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io-lu-art · 4 months

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just a looong ramble analysing and rethinking Rey's character and turning whatever conclusions I get to into my headcanon without changing any plot points in TFA because I don't have the energy for that....

First things first. With everything I write here and publish on my blog from now on I refuse to believe that TROS ever existed. Everyone is free to have their personal opinions as long as they don't harass or hate on anyone, and this is mine. Almost every choice in that movie has left me scarred, even up til now, 4 years after its release. I thought I can ignore it, like any other healthy human being, but - oh boy, I cannot. If you are interested in reading another ramble on that, here's the post.

Since I am writing my own take on what could happen after TLJ (you may call it a fanfiction, I'm gonna call it a fanscript since that's gonna be its format), this post serves the purpose of getting my head clear around what's the deal with Rey, analysing, and lying down a solid foundation for my WIP. The story I'm writing has barely reached the end of Act I (out of III) at the moment I am composing this commentary, and I constantly notice that I get stuck with Rey's character every time I have to think about her for different reasons I will address down below.

I will make some rewrites as I see fit and necessary along the way for her character to make sense to me. All rewrites are in Tumblr's

chat style

This post will be linked to my AO3 fancifction as a reference for people to understand how I treat her character as soon as that one will be finished... *clears her throat* ...ANYWAY-

Let's have a look at Rey, shall we?

Rey's introduction.

When we first meet Rey, there is already a lot we get to learn about her. She's a scavenger. On a pretty much deserted desert planet. Water and food are scarce. She gathers parts during the day to sell them in exchange for food rations.

She has no friends, no family. She's lonely. And has been for quite a while. And yet, though hard, it looks like a pretty peaceful and stable life. If it were significantly different, we would have gotten introduction scenes of her battling some gangs or other scavengers for parts or something. But instead we were provided with beautiful, peaceful cinematography and John Williams' incredible score.

She manages. She manages because she has to and has never known to do otherwise. This on its own is already a very solid introduction. And it becomes even more powerful as we are provided with additional context later on, as she tells BB-8 that she's waiting for her family.

We know who she is, what she does and what she wants. No more questions, right?

Well, this is where it gets confusing, at least for me: there's one shot in Rey's introduction which always leaves me puzzled about her actual wants. It's the moment she puts on the rebel pilot helmet.

Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it feels like it kinda wants to draw parallels to Luke Skywalker in ANH? What exactly is the purpose of this shot? Is she putting on the helmet just for fun? Is it to show that she is still a kid inside? She seems to enjoy herself. Is it to show us that she maybe wants to be a pilot...? The gesture on its own is too little information to imply that, let alone that she already is a very skilled one, so probably no. Then, is it, perhaps, to show us that she dreams of more? Like Luke, who wanted to get off the planet that is "farthest away from the bright center of the universe"?

The interpretations, especially when looking at it in context to the rest of the movie could go on and on and on.

Quick detour.

The reason it works so well with Luke's character is because from the very beginning, with everything he does and says, it is perfectly clear that he doesn't want to stay on Tatooine. It's his only want when we first meet him.

Luke has friends who tell him about the galaxy. He seeks adventure.

And he's very impatient about it.

Everything he says basically SCREAMS how much he hates it there.

Now back to Rey.

Am I expecting Rey to show the same interest in getting off Jakku with the same attitude and level of energy as Luke, should that have been what TFA was going for? No, of course not. They are (supposed to be) two different characters after all. But I do believe that, given the setup, that helmet scene leaves too much room for confusing and unnecessary interpretation. (More so because I am trying my best to avoid nostalgia bait wherever I can.)

I am not denying the fact that she wouldn't have heard about the wider galaxy, that she wouldn't wonder about what it would feel like, being out there. People travel. And with people traveling, so do stories. So if you want to hint at that, do it subtly, all the while keeping the focus on her biggest want.

I might really just be reading too much into it, but still, in my humble opinion, a way to solve this confusion is cutting out her interaction with the pilot helmet completely. Let me demonstrate.

Inside her home we already see this self-made rebel pilot puppet. Just like the puppet lying around, instead of having her pick it up and putting it on,

the helmet remains part of the environment, stuck in the sand. There could even be a close-up on it as Rey puts down her empty plate next to it when she has finished eating if you really want to show it. She then rests her arms on her knees and looks up into the sky, following the ship that has just departed from the far outpost into the high atmosphere until it disappears. Waiting.

What is achieved by changing the interaction with the helmet is that it keeps her wants just as clear as Luke's. Luke wants adventure. She wants her family back. Period.

...I rewatched this scene after writing these paragraphs and yes, I admit, in the end it happens so fast that one could probably just let it pass and interpret it as Rey being very bored and using it as entertainment to wait out the days. But even if it were just that, the effects this little tweak would have on the following scenes is quite interesting to look at nonetheless.

The tweak I am going with from now on: Having her not actively wonder about possible adventures at all. She doesn't believe those stories to actually be true, because she's never allowed herself to. She's never allowed herself to actually want to ever leave Jakku.

What would it mean for her characterisation? It would make her slightly more serious and grounded. And the movie (except for the helmet scene) actually already treats her that way. Notice how she, while fixing BB-8's antenna, takes a moment to look at him before asking:

She's never seen such a droid before. At least not in such good condition. So, of course, she's curious. But when BB-8 says it's classified, she only laughs about it. "Classified? Really? Me too. Big secret," as if to say, haha, yeah, right. She rejects that possibility. And she doesn't bother asking any further, because when she is confronted with the choice to go and explore, she is reminded of her promise to herself, which is that she will wait for her family until they return.

Now, here is where I insert some very subtle "rewriting". When Rey first meets Finn, she is suspicious of him...

...and should actually remain suspicious,

instead of admiring him and falling into this, let's call it, "excited, fangirly smile"...

She doesn't know him. She has no reason to trust him. Instead, the tone of this line should be one that reflects her emotions as it slowly gets to her that those stories she's been hearing about might actually have some truth to them, that there might actually be a wider world out there. So make her be gradually interested.

Huh. This man I just forcefully hit to the ground, a Resistance fighter, knows about BB-8 and his classified information. What are the odds of that?

"So you're with the Resistance?" Rey asks suspiciously, looking down at the man.

The man stands up, brushes the sand and dust off his jacket and answers, "Obviously. Yes, I am. I am with the Resistance."

Rey frowns, "I've never met a Resistance fighter before," scanning him with her eyes. Why would there be any on Jakku? Nothing ever happens here.

"Oh, this is what we look like, some of us. Others look different."

Rey cannot help a little smile at his strange attitude. She looks back to where BB-8 rolled off to. Puzzled, she tells him, "BB-8 says he's on a secret mission. He has to get back to your base..." Even hearing herself pronounce that out loud feels so surreal to her. None of this makes any sense. Why-

"Apparently he has a map that leads to Luke Skywalker and everyone's after it."

What? "Luke Skywalker?" she asks, confounded.

CUT TO ACTION.

Whether she wants it or not, the plot forces her into the stories she's been hearing of. You don't want to believe they are real? They're real, all right. She has no choice but to run and get along. And later, she does get more and more interested, specifically when she meets Han Solo, the legend himself. Her whole beliefs turn upside down. It's exciting and she embraces it. Why? She's made a promise to BB-8 that she will get him home, and those things kinda come hand in hand.

Rey's physicality.

Rey is very fast to jump into action. She doesn't think twice about what she's doing. She just acts. Because that's how she's learned to survive all this time on her own. When she but hears BB-8 struggling in the distant sand dunes the first time they meet, she immediately reacts and goes to help (which also shows how compassionate she is towards people - and droids - in need of help).

And she's incredibly stubborn about it. If I may even word it like this: it's something she carries with pride.

So she's a good fighter. And I have but one request: DO. NOT. FORGET. THAT. HER. FIGHTING. STYLE. IS. ROUGH. AND. DIRTY. AND. HAS. NO. TECHNIQUE. WHATSOEVER. WHILE. THE. STORY. PROGRESSES. OK? Ok. What else? Ah, yes. Piloting. I don't know which of the two aspects has brought more uproar in the SW community, with the addition of the Force to these 2 points making people call her a Mary Sue, her being overpowered and so on. Let's have a look at that.

Rey's piloting skills.

She obviously knows her way around the Falcon. And it's plausible. "This ship hasn't flown in years!" It's been there for quite a while. Maybe she has had the opportunity to sneak onto it once. What about her flying skills? Well, that takeoff definitely had me worried. At this point I am even amazed this ship is still all in one piece. Which has me thinking... just a thought...

While trying to get those TIEs off their tail, Rey damages a visibly big part of the Falcon's exterior. "Ups," she comments, hastily checking the controls. Ok... The ship still flies. All good.

"What was that?" Finn calls from the gunner position, seriously worried for their lives.

"Nothing to worry about!" Rey quickly shouts back. All in all, the flight is messy as hell, and the Falcon needs some heavy repairs. But they still manage to get out.

"Nice shooting!"

"That was some flying! How did you do that?"

"Thanks! I don't know! I've flown some ships, but I've never left the planet."

(This is me reacting to their dialogue in the new context:) Yeah, guys, good work! You've almost destroyed the Falcon in the process, but you're alive, so I guess it's fiiiiiine.

What am I going for here? Adding to their level of expectations, which are... pretty low, and hopefully Rey's likability.

And then, later, Han is horrified of the state his ship is in, "Who did that?" Rey doesn't answer his question, but instead immediately offers her help, "I can fix that for you," feeling a bit ashamed of handling the ship of a legend this carelessly. And Han is... well, Han about it.

When would the Falcon get those repairs, you might ask? Eh, *hand gesture* there's plenty of time on D'Quar for that while they discuss how to blow up the third Deathst- *clears her throat* Starkiller Base. And obviously it's not gonna be Rey doing those repairs.

This addition tones down her abilities, puts more focus on her skills as a scavenger and makes her more relatable. I'd also argue that it puts more weight to her decision to eventually decline Han's offer to join the crew because of her wants. You see, once immersed into the real thing, the stories becoming true, meeting the legends, she becomes genuinely curious. She asks questions. Why did Luke leave? What fight? She gets incredibly excited when Han offers her a job. And yet, despite all, she still wants to go back.

Nevertheless, Rey displays pretty amazing piloting skills under those stressful circumstances on Jakku. After all, flying the Falcon is....

Her instincts are implacable. One might even say that she*

She just isn't aware of it yet. It is not until some scenes with Han and the rathtars later that we get the first hint.

The Force.

Now I might be wrong, but I have a theory, which is that the piloting performance under high pressure on Jakku might have been it. The Awakening.

The Force calls to Rey through Luke's lightsaber. And she listens to it, not knowing what will follow. She experiences the Force vision, and is horrified.

"That lightsaber was Luke's, and his father's before him, and now, it calls to you!"

"I have to get back to Jakku." Again.

Even when Maz tells her, "You already know the truth. Whomever your waiting for on Jakku, they are never coming back,"

she still refuses to believe that.

Tears run down her cheeks

and she shakes her head. No.

"But there's someone who still could."

Rey frowns. What is Maz implying there? "Luke?" she asks and realises what it's leading up to, and doesn't like it. Her emotions are a mess. She gulps back and keeps shaking her head as Maz speaks.

"The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead. I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. [...] The light. Feel it. [...] The lightsaber. Take it."

Rey doesn't want to hear of it. Any of it.

"I am never touching that thing again!"

Rey just witnessed complete horror. She is in denial. Keep in mind her clear wants from the beginning of the movie. Ideally her want for her parents to come back should be replaced by the character fulfilling her needs at the end of her arc. But we're not nearly there yet. What Maz tells her about the Force completely contradicts Rey's experiences. She cannot just accept the truth. And how does she handle it? She runs away. She's terrified.

She wants to go back to the way things were before any of this mess started. But the plot doesn't let her run away that easily. It knows she has to face her fears, one being her fear of the Force and one the fear of perhaps never making it back to Jakku ever again.

It forces her further into these situations, making it impossible for her to get out of them. She's trapped. Literally and figuratively. And fighting her way out won't work this time, the one ability she always relied on to save herself. It's her darkest moment. And if that were not enough, Kylo Ren, this stranger, this man inside that mask, the man from her vision, shoves all her insecurities right into her face.

"And Han Solo." Rey jolts up. Either out of fear of possibly betraying Han and slipping, giving away a location, or out of rage that Kylo has gone too far into her personal space. Either way, this rage gives her some strength to oppose him. "You feel like he's the father you never had. He would have disappointed you."

"Get out of my head!" He backs away for his own reasons, not wanting to think any more of his father, but still holds onto her mind. Rey does all she can to withstand him, and the longer she does, the more time it gives her to understand what is going on.

And Kylo senses it. What he's trying to do here is not working. Concern washes over his face, which makes him lose control over the situation. The connection opens, inviting Rey to tap into his mind. She's inside his head. Now she understands. She understands she can use this power on him, too. So she does.

And there it is. She's strong with the Force.

And that's intentional. Why? For reasons we discover in TLJ and numerous other fanfictions. (TROS? w-what's that-)

She has found a way out of the situation. Now, has she ever heard of Jedi mind tricks? Maybe? But remember what she just discovered: She just tapped into Kylo's mind. So she tries that again on the stormtrooper. Because when she knows how to act, she just does. She's always been confident in her physical abilities and skills. Why would she have to treat this new power any different? And luckily it works, after 3 tries.

And that's fine. Let's move on. Kylo kills Han. Explosions.

Notice this. Even though she knows she now has these new powers, the same powers Kylo has, she still draws her blaster at him after calling him a monster. She acts on emotion and choses the quick, familiar way.

I actually like to believe that Rey really doesn't know what the Force is and how it works, at all. How would she? Yes, Maz did tell her about it, but how do Force-powers manifest in people? She's never seen anyone use it before, upon meeting Kylo Ren. So in every scene she does use it, she just copies Kylo. That's the only reference she has. Remember how proud she is of her physical abilities. And she is so naive that she just goes and tries it for herself, without thinking of whether it will work out or not. And it works out for her. Because, again, she is strong in the Force.

It's true that her flaw, her naivety, is not really addressed in TFA. It never really backlashes on her. And, to be completely honest, I have no idea how to make room for that without some heavier rewrites yet. But maybe it's not necessary. TLJ takes care of that. TFA just introduces us to Rey as a character after all.

Now, is the force-summoned lightsaber making her overpowered? If you interpret it as "Kylo couldn't get that thing out the snow but Rey could," then yes, yes it is. BUT, if you see it as "while Rey is observing the fight, she sees Kylo trying to summon it, so she copies him, the way she copied him with the mind-tapping, and reaches for it the moment Kylo conveniently gets it out of the snow for her," I don't think it is, though I do agree that in order for the second version to be true, the scene happens too fast with too little shots to explain it. *OP takes a breath* So, here is what I suggest:

Kylo reaches out for the lightsaber. SHOT of the lightsaber in the snow, fidgeting slightly. BACK TO Kylo, pulling anew. BACK TO the lightsaber. It gets free. CUT. Another shot of it flying through the air towards the camera.

SHOT on Rey witnessing that - she is already on her feet again - and immediately reaching for it as well, outstretching her arm towards it.

SHOT of Kylo as he feels the momentum of his pull shift and dodges out of the way. The lightsaber flies past him, into Rey's hand.

Rey has always been fast to react to action. So it would make sense for her to be able to do that. Ok. Now to the fight itself.

*sighs* I don't even know where to start. ...One thing's for sure. Kylo at this point is pretty much destroyed emotionally from having killed his father, but he's still big and strong and aggressive in his movements. Rey, on the other hand, kinda seamlessly knows how to handle a lightsaber, which... is definitely not believable at all.

Let's step back for a moment. Why do we have this fight? Rey needs to get Finn and herself out of there and Kylo is pretty much in the way, so she wants to eliminate the problem. And what does Kylo want? Sure, he is interested in Rey and her raw powers which eventually adds up to them being equals in the Force, so he doesn't want to kill her...

But he also wants that lightsaber, doesn't he?

(God, I am looking at this fight to find any clues and I'm just sitting here, elbows on the table, resting my head in my hands, massaging my temples, wondering, "why the hell are there so many cuts in that fight scene?") (I am no expert in fight choreography, so bare with me as I try to make this work.)

Rey is the one who draws first at him.

She has never wielded a lightsaber before, but knows how to handle a staff... so she treats the lightsaber like a staff within its limitations.

Because remember, HER. STYLE. OF. FIGHTING. IS. ROUGH. AND. DIRTY. AND. HAS. NO. TECHNIQUE. WHATSOEVER. So, pretend we have some well thought out choreography in this part.

Kylo blocks her with ease. Rey is frustrated. The lightsaber feels heavy and difficult to handle. It doesn't take long for Kylo to

get her cornered at the edge of the newly formed cliff.

"You need a teacher! I could show you the ways of the Force!" he exclaims.

Rey considers, out of breath, "The Force?" Rey takes a moment as her mind connects the dots. So that's what these new powers are? Kylo watches her, waits for her to make a move. No time for pondering about the Force any more. Rey moves. Kylo LETS her duck and free herself from his block. She runs, backs away from the crater. He follows her. He outstretches his arm. Rey is stuck. She's literally petrified. Again. Kylo draws nearer. He twirls his saber, now holding it backwards (you know, Ahsoka style). "No," she hisses through her teeth, struggling. Heavy breaths. She closes her eyes. When he almost touches her hand holding the lightsaber, "No!" she RESISTS his force-cage and GOES FREE.

Because, you see, even though Maz told her to "close her eyes" and "feel the light", Rey has never done that before, and when under stress, I do believe she would rather choose a quick, familiar way to get out of the situation. The only thing she knows how to do with the Force at this point is to copy or resist Kylo. She wouldn't know how to to draw power from the Force, yet. She'll have plenty of time to learn that from Luke later, should she survive this fight, so we better continue.

Kylo stumbles back as she draws at him. Rey goes for a swing to hit from above, which Kylo manages to block last second, bringing his lighsaber up from behind his back. As their lightsabers are crossed again he quickly reaches for her right hand, which is holding Luke's saber, with his left hand and moves it aside to his right towards the ground, using his crossguard for more momentum to force her down. He steps his left foot accordingly to keep himself stable. Rey cries out from the unexpected movement. They are kinda back to back. His left shoulder against her right one. The position is uncomfortable. He squeezes Rey's wrist. Rey cries out in pain. Then, she realises how close they are.

Time for some close combat, ladies and gentlemen.

She gives in and lets go of the lightsaber, lets it fall to the ground. Kylo releases her to reach for the fallen lightsaber. But before he can pick it up, Rey KICKS his left hand away with her right heel and PUNCHES his JAW with her right elbow from below. Kylo's head rocks back. He stumbles backwards from the harsh impact, causing him to turn his back to her in order to catch himself. Rey summons Luke's lightsaber back into her left hand, and ignites it. When Kylo turns back to his opponent, left and unprotected side first, Rey is ready to stab him in his left shoulder.

Kylo stumbles back some more, she brings her hands together for another strike leftwards, he barely blocks it, he stumbles back some more, it leaves his posture open, Rey strikes again, rightwards, lower this time, wounding his leg, he falls to his knee, leaving Rey the final blow to provide him with his scar.

The reason I started writing this entire ramble in the first place is a conversation I had with my friend which brought up the fact that Rey should be able to beat Kylo by using her rough, unpredictable moves. Shout out to my friend who, bless her, is willing to listen to and survives every one of my sw rants and who pointed this out in the first place!

Is this a good fightscene now? I have no idea. I hope so? I do have it very clear in my head now though, so I might go and have some fun storyboarding it in the nearest future.

You know the rest. The ground splits, she runs to Finn, Chewie picks them up. . . .

There are some more moments which I believe need some tweaks, like the meeting with Leia, which is just so unfair to Chewie, really, but if I go on and on about this, I would end up changing the entire movie, which I do not have the strength for atm. This ramble was supposed to be about Rey and her alone, so I am done here.

I guess in the end Rey does realise her needs and is able to let her wants aside for a bit longer and focus her hope on actually helping the Resistance and get Luke. Hope that, with finding Luke, she will get to understand these new powers. I do feel like the movie could have provided us with a more emotionally rich reactive scene to the fight and her abilities, and generally just more of those, but then, what am I expecting from a JJ Abrams film? We have Rian for that.

My conclusion? I'm bad with conclusions and summaries, so here you have it, my take on Rey by only adding to the existing dialogue, changing some attitudes here and there, adding a scene, and changing the fight sequence at the end and how she treats the Force.

I do have a clearer understanding of her character now, which was the entire purpose of this ramble, so I guess, mission accomplished. Congratulations on having made it till the end. It was a long ride. I did consider splitting this beast into 2 parts, but while writing this, at one point I just decided to fully commit to it.

You are totally free to, of course, agree with me and stay tuned for my WIP fanscript or disagree, never read through this thing ever again, ignore it and leave it to die on Tumblr's graveyard.

Before you ask, because I also considered doing that just for the sake of having fun with GIFs on Tumblr (all text gifs are taken from YARN btw), I will not do a post like this on TLJ, since I have no problems with Rey's character there at all. Props to Rian Johnson at this point, for managing to make sense of her with what TFA gave us.

#rey #rey nobody #the force awakens #the force is strong with this one #character analysis #character rewrite #headcanon #this is my headcanon now #ramble #long ramble #long reads #have i mentioned it's long?#star wars #star wars fanfiction

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imminentinertia · 1 month

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Now that everyone's forgotten about it it's a great time to word vomit about Last Twilight, yes? But it was only recently I finally managed to finish the last episode of Last Twilight and I have Thoughts and I needed to digest.

I also have A Very Personal Frame of Reference for how I judge media dealing with blindness. What I have read about Last Twilight has been a lot of delight, a lot of disappointment with how the story went, analysis of colours and outfits and dialogue and narrative elements, but I haven't yet seen much about the depiction of vision loss. Soooo *cracks knuckles*

(I bet I've missed some posts about it, though. I'd like to be pointed to such posts)

As for me:

I had an older relative with severe vision loss thanks to untreated glaucoma (get your eyes checked regularly once you hit 40! Glaucoma is treatable).

I grew up with two friends who had lost an eye as small children - one also had severe vision loss in the remaining eye, the other had a well functioning eye. Actually I know more people my age who have lost an eye and I did then too, but I was close with these two and I guided the near blind one often.

I have a younger relative, someone very close to me, who gradually went from perfect vision to near blind. That's the most important person from everyone with visual impairment I've known, in this context.

Let's just say I had a beady eye (sorry) on Last Twilight when I first heard of it, since I have a fair bit of experience as friend, relative, guide and activist when it comes to visual impairment. I've tried moving about with a white cane and I've learned braille (I don't remember much, though). I've provided the audio commentary when watching films with blind people, more times than I can count (and I've explained several times, with various degrees of impatience, to seeing strangers that yes, blind people can enjoy the cinema). I know a fair bit about this, I believe.

Which means I'm rarely terribly impressed with media depictions of visual impairment and it's something I tend to focus on.

As for Last Twilight:

HOLY SHIT SEA'S AMAZING ACTING

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If anyone tries to claim he's not doing a fantastic job, they're objectively wrong. One may argue that artistic quality is subjective as it's invariably judged against a set of agreed upon conventions rather than true objective measures, but if you hold Sea's acting up against any agreed upon good acting and find it lacking, you need to look again.

I noticed him slipping (eyes focusing when they shouldn't) twice. Slightly. In the gif above, if a seeing character was delivering that line, the actor would focus on Jimmy when he turns his head. It's natural, there's movement and seeing people's attention is drawn to that, especially when it's this close to us.

Sea doesn't. He fucking doesn't. He looks like Day is concentrating and listening and feeling and he fucking doesn't even glance Jimmy's way even though that's what every cell in his human body wants him to. And that's just one of a million examples of how instruction, coaching and Sea's talent and effort offers up a Day that seriously seems visually impaired.

