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I feel like it's been pointed out before but it never hurts to reiterate- that look on Aziraphale's face just before he breaks into the wild grin in the elevator, this one:
The way he holds his mouth, that expression is exactly the same as
To me, it's his battle face, he's ready to fight.
I see an angel who is committed to protecting, no matter what, and is steeling himself for what is to come.
Now this one might be a little straw clutchy but there is another, fleeting, expression that for some reason my brain latched onto as one we have also seen before.
This is a blink and you'll miss it flicker of an expression just before he says (CW: Final Fifteen™) "I forgive you".
I kept thinking, where have I seen that microscopic mouth grimace before? And then I realised, it reminds me of the same tiny mouth movement here:
The difference is really what happens next. In the Job episode, Aziraphale pulls this expression immediately after the line, "I give you my word as an angel", when he is committing to the lie about Job's children and the tight mouth eases into the hint of a (very tense) grin as he waits to see if Gabriel believes him. It's part hoping the lie lands and part preparing to protect Job and his family.
The same mouth expression (is that a thing? For the sake of this flimsy tying together of moments it's a thing), flashes across Aziraphale's lips after he sort of composes himself after the kiss, before he utters the forgive you line.
It's almost as though he is preparing himself to deliver a line that he knows isn't true (or more, that he doesn't want to deliver), just as he did with Job. Only this time he knows the impact the words will have, on both him and Crowley, so of course there is no anticipatory smile afterwards. But in both instances, I think, he's wanting the person he's spoken to to believe what he's said, only for very different reasons.
But wait, there's more! In the final fifteen™ moment, Aziraphale's mouth actually moves through two expressions before he says the line. There's first of all the bracing for the lie/I'm about to say something I really don't want to say mouth, as seen above.
But then, it quickly shifts immediately before he speaks:
Terrible screenshot and possibly extraordinarily tenuous, but I'm choosing to think that in that moment, Aziraphale is readying himself to do what he has to to protect. Just as we've seen previously.
And he can only do that by going through with what has now been set in motion, and so he says "I forgive you", knowing it'll push Crowley away but it's not what he wants to say, it was something he had to brace himself for.
And I'm also hoping there might be a moment where the emphasis in s2 on Aziraphale and Crowley being able to read one another and communicate without words might come into play, and Crowley will realise Aziraphale was doing what he had to, and that those words pained him to say. And that he'll know that Aziraphale would do whatever it takes to protect him and their fragile existence (but I'm also ok with it being full of tension and not talking and getting an amazing reunion so, yah!).
#good omens meta#good omens#aziraphale#crowley#aziracrow#i mean some of this is tenuous at best but you know what? when the brain latches on I gotta get it out#michael sheen and his expressions
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KINTSUGI - AKIN TO A PRIDE VERSE - MV1
When brought to panic by ruthless reporters, Reina snaps and hits a reporter out of instinct. In desperation, Hana flies Max to London help her daughter out of a depressive episode caused by Reina thinking that she's more like her father than she ever wants to be. And Max realizes some things about who you call family.
warnings: reporters grabbing reina, mentioned rumors of domestic abuse, mentions of child abuse and past/current broken metacarpal (hand) bones (wow look at me being sciency?), many assumptions about max's childhood, reina has a whole break down, reminder this isn’t a romance series, also btw I changed reina's age to make her 20 (legit go back and look LOL) and that totally isn't something for silly foreshadowing purposes no no, my comeback after going to college LMAO
I'M FUCKING SCREWED. I'm so fucking screwed. I can feel the anxiety coursing through my arms as I stand there, my teammates off to my side as we try and fight through the media pen. We weren't even supposed to be here but Ollie Bearman had decided he was bored and dragged me and Kimi Antonelli along to see some other drivers by wandering along the pit lane. We were all pretty civil with one another, save for one or two weird rivalries here or there, so we were quick to amass a group that eventually Trident broke up when they needed Richard back.
And then media had shown up, and we'd gotten quickly swarmed with no real way out.
Luckily, Kimi had called someone from the paddock to come get us and help us out so as we slowly pushed through the crowd as politely as possible, someone was actively coming to us.
And then I had gotten split off.
"Ollie!" I shouted, trying to grab his attention, but my voice is lost among those of the reporters who chase after him. How theres so many reporters here, I have no idea. It's not normal. And then again, nothing about this season really was normal because of the whole siblings thing.
"Miss Matsumoto!" someone shouts and a camera is shoved in my face, I try to keep a calm composure, nodding sharply in greeting as I try to continue through the crowd, "How are you feeling about your race tonight?"
"I think I'll be alright," I nod, pulling the rim of my hat down a bit further, "My team has grown a bit with Max's personal trainer giving us some tips for my physical training and it's been really interesting seeing how just changing my diet and training has made drive different."
"How is your relationship with Max?" Someone else shouts and a smile happily crosses my face, okay, I can do this. Just keep talking and just keep pushing forward. Do what Max taught you.
"He's been incredible, a lot kinder than people give him credit for." I make sure to point that out as I walk. A few more questions about Max are tossed my way, what exactly he's been teaching me (how to train for Formula One specifically, different ways to keep my brain sharp, physical training adjustments, how to cope with the drastic difference between F2 and F1, which both Logan and Oscar had already told me about), if I've met Kelly and Penelope (I have, Penelope adores me for some reason), who I've met in Red Bull (Daniel, Max, Christian, Geri, a few engineers, some other drivers who now raced for other teams, and such.)
And then someone asks something that makes my stomach crawl, "Can you tell us why we haven't seen your father in the paddock this season even though his racing company is one of your main sponsors?"
"It's only the third race. I'm sure we'll see him in Sakura." I smile, trying to keep my voice level, but the reporters have found something to latch onto. I took too long to respond.
"How is your relationship with him been impacted since moving in with your mother?"
"The timezones make it hard to speak, but he is still my father, so," I shrug, trying now a bit more desperately to shove through the crowd. They're not letting me go. I can hear Kimi telling someone to move, his voice is sharp and annoyed, but the reporter doesn't listen.
"Is it true your father abused you?"
"What?" I gape, but reporters flash cameras and shove over each other to get to me. My reaction fuels them.
"Is Project Matsumoto a real thing, or just a mimic of Project Verstappen?"
I can't even recover from the last question as I gasp out, "I'm sorry?" I don't even know what they're referencing.
"Did Red Bull pick you to be Max's sibling due to your similar childhoods?"
I can't get words out now, the berating is on, and all I can do is try and back away. I can see Ollie waving a hand, trying to beckon me through the crowd, and now FIA officials are coming to move the reporters away. It's a mess of shoving and screaming, people in my face as they repeat themselves until their voices pitch to shouts and screams. I can't move through because any step I take is immediately countered by a shift in the tide of cameras and voices, blocking my path.
"Was your fathers attitude is Sakhir last year reflective of your childhood with him?" "How did your parents divorce effect your racing career?" "Is it hard to be living away from your Japanese roots?" "Why did your mother accuse your father of emotional and physical domestic abuse when they divorced?"
A reporter steps forward and grabs me and I rip back from him. Ollie's shoving a reporter to the side, trying to grab me before he's closed off by the ocean of people around me.
"Is the rumor of your fathers mistreatment of you true?" The man asks again, trying to grab me and I stumble back in a panic. My hat is pulled off by him instead, and I just let it go as I bring my arms to my stomach and wrap around myself.
"Please! Everyone, wait--!" I cry out, the obvious panic in my tone making my skin flame with embarrassment.
"Answer the question!" The same man shouts, shoving a reporter aside as raising his hand with his microphone. All I see is the raising of a fist in the shadow of my father, and my brain reacts before I can really think about what I'm about to do.
Crack!
I gasp as soon as I make the connection. It's hard. Max's training paying off well. Ollie's infront of me, grabbing my wrists and gently pulling me to the side until he can get me out of the crowd. Prema's around me in seconds, closing me off as I stare at my hands and feel the blood seeping across my knuckles.
I'm so screwed.
They get me into the paddock, voices over my head and slipping through my ears. I'm sat in my drivers room, Ollie and Kimi being peeled from my sides to go off and get ready for the race. I can't hear, can't think, a constant ringing ruining any conscious thought. My knuckle is split. My ring finger. I stare as one of the medics begins to clean up the wound.
Not even the sting can pull me from the thoughts racing through my head.
I hit someone. Struck a man out of fear. He had grabbed me, knocked my hat off, I had every reason to hit him. Yet, I had hit someone. I could hear my father's voice ringing in the back of my head, warnings of inheritance and passing down genetics I had shaken off to make myself feel better.
I was not my father. Never would be my father. I was so sure of that. Until today.
When the medic lets go of my hand and sets it on my lap, I feel fear strike my bones. And when René comes to get me, my silence is terrifying to everyone. I stand silent, straight faced, not even cracking a smile. The cameras watch me twice as much, I react a thousand times less.
Max is sitting on his bed, Penelope happily napping on his chest as he watches the pre-race bullshit for Reina. He had off today, oddly enough, and Kelly had gone out to do some sort of PR management event which left him to watch little Penelope. No problem at all.
The pre-race is what he's expecting, he can see Ollie dragging Reina and Kimi around and amassing a small group of F2 drivers outside of Trident. He laughs when Kimi hoists Reina into his arms, loudly announcing her by her nickname of Little Lion and making the rest of the boys cheer. What he isn't expecting is when they break up from the rest of the drivers to return to their paddock. Ollie's leading Kimi and Reina back when they get cut off by a mass of reporters. F2 hadn't been prepared for their usual amount of media to almost multiply by ten, and apparently it had been causing all sorts of issues.
Like this.
The questions are easy enough. He feels a weird swell of pride when he notices how easily Reina answers the reporters compared to before he'd started teaching her some media techniques.
And then the questions shift.
He can see Reina's panic after the first question, actually he sees it as soon as the word 'father' is brought up. He sits up a bit, gently readjusting Penelope as he turns the TV a bit louder. The camera swings away for a moment to show Ollie and Kimi pause when they realize Reina's not there, and their quick turn around before the camera swaps to show Reina.
She looks horrified. Max feels a burn in his chest as he sits up and leans forward, almost willing Ollie through the crowd. He can see multiple Prema people attempting to shove through, but every attempt is in vain. Nothing is working. It's a Sisyphean task.
Then the reporter tries to grab Reina and Max has to hold himself back from getting up and shouting at the TV. Not that it's gonna change anything. Reina steps back, and her eyes are darting around, trying to find a weak spot to escape. She can't, Max realizes, as the reporters close in.
The next thing he sees is her arm jut forward, a loud crack sounding over the speakers. His jaw drops, the sight of Reina hitting someone so foreign to him. Silence falls over the crowd as Ollie grabs her and pulls her away, someone else shouting for her to come on as Prema swarms her in a protective bubble. The feed cuts there and leaves Max on a cliff hanger for thirty minutes until they are just about to start the race. The anthem is playing. But, the Reina he sees on the screen is not his Reina.
She's silent, stone faced, frozen still and almost robotic. She moves soft as a dancer, but her gaze is sharper than an ice skaters blades. She wins, sure, but he can't get her haunted look out of his brain. She carries it even through her podium, not even able to smile when she hoists the trophy above her head.
The call from Hana the next day is expected. The invite to their flat in London is not.
"She just needs someone who understands what she's going through." Hana had pleaded on the phone, "I know it's wrong of me to say it, but you were treated a very similar way when you first got into F1 and especially when you started winning. You had a similar past, you both have similar struggles. She needs your help, Max.”
Max had wanted to suggest a therapist, a psychiatrist even, but he knew Reina would rather throw herself in front of a Le Mans car, probably the Porsche 936, than talk about her problems. Which left the question of if she would even talk to him.
But he tells Christian and Geri what's happening for a second opinion, and he is told he should go.
So he's on a flight to London three hours later, about a weeks worth of clothing packed haphazardly. He thinks he forgot a toothbrush and aftershave, but he doesn't care to check. After careful conversation, Hana had agreed to let him get a hotel close by, so he could give Reina space. Hana had been so certain Reina needed him, but Max wasn't even sure if Hana had tried to reach out to her daughter herself. Apparently Reina wasn't eating, doing her training, or even the sim. She had been in bed except for when she was forced out, and luckily there was a bit longer break than usual, it gave Max time.
He gets to the flat around eleven in the morning, twirling the keys of his rental car in his hand. He tells Hana he's coming inside and she gives him the code to the lobby and to the flat. The second one isn't needed, the woman is waiting for him in the hall.
“Thank you so much for coming out here.” Hana sighs when she sees Max and he’s shocked to see the usually classy woman in such a disheveled state, he gives her a hug in greeting but allows her to ramble through it.
“I’m sorry that I’m such a mess, I just—Reina hasn’t done this in so long it’s genuinely frightening to see it again.” Hana wipes her face, sniffling as she shakes her hands to sort of shake it off, “I’ve been trying to get her to do anything and she just won’t, she’s usually twice as active after a race, not sedimentary! I don’t know what to do—“
Max cuts off her rambling with a soft, “Hey, relax. You’ve done all you can. You go and take care of yourself, I’ll talk to Reina.”
It must be what Hana needs to hear (it’s something he’d been told by his mom when comforting Victoria growing up) because Hana barrels into his chest in a hug, thanking him probably thirty times in a row before stepping back and letting him in.
