#a metaphor so terrible it could be about anything and still end up being disgusting! impressive

[kaedeichinose]

people trying to spin the ruby situation into being about medication/therapy/whatever already sound like theyre on insane levels of cope but if any of the writers try to pull that shit i'll be so mad

"it wasnt a terrible suicide allegory it was actually a DIFFERENT terrible allegory and we just used suicide imagery and framing for pure shock value and a cliffhanger!" i think thatd be worse actually

[ptn-imagines]

Greetings! I've read your work on Ao3 and I absolutely love your PtN content. Although the work is fanmade, the characterisation and interactions of Chief and sinners seem so on point to me (^^)

With that being said, I would like to request a SFW and NSFW headcanon of top!Chief and one my favourite sinners in the game - Coquelic. She considered Chief as one of her " flowers " in her 100% compliance document and was more accepting to them during her interrogation. It'd be nice to include how Coquelic dealt with admirers who were a bit too close to Chief. Thank you!

I'm glad you like my works! I hope this one is up to scratch as well -- I worry that I highlighted certain aspects of Coquelic's personality too much and others not enough, but judging by that last bit of the request, I think this should hopefully satisfy you. If not, feel free to send in a new request!

NSFW content and mild violence below the cut.

SFW+NSFW headcanons for Coquelic with top!Chief

What Coquelic wants, Coquelic gets. This is a fact of life, and the Mentor of the Garden will take what she wants with her own hands if need be.

At first, this was the Chief’s life. Though she knew two of her flowers were besotted with them – and what silly girls they were indeed – Coquelic cared little for them herself. As if the way they chained Sinners with those despicable shackles wasn’t enough, that disgusting Hush had asked her to look out for them… and there’s no way she was going to do anything that monster said.

Still, despite Coquelic’s convictions, she too ended up charmed by the Chief, just the same as her flowers. She went from wanting to take their life, to wanting to take their heart. Metaphorically, because Coquelic had taken hearts literally before, but it was a terribly messy and bloody business and more importantly, it left her victim dead, which was no longer the fate she desired for the Chief.

Still, for a while after Coquelic had made the decision to pursue the Chief, they were left with a feeling of bone-deep dread and a chill down their spine. Coquelic seemed to be popping up out of nowhere more and more often lately, and they wondered if she’d changed her mind about wanting to kill them.

Coquelic, of course, isn’t capable of doing anything in half measures. She was aware of how she was unnerving her adored one, but saw it as a necessary side-effect – after all, her confession had to be perfect. She already had a plan in mind; she just needed to find the right flower to bloom…

One day, Chief would find themself on their way to a meeting with a particularly snobby member of the City Council. They didn’t like this guy, not at all; the way he talked about Sinners was worse than your average Eastsider, likening them to diseased animals. He had been pushing to undo all the work Chief had been doing to reduce the stigma about Sinners, and though Chief had been managing to prevent any catastrophic consequences thus far, his power and influence was not to be underestimated.

Still, when they walked into the councilor’s office, nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.

The councilor was slumped in his chair, fresh blood coagulating into vibrant red Mania roses. Perched on the edge of his desk like she belonged there was none other than Coquelic, grinning as she twirled a lock of her hair around her finger. “Well, Chief? What do you think of my confession?”

They could only stare, mouth agape. “Coquelic- You- What- How-”

Coquelic sighed, tutting as if it was so very obvious. “My dear Chief, I know this guy’s been bothering you. We can’t have that, can we? So I took care of him for you.” She idly plucked one of the roses from the man’s body, and the Chief was too stunlocked to react as she sashayed over to them and tucked it behind their ear. “Forget about that ugly thing, and instead focus on these beautiful flowers that bloomed from the rot. Red roses… You know what they mean, don’t you?”

Chief’s brain was just barely able to comprehend that Coquelic was – confessing to them? This was all too much to handle. “Coquelic,” they managed to mutter, their voice hoarse, “go back to the Bureau. We’ll discuss this there.”

Coquelic pouted. “Oh, Chief, you break my poor little heart. But, if that’s what you want…” She disappeared in the blink of an eye, before the Chief could comprehend her words.

Covering up the councilor’s death was a pain – the 9th Agency had to get involved. Still, Chief knew that if the news got out that a very vocally anti-Sinner councilor had been assassinated by the Mentor of the Garden, it would cause an even bigger headache. As a result, it was several days before they managed to make good on their promise to speak to Coquelic back at the Bureau.

“Chief, what took you so long?” she whined as she noticed them approach her cell, sprawling across an ornate couch she’d managed to get brought in for her, somehow. “Don’t you know it’s rude to keep a lady waiting? I thought you stood me up!”

Chief took a deep breath and refused to respond to Coquelic’s provocations. “Coquelic, I’m… willing to go out with you. But on one condition. Don’t kill anyone else.”

Coquelic laughed, giving the Chief a smile that was both terrifying and hauntingly beautiful. “Is that your only request? Very well! I won’t kill anyone else in your name~” A statement that left no doubt that Coquelic’s days as an assassin were far from over, but Chief expected no less from her.

Coquelic demanded a lot of the Chief's attention, but also spoiled them. Flowers, custom-tailored clothes and commissioned trinkets, chocolates, the whole nine yards; Chief was genuinely worried they’d run out of space for all these gifts.

Being with Coquelic meant that the Chief also got to spend a lot of time around her Garden. Seeing how kind and protective she could be towards her flowers made them realize that Coquelic wasn’t just a madwoman; the stunt she’d pulled to confess was simply a grandiose gesture to get their attention.

She was an absolute drama queen, that was true, but she wasn’t as crazy as she first seemed. Indeed, she was perfectly capable of being serious and lowkey when she wanted to – it was just that she rarely wanted to be.

The scariest part of Coquelic was simply how territorial she could be. Though she kept her promise about not killing anyone for the Chief, they definitely noticed how some of their admirers would fall rather badly ill for a couple of weeks after being a little too bold with their affection. They were certain that Coquelic was giving them very small doses of poison, enough to cause disruptive illness without endangering their lives, but they could never quite catch her in the act.

Coquelic was also a very touchy person – she’d often drag the Chief to Garden-owned bathhouses for private outings. Baths with Coquelic were always a sensual experience; the Mentor of the Garden had an incredible body and she wasn’t shy about showing it off. She made the act of bathing seem like its own personal showing just for the Chief; water streaming down her breasts, her curves tracing a hypnotic outline of her body. It was nothing short of mesmerizing.

However, these moments also revealed the various scars across Coquelic’s body, the ones that were just barely covered by her clothes or concealed with makeup. She didn’t have as many as warriors like Zoya or Ninety-Nine, of course, but she still had a much larger amount than the Chief expected. They didn’t dare bring it up, but they couldn’t help but wonder about the stories behind these scars.

As sensual as these moments were, the actual sex was left firmly in the bedroom. Coquelic was a pillow princess, but Chief was a service top, so it all worked out very well in the end.

Besides, even if Coquelic didn’t do much to help, she was still an active participant in other ways. She preferred to have the Chief’s face buried in her arousal, which meant they spent a lot of time between her legs, and she wasn’t shy about her lewd gasps and moans, nor about telling the Chief how much of a good little flower they were. Her silky sweet voice and the taste of her ambrosia-like arousal was more than enough to bring the Chief to their own climax – sometimes without Coquelic’s permission, which would be sorely punished.

Indeed, Coquelic is no stranger to kink. It’s fairly common for her to blindfold Chief with silky ribbons, and on the days where she lets them ride her instead, she often also binds their hands behind their back. If she’s really in a mood, she’ll even use the ribbons to gag them. It’s all very artistic, of course.

Among the many gifts Chief has received from Coquelic is copious amounts of lacy lingerie. It’s her expectation that Chief will wear them, and she’ll kick up a fuss if she discovers they’re not.

Also, Coquelic is more than willing to use her fangs when biting, so drawing a bit of blood is par for the course when it comes to intimacy with her.

In the end, Coquelic was a complicated person, and indeed, a relationship with her was often messy. But she had qualities that Chief admired, too, when she wasn’t purposefully messing about: loyalty and a deep love for the people who were hers. So, much to the Chief's surprise…

In the end, they truly fell for Coquelic too.

[teencopandthesourwolf]

FIAT LUX

written for @sterekdrabblesgonelong using the @sterekdrabbles 23/11/22 challenge words that were: PART, MATTER and SPOT with the end-of-month theme of HONESTY.

sterek fic, MATURE, 2245 words, post-nogitsune stiles, stiles stilinski has PTSD, heavy angst, imagined body horror, healing, getting together, falling in love, POV stiles.

READ IT HERE ON AO3

.

"Hey, you good?"

Somebody spoke. Stiles remembers that. He also remembers thinking, at the time, how it sounded a lot like Derek's voice.

He'd been right. Of fucking course he'd been right. 

Stiles was scrambling to process what had been said to him, alongside trying to figure out what exactly was happening to his still-wobbly sense of self.

"Stiles? Are you okay?" 

Stiles couldn't answer. Couldn't get any sounds out of his strangled throat, nor force his suddenly arid mouth to move and make the right shapes needed for words.

Everything was muddying all over again, his mind and body becoming a wasteland in a heartbeat. He was barren, a damned apocalypse. Truth be told, since his possession, Stiles was just an empty shell, only pretending to be human. And now his memories were flashing before his eyes, having once again become a trailer for his fucked-up, one-man indie zombie movie. Although—no, actually. No, that wasn't right. This wasn't a trailer. The Horrors were back in full, movie-length, and were now playing out their incredibly specific brand of Existential Dread right before Stiles' glassy eyes in all of their glorious, terrible technicolour.

Spawn of the Dead: Double Feature!

Grab yourself an extra large bucket of Salty'n'Sweet and settle in for the midnight showing.

How, though?

How the hell could the parasitic evil which they'd ended—it absolutely had gone, it had!—be so inexplicably here? Like, right here and now, delightedly wrapping one crooked hand around Stiles's stringy neck while using the other to dig into Stiles's already bent-way-out-of-shape psyche, sinking its dirty claws in all the way again until Stiles couldn't think or see straight or even speak.

How could the thing they'd destroyed still have him so very firmly in its clutches?

In his peripheral there were now only blurred-out, bony digits where his fingers were supposed to be; Stiles couldn't stop the violent shaking as he looked down at his hands and felt bile rise in his throat that tasted of reams and reams of filthy bandages rapidly climbing his esophagus, in a far too-real scene from some disgusting, stop-animation nightmare.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

Oh, fuck no. 

It was here. Even if it wasn't really; it was. Here, crippling each of his faculties, one by one with a sickening sort of ease, the ghost of it shutting down his capacity to process his surroundings, to operate his body correctly, to function as a human being, even if only a pretend one. It was too quickly obliterating his ability to just be.

To be Stiles.

Void.

Oh, God. 

No! No! No! No! No! No! No! 

Breath became cement in his lungs. 

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

Re-appeared and yet not, the spectral memory of the Nogitsune was once more burrowing its way beneath pale skin and fragile bone, digging a six-foot deep grave ready to bury Stiles's power to answer a simple question and say No, no, I'm not okay and I really need some help here, and so very easily quashing his in-vain attempts at doing anything at all about this runaway train of a shit-show situation.

Chaos.

He'd lost control again. 

This time it was aftermath. Or aftershocks. Or afterburn or afterbirth or some other after-metaphor for absolute guilt.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

"Can you hear me, Stiles?"

Stiles wasn't really there anymore.

Stiles was spiralling, fast, due to that broken part of his soul ripping apart all over again and gaping open, a casm, a disgraced depiction of his abject shame for his past actions that now flowed out from the ghoulish wound like spilled wine. He looked down to see invisible gut-shot viscera tumbling out of him, staining his shirt and shoes like claret on crisp white sheets and instantly soaking into his skin and muscles and right through to the marrow of his bones, infiltrating his forever-infected anatomy in a strange sort of self-perpetuating vicious cycle. His heart, full of holes, was leaking its last vestiges of goodness, draining right out of him, his body now just a humanoid estuary. Other Stiles Juices added to the polluted mix—tears and adrenaline and cortisol, all becoming a veritable hurricane in his brain and chest and belly, swirling around viciously, dangerously—until it had drowned out his voice and drenched his autonomy in a chorus of non-existent Let me in! Until he'd lost his will completely to a bottomless whirlpool of contempt.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

Oh, Void had truly left its mark. 

And so there he was. Just a stricken, hyperventilating five-foot-ten jagged fissure wearing his clothes and his face. A mask was all that was left of Mieczysław Stilinski: Stiles, just a stupid boy in the body of a not-quite man, who was suffocating in the mould and the rot of himself.

The intangible had brimmed over and drip-drip-dripped until it was gushing freely and spilling right out of him and onto the floor, becoming an epic tidal wave of oblivion that would splash and tarnish and permanently stain everything and everybody around Stiles, all that he loved. 

Again. 

Only this insanity wasn't invisible, not to him. It was a vivid Hieronymus Bosch knock-off. A never-ending bloodbath painted in brushstrokes of the richest of colours. Stiles was an oily waking nightmare, a moving tapestry of his own creation that was playing over and over and over on the glitched-out loop that was his faulty VHS mind.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

"Don't step in it," he'd whispered. 

He doesn't remember if Derek had answered. He doesn't remember much of anything after that. 

Derek, just like everybody else, was poisoned by Stiles's toxicity. Forever marked, just as Stiles had been—because of Stiles.

Stiles, with his bony hands that hid those undetectable tattoos in blacks and blues and mauves that were the inky Rorschach contusions of all his loved one's cuts and bruises; Stiles, with his immortal pattern of dead leaves that twisted along the gnarled branches of his inner Lichtenberg tree; Stiles, with his fear-induced awful decisions that had lead to the lives of so many being taken; Stiles, with his murderous intent—borrowed or not, it made no fucking difference in the end; Stiles, with all of this horror; Stiles, with his blackened soul that was now only recognisable as death.

Yet, in stark contrast, his haemoglobin-bright red ravaged veins were very much not dead. He felt them, now, itching beneath the surface of his skin, unreal yet so real and becoming vine-like, pulsating and stretching out their long creepy creeper-fingers to reach down inside of him, clawing their way back home to the black hole that was his centre. And they were growing. He could feel them swelling in his arms and his legs and his face. Alive. Becoming stronger and stronger, they traversed alongside his nervous system like a road map, journeying through what was left of his tattered existence and getting so big and so fat they too were branches and were somehow both choking him and splitting him clean open—Stiles, roots and all—his thoughts and actions reduced to nothing more than a fractured glass pane in an already damaged photo frame which threatened to crack and turn him into thousands of thousand-year-old shards of nothing but absolute destruction.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

Out, damned spot. 

Maybe Derek had said more words. Begged and pleaded for Stiles to talk to him, to make sense of things for him. For Stiles to tell him what the hell was going on.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten! 

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine—

ten? 

Or was it eleven, or twelve that time? 

Too late. 

Rip. Tear. Shatter. 

Stiles had collapsed under the weight of his own mistakes.

*

When something in his brain managed to press the pause button on the horror show, there was only numbness.

Nothing. 

Then remorse had once more seeped through his pores like a poisonous gas, a hazy mist of it eventually filling him and triumphing over delirium because, after some time—minutes, hours, days, maybe—Stiles was finally able to communicate again.

Well, sort of.

There were four words he had to offer.

"It's all my fault." 

And as he'd made frantic attempts to once again count his uncontrollably shaking fingers, he'd whimpered those words on repeat, for an indeterminate amount of time and in a thousand different voices, none of which sounded like his own.

"It's all my fault."

onetwothree—start again.

"It's all my fault."

onetwothreefourfivesixseven—shit.

"It's all my fault."

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine—

"Hey, I've got you."

Derek?

If he wasn't dreaming, it meant Derek hadn't left him. He should have. Stiles was to blame for so very many terrible, terrible things.

But Derek had stayed and minded him, regardless.

He took Stiles in, after that. Fed him. Forced him to wash. Watched him as closely as he ended up holding him, in a way that he shouldn't. In a way that nobody ever should because Stiles was a travesty. Undeserving. But Derek? Derek was good and so Derek did it anyway. And those big arms folding around Stiles broke Stiles all over again, broke him impossibly more. Only it was a different kind of break this time around. Maybe not gentle so much as it was firm and necessary. A resetting of bones.

Then, somehow, slowly, painfully, Derek helped to put Stiles back together again, which was nothing short of a Herculean feat.

That Humpty Dumpty Stiles, he'd spent weeks sobbing and going mute, sobbing and going mute, and sobbing and sobbing and shouting and shrieking and screaming the loft down, bringing his feral nightmares back to life and out into the open and into the here and now, into Derek's already too-difficult world.

Stiles was just a transparent bag of those reset bones. Fused with fear and sorrow and so much sin, glued up all wrong, and held together with tears and snot and guilt and shame—and an ancient, evil-tainted love; a love possessed. 

Until he wasn't. Until there were hints of a new kind of love shimmering around the edges of their lives. Something quiet. Something lighter.

A love made up of Stay here with me and Stay another night and consistently screaming into the dawn but never any pity nor judgement and whole days of silence and then communication via eyebrows and heartbroken Fuck Yous and last-minute notes left on the refrigerator door and second and third and fourth, fifth, sixth chances and just being there and Shut Ups with no real heat behind them and listening and listening and listening some more and sandwiches left untouched until there were sandwiches half-eaten and finally sandwiches scarfed down at the speed of light again and conversations with thumbs-up and thumbs-down and Don't Call Me Dude and comfortable silences and unexpected classical music afternoons and awfully bad puns and quality time spent alone together and Wanna watch the Discovery channel? and smiling eyes and crappy paper planes and precarious mountains of hot buttered toast and stolen borrowed too-big Henley's and thrifted old sci-fi novels and English to Latin dictionaries and games of PSYCH! from opposite sides of the same room and eyes being rolled into the backs of thick skulls and gallons and gallons of Dirty Chai Lattes and a far too-kind and outstandingly stubborn asshole's absolute forgiveness and furtively holding hands in the dark and weighted long looks that said I know, it's okay—I'm broken too and the silent question of Do you want me? and the tactile answer being Of course I do, you idiot. Of fucking course I do. 

It was a love that made Nogitsune love never, ever love. A real love that shook its head softly at such dreadful affection.

Werewolf trumps Demon, every damn time.

* 

Stiles might not be able to laugh—at least not properly, not yet. He's getting there, though. The quirk of his lips today is bigger than yesterday's meagre twitch. And who knows, tomorrow could even bring a grin. Stranger things, right? 

There's still pain. Stigma. Suffering. Still so, so much work to do. Only now it's manageable. A touch easier.

Derek's touch.

There are many more hard days and nights to come, Stiles knows that, but he is nothing if not single-minded and he's making steady progress. Every day, he's mending. Thanks to Derek and Stiles's determination, the fissure that he'd become is closing up and he is no longer infected with quite so much self-doubt. There's scar tissue, sure. How could there not be?

But Stiles is healing.

He's being replenished and renewed, little by little, bit by bit, and at long last he's finally finding his voice again. The right tone, a familiar pitch—and it's strongest in those times he utters a particular word. It's a name, actually, so often spoken as a mantra, or mouthed delicately like a prayer.

"Derek?" 

Of fucking course. 

"I'm here."

No more counting fingers. 

As it happens, Stiles Stilinski is finding his way back to his life and to himself with the help of Derek Hale, sometimes stumbling and yes, often having to crawl from the oppressive blackness, dragging himself through it using only his non-existent fingernails and stubborn will, barely making it out alive by the skin of his teeth.

Yet he knows, now, that he'll conquer that darkness. Because he's not alone anymore. There's help at hand, in his hand, where Stiles holds a candle that burns just as brightly as the Sun, the Moon and the Truth, and won't ever blow out—not while shielded by the shape of the 'wolf.

Fiat Lux. 

Let there be light.

[voirists]

This is the picture I have as my profile on one of my socials.

Just a lot of tired rambling beneath the cut. Descriptions of not so great parenting and insinuated queerphobia, I guess?

Today my mother that I see once a year (and i'm very happy for those circumstances. 7 days a year are torture enough) called me on my dad's phone since she knew I wouldn't pick up if I saw her number to inquire about it. Or rather, interrogate me about it.

Her last update was me insinuating I had a girlfriend (which I didn't. I did say it out of spite though, since I'm afab and my mom is enough of a fucking queerphobe, she insists on disrespecting me in all ways possible and still hasn't managed to call me by the right names or pronouns even once without mocking me off the ends of the earth) and that nearly gave her an aneurysm, so I quite enjoyed not correcting her about that. That was nearly two years ago.

I also have never, never, ever brought up Pedro or anything of the like to her because she will never see any of his things on her own (she's kind of extremist old-fashioned when it comes to electronics and media too, what a shocker) and her favorite pastime is destroying the things I enjoy and making me miserable.

For some reason, she saw this picture today (I've had it for months) and her first thought was that this is a picture I took of my (non-existent) boyfriend. So she called me to complain that

1. Why doesn't she know about him? Clearly, we are best friends and she loves me oh so much and god, I am such a terrible daughter who just wants to make her miserable, what did I ever do to you? She's incredibly upset that I would not share these things with her (gasp) and she wants to meet him. I literally live in a different country. There are over ten hours of a drive between us (and thank fuck for that, physical distance is the only thing stopping her from randomly showing up on my doorstep and ruining my week and instantly making my mental health skyrocket 50 feet beneath the ground).

2. I seem to have fun. He seems to have fun. God forbid I have joy in my life that she can't get a chance to ruin and make about herself.

3. I am terrible with photography. Why is this picture so blurry? Also, he looks older. Have I finally realized the whole queer thing is just to make her suffer and myself special so I don't feel so worthless? Having a man put me in my place is just what I need, because clearly I'm still in my rebellious stage, thinking I don't want to see her every weekend.

4. She's also calling to remind me that it's mother's day, I owe it to her to celebrate her special day and she's so upset I didn't get her a week-long trip to Italy for two (that I wouldn't even be invited to) as a present. It's not like I'm barely paying rent and am lucky to have 20 bucks left at the end of a month.

And every time, she's fucking surprised as if it was big news that I'm not really into spending time with her as her metaphorical and literal punching bag, door mat and therapist. I wonder why that is. For fucks sake.

I am currently very tempted to photoshop myself into pictures with Pedro and putting them as my profile on that social she's apparently now stalking, slowly getting more unhinged until she's so fucking offended by it, she won't try to call me any longer out of pure disgust.

Apparently "Oh god, yes please" is not the right answer to her threat of putting me in therapy and going no contact because I'm so fucking horrible and bullying her by being myself and not giving a shit about her opinion anymore. I would have gotten myself therapy fucking years ago if I could afford it, and this is a very weird attempt to control a full ass adult who lives in a whole other country.

[youryanderedaddy]

I like your posts, it's always cool. May i ask a yandere concept between an innocent, protected princess and a prince who obsessed with her from the first time they met, and force against her will. Thanks so much, love your writing :3

Thanks, anon, that means a lot <3 If you haven't noticed, I am oBseSSed with royalty stuff so I rlly enjoyed writing this. It's slightly different tho, but the idea is there.

Title: We all fall down

tw: female reader, non - consensual touching, obsessive behavior, coercion, implied forced marriage, war mention, abuse of power

It was cold when you woke up, terribly so. The room was spacious enough, there was bright sunlight coming from all four windows on each wall and you were sure that your sheets were warm and puffy even without looking down at them, yet it still felt freezing. You soon realized the place wasn’t simply cold, it was different too. It looked nothing like your own room back at the Southern Palace with its countless colourful pictures, books shattered all over the ground and a fireplace just across the queen – sized bed. Before you had a chance to sigh in annoyance, a quick glance to the other side reminded you of the bigger problem. Him.

“Good morning, princess.” The man greeted you cheerfully, his voice still deep and husky from the early hour. He was laying against the wooden doorframe, the sly smirk you had grown to hate over the years once again adorning his red lips. You stared at him for a moment, then rubbed your eyes to chase the fatigue away, fruitlessly so. You were too tired and sleep – deprived to play – pretend, which of course didn’t go unnoticed by the nobleman.

“You don’t look too well, princess.” He teased with a cheeky grin and walked towards the bed, stopping just before his legs hit the edge of the frame. You puffed softly, but remained quiet just so you wouldn’t have to answer him just yet. “And look at your state, darling…” The heir continued, clicking his tongue in a mocking “tsk, tsk,tsk”. “Your nightgown is a mess, I can see all of your beautiful curves.” The heir paused to lick his lips in a disgusting, suggestive way, and you had to repress the need to vomit all over the beautiful yellow sheets. “In our kingdom such appearance counts as an invitation, did you know that?” He added, smiling sharply, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, satisfied at the way his words made you embarrassed, flustered and jumpy so early in the morning.

