#their just hopelessly devoted (and also spiteful)

[purgemarchlockdown]

In the vaguest way I can put it: 011 and their victim is the most toxic yuri Ive ever done where the two characters are Legetimatly Just Friends.

#like- they actually are just freinds the toxic yuri was an ACCIDENT #i didnt MEAN for this to happen #011 isnt even a girl…or romantically attracted to anyone #their just hopelessly devoted (and also spiteful) #oc nonsense

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

quick lil masterlist just so i don’t lose track of my writing let’s goo :3

✩ = personal fave!!

satoru gojo

you are somebody that i want to keep ✩ wc; 6.7k desc; you aren't sure what you have with satoru gojo, but you know that it’s good.

call my name and i’ll come running wc; 8.7k desc; satoru can be irritating, at times. but even if you push him away, he’ll always, always be there for you when you need him.

i’ll relearn love at our kitchen table wc; 4.9k desc; satoru doesn’t quite know what love is supposed to feel like. but if it means coming home to you, it can’t possibly be that much of a curse.

the things you do for love wc; 7.0k desc; satoru begs you to wear the frilly maid dress he bought. against your better judgement, you indulge him.

i can’t close my eyes alone wc; 4.2k desc; arguing with satoru is always exhausting. bitter and spiteful, you leave him in the bedroom and go find another place to sleep; your couch would be the obvious choice, but where’s the fun in that?

how deep is your devotion? ✩ wc; 6.6k desc; you’re his knight, and he’s your prince. if only it were that simple.

there’s a shipwreck stuck between your ribs wc; 4.6k desc; three times satoru sees you cry, and the understanding you gain of each other from it.

ask me to leave and i’ll stay forever wc; 10.8k desc; satoru is stubborn; even when plagued by such a high fever, he insists there’s no need to take care of him. thankfully, you’re equally as stubborn.

we can dip if you’re ready wc; 7.4k desc; your dreams of a peaceful summer are rudely shattered by the presence of your best friend’s older brother; the same brother who rejected you five years ago. the same brother you’re still hopelessly, uselessly in love with.

you’re an angel, i’m a dog (yan!gojo !!) wc; 4.3k desc; an upcoming exam has been stressing you out, and satoru’s pleas for you to take care of yourself fall on deaf ears. he takes matters into his own hands.

oh my destiny, how far you have sprung now (not an x reader + jjk 236 spoilers !!) wc; 5.3k desc; satoru gojo goes north.

unnamed drabble wc; 2.4k (melancholic beach fluff w teen toru <33)

come rest your bones next to me ✩ (stsg/reader) wc; 4.6k desc; satoru shares the first snowfall of the year with the two people he loves most.

dear spring, stay forever (sashisu/reader) wc; 3.8k desc; just another mellow breakfast shared between you and your partners. (you don’t think you’ll ever get tired of it.)

suguru geto

where you lead me, i’ll follow ✩ wc; 10.0k desc; opening up is hard, even under the comfort of a starry sky, seated next to your childhood friend. fortunately, suguru knows you like the back of his hand.

i've always loved the way you eat ✩ wc; 4.9k desc; suguru is a morning person. he likes the serenity of it all; the quiet of the early hours, the expensive feel of his coffee pot. more than anything, he likes bringing you breakfast in bed.

i dream, now, of a normal life with you ✩ wc; 9.4k desc; suguru isn’t a lightweight. this is your first time actually seeing him drunk — though maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’d be the sappy kind.

i crumble completely when you cry wc; 6.2k desc; after a tense fight with your boyfriend, you flee out into a brewing rainstorm. luckily, suguru is always willing to warm you up again.

if i fell through the floor i would keep falling wc; 7.5k desc; geto knocks at your front door one morning ten years after leaving everything he knew behind, fully expecting to be met with a middle finger or a hand to the throat. when you invite him in, instead, he can’t help but feel somewhat perplexed.

there was no place in nature we could meet ✩ wc; 3.3k desc; it’s never fun to run into an ex. especially when the ex in question is your unfairly handsome high school sweetheart — and also just so happens to be a wanted mass murderer.

the paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects ✩ wc; 21.1k desc; when the king puts you under the supervision of a dashing knight, you promise to make his job as difficult as possible. unfortunately, suguru geto is the patient sort.

i love you, i love you (kill me in the morning) wc; 10.0k desc; everyone has a weakness. some are harder to get rid of. (or, alternatively; suguru geto befriends a non-sorcerer as a child.)

unnamed drabble wc; 1.8k (silly spring fluff <33)

unnamed drabble wc; 2.7k (comfy fluff w sleepy needy sugu <33)

unnamed drabble wc; 1.5k (slightly bittersweet fluff w cult leader geto <33)

unnamed drabble wc; 2.2k (angsty kiss w cult leader geto <33)

come rest your bones next to me ✩ (stsg/reader) wc; 4.6k desc; satoru shares the first snowfall of the year with the two people he loves most.

dear spring, stay forever (sashisu/reader) wc; 3.8k desc; just another mellow breakfast shared between you and your partners. (you don’t think you’ll ever get tired of it.)

shoko ieiri

you drink your coffee black and we are afraid of each other ✩ wc; 4.2k desc; shoko makes you a morning cup of coffee. turns out she’s not very good at that, but it’s the thought that counts!

in the dream i don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap (jjk spoilers!!) wc; 4.5k desc; ever since the battle in shinjuku came to its conclusion, nothing’s been the same as it used to — but you don’t think anyone is doing quite as badly as shoko. 

dear spring, stay forever (sashisu/reader) wc; 3.8k desc; just another mellow breakfast shared between you and your partners. (you don’t think you’ll ever get tired of it.)

others

the green in your eyes (makes me feel warm inside) (megumi/reader) wc; 4.6k desc; in the comfort of a familiar bookstore, you find a boy. a pretty boy, who’s always reading, who doesn’t speak unless he has to. you’d like to get to know him — and maybe you will.

go for it! (yuuta/reader) wc; 7.4k desc; yuuta’s been crushing on you ever since the first group project you had together, but he’s too nervous to confess. luckily, he has some over-eager friends willing to help! step 1: ask for your number!

[jade-len]

bad svsss fanfic/au idea, pt. 2: random svsss anti-fan (or hater) transmigrates into svsss after tweeting "stupid author, stupid novels" and proceeds to solve 90% of the novel's conflicts out of pure spite by pretending to be a seer.

"luo binghe will not kill you, shen qingqiu. just trust me when i say that."

"please listen to me when i say this, luo binghe. focus on yourself for a bit. learn to love yourself too. yes i know you're hopelessly in love but you shouldn't just rely on his affection to hold up your emotional wellbeing, okay??"

"oh yeah no. the huan hua palace's sect leader is a pervert who preyed on su xiyan, which led to a bunch of conflict and misunderstanding and now he's kinda gotten away with it." *proceeds to explain the whole lore of it* "see you later, yue qingyuan!"

"zhuzhi-lang, i have very important advice, okay. just because you love someone and believe something is best for them, you should not force them to do it. by the way, can i see your uncle real quick?"

"yeah. uhm. it was all old palace master's fault. go fuck him up, tianlang-jun. just don't kill anyone else in the process. also uh, read better romance novels please."

"gongyi xiao, if immortal master shen qingqiu and shang qinghua ever ask you to look around for some special mushrooms, run right after you help them navigate huan hua palace. like leave the damn place. you will meet your fate if you stay here. ok cool bye."

"mu qingfang please introduce this thing called 'therapy' and 'counseling'. i promise you it will reduce qi deviations by 50%."

"mobei-jun... don't. don't beat shang qinghua up. look i know it's demon culture but maybe try to also learn some human courtesy too?"

"liu qingge. one day you will find someone who will have the same amount of devotion for you as you will for them. and you are an amazing person for it ok."

at some point they probably explain to sqq and sqh that they've transmigrated into a story that's about sqq transmigrating into PIDW, which is also a story.

there can be three routes to this:

1. there is no hurt. binghe's heartbreak points doesn't even exist. everyone is cool and there are no deaths. also tianlang-jun tortures and kill OPM, so there's that. maybe some romance or whatevs happens but it's all good.

2. while they stopped 90% of the original conflict, they proceed to accidentally create some more by simply being there. the system declares that they're the "new main character" for the audience, just like how sqq is with svsss. now, new and different plot points start happening to them instead of shen qingqiu! how will they use their knowledge now, with things they can't predict?

2. mid-way, they accidentally put a huge target on their back. unintentionally, they're going against the system's wishes and the whole point of the novel: uncover the hidden plot of PIDW. they're like a virus, a bug, something that isn't supposed to be there, but is. they don't have a system, they exist beyond that; so they can't just be sent back. they're accidentally ruining the story of svsss by not having any of the conflicts mxtx created to occur, and thus must be stopped before they completely flip everything over.

the new mission given by the system for sqq and sqh? [URGENT: stomp the bug, no matter what!]

#woah it got like. real meta at the end #svsss ideas #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #liu qingge #tianlang jun #shang qinghua #zhuzhi lang #yue qingyuan #gongyi xiao #mobei jun #su xiyan #svsss #mxtx svsss #the scum villain's self saving system

[steponmepinkjun]

i am in love with you, asra appreciating the titties™️ would be amazing <333 you are amazing and if i could give you all the stars in the sky i would

A quick shoutout to my Big Tibbie Bitches, may we all avoid irreparable back pain from our bitties ❤️

Asra X BIG TIDDIE apprentice  🍋  

He knows youre insecure. He wishes you weren't, but he knows you are. 

It's not just the back pain and the stretch marks, it's more than that. You know the ideal frame is wasp-waist, and you are decidedly… Not

He's more than happy to rub coconut and jojoba oil on your body to help ease the itchy feeling of stretching skin when you go up a size

He's run out of ways to try to convince you that he doesn't love you in spite of any of your self-proclaimed flaws, but because of them

Hes always wanted to expand his sewing skills, but what a perfect opportunity! He'll study every brassiere, corset, halflet, whatever-it-is that can possibly support you and give you relief

He knows you worry about the way your spine bends to accommodate your chest, and by his reasoning, the perfect solution is him following you around the shop, holding your breasts in his hands, alleviating the pressure on your form while also appreciating the soft, supple weight of your shape 

He doesn't think of your weight in terms of worthiness. He thinks of it in terms of how gravity is affecting your form, no more. You're no less to him because of your body's instinct to gain or lose mass

He tries not to draw attention to them, because he knows it makes you uncomfortable, but he can't help but want to suggest skimpier tops, low cut dresses, thinner fabrics… 

Your cleavage is ample and he will try to resist burying his head in it, but will fail

It doesn't take much to convey to him that your ample form, a blessing to others, can feel like a curse to you. You don't want the added attention it grants you from strangers or passersby, you just want to know that you're desirable to him

He begs you, please, test him, let him show you how helpless he is to control his body's response to you

But there's more to it. He knows what you need from him, what you crave and what will let you be at peace when you're with him alone

He kisses you and tells you that your form is a shape he loves, but it is merely a part of you. Its a physical aspect of the person he loves. It isn't his fetish or his driving motivation, it's simply a detail about the person he's hopelessly devoted to

He loves you because of, not in spite of, your body.  

#asra #asra alnazar #mine #my headcanons

[jokerfan99]

My Top 10 Favorite Anime Heroes (Updated) by DarkChild316

“Guess who’s back…back again! DarkChild’s back, with 10 more friends!” LOL, sorry for that lame-ass joke, but I was listening to some Eminem earlier today. Anyway, my terrible sense of humor aside, I thought it would be a good time to give my list of “My 10 Favorite Anime Heroes” an update, figured since I did one for the villains I thought shit, might as well do one for the heroes too! Now once again, this list is strictly for the men only, if you want a list of my favorite anime queens, check out my list of “My Top 10 Favorite Anime Heroines”. But in the meantime, enjoy this updated list of my favorite anime heroes:

#10. Izuku Midoriya (My Hero Academia): One of the newest (and quite literally) entries on my list, Deku is a character who dreamed of becoming a hero in spite of being born without a Quirk or any kind of powers in a world dominated by heroes with them. Only to be chosen as successor to the greatest hero of the age, All Might. A humble yet caring fanboy at heart, if All Might represents the Golden Age of heroes, then Deku represents the future of heroes in the Modern Era. He may be a socially awkward cinnamon roll at the best of times, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that he’s not willing to stand up and do what’s right when the chips are down and the world needs a hero to stand for, no matter what form of villain is in the way! The only reason he doesn’t rank any higher on this list, is because he’s still relatively new to the scene and time will tell where he stands in the Patheon of anime legends.

#9. Inuyasha (InuYasha): He’s half dog-demon, half human: put it all together and what do you get? A sword-wielding hybrid who knows how to take care of business. Originally wanting nothing more than to become a full demon, his human heart trumped his selfish desires, leading him to fall for the modern-day schoolgirl he vowed to protect. Fighting through feudal Japan to recover fragments of the Sacred Jewel, InuYasha can be both cold and rude, yet heartfelt and compassionate. Plus, he makes us all laugh whenever we see this happen.

#8. Alucard (Hellsing): There have been a shitload of vampires in modern anime, yet all of them owe their debt to this tall, dark, well-dressed man. There has never been a vampire as delightfully sadistic as Alucard but unlike most vampires, there’s a method to his sadism that makes him truly brilliant. He isn’t truly evil, he’s just a monster who revels in destroying other monsters in any sadistic way he sees fit. And he truly revels in it, making his victims (most of which are evil Nazis and powerful demons) believe they actually have a chance by damaging them before regenerating and wrecking them in devastating fashion. This isn’t to say he’s totally heartless though, as he’s shown a great deal of fondness for the members of his team who are just as devoted to ridding the world of the evil forces that threaten it. Even though the anime version of Alucard mentions that he doesn't entirely understand humans anymore, he seems happy to work in the service of them, and to protect them from devils who aren't as honorable as he is.

