#again there’s a reason fiction exists and it’s so we can explore dynamics such as this one without anyone being physically harmed 😌↕️

[neo-shitty]

literally mc in the onset of niki’s toxicity:

me when niki mentioned he was taking pills (assuming he was taking them to get better) vs when he mentioned what he was taking them for:

P: Baseball Player!Ni-ki X Fem!Reader

Warnings: Toxic Relationship Dynamics, Possessive Behaviour, Emotional Manipulation, Controlling Behavior, Obsession, Stalking Themes, Gaslighting, Mental Health Struggles, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Injuries, Angst, Ex-Lovers, Jealousy, Begging, Degradory Language (Slut), Speeding, Suggestive Content, Violence, Mentioned Use Of Drugs, Power Imbalance, Post-Breakup Trauma.

Synopsis: You left him, his fame, his fury, the love that felt more like a cage. But obsession doesn’t end with goodbye. And when he finds you again, it’s clear that some ghosts don’t knock. They beg.

A/n: I had another more normal plot idea for this, but in the end i went darker :) reblogs and commentary are appreciated!

now playing: DISCONNECTED by chase atlantic

Back then, the world felt smaller under the bleachers.

Ni-ki's hand always found yours first, calloused from pitching, fingertips cold from the Gatorade bottle he never finished. He’d lace your fingers together like it was second nature, like he’d practiced it just as much as his curveball. His hoodie always smelled faintly of sweat and sunscreen, and you’d rest your head on his shoulder, pretending not to hear the way his breath stuttered when you did.

He used to draw little stars on the back of your hand with a pen cap during downtime. Never hearts — always stars. “For luck,” he’d say. “You’re the reason I throw straight.”

You’d tease him for how dramatic he was, and he’d grin like he couldn’t help it, like adoring you was just muscle memory, the same way he knew the weight of a baseball in his palm without looking.

On game days, he made you promise to wear something red. “It’s not even our team color,” you’d argue, but he swore it helped him focus. Said it reminded him where to look when everything else blurred. The crowd, the pressure, the scouts in the stands. He’d pitch like the world was on fire, and when it was over, he’d find you first, always, and pull you into his chest like you were the only reason it was worth winning at all.

Sometimes he’d take you to the field at night, when no one was around. Just the two of you beneath flickering floodlights, with crickets singing in the grass. He’d throw pitches in silence, and you’d sit cross-legged by the dugout, humming whatever song was stuck in your head.

“I want all of this to mean something,” he said once, without turning around. “Not just the games. You. Me. I don’t want to lose it.”

You told him he wouldn’t.

At the time, you meant it.

You were always the calm before his storm.

When his anxiety got bad, when the scouts sat too close, when the headlines read someone else’s name, when his own doubt was louder than the roar of any crowd you were the only one who could quiet it.

He wouldn’t say it outright, not at first. He’d just pace, bouncing the ball off his palm like his thoughts were moving too fast to grip. You learned to catch him before he spiraled — with soft hands on his jaw, with slow reminders whispered into the hollow of his shoulder. “You’re not nothing,” you’d say, again and again. “You’re built for this.” And every time, he’d melt into your arms like he wanted so badly to believe you.

Before every game, he’d hold the baseball out to you with both hands, like it was fragile — like it needed you, too. “Blow on it,” he’d whisper. “You’re my good luck charm.”

It became a ritual. A superstition more sacred than any warm-up stretch. And when he walked onto that mound, just before he’d square his shoulders and breathe deep, he’d always glance over his shoulder and throw you a flying kiss, two fingers brushing his lips. Like a promise. Like he needed you watching to make the pitch count.

You never missed a game.

And after every win — especially the big ones, the hard-fought ones where the crowd roared and his fingers shook from adrenaline he always brought you home. Not to celebrate with teammates or party with boosters. Just to you.

He’d carry you into his room like you were something soft he didn’t trust the world to hold.

No teasing, no rush — just the quiet strength of his arms beneath your thighs and the steady thump of his heart against your chest. You’d bury your face into the crook of his neck, inhaling the sharp, familiar scent of cologne and the clean trace of whatever soap he used in the locker room. He always smelled like effort. Like adrenaline barely worn off.

The door would shut behind you with a soft click, and it was like the world slipped away.

He’d set you down gently at the edge of his bed and reach for his duffel bag, pulling out the same wrinkled jersey — the one he swore was lucky, the one that still had grass stains on the hem and a small tear near the collar. He never let anyone else touch it. Except you.

He’d undress you slowly, with the kind of care you didn’t know teenage boys could have, fingertips grazing along your spine, lips brushing your shoulder as if he were memorizing the way your body moved under his hands.

Then, he’d pull the jersey over your head — his jersey — letting it fall over your bare skin like it belonged there. The fabric swallowed you whole, oversized and worn thin, sleeves brushing your fingertips, the number on the back stretching across your shoulder blades. It smelled like him. Like game day and summer and something safe.

You were left in nothing else. Just his name on your back like a brand.

He’d press his forehead to yours, hands resting on your hips, fingers curling lightly in the hem.

“You look better in this than I ever did.”

Then he’d lay you down slowly, like if he moved too fast, you’d disappear. Like this — you in his bed, wearing the symbol of everything he chased was what made it all real.

“You’re everything good,” he’d murmur into your skin. “Everything that keeps me from falling apart.”

He kissed you like worship. Like winning wasn’t real until he was wrapped around you, forehead pressed to yours, your laugh muffled in his duvet, heart beating steady beneath his ribs.

Back then, it was easy to believe that love was enough to carry the weight of his fear. That you could anchor him through anything, even the pressure. Even the expectations.

But pressure has a way of changing people.

The turning point was supposed to be a celebration. He’d won a full scholarship — full ride to a top-tier university, scouts already circling, offers slipping into his coach’s inbox like promises wrapped in gold. People were calling him a future pro. A star. A name to remember.

He should have been happy.

And at first, he was. He lifted you off the ground when the letter came in, spinning you in the hallway of your school like he didn’t care who was watching. He kissed you hard, messy, grinning so wide his eyes crinkled at the corners.

But beneath it — even then — something had already begun to shift.

He started checking his phone more. Refreshing notifications, pacing during lunch. His grip on your hand got tighter, more distracted. His smiles didn’t reach as far.

You told him you were proud. Told him he deserved every second of it.

He nodded, kissed your temple, whispered “Couldn’t have done it without you.” But his eyes were already somewhere else.

The first time he lashed out, it wasn’t even angry, it was desperate. You missed one of his practices to study for an exam, and he showed up at your house that night, eyes red-rimmed and quiet. “I didn’t throw right,” he said. “Coach said my arm’s off.”

You apologized. You told him you’d make it to the next one. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scold. He just stared at you like you'd tugged a thread and everything was starting to unravel. “You’re my balance,” he whispered. “If you’re not there, I fall.”

At first, it sounded sweet. Romantic, even. Like something out of a love story. But then the calls started — late at night, between training sessions, before games, after games.

Where are you? Pick up the phone.

At first, it was easy to chalk it up to nerves. He was under pressure. He just needed reassurance. So you answered. Every time.

You’d lay beside him until 1AM, bathed in the soft glow of his lapm or the hum of his breath against your skin. You’d whisper over and over — “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re okay.” And he’d cling to you like a drowning man to driftwood, arms wrapped so tightly around your waist you could barely shift. Sometimes he’d fall asleep like that — fists curled in your shirt, jaw clenched even in dreams. Sometimes he wouldn’t sleep at all, just lie there staring at the ceiling, blinking slow like each thought hurt to hold.

You kept holding them for him. That was love, wasn’t it?

But as the matches stacked up, so did your own life. University deadlines. Club meetings. Family obligations. You missed a game and promised you’d be at the next.

But it didn’t matter. That was the beginning of what he called you drifting.

“You’re different lately,” he’d say, eyes narrowed. “I’m tired,” you’d explain. “But you still find time for other people,” he’d snap.

And then it started — the shift.

He didn’t question you anymore. He questioned everyone else.

It stopped being about him needing you, and started being about him needing you away from anyone else.

“Why are you spending so much time with her? She doesn’t even care about your work.”

“That guy from your class... does he always sit that close?”

“You were laughing with him. Was he flirting?”

He'd show up at your study sessions uninvited. Sit in the back, eyes locked on you the whole time. Silent. Waiting. Watching. Afterward, he’d wrap his arm around your shoulder like a claim and whisper against your ear, too quiet for anyone else to hear: “He looks at you too much.”

You’d brush it off. Laugh nervously. Tell him he was imagining it. But the jokes stopped landing. His smile never reached his eyes anymore.

One afternoon, you were walking down the hall with a group from your project, a guy you'd known since middle school beside you, both of you laughing about something stupid and harmless. And Ni-ki was waiting at the end of the corridor, bat still slung over his shoulder from practice, cap low, shoes tapping against the floor.

He didn’t say anything until you were alone.

“Tell me the truth,” he said quietly, boxing you against your car. “Do you like the way he looks at you?”

You shook your head. You tried to touch his arm. He flinched like it burned.

“You smiled at him more than you smiled at me today.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d measured you in moments. Counted seconds. Tallied attention like he was keeping score in a game he refused to lose.

You let out a shaky laugh, trying to brush it off. “Ni-ki, it wasn’t like that—” You reached for his chest — a soft push, a gentle cue to take a step back, to breathe. But he didn’t move.

Instead, he surged forward.

Your back hit the car with a dull thud, his body pressing too close, his hand slamming flat against the door beside your head. The other gripped your waist — not hard enough to bruise, but tight enough to remind you that he could.

He didn’t yell. That would’ve been easier. It was the quiet that scared you.

“Don’t do that,” he said, low. Controlled. Voice rough around the edges. “Don’t push me away when I’m trying to talk to you.” His cologne wrapped around you, sharp and heavy. Sweat clung to the collar of his shirt, mixing with the earthy tang of dirt and grass. It was the smell of post-practice — of games and victory and everything he used to come home from, laughing, pulling you into his arms. But here, this close, it felt suffocating.

“Ni-ki…” your voice wavered.

His eyes searched yours like he was waiting to find proof of betrayal hidden behind your pupils. “I see how people look at you,” he muttered. “You act like it doesn’t mean anything, but you’re not stupid. You know.”

You flinched as his fingers flexed at your waist, grounding you, caging you.

“You’re mine,” he whispered, almost like a prayer, like if he said it softly enough it would make it true again. “You said you’d be there forever. I’m not asking for anything you didn’t already promise.”

But he wasn’t asking. You felt it in the weight of his body, in the tension humming beneath his skin, in the way he stared at you like you were already slipping away and he was trying to pin you in place.

You swallowed thickly, heart pounding. You didn’t want to be scared of him. But in that moment, you were.

And after that day, it kept going like that.

Little things, at first. His hand finding yours too quickly, his grip a little too tight. His eyes always scanning, watching. Not the crowd, not the field, but you. He started glaring at anyone who looked at you for too long — classmates, teammates, even people you’d known since before him. His jaw would clench, fingers twitching like it took everything in him not to storm over and rip their gaze away from you.

You thought it was just stress. That it would pass. He had so much riding on him — pressure, scouts, press and you were supposed to be his calm. His peace. So you kept brushing it off. You told yourself he didn’t mean it. That he was just afraid of losing you in a world where everything else was up for grabs.

But it got harder to pretend.

He started staring from the court when you were late — not angry, not dramatic, just focused. Eyes locked on you like a storm cloud building behind his expression. No smile. No wave. Just waiting.

And after the final whistle, once the cheers died and the team dispersed, he’d always find you. Pull you into some dark corner of the hallway — near the locker rooms, behind the bleachers, anywhere the light didn’t reach and no one could interrupt.

“You were late,” he’d murmur, too calmly. “Where were you?”

You’d try to smile. Laugh it off. “I had a meeting. I ran across campus.”

He wouldn’t laugh.

“With who?”

You’d blink, confused. “What?”

His body would shift closer, blocking the light from behind you, his hand brushing your hip like a claim. “You were smiling when you came in. Was it with someone?”

And that was the pattern.

Every match. Every win. Every time you showed up just a little behind schedule or talked to someone for too long, he’d corner you after like the game didn’t end until you explained yourself. He’d never yell. He didn’t need to. The silence between you would do all the talking. His stare would press like weight on your chest, daring you to lie. And when you swore there was nothing going on, he’d sigh like the world was testing him, rest his forehead against yours, and whisper “Don’t make me feel crazy. I just love you too much. That’s all this is.”

You’d nod. Every time.

Because fighting him felt impossible. Because you still remembered how soft he used to be. Because you still wanted to believe this was love. Even when it started to feel like a cage.

It wasn’t sudden.

The shift crept in like a storm — slow, quiet, inevitable.

He started getting rougher with you, but never in a way you could explain out loud. Never in a way that would look like what it was. Not at first.

His kisses turned punishing — all teeth and desperation, like he was trying to brand you with his mouth. They came without warning; in stairwells, behind buildings, during parties when someone looked at you too long. His hand would grip your wrist, your jaw, your waist — and then he’d kiss you until your breath was gone, lips swollen, head spinning. You’d be left gasping when he pulled away, a thin thread of saliva clinging between you like proof that you were his.

Sometimes, he’d whisper it, too.

And he meant it. Every word.

“You’re mine.”

“Let them fucking look.”

“They’ll never touch you.”

You wore his jersey constantly, not just to his games, but everywhere. His name stretched bold across your back, a silent warning to everyone else. You stopped asking to wear anything else. He stopped giving you the choice.

Then there was the necklace — thin, heart-shaped, engraved with his initials. He gave it to you on your two-month anniversary with trembling fingers and a soft kiss to your throat. Back then, it felt sweet. Intimate. A promise.

But soon, it became a rule.

You weren’t allowed to take it off. Not even once. He noticed when you didn’t wear it — immediately. “What happened to the necklace? Don’t you want people to know you’re mine?”

And when you wore it — when you obeyed — he made sure everyone else noticed too.

Your throat was always marked up, your collarbone covered in bruises that bloomed in purples and reds. You stopped wearing low-cut shirts. Not because he told you not to but because you didn’t want people seeing what he left behind.

When he walked with you, his hand was always on you, hooked around your shoulder, gripping your waist, thumb stroking your hipbone beneath your shirt like he was staking a claim.

There was no such thing as personal space anymore. No such thing as subtle.

Every touch screamed mine.

You told yourself it was passion. That he just loved you too deeply, too fiercely. That this was what it meant to be adored by someone who couldn’t bear to lose you.

But deep down, when you were alone, when your lips were still tender and your skin ached where he’d held you too tight, you started to wonder if love was supposed to leave fingerprints.

Everyone around you told you that you were lucky.

And you’d laugh. You’d smile. Sometimes you'd even nod, pretending to blush, acting like his devotion made you feel cherished instead of chained. But it was fake. It was all fake.

“He’s so obsessed with you.”

“He never even looks at other girls.”

“You’re his whole world. You can see it in his eyes.”

Because they didn’t see what happened when the game ended and the crowd thinned out. They didn’t see the way he pulled you aside, pressing you into walls and whispering questions with clenched teeth and clenched fists. “Why’d you hug him for that long?”, “Were you trying to make me jealous?”, “You like being watched, don’t you?”

They didn’t see how you flinched when your phone buzzed, because if it wasn’t Ni-ki, it would become about Ni-ki. Didn’t matter if it was your friend, your classmate, your cousin — if it wasn’t him, it was a threat.

And yet, to everyone else, he was perfect. Devoted. The golden boy who always had an arm around you, who walked you to class, who kissed you like he couldn’t stand to be apart for even a second. They didn’t see that the kisses were possessive. That his hand on your waist was a tether, not a gesture. That every “I love you” came with a price.

