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thecousinsdangereux · 1 month

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i just recently discovered your soulmate au and i loves it so much. so incredibly intriguing and well written and damn is it hot 🔥 thanks so much for sharing with us. in your mind, does it have a happy ending for them?

also wanted to ask if you'll be checking in to see the big warrior nun announcement coming tomorrow?

Ahhhh thank you! This ask is kind of tragic now given how everything with Warrior Nun ended up going, but I thought I'd use it as a way to share my ideas for the rest of a beggar in the morning, if anyone is interested in learning how it was going to go. Long story short, it was going to have a happy ending. :)

Here's a full outline for what I had in mind for the second half of the fic. Under the cut because it's very detailed in the parts that I'd started writing. Also in case anyone cares about spoilers? At the moment, I don't plan on finishing this fic, but I do plan on returning to writing in general, so guess there's a non-zero chance that I could come back to it. Stranger things have happened.

Beatrice keeps looking for the recipient of the Letter she's been trying to deliver and starts taking trips out into the countryside. She takes Ava's advice and takes to enjoying the journey - stopping into small cafes for lunch rather than eating in the car, taking the long way when it means she can enjoy a new view, etc.

During one of these side quests, she's told about a man who lives way off in the middle of nowhere who has the last name of Reis (the last name of the Letter recipient: Lara Reis), and she tracks him down. He had a sister who had a child with someone who was not her Match. I wanted to go more into what this looks like (and how the church is still anti-abortion in this world, because they think this could potentially ruin a future match, cue eye-roll) but in this case, the woman was basically run out of town. The man directs Beatrice to an orphanage where the child was raised.

This trail eventually goes cold because the orphanage has no records of the girl. They only know she left when she became of age.

The end of chapter six is basically Beatrice being frustrated and taking some 'advice' from Lilith to find someone to fuck hfkjshlk so she goes to the bar and ohhh nooo Ava is working that night, filling in for someone. Ava gets jealous, Bea does some shots, and it's basically a rehash of the lemon drop scene from the show, but hornier. Eventually, they make out, and decide to be friends with benefits.

Chapter 7 was honestly just going to be porn. lol. It's actually some of the first stuff I wrote for this fic - just a page of porn. Beggar came out of a Secret Santa fic exchange, and my friend Alex asked for lots of sex and a soulmate au. So... Chapter 7 was the payoff (part 2). Here's a few disjointed scenes, in case anyone is interested in reading some unedited very E-rated stuff.

A few months go by and all the nuns visit Beatrice for her bday and they're like huh so what's going on here and Beatrice has to pretend that it's not that serious with Ava (lol). I also wanted to do a conversation between Shannon and Beatrice where Shannon talks about the whole Mary thing and loving someone against the will of god (or at the very least, in the very gray areas).

The end of chapter seven is Ava finally talking about her past, which is that Ava doesn't remember hers. She woke up in a hospital without her memories and then spent the next decade traveling around trying to find something that felt like home.

In chapter 8, a lot of time passes, and the fucking continues. Beatrice is kind of losing it, poor girl.

I hadn't exactly decided what was going to happen next, but Ava was going to overstep in some way (or in some perceived way) and Beatrice was going to panic. Either Beatrice was going to have a brief thought about being in love, they were going to have reallyyyy soft sex, or something like that, but either way, Beatrice was going to have to admit she has deeper feelings for Ava than what's allowed allowed, so she goes back to Spain and ignores Ava's texts/calls/etc.

Eventually she realizes she owes Ava closure. She comes back and kind of explains why she's reacted the way she has. She gets more into why she joined the church and it's not for God or the Church itself, but because she does genuinely believe that love itself is holy. She admits she's falling in love with Ava, but she can't break her vows. She believes giving into her feelings would be putting herself above the whole history of love... the sanctity of the entire universe... and to be that selfish would be monstrous.

There's a callback to their early game of three questions, and how Ava still owes Beatrice one answer. Beatrice nearly asks if Ava loves her, but pulls back because she's scared of the answer. They basically break up, but Ava tells Bea to let her know when she's ready to ask her last question.

Beatrice takes it HARD. She buries herself in her work and starts visiting hospitals in various towns. She finds a Spanish doctor and he recognizes the number (or rather, the system behind the number) that is on Letter Beatrice is still trying to deliver. He tells Beatrice she's not looking for a hospital in Portugal, but rather in Spain - one in a small town in Andalusia. He mentions a patient who was in a coma, who woke up without her memories.

At this point, Beatrice obviously knows and she flies to Spain in daze. She visits the hospital, gives them the number, and asks for the name of the patient. When they'd brought the girl in, no one knew where she came from, she didn't have an ID, memories, etc. Nothing except for an old receipt from a restaurant in Portugal. ("Beatrice braces herself for what she already knows, but doesn't want to face.") The nurse at the hospital tells her they used a generic Portuguese name for the girl and it stuck: Ava Silva.

Beatrice visits Cat's Cradle because what else is she supposed to do? How is she supposed to deliver this Letter to Ava, who she's obviously in love with. She talks with Mary and we get the other side of the whole Mary/Shannon thing, and Mary is kind of like, okay, the Letters matter but they don't Matter. Beatrice asks Mary what she would do if she got a Letter (since Mary isn't a nun and could get one, but Shannon never could) and Mary basically says she would throw it away without opening it because she wouldn't want to give Shannon a reason to go self-sacrificial.

Of course, Beatrice doesn't really think this is her call to make. She's going to deliver Ava's Letter. There's this whole scene of her very dramatically and angstily getting ready for the delivery in the Official White Habit, then walking through the town she's come to associate so completely with Ava. And chapter 9 ends.

When Beatrice walks through the doors of the bar, Ava looks up, but doesn't seem surprised, even says 'oh, finally', which is pretty much the last thing that Beatrice expected, but then again, maybe it should have been the first, because Ava is always surprising her, and shouldn't she expect it by now? She asks Ava if she'd known that she was the person Beatrice had been trying to deliver to all along and Ava looks confused at this, like she hadn't considered that at all. "It's not that. I just knew my Letter would be coming because I'd already met you."

Beatrice is like, no no no. That's not how this works. It can't be me. I've been carrying this Letter with me this whole time - before I met you - and the Letters are only sent to a person when they've met their soulmate. And obviously, Beatrice is a nun and can't have a soulmate, etc. etc.

And then Ava says something like this: “Maybe every once in a while, God -- or the universe or whatever it is -- knows that it’ll be really hard to make two people meet organically, so it fudges the rules a little bit. Makes one girl a nun, makes another one hard to find, and sets up the dominos really early on."

And when Beatrice says she's being ridiculous/it's impossible, she says, "I know what’s in that letter. It’s you. I don’t need to open it to know it's you." and "Maybe it’s like some people say and god arranged it all. Fine. Then god chose me for you. Simple. He made me in this exact way, down to my hands and toes and whatever, so that I was perfect for his favorite creation in all of the universe. Because that has to be you."

And: "Or maybe it’s like what those other people say. You know - the past lives reincarnation stuff. Fine, then in our first lives we fell in love and then I found you in the second and third and the five hundredth. I found you and I picked you and I wanted you every time. Or okay, fine, maybe it’s what the the pseudo science people say. Even if those guys are right, I still know. It’s you because at the very start of the universe - at the very beginning of everything - we were the first two bits of something. The first two tiny little sparks. One of those was you and one of them was me. And even when we split off into a million trillion billion infinite pieces, the core of one was you. And the other one was me."

And: "In every religion or in any theory, the world exists so that I can find you again, and the world will do whatever it takes - bend the rules in whatever way - to make sure that at the exact right time, we would meet. And maybe it wasn’t perfect - maybe it was stupid hard for us to get to this point - maybe there was an easier way to make it happen - but I don’t care. Because it worked and I found you and I fell in love with you and I would do anything for that. So yeah. This Letter is telling me that I’m for you. That’s easy. It’s not faith. It’s just a fact.

And: "Besides, whatever’s on that paper? It’s going to be you. If it’s a picture of a butterfly, then it’s going to be you because of that time we went to the dam and one landed on your hand and you said “isn’t the world beautiful?” and that’s when I knew I loved you for the very first time. If it’s the notes to the first bar in At Last, then it’s you, because we used to play it all the time in the bar and I always thought it was fucking stupid to think you'd know like that right away, before everything, but it was the song that played in my head anyways when you walked in the bar that first night. There she is, I sort of thought, a dream that I can speak to."

"It could be any single word or phrase or letter and it would be you, because I love you and I love you so much I see you in every part of this entire world. I love you and I want to keep you with me always, and so you’re always there in my thoughts, slipping over and into everything else and I love it. It makes me love everything I see a little bit more, because it reminds me of you. It makes the world more beautiful."

"So, no offense, but I don't really give a fuck about the Letter. I already know it's going to be you. But I think you need to see it. So you know you’re not as selfish as you think you are."

And Beatrice admits that she wants to be with Ava anyways. Even if it makes her selfish. (Even if it makes her heretical.) Love is holy and what she feels for Ava is holy too, even if it's a sort of holy no one else will ever understand.

I went back and forth about whether they actually SHOULD open the Letter. lol. But I think I eventually settled on that they should, and that when Ava does open it, it's a blank page with like, 7 little dots and Beatrice is like??????????????? But Ava recognizes it instantly and it's the freckles on Beatrice's cheeks, the ones she's always tracing, and she does that again, following the ink on the paper.

Beatrice had been ready to give up her religion for Ava, so getting to keep it, maybe, suddenly is a LOT. She can't quite believe something divine would do something like this for her. But maybe she can believe that something divine would do something like this for Ava.

Later, I wanted Beatrice to have a conversation with Mother Superion. I thought it would be interesting to get into the philosophical bits of it. To debate if Ava could actually be right in her ideas about how this could be, and still fit into what they know about god/Letters/religion. I liked the idea of the conversation ending with neither of them really knowing, and Mother S being like, look girl, you'll never know for sure, but that sounds like faith to me. And Beatrice says no, no this is different, capital F Faith is for the divine. This is just trusting that Ava isn't lying about the freckles thing, or won't get tired of me, or won't find someone else. Etc etc etc. because it's panicking time for Beatrice, suddenly. And Mother Superion just raps her knuckles sort of in the most gentle way she can manage and says "That's love, Beatrice." in the way way someone might say "That's pussy, babe."

Beatrice does leave the church (though she eventually goes back to 'consulting' kind of like Mary). And when she does actually physically leave as well, Ava is waiting outside on a bench. Beatrice asks why she didn't just come inside, and she says something about being a little afraid of churches these days. She did steal god's favorite, after all.

And then they walk off into the sunset, with Beatrice being like wait a second, I thought you said this was all God's plan. And Ava shrugs and says that she would never willingly give Beatrice up, so god might come to her senses and change her mind.

I was going to end it there, but I did consider doing an epilogue as well. Early on in planning I had this idea where, years later, all the nuns regularly come over to the Silvas (because Ava does keep her 'second' name, though she does start to learn more about the Reis family, and meets her Uncle - the dude Beatrice learned about the orphanage from). And on one of these occasions, the nuns are all in white, and they're delivering Beatrice's Letter, which is addressed to Beatrice Silva. In the end, I decided against this, because I liked leaving it more open-ended, but nothing had been set in stone at this point, of course.

So yeah, that was going to be a beggar in the morning. lol. I plotted most of it out before I even started writing, because it wasn't the sort of story you could make up as you went and still tell it well. And I did want to tell the story well! There's a part of me that's sad that I wasn't able to, but I do think it was worth writing what I did. I really loved seeing people realize that Lara was Ava, even as early as chapter 5! And I also loved people coming up with theories about how Avatrice would be endgame. Some of them were honestly really good and maybe better than mine fhdskjhfd I had one person be like PLEASE let Ava's Letter be for someone else so they can metaphorically spit in god's face and honestly that was valid.

I don't know if anyone is going to bother to read this very, very long reply to an ask that doesn't actually ask for any of this, but it honestly just feels nice to put all these ideas together and 'complete' the story. Even if I've done it in the most half-assed way possible I am so sorry fhadskjlfhldsj

#sorry to use your ask from forever ago to go off about the planned ending of this fic #I had to combine notes from my phone google doc and physical journal to find all these details again so it was like I was rediscovering #my own fic #me at me as I was reading back: wow this shit is cheesy you are a huge loser #warrior nun #writing #a beggar in the morning

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buddiebeginz · 12 days

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Everyone who watches 911 is entitled to have their opinions on the show. Good, bad, or indifferent. This goes the same for Buddie. But don't assume you can make posts talking about how "willfully delusional" you think people in your own fandom are simply because we're talking our cues from the show (and the people involved in it) and seeing the signs of Buddie canon without any push back.

I‘ve been watching this show for years and in my opinion we have never been closer to Buddie canon than we are now. This isn’t just fans seeing what we want to see this is everything that’s gone on with the show, it's creators, and cast since the promo for s7 started.

Before s7 even started Ryan and Oliver were doing tons of press together. There was more talk of Buddie than had ever been previously. We had Ryan and Oliver talking at the s7 premiere about how Buddie's relationship was changing and how they were going to be getting even closer.

During s7 we had more Buddie scenes than we had in recent seasons and not just like scenes of them working together but scenes that cemented their relationship and showed them becoming even closer than they'd been. Scenes like Eddie relying on Buck to help with Chris (multiple times during the season). Scenes like Buck talking about how worried he was about Eddie during the Kim stuff.

It's even more clear that Buddie canon is where things are headed when you look at how Tim chose to handle B/T vs Buddie in s7. If Tim was planning on making B/T a long term ship there were so so many times he could have done more to develop them and he didn't instead the development was put into Buddie.

704 was not about Buck trying to get T*mmy's attention it was about Buck having these big intense emotions he didn't know how to deal with or really understand (because they were about his best friend) and misplacing them onto T*mmy. If Buddie wasn't a part of the plan I don't believe Tim would have ever even included Eddie in that episode especially not the way he did. It would seriously be one of the stupidest moves the show could make. They know how much of their audience ships Buddie, hell people who don't even watch the show talk about Buddie.

Plus it's obvious that Buddie's karaoke scene in 706 was supposed to be a parallel to Maddie and Chim starting to realize their feelings for one another in 208 (when they did karaoke). But the karaoke scene was pulled once they were renewed for s8 when they likely decided to pause on Buddie happening and Eddie coming out until they had more time. Why else would they have them singing a karaoke duet to a love song (in Madney's wedding episode no less) if Buddie canon was never going to happen?

Then you had the very domestic scene in 707 with Buck commenting on Eddie's cologne and throwing food into his mouth. And zero mention of T*mmy in the entire episode. Then in 709 you had Buck looking at Eddie (not T*mmy) when he got his award. In 710 it was Eddie by Buck's side the whole time Bobby was at the hospital and the only scene B/T got was that dinner scene which didn't do one single thing to further develop that relationship.

Back to the bts of it all. Oliver liked and commented on Buddie stuff throughout s7. He also posted Ryan often on his stories. Most importantly he posted a pic of him and Ryan on the basketball court after the B/T kiss in 704. If I remember correctly after the B/T dinner scene in 710 he also posted something to do with Buddie too.

You also had Oliver saying in interviews that he sees what Buddie fans sees and we're not wrong. He also talked about Buddie as how it could work if it happens. Ryan also talked about Buddie happening and said it was baby steps for them to get there. Ryan also said in one interview (can't remember the exact wording) but it was something about who should lead like who should come out first and it was decided it was going to be Buck. But the way he worded it was very clear that both of them are supposed to come out not just one. Lou also talked about how it was originally going to be Eddie getting the queer storyline (with T*mmy) and instead they decided on it being Buck. Lou also talked early on about Buddie and B/T as T*mmy being someone that is basically getting Buck ready for Buddie.

I firmly believe that Oliver would not be interacting with Buddie stuff nor talking about Buddie as much as he has in interviews if he knew Buddie was never going to happen. He's said point blank before he stopped talking about Buddie in the past because he didn't want the fans to feel led on. I think this is part of why he hasn't really interacted with B/T shippers or anything much to do with that ship. He knows it's not meant to last and he doesn't want those fans to feel like he's lying to them.

I know people look at Ryan calling Eddie heterosexual during some of his s7 interviews as a sign that Buddie isn't going to happen but as soon as s7 was over and he had a couple of interviews he started using gender neutral phrasing and saying things like "partner". There was also an interview where he talked about how Buck is basically taking Shannon's place.

Now as we've started to get promo stuff for s8 a lot of the social media stuff has been revolving around Ryan and Oliver with it leaning more towards Ryan. This is similar to how it was for s7 only things were leaning more towards Oliver because of everything that took place with Buck. It's clear that Eddie is going to have a big storyline this season and it can't just be that he's missing Chris or going back to religion.

ABC and Tim know how popular Buddie is and they know how huge it will be for the show and their network to have Buddie go canon. It's why they're handling this very carefully. Honestly I don't think they would have even had Buck come out if they weren't at least considering Buddie because they would have known that the fans yelling for Buddie would only get louder once one of them was confirmed queer. And like I said earlier if they had no intention of Buddie they would have at the least been distancing Buck and Eddie and certainly wouldn't have made Buck's entire coming out episode all about him.

They also would have told the actors to limit talking about Buddie in interviews and the journalists wouldn't have been allowed to ask about Buddie. If you look back at previous seasons and the kind of interviews Ryan and Oliver had Buddie was rarely if ever talked about. That's because Fox did not want it to happen and networks can control what is talked about in official interviews. There's a reason Buddie was talked about so much during the s7 interviews. It's the same reason B/T has barely been talked about even though it should have been a much bigger deal being Buck's first relationship with a guy.

Oh also there was the person on twitter who claimed to have inside info for the show and proved that at different times during s7 with how they seemed to know stuff long before the episodes would air. They said that people behind the scenes had been trying to have Eddie come out in s5 and again in s7 it just hasn't worked out yet. This also fits with what Oliver said that Buck was originally supposed to come out in s4. This fits too with the shooting storyline and the panic attacks early on in s5. Buck would have had his bi awakening in s4 and maybe his feelings realization after the shooting. This would lead to Eddie having his queer awakening during the whole Ana storyline in s5. But Fox shut all of that down.

My point in all of this is that there's a lot of evidence to back up why Buddie fans are so sure about Buddie canon this time. More so than any other season. It's not just us seeing the show through our buddie tinted glasses. It's the most logical outcome at this point. Sure we could all be wrong and the show could leave us heartbroken but at the same time it's still fun to be excited and hopeful about the show.