#7. Kenshin Himura (Rurouni Kenshin): When I was a kid, Rurouni Kenshin was my favorite anime growing up and Kenshin was my favorite character. Having had a chance to revisit this anime recently during lockdown reminded me once again why that is, Kenshin is easily the most compelling character I had seen growing up as a kid and he was a refreshing change of pace in the samurai genre. Firstly, he was quite feminine to the point that many mistook him for a woman. He was also one of the politest characters in anime history, frequently putting others before himself and speaking to them with the utmost respect and patience. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the guy would be better suited as a florist that a samurai. But underneath that smiling exterior hides a dark secret, Kenshin is a man haunted by the demons of his past. A former mercenary who killed countless foes, he makes a vow to never kill again, and is repeatedly tested on that vow time and time again as less virtuous people endanger the country’s peace. When Kenshin's hand is forced, he can go to incredibly dark places and fall back into the habits that made him known far and wide as the most fearsome swordsman in the land. Although Kenshin’s momentary lapses make him a complete badass and set the stage for some of the most epic sword battles ever animated, Kenshin always goes back to his sweet persona once the danger is gone. But in his solitary, quiet moments, he's gripped by his greatest fear; that one day he will permanently revert to his former self and become a manslayer once more.

#6. Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop): I’ll admit, it had been a long time since I’d seen Cowboy Bebop, so naturally I had forgotten about how cool a character Spike Spiegel was. Thankfully, this pandemic has allowed me to revisit it, and I find myself being just as in awe of Spike as I was when I was kid in the 90’s, he’s that awesome a character folks! Spike was an amalgamation of influences (from Bruce Lee, to Lupin III, and a little dose of film noir), and the result was a creation greater than the sum of its parts. In a series like Cowboy Bebop, which was itself a combination of cultural influences from around the globe, Spike was the essence of the story. Voice actor Steve Blum launched his career into new heights when he gave the performance of a lifetime in the English dub of the series, giving Spike a sense of smooth, effortless cool that many argue surpassed the original Japanese version.

Spike proved to be a versatile character; he was an expert pickpocket, a gearhead who worked on his own spaceship, a clever detective, a badass fighter, and even a bit of a philosopher. But what made Spike most interesting was his past as a gangster, and a man hopelessly in love. His relationship with Julia, and the tragic end of that relationship, haunts him throughout the series and shows us what truly mattered to him all along. When Cowboy Bebop reaches its powerful conclusion, Spike goes out in a blaze of glory that is unmatched in the history of anime (all I have to say is “Bang”).

#5. Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach): The first of the shonen “Big 3” to appear on my list, you’d think being born with the ability to see ghosts would be enough, but not for this high-school bruiser. After a fateful encounter with a Shinigami, Ichigo gains the power of a god of death, and is tasked with defending his home from the malicious spirits known as Hollows. As his seemingly endless battle stretches to other planes of existence and some truly frightening enemies, both Quincy and Hollow, this orange-haired swordsman will keep fighting to protect what matters most to him no matter what.

#4. Monkey D. Luffy (One Piece): The second member of the shonen “Big 3” to make my list, this straw-hatted rubber-man takes my vote for his carefree spirit and his big heart. With the dream of grabbing the title of Pirate King, Luffy is a man who thinks with his stomach and fists rather than his head. Always in the pursuit of adventure, this happy-go-lucky guy may be the last person you consider when you think pirate captain. But you’d be wrong: You mess with Luffy’s crew and he’ll declare war on the entire world to save them.

#3. Naruto Uzumaki (Naruto): Talk about a rough childhood. After having a powerful demon sealed inside of him, Naruto was a social outcast in the shinobi village he grew up in; even though people despised him for being the vessel for the Nine-Tailed Fox demon he did not take the darker path in life nor did it deter him from pursing his dream of becoming the village leader to gain the respect and admiration of those who once shunned him. Naruto’s growth as both a ninja and human can be seen throughout the series,  as it was this good nature of his and the will to protect everyone close to him that slowly changed the attitude of people towards him as the bonds of friendship he forges make his dream worth fighting for.

#2. Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist): Wildly ambitious, wickedly smart, and wise beyond his years, Edward Elric entered the stage with a fresh, but interesting take on the modern shonen anime hero. Unlike those who came before him, he wasn’t this lovable idiot with a heart of gold. He was smart, calculating, arrogant, and shrimp sized. But most daring of all was the fact that Edward is technically handicapped, having had both an arm and a leg lost in a tragic accident fueled by love and hubris. In Edward we had a character who unlike most anime heroes was truly multidimensional. He could be comedic and pull off wild takes and sight gags. He could be placed in the most tragic circumstances and portray the deepest kind of sadness. He could be a complete badass, but he could also be the nicest guy on the planet. And most of all we saw Edward discover harsh truths about the world and learn that he didn’t know nearly as much as he thought he did.

#1. Son Goku (Dragon Ball): With the greatest respect to those like Luffy and Naruto, none of those characters would have ever been possible without this man (and the creators of One Piece and Naruto have even admitted this themselves). The prototype for shounen lead characters, Goku was somewhat of an anomaly back in his day. When the plucky, pint-sized kid Goku first appeared in Dragon Ball, the trend for male heroes was to have larger than life muscle heads (which Goku ironically turned into in his adulthood). Goku also grew up; another drastic change in a time when characters rarely changed much. But Dragon Ball Z is where Goku truly earned his fame. Goku isn’t even the most popular character in DBZ sometimes, but he is the foundation of the series. His heroism, strength, and dedication make him the perfect core for a kid’s show where the themes are meant to be pretty simple. He may not be the most complex character in anime history, but he’s perfect for the goal he was meant to accomplish. But Goku isn’t my top hero so much for his character complexity; it’s his influence that cannot be denied. He was, in many ways, a character that bucked the trends of his time and defined the direction of shonen manga/anime for decades, and that's why he's my #1 anime hero of all-time.

So that's my list, what did you guys think about it? Love it, hated it? Go on and tell me what you think and let me know who your favorite anime heroes are. See you soon!

Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/darkchild316

#izuku midoriya #my hero academia #inuyasha #Alucard #hellsing #kenshin himura #Rurouni Kenshin #spike spiegel #cowboy bebop #ichigo kurosaki #Bleach #monkey d. luffy #one piece #Naruto Uzumaki #naruto #edward elric #Fullmetal Alchemist #goku #dragon ball

[edorazzi]

IDK if you watched the Chat Blanc episode, but if you did, what are your thoughts?

I don’t usually post about my reactions to episodes these days (unless it’s in snarky comic form), but a few people have asked me about this one so why not!

This got super long, so I’ll throw it under a cut (and apologies for anyone on mobile if Tumblr dot hell still opens readmores automatically). 

I personally thought Chat Blanc was an underwhelming episode. Everyone knows how much I adore Adrien so of course I loved all his scenes, and I thought the actual Chat Blanc content was really exciting and well-done (when we were actually THERE), but the rest of the episode was pretty meh for me. For whatever it’s worth I watched this episode in French, so I don’t know if the English dub changed anything.

When it comes down to it I’ve got two big gripes: logical and emotional. My logical complaint is that the plot just DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. I respect that the rules of time travel are very loose in fiction and every work has its own take, but the episode’s “whatever happened today changes the future” basis absolutely doesn’t work when there’s been no interference from outside the timestream. Are they telling me Marinette has to follow a particular set of actions for the rest of time in order for the past to match up with the future, and every time she puts a foot wrong on this invisible path Bunnix will show up to berate her? It’s ridiculous. If Bunnix exists in the future then that path has already been written, so anything Marinette does in the present day she would have done anyway. It doesn’t work and I’m kind of amazed the writers thought it made enough sense to put in at all, let alone hinge the entire plot on. This has to be a Bunnix problem because both her episodes have been full of scrambled logic like this, and it’s really making me not enjoy her.

(I also don’t understand why Bunnix just did NOTHING even when she found out what the cause of the whole mess was. Why did she sit around waiting for Ladybug to defeat Chat Blanc when she could have just gone back to five minutes before Ladybug jumped through Adrien’s window and told her not to do it? I know she was gradually losing limbs to the altered timestream and stuff but she didn’t even try! There were easy fixes in this plot which no one took and that’s so frustrating!)

My emotional complaint might not be shared with everyone, but I was left feeling really irritated that the entire storyline was based on a problem created for this specific episode, which was then retconned into never happening. Adrien has a lot of emotional issues and it’s not been lost on me that Ladybug is starting to treat him pretty badly lately (the way she behaved in Reflekdoll was APPALLING, and I don’t understand people who say Adrien was a brat in Syren because I feel he was completely justified in demanding some respect and proper communication from his PARTNER), so it rubs me wrong that his akumatization - which is a VERY big deal! - was the result of this mangled “oH bUt WhAt iF gAbRiEl rUiNeD tHe LoVe SqUaRe AnD wAs EvEn MoRe eViL LaTer” concept instead of actually addressing the unfair way Ladybug’s been treating Chat Noir this season on top of everything else the poor guy is going through. 

Having Adrien bottle up his problems the way we know he does only to explode in such a drastic and dangerous way, like in the Christmas special which resulted in him running away and nearly destroying the town tree in an act of rage and spite, is SUCH an interesting route to follow for something like Chat Blanc. I don’t want it to be about some half-assed nothing-matters-in-the-end-anyway-lol love square BS laced with a big middle finger to anyone who’s been hoping for an identity reveal sometime this century. It’s just a sign they’re planning to hold on to this formula until the end of time itself, and I don’t know about anyone else but that’s going to make any future identity teases REALLY underwhelming (or terrifying, since now we know that APPARENTLY identity reveals result in the moon exploding all life being wiped out. Tread carefully, Marinette).

And comparing this to the Christmas special reminds me how horribly out of character Gabriel was! Like oh my god, who was this man?! Xmas Gabe was out of his mind with worry when Adrien went missing (and grateful enough for his safe return to let all the plebs into his home for dinner), and in several other episodes we’ve seen that Adrien’s wellbeing is his real weak spot, particularly when he’s suspected he might be Chat Noir (Jackady is a great example of both). Yet I’m expected to believe he’d ruin his son’s happy relationship for the sake of an akuma, then just go full maniacal villain in the event of discovering Chat Noir’s identity and try to physically fight him right after revealing Emilie instead of appealing to him on an emotional level? Hell no! That’s stupid and boring and nothing like the complex antagonist we’ve come to know over three seasons, and considering that’s what the akumatization hinged on that’s really disappointing. 

(Also Nathalie is a snake, but I don’t feel I know enough about her character to know if she’d rat Adrien out or not. She’s definitely hopelessly devoted to Gabe but I like to THINK she wouldn’t.)

I would definitely have preferred a much more lowkey episode focusing on Chat getting akumatized because of something Ladybug says or does, because she’s (canonly!) become complacent and isn’t treating him very well as a partner. Something which explores all his (canon!) insecurities and his (canon!) tendency to bottle up his emotions and not bother anyone. It could have been a great starting point for the pair of them to confront their issues and start fixing their relationship and getting back to that wonderful Season 1 dynamic! And this was none of those things. Nothing changed or progressed and nobody learned anything. :/

There were parts I liked though! As I said before I loved all the Chat Blanc scenes which I thought were really powerful, and Ladybug’s reaction was nice; being so gentle and near-tearfully sympathetic until Chat Blanc forced her to defend herself. I also adored the final scene where - to Chat, who has no idea about all the time travel stuff - it seems like Ladybug called him out exclusively to cuddle. I’m a sucker for that kind of platonic affection and it’s a huge improvement on their uncertain relationship in recent episodes! But that’s about it. I’ve heard this was supposed to be the finale at one point but got pushed back, and oh my god, can you imagine?! I haven’t even watched the finale yet (I wanted to keep my viewing in some kind of chronological order, not that that means ANYTHING with this show) but it cannot be more of a disappointment than this would have been. Extremely hard yikes.

Anyway, I could keep going but I think I’ve put more effort into this than the writing team did with the episode. This was a MESS. 

#IF PAPILLON TRIED TO AKUMATIZE FELIX HE SIMPLY WOULDN'T LET HIM; RIP TO ADRIEN BUT HE'S DIFFERENT #yellowmagicalgirl #josie talks about things #ml spoilers #does this still count as spoilery? i'll tag it anyway because who knows #i'm curious about why so many people have asked for my opinion on this episode specifically #is it because it was Like That or because it's the most recent one to ask me about which isn't the Felix episode lmao #(which i still haven't seen yet so please don't spoil me! i'm getting to it tomorrow though) #BUT ANYWAY YEAH THIS WAS..... AN EPISODE; CERTAINLY #miraculous ladybug

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: January 2021

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of January 2021 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Once again, we knew that Donald Trump wasn’t going to take losing well, but when a legion of his most boneheaded supporters storm the Capitol demanding the election result be overturned because a certain thin-skinned orange gobshite had spent several weeks screaming about electoral fraud and, by the way, also set the date of January 6th for some major event, even Mike Pence couldn’t sanction his buffoonery any longer - especially when said buffoonery involved him saying “I love you” to people who were guilty of sedition and, by the way, murder - all of which led to him finally, finally, getting the boot from various social media platforms

...all while Lauren Boebert appeared to be trying to help out the insurrectionists by livetweeting the location of Nancy Pelosi, presumably because Boebert forgot about that Glock she claims to take to work with her every day and was looking for a convenient meat shield, which naturally has nothing to do with her tweeting the day would be like 1776 earlier that morning

...but the real victim in all of this was Melania Trump as it interrupted a photo shoot she was doing, which she somehow thought it was a good idea to mention several days later in a statement riddled with two opinions: “both sides” and “me, me, me” which shows she didn’t realise the optics of rearranging the china as Washington burned around her

...but according to Laura Kuenssberg it was merely a “scuffle” at Congress, as opposed to an organised group attempting to stage an armed insurrection against the government complete with at least one member carrying zip ties

...and finally, we had Ian Austin reminded us that he’s still alive by saying the exact same thing would have happened in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn supporters storming parliament, as if that happened in the four years Corbyn was wishing Austin would go away, then did go away, but sadly didn’t go away

Once again the Tory government think they know better than virologists, epidemiologists and pharmacists with their one-two punch of thinking they can just mix and match the various vaccines available rather than give people two doses of the same vaccine, but they further weaken any chance of vaccination succeeding by ignoring Pfizer’s recommendation the second dose be given within three weeks of the first by adopting a policy of the second dose is given three months later, and it it’s just as likely to be the less effective but cheaper Oxford vaccine they get a dose of

...swiftly followed by the BBC did their bit to encourage people to get vaccinated by reporting a story of a nurse getting a dose of Covid six weeks after her first vaccination jab not by reporting how she was three weeks overdue for the second dose (or, if you prefer, six weeks before her second one) but simply saying that people vaccinated can get Covid, which goes beyond the BBC’s sociopathic inability to criticise Tory fuckups into being downright fucking dangerous - as does their putting sentient testicle Toby Young on Newsnight to say how we’re all overreacting as it's not as bad as all that