Sometimes, when a seeing actor is playing a blind character, they get instructed to - or choose - to go so unfocused that they look empty-brained. Some plaster on a vapid smile and/or Stevie Wonder head movements (you should know that Stevie Wonder turned blind very quickly after his premature birth, and he has no idea of how seeing people move. Adults who go blind are unlikely to move like him). Sea, however, looks like his brain is focusing but his eyes do not.

Day is intelligent and goofy and angry and bitter and worried and snarky-funny and sad and delighted and all of it shows on Sea's face, while his eyes look the part. It's so well done, I'm in awe.

Sea also moves exactly like my near blind younger relative and it's fucking uncanny. It's like seeing them. The often hesitant steps, the slight lean forward, the way Day uses his hands and fingers to figure out where he is and what is close to him, it gave me goosebumps. The way Day uses the remains of his sight to look at things is so like seeing my relative that I literally gasped the first time I saw it.

All the awards for Sea, please. And quite a few for Aof Noppharnach and the visually impaired acting coach. By the way, I never caught the coach's name, so if someone knows it I'd love to know.

HOLY SHIT A NEAR BLIND CHARACTER GETS TO BE COMPLEX

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That doesn't happen as often as one should think. When the story is about being/going blind, the blind character is often either a super brave little ray of sunshine, or terribly tragic. Day is neither. He is all of it. He is human. He's so well written it makes me need to chew on my fists, he has all the dimensions.

Mork is arguably a bit less rounded, but Mork wears quite a few masks, and he is absolutely a human being, not a pretty cardboard cutout.

HOLY SHIT A NEAR BLIND CHARACTER GETS TO DO REAL NEAR BLIND PEOPLE STUFF

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It doesn't happen as often as one might think. Fumbling somewhat, using a white cane (often in a completely meaningless way), wearing dark glasses all the fucking time - those are the staples of token blind characters, all too often. One of my favourite scenes in Last Twilight is actually when Day reads Morks contract, because it showcases a visually impaired person using his phone as a reading tool, perfectly real-looking. Well done! Kudos! Standing ovations! Now stop him there and don't let him do the stupid unnecessary breakup

Running with a seeing guide and using a phone for lots of text to speech/speech to text purposes. Going to events, libraries, bookshops, markets, parties. Going out to eat, watching a film. Day does all this with a caretaker's help for some, but not all of it. Blind people do things like this. They're not special little miracles for it, they're just people who hopefully have access to decent assistive products. Entirely too often main blind characters don't get to do many of these things. Entirely too often they're just vehicles for some inane moral of the "stay positive" variety, unless they're in a tragedy.

For the record, in the scene where Mork uses a white cane inexpertly, to put it mildly, it's quite obvious to me that Aof was aiming to show us Mork's sheer desperation. Mork's personality has extremes, and trying to put himself in a blind person's shoes and making it a lot of people's problem seems like something a distressed Mork could in fact do. The result is that he looks like a Bad Blind Character, but that's fine, just like the actors portraying those characters Mork doesn't know shit about what he's doing.

HOLY SHIT THEY DIDN'T MAKE DAY PERMANENTLY BLIND. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT

(At this point it's probably no surprise that I added an image description to the gif)

Yes. Well. Day gets his vision back in order to live properly happily ever after. I was mad as fuck about that for a while, and about the incredibly stupid breakup and time skip. I'm still mad about the most useless breakup plot fuckery ever and the time skip, and the general clunkiness of the final episode, but I'm not mad anymore about Last Twilight not showing that blind people can have true happiness.

It's about the audience, eh. To an audience of almost exclusively seeing people (I assume), losing one's sight is a frightful thing and doesn't make for the happiest of happy endings, and Day's condition is actually treatable. So production gave him his sight back. It would have been a notch braver to not do that, but a sweet romance isn't necessarily here to be all that brave. They did a lot of good work with showing how Day could manage many things on his own, with the right aids, and when the vast majority of the audience can be assumed to be seeing, showing how near blindness isn't crippling may be good enough.

After all, people are ignorant about blindness and will offer to help only to grab hold of the blind person's arm and drag them along, which is BAD, but if you've seen that guy on Last Twilight do guiding right maybe you'll do that yourself, if your assistance is needed some day. Maybe you'll listen to what the blind person is saying instead of assuming they lost their brain along with their vision.

And it's always a hell of a lot more convenient to see than to be blind, so when you have a condition that can be fixed, go ahead.

Except for that one fucking doctor making it sound like Day had three months left to live while it was just another few months until his vision would go completely, and everyone in the room (Day, mum, Night, Mork) just accepting that, I think Last Twilight did a really good job of showing that while there are great inconveniences to losing one's vision it's not being sentenced to sitting at home and feeling helpless, like Day starts out. It did a great job of dealing with an overprotective mother and a terribly guilty-feeling brother, too.

I would have liked Day to stay blind and end extremely happy, and I think it's bit of a waste of a character to heal him from the very premise of the story, but I'm not angry. Not anymore.

Although I greatly disliked the happyhappyhappy seeing ending, I was annoyed with most of the dad arc and the speedrun Night/Porjai romance, I loathed the breakup part and I hated how Day never took responsibility for his own actions leading to the accident where he got the cornea damage (although I will grudgingly admit that it's actually something that lends a whole lot of realism to Last Twilight and to Day), all in all, I honestly loved this show. No show is flawless, and Sea's gorgeous acting alone is enough to make up for a lot.

I recommend this blogger on how to write blind or visually impaired characters, if you'd like to know (a lot) more.

#last twilight the series #last twilight meta #visually impaired characters in fiction #immy mutters about things

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nateriverswife · 11 months

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In all honesty, I doubt that L would use the Death Note with the same intention as Light Yagami, or would've even used it at all. He would've read out the entire rule of the Death Note, ask a few questions and figure out a few loopholes he can exploit before going, "That's... so boring???".

L, to me, is the sort of person who doesn't give two shits of the criminal whom he apprehended. He had fun tackling the case, got his pay and let the government do their jobs in the aftermath. At the very least, he wouldn't want said criminal to roam the streets freely— as long as they're somewhere not amongst the civillian, then L fails to see why bother using the Death Note at all.

It's kind of funny when people said, "L would've joined Light had given the chance and eradicate the world off evil" because that would've contradicted L's whole character— and that being having the time of his life solving the unsolvable. What kind of entertainment is there if he just sits in front of his silly laptop, reading off solved cases just to write down the criminal's name and attend meetings with world leader? Sounds boring to me. L would've sentenced himself immediately.

I thought I didn’t have much to say about this, because I agree with it, but if you are the person who sent the previous asks or has read the others, you should know that I cannot for the love of God stop myself from writing. I recommend a drink and a snack, by the way.

I just want to preface this by saying that I did write a post about it, and if you are interested, check it out. It’s not long nor elaborated as these answers I give, but it sums up my opinion and it’s more about the “what if” L grabbed the death note before Light.

I don’t know in which post I wrote that I also think using the death note would take away the challenge he gains from solving crimes, but that’s another of my arguments as to why he wouldn’t use it.

Now, the post will focus on the reasons you provided and the opinions I found in the fandom that would contradict the idea of him being similar to Light in this regard.

[I wrote this after I finished the post.] Before I start, and I’ll talk about this thoroughly: the line between suspects and criminals is slim, and L deals mainly with the first ones. It’s important to remember this, while reading my post, because, while the ask talks about criminals, we have to keep in mind L’s actual job. So, consequently, it might be off topic in some parts, and this is the reason. Another thing is that I consider different situations L might find himself in. I tried to explain the details as much as I could, but there might be some variables that I did not disclose properly. Hopefully, they can be understood by the context.

PREMISE:

In the “I am not justice” speech L gave at the Wammy’s House, even if I think most of it was bait, I do still believe there is some truth to it, because I am not one to point the finger at L and criticise the fact that he does what he does because he likes it.

Work and pleasure can go hand in hand, and hopefully it can also be possible in this universe soon.

At the end of the day, L still solves crimes, still catches criminals, still provides “justice”, no matter what his main goal is here, which can also be getting a kick of serotonin by being challenged. There’s nothing wrong with it, as long as he does what his role requires him to, so it's one thing that I don't get about the fandom or those who think it is wrong.

Do you want him to hate what he does? Don’t you think that would make him more prone to take the short route out and detain suspects without any reason, until they confess? Or just straight up kill them and see if the crimes stop? Which, interestingly enough, I wrote a post about how L saving Misa caused his death, to prove that sometimes winning is not the only thing on his mind, but he wants to understand cases on a more nuanced level.

But the point is, this kind of people have no problem saying that L doesn’t care about others, that his ultimate goal is to entertain himself (and to win) and in the same breath, they continue by stating that he would use the death note in a blink of an eye with the same moral justification as Light, so… Does he or does he not care about the world? Why does he solve crimes? For entertainment purposes or to “get rid of the evil and save the world”?

To me, it’s both (kind of), so it would make sense that he wouldn’t use it.

REASONS: - one by one.

First and foremost, his role in the world and his responsibility of what happens to criminals after they get caught.

There’s a tendency to confuse private detective work with the criminal justice system and law enforcement.

I came across some posts a while back, when I used to dive in his hashtag, and people would read his work in a light that is not applicable to him, and I think it’s because he works with the task force.

L is a high-profile private detective, and like any other, he doesn’t have the ability to arrest nor sentence criminals.

Yes, he says that he will bring Kira’s head to the task force, but it’s a figure of speech and it only means that he will find enough proof to catch him (and I also think it was such a badass move to say it in front of Light, but I digress).

You could argue that some of his tactics aren’t legal, so he could possibly be the one to administrate “justice” (in quotes, because the death penalty is not it to me), but this is different.

If he wires the house of someone and gets proof that they committed the crime, let’s be honest, given his status and the probability of law enforcement or national agencies/government already knowing how he operates, he will get a slap on the wrist, but deciding the fate of a criminal or a suspect is overstepping his already non-existent authority in that field.

He would lose trust, which he cares a lot about. He wouldn’t be able to work with the support of the national law enforcement, which he needs because he is a private detective that countries need to employ, and nobody would do that, if he cannot respect them. It would also put him in danger of his identity being discovered, because that is a patently crime, which would get him blacklisted from working in a country and make him a wanted criminal.

"But he wouldn't be caught. Nobody would know."

Even if he uses the most intricate way to kill his suspects, one time is a coincidence, two times is weird, and three times shows that something fishy is going on. He seems to communicate his progress to high profile people, like the FBI header (we can see that at the beginning of the manga), so going from “yeah, I have suspect” to “they died” continuously would literally point every possible finger in his direction. He cannot afford that, not even if he wanted to do it. We are told and we say that he is smart, so why would he do something so stupid?

It would also be weird if all the criminals he caught were to be killed, so he would need to avoid patterns, which would definitely take him a lot of time and planning and would steal it from his actual activity, that he loves.

Besides, if he manages to kill enough people to raise some eyebrows but they are not linked to him, countries will ask him to do something about it and if he refuses, that's fucking weird, because that's the type of case he is interested in. If he accepts it, but it takes him too much time without any justifcation, weird. If he denies the help offered by national agencies, weird. If he accepts it, but does things that don't make sense and don't actual help the case, weird. Countries will start to think that he cannot be trusted, which goes back to what I said before. It's a circle that he cannot escape. And he is not the only smart person in the world. Someone will notice that something is wrong, that that is not the way he usually acts, and people will start to question his integrity.

But going back to the beginning, since he has no authority after he provides proof, I honestly believe the thought of him deciding the sentence of a criminal has never crossed his mind, because he has no reason to spend time over that. He cannot do anything. Maybe he has a wish but that is it. Nothing he can act upon, so it’s useless. He also came across so many criminals (10.500) and surely, he had no time to individually think about each one of them, so he just stopped doing that. By the way, he works on multiple cases at once, so why would he waste time over their fate, after he caught them, when he can continue to occupy it with more interesting and fun mind games?

So, yeah, he doesn’t give a shit in this sense. If his saying was required, maybe yes, but even then, he wouldn’t follow the criminal proceedings closely.

Anyway, I am not even sure what his opinion on the death penalty is, to be honest, because him using a criminal that was on the death row doesn’t immediately mean that he is in favour of it, and the fact that he was willing to get one of them out of that situation makes me incline to believe that he is not. In Lind L. Taylor, he just used what was already in place. So, if he isn't, obviously he won't use the death note by default.

The fun of solving a crime.

He loves it. You wouldn't ever guessed it, right? It's not as if his character is mainly based on this.

But seriously.

Considering the in-universe tale of what Light managed to do, it says that the crimes have dropped significantly. How can you possibly believe that L would love to be in a world in which his favourite pastime is useless?

I won’t get into math to calculate exactly how long it would take him, because the stats we have are not accurate. I tried to do it but there are so many variables that would change everything (e.g. when he actually started to work), but it’s safe to assume 20 years – or less –, because he still needs to find suspects but if he wants to use the death note on them, he doesn’t need to convince anyone but himself that they are the criminals, so as soon as he is convinced, he can proceed and then move on. He can also work on many more cases than just almost 2 a day. He can take on a lot of them, even five, if he feels like it, because the time for each one would be minimal.

And I think this is something people fail to consider when saying that he would use the death note, because what would his criteria be for choosing who to kill? Or when to kill them? If they are arrested and convicted, what’s the point of doing it? What would he achieve? Nothing, so you have to think he would do it when they are only just suspects, but he is confident enough that they are the one. The question remains: when would that be? L is quick to find a suspect and be convinced that they are guilty. Basically, for most of the easier cases, he would need less than a day. So, I’m going to believe that the people supporting this idea imply this, which is so contradictory to his character.

If you say that he would do what Light did, as I said, it makes even less sense. Other than the fact that he goes against Kira for this reason, that’s not his job nor his goal.

As you said, “What kind of entertainment is there if he just sits in front of his silly laptop, reading off solved cases just to write down the criminal's name and attend meetings with world leader?”.

Key word “solved”. I am repeating myself, but once it’s solved, why would L care? Unless he is personally invested in the criminals because they are connected to his past, or the case is related to a future one, he would literally move on. I cannot even force myself to conjure a reason other than these two, because there is not.

“But it’s Light.”

Yeah, that’s another reason why L doesn’t give a fuck. Who is Light to him exactly, realistically? No one but a suspect, which he is highly convinced that is Kira.

I am sorry, but if your whole reading of a character is through the lenses of a ship that is not even canon or probable to be canon, since Ohba is homophobic and would never do something like that, then I don’t know what to tell you, but I find it a bit embarrassing.

L is an independent character. Just like Light is.

Maybe – in-universe and without considering Ohba – I am at fault for failing to realise this attachment they might have for one another. Probably, I have this rigid way to look at Death Note in general, that does not allow me to consider L’s activity more than a case that he tries to solve, while gaining a bit of excitement out of it, especially after considering that it’s shown to us in the yotsuba arc that L cared only about Kira, not Light, because he found them entertaining and challenging, not because he liked Light.

I know it’s fiction, okay? Doesn’t have to be realistic. It can be silly and yada yada yada. I look at these posts and giggle at the “so obsessed with each other”, the whole university sees these men playing tennis and disappearing, etc. and I think it’s funny. I see the irony. That is a joke, but then I read posts that try to prove through canon that L was in love with Light or meta-analysis about him, butchering his character just for that or reducing him just to that, for a bit of gay love with the most republican looking guy ever (I mean, fair but, yk), and I wonder what I am missing, what piece of this puzzle I lost along the way, and I cannot find it.

[Tangent: And then I cannot even enjoy most of the fanfics in this fandom for the same reason. I feel like I am not in on the joke.

That’s why I also prefer L x Matsuda or L x Naomi, even though I don't ship them. People who do, at least, don’t change his personality, his morals and so on. In Matsuda’s case, it’s just a change of attitude, which is possible and easier. When I used to read L/Light fics, people would often either make L OOC or change Light completely, so that things could work. In canon, Light is no one outside of Kira, and L would have zero interest in a 17/18-year-old boy that is just smart. Also, L can find other idiots with the same intellect as him, that are not murderers and are far more entertaining. Did L ever say that Light is the only one who understands his mind or reach his level? I don’t remember it, so where does this belief come from? To be honest, I don’t even really like when people reduce characters to their intelligence. A person is more than their mind.

And I am glad to have found a small following/a group of mutuals that are like me in this regard, because the reason why I left the fandom years ago was also due to the inability to enjoy any content because it would always have L/Light slapped on it lmao (since the characters in the second half were not really considered).

Some people who ship them follow me, which is cool to see because it means they are not here expecting that, but for some unknown reason. I don’t usually go on a rampage about them – what I said here was very mild and I think bearable – so that’s maybe why they don’t mind being here, so yeah, that’s nice. There also people who like Light, and I despise him, so that’s also sweet, but it also means that I am not hating on him enough. I might compensate for that (jk)].

Killing people as a detective.

Don’t feel like I need to explain how this is just stupid. He uses some very morally grey tactics, but killing is a bit too far.

I wrote a post about how I think L wouldn’t work with Light, even if he caught him, because I honestly doubt L would want to be associated with someone who kills people, let alone be the one to do the killing. It just doesn’t feel in character, like at all. Not only it’s a shallow way to deal with criminals, he wouldn’t gain anything and if he does it long enough, his job will be useless, but why would a detective engage into that, also to that extent? It makes no sense, and, as I said, it’s not his focus.

A detective that kills people is contradictory. It is cool, not going to lie, but L is not that type of character.

I saw a comic a while ago in which L and Light joined forces, and L was the one using the death note to kill corrupted politicians. That would never happen. Not only because he wouldn’t kill criminals or join Light, but he doesn’t care that much, unless it hinders his job. And, even in that case, he would not end their life, but manipulate them to give him what he wants or persuade them to act in a way that is beneficial to him.

Neither of them is that righteous. I don’t believe Light actually cared about the world that much. His speech at the end was just to cover up that he was having fun with the power he held. Just a moral justification. I tried to write a post how him being smart, his supposed interest in this matter and his black and white view of the world don't make sense to me if he actually cared, but I was writing it in my tumblr drafts, and it got deleted. Now, it’s uncompleted in my notes, and I have no motivation to finish it. Nice.

Far-sighted.

As I was writing the paragraph above the last one, there's another thing that is different between Light and L and that is to be taken into consideration: how far-sighted they are.

I will use as an example how they manipulate.

In this post (long ask about characters in general), I talked about the Aizawa’s gateway to explain how L does it. Long story short, he convinces his target to act in a certain way, withholding information that the other person would need to know to change their mind.

He doesn’t do it with the intention to get something and then get rid of them, as Light does.

Besides Misa, who was protected by Rem, and other people, like the task force, that if dead would show that he’s Kira, Light manipulated people to gain something and killed them, because he could not see a long-term relation forming between them, probably due to the fact that he was scared that they might either try to overthrown him, hinder his work or find out who he is (although he does really get a sick pleasure by telling people he is Kira, after condemning them to death). Even in Raye’s case, he could’ve continued to threaten him and use him to kill any FBI agent that might come after him. He could’ve done so much with that one federal agent, but he just tossed him in the trash.

L is not like this. L can see himself working with same people he manipulated for a long period of time. He does not see it as an irreversible act, because other than his identity, he doesn’t have much else to hide, and he doesn’t always do something criminous. He can even create a mutually beneficial partnership.

He is far-sighted. He might think that a criminal he caught could be useful in the future. Imagine if he has a case that connects him to one he already solved and he needs any input he can get from the person responsible for that, I believe he will make a deal or manipulate them to get that information. So, using the death note and killing his possible future assets is such a self-sabotaging move, in my opinion.

What he would do with the death note.

As I wrote in the post hyperlinked at the beginning, he would study it, make Watari and himself remember the rules even without owning the death note and either give it back to the Shinigami, after getting as much as possible information about them too, or lock it up somewhere safe. It would depend on if the Shinigami is someone like Ryuk.

Either way, he would realise how destructive it is and would know not to engage with it.

Will he want to prove its authenticity? I don’t know.

He might ask the Shinigami, “how many death notes are dropped on average on the earth?” and from the answer, which – before Light – is zero, and after returning the death note to them, he might just decide to wait to see it happen without his intervention, because it’s not an urgent matter, so if it happens, he knows how to act, and if it doesn’t, it’s better.

I don’t think he’s that interested in the death note itself. In the Kira case, it was crucial to the investigation, but in a normal day in his life, seeing it actually work could lead him to have some thoughts he might not otherwise have, and that could possible spiral down to testing each rule. He would realise that, and I think he would take the Shinigami’s words at face value, considering that he just met a fucking Shinigami so that must mean that it has a high chance of working, and leave it alone.

If he had been that eager to test it, he would’t have shared his plan with the task force, as to get their approval, and would’ve done it in secret, getting back to them with just the results. It would’ve saved his life, to be honest, because Rem wouldn't have known about that and what would’ve meant for Misa. Or maybe not, because she might’ve just killed him once everything was done and while he was presenting everything. In any case, it shows not only cooperation but also a sense of hesitance on his part.

Going to the scenario of him getting the death note before Light, he would also hope that it doesn’t become a mainstream thing, because that would, like you said, make everything so boring for him, like, “get creative, I know how you are doing it”. A bit like what Near did in the 2013 one shot.

My rambling ends here, and now, I am thinking about L begging criminals to be a little bit more fun to catch, ‘cause they are making him die of boredom, and he can’t do it anymore, he’s losing his mind. And if they continue like this, they could actually defeat him. And all the leaders in the world being like, "bitch, what are you doing?? Don't encourage them!"

But yeah. That’s more or less what I had to say on the topic. I kind of get the feeling that I am leaving something out, so that might make this a “to be continued” post, depending on any external input I might get.

Hope you liked this answer. It’s quite long. Almost 4k words, but it was stimulating, to say the least. I love when I find these type of messages in my inbox, because they make me think lol

That’s all.

#thanks for the input!!#death note #l lawliet #light yagami #dn.inbox #as always hopefully my english is understandable #i feel like i know who you might be tbh #but even if i'm wrong - i still adore you #dn.general #dn.L #meta analysis #death note meta

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roydeezed · 11 months

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One Piece-Chapter Round-Up(Chapter 1084)

Hai Hai! I’ve been a little MIA recently as I’d been a little busy finishing up a personal project of mine, but now I’m back in full force to do a whole lot of analysin’. But before we get to that I want to talk about how cool Luffy looks on the cover of Jump! That’s our Captain! Alright, see ya below the cut mateys!

Oda cuts to the chase right away and has Bonney and Sabo meet. I’d been wondering what their roles were going to be as the Revo’s were the main force behind freeing Kuma. And Sabo’s already got the keys. This shows how Oda’s going to bridge the gap narratively between the two stories of Egghead and the Reverie. It’s the perfect way to leave us on a cliffhanger and transition to the Strawhats at the same time.

If the theories of the “Shock” sent around the world from Egghead about it being a dissemination of information are true, Bonney could provide the context to Luffy and get him on her side through mentioning Sabo. Since they separated, they could get two different parts of the same puzzle that only we’ll be able to see. Though I do wonder what Sabo does after this since he’s accomplished his main mission. At the very least we know he goes to the throne room.

Oda also casually drops another mystery through the mention of the Phantom Room. Some guards were disappeared because they saw it. We know it’s not the throne room, that has it’s own name and is also referred to as the Empty Throne. And this room is called the Room of Flowers.

So it could be one of these frozen rooms Imu was in while they played around with the posters of Vivi during the Reveries. But Imu seems to take a while to get down them, so how would a normal guard even get that far.

I also want to take this moment to bring up some motifs around Imu. There’s a theory floating around that Im is a stuck in time queen of Alabasta. I like this theory because of the following ideas that seem to surround Im. One is the idea of things being frozen. They go into this vault that’s all cased over with Ice. And in the chapter they’re introduced in, there’s a heavy emphasis on the ever-lasting beauty of princesses through Vivi and Shirahoshi. With the way Oda connects ideas together, this lends a lot of credence to the Princess Lili theory. Not only that. But think about how the cyclical storytelling of One Piece has always surrounded the saving of Princesses. Nami was a blueprint (we can get to my crackpot theory on that one day) that was perfected through Vivi and Shirahoshi and Rebecca.

