My lord, I think you’ve teased them enough,” Barbatos intones from the shadows, and Diavolo seemed confused. 

“Tease? I’m being perfectly serious... I don’t mean to embarrass you. I actually called you here because I wanted to ask which one was your favorite.” 

“Sorry?” The word slips out of your mouth without you meaning it to. 

“I’m just curious. I ended up reading all of them one night, so I just had to ask which of them you liked the best.” You hesitate for a very long moment. You know which one is your favorite, but if he’s really read all of them... Was there a right answer to this question? 

You eventually cave to his expectant visage, and you decide lying to his face would be a crime, so you tell him which one you like the most. 

“I see,” he muses. “Then you may go.” Was that the wrong choice? Was that a test? Your worries build as you uncertainly turn your back, and it is as you turn the corner that you find yourself eavesdropping. “Barbatos, can you make the necessary preparations for tomorrow?” 

“I can.” 

“I can’t wait to see the surprise on their face.” 

Without even realizing it, a stupid grin has crept onto your face and won’t leave as you head back to the House of Lamentation.   

   

Barbatos

“My apologies. It is not my intention to pry; however, I could not help but notice that ‘Barbatos x Reader’ frequently appears in your search history.”

“...just... disregard that,” you mumble, trying to drink your tea without looking as self-conscious as you feel. To think that you would come to deliver a set of documents for the student council, only for Barbatos to know about how you’ve been simping over him for the past several months. 

“If that is truly what you would prefer, then I will not speak another word of it.” You almost breathe a sigh of relief. “However,” he continues, and you curse yourself. “I must ask if that’s really what you wish for.” The butler pierces you with those omniscient, chartreuse eyes of his, and you’re not sure whether you should feel intimidated or exhilarated. You’re certainly hesitating—it seems as if the butler is prodding for a reason. 

“What do you want me to say, Barbatos?” you eventually ask as you put down your teacup, absentmindedly tracing one finger against the rim of the saucer it sat upon. 

“I desire for you to speak your mind; I want to serve you as well as I can.” 

“...I feel like you’re teasing me.” 

“Only a little bit, I assure you.” You turn to see Barbatos politely smiling. This little shit! “I am genuinely asking if you’d like to share your thoughts with me.” 

“And you won’t judge me?” 

“I wouldn’t think of it.” 

“Well... then, no, I don’t really want you to disregard it, I think. If you have any thoughts on the fact that I’m attracted to you, then...” Barbatos gives a little chuckle. “Hey, you said you wouldn’t judge!” 

“Apologies,” he says, even as he refreshes your tea. “If that’s the case, then I will prepare a room for you tonight, and we can discuss in further detail.”  

Simeon 

“Well, this is... how to put it... awkward?” Simeon says after you exclaim at his mistake. Simeon being... technologically challenged, had somehow logged into your account rather than his own, and now you both sit at the computer looking at one of your saved Simeon x Readers. “I’m sorry; I must have clicked by accident.”

“Can I just die right now?” you groan, covering your face, and Simeon hugs you. 

“No, don’t say that,” he tries. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“There’s nothing quite like reading fanfic of your friend.” You nearly said hot friend and only barely refrained. 

“I’ve written my fair share of fanfiction,” Simeon says while gently rubbing your back. “And some of it was... clearly in need of more work and consideration. And besides, admiration is the highest compliment.” 

“You’ve written fanfic...?” you mumble, and Simeon chuckles. 

“Volumes and volumes.”

“Even not safe for work?” 

“I have.” 

“Wait, back up, what?” The angel scratches his cheek, looking a little awkward as he does so, and you wonder what on Earth his NSFW writing looks like. Maybe like, “And then Adam lay with Eve ‘til dawn, conceiving a child who would come to be named Cain.”

“I’ve written several sex scenes, although most weren’t intended to elicit arousal. As much as I might want to, it’s difficult to write pieces that are capable of producing that kind of reaction.”

“What?” You’re flabbergasted. This is an angel... telling you about wanting to write smut? 

“That’s not important,” Simeon says, shaking his head, although you beg to differ. “The important thing right now is that you’re not ashamed of yourself. You know, if you want... we can go on a date?”

“You’re just being nice!” you protest, and Simeon seems confused.

“You think so?” he asks with a tilt of his head before he offers you a charming smile. “Isn’t it a little early to be deciding on something like that?”

Solomon

“Well, this isn’t what I was expecting.” 

“What wasn’t what you were expecting?” You pop your head around the library corner to see Solomon rifling through a magic book. At least, you’d thought it was a magic book, right up until you see the title. How did he find that here?

“You have some interesting tastes,” he laughs as he looks up at you, your ears hot with embarrassment. “Curious? It’s a book that lets you see into the hearts of the people you look up in it. Conditionally, of course. I wasn’t expecting to find that said condition in your case wasn’t that cryptic.”

“How much did you...?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he teases, and you feel like burning to a crisp about now. “I won’t stop you from reading fanfiction of me, but...” His smile fades. “I must admit that some of them made me feel very lonely. I can’t remember the last time I kissed someone.” 

“...Flint?” you suggest, referencing a dating app that was launched not too long ago, but Solomon shakes his head. 

“For some reason, those never go very well for me after the first date.” He sighs and shakes his head. “In any case, just remember that I’ll always be here when you want to see another human around.” He gives you a pat on the shoulder, before turning his back to put his book away, only for you to impulsively hug him from behind. 

“Thank you, Solomon.”

“...no problem,” he says. “But could you let me go?” 

“Er... yeah. Sorry,” you say awkwardly, only for Solomon to turn around and engulf you in a surprisingly sweet hug himself.

#obey me solomon #stories #writing #short story #storytelling #obey me! #fanfiction #obey me lucifer #obey me diavolo #obey me belphie #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me barbatos #obey me asmo #obey me beel #x reader #obey me satan #obey me simeon #shorts #romance #saucy

[seraphiism]

𓆩 ღ 𓆪 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝

( i think you've mistaken bonding for love. bonding is not a choice; it's a biological imperative, necessary for survival. love is a choice. )

chara : alhaitham fandom : genshin impact quote cr : catherine gildiner

restless nights in sumeru are few and far between ; you would be lying if you said you did not succumb to a strange, bored, and sleep-deprived state when they did, in fact, happen. unfortunately for you and alhaitham ( more so for the latter party ), tonight is one of those nights.

you stare blankly at the ceiling, a soft sigh escaping through parted lips. fatigue gnaws into the fibers & sinews of a worn body, an aching left behind in remnants of difficult missions past, yet the mind remains alert and awake. your gaze shifts to the still figure beside you, the scribe's normally stoic expression relaxed, breathing calm and collected. you always wondered how he managed to stay so still whenever he slept, while you on the other hand, always seemed to toss and turn, movements coming to an eventual halt whenever the warmth of his body lulled you to sleep.

"alhaitham?"

he does not open his eyes, but you know slumber has not captured him yet. instead, he pulls you close and rests an arm around your waist.

"it's late."

"i know." it's almost on instinct that your tension abates, bodies now in close proximity. "thank you."

he does not say much, not usually, preferring to answer with a simple grunt of acknowledgement. you smile, place your hand on top of his arm as you await for a dreamless sleep.

you are not sure how much time passes, nor does he, but he senses that you are still awake, feels your body tense against his. how baffling, he thinks, to know and understand you from a simple touch.

"alhaitham?"

he finally opens his eyes, almost feels something strange in his heart when you smile at the sight of such brilliant hues. you always manage to catch him off guard-- more than he'd like to admit, really, and he cannot describe what it is about you that brings restoration of emotions he once deemed unnecessary for survival.

"what is it?"

you scoot a little closer-- which he did not think was possible, should he add, and the serious expression you hold is not one he sees often.

"i have a confession."

"yes, i am aware that you are in love with me."

you both pause. no one talks. your face falls flat.

"um, okay. tone down the ego."

"am i wrong?"

"no, but that's not what i was going to say."

he feels a wave of uncertainty wash over him, wonders what you could possibly need to get off your chest during the late hours. he clears his throat as if it would brace him for what is to come, nodding as to prompt you further.

"i thought you were mean when we first met."

oh.

alhaitham's concern is replaced with something-- he's not sure-- shock? resignation? he's trying to decide, deliberately choosing to ignore the way you try to hold in your laughter at his deadpan countenance.

"speaking of confessions, i also have one." he says, entirely nonchalant. "i didn't like you when we first met."

how very quickly your amusement turns into bewilderment, your reaction a dramatic gasp at his retort. he chuckles, grasp on you tightening as you playfully swat at his chest. you resist his hold, laughter filling the air as you eventually find yourself looking up at him, his hands planted firmly by your sides to support himself above you.