“Your Highness, I would like to properly remind you that it was you who forced me to drink and dance all night.” You responded heatedly, all while fixing the straps of your silky dress to at least cover your cleavage. “You wouldn’t let go of my hand for a second. It’s your fault that I look like this.” You remarked, slightly offended by the man’s jokes, despite being used to his terrible humor after all those long years of shared parties and celebrations.

“If that is really so, my lady, please let me make it up to you.” The prince replied in the same smooth, carefree voice of his, the one he used before while talking to the maids and the peasant girls he wanted to bed. It made you sick to think of yourself as just another of his conquests, even though it couldn’t be further from the truth – you couldn’t stand the dark – haired male, his arrogance and absolute ignorance. “Join me for breakfast and I shall have our best cook serve your favorite meal.” The heir announced and winked at you before turning on his heels and finally leaving the room without hearing whether you agreed to his offer or not. You didn’t even have the chance to ask him how he knew what your favorite dish was or why he entered your room without permission, such a lack of manners was unsuited for a soon-to-be king. Perhaps you could use his inconsiderate behavior as an excuse to stay in bed until lunch but deep down you knew it was pointless. The egotistic little bastard knew you had no choice since you two had a lot to discuss.

---

The breakfast, if not anything else, was rich and delicious, each bite tasty and mouth – watering. The sweet aroma of cinnamon tea, vanilla and powdered sugar filled your senses with ease and a little bit of nostalgia for your childhood. The hardest part was yet to come, you wanted to deal with it fast and go home as soon as possible. As for Arthur, it was the first time you saw him serious with his brows arched and his thoughts all over the place. The uneasiness came back with full force.

“I think you know what we want, princess.” The male declared sternly after looking at the map for a while. His eyes were blue and clear, piercing in the way they were focused on you and you alone with no one else in the hall to act as a barrier between you and the monster. You understood why it had to be only you two, but these deals were always an open secret in both kingdoms, so there weren’t many reasons to keep the tradition going. “We want our territory back. We want you to surrender.” The heir hissed eerily under his breath, his pupils fixed on your frame, burning the skin underneath the thick layer of rough fabric.

You didn’t know how to respond to this – the dynasty’s requests had always been ridiculous and far – fetched, but never as impossible as this one. Yes, your land used to belong to the East centuries ago, but after several long, bloody, sacrificial wars where many of your men lost their lives, it was won fair and square. Now all your subjects lived there happily and freely, rightfully so.

“Your Majesty, please don’t dwell on the past. It will never come back.” You responded shortly after, laughing nervously at the end, hoping that would be enough for Arthur to drop the subject. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.

“Is that so, dearest? You have two weeks then.” The prince said coldly, narrowing his eyes like a fox. You opened your mouth to speak but quickly got cut off. “Prepare your troops, train the soldiers, announce the incoming war to your people.” The man chuckled darkly and threw the map all the way across the room. “You better get ready for a thunderstorm.” He added just to mess with you some more, just to see your face turn white from the shock and the panic.

“You can’t do that!” You shouted out suddenly and stood up from your chair, feeling cornered and suffocated. You hated the prince’s constant teasing and flirty remarks but you would have never guess him to be a cold-blooded conqueror. “This is too cruel even for you!” You screamed, the tears already blooming down your cheeks, hot and wet. Arthur spared you one condescending look before moving closer and trapping your body against the table, towering over you both physically and metaphorically, as if saying “Let’s see who has the stronger mind.”

“I will get what I want no matter the cost and there is little you can do to stop me, princess.” The heir pronounced slowly, tilting your chin up so you had no choice but to meet his hard gaze, full of intense yet unreadable emotion. There was nothing left of the sly cheerful boy standing against your doorframe, teasing you about meaningless little things, and you almost missed him now. “But what you can do is stop the needless violence and bloodshed, Y/N.” You despised the way your eyes lit up at his words, but, as always, your duty was above your comfort and happiness. “What can I do?” You uttered quietly, a part of you too scared to hear the answer, the other anticipating it.

“Marry me.” The prince stated in a deep patronizing voice. His eyes were dark and sharp, just like before, and there wasn’t a trace of his usual gleeful smile. He grabbed your wrists in a painful grip and pulled them up, holding them against his broad shoulders. “We can unite the kingdoms and live our Happily Ever After. No one has to die.” The man whispered surprisingly softly, his chest heaving with each passing breath. “I can make you happy, dearest.”

You gasped in shock as soon as the proposal left his lips. Every fiber in your body was frozen still, your whole being shaken up by the unexpected offer.

“Why do you want to marry me?” You asked frantically, squirming to loosen up his grasp on your hands just to feel it tighten up even more. This was going to bruise for sure. “Isn’t it obvious?” The noble exhaled slowly, staring at you, trying desperately to find the compassion and affection he hoped you had grown to hold for him over the years. His heart broke once he realized there wasn’t any, but it didn’t matter. Feelings could change in a matter of minutes.

“I’ve loved you since day one, my princess.” His attention drifted to your open mouth, especially your soft full lips. Oh, how much he dreamt of taking you and relishing in the whines and moans you would surely let out once he decided to claim you as his own. “All I’ve ever wanted is you.” The heir confessed, his face moving closer and closer to your own, forcing you to arch your back more and more until it hit the table. Before you knew it, he was pinning you to the hard wooden surface, caging you in, kissing you violently, furiously. You couldn’t breathe.

You couldn’t say no.

[cherrynojutsu]

Title: Like Gold

Summary: Sasuke grapples with love and intimacy regarding his developing relationship with Sakura after returning to the village from his journey of redemption. Kind of a character study on Sasuke handling an intimate relationship after dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt in solitude for so long. Blank period, canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric, lots of fluff and pining, slowly becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes ending author's notes

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Chapter 8/?: Grasping

Sasuke awakens abruptly, nausea clawing its way out of his throat like a soup of sepsis that’s been left percolating on a stovetop for too long, finally boiling over and soiling everything.

Stomach churning, he tries to aim it at the floor - he’s gotten better at doing that, over the years - but he doesn’t quite succeed. Hot bile, acidic with mostly digested dinner, coats the side of his bedding and part of his sleeve.

He coughs, gagging on acid and torment and hyperventilation. Then his stomach lurches again, and he turns to retch another round at the floor. Part of it floods his nostrils, stinging, and he rasps more.

That triggers another round, after which he waits a minute, sharp coughs punctuating the stillness, familiar at this point with what his stomach’s settling feels like. He shrugs off his shirt once it does, and makes his way to the kitchen, hacking on a foul aftertaste and vomit-inducing visuals flashing before his eyes.

A glance at the clock tells him it’s half past midnight as he gulps water, snorting in a manner very undignified to clear out his nasal passages and soothe the putrid taste overwhelming his insides. Then he chokes more of it down, feeling the beginnings of a pounding headache.

There are times when having a near photographic memory is not a good thing. He is very tired of recalling crackling electricity, of stumbling over body after body with lifeless eyes. Men, women, children, all with charcoal irises like his.

And teammates, with irises decidedly not like his, luster flattened to single dull colors.

And himself, at the end, deranged and dispiteous, standing where Itachi had stood a long time ago, looming over remains as if he himself is the final obstacle to defeat before it just ends, the culminating villain in some fucked up fable. All at once, he’s a child again, gagging on a demented form of truth, left to stew there for years and years and years, rotting him from the inside out.

He's noxious. He knows he is. He wishes he could spit himself out along with partially digested yakitori.

Sasuke takes another sip of water as his vision blurs, trying desperately to focus on the wood grain of the cabinets and not daring to close his eyes, lest another flash snake its way into his ocularity and undo the mild soothing the water is providing. He coughs again, throat raw. Then his mouth starts watering, a telltale sign that he’s going to throw up again, so he walks carefully to the bathroom, bottle in hand and trying not to jostle his stomach more than is necessary. Switching on the light and flipping up the seat of the toilet, he makes it just in time.

This round it’s mostly just water, and it burns a little less. The murky brown color he’s faced with seems very reflective of what he feels inside, ignominy and wretchedness and self-loathing, no substance at all, just a bitter aftertaste of that which was left behind on a wood floor a lifetime ago. There had been saliva then, too, seeping from his mouth to the floor in his cowardice.

He swallows once, a gargantuan effort. Then he takes another sip of water, studying the text on the label to try to distract himself, vile and unsettled as he is.

He doesn’t deserve Sakura, not after what he’s done. When his vision starts to blur again, he can’t read anymore anyway, so he looks at the mangled mess left of his left arm instead.

He deserves that, a maiming to fit the crime. He wishes he were a better man.

Slowly so as not to further disturb his stomach, he lies down sideways, pressing his cheek to the coolness of the floor. He feels disconnected from everything, at a loss for proper coherent thought, a mess of misery sprawled on a tile too clean for his own rancidness.

Nothing matters for a long time. He just stares into nothingness, a mild burning in his throat and eyes on a void of pure white that he doesn’t belong in, thinking about how it matches the skin tone of bodies that have been drained of all their color. It’s like he’s barely there, nothing seeming real except the hollow feeling in his chest and the buzzing sensation tempering the edge of his consciousness, like his brain has been stuffed with cotton but parts of it are burning away to nothing. Everything of substance singes away in a controlled burn, destined to always have gaping holes of meaning scorched away at random wherever the fire takes hold.

He doesn't know if there ever even was anything in the first place, deep down. Maybe corrosion is a terrible metaphor, because what's left, at the end of it? Layers and layers of useless shale and sandstone and limestone, packed atop Precambrian filth that’s been decaying there for what feels like centuries. Or magma, set to burn anything he touches.

Or electrocute it.

XXX

Suddenly it’s hours later, and a bird is chirping outside, twitters resounding through a metaphysical tunnel of distortion. Gradually it shifts into an audio that doesn’t sound quite as echoed, accentuated by light filtering in through the miniscule bathroom window.

This happens, sometimes, the nightmares and the absconding into abeyance where his brain seems to shut off, a resulting loss of significant chunks of time. Not sleeping, just staring at something dully for a while, stuck on the same cycle of repeating thought. The memorial stone is a trigger for it, he thinks. It’s why he dreaded going there, upon his return, although it's complicated. Occasionally, visiting it seems to bring feelings that are almost positive, where it feels like he’s reaching out to reclaim tiny shattered shards of what used to be his heart. Mostly, though, it’s just mourning. The reading of names may be what compels the worst of them; sometimes he thinks if he looks too long, he’ll learn things he doesn’t want to know.

Exhausted, he drags himself to his feet and begins wryly picking up the pieces, chest hurting from heaving. He throws his bedding and his shirt haphazardly into the washing machine, drowning them in soap before he grabs cleaner to do the same to his floors.

It smells disgusting, like it’s been petrifying in his stomach for years. He supposes that makes sense; a lot of things have.

Once the surface is clean, he gets in the shower, not caring that all of the hot water is being used for the laundry; the icy cold helps wake him up. He’s fatigued, lethargic, but he knows better than to try to go back to sleep at this point.

As he fights shivers in the towel afterwards, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looks awful. Pale and sickly, repulsive, purple sallow staining his skin the same color as the Rinnegan. His normal eye is bloodshot, vacant charcoal that pollutes everything it touches. He lets the black of his hair shift over his Rinnegan eye in a manner he's well accustomed to by now.

His remaining eye inches to the corner of the mirror, the front of the medicine cabinet.

He carefully procures a cough drop, and then makes sencha tea, hoping the caffeine will dull his headache. There’s a part of him that still feels like he’s hardly there, like he’s a ghost just going through the motions. When he takes a sip, it feels good on the throat, but the vomiting earlier has partially singed away the surface of his tongue; he hardly tastes it.

Sasuke then takes the photo from when they were Genin to the living room, grasping onto it for dear life in more ways than one. He alternates between studying it and gazing out the glass, to the cherry blossom tree across the street.

An hour passes, slowly, sitting there thinking about what he does and doesn’t deserve, a mess of thoughts swirling down the drain of his mind. Then another. The luminescence of the day begins trickling in more, green buds across the street gaining back their pigment.

He’s not sure if he should even go to Sakura’s still, because he feels like he’s going to make even worse company today than he usually does, as tired as he is. But he’s weak, and he selfishly wants her; there’s an equanimity only she can provide, the swingback of a pendulum briefly through a sense of normalcy, and he needs the chance to look into jade eyes, to see the light hit them, to ascertain that the chatoyancy has not been dulled. And she’s not dead, despite his inner psyche screaming at him that she would be, had Naruto or Kakashi arrived just a second later. He needs to thank them for that, when he gets the chance, though the timing has never felt right to bring it up.

And he loves her. He's not sure if his love is worth anything, contemptible as he is, but it’s the main reason he can make sense out of the absolute mess that is his inner thought process this morning. So he goes.

XXX

It helps. He’s enormously exhausted, and the light of day hurts his eyes, even once he’s inside and is only absorbing its rays from the diamond window, but it helps.

“Sasuke-kun,” she greets in a voice like honey as she opens her door to him, dimple on open display. She really is so lovely, multi-faceted jade sparking with life that nearly instantly calms some of his anxiety.

He is briefly concerned about what he looks like to her, today. He checked prior to coming over here, brushing his teeth thrice in the hopes that his breath wouldn’t be bad, that he could drench his innards in enough clarifying mint to be even remotely deserving of a small amount of her affection. His eye was a little less bloodshot at that point, but overall he still looked like hell, sickly and pallid.

“Sakura,” he murmurs in response, voice hoarse from being put through a ringer of his own making.

There is a prolonged moment in which she examines him, wearing an analytical expression that reminds him of clinician Sakura. Then the spell is broken, as if she’s forcibly turned that part of herself off, and she’s stepping aside and telling him softly, “Come in! I made onigirazu.”

He steps inside her entryway, setting his book on the console table momentarily beside where Hazel Wood lies, ready to be returned. He then shifts out of her way so he can remove his shoes. He’s not particularly hungry, but he’s glad it’s something fairly simple and heavy on the rice; he should be able to eat it fine.

He follows her inside, appreciating the subdued luminosity of her lamps along the way. The blankets are already laid out on the couch, a promise of simple warmth and companionship that he is very much looking forward to.

As his eye adjusts and he enters the kitchen, ready to grab a plate, his gaze locks on remnants of sliced tomatoes atop a cutting board he recognizes, though it’s familiar to him from his own apartment, not hers.

It’s exactly the same design as the one Naruto gifted him.

A fire roars to life in his ribcage as he freezes for a split second, an exhausted icy hot appreciation. It’s an implication that means the world to him, and particularly well timed.

She wants him around, to help prepare future meals.

“I put some sliced tomatoes in yours. I hope it’s okay,” Sakura says as she hands him a plate, not addressing the elephant in the room at all, as if she just needed a new cutting board and happened to pick up that one, though he knows that cannot possibly be the case; he'd seen at least two in her cupboard, before. “Would you like tea, or maybe some water?”

He nods stiffly, vision a bit blurry, then comprehends the second question.

“Water is fine,” he manages thickly.

They sit in front of her window, supple sunshine streaming in. It’s not too bright here, angled just right.

“...How was your morning?” He asks after taking a sip of water, voice still gravelly. He is beyond content to be sitting here, just looking at her, so much better than a picture.

“Good. Ino and I walk or jog in the early morning on Sundays, if it's nice. Hinata comes sometimes; she did today.” She chews a bite of her rice sandwich.

Sasuke blinks; she hasn’t mentioned that yet. Another chunk of her schedule falls into place. “...Where?”

A half smile blooms on her lips, dimple pushed into being. “Sometimes we run laps around the village, but usually there's no real destination; we just walk and visit.” She takes a sip of her own water. “It’s nice when Hinata comes; it tones Ino down a notch.”

He would snort, if he was in a different sort of mood.

“We went to the southeast part of town today,” she continues. “Ino wanted to see a new building they put up. Her mom has a big order of flowers to deliver there later this week.”

Flowers. In the chaos of the night he’s had, lily bulbs fell to the wayside of his mind.

Sasuke carefully takes the first bite of his own food. It’s good, as he expected; a mixture of salmon, tomato, and salted rice, simple enough to hopefully help settle his stomach. He can kind of taste it.

He chews slowly, reverently, alternating between eating and taking small sips of water as she chatters animatedly. “The flower shop's orders are really taking off now. Ino’s usually busiest once May comes. Hopefully things stay peaceful, so she can stay in the village for the most part; her mom can always use the extra help.”

They wash and dry the dishes together, afterwards, a routine that is beginning to feel familiar. She still doesn’t say anything about the cutting board, but Sasuke greatly appreciates the way it feels in his hand when she gives it to him, weighty and with a designated home under her roof. It slides into place easily in the cupboard with the two others.

They read for a while on her couch again, wrapped in their respective blankets; Sakura keeps her apartment fairly cool. It’s cozy in a way that makes his head feel funny, like he could fall asleep in minutes if he really tried, lulled by the soothing scent of berry and cleanliness. He wonders if it would be restful, if he did. Usually once enough time ellipses, well into the next day, his brain cuts him some slack, though it could be that he's just too exhausted from being up most of the night for the neurons to fire up again to such a frenzy.

Sasuke finishes the last chapter of his book sluggishly and contemplates the ending, a lengthy description of the fisherman gripping the solid railings of the dock with both hands as he comes ashore for the first time in months.

When he flicks his gaze to Sakura tiredly, she’s a third of the way through a new book, titled Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections. It appears to be a memoir; he assumes it must be one she’s purchased, as it doesn’t have the library label. Perhaps it’s new, picked up this morning while she was out, or it could be one from her bookshelves. He would like to peruse the titles she has, sometime. He drowsily wonders which war it’s about.

He takes a careful breath and just revels in it, being here with her, mere feet away with his eyes closed but able to sense her presence, worn out with thoughts that have edges as frayed as he is. He would like to stay for dinner, too. He thinks it’s perhaps becoming implied that they’ll eat together if she doesn’t have other plans, but he doesn’t want to be rude or overstay his welcome.

Sasuke hopes he can stay awake. Maybe he shouldn’t have said no to tea earlier; the additional caffeine might have helped. He could offer to make them both some, he thinks fuzzily, but then he starts wondering if that would be odd or overstepping. It’s her tea, and her kitchen, and her cups.

Then he sleepily remembers the cutting board.

“You can take a nap, you know,” Sakura murmurs kindly, soft words echoing a little in the stillness of her space. “If you’re tired. I don’t mind.”

He blinks his eyes open, vision adjusting as he realizes he nearly dozed off.

She’s smiling from the other end of the couch. “I can make dinner later, and wake you up when it’s ready. You should rest until then.” She pauses, then adds, “I can grab you a better pillow from my room, if you want.”

His brain catches up to his auditory processing, and then his ears warm.

Oh.

The offer is tempting, though he doesn’t want to be rude. If it were any other day, he would force himself to stay awake, to spend more time with her. But it’s not any other day, and he’s drained, enervated in a way that makes him want to give in. He should ask, to make sure it’s okay, but he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t offer if it wasn’t.

“...Here?”

A flush inks its way onto her cheeks as her expression turns thoughtful. “Yes. Or... you can use my bed, if you want.”

Sasuke forces his gaze away from hers, because his face feels extremely warm all of the sudden. “...I meant… here, at your apartment.”

“Oh.” Sakura laughs in a way that sounds nervous; he hears her fiddling with the book in her lap. “I, um… just meant whatever’s most comfortable.”

When he hesitantly looks back to her, she’s red, too.

“...What will you do?”

She gestures with her hand in a waving motion to indicate it's fine. “I can read, or do some laundry or work stuff. It’s no trouble. Really, Sasuke-kun.” Her blush deepens. "...I would like you to stay… And to have dinner later. If you’re free."

He swallows before slowly nodding his acquiesce, and then Sakura is up and heading to her bedroom in a blink of mismatched eyes. Muffled footsteps pad back moments later, a pillow with a lavender pillowcase clutched in her hands.

Her bedding must be a variant of violet, then, a pastel contrast to the black of his own. He is curious about the color of her bedroom walls all over again, but then she’s handing him the pillow, and he’s too tired to continue thinking.

“...Thank you.”

The smile she wears is so soft, treasured. “You’re welcome.”

He’s out within a few minutes of laying his head on the pillow, drowsing eyes barely catching the lamps flickering off one by one as she meanders around her space.

The pillow smells like her, too, cogent in its beckoning. He sleeps like a rock.

XXX

Sakura nudges him awake hours later, leaning forward to rest her upper body against the back of the couch. The scent of miso and roasted tomatoes drifts into his nostrils while lively jade peers down at him. The light coming from her window has dimmed quite a bit. It must be well into the evening; she let him sleep for a while.

“Dinner’s ready,” she murmurs softly, wearing an expression that is incredibly fond.

He stretches slightly as he rises from her sofa, working out a crick in his shoulder and thinking that he feels much more rested. Sasuke is about to head to her kitchen to get his own bowl, until Sakura turns towards the table, and he sees that she's already set out food for both of them, green market light switched on overhead.

There's onigiri, too, and a steaming cup of sencha placed on his side that he's sure is decaffeinated.

His side.

The realization, albeit a good one, disarms him.

He has a side of her table. And a side of her couch.

Sakura recites a story Hinata told her this morning as they eat, about how Naruto initially buried every single flower bulb in their garden beds six inches deep instead of reading the directions, so they had to dig everything up and salvage the instructions on the package from the trash to replant.

“He mixed them all together, too, instead of planting them in sections like a normal person.” She laughs, and his lips turn upwards in shared amusement. “She said she hopes they didn’t miss one. Iris and echinacea can sometimes multiply out of control. She was happy she didn’t add bee balm to the list, too, or they’d really be in trouble; those can grow anywhere, even in gravel.”

The soup and tea feel good on his throat, and the rice is filling in a way that would be difficult to throw up, absorbent of moisture and chunking together to expand in his stomach until he is full, in more ways than one.

He can taste again, the richness of tomato and miso and calming ubiquitous green on his tongue and in his heart, thoughts of flowers and their idiot teammate helping to cast aside his earlier melancholy.

Sasuke loves her so much in that moment that it physically aches, her voice a balm that puts the rawest parts of him at ease.

"Thank you," he says quietly at the conclusion of the meal, grateful in ways he's not sure he'll ever be able to put into words.

Her response is simple, gentle, pure. “You’re welcome.”

As they wash and dry the dishes together in the dim light of her kitchen, Sakura tells him softly, “I put leftovers in containers for you in the fridge. Please take them with you tonight.”

He nods as his eyes sting with appreciation. When he turns to put away the teacups, he blinks to clear them as she wipes down the sink one last time for the evening.

As she sorts through her movie selection afterwards - it’s her turn to pick - he asks, “How is the poison antidote coming?”

Sakura glances at him curiously for a second from where she’s perched on the wood floor, rifling through the lower cabinet. “I think we might have it solved. Blarina toxin from a southern short-tailed shrew, and then possibly lionfish toxin, laced with algal bloom cyanobacteria. The lionfish toxin is part of the trouble; it’s such a trace amount that it was hard to identify, not enough to cause swelling on the exterior body like you’d see if you were stung by one in person. We’re still running tests, but the neutralization seems to be working on the mice so far.” She blanches a little. “Or, rather, the mice we have left. It’s diminished our stocks; shrew venom is particularly deadly to them.”

Sasuke knew it was likely to kill several of them, but not quite to that extent. He’s interested in her work, so he asks, “How many?”

She turns back to sift through her cabinet as she answers, pulling out another movie to examine. “A gland-full of venom is potent enough to kill up to two hundred of them. It’s why it took us longer than usual; we had to give them the absolute tiniest dose in order to not kill them within hours. I guess it makes sense; they’re one of the things they eat in the wild. The dose in the poison sample was high, though, venom from multiple shrews. A single bite usually isn’t enough to do any harm to humans, but when it’s quadrupled in dosage and laced with other things, it’s more severe.”

“...What’s the treatment?”

Sakura rattles off the extremely complex answer as if it’s nothing. “An antihistamine, steroid, botulinum toxin, and an antibiotic. We’re also giving them blood transfusions and flushing out the blood as it comes to the exterior machine, to get rid of the cyanobacteria. Kind of like conventional water treatment… just more complicated. More steps, filtration, and obviously we can’t use chlorine, so it takes longer.”

Sasuke blinks somewhat in awe. She really is so intelligent.

“...That sounds lengthy.”

