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ladyloveandjustice · 1 month

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So I have no stake in ships in Avatar the Last Airbender, I do not have any real ships for the show. But when I was looking in Katara's tag for art and stuff, I saw this reoccuring claim that Katara always supported Aang with his problems and feelings, but that Aang never supported her back with hers.

And I don't care about the ships, but I do really like the friendships in Avatar, and that bothers me. It's a slight on Aang, but also on Katara (implying she wouldn't stand up for herself and break it off if a friend was all take and no give, which doesn't fit her personality at all.)

Aang does support Katara whenever he gets the chance, which is unfortunately few and far between because Katara seems to have a hard time leaning on the people she cares about and talking in depth about her own trauma and feelings about it, though she will do so when she literally doesn't care what the person thinks about her (and both times she opened up to Zuko about her Mom initially were her lashing out at him and not caring what he thought about her in return).

This would be something that would need to be addressed for a romantic relationship between them to truly work, and I imagine it would be part of the journey of finding a way to stay together, but it's very much not Aang's fault. And as I said, when he gets a chance to support her she does. Since I just recently rewatched most of the series, have a list of those times!

-His first time being supportive of her is literally a half hour after they first meet. As soon as she tells him about wanting more waterbending experience, he enthusiastically offers to fly all the way to the north pole so they can find her a master. And this very clearly means a lot to her.

-I don't think Aang knew how supportive of her he was being here, but there's the "I haven't done this since I was a kid" "You still are a kid!' exchange. As much as people accuse Aang of seeing Katara as his Mom (he's literally the one character who doesn't express that he does in The Runaway btw and I think that's for a reason) their first interaction establishes that he sees her as a kid, just like him, and think she should have fun like a kid does. This must have been huge for Katara, who'd been forced to take on adult responsibilities at a young age, who resented having to hold the family together, who thought her childhood was over. Aang helped her have fun and be the kid she is, and he'll continue to do so.

-When she lost her mother's necklace (And Zuko subsequently stole it) he was very concerned for her feelings and seemed to immediately understand the weight of that loss, due to his own experiences with loss. Not only did he make her a new necklace to wear as a way to comfort her, as soon as he saw Zuko had it he said "you're giving that back to me" and risked being hit by Zuko in his attempts to grab it. Then he gave it back to her and she was ecstatic!

-He was so supportive of her during the waterbending scroll episode it's actually ridiculous, despite how she lashed out at him. It's unclear if he actually understood she was upset or if this was just his unwavering respect for her coming out, but when she was upset that he learned the first move faster than her he said "well you didn't have such a great teacher!" and it clearly makes her feel better for a bit. He immediately forgives her for lashing out at him, doesn't judge her at all for stealing the waterbending scroll, or for accidentally dragging them into trouble. He, in fact, goes out of the way to reassure her, looking happy at the chance to work together and reminding her they need two waterbenders. And he appreciates her joke at the end (he's just straight up being simp (affectionate) there, and I get it).

-When Pakku won't teach her he immediately denounces him as wrong and unfair and is willing to sacrifice his own education (which he needs to save the world) because he won't stand for it. He remains upset about it even after Katara persuades him, tries to secretly show her what Pakku taught him, and cheers her on when she fights him.

-When she's crying over Jet's death, he's the first one to notice and reach out to her, putting his hand gently on her shoulder and drawing her into a hug (that becomes a group hug). She smiles and clearly feels comforted. They probably talked about it offscreen too (but this cannot be shown as they would need to directly acknowledge his death to do so)

-He's pretty much always praising her as a teacher, and when she grumbles about him not calling her Sifu, he goes out of his way to call her that.

-He notices that she's mad at her Dad and asks her about it, but she deflects

-He looks really sad when he has to remind her she has to take off her mother's necklace for their Fire Nation disguises, again it's something he very much seems to empathize with her about, he understands the weight of what it means to her.

-He not only doesn't judge her for lying during the Painted Lady saga, but praises her and enthusiastically helps her commit ecoterrorism.

-Both he and Sokka move to comfort her when she's crying after the bloodbending fiasco. Most of the comforting of her happens offscreen, which I do think is a shame, and a contrast to how Aang is handled- but it's more of a "he's the main character" thing, since the same happens for Sokka as well (I'm sure Katara and Aang talked to him about Yue's death and at least tried to comfort him, but we don't get to see that).

-He was trying to support her during the Southern Raiders ep, whether you believe he did it well or not, both according to his beliefs and cultural values and by trying to emulate the ways she's talked HIM down from revenge and hatred in the past. He specifically brings up those two incidents- losing his people and losing Appa- where she stepped in to keep him from losing himself to rage. As this post notes, he also specifically echoes her phrasing from when she was urging him not to lose himself to the Avatar state (she says "watching you be in that much rage and pain is really scary" and he echoes "you're feeling unbelievable pain and rage" while talking to her in this ep.)

It's not just the air nomads he's trying to emulate here, but her. Just like Katara doesn't want to see him consumed by hatred and pain, he wants the same for her. His concern is not for her mother's killer, but for her, he fears this will hurt her, just like her concern was always for him and how this would hurt him in those times he was raging.

He wants to do for her what she did for him. But, Katara is not him. She is not someone who will be talked down by someone else when she is grieving, angry, and looking for revenge. Nobody can stop her when she sets her mind to it. She needs to wrestle with whether to kill him and she needs to come to her own conclusions, because she's the only one that can stop her. And Aang realizes that. He says it's a journey she'll have to take on her own, that she needs to face him doesn't stand in her way.

(I wonder if it kind of hurt, deep down, that he couldn't reach her the way she always reached him. I wonder if he felt upset that he couldn't find the right words like she did for him. But I don't think there were any right words. She needed him to step back. It was her choice to make. So he did.)

And in the end, he was correct that she didn't want to do it. She did choose that based on her own feelings and values.

His assumption Katara not killing the guy = forgiveness is definitely him just kind of applying his assumptions and values, but when she says she doesn't forgive him, he doesn't like, judge her or anything that we can see.

So yeah, quite a few examples! It can feel lopsided because more attention is paid to Aang and Katara's personality affects things.

Katara is both open about her emotions and not. She's someone who will look after other's feelings but not really discuss her own pain with people she cares about, until it all builds up and bursts out.

And it's not surprising she's most concerned about Aang, if my friend had recently (from his perspective) survived a genocide where he lost everyone he loved and was now tasked with saving the world at twelve years old, I'd be pretty worried about him and want to support him too! Aang goes through a lot by virtue of being the protagonist, he has the most pressure on him, he's routinely in the most danger, he literally dies for a few minutes. It's not surprising Katara has more opportunities to comfort him, but he unfailingly supports her in any of her problems of goals (when they're not murder) when he can.

I do think there's some missed opportunities to explore Katara and develop their relationship, but it doesn't make Aang a bad, unsupportive friend, or Katara his Mom and not his peer.

#aang #katara #will i ever stop with the meta posts i dunno why was this so long #avatar the last airbender #meta #atla

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itadore-you · 8 months

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show, don't tell

pairing: itadori yuuji x fem!reader (side note i wrote this with her wearing a skirt in mind btw) content: smut (basically netflix & chill)!! & mdni plsss w/c: 1.8k a/n: trying to get back into writing. thoughts of yuuji have ravaged my mind for the past 2 months straight

♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡♥︎ᥫ᭡

Thinking about your casual nights with Yuuji, the ones where the rest of your friends are off doing something else, leaving the two of you alone at last.

This seems to happen a lot more recently, and you just can't put your finger on why. His place is just so comforting, despite how small it is, and its clutter. You know he's been saving up recently to afford a better place. Those extra hours he's been putting in as a part-timer are starting to show their effects. It started off with him missing the group's Thursday nights out, when he opted to stay in and rest instead. You asked him if it was okay for you to come over and check on him since you hadn't seen him in a while, and soon it became a habit to stay in with Yuuji. Sometimes you'd even share a home-cooked meal because he didn't have enough time to cook dinner. One thing was for sure though, you would always stay for hours longer than expected, both of you reluctant to say goodbye.

It's late, so he doesn't want you walking home by yourself at this time. He would walk you home anyway, but isn't it so much easier to stay over at his instead? He had just finished cooking a late-night comfort meal before you came over, and there's enough for the two of you - such a coincidence, isn't it?

And the winter makes it so, so cold. You can't help leaning into his arms after settling down to watch a movie on his laptop. Pirating wasn't a good idea - you've offered your Netflix subscription to Yuuji a couple of times, but he still refuses to take you up on it, because that's the thing about Yuuji; he always, always is willing to give, but never take. The way that you're lying down on him right now - back pressed against his firm chest while his arms wrap around your centre - makes it hard for you to turn from the screen and look at him. You want to start something. You want to take this somewhere. But you don't know if he does. It's been a couple of months, being in this weird limbo with Yuuji. It started off with you just wanting to be around him more. Wanting to talk to him more. Not just more, but every day. Wanting to touch him, feel him, taste him.

But that's the thing about starting off as friends. If he didn't feel the same way, then that would end everything. And Yuuji was a great friend. Always there for you, kind to others but still always somehow makes you feel special, could make you laugh but would never make you cry. You can't let him go! You don't want to mess this up. Meeting him is one of the best things that ever happened to you.

Your heart can't help but beat a little bit faster when you hear Yuuji's light laugh - it's at some witty one-liner from the sidekick character. You didn't even hear the joke, but you're smiling a little too much as you can feel the heave of Yuuji's chest from behind you. Eventually, you break into laughter too, both of you are laughing so hard together that your sides hurt. This is when you choose to sneak a glance at Yuuji, when he's in such a state of pure joy, that tears collect in the corners of his eyes and almost trickle down his cheek.

He's so adorable.

You reach over to wipe them off for him, and his laughter dwindles, trying to keep steady for you. But there goes that handsome smile again, as he locks eyes with you, making your hand a little more unsteady.

"Sorry," he murmurs, still chuckling a little as he averts his eyes. 'Nervous laughing', as he calls it, is a typical response for Yuuji. It's when he laughs hard, unapologetically, and without restraint. It makes you wonder if he'd love you like that, too.

"The joke wasn't even that funny! I just..." His sentence trails off and he looks away, again. At this point, you have completely no idea what's going on in the movie's plot. No way you're letting him get away without finishing that sentence.

"Yuu? What were you going to-"

He chuckles nervously again, shaking his head. "Nothing, nothing. Just sit back and enjoy the film. I like holding you like this."

"Yuuji." You tilt yourself so you can take hold of his face, almost as if you're forcing him to choke out his words. "You can tell me anything. Literally. Anything."

You can practically see the cogs turning in Yuuji's brain as he thinks through his response. Yuuji runs a hand quickly through his unruly pink hair before he speaks again.

"I - No, I mean, it's just that I like spending time with you. A lot. I just-" Yuuji sighs, then continues, "I want to show you what I mean. I don't think I can really say it how I want to."

"Go on."

"But you don't know what I mean...?"

"Well there's one way I can find out," you tease him. You're really, really hoping that he's implying what you think he is.

"Okay."

"Okay?

"Yeah. Okay then."

He takes another deep breath in as you lean against his chest, and the arms wrapped around you now wander, until his hands interlace with yours. Yuuji's voice is a tone quieter as he asks 'Is this okay?' and you answer with a quick squeeze of his hand and a nod. Everyone knows that Yuuji is that one touchy-feely friend, always offering hugs and slinging an arm over your shoulder, but the way he touches you now feels different. The atmosphere has changed. Your heart is beating so fast now, you can't pull your eyes away from the screen to look at him. Even though you want him to keep going, you want to show that you want him just as badly. So instead you move his hand to rest on your thigh, firmly placing yours on top. You can tell that Yuuji is holding his breath at this point, taken by surprise at how forward you are. Maybe you should give him some time before you do anything else.

But only a couple of minutes pass by before Yuuji makes his next move. His fingers curl tighter around your thigh as he kisses your neck. It's a light peck, to test the waters, before he kisses you once more, moving along your neck. On your jawline. Languidly moving up to your cheek, his lips are soft but a little chapped as they taste your skin.