"so? do you like me now?"

you are already familiar with that faint smirk that seemingly shows up more than his gentle smiles, know exactly what he's going to say.

"that remains to be seen."

you laugh once more as he leans down to kiss your nose, his words full of warmth as you wrap your arms around his neck, holding the person you love ever so closely.

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #alhaitham #alhaitham x reader #.: writing #this was supposed 2 be a lot shorter idk what happened #but here is a quick lighthearted fic bc i love him sm

[fromriches-tosin]

I have so many thoughts (and feels) about Jean and Reiner’s relationship, but I find them hard to put into words.

Anyway, what strikes me the most about them, is the fact that they both started off as rather minor, but well fleshed out side characters (instant faves), who eventually underwent tremendous changes and, at least for me, set the tone for the entire story.

Reiner’s shift from the toughest solider around to the most vulnerable victim of war, and Jean’s shift from a self-absorbed asshole to the most caring and selfless leader, tie in very well with how their own bond was shaped in the grand finale.

What can I say, Jean is Jean because of Marco’s death. So, when he tells Reiner he’ll never forgive him, he can’t forgive him, this is what Reiner surely expects to hear, just like the rest of us.

But then, the moment Jean realizes why Reiner did what he did, and that their motivations are exactly the same, Jean backtracks on what he said — does not forget (because it's still about Marco to a great extent), but does forgive, if you ask me.

Jean then proceeds to be visibly alarmed whenever Reiner is in any kind of danger and comes to his rescue time after time. And Reiner? Well, he is still the same suicidal man who has for a long time considered himself to be the biggest piece of shit, unworthy of anyone’s forgiveness. And here comes the best friend of the man he helped to murder, the one that should despise him the most, and shows him that Reiner’s life is important to him. Jean doesn’t spend the final battle shouting Conny’s name like a maniac or worrying about Mikasa (as if she needs that, ha) — he instead focuses on Reiner, because he gets him now and because he regrets dealing damage to the man who has been already damaged enough.

In the final chapters Jean’s mission, aside from the obvious one, is to keep Reiner alive.

So, Jean shows Reiner how much he cares. He single-handedly saves him from the Colossal Titan. Tells him he is still one of them.

Once Reiner realizes Jean really means what he says, something shifts. It must be strange for Reiner, to acknowledge this kind of concern for his person — taking into consideration not only their rocky past, but also the contrast between his own mother and Jean. One telling him he is only as valuable as his Titan power. The other telling him to stop transforming because he's afraid Reiner will get hurt again.

From that specific moment shared with Jean, Reiner no longer seems as much resigned to his fate. On the contrary, he’s focused and determined. And to shamelessly quote Gojo Satoru (hehe), he knows that dying to win and risking death to win are two completely different things.

(and Jean continues to worry)

What I’m getting at is that along the way, Reiner and Jean have become the hidden heart of the story. Together, they shifted from the sidelines to the very center of the action.

Even if they are just one piece of the puzzle, drowning in the bigger picture that are Eren, Mikasa and Armin, Jean and Reiner are the ones that, quite possibly, have the most to say about humanity itself in the AOT universe. They are the bridge between the two sides of that war.

Isayama’s decision to pair them up for the final showdown and to continue placing them next to each other in almost every following panel is a very nice touch. (They are his faves too, after all)

Not to mention this cover variant:

One of them is a child turned into a weapon of mass destruction. The other almost a toy soldier in the grand scheme of things.

It's good they managed to save each other.

#reijean #reiner braun #jean kirschtein #jean kristen #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan spoilers #long post #and ship manifesto? I guess #Reiner x Jean #veecanons

[dyns33]

A long life

Another Dream and Hob!reader, because I’m not done with them yet. 

With her long life, Y/N had been through a lot. Good things, beautiful encounters, but also a lot of problems that she tried to forget, even if she kept bad memories that allowed her to make the right decisions, as well as a few nightmares that sometimes came to haunt her.

This had happened less often since she had been dating Dream.

It had taken him a while for him to tell her about what had happened to him, the reason he had missed one of their precious dates. Being locked up was one of the things Y/N didn't want to remember, but being locked up for a hundred years wasn't one of the things she had experienced.

     "Fortunately, my love. I wouldn't have allowed it anyway, I would have come looking for you."

     "If I had known why you weren't here..."

     "Hush." said Morpheus, putting a finger on her lips. "You couldn't have known, and you couldn't have done anything except put yourself in unnecessary danger, which I never wanted. Others could have helped me and they didn't. You are not responsible."

Y/N showered Dream with kisses and caresses after this revelation, considering that physical contact must have been missing all this time. He let her, purring under her hands.

Later, Lucienne told her that the Lord always lacked physical contact, long before his misadventure. She was happy that he had found someone who loved him, and with whom he felt confident enough to allow her to touch him like this.

If he sometimes behaved like a cat in need of affection, Dream however had difficulty communicating his feelings with words. Which was ironic for the Prince of stories.

Oh, he sometimes recited poems and songs for Y/N, but he said little about himself and his torments. As if he was afraid of disturbing her, of disgusting her, or because he considered that she couldn't understand.

He also had some strange habits. For example, even though he gave her a few nicknames, he often used her full name when he wanted her attention.

     "Y/N Y/L/N, you are an incorrigible creature."

     "I'm in trouble ?"

     "No, I just find you amazing. Why ?"

     "People only use full names to indicate that the person has done something stupid."

     "One of my nightmares often said that, it's nonsense."

     "Dream of the Endless, it's you who's absurd. See ?"

     "What should I see ? I like to hear my name in your mouth."

He wasn't dancing. Never. Morpheus didn't give her any explanation about it, except that dancing was part of his youngest sister's domain. None of the dreams understood why, since they liked to dance and it was not forbidden.

Maybe their creator wasn't good at dancing and refused to look ridiculous.

Sometimes he didn't understand certain images, quotes or metaphors. This amused Y/N a lot, who found him adorable with his little pout of indignation.

     "I'm not saying I'm not happy to be with you in the Dreaming. I'm saying I'd like us to spend some time together, in the Waking world. I know you don't like being away from your domain, but Lucienne will be there to make sure you're okay, Matthew will come to you if there's a problem, and I won't let anyone hurt you."

     "I am perfectly capable of defending myself."

     "I know, babe. I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream."

     "... We walked together more than once in a dream. You just blamed me for that."

     "You really need to come to my place to see the stories and songs you missed during your capture. Oh, especially the ones about dreams ! I don't know if you'll like 'Paprika'. And before you ask, 'Requiem for a dream' has nothing to do with the subject."

     "No ! Please." Matthew begged her. "He looks lost when I sing 'Mister Sandman' and 'Just like a prayer', I don't want to lose that !"

     "I am indeed a dream, Matthew, and therefore I am indeed not what I seem to be."

     "Of course, boss, of course."

In secret, Morpheus had already inquired about most of the things he had missed for a hundred years, probably to not look stupid. Maybe Mervyn's dance theory wasn't entirely unfounded.

He also still seemed a little scared about leaving the Dreaming. Although he refused to admit it, he had been traumatized by what had happened to him, and he lived with the fear that it would happen again, that he would be locked in a cellar again and his world would be reduced to ashes. 

But it wasn't just that.

Dream was really not good at communicating, especially with people he didn't know. He wasn't used to people.

His older sister had tried to help him with this problem, introducing him to Y/N, then Hob, but it hadn't been enough.

Outside of his family and his creations, Dream never spoke to anyone. The few times this had happened, the story had ended badly.

The master of dreams and nightmares had therefore deduced that apart from his own and the beings he had created, no one could really appreciate his company. And again, his family and dreams didn't really have a choice.

Y/N had therefore been a surprise, a pleasant surprise, but he still thought that she could leave, and that no one else would replace her. He didn't want anyone else anyway.

It was for her, and for her only, with this fear that she would leave him if he didn't try hard, that he agreed to visit her more often in the waking world, and not just once every hundred years.

     "... You do realize that if I wasn't immortal, I would have died of a heart attack a long time ago ?"

     "I don't understand what you mean. Aren't you happy to see me, my love ?"

     "Dream, you're cute and of course I'm happy to see you, but you just appeared in my bathroom without warning, it's a bit surprising. Announce yourself. Use the door. Put a bell on."

     "Matthew and Mervyn told me that surprises are a good thing in a relationship."

     "I think they were talking about flowers, or gifts, or taking me somewhere romantic."

     "No, they talked about surprising you at home, to tell you that I missed you."

     "... Once again you're adorable, but remind me to kill them the next time I see them."

     "I can't let you do this, even though I will punish them."

     "It's an expression, love. So, you want to see a series with me?  It's too cold outside, I want to stay on the sofa, drinking chocolate, wrapped in a blanket, in front of Inception. You're going to hate Inception."