Of all the things proven liar Boris Johnson should have said when the UK’s Covid death toll officially passed 100,000 (as opposed to unofficially, which would have been last December), “We have done our best” was not it, because if their best includes not going into lockdown in order to protect landlords, having Dominic Cummings dictate herd immunity in spite the fact that you need vaccinated people for it to work, refusing to have quarantine at airports until July, thinking it would be a bright idea to tell people it’s their patriotic duty to go to the pub, giving them £10 vouchers to go to restaurants, putting children going back to school ahead of any concerns about every single school could become a petri dish and countless other horrifically mismanaged instances, then we should be kept up at night dreading what their worst would be

The fact that Chartwells were given a contract to provide free school dinners with a budget of £30, and the supposed lunches that arrived had £5 worth of food in them which begged the obvious question where the other £25 went, is appalling - but not surprising, as the Tory government gave them the contract and, equally unsurprising, Chartwells was founded by a Tory donor, and equally unsurprising their response to their grift being exposed was to tell all the public school clients they cater to a pack of lies while hoping nobody found out about them doing so...which worked about as well as you can guess

Something possessed the EU to ramp up the row over the AstraZenica vaccine not passing the rigorous tests for over-65s by threatening to trigger Article 16 and limit the number of vaccines that Northern Ireland received, and that something was it was hopelessly misguided as it allowed the Tories to get their hapless response to the pandemic off the front pages for a few days and let the Leave headbangers say this is why we left the EU...in spite this threat would have never been in play if we were still in the EU

There is no way to make jokes about Kellyanne Conway posting what was, in effect, revenge porn photos of her 16-year old daughter, because that sentence is so far out there that it is borderline incomprehensible

In the space of less than twenty seconds proven liar Boris Johnson claimed that there was no prior warning of the new strain of Covid, he had the SAGE paper stating it was coming which was handed to him last September held up in his face, and then said the government acted accordingly.  Yes, you read that right, he claimed the government acted accordingly to something they had no prior warning about, which is literally impossible, all in the space of ten seconds

In the latest hire by the BBC which is cause for both comment and concern, they announced their new chairman would be Tory donor Richard Sharp, whose credentials for the position are being Rishi Sunak’s ex-boss at Goldman Sachs, donating at least £400,000 to the Tory party, and having no background in journalism whatsoever

Smirking bully Priti Patel said that the UK should have closed its borders in March 2020 in order to prevent the spread of Covid.  Presumably she forgot that she was a.) Home Secretary in Marsh 2020 so could have done that, and b.) Home Secretary when she said that the borders should have been closed as that indicates she doesn’t know what’s going on

The terrifying world which Alison Pearson lives in has now started to cross over into our reality due to her responding to one of the four people she hasn’t blocked on Twitter calling her what she is - namely a liar - by siccing the Torygraph’s lawyers on them claiming libel, doing the usual cry bully tactic of learning the person she is harassing works for GlaxoSmithKline so promptly went to their CEO demanding he be fired, and howling about the hate campaign being waged against her - while telling the person, who was saying he was thinking suicidal thoughts after the pile-on that Pearson had instigated even after he had deleted the tweet and apologised , that “You’re finished”

Someday in the future, scholars will study Ted Cruz responding to Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement within hours of getting his feet under the Oval Office desk by pontificating about how terrible it is that Biden is more interested in the citizens of Paris than the jobless of Pittsburgh and wonder just how somebody who doesn't know why the Paris Climate Agreement was named the Paris Climate Agreement ever got to be a senator

...and judging by how Lauren Boebert also latched onto this brainless rhetoric, not only can it be asked how she got to be a senator when she had the opportunity to actually realise Cruz’s mistake, she also begs the question how she can be a senator after her publicly trying to use Nancy Pelosi as a meat shield during the Capitol riots

Unifying force Keir Starmer stated that Labour should be devoting their time to fighting the Tory government rather than fighting court cases, somehow forgetting that by breaking the guidelines of the EHRC report (which he pledged to follow without question months before it was published) is the reason that they’re fighting court cases, and just so happens to be the reason why people are asking how a meeting attended by Starmer, Angela Rayner, Len McCluskey and others either didn't have a single person taking notes, which is David Evans’ entire defence, or they did take notes by quite conveniently lost them

Oh boy, did Wall Street cheerleaders not take it well when r/WallStreetbets exposed to the entire world that the stock market is little more than a game people play with other people’s money - because the teams the Wall Street cheerleaders support started losing, and all it took was a few Redditors investing in Gamestop and Bed Bath & Beyond 

Nice of Shaun Bailey to remind everyone that he’s a Tory by giving his suggestion for how the homeless could get on the property ladder, namely by saving a minimum of £5000

Clearly Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t get the memo about the Streisand Effect, as the first thing she did after taking her seat in the House of Representatives was go on a mass deleting spree of Facebook posts - which only served to draw attention to her video saying that Nancy Pelosi be executed for treason, her track record of spreading conspiracy theories about the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings, and her claims that a Jewish space laser is responsible for the 2018 California wildfires

Insufferable self-promoter Jess Phillips got her 2021 off to a good start by tweeting out that, as Britait has happened, we should shut up and accept it.  To the surprise of nobody other than insufferable self-promoter Jess Phillips, this led to a lot of people saying that, no, they will not accept an advisory referendum somehow being bolted onto the Ten Commandments, especially as numerous things that were promised wouldn’t happen such as a border in the Irish Sea, leaving Erasmus, losing freedom of movement, leaving the Common Market have all happened

It is wrong to say that smirking bully Priti Patel has lost 150,000 police files.  The actual figure is closer to 400,000 - which begs the obvious question as to what those files were, for example if those files also happened to fall under the same category as the ones that 55-year old ex-minister Mark Francois might want to have disappear for the sake of convenience

At last CD Projekt Red took some responsibility for Clusterpunk 2077 being such a cyberfuck...if by “taking responsibility” you mean “taking responsibility, dumping it all on the QA testers, and saying that everyone should blame them for everything” - and then with perfect comedic timing CD Projekt Red released an update for Clusterpunk 2077 that was so broken they had to release a hotfix for their broken patch

Expenses-fiddler Robert Jenrick decided that the most important thing to protect in the United Kingdom at this exact moment in time is...statues.  Not key workers, not the vulnerable, not any human life at all.  Statues.

So either Rafael Behr wrote a column for The Guardian where he tried to blame Jeremy Corbyn for his heart attack which saw Guardian higher-ups remove that passage from their print edition but forgot to remove it from the online version of the article, or The Guardian deliberately left the passage in the online version of the column in order to get some form of engagement from rage clicks while allowing Behr to act as if he is suffering some great injustice

Of course it wouldn’t take long for Steve Baker to try and claim some spurious victory for Britait, namely him claiming that tampon tax he spent so long fighting against being abolished is proof of the sunlit uplands of our post-EU nation...which ignores the fact that a.) It had nothing to do with the EU in the first place, and b.) The fact that Baker voted to keep it in place in a 2015 Commons vote

Employer of the year WWE went for an interesting twofer, as one minute they were proudly stating that WrestleMania would go ahead with a prospective 30,000 in attendance without any concerns for social distancing or any other Covid preventative measures, and the next telling the wrestlers on their roster that they would not be supplying them with Covid vaccines at the exact same time the NBA were floating the idea of providing vaccines for all their players

Make no mistake, the criticism that Erik Lamela, Sergio Reguilon, Giovani Lo Celso and Manuel Lanzini have received due to the four of them flouting lockdown regulations to attend a New Year’s party is justified - however, the fact that Duncan Castles tried to chase a headline by claiming that Lo Celso and Lamela had tested positive for Covid in a swiftly-deleted tweet is a new low for the noted barrel scraping rumour monger

Self-awareness sceptic Laurence Fox was entirely predictable in his response to the news that talkRADIO had been booted from Youtube for repeated violations of their ToS, specifically the part about spreading Covid misinformation, screaming the usual things about being “cancelled” - and then, within hours, responded to the BBC announcing a plan of educational programming to help during Lockdown III by saying he will be shielding his children from being “indoctrinated” by the BBC’s “left-wing bias” - which not only means he’s cancelling the BBC, but also had people remember that Billie Piper has custody of his children so it's not like he can even enforce his rules on what his children can and cannot watch

...by the way, Fox said nothing about Lord Sumption appearing on the BBC’s Question Time (the same show where failed actor on the grift Laurence Fox announced his new career as a clueless right wing irritant) where he told a woman with bowel cancer that her life wasn’t valuable, it was merely less valuable as she has less life left.  Yes, that is eugenics getting free airtime on the BBC, thanks for noticing

Somehow the best choice of words the BBC could find when reporting the death of Phil Spector was “talented but flawed” as if murder is some character flaw instead of, oh I don’t know, a criminal activity?

You would have thought that Twitch would have simply retired the PogChamp emote permanently in the wake of Gootecks going all insurrectionist, but no, instead they thought of having a rotating cycle of emotes of various creators, in spite of those creators telling them this would be a bad idea - and those creators were proven right when Critical bard was inundated with racist and homophobic abuse in his chat that led him to close his social media profiles when he was selected for rotation, with Twitch doing fuck all about it

Fashion editor no matter what she claims she is Hadley Freeman had a really clever take about The Sopranos...actually, no she didn’t, she had an absurd belief that it’s the exact same show as Sex in the City but people overlook it Because Misogyny, and when she was lambasted for missing the point so badly she had noted dipshit David Baddiel rushing in to her rescue to mock those getting “triggered” by her insipid take while saying he never liked The Sopranos because, as he isn't an Italian-American mobster, the show did not speak to him - in other words, he made himself a subject of equal mockery

...but there was no sign of Baddiel when Hadley Freeman then jumped on the BidenErasedWomen bandwagon alongside the TERFs of Twitter as soon as Biden got his feet under the desk, which also happened to show hard centrist extremist Freeman say how she thought Trump did far more for women than Biden ever has, which as takes go is so bad that the best explanation is that she briefly forgot the difference between the words “for” and “to”, before she then deleted the tweet and tried to deny ever posting it with increasingly nonsensical explanations that rapidly looked uncannily like gaslighting

...although David Baddiel wasn’t quite done being a bellend, as he was soon yukking it up with professional victim Rachel Riley about his latest book which accuses the entire progressive left of antisemitism

The oppressed underclass known as Manchester United fans really showed their colours, first by responding to a loss to Sheffield United by sending racial abuse to Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial on social media, and a couple of weeks later responded to a draw with Arsenal by sending racial abuse to Marcus Rashford, because apparently when your team drops points the most important thing is to look for which member of your team you can racially abuse

And finally, oh so finally, we have Donald Trump and his discovery of electoral fraud at last - electoral fraud that consisted of Donald Trump calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he change the result and all he needs is Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes while also saying that he had proof of vote-counting machines being removed early...and when told they were still in Georgia, changed his lie to say the inner workings had been removed without anyone noticing.  By the way, the only reason anyone knows about this is because Raffensperger told Trump that he wouldn’t release the call to the public if Trump didn't say anything about it - so, of course, the Orange Overlord took to twitter, ran his mouth, and the Washington Post had one hell of an exclusive as a result

#dickheads of the month

[skvaderarts]

Hiraeth Chapter 4: Winter

Masterlist can be found Here!

Chapter Four: Winter

Note: This will be interesting. It’s not every day that I get to just write like this. Time to spread my wings a little and just dig into this.

-~-

A little more than two years ago…

Blistering cold and exalted, tranquil solitude. 

That was what the small town of Lympha was known for at the time. 

Ever since it had been founded countless centuries prior, people had ventured there to escape the overcrowding, poor living conditions, and noise that came from larger settlements. Most had been looking for an opportunity to live somewhere where opportunities abounded and resources thrived, and those that didn’t succumb to one of the region’s trademark winter storms were likely to discover just what they’d hoped to find.

It was a pilgrimage of sorts to reach the local, even in modern times. For nearly half of the year, the region was consumed by what weary locals had affectionately -or perhaps less affectionately- dubbed the “Bitter Night”, a state of seemingly neverending darkness that came with winter and was unusual given the global location of the secluded town. Thick black clouds shrouded the area in what felt like an endless winter at times, contributing to an unusually high percentage of residents suffering from almost yearlong bouts of seasonal affective disorder. It was as though the small population of fewer than two thousand residents was trapped in the iron grip of a nameless and unrelenting foe with which they hopelessly battled against. There were members of the town that had spent their whole lives there, but the majority left after less than a decade, unable or unwilling to cope with the constant cold darkness.

The silence was also a factor to take into consideration. While the peaceful silence that came with an early morning’s snowfall was something that many had come to treasure in areas of the world that we’re not constantly buried under snow, that could not be said for the residents of Lympha. Most of them were accustomed to leaving their homes for nonessential reasons due to the constant snow, leaving the area almost hauntingly quiet, a fitting backdrop for the heavily wooded fishing hamlet that set nestled between two large black snowcapped mountains, mirrored by the sizeable lake that spanned the distance between them. 

The natural beauty and splendor of the region could not be denied, but that did not change the fact that there was something eery about it that was difficult to put into words properly. Most of the locals avoided the surrounding forests with an almost religious dedication, warning anyone new to the town to do the same. And the longer that they stayed, the quicker they came to the same collective consensus. Most homes were a certain distance from the trees with only farmland bordering the thick, black woodlands. But talk of something wicked residing amongst the trees was rampant, and cattle tended to go missing during the long nights that the town was so accustomed to.

In spite of such obstacles, the small town did prosper. Exports of resources such as fish and cold weather fruit and vegetables fueled a comfortable life for the majority of the residents, and once a year during the coldest, darkest parts of the winter after the fall tourists had long since left and only the boldest locals dared to stay behind, most of the town ventured elsewhere on holiday and basked in the warmth and brightness of less supernatural pastures, savoring in their well-earned funds and taking a break from the ceaseless mists that blanked the region due to its altitude.

Despite the frequent travel, there was only one way in or out of the town. The nearly twenty-mile stretch of winding road that connected the remote village to the rest of the country was the sort of thing that only a fool would dare traverse under the cover of darkness, but it was serviceable for the most part. It had to be to sustain any sort of livable conditions for the town. Keeping it clear of ice and plowed for vehicles to pass was an essential part of the town’s functionality, and everyone felt the anxiety that came with the reality that at least once a year they would end up trapped where they were, unable to leave for any reason.