She shrugs, movie still in hand. “It is. It’s why we’re not one hundred percent sure if we’ve solved it yet; the lionfish venom is still the weak link, and will be until we can see that the other portions of the treatment have worked to isolate it.”

“...I’d like to learn the process.”

A smile plays at her lips and a flush inks its way onto her cheeks. He supposes it was a roundabout sort of compliment; he could have worded it better, but she seems to have understood him anyway. She does about a lot of things, he thinks.

“I can bring home a kit, sometime, and teach you the basics. It could be useful.”

He nods; he would like that.

There is a long pause as Sakura bites her lip before further examining the movie case in her hand.

Then, she asks, a tentative expression on her face and peeking at him to gauge his reaction, “Want to watch a bad one?”

Sasuke wonders if she knows he would watch any movie with her, if it means he gets to be in her company like this, saved from a room with white tiles or dark wood.

“...Sure.”

She wasn't exaggerating; it is truly terrible, riddled with plot holes so nonsensical that it’s almost funny. The acting is bad, too, though perhaps that’s more to blame on the script rather than the actors.

“Even the camera work is awful,” Sakura says at one point, gesturing towards the left side of the screen. “If you look in the background here, there’s an extra that just… walks into the wall.”

He watches, and sure enough, behind the main characters, a girl walks directly into a corner and just stands there.

He snorts, genuinely enthused in a manner he would not have thought possible hours ago. Sakura laughs at the other end of the couch. It’s a sound he could listen to forever, sweet and chiseled into his heart.

They play an extensive round of go afterwards, venturing well into the night with the plinking of small pieces into place. It’s nearly eleven when she finally walks him to her doorway, two containers of tomato miso soup and onigiri in her hands. As he pulls on his shoes, Sakura sets them by his library book on the console table.

“Would you want to read tomorrow afternoon?” She asks as he rises to his full height.

He nods. “...I’ll meet you here.”

Her dimple makes a reappearance. “One fifteen?”

He inclines his head again in agreement, then decides to ask. It’s becoming easier, now that she has said yes so many times.

“Dinner, after?”

Her smile widens. “Of course. I was thinking gyudon. Light on the sugar. You could…” She bites her lip and shifts a bit. “...You could help me cook, if you’d like.”

Something turns over in his belly. “...Okay.”

She glows at him. He swallows once before reaching out to skim her freckle, enjoying the feel of her cheek against the pad of his thumb.

And then her fingers against his fingers, holding him there against her cheek, soft and steady.

Then he leans down, and his lips are on hers, a breath exhaled in unison as her entryway falls away. Her free hand twists around his neck, delicately brushing the fabric and a fraction of his skin in a way that nearly makes him shiver. It’s a long moment of quietus, a finishing stroke to a day that could have gone very differently.

It is also the longest kiss they’ve shared yet, and it is over far too soon.

He’s pulling away to look at her, letting his hand drop away, when she wraps her arms tenderly around him.

He can hardly breathe, taken off guard by the absolute sensation of comfort he’s enveloped in.

She doesn’t say a thing; just hugs him tight, her fingertips spreading across his back and face pressed to his sternum. Berry invades his olfactory senses.

Slowly he lifts his arm to carefully return the hug, swallowing a tender sort of truth, a kind that goes down easy, the evidence and action of her affection. He can feel Sakura’s heartbeat against his chest, a tempo teeming with life.

They stand there together in her entryway for a long time.

XXX

He sleeps wrapped in a clean comforter, and though it’s not for very long, it is dreamless.

He’s eating leftover onigiri when he receives a mission summons, barely past seven in the morning. He finishes his meal and pops a cough drop in his mouth before departing for the Hokage’s office.

It’s a nice day, he thinks as he walks, coming to a decision as he admires vernal greenery lining the streets. The sun is just lifting over the horizon, painting everything pale amber.

“Sasuke,” Kakashi greets as he walks in; he’s the first one there again, apparently. “Good morning.”

“Kakashi.”

Their old sensei smiles at him in the strange all-seeing manner he has. Sasuke notes the presence of a new picture frame present on his desk, replacing the one he’s given him.

He is extremely grateful to have that picture to grip onto in his darker moments. Sasuke considers thanking him then, for Iron, but then Naruto is barreling in noisily.

“Whaizzit?” He yawns raucously, as if he just woke up, sleep still clinging to the corners of his eyes. They are multi-faceted, too, even in their barely aware state, and Sasuke inwardly breathes a sigh of relief, normalcy shifting fully back into place as the door clicks behind his teammate.

Then Naruto registers that Sasuke is present. “Eh? Teme?!” Cerulean scans the room as if he’s searching for something, then he frowns, directing a lengthy glare Kakashi’s way.

“If you've called me here at seven in the fucking morning for anything that isn’t a Team Seven reunion mission, I’m going to lose it.”

Ah. He was looking for Sakura.

“Afraid not,” Kakashi answers cryptically from his desk, and Naruto’s sleepy glare tightens. Then the Hokage smiles, as if something is incredibly amusing. "Guard duty. Kotetsu and Izumo deserve a break. Things are slow this week, and we have the extra numbers.”

The copy ninja skillfully dodges Naruto’s sandal as it flies towards him. “You’ve got to be kidding. You woke me up for this? You could have told me later in the day or something!!”

“Future Hokages don’t receive special treatment, and it’s professional to give more than twenty-four hours notice if possible.”

Naruto grumbles. "All week?"

Kakashi grins. "Tuesday through Friday."

Inwardly, Sasuke twitches.

"I should specify; nine to six, Tuesday through Friday."

Outwardly, Sasuke twitches.

It's not exactly her work schedule for all four days, but it lines up closely enough that it's fairly obvious what Kakashi’s doing.

Naruto barely reacts; just snorts in a way that is caustic, as if he finds the times unsurprising. "Cool. Can I go back to sleep until it’s time to kick teme’s ass now? Hinata-chan and I were cozy."

Sasuke rolls his eyes; when they spar in the mornings, it’s typically between eight and nine. He’ll have around an hour's extra sleep at best, though he supposes he’s not in any position to judge at this point, given his nap on Sakura’s couch yesterday.

Kakashi’s smile widens, mask wrinkling. "Sure. Dismissed."

They both watch on in faint amusement as Naruto stumbles sleepily out of his office, neglecting to collect his missing shoe.

“...Some things never change,” the Hokage murmurs, sighing.

“...No, they don’t.”

“Well, anyways, before you go…” Kakashi turns to him, tapping the pen at his desk absentmindedly. “How are things?”

Sasuke blinks, recalling leftovers and a new cutting board and the feeling of Sakura’s arms around him.

And kissing. Mostly kissing. Probably too much, if his neck’s sudden warmth is anything to go by.

“Good.”

A lone visible eye crinkles at the corners. “Great. Don’t hesitate to let any of us know if you need anything.”

He lets the words hang in the air for an extended few seconds before nodding slowly.

"I was thinking…” Kakashi continues, gaze flicking down to the photograph on his desk. “...Perhaps we could make Team Seven dinners a monthly thing. It would be good, don’t you think?"

“...Yeah.”

A dark eye locks on him again. "Sai could come, too."

Ah.

"...Sure." He really should make an effort to get to know him better. His replacement seems nice enough, peculiar as he is.

"Wonderful. Let's plan on the first Saturday of every month at six, shall we? If we're all in the village, that is. I’ll let him know when I call him in later this morning."

“Okay.”

A long moment passes, then Kakashi is procuring the shoe from the area behind his desk. Sasuke notes that he holds it as far away from him as his arm will allow.

“...I don’t suppose you’d return this, when you see him later?”

Sasuke says nothing.

“...Though I suppose I could assign it as a mission to some Genin.” Then he's sighing, setting it on the farthest edge of Naruto’s work area. “Too bad I just gave an assignment to my last two.”

Shooting him a withering look, Sasuke departs the Hokage’s Office. He gets the distinct feeling as he goes that Kakashi is incredibly pleased with himself, solidified by what he calls after him.

“Tell Sakura I say hi.”

Guard duty is easy in theory, but spending thirty six hours with the dobe may be… a challenge. He supposes if the reward is being able to see Sakura after she works most of those days, he'll take it. He's sure Kakashi won't keep him in the village forever; eventually duty will call him away for extended periods of time.

It solidifies his decision; he should take the opportunity of being here to plant something.

He stops by the market vendor on the northern end to buy two packages of lily bulbs on his way home. The market is fairly slow, so there are few other people around.

The packages feel good in his hand, lighter than he expected.

Sasuke works through a section of one of his other books before Naruto shows up on his doorstep, still appearing for all intents and purposes half asleep. Their spar ends in another draw; luckily there are no cracked bones this time.

He eats more leftovers for lunch after, appreciating the taste.

XXX

Sasuke feels at home in Sakura’s kitchen, cutting scallions easily while she broils beef and prepares the egg mixture for gyudon just a few steps away. The meal comes together quickly between the two of them, savory with a sauce that is heavier on the mirin and sake than the sugar.

Food they prepare together somehow tastes even better. It’s late when they finally sit down to eat dinner, gazing out through glass at the streets below as they take their first bites.

The sauce is perfect; not too sweet.

“...I have guard duty this week,” he mentions after a while.

“With who?” She asks, though her lips twitch upwards.

He rolls his eyes. “...Guess.”

She bites her lip, and he tears his gaze away from her mouth and up to her eyes. The green is filled with mirth, twinkling with illuminated flecks.

“Good luck,” she says sincerely. “What times?”

He glances away, ears warming and wondering if Kakashi has mentioned anything to her about them being… together.

“Tomorrow through Friday, nine to six.”

There is a long pause. When he peeks back at her, she’s blushing.

“...Kakashi-sensei is nosy.” Sakura takes another bite of her food, looking shy for some reason, and suddenly Sasuke is certain that their sensei has said something to her, perhaps on multiple occasions. He wonders what.

“...He is.” He thinks, then adds as an afterthought, “...He says hi.”

They do the dishes together and play two rounds of chess. Sakura wins once, and the second round is another stalemate, though he suspects he was close to beating her.

It’s close to nine by the time they’re putting the board away. As he works on packing up the last of the pieces to store in their allocated compartment, he notices she’s gazing out the window, scanning the sky as if distracted.

The way she’s angled puts the freckle on her cheek in plain view, pale hair loosely tucked behind her ear.

Then she turns to him, pink flooding her complexion, and Sasuke realizes he’s been staring, the remaining few pieces still clutched in his hand, frozen in midair in his distraction. He hastily finishes putting them away as his own face warms. Sakura rises from the table to put the box away, footsteps echoing softly through her living space.

He looks outside quizzically for a moment, embarrassedly trying to will the color away from his face and wondering what she was looking at. It’s a clear evening, calm without a cloud in sight.

"I was wondering if…"

His vision snaps to her expectantly across the room, and her cheeks flush darker; he can see it even though it’s dimly lit, shifting from one foot to the other. She seems nervous.

"If you would maybe want to… go stargazing for a bit tonight?"

His pulse quickens, pushing at the seams of chambers and ventricles in a way that makes it feel like the vines have twisted their way in, taking hold of whatever they can clutch.

She apparently does still like that sort of thing.

And she wants to go with him.

He nods immediately, struck speechless with elation before he manages to form the question, "...Where?"

Her expression is one of relief. "I was thinking just outside the village. There’s…” She looks away, smiles. “There’s a place Ino and I go to sometimes; we went today for a bit, after training. There are wild lilacs blooming right now.” She shifts her gaze to him again. “It's supposed to be a little cooler, but the sky’s clear. We could bring tea in a thermos; I have two."

Heat creeps up his neck as he agrees, heart stammering in his chest a little, because he’s started thinking about it now, and stargazing together is very clearly romantic in nature, amongst flowers even more so.

Sakura brews tea for the both of them as he distracts himself by slicing a lemon for hers. When he glances at her surreptitiously, she’s still blushing, and jade eyes snap away as if this time she’s the one that’s been caught staring. That makes his heart pound, to the extent that he’s glad she’s a few feet away, because it’s so loud that she might hear it.

They meander to the edge of the village as evenfall settles, into the forested area just beyond the gates. As Sasuke trails behind her, divagating through subtly flattened pathways between the trees, his thoughts wander to bygone seasons.

There once was a pond, three quarters of a mile outside of the village, beyond where the Uchiha District used to be. It wasn’t officially a part of their grounds, but it was remote enough that it wasn’t easily happened upon by anyone other than their family, off the beaten path and through thicket and thistle as it was.

Itachi used to take him fishing there.

He thinks they’d gone four or five times in all, but he remembers it well, because he had been terrible at fishing, not a shred of patience. His brother caught most of them, but he would sometimes set the hook before passing off the reel to Sasuke to help him learn. It was quiet, peaceful in the way that only the wilderness is, away from the pressures of expectations. Wildflowers poked up everywhere in the later summer months, situated on a hill towards the far side of the pond. They picked some together for their mother, once; Sasuke clutched them in his hands while they made the trek back to the village, Itachi carrying their bucket of perch and bass.

It was nice in the autumn, too, warm tones flooding everything. One could sit in the swaying overgrowth flush with falling leaves for hours taking it all in and still not see it all, an overwhelmingly pure sense of peace, made heartier by the taste of freshly grilled fish later in the evening.

The walk had seemed like it took forever back then, on short legs looking upward. He’s never returned to that place, not once, since he was eight. It would hurt too much, for different reasons now than when he was twelve.

He remembers passing wild lilacs then, too, on the way there and back. He supposes they probably thrive in the chaparral throughout Fire Country, if one cares to traipse through the foliage to look for them. He stumbled upon many on his journey, just passing through on roads less traveled.

The small clearing Sakura leads them to reminds him of the pond a little, wild and flush with fading hues, framed by fragrant lilacs in bloom as she said, but there are no memories tied to it yet, so it’s better. Huge bushes of them grow unaided here, wispy purple redolence scattered by the wind into the earth's cracks, ushered in by whispers through the trees.

The wilds are not so far from Konoha, really. Like the cherry blossom tree on the hill, it's a good reminder that some things can grow easily even on rougher terrain.

Sasuke sits rather close to her, so they can drink their tea together. The sun slips just below the horizon, a cloudless sky awash in a shifting gradient. He catches jade as he takes a drink, appreciating the taste, a small bit of warmth on a cool night.

The way she’s looking at him makes his heart rate accelerate again, a serene expression that implies there is nothing she would rather be doing right now than be here.

With him.

Eventually stars begin inking into existence overhead one by one, the last bit of sun lingering just on the horizon, a muted blur of violet bleeding into black. Things are slightly clearer here, beyond the boundaries of the village, no glass or light pollution to obscure the retinas.

Once she finishes her tea, Sakura lies down the same way she does on the hill, so he does, too, trying to calm his heart rate, because he is very close to her, just within reach. The forest breathes around them, coating everything in a lilac perfume.

He used to think about her, when he looked to the stars, feeling worlds away and wondering if she thought of him that day. Being next to her is better, revered, the calm din of an evening he has craved for a long time.

When he turns to steal a look, her eyes are already on him, and there is something about that moment, as the last light fades, being here with her, that makes his chest go aflame.

And then Sakura turns slightly, reaching out towards him with her right hand, and he blinks.

She sweeps his hair away from his Rinnegan eye, a thumb gently skimming his cheek as he has hers, before her hand falls away. Though they are cloaked in the gloaming of dusk’s darkness, enough he hopes to hide the warmth that has crept into his face, there is adequate light left to see her expression, so tender, jade eyes desaturated to dark sage.

He feels seen in a way that he hasn’t felt before, recalling soft words in an exam room.

Not me.

The sky is fully lit in short order, beautiful and dark with only a tiny sliver of the moon visible. It is truly lovely, Ursa Major, Leo, and Hydra scattered before them like a painting a million years old, ageless messengers traveling from who knows where, as he did. It took many steps to get here to her, scattered revolutions passing wide arcs around the sun, yearning for a day to close the gap, to feel like he was close to ready.

It was worth every single one.

A question is on the tip of his tongue, so he decides to ask it, to give in to the impulse.

“...Any poems?” He wants to learn the words she likes, what kinds of meaning she applies to things, intelligent as she is. Sasuke imagines the inner workings of Sakura’s mind to be quite complex, teeming with all of the things she’s read, research and fiction and nonfiction. He would like to know her favorite pieces of poetry, what she holds dear in her own heart.

She shifts slightly; he thinks she must be looking at him for a split second.

There is a lengthy silence punctuated by crickets before she finally answers, “A short one,” voice hushed like the breeze around them; if he wasn’t so close to her, he wouldn’t be able to hear.

He shifts his gaze to her on his right, barely able to make out her silhouette in the dark.

“Take notice of what light does - to everything.”

The words sink into him like rain on freshly tilled soil, triggering a bricolage of recollections. Instantly he is reminded of light through the window of his bathroom, stirring him from a pit of self doubt and guilt. Then light through the windows of Sakura’s apartment, cooking and doing the dishes together in her kitchen. A nap, comfortable on her couch as day fades into dusk, lamps switched off for a period of much needed rest. Flowers, grown by a doorstep with the sun’s rays seeping in through diamond patterning. The shadow of a jasmine plant, inked onto her cheekbone, and neon lights reflectant atop pale pink hair.

The intricate stitching of an uchiwa fan, thread catching iridescence as she holds it daintily in her hands as if it is something important, to be cherished.

Her eyes when she is happy, hints of gold flecks, catching like fractals of color atop shifting seafoam.

The way white nerine lilies looked drenched in sunlight, on days that are decidedly not summer monsoons.

Stars are a form of light, too, and despite being far away, they are refulgent in their luminosity, a beauty that cuts through murk and offers much for contemplation; the gaps of darkness between them are what allows people to make meaning out of them, constellations strewn together.

He is home, surrounded by spring. It is something to behold.

“...Did you write letters to Naruto?” Sakura asks after a lengthy period of reflection, so softly that her voice is almost a whisper.

The concept is so ridiculous to him that he would snort, if not for the moment they are sharing right now and the way she asked it, no hint of a joke in her tone.

So he answers seriously, just as quietly. “No.”

There is a long pause.

“...And Kakashi-sensei?”

Ah. He understands what she’s really asking. “...Other than missions, no.”

It’s hard to tell, but he thinks he sees her fingers grip in the grass next to her, gently as if in reflex.

Sasuke tries very hard to swallow his doubts.

When they were on missions as Genin, she used to lay sprawled out like this, hands spread next to her. So did Naruto. It bothered him then, because he liked his folded together on his stomach and he was very particular about personal space, which they both invaded.

Sasuke doesn’t have another hand to fold his with anymore, though, and he’s less concerned about personal space with her than he used to be. The darkness helps bolster his confidence, too, nyctophile that he is; she won’t see the heat that’s spreading to his face here, lit merely by distant flickering stars.

Take notice of what light does - to everything.

The luminaries above them offer only a little of it, yet it's a transfixing sight, something of the epochal and the divine present that he has been drawn to for years.

So he reaches out to skim her hand with his, a tentative sort of constellation in itself, recorded in points of contact and palm prints on the skin rather than etched in alembic light in the sky.

There are soft fingertips, a knuckle gently gliding by. Then she’s interlacing her fingers with his, and suddenly it’s not tentative at all. It’s leal, steady, her small hand in his as if it has always belonged there, the scent of flourishing blooms wafting around them and painting everything in his head lilac starlight.

Her thumb brushes his skin once, twice, thrice, achingly gentle.

He should have reached out sooner, but he supposes they’re young, still. There is a lot of time ahead of them. The stars will align eventually, slow in their revolutions around common centers of mass as he is in letting people in. She accepted his apology for being late already, fine fingertips clutching an uchiwa fan with a touch just as gentle as now.

If he can only hold her hand in the dark, maybe that’s enough for now, a single star he can reach. He hopes he'll reach the others eventually.

Hours pass with her hand in his, and he is a small bit closer in revolution by the time he walks her home.

Lilac and raspberry and starlight coalesce against his lips when they collide with hers, an allegorical perfume he could easily get drunk on. He skims the freckle again, tenderly osculant, and realizes that is the start of a constellation, too, a novitious star burning brighter every time he reaches out. Kissing makes three.

Her hands around his neck make four. This time he does shiver, but he doesn’t pull away.

Sakura’s lips are so soft.

XXX

He plants the lily bulbs shortly after they say good night, under the cover of the caliginous dark that shepherds in the dew of the morning, tiny drops of moisture beginning to collect on nearby blades of grass. The stars are still out, bright enough to be beautiful but dim enough so that he can’t read the names.

Sakura would help him if he asked, he knows, but he doesn’t think he’s quite ready for that yet. He settles for trying to make his touch as gentle yet sure as hers, an elegy of calloused fingers digging carefully through the dirt, grasping and placing lily bulbs one by one. There are four bulbs in total, so he plants two on each side, nine inches apart, allowing them to poke up through the soil slightly and frame the stone; he reread the instructions when he stopped by his apartment earlier. It’s a different brand of corrosion, manually digging up layers of dirt rather than hoping they slough off, but it’s progress, and it doesn't require digging too deep.

There has to be something beneath the layers of sediment, he thinks, to feel the way he does about her. He hopes that what he feels is enough, that his slow revolutions will be worthwhile for her, in the end.

I’m sure it will be lovely, when everything finally comes together.

Being in Konoha is not easy, after everything, but being with Sakura is.

When he’s lying in his own bed a short time later, he recalls the love in her fingertips against his. It lulls him to sleep.

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

Float Like A Butterfly... Ch.6 ...Sting Like A Bee

Summary: An unexpected ally appears before Marinette. The only problem is, he's stumbled onto something he shouldn't have. And she needs it back.

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

Marinette was having a terrible day.

First she shows up late with the principal accessory of the Gabriel line's Fashion Week showing. Fashion Week! Marinette was looking forward to it all month! 

Next Audrey Bourgeois, Style Queen herself, treats the hat Marinette worked so hard on like gum on the bottom of her shoe. Sure Adrien had been super encouraging but he hadn't seen the look of utter contempt on Audrey Bourgeois face. No one could look that disgusted all the time!

Speaking of Adrien, he didn't make getting over him any easier by being so kind.

And if that wasn't enough Marinette's brain insisted on using Chat Noir's Miraculous to fight the akumatized villain. Again! She didn't want to think about Chat Noir right now because... Because... Marinette blinked rapidly. Deep breath... Because thinking about Chat Noir was painful.

But that wasn't even the worst part.

"Don't worry, Tikki. We'll get the box right after the show," Marinette stage whispered so as to not alert her parents. Who walked not even a meter away.

Tikki let out a concerned whine. Oh, this was a bad idea. She could feel it. Marinette was right that they couldn't get away from her parents beforehand. But that only made Tikki even more anxious to get searching. And Marinette really didn't need something else to worry about on top of... everything else.

She hoped no one found it.

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

Chloe's day was ridiculous. Utterly, ridiculous!

She sat next to her mother as Adrien walked down the runway. Lingering dread squashed and thrown into the very back of her mental walk-in closet where she kept unimportant things. Like shoes she never wore anymore, problematic outfits and lingering guilt that totally wasn't her's. Adrien wasn't slowly disintegrating anymore so why dwell on the past?

Adrien's performance was flawless and Chloe was absolutely certain she appreciated his efforts more than anyone else... Even if Alya Cesaire was livestreaming.

The show went off without a hitch. Adrien seemed fine but then he was almost as good at pretending as she was. Chloe eyed him as Gabriel's lackey, um, assistant pulled him along. Not physically, of course. It was more of a metaphorical pulling.

Ugh, Gabriel Agreste started talking with Chloe's mother through his assistant's tablet. Like, yeah, apologizing to the Queen of Style was a no brainer. But he could have at least come in person! Not like Gabriel was doing anything important besides being the world's richest hermit.

... And Dupain-Cheng was there too. Of course she was. At least her mother would put Dupain-Cheng in her place. Chloe felt herself smirk at the thought.

Adrien raised an eyebrow. As though reading her mind.

Chloe pretended not to notice. No petty satisfactions here! No, sir! But it wasn't like the Queen of Style was going to say anything about Dupain-Cheng's hat except-

"It's the most exceptional thing I've ever seen!" Audrey Bourgeois announced.

Exact- Wait, what!?

"You're a visionary, Marinette! Glitter's had its day..."

Chloe's ears rang, drowning out her mother's voice. Exceptional? Her? Over a- a- a hat!? A vice squeezed Chloe's chest with cruel precision. When her own present was rejected without even unwrapping it!? Chloe's fists shook as she bit her tongue.

"Isn't that nice for your friend, Chloe dearest?" Andre Bourgeois asked.