     "So you wish to torture me ?"

     "No, I wish I was in your arms while you review the movie, because you will certainly make fun commentaries, and I want to be in your arms."

     "Sounds perfect to me."

With her long life, Y/N had experienced a lot of good things, but nothing had ever been so wonderful as since Morpheus was fully part of it.

#Sandman #morpheus #dream of the endless #morpheus x reader #morpheus fanfiction #morpheus imagine #dream of the endless x reader #dream of the endless imagine #dream of the endless fanfiction

[ilynpilled]

Aerys & Cersei

I have seen some posts recently that want to paint Dany as the Aerys parallel in the story, as opposed to Cersei, and I want to pick that apart, and argue why it is detrimental to the respective stories of multiple characters, as well as pretty thematically incoherent.

Putting this quote by George in here as a given, as it will be relevant to the content in here:

"Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books."

Thematically, Dany becoming an Aerys parallel is awful because of the bio essentialist undertones it has. I’ll put a link to the post that goes more in depth into this at the end of this. This is going to be rather long.

People use this argument for the Dany parallel for some reason: later, wildfire in many ways also functions as the Targs’ attempt to recreate dragons (Aerys is the most glaring example). To recreate lost magic, lost power. There are many historical stories of this destroying some of them. When you have a family be the head of a violent construct, like feudalistic hierarchies, it should not shock anyone how power can get corrupted. That is how I always viewed wildfire: the corrupted version of fire. It is an attempt to recreate power. Dany already has dragonfire, she literally brought them back into the world, she already has “power”, and she is learning to wield it (dragons, like power, can be wielded in different ways: plus they are living beings, I think this is key when comparing them with wildfire and its symbolic implications) Cersei’s story foils this in so many ways. Fire already has a rich duality in this series: life vs death, emancipation vs corruption, light vs destruction etc. Now let me get into the role fire & light plays in Cersei’s story:

She is associated with fire and passion in the text. She has a hunger for many things, power, love, respect and so on. She seems to mirror wildfire (directly as per Jaime’s description: “She had been a pretty girl, in truth; dimpled and delicate, with long auburn hair. Timid, though. Prone to tongue-tied silences and fits of giggles, with none of Cersei's fire.” , “Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted. [….] her fury had been fearful to behold. She does not lack for wits, but she has no judgment, and no patience.”) She feels that that fire, that power, is absent in her life, leaving her in darkness and turning her ice cold.

By the time they left Maegor's Holdfast, the sky had turned a deep cobalt blue, though the stars still shone. All but one, Cersei thought. The bright star of the west has fallen, and the nights will be darker now. She paused upon the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat, gazing down at the spikes below. They would not dare lie to me about such a thing. "Who found him?"' "One of his guards," said Ser Osmund. "Lum. He felt a call of nature, and found his lordship in the privy." No, that cannot be. That is not the way a lion dies. The queen felt strangely calm. She remembered the first time she had lost a tooth, when she was just a little girl. It hadn't hurt, but the hole in her mouth felt so odd she could not stop touching it with her tongue. Now there is a hole in the world where Father stood, and holes want filling.

Tywin is both a symbol and a person that governs so much of Cersei and her relationship with the world. He owned her, a misogynistic traditionalist that sold her and moved her like a chess piece, with no regard to how it would affect her. He did not allow her individualization solely because of her gender. She even thinks he is in hell in her first AFfC chapter, likely for a multitude of reasons. Yet, Cersei aims to emulate his example. She seeks to fill the hole that he left. She wants to prove to him that she is worthy, even in his death. More so than his sons. His absence means darkness to her, because he and his conditioning is all that she knows. She thinks this is the key to recreating that absent fire. This also juxtaposes Jaime’s thoughts when he looks up the same stars. He associates Tywin with death and a feast for crows. He acknowledges that the sun has set, but he does not connect that light to Tywin, and he also thinks about the faint light of distant stars instead. They also come to drastically different conclusions about the worth of a crown. Cersei is repeatedly associated with death, and I do not think it is just about her own doom, but the feast for crows that she will bring about.

The queen could feel the heat of those green flames. The pyromancers said that only three things burned hotter than their sub-stance: dragonflame, the fires beneath the earth, and the summer sun. Some of the ladies gasped when the first flames appeared in the windows, licking up the outer walls like long green tongues. Others cheered, and made toasts. It is beautiful, she thought, as beautiful as Joffrey, when they laid him in my arms. No man had ever made her feel as good as she had felt when he took her nipple in his mouth to nurse. Tommen stared wide-eyed at the fires, as fascinated as he was frightened, until Margaery whispered something in his ear that made him laugh. Some of the knights began to make wagers on how long it would be before the tower collapsed. Lord Hallyne stood humming to himself and rocking on his heels. Cersei thought of all the King's Hands that she had known through the years: Owen Merryweather, Jon Connington, Qarlton Chelsted, Jon Arryn, Eddard Stark, her brother Tyrion. And her father, Lord Tywin Lannister, her father most of all. All of them are burning now, she told herself, savoring the thought. They are dead and burning, every one, with all their plots and schemes and betrayals. It is my day now. It is my castle and my kingdom.

Mind you this seed was already planted in ASoS:

Jaime curled up beneath his cloak, hoping to dream of Cersei. But when he closed his eyes, it was Aerys Targaryen he saw, pacing alone in his throne room.

Then, this is as clear cut of an Aerys parallel as it can get. People use Jaime’s description of Aerys and his relationship with fire, and try to project that onto Dany:

“Aerys would have bathed in it if he'd dared. The Targaryens were all mad for fire.”

The traitors want my city, I heard him tell Rossart, but I'll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him…. that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash. (Beyond obvious how well this fits with Cersei’s current and pending situation like lets be serious) :

I am Cersei of House Lannister, a lion of the Rock, the rightful queen of these Seven Kingdoms, trueborn daughter of Tywin Lannister. And hair grows back.

My crown, the queen thought. They took the other crown away from me, and now they are stealing this one as well.

I should not have done this. I was their queen, but now they've seen, they've seen, they've seen. I should never have let them see. Gowned and crowned, she was a queen. Naked, bloody, limping, she was only a woman, not so very different from their wives, more like their mothers than their pretty little maiden daughters. What have I done?

“He has sworn that he will not speak until all of His Grace's enemies are dead and evil has been driven from the realm.”

Yes, thought Cersei Lannister. Oh, yes.

People take the Targaryen aspect at face value, because they love to pick and choose at what times they want him to be an entirely reliable narrator. Again, Aerys never had dragons, he wanted to recreate them. It is not hard to actually navigate Jaime’s bias here as a result of his trauma, especially considering what Jaime himself thinks of Rhaegar (Rhaegar is not a Targ mad with fire in his mind but the ”good king that never was” lol) and the brutal death of his children at the hands of his family. (Aerys trauma affecting judgement regarding bloodlines was present when he almost pulled a #targrestoration for the trolling after they found him and asked him to name a king and he almost named a Targ as king and his father as hand bc it would make Robert #mad and thats funny until he got Aerys PTSD. He fears the ghost of Aerys returning more than anything else. It is a priority over his family’s interests, even back then). Again, the text is not actually bio essentialist, Jaime just has a very intense and dark relationship with Aerys and immense trauma that affects his logic. Not to mention, again, all that Aerys and some other Targs craved, Dany already achieved naturally. I just find it very funny how some of you people pick and choose when you want this man to be a reliable narrator depending on your agenda. Trust it is actually not that hard to figure it out when he is bullshitting in his thoughts or his words. Just look for contradictory actions or words, or whether his trauma and dissociative tendencies are relevant. Also why would you agree with the logic of “inherently evil and mad bloodline” said by the guy who is currently also convinced that he and his twin are one soul in two bodies who are tied together by fate?

Then, Jaime himself makes an actually reliable connection between Aerys and Cersei. No bloodline bullshit here. Cersei is literally his twin.

"That would be an even greater folly than burning the Tower of the Hand. So long as Tommen sits the Iron Throne, the realm sees him as the true king. Hide him under the Rock and he becomes just another claimant to the throne, no different than Stannis.”

"I am aware of that," the queen said sharply. "I said that I wanted to move the court to Lannisport, not that I would. Were you always this slow, or did losing a hand make you stupid?"

Jaime ignored that. "If these flames spread beyond the tower, you may end up burning down the castle whether you mean to or not. Wildfire is treacherous.'

"Lord Hallyne has assured me that his pyromancers can control the fire. The Guild of Alchemists had been brewing fresh wildfire for a fortnight. "Let all of King's Landing see the flames. It will be a lesson to our enemies."

"Now you sound like Aerys."

Her nostrils flared. “Guard your tongue, ser"

"I love you too, sweet sister."