Most sane, normal people who didn’t call the settlement home avoided the Lympha outside of the fall harvest season, having no reason to go there. And that particular winter, the majority of the town had found no compelling reason to linger, either, leaving to escape what promised to be a bitter, hostile winter. Something was just different in the air that year, and it wasn’t the lingering fog. With the population down to just two hundred intrepid -or perhaps insane- prospectors, the town was essentially shut down, just as it normally was that time of year. And then the silence settled in. Everyone hunkered down and kept warm inside of their homes, only the vague flicker of warm light from inside of their homes giving any indication that the town was not, in fact, totally abandoned, it’s residents finally coming to their senses and writing it off as a lost cause before taking their families and their personal belongings and fleeing to a less spooky local.

But in spite of it all, there had been at least one person in Lympha who was willing to greet the Bitter Night with enthusiasm, a level head, and an optimistic attitude, and that was one of the newest additions of the community. After coming to town to experience the autumn festivities, the young man with the white hair that had whipped the entire town into a tizzy had weighed his options and decided to stay. Solitude had never unnerved V. He was accustomed to it, having spent the vast majority of his life up until then as a resident inside his mind as opposed to that of the physical world in order to escape the reality of the cruel world that he found himself in. But when he’d first traveled there, the silent, almost gloomy nature of the place had ignited something within him that he’d never felt before. To say that he’d felt compelled to stay would be a vast understatement, and there was simply something about the place that put him at ease, even if that ease and that almost tangible presence that he felt so comfortable with did precisely the opposite to everyone else.

He’d managed to find housing relatively easy, all things considered. There were always vacancies out towards the edge of town. No one wanted to live out there anyway, so the prices were considerably lower for much larger dwellings. Strange and unexplained events over the years had gradually pushed everyone towards the center of town leaving farmers to contend with the woods and unlucky landowners with residences that they needed to repurpose. Most were converted into rental properties for curious tourists, but long-term leases were not out of the question on the rare occasion that someone came to town and decided to stay. That had been a lucky break for him.

V realized quickly that he enjoyed taking long walks through the countryside, taking in the smoldering chimneys and feeling the crisp mountain air ghost across his face and through his hair. It wasn’t so much that he loved the cold, it was that he hated the heat with a burning passion, and was more than willing to deal with a few months of brutal cold to avoid it if that meant that the rest of the year was more to his liking. There was something tranquil about the area that put him at ease, and that was something that he treasured at that point in his life. Most people his age were just venturing out on their own for the first time, but he’d been that way his entire life. No, he was looking for something entirely different. A change of pace of sorts while he tried and failed to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life as the mounting pressure he felt from the weight of that decision slowly threatened to drive him insane. He could feel it’s tangible presence at all times, the weight never leaving him and never failing to unnerve him. It was his own darkness more physical than the dark winter that encompassed the town its self despite the fact that it was invisible, and that he knew he had another alternative that he could act upon if this did not pan out for him.

But he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted to devote his life to just yet, so here he was, walking up a lonely road towards the center of town, ready for the time being to clock into his easy-going day job and to then check out of reality for a few hours as he waited pointlessly for customers to come in despite the fact that they rarely did. Gaining employment at the local bookstore had been simple, given his love of books, and it involved minimal amounts of conversation or social interaction since foot traffic was uncommon. He worked open to close for six hours and then went home each day, taking the time in between to catch up on his reading and to contemplate the horrifying serenity that was his reality. What was he to do with himself when he returned to his home later on that evening? Play the violin for a little while? Would he actually cook something this time, or just stand in his kitchen and eat cold food out of a can in his fridge in the dark like the heathen that he was? It was too early to say. After all, he hadn’t reached his place of work yet. But was it so strange to make plans for the end of the day when the day had only just begun?

He found himself absentmindedly gripping the edges of his hood and pulling it down slightly over his face as he passed a few bystanders on the street. He didn’t need to see them to know that they were staring at him as he continued up the street. Practically everyone in every place that he’d ever lived did. In spite of the fact that all he really wanted was to blend in and be left alone by those around him, his stature and unique hair color insured that that possibility was nothing more than wishful thinking.

“Don’t pay them any mind. They aren’t worth it.” He said quietly to himself as he approached the front door of the building, ready to do his quaint day job. The lights in the shop were still out from the night before, and he made a mental note to turn them on before opening the shop this time. He repressed the urge to scold himself for his inability to tune out the world around him, noting that it was not his place to do so. Why should he be made to suffer so for a simple quirk in his DNA that he could neither control nor explain?

At times, there was a part of him that wondered where his extraordinary hair color originated from. Had that been passed down as a result of his parentage, or was it the result of a medical condition he didn’t know he had? Unfortunately, he couldn’t ask either of his parents these questions. Much to his disappointment, he had never had the pleasure of meeting either of his parents, and he had no way of knowing whether or not they were even alive. It was a fact that he lamented, but it was just one of the disheartening realities that he had to come to terms with as a result of being an orphan. The place he’d been forced to call home for the cursory years of his life had no answers for him, at least none that they were willing to share with him the last time that he’d asked, and there was no way he was ever going to willingly return there. No, he’d quite literally prefer death in that scenario. By a considerable margin, if he was being honest. There was nothing but pain for him in that place. That was how it had always been and how it always would be.

He worked to put the matter aside for the time being as he prepared to open the shop. There was a small number of tasks to complete such as checking the shelves for dust and, making sure that everything was accounted for, but nothing too out of the ordinary or difficult. He took off his winter coat and draped it over the counter before tending to his meager duties, absentmindedly contemplating how the rest of the day would go, Would anyone actually come in, or would he be left alone to read again today? He’d finished the book he’d been reading the day before, so perusing the shelves for his new literary obsession was something that he had to look forward to at the very least. He could run across the street to the bakery and grab something for lunch in a few hours. The elderly couple there were welcoming, if not excessively chatty, but they were skilled and he occasionally found humor in their musings. From what he could tell, they were fairly certain that people his age didn’t read anymore, and he was always pleased to know that they were wrong about that and that he could easily prove otherwise if he ever bothered to put that much energy into their words. It was unlikely, though. He didn’t tend to actively give other people that kind of satisfaction, and wasn’t entirely sure why he cared as much as he did. Perhaps it was because they were some of the only people he really interacted with in this town. Or maybe he was just tired of being treated as though he were something inhuman monster by those around him. It was hard to say, in all honesty. Experience hadn’t helped him develop a thicker skin, it seemed.

Pitty.

Before long, he’d finished what little prep work he needed to do, and turned in the direction of the front door. The light switch was by the entrance, and he needed to flip the open sign the right way around before the store could officially accept customers. As he fiddled with the sleeves of his sweater and headed for the door, something unusual caught his eye. The store sat at the center of a Y shaped intersection facing towards the central street. As such, he had a decent view of the central sprawl, at least when it wasn’t snowing like it was today. It was rare to see anyone running around, but that was exactly what had caught his attention. V turned away, not paying much mind to the unusual sight as he reached down to unlock the door. But just as he did, two more figures came running behind the first, gaining on them. He squinted slightly as he tried to make out their approximate ages, something in the pit of his stomach telling him that something about this wasn’t quite right. To his surprised disbelief, his hunch was confirmed as the two figures in black knocked the first individual down face-first into the snow and began to carry them off.

From there, several other bystanders entered his line of sight, all of them seemingly running in a panic as more hooded figures descended upon them and attacked with blunt force weapons such as bats and metal bars. When one man ran outside from one of the local shops and started yelling, the young white haired man immediately recognized him as the bakery owner and questioned why someone his age would get involved in… whatever this horrifying situation was. Clearly, he was trying to help, but what was he hoping to achieve in this scenario?

Before he could give it any further thought, the figure in black produced what appeared to be a thin sword and stabbed the man through the abdomen, knocking him down into the street in full view of the public and the man’s horrified wife, the latter of which was calling out for help in a desperate attempt to try and understand what was going on. The figure looked at her and then violently attacked the elderly man again, never once looking away from her as if to challenge her. He clearly wanted her to be silent, but V was unable to tell whether or not he was telling her as much.

V stepped away from the door, backing away slowly as the streets filled with panicked people, all of which seemed to be fleeing the strangers in black who has descended upon the town like a plage, their intentions unclear but clearly impure, to say the least. In his petrified haste to get clear of their line of sight, V slipped over a small handcart in the isle, earning a glance in his direction. He scrambled behind one of the bookcases just as the individual in black who had been stabbing the old man looked in his general direction, seemingly cheating what had to be certain death.

Horror overtook every muscle in his body as he realized that they were under attack, the impossibility of that reality finally sinking in. He had no idea what could’ve caused this tragic scenario, but that didn’t change a thing. The older man was more than likely dead, something that immediately made V kick himself internally for thinking badly of him just a short while before, but there had to be something he could do about all of this. It didnt take a Ph.D. to figure out that if he stayed where he was any longer, then he would more than likely end up dead. Someone had to get help, and he had to do something to save himself, lest he die at the hands of these mysterious strangers who had come to his quiet little town and painted the white snow-covered streets red with the blood of his neighbors.

V’s veins ran colder than the winter winds as he realized what he had to do. And if he didn’t, he was going to die. There was no time to hesitate. He had to get out of there.

-~-

Hey everyone! I hope you liked this chapter! Getting to explore V’s background a little is going to be interesting, to say the least. I’ll see you all on Friday, but for now, thanks for reading. I hope you’re having a good week! Once again, stay safe out there!

#DMC #Devil May Cry #V #Vitale #V's backstory #My AU #Pre Devil May Cry

[myersesque]

mayhaps some tua opinions 😔 warning for general character crit (no bashing, just light criticism) and several mentions of abuse.

none of the siblings are free from blame. imo the siblings all being morally grey (or, at least, morally questionable) is one of the most important points. luther is impulsive and thinks with his emotions, diego is bitter and doesn’t know when to back down, five is standoffish and stubborn, vanya is motivated by spite, etc etc. none of them are perfect.

pitting luther fans and vanya fans against one another is stupid. you can like a character whilst acknowledging their flaws. i personally am more emotionally attached to luther, bc i see a ton of myself in him (more on that later), but i don’t dislike vanya at all!

five is not a “cold-blooded killer”. people seem to always write five as a cold, hardened killer, who doesn’t care for his family - he, much like ben, was forced to kill people. it was his only choice besides hopelessly wandering in an apocalyptic wasteland. the entire show is driven by five’s devotion and love for his family; if he really didn’t care, he wouldn’t have came back.

i shouldn’t have to say this, but shipping the hargreeves siblings together is still incest, lack of biological relations aside. block me if you disagree with this one.

luther and allison are both to blame for their relationship. this should be obvious, but i’ve seen a ton of people acting as if it’s solely luther’s fault - iirc in the comics allison rumours luther into loving her, but since we thusfar haven’t been shown that in the show, both siblings are assumedly willingly engaging in this.

shipping five in his current state with literally anyone (bar delores) is bad. he’s mentally an adult, so shipping him with kids is gross. he’s physically a kid, so shipping him with adults is gross. if u absolutely have to write a shipfic, use the time where his mental and physical ages aligned; aka when he was working for the commission.

comparing the siblings’ trauma to one another is terrible - and yes, that includes luther. they were all abused by reginald. just because they weren’t all locked in a mausoleum like klaus or isolated like vanya doesn’t mean they weren’t all abused.

if you act like luther is “just like reginald”, ur being shitty. believe it or not, mirroring your abuser’s behaviour and being in denial about their abuse is an actual thing that abuse survivors do - and you can believe me on that one, because i’ve done it. it’s subconscious and unintentional, and whilst he absolutely should be held accountable for hurting his siblings, saying he’s “just like” his abuser is so fucking shitty. (and, uh, he isn’t the only one to hurt the others.)

luther isn’t a villain. please stop writing him as if he is one. if i have to scroll past 1 more “luther is every terrible bigoted thing on the planet” fic on ao3, i may actually scream.

vanya isn’t innocent. you can be a victim and still held accountable - hell, look at luther. she seems to blame her siblings for things reginald did - things they were also victims of - and that just doesn’t sit particularly right with me, personally. (don’t misinterpret this as vanya bashing. i can like her and also criticise her.)

hazel is better than cha-cha, but he isn’t innocent. hazel has still murdered and tortured people. i love the guy, but he’s still done some terrible shit, as cute as he and agnes are together.

i don’t mind not knowing how ben died. it’d be cool to find out, sure, but it feels more natural for his family to just glaze over it, since they’d all assumedly know how it happened. i won’t be mad if we’re told, but i also won’t complain if it remains a mystery for a while. it’s fun to theorise about.

all of the siblings’ reactions to their trauma are valid. definitely not entirely healthy, but valid, and similar to real-life trauma responses. luther’s denial, diego’s anger, klaus’ self-destruction, etc etc - they’re all normal and understandable responses to abuse, even if they aren’t necessarily healthy ones, or aren’t immediately visible to the viewer (e.g. luther being in denial is often misread as him supporting reginald).

that’s all i’ve got for now, but if i think of any more i’ll be sure to continue uwu

#mine #tua #the umbrella academy #opinions #characters mentioned: #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #five hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #delores #the commission #the temps commission #agnes rofa #tua hazel #reginald hargreeves #abuse tw #incest mention #discourse //

[redladydeath]

Hiiii, guess who has a Sin Swap AU but only has a detailed idea for the Pride (formerly Lust) arc????

It’s the night of the engagement party and Gumina’s struggling to figure out what to do. She’s found out about Sateriasis plans to kill Cherubim, but Cheri has picked this moment to try and corner her and confess his feelings for her. Gumina’s panicking, trying to figure out what actions she should take, before suddenly coming to the realization that this whole situation is stupid and can be partially resolved by talking. She cuts Cherubim off, telling him to meet her in the hallway, before marching off over to Sati, grabbing him by the arm, and dragging him out of the ballroom.

She brings the brothers to a side room before going off on Sati for being such an asshole. Cherubim’s shocked by the fact his brother was planning on killing him, while Sati’s defensive, accusing the two of them of being together behind his back. Gumina and Cherubim immediately and vigorously deny this, pointing out the flaws in his logic. Emotions are still running high though and eventually things devolve into a shouting match between the three of them, everyone angry at each other for on reason or another.

Eventually, Claster and Ilotte barge in on them. Mina and Sati just walked out of their engagement party after all, and Cherubim’s not supposed to interact with them. Gumina and Sati are both still furious though and refuse to go back. Cherubim, scared that this might be his last chance to speak to Gumina, breaks down and confesses his feelings to Gumina. Gumina is too shocked to give him a real response.

