#one thing marvel does incredibly well is found family

[swiftiedaisies]

when thunderbolts* releases, i need all the talented writers on this app to feed me with all the found family fics (idc how the movie ends. it can be a fix it)

like im talking 2012 era fics (but much better written) where they all live in the tower and have team meals and movie nights. of course also the angsty ones!!

i just know im gonna get attached to this team. i love teams who are forced to work together but grow to love each other!!

[lurkingshan]

Intergenerational Trauma Challenge - 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us

It’s winter and I’m huddled up in my house hiding from the cold weather, so obviously this is the perfect time to tackle another entry on the intergenerational family trauma challenge list. This week I finally watched 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us, a Thai drama about Wang, a young man just coming of age who is desperately seeking answers about his father’s death; Sasiwimol, Wang’s very complicated mother who does not want to dig up the past; Inthawut, his father’s best friend who has been hiding from it for years; and Siam, the black hole at the center of this story.

Before I dig into the trauma themes, let me just say that this show is excellent, if not for everyone. It has a very intentional style that makes it feel like a stage play—the writer is a playwright—and it’s basically eight episodes of very intense conversations. It’s not a romance and there’s an intellectualism in the writing that I found kept me at an emotional remove from the characters even as I marveled at how well crafted the dialogue is. And the dialogue is very important, which is why the translation of this drama is much stronger than we typically get from Thai productions—the words matter. It’s also loaded with visual metaphors and is all around beautiful to look at, and the three main performers are fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes theater, stories about complicated families, or beautiful and talented actors showing their work. And more than anything else, this show does incredibly strong thematic work and its messaging is on point: this is a story about how noble idiocy ruins lives.   

So, with that said, onto the trauma! Spoilers ahead, and I am assuming anyone reading past this point has watched the show. Some themes you’ll see in this one: taboo, denial of queer identity, homophobia, filial piety, and lots of emotional manipulation. Shoutout to @bengiyo and @twig-tea for reading this to make sure I didn’t miss anything in this complex story.

There are two main sources of intergenerational trauma radiating down toward Wang: the absence of his father, Siam, and his intense relationship with his mercurial mother, Sasiwimol. The story is structured around Wang’s determination to seek answers about Siam—both who he was and how he died. He has grown up knowing a certain story: that his parents met and fell in love in college but divorced when he was young, that his father loved him very much despite not staying with his mother, and that his father was an alcoholic who died in a drunk driving accident. Shortly after his father’s death, his mom put him in boarding school so she could focus on her career and became a weekend parent to him—as she was not around to structure his day to day life, their relationship became more about her taking him on fun adventures and spoiling him when she had time off, treating each other as best friends instead of like a mother and son, and never talking about Siam. He has always suspected there was more to the story of his parents that he was not being told, and as he has grown up, come into his own queerness, and picked up on his mother’s casual homophobia and obsessive devotion to compulsory heteronormativity, his suspicions about the secret his mom was holding became sharper. 

Enter Inthawut. Inthawut was Siam’s best friend, and with nothing to go on but a set of old pictures, Wang has an instinctual certainty that he is the key to the secret he’s seeking. And thus he engineers a way for he and his mom to “coincidentally” stumble onto Inthawut’s property and get invited to stay a few days in his isolated home, at which point Wang begins his campaign to figure out what the hell happened between Siam, Sasiwimol, and Inthawut at any cost.

One of the things I find most interesting about this story is how much the plot hinges on Wang going against Asian cultural norms in his pursuit of the truth. He is not respectful to his elders. He does not maintain filial piety and deference to his mother. He refuses to restrain his emotions. Instead, he is pushy and relentless and emotionally manipulative (all tricks we can plainly see he learned from Sasiwimol) and Inthawut doesn’t stand a chance against him. And so, because Wang explicitly acts against these cultural values, the truth comes out and the trauma is no longer suppressed. 

And in the end, it’s a simple, if desperately sad story: Siam and Inthawut were in love, but Inthawut was battling internalized homophobia and deep-seeded fear and so he relentlessly pushed Siam away and toward dating and then marrying their friend Sasiwimol. And when Siam, miserable in this heterosexual relationship he never actually wanted, finally snapped and confessed his true feelings, Inthawut rejected him and ran away to study abroad. Inthawut was running due to his own fear, but he also had noble notions of somehow protecting Siam from his own queerness and told himself that if he was gone, Siam would accept his heterosexual life. Of course, that did not happen, and in the fallout of this rejection Siam sank further into alcoholism and died soon after. Inthawut’s reaction was the exact worst fear of all gay people who work up the courage to confess to a friend they have developed feelings for: outright rejection, abandonment, and destruction of the relationship. And in his mind, he did this to Siam “for his own good,” a fairly textbook execution of the noble idiocy trope. In the aftermath, we see how Inthawut has isolated himself, part in penance, part in self-protection, and intellectualized his way to a romantic construction of his own cowardice that he tries to convince Wang is righteous.

But Wang is deeply affected by how the denial of his father’s queerness ruined his life and is absolutely not having any of Inthawut’s self-denying bullshit, and this is where things get messy, as both Wang and Inthuwat seem to start seeing Wang and Siam as interchangeable and they develop an emotional entanglement that is deeply unhealthy, to say the least. Wang wants to understand Siam so badly that he starts to be him, and Inthuwat is so desperate to address his regret and shame that he starts to see Wang as Siam, as well. Wang also uses this attachment as a way to shock his mother and forcefully bring her real feelings about Siam and Inthawut to the surface. Despite Wang’s many loud protestations to the contrary, I don’t believe that he and Inthawut actually love each other. They are using each other to work out their trauma about Siam.

And they’re not the only ones! Sasiwimol seems to have her own psychological confusion about Wang as he relates to Siam, and their dynamic is very strange as a result. She refers to Wang as dua-eeng (and has taught him to do the same with her rather than calling her “mom”), a Thai endearment that literally means “self” but is often used between lovers. They have a very physically affectionate relationship that often had me grimacing in discomfort, and she clearly sees Wang as both a source of pain—because he is so like Siam—and her one source of comfort and happiness. She is a successful woman by any standard, but she’s also desperately lonely, hanging on tight to Wang as her only companion in a way that often veers into overbearing, and deeply wounded by her past with Siam and Inthawut. It was through her own friendship with Inthawut that she pursued Siam in the first place, and she clearly feels betrayed not only by Siam, but by Inthawut, both for getting in the way of her relationship with Siam and for leaving them. Her feelings about both men are complex and the story never fully spells them out, in part because Sasiwimol never does. Determinedly not thinking about what happened between them is a big part of how she copes, along with sublimating her suspicions into homophobia, which she perpetuates quite intentionally in her work via production of heterosexual romance propaganda.

Wang clearly loves his mother even as he is frustrated by her prejudices, her desire to control him, and her tendency toward emotional manipulation. He is a perceptive kid and he has studied her closely; he understands her very well and can often predict exactly how she’ll react to a situation. Which is why his decision to announce baldly to her face that he is in love with Inthawut—not only coming out as gay but declaring his intention to move out of her home and in with a man 20+ years his senior who is deeply entangled with her own trauma—felt very intentional to me. He knew what kind of reaction that would get from her, and he wanted it. And sure enough, Sasiwimol crumbles at this repetition of her trauma and the perceived disloyalty of Wang choosing Inthawut over her just as his father did. The rest of the emotion she’d been holding back comes pouring out, resulting in the three of them finally airing out everything that lies between them and everything they are feeling about the Siam-shaped hole in their lives. And once she breaks down, Wang is able to forgive her for the grievance she’s caused him and ultimately decides to remain filial and continue living with her, because he does not actually want to punish his mother for what happened to his father. 

So, in the end, where did the story leave us with all this trauma? I can’t really say that any of these characters have healed, but I do think Wang kick-started that process, at least for himself. He got what he needed most out of this little scheme: deeper understanding of who his father was and why his life took such a drastic turn. He remains caught in the dysfunctional dynamic with his mother, and I’m not sure he’ll ever fully break out of it, but at least there is more honesty between them now about what they’re dancing around. She now knows he is gay and she has to accept it to keep him with her, and given that he has backed off from asking her to accept something much scarier than that, I do think she will find a way to make her peace with it. Inthawut is the character who seems to have progressed the least, standing firmly in his stasis and remaining determinedly alone with his pain, though the show leaves us with a note of ambiguity that suggests he may someday find the courage to move on.

The messages of this work are clear. Internalized homophobia and denial of your own queerness are poison for your soul. Rejecting a loved one “for their own good” is an act of cowardice and selfishness, not an act of love. Hiding from and sublimating your trauma will never allow you to heal. Refusing to process your pain will only lead to you pushing it down on the next generation. Ultimately, this story told us that bravely looking ourselves and our trauma in the face and confronting our truths head on is the only way to begin to heal, and that running from them only leads to ruin. 

[pagesfromthevoid]

Sparks Fly | r. | IX

Rolan x Sorceress!Tav

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: Canon violence, murder (is it murder is its Lorroakan tho?)

Author's Note: Enjoy Rolan realizing that Tav and her friends are not as organized as he imagined.

Series Masterlist | Talk to Me!

The sun is still down when Tav wakes up. She’s laying on her side, facing the rest of the room. Her companions are tucked into their beds around her, sleeping soundly for the first time in ages. She’s warm –unusually warm, but it’s not uncomfortable. There’s a weight against her chest –an arm, more like, and she fidgets a bit before turning over.

Rolan is fast asleep, one arm tucked under his head and the other wound around her like a vice. They’re both half naked from the night before, but she doesn’t mind as she traces her fingers along the ridges of his chest once again. He stirs a bit, but not enough to wake, and Tav can’t help but marvel at how peaceful he seems to be in his sleep. Tav suspects that Rolan has never actually felt a day of peace in his life –not that she knows much about him (a fact that she intends to remedy as soon as she can). But between the horrors of Elturel and Avernus and now his journey to Baldur’s Gate…well, it’s easy to assume life has not been kind to the wizard.

She slips out of his hold –though his tail is wrapped tightly around her ankle and she has to coax it to free her –and picks up her tunic, slipping it over her head. He turns over in the bed, facing the wall and away from her, and she stands up quietly and stretches. Her joints crack and her muscles protest being awoken so early. But she ignores them and steps out of the room, onto the balcony that accompanies their suite.

What she does not expect to find is Astarion, sitting on the ledge, with a glass of wine in his hand. She forgot that elves –and vampires, perhaps? –don’t sleep like others do and she lets out a surprised yelp when she spots him.

“Hells, Astarion,” she breathes, leaning against the balcony as she catches her breath. “I didn’t think anyone was out here.”

“Surprise,” he says simply, holding up his cup. He doesn’t look at her as he scans the city skyline. “Did you sleep well?”

“I…did, actually,” she admits, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “I take it you haven’t found yourself in bed yet?”

“Oh, you know me,” he waves off her concern, sipping his wine again. “And how was your evening with your devil, Anastasiya?”

“If you’re asking me to kiss and tell, you won’t get it,” she teases, looking back out over the city as well.

“Please, I don’t need you to tell me anything –if you had done anything scandalous, I’d be able to smell it in your blood.”

“That explains why you’re always hovering over Isobel and Aylin,” she concludes, reaching out for his wine. Astarion hands it to her without question. 

“If you must know, I ‘hover’ over the cleric and her lover because Aylin says the strangest things and it’s incredibly entertaining.” 

Tav laughs, nearly choking on the wine, before setting the glass on the ledge. “That’s so fair, honestly.”

“Speaking of Dame Aylin and her entertaining ways,” he continues, reaching out to snag his wine back. “Are we going to kill the wizard or not?”

“We are,” Tav responds without hesitation, looking at Astarion from the corner of her eye. Her voice is stiff, and she knows that she’s coming across as Tav in Charge, as Karlach would say. But if she’s making any executive decisions on behalf of her party –then this would be it. “If not because Aylin is a person and does not deserve to be caged again –then for Rolan, who does not deserve to be abused for no other reason than a narcissist’s ego mania.”

“I do enjoy when you give into your Drow nature,” Astarion grins, flashing his fangs in a gleefully predatory way.

“You do know I am not from a Lolth-Sworn Drow family, right?” She asks, brow raised as she reaches out for the wine again. “My family are Seldarine Drow –far less violent than, say, Minthara’s family would be.”

Astarion shrugs, passing the glass back to her as he returns his gaze to the city. “Then perhaps Minthara is simply rubbing off on you.”

“Or Lae’Zel.”

“Or Shovel.”

“Or you.”

Astarion barks out a laugh, nodding in agreement as Tav smirks at him. They sit for a while longer, watching as the sun peaks over the horizon. There’s soft sounds of people getting up coming from inside, and Tav is about to excuse herself to crawl back into Rolan’s arms so he does not wake alone (and because she simply wants to lay with him once more, really). But then Astarion murmurs something about missing the sun when all this is over, and Tav watches him with a sad smile, reaching out to take his hand. She promises to find a way to ensure he’s able to join them in the sunlight, and she hopes Astarion knows she’s very serious.

*****

Rolan only wakes because there’s shouting, then doors slamming, then the distinct scent of sulfur. He rouses from the bed, taking note that he’s still in Tav’s bed –but she’s not with him. Instead of panic or fear, however, he settles that she’s an early riser and is probably the culprit of the yelling. He sits up and reaches for his shirt, which is folded neatly at the foot of the bed for him. A piece of parchment lays beside it.

I’ll be back soon.

He slips his shirt over his head, then stares at the paper for a moment, memorizing how truly terrible Tav’s penmanship is. He wonders if it’s simply because she was in a rush, or if she truly writes like someone who was never taught how. 

“Good morning, Rolan,” Wyll greets happily from the sitting area, setting up a meal. 

Rolan notes that there are far less people in the room than there should be. Shadowheart is gone, as well as Gale and Lae’Zel. 

“Where is everyone?” He asks, making his way over to where the warlock sits. 

Karlach is sauntering over with Jaheira and Minthara, who are looking between each other like they have a secret. 

Rolan has a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Where is Anastasiya?” He asks, more firm this time. But he fears he knows the answer already.

“Mate, she’ll be back soon –promise. Tav just wanted to –,” 

But Rolan is cutting Karlach off, turning on his heel to look between the tiefling, Drow and Harper. “Tell me she didn’t go to Ramazith’s Tower.”

“I think you know she did, wizard,” Jaheira points out, and Rolan is half running to gather his robes.

“It will do you well to not interfere, devil,” Minthara interjects, though she is seemingly disinterested in the whole ordeal. “Anastasiya is suited for combat and revenge. Take her desire to kill the wizard for you as a compliment.”

And he does take it as a compliment –very truly, he does. But he does not want to be saved by her again. He wants to put a stop to Lorroakan himself. Or with her, at the very least. How could she take off without him? 

Wyll is trying to calm him down, rationalizing that Tav just doesn’t want to put Rolan in danger. But he doesn’t care about being in danger. He cares about being coddled as if he cannot fight his own battles. However, Karlach is pushing him towards the door.

“They just left, you can catch’em if you run!” She’s urging, tossing his quarterstaff to him as he’s trying to fasten his robes and move at the same time. 

By the time he makes it out of the Elfsong and through the throng of people entering Sundries, Tav and her companions are stepping through the portals at the top of the stairs. He yells after her –both in anger and fear that she’s about to get herself killed –but she doesn’t hear. He groans and misty steps to the portal himself, practically tripping in behind her as Lorroakan rises from his gaudy throne of books.

Rolan freezes as the woman from Last Light –who he believed was Selune herself, with her wings and armor and terrifying beauty –lands gracefully before his master. Tav approaches with the woman, eyes on Lorroakan as if she doesn’t know Rolan is just feet behind her.

