#I had made her backstory ages ago

[malarkgirlypop]

Helloooo! How are ya doing?

I was just reading your newest chapter of the MEDIC! fic and now i'm wondering: how are things in the present?

I mean, Emily simply vanished to the past never to be seen again, what is happening with her friends? Colleagues, family? Someone would notice... idk, just got really really reaaaally curious about it xD

I hope you're having a wonderful time! Thanks for writing so many good stuff, you are lovely and i absolutely adore ur story! 💕💕💕💕

Hello!

Thank you so much for all your support and love, it really means the world to me! I am always so happy when I see you have commented on my post! You are so sweet and kind, it really makes my day to hear from you!

So about Emily I have actually done a little bit of a backstory on her, it might help?

Was born in Boston Massachusetts to her Mother Melissa Lane, her father was not in the picture. Raised in a loving home with her Mother and Grandmother Kimberly (Nanny Kim). Had a good childhood when she was little. Had friends and was surrounded by love. When she was 14 her Mother was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer. Melissa went through all of the treatment and the outcome was looking good, until she had another biopsy. The doctors found the cancer had actually metastasised and had spread throughout her body, she was only given a few more years to live. When she was 16 her Nanny Kim passed away. Her mother seemed to be doing fine, Emily had hope she would pull through. Unfortunately her mother started going downhill in her health as expected and died just after Emily graduated high-school. Emily after loosing both of her only family members, started to push everyone away. She isolated herself and in doing this lost all of her support system. She was lost but knew she needed to earn money, she was always so grateful for the nurses who cared for her mother, so she applied to university to sit her Bachelor of nursing. It was hard, and she still was alone, but she persisted. She was in her final semester when the story begins.

So like she had thought in the chapter when she was comforting Babe (part 10, I think), she had worried no one would notice that she had disappeared. I guess we don't know how the present is until she goes back, if she goes back that is.

She is an empathetic person, who would've had many friends if she had been able to handle her mother's death. Unfortunately she shut down, she didn't want to make connections again because she was scared she would loose them, like she lost her mother. She thought it best to not love, rather than love and get hurt. But I think she has realised that she missed having those connections with people and has really found a new family within Easy company.

I hope this helps, we are a bit far from the ending but I have it planned, don't you worry! But for now we will just have to guess.

[millervrse]

A SECOND CHANCE ! joel miller x reader

summary: Joel was sent by Marlene to come find you and bring you to Saint Mary’s. You are the only human aside from Ellie Williams who has been bitten and not turned: You are the only way that a cure can be created where no blood is shed. But to do that, you’ll have to warm up to the hardass that is Joel goddamn Miller.

pairing: joel miller x afab!reader

warnings, notes: EVENTUAL 18+ smut, so minors dni, occurs after the plot of the first tlou, but before joel gets ellie out of saint mary’s, some canon facts are changed for the sake of this story, ENEMIES TO LOVERS! reader has a heavily established backstory that is to be explored throughout the series, game references (tess, the fireflies, sarah, the general plot of the game, etc). implied age gap. reader’s just as tough as joel, if not worse! warnings will change and be updated as the series progresses.

word count: 2.8k+

LYN SPEAKING! alright, hey! i’m lyn, and i’ve had this idea in the back of my mind for close to a year now (yes, a year) and baby FINALLY finished the first installment of this series i plan to work on based on it. i sincerely hope this is well received! if you want to know when i update this series, please let me know, and i will kindly tag you. also, if you have any ideas as to where this story can go, my inbox is wide open! alright now, buckle up and enjoy!

PART I: IMMUNE

“If there’s no way for you to do this where Ellie lives,” Joel said, a dark gruffness to his voice as the words leave his lips. “Then it ain’t happenin’. I swear it.”

Joel Miller and Ellie Williams had been through hell and back to deliver her to the Fireflies. People had died along the way, close to the pair or not, and sacrifices had been made for the greater good. But now, as they stood at the end of the line, Joel realized that there was no greater good, and that they hadn’t been to hell.

Because this was it.

Joel stood defensively before Marlene, the woman who was the reason this was happening in the first place. The Fireflies wanted to make a cure for the virus that had taken their world by surprise twenty years ago. One that would cure the infected of their curse, to bring them back to the human beings that they once were. But to do that, Joel would have to make the biggest sacrifice of them all.

Losing Ellie.

He couldn’t bear to lose a second daughter, not when he had already given his all to have her. To keep her. Not when he had already lost Sarah in his arms all those years ago. No, no, no. Sarah had been unfairly shot, unfairly killed, and Joel was powerless to help her.

That wouldn’t be the case with Ellie.

He stood in front of an unconscious Ellie now, laid out over a bed in the hospital he had delivered her to. He had managed his way in here by narrowly avoiding Firefly personnel. But just as he was about to flee, Marlene and several soldiers behind her had him cornered every which way.

“Joel—“ Marlene did her best. But Joel didn’t want to hear it.

“No,” he barked, gun trained on the brunette. It didn’t matter if this ended in flames. It didn’t matter if he died. If he was doing it for Ellie, then he’d do it again and again, in this life and the next. “If there is no scenario where this little girl survives, it is not, happening.”

There’s a pause, a look of delay in Marlene’s eyes as she looks at Joel. She debated. Should she tell him? Should she reveal a secret she had been holding back since he had taken this assignment nearly a year ago?

This was no time to hang back.

“There’s one.”

That, was the moment in time when Joel Miller learned about you.

A girl, who had also been bitten, and not turned. A girl, whose history Marlene refused to delve too deeply into. A girl, who could be the cure to the cure, where nobody died. 

Where Ellie lived.

“Where do I find her?”

———————————————————————

That’s how he had gotten here.

A noise sounds from behind you as you're readying to go and hunt for food in your house in Vermont, alongside a brief patrol to make sure that no infected were lurking by. You’re quick to tense when the sound fills your ears, grabbing the crossbow that was on the counter near you, the one that you’d thankfully just loaded, and whipping around.

A man who looked much older than you stood in the doorframe. He was tall with tousled hair, a green, wrinkled shirt mirroring his gruff demeanor. Your gaze darkened at the sight. You hadn’t seen a human being in a millennia. Let alone one that you hated to admit, was handsome.

You didn’t let that deter you, however, raising your crossbow higher and aiming it at him.

"You've got five seconds to tell me what you're doing here,” your voice firmly rang out as you drew the bow. Thank God you’d always been a natural at aiming. “Or I'll put one between your eyes.”

The man put his hands up, though his face remained neutral as he stood in place, as if to show he wasn’t afraid of you. “Easy does it,” he rasped, his voice as gruff as he looked. “I’m not here to hurt’cha.”

“Then, leave,” you returned. “This doesn’t have to end in blood. And if you get any fucking closer, I promise you, it will.”

“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” the man said in jest, causing you to draw your arrow back more, a warning for him to watch his tone. A sigh escaped his lips as his shoulders tensed at the gesture, closing his eyes and opening them to meet yours. “Look. I was sent here to find you. Alright? I just need to talk.”

This wasn’t going to be easy for Joel, was it?

Your aim never wavered as you responded. Your first thought was what the fuck was he talking about, but the curse doesn’t make the cut as you answer. “Sent by who?”

A pause.

“Marlene.”

You tense.

“She said you’d know her.”

Oh, you fucking know her, alright. Who the fuck was this man and how the fuck did he know about you and Marlene? It’s impossible, you think. That was years ago. This man was lying.

Right?

“Marlene?” you scoffed, your voice shaking. “That’s bullshit. I haven’t spoken to Marlene in years, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be sending anyone to find me,” you return, the furrow already present in your eyebrows deepening, eyes drowning in suspicion. “Who are you, really?”

The man doesn’t move, instead keeping his arms raised like he’s some sort of peace offering. “The name’s Joel, Joel Miller, and I swear on my life that what I’m tellin’ you is true,” he said. When he took note of the apprehension in your expression, he lowered his voice, letting it relax into one that was meant to make you feel calm. “I’m not here to hurt you. Alright? Just let me explain.”

It didn’t help.

You wanted to shoot this man already, with every fiber of your being. Your trust issues were rattling like fireworks in your brain, telling you that he was a liar, that he was trying to get you vulnerable, catch you off guard. But against your better judgment, you nodded, hanging fire for him to go on.

"There's a, uh, little girl. Her name's Ellie. About a year ago, Marlene asked me and a friend o’mine to smuggle her out of Boston, where we were, in exchange for some guns. We agreed. But Marlene didn’t tell us why,” Joel began, sighing before going on. “Come to find out, little girl was infected, but the bite was three weeks old.”

A pause.

“She was immune.”

You tense again, like you had been over and over again since Joel had walked into your house. That word, that fucking word. That word that made your blood run cold. Made your head spin. Made horrid memories rush to the front of your brain. 

Immune.

You raised your eyebrows at Joel in disbelief of the three words that had just fled his lips. “That’s impossible,” you said. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” he returned a little too quickly. “I was thinkin’ the same way you are. Ready to kill her right there and then when I found out. Thought Marlene set us up, knew it was only a matter of time before she’d turn and catch us by surprise. But the little girl, Ellie, wasn’t lyin.”

You grimace. A fucking little girl. You didn’t even want to ask how old she was. 

Because if this was going where you thought it was, then your heart was going to ache a whole lot more.

“Our journey had its ups and downs. We had to reroute over and over again. Fireflies can be pretty damn hard to find these days. But we ended up finding out that most of the ones who were remaining, were in Utah, holed up in some medical center. Ready to make a cure.”

Joel was about to go on, keep explaining. But he didn’t have to.

You cut him off.

“I’ve heard this one before,” you laughed, but it wasn’t one of amusement, let alone humorous at all. It was one of disbelief, because how in the fuck had the universe spared you that day, just to bring it back to your feet? A scoff escapes your lips, and you sigh, pushing your tongue into your cheek before answering. “Saint Mary’s, isn’t it?”

Joel furrowed his eyebrows. “How’d-” he said in confusion, wondering if he had accidentally let it slip a few minutes ago in his hasty battle to keep an arrow out of his brain. “How’d you know?”

It’s your turn to be confused. If Marlene had really sent this man all this way to come find you, you figured she wouldn’t have spared him the details on the true nature of your connection, or lack thereof, to Marlene. “Are you kidding me? I’ve lived this,” you say, a bit of  malice behind your words as you raise your bow. “And if you think I’m going to go through that again, you better think fucking twice,” you warned.

Joel scoffed, undeterred by your threatened show of violence. He had seen scarier in his over twenty years in the apocalypse, and he was sure that if you wanted to shoot him, which you were more than capable of doing, you would have done it by now. "Little lady, I am not asking you too, alright? There's more to it."

Your expression doesn’t get any more welcoming, much to Joel’s annoyance. “Then you better get to talking, because I’m dying for an excuse to shoot you. Pun intended.”

Killing a bloater is easier than suppressing an eye roll at your words.

"Look, that girl and her bite, Marlene thinks that the head surgeon over at the Fireflies could fix up a cure. A cure for mankind. But she can’t undergo the surgery alone, not unless, unless—”

You finish for him.

“Not unless she dies.”

Joel nods, his feelings too grim to ask how you know that. He was sure that there’d be lots to uncover about you, that is, if you agreed to come back to Utah alongside him. “Right. And Marlene said, that if I found you, there’s a chance you could undergo the surgery with Ellie. And she’d survive.”

You take his words in, mulling them over in your head. The survivor in you was screaming to not let your feelings take hold. That no matter how desperate this man was for you to come with him, you would have to decline. But your conscious, the moral part of you that somehow persevered no matter how cruel this world had been to you, was bellowing. It wasn’t fair, what was happening to that little girl. It wasn’t fair that she would have to die to fix a world that was arguable beyond fixing.

But then again, what had happened to you was unfair too. And so was this unexpected arrival.

“You’re asking me to leave the comfort of my own home, travel across the damn country, go off with a man I don’t fucking know, all for a goddamn chance?” you asked. There was no violence behind your words this time. Just disbelief, incredulousness. “Who the fuck do you think I am?”

Joel never lowered his hands as he spoke. “Look, I know you’re uncertain, and I would be too. But this girl, Ellie, she—” he paused, doing his best to maintain his composure. “I just can’t lose her, okay? I can’t.”

Now your face relaxes, if only a little bit. You can see the raw and vulnerable look in Joel’s eyes, the gloss to his brown eyes that shines in the dim light of your house. 

“You’ve grown attached to this girl, haven’t you?”

Joel Miller was a tough man. Feelings weren’t in the cards for him. Not since Tess, not since Sarah. And for the love of God, if he could turn them off and never feel again, it’s likely that he would. So for now, he doesn’t tell you how much Ellie really means to him, returning to the cold approach he took on the world before he met her. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I have, not that that matters,” he dismisses. “Point is, lady, if I have to drag you out of here kickin' and screamin', I will. But I ain't leavin' without’cha."

You scoffed. "You don't even know my name."

Well, for some reason, you figured he didn’t. But just then, he said it, proving you wrong in seconds.

 “Ain’t it?”

Don’tfeeldon’tfeeldon’tfeel.

You and this man were more alike than you knew.

Rolling your eyes, you speak up once again, pushing your feelings down into the gutter where they belong. “Let me tell you this, Miller. I gave up the hope a long time ago that there was anyone else out there like me, and so did Marlene. Why in the hell should I believe you?" you ask.

Joel parts his lips to speak, but words don’t come out. You were right. He had given you no reason to believe him, to trust him, and especially not, like you’d said, to leave the comfort of your own home and join him on his quest to save mankind, to save Ellie, if she was actually fucking real.

There’s a brief pause before he answers. "I don't know how else I can convince you. I can't, to be honest. But Ellie, she needs you. I can't let her die."

You paused for a second, allowing his words to sink in. God, you were apprehensive, but he, he was adamant. And the look in his eyes was tearing your survivalist ideologies to the ground.

"Saint Mary’s ain't close,” you say.

Joel’s eyes light up. It’s not a yes, but it’s hope. "I know,” he says. “I've got a car."

"A car?" you asked in shock. What more did this man have up his sleeve? You hadn't seen a working car in years. They weren’t easy to come by, and even if they were, gas was a major aspect of why nobody had cars anymore. Marlene and the Fireflies used to always have them, but because it’d been so long since you’d last seen her or a Firefly in general, you couldn't actually remember the last time you'd driven one.

"Yeah, it's a means of gettin’ around, kind of like-" Joel began. Annoyedly, you cut him off.

Did you really look that young?

"I know what a car is,” you said in annoyance. “Haven't seen one in years. You really have one?"

Joel decided to ignore your offended response, though it was hard to suppress a smirk at just how offended you’d gotten. "Yeah, I do. I told you, I'm not lyin'. Not about the car, not about Marlene, and not about Ellie. I promise.”

Promise.

You had it engraved in your brain that the word promise was a synonym for lie. It was just a kinder, less harsh way of putting it. But regardless, they were bullshit. Promises weren’t real. This wasn’t real. Joel wasn’t real.

You want to pinch your arm to make sure. Then you realize you’ve never had dreams this vivid.

You hated your face for the way it relaxed. You hated the fact that you could hear the genuineness in his tone, the converse of lies in his gruff demeanor. You hated the way your crossbow unconsciously lowered.

And you were going to hate Joel Miller for sure.

“You try anything, Miller—” you bark.

Joel’s eyes light up once again, and he can’t help the small smile that takes the corners of his lips. "You’ll put one between my eyes, I know. And I won’t, I promise.” 

“So are you comin’ or what?”

"Not so fast," you said quickly, shaking your head. "Give me some time to pack, mull it over a little more. You owe me that."

Joel wanted to protest, just a little bit. But he refrained, nodded, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, ma’am.”

Your eyes remained watchful, fixed on Joel as you walked backwards to the top floor.

There, in your bedroom, you think over what just happened. Were you really going to do this? Were you really going to risk the life you had created, all for a chance? Who the fuck were you right now, and what had you done with the tough woman you had always been?

You were about to let your morals cloud your judgment, traveling far and wide to save a little girl you didn’t know, alongside a man you were sure you were going to hate. You were about to throw away all you’d become, all you’d ever wanted to be since what went down with the Fireflies all those years ago. With Marlene.

God fucking damnit.

What the fuck had you gotten yourself into?

if you made it to the end of this, i really hope you liked it! please consider leaving a reblog, as they help my work immensely <3 kisses!

[garfunklefield]

Could you do cult leader! geto I’m so feral for this like he doesn’t care about his followers but reader is just so pretty and he wants to make her his lover for the whole cult to see PLS IM FERAL N I LOVE YOUR WRITING <3

Red Ink

18+ viewer discretion is advised

fem!reader/cult leader!Suguru Geto Warnings: angst, pining, slowish burn not really, selling and technically kidnapping, the reader has a sad backstory KAY [implied physical abuse], age gap [Geto is 37 and reader is 24], forbidden romance, im gonna make the reader sassy dx, alternate AU where Geto is a cult leader but it's set in more of an ancient time YOULL SEE [kind of like my happy marriage], bathtub masturbation, bathtub sex, sexual tension, cumshot [breasts], masochist!Suguru Geto, hair pulling, Word count: 7221 DESC: Suguru Geto never thought about giving a monkey who couldn't wield jujutsu a chance ... until he met you.

Hiii!!! I just got sick so please be patient my posts might get spaced out for a bit until I recover but I really like this! I took a few [A LOT] creative liberties when writing :3

If you want a guarantee I will write and post your request in a timely fashion head over to my Ko-Fi!

Every morning it was the same routine. Suguru would wake up at 7:45 AM every morning to an empty bed, with the lights a dull orange color. They hung from the room's corners and lit up just enough to let him peer around. He slowly forced himself off the squeaky mattress, becoming accustomed to the sensation of the cold wood against his bare feet. A breath of air flowed through his nose as his hand lazily trailed through his robes, hanging in his large closet. There were so many to choose from, all almost the same. Although, some details were different. Blue trim vs yellow, or a red pattern vs green. In all honesty, he never cared much about his appearance. As long as he wouldn’t have to leave, he didn’t mind his daughters or servants doing the shopping for him. Maybe that’s why the leader's hair was too long to manage, so he would lazily put half of it up in a semi-orderly bun. 

All of these people, and Suguru Geto was completely and utterly alone. He had no one who understood why he decided to become the leader of the Star Religious group so young, almost twenty years ago, at the ripe age of seventeen. All of his innocence was lost at such an age that he could feel a bitter taste rising on the back of his tongue. Bile. The taste of regret. Sometimes he looked out the window to some of the convent’s children playing in the courtyard, and he wished he had found a partner to aid him on his journey. No one ever caught his eye, no one ever piqued his interest. No one like … 

Suguru shook his head and blinked a few times, sending himself out of an impending spiral and instead leaving it for another day. He looked over to his robes, where his hand clung to his signature robe, yellow trim with a green pattern sewn to the front. There was something so comforting about this robe. Maybe because it was the first one ever made for him by his monkey servants, the only monkeys he’d ever let near his person without choosing to disinfect himself afterward. They knew their place in society and acted accordingly. The only monkeys he could tolerate. 

Another sound took him out of his thoughts, a knock on the door. He turned his head, “Come in,” was all he had to rasp. His voice was naturally soft, as he didn’t typically raise it past a whisper to most. Only when Suguru was truly enraged would he begin to scream and yell at those useless monkeys… but that was becoming rare now.

A tuft of pink hair appeared from the door as it opened, showing his secretary Manami. She strolled in as if she owned the room, opting to close the door with a push to her hip. The male watched her with an indifferent gaze as she tapped the rickety clipboard in her hand, “I found you a personal servant.”

“Personal servant? Why would I need that? I’m capable of dressing myself, you know,” as Suguru spoke he began to pull at his sheer robe, the one he slept in. His secretary looked up to the ceiling, avoiding any and all contact with his body as she possibly could. 

She tapped a pen along the rim of the clipboard as she continued, “Someone to make the bed and cut your hair. It’s getting too long, sir.” Manami swiftly raised her hand and pointed to him with the pen, still avoiding his body with her eyes up. He raised an eyebrow at her, shrugging off the robe and setting it neatly on his bed. His jaw flexed as he clenched it, in thought. Would the leader of the Star Religious group need a personal maid to do every little thing he needed? I mean, it sounded appealing to have a monkey fetch him any useless thing he requested. Watching them spread themselves thin trying to appease him. His lips pulled together in a silent smile at that thought.

“What’s this servant's credentials?” Suguru pulled his robe off the hanger and blew on it lightly, ridding it of the dust it had collected throughout the week it had been since he wore it. 

“Well she’s about 24, so past any good age to get married off,” she listed off, looking down at her clipboard as she spoke, “She’s worked in several different houses as a housekeeper and nanny, but she’s been let go for differing reasons.”

Geto slid on his robe and adjusted it until it fell across his muscular body, “Fired? Was she unruly or perhaps a pain in the ass?” A humorous tone took to his voice and Manami laughed in response, handing him the clipboard so he could see for himself. In a subtle sprawl, it wrote your name. It was interesting as he perused down the paper, stopping at the section where it detailed how you were let go: “Fired for talking back” and “Inappropriate conduct” happened to be recurring on the list, making the leader quirk an eyebrow. The last time he had anyone with some sense of personality was ages ago, as I previously stated my guy doesn’t raise his voice often. “What does she look like?” He asked, handing the clipboard back to the woman.

“I dunno. Why? Finally over your ex, Sugruuuuuuu?” Manami teased, a grin appearing on her face. However, it quickly disappeared as soon as he shot her a warning glare. Never bring up that name. Even edging around the subject, do not bring it up. Every servant and every secretary knew the leader’s past was a delicate subject. Never bring it up. 

