#where i wrote and or imagined an interaction between those two

[lovelylogans]

as a fanfic writer do you ever have a moment where you write an interaction between two characters, lean back, and go “oh so THIS is why people ship this couple???”

#my post #text #honestly there are some ships where it's just. not my cup of tea! #for this current wip i've had TWO count 'em TWO #ships where i've been either ambivalent or like 'mmm i don't get it?' #where i wrote and or imagined an interaction between those two #and i GET IT NOW!!!! i see what y'all are aiming for!!!! #i was too blindsided by canon!!! #like there are some ships where it's just. their interactions in canon don't do it for me #but then the FANON kicks in

[peachesyeo]

8/9... 8/8 - ATEEZ OT8 part two

THIS IMAGINE IS MATURE! MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

⊹ 1.6k words ⊹ friends!ateez x fem!reader (ft. straykids) ᭡ angst, mature. (+ fluff brought to you by straykids)

✧ a/n: i didn't expect so many people to like this work???? i wrote it in a span of two hours because i was feeling super depressed and wow, you guys gave me a huge surprise! thank you..? anyway, there won't be a part three. if you guys are inspired feel free to extend the lore and universe (:

p.s. the 1117 series will be rewritten!!!!!!!

thank you @sousydive for beta reading. thank you @ja3hwa for the banner (I LOVE YOU AS MUCH AS MY BLOOD VESSELS)

⊂ content: name calling, broken friendship. probably the start of a universe.

✦ network: @newworldnet

:̗̀➛ 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭? :̗̀➛ 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞? :̗̀➛ 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭? (for all works)

those who asked to be tagged: @vixensss @anxiousskylar @spenceatiny18 @kitkat1sstuff

The stormy clouds gathered, hiding the golden rays of the sun. You had run a distance away from the cafe, from Jongho, and you stopped, panting. 

A slut. You laughed, a shrill sound escaping your throat as thunder clapped overhead. 

You have been bearing that name anyway. From high school, to university. People assumed that you were the boy’s personal whore, being close to them and all. All kinds of nicknames were thrown in your direction. 

Whore. Slut. Used. Dirty. A common bus.

The boys didn’t know. They didn’t know that the girls would laugh at you while you were using the restroom. They didn’t know that men have come up to you, asking you how much you charge per night. They didn’t know the looks you received when the boys weren't looking.

You let out a sound between a sob and a laugh. 

Something wet hit you. Once. Twice. Droplets of rain fell, mixing in with the tears that were rolling down your face. Your tracksuit slowly turned wet, as you made your way home in a daze.

Eight years. 

You love the boys like your brothers. For eight years. To you, they are family. 

“Y/n!”

Someone pulled you by the arm. You turned around to see a worried Felix, who dragged you with him. He pulled you to the nearest shelter, where Bang Chan and Jisung stood waiting. 

“Y/n? Are you okay?” Jisung asked, as Felix fussed over you. Bang Chan was calling someone on his phone, sounding anxious. You nodded your head in a daze, your fingers gripping on Felix’s sleeve like you were holding on to your lifeline. 

“Wanna go home, Lixie.” Your voice was small. You stared ahead of you without any focus in your eyes. Jisung rubbed your shoulders, trying to warm you up. “Hey, Y/n, you here with me?”

You slowly looked over at Jisung. “Sungie..?” You whispered the nickname they had allowed you to call after just one week of hanging out with them. “Yeah, I’m here, Y/n.” Jisung answered carefully, his heart breaking at the sight of the tears in your eyes.

Felix sighed, pulling you into his arms. He doesn’t seem to care about his shirt getting wet, patting you gently as he speaks. “It’s okay to cry, Y/n.”

You leaned into his arms, your shoulders shaking as you sobbed quietly. Chan approached the three of you, his voice gentle. “Y/nnie, is it okay if we bring you home?” You got out of Felix’s embrace, nodding as you wiped your eyes. “Y-yeah. Thank you.”

Minho was fussing over you like a mother hen. 

“Absolutely not, Y/n. Yongbokkie and I will manage the kitchen, Bin will stay here and take care of you - and where is Hwang Hyunjin?” He barked. You giggled as Jisung pulled a face behind his back, while Changbin dried your hair with a towel. 

Felix appeared, holding a cup of tea. “Ginger tea, Y/nnie. Keeps you warm.” You accept the tea gratefully from him, taking a huge sip. “Thanks, Lixie.”

“No problem.” He smiled, heading back towards the kitchen. Hyunjun appeared with snacks, scowling at Minho as he placed them in front of you. “Don’t need to rush me, Mother.” Minho rolled his eyes, shahaying back into the kitchen. Changbin snorted, patting your almost dried hair. “Just stay here and eat snacks with Jinnie, Jisung and the two idiots there, Y/n. Don’t worry about anything, you need comfort and cuddles now.”

“Only one idiot here and it’s not me, hyung. But Jongho is such a bitch for saying that.” On the other couch, Seungmin commented, ignoring Jeongin’s glare and reached for the snacks in front of you. Your smile faltered as Jisung smacked Seungmin’s hands. “Minnie!”

“What?” Seungmin scowled at the older man, rubbing his arm. “I was just telling the truth, Y/n needs to know how fake they are anyways.” He grabbed the snack with his other hand as you shifted uncomfortably in your seat. Changbin rubbed your shoulders comfortingly. “Do you want to hear about this, Y/n?”

You bit your lip. “I.. don’t know, Binnie. They’ve been my friends - my only friends, for a long time. I just thought… If they had a problem with me, they should have told me sooner. I can change!” You gripped the cup tightly in your hands. “It just hurts. We are adults, but-”

“Hey, Y/nnie. Look at me.” Hyunjin put his palms on your cheeks, gently turning you to face him. “I know how you are feeling, Y/n. But it’s okay. You have us now.” He said slowly, as you blink the tears away. “We’ll be here for you, Y/n.”

Jisung sighed loudly. Suddenly, he felt something vibrating. Frowning, he felt around the couch, finally fishing out your phone from under a pillow. Checking to see if you were paying attention, Jisung discreetly slipped the phone into his back pocket. He signaled Changbin, who nodded and gave a meaningful look to Hyunjin. The younger cleared his throat, patting your hair. “You wanna see something fun? We have an album full of Innie’s ugly photos.”

While the youngest protested loudly, Jisung took the chance to sneak into the kitchen. Minho, who was busy over the stove, looked up at him lazily. “What is it?”

Jisung snorted at your phone screen. “Trouble.” He said, answering the call. 

“Hello? Y/nnie? Are you okay?” The caller rattled at lightning speed, not even giving Jisung a chance to speak. “Look, I heard about Jongho, he didn’t mean it. He’s feeling bad about it too, Y/nnie.” 

“She’s not here, you idiot.” Jisung leaned against the countertop, looking at his nails. The person on the other line paused, his voice lowering a few octaves. “Who are you?”

“Han Jisung. To think I’ll ever hear your voice again, Kang Yeosang.”

“Is Y/n with you?”

“Why do you care? Aren’t you guys tired of her?” Felix turned, looking at Jisung, who had a dark look on his face. “She was supposed to be our friend anyways, if Jung Wooyoung hadn’t been so thick-skinned and took credit for Jinnie’s work, Y/n would have been with us eight years ago.”

“...”

“Cat got your tongue?” Jisung raised a brow, as silence filled Yeosang’s line. “Y/n’s not a toy, Kang Yeosang. If you guys don't treasure her, we will."

“What did she say?” Mingi asked eagerly as Yeosang put down his phone. The older man looked towards Jongho, who was sitting in the middle of the couch with a distant expression. “She should be angry, Jongho said those words after all-”

“She didn’t answer. Han Jisung did.” Yeosang’s voice was small. Wooyoung, who had been really quiet after hearing Jongho’s story, stood up and left the room. San frowned in worry, following after the younger as Yeosang continued. “I think they are taking care of her.”

Silence. 

“I’ll go ask her at work.” Hongjoong decided eventually. “Let’s just give her some time and space… We were in the wrong after all.” 

Yeosang knew that that was the end of the conversation about Y/n. He looked towards Seonghwa, who was furiously typing away on his phone. He then lowered his eyes, a ridiculous feeling spreading over him. 

You’re one of them, Kang Yeosang. Too late for you to be regretting. 

Hwa Oppa: Y/nnie?

Hwa Oppa: Are you there?

Hwa Oppa: Look, I’m really sorry about this. Hwa Oppa: Can we talk? Hwa Oppa: Please reply to me if you saw this message, Y/nnie. ASAP.

The notifications had been coming in for hours. You ignored them, enjoying your time chatting with Jisung and Hyunjin. The boys made you stay for lunch and dinner, and when Bang Chan sent you home, you finally read the messages from Seonghwa. 

Your finger hovered over the screen hesitantly. Jongho must have told Seonghwa what happened, there were a couple of missed calls from Yeosang, Yunho and Hongjoong, a long message from Mingi and San sending you gifs to see if you would reply. There was nothing from Wooyoung, but for some reason, you didn’t feel angry. 

Nor were you sad. 

It was as if, it does not matter to you anymore. 

They do not matter to you anymore.

You: Hey Seonghwa oppa, sorry that I was busy. 

Hwa Oppa: It’s alright. Could we call? Talk? Or would you prefer texting?

You: Sure.

Seonghwa cleared his throat as he tapped the dial button. A few rings later, you picked up. He licked his lips dryly. “Y/nnie?” 

“Hey.” Your voice seemed lighter compared to his. Seonghwa gripped his phone tightly. “How are you?”

“Funny you asked about that, Seonghwa oppa.” Your voice was no longer the affectionate one Seonghwa was used to. In fact, it was one you used to speak with acquaintances. “It does not matter to you, does it?”

“I’m sorry-” “On behalf of Jongho? It’s clear to me that he had that thought in him long ago, Seonghwa. Throughout highschool, I’ve been called a whore for hanging out with you guys. Seems like I am really one to you, huh?”

Seonghwa couldn’t speak. Silence hung between the both of you, until he broke it in a small voice. 

“I never thought of you that way, I swear, Y/n.”

“And I don’t think I can face any of you after this, Seonghwa.” 

“But you have to listen to me, Lee Minho and his friends are-” “And why does it matter to you, Seonghwa? That is my problem now. Don’t you hate it when I complain to you about my worries? Didn’t you think it was annoying?” You shot back, your voice turning agitated. “So stop pretending you’re caring, Seonghwa.”

Seonghwa wants to cry. He didn’t mean to say what he did, he blames it on the alcohol he had. He did feel annoyed when you were complaining to him and all, but he never saw you as a whore nor a slut.

“And the others too. I won’t reply to them, tell Hongjoong not to bother me at work if he doesn’t want me to quit.” 

The line went silent. 

Outside the door, Wooyoung lowered his head. A smirk crawled to his lips as he tiptoed away back to his room. Once the door closed behind him, he fished out his phone, hands on his lips to muffle his laughter. 

On the screen, another Wooyoung was banging on the white walls, screaming for help. Wooyoung watched him for a while, before switching his phone off. His eyes flashed red, as he spoke to no one in particular. 

“Stage one, completed.”

➳ pernament taglist: @sousydive @yeodeulz @oddracha @jaerisdiction @yukichan67 @evidive @onysmamas

spoiler alert: start of a new strayteez universe?

#ateez ot8 #stray kids #ateez x reader #stray kids x reader #☁️by k #ateez #ateez imagine #stray kids ot8 #newworldnet

[emotionalsupportemoboys]

Thank you for all the love on part one! I wrote this a while ago and never got around to posting it. Not as long, but I may continue it eventually. Enjoy!

Lie to Me [Part 1]

🔞 MINORS DO NOT INTERACT 🔞

Summary: Pregnancy angst, smut, & fluff

You lean back against Dabi and rest your hands on top of his. You can feel his heartbreak, like a tangible, living thing taking up space between the two of you, sucking all of the air out of the room.

You knew that he wanted to stay with you, to watch your child grow and to have a chance at being a better father than Enji could have ever been. You’d already spent countless hours imagining him with a little red headed boy or white haired girl on his hip, but in those fantasies, his scars were always gone, along with the anger and resentment that he’d been carrying around for years.

“I don’t wanna discipline you tonight, Doll,” he murmurs, distracting you from your thoughts as he nuzzles his face into the crook of your neck. “I just wanna fuck ya hard enough to make up for an entire lifetime.”

Romance had never been his first language, but that was, by far, one of the most profoundly romantic things he’d ever said to you.

You swallow thickly while reaching back to tangle your hand in his hair.

“Yeah.” You say quietly, “Sounds good to me.”

“If I could...” He murmurs, sounding thoughtful as he presses a few open mouthed kisses along your throat, “I’d burn myself into your body so that you’ll never forget me.”

You smile ruefully while turning your head to kiss his temple, “As if I could ever forget you, Touya.”

He pauses and you can feel his chest rise and fall as he takes a deep breath.

“But maybe it would be better if you did,” he says while lacing his fingers through your own, “So that this kid never finds out who their father is.”

Your heart aches for him.

“I’ve already decided that this baby will know everything about you that is safe for them to know.” You say firmly, “No names, no gritty details, but they will at least understand what their father was fighting for.”

He scoffs and you can practically hear him roll his eyes, “Don’t make me out to be some kind of hero.”

You’re prepared to argue with him when he suddenly bites down on your neck, prompting you to shift your hips.

“Easy, baby,” he drawls as he slides his hand between your legs, easily pushing your panties aside in order to caress your already saturated cunt. “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

You hum in response.

“And your body is different now,” he says while slipping his free hand beneath your shirt to squeeze one of your swollen breasts, “More sensitive.”

You can feel him smiling against your throat as you gasp and arch your back. He was right, you’d undergone quite a few physical changes since you’d last seen him, yet he still seemed to crave you like a dying man thirsting for water.

He slides two fingers into your heat and starts pumping them in and out, using his knuckles to massage your inner walls in a way that makes you keen his name.

“That’s it, gorgeous,” he purrs while nuzzling his nose against your cheek, “Just like that.”

You can already feel his hard-on rubbing against your back and you innocently adjust your weight on the mattress in order to grind against him.

“Doll,” he snarls a warning while hiding his face in your hair.

“It’s been awhile for you, too, I see,” you say smugly.

He grunts, “Yeah, well, jerkin’ off in the shower to the thought of the last time we fucked doesn’t quite do ya justice. Now tell me where it is.”

“Huh?” Perplexed, you crane your neck to look at him, “Where what is?”

“The toy that you’ve been using.” He chuckles, “You can’t expect me to believe that someone with your libido hasn’t been touching herself every night.”

Embarrassment colors your cheeks as you eye the nightstand beside the bed. “It’s in the top drawer,” you admit quietly.

He leans around you in order to retrieve the toy with his free hand. Meanwhile, you hiss through clenched teeth as he purposefully curls his fingers into your g-spot.

“This pathetic-looking thing?” He snarks as he palms the small vibrator that had been keeping you sane all these months.

He turns it on and laughs, “Really?”

You crane your neck to glare at him, “It might not be a horse cock with piercings, but it still gets the job done!”

His blue eyes gleam with amusement in the dim lighting and when he speaks again, his voice is thick with lust, “I can tell how much your pussy has missed my horse cock because it keeps clamping down so fucking hard on my god damn fingers.”

The sudden vibration against your clit catches you by surprise and you struggle to bite back a moan as you squirm in his arms.

“Good girl,” he purrs, easily whittling away at your composure.

“Fuck, Touya...” You whine.

“Soon, baby. Soon.”

The next morning, when you wake to find him gone, you check to see if he’d fixed the lock on the window.

He had.

