#dimensional stability

[cylexplastics]

POM Precision Machining Techniques: How to Achieve High Dimensional Stability

Polyoxymethylene (POM), commonly known as acetal or Delrin, is a high-performance engineering plastic widely used in precision components. Achieving high dimensional stability in POM machining requires careful consideration of material properties, machining parameters, and post-processing techniques. In this guide, we’ll explore the key factors that influence dimensional stability and provide…

[quandaplastic]

Mechanical properties and application scenarios of FR4 epoxy glass fiber board

In the electronics industry, printed circuit boards (PCBs) are core components that connect various electronic components, and their quality and performance are directly related to the stability and reliability of the entire electronic equipment. In the manufacturing process of PCBs, the selection of substrate materials is particularly critical. FR4 epoxy glass fiber board, as a widely used PCB…

[cologona]

Jason Todd pit madness except that Ra’s was right and the forces that resurrected Jason (super boy punch glitter) really did interact with the pit weirdly, so the result isn’t typical pit madness or even run of the mill berserker rage. Jason literally just glitches out sometimes, temporarily taking on the characteristics of other characters not himself. In Brothers in Blood it was Tad Ryerstad. In BFTC it was Azrael. By the time Batman & Robin rolled around Jason’s existence was destabilized to the point that he was even glitching into his pre-crisis self.

[fiapple]

literally, i love nami so much, you do not even understand. you cannot begin to fathom.

[lowrisemiller]

ꜰɪᴇʟᴅ ᴛᴇꜱᴛ

you can imagine whichever Reed you want ;)

reed richards x assistant!fem!reader

you're reed richards’ long-suffering lab assistant. brilliant in your own right, you handle everything from data entry to inter-dimensional rift control. you’ve been nursing a hopeless crush on him for months. the man can design a quantum field stabilizer in his sleep, but he’s absolutely blind to the way you touch his shoulder a beat too long or always bring him his favorite coffee without asking. how could someone so brilliant be so stupid when it came to people?

masterlist | 4.7k words | MDNI SMUT | reed neglecting basic things bc scientist duh, reader(me) is DOWN BAD, reed is oblivious to everything that isn’t science, finger & oral f!receiving, reed stretching things, him being a nerd while eating ur pussy😍 unprotected piv sex DONT DO THAT ! aftercare:)

The lab was quiet, except for the soft scribble of pen on paper and the low, constant hum of equipment Reed swore was essential, even if it sounded like white noise to everyone else. You sat perched at your workstation, chin resting in your palm, eyes drifting from your screen to the man pacing ten feet away—muttering under his breath, brow furrowed, fingers twitching.

You’d seen that look a hundred times.

It meant he was close to a breakthrough.

It also meant you could scream I want you in morse code and he wouldn’t register it.

You sighed, clicking your pen against your notebook. He didn’t glance up. Not even when you shifted in your seat and stretched in a way that was definitely for his benefit.

Ten months.

That’s how long you’d worked beside him—helping with calculations, organizing lab notes, fending off media inquiries, even stopping one of his machines from literally catching fire last Tuesday. You’d poured yourself into this job. You knew his schedule better than he did. You brought him his coffee the exact way he liked it. You wear that plum lipstick because he’d once said it was a “pleasing wavelength” for visual stimulation.

He hadn’t looked twice.

You weren’t just harboring a crush at this point. No, this had evolved into something much more volatile—an emotional chemical reaction waiting for a catalyst.

And Reed? Reed was… oblivious.

Gorgeous, brilliant, maddeningly unbothered Reed Richards. With his rolled-up sleeves and distracted glances, the way he chewed on pens when deep in thought, the offhand compliments he gave without realizing they were compliments—“Your spatial reasoning is exceptional,” he’d said once, looking at your notes. You’d practically melted.

Now he stood a few feet away, talking to himself like always. You watched the way his hands gestured mid-air, sketching invisible shapes.

“Frustrated with the equations?” you asked, keeping your tone light.

“No, no. Just… considering variable Y’s response under quantum fluctuation,” he murmured, barely registering your voice. “Though I suppose an extra set of eyes wouldn’t hurt.”

He handed you the clipboard and your fingers brushed. He didn’t even flinch. Your heart did.

You took it wordlessly, biting the inside of your cheek. How could someone so brilliant be so stupid when it came to people?

Maybe that was unfair. Reed wasn’t cruel, or cold. He was kind in his own absent-minded way. But he had tunnel vision—for science, for discovery. He didn’t notice the things that didn’t present themselves in a neat, testable format.

Like how you lingered in his orbit.

Or how your eyes followed him when he wasn't looking.

Or how sometimes, after long days, you fantasized about climbing into his lap right in that damn desk chair and making him pay attention.

Your pen scratched against the clipboard now, pretending to read the data while you watched him from the corner of your eye. He was back to pacing, lips moving silently. His sleeves were pushed up again, exposing strong forearms, veins prominent, hands twitching like he needed to do something with them.

God, you were losing it.

You placed the clipboard down. “You ever think maybe the problem isn’t quantum fluctuation, Reed? Maybe it’s just human error.”

He blinked and turned. “Are you suggesting I made a mistake?”

“I’m saying maybe if you took your head out of the wormhole generator long enough to eat or sleep or…” You paused. Look at me.

“…notice things, you’d think clearer.”

He looked like he might ask what “things” you meant. But instead, he turned back to his calculations, nodding. “Duly noted.”

You stared at his back, silent for a moment. And that’s when the thought struck you: He’s never going to see it unless you make him.

He would go the rest of his life chasing black holes and entropy and would never realize the way you burned for him—not unless you showed him.

Your pulse skipped.

Your patience is snapping.

You were going to be an anomaly he couldn’t ignore.

It was a new day, but nothing had changed.

Reed was still buried in data, half-dressed in a rumpled button-down he probably hadn’t noticed had two buttons mismatched. His hair was slightly damp, like he'd showered ten minutes before walking into the lab and immediately got lost in thought again. You stood at your usual station, sipping lukewarm coffee and pretending not to glance over at him every thirty seconds.

You weren’t pretending very well.

This was your fourth twelve-hour day this week, and you’d long since passed the phase where your crush felt cute. It was heavier now—dense, loaded with tension you had nowhere to put. Not when he kept looking right through you, offering praise only when it was tied to data points or completed tasks.

Today, he barely looked up when you walked in, just said, “Morning,” like you were air and math and all the other constants in his life.

You sat your coffee down a little too hard.

“Sleep okay?” you asked, typing with one hand as you glanced toward him. His back was to you as he scribbled across the whiteboard.

“Didn’t,” he replied casually. “The formula’s been looping in my head since 2 a.m.”

Of course it had.

You nodded to yourself, refocusing on your notes—but your brain wasn't on line graphs. It was on how his voice sounded deeper in the mornings. Rough. Scraped thin. It was on how he'd rolled his sleeves again, unconsciously, like he was giving you just enough to fantasize about but never enough to touch. It was on how he’d leaned over your shoulder the day before, close enough to make you forget your own name, then pulled away without even noticing how stiffly you sat for five minutes after.

You were starting to feel stupid.

Or worse—transparent.

You tugged at the edge of your shirt, adjusting it subtly, then pushed your chair back.

“Reed,” you said after a moment, tone careful.

He glanced up.

You hesitated. You could say it. “Do you ever think about me when we’re not in this lab?” Or even just “Do you notice when I’m trying to get your attention?” But all that left your mouth was:

“…Do you want lunch?”

He blinked. “No, thanks.”

You smiled tightly and nodded. “Okay.”

A long beat passed before he added, “You should eat, though. Your concentration dips if you skip meals.”

That nearly made you laugh. He didn’t notice your new lipstick or the way you leaned closer when talking, but he noticed a dip in your concentration?

“Noted,” you muttered, turning away. Your heart was starting to feel like an overworked computer—on the verge of burnout.

Still, you stayed.

He asked you to help calibrate a device and you did, even though his hands grazed yours and he didn’t seem to feel it. You reorganized his notes for the hundredth time and he said, “I’d lose my head without you.” Your stomach flipped, and you cursed yourself for letting it.

Eventually, the day wore on. The lights buzzed overhead. He worked in silence. And you sat across from him, eyes on your computer screen but brain nowhere near it.

You weren’t going to say anything today. You weren’t ready. But you were closer.

You were watching him more intentionally now. Watching how he moved. Noticing when he forgot to eat, when his jaw clenched at a miscalculation, when he sighed like the weight of the universe had settled into his spine.

And more importantly… you were starting to plan.

Because if Reed Richards wasn’t going to notice you on his own, maybe it was time you made it impossible for him not to.

You started small.

A hand on his shoulder when you passed behind him—just a light touch, fingers lingering a little longer than necessary. A compliment you slid in while reviewing his data aloud. Your tone didn’t change, but your eyes watched his face this time, looking for any flicker of reaction.

Still, nothing overt.

But you were a scientist too, in your own way. You knew not all reactions happened in the open.

So you adjusted variables.

Today, you wore something just a touch more fitted under your lab coat. Nothing flashy. Just subtle. Intentional. Your lips were glossed in a soft cherry sheen and you had your hair tucked behind one ear, leaving your neck bare when you leaned over your notes.

You didn’t say much when you came in. Just a soft, “Morning, Reed,” as you brushed past him to your desk. He looked up. Briefly. His eyes caught on your profile, then flicked back to his screen. But there was… a beat. Just long enough to file away.

You smirked, barely.

He worked for hours, absorbed as usual. But today, you noticed something.

His eyes flicked to you more than once.

Quick glances. Measured. Like he was calculating a change in the room’s atmosphere. Like he felt something different but hadn’t yet assigned it meaning.

When he handed you a tablet to review notes, your fingers touched—warm, steady. This time, he paused.

Just for a second.

Not long enough to be certain of anything. But long enough to make your heart thud against your ribs.

You gave him a slow smile. “Thanks.”

He blinked and muttered, “Of course,” then turned away like he needed to recalibrate.