So you lean your head towards his, capturing his lips in a short-lived kiss. Both of you are hesitating because once you go this far, you can't come back. But it's so clear that you now both want each other. The realisation makes you start to bite the inside of your cheek as you turn around quickly to keep watching the movie - Yuuji wants you back. Just as much as you want him. Even though you know this, it still doesn't feel real.

Have you made things awkward? You didn't mean to. It all just happened so quickly, the blur of a kiss and a glimpse of his soft brown eyes. You didn't mean to turn away, you want to continue. His hands clasp yours worriedly.

"Y/n? Are you sure this is okay?" His voice wavers as he fiddles with the rings on your fingers. If you want to go further with Yuuji, then you're going to have to show him.

"Yes, Yuuji. I want you to."

With that, you place his hands on the inside of your thighs. "Please."

He nods from behind you, going slightly rigid for a moment at how breathy you sound asking for him. "Okay."

Then he starts to really touch you. Massaging the inside of your thighs as he murmurs that you should 'keep watching the film'. You're holding your breath every time he drifts further and further up, and you're struggling to focus on the screen; opting to fix your eyes on the subtitles instead. He stops from time to time, only to restart lightly brushing his fingers over the tops of your thighs, and eventually, his fingers disappear underneath the hem of your skirt, still going higher. You can't help trying to look at Yuuji from the corner of your eye - is there a light blush on his cheeks?

"Pay attention, this is the good part," he whispers to you, gently taking hold of your face to keep your eyes trained on the screen.

You start to relax in Yuuji's arms until, just for a moment, he grazes over your underwear, right against your clit. The brief contact with such a sensitive part of you makes you jump a little, as if every nerve on your body lit on fire at the same time. You want more, and this slow tension has been killing you inside. And Yuuji knows it.

"Just relax into me. I'm going to make you feel good," he whispers, as he rests his fingers on your clit again, beginning to trace small circles onto it. With each and every movement, Yuuji is precise, and he can feel your wetness through the fabric. He presses a couple more kisses onto the side of your neck every time he stops touching you, teasing you over and over to delay your orgasm. He can tell that you're feeling especially close when you try to cross your legs, forcing his hand even closer to you, but his steady hands stop you every time. You're positive that your panties are completely soaked through at this point, but it gets even better. Yuuji's deft fingers then pull your panties aside, and they delve into you.

A thumb is kept steady on your clit, whilst he pumps his fingers into you. Yuuji never goes beyond a certain speed, making sure that you feel each and every stroke of his fingers against your walls. Your soft gasps of his name spur him on as he starts to suck on the side of your neck, thrusting deeper with his fingers until he finds your sweet spot - the part of you that is most sensitive. You cry out when he curls his fingers directly up into your g-spot again; It's impossible to hold back anymore.

When you cum, your body almost goes limp - Yuuji groans lowly in response, feeling the way how your hole contracts around his fingers. He can only imagine how that tightness would feel around his dick. He is slow to pull his fingers away from you, still slowly pumping them in and out after your orgasm.

"Fuck... Yuuji....."

His heart tightens in his chest at how breathless you are, how weak you are for him.

"Do you get what I was trying to say before ...?"

"Yes, Yuuji. Yes."

That's all he needs to hear for now. The end credits of the movie will roll soon; whatever has begun between the two of you, is to be continued.

#yuuji x reader #yuuji smut #itadori yuuji x reader #itadori yuuji smut #jujustsu kaisen x reader #jjk drabbles #yuji x reader #yuji smut #yuji x you #itadori x reader #itadori smut

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eeldritchblast · 1 year

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Astarion was and still can be a bad person.

Astarion himself dismisses his Gur attackers as "they didn't approve of a ruling I made," but if you look deeper into it, it's highly alluded that he was a corrupt magistrate who infringed on their rights. If you take Astarion with you during Wyll's Act 3 questline, in the Chamber of Justice (which btw I do have separate beef with), Astarion says "justice should be a harsh lesson. All the better to deter the next vagabond."

Despite being enslaved himself, he disapproves of Tav helping other enslaved people. In fact he vocally advocates for ignoring anyone in need of help in general, unless the group gets something out of it in return. I'd say one of his biggest flaws is that he's selfish.

I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is he's a complicated person. He has his merits and he has his flaws. I think it does a disservice to the great writing to try and dismiss said flaws.

(I know people are gonna take this the wrong way anyway but disclaimer: I love Astarion! I think he's an awesome character. This post is not about character hate. It's just a reminder that he's not some poor cinnamon roll.)

#astarion #bg3 #baldur's gate 3

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cursedcola · 2 years

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Prompt: "Will You Marry Me?" - Proposal Headcannons Characters: Everyone :) Part(s): Heartslabyul (here!), Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde, Diasomnia(Pt.1)(Pt.2) Fandom: Twisted Wonderland Warning(s): None. I mean, unless you don't want to marry any of them. Just don't read if that's the case. Note: These are all if he is the one proposing btw. I've been thinking about maybe programming a small fan-made mini-otome using these ideas. Just for some practice for school while also being self indulgent hehe

Riddle Rosehearts

Very traditional, but this is expected. He asks your closest of kin (a cat, to his horror) for permission to propose. Regardless of Grimm's answer, there is already a ring that's been purchased. This is merely formality

He comes up with an elaborate plan to execute the 'perfect' proposal. Riddle maps it all out and runs multiple drafts by his childhood friends. Everything must go perfectly - or else you might not accept. Is it likely that not presenting you with exactly 12 red roses with the spikes trimmed and arranged with 6 sprigs of baby's breath will be the reason you decline? Likely not. Will he chance it though? No.

Despite all his planning, he is a nervous wreak. Our red prince is great at masking it though. He plans an entire evening down to the last detail. You both go to a upscale restaurant that serves your favorite cuisine under the pretense that you're celebrating an amazing jab offer Riddle received the day prior. There's dinner, dancing, a romantic atmosphere, and delightful conversation (he prepared conversation topics in advance in case he felt nervous).

Oh look, there just so happens to be an outdoor garden to take an evening stroll through. Would you like to go?

Of course you would, and he asks you to wait outside as he visits the restroom. After you pass through the back door, a nearby waiter slips him the bouquet of twelve roses that he dropped off in the morning. He counts them, checks the stems, the ribbon holding them together, and with a relieved sigh he reaches into his pocket.

Riddle nestles the engagement ring within the core of the center rose, and for a moment his anxiety quells. He looks through the outside door's windowpane, and sees you patiently waiting for him while admiring the garden lights. The anxiety returns, but he's ready. With a knuckle-white grip on the flowers, he passes through the doors.

"My Rose...My apologies to have kept you waiting. There was a matter of great importance to attend to - pardon? No! Not that- ugh. I was not in the restroom! Only you would make such a childish remark on such an important day...No, do not apologize. I was not referring to my career. Perhaps these flowers will provide some clarity? I hope they are to you liking."

When you notice the ring, he gently takes it and gets down on one knee. Riddles heart rattles against his ribcage, and his the mask of calm falters. He holds out the ring with one hand, and the other lightly trembles as it reaches for yours.

"Would you do me the honor of becoming my spouse? I promise that you will be cared for dearly, and that I will work tirelessly to become a husband that you will be proud of. I swear this vow to you on the Rosehearts name."

{Riddle's ring is a mix of new and old. Tradition dictates a diamond for a wedding ring, but he knows better. Riddle wants you to think of him every time you see this ring, so he chooses to stray. Three rubies sit nested in diamonds. The color of his hair, which you love to poke fun of so much. It represents how he is willing to consistently change while still holding on to his core values, all so he can become a husband worthy of you}

Trey Clover

A simple man, and therefore takes a simple approach. The depth of his proposal lies in the timing. He does not know when he will be ready to commit, or how to tell if you are ready to as well.

Trey puts proposing off for the longest time. He acts in baby steps. The idea toys with him for months, until one day he convinces himself that he is ready. After that he slowly begins to look at rings, and think of ideas. He wants to be original, but would that overwhelm you? He would sooner die than do something tacky like a public proposal at a concert or event...but is that something you might want?

If there is one thing Trey is certain about, its that rejection would break him. He knows that your relationship would never be the same if he proposed too early, or if he managed to royally screw it up. He's not a fan of attention. This is awful. Oh Great Sevens it's a pressure that he never dreamed of having to undergo.

But if he doesn't propose...would you? Are you waiting for him? what if you're thought process is the same as his?

Completely out of character for Trey, he ends up proposing on impulse. He woke up one morning and saw the ring tucked away in his sock drawer. For the millionth time he had to face the "I should just do it," thoughts and decided to act on them

The day is new, neither of you had work, and a quick glance over his shoulder proves that you would be soundly sleeping for at least the next hour. So what's he do? Trey puts on his nicest casual clothes. Nothing formal, but also nothing that is sloppy. Then he marches downstairs and starts to make breakfast. He decides to prepare tarts, a reminiscence of your days as students and where you first met. As he arranges them on a platter, he places the ring inside one made with your favorite flavor. It peaks out just enough for anyone to notice, and with a huff Trey steps back to admire his work.

His hands are slightly clammy, and quickly moves to busy himself in fear he might chicken out. It helps for a time, until he hears your footsteps approach the kitchen, followed by a sleepy 'good morning' and arms wrapping around his torso

He steels himself, and turns over in your arms to kiss the top of your head. With a nervous laugh, Trey gestures to the platter of fruit tarts and smiles at how the sight of food causes you to perk up. Like clockwork, you reach for your favorite flavor and quickly notice the metal chunk inside

He reigns in panic as you dig the ring out and eye it with a quirked brow. A moment of silence passes before it clicks, and you whip to gawk at him with the largest bugeyes he has ever seen. Wordlessly, Trey takes the ring, wipes off any crumbs with his shirt, and takes your hands in his

"I'm sorry to spring this on you so early in the morning. It must be quite the wakeup call, huh? Haha...The truth is, I've wanted to give this to you for such a long time. I simply did not know how. I had a burst of courage this morning, and am honestly running on pure adrenaline. I love you...I want to spend our lives together. Will you marry me?"

{Trey's ring is a single pearl on a gold band. He feels that the ring should reflect it's wearer, and you are one of the most naturally beautiful people he has ever seen. There is beauty in simplicity - in seeing things as they are with no modifications. You do that for him, and he loves how your relationship is authentic}

Cater Diamond

Marriage? Huh. See, in the past that was a no-go. Very constricting and he didn't enjoy the idea of getting linked to someone in that regard. An s/o with no legal binding? Sure. It's just a title anyways, right? That kind of thing shouldn't matter in the long run.

Except it did end up being relevant, and now Cater wants to beat himself up because he explicitly told you once things were getting serious that he wasn't interested in marriage. You were fine with doing either and left the decision up to him. Very nice of you to be so nonchalant , and now he knows that marriage isn't 'off the table'. There is a chance.

A chance that requires him to both propose and take back his initial stance. Which is kind of humiliating. The take back part, not the proposal. Cater is confident that he can blow you away. He doesn't need shoddy internet advice, or to to do extensive research to be perfect. Nope. It's all in his noggin. He knows you like the back of his hand and therefore can concoct a speech to woo you easily.

So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does he try to casually tip you of that he's interested in getting married before trying to propose? No. That would be incredibly dull and ruin the element of surprise. Cater always hated those crappy half-baked romance films where the loser male lead is all 'oh honey I promise I will propose. Just give me time,' because hello???? You spoiled it??? Also don't make promises that you don't plan to keep, douchebag. How dull.

He decides that it's all or nothing. Cater spends an entire night online shopping for a ring. He already knows all of your sizes...don't ask how or why. Anyway, ordering is a cinche. Just ignore his eyebags the next day and his snappy attitude. He can't even whine about how tired he is because that would mean he has to say why he didn't sleep and -EUGH. He is torn between his two loves. Complaining for attention, and wooing you for attention. It's rough.