How could I ever have loved that wretched creature? she wondered after he had gone. He was your twin, your shadow, your other half, another voice whispered. Once, perhaps, she thought. No longer. He has become a stranger to me. (Interesting that Jaime repeatedly associates Cersei with death directly, be it subconscious or conscious, and Cersei makes an accidental connection but not a deliberate one)

Other than the obvious fascination with wildfire, Cersei also aims to hurt him here with Kettleblack, because she is uncomfortable with losing her tool, and also because she is losing a source of warmth/love:

Cersei beckoned to Jaime. "Lord Commander, escort His Grace and his little queen to their pillows, if you would.

"As you command. And you as well?"

"No need." Cersei felt too alive for sleep. The wildfire was cleansing her, burning away all her rage and fear, filling her with resolve. “The flames are so pretty. I want to watch them for a while.”

Jaime hesitated. “You should not stay alone.”

"I will not be alone. Ser Osmund can remain with me and keep me safe. Your Sworn Brother"

"If it please Your Grace,” said Kettleblack.

“It does.” Cersei slid her arm through his, and side by side they watched the fire rage.

We have access to Jaime’s thoughts:

Jaime knew the look in his sister's eyes. He had seen it before, most recently on the night of Tommen's wedding, when she burned the Tower of the Hand. The green light of the wildfire had bathed the face of the watchers, so they looked like nothing so much as rotting corpses, a pack of gleeful ghouls, but some of the corpses were prettier than others. Even in the baleful glow, Cersei had been beautiful to look upon. She'd stood with one hand on her breast, her lips parted, her green eyes shining. She is crying, Jaime had realized, but whether it was from grief or ecstasy he could not have said. The sight had filled him with disquiet, reminding him of Aerys Targaryen and the way a burning would arouse him.

Jaime is aware and is bitter about that, but he hones in on a completely different thing. The bitterness over the cheating takes a backseat to him noticing the ghost of Aerys being present in Cersei. Then, this parallel keeps going. Right after Jaime makes a direct parallel between Aerys and Cersei, as well as associating her with death and corpses again, his thoughts drift to Aerys and his skewed relationship with wildfire & sex. Fire is passion, yes, sexual ardor, but again, wildfire is a corrupted version of fire.

whenever Aerys gave a man to the flames, Queen Rhaella would have a visitor in the night. The day he burned his mace-and-dagger Hand, Jaime and Jon Darry had stood at guard outside her bedchamber whilst the king took his pleasure. "You're hurting me,” they had heard Rhaella cry through the oaken door. "You're hurting me." In some queer way, that had been worse than Lord Chelsted's screaming. "We are sworn to protect her as well," Jaime had finally been driven to say. "We are," Darry allowed, "but not from him." Jaime had only seen Rhaella once after that, the morning of the day she left for Dragonstone. The queen had been cloaked and hooded as she climbed inside the royal wheelhouse that would take her down Aegon's High Hill to the waiting ship, but he heard her maids whispering after she was gone. They said the queen looked as if some beast had savaged her, clawing at her thighs and chewing on her breasts. A crowned beast, Jaime knew.

"And this?" Cersei pinched the nipple now, pulling on it hard, twisting it between her fingers.The Myrish woman gave a gasp of pain.

"You're hurting me."

"It's just the wine. I had a flagon with my supper, and another with the widow Stokeworth. I had to drink to keep her calm." She twisted Taena's other nipple too, pulling until the other woman gasped. "I am the queen I mean to claim my rights.”

"Do what you will.” Taena's hair was as black as Robert's, even down between her legs, and when Cersei touched her there she found her hair all sopping wet, where Robert's had been coarse and dry.

"Please,” the Myrish woman said, "go on, my queen. Do as you will with me. I'm yours.” But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her. There was no pleasure in it, not for her.

She gasped some words in a foreign tongue, then shuddered again and arched her back and screamed. She sounds as if she is being gored, the queen thought. For a moment she let herself imagine that her fingers were a bore's tusks, ripping the Myrish woman apart from groin to throat. It was still no good. It had never been any good with anyone but Jaime.

Cersei seeks to achieve catharsis. She is exploring her own trauma. She wants to derive catharsis from emulating power. From emulating violent men, emulating Robert. But she experiences no pleasure. She experiences no catharsis. This is not enough. This is not what she is looking for. All she has is the fire.

Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

This is what Cersei, like Aerys, will want to achieve in a metaphorical and in some ways literal sense. But with wildfire. It won’t work obviously, but it is all that she has.

Now lets talk about Cersei and swords.

Jaime, above most else, functioned as her sword. He was an extension of her, a weapon she desperately needed in order to punish others, and simultaneously protect herself. It was power. She immediately takes note of it when physical and internal change in Jaime is present:

"He'll have Casterly Rock, isn't that enough? Let Father sit the throne. All I want is you." He made to touch her cheek. Old habits die hard, and it was his right arm he lifted. Cersei recoiled from his stump.

"Don't ... don't talk like this. You're scaring me, Jaime. Don't be stupid. One wrong word and you'll cost us everything. What did they do to you?"

"They cut off my hand."

"No, it's more, you're changed." She backed off a step.

+

Jaime hugged her, his good hand pressing against the small of her back. He smelled of ash, but the morning sun was in his hair, giving it a golden glow. She wanted to draw his face to hers for a kiss. Later, she told herself, later he will come to me, for comfort.

"We are his heirs, Jaime," she whispered. "It will be up to us to finish his work. You must take Father's place as Hand. You see that now, surely. Tommen will need you.”

He pushed away from her and raised his arm, forcing his stump into her face.

"A Hand without a hand? A bad jape, sister. Don't ask me to rule.”

+

"Your turn," she told him afterward. "Pull his mane, I dare you." He never did. I should have had the sword, not him. (Interesting symbolism as to which one of them is opposed to the lions and which one is not)

+

If Jaime had not lost his hand. That road led nowhere, though. Jaime's sword hand was gone, and so was he

Jaime may yet come. She pictured him riding through the morning mists, his golden armor bright in the light of the rising sun.

It should be Jaime beside me. He would draw his golden sword and slash a path right through the mob, carving the eyes out of the head of every man who dared to look at her.

Ofc, who she used the weapon against were usually victims, but that is a big part of Cersei as a character, and the whole commentary about victims & perpetrators. You can have an irredeemable and evil character that the patriarchy still suppresses and affects the psychology of immensely, rendering her a bigger monster. The commentary on the destructive capacity of static social constructs is not lost as a result. A character can turn into the devil of the story due to a world that ceaselessly strips her of her humanity, as well as as a result of the choices she actively makes. Cersei has shown to be capable of cruelty even before her trauma (how she treated Tyrion, her extreme narcissism, throwing her best friend down a well), but this does not change anything. Being a perpetrator does not negate her victimhood, and vice versa. It is also her stubbornness and power hunger that leave her to her ruin in a world that does not allow her the ‘freedom’ or ‘power’ that she desperately desires. It becomes the worst combination of nature and nurturer. Her sword is gone for good. The motif of “sunlight” is once again present. It turns his hair/armor gold. She craves the golden Jaime in golden armor, the Jaime from AGoT. But we know Jaime’s color symbolism is heading in a very different direction:

Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister was unmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimson cloak to black.

She did as he bid her. "The white cloak . . ." ". . . is new, but I'm sure I'll soil it soon enough." “That wasn't . . . I was about to say that it becomes you”

When he was done, more than three-quarters of his page still remained to be filled between the gold lion on the crimson shield on top and the blank white shield at the bottom.

“Gold? Or silver?" Cersei plucked a hair from beneath his chin and held it up. It was grey. "All the color is draining out of you, brother. You've become a ghost of what you were, a pale crippled thing. And so bloodless, always in white." She flicked the hair away. "I prefer you garbed in crimson and gold."

(Again, gold is heavy negative symbolism for Jaime, another indication that Goldenhand the Just is an obvious dead end, as I have discussed at length atp. It is an attempt to recreate his phantom and cover it up with a golden lie.)

Then, finally, the conclusion for Cersei during her rebirth:

A shadow fell across them both, blotting out the sun. The queen felt cold steel slide beneath her, a pair of great armored arms lifting her off the ground lifting her up into the air as easily as she had lifted Joffrey when he was still a babe.