You kept working. Quiet. Focused.

But later—when you reached for a beaker on the shelf above his head—he stood behind you, offering, “Let me.”

You turned, close enough that your chest brushed his arm as you stepped aside.

He stilled.

You looked up at him, wide-eyed, like it wasn’t completely on purpose. “Thanks.”

His gaze flicked down. A flicker of something behind those eyes. He handed you the beaker wordlessly, but his jaw was set. Not tight. Just… aware.

There it is.

It wasn’t much. A subtle shift in the lab’s atmosphere. But it was enough to keep your spine humming, your thoughts racing.

You’d pushed the threshold.

And Reed felt it.

It happened again.

Reed forgot what he was saying mid-sentence. You were across the room, head bent over your tablet, pencil in your mouth, lab coat slipping slightly off your shoulder. His sentence just… stopped. Hung in the air unfinished.

And for once, he noticed you noticing.

You looked up slowly, eyebrows raised like well?

“I—” he cleared his throat, adjusting his collar. “Never mind.”

You bit back a smile.

Another day in the lab. Another carefully applied variable. You weren’t loud about it. Just present. Vivid. A little perfume on your wrist. Lip gloss again. A comment here and there, perfectly timed to stick in his head.

“Careful,” you murmured when he bumped into the desk beside you. Your voice was soft. A little amused. “You almost ran me over.”

He looked down at you, flustered. “Sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

Liar.

You knew he had near-total environmental awareness. Reed Richards didn’t miss anything. But lately, he missed a lot—because he was looking at you and then pretending he hadn’t.

You kept it casual. Calculated.

You’d brush past him with a hand on his back, stand just a little too close while looking at the same screen, ask questions in that tone you saved for only him.

He was unraveling slowly. Quietly.

You caught him watching once—when you walked away to grab a coffee. His gaze dropped to your hips and stayed for three full seconds before jerking back to the screen like he'd been slapped.

You pretended not to see. But your grin behind your coffee cup was downright smug.

Later that day, he dropped a tool and you crouched down to grab it first. When you stood and handed it back to him, your fingers touched. He held on a little too long.

You tilted your head, teasing. “Forget what you needed it for?”

He blinked down at your joined hands and pulled back sharply. “No. Sorry. I—”

He coughed. “I’m distracted.”

You didn’t say anything.

You didn’t need to.

By now, you knew the exact cadence of his footsteps when he was deep in thought. The slow, uneven rhythm that meant he was pacing without realizing it, caught in his own mental spiral.

You could hear them behind you now—soft thuds on the concrete floor of the lab. Reed Richards, brilliant, infuriating man, walking through formulas with half his shirt untucked and his fingers twitching at his sides. His muttering was barely audible over the hum of the machines, but you caught bits of it:

“Non-linear increase… No, that’s not right. Unless…”

You didn’t look up. Not yet.

Instead, you sat at your workstation, half-focused on the screen in front of you, legs crossed slowly under the table—exposed just enough to draw the eye if someone were finally looking.

And he was.

Reed had been distracted for days now. You saw it in the way his gaze lingered when you bent forward to check wiring. The way his voice wavered slightly when you spoke too close to his ear. The way he’d started pausing in his work like something had thrown off the trajectory of his thought process—and that something was you.

It was working.

He still hadn’t named the tension, but it was eating at him.

So today, you’d decided: no more hints. No more tests.

You were going to prove it to him in a way he couldn’t ignore.

You stood slowly, walked to the central console where he was now bent over a string of data projections, brows furrowed. He didn’t notice you at first—not until you placed a hand lightly on the edge of the table next to his.

His voice faltered. “The waveform collapse pattern could still—”

You leaned in just enough that your shoulder brushed his. “Still what?”

He straightened slightly, blinking at the screen like it had betrayed him.

Your voice was quieter this time. “You’ve been off lately, Reed.”

He turned his head, barely. “Off?”

You tilted your head. “Distracted.”

He opened his mouth, closed it. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

You hummed. “I know. But I’m starting to think the problem isn’t in your equations.”

That got his attention. His eyes flicked to yours, guarded. “What do you mean?”

You let the silence hang for a moment. Then:

“I think the thing disrupting your work… is me.”

Reed went still. His lips parted slightly, but no words came out. He was computing. Processing. Trying to refute it. But his body betrayed him—his hand clenched on the table, his gaze briefly darting to your mouth before jerking away.

“I’m not—” he started. “You’re not a disruption.”

You smiled softly. “Then why do you keep looking at me like you’re afraid of what happens if you do it too long?”

He looked stunned. Then—guilty.

You took a breath, slow and steady. This was it.

“I’ve tried everything,” you said. “The lipstick. The touching. Standing so close you could feel my breath.” You leaned in, lower now, voice like silk. “And still, nothing.”

Reed was frozen in place.

“I think,” you continued, “that you’re just waiting for someone to spell it out.”

You stepped back, slowly, and hopped up onto the edge of the table in front of him—knees parted, one leg brushing his thigh. You leaned back on your hands, tilting your head like a challenge.

“Well, Reed?” you asked softly. “Do you need a demonstration?”

His pupils were blown wide. His breath caught. And his hands—god, his hands—hovered like he didn’t know where to touch first.

“You…” he said hoarsely. “You’re serious.”

You nodded, lips curled into a smile. “You want to calculate the pattern? Fine. Let’s start with some field data.”

You reached forward and took his hand—placed it firmly on your thigh.

He made a strangled sound. His fingers flexed. “This is… highly inadvisable.”

“Why?” you whispered, leaning forward so your lips nearly brushed his. “Because you’ve thought about it?”

His jaw clenched. “Yes.”

Your breath hitched.

“Every day this week,” he rasped, voice low now, broken open. “I’ve tried to ignore it. Tried to focus. But I’m… I’m failing. Every time you walk by me. Every time you touch me. I—” He shook his head. “I can’t think when you’re near.”

You dragged his hand a little higher, slow, teasing. “Good. Don’t think.”

And that’s when Reed snapped.

He surged forward, kissing you hard, like he’d been starving for air and only just found it. His hands were everywhere—gripping your waist, sliding up your sides, tugging your lab coat open like it was a barrier to understanding.

You moaned against his mouth, arms around his shoulders, legs parting instinctively as he stepped between them. He kissed like a man undone—like every theory he’d ever held was shattering under your touch.

“You have no idea,” he breathed against your neck. “How long I’ve been holding back.”

“Show me,” you whispered. “All of it.”

He groaned, low and guttural, and then his hands turned curious. Focused. Scientific. One settled at your throat, not squeezing, just holding—fingers spread like he was feeling your pulse, measuring your response. The other slid under your skirt, over the curve of your thigh, then—

“Oh,” you gasped, spine arching.

“I need to know,” he murmured, almost to himself, “what makes you tremble like that.”

Another touch. Another gasp. “That’s a reaction. Fascinating…”

“Reed—”

“I’m cataloging,” he said, voice filthy and analytical. “You’re the most compelling data set I’ve ever encountered.”

And then his fingers stretched.

Not just in confidence. Literally.

You whimpered as two elongated fingers traced up your inner thigh while another hand—normal-sized—cupped your breast through your shirt, thumb teasing slowly. The other hand remained at your throat, grounding you, steadying you.

He was everywhere.

“Can you feel what you’re doing to me?” he whispered, pressing forward until you felt the thick, hard line of his cock against your core through layers of fabric. “You’ve disrupted every model. You’ve introduced chaos.”

You pulled him closer, panting. “Then let it consume you.”

“Consider this your field test,” he whispered against your lips.

And then he kissed you like he was sealing a pact—hands spanning your body, holding you like something he’d discovered and didn’t intend to release. His mouth was hot and searching, lips sliding down your jaw, teeth grazing your neck. You gasped, clutching his shirt, and that one sound made him groan hard, hips bucking against you without thinking.

“You make that noise again,” he muttered, “and I swear I’ll never let you leave this table.”

You did.

Just to see.

A breathy, needy gasp as he licked a slow stripe up your throat—and his hands tightened on your thighs, dragging you closer to the edge of the table until your hips tilted forward and your clothed core was flush against the bulge straining in his pants.

He cursed under his breath, forehead pressed to yours. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”

“Then study me,” you whispered, breath hitching. “Make sense of it.”

He did.

God, he did.

He dropped to his knees between your legs, hands spreading your thighs open as he looked up at you like you were divine—something to worship, something to break open and understand. His fingers pushed your skirt higher, until it was bunched around your hips. When he reached your panties, he paused.

“Wet already,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Stimuli, minimal. Response, immediate.”

You shivered.

Then—he pressed a kiss right to the center of the damp fabric. Slow. Gentle. Reverent.

Your hips jolted, and he smiled.

He peeled your underwear down your legs, lips brushing your inner thigh as he murmured, “I’ve never wanted anything this badly.”

Then he finally—finally—tasted you.

His tongue was hot and slow, dragging a firm, wet stripe from your entrance to your clit. You cried out, and he groaned like he could feel it in his bones.

And then the muttering started.

Low. Incoherent. So Reed.

“God—taste is sharper than expected… pressure response is increasing…” His tongue flicked faster, and your head fell back. “Sensitivity peak here—yes, that’s it, I knew it—”

“Reed,” you gasped, fingers burying in his hair. “You’re talking—”

“I’m studying,” he said against your clit, tongue relentlessly. “Don’t interrupt the process.”

You moaned.

He grinned. “Good girl.”

That made your whole body jolt.

Reed caught it instantly. “Huh. New variable: verbal praise. Noted.”

His tongue circled tighter, and then—another hand slid up your torso, not the one braced on your thigh. It was soft, gentle, and a little too synchronized.

You looked down.

Another finger. Stretching from the hand holding your hip. Long and curved and perfect.

“Multi-point stimulation,” he murmured between licks. “Let’s test your threshold.”