She cleared her throat and continued, “Her parents are the ones using her for labor money. We can undercharge them for an old hag and get full labor! ‘Course, she’d have to live here… but I can situate that,” she waved a hand in the air to dismiss that train of thought, “I think it’ll be good for you, sir. Maybe you can get some release.”

She did it that time. Suguru’s eyes shot up to hers and gave her a look that would have sent anyone running. Manami apologized instantly, bowing her head. Everyone also knew of their Emperor’s lack of sexual lovers, and his constant sexual frustrations. He had never been able to fully relieve himself, for well over twelve years. There was a pent-up hunger burning inside him and no one could satiate it no matter how much he tried.

“Hire her. I wish to get acquainted with my new personal servant.”

Your personality had always bounced back even in the face of adversity, maybe that’s why every household you’ve ever worked for had fired you. Life wasn’t easy for someone like you, in a family who didn’t prioritize you. All they wanted were sons and they were blessed with a daughter who couldn’t even marry, you were a disgrace. So they decided they would use you for money if they could, milking you for every cent you were worth. However, you couldn’t keep a job. 

You started well-behaved and quiet, but soon the snippy comments would start. Then soon, you’d be making a scene, disrespectfully calling out your bosses for their treatment in a very public manner. Then they’d fire you instantly, making your family angry once more. It was a vicious cycle they couldn’t snap you from. You were never going to change until your father had announced you had been sold. 

The Star Religious group had agreed to your purchase, giving your family a sum of money they hadn’t seen in their entire lifetime. It was enough for them to skip town and leave you in your own abandoned house. Rough. Of course, that money wouldn’t hold them afloat forever, but they didn’t realize it at the time. All you could think about was the fact you had been abandoned by the people you had been blessed to, the people who said they loved you. 

You were never going to change until that day.

There was no use in fighting, because what happened after this? You’d have no one to back you up or a roof to sleep under. This time… you weren’t going to fuck it up. A carriage arrived at your vacant lot a day after your parents announced you were sold, leaving you alone with your thoughts. In a side bag were two kimonos, a compact, and a hair clip. You opened your rickety front door and peered over at the carriage with wide eyes. Normally a comment would fly out of your mouth, but you couldn’t even will yourself to speak. You didn’t have the will or energy to do anything more than sit and stare like a rock before a woman came out of it. 

She was beautiful, with short pink hair and a purple dress. She shouted your name and clasped her hands together in front of her stomach, “Oh he’s going to like you very well. Sir Geto has a thing for submissive women.” 

You couldn’t even bring yourself to laugh in her face and contradict her statement, nodding lifelessly, “I am grateful for this opportunity, Ms.” 

“Ms. Manami Suda to you!” She grinned, stepping aside to let you walk inside the carriage. It was a dull red on the outside and the same interior-wise, nothing special. You didn’t note the patterns on the inner walls or how the cushion felt. In all honesty, you didn’t care. Even though it was mid-day, you found yourself fantasizing about sleeping in a cot that wasn’t made of pure shit material, maybe even with a pillow. 

The carriage ride was quiet, aside from the occasional comment from Manami about how you didn’t have the monkey smell. Oh, that’s right… they were Jujutsu Sorcerers. You or anyone in your family for that matter were not blessed with the sorcerer gene, so you truly didn’t understand what it meant. Instead of speaking you nodded politely and let a fake small smile grace your lips, as if you were actually listening to her. The countryside was beautiful, the ride taking you deep into the middle of nowhere. Then you saw it, large buildings all coupled together to create a convent. They were tan with brown bamboo roofs, slanted to a point on the top. Incredibly gorgeous. You had always fantasized about building your own buildings one day, admiring from afar. But you weren’t built for that lifestyle. 

It was only ever going to be a fantasy for you it seemed.

The two of you entered the convent in silence, taking in the architecture. It was gorgeous, something you had seen from far away but never dared to venture to up close. You resisted so many urges to run your hand along the columns of the outdoor hallways that lined the outdoor courtyard in the center, where many of the children played. They all looked happy and free, something you found yourself envying.

“Lord Geto is right this way,” Manami spoke eagerly, walking ahead of you and motioning around, “Get used to it kid, you’ll be spending a lot of time here,” she then glanced back at you, a smile branding her lips, “Don’t get smart.” To her, she didn’t think that you were the same girl with the smart mouth that had been let go so many times. In some ways, you weren’t the same. You were so completely and utterly done with your life you couldn’t bring yourself to even have an ounce of personality you once did.

The rest of the walk was quiet before she turned on her heels to the right and motioned to a large door. It was red, with golden trim around the edges. You couldn’t see inside but you knew exactly what lay behind those doors. Manami took your bag from you politely and knocked a few times on the door, hearing some shuffling and seeing them open. Two guards opened the door, their faces stone-cold and stoic. They were almost scary looking, but nothing prepared you for the man who was behind them. He sat on a mound of pillows, head resting in his palm, and his eyes glued to you. In every sense of the word he was gorgeous, you had never seen anyone that beautiful. And he could say the same about you.

Suguru’s eyes widened just a tad as he took in your person. You were beautiful, looking hand-carved from a cloud by the finest god, wine drunk on nothing but your beauty alone. How could this be? No non-sorcerer should have ever made him stare for longer than a few seconds. Manami noticed, hell, everyone but you noticed. He blinked once, then twice, pulling him out of the trace you had put over him, a delicate smile gracing his lips. He spoke your name and used his free hand to beckon you over.

You did as you were told, walking into the room silently. But you hadn’t seen the rug placed before you or the corner of that small table. You found yourself hitting the side of the table with your right ankle, then tripping forward, completely slipping due to the rug. It was within seconds you were face down to the ground, letting out an astonished gasp. That was it. You had done it. You had tripped in front of the most notorious non-sorcerer-hating Sorcerer in the entire country. You had made a complete and utter fool of yourself and that was going to be the end of your life. A sad and embarrassed blush filled your cheeks and hollowed out your temples, waiting for your punishment. 

“I’m… so very sorry,” you managed to mumble, lifting your head from your crouched position. You didn’t hear Suguru lean forward, changing his position to kneel in front of you, and you didn’t expect him to be leaning over you so closely. His face looked down at you with a different kind of softness, raven strands of hair falling over his ears.

“Nonsense. It happens to the best of us… sit up,” he purred, whispering a magical tune in your ear. In any other person, this caring persona would have elicited a feeling of trust and safety. But you found this to be resulting in a different kind of reaction. Suguru’s brow furrowed ever so slightly when you sat up, moving to sit on your knees in front of him, and stared at him with … fuck me eyes?? No one had ever lusted after him so obviously and that quickly too! I mean he was Suguru fucking Geto, for crying out loud- he was supposed to be scary, not sexy! Well… maybe both. 

He blinked slowly to reset his thoughts, letting a gentle hand swipe past her cheek and softly hold her chin. Geto spoke your name lowly as he tilted your head to one side, taking in your features. It was nothing more than a pass over to see you fully, but you had completely soaked your underwear. Yeah, that’s right, you weren’t scared of him you were aroused. It felt even more embarrassing because it was incredibly obvious your fear-torn stare had turned into something more objectifiying. 

You were just picturing him leaning in and whispering sweet nothings as his voice broke your thoughts, “Your name is very pretty.” His voice brushed against your ears and once he retracted his hand back, a small frown parted your lips. His touch was warm and soft, contrasting the devilish stare Suguru typically wore. You wanted to relish in it for a few more moments, but you couldn’t live in a fantasy, now could you?

“Thank you, sir,” you replied, looking down to your lap. You just felt your wetness create an uncomfortable pool in your underwear, making it hard not to squirm. Especially with those naturally beautiful eyes staring at you with a hidden curiosity. 

Aside from the obvious lust radiating off of your person, you were a hard individual to read. Geto was getting mixed signal after mixed signal from your face he decided to sigh and ignore whatever he was feeling at that moment, opting to go over the business side of things. “You will become my personal servant, focussing on cooking, cleaning, and fulfilling my everyday needs. Understood?”

You nodded as he continued, “I would let Manami show you to your room… but it appears she’s wandered off,” he motioned to the slightly open door behind you, “I don’t mind showing you.” With that, the emperor stood up and cleared his throat, brushing his big hands against his robe. You watched with wide eyes as it flowed around him, making him appear more majestic than he actually was. You found yourself standing up and following your new boss, opting not to speak or do anything to draw more attention to yourself. 

As the two of you walked, the columns lining the walls took hold of your mind. The patterns in the wallpaper were one thing in itself, but the structure of the clearly customized columns made your heart flutter. It was gorgeous. Dragon scales dipped into the wall before coming out, in the middle of every door that lined the long indoor hallway. Your feet slowed to a stop, staring at the gold dragon trim. Your hand inched toward it slowly, just one touch to see the type of material. Suguru hadn’t noticed you wandered off until he turned and in the corner of his eye, he saw you stroke the wall. At first, he wanted to do the dick thing and clear his throat, embarrassing you. But something stopped him. You were as pretty as that dragon, the gold reflecting off your skin and making you practically glow in the dim light. You were gorgeous. Stunning even. It was strange, he had never felt himself this attracted to anyone in his life. Aside from- never mind. 

The leader slowly walked back, making his way behind you. You were tolerable to be around, tolerable for a monkey. That was something he had to remind himself about. You were still a non-sorcerer. You were still inferior to him in every sense of the word. Whatever feelings were creeping into his chest and making his heart sing had to get shut away in that instant, so he did the dick move and cleared his throat. 

Your hand was on one of the scales and you froze, turning your head with the speed of light to meet his gaze. “Lord… Please forgive me,” you blurted out, turning on your heel and pressing both hands to your chest, “I’m very sorry. I should never have gotten distracted. I’m sorry,” you squeaked, shutting your eyes tight. You knew what was bound to come… either a physical punishment or your letter of unemployment. Before Suguru could even respond, you lifted your head and tilted it to the side, motioning to your cheek. 

His eyebrow quirked up. He had never seen a servant ask for a punishment for their own wrongdoings, especially when it wasn’t that severe. A strange pang hit his chest, causing a weight to form across his own heart. What had happened in your sad life that made you so prone to letting people do things like that to you? This wasn’t the woman he was expecting. When you walked in, terrified and shy, then … horny, he thought he had gotten the wrong girl. Something must have happened for you to change like that. Maybe your obvious attraction was a hint of the personality you were hiding. Then Suguru had another question: why were you hiding your personality? The first duh answer was so you wouldn’t get fired right away, right? But he felt like there was something more. 

Something he shouldn’t have cared about. You were a non-sorcerer, a monkey! It was forbidden on all accords. 

Suguru blinked a few times, taking himself out of his weird spiral of thoughts to look at your face, contorted with worry, “It’s … alright. I wasn’t aware you liked architecture,” he motioned to the dragon’s golden bodice on the wall, “That was custom made from…” You let your boss explain how the dragon was made and imported, listening to every word. You didn’t want to speak and ruin your only chance at a new life. This was the one and only time you had ever held your breath, stopping any words from coming out. 

After a moment, the male paused and looked over you once more. Something was turning over inside his head and he so desperately wanted an answer. What was going on inside your head and what had deflated your personality so? What had made you turn yourself into a shell of the person he knew was still in there? …And why was he longing to see this? But he said nothing. The moment had passed and as quickly as you wandered off, you were shown to your room. If Geto had let himself unravel any further he would have requested her to accept a binding vow of pure honesty, with the promise of his protection. Why? Why was she pulling at his mind and making him lose it?

That night, he set himself a bath. The water splashed and made small waves as he dipped his feet into it, before submerging his large body. There was something so very calming about a bath to clear his mind… but he couldn’t rid it of you. Of your face, of your monkey smell, or your body. Even though the kimono you were wearing was a size too big, he still made sure to look you over subtly. He took in your large curves and bit his lip, thinking about them as he sat by himself. He was completely and utterly alone, in spirit and in a literal sense. Of course, he’d get a morning erection every now and then, but it had been a long time since something had turned him on just from the thought of it. 

One of Suguru’s hands dipped into the water and grabbed ahold of his meaty cock, dragging a hand up and down his length. It was foreign, but coming back to him like muscle memory. He didn’t want to savor this orgasm to the thought of a lowly monkey, he wanted to get it over with then pretend it never even happened. He wanted to pretend this was all some strange dream he was forced into… not at all something that was going to be plaguing him. He inhaled sharply and leaned his head back, resting his back against the edge of the bathtub. The water was coming up to his mid stomach, warming up his lower half. His pleasure was a gradual build, but he was trying his hardest to rush it. The leader wanted nothing more than to cum and then forget it. His hand tightened around his shaft, stroking upwards to find any sense of release. It was a few seconds before he came, rolling his hips a few times at the new sensation. It was a build of pure warmth before he felt his fluids ooze out of his tip with heavy force. It sprung into the water and contaminated it with his filthy seed. 

It was enough to make him grimace. A non-sorcerer made him so hot and bothered he was forced to spill all over himself, in the bath no less! First, he felt an odd sense of attraction to you… now he wanted nothing to do with it. If it was going to keep him feeling this way, Suguru wanted nothing to do with you. Even if you were beautiful, and you smelt good, and your skin was soft. He could feel it on his fingertips, a psychosomatic warmth radiating off of his hands. 

This was not going to be good for him. You were not going to be good for him.

You woke up at 9 AM sharp, not by choice. Manami shook you a few times, forced you out of your comforting dream, and made you sit up on the small cot you had gotten as your bed. It was more than you could have ever asked for, even if it was made for someone a bit smaller than you. So was your new kimono. They had a dress code for servants to differentiate them, and clearly whoever was the last servant didn’t have a very large … bust. You stared at yourself in the mirror, seeing your form ache to be freed from the tight clothing. The buttons didn’t go all the way down, exposing a bit of cleavage, and it tore a bit at the small of your back. Manami wasn’t much help either, opting to snicker at you and roll her eyes. You wanted to bite back and say something to get her riled up, but you never found your strength. Instead, you took it and nodded. 

“Okay so, Sir Geto’s room is the one to your left. Go ahead and start his bath. Don’t try to wake him up, though. He’ll be all grumpy if you do,” she explained, motioning wildly with her hands. She was a very extroverted person. Someone you would’ve gotten along with if you didn’t feel like absolute dog shit at that very moment. You nodded your head politely and exited the room, opening your bosses. 

It was neat, with barely any decor. Gas lanterns hung from the walls dimly, always keeping the room somewhat illuminated. You tried your hardest not to look at his sleeping form, but you caved. He was so gorgeous it made you pussy throb just from looking at him. His face was resting peacefully against his pillow, some black hairs sprawled against his forehead. His hair was long, longer than you expected, flowing behind him on his bed. And he was wearing what appeared to be a sheer robe. You swallowed and made your way into his bathroom, almost slipping on the excess water left behind from his previous night's bath. You were innocent enough not to question the pile of tissues on the counter, pushing them into the small garbage pail. Then it was a matter of setting up his bath.

In a cabinet hidden by a curve in the wall, you noticed some aromatic bath salts and other essential oils. One of the households you worked for was very into the essential thing, so you had an idea of what scents went together. You didn’t want Geto to smell like a whole mixture of things, but rather one family of scents. You chose a vial of rosemary, lavender, and peppermint oil, hoping it would go together. The bath turned on with a single turn of the knob. Your hands rested on the base of the tub, feeling the water to make sure it wasn’t too hot. It got to the perfect temperature and you put the stopper on the drain, letting it fill up. In the meantime, you sat on the edge of the bathtub and peered around the bathroom. It was again, tidy and austere. He didn’t have an eye for decorating or he didn’t enjoy it. 

You heard a faint groan in the bedroom, signaling Suguru was waking. You inhaled the smell of rosemary and turned on your side to watch as it spilled one drop at a time from the vial. Then fell the peppermint, followed by the lavender. The scent filled the bathroom in an aromatic fashion, filling your senses with a sudden calm. Was it some kind of drug concoction? It was a smell that made you lean back and sigh, filling you with a sense of safety in your surroundings. 

“Good morning,” Suguru spoke, a raspy edge to his voice. Your eyes shot open from their closed state and you stood up, clasping your hands on your chest to hide your cleavage. But you hadn’t seen him staring at you from the bathroom door. He leaned against the doorframe, in only his thin nighttime robe, and stared at your thick breasts. The fabric was so tight, it pulled gaps between each button. He had to admit it, it was hot. Even if you were a filthy monkey, you were a hot filthy monkey. A hot filthy monkey with a banging body. 

“Lord Geto, I was preparing your bath,” you stepped to the side and motioned to the filling water. He caught a glimpse of your back as you turned to turn the knob to the water down to a stop. He saw the tear and the bit of your lacey underwear peeking out from underneath it. Was he that much of a monster that the first time a beautiful non-sorcerer appeared, he’d cave and melt? 

It was starting to feel that way as something came out of his mouth, “How do you feel about me? …Honestly.”

You opened your mouth to respond, on autopilot, before you closed it as quickly as you opened it. What could you say? You found him attractive and you wanted him to breed you? You couldn’t exactly say that, so instead you opted for something more generic, “I think you’re a very respectable leader and emperor to your coven.”

Bull. Shit. Suguru knew it was a lie and he knew you knew it as well. He didn’t have a reputation for being respectable in any sense of the word. He was a cold-blooded killer who’d murder anyone who wronged him in any way. A cold-blooded killer who was beginning to have a strange soft spot for you… 

“Tell me this,” he took a step forward, “if you vow to never lie to me again … I vow to protect you from getting fired, no matter what.” Was he seriously going to bindingly vow himself to some non-sorcerer? Was he seriously going to do this because he wanted to know how he was perceived? 

“...Really?” You asked, your mouth opening slightly. All he wanted was honesty?? You could do that! You could do that so well!! 

“Really,” Geto took another step forward and began to undo the tie holding together his robe. You had made it a point to stare at his face, but you were aching to quickly glance down below his belt. Just for a second.

“Okay. I swear…” You looked away and bit your bottom lip for a moment. You’d have to be honest now. You looked back at the man and let a smile appear on your face, “I think you’re more hot than you are scary.” 

Suguru’s eyes widened. That’s not at all the kind of tonal shift he had expected from you. He expected you to admit some kind of vague attraction and perhaps that he was a terrifyingly charismatic leader. But… he got a response which made an embarrassed blush fill his temples. 

“I’m .. hot?” He raised an eyebrow, pulling off the robe and letting it fall to the floor. Your eyes didn’t shy away now, making direct eye contact with his flaccid cock. It was beautiful even in that state, making your mouth hang open just a bit more. It was huge too. Thoughts of his girth stretching out your tiny pussy flooded into your thoughts. He could fuck you so good with that thing. And his voice… it was perfect.

“A lot of you is hot,” you looked back at his face, which was an excruciatingly bright shade of red. No one had ever felt this comfortable to objectify Suguru this way to his face. He couldn’t deny the fact he was growing to enjoy it. And grow in other ways. He took a few more steps forward, hands reaching out and pulling you closer to his front. 

“You’re being filthy, not honest,” a small smirk graced his lips as he stared down at you with half-lidded eyes, beaming with lust. 

“I can do both,” you returned a smile. A weight had been lifted off your shoulders. You had complete and utter job security. That’s all you could have ever wanted in your entire life, just a place to stay. Even if it meant working with this hot guy for the rest of your life, you didn’t mind. Although, he thought of you as inferior, you didn’t care. That’s what did it. Your personality had been led out of its cage and shown to Suguru’s perverted gaze. He realized what kind of person you were from your few sentences. You were just as much of a pervert as he was. The tonal shift was enough to make you realize what his next plans were, especially when he let his big hands snake around your waist. 

“This is,” Suguru let out a breath and craned his head down, brushing his lips past your ear, “Very wrong… But I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to kiss you, pretty girl,” he cooed, using his free hand to tilt your chin up to face him as he pulled his face back. You both looked at each other’s features for a moment without anything. What was there to say? You could feel him throbbing between your legs with that massive log he had attached to his front. It was hot. You just wanted to trail your hand down his chest and watch him shiver when you got to his v-line.

“You can’t fire me… so I don’t care,” two hands found themselves placed on his bare chest, running up and down his pectorals, “Am I too lowly for you, sir?” You purred, looking back up at him with a lustful expression. It was all you had to say before he proved you wrong. Devastatingly slow, he brought your lips together. The hand on your chin disappeared, moving to rest upon your ass. You sighed into the kiss, molding your lips together in perfect synchronization. It was as if his mouth was made for you, pulling you into sensations you had never felt before. The kiss didn’t last long before he pulled back and looked down at you with an unmistakable expression. He was going to fuck the living shit out of you. It was written on his face from the way he was clearly thinking about how to go about it. There was a bathtub full of aromatic water, waiting to be used… You looked down at the tub and looked back at him. You two didn’t have to say anything as his hands grabbed at the hole from the back of your kimono and ripped it. It made a loud tearing sound and he continued to pull, until little to no fabric hung from your breasts. 

You gasped and looked down at the mess he had made, moving to undo your underwear, then you looked at his cock. It was just aching to be touched in some way. Your hand found his tip and started to stroke down his shaft, then up. Who knew a non-sorcerer's hands would feel phenomenal compared to his own? Suguru let out a faint groan, leaning into your touch. He had never let himself take pleasure in things, ever since his breakup [at KFC] twenty years ago… but now it felt different. He felt like he had one chance to do this and he wasn’t going to spoil it. Your hands were so warm, he could just imagine how warm your mouth would be, gagging on his length.