#lie to me #my writing #dabi x you #dabi x pregnant reader #touya x pregnant reader #mha x pregnant reader #mha smut #bnha smut #dabi smut #todoroki touya #touya smut #touya todoroki #dabi #dabi x reader #touya todoroki x you #touya angst #touya todoroki x reader #touya x you #touya todoroki angst #dabi angst #MHA #BNHA #mha angst #dabi fanfiction #touya fanfic #dabi fanfic #dabi x y/n #touya x y/n #mha fanfic #mha fanfiction

[anywherebuthere]

i'll love myself if you touch me like that | c.f.

conrad fisher x fem!reader

"Use me if you just insist that you love the body you refuse to kiss" - based on fuck me (i didn't know how to say) by crawlers

[or the one where you would give him your whole world and all he can give you is sex in the backseat of his car]

WC: 1.9k

A/N: i really wrote 4 fics, participated in some discourse and dipped huh... well, it needs to be said that i have read the books and have been a conrad girl since day 1 and am therefore better than the rest. let me know if you want to be tagged for part 2

Warnings: bad smut, light choking, titty sucking vaginal penetration, theyre doing it in a red jeep wrangler. angst, i hated myself while writing the smut holy. all participating parties are 18 in this.

masterlist | part ii | ao3

In retrospect, you’re not sure what you had expected when Conrad had texted you to go driving at 1:22 am. Perhaps Cousins’ summer heat and the buzzing of the cicadas had finally driven you mad. No amount of teenage delusion could turn a “u up?” text into any notion of romance, but when it came to him, you seemed to have an endless well of good faith in his intentions.

The cliffside view he had driven to was beautiful, with the moon reflecting beams of light off the sea, redirecting into the misty depths of Conrad’s eyes. He was sitting tense, his arm braced against the steering wheel, the cords of his muscles flexed, looking as pissed off as he had all summer. In all the years you had known him, had loved him, he had never been quite like this. 

Sometimes you thought you could see traces of the gentle boy you knew; in the moments after sex, where all that could be heard were the mix of your breaths in the wind, and he would look over at you with that boyish smile, his eyes not quite as hard as usual.

Not that you’d seen much of him this summer, not in any way that really seemed to matter. 

You hadn’t even known he was back in Cousins; for months, there had been little interaction between the two of you and you weren’t desperate enough to count him viewing your Instagram stories as such. There were no more late-night calls or even the occasional text. He was just… gone.

Seeing him at the bonfire had felt like a slap to the face. He had grown out his hair and his glasses were long discarded. It was that night that you felt something more in his gaze, as though he had grown hungry in the months apart.

When he kissed you for the first time, it hadn’t been anything like the naive imaginings of your youth. It wasn’t soft or loving and it didn’t happen after a confession in the rain. It was open-mouthed and dirty, the taste of cheap beer etching the memory.

It had been short-lived for the dramatics of it all, with Belly Conklin interrupting midway. 

She had looked shocked but a little smug, with a look of “I told you so” carved into the creases of her grin. 

Once, a summer or two ago, Belly too had felt a flicker of emotion for the boy. It was hard not to; Conrad had always had this quality, an effortless allure of sorts that drew people in. It was a pull that existed even now, amplified by his new sense of brooding, that made anyone who looked into those reflective eyes want to dive in and drown in their depths.

Of course, now Belly hardly felt much towards the boy, too enthralled by her new girlfriend Taylor to care. But she was your lifelong friend. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

It wasn’t long after that kiss that you started sleeping with Conrad. In the light of day, you rarely saw him, catching only the barest glimpse of him through your shared fence. Yet it only ever took the single meeting of gazes to end up in some closet or empty bedroom with the boy. 

It felt unholy and blasphemous to the fantasies you had held for so long, but you relished in the rare moments of tentativeness. In every aching moment, every scorching touch, you yearned for him to see you. To notice the care and attention you place on your appearance, to trace the lines of your frame with more than just lust.

But now here you were, in his car for the first time since last summer, back when your yearning was something of tender love only felt in inexperience. The air hung heavy and you turned towards him, seeking his eyes, praying for a glimpse of the boy from last summer. If you could discern the boy of summer's past, then the love you felt would be justified. Then all the time you spent making yourself prettier, better, for him, would have been time well spent.

It would make all that you were less pathetic; because at least it would have been worth it.

When he finally turned to face you, there was nothing to be seen. He was an empty cracked shell on the shoreline and you were the foolish girl holding him close, listening for waves anyways.

And as he moved to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear, leaving his hand to rest on the crook of your jaw, you let him pull you into his embrace. 

The softness of his lips was contrasted by the hard urgency in which he kissed you, inhaling in your being as though you were the air he breathed. The hand cupping your jaw travelled down the column of your neck, raising goosebumps in their wake and you gasped against his mouth when you felt him give it a gentle squeeze.

As he swept his tongue against yours, you found yourself clinging to his back, clawing the smooth muscles built from years of football. He tasted like the cigars he smoked, like fire and ash. You were lost to the sensation of Conrad’s hands on your body, too filled with wanting to be embarrassed by the way you were moaning against his lips.

The white sundress you had haphazardly thrown on in the dark was sliding up, the hem skimming your upper thighs as he pulled you across the centre console into his lap. In the dark of the night, as you straddled Conrad Fisher in his red Jeep Wrangler, you caressed the contours of his face, cupping the strong lines of his jaw.

In moments like this, you could almost pretend you didn’t feel like shit being touched in this way; you could fake a level of tender intimacy that did not exist, pretend that you were more than some easy fuck.

“Do you want to move to the back real quick?” he asked, breathless, before moving to kiss the skin above your collarbone.

Almost. 

“Uh- yeah. Sure,” you replied numbly. 

Crawling into the spacious back seats, you could feel the weight of his stare. You barely turned around before his lips were on yours once more, tasting, feeling, consuming you whole. 

This was where you always ended up. No matter which path you took, it always led back to him.

He broke away for the briefest of moments, out of breath and looked into your eyes, before peppering kisses along your jaw. 

His hand shifted away from the small of your back and you felt a tug on the bow keeping your straps up. The delicate triangles of eyelet fabric fell away, revealing your bare breasts and you could’ve sworn you saw his pupils dilate at the sight before he dove in, taking one into his delicate mouth.

Whimpering, you sank into the matte leather seats, clutching his soft curls as he explored the expanse of your chest, openmouthed, gently biting and licking the stiff nipple. Trailing wet kisses down your naval, you shivered at the buzz of his mouth against your bare skin. 

“Is this okay?” he asked. Your sundress was a scrap of fabric gathered around your waist, and he was making sure you were okay with his head between your legs.

Same old Connie.

“Yeah,” you murmured with a smile. “This is more than okay.”

The smile he gave you in return was effervescent. He was effervescent. It was always so easy to remember precisely why you had been stuck on him for so many years; why you continued to cross tightropes to keep his eyes on you.

Grinning into his kiss, you shifted your hips as he peeled away your panties. His shirt was off now, his pale skin glistening in the starlight. The echo of his zipper rang through the car, twirling around notes of heavy breathing. 

He let out a shaky breath as he slid into you easily, groaning at the way you clenched around his thick length. Pulling out a few inches, he leaned in next to you, tickling the curve of your ear with a sigh.

“You’re always so fucking tight for me,” he whispered, thrusting in hard. “Always so pretty.”

Clasping your wrists in one of his hands, he pinned them against the window, which was collecting steam. His other hand coming to grasp your hip, he began to press into you harder, his strokes gaining rhythm. The slapping of skin reverberated throughout the jeep, creating a crude melody. 

He was staring into your eyes, and for the first time that night, it felt like he was truly looking at you. All summer long, a fog had obscured his eyes, but at this moment, there was a clarity in his eyes. He was seeing you.

Shifting your legs to his shoulders, you cried out at the new angle, feeling his cock push deep against your cervix. Your knees shook as you pulsed around him, so close to finishing. 

Bringing his hand down to where you met, you felt him begin to rub your clit, drawing elaborate figure eights around the swollen bud. 

You came then, in his arms as he gave you infinity.

Pulling out quickly, Conrad stroked his length quickly, his cum spread out across your tits.

-

It was 3:05 and the cliffside air was still. In the aftermath of it all, you always found yourself stuck in the limbo between childhood friend and lover. In these moments you were both and neither.

“So- uh, did you want to walk around a bit? Or we could stop by the diner if you’re hungry…” you rambled, sounding all too loud in the quiet night air. 

“Nah, I’m good, I have to be up early to meet Cleveland,” he replied, his voice low and husky. “We should get going anyways.”

You nodded eagerly, trying not to grimace. He wasn’t looking at you. In fact, he was looking everywhere but you. 

The drive home was silent, without any attempt at conversation, as if he wasn’t inside you only 20 minutes before. As though you had not been moaning in each other's mouths, tasting the embers on his tongue.

Rolling into the shared driveway between your neighbouring beach houses, embarrassment dawned on you as the barest rays of sun graced the horizon.

“Is this the only reason you asked me here tonight?” you said, breaking the tense silence. Inside, your heart was crumbling.

Conrad said nothing. 

How did you ever think he saw you? He didn’t see you at age 12 when he had first caught your eye outside of the friendship you shared. He didn’t see you at age 14 when you had gotten your braces out and he hadn’t seen you even at age 16 when he got his first pair of glasses to combat his astigmatism.

“Don't contact me again for stuff like this,” you said, with steel in your voice. Your vision was blurring. “Maybe don’t contact me at all for a while.”

Opening the Jeep door, you stepped out on weak knees, shutting it before the boy who held the shambles of your heart in his hand could call out your name.

When you closed your front door, escaping Conrad’s sight, that was when he allowed himself to cry.

#conrad fisher x reader #conrad fisher x you #conrad fisher x y/n #conrad fisher #the summer i turned pretty #tsitp #the summer i turned pretty imagine #tsitp imagine #conrad fisher smut #conrad fisher x reader smut #smut #angst #conrad fisher angst #conrad fisher x reader angst #conrad fisher fluff #conrad fisher x reader fluff

[hananosami]

Beautiful Boy

synopsis: Gojo Satoru finally proposes to his long-term girlfriend, and his students find out about how prudent his proposal was. As the students bicker with their teacher about how unromantic his proposal was, his girlfriend couldn't help but feel nostalgic upon watching this interaction. This leads her to reminiscence about the times when Gojo was a father figure to their adoptive son, Megumi.

One of the moments that she holds dear to her heart, would be when Dad Gojo sings to Megumi- in an attempt to help him fall asleep.

Reader and Gojo have been in a relationship since high school, and took care of Megumi and his sister together.

word count: 1.5k +

Author's Note: This is a chapter taken out of my fanfic that I wrote, but I essentially wrote it almost like a stand alone piece. Gojo acting like a dad is one of those things that I hold very close and dear to my heart. I really poured my heart out into this one.

"What kind of proposal was that?!" 

Nobara yelled, as she was holding unto your hand and was inspecting the ring quite intently. She'd twist your hand, to see how much the ring would shimmer under the light. If you were being honest, it was probably for the best to never mention that the two of you had actually lost the ring and it took quite a bit of time to look for it. Thankfully Satoru imbued some of his cursed energy into the ring, making it a tidbit easier to look for. 

Maki would then attack his teacher as well, telling him that you deserved better than just some measly proposal. Now, that was out of character for the green haired woman, but she just had so much love for you- so she too, wanted nothing less than for you to receive what you deserved. 

"You better propose to her again, Satoru!"

"Shake!"

"Yeah sensei, for a romantic, you'd think you'd get the hang of this by now.."

Now, even Yuta was also greatly disappointed by his teacher. But Gojo took it all, he'd cling unto Megumi, with fake tears in his eyes. "'Gumiiiii~ Help meee! They're attacking your precious 'dad'!" And you couldn't help but snicker at how the raven haired boy rolled his eyes, "She really did deserve better, you know?" Then Gojo clutched unto his chest, right where his heart would be. "My own son, on their side?!" He'd gasp, as he put a hand on his forehead, acting like he was about to faint. 

You couldn't help but laugh at the situation that was unfolding itself in front of you, they were more mad than you were. But as you watched the interaction between the kids and their sensei, you couldn't help but feel nostalgic at the thought of how these were essentially his kids. Children that he has essentially raised, and fought for in front of the council. One might even argue that Gojo Satoru has been a better father figure to them, than anybody else was.

But Gojo never saw himself as a fatherly figure, nor could he ever imagine himself having his own children. It was something that you've always known, something that the two have talked about when talking about the future. Sure, there would be moments in time that he'd get baby fever and want a kid of his own- but the truth of the matter is, he'd be too worried for their safety if it ever came to fruition.

He could also never see himself actively being there, being thrown into missions that the higher-ups would send him to- with no regard to the days he has taken off from work. But he knew, that if you were ever got pregnant on accident again, he'd take full responsibility. Even if he was never sure of the future, he'd make his priority to always be there for you. 

But you saw him under a different light, you knew that Gojo was always meant to become a father. Despite his upbringing, he was always one step ahead of proving himself to be a better man than his father could've ever been. He's already proved himself to be such a good man, at the ripe age of eighteen, when he took someone in that wasn't even blood-related to him in anyway. Then you'd see it, the way he'd raise the two children and that's how you knew- he'd make an amazing father.

"The monsters gone, he's on the run and your daddy's here.."

You'd hear a soft voice sing from inside of the bedroom, peeking in, you'd see your twenty year old lover sing to the raven haired boy. "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.. Beautiful boy.." You couldn't help but smile, as you watched your snowy haired lover caress the younger boys fluffy hair, noticing that the little boy's eyes were slowly fluttering closed. 

"Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.. Beautiful.. Boy.." He'd whisper in a hum-like sound, as Megumi's entire body rested against Gojo's side. Gojo smiles, as he slowly removes himself off of Megumi's bed. He snuggly tucks the little boy in bed, before-

"Goodnight, 'Gumi.. See you in the morning.."

Gojo never knew that you noticed these little things that he did for the children, maybe because by the time he'd left Megumi's room, you'd act like you just came home from work; acting clueless as if you didn't see how gentle he was with Megumi. You wanted him to figure it out on his own, for him to see that he would make a great father. But despite his high and almighty, egotistic act, you always knew what he thought of himself. That he always had thoughts of never being good enough to have kids of his own, and you knew that it was his deep-rooted fear of becoming like his father.

You always begged to differ, especially when the closed off boy called him 'papa' for the very first time. It was 2011 and you remember that day so vividly, Satoru wasn't even suppose to come- because he had been held back due to a sudden mission he was sent to by the higher-ups. You saw how disappointed Megumi was, especially since he was graduating elementary school and was now entering middle school- but he wasn't surprised. Satoru was an extremely busy man, especially now, since he is rising up in the ranks- and Megumi knew that. So the young boy never bothered him with such trivial things, like his elementary school graduation; he would have many more anyways. 

"Meeeeguuuumiiiiii~!"

Then there it was, the voice of you incredulously handsome lover. "Satoru?!" You'd turn around in surprise, to see the man running to the both of you wearing a black suit and flowers in hand. Turning to Megumi, you'd see the way his eyes widened and the little sparkle that manifested within them. "Did you really think I'd miss your graduation?" He'd ask theoretically, as he scooped the little boy into his arms, nuzzling his cheek against the little boys. 

"If you're here, then what about the mission?" You'd ask, noticing the way women would whisper amongst themselves. But you already knew what they were gossiping amongst themselves, and it would be how such a good-looking young man could already have a child; it wasn't your first time in this rodeo. "Ohhhh! Yeah! I finished it quickly~!" He'd glee, causing for you to furrow your eyebrows. 

"Oh Satoru.." He'd cut you off, knowing well that you were worried about him. "I'm alright sweetheart, besides I'm the strongest! And there's no way I could ever miss such an important occasion." He smiles, reaching a hand up to ruffle your hair softly. But the little boy in his arms was just in complete awe, genuinely surprised he was here. "Papa", the little boy spoke, causing for Satoru to turn his attention his adoptive son- flabbergasted.

"What.. What'd you just-" 

But before he could ask, he was cut off. "Excuse me?" A young beautiful woman spoke, as she stood by your lover's side. "I was just wondering if you were available to get some coffee-.." Causing Megumi to wrap his arms tighter around Satoru's neck, "Mama and papa are taking me out today to go eat in a restaurant." Which now left you stunned, especially at how out of character Megumi was acting. The young boy never acted out, nor has he ever called Satoru 'papa' before. You watched as the young woman's face flushed red in embarrassment, "Oh god! I didn't realize you two were his parents, I thought you were just relatives of his. I'm so sorry!" She spoke in a hurry, before quickly excusing herself out of that situation. 

