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#she has a huge god complex*
hella1975 · 1 year
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I'm watching the hunger games with people who's opinions I don't agree with HELP they literally don't get the implications of children murdering eachother like I do
(hella I've been reminded of you all day lol this is my 2nd ask about my day kfmsks)
that's genuinely so sweet i dont think you realise how much i appreciate things like this
oh bleugh i hate it when people just dont get a piece of media and ur just kinda sat there trying not to rant like 'you're all missing the fucking POINT'
#and the hunger games too? id be furious#something similar happened to me recently#okay so im very ashamed by this considering the fuss i kicked up about it but i CANNOT resist a show with dragons in it#so i eventually pirated all of house of the dragon and low and behold#youd have some of the most detailed worldbuilding ever and beautiful dragons and a ginormous budget for a fantasty world#and youd be enjoying it and then BOOM violence against women for literally no reason#it bugs the fuckkkk out of me but at least hotd has HUGE wlw undertones and the two main characters are actually women#and are COMPLEX? im not giving any compliments for this bc it's just not good enough but still it wasnt as awful as it has been#(*Looks at game of thrones*)#AND ANYWAY there's this woman in it called alicent hightower when i tell you i will defend her with my LIFE#and it's the typical 'female character made strong due to the trauma inflicted upon her by men'#and she is literally torn from her closest female friendship (love interest?) BECAUSE of men#and it becomes the ENTIRE FUCKING PLOT OF THE SHOW god it bugs me anyway#and it's made me superrrrrrrr protective of her bc not only do i adore her but she deserves so much better#like she's supposed to be the villain and the fandom are so thick that they treat her that way but im just like alicent get behind me#AND MY SISTER SAID SHE HATES HER#LIKE WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE SHOW AND MY SISTER JUST OUTRIGHT SAID SHE HATES ALICENT#I WAS LIKE NO YOU STUPID BITCH THIS IS WHAT THE MEN WANT ARE YOU JOKING YOU'RE FEEDING INTO IT#and i didnt know how to EXPLAIN to her why she was so wrong so im just there like why am i always right about everything#and everyone else is always so stupid why why why god im not you're strongest soldier#so yeah <3#ask
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arolesbianism · 5 months
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Impulsively read the most recent Kanade story and oh boy. Hooo boy. Thoughts and feelings
#rat rambles#sekai posting#I almost cried like five times godddddd I love kanade so much its insane#ok so. lets start with the positives#I am so fucking happy that they finally did an event like this. kanade has been in desperate need of any kind of character arc progression#and generally I rly like how kanade is written in this event!#I loved watching her just like. think to herself.#and I loved watching baby kanade be scary but also very adorable and the fact that she self taught herself cordes is sooo delightful#it also is yet again more insight into how kanade became the person she is today and also a wonderful look into how kanade views these#time and time again when kanade thinks about being happy and being loved its when her mom was alive#but its not just abt her mom being alive its also about her dad being so genuinely happy#its about her dad taking care of her and comforting her and being happy and it's just!! aughhh!!!!#I love that kanade doesnt just forgive herself just like that. she still blames herself so much and deals with self loathing.#butttt. that sorta leaves me to my nitpicks. I rly wish someone would just hug this kid and tell her its not her fault so that I can feel#secure in the sekai writers not actually buying the idea that its in any way kanade's fault#like it is in no way her fault that her dad formed an inferiority complex around his teenage daughter.#Im not saying its his fault either Im saying its no ones fault#they get close in this event to saying that tbf so Im not like pessimistic again its a nitpick#and the other thing is that Im not quite a fan of the conclusion but not in any huge way#just in a god this better be another step in a much longer character arc sorta thing#also Im trying to make my peace with the song to save mafuyu thing since I know theyre never dropping it#but god its so hard when it feels like the only satisfying way to do it is in a slow burn where at the end mafuyu realizes the slow burn#basically yknow how at the beginning mafuyu was upset at the prospect of kanades music only saving them a little?#I want them to realize that all of these little steps forward Did save them#that even if one song couldnt fix everything the fact that all of these songs have been there to help guide them did so much for them#I want the song that 'saves' them to be a song that makes them realize they Were saved#they survived. theyre living. and they want to keep living.#I want the penultimate kanade song to be a song of realization#oh also other negative no singing baby kanade worst event /j
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gallusrostromegalus · 2 years
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Herschel Has Discovered Tool Use. Again.
In january of 2021, deep in the throes of pandemic psychosis, we acquired a Corgi Puppy.
I would like to go on the record that we did not get a Corgi because they're cute. We got a Corgi because they're criminally brilliant and enthusiastic working dogs that were bred to bully cattle, which is the exact temperment a dog living in a house with three ADHD adults should have. Herschel does commit a lot of crime, but he also does his appinted service-dog job of "make everyone wake up, eat meals and go to bed at a reasonable and consistent time" extremely well, as well as his bonus jobs of "Keep the squirrels the hell out of the garden" and "Yell every time the cat does something". I didn't actually ask him to do that last job but it has helped in the "teach the cat to stay the hell off the stove" area.
But even with having a whole pack of humans another dog, and a cat to manage, this pales in comparison to his genetic capacity to manage several hundred sheep or cattle across the fields of Wales, and thus, Herschel has decided on further intellectual pursuits to occupy himself, namely, speedrunning the early phases of human tool use and terraforming.
I realized he has the brains of an entire hunter-gatherer tribe shortly after he got fixed, and within 24 hours and still dpey from anesthesia, he'd figured out that his plastic cone could be used to monopolize the water bowl and his favorite chew toys, and within a week, had learned how to carry three toys at once while leaving his mouth open by tucking the toys behind his enormous ears and under his chin. He also figured out that he could wiggle the cone to rest against his shoulders, and started using it as a shovel by literally running the bottom edge into the ground. But that wasn't making holes effeicently enough, apparently, and I ended up watching him figure out how to rotate the cone around so the two pieces of overlapping plastic were under his chin, then use his chin and the stairs to the deck to pinch both ends into a much more efficient V-Shape that let him gouge huge strips of dirt up in seconds. The anthropologists and animal behaviorists in the audience may recognize this as Tool Creation, a behavior normally only seen in higher primates, crows, and some parrots. Once a hole of suitable length, depth and temperature had been achieved, he very carefully rolled the cone around so the digging side was over his head and the smooth side under his chin, and splooted into his hole to cool his little tummy and stitches off. It was at that point that I realized that I was going to have to teach him how to garden, or he was going to teach himself.
He no longer has the cone (He was beginning to experiment with it as a battering ram), but his morning ritual is now "Wake everyone up at 8AM by screaming, locate everyone in house and jam my nose up theirs to make sure they're alive, go outside and scream at the squirrels. Now that Yard is Secure, go get Fun Parent who has hopefully taken their meds by now, and supervise them while they rifle through the plants (this is apparently KEY to their mental health), eating any pest animals Fun Parent points out, chase squirrel AGAIN, go inside and get Breakfast cookie." and BY GOD if we deviate from it there will be much screaming and destruction. If I am not home, it has been reported that he walks round the garden beds and sniffs the plants in the order I usually check them in before he will agree to come in. He doesn't quite know what the deal with the melons is, just that they need to be checked.
But we're out of the labor-intensive parts of gardening and now into Harvesting Season, and this is a bit boring except when I give him snap peas right off the vine, and he has decided to work on the complex physics problem that is Doorknobs.
And last week, he had a breakthrough.
Sometime in 2020, my mom sort-of taught her horrible crime herding dog Arwen how to open the back door so she could let herself out as she pleased during the day and stop interrupting Mom's Zoom calls. Arwen is a Kelpie, which means she's about 60lbs with full-length legs and horrible monkey paws that are one joint away from being hands, so when Arwen wants to open the back door, she sits up, leans on the door for purchase/to push it, and uses her terrible crime hands to *push* on the knob until it turns. She can pull the knob open by pawing and catching it on her toes, but she's 11-13 years old now and has mild arthritis, so she prefers to catch it on her central pad instead. She taught Charlie, the other equally brilliant but less criminally inclined dog, to do this but he doesn't like to go outside alone, so he rarely does this.
Herschel, ever the observant student, immediately tried copying them, but even though he is actually tall enough to reach the knob, his toes are just too stubby to get a decent grip on the knob, pushing or pulling, and the first few times, gave up and sat down to scream until one of the fullsize dogs or humans came to open the door for him.
Last week, we were up at my parent's again, and I watched him hunt around the living room until he found his slightly-sticky orange rubber ball (It's clean, it's just a kind of rubber that's always a bit tacky), carry it across the house, stand up on his hind legs at the back door, put the rubber ball on top of the gap between the knob and the wall, and then push down on the ball, which caught the doorknob and turned it for him, thus opening the door. He let himself out, had a merry time yelling at the squirrels, came back in, stopped a few feet inside the door, went back out, grabbed his ball, and brought it back into his kennel, a place he can leave toys if he doesn't want the other dogs playing with them.
This means he somehow worked out how doorknobs work, how fucking levers work, and that his orange rubber ball specifically was the one that would work (none of his other toys are the correct size/texture), that he'd need that ball specifically to open the door again, and yesterday he did the same trick with the bedroom door, so he knows that the rubber ball/skeleton key can be used on all doorknobs, not just that one.
I wonder if I can teach him to sweep.
___
If you want to fund Herschel's research into Tool Use and/or get me therapy for the ensuing chaos, please feel free to donate to my Ko-Fi, or get further Dog Content by subscribing to my Patreon.
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caligvlasaqvarivm · 3 months
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Murder, Love, and Destiny: An Eridan Ampora Character Study
Warnings for things from Homestuck, like discussions of child abuse, mental illness, murder, suicide, etc. etc.
Because there's a huge wall of text after this point, I'm going to summarize what I hope to convince you of in bullet point format, and then hope you'll actually read the rest of the text before arguing with me about it.
Eridan is the least casteist highblood, if you ignore all the slurs.
Those are his emotional support slurs.
Pale EriKar was not only canon, but set up to be endgame.
Eridan is incredibly plot-relevant, thematically relevant, and was definitely originally intended to be brought back to life, alongside the other dead trolls.
He's Sad.
The first thing we have to establish is what counts as "canon" for the purpose of this essay. I am only counting the original comic up to Game Over, after which there's a general consensus that Hussie kind of gave up on his original planned ending, and slapped together something that most people hate. So I am immediately disqualifying Pesterquest, supplementary material, fanworks deemed canon, the epilogues, and Homestuck^2.
Moreover, we are taking Hussie's commentaries with a grain of salt, for two reasons. The first reason is that I firmly believe - and will be arguing - that the original plan was to bring Eridan (and the other dead trolls) back; therefore, Hussie (who has a track record of playing coy with future plot twists) can't speak too fondly of him, lest he give it away. The second reason for de-emphasizing Hussie's words is that, post-retcon, Hussie isn't very well going to say that he had plans for a better ending, and then didn't execute on them; to save face, he has to act as though his trashing of several prior plot threads, including but not limited to Eridan, was the plan all along.
Therefore, this essay will not be putting too much emphasis on Word of God, and will instead be relying on textual evidence from the comic itself, of which there is plenty. So without further ado:
Eridan is a Consummate Murderer.
The reason I'm starting with this point is that, far more than any other, this truth lies at the core of his being. Eridan is formally introduced to us with a murder, and he's haunted by an overpowering genocide complex. He outright describes to Rose at one point that "killin is all i evver done practically," and uses "murder" as an expletive (ie "swweet stinkin murder"). With a conservative estimate of 5 kills per week for 4 sweeps (Vriska looks VERY young when she has to start killing, and Eridan was likely a similar age when he began), both Eridan and Vriska easily have bodycounts above 2000 - the real number is probably even higher.
At this point, many raise an objection that Eridan is only killing lusii, but I believe we need to count his kills as troll murders, for three reasons: first, a dead lusus results in the orphaned troll being culled; second, one has to assume he has had cases of trolls trying to defend their lusii, or coming after him for vengeance; and third - and most importantly - Eridan HIMSELF is thinking about the orphaned trolls.
Compare Feferi: Go Home:
That should keep her happy for a while. At least until she dies.
To Eridan: Go Home:
That should keep her happy for a while. And make a freshly orphaned troll somewhere very sad.
So Eridan, to a much greater extent than even Feferi, is thinking about the orphaned trolls he's leaving behind, and considers his own actions to be murder.
Now that we've established the facts regarding his murders - a rough bodycount, and the fact that, by his own admission, he barely had any hobbies outside of it - we can move on to the effect that it's had on him. It's not very good!
Vriska's manipul8tions and murders had to be done for her own sake - if she ever stopped, she died. Therefore, much of Vriska's personality revolves around justifying her own actions so she doesn't have to reckon with her softer feelings, like guilt or kindness - which she expresses would be viewed as scandalous by others of her caste.
But if Eridan ever stops feeding Gl'bgolyb, everybody dies. The stakes he has riding on his shoulders are, at all times, the fate of all trolls, including all his friends. Given Dualscar's title was "Orphaner," it's implied that killing lusii for Gl'bgolyb has always been a violet blood's duty, and is seen as such by the others, which is why nobody expresses gratitude for his hard work even a single time.
Which brings us to our next point:
Eridan is Crushed by Anxiety.
If Eridan stops killing lusii, everybody - especially his friends, but everybody else, too - dies.
If Eridan ever shows guilt or kindness, he'll be considered "weak" by the standards of highbloods - he shares this with Vriska.
Eridan is expected, by aristocratic tradition, to take on the mantle of his ancestor Dualscar and finish his work. Dualscar met a comedically cringefail end, so this is a massive undertaking.
Before finding out that god tiering is an option - so, for nearly his entire life - Eridan has had to live with the expectation that he will outlive all of his friends. The lowbloods from culling or dying on the battlefield, the highbloods from old age, and Feferi from being killed by the Empress when she gets old enough.
(This is reflected in who he talks to the most - Feferi, who's the only one with a natural lifespan longer than his, Vriska, who's a highblood, Kanaya, who's practically guaranteed to survive into adulthood, and Karkat, whose anonblood allows Eridan to give him the benefit of the doubt.)
Also if he can't land his concupiscent quadrants he'll die from that too, but that seems pretty secondary to the rest of his concerns.
He can't even make friends with the other highbloods, because sea dwellers are expected to hate and antagonize them.
He had a free ticket into adulthood, but would almost certainly be expected to join the army and serve as a commander. That is to say, his fate of performing the role of a vicious, murderous sea dweller seems dreadfully inevitable to him.
NO WONDER he can't stop having emotional breakdowns. NO WONDER his chatlogs swing wildly from relentless self-aggrandizement to traumadumping. NO WONDER he's obsessed with murder and death and genocide.
Doc Scratch calls him a "vengeful boy on the path of nihilism," and it's not hard to see why: Eridan's entire life has been about living up to the role imposed on him by society, sacrificing his own time and sanity for everyone else, which he "nevver got any appreciation for anywway." And all he had to look forward to was more of the same, all his friends dropping dead one by one before him. For Eridan, there has never been any hope.
SGRUB could have been a way out for him, but a combination of his own terrible choices, spurred on by his anxieties, and his teammates' unwillingness to knock some sense into him, meant that he only wound up mired even deeper in his hopelessness.
We all know about how Eridan wouldn't stop killing the angels on his planet, provoking their aggression and turning it into a ball of death. How he was definitely not supposed to be doing this, and how his stubborn insistence on it led to his further ostracization from the rest of the group. The thing is, when we look at his angel-murders from the point of view that Eridan's entire life has been about murdering things or else Something Bad™ happens, it actually starts to become... kind of sad.
KARKAT: BETWEEN A TRIGGERHAPPY PRINCE WITH A GOD WEAPON BLASTING ANYTHING THAT TWITCHED AND A MILLION CRAZED ANGELS HE DELIBERATELY ENRAGED, IT WASN'T WHAT I'D CALL AN IDEAL SOCIAL HUB. KARKAT: IF YOU WERE LONELY WHY DIDN'T YOU VENTURE OUT MORE OFTEN? ERIDAN: wwell i wwoulda but nobody else wwas vvolunteerin to pick up the slack on angel killin duties
Killing the angels is something he feels like his has to do, because his entire life has been about killing things he doesn't want to kill. He's unable to break out of that mindset on his own, and his unpleasant personality has scared off anyone who might want to help. No one on the team tries to understand his thought process on a deeper level, not even Karkat, who just tells him it was an idiotic thing to do without addressing his underlying anxieties at all. Indeed, "nobody understands."
And this is really the root of why I think so many people get the wrong read on Eridan - Eridan is constantly contradicting himself, constantly denying his own feelings, constantly pushing an image that he doesn't actually believe in, and constantly insisting that he's fine with all the horrible shit in his life - that he likes it, even. After all, he can't admit to his guilt for his murders, or how much he doesn't want to watch his friends die, or how scared he is about the future - that'd be weakness!