And this perfectly leads into the discussion Cobra has with the Gorosei. First of all, let’s talk about how badass Cobra is, because he knows that death is on the line. People have been killed for saying much less and to the Gorosei no less. But focus on the contents of what Cobra is saying. Because if the Lili = Imu = Main Bad Guy theory is true, then Oda revealed the bad guy all the way back in Alabasta! If Lili didn’t join the Celestial Dragons then we all assumed she came back. Or back then we assumed the monarch of Alabasta just didn’t go up to Marejois. But we didn’t consider the possibility that instead of not joining them, the monarch actually ruled them!

The Straw Hat Grand Fleet Represent! And Mjosgard. Who’s development I love. He’s also of the Donquixote family so I wonder if there’s some inherent pattern with them not being able to keep their Celestial Dragon status. Also Charloss gets another deserved beating, first from Luffy and now from his subordinates. It’s so cathartic. Though unfortunately, as it was earlier referred to as an “Attempted Murder” we know he’s not dead. Ya almost had him Leo! Also I just briefly want to touch on how badass Morley is. Karasu is my favourite but Morley is probably the strongest out of the four commanders. Not only did she break out of Impel Down, possibly even before Shiki, but she lead the infiltration into the territories of the God’s and held her own against an admiral.

Okay so one more thing that I’m sure has been talked about but I haven’t seen talked about is the fact that Imu’s name backwards is Umi, which means Sea in Japanese (Thank You Yu-Gi-Oh!). With the mentions of the secret treasure of Marejois and Imu’s name being related to such a big force in the One Piece world, she has to command some all powerful power, maybe even a sea fruit or something like that. Or hold some relation to why Devil Fruit User’s can’t swim.

Arriving at the last page and basically all throughout mentions of the Void Century, I always have one panel flashing in front of my eyes. This one:

“The answers you will arrive at may be different from ours…” This statement always screamed to me that the answer of the true history will not be as clear cut as we wanted. As in the way that we see the Celestial Dragons to be villains might not be what’s actually reflected by history. While it is interesting Oda highlighted York’s greed right before this, I still think the Celestial Dragons could have had a good reason to take down the Ancient Kingdom. (If anyone’s watched TTGL, I’m thinking along the lines of the whole Spiral/Anti-Spiral thing if you know what I mean). And with the main bad guy having some relation to a sympathetic party, I feel like Oda is setting the stage for some real twists and turns. There are a few other options, such as Imu being in a love with Lili, and Lili leaving to start Amazon Lily (P.S. Imu could’ve totally done that in her down time and returned) or Imu being Lily’s child, but we still need more information. All this chapter leaves us with is more questions. And with a break week next, we’re just gonna have to wait.

#op 1084 #one piece chapter 1084 #one piece 1084 #one piece #manga recap #manga discussion #eiichiro oda

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sleepingdeath-light · 1 year

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since this is still something of a debate…

re: silent readers, fan creators, motivation and interaction

Since I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about this lately, and have seen a fellow writer get hate for talking about it, I figured that it was about time to throw my hat into the metaphorical ring.

Interaction is a massive part of fandom as a whole because in the end we’re all just a bunch of nerds all obsessing over the same characters and media in our own little community. Like a nest of overly excited rats, or something equally strange. And interaction can come in many forms depending on which platform you’re using — and for this post I’ll be referring back to AO3 and Tumblr because that’s what I use.

On AO3 you have a few ways of interacting with an author whose content you enjoy — with some being anonymous and others being much more preferred and important to authors. Of course there are hits, which are encouraging of course but you have no way of knowing if someone clicked on and finished your fic or if they mis-clicked and immediately left; it’s completely ambiguous. Kudos and subscriptions are the other big ones and are a good form of encouragement for writers because they tell you who enjoyed your writing and give you an idea of who would want to return (even if subs are usually anonymous as well). Finally there are bookmarks and comments which are the best kinds of interactions to receive in terms of motivation because they can provide actual praise and feedback, telling a writer who enjoys your writing, what they enjoyed or where to improve.

I know that waking up to a flurry of comments makes my day more than checking on stats and seeing a couple more kudos — and it makes me more likely to continue writing for those fandoms.

And for posterity’s sake, here are my AO3 stats as of the 27th of February 2023 (for context I have 31 fics up at the moment):

22k of my word count came from fics posted over the last month that I got feedback for — which also account for 7 of my total comment threads.

Now let’s look at Tumblr — where your options for interactions are following a creator, leaving an ask, liking, reblogging or commenting on specific posts.

There isn’t a metric for tracking how many people have seen a post on Tumblr, obviously, so the closest thing we have are likes. And that is how I treat them — a track of who has and has not seen each thing I post — as opposed to a proper interaction. They’re nice, of course, but they’re sort of insignificant when you think about sharing content and such — especially when you get to bigger fandoms.

Asks are an amazing way to give feedback to a content creator as well as to send in requests if they accept them. That way even the more anxious of readers can participate and interact — which is great! But they tend to get clogged with demands, threats and hate if you leave anon on at the wrong moment — which I and other writers have experienced.

Reblogs and comments are probably the best way to motivate a writer — which I can absolutely corroborate. Even if you don’t think the post you liked will fit the theme of your blog, you’re welcome to create a sideblog just to reblog things you like. Nobody’s saying that it has to go on your main!

Now let’s look at all of that in real terms by comparing two of my side blogs: this one (@sleepingdeath-light) and my most recent (@sleepingdeath-bboys).

This blog (light) was started in 2021 and has 615 posts up as of now. I have 43,960 notes and write for 115 different fandoms. 2081 of you follow this blog and most of my interaction is through anonymous asks (over 200 right now) and likes with very few reblogs and even fewer that have any feedback with them (maybe 5 total off the top of my head).

My Baynton Boys blog was started at the end of January 2023 and has 49 posts up. i have 199 notes and write for 6 fandoms with a focus on characters played by a single actor (extremely niche). I still receive more likes than anything else but the margin is incredibly small as I also receive a large amount of tagged reblogs and requests from the other amazing writers in the fandom (@/jamiewintons and @/pink-booty-butts mainly, who you should defo follow if you’re interested in Mat Baynton content btw!).

I have written over 22k words and counting for the latter account because l feel so much more motivated and appreciated by the people I am writing for.

I have posted a few headcanon sets for this account in the same time period because I am massively lacking in the motivation to do anything else.

So in case you were ever up for debating it; interaction matters when it comes to any type of content creator. We’re not robots, we’re people giving you content for free — and it’s nice to know when people enjoy it. Like actually enjoyed it (especially if you were the one who requested it!).

#sleepingdeath #re: motivation and interaction #re: silent readers #bit of a rant so feel free to skip i guess

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maple-the-awesome · 2 years

Text

Ackerman's Sister || Chapter 4

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x Sister Reader (strictly platonic), eventual Erwin Smith x Reader

Words: 1,848

Overview: As only a teenager yourself, you're already put under a lot of pressure acting as guardian to your little brother, and it doesn't help that he continues getting himself into trouble even in Kenny's absence.

Series Masterlist 🤎 AOT Masterlist 🤎 Fandom Masterlist

CHAPTER FOUR: PRESSURE

You thought today would be a good day for once. Seeing that the funds Kenny left for you and Levi wouldn't last forever, you've been determined to find ways to make ends meet, but of course, finding respectable work in the Underground is far easier said than done especially considering your young age. Usually, you're paid for simple tasks like helping merchants load supplies onto their wagons or that one time you managed to milk three whole coins off some poor MP soldier who was desperate for information on some criminal in the area, however, this week has marked the first where you actually received a steady job spanning over the course of several days.

A local storekeeper had been outside complaining to a customer about being understaffed when you decided to offer your service. While they were originally against the idea, they eventually gave into your persistence, agreeing to let you work for them but only until their employee returns from sick leave. For the last four days, you've worked for the store while earning a decent wage much to your delight and, by the end of it, you were provided with enough money to buy food for the whole month.

With so much money in hand, you've decided to indulge for once, after all, this might be the only time you can afford to do so. The plan was to purchase some groceries as well as an early birthday present for Levi then make a nice dinner for tonight, but those plans have now been soured when catching sight of a crowd just down the street.

People are circled around at the end of the block, screaming and shouting cheers to whatever's going on in the center. Of course, you're not stupid. You assume based on the context clues that it's a fight, and whenever you see a fight nearby, you make the next conclusion which you always hope to be wrong, but that day has yet to come.

"Levi!"

Your once optimistic mood towards the day melts into anger and annoyance as you push past the crowd, your dull eyes locked with the two fighters. One is a man who's down on the ground, wiping the blood off his face the second the blows finally halt thanks to his attacker flinching at the sound of his name.

"What the hell are you doing?! Didn't I tell you no more fights?!" You grab your brother's arm, spinning him around to face you which is something he tries to avoid. Instead of looking up, he keeps his eyes on the ground.

"But he-!" Levi attempts to argue his case, but you don't give him the chance.

"Did he swing first?"

"Well, he-"

"Did. He. Swing. First?" Levi presses his lips together stubbornly, sneaking a quick glance at the deadly poison in your eyes before reluctantly shaking his head.

"...No," He spits the word as if it kills him to admit, continuing to glare at the ground as if it did something wrong. Meanwhile, you rub your tremble with your free hand before using it to drag him away behind yourself.

"I can't believe you. We're going home and once-"

"-‘ey now, where ya' runnin’ off to so fast, little lady? Ya’ know ya’ can't leave a fight ‘til it's finished. The kid's gotta finish what he started," the man Levi had been fighting steps in front of you both, successfully cutting you off from a hasty exit.

"I apologize for whatever my brother did, sir. I assure you he'll never do it again," you send a glare back to your brother who clicks his tongue in annoyance.

"'Sorry' don’t cut it ‘round here, princess. Ya’ gotta pay for the damage. That's how life works, ya’ know?" The man leans forward, getting dangerously close to your face even as you try to lean back with disgust. His breath smells like a pub and his yellow teeth are stained with the blood that oozes out the gap where one of his incisors use to be.

"I'm sorry, but I don't have any money," you lie quietly which only he likely hears. You try to push past him, but with a shake of his head, he snakes a very unwanted arm around your waist, drawing an uncomfortable gasp from you.

"Well then there's plenty o' other ways to pay up, girly," he slurs in your ear, causing a shiver to run down your spine.

You hear Levi growl and feel him pull against your grip likely in preparation to hit the man, but you beat him to the punch quite literally. Before the man can utter another word, your fist collides with the center of his face, cracking his nose against your knuckles and forcing him off balance. Letting go of Levi's arm, you swipe your leg under the man's, sending him crashing to the ground where his head smacks against the hard dirt. While he isn't unconscious, he certainly isn't getting up anytime soon.

The crowd erupts into laughter and awes, although, you give them no mind. Instead, you turn on heel to march off without even looking back at Levi," come on. We're leaving."

Not needing to be told twice, Levi steps on top of the man before chasing after you. He makes sure to stay a few feet behind with his head bowed in shame. He can sense the anger radiating off your body, then again, anyone could tell you're beyond pissed just by the way you walk with curled fists and a fire burning behind your narrowed eyes. It's a look Levi could only wish upon those he hates most in the world.

Once arriving at the apartment, you go directly to the kitchen, setting your bag down while Levi remains standing near the door stiffly. Looking down at his clothing, he memorizes each mud stain and slight tear, although, he's sure his face looks worse judging on the burning of his cheek and jaw as well as the liquid he can feel running down from his eyebrow.

"How many times does that make it this month?" You ask suddenly from the counter, focusing the best you can on putting the groceries away in their respected places.

He kicks his shoe on the ground,"...five."

He hears you inhale sharply which draws his attention upwards for once. While he was prepared to listen to you lecture him again about not picking his battles more carefully, he didn't expect you to fall so silent nor did he expect to see the visible quivering of your hand as you pause to set a jar in the cupboard.

After a second, your hands reach up to the top of your head, pushing your hair back as you let out a shaky sigh.

Levi whispers your name with worry, however, you don’t respond to him directly. Shutting the cupboard, you walk off towards the bedroom," I...I just need some time alone right now."

He watches the door shut behind you, flinching at the soft slam of it which leaves him confused. While the two of you have fought quite a bit recently, you’ve never just walked away with so little to say. Normally he was the one to run off.

Noticing you hadn’t put all the groceries away, Levi decides to quietly finish the task, putting each item away slowly before one in particular catches his eye. Removing the porcelain pot from the bag, he's eyes go wide to discover it's a tea kettle. Although it's cracked on the top, it's still beautiful with a blue flower painted delicately on the side. Reaching further into the bag, he finds a few matching teacups.

Frowning, Levi puts the tea set on the counter by the stove and hangs your bag up by the door before finally deciding to approach the bedroom. He hesitates there, reaching a hand out to knock, however, he freezes when the sound of soft whimpers meets his ears.

Sorrow pricks his heart at the sound, leading him to slowly crack the door open just enough to peer inside the room. From the glow of the kitchen lantern, he can see you huddled at the edge of the bed, your knees pulled to your chest and face hidden in your hands as you sob.

Levi's own lip quivers at the sight. He isn't blind nor is he stupid. He knows how much you've sacrificed for him, and he knows how truly lucky he is for it; all those nights you'd stayed awake just to ensure no one gave either of you trouble and the daily streaks you'd go without eating all for the sake of providing him with more food…Without any hesitation, you took on the responsibility of keeping him healthy and safe, but what has he ever done to repay you? Get into fights and add more unnecessary stress to your shoulders…

When Kenny first came around, Levi figured he could learn to be stronger and prove to you that you don't need to keep sacrificing everything for him, however, his quest to prove he's capable only resulted in the opposite. He's only managed to get himself into more trouble, getting into fights with adults three times his size just to return home to your disappointment and anger. What happens when you can't take it anymore? What if you decide you've finally had enough and leave him just like Kenny did? He wouldn't blame you and maybe you'd even be happier without him there to be a burden, but he's terrified of losing you.

Levi quietly walks to your side before sitting down close enough for his hip to brush yours, but he doesn't say anything neither do you, in fact, you only stiffen upon hearing him enter. While your cries may have silenced, there's still visible tears rolling down your cheeks.

"...I'm sorry, (Y/n). I'm really sorry. I'll...I'll be a better brother, I promise. I won't get into any more fights, I'll come home early, and I'll even start helping you make money without causing trouble. Just...Please don't cry..." Levi can't prevent his own whimper when he does decide to speak, his grey eyes quickly filling with tears as they remain locked on your figure," I-I don't like making you sad."

He isn't really sure what to say or do. Although he had sometimes heard your sniffles on late nights after your mother died and had seen you cry while fighting with Kenny a few times, he's never seen you cry because of him which leaves him to wonder just how often it happens. That guilts eats him alive…

Fortunately for Levi, you wrap your arms around him, holding him close with his small frame held firmly to yours, his chin rested against your shoulder. He's quick to return the embrace, sniffing to keep his nose from running which is getting hard to avoid with the tears that keep filling his eyes.

"We're gonna be okay...right?" He whispers, a bit afraid of the answer, but he's offered comfort when you pull away slightly to move a hand through his soft hair with that smile of yours that never fails to make him feel safer.

"Yeah...We're gonna be okay."

NEXT CHAPTER ➡️

⬅️PREVIOUS CHAPTER

#levi x you #levi ackerman x reader #levi x reader #aot levi #levi ackerman #x reader #levi x sister reader #sister reader #aot erwin #commander erwin #shingeki no kyoujin #attack on titan no regrets

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baekhyuq · 3 years

Text

“Get You Alone.” Baekhyun(m)

Chapter 2: Wine and Ice cream

Genre: Smut, Fluff, Single Dad!Bbh

Word count: 8.2k

Mini Playlist:

Paradise - EXO

Betcha - Baekhyun

WHIPPIN - Baekhyun

Summary: You meet your friend’s parent for the first time.

(This is not proof read lol)

<<Previous Next>>

You couldn’t stop thinking of what Baekhyun said that day, it’s been two days since and all you’ve thought about was him. What he was doing, what we was thinking. You felt like some love sick teen.

“You’re doing it again…” Sofia pouted, looking at you from across the table. “You’re zoning out.”

“Im sorry Sof, I get so easily distracted these days. You know I’m a grandma.” You apologize providing comedic relief. You felt bad, Sofia didn’t know. Would you tell her? Could you?

“You always say that Y/n.”

“Ugh, when you say it like that I truly do feel old.” You fake a cry.

Sofia rolls her eyes before smiling. “You’re hot for a granny.” She jokes. “Thanks, I could take anybody’s grandpa.” You say taking a sip of your drink, you both were in the school’s court yard, just talking. It was a nice day out, it was cold enough for you to wear a sweater and not burn up.

“Im surprised you’re wearing a sweater, actually.” Sofia says pinching the fabric between her fingers. “Its cute too.”

You grin, “I know right? And thanks, I got it from a thrift store.” Checking your phone you see that it’s time for you to be home. “Well would you look at the time- ow..” You’re cut off by a cramp in your stomach.

“Whats up?” Sofia places her hand on your shoulder as you wrap your arms around your middle. “Cramps? Must be that time of the month~” She teases.

You groan throwing your head back annoyed, “I really need to get back on birth control. This wouldn’t be happening.”

Sofia laughs at you agreeing. “I haven’t had one for over a year now. It was funny when I asked to even be put on birth control, daddy was so confused.” She snorts, “The look on his face was funny as hell.”

You smile at the thought of Baekhyun questioning Sofia about her sex life, like some confused old man thinking all girls were innocent. Especially his baby girl.

“I would pay to see Baekhyun’s face like that.”

“Huh?” Sofia raises an eyebrow at you, “He must have told you his first name? That’s funny.”

Your eyes widen slightly, shit. You didn’t mean to slip up like that, letting it slip out of your mouth was surprising. “Oh yeah, he introduced himself to me when I came over.”

“Oh! I forgot to ask, how did you like him? He’s a nerd sometimes but he funny I swear. You’ll love him.” Sofia exclaims, wrapping her arm around yours. “He seems very sweet.” Is all you respond with, even though Sofia doesn’t know about you two. Any other response out of context-in Sofia’s case-would be suspicious.

“That’s good you two will get along. Speaking of…You have to come back tomorrow for studying. I have so many more chapters I need to finish to even study them.” Sofia pleads with her eyes looking at you.

You roll your eyes, “Of course of course. You need all the help you can get. I understand it’s your second semester but starting these good habits will help you in the long run.”

“You’re so dependable Y/n, you’re like a mother at times.”

You could feel your face become red at the thought of being Sofia’s mother and Baekhyun’s lover. The thought was enough to overwhelm you. You put on a smile humming in response. “It’s time for me to head home now though. We should get coffee tomorrow morning.” You pat her hand that’s around your arm before standing up. Sofia stands with you, you now realize just how much taller Sofia is than you, only by a few inches.

Sofia pouts, letting your arm go. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow. Text me when you’re home.” She smiles, side hugging you.

“Will do, bye bye.”

You’re sitting in your living room, in a pair of shorts and a short sleeved shirt. It was the perfect temperature in your house. “Ahh.” You exhaled, “Finally some time for myself.” You grabbed your head set and plugged it into your controller. You loved to play games in your free time, you loved to play Overwatch especially support. You played for hours until your stomach growled, you traveled to the kitchen debating what to eat. You weren’t hungry enough for a meal, maybe a little snack. You looked in your fridge seeing a yogurt cup. You shrugged grabbing it, you looked into your pantry for any granola, grabbing the bag before sprinkling a handful into the yogurt cup.

You sat back on your couch in the living room, opting to watch some YouTube while you ate. The sun was going down, usually you would be studying or calling your parents to chat. You felt so lethargic from starting your period all you wanted to do was watch some gameplays and eat. You desperately wish you would buy a heating pad for your stomach when you had cramps so painful they made you walk doubled over.

Your phone dings, you already know it’s a text from Sofia.

“Whats up babe?” You roll your eyes at her playfulness before responding back, “Im dying from cramps I want cuddles.” You were curled up, hugging a stuffed animal you’ve had since forever.

“Aww, I’m sowwy. You should take some pain killers or eat some chocolate.” She replies. You groan when you feel another cramp torture you. Before you respond your phone rings and it’s Sofia calling to face time you.

“Hello granny.” Sofia says, you see her smiling face on your screen.

“You’re so cruel to me.” You had your phone turned side ways, laying with you. You look tired looking into the camera, Sofia notices.

“My poor baby~ you should use a heating pad for your cramps. You should go to sleep soon too.”

“Its only 7pm, and I don’t have one. Im so dumb for not buying one.” You groan. “I could really use it.”

“I’ll lend you mine when you come over tomorrow.” Sofia offers, you hum happily in response, smiling.

“I’ll never be use to being in college, it’s so tiring.”

“Who are you on the phone with?” You hear his voice. You couldn’t miss it, even though he sounded so far in the background your ears perked up. “Y/n.” Sofia responds smiling at whatever her dads doing. “Hi Y/n.” Baekhyun’s face appears in the camera, waving.

A small smile spreads across your lips, “Hello Mr. Byun.”

“How was classes?” He asks, taking the phone from Sofia. You’re surprised.

“They were good, how was your day?”

“Pretty okay, thanks for asking.”

You want to laugh at how Sofia interrupts him, grabbing her phone back. “Okay dad, this is our girl time, thank you.” You can hear Baekhyun apologizing dramatically. “He’s so goofy.”

“Definitely.”

“So Y/n...” Sofia drags out your name, “How has your college love experience been?” She asks with a mischievous smile on her face.

You laugh, “Non-existent. College men are assholes and I’ll never date one or fuck one again.”

“Wow, I feel you. They’re all so very boring. It’s like rinse and repeat with their personalities.”

You agree with her, sighing. “I’ve always focused more on my studies anyway. Those men deserve to fail every class.” You snort, watching Sofia laughing as well.

“I agree.” You see her swipe up on her phone. “It’s bed time for you missy.” She says with a fake stern voice. “You need your beauty rest. “Yeah yeah yeah. I’ll sleep after a few more videos. I’ll probably fall asleep on the couch.” You yawn.

“Good, sweet dreams Y/n.”

You heart skipped a beat before replying. “Good night, Sof.”

Those were the exact same words Baekhyun said to you before sending you back to their guest room. It gave you butterflies in your stomach at the thought of Baekhyun. He was just so perfect.

You smiles to yourself, hugging your stuffed animal tighter before closing your eyes, too lazy to go to your room to sleep.

The next day was pretty cold, you wore the same sweater from yesterday with an under shirt incase. Meeting up with Sofia for coffee was relaxing, you both sipped from your hot coffees discussing college, new music and the news.

“Your sweater looks so familiar I feel like I’ve seen it before I just don’t know where.” Sofia says wracking her brain for an answer.

“Really? It could be anyones really, maybe it was a popular sweater style at one time.” You take a sip from your coffee again, the warm liquid comforting your throat. Your stomach cramped, reminding you of Mother Nature. “Ugh. Cramps really are the worst form of torture.”

Sofia looks at you with a empathetic look, “I know.. It sucks, I’m sorry.” She rubs your lower back comforting you.

“That actually feels so nice.” You moan, you remember when your mother would sit on your bed with your and rub your back after you had your first few periods.

“Daddy would do this for me when I had them.” Sofia smiles.

“Really? My mom did the same thing. How funny.”

“It’s so soothing.” Sofia leans back in her chair watching the scenery outside. You rest your head on your hand, your body was still so tired and aching.

“Ugh, I feel like going home but I don’t want to drive 45 minutes back home and then drive to your house for studying.” You pout.

Sofia frowns, “You can just go to my house. It will save you a trip, i’ll text dad and tell him you’re coming.” She grabs her phone and sends a texts to Baekhyun.

Your eyes widen, “Oh you don’t have to I-“

“It’s fine Y/n, we girls know how hard periods can be on us. Especially the first few days.” She tries to convince you, “Plus we have chocolate ice cream in the freezer and a heating pad with your name on it.”

“That does sound like a good time.” You drool at the thought of eating ice cream, while relaxing. “Fine. Just this once, I won’t let it happen again.”