Large hands cupped your ass and lifted your body, causing you to exclaim loudly and wrap your arms around his neck for stability. He was so strong, you could hardly believe it. It was pure talent and genetics that made him perfect on every level. His face was godly and his body was sculpted from the heavens just for your perverted stare. The male set you down gently in the tub, being mindful to make sure you didn’t land too hard on your plush backside. He wanted to save the bruising on your skin for when it was from him. He wanted his hands to be the ones leaving imprint after imprint on your skin, slapping and grabbing without a care for what would be left behind. He plopped down into the water, not caring if he got water to spill from the sides. He didn’t care about anything, because his hands and eyes were glued to you. His hands hooked around your hips and pulled you onto his lap, still being mindful not to hurt you. 

You grinned and leaned forward, pushing strands of ebony-colored hair across his forehead and away from his beautiful eyes. Purple, they stared back at you gently. “This… is nice,” you spoke softly, pressing your lips first on his forehead, then his nose, before landing on his lips. It was chaste, as the first kiss had been. But it didn’t stay that way for long. Suguru’s tongue slipped its way into your mouth and took over with a dominating force, making you bite back a whimper. It felt so good. He knew exactly how to move it to elicit whatever reaction he pleased. Your hands raked through his hair, before grabbing fistfuls at the root and moaning into his mouth. He liked that, moaning with you.  

“...Harder,” he mumbled against your open mouth, kissing back for more.

“What a pretty little masochist,” you smiled, running your hands through the roots of his hair before clenching them down and yanking up another fistful, hearing him whine in his low gravelly voice. Fuck… it just made you so wet. You clenched your thighs together as you kissed up his face, pulling his hair just to hear the ardor-esc moans fill the room. This was even better than sex, just hearing him get a little bit of pleasure out of this hair-pulling would’ve been satisfactory. But as you did this, you felt his hands fondle your ass, squeezing and palming your skin. It wasn’t long before he lifted you and had you position his throbbing dick against your folds. 

You had never felt a dick this good penetrate you in your life. Something about the way it curved to the left and the bulbous head, touched areas you didn’t even know you had, just on the way down. You threw your head back in a breathy whine, rocking your hips back and forth once you felt yourself hit the base of his cock. Suguru used his two hands to help you slide up his length, then down again. He had you trapped in a rhythm of fucking your tight cunt with his member, making you his fuck toy. The male had never felt himself slip into such a trace over a monkey of all people. Non-sorcerers should have not had this hold on him, but you were different. You gasped and bit down on your hand to stop a loud groan escaping your mouth, with your breasts bouncing with each thrust. 

“Dirty slut,” Suguru uttered, biting on his bottom lip to stop his own noises from getting too loud. No one could figure out this was happening. It was wrong. It was against everything he had ever stood for. But …god it felt so good. Your walls clenched around him every time he forced you down on his length, taking the time to feel up your hips and ass. You were so soft, inside and out. The perfect toy he could use. 

It didn’t take him long to feel close, a familiar pang of desire creeping up the shaft of his cock. You were beyond ready to cum, with this log inside you it wouldn’t take long. You bit down on your fingertips and cried out, not having time to muffle your wails of pleasure. It was a warmth you hadn’t felt in such a long time wash over your whole vagina, flushing out through your body next. You convulsed, grinding your hips back and forth to continue to elongate your high for as much as possible, causing a second orgasm on your way down. No one had ever made you cum like that, making you dumbfounded by the sheer will of their dick. 

The cult leader felt himself throbbing for release, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t do it inside you. There couldn’t be any evidence of your joint mistake running around in nine months, not here. Instead, he pulled you off his cock and pressed his lips together, “Press your…” He motioned to your breasts then his cock, “So I can…” You nodded and pressed your tits together, pushing them up against the length of his dick. That was all he needed, using his left hand to finish the job. He focused his energy on the swollen tip, leaking precum and begging to release all over your mounds of perfect flesh. Mounds he wanted so desperately to put in his mouth and suck. 

Then he came, splattering out of his cock and messily coating your tits. Most of the cum was on your skin, although half of it also found its way into the water. You bit your lip as he came and thrust into the air, into nothing. It was like volt after volt of pure pleasure was shot through his urethra and forced out in one big release, a release he didn’t know he was even capable of. Your cunt had felt so good it made Suguru’s dick completely sensitive to any kind of touches, including his own. So when he came, he let out a loud whine, in his devilishly low voice, “F-fuck… mmm shit.. This was.. Hah.. a mis-mistake,” he breathed out, trying to regulate himself after he had just felt an explosive orgasm run through his penis.

You nodded and looked down at your breasts, coated in his cum. How were you going to explain to Manami that all of your clothes mysteriously wound up torn in Lord Geto’s bathroom? And how were you going to explain the fact you were also covered in Lord Geto’s cum?

“...Can I call you Suguru now?” You asked after a moment, tilting your head to the man who looked as though he had just run a marathon. 

There was something utterly interesting about your personality now that you had freed it from your nervous shackles. Suguru didn’t want to extinguish this new fire in your eyes, he wanted to foster it and let it burn. There was no way he was developing some kind of feelings for you other than lust… there was no way. But there were going to be dramatic changes now. After that day, you were treated as one of the regular Sorcerers, which infuriated Manami to no end. You were the most prized possession of Suguru Geto and everyone knew not to anger or upset you because he would get wind of it. Then… there’d be trouble. You were his prized possession. The possession he wanted to see smile and laugh in the sunlight, rather than stay inside and do mindless chores. The possession he wanted to have slept next to him in his bed at night and wrapped his large arms around. 

The possession he was growing to… love.

[sim0nril3y]

First Meeting

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Civilian!Reader

Scenario: Being dragged out for the night with friends Simon find himself desperately trying to be alone when a girl with a broken shoe stumble across him.

Note: Set in 2014

Warnings: No mask Simon (It's my personal headcanon in his regular life he probably wouldn't wear it), briefs mentions of abuse, mentions of smoking, mentions of alcohol, suggestive conversation, mentions of age gap, derogatory comments. Note: I made this an OC rather than a Reader because she has her own backstory and family and dreams that may not align with the whole Reader aspect of writing. If you guys do want something like that let me know and I'll see if I can work something out.

30-08-2020 Edit: I’ve updated this fanfic to be a reader rather than OC.

Returning from deployment never really changed for Simon. It wasn’t something he ever enjoyed. There was something about the regiment of the forces that grounded him, something about the strict timelines and regulations. None of that mattered back home. It wasn’t like he could speak to his "friends" about the trauma of being away in war-torn countries. It wasn’t like they even asked; they knew better.

Occasionally on nights out Simon would get asked the rude question of his death tally. He’d simply brush off the question. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he had a reasonable answer to it anymore. No, instead he would pretend like he didn’t hear as other friends chastised for even asking that sick question. Why was it sick? Did they not think of him as a killer? Maybe that tainted their idyllic persona of the perfect solider. Simon knew that war was disgusting and bloody and each time he took another life a little bit of his own chipped away too.

Stand outside he brought a cigarette to his lips, inhaling slowly and just enjoying the cold winter air. “Bollocks…” A voice slipped from beside him, glancing over his shoulder to see the slight frame of a woman bent down trying to repair the band of her high-heel. As always, he stayed quiet, used to just observing and not interrupting the flow. “Need some help, sweetheart~” A drunk came stumbling in her direction.

In an instant she shot to her feet, stumbling in her broken heel as you turned to face the offending man. “Oh-” “Gonna catch y’death out here, sweetheart. Specially in that little dress…” He commented and Simon gave himself a moment to take in your outfit, it was particularly short from a night-out in January, not that any of the other birds were dressed any different. “Why don’t we get a taxi back to my flat.” He offered and Simon saw the way your shoulders seemed to tense at the suggestion. “Oi…” His voice began before his brain registered that this was a poor idea. “Fuck off and leave her alone.”

“The fuck you think you are?” Came a drunken drawl back in his direction. “Think I’m gonna be your problem if you don’t leave her alone.” He rose then, towering over the two of them you, double both your weight, double both your size. “Pshh… fuckin’ have the slag…” Drunkenly he turned and stumbled back into the club. “Thanks…” Your voice was small as you tilted your had up to make eye-contact. “S’nothing…” Then turning he moved back to where he was sitting.

“Mind if I join you?” Your voice was quiet, flasing a packet of cigarettes in his direction. “Not gonna stop you.” Simon answered with a short shrug. “Fuckin’ shoe…” You grumbled under your breath before joining him delicately, sitting close enough that it looked friendly but far enough away to give him plenty of space. It a light voice your informed him your name. It was pretty. It suited you. The way your voice cut through the cold air, warm personality shining even on this night.

Simon didn’t reply, simply continued to smoke his cigarette in the quiet whilst you lit up your own beside him. “Y’even old enough to be in there?” Suddenly you looked at him before snickering. “Turned 21 months ago.” You announced proudly. “Even got my ID to prove it.” Fuck, you was young. 9 years younger than him, in fact. Whilst he was being beaten and abused by his sick father you was just coming into this world. Fuck, don’t think about any of that. “So, do I get to know your name? Gonna have to tell the story of how a dashing smoker saved me from a weirdo.”

Dashing? Were you flirting with him? You… were way out of his league. Jesus, why was you even paying him any mind when you could go home with practically any lad in there. Why did that sentiment bother him so much? “Simon.” He ground out finally, putting a firm stop to his inner monologue. “Nice name.” “No, it’s not. Just a name.” He couldn’t help the smirk that tugged at his lips. “Don’t be stupid.” He watched the way your pretty face contorted into a smile and then fell into a fit of giggles. It was fucking bliss. The way that you laughed. It was almost fucking musical, or at least it was to Simon’s ears. “Nice fuckin’ name…” He repeated shaking his head. “Kid, you’ve got to work on technique a bit.” Then shaking his head as he took another long drag of his cigarette.

“Well, maybe you could help with that…” Your voice was suggestive and inquisitive, putting the question out there loosely enough that he could see it as a joke or an invitation. “M’sure there are plenty boys your age that could help with that.” There was finality to his tone that even you could sense. Jesus, you were 21 by your own confession. You was so fresh and new to the dating scene. He, on the other hand, was just beginning his 30s, though his years of service made him feel a lot older. There was no way he could just fuck around with a girl like you. It wouldn’t fair.

Sensing his apprehension you simply shrugged your shoulders, as carefree as ever and then muttered. “Maybe~” Nabbing a nearby empty cigarette packet and jotting down your details onto the card before sliding it in his direction. “Guess if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

A flurry of girls stumbled from the club, surrounding her in a moment in a loud chatter of excitement. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” “C’mon, next club~” “Who is that?” “What happened to your shoe?” The questions buzzed around his mind and you kept his gaze until whisked away by her friends. “Fuckin’ hell…” Cursing under his breath as he inspected the packet between his fingers, taking the final drag of his cigarette and then flicking it aside.

Masterlist | Ask | 28-08-2023

[minticecodes]

A (late) piece for dmcweek2024 day 4! I was buzzing to put forward something for the week. Prompt was alt universe.

AU where Eva survived the fire and had to figure out a way forward, believing the twins dead. She becomes an RPG shopkeeper selling wares ranging from antique books to magical goods (Devil May Scry). She's also out for Mundus' blood.

Image descriptions are the same as in alt.

[ID: 7 Digital illustrations and sketches. 1: Coloured illustration of a bookshop at sunset. Eva, a pale blonde middle aged woman mans the bright patterned counter. She wears a turtleneck and red shawl, has shoulder length hair, and diagonal facial burn scar and scarring on her left hand. Light rays illuminate her gently smiling face. Besides packed books, on the shelves are potion bottles, statuettes, succulents, and a displayed katana. Roses and plants decorate the shop. On the counter are a thick hardback, bookscanner, and crystal ball. Cards are displayed inside the counter. On the wall hangs a price sign, featuring doodled vital stars (large star drawn with sunglasses), holy water and fortunes. Beneath it is a rose wreathed divinity statue display, with 2 red orb offerings in a dish. 2: Eva from behind, sitting hunched alone at a table where a birthday cake sits untouched. It's a two flavour cake. By her clenched hand are crumpled tissues. Caption: 'Vergil...Dante...happy birthday...' 3: Eva bracing the Devil Sword Sparda across her shoulders, aimed at the ground. She wears a bell sleeved, ruffled funeral/wedding dress with a slit for leg movement. A veil trails behind her like a ribbon. Close ups of her show the headpiece design; a pacifier made of a long bird skill, feather, rose, and four skeletal 'legs'. 4 & 5: Trish taking on teen Dante's image: a tan teen in black, with chin length white hair, a halter neck tank top, leather pants, kneelength boots and black polish. Her leather jacket collar resembles lightning bolts. She leans against an invisible wall, one leg bent to brace her foot against it. She looks askance with arched brows, lifting shades from her face. The 2nd image is a 3/4 profile with shades perched on her forehead and popped collar. 6: Helmetless portraits of Dante and Vergil in armour, expressionless. Dante's hair is shoulder length and falls across his face. 7: Full body of 2 somewhat lanky demonic knights. One (Nelo Angelo) in black and blue with droopy horns rests his palms atop his blue broadsword's pommel, the sword upright against the ground. He stands straight, staring ahead. The other in white and red and curled horns has a palm clapped on Nelo Angelo's shoulder, other hand at his hips. Somehow the eyes on his helmet express playfulness. At his back is the hilt to a flail, the spiked ball resting on the ground by his armoured heels. They're labelled '~16' . End ID.]

Read more for some wordy backstory and sketches. TW for mentions of torture, abuse and solitary confinement surrounding the twins.

I had...so many more ideas that I'm leaving out to keep this short. It's fun to think how she'd mesh with the cast.

Like! her and Lady. Mother that lost her kid and kid that lost her mother. It writes itself how much unwitting projection can go wrong. And pretty much everything about her, the twins, and Trish :)

In terms of backstory:

After the fire she's alone. Her birth family disowned her long ago. She thinks about revamping the mansion but the idea of staying in that empty space with only memories for company is too much. So she eventually opens a small store.

Starts off paranoid and distant. Still is distant but gets entangled with the local community overtime. Greets people by name and they'll chat about how life has been going. This includes demon hunters and demons and supernatural beings living peacefully; her shop becomes a small safe haven to exchange information to stay safe.

Gets very good at forging protective charms. Haunted by the memory of the enchanted closet, smashed in and empty.

A regular is a schoolgirl who originally came to pick up reserved books for her father but stuck around because hey, this place is quiet and interesting, and the owner serves stellar teacakes. Great place to study. To Mary, Eva's kind, though odd, secretive and a little lonely.

I got inspired by Eva's association with the bangle/bracelet of time and the amulets for her fighting style. It's based around item crafting, like an RPG character slapping on every stat boosting item.

She stitches together different outfits for different needs Cardcaptor style. They're all exceedingly dramatic. It's not clear here but I wanted a bird motif to eventually come through. Phoenix motif, really.

[ID: Rough sketches: A magician esque outfit with vest, feathered tophat and cape. A longcoat with long skirt and long scarf at her back like a cape. The cape is tagged with 'spells stitched into fabric'. Close ups on the coat lapel show two pins (strawberry and wing), labelled 'charm lapel pins.' Close up of the shoes show sharp heals and ankle bracelets. Eva leaping in a black bodysuit and leotard, with feathery collar, quill behind her ear, and ballet shoes with a claw at the heel. Eva making a triangular 2 hand sign in a hooded cloak and longskirt. Around her shoulders are claws. At her hips is an hourglass. Above her heeded head is a clocklike halo. Beside her is a sketch of a woman with a lionhead mask. A funeral and wedding dress inspired outfit. Eva crouches, wielding the Devil Sword Sparda in scythe form. Her face is covered by a tattered veil. She wears a knee length ruffled dress, black gloves, and a long, ruffled cape. Close up of her left hand shows a ring and finger claws Rough comic. Chibi lady talks to chibi Eva. Lady holds up a black body suit with billowing sleeves and a cleavage window. Lady: "Eva what is this" Eva (smiling cheerfully): "Oh - that old thing!" Eva: "My old hunting outfit. Gosh I'd almost forgotten about it. Not the most comfortable thing - so skin tight..." However Lady fixates on 'my old hunting outfit'. The words go in one ear and come out as a younger Eva in a catsuit, pointing a gun with a serious expression, wind blowing through her hair. Lady stares into the distance, bewildered, and slightly blushing. End ID]

Meanwhile the twins are having a terrible time but they have each other, even if they don't remember they're brothers. I think it'd be sweet if they have a bond anyway. Everyone else thinks they're rivals at best.

(Nelo is Mundus' favourite to toy with as the proud, eldest son. But when he gets rough, Bianco butts in and acts up for Mundus' attention. This gets him sent to solitary confinement; Mundus figured out Bianco hates small spaces and designed an iron maiden for him. Others think Bianco is a brute who acts out for a fight. But that's ok. It means Bianco can keep buying Nelo time.) (When lucid, Nelo despises his own weakness when this happens.)

[ID: 2 Images. Nelo and Bianco Angelo in fisticuffs in a cartoony dustcloud, glaring at each other as they fight. They're captioned 'Mundus' most competent generals'. Additional text: 'silent, obedient, crushing force when apart. Perfect soldiers. ... until they're put together. Complement each other's battle style OR clash terribly. Nelo Angelo staring off, arms crossed and furrowed eyes somehow expressing being completely fed up. Behind him, Bianco and Griffin talk at each other. Griffin's glaring. Bianco has a hand up to gesture. End ID]

[heretichromia]

Exploring the Relationship Dynamics Between the Abyssal Hunters

I had a few people either misinterpret or express confusion regarding this post that I made, so I want to make a different post covering the same (and more) material that's more rooted in explicit textual evidence which doesn't use emotionally-charged language. I'm going to try my best to stay neutral here and discuss multiple possible interpretations.

In short, I want to break down all that we know regarding the nature of the relationships shared by the four* Abyssal Hunters. In long, see below. And...I mean long, it's 5,000 words.

*Abyssal Hunters as a faction of Ægir; sorry, Andreana. Note: Minor Path of Life (CN) spoilers below. None of the major events are spoiled, but I do talk about a lot of the context that the event gives us on Ægir society and the backstories of the Hunters.

What we know from the text:

I'll keep this segment as objective as possible, and only state things that I can directly argue as nearly indisputable from textual evidence. Some interpretation work is going to have to be done here, however, and I'm open to anyone who disagrees with anything here pointing out the passages in the text that contradict my assertions.

Ages:

This is a subject the community as a whole is widely misinformed about, so I'm highlighting it separately.

We know from Path of Life that the expected lifespan of an Ægir is around 150 years.

Gladiia is likely in her late 30s. She has 17 years of combat experience, which we're led to believe began relatively shortly after she received independence from her abusive, neglectful, and controlling mother. She was appointed as Consul of Technology before becoming an Abyssal Hunter, though her module description characterizes her as having been unable to decide the trajectory of her life, which implies to me that she was not free of her mother for very long before the operation. We don't have reason to believe Ægir uses child soldiers nor appoints children to be Technology Consuls, so this places her minimum age at around 35 and her likely age as a little older than that. She was still characterized as a young Consul ten years after her appointment, so I don't believe she'd be much older. Late 30s is my best approximation; much older than that, and things begin making less sense regarding the multiple parental figures still present in her life.

Skadi is likely also in her 30s, though the actual bounds are wider than Gladiia's. She has 13 years of combat experience, making her 31 at the youngest. However, from Path of Life we know that she was the most skilled technician in her division prior to becoming an Abyssal Hunter. This means she probably had at least a few, if not several years of work experience out of the Academy. If she's younger than Gladiia, it's likely not by many years, and she could even be conceivably older than her. I think she's probably a small handful of years younger, if you had to ask me my personal interpretation.

Laurentina is the youngest of the Abyssal Hunters. She has seven years of combat experience, implying that she joined a decade after Gladiia. This places her minimum age at 25. We can imagine she's probably not too much older than that, since she never fully embraced a career as a sculptor before changing circumstances caused her to apply for the Abyssal Hunters. She's probably in her mid-to-late 20s.

Ulpianus is the oldest, and potentially by a considerable margin. He was the first Abyssal Hunter, becoming one twenty years ago, as well as one of the scientists who created the Abyssal Hunters to begin with. He was already one of the most preeminent scientific minds of Ægir by this point. Since Ægir can live to 150, this means the upper bound on his age is potentially very high. This man could conceivably be in his 80s or older without it breaking anything we know about the story. The lower bound of his age is probably somewhere in his late 40s at an absolute minimum, assuming that the Ægirian process for becoming an accomplished scientist is anywhere remotely similar to the real-world one. It's completely up to speculation where his actual age falls between those bounds.

Connections between the Hunters:

An important note to make here that isn't precisely a connection, but does inform them: Ægir as a society does not have a compulsion towards nuclear family structures. In fact, the opposite is true. From Path of Life, we know that Ægir are usually raised in groups in dedicated schools. Ægir seems to prioritize careers over interpersonal relationships, and direct blood family ties are much weaker. Ægirian women don't give birth to their children directly; the embryos are surgically removed and then grown separately.

Laurentina's close relationship with her biological parents was noted as being somewhat atypical, and they still didn't raise her themselves. Instead, they allowed childcare services to raise her while frequently taking her with them on their trips when they could. Gladiia's upbringing, where she was isolated by an abusive and neglectful mother, is also atypical. From her conversation with Clemenza, we learn that she was in fact strongly suggested to give up Gladiia to childcare services, but refused to do so.

Onto the actual connections:

Gladiia met Ulpianus in the earlier years of the Abyssal Hunter project, when she was a young, emotionally vulnerable woman who was actively seeking new familial connections (see: her module). Given how well Ulpianus understands the other Hunters (implied in Stultifera Navis and displayed in Path of Life), it's very unlikely that he wasn't aware of this. Ulpianus declined his student Underflow's application to the Abyssal Hunters because he didn't want her to become like him. It's likely, then, that he personally processed Gladiia's entry into the Abyssal Hunters.

