#or at least it's left up to 'interpretation' later on. like if it was Bad that grifo built his dream. an 'ambition' upon manipulation

[fizzfags]

EMIZEL/FIZZFANGS ANALYSIS

the long awaited. under the cut bc its really long and im fucking insane. (this does not necessarily focus on them as a romantic pairing, just the way they interact with each other. interpret it in whichever way is most compelling to you/what you see fit.)

EMIZEL:

the most notable thing about emizel is the fact that he is mainly motivated by status and climbing the social hierarchy in whatever situation he is currently in. in his human life, that was climbing the ranks within the demons. after he dies, he doesnt really understand the social hierarchy within vampire society, but he does understand that its very important to at least be in good standing.

(episode 2)

he has an inherent disrespect towards authority, also seen with his father, (which i will get to later) as seen with this interaction with arthur. he's insistent on meeting the important figures within vampire society in la, and prioritizes this over, say, learning how being a vampire actually works. in the same episode, he also tells arthur "It just seems like we have similar goals, you know? I clearly don't know what I'm doing in vampire society. You do. So I need to learn. And you did say you'd take responsibility for teaching me." keep in mind that this is only a week or so after he was turned. things become interesting when we see him interacting with said important figures.

(episode 4)

in a stark contrast to arthur, hes relatively polite and respectful. obviously, this is to build favor for himself within the community of important and respected figures. also notable, he is lying out of his fucking ass. this is probably my biggest piece of evidence against the people that genuinely believe that emizel is unintelligent, because he clearly knows what hes doing.

as stated in the tweet, he gets killed/injured makes stupid decisions so often because he's used to operating under the rules of the demons and normal human society, and he hasnt learned that consequences and rules are enforced much harsher in regards to vampires. his rash and impulsive personality/decision making skills/opposition to authority figures that he doesnt like just isnt compatible with vampire society, and this leads to him getting hurt (see any and all of his interactions with edward)

(episode 4)

so, we know he lies to get what he wants (status, respect, etc) and doesn't feel bad about it. now is time to address his upbringing. obviously, it was not great. he has a very negative relationship with his father, and it wouldn't be too big of a stretch to describe it as potentially abusive. "Listen, I've lived with this guy my whole life. He's always kind of been a piece of shit to me, so do what you want - I couldn't care any less. But, if you're making me choose between my wellbeing and his, then I'm always going to choose me. Besides, I can't do any of that mind shit anyways." (episode 2) we can most likely assume he joined the demons relatively young, as a way to escape or have a place to stay other than his dads house. this is also probably the source of his opposition to authority, especially those that act negatively towards him.

(episode 6)

episode 6 is very interesting. emizel risks his life to go back to the unseen one to ask a very specific question: "why did i get abandoned with my father, and why did shilo get to stay?" also noting that his most precious memory is one he had with the demons. when shilo asks about this question, he gets very defensive, because he knows that shilo would have an answer for him, but its not the answer he wants. if he tells them, they wont let him go back to the unseen one. of course, his question is left unanswered, and he asks it again in episode 10.

another very interesting thing happens in episode 10: he willingly gets rid of all memories of his father. he had a lot of other things he could have given up, but he specifically chose his father. with the definite negative impact his dad must have had on him, and how highly emizel prioritizes strength, it wouldnt be a stretch to say that he viewed the trauma of living with his father as a weakness, something to get rid of instead of grow and heal from. it would take time, a resource he isn't willing to share.

so, why is emizel so motivated towards power and status? with all this, the answer is pretty obvious: he wants to be able to build the life he was never able to have. power and status means money means opportunities means choices means a better life. he wants an escape from la, from his father, from everything he's had to deal with growing up. hes constantly reminding himself that its not fair, its not fair that shilo got to live that way, its not fair he was abandoned and stuck here. so he wants to make it fair for himself and the rest of his posse. those he considers his family. his jealousy motivates him.

so of course a wrench is thrown in everything when he loses that emotional connection to most of his friends (except theo. which i will get to) and finds himself just not caring anymore. the thing hes built his life around, spent years climbing the ranks - all for nothing. but what else can he do but continue on. find another distraction, find another goal.

THEO:

we don't know much about theos past other than he (supposedly) lives in the suburbs and has rich parents. (referenced in episode 8) though this is debatably canon, i think its interesting if it is because it brings up a lot of questions. most notably, why did he join the demons? the most obvious answer is that it's the same as emizel: his parents suck. though of course none of this is canon, so moving onto the things that are.

the first major event that happens to him is emizel being turned. he sees emizel less, "No shit, really? You know Emizel? How is he keeping up? He's kinda, been disappearin' every night." (episode 2) and we can assume emizel is a big part of his life. (which i will get to later) and then, thanks to shilo, a core aspect of his personality is stripped away. his entire life is essentially turned on his head, and he can feel something missing. so, as seen in episode 5, he turns to alcohol. its no surprise why, he's lost the sense of normality, his routine, everything he was used to. so he may as well do this. a lot of theos more interesting aspects only really show when hes interacting with emizel, so time to get to the fun part.

FIZZFANGS AS A WHOLE:

a very interesting thing is that emizel and theo act very differently when talking/interacting with each other than any other character. dialogue-wise, they both talk a lot faster and "messier" around one another, interrupting themselves and eachother to finish each others thoughts.

(episode 3)

just by their conversations, you can tell they're very close. this particular instance also has two other interesting things in it: theo asking what he can do to help emizel, and condi specifying that theo would be the only person emizel would tell about being a vampire. to address the first part, here is a complete list of all the times theo asks emizel what he should do/what he should do to help/etc (and this is an incomplete transcript, so ive probably missed a couple.)

"Alright, you lead the way man, let's do it." (ep 1)

"What's going on here? What do I do? What do you want me to do, man?" (ep 1)

"No man! I'm not leaving you, man! I can take him. I can still take him." (ep 1)

"I'm not leaving you, man!" (ep 1)

"Well, how can I help you with the non-soda related-?" (ep 3)

"Yeah! I mean... What should I do first?" (ep 3)

"So you just let me know whenever you need? I got you, bro." (ep 3)

"So, uh… Anything I can help with?" (ep 5)

"Don't worry, man. I got you. Where am I taking you?" (ep 5)

"So, um… how, c- how can I help you, man?" (ep 8)

this fucking crazy interaction:

(episode 3)

so it goes without saying that theo would do anything for emizel. and he does, he stays in the alley even after he gets hurt, he stays even after he watches emizel die. and when emizel crawls over to him, dazed and hungry for blood, he doesnt run. he only runs after emizel tells him to. another really important thing about their relationship is the fact that they're both a constant in each others lives.

(episode 8)

its kind of like they sort people into two boxes: "theo/emizel" and "everyone else." and the other will always be their highest priority. emizel drives to the other side of la just to see theo. after emizel dies in the club, his first instinct is to go find theo. theo is the only person that the unseen one appears as to him. in episode 8, the first step to his plan is finding theo.

(episode 6)

even if he hadn't just lot a good amount of emotional connection to the rest of his friends, i think he would still be a lot more urgent to go save him. and again, his first thought is to check if theo is there. if theo's okay, if he's safe.

(episode 5)

and theo does this too. he insists that emizel is his only friend, the only one he trusts. speaking of trust, that is the most crucial aspect to their relationship. they trust eachother a sickening amount, they regularly put their life in the others hands. when emizel drinks theos blood, its not "is he going to hurt me?" its "how can i make this the safest?" because theo trusts emizel not to hurt him, even after knowing he's killed ~12 people.

(episode 3)

and here, emizel trusts that theo loves him enough to be okay with this. note that arthur doesn't even bring up love, emizel is the first to. arthur only brings it up after emizel says that. because emizel knows that theo loves him and trusts him, emizel knows that theo would do anything for him.

(episode 9)

and emizel, notorious for not letting anyone close enough to hurt him, tells theo that if he wants to, not needs, wants, he can kill him. that theo can kill him, if he wants. because emizel doesn't fully trust himself alone, but he trusts himself when he's with theo.

and theo trusts emizel too. despite seeing what vampires can do in a frenzy, he trusts that emizel wouldn't hurt him, just as emizel trusts that theo would stop him before anything could ever happen. and emizel is a notorious liar, so we can assume that he doesn't/wouldn't lie to theo, which would explain why theo trusts him so much.

basically, they'll always be there for eachother and theo would do anything for emizel and emizel will always come back to theo in the end and they love eachother and despite everything they are together. theyre completely inseperable.

tl;dr: emizels main MOTIVATION is status, while the most IMPORTANT thing to him is theo

#jrwi #the suckening #emizel tucker #theo collins #fizzfangs

[signedeclipse]

hello! may i request headcannons for haganezuka x gn!reader with a cheerful, a somewhat naive personality, is highly impulsive, who smiles all the time (a lil too much to the point they're forcing theirself to smile at their saddest moments) and is energetic/extroverted?!?!

thank you thank you thank youu !!

Haganezuka [X Reader]

In which Haganezuka's s/o is always smiling and cheerful, regarless of if its appropriate or not.

Haganezuka is very much the opposite of you, or perhaps a bit similar except with anger

You two make a very interesting couple, and you've heard a few refer to you as 'sweet and salty'

Even so, Haganezuka is the least concerning of you two, many find you the moor terrifying of the two

Not only were you able to tame that feral man and wed him, but despite every horrible, aggravating, or sad thing that's happened to you, you've always stepped forwards with a smile

Everyone was just scared of when you'd snap, and what it would look like

When you walk down a crowded street, there will be at least a foot around you no one but he dares to step in

Because you were often referred to as something better left looked at from afar

Haganezuka though otherwise

He always pokes at you for being too kind, happy, or sweet to people and it makes him look bad, though that's mostly his interpretation of you

Probably thinks people hide from you two because of him, he does not realise you are pulling menacing smile and glare number one-hundred-seventeen behind him

It inflated his ego, and he gets really happy that he can at least defend you a bit

It also gets a lot of people to leave him alone and stop talking about his behaviour behind his back, because you are known to quote the conversation later despite no one knowing you were there

You don't actually think much of it, as far as you're concerned you try to hang out with everyone in town, so why wouldn't you know what they said?

No one has the gall to bring up your threatening aura so you are pretty much clueless of it, or assume the distance is out of respect which you take kindly

Haganezuka never picks up on how others are scared of you either, so you're just two clueless idiots

Authors Note - Thank you so much for requesting!! I focused a lot more on the threatening aura of the reader because I felt that worked so so well with him lol!

#haganezuka #haganezuka x reader #demon slayer #demon slayer x reader #demon slayer headcanons #kny #kny x reader #kny headcanons #kimetsu no yaiba #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #x reader #reader insert #headcanons

[ded-lime]

what i think on the whole making vessels thing the pale king did

first of all this is not about excusing pk, however the 'me exploding people who say pk is an asshole and throws kids in a pit with my mind' is very true, aside from the fact that it's literally not what happened, pk's character is all about a guy who was in a desperate situation without a good solution and saying that he's bad for what he did is missing the point. just like the colour scheme of his palace bro is morally grey. there are things that i believe made his plan sound not as bad as it is before it's implementation, and some of my interpretation seems to differ to how it is more commonly seen (that i know of at least).

so what was the plan? place eggs in he abyss and let the void animate their shells and voilà got some vessels.

why have the void? well one reason is obvious - it's a natural enemy to the radiance of sorts, an opposite of light. another one is the supposed belief that a creature of void does not feel or think. also yes the idea is that 100% of them are empty, that's the foundation it is on. i believe that he has done some experimentation before making this plan(and possibly before the infection): he's the type to build and reasonably coming up with that shit requires familiarity with the void. so assuming that they would not feel pain or think could come from that, also not that insane for a god who gave bugs minds of their own to think that with walking examples of void constructs. so godly resilience and empty head, can't feel the pain he has to put it through and strong enough to contain another god.

why so many of them? the reasoning for that is the same as why any creature has many kids: most of them not surviving for long. not just the climb, but just not even being born (which i think most of them just didn't) or dying right after (instability such as turning to liquid or crumbling shell).

the climb so here's a thing i thought since playing the game years ago. the abyss memory is a dream and not quite literal. you hit an egg with a dream nail, every time you've done that you go to a dream, i don't see why this is different besides it looking differently. the real part being pk getting pv and fucking off. and climbing up in general i guess but you know that. i don't think the ghost was literally hanging on that ledge and literally falling off after some screenshake. it's a representation of ghost and/or every other vessel getting left behind and pv leaving. and getting charm about uniting the void right after plays more into it.

the climb in itself could be a way to see which ones are stable enough, could also be a culture thing as rotten eggs all around hallownest may suggest that they are a bit more like actual animals in regard to offspring. (don't forget that this is not human society we are talking about.)

the main fucked-up-and-feeling-guilty-about thing in this whole ordeal is letting the void consume thousands of your yet unborn children inside out and subsequently animating them with it or let radiance kill everyone and picking the first one. which is you know, sucks and is pretty fucked up and he did indeed feel guilty about it. well that and then the whole hollow knight ordeal later but that's pretty straightforward. does he realise that they are not empty? like yeah probably suspected it at the very least, but that's when you can't just drop everything you've done up to this point to save everyone. only thing that does is add more guilt and drama.

the things done and decisions made were not to be cruel or evil or whatever, we don't see what this place was like before the infection and for all we know he saw the future and still thought this was the best option. how fucked up would that be huh

#the pale king #hollow knight #i wrote this at the middle of the night and a row of my keys (and spacebar) occasionally doesn't work you have no idea how annoying that is #my art #? i mean there is some

[elemom]

What are your thoughts on Echo and Dr. Julien's relationship?

Hi anon. I sure hope you’re prepared for a yap sesh!

I have SO MUCH to say about them.

TL;DR: Echo is Julien’s son AND his deeply flawed creation. And that dynamic is Difficult.

We’ll start off with:

Dr. Julien’s Perspective

Ok so i think the most important thing to get outta the way is that i don’t think Julien is *evil,* but rather he occupies a “creator” dynamic with echo (and by extension, zane) i’ll explain more, hopefully

I personally think Julien created Echo out of desperation and loneliness. The first time he was lonely, back in the birchwood forest, he built zane, and that basically fixed his loneliness problem. After such a long time in the lighthouse, he was desperate for *anything* to help him in his isolation.

Thus, I don’t think he was in a clear mindset when he was creating echo. Fueled by grief and a little bit of hubris (*he created mechanical life for crying out loud, he should never have to be alone again when he can just infinitely create consciousness!*) he used zane’s blueprints to build a brand new nindroid.

As the process went on, i think he lost more of that clarity and ended up wanting this nindroid to be a new zane, something he would later be deeply ashamed of when he realized he basically just built a replacement son. Once echo is complete enough to be activated, I think he realizes just how bad of a hole he’d dug himself. He’s disappointed: not in Echo, in but himself. He tried to create a life in the image of someone else, and he couldn’t even do that right.

Which brings me to the “creator” dynamic. While Julien sees Echo as a son, he also sees him as his creation; he’s something to fix and perfect and fine tune. Echo is imperfect, and as a creator, Julien wants to fix those imperfections. He views Echo (and zane) as sons, but also as his creations, and that’s a *really* hard dynamic to balance.

(as an aside, I dont think echo or zane mind getting tune ups/upgrades/etc. I think a lot of the internal conflict julien has with echo is because he needs *so many* fixes that it’s hardly feasible to do, so he’s left dealing with echo’s imperfections and echo is left as kind of A Mess.)

Now all the stuff I mentioned above about the creator + creation dynamic is still there, but I don’t think it’s the MAIN thing going on. I really truly believe Julien was a good father to Echo despite their circumstances. Like, I think he made Gizmo as a buddy for Echo like he made the falcon for Zane, he made toys and stuff for him, played chess with him, etc. However, I think Julien’s disappointment with himself and his regret over creating a replacement for Zane occasionally comes through.

Which leads me to…

Echo’s Perspective

Echo is completely 100% trusting of Julien. That’s the big thing, I’d say. After all, it was Julien that gave him life, who cares for him and reassures him when he’s down. (And he’s also the only other person Echo knows.)