"It's ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous!" Chloe whirled on her mother. "I've never been to New York with you and you're taking Marinette Dupain-Cheng!?" She spat.

"I'm afraid I have a last minute meeting to attend, my dear Audrey," Gabriel announced from the tablet. "Nathalie, bring Adrien home immediately."

Adrien's attention snapped from Chloe to Gabriel. "But, Father, I-"

"Do not embarrass me in front of the Bourgeois," Gabriel snapped, ending the call.

Jaw clenching shut, Adrien stared at nothing with stormy eyes as Nathalie led him away.

"I'm taking her because she's exceptional, Claudette. Uh- Chloe," Audrey stated matter-of-factly, the Agrestes already forgotten.

"I'm exceptional too!" Chloe shot back.

Audrey inspected her white gloves, bored of this exchange. "The only exceptional thing about you, my dear-" Audrey deigned to glance at her daughter. "-is your mother."

Chloe's blood boiled as she shook off Andre's hands on her shoulders, standing straighter. "I'll show you how exceptional I can be!" she promised.

Just as an akuma entered Chloe's present.

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

Alya was having an amazing day!

Her livestreams hadn't gotten this many new views since she almost got sacrificed by Pharaoh. The Ladyblog's activity was up. And Ladybug chose her as the Black Cat!

Sure it was weird that Ladybug didn't want to talk about it. But still! Black Cat! Alya tried to contain her grin as she thought about being Ladybug's partner for a day...

Her pace on the sidewalk slowed, enthusiasm dampening a little... Setting her face in determination Alya skipped into gear. All the more reason to piece together what happened! And she'd start with-

A burst of yellow light shot forth from the Grand Palais. Jolting Alya out of her thoughts as the newest akuma victim gave their villain speech from the roof.

"I am Queen Glitter! And from now on the only exceptional person in Paris will be me!"

Alya ran... straight for the villain who was obviously Chloe as she summoned a cloud of glitter and shapped it into a collection of accessories. The constructs restricting the movement of whoever they landed on. Scarves wrapping people's legs together or tying them to lampposts. Hats covering people's eyes as they tried to yank them off. There was even someone with his hands stuck in high heels. Queen Glitter made a giant floating scarf to stand on and took off in a random direction; leaving a trail of gaudy accessories in her wake.

Great. It was going to take forever to catch up to her now! Taking cover in an alleyway so Queen Glitter's sparkly formal wear wouldn't notice her, Alya scanned the street. Mentally kicking herself for not having recorded the villain speech for the Ladyblog.

"Looks like you're raring to go," Ladybug observed as she landed next to Alya. A familiar box in her hand.

"Ladybug! Didn't think I'd be helping out again so soon!" Alya held out her palm and Ladybug placed the Black Cat Miraculous in her hands again.

"Y'know the drill, right?" Ladybug's eyes wandered to the people in various states of running-for-their-lives.

"Give it back when we're done and don't take it personally," Alya paraphrased as Plagg emerged in a ball of light when she placed the ring on her finger.

"Ladyblog girl again?” Plagg gave her a once over. Ears flat against his head but swishing tail betraying his apprehension. "Well, at least Alya's not blue boy."

“He wasn’t that-“ Ladybug shook her head. “Y’know what, never mind.”

Glancing between them Alya filed that tidbit away for later. "C'mon, Plagg. We did great together!"

"You were okay," Plagg acknowledged. "Could've used more cat puns."

Alya chuckled. Of course he'd like those. With a -slightly forced- encouraging smile from Ladybug, Alya called out: “Plagg, transforme-moi!”

Green lightning traveled from Chat Noir’s ring across both arms and down her torso. A green sash wrapping around her waist and trailing into a tail. Running her clawed gloves through her hair as cat ears materialized. Said hair puffing up into an afro. Armor padding her shoulders and torso. Alya flexed her fingers to get used to the feeling. Chat Ombre's suit still felt strange on her skin compared to Rena Rouge.

Ladybug leapt onto the rooftops and Chat Ombre followed her lead. Racing towards the villain while avoiding her glitter. "So what's the plan?"

"Queen Glitter is basically a reskin of Style Queen," Ladybug thought aloud.

"But without that annoying habit of turning into a cloud!" Chat Ombre supplied.

Ladybug launched her yo-yo at a pedestrian and yanked him away from Queen Glitter's constructs as they passed by. "But she can spread her power over a wider area."

"Don't worry, Ladybug. We'll be- Look out!" Alya tackled Ladybug out of the way as a trio of glittery top hats zoomed past.

"Your reign is over Ladybug and wannabe Chat Noir!" Queen Glitter announced as she floated over them. Her appearance was similar to Style Queen except her crown was even bigger and gaudier. A foux glitter scarf around her shoulders. "I don't even care if you don't give me your Miraculous! I'll simply immobilize you and take them by force!"

They evaded a flurry of coats by jumping down to the street. "Really?" Chat Ombre called out. "That all you can throw at us? A tacky outfit?"

"Wouldn't be the first time!" Ladybug agreed.

"No one ever appreciates my gifts!" Queen Glitter stomped her foot. "Fine then. Why don't we try something more expensive!" Raising her hands she lifted two cars wrapped with giant bows into the air.

Alya's eyes widened. "Oh, shi-" Chat Ombre evaded Chloe's attacks as the villain played wack-a-chat. Glitter accessories flying in and attempting to restrict their movements as well.

Ladybug wrapped one of the vehicles with her yo-yo and spun it back at Queen Glitter.

The bright red sports car hurled towards her and- She stopped it with the palm of her hand. "You'll have to do better than that if- Where'd you go!?" Queen Glitter scanned the empty street, rising higher for a better vantage point.

Chat Ombre locked eyes with her for a second before a chimney obscured her line of sight. "Somehow I don't think that bought us much time." Alya voiced as a wave of clothing rose over the city.

Ladybug spotted a strip of blue between the rooftops. Thinking quickly, Marinette grabbed Alya's hand and turned them towards the Seine. Diving into its waters with a torrent of glitter in their wake.

Queen Glitter's constructs crashed into the river and washed away with the current.

Chat Ombre made for the surface once it was clear but Ladybug pulled her back. Chat's staff in her hand and yo-yo on her face. Pointing towards the magic tool Ladybug offered it to Alya.

Nodding, Alya quickly pressed it to her lips and took a deep breath, sweet oxygen filling her lungs. Giving Ladybug a thumbs up once she didn't feel like her chest was on fire.

Grabbing her hand Ladybug led Alya further upstream until they found a boat.

Gasping the (relatively) fresh air Alya examined Chat's staff. "I didn't know it could do that."

"Yeah, the Miraculous are full of surprises. And we'll need one of our own to beat Queen Glitter. Lucky Charm!"

A spotted snorkel fell into Ladybug's hands.

"Don't we already have one of those?" Chat Ombre asked.

Ladybug's brow furrowed as she stared at it. "Yeah... Wait, Queen Glitter's powers don't work underwater!"

"So, all we need to do is get her there!" 

Ladybug glanced at a pair of recycling bins. "And I know just how to sneak up on her."

Chat Ombre grinned. She liked this plan.

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

Chat Ombre hated this plan!

It had all gone smoothly. The glitter constructs ignoring the recycling bins they used as disguises. Snake style. Chloe was dumbfounded when she saw them. Enough to let them take the elevator up to the Grand Paris' rooftop where Queen Glitter set up her makeshift throne. Giving them the opportunity to tackle her towards the Seine.

Unfortunately, Queen Glitter could make constructs of any size. Like, for example, a wide brimmed hat big enough to stretch from either bank of the Seine.

"You were going to make me wear this?" Queen Glitter held up the Lucky Charm- "No thanks!" -and struck it across her knee.

Alya winced as the villain broke Ladybug's insta-win button in half. "Please, tell me you have a plan?" Chat Ombre glanced at the spotted hero currently wrapped up in an extra long scarf just like she was. The floating constructs squeezing just a little bit more as Ladybug struggled against them. Alya tried bending her wrist to Cataclysm her restraints but her right hand was held away from the rest of her body.

"No planning! Not that it'll do you any good. I've already won! Me! Queen Glitter! MWAHAHAHAH- Do you mind? I'm trying to savour the moment!" Chloe snapped as Papillon's emblem glowed over her face.

Alya's head turned from an increasingly frantic Ladybug to the annoyed villain.

"Of course I'm going to take their Miraculous! Why wouldn't I take their Miraculous?"

"An excellent question, your Highness!"

Three pairs of eyes snapped towards the source of the unexpected voice.

"... Who the heck are you supposed to be?" Queen Glitter demanded.

"Aristos! At your service!" He bowed with a flourish, giving Alya a good look at the bee shaped comb at the base of his ponytail. Blond hair highlighted with black stripes. Goggles obscuring his face, making his green eyes hard to read despite the grin on his lips. Suit mostly yellow with black, V-shaped stripes on his torso, forearms and lower legs. Three hexagons on his chest giving the impression of honeycombs.

"No no no no no no." Ladybug stared at Aristos, not realizing that she was speaking aloud.

...Well, that can't be good, Alya thought.

"Ha! Did you really think more insects would help, Ladybug?" The villain mocked. Her constructs closing in on the interloper.

Aristos' smile took on a darker edge. "I'm not with her, your Majesty. I'm here to pledge myself to the most exceptional Queen I've ever seen! Really, where does Papillon get off talking to such a glittery figure as your Highness like that?"

Alya blinked. Really? Even Chloe wouldn't fall for-

Raising her hand the villain halted her constructs' advance. "Hmm, well at least you know how to treat royalty." Queen Glitter offered her bejeweled fingers. "I guess you can be my underling."

Ah. Right. Never underestimate the power of Chloe's ego.

The Bee, Alya was ninety-nine percent sure he was the Bee, took Chloe's offered hand and leaned down. Lips hovering over the back of her hand. "Oh! That reminds me your Highness, I have a gift for you."

Queen Glitter's eyes shone. "A present? For me? It better be the latest- Ow! I'm getting to that!" She snapped at Papillon, looking away from the Bee to glare at the absent supervillain.

Aristos removed the striped top Alya recognized as his Miraculous tool from around his waist.

"You didn't beat them! I did!"

Casually, carefully, Aristos placed his top on Queen Glitter's hand. Point against her glittering skin.

"You couldn't do it yourself so you sent me!"

"Venom," the Bee breathed.

"What was-"

Queen Glitter froze as Aristos' top glowed; his power paralyzing her. The constructs bursting into clouds of glitter. Chat Ombre landed in a crouch as her restraints vanished.

"It worked." Aristos sounded as surprised as Alya felt. "It worked! Yes! Nailed it!" He pumped his fist as relief overflowed and- Was he crying?. "Independent hero debut successful!"

"What?" Ladybug was staring at the Bee apprehensively and that didn't help Alya's nerves.

Aristos' mood instantly became more subdued. Blinking rapidly to get the water out of his eyes. "Oh, right. You're still here."

Chat Ombre tried not to take that personally. He did just save them, after all.

Ladybug stepped forward. Voice even, diplomatic. Never mind that she seemed this close to freaking out. "Listen, Aristos was it? I don't know how you found that Miraculous but you have to give it back."

His face was disturbingly neutral. "...Don't I get a 'thank you' for saving the day?"

The tension in Ladybug's shoulders wouldn't budge. "Thank you, but I really need that Miraculous back." She held out her hand.

Aristos stared at Ladybug's hand like it was something alien. Cracks appearing in his facade. "Yeah, pass."  Walking backwards, away from Ladybug and Chat Ombre, he kept them in his field of vision.

"Wh- The- Y-you can't just decide that!" Ladybug sputtered, stepping forward.

"Just did! How do I even know this Miraculous is even yours?" Aristos asked, increasing the distance between them.

Alya got the distinct impression that he was bullshitting them.

"I'm the one who lost it!"

Alya's eyes widened. "You lost a Miraculous?"

"Not helping, Chat!"

Aristos' features twitched, eyes narrowing. "Sure you say it's yours but how do I know that?"

Chat Ombre bristled at the implication. "Ladybug is the Hero of Paris!"

Aristos gave her a once-over, his expression inscrutable, but said nothing.

Wow. Rude.

"That Miraculous belongs to the G- to me."

"That's interesting because I say it belongs to me." Aristos laid a hand on his chest. "Looks like it's your word against mine. Guess which one I'm choosing?"

Ladybug's yo-yo was suddenly spinning in her hand. "I swear, I'm not gonna lose another-"

An insistent beeping from Ladybug's earrings interrupted her.

"Welp! Love to stay and dance but it looks like you two need to buzz off before your precious identities are exposed to little old me."

Why did he sound bitter? Everything about him made Alya's head spin with questions. Not least of which being how the heck someone holding the Bee Miraculous showed up in the first place.

Taking his top, Aristos hopped onto the edge of the Grand Paris' roof. "Might want to deal with her before that happens."

Alya looked to where he was pointing to see Queen Glitter still paralyzed. When she glanced back at the Bee he was gone.

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

Adrien's day sucked.

Paris Fashion Week was always a chore but this year was even worse. Despite having friends around he felt lonelier than ever. Getting to talk to Marinette only helped so much. Adrien was still expected to plaster on a smile and represent 'the brand'.

And that was before he got turned into a freaking statue!

At least it's better than mind control.

Shut up!

He did not want to see Ladybug or her new partner up close and personal! Thank you, very much! But like always what Adrien wanted didn't matter.

Imagine his surprise when a Miraculous practically falls into his lap. A familiar glow blooming in his chest against all reason as Adrien opens the box.

"Hello, my King," the unknown, bee-like kwami greets formally.

There's a turning in his stomach that Adrien tries his best to calm it. "H-hi! I'm Adrien. What's your name?"

"I am Pollen," she bowed. "Kwami of Subjection. An honor to meet you. It has been a long time since I've had a king."

"Just Adrien is fine." Taking the Miraculous, a comb of all things, out of it's box Adrien stares at it. It's disguise all black and only vaguely shaped like a bee compared to the details he glimpsed before Pollen came out.

"Of course, my King."

Adrien sighed. Pollen was nothing like Plagg. Then again, Adrien wasn't sure the world could survive two of him. The lazy little jerk was enough to drive any Guardian mad all by himself... God, he missed Plagg.

"Um, anyway, how does your power work?"

Pollen clapped her small appendages together. "It's very straightforward, my King. You simply call out 'Venom' and your top will activate. Then strike your opponent with the point and they'll be paralyzed for however long you desire." She whooshed toward him for emphasis.

"Paralyze..." That was certainly more straightforward than using Cataclysm.

'Cause you sucked at that, didn't you?

Shut up. This was... What was he doing? When Adrien held the Bee in his hands he felt... Alive. Like a promise that things could be better this time around.

Adrien jumped as insistent knocking on his changing room door startled him out of his thoughts.

"M. Agreste? Mme. Sancoeur says we're back on in five."

"Be right out!" Brushing the Miraculous with his thumb to make sure it was really there Adrien placed it in his pocket. Hesitating for a moment he offered his jacket to Pollen.

Nodding, she zoomed into Plagg's old hiding place.

Taking a deep breath, Adrien opened the door. "Let's get this over with."

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

Adrien ran off as soon as Papillon's mark appeared on Chloe's face. Catching Marinette doing the same from the corner of his eye. Glass raining down as Queen Glitter broke through the Grand Palais' roof.

Pollen zipping out as he tied his hair into a makeshift ponytail. Holding it in place with the Bee Miraculous.

"Quickly, my King! Say 'Pollen, transforme-moi'!"

Adrien stared at her. He could hear screaming as people ran.

"My King!"

His oldest friend just got akumatized for the second time.

"My King!"

All he had to do was speak!

"Adrien!"

His knees shook as his back hit the wall behind him for support. "But... I wasn't chosen."

Pollen floated higher as her eyes widened in surprise. "Weren't you given my Miraculous?"

Adrien shook his head. "I f-found it... After giving up the Black Cat."

This time Pollen dipped as she nearly fell out of the air. "Chat Noir."

Adrien shook his head even more emphatically. Hands going up to cover his face. "N-no! Not him! Can't be him!" he choked.

Pollen laid her hand on his and Adrien tensed at the touch. "My King."

Something in her voice made Adrien look at her.

"You wish to help, do you not?"

"... Yes."

Pollen's eyes softened. "Then help."

Adrien stared at her. So sure that she'd want nothing to do with him once she knew what a failure he was... But that wasn't the case.

Rising shakily to his feet Adrien gave Pollen a grateful smile. "Pollen, transforme-moi'."

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

Aristos panted as he glanced up from the alleyway. Spotting no pursuers. "Pollen, detransforme-moi."

Landing on Adrien's outstretched palms, Pollen beamed tiredly at him. "Excellent work, my King."

Adrien smiled back. "Oh! What do you eat? Plagg loves Camembert but..."

"That would be fine. However, I prefer something sweeter."

"Yeah..." A weight settled on his chest. "Let's see what we can find..."

Pollen frowned. "Is something wrong, my King?"

Adrien avoided her gaze. What was he supposed to say? That disobeying Ladybug felt wrong? That he almost let his guilt and resentment make him say cruel things to his replacement? That his heart wouldn't stop pounding? "It's just... Do you want to go back?"

Pollen blinked.

"You're supposed to listen to the Guardian, right?" Adrien bit his lip as his heart tried jumping up his throat. "It's not fair of me to keep you if you want to go back."

Pollen sat up on his palms. "I have been in the Miracle Box for a long time, my King. I can think of worse things than spending what time I have outside it with you."

Adrien's eyes burned as he wiped away tears. "Thanks, Pollen."

Ladybugs swirled in the sky as they repaired the city.

"Of course, my King," Pollen smiled.

"Call me Adrien."

"Yes, my King."

Adrien sighed. A smile coming to his lips. Looks like Aristos was sticking around for a while.

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

Retroactively giving Black Cat Alya an afro.

[joviewinchester]

Let’s pretend that Mary is here to add to the *spice* Also major fluff alert. So terribly fluffy endings that they could be a danger to society. Except for the last one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also let me know if I should write more stuff with multiple endings because this was super fun.

Imagine dating Dean when Gabriel comes back, and going to stay with Lucifer.

Dean and Y/N were currently having the biggest fight of their relationship. “I still love him Dean! I can’t help it! I thought he was dead okay?! I assumed after he went radio silent he was dead not kidnapped by a Kentucky fried douche bag!”

“Oh! Oh! That’s even better! You knew that Lucifer didn’t kill him and you didn’t think to tell us?!”

“I was protecting him you ass! He would have really died if everyone knew he was still alive!”

“Well, what now, then, huh? I was a fucking distraction from all of your baggage wasn’t I?!”

“Like I wasn’t?! You have so much fucking baggage, it adds on an extra fifty pounds!”

“Well? What about now, Y/N? Even if I’m absolutely pissed at you, I’m still and love with you, and I’ll take a wild guess from when he tried to kiss you and say that he’s still in love with you too, so now what?”

“I’m staying somewhere else for awhile, Dean. I can’t stand being here okay? I love you. You know that, but everything is just so complicated right now and I can’t deal with it.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to stay with Lucifer okay? And don’t tell me that it’s dangerous and he’s an asshole and I can’t because I don’t have anywhere to go. I’m out of options, D.”

“So what? You would rather have a sleepover with the devil than stay here?!”

“Yes okay?! And this is why! I can’t deal with the way you’re being right now! …Look, i don’t have enough energy to fight anymore. Let Gabe know where I went, and just so you know, we’re on a break.”

Dean sadly watched as she walked out of the bunker with her duffel bag on her shoulder. “On a break?” He muttered to himself.

As soon as the bunker door slammed shut, Sam walked out from his room, where he had been hiding. He put an arm around his older brother. “It’ll be okay, Dean.”

“Will it really? Because she’s going to stay with yet another archangel that she, although I don’t have proof, most likely had feelings for, and the other one is staying with us.”

“Oh yeah yeah. Cry all you want, Winchester. You think I’m not upset that she’s staying with my brother who tried to kill me?” Gabriel asked.

“Is all this really necessary? I think we should probably just let Y/N do what she wants, and not fight. She is a responsible adult, and she can make her own decisions.” Castiel chimed in.

“Oh shut up!” Dean and Gabriel said in unison.

“By the way asshole, thanks to you, me and Y/N are on a break!”

“Oh don’t blame me for that Dean-o. You did that on your own. Y/N likes to make her own decisions, and you trying to make them for her? Yeah that was not working out too well. Clearly the only reason she really left was to show that she still had control over her own life.”

“Clearly, she left because your both being completely immature grade a douchebags, who, frankly, no one wants to be around, so shut up, or get a room!” Sam exploded.

They both put their hands up in surrender. “If you really want to know what really happened with Lucifer, I’ve recently come into possession of a super top secret diary of a certain loveable hunter.”

Mary walked in on the conversation. “Don’t you two dare. Just because she left does not mean you get to just take anything from her room.”

Dean and Gabriel both shrugged and sat down at the table. Gabriel began flipping through the pages to find the right date. “Here it is. This is after I went radio silent. You said that she started hanging around with Lucifer three years after my ‘death’ correct?” Dean nodded.

“”Dear Jenny,” Wow she named her diary. Whatever that’s beside the point.

“Dear Jenny,

I definitely made somewhat of a mistake today. Well, I wouldn’t call it that, but I know that the Winchesters would. I, well, I made out with Lucifer last night.

I think I’m in love with him, but then, there’s Dean. I’m starting to think he kind of had a thing for me? But then again, it’s Dean, he probably just wants to hook up or something.

You know, for some reason, I always liked the villains more. I think it might be because, most of the time, they aren’t using a girl. They love her. They’d get down on their knees for her. They’d die for her and do anything for her, and she’d always be their queen. I don’t know maybe I’m delusional.

What would Gabe say though? There’s no doubt in my mind that I will always be in love with him, dead or alive. If I ever got the chance to be with him again, I know that I would choose him, over anyone, Dean and Lucifer included. He is, well was, the light in my darkness, and I know that I‘ll never forget him.” Gabriel closed the diary. He glanced at Dean, trying to subtly study his face. He was clearly upset, and oddly enough, Gabe comforted him.

“Hey, cheer up, okay Dean-o. Let’s look at a further entry. Her feeling about you probably changed.”

They flipped further. It was an entry from last year.

“Dear Jenny,

I almost died today. There was a nest of vampires, and I went in on my own. I feel so stupid. Scratch that. I am stupid. I was lucky, so goddamn lucky.

Dean saved me. I felt really dumb. I hate being the damsel in distress. I was hoping that by going in there, I would take them out on my own and show Dean that I don’t need protection.

He has enogh to worry about, and he is always worrying about me. If anything ever happened to Dean, I don’t know what I’d do.

I know in past entries, things I said were so different, but we’re together now. Things are so different, and I love him so much.

He is my light…in the darkness.” Gabriel trailed off on the last part.

“You make her happy Dean. She’s yours now.”

“No. You made her just as happy, and besides, it’s her decision now. For all we know, she’ll end up with Satan.”

About, a week passed and Y/N was finally home. As soon as she walked in the door, everyone could tell how drained she was. She looked like she hadn’t slept in years.

“Hi.” She gave a weak smile to no one in particular. Now was not a time to play favorites. Then again, maybe it was.

Dean- “So, as you guys know, I’ve been MIA for a week, so I’ve had lots of time to think, and I know what I want. I know that you both probably don’t even want me at this point, but, Dean I love you. I want to be with you, and it was stupid for me to just up and leave. That one week was a living hell without you. Side note, that was a horrible metaphor for me to use.”

Dean pulled her into a tight hug, and buried his face in her hair. “Don’t ever leave me alone with Gabriel and Sam ever again. I know mom and Cas are here, but no one can stop them from arguing constantly but you.” Y/N laughed a little bit.

“I promise that I’ll never leave you ever again. I uh, I bought something while I was gone.” She pulled something small out of her pocket.

“Look, I know that this is kind of untraditional, but that’s who I am. Dean for as long as I’ve known you, you never even thought about a serious relationship, until you asked me out. Like everyone we have had ups and downs, but at the end of the day, I love you and you love me. With this life, you have no idea what’s going to happen next, so I guess what I’m trying to say is, Dean Winchester, will you marry me?”

“Hell yeah! Of course. I’m just sorry you beat me to it. Before our fight, I had this whole romantic thing planned out and-“ Y/N hushed him.

“I don’t want a bunch of rose petals. You’re more than enough for me.”

Gabriel- “Um…Mary can I talk to you?” Mary nodded and followed Y/N to a separate room.