“What have we here?” She asks, voice low and menacing. “A magician in a tower, hiding away from the frightening world. What are you so scared of, magus?” Lorroakan glances at Rolan, his eyes twitching, as the woman continues speaking. “Not the Nightsong, surely –why, she’s nothing but a relic to be purchased and pursued.”

His stomach drops as she speaks, and Rolan realizes now that this woman –she is not Selune, but she is what his master has been seeking for weeks now. 

“My gods,” he croaks out, and he feels like he’s going to throw up as he considers how complicit he has been in the search for a person this whole time. “The Nightsong is a person?”

Tav looks behind her now, turning to face him –eyes wide. “Rolan, you shouldn’t –,”

“At last,” Lorroakan begins, smiling that false, unnerving smile he gives anyone that he’s trying to lure in. “There you are, my dear –,”

“You will address me with due deference,” the woman snaps at him, “I am Dame Aylin. And you are a whelp without honor, without pride, with nothing but a tower full of trinkets.”

“My apologies, Dame Aylin,” his master continues, though there’s not an ounce of remorse in his tone. “I meant no disrespect. I asked our friend here to make an introduction –so that I may get to meet the famed daughter of Selune. Perhaps, then, our friend can do what they came here to do?”

“I thought wizards were meant to be smart,” Tav says, stepping forward. Her hand is resting on the hilt of her sword. “I came here to stop you, asshole. I warned you what would happen.”

“My steel-hearted friend speaks true,” Dame Aylin adds in, clenching her fists at her sides. “Give me one good reason, magus, why I should not strike you down where you stand.”

“You must understand, Dame Aylin,” Lorroakan insists, stepping towards the sigils that Rolan had spent many hours drawing himself. “I have found a way to harness your immortality. To share it with the world.”

“You wish to cage me once more,” Dame Aylin snarls, wings unfurling in rage.

“Boy, at the ready,” Lorroakan orders him, pointing now at the circle. “Once I take control of the aasimar, she must go directly into the caging runes!”

“No,” Rolan practically growls, stepping in front of Dame Aylin. Perhaps the daughter of Selune could protect herself fine, but he was complicit in this plan and he would be damned if he let her come to harm because of that. “I would never have assisted you if I knew you planned such…horrors.” He can feel Tav and her companions eyes on his back, but Rolan refuses to look back. “You liked to get the Nightsong –to get Dame Aylin here. Made us all believe she was nothing but a relic.

“But I have seen what true leadership can accomplish,” he glances back at Tav, whose brows are furrowed but there’s something akin to pride in her eyes. “It was never under your tutelage, however.”

“Watch your tongue, you child!” Lorroakan snarls, pointing at him. “I could make it such that no wizard in the realm will touch you.”

“If they’re all like you, then I think that sounds like an excellent bargain.”

Dame Aylin cackles, throwing her hands out to her sides. “Ho! Face us, charlatan. We who detest you so.”

Tav is grabbing Rolan’s hand and yanking him behind her, pulling her sword out with the other hand. Lorroakan summons his Myrmidons, and soon they’re taken to battle. Rolan hasn’t seen Tav and her companions fight before –not in person. He’s heard stories and imagined how they fought many times before; had nightmares over Tav losing her battles. But seeing them fight now…It was…

Well, the best way to describe it was chaotic.

Rolan is thrown off entirely by how out of sync they all are with one another. That is not to say that they are not highly effective in what they are doing, but they are not working together like he imagined they would. Instead, Tav is summoning elementals to harass the Myrmidons while Gale is trying to entangle Lorroakan in vines. Shadowheart is healing everyone within reach and Lae’Zel is slashing her way through anything that comes near. Dame Aylin is simply doing her own, very alarming, attacks and Rolan is wondering what on earth he’s supposed to do first.

But Tav backs into him, casting magic missiles at Krank, taking the armor out without issue. “You gotta do something or you gotta run,” she orders, pushing him out of the way as Lorroakan’s elemental retort fires back towards Gale. 

“He gets his power from the Myrmidons,” Rolan warns, then he turns to face Tav, calling out, “Mactē virtutē!” 

She gasps, looking around her for a moment. Rolan determines that she’s fine now without him, and makes his way around the perimeter, casting his mage armor on everyone else around him. Slowly but surely, they’re taking down each of the Myrmidons, taking away the power that Lorroakan desperately relies on to be as strong as he pretends to be.

By the time only one of the Myrmidons is left, Shadowheart has depleted her ability to heal everyone at once, and is trying to make her way to everyone one by one. Gale is struggling and Tav is relying on her sword over her magic, nearly collapsing when Lorroakan’s elemental retort strikes her in the chest. Even with the mage armor protecting her, Rolan can tell it knocks the wind out of her and he yells out in a panic, rushing to shield her from another blow.

“Detono!” He yells out, throwing his hands out in front of him. 

Time is slowed down now; Dame Aylin and Lae’Zel are taking the final blows on the Myrmidon, and Shadowheart is trying to heal Gale, who has collapsed himself. Lorroakan is caught off guard, and the spell suddenly throws him over the ledge of the platform, where he lands with a crack. Tav is on her knees, holding her chest, staring up at Rolan with wide eyes. And Rolan is staring at the ledge where Lorroakan has disappeared, heart pounding in his chest. 

“Holy shit,” Tav rasps, and everything is speeding back up around him again. 

She’s falling over to her side, rolling onto her back as she coughs. Rolan is dropping to his knees beside her, looking her over for any worse damage than the broken ribs he’s sure she has. Shadowheart and Lae’Zel are helping Gale up, uncorking a stronger potion than usual and handing it over to him. Dame Aylin has flown to the floor where Lorroakan’s body is and when she returns, she is grinning triumphantly.

“The urchin is dead,” she announces, and she’s clapping a hand on his shoulder. “You have done well, young wizard. It was a magnificent end to a lowly bastard’s life.”

“He’s dead,” Rolan repeats as Tav is pushing herself back up into a sitting position. Rolan can feel her eyes on him but he’s staring at the ledge again. He almost doesn’t believe it; afraid that it’s a trick or a test or something insane because that’s what Lorroakan was –insane. 

“I thought…I thought all of this –everything he did to me –was some sort of test,” he whispers, looking down at Tav now, who is uncorking a potion and downing it. She lowers the bottle from her lips, though, and gives him her full attention. “It had to be –I thought it was the price I had to pay to be a true wizard. But I realize now…he was just…a sick, sick man.

“I realize now,” he continues, looking up at her companions as they gather around them. “If I want to be a great wizard, I’ll need to do it myself.”

“You have the means here,” Tav points out, finishing off her potion and fishing out another, holding it out to him. “After all, Ramazith’s Tower has a new master.”

Rolan’s brows furrow as he takes the potion from her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she grins, reaching up to touch his cheek. “All hail Rolan, Master of Ramazith’s Tower.”

[msweebyness]

Some DC/Marvel AU Headcanons

Have some headcanons for the hero and villain kids from these universes! @artzychic27 @imsparky2002

DC:

Chloe is incredibly proud of the fact that her family is Markovian royalty and reminds people of that fact any chance she gets. It profoundly gets on the other villains’ nerves, and they make that known to her. Sabrina still humors her girlfriend by calling her “Princess”. The others have still picked up some Markovian phrases from Chloe though, particularly expletives.

Colussus: *steps on a lamp post that jabs his foot* MOTHER OF GOAT!

Even alien planets aren’t devoid of racism, and Evie has witnessed this throughout her life on M’arzz. While Evie herself, like her mother, is Ga’Runn, the ethnic majority, her father is A’ashenn, and one of her brothers was born such as well. The scorn they received from her mother’s wealthy family and the Ga’Runn population at large was brutal and at times violent, and it left a deep effect on Evie. It was part of the reason she was so hesitant to reveal her true Martian self first to Brecken and then to her fellow heroes, though all accepted her with open arms. (Her telepathy is the main means of communication between the heroes)

Reshma’s Scarab is a part of her consciousness, and that’s not necessarily something she’s happy about. While it’s certainly helpful in battle, it also wakes up and chooses violence every day, with its solution to most problems being “PLASMA CANNON”. Needless to say, this kinda annoys Reshma. Her friends are aware that whenever she seems to be talking to herself, she’s actually arguing with Scarab. …it does have pretty good taste with clothes though.

Reshma: No, it would not have been ‘preferable’ to vaporize them all when they were gathered as a group! Will you please just chill the fuck out?!

Jean and Ondine, as the chief magic users of the heroes and villains respectively, have a fierce rivalry whenever any battle crops up. Neither is willing to let the other show them up, and it can get to the point that Austin T and Kim have to intervene before things can get too crazy or destructive.

Petra will admit that becoming the hero Karma and wielding the power of fate is pretty cool, but the Helmet of Fate does come with a downside, and his name is Nabu. He does nothing but talk down to her and treat her like an ignorant child and they really wish they could just tell him to put a cork in it, almighty lord of order or not.

Being the resident extraterrestrials of the group, Marc, Evie, Mindy and Ismael have a close bond, helping each other out with Earther stuff and just taking the time to talk about how much they miss Tamaran, M’arzz and Thanagar respectively, and also comforting Ismael who never got to experience living on his home planet. They also geek out about cool Earth stuff together.

Missy and Gia have always had a strong friendship and friendly rivalry when it comes to their archery skills and work quite well as a team. They have frequent competitions and are evenly matched in wins and losses. Their friendship is so strong that when they’re older they found a private security company with Rochelle and Zoé. (Anyone who gets this reference, I love you.)

Zoé picked up Dick’s habit of messing with the English language by removing prefixes from words to make new ones. That is all.

Rouge: I am traught, whelmed and feeling the aster! Let’s do this!

Marvel:

Missy has an…entertaining dynamic with her Symbiote, named Rancor. They’re kind of a snarky little shit and frequently get on her nerves with their comments, but the two care for each other nonetheless. Missy protects Rancor from those who wish to exploit them, and they would do anything to keep their host safe. Their friendship has its ups and downs, but is nevertheless strong.

Ivan, as you might suspect, is chronologically a bit older than he looks. The experiment to turn him into a super soldier was conducted several decades before the present day, and he was subsequently frozen in cryostasis until being reawakened in the 21st century. During that time, his parents passed away and his sister lived to old age before doing the same just three years before he was thawed out. He misses them terribly and has a lot of bad days where he’s overwhelmed by the new and unfamiliar world around him. Thankfully, his girlfriend and friends are there to support him. (He also got to meet his sister’s daughter and her two kids, and she told him how much her mother would talk about him, how she would have loved her uncle.)

Adrien and Ondine were childhood best friends who grew up in Asgard together, and she’s always had his back no matter what. If Marc messed with him too much, she would be the first to kick the chaos God’s ass, and Marc respects and fears her for that. Adrien also helped Kim out with winning her over and asking her out.

Leave your thoughts in the comments and reblogs! Hope you liked these!

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #18 – Montress Volume 3: Haven by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

I have been reading one volume of this comic a month, in part as a way to force myself to take it a bit slowly and appreciate the issues and volumes as distinct arcs and works in their own right instead of archive binging, and in part because a volume of comic books being more than ~20% of my reading goal for the year feels like cheating. This has accomplished both of those goals splendidly, but it is making it increasingly hard to come up with different ways of talking about the basic premise of the story. So I’m just not going to.

The plot picks up fairly directly where the last plot dropped off – with Maika having escaped the last maratime city-state she’d found refuge in (now wanted fugitive) and settling into the next one. To secure safety for herself and her little crew of misfits (eldritch god-monster her mom bore and raised her to be a host for, adorable fox-child she treats like shit, terrible cat who betrays everyone, improbably hot noble magic assassin whose technically supposed to be murdering her), she’s conscripted by the royal engineer to assist in repairing the ancient magical shield which protected the city during the last war – which, due to her heritage and the aforementioned eldritch god, she might be the only one capable of safely accessing. That (literally) blows up in everyone’s face just about immediately, and the remainder of the arc is spent scrambling to deal.

Dramatically the volume works very well as a self-contained narrative, though a decade of marvel movies have left me kind of incapable of taking a big climax involving an apocalyptic glowing hole in the sky that seriously. Beyond that though, this is definitely a Lore volume, digging deep into the history of the Shaman Empress, her relationship with Zinn, and what the other Montrum are or want. It also, if my memory is right, marks the point where Zinn finishes transitioning from this terrible quasi-unknowable parasite ruining Maika’s life and turning her into a walking atrocity to just, like, Some Guy. They’re a little shit with an improbably amount of flattering amnesia and also murder a bunch of people but like, they’re a character now. They banter with Maika constantly, and also keep fucking up and being wrong about things. Deeply endearing tbh.

This also marks the point where The Doctor and Maika’s paternal family more broadly starts being a lot more plot-relavent which, going to be honest, I’m kind of dreading. Can’t remember any real details but my memories of the whole upcoming arc basically boil down to ‘at least Maika got that badass clockwork prosthetic out of it’.

Kippa and Ren are basically irrelevant to the actual plot this time, which is totally fine because I love them both dearly and would have happily read an entire issue of them going shopping and having a nice day in the market. Kippa, besides being adorable, does actually get some pretty meaty scenes providing the view from the gutter here though – Maika gets scooped up by a scheming vizier engineer as soon as she walks into town, and also hates people, but Kippa is absolutely the sort of person to go wandering through a sprawling refugee camp doing whatever she can to help. Which is both good worldbuilding and characterization and provides some desperately needed grounding to keep the whole story from vanishing entirely into mythic freudian psychodrama.

Speaking of preferring the social and political storytelling – I’m not sure they ever actually matter, but I do love the two bit characters who occasionally get scenes of their desperate heroic spycraft and diplomacy as they try everything they can to prevent another war breaking out. Their little bit in this volume also does a great job illuminating what a broken mess the politics of the Federation is – given the incredibly vague 1930s-East-Asia analogy underlying the story’s geopolitics, I like that the genocidal power about to plunge the world into war is riven with internal contradictions and five minutes away from a coup with the army and navy barely able to stand in the same room without gunfights breaking out).

Anyway yeah, it’s still Monstress. Still good! I probably sound like a broken record saying it at this point, but the character design remains just sublime, even for very thoroughly secondary characters. Speaking of, my favourite one has now shown up!

[black-diamond1329]

⭐ Name: Sandra, but you can tell me Sandy 😉.

⭐Age: I feel like I'm 15 years old, I stopped counting at 19 and my friends say that I act like I'm 5 years old XD hahaha ... Nah! I just turned 23 years old this August n_n.

💔 Occupation: Being a universitary girl XD ... Yes! It's so fun! (sarcasm).

🩷 Some things that I love it: Read (I read all kinds of books and about my favorite ships on Ao3! 🤭), cook desserts, listen to music while I do other activities like my homework or when I read, Greek mythology (The love between us will never die! 💗).

⭐Saint Seiya (or Knights of the Zodiac). I found this beautiful serie when I was 7 years old. My favorite is the original serie, although I also like the Lost Canvas a lot and Episode G (because Aioria is the protagonist). Soul of Gold gives me mixed feelings. From Omega and Next Dimension, better don't ask me; my mind lives in denial. My favorite characters are the Golden Saints, especially Aioros and Aioria, being Aioria my super favorite.

Thanks to Saint Seiya I developed a great love for the stars 💫 and I have many scientific books on the subject, as well as books of myths and legends about the constellations ✨.

💥 I'm a Marvel Girl. I love those tormented superheroes and antiheroes. I basically grew up watching Marvel since Iron Man came out in 2008 and I immersed myself fully in the world of the comics, I have a lot of comics and books on my bookshelf 🤭. My favorites are: Iron Man ♥️, Captain America, Spider-Man, Loki, the X-Men, Black Widow and Scarlet Witch, in all their presentations and with all their charms and defects!.