The apartment is gorgeous, Max can’t lie. It’s got big windows and tons of natural lighting, bright bold colors in decorations he’s sure Reina picked out. Which, he guesses, makes sense, because it will become her apartment soon. Hana points him in the direction of Reina’s room, but seems so genuinely distraught she can’t go near.
And this is where he’s stepping off the dock.
He hesitates to knock, but does eventually. It’s soft enough he’s sure Reina won’t hear it, but then he hears the most broken, teary and bitter, “what?” from the other side of the door.
“It’s Max.” He presses his hand to the handle, eyes staring through the wood as he leans in to the door itself, almost as if trying to see Reina through it, “can I come in?”
There’s a long enough pause he thinks she’ll say no. But theres a soft, "okay."
He pushes the door open to the darkness of Reina's room. One Himalayan salt lamp is on in the corner, providing a slightly warm glow to the room. The blinds are drawn tight, blackout curtains hastily thrown over them, and Reina's head is the only part of her body that's visible under her mass of blankets. Her room isn't quite messy, just cluttered with partially empty water bottles and a plate of cold breakfast. He remembers this. The shutting yourself off part of this all, of being raised like they had. Or, the lack thereof.
"Mornin'." He says simply, walking over to sit on the edge of her bed. Reina blinks a few times, like she can't even believe Max is there, and slowly sits up.
"Why are you here?" Her voice is groggy but not in the sense of just waking up, it sounds more like shes been sobbing for hours. A claim backed up by the redness of her swollen eyes and sniffly nose.
"Your mom called." He doesn't sugarcoat, never has, "I saw the punch. What did the FIA give you for that?"
“Five second penalty. Kimi was behind by six. Didn’t matter.” She grumbled, looking over at him from where she’s bundled up. She looks miserable, and though Max knows he’s started to crack through to get her to talk, he needs to keep trying.
“Did they fix your brakes?” Max asks and Reina nods, then sits up and sighs.
“I know you didn't fly all the way from Monaco to London for small talk. What’s wrong?” She asks, scrubbing at her red cheeks as she crosses her legs and grabs a large plush Hello Kitty and buries her face in it.
“Your mom said you’re not handling it well,” Max hums, leaning back on his hand and looking over at Reina as she curls a little bit tighter around her plushie.
“I hit someone.” She whines, “I hit him.”
“He grabbed you.” Max says, looking over at Reina and letting out a tiny non-committal hum, “the reason the FIA gave you such a little punishment is because it’s self defense.”
“But Max, I hit him.” Reina emphasized and Max blinked. What the fuck was she getting at here? His confusion must be all over his face because she shifts slightly closer and he can see where she'd split one of her knuckles open. Hana hold told him the finger was technically broken, but Reina refused to wear her brace on it. Something about having already worn one in the past. Not that Max would know. But when Reina goes to ball her hand into a fist, he notes her pinkie and ring finger don't close. Daniel's injury rings in his mind for a second, but he shoves the thought away as Reina continues to repeat herself, more broken, more panicked.
“Reina," Max attempts to soothe her, scooting a a bit closer to place a hand on hers, hiding the injury from her sight, "what are you getting at here?"
"I..." She stammers, eyes darting around his face, and then she huffs out a question he's not expecting, "Are you afraid of being like your father?"
Max blinks. The silence encompassing the room for a long while before he sighs out a soft, "Yeah, terrified."
"Me too." Reina nods, flexing her hand again. Max watches the way her eyes dart down to her injury and he realizes she's trying to cue him in. It's like a puzzle, and he has to put together the pieces to get the picture. She doesn't say anything next, leaving Max to figure it out himself, so he just watches Reina.
She's fidgety, fingers tapping along her injured hand, but he notes she keeps poking her pinkie. She'd injured her right ring finger, not the pinkie, so he's not sure what she's trying to do. She's not concerned over her current injury, but the past one. His eyes trail along her clothing, her mothers old NASCAR jersey, the rest of her hidden under mass amounts of fuzzy blankets. Her hair is braided back, greasy, and knotted, her skin is dull but still clear save for one or two pimples in her hairline. She wasn't taking care of herself, he could see that, it was a classic depressive episode.
Max meets her eyes and sees shes trying to pick him apart too.
But why? What did she need to know? Max was pretty open with her, he'd told her more than he told most people. Geri had encouraged it, hell she'd even asked if she could tell Hana some stuff from when he first got to Red Bull. The first time he'd snapped at Christian, expecting to be shouted back at, but was shocked at his calm tone. The first Christmas, when he had no one to go to, and Christian invited him to their home and though Max was slightly out of place he'd stolen the attention of the kids in a heartbeat. That was the day he'd become almost like a fifth kid to the Horners. Geri had asked if he was comfortable talking about his childhood with Hana, and he had, though it was a difficult conversation. She'd asked wonderful questions about healing and growing up and moving on, asked how much moving to Monaco and being on his own at eighteen had helped. Being on his own was freeing, he'd said that much, and though he kept some parts out he knew Hana could piece it together.
Hold on.
Max had snapped because he thought Christian would be like Jos when he'd failed to overtake on a turn.
Max hadn't had anywhere to go that Christmas because it was the first time he was celebrating without any family in the same home.
Max became an unofficial Horner because his own familial issues.
Max had moved to Monaco to get away from his father.
Reina was afraid to be like her father.
Reina was always looking to Max for validation, even with how short they had known each other.
Reina's injury, from what little Max knew, was caused after she had crashed out of a race--in heer drivers room. The last time she'd seen her dad after she'd left their house in Fukushima.
Shit.
"Reina." Max starts, not sure if he even knows how to approach this. He'd been the messy one, the one to snap, the one to shout, the one to lash out. It was evident of an 'avoidant attachment style' from his childhood or whatever the hell that meant, therapists always confused him with technicalities. Max wasn't gentle, he wasn't soft like this, he was hard edges and half-broken promises. How does one avoid their own sharp edges when trying to handle something so soft? How can Max be sure he won't break Reina?
"What happened to your pinkie?" He asks, gently prodding the knuckle with his own. Reina meets his eyes. He can't find her in her own gaze.
"Boxer's fracture." She murmurs, "Like Daniel's."
"I know that, but how did it happen?" He pushes and when Reina freezes up, he whispers, "Listen, it's just us right now. I'm gonna keep you safe, yeah? Like a real brother would."
Max had enough experience protecting Victoria.
"My dad." Reina starts, then swallows and closes her eyes. She leans forward, seeking out Max, and he moves so she can rest her head on his shoulder, staring down at her hands covered by his, "Last year, when I crashed out towards the end of the season. I was living with my mom by then, so I never really saw him. I didn't even know he was at the race. I got to my drivers room and we got in an argument. My mom tried to split us up and he slapped her so hard she fell over. I pushed him to get him to leave her alone and..."
Reina struggles to find the words and whatever she had gone through is a thousand times worse than Max could've ever expected.
"He grabbed me by the wrist, I grabbed a door to get away and he slammed it on my hand. Broke my metacarpal in two places, I needed surgery, so I never finished the season. Finished thirteenth."
Max is still. So still he's not even sure he's still breathing. Reina sniffles, and Max feels her tears hit the back of his hand.
"You don't wanna wear the brace because it takes you back." He says and Reina just lets out a soft hum. He doesn't know what to do. So, he does what Geri had done the few times she'd had to comfort him. One arm around her shoulders, the other on her head, and he pulls her taught to his chest to cradle her there.
The sob she lets out shatters his heart and he tries to pull her impossibly closer. They're flush to one another, theres no more space to close, but he still tries as Reina breaks and shatters in his hands like fine china. He attempts to piece her back together but there's not enough of him intact to repair her. Max, for his benefit, has dealt with Penelope's tired melt downs and so he gives Reina a waterbottle and wipes her tears, lays her down admist her blankets and tucks her in tightly. He sits on the floor by her face, running his fingers through her hair as best he can, gently running his thumb along her shoulder.
He can tell shes not just crying because she'd hit someone, but theres more to it. And an hour or so later, when the tears subside, she finally opens her heart to him.
"I hate my dad." She whispers after maybe five minutes of silence, no longer broken by her sniffles.
"I do too." Hate his dad? Hate hers? He's not sure. But he stands up to open her curtains and blinds, hands itching to do something rather than just sit silent. The noon sun warms the room almost instantly, and Reina lifts her head to shift into the sun. He turns and speaks as he bends down to pick up a stray bottle, "Why do you hate him?"
"Just... everything he put me and my mom through." Reina sighs, "There's a lot he did I can never forgive him for."
"What did he do?" Max sits down again and Reina reaches out to his hand, which he obliges, and she pokes at his fingers.
"When I was growing up, I started karting in Japan with my father. He wanted me to race rally cars since I was born, even with his obvious disappointment I wasn’t a son. I competed for the first time on my fifth birthday, and won. I got scouted that day and my dad completely changed. It went from a little hobby I could have to a future career, especially when my mother learned she was infertile after my birth." Reina speaks monotonously, eyes distant as she recalls, and though Max has read up on her past he knows he's getting a new raw look at her life.
"My dad finally got me in rally when I was ten, a year before the divorce. I did it for three years. The worst three years of my life." Reina shifts so she's laying on her back, looking up at the ceiling and avoiding Max's eyes, "everything that my father had just simply said became physical. Every single time I made a mistake, I was hit. Every time I talked back, ignored him, walked away, did anything he deemed to be incorrect, I was hit. Sometimes just a whack to the back of my head in annoyance, most of the time closed fists. The only thing I was allowed to do was race, extracurriculars, and school. And that includes sleeping, eating, showering, and such."
"On my thirteenth birthday, my mom came to visit us in Japan for a race I had in Fukushima. I finished second because of some dirty play and my dad was so angry at the company for not catching that, he took it out on me completely. My mom and her boyfriend at the time saw the entire thing, a huge fight broke out, the cops got called, it was a whole thing.
"My mom sued my dad for only my custody, no payment, nothing. And he dug his own hole, the court found out he was spending all the money my mom sent for me on himself, I had saved years of evidence... my mom ended up getting full custody without a challenge, and a payment that amounted to all her payments of child support and then two years worth of payments of my fathers child support in advance. That all happened around the time I switched to Formula racing. The entire time I've been racing Formula I've been living with my mom and my dad has been sending child support."
"When he got... aggressive with you, was it always physical?" Max hums and Reina shakes her head. Max slowly starts to undo one of the braids to redo it, trying to ignore the greasy feeling on his hands, and she leans into his touch so much he has to pause as he feels her face rest against his arm.
"No, it was just shouting until I got into rally and then every once and a while he’d hit me. And the most he did before I got into rally was slap me once when I was like, six? But it was mostly just him ignoring me or screaming at me, or making me race to exhaustion." Reina sighs as she then rolls to curl up against his side and Max adjusts so that he's half laying down with Reina curled up on his chest. It's similar to the way he'd gotten the youngest Horner kids to sleep when he'd visit or babysit over the years.
"My father is one of the worst people on the planet," Reina stares out the window. Max hums non-committedly, moving a little bit closer as Reina speaks in the most dead tone he's ever heard as she says, "and I have always been his favorite punching bag."
"I was my father's favorite too." Max admits and Reina nods.
"What was he like?"
"Just a lot more manipulative and way less physical. A lot of it was just him ignoring me, leaving me places, shouting at me, pressuring me. A lot of manipulation when I'd call him out on it." Max hums, finding the braid he'd half undone to fully pull it out. Reina grabs a brush off her nightstand and hands it to him so he can start to brush out her hair. It's weirdly remnant of Victoria and Penelope. Reina hums and as Max brushes out her hair, he feels the way her body relaxes.
“So did you pick me or did Red Bull?” Reina asks maybe five minutes later and Max hums, fingers finding loops of her hair to slowly braid it again. Practically hearing Geri’s voice instructing him on how to braid because it was ‘something good to know for Penelope.’ He was glad he had listened to her. It was a good thing to know.
“They told me I was gonna train you, then told me I was gonna train Ollie.” Max hums, “Ollie’s great but… I dunno. I just knew I should mentor you. Call it divine intervention but I knew.”
“Im glad you chose me.” Reina murmurs against the fabric of his hoodie and he realizes how odd this moment is. He’d packed up in thirty minutes, gotten on a two hour flight, and spent an hour coaxing his mentees trauma out so he can help her. He could’ve just said he was busy, and yet he’d already given so much of his heart to Hana and Reina he knew he couldn’t just abandon them. Reina needed him just as much as he needed her.
"I'm glad I did too. And... listen, Rei, you hitting this guy because he scared you doesn't make you an abuser." Max watches as Reina picks her head up, resting her chin on his sternum to watch him, "and Reina, you being afraid of being like your father tells me you will never be."
"But I just... I hit someone like he hit me and it was just an echo. He always told me I would grow up to be like him." Reina closes her eyes and Max takes a hand to cup her face, running his thumb along her wet undereyes.
"But you hit out of fear, not out of anger or with the intention of abusing someone, thats the thing that will never make you like him."
Reina nods, and Max knows it'll probably take him the whole week to convince her of that. But, as Reina lays her head back down with a soft thank you, he feels like he's done enough. Only twenty four hours ago he had Penelope sleeping on his chest. Now Reina’s in the same spot, her hand reaching out to cup the setting sun with her injured hand.
“Kintsugi.” She says softly, then sits up. Max watches her, head tilting as she moves to her closet and swings the door open. Grabbing a stool, she clambers up to the top shelf and starts rustling around. From his vantage point on the bed, Max can see deep scars running the inside of her leg and wonders briefly where they’re from before Reina settled back in front of him on the couch. She sees him looking and swallows, digging something out of a box from her closet.