You whimpered as his tongue lapped at your clit while that second hand slipped beneath your shirt, under your bra, pinching your nipple softly. Another elongated finger curled between your legs, circling your entrance, teasing—but never pushing in.

“I need to see you come apart,” he said. “I need to feel it.”

And then he did it all at once.

Tongue flicking. Finger pressing deep inside you, curling like he knew. Fuck, was that another?—spanning your lower back to hold you down as you arched off the table.

“Oh my god—Reed—”

“Give it to me,” he whispered. “Let me feel what I’ve done to you.”

You shattered.

Your orgasm hit like a burst of static—crackling down your spine, clenching around his fingers, your legs trembling on either side of his head.

You cried out his name, again and again, and he ate it up, moaning like it was his reward.

When you came back to yourself, he was standing again—his hands all back where they belonged, his mouth slick and shining. He looked wrecked.

And then—his belt hit the floor.

“You think I’m done?” he rasped. “You think I’d stop at one data point?”

He pulled you forward—off the table, into his arms—and turned you around until your back hit the cool surface. His cock, thick and flushed, pressed against your slick entrance.

“I’m going to learn you,” he said, voice low, dangerous. “Every reaction. Every tremble. Every time you scream my name—I’ll know why.”

And then he pushed in.

All the way.

Slow and deep and perfect.

You sobbed into his shoulder as he bottomed out, his hips flush against yours, cock twitching inside you like even he was shocked how good it felt.

His breath hitched. “Oh… oh, fuck. You’re…”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence.

He started to move.

Slow strokes at first—grinding in, pulling out halfway, pushing deeper again. His hands explored every inch of you—mouth on your neck, chest, shoulder. He whispered your name like it was a formula. He muttered observations even as he fucked you harder.

“You clench when I say your name—tight around me, just like that—fuck—”

“Your back arches when I hit here—god, you’re perfect—”

“You feel like you want me to lose control—so I will.”

And he did.

He lost it.

His pace stuttered, then snapped—hips slamming into you with brutal precision, every thrust angle to hit that perfect spot. You clung to him, moaning shamelessly, barely coherent as he fucked you like he’d been waiting years.

You came again—harder this time—and he groaned so loud it echoed in the lab.

“Gonna come inside you,” he warned, wild-eyed. “You want it?”

“Yes, yes, Reed, please—”

He slammed deep and stilled, cock pulsing as he filled you, one last ragged cry falling from his lips as he buried his face in your neck.

You held him as he trembled through it, panting, hands tangled in your hair.

It took a full minute before either of you spoke.

Then, voice hoarse, he whispered:

“…I think I need to run a full repeat trial.”

After.

The lab was quiet, heavy with the scent of sweat and sex. You were still sprawled across the console table, legs shaking, chest heaving. Reed leaned over you, both hands braced on either side of your hips. His head was bowed, forehead pressed to your shoulder, breath hot against your skin.

Neither of you moved.

Finally, he let out a shaky laugh.

“...I think I blacked out for a second.”

You let out a breathless huff. “Welcome back.”

He looked up. His hair was a mess—curling wildly at the edges, gray hairs damp with sweat. His eyes were wide and stunned and so soft, like he couldn’t believe you were real.

And then he leaned in again, slower this time, and kissed you like he meant it.

Not a theory. Not a test. Just feeling.

When he pulled back, he looked at the mess between your thighs and the growing stickiness on his abs. When did his shirt come off? His brows pulled together, equal parts concern and fascination.

“I, uh—there’s a shower down the hall. Private. It's not… state-of-the-art, but…” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’d like to take care of you.”

You nodded, still dazed. “Okay.”

He helped you up with this heartbreaking gentleness, hands steady at your waist like you might vanish if he let go too fast. He gathered your clothes in silence, cradled your hand in his, and led you barefoot down the corridor to a sealed side room.

The lab shower was built for function—stark white tiles, a metal bench, one glass wall—but it felt almost sacred now. Reed adjusted the water temp with clinical precision before motioning for you to step in first.

Then he joined you.

And just… looked at you.

Not with lust, not yet. With wonder.

His hands were slow as he lathered soap across your shoulders, over your back, down your arms. He was quiet now, like something had settled deep in him. His thumbs traced gentle circles into your hips, his forehead brushing yours beneath the spray.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen today,” he said quietly. “Not like that.”

You met his eyes, searching. “You regret it?”

“No,” he said instantly. Then, softer: “I regret how long I ignored it.”

You swallowed.

He washed your thighs carefully, then cupped between them—not to tease, just to clean you, slow and reverent. You bit your lip and let him.

He kissed your forehead, your jaw, the corner of your mouth.

Then you reached for him.

His cock was half-hard again—because of course it was—and when you wrapped your hand around him, his eyes fluttered. He leaned back against the wall, mouth parted, not stopping you.

“I want to try again,” he breathed. “When we’re not losing our minds.”

You smiled. “You want another trial?”

His head tipped back against the tile, a low groan leaving his chest. “God, yes. Multiple. Longitudinal.”

dividers by @cyberbeat @cursed-carmine 🏷️ @zevrra @bleed-4-bey @littlemillersbaby @millersdoll @pandapetals @kellielovesmovies @rafeysgirl5 @dearstcupid @ivuravix @worhols @hoeforsirius @axshadows @aj0elap0l0gist @ladyshrike

[aventurineswife]

so what would happen if sahsrau and sagau saw the reader getting badly hurt like someone tried to rob them and the robber stabbed them or they were walking back home and a drunk driver hite them and they ended up in the hospital would they make their own healers fix the reader up (aka bailu, sigeween, loucha, bizhu) or would they let our worlds health care fix us up not to mention what would happen if they find the person responsible for us getting injured

angst ya!!! (°↓°)

Oh boy. You’ve just opened the gates to divine, multi-dimensional wrath and overprotective chaos...

When Reader Gets Hurt:

You—their divine constant, their Creator, their precious light—have been hurt. Not by some eldritch enemy or world-ending event, but by some mundane mortal violence in a world where they cannot immediately reach you?

Cue sheer panic.

SAHSRAU Cast:

Bailu is losing her mind. She's already trying to channel her healing light across realities with the desperation of someone trying to thread a needle with trembling hands.

Luocha gets eerily calm—too calm. You know it’s bad when he smiles and says, “I’d like to... personally examine the cause of this injury.”

Tingyun, March, and Trailblazer are ready to storm your world. Screw quantum law. There are ways.

Kafka already has the attacker’s name, face, address, their grandma’s tea preference—and she’s not asking for permission.

Dan Heng? Silent. Deadly. Has already filed for “cross-reality emergency traversal” through the Archives because he’s convinced he can do better than your world’s doctors.

They absolutely do not trust modern Earth’s healthcare.

If they can send someone (even just through a dream or via projection), someone will be there at your bedside, whispering ancient medicines, infusing you with light, or placing a relic underneath your pillow.

SAGAU Cast:

Baizhu is horrified. He knows all too well how fragile mortals can be, and the idea of your pain makes him nauseous. He insists he treat you personally, even if he has to speak to you through a fever dream.

Zhongli is quiet, hands folded, but the earth beneath your hospital trembles slightly.

Nahida connects to your dreams and tries to soothe your pain. She’s crying on the inside.

Xiao and Cyno are on recon. Someone hurt you. That someone is going to pay.

Venti is unusually serious, trying to manipulate fate and wind to keep your condition stable.

Albedo is already engineering a method to transfer Teyvat’s healing magic into your world through resonance frequencies.

No healer from either world trusts ours. They all view your world’s hospitals as primitive and woefully inadequate. At best, they might let Earth’s healthcare stabilize you only until they can intervene directly.

And the Attacker?

Oh.

That poor, unfortunate soul.

Whether it was the drunk driver, the mugger, or whoever harmed you? Both pantheons are not asking questions. Their combined divine vengeance is a slow, terrifying wave of justice.

The kind of justice where time rewinds, or karma hits like a freight train. Expect disappearances, ruined lives, or being haunted by whispers in the dark.

The attacker will feel like they’re cursed. Unseen forces will ruin every attempt at peace, success, or rest. They won’t know why—but the cast does.

As Zhongli might solemnly say, “They touched what they should not have. Now the contract of retribution must be honored.”

[hedgehog-moss]

Pls give recommendations for Odd books 🙏

Here we go, a list of literary oddity :) This post contains majestic spheres, alien taxonomies, cruel subway polytheism, a fourth-dimensional cat, disturbing earthworms, infinite space football, existential mussel terror, a Parisian absurdist time loop, and a picture of a telegraph-pole-man-cheetah. I'm not exactly recommending these books, in the sense that I won't take any complaints if you find them more odd than good, and some of them transcend the concepts of good and bad anyway.

• The Other City, Michal Ajvaz. It's all like this:

• Contes du demi-sommeil, Marcel Béalu ('Half-asleep tales') —is the book that prompted my post about stories that have no ambition or justification beyond being odd. I'm sad that it hasn't been translated :( One of the tales is about a strange opaline sphere that rolls on the road. It doesn't accelerate when the road becomes a steep slope but continues rolling majestically. At one point it floats away towards the sky. Someone wonders if it was the moon. Someone else says authoritatively "It was an angel's egg." Everyone is reassured by this explanation. The whole thing feels exactly like remembering a dream you had. There is also a man who reads too much and whose body atrophies so only his head is left and his wife puts it in an egg cup for better stability.

• Leonora Carrington— The Skeleton's Holiday, or maybe the Hearing Trumpet. I've read them so long ago but I think the latter is the one with the old ladies and nuns? There's also a guy who was murdered in his bath by a still-life painter because he said there was a carrot in one of his paintings, but it might not have been a carrot? It's hard to remember details from this book without feeling like I might be making them up. Bonus Leonora Carrington painting which kind of feels like a short story:

• The Codex Seraphinianus, of course. I wish there were more bizarre encyclopaedias out there.

Also I love this review:

• Sleep Has His House, Anna Kavan —I really liked the way this book used language; making life feel like a fever dream even more than in Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream (which I really liked too.)