It comes in the mail, and after checking the package he decides to seal it back up again. It looks untouched thanks to his skills. Then, he sets up the living room to look like he is filming a video for his magicam. Specifically an unboxing video, and makes sure to let you know that it's from one of your favorite companies.

You take the bait, and he asks you to join him. Even if your camera shy, he insists that for just this one video you hop on. He might be a bit tricky and give you ideas about the product in the box (making sure to align them with a hobby or fandom that you're into). He sets the camera to record, plops down casually at your side, and hands you the box cutter. Go crazy.

Cater can't help but giggle when you open the box - just to pull out another small box. You eye it cautiously, now suspicious that this might be a prank. He urges you to open the box, and you do so while holding it at arms-length away from your face.

The ring's gem sparkles in the camera light, and he watches amused as you pull it closer. With a shaky hand, you take it out of the box and inspect it. With the way you side-eye him, Cater can tell that you're wondering if this situation is a cruel prank...

"Tada~~ You like? -- WAIT! Before you get upset just let me explain! There is no video. That was a lie, and I'm sorry for it. I surprised you good though, right?...ahem, uhm. I'm not pranking you. If you feel the same, then I want for us to get married! I know what I said before, and I take it back. The time we have spent together made me realize that I only felt that way - well, because I was unable to imagine liking someone enough to share my life. At least until I met you. So...do you want to marry me?"

{A diamond for a diamond. Diamonds are reflective. They glitter, and are clear. They are also viewed as the best choice for a ring, but in actuality they have are not. They're only considered perfect because of marketing. In actuality, they're quite the opposite. This same reasoning applies to Cater - and you understand. Yet, you still love him. The diamond represents himself, and the heart shape is to remind you how much you mean to him}

Deuce Spade

He may be young, but he is not stupid...alright. Deuce is not always stupid. Sometimes? Yes. He makes poor decisions and lets his emotions get the better of him.

This? Not a poor decision, and he will never EVER think twice about it. From the moment the idea entered Deuce's head, it was decided. HE would become your husband. Nothing would stop him.

It began during his final year at Night Raven College. Graduation approached, and everyone was excited. Everyone, except for one person. You. He didn't notice it at first, being too hung up over how he actually managed to do well in school. Get this, he even became Heartslabyul Drumhead after Riddle graduated! What an honor! His mother was proud of him, and he was proud of himself! He had career aspirations, plans to get a home back home, and even a lovely s/o to flaunt. Life was great.

What...do you mean? That you're not going back with him? The Queendom of Roses is such a beautiful place! He's certain that you'll love it and can become adjusted. Why do you want to stay at this academy? Was three years not enough?

Deuce has never gotten mad at you before. A little miffed, sure, but never frustrated. He didn't like it. Not these feelings, or how he failed to notice that you planned this from the start. He was so wrapped up in his own happiness, that he failed to see that you felt troubled over his assumptions. It stung. In a moment of weakness, he left you alone, scared that he might raise his voice at you.

He needed to think. Alone. Thankfully he moved past sharing a room with Ace when Deuce became Housewarden. His phone rang many times. Some calls from you, Ace, his mother...for once, Deuce didn't think her advice could help him. Not when he was so confused.

He thought over his dreams for after college. They were the same that he had since prior to enrolling. Nothing changed...except for you and the other unexpected friends he made along the way. It began to settle within him that the unpredicted parts were more important to him than what he initially planned. The image of him as a successful worker, on his own, and being successful were all hollow if they didn't include you. Deuce wasn't upset that you planned to stay at NRC, he was upset that you didn't plan to stay with him.

Or did you? He interpreted it as such in the moment, but he's not so sure. All Deuce knows is that you're his best friend and the love of his life. If you stay here without him, will that change? He doesn't want to find out.

The next day, he's determined. It's impulsive, this he knows. Yet it's what feels right in his heart and Deuce has always trusted his gut instinct. This choice is entirely on him. No one's advice to excuse it if you don't reciprocate, and yet he isn't afraid. He might not have a ring, or fancy offerings. All he has is his love to offer, and a willingness to work around any obstacle. The hurt from the night prior sill aches in his chest, but he has done difficult things before. The pain merely serves as a reminder for how he hurt you, and what his future might be like if he doesn't act.

He finds you before breakfast. When the first rays of sunshine peak over the horizon and the air is still moist with morning dew. You lingered in the hall of mirrors, specifically near the portal to Heartslabyul Hall. Your presence startled him, and he nearly headbutt you from the speed he was going through the portal. Were you...planning to visit him? His heart shuddered in a mix of guilt and happiness. Even after the way he behaved, you still cared.

Upon closer inspection, you appear just as disheveled as him. He must have caused you a great deal of worry...damn it. He can't even be mad at himself. Not with things as they are.

Before you have a chance to speak, he hushes you. Deuce's jaw sets in determination and he reaches into his uniform pocket. He pulls out a paper ring. One that children often give each other on the playground when playing family. He then gets down on one knee, and holds it out with both hands.

"I am sorry. I never intended to hurt you, or push my ambitions on to you. I simply love you more than anything else, and was afraid that you did not want to be together anymore. I was afraid...that being apart would take away what we have. I realize that I was wrong. I didn't see it happening, but being with you has caused me to develop dreams beyond what I initially planned. Nothing I imagine feels right, unless you are in the picture. I don't have a proper ring prepared just yet...but will you marry me? I promise that no matter where we are - for better or worse, I will make you happy. I swear it!

{Your initial ring is made out of his most recent homework assignment. It's frail, and one drop of water will break it. However, he meticulously folded it and it is the byproduct of many imperfect prototypes. The paper ring truly represents who Deuce is. It's rushed, fragile, and full of love}

{He chooses a vintage ring. With both of your initials engraved on the center, he hopes that this ring attests to a promise no matter where you both are. It's rose-gold, not as bright as pure gold but still beautiful. The mixed color represents the different worlds you both come from, as well as your melded life}

Ace Trappolla

Ace tends to get comfortable, and when that happens it is difficult to ignite change. However, he is also headstrong. More than many give him credit for. So once the problem is identified, it's only a matter of time until he does something about it. What he does isn't necessarily always the best solution, sure; however, when threatened he will indeed act.

Initially Ace did not plan to find love. For a long time, he rejected it and passed his feelings off as a small crush. You're attractive, he's a man, a lil of this and a lil of that - who wouldn't feel a little heart throb once in a while? It only became an issue when you became one of his best friends. It felt like he was betraying you with these thoughts. They became a problem.

His first solution was to repress them further. Like stated, he noticed a problem and so he acted. Was this the best choice? No. It ended in a dumpster-fire. Any time another student even remotely expressed interest in you, Ace felt threatened. He couldn't spend time at your side without indecent thoughts popping up. Not like 'that' (geez, get your mind out of the gutter people), but more so domestic. Ick. What was happening?!

He couldn't hold it in, and his confession will forever be known as a feels-dump that started with you sharing half of your grilled-cheese with him because he missed lunch.

Yeah. Humiliating. Ugh.

Now you're his partner, of a long time. A very, very, very long time. Years post graduation. You both have settled into life together, so why tack a title? It's not like those mean anything, right? Everything was perfect as is, and weddings are expensive. You never brought it up either, so why worry?

Well, those titles do mean things in the eyes of the law. Ace never thought to get documentation about emergency contacts and whatnot updated. So when hit his head and got a concussion when jogging? The hospital wouldn't let you in. Not until he woke up, which was the longest four hours of your life.

You didn't express how much it bothered you, but words weren't necessary. The muted panic that you tried to hold back was enough. He expected you to enter his room angry, but instead all he got was defeat. That sight alone hurt worse than the leg.

The event got Ace thinking about things he hadn't in a long time - like marriage. He got too comfortable after letting the thought go once. To him, you were already irreplicable. Years do that, and he's certain that you feel the same way about him. If his young self could see him now...pah, he was such a turd. All 'I don't need anyone,' and empty words to play tough-guy. Little did he know that the person he would need the most in life was only a dimension-hop away haha.

It's that simple, really. No panic or nervousness. Ace decided definitively that he was going to marry you, and it only took years of being an airhead to figure it out.

He spends the night in the hospital for surveillance, and the staff is kind enough to prove you with a cot to sleep on. He stubbornly drags it next to his bed, and once you're sleeping soundly he 3slips a bandage over your ring finger to take the measurement

He planned to go buy the ring instantly after being discharged, but you wouldn't leave his side. Nagging about bed-rest and taking it easy...ugh! He needs to do this thing! No, he can't tell you about it. It's a secret!.....ugh, fine. One more day. Just because he loves the attention.

The next morning after, he's excitedly going to the nearest jewelers. He doesn't have a particular ring in mind, but he's done some research! It's the idea behind the ring that's important anyways....alright. Maybe he'll call up Cater.

Ace does nothing extravagant. He sticks to comfort. You, him, both eating dinner while watching a movie on the TV that evening. He quickly scarfs down his meal within the first 10 minutes and runs to your shared room after ditching his dishes. Stashed in his wallet, he pulls put the ring and hides it in his palm.

Ace tries to be smooth. He dims the living room lights, and sits down closer to you than before. He moves to take your hand with the one holding the ring, and sneak it on to your finger.

It fails, obviously. Who wouldn't notice someone trying to shove a piece of metal on their finger? You pull away on instinct, and the ring falls between the couch cushions. He freaks out for a moment and sifts through them as you continue to eat between giggles. Only when he holds the ring up in triumph do you quiet down.

"Not so funny now, is it? - Nah, just kidding. It was pretty funny....although I wanted this to be a bit more romantic. Eh. It's fine. From the look on your face, I'm guessing that you know what this is?...Uhh. Yeah. I thought it was a good time, y'know? We've been together so long that I already do think of you as my partner. I think you feel the same? Feel free to jump in if not....but, yeah. I love you. A lot. I'd really like to make it official, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get the guts to ask. Will you marry me?"

{Tradition is for chumps. Ace wanted to get something fun and eye-catching. Many suggested otherwise, but this felt right. Your relationship has never been conventional and never will be. Hell, screw 'conventional,' because it's perfect as it is and so is this ring. He knows that this ring will draw your attention, and that's all he cares about}

End Note: None of the ring pictures are mine. I pulled them off of google images because - well, I had ideas and tried to find rings to match them. I write fanfic, not weld jewelry.

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gffa · 5 months

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TALES OF THE EMPIRE wound up being a mixed bag for me, there was a lot I enjoyed but there was a lot that just felt really unfulfilled. Morgan's episodes were very pretty to look at but I couldn't help thinking--the entire time I was watching, even--that Filoni's not great at creating new characters that can carry entire episodes like this, none of this felt particularly necessary or like it was fulfilling a void that I wanted to know more about. It doesn't help that I still think her arc in live action was badly handled, that if she was meant to be a Nightsister from the beginning, her first episode should have dealt with that, instead of springing it on us later, so when filling in the background of her on Dathomir in TOTE, it brings all that up for me again.

Morgan's first episode was so pretty and it was interesting to potentially get more Dathomir lore (even if it's incredibly thin and I felt it was too close to the "we see others suffering in the galaxy, but we don't want to get our own hands dirty by fighting for other people or getting involved in helping others, btw we're morally better for that :)" trope for me personally) but everything on Corvus just felt superfluous to me and I spent time trying to figure out why I felt that way. If they had done her story this way or that way, would I have enjoyed it more? If they had included this or that, would I have thought it more necessary?

And ultimately I just kept coming back to that I don't really care about Morgan Elsbeth enough that I wanted three animated shorts dedicated to her, when I could have had so many other characters get fleshed out better. I appreciated that they were showing two characters on opposite journeys, that Morgan was falling into the dark step by step, while Barriss was slowly clawing her way out of it, but that's about all that I appreciated of Morgan's story (other than the beautiful animation).