It’s this trust that leads to Echo’s…. Issues. See, Echo eventually comes to realize something’s up with how Julien sees him — or at least, how Julien seems to act when certain topics about his creation come up. Like I mentioned in his section, Julien can’t hide the disappointment/regret/etc he feels about creating echo — none of which are echo’s fault of course. But echo sees that he’s imperfect and that his father sometimes gets upset and he blames himself for that.

Echo knows Julien doesn’t hate him. He knows he’s trying his best and that he really does care. But he still wants to do everything in his power to make Julien happy. So he’s keenly aware of how he’s Not Zane and how he’s Not Perfect and how his father created him to Be Zane but didn’t do a great job at it. Julien always reassures him that he loves him, and it’s true! Julien *does* love him. But Echo feels like he could be doing better.

Depending on your interpretation and headcanons and AUs and all that, Echo can stay in this state of trust after s2 (waiting in the lighthouse for an eternity) or go in the complete opposite direction (Rejecting the idea of being Zane and becoming Mr E)

I might go into more detail about Mr Echo and how being found by the SoG impacted his view of Dr J. If you wanna see that, I’d be glad to infodump abt it on another post :3c

I also have some thoughts about Why echo got left behind in the lighthouse, but i dont think any of them were out of malice on Julien’s part. Some are worse than others, but I think he wanted to go back Eventually.

Maybe he died shortly after s2 and didn’t have the time to go back. Maybe Echo had shut down due to malfunctions and Julien didn’t know he was alive (Gizmo would have repaired him before the events of s6). Or maybe Julien was procrastinating, because he would have to admit to zane that he tried to replace him. Or maybe he just forgor 💀

ANYWAY thanks so much for asking!!! If you or anybody else ever wants to hear any more hcs feel free to send me asks about them. Because I have a LOT to say. I have put enough mental energy into thinking about the jfam that i could probably power Los Angeles for a month.

(disclaimer, many of these HCs come from melting together a bunch of ideas from fanart and fics and HC posts on tumblr, so a lot of these thoughts aren’t original.)

#aubz answers #ninjago #lego ninjago #dr julien #echo zane #echo julien #zane julien #i sure talked for awhile there didn’t i #ninjaposting

[yuliasolsystem]

One of the most interesting aspects of Legato as a character is that he's the only one who makes both Vash and Knives act against their principles at some points.

Everyone already knows that Legato was the first human that Vash killed willingly and while fully conscious, but just before that Vash was able to break free of Legato's control by "throwing off the shackles of the no-kill rule".

Somewhere I already made a post trying to translate this part more accurately, but I'm too lazy to look for it. A rough translation is "Vash the Stampede's body. And the pointed wings that emerged from it. No supernatural force could hold it all down. But that's why, up until this very moment, these two [forces] have been in perfect opposition. They [Legato and Vash] didn't realize it themselves yet..."

"...but one thing has changed. It was the time Vash Stampede threw off the shackles of his no-kill rule that he'd bound himself with for decades."

I interpret it as follows: Vash subconsciously restrained his Plant powers by not wanting to kill Legato, thus helping Legato without even realizing it. In other words, in this scene Vash not only lets his "dark" side come out by starting to fight to kill, but also accepts his Plant nature. In other words, Legato succeeded in doing what Knives failed to do: earlier, even Knives couldn't force Vash to fight like Plant.

That's the case with Vash, but as I wrote Knives also occasionally behaves contrary to his own words and beliefs with Legato. I've written about this many times before, though. For example, in the post at the link below, I mentioned three instances where Knives left Legato alive even though he had no particular reason to do so.

Note that each of those decisions to let Legato live resulted in Legato saving Knives' life later. And it wasn't a "return favor" on Legato's part, nor was it a calculation on Knives' part (Knives is really overconfident and each time doesn't even realize he's in trouble). It's purely a narrative device to show how much Knives really needs Legato and that he's invincible as long as Legato is the exception to the "all humans are bad and must die" rule for him.

In fact, if Knives had gone a little farther and accepted Legato as someone important to him (or at least clearly defined their relationship), then probably even Vash wouldn't have stopped Legato. I mean, if Legato hadn't decided to play "who's better, you or me?" with Vash, and instead used his own powers in the most effective way possible, he would have simply taken the entire city hostage and Vash wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

#trigun #trigun maximum #legato bluesummers #millions knives #vash the stampede #my analysis #my headcanons #trigun spoilers #trigun manga

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for trying to reconnect with someone I ghosted, possibly violating their boundaries in the process?

Disclaimer- This is a long and complicated story bc the context of the ghosting is important to the conflict, everyone involved are all in their early 20s, nobody in this story is a saint.

I was once part of a D&D group with my friends Alice (IRL best friend), Bob (IRL friend, DM), Chris (Online friend) and Fran (Online acquaintance). A couple sessions into our campaign, a couple of players were removed, and my IRL friend Gary joined to fill the gap they left, which everyone was okay with at the time. Gary and the group had a bit of a culture clash for a while, as the group all grew up on Tumblr and were pretty typical fandom Tumblrinas, whereas Gary was more used to Reddit and Youtube's culture and was just pretty offline in general, so we often had to learn each other's memes and references. Because Gary was my friend, I often took the role of "translator" for him, because I'd had more exposure to his jokes and enjoyed explaining them if people didn't get them, and liked translating the group's jokes back to him for the same reason. We found out later that Gary also liked to play D&D differently than the group did - we used it to provide structure to our RP, so our characters were built based on what sounded cool or fit the OC, rather than what necessarily was the best idea mechanically. His characters, on the other hand, had some RP ideas behind them, but they were primarily built for good mechanics, with a class and feats that suited their stats, so they were really good at combat and skill rolls. We didn't find this out until later, because when he first joined the campaign, he played a character that was really poorly built because it was a character that had been built FOR him by the DM of a different campaign, and they were BAD at it.

Some time passes, and it becomes pretty clear to both me and Gary that Gary's character is just not being engaged in RP as much as everyone else's. I tried to help him get more involved, thinking that we just needed to work his character into the plot a bit, and when that consistently didn't work, he contented himself with at least being pretty good at the combat part of the game. However, Bob eventually realized that he'd been misreading a rule (that Gary had been taking advantage of to BE so good at combat), and Gary's character was nerfed so hard by the way the rule was MEANT to be interpreted that he became borderline useless during combat. Fed up at this point, Gary decided to work with Bob to kill off his character and make a new one that he'd build himself. I helped him brainstorm ideas for this new character to help him make one that meshed better with the group's RP, and he made the character better mechanically to avoid being useless in combat like the last character was.

Unfortunately, this character was just as ignored in RP as his last one was. And she was so tightly optimized that whenever Gary made a roll with her, he got a success, or at least only a very mild failure...to the point that one day, after several sessions of this, Alice, Bob, and Chris got Gary and I in a Discord call and accused Gary of lying about his dice rolls. He was ruining the game for them so much, Alice said, that they wanted him out of the campaign entirely. The thing is...I sat next to him for every single session. I knew for a fact that he wasn't lying about his rolls because I saw every one of them. And after all the work we both put into trying to get him involved in the group's dynamic and their game, it felt wildly unfair to get him booted without at least giving him a chance. I tried to explain this, and even tried suggesting that he made his dice rolls public to the whole group (via roll20, which we were using for our combat maps anyway) so he COULDN'T cheat, but instead I was kicked from the call. After that, he left the group on his own, not wanting to argue anymore.

Here's where it gets complicated. This incident reminded me of the circumstances around the players that left at the beginning of the campaign, before Gary joined. They were online friends of Alice and Chris's at first, but turned out to not be the nicest people, and often didn't mesh well with the group. Problem is, Alice and Chris both have anxiety and were very conflict avoidant, and these two hadn't actually done anything WRONG aside from make people uncomfortable with rudeness from time to time. So Alice and Chris and I used to vent to each other about them in private, and stay polite in public while avoiding them as much as we could, and at Alice's request, we also kept an eye out for some bit of misbehavior that we could point at as a good enough reason to kick them out without feeling bad. We eventually found it, and out they went. Fran was IRL friends with one of these people, though, and for a while afterwards, despite very much NOT wanting to talk about the two people that weren't in the campaign anymore, or anything about the circumstances of kicking them out, Alice would still comment on how Fran seemed uninterested in the game to us in private, and how maybe she should just leave too...she only stopped when Bob told her to knock it off.

The culture mismatch between Gary and the group, the polite detachedness towards Gary's characters, the suddency of him getting kicked, and the complete return to normal the day after was similar enough that it made me suspect that Alice had pushed everyone to kick Gary out just like she had with those two, and my closeness with Gary made me worried that I'd be treated with suspicion the same way Fran was for a while...and that if I tried talking to them about what happened, I'd end up causing another big argument and getting kicked too. I was too attached to my character and the RP for that, and Gary didn't want me arguing for him anymore, so I just...kept my mouth shut and carried on, trying not to let it bother me. It still REALLY bothered me, though, and it soured my feelings towards my friends enough that after the campaign ended, I let them know I no longer had time for D&D, and left the server amicably...and also quietly left every other group I was in with them. I didn't block anyone, but I still effectively ghosted them.

After a year away from them and a lot of therapy to work through my feelings on the situation, though, I realized I missed them a lot, and that ghosting them like that over my own speculation about what happened with Gary was an AH move. So with some encouragement from Gary, who understood why I felt that way but had never wanted me to lose my friends like that, I messaged Alice to see if I could meet up with her IRL again so we could reconnect. She said we could, but with a condition: she never wanted me to even mention Gary in conversation. Considering I mostly wanted to meet up so I could talk to her about what happened a year ago so we could apologize to each other and get a fresh start...that didn't seem like it was gonna go well. So I said "sorry, can't do that, so I'll go ahead and leave you be, but my DMs are always open if you change your mind", and that was that.

At this point, seeing how Alice reacted to the very IDEA of Gary coming up in conversation, I began to worry about Chris. Gary and I had messaged Chris on and off several months after I left, though we hadn't done much more than send her a couple links to art resources we thought she'd like, or memes that were up her alley. She replied like normal to us at the time, but now I was worried that we'd put her in an awkward position with Alice by talking to her, so I messaged her next to tell her what happened with Alice and see if she wanted us to cut contact with her as well. I was still hurting from what happened with Alice, though, so when Chris asked me why I left the group to begin with...I told her everything I was going to tell Alice IRL. My full speculation over what happened with Gary, how it made me feel, how I felt like I couldn't talk about it without reprisal, and how I came back anyway because I realized I did the wrong thing and wanted Alice and I to talk things out right, get closure, and move on...and how I felt like I STILL couldn't, because of what Alice had asked of me.

Chris didn't take it well. Maybe I worded things poorly, but she reacted like she thought I was still blaming Alice for everything that happened, and that I'd dropped Alice and the group the instant I thought Alice was mean to me, because I was a bad friend. She claimed that I'd disrespected Alice's boundaries by not agreeing to them and choosing to leave her alone instead, and that with how much of an AH I was, we all clearly had never been real friends in the first place. I tried again to explain how she'd gotten that wrong, that I was trying to reconnect because I knew I'd treated Alice unfairly, but she didn't want to hear it, claiming that I was just contradicting myself to try and get her sympathy at this point. I gave up after that and just agreed to quit talking to her, at which point she blocked me.

It's been a few months since then, and I'm still hurt over it. I know I was an ass for leaving the way I did, but...Was I the asshole for trying to reconnect when I realized I was wrong? Did I really violate Alice's boundaries?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[twogyuu]

be here with me || ml

Pairing: Mark Lee x fem!reader

Synopsis:

And I keep saying okay (Okay) I never listen to my own heart I do whatever they say (They say) While looking like you're happy as hell (Oh, I) I really hope that you feel the same (Oh, I) Tonight

– 7PM, BooSeokSoon ft. Peder Elias

Alternatively: a series of events in one night that made Mark and you realize maybe you loved you each other more than a cherished childhood best friend.

Genre: Fluff with a good smattering of angst (DA NILE IS A RIVER IN EGYPT), crack, BFF-2-???, inspired by BBS's 7PM, clumsy heir!Mark, heir-to-normie!reader, struggling grad student!reader, secretary!Doyoung

Warnings: Profanity, mentions of food and alcohol, brief mentions of underage drinking, themes of social inequities, unhappy ending (kinda? up to reader interpretation), reader has long enough hair to be put in a bun

WC: ~8.9k

Taglist: @niinjo @dropsofletters @matchahyuck

A/N: A special thank you to @wooahaes for beta reading and keeping me company as I wrote my first Mark fic! 💙 In the words of Mark Lee, "This one's for you!" (and hopefully, he doesn't miss again 😭😂🏀🧺)

the playlist: anywhere but home (seulgi) >> 7pm (bss) >> sure thing (miguel) >> believe (paul blanco ft. crush) >> fallin' all in you (shawn mendes) >> with you (jimin and ha sungwoon) >> raise y_our glass (yunjin) >> abyss (woodz) >> cough (onew)

Winter was Mark’s least favorite season. 

Winter meant shorter days. The sun barely peaked over the city skyline when he arrived at the office. Despite all the windows letting natural light into the building (his father’s insistence on creating an eco-friendly company), he hardly looked outside, busy tapping away on his desktop, eyes trained on screens with bland PowerPoints, or scrawling his signature on the umpteenth document with words that started to blend and blur together into streaks of black ink. When he left with his trusted secretary, Kim Doyoung, the glass building a seemingly lonely and empty ghost of the busy life it held during the day, the dark night sky with a heavy gray haze had swallowed the sun and he was greeted by with what he’d like to think were stars (they were just blinking airplanes and signal towers in the distance he’d come to learn as he got older). Seldom did he leave before his hundreds of employees and catch the last few rays of sun. 

Winter meant the cold weather. His polyester suit sets already felt heavy on his thin frame. To have another layer and all the accessories that came with it was cumbersome. He had to watch how he turned his body so his wool coat wouldn’t accidentally take out a cup of coffee sitting on the table. He made a point to tuck his scarves into his chest, so the ends wouldn’t catch on the spinning doors of the entrance. He had an image to upkeep, which meant beanies that kept his head warm were not allowed for work attire. The tips of his ears would grow numb on the coldest days, just stepping out of his private car into the office. He felt bad for making Doyoung carry his leather shoes so he could change out of his snow boots while he was in the office.

There was one thing to look forward to in the winter though. 

(Autumn, really.)

With winter, also came you: his childhood best friend. 

Every year since the two of you were in high school, you’d spend your summers in Busan with your grandmother, helping her with her strawberry farm. In the fall, you’d return to the city for school, which also meant, Mark got to see you – when you weren’t busy with homework and your various part-time jobs, and him with his duties at his family’s company, that is. 

Peering out his back tinted window of his black Genesis, his eyes skimmed across the other vehicles and their drivers sluggishly passing by. He wasn’t sure why, but traffic seemed to be stalling later than usual today. Most nights, Doyoung seemed to whiz down the highway without a problem. 

A tired mother and her rambunctious daughter shouting and kicking in the carseat in the back. A taxi driver and a lonesome young boy sleeping on his seatbelt. An elderly woman with a fuzzy bucket hat pulled down over her eyes sitting in the front of the bus right behind the driver.

Despite the titles behind his name and the way his father’s business partners and employees praised and pampered him, Mark liked to think he wasn’t so different from all these people he was passing by on the drive. Life had its bright spots, but today was one of those seemingly dreary ones for everyone, glum and tired expressions painting their faces. It matched the dark, heavy gray clouds that loomed over the city. 

Tugging at the knot of his tie loose, Mark shook his head and took a few deep breaths in an attempt to shake the fatigue off his eyes. He slumped forward, pressing his forehead into the cool glass, hoping the cold would jolt him awake like after a couple sips of an iced Americano and the caffeine started coursing through his veins. A patch of fog formed from his breath and Mark raised his hand to trace a childish smiley face in it. For no good reason other than it brought him the smallest amount of joy, his expression mirrored the doodle as he smiled lazily at it.

Sometimes, it felt satisfactory to just let things be and exist. 

“We’ll arrive at the convenience store in about ten minutes, sir,” Doyoung announced from the front. 

“We’re off duty,” Mark caught his secretary’s watchful eye in the rearview mirror, “I told you could just call me by my name when we’re not in office.”

Mark peered outside again, quietly counting the cars he passed like the seconds until he reached you. 