Sati pitches a fit and says he was right all along, Claster is frantically trying to herd the two of them out of the room, and Ilotte is staring daggers at Cherubim. He tells Claster that he will take care of this and Cherubim freezes in terror while Gumina panics. She tries to implore Sati to help Cheri, to help her, but he stays silent, refusing aid out of spite. Gumina is horrified by his selfishness before becoming furious at him for treating her like something he’s entitled to.

Time passes. Cherubim is locked away again by Ilotte. He has no hope/expectations of being rescued again. Gumina is furious at Sateriasis, along with everyone else who thinks of her as nothing more than a pawn to be used for their own purposes. Sati, once he calms down, grows somewhat guilty for hurting the two of them so badly over pretty much nothing. In the meantime, Gumina takes to wearing an emerald ring that was given to her as an engagement gift. She refuses to touch any of the presents and is not entirely sure who it’s from, but she feels drawn to it.

Eventually Gumina and Sati are married. Gumina’s resentment for everyone grows, fueled by the ring, which, surprise surprise, turns out to be the Vessel of Pride. She hates Sateriasis, hates her fellow nobles, and is disgusted by the idea of taking on the role as Sati’s quiet little wife. Sateriasis is trying to make amends, but he’s failing, and is too scared/selfish to do anything significant to help the situation. Cherubim is slowly starving in the basement and has no hope to escape this situation

The vessel’s influence on Gumina grows stronger, fueling her indignation and anger until they reach a boiling point. She begins to make plans to set things right, which the vessel encourages her to act on.

Ilotte confronts Gumina one night, hoping to intimidate her into being more compliant. Her anger at his condescending attitude peaks and she snaps; the vessel changes from a ring to a knife and she wheels around and slashes his throat. She leave him to bleed out; she believes it was the just thing to do.

The whole household panics once his body is discovered. No one suspects Gumina. Sati tries to maintain order and stops paying attention to Gumina. While he’s distracted, Gumina fires half the staff for “allowing” the murder to happen, replaces them with servants loyal to her, sends the hysterical duchess to stay with Classke, and rescues Cherubim, who was on the brink of death, from the basement, assigning Carol to watch over his recovery.

Sati and Gumina officially become Duke and Duchess Venomania. Sati still hasn’t noticed everything Gumina’s done behind his back. After everything is settled, he turns to Gumina for support, but is shocked when she reveals all the power over the household that she’s attained. He tries to argue with her, but she simply has her men lock him in his room, leaving her to do as she pleases.

Once Sati is taken care of, Gumina goes to oversee Cherubim’s recovery. He’s quite confused about all that’s happened, but blindly accepts it simply because everything is suddenly so much better. Gumina spends a lot of time in his company as he recovers and her fondness is finally allowed to blossom into love. The two of them start a relationship, much to Cherubim’s shock. Part of Gumina genuinely loves him, the other part is getting a kick out of the relationship primarily because it’s in defiance of what everyone tried to make her do.

While participating in this relationship, Gumina starts governing Asmodean in Sateriasis’ name. She quite enjoys it, loving the ability to exercise the power she feels she is entitled to. Her and Cherubim grow closer, and he can’t quite believe this is really happening. Meanwhile, Sati is desperately trying to find a way out. He’s shocked that he can’t persuade anyone to help him and is beginning to go stir-crazy.

Gumina is satisfied with how things have turned out. Her and Cherubim’s relationship eventually becomes sexual. Cheri, being a socially and emotionally stunted individual, eventually expresses a wish for Gumina to bring Sati intro their relationship— Cheri doesn’t have a particularly nuanced understanding of ‘love’ and, once introduced to the idea of romantic/sexual love, merges it with platonic love in his mind. Gumina is shocked and unnerved by this request; she finally comes to understand how damaged and childlike Cherubim still is. However, the vessel fuels her anger at Sateriasis for doing all this to them, and it encourages her to continue to be the arbiter of justice.

Gumina grants Cherubim’s wish and frees Sati, under the condition he does as she says. Everything about this whole situation is nightmarish and wrong to him, but Gumina plays on his guilt for having nearly killed is brother and objectifying his childhood friend in order to paralyze him, keeping him from stepping out of line.

A new system is formed. Gumina runs the household and attends to affairs of state, Cherubim is given unlimited freedom and resources, and Sati remains in his room most of the time, except for when Gumina or Cheri want him for something. Gumina is immensely satisfied, Cherubim is happier than he’s ever been, and Sati is emotionally bruised from suddenly losing all his authority to his wife.

Gumina is satisfied with her position as unofficial duke, but the vessel is not. The vessel encourages feelings of superiority and righteousness in her, and slowly she comes to believe that all the other nobles are incompetent and she should be the one running everything.

She slowly starts implementing policies that subtly weaken other families’ power and strengthening her own. People notice, but it’s subtle enough where they can’t outright accuse her of anything. It gradually comes to be known that Gumina is really the one running the show, but as it’s believed she’s governing at Sateriasis’ request while he’s “grieving”, no one can do anything about it.

Gumina becomes a figure of suspension by the nobles and many men in Asmodean. However, she is a highly affective ruler who makes many substantial improvements to how things are run— she grants women more rights for a start. Gumina enjoys this new position; it’s incredibly satisfying to her to watch the nobles who once saw her as a pawn silently seethe as she takes control of the country and proves time and time again how capable she is. Many Asmodean women, as well as the Elphe government, admire her, but to most she begins to be regarded as “The She-Wolf of Elphegort”.

Things are good for a while: Gumina’s happy and running the county well, and her and Cherubim adore each other. Gumina, seeing herself as the arbiter of karma, showers him with gifts and affection (partly out of love, partly because she can now). Cheri, in return, is hopelessly devoted to her, never questions anything she does, and never leaves the house or speaks to anyone she thinks may be a threat. Part of Gumina is a little concerned about this— she wanted to help him become more of a person— but a larger part of her is too wrapped up in the love of this situation to actually do anything about it. Sati’s watching this love-affair go on from the sidelines, but he’s too concerned about staying sane and alive to get worked up about it.

While initially considered to be a just, albeit divisive ruler, public opinion about Gumina starts to change. The vessel’s negative impacts are starting to show again, and she starts implementing policies that hurt the people for the sake of her own enrichment. She never thought much of the lower-classes, and now her callous treatment of them starts to stew up discontent among the masses. Meanwhile, Mina’s currently trying to get pregnant by one of the brothers (it doesn’t really matter to her which one) so as to secure her position as the mother of the future duke/duchess. Sati is disgusted by this situation, Cheri doesn’t know about it because Gumina had the foresight to know not to tell him as it would inevitably send him into a panic.

Eventually, all of Gumina antics attract the attention of the royal family. Again, it’s not clear if she’s done anything wrong, but they’re suspicious and invite her and Sati to court for a few weeks. Gumina, accepts, confident that’s she’s utterly secure and they won’t be able to prove anything. Arrogance clouding her judgment, she also decides to bring Cherubim along, just for fun.

The visit is tense. Gumina’s completely relaxed, but Janus is suspicious. He can see something’s wrong with Sateriasis, but can’t get him to admit it’s due to anything but grief. Maylis is interested in this whole affair and wants to figure out what’s going on. She worms her way into Cherubim’s room and gains enough of his trust for him to mention Gumina and him are lovers and a few more suspicious things about their home life until they’re interrupted by Gumina.

Gumina tries to talk Maylis into keeping what she heard quiet, appealing to her distaste for arranged marriages. Maylis pretends to be convinced, but is really planning to gather more information before clamping down. This is already stressful enough for Mina, but then towards the end of the visit Sateriasis becomes bold enough to start hinting to the royals that something is seriously wrong. Eventually they leave, with Gumina still confident in her security, but angry and a tiny bit nervous.

Things start spiraling out of control. Gumina, becoming paranoid of losing power, starts acting erratically. She’s adopting new, unfair policies, questioning her servants’ loyalty, and lashing out at people verbally and physically. One night, while the three of them are together, Sati summons the courage to confront her about what she’s done. There’s a physical altercation and, in the heat of the moment, Gumina stabs Sati in the heart. Cherubim freaks out as Gumina tries to get him to shut up, regretting what she’s done but scared of attracting attention. She calls Carol to try and help Sati, but he dies before anything can be done. Cherubim’s in shock while Gumina tries to convince him that she will handle this and everything will be alright.

Mina hides Sati’s body in the basement and tries to keep up the illusion that he’s still alive. She announces to the public that Sateriasis is going to start ruling now, for really reals this time, in order to divert attention off herself, but no one’s buying it. Gumina’s growing more and more frantic, trying to maintain her power and coax Cherubim back into his devotion for her. He’s finally starting to question her and doesn’t trust her like he used to. This only makes Gumina more stressed and more angry.

Eventually things come to a head and Maylis shares the information she’s gathered to her siblings, who send men to investigate the manor. Gumina tries desperately to prevent them from probing too far, but they discover Sati’s body and Gumina and Cherubim, along with anybody who remains loyal to them, are arrested.

Once Gumina’s no longer a threat, many of the servants immediately start talking, confessing everything illegal/immoral they saw going on. Gumina is still trying to talk her way out of this, separated from the vessel but still feeling the affects of Pride.

Eventually, Gumina goes on trial and is found guilty of usurping her husband and abusing power that was not hers. She’s surprised she’s not tried for Sateriasis and Ilotte’s murders, until she finds out that Cherubim has taken the blame for them and some of her other crimes, hoping to protect her. She’s utterly horrified and tries to admit her guilt in the matters, but is ignored. The Beelzebian nobility doesn’t want to execute a noblewoman, and plan to banish/imprison her while executing the commoners involved in her activities.

Gumina is devastated and desperate, but there’s nothing she can do. Cherubim is executed, scared but satisfied with the fact that Gumina will be able to live. Mina’s sent off to a remote castle/convent in the countryside, barred from ever exercising political power again. The Demon of Pride breaks the contract and Gumina’s left with the guilt and grief of having lost her friends, family, and chance at a real life. She’s left with one thing though; soon after her arrival, she discovers that she’s pregnant.

#i wrote this over the course of a few nights so sorry if the writing style jumps around a bit #i took some inspiration from history with this #there are a couple of queens of medieval england who publicly took lovers and overthrew their husbands and were only punished by house arest #btw gumina's not supposed to be 100% wrong all the time #some of the stuff she does is good and most of the opposition she faces is for bullshit reasons #it’s just.. bad things come from the vessels no matter the person #evillious chronicles #redlady speaks #lust arc #i'm going for this thing where the sins always have the same result for those who commit them #i.e. if the sinner died and the responder survived in the original story #then the responder (who is now the sinner) will live and the original sinner will die #only problem is i don't have nearly the level of inspiration for the other arcs that i have for this one

[wildhcartcd]

↳ Oh, wow, is that WILLIAM MOSELEY? Never mind, it’s just ALEKSANDER SORENSON, the 29/979 year old PANSEXUAL VAMPIRE. I did hear that HE is CHARMING & FLIRTATIOUS but also really SECRETIVE & COLD. In the great war, HE is on the AVERY side. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. (Riley, 25, PST, they/them)

— **part two of three for intros on my disaster boys™ — there are a couple of built-in connections for this idiot so if anyone would be interested in playing aleks’s also immortal spouses please let me know. ~ i name them in the bio but their names can be changed by all means!

TW: mentions of death, disease, concentration camps. 

— aleksander jakob sorenson was born into the world of the supernatural on a cold, bright february morning in norway in the year 1040. the ways of his ancestors - a combination of vikings and vampires - were being forcibly tamped down in favor of the waves of christianity flooding his home country, though the sorenson clan kept largely to themselves - having built enough of an infrastructure to be largely self-sustaining ( though their natural inclination towards socialization made it difficult for them to remain entirely off the grid ). when he was twenty-nine he was taken through the sacrificial process all sorensons were subjected to in order to turn them in the least invasive way possible. 

— as aleks ( or aleksi, as his family fondly referred to him ) grew older and came into his own as a man and as a vampire he found it incredibly easy to attract the attention of men and women in their small village. for as much as his parents tried to warn him away from the human villagers for fear he would become attached and thus be heartbroken when he inevitably outlived them, aleks couldn’t help but want to be around them. he was soft hearted and flirtatious and enjoyed companionship more than anything - especially considering his iron-clad self control and sunlight ring made it easy for him to blend in with the villagers until he was just another young man falling hopelessly in love with nearly everyone who seemed to love him. 

— his passing relationships were of no real consequence until he reached his thirties and caught the attention of a human woman named hanna whom he fell deeply in love with before he really knew what was going on. in spite of the taboos such a relationship would break aleks did everything in his power to court hanna and she seemed, to him, to enjoy his attentions considering he felt the need to provide them to her at every opportunity. days bled into weeks that bled into months and in spite of the genuine devotion aleks held for hanna it seemed that she enjoyed his attention more than she enjoyed him as a person, and when he begged her to tell him one way or another whether she wanted him at all she admitted that she didn’t and left aleks utterly heartbroken. 

— eager to remove himself from hanna and the reminders of his heartbreak aleks boarded a ship with a captain who agreed to take him as far away from norway as he could. with aleks’s eagerness to forget the woman who had broken his heart he traveled the world at his leisure in relative anonymity and solitude. he found himself in the far east, trekking across the continent with no destination in mind and remaining alone outside of brief trips into civilization to feed just enough to keep his strength up and never enough to kill anyone at all. he wasn’t to return to norway until 1349 when the great pestilence wracked his country and he rejoined his family and fought to provide care of some kind to the people in the village he had once considered home. his efforts were largely in vain and aleks found himself yet again heartbroken, this time by the fragility of human life and his own inability to make a difference in the world. 

— though the time he spent with his family renewed him in some ways he was deeply distraught by the amount of death the plague left in its wake. as a vampire who tried his very hardest never to harm people to the point of death it was difficult for him to stomach such mass casualties and even as years passed and the village rebuilt itself aleks felt the need to travel again settle into his bones. in the 1500′s he set about traveling again, this time boarding a ship headed for the new world. though it was not yet densely populated by europeans aleks found community with the native peoples and traveled across the country in relative solitude for a couple hundred years before the violence of the 18th century ripped through the country and aleks found himself involved in a number of conflicts before he retreated to relative solitude once more, emerging from his self-imposed isolation to enter boom-towns and emerging port cities to feed. 

— he found groups of vampires of a similar mindset to his own and spent years and years living a peaceful, unblemished existence until war struck the world again in the 20th century. the dawn of the great war sent a deep terror through aleks and he returned to norway in 1913 and hoped fiercely that his home country would remain neutral in the coming conflict. 