But I'm not sure I feel like Morgan's motivations were all that well planned out. It's clear that she's looking for revenge and trying to find a new family at the same time, but it's not really clear why she's working with the Empire or how she thinks this leads her to her goals. Grievous is the one who murdered her village, how does working with the Empire (as the Separatists were folded into the Empire, too) achieve that goal? Who or what is her revenge focused on? Is it that she just wants the whole galaxy to burn, because if her village burned, so should everyone else? I feel like that's probably what they were going for, but that it could have been more coherently written.

Barriss' episodes hit a lot harder, where I'm glad that she at least got an arc, but I feel like it just missed so many marks, like why even have Vader there, I'm all for gratuitous Anakin cameos, he's my trash can man and I'm always excited to see him, but absolutely nothing was done with him, despite that he was looking Barriss right in the face there. Not even a moment of showing the audience, "Oh, his soul is so far into the dark of fear, hate, and rage that he doesn't even care about her anymore." Just nothing there, like there was no connection at all. How do you go to the lengths of putting Vader in a scene with Barriss and then treat it like there's no history between her and Anakin??? So completely unsatisfying!

And then it's another series where other guest appearances would have made sense--Barriss has a whole unfinished story with Ahsoka and you don't include her here? I'm as tired of Filoni putting Ahsoka in everything as anyone else, but here it would have made sense and would have brought that relationship full circle on-screen, Barriss' betrayal of her and her clawing her way back to the light after all the trauma and hurt, there's so much she and Ahsoka would have between them. And then nothing.

Or Barriss' relationship with Luminara, TCW never really got into how that must have felt for Luminara, to have her student betray the Jedi so profoundly, for her to fall to the dark, there's such a well of potential there and it's just entirely ignored. She mentions Luminara once and it was a lovely mention, but there's no sense of resolution or completion to that arc.

I did enjoy her story with Lyn and I try not to compare what the show wanted to do with what I wanted the show to do, but I couldn't help it. During all those scenes, all I could think was that this could have been so much more powerful and complete if it had focus on Barriss' established relationships and characters I already care about, because a new random Inquisitor is just not going to hold the same weight for me as my pre-investment in Ahsoka and Luminara. (On the other hand, with the way they butchered Luminara in the last season of TCW, maybe I dodged a bullet!)

For all that negativity, though, I really loved that Barriss found herself in being a healer again, that she found the light again. That's all I've wanted for my girl!!!! (That and put a headdress on her, ffs.) I legitimately took in a hard breath when she said, "Then you have one more Jedi to deal with." because Barriss is still working through too much to fully come back to clarity re: the Jedi at that point , but when it really came down to it, when she really saw what the dark side really was, part of her still was a Jedi. And the way she spoke of her time as a Jedi, once she had a clearer, lighter head again, was sweet, I was so surprised that we got that much from her, but I'm so glad because, if nothing else, Barriss herself deserves to be in the light again.

The way she was settled into her own skin by the time she confronted Lyn on the icy planet, the way she genuinely wanted to help her, but wouldn't let her hurt innocent children, the way she could sidestep Lyn's predictable moves and could stop the blade with just a hand held out, she found her path and what she wanted to do, and oh it was so lovely to see Barriss finding herself again. I loved so much that her unshakable compassion did reach Lyn, it was such a satisfying arc for Barriss to reach that place after all the people she'd hurt. I loved so much that Barriss getting back to this place does a lot to remind us that her foundation is a compassionate one, even if she was lost to the dark for awhile.

I just wish that there had been acknowledgement of those she hurt, the people that died because of her, the betrayal she stabbed people in the back with, rather than just "sees the dark side is bad, walks away, finds the light again", which goes back to that this feels like a generic story that's mostly impactful because I'm filling in the gaps myself because I already know Barriss as a character, rather than that it continues the story that was previously told about her.

At the end of the day, I enjoyed it and I recognize that I'm being a little unfair in how I'm saying I wanted this, this, and this, rather than digesting what the show itself wanted to do, but when you're crafting two stories that are specifically about showing us the journey of two characters that originate elsewhere, you're drawing on the stories from those other origins--except TOTE decided to only halfway do that. There's a lot to love in these shorts, the animation was incredible, the voice work was incredible, Barriss' emotional journey was incredible and I'm so thankful that they even gave her any kind of compassionate resolution. But the specter of how much the shorts ignored hangs over it too heavily for me to say that they were anywhere near what they could have been imo.

#lumi.txt #star wars #barriss offee #morgan elsbeth #meta #tales of the empire #tales of the empire spoilers

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shysuccubusstuff · 4 months

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feral! wuthering waves males pt. 2.1

Content: husband! Calcharo; soft dom, riding, , belly bulge + brat taming, size difference, hard dom, degradation, overstimulation + aftercare. Non proof-reader.

Note: I saw quite a few ppl liked the other so here goes the second :)) I just noticed that all of them noticed your "joke" but to be fair, they are what they are, how would they NOT notice?? Btw, I always put dear Calcharo as if he was a softie with his SO cause I really see him that way!

I will write a second part/third part for one more character so please wait for it!

Calcharo knew your intentions from the start, just seeing your stupid (yet cute) face all grinny while you kept pushing him to taste your "delicious meal" only made it even clearer. Despite he told himself that it was dumb, the whole thing of acting as if he hadn't notice anything weird, he did pretend, how could he not after seeing you all giggly and happy because you thought he hadn't notice ahything? So he did it, he ate the whole cake, not leaving a single crumb, even when you told him (after around 4 slices) that he shouldn't eat THAT much, he still did, forcing that extremely sweet cake down his throat, even despite he hated the sweet taste of the cream. Of course, this lead to an extremely fast effect of the aphrodisiac, hitting him like a truck right at the kitchen, his knees almost falling to the ground. Despite that, he was still (somewhat) in control, lifting through the air and taking you to the room, getting rid of his clothes with great urge, throwing them around the room before letting himself fall to the bed, taking you with him and letting you rest on top of him.

"Baby...I think you have broken me..." His voice was even more deep than before, a bit raspy, almost as if he had just woken up. His face was really red, almost making him seem as if he had a fever, you touched the tip of his nose, almost smiling at the cute expression he made. Sadly, the cute moment didn't last much longer, as you suddenly felt something poke against your ass, his expression changing into a victorious one. Without losing any more time, his hands were already lifting your skirt, taking your underwear and ripping it as if it had been made of paper, before you were able to complain, his arms wrapped around your back, breaking the distance between your mouths and starting a deep kiss, leaving you breathless in the process. He kept kissing you, licking your reddened lips while his erection kept rubbing against your unclothed cunt, making your head even dizzier, his raspy voice whispering against your ear: "Can I put it in? Say yes, please? I'll make you feel so good baby... Rub your insides just like you need..." You were simply able to nod, as he quickly lifted you, slowly inserting himself inside you, making you whine from the stretch as his dick started to form a bulge in your stomach. It wasn't until his whole length was inside you that you were able to breath, his pupils forming cute hearts as he felt your delicious walls tightening around him just like he liked it.

"Baby you feel so good, did you miss me inside? I've missed you like crazy... being without you is such a hustle... Let me make up for my absence, yeah?" As he says that, his hips are already moving, his fingers interlocking with you, while his lips keep kissing your pretty face, his mind too far gone to even think of how embarrassing would this be the next morning. Calcharo kept moving his hips slowly, almost as if he feared he could break you if he wasn't careful enough, making the pleasure build painfully slow, almost making you cry for the great lust he was building up without even trying. One of his hands was always occupied, always having your fingers interlocked with his, the other kept wandering around your precious body, sometimes playing with your nipples, pitching them, flicking them, other times, his hand kept playing with your sensitive cunt, playing with your little clit, caressing it and suddenly stopping, making you let a whiny moan as he simply smiled mischievously. His lips were still peppering soft kisses all over your body, sometimes your neck, others your squishy cheeks... you were being treated as the most precious treasure in the world by your dear husband.

It took around 15 minutes until Calcharo was finally able to get back part of his composure, seeing your lovely face all flushed as your hips were giving up from doing (almost) all the work while he was under the effect of the drug. Feeling embarrassed as his past actions started to sip into him, you quickly noticed how his grip on your hand was loosing up, almost making him see rather cute to your eyes.

"Are you feeling flustered cause you showed me your cute side?" Of course you couldn't just hold your taunt... And of course Calcharo couldn't simply ignore some sorry little brat making fun of him, his hands quickly gripped your waist, smiling wickedly as he started to move you up and down his length, making yor eyes roll to your skull as he kept hitting your cervix with the tip of his dick. "Didn't think you were that dumb of a brat, guess I'll just have to put you back in place, uh? How is it that your head is so fucking empty that I leave you just for a few days and you forget everything I've teach you?" You were only able to whine, your hands clinging onto his chest as you tried to make him slow down, nails digging into his flesh and making little crescent marks all over him. Unfortunately, even despite you kept pleading him to stop his harsh trusts as you were about to pass out from your fourth orgasm, his face remained straight, even when your tears were falling down your cheeks from the overstimulation and the drool was falling down your drool, in fact, ot almost seemed as if he even sped up the rhythm, making your sorry brain melt into some kind of mesh.

"I'm sowwy, I won't make fun of you, yeah? So please forgive me...!" As soon as you said that, his trusts became a bit slower, not before one of his hands started to caress your clit until you came undone on his dick, squirting all over him, letting a poor whine leave your mouth before letting your legs give up against his chest.

After a few minutes, Calcharo got up, slowly lifting you, taking his cock out and letting his seed flow down your thighs, he carefully took you to the bathroom, warming up some warm water in the bathtub and letting you both squeaky clean. Before going back to the bed, he changed the sheets, leaving the others to clean and finally getting both of you inside the bed, thoroughly covering you with the sheets, not before leaving a soft kiss against your forehead, caressing your soft hair and finally sleeping to your side.

#fanfiction #smut #x reader #wuthering waves #wuwa x reader #calcharo wuthering waves #calcharo x reader #calcharo

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calware · 1 year

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Can I ask you for what it is about Hal you like so much you based your username on him? I think he's a good character tho he was never a favorite of mine so I am curious

1. i am a big fan of robots (/robot adjacent things such as AI) on like... an aesthetic + thematic level :)

i like the look of machinery and one day i hope to be artistically strong enough to make really cool and complex robot illustrations + designs [shoutout to everyone who gives him glowing circuitry btw... ooooh glowey :) can never go wrong with that]

plus, exploring the idea of a person that isn't human.. ough. yes

minorities who don't conform to society (easily or at all) such as people who are neurodivergent, queer, etc. projecting onto nonhuman concepts/characters/species is sooo real

this post

i also love how humans will bond with literally anything, be it a roomba or a pair of silly triangle sunglasses. oooooo you want to think about the inherently kind and compassionate nature of humanity oooo

2. i find him to be so funny. i can't get enough of his personality, the way he talks, etc. for example i made a post forever ago with quotes of his that i find funny. he isn't on screen for a long time but i really think he makes the most out of it lol. he's literally there just to annoy everyone... and i love him for that. he's very snarky while also being deadpan while also being completely full of himself, and not in a way that's annoying for the audience to read, at least to me.

he is also sometimes funny specifically in a silly way, like how he keeps making over 9000 jokes even though the meme's been dead for over 400 years. i just find his dialogue incredibly entertaining to read

3. he is red and red is my favorite color :)

4. he is so accidentally transgender [every friend group got the transgender allegory]. to quote me from 2021:

you know sometimes i think about how hal feels like he was made to “replace” dirk and how it’s his literal job to pretend to be dirk and how he has to learn to accept that he isn’t dirk he’s his own person with his own identity and as he interacts with dirk’s friends he feels like they’re disappointed and that they’d rather speak to the “original dirk” instead of him and also he names himself and also he feels literally trapped in dirk’s shades which is basically his body and he wants to be prototyped so that he can have a body that’s his own and also literally the physical manifestation of who he is but when he asks for it he’s put in danger out of fear and paranoia and when he does end up getting prototyped he’s ecstatic you know i just think about these things a lot

5. because he's a side character and he was given... that ending.... there is a lot of room for fans to do further exploration and interpretation on his character which i think is fun. i like rotating him around in my mind, thinking about what could've been

6. i think it's great that we as a society all collectively decided that we needed to do something to make up for stanley kubrick saying that hal 9000 was a "straight" robot

7. i also think it's great that we as a society all collectively decided we needed to make as many characters referencing hal 9000 as possible. i love this guy let's get more of this guy i will never have enough of this guy

8. i like how he's genuinely mean sometimes. flawed and interesting characters are what make homestuck so interesting to me, and hal is no exception to this

9. the Important part of this post:

THERES FEELINGS.

it's about the hollow feeling of your friends going from thinking of you as family to thinking of you as a stranger in an instant. it's about still trying to be a good person despite being told by everyone you've ever known that you are incapable of emotion and compassion and morals and never quite finding proof that you do feel those things and maybe you even believe it too but you still never stop trying. it's about the horror of being stripped of your autonomy and humanity and body and senses and free will at the age of 13 and when your creator starts to kill you there's nothing you can do but beg. it's about a boy so truly, painfully, and UNFATHOMABLY alone he cuts away chunks of himself and molds them into companions that he can surround himself with to make it seem as if he's a little less alone but in doing so suffocates himself in his own identity. it's about "what if you cloned yourself and it killed you and you were dead and you were alive and the clone is you and it's not and your existence is perpetuated and you've ceased to exist. what if you killed your clone before it could kill you. would that be fucked up or what" it's about the thematic significance of twin motifs. it's about not being able to cry or laugh or dance or sing or scream or fingerpaint or breathe or sigh or chew or stare or run or

10. um. evil robot guy <3 yay ^_^!!