“Right . . . Mark,” Doyoung huffed. “Sorry, force of habit." He cleared his throat, eyes flickering from the road back to his boss again. "Uh, but um . . .” his voice trailing off, blending with the car horns going off in the distance. 

Mark knew he had more to say than announcing the ETA. He always did on nights like this – it was like clockwork at this point. 

The older man glanced in the mirror again. He cleared his throat and asked, “Does your father know yet?”

Mark didn’t bother to look back up at him. 

“No,” Mark replied curtly. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, knowing well that a mini-lecture was coming. As great as Doyoung has been as a secretary, older brother figure, and a companion these past few years, he was a stickler for rules, structure, and tradition – something the two didn’t always see eye-to-eye on.

Doyoung sighed, shaking his head slightly. “You do know you know this . . . arrangement between you and Miss Y/L/N is only going to hurt you in the long-run, right? Your father –”

“‘Would be very upset with you associating yourself with anyone with ties to the fallen CEO of Choi Electronics, especially the former heiress, herself,’” Mark cut him off, quoting his secretary. It was not anything new – Mark knew this lecture like the Queen Mab monologue from Romeo and Juliet he was forced to memorize in high school: boring and long, but dramatic when it came from other people. 

He continued, “‘It’s not good for your reputation if this gets out you’re still seeing her’ – I know,” he looked up at the rearview mirror again, a bored look in his eyes. “I know, but I can’t just . . . let her go like that. Not yet, at least; she’s . . . been my best friend since forever.”

“Mark,” Doyoung warned, though there was a hint of sympathy in his tone. Doyoung has been around long enough to know how fond the young heir was of you. Being one of the few children in the elite corporate world, the two of you were quick to befriend one another, becoming attached at the hip before anyone could blink. Despite the way your friendship waxed and waned as the two of you grew older, at the end of the day, you’d always find one another, some way, somehow.

The fall of your family name a few years ago didn’t seem to break that habit.  

Doyoung knew, none of it was your fault. You didn’t deserve any of the misfortune that you had faced and were coming your way when you finished graduate school. You were merely a collateral piece of a larger, cruel game. 

“It’s not my intention to guilt trip you, but do keep in mind, this is . . . much bigger than just you,” Doyoung sucked in a shaky breath. “If this goes downhill, she might get hurt – a lot more than you.”

Though Mark didn’t reply, the way his eyes dropped to his limp hands in his lap was enough to give Doyoung the slightest ember of hope that deep down, Mark knew. On the surface innocent meet up between friends, but the weight of the situation felt like a firework lit aflame, the wick starting to burnout towards the blunt and explode. 

The facts were plain ans simple: the two of you were childhood best friend.

However, the media had a way of twisting facts into truths for the public.

If he was being honest, it was guilt, and perhaps justice, that gave Doyoung the will to bring Mark to meet you at least once per week. As much as his father pushed it and as much as he tried to hide it, Mark had never quite settled into his role as the future CEO of NCity, Inc. If Doyoung could characterize Mark, he was like a mural on the side of buildings in Hongdae: hidden, yet loud, colorful, and bright. He was clumsy and bluntly outspoken, speaking his mind and curiosities at the wrong times though with good intentions. This predestined career path forced him into a plain and gray box that veiled the majority of his personality. He grew hesitant of his words and thought twice before acting. Every now and then, you’d see flecks of his quirkiness that charmed the company staff and board of executives, but that was all that was allowed. 

As fond as Mark was of you, Doyoung was just as fond of Mark, but in the sense of a younger sibling. Though he rooted for Mark’s success as the future CEO, there was a piece of him who also wanted the young man to be happy. From Doyoung’s perspective, happiness always seemed to stem from you. If he could give Mark just that much, Doyoung would risk breaking the rules. 

The neon green, red, and white sign of the convenience store you worked at spilled into the interior as the vehicle neared. To a bystander, the black Genesis felt out of place in this neighborhood. The buildings were short and small, but cramped against one another. Small alleys offered uneven stone paths to travel between them. The concrete was cracked, the decade old coat of paint was chipped nearly bare. Dogs howled in the distance and a few construction workers, their cheeks stained with dust and soot, were seated outside the convenience store on the picnic tables enjoying ramen from white plastic cups and cheap soju, slurping at the noodles and moaning in satisfaction like it was a five-course dinner. 

Doyoung parked the car at his usual spot: on the side of the hill leading up to the store, where Mark could see you, but you could just barely see the head of the car. Mark’s face visibly lit up as craned his neck to catch you smiling and handing change over to a middle-aged woman. He wondered if the woman was a regular customer who you were friendly with, based on the way you laughed at something she said and excitedly waved ‘good-bye.’ Loose strands of hair fell out of your bun as you bowed, your expression gradually falling to a calm when the women left and you returned to organizing chocolate bars at the side counter. 

[Mark]: Dark or milk chocolate?

[Mark]: Grab one for me if it’s milk chocolate – employee discount pls :P 

He peered out the window, watching your reaction. 

Your phone buzzed, halting you in your task to fish it out of your back pocket to swipe at the screen and read the message. There was a moment of surprise that flashed across your face, quickly followed by a soft smile. You spun around, shielding your eyes and squinting out into the dark to try and make out his car. 

You must’ve seen the black Genesis – your smile only grew as you turned back to your phone, tapping away at your screen. 

“She’s coming,” Mark confirmed aloud.  

Mark unbuckled his seat belt and fumbled with the loose knot around his neck. He hastily pulled off his tie and haphazardly threw it onto another seat and pulled on his trench coat. Folding the collar down and patting away any wrinkles, he quickly turned to Doyoung. The young man excitedly slapped the driver’s seat twice as if the older man already didn’t have his attention.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, bro! You can go home – I’ll get back on my own,” Mark explained. 

“Mark–”

“Don’t wait up!” he waved Doyoung off, clambering out of the car. 

You were already walking down the steps. Your faded yellow vest was traded in for your black puffer jacket. A white plastic ‘THANK YOU’ bag hung on your forearm, presumably containing the chocolate bar Mark asked for, amidst other snacks you got for free from time to time. You were trying your best to keep cool, but Doyoung could tell you were beaming. There was an extra pep in your stride and your lips were pressed into a tight line, but it looked funny because you were trying to suppress a grin. 

“You’re here,” you greeted him. You stopped a landing above Mark, clasping your hands together in front of you. You rocked on your heels, your composure slipping, letting the corner of your lip quirk up at the way he looked at you. His dark orbs were wide, reflecting the LED lights of the convenience store behind you. Unlike you, he didn’t try to hide his excitement, a grin spreading across his face.

“I’m here!” Mark sang. Immediately, his arms flew open, welcoming you for a hug. 

You rolled your eyes, but continued to descend towards him, settling to his chest and wrapping your arms around his waist. The plastic of the convenience store bag crinkled and crackled between the two of you. Your cheeks already hurt from smiling so much. Though you saw each other frequently enough (though at strange hours), Mark was always a breath of fresh air in your routine; the warmth of the fire on a cold winter day.

“God, I missed you,” he muttered, his voice muffled. 

“It’s only been a week,” you retorted.

“Still too long.”

Just as you scoffed, the honk of the car behind Mark tore your attention from one another. You turned to see that Doyoung had rolled down the window giving you both stern, knowing looks. 

Doyoung was more than happy to arrange for the two of you to see each other at these hours, but he had two rules: (1) Don’t draw attention to yourselves and (2) stay safe. 

“Be careful,” Doyoung warned. He turned to Mark, “Let me know when you get back, okay?”

Mark nodded and shooed him off. 

“Why are you sending him away?” you exclaimed, peering over his shoulder as Doyoung drove away. “No Doyoung today?” 

Sometimes the older man joined the both of you – as a good friend rather than a secretary. You all grew up together after all. 

“Just you and me,” Mark sighed, letting you go. “We have a flight and long day tomorrow – he wants to prep.”

“Flight?” you frowned. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Milan,” he replied, “New business partners – dad wants to establish a holding in Europe.”

“Mark, you should’ve told me.”

“I want to be here,” he remarked. “I’ll be fine! Let’s just . . . enjoy the night. “You and me – quality alone time. It’ll be fun. I need it.”

“Ew,” you wrinkled your nose jokingly, “Don’t say it like that – you sound greasy.”

“But I do!” he scoffed. Hands stuffed in his coat pockets, he bumped your shoulder playfully. “I need it, it’s been a long week.”

“Company drama?”

He kicked at the invisible pebbles along the pavement and nodded. “It feels like a whole k-drama sometimes. He said this, she said that, you should go on this blind date."

You ignored the way your heart ached for him. As glamorous as it seemed on the surface, what lied underneath was complicated and overwhelming – it was like a knot unwilling to untie itself. With a heavy sigh, you nodded and turned to link arms with him. You led him down the street. Mark’s footing faltered at first, but was quick to fall in sync with your own. 

“You know what tea is best served with?” you asked, staring up at the sky.

“Um,” Mark furrowed his brows together in confusion. “Honey biscuits?”

You jokingly shot him a disapproving look at his answer. 

“Mrs. Jung’s spicy noodles.”

. . . .

The walls were thin – quite literally. 

Only a faded blue tarp with an opening that flapped in the winter breeze defended the customers from the cold. Round metal tables were scattered inside, customers were scattered, seated on multi-colored plastic stools, sniffling and slurping on steaming bowls of noodles. There were no barriers between the kitchen and the seating area. A grill sizzling with meat and pots boiling on a fire stove greeted visitors. Spice and the smell of smoke wafted freely over the stainless steel edges, settling in the crevices of people’s coats and sweaters. The scrape of metal tools against one another clanged loudly and thwarted conversations, forcing people to shout to hear each other. Every now and then, Mark would bend over the table and ask loudly, “What was that again?!”

Mrs. Jung’s noodle shop was a street restaurant Mark and you stumbled upon in high school. You both were coming home from your first day of cram school – the “elite” one your mothers had tittered about just weeks before. It was in a part of the city neither of you were particularly familiar with and putting full faith in your navigation skills, Mark willingly followed you off three stops too early from home. Eventually, Mark ended up reaching out for his mother’s driver to rescue the two of you, but while waiting, you both grew hungry waiting and wandering around. Unfortunately, you only had 1248 won worth of money pooled together from the depths of your pockets – couldn’t even afford triangle kimbap at the 7/11 nearby. 

Taking pity on the two of you, Mrs. Jung offered the both of you dinner on-the-house – apparently, you reminded her of her daughter who had left for university a few months ago. Since then, Mark and you made a point to visit at least once a month (with adequate funds, of course). You were especially regular customers during the depths of finals season, when you clung onto your last brain cells and hardly had the time or energy to cook. 

Despite the less than luxurious conditions he was accustomed to, Mark liked dining here most. He felt at ease, like no one was watching. It was just him and his best friend, enjoying a simple meal under the stars (or so he’d like to imagine there were in this hazy city). It didn’t matter if he had sauce on his face. He could slouch, snort at a stupid joke, and slap his knee when someone said something funny. 

“So,” you started as you leaned over, placing the last slice of beef in his bowl, “How was the blind date?”

Mark stopped mid-chew and peered up at you, harshly swallowing down the wad of rice in his mouth. 

You sat back and waited attentively. 

“Blind date?” he asked slowly as if he didn’t know what you were asking. 

You nodded. “The one with the heiress of Jung Cosmetics – He . . . Hera? I think was her name? Her parents named her after the Greek goddess.”

“Ah, right,” Mark sniffled, returning to his food. He wondered why you were suddenly interested about it. “Hera – it was fine.”

“Did you like her?”

Mark paused mid-bite and glanced at you again. “She was fine.”

“Fine as in ‘she’s so fine’ or like fine as in she’s ‘meh’?”

“She was alright,” Mark explained, shoving the soft noodles in his mouth. “Didn’t like her, but didn’t hate her.”

“So . . . you wouldn’t marry her?” you asked. 

He looked at you strangely, but answered you nonetheless. “No – I don’t think so.”

He faked a cough, hoping to change the subject, but he wasn’t sure what. 

 "So . . . uuuhhh," he wiggled his shoulders back and forth, eyes trained on a Sharpie stain on the table, refusing to look at you. "How about you? Meet any boys yet?”

Immediately, you scoffed and scowled at him. 

Mark peered up at you playfully, dipping his spoon in his broth. “What?”

“Mark Lee.”

He raised a hand in surrender. “Hey, innocent question – you asked me, so I ask you. Plus, you’re cute, people are looking,” he shrugged, “And it’s university – according to Jeno, that’s like . . . the hot soup recipe for dating and all, ya know?”

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head at his stupid analogy, pretending as if your heart didn’t skip a beat at his unintentional compliment. This wasn’t the first time and if anything, it was a term of endearment.

“Hot like this soup!” Mark exclaimed. “Well, was – it’s kind of lukewarm now.”

"You know I don't have time for dating, Mark," you grumbled.

Despite what he just told you, he blew at the broth on his spoon as if it was scalding hot and inhaled the liquid. 

Within seconds, his eyes widened in horror as something caught in the wrong pipe. His lips pursed momentarily as he tried to keep his mouth shut to swallow whatever was left and prevent himself from spraying you. Mark finally started coughing up a fit, pounding at his chest. He turned away from you, covering his mouth with a napkin.

“Oh my god, you idiot – are you okay?” you asked. 

“Hot!” he repeated in between coughs. 

“About to be on your deathbed and you’re still on about that stupid joke,” you grumbled. Though you sounded upset, the way you adjusted yourself to hover over him suggested different. 

“No!” Mark waved. “The broth was hot!”

“You said it was lukewarm?”

“Hot! Spicy! I choked on a pepper flake or something!” he stuck out his tongue and fanned it. 

“Oh,” you settled back down in your seat. 

You paused momentarily before the pieces clicked. You reached into your plastic bag, pulling out a short bottle of banana milk and handing it over to him. 

“Here,” you pressed the drink into his hand. 

He peered down at it curiously then back to you. “You sure?”

“Of course,” you chirped. 

“It’s yours though.”

“I have more,” you fibbed. You split a pack of three with your coworkers earlier, each person getting one. You made a point to pull off the straw wrapped in clear plastic and puncture the top. “Drink,” you pushed it towards him. “It’ll help with the spice.”

Mark finally complied, taking a long sip. He let out a small sigh of satisfaction when he pulled his lips off with a pop. His eyes flickered from the drink to you. 

“What?” you asked bluntly. 

He giggled to himself like a drunk, shaking his head. “It’s been forever since I’ve had banana milk, you know?”

“When was the last time you had some?” you asked. 

“High school,” he reminisced, “When Chenle bought all that alcohol and snuck it into our hotel rooms on the school trip? I woke up hungover and you gave me one saying it’d cure it.”

Your eyes widened in horror at the memory, causing Mark to laugh even harder.

"I . . . lied about that," you told him, monotonously.

"No shit," he took another sip, "But I believed you and still drank a full eight pack."

"It's all I could afford from the 7/11!" you defended yourself.

"Lying about this helping with spice now too?" he ignored your comment.

"I'm a little more skilled in the art of drinking and hangovers now that I'm older, thank you," you turned your face back down to your noodles to ignore him.

Mark snickered, relishing in the memory. Even though he felt like shit and probably a whole lot of work for you taking care of him, it was a pleasurable moment for Mark – a time when things were simpler and not much mattered. 

Simple. 

Like now. 

These were small bits of his life he liked to keep close to his heart. 

First hangovers, banana milk overdoses, and all. 

. . . .

“I got this for you, by the way.”

Mark waved a small black gift box tied with a pink bow in front of your face as the two of you were exiting Mrs. Jung’s noodle shop. You stopped abruptly in your tracks, rapidly blinking at the item in your line of vision. 

You wondered why you hadn’t noticed it before. It was simple, but the pink bow was hard to miss. Was he holding it all along? It was no bigger than his hand – you figured he might have put it in the pockets inside his coat, which is why you didn’t see it. 

Your eyes flickered to him, though not with the excited expression he was hoping for. Contrary to his own bashful yet teasing and excited smile, your brows were furrowed together, a small frown tugging at the corner of your lips. 

Eyes beaming, Mark shook the box gently – just enough to hear a quiet rattle inside the box. 

“Mark, what did I say about gifts?” you sighed, pushing his hand down. 

“Y/N,” he dragged on the last syllable of your name, “C’mon – please!”