🍿Series: Friends, Full House, The big bang theory, How I met your mother and How I met your father, Modern Family, Mom, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel... I love it K-Dramas like Goblin: The lonely and great God, Crash landing on you, Tale of the Nine Tailed 😋, I have also watched many animes like Sailor Moon, Ouran High School Host Club, Toradora, Code Geass, Inuyasha, Kaleido Star, Shaman King, Attack on Titan... it's a long list and I don't remember everything at this moment 🤔. Miraculous Ladybug (I know it's for kids, but ... there is Chat Noir 🖤).

🐉In my House of the Dragon era 🖤: Like many people, I was also terribly disappointed with the horrible ending of Game of Thrones, but I really loved Fire and Blood when I read it in 2020... so I decided to give the serie a chance when I saw the first trailer... and I don't regret it! 🥳. I liked Daemon and Rhaenyra so much in the book and absolutely loved them in the TV Show! (Matt and Emma are incredible! ❣️). Another character that I loved in the book and the one I always wanted to know more about was Jacaerys Velaryon and I must say that I am very pleased with the choice of Harry Collett 😍 (oh yeah baby! 🔥).

I really hope that the directors and writers do justice to this wonderful crown prince! 🥰, because for me he is already one of my favorite characters of all time! ❣️.

🎥 Favorite Movies: Troy 2004 (did I mention I'm a Greek mythology lover?), the Star Wars saga 💫 (1-6 only), The Great Gatsby, A Walk to Remember, Harry Potter 🪄 (books and movies), The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, The Hunger Games saga ❣️(books and movies), The Twilight saga 😊 (books and movies).

I love Studio Ghibli movies with all my heart 💗 since my dad bought me the movie of Kiki Delivery Service when I was a 6-year-old little girl.

I love everything Disney and Pixar does 💗😘. (think of the happiest things, It's the same as having wings! 🎶)

🎧 Music: I have a very varied taste in music, some would say strange 😅, but if I like the rhythm and lyrics of the song I will surely add it to my playlist (mainly I like rock), AC / DC, Queen, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Linkin Park, Evanescence, Within Temptation, Imagine Dragons, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Lana del Rey, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. I enjoy classical music too 🩷.

⭐ Something more about me: I am an inveterate dreamer and extremely perfectionist. I express myself better by writing than talking 😚.

I haven't drawn anything in almost 5 years and when I did I used to draw with traditional media (watercolor, charcoal, colored pencils, gouche and acrylic paints 🖌️).

But since October (from last year), when I saw Harry Collett as Prince Jacaerys, I felt a desire to draw that I hadn't felt in a long time ❣️.

This is my first time trying to draw in digital media, I hope you like what you see! 😘 (YouTube tutorials don't fail me now! 😭). I spent the whole summer practicing🥺.

P.S: Sorry if exist some error, the english is not my firts lenguage.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

2022 MOVIE OF THE WEEK #34

black panther: wakanda forever. after i saw this one, i noted that reviews for it seemed pretty mixed--but i loved it. not because i felt like it was a perfect follow-up to the first one, but because it didn’t try to be that. it couldn’t, so it went in a different direction. and as messy and excessive as i did think it was in parts, pretty much all of those problems to me seemed caused by the curse of the mcu, which i certainly wouldn’t expect any filmmakers inside the system to be able to escape.

what i mean is, this movie had to accomplish three major things all at the same time: honor chadwick boseman’s memory and say goodbye to the beginnings of this series that he established; introduce a new black panther and situate that character in his place, with all the complications that entails; and introduce a new antagonist AND a whole new world that he originates from, that will be incorporated into the mcu going forward. that’s too much for one movie to do well! it just is. 

so they do all the things, but it feels obvious the whole time that we are witnessing a new antagonist who isn’t going to be conclusively beaten like  killmonger was, and that he isn’t stronger and smarter and more unusual because it actually makes sense for the movie...at least to me, it just felt really forced, them cramming this new marvel world and character into this sequel, to drive their phases of the mcu forward whether it would be what was best for the black panther series or not. 

but again, i don’t blame the movie for that--i think it’s well-established by now that any movie that does well enough in the mcu to gain a sequel will be expected to then stretch those sequels to fit whatever unrelated marvel nonsense the corporation has decided needs an introduction. the best they can hope for is to accommodate what’s required of them (to get to make the sequels at all) without completely ruining what made people love the originals enough to wish for sequels in the first place. and given the givens of this movie, which was also going on without its originally intended star, i thought they did okay.

so, a major part of why i loved this movie is that i knew they would have to address the absence of t’challa, but i didn’t know what to expect from them in doing so. i’m especially fond of media that allows characters to die when their actors do, because there’s something really moving and painful and cathartic and honest, when actors are channeling their own grief that way. but in a superhero movie, i could see that being too heavy, so i wouldn’t have been surprised if they did something different.

instead, i basically started crying when the opening title rolled--i was NOT prepared for the marvel logo to be comprised of slices of chadwick-as-t’challa--and then i didn’t really stop, so much as pause for long stretches in between many other moments scenes that had me crying right up through an end credits scene. 

this movie is about superheroes, sure, but even less than the first one was--and that one was about politics and family and responsibility and power, not just a guy in a suit who could fight. the biggest reason why i loved this movie is because more than anything, it felt to me like a meditation on grief. and that is probably not what most people wanted from this movie, or what they want from superhero movies in general (i wouldn’t really know), but i was not expecting that at all and i didn’t realize how much i needed it until i was in it.

if you set aside the Big Conflict in this movie between the new antagonist and Wakanda broadly (and the royal family more narrowly, then down to Shuri specifically), it’s just a story about loss and how it impacts all the characters we know and love from the first film--how it changes them, what they do with it, what they learn and how they reach out toward each other in attempts to heal. i found it honestly incredibly heartbreaking when even MORE loss was piled onto shuri during the events of the film, but all the parts of that narrative made sense to me.

it was like, if you sliced out most of the excessive time spent establishing the underwater world and any other villain had achieved the same results in destabilizing wakanda and the family, you’d have a tighter story that stuck to its core point: the black panther was never meant to be just one man. t’challa couldn’t live forever. but t’challa was the center of his world not because he was the black panther anyway; he was beloved for the kind of person he was, and that was a lesson his successor would have to learn in the face of losing him.

so, yeah. i loved everything they did with characters grieving and comforting each other and trying to face a new future after a terrible loss. i was still in the middle of my own grief-induced depression when i saw this, and it meant a lot to me that they did not hold back about any of it...like the movie was a farewell to t’challa and also chadwick but it also kind of felt like an invitation to collectively mourn whatever we all lost during the pandemic, somehow. together. 

and beyond that, tbh, i don’t remember much else. i know they also introduced a young female character, but much like the waterworld people, she felt shoehorned in, somebody it was hard to care about when important stuff was happening to the characters i actually came to see. re: the waterworld people, i should say that i didn’t dislike them or this movie’s antagonist--his motivations made sense and and the actor seems cool. he brought depth to his portrayal. marvel is the real villain here! (lol.) 

i firmly believe they did both waterworld (i know, i know, it has a real name, but i don’t remember the details a year later and refuse to google them because then it would seem like i did remember) and the black panther world a disservice by introducing it this way. i think if marvel wants to keep their ‘universe’ going until the literal universe dies someday, which seems to be the plan so far, they should be required to introduce the different worlds and major characters in standalone movies, like they started out doing. 

if they had done that with this new waterworld, and let black panther 2 be about everyone figuring out how to move forward after t’challa’s death, this movie could have still focused on shuri’s journey and everyone’s grief and wakanda’s ability to stand strong against america and the rest of the world--and it could’ve done so without also needing to adding so many other layers of battles and introductions. that was the only part that really felt messy to me, when the first film was so well-crafted.

other things i can add that i do remember: the fact that waterworld’s initial introduction in this movie feels like a scene from some other genre, and was absolutely terrifying for me (i hate underwater scenes in everything, i have drowning fear); the music was of course great but i expected nothing else; and the performances were (again expectedly) fantastic. this franchise is the kind where basically every character is my fave, so i loved seeing them all in top form again, fighting or offering wisdom or standing strong.

so this is a movie i can only recommend if you’re in the mood to face your feelings about death, and with the awareness that you’re kind of going to be watching two movies in one...which funnily enough the poster hints at, i guess. when i remember watching it, i remember it fondly, which is why i would still recommend it--but i think i remember it that way because in my head it is so sharply separated into ‘black panther things’ and ‘everything else that could’ve been in another movie’ and i really did enjoy it on those separate levels.

[timberlakefan96]

Apologies in advance for long rant

So I’ve been on a superhero comic kick for a little while now and I got curious about where comic books are in the Space Year 2024 and I gotta ask what the hell is going on over there? I might be preaching to the choir here. I don’t know. I haven’t been in this fandom for a very long time. I don’t know where the conversation is. I’m just airing my own personal grievances on the subject. But I don’t understand how the progenitors of the single biggest movement in media in the last 20 years have been failing so absolutely thoroughly on their core product. To a point where it’s legitimately incredible. A feat of its own.

I haven’t touched a comic book in about a decade and a half at this point. I read them a lot in my teens and early 20s and the last comic book that I picked up and read with intent to continue was during DC‘s new 52 lineup back in 2011. I did not continue reading there. So it’s been long enough, I am functionally a brand new reader, right. I asked a friend who would been reading comics this whole time what he thought and he pointed me to marvel’s new ultimate lineup, which, much like the original Ultimate comics that I loved, is supposed to be a fresh start for familiar characters, each one of them having a new twist. Which sounds perfect to me!

Ultimate Spider-Man, which has only been running for about three issues at this point for example, has the elevator pitch of “what if Spider-Man got bitten as a 35-year-old family man instead of a gangly teenager?” which sounds incredible, and I needed to read that right away.

So, okay, I know what I want, how do I obtain this comic? My first thought, as I imagine most anyone’s first thought in the year 2024 would be is: “there’s gonna be an app right?” And the answer to that question is yes but no. There is an app and it does have, for a monthly subscription, “a selection” of comics, but the new stuff doesn’t arrive until after a significant delay. Like, three months. Strikes me is wrongheaded, but not particularly surprising. So plan B was still in the mindset of reading these today: Find a local comic store. Luckily, I live in a part of the United States that is very dense with nerds. There’s half a dozen comic shops near enough that I can just pop in, so I do! None of them had the comics I wanted in stock. Turns out almost none of them order more comics than they absolutely have to, because comics floppies, in an ironic twist, are actually a terrible investment for comic shops. Unless the distributor is twisting their arm, they only order as many copies of a given comic as they have preorders for. They were all very excited and welcoming, and I will be going back, but they were entirely unequipped to handle some rando like me barging into their store for a specific comic. Okay so plan C is “Can I get them delivered?” and the answer to that is yes, but not directly. Which, Dear Marvel Comics; you’re a company that pumps out monthly publications, how do you not have a subscription service? How does that happen? So you can’t just read these comics online, you can’t order them straight from the source, and you can’t just buy them in stores. At least not without great effort and pain. Or piracy. Cannot overstate the pervasive force that was the temptation to hoist the flag through this entire process.

Eventually, I did find these comics and I buy them. Just found a place online and ordered them. Not my original plan, but hyperfixations are what they are.

After actually reading these things, I got three distinct and immediate impressions. First: The comic is good! For the most part! It’s well written and well drawn. They do make good on the promise of the conceit and I probably am going to keep reading it. In fact, I might dip in a little further and go for their ultimate X-Men line which is going in a wild new direction that intrigues me! But here’s the second thing. I bought three (3) comics. At five (!!) dollars apiece. So I ended up spending $15 before taxes and shipping. Basically a month subscription to whatever streaming service I want, and all for what, 50 pages of content? That’s insane, right? Like I can’t be the only one to think that? I just don’t understand what rationale they’re using to sell these things. I don’t understand where they think the value proposition is here, when, again, for the price of only a few issues, I could get access to hundreds of hours of content on virtually any platform I want. For the cost of these three comics, I could buy a month of Disney+ and watch every single Marvel movie. It’s just not a fair comparison, and I really don’t understand why they think this is okay.

And then putting value propositions to the side for the moment, thing three is: This comic, which again I want to emphasize is good, was pitched to me as a completely fresh start free of any baggage that might turn away a prospective reader, much like the original Ultimates line. In issue one we learn that’s not the case. I’ll keep this as free from spoilers as possible, but we learn that the entire universe, and reason for this Peter Parker’s existence is because of a decision a character made in another universe from a decade ago. And if you wanna know all about that, you have to read a separate comic series. Which feels like exactly the wrong creative decision to make here. And, like, I get it, This is Marvel things are gonna tie back together, that’s just what these stories do, but you can’t sell me a fresh start with a new version of a new character and then, in issue one, tell me that pretense is false. If you want to tie it in later, as a big stakes-raising twist, be my guest, but to bring in this whole Multiverse thing in issue one just smacks of no confidence in your product. Like you don’t trust the basic conceit of your story to sell itself. Which you should be able to do! Hell, it sold me! I guarantee if I told someone this story was about a character who died in a big multi-comic event a decade ago but came back and made his own universe, most people’s eyes are going to gloss over. But if I said “Spider-Man but he’s 35 and happily married *before* he becomes Spider-man”, that’s gonna turn some heads! But I digress.

In the end, I’m not an active member of this community, I’m just an outside observer who poked my head into comic books for the first time in a very long time, and I’m just baffled. Almost everything wrong here has been solved a decade ago or more. Again, I’m sure I’m saying nothing new, and if you’re reading comics and find no relation to my plight, then go with god. I just needed to vent frustration. I don’t understand how comic books are even still a thing, when they’re this hard to get, and this hard to parse. Get your shit together, guys.

[witchyravenarts]

Ones that I Have Written

You're gonna carry that Weight ~ Archive of Our Own, Tumblr Boothill x Reader Kinda??? Honkai Star Rail Mostly Boothill angst

A story of Love, Loss, and Finding family even though it hurts. Boothill's story has always been a Tragedy. And it almost feels like he brings bad luck wherever he goes. Almost as if he has become the bringer of death himself. He's gotten used to it. Its only when he finds someone from his past alive and well does he maybe see some change. Maybe he isn't bad luck. Maybe... Things will change. But Who knows. He will carry the weight of death for his entire life. And it wont ever get easier...

This is a fic I am REALLY proud of!! I have put so much work into it and holy shit. I am so excited to write more once I have more time. Im tryin to update as quickly as I can!!

Fics by others

Choice and Freedom ~ Archive of Our Own Levi Ackerman x Reader Attack on Titan

Living in Mitras with all the luxury one could wish for was the dream of many, but for you it was a nightmare; a cage that each day felt smaller, crushing down all your hopes behind its golden bars. Today was supposed to be another dull day, having the same brain-melting conversations, pretending to be someone you were not, smiling at people who didn’t care about you… That wasn’t the life you wanted, but what else could you do? Your fate was settled… until a thug from the Underground broke into your house and gave you the strength to take control of your own life and send destiny to hell. Running away from a loveless marriage and a pampered life, you got a lot more that you bargained for: a new family, new friends, a new life, a new love. Your story with Levi had a rough and unusual start, but your paths led both of you to the same direction, one that you chose and never regretted.

I enjoyed it when I read it!! Its still on going

My Spark is Your Desert ~ Archive of Our Own Megatron x Rodimus Transformers More than Meets The Eye IDW comics

When Megatron is put onto the Lost Light Rodimus doesn't like it. At all. But eventually he drops the pouting and puts in the effort of getting along with the tank in his own way. On the outside everyone thinks it's not working, but unbeknownst to them his charm loosens the ex-Decepticon's gears in private. One thing leads to another, and things end up changing quicker than they thought. What will the two mechs do through this spiraling path of uncertainty and pain, and what will become of them in the end?