CC: I can't look after you anymore. CA: I DIDNT EVER NEED ANYONE TO LOOK AFTER ME CA: i was totally fuckin fine my ambitions were noble
You see his contradictory nature with his stated love of history, which he only ever offhandedly mentions - because he's not actually that interested in history, it's just something that's expected of someone of his station. And you see it with his wavy accent, which he himself calls "weird" and drops when he's trying to be emotionally sincere. And you see it with his dumbass outfit, which is very clearly an imitation of Dualscar (with the only exception being the wizard-ass scarf, because wizards are his actual interest. I don't believe he likes fashion. I genuinely believe - and Eridan himself says so - that he basically has no hobbies outside of murder).
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Even being proud to be a sea dweller is pretty much an outright lie:
CC: You can't )(ave t)(e sort of affinity for "our kind" t)(at you profess if you've only spent, w)(at... CC: A few days underwater, maybe? IN YOUR W)(OL-E LIF-E!
One that he tells because he's SCARED OF THE OCEAN. Because he knows what lives in the ocean, because he's been feeding it his entire life. I see a lot of people who give Eridan an interest in marine life, and I'm telling you, that's just got no basis in canon. He's fucking TERRIFIED of the sea.
And for that matter, land dweller genocide. Eridan doesn't want to do it. Both Feferi AND his internal narration call him out for not actually wanting to do it. He outright states he wouldn't kill his friends.
CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be
But he feels like he HAS to want it, HAS to believe in it, HAS to be talking about it constantly, because that's what's expected from him as a sea dweller, and a sea dweller is ALL that he will get to be. The mutation that puts a violet streak in his hair is damning. It's a fate he feels like he can't escape. Which brings us to:
Eridan is Not Actually Casteist, Well He Is But Not Like That, It's Complicated
Secondary title: Those Are His Emotional Support Slurs, Okay
In the exact same vein (haha) as secretly not wanting all the land dwellers dead, Eridan also genuinely doesn't feel like he's better than lower blood castes. Vriska and Equius obviously put quite a bit of stock into being nobility, and both have acted superior to Karkat for it. Feferi actually revels in her high status, and while she is genuinely well-meaning, she's not as interested in abolishing casteism as she is in changing the meaning of "culling" specifically (the hemocaste, aristocracy, and casteism still very much exist in a Beforus under her rule). Gamzee MIGHT be the only highblood less casteist than Eridan, but then again, as soon as he snaps, he does say a lot of casteist stuff to Equius, although it's unclear how serious he is, and he also proceeds to get really into his weird highblood clown cult.
Meanwhile, Eridan - despite all his slurs and talk of genocide - does not actually try to "pull rank" on a lowblood for being a lower caste than him with a single exception. That exception is Sollux... after he's already shown having entirely caste-neutral opinions on Sollux:
CC: But Sollux finally came t)(roug)(, and now I believe t)(e full c)(ain is complete! CA: man that guy CA: hes a fuckin drama machine it is fuckin pathetic CC: YOUR STUPID FIS)(Y FAC-E IS T)(-E DRAMA MAC)(IN-E T)(AT DO-ES NOT)(ING BUT W)(IN-E AND GLUB. CC: 38P CA: fuck SORRY CC: Anyway you s)(ouldn't say t)(at about )(im, )(e is a )(ero and )(e saved my life. CA: yeah sorry
CA: my feelins seem petty and meaninless noww CA: she had better things to wworry about than my ovverwwrought bullshit CA: like the dead guy wwho savved her CA: so forget it thanks anywway
It's only AFTER he's mad at Sollux for dating Feferi that he starts going in on Sollux with casteist rhetoric... which is treated as unrequited flirting and not serious casteism:
ERIDAN: hey finless this doesnt concern those wwith mustard sludge slippin through their vveins ERIDAN: its a matter for royalty only ERIDAN: so keep your mouth closed or ill slit you open ovver my next meal SOLLUX: w/e bro, not iintere2ted. FEFERI: -Eridan, please! I don't want to see any more dueling. FEFERI: Don't try to provoke )(im. It's not like I don't know w)(at you're doing! You keep trying to spark a rivalry wit)( )(im to get me to auspisticize between you two, and pull us out of our quadrant! FEFERI: It is t)(e oldest and lamest trick in t)(e book. It didn't work t)(en and it won't work now!
THEY don't even think he's being casteist.
In fact, directly contradicting this earlier argument he has with Feferi:
CC: T)(is is t)(e last time I will say t)(is. CC: W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!! CC: GLUB. >38( CA: pshh CA: hemospectrum begs to differ
He OUTRIGHT states his real feelings here:
CA: im the biggest fuckin idiot who ever lived CA: i cant BELIEVE i just opened up to you like a chump when i knew what was comin CA: i am one sad fuckin brinesucker CA: overemotional sappy trash youre right im not better than anybody CA: im worse than anybody CA: EVERYBODY CA: all the bodies
So the question of "is Eridan casteist" has an answer of "kind of, but also no." Eridan DOES espouse the rhetoric; he's constantly saying stuff that a casteist sea dweller "should" be saying. However, if you look at his ACTIONS, and the way he actually treats people, he doesn't actually care about blood color. He'll hit on anybody, and he's rude as fuck to everybody. The real problem with him is that he's terrible to talk to, not that he's discriminatory.
That's the thing about Eridan. Understanding him means looking past the way he presents himself, the lies he tells to himself, and even, at times, the way the narration presents him. His "overblown emotional theatrics" seem a lot less overblown when his problems ARE so real, deep-seated, and constantly causing him an unimaginable amount of anguish.
The problem is, the main people he has to bounce those problems against are Feferi, Vriska, and Kanaya, three of the people most comfortable with their privileged positions, for whom Eridan's genuine emotional distress seems like needless melodrama. Feferi loves being a princess, Vriska enjoys her noble privileges, Kanaya doesn't need to worry about culling. But for Eridan, his noble status, and the duties and expectations placed on him for it, have caused him nothing but pain - of course he would feel like nobody understands. Most of his closest friends genuinely don't, nor do they try to.
Because that's what he is at his core - a traumatized fucking child, who doesn't see any way out. Eridan is not a casteist genocidal sea dweller... he just wishes he was one, and tries to be one, because if he actually was one, he wouldn't feel so awful and scared and sad all the time. He'd be normal, like his friends.
The reason he constantly spouts anti-land dweller rhetoric and uses casteist language is to assuage this cognitive dissonance. That's why he has to come off so strong, present himself in such an aggrandized way, act like such a douchebag. They're his emotional support slurs. He doesn't actually believe what he says, which means he's a Bad Sea Dweller, which means he's Failing, which means Something Bad Will Happen, so he'd better get his ass in line and say something casteist!
And it's all made worse because:
Eridan is Dumb of Ass (and True of Word)
Oh my god you guys he's so stupid that it hurts.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. Eridan is clearly well-educated and book smart; he has some of the most elegant prose out of the trolls, and he's prone to going off on insane rants with it. (Actually, his language gets more flowery and showy when he's trying to impress a stranger, and gets progressively more laid back, chill, and even kind of "bro"-y when he starts talking to people he doesn't feel like he needs to impress.)
CA: at this point i find all her adorable black pixie dabblins to be prime kiddie playtime shit CA: all of her FRAUDULENT MAGICS cannot come close to posin threat to my mastery ovver the TRUEST SCIENCES CA: an wwith my empiricists wwand i servve as the righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike CA: my holy fire is the wwhite fury bled from the wwrath-wweary eyes of fifty thousand nonfictional angels CA: and wwhen theyre finished wweepin they wwill boww before their prince GG: wow what are you talking about
What I mean is this: his brain is so full of anxiety and cognitive dissonance and murder and death that he struggles to care about other people, which has devastating effects on his social skills. I go really in-depth on how his though process informs his behavior here. The question may have popped up in your mind already: if his casteism stuff isn't actually real, then what is Eridan actually like? The answer is, overwhelmingly, and discomfortingly, SINCERE.
This boy is gunning at 100% emotional earnestness 100% of the time, and it's deeply uncomfortable for others to deal with. He'll swing wildly from insults and derogatory language, to stating a desire to kill all land dwellers, to awe and amazement at his friends' prowess, to demanding that they do things for him, to traumadumping and venting, without missing a beat. Often in the same conversation.
CA: kan its hard GA: What CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands
He's also specifically terrible at parsing hostility. Functionally, he interprets all hostility aimed AT him as either pitch/ashen flirting or "ironic repartee," and similarly views his own hostile words as verbal jousting, pitch/ashen advances, or even just factual descriptions of the world around him (ie calling Nepeta a "kittycat shipper cavve girl"). Hostility and aggression are just kind of his baseline, default state of being, and he basically has no ability to differentiate between good and bad attention. I talk more in-depth about his emotionally bereft upbringing (and shitty lusus) here, but suffice to say that our boy isn't getting any emotional support at home, and as a result, craves attention, no matter what kind.
This also means he's insanely gullible. For example, Rose calls him an idiot to his face, and then blows up his computer, sarcastically calling it "your first lesson in showmanship." Eridan proceeds to literally considers it that, blowing up Jade's computer after he's done talking to her. Furthermore, Kanaya sees him as a burden, insults him to his face, and pretty much just bullies him along with Rose for fun.
So she trains Eridan to become a powerful white wizard of hope to challenge her, as a joke.
And yet, in spite of all that, Eridan still has nothing but gratitude and praise for Kanaya:
ERIDAN: kan i been meanin to thank you KANAYA: For What ERIDAN: for all that trainin you did ERIDAN: i wwouldnt be the incredible holy wwizard i am noww wwithout your help KANAYA: But I Didnt Even Really Train You I Just Made You A Wand ERIDAN: yeah wwell thats all i needed i guess ERIDAN: i just needed for someone to showw a little faith in me so im sayin thanks i owwe ya KANAYA: Okay Then Youre Welcome KANAYA: I Hope You Use Your Magnificent Powers Of Light And Hope For Goodness And Purity And Lets Not Forget Science ERIDAN: dont wworry im all ovver that shit you dont evven knoww KANAYA: Uh Oh I Hope That Didnt Come Off As Too Sarcastic ERIDAN: wwhat KANAYA: The Thing I Just Said KANAYA: I Didnt Even Realize How Sarcastic I Was Being Its Starting To Become A Problem I Think KANAYA: Please Dont Take Too Much Offense ERIDAN: haha damn kan if thats your idea of offense bein made then i honestly gotta fuckin wworry for you ERIDAN: tell you wwhat ill givve you some lessons in dealin out the dark umbrage to repay you for your tutelage in the wwhite science
Like, he's in the middle of genuinely thanking her for believing in him, she makes fun of him to his face, and his response is to laugh it off and offer to teach her how to properly insult someone. It's honestly... kind of sad. Not that he doesn't deserve the ridicule, but what we're seeing here is a traumatized, emotionally neglected boy trying to communicate the best that he can that he loves and appreciates his friends, and receiving nothing but mockery in return.
It's really not a surprise, then, that he goes off the deep end. His entire life prior to the game has been shit; he got broken up with as soon as he entered the game (by someone who didn't even care enough not to use fish puns while doing it); he's ostracized and avoided for the game's duration; and then he spends the rest of his time on the meteor being bullied. He feels deeply hopeless and anxious about their situation because he literally doesn't know how else to exist, and his concerns are dismissed and mocked at every turn. When Feferi turns on him with intent to kill, that's his breaking point.
I see a lot of people say he goes grimdark, or succumbs to external influence somehow, but I don't think that needs to be true (nor is it) - he's just a deeply traumatized kid with almost no support network who's finally been pushed to the edge, despite displaying every possible warning sign and making multiple cries for help. Yes, ultimately, he's guilty for his own actions, but his killing spree - alongside Gamzee's and Vriska's - represents a cohesive failure as a team to address very clear problems in their midst.
So Feferi and Kanaya are sick of his ass. Sollux hates him platonically, Equius doesn't like him, and Nepeta thinks of him as a creep. Vriska is his awkward ex, and Terezi agrees with him when he calls himself pathetic. He never interacts with Tavros, Aradia, or sober!Gamzee. Is there anyone that treats him nicely?
Uh, okay, so I swear this isn't shipping goggles -
Pale EriKar Is Canon And I Can Prove It
So, I'm going to start this with a disclaimer: you can ship what you want to ship. I don't mind. I don't care. Headcanons are valid, death of the author, etc. What you do in your free time is up to you.
What I am attempting to argue in this section is that an Eridan/Karkat moirallegiance was heavily foreshadowed, one of the most heavily foreshadowed things in the entire comic, and - assuming that the original ending of Homestuck included all the dead trolls being brought back and redeemed - was going to be endgame. There's a torrential amount of evidence pointing to this, and very little of it is acknowledged even by the EriKar shippers, which is a shame.
At the very least, I'll be happy if I can convince some Karkat RPers to be extra nice to Eridans, because they are actually just friends who care deeply about each other. Canonically.
The first thing to note is that Eridan and Karkat, at least prior to SGRUB, talk all the time, to the point where Feferi feels the need to comment on it:
CC: You know, I'm not sure w)(y we never talk about our romantic aspirations. CC: We s)(ould more often. It is kind of -EXCITING! CA: shrug CC: Probably because you fill your gossip quota wit)( your nubby )(orned bro. CC: You leave not)(ing left to talk about wit)( your dear sweet moirail! CC: We are supposed to )(elp eac)( ot)(er wit)( t)(at stuff too, remember. CA: maybe CA: seems kinda CA: odd though
("Can you please stop having an emotional affair with Karkat" "Eh, I'll think about it")
The second thing to note is what the contents of those conversations entail. Sure, they "gossip," but it goes deeper than that, because they gossip about things that Karkat would NEVER gossip about with anybody else, because Karkat usually respects his "VERY GOOD FRIEND"s. For example, here Eridan mentions that Karkat has speculated on Kanaya's love life with him:
CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that GA: No Thats Not It CA: yeah it is your real feelins run pretty awwful RUDDY methinks evverybody knowws it CA: especially that assblood karkat he and me havve you so pegged about that its upright silly
And it's not even a one-off thing, because here Karkat is again, mentioning Nepeta's crush on him:
KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK? KARKAT: HER DISINTEREST IN YOUR ADVANCE WASN'T A REFLECTION ON YOU AT ALL. KARKAT: COME ON, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS.
It's a situation he's been trying to "tiptoe around for a long time," and he tells ERIDAN, of all people? MULTIPLE TIMES? (AND HE ALSO TELLS ERIDAN THAT THE REJECTION WASN'T HIS FAULT???? WHAT??????)
So we've established that they talk frequently and about some pretty seriously sensitive topics. But did you know that they also talk about... their feelings?
See, the thing is, Karkat has always been weirdly nice to Eridan. Here he is in a memo near the very beginning of their game, when Karkat is at his most "rah rah, I'm the big bad leader":
FCA: i got a problem FCA: wwith feferi FCA: and im really kinda sittin here in bad shape about it emotionally speakin CCG: OK, WELL CCG: I GET THAT, I HEAR YOU BRO CCG: BUT THIS IS STILL NOT THE RIGHT PLACE FOR THIS SO I'VE GOT TO BAN YOU. CCG banned FCA from responding to memo. CCG: BUT SERIOUSLY JUST GET IN TOUCH WITH ME IN PRIVATE ABOUT IT, OK MAN? CCG: WE'LL GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHTENED OUT.
Compare that to Tavros asking for advice later down in the same memo:
PAT: sINCE i DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE NOW, bUT MAYBE HELP ME, PAT: aBOUT A THING THAT HAS TO DO WITH A GIRL, PAT: lIKE, PAT: a ROMANCE THING, yOU MIGHT KNOW ABOUT, CCG: YOU PEOPLE ARE IMBECILES. CCG: ALL OF YOU. CCG: I AM NOT POSTING THESE MEMOS TO COUNSEL YOU ON YOUR PAST AND FUTURE DATING PROBLEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CCG: WHY ARE YOU ALL SUCH BASKET CASES. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY ANYMORE. PAT: sORRY, CCG: SHOULD I BAN YOU? WHAT'S EVEN THE POINT ANYMORE! ONE OF YOU STOOGES WILL BE RIGHT ON THE LAST ONES HEELS WITH ANOTHER SOB STORY. CCG: JUST CCG: HURRY UP AND TELL ME WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS BRO.
He then proceeds to dispense no actual love advice; he just points out that Vriska can totally read this memo too, and then mocks them both when she shows up - thus making it clear that he is giving Eridan special treatment.
You see it again in his discussion with Eridan in [S] Kanaya: Return to the Core, where Eridan invokes a "pact" between them, and Karkat immediately plays nice with him, despite himself being extremely high-strung and stressed out:
KARKAT: RIGHT, IT'S POWERED BY SCIENCE, I FORGOT. KARKAT: OR HOPE. WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS. ERIDAN: i dont fuckin need this from you i take enough shit as it is from the rest a you dirtscrapers i thought you and me had a kinda pact or wwhatevver KARKAT: OK FINE, SHUT UP, I APOLOGIZE. I KNOW IT'S TOUGH BEING YOU.