You smiled through it. Laughed at the right moments. Told yourself it wasn’t that bad. You let them call you lucky. Because if they believed it... maybe you could too.

Because you didn’t feel lucky.

But every time someone said “I wish I had someone like him,”

you felt something in your chest tighten.

You tried to distance yourself.

Gently, at first — like stepping backward without making a sound. You started saying no to late-night calls. Told him you needed more time for school, for yourself. Said you were drowning in assignments. Group projects. Exams.

He didn’t like it, but in the beginning, it worked.

He’d grumble, maybe pout, but he let it go. For a few days, he stopped asking where you were every hour. He’d send quiet texts — “miss you”, “don’t overwork yourself” — and it almost felt normal again. Almost made you believe the worst was behind you.

But distance, to Ni-ki, wasn’t space. It was threat. It was rejection in disguise. And it didn’t take long for the quiet to turn dangerous.

He started showing up unannounced, unexpected. Waiting for you outside your class, even when he had practice. Leaning against the wall like he belonged there, like you owed him your time. You’d come out with a backpack heavy from study sessions and see him — arms crossed, cap pulled low, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Didn’t answer my call,” he’d say, before you could even open your mouth.

“I told you, I was studying,” you’d reply gently, trying to walk past him.

His hand would catch your wrist. Not hard. Not painful. Just enough to stop you. To remind you he was still there.

And after that, the distance didn’t help.

Because now, Ni-ki was everywhere.

He waited outside your classroom door like a shadow you couldn’t outrun. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, pretending to scroll through his phone but his eyes were always on you. Always tracking your every step. If you stopped to talk to someone, he’d look up immediately. Watch. Assess. Wait.

When you excused yourself to the bathroom, he followed.

He wouldn’t come inside, He’d wait just outside the door, standing still in the hallway while others passed by, until you came back out. Then he’d fall into step beside you like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like breathing.

And when you hesitated for a second, he’d tilt his head, lips twitching into that soft, broken smile you used to love. “You don’t want a ride from me?”, “Did I do something wrong again?”

He started driving you to and from school, even when you didn’t ask.

“It’s not safe to walk alone.”, “I’m already going that way.”

Guilt was always his favorite kind of leash.

You wanted a moment to breathe. But Ni-ki didn’t want breathing room. He wanted control. He wanted to own every inhale you took. Every step you made without him. Every word you said that he didn’t hear first. He didn’t just want your love anymore — he wanted your heart. And no matter how many times you told him you were busy, or tired, or just needed time to yourself, he’d show up anyway. Like silence was a challenge. Like space was something he had to fill with his presence, with his voice, with his hands, with him.

He made sure you were at every one of his matches — unless, of course, you had something more important to do, in his opinion. If you said you had classwork or plans with friends, he’d get quiet. Distant. Cold. And then, sometime later, the questions would come.

“So your school comes before me now?”, “Is that guy from your group project more interesting than watching me play?”

You stopped feeling like his girlfriend, and started feeling like his hostage. A pretty thing he carried in his shadow. A girl with his name on her back and his hand on her throat, her smiles running thinner every day.

And still, no one noticed. Because from the outside, you were lucky. From the inside, you were drowning.

You started pulling away in small, careful ways. Texting less. Avoiding being alone with him. Keeping conversations short, cold. It was the only way you could keep yourself together. But Ni-ki noticed. And he didn’t get angry, not at first. That would’ve been easier to handle. Instead, he got hurt. Or at least, he acted like he did.

“You don’t talk to me like you used to,” he murmured one night, standing outside your apartment with his hands shoved into the pockets of his team jacket. “Did I do something? Just tell me. I’ll fix it. I always fix it, don’t I?”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. Not without starting something you weren’t ready to finish.

So he stepped closer, eyes wide and pleading. “Do you not love me anymore?” he asked softly, like a child. “Is that what this is?”

Your stomach twisted.

He knew exactly what strings to pull.

“You said you’d be there,” he added, voice cracking just enough to make your chest ache. “You said we’d get through everything together. I believed you. I still do. But you...” He looked down, jaw trembling. “You barely even look at me anymore.”

You tried to breathe. To stay steady. “I’m tired, Ni-ki. That’s all.”

But he wasn’t listening. He was already unspooling — fast, desperate, drowning in a panic he was trying to dress up as devotion. “I can’t pitch right when we’re like this,” he said, stepping closer. “I can’t sleep. I keep thinking… what if you’re leaving? What if someone else is making you laugh the way I used to?” He grabbed your hand, holding it to his chest like a lifeline. “I need you. Don’t you get that? You’re the only thing keeping me from falling apart.”

You wanted to pull away, but he looked so shattered. So raw. And you hated yourself for the way your heart still ached when he looked at you like you were the only person in the world who could stitch him back together.

He leaned in, forehead brushing yours. His voice dropped to a whisper. “If you go… I don’t know what I’ll do. I really don’t.”

That was the moment you realized he wasn’t asking you to stay. He was guilting you into it.

Love didn’t sound like affection anymore. It sounded like obligation.

And still, you stayed.

Because you didn’t know how to leave something that once felt like everything. Because a part of you still wanted to believe the version of him you met under the bleachers — the boy who kissed you like you were the only thing that could quiet the storm in his chest.

But that boy was gone.

And the man standing in front of you wasn’t afraid of losing you. He was afraid of not owning you anymore.

The moment you knew you had to leave him had been building for weeks — thick, silent, suffocating like smoke before fire.

Ni-ki had just signed a deal with a pro league. It was everything he had ever wanted. The dream he’d bled for, cried for, crushed everything else underfoot to reach. And when he told you, he was glowing. Golden. Lit from the inside like the world had finally opened for him. He’d grabbed your hands, eyes wide with excitement. “We did it,” he’d breathed.

We.

Ironic, because that day, tucked into the back of your bag, was your own dream, an acceptance letter from a global company. It offered you a position most people your age could only dream about. High-level position. Out of the country. Out of reach.

Out of his world.

You wanted to tell him. You really did. But then he’d looked at you with that crooked, hopeful smile, the one he still wore like armor.“I’m so glad you’ll be by my side through all of this. I need you there. You’re my number one. Always.”

And just like that, the words died on your tongue. Because what he meant was: You’ll stay. You’ll follow. You’ll fit your life around mine.

And once upon a time, you promised you would. You told him you'd never leave. But you made that promise to a softer Ni-ki. The one who kissed your knuckles and whispered dreams into your skin. Not the version of him that watched you like a threat, clutched your waist like a chain, and called it love.

So, no. You didn’t feel guilty for wanting out.

The chance came sooner than expected — at some overstuffed graduation party in a villa owned by some rich kid you barely knew.

You stayed close. Of course you did. That was the expectation. Staying by Ni-ki’s side like always, sipping from a plastic cup of cheap, watered-down liquor while he laughed with mutual friends. His hand on your lower back, his laugh too loud, his fingers toying absently with the hem of your skirt like you were a lucky charm he’d pocketed.

You waited for a moment when his grip loosened, his attention distracted by a story someone was shouting over the music. You gave him a soft excuse — “Gonna get some air” — and he barely nodded, too lost in his drink to notice the shift in your tone.

The breeze was cool against your flushed skin, and for a moment, you breathed. For yourself.

Then came the guy.

You didn’t recognize him — older, maybe someone’s college-aged cousin. Tall, a little tipsy, smile confident and lazy as he leaned against the railing beside you. “Didn’t think someone like you would be out here all alone,” he said, slurring only slightly. “That guy you were with is a little busy getting shitfaced, huh?”

You didn’t answer. You just glanced out at the pool below, not even looking at him. Disinterest plain on your face. You didn’t even want the attention. Not from anyone.

But he kept talking.

“Can’t blame him, though,” he went on, stepping a little closer. “You’re kind of a prize, aren’t you? Standing out here looking like that…” He gave you a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Bet you’re tired of being dragged around. Bet you could use someone who actually sees you.”

You turned to leave. That should’ve been the end of it.

But then his hand moved.

Just a small motion — a fingers-reaching-out kind of thing, aiming for your arm.

He didn’t get the chance to touch you. Because before his hand could even make contact, another hand snatched his wrist mid-air. Tight.

You both froze.

And when you looked up — your heart sinking fast — Ni-ki was standing there.

Silent. Pale. Seething.

His jaw was clenched, eyes unreadable, locked onto the guy like he’d just watched him commit a crime. His grip on the guy’s arm looked brutal — knuckles white, tendons straining, like he had to physically hold himself back from doing worse.

The guy blinked, confused and starting to sober up. “The fuck are you doing?” he asked, trying to yank his arm free.

Ni-ki didn’t answer.

He just punched him.

Fast, vicious, and without warning, his fist connected hard with the guy’s jaw, sending him stumbling back into the railing, dazed. You gasped — too stunned to move, the cup slipping from your fingers and hitting the floor with a dull clack.

“Ni-ki, stop!” you shouted, reaching for him, but it was already too late.

The guy swung back, half-blind and half-drunk, and in seconds they were on each other — fists flying, limbs colliding and a blur of rage. People were yelling. Someone dropped their drink. The music kept going like nothing happened.

You barely registered the crowd that started gathering. All you could see was Ni-ki — his face twisted, eyes wild, mouth set in a furious snarl as he shoved the guy down, pinning him, punching again. And again.

Too much.

You stood frozen as fists flew, as grunts turned into snarls, as Ni-ki's fists landed again and again — blind with rage, not even registering the damage he was doing. The other guy tried to fight back, but Ni-ki was relentless, all adrenaline and fury, a storm that had been building for months finally tearing loose.

It took two people — maybe three — to finally drag them apart.

Both of them were a mess — blood streaked across their shirts, knuckles raw and faces bruised. The room was spinning with whispers, gasps, the sound of someone filming on their phone.

And then, the guy wiped his mouth and laughed — low and bitter and mean. “You’re fucking psycho,” he spat, glaring at Ni-ki. Then his eyes cut to you. “You letting him treat you like that, princess? Or are you just another slut who likes the attention?”

The word hit like a slap.

Your heart stopped.

And in a blink — before anyone could react — Ni-ki snapped.

He tore away from the guys holding him, shrugging them off like they were paper, his eyes wild with something unhinged.

“Say that again,” he growled, voice shaking with rage.

“Man, back the fuck off—”

But Ni-ki didn’t back off.

He lunged.

Fists flew again, wilder this time — uncontrolled, messy. Not a fight anymore, but something primal. He tackled the guy to the ground, shouting, screaming, fists slamming down. You could barely make out the words — something about respect, about you, about never letting anyone speak to you like that.

It was too much.

Too loud. Too violent. Too far.

People scrambled around you, shouting for someone to stop him, to call police, to get help. But you just stood there, eyes wide, throat tight, watching the boy you once kissed under the bleachers become someone you didn’t recognize.

People screamed. Not just at Ni-ki now, but at each other — panicked voices, phones in hands, someone calling 911, someone crying. You couldn’t hear any of it clearly. It was like you were underwater, watching it all through glass.

It took five people to pull him off.

Five bodies—teammates, strangers, friends—grappling him off the bloodied figure beneath him, whose face was now barely recognizable. The guy didn’t even fight back anymore. Just groaned in pain, one arm twitching weakly, the other cradled against his chest.

Ni-ki was still snarling, spitting curses, trying to shake them off like an animal backed into a cage.

And you just… stood there, staring at the wreckage of the boy you once thought you’d grow old with.

The sirens came next. Red and blue lights splashing across the villa walls, cutting through the music that someone had finally managed to kill. You didn’t speak. You didn’t follow.

You just watched as the guy — barely conscious, nose shattered, blood soaking through his shirt was lifted onto a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance.

He’d live. But he’d carry the scars.

Then came the police.

Ni-ki didn’t run. He didn’t argue. He just stood there, jaw clenched, still breathing hard, red staining his fists and shirt, and let them cuff him. His lip was split. His eye already darkening. And as they pulled him past the crowd, he looked at you.

Not angry. Not pleading.

Just broken.

You didn’t say a word.

It never made the news.

No articles. No headlines. No scandal.

The pro league Ni-ki had signed with stepped in before the blood had even dried. Lawyers swept in, statements were buried, NDAs signed. The boy? Paid off. Silenced.

They couldn’t afford a scandal tied to their newest star.

But the story didn’t go away for you. Because you were there. Because you knew what that silence cost. Because you couldn’t scrub the sound of fists from your ears, the look in his eyes, the way you’d stopped recognizing his love long before the cuffs ever closed around his wrists.

“Just a misunderstanding.”

“Boys will be boys.”

“Emotions ran high after graduation.”

Ni-ki was free within two days. No charges. No consequences.

Well — He lost you.

And that was the consequence that mattered most.

You didn’t answer his calls. Not the ones that came in late at night from unfamiliar numbers. Not the voicemails, shaky and pleading, that begged you to just “talk to him.”

You blocked him. Everywhere. And then you erased him. Photos, playlists, half-written notes on your phone. That one hoodie he made you wear when it got cold after practice. All of it — gone. You didn’t cry when you packed it up. You didn’t hesitate. Because by the time your fingers closed over the necklace, you realized you hadn’t felt like yourself in a long time.

You weren’t his girl anymore.

You were just you.

But you needed to say something. Not for him but for yourself.

So you wrote a letter. The kind you could never say out loud. A quiet, shaking truth spilled out onto lined paper at 3AM, the last remnants of what had once been love now bleeding out in ink:

I don’t know who you are anymore, Ni-ki. I don’t know when things changed, or when I stopped feeling safe with you, but I do know this — I tried. I tried so hard to hold on to the version of you I first loved. The boy with stars in his eyes and dirt on his jersey. The one who kissed me soft and laughed with his whole chest. But that boy disappeared. And what’s left is someone I don’t recognize, someone I’m afraid of. I’m leaving. For good. I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t let me go. And I’m done asking for permission to breathe. This is me choosing myself for the first time in too long. And if there’s anything left in you that still cares for me, even a little. Let me go. Goodbye, Ni-ki.

You folded the letter. Slipped it into an envelope.

Inside his mailbox, you placed the letter, the crumpled jersey — the one you used to wear proudly like armor — and the necklace he gave you on your second month together. The one that had felt like a promise. Now a collar, a chain.

And then you left. Without ceremony. Without goodbye. You took your suitcase, your silence, and your second chance, and you left.

The airport was a blur. The terminal loud. The lights too bright. But your lungs felt clear for the first time in years. No more waiting at locker rooms. No more bruises dressed as kisses. No more “I’m sorry”s that sounded like threats. Just you. And a future you didn’t have to earn by staying small.

Somewhere, Ni-ki would open that mailbox. He would read those words. He would hold the necklace. But you wouldn’t be there. And for once, he wouldn’t know where to find you.

You made it.

The company you’d taken the leap for? You thrived there. Climbed fast. Faster than anyone expected. The office became your world with sleek glass windows, buzzing deadlines, coffee-fueled ambition. People respected you. Listened when you spoke. Your name meant something in boardrooms and business deals.

You had become what they called a career woman. Sharp. Independent. Untouchable. You filled your life with projects and flights and noise. You lived on your own terms. No more checking your phone every ten minutes. No more needing permission to exist. The mental chains were gone, rusted remnants of a past you refused to wear.

But love? You never really found your way back there. You tried. God, you tried. There were dates. Setups. Coffee catch-ups that turned into dinners, into maybe’s, into almosts. And they were all… fine. Nice, even. But none of them moved you. None of them made your chest ache the way his name once did. None of them were Ni-ki.

None of them looked at you like you were their oxygen. And maybe that was the problem.

Eventually, you stopped pretending. You poured yourself into work instead. Pushed the idea of romance to the edges of your life, somewhere between vacation days and unread emails. People called you focused. Driven. Strong. But they didn’t see the way your fingers paused on the remote every time his name came on TV.