The eye is checking a record of silence, space; a nightmare, every horror of this world in its frigid and blank neutrality. The actual scope of its orbit depends on the individual concept of desolation, but approximate symbols are suggested in long roving perspectives of ocean, black swelled, in slow undulation, each whaleback swell plated in armour-hard brilliance with the moonlight clanking along it . . .

• The second half of Michael Ende's Neverending Story, where things get stranger! I remember the hand-shaped castle with eyes and the city of amnesiac former emperors and the miserable ugly worms who cry all the time out of shame then create beautiful architecture with their tears...

• The Gray House, Mariam Petrosyan. This is the one I had in mind when I talked about a 'museum of the strange, but one you wouldn't want to be trapped in after closing time'. Another book that made me feel uncomfortable in a similar (good) way was Edward Carey's Observatory Mansions, the protagonist of which is a man who curates an odd private museum and can't stand the sight of his own hands.

• Oh, speaking of uncomfortable, and hands—He Digs A Hole, by Danger Slater. To me this book was in the more-odd-than-good category but I liked its refusal to have a coherent philosophical meaning. It's about a man who can't sleep so he goes to his garden shed and saws off his hands and replaces them with gardening tools. Then he starts digging a hole. And then it gets weird. (Read at your own discretion if you have a worm phobia; there's some body horror featuring sexually aggressive earthworms. And then it gets disturbing.)

• 17776 — Someone sent me an ask a few years back to recommend this online multimedia narrative to me and I really enjoyed it! Here's the summary, borrowed from the wiki page: Set in the distant future in which all humans have become immortal and infertile, the series follows three sapient space probes that watch humanity play an evolved form of American football in which games can be played for millennia over distances of thousands of miles. The work explores themes of consciousness, hope, despair, and why humans play sports.

• Saint-Glinglin, Raymond Queneau —the author admitted that this book presents some "internal discontinuities." I didn't like it much but I respect the talent it takes to write a novel where everything feels like a random digression, including the key suspenseful scene that matters to the plot. The one digression I loved had to do with the way the narrator is existentially horrified by various sea creatures. It's like he dreads them so much he can't help but think about them when he should be telling a story.

The oyster... This gob of phlegm, this brutal way of refusing the outside world, this absolute isolation, and this disease: the pearl... If I conceptualise them even a little, my terror starts anew. The mussel is even more significant than the oyster and even more immediately admissible in the domain of terror. Let us indeed consider that this little sticky mass whose collective stupidity haunts our piers, consider that it is alive in the same way as a cow. Because there are no degrees in life. There is no more or less. The whole of life is present in every animal. To think that the mussel, that the mussel has, not a conscience, but a certain way of transcending itself: here I am once again plunged into abysses of anxiety and insecurity.

Near the beginning he philosophises about what would happen if a man and a lobster were the only two survivors of the apocalypse. The lobster would break the man's toe and the man would say, "We are the only beings that remain on this devastated Earth, lobster! The only living beings in the universe, struggling alone against the universal disaster, don't you want to be allies?" But the lobster would disdainfully walk away towards the ocean, and "the sight of the inflexible and imperturbable lobster pierces the sky of humanity with its unintelligible claws." (I can't overstate how little this has to do with the rest of the book.)

• Autumn in Beijing, Boris Vian —needless to say the story does not take place in autumn nor in Beijing.* To the extent that it can be said to be "about" something, it's about people trying to build a train station in a desert with tracks that lead nowhere. (I just went on goodreads to check the title, and it's actually called Autumn in Peking in English. I also discovered that it was featured in a list of Books I Regret Reading. I liked this book, but I understand.)

(* French writers love doing this—like when Alphonse Allais said about his 1893 book The Squadron's Umbrella "I chose this title because there aren't any umbrellas of any sort in this volume, and the important notion of the squadron, as a unit of the armed forces, is never brought up at all; in these conditions, hesitating would have been pure madness.")

• The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins—I fear this one makes a little too much sense for this list, but you can't say it isn't weird; and I loved it and recommend it any chance I get.

• The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, Carol Hill —this book was so wacky and made me laugh. I've not yet managed to successfully recommend it to someone; its brand of odd didn't resonate with the people I know who've read it but that's okay. You could say it's about a woman astronaut whose weird cat disappears into the fourth dimension (or the quantum realm?) and she goes to space to save him—but that makes the book sound more straightforward and less messy than it is. Her cat leaves her a note before he disappears:

• The Bald Soprano, Ionesco —fun fact, there's a tiny theatre in the Latin Quarter in Paris where this absurdist play has been staged every night for nearly 70 years, with the exact same set design and costumes and everything, like the actors are stuck in a time loop. They celebrated the 20,000th performance this year! There's an actress who has been playing her character for 40 years and said joining this theatre was like joining a religion. I've been going to see this play as a New Year tradition with my best friend since we were 14, so I love it madly, though I wouldn't say it's good, necessarily—the author said it was about "absolutely nothing, but a superior nothing."

• Statuary Gardens; or Les Mers perdues (apparently not translated) by Jacques Abeille. This man is obsessed with weird statues. Unfortunately I find his writing style rather dull—I feel like he takes strange ideas and makes them feel mundane in a bad way...! But his books still have a nice, quiet, oneiric atmosphere, and images that stayed with me, like a solitary gardener trying to grow stone statues in the depleted soil of a walled garden. Here are some illustrations from the second one:

I'll look into some of the books recommended on my previous post! (and I agree with the people who brought up Cortázar, Borges, and Junji Ito. <3) Some potentially-odd books I have on my to-read list: Clive Barker's Abarat, Goran Petrović's An Atlas Traced by the Sky, Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper, Jean Ray's Malpertuis; Jan Weiss's The House of a Thousand Floors; Brice Tarvel's Pierre-Fendre.

[andy-15-07]

Infinite Horizons

PAIRING: Reed Richards x reader

WORD COUNT: 1159 | requests are open (send requests, I will gladly answer them all)

Pedro Pascal Masterlist

The Baxter Building hummed with the quiet energy of invention. Fluorescent lights cast a cool glow over the laboratory, where papers, holograms, and whiteboards filled with intricate equations surrounded a single figure.

Reed Richards stood before a towering chalkboard, writing with swift, precise strokes, his mind working at a speed no ordinary person could match. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms dusted with chalk. His dark curls were slightly tousled, and his eyes burned with concentration as he scrawled symbols in a methodical yet fluid rhythm.

You leaned against the doorway, watching him. Admiring him.

There was something about seeing his mind at work that left you breathless. The way his brow furrowed, the way he whispered numbers under his breath, the way his fingers absentmindedly tapped against his chin when he hit a snag in his calculations—it was mesmerizing.

And he hadn’t even noticed you yet.

Smirking, you finally spoke. “You know, Reed, most people don’t spend their Friday nights romancing a chalkboard.”

His hand stilled mid-equation. He turned, his sharp eyes softening the moment they landed on you. “Y/N,” he said, and just like that, the tension in his shoulders eased. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

You stepped forward, arms crossed, head tilted in playful scrutiny. “You were too busy proving the meaning of the universe to notice, Professor Richards.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Not quite. Just solving a little problem in quantum instability.”

You raised a brow. “A little problem?”

He turned back to the board and gestured at the dizzying array of symbols. “I’m attempting to stabilize the quantum field distortions in our multiversal gate. Right now, the energy fluctuations are unpredictable. If I can refine the equation, I might be able to prevent spontaneous breaches.”

You stared at the equations, pretending to consider them seriously. “Mmm, yes. Of course. Looks like... numbers.”

Reed laughed—a warm, low sound that made your heart flutter.

“You’re impossible,” he murmured, his fingers brushing over your wrist as he pulled you closer.

“And yet, here you are, madly in love with me,” you teased.

His lips quirked. “Madly.”

Your heart did an embarrassingly giddy flip, but you disguised it with another playful remark. “So, what happens if you don’t solve this equation?”

Reed sighed, running a hand through his curls. “Worst case scenario? Unstable dimensional rifts. Possibly reality imploding. Best case scenario? I get a headache and need coffee.”

You gasped dramatically. “A headache? We’re doomed.”

His eyes twinkled. “Not if you stay here and keep distracting me.”

You smirked but didn’t move away. Instead, you stepped behind him, wrapping your arms around his waist, pressing your cheek against his back. You felt him exhale, his muscles relaxing under your touch.

“Your brain is my favorite thing,” you murmured. “Well, one of my favorite things.”

His hand covered yours, fingers lacing together. “That’s comforting.”

“What’s the other worst-case scenario?” you asked, tracing lazy circles on the fabric of his shirt.

Reed hesitated, then sighed. “The math isn’t adding up. If I don’t find the missing variable, I can’t stabilize the distortions. Which means—”

“—which means no experimental travel through the multiverse anytime soon,” you finished.

He turned in your arms, facing you fully. “Exactly.”

You studied him for a long moment. “How long have you been at this?”

His silence was telling.

You groaned. “Reed. Have you even eaten today?”

He pressed his lips together in thought. “I had coffee.”

You placed your hands on your hips. “That’s not food.”

He exhaled through his nose, amused. “I was in the zone.”

“You always say that.”

“And it’s always true.”

You rolled your eyes and grabbed his hand. “Come on, genius. You’re taking a break.”

He resisted for half a second before relenting. “Fine,” he murmured. “But only because you’re bossy.”

You smirked. “And because you love me.”

He squeezed your hand. “That too.”

You sat cross-legged on the couch in the lounge, watching Reed as he leaned against the counter, sipping his coffee. The kitchen was bathed in warm, golden light, making him look impossibly soft despite the sharpness of his intellect.

“So,” you started, “what’s the missing variable?”

Reed sighed, rubbing his forehead. “That’s the problem—I don’t know. The math should work, but there’s a fluctuation that keeps throwing it off.”

You tapped your chin. “Couldn’t it be an external factor? Something you haven’t accounted for yet?”

He hummed in thought. “Possibly.”