Oh and one more thing. I get it if you don't like Eddie's mustache, we all have things we find attractive or don't for whatever reason. But continually comparing Eddie, a Mexican man who many lgbtq people relate to and see as queer coded, to characters you describe as "violent and abusive" or a "corrupt cop" just feels all kinds of wrong to me.

Again like I already stated above Buddie canon and Eddie being queer might not happen but there is plenty of evidence to back up why people see Eddie as a queer character. In some ways he's been far more queer coded than even Buck has been. To get upset at people for seeing the mustache as another sign of queer coding makes zero sense to me. You can think it looks unattractive but mustaches have a long history of symbolism in queer men's culture. This isn't just about thinking it looks like Freddie Mercury it's that mustaches (especially ones that look like Eddie's this season) have often by used by queer men as a signifier of their sexuality to other queer men. So the idea that the show is using it as an early sign to the audience that that's where they're taking his character isn't totally out of the realm of possibility.

You are free to disregard all of the facts I just pointed out. You are free to see the show how you want. But you're not free to insult the people in your own fandom and then act surprised when people don't want to follow you or even go so far as to block you because they're tired of the negativity. I mean we get enough of that from B*mmy stans we don't need it in our own fandom too.

If the fandom and the show is causing you to be unhappy it might be time to consider taking a break.

#buddie #911 buddie #911!#long post

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evilbihan · 2 months

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MK1's Lin Kuei

Can we take a second to talk about how bad the Lin Kuei are at what they're doing in MK1? They're supposed to be this ancient clan of elite warriors with years worth of combat experience and knowledge and skills beyond anyone's comprehension... but they're actually so comedically terrible at their job.

I won't include the teahouse fight in this since it doesn't count because they had to hold back against Kung Lao and Raiden but everything happening from there just contradicts all that the story wants us to believe about the Lin Kuei.

Cage mansion fight

Both Sub-Zero and Scorpion get absolutely destroyed by Johnny (who doesn't even seem to have any special powers in the new era, unlike the old timeline's Johnny). Of course, one might argue that they had to still hold back here since Johnny wasn't an enemy, they were just trying to recruit him and Liu Kang was there too, but it only gets worse from here.

2. The Ying fortress

This is one of the most hilarious scenes in the story mode. "No, you two can't come with us although you effortlessly defeated the three of us before because it takes YEARS to master the art of stealth."

What stealth????

Fast forward to the Lin Kuei trying to get inside the Ying fortress. Surprisingly, they can't make it three steps until they're discovered by Nitara and one of them almost dies because he had to show off instead of climbing the wall efficiently and, most importantly, without raising unnecessary attention.

How did Smoke not consider that a guy floating in mid-air would be spotted from a mile away? You can almost pinpoint the moment his brothers realized it was a mistake to bring him with them.

Not that they're doing much better though. On their way in, the three trigger pretty much every single defense the fortress has to offer. Nitara, Ermac... the guards that show up later on.

In fact, this whole thing couldn't have gone any worse if they had brought a marching band along with them.

Next, we get to see Bi-Han and Kuai Liang sneaking up on Shang Tsung so close behind him I'm pretty sure their footsteps would have given them away. They're completely out in the open, Kuai Liang is not even watching his back. It's surprising they made it this far.

3. Capturing Shang Tsung

As we learn, their plan to capture Shang Tsung is, in fact, nonexistent.

I don't know where their experience and years worth of training suddenly went in that moment, but this scene of them just... jumping out of their hiding spot and running at their enemies full speed with no real strategy behind it was so ridiculous and disappointing to me. It just feels rushed and unprofessional and of course, this not at all thought through maneuver triggers the guards to show up and intervene.

It's such an amateur mistake it makes you wonder why Liu Kang trusted them with this task in the first place.

Somehow, the brothers then get overwhelmed and end up captured themselves. The story really wants us to believe the two of them combined couldn't take on a few guards, but later on Scorpion is able to defeat them alone using the power of plot armor.

While Bi-Han had at least some significant wins against Nitara, Ermac, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung, the story of course forced him to lose in the end, Kuai Liang's losing streak for some reason magically ended the second he left the Lin Kuei and Smoke??? He got to beat up an old lady in a staged fight.

It's sad to see how little the writers care about the Lin Kuei, even with the franchise's most iconic characters both being Lin Kuei in the new era. I will never not be upset about the potential that went to waste here. Smoke didn't even get to be in a single fight, we saw nothing of Bi-Han's strategical genius and cunning and the rest of the Lin Kuei only showed up for the staged teahouse fight. They all deserved so much better.

#bi han #bi-han #mk bi han #bi han sub zero #mk sub zero #kuai liang #kuai liang scorpion #mk scorpion #tomas vrbada #mk smoke #lin kuei brothers #mk1 #mk1 2023 #mortal kombat 1

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nights-at-crystarium · 2 months

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Fragments - episodes 41-46 author notes

You can find similar breakdown posts on older episodes in my pinned!

Get comfy and reread with me the finale of the Il Mheg arc and the intro of a certain loser.

First off, I wanna emphasize how important this arc’s for Vivi. Had he not liked Il Mheg in general and Feo Ul in particular, the rest of the story would play out very differently, and not in favor of the sundered. His initial positive impression of the First is pretty much the only thing that saves it.

We've reached a high, physically and emotionally. You know what that means, as per the shb rollercoaster rule :>

Pan pride pixie blesses Thancred, ca. 2024, colorized. I accidentally gave them the pan colors but hey it works. ALSO! Stars in his eyes.

Re: distant nightmare, I’ll let you in on a secret, or a third party perspective if you will. Vivi's full of shit, he's too focused on the big picture. He’s narrating this whole story, but his perspective is, well, just that.

Initially this was Vivi's inner monologue, then I thought that I should just let them talk, and it wrote itself.

More under the cut~

Drawing a buncha vivi-lookalikes that act soooooorta but not really like him, just slightly off, was a surprisingly fun exercise.

Luckily for Thancred, though, he sniffs out the pixie magic, and knows better than indulging them.

...Still, what a shitty fucked up day. Sorry, Thancred :’>

This here’s an example of a moment where I’m uncertain if I’m being too subtle and if this flies over some readers’ heads. He refers to Alisaie’s “job” of dragging Vivi back to msq, which she recently started lowkey dreading (episodes 32-33)

...Though she goes back to her “duty” in episode 43.

She's pointedly SILENT throughout the episode, doing her best to hold back.

Thancred's a man who can say no to begging dogs.

Gridania mention! Vivi’s gridanian! He never speaks ill of the elementals, he's wary of them even a world apart.

This pixie's life is something Feo Ul's willing to sacrifice. Episodes 42-43 tell this story in reverse order, yes this’s the pixie that was supposed to agree with Thancred and go with the Scions to the Crystarium.

As to why there’s a dozen of vivis popping up as a backup: they needed just one fake Vivi to go with the Scions, but try organizing the pixies. Their plan’s already failed when this first pixie-Vivi refused to play their part.

“Yeah no, our guy’s special, but not as special as to explode in confetti”

I love his first ingame appearance in that Varis cutscene, this moment has similar energy: barely enters the stage, instantly gets impaled on a long object. This’s not foreshadowing, no, why would you think that-

The “camera” is perfectly still, there’s even some symmetry, demonstrating how calm and prepared Emet is. He didn’t expect much and he’s still disappointed.

This’s a super old comic. I spent the first half of 2022 testing and trying to find a style for Fragments, back then I had no plans, none, zero, absolutely no interest to give Emet a role bigger than a mention. The earliest version of the script had very few Emet scenes, which, looking back on it, was gonna be a disservice to his character. Well, that changed rapidly in late 2023 when I fell for him so hard that I broke my neck, and now I look back on a lot of what I did with Vivi with new eyes. THE EYEROLL. After spending two years developing a guy for a fun wolgraha chemistry (at the same time I was perfectly aware that Exarch and Emet are foils. I made a foil for Exarch, what on earth did I expect-), I’m going through a mindblow after mindblow as I realize HOW GOOD VIVI IS FOR EMET (and vice versa ofc) and how many things they have in common. This wasn’t always the case, Vivi just gradually got more cynical, tired, ✨grey✨ and everything else that makes a guy consider hitting it with The Other Old Man.

They’re off to a great start.

From Emet’s pov, this must really hurt, as in how many other shards of Azem might’ve snarled at him like this. Even though he must be numb to it by now, who says that there isn’t the tiniest flicker of hope when he approaches yet another not-Azem. He may deny and hate and try to snuff out that spark, but the fatal Soulmate Magnet keeps doing its thing.

Parallels to episode 2.

Apparently, Vivi’s first reaction to encountering his to-be-most-prominent boyfriends is to attack them somehow.

This’s really, REALLY dumb of him, and he even comments on it shortly after. But yes, his isekai tale in the First was rather pleasant just until now, and it lulled him into the false sense of security. OF COURSE there are ascians everywhere, not just on the Source. Vivi just forgor.

Emet tests Vivi's reactions to insults/being treated as a lesser, silliness, flirt.

I regret to inform you that both Vivi and Alisaie have been disarmed so easily. The tone quickly shifts, the weapon’s lowered.

Alisaie makes bad puns/jokes in canon, I thought it'd fit if she laughed at that kinda jokes too, and in the least fitting situations, to top it off. Alphinaud’s disappointed, even if he can hardly be called an expert in humor.

“It’s up to you”. Emet stops fooling around, assuming a more serious tone. He may not respect Vivi or his agency here, but he provides him with a choice that's guaranteed to give him some trust points, and uses "we" for an illusion of unity/equality, a not really subtle nudge towards cooperation, it's not me vs you anymore, it's "us".

Whether Vivi picks up on the manipulation or not remains to be seen, but Emet gets his way here.

Forgive me this lil tangent, but I’m so giddy and excited to write Emet. If Exarch’s decently emotionally intelligent but still obtuse at times, Vivi’s a tier or two above him, he’s not a stranger to manipulation, he registers it being used on him, and doesn’t hesitate to use it too when it suits his fancy. He's quite good at people-ing. Emet, though, Emet’s THE emotional intelligence personified. He’s had literal thousands of years to practice, he leaves everyone else in the dust in this regard. It’s daunting but so exciting to write him, I hope to do him justice.

Let’s just talk.

𝓛𝓮𝓽’𝓼 𝓳𝓾𝓼𝓽 𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴.

Mark this moment, remember this line for meme value. If these last words aren't famous yet, they WILL become that when we see what they talk their way into <w<

Yes I'm going all in on tragic irony of Emet's situation.

Accidental Emet rp, with the hunching over and all. Or maybe Vivi already unwittingly mirrors him. Or maybe he always did- *kicked and dumped in the trash bin*

Man. I'm guilty of enjoying drawing Vivi in genuine distress. He’s so fun when he’s agitated.

Hidden Angst Time! It's all hehe haha until you realize that this might be a product of the hectic wol lifestyle forcing him to speedrun his emotions like this. Either speedrun, or be left with no opportunity to process them at all.

Also, the sandwiches! The framing’s deliberate, they’re on the foreground all the time, and Vivi only notices them in the very last panel.

I! Love! This! Face!!!!!! A rare neutral, relaxed, thoughtful face, he isn't performing for anyone here.

Nevermind Ardbert getting brutally ignored here x’D

The fact that a guy that Vivi had briefly considered as partner material shut himself away in the Crystal Tower for what could be the rest of his life has stuck with Vivi for good. Or should I say for bad. He might not necessarily care about ARRRaha, still it upsets him that he kissed someone who practically killed himself some days later.

I recently talked a lil more about the Bitchless Liar. This’s how Vivi remembers him forever, take it or leave it. But hey, this cool Exarch guy has big balls probably <- in-universe hc \o/

This episode taught me to draw BREAD.

Even though Exarch’s been nothing but sweet so far, one thing’s to acknowledge a fact with your brain, another thing’s to wrestle with your trauma and paranoia that have all rights to exist and fester. Ever since HW Vivi doesn’t accept food and drinks from anyone except the few trusted sources. This isn’t really covered in this episode, but hopefully hinted at just enough.

He takes a leap of faith. Or maybe he’s simply sick and tired of living Like This. Maybe sandwiches kill him, and he doesn’t really mind. And, when they don’t, he goes through a visible shift in attitude towards Exarch, as we’re able to see in the following episodes.

This’s all I’ve got for now, thanks for reading till the end~

#ffxiv #aaaaaa too many characters to tag #i'll just tag the two that matter #vivien rell #emet-selch #emet selch #ffxiv: fragments #fragment ii: new world old friend #fragments talk

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lemotmo · 3 months

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Hey I found that one BT blog and this answer is even better. The question they got was basically why don't Buddie shippers remember that the original plan for Eddie was Maddie, and why don't we understand that's proof Buddie has never been the plan. They also went on a rant about the date scene from the finale. The ask also mentioned being blocked by Ryan and Oliver and threw in some Ryan/Oliver hate so just a heads up!

A. Hi anon! Okay you're correct, and I believe it was Jennifer herself (I could be wrong) that let us know the original plan was Eddie/Maddie but she lobbied hard for Chimney (go Jen!) and it means absolutely nothing. I hope that doesn't sound mean but it has no bearing whatsoever on anything at all. Nothing. Buddie doesn't have to have always been the plan to go canon. It can go that way if the natural trajectory of the story and characters lead things that way. And right now that looks like where it's going. I could be wrong, but it feels like that's what's coming. I mean Eddie and Maddie aren't even friends at this point, lol. I can't remember the last time they even had a scene together. I know both Ryan and Jennifer said they wanted more Eddie/Maddie interaction, which might mean they know they're going to have scenes together in the coming season. I hope they do, it's weird that they haven't interacted more. And none of that has anything at all to do with Tommy. I'm not at all sure what you mean by that? There is no Tommy connection running through the history of this show. That is not a thing. Yes he has history on the show but not to every character on this show. And certainly not to the degree you're trying to imply.

I have zero idea why people are choosing the finale date scene as their Tommy hill to die on. It was a terrible scene. It was wildly out of place in the context of that episode, and people should be willing to admit that. It was unequivocally and universally panned. The journalists who review and cover the show, the general audience, no one understood or liked that scene. The fact that Tim had to come out and flat out tell us it was supposed to be flirting is embarrassing. And tells you everything you need to know about how hard of a dud that scene was. We have all seen Buck flirt. And that wasn't even close. And it felt entirely out of character for Buck in every possible way. A lot of it can be pinned to K, who is a terrible writer in general, but, in my opinion, has never known how to actually write Buck. I also think Oliver wasn't trying to make it flirty, which maybe if he had tried it would have helped some but he clearly wasn't going for flirty. The episode as a whole was abysmal and that scene was no different. There is no need to pretend otherwise.

Now I'm going to lecture. I haven't seen a single Buddie shipper excuse Ryan's past comment. Not a single one, I'm sure someone somewhere has, but I haven't seen it. What I have seen is plenty of excuses offered for Lou's problematic history. What Ryan said was wrong, flat out inexcusably wrong. And guess what? He owned it. Publicly. He made a public apology and clearly worded himself. You can tell between then and now he's grown as a person. You only need to look at his relationship with Aisha to know that. We don't tear down or try to erase someone's personal growth to excuse the behavior of someone else. That's not how life works. You don't get to diminish Ryan's growth and personal journey to make you feel better about Lou's twitter history. Lou could have addressed things, and he chose not to. Actually he chose to go radio silent. Whether that turns out to be work related or not remains to be seen. I'm sorry you're upset that you've been blocked by Ryan, but if you sent him what you sent me in this ask, I can see why he blocked you. I also don't think it should be surprising that Oliver also blocked you. I don't think they're sitting around talking about Tommy fans like you're saying, but it wouldn't at all surprise me if they're sharing certain things they're being sent. They're friends. They're going to talk. They're allowed to be friends. You're not the first person who's mentioned being blocked by both of them. They are both huge mental health advocates and them blocking nasty comments should surprise no one. It is surprising, and incredibly disappointing, to kind of see how many people they appear to have had to block though. Look the bottom line is the story has already been decided. Whatever the direction is won't be altered by being assholes to the cast. And if we did have any kind of power to change things, which we don't, being openly hostile toward, and an asshole to, the main cast, would accomplish the opposite of what you want.

Imagine what this anon had to have sent to Ryan. I don't want to know. Also, imagine choosing the date scene as your favorite scene 🤣. Good on the answer though, it was I'm sure, humiliating to have to publicly explain that scene.

Wow. Thank you Nonny. :)

I have to admit, the eloquent way this person explains everything is incredible. They say all the things I've thought about, but might not have voiced so clearly in my previous posts.

So, I'm just going to leave this here for everyone to read. I encourage you all to take a look at it. It's highly interesting.

And again, please no hate on this post. I'm not posting this to mock anyone or to generate more hate.

I'm merely posting this because this is clearly written by a BT fan who has not been lead on by Lou's headcanons in his cameos. This person sees the show for what it. They see the way the story is unfolding and respectfully speaks their mind about it without any insults towards anyone else in the 911 fandom. I can appreciate that from anyone, no matter what they ship.

#season 7 meta #season 8 speculation #buddie speculation #insight into 911 fandom & season 7 and 8 #nonnies galore #anonymous blog I love

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whatifitookalilnap · 3 months

Text

The Magic of Makeup

(Kyoshi x Rangi)

(A/N: EVERYONE PLS THERE IS A SMUT SCENE HERE! WE GET PORN WITH PLOT SO LIKE AVERT YOUR EYES IF THATS NOT YOUR THING!!!!! Also don't judge me cause IDK how diplomacy or nobility stuff works I'm here for drama. Anywho I already made a couple posts about this but I thought it was so funny that I decided to make a whole fic. The ao3 link will be posted right after this for those who prefer it. Anywho, pls enjoy!)

Kyoshi was jolted awake by Jinpa roughly shaking her entire body. The Avatar immediately sat up and grabbed her fans placed right beside her bed.

“Who’s dying?!” Kyoshi exclaimed as she jumped out of bed.

“No one, but the Fire Nation nobility are here! Like, they are waiting in front of the gates as we speak!” Jinpa hissed.

“What do you mean they’re already here?! They were supposed to arrive at lunch!” Kyoshi yelled.

“That’s what I was told. I think this is some kind of power play. Just get dressed,” Jinpa insisted.

“Damn! Do you think I can get away with not wearing any of my usual makeup? There’s no way I’m going to have the time but I still need to look intimidating! It’s part of my whole shtick!” Kyoshi asked.

“You’re six and half feet tall, I think you can make it work. Now get changed, woman! We got people to argue with! I'll meet you there!” Jinpa said before rushing out the door.