Because he made it too.

He was different now. Older. Sharper. Still beautiful in that reckless, untouchable way. You’d watch him pitch, watch the way his jaw set before each throw, the way he exhaled like it was all still life or death.

Riki Nishimura. Pro league star. A face you couldn’t avoid if you tried.

Interviews. Highlight reels. Jerseys sold out. His name, once inked across your back in high school, now lit up on stadium scoreboards across the country. And sometimes, late at night, you’d catch a game playing on the sports channel, the commentators’ voices drowned out by the hum of your thoughts and you’d just… watch.

And you never changed the station.

Because ever since the first time you’d spotted Ni-ki on the TV — all bright stadium lights and sharp focus, the crowd chanting his name — there was one thing you couldn’t unsee.

The necklace.

That fucking necklace.

The one you left in his mailbox the day you walked away from him, folded next to the letter that said goodbye.

He wore it. Not under his jersey. Not tucked away. Over it. Always visible. Bold. Meaningful. And before every pitch, without fail he would kiss it. A quick, subtle gesture that to anyone else might have looked like superstition, a silly habit from high school. But you knew better. You knew it was intentional. You knew exactly what it meant. Because it wasn’t just habit. It wasn’t luck. It was you.

And every time his lips touched that necklace, just before he drew back and hurled the ball across the plate, he stared straight into the camera. Like he knew you were watching. Like he was aiming right at you. It made you stiffen. Every. Single. Time.

You’d be halfway through writing an email, sipping cold coffee on your couch, and the game would be on in the background — his game — and then you’d see it.

The way he stood on the mound, chest rising slow. The way his fingers brushed the chain. The way his eyes, those same eyes that once undressed your soul flicked up as he kissed the charm and held it there for a beat longer than necessary.

You’d feel it deep in your chest. That ache. Not longing. Not guilt. Just… that sharp, sick pull of memory. Of the boy who ruined you still holding onto something you gave back.

And somehow, despite everything, part of you still watched. Because he still made you feel like a ghost haunting your own life.

You wanted to scream at the screen. You wanted to throw the remote.

You wanted him to let it go — let you go. But he didn’t. Not then. Not ever. Because Ni-ki, even now, with fame stitched into his skin and the world chanting his name, still couldn’t let go of the only thing he ever thought was truly his.

A weekend. A gift. A smile. Nothing more.

You packed light. Told no one, not even your coworkers, that you were flying home. You didn’t post about it. You didn’t check the local news, or his team’s schedule.

But still… there was a part of you that hoped. A quiet, treacherous part. That maybe he was still there.That maybe he hadn’t left yet.

You didn’t say it out loud. Not even in your own head. But when the cab rolled past the old gas station he used to stop at after practice, you stared too long out the window. When you passed the high school baseball field, your chest went tight, not from nostalgia, but from recognition.

You wondered if he still trained there. You wondered if he still stood on the mound after dark, pitching into nothing, haunted by ghosts only he could name. You wondered — for just a breath — if he ever looked into the crowd and imagined you sitting there again. Because part of you wanted to believe he remembered everything.

No.

You shook the thought from your head, sharp and fast, like a reflex.

You weren’t here to hope. You weren’t here to dream.

You were here for your friend — for one night, one celebration, one brief step back into a place you used to know. That was it. There were no fantasies waiting to unfold, no old wounds waiting to be reopened. You were older now. Wiser. Sharper. You had carved a life without him, one made of clean edges, firm boundaries, and no more “what if”s.

So no, you told yourself as you walked up the front steps of the party — you weren’t here for him. And you wouldn’t look for him. You wouldn’t check every street, every shadow in the corner of your eye for his face. You wouldn’t scan the crowd for someone taller than memory, broader in the shoulders, eyes darker than they used to be.

You wouldn’t ask anyone if he was still in town. You wouldn’t go near the field. You wouldn’t stay longer than the weekend. You would laugh. Toast your friend. Smile like someone untouched by old ghosts. And then you’d leave — just as quietly as you came.

You had to.

Because you knew what Ni-ki did to you. And you weren’t sure you’d survive another kind of love from him.

So you fixed your expression, smoothed down your clothes, and stepped inside.

And for a while it was okay.

Better than okay, even.

You had fun. Real fun. Reuniting with people you hadn’t seen in years, laughing over old stories, clinking drinks together under string lights.

You were careful. You kept the conversation light — stories, travel, career talk. You danced around any questions that flirted too close to the subject of relationships. You smiled when someone asked if you were seeing anyone, gave a noncommittal shrug, and redirected the conversation.

No one brought him up. No one said his name. And you allowed yourself to relax.

Which was a mistake.

Because you had taken your guard down, just enough. Enough to let a friend pull you in for a picture, arms around each other, mid-laugh. A harmless moment. A beautiful one, even. And you hadn’t thought twice about it.

But they posted it.

Tagged you.

You didn’t even notice until hours later, when you stepped outside for air, your chest light with the kind of buzz that only alcohol brought on.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket. A notification.

[you’ve been tagged in a photo]

You opened it without thinking.

The photo was harmless. Beautiful, even. A version of you that looked happy. Present. Alive. You scrolled through the likes — a habit you didn’t know you still had. And then you saw it.

Riki Nishimura.

Your thumb froze mid-scroll.

That couldn’t be right.

But there it was, clear as day, his name sitting quietly among the others who liked the photo of you. And then — as if the universe couldn’t help itself — another notification dropped:

Riki Nishimura (@rikinishimura) has requested to follow you.

Your stomach dropped.

You stared at the screen like it had betrayed you. Like your friend had. Like you had — for lowering your walls for even a second.

“Oh no,” you whispered.

Because this wasn’t a coincidence. This wasn’t passive.

He saw you.

And now, he wanted in.

You didn’t hesitate.

You turned your phone off. Fast. Like it might explode in your hand if you looked at it any longer.

You then slipped back inside the house, weaving through the crowd, pretending to get another drink until you made it to the front door. You left your half-finished cup behind, didn’t even say goodbye.

You weren’t going to overstay your welcome and you definitely weren’t going to wait around in case he decided to make an appearance. Because if he had seen the post — liked it that fast, found your private profile that fast, then he could easily find the rest. Find you.

You didn’t want to find out how far he’d go now.

You got in your car and drove. Fast. Silent. Knuckles white around the steering wheel. The streets of your hometown passed in a blur. Too familiar. Too dangerous. By the time you pulled into your parents’ driveway, your heart was still hammering. But luckily — blessedly — the house was empty. Your parents were out of town for the weekend, something about a road trip they’d been planning for months. You didn’t remember the details.

All you knew was: you had the house to yourself.

You locked the doors. Twice.

You took a shower — water too hot, too fast, like it could wash off the way your skin suddenly itched with awareness. Like you could scrub away his name.

You didn’t cry, you just got out, dried off, and curled up in a blanket with a movie playing in the background. Something light. Meaningless. Something with no romance, no tension, no eyes that lingered too long.

You tried to breathe. But every so often, your eyes flicked to the corner of the room. To your phone. Still dark. Still silent. And even though you told yourself not to, you wondered if he was already looking for you.

You curled deeper into the couch, the movie flickering across the screen in bursts of color you weren’t really seeing.

But your mind wouldn't stay still.

You told yourself he couldn’t know where you were. That a like and a follow request weren’t a threat. That he wouldn’t show up. But your body remembered something your mind didn’t want to say out loud.

It hit you like a whisper.

A flash of cotton candy and laughter. The blaring music of cheap rides and blinking carnival lights.

You were still with Ni-ki back then. It was supposed to be a carefree night. A carnival had rolled into town, the kind that took over the whole parking lot by the mall. You hadn’t planned on going, but a friend had begged, and you’d needed a break, just one night to yourself.

You hadn’t told him.

Not because you wanted to hide, but because your phone had died halfway through the afternoon, and you figured it could wait. Just one night. A few hours. He had practice. He was busy.

He’d be fine.

But you should’ve known better.

You didn’t see him at first. You were in line for the ferris wheel, chatting with your friend, head tilted back as the lights spun overhead.

Then you felt a hand curling gently around your elbow. You turned and saw him standing there, hoodie pulled low, jaw tight. Not angry. Just... calm. That kind of calm that came right before something cracked.

“I’ve been calling you.”

You held up your phone like it was a shield. “It died. I was gonna—”

“Who are they?” he asked, eyes flicking to the guy beside you — your friend’s cousin. He hadn’t even said two words to you.

“They’re just—” you started, already raising your hands in defense.

“You didn’t think to tell me?” he interrupted, voice sharp but low, his eyes flicking only once to your friend beside you, and then back to you like they were the threat and you were the betrayal. “You didn’t think I’d worry?” he continued, tone cooling like he was reigning himself in. “You just disappeared.”

“I didn’t disappear,” you said, trying to laugh it off. Trying to reach for his hand, to calm him the way you always did. “My phone died. I was going to text you when I got—”

But he didn’t take your hand. Instead, he stepped closer, close enough that your breath caught, and rested his hand on the small of your back — not like a boyfriend pulling you in, but like a handler claiming what was his. “I looked at your location,” he said flatly.

You blinked, confused. “What?”

“You forgot to turn it off.”

And that was how he’d found you.

No call. No message. No warning. Just your dot on his map, blinking like a target. He’d tracked you like it was natural. Like it was his right.

You felt the unease slither into your chest, but you pushed it down. You told yourself it was sweet. That he cared. That he was just scared. So you tried to soothe him again — voice soft, placating. “Ni-ki, it was just an hour. I wasn’t trying to hide—”

His lips dipped to your ear before you could finish, breath warm, tone like velvet pulled over a blade.

“You really disappointed me tonight.”

You froze.

“You know I don’t like not knowing where you are,” he whispered, quiet enough that your friends wouldn’t hear over the carnival noise. “You know what it does to me.” His hand at your back flexed slightly. “You say you love me,” he continued, still murmuring, “but then you go running around like I don’t exist. Like I’m just some guy you can forget.”

You swallowed. Hard. Eyes on the crowd. On your friends, oblivious. “I didn’t forget you,” you whispered back, voice tight. “You know I don’t.”

“Then act like it,” he said, pulling back just enough to meet your eyes. His were steady. Unblinking.

And you nodded. Like always. Because what else could you do?

He kissed your cheek after that — soft, sweet, like none of it had happened and slipped his fingers into yours.

He walked you to his car. You didn’t say goodbye to your friends. He said you were tired. That you had somewhere to be.

And later that night, you told yourself it was love. That it was just him loving you too much. That maybe… this was just what forever looked like.

You lay in his bed, wrapped in his arms, his breath even against the back of your neck, and you tried to drown out the part of you that felt small. You tried to convince yourself that needing space was selfish. That being followed was protective. That love meant bending. That boundaries were optional when someone cared enough to break them for you.

But now — years later, curled beneath a blanket with a long-forgotten movie flickering in the dark you saw it for what it really was.

That night should have been a red flag. A screaming, blood-colored warning sign. Because love shouldn't feel like surveillance. Love shouldn’t come with GPS coordinates. Love shouldn’t feel like guilt when you forget to text back. Love shouldn’t make you flinch when you laugh too long with someone else.

You swallowed, throat dry as the memory burned slow through your chest, filling all the places you still hadn’t cleaned out.

It took a long time before your body let go, before the weight of exhaustion finally dragged you down. You don’t know how long you were asleep when the doorbell ripped through the silence.

Rapid. Aggressive. Too many times in a row.

You bolted upright, heart already pounding in your throat. Your skin prickled with cold sweat, chest tight as your mind tried to catch up with reality. You blinked at the old alarm clock on the bedside table, squinting through the darkness.

2:47 AM.

You groaned, rubbing your eyes, your head thick and fuzzy with fatigue and leftover tension. Your body moved on autopilot, legs heavy as you stumbled downstairs in the dark, each step creaking louder than you remembered. At first, you didn’t open the door. You just peered through the peephole.

No one.

The porch light cast eerie shadows on the sidewalk, the empty driveway, the unmoved welcome mat.

Nothing.

Still, something itched at the back of your neck. You crept over to the kitchen and, with slow fingers, peeled back the curtain just enough to peek out the window.

Still nothing.

No car. No silhouette. Just silence.

You let out a slow breath. Maybe a prank. A drunk kid. Someone at the wrong house. You hoped. But something made you open the door anyway. Just a crack, enough to glance at the porch, to check if anything had been left for your parents.

And that’s when it happened.

A hand snatched the door handle from the other side.

You gasped as it was ripped from your grasp, the door yanked open fully with a force that sent your heart straight into your throat.

And standing there — tall, broad, shadowed under the porch light — was Ni-ki.

His face wasn’t furious. It was desperate.

Red-rimmed eyes locked onto yours like they’d been searching for hours. His hair was a mess — flattened in places like he’d been tugging at it, the way he used to do when he couldn’t calm down. His face looked thinner, more hollow. And he was still in uniform. His baseball uniform. Dirt and grass smeared across the white fabric, clinging to his legs, streaked across his chest like he hadn’t changed, hadn’t showered, hadn’t done anything except get in the car and drive straight here.

His cleats were still on — muddy, scuffed, grinding into your parents’ porch, dirtying up the ground with every trembling step forward.

He looked like he hadn’t slept. Like he hadn’t eaten. Like he hadn’t breathed properly since he saw your face again. And he was staring at you like you were the only thing holding him upright.

You couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. All the air in the world seemed to tunnel between your ribs, caught just beneath your lungs.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out at first.

Then, finally, a whisper.

“Are you really here?”

You didn’t speak. Couldn’t trust your voice. You just gave the smallest nod, a barely-there confirmation that, yes, you were standing in front of him. That you existed. That he hadn’t hallucinated the photo. That you were real. But even as you nodded, your fingers were slowly curling toward the edge of the door — toward the handle.

You were trying to figure out how fast you could grab it. How quickly you could slam the door before he could stop you. Before he could reach you.

But it was like he read your thoughts.

His body jerked forward suddenly, his legs trembled as he stepped past the threshold, both hands gripping the sides of the doorway like he couldn’t keep himself upright. Like he’d collapse if he let go. His eyes were glossy. Wide. Brimming with tears that clung to his lashes like they had nowhere else to go. And then the words came. Rushed. Tumbling. Blurred around the edges with panic and pain.

“I missed you,” he gasped, like the words had been clawing their way out of his throat for years. “I missed you so fucking much I thought I was going insane.”

You didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. He was unraveling right in front of you.

“Since you left—” he choked, “—I haven’t slept right. Haven’t breathed right. I can’t focus when you’re not there. I tried everything. Therapy, distractions, practice, God—” He wiped at his face, his palm streaked with dirt. “I’d go out on the field and see your face in the crowd even when I knew you weren’t there.” His voice cracked harder, falling apart. “I thought maybe if I kept playing, if I kept winning, it would get easier.” He swallowed, and this time when he looked at you, there was something terrifyingly honest in his eyes. “And I tried to forget. I swear I tried. I tried everything,” he said, wiping at his eyes, smearing the tears across his cheeks. “But nothing worked. Not the parties. Not the interviews. Not even when the headlines said I made it.”

He looked up at you then and something behind his eyes shattered. “I only stopped thinking about you when I started taking pills.”

You swore your heart stopped.

“I figured it out. That was the trick,” he said, with a hollow laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s when I saw you again. In dreams. In hallucinations. You’d talk to me. Smile. Tell me it was okay. Tell me you still loved me. Even if it wasn’t real, it was better than nothing.”

You stared at him, throat tight, fingers still frozen near the door.

He took one final step in, just inside. Not touching you. But closer.

“So I kept taking them,” he whispered. “Even when they told me to stop. Even when my hands started shaking before every game. Because seeing you felt better than being clean and feeling nothing.” And finally, his voice broke into something soft and raw and terrifyingly small. “Without you… I’m just gone.”