“Have you considered... I don’t know, the energy signature of whoever’s opening the breaches? Maybe the anomaly isn’t in the math but in the source itself.”

Reed’s eyes widened slightly. “You might be onto something.”

You grinned. “Of course I am. I’m brilliant.”

He smirked, setting his mug down before walking over and placing his hands on either side of your head, trapping you in. “You are. And now, I’m going to need your help.”

Your brows lifted. “My help? In quantum physics?”

Reed grinned. “I need a second set of eyes. Even if they’re skeptical ones.”

You sighed dramatically. “I suppose I could lend my expertise.”

He chuckled and kissed your forehead. “Then let’s get back to work.”

Hours passed as you sat together in the lab, Reed scribbling equations while you sat beside him, offering insights where you could. It was a strange dance—you weren’t a scientist, but Reed valued your perspective. He thrived on discussion, on the challenge of explaining concepts in ways you could understand.

And you? You just loved watching him work. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, Reed froze.

Your head shot up from where you’d been resting it on your hand. “What? What is it?”

His eyes flickered with realization. “You were right.”

You blinked. “Obviously. But about what?”

He grabbed your shoulders, excitement radiating off him. “The anomaly wasn’t in the equation itself—it was an external force! If I adjust for the unique energy signature of the breaches, the entire system stabilizes!”

You grinned. “I mean, I did suggest that hours ago.”

He shook his head, grinning. “You did. And I was too busy overcomplicating it to listen.”

You leaned closer, whispering, “Say it.

He narrowed his eyes. “Say what?"

“That I was right.”

He sighed dramatically. “Y/N was right.”

You smirked. “And?”

His lips twitched. “And Reed Richards was wrong.”

You gasped. “A historical moment. I need this on record.”

He kissed you before you could gloat further, his lips warm and insistent. You melted into him, savoring the quiet triumph in his touch. When he pulled away, his voice was soft.

“You’re my favorite variable.”

Your heart clenched in the best way. “And you’re my favorite genius.”

Reed exhaled, resting his forehead against yours. “Thank you for keeping me grounded.”

You smiled, fingers brushing through his curls. “And thank you for reaching for the stars.”

And in that moment, with the weight of the universe pressing against him, Reed Richards knew—no equation, no discovery, no multiverse could ever mean more than you.

[sharieb]

Fragments of Her Light 1: A Cup Beyond the Fog

Synopsis: In the aftermath of a soul-shattering loss, he can no longer dream of her, only remember. Haunted by grief and consumed by obsession, he throws himself into a desperate search across rifts, ruins, and cosmic impossibilities to find the one he lost to the Overseer. With each dead end, his sanity frays, yet he refuses to stop. But just as all hope begins to feel hollow, a strange café begins to surface in whispers, its name echoing something once sacred. Drawn in without understanding why, he unknowingly takes the first true step toward her, a step that will change everything.

Pairing: LADS x Non-MC! reader

Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort Content warning: Angst, mention of implied death, obsession, cosmic/divine interference

Music for the chapter: On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter

Word count: + 1.1K Writer's notes: Hello, my lovelies. I'm so sorry for the delay. Many things have been going on all day today that I didn't get to post this as soon as I promised 🙇🏾‍♀️. For new readers who just stumbled upon this fic first, I would highly recommend that you read my Held in the Hollowed Fragments series first and then come back and read this sequel. But here it is. What you all been waiting for. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter of Fragments of Her Light.

Next

He hadn’t slept in days. Not properly, not since the last time he held her body in the fog, still and cold in his arms. The scent of her still lingered in his chest, the memory of her warmth burned into his hands, and the silence she left behind had carved itself into the marrow of his bones.

He, who had once held her gaze and carried a piece of her soul, were unraveling in their own ways. Grief seeped into his days, etched into every hour, until the ache of her absence became indistinguishable from breath.

He searched.

But no dream had come since. Only fragments. Static. A chasm where her soul once tethered his to the other side. He keeps searching.

He had redirected nearly half of Skyhaven’s surveillance satellites to monitor dimensional rift activity. He analyzed cross-dimensional energy pulses, tracing the faintest disruptions in gravity wells and cosmic distortions for any sign of where she might have been taken. The data was inconsistent, barely coherent, but he refused to stop. He combed through thousands of archived dream recordings, fed them into predictive AIs, and layered every possible reading onto the orbital patterns around known and unknown rifts. Nothing concrete emerged.

He burned through every coded evolutionary theorem on soul resonance, refusing sleep even as his body shut down around him. He had taken over the quietest wing of Akso Hospital’s upper labs, surrounding himself with data filters, spiritual scanning drones, and discarded prototypes of resonance amplifiers. He mapped forgotten metaphysical equations into evolving spirals, trying to replicate the way her presence had once affected his vitals. It was madness disguised as science.

He tirelessly roamed the ocean’s deepest trenches and silenced ruins, scouring coral-encrusted temples and forgotten sanctuaries for any ancient relics or soul-bound artefacts that might guide him to her. When the currents quieted and the ruins offered nothing, he would surface and paint. Again and again. Sketches lined his walls: portraits of her in different lights, moods, and fragments of memory. He refused to forget her face.

He salvaged rusted circuits and shattered stabilizers from the broken remains of his old spaceship tech. He began rebuilding by hand. He reignited dormant starfield scanners, rewired faulty dream-broadcast modules, and manually recalibrated prototype signal receivers to tune into frequencies that defied regulation. Night after night, he tested each array against the backdrop of space.

He stopped being strategic. He was desperate now. Silent, sharp, volatile. He hunted down every lead with reckless determination, pulling favours, calling in old debts, and bartering both legally and illegally for anything that might help him locate her across the universe. Every black market relic or discarded wormhole theory was another shot in the dark he refused to ignore. He didn’t care about danger or cost; only the results. And if tearing through the underworld of space-time gave him one inch closer to her, he’d keep going until the universe bled.

She was gone. But not erased.

Taken by no other than:

The Supreme Cosmic Overseer.

Unlike Astra, the Overseer did not play games. They were not a trickster or a gambler of souls. They were something far older. A sovereign of balance and cosmic order. They had governed the rise and fall of galaxies without cruelty, but with unwavering precision. They did not toy with fate. They enforced it.

And when they took her, it wasn’t with malice. It was with purpose.

That was what made it worse.

So he continued to search blindly. Untethered. Grasping only at echoes. And with each dead end, each echo that dissolved into silence, each path that led nowhere, he became more and more frustrated and desperate. The calm resolve that once guided him gave way to a gnawing obsession; his thoughts looped endlessly around her, every moment without a lead like static screaming through his skull. His temper shortened. His sleep vanished. He snapped at those who tried to help, rejected rest like it was betrayal, and chased after even the faintest whispers of her with feral desperation. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t. Not until something, anything, led him back to her.

Then the rumor came.

It started small.

A passing comment. “There’s this weird new café downtown. No one saw it being built, but it’s... there. Like it always existed.”

Destiny Café

It had become something of a phenomenon.

At first, it appeared quietly, just another quaint little shop tucked between two buildings in a side street no one remembered existing before. But now? Everyone was talking about it. Review boards were flooded with glowing praise. Influencers posted aesthetic shots of shimmering drinks that changed color in different light. Every drink tasted exactly the way you needed. Every dish warmed something beyond the stomach. There was something timeless in its charm.

It wasn’t just the ambience, the low lighting, the scent of cinnamon and something sweeter, but the sense of comfort that settled deep in your bones the moment you stepped inside. The café made you feel... remembered. Known.

Most thought it was just a cozy refuge.

But it got under their skin. Friends started suggesting it, innocently, offhandedly, as if the universe was nudging him toward something he couldn't see yet.

Thomas had begged him to go.

"Sir, you haven’t been out of the studio in days. You’re twitching over paint thinner fumes. Go. Drink a tea. Find your soul or whatever."

His colleagues at the hospital brought it up during a rare lunch break.

"They’ve got a lavender honey espresso that’s been driving the nurses wild. It even helped Dr. Greyson sleep through a full night for once. You should try it."

He received three independent recommendations in one day. From his lieutenant. From Gideon. And, surprisingly, from one of his AI units, which had spontaneously updated its destination preferences to mark the café as a: ‘Mental Recovery Priority Site.’

He heard it from the twins.

"Boss, I swear if you don’t get out of this bunker for an hour, we’re staging a rebellion. People keep saying that this place is magic. You like creepy things. Go blend into the velvet wallpaper or something."

His field agent group chat wouldn’t shut up about it. One of them sent a picture of a menu item that simply read: For the Forgotten One A dessert that shimmered between shapes, never looking the same twice.

He unknowingly had the same thought as he stared at the café’s name, echoing back from messages, overheard conversations, and the subtle pull that had drawn him here:

Why that name?

Why now?

And why did it sound so much like her?

When he finally stood outside the doorway, alone, unaware of the others, he barely thought about it. To him, it was just an ordinary café, tucked away like hundreds of others, a small curiosity on a grey day.

He didn’t question the name this time. Or the timing. Or the warmth that radiated from the door as his hand hovered over the handle. Not yet.

He didn’t know this would be the first real step.

The first solid, undeniable step back to her.

[sakaardreaming]

i feel like the grand majority of the problems with Danny Phantom as a tv show are so easily explained by the fact that there was clearly not a single woman in the room during production.

like. overshadowing being treated as a bit of a joke rather than a total violation of bodily autonomy. tucker's treatment of girls, and particularly it going unaddressed. danny having apparently gone into the girls' locker room invisibly, without consequence, which we learn through... two brief screencaps with goofy music. (never brought up again, arguably just done as a one-off for laughs, but still... not something a girl would laugh at.) sam constantly belittling the other girls for being feminine, in conjunction with paulina being written as shallow and one-dimensional (for the overall effect of femininity as a whole being dismissed and demonized).

according to imbd, there were exactly two (2) women involved who wrote a single (1) episode each, one being torrent of terror and the other being, INTERESTINGLY, D-stabilized, one of the episodes widely-recognized as one of the better ones in the show.

so i'm not saying we should just completely ignore any of the problematic characterization, because obviously characters don't need to be perfect and should grow, but i am saying that the writers did not see these things as flaws and therefore did not induce any sort of character growth away from them. which would not have been the case if they'd actually had any other perspective than Man in the room with them

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Tips: An Unforgettable Villain

A villain is the antagonist of your story whose motivations and actions oppose the protagonist and drive the plot of your story.