That's definitely pity, which Karkat states to be the basis of all relationships besides pitch. But, sure, okay, Karkat is sometimes nice to his friends. He is, after all, the Friendship Troll, so that's not necessarily out of the ordinary. But how about the fact that it goes both ways?
That's right, Eridan "100% aggro 100% of the time" Ampora is actually really considerate toward Karkat's feelings, and basically nobody else's. Upon hearing that Karkat is distressed that Sollux has died, Eridan actively puts his own meltdown about his breakup with Feferi on pause:
TC: BeCaUsE OuR GoOd bRo sOlLuX JuSt kIcKeD ThE WiCkEd mOtHeRfUcKiN ShIt CA: wwhat the fuck do you mean by that CA: are you sayin hes dead TC: YeAh :o( CA: oh fuck CA: oh god fuck noww i feel like an asshole
He then goes on to chastise Gamzee for his shitty advice, demanding to be given the chance to comfort Karkat himself instead:
TC: BuT I ToLd hIm tO Be cHiLl TC: BeCaUsE ThErE Is a mIrAcLe cOmInG, i cAn fEeL It CA: that is the wworst fuckin advvice CA: wwhat an awwful thing a you to say CA: MAGIC ISNT REAL STUPID STOP BELIEVVIN IN IT TC: i'Ve gOt tO BeLiEvE At wHaT My hEaRt tElLs iN Me, EvEn iF It's a fAkE ThInG TC: HoNk CA: this is a lot a pointless fuckin rubbish and isnt no emotional help to him or me either for that matter CA: put kar on
Before finally giving up when Gamzee insists he's "too scared of Jack" to help, drinking some Faygo, and trying to ask past Karkat for help, because past Karkat isn't sad yet about Sollux dying. So, to recap,
Eridan's first instinct when in emotional duress is to go to Karkat.
Eridan feels like he knows Karkat well enough to know that Gamzee's advice would be useless (and is proven right by the fact that Gamzee and Karkat's moirallegiance fails for similar reasons).
Eridan is willing to shelve his own emotional meltdown for Karkat's sake.
Eridan demands to be the one to provide Karkat with emotional support.
And this is, again, not a one-off thing. In the memo Karkat opens right after Eridan and Gamzee have both turned murderous, after he's spent several minutes making death threats toward Eridan and insulting him directly, he goes:
CCG: I'M SO UPSET, I'M JUST COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. PCA: yeah i knoww wwhat its like you wwanna talk about it
Eridan spends this entire memo under the belief that it's a completely run-of-the-mill conversation they're having:
PCA: i mean yeah obvviously i kneww you wwerent serious PCA: i guess i appreciate the effort youre puttin into cheerin me up PCA: i can alwways count on you for some good ironic repartee kar nobody else really gets our sense a humor CCG: UGH, NO PCA: are you busy PCA: you said youd try to make it to lowwaa soon wwell howw about it
Which implies that offering to listen to Karkat's feelings is also a completely regular thing for them.
But something magical is ALSO happening within this last memo, and to really explain it, I'll first have to be a little mean to the GamKar shippers (sorry).
So, canonically, GamKar doesn't work out for them, despite also being somewhat foreshadowed. In fact, they feature on Nepeta's shipping wall, which is actually, in my opinion, foreshadowing that it WOULDN'T work out. (Nepeta's ships being wrong, and shipping being something she needs to learn to outgrow, is a whole essay on its own, that I'm not getting into here.)
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But the thing is, the seeds for them not working out were also planted in the first - and only - real post-moirallegiance interaction that they have with each other, where Gamzee tries to calm Karkat down... and FAILS:
GAMZEE: naw brother, i was just about to all say for you to try and get your settle down on, maybe. GAMZEE: :o( ... KARKAT: OK KARKAT: OK YEAH KARKAT: I GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT. KARKAT: NO, YOU'RE RIGHT, I SHOULD RELAX. KARKAT: AND BREATHE. KARKAT: I MEAN, WHAT ARE MOIRAILS FOR, RIGHT? KARKAT: THIS IS HOW IT WORKS, I STOP YOU FROM KILLING EVERYBODY, THEN YOU RETURN THE FAVOR AND CALM ME DOWN AND I JUST KARKAT: BREATHE KARKAT: LIKE KARKAT: THIS... KARKAT: SNIIIIIIIIIIIIFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK, THAT SUN IS BRIGHT. KARKAT: CALL ME CRAZY, BUT IT'S KIND OF HARD TO RELAX WITHIN A STONE'S THROW FROM, OH, I GUESS ONLY THE BIGGEST FUCKING STAR ANY MORTAL HAS EVER LAID EYES ON. ... KARKAT: BUT I MEAN, CAN THIS BE HEALTHY? KARKAT: AREN'T WE GOING TO GET BURNED OR HAVE OUR RETINAS SCORCHED BY LOOKING AT IT? KARKAT: OH GOD I THINK I'M HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.
But let's go back to that memo where Karkat is freaking out in every way possible. This is how he starts that memo - so upset about the deaths of his friends and terrified by Gamzee that he can barely string together a coherent thought:
CCG: WE ARE SO SCREWED. CCG: OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. CCG: GUYS, I AM TERRIFIED, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. CCG: I'M IN A ROOM FULL OF BODIES, AND I THINK I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO TURN MY BACK ON THEM? CCG: OH MY GOD, I JUST HEARD A HONK. ... CCG: FEFERI, I'M SORRY. CCG: IT WAS MY FAULT, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. PCC: Sorry for w)(at?? CCG: FOR CCG: I CCG: I CAN'T DO THIS CCG: IT'S TOO MUCH FOR ME, I'M SORRY.
In fact, he's so distressed that he bans Past!Feferi and Past!Gamzee almost immediately after they come in. But then Eridan comes in, and... I mean, first of all, just compare how long it takes for him to ban Eridan:
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But more interesting are the contents of their conversation. Over the course of talking to Eridan... Karkat completely calms the fuck down. Like he's entirely forgotten that he's shitting his pants with fear. In fact, he even starts critiquing Eridan for his dumbassery:
PCA: evven if i wwasnt compelled to think you wwere still bein flippant and ironic wwith me you cant exactly outright reject me can you CCG: WHY NOT PCA: cause youre future you PCA: doesnt count unless its present you til then its all fair game CCG: IS THIS REAL, ARE YOU BEING IRONIC OR SOMETHING, I CAN'T EVEN TELL ANYMORE CCG: THE PROBLEM IS, I CAN'T PUT THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR PAST YOU AT ALL, SO I DON'T KNOW. ... CCG: YOU'RE KILLING ANGELS NOW, AREN'T YOU PCA: no CCG: YOU ARE KILLING FUCKING ANGELS, RIGHT NOW, IN THE PAST, WITH YOUR SHITTY GUN. I JUST KNOW IT. PCA: wwell uh PCA: therere just so damn many kar and theyre not gettin any less bloody pissed is the thing CCG: THIS IS WHY IT WOULD NEVER WORK BETWEEN US, MAN.
It's extremely funny. Over the course of talking to Eridan, he goes from:
CCG: OH GOD OH GOD OH MAN OH GOD CCG: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
To:
CCG banned PCA from responding to memo. CCG: ANYWAY CCG: THAT'S IT I GUESS.
Eridan isn't even trying to calm Karkat down. He still succeeds in doing so. This is because they are soul mates. And I mean that in the sense that the comic literally calls being moirails soul mates, which it doesn't do for the other quadrants:
A reasonable human translation would be the concept of a soul mate, but in a more platonic sense, and with a more specific social purpose.
That "social purpose" being that an even-tempered troll calms down a more hot-tempered one, and vice versa.
It also goes on to note:
But some pale pairings, as the one above [referring to a picture of Nepeta and Equius], will be strikingly obvious to all who know them.
But what's really interesting is the next page.
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And yet others will seem to have been hatched for each other.
Did you catch that? Let me zoom in.
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(Also, the blue and red cuttlefish to represent Sollux - Feferi and Sollux spend the whole game together, and even wind up talking about their feelings constantly in a pile - more on piles in a sec.)
In fact... in Eridan's first visual appearance...
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The crab has always been there for him.
It's also important to talk about the bottle of Faygo that's been photoshopped to be candy red, Karkat's blood color. The path that it takes actually directly mirrors Karkat's relationships with Gamzee and Eridan - it's initially something that Gamzee has, but winds up being ejected out of his life, and washes up on Eridan's shore. In fact:
TC: SnAtCh aN IcEcOlD, dOg TC: MoThErFuCkIn cHuG ThAt sHiT LiKe yOu aNd tHe bOtTlE WaS ReUnItEd lOvErS CA: are you recommendin a bevverage to me or somethin CA: is that wwhat this is TC: YeAh mAn SlAm A FaYgO CA: i dont havve a fuckin faygo you stupid fuck wwhy wwould i keep that disgusting shit on hand TC: ArE YoU MoThErFuCkIn sUrE AbOuT ThAt? CA: oh CA: oh god youre right i do CA: i totally forgot about it TC: YoU SeE MaN TC: MoThEr TC: FuCkIn TC: MiRaClEs TC: :o)
When Gamzee and Eridan discuss this exact bottle, Gamzee even likens it to "reunited lovers"; it's something that Eridan has had this whole time (after all, he was cheating on Feferi with the guy), but never realized.
There are a few miscellaneous things that don't really mean anything on their own, but put next to all this other stuff, is worth considering, so I'll list those now.
First, they both do the bonk:
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Second:
CG: ARE WE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE OF STUFF I SAID. TA: eheheheh you LIITERALLY a2k me that every tiime are you jokiing. TA: ii cant even tell anymore. CG: IT'S A JOKE MORON. CG: HONESTLY I'M JUST GLAD NOBODY ELSE IS PRIVVY TO OUR CONVERSATIONS.
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Third, Karkat muses to his future self about how he misses his friends, especially the assholes, two pages before staring at a dead Eridan's ass (joking, he's definitely looking at WV, but it's still significant that this thought is being associated with Eridan):
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CCG: I MEAN, DON'T GET ME WRONG. CCG: I MISS ALL OF MY DEAD FRIENDS A LOT. CCG: EVEN THE ASSHOLES! I MISS THEM TOO. MAYBE EVEN ESPECIALLY THEM, IN SOME PERVERSE WAY. CCG: AND I SHOULD BE RELIEVED THAT THEY ALL SEEM TO BE HAPPY IN SOME WAY, EVEN IF IT'S BY FLOATING NEBULOUSLY THROUGH DREAM PROJECTIONS WITH THEIR FREAKY BLANK EYES. CCG: AND I GUESS I AM RELIEVED ABOUT THAT. CCG: BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT'S LEFT ME UNSETTLED.
Fourth, in the same conversation, he bemoans his failed relationship with Terezi, before Future!Karkat chastises Past!Karkat for his instability and mixed signals. Going back to the page on moirallegiances, an explicit function of a proper pale relationship is stabilizing a troll's other relationships:
The two partners in a strong pale relationship will serve to balance and complement each other's emotional profiles, and thus allow their other relationships to be more successful.
Of course, I don't need to tell you how messy and unstable Eridan's relationships have been.
And finally, Piles of Stuff™ are associated with moirails, and directly stated in-comic to cause an outpouring of emotion:
Standing near this pile stirs powerful emotions. The closer you stand to piles of stuff, the more freely the feelings flow. It is a law of reality.
So here's a seven-word tragedy for you: For Sale, Shitty Wand Pile, Never Used:
ERIDAN: at least i got the upright basic decency to hide my shitty wand pile somewwhere in the lab you wwont find it dont evven bother lookin KARKAT: WHY DO YOU ASSHOLES HAVE PILES OF THINGS, JUST STOP.
(Which he specifically tells Karkat about.)
So, yeah, what I'm saying is, there's just, like, a weirdly large amount to read into here. That Karkat and Eridan are probably soulmates or whatever. And that this is important because...
Eridan Is Plot Relevant (Well All The Dead Trolls Are But This Is An Essay About Eridan)
So. Now we are going to talk about themes. Yes, like we are in schoolfeeding again. I'm going to keep it simple, because "The Themes of Homestuck" is a whole essay on its own, and this one about just the shitty fish boy is already way too long.
I think it's fairly non-controversial to posit that the main theme of Homestuck is, "children should mature, care about each other, and throw off the shackles of their old society, because they will be responsible for a new world one day."
Up until Game Over/the Retcon, this is so prevalent and well-established that SBURB/SGRUB's coming-of-age themes will outright be commented upon by the characters, and the main villain is a child who deliberately stunted his own growth so he could go around kicking over other peoples' toys forevermore.
So, the thing is, with that being the theme of Homestuck, if ALL of the Alternian trolls don't survive to the end, the ending is thematically unsatisfying, because the message suddenly gains an addendum of "well, some kids just need to die," which totally sucks. Like, sure, Eridan was a violent, crazed murderer even at the best of times, but his permanent death within the canon ending kind of means that the comic is saying that people in his position don't deserve kindness or second chances. That position being a traumatized, emotionally neglected child, who was being bullied by people he considered his friends. It's a pretty terrible message.
It's even worse when you consider what other trolls don't make it to the end - Nepeta, the most outspoken troll against the hemospectrum (and Davepeta does NOT count, don't try to tell me the final culmination of Nepeta's character arc is being combined with some guy she barely knows and a bird). Feferi, who genuinely wanted the best for others, even if she was kind of a privileged princess. Aradia and Sollux also stay behind in the bubbles, even though their lives have pretty much been endless parades of suffering and being used by other people. Even Equius doesn't deserve it - he was kind of a casteist freak, but not irredeemably so, and the fact that he became kinder to Karkat over the course of SGRUB proved that he had the capacity to change. And Tavros, allergic to himself and being insulted by Vriska, is a terrible way to end his arc.
It's also really clear that, since half his friends are dead, Karkat just doesn't really have anything to do. His title is the Knight of Blood, and Blood is about bonds - romance, friendship. And yet, he ends the comic having never figured out what Blood was about, with no confirmed filled quadrants (sorry DaveKat likers, but within the comic itself, DaveKat is never confirmed), and most of his bonds nothing more than ghosts in the bubbles. It's a terribly unsatisfying ending for the most narratively important troll.
I think, then, that even if you don't agree that Homestuck should have ended with full revivals and redemption arcs for all the trolls, the essay is going to proceed on like you do, so, sorry, I guess.
The thing with Eridan, specifically, is that he's actually tied deeply into the plot and themes, and his return means more than just Karkat finally getting a date (although that's important, too). Eridan is directly intertwined with a prophecy to kill Lord English; he's set up to mirror Caliborn and Calliope; and thematically, his redemption would be the most clear instance of the "interrogating society" part of the theme of Homestuck, because Eridan is kind of the Society Troll. And also, he was definitely supposed to be Roxy's wizard boyfriend.
Just gonna get that last one out of the way real quick because it's a fast one, Roxy fucking loves wizards and is a hipster. Eridan is a wizard and is also a hipster. Roxy has a crush on a prince. Eridan is also a prince. Roxy wears a purple striped scarf. Eridan wears a blue striped scarf. Roxy uses rifles. Eridan uses rifles. Momlonde's introduction includes a passive-aggressive fridge battle that features a cameo of Eridan's quirk.
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Using the colorful MAGNET LETTERS, you recently left a succinct message, which may or may not have been directed toward anyone in particular. But you couldn't find the letter W, so you just stuck two V's together. Your mother then purchased a fresh pack of W's and left them there for your convenience.
Yeah. So. Uh. Not only did Eridan need to be brought back to date Karkat pale, but he also needed to be brought back to date Roxy flushed. Can you imagine how funny it would be. They'd get together within 5 minutes of meeting for the first time and Rose would lose her shit. Anyway.
Him being a parallel to Calliope and Caliborn is also a quick one - Caliborn uses Riflekind/Sceptrekind, and Calliope uses Pistolkind/Wandkind. Eridan's two weapons are rifles and wands. Lord English is described as an evil wizard and at one point is shown using Calliope's wand. Eridan is also an evil wizard who uses a wand.
Look, I'm not saying that Eridan is necessarily directly related to these two, nor am I even necessarily saying that he and Roxy HAVE to date, but I am saying that he's got Weird Plot Connections that make him bizarrely relevant to characters that only come into play well after his death - almost like the comic was setting up that he would be coming back. His reaction to Cronus supports this, which I go into detail about here.
There's other strange "Eridan's plot important" things, too - like the fact that he's completely unimpressed by Faygo, considering it to be "just soda," and seems to be the only non-cultist who's okay with it. Or the fact that he's actually been awake on Derse since before the game (but unable to hear the horrorterrors, maybe foreshadowing some psychic resistance?) which he casually reveals to Kanaya and which Terezi is aware of, hence he's included in the people she names are "in" on the existence of the game. Or the fact that the genetic code for Alternia's first guardian was written within the pages of four FLARP books, with the addition of a fifth code Gamzee wrote in Karkat's ~ATH book... but Eridan was the fifth FLARP player in the team, implying that Doc Scratch/LE influencing Gamzee caused him to usurp Eridan's part of the first guardian code, giving LE his way into the trolls' universe.