“Also from my dad.” She says, eyes flickering up, “same day my mom was in Fukushima.”
“Ah.” Max nods, and lets Reina continue to rustle. He wants to ask questions, but he’s curious as to what she’s doing. She sets down her brace and a thing of gold paint and hands a brush to him.
“What is this?”
“Okay. It’s kinda stupid because this is no where close to what you’re supposed to do, but hear me out,” Reina raises her hands in defense. Max let’s her have the floor, he’s not gonna judge her.
“Kintsugi, it’s a Japanese art of repairing broken pottery or dishes or whatever with urushi lacquer mixed with powered gold or whatever and I don’t have lacquer and this isn’t technically broken but!” Reina pauses her rambling, chews her lip, and looks away from Max and to the window, “When I had my first hand brace, my Jiji—my grandmother, she painted it with this beautiful gold design. She told me it was my kintsugi. That I was broken, and that she was mending me. And… she’s always been my biggest support. Besides my mom, Jiji sacrificed so much for me, almost all her salary went to helping me get into F4 because my dad stopped helping me pay for racing until he started sponsoring me last year. And… Kintsugi is our thing. If she breaks anything she waits for me to fix it.”
There’s something hanging here, something so vulnerable, so Max asks with plenty of pause to show his trepidation, “Why did you give me the brush, then? Where’s Jiji?”
“In Washington.” Reina hums, “And… you… you’re a really big supporter to me. And you mean a lot to me, Max. I’ve only known you for half a year now but… you’ve helped me with a lot. And you sacrifice a lot for me. You flew all the way here to help me because my Mom asked. And don’t think Christian didn’t tell me about you trying to anonymously sponsor me.”
Max laughs softly, “Guilty as charged.”
“I want you to paint something on it. Anything. I have a—“ Reina starts to dig again, “a gold marker too. I do this all the time with things I break—like my phone cases or my hair ties. This is a whole bin of knockoff Kintsugi.”
She hands Max the marker and then rolls off to the side to curl back into her blankets, but rests her head on his thigh. Max sits and stares at the brace in his hand, rolling it around in his grasp as he thinks of what to write. There’s about a thousand things that ring through his head, and none he can settle on.
And then he gets an idea.
While Reina watches him focus, the golden light of the sun haloing him, she wonders briefly if she’s found her own form of Kintsugi in him. Sure they weren’t perfect, and both deeply troubled in their own right, traumas rooted deep within them, but they had each other and that was what they needed.
And Max knew he found Kintsugi in Reina.
Reina sits up when Max hands her the brace back, making an odd face when she sees its written in Dutch.
“laat u niet definiëren door uw naam. Do not be defined by your name.” Max says simply, and Reina looks up at him and tears prick in her eyes immediately. When Max helps her put it on, he adds a bit more gold flare to the boring black brace and smiles.
“Now you can wear it, yeah?” he says, and Reina leans up to wrap her arms taught around him. He laughs softly and hugs her back, letting her bury her face in the side of his neck.
If she sobs, he doesn’t comment, just lets her lay there until she’s run dry.
A week later, Max is unpacking in Monaco when he notices something new in his bag. He finds a small little keychain, a little blue ribbon tied to a clasp he knows he can snag on his keys. It’s in Japanese, but the note attached makes him smile a little watery smile.
‘Max,
Thank you. That’s all I can say. For everything you were supposed to help me with, and everything you chose to do on your own. I hope I can return the favor.
Reina.
ps. it says ‘do not be defined by your name.’ just like my brace,’
The keychain hangs off the zipper of his work jacket instead. And if anyone asks—and Yuki is the first to ask the meaning since he knows what it actually says, he simply smiles and says it’s a gift. No other explanation needed.
Except for when Geri asks, and he tells her the whole story, and then Christian ‘yells’ at him for making Geri cry.
reinamatsumoto made a new post!
liked by gerihorner, logansargeant, maxverstappen, and 458k others...
reinamatsumoto: [come back soon, big brother]!!
viewing translation from japanese
tagged: maxverstappen
misshanatanaka: [so sweet! glad having him by helped sweetheart!!]
user1: CAPTOIN HAS ME IN FUCKING TEARS
user2: MAX IS HER BROTHER !!!!!!
logansargeant: did our sushi date meaning NOTHING.
⤷ reinamatsumoto: GOD YOU WANT A POST FOR FUCKING SUSHI??
⤷ logansargeant: YES?
⤷ oscarpiastri: please rei he's pouting.
⤷ reinamatsumoto: fine. anything for my favorite white boys.
⤷ user6: my favorite prema survivors <3
user3: CRYING OVER HER CALLING MAX HER BROTHER. OH. IM SO NOT WELL.
user4: so are we gonna talk ab her punching a reporter? bc shes hot for that.
oscarpiastri: PERONI??? FOUL.
gerihorner: so so so cute!!!!!
⤷ reinamatsumoto: thanks mom!!!
⤷ maxverstappen: thanks mom
user5: logan crying in the comments is so real
yukitsunoda: [max is a big softie!]
⤷ reinamatsumoto: [I KNOW !!!]
taglist (thank you for your support!!)
@vellicora @justsomejess @struggling-with-delia
#f1 fanfic#max verstappen fanfic#max verstappen fic#max verstappen fanfiction#formula one fanfiction#formula 1 fic#formula one fic#formula one fanfic#formula 1 fanfic#max verstappen angst#f1 fanfiction
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Mw3 spoilers (just a long personal ramble)
Hiii. So
As soon as the pre-release came out on, I hunted down spoilers, because I know myself and knew that if someone died and I got that information out of the blue, I wouldn’t take it well. Jokes on me, because I still haven’t been taking it well lol
I won’t talk about how Soap’s death was handled or the quality of the game. Plenty of smarter people are doing so.
I try not to talk a lot about myself and irl stuff on here, but will just say: I am very unwell, mentally. (Cue silence because that’s not surprising at all) Something I am very aware that I do, is that I latch onto fiction with my whole being, usually one specific character. For some reason, I always latch onto the character that ends up dead, usually in a way that make them only exist to further the motivations of other characters. It sucks.
So my hope for Soap has never been great, but for some reason I was still so shocked?? I don’t know, I tricked myself into thinking this time was different. Such an iconic character with so much good setup for great character development. I knew someone would die, but ow. To me, he was the element that made 141 seem more like family than coworkers. Soap’s interactions with the rest just livened up the games so much and made them all shine. Especially Ghost. Their dynamic, man.
Soap was the character that intrigued me enough to jump into the cod rabbit hole. It feels very hollow without him.
I keep telling myself that it’s silly to be so hurt over something fictional, and that I can just treat it as a mcd fanfic and move on, but nope. Brain’s stuck in the bad stuff. It’s a bad habit of mine to let something like this affect me so much, but well. Logic vs feeling and all that.
I really did find so much comfort in Soap this last year, that I severely needed. It feels a little like losing someone I know, someone who helped me through a rough time. I related to something in him and felt inspired. I only started writing after getting into ghostsoap, I started working out and I got back into art after a very long burnout. It may be fiction, but the impact is not.
So that was pretty much the worst case scenario of what mw3 could be to me. I always knew the risk, but, once again, ow. But there also seems to be plenty of good stuff in the game that I enjoy. I’m happy with the Ghost and Soap dialogue, the whole team working together and seeing Laswell and Farah and Alex and Nik. I hope I can be inspired by some of the new content once I’m calmer.
And I was worried they would ignore Ghost and Soap’s relationship after their development in mw2, but they genuinely seem to have gotten real close. It’s nice. I thought the shipping might scare the game devs into never having them appear in a scene together again, so that’s a plus.
Bottom line to all this is: I probably need a little break to get my head sorted. The grief is surprisingly real, it’s triggered some old stuff for me (haven’t been sleeping or eating, been stuck in some old thoughts). I’ll need to calm down and become a bit more normal about this again. Part of the grief isn’t so much about Soap himself, but also just the safe space that this account has been. The very nature of how the fandom is going to interact with Soap and Ghostsoap is going to change now, and man… I liked how it was, y’know? Could’ve used a little longer in that bubble. There’s going to be plenty of new fics and art, lovely stuff as always, but many of them will be tinged with grief, and I’m not in a place where that won’t break me a little.
I will hopefully come back to posting and making stuff once my brain settles down. I have so many drafts for fics and ideas that I hope I can return to. I’ve gotten so used to drawing these lads that I doubt I can stop tbh
The version of Soap that we love is already evolved from the games due to all the time and care the community has put into the character. The games may have killed him, but luckily, he’s fictional. We can do what we want, same as before.
I’m not even saying that I wish they hadn’t killed him. The games are crafting a story that fits their audience. It makes sense.
But I will choose to live in one of the many universes we’ve created for Soap, where he is alive and cared for, with a found family and a spooky lieutenant with a soft spot for him. Good for him.
Hope you’re all taking care of yourselves. RIP canon Soap (again). Thanks to Neil for a wonderful portrayal. And no matter where we go from here, thanks for a wonderful year of creating with you lovely folks. Seriously, some of the kindest people I’ve met in fandom. <3
Lastly: fuck you Kevin O’Reilly, but more importantly, sincerely thank you. (CallMeKevin video about mw2 got me into this mess. Otherwise I was keeping cod at an arm’s length, but he’s my fav youtuber, so I watched it. And here we are!)
#if u don’t wanna read: I’ll be taking a small break for mental health reasons but expect to be back and creating for this fandom again <3#mw3#mw3 spoilers#cod mwiii#mwiii spoilers#call of duty mwiii#ghostsoap#wispy update#always feel anxious posting anything emotional but feel like this one deserved a proper update#you’re all wonderful ppl ily#hopefully see you soon !
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Hiiii, Keely! It’s been a while since I’ve found myself in the inbox of my mutuals with a thoughtful question about our boys. However, we’re preparing for the hurricane down this way and I’m looking for something to keep me occupied — like talking to all of my beautiful lovely friends!!
So what I want to discuss today is the love language of our boys. What love language(s) do you think they each excel at and which one(s) do they struggle with the most? Do you think their love language(s) have changed since the beginning? Do you think they still excel or struggle with a certain one(s)?
I would also like to pick your brain on your thoughts of how they protect one another — how they protect one another physically, how they protect one another’s peace, how they protect each other mentally, etc! 🩵
— Much love, Chey
Hi I almost accidentally deleted this instead of answering and my life flashed before my eyes
Anyway THANK YOU for asking this was very fun 😈
So I feel like it’s pretty universally believed that Mickey’s a big acts of service guy, but…can I be honest? I know the man loves a grand gesture, but I think that’s different than acts of service. Honestly the grand gestures almost feel like gift giving to me? Plus I love believing that Mickey grabs a Kind bar for Ian every time he stops at a gas station. I don’t know, especially growing up poor, it changes the way you think about material possessions, and I think he’d want to give everything he can to Ian
I think Mickey probably struggles with words of affirmation—at least receiving it. Like he’s probably more comfortable with it now, but I think for a long time he felt weird about Ian saying nice things to him and was pretty dismissive of any compliments
I 100% believe Ian is a physical touch man—he’s ALWAYS touching Mickey (hand on knee my beloved). I think he just loves being close to him. Plus obviously their sex life has always been…fulfilling and Ian was down bad from the start so I think that plays into it
I also love thinking of him as a words of affirmation guy because I really latch onto the fact that he tested out of English so I KNOW he’s good with words and I know he writes the cutest, sweetest little cards for Mickey on his birthday or their anniversary
Hmm what does Ian struggle with…? Ironically I think he might be a little resistant to gift giving because I think he’s the saver in the relationship, so Mickey keeps getting him these little “I’m thinking of you” gifts and Ian’s like stressing about rent (but also he loves it because that’s his HUSBAND and he’s thinking about him 🥹)
And I don’t know if love languages have changed since the beginning per se, but they’ve obviously both become more comfortable with expressions of love throughout their relationship and I’m having a lot of feelings about that
PROTECTION?! Well physically they will literally kill for each other if push comes to shove I am very confident in that. For some reason I like to think that Ian always tries to walk closer to the road so Mickey won’t get hit if a car swerves or something and Mickey thinks he’s dumb but lets him do it anyway. And Mickey wants to be facing the door on dates and stuff so he can size people up and assess any threats
Protecting each other’s peace I think they’re both willing to be the bad guy if they need an out. Like if Ian just can’t handle being around his family for some reason, Mickey’s like “tell ‘em I’m not in the mood”
MENTALLY I have a lot of feelings 😭 obviously canonically Mickey is great with Ian’s bipolar (we pretend Hall of Shame doesn’t exist) and I think that continues and grows (“I gotta worry, you’re my husband” my beloved). I think he’s VERY aware of potential triggers and warning signs and I think he’s supportive AND gives Ian space when he needs it because he likes his autonomy and independence
I think Mickey has a lot of unresolved trauma and I’m not like his therapist or anything but I’d want to assess for PTSD and generally unhelpful cognitions, and I love the idea that he goes to therapy some day (honestly I’d love if they both did), but I think Ian is really good at holding space for him to share what he’s thinking about AND I think he’s eventually willing to do that
Anyway I hope that answered your questions and PLEASE feel free to send me more, I love thinking about them
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Speaking Tongues
hello everyone!!
if you didn’t hear, yesterday was @mushiewrites BIRTHDAY WOOOO 🎉🎉🎉 everyone go wish them a happy birthday and give good vibes :DD
this is the fic i wrote for the momentous occasion, and originally i wasn’t gonna post it but someone encouraged me to anyway so here it is <3 it is different than anything i’ve ever written, but it was pretty fun to do, so i hope everyone likes it as much as mush did >:)
WARNING: this fic does include mouth tickles on george’s belly button, i know that is Not a lot of people’s cup of tea, so if that makes you uncomfortable, read at your own risk/skip this one!! no hard feelings, keep yourselves safe <3
lee!george, ler!dream, feat. sapnap, 1.6k words
enjoy!