Incredible writer and I LOVED this piece, Im not one for Megatron x Rodimus, but I enjoyed this one

Let Me At The Wall ~ Archive of Our Own Drift x Wing Transformers More than Meets The Eye IDW Comics

He was lovely. All his snarly, angry mech self. Wing wanted to help him, to teach him to be his best self. But that was going to be tougher than first thought. Was it because of his temper or his instincts untethered by socialization? No. The problem was more simple than that. Something flying under his radar. Wing should really pay more attention. Though it was pretty hard not to when you're living with a grouchy, wild mech whom you found attractive. ...This isn't going to turn out well.

Another incredible piece by the same author!!

Paper Mache ~ Archive of Our Own Drift x Ratchet Transformers More than Meets The Eye IDW comics

Ratchet meets a bot who dances his breath away and steals his spark. Will fate be kind to them and keep bringing them together, or will it be cruel and tear them apart at the seams?

Incredible read of this ongoing fic. It is INCREDIBLY well done and the author takes care into writing some of the more graphic, and sensitive topics. I love this fic even though it is an incredibly hard read. Please give this authors work love!!

Vacant Mirrors ~ Archive of Our Own Bucky Barnes x Reader Marvel

Dr. Hart shares an office with Dr. Raynor. You share a waiting room with Bucky Barnes.

PLEASE read this if you are a Bucky Barnes girlie. Oh my gods I love this fic so much. PLEASE PLEASE read it!!

Gut and Idyll ~ Archive of Our Own Content SMP x Hadestown

eldritch gods, mortal follies, and an excuse to give everyone the ending they deserve (even if it isn't really the one they want) ~ In which myths teach how the world is, and changing one changes everything. Orpheus is a strange sort of muses son, Eurydice is a hungry young girl, Hades can't help but be an old god of the end, and the Fates try meddle just a little too much. ~ Or: What makes a god, when no one dies? and what, in turn, marks a mortal?

OH MY GODS PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE SERIES!!! Its written by my best friend and soon to be roommate, holy shit this series is incredible!! PLEASE READ IT!!

Tags:

@kalikastorm @ghostie-jakxy-gray

fic authors self rec! reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. spread the self-love!

thank you for tagging me @mangostarjam 🩷

is it casual now? (hinata shoyo)

notes: probably my favorite shoyo fic I've written, there's just so much of how I imagine him to be in this one and idk I just love the charming, flirty, kind, slightly possessive picture of him I painted here

surreal, but nice (miya osamu)

notes: I wrote it for bloomy's romcom collab and it was sooo much fun to put osamu in a notting hill setting! I still wanna write a part 2 really bad

like real people do (itoshi rin)

notes: I'm really happy with how the dialogue/dynamic in this one turned out, I got to balance sincere love, angst, complicated sibling relationships and hopefully gave rin a break lmao

et nunc et semper (aiku oliver)

notes: ancient rome au is so special to me! I also really love the dialogue, settings and dynamics in this one. I thought no one would be interested enough to read it but everyone has been so immensely nice

should've known better (rengoku kyojuro)

notes: hurt quite a lot of people with this one, sorry! I still adore it

rain is bad luck (shinazugawa sanemi)

notes: my first tumblr fic!!! also first fic I wrote in english :')

all eyes on you my magician (jjk various characters) (dark content)

notes: the secret history au my beloved!!! dark academia my most beloved!!!!! I love this one so much despite the heavy content, this fic probably has my favorite gojo

no pressure tags: any writer who wants to join + @strawberrystepmom, @nagumoan, @heavenlyakin, @tohruies, @lvmimis, @kweenkatsuki-fics, @gojoest, @yuujispinkhair, @ms0milk, @comatosebunny09, @chimielie

[cerealboxlore]

something i need more of is protective captain marvel

specifically fiercely protective of people he personally cares about (mostly leaning towards family hear but also friends) captain

like of course with a heroes heart (whatever that means) caps gonna be naturally protective

but billy probably also has some separation anxiety from his parents death and, if it’s a twin sister mary version, being separated from her

possibly add onto that memories from past champions of their loved ones dying? no way he wouldn’t be protective

so what i want to see is a marvel, who has been working with the league for a while, having them meet the shazamily for whatever reason and just just being fiercely protective

i want his mindset to revert(?) to billy to a certain degree making him act a little bit (a lot) feral to protect them from the smallest of things and to glare a glare harsher than batmans at the league while trying to physically distant them

if the flash or someone flirts with one of them (obviously not knowing they’re underage and if its the flash him not being married/in a relationship) and for marvel to just punch him in the face immediately without thought

I think we could all benefit from more protective Captain Marvel, if I speak for everyone.

Billy having separation anxiety isn't something I considered before, but now that you bring it up, it makes complete sense! It fits into his character so well with having been abandoned so many times in his life, he'd depend on the few stable and promising relationships in his life for safety and comfort, even when in his champion form. He'd want to protect them at all costs, no matter what. Because underneath that magical form of a champion is a small child scared of the world who wants them to be continuously alone. A child who is used to having nothing will protect the the things they hold dear as they grow older, no matter what. Adding on that, with the reoccurring memories and dreams from the past lives of the former champions of magic who have already experienced death, mourning, and worse fates, Billy Batson wouldn't come out of it without needing some therapy.

Tawny as a therapy cat is much needed.

Billy has such a pure heart, a sweet boy, I can definitely seeing him accidentally become overly protective of his found family when introducing them to other people and fellow superheroes.

The idea of another superhero flirting with one of them isn't an impossibility, just a little awkward to approach. If anyone ever does, I'm pretty sure the whole shazamily would reject that person as a team, hahaha

Maybe Flash would give Mary a compliment considering the similar costumes, but I think Guy Gardner trying to make a pass at one of them and immediately getting decked across the city sky by Billy would be incredible. Feral nature is approved in that moment. Unleash the Billy!

[genuineformality]

Rules: List ten comfort movies and tag ten people. Or not. I’m not your boss.

Thank you for tagging me @taralkariel! I don’t watch a lot of movies these days, partially because the way our house is set up isn’t really conducive to that, but… I do have some that I think about all the time and bring me joy.

Here are my comfort movies in the order in which I thought of them:

Pride and Prejudice (2005): It’s such a pleasant adaptation. Is the 90s miniseries objectively a better adaptation in terms of closeness to source material? Probably. But this does such an incredibly beautiful job of capturing the essence of the novel and doing some really lovely things with showing the differences in class that exist between impoverished and wealthy gentlepeople which gets missed in a lot of regency romance adaptations.  

White Christmas (1954): I love this film. It’s only kind of a Christmas movie, in that it takes place over the Christmas holiday and features the Irving Berlin’s (noted Jewish composer) White Christmas, but let’s face it: it’s really a thin excuse to smash as many completely ridiculous dance numbers together with only the tiniest hint of a plot.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992): Another completely ridiculous Christmas movie that I mostly love because it is probably the most faithful adaptation of A Christmas Carol that exists, even with the muppets. Possibly because of the muppets. I have a long, complicated history with Christmas (as someone who is Jewish; as someone whose mother tried to join cults a few times, and as a result, all holidays are weird; as someone with a lot of family trauma that often came to a head around holidays, both the ones we observed and sometimes especially when we were not observing them), but I found an uneasy détente with Christmas and now observe it in a way that makes sense for me and my (non-Jewish) family. So it seems weird that I have two Christmas movies on this list, but I cannot tell you how many good, fond, wonderful memories I have tied up with this movie. Just thinking about it lowers my blood pressure.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971): Angela Lansbury, my beloved. When I was growing up, we had a VCR and a very small collection of films on VHS, of which this was one. And this is definitely the one that I wore out through watching and rewatching. It’s such a weird, fun, lovely film.

The Birdcage (1996): Robin Williams and Nathan Lane clearly had so much fun making this. It’s a farce and looking at it any deeper than the surface means that the plot falls apart almost immediately, so you cannot take it seriously. And yet, it has such warmth and heart. I love this film, even though it has not aged well; even though it’s imperfect.

Empire Records (1995): What’s with TODAY, today? This came out when I was entering high school and it was the perfect film for that time in my life and it has remained a favorite ever since.

Auntie Mame (1958): Speaking of films that haven’t necessarily aged well, but are fun, hilarious, and heartfelt. Auntie Mame was a book (that also has not aged well) and was adapted to theater and film about making the best of the family you have and creating family from your friends as well as blood kin. My mom showed me this film when I was still in single digits and I knew then that my goal in life was to be Auntie Mame, the original wine aunt. And you know, I’m not doing a half bad job of it.

Galaxy Quest (1999): It’s the best star trek movie. Fight me.

Mystery Men (1999): It’s the best marvel movie. Fight me.

Persuasion (2007): Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel. When I was in high school/college, I was all about that Pride and Prejudice life, but as an adult (and one rapidly approaching middle age), I feel Persuasion to my core. There is something so incredibly human about grieving the life you might have had; of living with regrets and still living your life with as much integrity as you can; of having a terrible family and bearing with them; and of getting second chances that honestly were probably only available because of your lived experience, integrity, and living through that grief. Anne Elliot is my girl (and I’m actively mad about the Netflix adaptation, despite generally being very live and let live about adaptations being adaptations). Why is this one my comfort movie? Because this is the one that captured Anne for me. Sally Hawkins was beautiful casting and she shines with subtle, understated grace. 10/10, would Anne Elliot again.

Tagging (with no pressure whatsoever): @marycontraire, @saritasoyyo, @totchipanda, @capinejghafa, @whatanybodygets, @pyrrhlc, @tlonista, @feelinglikecleopatra; @jackwolfes; @carolinawrenn; @whimperandabang

[annathesillyfriend]

Anna's August Fic Recs

Welcome to my August fic recommendations masterpost!! This has been quite a busy month for me but I'm holding onto last weeks of freedom. I am trying to read as much before uni starts and I had a pleasure of reading some brilliant fics this month. I am so excited to share them with you all! I hope your summer is going amazing and to those, who have just started classes - good luck!

To all the writers - I love you and I appreciate you so much!

To all the readers - please, share the fics you read and love. The reblog really makes the change! It’s the least we can do to show our gratitude.

HOLLAND & Co.

✨ Tom Holland

revenges is sweet by @t-lostinworlds

series, social media au, college!au, football player!tom, fake dating, idiots to lovers, all of our fave tropes, i am invested in this series more than i am in my own life, it's just that good

sunkissed by @duskholland

one-shot, 18+, surfer!tom x lifeguard!tom, exes to lovers, h's great mind at its finest 👏

souvenirs of the heart by @veryholland

one-shot, brought me to tears no joke, such a beutiful story, mila did such an amazing job!!

heartbreak girl by @lauras-collection

one-shot, 18+, lead singer!tom, based on 5SOS song, this is so goooood 😫😫 this story lives in my heart rent free right nextdoor to laura!!

act 1: scene 5 and 6 by @youandtom

one-shot, best friends to lovers, helping tom with learning lines, i loved this very much!

happier than ever by @vendettaparker

one-shot, tom being the great lad he is comes to save an awful date and we stan

the trial of the eldest holland by @reawritesthings

one-shot, ex!tom, welcome to the angst town! this is so deeply heartbreaking but so beautifully written!

lucky to be in love by @hollandsvogue

one-shot, rose is going staright for my silly little heart :')

slide in by @uglypastels

one-shot, frat!tom, i fall in love with this story time and time again

white winged dove by @muhollands

one-shot, 18+, conuntry!tom, insert country boy i love you vine here (also, i'd like to take this moment to kindly invite you all to go through d's whole masterlist cause it's brilliant. this mj blurb has sent me straight to hell but it's so worth it)

abide by @hazofmyheart

one-shot, 18+, mob!au, tom x reader x harrison, this made me feel some type of way 👁👄👁

getting ahead of ourselves by @/hazofmyheart

one-shot, 18+, college! lacrosse player!tom holland x tutor!reader, this is soft, this is cute, this is hot, this is everything! 12/10 would recommend

✨ Harrison Osterfield

little lune by @dovenymph

one-shot, celebrating your birthday with haz, made me want a refund for my birthday cause it's so lovely 🥺🥺

it will come back by @greenorangevioletgrass

one-shot, part of the rich kid!au series, 18+, richkid!haz x richkid!reader x actor!tom, there are no words in any language that would let me express how much i love ava and this au

✨ Harry Holland

wild side by @softholand

one-shot, 18+, best friends to lovers, that trope was made to be written about mister harry holland, i swear

lost in your light by @spider-barnes

one-shot, 18+, best friends to lovers, bloody lovely 💛

falling in love at a coffee shop by @/spider-barnes

one-shot, college!au, oh to fall in love with harry holland at a coffee shop 😫

hope is frightening thing by @peterplanet

one-shot, writer!reader x first da!harry, her book gets a film adaptation and harry is being is wonderful self 🥰

my forever by @unsaidholland

blurb, talking about your future with him, it's just 🥰🥰

circles by @farfromharry

one-shot, rich kid!au, enemies to lovers, so wonderful!

MARVEL

🎂 Suz's birthday fics

this total babe @samwilsons-pillowpecs gave us four beautiful gift on her birthday! we adore you, lovely 🥰 these stories are all wonderful anddeserve their own category 💛

you're the glitter in the dark

one-shot, 18+, mob!bucky

if i could touch you...

one-shot, 18+, boxer!steve

love you in a thousand ways

one-shot, 18+, ceo!sam

miss your kiss

one-shot, 18+, biker!thor

🎂@rodrikstark ’s 1.5k follower celebration!

collecion of headcanons with our favourite marvel boys as well as some other characters, i bloody love them all but my numer one has got to be joaquin teaching you spanish 😌

✨ Sam Wilson

book smart by @indyluckycharlie

one-shot, librarian!sam x PhD student!reader, such a warm and comfy little story by my dearest cate who i love very much 😌

he we go again by @/xbuchananbarnes

one-shot, idiots in love 🥰🥰

adventures in babysitting captain america and winter solider by @princessmisery666

one-shot, reader takes the boys to disneyland and it's just so amazing!

stay awhile by @lacapucharoja

one-shot, black!reader, a saturday morning with sam 😌😌

slow motion by @ambrosiase

one-shot, 18+, sam in baggy grey sweatpants and no underwear, need i say more?

✨ Steve Rogers

bullies, bullied by @anika-ann

one-shot, my main babe is blessing us with protective steve and i love her 🥰

there's a peace in dreaming by @babycap

one-shot, i don't have the words to tell you how stunning this story is, please go read it

✨ Bucky Barnes

timer by @xbuchananbarnes

series, soulmate!au based on the movie TiMER (2009). i could go on and on about how incredible that series is but with dani it's a given, sooo 🤷‍♀️

the kids will be alright by @imaginationintowords

series, social media au, lawyer!bucky x interior designer!reader, single dad!bucky, single mom!reader raising their kid together as friends, also reader x clark kent. honestly this is one of my fave social media aus of all time. and it's got a sequel is coming!!

quick fix by @ocean-bucky

one-shot, tfatws!bucky x ofc, vidra is the queen of ofc's, you simply can't not love her characters!

grant (part 2) by @coffeecatsandsarcasm

two-shot, bucky's in a relationship with a single mom with a little boy, it's so soft, i love this little family!

before sunset, i fell by @buckysbiota

one-shot, modern!au, when i get drunk i get myself cake, when reader got drunk, she got herself a husband. a very fine husband 😏

alcohol you later by @/xbuchananbarnes

one-shot, is it the 4th of dani's fics on this list? yes, she's just that powerful

three flags up by @starbuckie

one-shot, 18+, campcounselor!bucky x campcounselor!reader, best friends to lovers, buck being a cute little puppy in love and i adore him very much

and he kissed me right there by @sunmoonandbucky

one-shot, veteran!bucky, age gap, this is so full of feelings and it's gonna steal your heart!

lost and found by @sunshinebuckybarnes

two-shot, neighbour!bucky, alpine being the matchmaker of the year and we love that for her

hazy dreams and good mornings by @angrythingstarlight

one-shot, 18+, firefighter!bucky, i think that's enough encouragement to read this gem 😏

✨ Joaquin Torres

red by @remmysbounty

one-shot, a truly exceptional story!!

hold my words, keep us together by @/xbuchananbarnes

one-shot, soulmate!au, just simply stunning!