We know from Specter the Unchained's module that the two of them spoke at least somewhat often, discussing subjects like philosophy. In the one conversation we see, Ulpianus is explaining to Gladiia his concerns about the direction Ægir is heading in these "protracted days of calamity," and she seems to either agree with or absorb his pontification. He certainly takes the lead in this conversation with the "young Consul," and while a mentorship role can be inferred from this, it's not directly stated anywhere.

From Gladiia's IS3 ending, we know that Ulpianus never directly indicated to her that he felt any connection between them, nor did he bring up concepts like seniority around her. However, his actual feelings concerning her were clearly more sentimental than he let on, as he unexpectedly sacrificed his life for the sake of his "junior." Gladiia hadn't realized he was so sentimental until it happened, but in retrospect she looked back upon it warmly, realizing she never truly understood Ulpianus.

We have fewer interactions between Ulpianus and Skadi than we do between Ulpianus and Gladiia, but we can infer something of a dynamic from what we do have. Ulpianus trusted Skadi implicitly. From Path of Life, we know that he treated her differently from the other Hunters in his company. Ulpianus was a brilliant tactician who gave complex plans to each of his soldiers, but when he got to Skadi—who frequently spaces out when listening to others, and by her own admission in the event doesn't like to think—he merely told her that he trusted her to carry out her duty. He understood her, and didn't belittle her for her weaknesses. He had faith in her, and was right to do so; Skadi completed every mission exceptionally.

In the Second Company, meanwhile, Gladiia and Laurentina clearly had a closer relationship than just their positions would imply. Gladiia considered herself Laurentina's teacher, instructing her not only in the art of war but also in life skills. Their first lesson was not in violence, but in dance (Specter the Unchained OpRec). Whereas Laurentina is now frequently associated with her dancing, not just in narrative framing but actively by Ulpianus in Path of Life, she had barely danced much at all prior to her dances with Gladiia.

Already by the time of her aforementioned conversation with Ulpianus, Gladiia had developed a fondness for her subordinate. She even smiled when she spoke of her glowingly, something she almost never does. Gladiia, as critical as she is of almost everyone, can hardly find fault with Laurentina. From the aforementioned OpRec, we see that even Laurentina expects her to lecture her more than she does. Frequently, when confronted with her peculiarities and the choices she makes, Gladiia will approve of them warmly. The OpRec also has a wonderful passage of them just talking and spending time with one-another. It's very warm and gives a lot of small insights to their relationship and their relationship with the arts (a subject they're both very attached to) that I can't really explain effectively here without exploding the already extremely high word count. I'd recommend reading it if you haven't already.

In short, though, the relationship between Gladiia and Laurentina is very warm despite Gladiia's frequent brusqueness and coldness. In Ægir, they would see plays together—but because of Gladiia's insistence upon minimizing distractions while experiencing art, would sit apart. In Specter's post-Under Tides OpRec, Laurentina had to practically beg Gladiia before she showed her any more warmth than would be warranted to any other subordinate, as Gladiia kept her emotions tightly to her chest. Laurentina's emotional intelligence and close bond with her allows her to see through Gladiia's practiced emotionless exterior. Like Ulpianus, she understands Gladiia well enough to see through the strong facade she fronts to get glimpses into the deep well of anxiety beneath. In Laurentina's story in IS3, their bond is described as so close that she doesn't need to speak with Gladiia to understand her. She continued to dance with her as their primary method of silent communication for months after Gladiia had ceased speaking because of how much she hated how the Seaborn assimilation had changed her voice.

Of course, Laurentina and Skadi also share a deep bond, which is probably the most well-known one. Though how well they knew each other prior to the attack on Ishar'mla is still somewhat unclear—though it's clear from multiple sources (e.g. Specter OpRec, Path of Life, etc.) they weren't strangers—the important bulk of their relationship concerns their time spent together at Rhodes Island on land. Tortured by the Church of the Deep's horrific experiments and driven insane by the originium that Bishop Amaia injected into her spinal column, Laurentina was in an almost unrecognizable state when she was reunited with Skadi (Specter OpRec). She'd developed a second personality called Specter as a result of her experiences, one that was fully unfamiliar to Skadi, and the real Laurentina seemed to be locked away inside her own mind, in endless sleep, unable to awaken.

Skadi took care of Laurentina. She was not easy to care for. Beyond just requiring intensive care to keep her alive, Specter was mentally unstable. She would be unable to leave her treatment room for long stretches of time, and if the way she spoke to Skadi during her OpRec once she'd 'fallen asleep' again is any indication, some of the things she'd say to Skadi were truly vile. To continually bear this cannot have been an easy burden to shoulder, but Skadi would nonetheless come into her room constantly, sing songs to her, and tell her stories. Laurentina heard it all, though she couldn't speak. Though she teased her for it mercilessly when she awoke after Under Tides, she expressed legitimate gratitude to Skadi for all she'd done taking care of her.

If their bond was not intensely close before, it is now. Laurentina, now awake, teaches Skadi to dance in Unchained's OpRec, just as Gladiia taught her before. Just as she can see through Gladiia's facades, Laurentina understands Skadi enough to be able to see through hers to the genuine, warm, and caring person she is. Skadi, meanwhile, goes to great lengths to make sure Laurentina is okay. She cared more about her wellbeing than she did about obediently listening to the orders of her superiors; when Gladiia came to take Specter from Rhodes Island, she protested, and followed Gladiia to Sal Viento to take her back.

Skadi and Gladiia do not have nearly as warm a history. Both are rather emotionally unintelligent and wear masks of indifference around each other. That isn't to say they don't care about each other, though; if anything, we have plenty of evidence to the contrary. Gladiia did not hesitate for a moment about risking death for Skadi's sake in Under Tides, feeling a duty to protect her from both the First to Talk and the monster that dwells inside her head. They share a bond of camaraderie that's constantly reinforced in every event.

In Stultifera Navis and its supplemental material, we got more inklings of the development of a deeper relationship between them, though it's naturally strained because of their natures. Skadi, who always calls Gladiia "Second Captain," accidentally called her Gladiia in SN—to which Gladiia brusquely remarked that she was getting rather comfortable around her. She corrected her mistake and hasn't made it since. In the oft-mentioned now Specter the Unchained OpRec, when Laurentina teaches Skadi how to dance she remarks that Gladiia would like to dance with her. Skadi brushes this off as a mean-spirited joke, but it's much more likely that Laurentina knows they both feel an unspoken fondness for the other and is steadily poking at them to share it with the other.

Lastly, and certainly least, we have Laurentina and Ulpianus. There's...almost nothing here. We know that they're not strangers, and from Path of Life we know that Ulpianus at least understands Laurentina well enough as an individual, but as far as I'm aware there's not much to suggest what sort of relationship they may have had beyond just comrades, if any. Ulpianus seemed to become disinterested in continuing his conversation with Gladiia once she started gushing about Laurentina, but that's more likely a case of him being averse to talks about feelings in general than it is any distaste for Shark herself.

---

Possible interpretations:

From this, we have a pretty good idea of the general shape of how these dynamics work. There's a lot of room to talk about the intricacies of their relationships, and I...can't cover every single possibility here.

I'd love to. If you ask me, I can keep yapping. I didn't write all of this because of some solemn dedication to archiving these fictional fish. Please, litter my inbox if you have questions. I can yap endlessly.

Instead, I'll focus on some of the predominant interpretations that I've seen across discussions and fanworks. Namely, the idea of the Abyssal Hunters as a family and the idea of some of the Abyssal Hunters as romantic partners.

I'll be covering interpretations that are both supported and not supported by the text to varying degrees. I'm going to outline how well I believe the text supports these interpretations, which is obviously going to be subjective, but I'm going to try to keep my own personal bias out of it. I have my own preferences, but I will be as neutral as I can be here.

The Family Angle

The Abyssal Hunters are a found family. That's not so much subtext as it is text—again, see Gladiia's module about how she failed to find the warmth and belonging she sought from her biological family, and instead searched for a new family. They have dynamics between them that are clearly at least meant to mirror existing family dynamics.

But a found family is not the same thing as a biological family. It does not necessarily feature the same dynamics as you'd find between actual family members. The "family angle" is the interpretation that the relationship between all of them is in fact completely familial in nature. While found families do not preclude romantic and sexual relationships between their members, a familial relationship between these characters implies that their bond is strong in a way that is neither romantic nor sexual in nature.

This, in itself, is neither confirmed nor denied by the text. It's consistent with what we're shown, and is perhaps one of the more 'pure' interpretations of these relationships—in the sense that it doesn't read more into the characters than the information presented. The Abyssal Hunters are characterized in expressly familial terms, and so this interpretation says that this is the extent of their dynamics. For clarity, it is neither more nor less correct than other interpretations for this, and is not personally my own. If there's anything limiting this interpretation, it's that Ægirians don't have nuclear family ties in the same way that we do, but that doesn't in my view contradict a familial interpretation as much as it modifies how it's perceived by the characters.

There are, of course, a lot of different ways you can approach the family angle. I'll outline some of the more sensible ones that can be concluded from the text.

One of the more common interpretations is that of the three female hunters as siblings. Again, there's no real confirmation of this in the text—only sentiments that the bond between them is thicker than blood—but there's nothing in the text which contradicts this. They certainly could play into typical sibling dynamics fairly well, with Gladiia as the serious, beleaguered older sister who whips the younger siblings into shape, and Laurentina as the brattiest child of the family who's nonetheless more emotionally intelligent than her stubborn sisters. It's one I see a lot, and I don't really see an issue with it.

Another common interpretation is that there exists something mirroring a parent/daughter relationship between the Captains and their subordinates: Ulpianus/Skadi, and Gladiia/Laurentina. From what's been outlined above, there's definitely food for this sort of interpretation in the text. Gladiia, for instance, is definitely motherly towards Laurentina. I do not believe this is a coincidence; as someone who was failed by her mother in horrendous ways, she's taken on a motherly role towards those she cares for and whom she believes she has a responsibility for. I think this, in itself, is a fine interpretation.

I think it gets much weaker when it's taken a step further into a literal parent/daughter relationship between them. These are adult women. At most, the age gap between Gladiia and Laurentina is a little over a decade, and they were adults when they met. She might feel a motherly responsibility for this woman, but I do not believe she'd consider a fully adult woman only around a decade her junior to be her daughter. Friendships between people in their mid-20s and mid-30s happen all the time in the real world. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, anything like real parent-child relationships. The age gap between Ulpianus and Skadi is likely wider, and thus it's more reasonable that Ulpianus would see someone Skadi's age that he met in her 20s as someone who could have been his daughter. Even in that case, their dynamic would be heavily qualified by the fact that he has always known Skadi as a fully adult woman.

One similar possible dynamic that I almost never see is the idea of Ulpianus as a father for Gladiia. They're of similar ages, and if he saw Skadi as someone who could have been his daughter, he surely see Gladiia as the same. Gladiia, as well, desperately needed a parental figure in her life and never got one. They clearly have a senior/junior, possibly mentor/student relationship in the text, even if neither of them explicitly acknowledge it as one. This is the logical next step, which many have taken for the other plausible parent/daughter relationships, but I never see this one.

The Romance Angle

People like shipping. I'm people, too. I like shipping. It's pretty natural that, when it comes to characters we like that have close relationships like this, there's going to be people who are primarily invested in slapping two or more of them together like Barbies. Some of these relationship dynamics are more plausible than others.

Here's where some of the objectivity might break down. I'll try my best to limit my personal bias, but it's extremely hard to speak objectively about topics that are so obviously subject to personal interpretation.

First, I'd like to emphasize that Ægirian social dynamics, likely including romance, are alien to us. The likelihood that these characters would feel exactly the same about romance as we do in a predominantly monogamous society structured around nuclear families with a marriage at the core is...very low. Ægir and the nations of land are fundamentally different in ways that make understanding one-another difficult. Listen to some of Specter the Unchained's voicelines expressing her frustration about how she doesn't have the means to convey to the Doctor everything she'd like to. While we can (and should if we'd like to) have fun with applying our concepts of romance to them, we should always keep in mind that they might not actually share them as characters.

On the more fun side, this opens up a world of possible arrangements. We can speculate, for instance, that these characters might be much more open to polyamory than others might. Or, perhaps, their courtship looks very different from ours, and we can explore how that might look through fiction. One relationship existing does not need to preclude the others even in our society, much less theirs.

The most obvious potential romance that most people would identify among the Abyssal Hunters is Skadi and Laurentina, and I have to agree that it's one of the most plausible, if not the single most. I...don't think I even need to linger too much on this one, because most of it's already been laid out. Their story reads like a tragic yuri plot. The romance is practically already written; if you showed me the exact same story that these two have, but they kiss at the end, it would not remotely feel like it came out of nowhere. It's one of many dynamics between characters that would be readily interpreted as romantic by a wider audience if, say, Skadi were a man. It's already one of the most popular Arknights ships as-is! It fits their characters, and makes sense as an interpretation.

It isn't necessarily the only interpretation of these characters, of course. As discussed, there's a wide array of ways you can interpret their bond, and many are just as supported by the text. While there's plenty of subtext that can be said to be romantic between them, that subtext can all be interpreted in platonic and familial ways. This is a Chinese gacha game; we're not going to get explicit confirmation of any of these relationships, and all romantic subtext will be written to resemble other kinds of subtext. That means that other subtext that was legitimately not meant to be romantic can scan as romantic. There's no strong argument here for authorial intent regarding the two of them either way.

...You can tell how strong the potential for a ship here is that I felt the need to use one of the two paragraphs I spent talking about it to discuss how it's not necessarily the only possible dynamic.

The second most likely, in my eyes, is Laurentina and Gladiia, which I'll elaborate further on than Skadi/Laurentina because of its rarity as a ship by comparison; it's legitimately plausible that most who might read this haven't considered it at all. Of the pairs possible within the trio, they're the two with the oldest history, who clearly have a deep and intimate bond. The exact nature of this bond is subject to interpretation, of course. As discussed earlier, Gladiia is quite motherly when it comes to Laurentina. A familial interpretation of the two of them is common, but as uncommon as a romantic interpretation is, I think it's both easily supported and already has plenty of material in the text to feed it. You can easily read the time they spent together in Specter the Unchained's OpRec as a date. That their dynamic has motherly characteristics does not stop it from being romantic. Plenty of romances in popular fiction have motherly elements to them; that behavior can simply be Gladiia's chosen language of love.

An issue that I can imagine is the power dynamic between them—not necessarily even as a moral argument about the ship, but as an issue between their characters. Laurentina was, of course, young when she joined the Abyssal Hunters, and Gladiia became both her superior and her mentor. I would be surprised if Laurentina was much older than 21 at the time, and I would not be surprised if she was in fact 18. Gladiia, meanwhile, would have been probably in the range of 28-30. While almost the same exact age gap would be present between Laurentina and Skadi, who would have met her at a similar time, the fact that Gladiia served as her mentor definitely colors the relationship in a different way.

As someone who clearly felt a responsibility towards Laurentina, I find it very unlikely that the nature of their relationship was immediately romantic. Even though Gladiia was immature in many ways and inexperienced compared to others of her age as a result of her isolated childhood and arrested development caused by her mother's abuse, she still likely would have seen a romance as unacceptable between the two of them. That may have even contributed to the arm's length she seems to sometimes keep Laurentina at, to the latter's chagrin.

However, critically, they aren't that age anymore. Laurentina is firmly an adult who can make reasoned decisions for herself, and frankly often showcases more emotional maturity than Gladiia does. Their situation is radically changed. Gladiia is still her commander, but she's her leader more because of mutual trust than any necessity to follow the orders of the Ægirian military. They're no longer student and teacher; they're much more akin to equals now. There are now things that Laurentina can teach Gladiia; Gladiia is now the one who most desperately needs character development. The barriers that could have stopped their feelings from becoming a romance have eroded, and there is now the potential for one to form that is completely fitting within the bounds of the text and our understanding of their characters.

...

Okay, it's time to discuss the subject matter of the post I linked at the top of this one. Ulpianus and Gladiia.

...Almost everything I've just said about Gladiia and Laurentina applies doubly here.

It's the same dynamic. A junior who becomes an equal. It's much more common, in my experience, probably because it's heterosexual. Like with the other dynamics, there's nothing in the story that outright contradicts it. I do think its claim is weaker than the last two, though. I find it much harder to believe that Ulpianus would have harbored romantic feelings towards Gladiia.

She was much younger than him at the time they met, compared to the age gap between the other Hunters and Laurentina, and—as mentioned—he was likely very aware of her emotional immaturity, vulnerability, and desire to form real connections for the first time in her life. Ulpianus is, from what we can tell, a very thoughtful man who understands his comrades very well and reckons solemnly with the consequences of his actions. As I put it in a previous post, he's a man who "constantly pontificates on duty, responsibility, and what 'ought to be.'" I don't believe a principled man like Ulpianus—who is stubborn about principles to the point of contentiousness, who considers emotions to be secondary to duty and righteousness, who is prepared to throw away everything for what he believes in, including his life and his humanity—would do anything that could be considered taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable young woman. That seems incredibly contradictory to his character. Even if she's grown physically, I think it's easy to read from his actions that he still sees her as someone who's still immature. I think he would have a much harder time seeing Gladiia as an equal peer than Gladiia would Laurentina.

Now, to play devil's advocate somewhat, I will say that there's material within this to work with. The love of a man who won't even confess that he cares at all for his younger student, much less act upon his desires is a setup for what could be a great fan-made story. I don't personally think it could ever end with the two of them together while staying true to their characterization, but that's up for interpretation. This is, however, not the way I see this ship characterized at all. If anything, they're most popularly depicted as ex-lovers or the husband/wife of a nuclear family. I've probably belabored the point enough that I don't need to break those concepts down, so I'll leave it there.

Briefly, I want to pay some lip service to the idea I floated earlier of a...fish polycule. I don't believe that Skadi and Gladiia have the most romantic flags at present out of the trio, but (especially in the event that both of them are romantically involved with Laurentina) I can easily see them growing closer and eventually breaking down the barrier of communication between them that stops them from expressing their fondness for one-another in ways that aren't professing they'd want the other to kill them if they became a monster.

There's not a lot of material in the text for this, but that's hardly stopped anyone before. It certainly hasn't stopped me. I ship Gladiia with Lavinia/Penance. I don't need them to acknowledge each other's existence to see a line there; I'm not about to judge anyone for pairing off two characters who have had considerable screen time together, where one nearly died for the sake of the other.

Lastly, I feel like I should at least mention e.g. Laurentina/Irene and Gladiia/Kal'tsit. Mostly because this post isn't about those dynamics. I could talk about Gladiia/Kal'tsit. I could talk about the parallels in Gladiia's first IS3 scene, where Gladiia's recollections about her mother's neglect are immediately juxtaposed with Kal'tsit's concern for her. I could further elaborate on Gladiia's complex relationships with the concept of motherhood, and how Kal'tsit relates to that. I won't. But I could.

I don't even know if I ship Gladiia/Kal'tsit as a romantic couple. I just like their relationship a lot, whatever form it takes.

---

Endnotes.

Thanks for reading! I don't have a sweeping conclusion to finish with; the point of this post was just to compare and contrast popular fandom depictions of these characters with the actual material found in the text.

I hope you enjoyed, or learned something. I know there's so much goddamn text in Arknights that it's kind of impossible for anyone to reflect thoroughly on every single part of it. If you have any questions, criticism, or suggestions, my inbox is open!

[lvis44]

Sweet Escape - Prologue // LH44

Lewis Hamilton x Y/N - focusing more on a friend group in this section

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol, slight jealousy? , age gap-ish (being friends with older people), possible language, not edited

Word Count: 1.2k+

Summary: A little backstory on how you found the friends you now consider family, all leading up to the group trip Lewis has planned and an unpleasant surprise that may come with it.

Notes: This is a prologue to a short series I have been planning. This part was written in a bit of a rush and ended up being longer than I had planned. It's not wonderfully written, the next parts will be much better. Part 1 of the story should be up later today and can be read without reading the prologue, this is just some backstory and context. I am not a professional writer and all of this is a work of fiction and is strictly for fun. Enjoy!

Two years ago you stumbled into a group of tight knit friends, people you are now lucky enough to call family. You had just moved to a new city where you didn’t know a soul, yet somehow you were lucky enough to meet Charlotte. You met through work and she quickly took you under her wing. She introduced you to colleagues, brought you to lunch for work gossip, but most importantly knew when work had been tough. Those days she would show up at your apartment, usually unannounced, carrying a bottle of wine and junk food. She was like the older sister you never had. When she told you she wanted to introduce you to her other friends, you were incredibly nervous. You knew they were all older than you and if they were anything like Charlotte, they were very well off. You tried to explain that you didn’t want to intrude and that you really wouldn’t fit in. She was persistent and you truly couldn’t let her down, so you finally conceded. The shock you had felt when you finally met everyone was astronomical, multiple faces that you recognized, from models to professional athletes, nothing that Charlotte had ever mentioned. The one that had you the most starstruck though was Lewis Hamilton. You’d grown up watching him race, yet there he was, sprawled across Charlotte's sofa with a drink in his hand and a kind smile on his face. You had only been allowed to sit in your shock for mere moments before they were all warmly welcoming you, peppering you with questions and joking around as if they’d known you for years. They managed to not once make you feel out of place, despite the fact that they were all older than you and had been friends for nearly ten years. It had been a natural progression; them inviting you out to clubs, over for dinner or game nights, getting added to group chats. You became a fixture, part of the family. 