Kyoshi cursed before springing out of bed to put on her usual business attire. Alright, the green outfit? Check. The headdress? Check. The fans? Check. Big ass gloves? Ah shit, they're not here. Whatever, it’s not that important. Well, that’s all Kyoshi has time for.

The Avatar quickly threw open the door to her bedroom and began speed walking down the hall. Kyoshi already hated leaving her room without makeup. Nowadays, putting on her makeup is step one of her morning routine. She can't remember the last time she handled Avatar business with a bare face. It made her feel vulnerable. Exposed. This meeting needs to end quickly.

As she was speed walking to the conference room where this meeting is to be held, Kyoshi spotted her girl briskly walking in halls. The Avatar couldn’t resist perking up at the sight of her girlfriend coming to meet her. Of course, Rangi had already been awake for an hour before the stupid nobles arrived. She’s always been an early riser.

“Did you have any clue they were coming in so early?” Rangi asked once they met up.

“No, Jinpa had to wake me. I had zero time to get ready,” Kyoshi sighed as the two fell into step with each other.

“I assume that’s why you’re not wearing any makeup,” Rangi very correctly guessed.

“Yeah, there’s just no way I could have made it happen,” the tall woman confirmed.

“I think that’s for the best, honestly. Being punctual should take priority in this scenario,” Rangi nodded.

Kyoshi felt a surge of pride course through her when Rangi approved of her plans. If only the world knew how weak the Avatar is for her girlfriend. She’d be killed within a week.

“Let’s get this over with. Hopefully the little bastards are more agreeable this time around,” Kyoshi sighed.

How Kyoshi despises the damn Fire Nation nobles sent into the damn peace agreement. Kyoshi’s had like five other meetings with them and has been unable to come to an agreement all parties are happy with.

The names of the three nobles that have been utterly torturing Kyoshi for weeks are Akira, Nao, and Chari. Akira does most of the talking, Nao and Chari are really just her yesmen. They're all simply unbearable. The three of them were around her age of twenty two, which is probably what makes them so insufferable. They’re young, spoiled, rich, think they know everything under the damn sun, and worst of all, they don’t have the good sense to fear her.

Anyone with half a brain should be terrified of Kyoshi! It’s like Jinpa said, she’s six feet and six inches tall! She towers over everyone she meets! Plus the makeup! Ghostly white face and bloody red eyes?? That’s the perfect recipe for fear! How can anyone not be terrified of her?

Maybe it’s wrong to feel so upset that some people aren’t scared of her, but Kyoshi can’t help it. People not having a healthy amount of fear when interacting with her makes her uneasy. If the literal Avatar can’t freak someone out, what can?

“Wait, one more thing before we go in there,” Rangi said as she stopped right outside the door of the meeting room.

“What? Did I forget something?” Kyoshi frowned.

“You did,” Rangi confirmed.

Kyoshi furrowed her brows and went back through her mental checklist involving her attire. Outside of the makeup and gloves, Kyoshi is pretty positive she had everything she needed.

Naturally, Rangi proved her wrong. The firebender cupped Kyoshi’s face in her hands and gave her a light kiss on the lips. At once, Kyoshi’s arms went to Rangi’s hips in order to deepen the delightful sensation. Sadly, Rangi pulled away.

“You’re going to do great. Stop worrying so much. That’s supposed to be my job,” Rangi smirked.

“Kay,” Kyoshi said. You know, like an idiot.

Rangi should never have kissed her right before such an important meeting. Now all Kyoshi can think about is the next opportunity for those lips to be back on her. Kyoshi is so in love with her it physically hurts.

Okay, time to get the love struck look off her face before facing the nobles. Kyoshi took in a deep breath before nodding to Rangi. With that, her loyal bodyguard opened the doors to where Jinpa and the nobles sat.

The Fire Nation nobles were muttering amongst themselves as they had during every single one of the past meetings. Typical. Kyoshi had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. However, once the three nobles looked at her, they immediately shut up. That was a surprise.

During the past meetings, even when Kyoshi made her presence known, the little trolls still blabbed on and acted as though she didn't even exist. They would only stop talking when Kyoshi started to speak. However, today she didn’t need to say a word before all eyes were on her. All of the nobles were looking at Kyoshi with shocked expressions, flushed faces, and one of them had their lips parted slightly open in what she can only assume is shock.

This is suspicious as fuck.

“Apologies, everyone. I hadn’t realized we would be meeting so soon. Please accept my tardiness,” Kyoshi said respectfully with a bow.

What she really wanted to say was ‘couldn’t you have given a girl a heads up before meeting me at the crack of dawn’ but that didn’t seem appropriate.

Akira then sprung up out of her seat to pull out a chair for Kyoshi to sit. Kyoshi quickly glanced at Rangi and Jinpa in wonder to see if she's seeing the same thing. Now why on Earth would Akira do that?

“Of course, we certainly didn’t mean to inconvenience such a beautiful woman as yourself. Please, allow me,” Akira said.

Rangi looked like she wanted to set Akira on fire. Kyoshi shared the sentiment. What is she playing at? Less than a minute in and it's rather obvious they are sucking up to her. Ultimately, Kyoshi did sit down on the seat Akira pulled out for her in the name of civility. But that doesn't mean Kyoshi had to like it.

“If you don’t mind me asking, where’s Avatar Kyoshi?” Nao asked.

Kyoshi shot Rangi and Jinpa yet another look. Are these idiots being serious right now?

“I didn’t realize I was so unrecognizable without my makeup,” was all Kyoshi said.

Granted, that is a lie, but she really didn't know what else to say that's a polite statement. Whenever Kyoshi goes into town with a bare face, many do not make the connection despite her rather noticeable height.

“What? You’re Avatar Kyoshi? Really?” Chari blurted out.

Oh, this is going to be a long meeting.

“Yes, I am,” Kyoshi nodded.

“I didn't realize you were hiding freckles under all that makeup. You wear them well,” Nao smiled.

Is Kyoshi drunk? Did somebody slip her something when she wasn't paying attention? What in all Four Nations is happening right now? They must want something from her if they're being this nice.

“I think we need to get started with this meeting,” Jinpa rushed out hastily. It was almost as if he was in a panic. Odd.

“Of course. Please, start us off. Your voice is quite soothing, Avatar Kyoshi,” Akira smiled, chin resting in the palm of her left hand.

Kyoshi actually thinks she’s experiencing whiplash right now. In past meetings, when the discussion gets opened up on a subject, the nobles immediately try arguing for their side. It takes ages for them to be willing to hear Kyoshi out. Something is so wrong here. It's best to ignore that compliment for now.

The more the negotiations progressed, the weirder everything got. The three nobles, mainly Akira, kept blatantly sucking up to her by praising everything she did. While it's true her reputation has improved as the Avatar the past couple years, it certainly wasn't enough to warrant this kind of reaction.

Even one of the people on her side was acting strange. Jinpa, who's usually a man of patience and serenity, seemed very antsy to move things along. He would often try to steer the conversation away from the nobles when their compliments became too excessive.

Rangi was the only one who was making sense right now. As per usual, she took her role as a bodyguard very seriously. She stood there, stoic as a statue, ready to defend Kyoshi should any dangers arise.

Kyoshi stole a quick glance at her girl to find her looking ever so slightly more irritated than usual. Who can blame her, honestly? Kyoshi wants this to be over just as much as Rangi does.

About one hour in and Kyoshi is bored out of her mind. She propped her chin on the palm of her left hand. It's really not proper etiquette and she might get scolded for it later, but Kyoshi is not at a point where she cares. She then felt an itch on her nose, so she used her right hand to scratch it.

Akira was speaking like she always did, but her voice died down when she took a good look at Kyoshi's hands. This woman literally could not get any more strange.

“Is something the matter, Lady Akira?" Kyoshi asked.

"Apologies, Avatar Kyoshi. I hope I did not offend you, I was simply caught off guard. You just have the most beautiful hands," Akira said earnestly.

Did Jinpa squeak? Huh.

Well, Kyoshi had to fight the urge to laugh. Man, they are really grasping at straws here. She must have run out of things to stroke Kyoshi's ego about. The Avatar is well aware of the state of her hands. Beauty is not on the list.

"Please, no need to fill my head with empty compliments," Kyoshi insisted.

"I assure you, my compliments are nothing but sincere. You have the most wonderful hands I've ever seen," Akira said seriously.

Huh, weird. It honestly did seem like the noblewoman was telling the truth. Maybe she is. It could very well be that she's borderline insane, but that's not really the topic here.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but my hands are pretty banged up with all the scars. Consequences of those battles, I suppose," Kyoshi awkwardly laughed in order to lighten the mood.

"The way I see it, the scars you adorn are a testament to your bravery and honor. Courageous is the most beautiful thing a person can be," Akira said. Her two noble goons nodded their agreement.

She had to admit, Kyoshi feels moved. It's no wonder Akira is the spokesman of the group. That is a noblewoman who really knows how to sweet talk a girl. She did wonder why Jinpa squeaked again, though.

Okay, Kyoshi needs to think this through. The odd behavior of the three nobles is a mystery Kyoshi has the desperate urge to crack. The compliments, the pleasantries, the agreeability, there has to be a reason why.

Seeing the three Fire Nation nobles stare at her scars with that look in their eyes made the answer hit Kyoshi like a boulder. Finally, the Avatar understood the out of character actions. Those three are absolutely terrified of her.

It all made perfect sense. Scars in general can look pretty scary. Not only does Kyoshi have a rather large amount of them, the implications of what she experienced also must be freaking out the nobles. The scars show that Kyoshi has lived through much more powerful and intimidating foes than the ones who sit before her. It's visual proof that Kyoshi is the strongest person in this room. And they're terrified of that.

It has to be why Akira made such a point to compliment them. She's well aware of the battles Kyoshi fought to gain her scars.

The makeup and gloves were hiding the scars which must be why the nobles haven't seemed scared of her until now. Turns out, Kyoshi just had her approach all wrong. They did not fear scary makeup or a tall stature, they fear scars and Kyoshi's true face.

Their behavior makes complete sense now.

It's probably wrong that Kyoshi is so excited that she finally found a way to scare these people. They have been grating on her nerves for weeks and she finally has the upper hand. The Avatar is in full control now.

Kyoshi is absolutely going to milk this.

"It feels as though we've been stuck in this room for ages. It's getting quite hot in here," Kyoshi lied.

With that, the Avatar rolled up her sleeves where even more scars decorated her arms. Kyoshi was even bold enough to undo her collar a touch to reveal the scar on her neck. She snapped open one of her fans and fluttered it to gently brush against the neck scar.

Her actions had the desired effect. All three nobles immediately began intensely studying Kyoshi's scars, especially the one on her neck. They were red, evidently nervous, and now incapable of looking her in the eye. They finally feel terrified by Kyoshi. This is a memory she will cherish for years to come.

Kyoshi saw Rangi in her peripheral vision sitting with crossed arms and a deep scowl. The Avatar felt as though she was beaming with pride. Of course Rangi caught onto the fact that Kyoshi is working on her intimidation tactic and is playing the role of scary bodyguard to add to it. Rangi is just so smart.

"Avatar Kyoshi! Would you like me to, uh, open up some windows? I had no idea you were feeling so hot," Jinpa nervously rushed out.

"Please do," Kyoshi smiled.

Jinpa nodded and hurriedly opened up a couple windows as Kyoshi put her fan back at her side. She did what she needed to do to strike fear in their hearts.

"I must say, Avatar Kyoshi, you wield your fans as though they're part of you. It's quite impressive. You have very skilled hands," Nao pointed out.

"Well, I'm sure you've heard of the other things my hands can do, haven't you?" Kyoshi asked with narrowed eyes.

If her reputation precedes her, then stories resembling her scuffle with Xu Ping An would have certainly reached the Fire Nation. She would make it very clear that compliments should not distract from how truly terrifying Kyoshi really is.

"I, well yes. Many have heard stories of your, um, abilities," Nao rushed out.

"Many stories indeed," Akira mumbled.

Chari just sat there looking like an imbecile. Kyoshi wasn't really expecting much else from the lump.

"Alright, I'm going to cut to the chase. What is it that you want from me?" Kyoshi asked in a low voice to add to her intimidation.

Obviously, for them to be this scared of her, she must also have some kind of leverage they need. Apparently, Kyoshi would have to wait to find out.

"Avatar Kyoshi, I insist upon a recess at once!" Jinpa practically shrieked while standing up.

Everyone in the room was visibly shocked at the monk's outburst except for Rangi. Kyoshi's never known the man to raise his voice in such a manner, especially not in a meeting like this one. Whatever had Jinpa so panicked must be important.

"Of course. You don't mind a small break, do you?" Kyoshi grinned, knowing damn well they won't say no to her.

"Please, take all the time you need. We'll wait as long as it takes," Akira managed to rush out.

Hah, the annoying noble still looks flustered. Kyoshi could not be happier. They finally fear her. It feels so good to win.

Kyoshi left the room, quickly followed by Rangi and Jinpa. Once the door closed behind them, Rangi grabbed Kyoshi's arm and pulled her to the left.

"Make sure we're not followed, Jinpa," was all Rangi muttered out.

"Y-yes of course," Jinpa hastily agreed.

"Rangi, what's-" Kyoshi started to say.

"One more word and I'm putting you into horse stance for so long your successor will feel it," Rangi hissed.

Okay, so clearly she's not happy. Kyoshi can't imagine why though. That meeting is going spectacularly. The nobles are significantly more cooperative, they actually listen to what Kyoshi has to say, and they're now willing to give into her demands. She can't understand what Rangi could possibly be so upset about.

Maybe Kyoshi didn't notice something during the discussions? Is it possible the Fire Nation nobles are playing her and Rangi is going to let her know? It's certainly not the first time Kyoshi has made a major blunder like that. There really wasn't much time to contemplate this because in less than a minute the two women apparently arrived at their destination.

The spot Rangi led her to was a tiny hallway that had a single window at the end of it but nothing else. There are no doors or chairs, so no one really spends much time in this area of the building. This is a very interesting spot to talk about any potential issues from the meeting.

Kyoshi looked at Rangi and raised an eyebrow, still very unwilling to speak in risk of horse stance punishment. Rangi didn't say anything. No she did not. Instead, she yanked on Kyoshi's collar and crashed their lips together. Before she even had time to blink, Rangi had pinned her against the wall of the tiny hallway.

Is that what Kyoshi was expecting to happen? It most certainly was not. Is Kyoshi mad about it? She most certainly is not.

Kyoshi quickly put one hand on Rangi's shoulder while the other cupped the back of Rangi's neck to deepen the kiss. The bodyguard moved on from kissing her lips to slowly trail her mouth down Kyoshi's neck.

"There's other ways to rile me up, you know," Rangi mumbled into her skin.

That is something that Kyoshi will be noting for later. Especially if this is the result.

The Avatar gasped as Rangi began pressing hot kisses on the scar at the base of her neck. A low moan rumbled from Kyoshi's throat against her will. Fuck, that firebender knew exactly what she was doing. Rangi knows Kyoshi's body like the back of her hand.

Therefore, she knows that kissing Kyoshi's neck scar will automatically turn her on. Kyoshi can feel herself getting wetter by the second. Her cunt began clenching around nothing, practically begging to be stimulated.

That's when she felt Rangi's hand slowly creep down to the very top of her long skirt. Then, her fingertips ever so slightly went beneath the skirt where Kyoshi's underwear resided.

Holy shit. Is Rangi trying to do what Kyoshi thinks she's trying to do? Now? Of all the times?

"Rangi, we have a meeting," Kyoshi gasped.

"Just say the word and I'll stop," Rangi whispered into her ear.

A better Avatar would be able to resist. A better Avatar would be able to tell their girlfriend it's a bad idea to have sex when they're in the middle of an important meeting.

It would appear that Kyoshi is not a better Avatar.

"We need to be quick," Kyoshi hissed.

"Well who am I to defy the Avatar?" Rangi grinned.

With that, Rangi's hands slipped past the waistband and lightly brushed against Kyoshi's clit. The taller woman gasped once more and bit her lip to prevent the sound from coming out.

"Fuck, Kyoshi. I've barely even touched you," Rangi mumbled lowly.

The poor Avatar didn't even have time to respond before one of Rangi's fingers slowly entered her. Kyoshi gasped and clenched tightly around her finger. It's when Rangi started slowly moving her finger that Kyoshi let out a high pitch whine.

Embarrassingly enough, Kyoshi's always been rather vocal during sex. This really is not the time to be vocal.

"You know I love the sounds you make, but unless you want those Fire Nations nobles to see the Avatar getting fucked by her bodyguard, you're gonna need to be quiet for me," Rangi smirked.

The prospect of that scenario playing out is enough for Kyoshi's entire body temperature to increase. It's just not fair how sexy her girlfriend is or how her melodic voice gets Kyoshi all riled up.

The Avatar had gotten so wet that Rangi had no issues slipping a second finger inside of her. Kyoshi buried her face in Rangi's shoulder to muffle her moans. The way her fingers furiously thrusted inside Kyoshi brought her closer and closer to her breaking point.

While Rangi continued to fuck Kyoshi with her fingers, the bodyguard decided to continue her onslaught of kisses on the side of Kyoshi's neck. The sensation made the Avatar so weak in the knees that she's basically leaning on Rangi for support.

Kyoshi knew she wouldn't last much longer. Rangi's fingers were relentless and every spot her lips touched set Kyoshi's skin on fire. Then Rangi's fingers hit that perfect sweet spot that made Kyoshi want to cry out from pure bliss. The firebender's precise fingers hit that same spot over and over again, causing Kyoshi to arch into Rangi, desperate to be as close as possible to her.

Once Rangi's thumb began hastily circling Kyoshi's clit, it was over for her. The Avatar had to physically bite her lip to prevent her moan from coming out as she finally reached her climax. Evidence of Kyoshi's wetness was coated over Rangi's fingers as she slowly pulled them out of her. Rangi made direct eye contact with her as she licked Kyoshi's arousal right from her own fingers. Kyoshi's face burned at the sight.

Kyoshi was too busy reeling from her orgasm to mentally process the fact that Rangi had dropped to her knees. The bodyguard began to slowly lift up Kyoshi's shirt. The Avatar's eyes widened when she realized Rangi was not, in fact, done with her yet.

"Do you think you have one more left in you?" Rangi asked.

"No Rangi, we need to get back to the negotiations where literal nobility is waiting for us!"

Is what Kyoshi WOULD have said if she wasn't such a whore.