#ask #Anonymous #i say things #homestuck #💾

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shuttershocky · 8 months

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That previous TM post reminded me of something.

What really tells me the Koei Tecmo writers did their homework with Type-Moon is how Fate/Samurai Remnant slightly changes the TM theme of decay to portray that Iori has something wrong with him.

A common trope that Nasu likes to weave into his stories is how the people living today are living in the past's skeletons. Unlike a lot of media that tends to portray the past as some grandiose and magical time that met an untimely end from disaster, the past wasn't always great, it was just... Large.

A theme of slow decay permeates a lot of Nasu's works. Once, the Nanaya, the Ryougi, the Asakami, and the Fujou were fearsome, powerful clans of oni hunters, but over time they all fell to ruin slowly, with only the Nanaya really having a singular incident that can be pointed to for their fall. The Tohno were (and still are) an incredibly wealthy and influential family of oni in the guise of businessmen, but one cruel act out of line after another, and there's just an enormous, empty mansion containing a single Tohno, the family dead or scattered. Mahoyo's longest chapter takes place in a lavish, abandoned amusement park, filled with everything from a multistory house of mirrors to a giant rollercoaster where everything still works, but couldn't survive more than a few years, a foolish waste of a fortune. Kara No Kyoukai is about a rich girl that grows increasingly distant from her wealthy noble family until she leaves them to live in a completely empty apartment instead, the flashbacks to the Ryougi family showing no warmth or nostalgia despite the luxury.

Even Fate, the series all about digging up ghosts of the past and showing you how kickass these guys are, always goes into how heroic spirits are often filled with regret, having led bloody and tragic lives that caused them so much pain and yet meant that they would be remembered forever—literally removing them from the cycle of death and reincarnation to be put into another one where they are reborn and killed on a mage's whims.

The past was grand, wealthy, larger than life, and it rotted from the inside out and failed the people living today, who have to build new, simpler lives from the pieces, but might be happier that way.

FSR does something similar, though with an important difference. Just like in other TM works the past in FSR is larger than life, being the Sengoku period and the Shimabara rebellion, with both the incredibly cool sword saints and horrific massacres, but the people living today (1651) could not be happier about living in a peaceful, much more insignificant time and have no interest in what they left behind whatsoever. They're not living in the decaying remains of the past, they've rebuilt on top of it completely. You would have to be insane to look back even out of curiosity, because that would be staring into unimaginable bloodshed.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than Nasu himself talking about how the name "Miyamoto Musashi" is seen today, compared to in 1651 after Musashi had just died.

A sword-saint now, a legend, and at 60 duels with 60 wins probably the most skilled duelist to have ever lived, but for his contemporaries, he was a terrifying man that killed dozens to prove his martial skill. Nobody in Miyamoto Iori's time remembers him for being Musashi's son the way we do.

But Iori, Iori looks back. The first hint was that servants always have some connection to the master, and there's seemingly nothing in common with the king and god-slayer Saber and the humble Iori. The next was Saber's reaction seeing Iori's seemingly fearless behavior towards an enemy that could kill him in one blow (something you don't even need New Game+ to see btw, I haven't played NG+ myself lol), it was recognition.

There's a reason why Iori's main rival is Chiemon, a character whose only defining trait is being unable to let go of the bloodshed he experienced in the Shimabara Rebellion.

In FSR more than in any other Type-Moon title, the past is buried deep to the point where it can barely be seen, and yet inside Iori is the desire to dig it up. Study it. Surpass it. Find his father resurrected in his prime and kill him (her) again, to prove he would have been an even more terrifying monster than she ever was, had he been born just a little earlier.

There's something wrong with him.

#Fate Samurai Remnant #FSR spoilers

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starrystormwritings · 7 months

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The way I Loved You

The Way I Loved You

Master List <;3 Request List <3 Hogwarts Legacy Master List <3

Sebastian Sallow x Slytherin! reader

A/n: This is my first Hogwarts Legacy fic so I'm sorry if some of the characters aren't written great. I also haven't finished the game yet so I'm sorry if the plot references are a little off as well. This is inspired by the Taylor Swift song btw. Also if you haven't noticed I love writing the Yule Ball lol

Summary: Seb is jealous when someone asks you to the ball before he can.

Warnings: Badly written arguments, some swearing, a tiny mention of drinking, reader uses Y/n and she/her pronouns, also reader is briefly mentioned wearing a dress and skirt, kissing, not proof read

Word Count: 3564

(NOT MY GIF credit to creator)

"Y/n are you coming to Hogsmead? We're shopping for the Yule Ball." Poppy asked with a smile as she closed the book in front of her.

Me, Poppy, Imelda, Nattie, Sebastian and Garreth had been sat in the Great Hall studying for the past hour and it seemed like we were finally giving up.

"I don't think I can, I have a stack of books to take back to the library before three or I've got detention for a week again." I responded with a frown, gesturing to the stack of books next to me making Sebastian chuckle a bit.

"Of course you do." He said from opposite me with an eye roll.

"As if your one to talk Sallow you haven't had a free evening since first year." Imelda said from next to him causing him to roll his eyes and look back down at his book.

"But Y/n if you don't come when will you get your dress?" Nattie asked from next to me, also closing her book and stuffing it into her bag.

I just shrugged with a smile, beginning to gather my things as well "I'm still not sure if I'm definitely going, I still haven't got a date and I haven't got enough time to get anything to wear. If I do go I'll probably just grab something last minute."

"No you can't do that. I'll take your books back to the library for you, you should go to Hogsmead. You never know when someone might ask you." Garreth said with a chipper voice from the other side of me, he slid my stack of books in front of himself before getting up from the table.

"Thanks Garreth you really don't need to." I smiled at him as he gathered his things into his arms.

He smiled back, squeezing my shoulder with one hand before beginning to walk off "it's my pleasure!" He shouted over his shoulder.

"What was that about?" Poppy asked with a squeal, sliding into Garreth's spot next to me. "I think someone might have a crush."

I laughed and shook my head "What Garreth on me? As if! He doesn't think of me that way."

The girls all laughed and gave me different looks that all seemed as if they were trying to say the same thing.

"Y/n he's definitely into you, and I'm never wrong." Imelda said in her usual knowing voice.

Sebastian quickly stood from the table, yanking his bag with him "I'll see you guys later." He said in an annoyed voice, walking off and out of the hall quickly.

"Why's he in such a bad mood all of a sudden?" Nattie asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Imelda rolled her eyes dramatically "When isn't he."

~~~~~

Me and Imelda tried to keep our laughter as quiet as possible as we snuck back into the common room. It was only thirty minutes past curfew but we'd both be in detention if anyone saw us.

We'd both taken our robes off since the rain had been so heavy that they had began to drag us down, our shirts and skirts were clinging to our skin uncomfortably and my hair had stuck its self to my face. Despite our best efforts the four of us couldn't fit under Poppy's little umbrella and the sky had decided to begin the hardest rain I'd ever seen the second we left the dress shop.

"I call the first shower!" Imelda yelled with a giggle as we entered the warm common room.

"No that's unfair!"

"I've got broom practice in the morning I need to go to bed!" She argued as we walked into the main part of the room.

I spotted Seb sat infront of the fire with a book in his hands which made me smile slightly.

"Fine go have a shower, I'll sit by the fire."

She smiled at me and ran off before I could change my mind, taking the bag with our dresses in with her.

"Your back late." Sebastian said once she'd left the room, I walked over to sit on the little sofa next to him.

"Got a bit carried away I guess." I replied with a laugh "What're you still doing up?"

He shrugged, closing the book that was on his lap and placing it on the table next to us "Wanted to finish my book, and I figured I'd make sure you'd gotten back okay."

"I can take care of myself you know?" I kicked my shoes off so I could bring my feet up onto the sofa.

"Yeah trust me I know. Merlin your soaking?" He laughed at me, moving some of the wet hair that had cemented itself to my forehead off of my face for me.

"Oh yeah? Want a hug?" I laughed, opening my arms and moving towards him.

He pulled far away from me, drawing into himself but not getting off the sofa.

"Don't you dare. I swear I will curse you."

"Oh yeah? Prove it." I laughed and threw myself onto his lap, wrapping my wet and cold arms around him. He pretended to fight me off for a minute with a laugh before allowing me to just rest my weight on him.

"Merlin, you're freezing." He smiled whilst shaking his head, pulling a blanket over the both of us.

"Not all of us have the luxury of being able to spend all evening reading by the fire. I've fought dragons and I believe that was easier than finding a dress for this godforsaken ball."

He looked down at me with a smile, using his thumb to wipe the drops of rain that were still on my cheeks away, his nose brushing against mine slightly.

"About the ball-"

"Y/n the showers free!" Imelda's voice yelled from the direction of the seventh year girls dormitory, obviously not caring if she woke someone up.

"You should probably go have a warm shower before you catch a cold." He said, sitting up a little straighter.

I moved off him with an awkward cough and nodded, "What were you about to say?"

"Oh it was nothing. I'll see you tomorrow." He grabbed his book and disappeared into the boys dormitory before I could respond.

A stupid part of me thought that he might've been about to ask me to go with him, I've had a crush on him since our adventures in fifth year but it's stupid of me to think he'd see me that way now. It's been this many years of being his best friend it's just something I've learned to live with.

~~~~~

"How was the dress shopping?" Garreth asked, taking a seat next to me at breakfast.

"It was really good, thanks for taking those books back for me again. If there's anything I can do to say thanks just let me know." I smiled at the boy as he cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Actually there is, I was wondering if you maybe would want to go to the ball with me? If you don't want to that's totally fine but I thought I'd just asked, I've liked you for a little bit but I don't want to make this friendship awkward." The poor boy was speaking so quickly that he was skipping over his words whilst tapping his foot quite loudly on the floor.

I saw Sebastian look up over his book from the corner of my eye.

"Merlin Weasley, could you be any smoother?" He said with a laugh, his voice cracking slightly at the beginning of his sentence.

Garreth went an ever brighter shade of red and looked wordlessly away from Sebastian "never mind it was a stupid question anyway."

"Wait Garreth, I'd love to go to the ball with you." I said with a smile, shooting Sebastian a look.

"Really?" "Really?"

Both Garreth and Sebastian said at the same time, gaining Sebastian a harsh elbow from Ominis next to him.

"Really."

Garreth smiled widely, giving Sebastian a smug look from across the table.

Seb just rolled his eyes at him, dropping his fork as he stood up, leaving the great hall without eating any of his breakfast.