Satoru turned his attention to the young boy, who was looking at him with that same stoic look. "'Gumi, call me that again.." But instead of hearing 'papa' leave his lips, his face only contorted into a disgusted one. "Come on 'Gumi! One more time!" He'd whine, nuzzling his cheek once more against his adoptive sons. You'd watch the two in amusement, content, as you watched Megumi have that soft and playful smile plastered unto his lips. It made you feel at ease, knowing that Megumi would never refer to Satoru as his father if he never meant it, and you knew it took a lot out of him to do so. 

And that's how you knew, that Gojo Satoru would be an amazing father.

#gojo #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #jjk imagines #jjk gojo #jjk gojo x you #gojo x female reader #jjk x you #jjk gojo satoru #oneshot #y/n #gojo x y/n #gojo x you #gojo satoru #gojou satoru x reader #jujutsu kaisen #dad gojo #father gojo #jjk megumi #fushiguro #megumi gojo

[aubeystawby]

HEARTBREAK AND BLAME imogen heaney x gn!nelson!reader ➤ summary: You like Imogen, and Imogen likes your brother; Nick. ➤ notes: I don't remember when I wrote this but it was quite a while ago, when i wrote this i imagined nick & reader to be twins but its never mentioned so you can imagine whatever!! ➤ warnings: it's full angst, no comfort, unrequited love, reader has low self esteem, jealousy, swearing

Imogen was the kind of girl who people would take one look at, and assume that they had her all figured out. The way she looked, the way she talked, the way she acted, they'd see all that and pat themselves on the back for reducing her down to an obsessive teenage girl. They saw her as an obnoxious girl who would scream for her favourite boyband and giggle disgustingly with her friends about the boy across the room. 

They'd talk about her, those assumptions building the foundations of their opinions on the girl. They'd whisper about 'Imogen Heaney, the girl with an ear-piercing voice that makes you want to punch her in the face'. 'Imogen Heaney, the girl who's fashion sense would make anyone want to throw up because it's so basic'. 

It made you so angry, those people talking shit about her, when they'd never made an effort to get to know her beyond near-fictional rumours and quick glances. It made you angry because you knew Imogen. You knew her as the kind-hearted girl who would look out for your twin brother no matter what, who had a bubbly air to her that made your head light and your heartbeat quicken. You knew Imogen in a way that you were sure no one else did, you saw her beauty, her light, the magic of the girl, that you could tell not even your brother saw. 

That was another rumour, 'Imogen Heaney, the girl so madly in love with Nicholas Nelson', and oh how you wished and wished for it to be just a rumour. You'd stay up at night, listing all the reasons in your head as to why it wasn't true, reasons why she wasn't actually in love with your brother, reasons why she may even be interested in you. Your sleepy head was plagued with the overthinking every moment your body hit the mattress, not a single night went by where you wouldn't analyse every interaction she'd had with you and your brother, in the hopes of finding something that seemed more and more like it wasn't there. 

No matter your doubts, sometimes you'd still convince yourself that what you were looking for was right there. You'd convince yourself that she had fallen for you, that her apparent feelings for Nick were just another empty whisper, a lie made up to cause drama between the two friends, and nothing more.

This false hope never lasted long.

The longest you'd ever gone believing in your fantasy had been a bit less than a day, the illusion breaking as soon as you saw her waiting for Nick at the gates of Truham, a school she didn't even go to, going out of her way just so she could see the more favourable Nelson sibling. Your legs had almost given out, and you could feel a boulder squeeze itself into your tight chest, the sight before you cementing the fact that she did like nick like that, and not you. That night your hopelessness bloomed as it settled in your mind that she'd never look at you like she does Nick, that you'd never be her one.

That was a month ago, and you still weren't handling it any better, if anything it was so much worse. You'd taken to blaming Nick for all of this, your brother with a heart the size of the whole planet, who was literally a golden retriever personified. All things you'd now convinced yourself to hate him for. 

Maybe if you'd been a more kind hearted person, Imogen would have taken a liking to you. But you were a kind hearted person, you really were, but your brother just had to take it that step further, and have a heart of pure fucking gold. If Imogen had never met him, you may have been the nicest person she'd ever met, and she would have fallen for you just like she had him. 

In your eyes, the only way to go about this was with hostility towards your brother. Your temper was a bomb that just kept going off, you'd yell and glare and push past him, anything to knock his inherent joy down a peg, anything to raise yourself above his loving nature. 

He of course noticed your change in behaviour, but didn't know what to do about it. Neither did your mother, who would think about your change with tears in her eyes and her brain running a hundred miles an hour trying to think of what could've caused you to act like this. 

They didn't figure it out, and you didn't stop. Maybe if you were rude enough, cold enough, Nick would change just a bit, be a little less kind to those around him, he'd have a shorter temper, he'd snap at Imogen, and then she'd realise that you were the Nelson she should be with. 

You weren't thinking straight. You loved Nick, he was an amazing brother, you'd both grown up together, facing everything that was thrown at you. And here you were, trying to practically bully him into negativity. 

You didn't know what you were doing. You didn't know how to handle any of this. You didn't know what was going to happen years from now, when Imogen still liked Nick, and you were still nothing to her. Would you continue being the worst sibling ever? Sabotaging those around you? Sabotaging yourself?

You didn't know. 

All you knew was that you really really liked Imogen, and that she really really didn't like you back. 

Beneath all the hurt and anger, the nights spent crying and the days spent blurry and mind-numbing, all you wanted was for Imogen to like you back. All you wanted was to be loved by her.

And it tore you apart from the inside. 

💛 @splitriverghostie

#imogen heaney x reader #heartstopper x reader #imogen heaney imagine #heartstopper imagine #osemanverse x reader #osemanverse imagine #╰─www.my-writing.com─╯

[wondernus]

˗ˋˏ LIVE・ˎˊ˗

synopsis: having just finished composing a song a few hours ago, jihoon starts a live on his phone to sing to those who are feeling a little lonely at night. little does he know, your sleeping figure could be seen in the corner of his little livestream, causing his fans to go crazy.

pairing: ljh x reader

genre: fluff

tags: established relationship, public relationship, idol x non idol

wc: 1.24k

a/n: just a little something short I barely remember drafting at 4am. I haven't written an imagine in months so this was a nice change c: also squeezing a little something out of my braincells before I let my brain melt during the concert in a few days ahhh!!

wondernus' masterlist

“I don’t really do this a lot,” he whispers while leaning forward in his seat to stare into his phone screen he set on his desk, propped loosely between his mechanical keyboard and his miniature sound board. “I usually upload videos, but I wanted to sing to you on live today.”

Thousands of hearts and messages pop up one after another, and Jihoon quickly reads through them as best as he can. Most of them are greetings from fans who are slowly joining his live, and some fans ask him why he’s whispering.

“Why am I whispering? It’s past midnight,” he chuckles. “I’m trying to keep my voice low so I don’t disturb anybody.”

His studio lights are off, and the LED lights color his studio in a lazy purple haze. Fans can see him rolling his seat over to the guitar rack near his work desk and return with an acoustic guitar. He tunes his strings a bit before positioning the capo on the neck of the guitar. He opens his desk drawer to grab a silicone guitar mute to tuck under his strings.

“Are you all getting ready to sleep?" his voice is tender and loving in this interaction. He finger picks a simple but sweet melody as he continues, "I wrote this a few hours ago and just wanted to share it with you tonight. Maybe it’ll bring comfort to those who are feeling a little lonely."

Jihoon was never the type of guy to act so caring in public and private. The most care he would show was to slap you on the back once in a while if you did something right. But him singing his fans to sleep? Him offering comfort in a time of loneliness? These are actions he would never do on his own before you came into his life. Now knowing what it feels like to have someone by his side, to have someone he never plans on letting go, he's become more sympathetic to others. He openly worries and cares for those who need that extra comfort.

“Where’s Yn? Ahh…” he awkwardly scratches his hair and shakes his head so that his hairs fall flat against his head. “Yn’s sleeping right now.”

There are replies about him avoiding the question, but he smiles into his lap while he hugs his guitar closer to his chest.

Despite the fact that your relationship with him has been public for a while, the two of you still choose to keep your relationship to yourselves. As much as his fans want to know more about Jihoon's love life, they respect the privacy of others. However, anybody can notice the positive changes your relationship has on him.

He seems happier - not exactly floating on cloud nine. Jihoon is not the type to do so, but he simply seems happier than he was before. There's a subtle type of warmth he exudes. He's smiling more than usual and pushing Soonyoung off him less in interviews. One time he patted Soonyoung’s hair while Soonyoung was leaning his head on his shoulder. It weirded out the older boy so much that he avoided Jihoon for the rest of the day.

In his studio, there is a tiny framed polaroid of the two of you smiling, cheeks touching and faces squished together, that leans against one of his large Bearbricks standing on his white cubed shelves. One of his minimized tabs on his desktop is a page for a Polaroid film bundle that comes with a mini photo album and a string with tiny clips to hang the photos on the wall. He thinks it would look good on the wall above the couch with tiny fairy lights. He’d probably hang pictures of his studio guests and his pictures of you on the strings once he has time to print them out.

He tells his fans to wait a few seconds while he pulls up the lyrics he finalized after you fell asleep. With nothing in mind but singing the song he wrote with you to his fans, he pulls his keyboard close to him. His phone slowly slides backwards onto his sound board, and his fans see nothing but the ceiling changing colors in slow waves from purple to blue. They hear him click on his mouse a few times before softly gasping when he notices his fallen phone.

He mumbles his apologies while propping his phone against whichever surface he finds. His head turns away from his livestream, checking on something behind him, but he quickly focuses back on his live. The phone is repositioned in a new angle that Jihoon isn’t really bothered to doublecheck as long as he is in the frame. It’s already pretty late, and he doesn’t want to keep his fans up for too long.

The song he sings is very short. With a simple down, down, up, down, down strum pattern, he sings about the feeling of having somebody he loves fall asleep on him. He describes the fear of moving when someone is resting on his shoulder – too afraid to wake them up. He wonders if they’re dreaming about him, if the version of him in their dreams is a better version of the real him. Casting doubts aside, he ends his song on a note about the difference between dream him and real him is that they chose to be with the real him.

There is a small but cheesy smile plastered on his face as he leans forward to look at the comments his fans are leaving. However, his smiling face turns into one of blatant confusion when he notices the chat box moving a lot quicker than usual. He can barely catch the comments as they zoom upwards along the left side of the screen. His mouth drops open and his eyebrows twist in confusion when the only comments he is able to catch are keyboard smashes and people talking about themselves crying. He awkwardly thanks his fans for staying awake and waves them goodnight before ending his livestream.

When he locks his phone, he turns around to look behind him. He sighs in relief when he sees you sleeping soundly on his old couch. He puts his guitar back on the guitar rack and makes his way over to you. He quietly squats in front of you, laughing through his nose when he sees the tiny pool of drool forming where the corner of your lips touch the cushion you’re using as a pillow. He readjusts his large jean jacket you’re using as a blanket and decides to quickly clean up around him before waking you up to go home with him.

Little does he know the two of you are trending on Twitter. There are screenshots and recordings of his live from when he was singing. More importantly, fans are going wild about seeing you sleeping soundly in the corner of his screen. Not only that, they notice his jacket draped over you, and you’re hugging a pair of matching plushies fans have deduced are supposed to represent the both of you. Many have already guessed that there was another person in the studio with Jihoon when he started whispering in his large studio and turned around to check on something. However, many are even happier to find out that the person was you.

A few hours later, Soonyoung posts a screenshot from the live with the caption: “When will it be my turn?”

forever taglist: @jiminismybabymochi, @anissanightyoung, @bat-shark-repellant, @woozarts, @jaycheoluwu, @staysstrays, @soobin-chois, @anothershorthuman, @hoohoohope, @bibinnieposts, @candidupped, @purpleglassesenthusiast, @seokshook

#wondernus imagines #woozi scenarios #jihoon scenarios #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #svt imagines #seventeen fluff #svt fluff #woozi fluff #jihoon fluff #seventeen x reader #woozi x reader #jihoon x reader #woozi imagines #jihoon imagines

[lex-loudestwoman]

Kaylor Swiftgron: Which Muse Inspired Which Songs on Red & 1989

On the precipice of 1989 TV's release and amidst the Kaylorification of 1989 TV's rollout, I thought it'd be a good time to figure out which muses aligned to which songs. I did my research, which includes: lyrical analysis & music video analysis, the timing of when songs were written, which producers and co-writers were credited to each song, social media posts, and where the girls were in real time. Shout out to @sophietv for her incredible work on the Kaylor timelines and evidence, and to @swiftgronmasterpost and @swiftgronmasterpost for their work to outline everything from Achele to Rivergron to Swiftgron. Round of applause to you both!!

Let's get into it!! (and if you want to just see my conclusions for which songs are about which muse, scroooolllll to the bottom)

The Red Muses

2011

Red was written in two phases. First, she worked with her producer from Speak Now & Fearless, Nathan Chapman. They wrote 25 songs together between February and October 2011. She took these songs to Scott Borchetta and he congratulated her on a finished album, but she wanted to experiment with other producers and writers to play with new sounds. So, after October 2011 she started working with a handful of other producers to write more tracks for Red. Here's a breakdown of Red songs by producer.

Nathan Chapman:

State of Grace

Red

All Too Well

I Almost Do

Stay, Stay, Stay

Sad Beautiful Tragic

Starlight

Begin Again

The Moment I Knew

Girl At Home

Martin & Shellback:

I Knew You Were Trouble

22

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Message in a Bottle

Bhasker: Holy Ground

Wilson: Treacherous, Come Back...Be Here

Walker: Everything Has Changed

Lind & Bjorkland: The Very First Night

McKenna: I Bet You Think About Me

The first time we know for sure Dianna and Taylor interacted was on September 4th, 2011 at the Fairfax Flea Market, which implied that the songs Taylor wrote with Chapman weren't about Dianna.

Karlie and Taylor dated (I think) starting in the summer or early fall of 2011. I think they weren't expecting anything super serious, but it was one of those flirtations that starts out strong and feels good with them and all of the sudden you're in love and you barely believe it and feel ridiculous for knowing but you have a feeling this person is for you, maybe forever... It sounds right for Taylor who has admitted how fast & hard she tends to fall for people when she's in love.

Taylor attended the Rodarte Spring/Summer 2012 fashion show during NYFW and sat front row next to Anna Wintour on Tuesday, September 13, 2011. Karlie walked in the show (slay). This was also the day that Taylor spent with a Vogue interviewer for her iconic January 2012 Vogue Cover and Article where she is quoted as saying "I love Karlie Kloss! I want to bake cookies with her!" She said this straight after leaving the Rodarte Fashion Show.

Interestingly, Karlie was quoted in a magazine as having been introduced to Taylor Swift at the Met Gala and they joked about baking cookies together! They both attended the Met Gala in May 2011, just four months before the Rodarte Fashion Show/Vogue Interview day! So it's pretty weird that Taylor would say the exact same thing, unprompted, when she saw a photo of Karlie Kloss at a fashion designer's studio on the exact same day she sat front row for a fashion show Karlie walked in!!

I imagine that Taylor and Karlie fell into something new and beautiful and sweet by accident. The Rodarte Show was on a Tuesday, maybe they met up for coffee the next day on Wednesday, September 14th in NYC? Who's to say!

All that said, I think Begin Again is about Karlie. It was written sometime between February and October 2011, which would've been a really, really fast turnaround for it to be about Dianna. Between the music video and the lyrical connections, it's very Kaylor coded. Starlight also could plausibly be about Karlie because they attended the Met together in 2010 and 2011, and their 2011 dresses were sparkly and tbh Karlie looked hot AF.

But, let's also remember that Taylor is on tour and just got herself out of two on-again-off-again, fairly toxic relationships, and as she said herself in Begin Again that the last 8 months she's been heartbroken and scared to get hurt from love (earliest would've been June 2010-February 2011 and latest would've been February-October 2011). Plus she's not even 22 years old, so she's not necessarily good at being in relationships yet. She's in a messy place, and she falls in love like a ton of bricks.

I think that this delicate, precious new thing with Karlie didn't work out (not for malice or hurting each other, just life) and over the winter they were distant but were still in contact.

2012

On January 17, 2012 we get tweets from BOTH Karlie and Dianna about the *iconic* Vogue article. This makes me think:

1. Karlie is still interested in exploring this new relationship with Taylor

2. Dianna and Taylor have kept in touch and have a lil something something going on, a little curiosity they might want to explore

3. Taylor likes public attention, and she likes feeling wanted, and she's got two hot ass women who want her. Do you blame the girl for being messy!?!