"Rangi please," Kyoshi begged in reality.

The Fire Nation woman grinned and threw Kyoshi's right leg over Rangi's shoulder while the other leg stayed planted firmly on the ground. Rangi rolled up Kyoshi's skirt to her waist.

"Be a good girl and hold this for me," Rangi whispered.

It was like Kyoshi's body had a mind of its own with how quickly she fulfilled such a command. Kyoshi used both hands to keep her skirt up as Rangi moved the Avatar's underwear to the side. Now her bodyguard got a full view of Kyoshi's aching cunt.

"Your pussy is just as pretty as you are," Rangi praised.

Kyoshi blushed at such a sincere and lewd compliment. A split second later, Rangi's mouth made contact where Kyoshi needed it most. The Avatar couldn't help but allow a low moan to slip out.

Rangi dragged her tongue along Kyoshi's entrance. Yet again, the Avatar had to bite her lip to stop any noises of pleasure from coming out. The bodyguard decided to focus on giving Kyoshi light kisses onto her clit before starting to suck it.

Kyoshi's pants and muffled moans increased as she was being brought closer to the edge in absolutely no time. The first orgasm already made her incredibly sensitive, she would come to her peak much faster now.

Rangi's tongue began circling faster around Kyoshi's clit in a way that made her vision blur. Kyoshi began helplessly grinding her cunt against Rangi's face to get even more stimulation as fast as possible. It all felt too good. Rangi is just too good.

Once again, the bodyguard has to essentially hold up Kyoshi's entire bodyweight. The way her tongue makes Kyoshi feel is just so intense she can barely think. Thank the spirits for the wall behind her.

Rangi's skilled tongue brings Kyoshi closer and closer to her breaking point. Kyoshi's hands squeezed her skirt as she felt herself approach her release. The bodyguard's hands gripped Kyoshi's thighs as she continued eating her out. Finally, finally, Kyoshi got to experience the sweet release she had been craving. For a second time, that is.

Kyoshi really couldn't stop herself from letting a breathy moan escape her lips. Rangi pulled back with Kyoshi's wetness all over her face. The Avatar blushed as Rangi had to pull out a small handkerchief from her pocket to clean herself from the mess Kyoshi made.

With the same amount of care one would use to handle a delicate vase, Rangi gently moved Kyoshi's leg off her shoulder. Kyoshi pouted, feeling the warmth of her girl leave her, but dropped her skirt once her underwear was readjusted.

Rangi finally stood up and peppered Kyoshi's face with light, playful kisses. The Avatar giggled as her touch began to tickle.

"We really should get back to the negotiations meeting," Rangi sighed while pulling away.

"Wait, what about you?" Kyoshi asked.

Kyoshi does her best to be a good girlfriend. It's only natural she'd want to return the favor.

"Don't worry about me. Knowing you came on my face was more than enough satisfaction. For now, at least," Rangi grinned.

Kyoshi blushed brightly and looked away from her lover's gaze. It always sounds so much more dirty saying it out loud than when they actually do it.

"Rangi?" Kyoshi asked once she felt her blush die down.

Rangi hummed in response. Kyoshi smiled and gave Rangi a quick but intense kiss.

"I love you," Kyoshi smiled.

At once, it was as though every hard exterior Rangi possessed automatically softened. It was a statement they both already knew, but it was always so good to say.

"I love you, too. Let's go, Jinpa's probably having a heart attack as we speak," Rangi said.

Kyoshi nodded and followed her girl back to the meeting room. Jinpa looked at them in pure relief once he saw them again.

"Everything okay you two? What took you guys so long?" Jinpa asked.

"Oh, we're perfectly fine. Just had to tend to the Avatar's needs," Rangi shrugged.

Kyoshis misses her makeup so much. She had to hold her fan in front of her face to hide the red blush spreading all over it. This meeting needs to be over five minutes ago. How is Kyoshi supposed to survive when the love of her life does things like this?

Please, for the love of all that is good in this life and the next, let this damned meeting end quickly.

****************

The rest of the meeting went surprisingly well and without a hitch. All that was left to do was finalize the paperwork tomorrow and they would be out of Kyoshi's hair. Thank the spirits for that.

Now that the day is over, Kyoshi has the opportunity to have even more sex with her girlfriend. Life truly is good.

Once the Fire Nation nobles left the premises, Kysohi turned to her girl and gave her a smile of pure relief. The relief of finally being done with the most grueling task imaginable, talking to other people. Usually, Rangi returned her smile. Instead, the firebender simply pursed her lips and avoided Kyoshi's face.

Is she feeling okay? Rangi seemed distracted, which is very unlike her. Maybe all the recent negotiations have been getting to her?

"We need to talk," was all Rangi said before walking back into their home.

In no universe is the phrase 'we need to talk' a good thing to hear from the woman you're dating. Kyoshi felt like she was walking to the gallows as she followed Rangi back to their shared bedroom. Once they reached said room, Kyoshi sat on the edge of the bed. Rangi did not sit beside her. Instead, she chose to stand right in front of her.

Well now Kyoshi is slightly terrified for their relationship. She simply waited for the bodyguard to speak.

"Look, next time you use such a tactic to get your way in negotiations, at least warn me first. I realize sometimes a more, unconventional approach is necessary, but I was completely blind sided," Rangi frowned

"What are you talking about? That was the most conventional strategy," Kyoshi replied, very confused.

Intimidation tactics in general are very common to use. In fact, Kyoshi would say it's her favorite tactic of all time. How she loves striking fear into people's hearts.

Yikes, it sounded really bad when she put it that way.

"You're kidding me, right? There's absolutely nothing conventional about what happened back there!" Rangi snapped, voice laced with hurt.

Kyoshi has no idea why Rangi is so upset. Could it be Kyoshi had done something to offend her?

"Look, I honestly don't understand why you're so upset. I did what I always do. I scare the life out of them, they give us what we want. Simple math," Kyoshi insisted.

Rangi did not look amused at all.

"Scared them? You're claiming to have scared them? You have to be joking," Rangi scoffed.

"Uh, no. No I'm not," Kyoshi honestly told her.

Rangi stared at her for a moment before her entire expression changed.

"Holy shit, you're not joking," Rangi mumbled.

"Why would I?" Kyoshi asked with a raised eyebrow.

Rangi merely continued to stare at her for a moment. Then, she buried her face in her hands. She let out a strangled, almost choking sound and Kyoshi feared her girl was crying. Then she looked up and found Rangi laughing.

The fuck is so funny?

"I could not be more lost right now," Kyoshi bluntly stated.

Rangi, still laughing her ass off, walked over and sat next to Kyoshi on the bed. Once she was finished with her little giggles, Rangi let out a long, drawn out sigh.

"Spirits, I fell in love with a moron," Rangi said.

"I mean, you're probably not wrong, but why?" Kyoshi exclaimed.

She is just so confused. For once, Kyoshi thought she knew what she was doing!

"I swear, you're denser than the rocks you bend. Kyoshi, those nobles weren't scared of you, they were flirting with you," Rangi told her.

Kyoshi blinked twice. Then immediately rolled her eyes. That's what she thought was going on? Seriously?

"C'mon Rangi, there's no way. I think I would know if I was getting hit on," Kyoshi drawled.

"I had a crush on you for two years before you confessed," Rangi very rudely reminded her.

"That's true, but be realistic Rangi. I'm well aware of what I look like," Kyoshi scoffed.

"Believe me, so am I. What exactly are you trying to say?" Rangi glared.

Boy, her girl is not going to like this one. Along with being the Avatar's bodyguard, it was Rangi's life mission to build Kyoshi's confidence. The Avatar never really excelled in that department.

"No need for the looks, Rangi. It's not like I think I'm some hideous troll or anything. But, well, I'm crazy tall and have a lot of scars. It's not exactly an ideal look. Neither are the freckles, I've come to learn. Besides, it's like you said. I had nice hands before they got all scarred, but now," Kyoshi sighed while trailing off.

Rangi frowned before holding both of Kyoshi's hands in her own. She soothingly rubbed her thumbs against the back of Kyoshi's hands.

"I'm sorry I made you feel as though a part of you was undesirable. That's really not what I was trying to say. I've always found your hands pretty, I just conveyed my feelings poorly. I admit, I have very complicated feelings about your scars," Rangi sighed.

She thinks that deep down, Kyoshi knew that already. Unfortunately, her self esteem has never really been sky high. Hearing Rangi say those words out loud was a bigger comfort than Kyoshi thought it would be.

"Oh? Like what?" Kyoshi asked curiously.

"On one hand, I hate that you had to experience so much pain. They're reminders that I wasn't able to protect you. You never deserved such horrible treatment. But on the other hand," Rangi said. "Spirits, Kyoshi, your scars are so attractive. The way they decorate your skin makes you look like a damn masterpiece. It's like lightning running across your body. I've never seen anyone so beautiful."

Rangi was staring at Kyoshi with so much love that it actually stole the air from her lungs. Immediately, the Avatar's cheeks were burning so badly they had to resemble the deep red of a fire lily.

"So you think I'm attractive," Kyoshi mumbled with a dopey grin.

Rangi gave her a look and lightly kicked her leg. Kyoshi let out a small giggle at her girlfriend's action.

"Of course I think you're attractive, you big oaf. We are in a romantic relationship," Rangi snorted.

Kyoshi giggled and pressed a small kiss atop Rangi's forehread. Her girl blushed a bit before leaning her head on Kyoshi's shoulder.

"You know, in the Fire Nation, scars really are considered to be a very beautiful addition to the human body. I hate to agree with that stupid Akiko or whatever, but your scars are so pretty. They're like little trophies of battles you survived. Let me tell you, they'd have gone ballistic if they knew about your stretch marks. They're a sign of growth and health back. Just another part of you so attractive it drives me insane," Rangi told her.

Kyoshi blushed once more at the mention of said marks. Her stretch marks mainly littered around her breasts and thighs. Now that Kyoshi thinks about it, Rangi's always given them special attention.

"Also, fuck Yokoya beauty standards. I adore your freckles. The jackass nobles certainly did too," Rangi huffed.

Kyoshi giggled and kissed her girl's nose. Then, realization dawned on her.

"Oh spirits, does that mean me showing off my scars," Kyoshi trailed off.

"Yeah, you were basically seducing them. It was very effective," Rangi confirmed.

"That's so humiliating! Now everything I threatened just sounds sexual!" Kyoshi groaned while flopping on the bed.

Rangi laughed and laid down next to her. Kyoshi adjusted herself so that they were eye level. Spirits, Rangi has the prettiest eyes.

"That may or may not be why I dragged you out of the meeting. I get that people flirt with you, I do. But it just seemed like you were flirting back this time," Rangi admitted quietly.

Kyoshi frowned at the realization that it definitely seemed like she was flirting. She cringed remembering the comment about what her hands had done. That really sounds sexual and Kyoshi absolutely hates it.

"I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to," Kyoshi honestly told her.

"Now I know you didn't. I'm not upset since you were unaware. I guess I just got too jealous. I wasn't too much during that meeting, was I? I hope I didn't pressure you into anything," Rangi worriedly stated.

It shouldn't be possible to be this in love with someone, yet here Kyoshi is. The amount of love she has for Rangi is far too much to be contained in this world.

"Of course I wanted everything you gave me. I'll sleep good tonight knowing that my stoic, calm, and collected bodyguard fucked me in the middle of a negotiations meeting because she was jealous," Kyoshi teased.

Rangi groaned and playfully shoved Kyoshi's shoulder. The Avatar merely laughed and scooted closer to her.

"You're not the only one who gets jealous, you know. I swear countless people have tried hitting on you. I never feel too upset about it because you shut them down so quickly it baffles them," Kyoshi smiled.

Rangi merely kissed Kyoshi on the lips in response. Kyoshi was more than happy to feel her love's lips on her once more.

"I still can't believe you didn't notice, they were being so obvious about it. I really shouldn't be surprised. Not like this is the first time you were flirted with and were completely oblivious," Rangi sighed.

"What? What other times are there?" Kyoshi frowned.

"My point exactly. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about," Rangi teased as she kissed her cheek.

Kyoshi just smiled and observed Rangi's face for a moment. Truly, has there ever been a more beautiful woman? Kyoshi doubts it.

The Avatar was going to change the subject and suggest the two get a quick nap in, but stopped herself. There's just one detail that still doesn't make sense about today.

"Oh, quick question. Do you know what was up with Jinpa during the meeting? I've never seen him so antsy," Kyoshi asked.

Rangi's face turned bright red and she avoided Kyoshi's gaze. It took her a couple moments, but Rangi finally gave her an answer.

"That was unfortunately my fault. I'm not as calm and collected as I look. Seeing someone flirt with my girlfriend kind of makes me seethe with rage. When they started hitting on you, I thought I was gripping the chair but I was really digging into Jinpa's arm. He told me it was fine so pretty much every time you were hit on, I squeezed his arm. I'm pretty sure I ended up burning it at some point. So, uh, please remind me to apologize to him tomorrow," Rangi sheepishly told her.

Wow.

"Between the two of us, that poor bastard needs the biggest raise in all Four Nations."

"Agreed."

#rangi x kyoshi #kyoshi x rangi #the shadow of kyoshi #kyoshi #the rise of kyoshi #avatar kyoshi #kyoshi novels #rangi #shadow of kyoshi #rangi sei'naka #rangshi #rangi avatar #smut

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jolieblack · 1 month

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Jolie’s notes on

The Lion’s Mane (Sherlock & co podcast)

Oh, this case made me so happy. 🦁🪼⛴️

Sweet domesticity in Baker Street, then a client ringing the bell bringing a dramatic case… This is another ACD story with quite striking hidden horror. You don’t really think much about the state of the body when you read it, but when you really start thinking about it, it is horrific. And off they go, our heroes, to solve another mystery and right another wrong.

Heroes with a pension plan, of course. Because of course Mariana would have set that up for them all. I love how this show keeps finding modern ways of showing how well Mrs Hudson cares for those two crazy boys.

Heroes who drink tea with marshmallows, too. Sherlock being a big petulant child about those cracked me up.

Loved Maud‘s early reference to tentacles, too. 🦑

Archie being able to sense when people are sad. 🥹

The non-consensual bathroom sharing made me laugh, too, but can people PLEASE just stop making fun of men who sit down to wee? Housewives and cleaning staff all over the world would be so much happier if all men just did.

"It‘s a trolley stuck in a wall." 😂 Trust Jonk to turn absolutely everything into a rant against the rich. 😝

And then they’re off.

Loved this modern version of "Holmes and Watson get on another train for a case", and John waxing poetic about the countryside by night. I have looked out of the window of a night train at the starry sky in the not too distant past myself, so this scene struck a particular chord. But I‘d just love to see more of this reflective, quiet John. He hides him too well usually.

And talking of beautiful, evocative mental images, the moment when Fjara rises out of the sea mist gave me absolute goosebumps. A sight that makes even Sherlock Holmes go "oh my word" must be a sight indeed. And all that with just voices and music. Amazing work.

I also loved how the mythical aspect kinda crept in slowly but unstoppably, and I spent the longest time wondering why Maud had mentioned none of it. In retrospect, of course there was zero reason why she would have. I kinda forgot that Sherlock Holmes stories love playing with our fears of the supernatural, only to supply a completely natural explanation in the end. But that’s quite an achievement in itself! Well played, Joel.

I’m quite happy with the solution as such, too. The original story has always been a little fantastical, that the waters of the British Channel should contain one single organism who could inflict such damage on a human being. But the combination of Lion’s Mane burns, chemical burns, previous fistfight with probably head trauma and quite possibly also a touch of the Martini effect together could totally do it. I’m glad Ian Murdoch survived, btw, I thought he was going to be the third corpse.

I also really appreciated the Lion/Liona throwback to Rache/Rachel in Study in Pink (which seems to confirm to me that we have seen Study in Pink already and it won’t come back).

And the accents! I loooooved the accents. I think they’re a major part of the reason why I listened to this case three or four times before I even managed to pause the flow to take these notes.

Jonk was really taking cringe to a whole new level in his interactions with the locals, though. This is really a part of Watson’s character that they entirely made up for this adaptation and while Paul plays it to perfection, it never sits quite right with me. I’m glad John was his kind and sensitive self with Maud though.

Sherlock wading in rock pools with his trousers rolled up is a mental image that will stay with me for a long while. Check out this lovely art by @noodles-and-tea

"Sexy murderous sea demons?" - "Very, very unlikely." 😂

"We‘re cutting the engine *and* the conversation." & "You are not a priority." 😂

Poor John, nobody wants to hold his hand…

THE JELLYFISH

There’s a reason why the scene with the submarine submersible has inspired a lot of fantastic fanart. I’ll just let these speak for themselves:

Behold the Lion’s Mane by @starfruitsomething

Lion’s Mane by @abstractfrog

The Lion’s Mane Part 3 by @sealbug

The Lion’s Mane by @reibub

Lion’s Mane Comic by @abstractfrog

I’m so glad they went and found Fitzi McPherson in the end, too. I didn’t expect that and it was a lovely touch.

I may also be a tiny bit obsessed with Sherlock competently handling boats. Very happy to see this several times in this story.

All in all, pure enjoyment this time around. Story, atmosphere, humour, acting, straight As all around for the entire team. More, please!

#sherlock & co #podlock #sherlock & co podcast #sherlock and co #episode notes #the lion’s mane

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stillness-in-green · 4 months

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Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 423: One For All vs. All For One

At the request of a few asks, have some chapter thoughts. I will warn everyone in advance that some portions of this post are extremely bitter. This is less salty than it is bile-flavored. It's also not quite as thorough as other posts have been, as my disillusionment with the material limits my willingness to comb the chapter for details to muse about beyond the ones that jump out at me.

None of which is to say that this post is short.

CONTENT WARNING: Confrontational rhetoric about irl prisons and the hypothetical of committing suicide to avoid them. I have strong personal feelings about some of the language I've been seeing from defenders of this chapter and I'm in no mood to prevaricate around them.

o Danger Sense continues to be some real bullshit. My initial response to the leaks was that it was yet another dumb contrivance to make things arbitrarily harder for the villains than equivalent things would be for the Heroes, but reading the official release, I actually just think it's dumb that AFO thinks Danger Sense would have alerted him to his/Shigaraki's failing body at all. Why would it? Danger Sense nominally (nominally) activates based on hostility, and where's the hostility in super-regeneration failing? If it were the remnants of Shigaraki/OFA attacking him from within his own body, that'd be one thing, but that doesn't seem to be what the first few pages are getting at.