✨Peter Parker

love lies by @rosyparkers

series, social media au, y/n is silk but peter doesn't know it, peter is spiderman but y/n doesn't know it, sarah is the brightest star in the universe and everyone knows it

sunset lovers by @duskholland

one-shot, college! au, soulmate!au where what your soulmate writes on their skin, appears on yours. i don't think i have to tell you that eveything written by h, my beloved is pure gold. the softest thing!

always waiting (for you to come home) by @peterbenjiparker

one-shot, reader comes to peter cause she needs him to patch her up after patrol, it's so funny and sweet and i just love it so much, m is the bestest!!

perfectly a little late by @/t-lostinworlds

one-shot, college!au, reader forgets about peter's birthday. or does she 👀 please, give a round of applause for this wonderful writer who's been feeding us so well this month 👏👏

this fic by @peeterparkr

one-shot, last kiss with peter :') nancy knows all the most beautiful ways to break someone's heart

the plan by @spideyyeet

series, aveneger!reader, reader likes peter, peter likes mj, mysterio shows up, lots of angsty things happen. it's so bloody good, my mates, go read it!!

burning red by @spideyspeaches

one-shot, avenger!reader who who describes people's personalities as colors, it's just a stunning story with wonderful writing and i love it!!

this fic by @mcumendes

blurb, peter brings y/n flowers and is very very adorable!!

kiss me more by @celestialholland

one-shot, first make out with peter and i'm just 😫😫 in love

the reveal by @cloudybarnes

one-shot, best friends!reader where she finds out about him being spiderman, so lovely!!

always by @ptersmj

one-shot, an absolutely adorable best friends to lovers moment

red-handed by @/vendettaparker

one-shot, stark!reader, morgan interrupts y/n and peter's alone time 😏😂

OTHERS

✨ Spencer Reid

as told by flowers by @reidingmelodies

one-shot, story about the progress of the relationship with spencer told by flowers (duh 😂), it's just wonderful!!

✨ Frank Adler

thnks fr th mmrs by @wiypt-writes

one-shot, 18+, reader goes to frank the night before his wedding, i love this with everything i have

will you hold on my love by @writerwrites

one-shot, don't come anywhere near this piece without tissues!!

✨ Ransom Drysdale

undercover boss by @chase-your-dreams-away

series, reader's working at drysdales' company and hooks up with ransom not knowing who he is. this series is so bloody good! i love the reader in here so much!!

a/n: if you catch some kind of mistake or if you see that i miscredited someone - please let me know so i can change that!

[h-worksrambles]

Well, I got caught up with Remember the Flowers. And considering that doing so left me an emotional wreck at 4 in the morning. I don’t think it’s a surprise that I have a lot to say.

Now before I get into my spoiler heavy thoughts I want to say one thing: Play Remember the Flowers. I don’t care if you’re not a furry. Just do it. I cannot recommend it enough. If you want a genuinely good and refreshing isekai story with memorable characters, gorgeous art and music, an excellent sense of mystery and incredibly emotional payoffs, you will get all of that and more here, even in its current WIP state. The 13 chapters currently available are worth the experience alone (and it’s free by the way).

Now with that said, allow me talk about just why this game made such an impression on me. FULL SPOILERS FOR UP TO CHAPTER 13 BELOW. DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED.

First and foremost, the structure and delivery of the story is fantastic. You experience the plot over the course of story arcs of about 4-5 chapters each, and every single one does incredible work escalating upon it itself. The pacing is something of a slow burn but every chapter still provides plenty of interesting character interactions and new things to learn about the world. And the payoff comes with the finale of each arc, all of which somehow managed to one up each other in their dramatic weight. The first arc already managed to end on the emotional gut punch of Cooper’s betrayal. The second arc took great advantage of Cyrus dealing with that emotional fallout and trying to adjust to the new status quo despite being more afraid and distrusting than ever, before the devastating revelations of his own past. The third arc has an absolute beautiful exploration of the characters’ relationship, seeing Cyrus becoming truly comfortable around this found family, many of them starting to heal from their own traumas in the fight against Resoom, before leading to an emotional tour de force that completes Cyrus’ character growth beautifully. While I think the dystopian world is interesting, I think it’s this execution and craft of of this story that really elevates it to something special.

Speaking of the characters, they’re also a delight. It’s honestly impressive that most of the actual main cast are as compelling as they are when none of them actually show up until roughly 5 hours in. Pretty much every character with prominent screentime in the first few hours is a red herring. Diana and Damion, who are first introduced as lovable supporting figures in Cyrus’ life who he longs to reunite with, turn out to be long gone given the game’s twist about its timespan. And Cooper, who is effectively the second main character when the story starts is…well we’ll get to that.

Making the player care about the resistance team when they effectively replace the people you thought were the main cast promised to be a tricky business. Fortunately, the game pulls it off marvellously as these guys are a joy. Aaron is an absolutely precious character, and if you follow my blog you’ll know I’ve gushed about him (and what absolute husband material he is) already. It’s very easy to warm to Aaron very quickly. He’s attentive and affectionate as a friend to Cyrus, especially at a point where Cyrus really needs that kind of friend, consistently selfless, a good leader. He almost feels like Mr. Perfect when you meet him. And that’s because he’s trying so SO hard to be. Learning the truth in Chapter 13 of his journey from an impoverished orphan, to a bitter thug hell-bent on violence, to a man genuinely inspired to fight for what he loves recontextualises his past kindness, but not in a bad way. He acts this way because he’s determined to prove to himself and to others that he’s not the killer he used to be. And he’s clearly holding himself to a high standard, afraid that anything less than his best would be enough to make Cyrus see him as the monster he still believes he is. Even now knowing little about his history with his lover Xavier and the role that played in redeeming him, there’s something powerful in just how much of an inspiration he was to Aaron. We don’t know fully who Xavier was. But we can definitely see who Aaron is now and that is an unequivocally good person. By the time it really becomes apparent that Aaron as being set up as the actual love interest, it’s very easy to already fall for him.

And the rest of the cast is also excellent. Canto’s standoffish nature is contrasted by the fact that he’s just genuinely a funny and entertaining presence in the narrative. Karin’s boundless enthusiasm and energy, mixed with a punch first, ask questions latter attitude but also a genuine love for her friends is consistently endearing. Vita’s quiet, business like manner conceals a character who ends up becoming a kindred spirit, one of the few who can really understand what Cyrus is going through. And their own steady growth to overcome the damage done to them physically and emotionally by Resoom leads to some truly poignant payoffs. Silver, despite being the last character to be introduced properly, more than makes up for it with a strong first impression. His quickly blooming friendship with Cyrus is a pleasant contrast that prevents him feeling the ‘edgy dude with a sad backstory’ trope. In fact, watching Cyrus and Silver empathise with each other over their experiences in one scene, and comfortably joke around each other as roomies in the next, feels natural and cathartic.

These guys genuinely feel like a found family before long. Cyrus’ steadily growing attachment to them feels earned. And seeing him heal from the terrible things he’s endured with a group of people who love and support him is incredibly heartwarming.

But I want to focus my discussion on two characters who particularly stuck with me. The first is the resident bastion of controversy, Cooper, or Lance I guess I should say. Suffice to say my earlier post about how I knew he was a polarising character but was liking him so far aged…interestingly to say the least. Seeing Cooper’s early impression of a rough around the edges bad boy with moments of emotional sincerity quickly come crashing down as he’s revealed to be a selfish merc willing to sacrifice innocent lives for a quick buck was a horrible shock to be sure. The story succeeds at making you genuinely like Cooper and his seeming budding friendship with Cyrus. Which makes the reveal all the more heartwrenching. Any kind of ‘I can fix him’ charm is utterly dismantled. Because even if that was real, even if there was a connection here, Lance still chose to throw that away. And we know now it’s not the first time he’s thrown away people he cares for out of selfishness. Still, piece of scum though he is, I was hoping Lance would make a reappearance eventually as I was genuinely curious where they were planning to take his character next. Especially as Cyrus meets and tries to bond with Lance’s former teammates who themselves have been hurt by the guy in the past.

What really fascinated me was when we started changing perspective to follow what happened to Lance after he sold out Cyrus. It was definitely interesting to see him at such a low point. Having all his actions bite him in the ass seemed to make him briefly realise how much he’s screwed himself and everyone around him. While spiralling in self loathing he’s forced to admit what a despicable person he’s been and even expresses regret for what he did to Cyrus. It’s clear that there’s a lot of anger, bitterness at his life, grief over his lost friend and pure simple selfishness that’s brought him to this point. But maybe, just maybe, spending time with Cyrus, did make him start to remember what it’s like to actually give a damn about someone else and to be cared about in turn. Reminded him of everything he’s thrown away. For one moment, you think he might be starting to get it. Might be taking that first step to be a better man like you’ve seen hints he’s capable of being…

And then when Artemis brings his old team up, and all those feelings of anger, jealousy, grief and resentment, that thickheaded belief that he’s the victim in all this, comes back full force. And before you know it, he’s in too deep, utterly in Resoom’s pocket and unable to get out of it if he even wanted to, It reminds me of that one scene from Bojack. ‘You can’t keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about it like that makes it ok.’ Much like that show, there’s something so maddening about seeing someone who has the potential to be better being so close to a breakthrough only to slide right back into the same self destructive impulses and be right back where they started.

This man is a fascinating trainwreck of character and I want to study him with a microscope like a cockroach but he also makes me want to rip my hair out. Despite being one of the most despicable members of the cast, he’s probably the one I’m most interested to see where his character goes. As a foil to a cast who all have baggage and have all done bad stuff in the past, but all ultimately make the effort to be better and work for something other than themselves, Lance makes a very effective counterpart. While they collectively heal, he is continuing to spiral, and I can’t wait for the inevitable confrontation, however it turns out.

And last of all I want to talk about our protagonist, Cyrus Cantwell, who might be my favourite member of the entire cast. The first few chapters do a good job establishing Cyrus as a protagonist with a refreshing amount of backbone and spirit given his situation. His back and forth with Lance (pre-reveal) establishes him as someone determined to get home, but increasingly frustrated over his powerlessness in this new setting. He’s inquisitive, intelligent and empathetic but he doesn’t put up with people’s crap, all of which makes him pretty immediately likable. But it’s the second arc where he really comes into his own as a character. Having been sold out by the one person he’d formed any attachment to in this strange new world, Cyrus’ dynamic to the resistance team is very different. He’s much more guarded. Much more jaded, dead set on getting away from his apparent rescuers pretty much from the word ‘go.’ But he slowly starts to respond to their unconditional warmth and kindness, the kind he hasn’t experienced in a very, very long time. And he’s gonna need it because this leads directly into the emotional turmoil that is Chapter 9.

This is probably ‘that one moment’ for people who’ve played the game. The truth finally comes out. Cyrus’ history as a test subject of Resoom for 300 years. Centuries of traumatic suffering locked away in his lost memories. And worst of all, the earth shattering revelation that Damion, Diana, his parents, all the loved ones in his scraps of memory he’s been trying to get back to, are all long since dead and gone. The life Cyrus once had is gone and he can never get it back. The delivery of this scene is phenomenal and Cyrus’ reaction over the next few days, from sheer emotional numbness until he finally lets himself feel it with Aaron’s help, is agonising.

…And yet. Despite everything, Cyrus slowly recovers. Over the third arc we see him carve out a new routine at the resistance base. His new friends support him in that process, and he in turn does what he can to help them. All of which builds up to one more emotional tour de force, yes, even more than the last two.

Cyrus’ return to his old home, after centuries of decay, is a devastating moment of grief, but it’s also one of genuine catharthis. Cyrus is able to say goodbye to the life he left behind and let go. But not before he finds one last gift (and this is what had me almost sobbing at my computer). A final set of messages and parting gifts left buried as a time capsule by his loved ones, knowing they’ll never see him again. Throughout this story, Cyrus has been asking himself who he is in this new reality, with or without his memories. He’s been pulled into a resistance against a despicable organisation who ruined his life, but he’s not sure what he’s fighting for. Seeing these last messages reminds of what kind of person he was and is. The empathy and concern for others and dedication he’s always had. And now he’s ready to fight for both the family he’s lost and the one he’s gained. So they can all live the life they deserved. It’s a beautiful resolution to an arc of self actualisation and identity that we’ve seen play out over all 13 chapters. And I for one can’t wait to see where we go next.

There’s a lot to love about Remember the Flowers: Its beautiful art, with every character design full of striking personality. The deliberate, excellent pacing of its story and reveals. Or the emotional, poignant journey of self discovery and healing at its core. And I have faith that it’s only going to get even more remarkable from here.

[obsidiancreates]

Our Museum Of Rot And Love (Part 2)

Every Time We Touch I Get This Feeling

"So you're Edward Teach."

The man nods. "Edward Teach, born on a beach."

Stede laughs. "That's clever! I love wordplay."

"I figured." Ed's eyes sparkle, and Stede wonders if his breath will ever find it's way back to his lungs.

"I promise I won't sue, by the way," Stede says as Ed helps over to a nearby bench. "It's not even that bad, I'm just being dramatic."

"You kinda got stabbed, man. Okay to be a little dramatic about it."

"Oh, I doubt this is anything close to being actually stabbed." Lord knows he's had enough nightmares about the idea that he may as well have been stabbed before. Price of studying all those grisly historical deaths, he supposes.

"Still, not fun." Edward sits down next to him. "You can just call me Ed by the way."

Stede holds his hand out for a shake, and Ed takes it. His hands are softer than Stede expects, though he's not totally sure why he would expect a museum director's hands to be rough in the first place. He just has this... aura, about him, Ed. A world-weariness.

"So, you like the museum other than the stabbing?"

"Oh, I love it! Actually, if we could talk about some kind of group rate, I'd love to bring my class in sometime!"

"Yeah, Frenchie told me you're a professor. Historical Piracy has degrees now?"

"Oh, that's just personal passions bleeding in to lesson plans," Stede says with a hand wave. "Just a general history class, a fun elective!"

"That's pretty cool. Have you seen our library exhibit yet? Feels like your type of thing."

"Library?"

"You've never heard of pirates with libraries?"

"I came across old rumors and writings, but I didn't know proof was found!" Stede stands up, and then winces and holds his abdomen. But he smiles anyway. "Lead on, mate!"

Ed lets out a scoff-laugh, and stands as well. "Here man, lean on me. If your shit gets any worse we will have to give you a payout."

"Oh, no need." The leaning does help relieve the pressure, and through the thick cotton of Ed's black shirt Stede can feel the sweetest, softest warmth he's ever experienced. "It's a little embarrassing to admit, but ah, I've got a bit of generational wealth in the family."

"Fancy man, huh?"

"A little bit." Stede gives a slightly shameful smile. "Not 'owning a castle' rich, but comfortably free of student loans and keeping up a collection of as many old books as I can find. Oh! I could donate a few, if you'd like."

"You can try. You might not find us lacking any though."

"Oh, I'm sure I can- wow!" Stede's mouth drops open. The library is three large cases, set in a sort of curved nook style to cradle the person stepping inside. The shelves are packed, and every spine is not only authentic first-edition, but incredibly well-preserved.