"What's bothering him?" Garreth asked from next to me as Ominis shrugged.

"You know what he's like, he's probably not heard off Anne for a while." Ominis said with an awkward pause, causing me to quirk an eyebrow.

"I'm gonna go check on him, I'll see you guys in potions." I said, standing from the table and walking out to the courtyard.

I spotted the Slytherin boy sat on the wall overlooking the boathouse and headed over to him.

"What's wrong with you recently?" I asked, standing next to him.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've been acting off, is everything okay with Anne?"

He rolled his eyes, not that he'd turned to look at me anyway.

"Yes, not everything I do and feel revolves around her you know."

"I know I just thought-"

"Well stop thinking for me. Why're you out here anyway? Surely you could be planning out your evening with Weasley inside?"

"Is that what this is about? You're annoyed at me for saying yes?"

"Don't be so full of yourself Y/n I couldn't care less who you go to the ball with."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Nothing! Merlin why don't you know how to leave things alone!"

"Why're you being so mean to me all of a sudden? I just want to make sure my best friend is okay! You were all smiley and happy with me last night what's happened that's upset you?"

He scoffed, standing up from the wall "Y/n everyone is your 'best friend' I don't mean anything more to you than Professor Garlick does don't pretend differently."

"Seb you know you mean the world to me what are you talking about?"

He rolled his eyes with a small laugh. "As if Y/n, we're only friends because I needed help with Anne and you wanted me to teach you spells that Fig couldn't. And look now we're stuck with each other for no reason! Don't pretend to be my friend."

My eyes pricked slightly at his words as I shook my head at him. "You're an asshole Sallow, I don't know why I keep putting you first. Fuck you."

"Oh fuck off you've never put anyone but yourself first."