This is the reason the sun gets blotted out at the end. I think that is a final statement on how he will never be her sword again. So now she needs a new sword. She has Robert Strong, and she has wildfire. Light & sun is repeatedly absent, and she lands in the cold darkness over and over again. She has associations with ice and wildfire. Unlike Jaime, who is often reborn in light & warmth (1. first POV: “sent them toward the pale pink dawn. After so long in darkness, the world was so sweet that Jaime Lannister felt dizzy. I am alive, and drunk on sunlight.” In contrast with Cersei’s first POV: her awakening in her dark chamber after a dream turned nightmare. 2. when the arakh kills his old self: “sunlight ran silver along the edge of the arakh”, 3. the steaming bath. Robert Strong also contrasts Brienne. Interesting that he lifts Cersei up into the air, while Brienne catches Jaime before he could fall. Robert Strong is “cold steel”, while Brienne’s touch is “warm” (noted twice by Jaime). “The cell began to darken. It was growing cold as well. Cersei began to shiver. How can they leave me like this, without so much as a fire? I am their queen.” Cersei on the other hand keeps being put or reborn in darkness, I assume this symbolically has meaning and is no coincidence. Plus, while Jaime chooses to cut his own hair, Cersei is forcefully stripped from it. What is also interesting is what the both of them have in the dark (Jaime’s weirwood dream) are the flames (for Jaime the flaming sword, for Cersei the torch, and later the wildfire).

Again, people want Jaime to be an unreliable narrator here, clouded by bitterness and hatred or something, but I really doubt that is the case. Again, the cheating takes a backseat, and that whole thing is more complicated anyways: it is primarily a catalyst that reveals to him how broken the illusion he created for himself about the relationship is at its very foundation. The whole idea of her love, which is so significant for him, is questioned. There are so many factors that play into their relationship falling apart (they both change, the hand loss, Jaime’s rejection of being Tywin’s heir, his desire to give up power and choose Cersei, while Cersei would never give up power for Jaime, him not understanding the nuances of that as Cersei is inherently more powerless bc of her status and she craves it desperately + differences in nature and experiences. + Cersei asking him to kill Tyrion. Again, they are fundamentally different. This is also a partial reason as to why Jaime rejected her advances post sept scene imo, even if he keeps making inconsistent excuses (location, the dead KG or his father, vows, judgement of the gods [he never really cared about this before: he is a reddit atheist, also did not stop him at the sept]). Some of this is before the cheating reveal.) Jaime does not harm her even if she repeatedly hits him, emasculates him, insults him (he mentioned that he already turned her blows to kisses before) etc. but there is violent anger within him about the cheating. I think this is because that is the one thing that truly creates a major hole in his self-conjured narrative about the relationship (we are one soul in two bodies, destined lovers), as well as something that recontextualizes all the awful things he had actively done to sustain it. Other than all that, let me talk about Jaime and eyes:

Jaime watched her eyes. Pretty eyes, he thought, and calm. He knew how to read a man's eyes.

Bolton's silence was a hundred times more threatening than Vargo Hoat's slobbering malevolence. Pale as morning mist, his eyes concealed more than they told. Jaime misliked those eyes. : Roose Bolton's eyes were paler than stone, darker than milk

He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys's throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord's eyes, cold and grey and full of judgment.

The clasp that pinned it to her breast was wrought in the shape of a wolf's head with slitted opal eyes. The girl's long brown hair blew wild in the wind. She had a pretty face, he thought, but her eyes were sad and wary. (makes his inaction [link] all the more terrible, his conscience is screaming at him)

"Blue is a good color on you, my lady," Jaime observed. "It goes well with your eyes." She does have astonishing eyes.

The queen's eyes were green ice. "You had best go, ser."

He remembered how Rossart's eyes would shine (another Cersei parallel) when he unrolled his maps to show where the substance must be placed.

With his grim face and deep-sunk hollow eyes, Ser Ilyn might have passed for death himself . . . as he had, for years.

Though his pox-scarred face was grim and his eyes as cold as ice on a winter lake, Jaime sensed that he was glad he'd come.

Sorry, but I am gonna trust what Jaime sees in her eyes at Tommen’s Wedding. His judgement tends to be very accurate. Eyes are the windows to the soul after all.

Every idea that I have discussed at length here is also present in Jaime’s dreams.

Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. I must go up, he told himself. Up, not down. Why am I going down? Below the earth his doom awaited, he knew with the certainty of dream; something dark and terrible lurked there, something that wanted him.

The steps ended abruptly on echoing darkness. Jaime had the sense of vast space before him. He jerked to a halt, teetering on the edge of nothingness. A spearpoint jabbed at the small of the back, shoving him into the abyss. He shouted, but the fall was short. He landed on his hands and knees, upon soft sand and shallow water. There were watery caverns deep below Casterly Rock, but this one was strange to him. "What place is this?"

"Your place." The voice echoed; it was a hundred voices, a thousand, the voices of all the Lannisters since Lann the Clever, who'd lived at the dawn of days. But most of all it was his father's voice, and beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Joffrey was there as well, the son they'd made together, and behind them a dozen more dark shapes with golden hair.

"Sister, why has Father brought us here?"

"Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness." Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go.

"Stay with me," Jaime pleaded. "Don't leave me here alone." But they were leaving. "Don't leave me in the dark!" Something terrible lived down here. "Give me a sword, at least."

“I gave you a sword," Lord Tywin said.

It was at his feet. Jaime groped under the water until his hand closed upon the hilt. Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword. As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand's breath from the hilt.

—- Brienne shows up naked. Jaime cuts her chains. Gifts her a sword. etc.

Brienne's sword took flame as well, burning silvery blue. The darkness retreated a little more.

"The flames will burn so long as you live," he heard Cersei call. "When they die, so must you."

"Sister!" he shouted. "Stay with me. Stay!" There was no reply but the soft sound of retreating footsteps.

— Jaime and Brienne are left to face ghosts, lot of LN imagery and all that. Jaime’s sword’s fire goes out, Brienne’s still burns, he jerks awake before the ghosts rush him with his heart beating. Another moonlight motif happens after he wakes up on a “white stump” and he goes back for Brienne and saves her from the bear etc whatever no longer relevant to Cersei’s story imo

The Lannister legacy is associated with doom in Jaime’s subconscious. Cersei leaves with fire to join the Lannisters, specifically her son and father, and the imagery of death is so prevalent again.

This then mirrors Jaime’s other main dream, where his subconscious mind is communicating with him, right before he burns her letter. Again, overwhelming fire imagery. And it is fire that is destroying her. Like the letter, she is left to burn. First he mistakes his mother for Cersei, and then her leaving him parallels Cersei leaving in the fever dream. His mom, or his subconscious, also presents him with a key reality check:

One. One hand, clasped tight around the sword hilt. Only one. "In my dreams I always have two hands." He raised his right arm and stared uncomprehending at the ugliness of his stump.

"We all dream of things we cannot have. Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. He dreamed they would be so strong and brave and beautiful that no one would ever laugh at them."

This is in direct conversation with his last dream (I assume it is deconstructing it. Idk, Jaime, it is almost like Goldenhand the Just is not a real possibility): “Last night he dreamed he'd found her fucking Moon Boy. He'd killed the fool and smashed his sister's teeth to splinters with his golden hand, just as Gregor Clegane had done to poor Pia (we know what he thinks of Gregor, we know this is not good in his mind or ours, it is almost like his subconscious is telling him something). In his dreams Jaime always had two hands; one was made of gold, but it worked just like the other.”

"I am a knight," he told her, "and Cersei is a queen."

A tear rolled down her cheek. The woman raised her hood again and turned her back on him. Jaime called after her, but already she was moving away, her skirt whispering lullabies as it brushed across the floor. Don't leave me, he wanted to call, but of course she'd left them long ago.

Both of their endeavors seem to be dead ends. Cersei is not gonna be the Queen that she always craved to be, despite having the title. Jaime is not and is not going to be the glorious knight, Goldenhand the Just, as he should conclude based on the Riverrun fiasco (this is also why I think Jaime’s very emphasized white/silver/grey replacing gold & crimson color symbolism is not about the KG, it is either something more abstract or it is about the Starks: “White is for the Starks. I’ll drink red like a good Lannister”, ntm how tied Arya is to JB through locations/brotherhood/stoneheart despite their desperate search for Sansa (pointless, she is at the Vale), and horses & wolves, the weirwood, the oath in general, and the fact that WW is half of Ice.) That is his attempt to recreate a fictive ideal that the boy he used to be dreamed of. That is not what true knighthood is about though. It was never about golden glory. These are golden lies. He knows too deep down. He has one hand. He has to look at the ugliness of the stump. It feels like Jaime realizes this, on a subconscious level certainly, and will pivot (especially after confronting what is essentially the embodiment of the worst product of the Lannister regime: a monster created by its sins, the cycle of violence itself, as well Jaime’s specific part in it: Stoneheart) at least I hope so, because that is how his arc would be functional, but Cersei remains steadfast. Also, Cersei remaining passive would feel like her character and the set up did not go anywhere. Whatever she will do with wildfire will be a grand act of agency, and her combatting the state she is in, it is gonna be a very corrupted and poetic act of destruction. She is essentially gonna set herself and the world on fire in order to battle the cold (her enemies, the people that hurt her, witnesses, and the innocents that are a victim to this whole cycle). That is what I would like to see. Jaime’s last AFfC chapter is also supposed to be a point of no return in some form. The idea of “opening the shutters”, winter, is so emphasized. The main reason certain retreading happens in ADwD that some people are obsessed with overanalyzing or misrepresenting (especially bc they need it desperately to justify “Jaime is drawn back to CR of all places to Cersei for no good reason other than he is a codependent addict” so they can get the wildfire + Cersei + KL out of the equation so Dany or whatever can be the Aerys parallel/mad evil kaboom boom person while there still being some lackluster follow through for all of Cersei’s set ups like valonqar etc) is because George’s editor told him to do some retreading with him since he took so long between books that the readers needed a reminder about where these characters were left:

so this entire passage had to be added in to cover these bases. When I read the Feast/Dance combined book it made me laugh how much this part was a “previously on Jaime Lannister.”