At the beginning of the year, Lewis asked everyone to go on vacation while he was off for summer break. It wasn’t really a question, when Lewis was available, everyone dropped everything to see him. He was a rarity, sure he always kept in touch, but text messages and facetimes were nothing comparable to actually having him around. He made all the arrangements and informed everyone of the plans before you had even had time to agree. It was never lost on you that all of your friends were extremely wealthy, vacations like this were nothing foreign to them, but you never wanted to feel like a burden. Being considered a gold digger was the last thing you ever wanted. You didn’t know how you were going to pull it off but you knew you had to, you hadn’t seen him in more than two months now. While you tried to figure out how to scrape together the funds, you texted him and asked what you owe, bracing yourself for the number. His response had been simple and sweet, “Are you crazy? All I want is your company, miss ya :)”.

You had grown shockingly close with Lewis over the short period of time you’d known him. The night you met everyone you had found yourself alone with him, making drinks for everyone. Despite having calmed down, being in his sole presence had brought back all of your nerves, and he could definitely tell. You had ended up blurting out that you were a big fan, gushing like a maniac about his career. He had been kind, just chuckling as you rambled. When you realized what you’d done you quickly switched to apologizing, embarrassing yourself even further. He had laughed it off, shrugging before saying “It’s good to know I have somebody to talk to about racing.” He had asked for your number that night, saying he needed it to bore you with technical talk after races, and he did just that, not that it ever bored you. Every time you saw him you were greeted with a big hug before he asked for the rundown on everything that had been going on in your life. He was always protective of you when you all went out, keeping an eye on you from a distance while you danced in clubs, making sure no one ever tried anything. There had been a few times that you found yourself in the passenger seat of his car, giggly from the alcohol you consumed with your friends, he never let you take an uber, insisting it was far too dangerous for a young drunk girl late at night. He usually stayed relatively sober during the season, only having a drink or two all night, and never drinking during race weekends. He would carry you to bed, despite the fact that you could walk perfectly fine. Each time you fell asleep with a kiss on your forehead and woke with a bottle of water and a packet of aspirin next to your bed. He’s definitely a flirt, you noticed it the moment you met him, but you couldn’t tell if there was anything behind it. It always frustrated you and it never helped the crush that felt to be constantly growing. He’s an attractive man, painfully attractive at that. There have been more than a few times that you have all been hanging out around his pool, where you can’t help but watch the way the muscles of his back ripple under his skin. The main problem though, was he always seemed to have some sort of entertainment. You had met many models over the time you’d known him, all the definition of beautiful, but they only tended to last a few weeks at most. It was rare you would meet someone more than once or twice. You assumed he would have someone with him on this trip, he usually did.

Your suspicions were confirmed just a few days before the trip, he had sent out a full itinerary, including a guest list. There, amongst your list of friends, was an outlier, shockingly it was a name you recognized, a rare repeat for him. You couldn’t help but feel a little nervous, the last time you had met her she seemed to dislike you very much, and she hadn’t made it particularly subtle. You had been the recipient of many a poisonous stare, scoffs of disapproval when you talked about work, but more importantly nasty glares anytime you had the attention of Lewis. Unfortunately there was nothing you could do about it, you had never told him how she had treated you, mostly because you thought you would never see her again. You were in no place to tell him now, you felt it would be rude seeing as you were going on this trip on his dime. The only person that knew what she had been like was Charlotte, who immediately texted you making sure you were okay. You assured her it would be fine and to not bring it up, you were planning on ignoring the girl as much as possible and enjoying some quality time with your friends. You couldn’t help but snort when Charlotte tried to assure you the girl probably wouldn’t even last the whole week. 

Everything would be fine.

[pinyeti]

EPISODE 6: RETURN OF THE JEDI

Is it just me or have they just not explained the Death Star properly?

I cant take Darthy seriously anymore, he’s just a bag of organs 

Whats quirrel doing here

OMG ELEPHANT SNAKE IS BACK

Isnt this that old caterpillar from Alice n wonfderlad

WOW LUKE REALLY SUITED UP FOR HIS MESSAGE- DID HE JUST SELL???? GOLDENFACE AN R2-oh right Hans in the carbon - way to go to the dark side Luke, triangular droid trade YOU ARE YOUR FATHERS SON LUKE 

So much of Star Wars is just running into the problem with a glowstick and hoping it dies

Wow hansolo has been imprisoned, thrown into garbage, tortured, thrown into carbon, imprisoned AGAIN all cuz he has can’t shut my mouth disease

What even is their relationship with Luke btw, are they his adopted fWOAH WOAH WOAH WHEN DID LUKE TURN INTO A MAN??? Last I saw he was a child who couldn’t get a plane out of a lake AND THEY LEFT THE LAST MOVIE WITH ALL OF THTEM BEING TOGETHER wow the text in the beginning is more important than I thought 

No seriously why is Luke dressed like a pastor whats going on

WOAH GOLD BIKINI LIEA - OKAY STORY TIME I USED TO WATCH PRINCESS RAP BATTLES AS A CHILD AND THE ONE I SAW WITH LEIA IN IT SHE SAID “I wore a gold bikini and the whole world lost its shit” ANF NOW I KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

Ok yoda we get it you’re 900 no ones talking about your wrinkles anyway with pastor Luke in the room, projecting much?

Is yoda suidicdal???

WDYM LUKE IS REaDY???? HE DIDNT DO ANYTHING TO BE READY EXCEPT FLY FACEFIRST INTO A MILITARY BASE HIS TRAINING ARC IS SO SHIT

 Whos the other Skywalker?? lukes not even a Skywalker isnt his name Luke vader where’s skywalkers real son OH darthy’s deadname is skywalker

BABY WONKENOBIII IS BACKCKCKC-OMGWHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WDYM LEIAS LUKES SISTER WDYM HE SUSPECTED THIS AFTER MAKING OUT WITH HER FIFTY BILLION TIMES??? WHAT THE HELL

??? HELLO>>??? WHAT TH EHELL??? WHAT IN THE GAME OF THRONES IS GOING ON??????? How is Leia a princess then?? HahahahaHAHAHA SO YODA KNEW …… ABOUT THEIR LITTLE TRIANGLE

Nice the gang is back together, waiting for chewbakka to be revealed as darthy’s next offspring

YES YES GOLDENFACE GETTING THE RESPECT HE DESEREVEVVES I LOVE GOLDENFACEEE

I cant believe these are the idiots the emperors trying to kill

"yes I could sense you were my brother when my tongue was down your throat"

Oh yes Luke hands himself over- haha darthy sensitive over dead name 

Luke youre so stupid- but since jedis cant die is he gonna go to wherever yoda and obi wan is 

Lando is growing on me, also squid guy

This movie is gonna end with emperor and Luke dead isnt it

Is the emperor a jedi too how else does he have power or something something Sith

Id make a horrible jedi- im made of hatred

Hansolo my pathetic little idiot

I JUST REALIZED WHO LUKE EP6 REMINDS ME OF - TROY BOLTON

IS HE BEGGING DARTHY TO KILL HIM WTF

You’re telling me this big of an empire cant take down 6 idiots lead by a happy go lucky guy, never heard of this before

OHMYGOSSDDHD. LYKE YOU IDIOT NOW HE KNOWS ABOUT LEIA

Hahahah a hand for a HAND- wait what…. Why does he have a robo hand too whats going on 

Luke stop acting like you didnt hear about jedis 5 secs ago

Aw does darthy have a heart among his organs

OHMYGOD DARTHY IS A GOOD GUY????? ????? What A VILLAIN TTURNS GOOD ITS BEEN AGES SINCE I SAW A VILLAIN COME OVER TO THE GOOD SIDE

OMG DARHTY FACE REVEAL

Oh damn hes not as ugly as I thought he’d be

Kinda cute even - bro how did he even get this weak why’s he dying rn 

He has such kind eyes

Yeah ok I am so lost I NEED DARTH VADER BACKSTORY RIGH FUCKIN NOW

Is the empire this easy to penetrate? No but they did it with the power of lOVE and FRIENDSHIP 

Love lando 

YES HAN THATS THE REACTION I HAD AN HOUR AGO ACTUALLY WTF

Yes Luke its so sad your daddy that blew up an entire planet in ONE second without a single thought died IM NOT FORGIVING HIM THIS EASY

No way thats it??? They took down the empire just like that???? What??

Damn no one in this world can dance

OHMYGOD ANAKIN???? HOW CAN HE SEE THEM NOW??? IS IT CUZ HES BETTER AT WEILDING THE FORCE

ok fine anakin is cute

(3/9)

[goosewriting]

Wherever you go, I go

summary: after reader and Cal are rescued from Bracca, reader questions whether they know him at all.

relationship: Cal Kestisx GN reader

warnings: none!, a tiny bit of angst sprinkled in there but mainly fluff

word count: 4.4k

A/N: i have the Cal Kestis Brain WormsTM and they will not leave me alone sdfsdfd this follows the first part of the game on Bogano pretty closely but not to 100% 

Navigation: Part 1 (you're here) | Part 2 | Part 3

(english is not my first language. constructive criticism and grammar corrections are very appreciated!)

— — —

You breathe in Bogano’s humid air deeply into your lungs as you stretch your back, stepping out of the ship onto the soft grass. The last 24 hours have been wild.

Around two years ago, you had ended up on Bracca, where you met Cal. You were both around the same age and Prauf had taken a liking to you both, so he had ended up introducing you to the redhead when you were new. They showed you the ropes of the place, how to properly use the machinery and tools, and pretty much everything you needed to know to be a scrapper. 

You had been dealt a bad hand early in life; it wasn’t without reason that you ended up on a planet like Bracca after all. You were on your own, needed a job, and the bounty on your head didn’t make it easy to hide, so you had to disappear. 

And yet, after everything that happened, you can’t help but think that it wasn’t all so bad, in hindsight at least. Because after leaving behind everything you knew, adopting a new name and taking the first ship to “as far as way as possible” from your homeplanet, it was like the universe dropped you right into Cal’s arms. Or at least that’s how you liked to think about it.

Ever since then, Cal and you became pretty much inseparable. In each other you found the friend and peer you needed right then. You were both pretty secretive about your lives thus far, but you knew that if there was anyone you’d trust on that heap of scraps, it was Cal for sure.

As time went on, you grew ever closer. You ended up telling him about how you had been on the run and needed to lay low for some time. Even if he didn’t tell you much about where he was from, you knew that if he wanted to tell you, he would, on his own time. And you were okay with that. You tried not to make up your own stories about him in your head, yet sometimes you couldn’t help but wonder. Whatever backstory your mind came up with though, never in a thousand years would you have believed the truth if he had told you, which you learned later and saw with your own eyes.

You think back to how that day had started and gone by normally, everyone working on their own thing. It was only on the train ride home that you noticed how weird Prauf was acting, and he and Cal were having a talk in hushed whispers, looking around nervously. You had made a mental note then to ask the readhead what happened later on, but you’d never get to that. 

From the moment the train stopped and Stormtroopers escorted you all out to line up, everything happened so fast; the Inquisitors talking about a Jedi traitor in your rows, Cal suddenly taking out a lightsaber, Prauf being killed, the whole train chase… Your memories are foggy, and you’re not sure if it’s because you’re having a hard time wrapping your mind around everything that’s happened, or if it’s because you understand exactly what trespassed, but are unwilling to accept it. For now, at least.

Cal had somehow managed to get you out of there, falling onto moving wagons, and ushering you to go on. He fought off the scary Inquisitor lady while you cowered away. Then a mysterious ship came to your aid, bringing Cal and you to safety. 

And now it turns out this Cere person needs Cal to go to a… vault of sorts? Because he is actually a Jedi, and needs to pass a test to help her on a mission.

Truly, what a wild 24 hours it has been.

Now on the swampy planet, you somehow convinced Cal to let you tag along. You really don’t want to leave him on his own right now, and to be honest, you also don’t want to be left alone with Cere and the Latero. You aren’t even sure yet if you can trust them. This whole situation is just… too much right now.

So off you go with Cal, making your way towards the first cliff in silence, breathing in the clean air and taking in the sight. Little creatures with big eyes hop around and out of your way, looking at you curiously. As you reach a drop, Cal jumps first, helping you down. 

When your feet meet the ground, you don’t let go of his gloved hand just yet. He gives you a questioning look.

“It’s the first time in a while that I’ve been off-planet,” you remark with a smile. “It’s so silent out here. I had almost forgotten what that’s like.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while for me too,” Cal says. “It’s nice out here.”

You two just look at each other for a moment, suddenly aware that it’s the first time in a long time that you’re alone, hidden from prying eyes. And there’s also the bantha in the room of Cal being a Jedi. 

“Thank you, by the way,” you speak genuinely. “For… taking me with you, and not leaving me behind.”

“I already lost a friend,” Cal says, and you see the hurt cross his face for a moment. “I wasn’t gonna let them take you too.”

‘Friend,’ you think, and bitterly smile to yourself as Cal turns and keeps walking, without letting go of your hand though. You look at where he holds you, heat starting to spread on your cheeks. You’re painfully aware that your feelings for him have developed into more. You’re not quite sure when it started, but they were solid. And as strange as it was, Cal being a Jedi suddenly seems like the last piece to a puzzle. Everything falls into place, finally making sense. It actually suits him, somehow. And you understand why he didn’t tell you. The memory comes back of how he fought with his lightsaber, and how good he looked while doing that. You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of those thoughts. You were actually planning on confessing at some point, but that just got pushed way further into the future. There’s more pressing matters right now.

You don’t want to force Cal to talk about his past or his abilities, but you do have to talk about what your plan is. Not entirely sure how to approach the subject, you start formulating some questions in your mind, trying to find the best way to word them. You don’t get to ask him though because Cal stops at the base of another cliff, removing his hand from yours, which you miss immediately. 

“This seems like a good place to meditate,” he remarks, more to himself than to him.

“Meditate?” you ask.

“Ah, yeah,” Cal says and kneels down onto the ground. “To, you know, connect with the Force. It’ll take just a minute.” 

And with that, he closes his eyes and starts evening out his breathing. You look at him for a moment, then decide to sit on a rock a couple steps to the side. It doesn't take long and Cal’s face starts twitching lightly, his brows furrowing. Wherever he is, you hope he’s alright. 

You watch him a little longer, then avert your gaze as you realise you’re just shamelessly staring at this point. Taking in your surroundings a little better, you take note of the rocks and their curious colouration, with several shades of reds and browns between the white layers.

Suddenly you hear little, mechanical steps approaching, so you stand up and turn around, your body getting tense in a fight or flight moment. But you immediately relax as you see a curious little droid approaching the two of you. It looks at you, then at Cal, and stands in front of him, seemingly waiting for the redhead to come out of his meditation.

Cal’s breathing starts growing shallow, with the slightest of whimpers, and you want to reach out to him, asking if he’s okay, but you’re not sure if it’s safe to interrupt his meditation. So you just sit next to the droid, who gives you a look and a beep you can’t quite understand; you’ve never been fluent in binary. 

With one last pant Cal finally opens his eyes and is met with your worried gaze and the droid. 

“You good?” you ask him.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he answers, and gestures to the droid with his chin. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, he joined in earlier. Looks like he was waiting for you to react,” you explain and the beeps sound like agreement to you.

“He says his name is BD-1,” Cal translates, then introduces you both to the little droid. BD gives another series of beep-boops.

“We’re looking for someone,” Cal answers, and BD beeps excitedly. “No, not you,” Cal says with a chuckle. “We’re searching for a Jedi. I think.”

BD jumps with a series of quick beeps, and hurries off.

“Hold on, you know the Jedi?” Cal asks and stands up. “Hold on!” he calls after the droid who is running ahead, and tells you to follow him.

You two navigate through the landscape of floating rocks and cliffs, following BD. He brings you to what seems to be a long abandoned hiding place. As you have to walk over a big pipe to get there, BD arrives first, and gets attacked by a rather ugly, maggot looking creature that was burrowing underground, and you see some sparks fly. Cal rushes to his help, getting rid of the creature and its friends with his lightsaber.

“BD! Are you okay?” you ask the droid, picking him up to inspect his leg, which is pretty busted. He beeps sadly. 

Cal joins you, taking a look at the droid to check out the damage, and you can’t help your heart skipping a beat at how he’s standing behind you, looking over your shoulder, and you feel the warmth radiating off of him. BD tilts his head at you for a second but you choose to ignore it, trying to convince yourself that droids can’t pick up on that kinda thing. 

“That was pretty brave,” Cal says to BD as he takes the droid from your arms. “And hey, I can help you with that…”

He brings BD over to a workbench, quickly fixing up the mechanical leg. BD seems to run some damage analysis as he stares straight ahead, then beeps at Cal.

“The vault?” he asks. “Yeah, that’s where we’re headed, too. Let’s go.”

“Uhm, what’s happening?” you ask, following behind the other two.

“BD says we have to go to the vault. He said he knows a Jedi, so, I’m guessing that’s where we’ll find them.”

“So… BD is a friend, yes?” you question further, lowering your voice so the droid doesn’t hear you.

“Yeah,” Cal answers, looking after BD that is rushing ahead to show the way. “I hope so…”

Trying to find a way out of the place, you two squeeze through a barely open door. There’s a hallway that could be your exit, but it’s blocked by some thick cables. You’re too late to notice Cal swinging his lightsaber at them; they’re clearly sparking. Before you’re able to stop him, he gets zapped and thrown back. You rush to his side.

“By the Maker, Cal, are you okay?” you ask, checking him for injuries. 

“I- I’m okay,” he groans, as he sits up. 

You’re about to give him an earful about being reckless when BD rushes to Cal’s side, offering a healing stim canister from a little slot on his cubic head. 

“A stim?” Cal asks as he inspects the vial. Looking up at you, he offers you the object with a lopsided smile; you’ve always been the one to patch him up. 

You playfully roll your eyes at him, taking the stim and stabbing it into his upper arm. 

“That’s better,” Cal sighs, and you help him get back to his feet.

“Thanks, little droid,” you say to BD, and he beeps happily.

“Let’s try that again,” Cal mutters, and you give his shoulder a squeeze.

“Without getting hurt this time, please,” you instruct, to which he chuckles, and you let him go. But BD is now holding onto his leg, beeping. Cal lifts him up and swings him over his shoulder, where the droid settles, and you see the happy little shimmy, which internally makes you go “aaw”. It really is an adorable sight. 

The three of you continue your journey to the vault mainly in silence. Cal makes a little conversation with the droid from time to time. You can’t understand everything but it seems that BD doesn’t remember how he got here.

At one point you get to what seems to be the last stretch towards the vault. You wonder how you will get across that narrow space, which essentially is just vertical, rough walls, in mid-air. You turn to Cal, about to voice your concerns, when you see that he touches the wall, and his eyes glaze over, staring beyond the walls into nothingness.

Is he… meditating again? 

You wait a couple of seconds, but he remains unmoving. Reaching up, you give his arm a gentle squeeze. 

“With persistence…” he mumbles, shaking his head slightly, seemingly coming back from wherever he was.

“Hey, you okay?” you ask him, stepping in front of him to have him meet your eyes.

“Yeah, all good. Just remembering old tricks…” he replies.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“I just saw my… my old Master,” Cal explains with a slight shudder. “I was remembering my training, as a Padawan.”

Padawans. Jedi Masters. The Force. Those are all names you’ve heard growing up, but you never got to see one for yourself. You were too young to understand what was going on when the Clone Wars ended, but you did hear the stories. Some fantastical, others straight out of a horror holomovie.  

“Listen,” Cal speaks softly, taking both your hands in his, and your heart flutters as you look up at him. “I know this must be all so weird to you, and I promise I will explain everything. Just… I have to do this.”

“Do you though?” you counter. “What happened was awful but it was our ticket off of Bracca.” ‘We can start over again. Together’ is what you want to say, but it doesn’t seem like the appropriate time. “Why are you listening to a stranger?”

Cal hesitates for a second.

“It’s hard to explain,” he starts. “There’s just something coming from that vault, it’s like it’s calling out to me. I know you probably don’t understand, but please, trust me on this,” he almost pleads. “If anything is off, we’re leaving, I promise. But if there’s another Jedi… I need to know.”

You don’t trust Cere, or Greez. Maybe even BD, not yet at least. But you trust Cal. So you nod. 

“Just promise me one thing,” you insist. “Warn me when you’re about to meditate or think about your old Master. It’s a bit scary when you’re just… gone like that.”

“I will,” he promises with a smile, giving your hands one last squeeze before letting go.

“So,” you say after a while, looking at the vault which is so close, yet so far. “How are we getting there?”

Cal gives BD a sly glance, then looks back at you with that stupid grin you’ve grown to love so much. 

“Heads-up: you won’t like this,” he says and suddenly leans in, and you freeze. His arms snake around your back and under your legs, lifting you off the ground like you weigh nothing. “Hold on!” he quips. 

And with that he runs towards the cliff end, and you do hold on, for dear life. Cal skillfully runs along the walls, jumping from one side to the other, until he reaches the far end and hops onto safe ground once more.

He chuckles as he sets you back onto the grass, but you have to hold onto his shoulders a little longer until you feel safe on your legs again.

“Please never do that again,” you mutter under your breath, and Cal laughs. 

“C’mon, we’re almost there,” he remarks, gesturing towards the large structure with his chin. BD beeps happily. 

You walk next to Cal as you climb the rather steep mud path towards the vault. Up close, it is much taller than what it looked like from a distance. Still, you’re not sure what you expected it to be, but there really isn’t much… It’s just a giant tower surrounding a smaller column. That’s it.