“I thought we agreed ‘no gifts’ – unless it was the holiday or our birthdays?” you reminded him. 

Mark was quick to press the box into your hands, wrapping his own around yours as to secure it and not let it fall to the ground. Your breath hitched a little at sudden touch and the warmth that encased your hands. You hadn’t expected him to be so . . . “aggressive” about this. 

“I wanted to – for you,” Mark insisted. 

You frowned, unconvinced. 

Mark knew you didn’t like gifts – especially from him after your father lost his position at the company. He couldn’t completely understand it, but he knew enough that it lied within a feeling of guilt and discomfort. You didn’t want to feel like some charity project. On that same note, you didn’t want to be a burden to your childhood friend. After all, it was partially his father’s doing for what happened to your family. 

The milieu surrounding your friendship of over twenty years was not the most ideal – not that it was either of your faults. A part of you always wondered if he still only hung around because he pitied you. You felt bad for even having such a thought – Mark had been so kind and understanding of you all these years. However, you couldn’t help, but question it when most have abandoned you. You didn’t dare push him away for you held onto the small sliver of hope that maybe he wasn’t like that. 

To lose him was a reality you didn’t want to know. . 

“Take it,” Mark pushed the gift closer to your chest. He took a step back. “If not for you,” he pointed to himself, “For me.”

Though you only answered with a heavy sigh, the reluctance evident in the way your shoulders slumped and your arms fell to your side, you took it nonetheless. You flipped it over in your hand, studying it with your eyes and examining it with your finger pads, grazing across the smooth velvet material of the box.  

“Open it,” Mark urged. 

You looked up at him again, feeling nervous.

He only nodded at you, gesturing with his hand for you to do so. He wanted to see your reaction. 

You caved – never had you seen someone so excited to see another person open a gift before. Gently, you started pulling at the pink ribbon, the satin cool and smooth under the pads of your fingers. With ease, it slipped off – its once pretty and neat form now collapsed into a lifeless thread. Pulling off the lid and pushing aside the white tissue paper, a small beige wallet with cushion-style stitches and gold painted metal clasp sat inside.

Your eyes widened in surprise, your mind immediately flashed to last week’s outing when the two of you had gone window shopping after hours when all the storefronts had grown dim and the doors were locked. 

“ That’s so ugly,” Mark giggled, his mouth half-full with red bean bungeoppang. 

“I like it,” you insisted, reluctantly turning away from the glass display, the wallet sitting on a sterile white stand surrounded by purses and backpacks of similar styles. You joined him, continuing down the sidewalk.

The streets were quiet at this time of night. Nearly silent enough that you could hear each other’s breath and the click of your shoes against the pavement. Only a few lonely souls walked the streets, phones pressed to their ear as they chatted with their loved ones, hurrying to the comfort of their own home. The street lamps lit your pathway, casting a soft orange glow across everything, your shadows were long and slanted, accompanied by that of trees. 

“It looks like something my grandma would use,” Mark tried to explain. He handed the bungeoppang over to you for a bite. The wax paper crinkled under his hold. 

“Your grandmother is a woman of good taste!” you retorted. 

“Is she?” Mark asked, thinking back to her last outfit choice at the art gala downtown. It was a bright pink business suit – she almost looked like she was a piece of artwork instead of the paintings and sculptures instead. 

He threw one last look over his shoulder. Indulging in your treat, you failed to notice the way his eyes lingered a while longer, making a mental note of the store name. 

“It’s classy,” you huffed. “Simple with sophisticated detailing.”

“Whatever you say,” he muttered. 

Roughly, you handed the treat over to him, nearly wacking him in his chest. Unfortunately, Mark wasn’t fast enough to catch it; the bungeoppang slipped out of the wax paper and splattered onto the sidewalk. 

“Dude!” you both groaned at the same time. 

“Mark–”

“Ah!” he raised a finger at you, already anticipating your protest. “I don’t wanna hear anything except ‘thank you, Mark.’”

You closed your mouth, pressing your lips together. Your hands tightened around the small wallet, suddenly feeling heavy in your hands. 

Once upon a time, goods like this were a ‘given’ to you – if you wanted it, you could have it. Not to say that you were a spoiled brat and received everything at a snap of your finger, but you didn’t have to think twice about the cost of it. It’s funny how things you once took for granted were now a privilege to even hold like this. 

“Don’t think too much about it,” Mark finally said, breaking the silence. Hands stuffed in his pants pocket, he took another step closer to you, knowing your mind was reeling with thousands of questions, your heart twisted in every which way. He wrapped his hand around yours again, giving you a firm squeeze. “It’s alright to want it . . . to have it, to be given it.”

Sometimes, you hated the way he was so generous.

Sometimes, you hated how he knew you so well – even more than yourself.  

. . . .

“Doyoung’s getting married at the end of summer.”

You stopped pumping your legs and let them drag against the pile of wood chips underneath you as you drifted backwards on your swing, skidding to a halt. The two of you stumbled upon an empty playground nearby, opting to loiter around and found yourselves on the swingset. Your bones creaked a little too much for the jungle gym and the seats of the seesaw were much too small for either of you. 

Your jaw fell slack at the sudden news – it wasn’t bad news. It was actually really good news given what you’ve heard about Doyoung’s special romantic situation throughout the last couple years in passing. Though you wished your reaction could have been happier, it was the reality of the circumstances that made your heart feel heavy. 

This was the first time you were hearing about Doyoung’s wedding. You had figured that if they already had a date set, that meant the plans were in process: invitations were made, venues were picked, wedding dresses and tuxes were tried, cakes were tasted, and seating charts had been laid out.

Yet you heard none of it. 

You wondered why Doyoung and Mark had kept this from you on purpose on the few occasions you’ve met over the past few months or so. The last you heard about him and his partner was simply that Doyoung thought she was “the one” and thinking about getting engaged. 

Perhaps they forgot to tell you about it with the new business deals and product launches Mark had talked about over dinner? 

But was the answer really that simple? It was a wedding after all – one of the biggest events in a person’s lifetime. 

You hoped they had good intentions, but the fact was you were no longer a part of their world despite your years of friendship and history together. It was as if the pluck of your dad’s name plaque at his office desk and you were suddenly a distant commoner among the crowds watching kings from aways on their pedestal. Of course, these kinds of affairs are never done without family politics. As lovely as she was, Doyoung’s mother was superficial – her only son’s wedding had to be pristine and fairytale perfect. You could only imagine the number of renowned names on the guest list, including Mark’s family.

If that was the case, you were on the blacklist.

There was a time where your parents were on the list of VIP guests – and you were dragged along. Not only weddings, but birthday parties, graduations, retirements – rich people always found a reason to celebrate. Then, Mark and you were twelve you were pesky wedding guests, trying your best to sit still for once while brides and grooms walked down the aisles, eyes wandering to the cake, your minds wondering about the dinner and the music selection for tonight. 

You always knew, but with Doyoung being the first one to go, you realized you were getting to that age of business “proposals” and marriage. Now you wondered what twelve-year-olds would be watching Mark walk down the aisle. 

When? 

And with who?

You couldn’t put a finger on why, but your heart ached a little at the thought. 

“T-that’s great,” you said softly, you looked away from Mark. “Congrats to them – really,” you choked out a half-hearted chuckle, “it was a very long time coming.”

Only the wind answered you. It nipped at the tip of your nose as if to tease you and seeped through the openings of your outerwear, sending chills down your spine. Your mind spiraling with questions that you didn’t have the answer to (or rather didn’t want to know the answer to), you failed to notice the longing and wistful expression on your companion’s face as he stared off into dimly lit streets.

“Do you ever think about us?” Mark finally blurted. 

You whipped your head towards him. “Us?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, still refusing to look at you. “Like . . . when we’re going to get married.”

When we’re going to get married.

His last few words echoed in the chambers of your mind. Of course, the practical part of you knew that he meant when you were going to get married – separately. Him with someone else and you with someone else. 

Yet for some reason, the way he said it, his tone laced with sincerity, made you want to believe he meant otherwise. 

“Y-you and me?” you asked to confirm. 

“Yeah,” he replied, drawing out the word. 

You didn’t think he was understanding your question. 

“No, no, no – as in . . . like,” you sucked in a shaky breath, “You with me?”

Finally, he tilted his head to look at you. You could hardly make out his eyes in the dim lighting, only remnants of the streetlamp slipping though the bare trees and past the jungle gym, reflecting off his face. However, perhaps it was for the better as the way his eyelids hung heavy made you nervous. It did not appear “heavy” in a sense that he was tired, but that mix of giddiness and bittersweet look of nostalgia that some people got when they were drunk. 

Mark didn’t have any alcohol tonight though. 

Could it be . . .?

He smiled cheekily, resting the side of his head on his thumb wrapped around the chain holding up the swing. 

“You? Wanna marry me?” he asked. 

“Mark,” you huffed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“If Doyoung and Emmy are enemies to lovers, we could be childhood friends to lovers,” Mark teased. He let out a heinous cackle, sounding like one of those hyenas in Lion King. 

“Mark,” you gritted your teeth. 

“I’m kidding!” he chuckled. “Geez, calm down – would it be that bad to get married to me?”

You didn’t answer him, pretending you didn’t hear his question and started pumping your legs again. 

“What kind of story trope do you think your love life is gonna be like?” he continued to muse. “I think I’m an enemies to lovers kind of guy too.”

“If that was the case, you would’ve loved Hera already,” you remarked. 

“Nah,” he shook his head, shoving his hands into his trench coat. “Didn’t hate her enough the first time.”

“Mark,” you whined, accompanied by an annoyed chortle. You couldn’t help but laugh at his antics sometimes. “Why are we talking about this?” 

“Ey,” he got up from his swing and stood a safe distance from you. You weren’t moving that fast, granting him the chance to punch you softly in the shoulder when you swung by. “I’m just pondering and trying to make conversation.”

“Let’s talk about something else?”

“Okay,” he paused. “I’m curious – who was your first love?”

“Mark Lee,” you groaned.

“I think you’re a first love kind-of-girl,” he rambled on. “I know your first kiss was Haechan – gross, by the way, but your first love. I don’t think you ever told me.”

“Yeah,” you scoffed, “There’s a reason why I never told you.”

His interest piqued, Mark grabbed onto the chains holding up your swing, bringing you to a halt, nearly knocking foreheads with him. For the second time that night, your breath hitched, your faces so close to one another. He was too close for comfort – too close for best friends. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes – one that you don’t think you could handle for too long, tearing your gaze to the side. Unfortunately, he was quick to adjust his position and tilt his head to maintain eye contact with you. You couldn’t help but notice the way your lips were a finger-width away apart, and if you just tilted your chin up – god, you shouldn’t even be thinking about kissing him right now.

You let your hands slide down away from his own, tightening your grip around the rusted metal, somehow, finding solace in the way the rough and uneven surface of the metal dug into your palms. You let out a shaky breath and broke eye contact with him once more. 

"H-Haechan," you replied softly. 

Silence. 

“My first love,” you cleared your throat and continued a little more confidently, “Was Haechan.”

Your answer came a beat late – enough to tell Mark that it was a lie. His lips quirked up, eyes still trained on you.

“I knew it,” he whispered, equally quiet, a hint of melancholy in his tone. 

The delicate moment was suddenly interrupted by his Super Mario ringtone, his device vibrating violently in his pocket. 

You let out a small, shaky breath and turned away – Mark noted the way your feet stuttered, pushing your swing to the left, further away from him in an attempt at courtesy of letting him take his call. 

Cursing under his breath, he fished his phone out of his pocket and swiped at the screen. 

Kim Doyoung. 

However, rather than answering it right away, he stared at the name flashing across the screen. The green ‘answer’ button and the red ‘ignore’ button pulsed with each vibration, urging him to make a choice before Doyoung hung up or was sent to voicemail. It reminded him of the Matrix when Neo had to make a choice between the red pill and the blue pill. 

Did Mark want to continue living in the reality he was born into?

Or to feign ignorance and live in the bliss you gave to him?

He knew if the older man called this late at night, nothing good would come out of it. He could come up with multiple scenarios right now: An emergency at work. Perhaps his father had found out and was furious, urging him to come home.

Or worse, the reporters and paparazzi. 

Mark chose the latter.

He swiped at the ‘ignore’ button and readjusted the volume to mute all notifications. 

Was it such a crime to crave happiness? Even if it was just for a minute? An hour? An evening?

“Let’s get out of here,” Mark said, breathlessly. He slipped his phone back into his pocket and stood up to face you, a strained smile stretching across his face. 

His footsteps stopped when he was just a few inches from you, the toes of your shoes nudging against one another. 

“Aren’t you gonna get that?” you asked. 

He shook his head, extending a hand out to you. 

“But it could be important,” you protested, your grip slipping off the chains. 

“I promised,” Mark replied, “Just you and me tonight.”

You seemed unconvinced, however. 

Mark let out a heavy breath, taking your hand in his own and gently tugged you off the swing. It didn’t take much – it’s not like you were trying to resist. 

There was that sense of guilt surging in your chest again, but you tried your best to ignore it as Mark took off in a jog. 

Though it was never said, you both knew, neither of you wanted this night to end just yet. 

. . . .

It’s funny, isn't it?

When the two of you were no more than five, reaching for his hand, and him yours, was second nature – no questions, no hesitations about it. Whether it was him seeking your comfort after being chased by Renjun on the playground or you merely trying to catch up with him after seeing him down the red carpet at yet another lavish event, your chubby fingers would interlock like two adjacent puzzle pieces snapping in place. 

It was comfortable. It was easy. It was fun. It was friendship. It was love – not romantic, but something innocent and untainted. 

Yet as the two of you grew older and you were introduced to the concept of "cooties" at the end of first grade, unknowingly he and you slowly began to unlearn the habit of linking hands when you were with each other. It started when Jaemin teased you for holding Mark’s hand during a game of hide-and-seek. This was the first moment you were quick to let go of him under the watchful eyes and mocking snickers of your classmates. As second grade started, you grew bashful and more hesitant to keep doing so. With the two of you being in separate classrooms, however, it made the process easier and neither of you questioned it. Rather than at school, you’d find yourself falling back into old habits at company dinners where the two of you were bored and ran off to play, or when his father brought him over during a meeting with your parents. 

However, these moments became less and less frequent until it was nothing. 

The rule was simple and it had finally solidified when the two of you were ten.

Boys and girls didn’t hold hands.

Therefore, neither did you and Mark. 

It was an unspoken agreement and has remained so until this day. 

It didn’t faze you when he offered a hand earlier – the adrenaline and euphoria overtaking your consciousness and your senses to think properly, you willingly took his hand and ran wherever he wanted to lead you. However, when the fleeting and short-lived emotions had passed and you had fallen from cloud nine like a rain drop from a heavy gray cloud, your nerves were starting to get the better of you. Even if it was something so normal when you were children, it’s why now, even the ghostly brush of his fingers against the back of your hand brought heat to your ears and made your throat constrict as you stood next to Mark, shoulder-to-shoulder on a train to Cheomdangdong. 

Bellies full and conversations fell quiet, but unwilling to part ways, the you both decided along the way for one last walk along the Han River. Having sent his driver home, there was no way to get to the other side of the city, except by train. Mark scanned his neon orange metro pass for the first time in months for a ride in comparison to your worn and scratched green one that you used daily. 

The evening rush hour had long passed. Your cart was fairly empty sans the elderly businessman dozing off in the corner and the few bleary-eyed high school students in crumpled navy and white uniforms with Airpods jammed in their ears, returning home from cram school. There were an abundance of seats for either of you to sit, yet Mark and you opted to stand, holding onto the worn velvet straps tied around the stainless steel poles. 

Only the rhythmic chugging of the train wheels rolling across the rusted tracks, rushed through your ears. The silence that settled between the two of you was comfortable, but the growing tension was deafening – at least to you. 

You wondered if he felt the same. 

When the train halted at the second to last stop on the line, the sterile white doors hissing open, he and you trickled out with the last few passengers into the dreary tunnel. Perhaps your steps were too wary and slow, hoping to fall in sync with Mark’s, because the elderly businessman was suddenly wide awake and hastily squeezed his way between you and the door, pushing you into your best friend. Reflexively, his arm came up to wrap around your shoulder, turning and pressing closer into his body, while the man grunted something under his breath before taking off in a speed walk down the strip. 