But again, he makes a clear choice, motivated by a concoction of things: he goes with Brienne, not back to his King, or back to Cersei. I think he is not ready to face Cersei yet and fears what he would do. I think so many dichotomies were being emphasized in this chapter: Tywin’s dogma, its results, the glory of pursuing the brotherhood, and how it all conflicts with Jaime’s arc in the subtext. I do not doubt he will land back there again, yes, George said they are effectively estranged, the romantic relationship is over, but that does not necessarily mean they will not meet again, nor that they will not hold any relevance in each other’s stories anymore. (Even if valonqar will not be literal, again, he has one hand, and he came to this conclusion in his dreams too in the end, and this fact very much comes in the way of the logistics of “the valonqar will wrap his hands”, if not only literally, certainly symbolically: even if it is the gold chain part two (was one not more than enough George???), I feel like Jaime would struggle with doing it with even that considering his hand situation.) Personally, I would prefer it if that part of the prophecy is subverted and it ends up not being an ex (or any other man for that matter) overpowering and murdering her. George had enough misses when it concerns some misogynistic writing in her storyline, it is 2023 now, so her death not being in anyway “gratifying” for misogynists (see aspects of the framing of Lysa’s death) would be my preference. I would love her death to be on her own terms. I made a parallel about her and Hedda Gabler before, and maybe something of that sort would be the best case scenario. She would rather take herself out in a blaze of glory than let the men (any valonqar, be it Tyrion, Jaime, Aegon etc) do it. That would be tragic as well as in some very dark way her reclaiming agency from fate itself. But honestly I doubt that is the direction George will go. Jaime will probably kill her, and it will be an incredibly grey act. Do not want that to be presented as straightforwardly heroic. I think it will be motivated by a lot of emotion and not just duty. Do not know how this entire situation will go down exactly. Also, really specific detail I noticed regarding prophecy wording, might not be deliberate:

“And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.”

Sometimes he even wept, until he heard the Mummers laughing. Then he made his eyes go dry and his heart go dead, and prayed for his fever to burn away his tears. Now I know how Tyrion has felt, all those times they laughed at him.

Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away.

And then there was no stopping the tears. They burned down the queen's cheeks like acid.

To my knowledge, these three (+ Cat’s tears burning like vinegar) are the only characters with this specific phrasing present. Interesting anyway.

Also, I am wondering how much Cers will even trust Jaime atp. The sun is blotted out, that has to represent disillusionment, no? Ronnet Connington is also back at KL, we all know what Jaime did to that man when it concerned Brienne, and Cersei’s “he would never abandon me for such a creature. My letter must not have reached him” might entirely fall apart even more if he happens to tell her. Nonetheless, Widow’s Wail is still very much at the Red Keep, and that will have to land in Jaime’s hand(s). Also to further address the theory that the twins will be away from the wildfire and die together at CR since I mentioned it, I do not think the twins should go to The Rock. It is a place that Jaime repeatedly rejected, and Cersei is so closely tied to KL, the throne, and her kids are destined to die because of their crowns. Kevan wanted to return Cersei to The Rock, and what happened to him lol. “So long as Tommen sits the Iron Throne, the realm sees him as the true king. Hide him under the Rock and he becomes just another claimant to the throne, no different than Stannis.” “I am aware of that” the Queen said sharply.

I don’t know guys, doubt Cersei will want to hide under the Rock after what happened. Like you are telling me that Cersei, the one that reached into the lion’s cage, the human embodiment of wildfire, will passively accept all this? “That is not the way a lion dies.” So unless it is like a huge irony moment, which I would honestly like less, I do not think I see it or would like it happening. Also, Jaime is presented with the opportunity to die with Cers twice atp, once at the end of AFfC when the letter comes, and then at ADwD he is on his way back there. He ends up not taking it. In ASoS, when Brienne talks him out of passive suicide under the graceful crescent, he makes “Cersei needs me, I cannot die we need to die together”, “Tyrion who loves me for a lie needs me”, and “revenge against Hoat and co” his purpose to keep living. Notice how literally none of these things come to be. He does not even actively pursue the Hoat gang, revenge “lost its savor” once he sees the brutality that happened to Hoat, Tyrion no longer loves him for a lie and he believes he does not love him at all, and look at what is up with Cersei. “Her need is real enough”, + his bitterness about the cheating is still present in the chapter, and yet he does not end up pursuing any of that and chooses the oath to Cat (he abandons his position alone with Brienne, not exactly the safest thing). Like in his dream, he has his own flame right now, Cersei leaves with her torch and is no longer “the only light in the world” like it used to be as a result of their codependent relationship. The essentialist roots of that were completely deconstructed for both parties, Jaime especially (and it is touched upon again in ADwD w Hildy). So I don’t know why and how he would go to CR to Cersei atp tbh. Something will have to draw him to KL imo. Jaime’s dream is not about CR literally either, one it mirrors Brienne’s dreams and she pictures a different location (ntm they are together in Jaime’s whole dream thing anyway, what the fuck would Brienne be doing over there), two he repeatedly thinks and realizes how there is no such place beneath The Rock by the end. The original CR connection is more metaphorical than anything in my opinion. It is Tyrion that is tied to that place in a plethora of ways. It is his character that it is extremely relevant to. Whatever he will end up doing there will serve just as well with the idea of the destruction of Tywin’s legacy. I think the other two siblings will destroy Tywin’s legacy in different ways.

Finally, here is why it being Dany is thematically pretty dysfunctional imo: link

And even if, after all that, you guys still believe there to be another Aerys parallel in the narrative: This is already in the text. Is Cersei’s role just to foreshadow another woman’s path? You want this same narrative to happen again but with a teenage girl? I sure love that guys great message about women and power.

#disagree with some of this now but the symbolism analysis is good imo #asoiaf #cersei lannister #daenerys targaryen #jaime lannister #aerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #long post

[kaigarax]

When You Craft With Me

or The 3 Times You See Someone Else + The 1 Time You See Him

Sasori (of the Red Sand) x Reader

Quote: "Fall in love with an inquisitive mind."

1.

“Sasori,” you smile at the Puppeteer as he enters the room. You seem to have been resting your head on the side of the table but were quick to perk up at his sudden appearance.

It takes the Puppeteer a moment to realise you’ve said his name - it sounds… different when you say it.

Your smile is bright and innocent; and it warms his heart. So, Sasori ignores you, snapping his gaze in the other direction as he makes his way through the room.

Sasori’s relationship with you had always been a rather strange one. At least from his perspective. There’s just always been this strange push and pull. He does something rude and you ignore the brash behaviour choosing to instead annoy him.

Something like what’s happening right now.

You practically jump out of your seat as you make your way towards him.

Sasori takes note how you always walk with your hands behind your back. At first he thought it might be because you were holding a weapon but he eventually came to conclude that it was just a strange quirk of your character. It’s annoying and subtle - yet draws in the Puppeteer’s attention immediately. It makes you seem older. Not exactly in appearance but essence. Something reminiscent of his grandmother.

His eyes narrow in on you as you turn your head to the side. He thinks it’s cute. That you’re cute as you eagerly wait for him to finally acknowledge your presence.

And, Sasori thinks, perhaps this time he’ll humor you. Afterall, it’s not as though he has anything to lose by entertaining you at this moment. It’s what his grandmother would do.

“What do you want?” Sasori asks, his voice the deep brooding one of his puppet insead of the boyish one he thinks you’d like to hear.

You smile, “we should head into the nearby village.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because there’s a festival. You enjoy those kinds of things, don’t you?” You ask as though you already know the answer and it makes him feel disgusted yet intrigued at the same time.

“No,” he smiles slightly, “I don’t.”

And you frown in response.