You stood there, jaw trembling, every breath shallow, every part of you aching to say something. But nothing came out right. “Ni-ki,” you said, voice barely a whisper, “you can’t—this isn’t—” Your throat closed. You shook your head, blinking fast, heart pounding so loud you were sure he could hear it. Every word tangled before it could even leave your lips. “You shouldn’t be here,” you tried again. “You can’t just show up like this, you—this is not okay, Ni-ki.”

But he didn’t respond. He just watched you. Hung on to every word like it was oxygen, as if even your rejection was better than silence.

“Please just stop,” you murmured. “You need to go. You need to—I can’t do this with you again.”

And before you realized it, you were backing up.One slow step at a time. And he followed. Eyes locked on yours. No words. No threat.

Just… devotion. Twisted and heavy and far too close.

But he kept moving with you, silent, his cleats dragging dirt into the hallway, scuffing the floorboards. His body was trembling, soaked in sweat, in desperation, in memory.

“I’m not the girl you remember,” you said, almost frantic now, backing through the kitchen, voice shaking. “I’m not her anymore. I left. I left for a reason. You can’t show up like this—like it’s still your right to find me, to follow me, to—” Your heel caught on the corner of the carpet and you stumbled. Caught yourself on the kitchen counter, fingers clutching the edge like it might save you.

And still, he followed. He didn’t reach for you. Didn’t raise his voice. He just kept coming.

“I’m not yours,” you said, louder now, trying to force the words out before you lost your nerve. “I’m not yours, Ni-ki. Not anymore. You don’t own me. You never did.”

And still, he didn’t stop. He was trailing behind you like gravity. Like you were the center of something he couldn’t escape. And it was all too quiet. That was the worst part — the silence. The way he didn’t argue. Didn’t yell. Just watched you unravel. And somehow, that was more terrifying than if he had screamed. Because you didn’t know what he was going to do next. You didn’t know what he wanted. Only that he was here. And he wouldn’t stop following you.

Your back hit the side of the dining table. You flinched, steadying yourself with trembling hands, heart stuttering wildly behind your ribs. You stared at the boy you once loved, the man he’d become, and the empty space inside him that looked a lot like you. “Ni-ki,” you breathed, “please—just stop.”

He didn’t.

You backed around the table slowly, feet scuffing against the hardwood, trying to keep something — anything — between you. “This—this isn’t love,” you said, voice cracking now, trying to stay steady, to stay in control. “Whatever this is, it’s not what we used to have. It’s not healthy, and it never was.”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t answer. Just kept following. Silent. Breath uneven. Shoulders tense. Like your words weren’t even registering or like he’d already decided they didn’t matter.

You reached the other side of the kitchen, the cool edge of the counter brushing your back. You could feel yourself trembling now. Fully. “I’m sorry,” you choked out, voice rising. “I’m sorry for the way things ended. I’m sorry for the road you went down. I’m sorry you hurt. But this? This is not my fault anymore.”

Still, he said nothing. Still, he kept walking. Step by step. Quiet. Purposeful.

“Say something!” you snapped, desperation cracking out of you like thunder. “Anything. Tell me why you’re here. Tell me why you think this is okay. Tell me what you want—just talk to me, Ni-ki!”

But he didn’t. He just stared at you like you were slipping further away, like you were glass and he didn’t know how to hold you without shattering something. And every time you moved, he matched your pace.

You couldn’t take it anymore. With your heart in your throat and your limbs moving faster than thought, you turned and ran.

Up the stairs. Two at a time. You heard him behind you, footsteps heavy, breathing ragged as he followed without hesitation. You didn’t stop to look back. You didn’t call his name. You just ran the way you should have years ago.

You reached your bedroom, heart pounding, and slammed your hand against the door to shut it but before it even closed halfway, his hand caught it.

You gasped — a strangled sound caught between fear and disbelief as Ni-ki shoved it open, the force of it sending you stumbling backward.

You screamed. Loud. Raw.

It tore from your throat as you backed away, palms out, as if that would stop him. But he was already inside. Already past the door. Already in your space — again.

“Get out!” you cried, voice splintering. “Get out!”

But he was already inside. Breathing hard. Eyes wide. His whole body shaking as he stepped into your space like he couldn’t bear to stay away. “You don’t understand,” he said, voice cracking open, “I love you. I still love you. I never stopped. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted—the only one I could ever want.”

You shook your head, tears stinging your eyes, but he kept going, his voice rising, trembling.

“I wake up in the middle of the night and I can still feel your hands on me. I swear to God, I can still smell you sometimes—like you’re right there, right beside me.” He ran a hand through his hair, pacing now, unraveling in front of you. “I’ve tried everything. Everything, baby. But no one is you. No one even comes close. I see other people and I feel nothing. I touch them and it makes me sick.”

You pressed yourself farther away as he came closer.

“I don’t want anyone else. I don’t care how long it’s been. I just want you. Your voice, your skin, your laugh... I want to taste your lips again, I want to feel you again. Please.”

And then... his tone shifted. Softer. Slower. Dangerous in its sweetness.

“You said you loved me. You said forever. You promised.”

You swallowed.

“That wasn’t—”

“You promised,” he said again, stepping closer, eyes narrowing in conviction. Like he truly believed your past bound you to him. Like your old words still had chains around them.

“You left,” he whispered, voice trembling. “And I let you go once. I didn’t chase you. Not the way I wanted to. I respected your space.”

You stared at him.

Respected?

“I let you have your little career,” he said with a broken smile, too wide, too thin. “But tell me the truth... are you really happy without me?” You opened your mouth, but he kept talking, his words picking up speed again, wrapping around your ribs.

“No one will love you like I do. I know that. You know that! You felt it. I’d give you everything. And you’d throw it away for what? A job? A clean break?”

Your breath came in short, frantic gasps now, body screaming for an exit, for space, for him to stop.

“But maybe,” he murmured, “you don’t care anymore. Maybe you forgot what we had. Maybe you just threw it all away—like it meant nothing.”

You shook your head quickly, voice caught in your throat.

He moved closer, and your body flinched before you could stop it. “I would’ve burned the world for you,” he said, heartbreak bleeding into resentment now. “And all I ever wanted was for you to stay.” His voice broke again, somewhere between a sob and a snarl. “So tell me baby,” he said, voice low, lips trembling, “how was I supposed to survive you leaving?”

Your breath shuddered in your chest, hands raised instinctively as if that would shield you from the storm rising in his eyes. “I’m not responsible for your survival, Ni-ki!” you shouted, your voice shaking but firm. “I loved you. I gave you everything, but you twisted it! You crushed it! And then you blamed me when it broke!”

Something behind his eyes snapped.

And then—he moved.

Fast.

You barely had time to react before he grabbed your arms, too tightly, and crowded you to the wall. You gasped, your back hitting the plaster with a dull thud. His face was inches from yours, eyes wild, breath ragged. You could feel the tremble in his hands, the erratic thrum of his pulse — too fast, too hard, too close.

“Don’t say that,” he whispered, shaking his head like a child being told their favorite dream wasn’t real. “Don’t say that like I didn’t try. Like I wanted to lose you.”

You opened your mouth, but your words caught. Because just as fast as he’d snapped — he collapsed.

His grip loosened.

And then, suddenly, he dropped.

Down to his knees.

Arms wrapping tight around your hips, his forehead pressing against your thighs, shoulders shaking violently as the sobs tore out of him. “Please—” he choked, voice muffled against the soft cotton of your pajama pants. “Please don’t push me away. Please—just for a second. I can’t—I can’t be without you.”

You stood frozen.

His arms clung like a vice around your waist, his body folding in on itself, rocking as the tears came hard and fast — ugly, gut-wrenching sobs that soaked through the fabric where his face was buried. “Please,” he cried again. “I’ll fix it. I’ll do better. I’ll be better. Just—don’t leave again. I swear I can’t go through it twice. I can’t—” His words tangled, cut off by a broken breath. His grip tightened, desperate, fingers curling into the fabric like you were a lifeline. “I wake up every night reaching for you,” he choked out. “Do you know how empty I’ve been? How hollow everything feels without you in it?”

You stared down at him, paralyzed.

This wasn’t the confident, golden boy on magazine covers. Not the rising star who kissed cameras and made stadiums scream. This was a boy broken by his own obsession. Drenched in sweat and dirt and grief, clinging to you like something he’d been chasing for far too long.

His shoulders shook as he sobbed against you, arms wrapped tight around your waist, muffling apologies, pleas, half-spoken fragments of the version of you he still carried in his head. “I can’t lose you,” he whispered through the fabric. “I don’t know how to be without you. I don’t want to.”

You hesitated. Then, slowly you placed your hands on his arms. “Ni-ki…” you said softly. “Let go.”

He didn’t. Not at first. His grip only twitched — reluctant, scared.

But eventually, you pushed a little firmer, easing him back.

And he let go.

Just enough to fall backward onto his heels, blinking up at you like you’d stolen the ground from beneath him. His face was blotchy, streaked with tears, bottom lip trembling like a kid about to be left behind.

You were taken aback by the sight. By how small he looked. How pathetic.

You didn’t say anything. And that silence — that tiny pause — was all it took.

Suddenly, he surged up, fast and unsteady, arms reaching before your voice could catch up. His hand gripped the back of your neck, pulling you in too fast.

And suddenly his mouth was on yours, just as his other arm slid around your waist, under your pajama top, fingertips pressing against the small of your back like they remembered the map of your body by instinct.

You opened your mouth to protest but that only deepened the kiss.

He kissed you like he was drowning. Like he believed if he clung hard enough, kissed deep enough, you’d come back.

And worse, your body responded. Your fingers, traitorous and aching, clenched into the fabric of his jersey, tugging him closer as your lips moved with his — automatic, confused, familiar.

It was heat and memory. Hunger and heartbreak. Years of silence crashing together in a moment you hadn’t meant to create.

And eventually — breathless, shaken — you both pulled back. Just far enough to breathe. Just far enough to feel it.

His forehead rested lightly against yours, his breath spilling into your mouth, warm and shaky. Your lips brushed with every inhale, every exhale — like even air had become too intimate now, shared and stolen between you.

You couldn’t think. Could barely blink. Your heart was pounding, your hands still gripping his shirt like he was the last real thing you had.

His eyes searched yours — red, glassy, wrecked — and he whispered your name like a prayer, like an apology, like a need.

And somehow, before you even realized what you were doing, you kissed him again. Slower, this time. Softer. Like maybe if you closed your eyes, you could pretend none of the pain had happened. Like you could rewind the world to a version of him you once trusted.

He exhaled shakily into your mouth, his hands fisting the back of your pajama top, like he didn’t know how to let go even if he wanted to.

The kiss deepened, again, on instinct. Because your body still remembered. Because your heart still ached.

Somewhere along the way, words stopped working. You weren’t sure what was said. Only that eventually… you let him stay.

He showered. You gave him a clean set of clothes — old ones, left behind from before. They still fit. Too well.

He didn’t speak much after. Just moved slowly, like he was afraid any wrong word would make you disappear again. When he finally crawled into your bed, it wasn’t with the same fire he’d arrived with.

It was quiet. Fragile. Desperate in a new way.

He laid beside you, then gradually shifted until his head rested on your stomach, arms circling your waist like a shield. Like if he held on tight enough, the nightmares would stay away.

You didn’t sleep right away.

One hand reached for his hair, almost without thought. Fingers brushed gently through the damp strands, and he leaned into the touch like muscle memory. The steady weight of him against you was too familiar.

But for a moment, just one…

You let yourself breathe.

And sometime after, sleep found you both.

Morning came too bright.

You woke to his weight still wrapped around you, his breathing heavy and even. There was something almost childlike in it, how tightly he clung, how peaceful he looked, like the storm hadn’t touched him in his sleep.

You slid out carefully, moving slow enough not to wake him, padding quietly down the stairs.

The television was on from the night before, volume low. You moved to shut it off until something on the screen made your fingers freeze.

Breaking Sports Update: Nishimura Riki Abandons Match Mid-Game

Your heart dropped.

You turned up the volume.

The announcer’s voice was calm, but laced with speculation.

“In a shocking turn of events during last night’s game, rising pitcher Riki Nishimura left the field during a seventh-inning break and never returned. Sources confirm he left the bench and disappeared before the inning resumed. The team ultimately suffered a loss without their star player, sparking controversy and concern about his current condition.”

You sat down slowly.

The pieces clicked together like glass shattering in reverse.

He hadn’t just shown up at your door in uniform out of habit or stubbornness.

He’d walked off the field. He left — in the middle of everything.

Just to find you.

And his team… lost.

You stared at the screen, numb. Suddenly the way he looked last night made sense. He hadn’t even changed. He’d just run.

Straight off the mound. Straight to you.

Bonus:

The break started the way it always did, sweat dripping from his temples as he strode back to the dugout, teammates clapping his back, someone tossing him his water bottle. His chest heaved with every breath, the stadium buzzing with lights and noise and pressure.

He grabbed the bottle and tilted it back like it was air, water spilling over his lips as he drank greedily. His throat was dry. His hands were shaking.

Someone was talking. The manager, maybe. Strategies. Signals. Bullshit.

Ni-ki wasn’t listening.

He sat down, elbows on his knees, water bottle rolling to the side as he pulled out his phone, a habit he wasn’t even supposed to have during games, but no one ever stopped him.

He scrolled. Mindlessly. Endlessly. A blur of faces, ads, noise.

Until... There.

He nearly missed it, just another flash of a picture, a crowd, people smiling. A familiar mutual. Someone from a lifetime ago. His thumb hovered over the unfollow button like it had for so many others lately.

But something froze him.

His vision sharpened like a camera lens snapping into focus.

You.

Your name.

Your face.

Your smile.

His body locked up. His mouth went dry. The world dropped out from under him. You were there. You were real.

His thumb twitched and double-tapped the post without thinking, a quick, desperate motion, like if he didn’t claim it now, it would vanish. Be deleted. Be just another dream.

But the like stayed. The photo stayed. And so did you.

For a long second, he just stared, then his breathing turned sharp, his chest squeezed so tight it felt like something inside him snapped.

A hot wave of nausea rolled through him, twisting low in his stomach, crawling up his spine. His hands started to tremble, not from exhaustion, not from the game, but from everything that photo brought crashing back into him like a tidal wave of knives.

Your face. Your smile. That quiet tilt of your head. The one you used to do when you were teasing him. Or forgiving him.

He hadn't seen it in years. But it hadn't changed. And neither had he.

The ache was instant. Violent. All-consuming. It was like someone had scooped his insides out and replaced them with fire.

The cheers from the stands blurred into noise. The smell of sweat and chalk and grass became suffocating. He looked down at his hands, the same hands that once held your waist, that once pulled your fingers into his between innings like a secret, and he felt sick.

Because you weren’t with him. And someone else was close enough to take that picture.

His jaw clenched.A red-hot sting curled behind his eyes, not just grief, but fury.

How could you still be so beautiful without him? How could the world get to look at you when he hadn’t seen your face in years?

How could you be so close and not tell him?

Every fiber in his body was screaming. Muscles tight. Teeth clenched.

Find her. Find her. Find her.

His body moved before his mind caught up.

He was standing. Grabbing his phone. Ignoring the coach, the teammates, the voice shouting his name. He left the dugout still in uniform, cleats slamming concrete, each step faster, more unhinged. He didn’t care. Didn’t explain. Didn’t even think.

Because in that moment nothing mattered.

Not the team. Not the score. Not the reputation. Not the consequences. All that mattered was that you were here. And if he didn’t see you — didn’t touch you — he’d combust. Cease to exist. Dissolve into the version of himself he’d barely held together since the day you walked away.