Rather, it's just that the power of OFA is being too much for his body, in the same way it was for Deku at the beginning. As if, you know, Shigaraki hasn't already been surgically modified to handle both AFO and, presumably, OFA the whole time. Ujiko only mentioned the former specifically, but given that the plan was always for AFO's new vessel to be able to steal OFA, why wouldn't that also be accounted for? The best I can think is that AFO and Ujiko didn't know that OFA would put such strain on the body, but it's not like AFO couldn't have observed that the quirk's been growing stronger over the generations. If he and Ujiko just failed to calibrate the body correctly, it's a failure of Ujiko's warped genius as a mad biologist and quirk scientist—which again takes us back to dumb contrivances that make things harder for the villains than they would be for the heroes.

o The Kurogiri scene would be very touching if it, you know, actually amounted to something. If it didn't apparently end with Bakugou coming in to murder him. Except we don't even quite get that level of commitment because Kurogiri was falling apart already, so you get the impression that he would have collapsed with or without Bakugou's intervention.

o This in turn makes Bakugou's intervention really silly and pointless. My god, I don't care. I do not care! I do not care about Bakugou pushing Deku two steps forward past a barrier that was already failing. I do not care about Bakugou getting one last stupid victory lap when he's already dramatically endured a severe beating and emotional assault, stood back up from the stupidest heart surgery in the history of fiction, and faced down everything AFO could unleash on him, far outstripping that same villain's climactic efforts fighting All Might in Kamino in what remains AFO's only semi-emotionally resonant battle in the whole manga. As it is, this is just one more ludicrous handwaved magical cross-country teleport like every other one the Heroes have been enjoying through this whole fight.

o Yoichi paying attention to AFO now? Man, imagine if we could have just skipped a bunch of bullshit and gotten this way back in Chapter 368, when Yoichi first told AFO that it was over. Imagine if Vestige Yoichi had something like this when his actual for-real flesh-and-blood brother died, rather than having zero reaction to it whatsoever, not even looking over Deku's psychic shoulder and making a sad face about it.

o It actually kind of offends me that Horikoshi thinks he can get away with taking a stab in the direction of making AFO "sympathetic" now. Now, after he's spent the entire endgame portraying AFO as a two-dimensional Demon Lord who was literally Evil In Utero. And, you know, I'd buy AFO as being Evil In Utero but also capable of loneliness, sure. And I'm even more than on board with interpreting AFO as a man who's spent the last century working 24:7 to convince himself that he's heartlessly evil to deal with the loss of the only family he ever had. But the fact that this statement has been put in the mouth of Deku, who has never indicated the faintest trace of sympathy or understanding, much less compassion for AFO? Fuck off.

o All that Yoichi hyping up Deku's incredible finesse in attacking Shigaraki with the stored-up OFA quirks makes me think is, "Welcome to My Hero Academia, where the stakes are made up and the past doesn't matter!" I am so abominably weary of the endgame's—and the series in general's—willing to just baldly lie to the audience's face about what is actually happening at any given point in the story.

That was the moment when we should have had a response from Yoichi, what with Shigaraki having apparently torn AFO's vestige limb from psychic limb and Bakugou overseeing as the real man rewound out of existence. That Yoichi didn't respond back then just made him seem like he'd written off his brother generations ago; it makes his sorrowful-yet-grateful act in this chapter incredibly unearned. Of course, the actual reason we didn't get a beat like this back then wasn't for any reason consistent with Yoichi's feelings about his brother, nor because Yoichi was too far away to know that the brother he has a psychic bond with was dying. No, it was because Horikoshi was already writing towards this beat instead, so he didn't need to bother. The last time Yoichi looks the real AFO’s way was the chapter-ending Bakugou blast of 409, when it takes the first eight pages of 410 for AFO’s Rewinding death to finalize itself. The Hawks vestige talked more to All For One in his last moments than AFO’s own brother did.

Internal monologue is placed where internal monologue cannot possibly exist. Characters' plans are backdated to points in the story which are completely irreconcilable with how those characters were behaving at the time. Surprise and dismay are pantomimed from characters who are revealed to have anticipated and planned for the very eventuality they're acting so shocked about.

The main character, a kid who was once characterized by his tendency to mutter his thoughts out loud, who had a running gag of tightly packed, densely worded speech/thought balloons, has been reduced to an empty marionette, devoid of internal monologue, scoured of thoughts more complex than the multiplication tables of his quirk combinations. The story can retroactively say that Deku did—intentionally and willfully!—anything it wants and not have to worry about belying its phony stakes and made-for-Twitter cliffhangers because it has deprived Deku of his own capacity to reflect. He can't spoil twist reveals of his own true intentions if the narrative completely locks us out of his head! Nevermind how much of his final battle has occurred inside a shared goddamn psychic space.

All of this has made it totally impossible for me to read the story as a story. Not only do I see the strings, the strings have become all I can see.

Of course the vestiges are back one last time for a dramatic punch, despite multiple chapters swearing up and down to us that we were seeing a big emotional sacrifice play. Last chapter we witnessed the word vomit that was Horikoshi trying to justify Star's pilots surviving their planes blowing up, because that's how determined Horikoshi is that no one on Team Hero actually die. Of course the vestiges came back.

Who cares? Truly, who the fuck cares? I don't care about them; I don't care about whether they'll be back again in the epilogue; I don't care about why Vestige Might and Shinomori are missing from the punch; I don't care about the story finally trying to pretend that anyone in its pages has ever given a single starving river rat's ass about All For One's humanity.

—NOW ENTERING FULL-FLEDGED RANT ZONE—

I care about the only characters who have ever been facing actual stakes in this war: Shigaraki and his followers.

o Even though I care, I don't have it in me to weigh in much about Shigaraki's seeming death here, and especially not his last words. I'm far too jaded about Horikoshi's cliffhangers to think that anything I say now about Shigaraki dying and what it means for both Hero Society and the people Shigaraki leaves behind can be assumed to still be accurate two weeks from now.

I hope it's a fakeout. I hope a chunk of Shigaraki's body fell through Kurogiri's last portal and the hyper-regen can kick back in once he's no longer being assaulted on all sides by the allies of the kid who was trying to “save” him. I hope Horikoshi has one last stupid asspull up his sleeve. I hope for a complete Karma Houdini ending for Shigaraki and the rest of the League.

If we don't get that, it's gonna suck, and it's gonna turn Deku into a fraud and a liar. I don't care if the story wants me to think Shigaraki was saved; I don't care if Deku is satisfied with having saved "that crying boy."

I have not forgotten that "that crying boy" gently refused to accept Deku's "save" when the bell rang to go home. He wanted to go back to his friends, instead; he reiterated his desire to be a Hero for the Villains. The crying child returned to the form of Shigaraki Tomura and then AFO devoured him. Deku didn't save the child then, and he hasn't saved him now.

Remember how Eri didn't count as truly saved from Overhaul until the first time she could smile fully and freely? Guess what stops you from doing that? Right—being fucking dead.

And those touching last words of Shigaraki's won't do Spinner much good on account of him still being brain-damaged from a bunch of extra quirks no one can remove, because the only people who could are, again, fucking dead.

Unless, of course, the theorists are right and Deku is going to be not only not quirkless in the epilogue (meaning all that drama and emotion about sacrificing OFA is going to be another fucking lie), he's going to have the "unified" OFA+AFO quirk via Shigaraki's fistbump. Meaning Deku can remove the extra quirks, presumably just before telling Spinner that Deku saved-via-killing the love of Spinner's life.

Solidarity among outcasts is false and toxic. Everyone should just rely on Heroes more, no matter how much Heroes have failed them in the past.

o One last thing I want to address, less about the canon and more about the reactions I've been seeing elsewhere to the prospect of Shigaraki (and any combination of Dabi, Toga and Spinner) being dead: the idea that being dead is the best possible outcome for them because if they don't die they'll only have to spend the rest of their lives "rotting in jail."

Great job, team; nice message to take home. Everyone pack it in.

Firstly, and to get this out of the way, that is a false binary that totally ignores the long history of Shounen Jump villains getting absurd Karma Houdini endings where they walk off into the sunset free as birds because they've changed their minds and resolved to be better, or at least have decided mass murder is no longer worth their time and effort. (Vegeta wasn't the first mass murderer a Shounen Jump story rewarded with freedom and friendship, nor was he the last.)

But more importantly, that false binary is one that could only be presented by someone who truly does see prison as a fate worse than death. No rehabilitation is possible. No supervised release or house arrests in the care of assigned guardians who want better for them. No lenience can be granted in recognition of the League's mental states; they can be admitted to no mental hospitals focused on therapy.

The "better death than prison" line is the product of a perspective that has never had to seriously consider the prospect of living behind bars. It's a childish imagination of prison as a nebulous Bad Place where Bad People go to be Punished For Being Bad, or a self-righteous fantasy of a cold hell where sinners are sentenced to suffering eternal.

People can tell that the League have suffered too much to sentence them to Forever Bad Times, so they comfort themselves with the idea that at least they died happy, instead of living forever in a pop-culture-informed crayon doodle of concrete and solitude.

I’m not here to tell these readers that there aren't people in the world who would rather die than live under watch for the rest of their lives. I won’t deny that Japanese prisons are bleak and there’s every chance that the prisons in Horikoshi’s fictionalized Japan are even worse. But I am asking people espousing the view that death would be better than incarceration to seriously consider all the angles on what that sentiment means.

If it were you facing the life sentence, are you so sure you would prefer to take your own life? If it were someone you loved who would rather die than face imprisonment, would you help them—hand your older brother the gun, or your younger sister the knife?

Or would you want to hope that they could get some help instead, have an opportunity to connect to something meaningful—find religion, take up reading classic literature, connect with someone inside or via letters? Would you want them to accept the lawful punishment for what they'd done rather than evade it by ending their lives? Would you want them to hold on in case their case could be reassessed someday, that they might eventually finish serving their sentence or be moved to someplace that would focus on helping them rather than punishing them?

Would you want a glorified cop in a cape making that decision for them—or you—based on that cop's ability to "forgive"?

If you think prison is a fate worse than death, why is it okay that people like Gentle Criminal or the Shie Hassaikai Trash Trio have to endure it, while mass murderers, serial killers and insurrectionists like the League get to escape through death? Think of every purse snatcher who gets paraded in front of cameras with their arms bound and their face muzzled; think of Twice at sixteen; think of Mr. Compress now. Do these people deserve to suffer in the kind of torment you're imagining prison must entail? Would it be better for them to die rather than endure it?

If prisons in BNHA's Japan are so terrible as all that, isn't that something the kids should try to fix? Shouldn't that be a part of the mass societal improvement project people are swearing up and down the kids will have nicely sewn up in the epilogue? If the kids aren't going to fix these prisons—these places that take suicide risks like Ending and spit them out worse than ever; these places like Tartarus where the wardens call the people in their charge monsters and animals—then why should I believe the kids are going to fix literally anything else?

Or is it simply the case that it's perfectly fine that prisons should be this way; shitty prison conditions are only bad when it's the villains whose sympathetic backstories we know who're facing them?

"It's a shame, but the League has to pay for their crimes." But why does that “have to be”? Isn’t it because no one involved—not the characters, not the author, not the people who accept this ending—can envision a world where the “has to be” could be otherwise?

That's the problem with, "Killing someone can be a way of saving them," and, "They would have just spent the rest of their lives in prison anyway." It's a stunted mentality that leaves no room for the radical reforms and systemic improvements that are necessary to stop this whole cycle from repeating. Worse, as I very much suspect we're going to see in the epilogue, it's a mentality that says the system is actually fine as it is—the only real problems were caused by a tiny handful of bad actors, and now that they've been removed, everything else will self-correct, and things will go back to normal.

That precious, perfect status quo that Deku swore to return: this is the way he brings it back, it and everything that comes with it.

o In summary: if this ending sticks, then what we have in My Hero Academia is thus:

A world that played at being grounded, but which turned out to run on arbitrary rules, magic thinking and Evil Babies.

Characters that were presented as radically kind, but whose endgame resolutions represented a cruel underlining of the status quo, in which only those who suffer in silence deserve not to have to.

A story that wanted to be staunchly idealistic but which ultimately entrenched to hollow, meaningless platitudes.

o P.S. So like, Nana’s vestige saved Shigaraki off-screen, right? So even after all her fear that Shigaraki would have to die, even after all the efforts she and Deku made to help Deku break him down, at the very last moment, she wanted to save him. And she did so in the only reason she could, as one psychic scrap to another: she held his soul together when he was shattering apart. But when Deku comes to the very last moment, when Shigaraki’s body is shattering apart, does he do anything to try to hold Shigaraki together? Try to tell Shigaraki how to use Black Whip to hold his body together, call for Sero and his tape, Aizawa’s Erasure, anything like that?

If it doesn't stick? That I'm less sure of. But I'm pretty sure Deku's fucked as the Symbol of Hope no matter what. There’s no way, at this point, to fix his portrayal as the kid who has a drive to save that eclipses all common understanding. Every part of the story, before and after that declaration of Yoichi’s in Chapter 287, has served to undermine that claim. This is just the last nail in the sky coffin.

Nah. Instead, he just administers one last punch to finish the job. The boy with the drive to save that eclipses all common understanding, everyone.

#bnha #chapter thoughts #stillness has salt #more tags later

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kdrama-mama · 1 year

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Just sitting here thinking about how I don’t understand why Wedding Plan wasn’t more popular. The story was sweet, chemistry was excellent between the couples, it highlighted a real world issue many queer folks have to navigate, the NC scenes were sexy as hell - it was up there with one of the best BLs I’ve watched honestly.

I find it so weird how people shit on Mame so often for being “problematic” and yet they didn’t want to watch a series she put out that was totally unproblematic? The worst thing is Lom misleading Nuea and his mother, but if you listen, you realize he was very carefully *not* lying, and simply skirting the truth because he was in a very difficult situation. (Do they really love the “problematic” content but feel the need to publicly loudly pretend otherwise? Maybe)

Or they wrote it off completely because they didn’t like the kiss between the GL couple? It makes zero sense to me, and I have seen many people say that. There was a whole discussion on one Reddit thread I saw. And yeah, I agree that Katheryn did not do a good job with the kissing - Aya was clearly trying, but wasn’t given much to work with. But they weren’t the main couple, the main couple had excellent kisses, and they were so freaking adorable in all their other scenes. I really want to see Aya in a GL where she’s the lead.

Whenever I tried to engage on Twitter or a bit on here, it was like nobody was talking about it. Aya liked some of my tweets, and I honestly think she saw it just because so few people were tweeting about the episodes!

Or there’s people who wouldn’t watch it bc they thought Mame was using Boss, Noeul, Fort, and Peat for “clout,” when their cameos made perfect sense and were incredibly sweet moments for two of my favorite BL couples! I was so happy to have those sweet moments of closure for their stories.

Anyway, if you didn’t watch Wedding Plan for whatever reason, I highly encourage you to watch it! I’m sad I can’t get the special episode legally in the US, I would have bought it. I suspect she didn’t have it available in as many countries as Love in the Air because it was less popular.

#the wedding plan #wedding plan #wedding plan the series #love in the air #love in the air the series #payurain #rainpayu #skyprapai #prapaisky #lomnuea #nuealom

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jadeazora · 1 year

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A bit of review/overall thoughts for the Teal Mask.

Overall, a much better attempt compared to DLC1 of SwSh. The Isle of Armor was pretty cool, but the storyline was pretty bland overall. I found the story much more engaging here, especially when we get the true story of what happened between the "Loyal" Three and Ogerpon.

Speaking of the new Legendaries, the L3 are interesting with how much intelligence they show (from knowing how valuable the masks are and traveling across regions to get to Kitakami to clearly planning their revenge on Ogerpon right in front of you and Carmine) and how they might have been corrupted by the Toxic Chain. Ogerpon is also really cute with how much personality she shows. I feel SV really did a great job with bonding us with our Legendary partners overall.

Also with the Loyal Three, there's a number of interesting guesses about how they came back to life. My initial assumption was that it was something like them feeding on Kieran's anger and resentment to reawaken themselves, but there's also the theories that he was possessed by the Toxic Chain (we do see a purple glow travel up his arm during the scene if you pay very close attention, so it's possible this is where he would be possessed) and the rumors of the crystals from the Crystal Pool possibly bringing the dead back to life, since Carmine mentions a rumor where people have met those who have passed away there, and Kieran was hanging around with the Mask that had been imbued with those crystals.

(As an aside, SV has very much of a corrupted wishes vibe, from the Professor and their vision of a utopia would cause an ecological disaster to Paldea, to the Loyal Three wishing for beauty/power/intelligence when they made contact with the Toxic Chain at the possible cost of their morality, and how Kieran wishes to become stronger than the player but falls into his obsession at the end.)

Honestly, Kieran's launched himself into being one of my favorite rivals with the game seemingly building him up as a problem for the Indigo Disk storyline, but it's neat how the siblings undergo a complete reversal with how they view the protagonist. He's also a pretty decent challenge, with a fully-evolved team of six in the low-mid Lv70s all packing held items. (If you're doing this after you completed the main story of SV.) He puts up a much better fight than Geeta does, for sure, and I hope he gets to meet your base-game rivals in the next storyline.

Carmine is also really fun, especially when she starts warming up to us, but I do hope she gets called out for her earlier treatment of her brother, and how she started this whole mess by lying to him. Like, I don't think he would have felt left out by us just randomly running into Ogerpon. We thought it was a child until it dropped its mask, we could have just explained that to him. We're the new kid, how would we know any better or what the ogre looks like? I guess she might have been worried that two little kids would just climb up this dangerous mountain at night, but it still lead to more problems.

I loved Perrin's sidequest too, and hope we see her again in the Indigo Disk! Bloodmoon Ursaluna is so cool (already one of my fave Gen9 Pokemon and regional variants), and can actually give you a pretty fierce battle if you go in with a new team.

Kitakami still feels a little empty imo, just like the base game, but there's a good amount of small caves that sometimes have rare Pokemon inside, and places like the Chilling Waterhead that I wouldn't even know was there if not for Fezandipiti. Some other areas are also visually cool, like the Crystal Pool (interesting to see those crystals from Area Zero are showing up in other regions as well) and the Fellhorn Gorge.

I'm really excited for the Indigo Disk now, like full-on brainrot mode rn, and feel the Teal Mask really does a pretty good job of building up the second part of the DLC with all the little teasers we get. (In comparison, SwSh's DLC felt more separate between the two halves.) I feel they haven't shown much of the story aside (from the BB League/battling stuff), so things are probably going to get pretty crazy, especially with certain things the datamine has given us, in Pt2, and I really can't wait to see what happens next!

#pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon sv #pokemon sv spoilers #pokemon sv dlc #pokemon kieran #rival kieran #rival carmine #pokemon carmine #loyal three #fezandipiti #munkidori #okidogi #the teal mask #the hidden treasure of area zero #ogerpon

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ifishouldvanish · 8 months

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Some Mizrak / Mizrox Analysis and Headcanons

I know, I know, I'm That Alurox Blog™, but I'm just gonna take off the rarepair goggles for a bit to take a closer look at Mizrak and his relationship with Olrox as it's presented in canon. I feel like there's a tendency for his character to be reduced to just the 'repressed gay monk' archetype and it does him a disservice because he's way more interesting than that!!!

Anyway probably not as cohesive as my Olrox analysis because I don't really have specific headcanons with regard to his backstory yet but here goes:

1. Mizrak FUCKS!!1!

All the "haha the Catholic monk folded and had gay sex with a hot vampire in .2 seconds" jokes aside... I think Mizrak really does fuck. Like I'm not convinced at all that he is some repressed virgin who just got his world rocked for the first time.

First of all, he takes like, zero convincing to jump in bed with someone who has just established themselves as an enemy. We get the little fight in the courtyard, Olrox saying, "let's do this somewhere more comfortable" and next we see them they're already post-coitus. Furthermore, Mizrak is like... pretty fucking casual about it? Like, he's the one brushing a clingy Olrox off in the morning. I'm sorry but I don't see any evidence in that scene that suggests he hasn't done this sort of thing before. This man has had casual sex before, presumably with other men.

Sure, we get a few shots of him being mopey and conflicted in the morning after scene, but these are brought on by Olrox watering the seeds of doubt he already has about the whole working with Erzsebet thing; not Catholic Guilt over knocking boots with a vampire.

Also just... from a writer's perspective, if you have some repressed monk character and he's gonna get carnal with a vampire, you are MILKING that shit for all it's worth. You're gonna lay on the angst, the temptation, the moral quandary of giving into the sins of the flesh. But all of that is markedly absent in these scenes. We just see two grown men who think each other are hot and decided to have sex about it.

2. A Foundation of Mistrust

The first thing either of these men learn about each other is that they are on opposite sides of the same conflict (and it don't stop them from fuckin' 😌)

Olrox's mistrust is born out of his experiences with colonization by the Spanish, and an understanding that imperialism is the ultimate goal of Erzsebet's mission. Mizrak's distrust is born out of Olrox being a vampire, and the antagonistic nature of their first meeting.

But there's still a draw, of course. Despite going along with the abbot's plans, Mizrak expresses some misgivings about the whole thing. He doesn't want to work with Erzsebet—they just have no other choice. This is probably a position that Olrox knows all too well: just as native Americans were divided on whether or not to help the American colonists, just as some states in mesoamerica decided working with the Spanish was a good opportunity to strike blows to the increasingly powerful Mexica Alliance.

A telling thing Mizrak says to Olrox is, "There's evil everywhere we look, so we use our heads." In the context of their conversation, he's referring to the arrangement with Erzsebet—but I think it's also his general attitude toward Olrox as well. He's willing to get close to him, but he's going to keep his wits about him and not lower his guard.

They don't trust each other, but they do begin to understand each other. For what it's worth, I do think Olrox grows to trust Mizrak by the end of the season (otherwise he wouldn't have put his cards on the table to protect him during the battle), but it's clear from Mizrak's reaction that he has not grown to return that trust yet.

Which isn't to say that Mizrak is being unfair here. As far as he's aware, Olrox really hasn't done anything to earn his trust yet. Pulling him out of battle was supposed to be Olrox's gesture of "see? I'm sticking my neck out for you!" but to Mizrak it's just cowardice. Which... I'll touch on later.

3. "Is that what you have planned for me?" / "Of course not, I'm not in love with you."

Again, jokes about Mizrak having the absolute balls to be like "oh so ur in love with me?" after like, two nights aside... This is a really interesting exchange they have here??

For me, Mizrak's line here is just an expression of his distrust. Olrox has just told him about the only man he's ever loved, and this??? THIS is his response???

Hoo boy. This isn't "well, we are having sex and hanging out so obviously you're falling in love with me 😌". This is "I think you're just trying to manipulate me into believing you actually have a conscience/are capable of compassion, and I'm not falling for it." Mizrak thinks he has Olrox all figured out. Thinks he's calling a bluff.

And so with that framing?? Olrox's response, "Of course not, Mizrak. I'm not in love with you," is a FANTASTIC rebuttal. This isn't "oops, you caught me slipping and catching feelings, time to deny, deny, deny!!!" This is, "Of course you can trust me. I'm not trying to lure you in with romance or manipulate you into temptation—we both know I didn't have to do any of that to get here. I'm just here to tell you like it is, and you know in your heart that I haven't told you a lie yet."

Mizrak is accusing Olrox of trying to manipulate him into developing feelings for him, and Olrox is saying, "Gods no, I know you're smarter than that."

Which... is SO delicious in that I'm sure this is the line that will prove to be a lie. It's just not one yet. Ooh the foreshadowing and dramatic irony of it all gives me goosebumps!!! (Have I mentioned that I love Olrox and everything about the way his lines are written??? 🫠🫠 THE character of all time I love him sm)

4. Mizrak Has Nothing to Lose (History of the Knights of Malta Speedrun)

We know that Mizrak and the abbot came from Malta, and the 8-pointed cross they bear identifies them as part of the Order of St John. The history of the Order and of Malta is basically a centuries-long back and forth between the Ottoman, Holy Roman, and Byzantine empires. The Order is founded in Jerusalem 1023 with the mission of preserving the faith, aiding the poor, and providing care to people making pilgrimages to the Holy Land, regardless of faith. But they turn into this sort of paramilitary outfit during the crusades—granted authority by the pope to sort of act on its own without any real checks and balances. In short, they are tasked with defending the Catholic church independently of any conflicts between individual European/Christian nations, and European powers grant them land and financial support so they can carry out their mission.

Eventually the Ottomans expel them from Jerusalem (and a few other places), and the Order makes its new home on Malta, where they are tolerated by the locals in exchange for establishing some infrastructure (hospitals, schools, etc) and boosting the economy. The Order famously defends Malta from another Ottoman attack in 1565 and they're heralded as heroes of the church (but let's stick a pin in that for now)

As the centuries go by and the conflict between the Muslim world and Christian world kinda fizzles out, the Order becomes an outdated relic of a bygone era. The Catholic church lost some traction in the protestant reformation, and a more complex political landscape has the knights taking arms against other catholic entities (particularly the Franco-Spanish war). In fact, by the time Nocturne is set, the Order had already established a protestant division because they just REALLY didn't want to lose the support of Germany and England. France, who had been one of the Order's strongest supporters, forms an alliance with the Ottomans, and they just kinda have to look the other way.

As a sovereign entity that's no longer needed or even really wanted by mainland Europe, the Order decides to use its advantageous location to take on the responsibility of intercepting Ottoman ships—confiscating goods and taking slaves, to the extent that Malta becomes something of a major slave trade hub in the Mediterranean. The age of piracy is in full swing, and the Order earns itself a not so great reputation of effectively being pirates themselves, as even Christian ships start complaining that they're getting raided by the Knights. This campaign was called the 'Corso', and despite the Order's vows of poverty, it entitled them to a portion of any spoils they confiscated during a time when the Maltese economy was doing poorly.

Their souring reputation creates a cyclical effect where more and more countries drop their financial support for the Order, and the Knights have to lean further into the piracy and slave trade stuff to support Malta's economy. Not only is Catholicism losing ground, but the Order's mission: preserving the faith and aiding the poor, has become more of a loosely interpreted suggestion. The meaning of the 8-pointed cross gets diluted, as non-members of the Order are able to fly the flag—for a fee.

So imagine you are Mizrak, and you're a devoted Catholic who's committed himself to the Mission™ only to find... It's pretty much bullshit. No one cares, least of all the Knights of Malta who are more interested in engaging in legalized piracy and slave trade than God. You've lost all sense of purpose. But then... Some abbot named Emmanuel comes along and HE is legit. HE believes in the power of God and Faith and the Church. HE sees the way the world has turned its back on God and HE has a plan to fix it.

Sure, it involves allying with a vampire and creating a demon army for her, but that's hardly any different from anything else the Order's been up to for the past two centuries or so. At least this time it's For The Cause. You have to believe Emmanuel is doing the right thing, that he's in this for the right reasons—because if you can't have faith in that, then what else is there? The world has already abandoned you.

(The history of Malta and the Order is pretty wild honestly. Here are some sources to check out:)

History | The Knights of Malta

r/AskHistorians - What Were the Knights really like?

The Decline of The Order (PDF)

Noble Slavers: The Knights of Malta and Slavery in the 16/17th Century

Tragic Tales of Slaves in Malta

5. Courage as a Virtue and Redemption

So back to courage, and back to that pin from the Order's history.

The Ottoman Empire was massive, and during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, they vastly outnumbered the Knights. Ottoman forces had about 30-40 thousand soldiers while the Knights had six thousand—half of which were Maltese civilians who were called upon for service. The siege lasted four months, and ended in a decisive victory for Malta.

This was an epic underdog story that turned the tides of the conflict and revitalized Christian morale across Europe. And I think this story is what drives Mizrak. This is why he became a Knight in the first place. What he believes the Order is capable of, what he believes Emmanuel is fighting for.

To be clear, I think Mizrak is disheartened by what the Order and church has become by the 18th century. So Emmanuel's plan, as sketchy as it is, is an opportunity to restore it to its former glory and rally people around the church again. To return the sort of disgraced Order to its original mission: preserving the faith and protecting the vulnerable.

This is his Moment to serve his God in the fullest extent of the word, to take a stand for what he believes in. Anything short of that is cowardice. And that's why he's so offended that Olrox would pull him out of that fight.

And if we take all this context from the previous points here and we circle back to his and Olrox's first meeting, it adds a new layer of meaning to, "It doesn't sit well with your faith" and Mizrak's defensive, "What would you know about faith?" — Mizrak has likely already had to compromise his morals on more than one occasion, with his faith being the one thing he still has to hold onto to justify it.

6. So What Is His Deal?

Honestly, I really don't know. The history of Malta and the Knights is so long and winding, the show could do just about anything with his backstory and I'd be like, "yeah, that checks out."

What I do think we can take away from canon is:

He's a True Believer and defender of the Catholic faith. One of his first lines to Olrox is his "faith is a foundation" speech where he quotes Isaiah 43:2. In the finale, we got his call to the other Knights to put down their swords and pray with him for forgiveness to stop the madness. When Olrox presses him about why he's forging night creatures, he explains that Catholics are being executed.

He's a pragmatist. Despite his devotion to the church, he demonstrates some moral flexibility so to speak. There's the "use our heads" line, of course. But there's also this line during the meeting with Drolta: "We don't have to pretend to like each other. This is an arrangement convenient to us both because we share a common enemy." Devoted as he is, this man is not a purist.

... But he still has lines he will not cross. Earlier in the season, we see the abbot express discomfort about Drolta attacking Maria, about harming children. But by the end of the season, he's justifying sacrificing her to Erzsebet. Mizrak however, remains steadfast in the "killing children is wrong, even if they are part of the 'godless mob'" position. Holding this line is what pushes him to deflect from Emmanuel and Erzsebet.

#castlevania #castlevania nocturne #mizrak #Olrox #mizrox

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cyantt-does-stuff · 8 months

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Prime returns early AU

So basically, in this AU, set around the start of season 5, Morty ecounters Prime a bit early. He has zero information on the guy. He doesn't know about C-137's past or what Prime is capable of.

I have a whole scene planned because we could have had so much more potential in canon. I wish we could have seen Prime and Morty interact more. That's what I'm going to attempt to do here.

I also want to explore how Morty chooses family over originality. He's had so much character development over the seasons and I am proud of him.

Anyways expect a fic about this sometime in the future!

#rick and morty #rnm #r&m #morty #morty smith #rick prime #au idea #au #fic idea #there are so many crumbs and I am determined to make a meal out of them #rickorty dni #my art #cyanttdraws

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fluorescentbalaclava · 6 months

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training season's over

Chapter 2: Charlie Foxtrot

Summary:

Charlie Foxtrot / CF / cluster fuck Chaotic situation with all plans disintegrating in all directions.

TF141/female reader

spy reader, forced bonding, slow burn, slow build, militar inaccuracies, sugestive language, language, canon typical violence, second chance

previous: chapter one "Ground Zero"

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Everything felt relatively normal...for one month. You tried to avoid Ghost to the best of your capabilities, considering that he ( allegedly ) lived on the floor above yours. Awkward lift rides occurred but weren't so frequent.

After spending three weeks in your new home, you were called back. The task wasn’t hard at all, just to pose as a sniper while a small team of rookies conducted a RIF on a Konni base, which apparently held some important cargo that soon was going to be on the move. Your duty was to back up the team in case things got hairy and to observe the strength, deployment, preparedness, determination, and other tactical data of the target for a future raid.

You packed up only the necessary, as it was a short affair, and once you were ready to leave, you double checked all the entries on the flat, to make sure it was all locked. Once in the hallway you pressed the down button in the lift, and you weren't surprised at all when you saw Ghost going down as well, you just sigh to yourself, standing next to him as the door closed behind you. Does this man live in this lift?

"Going somewhere?" He asked, checking you from the corner of his eyes.

"With some friends for the weekend" You answered nonchalantly, looking up as the lift went down. Just one more floor.

"I see," He answered, leaving it there. The door opened and you basically sprinted your way out of the building.

After taking a nap both on the transfer and the plane to the safe house close to the target, you were all equipped and ready to go. Your face mask leaving only your eyes uncovered, your hair in a bun, your dark blue uniform on and the case where you kept your sniper rifle hanging from your back. Your station chief gave the team their assignments before leaving. The scouting team had weapons free order, while you were given weapons hold order, only engage when engaged.

The recce team were in motorcycles, the idea was doing a hit and run, and see what the Konni soldiers used to fight back, and how many were visible. You were dropped midway by them, and you walked to your position. The warehouse was surrounded by fields, some wind turbines could be seen in the distance, and you made your way to an abandoned watchtower that was the perfect sniper nest.

"Sage to Control. I'm in position, I have visual." You said as you settled down on your stomach on the floor of the dome of the top of the tower.

"Copy, Sage. Control to Delta team. Delta, you're clear to engage." The voice on your comm answered.

After the order was given, you could see through your scope three motorcycles from the Delta team, each one with two people on them, one driving and the other shooting, quickly approaching the place.

"Delta-1 to Control. Control, we have contact." The voice came through the comm followed by the sound of shooting, and you could see through the scope the whole scene.

"Control to Sage. What do you see?"

"Six armed personnel. Automatic weapons...they don't seem very prepared." You said as you zoomed in on the scope, and you could tell everyone there was caught by surprise, unorganized men rushing to shoot back, no heavy weaponry in sight. They sure are disorganized for people guarding an important cargo.

After a few more minutes of combat, two hurt Konni soldiers, and with no changes in the defences, the team was called back to retreat.

"Control, how reliable was the intel? These poor bastards couldn't even defend themselves against an angry dog" You said as you kept looking at the warehouse, everyone looked as if they were angrily talking to each other, clearly still on edge.

"It was a tip, reliable source so we thought it was worth a check. I'll tell Delta to pick you up on their way back”.

"Thank you very much" You said as you stood up to start disassembling your rifle, carefully putting it back to its case, and hanging it in your back.

As you came out from the tower, you were greeted by a very heavy and unexpected hit on the face and when you felt something warm and salty in your mouth, mixed with the sharp pain that made your head hurt and left you stunned, you were pretty sure it broke your nose. Your mask was starting to get wet with blood, as you fell on your back on the floor, and when you focused your sight you saw a big figure towering over you, with a knife. You quickly kicked it on the stomach, a deep grunt was heard, and they answered with a cut on your leg that made you hiss in pain, but you used the same leg to kick their arm, throwing the knife across the room, hitting one of the walls. The figure was already charging at you again when a shot impacted on the wall of the tower, prompting the figure to quickly flee to the woods.

"Motherfucker...fucking shit, fuck" You took off your mask, whimpering at the pain. You spit a mix of saliva and blood to the floor, as you tried to clean your mouth with the back of your hand, which made you wince in pain as you accidentally brushed your nose.

"Jesus Christ, Sage, what the hell was that?" The man that you only recognized as Delta-1 approached you quickly, lowering his gun, looking down at you at the floor.

"Do I look like I fucking know?" You shot back, glaring up at him. This was not the first time you got punched in the nose, however it was the only time where you got it broken, and the pain was making you dizzy.

"They left their knife," Delta-2 said, picking up the stray knife from the floor close to the wall. Nothing remarkable about it, just an average hunting knife.

"Come here, mate" Delta-1 said, letting his gun go from his hands and hang behind him, as he crouched over and carefully helped you up from the floor. Your head was killing you, and the cut on your leg wasn't as terrible but you felt it with each step.

Two days later, you were dropped in the corner of your building. Gauze wrapped around your nose, and some packing stuffed inside it to provide support while it heals. If you thought a broken nose was bad, it was because you haven't heard about the recovery of a broken nose. You felt like it was constantly stuffy and you couldn't do anything about it, your head hurt very often, and you could only breathe through your mouth, making it dry and your lips constantly chapped. Additionally, you were given a three-week medical leave, with no strenuous activities or heavy lifting, and some purple was starting to show under your eyes. You entered the building, bag in your back, and you lazily walked to the lift. As you were waiting, you heard heavy footsteps behind you. Jesus Christ, have I not suffered enough?

“Morning" You heard that husky voice you were familiar with behind you.

"Hey" You answered back, doing very little to hide the contempt in your voice. And as the lift opened its doors, you entered, followed by Ghost.

There were some minutes of silence, which made you believe that he wasn't going to try to be a smartass, but then...

"What happened to your nose?" He suddenly said, looking down at you.

"Rhinoplasty" You answered flatly, shrugging.

"It looks the same to me" He answered in a matter-of-factly tone.

"That's because the swelling needs to go down" You answer in the same tone.

"You're limping" He poked again, still looking down at you.

"Got fucked." You answered once again, nonchalantly, and if you were looking you could see him arching a brow under his mask at the blunt answer.

"With a broken nose?"

"Don't tell my doctor" You said as you reached your floor, exiting the lift.