Individually, it's all kind of nothing, but it just paints a bigger picture of Eridan being weirdly relevant, especially when we get to the juicy stuff:
The Prophecy
ARANEA: The 8ard of Hope may seem a little jaded these days, 8ut he once had a deeply a8iding faith in magic, and dedicated himself to 8ecoming a great wizard. He 8ecame convinced he was hatched to defeat an extraordinarily evil magician, one he swore the angels foretold of. ... [T]his magician once somehow from afar tried to strike him down at a young age, so he would never have to face him. 8ut the evil spell was deflected, sealing the magician's spirit away in a series of unassuming vessels until he could find some other cunning way to enter our universe. ... ARANEA: 8ut at some point he 8ecame disillusioned with magic. If there ever was any truth to his far fetched vision, the legacy of defeating the evil magician would have to 8e passed on to his descendant, or if his descendant proved to 8e as much of a failure as he did, then perhaps on to some other Hero of Hope.
ERIDAN: i slaughtered enough angels to knoww my limits and wwhere i stand against the lord of all angels they prophecized
GG: im pretty sure hes from the future! CA: wwhy GG: because he said hes my grandson CA: wwhat the fuck is a grandson CA: is that some kind of pervverse human familial thing GG: umm yes ... CA: that gun i just gavve you is somethin of a hatchright to the kid CA: happy i could play a role in your dirty stinkin lineage GG: like an heirloom? i guess it could be ... CA: i kinda think thats wwhy i found the gun in the first place CA: but noww im forsakin it because fuck i just found a better destiny than my old crappy one wwhich i nevver got any appreciation for anywway
Jake is supposed to have been the one to defeat Lord English. (No, Jake defeating pre-LE Caliborn right before he gets sealed into Cal doesn't count! He doesn't even get the final blow in that fight, DIRK does.)
But Eridan at one point had that destiny on his shoulders. Aranea turbohealing Jake, and the resultant hope field, summons a bunch of angels, which are heavily associated with Eridan - yet another random connection that Eridan has with future plot events.
Jake was another character, alongside Karkat, who was kind of reduced to a joke by the end, despite the fact that he had literally, directly, been passed the destiny of defeating Lord English. It's hard not to see this as a consequence, at least in part, of removing Eridan from the story. By cutting him out of the fabric of the ending, several plot threads - including this prophecy - are left dangling in irrelevance. And so Jake, like Karkat, now has nothing to do.
Homestuck is generally a series where every prophecy does come true, which makes it kind of startling when several prophecies fail to - Feferi's to "unite the two races," Jake's to defeat Lord English, and Karkat's to bring "compassion, forgiveness, and equality among all bloodlines" in the Signless's place.
That last one is actually relevant to:
The Thematic Importance of EriKar As Soul Mates
Eridan represents the worst aspects of Alternian society. He's a sea dweller at the top of the caste structure, with free reign to murder whoever he wants, soaked in the blood of thousands of innocent trolls. He espouses the casteist rhetoric that their society is built on, calling for the deaths of all land dwellers and the oppression of the lower castes. And while he should be benefitting from his position of privilege, it has also done nothing but hurt him.
Karkat, meanwhile, is a pariah. A mutant who would've been culled on sight, who spent his entire life living in hiding, and most of the game in fear that he would be ostracized or worse by the rest of his friends if they found out about his blood color. He's also the second coming of Troll Jesus, and thus, more despised by the Alternian ruling class than a mutant normally would be. For most of his life, he dreamed of nothing more than finding belonging within the society that had deemed him unfit.
Their friendship is something that "should not be." The highblood and the mutant. The royal-v and the off-spectrum. The empress's sea dweller and the second coming of the signless. Eridan "should" see Karkat as a miscreant to cull on sight. Karkat "should" be terrified of Eridan's very existence.
But in reality, Eridan doesn't give a shit about blood color, and Karkat just wants to be accepted. Eridan just wants someone to care about him, and Karkat loves his friends. Aside from Feferi, Eridan is the only highblood who never comments about Karkat's mutant blood, and they were best buddies even before Eridan knew.
Eridan and Karkat getting together isn't JUST the two most undateable trolls on the team finally landing a stable quadrant. These two, moreso than any other pairing, represent the themes of Homestuck. Children growing up, caring about each other, and throwing off the shackles of their old society.
In the pre-retcon timeline, their team failed to do so. This led to Gamzee falling into his highblood clown cult, Equius letting himself and Nepeta die by submitting to his place in the hemospectrum, Vriska killing Tavros because she couldn't allow herself to show weakness, and Eridan completing his caste's dream of genocide. Karkat spent the entire meteor trip and beyond beating himself up about it, since he considered it all to be his fault.
But with the introduction of John's retcon powers, they have the chance to, one by one, redeem themselves. I believe that's how the original ending would have gone: Terezi would ask John to bring Vriska back, because she only feels comfortable fixing her own mistakes. Vriska would then have asked John to bring back Tavros, whom she regretted killing. Tavros would be there for Gamzee, rendering him an ally. Gamzee would ask John to bring back Equius and Nepeta. Equius would ask John to help him not make the same mistakes with Aradia, and Aradiabot would catch John by the wrist and demand he bring her back in time to before she died, allowing her to circumvent her own death and Sollux's guilt. Sollux would ask John to keep him from provoking Eridan, saving Feferi. And Feferi would be pretty ok with the way things were... but KARKAT would then pull John aside, and drop an entire book of mistakes he made on John's lap, and this would result in a finalized timeline where all his friends are alive and god-tiered.
Because all the trolls SHOULD have survived.
Vriska should've survived because people should be allowed to have second chances.
Tavros should've survived because caring about each other, and being willing to show kindness and mercy, are good things.
Gamzee should have survived because people mired in religious fundamentalism and cults deserve to be offered a helping hand.
Equius should've survived because people should be allowed to grow and change their beliefs.
Nepeta should've survived because she was the anti-casteism troll. Casteism is bad, folks! Not only that, but I'm convinced that she was originally going to give the Ultimate Self exposition, and Davepetasprite^2 had to be contrived in the canon ending in order to shortcut Nepeta's character development, ruining it in the process.
Aradia should've been allowed to stay with the rest of the team and live a life free of the control of evil uncles and shitty ancestors.
Sollux should've been allowed to stay with the rest of the team because we all deserve to heal and be happy.
Feferi should've survived so she could be in a kismesistude with Nepeta, and realize that casteism itself is bad, not just the definition of culling, and then used her Witch of Life powers to even out the lifespans between the next generation of trolls, which needs to happen or else casteism will just happen again as long-lived highbloods inevitably amass power. And, also, it would complete the prophecy Gl'bgolyb gave her that she was intended to unite the two races (dream bubbles don't count, because by that metric, Sollux did more than she did by establishing a connection between the trolls and humans).
And Eridan should've survived, because the harm society has done to us can be undone. We don't have to submit to the roles it imposes, to the laws it wrote, to the abuse it inflicted. We can be free.
I've seen a lot of people who believe that such-and-such character did SUCH awful things that they don't deserve a happy ending. Oftentimes, it's Eridan, but nearly all of the dead trolls have gotten this treatment. So, let me just ask all of you who have gotten this far and still hold that opinion one thing. Do you think that's what Troll Jesus would have wanted?
This is why pale EriKar is so important: for it to happen, Eridan has to make a choice between upholding the beliefs of his shitty society, or pursuing a happier, kinder future, one where he outright rejects the caste system. For it to happen, Karkat has to shake all his insecurities about not being good enough by Alternian standards, and take on the duty of creating something better than what he came from. If pale EriKar happens, it means Eridan and Karkat choose love, not fear. Compassion, forgiveness, and equality.
This choice - this pairing - is the ultimate representation of giving Alternian society one big middle finger. Saying, we don't need you anymore, fuck off! Saying, we reject you at your core; we will choose something better! Saying, we will create a new world, and it will be kinder than the one we came from!
Pale EriKar means LOVE WINS.
Thank you for reading.
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munsonsmixtapes · 7 days
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I saw you were taking requests so I decided to submit one!
Thinking of some Older!Eddie smut where him and the reader are neighbors in an apartment complex. The reader has a huge crush on Eddie but is too afraid to say anything. They have bumped into each other a couple times and have had a few casual conversations in the mailroom or at the park. He notices her trying to move furniture into her apartment on her own and offers to help. How can she ever repay him? 👀👀
This might be my favorite request yet!
Older!Eddie x fem!reader
cw: reader is 25 and Eddie is 40, MDNI 18+ smut, unprotected sex (please don’t do this)
You stood in the lobby of your building, staring down at the giant chair that had definitely seemed smaller online. You had ordered a something small to read in and what had been sent to you could easily sit two people instead of one. There was absolutely no way you were going to get it upstairs by yourself and also no way you were going to going to ask anyone for help. You just felt like you were a bother.
Knowing that you couldn’t leave it in the lobby, you took a deep breath and grabbed onto one of the arms and pulled it. Once it didn’t move, you pulled again and again until it started to slide. You were able to get it across the floor to the elevator, but it got caught on something, causing you to fall back just as the elevator door opened.
“God, are you okay?” A voice asked as whoever it belonged to rushed to your side.
“I’m fine, it’s just this stupid fucking-“ you cut yourself off as you realized that your neighbor that you had been crushing on had been right in front of you. His brown eyes bored into yours as he searched for any sign that you had been hurt.
Eddie offered you his hand and you took it, letting him help you to your feet. You quickly pulled your hand away and brushed yourself off, afraid to look him in the eye. He was just too pretty and off limits. He was fifteen years older than you and you were sure that he wasn’t interested in you in the slightest.
You both had said hello to each other in the mailroom and at the park where the two of you liked to take walks, but him greeting you with a few words didn’t necessarily mean that he liked you. He was just trying to be nice, you were sure of it.
“Is this yours?” He asked, pointing at the chair and you just sighed, collapsing into it, causing Eddie to laugh. You were suddenly embarrassed of the thing, very much wanting it out of your sight.
“Yes,” you let out another sigh. “But it’s very heavy, so I guess I’m just going to have to leave it here and get in trouble with the building.”
Eddie felt bad for you being in such a predicament, and despite his want to never get to know any of his neighbors, he felt the need to help you. He couldn’t let such a beautiful woman try to get a large couch up to her apartment by herself, could he?
If he was being honest, he always looked forward to seeing you whenever you had run into each other. You had always been sweet to him and it had been very obvious that you had a crush on him with the way that your cheeks blushed when he made eye contact and your open flirting. Eddie was no fool.
“I could help you get it upstairs if you want.” You sat up at his offer, vigorously shaking your head as you did so.
“Oh no,” you stood up from the chair. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.” You did want the help, but felt like he probably (definitely) had better things to do.
“You’re not asking.” He stepped towards you. “I’m offering.”
“It’s really heavy.” You showed him by trying and failing to lift the side of the chair, barely able to even lift it off the ground.
Eddie moved towards the chair and you moved out of the way as he picked it up in one swift motion. You headed for the elevator and pressed the button with the up arrow on it, waiting for it to open. The way he was standing gave you a perfect of his flexing bicep that you wanted to wrap tightly around you as he pressed a filthy kiss to your mouth.
You were embarrassed by how badly you wanted him, thinking about him at pretty much every waking moment. Some of your thoughts were innocent, like how he would definitely hold you in his arms as you both fell asleep. And some not so innocent, like the way you wanted him to fuck you so hard that you couldn’t walk afterwards.
You didn’t know why you were even thinking about him or why you were so attracted to him. But he was so hot with the way he always had his hair pulled up into a bun and the way he dressed with his muscle tanks and jeans that hugged his ass just right. You were so down bad that it was sad.
The elevator doors opened and Eddie stepped into it, holding the chair as if it was light as a feather. You got in after him and pressed the button that would take you to your floor and the doors closed.
“Are you sure it’s not heavy? I can help.” You reached for the chair but Eddie just backed away.
“Nope, you just stand there and look pretty, okay?” You turned away, feeling your cheeks burn at his compliment, not wanting him to see your face.
Before you knew it, the elevator doors opened on your floor and Eddie insisted that you go before him. You walked down the hall and he followed you, adjusting the chair in his arms so it was more comfortable. You got to your door and quickly unlocked it before moving aside, letting Eddie bring the chair in.
“Where do you want it?” He asked and you pointed to the corner by the window that led out to your fire escape.
“Right there.” Eddie moved quickly and set the chair down exactly where you wanted it before collapsing into it with a sigh. He leaned back into it and rested his hand behind his head as he closed his eyes. You chewed your bottom lip as you imagined yourself straddling his waist as his hand rode up your skirt, gripping your thighs as you pressed your lips to his neck, eliciting the most beautiful moans from him.
“This is nice,” he sighed and you felt yourself getting wet at the sound. He then rose from the chair and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he headed towards you. “Was that all you needed?”
“Yeah,” you nodded. “Thank you so much. I don’t know how I could ever repay you for your generosity.” Little did you know that Eddie was having the exact same thoughts, wondering what it would be like to place his lips on yours. And that’s when he got the idea.
“How about a kiss?” Your eyes widened at that, but he quickly turned his face to the side pointing at his cheek.
“Oh, right,” you nodded. Of course that was all he wanted. How stupid of you to think he would have wanted a kiss on the lips.
You leaned forward and pressed a lingering peck to his cheek and he closed his eyes, loving the way your warm lips felt against his skin. You pulled back after a few seconds then stepped away, putting your hands behind your back so you wouldn’t be able to pull him in for a real kiss.
“Have a good night, y/n. And may I just say, you have excellent taste in chairs.” He gave you a small waved and you opened the door for him.
“Thank you.” You gulped, wanting him to stay. He couldn’t leave now. You had a feeling he would have if you had just asked, but you the words wouldn’t come out of your mouth.
“You’re very welcome,” he winked then headed out into the hall and you watched him walk the few steps it took to get to his own apartment that was next door. He stepped inside and gave you another wink before closing his door gently.
You slowly walked back to your own place and shut the door before leaning against it. The hottest man you had ever seen had just been in your apartment and you hadn’t taken the chance to jump his bones like you were sure anyone else in the building would have. You had heard the whispers when he entered the mail room, all of the moms giggling about how attractive he was. And you had seen people turn their heads when he passed them at the park. The was a fine piece of ass and you were kicking yourself because you hadn’t hit that. If you had just-
Your words were cut off by a knock at your door. You weren’t expecting anyone so you were unsure of who it could’ve been. You slowly stood up and took a peek through the peephole only to see Eddie on the other side. With your curiosity getting the best of you, you opened the door putting on a bright smile.
“Forgetting something?” You asked and Eddie stepped closer to you.
“Well, I was wondering if I could change my payment?” Change his payment? What the fuck could he have possibly wanted?
“Well, that depends on what you’re wanting.” You stepped forward so that you were toe to toe.
“Well, I was wanting a real kiss, if that’s okay?” That was so okay. More than okay, in fact. It was perfect.
“I thought you’d never ask.” You grabbed onto the collar of his shirt and pulled him inside as he pressed his lips to yours. His nose dug into your cheek because of the pressure but you hardly minded.
His hands grabbed onto your waist and pulled you to him as your arms wrapped around his neck. He stepped forwards and you mimicked him, the two of you moving further into your apartment as his tongue swiped along your bottom lip. You let him lick into your mouth as you back him up to the chair, breaking the kiss only to push him into it.
Eddie collapsed into the chair and you took no time to straddle his waist, his hand resting on your waist as yours moved to his hair.
“Go ahead,” he nodded and you removed the hair tie from it, putting it onto your wrist before fixing his hair and making it look nice. Why, you weren’t sure since you were just going to mess it up again.
“You looked so pretty with your hair down,” you told him. “Your curls are so pretty. You’re pretty.” Eddie blushed at that and if you noticed, you didn’t say anything about it. He considered himself to be an attractive guy, but hearing you call him pretty made his confidence skyrocket.
“If anyone’s pretty here, it’s you, hon.” Now it was your turned to blush, but you resisted the urge to turn away.
“Really?” You just couldn’t believe it. Maybe he wasn’t just being nice to you.
“Oh yeah. You’re beautiful.” He pressed a kiss to your cheek. “And gorgeous.” A kiss to your other cheek. “And not to mention fucking hot.” His lips captured yours in another messy kiss as his hand slid up your skirt, his hand resting on the spot right above your ass. “Is this okay?”
“More than okay,” you replied, slotting your lips between his as you wound your hands into his hair, loving how soft it felt between yours fingers. Eddie’s hands slowly slipped into your underwear, giving you enough time to deny him if you didn’t want him to continue. He slowly pulled them down and you pulled away, causing him to stop everything.
“You really want to?” You asked, biting down on your bottom lip. You could have sworn that you were dreaming.