It didn’t quite hit you, the position the two of you were in until Mark muttered, “Geez . . . asshole. Where does he have to go this late at night anyways?”

You turned in his hold and leaned away to look at him. Your best friend scowled at the stranger’s figure fading in the distance. 

As if on cue, he peered down at you. He shifted his hands onto your shoulders, eyes scanning up and down your figure.

“You okay?” he asked, finally catching your gaze. Though it wasn’t his fault, he offered you what looked like an apologetic smile. 

It wasn’t a rough shove, but Mark figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. 

You nodded, muttering, “It’s fine.”

Letting out a small breath, you readied yourself to take off towards the stairs that led to the streets and took a step or two backwards. Mark’s hands slipped off your shoulders, one of them falling a little faster than the other, just in time to graze against one of your own, sending heat to your ears again – though you tried your best to ignore the steam that were probably coming out of your ears out of embarrassment. 

He was your childhood best friend for heaven’s sake. 

Yet this time, instead of just letting it be like on the train, Mark didn’t let the opportunity pass this time. He was quick to lurch for your swinging hand, encasing it in his own. He feigned ignorance and courage, not paying mind to the look of shock and terror that flashed across your features. He gave your hand a small squeeze, marching forward into the night, not daring to let go. 

Rather than looking forward, you continued to look at him, searching his face for any hint of anger or regret – any reason that would explain why he would suddenly hold your hand like this. 

No, it was far from scandalous. It wasn’t like he kissed you unprompted or planned on taking you home to warm his bed. 

Nonetheless, this seemingly familiar act from your childhood felt taboo and wrong. Something that once felt like two puzzle pieces fitting together, now felt like putting a spherical block through a square hole. 

He was Mark Lee of NCity, Inc and you were Y/N Y/L/N of rented, tattered textbooks and the less than quarter full tip jar at the alley convenience store. 

As hard as you looked, however, Mark’s nonchalant expression didn’t budge. Eventually, to avoid tripping on the stairs, you forced yourself to divert your eyes. 

Only then, did his lips quirk into a small, gentle smile for a split second.

For tonight, he wanted it to be simple. 

Just Mark Lee and Y/N Y/L/N. No titles, no obligations. Just childhood friends enjoying the little time that remained of the fleeting night, slipping through your fingers. 

. . . .

Water lapped gently against the shore as Mark and you walked along the Han River in blissful silence. The half-moon casted a pearl-like glow across the waters, turning it blue. You’d like to imagine the two of you looked like you were silhouettes in the distance stuck in the Starry Night Monet painting. Black shadows blending into the night – seemingly unimportant to the critical eye. 

Mark’s fingers still woven with your own, the weight and the warmth of his hold grew familiar and comfortable with each step. It was as if he were imprinting himself  in your own hand, and yours, his. You’d both catch each other’s eye every now and then, only exchanging soft smiles before continuing your way to no end. No words were exchanged, but the both of you knew, the feelings, whatever they were, were there, wrapping around the both of you and settling on your shoulders like a fleece blanket on a cold evening. Friendship, love – you weren’t sure if you could even label whatever it was between the two of you, whether it be in the past, right now . . . what would be.

Tonight, however, selfishly, you just wanted to indulge in this moment: where it was just you, him, and the Han River. There were no expectations, no roles that neither of you needed to fill. 

Though it seemed like the two of you were walking for hours, when the ring of your phone interrupted the peace, it felt like minutes cut short. 

“Don’t,” Mark warned as you halted in your steps, already reaching into your coat pocket to grab for your phone.

The device, untouched for the past hour or so, felt cool against your fingers as you looked up at him. 

“It could be important,” you muttered. “It could be my parents or my younger brother.”

“Or Doyoung,” Mark said, his lips crumpling. 

“And if it is?” you gave his hand a firm squeeze. 

“I don’t want to go back – not yet.”

You sighed, pulling out your phone nonetheless to look at the time, but inevitably also revealing the caller ID. 

1:34AM. 

Kim Doyoung. 

The call ended, but started up again within the next few seconds, Doyoung calling again. 

You glanced back up at him, a conflicted look flashing across your eyes. 

“Y/N,” he said, breathlessly though he hadn’t run. Mark knew though, at the end of the day, you were a practical person and knew your place in the world too well. The urge to rip the device out of your hand and throw it into the river itself was strong. 

“It could be . . . important,” you muttered reluctantly, finger hovering over the green ‘answer’ button. “Doyoung would never bother if it wasn’t.”

“I don’t want this night to end,” Mark blurted. “I don’t want this to end.”

But the both of you knew – with every night, came a dawn. 

You smiled sadly, breaking away from him and answered the call. 

“Y/N? Is Mark still with you?” Doyoung asked hastily. He was clearly worried. 

“He is,” you replied, trying to stay calm. 

“Send me your guys’ location right now – I’m sending a driver,” he urged. 

“What’s going on?” you asked, peering at Mark. 

Doyoung paused, letting out a huff into the receiver. “Y-You’re trending on Twitter – there are pictures and his father is furious.”

Your jaw grew slack – something both you and Doyoung feared finally manifesting itself into reality. After listening to his instructions on how to proceed, you handed the phone over to Mark as the older man needed to talk to him as well. The two argued, Mark not letting down his guard until Doyoung said something that brought about a look of devastation into the peaks and valleys of Mark’s sharp features. After a few nods and words of ‘yes,’ the younger hung up, handing you over your phone. 

Silence engulfed the two of you again, but this time out of discomfort. 

Nonetheless, Mark couldn’t quite let this night go just yet. Not caring if there were reporters around to catch this on camera, he wrapped his arm around your waist and pressed his lips against your forehead, letting his lips linger for a few seconds more before pulling away. 

“This isn’t over,” Mark reassured you, giving you a firm squeeze. “We’ll talk about this, hm? I’ll find my way back to you.”

But just because it felt right, doesn’t mean it was right. 

You belonged to two different worlds now; two worlds that were never intended to mesh. 

Perhaps in another life, simple nights like this could last a lifetime instead of the seemingly few hours of dark.

#mark lee x reader #mark lee fluff #mark lee angst #mark lee scenarios #mark lee imagines #nct x reader #nct 127 x reader #nct dream x reader #nct angst #nct fluff #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #nct dream fluff #nct dream angst #nct scenarios #nct 127 scenarios #nct dream scenarios

[virgobingo]

Hi! I have a question, I hope I can explain myself: how would you describe Gojo on a moral level? I see the majority of the fandom (jjk in general, not just the shipping ones) considers him a good person, but I'd argue he's more on the grey side...and not a light grey. See, I can't really wrap my head around the way he blatantly ignores the fact the Suguru was completely fucked up, to the point that in chap 236 he wishes Suguru was with him before fighting Sukuna and imagining him (adult Suguro, the fucked up one) together with the same students he tried to kill in jjk0. How on earth? If I'm not mistaken Gojo never really says "yeah, Suguru was my friend but he used to be completely different, this is not the Suguru I used to be friends with". He never says Suguru was wrong. He just misses him, even though he was surrounded by people who liked him. At least Shoko clearly doesn't feel any affection towards Suguru. And let's not talk about the way he doesn't really seem concerned about the future of his students in chap 236. What do you think? Just to clarify: I do like Gojo. But I don't share the sentiment of the rest of the fandom: he's not a good person. I guess Nanami was right

i sort of explained how i think gojo sees the matter of suguru before but it's buried in my blog since i don't tag properly so to any one else reading this i might be repeating myself.

to gojo the "suguru he knew in hs" and the "suguru he killed" are one and the same. i don't believe gojo is the type to draw hard lines like the average person since he is "enlightened"— as his name (satoru) suggests. "past" suguru is at his core the same as "future" suguru. to him the person suguru becomes doesn't exist in a vacuum (his path is ultimately a product of their society). in other words, to gojo the distinction lies not in what suguru did, but who suguru is (gojo doesn't conflate actions with the "self"). i think this is how gege, who seems to be an overthinker, looks at the whole thing anyways. the matter doesn't boil down to "good" or "bad".

and the thing is gojo loves suguru at his core (or i choose to interpret it that way anyways). gege frames him as gojo's "one and only friend" for a reason. i think he's the only person who ever really made gojo feel that he was "just like everyone else."

being "liked" by others (and even reciprocating those feelings) doesn't help fill the gap gojo felt from losing suguru. gojo's simply been growing around the loss. i think this diagram explains gojo's sentiments best:

i also don't think that gojo's unconcerned for his students so much as choosing to be an optimist (once more, which aligns with his progressive ideals too),

honestly, there's not much left for gojo to do beyond the grave either.+he really went all out. he didn't exactly roll over and die haha there was a possibility his own hollow purple might kill him but that was a sacrifice he was willing to take to beat sukuna, for his students sake... but also because he was feeling experimental

in any case, if you look at his desires, sukuna wasn't even his priority,

in conclusion: i don't think gojo's a bad person or that nanami even implies that in ch 236 haha i think he's shown to be human (he loves to fight despite everything and he fails to connect with others).

sukuna even calls gojo greedy two chapters later. that's a very human trait. the thing is sukuna is technically right too because despite all gojo's power, wealth, success, and the people who like him— there's only one thing he wanted (geto by his side),

tldr: it's complicated. gojo's doing his best lol hope that makes sense?

#i will notice some horrific typo later #i need to go back and tag things so i can find them ahshsj #gojo satoru #jujutsu kaisen #jjk 236 #asks #satosugu #i guess

[chirpsythismorning]

It would appear I am indeed one of the very few optimistic (delusional?) Bylers left.

Not saying that if you feel hopeless and need to move on, that you can't. A lot of you have been through this before with other shows. Again and again. You’re tired and fed-up and you have every right to be.

Technically, Season 5 won't be out for another 2+ years anyways, which means the best thing for everyone regardless is to get whatever we need off our chests now and then to just go on a hiatus for the foreseeable future. 

When it comes to how I feel about Vol. 2, there were definitely at least a few good moments. If this season has anything going for it, it’s the emotional value. This is without a doubt the most I’ve cried ever while watching the show. One scene in particular that had me on the floor was the scene with Will and El reuniting and hugging. And of course the scene with Will and Mike in the van (DAMN YOU NOAH SCHNAPP FOR MAKING ME SOB SO HARD ALL DAY THAT I GOT A MIGRAINE!)

But yes, I am a Byler. So you could say I was a bit disappointed in that department.

And yet still, I think my take on the later part of season 4 is much different from the majority.

Because personally, I don’t think that what played out in Vol. 2 means that Byler is dead. If anything, I believe it to be more endgame than I did before (well, at least in comparison to pre-s4. There’s no denying pre-Vol. 2 confidence levels remain unmatched. Truly the best era for the Byler fandom to date).

I think my main issue is, like so many of us on here, I thought it was guaranteed we would get to see Mike become aware of Will’s feelings. 

Alas, we did not.

And to be totally clear, without this revelation, Byler can’t go anywhere. 

Neither forwards, nor technically backwards.

This means the baiting game is not over. Which as bad as it sounds, is why I’m still so optimistic…

Now, if they had made Will’s feelings obvious to Mike, or even the fact that Will is gay as being obvious to Mike, but STILL had Mike behave the way he did in Vol. 2, now THAT would have sucked. It would have been canon rejection on Mike’s end.

But we didn’t even get rejection from Mike. 

Instead, we got Will coming off as a hardcore M*leven shipper in Mike's eyes, all while the audience was getting the exact opposite interpretation of this situation; that Will is helplessly in love with Mike. 

Will is able to voice the extent of his love, albeit through advice to Mike about his own situation with El, in a way that no one else on the show has been able to. Most of the other characters need a bunch of bystanders to make them realize their feelings and push them in that direction. But Will, he doesn’t need someone holding his hand along the way, telling him what the right thing to do or say is. His love isn’t something he needs to really think about in order to understand it. It just is.

(Which is SO fucking ironic when you think about how Mike always needs help with figuring out his feelings for El and even sounds like he’s reading off a script when he’s trying to explain himself to her. Whereas with Will, s2 monologue teas, it’s the most natural thing Mike’s ever done. Unscripted, straight from the heart… And both Vol. 1-2 continued to drive home this concept, so maybe jot that down..)

It’s just that, unfortunately, in Will’s eyes, Mike will never return this love, which means his only option is to let Mike go. If supporting Mike and El’s relationship means putting himself dead last in every respect, so that his best friend and his sister can be happy, Will is going to do just that. 

But as far as Mike knows, Will holds no romantic feelings for him. I mean after all, Will is guiding Mike literally every step of the way to confessing his love to El, and that doesn't sound like the behavior of someone who’s in love with you, now does it? 

So why would Mike, throw everything on the line, including the survival of their family and friends in Hawkins by not simply just telling his gf he loves her? All while El is right there loving him and needing his love to fight (presumably), with Will beside him literally rooting for him to do just that? This is very obviously the only option in Mike’s eyes.

Which is ironic, because in a way, I think that Mike has truly never seen him and Will as an option, just like Will, but for an entirely different reason. 

Mike views his feelings for Will as childish, something he will grow out of, or at least should have by now.

“We’re not kids anymore. What did you think, really? That we were never going to get girlfriends? That we were just going to sit in my basement and play games for the rest of our lives?”

If Mike can’t love El, then how can he possibly love any women? She’s special. She’s a superhero. He HAS to love her, right? It’s the best option he could ever possibly have. Well, at least considering…

But what happens when suddenly, he comes to the realization that him and Will ARE an option? And that the only thing ever stopping them was himself and his inability to just be honest with everyone and himself?

I think the truth is, there’s a reason that they’re holding off on this revelation for Mike. 

It will be a catalyst. It will change everything.

Now, how exactly do you think Mike is going to react to this? The fact that Will was in love with him this whole time and he had no idea?

Honestly, I think he’s going to react horribly, but not for the reason everyone assumes.

Because I would argue that, if Mike was going to react badly with disgust or even just let Will down nicely to confirm it’s indeed unrequited, then the Duffer’s would have just given this revelation up by now. But they haven’t.

Once Mike finds out that Will is (probably always will be) in love with him, and that instead of telling him, Will used his love to help Mike get closer to El, even when Mike himself was having doubts over and over? That Will went as far as to lie about the painting he worked so hard on for Mike in order to rekindle their dying friendship, to instead insinuate it was commission from El, to give Mike that final push he needed to even have the courage to tell El he loved her? That all the moments like this that they shared as of late, was really just Will talking about himself? That the only reason he was able to tell El he loved her in the first place, was because he was so moved by Will’s love for him??

This is going to break Mike.

And let’s be real here, two episodes would not have done this revelation justice. 

So now, just knowing the direction they went for Vol. 2, as well as coming to terms with it, I have reached the conclusion that, despite how bleak things seem now, ‘maybe all of this is happening for a reason’ (s2 Mike Wheeler, we miss u).

Which brings me to the other most important piece of the puzzle, which is that, arguably, El needs to be the one who ends things once and for all.

The general audience has been given the impression El is head over heels in love with Mike, and so of course they were rooting for Mike to get on with it and just tell her he loved her. 

But that’s the interesting part. He finally did tell her, but her reaction in the aftermath was not something a lot of fans expected. 

It seems that she’s distancing herself from Mike, a fact that Will acknowledges to Mike later at Hopper’s cabin, with Mike genuinely confused because he thought he did the one thing he had to do. 

He told her he loved her. Which makes everything alright now, right?

But maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe the reminder we got, of that speech from Max to El, about how she didn’t need Mike or Hopper or ANY man to know her worth, was foreshadowing for what honestly needs to happen in order for El to really process and realize her own true feelings about Mike.

Because, although I do believe El genuinely thought she loved Mike, is it possible that Mike was not only having doubts about saying it because of the reasons he argued, or even because of some repressed feelings for Will, but also because El hadn’t given him what he needed to truly believe she loved him.

Mike, like a lot of people, doesn’t need to hear “I love you” to believe that someone loves him.

“I didn’t say it.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He wants something more meaningful, or more specifically, something along the lines of the speech Will gave to him in the van.

Will’s confession disguised as El’s, was what Mike needed to finally say I love you to El... 