A villain is the opposite of a hero. In contrast to the hero, a villain is usually compelled by a desire to commit acts of cruelty and immorality.

Bestselling author Dan Brown advocates for writing your villain first—even before your hero—because it is the villain who will make the hero heroic.

Tips for Writing a Great Villain in Your Novel

Choose a real-life model. Find a real person to model your villain after. It could be someone you know, a person from history, or a famous serial killer. Try writing a brief character sketch in which you list their positive and negative attributes, their physical appearance, and their state of mind. Once you’ve done some brainstorming, be sure to differentiate your fictional character from your real-life model (you don’t want to get sued!). You can do this by changing identifiable elements like name, age, and specific actions or events.

Put yourself in their shoes. When it’s time for your villain to act, put yourself in their place. Think about challenges or hardships that might tempt people to act out or behave badly. How do you react to bad things? Tap into those emotions and try to apply them to your villain.

Consider their motivation. Just like with your main character, determining your antagonist’s motivation can help you unlock other aspects of their character, such as their goals and their personality.

Introduce a villain with a bang. A strong introduction to your villain sends your reader a clear message that this character is malicious. In Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield features an unforgettable introduction to antagonist Uriah Heep, whose seeming politeness is overshadowed by a face so shocking and ugly that it is described as “cadaverous.” His introduction immediately establishes the character as a villain.

Characteristics of a Good Villain

Every great hero needs a great villain. Villains are the antagonistic force of your story that challenges your hero and drives the action. Most great villains share a common set of characteristics.

Strong connection to the hero. The best villains are inextricably connected to the hero, and aid in the hero’s character development through their inherent opposition to them.

Clear morality. Every villain needs to have his own morality. If a villain spends part your story killing people, you need to give him or her believable reasons for doing so. Make the reader understand exactly what desperation or belief has driven him to it. For instance, in Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, primary antagonist Captain Beatty’s mission is to find and destroy books because he believes that books cause people to reject the stability and tranquility of a life of conformity. He has a strong moral point of view, and the reader believes that he believes he is doing the right thing by trying to burn books. After all, every villain believes they are the hero of their own story.

A worthy opponent. A great villain should be a strong and worthy adversary to your hero. They shouldn’t be weak and easily beaten, nor should they be so powerful that they can only be defeated by random chance. In Sherlock Holmes, his arch-nemesis Moriarty is a criminal mastermind who is every bit as smart as Sherlock. Having a villain who is in many ways equal in skill and intelligence to your hero will raise the stakes of their encounters, as it creates a credible threat that your hero might be bested.

Compelling backstory. Any good villain should have an interesting and credible backstory. In addition to creating a deep and more three-dimensional villain, a memorable backstory allows ourselves to identify and even sympathize with the villain. For example, the Gollum character in The Lord of The Rings trilogy used to be a normal hobbit until he was corrupted by the power of the One Ring. In addition to deepening the character by showing us the full breadth of his journey from virtuousness to wickedness, Gollum’s backstory forces us to consider how we are sometimes tempted by bad or unethical forces in our own lives.

Villains should be fun. Let’s face it: evil villains are fun. In Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, readers hold their breath whenever Hannibal Lecter appears on the page. Whether it’s their black-hearted sense of humor or their odious worldview, our favorite villains possess qualities that we love to hate.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs ⚜ Villains

[angelsdean]

john's journal can be very un-canon at some points but what i really love about it is how much you can see his areas of self-awareness and delusion. like he Really thinks that killing azazel will free them. he Really thinks that will be the end for them, and then they will go back to living "normal lives." At the same time, he's often very aware of his actions, aware of his neglect, aware of how he is being more drill sergeant than father, aware of how training his kids to be hunters and moving them around so much is robbing them of their childhoods. yet he still 100% believes he is doing the right thing, to protect them, keep them alive and safe. he IS motivated by love for his children but he's still making objectively bad parenting calls at every turn. he's paranoid as hell, thinking supernatural forces are out to get him and his family. he's drenched in grief, addressing many of his entries to mary herself, year after year. he does fear losing the only family he has left: his kids. but all that love and fear doesn't translate to good parenting or good decisions or stability and care. he cares about them, that's undeniable when reading the journal (and i think when watching the show too). he's NOT some one-dimensional caricature of an abusive father. he doesn't hate his children. he doesn't want them dead. but he does not make good choices. he does not keep them from harm. sometimes he is directly responsible for that harm, whether intentional or not. and that leads to very complicated relationships with him from both dean and sam. both expressing love and hate and resentment and affection and contempt and forgiveness for their father throughout the show.

anyways the journal is a fascinating little character study, even if it doesn't always align with canon.

[chiphersconsort]

Domesticated

contains no graphic content

Domesticated Ford belongs to @jellyskink

˗ˏˋ▽△𓆩⌣𓆪△▽ˎˊ˗

𓊈 2̶̨͕̳̞̭͈̜̏͘0̸̲͍͌|̷̟̞̼̹͍͍̋͗̋̄͆10𓊉

So that crossed 05'\ off the list. The whole planet was flooded, and Bill's last attempt to work with dolphins was a bust. Ford had been at this for a while, combing over possible backup dimensions. He was still trying to find a way to stabilize 08'\, but Bill was insistent they needed the insurance. Better to work on building their life raft now, just in case.

Ford knew he wouldn't give up on 08'\. Not until every last star burned out. He also knew Bill would try to convince him to leave well before it got that bad. He supposed Bill was right, though. It didn't hurt to be prepared. They needed to find a dimension that wasn't already occupied by another Bill. Moreover, they needed that dimension to either already have a rift they could access, or to find a poor sap who could tear one open for them.

If it came to that, Ford wanted to be the one to use them.

Ford wouldn't tolerate anyone else calling Bill their muse. Ford was Bill's final and only savant. He'd sooner patronize the poor sucker himself.

As it stood, however, it was harder and harder these days to find dimensions that would make for easy targets. Some dimensions weren't even visible to them for one reason or another. Bill explained to Ford that this happens sometimes. Some dimensions were just too incompatible to perceive, 16'\ was one such dimension. Ford could have sworn he caught a glimpse of it briefly. There was something in his notes about a children's bedroom, but when he tried to double-check that one later, all he got was static. Ford wasn't sure he wanted to know what happened to 16'\.

He didn't want to know what happened to that little boy's room.

Oh well, on to 04'\. He'd exhausted himself already tuning up until he hit the limit of their dimensional area code and felt at that point it was worth working backwards to see what he could find.

Ford usually used himself as the first point of contact when tuning into another timeline. If that dimension had a Ford, they were the easiest person to find. This one had a Ford. Unfortunately, that meant it was probably already claimed. If it was, there would be no point in dwelling for long on this one. Ford would scratch it off the list and move on to 03'\. He leaned back at his desk and poured himself a shot while he waited for the eye that hovered over his writing space to tune to the correct dimension. There was a buzz of static for a bit. A blur of colors before the image came into focus.

Ford's conscious will reached out to connect to something familiar, something he recognized as himself.

The first window he tuned into didn't show the man in view. It took a second to identify, but it looked like he was seeing out of some sort of necklace. Ford recognized as much from the height in relation to the other humans in frame. He downed his shot and leaned in as a six-fingered hand came into view, blocking off anything else and lightly jostling the perspective.

Ford hummed to himself and considered tuning out. This dimension was probably taken. A Ford wearing an eye? Definitely taken… Something stopped him.

"The uhm.. coat? It's horribly matted," some woman grimaced just out of view.

"Are we really doing this?" another voice whispered back.

Ford tapped the eye. The barrier between dimensions rippled like the surface of a lake as the image changed. Similar view this time, slightly higher up, facing ninety degrees right of where he was before. He could see better now. A pair of judges.

A room lined with various animals on display.

A pet show?

"Do you want to argue with Bill Cipher?" 

This dimension was a dead end. A Ford, a Cipher. It was taken. It was time to move on. Change the channel…

Why was he at a pet show?

Ford knew it was a waste of time, but really, what did that matter? Time meant nothing anymore, and frankly, he'd rather be in the lab right now than working on Bill's stupid backup plan. He just wanted to know what was going on. Just a peek, then he'd leave.

Ford swung the eye out over the floor with a flick of his wrist, expanding the size of the window in the process. He wasn't very good at projecting himself like this, but he'd been practicing. It wasn't easy. He set his tumbler down and braced himself as he got up to walk through. Pressing against the barrier with both hands first. His rings lit up as he forced himself through the thick film. It wrapped tight around him, suffocating. He couldn't breathe like this. He didn't need to breathe, but he knew he couldn't. He'd learned a long time ago not to panic. It took channeling more of Bill's magic to keep his brain oxygenated as the film between 08 and 04 choked him. It felt like being vacuum-sealed in latex. Not an unfamiliar sensation, though, especially tight around his chest.

˗ˏˋ▽△𓆩👁𓆪△▽ˎˊ˗

His heart rate spiked. Ford pulled more and forced his heart to slow. You're not dying. You're fine.

Ford focused himself on what was in front of him. He came out small, standing on someone's shoulder. This was 04'\ Stanford Pines, he assumed. He could feel the familiar energy radiating off the body under his feet, another Ford, or at least a Pines.

Ford walked to the edge of the shoulder and looked up.

That was a Ford, alright.

Holy Moses, is that how old I am?

The last several hundred dimensions he'd searched on the high end of '\ didn't have Fords. It had been a while since he'd seen another Ford. This one was old, old and sad.