“Huh, such a fuss over this?” you ask no one in particular.

“Hold on, I think I can get it open,” Cal says, and reaches up to touch the front panel. Closing his eyes, he focuses, and you can feel a shift around you as well as under you, as the ground shakes slightly, and the panel opens, revealing a dark and narrow passage. 

You inspect the passage, but you can’t see anything through it; it’s just a black void, and it’s rather unsettling. 

“I think you should wait here,” Cal states, giving you a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back.”

“But–” 

Cal walks into the void, BD still on his shoulders, and you circle around the column to catch him coming back on the other side to make fun of him thinking that would lead anywhere, but he doesn’t come out.

“Cal?” you call, but there isn’t even an echo of your own voice to answer you. 

With a sigh, you walk back to the side where the redhead left in, and you lean onto the opposite wall, waiting for him to come back. The wait grows longer and your patience thinner, and for a second, you think that you just got ditched on this swamp planet, and you hug yourself. No, you tell yourself, Cal wouldn't do that.

…Right?

After what feels like an eternity, but probably was just a couple of minutes, Cal and BD finally emerge from the void again. You all but throw yourself onto him, hugging his torso. 

“What took you so long!” you say into his chest. 

“Sorry, I…” he hesitantly hugs you back, and you can feel he wants to say something but is holding back. So you look up at him.

“What is it?” you ask. “Did you meet the Jedi?” 

Cal just looks down at you, studying your face with an unreadable expression, and if you weren’t so worried by his silence, you would probably be very flustered by his gaze and how close his face is to yours. 

“Things just got a lot more complicated,” is all Cal offers as an explanation as he takes your hand, pulling you with him, out of the vault. “C’mon.”

“Wait, what?” you ask confused, trying to keep up with his hurried pace. “What happened in there?” 

“This is bigger than we could have imagined, I need to tell Cere immediately.”

That’s all you got out of him all the way back to the ship. BD kept looking back at you with questioning beeps, but Cal either didn’t hear or ignored him.

When you finally make it back to the Mantis, you’re out of breath. Cal’s pace was relentless when he was in a hurry, and he did carry you across some of the walls like before without warning, so you were looking forward to getting in there and sitting down for a moment.

“You passed the test,” Cere calls from the entrance of the ship as you approach it. 

You beeline for the corner bench behind the round table, where BD hops on as well, and is immediately scolded by Greez. Cal introduces everyone to BD, telling the other two that he’s “with us” now. 

Sitting down, Cal starts explaining what he learned in the vault. Some guy called Cordova hid a Holocron with a list of force sensitive children in the vault. The only way to get it though is by following his path, and the next leads are on the planets Zeffo and Dathomir. 

You’re still trying to wrap your head around this whole ordeal, when Cal asks Cere why she’s no longer a Jedi. She explains that an experience changed her perspective (vague much?) and she cut herself off from the Force. But she believes that with the holocron they can rebuild the Jedi Order, and in that way fight against the Empire.

When Cere asks Cal if he’s on board with the plan, he’s about to answer, but then looks at you, and you can see in his eyes that he wants to do this. So you give a short nod.

They come up with a plan, deciding what’s the next step, and Cere and Greeze disappear in the cockpit. You find an empty cot at the back of the ship and take a seat.

Your chest tightens at the realisation that Cal isn’t who you thought he was at all. That maybe you don’t know him at all, actually. But Jedi or not, he’s the guy you fell for. Behind whatever it was he’s been trying to hide all these years, there was a personality that was just unmistakably and often unapologetically Cal. And he’s become too important for you to lose. 

And now there’s this mission. A mission where, if you got things right, the weight of the universe will be placed on his shoulders. And it makes you angry, because that’s just not fair. There must be other Jedis out there that could do it, right? To make it worse, and you’re aware this might be a selfish thought, it makes you feel inadequate. Was Cal gonna drop you off on the next pit stop? You aren’t exactly an experienced fighter. You doubt they’d have a need for a thief on the run from the Empire. Would you be just a burden to him? 

Cal, who survived the Purge of the Jedis, and will now attempt to restore the Order. And you, helplessly in love with him, probably holding him back, because you’re too scared to lose him.

Just as there’s a voice echoing in your mind, telling you that you’re not enough, you feel a dip in the cot beside you. Looking up, you’re met with Cal’s worried gaze.

“You okay?” he asks softly. 

You slowly nod, but it quickly turns into a shake of your head instead. 

“I just…” You hope your voice doesn’t betray you, giving away the tears threatening to spill. “Everything happened so fast, so much all at once. And now I’m left feeling like I don’t know who you are.”

Cal is about to retort but you quickly add, “Wait, I didn’t word that right.”

So he waits for you to collect your thoughts.

“What I mean is, we’ve known each other for some time now. And I understand why you hid who you are. I just can’t help but wonder if the Cal I know is the real Cal or not?”

You dare bring your gaze up to meet his, and your chest tightens at the hurt look in his face.

“Because I like the Cal I know,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself. “A lot.”

He gives you a smile, and you swear you can see the slightest shade of pink spreading on his ears and cheeks. 

“There’s only one Cal,” he says, leaning slightly to the side, softly bumping his shoulder into yours. “And he likes you too. A lot.”

For a second, you simply watch your hands in your lap, replaying his words in your mind. You see how his hand gets into your field of vision, folding over yours, and now your brain short-circuits for real. You look up to him, searching for regret or teasing in his eyes, yet you find nothing but affection and warmth. A warmth that spreads through your whole body, and has you taking a shuddering breath.

“So what’s the plan now?” you ask him after a while, giving his hand a squeeze that he returns. 

“Telling you the truth,” Cal answers. “And then you can decide if you want to actually be a part of this.”

“And if I say no, you’re just gonna ditch me?” you say with a playful scoff, but a slight panic still sneaks itself into your voice. 

“What? No, of course not,” he assures you. “I already talked to Greez. You can stay on the Mantis as long as you need. What I mean is… I want you to stay by my side. But I won’t force you to. We have a pretty ambitious mission, after all.”

“Fighting the Empire?” you ask rhetorically. “Been there, done that.”

“Wait, what?”

“Why do you think I have a bounty on my head, Master Jedi?” you say with a playful tone.

“What did you do?” he asks, genuinely curious. 

“Hmm,” you stroke your chin as if considering his question. “I’ll tell you after you tell me about your training and how you escaped.”

“Deal,” Cal says with a smile. “And I’m not a Master Jedi, actually. I only ever was a Padawan, an apprentice.” 

“Well you have some nice moves for an apprentice,” you chuckle. “And Master or not, you look good with a lightsaber.”

Cal lets out a strangled sound at your comment, face now several shades darker. 

You both turn when you hear steps approaching, seeing that it’s Greez. You instinctively want to remove your hand from Cal’s, feeling like you just got caught, but he doesn’t let you go. 

“Ah, I see you’ve found the bed,” Greez says. “It’s the only extra we have. We were counting with just one Jedi, after all.”

“Technically you’re not wrong,” you say, unable to meet anyone’s eyes and looking down at the floor instead. “We’ll figure it out.” 

“You’ll have to,” Greez answers with a smile as he doesn’t miss your joined hands, and turns to leave. “Come get some dinner, kids.”

Cal wants to stand up but you pull him back. He turns to look at you with a raised brow and you take the chance to plant a kiss on his cheek. You almost laugh at the surprise on his face.

“Wherever you go, I’ll go,” you tell him as you rise to your feet with a smile. “At least it won’t be boring, right?”