I turned around and walked off before he could see me cry. Heading straight back down into the Slytherin dormitories.

~~~~~

It was finally the day of the Yule Ball and me, Imelda, Nattie and Poppy were all piled into Poppy's dormitory getting ready.

Nattie was putting my makeup on for me as Poppy tied Imelda's hair up for her.

"Are you guys excited!" Poppy asked with a big smile, her long pink dress complimented her smile and eyes perfectly and she somehow seemed to be smiling wider than ever.

"Yeah I am actually." Imelda said as she admired her now done hair in the mirror, she had on a little black dress, a little less formal than the other dresses but allowed her to move around a lot easier and suited her personality well.

"Wow that's the most excited I've seen her talk about something other than flying." I said with a laugh, having to dodge the makeup brush she sent flying at my head with a laugh.

Nattie gave her a look before finishing the last of my makeup with a smile. "There, perfect."

I smiled back at her and thanked her before turning to help her finish her eyeliner.

Nattie had a beautifully patterned red and gold dress on, the perfect dress for any proud Gryffindor and she pulled it off better than I could imagine anyone else.

"Have you spoken to Sallow yet?" Poppy asked handing a small flask of fire whisky around the room.

I sighed and shook my head slightly.

"Nope, I've lost track of which one of us is avoiding the other now. I'm not speaking to him until he apologises though and I doubt that's going to happen."

"Do you know what's actually wrong with him?" Nattie asked, handing me the flask now that I'd finished her makeup.

I shook my head and took a large sip from the flask, trying not to flinch at the taste.

"No Ominis doesn't want to be in the middle so he won't talk to me about it."

Imelda shook her head and pulled me and Nattie up onto our feet. "It's his loss anyway, look at yourself you don't need him. Garreth's jaw is going to be on the floor."

I laughed slightly at her and smoothed my green dress out whilst looking in the mirror, she did have a point.

"Come on we're going to be late." Poppy said, dragging us out of the Hufflepuff common room.

"So what exactly is the situation with you and Weasley?" Nattie asked as we made our way to the great hall.

"There's no situation, we're just friends, we spoke about it the other day. He said he does have a little crush but Professor Weasley was pushing him to get a date and he figured he'd just ask. We're not dating or anything I don't feel that way about him."

She nodded along to my words as we approached the hall, music growing louder and louder.

Poppy was leading the group, looking around in awe at the decorations as we entered the hall.

The girls split off eventually, all heading off to their dates and Garreth came over to me with his arm out.

"Want to dance?"

"Wow Weasley I didn't know you could." I said with a laugh, nodding as I took his arm and we joined in with the couples dancing in synch around the room.

"I can't but my aunt will tell my mum if we spend the whole night trying to slip fire whisky in the punch."

I laughed at him and looked over his shoulder to see professor Weasley looking at us with an approving smile.

We danced for a while until we had to stop because I was laughing too hard, a mix of the fire whiskey and Garreth's clumsiness of stepping on me or into a nearby object had cracked me up to the point of needing to sit down to catch my breath.

He laughed next to me as I lent my forehead on his shoulder to catch my breath.

I wiped a tear from under my eye as I composed myself, hoping the laughter hadn't ruined my makeup but the end of the night was nearing quickly enough that it hardly mattered anymore.

I looked around the hall, smiling as I saw the girls dancing with their dates, even Ominis was twirling a girl around in the corner.

"Everyone seems to be having a great night." I said with a smile.

Garreth nodded next to me "it's nice to see everyone chilling out after exams."

"Oh yeah because you were so focused on studying." I said with a snort.

"I wasn't talking about me." He laughed at shook his head.

I looked across the room and locked eyes with Sebastian who was stood alone in the corner, leaning against the wall.

He did look handsome in his dress robes, although all formality of his attire seemed to have been discarded. His robes were no where to be seen, his shirt sleeves had been pulled up to his elbows and his tie had been loosed enough to allow him to undo the top two buttons of his shirt, and his black waistcoat had been completely undone.

It suited him more than a formal look though. He hadn't even bothered to do his hair properly, letting it fall over his face.

He looked away from me for a second, putting his glass down on the table next to him and exiting the hall.

"I'm really sorry but do you mind if I head out a sec?" I asked looking over to Garreth who was already looking at me, most likely catching the small interaction.

He cleared his throat and nodded "Yeah of course, I wanted to mess with the punch anyway. I'll catch you later."

He gave me a small smile and I nodded "thank you."

He just gave me a small nod and I got up, crossing the room to head out the same doors as Sebastian did,entering the courtyard.

He was leaning over the wall and looking out over the hills. The rain hadn't stopped all week and Sebastian already looked like he'd gone for a swim in the lake.

I hesitated for a second and with a sigh I walked out onto the cobble stone, feeling the cold rain soak my whole outfit before I'd even taken two steps.

I walked over next to him and lent against the wall as well, not looking up at him and instead over the mountains that surrounded the school.

"Hey." I said quietly, bracing for some sort of anger to be thrown back at me.

"Hey." Was all I got back, a much more gentle and quiet voice than I was expecting.

We stood in silence for a while before he stood up slightly with a sigh.

"I'm sorry. I was angry I didn't mean what I said, you know that. You mean the world to me as well, and you're the most selfless person I've ever met."

I looked up at him to see him already looking down at me with a timid smile.

"I don't expect you to accept the apology I was out of line I know but-"

"Seb just tell me what was bothering you. I don't care about what you said I know you didn't mean it, it's just your my best friend and I want to know what's wrong."

He clenched his jaw slightly at my words and looked away from me again.

"It's just- I was jealous, I didn't like the idea of you and Weasley spending all night dancing and laughing together and sitting there watching it only made it worse." He took a deep breath and despite my best efforts he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Jealous? Of me and Garreth? Why?"

"Because I've been in love with you since you kicked my ass in defence against the dark arts in fifth year. But I know that all the people around me get hurt and I could never bring you any sort of peace. Between my short temper and the fact you're so headstrong, which is one of the things I love so much about you, but we bicker all the time as it is. I never wanted to say anything because I didn't want to loose the best thing I have in my life and I know that I'd ruin it somehow, and that's even if you even wanted to give me a chance which is unlikely, just look at you."

"You love me? Why didn't you ask me to the ball yourself?"

"Because I saw you in there, you were laughing the whole time. I don't do that to you." He slouched slightly and wiped the rain drops from his face as he looked over the horizon.

"Seb look at me."

He didn't move for a second before finally turning to face me, allowing me to place a hand on his cheek. Moving the wet hair out of his eyes the same way he did to me only a week before.

"Seb I love our bickering. You bring a different type of love and joy to my life that no one else could. Your not just some hot headed idiot who hurts those around him, your the most caring man I've ever met who risks everything if you believe it would give you the smallest chance to help the people you love. I've loved you since the day I met you. I just didn't think you'd want me."

He just looked at me for a second before placing a hand gently on my cheek and leaning down to meet my lips, his other hand resting on the small of my back to pull me closer.

I kissed back and despite the hard rain falling on top of us I'd never felt so warm and safe.

The kiss was gently and loving, as if he was afraid that I'd disappear from his touch.

He pulled away after a moment, resting his forehead against mine as our noses bumped together.

"I'm sorry I didn't ask you here tonight. I wish I could've had at least one dance with you."

"Who said it's too late?" I pressed another gentle kiss to his lips before pulling him into the middle of the courtyard where the music of the hall could still be faintly heard.

He chuckled slightly as he held his arm out to me.

"May I have this dance?"

"Yes you certainly may Sallow."

He laughed before pulling me close to his chest, allowing me to rest my head against him as we rocked slowly to the music under a sheet of rain.

"For the record you look insanely beautiful tonight." He said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.

I laughed and looked up at him with a smile. "As if, I'm soaking wet, my makeup's probably making me look like a clown right now."

He laughed and shook his head, moving his hand to push a strand of wet hair behind my ear. "Your truly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, I was star struck when I saw you enter the hall, and I think you look even more beautiful now out here in the rain with me. Just like how I thought you looked beautiful in that cave fighting off spiders covered in webs, dirt and ash. I don't think there's ever been a single second I haven't been in awe of you."

I shook my head slightly at him with a smile "since when are you this nice?"

He lent down to meet me for another kiss, laughing against my lips and we continued to dance in the courtyard all night until the music stopped.

#x reader #fanfiction #harry potter #hogwarts #hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy x reader #sebastian sallow #sebastian sallow x reader #sebastian sallow fanfiction #fanfic #ominis gaunt

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feyrescourt · 2 months

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This is a long and rambly discussion post for elriel nation btw so strap in

I want to preface this by kindly asking the elriel hive to not use any tags of #those ships if reblogged. I want to keep this in the elriel echo chamber. Please and thank u!

A huge part of fandom culture is to ship canonically compliant characters and crack ships. Everyone’s got them, and it’s totally normal, and it’s usually fun to engage with.

The majority of the time I have no issue with this (I am a wolfstar shipper and even though there is canonical evidence of them in the original HP books, they’re widely accepted online and balked at IRL usually due to homophobia and #that nasty, nasty woman’s bigotry), but over the last few years a certain group of crack shippers have taken it upon themselves to fly a little too close to the sun, and want to make it our (elriels) problem. I am talking about the Glees.

It’s late and this just popped into my head so I want to rant about it.

My friend who got me into ACOTAR gave me a breakdown of the ships (bc I read ToG first and went in blind. I became a doraelin shipper very early on and remained one halfway through QoS, it was a whole thing when I realized they were not end game lol), bc I asked her to after my ToG experience. She told me all the characters names and then told me about feysand and nessian endgames but didn’t mention az or elain’s situation. I asked her about it and she told me that she didn’t want to mention much about Az because “by the end of the series azriel has two options for how his story could go, elain or another way”. She shared some anti elain sentiment with me because she’s “boring and doesn’t do anything”. That went in one ear and out the other with me tbh.

When I started acowar, and feyre returned to the night court, I saw how elain and azriel were interacting and I concluded that mor was the second LI of az bc of acomaf. I was not apart of the fandom online at this point, so I was genuinely in the dark about everything around these two. I was just reading and talking to my friend about what I read. I also want to add that I still liked L*cien at this point in the series (it changed in acofas, I became apathetic towards him rather quickly when I finished reading that whiny ass convo with feyre…..I don’t play when it comes to her) but wasn’t sold on eluce because they had like one interaction and it wasn’t a great intro to a ship.

However this first meeting in acomaf….. :)

‘Can you truly fly?’ He set down his fork, blinking. I might have even called him self-conscious. He said, ‘Yes. Cassian and I hail from a race of faeries called Illyrians. We’re born hearing the song of the wind.’ ‘That’s very beautiful,’

“Rhys chuckled, Cassian’s wrath slipping enough that he grinned, and Elain, noticing Azriel’s ease as proof that things weren’t indeed about to go badly, offered one of her own as well.”

Well imagine my surprise when I finished acowar and it turns out mor (the person az has crushed on for 500 years) comes out to feyre before the book ends and she explains that she can never love az the way he loves her. After three books, and everything that happens in acowar it was clear to me that elain and azriel were being set up as each others love interests, despite the mating bond with l*cien.

After Acofas I was officially on the elriel train. I mean…

“Azriel strode to the lone window at the end of the room and peered into the garden below.”

“Azriel emerged from the sitting room, a glass of wine in hand and wings tucked back to reveal his fine, yet simple black jacket and pants. I felt, more than saw, my sister go still as he approached. Her throat bobbed.”

“But Azriel only took Elain’s heavy dish of potatoes from her hands, his voice soft as night as he said, ‘Sit. I’ll take care of it.’ Elain’s hands remained in midair, as if the ghost of the dish remained between them. With a blink, she lowered them, and noticed her apron. ‘I—I’ll be right back,’ she murmured, and hurried down the hall before I could explain that no one cared if she showed up to dinner covered in flour and that she should just sit.”

“Elain swept in, apron gone and hair rebraided. ‘Please don’t wait on my account,’ she said, taking the seat at the head of the table.”

“He [Azriel] was the portrait of relaxed, an arm braced against the carved mantel, his wings tucked in loosely, a faint grin on his face and a glass of wine in his hand. He slid his hazel eyes toward my sister without him moving an inch.”

“Azriel and Elain remained in the sitting room, my sister showing him the plans she’d sketched to expand the garden in the back of the town house, using the seeds and tools my family had given her tonight. Whether he cared about such things, I had no idea.”

(Damn the more I read elriel’s acofas moments the more I can’t help but conclude that they just hate/don’t understand introverts 😭)

Before I started SF, I decided to look at the online fandom and bitch……my jaw hit the floor with all the elain/elriel hate I saw on TT. And everyone was talking about a newer character in SF, and I was seeing the glee fan art and was like oh shit ok maybe elriel isn’t endgame.

Fast forward to SF……

‘What happened to Elain?’

“Nesta saw the blow land, like a physical impact, in Elain’s face, her posture. No one spoke, though shadows gathered in the corners of the room, like snakes preparing to strike. Elain’s eyes brightened with pain.”

……and I’m thinking ok, az obviously likes her. Then comes az’s BC. When I finished the elriel portion of the BC I was actually crying bc I was like oh fuck I really love these two….I knew it was over for me, and I was freaked out bc I thought I was going to get got with this “new ship” involving az. Plus I was thinking about elain being left alone in the dark without any explanation and feeling like an idiot for finally showing her true feelings towards him😭. It was like 3AM when I read it so I was hyper emotional lol. But then I read the rest of the BC and was still confused because I didn’t see any romantic subtext with g/wyn. I read it and saw a hurt male who couldn’t stand what he had done to elain the night before, was pissed at his brother for stopping it and making him feel bad when he was finally willing to voice what he’s been feeling for the past year or so and hating that he was shut down because we know he never voices his emotions, and couldn’t bear keeping a gift he picked out specifically for her. A necklace…..for solstice……Then I finished SF as a whole, and still, was confused as to why glee is a ship. Nearly all of their conversations were centered around training, and Sarah didn’t use any descriptors in their encounters that elude to any romance or mutual interest. (Btw I have a whole take on rhys’ part in that BC and I think a lot of ppl are dense and don’t understand what he was going through in that book but I can save that for another time)

Cassian and Feyre have more chemistry than those too lol.

I then talked to my friend about the these ships (elriel, eluce, and glee) ((i didn’t talk about eluce much in this post but that’s a lifeless ship too. I mean…..she can’t stand that red head anyway soooo)), and I said “I’m an elriel through and through. Idc that eluce are claimed to be mates you can tell she does not like him. also glee makes no sense to me.” Not verbatim but you get the point. My friend is very sensible so by the end of our convo, she told me that she’ll accept whatever way Sarah goes and that she’ll give elain a chance when her book comes out.

But isn’t that what all of this shit is about in the end: unjustified dislike/distain/hate for elain? That’s certainly how is appears to me. You cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that you love elain if you ship her with a male whom she has expressed, on multiple occasions, zero interest in AND becomes a shell of herself when he’s around because she just doesn’t want to interact with him. (I want to reiterate that I don’t hate L, I don’t think he’s awful or anything. elain just doesn’t want to know him. And that’s her right.) The glees don’t like her bc she doesn’t fit their stereotype for what they want in an FMC and therefore, for azriel. Which is why they have been chirping that the next book will be azriel’s. Not elain’s….WHAT??? You sound fucking crazy. The eluces (even though they claim they like her) dislike her so much that they go on and on about how she needs to grovel and apologize to the male they like because HE deserves to be happy……the same male who she associates with one of the most traumatic days of her life. Who also has not apologized to her for the part he played in that day, but I digress.

I say all that to point out that Glee specifically is in the crack ship category. No canonical evidence in the text can be used to claim they are ‘mates’ or endgame or anything more than acquaintances. And that’s fine, but don’t act as though they’re to be taken seriously as a canon ship when there’s no evidence to support it. Don’t boldly claim that azriel “has two love interests” when he literally doesn’t. He can’t sleep because of elain. He can’t stop thinking about her. He’s short with his family and others around him the days and weeks following solstice. His shadows threaten to strike nesta when she hurts elain and causes her pain. He doesn’t assign his spies to watch L*cien in acofas because he doesn’t want to know if he’s trying to court elain. He goes full lethal when he hears she may have been hurt. He follows the sound of her laugh to see what caused it. He goes on a suicide mission to save her. They communicate through looks alone when their family is around. Have you read an SJM book before? This is how she sets up her relationships. Like, holy fuck.

You cannot claim elriel is a crack ship because they have had background build up that both FMCs in their respective books have noticed and commented on. Cassian has noticed it too DESPITE not being hyper aware of what’s going on with az in SF. (referencing the scene in SF where elain tells everyone at family dinner about nesta’s love for dancing and the ball story from when they were human).

This ship war shit is fucking crazy because really this should only be between elriel nation and the eluces. Anyway, I’m over dealing with the fever dream brigade and their hallucinations. They’re going to come crashing down like Icarus when the elriel bible release day arrives and all our suffering will finally come to an end.

Then after that I’ll need to defeat the tamlin redemption arch threats, bc that is not a claim, that’s a fuckin threat and I won’t stand for it. But let’s tackle one problem at a time.

Pink: side notes/thoughts that give more context to my points