He didn’t know what he’d say. What he’d do. How you’d look at him.

He just knew he needed you. And every inch of him was already gone.

He didn’t remember getting into the car. Only the way his fists trembled as he jammed the key into the ignition, the engine roaring to life like it shared his pulse — fast, erratic, furious.

His baseball cleats slammed the gas. No hesitation. No second thoughts. Just raw, blinding need.

The tires screeched against the asphalt as he tore out of the parking lot, the stadium lights shrinking in the rearview mirror. His match was forgotten. Irrelevant. Nothing mattered now. Not his career. Not the team. Not the media. Not the law.

He flew down the highway like something feral, like the ghost of every sleepless night was sitting in the passenger seat, whispering go faster, go faster, she’s slipping away again.

He didn’t care about the speed limits. Didn’t care about the red lights blurring past. Didn’t care about the fact that he couldn’t feel his hands anymore, fingers clenching the wheel so tight his knuckles went white. He wasn’t in his right mind. Not even close. But none of that registered. His vision tunneled. Your name pulsed in his head like a heartbeat he hadn’t heard in years. Your face. That photo. It was all he saw.

He didn’t even know where you were exactly. But something inside him did. Something old and twisted and devoted. Like his body had been carved to find you, like every breath, every cell remembered the way you tasted, the way you ran your fingers through his hair when he couldn’t sleep, the way you whispered his name like it meant something.

The match had been out of town. A few towns away. A long drive. Several hours. He didn’t care. He’d drive through the night. He’d drive to the ends of the earth. He’d drive into the damn ocean if it meant seeing your face again — not in a photo, not through glass, but real. Breathing. Close enough to touch. Close enough to keep.

The speedometer climbed. 140. 160. 180. The engine growled beneath him, the kind of sound that came with warnings and regrets. But Ni-ki didn’t hear it. He didn’t feel the way the tires shook beneath him, the way the car trembled on sharp curves. Didn’t notice how the road signs smeared past like watercolors in a storm, unreadable, unimportant. He flew past them all. A blur of red taillights and distant horns, none of it touching him.

190.

Faster.

He clenched the wheel tighter, jaw locked, eyes wide and unblinking. Wind whipped through the open window, slapping against his skin like punishment. The sweat on his forehead dried against the cold rush of night air, but the fever in his chest only climbed. Every inch of him screamed with one singular obsession:

200.

Get to her.

Get to her.

Get to her.

Before the world tries to take her from you again.

It wasn’t speed anymore. It was compulsion. It was possession.

And nothing — no cops, no crash, no consequence was going to stop him. Not when he’d finally seen proof that you still existed. That you were still within reach. And he’d break the world in half just to feel your heartbeat against his again.

He wasn’t going to let you slip through his fingers again.

Not without a fight.

Not without everything.

══════⊹⊱≼≽⊰⊹══════

Perm taglist: @ilyunjina @nshmrarki @laylasbunbunny @dollyyun

@wensurr @immelissaaa @simj4k3 @vegahrid @03sunoos

@hollxe1 @moonpri @cherriesfine @badtzsan @anushkaaaiaiiaiaia

@heeseungbabydoll @wondash @renjiishot @demigodmahash

@strawberrieswithchocolateo3o @honeybunnee @jjongstar111 @yenienha

@enhaprettystars @zorange13 @jiminie-08 @gyuuberriess

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@sumsumtingz @norucking @tunafishyfishylike @txnwvc

@jakeluvrrs @firstclassjaylee @xnatqq @arclviie @aussie-boys-wife

@vvenusoncasual @bamguetismee @cristy-101 @lynreiii

[storytellering]

I guess I can see how if they (the Sparda boys) weren’t related shipping them would be interesting. I think a better question for me to ask is why incest? You said it was the cherry on top, so why is it appealing to you? Is it a taboo thing or like a dark fantasy type thing?

I’m sorry if I’m being overly nosey. Obviously you don’t have to reply to me again. I just don’t know anyone who likes this type of stuff and I’m curious as of why some people do.

No worries! I chose to answer this more in depth anyway, because I feel like it's a valuable topic to discuss and it's important to understand where other people come from, especially if they naturally tend to have a different perspective from oneself. Still, thank you for being respectful, I can tell you're just genuinely curious and I personally don't mind explaining! Since I have answered a very similar question before on twitter, I'll direct you to my answer there as a first intro to it, and then expand since this is tumblr and I don't have to fit my answers in many tiny character limited boxes. So: like I said in that sp answer, it simply appeals to me, on an intrinsic, personal level. When there's something morally wrong in a potential fictional couple, if I already liked their dynamic, it just draws me more to it - I do think the simple fact of having a taboo aspect plays into it, though I don't know to what degree necessarily.

Personally, when it comes to dmc and spardacest specifically, I do really, really enjoy playing with the demonic aspect of it - there's something deeply, deeply satisfying to me as a queer neurodivergent person who grew up bullied and ostracized all my life and have been treated like a freak and an animal and an other my entire childhood, to imagine a humanoid-but-not-quite species that can shift form at will, and has completely different moral/societal/biological rules from regular human society, and subsequently imagining a character that's been brought up their whole life to believe they were a human and full of fucked up things wrong with them, only to discover that, hey! Actually they weren't human, they were something else just vaguely human looking all along, and all their flaws are actually features among the species they belong with. In that way, I do think it's wish fulfilment, though very much metaphorical and not 1:1 to reality or anything I personally experienced or related to. It just feels good in the brain to play with that. (similarly, it's why dbh as another fandom I've been very into for a long time also draws me - androids are very good for making similar analogies, even if there isn't anything necessarily inherently "fucked up" there by regular irl standards, unless you count two androids of the same model fucking as akin to incest, or want to claim some kind of unbalanced power dynamic in an android/human couple lol) In that way, the incest is simply an extension of it - it's not appealing to me because it's morally wrong or fucked up, but because I like to assign traits that would be repulsive to an average human to the Spardas as a species, and explaining them as instinctual/natural to them (for example of other nonsexual things, also things like a tendency for extreme violence and heightened aggression, cannibalism, territorialism, etc ), so at the end of the day, the incest is more a way to play with the existing dynamics and explore my own hc's, than something I'm into for its own sake (and actually, if we have to be honest, before I got into dmc I was really not that into fictional incest for its own sake lol! Not for any personal disgust reasons like I said, but it was just completely neutral to me, not something that would attract me to a fictional ship for its own sake, but not something that would repel me either. In that way, I do think I enjoy it far more as pack and parcel of their demonic nature than for its own merit.) I understand that to some people, otherwise liking a fictional couple's dynamic might be extinguished the moment they find out/realize that there's something morally wrong were they to be together (age gap, underage, incest, toxicity/abuse, etc). That's also perfectly fine and a perfectly acceptable way to navigate fiction. I just so happen to not really care that much in the realm of fiction. To me, it's always kind of been a given that it was separate from my irl morality, in the same vein some people love horror and gore and splatter media, and some people don't.

[simpfornegan]

I think there needs to be a conversation about white people centering Black trauma and inserting a white savior narrative into a film that goes out of its way to not do that. I'm sure there are Black Sammick shippers but when you have a movie full of poc that are against Christianity and they could all be queer coded, one has to think why we center the white guy aimed to destroy that community. So plenty of us, yes queer Black folks, are gonna side eye and dwindle it down to yaoi-fying the white man because, that is something plenty of us grew up around time and time again in every fandom. It is something that we have to engage more rather than assuming Black people calling this a white ship are doing it to be bigoted towards their own. It's just tiring is all. Also I'm sure you don't mean anything by it but can we please be more mindful of describing shipping related things as puritan. I know that word has been thrown around on this site for the smallest of matters. But it is a heavy term that has its roots in religious trauma, colonization, r*pe, forced in*est, white supremacy that I don't think needs to be used to describe people that don't care for a ship

and i agree, there should be a conversation about it. but i can also acknowledge that there is a time and a place for those conversations. as well as spaces to address those issues without minimizing/ridiculing black sammick shippers in their own space. also not saying it doesn’t exist but specifically with sammick, from what i’ve seen of the few fics they have, remmick isn’t ever written as a savior of anything outside of his own delusions.

again, the complaints about the ship aren’t the issue. the issue is vocalizing this assumption that sammick shippers are centering black trauma around a white male character in their own space rather than seeing their reasoning/perspective on how they actually perceive the ship or why they write it in the first place— writers exploring a dynamic, otherwise taboo, in a fictional setting. the problem is the persistence (not from you persay) to invade those spaces and shame others, most of whom relate to sammie and are often black (or pocs ) themself.

and my usage of puritan culture wasn’t directed at the fact that people just don’t like or care for the ship, but at how they interact with the ship because of said dislike. shaming shippers for enjoying a toxic dynamic / power imbalance in a fictional ship to the point of harassment is in fact giving puritan culture. harassing someone because they like a ship you deem problematic is puritan culture. not saying this relates specifically to you, but from the things i have seen in the tag on here and twt. it isn’t just with this fandom either, fandom as a whole has encountered this shift where anything written that is deemed slightly problematic is immediately condemned (a very slippery slope.)

but i do respect your opinion and i see where your coming from, and that it’s not a place of malice or bigotry, i just believe in protecting black ppl in their creative spaces.

and that leads me back to my point overall, just leave it out of the ship tag. respectfully.

[bookwormbynight]

the take that lawlight and other ships involving Light and an older character are not problematic because “Light Yagami is incapable of being groomed” is doing rounds on dntwt again and holy shit it drives me insane every time i see it because

(“you” below refers to people with this take, not you)

1. what the hell is this victim-blaming logic when you’re literally talking about it as something applicable to the real world. no one is immune to being groomed.

2. to speak of the idea in-universe, I’m pretty sure that is just factually untrue. Light can definitely be groomed and has many traits that make him susceptible

3. no one is immune to being groomed. Light being manipulative, “evil”, intelligent or ““mature for his age”” (oh boy) does not prevent him from grooming in any capacity. in fact those traits combined with his arrogance make him a easy target as long as the perpetrator knows what to say

4. if you’re uncomfortable with the idea that lawlight is grooming, you can just think and say that you do not view lawlight’s dynamic as grooming. that would be reasonable, at least in comparison to fucking “light is immune to being groomed”

5. (pardon my language but) why in the fuck would you phrase it like “I’m sorry but if you can *insert a bunch of things that don’t prevent anyone from being groomed* then I’m NOT gonna believe you got groomed” like do you know how you sound right now????

6. have I mentioned that no one is immune to being groomed.

frankly, as someone who doesn’t usually prefer to view lawlight as full-on “adult grooming child” (I do think the existing age gap is a very intriguing factor but generally it is not my top preference to take it to the extreme in my own conception of it; it is very interesting to see as an alternative though, I respect it), I feel MUCH safer around everyone in this dn tumblr circle than people who say that shit. respect and salute to you all 🫡

Oh, ick!! Thank you for sharing!

Dude I am so afraid of dntwt I refuse. Of course the drawback to that is Tumblr doesn't allow the kind of images that Twitter does so I miss out on that but with the combination of Elon Musk and the nazis and whatever nutcase discourse that regularly happens over there, I'm not touching that shit with a ten foot pole even for the sake of porn 😭

Yeah no the solution to something that makes you uncomfortable is never ever to blame the victim. (Honestly, and I'm psychoanalyzing again, I think part of what makes this circle so safe is that we treat this shit with the gravity it deserves, even when we're sexualizing it. Because what we're sexualizing IS the horror. The horror is what's hot about it, but the horror reaction implies that it's something terrible and serious. It's not normal or okay or impossible.)

I'd like to explore the mention of discomfort with the topic. That shit is normal and human. Not everyone likes sexualizing horror, not everyone understands everything you need for it to feel safe, AND, and this is a wildly different but still important factor in fandom interaction, not everyone DOES think it's plausible for the universe. You can think things don't match your headcanon for how you interpreted the work! I made a post yesterday along those lines about a fanfic I was reading! The thing is, don't attack real people (if you think someone's handling a subject in fiction in a way that does real harm, like E.L. James for my example, you don't send hate mail, you tell people why it's harmful and boycott the work); be aware that canon is subjective even if you have some textual evidence to back your view up - feel free to present said evidence, but nobody has to take it to heart and you can't make them; and above all, if it's pertaining to these types of topics, DO NOT USE THE VICTIM TO CONTRADICT IT. USE THE SUPPOSED PERPETRATOR. If you don't think L is a groomer, say so, if you don't think lawlight involves grooming, go for it, but Light Yagami better not fucking be a pillar of your argument because victims are never the reason something happened to them, which means they are also never the reason something didn't happen. People astound me.

Be kind everybody ❤️

[darklinaforever]

So, apparently, we Dramiones are proudly admitting how much we want to see Hermione getting raped by Draco.

And that's why this ship is the worst, because Drarry and Pansmione wouldn't admit that proudly.

So uh... wtf ?

I want to say that personally, and tell me if this is the case for you too, but I have never come across a Dramione shipper who did /said that.

Not even those who like Manacled, or indeed other fanfictions of this type.

And this is where I think there is a huge disconnect between the Dramione fandom in general, as well as the more specific part of it liking this kind of fanfiction / story, and precisely what the anti-Dramione people think of the ship and the fandom.

For them to enjoy reading these kinds of stories or writing them would be equal to this bullshit of proudly proclaiming how much we want and love to see Hermione get raped by Draco.

When it just has nothing to do with it.

Most of the time, those who enjoy reading or writing this, it's either for personal cathartic reasons, or exploring rape fantasy too, or simply enjoying delving into a super twisted and dark story that is generally stimulating on a psychological level. Also simply exploring a fascination with the morbid perhaps (and no, there's nothing weird about it, in any case, it's not weirder than the general fascination with serial killers). That or the fact that it allows the reader to feel valued and victorious by reading this type of story where the heroine (with whom there is precisely an identification) despite all the horrors that happens to her ends up happy and manages to help to reform the worst of the worst.

All in a reassuring way through fiction, all as a bonus with appreciated characters from an already existing story in particular, and this in a purely fanon context, which is doubly reassuring by the fact somewhere.

So no, liking to read this kind of problematic story, equivalent to Dark Romance, has nothing to do with proudly wanting /particularly liking Hermione to be raped by Draco (very harsh words with the obvious aim of degrading the shippers).

Fanfiction is a place that exists expressly to give free rein to our imagination, even the most disturbing and / or perverse parts (and this in a much freer way than writing a book made public with your name on the cover).

So putting a limit or taboo on what you can or cannot write on a ship is ridiculous.

Not liking it, yes, that’s no problem.

But putting a general stop on it because it would be too inappropriate, and would reveal things about consumers or writers is just stupid and disrespectful.

Also, it is not because these problematic fanfictions are very successful that they are representative of the entirety of what is done / and is loved in the Dramione fandom and his writings.

Quite simply because it is a fanon ship, with multiple possibilities to write that many people write every day.

It really doesn't make sense to simply take Dramione from this type of more dark fanfictions precisely in order to say that it's the most toxic ship in the Harry Potter universe, when it is, once again, a ship fanon with lots of other versions ! It's not a canon ship with an established and grounded dynamic and it never will be !

Acting like Dramione is just pure toxicity and the worst in the Harry Potter universe because of some successful problematic fanfictions is stupid, because those fanfictions, once again, do not 100% represent the ship and the fandom (for example, I'm not particularly into this type of very dark story).

They are just one facet among many others. A facet of which there is not even anything to be ashamed of in fact, because it is simply fiction. There is no problem in loving this kind of story and embracing it.