Once inside your flat you locked the door behind you before laying on your couch and basically passing out on it, without even bothering to change your clothes. You already knew that Ghost knew. If he didn't know who you were exactly already, he for sure was close to it after today.

For now, you just hoped he would spare you for the night, as you slowly started to drift asleep on your couch.

You don't know how much time has passed before loud knocks at your door woke you up. You grunted as you got up from the couch, and you went to your desk and looked in the drawer for your handgun...you were surprised to see that it wasn’t there. Someone was here. You were so tired that you didn't even check.

Your body tensed, as you went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, the second-best option. You held the knife on your back, slowly opening the door.

Bucket hat = Price

You froze as you stared up at him, and when you lowered your gaze you noticed how he was carrying your gun.

"Think very well about your next actions, kid" He warned you, taking the safety off your gun. Why does everyone in that damned unit have the same husky voices?

You were a fighter, but you weren't stupid. So, you moved the hand off your back, and handed him the knife.

"Atta girl" He said as he stepped back, making a gesture with his head indicating you to step out of your flat. "Let's go for a walk.”

The next hour or so was kind of confusing. He got you into a car, putting a bag over your head, making you flinch when it touched your nose. Then, at some point in the ride, you felt a sharp pain on your neck, then everything went dark, as you heard a distant female voice talking.

When you felt yourself slowly regaining consciousness and getting back to your senses, you blinked a few times, trying to clear your blurry vision. You looked around a bare grey room, a table in front of you, a blinding light hanging over it and Price sitting across it. Behind him, a blonde woman standing against the wall, looking at you as well. You tried to move, but both your feet and hands were tied up.

"Easy, girl. Try to focus" You blinked a few more times, taking a few deep breaths, your mouth felt dry. "You are slippery and hard to find, I give you that" He added, as you tried to concentrate on him.

"Where am I?" You managed to mutter, but your words came out a bit slurred.

"Don't worry 'bout that for now..." He answered before he started. "I can't begin to explain the pain in my ass you've been these months. The higher commands have been chewing my ear off bitching about how we spent taxpayers’ money to purchase the intel from some contracting company that magically got to it first. It could have been a coincidence, yes. One time? Sure. Two times? Maybe. But seventeen fucking operations frustrated in the span of 8 months? Someone was on us."

You started to be able to see his image more clearly and the haze you were in started to wear off. You were in an interrogation room...and the camera was off. Off the records, bad sign.

"So, we started to look back, every detail, every camera, every mistake we made, anything we could find. A shadow in the middle of the smoke in shitty quality footage of some warehouse, which led us to multiple street cameras, until we saw the same figure getting in an unregistered car. The unregistered car led us to some tax haven in God knows which island, and then back to our old friends from KorTac, but your profile didn't match anyone we knew from there before...but we got a solid lead a couple of months ago and we went with it. And three days ago, we managed to confirm it by pulling some contacts, and dropping some fake tips...I'm sorry about your nose by the way, my hand slipped, and I punched harder than I was expecting to."

“Son of a bitch..." You muttered under your breath.

"When Captain Price showed me the footage, I ran your face through facial recognition..." The blonde woman that has been silent since you woke up suddenly said, before handling Price a tablet. You were sure it was the voice you heard on the car as you blacked out. "...and imagine my surprise when I saw that on our database."

You turned your attention back at Price in front of you as he showed you the screen of the device. You saw a much younger picture of yourself, when you first enlisted, and then the word "Corporal" followed by your full name.

"I spoke to your old sergeant, and he said amazing things about you. He was happy to hear about you again. He remarked on your exceptional performance and leadership abilities. And of course, he started boasting about your good records in basic and advanced individual training, and he said how excited he was for you to take the test and pass the SAS selection, and how he was even planning to write you a recommendation letter..."

You lowered your gaze; you already knew this story.

"And how shocked he was when he learnt you put your 28 days’ notice after two months of signing your contract." He then swiped his finger, showing the scan of your formal letter of resignation, to which you looked away. I already saw that bloody paper before . “Is that when you joined KorTac?"

"I wanted more liberties, not being tied up for four years" You said in an attempt to put on a nonchalant tone.

"Are you sure that’s the reason?" The woman said from behind Price, to which he turned around, and the woman nodded at him.

He then swiped again on his tablet, revealing a photo of your parents. You felt how your whole body went stiff, as you felt yourself immediately getting sick, bile threatening to go all the way up to your throat.

"Cunts" You manage after some minutes, trying to desperately free your hands from the handcuffs to the chair, the sound of metal clicks echoing through the silent room. "Leave them out of this.”

"We are not planning to hurt them." The woman spoke again, but it did little to calm down your growing anxiety. "We were worried that since you're officially MIA in KorTac's records, that they would try to...tie other loose ends" She said as she swiped through more pictures of your parents and judging by the looks of it, they have been under surveillance for weeks.

You felt nauseous, you haven’t even thought about that. Once you joined, you tried to leave all your old friendships back home, and keep the contact to your parents at minimum, since you couldn't just cut them off completely. It was easy to blame not having signal while on the move.

"They're actually very nice people but imagine my surprise when I was informed that they think you're still in the army" You started to feel like you were about to have a panic attack. All your lies catching up to you at once.

"I...W-We needed the money..." You answered after a few minutes of struggling to the strength to talk, your voice still came out strained.

“And…?” The woman said, and by the look in her eyes, you could tell she already knew the answer.

“KorTac had someone in the army, they would contact the recruits with the best performances to work for them. They showed me what they could pay me, if I joined…my parents are not young anymore, and they need money for the mortgage, bills, healthcare…I just wanted them to have a good life…I wanted to have a good life.”

"There you go, kid. Doesn't it feel nice to say the truth for once?" Price said, putting the tablet on the table and returning his attention to you. "The boys are with them right now, playing along with your lies...for now. They're going to move them to a safe house, until we can find another place for them to settle."

"Why...?" You looked between both Price and the woman. Why protect them? What's the trick?

"Your parents are not to blame for the things you've done. Legally, you should be prosecuted for high treason, and you'd get at least 7 years. And how do you think your parents react when we tell them their daughter, who they thought was serving in the army, is in prison?" Low blow. You just stared up at him, clenching your jaw. "However, Kate and I discussed your situation before bringing you here..."

“You have potential, kid" She said from behind him, still leaning against the wall.

"What is this? Some kind of intervention?" You said looking between them, anxious and confused in equal measure.

"We can always just send you to prison, if you don't want to hear us" He said, crossing his arms, and you just leaned back to your seat, staying quiet and listening, your body still tense. "That's what I thought."

"We could use a person of your abilities...and your experience." Kate said again, still glancing over you.

I'm fucked, I'm so fucked, so, so, so...

"What's the catch?" You asked, still looking at them.

"Instead of spending time in prison, like you should, you'd serve in the army again" Price started explaining again. "You'd get an ankle monitor, you can't leave the base unless someone from the team is with you or for deployment, you'd serve for 5 years, and you would be demoted, from your fancy sergeant title in KorTac back to corporal."

"So like parole?"

"Sort of" Kate answered.

"And if you break any of the terms of the agreement, you'd go straight to jail, no third chance" Price added. Both were just staring at you.

"Truth be told, you know too much. You're a liability for them and for us, however we could be more...understanding. Can you say the same about your friends back at KorTac?" Kate added, making you lower your gaze, contemplating her words.

Your leg was shaking under the table, and you bit your lip, still looking down. Your life's work goes down the drain, but at the same time you were getting a second chance, besides going back to the army would mean you'd stop lying to your parents. This is the worst day of my life.

"Would I still get paid?" You asked looking up, meeting their gazes again. The question made Price sigh.

"Yes, you would. But while on duty, your accounts will be controlled by your commanding officer, and any purchases or transfers must be authorized by him" Kate explained, making a gesture with her head pointing at Price.

You stayed quiet for a few minutes, contemplating. Not that you had many options, jail or the army. But you still stopped to try and put yourself together to meditate and try to get a thought out of the mess your head was.

"Can I talk to my parents?" You asked in a small voice, looking nervously between the both of them. Price looked back at Laswell, and she nodded.

You felt your heart beating in your ears, your hands shaking and your palms sweating. You haven't spoken to them in months with the excuse of being in deployment, it always made you nervous. They were proud of you when you joined, praising you for following your dreams. It broke your heart a little to see the glint of sadness when you explained how you couldn’t frequently talk to them, but they still supported you.

So lost in your thoughts you didn't even hear what Price said before he put the phone on speaker.

"Darling...?" You heard your mother on the other side of the phone.

You felt some tears forming in your arms, as a smile appeared in your face, your demeanour visibly softening.

"Hi, mom" You answered as clearly as you could with the knot on your throat, trying not to worry her.

"Hey, love, I'm so glad to hear you. How are you?" She said, her voice sounding worried but slightly relieved to hear you. "Is everything alright? When we saw three soldiers on the door, we thought the worst.”

The lump on your throat felt tighter, and you bit your lip trying to control yourself at the thought of your parents thinking that you were dead at first.

"Yeah, everything is alright, mom. Those are my...colleagues" You explained while looking at Price.

"They told us they're going to move us, that we should leave the house for a few months, that they will pay for a new place for a bit. What's wrong? Are you in trouble?"

Ah, mom, I'm in deep shit.

"It's for security. We just got back from deployment, and we bumped into some...dangerous people, I told them it wasn't necessary but they insisted on relocating you for a bit, everything is going to be alright, just do as they say, everything will be fine, it's just for prevention...army things as you always say" You said with a soft smile, looking at the phone. "Maybe they could even get you a place with a heater that actually works."

That made your mom chuckle, and her tone audibly was more relaxed, and it made you chuckle too, which prompted some tears to fall down your cheeks.

"Well, you're not wrong, maybe a change of air would be nice..." She added. "Did you get hurt?"

"Just a broken nose, that's why I didn't go there, had to stay for a check-up, but I'll be fine" You answered, just to hesitantly add. "Are...are my colleagues treating you and dad okay?"

"Please tell me what the doctor says...and yes, dear, your friends are lovely. We were having tea while we waited for you to call" That confused you, and you looked up at Price who had a small smile on the corner of his lips. "Johnny and Kyle are very sweet, but uh..." and then she added whispering "...is the man in the mask your colleague as well?"

You glared at Price, and he was visibly trying to hide his smile. Of course he sent Ghost.

"Yes, mom, he is... he's just a... little shy" Your unsure answer made Price chuckle softly.

"Your father invited them for a barbecue later on," She added, sounding excited.

"Of course he did..." You said with a sigh, closing your eyes. "Mom, I need to go now, yeah? I'll call you as soon as I can, please do as they say, okay?" You said as you looked at both Kate and Price.

"Alright, sweetheart. Tell me what the doctor says later, we are so glad you're alright" You smiled again, looking back at the phone. "Your father and I are very proud of you. We love you.”

You couldn't do anything to wipe your tears as your hands were still handcuffed.

"Thank you...I love you too...Bye, mom, I will call later, I promise" You answered in a soft voice, still trying not to give away how upset you were.

"Alright, love, bye-bye" She said one last time, before the sounds gave away that she must have passed the phone back to someone, to which Price turned off the speaker and put the phone back on his ear, standing up and leaving the room for some minutes. Kate walked over you and wiped some of your tears quite gently with a handkerchief, and you felt so defeated that you just let her.

After a few more minutes, Price walked back into the room, phone back in his pocket.

"Your parents are packing to go to the safehouse. Nothing out of the ordinary in the perimeter, and the guys will keep them safe." He said, his hands behind his back as he looked down at you. "Do you have your answer, kid?"

"I'm in"

next chapter: Chapter three "Foxtrot Oscar"

if you like it leave me some kudos or suggestions on ao3! <3

#call of duty modern warfare #call of duty #soap cod #cod modern warfare #cod #cod mw2 #cod mwii #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley #simon riley #ghost cod #kyle gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick #john price x reader #john price

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stellamancer · 1 year

Text

pairing: fem!reader x merman!satoru gojo

contents: more varying levels of anxiety from the reader, mentions of food and eating, satoru gojo is an absolute menace

notes: part ii! um, got a little delayed because i wanted to write a kiss scene... and also because i was fretting over characterization, over reader’s characteriztion, over gojo’s... he’s really hard to write i think. nuances, you know? hoping i did a good job. also somehow this chapter is?? longer?? than the last?? i’m surprised tbh. anyway, please enjoy.

word count: 5.5k (who the hell am i???)

previous chapter || masterlist

You think you might have made a really, really big mistake.

Last night, it didn't seem like a mistake, rather, it seemed like the right thing to do. Who knows who could have found him? What they would have with him? To him? It was better to have brought the merman home than to leave him to an uncertain and possibly cruel fate. You did the right thing; you were certain of it.

At least, you were until you woke up, greeted by the merman's smooth voice and his blue, blue eyes. Ever since then, it’s just been one thing after another with him.

Don't you know that merfolk need the water to be at a specific temperature?

Don't you know that the water needs to be at a certain salinity level?

Don't you know that thing you're keeping him in is far too small?

It's only been for a couple of hours, but you're already completely exhausted trying to keep up and accommodate his needs. To be honest, it's actually kind of overwhelming and you can't help but wonder if this is what it's like for people who adopt animals just because they think they're cute or something.

Not that you would call the merman cute.

Especially not after he’s spent all morning basically mocking you for not knowing anything about merfolk. You didn’t even know they were real until last night, so how could you possibly know the optimal ambient water temperature for a merperson? But you're trying, and hopefully that counts for something. Which is why you're standing in the doorway of your bathroom, holding a platter with a single, whole, raw mackerel on it, its dead eyes boring into your very soul.

Originally, you were going to grill the mackerel in question and have it for breakfast, but you’ve been so caught up in doing this and that for the merman that you haven’t had the time to eat, much less cook. It’s fine. You and Minori planned to meet up at that cafe off the beach that she likes, so you can just eat there even if you think their food sacrifices flavor for the sake of looking disgustingly photogenic.

Speaking of that, you should probably start getting ready soon. You’re supposed to meet up in a little over an hour, and you feel a little gross, still in the clothes you wore last night, plus you have no doubt that you absolutely need a shower, but before you can do any of that, you need to feed the merman.

His gaze zeroes in on the platter in your hands, realizing you heard him earlier (as if you couldn't— he's so very loud). He seems to perk up at the prospect of eating, but it doesn't last long as a frown settles across his features. You gulp. It feels like you're in for yet another merfolk lesson.

Finally, he asks, "Is that supposed to be… food?"

You nod slowly.

"For me?"

You nod again.

"I can't eat that."

"Wh-why not? What's wrong with it?" You almost demand. In hindsight, you should have asked, especially since Mr. Merman's seemed eager to point out every misstep you've made so far. You were so sure that the mackerel would have been acceptable that you didn't even bother. It makes sense for a merman to eat fish right? What else would he eat? Seaweed? Is he maybe vegan?

"It's dead," he tells you and though his tone is plain, you can see the amusement dancing in those beautiful blue eyes of his. "Fish are best live— squirming as you bite into them, their blood squirting—"

"Okay!" You squeak, interrupting his rather grotesque description. It’s way too early for any kind of gory stuff. "Okay! Got it!"

Well, that settles that; he’s definitely not vegan.

He grins, clearly finding enjoyment in your discomfort, and you try to tell yourself, again, that you did the right thing. You're trying your best, but the fact that it doesn't seem to be amounting to anything is frustrating. The merman's constant jabs and jeers at you and your efforts certainly aren't helping.

Neither is the distinct feeling of intense hanger that's starting to claw at you.

Maybe you should have a snack before you meet up with Minori.

The merman tilts his head, and you think maybe he's trying to look innocent, his eyes big and wet, his lips barely puckered. But the mischievous look in his eyes betrays him, making it clear that his aim is just to continue messing with you. "Oh, but—"

"Unfortunately," you interject again, exasperation seeping into your tone. You can feel your hanger about to violently consume you as you hiss. "I'm rather uneducated when it comes to merfolk food culture."

He just stares at you and it feels strange that he has no quip to counter you with.

Shit. Was that a bit much? You regret your words as soon as they're out of your mouth. Despite the merman's behavior, he doesn't entirely deserve to be on the receiving end of your ire. You really should have asked about his diet. And maybe gotten yourself a bite to eat while you were getting him that fish. It's not as if you didn't know you were hungry.

You take a deep, deep breath, hoping that fresh oxygen in your lungs can keep you sane for just a little bit longer. "Sorry. Just… is there— is it really completely inedible like this? If you really want it warm or something, I can cook it for you really quick."

He seems to consider your words, and you hope his response will be favorable. "...No, it's fine like this, I guess."

Relief saturates you as you exhale. You hadn't even realized you'd been holding your breath. "I promise I'll get you something better later, it's just I… kind of don't have the time right now."

The merman hums and holds his hand out expectantly. You're not sure if you should just give him the whole platter or just the fish itself; you opt for the former as you cross the length of the bathroom to give him his meal. Then you look away. He's either going to swallow the fish whole or bite into it, and frankly, you don't know if you can stomach the sight of either.

It sounds like the latter though. You start to step away, seeing this as the perfect opportunity to get ready, but that would have to start with a shower and while the shower is completely separate from the tub it is also right there. The thought of giving the merman a show while he eats is absolutely mortifying, especially when you consider how unnaturally handsome he is. Maybe you should leave a little early and swing by the bathhouse to shower there…

“Got plans?” The merman’s voice stops you in your tracks.

“Uh, yeah.”

"A hot date?" he probes, sounding like he's snickering.

Your face feels warm and you whirl around to face him, catching a peek of a bit of the mackerel's tail hanging out of his mouth. "No, I'm meeting up with my best friend."

Last night doesn't count. You barely even spoke with one another. Not that you could since she—

"You don't seem all that excited about it," the merman remarks, his eyes watching you curiously, looking impossibly bluer than before.

You open your mouth to refute the claim. To tell him that the reason you don't seem excited isn't because of Minori but because you've spent your entire morning running yourself ragged because of him. But it’s not quite true, so you don’t. Try as you might to ignore it, Minori's recent behavior still weighs on you, awkward and uncomfortable. You hold your tongue and instead say, "That's… not true."

The merman's expression is indecipherable, his icy blue gaze fixed on you. It feels like he’s seeing right through you, silently calling you out on your weak excuse of a lie.

Feeling the conversation is over, you turn back around and take another step to leave, but then the merman speaks again.

“So, you know,” he starts, his tone adopting a flirtatious edge. “I’d be happy to teach you about merfolk culture. I’m pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.”