Dianna and Taylor attend the same pre-Oscars party on February 24th, 2012, and this is where I think Swiftgron starts to take off. Dianna is all happy and heart eyes online for the next three weeks until the Speak Now Tour ends. They're spotted together frequently in March and April. The Shirley MacLaine birthday party thing happens April 25th, Dianna's circus birthday party is April 28th, and I would bet anything they started hooking up sometime these first two months. I think Holy Ground was written about Dianna's birthday party, with the note on the door with the joke we made, and that was the first day.

Taylor writes Everything Has Changed and Run on May 15th, 2012, with Ed Sheeran, and records both EHC and The Last Time on May 28th, 2012. Everything Has Changed seems Swiftgron (thanks Gaylor twt for helping me figure out that the freckles are IN Dianna's green eyes bc girl bye I was full of questions). The Last Time is almost certainly about Liz.

But Run is very Kaylor coded! The pale blue eyes, use of darling, the laugh like a child (Begin Again), locket, picture frame...

On May 31st, 2012, Dianna is bearding hard with Henry Joost to distract from her appearance with GLAAD. I have a working hypothesis that Taylor Swift hates beards and is not a fan of having to use them or be with people who have them. I just don't think it works for her with how insanely famous she is, the guys are hyperscrutinized and she's honestly not very good at being a convincing heterosexual woman. I think there's some conflict between Taylor and Dianna because of the beard.

By June 10th, 2012, Taylor has written 22, WANEGBT, and IKYWT. I am inclined to believe that WANEGBT is about Emily or Liz. Same thing with IKYWT. 22 is about her besties and living life and being carefree and embracing all of the beauty and pain of falling in and out of love and everything that is your early 20s.

We get the whole Hyannis Port x Kennedys summer week of pap walks featuring Swiftgron all over the place! But it seems like they probably break up later in July. This was a hot and cold relationship for real.

WANEGBT is released on 8/13 and Dianna tweets at Taylor (like never ever?). On September 29, 2012 Dianna and Naya Rivera are on a cheeky, lil sexy vacation in Paris. Taylor goes to Paris that same weekend to film Begin Again at the Love Lock bridge (Karlie is also in Paris but there's no evidence to show that they saw each other at all).

However, I wouldn't put it past Taylor and Karlie to have seen each other while Swiftgron was cold. Perhaps in September 2012 right around when she filmed Begin Again?

October 17, 2012 Taylor writes This Love in LA according to her diary entries. So I think This Love is about the Swiftgron reconciliation for whatever happened this summer. Things are good for a bit, they go to the Ripple of Hope gala together on December 3rd, 2012. They're pictured together on December 6th, 2012 and Dianna's all cryptic online about her secret love.

Quick Aside: Karlie and Josh have been "officially together" ever since June 2012, but they were first seen together in November 2012 when they both attended the VS Fashion Show. I'm under the impression that these gay celebrities in their early twenties only needed a beard when they were in another relationship they were distracting away from. They didn't need a beard, they could just say they were focused on friends and their career (aka 1989 era). So who was Karlie dating in mid 2012 that needed to be covered up with plausible deniability? This would've been in the works for a bit before they launched it in November 2012.

Also, super interesting that Karlie also met Taylor for the "first time" at the 2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, hmm? Anywayssss.

2013

I think everything Swiftgron blew up on February 14th, 2013 with the 'I Do' episode of Glee where Dianna Agron and Naya Rivera hook up on screen. Taylor made a whole big deal about this episode containing one of her songs and encouraged her fans to watch, but her song wasn't in the show (tweet was later deleted). But picture this: Happy Valentine's Day, watch your girlfriend hook up with the girl she told you not to worry about!! And then learn that they actually did hookup when y'all were on a break, like two weeks before y'all got back together!! Oooh boy!! I'm pretty sure this was what inspired Babe (in the music video Taylor was the mistress, but IRL Taylor was the main character who got cheated on instead of the mistress!!).

Dianna is a mess on Twitter after that and there might have been about two months of back & forth, maybe some breakup sex, but I think Swiftgron died dead by the time the article about them secretly dating dropped on April 16th, 2013.

The Red tour started on March 18th, 2013 and I can't imagine that made things any easier for Swiftgron. Meanwhile... I think Karlie and Taylor re-reconnected in this time period.

The 1989 Muses

2013

Taylor wrote 1989 while on tour for Red (except for This Love, according to the diary entry it was written on 10/17/2012). I think the breakup songs are about Dianna and the love songs (excluding This Love) are allllll Karlie.

If Taylor and Karlie did reconnect in Fall 2012, then Spring 2013 would be a long six months later...

Taylor and Karlie "meet for the first time" (which we have so much proof that it's not but like, okay, fine) on November 13, 2013 at the Victoria's Secret Fashion show. We know this isn't their first meeting or flirtationship, but it certainly is their first public outing to test what people say about their friendship.

Then, I'd wager Taylor plays "cat & mouse for a month or two or three" until they officially are girlfriends on March 6, 2014. Yay!!!

Songs About Dianna:

Red: Holy Ground, Everything Has Changed, Come Back...Be Here, Better Man, Babe

1989: Clean, Wonderland, All You Had To Do Was Stay, I Wish You Would

Songs About Karlie:

Red: State of Grace, Treacherous, Stay, Stay, Stay, Starlight, Begin Again, Message in a Bottle, Run, The Very First Night

1989: Welcome to New York, Blank Space, Style, OOTW, Wildest Dreams, How You Get the Girl, I Know Places, You Are in Love, New Romantics

#kaylor #swiftgron #1989 #1989 taylor's version #red #red taylor’s version #lgbetty #gaylor #taylor swift #dianna agron #karlie kloss

[tackytigerfic]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you so much for the tag @lettersbyelise. loved reading yours here!

How many works do you have on ao3?

63 under my tacky account and I think 2 under my brasstacks account.

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

On my tacky account: 358,302.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Only HP so far (plus, inexplicably, one Witcher fic even though i wasn't even really into the show let alone in the fandom). I have an idea for a Steve x Eddie fic (stranger things) and an F1 fic (i don't know the fandom or the real life people at all but I am obsessed with the writing of @boxboxlewis and have, fatally, had An Idea for a galex fic as a result. pray for tacky, i can't afford another hyperfixation, the one i have is bad enough). but they will probably never get written, alas. i barely get my drarry stuff done!

4.. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I never check my stats - i don't have them blocked or anything, it just doesn't occur to me. I also think it's a really unhelpful way of judging the merits of a fic. Fandom is supposed to be fun, and a fic can be great in many different ways for many different people, and none of that can accurately be conveyed by how many hearts people leave. That said, I appreciate every reader i get so much - I never ever imagined people would read my fics so each person who does gets a whole lotta love from me. However for the purposes of this ask i did go into my stats section to have a look and here we go, it might be a surprising one as i suspect Modern Love is probably my most recced:

If It Takes All Night: quick oneshot i wrote for Lock Down Fest, forced bonding, quidditch buddies, friends to lovers.

A Lick and a Promise: My first long fic, a case fic involving an auror/unspeakable team who go undercover as Hogwarts professors to solve a crime at the school. oh and they also happen to be fuckbuddies already.

Modern Love: My own favourite, also my longest fic (so far, mwahaha). Muggle world Draco, depressed Harry learns to love himself and falls in love with Draco along the way.

Through the Window, Clear Skies: 1.4k of love story. so fond of this one as it's the first fic i wrote where i felt like i had finally clicked stylistically. it was the start of me learning to write in my own style rather than trying to emulate the fics i loved to read.

And One to Play: Gosh, i actually do not really remember what this is about. auror partners? Harry loves clothes in this one i remember. And it's about weather magic. I was so proud of this one when i wrote it and really learned a lot at the start of my fic writing journey.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Just like Elise, I would love to but I fell massively behind after Modern Love posted and never got my momentum back. I am currently about 3 years behind though i do try to reply whenever i can. i absolutely treasure comments and i really miss interacting with readers. at the moment it's a choice between writing new stuff and replying to comments. i also never ever mind when an author doesn't reply to my comments so i figure people will allow me the same grace.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Some people might say it's Last Offices as that's MCD, but my own choice would be The Quiver of a Heartstring because of the sheer hopelessness of it. Depends on your particular flavour of angst i think.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics are cheerful, I suppose Modern Love as there are two follow up fics so you get to see them happy in both of those, as well as in the epilogue?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not much that anyone tells me about! Someone did feature one of my fics (ironically, the one with most kudos) on some horrible mean-spirited blog about crap mary-sues, which was probably the most out-and-out horrid thing i've come across. i wasn't upset by it, but i did think it was a surprisingly shitty thing to do about anyone's fics! I also had someone leave me very very long comments on one of my fics asking me to explain why I made Harry so mean, and then went on reddit and posted some long posts about the same thing (naming the fics they had a problem with, including mine). bizarre! i have never had out and out hate comments, thankfully. just the usual WELL ACKSHULLY type "concrit" that really just means "i didn't like how you did this, so i'm going to let you know in detail about it". to which i say, off you fuck, buddy, and learn some self-awareness. and brush up on your grasp of fandom etiquette while you're at it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes i do, not necessarily all the time and sometimes it's more M or T rated hints. I read fic for the romance and sex is part of that. and i write what i want to read.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

No i don't, though after chats with my resident F1 expert @sweet-s0rr0w I wondered about writing a racing AU where one of them crashes and ends up in a fiery inferno but walks out of it. only they've come back wrong.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of, i would absolutely hate that though.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

earlier fics yes, but now i ask that people not translate my fics. this is because if i need to delete all my works off AO3 at any point, i would prefer to have them all in one place to scrub them. i know it doesn't work like that but it's just one of those irrational worries i have and it gives me the illusion of control!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! Body Electric with @shealwaysreads which is a Drarry bodyswap. And Dreaming Skies with @sweet-s0rr0w which was the Dron dragon-tamer getting together fic of my dreams. love a collab, what a privilege to get to work with such talented people!

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Drarry absolutely 100% no questions asked. I've never had another ship and never will. my brain just isn't made that way. it's a pain but it is what it is.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

None, i have quite a few WIPs but I feel like I could go back to any of them at some point. I'd never say never on a fic tbh. if i started writing it, i had a reason. some WIPs i have from years back are: quidditch fic where Draco buys the team Harry plays for, Master of Death Harry fic where he is reckless after the war and Draco dies due to trying to keep up with him, and Harry has to go get him back... umm political fic about a corrupt Ministry where Dudley has a magical baby and Harry and Draco take the kiddo (and Dudley!) and go on the run. i probably have more that i've forgotten.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Not being disingenuous but it's harder for me to appreciate my strengths as I tend to be too immersed in my own writing to have any distance. I think maybe, going by what people have said, I am able to capture a mood? And i write love in a loving way.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

From my own perspective, my weaknesses are being too slow (it takes me ages to write anything), inability to focus for long, and not being a good plotter.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Yeah, I think that's fine! i'm not sure what this question refers to tbh 🤔😂 I mean, if it works in the story then it works. I have never done it myself other than in Our Little Life which is a multiverse fic where Harry gets visions of multiple other lives with Draco through space and time. In it they speak Middle English, Latin, Irish... i think that's all?

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter. i actually wrote an angsty Draco x Ron oneshot YEARS ago (it was called Take This Longing and i went by perfidia back then and i can see the link on the wayback machine but the fic itself is lost sadly.. or actually that might be a good thing) but then I never wrote anything at all ever again until i started writing fic in 2019. i have never been in another fandom and i don't think i ever will. i don't know why i've imprinted so hard on these two idiots but here we are. I have also started writing original work in recent years, again not something i ever imagined doing but it's lovely and satisfying in different ways to the way fic writing is! so i feel very lucky tbh.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Probably Modern Love. It is exactly the fic i wanted it to be, and people who read it seem to get what I wanted to give. and you can't say fairer than that.

Tagging @blamebrampton @boxboxlewis @citrusses @epitomereally @maesterchill @mintawasalreadytaken @porcelainheart3 @shealwaysreads @skeptiquewrites @sweet-s0rr0w @teacup-tai if you fancy it! and anyone who wants to play.

#drarry #drarry fic #drarry writer #writer ask game

[blood-teeth]

TMITAWH is 2 years old????!!!!

i cant believe i missed it that sounds so ridiculous to me! in my defense, i was driving for two weeks straight

i don't have anything planned for celebration; i'm so sorry! but i do have some updates!

for those that missed it, tmitawh is now a novel and will no longer be told in an interactive fiction format. this has upset a lot of people. i've lost a lot of followers over this announcement. and i can understand this to some extent, but largely i have to continue to be unapologetic about my choices.

this story is one that has, in every meaning of the phrase, saved my life. writing in this little world has gotten me through some of the darkest times and carried me through to the next day. at some point, IF stopped being a media that was capable of telling the story i wanted to tell.

i'm disheartened by a lot of the anons i've received. some are hateful and unkind. others are upset that they no longer will have the opportunity to pursue Cain or Ezio, and a few mention that they're not interested in reading a lesbian story and will not be reading the book if it ever makes it to publication. i've disregarded the first, but the second cuts the deepest i think.

i have never, ever been shy on this app that i'm a lesbian. i feel as though i've talked endlessly about it. being a lesbian is a huge facet of my identity and being told that, in so many words, a story written for myself, with other queer people in mind, is not for them seems like such a stupid thing to say. like, i didnt write it for you. i wrote it for me. i wrote it for the lesbians who love so violently that they have to hide it away under their clothes, in between their teeth. i wrote it for the lesbians who have been told their love is disgusting, or wrong, or sexy and for a male's pleasure only. i wrote it for the lesbians who are told their love is okay as long as they never show it- as long as they only hold hands at most but never kiss in public. i wrote it for the lesbian who sits in pews and breathes over their hands and wonders if God loves them still.

i'm not sorry to not have written a story catered for you when the whole world is for you. leave me out of your self-absorbed, hateful little orbit.

please know, this blog does not tolerate hatred, bigotry, or harassment in any shape or form. and if you're going to fuck around with me, you sure as hell are going to find out with me.

on a more positive note!

i want to thank you all who have been overwhelmingly positive and supportive of my endeavors!! it means the absolute world to me!! i sometimes hold myself at night and think of all the kind words y'all have sent over these past two years and just sob. never in my life before this could i have imagined sharing my work with people who give a shit and care. it warms me in ways i cannot begin to describe. i love you and i hope you are well as always. my inbox/dms are open ANYTIME if you just want to chat, catch up, rant to me, or tell me about your pet. actually, please tell me about your pet.

Some quick publishing updates:

I'm 20k words out of 90k into draft 2. and i think this is going to be the last draft before i query (?????) i'm really very happy with the muscles and bones of the manuscript. now it's just some meticulous line editing i have to work through.

after this, i'm off to the query trenches. (im scared) if anybody has gone through this process before and has any tips, i'd love to hear them!

here's a little excerpt:

"She grabs hard enough to make sure of her presence, not enough to bruise. Some sick part of the Traveler’s brain says, Yes. Please. More. Press deeper. Press harder. Bruise me. Hurt me. She delights in the heat that blossoms from where the Reverie digs her fingers into skin. Eyes earnest, stubborn disposition to her jaw as the thick muscle there flickers in an implication of anger. “I will find you,” she’s shaping her tongue into a dagger at the Traveler’s throat. “I will find you again, and that is a promise.” The Traveler gasps, tilting her head higher. She blinks and— The Reverie’s mouth is on hers, hot and aching, and the Traveler blinks— Want flavors the Traveler’s tongue, the Reverie’s hands pressed tightly against her collarbone, teeth at her jaw. She blinks and— Is this Before or After?"

i also, stupidly, have officially started a twitter that i want to start working with. i know twitter is dead, but it remains to be very useful for publishing. if you'd like to follow me, im there on @ morganhollow25. i dont know how to use it. im scared to use it. but if you have a twitter maybe follow me there too! i absolutely plan to be on tumblr primarily. i love it here and have grown a tiny home in these webs.

i'll have more updates coming soon regarding FTMTB and other works. thank you all again <3

#long post #long update #update #tmitawh #tell me if there's a way home #this was a lot more lecture-y than i meant it to be #but i dont think i said anything unnecesary #writeblr

[imtryingmybeskar]

Come Home Chapter Fourteen

Joel Miller x F! Reader.