--
“This is so stupid,” George grumbled, clenching his teeth as he yanked at the restraints that held his wrists captive above his head. He felt the cold metal dig into his wrists uncomfortably, a harsh reminder of his captivity, yet the only anxiety he felt was that of the anticipation– really, he was more endeared than anything. “Is that really necessary?”
“For you? Yes. You’ve never tickled you before, you wouldn’t know,” Sapnap explained from his spot, cross-legged next to George’s bound arms at the head of the bed. George scoffed, already squirming through his nerves, twisting his wrists and trying to find a comfortable position for them to be stuck in for the next… however long it would be.
“Whatever,” He groaned again, earning a chuckle from Dream.
“You better watch that attitude, Georgie. If I was in your position I’d be careful,” He explained, settling himself to straddle George’s thighs, an action that made George’s heart kick up and his toes curl as he shifted nervously again.
He knew, realistically, that Dream was right, and that he should shut up, but for some reason that even he didn’t fully understand, his mouth was literally incapable of listening to that logic. So, he dug his grave even further.
“If you were in my position, you wouldn’t have even made it far enough to have an attitude, so…” George said, unable to stop himself, his brain spiraling as he cursed his lips for moving.
The room went silent. George felt like he had just stepped on a twig in the woods in a horror movie, alerting the killer of his exact location. He had no idea what was going to happen next, but every option his brain supplied was worse than the last.
“…Oh?” Dream replied, voice dangerously low, rumbling through his chest and into the deep center of George’s soul, and eyebrows dangerously high, wide pupils staring daggers into George’s eyes. George swallowed, already breathing heavier at the single syllable.
“No– no, I-I didn’t mean–“ George said, immediately trying to backtrack, voice shaky as he twisted and pulled lightly at his wrists. Dream sucked in a breath through his teeth, letting it out as a wistful sigh, as if he was pushed to make a decision he was reluctant to make– and his next actions were decided for him, and he was simply going along with suggestions that were given to him nonchalantly.
“Well, if that’s what you want…” He finished, shrugging his shoulders, before launching his attack, and suddenly the tips of his rough fingers were digging into the center of George’s rib cage, his thumbs digging into the front of his ribs as well.
“NO, NONONO, I’M SORR– AHAHAHA, FUHUHUCK–!” George protested, screaming as soon as Dream’s hands touched down, latched onto the horrifically sensitive area, unmoving even as George thrashed and squirmed and tried his hardest to throw him off. “DREHEHEHEAM, PLEHEHEHEASE!”
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Dream soothed, giggling as he watched George’s reactions only grow stronger. He shook his head wildly before throwing it back against the pillow below him, switching between pulling at his arms and forcing them to straighten out when the bite of the handcuffs became too much to handle, his eyes squeezed shut as tears formed at the corners. “I bet you’re sorry now, huh, baby?”
“WH– AHAHAHA– YEHEHEHES! DREHEHEAM, COHOME OHOHOHON!” George pleaded, attempting to reason with him, well aware that both he and Sapnap knew how much everything about the situation was driving him completely insane. He heard Sapnap chuckle next to him and he turned to hide his face in his arm as much as he could, the sudden reminder that he was still being watched hitting him like a truck and making him dizzy.
Well, that was probably the lack of oxygen, but he wasn’t exactly thinking straight, was he?
“Alright, fine, take a breather,” Dream said, pulling his hands back and rubbing the ghost tickles away with his palms, letting George catch his breath for a few moments. George took the opportunity graciously, gulping down the air like water in a drought, his body relaxing against the calming touch of Dream’s hands, almost forgetting what those same hands were just doing to him.
Almost.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Dream decided, slipping his hands under George’s loose t-shirt and pushing it up to reveal his torso, his whole tummy on display as he giggled nervously at the attention.
“Oh– Dreheheheam…” He whined, practically putty in Dream’s hands, but he tensed up again when Dream’s fingers began to scratch at his sides and the dip of his waist. He broke into high pitched giggles, squirming harder than ever before at the light touches, knowing they could sometimes drive him even more crazy than the cruel tickles– and he worried that might have been one of those times. He was able to handle it, though, until a few seconds later when he felt a soft gust of air flow over his tummy, and he whipped his head down to see none other than Dream’s smiling face hovering barely a few inches above his torso and blowing softly on his skin that was already riddled with goosebumps. “Nohohoho, nononono, whahat are yohohou doihihing–“
“Shhh,” Dream soothed again, only spiking George’s anxiety more.
Then, just as George thought he’d seen it all, he felt something he had never, ever felt before, touching his skin.
Dream’s tongue. In his belly button.
“OH– NO, OH MYHY GOHOHOHOD!?” George blurted out, voice turning squeaky and stuttery from the sheer shock of the feeling, and he dared to venture a look down to see if he was imagining it or if Dream really did have his fucking tongue inside his belly button, and he was horrified to find out that it was, in fact, the second one. “WHAHAT– oh myhy– whahat’s wrohohong wihith yohou–“ George yelled, breathing shallow and panicked, squirming like his life depended on it– which, in that moment, it kind of felt like it did.
“Sapnap,” Dream said sternly, not missing a beat, and Sapnap seemed to know exactly what he wanted from that.
Sapnap leaned over, gently curling his arm around George’s head, and placed one hand softly over his mouth, using his pinkie under his jaw to keep his lips pressed tightly together. The other hand quickly found its way to George’s hair, combing his fingers through the soft curls there, helping to both keep George in place and to help him relax into the feeling. George continued protesting, whining and trying to shake Sapnap’s hands away, but nothing seemed to help, and his whiny giggled and attempts at complaining were muffled into Sapnap’s palm against his will.
“There we go, that’s better, isn’t it?” Sapnap commented, voice low, close enough to George that he didn’t need to speak very loud. George groaned behind his hand, glaring up at him with a fire in his eyes that Sapnap couldn’t wait to watch Dream extinguish. He looked back down to watch Dream lower his head, and like magic, his mouth was on George’s belly button and George was thrashing once again.
“MMMH–!” He yelped, sucking in his stomach and tensing his entire body, his toes curling and biceps straining, puffing his chest up in favor of driving his hips back into the mattress, hoping to pull back far enough that Dream would stop. He didn’t, of course, and it only gave him better leverage to hold George’s hips down and let his tongue dip into the hyper-sensitive button. George gasped, a strangled sound getting caught in his throat as his entire body convulsed, and his broken screams and whimpers returned. “MM– MMHPH, MH!”
“This is cute,” Dream mused, placing a few tiny kisses to George’s tummy before nibbling lightly at the edges of his belly button. George squirmed and jumped at each nip, squeaky laughter taking over, his face bright red from complete and utter embarrassment, shock, and disbelief at what the hell Dream was doing. “Love when you get all squeaky, pretty boy.”
“MM-MM!” George denied, trying to shake his head as much as he could, curling his arms in to hide the rest of his face that was still visible. He was still squirming, but both Sapnap and Dream could tell that it was completely involuntary– he wasn’t trying to squirm away, it just kind of happened. Sapnap’s hand in his hair continued to scratch softly, helping him relax and fall into the trance even further, and Sapnap giggled at how sweet the scene was.
He could tell George wanted to be vehemently against everything that was happening to him, but he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t essentially floating towards the moon with how spacey he was because of it.
They stayed like that for a while, Dream’s mouth playing with the sensitive dip of George’s tummy, George’s whining and spasmic squirming, Sapnap’s hands staying firmly in their places, until George’s muffled voice grew raspy and the other two decided he’d probably had enough.
Dream pulled back, dazed for a moment as he came back to reality and stared at the red marks on George’s abdomen made by his fingers and mouth, but George couldn’t have seemed more content if he tried.
They quickly uncuffed him, Dream taking a moment to press soft kisses to the harsh red lines on his wrists from pulling at the restraints, holding George’s hands and playing with his fingers as he, too, came back into his own body. Sapnap immediately laid down on the bed, tugging the covers over himself and George and motioning for Dream to do the same on the other side, before clinging to George like a koala. He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso, making George laugh and jokingly try to shove him away, but that only made him squeeze George impossibly tighter, making him fall into another fit of giggles as they all settled into each other’s arms.
#everyone say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUSHIEEEE 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉#or ELSE 🫵🫵#anyway. this was actually really fun to write#i’ve never written anything with That before bc it’s never really been my thing but it was a fun topic i think#i hope everyone enjoys <3 mush did and that’s all i care about but i guess everyone else can see too 🙄#im kidding lmao i hope it’s good for everyone else too#lee!george#ler!dream#ler!sapnap#technically#cals writing#mushiewrites
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selfshiptober day 13: party / magic
I'm doing a couple of prompts from some different writing events this month, but I wanted to make sure I got at least one from this prompt list! I was able to combine both of the prompts for this little ficlet, of course about Anders bcs my brain is so latched onto him right now
Rating: Teen
Genre: Fluff
Words: 726 words
Divider by animatedglittergraphics-n-more
Content warning: alcohol/drinking, sort of suggestive content
The Hanged Man is always full of life, but tonight in particular, it seems to be so loud that Romilda can barely think. She never liked visiting the bar all that much— she doesn’t drink alcohol, so the only reason she ever comes here is to spend time with friends. And while tonight’s party to celebrate Abigail’s birthday is fun, it’s also started to get a bit overwhelming. The music being played by the musicians in the corner is too loud, and everyone’s overlapping voices and laughter only makes it harder for her to process anything.
Romilda does at least enjoy seeing Anders have fun. Ever since she’s found him, it’s always seemed like a dark shadow’s been hanging over him between Justice, the situation for mages in Kirkwall, and all his all the other responsibilities he has at the clinic. She likes getting to see her enjoy herself, grinning as she makes her way around the party. Eventually he makes his way back to Romilda, face red and smelling of alcohol.
Anders wraps her arms around Romilda, hugging her like she hasn’t seen her in months. “I was looking for you, my love.”
“I’ve been right here most of the night, baby,” she replies, hugging him back. “How much did you have to drink?”
“Enough. Justice isn’t happy about that, though,” he says with a laugh.
“I can’t imagine he would be. This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing he would approve of.”
Anders pulls back enough to look at Romilda, arms still tight around her. “We should get out of here.”
“You want to go home?” she asks.
“No.” She gives her a quick, messy kiss, mouth half missing Romilda's. “I want to enjoy some time alone with the loveliest woman at this party.”
“Then maybe we can find somewhere in the back,” Romilda says.
She wouldn’t mind a break from the crowd. And a break with Anders at least should help her ease some of the tension in her shoulders from all the noise and people surrounding them here.
Anders takes Romilda’s hand, guiding her through the crowd and back to one of the Hanged Man’s back rooms. He doesn’t bother knocking, backing into the door to push it open and pulling her along with him.
As the door swings closed behind them, Anders all but wraps herself around Romilda. He plants kisses all over her face, his breath warm against her skin.
“I love you so much,” she says.
“I love you too,” Romilda replies, hugging him tight and managing a kiss on the side of his neck.
She always thinks it’s adorable when Anders gets affectionate like this. She’s always sweet, but it’s nice to see some of the passion in her that she loves so much. Every brush of his hands against her is grounding, leveling out the anxiety that hangs over her from the overstimulation of the party outside. It's a reminder of what she's here for, and it's a reminder of better times.
Though the brush of electricity against Romilda’s exposed arms does send a shock through her. It’s not uncommon for Anders to use a bit of magic when they’re intimate with each other— she likes that they’re both mages, and she likes getting to flex her magical abilities. Romilda will reciprocate most of the time, always happy to see how entranced Anders is by her magic. But right now, they’re in a place others can easily walk into, and not everyone here might look kindly on such a brazen display of magic.
“Don’t get too bold. We’re in public,” Romilda chides. Someone catching them making out in a backroom would be embarrassing, but not anything too horrible. Someone being able to recognize the smell and feel of magic in the air could spell disaster for the both of them, though.
“That’s part of the fun of it,” Anders replies, going in for another kiss. His hands keep roaming over Romilda’s body, pressing her flush against him as he enjoys as much contact from her as he can.
“Just remember to behave yourself,” Romilda says.
Anders grins, bringing her face close enough for their noses to bump together. The spark of magic flows between them again, more subtle now, a faint hum between them that only they’ll be able to notice. “Anything you want, pretty girl.”
#selfship fic#selfshipping fic#selfshiptober 2024#my posts#my writing#🧶#🧶 love someone like you#🦋 romilda#i love my bf who canonly likes to mess around with magical stuff
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satisfy 05 (teaser)
summary⇢ “listen,” taehyung says, eyes wide and eager as he smiles at you. “i figure we can just help each other out. i scratch your back, you scratch mine.” but when you find yourself suddenly in need of a massive favor, exactly how much scratching are you willing to do? pairing⇢ kimline/reader teaser word count⇢ 1k estimated chapter word count⇢ 13k+ rating⇢ 18+ genre⇢ smut | escort!au | ceo!au (kinda)
a/n⇢ HELLO!!! i've been slowly working on this for what feels like forever and i can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel 😭 fingers crossed i can post in the next few weeks, but for now i wanted to share a little snippet. as always, subject to change until i do my final edit--HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS IS GONNA BE A DOOZY 😈
You were even planning on putting on a little makeup, on properly doing your hair for the first time in weeks and giving the bun you had been sporting a rest. However, all it took was a knock on your door to put an end to all those extras.