— time away from modern civilization in many respects left aleks feeling rather discombobulated when he settled in oslo once more, finding things had changed greatly since his last proper stay in a major city. he adapted quickly, as he was known to do, and found that perhaps the modern age wasn’t as terrible as he seemed to think. people seemed to love more freely in certain regards and though he found himself in the cross-hairs of human law enforcement more than once for acts they deemed “immoral”, he was rather happy to be among mostly like-minded, peaceful people. during the 1930′s he again found himself drawn to yet another lover he had taken casually during a stay in bergen— the young man, hugo, himself a supernatural being, adored aleks and they lived together in incredible happiness for nearly a decade before yet another war gripped the world. again praying for neutrality, aleks chose to remain in bergen with hugo at his side, reluctant to leave the man he loved so dearly— he’d not expected the german invasion and in the summer of 1940 both he and hugo were sent to buchenwald. 

— life in the camp was miserable— and it was everything they could do to remain sane and for that matter, healthy. stealing moments together whenever they were able in order to ensure their respective health. years passed and aleks wished for death for both of them if only to end the suffering they were enduring at the hands of the nazis. the spring of 1945 brought relief to both of them and aleks and hugo were free to return to their lives. secluding themselves yet again in bergen, they recovered together as best they possibly could, eventually following whispers to the new world where aleks requested shelter with a long time friend and fellow vampire, katerina angelova. it was a comfortable living made even more so by the presence of his now-wife fiona, an irishwoman he’d met in the 20′s who had captured both his and hugo’s attention almost immediately but whose nomadic nature had kept her traveling until she found them once more. 

basics

Full Name: Aleksander Jakob Sorenson.   Nickname(s): Aleks, Aleksi, AJ. Age: He was turned when he was 29, and is currently 979. Date of Birth: 14 February, 1040. Zodiac Sign: Aquarius.  Place of Birth: A small village outside of Olso, Norway.   Ethnicity: Caucasian. Nationality: Norwegian.  Gender: Genderfluid male. Sexual Orientation: Pansexual. Polyamorous.  Religion: He’s more spiritual than anything. Occupation: He teaches Classical literature as a professor at NYU when he feels the need. Otherwise he has more than enough money to make work unnecessary.  Language(s) Spoken: Norwegian, English, Irish-Gaelic, German, French.   Accent: He has a fairly noticeable Norwegian accent, though it isn’t enough to make his English heavily accented. 

physical appearance

Face Claim: William Moseley.  Hair Color: Blonde.  Eye Color: Blue.  Height: 5′11″. Weight: 181 lbs. Build: Athletic. . Tattoos: He has a prison ID number tattooed on his forearm from his time in Buchenwald but he rarely discusses it and feigns dumb when asked about it.   Piercings: None. Distinguishing Characteristics: His accent, his immediate interest in everyone who strikes up a conversation with him, his eyes. 

family

Father: Soren Gunnarsen.  Mother: Ellinor Asmundsdatter.  Sibling(s): Adrian, Felix, Gustav, Elise & Ingrid.  Pet(s): He has a golden lab named Lachlan ( they’ve had him since he was a puppy because Aleks has no way of saying no to Fiona ).   Financial Status: Wealthy. 

#☩ [ there's a lot that i don't know; there's a lot that i'm still learning ] aleks. #tmw.intro #//this got long as fuck but feel free to message me about plots~! #//aleks's husband and wife are also open for the taking if anyone's interested before i put in a connection to the main

[shownuslaugh]

Just Pretend

Series: Super Junior 14th Member AU

Pairing: Minnie/Donghae; Minnie/Heechul

2022

             “I miss him,” Minnie mumbles to Donghae one night over dinner when she’s feeling really sad. “I wish he would just come back already.”

             Donghae knows she worries over Heechul. He knows she just wants to hear even one word from Heechul to know he’s doing okay. Donghae also knows Heechul’s pride would never allow that. He’s tried so many times to get Heechul to talk to Minnie, but each time Heechul just ignores him like he didn’t hear anything or he’ll flat out start yelling at Donghae for even suggesting it.

             “Are you trying to get rid of your wife, you idiot?” Heechul yelled one day when Donghae cornered him after practice. “I can’t be just friends with Minnie. She’s either mine or she’s not. There’s no in between for us anymore. Not after everything we went through. Leave me alone.”`

             Snapping back to the current moment, Donghae says, “I know, baby. But you shouldn’t give up. He’ll come around eventually. He’s just stubborn.”

             “I know.” Minnie pushes her plate away, not feeling very hungry. Her stomach is in knots and she’s felt so sick for the last week.

             Donghae watches her closely. “Is it getting bad again?”

             “Not bad. Just bad enough I should probably stop eating.”

             He sighs, clearing the dishes from the table. “Jimin, I really wish you would see a doctor. I know you say it’s nothing, but you’ve been ill for seven days now, and there’s no sign of it going away. Please, schedule an appointment.”

             “But we have a comeback to get ready for,” Minnie argues. “You guys need me.”

             “We can manage one day of practice without you. Will you really make me pull the ‘I’m your husband so you should listen to me’ card?”

             Minnie narrows her eyes and folds her arms over her chest. “You wouldn’t.”

             Donghae tilts his head to the side.

             She has a doctor’s appointment the next day.

             The doctor is nice enough and came highly recommended by SJ who gave Minnie the name with a wink. Minnie is still confused about why she would recommend a… lady doctor of all things. After all, Minnie isn’t pregnant. She’s a perfectly healthy woman that just has a little virus or something. SJ was just so persistent that Minnie couldn’t say no.

             “Congratulations,” the doctor tells Minnie when she walks back in the room with a clipboard full of test results. “You and your husband are expecting a baby.”

             Minnie’s eyes go round as saucers. “What? No, that can’t be right! There’s no way I’m pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. We have a comeback to get ready for!”

             The doctor shakes her head. “I’m afraid the tests don’t lie. You’re about six weeks along.”

             “I… thank you.”

             “On your way out you should schedule another appointment. I’d like to check your progress in a couple more weeks and see how you’re doing.”

             “Okay.”

             Minnie walks blindly to the checkout desk, taking the pamphlets and paperwork the lady shoves at her. Nothing is really registering. The only thing playing on loop in her head is: I’m pregnant. Minnie is going to be a mother. Donghae is going to be a father.

             “Oh, God,” Minnie moans out loud in the parking lot.

             The boys are going to be uncles.

             “I can’t do this,” she says as she feels the panic set in. “I can’t have a baby. Not yet. Not now. We didn’t plan this… we didn’t… I can’t…”

             Her breathing becomes harsh and labored as she gets in her car. Everything is spinning just a bit too quickly and nothing feels like it’s in her control. Her hands shake as she pulls out her phone and randomly presses until it starts ringing.

             “What is it?” Heechul’s voice is tense.

             “I… I…”

             “Minnie?” He drops the harsh tone and immediately begins to worry. “Minnie, where are you? What’s happening?”

             “The doctor. Heechul…” Minnie takes a deep breath. “Heechul, I can’t do this.”

             “Give me the address. I’m on my way.”

             It only takes ten minutes for Heechul to find the place and even less time for him to spot Minnie and Donghae’s sleek black Tesla in the parking lot. He slides in beside her, wrapping her up in his arms like these last few years have meant nothing. His hug is soothing, comforting. Minnie relaxes until her eyelids grow heavy and she’s struggling to stay awake.

             “Can you tell me what’s happening?” Heechul tilts her head up so he can look her in the eyes for the first time in he doesn’t know how long. “Are you okay?”

             She nods. “I think so.”

             “You think? Don’t you know? Donghae said you’ve been sick… is it bad?”

             “No!” Her answer comes a bit too quickly. “I mean, no, it’s not bad. Just unexpected. We didn’t plan to do this until later…”

             Heechul tenses up. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what she’s trying to get at. “You’re pregnant.”

             With those two simple words, Minnie breaks down sobbing in Heechul’s arms. She isn’t sure if they’re happy tears and, to be honest, Heechul doesn’t know either. He knows he feels like crying as well though. Minnie’s getting everything she ever wanted but not with him. She’s became a wife, she’s going to be a mother, and she did it all in spite of Heechul fighting her every single step of the way.

             “I’m pregnant,” Minnie whispers when she calms down. “Donghae and I are having a baby.” She looks up at Heechul suddenly, eyes wild. “Heechul, you can’t leave me again. You can’t pretend today didn’t happen and just go back to ignoring me.”

             Heechul doesn’t like being told what to do. Even if it’s by Minnie. “Why not?”

             “Because I need you.”

             Just like that, he feels the walls he built so high around him after Minnie left crumble to ash. He can’t say no to her after that. Heechul waited years to hear her say that to him again. To admit that they still mean something to each other.

             “Minnie…” Heechul looks at her so softly she feels her heartbreak all over again. “You don’t mean that. You have Donghae.”

             “Of course I have Donghae. Having him doesn’t mean I don’t need you too. Please, Heechul, let me be selfish.” She takes his hand in her own, relishing in the heat of his palm. Relishing in the fact he’s actually close enough for her to touch him again. “We all need you. You’ve been so, so distant from all of us. Please… come back?”

             Heechul knows what she’s actually asking, but that doesn’t stop him from pretending she’s asking something else. It doesn’t stop him from pretending she’s asking him to come back to her, back to their relationship. She would never do that to Donghae. She, for some reason, actually loves him. Heechul can still pretend though.

             And he’ll pretend as long as he fucking wants.

             He’ll make this baby his own in every single way except biological and no one needs to know about it.

             “Okay,” Heechul finally says. “You’re going to need all of us. I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

             Minnie’s lower lip pokes out. “Oppa, thank you.”

             Heechul nods, bringing Minnie back in for another hug. His eyes fall shut as he breathes in her familiar scent, pleased to find she still wears that expensive ass vanilla perfume he started buying for her when the band started making it big. With his eyes closed he can pretend this moment is theirs and theirs alone. This is their baby, their future, their life together. Maybe if he hadn’t been such a bastard he wouldn’t have to pretend. Maybe if he’d realized what he had when he had it, they wouldn’t be in this position.

             Minnie wouldn’t be married to another man. She wouldn’t be having another man’s baby. She would still be hopelessly devoted to him.

             But she is married to another man. She is having another man’s baby. She’s hopelessly devoted to someone who actually deserves her.

             Heechul can pretend though.

             He’s been doing it since she left.

             What’s the rest of his life spent pretending she’s still his?

#super junior au

[theblogs2024]

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[thesaltydigest]

Joint Review: “And I Darken”, or: Everyone is Fucked Up and Toxic and Nothing Goes Well

Title: And I Darken

Author:  Kiersten White

Review By: Captain Clo and Bekworm

Verdict: So many bad decisions are made you’ll want to pull your hair out, but this violent girl is fascinating, and boy isn’t her brother adorable? but I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel... wait did I just buy it???

This Review contains spoilers

And I Darken is an alternate history YA novel with a very specific twist: what if Vlad Dracul – the one who inspired Count Dracula – was a woman? Lada Dracul has all his story – daughter of the Wallachian Voivode, or Prince, Vlad II Dracul, she is sent to the Ottoman court as political hostage with her younger brother, Radu (who is instead an actual historical figure), when she is just a child. Inflexible and obsessed with the idea of going back to Wallachia and becoming its ruler, Lada is violent and cruel, convinced that love is weakness and that being a woman is a disgrace. Of course, she isn't completely wrong. Lada is a warrior at heart, but she has to struggle a lot in order to be respected as such. And she is a political hostage, in a precarious situation, and any weakness or soft spot she might show can and will be used against her – hence why she never lets her love for her brother show, for example. 

Radu is the deuteragonist, and is everything Lada isn't – kind, sensitive, averse to violence. Where Lada fights with all her might against any and all attempt to tame her with scathing remarks or her fists, Radu is more of a political animal, preferring to use his words and his good looks to charm and deceive. They are also complete opposites in how they see their future. Lada hates the Ottoman empire and wants to go back to Wallachia; Radu converts to Islam and has no desire to leave.

Their relationship becomes even more complicated when Mehmed, the future Sultan, enters their lives – since they both fall in love with him.

CHARACTERS

BEKWORM: The hatred for women in this book is a little much for me. Women who marry are weak or "A waste of air", and women who have children are even weaker or "broken from the inside". The only strong women are the ones who walk away from this life. The ones who marry and have babies are locked away and considered useless.  

CAPTAIN CLO: That's understandable for who Lada is, but is certainly there. She sees marriage as a prison – she knows she's going to be used as a political tool and made to marry whoever her father wants. You can either sympathize with her perspective or see it as a sign of how inflexible and spiteful she is. No one character in this book is a good example. Lada is very self-centered, and since she can't imagine a situation in which marriage doesn't mean her personal annihilation (and she's right in this expectation), she thinks any woman who is satisfied with marriage is stupid. Actually, self-centredness is exactly what makes her and Mehmed identical, and so toxic for each other.

BEKWORM: Mehmed did not grow on me one bit. My god. He is well and truly awful. I'm glad Lada walked away from him. And Radu's devotion is just pathetic by the end of the book. "Could never love anyone but Mehmed!" You're like 16, mate, calm the fuck down. But I guess I'm not romantic in the sense that I believe loving someone every day for years is a choice. People think it's something you fall into and can't get out of, but that's not true. And it's why I think a lot of long term relationships fail when people realize they're not hopelessly in love anymore. Because waking up and loving the same person every day is a choice you have to make. So if you love someone for years it's because you want to. So get the fuck over it, Radu. Sometimes people don't love you back. For fuck's sake. Am I heartless? I don't even care.

CAPTAIN CLO: I was actually struggling to rationalize what I liked about Mehmed and I came up short. What even is his personality? I can come up with a decent list of character traits for Radu and Lada, but not for Mehmed. Why are they both in love with him?  

BEKWORM: Exactly!! He's definitely a character you can't describe because there's just nothing there.

CAPTAIN CLO: I think Lada might like him because he's something to aspire to (powerful), and because for all that he's still sexist sometimes, he doesn't want her to change her ways. But that's very little. And why does Radu love him at all? What does he get from Mehmed that makes him attracted to him?

BEKWORM: I don't know. Maybe because Mehmed was his sexual awakening. But he gets nothing out of their relationship.