Word count - 4,002.

More spoilers for Ellie’s sixteenth birthday celebration. I always wondered how Joel got that recording of a liftoff, so I wrote it!

Some soft! Joel incoming, but there are storm clouds on the horizon...

Come Home

Chapter Fourteen - Every Sky Is Blue...

The space exhibition you emerge into is small but comprehensive and very interactive, especially since you can now reach out and touch stuff you weren’t supposed to before - the model of a lunar rover, the facsimile of the moon, the reproductions of the rockets. You accidentally knock a couple of these off their perches and they won’t reattach afterward despite your best efforts, so you leave them in disarray and scurry away hurriedly even though there is no one to berate you for your clumsiness except Joel who just laughs at you.

“You ruinin’ Ellie’s present already?” he teases as you walk to the other side of the room.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you reply airily. “Ohhh look, spacesuits!”

The spacesuits decorate the sides of a rounded room, the star of which is a space capsule, overgrown with ivy and vines that have forced their way through the glass ceiling above and twined their way around the object. You run your hand over the riveted metal and a thought suddenly strikes you.

“Yeesh. Imagine being up there when everything happened. Fuck…you’d see…you’d hear everything. The news reports before they stopped. Updates from mission control. The bombs…And then just…nothing. And you’d know that no one was coming. Ever. Christ. Those poor bastards.”

“Now, I was havin’ a real nice day before you said that,” Joel replies, grumpily.

“Sorry,” you apologise, turning to grimace at him. “I’ll shut up. You’re right. Ellie’s going to love this.”

Joel smiles toothily before he reaches to grasp the handle of the capsule on the floor.

“Gimmie a hand with this will ya?”

Between you, you manage to pull the heavy metal door open and the dry, stale, twenty year old air whooshes out from inside as you do.

“Wowww, this is so cool!” you say as you stick your head inside to look at the controls. It seems like there are a thousand buttons and switches spread over several consoles, all just begging to be pressed and fiddled with, as well as a joystick between the two empty seats that the capsule has to offer. “Joel, come look at this!”

“Yeah, just a sec,” he says. His voice is absent minded and far away and you pop your head back out to look at him. He’s staring at the spacesuits, and then his eyes flick back to the capsule.

“What you thinking?” you ask.

“What if…I could make this like a proper mission?” he says, slowly. “Get the helmet, get in the capsule, pretend to take off…But I’d need…I mean they gotta have a copy here somewhere…” He trails off again and you look at him in puzzlement, letting him work it out silently. He tips his head up, looking at the sky that can be seen through the glass dome of the ceiling above and hums thoughtfully.

“I think we got time,” he mutters to himself, then looks at you, a purposeful gleam in his eye. “How would you feel about explorin' a little more? Lookin’ around some of the stuff behind the scenes here?”

He leads you back downstairs to one of the smaller dinosaur exhibits where a set of double doors leads to a long, dark corridor that has precisely zero light, natural or otherwise and as such looks extremely uninviting to your eyes. You take a breath and follow Joel through, sticking very close to him as the combined light of your torches sweeps over the walls and floors. Still no fungus, still no spores, for which you are grateful, but you can feel the insidious blackness begin in your mind. The projector of your nightmares begins to whir as your brain makes connections between what is and what was and you feel only a little shame as you clutch on to Joel’s arm with a shaking hand. He stops immediately.

“You alright?” comes his deep voice from the darkness.

“Yeah, can just we get out of this corridor please?” Your voice is more terse than you had intended, but he seems to understand.

“We’ll step it up,” he promises. He takes your hand in his and holds it tight. A development which you had not been expecting but weren’t inclined to argue against given that it was actively helping in this situation.

The torchlight picks out plesiosaur bones, underwater fossils and information about them lining the walls, and additional small exhibits that you have no intention to stop and look at are displayed underneath. After what feels like twenty minutes of walking you come to another set of double doors, these ones with an ornately carved wooden sign above them proclaiming that you are about to enter The Hall of Minerals, and when you push open the door you give an audible sigh of relief. Tall windows on one side allow the fading light in, and it’s enough for you to be able to command your stomach to unclench. You give Joel’s hand a companionable squeeze before you let him go.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

This place has been modelled to appear more old fashioned than the other parts of the museum that you’ve seen – polished wood panelled walls cocoon the room, towering decorative ionic pillars of crumbling plaster do almost nothing to support the ceiling, and spindly, Victorian looking display cases lie in dusty clustered rows, their treasures gleaming dully within. You pass through slowly, taking in the beauty of the gems, geodes and meteorites. Toward the centre of the room some large pieces of plaster have fallen from the ceiling and glass and jewels both glitter on the ground together, spilling out from the smashed case above. The shine of them catches your eye and you crouch down to take a better look.

“You think it would be bad if I took some of these?” you ask Joel as he comes to see what’s captured your attention.

“Well…I don’t think anyone’s comin’ back for ‘em,” he points out. “What, you want a diamond?”

“Nah, not my thing. But this-“ You pull up a shining pearlescent blue opal, veins of pink and orange and purple fire running through it. “-this is gorgeous.”

“Probably better to have someone appreciatin' ‘em. And its not like you smashed the case.”

“Thank you for supporting my life of thievery, Joel.”

“Long as you ain’t stealin’ my rations, I do not care.”

“So…what are we looking for, anyway?” you ask as you continue to pick through the rocks on the floor, pocketing small bits of lapis lazuli, fire agate and bismuth and feeling distinctly corvid-like at your desire to possess the useless, shiny things.

“A recordin'. Of a rocket launch. I’m gonna give it to her to listen to on her Walkman while we’re in the capsule. I can’t train her to be an astronaut. But I can at least try to help her live it.”

You look up at him, both impressed by the originality of the idea and touched by the sentiment of it. “That’s such a wonderful idea! She’s going to have the best birthday."

“Well, I don’t think she’s had too many she cares to remember. I want this one to be good.”

“She’ll be happy whatever you do,” you smile, resuming your sifting of the stones and glass. “As long as she’s with you. Dinosaurs and going in to space definitely can’t hurt though.”

Once you’ve collected up all of your ill-gotten gains, Joel heads toward the back corner, where you can see a door of the same polished wood, the sign proclaiming that the area is for Staff Only ruining the original intention of having it blend in with the rest of the wall.

Another long corridor lies beyond, this one thankfully with some more windows to light your way. The sky outside is now distinctly angry looking – dark grey clouds totally blotting out the sun, tree branches whipping violently in the wind and tiny patters of rain beginning to drum against the window panes and roof.

“We need to get back to the horses soon,” you mutter to Joel.

He nods his agreement and you each take a side of the corridor, looking at the descriptive plaques on each to determine what lies inside, and listening carefully to check if there are any lurking visitors aside from yourselves. Nothing grabs your attention except the administration office, where you both search through the drawers and come away with pens, notebooks, scissors, twine, a box cutter, and some duct tape. On your last sweep of the room you find a drawer locked at the bottom of one of the desks and manage to pry the cheap wooden front off with brute strength. A cup with a family portrait printed on it, papers and files that were no doubt once important and confidential, some sort of snack that now coated the inside of a Ziploc bag with black goo…and a voice recorder. You take the bag to wash out and reuse and then hand Joel the recorder.

“Ohhh you’re smart,” he smiles, and your heart gives a warm little tremble in your chest at his praise. He reduces the volume and presses the play button whereupon a low, garbled hissing stream of speech begins to emanate from the device, some sort of letter being dictated by the sounds of it. Satisfied that it works, Joel begins to put it in his pocket and then hesitates.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just...well it's kinda stupid but I feel bad about recordin' over this. It's like...it's like erasin' the person."

"Well, they could still be kickin' out there," you reassure him with a shrug. "Besides, it would only have sat in that drawer until it became unusable. Better that we take it and use it for something to make Ellie's day special. And it's definitely more useful than these rocks that are probably going to weigh me down and drown me on the swim back."

He laughs at that, the previous small frown of doubt cleared from his handsome face.

"Well, I ain't helpin' you if you get in trouble. You live by the rock, you die by the rock."

"Joel, that is quite possibly the worst saying I've ever heard. I'm just gonna let myself drown after that!"

"Might catch on," he sniffs prissily, then he smiles and winks and you continue on your search for Ellie's birthday surprise.

The corridor leads to a stairwell and you descend into the depths of the museum, now relying fully on your torches again. Joel doesn’t wait this time and instead seeks your hand immediately, the warm press of his palm against yours a lifeline to the reality in front of you. Still no spores, still no infected, and by this time you’re starting to relax a little. You couldn’t be sure, but if anyone had been left in here, or come here to shelter you’re pretty sure you would have seen evidence of them by now. It helps, the idea that at least you probably won’t be fighting off the dead today, and your brain is able to sharpen into better focus without the distraction of that particular worry. The enclosed space of the corridor and its dry, ancient air is stifling though, and you briefly let go of Joel’s hand to unbutton your top shirt and roll up your sleeves to release some of the warmth that is starting to make itself known in prickles on your hairline.

“This looks like the place,” Joel mutters quietly a few moments later. Your torchlight joins his as the light picks out a nondescript door marked “Archives.”

The door deposits you on to a platform and twisting staircases with beautifully carved wooden bannisters lead down into the cavernous room inside. It’s lit by long, rectangular windows set horizontally high up into the walls and is packed floor to ceiling with…stuff. So much of it that your brain has difficulty processing what’s what initially. In-built wooden bookcases line the walls, more information held within than one person could possibly ever absorb. Small workspaces are interspersed with them, long dead computers showing their permanently blank faces to the room. Rows upon rows of large metal shelves and filing cabinets are spread out below, random labelled objects and heavy looking box files sitting forgotten and dusty upon them while smaller, older wooden catalogue drawers with yellowing identifying labels attached stretch away toward the back of the room. Large, semi-opaque plastic sheeting cover erratic piles and you catch glimpses of what lies beneath - plaster cast bones and cardboard boxes and enormous preserving jars, their innards hidden by the yellowish tinge of the embalming fluid that cocoons them. There’s even an old recording desk with tape reels off to one side, the process of digitisation halted forever.

The sheer scale of information to sort through is overwhelming, but you press on into the darkening room and begin to search separately, the feeble yellowish light from outside now being assisted by your torches. Joel takes the filing cabinets, you start with the older indexes. You find plenty to take your interest, but nothing like what Joel needs and even as you wish you had more time to stop and enjoy this peek into a world you had never known, your mind is itching with the knowledge that you have been at the museum for quite a while, your skin starting to buzz with the desire to move on, the ingrained habit of never staying too long in one spot hard to ignore. You stray briefly to the books, not expecting to find what you need, but with a desire to take some additional reading material while you can. Next to one of the workstations lies a copy of “An Idiot’s Guide To Space”, the page open to a section about quasars. Thinking of Joel’s reaction to being presented with it, you smile and put it into your backpack along with a couple of other tomes that you think Ellie might enjoy.

“I think this is it.”

Joel’s voice is low and excited, and you rush to join him in front of one of the filing cabinets. The CD cases he holds all bear handwritten notes – ‘Audio Gemini ‘65’, ‘Audio Apollo ‘69’, ‘Audio ISS ‘96’ – and he looks gleeful as he begins to shove them into his backpack.

“Hold up.” He’s instantly alert, hand moving automatically toward his gun and you shake your head to calm his fears. “No, it's okay. I just had a thought. We need to make sure all of this doesn’t get wet when we’re swimming back.” You cast about for a solution better than the Ziploc bag and light upon the plastic sheeting, tilting your chin toward it. He grins and you begin the process of extracting them from where they are twined around their contents, coughing as the dust they also contain twirls into the air.

Cargo successfully protected, you make your way back toward the entrance. You’ve never seen Joel quite like this before. His eyes are animated and sparkle with excitement, his gait lighter than usual and he literally has a little bounce in his step. The sight makes your heart hurt in the best way. It’s a glimpse into his life before, of the father that he was. Would have been. Could have been. It’s also very infectious and you find yourself grinning widely at both his glee and the prospect of Ellie's as you bid a final farewell to your Triceratops steed.

There is one final stop – the gift shop. The light is minimal in here too, the large windows having been overgrown with moss and vines that block out most of what light remains of the day, but since you’re not too worried about infected anymore you take your time to see what treasures you can find. It’s a pretty good haul. Several packs of unopened, unspoilt colouring pencils, stationary sets with cartoon dinisaurs decorating them, educational books for children that you intend to donate to the daycare and school, some items of clothing that have endured due to their plastic wrappings, a couple of umbrellas. Then, on to the more frivolous things.

“Hey Joel,” you call him over. “What do you think? I didn’t get Ellie anything for her birthday yet.”

He examines the collection in your hands. A few dinosaur pin badges that you thought would look nice on her bag, some glow in the dark stars to decorate her ceiling and two self-assembly kits - one of the solar system and one of a dinosaur skeleton.

“I’d wait to give them to her until you get back to Jackson, obviously. Wouldn’t be much of a surprise for her to come here otherwise!”

“I think you’re spoilin’ that girl,” he smiles, his tone indulgent.

“Says the man who’s risked life and limb and spent an entire week making sure she would get here without encountering any infected,” you retort, also with a smile.

“We ain’t exactly been overrun,” he chuckles.

“Hey, you didn’t know what was out here when you started this. Could have been far worse.”

“Well, that’s true. She’ll love them. The dinosaur kit’s for you though, right?”

“Dammit, you got me! How did you know?”

“I’m psychic, didn’t you know? I know everything that goes on in that head of yours.”

Though he’s clearly teasing, you still can’t stop the flustered feeling that flutters in your chest at his words, and you try very hard not to allow some of the more explicit daydreams that you’ve had about him float to the surface of your mind.

“It’s a Triceratops,” he clarifies, and you hope you’ve gotten away with your embarrassment once again.

As you exit the museum, you're perturbed to see that the sky is looking steadily more menacing. The grey clouds above are heavy and brooding, and you resign yourself to the possibility of staying in the tent all night. Though was it really resigning yourself if you were looking forward to it? To talking to Joel, listening to him strum softly on his guitar, to falling asleep next to him under the soothing hiss of the rain pattering on your tent?

“Urgh, my boots were so nearly dryyyy,” you whinge as you step back into the pool of water. “If you come across any next time you’re on a run, please get them for me. These are never going to recover!”

“Get in line,” he calls back as he swims ahead. “I’ll be lookin’ for my own!”

You make it about halfway back before the heavens open. Fat droplets splash into the water around you and even though you’re half submerged and wet from the neck down already, somehow the rain makes you feel even more soaked through. God only knew how you were going to dry off-

A wave of water suddenly tips over your head and you splutter, swiping at your eyes so your vision clears. When it does, you’re met with the sight of Joel grinning at you as if he had just told an amazing joke.

“What the fuck! What was that for?!”

“What? You can’t get much wetter!” he laughs as he gestures to the sky.

You swim closer toward him with exaggerated movements, launching wave after wave of water over him and when you reach him you take him by surprise when you grab on to his broad shoulders and push him down to dunk him under the agitated surface of the once-peaceful stream.

“Neither can you, now,” you cry triumphantly as you swim away from him.

“I’ll get you for that!” you hear him splutter behind you.

“Gotta catch me first, Miller,” you shout back gleefully as you race to shore, the hissing splash of rain surrounding you.

In fact, you reach the shore at the same time and you kick water at each other as you exit the stream, both still trying to get the upper hand in your silly game.

“Hey! Not fair, your legs are bigger than mine,” you protest as a particularly large wave reaches you.

You make a break for the trees and stand under their relative shelter, chuckling softly as you start to try to wring out the bottom of your shirt and barely noticing the droplets of water that slide off the leaves above and trail down the nape of your neck.