Your entire body goes rigid and you glance back at him, in mild disbelief. “At… teaching?”

He grins at you, as if he’s happy to have your eyes on him again. Is he starved for attention or something? The merman winks as he responds cheerfully, “Yup!”

You gawk at him. “Like how you’ve been ‘teaching’ me all day?”

“That’s right! You’ll be an expert in no time.”

You doubt that. His teaching methods leave a lot to be desired; you’d even go so far as to say he’s actually a garbage teacher. You consider telling him this, but decide not to because he really seems legitimately proud of his skills (or lack thereof). “I don’t know…”

“Come on! It’ll be lots of fun!”

You doubt that even more. “Based on everything you’ve ‘taught’ me so far, I’m honestly not even sure if I can adequately take care of you here…” You pause, then add, slowly more to yourself than the merman. “Maybe when I get back I should call the aquarium…”

It would be better, you think, to return him to the sea where he belongs. If anything, he seems well enough, and he hasn’t made any mention of any injuries that would keep him from going back. You don’t know for sure, but being in the aquarium would probably be better than your parent’s luxurious bathtub.

“An aquarium?” he exclaims and his voice is louder than usual, causing you to jump just a little bit. “You’re not serious, right?”

“Uh, well—”

“They keep a lot of different aquatic creatures there, don’t they?” the merman says before you can say anything.

“Yeah, but that means the facilities are bigger and so you’d—”

“They probably wouldn’t be able to give me the same kind of personalized care that I could get from you.”

“Maybe, but I’m sure they’d—”

“Besides,” he interrupts again, his voice even louder as if he’s trying (and succeeding) to gain dominance over the conversation at hand. “They’d probably keep me there for the rest of my life! They might even experiment on me!”

Wide eyed, you stare at the merman. Your initial thought is that the family that owns the aquarium wouldn’t do that, but you don’t know, someone else who works there might. Merfolk are supposed to be myths, legends, so it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that if you were to dump him off at the aquarium that he’d become someone’s research project.

"You wouldn't do that to me, would you?" he pleads, staring at you, his baby blue eyes blown wide, wet with what you think, in the back of your mind, are crocodile tears, his lower lip quivering as if he’s a frightened child.

“I…” you start, trying to think of something, anything to say. There’s no doubt in your mind that the merman is guilting you. But you also know that he has a point, there’s no way to ensure that he’ll be treated humanely if you hand him off to someone else. Your stomach churns at the thought of scientists cruelly poking and prodding at him with needles and scalpels as if he were a lab rat. No matter how annoying he’s been, he wouldn’t deserve that.

After all, isn’t that why you brought him home in the first place? To protect him from such a cruel fate? If you were just going to hand him off to someone else, you should have just left him on the beach.

Slowly, you shake your head, “No… I wouldn’t.”

Pleased, the merman beams at you, his expression now the complete opposite of the pitiful look he was sporting just a moment ago. Despite his cheer, you still feel uneasy and you don’t think it’s because you’re hungry.

The reason becomes obvious when the merman speaks, as if your body was giving you a premonition, trying to warn you. “That settles it then! Guess we’re roommates now!”

You stare at him blankly, your thoughts stuttering at his words, struggling to comprehend them as if they were spoken with a foreign tongue. What did he say? What did he say? When your brain finally processes them, translates them into something you can understand, you nearly screech, the words flying out of your mouth before you can even think about filtering them. “Roommates? Who said anything about roommates?”

The merman’s eyes narrow into a smoldering gaze and you distantly wonder if he's just trying to show off the range of emotions that he's capable of. His voice drops an octave, purposefully sultry and seductive as he says, "Well, if you'd like a different kind of arrangement—"

"Shut up!" you finally snap, ignoring the electric feeling running up and down your spine at the mere sound of his voice. You don’t think you’ve snapped at anyone before, much less a stranger, but to hell with that and to him too. All morning he’s been bossing you around and while you’ve been doing you best to acquiesce to him, he keeps messing with you as if you’re his own personal toy. Maybe it really is the hanger, having consumed you, body and mind, by this point, but regardless, you’ve hit your limit with him. “We absolutely cannot be roommates! Don’t you have to return to the ocean, anyway? Won’t you turn into seafoam or something if you don’t?”

He starts to laugh and you glare at him. It probably sounds stupid, but you think you’ve heard something like that before, but then again it’s not like you actually know anything. The merman waves his hand dismissively, his lips curled up in amusement. “I know what you’re thinking and no, it’s nothing like that.”

"Okay, but that doesn't answer my question."

He gives you a noncommittal shrug. “Yeah, eventually.”

You wait, because you know there’s got to be more to it than that. Is he just doing these dramatic pauses for the fun of it? He shoots you a mischievous grin, almost confirming it, as he adds, “Should be fine as long as I go back in the next hundred years or so.”

You nearly choke on the air. One hundred years? He can’t be serious. You take a deep, deep breath before speaking. “Sorry, but I don’t have one hundred years to be your roommate— I don’t even know if I’ll live that long. I’m only going to be here for the summer, and then I’m heading back home to Tokyo.”

That should be enough to deter him. At least that’s what you think, but you also think that the merman might like proving you wrong. His smile shifts only just slightly, the glimmering in his eyes reminding you more of the sky than the sea that he calls home. “For the summer then. We can be roommates until you go back to Tokyo.”

You scowl, wracking your mind for some kind of counterpoint, but it feels like you’re fighting a losing battle in trying to argue with him. He takes your silence as a chance to attempt to further convince you. “Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re the only one here, right?”

You don’t say anything so he continues.

“Aren’t you lonely here all on your own?”

His question hangs in the air, unanswered, as you remain silent.

The truth is you’re used to it— to being lonely. You’ve been living on your own in Tokyo for long enough to be comfortable with the silence that comes with solitude. It’s no stranger, and sometimes you could even consider it a friend. But there’s no denying that maybe, just maybe you’d been hoping there would have been a little more time between your arrival and your parents’ departure. It’s fine. You’ll see them when they get back.

Besides, you still have Minori.

You can still hang out with her. Go eat at little cafes where you’re meant to take pictures of the food rather than enjoy eating it. Or have sleepovers where you chat about anything and everything. How she’s got something going on with Hayato. How weirdly nice Shinomiya is. How different life in Tokyo is compared to here. And maybe spending time with her will be enough to take the place of the silence, the loneliness that you’re grown accustomed to. It’s fine, you tell yourself, almost viciously. It’s fine because you still have Minori.

Minori, who’s supposedly your best friend.

Minori, who, you suppose, is acting strange around you.

Minori, who you’re supposed to hang out with in about an hour.

“We can’t be roommates,” you repeat, through gritted teeth as you reach up to massage your temple in exasperation. You don’t have time to deal with this right now: you need to get ready. “I don’t even know you. I don’t even know your name.”

The merman opens his mouth to respond but just as he starts to speak, you can feel a vibrating in your pocket. Soon after the sound of your ringtone fills the bathroom, echoing off the walls. You shoot him a look, silently telling him to be quiet as you reach into your pocket to grab your phone. Your stomach feels like it’s doing gymnastics, flipping and folding into itself, uncomfortably, painfully. It’s amazing your phone is still alive, having gone all night and almost all morning off the charger and you catch sight of how much the battery remains— nine percent. But that’s not the most important thing right now.

It’s Minori that’s calling.

You turn away from the merman, gulping as you swipe the green answer button on the screen. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Her voice is strained, hoarse, like she’s gotten sick or spent all night screaming.

“Are you okay?” you ask, more a formality than anything. You know the answer, but you’re still concerned.

“No, I—” She coughs. It sounds almost forced. You ignore it. “I… kinda drank a little too much last night…”

Somehow, you’re not surprised. You bite the inside of your cheek as you try not to frown. “It’s okay. We can reschedule.”

“...you sure?”

“Yeah,” you say softly. “You don’t feel well and… we have all summer to hang out.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Minori rasps out, then she adds, almost an afterthought. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” you insist. “Really.”

You could almost swear you hear another voice in the background, one that sounds almost familiar but you ignore it. You ignore it. You ignore it.

“It’s fine,” you repeat. “We have all summer.”

“Right.”

“Just get some rest, okay?”

“Mmhmm… bye.”

“Bye.” The line clicks first on Minori’s end. Your hand drops to your side limply and your phone almost slips from your fingers.

You don’t know how to feel.

On the one hand, she really might have drank too much. You remember seeing a few coolers filled to the brim with booze last night. It’s not impossible that, after you’d left, people, people including Minori, might have really gone to town with the drinking. She definitely could have gotten a hangover from drinking too much.

But something else in the back of your mind insists otherwise, it whispers that there’s something else going on. Her behavior is too suspicious, and it’s getting harder and harder to fight off the notion that she’s doing this on purpose, that she’s avoiding seeing you, avoiding talking to you.

And that hurts.

But what hurts more is that you don’t really know why.

Is it just because you were really bad at talking to her when you were in Tokyo? Or is it something else? You could message her and ask, but you’d rather ask her in person when you can. If you can.

“Satoru.”

You startle at the sound of the merman’s voice, turning toward him. You almost forgot that he was here. He’s watching you curiously, expression unreadable. It makes you a little uncomfortable, like he’s dissecting you.

“What?” Your voice is almost inaudible.

“Satoru,” he repeats and you notice his tone is almost gentle now. “That’s my name.”

“...just Satoru?” you ask, unsure. You actually have little doubt that it’s his name, but it feels a little… too close, too personal to be using his first name when you barely know him.

The merman gives you a wry smile as he dodges your question. “You know, it’s impolite to not offer your name after someone else gives you theirs.”

He’s not wrong, but still you hesitate. You feel like there’s some unspoken significance in giving him your name, like once you do, you’ll be setting something into motion that you won’t be able to stop.

It’s just a name, just your name.

Satoru’s eyes glimmer as you offer it to him and he repeats your name back, as if he’s testing the feel of it in his mouth. Something in your chest stirs at the sound of it, a little voice in the back of your head smugly telling you that it was right, but you ignore it.

With a satisfied hum, he says, tone shifting into something more cheerful, “With that out of the way, there’s no reason we can’t be roommates now, right?”

You stare at him wide eyed. It’s completely beyond you why he’d rather spend his time here, in your parent’s bathroom over being in the big wide ocean, but it’s clear that he has no intent on giving up. Between Satoru keeping you busy all morning and Minori canceling your plans, you don’t really have the energy to fight him any more anyway.

“It’ll be fun, I promise,” Satoru insists with a smile. This one is different from the others you’ve seen from him so far and you wonder if he’s trying to take a different approach to convince you.

Not that he needs to any more; you’re already resigned yourself to your fate.

“...only until I go back to Tokyo, okay?” you relent, squeezing the phone in your hand so hard it might break. This might be a mistake, agreeing to let this merman, to let Satoru stay here for the summer, but it’s fine.

It’s fine.

Satoru beams, bright and triumphant as he echoes. “Only until you go back to Tokyo.”

One trip out of the house to the bathhouse and the store is enough to reduce the discontent you feel from whatever is going on with Minori to just a frustrating buzz in the back of your mind. You know it won’t fully go away until you and Minori actually talk about it, but with the way things are going, who knows when that will be?

Besides, you feel like your hands are going to be too full attending to Satoru to dwell on anything for very long.

You heave everything you got at the store onto the counter. Even though you’d gone just yesterday, the sudden appearance of another mouth to feed demanded another trip. Despite Satoru’s offer to teach you about merfolk culture, he wasn’t particularly helpful when you asked him (this time) what kind of food to get him. Seafood, he’d told you with a snicker, and when you probed for something more substantial than that all he said was to surprise him.

His teaching methods really do leave a lot to be desired.

You did what you could with what little he gave you. Naturally, you bought seafood, two more whole fish, and then some other things, some of them a little… unconventional. It’s fine, though, you made sure to get things you could eat just in case Satoru doesn't like them. And if he doesn't maybe that'll teach him to be a little more specific next time.

"Hey! Are you back?" Satoru's naturally loud voice echoes throughout the house. He must have really good hearing if he heard you shuffling in the kitchen, though you did slam the door pretty loud when you came back in earlier.

"Yeah!" You holler back.

"Perfect! I'm hungry!"

Of course he is. But then again, it's been a bit since he ate that mackerel earlier. Your stomach rumbles in agreement with Satoru. After Minori had called, your hanger and appetite had basically disappeared, but now it seems like it's recovered. Your stomach grumbles again, and you consider eating before bringing Satoru his food, but…

Since you're "roommates" now wouldn't it be better to eat together?

Sharing a meal with Satoru sounds like a mistake, but if he gets too annoying you can just get up and walk away. Nodding to yourself, you grab the things you'd bought to eat and some of the things you'd gotten for Satoru to try and head for the bathroom, stopping by the storage closet on the way.

You find what you're looking for— your mother's bed and bathtub trays— with relative ease. Hopefully, the bathtub tray will sit comfortably on the tub, even with Satoru's massive body in it, if not… you can probably both share the bed tray. You grab both trays and, while it's a little awkward, you manage to carry them both into the bathroom.

Satoru's lounging in the tub, since there's not really much else he can do, his long arms and even longer tail hanging off the edges. You feel bad, even though your parents' luxury tub is huge by human standards, it really is too small for him. Maybe it'd be fine if he could bend his tail the way people bend their legs but you don't know if he can. When you enter, Satoru tilts his head toward you and shoots you a lazy grin. You freeze, remembering again, how stunningly handsome he is.

And then he ruins it, by opening his mouth, eyes on the bag in your hand.

He starts to pout. "Did you bring me another dead fish?"

"They only sell dead fish at the store." You say while you set up the trays as little makeshift tables for you both. Luckily, the bathtub tray fits— just barely— but a win’s a win in your book. When that’s all done, you start to pull everything out of the bags. Satoru watches curiously as you separate your stuff from his. Belatedly, you realize you’ve only really brought him snacks and nothing actually substantial.

“So, what have we got here?” he asks when you’re done.

“Uh, well,” you point at each item, telling him what it is as you sit down next to the tub. “Dried shredded squid, some different kinds of seaweed snacks and dried anchovies.”

Satoru hums and picks up the bag of dried anchovies and examines it, turning it over in his hands. Is he wondering how to open it? You’re about to reach over and show him the notch in the bag that he needs to tear, but he gets to it before you do and rips the bag open. It’s a little impressive that he figured it out on his own. You watch as he reaches his hand in and gingerly pulls out one of the fish. He turns it over in his fingers, looking at it before popping the whole thing in his mouth. You hear the absolute barest crunch as he chews on it.

When he’s done he chucks another one in his mouth as if it were a potato chip. “Not bad.”

You beam, maybe it’s not a glowing review, but still you’re glad to have finally, finally gotten some kind of stamp of approval from Satoru.

He glances at you and his lips ease up into a mischievous smile as he plucks yet another anchovy from the bag and holds it up to your face in offering. “Would you like one too?”

You eye the anchovy anxiously and bite your lip, not sure what to say. Do you tell him? Or do you just bite the bullet?

“What’s with that look?” Satoru asks, pouting. “Do you humans not eat these?”

“Uh…”

The pout becomes more pronounced, his eyebrows furrowing together. “Did you really give me something you wouldn’t eat? How mean.”

“...you said surprise me,” you finally grumble. “I’ve only ever used those in making soup stock— I’ve never eaten them like that.”

In an instant Satoru’s frown is gone as he latches onto the last thing you’ve said. He leans forward excitedly, his eyes shimmering with some kind of predatory joy. “Is that so? That would make this… your first time too?”

He does that thing with his voice again, and your brain goes offline for just a millisecond before booting back up. “Don’t make it weird.”

Satoru smiles, unaffected by your deflection. He waves the anchovy in front of you. “Well? Gonna try?”

You stare at it. It’s not like you’re opposed to it, so why not? It’s Satoru’s first time trying anchovies like this, so in a way would it be fair. You’re drawing the line at letting him hand feed it to you, though. Leaning a little bit back, you take the fish from him and toss it into your mouth. Just as you expected it’s a little crunchy, but more than that the taste is intense and salty, but…

“It’s not bad,” you remark, echoing Satoru’s sentiments. He grins and starts to eat them in earnest, few at a time. You pull at the plastic of one of the rice balls you got for yourself so you can dig in. After a couple bites, you notice out of the corner of your eye that Satoru’s looking at you again. “Mmm?”

“What do you have?”

You swallow what’s in your mouth before you explain. “Just some rice balls and a fruit sando.”

“Why does your food look better than mine?”

“Uh,” you pause, trying to think of how to word it, “My stuff is more… complex, I guess?”

Most of what you got for Satoru is pretty simple, consisting of only an ingredient or two. He huffs, obviously off-put by your answer, and leers at you like he wants something. Then he says, petulant, “I want some.”

You’re almost startled at how straightforward he is about it. Almost.

“I… just wasn’t sure if your stomach would be able to handle more… processed human foods,” you explain. “If… if you really want, we can share. I-I just wouldn’t want you to get sick from something you ate, you know?”

Satoru’s eyes widen slightly at your words, but then he waves his hand almost dismissively, “Nah, it should be fine.”

You’re not so sure, but if he says so. “Okay…”

“So, what's that?” he asks, gesturing to the rice ball in your hand.

“It’s a tuna mayo rice ball. The other one I have has salted salmon.”

“I see.”

You think about the best way to go about sharing the rice ball. Would it be better to just flat out give him your salted salmon rice ball? There’s really no way for you to break off a piece of your rice ball to give him to try without basically breaking the entire thing apart.

Before you can decide on a course of action, Satoru ends up deciding for you. He leans all the way forward, getting all into your personal space so he can take a huge chomp out of the rice ball in your hands. You almost drop the entire thing in shock, and Satoru is either completely unaware or doesn’t even care as he leans back in the tub, grinning with a wicked amusement as he chews.

“That’s pretty good,” he remarks, licking his lips. Your eyes are unfortunate enough to pay a little too much attention to the action.

It takes you a moment to recover and you hand him the rest of the rice ball and say. “Okay, well, you can have the rest of this one and I’ll just have this one to myself.”

“I thought we were sharing?”

“We are,” you insist. “You’re eating that one, and I’m eating this one.”

“But I wanted to try the salted salmon one, too.”

“I… I will get one just for you next time I go to the store, okay?” you offer, hoping that will deter him from invading your personal space again and sinking his teeth into the other rice ball.

It doesn’t.

You’re so lucky that the fruit sando is sliced in two pieces.

next chapter (coming soon) →

#satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x you #gojo x you #gojo x reader #jjk x reader #nikuniku fics #sots fic tag

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