“So, I know Dean is your son, but you’re my best friend and I feel like you’re the only person I can talk to. This may not be what you want to hear, but I’m still-“

“In love with Gabriel. I know n/n. Just let Dean down easy okay? You know how he is with these things. He’s not going to get over it overnight.”

Y/N pulled her into a hug. “Thanks, Mary.”

“Now why don’t you go shower and then talk to Gabe.” Y/N nodded and went up to her room then headed to her personal bathroom.

When she got done, she walked out to her laid out clothes and almost had a heart attack. Of course he would be waiting on her.

“You know, I feel like I already know the answer to this, but do you think I could get dressed before we talk or?”

“Nah. It’s not in my programming to do that.” Y/N grabbed her laid out clothes.

“In that case, I’ll be right back.” She said heading to the bathroom once more. When she walked back out, she sat next to him on the edge of her bed.

“So…” Y/N trialed off, nervously tapping her fingers against her thigh.

“Y/N, I know you aren’t very good at confrontation and stuff like that, but you have a decision to make, and no matter what, Dean and I have both agreed to respect that, even if that choice is neither of us.”

“Gabe, I’ve already made a choice. I made a choice a long time ago. I love you. Even through the years nothing has changed the fact that I love you. You were the first guy, or archangel rather, that I fell in love with, and I want you to be the last.”

“That was the most incredibly sweet and cheesy thing you have ever said to me.”

“Oh shut up, you love me.”

“You know it, sugar.”

Lucifer- “Look, I’m not staying here anymore. I know that might be kind of hard for you guys to process, but I know what I want now, and what I want is not anywhere near this bunker, so to save us all the heartache, I’m packing my stuff up and heading out of here.” She quickly ran up to her room.

“Lucifer.” Gabriel and Dean said annoyedly at the same time.

“You guys don’t know that. Maybe she just needs time on her own.” Sam said.

“Uh... yeah no.” They all turned around, then simultaneously groaned in disgust and annoyance.

“Oh come on. Don’t give me that. I’m a delight to be around. Ask Y/N.” Lucifer stated with a cocky smirk on his face.

Mary scoffed. “You’re a self righteous asshole. I don’t know why she finds any part of you attractive.”

Y/N came downstairs carrying like five bags, and rolled her eyes. “I go upstairs for five minutes and you guys are already fighting. Look, I’m leaving okay! I can’t be here right now! So, just at least let me go peacefully.”

“Is this what your mother would have wanted?” Cas stopped her. Y/N whipped around, and dropped the bags she was holding.

“Don’t talk about my mother! She died saving your sorry ass, so screw you!” Seconds later, they were gone.

“Maybe she’s right. Maybe he is different.” Mary suggested.

“Or maybe she’s blinded like she always has been.” Dean scoffed.

[aster-ion]

Sylvie x Loki Might Not Happen and Here’s Why

***SPOILERS FOR LOKI TV SHOW***

1.  They are basically siblings

Even though they have different personalities, backstories, and physical appearances, that doesn't change the fact that they are the genetic equivalent of siblings. No matter what Timeline you're looking at, both Sylvie and Loki are the offspring of Laufey and whoever he had children with. We know this because they are Variants of the exact same person, meaning that if either of them were born to someone other than Laufey, they would have been pruned as a baby. And since they weren't, that means they must be just as genetically similar as siblings are.

Because of this, the idea of Sylvie and Loki engaging in any kind of romantic or sexual relationship is extremely disturbing to a lot of fans. It's too big an oversight to brush past, especially when the show has continued to remind us over and over that they are, in fact, both Lokis. Maybe if them being the same person wasn't such a major plot point, it would be easier to ignore the facts, but it is, and that means that Marvel is basically pushing either an incest or selfcest (depending on how you look at it) type relationship. And that’s extremely risque for a corporation as large as Marvel, especially with a character as beloved by fans as Loki. 

2.  It is terrible LGBTQ+ representation

And before anyone says anything, no, it is not because Sylvie is portrayed as female and Loki as male. I've seen a lot of Sylvie x Loki shippers say that the reason people don't like the couple is due to it being one between a male and female, but that's not true. Loki and Sylvie were both confirmed to be bisexual, meaning that they can engage in a relationship with anyone of any gender. It would be completely valid for either of them to pursue romance with someone of a different sex and still be bisexual. No one is arguing against that, and if they are, I definitely do not agree with them.

However, the problem comes in when you take into account Marvel and Disney's (who owns Marvel) long history of queerbaiting. There have been countless times that Disney advertises their "first gay character!" only for it to be a single line of dialogue or a brief shot. Marvel in particular has used the popularity of certain LGBTQ+ ships and headcanons in their fanbase to generate media popularity that they don't actually follow through with in their movies/shows. So when Loki was confirmed to be both genderfluid and bisexual in Episode Three, lots of people felt like they were finally getting a win for representation. 

But those people, myself included, appear to have been let down again. The first two official queer characters had so much potential to go off and be with anyone they wanted, but instead, the show has set them up to be in a romance with each other. Now, this wouldn't be problematic on it's own, but when you take into consideration the questionable nature of their romance from Point One as well as the fact that the show has explicitly referred to it as "twisted," it raises the question of whether or not this is actually good representation. Because the fact is, in one episode the writers went “look, it’s two queer people!” and in the next, they said “their relationship is disgusting and demented.” Marvel’s first bisexual characters being borderline incestuous/selfcestuous does not sit well with me at all.

All of this is made even more confusing when you take into account the background of the Loki crew, most notably, the director Kate Herron. She also directed the Netflix series Sex Education, which has quite a bit of very well done representation of all kinds. So how is she managing to fail so badly on this project? It makes me wonder whether she truly is just losing her touch or if this is all a misdirection. Personally, I'm hoping for the latter.

3.  It does not send the "self love" message people seem to think it does

The writers, director, and cast of Loki have said multiple times that the relationship between Sylvie and Loki is meant to act as a metaphor for self love. And in a way, that makes a lot of sense. Despite creating different identities for themselves over time, they are still ultimately the same person and therefore share a special bond because of it. And there's a lot of potential that can be done with that concept.

Loki is an extremely complex and intriguing character. He has experienced a lot of trauma in his past that has shaped him into the person he is today. And that person is clearly very broken. He has never given away or received any kind of love, with the exception of his mother and possibly his brother, Thor. Other than that, he's had no healthy friendships, romances, or perception of himself. It makes sense for him to be confused by this pull he feels towards Sylvie, who is both alarmingly alike and vastly different from himself.

Something this series does exceptionally well is breaking Loki out of his comfort zone. He is finally forced to see himself from other people's perspectives. It started with the file Mobius showed him in the first episode. Loki was able to view his actions apart from himself, and was hit with the realisation that he had been hurting people, and he didn't like that. 

Loki is also confronted by the existence of the Time Keepers and the TVA, who describe him as an antagonist and nothing more. To them, his role is to make those around him look better, even if that means he repeatedly gets the short end of the stick. Mobius mentions that he disagrees with this and that Loki "can be whoever and whatever he wants, even someone good," adding another layer of depth as to who Loki could be in the future of the series. 

Another huge moment for Loki's character development is while in the Time Loop Prison with Sif. Though he starts out annoyed with the situation and recalls not feeling apologetic when he cut off Sif's hair, the longer he is in the loop, the more he changes. Loki admits things to himself that we have never seen him say aloud, such as the fact that he is a narcissist that craves attention. Sif telling Loki over and over that he deserves to be alone makes Loki question whether or not he believes that to be true, allowing him an introspective moment where he really has to think about who he is. 

Now with all of that being said, I'd like to tie in why this is important to the writing of Loki and Sylvie. They act as a mirror to one another, representing both the flaws and strengths of "what makes a Loki a Loki." For once, Loki gets an honest, unbiased look at himself without layers of expectations or self doubt. On Lamentis, he calls Sylvie "amazing" and praises her for all her accomplishments. That's a huge moment for him because it shows that despite also finding her irritating, he can look past those traits and see someone worth being a hero underneath. And through that realisation, he begins to understand that he can also grow to love himself. That kind of character development for Loki is incredible to watch, and it's the kind of character development I want to see from this series. Unfortunately, them possibly engaging in a romantic relationship will ruin it.

Whenever I'm feeling insecure about myself and my abilities, the solution has never been to look at who I am through a romantic lens. Self love is an entirely different type of love from romantic love, so if the series tries to push this relationship as a romance, it will fail to truly represent the arc that they are trying to show.

4.  Nobody likes it 

This one's a little on the nose, but it's true. Almost no one likes this ship, and more than that, most people actively hate it. Yes, there is a small minority that like Loki and Sylvie together, but there is an overwhelmingly larger group that is disgusted and angry by the fact that the show paired them up.

After Episode 4 aired, I ranted for about an hour and a half with a friend about how much we didn't want them together. My aunt whom I have never texted reached out to me to say that she hated their relationship. My homophobic neighbour came over and told me that she would prefer any other romance to this. Friends that I haven't talked to much since school let out for summer have all agreed that they collectively dislike Loki x Sylvie. This ship has brought people together purely because everyone hates it more than they hate each other.

There is no denying that the general feedback for Loki and Sylvie being a couple has been negative, even if you support them getting together for some reason. So if there are so many people out there who don't like it, I'm confused as to how it would be approved by a team of professionals.

5.  The contradicting information we have gotten so far

Before the release of Episode Four, Kate Herron said that the relationship between Loki and Sylvie was “not necessarily romantic.” During the interview, she continued to refer to them as friends and people who found solace and trust in each other.

However, after Episode Four, the head writer, Michael Waldron, and other members of the crew spoke up about Sylvie and Loki. They said things like “it just felt right that that would be Loki’s first real love story” and “these are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another.” These kinds of comments very heavily imply something romantic, directly contradicting what Kate Herron said. Even Tom Hiddleston, the actor for Loki, has assessed the situation, highlighting the differing viewpoints. He’s also said before that the end of Episode Four ultimately has Loki getting in his own way. 

Now, this could all just be a misdirection on either side to build suspense for the show, but as of right now, it is entirely unclear who is telling the truth. Though it is more likely that the statements made by Michael Waldron are more accurate (as he is the writer), there is still a slight possibility that Loki x Sylvie won’t happen. I’ll link the articles I’ve found on this topic below so you can read them and decide for yourself. 

Kate Herron Statement - https://www.cbr.com/loki-sylvie-relationship-not-romantic/ 

Michael Waldron Statement - https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/loki-sylvie-in-love 

Tom Hiddleston Statement - https://thedirect.com/article/loki-tom-hiddleston-sylvie-romance 

6.  It is still salvageable

The odds are not in our favour, I’m afraid. It is highly probable that the show will put Loki and Sylvie in a romantic relationship with each other. Yet there is still a way to salvage it and turn their bond into something incredibly satisfying. Like I mentioned in Point Three, the relationship between Loki and Sylvie has the potential to be incredibly empowering and provide both characters some much-needed growth. And I believe that while unlikely, it can still do that. 

The only mention of them being romantically interested in each other came from Mobius, who at the time was angry, betrayed, and doing anything he could to get Loki to talk. Then, at the end of the episode, right before Loki is about to confess something important to Sylvie, he is pruned. This results in no explicit confirmation from either Loki or Sylvie that they are in love with each other. The audience is left not knowing whether Mobius was correct in his speculations, and honestly, I don’t think Loki knows either.

Loki is no expert on love, as I explained earlier. It is entirely possible that he doesn’t grasp how he feels about Sylvie and defaults to romance because of what Mobius said. There is undoubtedly some sort of deep bond forming between them, and I would love to see that being explored in the next two episodes. I would love to watch Loki’s journey of realising that he doesn’t want anything romantic with Sylvie, and was simply confused by the new things he was feeling towards her. Loki even says “this is new for me” when talking to Sylvie at the end of Episode Four. Him momentarily believing that he wants to be a couple with her then shifting into them becoming friends who help each other grow is still a reality that could happen. And ultimately, I think that would benefit them both as characters as well as strengthen the overall message of the show.

In a show about self love, acceptance of yourself, and figuring out who you want to be, Loki very much needs people who support him. He has that in Mobius already, and now he’s beginning to have it in Sylvie as well. I just hope that it is done in a way that resonates with the audience and subverts expectations, which just cannot be done through some twisted romantic relationship. I’ve spoken to others watching the show and seen people talking online, and everyone seems to agree that Loki and Sylvie work much better as platonic soulmates or found family than a couple. 

Of course, my hopes aren’t that high up. While I’d love for this to happen, I’ve been let down by Marvel before and wouldn’t be surprised if they went for the easy route of pairing characters up rather than dealing with the emotions correctly. Still, I have hope for this series. Everything else about it is wonderful and perfect in every way. It has the potential to become a masterpiece and easily the best thing that Marvel has ever done. However, this romance would ruin it for me and so many others. We already feel incredibly disappointed by Loki x Sylvie being suggested, so I can’t even begin to fathom how people will react if the show makes it canon. I’m begging Marvel to please do better than this. They have a wonderful story to tell and a wonderful team to do it, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that they don’t throw that away. 

[tidesreach]

So, I've been musing a lot on whether Xue Yang thinks he is deserving of love or not, because I have seen varying opinions on the subject. I think this is actually a debatable point. I have my own musings, but you could definitely argue either way. You could definitely argue, for instance, that Xue Yang doesn't think he's undeserving of anything because he doesn't particularly think of things in terms of deserving. If everybody got what they deserved he wouldn't have been abused as a child. Or, alternatively, Chang Cian would have faced repercussions for his actions. Xue Yang learnt very early on that what people deserve doesn't actually mean shit in this world. You have to take it for yourself. So, that's a point.

But, having said that, you could also definitely argue that Xue Yang doesn't think himself deserving of love. Personally, I don't think he does think himself deserving of love. For many trauma-related reasons. But I don't think that necessarily bothers him. Or he's convinced himself it doesn't bother him. At least until Xiao Xingchen. Love is not something Xue Yang thinks he needs. It's not even something he understands. It's not something he has — and I can't stress this enough — ever had. You can't miss something you've never had. So being deserving of it is utterly irrelevant to him in the grand scheme of things.

Xue Yang has figured out how to reach his own goals and also get attention and acknowledgement in other ways (murder! demonic cultivation!) and he's perfectly fine with that, thanks very much. He's not fussy about how he meets his goals as long as he meets them. He's not fussy about the kind of attention he gets as long as it's attention. Not to expose my bandom roots, but he's very "I don't care what you think as long as it's about me" (Fall Out Boy, 2009). He's never tried to be deserving of love because he doesn't need it. Or, at least, he thinks he doesn't. Xue Yang's whole thing, really, is that he has literally nothing to draw from where love is concerned. It's a completely foreign concept to him. He doesn't know how to be someone deserving of love, he has no blueprints for that, but he does know how to make himself deserving of hate. And that, well, that's just as good. Better, even. If he can be notorious, he can't be forgotten. Which, I think, is a very real fear of his. He wants to be remembered. He wants to be acknowledged. He wants people to know he exists, that he existed. Which makes sense, considering he spent so much of his life being treated as worthless. Being loved is not important. Being acknowledged is.

I think another layer to this is that Xue Yang doesn't believe his actions to be wrong. Or more, he doesn't see things as morally right or wrong. So you could argue that he doesn't think himself undeserving of love because well, actually, he's not wrong. But also, Xue Yang is not stupid. He knows how the rest of the world sees him. He thrives on it, in fact. He knows his actions aren't deemed Right and Acceptable despite what he personally believes. The rest of the world sees him as a monster. If you spend long enough being told that you are a monster, that you aren't worthy of love, you start to believe it. You start to feed into it. You start to believe that maybe you don't deserve anything good. So you act out, because if you don't deserve good things, if they’re unattainable, why bother trying to be good?

Xiao Xingchen solidifies this feeling for Xue Yang, I think. Because regardless of whether Xue Yang previously thought he deserved it or not, or whether he even gave a fuck either way, he knows that Xiao Xingchen would never deem him worthy of love if he knew who Xue Yang really was, and that, for reasons Xue Yang can't understand, bothers him. This is a predicament that Xue Yang has never had to deal with before, he has never cared about what people think about him; hate and fear are better than indifference. But then Yi City happens, Xiao Xingchen happens. And all of a sudden, Xue Yang cares. Xiao Xingchen's kindness really drills it home for Xue Yang that he Does Not Deserve Good Things. It's apparent from the moment he wakes up and realises that Xiao Xingchen is helping him, showing him care and concern. That kindness is a foreign concept. You can literally see that play out on Xue Yang's face. He has never had this before. No one has ever deemed him worthy of this. It visibly affects him. For a moment, he's so lost in it that all he can do is smile, softly, so softly that it's disorienting because we have never seen him look like that before. Because, I repeat, he has never had this before.

After that, I think he craves it. He drinks it in, all of this kindness that Xiao Xingchen is offering. He has no idea what to do with it, because it's not meant for him, but he craves it. He also knows that who he is and what he's done would make him undeserving of that love in Xiao Xingchen's eyes (metaphorically, obviously). I think a lot about how disorienting and unfamiliar this must feel to Xue Yang. How little he was prepared for this. How this is something he has never experienced before. So much so that he actively works incredibly hard to be someone (for years, after he stops manipulating Xiao Xingchen into killing people) deserving of Xiao Xingchen's love, and that, paradoxically, he actively works to eliminate any threat (Song Lan) to the life he has built with Xiao Xingchen, because he is terrified of losing him. He knows that some of his methods would deem him unworthy of Xiao Xingchen's love, but as long as Xiao Xingchen doesn't know, then there's no harm, right? Xue Yang will do anything to keep his secret (even if he doesn't acknowledge that that's what he's doing, or more, why he’s doing it). Not because he has some Long Con Revenge against Xiao Xingchen planned, but because he, in his own way, loves him, and loves the life they have built. I feel like, in Xue Yang's head, he's always telling himself that it's all just a long con, that "one day, I'll tell him one day, it'll be brilliant!" and keeps telling himself that for years. That's how he justifies their life together. Because if he keeps telling himself that, then he won't have to look too closely at all of the reasons why he hasn't told Xiao Xingchen yet. Why he hasn't yet had that dramatic reveal that he has planned. Why he really wants to stay in Yi City (spoiler: it's love).

In the beginning, Xue Yang tries very hard to bring Xiao Xingchen down to his level. His immediate reaction to Xiao Xingchen's kindness, after the initial unexpected softness, is to exploit it. For a number of complex reasons, but one of them, I would wager, is definitely "if I make him do all of these things he deems Terrible then really he is no better than me, we are on an even footing, and I am therefore more deserving of this kindness". He's looking for ways to justify accepting Xiao Xingchen's kindness, and exploiting it is, obviously, his first port of call, because he doesn't know what else to do with it. He doesn't know how else to be deserving of it. I think that becomes apparent when he lashes out later, during that final confrontation, when he says to Xiao Xingchen "Can you really be disgusted by me?" and then proceeds to tell him about the people he had him kill. He bitterly lays it all out, in a way that I think, at this point, he never actually wanted to do, because he realised that if he did it would hurt Xiao Xingchen, it would make him undeserving of his love. But he does it because it doesn't matter anymore, Xiao Xingchen has already realised Xue Yang's worst fear, has already attacked him without hearing him out, has already called Xue Yang disgusting, has already deemed him unworthy. Xue Yang could have argued that he had stopped all of that — all of the killing, the trying to corrupt Xiao Xingchen — years ago. He didn't even need to bring it up in the first place, he could have left it all buried. But, tragically, Xue Yang didn't ever fully realise (or didn't want to admit) why he stopped the killing. I think part of him knew, part of him knew that it was Xiao Xingchen's love and kindness and approval that he wanted to be worthy of. Part of him knew that this wasn't about revenge anymore. Part of him knew that he wanted to keep this life they had built. Part of him knew that he stopped the killing because Xiao Xingchen wouldn't like it. But Xiao Xingchen's refusal to give him a chance to explain, that straight shot to you're disgusting, to deeming Xue Yang unworthy of any empathy or love, that flipped the switch for Xue Yang. That's what ruined it. Because it realised all of Xue Yang's worst fears that he had tried so hard to combat. So he threw it in Xiao Xingchen's face, that Xiao Xingchen had killed innocent people, out of cruelty and spite, yes, but also as a last ditch attempt to prove that Xiao Xingchen wasn't any better that him, that Xue Yang wasn't unworthy because Xiao Xingchen was also a killer.

The tragedy of Xue Yang is that, really, he is still that terrified child, craving acknowledgement and just... a show of kindness and empathy. The tragedy of Xue Yang is that he worked so hard to forge this life, a life where he is loved, where he can be deserving of it, that when it all comes crumbling down and he is ultimately rejected, the only way he knows how to deal with that is through lashing out. 

He didn't let himself realise, until after Xiao Xingchen was dead, that the reason he so desperately needed him was because Xiao Xingchen made him feel loved. I think love was such a foreign concept to him, something that he never really believed in or believed he could ever deserve, that he couldn't understand that it was the whole reason he wanted to stay in Yi City and build a life. I don't think he even let himself acknowledge that until the very end, when he was clinging to that candy. He was so focused on getting Xiao Xingchen back in whatever form he could that he never really stopped — for several years — to ask himself why. He was adamant that the dead are better, more obedient. But he never considered that he would likely hate Xiao Xingchen that way. This is not his Daozhang. It wasn't obedience he wanted, it was love. But all Xue Yang knew was he couldn't live without him. In the end, he didn't have to any longer.

[goneseriesanalysis]

Drake Merwin

I am soo sorry, this is super late but I got incredibly distracted with reading and forgot that literally anything else existed. Drake was a really hard character for me to analyse because his characterisation was just so disappointing to me - but luckily my intrinsic desire to have everyone hear my opinions prevailed, and so here it is. I hope you enjoy!!

Spoiler Warning: Major spoilers for Gone, Minor spoilers for the rest of the series and the monster trilogy 

Old Opinion: I had a sort of morbid obsession with Drake and thought he was a top-tier villain

New Opinion: So far Drake is tied with Astrid for most-changed opinion. His character has almost no-depth and could be placed in almost any story without changing a single thing about him - and it would make sense. I found myself desperately trying to make him more interesting than he is in an attempt to justify younger me’s obsession - but alas I was unsuccessful. He had a lot of potential, but instead he ended up as a copy-paste villain with no realistic motivations and no real intrigue. 

1.) DRAKE’S APPEARANCE:

Drake is, I think, the character who is best (as in most thoroughly) described in the first book. Not only do we get an idea of his actual appearance beyond the vaguest possible descriptions (sorry to Sam, Caine, Diana and every minor character) but we also get some idea as to the effect his appearance has on other people.  

In Chapter 14, when we are first introduced to the Coates kids, Drake is described as, “a smiling, playful, mean-eyed kid with shaggy, sandy-coloured hair.” I actually really like this description. Contrasting “smiling” and “playful” with “mean” really brilliantly sets Drake up to be a complex villain – the kind of villain we all love to hate, who cracks a joke while slitting your throat. It has the implication of a layered personality but sadly, this is not the villain we get. In fact his character in the first chapter compared to the character we get as the book continues is so drastically different that it almost seems like mg did a complete 180 on his character. An original description is supposed to give us some indication as to what a character is like – their personality and role in the story, and we know that mg can do this really well. (Sam’s non-descript description setting him up to be the underdog, Quinn’s mismatched attire hinting at his inability to fit in, Astrid’s colour scheme reflecting her innocence and religiosity), and so it seems particularly odd, not to mention disappointing, that Drake’s description gives us…nothing. No real indication as to who he is or his purpose other than to hint to him being an antagonist (which we already guessed from his affiliation with Caine.) I could go on and on about what a waste Drake’s character was, but I’ll save it for a later paragraph.

We will then skip ahead to Chapter 37 where both Howard and Lana describe a similarity between Drake and Pack Leader:

“The one time she had seen Drake Merwin. He had made her think of Pack Leader: strong, hyper alert, dangerous. Now, the lean physique looked gaunt, the shark’s grin was a tight grimace, his eyes were red-rimmed. His stare, once languidly menacing, was now intense, burning hot. He looked like someone who had been tortured beyond endurance.”

“The two of them, two of a kind, it seemed to Howard, stared holes into each other.”