— — —

A/N: this may have the potential for a second part? if you'd like that let me know! ♥ // (screenshot is mine)

~~~~~

🐥 taglist: [more info in my pinned post!] @dybynyght, @galaxtic-writings (sorry for the late tag!)

[starstrvckfool]

hehehe this jin wants to hear about jin

OMG somebody who wants to hear about my lmk oc!!!

So Jin is a lmk oc of mine that I made about.. Last march! Here is his ref (he's 23 in this ref because it takes place s4-5)

His name basically means "shadow snub-nosed monkey" kinda like how macaques name is simply "the six-eared macaque"

So ya he's based off of this monkey

Backstory/basic lore

I headcannoned that macaque got revived year's ago before lmk pilot (mainly because he knows things like how to fly a jet and Code games?? HE WOULDN'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT IF HE RECENTLY GOT REVIVED/silly)

so one of the things LBD ordered him to do was to create a soldier for her if he didn't want to comply with freeing her using the skeleton key, so he tried using his magic to create a shadow clone that would withstand a struggle, basically one that was stronger and wouldn't easily poof away, but putting too much magic into something was costly because instead of making a clone he accidentally made Jin. Since Jin was a baby monkey at the time macaque then had to raise him and take care of him. (bro said he wouldn't get attached and then got attached)

Time skip and it's lmk s1-2 Jin is 21 now and is training under macaque, and then when we get to s3 Jin actually has to serve LBD! (There's more lore for s4 and upcoming s5 but it's stuff to do with his friend group called wintertide)

Powers

Because he was made with macaques magic he gained some traits from the older monkey, he can use shadow magic but he cannot do

・transformations

・make clones

He also has a large range of hearing like macaque but it has a smaller range than macaque since

1. He's younger than him (I HC macaques hearing gets better with age)

2. He only has 1 set of ears

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He also has some of lbds powers from when he was her soldier, it's nothing really prominent except the ability to create ice/bone(?) structures while portaling and giving people headaches

(just imagine macaques abilities in s3 in the prince the king and the shadow)

Ok that's about it I hope you enjoyed this because I love talking about my oc!!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for kissing my friend's crush?

I feel the need to add a bit of backstory: I grew up with my friend. I love her to death, she is my best friend and family. We are both the same age (26 now, 25 when the event occurred). We both were socially awkward throughout school, and recently I have been diagnosed with ADHD.

Growing up however, people would always choose her over me. I did not blame them, my friend is attractive and I do not think I am. I have been told to my face I'm too tall and she's perfect height (I am 6" and she is 5"4'). I've been told my chest is too small compared to hers, or that my thighs are too big. People would compare us a lot and always said she was more attractive but I was smarter. This i know has subconsciously made me compare myself to her in many ways.

My friend was telling me about this guy. Really talked him up, stated she thought we would be a good match. A few months went by and all of a sudden we wouldn't be a good match, we liked different things. It was a complete switch up from what she had been saying. I knew she had a crush on this guy.

Well, me and my friend were at a party and this guy was there. I had never met him prior to this night. She introduced me to a whole group of people I had never met. This dude was extremely charismatic and later I found out he had been flirting with me most of the night. I had thought he was being friendly, because in my mind he treated me the same as everyone else.

Well, my friend had went outside to do something (vape or smoke im not sure what) and me and him were in a corner of the living room talking. He kissed me first. I asked him why he did that and he flat out told me he had been flirting all night. I told him I had zero clue and thought he had flirted with my friend. He told me he did not like my friend that way at all.

We spoke a bit more before I asked if I could kiss him, which he readily agreed. We made out and my friend caught us. She was pissed and was my ride so we left. I thought she was mad at first because she had caught us making out and my friend has said she doesn't like PDA.

We didn't talk about it until the next day, which she then told me it was a bad idea and she was mad because she had a crush on him. This was the first time she herself had confirmed she had a crush, but I had suspected up til that point. I told her I had guessed but wasn't sure. She then got more mad because if I had guessed she had a crush, I shouldn't have kissed the guy.

Normally, I would agree. However, the guy said he didn't like her but he did me and had been flirting with me, im just bad at social cues. But the real kicker here is my friend is married. She is married and they are NOT in an open relationship. I am fully single as was the guy.

I thought the whole thing was over as it happened a few months ago, but she brought it up again because I was showing her a picture of a guy I liked and she told me that maybe she should kiss him so I'd know how it feels. She admitted she is still upset about it, even though she doesn't have a crush on the guy now (she even admits she only had a crush on him because she went through a rough patch in her marriage where her and her husband were fighting constantly but they've been in therapy and she says things are good now). She says the reason she is upset is because I had suspected her feelings and still kissed the guy even though I knew it would cause her pain.

So AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[luvtonique]

I wanted to address all of the controversies about me and put some explanations on them because unfortunately we live in a day and age where people just see the dirt without ever wondering how the dirt got there. They think "Man that guy never washes his car look how filthy it is" because I just fuckin went offroading 10 minutes ago but they didn't know that.

Aight let's start with numero uno, the thing I'm called the most, the big word for good ol Jay: Transphobe!

This is the one with the most hilarious backstory of them all which to this day baffles my goddamn mind.

I used to be a hated artist because I drew violent shit, I was known for Lil Miss Rarity which is a super violent comic. Naturally this lead to people saying that I was "killing children" because I was drawing violent (and sometimes pornographic) images of a children's cartoon show (My Little Pony).

So in my quick rise to stardom, I had a lot of hateful people attacking me as well, and I had fun with it. I called them out, called them stupid, etc.

Well, one of them was Dumbo. Dumbo spent 6 full months making posts about me that are still on their blog to this day. Every single time I made a post, they reblogged it or reposted it, to call me a shithead, call me an ass hole, wish I'd kill myself, etc.

One day I was doing a fundraiser to put away money for a potential emergency because my mom had hurt her spine really bad and was in the hospital. I had a goal of $300 and raised $1200.

Dumbo, of course, was saying hateful shit about me still, and said, I quote, "I hope that whore dies in the hospital lmao"

So, I looked into who Dumbo was. The Brony fandom was, at the time, all about Love and Tolerance, so I did some sleuthing and found out they were an artist on DeviantART taking full color commissions for $10. I commissioned them on my DA account, and asked them to draw Lil Miss Rarity. They and I had a very polite conversation, and since they drew the picture very quickly I tipped them 100% and told them to up their prices because their art is very good.

They thanked me, not knowing it was me (despite that it was literally my main account), and I walked away.

Then, they checked my gallery, found out it was me, and went into a rage, making a post that says, "LMFAO, Jay just begged for money and then turned around and used it to commission an artist for double their asking price, what a shithead!!"

So, I took the screencaps of all of their death threats over 6 months, compiled them all, and showed my massive Tumblr following in a huge callout post against them. In the middle, I referred to Dumbo as "he/she/it/clown" and everyone (AND I FUCKING MEAN EVERYONE) completely ignored the 6 months of death threats and how consistently polite I was to them, and sided with Dumbo in a moment that labeled me "Transphobic" for the rest of my life.

Another instance is I called Kris from Deltarune he/she, and was called transphobic for that, and got the amazing quote "That's a real-ass child and you're misgendering them deliberately," to which I replied, "That's not a real-ass child that's a fictional character you fucking retard"

NEXT UP: ABLEIST.

I grew up in Los Angeles in special ed classes and have a mentally retarded brother, I have the pass to say retard, fuck off.

NEXT UP: RACIST.

I grew up in Los Angeles with a father who called himself "N*gger Bob" (he's white) because he was a super racist who believed being asked to help take the trash out was "akin to slavery." He also beat my retarded brother half to death for having a black girlfriend.

I was in LA during the Rodney King riots, I was in LA right in the middle of the Crips and Bloods trying to kill each other and having fuckloads of gang shootouts that I overheard when I was chilling in the Ceritos (spelling) mall.

I know what racism looks like.

A white boy saying the n-word while playing Fortnite is not what racism looks like.

A white boy singing along with Busta Rhymes (hi that's me) on a livestream and casually dropping n-bombs because I'M SINGING ALONG WITH BUSTA, BITCH, is not what racism looks like. I had three black friends growing up, Davion, Julian and Smalls, and also Undrier but Undrier was retarded and I didn't consider him a friend he just followed me around and called me "Day" because he couldn't pronounce J's. But me, Smalls and Davion would stand on Davion's aunt's porch and eat zucchini cornbread and listen to Woo Haw and headbang and sing along til the fucking cows came home.

But now that I'm grown up, my upbringing apparently doesn't matter, my FUCKING SKIN COLOR DOES (you know, racist ideology!) and I'm no longer allowed to say the n-word despite having casually spent my entire childhood surrounded by black friends who were completely okay with me saying it. I grew up in the hood, motherfucker! Bellflower born n' raised, bitch! Wes' Side!

But I'm <skin color> and since <skin color> isn't allowed to <thing that's designated for only other skin color to do>, I'm racist.

NEXT UP: PEDOPHIIIIIILE

I was molested when I was 13, which thankfully didn't leave too much emotional scarring on me. Anthony Sevarino, the dude's name was, and he shoved my hand in his pants and showed me his dick during a camping trip and said he was gonna fuck me in my bed. I was so shocked by this happening that I didn't even tell my parents who were in the same motorhome literally asleep 10 feet from me.

Growing up, I always had a really emotional trigger to seeing harm come to children, I hate it. I cry and shake uncontrollably when I see children getting hurt, no matter what. It's the only thing I have I'd call a "trigger."

I saw that episode of Rugrats where Tommy cuts his finger and then he's scared to do anything anymore because he might get hurt, and that made me fucking bawl, it still does, seeing Tommy cry super fucking hard over seeing his finger bleed- holy shit it's making me teary eyed right now just typing that.

So, naturally, I don't want children to get hurt and am extremely against pedophilia, child predatory behavior, MAPs, grooming and these FUCKING PEOPLE WHO KEEP CASUALLY TALKING TO 13 YEAR OLDS ON DISCORD FOR FUCK SAKE.

"But Jay! You drew foalcon! Those fictional ponies are underaged!"

What, you mean that tag that's still extremely popular and always has been in the brony fandom?

Yeah can't imagine why I, a very popular artist in the brony fandom from 12 years ago to 10 years ago, would ever draw something so insanely high demand and so insanely popular. Can't fucking imagine.

Never mind that I haven't drawn it in 3 years, removed all my old images of it, and even announced I'm not drawing that shit anymore, I'm still losing friends when they find out I did once, because "I can't associate with a pedophile I'm sorry." (See: "I can't differentiate fiction from reality and also can't allow a person to move on from a troubled past that they had.")

Also never mind that the few crowdpleaser foalcon moments in Lil Miss Rarity were officially written out entirely (the part where Twist and Sweetie Belle kissed).

But you know what's amazing? Being part of the brony fandom and being an artist willing to draw anything meant that people would come to me and literally confess that they're in possession of the "real shit" and wanted to know if I was interested. Seven of them, seven, are in prison now because of me and my buddy "Z" contacting the FBI with their confessions and the shit they shared with me thinking that I was a "safe person" to admit that shit to.

My position in the fandom as an artist who gets to know their commissioners personally and was willing to draw that type of shit was literally fishing out real actual predators and putting them in prison, but I was still getting called a pedophile, and still get called it today. It's fuckin great man.

NEXT UP: TRANSPHOBE (PART 2)

I was trans. Shaved my hair half off, dyed it blue, called myself Jynkx, cussed out my family, moved to Ohio with a guy who wore diapers around the house (with his brother living there) and collected loli figurines, and dated a transgirl who was catfishing and manipulating me for 9 fucking years. I have a Discord server to this day with pronoun selection roles, my best friend is trans (I met her when she was cis and helped her come to the decision to transition and it has since improved her life and happiness), and almost every mod in my Discord server is trans.

The problem, of course, is that the trans activist community hates itself more than any other, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. This is a group of people who encourage hating cisgendered people, and encourage people to hate the body they're in and to transition to a "different body." It's been proven multiple sources that there are entire "Femboy Cults" (search that on YouTube) who are actively seeking out depressed people to manipulate them into starting HRT, and cutting off their family.

WELL GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?

Bridget, as you all remember her, was a manipulator who lied to me for 9 years of dating to make me depressed, hate myself, hate my family, give her thousands of dollars, and kept promising we'd meet some day while turning down every opportunity (such as conventions we were both already going to) to meet (yes, I went to conventions she was at and didn't meet her).

I was a victim of manipulation, was surrounded by horribly manipulative and narcissistic pieces of shit who warped my mind and made me believe I was depressed because I was "an egg" and needed to go get on HRT and change myself. And I almost did! I came within a hair's reach of shoving a hormone-altering drug into myself in hopes it would cure my depression, and then went "Wait a second, I'm not depressed because I'm a woman trapped in a man's body, I'm depressed because femboy-obsessed manipulative pervert rapists want me to turn myself into their fetish." I broke up with Bridget, I moved home from Ohio, I waited for my hair to stop being blue, and I became proud of myself for escaping that horrible situation and bettering myself mentally.

So how's this make me a transphobe?

I DON'T FUCKING KNOW, YOU FUCKING TELL ME YOU FUCKING INSANE BOOGEYMAN-BELIEVING ASSHOLES WHO BLAME EVERY OTHER PERSON FOR YOUR OWN INTERNAL LACK OF FUCKING SELF WORTH.

WAKE THE FUCK UP. YOU'VE BEEN MANIPULATED BY THESE FUCKING TRANS ACTIVISTS WHO ARE JUST SICK FETISHISTS WHO WANT TO TRANSFORM LONELY MEN INTO "FEMBOYS" UNDER FALSE PROMISES THAT IT WILL FIX THEIR MENTAL PROBLEMS. GET OUT WHILE YOU FUCKING CAN. I DID AND I'VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER IN MY LIFE.

Next up: HOMOPHOBE

I draw LGD (Lesbians Getting Dicked) because I think it's hot when girls who like girls have sex with guys. I've drawn some pretty offensive pictures of it such as a pic of two lesbians being told "Pride month's over, ladies, time to be straight again" while being surrounded by hard dicks and looking scared.

Why'd I do this? Well because a lesbian friend of mine also likes that shit and we did that as an art trade.

But why do I draw it on my own sometimes? Because it's hot. It's fucking fictional porn, it's not real, it can't hurt you. I tag it LGD and only post it in servers you need accounts to see. You don't like it stop going out of your way to look at it, and if someone slams it in your face in your private "We Hate Jay" Discord server (which there are many of. I have moles who tell me.), that's not my fault y'fuckin dipshits. I properly tag and hide my stuff so only people who want to see it can see it. If someone showed you a picture of my spread asshole, you should get mad at them, not me. They're the one who SAVED IT TO THEIR COMPUTER AND SHOWED IT TO THEIR FRIENDS UNSOLICITED, YOU MORONS.

Anyway.

Next up: AN ASS HOLE.

I've spent 13 years being called all of the above names no matter how much I've catered to their activism and was even part of their activist movements directly. Fuck you.

Next up: A NAZI

Lmao.

I said on Twitter, "I hate that no matter what you say on this site, someone somewhere will get mad."

And that, without any further comment from me literally at all, turned into a massive amount of people including "Wootmaster" (Added note: I talked with Woot in private and he gave me the okay and apologized, we cool) calling me racist and a "Bootlicking Nazi." I literally did not add to it. I literally just said the opening line and left it for 3 days.

That's why I deleted my Twitter.

That's why people think I'm a Nazi.

Because I said "I hate that no matter what you say on this site, someone somewhere will get mad."

Next up: I DON'T FUCKING KNOW I BET THERE'S MORE.

You see why I make angry rant posts like this one?

Because this is how I've been treated for 13 fucking years.

I've been attacked, called names, labeled evil, told I'm phobic against the movements I was literally part of and being an activist for, had money stolen from me by perverts who got arrested for drilling a hole in the bathroom wall at a brony convention to jack off to his female roommates (he pretended to be trans and bullied them into letting him room with them in their "Safe Women's Hotel Room" and then did that shit and got arrested. But not before he stole money from me! Six thousand fucking dollars!), lived with a fucking probably actual child predator who would show me his loli figures and foalcon posters every day and try to convince me to like them and showed me his dick multiple times...

I literally was smack dab in the middle of super ultra liberal activism and trans activism for over a goddamn decade, right down to blue hair half shaved off and calling myself Jynkx.

And I come back, snap out of it, and get cussed out and called transphobic and "the reason trans people are being killed" because I don't like the flowery 1-dimensional LGBT representation in World of Warcraft and have a 9 year running best friend I went to multiple conventions with decide instantly that I'm a Nazi racist communist because I didn't disown my mother when she voted for the orange guy, and because I called one of their friends "Insane" for identifying as fae/fie and thinking they're a goddamn gaelic woodland sprite. (Btw he was my most frequent commissioner for loli shit and used to jack off while I was drawing it for him.)

You see, people.

I've spent 13 years surrounding myself with and getting personally connected with the lives of my commissioners as a brony/furry artist who was deep into LGBT and Liberal activism.

And in those 13 years I've come to realize that I surrounded myself with the most fucking disgusting and evil people on earth, who no matter how much I would shill for them and do what they asked, I would still be the label-covered punching bag whose reputation is now so utterly in the trash that literally no matter what I draw, say, or do today, I still have people on shady Discord servers n' shit calling me a fucking lolcow and a pedo and a transphobe and a Nazi and a racist and a homophobe and an ass hole.

I have learned in 13 goddamn years that you can't appease these fucking lunatic psychopaths.

And so I don't anymore.

So who am I really?

I'm an incredibly easy to talk to artist, I'm a dude, I love roleplaying and drawing pictures for people, I like writing song lyrics, I love hearing about new inventions and innovations, I love goats, I love dogs, I think cats make bad pets but I don't mind cats, I'm making a video game about an elf girl, and I want you hateful people who I've lived rent-free in the heads of for over a goddamn decade to leave me and my fanbase the fuck alone.

Love you all.

~Jay

[anghraine]

About a month ago, I found copies of Morgoth's Ring and The War of the Jewels in a local used bookstore after many years of looking for used editions, and immediately snatched them up to go with the copy of Peoples of Middle-earth and the LOTR drafts I've had for years.

I don't have The Fall of Gondolin, but even so, I was kind of fascinated by the different variants of the story Tolkien was coming up with until very late in his life. Christopher Tolkien could pretty authoritatively date some of the revisions to the 70s based on the typewriter his father was using, and iirc it was the last First Age material (JRR) Tolkien worked on, and he seemed to really think he could get it done after not touching it for 20 years.

But between the different texts that I do have, there are so many different versions and ideas for the Maeglin backstory that it's pretty wild.

Eöl was captured by Morgoth at some point and his skills made him useful enough in Angband that he got some limited privileges among the slaves and prisoners there, and also he learned some of his craftmanship because he was there. He either escaped because of this or """escaped""" (unconsciously a tool of Morgoth still). JRRT really liked this idea on a narrative level but rejected it for being too similar to Maeglin's own story.

Eöl was a Sindarin relative of Thingol's but had always been a hater in general, and left Doriath out of some mixture of personal antagonism and not wanting to be limited by the Girdle of Melian. His incredible craftmanship had nothing to do with Angband; he advanced his skills through his friendship with the dwarves.

Or maybe he was never one of the people of Doriath, actually, but akin in a looser sense of the broader Sindarin kinship group. He was, incidentally, wrong about the Noldor stealing Sindarin lands; the Sindar weren't occupying those particular lands in the first place.

Eöl was actually a Noldo who refused the final step of the journey and trapped/misled a young Aredhel before the Noldor ever even got to the Undying Lands (thus denying her the sight of the Two Trees). The Valinorean Noldor look down on him for being personally a loser, but there's no racial subtext to it.

Separately from any of this, Tolkien keeps confusing the exact generations that the Nolofinweans and Fëanorians belong to, so there's a draft where Aredhel is accidentally moved up a generation and Eöl regards Curufin and Celegorm as his shitty nephews.

JRRT wrote a whole passage about Curufin's motives in his interactions with Eöl, what he knew or guessed at what point about just who Eöl's mysterious wife was, and the importance of showing the better side of Curufin's character (given how awful he usually is, esp in Beren and Lúthien's story) in his relationship to Aredhel and his distaste for Eöl, even if he remains arrogant. Although Curufin unfortunately doesn't choose murder on that specific occasion, his annoyance with Eöl does cause significant delay that buys some time for Aredhel and Maeglin's escape.

There's more, but those are things I found interesting!

[reunionatdawn]

The beauty of Axel's original character arc

"I thought a lot about that. Should I leave him as he was or should I bring him back again? However, when I considered the people that Lea wants to bring back, his existence plays a big role. I think Lea has successively become a key character." (Tetsuya Nomura)

Nomura said that he debated whether to bring Axel back to life, or to leave him as he was. The fact that he wasn't sure meant that his KH2 character arc must have felt complete somehow. So, I'd like to take a look back at Axel's original storyline in KH2 and why I liked it so much. I thought his death worked very well as a beautiful and satisfying (albeit more bittersweet) ending to his story. In many ways, I found it to be much more poignant than his storyline in KH3.

“Is that how to treat a best friend on coming back from completing a long mission!” “I don’t recall becoming your best friend.” (Another Report: Roxas—Somewhere in Time)

Roxas was closer to Axel than any of the other Organization members. But he obviously yearned to have best friends his own age. That is why he was best friends with Hayner in his dream world, even though he didn't know them in real life. And he didn't even remember Axel. In other words, Roxas and Axel were not really best friends. In the short story that was included with the Japanese version of KH2FM+, Axel was the one who was insistent on using that label.

Hayner: Well, I doubt we can be together forever. But isn't that what growing up's all about? What's important isn't how often we see each other, but how often we think about each other. Right?

The whole concept behind Nobodies was that they had no hearts, but they still had their memories from the time when they did. So, the writers undoubtedly had some idea of what each member's backstory was like. In the original KH2, the writers chose not to explicitly tell us anything about Axel's past. But based on his behavior, we would be able to ascertain that he probably had a best friend when he was still a human. However, he was already a grown up. His summer vacation must've ended a long time ago. He could no longer be with his best friend, and he needed Roxas to fill that void.

Roxas: Organization XIII… they're a bad group. Naminé: Bad or good, I don't know. They're a group of incomplete people who wish to be whole. To that end, they're desperately searching for something.

One of the biggest themes in KH2 is that of duality. In Hinduism, the universe is said to be made up of two complementary opposite forces called Shiva and Shakti. Shiva is the masculine force and is known as the destroyer or transformer. He is associated with chaos, darkness, and the element of fire, which symbolizes purification. Shakti represents light, order, and the feminine nurturing aspects of the universe, giving birth to new life. She is associated the element of wind, which symbolizes life energy and creation.

Axel's moniker is "おどる火の風". It translates to "Wind of the Dancing Fire" or "Dancing Fire's Wind". This is my theory of what the deeper meaning was. One of the most famous depictions of Shiva is that of him dancing in a ring of fire. This version of him is known as known as Nataraja. The rhythmic movements of the dance are said to cause storms and destruction. And there's a backstory to the dance.

In Hindu mythology, Sati immolated herself out of intense devotion to her husband Shiva when her father insulted him. When Shiva learned of Sati's death, he was overcome with grief, sorrow, and uncontrollable rage. Shiva carried Sati's lifeless body on his shoulders and began to perform the cosmic dance of destruction.

In KH1, the reports mentioned how Ansem amplified "storms" in the subjects of his experiments on the darkness of the heart. The kanji used (嵐) can refer to a literal storm or it can also be used metaphorically to describe an intense emotional state. I suspect that the original idea in KH2 was that Axel's best friend was killed during an experiment. And this event caused Axel's heart fall to darkness, turning him into a Nobody. It's probably the reason why Axel was so delighted to assassinate Vexen by setting him on fire.

Axel: Let's meet again in the next life. Roxas: Yeah. I'll be waiting. Axel: Silly. Just because you have a next life…

The imagery of Shiva dancing within a circle of flames represents the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Shiva performs the dance and destroys the universe, but this destruction is eventually followed by rebirth. His lover Sati was reborn as the goddess Parvati and reunited with Shiva as his other half. Their combined form represents unity in duality and cosmic balance. In KH2, Axel did not think he was going to be reborn. And that was the basis of his storyline.

Naminé: We may not have homes. But there is someplace I want to go… And someone I want to see… Axel: Same here.

Nobodies had a strong thematic association with death and the afterlife. In KH2, Naminé was the ghost girl living in the haunted mansion. In KH3, she was an incorporeal star in the Final World, the metaphysical place where people go when they have strong attachments and cannot pass on to the other side.

A Nobody was the spirit that went on even as its body faded from existence. They were very similar to the Unsent from FFX, which was another game written by Kazushige Nojima. Axel was created because his human-self had strong sentiments. He desperately wanted to be with his best friend forever. And this unfulfilled dream, ironically, kept his body and soul tethered to the realm of light.

Kairi: Maybe…waiting isn't good enough. Axel: My thoughts exactly! If you have a dream, don't wait. Act. One of life's little rules. Got it memorized?

When Axel asked Kairi if she wanted to "see" Sora, he was referring to her meeting him in the afterlife because he was planning to kill them both. A similar form of wordplay was also used in the Japanese dialogue. His intentions were made apparent by his outstretched hand. He wanted Sora to become a Heartless again. So, he probably planned to accomplish that the same way he became a Heartless.

(Japanese Translation) Axel: We're quite similar, aren't we? Both of us want to meet our important friends. Don't you think we're like comrades?

In the KH universe, when a person dies, their heart returns to the light of Kingdom Hearts. Since Axel didn't think he had a heart, he thought there would be nothing left of him to live on after his empty vessel was destroyed. Even if he wanted to die and be reborn to meet his best friend, he couldn't. He was driven by intense loneliness.

Some Kingdom Hearts fans think there's something romantic between Axel and Roxas and that Disney stopped that from being made explicit. Is that true? Have there been things Disney have stopped you from doing? Nomura: In terms of the relationship between Axel and Roxas, we never intended anything like this and this is actually the first time I ever heard of it! We don't want to openly negate how the fans have come to enjoy the characters, but it was not something the creative team intended. Axel and Roxas are the best of friends and that's their primary relationship. 

Axel's intense yearning to see Roxas once more made fans question his orientation even back in 2005. Akuroku was quite a popular ship back in the day and many players saw romantic subtext on Axel's part. I do agree that Axel is easily read as queer. But the creative team was not trying to imply that he was in love with Roxas. I think it was his human best friend that he was really in love with, and Roxas just reminded Axel of him. When he was with Roxas, he felt like he was with his best friend. And that's why he wanted to die by his side.

(Japanese Translation) Axel: When I was with him, it felt like I had a heart too. That kind of feeling... I feel it with you too... The same...

When Axel said, "the same", he was referring to how Sora reminded him of Roxas. But I believe that we were invited to read between the lines and wonder if he was also referring to a human best friend that had already passed on. Ultimately, Axel's original KH2 arc was not about being together with Roxas forever. Roxas merged with his other half and became whole. He would live on within Sora.

In some Hindu traditions, "Sati" also refers to the act of a widow willingly participating in a self-immolation ritual on her deceased husband's funeral pyre. It was seen as an expression of devotion and loyalty and also an act of peerless piety which was said to purge her of all her sins. The widow would achieve spiritual liberation (moksha) not only for herself but also for her deceased husband. This meant that both would be freed from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). The widow was thought to be reunited with her husband in the afterlife, enjoying an eternal spiritual existence with him.

To help Sora reunite with Kairi, Axel self-immolated. After he died, Nojima probably envisioned that he would meet his dead best friend again, who was waiting for him on the other side. He had attained moksha, which represents the final goal of human existence in Hinduism, where the soul is liberated from the cycle of samsara. And that's probably why Nomura wasn't sure whether it was better to bring him back to life or to just leave him as he was.

"I never thought he would grow as much as he has. We originally planned to have him exit upon being defeated by Roxas during the opening of KHII, but all the staff, myself included, were strongly inclined to have him keep playing an active role after that. It's possible he will have things to do in the future, too. I tried to put that into his 'see you' line in KH2 FM+." (Tetsuya Nomura)

When KH2 was written, the writers probably had not envisioned a preexisting relationship between Saïx and Axel. But after its success, they decided to expand on the Organization's backstories, and came up with that idea. Isa was based on the original concept that was implied in KH2. Axel did have a human best friend, and that loss had a profound influence on his relationship with Roxas.

If Axel's human best friend was supposed to be literally dead in KH2, then him only being Norted is a major retcon, yes. But it was a retcon that would allow for the eventual reunion of Axel with his best friend in the physical life. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, he could resurrect him from the dead. And that was the underlying idea of making Lea a Keyblade wielder in the first place.