“I want to so bad, sugar.” The words came out more like a whine and your underwear got even more damp with hearing it.
“I guess it’s what I owe you for bringing this all the way up here.” You batted your lashes and Eddie felt his dick hardening at the thought of fucking you right there.
“You don’t owe me anything. I want you to want this, not because you think I deserve it.”
“I want it.” Eddie patted around his pockets, clearly looking for something and his eyes widened once he realized he didn’t have whatever it was.
“Fuck,” Eddie swore and your eyes snapped back up to his eyes.
“What?”
“I don’t have a condom.” That definitely wasn’t great, but you could work around it.
“Shit, me neither. But I’m on birth control and I’m clean.”
“Me too.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Eddie pulled your underwear down as much as he could before you stood up and removed them completely letting them fall to the floor into a pile. You then removed your skirt as slow as possible, looking Eddie in the eye as you did so. He watched you, bringing his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes filling with lust.
You let the skirt pool at your feet then kicked it aside before removing your top and your bra. You let the strap fall from your fingers and clatter to the floor and stood there while Eddie rushed to undress himself.
He removed his shirt then unbuttoned his pants then pulled off his boxers before tossing them aside as well. Your eyes immediately fell onto his dick and you could t help but stare at how massive it was. Of course he was huge.
You climbed back into the chair and slowly settled yourself onto Eddie’s dick, you both letting out moans as he entered you. You rode his cock slowly, trying to get used to the feeling of it being bare inside your cunt. Once you got onto a rhythm, you moved faster, wanting it harder.
“Oh,” Eddie let out a moan as his hips bucked against yours, trying to get as far inside you as he could. “So good, baby. Love the way you look riding me.”
His words only encouraged you to move faster, the two of you moaning in unison at the sensation.
“And you look so good under me. You feel so good, Eds.” Your words came out like a whimper and that only made Eddie harder.
Eddie threw his head back, his eyes shutting tight as his hands found your ass, digging his fingers into the skin and you let out a gasp at feeling, but you didn’t hate it. You continued to ride him the fastest you could and you both let out moan after moan, not wanting the pleasure to end.
“Taking me so well, baby,” Eddie told you as his fingers dug further into your skin and you kind of wanted it to bruise so you could look in the mirror and remember that night.
“Well, it helps that you feel so good.” You each gave one last push and you normally would have been concerned at how loud you were, but with Eddie, you didn’t care. You were just lucky to have the chance to be with him like that.
You got off of Eddie and held out a hand to him to help him up from the chair that you were definitely going to wash thoroughly. You led him to the bathroom where you cleaned each other up before putting your clothes back on.
You couldn’t believe that you had just slept with your crush. Everything that you had thought about before falling asleep had come true and had been just as amazing as you could have hoped. It had all been so perfect that you were convinced that you were going to wake up in your bed any second.
You took Eddie by the hand and led him to the door before opening it. The two of you lingered in the doorway, neither of you wanting to be the one to say goodbye. Eddie pressed kiss after kiss to your lips, promising that it would be the last one, but they just kept coming.
“It’s late,” you told him through giggles.
“Sorry, honey. S’not my fault your lips are so kissable.” He pulled you in for another one.
“I have to work in the morning.” You tried to push him away, but his grip on you only tightened.
“Promise me you won’t be a stranger?” As if you’d ever let that happen.
“I promise,” you nodded, but he didn’t seem satisfied with that.
“Go out with me.” His words sounded so desperate and you thought you would have been stupid to say no.
“I think that can be arranged.” He finally let go of you but only after stealing one more kiss.
“Tomorrow night at seven?”
“It’s a date. Goodnight Eddie.” He finally let go of you but only after stealing one more kiss.
“Goodnight, neighbor.” He gave you yet another wink then turned on his heel. Once he was inside, you went back to your own apartment and let out a squeal as you raced to your closet to look for an outfit to wear on your date. You were beginning to think you should have thanked the delivery guy for dropping the chair off in the lobby instead of inside your apartment. After all, without him, you wouldn’t have even been going on a date with your hot neighbor. Maybe you’d write a note to thank him.
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blondephenobarbitol · 4 months
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I actually fucking hate Mr. Jägerman here's why
Mr. Jägerman is a character in the Hatchetfield universe who is never onstage and only mentioned in 1 (one) line. This was enough to ignite my rage.
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It's because in this one line, so much is revealed about Max's character. So let's dissect that.
Max is mean. We know this. The very first thing established about him is how threatening he is. But I think his character often gets lost in the 'bully' identity, because just like every other Hatchetfield character, he is layered and complex.
We also find out two other things about him pretty much immediately: He has a crush on Grace (we'll come back to that) and he needs to feel in control.
There's a lot of evidence to support this. He repeatedly refers to himself as the 'god' of Hatchetfield High. He creates arbitrary rules around who his friends can date. He creates arbitrary rules around where the nerds are 'allowed' to go. And the moment someone implies he is not as powerful as he thinks he is, he retaliates violently.
This isn't just Max being a jerk. These are all signs of someone who is almost certainly deprived of control in their home life, which forces them to find it elsewhere. Max likely has little to no say in what happens to him at home. He's clinging to a sense of control wherever he can find it. And that line basically confirms that his home isn't a safe place for him.
Back to the crush on Grace, when you look objectively at the actions Max takes in the show, you'll find that he's not really a bad person, he's a mean person. He's a little shit that processes his need for control in the entirely wrong way, but people are shaped by their surroundings. The actions that come from him are different.
His crush on Grace only supports this. Every other bully in every piece of media sees the girl they like and whistle and say "yo lemme hit that." And if the girl rejects them, they resort to "tease bitch." Not Max. The first thing he does is start a conversation with her, laughs at (what he thinks is) a joke, then offers to carry her books. Like, I wish my highschool bullies were that nice to their own girlfriends.
When she rejects him, it's true that he continues to pursue her and calls her "dirty girl," but that once again comes back to his need to feel in control. But he doesn't get aggressive, he doesn't do anything that screams 'bully.'
We don't get a lot of scenes with pre-ghost Max. But when we do, they're interesting to analyze. Like, have you ever noticed that when he finds Steph in the Waylon Place, his very first instinct is to tell her, "Get behind me, I'll protect you" from, as far as he knows, actual ghosts? He feels like his life is in danger, but he's still putting Steph's safety first, despite having no interest in her romantically. That's huge.
There's even some evidence to support that Max terrorizing the nerds is, from his perspective, not so one-sided. When he finds out they were the ones who pulled the pranks, he says "I thought you guys hated me."
And he's open to change. He's not stubborn, he's not brutal. He doesn't continue hating the nerds just because it is what it is. Moments before his death, he is showing signs of opening up to them, and actually seems like he's coming around.
And none of this is meant as trying to defend Max's actions. I know he's the antagonist. I know he treats people unfairly. But all of this has to come from somewhere. I'm trying to say that there was clearly a foundation of a good person underneath all that cruelty. So what toughened his shell?
Mr. Jägerman. Max reveals in that one line that if he were to go back home from the 'party', his dad would call him a 'little cuck.' "can't even fight off one lousy skele'uhn." In this, he reveals his dad is demeaning to him. He's the kind of man who would hear that his son was in a life-or-death situation, and instead of comforting him, he would have made fun of him.
What must that do to a person? As someone who grew up in a home where Dad wasn't always a safe person to be around, I know that when I was younger, a lot of my bad bad behaviours were something I learned from him.
The prank meant to scare Max was the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him.
I think a lot of what happens in NPMD is indirectly Mr. Jägerman's fault. "Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein is the doctor, wisdom is knowing Frankenstein is the monster" type of shit. It is directly because of his actions and the way he treated his own child that any of this happened.
or maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I fucking hate Max's dad so much.
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velocesainz · 5 months
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Cinema
(CL16, CS55)
F1 masterlist | Main masterlist | Taglist
Summary: Charles is forced by Carlos to go watch an English movie with him at the theater since you are one of Carlos's best friends, he happens to take quite a liking to you not knowing Carlos's love for you. What will happen when you all of you meet at a house party?
Warnings: smuttyyyy (threesome) minors dni
Pairing: Charles x actress!reader x Carlos
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Charles POV:
Carlos is currently in the process of dragging me to one of the biggest theatres in Maranello.
Why?
Because his best friend recently released a new film.
I'm offended that I'm not Carlos's best friend, and also I did not know that Carlos had a girl best friend let alone one who is an actress.
I looked her up on the way to the theatre and turns out she's one of the most famous actresses today and my oh my, was she beautiful.
We got to the theatre and Carlos got us some tickets and popcorn. He rushed me into the theatre and we sat down in our seats as we watched the movie: May December. (Guys please watch it's such a good movie)
That was one hard one to take, vet complex. Yet y/n's acting was perfect and I understood even the most complicated details.
"Mate she's such a good actress and so beautiful! Why haven't you told me about your "best friend" before?" I asked Carlos wondering why he had hidden y/n from my knowledge. As far as I knew we shared all our life stories with eachother.
Carlos shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't know mate, I didn't want to tell you because I know you'd find her attractive. I've been in love with her for years and idk, you're someone that everyone easily seems to fall in love with" Carlos confessed. I wasn't so sure that I would be able to keep my hands off of her
"let's go mate, it's getting late" I said to ease the tension.
With that we left the theatre and got back to our hotel rooms. Tomorrow we had a small house party at Pierre's house in Milan so I knew I wouldn't get sleep the next day.
Timeskip
I dressed up for the party, throwing in a simple white button up with blue jeans pairing some jewelry along with it.
As I was driving to Pierre's house my mind wandered to y/n. Her acting skills were amazing and she was so immensely attractive. She had won golden globes and even an Oscar for her remarkable acting.
I arrived at the party realising I'm late as the place was completely packed with people, most of whom I didn't recognise.
I was looking for either Pierre or Carlos but as I was looking my eyes fell on a lean figure in the corner of the room. Y/n.
I walked up to her with my sudden, newly found confidence "hey! My name is Charles, I'm Pierre and Carlos's best friend. I'm a huge fan of your acting" she looked at me wide eyed. Shit. Did I ramble?
"Oh hey! I'm honoured to have you as one of my fans, good to know Carlos has replaced me" she said chuckling. Oh thank god, I thought I fucked up my only chance.
I chatted with y/n for some time until someone came up to us.
"Hola mis mejores amigos" the person said, I froze. It was Carlos.
"hola Carlitos, estaba hablando con el apuesto caballero con el que me reemplazaste" Hello Carlitos, I was just talking to the handsome gentleman you replaced me with.
She spoke in perfect Spanish, god her accent was so hot.
Carlos and her exchanged a few words and then turned to involve me as well into the conversation. How nice of Carlos.
I saw that she spoke french as one of her native languages and decided to take advantage of the fact that Carlos didn't understand a word of French.
"Si jolie fille. Veux-tu retourner dans ma chambre d'hôtel ? Je peux te montrer un bon moment" So pretty girl. Do you want to go to my hotel? I can show you a good time.
She blushed hard, her cheeks turning bright red. Carlos pulled me aside.
"What are you doing mate? I told you I like her and you're going on trying to sleep with her?" Carlos said. How did he understand what I said.
"Carlos she's not your to have. If you want we can share, I see the way she looks at you as well. She likes the both of us, let's show her a good time." I suggested
Carlos nodded and walked back to y/n whispering something in her ear causing her to blush again, got was she beautiful.
All three of us got in my car and drove to my hotel.
As soon as we got there Carlos threw y/n against the wall and started kissing her
I traced her curves with my hands, pressing up behind her. I was sure she could feel my arousal on her ass.
She ogled at Carlos's body before her. I hooked my fingers in the waistband of her linen pants, leaning forward to pepper kisses on her right shoulder. Y/n reached up under the shoulders of Carlos’s shirt and pushed the fabric away. The shirt flowed off his arms, falling to the floor. He reached forward, cupping y/n's cheek before kissing her again.
My kisses on her skin flowed down her back, teeth nipping at her hips through her panties as I slid her pants down.
Carlos POV:
Charles kneeled behind y/n once the material pooled at her feet, kissing upward. I massaged one of her breasts through her bra. Charles stood up to his complete form, kissing her shoulder once more as his hand swept across your skin to her panties.
I felt Charles’s hand slip beneath the material of her panties and graze her clit, going to feel the wetness between her folds. The kiss was broken as a moan left her lips, back arching into Charles. I chuckled looking at how worked up she was.
She squirmed between me and Charles, reaching forward and gripping my shoulder for support.
Charles POV
I had y/n on her toes as I fingered her lazily as if I was playing the piano. She let out soft pants, not giving us the satisfaction of hearing how good we made her feel. We'll make sure those noises come out.
My hand fell to her side as she undid my belt, leaning forward to kiss the flesh softly. Herr fingers slipped the button free, teeth nipping at my right hip. My breath hitched, chest rising and falling as she slowly pulled the zipper down. Y/n reached in, purposefully grazing the obvious erection in my underwear before tugging the jeans down.
“Fucking hell” I breathed, pulling away from her. Her hands brushed my thighs as I stepped away. She grinned at me, knowing that she got underneath my skin.
Carlos was watching the whole thing with his arms crossed and shot me a smile. As soon as I was yanking my jeans and underwear off, Carlos quickly undid his belt and jeans.
“Fuck, I am the luckiest woman in the fucking world,” She breathed, toes curling and eyes almost rolling into the back of her head at the sight of the me and Carlos naked before her. Carlos laid horizontally across the bed. His head was slightly close to the edge. He looked at yher, patting his chest.
“Come have a seat,” Carlos suggested calling y/n over. Carlos pulled her down with no warning, tongue immediately delving within you. She cried out as his tongue circled her clit. She reached forward, gripping my forearm. I waited for her to adjust, in awe at the sight of her. She looked so fucking hot and bothered.
“Ch-Charles, let me, please,” she pleaded me, reaching forward with her free hand and wrapping it around my cock. I widened my eyes, fuck that felt so good. I walked a little more forward. Her gaze was innocent despite her lips wrapping around the tip of my cock. I groaned loudly grabbing her hair. God she was doing so good.
Carlos POV:
I moved to suck on her clit, slipping away one of my hands from her thigh and pressing a finger between her wet folds. She moaned on Charles’s cock, causing him to pull a breath through his teeth. I gently brought my finger in and out of her, adding another.
I continued sucking her clit and I could feel that she was getting close. Her moans grew louder and louder.
“Carlos, please,” she begged, god I needed her so badly.
I stopped pleasuring her and got her off my face guiding her to the edge of the bed.
Charles walked to his dresser removing two condoms and passing me one.
“Thanks, mate,” I said quietly. We both ripped the packaging and slipped the condoms on.
“Come here, cariño,” I said to her. She came to me leaning down and kissing me as she planted a knee on each side of my body. I gladly returned the kiss, one hand on her back, the other lining my cock up with her entrance. The kiss deepened as she allowed me to fill her to the brim.
Second person POV:
Charles watched the both of you, aroused by the scene and watching Carlos fill you with ease. He stepped between Carlos’s parted legs, touching your lower back. He caressed the flesh of your ass, causing you to pull away from Carlos’s kisses and watch Charles. He took himself in his left hand, shifting to level before slowly entering you from behind. Your eyes rolled back, toes curling, and cunt clenching around Carlos as Charles entered you.
Both men gave you a moment to adjust; the sensation wasn’t new, but it was always slightly alarming initially. Charles leaned forward to kiss your shoulder before straightening back, waiting for the cue. You nodded aggressively, eyes squeezed shut as you clutched Carlos’s shoulders. Carlos kissed your temple before both men moved together, Carlos thrusting up into you and Charles’s thrusts pushing you forward. You moaned, ready to come apart right there.
They were slow at first, continuing to let you adjust like the gentlemen they were. Then, when the only noise you made was panting, they changed their pace, their hips snapping against you. You moaned, back arching, which pushed you further into Carlos. Carlos’s hands gripped your hips, fingers digging into your flesh that you knew would leave a mark behind. Charles’s grip was a little looser than Carlos’s on your waist but would still leave faint marks behind.
The pace they set quickly brought you closer and closer to an orgasm, the sensations of both pumping in and out of you overwhelming your body. Carlos thrust up, hips lifting off the bed, and a spot inside you that made you see stars. You gasped, clutching his bicep to the point your nails dug in. The sound of panting and your moans echoed throughout the room, all three bodies glistening with a thin layer of sweat.
“Fuck!” you cried out, soon feeling the tension in your core snap. You squeezed around Carlos, the tightening of your walls pulling him with you, causing his lips to stutter and his grip to tighten. Despite fucking you from behind, the tension of your orgasm was enough to bring Charles to his climax. He rode through his orgasm, slowing his pace until he stopped.
You fell on Carlos, not caring if your full weight was on him. Both of you were a panting, sweating mess. He removed a hand from your waist, running his fingers through his hair. He laid his head back, staring at the ceiling as he tried to get his breathing down to normal. Charles leaned over you, panting, but he kissed your spine. You hummed softly, weakly glancing back at Charles. Your eyes met, and he offered you a gentle smile, rubbing your back before he removed himself from you.