Sofia smiles giggling at your stubbornness. “Good, i’ll walk you to your car.”

You pull into Sofia’s driveway, nervous. It does beat driving all the way back home. But at the same time you’re so anxious about being around Baekhyun.

You see the front door open and watch as Baekhyun walks toward your car with a smile.

You open your door, bag and phone in hand. Baekhyun holds your door open for you, seeing you carry a heavy bag, he rushes to take them off your hands.

“I’ll carry them for you, you just get inside.” He offers.

You thought it was sweet, Sofia must have told him everything. You sighed, that girl had a big mouth.

“Thank you.” You say as you take of your shoes leaving them at the door. The house smells so nice and fresh, as if he just cleaned.

“Don’t worry about it-“ He pauses looking down at your sweater. “Is that my, sweater?”

“Huh? Oh I thrifted this.”

“What size is it?”

“Xtra large.”

Baekhyun smiles shaking his head, he couldn’t believe he was seeing you in his clothes already. Albeit you had no idea it was his in the first place. But it was a cute scene for him to admire.

“So it is yours, you donated it?” You ask. Baekhyun nods.

“You look so cute in it.” He says, not needing to worry if somebody heard him.

You hide your embarrassment by changing the subject, “Thanks… I was actually promised chocolate ice cream and a heating pad.”

Baekhyun snorts, sporting a boyish smile, “Coming right up miss, please have a seat.” He teased before walking upstairs.

You smiled to yourself, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s not like Baekhyun is going to sit and stare at you for two hours. You didn’t need to be nervous, besides he already confessed he liked you as well. You sat on the comfortable couch, relaxing your aching bones into the plush furniture.

“Comfortable?” Baekhyun asks noticing your tired body leaned all the way into the couch.

“Unbelievably so.” You respond. He hands you a square shaped heating pad decorated in red hearts. You laughed knowing Sofia picked it out. Placing it over your stomach gave you so much needed relief you groaned subconsciously.

Baekhyun stopped in his track on the way to the kitchen, looking back at you. Your head was leaning back on the couch with your mouth open. He struggled to look away from your figure before robotically moving through the kitchen. He came back with a small bowl of chocolate ice cream.

“Thank you, so much.” The ice cream melted in your mouth, it was smooth and cold. The perfect combination. “I have this same bowl at home.” You comment.

Baekhyun’s blankly staring at you from beside you, you don’t notice as you’re enjoying the ice cream and watching whatever is playing. You glance over in his direction, spoon hanging out of your mouth. He’s already looking at you, a small smile on his lips. He shakes his head before leaning back and putting his feet on the coffee table.

“You’re very interesting Y/n.” He comments, eyes now on the television.

You admire his hair that’s messily pushed away from his face, his plump cheeks and cute nose on display. He looked so handsome to you, especially in this moment admiring his side profile. It felt so unreal to be in his presence. You face forward again, looking down at your almost empty bowl.

Baekhyun notices, “Do you want some more?” He offers.

You turn to look at him again, nodding shamefully.

He laughs before taking your bowl. “What’s the magic word?”

“Excuse me?” You raise an eyebrow at his question. You’re not 10.

“Incorrect.”

“Please?”

“Bingo.” He leaves to the kitchen, and you once again shamefully stare at his figure. He was like candy to your eyes. He returns with two bowls one with vanilla and one with chocolate.

“You don’t like chocolate?” You question as you spoon more ice cream into your mouth.

“I love chocolate.” He says casting his gaze onto your lips wrapping around the spoon before letting go. “I let you have the rest.” He whispers, teasing you.

You pout playfully before cracking a joke, “Do you want some?” Offering a spoon full of ice cream in his direction.

Baekhyun pauses for a second before taking the spoon into his mouth.

You were caught off guard, his eyes were looking into yours before he released the spoon from his mouth, licking his lips. You’ve never seen anything more sexual right in your face.

“Thanks, Y/n.” Baekhyun grins before enjoying his own bowl. He watches your frozen figure staring at him with slightly widened eyes. “Here,” He returned the favor by holding his spoon in front of your mouth. You reluctantly eat the ice cream from his spoon, avoiding his eyes. “ ‘Thank you Baekhyun.’ Oh you’re welcome.” Baekhyun teases you even further.

He’s so evil, you thought to yourself. You felt a cramp in your stomach, frowning at the feeling.

“Are you okay?” Baekhyun asks catching your expression.

“It’s just cramps.” You groan, sometimes the cramps would leave you breathless. Holding your breath while the pain passed by. “Im okay though.”

Baekhyun nods and takes both of your empty bowls to the sink before washing them and drying his hands with a towel. He returns to the living room, pumping some lotion into his hands and rubbing them together. You caught the smell of the lotion and it smelled like pumpkins. It smelled nice and sweet.

You lay on your side, leaning on the side of the couch holding the heating pad to your stomach. It gave you a little relief to lay down.

“I’m so glad I don’t have to go through that.” Baekhyun’s comment fills the air.

You roll your eyes before looking his direction. “Yeah yeah. I wish you could experience half the pain, you men wouldn’t be so loud.”

Baekhyun laughs at your statement, “I’ll pass, I can tell by you having to lay down instead of sitting up right that the pain is that bad.”

You sigh, “Yeah, it feels better to lay down actually.”

“When Sof was on her monthly, I would rub her back for her till she fell asleep. She loved it.” Baekhyun smiles at your curled up figure. He was surprised to be told you were coming over by Sofia. He didn’t want to admit he was happy to see you again, to be in your presence and tease you endlessly.

“My mom would do the same thing when I was younger. She would stay with me right before bedtime.” The smile on your face makes Baekhyun’s heart beat faster.

He thinks for a moment, “Here.” Baekhyun places his hand on your lower back, rubbing in a back and forth motion. You were shocked at first, but soon relaxed into the comforting feeling. You close your eyes sighing, you feel his hand pause before continuing. You could seriously fall asleep. You were fed, you were warm and now you’re being massaged. This felt like heaven.

“This seriously feels so nice.” You whisper to Baekhyun even if he didn’t hear you. Which he did, laughing lowly to himself. “I could stay like this for all eternity.”

“You could.”

Baekhyun’s words catch you by surprise. What was he saying? “What do you mean by that..” You’re almost reluctant to ask him, you’re scared to even hear his response.

“Y/n.. You know I like you. It’s only natural I’d want you to stay here as well.” His words make you grin to yourself, was this how it felt to be so giddy in front of someone you liked.

“I didn’t expect you to say something like that so soon is all.” You say truthfully, you’ve known Baekhyun for so little time but you’re so infatuated with him.

“I understand Y/n,” Baekhyun leans closer for only you to hear him even though there is no other soul here. His side is flesh with your legs. “I’m usually a very patient person, but you make me so very impatient.”

You want to hit him for making you feel so embarrassed, his voices and tone all so low and inviting. “I’m sorry?” Was all you could think of, your mind was putting together scenarios of you and Baekhyun together.

“Don’t apologize,” Baekhyun’s hand on your back grips your side, he’s now leaning over you completely. He looks so heavenly in this position, you could only think dirty thoughts by seeing him over you in such a way. He’s leaning down closer and closer to your face, stopping only a few inches away. “It’s a nice challenge restraining myself.” He whispers, “You’re so cute when you blush.”

You could only look up at him, his eyes staring right back at yours. They were half lidded and dark, so sensual. The proximity to him made your heart beat faster, the beating is practically in your ear. Baekhyun smiles, one that shows his perfect teeth.

“Ah, seriously.” He pushes himself off of you, leaving his hand on your backside. “You’re too easy to turn red. How does that make you feel?”

“Like a tomato.” You’re pouting from being teased so often. “Why can’t you not tease me? I can’t think straight when you do those things.”

“What things?” Baekhyun plays dumb.

You sit up and come really close to Baekhyun’s face, “These types of things.” His heart skips a beat, feeling like some boy leaning in to kiss his crush. You go to move back to your spot but Baekhyun’s hand on your back stops you. You furrow your brows confused. You see Baekhyun’s eyes dart to your lips, causing you to subconsciously bite them.

“May I?”

You couldn’t say no, no matter how much teasing he’s done, you couldn’t resist wanting to kiss him as well. So you nodded slowly.

Baekhyun’s hand cupped your cheek softly, bringing your lips to his. He could only think about how soft your lips actually were, how they fit so perfectly with his. He could practically still taste the chocolate on your tongue. It was a slow kiss, one with so much pent up tension releasing slowly. Baekhyun was the one to pull away, watching as your eyes opened to his, a dazed look in your eyes. He smiled, before bringing your lips to his for a small peck, and another, and another…and another. Baekhyun leaned his head back on the couch staring at you, you were gorgeous to him. He’d never found someone as beautiful as he found you. You watched as Baekhyun licked his lips, ending with him grinning at you.

“Your lips are seriously heaven.” He whispers, “Im sure your other pair are just as heavenly.”

You gaps, hitting Baekhyun on his chest, “You’re so dirty minded, why couldn’t we just have had a nice moment.”

Baekhyun laughs, smiling at your shouting and hitting. “That wasn’t romantic to you?” He jokes, rubbing your back.

“As romantic as me being on my period.” You roll your eyes, smiling to yourself. You almost forgotten where you were. Baekhyun brought you out of reality with that kiss. You subconsciously bit your lip thinking about it again.

Baekhyun snorts, it’s his turn to roll his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sure. You’ll learn to take me as I am” He says dramatically pulling you against him in an embrace to emphasize you being his. Even if you weren’t.

You yelp in the sudden movement before laughing with him, he really was a fun person to be around. “Okay not too rough, I don’t want to move so much.” You pat his shoulder to release you.

Baekhyun does so, and pulls you back just to admire the smile on your face. “You look pretty with a smile.” He comments. “Smile more often.”

It makes you smile even wider, the comment leaving your cheeks red again. “Thank you.” You felt another cramp coming on slowly. You groaned once more, “Just kill me already.” You joke. Baekhyun lets you lay down again, with your head on his lap. He rubs your back soothing your pains slightly.

The comfortable position caused your eyes to struggle to keep open, you feel like you’re being put to sleep by how relaxing this all was.

Baekhyun notices your breathing evening out and sees your eyes closed. You looked so cute asleep on his lap, he wanted to just take you to his room and cuddle you all day. Though, he knows Sofia would be home in about a few hours. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Sofia would react to you two, he couldn’t think of her reacting any other way than angry or upset. How could you two continue your feelings or even become something? Baekhyun sighs, letting his other hand pet your head.

“We’ll work something out.” He whispers.

You wake up to Sofia patting your back, smiling down at you. “Hey babes, you fell asleep?”

“Oh, yeah I was tired.” You slowly sit up.

“You don’t have to get up if you don’t want to. I was just checking on you.” She sits down beside you.

You shake your head, “I’ve slept for too long already.” You’re curious as to where Baekhyun has went, as you look around the room. “How was classes?”

“Ugh, so boring without you.” She pouts grabbing your arm. “I had to actually talk to boys without you.” She fake cries. “Oh no it will be the end of you.” You mock her fake crying, before laughing. “Im sorry I just was not feeling good enough to last through class.”

“Did you have ice cream?” Sofia asks.

“Yeah she had two bowls full.” You hear Baekhyun’s voice as he walks into the room. He smiles at Sofia before looking down at his phone. “She actually finished the rest of the tub.”

You blush remembering sharing your ice cream with Baekhyun earlier. “It was better than any ice cream I’ve tasted.” You admit.

“Its so good,” Sofia giggles. “Do you feel like studying in a few? I want to shower before.” She asks, standing up.

You nod, “Yeah I can wait. Go ahead.”

Sofia dismisses herself leaving the room. Your eyes shift over to Baekhyun who’s still standing, on his phone. “Yes Y/n?” He can feel your eyes on him.

“Nothing.”

He lifts his eyes to meet yours, a smirk on his lips. “Okay then, sweetie.”

You grin at the nickname, it was cute. Simple and innocent enough to say in front of anyone, but cute. “Baekhyun?”

He hums in response.

“How old are you?” You ask, you knew he couldn’t be past his early 30’s.

“Im thirty five.” He says, walking over to your sitting figure. “Is that surprising?”

You are surprised, he looked so young, he’d aged so handsomely. His ex wife was lucky, was. You grin at the fact that Baekhyun was single. An actual diff. You laughed out loud at your own thoughts, catching Baekhyun off guard. “Wow you’re going to laugh in my face? I know I’m getting old, geez.”

“No- its not that. I was thinking something funny, you look so young to be in your thirty’s.” You shake your head still laughing, trying to contain yourself.

“Well what was so funny?”

“I was thinking about how you’re a dilf.” You laugh trying to get your words out.

Baekhyun raises an eyebrow at you with a grin on his face, “Wow is that how you see me, Y/n?” He crosses his arms over each other, “You do have a dirty mind. I knew it.” He walks closer before thumping you in the forehead. “It’s always the innocent looking ones.”

“Ow, what does that even mean?” You rub your forehead, looking up at Baekhyun with a scowl.

“Women like you, who appear to look and be innocent but once you get down to it…” He leans down to your level, “You’re actually a nymphomaniac.”

You pushed Baekhyun’s shoulder rolling your eyes. “Yeah sure, I’ll tell you right now that isn’t true.”

“Care to show me?”

“Control your hormones Byun.” You scoff, his boldness turns you on but you’ll never admit it to him. His ego would only grow bigger.

“It’s hard to when you’re around.” Baekhyun whines like a child.

You could only stare as this grown man was entertaining you. “You’re too playful.” You shake your head.

Baekhyun smiles, before standing between your legs, forcing you to look up at him. He looked tall from this angle. “I just like to see you smiling. You look like you need a laugh.”

Baekhyun’s words made your heart beat out of your chest, he had a way with words.

Truthfully Baekhyun did love seeing your smile. It made his heart flutter every time he saw it, he would make a fool out of himself just to see it. He loved the view of you’re gorgeous eyes staring back up at him, he felt the urge to kiss you but knew now wasn’t the time. He didn’t know how you two could find time for each other, how to get you alone. Sofia would be leaving for a week or so to stay with her grandparents visiting her mother’s side of the family, that would be the perfect time. Baekhyun smiles down at you, cupping your face in his hand. He rubs your cheek with his thumb, he feels intoxicated touching you each time its like he’s taken a shot of vodka and his body is becoming warm.

It’s endearing to feel you lean into his hand, your eyes leaving his to glance at his lips. Baekhyun shook his head, laughing lowly before detaching himself from you. He walked over to the other couch, sitting down. He was sitting with his legs spread, his arm crossed over his chest and the other scrolling on his phone.

You scoff at him, how dare he get you so ready for a kiss just to be teased. You threw a pillow at Baekhyun, it hitting his leg and landing in his lap. “Asshole.”

Baekhyun takes the pillow and holds it to himself, “You know we can’t do anything now, Y/n.” He says quietly in a sing song voice. “I knew you were a nymphomaniac.”

You rolled your eyes, “Whatever, this is your fault.”

“Hmm, maybe it is. What are you going to do about it?”

You give Baekhyun a look, he shuts his mouth before he says anything else. You stand up and walk over to Baekhyun, taking the pillow and smacking him upside the head. “Stop teasing me, especially this time of the month.”

“Okay, Okay don’t hurt me, mean lady.”

“Mean lady?!” You gasp. “I know you’re not talking, old man.”

Baekhyun places his hand over his chest dramatically, “Don’t remind me, Y/n.”

You point a finger at Baekhyun, he’s looking up at you. “Stop testing me then.”

“Yes ma’am.” Baekhyun says with a low voice. You don’t know why but the way he says the words make your legs weak. Baekhyun notices your blank expression and smiles. He stands up from his spot on the couch, now looking down at you. “Have fun studying, I do hope you spend the night.” He says but he’s only joking, dragging his hand across your waist as he walked off to where you presumed was his room.

“This is the third chapter right? It will be our last for today?” Sofia questions, begging to quit studying. It had only been about two and a half hours, you knew this was still new to her. Making her dread actually studying wouldn’t be good for her future studying habits.

“Yeah this will be the last, we can wrap it up after this.” You nod, scribbling down notes as you read along your textbooks. Your stomach had been hurting a bit, your cramps kicking your ass once more. Sofia offered for you to spend the night again and you couldn’t refuse, you didn’t mind not having to drive home at 11 at night.

You watch over Sofia reading over books, she actually was a determined worker if she understood the material. You were happy she was learning and catching on quickly.

“You know…” Sofia starts. “Dad has been acting a little strange the past few days.”

You look up slowly from your notes to see Sofia already staring at you. “Really? H-how so?”

“He’s been staring at walls sometimes and asking me how a certain hair style would look on him. Ill catch him randomly laughing or smiling..He seems happier, or distracted.” Sofia shakes her head. “I don’t know maybe it’s just him being old.” She snorts.

“Maybe.” Was all you could reply, nervous that she had found out but being reassured she was as oblivious as day one. You did feel bad with her not knowing, you couldn’t describe why you felt so horrible.

You hear the door knob twist and the door opens, Baekhyun’s head popping out the opening. “Dinner is almost finished, whenever you guys are ready to eat.”

“Okay, we’ll be down soon.” Sofia nods, turning back to her textbook.

You watch as Baekhyun shifts his eyes to you, winking before closing the door.

“Whats got you smiling?” Sofia lifts her head to see a small grin on your lips.

You shake your head, “Im excited to eat, I’m hungry.” You lie. It was only half a lie? You would love to eat Baekhyun up. But that day would come, much, much later. Painfully slow.

“You know, he can really cook. He’s always feeding me I’m scared I’ll be immobilized. Im already chunky.”

“You’re the hottest girl I know.” You smile, scruffing Sofia’s chin before going back to taking notes.

Sofia giggles, “Thanks, and you’re the hottest girl I know.” She repeats back to you.

You both laugh before continuing another 10 minutes, questioning each other over the material.

You stretched your limbs, hearing some of your joints popping with a satisfying noise. “Sofia, I’m old.” You groan. Your back was killing you sitting on the floor for so long.

“God you sound like my dad.” Sofia laughs before lending you a hand to help you off the ground.

“Yeah yeah, you’ll be old one day and you’ll be saying the same phrases. Just you wait.” You joke before you two go downstairs to the kitchen.

As soon as you enter the kitchen you can smell the delicious aroma. You’re not sure what it is but you’re ready to eat whatever it is.

“Finally, you guys decide to come down.” Baekhyun has a towel thrown over his shoulder and an apron on over his cozy attire. He looks like a real dad about to barbecue something. You laugh to yourself, thinking he looks absolutely adorable.

“It smells great in here.” Sofia says taking a seat and patting a chair by her for you. You sit as well, watching Baekhyun place plates in front of both of you before sitting down with his own. You’re practically drooling over the sight of steak and vegetables. It smells so heavenly you could be full from the scent alone. You watch as Sofia cuts a piece off before eating it, her expression turns into a happy one and she wiggles in her chair. It’s funny how so many women do that dance when they eat, they’re so happy.

You turn to your plate before letting yourself enjoy Baekhyun’s cooking for the first time. Sofia wasn’t lying when she said he could cook. You wouldn’t mind being immobile if Baekhyun fed you like this everyday. You could feel eyes on you so you look up to see Baekhyun gazing while sipping his drink, presumably wine. You’re curious to why you only have water then, you raise a brow at him before glancing at your cup. Baekhyun shakes his head a grin on his lips.

“Are you drinking wine?” Sofia asks, Baekhyun shakes his head.

“Of course not, it’s just juice.”

“Yeah sure, we’ll see in 10 minutes how your juice treats you.” Sofia laughs, Baekhyun just smiles as he takes another sip, swishing the glass around.

“Y/n, do you drink?” He obviously knows you’ve had wine. You nod your head, “Yeah a little.” You would never drink hard liquor or any beer. You hated the taste of alcohol.

Baekhyun stands before grabbing the bottle off the counter and another glass, pouring a considerate amount of the wine into it. You clap your hands as he walks over to you with the glass, you accept it happily. Sofia raises an eyebrow at your giddiness for a drink and laughs.

“You look like some addict getting their fix.” She jokes, you roll your eyes. “Have you tried wine?”

“No..”

“Do you want to?”

“Hmm, sure.”

“Here,” You hold your glass up to Sofia’s lips holding your hand under her chin to catch any juice that falls. “How’s that?”

Sofia makes a face, crunching her nose up at the taste. You and Baekhyun both laugh loudly.

“I honestly thought you would like it.” You say between laughs.

“That is so disgusting how are you two drinking that?” She wipes her mouth before drinking her glass of water to get the taste out her mouth.

“It’s something you enjoy as you get older, or you just never drink. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Baekhyun reassures his daughter. You smile at his words, they were carefully chosen to comfort Sofia, alcohol isn’t some cool thing college kids need to do. He was smarter than you thought, it was actually charming.

“I’ll pass then, geez.” She fake gags.

You three ate in a comfortable silence before Sofia spoke up again, “I’m going to grandma and grandpa’s next week.”

“Yes, don’t worry i’ll still be here when you come back if that’s what you’re worried about.” Baekhyun jokes.

“I just know how you get when I’m gone for a long time.” Sofia says in a more quiet voice.

You feel like you’re intruding but you can’t do anything, you can’t suddenly leave the room.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be just fine okay.”

“Fine but don’t face time me crying saying you miss me.” Sofia laughs, it almost makes you bust out laughing too. You cover your hand over your mouth.

“Yeah yeah, I was lonely okay I missed you, you were gone for two weeks instead of the one we agreed on.” Baekhyun rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair. “I was just having a good time.” Sofia giggles. “I love visiting the old people.”

You snort, “You can’t keep calling people older than you, old people.”

“Okay grandma.”

You pinch Sofia’s ear and she cries out frowning at you. “Fine.”

You let go and sip on your wine.

Baekhyun looks entertained by Sofia being teased for once, she was always known to tease others. Definitely gets it from her dad.

Diner was over and you all were watching scary movies in the living room. You could feel the effects of the wine taking over your mind, making it fuzzy and giving you that buzz you loved.

You could see Baekhyun looked unfazed as if he hadn’t drunk as much as you if not more.

Baekhyun was surprised to see you staring at him, Sofia had fallen asleep shortly after you guys started a third movie, her head resting on the arm of the couch. You smiled at Baekhyun, watching him smile back before tilting his head as to ask “what?”

You shrug, laughing to yourself.

He definitely could see you do not handle alcohol well. It was kind of cute to be honest, seeing your glazed over eyes and red cheeks. He couldn’t help but laugh to himself. You both needed to be put to bed, it was the weekend but Sofia had already fallen asleep and you were drunk.

Baekhyun picked up Sofia, carrying her to her room, before shutting off the lights and closing her door. You didn’t know Baekhyun was so strong.

“My turn!” You say reaching your hands out as Baekhyun returns. He raises a brow at your childish state. What a show.

“You need to go to sleep as well.”

“You need to go to sleep.” You copy him.

Baekhyun crosses his arms over his chest and you do the same, “Seriously.”

“Seriously.”

“Okay Y/n, let’s get you to bed.”

“No, no let’s drink some more you’re not even drunk yet.” Your words making Baekhyun shake his head.

“Well sweetheart, you’re very much drunk, I don’t think you should drink anymore. You might be sick.” He offers you a hand up.

You grab his hand and pull him down, he almost falls, catching himself with his hands leaning over you. You smile, and his heart beat increases. “You’re always so cute this close up.” You giggle.

“You seriously test me.” Baekhyun says in a low voice before he pulls you up and lifts you over his shoulder.

“Woah.” You say becoming dizzy, your view isn’t too bad, Baekhyun’s two cheeks in front of you. You pinch one and Baekhyun smacks yours in return.

“Stop that, Y/n.” He lays you down on the bed in the guests room, he turns to leave the room but before he turns the lights off he sees your sad expression.

“Please don’t leave.” You plead, Baekhyun can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.

“What’s wrong?” He walks closer, seeing that you’re crying.