CAPTAIN CLO: This is always a big problem with YA romance, in my opinion. A lot of times you can't tell what makes a character attracted to someone. Certainly, Mehmed treats Radu with kindness and trusts him, but just like Lada, he's self-centred, takes him for granted, and hardly thinks about him at all. Radu is invisible to both of them. Maybe that's exactly why he falls in love with Mehmed? Radu has a few friends, and it seems like he looks for kindness in people, but if it's kindness he's after, he might have fallen in love before, with the first Janissary he befriends. Instead, even when offered a relationship with him, he's not attracted to him at all. He wants Mehmed. But why?

In general, the relationship between Lada, Radu, and Mehmed is toxic. Anyone expecting them to get better and understand each other eventually will be disappointed, probably – and I'll be the first in that sorry lot. I really want Lada to stop treating Radu badly. He doesn't deserve it, and they could be such an amazing team. And Radu could learn not to be a fucking doormat, but that's what he's used to, thanks to Lada. And although I want them to get what they want and both have a relationship with Mehmed, I know it won't happen – when does it, ever? No, let's have another toxic triangle. 

I think it's so amazing that there is a book about Radu that acknowledges his romantic ties with Mehmed – at least one historical source attests it, but I can't delve too much in it here – but the plot falls into the tired, old Gay Best Friend Who Is In Love With Straight Friend trope. Honestly. There is also a fair amount of angst about it – Radu feels deeply ashamed of his inclinations. And actually, I'm not sure how much that makes sense. He's an educated person, and his best friend was (historically) noted for his interest in Greek literature. Are you telling me Radu never stumbled upon homoerotic poetry from ancient Greece? Even Persian poetry had notable examples, and that would have been so easy for him to find. And the fact that Mehmed is firmly established as heterosexual... I'm not down for other two books of anguish and pining.

BEKWORM: I'm glad in the end Lada remembered what she wanted from life, because she fell into that classic trope of Ambitious Girl Falls in Love and Forgets EVERYTHING. And that she left. And Radu's reason for not joining her wasn't just Mehmed, and that was good too. Because the two of them having a conflict about what they consider Home is interesting. Having a conflict over Mehmed is not.

CAPTAIN CLO: That's definitely a nice touch. But knowing how history went between the two of them... Yeah, I can't see this ending well. It was inevitable too, they adjusted differently to living in the Ottoman empire. Although Lada will NEVER find a place where she can fit is she keeps going like this. The problem is not only what place they consider home, but their different personalities. Lada has ambitions, but they're STUPID ambitions. She just cares about ruling Wallachia, just like her father before her; she doesn't care about advancing the region or protecting people. Granted, no one does in this book (and historically that's also generally true). She lacks emotional intelligence, and she also suffers for it. Lada completely rejects the idea of home = trusted people I love, so there won't be any betterment in that, I don't think. I wonder if she'll come to realize all this or she'll just. Start to impale people.

BEKWORM: Obviously we hope she just starts impaling people.

Not but really. Lada is an absolutely fascinating protagonist, especially in a time where many female YA protagonists are pasty white girls with shiny brown hair, who has no friends, but she’s so clumsy guys isn’t that adorbs? Lada doesn’t have many friends, but that’s because she’s a feral she wolf who’s ready to cut some throats open with her damn fingernails. And it’s awesome. She’s ready to take over, and I’m more than ready to watch it happen. Lada is an amazing outlet for my lady rage, y’all. I love it.

ON HISTORY                         

CAPTAIN CLO: When goodreads suggested And I Darken as my next read, I was pretty conflicted about it. I'm a huge history nerd and I've been studying the area from the Republic of Venice to Istanbul in exactly the same years in which the plot develops. So of course, I had high expectations. At the same time, however, I didn't; this is a YA book, not a historical novel, and it would be unfair to expect of it the same attention to detail and history-related content. YA lit is (generally) focused on fast-paced adventure, romance, and characters – not on showing historical issues and give a broad, in-depth account of life and history of the time.

In the end, I was still disappointed by what I got – but I feel like I have to “confess” my inflated expectations.

There is one specific issue that I feel like was underdeveloped – the Janissaries. The Janissaries were a military corp at the direct orders of the Ottoman Sultan. They were also slaves, ailing from the Balkan area under the Ottoman's influence. Young Christian boys were taken by Ottoman officials (sometimes offered by the families themselves), mostly from peasant families, and then brought to Turkey. They were taught Turkish and converted to Islam, then brought to the capital to be trained as specialized infantry soldiers. Janissaries were salaried slaves, but were also highly respected and had many privileges. They didn't pay taxes, were the personal guards of the Sultan, and had great opportunities to advance socially – something a lot of them would never achieve otherwise. Promotions were given on the base of loyalty and meritocracy, not class. The more skilled became governors or even prime ministers. Some became governors and then rebelled to the Sultan, like a famous Albanian national hero, Skanderbeg. Some became immensely powerful Grand Viziers, like Zaganos Pasha, the prime minister at the time of Skanderbeg’s rule, and close collaborator of Mehmed the Conqueror. 

There are so many interesting things in just this little, scant description, I don't even know where to begin. Issues of conversion, religion, national identity, class, social advancement... The list is long. And the Janissaries feature heavily in And I Darken, yet these issues are barely touched upon. The Janissaries we directly see on the page are either resentful of their slavery and desire freedom, or traitors of the Sultan, only after better pay and privileges. The better prospects are only brought up once, by Radu, who isn't a Janissary. On top of that, he was partly lying. It's not like dissatisfaction wasn't possible in the ranks, but I think it's important to remember that, historically, Janissaries never revolted to be free. They only did so to have better pay. Seeing as slavery is perceived as morally revolting in contemporary Western culture, it's understandable that we expect them to revolt, Spartacus-style; I did for sure when I started to get interested in them. But history proves that something – their training, their sense of camaraderie, their new-found religion, their better prospects, I honestly don't know – made them stay, and made them mostly loyal. I am deeply dissatisfied in how this matter was brushed aside in the book, although I'm not surprised it was.

RELIGION

CAPTAIN CLO: The role of religion and religious conversion was more central, but still not developed very well. Radu converts to Islam of his own volition, finding peace and understanding in its practice. Which is positive, but the reader is never really told much about Islam itself. I'm not an expert, but my perception is that at the time – mid 15th century – Islam was a much more approachable religion for every class, but especially the lower one. Radu himself remembers the Orthodox rite he was used to as oppressive, dark, filled with notions of sin and hell, and a language difficult to understand. These are childish recollections, distorted by how much he hated his previous life – in which he was mistreated and abused – but they make sense. In Islam he finds something different... but what? Although we're treated to the scene in which he enters a mosque for the first time, we never know what, exactly, he learns that makes sense for him. One can read through the entire book and never learn anything about Islam proper but the superficial, commonly-known things – the five pillars, the muezzins, the mosques, the existence of the Quran. It's very little. It's even less when we learn that a lot of Radu and Mehmed's friendship is based on deep conversations about Islam – but we're never once shown them having such a discussion.

BEKWORM: I wonder if White worried that getting to deep into it would be seen as preaching. But you're right it would have been more interesting to see more about the religion, especially because most people don't know what it's about. I know I really don't.

CAPTAIN CLO: Maybe she did, and that's understandable... but such as it is, Radu and Mehmed's shared religious passion sounds like an informed ability. It feels to me like an important piece of the historical puzzle is missing. Conversions to Islam in the Ottoman empire were rarely forced – yet they happened a lot. Certainly in part for pragmatic purposes – non-Muslim subjects had to pay an additional tax and had various other restrictions – but the persuasive power of Islam shouldn't be underestimated, in my opinion.

OVERALL

BEKWORM: Overall we give this a solid Meh. Lada and Radu are worth the time it takes to read this book. Their relationship with each other is heartbreaking but sweet in an entirely new way. However, the focus of their romantic interest is definitely a big, dull dud. Sorry, Mehmed! But please get a personality you’re really bumming me out. (Oh my god, guys, I think he’s this book’s version of the pasty, shiny haired protagonist! Everybody loves him but no one knows why. He’s the Bella Swan of the Ottoman Courts)

We’re expecting the following books in this series to involve less pining, more impaling, and so much heartbreak you’ll probably be sitting there wondering why the fuck you’re reading it while simultaneously refusing to put the damn thing down. Should be fun! I’ll need a bottle of wine.

#and i darken #ya books #historical fiction #women authors #review #kiersten white #love triangles

[nayeon-sadly-owns-me]

Welcome back for the final part of my mini series revolving around Gold Dust if you need to read my Part One and/or Part Two here are the links. Depending on if people want to hear my theories, I’ll leave that up to any feedback I get. I also might do Fool’s Gold, who knows. (I know.) Yes this is still long af because you gotta go out with a bang.

Part 3

Chapter 2 Second Half

Spoilers beyond here-

Last time we left off with Nayeon and Momo overlooking the city on the same cliff that Nayeon learned that having sex with someone you have feelings for is beyond comparison to having manipulation sex.

We pick things up with Nayeon returning to Seungyeon’s room after being forced to actually be on time for once via Momo. Funny seeing as it’s hinted at the beginning of the group session mentions that Momo tends to be a few minutes late so she is the last one to enter and first to leave.

When asked if she likes the Starry Night, we get another view of just how much Momo has affected her thinking. She lets it stay up because the stars remind her of Momo. Interesting facts about this painting is that it was painted after Vincent van Gogh experienced a mental breakdown and sought treatment in a mental asylum. The painting itself has been interpreted as him painting his darkest night but still finding hope in the star’s light (and the houses below). It really is a painting suitable for Nayeon and how Momo has given her hope.

On the surface, Nayeon buying and giving Momo a phone so she can be there in case something is wrong, is a pretty simple answer to accept. Except, Nayeon has strong emotional ties towards keeping her phone on her and making sure she can contact her dad and now Momo. Her strong push for Momo to take the phone is now physical evidence that Momo’s concerns are now hers just like with her father. She needs to know that they are okay at all times, so it’s important Momo has a phone. Also she has hit the lovey stage where any minute they’re apart she misses her but you didn’t hear that from me.

Like any addict, if you give them an easy route to obtaining their drug of choice, they will probably cave and do it. Despite all her ramblings about how Seungyeon’s preaching was bullshit, she finds herself having an identity crisis because her grasp on who she is has been altered. It’s out of spite that she tries to force herself back into the game, but she can’t. Momo has become too important to her to except any less now.

Bringing it back to Nayeon describing how different sex with Momo was compared to all the others, it was the first time she had felt the ecstasy that is supposed to be felt. Anything less than that will now feel unacceptable as she is now experiencing.

In comparison to how Momo makes her feel, not even substances can top it.

It’s why you can’t knock this couple as having an overly toxic relationship because despite their flaws, they make each other better. More on this though when Chapter 3 comes out, whenever it does.

For all the talk of Nayeon wanting Momo to have a phone in case she needs her, it’s actually Nayeon who calls Momo. It leads to another situation where it could be late at night but if Nayeon calls then Momo will be there. Just like if Momo called her, Nayeon would be there.

We get to see the difference between Momo and Nayeon when it comes to how they feel about coming to each others houses sort of how they were when they came into each others lives. Momo gives warning and politely waits outside to be invited in. Nayeon speeds over and announces her arrival like it’s her life’s mission.

Earlier in the scene, it was briefly mentioned that a movie was playing in the background. Nayeon treated it as no big deal and used it as white noise. Now we have Momo who is completely fixated on the movie because she doesn’t have the luxury to watch tv. In fact, I’m sure she would have been captivated by anything on the tv. What seems small and insignificant to Nayeon is large and important to Momo.

Blanket forts have always been a sanctuary of comfort, especially for kids who are afraid of the dark. They always were portrayed as a place where your demons can’t reach you. It’s a beautiful idea for Momo to suggestion when Nayeon is on the brink of an emotional breakdown from watching Cameron sink, just like how she feels. Despite the fact that Momo has no clue about her extreme anxiety over water or any of her core issues in general, she still triumphs at giving Nayeon a safe space. She doesn’t ask questions, and for the moment it’s the best thing Nayeon could ask for.

It’s arguably the softest scene in the entire two chapters, where they can just exist just by being together.

We get our second scene with Momo and the Maid. It’s important to note that the maid really supports Momo being in Nayeon’s life because of all that she’s seen. Momo has made her better in almost every sense of the word. We have already seen Nayeon changer her attitude towards the staff from when Momo dropped her off and she woke up. This is a nice comparison to Jeongyeon/Seungyeon who haven’t seen the real and fake Nayeon in all her glory.

Momo also has considerable character growth with the fact that she now longs to be somebody to Nayeon. She’s long since abandoned the notion that she is nobody important which is huge for somebody like her.

I like to pretend that Nayeon made her her sandwich because she doesn’t trust anyone in her staff with the job. I can hear her reasoning that if Momo is gonna have practice ALL day then she should have a decent lunch and well she knows what she likes better than the staff so she might as well do it. Then staring at the clock until it was close to the soccer teams lunch time (that she totally didn’t make Dahyun tell her) so she could personally deliver it (absolutely not because she wants to see Momo).

If Momo wasn’t so convinced that Nayeon only sees her as a friend, she would have noticed Nayeon staring at her like she was a 5-course meal. Of course, she rationalizes that it’s because she’s messy and not because Nayeon’s head gets fuzzy when she looks at Momo’s body in general. Subtle isn’t in Nayeons vocabulary.

Something to note, Momo is fiercely protective of Nayeon when it comes to Jeongyeon. She gets much colder. I was actually surprised that the ending line came from Momo instead of Nayeon because we had that little line spoiler during the update phase. I have my own theories on what Jeongyeon is referring to, my thoughts is that it connects to how Momo got into therapy in the first place. My question is what had happened to trigger Momo and how did Jeongyeon discover it? Gotta wait.

They say that when you are attracted to somebody, you begin to show more physical affection because of compromising needs and wants. Up until now, Nayeon had always been extremely cautious to not engage in physical contact because it goes against what she was taught to believe. However, with her mental state constantly reminding her that she’s attracted to Momo, she has to give in to that urge slightly so that it doesn’t drive her insane. Meanwhile, Momo lets it happen because she is openly aware that she likes Nayeon and is happy about this change in her.

If these were two stable people, they would have already come to the conclusion that the feelings of interest are mutual and would stop pretending that they’re just friends. Instead, they continue to never use the term ‘friend’ at all, because they’re not friends at this point. Their not so subtle attraction and die-for-you attitude extends beyond being comfortable with using the term ‘friends’. That’s why you only see them use ‘barely-friends’ or ‘sort-of-friends’ ect ect. If anything, you should already stop reading it as implying of friendship and start implying it as dating.