"Modeled after a real ship's design," Ed says proudly, looking at Stede almost expectantly, or maybe hopefully. "What's my grade, professor? Historically accurate enough?"

"I have no bloody fucking idea," Stede marvels, "But it's incredible!"

"What do you mean you have no idea? This is like, your thing."

"I've never seen any sketches or descriptions of libraries aboard ships! Can I see your references, what you used to glean the design? How did the books stay on the shelves, you'd think storms would ruin the volumes! These can't have actually lived on pirate ships, could they?"

"Most of them did. Had to find a few from private collectors, recreate a couple. But most of these really did live their lives on the sea. ... You've really never heard of this kind of thing?"

"Well, like I said, just rumors in a journal or two! I mean, wow! Is that Pinocchio? Pirates, reading Pinocchio after a raid!"

"Imagine that," Ed says softly, and Stede turns to find Ed's eyes locked onto him. Ed blinks, and smiles again. "I mean, I'm teaching you something. Fuckin' ironic, man."

"I love a bit of irony," Stede says with a grin. He looks all around them. "I can't possibly explore this whole museum in one visit!"

He sees Ed perk up out of the corner of his eye. "What does that mean?"

"Well, I do live decently close by." He turns to look at Ed again. "I think this'll become a regular trip!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At his next class, there's raised hands before he even writes on the blackboard.

"Yes?" Stede gestures at the closest raised hand, a young woman.

"Have you been to the Pirate Museum yet, professor?"

"I went opening night, actually." Wow, his students know him well.

Suddenly there's murmurs and the rustling of bags, and then money being passed around.

"Did you take bets on how quickly I'd go?"

"Yeah," one young man says without shame or hesitation. "Did you bother the owner too?"

"Actually, one of staff introduced me."

"So yeah."

"We're friends now, in fact."

More rustling, and more money passed around.

"You made bets on if I'd make friend with the owner?!"

"We make bets on who you might become friends with all the time," one of his nonbinary students admits, having the decency to look a little sheepish. "Started with staff here, and then we saw you at sandwich shops..."

"Alright, alright," Stede tries to look annoyed. "Sit back down, all of you! Today we're going over colonies, not pirates, so save the bet payouts for after class."

The lesson does include some information about pirates, of course. But it's not the focus. So he wasn't totally lying.

When class ends, he checks his planner.

"Going back this weekend?" the first young woman he'd called on earlier asks.

"If you're all on your best behavior and I don't need to have any weekend behavioral consultations, yes." Stede adjusts his reading glasses a little. "Can you tell what I've written here? Wrote too small for my own eyes again."

She leans in. "Just says Boating Lessons. You're taking up boating?"

"Ah. No, no. Just an idea. That's it."

"I'm glad. We all like you a lot, professor. We would be really upset if you drowned."

Stede puts his hand over his heart. "Really? Oh, well... thank you."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So we've got the set pieces for the fuckery stagings," Frenchie goes over, "And Roach managed to make the burn marks on the old stove look intentional, so that's covered."

Ed nods, thinking about golden blond hair and shining brown eyes.

Frenchie grins. "Hit it off, then?"

"Natural as fuckin' breathing, man."

"Knew it. Did he like the library?"

"Fuckin' loved it. Almost kissed him right there. Fuck, man, love at first sight all over again."

[marwritesgood]

Just Me | S. Basset

Pairing: Simon x WOC!Reader

Timeframe: Early Season One

Summary: Simon and Y/n had a long history together. So why did it take reading Lady Whistledown’s latest column for her to learn about his blooming relationship with Daphne Bridgerton?

masterlist

A/N: This fic is over 6K words. 

The mere thought of a BIPOC love story set in the 18th Century is enough to make me swoon. So I decided to give it a go and write one myself. There’ll be two more parts after this :)

I also wanted to keep the reader description applicable to any and all women of colour, so it’s a bit vague just to ensure all of us (women of colour) can feel included. Please let me know if there any parts of this fic that don’t do this and I’ll fix it asap! 

If you’re white, this fic is not for you to identify with x

Also, if at any point you find my attempt at mimicking the language used in Bridgerton laughable... you are not the only one lmao. This has been super fun to write and also very challenging, but I am well aware it is farrrr from perfect :)

Nonetheless, I hope it’s a nice read for my WOC readers <3

Simon and Y/n first met when they were children. Her mother was very closely acquainted with Lady Danbury, so naturally, a friendship grew between the two of them- and a strong one at that. 

For years, their interactions had remained within confinements of what was socially acceptable. They bickered. They laughed. They shared inside jokes about the people within their social circle. Their feelings for each other never extended beyond what was befitting of a friendship. 

That was until they grew older.

When marriage and love became more and more ingrained into casual conversations, Simon and Y/n explored their feelings for one another. Questioned the extent to which they cared for each other and whether there was something more beneath the surface.

However, just as Y/n came to realise her love for Simon, he left for London. After a few short weeks, he returned with a new title. A new vow that the Hastings bloodline would end with him. Subsequently, with it, any hope Y/n had of her relationship with him becoming anything more than all it had always been: a friendship.

A year had passed since the sorrowful conversation resulting in Simon and Y/n agreeing to not indulge in the affections they shared. Since then, Y/n struggled to focus on securing a marriage proposal from one of the suitors in her town.

“This is your second season,” Y/n’s mother cried as she paced across the sitting room. Y/n sat in silence, having been interrupted from playing the piano by another one of her panicked outbursts. “Your second season and yet you continue to reject every marriage proposal you receive.”

She couldn’t blame her mother for being frustrated with her. As her only daughter, she needed to find a good match and be married off as soon as possible. Her father was of old age, but even he remained restless that Y/n be married. He much preferred the prospect of dying knowing that the estate would be inherited by Y/n’s husband instead of his nephew.

“I did not reject Mr Graham’s proposal, mama,” Y/n responded, unnervingly calmly considering how distraught her mother was. Mr Graham’s proposal was the latest one she had received that season. “I... simply asked for more time to consider my answer.”

“What on earth is there to consider?” Mrs Y/l/n shrieked. Her frustration only grew when her daughter was unable to answer her question. Y/n turned away from her mother. “He is a good man. He comes from a good, honourable family and will give you a good future- something you will not have if you continue to turn away suitors.”

“Mama, please.” Y/n could not say anything more, for fear that her mother’s anger toward her would only grow if she were to find out the truth. The real reason she could not yet bring herself to accept a marriage proposal.

“Why do you need time to consider, Y/n?” Her daughter had stood up from behind the piano and had her back turned to her mother. That did not stop her from continuing to pry. After so many rejected proposals, she felt she had a right to know why her daughter refused to marry. “I beg of you, tell me- what is there to consider?... What could possibly be keeping you from marrying Mr Graham.”

They stood in silence for a moment before Y/n sighed exasperatedly and turned back to face her mother.

“I do not love him,” Y/n replied in a hushed cry, only just loud enough for Mrs Y/l/n to hear from across the room. “He may be a good man, mama, but I... I do not love him, and I do not believe I ever could.”

She knew from their first encounter that she could never love him. Perhaps it was how he mispronounced her grandmother’s name or the way he possessed the same arrogance as every other suitor Y/n encountered. 

“My dear,” Mrs Y/l/n said, her voice and expression softening entirely. She reached out for her daughter’s hand and took hold of it gently. She knew precisely how Y/n felt, which meant that, unfortunately, she knew there was nothing to be done. “We have talked about this. Women like you and I... we do not have the luxury to make decisions based on our own feelings.”

Y/n was surrounded by women who did not share the same experiences she did. Women who could not empathise with the challenges she faced and being a woman in the 18th Century. Not even if they tried.

Therefore, whenever Y/n found herself hoping for the same things as the white women around her, she had to bring herself back to reality. She had to remember that if life was unkind to white women, it would always be hell for women like her, no matter who married into the royal family.

“I know,” Y/n answered. 

She did. She knew it was incredibly reckless of her to reject all of the proposals she had received. She knew she was naïve for basing her decision based on love. Yet, even so, she could not keep herself from holding out on the hope that she would not end up in a loveless marriage.

“I do not mean to upset you, Y/n,” Mrs Y/l/n said sincerely, as she guided her daughter to the nearest seat. “But I fear that if you continue on, you will have no more proposals to reject, and I... I simply cannot bear the thought... Please, dear, you must-”

Y/n began to close her eyes ready to brace herself for what she feared would inevitably happen- her mother insisting she accepts a proposal. However, just as she did, a maid knocked on the door and promptly brought in the newspaper. When Simon left for London, Y/n requested that any newspaper copy or mail sent to her from London be immediately handed to her. She looked forward to any kind of update on him.

“Thank you,” Y/n said to the maid as she handed her the newspaper. Without hesitation, she immediately turned to Lady Whistledown’s column.

“What does it say?” Her mother asked, giving up on her attempts at convincing Y/n to accept a marriage proposal, at least for the time being. 

Y/n’s blood ran cold as she read the column. She had expected to hear more about the bitter impression Simon was leaving in London. She was going to comment on how typical arrogant white elitists villainising anyone who did not approach them in a way that appeases their ego.

But that was not what she read.

Instead, she read about Simon showing a particular interest in the woman named the ‘Diamond of the Season’ by the Queen herself- Miss Daphne Bridgerton. She read about him courting her and spending a significant amount of time with her. She read about flowers, the expensive kind, and walks through Hyde park, and she was unsure whether to feel betrayed or feel furious.

It was one thing for Simon to begin courting another woman, after explaining to Y/n that he would never marry. It was another for her to have to learn all of this from reading the Lady Whistledown column. 

Without providing her mother with an answer as to what the column wrote, Y/n slammed the newspaper against the table beside her and stood up abruptly. 

Her mother went to reprimand Y/n for slamming the paper so violently against her favourite table. However, Y/n walked hastily into her bedroom. She began to plan what she was to pack when she would leave for London in the morning.

She was adamant on learning the truth in its entirety. And, this time, not from an anonymous publisher but from Simon himself.

***

Y/n had an aunt who lived in London with her husband and their three kids- all much younger than Y/n was. She knew that if she could get away with arriving in London unannounced with intent to stay for longer than a week, her only luck was with her aunt.

After she was escorted inside by one of the workers, Y/n stood and marvelled at her aunt’s husband’s estate. It looked nothing like the sitting room at her home. It looked fancier with much nicer things, leading her to think back to why her mother pushed so hard for her to marry. Mrs Y/l/n had helped her younger sister find a match, and now she lived in a beautiful home in London. 

Perhaps all she wanted was to ensure the same future for her only child.

“Y/n, my dear!” Her aunt came bursting through the doors with arms stretched out. She pulled Y/n into a tight embrace as she always did whenever greeting her niece. Before her three children, she had Y/n. “Oh, how I have missed you!”

“I have missed you too, Aunt Philippa,” Y/n smiled, gently clutching her aunt’s hand as she held her cheek. “Please forgive me for arriving here unannounced. I would have written to you in advanced, but I have an urgent matter to attend to.”

“Do not be silly, my dear,” Philippa laughed, before guiding her niece out of the sitting room and towards the staircase. “You are welcome to stay here for as long as you may need. Though I imagine your mother will be impatiently anticipating your return... how is my dear sister?”

“As restless as ever,” Y/n mumbled. Philippa’s laughter echoed across the halls. Just as she expected, her older sister had not changed. Not one bit. “She is adamant that I am engaged by the end of the season, which is part of the reason I needed to leave home so quickly.”

“I do not blame you, dear,” Philippa murmured. She knew from first-hand experience how relentless Y/n’s mother could be. Even so, she knew it was out of love. Y/n knew as well. “Now... what is the urgent matter you need to attend? I imagine you will need a chaperone... and perhaps a carriage?”

Y/n smiled in relief. Everything she had done leading up to her arrival in London was purely impulsive. She hadn’t even thought of how she would get to Simon or who she would have to escort and chaperone her. 

“You wouldn’t happen to know the whereabouts of... the Duke of Hastings?”

Philippa’s eyes grew twice in size. Whether it was shock or excitement, Y/n could not figure out. It wasn’t until her aunt pulled her into the nearest empty room, checked to see if anyone was listening in, and grinned at her that Y/n concluded it was the latter.

“When I read about the Duke and Miss Bridgerton, all I could think of was you,” Philippa began, speaking in a hushed tone, though unable to contain her excitement. She did not typically indulge in gossip, but she was entirely invested in staying updated to her niece and Simon. “You never did tell me what happened when he returned. Did you confess your feelings?”

Philippa had generously volunteered her afternoons so that her niece could practise what she would say to Simon. She hoped those afternoons had not been spent in vain.

“I did... And then he did too... Before telling me, he would never marry,” Y/n explained, trying to conceal the way her breath hitched and the way tears welled up in her eyes. “Though, after reading Lady Whistledown’s column, it is clear that perhaps he meant that he would never marry me.”

Philippa frowned and lifted her hand up again, holding the side of Y/n’s face and swiping the few tears she couldn’t stop from escaping. As she did so, Y/n inhaled sharply- trying desperately to keep herself from indulging in her sorrow.

“I am sure that is not the case, dearest,” Philippa insisted. 

She refused to believe Simon would do that to her niece. Not after the stories she had heard from Y/n as they grew up. Not to mention all the times she caught one staring at the other across ballrooms and dining tables. 

“We must hurry,” she chirped, dropping her hand so she could grasp her niece’s arm. “I believe the Duke will be in Hyde Park with Lady Danbury. ‘Tis best we leave now if we wish to catch them.”

Y/n smiled. Being with her aunt was a nice change of pace to being with her mother. She would have scolded Y/n had she caught wind of what had happened. 

***

Upon their arrival at Hyde Park, Philippa approached Lady Danbury. Her plan was to make conversation with her, find out more about Simon and Daphne’s relationship. Then, she would ultimately create a segue for Y/n to have a somewhat private conversation with Simon.

However, Y/n had other plans.

When they arrived, she scanned the park in search of Simon. Once she spotted him walking alone on the pavement, she threw caution and decorum to the wind. Before her Aunt Philippa could stop her, Y/n sprinted. 

Once she reached him, she grabbed his shoulder roughly, prompting him to turn around.

“Peach,” Simon whispered, dumbfounded by Y/n’s sudden appearance.

He stopped calling Y/n by her name when they were five. Instead, he called her Peach, for reasons that remained a mystery to Y/n. Despite not knowing the reasoning behind it, she always adored it. She was the only person he had a unique designated name for.

More recently, she wondered if Miss Bridgerton would soon become an exception.

“You owe me an explanation,” Y/n said harshly, not having the patience to beat around the bush. This was primarily because she wanted to know the truth and because she was out of breath from sprinting to Simon.  “Do I really mean so little to you, Simon?”

“Please lower your voice,” Simon begged, subtly grabbing Y/n’s arm and quickening their pace to avoid the crowded area of the park. 

“Do not speak to me as though I am a child,” Y/n growled, yanking her arm away from him and stepping back. 

“Then do not act like one,” Simon retorted.

Y/n scoffed, before dusting off her dress. Simon rolled his eyes to cover his nervousness. He had a habit of concealing it with aggression. Y/n was often able to see through it, but she was guilty of doing the same.

“What changed?” Y/n asked as she looked back at Simon. “You seemed so certain when you told me you would never marry. Now you have extended your stay in London to court Miss Bridgerton?”

“I wish I could give you an answer,” Simon responded honestly. It was perhaps the most honest statement he had made all month. 

His courtship of Daphne was a mere ruse to attract more suitors for her. Truth be told, Simon was incredibly stressed by it, but he was too deep into the lie to give up any time soon. He hadn’t anticipated Y/n would be caught in the middle of it.