Plus, tons of people, like me, have been shipping Dramione since they were kids and reading fanfictions ever since. Do you think the kids who ship Dramione get involved in this type of fanfictions, or imagine this kind of scenario when they have Dramione in mind ? That they proudly want Hermione being raped by Draco ?! No. Of course not. Mostly, what we imagine, and what is also the most written generally is a redemption arc where Draco learns to be better and worthy of Hermione. That's all. Even if, yes, sometimes fanfiction with problematic characters can be part of it for some members of the fandom Dramione.

Frankly, I repeat, it's really ridiculous to judge a ship fanon on a single type of specific fanfictions, which of course, as if by chance, suits the hateful speeches of some people.

Like I said, it's baloney, and nothing is set in stone. If today, certain fanfictions with problematic characters are "the face of Dramione" for some and as some say, well maybe in a few years, other less problematic and even healthier stories could come and replace these success.

And at that point, how will the antis justify their hatred of the ship ?

Will they stay focused on the era when it was fanfiction with problematic characters that was most highlighted ? They would be quite capable of it. Or surely they will simply return to the still existing classic discourse on the canon relationship of the characters of Draco and Hermione to proclaim how bad it is to create fanfiction where they are in love with a beautiful relationship ?

After all, these types of extremely Dark fanfictions were not as present at one time and / or were much less represented / popular than today, however, that did not prevent Dramione from being hated with other types of arguments, all generally based on the canonical relationship of the characters while once again, we are on fanon / an alternative continuation from a certain point in the original story...

The truth is that all this is just another excuse to hate Dramione in such a way that it allows you to feel justified in spitting on the shippers by saying precisely such stupid things as, the part of Dramione fandom who love the concept of Dark Romance (or not by the way since they don't even seem to make the difference and put the entire Dramione fandom in the same basket of taste in terms of reading), would be proud of wanting Hermione to get raped by Draco, something other ships fandom doesn't do.

Like... really wtf ? How twisted do you have to be to spout this kind of insulting bullshit ?

And then, not to break these people's bubbles... but there are certainly Drarry fanfictions containing rape, maybe even for Pansmione too.

Since fanfiction has existed most fanon and even canon ships have gotten this kind of fanfiction at one time or another.

Seriously, as if other Harry Potter ships didn't also have problematic scenarios. As if it were only Dramione's own !

You really have to stop the bullshit after a while frankly about the fact that Dramione would be worse (specially when Tomione, who I also like by the way, exists !).

An all that for, once again, fanon ships or you can literally write the relationship however you want because it has no grounded / canon romantic dynamic !

Even if I think that the reason why Dramione has more stories highlighted on this side in recent years than the other ships (beyond the fact that there seems to be a spike in popularity around Dark Romance in general in recent years in the world of literature), it is also because the context of the status of the characters in the Harry Potter universe can best fit a Dark Romance scenario to exploit for those who also love this genre of literature in particular.

Not to mention that they are both very popular and interesting characters to varying degrees who could fit the trope of enemies to lovers by being put together, a trope which can already contain problematic aspects to varying degrees.

And once again, in the context of a universe like Harry Potter with the status of the characters, we can easily switch Dramione squarely into Dark Romance for those who are interested.

This kind of Dramione fanfiction does not exist simply because some of the Dramione shippers would strangely and out of pure perversity of a sick mind want to "see Hermione being raped by Draco in various ways". There is a logic behind the creation of these particular scenarios. We're not sure it's purely free.

But once again, it's not because the context of Dramione lends itself to Dark Romance, which many love and have really immersed themselves in for several years (because yes, I remind you that this type of story does not were not as popular written and represented several years ago as today), that everyone does it and therefore that the whole fandom is like that, including the ship itself, which once again I remind is fanon and therefore still has no established canonical romantic dynamic and we can do what we want with it !

And once again, maybe in a few years, the trend will reverse and much healthier stories from Dramione will replace the Dark Romance type hits of today.

Because a fandom always evolves over time, as does what people write and read.

Dramione has always had certain phases in the fanfiction genre. I remember the period when almost all of the most recommended Dramione fanfictions were fanfictions about Hermione and Draco's 8th year at Hogwarts as head boy. A type of Dramione still popular today, almost classic one could say.

And yet Dramione was just as hated as he is today. When I tell you that all this is just excuses for the haters !

Limit, they can talk about what a certain more or less broad and current part of the Dramione fandom prefers to read / write currently, all without also going into generalization and even less generalization full of judgment of hatred and negativeness, because like I said, there are no real problems or shame with these stories.

But in no case can you give a real genre label to the ship Dramione which once again is purely fanon.

But in short, I think you understand my overall point with this huge block.

Love the ships you want ! Write and Read what you want ! Long live to Dramione ship ; In all forms, past present and future !

[the-path-to-redemption]

I have a question about shipping in RWBY: when it comes to that subject is the the fandom too restrictive when it comes to picking characters?

I asked because I see fans harassed writers for ships they don’t like. For example

Pyrrha x sun (especially with Pyrrha)

Yang x Cardin (when making Cardin a better person)

Willow x (any guy) (they bring up the age difference part…until it’s jaune)

Etc

And most of time they want Jaune only ship with all the women.

I don’t understand the mindset: why can’t I use other guys? Why does it have to be Jaune only?

Why am I forced to only use Jaune as a default?

It honestly gets tiring seeing the same scenario over and over again.

Oh boy...*puts on hazmat suit*

Long Post Ahead

I can't speak for everyone, anon, so I'm just going to use my own experiences in the FNDM and shipping in the FNDM to answer this question as best as I could.

The first is that the RWBY FNDM is just a hostile place for shipping, as ironically as it sounds. What I mean by that is it's deeply rooted in anti culture and fictional puritanism, therefore if you ship the "wrong" ship, you are a bad person and whatever comes your way is deserved. It doesn't matter what the reason for shipping two fictional beings you might have, it's not "good enough" in the eyes of rabid FNDM stannies.

And that really sucks. Shipping is a way for fans to explore the dynamic between characters, expanding on a character they see potential in, or just because they like the way it works. It doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter, because none of it is real and it's for fun. But like I said, the inherent anti culture in the RWBY FNDM coupled with the hypocrisy of its treatment of canon ships exploited by the writers (BB, Arkos, etc.) versus its treatment of fan ships (especially rare ones) are the core issue of shipping in RWBY.

They're just fucking assholes to shippers in the FNDM because it's easier to target them.

And on the matter of Jaune, I'm not surprised. As a former Jaune fan, it's deeply depressing to see this character metamorphosis into the face of FNDM toxicity, especially for the dudebro ultra-masc bullshit that's integrated into every single issue with RWBY's narrative that the stannies refuse to accept. It's sad, but it has come to a point that you have to realize that the show is about Jaune, not the girls, and sure as shit not Ruby.

TLDR: the RWBY FNDM is extremely hypocritical when it comes to shipping as a result of both anti culture and dudebro extremism with Jaune, causing the space to be incredibly hostile to people who just want to vibe and play with pixels.

My advice? Fuck them, do what you want, and block the assholes. YOU, reading this, is a REAL person who has emotions and boundaries, and those should be prioritized over FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. Just be nice and civil to others, and we can all exist.

[borndalemouche]

I think the issue with calling Marius a "white supremacist character" is that 1. We don't have enough information on him in the show yet to know if that in any way applies to him in the show, and 2. If you've not read the books, I don't think you should make definitive statements about them (especially in the main tags for a character) because as you can see from some of the other anons you got, a lot of different subjective opinions feed into the grapevine and warp what you might think is actually in them.

For what it's worth, Marius is a representation (and critique, later) of a specific idea of a European secular enlightenment, which has often been incorporated in part into the frameworks of white supremacist ideas. The character himself is not only this representation, and as a character has a lot more nuance than that, but that's part of what's going on there. For Anne Rice, it was mostly a reflection of her anti-religion ideas, which are a huge part of the books, and especially a huge part of the Marius/Armand dynamic. He mostly represents secularism but in that specific way, and so often quotes from/about him about "civilization" are obviously about religion, and mostly pretty anti-Christian, in the actual context. Doesn't mean it's perfectly written, doesn't mean it doesn't incorporate problematic ideas, just means there's a context.

That's why so many of his fans are easily frustrated by the stuff about him being discussed out of context: its not that he has no issues in the books, but the reasons he does things are really laid out if you've read them. He's a POV character with a lot of characterization built around him. For example, you say he's Celtic, which is a symbol of white supremacy, but a big part of his characterization is also that he just really fucking hates Celts, mostly because of his own specific ideals, which doesn't make you wrong, but hopefully illustrates some of the Marius Fan frustrations.

I get your point nonny.

However, I'd like to make things clearer that I don't think that Marius himself is a white supremacist (if only because the man was indeed born before the concept of race white supremacism is based upon even existed).

I do think that the way his character is portrayed is reminescent of white supremacy motifs. Namely, race purity, colonialism and various references that white supremacists have claimed (like nostalgia for the Roman Empire, celtic symbols, etc.). I'm not saying Anne meant for it to be this way, I'm saying that if you look at it today, through the lens of someone who is aware of these issues, it is something you will probably see. (Whether it is or isn't a result of her own biases as an American white woman can be discussed, but I won't here.)

So, yes. To take a character so heavily white-coded (let's leave behind the supremacy aspect) and to say that a black actor should play him... I do think it's stupid.

[Sidenote: not any black actor, but Giancarlo Esposito whose work I happen to really enjoy and who has time and time again through his career shown his commitment to exploring race relations and portraying Black voices...]

To get back to Marius, I don't claim that he isn't a nuanced character, with justifications for his actions, etc. And, for the record, I also don't think that Marius fans are wrong for liking him. As I said, I wouldn't know, since I haven't read the books.

I'll also add that I understand the frustration of seeing a beloved character be "misunderstood". However, as I've mentioned in previous posts and comments, I am of the belief that a book (or any artwork for that matter) can be read in as many ways as there are readers. Of course, we're all biased and our identities and lifestories impact the way we interpret fiction. That doesn't necessarily mean one interpretation is right over an other.

Still, to get back to the initial point, I don't think he should be played by anyone who is not white. It seems to me like it would be a betrayal of the show’s intentions in regards to adapting TVC. But, once again, even though I admit my initial post was quite categorical, that's just my opinion.

[separatist-apologist]

Your response to my message about WNGOOS was so interesting, and I hope my excitement didn’t come across as pressure, above everything I support authors writing whatever and whenever they feel like!

But it’s enlightening to hear you talk about how gwynriel fans can get pigeon-holed, and it’s strange to think that elucien doesn’t have the same fanaticism attached when we arguably have more canon characterization for both Elian and Lucien than we do for gwyn and az. And maybe that’s why? They’re easier to project upon because they’re more malleable? But at the end of the day, they’re still fictional and I can guarantee that the same folks who disagree with your interpretation of them will likely be disappointed with SJM’s actual canon characterization of them when the time comes too. It’s a good reminder to take all of this less seriously and enjoy the fandom and the fiction and the plotless smut and the smutless plot! And thank you for writing both so prolifically!! I know for one I read every word you write 😂 and will support you whatever you choose to do!

I think this happens in most fandoms, to be fair. A couple VERY well written fanfictions get dropped that are wildly popular, coupled with just the way people view characters and it shapes the interpretation of a character.

I don't think there is anything wrong with this, just for the record. I come from Star Wars and this runs RAMPANT over there. I think even for well established characters (please no one bully me but like, Dramione comes to mind), people create new thoughts and storylines and attempt to stitch motivations together in a way that makes sense. Other people enjoy them, they build upon them, and it becomes very popular (for a reason!), and a lot of people enjoy it.

Again, I don't want to speak negatively about gwynriels because I like both the ship and the people who ship it- and even within ACOTAR I see this. I see interpretations of Elain ALL THE TIME I'm like, cite your SOURCES, but its popular because people like this interpretation of her motivations, her potential, etc etc.

I also want to say that I think gwynriel as a ship feels difficult to write when you consider all the pieces you need to stitch together. They have a LOT of combined trauma that, when I was working on LIBTM, I found really hard to like...give a voice to? I think there are tons of very talented authors who have done a beautiful job with their characters- far better than I ever managed to- and deserve every inch of attention they've gotten.

And with all that out of the way, I do think if you really love a specific vision of a ship, and a person you like who writes a different ship steps in, you might be hoping to see that vision of it, too. I think for gwynriel especially, there is a lot of pressure to make it loving that also once existed in the elucien ship because of the outside criticisms. So we can't make it vaguely toxic, or enemies to lovers, or even tense because folks come in and are like "SEE EVEN THEIR OWN SHIPPERS THINK-" and I want to say that because I think it adds nuance and layers to how some of this happens.

I have done the same thing. Remember Exile? I wasn't afraid of other eluciens coming in mad at me hahaha. I was afraid of the people who stalk this blog 24/7 so they can write another vague I don't care about (but two years ago I cared SO much) (time doesnt it give some perspective) in which they paint with EXTREMELY broad strokes, as if a fanfiction I wrote is somehow speaking on behalf of every single person in the ship. Sometimes you just want to explore a dynamic, you know?

Anyway- all of this to say that I don't blame the people who felt like that, nor am I trying to victimize myself. A lot of my problems exist inside my own head. It would be a lie to pretend I don't want people to like the things I read, but I also get SO nervous when things get popular in a large way because I feel like I can't deliver the things people want and I'm going to let everyone down.

[thehonestcollection]

I've been thinking about this for a long time. In the last few years, I've been lucky enough to participate in several British (fiction and non-fiction) filmmaking and writing schemes. Some of them were excellent and helped hone a lot of what I was interested in. Others were not so great and often, quite a few of us who are POC, noticed how our stories were treated extremely differently. Over the course of the last few years, in making shorts, music videos and other visual materials - what has become clear to me is that there exists a serious faultline with creatives of colonial heritage. We are not afforded the same rights of creativity as our peers, and this isn't just an issue of misunderstanding, there are deep-rooted issues that have never been addressed. British South Asians are more likely to be commissioned to make comedies - despite sharing an exceptionally violent past with the British Empire. One of the reasons nearly every minority group in Britain looks up to Black artists is because they have transcended into a creative space that was never allocated for them, but forged their own way against a system that attempts to stereotype them. The US has a different dynamic, but some things are comparable. Jordan Peele is a great filmmaker, not only because of his works but because he speaks to a type of hauntology, a lost future of creativity by Black and POC creatives that many of us thought would exist but did not manifest. When I was younger I thought there would be a scene for filmmakers to explore our colonial past, afro-futurism, and fictional fantasy that merged these themes with one another within a new wave of talent. This never happened. What we got instead and are currently living through, are executives who are 'interested' in niche and palatable topics that they think garner attention. These films are usually based on white-working class women - as has been the new commissioning trend, by interesting and talented women filmmakers. The other common trope is to engage with LGBT+ cinema and filter the most interesting stories to make them palatable and inorganic. Not only is this disappointing but it can be perceived as insulting and acts as fodder for more people against EDI and 'tick boxing'. Again, what is interesting is that this same attention is not placed on any other POC community. Rye, Lane is an exception and it is a blessing that it got made.

What can be done? We have to create our works, perhaps not exactly how we wanted, but to make sure they exist, and to make sure we talk about them with one another. We must try and carve our own space and our own wave that, unfortunately, has not been and most likely will not be recognised by those who systemically are not attracted or interested in our identity. Pour yourself into your work. Get it made - by the means you have. Ask for help. Be allies. Continue creating.

[winds-of-zephyr416]

It might be a bit petty, but one of my favorite things about angbang is the way it pisses the dudebros and the homophobic purists off. They’re obnoxious about it, but still… buddy. YOU are the one who’s getting worked up here. This ship has been in the fandom for over a decade and isn’t going anywhere, why u mad? Why u sad? U need to go jump in a bubble bath to wash off all the icky fandom gayness?

It’s literally that one meme about frolicking in a field and then suddenly having a random guy yelling and screaming about how nobody should be having fun like that.