This is a much better example of mg using descriptions to establish the purpose of a character. By drawing a comparison between these two, mg sets up Drake’s later role in the books, where he replaces Pack Leader as the gaiphage’s right-hand man. This almost leads me to believe that mg had decided very early on that Drake was going to desert Caine and this is possibly why he seems so out of place and underdeveloped as Caine’s underling in the first two books. Mg had already moved on from this side of his character…and it shows. Lana’s description of Drake also works as a basis for showing the reader how he has changed since losing his arm (before gaining his whip) and acts as an insight into his current mental state – which is important as we don’t get much introspection during Drake’s POV’s. But, I still have a few issues with this. First of all, his “lean physique”. Now this isn’t really a problem all by itself, but unless I have forgotten what 14 year olds looks like (which is a possibility though I doubt it) I don’t think that they should be muscly with minimal body fat. And Drake is not the only character he does this with. Quinn gets extremely muscly later on in the books (I’ll admit that there is a plausible reason behind this so this example isn’t terrible but it’s mentioned like every 5 sentences) and in Fear Caine is described as having wash-board abs. Why are we sexualising children?? Children should be pudgy and awkward and still growing into their bodies, not lean and muscly!! The attractive, damaged man who hates women for no reason at all is also a really really really common trope and tbh I’m just so bored of it. It’s not relatable (at least it shouldn’t be) and it’s just really unimaginative – although it does help us to understand Drake’s character as we’ve seen him before so many times in all types of media. My second issue with this description is the way it really really highlights how much of a waste of character Drake was. The potential of a high-school bully with a skewed world-view due to the death of his father and the later abuse of his mother at the hands of his replacement father figure trying hard to impress the charming “leader” with unimaginable power (that he so desperately wants) only to be undermined at every turn by a girl who teases him by pointing out his flaws and insecurities taking his anger out on everyone around him (especially women) as a way to cope with his childhood traumas then turning into a heartless monster who not only enjoys others pain but lives for it after being “tortured beyond endurance”, was astronomical. But we don’t get that. Instead we get a cheesy, one-dimensional cartoon villain. The change that his body and mind go through after his maiming should have been pivotal to his character, but that just doesn’t come across in the writing. :/ But more on this later.

And last but not least, the whip-hand, which is very important to Drake’s character. It turns his actual body into a weapon and his excitement over this is indicative of his sadistic nature. Again, I think this is an example of a wasted opportunity. I would have liked mg to have gone in to depth about how Drake’s body undergoing this change affected his psyche (and I’m not counting his one-off line in the monster trilogy). I think it could be argued that Drake’s “change” is a metaphor for him going through puberty. Him gaining the whip that ultimately turned him into his very own weapon shows his transition from a child [a little messed up but still just a kid] into a monster, someone who is capable of committing atrocities without a second thought. It would have been particularly interesting for Drake and Orc’s final battle to put some focus on the fact that they both suffer through monstrous physical changes that can be used to represent their shift from children to young adults but whereas one relishes in this, one is completely disgusted. The whip-hand is described as being an “impossible blood-red snake” and then that “It was stretched. Like it had been turned into dark, blood-red taffy. It wrapped twice around his body.” – Both of these occurring in Chapter 39. I don’t have much to comment about this – other than that I think red is great colour choice for Drake, thematically at least.

I know this point was mostly about what Drake could have been as opposed to an actual analysis of his appearance, but I’m just so tired of the attractive misogynistic villain that seems to appear in every single piece of media. His characterisation really bummed me out and put me into a slump so instead of analysing his appearance I decided to roast him instead. But, onto actual analysis now (I am going to further expand on some of the points I made here I promise).

2.) DRAKE’S PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER

I mentioned in the previous point that a lot of Drake’s characterisation seems like an afterthought at best and one of the things that made me think this, is the inconsistencies with his character and the most obvious example of this is the discrepancies with his birthday. In chapter 20, Diana says that his birthday is “April twelfth, just one minute after midnight.” But, in Chapter 33 we get the line “Sooner would be better,’ Drake drawled, ‘what with me having a month.” This is a really small nit-pick, I know, but it just really bugs me that mg overlooked something as simple as a birthday – especially when birthdays are such an important plot point in this book. But anyway, moving on. I promise this whole review isn’t going to be negative.

Backtracking now to Chapter 14. Drake’s character here seems to differ quite drastically from his later characterisation. He seems here to be an example of the laughably evil trope, he has a kind of dry sarcastic humour that is quite fun and seems to lighten the tone of the story a little bit. Rather than showing us the boringly disgusting misogynistic villain that Drake turns out to be, we instead see a funny, charismatic character who seems to prefer picking on those who already have power – as is seen here:

“Drake paused halfway, turned back, and spoke for the first time. In an amused voice he said, ‘Oh, um, Captain Orc? Have your people – the ones who aren’t injured- line up outside. We’ll work out your… um, duties.’                                  With a grin that was almost a snarl, Drake added a cheerful, ‘Later’.” – Chapter 33

Now I understand that the reason we don’t see the real Drake here is because Sam is obviously not yet aware of his true personality – my issue lies in the fact that based on just this small excerpt here, I expected so much more from his character. We get hints of his sadistic nature here, with him joking about Cookie’s horrific injury and clearly taking joy in exerting power over Orc, but it is evenly balanced by the fact that he’s kind of amusing and we don’t really like Orc at this point anyway. Can we see that something isn’t quite right with him?? Yes. But do we kind of like him anyway?? Well I did. At this point. I would have really loved it if mg had carried on this idea of Drake abusing those who already have power – him enjoying to take down bully after bully so he can be King bully, instead of him picking on people who he perceives as weak and vulnerable. Mg relying on misogyny as a motivator is just really disappointing to me because there is no depth to it, and it’s pretty lazy. He hates Diana because she is a woman and he sees women as beneath him?? Weak. Over-used. Dull. He hates Diana because she has  power over Caine in a way that he never can, which makes him feel insecure in himself and the fragile sense of stability and power that he has struggled to cultivate within his damaged psyche?? Yes pls. Not only would this have made Drake a much more engaging character, but it would also have made his desertion of Caine in hunger much more impactful. And while I think there are aspects of this within his character, which I will go into later, I wish there had been more of it. Again, I’m sorry that this has become more of a “what could have been” rather than an analysis but there really is just so little to analyse without just pointing out obvious facts and statements. There’s no spice here :/

Moving on now to Chapter 16, where we as an audience, as well as the characters within the book, begin to realise what Drake truly is – an unhinged madman. We are told by Sam that Drake has been abusing his power as Sheriff – which particularly stands out as, so far at least, Drake is the only member of Coates who has shown this kind of behaviour (Caine is actually a pretty sound leader until he loses his shit and attacks Sam). And this is the first major distinction that we get between Caine and Drake and their capacity as villains in the story. Caine is a bad person who will do bad things to achieve his goals, he is power-hungry and ambitious but he is not needlessly violent. Everything he does he (in his own mind) is able to justify as it helps him to achieve his vision. Drake, on the other hand, doesn’t really seem to have an end goal. He is violent for the sake of being violent – he is a sadist who enjoys the suffering of other people as we see here, “Drake was more than a little scary. Kids who defied Drake or any of his so-called sheriff’s had been slapped, punched, pushed, knocked down or, in one case, dragged into a bathroom and given a swirlie. Fear of Drake was replacing fear of the unknown.” Now, we still don’t get to see the full extent of Drake’s madness here. Most of the crimes listed are pretty mundane bully things – they’re still wrong, but they aren’t life-threatening. He hasn’t bashed anyone’s head in with a baseball bat. While Caine is playing with politics, Drake seems unable to move past his role of high school bully. If he had played it right, the role of Sheriff would have been perfect for him. I mean, how many actual police officers get away with literal murder in the name of “upholding the law”?? But he is unable of seeing the bigger picture, unable to grow and fit the new world order as Caine does so naturally, and so, instead of properly taking on the role of Sheriff and building up his own authority in this way, he turns back to his tried and tested method – hurt them and they’ll fall in line.

I particularly enjoy this as I think it explains, a little bit more, why he hates Diana and Astrid so much. Now I know the bottom line is simply that he is a violent misogynist – but that doesn’t explain why he hates Diana and Astrid specifically. Is it because they’re both attractive women and he is unable to distinguish sex and violence in his head?? Partly yes, but then Taylor is also described as attractive (and most people find her annoying) and yet he doesn’t seem to hate her to this extent. I think the real reason he hates these two specifically, more than anyone else, is because he simply cannot understand them – and that scares him (although he is unwilling to admit it). Drake only knows how to gain power through violence – he sees this work at home, he used it on Holden, he used it to gain his reputation at Coates and, although he has the ability to gain authority in other ways, he continues to use this method even now in the FAYZ. Diana and Astrid cannot do this, they are not fit to fight, they are not able to use violence to assert their status – and yet they both have more power in the FAYZ than he does. They make him question his whole world view and, as he cannot or will not adapt to the new hierarchy of the FAYZ, he resorts to trying to destroy them, in order to return the world to what it was before. His hatred of others gaining power through (what he sees as) unconventional means is then further established with his dislike of actual powers and the people who have them:

“I’m sick of all this powers crap. You saw what we did to freaks at Coates?? Who do you think it was that took care of that?? All these kids with their stupid so-called powers. Starting fires and moving stuff around and reading your mind and all?? Who do you think it was grabbed them one by one in their sleep and beat them down and when they woke up their hands were setting in a block of cement??

[…]

That’s right. And I didn’t even have a gun then. It’s not about who’s got powers, morons. It’s about who’s not afraid. And who’s going to do what has to be done.”

We get told by Diana that it was Drake’s idea to cement the kids in the first place (and a bad one at that) and I really think that is all the evidence you need to see that Drake’s hatred and fear all stem from his complete inability to adapt. He is trapped in a cycle of abuse that started with his father, a police officer who teaches him how to shoot people (however unwillingly) and is then continued by his step-father (an actual abuser) rendering him incapable of recognising any kind of authority if it is not gained from violent means. And so of course he hates the powers – none of the kids gained their powers through suffering or through causing suffering. They didn’t earn their authority in any valid way, according to him. (This is also another reason why I think Drake was so ecstatic at gaining his whip-hand. He suffered for it and therefore, in his twisted mind, he earned it. It is physical proof of his supposed power over these kids.) It’s tragic really – but mg then goes on to make him so disgustingly unsympathetic that his story loses its meaning. I love mg’s writing but Drake’s character truly was butchered for shock value and plot convenience and it makes me so sad.

Ok back to Chapter 16. Here, not only do we hear about some of the things that Drake is capable of, but we see them as well. His beat-down of Orc is the first indicator we get that Drake is someone we should really be afraid of. Heads up, this is a long quote:

“Nobody move,’ Drake said.                                                                                    Orc pushed Edilio off and jumped to his feet. He started kicking Edilio, landing size-eleven Nike blows into Edilio’s defensive arms. Sam jumped in to help his friend, but Drake was quicker. He stepped behind Orc, grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head back, and smashed his elbow into Orc’s face. Blood poured from Orc’s nose, and he howled in rage. Drake hit him again and released Orc to fall to the concrete.                                                                                                ‘Which part of “nobody move” did you not understand, Orc?’ Drake demanded. Orc rose to his knees and went for Drake like a linebacker, Drake stepped aside, nimble as a matador. He stuck his hand out and said to Chaz, ‘Give me that.’    Chaz handed him the bat.                                                                                        Drake hit Orc in the ribs with a short, sharp forwards thrust of the bat. Then again in the kidneys and again in the side of the head. Each blow was measured, accurate, effective. Orc rolled over on to his back, helpless, exposed. Drake pushed the thick end of the bat against Orc’s throat.                                  ‘Dude. You really need to learn to listen when I talk.’                                              Then Drake laughed, stepped back, twirled the bat in the air, caught it and rested it on his shoulder. He grinned at Sam.”

“Sam had gone up against bullies before. But he’d never seen anything like Drake Merwin. Orc outweighed Drake by at least fifty pounds, but Drake had handled him like a little toy action figure.”

Orc has already been established as the top bully in Perdido beach – we’ve already seen that our main character is afraid of him – and for good reason. And so for Orc to be defeated so casually and so easily is shocking. It lets us know that the old world order has collapsed and old fears are fading away with it, with new, much more threatening adversaries taking their place. I actually think that this scene was exceptionally clever of mg. Drake is attacking someone who has already been set up as an antagonist, at the same time rescuing Edilio, who the reader has been conditioned to like. But, through context clues, we know that this is not a good thing. It sets up the villainous nature of the Coates kids, Orc’s redemption, Drake and Orc’s rivalry and Sam’s fear of Drake. And it feels natural, even after re-reading the book multiple times. It’s scenes like these that really remind me how great of a writer mg is.

Another thing I really wanted to talk about here IS Drake and Orc’s rivalry because, yet again, I think mg missed a huge opportunity with this. Drake and Orc are very similar before, and in the early days of the FAYZ. Both have abusive fathers (a step-father in Drake’s case but still), both enjoy asserting their power over people through violent means and both are put in positions of power that they are unable to fully take advantage of – Sheriff and Sheriff Deputy. And even as the books continue, similarities can still be found. They both suffer mutations that turn their bodies into grotesque weapons, dehumanising them and alienating them from their peers and That Scene in Plague tells us that Orc and Drake sometimes have similar “desires”. Their stories are constantly intertwined, with them being played off of each other from the start and Orc becoming Drake’s jailor later on (and in turn Drake sort of becoming his). Their differences come from their reactions to the horrific acts of violence they have committed – and of course why they do them. I’m going to make a whole separate post on this because it’s long enough to be a standalone, but my I just wish mg had played up both their similarities and differences more. It would have made Drake so much more interesting.

We also get more hints at his sadism in this scene. He is later unbothered that Betty has been hurt and it seems that the only reason he attacked Orc was because it gave him an opportunity to assert his dominance over him. All in all, this is one of my personal favourite scenes in the book as it establishes characters, themes and relationships very well. I just wish some of these had been developed further – but mg dropping certain aspects of the story does seem to be a common problem.

The final thing I wanted to talk about in regards to Drake’s personality and character is this line we get in Chapter 23, “It was small, just two bedrooms, very neat, very organised, the way Drake liked things.” This was another thing that irked me slightly. It’s such a small aspect of his characterisation but it reinforced the idea that drake is just another cookie-cutter villain with no real personality, nothing that makes him stand out in the sea of white male psychopaths with a hatred for women. His whole character could be replaced with any other misogynistic psychopath at no detriment to the story. My immediate though when reading this was that even the smallest aspects of his character can be seen in other, more developed villains – this line in particular is hugely reminiscent of Patrick Bateman. Nothing seems to be his own. No aspect of his character is even remotely unique. (I think this may also be why some young fans develop an obsession with him. His character is comfortable because we’ve seen it so many times before.) He is so entirely replaceable and replicable - only reason he isn’t completely forgettable is because you are constantly plagued by the horrific things he has done. Mg sacrificed depth and development for shock value and it’s so disappointing

3.) DRAKE’S PAST

Onto Drake’s life before the FAYZ. Not only does Drake receive some of the longest and most POV time in this book, he is also the character whose life before the FAYZ we learn the most about (with the possible exception of Sam). This is especially shocking to think about seen as Drake is arguably one of the most underdeveloped characters in the whole book, but anyway. There are two scenes I’m going to talk about here, both occurring in Chapter 23, with the first being his dad teaching him how to shoot. I apologise in advance for the long quote:

“His father had taught him how to shoot, using his service pistol. Drake still remembered the first time.

[…]

He remembered the way his father had taught him to grip the butt firmly but not too tight. To rest his right hand in the palm of his left and sight carefully, to turn his body sideways to present a smaller target if someone was shooting back. His father had had to yell because they were both wearing ear protection.                  ‘If you’re target shooting, you centre the front sight in the notch of the rear sights. Raise it till your sights are sitting right under your target. Let your breath out slowly and squeeze.’                                                                                          That first bang, the recoil, the way the gun jumped six inches, the smell of the powder – it was all as clear in Drake’s mind as any memory he had.                                                                                                                                                   […]

‘What if I’m not shooting if I’m not shooting at a target?’ He’d asked his father. ‘What if I’m shooting at a person?’                                                                          ‘Don’t shoot a person,’ his father had said. But then he relented, relieved no doubt to find something he could share with his disturbing son. ‘Different people will tell you different techniques. But if it’s me, say I’m doing a traffic stop and I think I see he citizen reaching for a weapon, and I’m thinking I may have to take a quick shot? I just point. Point like the barrel is a sixth finger. You point and if you have to fire, you shoot half the clip, bang, bang, bang, bang.’                    ‘Why do you shoot so many times?’                                                                    ‘Because if you have to shoot, you shoot to kill. Situation like that, you’re not aiming carefully for his head or his heart, you’re pointing at the centre of mass and you’re hoping you get a lucky shot., but if you don’t, if all you’re hitting is shoulder or belly, the sheer velocity of the rounds will knock him down.”

Ok so the first thing I want to analyse here, is how important this memory clearly is to Drake. He remembers it fondly, in immense detail and seems to call back on it when he needs to clear his head (notice how this memory is placed while Drake is trying to figure out what to do, not while he is doing it.) It seems that rather than just using this memory as a source of useful information, it is also a source of comfort to him. Now there are some things that I really wish mg had told us that would help to analyse this scene better, like: How old was Drake when this memory took place?? How old was Drake when his father died?? How did his father die?? But alas, we don’t know these things (at least not that I’m aware of, and not within this book) so I’m going to try and do the best I can with the information that we have. Now, in Light, Drake makes it seem like his step-fathers behaviour has been significant in forming his worldview – which makes sense, trauma does that. But he spends half of his time away at Coates, which says to me that for this behaviour to have had such a profound effect on him, his step-father must have been around for a while. Right?? I’m gonna take a guess at 3-4 years at the least. Give Drake’s mother about a year to meet and start dating this man after the passing of her husband – this means that Drake would have been around 9/10 at the latest when this scene took place. That’s pretty young. Like, this is a formative memory and from the way it’s written, it seems like this may be some of the only bonding that Drake and his father ever did together. No wonder Drake has such an unhealthy obsession with guns as is seen with these quotes:

“He started from Astrid’s house, which was already beginning to smoke. He worked his way methodically, a hunter, looking for any movement. Each time he spotted someone walking or running or biking, he would take a look at them through the rifle scope, line them up in the crosshairs.                                        He felt like God. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger.” – Chapter 23

“Drake kept all three guns loaded all the time. They were set out on the dining room table, a display, something to be gazed at lovingly.” – Chapter 23

“Drake could not leave the gun alone. He kept thumbing the safety on and off. He rolled down the window and aimed it at stop signs as they passed, but did not fire.” – Chapter 31

Drake shooting Sam and his gleeful reaction – Chapter 34

For him, guns are the ultimate symbol of power and authority. He was introduced to these weapons of incredible power at such a young age – of course he loves them. That being said, it seems that Drake has always been “disturbed” so I suppose we can’t fully blame his father and step-father for his mind-set – and I have to say I don’t really like this. Drake’s issue as a character is that he is completely de-humanised by all the horrific things he does. By having it seem like Drake was irredeemable from the off-set, it just adds to this idea and again removes any possible depth or character development. Imo it would have been much better to present Drake as becoming the way he is AFTER his father’s death. It would bring a sense of tragedy to his character – the way he uses his father’s advice to hunt down Astrid would seem less like a by-product of his sadism and more like a misguided attempt to feel connected to his deceased father.

However, flawed though it is, this scene does give us some insight as to why Drake is the way he is – through the characterisation of his father. Admittedly we don’t get much, but one line really stood out to me, “Because if you have to shoot, you shoot to kill.” Ummm..sir?? I don’t think that’s how police officers work. Isn’t your goal to incapacitate – not to just kill on sight?? The fact that he not only stands by this rule himself, but also gives this advice to his CHILD is disconcerting. Drake is not only receiving this harmful rhetoric from his father figure but also a police officer. Someone who is meant to uphold the law. I think this links back to my earlier point on how Drake only recognises authority if it is gained by violent means. While we get no indication that his real father was ever violent to Drake or his mother, he openly tells Drake that when he is upholding the law (in this hypothetical situation) he does it by using force. That is a dangerous thing to tell a child, especially a child who you already think is disturbed. This twisted-take on a father-son relationship nicely sets the precedent for Drake’s warped perceptions, I just wish it had been developed further. And this leads us nicely into the next scene – the shooting of Holden:

“He remembered with vivid, slow-motion detail the time he had shot Holden, the neighbour’s kid who liked to come over and annoy him. That had been a bullet to the thigh, with a low-level calibre gun, and still the kid had nearly died. That ‘accident’ had landed Drake at Coates.”

Again, first and foremost I just wish we had a little bit more information. It is not clear whether this situation occurred before or after his father’s death – which seems like a pretty important detail to me. Although, we don’t actually find out that Drake’s father is dead within this book, and this omission again makes me feel like mg adding that detail was little more than an after-thought. It feels like in Light he wanted to quickly try and make Drake more of a sympathetic character and so he added in an abusive step-dad to try and tone down or at least explain Drake’s violence and misogyny. It seems like Drake is a plot-point first and a character second and the lack of detail here really highlights that for me. What purpose did these scenes really have in the story?? They did very little to flesh out his character, they introduced no new themes or relationships. It seems like mg just wanted to let us know – “Hey! Drake knows how to use a gun. That’s gonna be important later.” That being said, there are a couple of other things I would like to quickly mention. Firstly, I think the fact that Drake did not aim to kill Holden, even though he could have, is meant to be indicative of his change between then and now. It’s done to tell us that Drake wasn’t always this bad – there was at one point some hope. For this to have the desired effect though, I really think mg should have waited until after Drake lost his arm to straight up try and murder Astrid and Little Pete. Like, you can’t tell us that Drake was a little messed up but still redeemable before his maiming and then go and have him try to kill a random girl and her five year old brother. Because that’s more than a little messed up (and that’s not even mentioning the cementing). And it also contrasts the idea that Drake has always been disturbed. An idea that was introduced to us not even a page ago!! The other thing I wanted to pick up on, which I actually quite liked, is the ambiguous “who liked to come over and annoy him.” Because this is Drake’s point of view – so “annoy” could mean anything. Was Holden actually just an annoying kid?? Was he just trying to be Drake’s friend?? Or was he actually a bully and Drake doesn’t want to admit it?? I guess we’ll never know.

4.) DRAK’ES MOTIVATIONS

For this point, I wanted to focus on three particular motivators: Caine, Diana and Astrid. These are the three people, I believe, who provide, either consciously or unconsciously, the motivation for his actions within the FAYZ. I’ll start first with Astrid and Diana, the two people who Drake hates the most. Throughout this book it is clear that Drake has no real goals – he has no desire to be in control like Caine, no desire to re-invent the world like Albert. All he wants is to cause pain, with his preferred targets being these two. And, as I’ve said before, I think this is partly because he hates the authority that they have within the FAYZ – which stems from manipulation and intelligence rather than violence.

In Chapter 20, Drake explains his hatred for Diana, “Drake had made the time to check out Diana’s psych file the day after the FAYZ came. But her file had been missing by then. In its place she had left Drake’s file lying open on the doc’s desk and drawn a little smiley face beside the word ‘sadist’.                                Drake had already hated her. But after that, hating Diana had become a full-time occupation.” What I take from this scene, is that Drake’s loathing stems from Diana’s ability to get under his skin, to make him feel inferior – to annoy him. (Perhaps Holden had a similar talent). I’m going to assume that his prior hatred of her can be boiled down to his misogyny and his disgust at Caine’s weakness for her, both of which have been explicitly stated in the text. His hatred after this though, comes from a pretty mundane incident. I mean all she did was get there quicker, and do exactly what he was going to do to her. And so I think this loathing is less about what she did and more about his own personal reaction to it. Diana was able to weaponise Drake’s own anger against him – to make him feel inferior and powerless. She challenges Drake’s fragile perception of authority and takes a diagnosis that he seems to not only be ok with, but is actually proud of, and makes him feel embarrassed. His whole perception of power is rooted in the idea that his ability to inflict pain on others with no guilt or remorse is what makes him better, it is what gives him his power. But she takes this idea and belittles him for it and so his initial reaction is to attack. This is an idea that is again seen with Astrid. Astrid intentionally tries to make Drake feel inferior by bringing up his biggest insecurity, Diana’s treatment of him “Doesn’t it bother you that Diana treats you like some wild animal she keeps on a leash?” And she does escape him – twice. Her and her autistic brother (and we already know how Drake feels about autistic people). She also proves herself to be more intelligent than him, in their little argument over the r-slur. Drake only gets violent after he realises that, in an intellectual sense, she has more power than him. It seems to be his defence mechanism just as much as his pleasure – and therefore Astrid and Diana’s power over him motivates him to use it.