“Aw man, I think I might as well just throw these in there and be done with it!” you say as you shake your arms violently, trying in vain to make yourself even a little bit drier. “At least now I don’t need to try to wash in-“

Your words are stolen from you as you look up at Joel. Instead of following your futile efforts to dry off, he’s rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and is now running his hands through his hair to push it back from his face. Time seems to slow as you stare, taking in the way his fingers run smoothly through the mix of slicked back silver and black, veins prominent on the back of his hands, his brow furrowed a little and eyes closed as he concentrates on his task. One stubborn curl won’t stay. It pops forward over his forehead and deposits a droplet of water that runs down the bold curve of his nose to combine with another and another as they join together and run in rivulets over his neck, the hollow of his throat, until they melt into the rest of the moisture on his skin.

The air in your lungs feels trapped. You can’t take a breath in, you don’t even want to because if you do it means the moment will have passed and you will have to tear your eyes away from the divine sight you have been presented with. And it’s already too late, far too late. He must have seen you. You’ve been staring at him for way too long for him not to have noticed.

But no, he hasn’t. Because he’s staring at you too, and it's as if time has now simply ceased to be altogether. A shiver passes through you at the look in his eyes. The most tender hunger you’ve ever seen lies within those dark and fathomless depths. They linger on your lips, they rove slowly downward, and suddenly you realise that you forgot to do your shirt up before swimming back. Your chest moves more rapidly at the revelation, and he allows his eyes to rake down your body before he too seems to remember himself. He drags his eyes back to your face and there is a thickening in the air that has nothing to do with the storm clouds.

He steps forward confidently, once, twice, and you do not step back. His hand comes up, steady as anything. This close he’s still so calm, but you feel like you’re trembling so hard that you’re practically vibrating. The pad of his finger is calloused under your jaw as he tilts your chin and you go with it willingly. He cradles your jaw in one large hand as his thumb softly traces a water droplet from your lower lip, dragging it slightly with the movement, and you can’t take your eyes from the endless abyss of his as he bends to you, as he moves himself impossibly near. His lips are so close to yours that you can feel the warmth of his breath brush against you and now you can’t take your eyes off of that perfect mouth, can almost taste the sweetness of him-

BOOM

He leaps backward, the thunder startling you apart and you’re so dizzied by what has happened and what has not happened that you can’t even translate the words that are now falling from those beautiful lips.

“Shit! The horses!”

Your brain finally catches up with your ears and your eyes grow wide. Shit. The horses.

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#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #joel tlou x reader #joel tlou x you #joel tlou x f!reader #joel tlou x female reader #joel tlou fanfic #joel miller fanfic #joel tlou fanfiction #joel miller fanfiction #tlou fanfic #tlou fanfiction

[nav-ix]

Queerness and Hierarchies of Power in The Locked Tomb

I wrote this essay for my sci-fi class and a few people expressed interest in reading it, so I’m posting it! Bear in mind the initial audience I wrote it for isn’t familiar with the series (I cut out some of the straight-up summarizing because if you’re here I’m assuming you’ve read the books, but if the tone seems weird or like its explaining things that are obvious, that’s why). I do use the term “queer” throughout the essay as an umbrella term for LGBTQ experiences, as well as to refer more broadly to non-normative interactions with gender/ gender-like hierarchies. Also, this has spoilers for Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth AND for the first chapter of Nona the Ninth, so watch out for that. Essay below the cut :)

     Though there has been an increase in LGBTQ representation in popular sci-fi and fantasy, representation that ends at same-sex attraction fails to actually explore queerness as an experience or identity, or, most importantly, as a lens through which to see the world. Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series, however, is impossible to read without exploring that lens, and as such it is able to explore queerness on more than one level. I intend to analyze those explorations through the lens of queer theory and apply that analysis to how we imagine normative power hierarchies as a whole.

     The queerness of the series is overt and unmistakable by the beginning of the first book. The protagonist, Gideon, is a butch lesbian. This is a characterization that makes this series distinct from many others of the genre;  LGBTQ representation often takes the form of attraction and relationships between characters of the same gender, but does little to explore other nuances of queer identity and experience. From the beginning of Gideon the Ninth, however, Gideon’s queerness is clear by her personality alone, outside of any relationship. She is gender-nonconforming both as a woman and as a cavalier; she is muscular, her narration is blunt and often crass, she resents the elaborate sacramental face paint that she is required to wear, and her attraction to women is shameless and unmistakable. Swordsmanship is what she excels at, but rather than the delicate rapiers that cavaliers traditionally use, she prefers to fight with a huge two-handed sword. Even outside of Gideon, there is an overt queerness to the setting and many of its characters. Of the first book’s ten central female characters, at least six are attracted to other women in some capacity. Not only this, but their attraction to one another is framed as normal and assumed; there is no circumstance where anyone needs to come out.

      In this setting, traditional and patriarchal gender roles take less precedence in the power dynamics between the characters. But that does not mean that other parallel or allegorical hierarchies are absent. Though the series has checked more than enough boxes for queer representation, it continues to explore queerness by a broader definition, by establishing new normative hierarchies of gender and power and exploring the ways in which they are subverted. In the absence of traditional patriarchal heterosexuality, the characters in the book exist within the dynamic of necromancer and cavalier. Initially, we will explore how Gideon and her necromancer exist within this dynamic, and the degree to which her treatment of the dynamic is non-normative.

      Gideon was not trained as a cavalier, but when there is no one else to fill the role, she has to hastily learn those traditions and behaviors. Already, she is in the position that many queer people find themselves in—she must learn to successfully imitate conformity to a role she doesn’t identify with. In order to do this, she must learn to fight with the delicate rapier, as opposed to her heavy, military-grade two-hander. She has to learn to apply daily the sacramental face paint of the Ninth House, which it is made clear that she hates wearing. She pretends to have taken a vow of silence, as her crass jokes and mannerisms would make the ruse immediately obvious. All of this she does at the command of her necromancer, Harrowhark, who is the heir of the Ninth House, who conforms fully and perfectly to the standards of a necromancer, and whom Gideon hates. When Gideon does conform to these standards, she performs exaggerated caricatures of devotion to Harrowhark in ways that highlight her nonconformity, such as saying things like “I am your creature, gloom mistress, I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady…I am your sworn sword, night boss.” (GtN 151). She pairs exaggerated, ironic declarations of loyalty with nicknames that make fun of Harrowhark’s necromantic pretentiousness. This reaction is a familiar one—for many people forced to embody gender roles that they don’t identify with, irony is the most comfortable solution.

      No power hierarchy, least of all a patriarchal hierarchy, is simple. Hierarchies that deal with both power and identity are at risk of being oversimplified into a win-or-lose model, but I think that that is a misrepresentation. To imagine patriarchy as a game in which men oppress women for their own gain assumes that men are the winners in the dynamic. In reality, I would argue that there is no winner. I think the most helpful way to imagine patriarchy is as a hierarchy, but not one with men at the top. In fact, I would argue that no one is at the top, except for, perhaps, patriarchy itself. In a patriarchal model, women are trapped as the objects of desire; their bodies exist to be exploited and consumed. The objective ideal of patriarchal femininity is characterized by smallness, by the ways in which women are available recipients of power or sexual desire. Men, however, are trapped too. They are trapped as the desirers, divorced from emotion and intimacy, except in those instances where they are desiring women or engaging in violence with other men. The objective ideal of patriarchal masculinity is characterized by the ways in which men exert physical and sexual power over both women and other men, with varying degrees of associated violence. Both men and women are rewarded for the ways in which they conform to these ideals and punished for the ways in which they fail. Critically, however, those objective ideals cannot be reached. Judith Butler, in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, describes gender as “a performance with clearly punitive consequences…” explaining that “those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished.” Butler continues, arguing that “there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact…” (Butler 552). There is no way to successfully embody normative masculinity in ways that will not cause oneself harm, just as there is no way to successfully embody normative femininity, because both of these standards exist somewhat divorced from the complexities of real personhood. Though queerness, by nature, defies definition, I am defining it in part as the instances in which people fail to conform to these hierarchies, and how, in doing so, they construct and embody non-normative models of gender.

     In the power dynamic between necromancer and cavalier, even the most normative, conforming participants find themselves punished by the ways in which they have failed to conform perfectly, often by the inevitable incompatibility of that perfection/ideal and their personhood. The hatred between Harrowhark and Gideon is mutual and codependent, and is perhaps one of the only ways in which Harrowhark fails to conform to her role. This power dynamic continues to function as an allegory for patriarchy, in which Harrowhark benefits from the power she holds over Gideon, but nevertheless is both trapped and harmed by her role in it. Because Harrowhark’s existence as a necromancer depends on her exploiting people like Gideon, she is consumed by and beholden to the guilt of her position. She resents it, and because she has no one except for Gideon, she has hated her for her entire life. Likewise, men benefit from their position in a patriarchy, but nevertheless are trapped within it, and harmed by the roles they are asked to embody.

     Even the first Lyctors, who worked alongside God since The Great Resurrection, who created the framework and thus should conform to it perfectly, are hurt endlessly by it. The first Lyctors are characterized as bitter and hateful in general and toward one another. Though many of the details of their history and origins are vague, we know that the love they had for their cavaliers has taken the form of ten-thousand-year-old grief, even as their necromantic power continues to feed on those souls. One of the Lyctors says, referring to another, “I never saw her cry except once…the day after…When she became a Lyctor. I said There was no alternative. She said…We had the choice to stop.” (HtN 121).

     How else are these dynamics complicated in the other houses, and within Lyctorhood? We see several examples throughout both Gideon the Ninth and its sequel, Harrow the Ninth, but some stand out more than others. Putting Gideon and Harrowhark’s Lyctorhood aside (for they do, tragically, achieve it), there are several other characters that stand out and complicate our understanding of the dynamic. The characters that most clearly subvert the dynamic of necromancer and cavalier are the pair from the Sixth House: Palamedes and Camilla. Throughout the first book, they are depicted much more as equals than many of the other duos. They are lifelong friends, and though there is no romance between them, they are close and familiar in a way that makes Gideon uncomfortable to see, as her own necromancer-cavalier relationship is so fraught. In the first book, the characters face a series of tests which introduce many of the component parts of Lyctorhood. In several of these tests, the necromancer is not yet asked to kill their cavalier but is required to use their body or soul in some way, and the cavalier is required to submit to that process. Palamedes is one of the first necromancers to realize what Lyctorhood will eventually require, and refuses to engage with any test that has the potential to harm Camilla. When she does come to harm, he cares for her wounds. At the end of the first book, he sacrifices himself to save several of the other characters, Camilla among them. In all of these instances, he refuses to conform to a dynamic which would put him in a position to hurt her. Though neither of these characters are explicitly queer in the traditional sense, the way that they subvert the dynamic of Lyctorhood functions as a queer-ing of the normative hierarchy.

     Their dynamic exists in contrast to that of the Third House. Long before it is necessary, the necromancer Ianthe uses the body of her cavalier, Naberius, as fuel for her necromancy. “At one point [Ianthe] beckoned Naberius forward and, in a feat that nearly brought up Gideon’s dinner…ate him: she bit off a hunk of his hair, she chewed off a nail, she brought her incisors down on the heel of his hand. He submitted to all this without noise.” (GtN 188). Ianthe is the only one of the necromancers who willingly and intentionally becomes a lyctor. Her relationship with her cavalier is antagonistic, but both of them know their roles; she treats him almost like an annoying pet—dismissing him, mocking him, nicknaming him “Babs”. This hardly matches the loyalty and devotion we see in the other pairs, but as a result, Ianthe is the perfect candidate for Lyctorhood. She was consuming her cavalier before she was even aware of what Lyctorhood would entail. However, though she is rewarded for conforming to and embodying that hierarchy, she does not escape the harm entirely. She has a twin sister, Coronabeth, who is neither necromancer nor cavalier, but who trained in the ways of a cavalier in the desperate hope that her sister would choose her instead of Naberius. When the others find that Ianthe has killed Naberius, they also find Coronabeth, “eyes swollen from crying,” sobbing and “utterly destroyed.” She tells them, “She took Babs,” seeming in every way as if she is mourning the death of Naberius. But then she continues, “And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken me.” (GtN 394). In the second book, Coronabeth offers her life again to a different necromancer, one who she has loved since childhood. She says, “Save me…bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?” (HtN 551). Again, she is refused because the necromancer in question loves her. Coronabeth is heartbroken by the refusal to take her life because, as someone in the position of a cavalier, the only way she knows how to love someone is through literal self-sacrifice. Ianthe loves her sister more than anything else, but she is divided from her by her refusal to kill her. Even Ianthe, who embodies the power hierarchy perfectly, is harmed by the structure of Lyctorhood and its incompatibility with the complex love she feels for her sister.

The Locked Tomb deals with two notions of queerness: the first is the representation of LGBTQ characters whose identities don’t conform to traditional, patriarchal ideas of gender, and the second is the subversions of the normative power hierarchies that are unique to the story’s setting. These two levels of exploration don’t occur completely separately, however. In fact, as the story develops, we begin to see the interaction between these two kinds of queerness literally embodied in certain characters. In the third book of the series, Nona the Ninth (I will reference only the first chapter, as the full text has yet to be released), there are at least two characters whose Lyctorhood has been performed incorrectly in some way. Palamedes, the Sixth House necromancer who sacrificed himself in the first book, used necromancy to prevent his soul from truly dying. When we encounter him again in Nona the Ninth, his soul is living in his cavalier’s body, alongside Camilla’s own. Again, in normal Lyctorhood, the cavalier’s body is killed, and their soul is consumed by the necromancer, effectively killing the cavalier outright. But in the instance of the Sixth House pair, it was the necromancer’s body that died, and both their souls live in the cavalier’s body, neither consumed by the other. In every way, this pair subverts and outright reverses the standard operation of Lyctorhood. 

     Likewise, there is another Lyctor who failed to completely consume the soul of his cavalier. When the soul of that necromancer was killed, his cavalier’s soul, named Pyrrha, surfaced and now lives in his body. Palamedes lives in the body of his cavalier, who is a woman, and Pyrrha lives in a body that previously belonged to her male necromancer. Pyrrha is very much a woman whose body would be traditionally thought of as male, and Muir doesn’t shy away from describing her as such. In the first chapter of Nona the Ninth, for example, she is described as “wearing pyjama pants and a string vest and no shirt, so the orange glow of the hot plate ring lit up all the scars on her wiry arms.” Later in that same scene, she shaves her face. In the case of Palamedes and especially Pyrrha, their subversion of the Lyctorhood dynamic results in bodies that embody gender in non-normative ways.

(note: that bit was kind of hellish to write, because my audience is unfamiliar with the series and I’m already cutting out so much of the convoluted plot, so I just did my best to leave out the fact that two essential characters have the exact same name lmao. In any case, that is why I did not name G1deon here.) 

     The phrase that repeats throughout the series is “one flesh, one end.” It refers to the bond between a cavalier and a necromancer, and it is the oath they make to each other. As Gideon sees cavaliers and necromancers who care for one another deeply and as equals, it is implied that this phrase refers to the epitome of devotion to one another, a dynamic in which the cavalier and the necromancer are equals. However, as the true process of Lyctorhood is revealed, the phrase’s meaning turns dark, referring instead to a process in which the necromancer’s body and power is both the flesh and the end. However, though Lyctorhood grimly recontextualizes this phrase, it doesn’t change the interactions that Gideon sees between many of the cavaliers and necromancers. At one point, the Fourth House cavalier asks Gideon if she and Harrowhark have been paired for a long time. Before she answers, Gideon sees Palamedes bandaging Camilla’s wounds, and sees the necromancer from the Fourth House braiding his cavalier’s hair, and she “contemplate[s] the sight of the growing braid, and the sight of Palamedes squeezing the noxious contents of a blue dropper into Camilla’s wound… [as] Harrowhark lurked next to them, pointedly not looking at Gideon…[Gideon] still didn’t understand what she was meant to do or think or say: what duty really meant, between a cavalier and a necromancer, between a necromancer and a cavalier.” (GtN 275-6). Though the dynamic between the two is modeled after a relationship built around harm and unequal power, the relationships that occur within that framework do not always emulate that harm or imbalance. This reflects a real phenomenon, in which the ways that we might define gender within a patriarchal framework are disproven by many of the people embodying those identities.