“I don’t want to be alone in here.” You say while sniffing. The alcohol definitely brings out the sadness in you, you were a sad drunk from the start. It took Baekhyun by surprise. The main reason you never drink is because of that fact. You made a fool of yourself almost every time without fail.

“Y/n..” He says quietly, he can’t say no to your wet eyes and sulking figure. “Shit. Fine, okay… okay. Come here.” Baekhyun runs a hand through his hair before standing you up. You definitely do not have any sense of balance as you try to walk so Baekhyun basically picks you up, carrying you to his room downstairs.

“I’ll have to explain this to Sofia in the morning.” He groans before sitting you on his giant bed, filled with many pillows and a black cover. It smells like him, all of it. You smile closing your eyes, before curling up in the middle of the bed.

Baekhyun watches you, his hands on his hips, he’s defeated. The couch definitely wasn’t big enough for him to sleep on. He’d have to use the guest’s room. Baekhyun goes for the door handle but you catch him.

“Baekhyun, where are you going?”

Shit. Baekhyun cannot sleep with you, not now, not tonight when you’re intoxicated like this. He can’t sleep next to you with all this pent up tension building.

“Y/n, you know we can’t sleep in the same bed, Sofia is here. And you’re not sober.” Baekhyun watches as you frown, reaching out for him like a child.

“Please?”

Your words tear at his heart, he couldn’t resist when you asked so nicely.

“I don’t want to be by myself. I want a hug.”

“Okay, just this once. It cannot happen again with Sofia here.” Baekhyun slips off his house shoes, running a hand down his face tiredly. “You go to sleep first, i’ll make sure you’re safe.” Baekhyun says quietly, reassuring you.

You look up at Baekhyun, “Thank you.” Is all you say before your body is covered by a thick duvet.

Baekhyun lays on his back, staring up at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep despite being tired. He turns his head to see you’ve fallen asleep quite fast. He observes your sleeping face, he can’t help but to admire how dreamy and peaceful you look. Your eyes closed and lips slightly parted, he smiled. He turned back to the ceiling before trying to shut his eyes to fall asleep again. He felt something cold touch his side and he held in a shriek, before realizing it was your hand. Baekhyun looked back over at you to see you were still asleep, your hand laying across Baekhyun’s waist, gripping his shirt. Baekhyun definitely was going to have a harder time falling asleep, he’s slept alone for so many years now, to have someone he admires in the same bed as him had become foreign. He hadn’t in so long.

Baekhyun sighs deeply.

“Go to sleep Baekhyun.” He hears you whisper, he looks over at you again to see your tired eyes looking back.

“How did you know I was awake?” He says, turning onto his side toward you.

“Your dad noises and your deep sighing is pretty loud.” Even in a moment like this you find something to joke about.

Baekhyun smiles before closing his eyes. “I’m always tired from over working myself, but right now I’m having the hardest time trying to sleep.”

“Why?”

“Because of you.”

You don’t know what to say, your fuzzy mind doesn’t think of a response. You scoot closer to Baekhyun, wrapping both arms around him this time. And soon you fall back asleep.

Baekhyun’s heart is beating out of control and he doesn’t know how you can’t seem to hear it. He hasn’t felt like this in a long time, the adrenaline of being closest to the person you like the most. He can only try to zone out and fall asleep.

You wake up because you’ve become too warm, your eyes open slightly before all the dreadful actions from last night play in your head. You groan, closing your eyes again. You felt something around your waist and you turn your head to see Baekhyun behind you. He’s entangled with your body, his arm around your waist and his forehead pressed against your back. You found it cute but at the same time noticing him so close to your gave you chills. He was the one providing you so much warmth. You were always quick to cool off after becoming so hot, but right now you didn’t want to move. You didn’t want to ruin this moment of Baekhyun’s breath against your back and hearing his light snoring. He was absolutely adorable.

You turned in Baekhyun’s arms without waking him, just admiring his sleeping face. He looked like a baby. Baekhyun moves again and he’s bringing your body closer to his. Your cheeks turns cherry red as his face in nudged between your chest. He was even naughty in his sleep, how could this be. You could see the top of his cute head, his fluffy black hair all messy from sleeping. You could only wonder what it would feel like. You hesitantly reached up and pet Baekhyun’s head, instantly earning a groan in return from the man. You froze, retreating your hand. But he didn’t move or wake up. You reached up to pet his hair once more, hearing the same noise emit from his chest. You found the noise pleasing so you continued petting Baekhyun. His warm breath blowing across your chest and his arm hands on your back was enough for you, but the added noises made it better. You feel Baekhyun’s hands travel further down until they reach your ass and you freeze your motions of petting his head. Baekhyun’s still so oblivious and asleep, he’s not doing this on purpose. You pull one of his hands back to your waist unable to retrieve his other hand.

Baekhyun is a surprisingly heavy sleeper, you feel like you could jump up and down on the bed and he would still be asleep.

“Baekhyun?” You whisper, no response. You grin, you could toy with Baekhyun all you wanted till he woke up. You pinch his cheek, wanting to know how they felt, pretty squishy. You trace the outline of his nose, your other hand playing in his hair. “So cute..” You say to yourself. Baekhyun was so oddly cute, for a grown man. Your hand gets tired playing with his hair so it falls onto the pillow, Baekhyun’s head falls back to rest on your arm, you can see his face again. The view makes you smile.

“Who told you to stop?” Baekhyun’s eyes slowly open to meet your shocked ones. “It felt so nice baby.” He moans softly.

“You were awake?” You pout, “Why would you do that, that’s actually embarrassing..” You have little energy to be angry at him.

“Because I wouldn’t have gotten this much special treatment. Honestly, I could’ve stayed like that forever.” Baekhyun smiles.

You use your hand behind his head to pull his hair, earning a groan from him. “You’re annoying.” You say before letting go of his hair.

Baekhyun frowns playfully, “Aww, do you want me to play with your hair instead and let you lay your head on my chest too.”

You hit Baekhyun on his chest at his teasing. “Ugh shut up! I get it!” You bury your head into the blanket, not wanting to be seen. Baekhyun ducks his head under the cover too, bringing your body closer to his.

“Y/n.”

“What-“

Baekhyun pulls you into a kiss, one that’s slow and short. His hand around your waist and the other holding you by the back of your neck. You sigh into the kiss, your temper melting from Baekhyun’s lips. He pulls back, biting your bottom lip.

“Don’t be shy now.” He says quietly, rubbing his thumb over the side of your neck. Even in the dark you can see his eyes. “I would have done the same thing, if I woke up to you as well.” He smiles.

You find yourself just staring in awe at how heavenly Baekhyun looks. In bed with a messy head of hair and sleepy eyes.

You’re the one that leans in to initiate another kiss. Baekhyun’s taken back by your action, his lips moving with yours. You grip Baekhyun’s shirt, bringing him impossibly closer until he’s practically on top on you. You’re tempting him as you wrap your legs around his middle as he’s in between your legs now. Baekhyun can have only so much patience before it runs out. You’re wrapping your arms around his neck as the kiss is becoming needy, more desperate to feel something. Baekhyun’s breathing is heavy, he’s not sure about restraining himself when he’s in such a position to have all of you right now if it wasn’t for your monthly.

“Y/n.” He says above you, “You know we can’t do what we both want to right now.” You look up to him with a frown, almost forgetting you were on your period.

“I know..” You whine, letting your arms fall from around his neck. Baekhyun makes a noise of disapproval, taking your arms and wrapping them around him again.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t just lay here with each other.” He grins down at you before laying between your legs, resting his head on your tummy. You smile, this was definitely a wholesome moment. Your hands find themselves in his hair again, and he’s sighing at the sensation.

“You’re so good at that.” He says closing his eyes.

“You’re just easy to please hm.” You joke. “What about Sofia…” You say remembering it was now morning.

“She left early to her grandparents.”

Your eyes widened, you were here in this mans bed-no-in this mans house alone with him.

God fucking damn you for having a period.

Taglist:

@blahblahblah-boo @bobohumyonlyboo @ncteaxhoe @dixnysustae @vsszn @sugamilkteaxkookiesxcream @bubutaeyongie @jennxx3 @to-all-the-stories-i-love

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wingsofkpop · 3 years

Text

NSFW Alphabet - Yang Jeongin (m)

A - Aftercare

Despite being on the more inexperienced side, I think Jeongin is responsible enough to know that aftercare is a must following sex, whether it be making sure you both are properly hydrated or helping you change the bed sheets. Because he’s usually babied by his members, this sweet boy treasures each moment he’s able to take care of you for a change though he won’t say no if you request to be the bigger spoon for a night or two.

B - Body Part

Seeing as our dear maknae has apparently gotten buff somewhere over the years, he likely takes pride in his biceps and arms in general as he damn well should. We’ll go more in depth about it later, but let’s just say Innie likes to use his strength in more ways than one… Moving on, Jeongin will never not be a fan of your neck. Mans has a bit of a marking tendency, but hormones aside, Jeongin’s in love with your scent, which seems to be more pungent around thah area. Plus, the crook of your neck also makes a good hiding place when he’s shy.

C - Cum

The only place this man’s cumming is in a condom. He may not be a baby anymore, but he doesn’t want any other baby Jeongins showing up anytime soon. Changbin is already a handful enough as it is…

D - Dirty Secret

Now it’s a bit out of the element here, but Jeongin sometimes gets tired of being coddled by his members. That being said, he’s had some fantasies about proving his growness—fantasies that may or may not include getting caught eating you out until you’re a literal puddle by Chan or Hyunjin, or maybe fucking you into the wall just in time for Changbin or Seungmin to walk through the door. Not wanting to disrespect you or anything, he prefers to keep these thoughts to himself… just don’t ask questions if he starts to get a little handsy during movie nights with the other boys.

E - Experience

Like most of the younger Stray Kids members, I don’t think he has too much sexual experience. He’s probably made out with a girl or two over the years, maybe felt her up a bit, but that’s as far as his hands-on exploration goes. Even so, he probably has a general idea of how things are supposed to go, generously provided by stories from his members and the wonders of porn.

F - Favorite Position

Due to his lack of sexual practice, Jeongin probably has not found his all-time favorite position just yet. He’s eager to try everything he possibly can, so expect to be blown away literally every time y’all do the do.

G - Goofy

Jeongin doesn’t mind getting a little silly during sex every once and a while, but he also knows that a more sensual, serious mood is needed too. The first few times will definitely be more casual and light-hearted, kept alive by his playful grin and mischevious fingers. But even as you two begin to become more mature, that same youthful atmosphere will remain, making it feel like the first time every time.

H - Hair

He probably just lets it do it’s own thing honestly. As long as it doesn’t get too unruly, he doesn’t mind it all that much.

I - Intimacy

Seeing he’s likely never been in a serious relationship before you, he’s all about the ideal, romantic aspect of love making. And while there won’t necessarily be rose petals and silk sheets every time you guys have sex, he knows how to make you feel loved and wanted with just his touch alone. Eye contact is also a huge must for Jeongin—he needs to see your face in the moment, to watch the pleasure overtake your body as he brings you to a headspace only few have the privilege to witness. It may sound cheesy, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he has a secret plan to marry you one day, already knowing you’re his forever person.

J - Jack Off

Innie is young, so it’s no surprise his hormones are a bit on the overwhelming side at times. For him, getting off largely depends on if and when he has a moment to himself, which is quite rare between his busy schedule and lack of privacy in the dorm. That being said, he probably masturbates no more than three times a week. If that.

K - Kink

Alright hoes, I’m gonna start this off by saying Jeongin damn well has some sort of strength kink. We’ve all seen the size of those arms. Now he wouldn’t necessarily manhandle you, but if the moment requires him to pick you up by your thighs, or maybe pin your wrists to the bed cause you’re getting a little too frisky, then a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. He also has a HUGE thing when you get all dressed up for him, whether it be in a dress/suit or a lingerie set. Some other honorable mentions of his include marking, praise, and the occasional teasing.

L - Location

Please, please, PLEASE let this man take you against the wall, or anywhere that lets him show off his strength. He turns into some type of beast, I swear—Bonus points if y’all have the dorm to yourselves, because then he will literally take you against every single surface…

M - Motivation

The second you compliment him, this man will be literal putty in your hands. He loves, and I mean LOVES, when you praise him for his stage performances or MV scenes. And don’t let him catch you watching his fancams… or else prepared to get dicked into next year~

N - NO

BDSM is completely off the table for Jeongin. While he doesn’t mind trying something new every so often, he’s just not comfortable treading into the kind of intense territory that would require use of a safe word. He’s also just not a fan of power dynamics in general.

O - Oral

Sorry fam, oral is just not it for Jeongin. It’s nothing against you, he just doesn’t prefer blow jobs because of his tendency to finish too early, and he’d much rather practice other methods of foreplay to get you both off.

P - Pace

In the beginning stages of your relationship, Innie used to utilize a rapid, sloppy pace. After obtaining more experience, his stroke game is much, much better and more fluid, though he sometimes tends to revert back to an awkward pace when he’s close to climax. But like everyone, his skill and confidence will grow more over time.

Q - Quickie

The only time he’ll settle for a quickie is if he’s completely and totally desperate for your touch. But even then, he needs to be sure your session will take place in an environment that is both private and isolated from any other people. But once he’s comfortable and secure, he’ll drive you into the nearest wall with no further hesitation whatsoever.

R - Risk

Nope, nope, nopity, nope. While the idea of getting caught makes him feel all the things, Jeongin would rather not risk anyone actually walking in on you two when you’re being less than innocent. Especially his members, because if they do, he knows he’ll never hear the end of it.

S - Stamina

He’s got pretty decent stamina. Jeongin can usually go for some foreplay and maybe two rounds depending on how exhausted he is from his schedule. Then again, on days he is a bit more on the tired side, he wouldn’t mind sitting back and letting you do most the work.

T - Toy

The most curious boy omg. Innie’s experience with toys probably stems from porn and the dark side of Reddit, so he’ll be utterly fascinated if you own any nifty gadgets of your own. And while I don’t think he’d actively shop for sex toys, he doesn’t mind spicing things up in the bedroom with a couple vibrators, restraints, or sensation play objects.

U - Unfair

Don’t let his adorable facade fool you—this boy can be the WORST tease on any given day. He’s the type of lover that will suggestively trail his hands across your breasts and thighs, then act all innocent when you call him out. Jeongin is also an expert in getting you to tell him what he wants to hear. For example, “You want me to make you cum, baby? How exactly do you want me to do that?…”

V - Volume

Honestly, this man is a moaning machine. And you may hear some cute little whimpers and whines in that mix too… At first, he was probably a bit bashful to make any noise in that context, but after some coaxing and needed praise from you, he’ll never try to be silent again.

W - Wild Card

Let me set the scene for you: You and Innie watching some horribly budgeted rom-com you found on Netflix, and literally just making fun of the entire movie. That is, until the two main leads start making out in the back of a car. Oh, this shuts you both right up, especially when clothes start coming off and the car windows begin to steam up. The scene ends eventually, but this awkward, sexually tense silence still remains between you and Jeongin, and when you look to your blushing lover, you find him poorly attempting to cover his raging hard on. Then, he clears his throat and cutely stutters, “S-So… You wanna… you know?…”

X - X-ray

He’s a bit below average: 4.5-5 inches. But he’s got some thickness to his name.

Y - Yearning

As already mentioned, Innie tends to hold back in regards to his sexual needs for fear of coming across as a horn dog. You two probably do the nasty at least once a week, but I guarantee you can raise that number if you sit your boyfriend down and explain the concept of a mutually beneficial relationship huehuehue.

Z - ZZZzzz

If there’s one thing that Jeongin loves most in the world, it’s being in your arms after a long and stressful day. Whether or not you choose to end the night with an orgasm or two, he’ll settle himself atop your body, using your breasts as his own personal pillows, and just let his tension melt away in the comforting warmth of your touch. And though he’d never admit it, sometimes he doesn’t really mind being babied after all…

#i honestly cant believe i actually wrote this...#wtf did this kid grow up?!?#stray kids smut #stray kids x reader smut #stray kids smut imagines #yang jeongin smut #yang jeongin x reader smut #kpop smut

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ruby-whistler · 3 years

Text

Why c!Dream should (and probably will be) redeemed

Hi! I’m bad with intros. You’ve read the title, so, let’s start with the definitions.

In this essay, we are considering the popularized definition of “redemption” instead of the classical one, which is, as per the Oxford Dictionary, “the act of saving or state of being saved from the power of evil; the act of redeeming.” That’s not however the way the word is used in fandom and media.

/dsmp /rp

The definition of redemption I’ll be working with in this essay is not forgiveness by the people who c!Dream has hurt, nor is it removing himself entirely from his past actions, but moreso the decision to change for the better and abandon destructive mindsets for himself and others.

A “redemption” in a narrative sense would be circumstances and a character arc that would allow that kind of healing and betterment.

I’d like to start this off by the fact that being “irredeemable”, in this sense, also doesn’t exist; redemption is a thing of conditions and choice, not of being allowed by someone else. You can’t gatekeep healing from people who seek it, just to be clear, and that even goes for people who have done terrible things.

Since I understand there is a lot of concern for c!Dream’s past actions, here is a post from people who are much more fit than me to speak on the matter, about the way in which they see a possible c!Dream redemption arc.

Another disclaimer, I am not going to be considering c!Dream only from the perspective of c!Tommy in this essay. c!Dream appears in other people’s perspectives and he himself has his own, unseen perspective. As a character, he is an individual person in his own right rather than just the antagonist of c!Tommy’s story, and so I do not have much concern for their narratives intertwining too much should this writing choice occur.

I’d also like to note that redemption is, in this sense, always a positive thing for everyone involved - someone who’s been prone to doing bad things in the past deciding not to do them anymore and try to change, or just simply heal enough to consider it, isn’t going to have a long-term negative effect in any of the characters, but rather the other way around. Healing is an unlimited resource, and the victims do not have to heal first for the person who hurt them to consider being better.

Here’s a well-written thread on Twitter that elaborates a bit to finish off this point, and let’s move on to actually talking about redemption in the context of the Dream SMP, and c!Dream specifically.

Why a c!Dream redemption arc is not only a good writing choice, but in this case the only good writing choice;

c!Dream, as we all know, has been subject to mental and physical abuse to the point of straight up torture by both c!Sam and c!Quackity (to different extents). He has been in indescribable amounts of suffering for the past 74 days at the time this essay will be published. That is six and something times the duration of the entire exile arc in canon.

Whatever the interpretation of his words in prison is, what is undeniable is first of all the fact his mental stability is absolutely crushed at this point, second that no human being could possibly ever deserve to undergo this, and third, his stay in the prison is showing off his humanity and making him out to be sympathetic.

Now, consider this; how would it feel if c!Tommy died at the end of the exile arc? Empty, there would be no catharsis to such an end, especially because of all of the hurt he’d gone through. Objectively, a bad writing choice.

Let’s compare, narratively of course, this situation to the prison arc. Even though I would never say one of them is “better” or “worse” than the other, since both are terrible and undeserved, c!Dream’s current state checks off all of the boxes that would make his death unsatisfying in the storyline; even if people want him gone, there would still be the dissatisfaction at the current build-up and why they even did it in the first place (it really wasn’t necessary to anyone else’s story to make him out as a victim, and yet they did) if they were planning to kill him off anyways. And since the prison arc is naturally meant to induce sympathy, even from an angst perspective it would simply not make sense within the themes and writing of the plot.

So, c!Dream can’t die, and he also can’t stay in the prison forever - the build-up must lead to something, which is logically a breakout. Great… what now?

Well, the Dream SMP prides itself in accurate representation of trauma and mental instability, specifically cc!Tommy and cc!Dream who have pulled it off incredibly during the exile arc.

Now, undoubtedly, after the prison, c!Dream is going to be just terribly traumatized- considering the writers’ past creative decisions, would it make sense for him to play the role of a dangerous, heartless villain in other people’s stories, while completely ignoring the logical fallout of what he’s been through?

In my mind, no. The most possible result is that cc!Dream is going to rightfully portray someone who’s been hurt so much he is broken, scared and tortured into submissions over months of agony and slowly stripping away of his agency, his dignity, his humanity. And that is… not going to be pretty, nor is he going to be in any way the same as before.

After everything, I’d be surprised if he can properly look at shears without shaking. That’s not villain behaviour, that’s the behaviour of someone who needs help.

Which leads me to another point, which is relatability. Believe me or not, there are people out there who heavily relate to c!Dream because they have been through things that allow them to see themselves in the character - abandonment, mental illness, etc. - or who have had destructive mindsets they have struggled to let go of in the past.

To them, as well as to the viewer, redeeming c!Dream could actually be a very good example, showcasing that anyone who has done bad things or has been hurt in the past can learn that it is possible to be better, to move on, to not be stuck in a loop but to actively seek help and then use that support to find the path to healing.

Making c!Dream a better person, who in a way, wins over his past, over his trauma, over the hurt he’s caused, and manages to actually get better… is inspiring, in a sense. It shows that you can abandon unhealthy mindsets, you can find a support group of people who care about you, you can make your life better simply by deciding to be better and then sticking to that, no matter how difficult the process.

This is why I believe that redeeming c!Dream would not be bad writing, but quite the opposite, and that the prison arc is an obvious set-up. Alright, but how does that work with the character? How could someone so widely hated mentally improve in such a seemingly violent and terrible environment? Would it even make sense within the context of c!Dream’s character so far? Well,

Why c!Dream has the capacity for healing and the Dream SMP the ability to provide it;

First of all, let’s remind ourselves that through c!Dream’s entire spiral he wasn’t ever directly given a chance to change. He was regarded as someone to defeat in order to accomplish a happy ending, or as someone who needed to be removed in order to achieve power on the SMP. Ever since the 16th, which is when the corruption of the character is the most obvious, there have been no attempts to reach out or to help him. I do not blame the characters for this - I am simply pointing out that since it has never happened before, we do not know how he would respond, and that, after everything he’s been through, any bit of kindness or compassion towards him will be a new concept he will have to learn to deal with somehow.

This point is especially driven home by the fact that both c!Quackity and c!Sam would often tell him he is a monster who deserves nothing but to suffer, and that what he’s going through is never going to amount to all the hurt he��s caused - basically removing any possibility for ever getting better (because by this logic, he doesn’t deserve support, and he doesn’t deserve to get better) from his line of sight.

He also hasn’t had a support system since shortly after the 16th, when his friends left him over c!George’s dethronement and made no effort to mend their relationship afterwards. c!Dream isn’t used to having allies and people on his side, but to being hated; again, wouldn’t that mean positive reinforcement could very well be all he needs to make the choice?

His bad mindsets - attachments are weakness, ends always justify the means, people will consider you a bad person no matter what you do - have been continuously proven right by his environment, even in prison. Any kind of subversion, plus an explanation as to why they are wrong, could be of great help to c!Dream.

Just another disclaimer; I do not believe c!Dream would change thanks to the treatment in prison, but rather despite it. His mental stability is non-existent at that point, and in order to get better he needs genuine emotional support from the people around him as well as to heal before he can redeem himself.

Alright, but… c!Dream has hurt a lot of people. Who would be fit to help him?

Let’s start off with the worst option and why it’s impossible the writers would even attempt this; c!Tommy.

c!Tommy has no responsibility to help or ever forgive c!Dream - not to say he could. The two, as it is, would drag each other down instead of helping in any capacity, and only make matters worse. The two of them shouldn’t even interact in the best case scenario - the best thing for both of them would be if they got enough healing and support individually that they could live around each other and not get their trauma or toxic habits triggered when interacting for whatever purpose of the plot.

So, if not c!Tommy (and c!Tubbo neither by extension), who could redeem c!Dream?

Well, he can’t do it on his own for sure. Being in nature with animals is nice, but further isolation from other people would merely help with the prison trauma, not with the state of his tendencies when interacting with others. He, once again, needs positive reinforcement from other people for him to heal properly.

There are two main options for this in my mind, and then there’s a few individuals he could also find comfort in, including people from both groups or those unaligned.