Now onto Caine. Caine and Drake’s relationship is, for me, one of the most interesting aspects of Drake’s character and while I’ll only be mentioning it in its capacity as a motivator here, I have a whole post planed out for it. Drake seems to simultaneously hate Caine and admire him. He is constantly looking to impress him and the only time we ever see Drake think about betraying him in this book is when Caine gives his attention to Diana rather than Drake. And, because of this, I can kind of understand why people ship them (although I personally dislike the idea of Drake being gay). A lot of the time this motivation is completely unprompted by Caine himself, like in these quotes:

“Drake cursed and, again, for just a moment, felt the almost desperate fear of failing Caine. He wasn’t worried about what Caine would do to him – after all, Caine needed him – but he knew if he failed to carry out Caine’s orders, Diana would laugh.” – Chapter 23

“I got him’ Drake announced. ‘I got them all.’                                                    ‘Yes, you did,’ Caine said. ‘Good work, Drake.” – Chapter 34

In Chapter 23, it seems that both Drake’s need to impress Caine and his need to prove to himself that he is better than Diana are his main motivators for his extreme attack on Astrid. I think it’s important to note that he only planned on trying to catch her, until Caine told him to kill her. His sadistic nature is brought out in full because he needs to prove himself to Caine. But why does he?? If he is planning on taking over from Caine in the end, why does he have a “desperate fear of failing Caine”?? Sure, part of it is his desire to prove himself to be better than Diana. But even this has roots in his absolute need for Caine to take notice of him. Drake is drawn to Caine because of his power and authority over people. Caine seems to be the closest thing that Drake can get to an equal, someone who shares the same motivations, ambitions and worldview (of course Caine and Drake do not share these things, but Drake doesn’t realise this…yet.) He seeks validation from Caine because he wants to have these things in common with someone – yet another motivation for his hatred of Diana as she constantly gets in the way of this.

We also know that Caine is, at least, partly aware of his effect on Drake. He is paranoid that Drake will turn on him (because Caine sees being equal to someone as relinquishing power) and he is able to manipulate Drake’s misguided feelings when he wants to – most notably in Chapter 36:

“It’s not Diana or Chunk or even me,’ Caine said. ‘It’s none of us, Drake. It’s Sam. It’s Sam who did this to you, Drake. You want him to get away with it? Or do you want to live long enough to make him suffer?”

This is such a clever moments as it sets up Drake’s whole character in Hunger, and it’s false. Because yes, Sam is the one who burned Drake’s arm and Drake has every right and reason to hate him. But it was Caine who abandoned him to save himself. And it was Caine who refused to let Drake die, even though he was begging for it (and let’s face it, he didn’t refuse to kill him out of any affection – it was a selfish decision.) But Drake is so desperate for that equal, for that validation that his worldview is correct and is shared by another person, that he just idk forgets?? He never brings up this conversation again and just accepts Caine’s word as gospel. I have so much more to say about their relationship but, as I said, I’ll save it for a later post.

5.) DRAKE’S MENTAL STATE

And finally, we have Drake’s mental state. Now I’m not going to try and give him an official diagnosis or anything, but I wanted to make a small point specifically about his mental state after his maiming. I think we can all agree that what Drake went through was pretty horrific, and while I personally struggle to feel any amount of sympathy for him due his own list of horrific crimes, the change he goes through after this is extremely significant, or at least it’s supposed to be. I think mg wants us to believe that Drake’s descent into madness was directly cause by the loss of his arm, and that before that he did have the chance to be redeemed. I think whether you buy into this depends on how forgiving you are, but I want to focus more on the actual proof of change that we see.

I’ve already talked about the physical changes he goes through, and the implications of this so I’m going to focus solely on his mental state during and partly after the whole ordeal. I think the first and most important thing to talk about is the fact that Drake didn’t actually want to survive:

“Don’t cut off my arm,’ Drake cried. ‘Let me die. Just let me die. Shoot me.” – Chapter 36

He would rather die than lose his arm (his gun arm to be specific). Now, while I don’t doubt that the burning was indescribably painful, I’m still not sure that the majority of people would beg for death. Especially when an alternative (in this case losing his arm) is presented. Not to mention, he doesn’t actually talk about the pain when begging for his death – what he talks about is the loss of his arm. Of course it could be argued that the reason he didn’t want his arm to be cut off is because he knew it would mean more pain, but I don’t think that this is the case. Rather, I think that Drake is so scared of losing the power that he has, that he would genuinely rather die. This 14 year old boy is so messed up that his own death is preferable to the idea of no longer being able to hurt people. And so when he gets his power back, he doubles down. He has realised by this point what he truly wants, that he would rather die than be rendered powerless, so he begins committing more heinous acts (like attacking the prees). Pair this with the amount of pain that he went through, which most definitely will have had an effect on his already damaged brain, and you can see how a high-school bully became what he did. The groundwork for an interesting and though-provoking character was right here. I think yet again the problem with his character is the execution. Interesting aspects of his personality are dropped in favour of plot convenience and shock value and it cheapens his character as a whole until all the intended nuances are lost and over-shadowed.

I’m really sorry if this is a bit all over the place and not quite as polished as my other posts. I found Drake so difficult to write about and so my thoughts kept going haywire. Thank you so much for reading (and being patient with my brain). I hope you enjoy!!

[mudwingpropaganda]

Queen Glory of the RainWings

Ye of terrible governmental implications! The replacement Dragonet of Destiny, her Majesty of the Rain Forest, and who knows what else. There’s a lot to be said about Glory, a victim of abuse, a part in the cycle of violence, and the child who knew better than an entire queendom of dragons. Glory is an unfortunate character, both personally and in the story as a whole. 

I have a lot of opinions about Glory. Bless yourself upon them if you deserve so.

Design Headcanon

Despite appearing colorful and bright, especially among her fellow dull scaled siblings, her scales are much plainer than a traditional RainWing’s. Most of which tend to have terribly neon scales correlating with their emotions. Glory tends to have disgusted green and irritable red scales reflecting her mood. The yellow is simply an accent, but mistaken by her subjects as muted amusement. Her scales easily flinch along to her emotions, but she finds that showing these colors gains the respect of her subjects, rather than lose it like she did with the guardians, who never truly did pick up on what these colors meant.

Glory has inspiration from a few different animals. Chameleons are out of the way. She also has a similar “beak” to a swan, a dark area on her face that she simply can’t change the color of. She also has dexterous claw talons, excellent for gripping onto trees or delicate dexterity. And the oddest thing about RainWings is that they initially appear wingless, similar to a draco lizard. RainWing ribs expand and and glide rather than the intense flying that most dragons do, which made her appear weaker than her fellow dragonets of destiny. She always keeps her wings flared, which is risky and makes her underside vulnerable, but it was better than being called a wingless serpent by her guardians.

Glory is a very cautious individual. She doesn’t walk until she knows where she’s going. She won’t begin to walk until she’s sure she can get there confidently. Glory is surprisingly prideful and avoids not to waste her breath, even if she chooses the wrong battles to fight.

Implication of Heritage

If I were to write Glory, I would completely boot out the idea that Glory was biologically destined for the throne. The whole moment where Grandeur spills her guts and explains the whole narrow-minded royal blood idea, that was stupid. Because it implies that all overcoming of adversity will be rewarded with the fact that all those who deserve it will be rewarded with their desires, not for hard work they used to achieve those goals, but simply because they’re supposed to.

Instead, I would make Kinkajou a convenient character in the scene to have a moment of importance, but it doesn’t mean she’ll be the new queen. But I’ll get to that later on. Grandeur will recognize Glory’s selfless and initiative as the prime reason she is more deserving to be queen. The idea that she’s fighting so desperately to help the NightWing prisoners, and that’s reflected by how she puts away the chance to win the Queen Competition for the life of this little dragonet.

Glory should have been Queen through initiative and new perspective, not the idea that she was “smarter” than the RainWings or that the RainWings were too “lazy” to have a functioning leader. She should have been a respectable character who overcomes her biting remarks to be truly selfless, put aside her needs and desires to help this tribe. Be the leader that Sunny would look up to.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Glory doesn’t honestly get the proper respect as a grumpy character considering the trauma she’s went through and considering her entire life has been ruined as those who raised her repeatedly told her she shouldn’t exist and that they ought to kill her. Not as an empty threat! The acceptance of her situation seemed so understated (until it was revealed she had a plan) and no one really respects that she had the shortest end of the stick compared to the other Dragonets of Destiny. 

Along with that, I feel like it’d be interesting if Glory had an innate distrust or fear or SOMETHING of SkyWings. After being berated by a SkyWing guardian, being meant to be a SkyWing her whole life, Clay unintentionally claiming Peril as the missing SkyWing, and being prisoner and biggest prize of Queen Scarlet of the SkyWings, I don’t see why she wouldn’t be a little more afraid or hostile in a scenario with one. 

One headcanon of mine is that Glory has narcolepsy, a byproduct of not getting enough sun as a sun dependent tribe. She frequently lost control of her muscles during sparring practice with Kestrel, leading her to slither helplessly and worsen her image. She pardoned her sleepiness through consistent naps Under the Mountain, but it became harder to excuse after they left the mountain. Once the sun hit her scales on the marble tree in Scarlet’s clutches, she finally gave in and slept for a majority of that time, otherwise overwhelmed and unable to move. Unfortunately, along with classic form of narcolepsy, Glory also has hallucinations. She often interprets her hallucinations as Kestrel or Queen Scarlet, long after their deaths. Despite denying special treatment as the RainWing Queen, she does give into sun times to satiate the urge in her to rest.

Narcolepsy is also described as being triggered by high surges of emotion. Another reason why Glory does her best to suppress her emotions, to stay in control of her consciousness.

It can negatively affect relationships with other people by being triggered during these surges of emotion and as a result, Glory is not quite as emotionally connected to her siblings as the others are. As the consequences of the war subsides, she wishes to try making up for lost time and finally respond to her narcolepsy instead of be frustrated and angry with it.

Glory’s reign of the Rain Forest Queendom is characterized not by her inherent intelligence over the other RainWings. In fact, a majority of the beginning of her rule is learning the rich history and important traditions of RainWings from Duke Handsome. Due to her unfamiliarity with oral history, her first order is to try and record as much history and as many orders as possible to keep the RainWings’ respect and learn about her own culture. 

As well as that, Glory steels herself, with the sympathy of her siblings, Prince Jambu, Duke Handsome, and the other Queens, when ruling the NightWings. So easily could she take out her anger on these innocent victims of their own actions. But in the end, she learns it’s more important to be the bigger person and move forward in peace, not dwell in hatred.

Despite that, Glory is still apprehensive before directly meeting with SkyWing figures such as Queen Ruby. 

Glory and Tsunami probably have the closest relationship out of any of the other Dragonets of Destiny. Tsunami looks up to Glory as a queen and Glory makes fun of her lack of royal blood for it. Tsunami, after apprenticing with General Shark, also assists in the disciplining and order in the Rain Forest Queendom. Tsunami, Sunny, and Glory are the main royalty figures establishing a fairer justice system in the Rain Forest so there are no more Chameleons and that individuals like Mastermind have a place to go.

LGBT+ Headcanons

Glory, for a large part of the story we see her, is probably questioning her orientation. She’s never felt the right to be loved and never been able to emotionally connect with anyone enough to feel worthy of affection. Eventually, she comes out as a lesbian! Proudly leading her two tribes with acceptance and understanding. The Rain Forest proudly leads the largest Pride Parades with the SandWing queendom following closely behind. (Which means Deathbringer x Glory is not canon in my headcanons! He can ROT.)

Glory is also a trans woman! She did not embrace it easily with the role models she had growing up. She had always been told she was born incorrectly (for OTHER reasons, but it’s for the metaphor), but with the unconditional support from her siblings, especially her solidarity with Starflight, she was able to come to terms with her identity and be even more prideful because of it. Fully taking her destiny and her life into her own talons has empowered her more than anything after the events of the SandWing War of Succession.

[nandoor]

guillermo & why he wants to be a vampire (aka a long rambling meta post): 

tw for mention of suicide/suicidal ideation 

i’ve got 3 ideas rolling around in my head but tbh i think aspects of all 3 ideas are valid/plausible given what we know of guillermo so far

1) unhappiness as a human: 

it’s very clear that guillermo did not have the easiest childhood. he makes numerous references to being bullied growing up & even his mannerisms, the way he dresses, & his way of speaking suggest years of verbal & physical abuse for being who he is. 

whether vampirism will actually make him happier (which, honestly, it might--i mean he has devoted over a decade of his life at this point so guillermo is, at the very least, convinced this is 100% what he wants) is debatable, but it would be a considerably different life for him & that may be enough. 

i think it’s fair to say that up until finding out vampires were real and that he could potentially become a vampire if he acted as a vampire’s familiar, guillermo was likely depressed & unhappy with life. frankly, i can’t imagine a human wanting to be a vampire unless they were terribly bored or upset w/ their current lot in life. 

2) vampirism as a metaphor and/or substitute for suicide--aka does guillermo actually want to be a vampire?: 

this ties in w/ option #1 but the difference here is that guillermo seeking out a vampire to turn him was, ultimately, a substitute for suicide. 

suicidal ideation isn’t always big, grand dangerous gestures. maybe you don’t wear a seatbelt on purpose when driving or you don’t pay attention when crossing the street in heavy traffic or you encourage/build bad habits (i.e., excessive drinking, smoking, drug abuse, and/or other unsafe practices). & purposefully searching for vampires seems like a wwdits universe equivalent at the very least given the inherent danger involved. 

in this way, you can see guillermo’s desire to be a vampire less of an ambition & more of a desperate attempt for something that will make him happy--or, specifically, a way to regain control of a life he no longer feels is worth living. furthermore, even the act of being a familiar is dangerous & almost an admission of a death wish--guillermo had seen countless of familiars employed to nadja & laszlo die, but he never stopped being nandor’s familiar despite facing death on numerous occasions. 

at the end of the day, in the wwdits universe, becoming a vampire requires you to die. if you want to become a vampire, you are embracing the idea of dying. your heart stops. your brain ceases to function. your soul leaves your body and the ghost of your human self drifts off into the land of the dead. & when you wake as a vampire, you will have more in common with a corpse than with a living, breathing human. you subsist on the literal lifeblood of others much like a ghost might need an object to haunt/possess to remain in the living world. 

take for instance laszlo--some of his dialogue reveals that he was quite unhappy as a human & also was likely destined to die sometime soon (from the plague). once nadja turns him into a vampire, however, he is unbelievably happy. he loves & cares for nadja deeply--he feels no resentment towards her for his turning even if it wasn’t necessarily consensual at the time. &, unlike nandor & nadja, who seemingly wax poetic about their ‘human’ days (most likely bc they were both turned against their will/were not actually unhappy w/ their human lives), laszlo seems to care very little about talking about his human life. his real ‘life’ began the moment he met nadja, plain & simple. 

which brings us back to guillermo. if being a vampire hunter can give him the autonomy, power, and community he craved in his original pursuit to become a vampire, than i honestly don’t think guillermo will want to be a vampire anymore. because it wasn’t about being a vampire--it was about finding something to live for. of course i personally think that we don’t need to find something to live for--rather, we should learn to just live for ourselves if possible but i digress.

3) the happiest option: he genuinely loves vampires/vampire culture (?): 

not much to say here other than guillermo is in it for the #aesthetic. or, rather, he was in it for the aesthetic at first but i doubt something as vapid as simply enjoying the /idea/ of vampires would keep anyone in the role of familiar for over 10 yrs. he also probably clung to the idea that being a vampire would fix all his ‘human’ problems, make his lifelong self-esteem issues & desire for community disappear if he was able to successfully integrate himself in a group that would accept him for who he was, eccentricities and all. he wants to be his 100% authentic self & vampires are a group that will pretty much welcome anyone into their fold (ex: we’ve got jenna, who parallels guillermo pretty well, & was accepted by nadja & eventually laszlo w/ open arms as she was. like nadja didn’t make her change or doll her up or anything like that--jenna is still the same jenna from before she grew fangs... just w/ a severe sun allergy & a strictly liquid diet lmao) 

+ bonus crack idea: guillermo’s obsession w/ vamps is actually a byproduct of his van helsing heritage. i love the idea that his wires got super crossed thanks to watching iwtv/reading anne rice novels as a kid & instead of feeling disgust or hatred for vamps, he falls head over heels w/ them as a metaphor for the ‘otherness’ that he felt growing up (assumedly as a gay POC in a strict catholic household). 

like just imagine abraham van helsing’s ghost rolling in his grave over the fact that one of his strongest descendants is actually hopelessly in love with a vampire a vampire’s familiar. 

van helsing: ok so this is all a plot to kill the vampires once you’ve gained their trust, yes? 

van helsing 10+ yrs later: ...you’ve got to be kidding me :/

[popatochisssp]

for the diamond skellies, when was the moment they felt 'must protect and cherish' for their seaglass?

Ohohoho, fantastic question!

Sans (Undertale): Blue Diamond has his realization the first time they tell a bad joke. Not just any bad joke, mind you, a really bad one, a terrible joke that was a totally predictable cliche and probably not even that funny, but they just… say it one day, looking up at him with that, ‘waiting for you to realize the bad joke’ face and… welp, that’s it, he’s done– he adores this gem.

Papyrus (Undertale): Orange Diamond is dedicated to protecting and cherishing his Sea Glass from the very beginning! That’s his job, as a Diamond, to protect and care for all the gems in his court, and in other courts, and all over Homeworld, and across all their colonies! But… really the moment is the first time his Sea Glass gives him a genuine compliment. He gets a lot of compliments, as a vibrant and impressive Diamond of course, but getting so many… he knows the difference between a real compliment and a pleasantry for manners’ sake and many of them seem to be…the latter. So genuine compliments, said just because, are all the more precious to him! 

Sky (Underswap Sans): Yellow Diamond falls head over heels the first time he sees his Sea Glass perform their talent for him. He sees their skill but more importantly, he sees their passion, their love for their art form, and maybe that in and of itself isn’t altogether special, but it feels…unique. He knows with certainty that no other being could do exactly that, in the exact same way, and that this Sea Glass is genuinely special. Of course he’s going to protect that!

Paps (Underswap Papyrus): Green Diamond’s realization…sneaks up on him. The funny part is, nothing in particular even brings it on? He’s just…sitting there one day, looking over reports, weighing the merits of installing a new warp pad in Sector X7 versus just expanding the one in X8 when it’s due for repairs in a rotation or two, and… he looks down. And there’s his Sea Glass, sitting on the arm of his chair, not even doing anything, but……… It just hits him, right there in one understated yet totally devastating, ‘oh, shit…when’d that happen???’ moment.

Jasper (Underfell Sans): It happens for Red Diamond the moment he’s faced with the prospect of any kind of harm coming to them. Maybe his Sea Glass is too close by during an ambush, maybe something malfunctions and falls near them, or maybe it doesn’t even happen to them– maybe something happens to another Sea Glass, some other gem, made of the same stuff as his, ending up cracked or shattered or with a near-miss. That’s his realization moment, being faced with the abrupt and thoroughly unpleasant thought of what could’ve happened instead, and how very much Not Okay he is with that possibility. He’ll ensure they’re protected and cherished after that.

Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): Black Diamond realizes the first time he really scares them. Normally, he doesn’t care about frightening gems, guiltlessly using his aura or just his own natural, imperious presence to whatever purpose he deems necessary to his rule. …But. To see his Sea Glass– just one, breakable little Sea Glass– looking up at him with fear in their eyes…fear of him… It occurs to him that he…really…doesn’t like that… At all. He’ll try to puzzle out the ‘why’s and ‘how’s later, but he’ll gently scoop up his apparently special and important Sea Glass and pet them until either his aura wears off or they realize they’re not in danger. Because they aren’t– nothing is going to threaten them ever again, not if he has anything to say about it.

Mal (Swapfell Sans): Purple Diamond realizes the first time he sees them asleep. Sleep isn’t a typical gem activity, something they can do but not something they need, and he’s always thought of it as a waste of time; a waste of productivity, more importantly! But when it’s them, this little Sea Glass he’s rapidly become fond of… He sees how peaceful they look, and how soft and still and lovely… Maybe there’s something to this whole sleeping thing (and this gem in particular) after all. They wake to find themselves moved to their Diamond’s sternum, said Diamond asleep for the first time in…ever.

Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): Violet Diamond starts to fall head over heels the first time they talk to him like an equal. With many other Diamonds, especially ones one isn’t already close with, this is a supremely horrible move, dripping with implied disrespect and defiance of authority… but Violet is a very young Diamond who doesn’t stand much on authority and his metaphorical bleeding heart seeks connection and relationships! He has Purple, of course, which is good, but he also has this whole court who tiptoe around him a lot, always speaking formally and trying way too hard not to offend or anger him. It makes him feel…awkward…isolated… So to have another gem besides his brother actually see him, and talk to him, and treat him like he’s a normal person, he realizes right away that he’s found something very special in a Sea Glass like that! 

Slate (Horrortale Sans): Gray Diamond is utterly hopeless the moment he sees them glow. He doesn’t get all too many visitors, even overseeing gem production the way he does. Most of the gems he sees are ones he’s inspecting, or engineers, technicians, analysts– in short, gems who have to be there to do a job and leave when they’re done, cold and impersonal. Much as he adores his brother’s company, it gets lonely up at the top… so when his Sea Glass glows for him, it changes everything. They’re doing such a beautiful thing, and they’re doing it because of him, he made them happy! His own gem might start to glow a little too, in reaction, and he wouldn’t even notice, utterly transfixed on the far prettier light gleaming all through his favorite gem’s little body.

Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): Brown Diamond likes them from the start! Of course he does, he’s a very friendly Diamond who sees the beauty and worth in all gems, no matter how small or damaged! But that’s all it is, for a little while, just that basic respect and care because this Sea Glass is a living gem and that makes them special! The ‘something more’ doesn’t come until after he’s seen them meet Gray Diamond which is…something of a test? He doesn’t like to think of it as a ‘test,’ it feels…underhanded, somehow, or manipulative… But a lot of gems lose a fair bit of his favor failing this test, so he always pays attention to how they react to his cracked brother. Gray is very important to him, in spite of his damage, and anyone who views him with fear, disgust, or displeasure is not someone Brown Diamond cares to consort with. What would they think about him, if they knew about the surface-scratch on his gem that’s only barely hidden by the curving, angular cut of his gem? But! If his Sea Glass is kind to his brother, or only a little afraid because he’s a Diamond, then… then that’s… That’s something special! Something to pay extra attention to and cherish even harder than he already was!

[folkloreguk]

Spiderman!Kevin

A/N: I got a request to write anything about Kevin, and as a Kevin stan I was more than happy to do so! I’m also obsessed with Marvel and I’ve Always wanted to write a spiderman!au so yaaay I hope you like it! x

words: 3.1k

genre: fluff, slight angst (with a happy ending!)

[masterlist in description]

“Charlie! Where are you?” you shouted, holding a leash that had no dog on the other end. A second ago you had watched your little dog run after a stick you had thrown for him. The next he had spotted a squirrel and now there was no trace of him, as you wandered around central park aimlessly. In the distance the concrete jungle of New York surrounded you, and the sun was slowly setting on the horizon. But you had other problems to solve before you could go home. You needed to find your furry friend.

Inwardly you cursed the squirrels for leading your dog away, but you knew it was also your own fault for not paying enough attention. You tilt your head at a familiar bark. A spark of hope lit inside you. Quickly, you jogged off in the direction of the noise. A few people passed you, turning their heads at the way you were running, and your probably distressed expression.

Your heart almost jumped out of your chest when suddenly a figure landed in front of you.

“Kevin!” you screamed at the surprise. In his arms, he was holding your dog Charlie. 

“Are you crazy? Don’t shout my name around like that!” he claimed. Oh. Maybe it was important to mention that he was wearing his suit, a mask covering his face as always. Almost everyone in New York knew about the famous Spider Man, or, as he called himself, the friendly neighborhood Spider Man. Not many people knew of his real identity, though.

You had gone to school with him, and even though you weren’t extremely close, when you had gotten paired up for a project, you had gotten to know each other. And one day he had invited you over, to finish the project. It hadn’t been your intention to find his costume. But you had brought your dog along and when he had suddenly appeared, a Spiderman mask in his mouth, Kevin didn’t have a lot of options. He had to tell you. And you promised his secret would be safe with you.

“If I’m not mistaken, this one is yours,” Kevin now said, holding a happy looking Charlie in his arms.

“Thank you,” you said, gladly taking the dog from him. “He must’ve chased a squirrel.”

“Oh, what would you even do without me?” Kevin joked, leaning against a tree, hiding a little from the rest of the park visitors. Even though you couldn’t see his face, you knew the way he was smirking under his mask all too well.