Even more so that Nayeon is THAT bitch that has to call her person of interest (on speed dial no less) just to hear her voice in the middle of the night. Then calls three more times because obviously something is wrong and she isn’t just sleeping.

Think back to the panic Nayeon showed when she wasn’t sure if her dad was alive still or not because of a missed phone call. Her fear that something happened to Momo might be irrational, but it’s still a fear she has. She has a very real fear that something bad will happen to the people she loves and it bleeds into her daily life.

Their relationship becomes a game of ‘How can I turn this into a reason to show im attached to you without having to say it’ leading to reading, cuddling/sleeping together, and playing footsies. Although Nayeon is comfortable just reading with Momo, she still wants that interaction that leaves her physically satisfied. Admitting you find the person cute is the first step of acceptance. Coming to the realization that you want to kiss them is the second. Her steps of acceptance are messy, just like her.

This scene makes me hope that NaMo adopt a puppy to raise together because it would make Momo the happiest girl alive. It also shows how hopelessly devoted she is towards her even when Sana makes blunt attempts to gain her attention and they fail. It only succeeded in reminding her that the people around her only would only want her for shallow reasons. It seems that it’s her way of dealing with what she thinks is one-sided feelings so she thinks the worst to try to make these feelings go away.

Because of those thoughts, she misses the fact that Nayeon would cut down anyone who tries to get with Momo. Specifically Sana, who has eyes on Momo because of her physical attraction (and Jeongyeon’s manipulation). She also misses Nayeon’s growing fondness of being Momo’s only person, something that will be entertaining to watch when Mina comes into the picture.

It’s frustrating as a reader to watch Nayeon agonize from being sexually frustrated when we know Momo wants the same thing. It’s just dramatic irony playing its role and you have to reminder yourself that both of them think that what they’re doing right now is what the other wants and needs. Nayeon is use to playing the puppeteer so it’s no surprise that she feels a surge of guilt when she makes herself come to the mere idea of it being Momo doing it. It reminds her of her days using people, connecting physical activity with using. Because any slip of want feels like it’s coming from Nayeon’s darker days of having ultimatums instead of her being close to being in love.

Pair of eyes is what I assume to be belonging to Jeongyeon seeing as she has such a harsh reaction later in the scene.

There are subtle hints that Nayeon is about to have one of her irrational breakdowns, Jeongyeon unknowingly is the catalyst for this one. Which is pretty ironic considering she tries to make Momo forget about Nayeon using Sana thus trying to sabotage their thing (one of which she doesn’t know what she’s sabatoging). Like I said, it’s frustrating to read but can’t be written any other way.

When you’re trying to defend your relationship to someone you fucked over (in more ways than one), describing said person as fragile as your defense is not the best way to go. It already shows that her defenses are weak. If Nayeon had a more stable mindset, she could have given a better answer. All it took was Jeongyeon saying “All the more reason to keep her away from you” to cause her into a spiraling breakdown.

Because Nayeon isn’t listening when Momo tries to explain that whatever version of Nayeon Jeongyeon knows, it’s not the same as the version she knows. However, you can’t explain that to somebody that already has their mindset made up. They’re still going to believe what they want to believe.

So, Nayeon does the only thing she can do in this situation. She kisses her and lets herself loose despite all the warning signs. Because, like I mentioned earlier, Nayeon associates sex as a game, she hasn’t gotten to the point where she has separated the two yet. She also ignores Momo in the process and choses to believe that she is only using her.

It’s even worse when Momo starts to blame herself and asks her not to leave her. They’re a dangerous mixture that’s bound to hurt Momo the most just like Nayeon thinks. Nayeon has the ability to come back to reality where she remembers that she wants Momo in her life. Momo, unfortunately, can’t think of this fact (despite Nayeon having already done this several times) because of her abandonment issues.

Seungyeon isn’t blind by any means. Im sure she knows by now that there is something going on between Momo and Nayeon. She is waiting for Momo to speak up about Nayeon, she needs to her for herself how and why they ended up finding each other and what makes it different than Nayeon with her sister. If you think that Jeongyeon is clueless, Seungyeon is arguably more in the dark.

Momo’s coping mechanism isn’t strong enough to combat Nayeon’s latest meltdown, and it shows just how worn down she is. She draws stars in the night sky, although it’s not the comforting kind. It’s the kind of picture that makes her remember what it was like to want to kill herself. Having both these scenes back to back creates a genuine emotion of feeling hurt for these characters because you see how broken they really are.

With Nayeon back down to earth or as close as Im Nayeon can be, she explains her self-created fuck up to her father. Fighting against her latest substance hangover, no doubt the pills from the living room. Although her defenses are lowered enough to admit her feelings, it’s not enough to stop the fact that she can’t say it to him while he’s awake. It’s the third step towards acceptance though.

This isn’t a quick fix though and too many things around her make it impossible to ignore it. Such as, a letter from her mother in prison. We don’t get the context of what the letter says, but we know the anguish it causes her.

She takes being over-dramatic to new heights as she tries to show Momo just how destructive she can be when dealing with a crisis. Her mother treated her like shit and now she feels like she can only treat people like that too. Granted, she has followed through on that in the past. No good deeds will ever replace that, and Nayeon is all too well aware of this fact.

She destroys her mother’s favorite car and topples it down a cliff as a grand message to Momo as physical proof of the point she is trying to get across. I want to remind you that Momo has no context on what happened with Nayeon and her parents. All she knows is that it’s bad and she is trying to scare her off because of it.

The opposite happens of course, it’s Momo after all, and she admits that she’s tired of pretending and just wants to be with her. Making it clear that she is aware of Nayeon’s indecisive behavior that keeps Momo from standing on solid ground for more than a couple of days. Despite the fact that we know how horrendous Momo is with words, she is the one who comes up with what to say in order to snap Nayeon out of it. (for now)

It’s true that Momo gives her more chances than she deserves and that is what has given Nayeon the ability to not think about the consequences of her actions. With the apparent idea that Momo is done, it brings her back to reality that that’s not what she wants but she’s conflicted.

In the end, Momo demands an answer for the second time, and gets nothing.

Instead we’re brought back to Nayeon’s thoughts and how they reflect Seungyeon’s words when they talked about hating the sunset/sunrise. Nayeon tries to burn things to the ground to avoid the pain of liking something and having it not work out. If it doesn’t work out. Throwing away her own words/thoughts along with a bottle of wine (her failed coping mechanism), Nayeon gets her act together roughly the last time of the chapter.

If there is one thing I want to know out of the Sana/Momo thing, it’s if Momo was the one to approach her because of the offer Sana made at the park. My guess is yes.

It’s nice to know Seulgi is as amused with Jeongyeon messy scheme as the readers are.

Nayeon could have threatened Sana, curse her out, physically dealt with her. Instead she just tells her to get the fuck out. Because THIS Im Nayeon doesn’t hurt people. Especially not in front of Momo (until she feels like she has too).

(You can ignore this section. This is my bitch about the situation even though it makes sense in story section)

As someone who has played both High school and college lacrosse, these next few scenes bother me for it being the fact that its arguably the least realistic part of the whole story. No coach in their right mind would allow their players to fuck around with the crowd to stall just because one player isn’t there. Stalling can lead to forfeiting by default. Jeongyeon wouldn’t have time to talk to Sana because nobody is allowed on the field except for staff and players. Not to mention I’ve never met a coach that is okay with their players using their phone before a game much less the starting goalkeeper. Don’t get me started on how may rules Nayeon broke tackling Lisa and Momo just leaving-

What’s worse is that it moves the plot along so I can’t even be properly annoyed at this. You win this round Stormy.

Anyways,

What Nayeon couldn’t say in the locker room, she lets out by tackling Lisa who had just slide-tackled Momo to the ground and calling her out. At worse she should receive a yellow card for an irresponsible tackle but alas, we are treated to an angry Im Nayeon. Remember what I said about her never wanting to physically hurt anybody in front of Momo? Yeah, that goes out the window when somebody dares to hurt Momo even if it is not on purpose.

Despite the drama, Nayeon’s actions are self-justifiably (although not excused) fueled by emotions that have been boiling since she left Momo in her car.

Now that she has released all that pent up energy, she is now left to come to terms with what she has done. By the time Momo finds her, she’s drained and arguably at her best to talk to about feelings.

Except they don’t talk. Instead Nayeon does what she knows how, and that’s to kiss Momo into believing that this time she isn’t going to leave her. I keep being brought back to the time when Nayeon first tried to kiss her when Momo asked her to show her something real. Although in fic time it was only a few weeks ago, it shows that now the definition of real has changed for Momo. At least when it concerns Nayeon.

Rest assured that her feelings are returned, she finally admits to wanting Momo back. There were three times that Nayeon had come to find Momo to talk about her feelings- whether to keep her in her life or finally admit her feelings. 3 seemed to be the magic number for this fan fic.

Throughout this story, there would be thoughts put in parenthesis that would be repeated three times. 99% of the time, they were thoughts that were untrue or wrong in some way. When Nayeon repeats I promise aloud 3 times for Momo to hear, it has me wondering if that is what makes it true. It is a noticeable difference if you’re looking for it. I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Also NaMo are THAT couple that will bang in a classroom because of the pent up sexual frustration and just can’t wait because they have each other right there and why stop at kissing.

We’ve seen Nayeon make strides to get over her addictions (although she has a long way to go). Most impressively would be Momo. For years she practiced hard to become a star soccer player. I would put money on the fact that she has never skipped a practice or game. The fact that she was willing to leave a big game to go check up on Nayeon shows just how important she has become to her. It’s enough to leave the thoughts of her parents behind, whether she still has lingering thoughts about them or not.

From Nayeon worrying about Momo ruining her reputation, to now being regarded as Momo’s girlfriend by probably the whole student body- she’s come a long way in that regard.

You know Nayeon must have had a good time earlier when she doesn’t try anything after seeing Momo in just her underwear and a shirt.

Despite Momo’s attitude of accepting the idea of Nayeon not wanting her- I really don’t think that’s what she truly thought was real deep down in her subconscious. Because when Nayeon finally told her how she felt, Momo showed no signs of believing it to be false. She just hesitated to make sure that Nayeon wasn’t going to have another meltdown. Despite what she may or may not believes, she has to hear it from Nayeon so it’s good that they got to talk that out.

We get to our third maid and Momo scene, the one where Momo can finally introduce her as a somebody because finally she is now with Nayeon. It’s a little concerning that she felt like the only way to be somebody to Nayeon was to be romantically linked to her, but that is just another one of her issues that I hope to see worked out someday.

(I also want to say that I think it’s adorable that Momo associates home with Nayeon now.)

At some point Momo had to have told her where she gets her gum because Nayeon goes to Seungyeon for it of all people. Nayeon could have bought a whole counter of it if she wanted to. Instead she goes to the source that has helped Momo out even with small gestures.

Going back to the text that Jeongyeon had sent her sister, you have to understand that she only has that to go off of. Seungyeon had to have been there for Jeongyeon when the whole Nayeon thing was over. She knows how much damage Nayeon can do to Momo. That’s why she is so concerned. A part of me wishes that she just ask them about it, but that’s against therapy code (no really it is). Although Momo was never an open book with her, she still knows how unstable her mindset is. Just another case of the missing details factor on Seungyeon’s part that leads to her concern.

We get a tease that Nayeon had something to do with her father’s hospital stay, sadly we haven’t been told enough to be able to think about what that something is.

Instead of flying off the handle about the hospitals lack of contacting her about her father, she goes to Momo in perhaps one of her most vulnerable state.

Up until this point, neither of them have genuinely cried in front of each other because the other has walked away or turned away before they could. Now we see Momo embrace a sobbing wet Nayeon with as much love and care as she can then proceed to get her dried off and wearing clean clothes. The moment feels very rewarding. (Also, this is the first time we see Momo be the one holding Nayeon for a change.)

I have a theory about this water dream- That her mother is in prison for trying to drown her for causing her father’s hospitalized condition. She is recreating the scenario in the form of a nightmare probably brought about from her panic over her father being missing earlier. The reason why she is drowning Momo can be because of her expressed feelings of treating people the way her mother taught her and treated her.

Of course now she has made an effort to escape that way of expressing herself in the form of her thinking she is drowning Momo but can’t stop it. As most nightmares representing trauma do not give you the freedom to change anything from the scenario that it was developed from. While I sincerely don’t think this dream is suggesting Nayeon would actually do something like that to Momo, it’s ominous and could be foreshadowing about their relationship. For now, Momo is still with her and everything is fine.

I don’t need to analyze anything to know that Momo’s parents were two atrocious parents for what they’ve done to their child. It’s a wonder that it took Nayeon so long to figure it out seeing as they’ve both been left alone in their own respectable houses.

If we are basing their birthdays as the same as the irl NaMo, it would mean that Momo had to be 11 when her parents abandoned her. (Nayeon would be a year older, making her 18) (BUT, their birthdays could be adjusted to only being a few months apart making Momo 18 as well. Dunno. It’s up to Stormy.)

Regardless, now that Nayeon knows the root of Momo’s issues, she makes a promise that I don’t know if she will be able to keep. I want her to be able to keep it because they both need it, but habits are habits.

We end the chapter with the revelation of what we already knew, Nayeon is falling in love with Momo.

Will Nayeon’s mom be released from prison? Will Jihyo come back for revenge? Will something bad happen to Nayeon’s dad? Will water be involved at some point? What role does Mina have to play? Will NaMo be happy for once in this god damn fic?

Tune in next time.

Thank you for reading : )

#namo #IM FREE #gold dust

[f4rfields]

my dream au is where takada turns on light and begins to use mikami as a means to carry out being kira herself through him because she finds out during her christmas dinner with misa that he’s actually manipulative scum (like she herself said that she does not trust men in general) 

and so she decides that this kind of person isn’t suited to be “god” at all and that she’d be better off doing it herself now that she has pretty much complete access to this kind of power. 

because like takada is confident enough and loves the attention she gets from just being kira’s spokesperson that she’d totally go for it and become kira herself. she also doesn’t have any qualms about using the death note in the first place, and she’s a decent enough actress. she’s also haughty and spiteful enough that she’d probably want to watch light lose control of the situation before taking him out.

and light’s just full of himself and misogynistic enough for her to pull it off without him suspecting her of acting on her own for quite a while, because he assumes she’s hopelessly devoted to him - he’d probably assume it was mikami who was acting on his own before he’d think it’s takada.

so like... just light now having to deal with near, mello, AND takada now trying to take over as kira right under his nose? like... imagine... takada with a better role in the story.................... my dream........

#text #dead book #death note spoilers ///