Lea and Isa's backstory is one of the missing links of the KH series. By all means, it should have been depicted many years ago, in the defunct Birth by Sleep Volume II. This is a shame because it left their relationship extremely underdeveloped, and their reunion was largely glossed over in KH3 as a result. Because of this, I thought Axel's storyline in KH3 fell flat, and I thought that his ending in KH2 was more impactful. But I may change my mind if we finally get to see more of Axel's long overdue backstory in Missing Link.

[dellalyra]

Hey,i saw your reqs are open! So if i may, can i request for gojo with a fem s/o who i as strong as him but no one knows that since she hides that from EVERYONE. (Maybe she thinks shes alone with a curse and she is toying with a special grade curse and easily kills it, and gojo accidentally sees that and is like.... You're stronger than you let ppl know?)

Thats it and i hope u have a great day!!

Family Formation - Part Nine

Summary: Satoru discovers the extent of readers cursed technique.

CW: fluff, canon typical violence, mentions of mythology, fluff, fluff, teen satoru and reader (17/18), the elders (angry face)

A/N: this was SUCH A FUN REQUEST I love reading about powerful readers so this was a lot of fun to write, I wrote it this was bc I also felt I needed to explore their dynamic pre-relationship and also Y/N’s cursed technique before I get to other *ahemshibuyaahem* parts of the story. thank u all so much for all the love and support :) <3

Recommended Listening:

Brutal - Olivia Rodrigo (reader’s fight)

The Fruits - Paris Paloma (the explanation)

The Tradition - Halsey (the backstory)

Won’t Bite - Doja Cat (the ending)

The sunlight reached its peak, reflecting off Satoru’s bright white hair. Geto was bored and taking a ‘rest’ day and Shoko… well, she threw a water bottle at home when he even approached her room. That left you, he needed someone to hang out with, something to do because all of this hanging around was going to drive him even nuts than he already was. He text Shoko, asking where you were since you two were joined at the hip usually and you weren’t answering your phone. She replied telling him you’d been sent on a mission alone that morning – some abandoned orphanage down by the Shinjuku district. The next line nearly made the man’s eyes pop out of his head – a semi-grade one? Alone? You were only in second grade and the same age as him. Only a 1st year. Sure, you could hold your own in a fight but – this seemed like a reckless match.

Pulling on his sneakers and bomber jacket (not wearing his uniform felt weird) he Googles Shinjuku Abandoned Orphanage and finds an article about one being shut down 3 years ago due to the children speaking of ‘witnessing paranormal activity’, it had been closed due to the terrible publicity surrounding it. He rang for a driver and pointed him in the right direction.

A 20-minute ride was filled with Satoru thinking about how he should have been sent on this mission – not you, he was the strongest sorcerer alive after all. He kept telling himself the gnawing feeling in his gut was excitement for a fight – not worry, he wasn’t worrying about you. No, not. Why would he?

He could hear Suguru’s voice in his head from their last mission together.

“Bro, you love her. Just accept it, my guy. It’s clear she’s into you too.”

The car pulls up and Satoru unfolds himself from the back seat and waves the driver off. The building in front of him is surrounded by barbed wire fences, it’s been vacant for a long time if the boarded-up windows set in the building’s imposing front are anything to go by. He could sense a strong cursed energy, definitely a semi-grade one – along with something else, something stronger. Something far more ancient and far more powerful. It was familiar but different.

He had to find you.

He pinpointed the location where both energies were – third story, east wing, 5 doors down the corridor. He raced his way down thinking about how he’d love to practice his techniques warping abilities so he could quit all this running around. Maybe someday in the future, he’ll be able to just *poof* into a room. He was surely gonna do that to annoy Shoko.

He slowed down, nearing the room as he heard a familiar laugh coming from the room.

He knew that laugh, it always made his heart skip a beat – but why were you laughing now?

You were meant to be in danger. Not that he was hoping to be your knight in shining armour so he could see that shiny look of adoration in your eyes – no, that’s ludicrous.

The door was hanging off its hinges and nothing could have prepared him for what he saw inside the room.

You.

Y/N.

But – different.

You stood, your stature still miniature in comparison to his lanky, boyish frame but you seemed so much larger now, your presence was pulsating through the room – overwhelming to anyone but him.

Your feet were bare on the concrete floor and you seemed to almost hop around your prey, your tiny little hands, nails usually painted a pretty pale green – we’re still pale green but not your nails, no – claws were protruding out of your dainty little hands. He could see from here they were as sharp as any cursed knife. Your hair, seemed longer and wait, were those… vines? Vines and leaves seemed to grow from your head as naturally as the hair itself, mingling with the pretty cascade of your hair down your spine. Your eyes he so often couldn’t take his own off were alight and you were talking, and when you opened those pretty lips that he flirted with you about how much he’d like to taste your lip gloss – leaving you to tell him to save his flirts for someone he was into (both of you were so oblivious to the obvious feelings that you held for each other that Shoko and Suguru might cry if it went on any longer), he saw two sharp as needle fangs, pearly white on your pillowy lips.

You were completely and utterly ethereal.

What shocked him – was the mess in the middle of the room. A grotesque mess of a curse – horrifyingly long, spindly limbs attached to a body that was just stretched mottled skin over bones – the whole body covered in beady eyes, almost insect-like. The creature had no discernible head, just those torturous limbs. He’d seen worse things before.

He had seen your techniques, you could do things like to make a wall of thorns to deflect curses - he’d seen you summon whips of vines to lash at and bind a curse, he’d even seen you seemingly have a chat with a ladybug one day. And of course, your marksmanship with your cursed longbow was unrivalled, sniping shots that seemed impossible. He knew you were a very capable sorcerer, the most intelligent he knew in the school (even beyond Nanami). Your love for books helped that too.

What shocked him was what you had done. It looked like the very earth was cooperating with your every whim, grasses and vines and tree branches had broken their way through the floor and were caging the fighting curses limbs as they grew weaker and weaker against your onslaught. There was a beam coming through the ceiling, moonlight? At 2 pm? It seemed to sear and burn the curse in licking flames as it shot down onto it before returning to the shape of a small, silvery orb and absorbing itself into your palm.

“You lay here, waiting each day for night to fall, didn’t you? To prey on these children, to torture their little minds with fears and terrors – to be the monster under their bed. The children who were already scarred and frightened – but you knew that, and you loved it, didn’t you? Oh, you loved the feeling of drinking up the screams of those innocent children – and do you know what that makes you? It makes you a monster. Funnily enough, my family were taught and raised for one destiny, but me especially, I was born with ancient rage, and I was born with the strength for one thing – to kill monsters, just like you.”

And with that, you notched an arrow into your bow and muttered something under your breath.

“You won’t harm anyone anymore. Sleep well.” And with a smile, the arrow tip glowed a soft gold and flew threw the air into the restricted body of the curse who was quickly engulfed in a golden light as it screamed and fell, returning to the ground as nothing but dust.

“Nurture the earth now, do some good for the world.” You whisper, low enough that Satoru could barely hear. How you still manage to keep your heart so soft will always amaze him.

Satoru’s phone dropped from his hand, and you spin, notching another arrow into your bow and aiming directly at his head.

You gasp when you realise who’s here.

“Gojo, what are you doing here? How long have you been there?” You ask, lowering your weapon.

“Y/N. What the fuck. YOU HAVE CLAWS.” His jaw was hanging open, hardly believable image of what he’d seen.

That ancient energy wasn’t another curse, you hadn’t been in danger – you had been the danger.

You sigh. Gojo would have found out sooner or later, guess it was sooner. A part of you was worried about what he’d seen, would he think it ugly? Would he think you cursed? This boy – you had accepted your feelings but even though you thought (idiot) he’d never love you back, you didn’t want him to think any less of you.

Well, no escaping this conversation now.

“Wanna grab boba? I’m done here so, we can grab some on the way back to school. I’m guessing you have some questions.”

Uncharacteristically quiet, he just nods.

You walk ahead, slinging your bow on your back and taking out your phone. He sees you dial Yaga’s number.

“Hey, yeah it’s all done. Just as we thought.” You say, and he hears the deep rumble of his sensei’s voice through the speaker.

“Yeah thing is, I’ve had an unexpected visitor. Seems someone thought I might not be able to do it alone so showed up at the end. Yeah, I have it handled. Yup, exactly who you think. Yaga! Stop! I’ll see you later.”

You hang up the phone, just as you reach your favourite boba shop.

“Drinks are on you, Satoru – you gatecrashed my mission.” You smirk.

“Hardly gatecrashed if I turned up and feared for the safety of my pretty face!” The shock had worn off now and he was just in awe and desperate to hear what the fuck he witnessed.

He ordered you both your usual orders and sat across from you at a secluded table outside. You notice the dewy drop of sugary tea on his lip, his skin glistening under the golden sun. God. How can someone be that beautiful, surely it’s illegal?

“So sugar - you’ve been hiding something from your dearest darling best friends, haven’t you?” He looks at you with eyebrows raised.

“Not my choice. It’s a complicated situation. Yaga thought it best to keep it under wraps until I’m 18.”

“I hear ya – but the question still stands: keep what under wraps? Here was me coming to my princess’s rescue,” your cheeks flushed at his (what you thought) casual flirting.

“It’s a long story – you sure you’ve got nothing better to be doing, Mr Honoured One, no ladies to dazzle with those pretty eyes of yours?” You laugh, slurping up a brown sugar Pearl.

“Oh I’ll always have enough time for you, sugar, plus – am I not dazzling a pretty girl now?” You both giggle it off, unaware that he’s being serious and that you were dazzled by him long before today.

There’s a beat of silence.

“My family’s inherited technique. The elders think it’s long extinct but I was born with it. Legend says my family is descended from dryads, forest spirits, you’ve known that nature is the root, no pun intended, of my technique since the start but – it goes a bit deeper. I’m listed as grade two, but only because the elders don’t know the truth. I’m meant to hide everything until I’m 18, so only 5 months left to go anyway. The elders will throw a bitch fit when they find out. Your ancestor La and mine worked together, and when I was born my mother and grandmother chose to keep the technique hidden until I was legally an adult and could make my own informed choices about whether or not I wanted to stay part of the jujutsu world. The elders… don’t take kindly to my family. We’re kind of considered outcasts, like the Inumaki clan.” You say, taking a breather to sip your drink.

“Why? Your mom is so nice” He adds in.

“Ah well, my family, we’re very much a matriarchal family. The women have typically done everything in their power to fight the elders on their idiocy. Given that they’re old, sexist men – this didn’t go down well. So we’ve typically been hounded by them. Then, I was born. Not only the heir to my clan but a woman which ancient cursed abilities. Our family has always scared them, but I’m their worst nightmare trifecta. I made a deal with my family, I’d keep it secret until I’m 18, then I’m free to do as I wish..” You added, smiling, because in truth – being the bane of the elders’ lives was a source of pride.

“So they hid it until you can make your own choices, and take the helm of the clan leader at 18?” He asks.

“Yeah, my mom just wants a quiet life. She’s travelling the world writing of jujutsu sorcery and my grandma is holding the fort. We’re not quite the Gojo’s, Zen’in’s or Kamo’s – but we’re a very old sorcery family, so we’ve influence enough.”

“Y/N. You know you’re not grade two, right?” He asks, dead serious.

“I know, Gojo. I’m special grade. Yaga is a friend of my uncle’s so he agreed to keep it all quiet.” You finish up your drink.

“Gojo – what I’ve told you, only Yaga knows. This stays between us, okay?” He nods and crosses his heart.

“And don’t worry, you’re still the strongest. I’m just good backup.” He giggle, swinging your bag over your shoulder and motioning for him to follow.

“You say that part of your technique is ancient? And thought extinct? Which part? Now you’ve told me I wanna see everything.”

You look back and forth between the streets, and you find an empty alley.

You stop.

He stops.

“Snow leopards are your favourite animal, right?” You ask and he wonders why his heart skips a beat at you remember such a silly detail.

He cocks an eyebrow and agrees.

“I’d tell you to close your eyes, but it won’t do much good.” And with that, a flash a golden light encompasses you and instead of the oh so pretty girl he loves seeing in front of him is a snowy white, fluffy, golden eyed leopard.

And in a flash, you’re back in front of him.

“I can’t do it for long. It’s still really taxing to do and zaps my cursed energy.” You say, gripping his elbow and making your way back to the main road.

“Y/N. I hope you know. That might have been the coolest thing ever. Oh! Can you do like a little mouse so I can just hide you and carry you around in my pocket all day and give you cheese and –” his enthusiasm is cut off by your loud laughter.

“Maybe when I’m stronger Satoru, then I’ll stay with you all the time and you won’t have to follow me to my missions when you’re bored.” You’d text the driver to pick you both up.

“Hey! I was worried! I didn’t know you were some freaky nature fairy when I left did I? !” He grins, and god he looks so handsome in the late afternoon light.

You swat his arm.

“You’re one to talk Mr. I have nearly the same number of eyes as a spider.” And with that he tosses your much smaller form over his shoulder.

“Hey – you might be cool but I’m still the strongest and right now, it’s time for me to demonstrate that.” You half heartedly thump at his back as you laugh at him to put you down.

The car pulls up, a curious gaze from the driver who is thoroughly confused by why you’re over Gojo’s shoulder.

He tosses you into the backseat of the car.

“That’s for keeping secrets from your bestest friends ever.” He flicks your forehead, buckling your belt.

You just roll your eyes.

The drive back home is filled with idle chatter, but Gojo can’t stop thinking about how goddamn fucking perfect you are. You’ve always been strong, kind, beautiful, sexy, funny but god the feral determination he saw in you today shook him to his very core. You say your goodbyes as you head to shower and sleep, but your phone buzzes that night – with a terribly photoshopped picture of your face on a mouse, captioned – ‘btw- ur technique, it’s really beautiful Y/N, I’m really hpy I saw you like that, and thx for telling me, u nd ur secret r safe w me ’. You can’t fight the smile on your face, a weight lifted off your shoulder now that the boy you love knows everything about you – well, except that one secret. The one that you’re hopelessly in love with him.

Maybe some day.

TAGLIST: @vesta-ro @lilithlunas @mialexandruh @sassy-cat-in-town @madam-ri @cjm-cookiethief

Requests open <3

[jillsandwhichs]

Our Future Day's

Joel Miller x Reader series , Chap 1 , Move in day

Masterlist

Pairing: Fem!reader x Joel Miller

Summary: You officially move from oregan to texas and get to meet your very new & handsome neighbor, Joel

WC: 3.1k

Type: SFW

Some thing's you need to know before reading: this is a series, not a one shot collection! you (the reader) already have a semi premade backstory. first off, you're originally from oregon. you studied at med school and got a job offer in texas to become a doctor, which you took. you are 23 in this but if you don't like that, imagine any age (18+) and i did make joel younger 26 (until the 20 year time jump, he'll be 46) but he does still have sarah, just pretend it's not wonky LMAO! one more thing, ya have a dog in this fic, he's a boy but imagine any breed you'd like! aside from that, this is tlou game version but i included some sides from the show! a couple more things: 1. all characters from tlou1/2 will be mentioned/featured. 2. this takes place before outbreak, then eventually outbreak day, then eventually in the apocalypse. 3. this is a slow burn romance (drabbles of it in each chapter though, esp when it progresses) and does feature a decent amount of smut. 4. JOEL NEVER DIES!!!

A/n: Hi! Hope you all enjoy. Please check out my masterlist, there's a lot of stuff there. You can get to know me, you can see the rules of my blog and then you can see all of my fanfictions. You'll be able to find the previous chapters to this fic and upcoming ones. You'll also be able to find my Wattpad & AO3. Thank you

Tapping your fingers on the steering wheel, you matched the beat of the song playing on your cars radio. It was a song by Blake Shelton. You weren't a huge fan of him but he had some classics. It has been such a long day for you. You've been driving for the past two hours, not a single break in between. You just wanted to get to your new home as soon as you could. You could tell your dog, Becker, needed to go potty as well. He'd just have to hold out.

The GPS on your phone stated you were only about ten minutes away. The center of Austin TX was busy as all hell, so that time span could get longer by the second. So many cars & people flooded the streets. "God dammit." You mumbled to yourself, rolling your eyes as you seen all the upcoming traffic ahead. This was going to be a long night. You had no clue when you'd even be able to get into bed. Then again, it was only 4:30 in the afternoon, almost evening.

Behind you, in the backseat, you could hear Becker whimpering & whining. "Don't worry boy, we're almost home, just a little bit longer." You cooed to him, reaching your right hand back and allowing him to lick you. You got Becker as a graduation gift a few weeks ago. You two have bonded ever since. You were never a cat person, dog's were more of your style. "You'll be able to go potty soon." You said to him, pulling your hand back up and holding onto the wheel.

Traffic wasn't going as slow as you intended, was traffic always going to be like this though? This ain't going to be pleasant if so. Especially working for the hospital. Imagine an emergency happens and you're needed but the roads are packed, that's going to be one helluva time. But, you wanna think positively. You missed your family too. It's going to be hard without them, especially your mom. She is your number one supporter and without her in the same home as you, it'll be a large change.

You turned the radio up, hearing the country music blast throughout your car but not loud enough to scare your dog. Dogs ears are sensitive and you didn't wanna bother him further than he already was. No doggo wants to be stuck in a car all day, especially in this heat. Despite it being early September, it was still quite warm out. That's another big change from Oregon, you imagine that back home, it's either really windy or heavily raining. The change could be nice though.

The sound of Becker panting was clear as day, it only made you feel more guilty. "Hold on baby." You muttered to him before you then rolled your window down and the window directly behind you, not a lot though, you didn't want him to jump out or something. Through your rearview mirror, you could see his slobbery tounge blowing in the wind as he stuck his head out the window. "Hah, good boy!" You giggled, turning left onto the exit, finally getting off of this miserable highway.

Finally, the road wasn't full anymore. It was a downtown rural area now, cars slowly made their way through the town. Austin is busy, yes, but this side of it, not so much. The only logical reason it was super busy on the highway and earlier roads was because people are getting/going to work. Your first day at the hospital is on Monday. You were nervous but in a great way. You have been non stop thinking about it. All of the work you've put in and you're officially where you wanted to be. Life was going good... For once...

You passed by all sorts of different places. Gas stations, fast food chains, locally owned stores & stands, it felt so honey. Back in Oregon, you lived in the center of the city, it was always so lively and never calm. Austin is like that too but not as bad, and definitely not as bad as Dallas is. You were grateful you didn't end up moving there or even somewhere that was worse. Austin was a good enough fit for you.

The GPS showed you were only a minute or two away from home, your heart was racing a bit. You've never been on your own before and you least expected it to be in a completely different state. Luckily, a week from now, you'll be going back home for the weekend. It'll be comforting. You'll definitely make sure to call your family everyday, you made sure they knew that too. They'd have to simply put up with it.

You could tell you were getting closer due to the change in scenery. There weren't any establishments around these parts, just either compact or extensive suburban homes. You actually used to make fun of those perfect American families who lived in these types of areas but look at you now. Back home, you lived in a small house, only two bedrooms but you were an only child so it was never a problem. You did wish for siblings growing up but you understand now that if you had some, things would be a whole lot different.

As you turned left, the tracker built into your phone made a dinging noise, indicating you had arrived at your destination. It wasn't wrong. Just to the left, you could see your newly purchased home. It made your heart skip a beat. Not only were you nervous but you were also so happy. You glimmered as you pulled right into the driveway and set your car in park. You could tell Becker knew this was your guy's new home, his whimpers weren't ones of boredness but rather excitement. "One second." You sighed out before getting out of the car.

Stepping out of your car, you sighed softly as you breathed in the fresh air. The smell of outside was always so welcoming. You grabbed your purse out of your car too and swung it across your shoulder. It was a brown leather purse with an embroidered strap. You then opened up the backseat so Becker could jump on out. "Stay over here buddy." You chuckled out, scratching the top of his head a few times before closing both doors. You had quite a bit of stuff in your trunk & backseat but you hired a truck to drive all of your other belongings here. It wouldn't be there for another day or so.

Becker ran off to the side of the house to go potty ; You trusted him enough to not run off. He was a good dog. You went to the back of your car and popped open your trunk. It was a mess but everything you needed for the night was in there. You even bought an air mattress, your back would die trying to sleep on a wooden floor. You grabbed the first two boxes, they weren't very big, and set them on the concrete of your driveway. They just had toiletries in them.

You grabbed out another box, this one was a bit bigger than the other two. It had all of your kitchen appliances in it. You were excited to cook your very first dinner in your very own home. You already decided on making Pesto Pasta, one of your favorites. In your trunk, there was the air mattress box. It wasn't going to be the best way to sleep but it'd have to suffice for the night, your proper bed should be in either tomorrow or on Sunday.

Whilst grabbing out the air mattress, you heard the sound of a truck driving past and pulling into the driveway across from you. They must've been your neighbors. Your neighbors back home weren't the nicest. There were the Johnson's so were beyond uppity and thought they were better than everyone else, they lived beside you. Then there was Cassandra and Cody, they were your age and pretty kind except they were literal kleptos.

You ignored the truck behind you, just trying to get everything you needed for the night. You could hear Becker barking but you didn't know what it was he was doing it at. You figured a wild animal, maybe a bunny or a stray. Becker was actually from a shelter, you'd never buy an animal from PetSmart or whatever. "Becker, quit your barking!" You shouted at him, nudging him to come over to you. Maybe he wasn't good with new environments.

You placed the last cardboard box from your trunk on top of another one, shooting your eyes to look at Becker. He was looking at the truck across the street, barking at it. "Oh boy, quit it." You spoke out to him but he didn't listen. You went to grab onto his collar but right as you did, he bolted off into their driveway. He was a friendly dog, you didn't think he'd do anything bad, he was just inquisitive, but it was still bad of him to run off like that.

"Becker!" You yelled, jogging across the street to grab him. You watched as two men got out of the black truck. The one in the driver's seat had a mullet and lighter hair than the other man, he also seemed shorter. The other one though had short dark hair, although you couldn't tell if it was purely brown or black. He was well built, along with the other man. Were they brothers? That's the only assumption that came to mind.

Once you reached their driveway, you grabbed Becker and pulled him back to you. The man getting out of the passenger seat looked back at you and had a puzzled look before letting out a chuckle beneath his breath. "Listen, I'm so sorry, he's just curious." You sighed out. Becker was now listening as he sat down right by your feet. "Sorry, we'll be out of your hair." You giggled, beginning to turn around before you heard the man's voice speak up.

"You just move in across the street?" He asked you, his voice sounded southern and it was very deep. "Oh uhm, yeah, just got here tonight actually." You said kindly, looking back at him again. "Well, welcome then, and to your dog." He snickered out. "I'm Joel, this is Tommy." Joel spoke deeply, pointing over at the other man. You let the two men know your name before asking them whether or not they were brothers, and they were. You weren't surprised, they did share similar facial features.

"Where are you from?" Joel raised, his arms crossed. His arms were huge, he definitely has a nice body. "I'm from Oregon." You said softly, placing your slender hands onto your waist. "Damn, that's a long ways out. What made you move all the way here?" "Got a job offer at the hospital." You said with a titter, his accent was thick. "Oh, you a nurse or something?" He questioned, leaning up against his truck. "No, a doctor. Recently gradated from medschool." You explained, glancing over at his brother as he walked into the house. Maybe they lived together.

"Well how bout that? I'm just a contractor." "That's nice." You added, tucking strands of your thin hair behind your ear. "Yeah, yeah, well I'll let you continue settling in. If you need any help with uh larger furniture, me and my brother can stop by, we helped the Adler's when they first moved in." Joel said with a deep voice, pointing his index to the home beside his. "That would be great, thanks, luckily I don't have to deal with the bullshit of larger furniture today, it'll be in either tomorrow or Sunday."

"Alrighty, well, you have yourself a good evening. See you." Joel said with a sly smirk, slowly inching backwards. "You too, Joel." You gave him a slight smile before patting Becker to follow behind you. You made your way across the street, allowing Becker to run around in his new yard. You took a gander back and seen Joel looked back at you before entering his home. When you saw his eyes on you, you felt a deep pit in your stomach. Nothing bad, rather just glee or something. You couldn't pin it.

Around your neck was a lanyard, it had the key to your home, you assumed it was locked. At least you hoped, you don't want any squatters inside. You unlocked the white door and opened it, stepping inside of it. The sunset beamed in through the windows throughout the house. It was still dark though, every single light was switched on. The seller said you'd have to go to the basement to switch them all on. That sounded like a fun time!

One by one, you dragged each box into the home, keeping some on the floor and placing some on the island counter. You didn't plan on unpacking any of it tonight, you were restless and just wanted to lay down for the night, despite it only being 5 PM. The more sleep you get, the easier it'll be tomorrow. You definitely had to get a lot of sleep Sunday considering on Monday, you start your first day. Even though it's just training, you wanna be as awake as possible.

You ambled towards the front door again and away from the kitchen to call Becker in. He'd have to deal with the floor for the night. He is a cuddly dog, he loves big comfy areas but without a bed or a couch, there's no way. "Becker!" You said with a rowdy voice, "C'mon baby." He came running over to you and past your legs, going into the house and treading around like a mad man. "Oh good boy." You chuckled, petting him gently.

You walked back over to the kitchen and grabbed the air mattress, you needed to get it open and blown up. It was sealed to a T, your nails were definitely not enough to get it open. Striding towards the appliances box, you opened it up and searched through it, taking out a knife to slice it open. You are quite clumsy so you were praying you wouldn't stab the mattress on accident. It didn't help that Becker felt the need to push himself up against you, seeking attention & love as if he's starved from it.

"Back off boy." You snorted, pulling the mattress out of it's box. It was all wrinkled up and looked compact. Although it was the size of a Full. You straightened it out on the living room floor, you didn't feel like carrying it all the way up the stairs. It came with a machine to blow it up and you connected it to the black cylinder hole, turning it on and hearing the loud blowing noise it was making. You didn't have any pillows, they were all packed up in that truck but luckily, you had a blanket, it was the one you let Becker use in the backseat when you were driving.

"You stay here mister." You stated out to Becker before beginning to make your way out of the front door to take the blanket out from the car. As you went outside, you noticed a bright light was on in Joel's house, just in one room though. You could also see the shadow of a smaller person's body walking through said room. Did he have a girlfriend? Or did Tommy have one? Maybe it was Tommy's. You convinced yourself of that at least.

After grabbing the blanket, you walked back inside and seen Becker already making himself a spot on the bed, despite it barley being inflated. "You little shit." You grinned, tossing the fuzzy blanket on top of him. Guess you were going to have to share.

The bed was officially ready to be slept on, you haven't been this excited to sleep in a very long time. Back home, you dreaded it. You would stay up all night, doing different stuff. Whether it was studying, painting, reading, working out, etc.. You were always doing something new. With Becker, it's been better. You're an affectionate person and he is as a dog. It may be a rough night, it always is sleeping somewhere new, but with him it may be easier.

Pulling the machine away from the bed, you turned it off and climbed underneath the blanket, feeling immediate warmth. The Texas heat also played a part in that. Back in Oregon, you had a heater beside your bed to help, you definitely didn't need one here. "Alright." You whispered to yourself, Becker lying right beside your feet, his fur was cozy. You were originally going to turn the lights on to your home but honestly, you were scared to go down there all alone, a pitch black basement? No thanks.

Trying to sleep in a new area was hard. You felt homesick. You miss your old room, the house noises, the feeling of it. You lived there your entire life, now you're thousands of miles away. Becker probably felt that way too, especially with how he connected with your father, they bonded. A week from now though, you'd be able to see them. It'd be easier. Another thing you couldn't stop thinking about was that man - Joel.

He seemed so different. He was kind & understanding, and that's just simply based on the short conversation the two of you had together. He was so willing to help you out, no one else was like that. It was a sweet welcoming. He was also very handsome. All the men back home weren't like that. That glimmer in his eyes wasn't something to ignore. It was the way he gazed at you that had you wrapped around the thought of him.

That brother of his was good looking too, definitely not as much, but either way. Were they both contractors? It appeared as though they had just left work so maybe they work together. And who was that smaller person walking throughout his house earlier? Had to be a girlfriend. A daughter? No way, the two of them looked to young to even have children. There was still a chance though, teen pregnancies aren't uncommon. You presume you'll deal with a lot of them as a Doctor.

Your eyes felt more & more heavy. Becker's deep breathing made you weary too. The pitch blackness of the room was helpful ; White sound would've been helpful too. Sleeping in complete silence was torture. All you could really hear was your dog and your own breathing. You were completely spent for the day. And you were ready to hit the hay.

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