1) Kinoko Kingdom

From the people of this new country, c!Dream has never negatively interacted with c!Karl before, he has never hurt c!George and he hasn’t directly harmed c!Sapnap. Although the relationship with his old friend group could be difficult to rekindle, none of them have grudges against him that are too personal, and they have been canonically close friends since the beginning of the SMP, so it would be very much possible to rebuild burnt bridges. They’d be familiar, and with the addition of c!Karl they could be a good source of comfort for c!Dream after he either breaks out or is released from prison - just gotta convince c!Sapnap not to kill him first.

2) The Syndicate

From the Syndicate, c!Dream has never directly interacted with c!Nikki, and from what I know of her character she never seemed to be very affected by his actions - even doing his work for him when he was planning to burn down the L’Mantree. c!Techno is an ally who doesn’t have anything against him, and as for c!Ranboo, here is why I believe c!Dream being in the Syndicate could be positively influential on his character arc as well;

c!Ranboo and c!Philza have had a conversation about change, during which c!Ranboo made it clear he thinks everyone can change except for c!Dream; who, in his mind, is “too deep down the rabbit hole”. c!Philza replied that he thinks anyone can change if given enough time.

… you see what I’m getting at?

c!Dream has been implied to be an ally to c!Ranboo’s enderwalk state (or the state when he has access to his full memory), and hence would most likely not behave negatively towards him at all. While it might make it more difficult for c!Ranboo to deal with his own issues, it might also give him more motivation to get to the bottom of it as well, especially since he now has access to the person who, presumably, started this all. While this is going on, c!Dream would show himself in a much different light than c!Ranboo sees himin, which could lead to confusion, realization of the flaws in his own logic, and hence, positive character development.

Here’s a great post about why c!Techno as a character could be a great asset in c!Dream’s healing process & redemption, and why there is not much need to worry about him not knowing or finding out about c!Dream’s actions.

Of Kinoko Kingdom and the Syndicate, as far as I know, neither c!Tommy nor c!Tubbo have ever been directly involved with these groups, nor are they planning to.

Another important point to make is that, while c!Tommy needs to be kept away from c!Dream in order to heal properly, the same goes for c!Quackity and c!Sam in c!Dream’s case. While c!Quackity has high chances to interact with either Kinoko Kingdom or the Syndicate in the future, there’s an even higher chance, in that situation, that c!Dream would be offered protection, which is also important; there is no healing from trauma without the knowledge of safety, to some degree.

So, this was an essay as to why I think c!Dream’s recovery and redemption (one needs to come before the other, naturally) is not only extremely possible but also could be pulled off well and have a positive impact on both the characters, and the audience.

#dreblr #dream smp #c!dream #c!dream sympathetic #c!quackity neg #c!sam neg #dsmp analysis #tw torture #tw abuse #long post #i really should start writing longer essays #i need more material #anyways #hope y'all liked this #just joining the debate #:]

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gohyuck · 3 years

Text

pairing: head knight!jeno x monarch!reader (reader has genitals attributed to those considered biologically female but no pronouns are actually used)

genre: fluff, mild angst (they discuss an oncoming battle they must prepare for), smut (it’s mostly smut)

word count: 6.5k

warnings & notes (nonsexual): mentions of war/battle, mentions of injuries retained from past skirmishes, jeno is as tall as you need him to be in order to rest your head against his chest without leaning down, it’s kind of cheesy tbh they are disgustingly head-over-heels in love with each other, also a peryton is a fantasy creature that’s essentially a stag + a bird, also i know y’all must be tired of royalty aus but i swear this is almost pwp (except there’s context so there’s plot) so give it a chance (if you’re legal) i guess

warnings & notes (sexual): oral (giving and receiving for both parties), fingering (reader receives), spit kink (lmao sorry), general messiness honestly, mild knife kink (no blood drawn, he just uses a dagger to tear apart clothing), gratuitous usage of the name ‘lionheart’, jeno has a big dick because i cannot stop myself from doing that to y’all for some reason, some choking

special thanks to @moonlit-jeno @domjaehyun @waithyuck for reading parts of it/all of it beforehand!

the soft hours of twilight have their holds on you, chilling you to your bones even as you pull the heavy fur cape tighter around your body. you should’ve pulled something over your thin nightgown, you suppose, something to act as a middle layer between silk and skin and peryton fur, but it’s too late for that. you’re already out on your private balcony, overlooking a kingdom you’d do anything to see the sun rise on day after day.

far, far past the outskirts of your humble realm, barely visible to your own eye, an unsettlingly large camp of soldiers is finishing setting up camp for the night. you watch as tiny, tiny orange pinpricks - no doubt the fires they’d set to make food, to alert you of their presence - begin to get snuffed out. finally, they sleep.

if you were any worse of a person, of a ruler, you would send your army after them now, hours before the battle is set. perhaps, if you were any less selfish, you would do so regardless of keeping your status as a good and just monarch. if you were any less selfish, you would shake awake the love of your life and hand him his cape after shedding it from your shoulders. you would tell him to rouse his men and women, to arm them to their teeth, and to fight for what is right using means that are entirely wrong.

as if privy to your thoughts, your head knight stirs in the too-large bed behind you. you turn just in time to see him sit up and twist his body left, right, left as he stretches to rid himself of sleep. it’s too late - or maybe too early - for either of you to be awake. maybe you should have stayed within his warm embrace rather than gotten out of bed to size up the army of the kingdom of crithage.

even now, you can’t help but strategize, at least on a basic level. crithagians are unused to the cold of your beautiful - but often frigid - ekoria. they won’t expect your people to fall upon them from the icy cliffs that surround their camp, nor will they be able to see over the oncoming blizzard your royal sky-reader has predicted. she has not been incorrect in many, many years. ekorians have, over the years, grown accustomed to heavy snows, among other weather phenomenon, so your army’s visual acuity is not to be questioned.

that, and your troops are in the hands of the best warrior ekoria has ever had.

jeno. your jeno. your lionheart. you rein your thoughts in just as he pulls open the balcony door, closing it behind him with a soft click as he steps over the threshold separating in from out and warm from cold. goosebumps rise across his bare flesh the moment his skin meets air, and you don’t hesitate to slide his cape off and thrust it towards him, knowing full well that his arms will provide more than enough heat for you. he fastens it with ease, seeming slightly amused at how you’d been using it as a blanket, and gently grabs ahold of your wrist before pulling you into his chest and wrapping an arm around your waist. with his other hand, he takes a corner of his cape and wraps it around you, leaving you enveloped in both his hot-to-touch skin and the comforting fur.

“they’re out in the valley, aren’t they?” he finally murmurs, leaning to place his mouth against your ear. jeno’s voice is thick and sleep-ridden, still raspy in a way that settles around you, inside you, within you. you lean back slightly, raising a cold hand to rest against the tattoo of a lion that adorns his left pectoral, mane stretching up to his collarbone and encroaching on his bicep. the lion has a scar on its right cheek. you pull away more, eyes landing on the thin discolored line underneath your lover’s same eye.

it had been a longsword, meant to slash across your throat. jeno, with the speed of a star falling from grace and enough adrenaline to fuel a hundred men, had leapt across you in order to take it across the face. for crown and for country, bard’s songs later regaled of him. for you, he’d whispered to you that same night as you’d stitched him up, using the threading tactics you’d learned from the castle medic as a child. for you. always for you.

“my love?” jeno prods, and you realize you haven’t given his rhetorical question any acknowledgement. you hum, meeting his eyes with your own, and watch as he allows one corner of his mouth to turn up.

“they only just put out their fires.” you finally respond, moving to be against his chest again. you rest your head against the intricate ink against jeno’s skin, finally letting out a breath of what one might consider worry. the air that leaves your lungs manifests into wisps out in the cold world that surrounds you. your lionheart pulls you ever closer.

“you need not stress.” he says simply, and an outsider to your relationship would see no cohesion between your statement and his. still, you know precisely what jeno means, why he’s said what he’s said. you turn, pressing your lips against the lion’s forehead. above you, your own lion brushes his lips against your temple.

“i have an army, a kingdom, even, to worry about, and yet i only fear tomorrow for whatever outcome befalls one man.” you whisper, and even you are surprised to find tears catching in your throat. you do not cry easily, not when you know firsthand how cruel the world can be.

you only reign because your parents no longer breathe.

tomorrow’s battle could easily bleed into next year’s war, and while your kingdom is prepared for such a thing, your heart may not be. your people are not belligerent, and neither are you. crithage had been the one to throw the first stone, had sent word that if you refused to relinquish your throne and bow your head, they would aim the first arrow, draw the first blood. no tears had been shed then, not even when you’d paced around your bedchambers, reading and rereading the note signed with blood red ink until jeno had physically pulled it out of your tight grasp. you hadn’t cried, not even when he’d said that he was willing to die if it meant keeping crithage out of ekoria, out of the kingdom you’d both built from ground up after the war that had taken your parents, out of the home you’d created together.

“wherever you take us, i will follow. wherever you need me, i will lead.” he’d murmured the words against the lobe of your ear, standing beside and slightly behind your throne as you’d written out your reply to crithage in a room full of your advisors. nobody else had moved a muscle then, not even as you closed the envelope with hot wax and the royal seal.

you’d sent back a much, much shorter letter than their own in response.

a time and date for battle. nothing more and nothing less.

that had been so many months ago, so far away that the concept of time dissipates when you attempt to organize it in your harried mind. with a hostile army on your doorstep, everything suddenly feels far more real than it has before. your people have been evacuated, your troops have been trained. your lionheart is unafraid to the world, standing tall and proud at your side as he always has.

a sigh that starts from deep in jeno’s chest brings you back to the present. tomorrow is it, you’re reminded. crithage has seiged almost every other state between themselves and your beloved ekoria. if they get to you, they’ll have your head, raised high on a stake they’ll erect outside of the gates they’ll install to the place you call home. if they get to you, it means they’ll have gotten through jeno.

you can’t live in a world without him. it’s a dangerous attachment for a ruler to have, you’re well aware. if other kingdoms find out that your weakness is a person, one that lives and breathes, you’re not likely to ever see your love again.

it’s little comfort that jeno can’t live in a world without you, either.

“i worry about not being here, at the castle, to protect you,” he mumbles into your hair. “i know that you are perfectly capable, and that you’ll have your own faction of our knights with you, but i- it feels as if i’m about to open my chest and leave my naked heart unguarded, right there for any arrows to pierce.”

jeno’s confession is simple, beautiful in the way the most ornate of daggers are: that is, you feel as if he’s just dragged a sharp edge down the length of your sternum, taking you apart piece by piece. his words cage you in, force you deeper into your own head in a way you can’t afford, not right now.

“eloquent,” you hum, unable to resist teasing him even as the moment does not call for it. it’s to save yourself from your heavily beating heart. “it isn’t too late to make you my poet laureate, you know. no need to wield a sword tomorrow then.”

“and who would be your head knight then, hm? the current laureate? you want renjun to lead the charge against the crithagians? to be your lionheart?” your lover draws back to ensure that you can see his eyes, glimmering with mirth. renjun is an able man, and one of your best friends, but he is not the warrior jeno is.

nobody is the warrior that jeno is.

“such a foolish thing to say,” you smile up at him, lips folding from joking to earnest within moments. the merriment fades a little from jeno’s eyes at recognizing the change in your expressions. “you’re my only lionheart. always have been and always will be, even when you’re too old and gray and slow to be my head knight.”

“someone seems confident of that happening.” he says quietly, raising the hand at your waist to come up and rest over your own hand that lies against his chest. you swallow, your own spit feeling too heavy for you to stomach, your throat dry and scratchy.

“who else can have confidence of a victory rather than a monarch?” you ask, a smile that isn’t quite sad - but isn’t quite self-assured either - resting on your lips. jeno raises your hand to his lips, pressing one, two, three chaste kisses to the back and then repeating the pattern against your palm. he does not let go.

the two of you stand there for a stolen moment. you lay your head back against his chest, listening to the thundering of his heartbeat below the ink and skin and muscle and bone. he is real, and he is here.

he is real. he is here.

“the monarch’s lionheart, of course,” he murmurs, finally dropping your hand to reach back and push open the balcony door. “we only have four more strokes of time until i must go, my love. is this truly how you want to spend it?”

it’s evident that jeno no longer wants to mull over the what-ifs, not when he prefers living in the present more than anyone you’ve ever known. unsurprising, you suppose, for someone whose livelihood involves strategizing away his own mortality. you allow him to pull you back into your bedroom, immediately more comfortable when the door closes behind you, keeping you in with the body heat of your lover and the warmth of the crackling fire on the hearth in the corner of your room. jeno sheds the cape, draping it over the nearest chair, before bringing you back to his chest by placing his large hands against your waist.

it takes feeling his fingers against your skin through the thin silk of your slip to remember that jeno has nothing on. he’s always preferred to sleep naked, unlike you. though you hardly have any undergarments on, you at least wear a sheer gown most nights.

you’d ridden him passionately before bed, tiring both of you out in order to get any semblance of sleep. as your lionheart pulls you flush against him, though, it’s difficult to avoid the way his cock hardens against your hip once more. you want to quip about how jeno’s insatiable, but he trails a hand up, up over your body to swipe a thumb over one of your hardened nipples, and you can’t help the sigh that escapes through your prettily parted lips.

“will you get on the bed for me, love?” jeno’s voice is smoother now that he’s more awake, though you can’t help but miss the low growl that had come with the earlier rasp. he may be asking you a question, but you know that it’s an order in disguise. wordlessly, you step back, back, back until the wood of your bedframe presses against the soft plushness of the back of your thighs. jeno has not moved, choosing to stay put and appraise you instead. his eyes are hooded now, and as his gaze trails from your neck - he’d marked it up earlier, the kiss-bitten bruises not yet having faded from your skin - down to the curve of your chest, over the expanse of your thighs, he can’t help but reach one hand down to his dick, swiping two fingers over its head to collect his precum on his skin.

jeno says nothing else, makes no other move. it’s to give you an illusion of control, you suppose. not that you need one.

“should i rid myself of this, lionheart?” you ask, the words coming out breathier than intended. the nightgown leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, and you’re sure he can even see the slick wetness that’s pooling against your inner thighs. jeno adores seeing your body more than anything, but the gown does not inhibit that.

it’s no surprise, then, when he shakes his head no, instead finally moving to stand at the edge of the bed, slotting himself between your thighs as they naturally move apart to fit him in. his clean hand slides up under your gown, resting just above your cunt, as he raises his other hand to your face.

“lie back, and open.” jeno states, no air of leniency about him anymore. you oblige, and your love leans over you, his dark gaze centered on your parted lips.

he lays his two precum-coated fingertips against your tongue, pressing in and then down and revelling when you don’t gag but instead run your tongue over his fingers, cleaning them off for him. you haven’t gagged in a long time, your reflexes getting used to him in the way the rest of you is. when he withdraws his hand, your mouth stays open, and jeno can’t help himself as he leans over you and, after gathering it in his own mouth for a moment, allows his own spit to fall from his own tongue and onto yours.

your eyes go wide at the action, and you know that he notices it even as he does not acknowledge it. even so, you don’t miss the smirk that crosses his face upon hearing your breath hitch. jeno has you in his palm.

satisfied, he stands, and you close your mouth and swallow a part of him with a part of you. jeno’s no longer looking at your face, but you can’t bring yourself to care, not when he’s ruching up your nightgown with growing hunger, not when he’s kneeling on the stone ground just to make himself eye-level with your pretty, pretty pussy.

“i took you hardly any time ago,” he murmurs, breath hot against your skin as his mouth nears where you so desperately need him. “and yet here you are, laid open once more, all for me. only for me.”

“always you, jeno, please - ” you can’t get any more words out, the air being pulled out of you as he dives in and circles your clit with his tongue, bringing his two spit-soaked fingers up to press into you with almost no resistance. your reaction is instantaneous, walls clenching like a vice around his fingers as he lays a filthy kiss against your bundle of nerves, hips jumping up only to be kept down by jeno’s other hand, pressing down against the bottom of your stomach.

“patience.” he pulls off of your clit just to growl the word out against the skin of your inner thigh, and the wet heat of his mouth directly against your flesh has you practically gasping out. when jeno sinks his teeth into your thigh as he’s often wont to do, you let out a full-bodied whine, the kind that starts in the back of your throat and rises up through the inner column of your neck, meant only for your lover’s ears. jeno laves his tongue over the marks he’s just created, as if to wash the pleasurable pain from your body.

he does not reattach his mouth to your core, choosing instead to fall back and watch, eyes trained, as he scissors you open. with hardly any warning rather than his gaze jumping up to meet your own momentarily, jeno presses his thumb into your clit, using your slick wetness to eliminate any raw friction as he rubs slow circles against your nerve endings. he’s never failed to bring you to the edge with ease, and now is no different. you’d be embarrassed at how easily you fall apart just from his simple simultaneous motions, in and on you, but it’s jeno, and he knows your body maybe even better than he knows his own.

keening, a loud, gasping wail, falls from your lips only for jeno to rise from his place in between your thighs and swallow your sounds with his open mouth, his clean hand coming up to cage you in against your sheets. the way you raise your arms to loop them around his neck is akin to the way a drowning man would grab on to a lifeline, and once he rises you pull him back into a longer, filthier kiss, where your teeth click against his and his tongue opens up your mouth the same way it feels like his touch opens up your body.

you feel as if you’re being flayed, as if hellfire is the only thing comparable to the heat against your skin. jeno steps closer, just by the tiniest bit, and you feel his hand - the one shining with your arousal - brush past your hip before he uses it to wet his cock with one, two, three firm strokes. copious amounts of precum arise from the tip before being pulled down against his flesh with expert downstrokes. your mouth waters as you watch.

“my mouth, lionheart, please?” you finally gain the courage to ask what is on your mind, sitting up on your elbows as you begin to slowly find your strength. your love raises an eyebrow, and not without reason: jeno is a big man, making even you - a literal monarch - feel small at times, and this does not end with his personality or his person: you have never been able to take all of him into your mouth. the ache borders on painful, frankly, and jeno himself refuses to harm you in that way.

“this, now, is about you.” he responds, and your heart cracks as you register that as a ‘no’. still, you speak again. you need him in your mouth, suddenly. it isn’t just a want. something has to anchor you to the here and now, it may as well be the head of his cock, heavy against your tongue.

“what is about me is about you as well,” you respond, and before he can lay his refusal down out flat, you slide onto the floor - warmer than expected - and tuck your heels behind your bare ass. “i need this. please.”

you’re directly in front of him now, face parallel to his strong thighs. jeno strokes up, squeezes tighter just below his frenulum, and you watch, struck, as precum beads at the tip and then splits into two streams, half sliding down his hard dick and the other slowly-but-surely falling to the ground, hardly a quarter of a step from one of your knees.

“give me your hand, then,” your knight murmurs from above you, drawing your gaze from his leaking cock up past the dainty curve of his lip to his hard eyes. “now.”

when you raise your hand up, you only put it up limply, unsure of what he means to do with the limb he’s asked for. your eyes must be swimming with questions, because jeno gives you a hint of a sweet, reassuring smile before allowing his expression to become stoic again… right before he grasps your given hand and straightens it out, gentler than expected from such a great warrior but harsher than he truly ever treats you.

he’s passionate. this demonstrates it.

before you can react, your body following your hand up off of your heels, though only slightly, as he yanks up your hand, jeno leans down and licks up your hand, from the bottom of your palm to the top, all while maintaining eye contact with you. he lets go, though you keep your hand raised, your gaze obviously dumbfounded.

“a dry hand would rub me raw,” he explains, though the smirk that’s tugging at one corner of his mouth shows that he finds your wide-eyed expression at least mildly amusing. “we do not want that, do we?”

it’s amazing how easily he can get you under his thumb when you give out orders that hold his life in the balance on a day-to-day basis. maybe that’s why he finds taking charge in private so easy. maybe it’s his way of evening your dynamic out. even now, as he asks you an innocent question with no hidden meaning or reaction, you find yourself shaking your head along enthusiastically. no, of course you don’t want to rub him raw. of course you and him don’t want that.

you raise the hand now deemed ‘not dry’ up as jeno watches, finally, finally wrapping your hand around it. your thumb and middle finger do not meet, no matter how tight you squeeze. your lover lets out a fulfilled groan at finally feeling a touch other than his own on his hard cock, and it’s a beautiful sound. you want more of it. you want more of him.

as if mesmerized, you lean closer, darting out your tongue to lick experimentally at his slit. he holds his breath, a large hand coming to rest lightly against the back of your head and base of your skull, waiting. you take this as a sign to stretch your lips wider, engulfing the entire tip of his cock in your hot mouth. his grip tightens in your hair, and, in return, you clench around nothing.

as you struggle to take more of jeno in your mouth, you do your best to stroke the rest of his cock with a tight enough grip to make him feel everything, but not tight to the point where you’re hurting him. regardless of how little you can take on your tongue - not your fault, by any means - jeno seems happy, barely able to stop himself from bucking up into the back of your throat. at this point, you’re essentially just warming his cock, so you pull off with a slick pop to look at him with slightly watery eyes. a string of precum and saliva connects your bottom lip and his tip, and when it breaks, you’re acutely aware of the mixture dripping down your chin and onto your nightgown. it’s no matter.

jeno’s thumb runs over your scalp, just above the bottom of your skull. you close your eyes momentarily to take in a deep breath.

“you can force yourself down my throat, you know,” your voice is raspy when you speak, eyes fluttering open almost drearily. “i’m not too delicate for it.”

there’s something simultaneously raw and pure about the way you speak, and jeno recognizes that your headspace has changed, just a little. your need truly is all-encompassing now. he must tread more delicately than usual.

there’s so much love, so much adoration in your wide-eyed gaze. he only wishes to return it with the same intensity and double the care.

“i know, love,” jeno responds, finally moving his hand in order to place two fingers under your chin. he tilts your face up, taking note of the way your eyes run over his tattoo before looking at his chin, then his jaw, then his nose, then his forehead, until, finally, you land on his eyes. you’re a tad bit unfocused, full of need, but that’s okay. you’ll always come back to him. he continues speaking. “you’re so strong. always so strong for me. that’s why you deserve to be rewarded, yes?”

“rewarded?” you’re confused, to say the least, though you do not dislike the direction jeno is suddenly moving towards. he only smiles, gentle and kind and good and yours. all yours.

“on the bed, (name).” he tilts his own head, jutting his chin towards the bed you’d slid off of earlier. you don’t hesitate to follow, pushing yourself up onto your feet and all but scrambling backwards to be seated against the soft mattress. the blankets are all haphazard and the pillows aren’t straight, but that’s the least of your worries right now. jeno gives no other orders, only stepping closer and, without warning, winding his arms underneath your thighs and propelling you backwards, causing you to land, back flat, in the center of your bed.

it had always felt inescapably large when you’d slept in it alone. now, it feels welcoming. safe.

“you’re ready for me, yes?” the tone of voice jeno uses is soft, even as his rough palms push apart your thighs. you nod, murmuring a small ‘yes’ once you realize he’s waiting for you to verbalize your thoughts. this is all jeno needs to climb onto the bed and move in between your spread legs, settling back on his calves as his hands smooth over your hip bones and waist. it’s evident that he’s bent on taking his time with you tonight, likely under the illusion that that is what you want.

it is not what you want. it is most definitely not what you need.

“i need you within me, lionheart,” one of your hands clutches at the sheets beneath you while you stretch the other towards your lover, imploring. “soon. now. please.”