Charles walked to the ensuite bathroom, going to quickly clean up before he joined the both of you in bed. Carlos tilted his head up, stroking your back before gently patting your bum. You sighed, sitting up and letting him hold the condom before you removed yourself. Carlos leaned over, moving some hair that stuck to the sweat on your forehead. He gave it a gentle kiss, stroking your hair in the process.
Charles quickly returned, picking you up from the end of the bed. Carlos stood up and went to the bathroom, patting Charles on the shoulder. He carried you bridal style to his side of the bed, kneeling to place you in the middle before laying down next to you. You lay on your back, staring at the ceiling until Charles was beside you. Your head turned to meet his eyes, a soft smile on both faces. He stroked your hair, and you gently caressed his thigh and knee and all three of you fell asleep.
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blkgirl-writing · 6 months
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What Happened at the Moon Lit Pond PART 2
Gale of waterdeep x F!Reader smut
Summary: You and your companions finally made it to baldurs gate, well, rivington. And it's finally time to relax and have a fun day out.
TW: drinking, sex, oral, PnV, F/M sex, thigh riding, brothel, overstimulation, a bit of anal, begging, everyone is consenting! I'd love to do a public sex chapter sometime, but not today.
word count 3.3k
{part one} {part 1.5}
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It had been a long time since that night at the pond. You had long since left the grove and past the shadows, almost to baldurs gate, actually, in the small town of rivington. It was a long and difficult journey, yes, but with ample time and opportunities to talk about what had happened. But it never came up. Instead, there were many longing stares shot your way on gales part, small flirty conversations, and even more excuses to skip away from your companions to get any alone time with Gale, practically praying to the gods he’d say something first. But Gale wasn’t the type to come out of his comfort to express his feelings, let alone such complex ones. He had been rendered speechless.
Today was different. Maybe it was the long journey nearing it's end, but everyone was ready to let loose, even if it was just for a short while. Karlach and Wyll had split up to look for some armor, jaheria stayed back at camp to care for the small child who lost their mother, so it was a smaller company than you were used to. Just halsin, Shadowheart, Astarion, and of course, You and Gale. It was really a perfect day to mill about town, the sun beaming down in warm rays of light, not too hot and not too cold out, not even a hint of rain, so the dirt paths often muddy were dry, no ruining the clothes you had just washed.
Everyone was at their happiest, though of course, the underlying anxiety and pain for events soon to come were lingering, just pushed aside for the time being.
"Is the sun usually this blinding?" Astarion hissed, shielding his eyes with his hand "I don't remember everything being this bright"
"It simply feels brighter coming out of the shadows, you will get used to it" Halsin smiled down at Astarion, slipping behind him slightly to cast a shadow around him, guarding him from the sun. "We Haven't been inside in a while, why don't we find a shop to rest in for awhile, we have some money to spare"
"I could use a new hair ribbon, My old one looks a bit strange now that my hair has changed.." Shadowheart commented, lightly playing with her hair.
You went from shop to shop, it didn't matter, stopping by everything on the way, getting food, drinks, jewlery, and other small goods, the last place you had any energy for was a small looking shop with people outside raving about their service and pleasure being a customer there., without really looking at the sign or name.
Inside was dimly lit, a dark oak, cream, and red color scheme. Easily the most expensive place in all of the town.
"this is...awfully fancy, isn't it?" Gale murmurs, eyes flickering across the room.
"Certainly. I wonder what we could get to drink, I need a good wine..." Astarion immediately glided across the hall and to one of the counters, a huge smile graced his pale face. He stood there, talking for quite a bit, meanswhile, shadowheart wandered around, peaking her head into a room, she slipped a bit more into the room, then suddenly jolted out.
"Shadowheart? you look like you've seen...a lot"
"It's a brothel!" Astarion and Shadowheart said in unison, shadowheart nearly a whisper, Astarion nearly a yell. The woman behind the desk gave them both a nasty stare for the disruption of the ambiance.
"oh of course, sorry, beautiful" Astarion cooed at the woman. the immediate reaction to his flattery and dashing smile visible as she tucked her auburn hair away from her blushed face. He sauntered over to your merry group, that smile still plastered over his face. "I got us a discounted rate on a pair very talented drow."
"Excuse me, what now?"
"I got a discounted rate for an absolutely lovely time with drow twins for the same rate as one person but five. And we will have two rooms for comfort of space. I'm just that good, you all should be thanking me."
"Thank you, Astarion-" Halsin crossed his arms, a small smirk on his lips.
"I-thank you?" Shadowheart sputtered, still looking a bit frazzled by her earlier revelation.
you were still trying to process all of what just happened when even Gale spoke up.
"Well, looks like you'll have just...four people joining you, I'd prefer the company of a good book and an ale right now, i think."Gales eyes met yours for a split second, as you looked up at him. A very distinct look. He wanted you. It was hunger, lust, but restraint. He wasn't going to stop you from having fun with your company, but god did he want you to stay with him.
"I...um.." you looked up at Gale, fully taking him in this time. Gods...He was really the only thing you wanted. You wanted his soft hair between your fingers, your thighs wrapped around his waist. You wanted to feel his tongue shoved inside of you again.
"I think I'd like an ale or two as well."
"Oooookay...Well, since i already paid for two rooms, why don't you both buy a round for the spare room while we get busy." Astarion's eye roll was quite visible and very pointed, but that didn't matter, no one would actually remember anything that was said, as they'd be wrapped in bodies and sweat, including you.
So you ordered two bottles of ale and two of a beautiful red wine, they sat in the middle of a small round table. The room itself was stunning, the walls painted a deep purple, with a golden trim at the tops and bottoms. There was a bed centered in the middle of the room, with an abundance of fluffy pillows on top and a velvet sheet to top it off. It was by far the fanciest room you'd stayed in. Everything dripped of gold and pearls, there was even a damn chandelier. If this was a side room, you wondered what the main room must've looked like.
"This is...." You trailed off, still taking in the whole room.
"extraordinary?" Gale muttered, taking no time to sit down and pour out two glasses of wine. Something was obviously on his mind, as he swirled the red liquid around, his eyes were slightly distant, and his brows furrowed. It didn't surprise, you, though, there was a lot going on, and he had the chance to end his own life to possibly save the world, and yet here he sat, already on his second glass. There must be a lot on his mind, you thought.
Really, he just wanted the courage to make a big move, and a bit of liquid honesty couldn't hurt. While you drank, he tried not to stare, but it seemed to be getting harder and harder. He wanted so badly to reach out and devour you. He wanted to taste you again, grip your thighs with his hands, leave hickeys across your whole body, he wanted everyone to know how much he could pleasure you. He couldn't help but look at his drink, look at you, and the bed. he kept repeating 'just tell her' Tell you what? He wasn't sure what to even tell you?
Was he madly in love with you? Likely. Did he Lust for you? Always. Of course he did. Out of all the worldly and otherworldly beings, things, concepts, you were the most perfect. He Would year the night sky apart to see your smile. Commit crimes to stare into those eyes endlessly.
"They're certainly making some noise," The drinks were certainly kicking in, your voice was a bit shakey, but your head still fairly clear, clear enough to hear the moaning and grunts from the other room, even some....weird god kinks, you weren't sure and didn't care to be that snoopy.
Gale chuckled, nodding his head. "I would bet 5000 gold I could get you moaning louder than all of them, combined."
"Is that the wine talking?" You tried to blink away the disbelief and shock you clearly wore on your face, Gale was an upfront man, but this was on another level...
"Only to help say what's been on my mind." His deep brown eyes looked at you with incredible lust, more than you'd ever seen before, It was hot, searing, intense. "You have always been on my mind."
You got up from your chair, legs weak not from the wine, but from how this charming wizard looked at you like you were the entire world, right in front of him. "Is that so?" You wanted nothing more than for Gale to wrap his arms around your waist and take all of you til night passed and morning arose.
Your legs slotted through his perfectly, your knee nearly grazing his crotch. In one big gulp, you downed the rest of your drink, and leaned over Gale to set the glass down on the table, not very subtly getting closer to him, and even though your chest was practically in his face, he was still looking into your eyes.
"it would be such a waste if we didn't use such a beautiful bed. We're not often afforded those luxuries.." You took one more small step closer to him, reaching out to the hand free from drink, guiding it to your waist. "And we don't want to be wasteful..."
"Certainly not." Gale took one last sip of wine, licking the small drip that fell from his lips. He stood from his chair, his obvious hard on graising your hip. A small gasp left your lips, gods, you had forgotten how badly you'd wanted him, how big he felt...It was all returning to you. Your face flushed with heat as you remembered his tongue deep in your pussy, your lips wrapped around his cock.
Gale was emboldened by the wine, tipsy off of lust, his mind racing with all that he wanted to do to you, sweep you off your feet and into the weave. but that would have to wait, the here and now, right in front of him, you practically offering yourself to him yet again, he'd be a fool not to take it. "Come here, beautiful."
You let out a sigh, biting down on your lip as you sat down on his thigh. He wrapped his hands around your hips, squeezing slightly, almost reassuringly. He guided your hips back and fourth, while pressing you down further onto his thigh. your dress rode up to your waist, only your thin underwear creating all the friction you ever needed between your pussy and his thigh, getting ungodly close his his bulge yet never quite close enough.
His pace was slow and hard, Still clutching onto you like you absolutely needed it, which, was true, as the longer he rocked you the more wobbily your legs felt. You breath started to get heavier and heavier. Your head fell to his shoulders, the pleasure wracking through your whole body.
"No no, beautiful, look at me when you cum" Gale's hand inched its way to the back of your neck, pulling your head off his shoulder and holding you steady as you looked into his eyes,
It was all so much, his needy eyes begging for you to cum, your throbbing pussy, the small wet stain now on his pants from how gods damn much he turned you on, it was hard to keep his stare but you did, as you moaned his name, gasping as pleasure kept pulsing through your body. "fuck..." you chocked out. He let go of your neck but kept his hand on your shoulder, still keeping a firm grasp on your hip as it was clear you weren't exactly stable.
"I...That was..." You nearly whispered, still shuddering from the orgasm. You were so flustered, something that wasn't too easy for you, yet, he made you. His intensity with a smile had you dizzy. "Do you want me to return the favor?"
He raised a hand back to your jaw, tilting your head to look at him fully, to stare into his eyes.
"Let me make love to you-" Gale cooed, soothing you with his charm. "Sit back and let me give you everything."
"Yes, please-" you practically begged. Gale used his fingers to tilt your head slightly, leaving room for him to trail kisses and love bites down your neck, sucking on your skin, leaving you with shivers down your spine. You leaned into his touch, your hands nearly shooting up to grasp his soft hair, pulling him even closer.
"you're so beautiful-" He muttered between hickeys, breath getting heavier as you pressed your hips against him, feeling how much he wanted you, straining
You pulled away slightly, grasping his hand and struggling a bit to get up, turning to lead him to the bed. Although your eyes were set in front of you, you felt his gaze scan your body, how your hips swayed as you walked, he wanted to take all the time in the world to explore your body, learn it more than anything he'd ever read.
"just lay down, beautiful." He pressed his hand to your chest, pushing slightly, letting you fully relax into the bed, his body hovering over yours, his steady and strong arm next to your head, the other making quick work of unbuttoning your dress.
"Take those off for me," he looked down at your panties, slipping a finger at the band of your underwear and pulling it back, snapping it against your skin. It took a moment to register, there was so much distracting you, but you somehow managed. Completely bare and laid out, displayed like a work of art for him to admire. Gale took a moment, sitting up on his knees, to take you all in. His fingers traced along your stomach, lowering slowly, with such a light touch you could barely tell if it was him or a chill.
It shouldn't have been surprising but when he slipped his middle finger inside, you gasped, letting a moan escape your lips as his finger curled in and out of you, working in a slow and consistent pace. His index finger grazed your clit every time he pumped in and out, lightly, still taking you down from the high of riding his thigh, him knowing you'd still be sensitive, to not overstimulate.
"Come here" You pulled him in by his hair, now slightly tosseled and looking frankly unfair. "kiss me."
He didn't need to be told twice, quickly pressing his own lips to yours. He tasted of the sweet red wine, with hints of caramel and clove. He was delicious , addicting. You licked his bottom lip, opening his mouth to allow you deeper into his mouth. While you explored his mouth, he slipped another finger deep inside you, pushing in further than he had been doing before, quickening his pace.
His lips left your own, slightly panting, a bit out of breath. He then trailed down your neck to your breast, looking back up at you, asking permission to suck on your skin. You nodded desperately, gods you needed anything he would give you. His lips attacked to your nipple, sucking and licking, bobbing his head with every pull, it was all building up.
"I'm gonna cum, gods, Gale please I'm close-" You begged, yet he pulled back quickly, you let out a disappointed groan, why would he stop now? It didn't take long to get your answer, he wanted your cum on his mouth. He moved fast to move his mouth to your pussy, not relenting in his speed with his fingers and now, tongue. It didn't take long for the wave of bliss to wash over you, uncontrollable sounds coming out while he rode our your orgasm with one less finger and slowing down with his lips. It wasn't until your hips stopped shaking that he drew out his fingers, moving them to his mouth where he sucked them dry, letting out a small moan when they were clean. "divine.."
His clothes were stripped off, yours now completely tossed aside, the cool air hitting you both, but neither of you really noticed. You were focused on his hard cock pressed against your pussy, grinding againt your lips, getting slick with his spit and your cum. It would be so easy just to slide it in, but he drew it out, teasing you til you begged, pleaded, please, you needed it, you wanted him so desperately. Yet still somehow a fraction of his need for you the past weeks.
Gales restraint was shocking, even to himself, but the sight of you underneath him, begging for his cock, glowing from the orgasm he brought you, was enough for a lifetime, though he hoped there'd be many more lifetimes of this.
One more whimper is all that it took for him to shove himself deep inside you, all the way to the hilt. You felt him pressing against your cervix, a small but sharp pain from the sudden sensation , a good pain, that meant you were taking it all, and so well for him too. He had waited too long for this to stop, he kept pumping inside you, at an unrelenting pace, fast and hard. He switched between sucking on your neck, your breast, and biting your lip, keeping eye contact whenever he could. He wanted to see how much you wanted him, and he wanted you to know how much lust he had in his soul, just for you.
Gale held your neck with his hand, grasping lightly, as he came for the first time, shoving his cock even deeper into your pussy as he slowed his pace down, nearly whimpering in your ear as his head fell to your shoulders, biting down on your skin to keep from some more sounds he found embarrassing, but was so very sexy. You expected him to lay down and rest, after that, but he kept going.
"Flip over for me." He asked, giving your earlobe a small nibble as he spoke. You couldn't move fast enough, laying down on your stomach as he held down your waist, fingernails digging into your skin, leaving small crescent dents. You shoved your ass down on him with every thrust, wave after wave of orgasms wracking through your body, it felt endless, overwhelming. When it all felt like enough he kept going, adding more, rubbing your clit as your ass bounced on his cock, his thumb slipping in and out of your ass, him completely exiting you and only coming back in when you came from his words alone, sweet talking you into more orgasms. Or stopping completely to finish you off with his mouth again, you'd squirted in his mouth more than once, and he came once just from that. Maybe the stopping and starting was also so he himself could keep going as much as he could muster, but that never crossed your mind.
"You take it so well-" and "I want to see you need me" and "You're just too beautiful when you cum, I can't help but follow."
You went until your bodies gave out. Too sweaty, too raw to take anymore.
Gale fell beside you, out of breath, tan skin glistened with sweat and cum, his cock still leaking a bit, though even he was shocked there was anything left in him. You laid there for minutes, maybe longer, it didn't matter. It didn't click that the room next to you had fallen silent until you'd finally caught your breath. Actually...you remember the screams and moans ending a while ago. you notice Gales eyes had also turned to the shared wall, probably coming to the same conclusion as you.
"Do you think they heard us?" You asked, a small smile forming.
"Most definitely."
_
A/N: Well that was a lot huh? This took probably 20 hours straight of writing if not more, so please tell me if you liked it! It would mean a lot to me. Requests are always open but slow, as i'm not a fast writer haha. Thanks for following along! My gale fics have done better than I ever expected, I've gotten about 1k new followers from them I believe, so thank you all!
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hnychn · 7 months
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I AM HIM, AS HE IS ME
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SUMMARY — If there is anything that is universally acknowledged to be wholly true and incontestable, it’s that Gojo Satoru loves his daughter more than anything in the world. But does she know that?
AUTHOR’S NOTE — i got into a huge argument with my father a while back and it’s been weighing on my conscience. this series is largely based on our relationship and it’s been so therapeutic to write everything out and indirectly give myself an ending i want. the series isn’t complete, if anything, it’s no where near done. i want to make sure everything is perfect before i even think about posting the first chapter. its been so long since i’ve felt this strong need to write and i forgot how much of a beautiful feeling it is. everywhere i look and everything i see gives me so much inspiration for this series. but for now, here’s a little sneak peak of my new child.