You frowned at the sound and padded over to your front door, happy you had already thrown on a hoodie to keep yourself warm until the festivities properly started. The sight of a familiar man through the peephole, hands resting comfortably in his slacks, threw you off.
Automatically, your hands were disengaging all the locks, were swinging the door open. “You’re early—”
Whatever words you had next immediately dissipated on your tongue. Taehyung was there, but he apparently came with company. Your mind whirred, trying to come up with a perfectly logical reason for why all three Kim brothers were at your doorstep right now.
“Your hair,” you blurted, your scrambled brain latching onto the easiest subject first.
“Hmm?” Taehyung ruffled his newly dyed locks, the onyx hue a stark difference from the silver you were used to. “Oh yeah, I guess I haven’t seen you all week. My dad wanted me to dye it to a more ‘appropriate’ color before the conference. But whatever. It was time for a change, anyway. And this will be easier to upkeep.”
You could only continue to stare at him as he spoke, your eyes naturally drifting over his shoulder at your additional visitors.
All three of them were dressed pretty casually, which was normal for Taehyung and Namjoon, but less so for Seokjin when not in the comfort of his own home. The soft pink of his sweatsuit was a stark contrast to the sharp intelligence of his eyes. He met your gaze for only a few seconds before he was turning to meet Namjoon’s instead, a pinch in his brow.
Taehyung spoke again before either of them could say anything. “You gonna keep us out here?” he teased, casually leaning against the doorframe.
That finally jumpstarted you out of your haze, scrambling to move out of the way and gesture them inside. “Yes, of course. Come in!” Before your nosy neighbor caught them and assumed you were slutting it up.
(She would technically be right, but still. It was the principle. Your life was none of that judgy shrew’s business.)
Tae strolled in like he always did—like he owned the place—but you noticed his brothers’ strides seemed a bit more hesitant than the confidence you usually got to witness. Namjoon’s mouth was slightly pursed in the way you’d long learned meant he was thinking. Why did they seem as confused as you did?
“Hi,” you hedged anyway, a small, puzzled smile on your lips. “It’s been a while. Sorry if I’m acting weird—I just wasn’t expecting you, so I’m a little thrown off.”
Understanding immediately crossed Seokjin’s features, but you only got a second to see it before he was whipping towards his youngest brother, appalled.
Namjoon was looking at him too, clearly irritated. “Are you serious, Taehyung?”
“What?” you asked, gaze flitting between the three of them in hope of finding some clarity.
“You never asked her?” Seokjin snapped.
Namjoon shook his head. “You know that’s not cool, man.”
“Never asked me what?” you cut in, bemused.
Taehyung, for his part, looked properly contrite. “I’m sorry,” he told the room, before solidly placing his attention back on you. His eyes were soft and sincere. “It truly slipped my mind, and I’m sorry, _____. I didn’t think.”
“When do you ever?” Seokjin snarked, but you ignored him, focused solely on Taehyung.
“What, Tae?” you encouraged gently. “What are you sorry for?”
It was clear from the hunch of his shoulders that he felt bad. “Um…”
“He invited us to come with him to meet you today,” Namjoon supplied. He gave his little brother a disappointed shake of his head. “But that’s not a decision for him to make. Is it, Tae.”
“I just knew that none of us have seen her in a while,” Tae whined. “And _____, when you reached out yesterday, I figured it would be the perfect opportunity since we’re leaving the country for a few weeks.”
“I should have known better,” Seokjin muttered with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry about this, _____. You never marked group activities as a no and I thought Taehyung actually asked you like an adult, so I just assumed you were on board. I can leave.”
You blinked, still trying to grasp what was going on. “You were…trying to share your time?” you asked Taehyung slowly.
He nodded meekly. “I don’t mind sharing,” came his honest answer.
“But does she,” Seokjin scoffed, eyes narrowing in irritation. “That’s the only thing that matters. And to think otherwise is just selfish, Taehyung.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” The words left your lips before your brain could even register them, likely spurred on by how chastened Taehyung looked. The three of them looked at you in surprise.
“It’s okay?” Namjoon parroted, an eyebrow raised in question.
You swallowed, then gave a nod of confirmation. Because you knew Taehyung had never been trying to trap you. One of the qualities that simply made him him was his spontaneity, and while that made him fun and interesting to be around, it also was a double-edged sword that could end up with situations like this.
Tae knew none of them had seen you in a while, he knew they were soon going to jet out of the country, and had simply been trying to be nice in inviting his brothers along. He didn’t mean any harm.
“It’s okay,” you repeated, giving him a reassuring smile that visibly loosened some of the tension in his body. “You can all stay.”
The words settled between the four of you, heavy in the resulting quiet. Teeming with implication. You still weren’t completely sure what you were agreeing to, but what you did know was that you were going to need something to help stave off the nerves slowly bubbling beneath your skin. You cleared your throat, turning to make your way to the kitchen. “I think I need a drink.”
#👀👀👀👀👀👀👀#fic: satisfy#mine#bae#husband#mr. worldwide#✨kim tag✨#namjoon smut#taehyung smut#seokjin smut#bts fanfic#bts smut
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Sonic Prime!
The first eight episodes of Sonic Prime are out! I've been busy for obvious reasons this past week (I kinda released a video game), but I've now seen all eight episodes, and as such can give more structured thoughts on them.
Overall: pretty good! I like it! ...But it's not 100% there yet for me. In the spirit of Festivus, I'm here to air my grievances.
Let's start with one of the highest points. First and foremost, this show looks great. We FINALLY have a Sonic cartoon that actually looks like the games with no asterisks attached, even across multiple wildly different AUs. And everything from small acting choices to big, bombastic fight scenes is a joy to watch in motion thanks to the fluid, expressive, fast-paced movement, with characters pleasantly squashing and stretching in fun ways. It's so fun literally to just watch Sonic's face move in dialogue scenes. God, I wish the cutscenes in Frontiers had animation this good. I get why they don't, but still.
And those action sequences! Man, some of these are the most fun fight scenes in any Sonic cartoon ever, period. Lots of great shot choices, a good mix of recognizable moves from the games combined with new ones and improvisations, I could go on and on. The shot of Sonic leaping backwards down that long stairwell, only for the camera to pan around beneath him and show his friends following suit? There's a reason why they put that in the trailer. It rules. This isn't the greatest action series ever - it still has your typical kids' action cartoon problem where the stakes rarely feel adequately high and you can turn your brain off during fight scenes - but it's fun to look at in a way that previous Sonic cartoons haven't always been.
Really, with how strong the presentation is, it's the writing that tends to let the show down in this first batch of episodes. The writing isn't even bad - there's some really cool stuff to latch onto, and I'm optimistic about them leaning more into what's interesting as the plot continues to develop. It's just... well, it's a Man of Action cartoon.
I'm going to nitpick a lot here, so I want it to be perfectly clear that I like Sonic Prime. I think it's a solid cartoon, and firmly on the high end of the Sonic cartoon spectrum. There's a lot that I'm into, and if someone told me it was their new favorite Sonic cartoon, I could absolutely see why. It mainly just has three things working against it:
It can't decide whether or not it actually wants to be wholeheartedly faithful to the games.
It was very clearly written to be a weekly TV show and not a Netflix show dumped in large batches.
The bar has been VERY high for Sonic content this year across every other medium.
Faithfulness to the games
As has been touted in interviews, Sonic Prime is actually canon to the games, and in many ways it's slavishly faithful to them. Which only makes it weirder when it isn't.
The thing that'll immediately stand out is the new voice cast they had to get because Canadian production laws blah blah blah. Now, they're all good here, particularly Deven Mack as Sonic. His take definitely sounds similar to previous takes on Sonic, but I think he manages to find a nice middle point between the youthful enthusiasm of movie Sonic and the more experienced heroics of game/IDW Sonic. He's great. And not to knock Cindy's performances, but I think Shannon Chan-Kent's voice might actually fit Amy just a liiiiittle better here. But the problem is it gets harder to view this as the regular game cast and alternate timeline versions of them when everyone always sounds a little off. Knuckles in particular is really weird because his AU counterparts have a completely different voice actor, and neither particularly sounds like his current voice in the games. I have no idea why.
For another example, Green Hill is used as a setting in a cartoon for the first time ever, and it looks exactly how you remember it. Cool! But it's also framed as the place where Sonic and all of his friends live 24/7, which has never, ever been true in the games. Even Knuckles is here with no explanation for why he isn't guarding the Master Emerald. (One might think that not drawing attention to Knuckles' job allows the writers to just pretend it doesn't exist, similar to what Sega does in many games, but then we get a literal 16-bit flashback to him guarding the Master Emerald in Hidden Palace.)
This would be a totally fine concession if this show was just doing its own thing like every other Sonic cartoon. The different universes are all different bad timelines for Green Hill, with Sonic spotting the unique iconography of the level buried beneath whatever's taken over South Island this time - a smog-filled Eggman city, an overgrown jungle, an abnormally high sea level - to drive home how wrong the AUs are. It also explains why Sonic can always find the AU versions of his friends in Green Hill, and it probably cut down on the number of sets they had to model. But because it is canon to the games, things like this distract me as a hopeless Sonic nerd. It also leads to some repetitive dialogue in the first few episodes as characters constantly comment on the presence or lack thereof of palm trees, because their only reference for what the world is supposed to look like is Green Hill.
Rings are also treated as a minor plot point early on to incorporate another thing from the games, as Sonic is late for the big battle against Eggman because he was off collecting extra rings. But despite how often it's brought up in that context, they aren't actually a factor in the fight at all, and then rings are never seen again in the AUs.
Also Orbot and Cubot are in this in the regular universe and then we never see them again? Are they going to come back??
This extends beyond these pedantic nitpicks, though. To me, the worst offender of the show selectively choosing when to care about the source material is the dichotomy of the character writing in the alternate universes.
Every AU will have one or two takes on one of Sonic's friends (Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, and Big) who are The Interesting Ones, the spotlighted characters for each subplot. These are the ones that get actual character arcs, and they feel like they're written in conversation with their original game counterparts in interesting ways.
In the dystopian world, Tails is known as Nine, a cynical loner inventor who was never saved from his bullies and inspired to be a hero by Sonic - but who, when pushed, is still a good kid deep down. In the jungle world, Amy is the extremist Thorn Rose who rides around on a giant Flicky like it's a chocobo and prevents foragers from "stealing" from the forest, possibly riffing on her bond with the Flickies in SA1. She's still looking out for the little guy, she's just doing so at the expense of everyone else. And in the pirate world, Knuckles is the captain Dread Knuckles, who instead of diligently guarding a magic rock was a pirate obsessed with obtaining a magic rock, and who swore off of that quest (and fighting in general) after it cost him the trust of his original crew.
These characters and their interactions with Sonic are all fun - Nine in particular provided a lot of my favorite emotional moments so far - and it feels like it gets at why you would do a multiverse story like this in the first place. You get to examine the characters from other angles! It's just that then there's... the rest. Characters who aren't the focus will just kind of get inserted into roles as Man of Action rests on broad cartoon tropes instead of actually doing anything with the Sonic source material. The dystopia of New Yolk City feels like a good fit given the history of the franchise, but then the other two worlds we've seen so far rely largely on stock "tribal" tropes and pirates going yaarrrrr.
I'm biased, but the worst off here seems to be Rouge, who has yet to get her spotlight universe (assuming she gets one next). This really stings because she's spot on in the regular universe. She hasn't been retconned to be part of Team Sonic, she's invited herself over because she's got her eye on the Paradox Prism (even dropping in unannounced at Tails' workshop). She's got a bit of that playfulness that makes her so fun, and the animation is able to lean into it. But then you go to the other universes and it's all gone.
Pirate Rouge is pretty fun, I'll admit, but I'm shocked they don't play up her love of gems there. Rebel Rouge (yes that is her literal name, the other rebels call her Rebel) gets to be a spy with a fun dynamic with Knuckles at first, but it quickly devolves into her just being the serious, responsible girlboss leading the rebellion who acts as a straight man to Sonic's snark. In other words, she's a lot like... Sally? I hate making that comparison because SatAM/Archie fans have been derisively comparing literally every new female character in the franchise to Sally since the '90s, but it's really hard to shake. (Similarly, it's hard to shake comparisons to Bunnie and Mecha Sally with Rusty Rose, the evil cyborg version of Amy with extendable limbs.) And Rouge's jungle universe counterpart ("Prim Rouge") is also just kind of there as the no-nonsense leader of the tribe, similar to Rebel.
And it's in scenes revolving around the blander of the AU characters when I'm like... man, I kinda wish they'd just made a show about the regular game universe without having to watch Man of Action bust out the pirate joke book and write the dollar store version of Princess Mononoke. I want to spend more time with the actual characters. Because they nailed the tiny glimpses of the game world that we got. This isn't a constant thought I have - again, I like the show, and the major AU characters are cool, and I like seeing new things be done with Sonic. But I'd be lying if I said I never wished the show had gone a different way. My perfect Sonic cartoon continues to elude me...