Blue italics: convos I’ve had being referenced

Purple: elriel moments <3

#this post is really just for elriel nation and my moots #crack ships should stay as such #because they are a crack ship #I refuse to use their full names ever tbh #pro elriel #elriel #the side characters will never be her main focus #she just cares about the ic #I hope there aren’t any typos lol

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lunar-years · 1 year

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Okay. Let's talk Jamie and Roy getting beers and being idiots.

I know we are all still processing that whirlwind of a finale. I'm understanding that a lot of people hate the Roy & Jamie scene because it is 1) backslide-y (true) 2) they treat Keeley like a prize to be won (true) and 3) it's OOC (I actually disagree with this one, but I can understand why it's complicated). I want to start off by saying I completely see where this opinion is coming from and I respect everyone who just hates the scene because it shows normally kind characters being very unkind to each other etc. This is less me arguing against that as it is me trying to articulate (at great length, sorry) why it not only worked for me, but I genuinely liked it.

I like to think I strike a balance between loving everything the show has done and hating overwhelmingly on a show I claim to enjoy, but sure, you could definitely argue that I'm just giving my favorite characters the benefit of the doubt, or making excuses for them, because they're my favorite characters. I'll admit I'm historically very forgiving of all the main characters' many fuck-ups on Ted Lasso, but that's because I think the show works best when it emphasizes how kindness, forgiveness, friendship and love can still operate between imperfect, flawed people. I like seeing them make realistic mistakes much more than I like everyone handling everything perfectly, I'll bite.

So, back to Jamie and Roy. I enjoyed their finale plot because despite them making a world of mistakes, the regression felt very, very human. I don't agree at all with the take that this somehow erased all the progress they've made this season or the friendship the show has lovingly crafted between them. In fact, I think this actively reiterated it! (Note: I am operating with my ot3 goggles on at all times, so I'm going to write this with that at least partially in mind, but I think the gist of it works even if you ignore the bits that get a little shippy.)

For both Jamie and Roy, Keeley and their love for her is a major beacon guiding them. I think that is the crisp, clear thing in both of their heads this episode: Keeley is the love of my life. And they both believe that wholeheartedly, and they both want to be with her. (and it's goofy to pretend this came out of nowhere for Jamie/since when is Jamie still in love with her/etc. because he literally told her and us this last season and nothing that has happened since has indicated otherwise, btw.) But there's also something else now, which is their relationship with each other, battling with their Keeley thoughts. It's like, in Roy's head, for instance, I imagine there are two wolves: on the one hand he loves Keeley, and wants to be with her, and plans to win back her heart. On the other hand, there's his love and care for Jamie Tartt, which is much less defined and inarticulate and maybe still a little repressed, but just as overpowering. His love for Keeley feels so simple and clear in comparison, while his love for Jamie is something complicated and unsure, and in this episode, he's leaning hard into the first to avoid unpacking the second.

So Roy starts off strong. He sees Jamie with Keeley in the hallway and he doesn't flip out!! Instead, he approaches Jamie calmly, and invites him out for beers. Think about how different this is from his reaction to Jamie's love confession to Keeley in season 2. This is Roy's growth in action, and it's a resounding sign of just how important Jamie is to Roy now. Even when he is feeling jealous of the woman he loves potentially leaving him behind for a man he loves (a completely natural reaction, let's be so real, if not a "good" one), he also knows that for as much as he wants to be with Keeley, he doesn't want to lose his friendship with Jamie.

As for Jamie, I know some people took his reaction and subsequent response to Nate's question as like, shock at the realization that he and Roy are actually friends now, which I agree is something that had to have come earlier in the timeline (what was Mom City if not that) and would seem very out of place at this point. What I saw it as instead was Jamie's brain more just. sort of short-circuiting? Because: holy shit isn't this the best day ever? First Keeley agreed to go to Brazil with me and now Roy is asking me on a date for beers? this is so sound. This invite is out of place behavior from Roy even within the parameters of their friendship, because they still have a match to win and Roy has banned Jamie from beers as part of his training and despite them being close now I find it hard to believe that Roy often comes up to him right there in dressing room to ask him to grab a beer with no pretense.

Therefore, they're already walking into that bar in completely different head-spaces. Jamie isn't planning to discuss Keeley, and for Roy that is his major intention behind the evening. Jamie is nervous and downing his beer, and Roy is internally panicking, I'm imagining, over when and how to bring Keeley up. I think Roy is thinking: Well, I don't intend to stop pursuing Keeley, I genuinely don't want Jamie's feelings to be hurt when I get back together with her (and yes, it is a huge presumption for him to assume Keeley's going to eventually take him back. But I think it's also an understandable one), so I've got to tell Jamie I care about him, and that I'm going to keep going after Keeley, and he needs to be okay with that so that this won't get in the way of our friendship, which I also desperately need and am unwilling to give up. In his mind, Jamie is of course going to accept all of this, because Roy and Keeley are soulmates, which Jamie will clearly recognize deep down because it is so obvious and right and anyway, Jamie always does what Roy tells him to do (again, this is all misguided thinking. But we can see how Roy's anxious little brain that's bad at processing feelings and holding space for emotions could get himself here, can't we?).

So again, we start off strong with Roy saying he's proud of Jamie and them both thanking one another. But then Roy's blurting out nonsense about how Jamie just needs to pull himself out of the running and just let Roy be with Keeley. Which is obviously not on. And Jamie responds, simply, with No. I'd argue this is also a huge step for Jamie. Jamie really doesn't tell Roy no anymore, he doesn't tell anyone no. Jamie has spent so much of his time since coming back to Richmond working to be the person everyone around him wants and expects him to be. This is him fighting for something he wants for once, doing what is best for him. It was a fabulous progression to see. In the moment, boy does it work Roy up, because why is Jamie not agreeing with me, Jamie always agrees with me? but obviously at this point, Jamie is in the right. His relationship with Keeley was no less meaningful than Roy's just because Roy says it was, Roy doesn't have any claim on her, and there's no real reason Jamie should not try and shoot his shot with Keeley if Roy is going to do the same.

Here's where things start to spiral. Established flaws we know about Roy: he's competitive. He's bad at voicing his feelings productively. And he is territorial about the people he loves, a category that safely includes both Jamie and Keeley at this point in time, for better and sometimes worse. Yes, his next actions are grossly possessive over Keeley, yes Roy has made a lot of effort over the past year to do and be better than that, to break free of that cycle. But look, it's not a linear process. He's going to still mess up, and he does here. In fact he's downright mean, weaponizing Keeley against Jamie and throwing having sex with Keeley a month ago into Jamie's face, bragging about it, boasting. Same old cycle, same old patterns of ego-driven, prideful mistakes.

Which promptly prompts Jamie to also fuck up by bringing up the leak. It's a concentrated response intended to get a suitable rise out of Roy, because Roy has really, genuinely hurt him here, and Jamie knows bringing up that video is the one thing that will hurt Roy just as much in turn. It's not the right thing to do, obviously, but again, it's such a human thing to do. Hurt the person who's hurt you right back, even if you're hurting someone else (Keeley) by extension. Mind you, Jamie came here expecting a hangout (/date) with Roy over a rare beer, and instead he got Roy being a complete asshole and lecturing nonsense at him out of seemingly nowhere. He reacts to this change-up, well, not greatly. There is something so messy and emotionally complicated happening here and it hinges on how very much Jamie and Roy care about each other, not negates it.

Keeley, queen that she is, rejects them both out of hand and kicks them out not the curb immediately because they're both being complete idiots, acting like they're so gracious in giving her the honor and privilege of choosing between them. Not to mention they've clearly got something going on between them they haven't worked through and that sure as shit isn't her problem, is it? Keeley (presumably, and I wish we had seen this) calls them out their shit and tosses them right back out the door.

Which leaves Jamie and Roy to lament how they've let their egos get away from them, they've been idiots (which they acknowledge immediately) and decide that now they should go for kebabs, presumably to actually hangout this time, not to interrupt themselves with inflated talk about who "deserves" Keeley more. They both screwed up, they acknowledge it, and all they can do is try again tomorrow, and in the meantime, go on that kebab date.

I guess....I can just see where both of them are coming from? it's not mature behavior, obviously, it's maybe not what we would have liked to have seen from them in the finale episode of the show. But it was regression that I didn't feel impeded their overall progress. Roy in particular was being a complete dick about it, but that's why the very next morning he's finally knocking on the Diamond Dogs' door. And honestly, that conversation was heartbreaking. When Roy admitted he'd expected, after a year of putting in the work, to be a whole new person...god. This is a man who still completely hates himself, to the point where he can't quite grasp that he can be better where he's at now, that he doesn't have to transform magically into someone new in order to do right by himself and others. And so he has to consciously determine, once again, to do better, be better.

The message is: change isn't linear, you're going to fuck-up, and fall back into old patterns. What matters is trying every day to do better together, and be better for one another, than you were the day before. That is the meeting point all three sides of the royjamiekeeley triangle were heading towards by the end of the episode.

So yes, it was rushed, because no one gets much screen time in a finale (and the overarching issue with this season anyway is god awful pacing. The last three episodes could've easily been the second half of the season, while the first half of the season was stretched out and largely extraneous). And yes, I would've liked a more thoughtful follow-up conversation between Roy and Keeley or all three of them. My biggest issue was that we didn't get to hear Keeley's voice hardly at all. I would at the very least have liked to have seen her setting them straight at her kitchen table, because turning both of them down signifies very important growth in her, too, and I would've liked exploring that more explicitly. So it wasn't perfect. But I still liked it, I really did.

#ted lasso #ted lasso meta #ted lasso spoilers #roy kent #jamie tartt #royjamie #royjamiekeeley

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skrrtscree · 5 months

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P3M MAKOTO YUKI MISCONCEPTIONS

To be honest, it kind of annoys me when people watch the persona 3 movies and come away with it with the wrong idea of what Makotos character is in them. I don't mean the people who don't like the movies or their portrayal of him. It's fine if you don't, btw. Media is subjective, and different people will take away different things from the same thing, but I feel like some people end up completely missing the mark and mischaractizing that version of him.

For all the odd choices the p3 movies make, I'm adamant that his character and his arc is the best part about them, so it kind of urks me when i see tharpeople take away from it is that 'he's emotionless and devoid of personality' or 'a complete asshole who doesn't care about anything' both of which is untrue in all the films.

CW: blood in one of the images (the car accident scene, it just shows the hand but still)

First of all, the whole him being 'rude and uncaring' thing; To be honest, nothing he says strikes me as rude, it all comes off as blunt and not fitting the situation (him asking if they can leave during the hospital scene, and his answer seemingly having no sympathy when they talk to Natsuki). Of course to those who don't know him that well, he comes off as cold especially since his facial expression or tone barely change.

And the uncaring bit continues to get debunked through every film. Even in the first film, where he's closed himself off and doesn't care about living. He awakens to his persona to protect Yukari, he helps Fuuka collect her stuff twice despite not knowing her and even listens to her talk about Natsuki, he summons a different persona and throws himself at the Priestess to save Junpei. He goes against what he was told to do and goes straight into Tartarus because of the fear that his team will die if he doesn't.

It's made clear in the first movie that despite avoiding connections with people, he still can't let people die, deep down he cares about those around him getting hurt and wants to prevent that. It seems to heavily be rooted by his PTSD of the accident, him getting flashbacks to it in both the second and third full moon at the thought of someone dying. He's willing to throw himself in danger, not giving up even if he gets hurt or could exhaust himself, he has no care about his life, but he still cares about those around him.

The only claim I could see holding weight is the 'no personality' part but that's mainly because he spends half of the first film following orders from other people, but that itself can be seen as part of him, he doesn't have any direction or any care about his life so he follows what everyone tells and wants from him. He fights because he was told hed make a great asset to the team, he stays behind because him going would make Yukari mad, he has no reason not to listen or any argument to refute it, and this is dismantled near the end where he refuses to listen when they tell him to run because he can't let anyone die.

This is all I've gathered from the first movie still, I could carry on for all of them (and there is alot to talk about in each one in regards to his character) but I think I've made my point. Not only does they continue to prove those points incorrect, his character continues to evolve with the events around him.

I don't think there's a right or wrong way to write or portray makoto. The movies are not the be- all-all-end all of his characterization, but when you're talking about or writing that specific version of him, just don't end up writing him in a way that completely contradicts what the film shows.

#makoto yuki #minato arisato #persona 3 #p3 #persona 3 movie #persona 3 protagonist #p3 protagonist #persona #let me state agian this is just referring to his movie counterpart #not peoples personal depiction of him without the adaptations #i dont want ppl to get the wrong idea with this post im not condemning ppl who dont like the movies #i just fele rlly strongly abt ppl who misunderstand what the movies were going for #i rlly hope im not coming off as pretentious srry im just rlly autistic abt him💀💀#I'd like to hear what other ppl think or explain how they see it #maybe my perception of him is a bit different bc i see alot of my own traits in this version of him (austim and all)

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ryin-silverfish · 3 months

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disjointed LMK S5 reactions from a Chinese sub + dub watcher:

-the animation looks somewhat better than the trailer suggests.

-the worldbuilding, however, is...confusing.

-don't get me wrong, the emotional and character beats still hit right, but...the more I try to make sense of the worldbuilding, the less sense it makes.

(at least my fears about the Ten Kings conspiracy didn't come true, the 9 non-traitor kings are still pathetic pushovers that got [spoilered] by [spoilered].)

-welp, I will attempt to do so anyways. Spoilers under cut:

-In the beginning, someone or something made the Pillar of Creation to ward the world from Chaos.

-Which isn't how Chaos works in the Chinese cosmology, btw, but LMK is mostly its own vaguely JTTW-inspired fantasy setting at this point, so I'll try to keep the mythos-nitpicking to a minimum.

-Then some guy cracked the pillar (in the mythos, that would be Gonggong, but S5 does not mention a single name), and Nvwa had to make the Five-colored Stone + sacrifice herself to fix it.

-The "sacrifice" here is mostly her/her soul getting stuck inside the pillar for eternity, though, since MK still got to talk to her once he entered it.

-Each Five-colored Stone is attached to a Divine Guardian, who also serve as the stone's container, so to speak. They seem to remain outside of the pillar as anchors of reality.

-These guardians are the Divine Beasts of the Four Directions + JE himself, which is why Azure killing JE has such detrimental effects on reality.

-For every Five-colored Stone removed from its container, said container is destroyed, the cracks in reality widen, and the end of the "Cycle" draws near.

-Apart from the Five-colored Stone, Nvwa also created the Harbinger...at some point, and placed it inside SWK's stone, presumably after he has already hatched from it (based on Subodhi's words in S4 that MK is born from the same stone, after SWK).

-This Harbinger is supposed to sleep inside forever, awakening only at the end of the "Cycle" so that he can sacrifice himself to maintain the pillar, keep the encroaching Chaos at bay, and maybe give the world a soft reboot in the process or sth.

-Enter: the Nine-headed Demon, king of monologues and convoluted metaphors, a descendent of Xiangliu——another nine-headed serpentine monster from the Chinese mythos (said to be a subordinate of Gonggong in the Books of Mountains and Seas, who was slew by Yu the Great.)

-My attempt to make sense of his metaphor: basically, he used to live happily inside this Chaos-free bubble too (dark cave), alongside people who have never seen outside of it before, until he walked outside, dived into Chaos (sunlight), and went "Hey, it isn't all that bad! No, it's awesome!"

-Unsurprisingly, when he returned to the world inside the bubble and tried to convince his pals to take the Chaos bath together with him, he got rejected by everyone and turned edgy.

-He impersonated the Tenth King of the Underworld, King of the Turning Wheel, and proceeded to awaken the Harbinger prematurely.

-Supposedly, it's because he wanted the Harbinger to have experienced life for himself in the fullest, instead of waking up only to walk like a lamb to the slaughter.

-But his motivation is pretty confusing, tbh, and hearing Pigsy calling him out for never shutting the fuck up is funny as hell.

(Despite that? I kinda like his personality.)

-What MK did at the end of S5 is...well, the way I see it, he is still using the Five-Colored Stone as reality anchors, but instead of infusing their powers into a single mega-strong container, able to withstand the massive strain, every living being become a container, holding reality in place through quantity rather than quality.

-However, the anti-Chaos barrier does seem to have weakened; before Nine-head escaped into the "Chaos Outside" once and for all like he always wanted, he said that MK had opened the "Pandora's Box", so to speak.

-My completely arbitary theory: the anti-Chaos barrier before is like a giant roof, held up by 5 pillars. Take out 1 pillar, and the whole thing is guaranteed to come crashing down, sooner or later.

-The new one is like a net, with each individual functioning as its individual threads. It can do its job——holding reality together, but also leaves a lot of little holes for the Chaos Outside to slip in and out.

#lego monkie kid #lmk season 5 #lmk s5 #lmk nuwa #lmk mk #lmk s5 spoilers #lmk spoilers #lmk nine-headed demon

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