“absolutely impatient,” jeno only chuckles in return, drawing an indignant whine forth from the base of your throat. he looks over your barely covered body once more before finally - almost in slowed motions as if to tease you further - rising up onto his knees. his hands stop moving against your skin, finally circling around the soft meat of your upper thighs. swiftly and fluidly, jeno pulls your body towards his, wrapping your legs around his own waist. his wet cock lies heavy against your pelvis, leaving slick precum against the apex of your thighs and the bottom of your stomach. he smirks. “is this what you wanted?”

the motion of being pulled into your knight had forced the air from your lungs in a surprised yelp, and the feeling of his warm skin - he’s always supplied so much heat, it baffles you to no end - against your own momentarily blanks your mind. jeno repeats his question twice, cocky grin growing with each utterance, before you nod vigorously and sputter out something vaguely affirmative. yes. yes, this is exactly what you wanted, exactly what you want.

you’ve been growing steadily wetter the longer your foreplay had drawn out, but jeno, ever-caring, still pulls back - his cock sliding against your thigh has you moaning - to slip two thick fingers into you, adding a third when he’s absolutely sure that you can take it. in no time at all, you’re grinding your clit against his rough palm, the friction absolutely heavenly. jeno makes no move to stop you, only gently forcing his fingers in deeper.

a fourth finger is added just as your abused clit can’t take anymore, and you spasm on his hand as you fall past the point of no return. your second orgasm of the night washes over you, and you can’t help the muted but harried gasps you let out as your hips buck up, driving your head back into the mattress. jeno draws his fingers out slowly, licking your essence off of them with practiced ease. once your body has calmed down, you can only let out a small whimper, still basking in the intensity you’ve just experienced.

jeno knows your limit, and knows damn well that you haven’t reached it yet. it’s because of this that, even as your walls are still clenching around nothing due to aftershocks that wrack your body, he places the fat head of his cock against your hole and slowly but surely slides in. the hands on your thighs move up to wrap around the sides of your waist, and his grip is bruising as he pushes deeper and deeper. even as he goes at a snail’s pace, you feel as if you’re being pulled apart only to be pieced back together again. you hold your breath.

jeno is halfway in when he realizes you still aren’t quite wet enough. he shifts slightly, carefully moving one of your legs up just a little bit higher, before swiping over your raw clit with a thumb he’s wetted with his own tongue. a moan flies forth from your mouth immediately, and a gush of wetness coats jeno’s cock anew as he circles over your bud with abandon. he’s finally free to surge forward and bury himself within your warm walls without fear of repercussions on your own body… so he does. the breath you’d been holding in is punched out of you, replaced with an honest-to-god wail. tears bud at the corners of your eyes at the stretch, falling as he pulls out almost entirely and slams into you again.

jeno does everything in his life in order to live up to the name you’ve given him: lionheart. he is just and loyal and thoughtful as an advisor, and analytical and fearsome and ruthless as a warrior. sex is where both sides of him meet. it is where he is not just the kingdom’s bravest knight, or the crown’s right-hand man. it is where he is your lionheart, and yours alone, where your souls intertwine at the place your bodies meet.

he notices how your hands come up to reach for him, leaning down so you can place one hand against his heart - against his tattoo - and throw the other one over his other shoulder. jeno’s nose is almost touching yours, though your bodies shift continuously as he keeps drawing back and driving his hips into yours with force.

he never ceases to make you feel full.

your walls grip his cock tightly, amplifying every movement jeno indulges you in. the slide is slick and wet and perfect, but it is not easy. the head of his dick catches on your clenched walls every time he pulls out just to slam back in, forcing you to feel him with everything you have. it’s exactly what you want.

he slows down his thrusting for a moment as he moves forward slightly, leaning closer still as he places one forearm against your head and raises his other hand to fondle your chest over your sheer clothing. somehow, this is no longer enough for you. jeno’s cock is fully sheathed within you as he swipes a thumb over one of your nipples, and the feeling of his skin pushing the cloth against one of your most sensitive areas has you shuddering in a way that causes you to squeeze even tighter around him. his hips stutter slightly, driving him impossibly deeper into you.

“jeno,” you rasp out, tongue heavy and dry. “my pillow. beneath my pillow.”

his eyes go wide as he processes what you’ve just said, his shallow thrusts slowing down. jeno gulps audibly.

“your- love, your dagger?”

“need you to touch me.” you respond, holding his gaze and watching it clear up from confused to comprehending you entirely. he pushes himself up from his forearm to his hand, sliding out of you in the same movement. you whine sadly at the loss of contact, but jeno mutters a good-natured ‘be quiet’ almost immediately.

“you know,” he starts, voice teasing, even as he pulls your dagger - black steel, quillions and hilt encrusted with blue jewels, black tempered glass at the pommel - out from beneath your pillow using the hand that had been fondling you earlier. he moves back down to his prior position, and your breath hitches as he presses the apex of the knife against the collar of your nightgown. “i’m already touching you.”

“more,” you moan out, the end of your word coming out almost breathlessly. one of your hands slides against his tattoo once more, as if feeling the lion will make it roar to life. “touch me more.”

jeno chuckles, albeit darker than he had been earlier, and digs the dagger into the cloth in front of it without any further ado. you hold your breath willfully this time, not wanting to actually nick yourself on the blade, as he moves down your body, cutting the sheer gown open down its direct center. your lionheart dots his lips against your flesh in a trail in his wake, scraping his teeth against your skin as he sees fit.

he leaves a quick, but filthy, kiss against your clit for good measure, eyes lighting up as you attempt to close your legs around his head on impulse, only to have them pushed apart even farther than before by his strong hands. once he gets to the hem of the slip, he throws your dagger somewhere on the stone floor - neither of you pay any heed to where it clatters - and rips it apart with his bare hands, hardly able to bear not feeling you around him for much longer.

before you can do anything or say anything or even think anything at all, your lover surges forward and presses himself back into you with a grunt that sounds almost like a growl. his hands knead at your thighs as he finds his rhythm with ease, pounding into you with practice as if you’re an art medium and he’s a skilled master. he’s everywhere, all around you and inside of you and in the air and in your skin, and it’s all you’ve ever wanted.

“touching - ha - touching you enough now?” he asks, resolve crumbling bit by bit as he fights to keep himself from tumbling over the cliff’s edge before you do. you can’t dignify him with a response, unable to do anything but claw at his back and pin yourself further against his chest as if it’ll make even more room for you in his heart than there already is. he doesn’t need a response, anyways. jeno already knows.

he knows just how close you are, too. just as close as he is. it’s because of this that jeno moves a hand up to curl around your throat just as he circles your clit with two fingers of the other hand, continuing to fuck into you at the same rate as best he can. with a sharp cry and the arching of your back off the bed, you clench around him for one final time before he comes to a halt, barely holding himself up over you as he releases within you with a shuddering, gasping groan.

moments pass, stretching into longer than they typically are. jeno takes care as he slides out of you, climbing onto the bed and flopping down next to you right after. the feeling of his release, sticky and wet against your inner thighs, is unpleasant at best, but you can’t bring yourself to clean up just yet. instead, you turn your head to your side, your nose immediately brushing against jeno’s sternum as you realize that he’s turned his entire body towards your own. he lets out an airy laugh at the sensation, pushing half of the sliced cloth off of your body in order to run a wide open palm down your naked side.

“good?” he speaks first, asking an arbitrary question. ‘good enough to make you forget?’ is what he means, knowing full well that you could never lose thought of what awaits the two of you. the sentiment is what’s important, though, and you let out an agreeable hum as a reply. the sex itself was great, of course. he’s well aware.

“sleep, lionheart,” you say just as silence attempts to cloak the two of you. “we must be ready soon, as it is.”

jeno gives you no response, and you do not require one from him. instead, he pulls you even closer into his chest as if doing so will protect you from the crithagians across your kingdom. his entire world rests between his arms. you are both tired enough that sleep forces your eyelids closed swifter than expected, and as you fall asleep to your lover’s slowed breathing and muted heartbeat, you can’t help but, just this once, allow your worries to slip off your body as your torn nightgown does.

just before the rise of the sun, jeno will have to get out of bed and clean you up as best he can before donning his clothing, his armor, and his cape. you’ll put his helmet upon his head, pull his visor down over his face after sharing a kiss that could be your last. it is always like this. jeno will rouse the army, you will dress and arm yourself, and meet with your own private troops.

as the sun begins to take its place in the morning sky, luckily opposite your gaze, jeno will lead his people into battle, riding his steed far, far from you. you will watch him go, but he will not look back. doing so is unfortunate luck at best. you’ve ingrained this into his mind.

you do not know whether he will be back or not.

you desperately need him to come back.

all of that will happen in due time, but now, you drift to dreamland, safe in the arms of the man you’ve sworn to be with until the end. he tightens his hold around you, and that is how you spend the night before battle, in total comfort and full of love. no matter what tomorrow brings, at least you have this now. at least you will always have this moment.

the lionheart and his liege. your lionheart and his love.

for now, you are at peace in the calm before the storm.

#first #five #tags #dont #work #jeno #jeno smut #jeno fluff #jeno angst #jeno x reader #nct jeno #nct smut #nct fluff #nct angst #nct dream smut #nct dream angst #nct dream fluff #nct dream

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sundaymorninglife · 3 years

Text

the morning after

corpse husband x fem!reader

warnings: cursing, drugs, alcohol, insinuation of sex.

a note: thank you so much for your support on part one! uh, i haven’t written in years and coming back to tumblr has been a weird yet lovely ride. hope you enjoy this part two.

part 1 - next

tag list is open!

y/n closed the door behind her quietly.

she looked around the hallway, trying to see if any of her friends were around, but all she could find were some girls drunkly talking, waiting to go into the bathroom. she knocked on the door twice, having agreed that that was the code for coast clear. without looking back, she made her way through the hallway and then the stairs, before going to the kitchen.

she sighed heavily, and made her best to check that her clothes and hair were OK and not too much of a giveaway of what had just happened. she looked at the array of drinks in front of her, and grabbed a bottle of tequila to pour.

as she was looking for shot glasses, rae and lily bursted into the kitchen.

“y/n, there you are!” lily shouted, even though they were alone. she sounded a lot drunker than when they had left y/n before.

rae laughed and took a hold of lily, balancing her, before looking at y/n. “yeah we’ve been looking for yo- oh my god what happened to your hair?”

y/n’s hands instinctively rose up to her hair, her eyes wide and paranoid. “i- oh god. is it that bad?”

rae burst out laughing, lily just looked at them confused, too drunk to understand the unspoken context. “oh god y/n! WHO and HOW and WHEN? we were only gone for like forty minutes!”

y/n finally found the shot glasses and poured herself a shot of tequila, which she quickly downed before serving herself another one. “please don’t judge me,” she said, before taking the shot she had just poured.

“please don’t tell me you fucked e/n,” rae retorted, still holding lily up by the shoulders.

“oh my god please tell me you slept with e/n, it would be the gossip of the week!” lily said, just excited to have any kind of drama to talk about. their group of friends was great, no doubt about it, but it needed some spice some days. nothing too serious, of course, but enough to provide entertainment, that’s all lily wanted.

y/n let out a snort. “no fucking way. he’s so sleazy! i can’t believe i ever dated that guy.”

“so...” rae wiggled her eyebrows at the girl, “who was it then? do we know them?”

y/n gulped. “it was.... it was no one okay. it was just a random dude.” she wasn’t technically lying, but it still felt weird to hide this from her two closest friends in LA. rae and lily gasped and looked at each other, but before they could say anything, y/n continued: “i know, i know, i swore off men and random hook ups, but...” y/n paused, thinking of corpse and about what had just gone on in the bathroom mere moments ago, “he was charming, what can i say?”

“oh my god, you have to point him out later on- was it good? it looks like it was good, you’re practically glowing!”

y/n blushed and put her face in her hands, looked at rae from in between her fingers. “yeah, it was great. anyway,” she got in between her two friends, “how about we go and we dance a little?”

***

corpse left the bathroom a few minutes after he heard the two knocks on the door. as he went into the hallway, he barely caught y/n going down the stairs. his mind was racing. that had just happened. he had followed her into the bathroom, hoping to not get caught by any of their friends, and in between the kissing, the unbuttoning, the desperate need for skin on skin contact, they established a few rules.

1. no feelings. this, whatever it may become, will remain strictly physical.

2. no one can know. if anyone finds out they might pressure them to get into a relationship, or worse, it might ruin the group’s dynamic.

3. no jealousy. they are allowed to see other people as long as they keep each other updated, for health and safety reasons.

it was fairly simple and straightforward. of course, rule number one had sort of already been broken on his part since he did have a crush on her but, he thought, it could be easily pushed away. not like he was in love with her.

as he walked down the hallway, ready to rejoin everyone downstairs, he felt a hand against his shoulder. he turned around to find jack, drunk of course, smiling at him. “corpse! my guy! where have you been for the past hour?”

“i... i was talking to that group of girls,” corpse said, pointing to the girls waiting outside the bathroom. “although i got a little freaked out when they offered me snow.”

jack laughed. “well, i won’t offer you snow, but let’s go get some shots. you look way too sober compared to me, my man.” corpse laughed and let himself follow the irishman, trying his best to not think about y/n and what they had just done.

***

as people woke up the next morning, the ever so familiar hangover headache started infecting most of the people who had gone to mark’s party.

lily and y/n had gone over to rae’s apartment to spend the night. the two friends insisted y/n point out who it was that she had slept with at the party, but the girl simply told them, very regretfully, that he had already left, probably to never be seen again.

lily was presently throwing up in rae’s toilet, having been the most drunk out of the three friends, while rae and y/n battled simultaneous headaches in the kitchen. as rae was making a much needed batch of coffee, and y/n was toasting some bread, lily dragged herself to the kitchen, tiredly proclaiming, “i am never drinking again.”

rae and y/n just laughed, both of them had been in the exact same situation, and they knew that lily would probably be drinking just as much the following week.

“so...” rae started, as she poured the now ready coffee into three mugs, “y/n. are we gonna get more deets on mr. bathroom?”

y/n groaned and let her head fall into her hands. “please don’t remind me that i did it in a bathroom, rae.”

rae snorted. “yeah, yeah, WHATEVER. you’re avoiding the question at hand, y/n. what was he like? where was he from? will you see him again? did he have a big d-“

“WOAH, woah, okay!” y/n interrupted rae before she could finish that last question. “he was nice. i didn’t ask where he was from. and no, i probably won’t see him again.” y/n looked down sheepishly at her mug, knowing that last answer was a straight up lie.

as a matter of fact, corpse had already texted her that morning to make sure that what had happened in the bathroom (and the rules they agreed upon) was OK. she appreciated the concern he had for her and the fact that he went out of his way to make sure she was comfortable. she replied to him saying that everything was good to go, and she honestly couldn’t wait to see him again. even rae, when she saw her in the kitchen, told her she was glowing.

“aw damn, that’s too bad! i wanted to meet this guy. hey, you still didn’t tell me how big his di-“

“oh my god guys please shut up, i’m dying over here.” lily interrupted rae this time, clearly too hungover to be interested in the subject at hand.

rae and y/n just laughed and started talking about other events that had transpired throughout the night, although y/n couldn’t keep her mind off of a certain curly haired guy.

***

corpse quietly made his way to the kitchen. him and jack had gotten home very late and very drunk, and he was already getting ready for toast to be kind of pissy at the whole affair. after all, he was kind enough to offer them his home while they were staying in LA.

corpse’s head was pounding, from the hangover or the anxiety of seeing y/n, he didn’t know. he had texted her to make sure that what happened the night before was OK, and to confirm that they were actually going to do this. he felt relief when she texted back that yeah, she wanted to seriously do this no strings attached sort of thing.

the curly haired man dragged his feet to the kitchen. he found toast there, already having breakfast, looking a little ticked off.

toast looked up at corpse from where he was seated. “you know, i love you and jack. but for the love of god, i’m never going to let you back into my apartment if it means you two getting home drunk as hell at four in the morning, screaming about how much you want chicken nuggets.”

corpse groaned and covered his face. he mumbled a quiet “i’m sorry,” before going to boil some water for tea. toast looked at his friend and decided the argument was sort of silly, and kindly laughed it off before saying, “it’s like you guys forgot mcdonald’s has delivery.”

once his tea was ready, corpse sat across from toast at the kitchen table. by then, sykkuno had also made his way into the room, and he said a quiet but sweet “good morning” to his two friends.

corpse was quietly drinking his tea when toast noticed it. “holy shit,” he started, “what is that on your neck?” it wasn’t long before toast was laughing incredibly hard. corpse immediately pulled out his phone and opened the camera, trying to get a look at his neck.

y/n had left him a hickey.

sykkuno made his way over to the table and peeked at corpse’s neck, before gasping and bring his hand to cover his mouth. “corpse, oh my god!” he said between laughs.

corpse felt his face grow red, before putting his hand on his neck to try and make the hickey disappear.

toast was still laughing when he asked, “who gave you that corpse?!”

“i... well it was-“

“can you all please stop laughing so fucking loud? my head fucking hurts.” corpse was thankful for jack’s interruption. he was quickly trying to come up with a cover up story for the hickey on his neck.

“corpse has a hickey!” sykkuno informed jack. the irishman’s eyes widened at the statement and immediately he went over to tear away corpse’s hand from his neck.

“so that’s what you were doing with the girls outside the bathroom, huh?” corpse sighed with relief. jack came up with the cover up on his own.

“uh, yeah. i hooked up with one of them in the bathroom. they offered me coke after and that’s when i found you, jack.”

“un-fucking-believable. i miss being 23 and being able to pull shit like that off.” jack sat down next to him at the table.

“pfft! as if you had half the game corpse has when you were in your 20s, jack,” toast said, trying to tease his friend a little.

“oh shut the fuck up toast! as if your game is any better than mine, huh?”

corpse just laughed, bringing his hand back up to cover his hickey.

“are you gonna see the girl again corpse? what was she like anyway?” sykkuno asked.

“uh, she was nice. i probably won’t see her again though, i’m not really looking for a relationship right now.”

ah, but he would see her again. he actually couldn’t wait to get his hands on her once more, even if it meant more hickeys for his friends to find and make fun of.

taglist: @evi-ka @bi-andready-tocry @ramshasar

#corpse husband #corpse husband x reader #corpse #corpse x reader #corpse imagines #corpse husband x y/n #corpse_husband #corpse husband x you #corpse x you

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bookishlyizzy · 3 years

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discussing the final season of carmen sandiego

*spoilers* umm....so yeah, i finished watching carmen sandiego, and i’m left in a state of perpetual sadness and despair. i feel like the ending of the show wrapped up wayyy too fast, and kind of left off on a bit of an unsatisfactory note for some of the characters. although i love the large and diverse cast of carmen sandiego, one of the drawbacks of having all those characters and arcs and storylines makes it harder to cram in a satisfying conclusion for everyone in a twenty-minute episode. so here’s what i would do if there was more time.

let’s start off with the threads that i think were tied off pretty well:

julia & chase devineaux: i wasn’t really a shipper of julia and devineaux but i actually really enjoyed their relationship throughout season 4. we see a lot of character growth from devineaux in the way that he interacts with julia and the world. julia pushes devineaux to become a better person, to see things with a broader perspective and from other people’s points of view. and he does really change a lot into an understanding person instead of the overconfident, arrogant detective we first saw him as in season 1. in addition, he also grows to respect julia as a person and partner, and it’s completely adorable how he looks at her while zari tells julia that they’ll follow her lead. also i love how he keeps wearing his lucky cat jacket from san francisco in season 4.

el topo & le chevre: okay, i was pretty much shipping these two the minute they showed up on the screen together. you can tell how much they care about each other throughout the series. whenever one of them gets hurt, you can really see how they prioritize each other over whatever thing vile is planning. when things are good, they’re so sweet and they have so much fun together. and they take dumb cute selfies. they’re so, so adorable, and this season definitely brings the shipping fodder. and they end the season moving on from vile and running a food truck together. the only thing i’m mad about is that we definitely needed more screen time from them.

shadowsan: i didn’t like shadowsan in season 1 but over the course of the series he really went through a lot of major character development and i love how he’s now basically a grumpy dad figure to carmen. the season ends with him finally reuniting for good with his brother in japan, and it’s a satisfying conclusion for his arc. i also love how he was the one to help carmen in the finale when she’s struggling with the brainwashing thing. which is way better than the brainwashing being resolved by some bs like true love’s kiss. (also carmen and gray are way too hurt and they’re super not ready for a relationship.) carmen sandiego is a show that emphasizes the importance of family with this father-daughter duo, and i think that’s something really valuable. also i’m interpreting that shadowsan isn’t permanently moving to japan, but rather just visiting his brother. he’s still definitely going to be there for carmen going forward when she needs him.

player & carmen’s friendship: i love this show for having a male/female friendship with absolutely no romantic feelings going on. it’s a solid friendship, and depicts a wholesome, supportive relationship. absolutely no qualms here.

and here’s all the stuff that needs expanding/fixing:

tigress: i actually really love tigress as a character, and i personally think that there should have been more of her in the series. i would have liked to see more depth and motivation to her, since she has a lot of character potential. i don’t really know how i would rewrite tigress’s arc, because it’s virtually nonexistent and there’s not too much to go off of. i don’t think she needs a redemption arc, but i would give her more of a spotlight. (also low key fictional-crushing on her.) i would like to include sort of a tigress-centric episode, which can also generally be more expansion on the inner workings of vile.

cleo & saira: villain couple. villain couple. they need to be a villain couple, enough said. i would rewrite season 4 to have include an emotional downbeat moment in which saira struggles with being able to fit in with society and humans and being completely awkward at it while cleo, in all her regal and ettiquite-esque manners, tries to help. this wouldn’t really help with the main plot, but it would be humanizing and provide character depth. i feel like this could be the b-plot in the tigress episode somehow.

coach brunt: you don’t betray family. at this point, coach brunt has lost the daughter she raised, who, in her mind, has basically backstabbed her entirely. coach brunt was also betrayed by shadowsan and left for the police to find, and in season 4, malestrom basically abandons her to drown. and it’s highly likely that somewhere in her backstory she’s been betrayed many times, likely by her own blood family, which would provide context for why she’s such a loyal person to vile, who she thinks of as her found family. in rewriting season four, i’m adding one extra episode that’s solely on the backstory of coach brunt. in this episode, we would explore brunt’s upbringing and the first time she is betrayed by someone she considers family. in my opinion, coach brunt was likely pushed to fall by another influence, but she also makes the conscious choice to choose revenge over moving on. potentially, we could also explore brunt’s budding friendship with the mechanic, who we never see again after that one episode, as well as a reflection upon this from her adult self.

gray & the freaking mind control thing & his moral struggles: *sighs* i can see what the show is going for, but i really just don’t see it in the execution. the way that gray struggles with morality is like it’s an on and off switch. he’s either graham, basic civilian, or crackle, basically evil. in that one episode, he flip flops between being overly heroic, even taking out time from his day to specifically track down a random kid to return his wallet instead of just dropping it off at the police station or leaving it where he found it. and then the flip side is like he’s just robotically relapsing into stealing mode, where he just suddenly has to impluse to steal literally anything. i feel like this flip flop wasn’t really a good portrayal of his struggle and didn’t really demonstrate many active choices made by him. and the way that he’s just like “i’m actually just evil” when he confronts carmen at the lab is just super one-dimensional. i just don’t buy it that he flips to vile so quickly in the span of a few episodes. i feel like there should have been more active reflecting and the decision should have been dragged out longer.

also it’s revealed in the finale that gray also changed his crackle rod to not go beyond a stun, and i think this was a nice touch, because it demonstrates his aversion to murder, which calls back to the first caper, in which he’s confronted with killing the archeologist at the excavation site. but he doesn’t end up having to make that choice, because carmen stops him. but this time, it’s his own choice to take that step away from vile ideals. i don’t think gray is ever going to be a “hero” of the traditional sense or have a complete redemption arc, because it just doesn’t fit him. to be honest, i don’t know what the future will hold for gray, but i definitely think of he will fall somewhere along the lines of red x (teen titans) or catwoman’s (in certain comic runs) gray morality. (and i think the way gray returns to vile kind of screws this up.) he’s still going to steal stuff sometimes probably, but he’s not going to straight up murder people. he would probably be the type to work for himself alone mostly, but be okay teaming up with the good guys sometimes. definitely no joining evil organizations tho.