Story construction
Let's back up a bit and describe the basic premise. On the regular version of Sonic's Earth, things are business as usual, although Sonic seems to be getting a little too cocky and taking his friends for granted. During a fight with Eggman, Sonic accidentally shatters our new macguffin, the Paradox Prism, creating a series of new bad timelines in which he never existed. In that way, I might almost compare it to a multiverse-hopping adventure version of It's A Wonderful Life. A pretty solid emotional throughline to give the show a little more heft. In each of these worlds, Sonic helps set things right with the alternate versions of his friends and finds another shard of the Paradox Prism in an attempt to restore his world. He also usually faces off with the Chaos Council, a team of five alternate Eggmen who are all different ages.
Beyond the fact that there are like five versions of most characters, it's not THAT complicated, especially in a time when damn near everything in pop culture is doing multiverse shenanigans. Which is why it's frustrating that the script seems to think it's fucking House of Leaves.
For the first few episodes, Sonic has a VERY hard time grasping the fact that he's in an alternate universe. This is to be expected to some extent - Sonic is our point of view character through all of this, and it's a kids' show, so he's got to go through a process of figuring things out so that it can be explained to the kids at home. The problem is that it takes him damn near the entire first mini-arc in New Yolk City to figure it out, which starts to come off as insulting and leads to EXTREMELY repetitive dialogue where Sonic wonders why his friends don't remember him and where all the palm trees went. You'd think that by the time Nine explains that his personal history is completely different from how Sonic remembers his time with Tails he'd get a clue, but no, not really. He continues to meet alternate versions of his friends, stubbornly refer to them with their original names, and wonder why no one remembers their previous adventures together. This then somehow even continues into the second universe, the jungle one, where he somehow thinks he's still in New Yolk City and wonders why the cyberpunk rebel versions of his friends are all covered in leaves and wielding spears now. Thankfully, by the time he reaches the pirate world Sonic finally gets a clue, so this isn't a pattern that's going to continue. But it does make the first few episodes a drag.
This, the many recaps, and the out-of-order presentation of scenes back in Green Hill so that they can have a flashback to the regular universe in every episode for context really make it clear that this series was written for TV, not for Netflix. It's assuming that every single episode is going to be some 7-year-old's first episode and that they need to have everything explained again. I'd probably be a bit more sympathetic towards this repetitive, patronizing writing if it actually was airing on Cartoon Network, rather than being a Netflix show where they're dropping eight episodes at a time.
Stiff competition
This is the least fair of my complaints, but I gotta say it. As solid as Sonic Prime is for the most part, it looks worse at the tail end of a year when we've been FEASTING as Sonic fans.
We got a movie sequel that pivoted HARD into game elements, giving us both really great takes on the characters and interesting remixes of old ideas. The IDW comics are still going as strong as ever, with the continually compelling arc of new villains Surge and Kit and now the wildly inventive and downright beautiful to look at Scrapnik Island. And, of course, we got Frontiers, a return to form for the series that adapts it to a semi-open world with the best and most interesting story we've had in god knows how many years.
And then we've got Sonic Prime, a pretty good cartoon that between fun action scenes and interesting story ideas frequently relies on genre pastiches that were tired 30 years ago and jokes that aren't particularly funny.
I think reading Scrapnik Island #3 really put this into perspective for me. Which, again, isn't fair. The comics target older kids and are ALWAYS heavily tied to established continuity, and a comic miniseries can afford to go way more niche than a Netflix show. But Scrapnik is just doing such amazing and original things, bringing back long-forgotten elements of the games and recontextualizing them in fascinating ways. That mix of both the heartwarming sight of the Scrapniks finding happiness in their new lives and the EXTREMELY atmospheric horror aboard the ruins of the Death Egg. It rules! It takes elements hardcore fans wanted to see again and tells a totally new story with them that's unlike anything we've seen before in the franchise. It's really, really hard for "what if Knuckles was a pirate" to compete with that.
But we're still early in Prime. Things are getting more interesting over time, with Sonic acclimating to the dimension hopping and more crossover between the different universes. Nine discovering a completely dead, empty world and wanting to start from scratch there was also really interesting, and I'm curious if that goes anywhere. Again, I've been nitpicking a lot, but the show is pretty good and I've enjoyed my time with it overall. I just don't quite think it's 100% there yet. But I definitely think it could get there within the next 16 episodes.
Misc thoughts
Rouge sleeping like an actual bat is cute.
I like that the environmental themes of the series are such a big focus here! They fall to the wayside too often
I like that the AU characters have different names for the sake of telling them apart, but some of them are pretty bad (the aforementioned Rebel Rouge) while others I just don't get. Why is the old man Eggman named Dr. Done It? Why is the teenage one Dr. Don't?
I thought the scene where Sonic was trying to talk to the New Yolk City crew after a battle and they had to keep ducking under a laser that was still slowly circling the room was funny
The new shoes and gloves are ugly and I think it's really contrived that they magically transform into the perfect tools for every new universe
Between this and Frontiers it's becoming a pattern that Tails and Knuckles can get explicit flashbacks to previous games to highlight their histories with Sonic, while Amy can't. I don't know what to make of this
Thorn is pretty good overall but I do think the flashback depicting her as just randomly snapping one day when her friends pick one too many berries is so hokey that it wraps around to being kinda funny
I've neglected to mention Shadow, but I like him okay in this. It's definitely modern Shadow, but I think "hardass, no-nonsense rival who thinks Sonic is an idiot who acts without thinking and thus wants to kick his ass" is a decent place for Shadow to be in, compared to just The Vegeta, even if it's not my favorite version of the character. I'm curious to see what his role is in the rest of the show, especially given the cliffhanger, and hope he's able to work together with Sonic instead of just being a pissed off antagonist the whole time.
I hate baby Eggman
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Ok so my hyper fixation on aphmau has sparked u again, I've decided to share my little Au with the world because my friends are getting tired of hearing about a minecraft roleplay from... oh god it's been that long? Jeez.
Anyway here is what I'm changing about the base cannon of mystreet before I throw in any crazy AUs like Ein being a decent person and living with Aph and Sylvanna during S2 of PDH or mystreet Dante getting stuck in MCD when everyone ditched him.
So I don't know I can fit my whole four years worth of brain rot in one post so we are going to start with the big blaring walking red flag himself Aaron.
What needs to change?
So so muck For starters, apparently, Aphmau needed to listen to sylvannas internet safety lectures a bit more because SHE STILL GIVES A STRANGER HER ACTUAL PHONE NUMBER!!! Sorry sorry this is a post about Aaron not how nieve aphmau is.
Anyway the guys 18 and is dating aphmau who is probably 14/15. This guy is going off to college in a year and aphmau still talks her stuffed cat and hides in a closet before her first day of high school.
Also at first I defended Aaron becouse I thought he just didn't know how old she was when they were strangers texting each other but they have a whole conversation about how nervous she is ABOUT HER FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL! Sorry again 😔 but if I was Aaron and I found out that the person I was talking to was actually a young girl who was probably fourteen or fifteen (younger actually since they've known each other and have been texting for atleast a couple months) and knowing that I am seventeen or eighteen would break it off and probably unfriend them not keep texting them about it and then start to ask them to reveal there real name.
Then there's the whole like ultima thing I know it wasn't actually written in until like season 4 of mystreet but I have a question 🤔 if darek knew what kind of life was in store for his son having the curse if he feels so bad about having to isolate his son if he knew the curse is a possibility why have him? Why risk have biological children? Or why not stop after milisasa since for some reason the curse only effects the males of a blood line. (You're telling Me the lycan family has never had an all female generation? Is the curse just dormant in females?) I'm changing that we need to change dark put him on the list right above Sylvanna but under KC.
There's also like why are you the alpha of the werewolf pack? Like I get it in highschool but after in season five? You don't know anything about the culture and Daniel ran the highschool pack for four years you don't have to be the alpha now? I genuinely think that was from Jason wanting his self insert to be the ' powerful hot alpha oc trademark do not steal'
So how an I gonna fix this?
Well we are going to start with Aaron's age, He's aphmaus age or well hes sixteen but so were Garothand Laurence. Plane and simple hes sixteen hes a softmore who was homeschooled is life becouse of his secret ultima curse. He does switch schools temporarily for S2 of PHD becouse dark was worried about how frequently Aaron was loosing control and how he still hadn't had a grasp on the curse, I'm gonna get to that hold tight.
That leads me into my next fix how Aph and Aaron met! They were put in the same online schooling class because Rachel is a bissness major, and Sylvanna is the type of mom to make you cry when she helps you study for your spelling bee (she loves her daughter but she does not have enogh patients to be a teacher.) Anyway they meet in the online class and find out they're both into the same things including a popular Online game and being lonely homeschooled kids latch onto each other, (I would imagine that Aaron went under a different name for the homeschooling program since he can't have the media tracking him down or asking questions y'know?) Then once they get to the age were they have phones reluctantly trade Instagram (aph made a separamount. Just for talking to Aaron and not posting pics because her mom follows her mian and Aaron makes his very first acount and only follows aph who goes by Shu on that account.)
Now to fix the lycann family.
Let's start with the curse, like I said makes no sense as to why Dark still had kids with Rachel biological when he Knew what his kids would go through. So the ultima curse effects all offspring male or female and it isn't usually as strong as Aaron's. In my head not being able to control there eyes was grown out of around five years old to seven years old and then there eyes stop turning red without wanting them to they still pose the danger it's just not that hard to control. It's like potty training they learn as they grow up. But for whatever reason Aaron never really grew out of the uncontrollable eyes thing, infact they were almost always red when he was young. This scared Darek who grew up on these stories about what will happen to them if the curse is ever discovered in they're family blood line, (which is why they still hide that they're werewolves.)
Aaron lived his life in solitude while millisa got to go out and experience the world she got to go the boarding schools in Germany and go with mom and dad on they're business trips while he stayed in they're house in falcon claw with either one of his parents or trusted staff. (This is not how millisa sees it BTW but we'll talk about her later.
I hope you enjoyed my brain dump.
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So for some reason out of all of them my brain REALLY latched onto the Joseph being in Italy part of the Star Swap AU and I spent literally hours Pondering so-
to start things off, Joseph is…… he is definitely Having A Time. He freaks out slightly upon seeing that he doesn’t actually have his own body anymore, and the fact he’s still in Italy but in the future and also over the fact that he’s DEFINITELY. not in Venice
No very comforting.
So Joseph has his week of adjustment before the plot and it….. it goes. Mostly just him trying to figure out who he is now, why, and what to do from here. Luckily he finds Giorno’s wallet and student ID so he at least has a place to stay, but it’s a bit weird because he has to get used to this new, much smaller body as well as all the new technology. He still practices his Hamon whenever he can out of habit, and decides that perhaps he should try making his way to Venice and Air Supplena Island eventually.
Of course, Joseph also realizes he needs money. The lira in Giorno’s wallet is only going to last so long and he needs to keep what little strength he has.
And this is how the chaos of the plot starts. Joseph scamming tourists and accidentally pisses off the local mafia by accidentally killing Luca with Hamon when he tries to take a swing at him. A few hours later after dodging the weird shirt grey haired kid he and Bucciarati fight, BUT it’s very different from canon.
See, I want to play around with the idea of Joseph having Hermit Purple, but it’s not fully manifested yet. He still experiences the Stand Magnetism and sometimes sees vague ripples in the air, but he can’t actually see Stands. Think like how Trish was before Spice Girl manifested but on a much weaker scale. So Joseph gets the feeling there’s something there, but he has no idea what
But yeah, they fight and Joseph still wins by using a bit of Hamon for the heavy lifting and his own intellect to outsmart and talk Bucciarati down. I’ll admit the details about the next bit are….. a bit vague, but he still goes through the Polpo Black Sabbath Joining Gang Eventual Murder thing, all without getting stabbed by the arrow. He meets the gang, probably pulls some “your next line is-” shenanigans just to mess with people. He’d definitely notice Abbaccio’s trick before he’s offered the cup, so maybe that’s how he circumvents having to drink it
And then they get to the boat and fight Zucchero, and this is when some of the insanity begins.
So it’s gotten to the point that it’s just Joseph, Abbaccio and Bucciarati left, and Abbaccio expresses his desire of not revealing his Stand to Joseph…… only to be met with the response of “it’s not like I could see it even if I wanted”
Naturally, this causes them to pause and stare. Bucciarati then questions Joseph on what he means by this.
Joseph clarifies that he doesn’t have a Stand.
More silence……. And then Bucciarati questions him a bit more frantically citing the yellow lighting and how he’d predicted what everyone would say. Joseph vaguely says “oh that’s something else. Still not a Stand”
Then Abbaccio uses Moody Blues to flick him in the face
As expected, Joseph can’t see Moody and has no idea what just happened. So Abbaccio reluctantly uses Moody to look at things. (For added chaos what if Joseph’s able to figure out what Moody does anyways)
And this next part is actually inspired by when I was talking about this AU with an irl friend. So they still beat and capture Zucchero followed by some Torture Dance Time….. and then they realize that Zucchero had successfully radioed his comrade about where they were going and when they’d get there
Naturally they start worrying and debating about what to do. Narancia even suggests using Aerosmith, but it’s shot down because of the collateral and they’d have no actual way of knowing if they hit the guy they were after.
Then Joseph asks how far away they are, as well as the direction.