(i am him as he is me spotify playlist)
SERIES WARNINGS — heavy religious themes, female reader, sugugeto, heavy angst, child abuse, childhood neglect, reader is a brat in the beginning, reader is assumed to be a person of color…
TOTAL WORD COUNT — tbd…
BEFORE YOU READ — the reader is mentioned to be a third year at jujutsu tech, and i completely understand the ages and time line don’t add up, but for the sake of creativity, let’s all just pretend it makes sense and ignore the age inconsistencies. <33 thank you!! <33
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PREVIEW —
The rhythmic buzz of the cicadas and the sweltering humidity of the summer air marked the beginning of summer and the end of… everything. Satoru could feel the material of his pants begin to stick to his legs the longer he sat on the rotting wooden bench. The train tracks before him were rusted and old; they had weathered the storm of time and had the marks to prove it. These tracks were the end. The led you to the beginning. All Satoru had to do was wait.
“Maybe it was because I knew she would always come back to me. Maybe I was testing her love for me. Maybe I wanted to push her away before she pushed me away.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.”
“There’s a lot of regret.”
Satoru could still feel the weight of that nostalgic love and regret in his stomach. It has buried itself so deep within him, he’s hardly sure anything would make it go away. The woman next to him looks different now; youthful, free. Satoru wants that. But does he deserve it?
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I AM HIM, AS HE IS ME [MASTERLIST]
— CHAPTER ONE: “He Doesn’t Know I Learned it From Him.”
Gojo Satoru, in all aspects, is a God reborn. He holds the world and its universes in the palm of his flaming hand; unknowingly burning everything he holds dear.
— CHAPTER TWO: “I Was a Girl Gulping a Woman’s Grief.”
With an emotionally distant mother and a father plagued with a god complex, there weren’t many people you could look up to. maybe, you have to look down.
— CHAPTER THREE: “Do You Believe Me When I Tell You I’m Trying to be Better?”
With tensions at an all-time high, it’s hard to ignore what has gone neglected for so long. Dams are broken and feelings are hurt, but if there’s one thing everyone knows, it’s that Gojo Satoru loves his daughter more than anything. But does she know that?
— CHAPTER FOUR: “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”
There is nothing more heroic than the sacrifices made by a mother. But what is born of those sacrifices made? Virtue? Honour? Strength? You knew the answer to that question all too well: Guilt.
— CHAPTER FIVE: “Desperation Sits Heavy on my Tongue.”
You and your father are more alike than either of you are led to believe. He doesn’t reach. You don’t beg. Where does the tension snap?
— CHAPTER SIX: “Through Heaven and Earth, I Alone am the Honoured One.”
Hymns were sung at his birth and prophecies were written for his future, in all aspects, Gojo Satoru was a god reborn. But who is a God to a little girl searching for her father?
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phoneuserhana333 · 8 months
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what about neighbor!ellie? — headcanons
miscellaneous neighbor!ellie thoughts while i brainstorm. enjoy <3
• i imagine ellie and you are neighbors in a huge apartment complex, you live below her and she has a balcony where she smokes weed like every day
• ellie is the type of neighbor to romanticize interactions she has with you; unlike abby, who has a clear dislike towards her neighbor, ellie will put up with anything you do. you could blow up the apartment complex and she’d call dina and be like “lol guess what my cute neighbor just did? :’D”
• orders sooooo much fast food. she can’t help it! she gets munchies whenever she smokes. if you bring her a warm, homemade meal she will MELT !!! it feeds into her wifing you up fantasy where you cook and she goes to her 9-5 to provide for u. horribly cheesy. someone help her
• her apartment is full of posters. bands, animals she thinks are cool, her favorite dinosaurs. her sheets are a plain forest green, she leaves dirty plates everywhere.
• she enjoys a good weighted blanket, funny mugs, those ugly grandpa slippers (iykyk), dino nuggets. always stocked up on sweets. never stocked up on period products (she just forgets, would cry if you brought her a lil basket of period products and sweets)
• lurks. a serial lurker. wants to know if your house appliances need fixing (if they do, she’s swooping in with a toolbox she ‘borrowed’ from joel to save the day), wants to see what you like, basically she’s looking for an excuse to start a conversation with you
• fails to start a conversation every single time. she ends up leaving her phone number under your doormat, praying you’d find it. surprisingly, it took you a few days to find it and you texted her.
• neighbor!ellie is defo the type to be all bark and no bite, she’ll send you flirty messages HOURLY, and then when she hears your flustered squeal through the thin walls she’ll tease you even more.
• but when she sees you in the hallways, or god forbid, the elevator? she’s a stuttering, blushing mess of dodgy eyes and awkward laughs. the close proximity makes her nervous, the smell of your perfume and how warm you are might be too much for her. can’t stay sane when she sees you.
• hasn’t brought any girls over since you moved in. what can i say? she’s stupidly loyal.
• ellie wishes she could just move in with you already! whines to dina on the phone about how she’s in love and how you’re her soulmate. she’s done everything in her power to make you fall in love with her (she was just saying ‘hi’ in the lobby), so why wasn’t it working?!
• little does ellie know, you’re eavesdropping on her very loud nightly phone calls, smiling to yourself as you plan your first date and how you’re going to ask the useless lesbian out.
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bethanydelleman · 6 months
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Taking a break from my usual programming to talk about Megara from Disney's Hercules being an awesome, flawed, complex, female character who has a very compelling arc.
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The backstory, given by Hades, is that Meg sold her soul to him so her lover could live, but he left her for someone else. This makes her one of the very few Disney women who actually has romantic relationship baggage and experience. She is also older than Hercules (I think unique in Disney) though I think she's still mortal and within a normal lifespan. But the point is, she thought had the "Disney princess" perfect sacrificial romance, but then was betrayed.
She does fall in love and begins to believe that Hercules is a really good person, which inspires her to be better as well. Then Hercules finds out that Meg has been working for Hades the whole time and is heartbroken and betrayed. Meg sacrifices herself to save him, JUST LIKE BEFORE, but this time, she did pick a better guy and her sacrifice was honoured. Hercules probably has a far better reason to abandon Meg than previous boyfriend, but he doesn't: he goes to the underworld, retrieves her soul, and then, in another huge personal sacrifice, opts to stay with her instead of joining the gods on Mount Olympus.
She is shown as cynical, amoral, and sarcastic; not seeming to mind that she's helping Hades attempt to overthrow the other gods. Even though she likes Hercules, she agrees to attempt to find his weakness when Hades offers her personal freedom (that seems to be lifted from the story of Delilah and Samson, by the way). While she is a slave to Hades, that doesn't fully excuse her actions because we learn that she can refuse to serve him. Her motivation seems to primarily come from her not really thinking humanity is worth saving after her betrayal.
I loved this movie so much as a kid and I think I imprinted on Meg like some sort of baby duck. I love her song, I Won’t Say (I’m in Love) and how she struggles to get over her cynical views of relationships and men. But now, I'm amazed that she exists at all. She's a femme fatal who tried to take down the hero of the story and she both survives and gets a happy ending! She commited the Ultimate Narrative Woman Sin: she used her sexuality against a hero! She does make a huge sacrifice, dying to save both Hercules and the world, but in most stories she would have saved him and died (permanently). Instead, she's completely forgiven and Hercules risks his life to bring her back.
I love her. I love her story. She's the best. Can we have more of her please?
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euryvices · 2 months
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As someone who has never even touched ATLA (anime), and has only ever seen the movie, let me give you a list of reasons why i absolutely adored it :
aang is literally a kid in this one, like he's a child hero and golden boy, and god, doesn't your chest hurt a little from seeing all that youth pain and pain? don't you feel raw?
katara is a total badass. i know some of the anime fans don't like how she's different, but i look up to her so much and she's younger than me canonically. i would die for her. i esp like the fact that she saw jet, liked him, but the second she realised he was kind of a cult-leader she went fuck that shit im out
ZUKO IS A SMALL BABY I WANT TO PET HIM HE'S A SMALL CHILD HE IS MY SMALL CHILD HAVE YOU EVER FELT SO TERRIBLY ABOUT SOMETHING THAT YOU WISH TO EXIST IN A TIME WHERE YOU COULD HELP IT HEAL
sokka being a playboy/summer-fling/taylor swift's james from the love triangle coded kinda guy makes so much sense. in the movie he was obsessed with one (1) girl and that never made sense to me. like okay bby pop off monogamous king??? but i definitely feel that sokka is not the kind of person (esp in this time of his life) to be a one-woman guy. also i want to see him get in trouble for it sorry idk
iroh is zuko's dad and none of y'all can convince me otherwise.
i am so obsessed with jet he's literally babygirl. sebastian ATE TF UP!!!!!!
the complexities of monk gyatso being a friend and sort of a parental figure. how aang brought out his childish side, and how life is so terribly aching and huge with grief. how it's palpable in every room. and how love is an intimate boyfriend to time's cruelty and god why can't we let there be tenderness? this isn't fair.
FLUFFY!!!!! BIG!!!!! DOG!!!!! I LOVE APPA!!!!!! HES SO CUTE!!!!!!
ozai is more despicable that any father ive read about or even my own. i wish him all the most terrible forms of daily death.
absolute brilliant fucking chad actors (sorry for using the f-word and c-word) they're absolute g's. i love every single one of them and their ability to act and their personalities and also THEY HAVE A BIG WATER BISON THAT LOOKS ADORABLE HOW ARE YOU NOT HAPPY (SORRY FOR USING THE B-WORD)??????
Rant being over, I respect y'alls opinions fr. I get that seeing somethings change or become different in a new iteration of your favorite work is tough. But let's remember the amount of effort and time it takes for these actors, sets and even storyboard artists to work on these things!!!! Life is so terribly short, why must you fill your time with dissatisfaction? Find the things you love about the new show!! Find the positives!!!
also azula is so luke castellan coded
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winters0689 · 7 months
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Lester Papadopoulos is a comfort character to me. I’ve been a huge Percy Jackson fan for years now, and I’ve loved many characters (Grover, Nico, Leo, Percy, etc) and when I first read TOA I loved it, but after rereading it…
I fell in love with Lester, this caring and complex character who had many layers to him, that came off as selfish, and yet just so happened to be one of the most selfless characters in the book.
He’s caring, he’s a former god, he’s selfless, he pees himself regularly, he loves his children, he drowned his ex that one time, he is a god of many things, he has had many lovers. He has so many aspects to him that makes him so interesting.
He has a redemption arc as he realizes that he has made mistakes, but also realizes that he has been abused by Zeus, that it most likely influenced how he view things, and how he may have picked up toxic behaviors from Zeus. He learns to be more human, which is such a beautiful arc to see him go through.
He cares SO MUCH about others. He grieves for Jason and Crest and Heloise and so many other people. He tried to sacrifice himself many times and has many heroic qualities, but he is an unreliable narrator and sometimes what he says doesn’t reflect what he does.
His and Meg’s relationship is one of my favorite friendships in the books. It feels like it’s the two of them against the world at times. Meg cares so much for him while also calling him out on his bad actions (like when they were on Sutro Tower) and Lester cares so much for her as he realizes that she has been abused, that she needs help, and that he wants to help her separate from Nero’s influence, that he is so proud of her for standing up to Nero. They both form such a strong bond with each other and I just- I love them!
He is also absolutely hilarious. I find myself laughing as he is just- so snarky sometimes? He also sometimes know random things? (Like the Goddess of Sewers Cloacina) He is also funny when he has no knowledge on how human things work (like not knowing the price of Tater Tot’s)
He also gets anxious and freaks out and cries and he just feels. He gets happy and laughs and gets sad and laments. He gets flashbacks and clearly has trauma but doesn’t let that excuse his bad actions as he feels guilt for his actions. He can also be quite harsh on himself, blaming himself often and sometimes projecting that onto others (like him saying that Piper is blaming him for Crest’s death??) He is such an emotional character and I love him for that.
I love whenever he gets his godly strength as it starts with small things and then it gets to the point that he can create fire with his hands just by simply mentioning cauterizing a wound and breaking Nero’s fasces and having enough strength to drag Python into the Underworld and is strong enough to hold on just enough to save himself from falling into Tartarus. He is such a strong person who has an incredible pain tolerance.
There are many other things that I love about Lester Papadopoulos/Apollo. I think I can positively say that he is my favorite PJO character. I often reread TOA more than the other books. I love the story and how dark it can get while also exploring the themes of how abuse affects you.
I just- I love Meg and Apollo. I need for fanfic of them!! I need more content of them! Their friendship is so underrated, so when I see people make fanfic of them I get so happy!
I also love the community. The fan-artists and the fanfic makers and anyone who just writes long posts, like me, are so talented and is honestly the best fandom I’ve been in.
I hope the PJO show becomes popular so that more people can read these amazing series. I hope there will be a day that TOA gets adapted, and even if it doesn’t, I still have the audiobooks to go back to.
Thanks TOA fandom, for still going strong, even years after the books ended and new books have come out and are still making fanfic about them. It feels like the books have never ended, like the TOA books are still going on and are still making posts.
I’m so happy to be part of such a passionate fanbase.
Anyways if anyone is willing to offer any good fanfics then let me know!
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sideeve · 7 months
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﹙dating Light Yagami (Pre!Death Note) )
— ★ his man has a god complex. he sees no one above him. and if he sees a threat to his over achieving ability, he will taken them out immediately.
— ★ now let’s give a plot. your school had given the opportunity for 5 students to experience education in different countries for an experiment to see with countries have better education.
— ★ you had gotten Japan. you weren’t too psyched about it but it was a new scene for you to see. you were quickly accepted into Daikoku Private Academy. your grades and test score defended your intelligence beautifully. you exceeded have the academy in their eyes. and that ticked Light off.
— ★ he was supposed to be the golden student; not some random exchange student! Light didn’t appreciate being lesser than another.
— ★ he quickly came up with a plan. Japan talks. any rumors in a city spreads like wildfire. he would make you an outcast, forcing you to leave Japan and giving him back the title of a golden student.
— ★ but your aura couldn’t make him damage you in anyway. you were fiesty, humorous, and too intelligent for any harm to be done to you. there was an invisible gravitational pull between you two that was getting heavier on his end.
— ★ but his opportunist way had gotten the best of him. he saw you as leverage to better his reputation. you were popular. he was popular. popular + popular = power. he craved power.
— ★ “hey, you’re [ name ], right?” Light stands in front of you, hands in his pocket with a warm smile on his face. “i’m Light Yag—” you interrupt him, “Light Yagami. the school’s over achiever.” ‘who does this girl think she is?’ Light takes a breath, gathering his sweet boy persona back. “i heard that you’re the exchange student from [ your country ]. i’ve never been there. is it nice?”
— ★ he’s a sociopath. he craves validation from people. he’d say anything under the sun to have someone like him. just for them to be an asset for his path of success.
— ★ months after talking to you, he grew fond of your presence. you were the only person that had the courage to speak to him first. the both of you shared a lot on interests. his fondness turned into love. he finally looked past his pride and courted you.
𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗻𝘀
— ★ getting the plot out of the way, let’s list the way he treats you.
— ★ if you think he treats you differently than he did Misa…you’re somewhat right. he’s more considerate with you. he has problems or making big deals of one of your small mistakes, making you feel like shit after he’s had his fill on chastising you.
— ★ whenever you have those “i don’t like when you do this” moments, he somehow turns it on you. “you’re the problem.” “you’re too sensitive and you need to get over it.” “if you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to change my ways.” the king of gaslighting.
— ★ if you want lighthearted headcanons, he rushes to get you to meet his family. his family is a huge part in his life though he may not show it. now that you’ve taken another piece in his life, it’s only right to have you meet them.
— ★ before he courted you, he used to daydream his future with you. little children running around your house. the wedding the both of you would have. it helped him sleep better at night.
— ★ he planned your first date to perfection. and, his reputation to the public was a big deal to him. having a bad date on his account wasn’t something he wanted. if you were someone random, he wouldn’t go this far. he had paid the waiter extra to not even look at you for too long. he reserved a secluded table from the rest of the restaurant with a beautiful scenery of the night in Japan.
𝗡𝗦𝗙𝗪 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗻𝘀
— ★ if you didn’t know by now, he’d a dom. won’t never be submissive. he hates being emasculated by any means. but you aren’t complaining.
— ★ he knows what he’s doing. though he was a virgin when you two had met, he was naturally gifted in sex.
— ★ he’s skilled with his fingers. if you were needy while he was studying, he would sit you on his lap, hands stuffed in your pants and would make you release on his fingers until you would pass out. and to get you closer to the edge, he would kiss behind you ear, whispering sweet nothings to you.
— ★ missionary or doggy strictly. i picture him as a boobs man. in missionary, he would pinch your nipples, or bend down to flick his tongue on your sensitive bud.