“Well, what could be hindering you from doing so?” Y/n cried, confused by how vague and cryptic Simon was acting.

He struggles to find the right words. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Y/n any more than he already had, but he could not give her the answer she wanted. Although he was not actually courting Daphne, he still would not marry. Thus, he could not do what would make her happy, which was the main reason he kept his distance from her in the first place.

“Things are different now,” Simon said apologetically, hoping to deter Y/n from prying. Though he desperately wanted to say more, he knew that doing so was incredibly risky. “We... we are not children anymore.”

Y/n blinked, astonished by Simon’s reaction. It was far from what she had expected. She expected an explanation. She expected assurance. Instead, she has pushed aside as though she and her feelings were disposable. 

This was a familiar feeling to Y/n.

“Is that all you think of me?” She asked angrily. Simon, of all the people in her life, had the most power to hurt her. And he often did so without realising. “A child?... And our relationship? You think it is something as easy to put behind you as your childhood? Is that all this is to you, Simon?”

She went to speak again. To demand what she felt she had a right to. However, before she could get a word out, a woman appeared from behind her. She was fair-skinned and wore a dress that resembled her complexion. 

“Miss Bridgerton,” Simon gasped. He did not know whether to be grateful for her arrival or concerned about how it would affect Y/n. He eventually became both. “May I introduce you to Miss Y/l/n. She is a... very close family friend.”

Y/n had to keep herself from scoffing. She was more to him than just a friend. Y/n knew that well, despite Simon’s denial.

“I am terribly sorry,” Miss Bridgerton cried, averting her attention to Y/n. “I did not mean to intrude.”

“Not at all,” Y/n assured, smiling sincerely at Daphne. Her anger was entirely directed towards Simon. Unlike him, Daphne had no pre-existing history with Y/n to remain considerate of. “I actually must return to my aunt. It was lovely to finally meet you, Miss Bridgerton.”

Before Y/n turned to walk back to her Aunt Philippa, she glanced back at Simon, who was very clearly terrified of how calm Y/n was. He could only imagine the amount of anger she was harbouring. Deterring her would prove to be much more complicated than he expected.

“Your grace,” Y/n snarled through gritted teeth, before forcing a smile as she turned away.

***

It had been a week since Y/n and Simon’s interaction at Hyde Park.

Y/n sat beside her aunt Philippa in a carriage as she read through her mother’s letter. She had made vividly clear, through an eight-paged rant, that she was absolutely livid with her daughter. Y/n’s hands were trembling. 

“I assume she is quite upset?” Philippa asked, though she already knew the answer. 

Y/n had extended her stay to a week just so she could attend a gala at Lady Danbury’s estate. It was her last hope of catching a moment alone with Simon and gaining, at the very least, some form of closure. She hoped it would not come to that, but from their last interaction, Y/n was losing confidence.

“She is furious,” Y/n answered shortly, before folding the letter abruptly and placing it aside. Her mother wrote one demand that sent chills through her bones. “If I am not home within a week, she will come to London and take me back herself. Then, I will have to accept Mr Graham’s proposal.”

Philippa’s stomach dropped. She placed her hand atop her niece’s. Y/n looked down to conceal the tears that began to gather in her eyes. Philippa noticed and wrapped her arm around Y/n, gently squeezing her shoulder. 

“I am sure it will not come to that,” she whispered soothingly, though she struggled to sound sincere. Y/n nodded. She didn’t quite believe her aunt, but she knew there was no point in losing hope entirely. At least not yet.

Once they arrived at the gala, Philippa made conversation with a friend, whileY/n made way to Lady Danbury. The event was held in her courtyard. While others marvelled at her estate, Y/n felt a warm sense of nostalgia. When Lady Danbury brought Simon to her London estate during summers, she would often invite Y/n and her parents. While her parents and the Danburys made conversation in the house, Simon and Y/n would run about freely outside.

“Welcome back, Miss Y/l/n,” Lady Danbury smiled warmly, as Y/n and her aunt approached her.

“It is a pleasure to be here, my lady,” Y/n responded curtly, before laughing out loud as Lady Danbury pulled her into her arms for a tight hug. 

Once she let go, they made small talk. Lady Danbury asked Y/n how her parents were. Y/n asked Lady Danbury how she was and how her fruit orchards were. After they ran out of things to discuss, Y/n could not help but scan the room searching for Simon, who was nowhere to be found.

“I am not completely sure where he is,” Lady Danbury said, startling Y/n who had not realised how far from natural she was acting. “Though, he did complain about how suffocated he was by the throng here... I imagine he has gone to a place where it will be difficult for most to find him.”

Y/n thought for a moment. Lady Danbury was cryptic by nature, and after years of knowing her, she had a knack for figuring out what she meant. Once Y/n knew, she smiled at Lady Danbury, before excusing herself from the gala.

Y/n headed away from the gala and towards the maze area. It was well-lit, which she was grateful for as it meant she could navigate her way around swiftly. It felt like second-nature to her; running about in the Danbury’s London Estate. She forgot how much she enjoyed the thrill of running through and past the hedges.

Once she reached the maze’s centre, she saw Simon standing idle, his back towards where she stood. That was the place they spent most of their time. When they were younger, they would sit there and play games. As they got older, they would sit there and talk. Sometimes he would read while she drew. Sometimes vice versa. But most of the time, they spoke—about everything worth talking about, and then some.

“I remember the first time we played here together,” Y/n began, causing Simon to jump. Once he turned around and saw Y/n his tense posture softened, and a small smile appeared across his face. She felt relieved by it, though she didn’t want to let her guard down entirely. “I got lost, almost immediately, and you found me sitting here, cross-legged, in a puddle of tears. Do you remember?”

Simon chuckled. Of course, he thought. 

“You were inconsolable when I found you,” he mocked, prompting Y/n to reach out and lightly punch his shoulder. His laughter only grew.

“We were five,” Y/n reasoned. She would never admit that she was dramatic. Not even as a child. “I genuinely thought no one would ever find me... and then you did, within a matter of minutes.”

She joined him in laughing. It made for a very entertaining story that they retold relentlessly. While others were sick of hearing it, neither of them were sick of recounting it, for their own reasons.

“I told you I would never leave you behind,” he added, smiling as he thought back to that day. His smile faded quickly when he realised the irony. He frowned and took a step towards Y/n. “Peach, I must apologise-”

“-No... I am the one who must apologise,” she intervened. Simon stood back in confusion. Y/n sighed before clarifying herself. “I did not mean to blindside you so aggressively before. I did not come here to argue with you, Simon, I... I came to ask you if it is true... Are you courting Miss Bridgerton... with the intent of marrying?”

Simon winced. 

He felt conflicted by both his love for Y/n and the promise he made to Daphne to uphold their ruse. He could not in good faith outright admit that he was merely pretending to court Miss Bridgerton. However, he couldn’t bear the thought of breaking Y/n’s heart a second time.

His lips parted, but his mouth ran dry. Before Simon could keep himself from blurting out the wrong thing, he was overcome by a habit he developed over the last month of playing along.

“I am,” he answered.

Just as he did, he lifted his hand to his temple and scrunched his eyebrows. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Y/n. He was still haunted by the look on her face when he told her he would never marry.

“Right,” she sniffled, unsure how to react. Y/n had convinced herself that there was more to the story than what she had read from Lady Whistledown. She regretted how in-denial she allowed herself to become. 

One thing Y/n knew for sure, though, was that she did not want to be near Simon. Although she was on the verge of sobbing, she still turned around and intended to leave him, but Simon grabbed her arm and kept her from doing so.

“Please let me explain,” he begged.

Y/n’s tears halted as she glared at Simon, shocked. She shook her arm out of his grasp and took a step back from him. She had always despised the way men often treated women as though they were disposable and replaceable. She never expected Simon to be one.

“There is no explanation necessary,” she scoffed.

“Y/n, please, you do not understand,” Simon cried. It was rare for him to call her by her name, but Y/n dubbed it as him trying to manipulate her emotions. She would not let that happen. 

“No, of course, you would deceive me,” Y/n spat, unwilling to let Simon get a word in. She was tired of waiting around just to hear from him. This time, she would be the talking. He would be the one listening. “-about not wanting to marry or have children, and of course, I believed your ridiculous lie, like the fool I have always been for you.”

“Ridiculous?” Simon hissed. Y/n’s dismissal of his vow sparked a fit of anger that overcame him before he could realise it had done so. No one had ever called to question or criticised his decision to remain a bachelor for life. No one until Y/n.

“Perhaps not a ridiculous lie,” Y/n sneered. “No, it was more-so childish and nonsensical.”

“And yet, you believed it... What is that to say about you, Miss Y/l/n?” Simon scorned. Y/n flinched. Simon had only ever addressed her in such a way to either tease her or to emphasise his anger. It had been a long while since he had done so for the latter. “It was not a lie, Y/n, I... You could never understand the immense pressure I have been placed under my entire life-”

“- Pressure that significantly decreased with the death of your father,” Y/n argued. Simon acted as though he had a monopoly over her when it came to challenges in life. He could not have been more wrong. “I, on the other hand, am placed under severe pressure and will continue to be, long after my parents pass... That is one of the many things you will never understand.”

“That is not true,” Simon fired back, only for Y/n to continue speaking- this time, with a louder voice.

“We may be the same in one sense, but we are significantly different in another, because you, Simon, are still a man with a title.” Y/n and Simon both shared similar challenges as neither of them were white. However, where Simon inherited certain advantages for being a man, and a Duke, Y/n was only disparaged more. He often forgot that. “You, at the very least, still have the luxury of choice. To choose how you wish to fulfil your future, and whether or not that may include a wife or children.”

Simon lowered his eyes defeatedly. Though he was still angry, there was no denying the shame he felt. 

“I do not. Those choices were made for me the moment I was born a daughter and not a son. So do not act as though you are in a position to empathise with me,” Y/n said. “Especially when you have been the least bit empathetic after I came all the way here, just to confirm the truth about you and Miss Bridgerton.”

“I never told you to come to London,” Simon snapped.

“No, you did not,” Y/n retorted, with just as much, if not more, annoyance in her voice. “You did not tell me anything. I had to find out at the same moment as everyone else in England, as though we are strangers.”

Simon flinched as Y/n progressed from speaking loudly to outright shouting. He had always relied on having her sympathy and her support, even when he was in the wrong. Thankfully, they were far from the gala. However, Simon still feared someone had heard her reprimanding him.

“You claim you are different, now that you are a Duke, but you are the same as you have always been,” Y/n continued. She knew how he had always been. Better than anyone, let alone Miss Bridgerton, that was for sure. “You are still rigid and arrogant. You are still a coward who will never allow himself to feel any kind of joy. And you are still revolving your every decision in life around a man you claim to despise.”

“You do not know a thing,” he whispered, which only confirmed to Y/n that he was scared. He was intimidated. For as long as they had known one another, Y/n rarely confronted his relationship with his father.

“I have watched you go from living only to please him to living only to spite him, even if it means hurting the people who actually care for you,” she cried. She had no more anger within her. Not any more. She had only sadness. “Did it ever occur to you how much it hurt when you rejected me?”

“That was never my intention,” Simon said regretfully. 

It was the truth, though Simon had begun to realise that his wrath against his father blinded him from what he cared about more: her happiness. 

“Peach,” he whispered, inching towards Y/n as he lifted his hand and held the left side of her face. “Please, believe me, I never meant to hurt you.”

Their eyes locked for what felt like an eternity. It had been so long since they had shared a moment like that. An intimate moment shared between no one but them. Where Simon was not the stoic and emotionally detached Duke of Hastings. He was Simon. Dare she say, her Simon.

Despite that, Y/n was the first to turn away. She wanted to indulge. To take advantage of the opportunity to reconcile with him. To enjoy how vulnerable he was, after months of distance. 

But she couldn’t. 

Not when there were still questions burning in her mind. She could not rest until they were dealt with. After all, she was her mother’s child.

“Then what about Miss Bridgerton?” Y/n’s expression remained stagnant, but she could not keep hands from trembling. Simon winced at the mention of Daphne. “You... courting her after rejecting me... You cannot possibly tell me you did not intend to hurt me when you did that.”

Simon opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He had no response to what she had said because there was no justification for what he had done. All he could do was curse quietly to himself for taking so long to realise how foolish he had been.

“I had always expected this to happen,” Y/n began, sniffling as she tried to compose herself enough to explain herself. Simon remained quiet and decided he would until she finished. He figured he owed her as much. “I always knew I would be turned away for someone like Daphne Bridgerton.”

It had been the subject of many of her mother’s lessons. Before she was introduced to society, her mother made it a point to prepare her for rejection. To not hold out hope for any man, until a marriage proposal was made. 

Simon had been Y/n’s only exception to that rule. 

“It’s happened to me my whole life,” Y/n laughed bitterly, as she recalled all the times she had lost to a woman of fairer skin than her. All the times she wept to her Aunt Philippa and to Simon. “I always expected this would happen. But I never expected this would happen with you.”

Simon’s eyebrows furrowed as he watched Y/n struggle to stifle her cries in between her sentences. He had watched her sit in this sorrow many times, just as she had done for him, for this was a pain she shared. But this time was different. This time he was the one responsible. 

He didn’t know pain, so heart-wrenching, was possible. But watching her cry and knowing he could do nothing to fix it. That pain had never felt more real.

“I do not blame you, Simon,” Y/n whimpered, which only made him hurt more. He wanted her to be angry. To berate him some more. It was the least of what he deserved for causing her such sorrow. “She is the ‘Diamond of the Season’ after all, and... I am just me.”

Y/n hated the pity party she was throwing for herself, but she could not help what she felt. After a life of being classed second to white women, who could blame her for internalising this? 

He was dying to say something. To tell Y/n that she had it all wrong. He wanted to reveal that his courtship of Daphne was all a ruse. That he could never bring himself to entertain the idea of marrying anyone but her. But his fear of only making things worse left him paralysed. 

“You have made it abundantly clear that I was a fool forever waiting around for you,” she said to Simon. Unfortunately for him, she had taken his lack of response as confirmation that what she had concluded of the situation was accurate. “I will not make that mistake again.”

“Peach-”

“Goodbye, Simon,” Y/n blurted as she turned away hastily. 

Left in too much shock to reach out and stop her, Simon stood, dumbfounded, and watched as the woman he loved walked away from him and back to the gala. Looking back, he wished he had called out to her. Simon wished he had run after her. But he did not.

When Y/n reached the courtyard where the gala was being held, she couldn’t help the wave of disappointment that rushed over when she realised Simon let her go. This assured her that she was right to leave him, but it did not alleviate the pain in doing so. 

She made her way through the crowd and searched for her aunt. As she did, she felt her cheeks burn and her pace of breath quicken. She had gone through all the effort of coming to London just for what she feared most to be the reality. 

“There you are, my dear!”

Y/n turned around and saw her Aunt approaching her. Philippa smiled brightly as she walked towards her niece. However, when she realised that Y/n’s enthusiasm fell short of matching hers by a significant margin, her smile began to fade.

“Where is Simon?” She inquired, her voice lowered to not draw attention to their conversation. From Y/n expression, Philippa inferred that was the last thing she wanted.

Y/n’s lip quivered as she tried desperately to answer her aunt’s question. When she failed to do so, she hung her head- too embarrassed to face her aunt. Philippa frowned. A line appeared between her brows as she reached out to her distraught niece.

Though she was dying to know, the details of Simon and Y/n’s conversation were the least of her concerns. All she cared for was her niece and helping her in any way she needed. 

“I will call for our carriage,” she whispered, before guiding Y/n out of the courtyard. 

Once their carriage arrived, Philippa sat opposite her niece and watched worriedly as she refused to make eye contact, let alone speak.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Y/n took a long moment to respond. She stared at her gloved hands as she thought about what to do next. She regretted all the proposals she had turned down, and all the ways she put her life on hold for Simon. She felt ashamed that she had allowed herself to be in the situation she was in. 