Something I think we also got caught up in, is this idea that the Duffer’s were just going to drop M*leven and throw in Byler, with everything else going on, while they still have a whole ass season to promote for another 3+ years, and to their mostly 80’s loving homophobic audience. If Byler is going to happen, it’s going to be the definition of slow-burn and endgame. That’s literally the only way. 

This puzzle is complex, which sucks if you want all the answers now, because we’re just not going to get them. If they give up all their moves, then what is the point of telling the story at all? 

Other pieces of the puzzle include things that arguably still need to happen before Byler can, even regardless of the constraints they have as show-runners who run the biggest show on Netflix’s dying platform. 

Things like Will and El’s love for each other as brother and sister. Considering all the fans that said Will hates El because he didn’t stand up to her bullies or that he’s a home-wrecker who just wants to get with her boyfriend, is why I do think they needed to debunk these insinuations within the narrative. And boy oh boy did they deliver on that front. Will is the most selfless son of a bitch on the planet, who loves his best friend and his sister so much. They made that very clear. And you can see that despite a few homophobes here and there, the general audience's reaction to Will in Vol 2 is sympathy and to Mike it's confusion and betrayal...

Hmm, making El realize she doesn't even love Mike, after making Will's unrequited feelings for Mike more clear, after making Mike behave like an IDIOT this entire time juggling these two relationships, only for him to become aware of whats going on, and to clearly be in love with Will?

Sounds like a good way to set up Byler to an audience that might not have humored it before...

And like I said, with how important I do think it was for this to happen in order for them to go the Byler route, is why I don’t necessarily see this approach as a bad thing. We even got the Will and El hug in 4x08, which maybe it’s just because Noah and Millie are so close, but I would easily rank that on my top most well-earned moments in the whole show.

We NEEDED that. Especially in terms of what is likely to come in season 5 with Byler endgame...

Also, yes the Will angst sucked and it's just trauma porn at this point. I’m not going to deny that fully. I agree with pretty much all of the criticism in regards to how they chose to do certain things when they didn't necessarily have to, but I also simultaneously am able to understand that it again, maybe this is all happening for a reason. If they are indeed going to have Will play a big role in the final season, than them forgetting his birthday, Mike being oblivious and all this other shit he's been through combined, sets up a really arc for him next season, not even necessarily a villain one, but all of this pain has the potential to lead to a happy ending. And I'm being full serious.

Like we have Finn Wolfhard saying the ending of Stranger Things will be like the ending of Schitt’s Creek??? That it will end at it's highest point. The last episode of Schitt’s Creek is literally a happily ever after gay wedding, there's no other way to interpret that…

We also know that a lot of ideas for the last seasons were planned from the beginning, with David Harbour saying that he knew the ending way back in s2 and that it's beautiful and has been the intended plan all along. That there's easter eggs that will have us going 'WOW this is what we've been watching the whole time'? That it's wonderful?

If you’re the level of Byler truther that believes they were somewhat planned all along from the beginning, then you would also know that if they plan a happy ending for Mike and Will, then they would have no problem killing us this painfully in the beginning of the end, because they know we’ll be the ones cheering on by the actual end, and it'll be the homophobes who are pissed and stuck with this result forever as endgame. 

I’m just saying, don’t be surprised when s5 gets closer and we actually see them promoting Byler… like a lot. And we actually start getting in canon hints at scenes with El herself even trying to get them together.

Groveling Mike Wheeler era?

Will finding a potential new love interest and Mike pining/jealous?

Come ONNN! You guys are way more delusional than you’re giving yourselves credit for and I urge you to join me!!!

#byler #stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things 5? #stranger things spoilers #stranger things theory #stranger things meta #byler evidence #byler season 4 #byler proof #byler nation #byler better be canon #be gay make byler canon #mike x will #byler tumblr #byler st4 #mike wheeler #will byers #noah schnapp #finn wolfhard #duffer brothers

[surachibee]

if you’ve been following a lot of my recent stuff, you’ve probably noticed (or maybe you haven’t, idk!) that I’ve been tagging a few art posts as ‘pitverse’. You’ve also probably noticed that I’ve provided no context to these posts what-so-ever! and that sucks! So to explain a bit, I present:

”surachi what the heck is pitverse”

Okay, first. ‘Pitverse’ is a working title. Maybe. It’s cheesy, but I kinda like it because it’s cheesy.

Anyways, if you’ve been following me for a while, you may or may not remember this art where I designed a bunch of pits that were loosely based on the different ending to the original Kid Icarus on the NES. Some took influence from different places (eg. the solider ending heavily drawing inspiration from Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters) and some were completely made up (eg. the farm ending’s design). It was fun! And it pretty much started this whole idea to begin with.

I’d draw some stuff here and there for it, but other than that I never really did much with the idea other than ‘oh hey look designs’. That is until it came up again a couple years later when I started to get *really* into oMaM stuff, which led to me coming back to the idea of a weird multiverse thing.

Thanks to a few friends, we talked about it and eventually it became like a four-swords adventure multiverse labyrinth thing. Pandora’s Labyrinth times twelve. So as it is right now, it’s like a hypothetical game where some new *evil big bad* takes a handful of Pits from different universes/timelines and plops them into some pocket dimension of different levels and challenges, and together, they have to find out what the heck going on.

Right now, I think I’m gonna try to keep it to three Pits for simplicity sake. Obviously, Pit from Kid Icarus: Uprising has to be here, that’s our guy. He’s also the protagonist! He’s left relatively unchanged in this AU. This also takes place in a post-game setting, so he’s already fought Hades. This applies to the other guys as well, even if their hypothetical “games” and adventures aren’t actually real (Factor) or heavily rewritten (Myth) here.

Good news is that Uprising Pit can still communicate with Palutena! But he’s the only one out of the bunch that can. (Would’nt that have been nice? Imagine all the work you could get done with THREE Palutenas [haha reference]). In this AU’s logic, Uprising’s world in the pocket-dimension what-ch-ma-have-it space is closer to the one where this takes place, so (Uprising) Palutena is able to establish a decent enough connection to at least communicate, though it’s not the best. The other Pit’s worlds are further away, so communication with their respective realms are off the table. This also causes other problems like occasionally “bugging out” and forgetting stuff since they’re so far from their original worlds. So Uprising Pit got kinda lucky.

Speaking of other Pits, there’s other Pits! Both of them draw inspiration from things previously done/involved in the franchise so they’re not entirely made up, but they do stray pretty far from their source material. Anyway..first, we have Factor! He’s heavily inspired by Factor 5’s rendition of Pit from their “Icarus” project back in 2007-2008 that was turned down. Here, this AU’s interpretation of the idea is a little more in line with the franchise’s overall light-hearted and goofy nature. (In this AU the Pit’s are taken from different points in time, so he would’ve been plucked from the future. I did this so 1. They all could look visually distinct from each other, and 2. the thought of Factor going “oh he doesn’t know about [x] yet” or Uprising Pit insisting Myth to NOT go after the wish seed in the future was funny.)

Next…there’s Myth! He’s based on Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters, and besides a few plot points he’s pretty much just a modern take on the character. He was easier to pin down because while the concept of Factor’s story was interesting, being banished from the heavens for some unspecified crime, it’s pretty vague in comparison. With Myth, there’s an entire game with a plot to go off of, even if this AU strays a bit from it.

That’s pretty much the basics of this AU! Just a couple of Pits going on an adventure getting into other-worldly shenanigans. I’m having a ton of fun with it and hopefully I can develop the idea more as I go along. Thanks for reading! There’s some extra footnotes and miscellaneous doodles below.

• This AU follows the idea that oMaM takes place in a different timeline than Kid Icarus: Uprising, hence it not being referenced (at least not on purpose, I’m looking at you aurum track accidentally having the same intro motif) or mentioned. Plus y’know, Sakurai not knowing it existed so there’s that. Might as well rework it into a weird explanation. (coping)

• All of these worlds take place in different timelines, so Factor isn’t an older version of Uprising Pit, nor is Uprising an older version of Myth. They’re all still Pit, and all of them have fought Medusa, but it had different outcomes (somewhat based on the endings) and at that point they diverged from each other. • I’ll probably change the naming of the Pits at some point. While they’re good right now, I’m not sure if I wanna keep Factor named after a company. Might have their names based off the titles of their respective games, so instead of “Factor”, “Myth”, and “Uprising” it’d be “Icarus” (based on the project’s internal name), “Myth”, and “Uprising”.

#surachiarttag #pitverse tag #kid icarus au

[thesherrinfordfacility]

left vs. right framing - part one (flashbacks)

ive talked about, very basically, ineloquently, and with very little academic reference*, the linguistic and symbolic connotations behind the concept of left vs. right - and i don't think it's escaped anyone's attention that s2 has a lot more noticeable examples of the 'reverse placement' than we see in s1.

*also please ignore the bit where i say that the only time they reverse in s1 is in 1601 because i lied like a rug, i was a fool, and my god does it happen at some auspicious moments in s1 - in fact it happens way more than i originally thought... because it's not just a case of when aziraphale is physically positioned to crowley's left vs. right, but also when the audience perceives him on the left vs. right hand side of the screen.

neil has also acknowledged their deliberate placements (which i hadnt realised before i wrote the above, but im nonetheless glad i wasnt reading into it baselessly). he invites fans in 2019 to their hcs on why this would be the case, so fuck it im going to give it a go.

im going to go in the chronological order of their timeline, not just because it's more logical, but because i think the placement directly relates to aziraphale, and his development since the beginning.

by way of an introduction, i think it should be noted that in the pre-fall scene, on the wall of eden, and in mesopotamia, aziraphale is positioned resolutely to the right of crowley. there are some shots where the audience sees from behind them, but their placement does not change. this gives us the baseline - their traditional positioning - upon which to contrast the occasions that follow where this changes. when we are introduced to aziraphale, he is shown as being (for the most part) conventionally angelic, and very clear in what is the heavenly, right path, derisive at crowley's alternative perspective as a demon.

aziraphale is pointedly on crowley's right for most of the show, or at least shown to the audience as being on the left-hand side of the screen. the way i interpret this 'traditional' position of his, is that it connotes that aziraphale in a state of certainty or conviction. when aziraphale is shown in the opposite placement - to crowley's left or on the right-hand side of the screen - it suggests that aziraphale is battling some kind of internal conflict.

2500 BC

i debated whether or not to go into the job minisode, but i do think there's a very important moment that whilst maybe they do not deliberately swap their habitual places (ie. it could be for blocking reasons), there is a moment where, to the audience, they are shown in a switched position.

for most of the minisode, aziraphale is shown in the traditional position in relation to crawly. there is no doubt in his mind that the children should not die, that is the part that is concrete. his hesitation in this minisode comes, however, from whether he should question what, as crawly states, is the exact will of god.

aziraphale seems to toy with the idea, as far as i see it, that god is not actively supporting or discouraging harm being done to the children; she is, simply, letting her creations decide for themselves, and no answer - to her mind - is wrong. it's all down to free will, and what her creations think is right or wrong. aziraphale seems to understand this to a limited extent (albeit then later on considers that maybe it was the will of god after all); he contradicts crawly, but nonetheless goes by his own moral code of thwarting job's children's fate... as heaven deems it should occur.

but in order to do so, he has to lie - and therein sits the moral dilemma. he baldly lies to the face of two powerful archangels, one the highest angelic (?) representative of god, outright defying what he considers may be the will of god, and does the bad thing to ensure the right thing. what is the greater crime, to his mind? well, he makes up his mind, protects the children, and lies:

it could very well just be because this is how the scene is set up, and there's nothing else to it. but for aziraphale to not only be placed to the left of crawly, but for a) aziraphale to be placed to the left of all parties present, and b) crowley to be placed to the right, with all the angels between them, indicates just how difficult aziraphale finds navigating this situation - absolutely supported by his later anticipation that he will be made to fall for his 'transgression'.

1601

so i think we can pretty much agree that despite not being the only time in s1 for them to deliberately or pointedly switch within the scene, it is the first, and perhaps most pivotal, time that they do. between job and 1601, all of the flashbacks have had aziraphale placed traditionally on crowley's right, and connote aziraphale's moral conviction.

by 1601, we know that aziraphale has been resistant to the Arrangement when crowley proposed it in 537 AD. aziraphale sticks to the heavenly, angelic principle that it would be lying and dishonest; probably scared out his wits by the close-call in uz, but also out of fear that if they were to be found out, michael and gabriel would rain shit on him.

(which, given how their 'fraternisation' got revealed in 2019, may or may not have been unfounded, depending on how you look at it. gabriel is hesitant to accept that it was anything other than aziraphale doing his job - "im sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation." - and it falls to the archangel baddie trio to rough aziraphale up for it)

but by 1601, aziraphale's resolve in this regard has wavered. he admits that he and crowley have been doing favours for each other, but doesn't want the title 'Arrangement' given to it, and certainly not out loud. but when crowley continues, as he did in 537 AD, to persuade (tempt?) aziraphale into it, the reasoning as to why he's resistant has changed. he no longer gives the explanation that it would mean disaster for him in heaven, but that it would spell annihilation for crowley with hell.

i feel like this is something crowley is well aware of - that aziraphale is not necessarily against the idea (after all, they've done it "dozens of times now"), that aziraphale certainly sees the benefit of being slightly slopey-shouldered, and all he needs is the final nudge to betray his morals, and disregard his, frankly, valid worry that crowley being caught either fraternising with an angel, or indeed doing good things, would be an unmitigated catastrophe. (see: 1827 death-slide into hell, and 1941 literally caught red-handed)

by all accounts, the Arrangement is a Bad Idea, and if aziraphale isn't blatantly clairvoyant about this, he's certainly got the better measure of hell and heaven than crowley seems to. imo crowley, however, chronically underestimates them both - hell, in particular. his platitude that hell will not care as long as they get the paperwork is proven false in the next few flashbacks, and yet he continues; if nothing else, it stops being an excuse to slack off, and instead becomes a way to keep seeing aziraphale. aziraphale is evidently reassured by crowley's conviction sufficiently enough (as well as likely wanting the same excuse) to agree.

but again, this goes against what he believes is the right thing - whether it's wrong because it's not angelic or because it would mean crowley could get hurt, take your pick (both are equally compelling) - and this is represented, for me, by crowley literally oscillating behind him. it constantly puts aziraphale on the edge of that conflict, and when he lands - when he chooses to accept the Arrangement - crowley is on his right, not his left.

1793

from the audience's perspective, this whole scene has crowley on aziraphale's right. all of it. now before anyone comes to say it's just blocking - yeah, sure, okay, maybe it is. but it could, i would imagine, have rather easily been set where crowley is on his left. when aziraphale turns around, the camera deliberately looks over his right shoulder as he spins round, and places crowley on the left hand side of the screen. so let's look at it closer with the above 1601 turning point in mind.

there's the whole thought process that aziraphale set up this 'scene' as a way to get crowley to play the hero, his knight in shining armour - and whilst ive said it in multiple posts, i'll say it again; this is not quite how i interpret it. aziraphale definitely has a means to get out of the situation (there's no miracle blocker, he changes his clothes - even if that miracle "barely counts"), but he doesn't want to perform another because of the reprimand from gabriel. that being said, the risk of discorporation, especially when he'd have to explain the embarrassing predicament that he just wanted his sweet, sweet crepes (and brioche), would probably be a viable excuse to use a miracle; it's hardly frivolous, by definition. arguably, wasting a body would be more frivolous.

so by the point that aziraphale's tried - and failed - to talk his way out of the situation, and not noticed the guard being stopped in his tracks, crowley has appeared. crowley seems to definitely have a way of tracking him - whether it's a demonic-ish power, or because of the instruction left in the book furfur has in 1941, whatever. crowley knows aziraphale is there, comes to 'save the day', and aziraphale seems genuinely elated that he's done so. he asks why he's there, crowley avoids the question, and aziraphale assumes the worst (which crowley quicky clarifies is not the case... but still very neatly sidesteps giving a full answer).

it stands to reason that after this, and 1941's 'rescue', that aziraphale would get into his head the conclusion that he vocalises in s2 - that crowley is coming to his aid, even when it's not strictly needed (and aziraphale is just simply trying a different escape route before resorting immediately to a miracle to get himself out of scrape), because he wants to, and it makes him happy. regardless, it makes aziraphale happy in kind to see him, and to make crowley happy.

but the thing is - they both err on the precipice of acknowledging this. the way crowley drawls out his "lucky i was in the area", and aziraphale similarly says he is indeed lucky... the delivery suggests that they're both aware that this is an excuse to see each other... or, at least, aziraphale suspects that crowley isn't there by accident or coincidence.

ultimately, crowley rescuing aziraphale, as he remarks, is something that if fully acknowledged, out loud, could get himself into some hot water. aziraphale accepts this, but insists that he thanks crowley somehow - so, what about lunch? the whole scene reads as them starting to shake off the excuse of the Arrangement, and (even if only to themselves) admit that they want to spend time together. which, at the very least, places aziraphale in a moral quandary - should he want to? what danger does it place them in? what does it say about him?

the scene ends however with aziraphale placing himself firmly back in the standard position - to crowley's right - as the guard is led out to his mistaken execution. the scene obviously doesn't go into much detail about the sociopolitical landscape of the reign of terror, but i find it intriguing that aziraphale's moral conflict over his association with crowley (positioned to his left) as opposed to his apathy over the execution of the guard (positioned to his right) is as blatant as it is.