Sasori, both now and when he was young, has never been a big fan of festivals and he finds a sick sort of pleasure in seeing your bright smile fade. It’s not as though that smile has ever been for him in the first place anyways. Yet, somewhere beneath that sick pleasure, Sasori feels a tinge of regret. Not the kind that becomes tears and apologies but the simple kind that manifests itself as fresh flowers on the windowsill (because he knows you like that) or a new trinket in the hallway (because it brings just the smallest amounts of life into the base).

Of course, the Puppeteer would never admit to such things but he thinks that you know it’s him. At least he hopes that you don’t mention it to the others.

Ah yes, the others.

Sasori has never been a big fan of the way the others speak. So unrestricted and crass. So different. There is, for one thing, the different slang that comes with growing up in other places. It often causes confusion in communication. But the hardest part is in the placement of words. Most times, Sasori often finds himself feeling just slightly… out of step with the others when they speak. But, strangely, not with you.

Perhaps it’s because of age.

---

2.

It’s bright and early in the morning when Sasori makes his way into the kitchen. He’d been assigned to another one of those capturing missions and wanted to make quick work of something so tedious. Of course, needing to make quick work would mean having to start the day earlier.

And this is what causes Sasori to run into you.

You’re sitting at the counter peeling a fruit of some kind. You’re humming something to yourself that seems strangely familiar to the Puppeteer. Perhaps because he’s heard you humming it before?

Anyways, your presence causes Sasori to halt in his tracks.

He isn’t quite sure of how to approach you. Isn’t quite sure if he wants to engage in conversation or cautiously wait in the shadows until you leave. Of course, you’ve always been good at chakra sensory so you might have already spotted him but the chance that you haven’t yet is always there.

If you have noticed him you don’t bother to say anything.

Instead you stay seated, concentrated on the task at hand.

You always were quite good at completing what you set your mind to and it was something Sasori… admired. Though it seems rather obvious that you would be good at something like this if you were able to enter a group as exclusive as the Akatsuki.

You’ve positioned yourself directly in front of the window in such a way where the natural light can help you finish what you’re doing. Of course, Sasori thinks it’s ultimately dumb because you’ve positioned your back to the door opening yourself up to sneak attacks. Your hair falls around your face as you lean forward and it shimmers in the light of the sun and it feels almost nostalgic for Sasori as he watches you. As if he’s seen something like this before.

“Do you want one?” You ask.

Sasori almost jumps, “what was that?”

“Do you want one?” You’ve turned away from the window and towards him, who's been looming in the entrance of the room. You hold the fruit out to him with a small smile on your face.

Upon a quick inspection Sasori’s first instinct is to reject your offer. He remembers when his grandmother had tried to give him that very same fruit. He, a rather brash and spoiled boy, spit the trash out immediately. He could barely fathom how his grandmother could eat it back then, much less how you’re able to eat it now.

Actually, Sasori’s pretty sure this is the exact same fruit he told you that he vehemently hates. At the time he hadn’t exactly given you a reason why but he thought at least this you would have remembered.

But… he supposes that there has been a long time since he’s last tried it.

And it wouldn’t hurt to eat something fresh for once.

And he quite likes the way you smile brightly when he takes the fruit.

Your eyes light up in that way they always do when you look at him and Sasori’s heart races. He isn’t quite sure for what reason. Sometimes he thinks anger - because he feels as though you expect something from him that he can’t quite give. Others are embarrassed because this side of him isn’t one that he thinks he’d like to show to others. But most, he thinks, is disappointment. Disappointment because he knows that gaze isn’t for him.

The horrible flavours of the fruit sink into his mouth the first moment he takes a bite. Of course it still tastes horrible. What was he expecting anyways? He wants to scrunch up his nose and spit it out but forces himself to swallow. He’s a grown man after all and this is no time to be acting like a snot nosed brat.

Yeah. It still sucks.

---

3.

“You’re better at this than I thought you’d be.” Says Sasori.

You grin, turning your head away from him, “well I had to be good at something, eventually.”

There’s a snippy quip at the edge of Sasori’s tongue but he bites it back. At least you’re trying to hide that smug expression so he’ll at least try to be… nice. Well, at least as nice as he’s capable of being.

Your fingers are quick and the gentle glowing blue of your hand feels almost… different from the other healers he’s been to. Not that he’s been to many different healers in the first place. Sasori hadn’t even been sure that your abilities would work on him in the first place but being left in the middle of nowhere and in the midst of a mission he had no choice but to accept your help.

It’s not exactly a pleasant feeling that fills Sasori but it’s… warm. Almost nostalgic - as if he’s back home sitting alone in his room, tinkering with his latest puppets. It’s almost as though you’re reversing everything. Not just the physical form but his chakra and soul, if that was possible.

He looks up again only to see that your eyes are directly on his own. Almost as if you’re looking for something that he knows isn’t there.

Sasori rolls his eyes, “don’t be a brat.”

You laugh, “and here I thought we were finally getting along!”

“We’re not.”

And your eyes are soft. Almost as if they were oceans to drown in.

So instead, Sasori chooses to focus on the gentle blue glow of your hands. Most healing, Sasori notes, is green. Though there are instances when people coat their hands in blue chakra in order to cut into someone. Are you directly putting your own chakra into him as you heal? Does it have something to do with a kekkei-genkai? A skill you developed on your own? Neither, at this rate, would surprise him. Sure, he did like to tease you for a lack in skills but ultimately you were a part of this group for a reason.

Eventually, the light blue glow shifted into a darker shade. Gradually becoming darker and darker as the warmth from your hands began to fade. Your expression remained neutral.

There’s a strange sensation that begins from where your hands are and works its way through his limbs until it’s right there at the tips of his fingers and toes. He feels as though he could fall asleep in your arms. That everything would be alright if he just suddenly stopped.

Oh. So this is why.

Did you happen to have control over the mind or something?

You must’ve with how much you seem to affect him.

“The weather’s quite pleasant.” You say, though your eyes are focused on his wound.

Sasori raises a brow, “is that a practiced response?”

There’s a shift, ever so slightly, in your healing, “I guess.”

“Thought so.”

“But you must admit, the weather is rather decent today.”

Sasori grunts in response, “depends on perspective.”

You look up, your eyes once again seeming to look deep into his own. Sasori wonders if you’re once again going to call his name. It seems to be on the tip of your tongue as you lean forward, sitting on the edge of your seat.

“Ready to bolt?” Sasori teases.

“And why would I bolt from you?”

He smirks, “you’d be surprised.”

Finally, after what feels like forever, the glowing from your hands stops. The high that he’d gotten seems to just suddenly halt. A sensation he finds himself missing despite not being apart from it for very long.

He reaches out to grab your hand but stops. It’s hovering only inches away from you.

You smile, “it’s calm right now.”

“And I’m completely at my lowest.”

---

1.

“What are you reading?” Sasori asks.

Your head shoots up immediately from the book in hand - almost as if you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t. Your secretive look quickly shifts though as you spot Sasori.

“Hey,” you smile.

You flash him that warm half smile he’s grown familiar with. It’s the kind that makes him feel like the only person in the world; the one where his insides begin to toss and turn while his outsides seem to freeze up entirely. It’s the kind of smile that leaves him thinking about you for hours and the exact kind of smile that he absolutely hates.

Not because of any distraction it might cause - though it’s not a benefit either.

Not because he doesn't like the way it makes him feel.

And definitely not because he’s opposed to feeling those emotions.

No.

It’s because he can’t stand the fact that you don’t seem to see him.

Everytime it feels as though you’re looking at somebody else.

“Sasori?” You ask.

Even when you say his name it feels foreign. As if it’s something that belongs to somebody else.

He leans in towards you, a scowl on his face, “I asked you what you’re reading.”

“Oh. Just a story about the third great war.”

“Stupid.”

“Is it?”

“Well would I have said it if I didn’t mean it?”

You shrug, “I suppose not.”

He moves towards you, yet you don’t seem to respond. Instead you continue on reading. As if he’s not some dangerous and hardened criminal. As if he wasn’t declared one of the most wanted by his home village.

He snaps the book from your grasps suddenly.

At first he expects you to smile and laugh it off after a brief moment of shock but instead your eyes narrow in on him hard and determined.

Huh.

He almost thought you weren’t capable of such an expression at all.

You look as though you might jump him right then and there and start a fight.

Every part of you seems to suddenly be on edge.

Sasori thinks it’s quite the change of pace for you. That it’s very… refreshing. And he thinks that he quite likes this expression on you. At least more than that doe eyed look you always give him when you think he isn’t watching.

For once you are actually seeing him. And that makes him smile.

Fall in love with an inquisitive mind.

#naruto #naruto shippuden #naruto shippuden x reader #sasori x reader #100 ways to fall in love

[velvetjune]

All my thoughts on Alan Wake 2: The Final Draft below! Major Spoilers for the game (and Control 2019). This is a very long post, but this game has taken over my mind.