gray & carmen & the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight:” i definitely ship these two, but i think they’ve got a long way to go before they’re really ready to admit their feelings for each other. i’m happy that the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight” didn’t culminate in a kiss scene being the thing that snapped carmen out of the trance. because that is just so cliche and not the message of the show. instead, it’s shadowsan who does. and that makes sense going along with the themes of family. i think the issue with this i dislike how there is no more elaboration after carmen supposedly kills gray. this is her best friend. i would imagine that the reaction would be greater, since he was also her friend and teammate during the months they were both working under vile. and then when carmen’s brainwashing wears off, she agonizes that she killed her best friend. but that’s it. the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight” is the last screen appearance of both of them together. then it’s directly cutting to taking down vile. there should have been a hospital scene where carmen rides with him in the ambulance and talks to him as he’s unconscious, and leaves behind a note for him to read when he’s awake.

i just really think there should be a “heart to heart” scene somewhere in this finale where they confront their feelings (not romantic stuff, but more about like shared trauma at the hands of vile and their broken apart friendship). this could happen at that sydney cafe. both times carmen and gray go on a “date” she leaves him sitting there alone, bewlildered. i think the finale should include a scene of them leaving the cafe together and then walking away and waving to each other. this shows development in their relationship, and that they are now closer, but it also visually shows that they still have differences as they walk away with a sort of two toned kind of environment angle that shows the different paths they have chosen. (and carmen calls him gray. and he doesn’t correct her.) it’s more of a see you later, than a goodbye though. we’re also getting rid of that part of when gray says he doesn’t want to complicate carmen’s life in the hospital scene. instead, he’s going to ask for a sheet of paper on which he will write an indiscernible letter to carmen. (the same letter will be seen in at the carmen brand outerwear hq a few scenes later for continuity, but unopened at the time, as if carmen’s not yet ready to read it. i feel like both of them need to heal a bit on their own before they’re ready to reconnect. gray knows he has hurt carmen in the past but he also knows it will hurt her if he disappears without a trace, so he’s leaving her with the choice if she wants to see him again instead of making the choice for her.)

ivy & zach & found family: carmen leaves a note behind for ivy and zach and leaves to find her mother. i feel like this did not handle team red’s found family very well. basically, the whole show is setting up this importance of family, especially found family not blood family kind of narrative. vile blood runs in carmen’s veins but she chooses to do good and find her own family. ivy and zach both choose carmen, their found family, over their racing career. i think that they should have stuck together, and when carmen goes to find her mom, they would have been totally onboard dropping her off at the airport and saying a “see you soon” or actually driving her to carlotta valdez’s house in lydia (the car). i just don’t think that splitting them up via a note is really a satisfying conclusion to the whole found family aspect. and in that time skip carmen really should have stopped by to say hi to the zach and ivy and the acme squad instead of maintaining the air of mystery. that would have definitely pushed the family feel, instead of the mysterious loner archetype.

that time skip thing: yeah, no. this part was completely not needed and unhelpful. instead, we’re going to have carmen hug her mother at the airport, and go to visit all of her friends and found family, especially shadowsan in japan and ivy and zach in presumably boston. and the time skip will be a few onths not two effing years. i think it’s natural for them to grow apart a bit and pursue their own personal goals in life after vile’s gone, but they’ll definitely be staying in touch and reconnecting and seeing each other pretty often. and lastly of all, carmen will meet gray at the cafe in sydney.

basically, this is how i would redo the episodes for season 4.

episode 1: the beijing bullion caper. (this episode remains as is for the most part, i would like more expansion on lady doksu and shadowsan's past since it seems like their pasts are more tied together than is revealed)

episode 2: the big bad ivy caper. (this episode remains as is for the most part.)

episode 3: the robo caper. (the scenes in which carmen first meets the robot and ivy runs it over with a truck can stay the same. where we start to deviate is with gray’s story with a revised, more complex, and in depth view of his moral struggles. instead of being unaware largely as gray flops between graham/crackle, he’s going to be a lot more aware. he’s still going to rob the house, but instead it’s because he feels hopeless that since he was previously a criminal, that’s all he’s ever going to be. gray doesn’t want to be a civilian, and feels like the only thing that he can do instead is be a part of vile. however, when he sees carmen again, he’s going to realize that if she got out of vile, then that means he has a chance to get out of it too. gray comes to a crossroads of deciding between carmen and vile, good and evil.

episode 4: this will be the episode that concentrates on tigress, with a cleo/saira b-plot. most of this episode will take place within vile, and give more insights on the workings of the organization.

episode 5: the himalayan rescue caper. (this episode is going to get a real makeover. with the insertion of episode 4, this creates more actual space between the last time we see gray grappling with his big choices, which makes it feel like more time has passed. so it actually feels like he had more time to think. carmen’s still going to try to rescue gray, and the part with player can stay the same. as gray is manipulated by malestrom, i think this episode should further emphasize how vile manipulates their recruits and amp up the shittiness of how malestrom is acting. i think malestrom should say something along the lines indicating that vile is gray’s only family left, this is what he was born to do, he belongs with them, and make up a bunch of bullshit lies about carmen. malestrom will portray this stuff as the “truth” and then say something like “we told you to the full truth, while carmen was hiding your past from you. didn’t you say you wanted to piece together more of your past?” (which gray did express interest in a previous episode.) since more time has passed, malestrom will play the “if carmen wanted to rescue you, she would have done so already. she abandoned you.” card. of course, it’s not easy to get into a super advanced vile facility, so instead carmen’s going to be having more struggles with getting in, which is the real reason she’s taking a while.) i want to keep the scene where he says that his name is crackle, not gray and not graham. i think this scene is particularly painful because graham/crackle is kind representative of the two sides of good and evil that gray thinks he has to choose between. gray will accuse carmen of abandoning him, both in the present but demonstrating that he’s still hurt by the time when she first left vile, and all those times when she kept secrets from him and disappearing in sydney. carmen asks him to leave with her, but instead of him being like “i’m bad, and i was always a villain,” he’s just going to be hurt and feel manipulated and be so conflicted. i feel like gray would choose vile, but not because it’s where he belongs but because he’s afraid of being brainwashed again if he doesn’t agree and because he just wants to know the truth, which vile happened to tell him first (and carmen had been hiding it from him for a while). why would it make sense for gray to willingly side with vile because he’s “throughly bad?” actions speak louder than words, and it’s clear that he’s definitely not evil enough for vile.

episode 6: the vile history caper. (we’re just going to keep this episode as is for the most part. but like more el topo and le chevre moments.)

episode 7: this will be the coach brunt backstory episode, piggybacking off of her hurt feelings about maelstrom’s intended betrayal.

episode 8: the egyptian decryption caper. (this one is just going to be as is for the most part. the cleaners kidnap carmen, but we’re going insert one more painstaking scene of gray learning of vile’s plan to kidnap carmen. he’s not going to know they are planning to brainwash her. he’s going to feel conflicted and try to protest, but then realizes that now that he’s stuck with vile, if he goes against them he’s probably going to get brainwashed himself. and the brainwashing was really traumatizing, so it’s understandable he’s really afraid of it happening to him again.)

episode 9: the viennese waltz caper. (mostly just keeping this episode as is, but more worrying gray scenes. i feel like he should have had a bigger reaction to seeing carmen so unlike her personality. carmen’s lack of empathy should have pushed himself to question if vile is really a healthy place for anyone if they’re so willing to brainwash his best friend in a greater capacity. i think gray should recognize how bad the situation is but he still won’t act upon it since he’s trapped in the nostalgia of their old squad and since he’s been abandoned by carmen before, he’s too afraid that reversing the brainwashing will result in a repeat of her leaving him again. and he’s still afraid of the brainwashing.)

episode 10 + 11 + 12. the dark red caper. (yeah, this episode is kind of just way too quickly wrapped up. i’m going to expand this into a three parter so we have more time to focus on everyone. basically, we’re going to expand this for the angst. and because this is the last season and i need more content. i feel like we can follow the general plot trajectory but with more nuance and include the improvements i wrote above about the finale. absolutely pushing the found family trope to its limits, and less vagueness since there’s not going to be another season. oh yeah, and the scene when carmen fights shadowsan, i feel like they could have amped up the emotional stuff and make it as much as about him being her dad figure as the doll because #foundfamily. and also the extra time gives more space for all of that other stuff like endings for all the characters, and more team red found family, and a bit about the non-jailed vile operatives, and the acme team, and also maybe a little infrastructure rebuilding montage, and also that carmen and gray moment.)

basically i just want a satisfying ending for gray, and i love him, and he can’t just stare out of the hospital bedroom and agree to stay out of her life while melancholy music plays.

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kantrips · 3 years

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Alistair & Celia Headcanon Collection

Some Amell x Alistair (largely fluff) headcanons! Includes some from Origins, Warden time at Amaranthine and the Inquisition-era. Some of these I have had since my first playthrough, but others I may have read elsewhere, loved and thusly absorbed so please let me know if I can link anyone!

Origins

The first time they meet at Ostagar, Celia thinks Alistair is the most fascinating person she has ever encountered because no one in the Circle had a particularly boisterous sense of humour. Alistair is oblivious to her heart eyes, and also holds back because he’s worried she won’t survive the Joining.

Even after the Joining, Alistair tries very hard not to ~feel feelings~ despite the clear signals Celia is hurling at him because he assumes she won’t like him once she gets to know him more/she will get bored of him/ she will leave like everyone else i.e. the boy is hecking damaged.

Celia laughs obnoxiously hard at all Alistair’s jokes because a) she finds them unexpected, and b) because, like a dork, she wants to prove she gets the punch line. Alistair is perplexed by her reactions at first, and cautiously wonders if she is mocking him. Once he realises she is genuinely amused, it bolsters his ego significantly.

Celia has no concept of personal space and sits and walks very close to everyone. There wasn’t a lot of room at the Circle so she forgets she can spread out. Morrigan makes it clear she needs to back off (Celia doesn’t need telling twice) but Alistair is more relaxed and gets used to it quickly after the confusion of the first night when she blithely sets up her bedroll right next to his. Alistair assumes she is a bit scared of sleeping in the forest but really she is just accustomed to the need to cram as many apprentice bunks into a room as possible.

In a way, Alistair is also used to sharing small spaces (Chantry and Wardens) so it doesn’t bother him at all when Celia chooses to sit pressed against his side, walks so their arms bump together, or unconsciously brushes an eyelash from his cheek. He quickly grows to like her overfamiliarity (for some reason…).

Similarly, Alistair eats Celia’s leftover food if she can’t finish it or doesn’t like it, even before they’re a couple. She just offers one day and after that it becomes a given. The others side-eye them but they are happily oblivious.

Celia gets in trouble from the rest of the party for getting distracted yelling encouragement and cheering Alistair during combat. In turn, Alistair gets in trouble for turning around mid-battle to thank her when she buffs or heals him. Morrigan advises that if they are both so determined to get killed, she is more than happy to assist with hastening the process.

Celia’s mabari, Trevor, is quickly accepting of Alistair and his proximity to Celia because he observes Alistair protecting Celia in battle and thusly deems him to be a ‘good dog’ and considers that they are equals in the pack.

Alistair and Celia vandalise each other’s wanted posters whenever they come across them. It gets competitive.

Celia doesn’t really want to be in charge of saving the world but has three things working in her favour: 1) she absolutely hates letting people down 2) has an intense need to finish what she starts 3) she is in possession of a bossy streak.

That said she spends the entire Blight screaming internally to an extent not even Alistair fully grasps.

They go to the Circle Tower first, because Celia thinks she will have the best chance of getting help from people she knows and is also ‘homesick’ in the sense that she is very glad to be free of the place, but stressed enough with everything going on to crave something familiar even if she resents it. The events there devastate her. Along with the loss of friends and mentors she has known since childhood, being trapped by herself in the fade particularly terrifies her as she has never truly been alone for so long before in her life. It reminds her of the Harowing which totally blindsided her. She is very teary, untalkative and introspective for some time afterwards, but both Trevor and Alistair have the correct instinct to stay close without trying to interact with her which she finds incredibly comforting.

Accustomed to making potions, Celia will not under any circumstances deviate from a recipe while cooking, whereas Alistair just chucks everything in to use up leftovers and see what happens. Alistair gets meals together super quickly whereas Celia takes forever. A little unfairly, Celia is perceived as the better cook because she produces very consistent meals, while Alistair’s experiments sometimes do work, and sometimes don’t, with people tending to focus on the disasters rather than the successes. Meanwhile Celia is rather: “should I add half a sprig of rosemary? No I mustn’t: it would be far too daring!” so everyone learns to tip their own seasonings into their bowl before even tasting her food.

When they’re travelling and walking for days on end, Alistair and Celia make up a lot of games in the vein of ‘I spy’ and ‘would you rather?’ They can occasionally persuade others to participate though no one enjoys them or gets quite as invested as Celia and Alistair (who are actual children).

A game stops abruptly one day when Celia guilelessly asks if Alistair would rather be Emperor of Orlais or King of Fereldan and he gets extremely defensive and answers, “Neither.” Having no context for this reaction (yet), Celia (a stickler for the rules) pushes him, insisting his answer isn’t allowed and that he’s cheating until Alistair gets grouchy, stomps off and refuses to play anything for days.

Celia figures he must be overtired, but his unhappy reaction does come back to her later at the Landsmeet and contributes to her already firm resolve not to put him on the throne.

When bored, Alistair also periodically asks Celia to, “Do a trick!” with her magic and she usually obliges with something small and silly which Wynne always scolds them for (but they continue to do anyway).

Celia does not like Eamon one bit and makes it clear from their first meeting. Alistair actually gets a bit annoyed at her because she is polite to 99% of the other people they meet and he can’t understand what her problem is. Celia won’t say because she doesn’t want to drive Alistair away so she remains coldly civil towards Eamon and commences a long, looong process of nudging Alistair towards having the realisation himself that a) Eamon is manipulative, selfish and cruel and b) Alistair deserves better.

Celia wants to collect some of the books they find which is not practical given they are constantly travelling, but Alistair carries as many as he can in his pack and suffers in silence for it, ultimately finding it worth it for her enthusiastic gratitude.

Celia cuts Alistair’s hair and does a very respectable job after weeks of him complaining it’s flopping in his eyes (they used to cut each other’s hair in the Circle). Zevran pretends she did an awful job, gasping in horror at Alistair’s appearance, much to Celia’s ire. Alistair (internally weeping) tries to be brave until he can check his reflection in some plate mail and see it is fine.

Celia is very naïve about how the ‘real world’ works having been at the Circle since she was a child. This is especially evident in Denerim and Alistair has to explain how money works and grab her before she wanders down dicey looking alleyways.

Alistair nearly dissolves into a paroxysm of agony when he points out his favourite type of cheese at the Denerim Markets and (accustomed to the very limited range of bland foods provided at the Circle) Celia innocently asks, “There is more than one type of cheese?” Alistair makes it his mission to educate her. She doesn’t like most of what he feeds her but doesn’t say so to protect his feelings given he seems to take the matter so incredibly personally.

Leliana convinces Celia to sing one evening at the campfire. She’s breathy with a very limited range but manages okay, and Leliana plays and harmonises in support. Watching on with a goofy smile plastered over his face, Alistair comments to the surrounding companions about how talented she is and they’re like “…she’s really not mate.”

When they both wake up from a blightmare (or Celia has one and wakes Alistair with her flailing) they sneak about and eat anything they can find then sit up and have massive deep & meaningfuls (i.e. in the spirit of going for a long drive with a friend or being in the garden with someone outside a party and spilling your guts). Eventually they start blaming the depleted food stores on Leliana’s nug, Schmooples, much to Leliana’s displeasure.

Given Celia usually responds so well to his jokes, Alistair gets a bit peeved when Celia starts replying to some of his more severely self-deprecating humour with an unamused, “No you’re not,” or, “That’s not true.” He defensively argues it’s just a joke, but he does stop doing it so much as time goes on.

Celia is SO excited when Alistair gives her the rose. She never in her life thought she would be the recipient of a proper ~romantic gesture~…however she accidentally sits on the rose about five minutes after she gets it. Celia is devastated. There is a lot of panic and tears and she keeps one petal pressed in a book but has to unceremoniously ditch the rest in secret.

Celia doesn’t tell Alistair about this until years later and she’s terrified he’ll be hurt but he just laughs because he was so worried he was going to be the one to squash it and then she destroyed it basically the minute she got it. Alistair acknowledges it was an impractical gift given their situation. Celia gets mad and says it was a PERFECT gift and is annoyed at how funny he finds it given this has been a crushing, guilty secret hanging over her for years.

Following this, every time Alistair gives her any kind of gift, he can’t help but throw in a ‘Don’t sit on it!” and cracks himself up, especially when Celia gets grumpy about it and accuses him of spoiling the moment. It happens so often that when Alistair chooses a horse for her and plans to teach her to ride, Celia manages to cut him off with, “Yes, I know Alistair: I can sit on this one,” and steals his thunder.

Alistair periodically says Celia’s name just to check if she’ll answer, especially after a long period of quiet or to see if she’s awake à la screaming in the chantry because it’s so silent. When she responds he says, “Nothing” or “Never mind” but he finds it vaguely comforting just to hear her reply and it’s a habit he never loses, even when they have been together for years and he is much less isolated generally. Alistair doesn’t realise he’s doing it, and it never happens frequently enough for Celia to notice: she just assumes he has lost his train of thought.

They sometimes conspire to purposely fall to the back of the group while on the road so that they can hold hands. Everyone knows full well what they are doing, but Alistair and Celia think they are being incredibly ~sneaky~.

The first time they sleep together they laugh. A lot. Before, during and after.

Alistair snores loudly but only when he’s on his back. Celia is used to the noise of people sleeping around her at the Circle so it doesn’t bother her and she doesn’t want to disturb him because she knows he needs the rest.

When they are known to be sharing a tent however, their companions will slap on the walls of it and demand she kick him until he stops snoring. Celia will relent and gently prod and nudge Alistair until he rolls over with a bit of sleepy grumbling.

I think everyone has this headcanon to the point it is basically actual canon HOWEVER I am legally obligated to include it: Alistair is a professional body heat distributor and Celia drastically cuts down on the number of blankets she uses once they are sleeping together. If she stands in front of him on cold days, he understands the non-verbal signal and will automatically wrap her in his cloak.

Also might as well be canon: Alistair likes to be the little spoon. He doesn’t say, but Celia knows.

Decidedly not a fluff one (you can skip to Amaranthine to avoid) but the ritual with Morrigan fairly significantly messes Alistair up (both the act itself and his consideration of the repercussions i.e. Kieran). He’s jubilant and relieved at their victory over the Archdemon, but in the background struggles to process and there is some fallout once the victory celebrations lull and he has time to fully register what happened. Alistair grapples with a lot of guilt, disgust and confusion. He doesn’t know how to express it or where to direct his emotions so it mainly manifests as self-loathing. He wants to talk to Celia about it but can’t articulate his feelings which makes him feel worse.

Celia tries to comfort him, but he needs space on and off for a long while after and she gives him it. She feels a lot of guilt too, and never stops wondering how much it was actually his choice to do the ritual, worrying that she made him feel like he had to do it. Eventually they discuss it openly and honestly, which eases both of their minds somewhat, but it takes a long time to get to a point where they can talk on the subject. Meeting Kieran at Skyhold also helps Alistair down the line, though it’s obviously painful.

Amaranthine & Inquisition

Alistair keeps an eye out for people struggling, especially new recruits who are having trouble fitting in. He takes them under his wing and is very good at building people up and making sure everyone is included. He’ll just start enthusiastically greeting people like they are his best friend and squeezing himself onto the bench next to them at meals until everyone else follows suit.

For recruits that don’t respond well to his ‘mother hen’ type attention, Celia is good at assigning tasks that specifically highlight their strengths and builds their confidence/sense of purpose which also gains them the respect of their peers.

Alistair has been known to stand behind Celia while she is giving mundane orders/making speeches and pull faces or impersonate her, turning stony and impassive when she spins around accusingly because people are laughing.

But if anyone else talks smack about her he gets very, “Sorry mate, just to clarify was that comment directed at my wife, your Commander, the hERO OF FERELDAN, VANQUISHER OF AN ARCHDEMON!? That’s lucky, I didn’t THINK IT LIKELY. Because that wouldn’t be WISE, would it now?” etc. with some loud, fake laughter and firm backslapping for the worst offenders.

The plan for them to part ways so that Celia can search for a cure goes very badly, especially because Celia (under a lot of stress and not coping™) eventually devolves into, “I’m in charge and I say so,” which is a big betrayal of their agreements both to stay together, and make decisions together on equal footing. She realises this and takes it back but Alistair is demoralised and gives in with a bit of petty, sarcastic reverence e.g. saluting and, “Whatever you say boss, don’t know why I dared to utter an opinion how foolish of me...” so they still part on slightly strained terms, even after later mutually apologising and trying to make the most of their time together before they go.

Both regret the argument during their separation and write horribly soppy letters to each other, but something still feels uncomfortably unresolved until they are together again. They pine. So much. It’s disgusting and cliched. There is considerable sighing and staring at the moon or deep into tankards, very much to the ire of those around them. Alistair can be particularly annoying: “This roll reminds me of my wife...she eats bread sometimes...”

After Celia sends the letter to the Inquisitor, she writes to Leliana directly along the lines of, “I know it was incredibly subtle but I wanted to check: did they get the message? That I will destroy them if Alistair gets hurt?” and Leliana replies in the vein of, “Hon, it wasn’t even remotely subtle ffs…”

When reunited, though ecstatic and nearly delirious with joy and relief, it takes a while to rebuild the trust they once had, especially for Alistair. There’s an unfamiliar awkwardness that flares up unexpectedly, but it doesn’t last and they’re both fully committed to each other and to staying together permanently this time.

Celia and Alistair have a conversation recapping everything that happened while they were apart in which Celia is all, “Poor Hawke. Honestly I’m shocked you didn’t do something obscenely idiotic like try and sacrifice yourself thank the Maker for that…” and Alistair is there, nervously sweating, looking for an exit, loosening his collar etc.

As they settle back into their old routines Alistair will occasionally blurt out things like, “I really like having breakfast with you,” and then berate himself internally for how trite that sounds but Celia replies on cue, “I love waking up next to you and the way you groan when you stretch your back out and the way you check your hair twice before you leave the room and the way you complain if I don’t eat my crusts and the way you still hold my hand when we’re walking...” and basically they’re just blissfully happy being comfortably domestic and even as they get older they are forever just teenagers in love.

The Wardens at Amaranthine acquire/receive a griffon egg and the hatchling imprints on Alistair and decides he is their mother. It can’t cope with separation, crying constantly if Alistair goes out of sight, and won’t let anyone else feed or handle it so Alistair carries them in a sling 24/7. He gets to give orders and run training sessions with the tiny griffon occasionally poking its head out just to glare at everyone.

Whenever the baby griffon squeaks, Alistair automatically replies, “Well said,” or “Excellent point, Ser Beaksly” with a totally straight face.

For the first few months, Celia gets nipped or scratched if she approaches Alistair unless he wraps the griffon up. It so badly wants to fight her. Celia is permitted to sleep in her own bed, as long as the griffon sleeps curled on Alistair’s chest and Celia doesn't try anything outrageous like touching her husband even fleetingly. It gets a little frustrating as the months drag on, but the image of Alistair with the sling over his armour, or with the griffon snuggling possessively around his neck staring daggers at everyone, is so entertaining that Celia can’t get truly annoyed about it. As the griffon gets older it does learn to tolerate other people and becomes more independent but remains very protective of Alistair and favours him above all others. Insert the ‘Ah yes. Me. My husband. And his thousand pound murder-bird-cat child’ meme here.

Modern AU Bonus Round

They share headphones while commuting.

They occasionally end up wearing sort of matching outfits, mostly unintentionally.

They consistently refer to their dog, Trevor, as their son to the point that people who aren’t familiar with them assume that they actually have a child.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #alistair theirin #warden alistair #warden x alistair #amell x alistair #warden amell #headcanons #my art #my writing #file under no one cares but me #but my goodness do I ever care #I can't wait to delete a bunch of these from my phone where they have been lurking forever #this draft is weeks old why am I so scared of posting on tumblr???#the problem is the longer I leave it #the more I add #I'm out of control #this is too many headcanons #I must be stopped

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