On a more serious note, the Thuringwethil thing. Ew. Ugh. That’s really the part of this that elevates it from “sucks, but nothing new“ to “ohh I see. They’re homophobic AND they think the only reason women exist in fiction is for them to get laid! That’s gross!” It bothers the hell out of me because 50% of the population is women, 80% of the people I know are women, some of those writers are probably women, and yet we still have fandom treating women like they’re barely people at all. Especially when they have close ties to another character who just happens to be a man/masculine-presenting. It sucks and I hate it, because, while there are plenty of gay ships interpreted from platonic dynamics, there are basically zero platonic m/f dynamics, anywhere. I want to see friends. I want to see found siblings. I want to see a masculine character and a feminine charcacter be each other’s ride-or-die without anyone shoehorning in a kiss scene. I want stories to be themselves without getting straightness shoved on them like it’s some kind of rite of passage. I want to read fics where a woman and a man can have any dynamic other than “yeah, they’re fucking.” I know men and women who are best friends, I know men and women who are coworkers and nothing else. I know men and women who are romantic partners, but also have friends that they can see without the other getting jealous or worried they’re going to get cheated on. Why can’t we show these things instead of the same five amorous subplots over and over again?

I guess part of the reason stuff like this pisses me off so much is because as a trans guy/enby, I’ve spent my entire life trying to escape these kinds of gender roles that I still don’t even understand. (The autism is probably part of that too). They’re pointless, they’re unrealistic, and the only purpose they serve is to dumb down an entire gender into fanservice and mysoginistic takes. I dunno. Maybe Tolkien wouldn’t like angbang. They’re a gay ship and the dude was a Catholic born in the late 1800s, after all. But judging based on how important he felt the tiniest details of Arda were, and on how he gave characters like Idril, Lúthien, Galadriel, Nerdanel, Haleth, Elwing, Melian, and so many more the ability to think for themselves, I think he would’ve disliked the treatment of his female characters more. Especially since much of it directly misinterprets what’s actually in the book. (Case in point, Melian. No, she was not a selfish and uncaring queen, she was greiving her dead husband who she had been ruling with since before the Sun and Moon. Of course she would react differently than she would as a ruler, the love of her life just got stabbed! To death! Have you ever lost someone you thought you were going to spend eternity with? No? Then how can you dictate the reaction of someone who has?)

Besides, the will of the author is never the deciding factor in fandom, especially not when it’s in speculation. Everything in what I said about how Tolkien would feel could be proven wrong if he were to pop out of the grave one day and say so. But still, would that even matter? Because in this context, the point isn’t what’s in canon or in the author’s mind, the point is what’s in the fandom. And fandom is a space for fun and exploration, not adhering to the book or the author like it’s scripture. Tolkien AND half the fanbase could hate my guts, and I’d still be shipping angbang, writing women like people, and throwing my queer headcanons wherever I see fit. Because it’s fandom, and fandom is for fun.

I saw someone complaining under angbang fancomic about how it's "disrespectful to Tolkien" and "never happened in canon" and blah blah blah, and that fans should stop making everything gay. BUT then they said that both Melkor and Mairon slept with Thuringwethil 🫠Normally I ignore dudebros, but this time it low-key pissed me off.

WHY are you so homophobic AND misogynistic? 😭 We know nothing about Thuri except that she was a vampire and Sauron’s messenger, but she’s also a woman, so it’s suddenly canon that she slept with both Dark Lords??? But when it’s angbang, you can’t even make fanart without getting attacked for it because they both are guys 💀

The same people who complain about how "insufferable" yaoi/yuri shippers are, and that they ruin everything by making platonic relationships gay don't even notice that they do exactly the same thing with platonic m/f relationships. It happens all the time in all fandoms, and hetero shippers are always way more insufferable about it.

A guy and a girl can stand next to each other for five minutes, but people will already assume they’re canon and act like it’s confirmed 🙈

[stardustizuku]

Part 1: The Love Square. Why it worked, and why it failed.

People who aren’t as interested in Magical Girls as I am, specifically Magical Girl Animes with Romance, may not understand why the Love Square was such a big deal. Why it was the core; the life of the series.

Okay, so how many times have you seen a love triangle unfold? Quite many, I must guess. Some really good, and some, uhm, not so much.

In Magical Girl Animes they’re common – and the most popular ones have one very particular dynamic. Let’s run down it, shall we?

Our main character falls in love with another man, someone unreachable, unattainable. It’s someone she genuinely looks up to, and is most likely popular already.

I call this character “The Prince”

In Princess Tutu, it’s Mytho. In Shugo Chara it’s Tadase. In Tokyo Mew Mew it’s Aoyama. Sailor Moon has Motoki Furuhata in Season 1, and Mamoru in Stars.

He is the type of guy you want to fall in love with. Nice, kind, good-natured, a good leader, pretty and everything.

There’s one issue, though. The person who our Main Character’s crush likes is not her, but her alter ego. Mytho is in love with Tutu, not Ahiru, Tadase is in love with Amulet Heart not Amu. The one she becomes thanks to super natural magic.

Then, there’s the opposite. I like to call them the “Rebel” character.

You know who I’m talking about. The Ikuto, the Kishu, the Fakir or even Seiya of the story. They serve to be a contrast to the “Prince”. They’re often times, the only one who gets to see through the MC’s disguise and comes to understand her. “Rebel” characters are rarely in love with alter ego, but instead feel attraction to the MC or the “real one”

These are all fan favourites characters that fall under the “Bad Boy” trope. And for good reason.

Bad boy characters are popular with little girls, teen girls, women or even AFAB people in general since they call out something in our society. There’s very real pressure put forth by either parents or society to adhere to certain gender roles, and what they mean.

In other words, you’re “supposed” to be a good girl.

You have to get good grades, you have to smile all the time, you have to be polite, and you have to play nice. A bad boy character in fiction allows the viewer (in this case and for simplicity) girls to push back or be rebellious in a very safe way.

You don’t have to be good, you’re just following the steps of a bad guy with a heart of gold. He will help you break out of your shell, and be more confident. You get to feel like you’re trying to be the good girl society tells you to be, while finally exploring these darker aspects of your personality.

In YA and more mature books, this can involve anything from trying alcohol, having sex, or allowing oneself to be angry (exploring the “bad” or “not good” emotions AFAB people are always told they shouldn’t have).

But in audiences more aimed towards children, like those in Magical Girl animes, shoujos or tween cartoons, they exist in a more subdued way – although still tapping into this idea of rebellion against the status quo.

That’s why these characters are fan favourites.  

So, to summarize. You have the MC in love with a “Prince” who in turn is in love with the Perfect Girl version of the MC. And a “Rebel” who is in love with the Real Version of the MC, flaws and all.

This particular dynamic is used as a thesis of sorts in any good story. Only by understanding both the real and idolized version of the MC can a man can “win” the love of our protagonist. And only by our MC knowing who she is, what her alter ego means, or how she relates to these dichotomies, can she understand herself.

And really, depending on how each show tackles its themes, it can have different answers. Tokyo Mew Mew offers the idea that the Prince is the correct option, while Princess Tutu says it’s not. Then there’s those with open endings such a Shugo Chara. Again, they use the dynamic, the thesis of their characters, to come to a conclusion that neatly ties to the theme.

Princess Tutu, for example, ties the ideal version of Mytho with the tragedy of a fairytale. Ahiru has to let go to be able to reach a conclusion. In Tokyo Mew Mew Ichigo sees her flaws (the cats ears) as something someone as perfect as Aoyama could never love – yet he shows he isn’t perfect and that he loves her with or without the perceived flaws she has.

That said,

It’s exactly why I loved Miraculous Ladybug when it first aired. It managed to boil down this interesting dynamic into the Love Square. The perfect and the real, the idolized and the true.

Ladybug represents the perfect version of Marinette. Adrien represents the perfect version, while the real one is Chat Noir. Chat was both the “Bad Boy” and the “Prince” all in one. Both Marinette and Adrien were in love with the “Perfect” or Idolized version of each other.

This was something never before seen. It would make for amazing content, right? Explore why we prefer an idolized version of someone, realize that true love means caring even when you’re not perfect. What our perceived “flaws” meant to others, and if they were truly flaws – or if our environment was the one teaching us they were. The possibilities and themes were limitless. We could have had something great-

No.

Sorry, we. We didn’t get that.

What we got were padded episodes, new love interest that refused to deal with this complexity, and a stagnant rship that refuses to explore any of the flaws of their characters - why they’re not perfect, or even a reason why they stay in love

This is why the Love Square fails. This, is the core of why and how it works. People can expand upon this in million different ways, but you inevitably come back to this.

The real and the idolized. The want vs the duty. The expectations and the responsibilities.

Instead of having an episode where Marinette realizes that Adrien isn’t perfect, that he isn’t a model 24/7 or that he has flaws, secrets and fear just like anyone else, we got Kagami.

Instead of Chat realizing that Ladybug isn’t perfect, that she isn’t always composed, that it’s just a persona put forth to feel more in control of a situation, we got Luka.

Both characters that I love, but they bring very little to the themes the Love Square was introducing, to begin with!

More focus should have been put in how these two bounce off each other.

How much better would the story had been if we got to see Marinette and Chat have a conversation? The two very flawed, very real, very confusing version fo these characters, just trying to understand each other.

And by the way, this is exactly why MariChat is the most popular dynamic.

Marinette acts like a girl. Scared, confused, and lonely. She isn’t a hero, she isn’t her perfect version. She is just Marinette. While she can put the mask on, at the end of the day, it’s still just a mask. And Chat? Well, we get to see him. Not the model, not the paper cut out, but a silly kid who wants to break free from a life of imprisonment by the parent who’s supposed to love him.

We get to see something real.

But, unfortunately we do not get that.

Their relationship stays static. The reason for this is a bit obvious.

The writers, to my opinion have come to this bizarre conclusion:

Developing this dynamic would mean changing dynamics, ending the status quo morphing the story into something new. And they assume a “new” means an “end”.

They’re thinking that the endgame is Adrien and Marinette realizing their identities, so they don’t wanna develop it for fear of bringing an ending “too close”.

Say you have 7 seasons prepared, you can't have them find out their identities in season 5 because their reveal should be in season 7. It should be the last couple of episodes even. After that, they'll date and it's over. So better drag this on for seasons on end.

This just proves to me: flawed writing skills and lack of direction.

WHICH wouldn’t surprise me seeing how Chloe ended up.

It is plain bad writing. Changing stuff doesn’t necessarily mean an endgame is near. It just means things are changing.

I’ll be mean to this series and compare it to the Magnus Opus of Magical Girls: Sailor Moon

Sailor Moon got together with Tuxedo mask in the first season, yet the writers were able to up the steaks of their relationship through its 5-season run: Through memory loss, a long distance romance, anxieties of hurting one another, or simply…developing their relationship. People change. And so does how they interact with other people.

These created amazing episodes that highlighted how much Usagi and Mamoru loved and cared for each other. It wasn’t just chance, it wasn’t just fate. This took work, it took time, and it took trust. This wasn’t something so easily lost. That’s why SailorMoonStars hits the hardest.

In the very last season, Usagi is in a long distance rship with Mamoru. And it breaks her. We see that she misses him, dealing with the turmoil of him not answering her messages. She’s devastated, seeking comfort in other people, but unable to forget him. Not even as Seiya begs her to take him instead of Mamoru, can she bring herself to give him up– because they’ve been together for a long, long time. And we’ve seen that.

We see her reminiscent. We see her break down and cry because he hasn’t called her. We see her thinking of him when she’s with Seiya. We see her be in love with him and we see how much it affected her that he’s ignoring her.

And by the last few episodes, we get a payoff. We find out Mamoru is dead, and that he died confident that Usagi would be strong enough to protect the Earth in his stead. That he believed in her, and he thought of her until the moment he died - uttering her name as the last thing he could do.

That’s why when Sailor Moon defeats Sailor Galaxia, the woman who killed the man she loved, through purification and not violence – it all feels right.

It’s a very simple but powerful story, packaged in 45 episodes. With enough room to breathe, digest it, but not drawn out enough for it to be annoying.

All this, when the relationship was already established. We could have had something like this in Miraculous Ladybug, if the writers WERENT drawing out the reveal and get together until the very last second!

ChatBlanc could have been an AMAZING multi-episode mini-arc.

No time-travel thing. They find their identities, they date for a few episodes, something goes horribly wrong, and Marinette has to find a way to fix the mistakes she's made. Much like Sailor Moon R.

Maybe by the end of it, she fixes it but sacrifices most of her memories. The only thing she recalls is that she knew Chat's identity, Paris almost got destroyed, and that leads to her putting distance between them.

Or maybe one day she wakes up with the memories of Chat Blanc and spends and entire season trying to know what happened, and when she does, she's horrified.

Idk, million amazing things could have been done with this episode to further develop these two's relationship. Complex, interesting, beautiful things.

But no. Because, apparently, thinking of love post-reveal is too much. Instead, we watch them run and run in circles. Chat Blanc was a single episode, and half of it was time travel shenanigans.

And all of this, just because the writers don’t actually know what they want to do with the love square. So they add new rivals, new teams, new accessories, side plots - all to avoid touching the actual core of what made the series great.

It strongly reminds me of Star vs. in that scenario the creators also weren’t sure where to take the show.

It wasn’t until season 2 where they started the subplot of Star realizing Mewni colonized Monsters that it started having a sense of self. And it showed in the romantic subplot, which was all over the place. They didn’t know what they wanted, so the romance in that show was a mess. Lack of direction and intention, aside from the knowledge that Star and Marco were the end game

I personally don’t hate Star vs. I don’t like how it handled romance but I will give it much leeway because the actual plot of Intergenerational conflict and coming to terms with the harm your ancestors have done to others - is quite compelling and not something I see tackled often.

But Miraculous does not get that. Its episodic plot is simple and refuses to get into the murky waters of its own premise.

The only thing it had going was The Love Square. Because I assure you, very few people give a crap about the Miraculous being stolen.

So, their lack of willingness was the first thing to ruin the Love Square. Fine.

But it’s not the nail on the coffin. The real reason why this suffered, was something that happened waaaay before all this.

Because one thing that the show refused to explore up until late into season 3 and start of season 4 was the specific parts of the “Ladybug” character. What I mean is, what “ideal self” she is as “Ladybug”. And how her existence affects Marinette. This is the fundamental flaw that issss...

PREV << MASTERLIST >> NEXT

[whatudottu]

Me thinking about electrical compression and aliens again has led me to think about another repeat biology subject of the amperi, and how I can explain wire travel in a (still fictional) logical way- find out next now how that turns out!

You know, after I have posted multiple other stuff between this being completed and this actually being posted-

One thing that I tend to do when considering amperi biology is that they need to be a little moist (apologies for the word) in order to breathe, but to take more inspiration from jellyfish - surprisingly the actual inspiration for amperi (probably because you couldn’t exactly design constantly transparent characters in animated tv) - and say that physically a lot of their main body is made from this moisture. Unlike jellyfish it’s not quite water, rather it’s a conductive fluid that actually contains a lot of electrochemical signals akin to a nervous system. This in particular is a biological reason why emotion reading is part of amperi languages - communication is done through the excretion and dispersal of this nervous system in water - and why the now ‘surrounded by emotion chemicals’ Ra’ad due to his undiscovered psychometry mutation was constantly overwhelmed, overstimulated, and overcome with anxiety.