1827

okay, so now we get to one of the biggest moral dilemmas aziraphale faces. in case you missed this, im still more convinced than not that the s2 flashbacks are from crowley's POV than aziraphale's, and so there may be, to my mind, a degree of bias in how this flashback is recounted... but that's by the by. aziraphale definitely has, same as in job, a huge introspection on what he considers to be right vs. wrong, and... arguably still misses the point for the majority of the minisode.

but it's interesting to note that where aziraphale has conviction in his beliefs, he is placed on crowley's right - as per usual. where he falters, however, is in his conversations with crowley of humanity's choice between right and wrong. he claims that humanity's suffering gives them more chances to choose the right thing, which crowley counters doesn't make sense, given that their suffering - especially poverty - makes it so humanity will choose whatever improves their lives or ends their suffering, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.

despite his vocal conviction in his principle, the angelic line, aziraphale seems to doubt it privately - you can see that in his expression - he's not entirely sure, or doesn't fully understand it at the very least. when he doesn't quite know how to give things a logical explanation, he falls back to the old standby of claiming that it's all ineffable, which... okay, sure, maybe that's true. who is he to question what god has deemed to be so?

aziraphale is not an unfeeling or unsympathetic person. so his view on suffering here is, in some ways, is completely at odds with some of the lesson he learnt in job; that suffering doesn't necessarily make you more susceptible to do right or wrong things, it only drives you to do whatever it takes to survive, to escape that suffering, and its fairly immaterial whether it's right or wrong. he learns in job to go by what he thinks is right, not by what someone else has dictated he do - and here, in this scene, i do think he begins to question whether things are as black and white as he has previously rationalised - that the situation with job is not a one-off. hence, to me, he is on crowley's left - occupying the position of examining his moral identity, and his conscience.

and just for the avoidance of doubt, he seems to reach a conclusion that, no, he has the right of it - indicated by his return to crowley's right. he thwarts elspeth with the body, and tries to further thwart the necessity of bodysnatching by attempting to convince dalrymple that if he wants the bodies so bad, he is at fault for exploiting the poor and desperate. once he holds the little boy's tumour, however, his moral stance shifts, and he starts to see the benefit to the whole endeavour - and returns to elspeth and morag, but still on crowley's right. he hasn't had a dilemma here, just a sharp realignment now that he has the context of human suffering literally handed to him. his stance on the issue literally turns on a dime.

1941

it's not until the graveyard, when crowley points out that only the rich have the means to safeguard their remains, and that by aziraphale's reckoning that sounds like the right way of the world, that aziraphale is once again forced to reconcile his moral dissonance. in this scene, aziraphale is once again on crowley's left as he examines this.

he continues to be on crowley's left, funnily enough, when they enter the mausoleum. aziraphale is warring with the decision to save morag, citing that it's not technically allowed but he has the power to do so, and it's his fault, so he ought to do it. regrettably, however, he's too late - and morag dies. and when elspeth intends to take her body to dalrymple, crowley still pointedly places himself to aziraphale's right, suggesting that aziraphale continues to be in internal conflict over the situation. something he feels is wrong but... well, "it's a bit different when it's someone you know."

for the rest of the minisode, however, crowley and aziraphale return to their traditional positions; and i think this marks where aziraphale does, in fact, learn something from the whole encounter. he still hesitates at giving the money to elspeth, but it's weaker than it was before; he follows crowley instructions to hand it over with little protest, possibly having seen that humans having a means to survive will, in fact, make it easier for them to make choices.

be warned; the 1941 examination is lengthy. however, i think it especially poignant in that this seems to be where we depart from aziraphale having issues reconciling his morals as concerns right and wrong in general terms, and instead it contextually hinges in direct response to how his relationship with crowley himself changes. it becomes a more specific introspection into how aziraphale handles the predicament of realising that he's fallen in love with crowley, and the conflict that this poses for him.

for all of the church scene, we see that crowley is positioned to aziraphale's right. this is in stark contrast to where we left off in 1862, when crowley is completely on aziraphale's left as per tradition - where aziraphale stuck by his principles on the issue of the holy water, that there is no way he'd ever give crowley the means to destroy himself (and then adds, when that doesn't dissuade crowley, that gaining it would also place aziraphale himself in a dangerous position), and doesn't sway from this. in 1862, he enters, remains, and exits entirely on crowley's right.

but back to 1941; upon reflection of the specific moments where he and crowley switch positions, or at least their positioning is reversed to the audience - as i said, i think 1941 might be where aziraphale starts to particularly feel conflict around crowley on a personal level.

crowley enters the church, and throughout is, on aziraphale's right instead. we could look at this the same way as we do the 1793 scene. but in 1941, with the context of the holy water, it feels like more than that (especially when you consider that crowley calls attention to the holy water in the church itself - holy water that doesn't serve any purpose within the 1941 flashbacks, but obviously inspires his heist plans 26 years later). aziraphale and crowley left off, canonically, on a bad note; they argued over it, biggest argument they've had (perhaps even the first?), and they've been disconnected as a result ever since.

but here crowley is once again, by my reckoning, very suspiciously arriving at the exact right moment (and before aziraphale even has a chance to get himself out of the situation which - let's face it - aziraphale absolutely could do), to 'save' aziraphale even after everything that happened, even after a huge argument that, again, canonically separated them for 79 years.

this arguably puts aziraphale into a quandary yet again; crowley has been the bigger person, to reach out first, and on top of that has done so by way of 'saving' him from literal discorporation, as well as associated embarrassment. aziraphale is still angry with crowley by the time he arrives at the church, and this is only added to by his assumption that crowley Has Something To Do With The Nazis, but he's made to very quickly re-evaluate his bias, his anger, and the measure that he previously had of crowley as residue from 1862. perhaps (spitballing here) aziraphale thought in 1862 that crowley was exploiting their friendship, and was manipulating him. and look - crowley may have in fact been doing just that, out of fear, but he still came to aziraphale when aziraphale 'needed' him, like nothing had ever gone amiss. and i daresay that fucks with aziraphale's head ever so slightly - makes him question, once again, what is the right or wrong thing to do.

and then we move to the post-bombshell but pre-Bombshell moment; 'lo and behold, crowley is now suddenly shown to the audience as being to aziraphale's left - back in the usual positioning. in those few moments, as the dust settles, aziraphale seems to have made up his mind, resolved his moral dilemma, and attempts to break the ice; "that was very kind of you." it works, puts them back into their familiar territory and dynamic... he's resolved his inner conflict that crowley did the right thing, the better thing - to set aside and (even if temporarily) let go of their argument, because they ultimately care very much about each other, and can always rely upon each other.

but the thing is, the positioning is the traditional way around... but only temporarily. crowley reveals that he saved aziraphale's books, hands them to aziraphale, and crosses over him, placing aziraphale back on crowley's left, rather than his right. in this scene, as we all know, aziraphale abruptly realises that not only does he love crowley, but that crowley, maybe, might just love him too. and it plunges, i think, aziraphale right back into the theme that continues through the 1941 minisode in s2; that he's now at war with himself, all over again, over his newly processed feelings for crowley.

with that in mind, let's continue with the s2 1941 minisode. because wow do we really get into the weeds of this left/right placement. so we've left the s1 1941 flashback where aziraphale has abruptly realised the depth of what he feels for crowley. regardless of the saucy subtext of aziraphale's lines in the bentley, he tries to coax out of crowley a way in which he could possibly repay his kindness, and is knocked back*. but once we get into the windwill, aziraphale volunteers to cover for crowley when he bollockses up with the whisky bottles, an act of reciprocation as far as aziraphale can brave at this early stage - and all the while, aziraphale continues, from the rubble scene where crowley crosses from the right of the screen to the left, to be on crowley's left, rather than his right.

(*i do however find it rather telling that instead of crowley delivering on "lift home?", he chooses to take a detour and bring aziraphale along with him... a scheme? to keep in aziraphale's company for longer? who knows)

we could interpret this as aziraphale being at odds with himself because he's doing what is ultimately a personal favour for a demon, and in reciprocation - but i think he's far beyond that being An Issue at this point. yes, he's taking this opportunity to pay back the favour he feels he owes crowley for the "very nice thing [he] did" because road head wasn't cutting it, apparently, but his line? about crowley being his friend? no - aziraphale is still sitting on his inner conflict of realising, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, that he's in love with him. this positioning continues all the way through the bookshop scenes.

given the dialogue in the scene, it's a continuation of the above moment in the windmill; aziraphale is fully cognizant of his newly realised feelings for crowley - we know this from his twice-hesitation of the word 'friend' - and is still stuck in that realisation, possibly even warring with himself internally as to where to tread that fine line... does he go for it, acknowledge it out loud? is now the time? has he fully understood what crowley was, he thinks, trying to communicate to aziraphale? is it right? would it put them in danger?

this whole internal conflict is set aside somewhat by the magician plot, and when they leave the bookshop, leave its safety and enter into unfamiliar territory, aziraphale is back on crowley's right. i don't think it's because he's made a decision, or resolved to anything, but more he's had to bury it momentarily, and put the mask back on again. it doesn't slip until aziraphale is trying to convince crowley to engage in the bullet catch, in a small moment that aziraphale thinks is unobserved by anyone. i don't think aziraphale can't quite miss crowley's hesitancy, and even mimics his head movements to maintain eye contact, cornering crowley into agreeing to the trick.

however, i think the fact that - once again - aziraphale ends up placed to the right of the screen, rather than the left, indicates potentially that aziraphale is still conflicted. his interactions with crowley here scream of aziraphale levelling up their dynamic by placing his complete trust and faith in crowley, of wanting crowley to help him - of reciprocation.

and yet there is still the suggestion that perhaps this is cutting it too close, and that aziraphale is, in his overall excitement, losing sight of what they - as an angel and a demon - can and can't risk. this foreshadowing ultimately pays dividends later on in the minisode; this very closeness is what brings them, as close as they have been so far, to near-destruction as a result of their affiliation... and that's just when, ultimately, they were just friends; what would happen if something more was acknowledged?

let's continue this onto the stage; crowley crosses aziraphale in the reverse motion that we saw at the end of the church scene, entering the screen from the non-traditional left hand side, and crossing back over to aziraphale's left/right hand side of the screen.

this to me feels like aziraphale is resolute in his faith in crowley, despite the issue surrounding the miracles; he doesn't abandon the performance... not just because it could be embarrassing for him to do so, but because, miracles or no miracles, he trusts crowley to do this. the issue that remains is convincing crowley to trust in his trust which, ultimately, crowley does - and the trick is performed flawlessly, only cementing aziraphale's conviction that his faith in crowley is not misplaced. sure, he's scared in the scene once he realises miracles are no longer a safety net, but his trust in crowley doesn't waver.

but then! then! we get to the dressing room. we see most of the scene, understandably, from behind aziraphale and facing furfur - this places aziraphale on the left-hand side of the screen as per usual. but in the context of his position vs. crowley's, they are reversed. aziraphale is positioned to crowley's left, instead of his right.

this calls back to the dilemma aziraphale faces right back in the bookshop; what risk is there in aziraphale potentially acknowledging his feelings out loud to crowley? or reciprocating, as he suspects it would be?

crowley is being threatened, and their closeness, their affiliation, their fraternisation, has directly brought the threat to their door. it's the bucket of ice water poured over them, over aziraphale in particular, that to be anything beyond idle acquaintances will bring danger and despair - because it literally would place crowley in harm's way. that brief moment of elation and contentment, of possibly even considering confessing what he feels - reciprocating, as he sees it - to crowley, is suddenly wiped away.

aziraphale saves the day of course, but it's a close call. it's too close, and not something that he can risk again. once furfur and the nazis leave, and aziraphale and crowley return to the bookshop, aziraphale is back on crowley's right. he's resolved to keep the status quo, because he's now been directly exposed to the risk of there being something more. that continued closeness with crowley as friends, let alone as anything else, puts crowley directly in harm's way. and it's a risk he cannot take; his dialogue speaks of him trying to impress on crowley that he cares for him, but compared to before, he now is keeping him at arms length.

a brief moment of consideration for how s3's 1941 flashback could go. it may initially continue on with this traditional placement; that aziraphale is resolute that despite what he feels, and suspects what crowley might feel, it is not worth the risk of losing him completely.

if there is any romantic push from crowley, as i suspect hope there will be, i'd imagine the positioning to be reversed, to show the last glimpse of aziraphale being tempted to it, of having to make a very clear, firm decision on whether to pass the point of no return.

but then aziraphale, id imagine, would come to his senses, and as he stands firm on keeping his emotional distance from crowley, to not risk his safety, and ultimately reject him, their placements would return to their traditional position.

1967

im finally going to finish off part one (part two will be written... eventually, and look at 2008 onwards) with a small look at 1967. this is difficult, because - for our sins - uk vehicles are right-hand drive... so there is literally no option but to have them in the reverse positioning.

because of this, i don't think it's fair to single out this one interaction of them in the bentley as being an instance that fits the above pattern - at least, not until all bentley interactions are examined. plus, neil confirmed that the positioning of aziraphale and crowley to each other (and, i imagine, to the audience) was very deliberate, but something they couldn't account for in scenes in the bentley.

regardless - the dialogue therefore, in my opinion, has to pull even more weight (and by god does it ever) in this scene to show aziraphale's turmoil over the holy water. that being said, even in the first few sentences, we know that aziraphale has actually made up his mind to give crowley the holy water; he doesn't like it, hates it in fact, and we can even see how much it devastates him to do so - but he has surrendered to handing it over in order to prevent crowley doing something dangerous and stupid in order to obtain it without aziraphale's involvement.

it's the lesser of two evils - aziraphale is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea - but he chooses to give it to him. wraps it in a tartan flask to remind crowley of what exactly the holy water means to aziraphale, and remind him of the gravity of the request. remind him of what aziraphale stands to lose if crowley was lying, if crowley in fact does intends to use it on himself, and also to remind him that the request is - at this point - a breaking point for aziraphale. their relationship to each other, whatever it is, is re-contextualised by this.

a lot of the context of aziraphale's last line is clearly wrapped up in the missing s3 1941 flashback, but it's still nonetheless clear that aziraphale is not necessarily conflicted over this decision anymore; he doesn't hesitate to give it to crowley, but merely states that he will do this for him, knowing the risk, because the alternative is worse still. whatever happened in 1941 means that aziraphale still can't quite bring himself to be close to crowley, cant risk anything anymore, but he still doesn't hesitate.

part two to come soon!

#the mother of all metas this nearly killed me #good omens #s1 meta #s2 meta #flashback meta #1941 spec #aziraphale meta

[ramshackledtrickster]

Tuning in on the family stuff with Miguel. Are we even sure that he used to have a family in his own dimension? Because the way he talked about his past made it sound like he might’ve not even had that. So either he might’ve had a family before and experienced twice the loss. Or did he just have a very shitty life, which made it easier for him to go somewhere where he has someone to personally love & care for. Also, when he left his dimension, wouldn’t that mean things went down the pits there?

Maybe !! Again, there’s tons of possibilities since the backstory is so vague so far, and you’re hitting all the right possible marks

I personally subscribe to him having a family before (or at least having Gabriella before), since it makes more sense for his choice to jump worlds that way since that want is so so so much more potent if he had experienced that positive experience before.