He squints off into the distance, clearly doing some kind of mental math, before nodding.
“yeah I can make it”
Then he starts taking his shoes off.
Naturally this sparks questions, which he simply responds with “I get better conduction when I’m barefooted”
And that just sparks even more questions, but he doesn’t get to answer any of them because he just.
Jumps off the boat.
only instead of splashing into the water like they all expected…… he lands on top of it
And then he just starts BOOKING IT in the direction of the island
I have way more thoughts, but this post is starting to get long so to be continued >:D
#this au makes brain BRRRRR#star swap#jjba#jojos bizarre adventure#golden wind#vento aureo#jjba part 5#jjba joseph#joseph joestar#jjba bucciarati#bruno bucciarati#bruno buccellati#jjba abbacchio#leone abbacchio#moody blues#jjba narancia#narancia ghirga#aerosmith#bucci gang
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ᴛʜᴇɴ & ɴᴏᴡ - ꜱᴠʟᴇᴍ
I saw the trend floating around, and I wanted to participate. I want to talk a little bit more on just how important Salem has become to me. 🖤
The picture on the left is one of the very first portraits of Salem I had taken. I think I had made him a bit earlier, but I officially introduced him to Tumblr on January 24th, 2022 (four days before his canon birthday, which funny enough, wasn't assigned until way after). And the portrait on the right is one of my more recent ones, that I've taken last month (June 19, 2023).
When I made him, he was just a side character. A little project that sparked when I discovered the genre of music I would eventually associate him and his character with. I wanted to create something that I thought was unique at the time. I wanted to do something different from the usual character tropes that I usually do. I didn't expect to fall deeply in love with his entire concept.
(Left picture: taken September 9, 2022 - Right picture: taken June 22, 2023)
I've always defaulted to female characters in any type of game where I could create and customize my character. I just never questioned it and felt it was what I should do, but I never really connected with them. I'd play around for a while, then get bored and move onto the next OC. And so on.
Salem wasn't my first male character, he was actually the last of my main six. But for some reason, the moment I started writing through his eyes, it just felt right. That's when the questioning started. What did that mean for me? Why am I suddenly far more comfortable writing through the perspective of a male than any of my hundreds of female characters I've been writing for all these years? Why am I now suddenly wanting to default to playing male OC's? I began to explore things through him, things that I've come to find out I really enjoy and connect with. Things that make me happy and feel right. It was through Salem that I figured myself out a bit more, that I wasn't what I was told I was my whole life by people around me. I think that's one of the reason he's so special to me. I found myself through my character.
But not just that, I also found people that mean the world to me through Salem. My social circle expanded--I now had people that shared the same interests as me, that liked what I had to create, that encourage me and support me. People that I could be myself around. I met my best friend (hi, bestie 🖤) because of Salem, who at the same time, met his best friend in their OC, whom Salem loves as much as I love mine. I met friends from all over that I care for deeply and love very much--people I would have never met otherwise. That's one of the reasons this fandom is important to me and why I stick around, no matter how hard things get.
(Left picture: taken September 9, 2022 - Right picture: taken July 11, 2023)
I know VP was never really my strong suit. A lot of my shots are very plain and simple, most of them are just portraits. In fact, I feel my style hasn't really changed much since my beginnings in this fandom. I'm never really going to be able to make all these elaborate set ups or be able to tell his story through virtual photography. My brain just doesn't work that way. I struggle a lot trying to improve and "catch up" with everyone else. And I'm growing to accept that. I think it's okay, that my talents and skills are stronger elsewhere. I just want to be able to capture him and share him with the rest of the world--to participate in the joy and camaraderie of loving the things we create so dearly.
While Salem isn't a self-insert, he does have a lot of me in him. Which I think is why I latched on so hard. He's all of my interests and beliefs personified. He's what I would like to be, how I would like to look. And he'll always be with me. Salem will forever be my main OC. Doesn't matter the fandom, if this one is still alive and kicking years from now--or if I've moved on to different media--Salem will always be my muse and he will always live on through my stories.
#cyberpunk 2077#I'm sorry this ended up being way too personal#but I really wanted to paint the picture on just how important this OC is to me and why I put so much effort into him#and sorry if it's way too long#i don't normally post things this late either#I just felt the need to talk#ᴏᴄ ⋆┊ꜱᴠʟᴇᴍ
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The thing with Ryou Bakura
I am honestly weirded out how lighthearted some people play Ryou Bakura and then I read their "canon" tag. I mean AU Ryous are superb and fine and Ryou Bakura is s very handsome character, but in my head, he hasn't ever earned the tags cutesy, weak or boring.
Lets delve into a mind of one Ryou Bakura, who is still under the influence of the ring.
He has gotten the Millennium Ring during his childhood and bonded with it. We're not talking about his family circumstances or his life from before, whenever he lost his parents snd sister isn't really important to this.
The important thing is that Ryou Bakura has started out as a child, probably already losing time. First it's harmless minutes. Like maybe he was just taking a nap or he was not concentrating well. The less people are there to keep tabs on him, the more time he loses. He finds things that don't belong to him while other things completely go missing. He loses more time and sometimes, he doesn't remember how he got to where he is.
Most importantly, he is losing friends. He has most likely been bullied a lot and the little friends he has are falling into comas during gaming sessions. He uproots and travels on MULTIPLE TIMES so he can avoid getting lynched, because parents can be fucking vicious.
Nobody knows how long this has happened and then he comes to Domino. He has learnt to keep impeccable track of time and date, maybe he even has a diary for how much time he loses, just to keep an eye on it. So far, everything could be a row of weird coincidences. And then he finds out he is responsible for all of it. Or rather the thing in the Ring he wears is.
And that is the moment, where he stops being weirded out by it all and truly and directly emotionally charges himself. He breaks down and only gets up again to help his new friends not to be killed by whatever latched onto him.
Ryou, even after that, realizes he sometimes loses time, but he is relatively calm, since nothing bad has happened so far. The moment Duelist Kingdom starts no one knows how often Ryou is in control and how often Bakura is. He loses more and more time, sometimes IN THE MIDDLE OF A TALK and he knows it means trouble.
Second murder attempt and now he isn't just concerned, he is really afraid. Now he knows that the spirit cannot be banished and is sticking to him. Bakura keeps his cards close, maybe influences Ryou to not even realize that much what is going on... it's probably all a blur to him.
Then of course BC arc, where Ryou is CONSTANTLY close to dying. He doesn't know where he is, where are his injuries coming from, he transports from one location to the other without knowing how, his thoughts are constantly muddled, because Marik has his hands to the ellbows in there and Bakura shoves him to the back so he can control everything just like he wants to.
I personally think he doesn't remember the rest of BC at all thrown in and out of consciousness until he gets out of his head again, snatches the Ring and fucking books it...
We're at the point of the worst moments now, so get prepared. Ryou has been kept hostage in his own head for years, he has lost people to this, he has been taken over consciously and unconsciously, he has lost more time than he can even count anymore, his everything hurts, he is afraid that his brain doesn't even function anymore. The only reason because he is keeping it together is so he can keep his friends safe and show just a bit of bravado to the spirit, who knows how terrible he screws up this boy, but probably doesn't even care all too much, on the contrary.
I can very much see him pay 'his rent' to Ryou in unspeakable ways.
Imagine you leave the house in the morning to go to school. The next thing you know is that it is nighttime, you are in an area you barely know, you are soaked through, you wear completely different, DIRTY clothes, your pokets include items you have never seem before. Area's of your body are hurting. What day is it? What time? When have you eaten last? Have you hurt or killed anybody?!
I can see Bakura do this to him simply out of spite and Ryou never wanting to sleep again because he doesn't know where he will wake up. In what situations will he end up? There is no constant in Ryou's life anymore. He can't sleep well, ANYTHING could happen. He can't eat well, because he is in constant duress. He obsesses over things to forget his problems.
He is literally a constantly sleep deprived bundle of anxiety, who pretends to be socially capable, because if he gives in to the spirit, it's game over.
He keeps distance from his friends so he doesn't hurt them anymore and his friends don't seem to care sbout this a bit.
I want to really ask you, if you can see a sparkle of weakness or cuteness in a person, who is going through this EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
And the most mindbreaking thing for me is, how he even got through this alive. I wouldn't have, I can tell you that.
#yugioh#ryou bakura#headcanon#ofc it's headcanons in here#we never see much of ryou bskura#he deserves his junji ito horror show to be written#in sll honesty
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HHP - Chapter 6 pt 4 (18+MDNI)
I really hope tumblr fixes itself because i hate having to type in parts into the post box and only being able to copy and paste bits and pieces of the proofread and revised drafts i have on my laptop. either way, once it's fixed i'll post the proofread version, so for now, if you find the errors or if the chapters i've been posting lately seems a bit choppy, it's all because majority of the content i had to retype in after i hit the "create" button. smh.
It was that feeling that had always emerged when you were near your orgasm and causing you to blackout, inhibiting you to remember the remainder of the events that took place the previous night after you experienced euphoria. However, this time, there was a change. Though you weren’t at all close to your orgasm, the overbearing sensation was being drawn out uncontrollably.
This feeling…it’s the same but so different at the same time…
Normally, the “urge” would garnish the desire and thoughts of wanting to be with Ethan. It normally developed a strong sense within you to enjoy his Ethan side, and relish in his touch. Yet for some reason, you could feel the ripples of anger and offense as it was closer to being fully drawn out, that high pitched sound of the voice speaks in your head. Normally, it begged and employed you to switch out, expressing its desire to be with her soulmate. This time, the voice lashes out, expressing discontent and fury just as you had been feeling since the ordeal with Tiff on campus.
“…………………”
‘What?’
“………………….”
‘Who are yo-…’
“…………………”
‘You want…out?’
“……………….”
‘How? He’s too strong…’
Finally, the voice was beginning to come in clear, as the muffled aura of its tone began to fade. With clarity, you hear in full as it tells you…
“……Not stronger than ‘us’.”
Enveloped by the self-interaction taking place in your brain with the bell like voice that echoed within you, you suddenly felt weak. Too weak. It was familiar to you, the “urge” was clawing its way out from the depths of your soul, as it applied its own strength and stamina to replace your own. You felt the piercing of its migration as it latches on to every connecting vein, muscle, and ligament in your body. Your blood became heated, as you felt the warmth and tingle of the temperature rise and prickle your skin. Becoming silent and limp, your body falls forward, just as Ethan was about to finish. Remarking at what he assumed to be a high level of exhaustion from being ‘fucked hard’, he scoffs as he spoke calmly out to you, taking this moment to catch his breath as he twitches his length inside of you.
“Oh?...What’s wrong y/n? Got nothing more to say to me now? No more bickering? Had I known that fucking you like a whore was going to shut you up, I would have done it sooner.”
Leaning his head in to place a kiss on your cheek, he felt somewhat satisfied, though he was nowhere near done in teaching you his lesson. Since you were no longer lashing out and insulting him, for a while now in fact, he figured he could begin to relax in being angry and start showing you some tenderness. So, he thought…
Just before his lips could touch your skin, for him to give you a warm kiss, he found himself stunned as the cold air hit his shaft as it suddenly exits out of you, all from the sharp turn you conducted to face him straight on. Simultaneously, your hand smacks against his neck as you gripped tightly, unable to grab all around with your small hand, your fingers dig into the muscles of his neck instead, issuing a sting to the unpleasant sensation. It all happened so fast, the way you moved and pushed him back a few steps backwards, causing him to topple onto the bed as you followed suit, right on top of him.
With the heavy glare in your eyes, the dark lining of its shape replacing the soft and wide-eyed angelic feature it normally carried, your face had become fierce, dark, and alluring as the marks of Hell flared from the breath that escaped your lips, which seemingly appeared a darker shade of red compared to the brighter, rose tone that everyone envied. Straddling Ethan, you and the “urge” watched with delight as Ethan attempted to flip you, yet your fingernails digging into the soft skin around his Adam’s Apple fixed him still. Gritting his teeth, he glared up at you, furious at the position he was forced to lay in.
With a chuckle, your voice, which normally wasn’t deep in tone, yet compared to the tone it carried now, it was like comparing the bass of a trombone to a twinkling chime of bells.
“Aww…what’s the matter?” Feeling Ethan jolt, trying to escape your grasp yet again, he succumbed to the pain around his neck as you remained a hold surrounding his more sensitive spot.
“Don’t like being fucked?” your voice speaks out, it felt strange, this was the first time you were able to maintain a balance and retain coherency as you allow the “urge” to call the shots.
“If I recall, you like it when I ride it, but only if you’re in control. Isn’t’ that right, lover?.” You and the “urge” spoke out, in the same mocking tone he had issued out to you before.
If there was anything Ethan did not like the most, it was to be dominated. While he loved, and truly enjoyed you riding him, that was all due to him remaining in control by gripping your hips, setting the motion and rhythm as he would lift and drag you down repeatedly on his length, causing you to bounce to his tempo. Whenever you tried to initiate being on top on your own accord, he often would smack the idea out, forcing you into the position he wanted.
Being the dominant type he was, he found himself growing enraged at the fact that not only did you initiate being on top but rendering him to a submissive state by the painful grasp you had on him was causing his blood to boil.
‘How fucking dare she?...’
Enjoying the view of Ethan’s irate expression as he narrowed his eyes and continued to glare into the depths of your soul, the “urge” reassured you mentally that all was well. To trust in your instincts.