Then she realised the only thing she could do to fix it.

“May you organise a carriage to take me home tomorrow?” Y/n asked. Her aunt’s eyes widened. Returning home to face her mother was the last thing Philippa expected Y/n to want to do. 

She watched her niece closely, trying to figure out what her plan moving forward was. Y/n finally looked up and met her aunt’s gaze. To Philippa’s surprise, her niece had a prominent sense of confidence in her expression. 

“Why, my dear?” Philippa quizzed, her eyebrows still knitted in confusion as well as fear. The way her niece was suddenly overcome with confidence after being on the verge of tears was concerning. She couldn’t imagine it would lead to anything good.

Y/n inhaled sharply, pursing her lips as she did so. She knew her aunt would disagree with what she planned to do. But she also knew that, given the circumstance, Philippa would reluctantly do as she asked. Before she answered, Y/n momentarily glanced down at her hands and turned back to her aunt.

“I have a proposal to accept.”

NEXT PART

[sunkissedpages]

instead of you [part sixteen]

pairing: [best friend’s brother] tom holland x college!reader

summary: you didn’t expect to spend your summer pretending to be your best friend’s girlfriend- then again, you didn’t expect to fall for your best friend’s brother, either.

warnings: swearing, mentions of alcohol, smut (18+) additional warnings under the cut

word count: 3.1k

series masterlist

smut warnings: female masturbation, porn, mentions of choking

“‘We’? Like, you and me?” you clarified, hoping you had misunderstood.

“Yeah, it’ll only take a second,” Tom assured you.

You looked to Sam for help, but he looked just as lost as you were. “I’ll go try and find a microwave to heat up your leftovers,” he offered and took the container back from you. “I’ll be right back, babe.”

“Okay...”

You watched him shrug past both you and Tom and then disappear into the hallway with a sinking feeling in your chest, knowing he trusted you completely. He had no reason not to, and that’s what consumed you. 

“What do you want?” you muttered, reluctantly stepping to the side to let Tom in. 

He didn’t answer right away, giving you a moment to collect yourself. His eyes followed you around the room as you found your pants and tugged them on. He averted his gaze when he realized you were getting dressed mumbling a “sorry” as he trained his eyes on the carpet. 

You sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to explain why he was there. 

“You weren’t there today,” was all he said. 

You blinked. “Yeah?”

“Was it because of me?”

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

Tom’s tongue poked at the inside of his cheek. “Is that all?”

“I had a lot to drink last night,” you reminded him. 

“So you don’t remember anything?”

“I never said that.”

“So it was because of me?”

“I never said that either.” You sighed. “If you’re here to ask me if I told him you kissed me, I didn’t. And you could’ve just texted me to ask.”

“No that’s not why- I don’t have your number anyway.”

“I’m in the trip group chat with your family.”

“Oh, right. I’ll save it to my contacts.”

The tension in the room was palpable. It felt like all of the air had been sucked out and replaced with thick, suffocating silence. Arbitrarily, you wondered who the most famous person in his phone was. He was a Marvel actor, he probably had Simu Liu’s number, right? Who would your contact information be sitting in between? Maybe if you ever forgave him for what he did you could ask him. 

“Is something funny?” The firmness of Tom’s voice cut through your train of thought and brought you back to the present. “Why are you smiling?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you said despondently. “Sam’s gonna be back soon. What did you want?”

“I just wanted to check up on you. Sam said you were sick.”

“Oh, so you wanted to see if I was lying?”

“No! God, why is it so hard to believe that I’m genuinely concerned about you?”

“Because last night you only seemed concerned about yourself.”

Tom pursed his lips and shoved his hands in his pockets, expelling a breath harshly. “Okay, I deserved that.”

You hummed in agreement, and let your eyes trail down the veins of his arms to where they disappeared into his pockets. It looked like he was fiddling with a coin or something small, but you couldn’t tell. 

“Are you feeling better?” he said the last part through gritted teeth.

“Yes, thank you. This chat has helped considerably.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“Well, lucky for you I’m not your problem to deal with. I'm Sam’s.”

He flexed his hand in his pocket and sighed. “Okay, well, I also wanted to apologize again for...” the word kiss seemed to die on his lips, poetic irony at its finest. “Being a dick.” Less poetic. 

He finally fished his hand out of his pocket, holding a delicate piece of paper between his pointer and index fingers. He shifted uncomfortably where he was leaning against the dresser. “We went to the Academic Gallery today. I saw this in the gift shop and thought of you.” He presented you with what turned out to be a postcard, creased down the middle unevenly and smudged with pen ink.

You turned it over to look at the front first, admiring the artwork printed on it. It was a picture of Michelangelo’s David drawn in swoopy black lines and filled in with watercolor paint. Instead of a museum, the statue was in the middle of a garden, the centerpiece among dozens upon dozens of flowers. 

 “Sorry it’s folded,” he mumbled. “It wouldn’t fit in my pocket.”

You flipped it over to read the back only to see iou scribbled in his handwriting and nothing else. You turned it over again to see if you had missed something on the front, but there was nothing.

You looked up at him in confusion. “Iou?” 

“Yeah, you know... I feel really bad about last night, and I don’t really know how to make it up to you so I’m letting you decide.”

“That’s not really how it works.”

“I think that this counts as an exception, since we’re kind of in uncharted territory.”

“Maybe for you. My boyfriend’s brothers make out with me all the time.”

“Fuck you, I didn’t make out with you- it was barely a peck.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “It was more than a peck.”

His cheeks were beginning to grow pink with what you couldn’t tell was either embarrassment or frustration. He cleared his throat awkwardly and changed the subject. “Anyway, if you ever need a favor or anything, just let me know. Think of it as me owing you one.”

“And do I have to give back the postcard when I cash in this ‘favor’?” you asked.

“No, you can keep it.”

“Good, because I was going to keep it anyway.”

He chuckled in spite of himself and shook his head. “Knew you’d like it.”

You flattened the card on your lap, smiling as you tried to iron out the little crease with your fingers. 

“It’s pretty, thank you.”

Tom nodded in acknowledgement and straightened his posture. “I should get going. I just wanted to give you that, and see how you were doing since tomorrow’s a travel day and I know you get a little motion sick sometimes. I didn’t want... whatever you’d come down with to make it worse.”

How did he know that? Had Sam told him? You didn’t have time to ask because he was already walking towards the door. He paused when he reached it and turned his head towards you, hand already on the knob. 

“Good night, y/n.”

“Good night, Tom.”

  He opened the door and let himself out into the hallway, catching it suddenly on his foot as he saw Sam coming off the elevator. Tom held the door for Sam, since his hands were full, and then said goodnight to his brother as he finally left.

“Sorry, I couldn’t find the microwave,” he explained. “I had to ask the night manager and they heated it up in the break room for me.”

“Oh, Sam, you didn’t have to do that! I would’ve eaten it cold.”

“I know you would have, and that’s why I’m not letting you.” You gave him a look, which he ignored and handed you the container of food. “It’s carbonara, it’s one of the things Rome is known for. I couldn’t have you eating it lukewarm.” 

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He ran a hand through his hair and took a seat next to you on the edge of the bed, pulling the ottoman closer to use it as a makeshift table. He watched as you tried the first bite, gauging your reaction. It was something he did whenever he cooked for you, especially if he was trying out a new recipe. He always needed your approval, and valued it above anybody else’s. But he hadn’t even made this, and as his eyes searched your face you found yourself wondering if they were looking for something else. 

“Do you like it?” 

You breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Your paranoia was starting to get the better of you. “It’s delicious,” you assured him. “I’m sad I missed dinner.”

“I’m sad you missed the whole day. Spending time with my family without you was hell.”

“Oh come on, it’s probably good that you got some real family time.”

“It’s real family time when you’re there. It felt like something was missing.” 

You let a small smile slip past your lips despite the guilt that bubbled under the surface. You pushed it down and took another bite of the carbonara. 

“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you? It can’t have all been bad. Tell me about the good stuff. I wanna hear that.”

Sam nodded and pushed his curls back again, grinning like he’d been caught. “Fine, maybe there were some okay moments.”

“And what were they?”

“We went to the Accademia Gallery today. I think you would have really liked it. They had a whole wing of instruments from some of the most famous inventors and musicians from history. They even had pianos from Bartolomeo Cristorfori, the inventor of the piano.”

“Wow,” you said, impressed. “I bet it was beautiful.”

“Of course if it was played, it wouldn’t sound anything like the piano we’re used to hearing today, but I’m sure it would still sound incredible.”

“Even if it hasn’t been tuned in a few hundred years?”

It was his turn to give you a look. “Yes, of course.”

“Sorry.”

“And they had a Strativerius, I don’t even want to know how valuable that thing is. It must cost millions. I took some pictures for you, but I know they won’t compare to the real thing. The lighting in museums never does the art justice.”

He handed his phone to you to scroll through. You swiped the photos, smiling whenever you came across a selfie he’d taken with a statue or painting. You reached the pictures of David and couldn’t help but zoom in on-

“Hey!” Sam yelped and grabbed his phone back from your hands.

“What!”

“Michelangelo would be so ashamed of you! I bet he’s rolling in his grave right now.”

“No way! If anyone appreciated good dick, it was Michelangelo.” 

“Unbelievable.” 

“If you don’t want me to judge these statue’s penises, don’t take pictures of them.”

“I didn’t take pictures of their penises! I took pictures of the whole statue- you’re zooming in on- you know what, nevermind. Arguing with you about this is pointless.”

“Smart boy.”

Sam rolled his eyes at you and put his phone in his back pocket. “Oh yeah, did Tom give you that postcard?”

“He told you about that?” you asked, suddenly panicking. Sam hadn’t said anything about last night so far, but maybe Tom had-

“Yeah, said he wanted to give you an iou for the limoncello last night.”

“What?”

“He said you paid the tab for it since he left his wallet in the room and that he wanted to pay you back for it.”

“Oh. Right.”

Another lie. You had very much not paid for the drinks last night. Tom had. And you knew he had to make an excuse for why he was buying his brother’s girlfriend something from the gift shop, but to add another lie to the ever-growing list made your throat burn with regret. You wouldn’t be able to keep the secret forever, and it was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down around you. 

-

In the morning you took the train from Rome to Naples, and then took a taxi to Sorrento to spend the last bit of your week in Italy by the sea. The atmosphere was much more relaxed than it had been in the busy cities of Rome and Florence. Even though there were still hordes of tourists, they were far more dispersed and less overbearing than you expected. The whole town seemed slowed down, like it had escaped the chokehold of time. 

Sam’s parents took everyone out to lunch by the water and went over the schedule for the next day and a half. 

“So, you’re on your own after dinner tonight, and then tomorrow morning we’re going to take the ferry to Capri for the day before our flight that night,” Nikki explained as she read through the spreadsheet on her phone. 

“There’s an Irish pub down the street from our hotel,” Harry said. “Do you guys want to go after we eat tonight?”

“I’m down,” Sam agreed. 

“Sounds good,” Tom chimed in.

The boys all looked at you for your answer, but you hesitated. Thinking about what happened the last time you drank didn’t make you eager to do it again, and you were already exhausted from travelling.

“I’ll pass.”

“What? Why?” Sam asked, sticking out his bottom lip in a pout.

You leaned into him, resting your head on his shoulder with a sigh. “I’m tired, and I’d rather go somewhere Italian... since we’re in Italy.”

Harry shrugged. “Your loss.”

“We’ll have a shot in your honor, babe,” Sam said and pressed a kiss to your temple. 

“Please don’t. Something tells me you’ll have plenty to drink without an extra shot for me.”

“You know us so well.”

After dinner, you walked back to the hotel with the Hollands and said good night to Sam’s parents before parting ways to your separate rooms. Sam went with you to change into clothes for going out while you changed into pajamas. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

You nodded from where you were on the bed and yawned. Sam didn’t push any further, instead resolving to finish getting ready in silence. He paired his black jeans with a pair of converse and a dark green button up over a black t-shirt. 

He turned to you for approval.

“Fake girlfriend approved?”

“Fake girlfriend approved,” you repeated and gave him a thumbs up. 

“Okay, well I’m headed out,” he announced. 

“Have fun! Don’t kiss any cute girls without me!” 

It was something you always said to each other, but it sounded strange since it was supposed to be coming from his girlfriend. Sam just chuckled and blew you a kiss as he let himself out. 

You heard him greet his brothers outside and then listened to their footsteps fade into the distance before pulling up an incognito window on your phone. It had been weeks since you’d been able to get off and it was killing you. The amount of stress this trip had given you only made it worse. You were wound so tight that you were sure you’d snap soon if you didn’t get some relief. 

And you thought that maybe if you rubbed one out it might help you forget about... the confusing feelings you had for your best friend’s brother. 

Seeing as you had the night to yourself, you figured you might as well take advantage of it. You copied a link from your notes app and pasted the url into the address bar. You didn’t feel like digging through your luggage to find your earbuds so you set the volume low enough for only you to hear. 

The video started playing and you let your hand wander from your side up to your neck, brushing your hand lightly across your collarbone. You traced the curve of your breasts with a finger before squeezing one of them gently, feeling your nipple harden under your palm. You only had one hand to use since the other was holding your phone, but you made do. 

The video was one of your favorites, one you found yourself watching at least once a week. It was one of the few videos of hetero couples you had favorited, and it started with the guy going down on the girl before fucking her...

You admired the muscles on the man’s back, watching intently as they flexed whenever he moved his head. The woman moaned, struggling to keep her legs open while he brought her closer and closer to orgasm. 

You let your hand travel down further until it was sitting at the waistband of your pajama shorts. You knew you had a while before Sam would be back, but you were too impatient to wait. You propped your phone up on a pillow next to you to free your other hand as you started to play with your clit. 

You pictured someone’s head in between your thighs, imagining them moaning against your pussy as they tasted you for the first time. 

The man was taking his pants off now and lining himself up with his partner’s pussy. You tried to follow along, putting yourself in the moment with the couple. You gathered your own wetness on two of your fingers to lubricate them and slid them inside yourself, sighing in relief. Your entire body tensed as it accommodated to the stretch and you gave yourself a few beats before moving your fingers. 

When you finally did, you felt yourself relax and sped up your pace so that it matched the actors on screen.

The angle the video was shot at hid the man’s face and you found yourself wondering what he looked like. If you squinted you could almost picture Tom- no. You tried to shake the thought from your mind, but it was already there. 

Closing your eyes didn’t help either. You just imagined Tom’s fingers sliding in and out of you instead of your own, imagined the veins on his arms becoming more pronounced as he tightened his grip on your thigh. 

“Fuck,” you cursed, knowing you should stop. 

You were too close to stop now, and the pleasure was clouding your judgement. Suddenly the man brought his hand up to the girl’s throat and began to choke her, sending her hurtling into her own orgasm. You moaned accidentally, thinking about Tom’s hand around your throat. You curled your fingers up so that you were hitting your g-spot and whimpered pathetically.

This was wrong. This was bad. Not only were you fantasizing about your best friend’s brother, but you were confusing yourself even further. 

You tried to fight it, at least that’s what you told yourself, but all you could hear were Tom’s moans echoing through the speaker. You pictured the way he’d look on top of you. His eyes would be so dark and he’d be smirking like the cocky asshole he was, chain hanging down in your face- just inviting you to take it into your mouth. It didn’t take long before you felt your orgasm begin to build. The video was still playing in the background, the man still chasing his own high and bringing his partner to her second orgasm, but you’d tuned it out by now. You came around your fingers thinking about Tom’s hips snapping into yours. 

You were fucked.

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