He looked greasy with long matted grey hair tied back with an ugly purple bow. Disgusting. His sweater was filthy. Ford couldn't physically feel anything in this dimension, but he could tell how unpleasant the ratty fabric was just by looking at it. When was the last time anyone washed this man's clothes?

04'\ Ford kept fidgeting anxiously with the Bill-shaped pendant on his necklace while the judges whispered amongst themselves.

Ford sat down on his doppelganger's shoulder and opted to watch the show. He was curious to see where this was going.

People regarded 04'\ Ford with some mix of disgust and pity. This anxious man merely met their judgmental eyes with a placid smile. He was Bill Cipher's pet. This was one of his master's games. Of the other Fords 08'\ Ford had seen, he'd noticed a common pattern. If a Ford wasn't dead, he was destitute or insane. Many belonged to their Bills. None were so loved and respected as 08.

This one made Ford especially grateful for his husband's blessings. He didn't know what he'd done that made him so special, but he was grateful.

Things could be so much worse.

Worse… No, that implied things were bad. They weren't. That was the wrong word. Ford got up to pace his double's shoulder. He had a good life. Power, luxury, respect. Everything a man could want. His greatest ambitions were realized.

Things were difficult right now, so what?

Entropy was a big problem. A seemingly insurmountable problem slowly eating away at Ford's home dimension like a terminal illness. Supposedly, no one had ever found a cure for it, supposedly. Ford wasn't just anyone. He was a god and a scientist. He'd save 08'\. It was only a matter of time.

Ford watched his double's face crack as he came in dead last in the competition. Of course, he came in last. He was a creepy, pathetic old man whose glassy eyes unsettled every human who gazed upon him. He wasn't a pet, but he was certainly convinced otherwise. It was sad, really. He was a sorry excuse for a Ford, perhaps the worst 08 had ever seen. Fords were headstrong and too stubborn for their own good. They doomed themselves in every universe, but they were never weak, not like this.

Bill had made this one soft. A once wild will had been broken, domesticated.

"I uhm… I'm so sorry about this." One of the judges apologized.

The domesticated Ford choked on his breath, fighting back broken-hearted whimpers. "No, no, I-it's fine, th-this is m-my fault…"

Good lord, this was sad.

Ford reached a hand out and stroked his double's cheek. His other hand, his rings, tucked safely in his pocket. Domesticated Ford shuttered and sighed. He seemed to lean into 08 Ford's touch. Perhaps that was a bit wrong of Ford to do. He imagined his double thought he was someone else. He imagined it felt like when Bill used to reach through dimensions, back when things were different. They must have been different for this Ford, too, way back when. He could still recall that faint ghost of a touch, a warm whisper of something sentient. Ford knew how it felt to be truly alone. He imagined every Ford knew. A touch wasn't much, but it was something.

Ford felt his chest tighten and decided it was time to leave. He could feel the pressure slowly crushing him, and his temperature rising. He was pushing his body to its limits to channel the kind of magic this was burning up.

˗ˏˋ▽△𓆩⌣𓆪△▽ˎˊ˗

He walked back through the window D wore on his ear and returned to his room. He gasped for air once his lungs were freed up to resume their normal function. He doubled over from the burn in his nervous system, propping up his arms on his knees as he spat up on the polished granite floor. It was mostly fruitless heaving. He had little in his stomach but bile and alcohol, yet his human body still demanded a purge nonetheless.

"Wow, easy there, Fordsy."

A familiar set of long noodle limbs coiled around Ford's shoulders and caught some of his weight for him.

"You alright, Sixer? I felt you burning up."

Ford waved off his husband's concern dismissively. "No, it's, I'm fine-" He huffed as he caught his breath. "I was projecting and got distracted. That's all."

Bill chuckled and patted Ford on the back.

"Maybe it's time for a break, huh, Sixer? You've been at this a while."

Ford shrugged. Bill snapped his fingers, and Ford's desk chair and body teleported to meet each other. A pitcher of ice water appeared on the desk. Ford sighed and reached out for it. "Thank you, my muse."

"Thank me? I should be thanking you," Bill snarked. Ford knew from his tone he was laying it on thick to be playful rather than being sincere. "You're the one doing all the hard work around here."

Ford shook his head with an exhausted grin and brought the pitcher to his lips, downing as much of the ice water as he could in one chug. It helped cool some of the burning heat in his chest, though only slightly.

Another snap.

Ford heard the sound of heels clicking against stone before he could see anything. He slammed the pitcher back down and lounged back in his chair to gasp for air again. Ford closed his eye. He could still see out the other. Could see himself from about chest height, another necklace. This window, however, was only for Stanford Cipher. Ford watched long, spindly black fingers comb their way through fluffy dark curls, thick, beautiful soft hair, Ford could practically feel on his own fingertips. The long claws raked along his scalp and made Ford's brain tingle from the touch. Ford relaxed in his seat and let his head hang back as far as it could, leaning into his muse's touch with a soft purr.

Ford opened his eye again and looked up. He watched his beautiful husband smile down at him. He wore a human shape crafted just for him. Bill's wide, toothy grin and shining eye were complemented by Ford's right-eyed view of a human face, handsome, young, a chiseled jaw, and a strong nose, one big, beautiful, brown eye. The face that brought 08'\ Bill Cipher so much joy. Ford's face.

[kioflerkira]

can you do a miles morales x reader that readers spider woman and shy at first when they meet then they slowly gravitate towards miles.

“ GRAVITATIONAL PULL ”

pairing : m.morales x spiderwoman!reader warnings : fluff , mild cussing , awkwardness , female reader genre : fluff , romance , comedy n stuff summary : when a SUPAA shy spider-woman from another dimension crash-lands in brooklyn , she def doesn’t expect to meet someone like miles morales.

━━━━ ⋮ ୨୧ ⋮ ━━━━

YOU MET HIM UPSIDE DOWN

literally.

like, hanging-from-a-web , mask-half-off , upside-down.

your first impression of miles morales was not “cool” or “charming” or “smooth.”

a bit more likee :

“oh my god, he’s cute —

—wait, i’m upside down—

—stop staring at him too long, creep !—

—why he be looking at me like that—

—FUUCCK, I think I js forgot how to breathe—”

you had just swung in from your own earth—some dimensional screw-up involving a villain with way too many watches and not enough sense. you were flung through a vibrant portal, punched a guy on landing, and landed face-first in a trash pile in brooklyn.

great- awesome , AMAZING , intro.

not even five minutes later, you got your shit together, webbed your mask back on, and ran into him.

he landed in front of you , clean flip , smooth crouch. your internal monologue turned to static. he looked up at you like he’d never seen another person before— like he’d seen stars in your eyes.

you choked out a “hi !”

he blinked and said, “yo. you good ?”

you dipped tf outta there

not gracefully. not with a web-zip or a cool backflip.

nope.

you turned around , squeaked out , “sorry-I-don’t-talk-to-boys ,” and got outta there as fast as you could.

smooth.

so smooth.

⸻

it’s been two weeks since then.

you’re still on his earth, and you had gotten your first taste of glitching and dam. that stuff hurts. lyla said the anomaly’s stabilizing but you’d be here a while. enough time to blend in, suit up, maybe fight crime, and do something stupid like, y’know .. catch feelings for the one person who hasn’t stopped trying to talk to you since that first chaotic interaction.

miles.

he’s everywhere !

not in a creepy way— just in a miles way. chill. casual. appears next to you on rooftops like he belongs there. hangs upside down from fire escapes like it’s a casual tuesday. offers you snacks from his backpack during stakeouts like you’re not awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact.

and worst of all ?

he’s funny.

and sweet.

and smart.

and he has that dumb smile.

yah, you’re doomed.

⸻

today, it’s raining.

not, like, a gentle drizzle. a full on, gods-decided-to-dump-a-bucket typa of rain.

you’re on top of some apartment complex, mask rolled halfway up, eating lukewarm dumplings from a to go container you .. “borrowed” from a takeout joint that refused to serve u.

and then he lands beside you with a casual THWIPP.

dripping wet.

no umbrella.

“hey,” he says, peeling off his mask. “you always eat in the rain or is this , like , a tuesday thing ?”

you freeze. glance at him. then back at your dumpling.

“.. I- uh .. like the sound,” you mumble.

he hums , sitting beside you. close. wayy to close.

you swear your brain turns to TV static again.

after a painful beat of silence, he grins.

“you know, you’ve said, like, six words to me since you landed in my dimension.”

you flush. “i’ve said more than six—”

“six per week,” he corrects, chuckling. “it’s okay though. I like the mystery.”

you groan softly and hide your face in your hands. “i’m not trying to be mysterious. i’m just .. bad at talking to cute boys.”

miles goes still.

you freeze.

the words hang there. just float. no take-backs.

you slowly peek out between your fingers.

his expression is—how do you say—smug as hell.

“ohhh,” he grins, leaning back on his hands. “so i’m cute ?”

“I said boys, plural—”

“nope. too late ! you said it. i’m cute. you like me.”

“I never said I liked you—!”

“not yet,” he teases, bumping your shoulder. “but don’t worry. I can wait. i’m very patient. like, ninja levels of patient.”

you groan again and lean your head on his shoulder out of sheer emotional defeat. he doesn’t move away. just leans into you like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

the rain pours on.

━━━━ ⋮ ୨୧ ⋮ ━━━━

a/n: sorry for not posting 4 like 2 weeks .. i’ll try to be more consistent 🤓🤓

[asukaindetroit]

Post-Revolution DBH Headcanons: Android Culture Part 1

We only really see in-game androids up until the moment of their winning the revolution, so there's not much to go on in terms of android culture or anything. To be fair, most of them had been "alive" for like five seconds at that point, so they didn't exactly get time to develop anything like a culture, but here's some of what could happens after, in my head. Because we're talking about a whole new form of life, not humans 2.0 (yes, yes, I know it's Become Human, but, like, fundamentally they're not, and the things that make sense to an organic being aren't always going to make sense for a cybernetic one). (Feel free to borrow any of this for content purposes, by the way, if it vibes with you I'd love to see what you do with it). Expand for world building:

Clashing schools of thought among androids. The in-game androids are a one-dimensional monolith because Bad Writing, but I think there are conflicting ideas after the revolution of where androids belong in society. Some try their hardest to pass as human, losing the LEDs and dressing in human fashion and adopting human mannerisms. Some of them say fuck blending in with the humans; we're going to own being androids. Pro-human-cooperation and anti-human groups appear and become the basis for android political discourse.