     In some ways, the dynamics of gender do exist as a result of the framework of patriarchy; that the ways by which we define femininity or masculinity revolve around their roles within heterosexuality. As with any categorization of identity, however, there are always people whose performance and engagement with the category defy the bounds of its definition. Likewise, though the normative necromancer-cavalier relationship is epitomized by the self-sacrificial, grief-filled, exploitative model of Lyctorhood, there are versions of that dynamic that defy that definition, that subvert it or refuse the harm that is seemingly inherent to it. The pairs that seem to embody the initial understanding (and not the later, darker meaning) of “one flesh, one end” most strongly are pairs such as Palamedes and Camilla, who would refuse to ascend to Lyctorhood once they know the cost.

     In deconstructing the patriarchal framework that defines femininity and masculinity, I often feel that the question is: what is salvageable here? Is anything? The Locked Tomb series argues, in part, that we are shaped by our broken cultures, and that to accept the rewards of such hierarchies is to inevitably hurt one another. There is a cynical way of looking at it, and that cynicism is characterized in Harrow the Ninth by a letter left by an enemy commander, a character who hates everything that the nine houses stand for. She says, “The only thing our civilization can ever learn from yours is that when our backs are to the wall and our towers are falling all around us and we are watching ourselves burn, we rarely become heroes.” (HtN 403). This commander, however, is characterized almost entirely by her hatred, and though her letter sums up this argument well, I believe that it is only half of what the series is saying. The Locked Tomb says that there are things here that are salvageable; even if we are shaped by our broken cultures, even with our backs against the wall, there are ways to reject that harm without leaving ourselves and our identities behind. It argues that the nature of humanness is that we, as people, will always love one another in ways that fail those hierarchies. Though the hierarchies of identity, gender, and power only ever give us options to love in ways that hurt one another, our personhood is complex in ways that makes queerness and queer love inevitable.

#ta da! there she is #like i said earlier lol we shall see if the events of Nona and Alecto render any of these points moot #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #gtn #htn #ntn #tlt #essay

[acourtofthought]

"Lucien is irrelevant"......is he though?

(Mor and Cassian talking about Lucien ⬆️)

(yazthebookish brought the above to my attention, that it's possible Helion is dealing with discontent in his court over the fact that he has no Heir)

Let's recap that, shall we?

The concern is that the Fae on other continents are possibly looking to expand their territory into the Human Lands so the NC is trying to get them to sign a treaty. A treaty Mor has been unable to get them to sign. A treaty Lucien's father played a large part in putting together though Helion is currently unaware that Lucien is his son meaning his court may be experiencing unrest because he has no spouse or Heir. Lucien who has been to the continent, who played a major role in helping sort out the politics of the Human Lands and who is close friends with two characters who are hinted at eventually ruling over a territory in the human world (a benefit to future Fae / Human relations).

I hadn’t seen them interact, could only imagine what the two of them would be like in the same room together. Both trying to lead the humans who occupied the sliver of land at the southernmost end of Prythian. Left ungoverned for so long. Too long.

Then there are the mentions of Spring being vulnerable due to Tamlin's current state and with Tamlin not getting better, the lands are at risk for being conquered and the NC is down an ally. But Lucien is the one keeping tabs on Spring. Lucien is the one providing reports to the IC. Lucien is the one who last did his duty to the Court in place of Tamlin.

Lucien has also developed a relationship with those who most likely became High Lords in other courts after befriending them during his youth.

Truly, how can anyone say Lucien is irrelevant? He's possibly the most connected character across all the courts, he's a son of Day, a son of Autumn, participated in Springs Rite which ties him to the land, an emissary for the Night Court AND has strong ties to the Human Lands which ties him in to nearly all the outstanding plots (including the Vassa / Koschei storyline), save for the Illyrians / Valkyries. Helion even felt a concerning response to the mask which means Lucien is connected to that too, not to mention the decline of the Pegasus on their homeland where the Prison is located would also be a possible concern for Lucien, as Helion's son.

Side Note:

While Tamlin also has no Heir, there are hints that Elain is going to be tied to Spring, possibly taking over for a period of time.

Her sister’s delicate scent of jasmine and honey lingered in the red-stoned hall like a promise of spring.

But Elain … The Spring Court had been made for someone like her.

SF also has hints of her traveling to the continent and we know she had a fondness for her humanity, two things that also connect her to the things Lucien is connected to.

I wrote a post the other day with a headcannon of an arranged marriage between she and Lucien (which would be Elain's decision as it would be beneficial to the courts, her doing "whatever was needed" and would of course eventually result in them falling in love). An alliance between the Heir to the Day Court throne and a High Lady (?) of Spring and any resulting children would strengthen their courts which would be especially important for Spring considering it shares its borders to the Human Lands.

#elucien #pro lucien vanserra #lucien vanserra #lucien spell cleaver #lucien supremacy #elucien supremacy

[buttercupjosh]

nineteen

(Gif credit to @fivehole)

word count: 5,152

warnings: none

genres: strangers to lovers to ex’s, a bit sad, somewhat happy ending

A/N: To start, I know that Nolan’s not as popular anymore and his future in the NHL is looking a bit bleak but despite that, this story exists. This story is based off of the songs, the Hayley Williams cover of Nineteen by Tegan and Sara, (which is where the title comes from), You All Over Me by Taylor Swift feat Maren Morris and Last Kiss by Taylor Swift (I highly recommend listening to those songs before reading. I’m taking vibes, elements and references from them and putting them in the story and listening will also help with understanding the plot). I’ve wanted to write a fic based off of those songs for a while and my vision for the story works best with Nolan. It’s set in a timeline format by the hockey season. It’s written with a female reader in mind because I’m a female of color but the reader doesn’t specifically have to be a POC or a woman and there’s no dialogue. As always, I’m open to any and all feedback, comments or questions; just put them in my inbox or dm me. Thank you so much in advance for reading, I appreciate it😌

(P.S. I have other stories (linked here) that I have written for other players as well if you want to check it out)

“You were mine, always but now you’re gone. Look what we’ve become, just another sad song of a love gone wrong.” -Pictures by Judah and the Lion feat. Kacey Musgraves

2017-18

Nolan could feel you in his limbs before he ever met you and he could feel you in his life before he ever thought to. How can you feel someone that you don’t even know yet? On the day you met, Nolan felt an unexplained tingle in his body. He was dreading having to go to the DMV but he misplaced his license so on a rare weekday off, he went to get a replacement license. Nolan really needed his license; he legally couldn’t drive without it. He could only imagine the chaos that would ensue if the recently 2nd overall NHL draft pick was pulled over and caught driving without his license so he couldn’t put off getting it done. To top it off, Nolan felt this weird tingling sensation in his body so he mentally made a note to talk about it with the team doctor. Travis (TK) kindly dropped Nolan off at the DMV and continued with his other plans for the off day. For you, you had some time after your classes to pop into the DMV to renew your license, which was going to expire soon because your birthday was coming up.

That tingling feeling that Nolan was experiencing went away when you first interacted with each other in that crowded waiting room back in 2018, in the middle of his first season with the Flyers. The softness in your voice asking if the seat next to him was taken directly contrasted with the deepness of Nolan’s voice. It was going to be a long wait so to pass the time, you and Nolan started talking to each other. Nolan usually was against unnecessary small talk and preferred to keep to himself but chatting with you felt different. Throughout these conversations, you learned little details about each other; details that would be held onto throughout the course of your relationship. You learned that Nolan was actually a funny guy behind his intimidating demeanor and he learned that you deeply valued family. The connection that you had made in the hours of waiting felt special to Nolan. You didn’t even know each other for that long and that well but it was almost like you could feel each other in your hearts as you talked. Since Nolan had arrived before you did, his number was called sooner so he left first. Before leaving, he quickly wrote his number down on the back of the waiting room ticket.

Later that same day, you sent Nolan a text to check in on him and that started a long text chain between the two of you. In the beginning of your friendship, Nolan definitely had his walls up but as you got to know more about each other, the walls came down. Nolan enjoyed talking to you because you made him feel like a regular person, not some superstar; the pressure of being a high NHL draft pick disappeared in the chats that you shared. Over time, he became more comfortable and trusting with you, even inviting you to his games and team events and telling his teammates about you. You began falling for each other and your relationship grew from texting buddies to friends to lovers. Your relationship with Nolan was quiet but it worked well that way. There was a slow introduction to the most important people in your lives; you’ll never forget how your father complimented Nolan’s handshake and how that handshake indicated to him that Nolan was a strong man and your mother admired how Nolan treated you so well. Nolan didn’t want outsiders to judge and ridicule his relationship with you so there were no direct social media posts of your presence in each other’s lives –only small snippets of his face or hands in your Instagram story posts, listening to songs that you liked or that reminded him of you on his story posts and location tags of being at the same place– but the right people knew you were together. There were also fun things, like surprise flowers and other gifts at your door, inside jokes, and secret road trips down to the beaches on the Jersey Shore. You were down so bad for Nolan and he could make you melt like ice cream on a hot June day with just one look. Nolan was down badly too; he tried to be all cool and push it aside but as soon as you walked into the room or opened his car door, the heat in his cheeks would rise and it was game over. The first year of your relationship together was so amazing until things changed.

————————————————————

2018-19

Due to your summer internship commitments, you only got to spend 2 weeks in Winnipeg with Nolan before school started back up at the end of August. Nolan was anxious about you coming to his safe space of his hometown; it rained the day you arrived and the smell of rain brought comfort to him. As both a test and a joke, you ran towards your boyfriend in the airport to see how he would respond. Nolan saw you running at him and his first reaction was to open his arms to catch you; having you in his arms meant everything to him.

Nolan isn’t a man of many words but being with you made him want to sing. On your first night in Winnipeg, Nolan took you to a bonfire party to meet some of his friends. At the party, you mixed and mingled with the people who Nolan trusted the most. Nolan even pulled you in for a dance, which surprised you because he knew that you weren’t much of a dancer and also that he would bust out a move in front of so many people. After the party flamed out, you and Nolan drove back to his house and by the time you arrived, it was almost 2 am. Before going inside, Nolan had looked at you with those blue eyes of his that you adored and you could sense that he was nervous; something was up. Nolan took a deep breath and told you that he loved you for the first time in that same deep voice that captivated you when you first met and you repeated it back to him. You always knew in your heart that you loved Nolan but hearing him say it meant so much more.

Summer Nolan was much more laid back and chill than Hockey Season Nolan. During your time in his hometown, Nolan showed you around the place that shaped him into who he was and let you meet the people who impacted him along the way; he even drove you all the way out to Brandon to see his old stomping grounds before he was drafted. It wouldn’t be summer unless he also took you fishing, hunting, and out for a day on the golf course as well. You got along well with Nolan’s family and meshed great with them. By the time you left to return to Philly, Nolan was already looking forward to bringing you back home to Winnipeg for many summers to come.

After you had left, Nolan was doing some summer training and unexpectedly started experiencing some migraines; he had experienced injuries and concussions before but this wasn’t like that. Due to Nolan’s career choice as a hockey player, he had access to the best doctors and specialists in the country so that helped relieve some of the stress that came with having a chronic illness. His migraines came with good and bad days and one of those bad days came as a test when you were together.

The first time you had ever spent the night at Nolan’s place in Philadelphia, he had a random migraine. Thankfully, it wasn’t so bad that he would miss time from playing; Nolan was still trying to navigate his newfound diagnosis but he handled it the best way that he could. At the time, he was living with Kevin (you were taking things slow and hadn’t talked about moving in together yet) so you weren’t originally planning on staying overnight but Nolan really needed you there. You weren’t trained like a doctor or nurse to take care of him but you did everything in your power to make him feel as comfortable as possible and to help to alleviate his pain. The only thing that helped Nolan was laying down in the dark with no light and you cautiously lay beside him in the darkness of his bedroom. Whenever you were sick as a child, one of your parents would come into your room to make sure you were breathing okay on your own and you did the same for Nolan. You watched him as he slept and could feel him breathe. That evening was a bit rough but Nolan was so grateful that you sacrificed your time to be with him during an unexpected, difficult situation. Like anything else in life, there would always be ups and downs but you would always be there to take care of him, no matter what.

————————————————————

2019-20 and 2020-21

Nolan continued to miss time away from the team and he did his best to try to get healthy enough to return to play but it took more time than expected. Patience would end up becoming an important, key virtue throughout your relationship. During this time, you graduated early from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor’s in Public Health and Nolan was super proud of you, beaming with joy from watching his lover achieve such a great accomplishment. You decided to take a year off from school before going back to get your Master’s degree in Epidemiology but then in early 2020, a pandemic hit; suddenly, you were hunkering down in Canada with Nolan and his family, your hope-to-someday-be in-laws. The world that you all knew was changing dramatically. The NHL season paused for a bit and started back up in a bubble-style tournament but due to his extended absence and health concerns, the Flyers and Nolan’s doctors felt like it was best for him to continue his recovery instead of having him come down to play in Toronto and Edmonton. You could sense the hurt from Nolan having to watch his team play in the playoffs without him and you felt that same pain, both sharing the hope for things to get better.

After the Flyers season concluded in late 2020, Nolan’s health had stabilized by then and he felt confident about returning to play so the Flyers gave him a contract for the shortened 2020-21 season. That condensed season was a bit brutal on Nolan since he hadn’t played professionally in over a year and the team wasn’t in the best condition at the time but he tried his best to persevere through it. He had a minor setback when Phillippe Myers accidentally hit him with a puck mid-game but thankfully, Nolan only missed 2 games and finished out the season without another injury. You saw a light in Nolan’s eyes when he played; a light that both shined and dimmed as time would go on.

The Flyers missed the 2021 playoffs and Nolan was so appreciative for the time off to recover but he also felt fearful for what was to come for the future. Nolan wanted to escape the criticism and pressure from being in Philly so during the 2021 off-season, he talked to you about his plans for leaving. He thought your input was super important and you were supportive of whatever he chose to do and were open to moving wherever he ended up.

The trade to Vegas was a bit surprising because there was no solid guarantee of where he was going to play but you were both grateful for the chance that the team took on Nolan and to open to this new chapter. It wasn’t easy leaving everything you knew behind in Philly but there was something exciting waiting for the both of you in the desert. You originally wanted to finish grad school in Philly but took a pause on your studies to move with Nolan to Vegas; this was also going to be the first time you had lived together. Living in Vegas had its expected highs and lows but you both made the best of the new city. You still kept in contact with some of the Flyers WAGs and made new friends with Golden Knights ladies, discovered new things to love about each other and the new place you lived. Yes, there still were some setbacks with Nolan’s health and his play needed some adjusting but it was okay because he was glad to be back on the ice and starting over somewhere new. Things were looking fine for both of you until February 16, 2022.

————————————————————

2021-22

You had a rare weekday off so you trekked down to T-Mobile Arena to go watch Nolan play. That game happened to be against the Colorado Avalanche; conference rivalry games always had some sort of chaos and drama but this time, that drama and chaos hit too close to home. As you sat in the stands, chatting away with the other WAGs, something devastating happened. Early in the first period, Nolan got hit. The hit was brutal to watch and you angrily cursed Nathan MacKinnon’s name for what he did to your man. You had always known that hockey was aggressive and physical but this hit ignited both a rage and sadness within you. During the game, you left to meet with the team doctor to discuss Nolan’s prognosis; it was a head injury so you knew what was coming ahead and you had to drive him home. You always liked when Nolan let you drive his car but this time it was different. The car ride back home was very quiet, the only noise was the sound of the other cars around you and the clicks of the turn signal. Every time you saw Nolan hurting, it made your heart break a little. You loved him so much that seeing him in pain made you feel pain and you wished that you could just erase the pain that Nolan dealt with and make him 100% better.

Nolan eventually did return to play before getting hurt again and playing his last game on March 24. After his final game, there was a shift in Nolan and the light in his eyes disappeared. His migraines continued to be on and off but the time away allowed them to stabilize for a bit. During his hiatus from hockey, Nolan became more distant and less affectionate with you. You tried to let his actions not bother you but it silently hurt you. You knew Nolan was upset with the way how his hockey season ended and you tried to comfort him and distract him from his pain but it wasn’t enough for him; it was terrifying to watch him fade away like that. Nolan was hurting a lot, not only physically but emotionally. He couldn’t quite fully escape the injuries and the lingering pressure of returning to hockey was always there. Everything in his life was centered around hockey; his identity, his goals, and the conversations people had about and with him. It was almost like he resented the sport that he was the most grateful for; hockey was the only thing people seemed to know him for and that was gone. The loss of Nolan’s hockey career would be a very challenging loss that he would grieve over but you were right there by his side to support him during this difficult time.