“Well little boy-“
“Li-little?” Scoffing in anger, Ethan struggles out his words as your fingernails dug deeper into his skin. “Oh…Eden. I’m going to fucking rip you apart.”
Chuckling in amusement, the “urge” or rather, “Eden” as Ethan called her, spoke out again.
“Shhh…be quiet and still. It’s your turn to get fucked.” At that, Ethan’s eyes glared, though you and Eden could tell that he was losing it at the feel of Eden grabbing on to the shaft, re-inserting it inside your cavity. At that moment, infernally, she beckons you to allow her to have full control, just as Heeseung had allowed Ethan to take over fully.
You gave in and went full Eden.
Riding him, starting off slowly, Eden incorporates an up and down motion as she picks up the pace. Each time Ethan even thought about moving his hands to grab onto her, she re-tightened her piercing grip, causing him to wince in pain as he irritably laid, forced to take it.
Scoffing, smirking, and issuing her own whims of mockery, Eden speeds up, her body moved in ways that no other woman has ever done, let alone mastered. Trying his best to refrain from caving in, not wanting to give her the satisfaction, Ethan struggled as he gritted his teeth, bit his lip, and gripped the bed spread in his hands. However, the sensual motions of the dark goddess on top of him, feeling like the finest silk as she stroked him in and out of her womanhood, became too much as the uncontrollable act of him releasing, all shattered as Eden applied the last bit of her ruthless punch to him by taking out the shaft last minute, tilting his shaft in the direction of his chest as he came. The insulting act of not only cumming on ‘her’ terms, but to finish outside was just…unforgiveable.
“Mmm…good boy.” Eden remarks. Yet, her victory was short lived as Ethan snapped her hand off his neck, she was too careless upon him finishing that she hadn’t realized her grip loosened. Feeling the slight release on his neck, he took the opportunity to bed her arm behind her back, pinning it as he flipped their bodies over, now he was on top as she laid beneath him, with his hand gripping her neck. Since her neck was much slenderer, and his hand bigger, his fingers nearly met all the way around as he held on, tightening his grasp, tempted to choke her for just a second to obstruct her breathing as the ballistic sense of anger continued to rile through his body.
Regardless that the tables of turned, Eden smiled, and even laughed in her own teasing and slight sinister manner. She was sultry, sexy, and dark, the opposite of the submissive and angelic y/n that he was used to seeing. Yet, seeing her like this…
Eden…
Ethan felt himself being drawn into her, the fact that she displayed her teasing smile, her slight bit of laughter as she bit down her bottom lip as she laid beneath him, with his hand still firmly gripped around her delicate neck. The string that laced the top, front of her dress had come undone, exposing the outline of her breasts and parts of her areola’s.
He couldn’t figure out why, but he felt the fury in his bones beginning to turn into something else, as he started to find some sort of attraction to Eden’s demeanor. The way she had him in a submissive state, forced him to cum, and added insult to injury by staining his chest with his own release, only to smile and laugh playfully as he pinned her down underneath his chest. She wasn’t angry nor was she scared or shocked. No one had treated him that way, nor would he ever permit it to happen, and before this moment, that included Eden. But now, he began to feel a strange feeling as he continued to look and adore that twisted, smiling face looking at him. The way she bit her lip as she smiled…
‘She’s just so…’
Feeling a smirk grace his face, he leans in closer. Both displaying their sinister and twisted desires in their expressions, biting, and licking their own lips as the distance between them was closing in. As Ethan leaned in, still with his hand gripped around her neck, he hovered over, his nose tip barely touching hers, and with a calm voice, he bids her as he scoffs, his tone came off as if he was challenging her. Reaching up with his free hand, his palm facing up, while his index and middle finger curl up, gesturing for her to come closer. With a soft chuckle, he spoke out, nearly whispering…
“…Come on.”
Chapter 7
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CW: mention of theoretical rape/non-con, discussion of mental health, mention of smut
I’d like to try to start writing fic—I’m pretty sure I’ve exhausted all AO3 has tagged with Helmut Zemo. Perhaps let’s start there. Why on earth have I latched onto this middle aged man with such a ludicrous degree of self-projection?
This is a terrorist. He is referred to as a war criminal—you don’t get that designation from a single bomb attack. What does one actually do on a Sokovian death squad, much less the commander? I should take him and his crimes seriously. My brain always conveniently slides over this part. I suppose on some level I desperately want him to be redeemable, which I feel is fairly inconsistent with war crimes. What do I consider unforgivable? Rape. Dehumanization. Genuine non-sexual sadism—relish in the suffering of innocent others.
I can’t envision a version of Zemo that willingly rapes another human being that I can empathize with, and this seems to elicit almost a gut-reaction. I’ll enjoy some of Hydra Steve or Evil Bucky, but as soon as it gets to Zemo I balk. Some might argue that sadism is a hallmark of his personality. There’s this one brilliant writer whose work I adore who has one fic discussing the possibility of Zemo’s actual war crimes, and I’ve never actually finished it, each time I feel almost nauseated. Why is this so?
While he’s likely been my strongest obsession, he wasn’t the first. For a few years there were Bucky recovery fics (pre-TFATWS). For a time in college, when I went through my depressive episode and all that came after, I genuinely felt that I had no idea how to be a human being and that I had to establish it from first principles. To have this character literally try to figure out how to be a human being and not a machine, I think it calmed something inside me to see my internal struggle made so explicitly external and magnified. How do you build from nothing? Or, worse than nothing, a ragged slate of pain and numbness and despair and fear? Of course, my issues weren’t anywhere near the magnitude of those depicted on screen and in fic. To be honest, they’re fairly typical of figuring out how to be a young adult. Still, this kind of fic deeply resonated with me for reasons I couldn’t understand. Throw in my figuring out my sexuality and interests over that same period, my exploration of kink, and there were a whole bunch of interesting things—still are.
And now, a slightly different time in my life, a different character. In truth, I think what it always is, as with all comfort characters, is projecting my deepest insecurities and dearest hopes onto them. Wanting to find a better story for myself. I’m a sucker for a redemption arc—I started figuring this out with Zemo, but it really crystallized after I read a few excellent Draco/Harry fics. I want to see someone who has genuinely been bad put in the work to genuinely become good. I want to believe that I, too, can be redeemed, even if I can’t figure out yet how to ask from what.
I’ve had a bit of trouble with some slight scrupulosity, and so it’s this version of Zemo as an exhausted, world-weary, suicidal, scrupulously moral (to his own code) master strategist that has me by the heartstrings.
He has experienced so much pain and loss, and he is so tired, and his is so driven by this one overwhelming goal, and everything must be precisely the way it should be—come hell or high water he’ll finish his mission. He’s a master strategist, he looks at the world and sees interlocking systems, identifies the many interwoven strings and twings only the precisely correct one to accomplish his goal. He is precise and methodical and tired and hurt, still hurting, still working. I want to see him rewarded for his efforts, see him acknowledged as good, redeemed, a protagonist suffering instead of a villain wallowing. Painting him as a tragic figure allows me to feel better somehow in my small challenges—not necessarily a positive all the time. I can and have, after all, thrown myself into reading fanfic to hide from my fear, shirk my responsibilities. It hasn’t always had a positive impact on my life. And yet in other ways it has been deeply comforting and inspiring. And just fun.
With that all being said, the majority of this blog will be unrepentant smut XD
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hello o//
i heard you had a fursona and i was curious to know about them if you’re willing to share :]
(/nf of course)
oh of course!!! :]] here he is!
i <3 robot furries so he's a robot dog! i based him most obviously off of transformers (specifically idw tailgate and ironfist) (named kibble both cuz dog and cuz that's the term in transformers fandom for extraneous robot-parts that don't serve much purpose on a 'human' body ie wheels etc) but i also wanted to, in 2024 redesigning him for this ref sheet, make him a bit easier to follow as an anthro dog design and able to be worked into furry stuff, while still being visibly mechanical ^_^
in the ways of lore i really don't have much for him - honestly he's just a standin for myself - but i have the concept that he was made to be a sort of living computer. genius database, future of technology, etc... but his storage capacity's small and his scope of interests even smaller, so he doesn't really have much actually technically helpful knowledge... he does, however, have encyclopedic levels of knowledge about nonsense things like tvtropes and trivia for whatever show he's into now.
(^really this is just a way (FOR ME PERSONALLY i should say as i know 'autistic robot' is a bad stereotype for a reason) to express autism as that's what it feels like for me a lot of the time. having a lot of passion and drive to learn but only in the few things your brain's latched onto - and of course the social hurdles that will come with being a robot in 'human'(furry?) society)
he's very inexpressive - doesn't have pupils, doesn't blink, has no mouth (the robotic muzzle isn't a mask, it's just what his face looks like), and i imagine he speaks mechanically too (i waffle between making him mute, giving him a text-to-speech type thing, or limiting his communication to pulling up webpages haha)
he's also one of those fursonas that has a few different designs and such depending on the 'verse, i've drawn him in the context of transformers designs for selfshipping a few times (specifically w/ mtmte first aid, and moreso idw/es tarantulas) and i should do that again :] depending on the situation his design falls in many different places along the furry-mech scale lolol
to get real: i've been a furry and had fursonas since. like. im gonna say as far as 2008, since i was very small :]c but kibble's the first one in a long time i feel actually suits me in both a "feels like me" sense and a "fun character to draw with some degree of fun fantasy" - cuz for a long stretch of time, when i stopped being into sparklecats and the like as a teenager, i fell hard into the "truesona" type of furry designs...
...which, nothing wrong with those, but as someone with crummy self esteem, just kind of led to me hyperfocusing on myself as a kind of "boring slob" type of character. not interesting enough to be anything but a plainly colored realistic animal, and too self-conscious about my appearance to feel too comfortable straying from "fat, depressed, tired and messy slob", as to portray myself as anything but that felt dishonest.
until one day, and this was at the height of my transformers hyperfixation so i'd grown attached to very inhuman robot-y designs, i just kind of realized, "hey, if i wanted, i could make my sona anything i want, right? i like robots and my friends compare me to dogs, i could make a robot dog! i could have fun designing a mech anthro dog!" and. i did lol. and it's the happiest i've been with a fursona, both from a design standpoint and a 'me' standpoint :]]
thank you for the ask! sorry for suddenly getting so real, i don't think you expected me to, kibble as an oc just means a lot to me :'D
(i also have other, non-sona, furry ocs if you ever wanna hear about furry boy band drama lol. i only recently reopened asks again so i'm trying to get more comfortable with em despite my constant Inbox Paranoia. ty again!!)
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Astral, Ryoga, Mizael for the ask game!
oooh three guys let's see. my zexal rewatch was a while ago so i might be fuzzy on some things. ty for the ask i'm gonna answer as best i can for everyone Sorry if i forget anything!!
Astral!
General opinion: I like him! probably one of my A tier zexal characters. solid character but did not give me a disease. Ship I like: ok so this is probably really off the wall but two of my mutuals wrote this fic with kaito/astral and got me way more invested in that pairing. if there's a ship name for them i forget </3 Non-romantic pairing: i love a good non-romantic reading of astral and yuma. i'm pretty neutral on romantic keyship (like i am with most pairings tbh). NOTP: i don't really have one for him! Headcanon: i'm drawing a blank here :( Fanfic: yeah i need to think about this hm. sorry Something that makes me think of them: kitty. that one scene where his eyes get all big? i think because he tasted food for the first time. yeah that's so kitty to me Ryoga!
General opinion: dude wouldn't it be fucked up if we put a dead guy's soul in a dead kid's body and then had him live a relatively normal life only for him to realize that he was not in fact a middle schooler but actually an alien demon thus destroying his previous personality. wait you Did That? Ship I like: like i've said shipping is not really my main Thing but sharkbait is fine. though there's other yuma ships i like more. Non-romantic pairing: his beef with vector. it's just fun your honor NOTP: hellshark/disqualify. sorry. i'm one of the few IV stans who doesn't like it. it's one of the tiny number of ship tags i actually have blacklisted. this was mostly for self shipping reasons but also i just don't like it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Headcanon: i think he can be going to the aquarium Fanfic: can we talk about how weird it would be for him to return to school and shit after the end of zexal like that's clearly a different guy. his middleschoolersona is dead. people would pick up on that no??? i think it has potential. i love you zexal the existential horror card game anime. Something that makes me think of them: sharks, fish, the horrors. you know. typical ryoga stuff. also the c32 card i must've opened dozens of abyss rising blisters to get when i was a kid. Mizael!
General opinion: anon. i've been rubbing my hands together since i saw that you included him. ah. this blond bitch. you know, i was into ygo when zexal was airing. and my little 10-11 year old dragon obsessed brain saw mizael and imprinted on him immediately. oh and you can bet i was sending asks to those character ask blogs to know his opinion on only the most important affairs. and you can definitely bet your ass that i watched the moon duel and cried as soon as the subs came out. takes me back to a simpler time. upon rewatch i did not latch onto him as i had previously. but he still holds a degree of importance to me because of the history. Ship I like: this is another situation where i don't really have one but a lot of galaxymaster art is cute and also involves dragons so. that's cool Non-romantic pairing: him and jinlon. i love human and dragon partnerships what can i say NOTP: don't have one! Headcanon: i think he is a dragonfucker your honor Fanfic: See Above. Something that makes me think of them: my ultimate rare tachyon dragon card from the set it came out in i got as a gift one year and thought i lost but found buried in my dresser still completely intact. it sits safely in the first page of my card binder now with all my other favorites.
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