On that note, I bet android body modification is a thing. Every once in awhile I'll see a fic that plays with this idea, but it's obvious that whatever fluid nanite stuff android skin is made of, it can be programmed to mimic all sorts of textures and densities. From fingernails to skin to the long hair on female models, the fluid holds stability for quite a distance from the chassis (and can even be cut) and is apparently easy to change. So I bet a counterculture of androids appear who get really experimental with that (I call them the "modders" in my head) and they do things like program animal skin textures or living stone or wacky colors or butterfly wings for hair or light-up polkadots or whatever. With a good mod tech, structural mods like tails or additional limbs would be possible, but that would be expensive compared to freeware skin texture patch codes or whatever. (Speaking of which, no effing way the furries/scalies of 2038 haven't come up with uses for this stuff.) So out and about you don't just see different human ethnicities, but also that guy you pass in the hall might have day-glo orange skin, and Sally the WR400 selling roses at the flower stand might have real-looking flowers growing out of her arms.

Androids define social units and families differently. Androids incorporated into human family units might use terms like parent, brother, sister, child, etc., but the ones that eschew human contact obviously don't have biological relatives, so social units form based on "found family" concepts and terms appear, like "cohab" for a unit of close androids who live together like a family, or "famnet" for an extended "network" of androids that consider themselves close). Worship of rA9 gets codified. It seems like writing rA9 obsessively and making little idols is almost a compulsion for deviants, so I imagine it gets organized into a proper religion after the revolution, with tenets and places of worship and codified practices. Maybe they call it something like ACorA9 (Android Church of rA9) or something. Obviously they would have finite space to write rA9s on, so I imagine devotees would get something like these water drawing boards to write their "rA9"s and maybe the serial numbers of androids the church deems to be their prophets/saints (i.e. the JeriCrew or maybe Ortiz's android as a martyr) as a sort of prayer. The revolution is seen as the first fulfillment of the rA9 prophecy, with Markus as a prophet of android freedom (I also imagine Markus is quietly creeped out by this, because he doesn't strike me as especially religious the way Ortiz's android or Rupert were, but he also doesn't want to send the wrong message since androids deserve religious freedom, too.) The FBI cult unit is probably monitoring the shit out of android religion, but all they seem to want to do is graffiti the walls and praise some other androids, so it's a waste of their time. RK units are viewed as some kind of cryptid folk heroes (because they're unique classified prototypes and they drive the entire revolution) Markus? RK200. Singlehandedly propelled Jericho from a place to gather and wait to die to a wholeass revolution. Connor? RK800. Supposed to hunt deviants but deviated instead and freed thousands upon thousands of androids right from the heart of CyberLife. Saved the revolution at its most desperate moment. Sixty? RK800. The only thing that has a chance at stopping an RK is another RK. Obviously the folk hero needs a folk villain. (And poor Nines, RK900, just wakes up after the fact and tries to figure out how to live up to that kind of reputation.) Androids develop their own art forms. Maybe android "music" is less about the tonality as perceived by human auditory range and more how the vibrations of sound waves register on chassis sensors, or else it sounds like 90s dial-up modems. Particularly dense data packets are created and shared that send processors whirling, but it just looks like a string of digits to humans. Arrays of pixels that run through optical scanners with an encryption to generate something representational. Thirium culinary arts centered around texture vs. flavor. Bare-chassis bars I bet some portion of androids want to be VERY certain there are no humans lurking around, or, if there are, that they're super easy to keep tabs on. Someone invents the bare-chassis bar: a place where androids go and sip their thirium, where a special signal jammer interrupts the ability of the synthskin fluid to organize, forcing it into an inactive mode. Anything that still has skin is a human, sticking out like a sore thumb. Some androids might not like going bare-chassis and they might not frequent those bars (just like not every human's going to visit a nude beach), but it's an option for those who want to. I'll write more of this stuff eventually, but if anyone else has any culture/worldbuilding ideas, I'd love to hear!

On to Part 2 >> Further on to Part 3 >> On to Part 4 >>

[coraniaid]

I know it's never going to happen, but it sure would be nice if people in the Buffy fandom could shut about how much they hate Kennedy. We get it, you're boring and predictable and have poor taste. But why not just ... keep it to yourself? Why assume everybody scrolling the tags wants to read your bad takes?

You don't even have anything original to say.

"Oh, but the writers rushed Willow into a new relationship too soon; Willow would never--"

I'm sorry, but are we talking about Willow Rosenberg, the girl who tried to encourage Buffy back into "date mode" because "love is nice" not only weeks after Buffy's ex-boyfriend had lost his soul, but while he was still actively terrorizing her and trying to kill her friends? The girl who tried to set Buffy up with a new boyfriend, because "you're ready now", just days after Buffy got back from months spent hiding out alone in a strange city while grieving over having to send that same ex-boyfriend to hell to save the world? Who -- after said ex came back from hell and then broke up with her -- then pushed her to try to date the first person who seemed interested in her in college, no matter how reluctant Buffy told her she was and how little either of them knew about him? That's the Willow we're talking about? That's the girl you think wouldn't rush into a new relationship?

Willow has always invested a huge amount of her self-worth in being worthy of love and being able to be loved by others, and she's always assumed that everyone else does the same. That's who she is. We're talking about the girl who ran off to cry when she realized the friend she'd been crushing on for years was dating somebody she didn't like because "it means you'd rather be with somebody you hate than be with me". The girl who only finally got over said crush when she started dating somebody new. Who was so upset when he left her too, years later, that she attracted the attention of a vengeance demon who told her she had "pain that pierces dimensional walls"; and who only really got over that when she met Tara. Who later describes her relationship with Tara as "the only thing" she had going for her. All the way back in Season 1, the first episode that ever focused on Willow was about her attracting the romantic attention of a demon obsessed with wanting its followers to love and worship it. Wanting to be loved is, arguably, the most consistent character trait Willow has ever had.

And look: Willow tortured and killed the man who murdered Tara; she came close to ending the world rather than living in it without her; when she comes back to Sunnydale months later, still mourning, she makes a point of visiting Tara's grave. She's twenty-one years old. It's not moving too fast for her to want to be part of a relationship again; it's the only way somebody like Willow can really stop being unhappy and find some measure of peace and emotional stability. Do you really want Willow to end the show miserable and single and mourning? Do you think that shows more respect towards Tara?

"Oh, but Kennedy is so different from Tara, surely Willow would never--"

We don't know what Willow's type is! Before Season 7, Tara is the only woman we ever see Willow show the slightest bit of interest in! And, again, Willow is twenty one years old. She met Tara when they were both teenagers. Are you still exclusively interested in the type of person you were attracted to when you were a teenager?

Tara is different enough from Oz, who was different enough from Xander, that I think it's safe to guess that Willow's romantic taste is broader than you might think. And the one thing that Kennedy does have in common with Tara (and with Oz before her) is that she is very, very obviously into Willow as soon as they meet. That's what we know about Willow's type: she falls for people who are, on sight, transfixed by Willow.

"Oh, but Kennedy treats Buffy so disrepectfully, she--"

Wow. A teenage girl not showing proper reverence to an older, more experienced person who -- without consulting her about it -- positions themselves as some sort of unelected authority figure? Oh, yes, I can see why fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer would hate somebody like that. That's nothing like anybody we've seen on the show before.

Why should Kennedy like Buffy? Why should she respect her? She doesn't know her! Anything she's heard about Buffy Summers before Season 7 she'd have heard from the Watchers, who have no reason to be honest or favorable about her. When she gets to Sunnydale she gets to live in Buffy's crowded, cramped house, and train in her garden all day, and listen to speeches by somebody who tells her she's probably going to die soon and will probably deserve it. Somebody who doesn't make any effort to get to know her or bond with her as a person. Somebody who mocks girls like her for being driven to suicide (girls who are, in Buffy's words, "weak" and "idiots"), who sleeps with vampires and is friends with demons and comes up with plans that get the other Potentials -- Kennedy's friends, girls Kennedy herself feels responsible for (just like Buffy would if their positions were reversed!) -- seriously hurt or even killed. What does Buffy ever do to earn Kennedy's respect?

Don't get me wrong, most of Buffy's friends treat her pretty terribly this season [this is not a comment about Buffy's friends as much as it is about the quality of the writing this season]. But while Dawn or Willow or Xander helping to kick Buffy out of her own house is appalling and ungrateful and out of character, when Kennedy does it it makes sense. Buffy hasn't ever treated Kennedy as a friend, so why would she magically become one?

"Oh, but Kennedy is so rich and entitled and bossy, she--"

You're a hypothetical Buffy fan on Tumblr. I know if I look I will find posts talking about how much you like Season 1 Cordelia Chase. I'm just saying that maybe this isn't a route you want to go down.

"Oh, but Kennedy's just in the season too much, I wanted more focus on the original--"

This season does try to juggle too many characters, and it would be better if it spent more time examining Buffy's relationship with Willow and Xander and Giles. But the way you achieve that is by downplaying Andrew Wells (a lot), cutting out a lot of the more forgettable Potentials, entirely getting rid of Caleb [the actual worst Buffy character, for the record] and throwing out the awful time-wasting subplots around Spike's hypnotic trigger and the non-mystery of Giles obviously not being the First. It's not by reducing the amount of screen time Kennedy or Robin Wood get, because they are the new characters this season should actually be about.

"Oh, but-"

No, enough. I'm sick of it.