Throughout his recovery time, Nolan began to get rid of anything and everything that reminded him of the life that he once had but didn’t have anymore. First, it was removing the social media posts. Then, it was unfollowing his old teammates and so-called friends who never checked in on him. Finally, it was hurting you. At the end of the 2022 season, Nolan requested that you have a deep serious talk together. In the back of your mind, you knew that something big was coming; Nolan was already distant with you so maybe he needed some more time and space from you. He dropped the already expected and painful news but it didn’t make it hurt any less. Nolan expressed that you deserved better than him and being around you, unfortunately, reminded him both of his past and of a future life that he couldn’t give to you. You didn’t care about those things and it didn’t matter what he could or couldn’t do because all you wanted was him but Nolan already made up his mind to end the relationship.

You couldn’t believe that he would just give up on what you had but he did. Nolan told you he loved you so frequently but now, the feelings of love were going away. You already knew Nolan was devastated with the way his hockey career and life derailed but you never would have imagined him hurting you because of that. You were already there with him through some of the toughest moments for him and were willing to continue to stay through them; if you didn’t love Nolan as much as you did, you would have left sooner. Naturally, you tried to reason with him but everything was pointing towards the end of your relationship. It frustrated you that Nolan wanted to break up for good instead of just taking time apart from each other; you were willing to give him the time and space he desired and the hope of you possibly come back together lingered around throughout the air. You had Nolan but he ended up burning you; you thought your relationship was so solid and strong, that these setbacks and other things wouldn’t break it down but it shattered everything you built together.

Nolan blamed being young in love and wanting to meet new people as a reason for wanting to separate. Deep down, he wanted to be with someone who didn’t know or had any connection to his hockey days so that he could leave that part of himself behind; Nolan just wanted a blank slate to start over from it all but that came at the expense of the beautiful relationship you spent years in. Breaking up with you was like watching a part of himself die; you and Nolan were always separate individuals but your relationship interconnected you together in such a profound way. Nolan’s honest confession to end the relationship hurt so deeply; you could feel the pain in your chest and Nolan could feel the pain of what he did rattling in his bones. It was almost like that tingling feeling Nolan felt the day when you first met returned back.

This breakup was 100% one of those “it’s not you, it’s me” moments. Nolan felt bad about breaking your heart but he felt like the only way for him to get peace from his past wasn’t to carry things from it into his future. He wanted out because of himself, not because you were a bad person or something you did; Nolan truly did have a catch on his hands being with you but he couldn’t hold on much longer so he let you go. You held out and held on to your relationship with Nolan for so long; you sacrificed so much to be and stay with him but Nolan just didn’t want to continue. At the time, it was hard to understand why he didn’t fight for your relationship harder but maybe it was a sign that Nolan wasn’t the one for you and you were never really meant to be.

At least once every day since the first time it was shared, you would tell each other “I love you.” Now, all you could say to each other was goodbye. You could see in Nolan’s eyes that he was trying his hardest to not cry but he did anyway. For one last time, Nolan held you in his arms in a tender embrace as the both of you lost tears. Normally, a couple that just broke up wouldn’t do this but Nolan tilted your head up towards him and sealed the end of your storied relationship with a final tear-soaked kiss.

Over the course of the next few days, you packed up your respective things and began the separation, silently removing things from your shared space. Throughout your packing, you both found little mementos from your relationship; things like the paper ticket Nolan wrote his number on when he first met you, the gold N necklace Nolan gave you on your first anniversary, the birthday card you gave Nolan when he turned 23 last year, a bottle of your perfume that was Nolan’s favorite. You had also found some of Nolan’s clothes that he had given you over the years you were together. The world that you had known together had turned around and it was a lot to process; you really were beginning to enjoy your new home but now, you both had to return back to your old one. Thankfully, one of your local friends let you stay at her place in the meantime until everything was in place for you to return back to Philadelphia and Nolan stayed at the apartment. You were all his and Nolan was all yours but that was all gone. Leaving you behind wasn’t easy but he did it anyway. It was wild how you moved to Vegas at the start of the 2021-22 season and by the time the season ended in April 2022, the relationship was over.

The 2022 off-season was supposed to be different this time. At the start of the year, you and Nolan had made plans to explore Europe for an off-season couple’s trip but before the start of the summer, that trip never happened. Flights and hotels were refunded; the diamond ring Nolan had planned on proposing to you with on the trip was returned to the jewelry store. Nolan went back to his happy place at home with his family but returning to Winnipeg without you this time did hurt him a bit. As expected with returning back, Nolan had to deal with the whispers and rumors that came from people who had no idea what he was going through.

The only bright side of the otherwise sad off-season was that Nolan’s quality of life improved a lot as his migraines continued to get better with the time off; he eventually found a good regime to help him cope and he was able to do some of the things he loved, like golfing and listening to loud music. While he was home, Nolan cooked up a good plan to fly back to Philadelphia to convince you to take him back but that was all in his head; he hadn’t been to Philly since you both moved to Vegas for the trade and he never did return to play a game there. Nolan couldn’t bring himself to go back to the city that was home at one point but isn’t anymore so he let the plan go and let time pass by.

————————————————————

2022-23

The 2022 off-season turned into Nolan not returning to the NHL at all. The Vegas Golden Knights ended up winning the Stanley Cup in 2023 without him; it hurt the both of you to see Nolan’s old team succeed at achieving one of his goals. Despite the progress made in Nolan’s recovery, playing hockey full-time unfortunately never really made its way back into the picture for him.

Nolan still quietly kept tabs on you, watching you from the sidelines. You finished up your Master’s degree program and he was proud of you again, just like he was when you graduated with your Bachelor’s degree. It had been over a year since you last talked to Nolan. You tried to keep tabs on Nolan but he wasn’t really close with anyone from his old teams anymore and you only saw brief glimpses of him through his Winnipeg friends. You romantically moved on with someone new, someone who fulfilled the “if he wanted to, he would” that Nolan chose not to meet. Nolan moved on too, he met a girl in an online support group for athletes whose careers were derailed by injuries. His new girlfriend met the requirement of no hockey connections and she was great; he deeply loved and cared for her, just like he did for you.

Despite the amount of freedom you had from each other since the break up, you weren’t fully clean and still had pieces of each other left lingering all over you. You would never look at a vehicle with muddy tires the same way –they reminded you of when you and Nolan went to Hawaii for All-Star Break, rented a Jeep, and explored the island–, you would never look at anything related to ham and cheese without thinking of Nolan’s pre-game meal and how you missed going to watch him play, the migraine medication commercials made you think about the treatments that didn’t work and wondered what was helping him now. Nolan was notoriously known for his privacy and for being a lurker so you had no idea if he had truly missed you.

Sometimes, Nolan did miss you but he wasn’t going to let you know that. When the Italian restaurant that you had gone to on your first date closed down, Nolan wanted to talk to you to reminisce on those good times but he didn’t reach out, he couldn’t see orange juice without thinking about how he always kept a bottle in the fridge for you, plaid always reminded him of the flannels you wore in the fall, hearing certain songs on the radio made him wonder if you would like this song. One day, while figuring out what to listen to, Nolan came across the playlist. During your relationship, Nolan made a secret playlist called “y/n-core” and it contained all of the songs you liked and songs that reminded him of you. He listened to it whenever he missed you; when you found out about it, you made a similar playlist for him. Music was something important to both of you so deleting the playlist was hard so you both kept it; Nolan would secretly listen to it whenever he missed you and look back at old photos from when you were together and when you missed him, you would put on one of his old shirts and play it as a coping mechanism.

Looking back at the relationship, some questions began to arise. Were there any warning signs that you missed beforehand that could have indicated that the relationship was doomed? Could you blame Nolan for wanting a change? Could you blame Nolan for not changing his mind and not wanting to reconcile what you had? Could Nolan blame you for moving on when he didn’t want to stay together? Neither of you would have ever thought your relationship would have ended the way it did. It started off like a beautiful love song but it crumbled like a piece of paper when it ended. Neither of you would say that you wasted your time being together because you lived and learned throughout your relationship; you both carried those things into your new relationships. Even though you’re not sure if you’ll ever see or hear from him again, you had hoped that Nolan was doing okay and he had the same hope for you. Over time, you forgave Nolan for what he did and Nolan forgave himself for his actions. You understood why Nolan broke your heart the way that he did; he did it because he loved you so much that he willingly walked away from you so that someone better could come into the picture. Nolan’s capacity for love was enough for you but he saw it differently so you had to fully accept his decision.

Even though you’ve both moved on to new partners, your name and Nolan’s name still lingered on each other’s lips whenever either of you kissed your new lover. Sometimes, you missed the moments when Nolan would randomly interrupt you with a kiss (your new partner wouldn’t attempt such a thing) and Nolan actually missed doing it to you and couldn’t bring himself to continue that with his new girlfriend. Every now and then, the feelings of missing each other would occasionally sink in and you both would miss and think about the other. You both hated missing each other because you both had new lovers, but that didn’t prevent those feelings coming up. Sometimes, you both wished that the other would call but those calls would never come and you had to let each other go. If you somehow did end up back together, it would cause more pain than love; how do you fully trust someone who hurt you so much? You both still carried a little of the love you shared together but things would never go back to being the same. After being out of touch for so long, there was no point in trying to revitalize the relationship you had together or to even try attempting to be friends because you were both on different roads and chapters in life. The last drop of rain from the storm of your relationship dried off the pavement and there were no physical stains left behind.

————————————————————

20xx-xx (Epilogue)

Many years later, when you were chilling with your new partner at your apartment, they accidentally spilled water on their shirt so you gave them one of Nolan’s old practice shirts to wear. Seeing your new lover wear something from your old lover made you short-circuit for a minute. How can someone that you love now look so good in something that belonged to someone you loved before? Your new lover also asked you to marry them underneath a pillow fort while wearing Nolan’s old shirt with your dream ring and the date this occurred was the 19th. On a warm sandy beach somewhere, Nolan proposed to his new girlfriend on the exact same day with the same ring you wanted (his now fiancee’s dream ring). Throughout your relationship with Nolan, the number 19 started appearing more in your life and started holding more importance to you because of him. It was Nolan’s jersey number in Philadelphia (changed to 41 in Vegas), his birthday was on the 19th of September, it was part of the address of the first place you lived together, and it was the age that you fell in love with each other. The number nineteen meant something significant to the both of you and neither of you would ever forget it.

#nolan patrick #nolan patrick x reader #nolan patrick imagine #nolan patrick fic #hockey fic #hockey imagine #hockey writing #my writing #philadephia flyers #vegas golden knights

[crazylittlejester]

TW FOR *MENTIONS* OF S/A

I don’t want to ask stupid questions or anything but is there SA/RP/NCON stuff between ur wars and ur cia? Ik its a popular LU headcannon for wars, and it feels very implied in some of your fics (one of the FH9 spin offs, I think) but I also don’t wanna read too deep into this or say something’s there when it isn’t. If this is a major plot point or smth you can’t answer bcuz if spoilers just don’t reply and I’ll figure it out :p

It’s not a stupid question at all, and the short answer is yes.

The severity of the situation and also like, the circumstances are very different depending on which series it is. For example in FH9 Wars and Cia were actually together as a couple for a bit where in some of the other things I’ve written they do not even know each other and have met like twice. For the most part I try to keep it as more of an implied thing because, with the exception of FH9, the interactions between them are never super relevant to the plot, but it is there, and that’s how I meant it to be read.

I know it’s a bit of a sensitive topic for a lot of people, so even though it’s only been implied and not outright stated, I try to post trigger warnings at the start of the chapters/fics that imply it, and also (unless it’s super plot relevant) I try to write it in a way where if you don’t want to read into that, you can kinda skip over it or imagine they’re talking about something else. I know a good portion of this fandom is on the younger side and because most of my fics are rated T, I feel like if I wrote anything more than just heavily implying what happened I should move the rating up, if that makes sense…?

One thing really important to me is representation in writing, being able to read a book or watch a show and see someone who’s gone through something similar to you and be able to feel seen through that character. Male SA survivors are something I rarely see in media, and without talking too much about my private life, I personally would’ve loved to have seen more characters healing from traumas growing up, I think it would’ve really helped me when I was younger. I tend to write a lot about my own experiences and traumas, it’s really helpful actually- And this is just another thing I’ve kinda thrown unto Wars, although this one has a lot more canon ‘backing’ than a lot of my other headcanons and I know this is a headcanon a lot of other people have as well

The whole canon situation between those two was honestly a bit insane for a nintendo game, like just the wiki thing about her that shows up on google is kinda crazy. Like I’m not sure what the hell nintendo meant their whole dynamic to be but playing the game it made me uncomfortable as hell

So yeah, I have this headcanon too, I’m not sure if I’ll ever write a detailed fic about it, that would be a lot for me mentally I think. The most I’ll ever get into it is probably having him say the words ‘I was assaulted’, but nothing more than that.

Full disclosure I wrote this out in my car twenty minutes before class starts so sorry if parts of this make no sense but TL;DR: Yes in my fics Wars was assaulted, I don’t wanna trigger people because I know that’s a bit of a darker headcanon, I think Male SA survivor rep is important, and yeah I think that summarizes everything 👍

(sorry for spelling errors or oddly autocorrected words i am dyslexic-)

#i hope this is coherent i wrote this in a rush 😭 #linked universe #linkeduniverse #tw sa mention #jes talks #jes ask #lu warriors

[danggirlronpa]

I have been writing for femslash February and oohhh boy do I have Mikan/Komaru on the mind from what I wrote about them. Like, in normal DR canon timeline these two would probably never meet or if they would, wouldn't interact a lot or think of each other much, but if you take in account Another Episodes Bad Ending, suddenly they have the potential to have a wonderful toxic yuri love story. Like... what does Mikan think of this girl who's taken her beloveds place? There's so many ways for it to go, especially depending on how Komaru reacts to the whole thing. Does Mikan take the idea that Komaru could replace Junko to be an insult? Like, how dare you say you could be on her level? Or perhaps even more horrifying is the idea that she'd embrace it! Only calling Komaru "Junko-chan," and getting violently upset whenever it's pointed out she's not. Forcing Komaru to conform to her image of Junko (made more confusing if Komaru is in contact with other people who knew Junko, and those people contradict what Mikan says, leading her to always chase the idea of Junko but never know what it means, torn between contrary images of it). Komaru is in a very volatile and vulnerable state in the bad ending - she just made herself the enemy of the world, so even if she didn't want to become Junko the Second, she's in a position where no one would believe that anymore. She would be treated just as a remnant would be, or perhaps even worse... She has limited people she can count on, because the only people willing to be her allies would be the remnants of despair, Monaka, and Touko/Syo depending on how it all goes down. Plus the adults she "saved", but they would also radicalized her if they could. It's the perfect circumstances to recruit and influence her as a remnant of despair such as Mikan - she could even honestly say she had nothing to do with the entire Towa situation, and if she supported Komaru enough, Komaru could come to depend on her as one of the only people who are willing to ally with her and also didn't have any part to place in her previous suffering. It sounds like a dream come true for Mikan, too! A Junko Enoshima who not only forgive her, but *needs* and *depends* on her like a patient would. There is potential there for a toxic yuri tragedy. Plus, I just would love to see more stuff exploring Another Episodes bad ending and how the remnants would react to it.

For a more wholesome idea, if Komaru is captured along with the remnants post-bad ending and ends up in SDR2 in the NWP with them, Mikan and Komaru could also meet then (or remeet depending of how things went pre-nwp) and fall in love. Of course, I imagine that would also fall apart at chapter 3, so maybe these two are destined to be a tragedy, but still.

Oh my god. The concept of Mikan manipulating Komaru the way Junko manipulated her...incredible. Bad End Komaru really is an underappreciated gift in sheer narrative juiciness, and I LOVE this take on it. Who else loves you as much A the person who comes to you in your time of need? Enough to accept you despite what you've done? Enough to kill for you?

#now the problem and the reason ive put this ask off is how to tag it. #??? thisll have to do for now. #asks #anon #headcanons #mikan tsumiki #komaru naegi #udg #sdr2 #talk to the mod #long post #mikomaru