Under the cut, mentions of domestic abuse, neglect, suicidality, getting drugged

His life really is. Shitty. In the comics. He lacked a lot of stability growing up, his step-father being verbally and physically abusive while his mother was traumatized as a result (but coped with it unhealthily by later on neglecting Miguel, and projecting her hatred for his real father (Tyler Stone, Alchemax CEO) onto him growing up. His brother became completely jealous of him and tried to kill him, his love life is tumultuous and he has had outbursts that cost him that which he regrets deeply, and a lot of his own bodily autonomy was taken away from him at work since his spider-man origins revolve around Tyler drugging him with an extremely addictive substance (Rapture) that he could only get out through a gene splicer machine (and his co worker tried to kill him using spider DNA in that process). He is frequently shown as being suicidal and had a pretty in depth fantasy with that… it’s really hard to read and shocking tbh

So it makes total sense why he would jump at the opportunity to find somewhere where everything is better— even more so, if Gabriella was basically his only ray of sunshine in his own world, lost her, and would do anything to get back to her.

Maybe in his dimension, everything turned out for the worse too. His family dead (yeah his mom gets a redemption but gets killed off in a poorly done way— ,maybe Gabriel died too, or they ended on such bad terms they just never see each other again), partner dead, and the one person he had consistent positive connection to (his daughter) is dead or gone… he’ll, maybe his reputation as Spider-Man has take a turn for the worst and he can’t take being public enemy number one anymore. It would be hard to resist the temptation to go elsewhere, and part of it being to give himself a second chance and redeem himself since he fucked up a lot of his relationships himself. He’s remorseful, and heavily driven by guilt, and painfully aware of his shortcomings and his toxic traits that he has internalized over the years.

So yeah personally I can see your takes as being an ‘all the above’ type thing in my interpretation based on the comics :))

I guess my personal summation of it is,, no family (anymore— dead or cut off), but had one and wanted to hold onto that with Gabriella, his choice was absolutely influenced by his personal trauma and upbringing and guilt complex, and maybe he left his dimension since he felt he had nothing left to lose. Maybe during the period he left his own dimension, things stayed relatively/negatively the same? Since it’s a universe run by Alchemax (in the comics) and maybe he started feeling helpless since there’s not enough that could be done to stop it, and he lost so much motivation over time despite wishing he could do more to change it?

#across the spider verse spoilers #miguel o'hara #spiderman 2099 #spoilers #child abuse cw #suicidal cw #drugging cw #ask to tag

[slasherfckr]

Did you think you could get away with writing something about our Tommy cheating and leave us hanging? WRONG! I demand humbly request an ending to somehow fix the hearts broken in the reading of the fanfic. Please, write about Thomas sparing reader and trying to make up for what he's done. Reader is obviously very hurt and won't trust Tommy for a long time, but appreciates that he at least has the decency to apologize and that he still chose them over that victim. Thank you ;;

PS: it's totally cool if you don't wanna! I'm just being a silly little idiot. If you feel like it should remain with an up-to-interpretation ending or just don't feel like it, then so be it! <3

You ask, you shall receive. Here's a follow up to the last Thomas fic.

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

Cheating!Thomas Hewitt x GN!Reader (pt.2)

You awaited the, hopefully, quick death Tommy and his chainsaw would bring you but it never came

You instead heard a heart stopping, blood curdling scream over the roar of the saw

You opened your eyes and looked over to Thomas cutting the victim down. Blood spraying all over you in the process

The sound of the chainsaw soon died out and you were left just staring up at your....you weren't even sure what to call Tommy anymore

You were so mad at him for betraying your trust in the most brutal way. But deep down, you still loved him. You just didn't think you could ever forgive him for what he's done

Thomas put down his saw and slowly turned to you, his eyes refusing to meet yours. He got down onto his knees and reached out for your hands

He held your hands in his for a minute before he raised his head up and looked at you

There was so much pain and sorrow in his eyes. Your heart broke at the sight. You wanted to hold him. To comfort him. But then you remembered why this was all happening

"Listen....Thomas....You cheated on me. You hurt me really bad. I....I just want to know. Why? Why did you do what you did?"

Thomas was about to sign you an answer but then Hoyt opened his mouth

"You two can fucking talk about that later. Right now, you need to go get a damn shower and Thomas needs to clean up his mess. Now get to it.'

You rolled your eyes at Hoyt but did as you were told anyways. You didn't have the energy to argue with the old fuck. Besides, maybe a nice cool shower would help straighten your mind out. So many thoughts were running around in your head, you couldn't think straight at the moment

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

You were up in the room finishing drying your hair with a towel when there was a knock on the door before it opened

Thomas came in and sat on the bed. Your heart was dreading what your next conversation would entail

You took a deep breath and grabbed his hand

"Thomas I want you to be completely honest with me. Did you have sex with that person because you don't love me anymore? Or because I can't give you everything you want in a relationship?"

Thomas' eyes went wide and he shook his head. You felt a little relieved that it wasn't your fault what has happened

"So....what happened?"

Thomas signed to you what happened

Apparently, they tried seducing him to try and escape. He told them he already had someone, they somehow convinced him that you would enjoy seeing him being so intimate with another person, that that was a common kink people had; to watch their SO bang another person. He immediately knew he fucked up when he saw your crying face down in the basement

You shook your head at Thomas. You felt bad he had been tricked so easily by a victim but on the other hand, he could have easily gotten you to double check

"They weren't wrong. That is a kink people have but it's not one of mine. This is why it's important to ask if you're unsure about something.... I'm sorry Thomas, I just can't forgive you...."

Before Thomas could react, you continued

"But that doesn't mean I don't love you still. I'm willing to give you another chance but you have to earn my trust again, which might take a very long time.....are you willing to work through this with me?"

You barely got the last word out before you were crushed by a bone crushing hug by Thomas. He quickly pulled away, nodding his head as he stroked one of your cheeks

You got up and gathered what little things you had in his room

"Well I'll be in the guest bedroom if you ever need me, Tommy."

You gave him a small smile before leaving the room

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

Ahhh sorry if it wasn't that good! Literally could not think of any other way on how/why Thomas would cheat honestly. Hence why the first fic was left so ambiguous. Hope this eased some heartbreaks the first one caused!

#texas chainsaw massacre #thomas hewitt x reader #thomas hewitt #slasher x reader #slashers #slasher fucker #tw cheating

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

Horcruxes as Seven Deadly Sins

This has been jabbing at my brain for a while, I need to get it out. Idk if someone has already done this.

This will only mention Christian, because I don't think I have enough knowledge about Greek, Roman or any other interpretation of the seven deadly sins.

So, Tom Riddle created seven horcruxes. (actually eight)

It is no secret that Tom Riddle was obsessed with power, because he never had anything of value and thought power was the remedy for his misfortune and a very depressing life. Splitting one's soul is already a sin itself because it's done by murdering someone. Tom Riddle Jr. (I think it's hilarious to call him that so what) created seven of them during various stages of his life. Without further ado, let's review his misdeeds chronologically.

The Diary

The first horcrux he created was by murdering Myrtle, an innocent Muggleborn Ravenclaw student. The basilisk did Tom's bidding. The diary becoming a horcrux is very interesing considering the timeline. He was in fifth or sixth year. By that time he figured out he was the descendant of Salazar Slytherin, but he did not yet know of the tragedy that brought him to life. He thought he was doing noble work by getting rid of the muggleborns and finishing what Salazar intended from the start. Years later, diary Tom talks to Harry about abandoning his filthy muggle father's name, but had Tom already visited his uncle by that time and found out about his parents? Or did Tom murder Myrtle earlier and then was told about his heritage as a diary by the actual corporal Tom? Because when he visited his uncle and found out his father was a muggle, he knocked his uncle out, went to the Riddle manor and killed his father and his grandparents. And stole the Gaunt family ring, which would also become a horcrux. Officially, the diary is considered the first horcrux, so we'll follow that. I will assign the diary the sin of wrath. Tom was angry at his muggle father, weak mother, deranged relatives who destroyed an ancient house and his childhood. However, he still holds his heritage in somewhat of a high regard because, frankly, what else he has left. He took out his wrath on regular bystanders who had no effect on his life. Teenage boy bottles his anger in his diary and holds petty grudges.

Marvolo Gaunt's Ring

Created after Tom spoke to Slughorn about splitting a soul in more than two pieces. A gaudy ring, not even a famous artifact, the last family heirloom of Gaunts. Even though his mother's side of the family was no less pathetic than his father's, Tom did not forsake it completely. He still hid his connection to them, but at least they provided him with the gift of parseltongue and magical talent. I think he was silently...grateful, for the lack of a better term. He felt no sympathy towards his mother even before he found out who she was, but he was grateful for her the way you can be grateful for someone who brought you to this world and gave you gift of magic and did nothing else for you. The ring represents the sin of pride because Tom was not honoring his family, he clung to his terrible ancestry. The word pride is not used as a bad thing in the modern context as much. You can be proud of something. That's not a bad thing, right? Well, in this case, it is. Tom was not ashamed of the things Gaunts did, he was ashamed how they ended up. If he was met with Gaunts who looked and lived like Malfoys but where ten times worse, he wouldn't hide his connection to them and would display his pride. Why else would he keep the ring if he didn't plan to use it. Sentimental reasons.

Salazar Slytherin's Locket

Envy. Tom tracked down the current owner of the locket, killed her and stole it from her. He was envious in a way of Hepzibah Smith, who lived luxuriously, was in touch of her pureblood ancestry, a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff. Meanwhile, Tom, who, in his opinion, should've been born with the same privileges, had to scramble for scraps his whole life and smile politely at others and be of service, instead of the other way around. A prince mistaken for a beggar, forced to live his life, found the crown jewel of his. And some old lady displayed it like it was her own. Technically, it was.

Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem

Now, what business did Tommy have messing around with other founders' sacred artifacts? He had acquired "his own" ones. He could stop at three horcruxes. Surely, there were risks, consequences of such extreme magic, just take the locket and leave the cup, don't even bother with the lost diadem...Greed. He sniffed around and inquired about it while he was still in Hogwarts, charmed the Grey Lady Helena Ravenclaw to find out its whereabouts and went to bloody Albania to get it.

Why shouldn't Tom take the diadem and the cup as well? Why shouldn't he take other heirlooms and make it his? He's the greatest wizard of all time in the making. What can possibly rival his power? You get the point.

Helga Hufflepuff's Cup

Gluttony. Are we even surprised at this point? He went through all that trouble to get other items, the cup was literally lying right there next to the locket at Hepzibah Smith's house. I'm getting tired, I'm sorry.

Nagini

Sloth. The snake was already unnaturally loyal to him, he was actually acting affectionate towards it. Making a horcrux out of a living being was an unheard concept, but he'd done much weirder things already. The parselmouth and a snake, very original. His easiest and laziest horcrux, one more testament to his power and "pure" blood.

Harry Potter

Lust. Harry was a horcrux he never meant to create. On a fateful night when Voldemort nearly died of his own spell (the first time around), a small piece of his soul attached itself to the only living thing it could find, a baby. All of it, really, began with lust. An ambition gone bitter. Lust for power, immortality, desire to be remembered and stand out. Driven to insanity, orchestrated his own downfall. The lust for power, the only thing he could approximate with love.

#harry potter #tom riddle #slytherin #harry potter analysis #voldemort #tom marvolo riddle #lord voldemort

[dayedreamm]

Unexpected beginnings Chapter 1

blk fem OC x paige bueckers

warnings: angst, heartfelt goodbyes ----------------------------------------------------

“Ms. Robinson?” the teacher calls from the front of the classroom. It was first period and the last thing you wanted to do was deal with mathematics, so of course you were slumped on your desk not listening to a word the teacher was saying. “MS. ROBINSON,” she says in a harsh tone, although this time it seems to wake you as you shoot your head up looking frantically around the room. “PRESENT” you scream loudly and an erupt of laughter fills your ears as your eyes find the teachers enraged ones. She looked pissed, to say the least “Well since you want to take a nap, you can take all the ones you want in detention” she said before turning around to face the board. You internally groan as you attempt to rub the sleep out of your eyes so you can try to listen to this boring lesson.

20 minutes later

“Lunchhhh time” your best friend sings in your ear, her name was Talia you guys had just met freshman year but you guys were still close as if she was your sister. “You think it's going to be good or bad today causeee I was thinking of doordashing today,” she says mischievously. You roll your eyes, the girl wasn't rich but she had a wealthy boyfriend and whatever was his was hers he was whipped to say the least. “Looking forward to seeing yu on the field again Imani” Joshh says as he winks in your direction. You were known for your softball skills at the school but it didn't really make you popular unless it was the spring or late winter where winter workouts started. Although Josh, the tall jock who just shamelessly flirted with you in the hallway surprised you just a bit. “He sooo has a crush on you, why don't you give him a shot” Talia nudges at you. Yeah, you were bisexual, but you found yourself leaning toward more girls more specifically masculine girls, nothing against the fems you just were not attracted to them. You were a fem yourself and the sights of masc women had you foaming at the mouth. “I'm not really into him, he's just not my type personally,” you said still feeling tired. “Dont worry ill find you someb-” Talia lost her words as an explosion interpreted her mid-sentence

“EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THE SCHOOL ONE OF THE SCIENCE LABS HAVE BLOWN UP. EVACUATE I REPEAT EVACUATE” a teacher yells into the lunch room, you were terrified and a little frozen, but it didn't take much for Talia to grab your hand and start dragging you both toward an exit. Students flooded your vision as you tried to keep up with Talia as someone grabbed you by your arm and shoved you behind them in attempt to get in front of everybody. You fell to the floor and someone kicked your head causing your vision to go dark…..

20 hours later

beep….beep….beep… all you heard was the constant sounds of a machine near you and the smell of a hospital. You blinked quickly to get used to the light as you saw your mother, father, surrounding your bed while your little sister and little brother were asleep on the chairs. Your mother heard your movements and shot her head up to meet your opened eyes, her face glowed with excitement as she gently gave you a hug “oh my sweet daughter I am so happy you are ok” she says as some tears left her eyes. My dad tried to stay strong but failed as he engulfed me in a hug as well. “What happened” I asked in a state of worry, as if on cue talia walks in with snacks and her her lips curl into a smile that was onced sadden. “IMANI YOUR ALIVE” she says before running to hug me. I embrace her hug before my mother had to pry her off of me, and then she started rambling how sorry she was that she let go of me. I tried to calm her down but something in the background caught me attention…or more like somebody, there was a woman on tv in from of a burned school. My school. I pointed at the tv in shock, and thats when they told everything that happened. Apparently somebody had spilled the wrong chemicals making there be an explosion in the school that soon caught on fire, but, it had spread too fast before they could stop it. In addition, while you and talia were attempting to run away the flood of students made you guys separate, and also made you fall and someone kicked on the side of your head making you pass out.

2 hours later

Needless to say you were tired, the hospital finally released you, you wanted some real food, and you were sitting in your bed about to sleep, but a though still rang in your mind, you called talia to see if she had the same thought as you. You dialed her number and after two rings she answered, although before she could say anything you beat her to it. “wait where will we go to college now we are half way through the junior year.. AND OUR COLLEGE IS IN ASHES!!” You yelled. You were in a panic you didn't want to restart the year let alone not get a bachelors degree but who would take you guys now. “ I know girl….. and I have an answer to your question,” she says turning the mood from panic to sadness. “Your parents and my parents found colleges that would take us but-” “oh that's great when do we start” I say as I interrupt her. “Girl trust me we got this we can accomplish this together,” I say trying to brighten her mood. “No that's not it its just….. We're not going to the same college Imani” she says breaking the bad news. Your heart dropped, “wait where are you going..” I say heartbroken. I didnt want to start over again at a new school, it would be like freshman year all over again…  “im going to Notre Dame in Indiana” she says kinda quiet. “And how do you know all this?” i say questioning her. “Your mother thought it was best I break the news to you. So she told me the information.. And I was just thinking of a way to tell you.” she says going quiet again. 

“So then… where am I going to school..?” 

“Uconn” she responds

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

Authors note: yes I know Paige isn't in it yet but she will be in chapter 2 I just wanted to build up the plot.

#paige bueckers #uconn wbb #paige #wbb #uconn women’s basketball #uconn huskies