And it’s this excretion that actually plays a language role too, essentially being practically REQUIRED in communication especially with how in water it spreads out. A reason why in the air amperi are a little damp is because excretion is a constant (but consistent) autonomic function, like conductive sweat that contains so many messages, though in surface environments it does make communication difficult. Partly the reason why Ra’ad finds himself preferring land, even if either way he’d still need to wear some damp robes when a dry season hits; it beats having to wear one everytime in the ocean with the cultural equivalent connotation of constantly wearing a balaclava though-

And all this ‘filled with goo’ stuff doesn’t mean that amperi have a true main body under their skin (that’s for @ohyeahben10 ‘s Ultimate Ampfibian) but it DOES mean that if an amperi were to perhaps compress themselves to a smaller ‘fit through the neck of a bottle’ size, they build up a charge and in fact begin to conduct electricity. It’s an adaptation for both offence and defence, either being used in constricting tentacles to electrocute prey and victims through excretion and consequent conduction of their electrochemical gel or - a way we will explore in depth next - electrifying predators and assailants using complete compression and slipping between teeth, gills, blowholes, and/or grasp, leaving a trail of ‘lightning’ in escape.

That’s right baby I’ve finally figured out how to logic my way around wire walking!

I’ve mentioned a few times that I think amperi have a bone in them, often referring to he more literal bone like structure in cuttlefish rather than the flexible structure inside of a squid called a gladius or pen, the squid of course being the basis of my ‘this exists in real biology’ inspiration. In fact, perhaps this gladius will serve to fit much better with the amperi, as it’s role in Earth squids is to serve as protection of visceral organs and an attachment for very important muscle groups; I say, grinning into the camera as if I were a villain thinking of something dastardly.

With this gladius, not only does it serve as a base for the important muscle groups of compression - a complicated dynamic of contracting muscles to reduce size and expanding pores to excrete the mucus they adapted for - but in amongst the visceral organs (from a list of few includes the very important heart) there is a very valued organ that in fact produces its conductive gel, sitting nice and comfortable against the brain where these electrochemical signals translate into commands ether somatic or autonomic. As the muscles contract using the gladius as it’s base it in fact squeezes the perfectly placed organ that disperses this electrochemical as if along a highly distributed nervous system and in fact carries with it charge, charge that conducts to whatever purpose the amperi compresses with.

It is that same conductivity that amperi naturally are that allows them wire and cable transportation, since it is a high energy mode of travel for a significantly reduced body size. In a great grand ocean of vast expanses it’s less effective than the semi-compression of weaponry and desperate compression of ‘please don’t eat me’, or the less desperate semi-compression of electric inking; too much energy for too little time, it’s like trying to sprint across the country.

But in areas with a denser population with specific infrastructure built as the amperi equivalent for public transportation or perhaps at a more basic level a bike lane, literal cable travel is developed around the idea of being high energy fast travelling short distance trips. In ocean cities or towns in close proximity to them, think like if internet cables along the ocean floor were filled with people going to work or school or just going out for lunch. On the land where a lot of the metalworking is literally landlocked to be in as dry of air as it can in order to smith, there are powerlines that provide local traffic for any surface towns or workplaces, but you also get a few more uh trespassers along the lines because a not insignificant number of people live on the surface as hermits away from the ocean and many lines are mainly for transit companies.

From personal experience of accidentally walking through my local transit worksite (fuck you google maps) finding that I’m on the wrong side of a tollgate, sometimes where you need or want to go, the fastest route just so happens to be through the company lines.

On Earth, because the only reason we have internet cables and powerlines is because we use them as - well - powerlines and internet cables, it’s not as if an amperi runaway who’s lost and afraid far from whatever he might’ve called familiar if not quite the home he wanted it to be has any real societal understanding that Earth is the American transportation system of Tesslos, Ra’ad just takes the lines and is internally horrified that they lead directly into houses on occasion.

And I think that’s it for wire walking lmao- this was meant to be posted after I rambles about petrosapien nervous systems but yeet yeet!

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don��t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

[acequinz]

If you read properly you would have noticed that the snide is not bout enjoying JL with WWX and LWJ dynamic since I actually like that one myself but people who harass others because they are playing with fictional characters the wrong way

Which I have no qualms about doing.

So if the shoe fits.

And the canon JC tag yeah that one is on me. A mis-click there my bad.

Now coming to the main topic. You do understand that one novel can have multiple interpretations and while Jiang Cheng's actions are very solid people may interpret his reasons and emotions differently which is completely fair because to each their own.

And if people want to explore things going a certain way, whether they call it au/headcanon/fanfic they should be allowed to do that without someone else screaming in their face because they think only they have the right answers, which obviously isn't possible cause there's no right answer in fiction, just interpretations and feelings.

Now if we took out the understanding of emotions part then you would have to take it out of both parts. It does not matter why JC did what he did then it would also not matter why or how WWX did what he did.

So Jin Ling getting along with WWX as besties would have about the same chance as LSZ getting along with JC.

But then again that does not matter.

Because fictional characters are essentially dolls people play with. Headcanons do not affect canon and so people can have as many weird headcanons as they want.

They can have modern au headcanons as well. It's supposed to be good fun.

So why the fuck do other people feel entitled to harassing others?

Like you have been purposely trying to twist my words to mean something they don't. When all I meant was that it's hypocritical to harass people for things you yourself are doing?

Are you unable to read properly and need to jump through multiple hoops to bring up deep hatred where it does not exist? (That refers to my post by the way, because there's no hate, just minor annoyance since I block people anyway. Just in case you would try to add context that does not exist here.)

It's so funny seeing people who get mad JC getting along with juniors headcanons. (Specifically the JC getting along with Sizhui headcanons)

Who then later turn around and headcanon Jin Ling getting along with either Wei Wuxian or Lan Wangji.

Not that it's wrong or bad or whatever but like... The Hypocrisy is Hypocrisy-ing.

Enjoy all the dynamics you like but don't bitch about it when others do it.

[venhedish]

In light of a certain wincest-adjacent blocklist making the rounds and some friends of mine getting smacked with the purity hammer, I have things to say for anyone who would like to listen!

In my experience, antis are more concerned with the rush they get from being angry and feeling morally superior than they are with actually engaging critically with us, the text, or themselves to understand why they feel the way they feel.

This is not actually about the incest thing and it never has been. Incest in the SPN fandom is being used as a dog-whistle to draw a dividing line between us and them, and it’s that shitty black-and-white thinking that tons of young people are falling victim to because it’s wrapped up with a bow that presents a neat little package: incest bad. We can all agree on that, can’t we? But what’s so insidious is that this new-Victorian purity movement is only cloaked in a signifier of moral purity. What it actually is is a giant, authoritarian flag waving in the air, inviting the anti-intellectual to join together behind a concept that sounds righteous on the surface but is actually being used to bully, harass, and harm people who are often already marginalized out of their own communities.

One thing to look out for in particular that absolutely fascinates me is the way language is used as an exclusionary, self-selective force that reinforces these boundaries. Go to any one of the big heller/anti-wincest blogs and look at the way they talk to each other. To be clear, almost all groups will eventually start developing a shorthand that makes them easily identifiable to each other, but sometimes I’ll check out that side of tumblr and legitimately feel like we’re speaking two different languages.

This is a really common thing that happens with political and religious movements and it’s happening here for similar reasons! If you’re on the fringes of fandom and you like destiel and you join tumblr or twitter or wherever these communities are active and you do a search for your ship, you’ll find some blogs that seem really cool and have interesting stuff to say, but they’re full of in-jokes and weird terms and meme language. And because you want to fit in—to understand the community you’re joining—you dive deeper, you search back through history and pick up pieces here and there until you finally get it. And by that point, you’ve basically indoctrinated yourself. You’re doing their work for them, essentially.

This kind of thing is done on purpose for two reasons: it helps to signify that people using this language have passed a litmus test that proves this person is one of us, and it makes it harder for the outsider to engage with you on even footing. I mean, this sounds fucking ridiculous, but how the fuck is an intellectually honest person supposed to engage critically with someone who attacks them by calling them J*red-kin??? (I just made that up but I can 100% imagine a heller using it as an insult). I’m not saying this is done on purpose in the SPN fandom. I mean, maybe a little by people who are shit-stirring on purpose, but this kind of thing just happens and it’s very hard to catch on to. We’re all guilty of it. Language is crazy flexible and always shifting and we flex and shift with it as popular phrases come and go.

Look, all I’m saying is that if you actually think about the response to wincest from the heller community, you realize how flimsy their platform really is. Reading and writing about fictional brothers fictionally fucking each other harms no one, and anyone with a brain who actually cares knows this! That’s why the anti-wincest crowd isn’t citing articles or research about the dangers of portraying incest in fiction – because they don’t exist! We can, of course, talk about the impact that uneven power dynamics in real life incestuous relationships have on victims of such abuse, how most people who are sexually abused are abused by a family member, how to be aware of grooming techniques and watch out for red flags that point towards abusive behavior. But we don’t! Because that’s 👏 not 👏 what 👏 it’s 👏 about 👏

Instead, it’s just an overflowing bandwagon jammed full of empty ideas and a lot of people getting hurt because of it. Innocent – let me say it again: INNOCENT people who are exploring sexuality, trauma, relationship dynamics, and just plain old having a good time minding their own business in an ethically safe and victimless way are being threatened and harassed and told to die. Wonder which one is actually more damaging and morally bankrupt. 🤔

Anyway, imagine a world where the purity police got their way. There’d basically be no safe literature left. Nabokov? Cancelled. Rushdie? Salinger? Ginsberg? All cancelled. Imagine antis whole-cloth discarding hundreds of years of religious tradition because of all the shit the gods got up to! This is the same line of thinking that made a generation of moms believe that violent video games led to real-world violence. Fiction has never, ever, been meant to only tell pure stories. The whole world of literature would be narrowed down to, like, a couple cautionary tales and picture books if anti culture could somehow actually reach the inevitable praxis of its desire. 

Taboos have always been sexy. It’s okay to explore them through the medium of fiction. It’s literally the safest, most ethically responsible thing you can do. Please, please don’t let a functionally illiterate hive-mind convince you otherwise!

For an amazing resource to learn more about anti culture and how troubling it is, check out @freedom-of-fanfic. It’s an awesome blog to browse if you’re even a tiny bit interested in this kind of thing!

[the-path-to-redemption]

hiiii i'm here with my last anon message (❀´ ˘ `❀)

i don't think i'll finish RWBY for the time being... i'm halfway through volume 9 and my head is spinning ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) this is just like An Oriental Odyssey, but from the USA!

both:

* have pretty solid writing for the first half and clear expectations, then goes crazy

* develop ok ship only to tear it apart

* main antagonist is bad because their lover died

* many plot twists without any foreshadowing/contradictory foreshadowing

* purest character dies twice and comes back from the dead

* starts as magical realism but SUDDENLY MAGIC!! WOWIES MAGIC DOES EXIST??

* love triangles

* canon ships are bad and the notion of love is twisted and abusive

* fans of the work treat you like an idiot because you don't understand the brilliance of the work

* no subtlety at all

* characters not growing and falling into the same pitfalls

i was halfway season 5 when i realized (˃̣̣̥ᯅ˂̣̣̥) i was cheated!! but i immediately thought, "well, the writers must be young too" then i checked and they were way older than me!! .·°՞(˃ ᗝ ˂)՞°·. double cheated!!

what can you expect from beginner writers... but the designs... _(:‚‹」∠)_

i guess Adam's death didn't shock me (i saw spoilers...) as much as how bad the pairings are!! when Renora started showing signs i had to take a break by reading two whole mangas before going back to it. i thought we finally had good girl/boy friendship!!（ꐦ𝅒_𝅒）what do you mean Ren raised her and they're both in love but Ren doesn't speak his feelings for some reason so Nora had to force a kiss on him?! everything was too creepy!! ���

(ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ ┻━┻ didn't we have enough with Jaune and Pyrrha?! and suddenly Blake starts slapping Sun around... Bumbleby is ok but i thought this was a sapphic show!! where are my sapphics?! (╯'□')╯︵ ┻━┻

i could rant about many things but the general vibe i got was "ah, everything feels very creepy and cruel somehow" since season 4. i don't know how to explain it... i felt like i was seeing hell for the characters besides the actual problems (•﹏•;) it might be my trauma from An Oriental Odyssey but who knows...

either way this will be my last anon message ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ i need a break from RWBY... i want to do fanarts, but i'm still too shocked (￣◇￣;) thank you for reading my messages and accompanying me through this odyssey journey!! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡₊˚⊹♡ if i come back, i'll definitely come back with a blog!! ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧ stay strong friend!! wishing you good health and lots of money and love!! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

Hello again!! It's so nice to see you, anon! Please take your time if you're coming back with a blog, and take care!

Long Post Ahead

I have not seen An Oriental Odyssey, but I might actually check it out now just to see because I enjoy xianxia/wuxia lol. But from what you said, I will be keeping a low expectation for the series if it shares that much similarities with RWBY.

I will also say that I'm personally fine with darker topics being explored in fictional work; my only requirements are that they're portrayed with proper research and with content warnings so that I know what will be included in the narrative (Banana Fish and Scum Villain's Self Saving System are two of my favorite series, with both containing very dark topics). In the case of RWBY, dark topics such as abusive relationships and cruelty in dynamics were not only very sloppily written, the writers refuse to even acknowledge how bad it is along with the FNDM (eg. Blacksun and Renora).

There's a lack of accountability when it comes to how they portray such topics, and even expecting us to think of it as a good thing without even giving us a choice to decide that ourselves. The writers blamed their animation team for the slap when criticism of it arise, and continues to not take abuse very seriously outside of the caricature portrayal of such things with Adam.

And yes, the writers are old enough to know better. They've been writing this series for more than ten years, which should have given them enough time to grow as both creatives and people, but I've also learned that age does not always equal maturity. M*les himself has once said a racial slur against African Americans when he was 26, and called the character Tifa Lockhart from the FF7 Remake game a prostitute for the way she looks and dressed, even though everyone knows that she is the primary inspiration for Yang. With such a person on the writing team, let alone leading it, it's no wonder a lot of RWBY's morals feels extremely juvenile and lackluster.

The matter of age when it comes to creating things aren't always attached to age, it's about how dedicated the creators are to their projects, which RWBY has not been for quite a while now.

Moving onto the matters of ships and their dynamic, yes I was disappointed with Renora as well. Just a correction though, Ren didn't really raised Nora; it's more like they took care of each other when they lost their families, with Ren taking more responsibility for them while Nora supports him emotionally. However, the relationship starts to sour (for me at least) was when Nora lost her emotional maturity and intelligence to basically invalidates Ren's turmoils. Forcing him to talk when he's not having a good time, forcing a kiss on him, then proceed to blame Ren for the relationship falling apart even though he tried to be rational in a crisis. She became extremely nasty as a person that I don't want to see her near Ren anymore for his own well-being!

This isn't uncommon in RWBY... every relationship (romantic or otherwise) are very shallow and disappointing. It's even worse when it comes to LGBT+ romance, because RWBY did not start or continued as a sapphic-friendly show. Blacksun was baited for years, until the writers saw that Bumbleby brings them more traction despite having very little believable hints that these two would ever be in a relationship with each other, even if you don't look at the very problematic elements of it (again, I don't mind such ships, I just dislike how these two are heralded as "cute and good" when the foundation of their romance is so toxic and they're stripped of their other personality traits).

Sapphic ships in RWBY (or just LGBT+ representations in general) are either for marketing purposes or shoddy afterthoughts. The writers were never going to treat such representations seriously because they themselves do not treat real life LGBT+ individuals with respect. If you go into the research of how Rooster Teeth's queer employees are treated, you will find the account of Kdin Jenzen being abused, hate crimed for being trans and fired by the company without aid. You're better off watching The Owl House, or even any queer manga out there.

Thank you again for the ask and reading my ramblings haha. Whatever it is you do going forward, I hope you have fun and stay safe! If we do meet again, I look forward to seeing your art! It was fun, and I wish you an abundance of wealth and love as well! Bye bye, anon! <3