The Final Draft was good! I’ve never played NewGame+ versions of games before, so I don’t know if this is usually how it goes. The additional material and introduction/ending makes it all worth it, although I wish there was a way to speed up the case board process, since I completed almost all of it my first go.

My immediate concern is. What is ‘a master of many worlds’? What does that MEAN?? Surface level, he can already exert power over his world and the dark place, so that was the two he was initially referring to. Since Door said the Dark Place was a mirror that reflected other realities, is that why Alan now holds power of them? No matter what, he is Way too confident for someone who’s been an absolute mess. The power of being loved and reaching out to others is just that good.

I’ve vaguely known about this draft’s ending and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Actually playing through again helped me lose that negativity, although I still prefer the first ending! Hearing Saga’s relief at Logan being alive and Alan rising from the dead was one amazing sequence. Visually beautiful and acted out.

The EXPRESSION you can see on Saga the second Logan picks up. I was so happy for her. Having Logan and Casey by her side. No matter what comes next, they succeeded in saving both of them. Now—are Saga, Casey, and Alan all in the dark place? In an overlap? Or Bright Falls?

The “love is strange” quote was a personal favorite. Sometimes you love someone so much, both of you ascend past your humanly self and become so intertwined in thought and memory that you’re always with each other. Love is strange.

Is anyone else ridiculously nervous about what’ll happen with Alan and Alice?? They both seem to be in states that are tied to each other and the dark place. I don’t know if they can technically leave. Read some theories on Alice being the bullet of light, but I took it as a sort of symbolic gesture, with her still being an agent moving in the dark place. Similar to Zane or Darling. Idk.

The ‘Spiral’ writer’s room video got to me even more than the ending! Bringing up how time is overlapping, which means Alan IS already at the end of the spiral, as an enlightened figure, potentially “playing a secret game” or “building something”. There’s an inevitability to Alan’s fate that stresses me out. Describing himself as a demiurge or demon too,, somehow he made everything 10x more unsettling. So thanks for that Alan. Love it for the horror, but also I just want Alice and Alan to reunite with Barry… it’s not looking so good.

I was already a fan of the cliffhanger-ish ending, but, even after seeing this one with more confirmations, I don’t understand comments I’ve seen about having to play the Final Draft to get the actual/true ending. The first ending was emotionally satisfying and left a bigger impression imo. It was the turning point of this entire cycle Alan was stuck in and is what makes the Final Draft’s ending feel earned. It didn’t need confirmation on Logan answering back or Alan ascending because Alice’s post-credit video implied that was what would eventually happen. I still like this final draft’s ending, but I don’t think it’s to the detriment of the original playthrough and won’t hurt if anyone doesn’t end up playing through it (Kinda how I view AWAN too—although I haven’t finished it)

Dr. Darling my beloved. My everything. Remedy took their chance at making the funniest crossover. Alan repeating text over and over, being what’s keeping the dark place formed in its current shape—reminded me of the final nursery rhyme. This could’ve been creepier, but Darling’s reaction of “let’s not think too much about that” for the voice was golden. And what is there even to say about Zane and Darling. They got to flirt, so good for them. The ramifications of this could be dire or stay as some gag.

My conclusion on the situation with Alan, Zane, and Scratch is “I don’t think we’ll ever really know.” All the same person, but also every iteration is their own person. Their existences are too muddled and changed and distorted to ever find an origin or who made who.

I do find it fun that generally Zane IS helping Alan/Scratch and wanted to collaborate with Alan, and Scratch also wanted to become one with Alan, be the heart, bring an enteral deerfest that celebrates Alan. They’re both dangerous and/or manipulative, but it doesn’t seem to be out of hate.

My game had a bug where I could never talk with Odin and Tor apart from the mandatory scenes to move the game, so I missed everything near her trailer AND whatever they were standing around for in the Final Draft 😔

The Lake House page is making me excited for the DLC with the same name! Big fan of Remedy’s love for mad scientists and their death-by-hubris. Another Darling name drop that further shows how annoyed some FBC employees are at Darling’s golden boy reputation and his smug confidence. Incredible.

The Night Springs intro video!! Literally lays out what happens. Alan succeeds, transcends, and becomes a master of these realities he was inspired from. Interested in what this means for the Night Springs DLC. Will it make characters experience one of these other realities or will it remain grounded in the real world of Alan Wake 2?

I’m in love with how Alan Wake 2 repeatedly tells the player what the story and themes are, and outright says reveals and the ending before it plays out. The Yötön Yö song about Scratch, the Zane film of the same name spoiling “It’s not a loop it’s a spiral” and Alice+Alan in the Final Draft, this Night Springs intro confirming his success, all the nursery rhymes predicting Saga’s life, etc. Telling out what will happen through different mediums of art. It’s a clever way of making everything fit together and imply that Door, Zane, Alice, etc. aren’t as affected by the loop’s cycles restarting.

There’s mysteries that haven’t gotten answered at all. Nothing for Tim’s future and underlying connection to Door (I know it’s related to Quantum Break, but haven’t played). The 103 door a guest at the lodge kept banging and screaming at, which I think had the square looped symbol at the Oceanview Motel in Control. The employees door at Oh Deer Diner was always closed off.

Glad to have officially played through Alan Wake 2! Need that DLC trailer to drop soon

#alan wake 2 #final draft spoilers #alan wake 2 spoilers #I needed to put my mess of thoughts somewhere #this gameeeee #I don’t talk much about it either but this game is wonderful with its approach to mental health too. #Saga’s dark place in her mind is emotional every time. and seeing alan and saga work together. it’s 🩷💖💘

[sabfetamina]

Hey, I see that the discussions around Sabezra are quite tense, so I decided to add my three cents as a person who started to ship them only while watching ahsoka show.

I must admit that even though I watched the rebels a few times, they never seemed to me to be such a good ship . Their dynamics did not seem interesting enough to me, just a one-sided crush and that's it. However, after watching ahsoka I start to have doubts about that. With all the references to Anidala and sabine's behavior I'm really starting to question it .

Starting with episode 1, just because Ezra said that Sabine is like a sister to him doesn't mean the ship is over. Honestly, this is quite common in the friends to lovers trope. One of the characters, in fear of rejection, says that the other person is like a brother/sister or simply a friend, to avoid conflict.

The thing that is often used as a counter-argument to this ship is the fact that Ezra's crush disappeared after Season 2, and I have to disagree. Sabezra has had its moments throughout the Rebels in each season. Their relationship for most of the series is coded romantically or at least it looks that way because no one can tell me that the jetpack scene was platonic. Another such striking scene is the one in which ezra saves sabine's father, I won't quote the dialogue because I don't want to look for it, but it is telling (believe me)

Back to the ahsoka show, there are many things that make me start to question sabine's behavior. First of all I would like to mention that I don't think that romantic love is stronger than platonic love etc. or that the behavior shown by Sabine could never be shown to a member of the family (for example, for the siblings).

So why do I think that the whole thing seems at least strange? It has to do with their early relationship and the dynamic in the rebels ,which has been hinted at as romantic throughout the series. To demonstrate this difference with an example of a different relationship : if someone told me that Sean from lis 2 would do all of the things sabine did for ezra , he would do for his younger brother I would take their word for it and wouldn’t question it, because yes the siblings love is just as strong.

The problem lies in how differently the two relationships are presented. Sean and Daniel's relationship from the beginning is clearly shown as a family relationship of two brothers who can rely on each other, Sabine and Ezra's relationship has an already earlier established romantic overtone and because of this ,all of the stuff that sabine did also seem romantic.

Another twist I noticed while watching are the similarities to Anidala.

A person will put the fate of the galaxy on the line for a person who continues to live in fear of being separated from them?

Check

nightmares about the person they want to save?

check

Becoming "blinded" by thinking only of the welfare of that person?

check

I think you can see what I mean. I have no idea if these references are intentional or not but they are quite striking. In addition, it is worth noting that the series is about ahsoka, who was anakin's padawan and now has become Sabine's master, which makes me wonder if maybe this is done on purpose. I like to think that ahsoka has a chance to save her apprentice from a fate similar to her master.

(Haha and a little thing I noticed in this context is that at this point Ezra is the same age as padme , they are both about 27. Looking at the fact that Ezra is supposed to be a reflection of padme I find this interesting).

Okay, I'm ending my rant now, and I'm glad I was finally able to get this off my chest. To be honest, I doubt anything significant will happen in episode 8, but that doesn't mean the ship is doomed. Frankly speaking, I think it's just getting started.

#star wars rebels #sabine #sabine wren #ezra bridger #star wars #starwars #ahsoka #ahsoka series #sabezra #the ahsoka show #rebels #anidala #ahsoka spoilers