— ★ in doggy, i feel like he would start on all four then turn to your bare back on his cheek, his large hands kneading your breasts.
— ★ the moment you’ve been waiting for (just me), he is a munch. his sex drive isn’t that high due to the fact that his main focus is his studies. but some days, he would love to be smothered in your thigh, his lower face glistening in your juices.
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taglist ;; @worldsgreatestsinner
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lizzaneia-elizalde · 7 months
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hey iit's me again! (can i be your 🌼 anon?)
Thoughts on yan!CEO with caretaker reader who is looking after his sick father (home service i dunno what's it called) and she does some little chores here and there casually. Yan!CEO is so used to seeing her around his mansion that it starts to feel natural along with his father pressuring him to get married because the father thinks he's nearing his end. So when the father really dies tragically (bcoz ✨taruma✨) he only sees reader as his salvation and he convinced that she'd look after him even though she didn't do anything significant with lot of effort.
Yandere! Hospital Chairperson x Caretaker! Reader
OOH MY FIRST ANON! Hi :3
Btw, forgive me, the CEO thing will be changed into something other than, well, CEO. My yandere! CEO is already taken! But, with the help of my friend, we got to a little discussion, and decided on a Hospital Chairperson. Why? You'll see hehe
Yandere! Hospital Chairperson name: Xavier
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It's always Xavier.
"Xavier, can you write up the last patient's records?"
"Xavier, please do the time of death."
"Xavier, fetch the files for me please."
It's like he's being worked around like a horse around the hospital.
He has to run up and down the building, right to left on this huge private hospital. Sure, he was a newbie, a fresh graduate from medschool, but did these people had to work him to the bone?
It was almost abusive, the lot of them.
"Father, it's so hard..."
He would usually complain to his father who was the hospital chairperson.
His father laughed lightheartedly before giving a few loving pats on the head. Xavier gripped the handkerchief in his hand.
"it's because they rely on you, Xavier. You're very strong and independent, yet kind and understanding. You are very dependable."
Xavier wanted to protest, that he knew his father was the one to order for him to be ordered around like that, but he pursed his lips.
Xavier Signet. The heir to the hospital conglomerate that is his father. Ever since his mother died, his father did his best to raise him to be a well mannered man despite being absent most of the time due to his job. His father made sure to teach him good manners, to have great academics, and to not be spoiled and always appreciate hard work.
Hard work was something not unfamiliar with the Signets, they were new money after all. From a humble clinic to something as well renowned as the Signet group of Medical Facilities. They were medical practitioners to a tee, and valued other people's lives more than their own.
Xavier gritted his teeth as he held down the fountain of profanities and complaints as his father waved goodbye to him.
Nevermind the handkerchief in his hands, spots of blood in it, a sign on Xavier overworking himself too much.
What his father didn't know is that Xavier is not the angel he thinks he is. His superiority complex that borders on God complex made him boil inside with defiance and insults as he took every single work his higher ups throw at him.
He wanted them dead. So much.
But he can't.
Yet.
Fast forward five years later, and his father lied on the bed, sick and weak.
Xavier bit his tongue while holding his father's cold, wrinkly hand. It was so rough and dry. Obvious from the years of hardwork and patients he had to go through.
"Dad..." Xavier whispered. "You know you can't move already, so please. Let me hire a caretaker for you."
His father coughed, love brimming his eyes for his son.
Xavier matured into a well endowed person. One who was steadfast and an amazing leader, but also a great listener. He's the perfect man for the chairperson seat.
"Alright. You can hire one, son." Ever the fool for his offspring, he nodded.
Xavier hired you, a seemingly gentle and sweet soul, someone who knew how to take care of an elderly.
At first, Xavier was only curt with you. Professional, at most.
He was so busy with his work that most of the time, his relationship with you slips his mind.
It made him open up to you sometimes, while he drank his scotch.
"ah... Those bastards. Really? They want to siphon more money from our patients? Are they out of their mind? Isn't it enough that they stomp on the new residents, but also the patients."
You furrowed your eyebrows, listening to Xavier's whiles.
These were one of the days were you noticed that he drops his nice and angelic facade and into this arrogant, yet empathetic guy.
"Tch. They're not even fucking geniuses. All they do is pocket money, invest, and splurge. They don't give a damn to patients. Like who the fuck do they think they are?!" Xavier rambled more, the scotch making him blurt out his real thoughts onto you.
Sympathetic, you finished folding the clothes of his father and gently walked up to him, and then patted his head with a rub.
Xavier gasped, suddenly feeling that everything was at a standstill, slowly looked up to your peaceful face that was highlighted from the lights of the living room.
Oh god.
"Sir Xavier, those bastards are really something. They're public servants, they should be nice and caring. But all they knew is money." Your sweet voice infiltrated his ears, making his arrogant and superior walls crumble in just a snap.
He was so starved of affection.
Then, your hands caressed his shoulder and rubbed them, making his tense form go away.
Oh god.
And as he grabbed your form and cried into your arms, he knew that things will never be the same.
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Xavier rubbed his temples as he listened to the whines of his constituents. Apparently, they wanted to invest in commercial businesses also, but it was a failing start up company with the asking money of 200,000 dollars in exchange of only 10% of the company.
They're seriously fucking him over if they think he'll agree to this obvious scam.
It's been two years since you got in their life.
In his life.
And everyday, he looks forward to coming home into your arms and crashing his low energy body in your embrace.
It was weird, really. At first, he was so stand-offish, but now he was treating you like you were his wife.
That, and also his father continued to pester him to get a wife, since he wanted Xavier to have children before he passes away.
And when he ranted to you about that, you laughed heartily and rubbed his head once more, making him lean into your touch.
"I look like your spouse if you think about it!"
And those words permeated into him, and latched itself into his bones.
Yeah, maybe.
He glared into one of his subordinates and they trembled.
"S-sir, I swear, it's a good investment!" The subordinate said, but their hands are shaking and sweaty.
"No. Get out."
They hastily bowed and ran outside.
Due to your encouragement, he learnt to not hide his true nature and not just grit and bare the shit thrown at him.
"You're the chairperson! And you're just going to let them walk over you?"
You were right. He was at the highest position. So why would he?
So now, he's the one making life a living hell for them. Exacting revenge like a bloodless villain. Even attacking their personal lives.
He worked hard for this position. Too hard. Now it's their time to work hard to maintain theirs.
Then, all of a sudden, his phone rang. He looked at it, and his eyes softened. It was you. With heart emojis in his contacts.
"Hello y/n, how's father?"
But then your panicked voice made him drop everything and drive as fast as possible to your side.
And he saw you crying at the foot of his father's bed, tears streaming down your lovely face as you wept.
His hands trembled.
This time, he's the one to comfort you as he whispered reassuring words.
He looked up at his father's corpse, silently wishing him goodbye as tears also starting to leak from his eyes.
Now he had no one but you.
He held you closer, a numb feeling erupting from his chest as he felt your tears wet his shirt.
Painful sobs of the both of you permeated from this seemingly quiet and cold room, finding one another for comfort from the loss of a dear father figure.
Xavier had to take a break from work.
He felt so numb, leading the wake and the funeral of his father.
As much as he hated him due to his extreme ways of teaching him manners and discipline, he was still his only family left.
His ears rung whenever his father's "friends" sent condolences in a professional, yet fake way.
Time was a concept, and now, he was looking down at his father's grave.
His father didn't want a mosoleum, just a simple grave besides his wife's, Xavier's mother who died in childbirth.
And you were beside him, gripping his hand.
When did the line blur from employer to employee?
Who knows?
But both of you needed each other.
He needed you.
You were the only one left on his side, genuinely.
And he'll be damned to let you go, his only anchor to prevent himself from going apeshit and letting blood spill.
He gulped a cry.
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"Y/N, darling, where are you?"
You stilled, hearing his weary voice come from outside of your room. You gripped your clothes and hastily placed all of them in your bag and sliding it under your bed.
"Oh here, Xavier!" Your voice, strained yet giving the outmost genuine tone you could muster. Yet a slight shake can be heard.
"Thank god, I thought you left me. Haha." He opened the door and saw you, sitting on the bed with a wry smile.
He approached you and wrapped his arms around your waist, cuddling close. You bit your cheek.
"Xavier... Um, is it possible for me to go outside to shop?" You asked, rubbing his hair. Wanting a semblance of freedom and a chance to escape.
Xavier's head shot up and he shook his head desperately his grip on you tightening.
"no no no! Silly, definitely not. If you go outside, you'll catch some sickness out there that will probably kill you. And we don't want that, do we? We want you living healthy and long." Xavier desperately reasoned, clinging to you. You bit your lip and nodded slowly.
Ever since his father died seven months ago, he refused to let you go. He was crying, begging for you to stay, for you to take care of him. He even went and upped your salary just for you to stay with him.
But what use is your money if you're essentially locked inside his house?
He refused to let you go at all, scared that you'll get sick and die.
And then he would be truly all alone.
He doesn't want that at all.
He still wants to marry you, to make a family with you. To be with you, his only pillar left.
"I get it, Xavier. I'll stay put." A lump appeared on your throat as you saw his genuine smile of relief.
You were so torn with guilt and desperation for freedom.
You wanted out,
Yet also wanted to stay put and take care of the man.
So, what will you choose?
Spread your wings, while potentially setting off the ticking time bomb that is Xavier, or stay, and accept that being confined in this mansion with no one but Xavier as your only... Friend.
But one thing's for sure.
No matter what you choose,
You'll always end up in his arms.
It's an illusion of choice,
He's always the end game.
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hms-no-fun · 8 months
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so, (SPOILERS FOR FIONNA AND CAKE but its relevant to the question but im gonna put a bunch of line breaks just in case lol)
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so fionna and cake ended with fionna basically being like, you know, youre RIGHT god, if magic came back my wish would simply be twisted and it would suck, there will be no rule breaking miracles! I will now work as a struggling minimum wage employee in seattle and Be Happy about it. i sure am glad the threat of losing everyone i know and love set me straight!! sorry to send u this really random thing the ending just felt like such a slap in the face and i wanted to ask someone who knows that exact Seattle Struggle. this is absolutely me appealing to the Writing Gods to back me up that the ending wasnt very good lmao but if i have a direct line to the craftsgoat i simply must use it for something stupid at least once
FULL SERIES SPOILERS FOR FIONNA & CAKE AFTER THE BREAK!!!
i really disagree with your read on the ending. it didn't feel like "just struggle with seattle minimum wage forever and be happy about it" at all to me! the whole instigating incident was that fionna wanted to transform reality into something that she personally thought would be better, without taking into account the fact that other people exist and have internal lives just as complex as hers. she comes back to her original world to find marshall and gary holding hands, explains to them the magical adventure she's been on and the fact that their world is about to transform into something unrecognizably magical, and they receive this with abject horror! fionna doesn't know whether simon becoming ice king again will erase marhsall & gary's burgeoning relationship, which makes her realize that in her quest to escape the boring, oppressive reality of working odd jobs to make ends meet, she's only ever focused that energy on how to make things better for her.
i really want to dig into this because it's a key theme of the show. there is a destructive selfishness innate to the "heroes" of this universe, who feel entitled to the joyous empowerment of being able to defeat anyone and everyone they see in open combat. cake has a whole musical number about this! simon's arc in the last two episodes was betty grabbing him and shaking him until he finally asked himself, how would my life have been different if i'd just once let the woman i loved steer the ship for a while? and then of course we see the lich in a reality where he succeeded in eradicating all life, only to find himself desiccated and without purpose, begging the god of chaos for an answer it cannot give. brian david gilbert's ice prince seems perfectly put together and successful, until the reveal that he's outsourced his madness to someone who didn't accept the terms of the crown's curse. this didn't solve the fundamental problem, it just inverted the roles of its expression by making princess bubblegum into the mad candy queen. nothing about the status quo has changed, simon has simply given himself a more dignified role in it.
this is a story about what happens when people in struggle behave as though they are the protagonist of reality. when fionna says "this is the world i want to fight for" she's not fighting for the right to get another shitty minimum wage job. i think you've really missed something by accepting that conclusion when cake the cat is right there saying that her magical self IS the version of herself she wants to live as. being a normal house cat for her was, arguably, a form of body dysmorphia, and the show lets her keep that magic at the end! the thing is, their world IS changed by the events of the show! the status quo is altered!
like, what do we actually see everyone DOING when the credits approach? we see this entire disconnected community banding together to rebuild the city together, and we see a huge crowd of protesters outside marshall's mom's place demanding that she lower rents. we see people connecting with other people, including three outcasts from other universes escaping to this more boring one for their own safety. i loved this ending honestly, because it felt to me like an attempted refutation of the very idea that you can magically transform reality into something better overnight. if fionna'd gotten her original wish and made her world into, like, candy world, then... what? let's say they play it as like, at last people are freed from the shackles of capitalism and everyone just gets to be weird funky critters going on adventures or whatever. what would that, as art, actually say? what would that mean to us in the real world? if we're going into this cartoon looking for some kind of revolutionary energy (which IS present in the text, much to its credit), what actionable or symbolically resonant message are we supposed to take from a story that resolves its problems with magic? at that point, it ceases to be relevant as anything more than pure fantasy, because it has abandoned any connection to the material reality WE are trapped in.
i don't want to magically transform the world overnight. this whole show goes out of its way to explore how trying to transform the world overnight, in a world where such a thing is possible, is a really fucking bad idea for a whole host of reasons. regardless, such things aren't possible in our world. so going into the finale, my worry was that they WOULD turn fionna's world into another candy world and just say, ah, the revolution is when you think the right things so hard that the material plane bends to your will.
that's neoliberal thinking. that's like the essence of the failed leftist project of the "end of history" era from the 90s onwards, when marxism was systematically rooted out of academic cultural analysis and replaced with the delusion that if you can just get people thinking the right things, you can affect change in the world. well here we are, it's 2023 and all that magical thinking has got us is a world on fire and a civilization of human beings so thoroughly disempowered that they would literally rather pretend to be a tortured anime protagonist than exist in this boring, shitty, violent reality. you can't think your way out of oppression. raising labor consciousness is, at best, step one. you want to know why unions are winning big right now when they've been completely useless in this country for decades? it's because they've stopped giving a shit about optics they can't control and remembered that the boss's value does not exist without labor. you do not necessarily need marxism for this, marxism is simply the most accurate articulation of the fact that workers who make the things a capitalist sells can kneecap the capitalist by refusing to make the things they want to sell. change doesn't happen with the publishing of a book or whatever, it happens when enough people in real life press their material demands hard enough that someone in charge is left no choice but to listen.
so for me, fionna & cake ending the way it did was a huge relief, because it wasn't espousing magical thinking. the solution to fionna's ennui and economic anxiety was not to just get another job and be happy to live in the world as it was-- it was to create a sense of shared community and struggle, uniting the not-seattleites in their survival of a near-apocalypse and using it as a jumping off point for fundamentally transforming the state of that world as it exists. fionna had to realize that her problems are everyone's problems, and that making her life personally better at the expense of everyone else's agency is just an act of kicking the can of responsibility down the road indefinitely. no one who gets their wish in this show is happy to have gotten it, or avoids punishing others who didn't ask to be involved.
the "canonization" of fionna & cake felt like a reaction to the idea that we in our world are permanently isolated from the fictional realities we create where change seems to come so easy, and the powerlessness that can engender. instead this show is saying, okay, let's say we are in continuity with these fantastical realities. what do we actually DO with that? how do we make this world more fun, more interesting, more fulfilling for everyone to live in? the answer is the same as it's always been, and no other answer would ever feel satisfying: you do it by organizing the workers against the current arrangement of the state with the explicit goal of transforming it for the better.
what does simon do at the end when he gives fionna her world to her? he says that no one person should have that responsibility, that it's been in one person's hands for too long. so he gives it to her in the form of a dandelion, whose blown seeds merge with and become part of everyone trying to survive the scarab's attack. the idea here is that while no single person ever possesses the power to transform the world on their own, the world itself belongs to all of us, and it is within our power to transform it together. those who hoard power want us to believe that this is not the case precisely because the basis of their power is fraudulent and maintained through the violence of the state.
as someone who does live in seattle for better and worse, as much as i do wish i could make literally anything better right the fuck now by whatever means necessary... the fact is i can't. and it does no one any good to labor under the assumption that i or any other individual has that kind of absolute transformative power. the solutions are all right there, and they are simple, materialist propositions whose only difficulty lies in how successfully we've been propagandized to think that the individual is God, or at least speaks on His behalf. there's no thinking our way out of this pickle, and no one's gonna do the hard work for us.
as to the question of how you actually get people in real life to get together and do all that hard work... well, personally i think it's unfair to ask a 10 episode cartoon show to give you any kind of actionable advice on that front. i might even go so far as to say that such an expectation is an expression of the very same magical thinking which the show tries to push back against! in any case i liked it quite a lot and i hope this rambling answer encourages you to revisit the show and reconsider some of your takeaways
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