“I was fine, I had everything under control!” you explained.

“If you say so,” he said, and you couldn’t help but smile at his playful tone. For a few seconds you stood in silence, waiting for someone to say something. So, you did.

“Don’t you have people to save? What are you doing here, flirting with me?” you asked.

“Hey! I was saving your dog, this definitely wasn’t an excuse to see you!” he said, and you knew he was lying. Kevin was always spying on you throughout the day. You didn’t exactly mind it, but you knew he should have other things to do then to wait for any little inconvenience that occurred in your life so he could solve it.

“If you say so,” you said, mocking his previous tone. “Goodnight, Kev.”  

Speaking of inconveniences, the next one metaphorically grabbed you by the collar the next morning. You were out to buy groceries. A gust of wind and downpour greeted you the second you set foot out of your apartment. You made a face of disgust and quickly opened your umbrella. Luckily, it was only a short walk to the store. The faces of the people you passed mirrored your discontent, and you fastened your steps. On a sunny day, you would have let your eyes roam the walls of the skyscrapers for a trace of Kevin. It was an automatic reaction by now. And whenever you would see him, waving at you from high up in the sky, your heart would flutter like a butterfly inside of your chest.

Finally, you had made it to the front of the store. Hastily, you lowered your umbrella, with the intention of closing it and quickly entering the shop. But mother nature had other plans. Just as you reached to close the umbrella, the strong wind picked up. A moment later it ripped the umbrella from your hands, and it flew up in the air and across the street, causing a car to stop abruptly. You felt bad for shocking the driver and were going to apologize, but they had already recovered and driven off before you could do so.

Your next priority was to get your umbrella back. The traffic was busy, as always in New York. Nonetheless, you searched for an opportunity to cross the street. You scanned the other side nervously, not even sure where your umbrella had gone. As you were watching, frustrated by the number of vehicles covering your sight, someone suddenly tapped your shoulder. Tensely, you turned.

“Kevin!” you said. Right away, he covered your mouth and you realized. He was in his Spiderman-suit.

“Sorry,” you spoke through his hand, your voice coming out in a muffle. Kevin couldn’t help but grin beneath his mask. But you didn’t know that. In his hand, he held your umbrella, unharmed and closed perfectly.

“How are you around just the moment the wind tries to steal my umbrella?” you asked.

“I was just on a stroll, and ran into you I guess,” he said. Again, you didn’t believe him. You almost wished you could have taken off his mask to see his face. You missed it.

“Well excuse me now, I need to find out whether they sell my favorite ice cream here,” you explained. “It was sold out last week.”

“Sounds like that’s one hell of a good ice cream,” Kevin said with a chuckle.

“Triple chocolate, that’s all I’m gonna say,” you said with a grin. Somewhere in the distance, you heard police sirens.

“And that’s my sign to go,” he said, awkwardly fiddling with his hands.

“Go on, save somebody,” you said, smiling shyly. “Thanks for bringing back my umbrella.”

And he was gone just as suddenly as he had appeared. Finally, you entered the store. And if you hadn’t already been annoyed enough because of the rain and the wind, the store was out of your favorite ice cream. You couldn’t believe it. Sadly, you needed to go to a meeting at your workplace in the afternoon, so you had no time to go and search another store. Sulking a little, you waited in the long queue to pay.

“Have a great day,” the young cashier told you. You nodded, thanked him and forced yourself to smile.

But as soon as you stepped back outside the store, your fake smile turned into a real one. On a street lamp post across the street, Kevin sat, watching you through his mask. He waved at you when you noticed him, and your grin only grew bigger. You returned his wave and mouthed ‘no ice cream’ whilst pulling an overly-dramatic, sad face. Although you couldn’t see his expression, you knew what his sympathetic smile looked like.

So, you went on your own way again. Back home. Happily, you watched as he swung himself up into the air and disappeared between the house blocks. At your flat, you quickly made yourself some lunch, before you had to leave for the work meeting. You were busy cleaning your plate, staring off into the distance through the window, when suddenly a figure jumped into your view. With a shriek, you almost dropped the dish and took a quick step back.

“What the hell was that for?” you asked, opening the window when you had finally realized it was no threat, but rather the only face you wanted to see right now.

In the cover of your flat, he could finally take off his mask for a moment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be right here in front of the window,” he apologized. “I just wanted to drop this off, before it melted.”

You instantly knew what he was talking about, but still shook your head in disbelief when he handed you the ice cream.

“Triple chocolate, for you,” he announced, smiling cutely. You could have kissed his face. But that would have been rather awkward, you suspected. So instead, you hugged him tightly.

“Thank you, Kevin,” you spoke, close to his ear. When you pulled away, you put on a more serious face.

“You know…you need to stop worrying about me all the time, and following me around,” you said carefully.

“Why? Is it creepy?” he asked.

“No, it’s…really sweet, actually,” you said. “But New York has a lot of residents. And they probably have bigger problem than losing their umbrella and not finding their favorite ice cream at the store.”

“I’m looking after everyone, don’t worry,” he assured you. “But I can’t stop thinking of you. So, I always wonder what you’re up to, whenever I have a free moment.”

You felt terribly shy at his confession. For a moment you thought of what to say. Should you confess your feeling to him, right here? What if he only cared about you platonically? Worries ran through your head and as much as you tried, you couldn’t push them away. Then, you took a quick look at the clock. And almost had a heart attack.

“Kevin! I’m late for the meeting!” you exclaimed, in panic. “Can we talk tonight? Will you come by when I get back home?”

He barely had time to reply a long answer, because you were running around frantically, searching for your bag and things you needed.

“I promise I’ll be here,” he said, giving you a little smile. “I’ll see you later. Be careful of the cars!”

As much as you tried to be careful, you still caused some of them to honk at you as you ran to your work place, which luckily was only a short walk from your apartment building. The elevator seemed to take forever to arrive at the ground floor, but when you got inside you were still short of breath. Nervously, you pressed the button to the 8th floor and went to your boss’ office. You made it, being only a minute late, which no one seemed to notice.

For hours you sat there, trying your hardest to focus on the meeting. But how could you have focused when Kevin was on your mind? You mentally prepared around six different speeches you could have given him that night, confessing to him. You were scared of how he was going to react, and somehow no words seemed good enough and seemed to express your feelings perfectly. Luckily, the meeting wasn’t a very important one, or you would have had to feel guilty about it. You smiled absentmindedly at the memory of Kevin bringing you ice cream while your eyes stared out of focus.

“Miss Y/N, what do you think about that?” your boss asked, and you snapped out of it. You had to be honest, you had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. Just as you opened your mouth to reply, a ringing tone made you jump.

“What is that?” somebody asked. Confusion broke out, until your boss spoke.

“That’s the fire alarm,” he said. Instantly, he had everyone’s full attention. Even yours. “We’re going to keep calm and leave the building now.”

Maybe it’s just practice, you told yourself, trying to relax. But when your boss opened the door into the hallway, you smelled the smoke right away.

“Is there anyone back there, still?” you asked, pointing your finger towards the opposite end the stairway was. Your co-worker wasn’t sure either. Although you knew you needed to get out as fast as possible, you knew and cared for the people who worked there a lot. And just a few days ago, you had gotten new co-workers, you remembered now. They would probably not even know their way around yet, you worried.

“I’m gonna run back there and check, you go ahead and I’ll join you when I’ve made sure no one’s left behind!” you ordered. Your co-worker didn’t seem happy with the idea. You heard shouts from somewhere, and you could have sworn you could see the smoke in the air now.

“Go on, get yourself to safety!” you shouted over the loud ringing noise of the alarm. So she turned around and ran toward the staircase. You took off into the other direction. Hastily, you pulled open door after door. The offices were spread all over the top floor, and by the time you had finished searching, the smoke had gone from thin to heavy and dark. Luckily, you found nobody.

When you stepped out of the last office into the hallway, a terrible coughing fit overcame you. Quickly, you stumbled back inside and slammed the door shut. Oh no, was all you could think. Your chest hurt from the coughs and your heart was hammering against your ribcage in fear. Quickly, you took off your thin jacket and ran to the sink. You soaked it in water and pressed it to your face. Although it made you feel slightly better, you knew it wasn’t going to save your life.

In panic, you ran to the windows. The fire escape stairs. This is it. A small hope lit inside of you.

“Come on! Open up!” you yelled at the window as you furiously tried to push it open. The building was old, and it required a lot of strength to get certain parts of the house to move. Black smoke was now creeping through the bottom of the door, and it became harder for you to breathe.

“I haven’t confessed to Kevin yet!” you yelled at the window, as if it would magically open it. But maybe it did. Because suddenly, the glass swung open and a wave of fresh air hit you. Eagerly, you climbed through the opening and into the metal stairs. You attempted to close the window behind you, but it was stuck. Again.

“Help!” you screamed, but there was no one in the tiny passage underneath you. Terror overcame you when you noticed the blazing flames in the level beneath yours. And because the eight floor was the top level of the building, you had no other chance than to stay exactly where you were. The fire was reaching out the window, the heat radiating all the way to where you stood. For a moment you thought about dying. It overcame you like a crashing wave, and you saw your life flash before your eyes. Tears welled up in your eyes. Then, you thought about Kevin, and hope ruled inside your head.

“Kevin!” you began to yell, over and over, until your throat felt sore and you barely found your voice. And yet, you didn’t stop.

“Where are you when I really need you?” you quietly asked yourself, crouching on the ground. The flames beneath you were now towering outside of the window dangerously, almost reaching the spot you were trapped in. Deep black smoke was all around you and in your lungs, making it hard to breathe calmly.

“Kevin!” you shouted one more time, your heart not seeming to want to give up. For just a moment, you thought you had heard your name. But the shouts of people and sirens all in the air were louder. But then you spotted red color. Something was moving towards you, fast. There was nothing, no one in all of New York who could have moved in this way. No one other than Kevin.

“Y/N!” you now heard him shout clearly.

“I’m here! Kevin, I’m here!” you yelled, waving your hands. With a loud, metallic noise he landed beside you. You almost broke into tears at the sight of him, and instantly swung your arms around his neck.

“You’re gonna hold on to me now, okay?” he spoke into your ear while he soothingly rubbed your back. You nodded and tightened your grip on him. Your eyes were shut tightly, and your face was nuzzled in the crook of his neck while you clung to his figure. A strong wind blew through your hair and you felt every jump as he swung through the air with you. The rollercoaster-like feeling went on for a while, but you could barely focus on it. All you could think about was how scared you still were, even if you knew you were safe now. Your eyes stayed closed all the way, until he softly set you down.

You were sitting on the windowsill of your apartment, the window opened. Gently, he helped you inside and climbed right after you.

“No! You need to go back there!” you said. “What if there’s more people in danger?”

“I spoke to the firemen,” he explained. “They said almost everyone is out the building. Everyone, except for one person, who apparently stayed behind to make sure everyone was safe.”

He was looking at you so intently, you almost felt guilty.

“I was worried about our new co-workers!” you said, fear still obvious in your voice. He must had noticed, because his gaze instantly softened and he took you back into his arms.

“It’s okay, you were just trying to help,” he assured you. “You’re safe now, everyone’s safe. The firefighters are going to finish the job now.”

For a while you stayed that way, clinging to him, until your breathing felt a little more even. Slowly, you pulled away, and realized he was still wearing his mask. So you reached behind his head, and pulled the material off him carefully. A wave of affection overcame you at the way he looked at you now. His eyes were warm and gentle. And when your gaze wandered to his lips, you couldn’t help but lean forward slightly. His eyes caught yours as he recognized your actions. When you tilted your head a little, your eyes automatically closed. Next thing you knew, you were kissing him. He tasted of smoke and a little sweat, but you couldn’t have cared less. Happily, you smiled into the kiss as neither of you refused to pull away just yet.

You had thought about what to say for so long. How to confess, without messing things up or making it awkward. But you guessed s it was right what they said. Sometimes it was better not to speak your emotions. It was best to simply show them.

[teaveetamer]

My Issues With TFioS (and Other Elements of John Green)

Alright I’m just going to preface this with two things.

It’s been about six years since I’ve read the entire thing through, so my points are probably not going to be as detailed or precise as they were when I first read it.

If you enjoyed the book, identify with the fanbase, or like John Green in any capacity... Great! You might want to skip this one. This is definitely not the post for you. I’m going to put all of my more controversial thoughts under the cut so if you don’t want to see them you can just move on.

I brought up the book in that other post because I felt it had relevance to the discussion of “authors using characters as a mouthpiece”, but that’s only a small part of my issue with the book itself. I suppose I could have used a fanfiction example, since there’s more than enough fodder there, but I brought up The Fault in our Stars specifically because I feel comfortable criticizing a book in a way that I don’t feel comfortable criticizing fan works. John Green is a public figure that produced a paid product, made money, and does this professionally, while most fanfic authors are amateurs that provide free entertainment and just do it for fun.

Now with that said, we move on to the meat of the post.

Some Background

Perhaps this is not a little known fact, but I absolutely adore love stories. I don’t have incredibly high standards for them by any means, and in fact I actively enjoy them even when they aren’t the deepest, most thought provoking pieces. Someone got me a copy of Red, White, and Royal Blue for my birthday this year and I read the entire thing cover to cover in a day (and I seriously recommend if you’re looking for a pretty easy read with a lot of gay).

The only thing I love more than love stories? Tragic love stories, of course. If anyone has followed my fanfiction or main blog for any amount of time then you know that I love a little bit of tragedy. Usually with a happy ending, but not always. So when one of my friends shoved (and I mean literally shoved) The Fault in Our Stars  into my hands and billed it as a “tragic but heartwarming love story” I thought it would be perfect for me.

I was sixteen at the time, the target age demographic, and I was always looking for books with smart, well written teen characters. At this point in my life I’d never heard of John Green or his fanbase before. I tell you this because I disliked the book as I read it, but I think John Green and his fanbase are a major factor in why I disliked it so much I’m willing to sit down and write a blog post about it six years later. Granted, that’s not all on the book, but it is a factor.

Needless to say, I was not all that impressed by it. At some points I was downright infuriated, really.

My Issues With the Book

In summary, it feels very meh and overly pretentious. After about two chapters I just wanted to put it down, and the only reason I pushed through is because my friend insisted that it got better. She said it was funny, relatable, and intelligent, but I found it to be none of these things.

The impression I got was that the author, whoever he was, fancied himself terribly clever and he wanted everyone to know it. You know the type, the kinds of people that go around and assure everyone of how smart they are? It feels like it was made for haughty teens to brag about how intelligent they were because they read a “deep” book.  The book itself, despite being a surface level of “witty”, didn’t really have anything to say. In the end it reads like a thirty-something year old man bragging about how smart he is and waxing philosophical about the nature of life (and... Breakfast food..?) and using a fictional teenage girl to do it.

That’s why I brought up the “mouthpiece” thing. I didn’t want to read a book about a thirty-something dressing up his thoughts as a teenage girl. I wanted to read a book about a teenage girl.

Speaking of Hazel Grace… I don’t know if this is a common experience, but can anyone else tell when a man writes a female character? I find that I usually can. Men have a particular voice when they write, and especially when they write women. Every single page hammered me over the head with the fact that this was a man who was trying (and, in my opinion, failing miserably) to write a relatable teenage girl. And, in my opinion, he parroted a lot of very upsetting, dangerous mentalities for young women.

There were quite a few “I’m not like other girls, and not just because of the cancer!” moments (a mentality that I find wholly problematic coming from other women, let alone a man writing for a woman) that just had me rolling my eyes straight out of their sockets. She doesn’t care about shoes, see! She reads books! Isn’t that awesome and unique? Because, apparently, women are not allowed to do both.

These problematic mentalities extend into the book’s romance plot, too. Augustus is, frankly, one of the creepiest motherfuckers I’ve ever had the displeasure to read about. Not only is his aggressive creepiness portrayed as romantic, but Hazel reacts exactly how men wish women would react to their advances. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the book in front of me so you won’t get much in the way of direct quotes, but some examples include:

He stares at her, completely unblinking, for the duration of their cancer kids support group meeting… before they’ve even so much as spoken a word to each other. Which also features this gem of a quote: "A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well." which just perpetuates the disgusting misconception that women are okay with being creeped on as long as a guy is attractive. Spoiler alert: We fucking aren’t.

He repeatedly refers to Hazel as “Hazel Grace”, despite her introducing herself as “Hazel” and asking him to just call her “Hazel”. And not only does he ask for her full name, he demands she give it to him. This rings all kinds of alarm bells for me, because you know who else does that kind of shit? Christian Grey. And it’s manipulative, disrespectful, and downright rude. It is essentially saying “I hear your desires, but I would prefer to address you how I want to address you, not how you would like to be addressed, because my ego is more important than your comfort”.

Hazel is perfectly fine with getting into a complete stranger’s car and spending time at his house mere minutes after meeting with him and after all of the questionable shit he just pulled.

Continuing this book’s litany of problems with women, let’s talk about Isaac’s (ex)girlfriend. The book treats their breakup as this massive betrayal, then even goes on to justify vandalizing her property because of it.

I’m sorry, but no.

You, as an autonomous human being, have the right to end a relationship with someone else whenever, wherever, and for whatever reasons you designate, regardless of previously expressed emotions or promises. How and when she did it was not the most ideal, but she’s an emotionally immature teenager, and there’s never going to be a good time to do something like this. What was she supposed to do, keep pity dating him because she felt sorry for him? Wait until someone invented technology to cure blindness? Assuming she did actually break up with him because of his disability… Are her reasons shitty? Sure. But she’s allowed to have them.

And you know what? He’s allowed to be mad about it. His anger might be completely understandable, if not totally justified. But you know what else? That does not give him the right to take revenge on her by vandalizing her property.

I would have no problem with this scene if it were honest about what it was: a bunch of teenagers with under-developed frontal lobes that are angry and feeling vindictive. But it’s not that. It’s depicted as not only completely justified, but heroic. I’m sorry, no. You are never heroic for harassing another human being.

And Augustus’s dumb little speech to her mom is such garbage. You really expect me to believe that a grown woman was so pwned by some jerk teenager’s super witty justification for destroying her property that she just went inside and, idk, watched TV? Didn’t call the police to report the crime that he and his friends were actively committing against her? Bullshit.

Speaking of bullshit, that scene is pretty egregious, but that doesn’t even begin to cover my issues with this book’s pretentious dialogue. If you told me that they ran every word in this book through Thesaurus.com then I would believe you without hesitation. The one hook, the draw, the thing that kept me reading was supposed to be the relatable characters, but they just aren’t relatable. They’re not realistic in the slightest. Seriously, go read any line of this book out loud and tell me how ridiculous you feel. I kept expecting Augustus to pull off his skinsuit and reveal that he was secretly a robot trying to imitate human speech the entire time.

I’m not sure how far I can go into this point without giving you direct quotes, but half the stuff that comes out of these characters mouths is pseudo-intellectual nonsense. “Put the killing thing between your teeth so it can’t kill you”?

It’s not a metaphor.

Putting an unlit cigarette in your mouth is still stupid. I guess it won’t give you lung cancer, but really? It’s still not a great idea.

Augustus has to go buy these cigarettes, which means he’s actively going out and giving money to an industry that has been funding pseudoscience and suppressing health initiatives that would prevent people from suffering what he did (i.e. fucking cancer).

Here’s a clue: Tobacco companies don’t actually care about what you do with the cigarettes. Their transaction stops as soon as you put the money in their hands. I could purchase a hundred packs and throw them in the garbage, and the only thing they know is that they got about $600 from me. Way to “stick it to the man”, asshole. You’re not clever.

With the exception of the Isaac’s-girlfriend thing, all of that is in chapters 1-4, by the way. This book turned me off so thoroughly that early.

So by the time the Amsterdam trip rolled around I was already not enjoying this book, but then this thing happened and it was just the final nail in the coffin for me. You probably know what I’m talking about already, but if you don’t… The Anne Frank Museum kiss.

I honestly cannot even articulate how incredibly tasteless and disrespectful I find the entire thing, and not only does that happen, but it’s followed by an r/ThatHappened “and then everybody stood up and clapped!” Seriously?

There are smarter, more well-versed people than me that have covered this topic, so I’ll leave the analysis for why that’s all kinds of wrong to them.

Those are really my big gripes, though there’s a few smaller ones (like Augustus throwing a pre-funeral like are you a psychopath? Why would you put the people you love through that???) that I’m not going to touch on because they weren’t all that instrumental in putting me off. Instead I’ll move on to the external factors.

The Fanbase

So I finished the book, a little miffed at having just wasted my time, and immediately told my friend that I didn’t like it much, and that I would be returning her copy the next day. Feeling pretty meh-to-slightly-negative about it, but whatever, it happens.

I was essentially met with “wow I can’t believe you didn’t get it.” and “Oh well maybe you’ll finally understand how deep it is when you’re older” from my friend. Which is really just one step away from the wow can’t you read?! BS that I’ve been seeing more and more frequently these days. So immediately I was pissed. All that aside, I was sixteen, the target age demographic? If I didn’t ‘get it’ then John Green was doing a pretty piss poor job of conveying what it is.

So I went online seeking something. Either validation that I wasn’t wrong and that I didn’t miss the point, the book just wasn’t great, or an explanation of what this it was that I’d missed. And let me tell you... Spotting a negative opinion of this book was like looking for a unicorn. There were a few, and many of them were met with the same kind of thing I had experienced. Vitriol, insistence that they were stupid or that they didn’t get it (again, with no explanation of what it was), and, apparently, a lot of harassment and threats.

I discovered that John Green’s target audience had a tendency to be… A bit obsessive. Lots of young, impressionable teenagers that were willing to jump on an opposing opinion with zealous outrage. If I had any interest in pursuing any of John Green’s other works or John Green as an internet personality any further, then it died in that moment. Absolutely nothing turns me off like a rabid, spiteful fanbase.

Now by this point I was already in the rabbit hole, and I began encountering a lot of criticisms of John Green and the things he’s said and done in the past. I did not like what I found.

John Green Himself

To be extremely blunt, the guy put such a bad taste in my mouth that it retroactively soured my opinion of The Fault in Our Stars even more. Since this is a post about my opinions on the book, I’m only going to be discussing things that affected my view at the time I read it. These are all things that happened six years ago, and I have no idea what this man has been up to or what he’s said about any of these topics since.

Let’s just get this out of the way… John Green writes the same book over and over. There’s always a quirky, nerdy white boy that is invariably cisgendered, and almost always straight. He is always an outcast with only a few friends, though apparently never directly bullied. He always meets an edgy girl that he falls in love with the idea of. Usually there is a road trip somewhere in there too.

The Fault in our Stars admittedly doesn’t follow the exact same framework, but it’s close enough in a lot of ways. Instead of the Quirky, Too-Smart-For-His-Own-Good cisboi being the PoV character, it’s the love interest (Hazel also fits this description, albeit a female version). Hazel and Augustus are both still outcasts. Hazel is attracted to Augustus because he’s Deep and Edgy and A Little Larger Than Life. The road trip is a flight to Amsterdam.

Looking at the man... Yeah the entire premise starts to come off as some weird self-insert fanfiction. I can feel the “I was a quirky, bullied teen and I wish this is how my high school life had been!” energy coming through absolutely every pore and every molecule of ink. Every character reads like John Green. John Green has written book after book and the main character always appears to be John Green in a slightly different teenage skinsuit.

And that’s fine, I guess. A little lazy, but I guess it’s working for him since he’s making hella bank? It’s certainly not enough to put me off the guy, just not something I’m interested in reading, and not something I find compelling.

What put me off for good were some of his comments. Dude skeeves me the fuck out. I’ll just go over some of the highlights I found at the time, and why they upset me so much when I heard them.

“Nerd girls are the world's most underutilized romantic resource.”

As a nerdy girl that has been stalked and harassed by men because I’m “good girlfriend material” (aka I like video games and traditionally masculine stuff and I’m pretty! I must be a unicorn!), this statement is disgusting.

I don’t care if it was a joke. I don’t care if he wasn’t being serious. This is the kind of shit that men think is a compliment because they think it makes “quirky” girls feel “unique” and “special”, but that “complement” is also an insult. You know why? Because it makes female interests all about how men perceive their sexual or romantic viability.

John Green’s penchant for writing “special” and “unique” girls (while simultaneously shaming “typical” girls, but I’ll get to that in the next point) and depicting them as the ideal woman just reaffirms my feelings about this quote. I think, on some level, John Green has no idea why this is such a bad take. And that’s not even getting into the fact that he called human beings resources. Women are not objects that exist to be a plot device or for your gratification. Fuck right off with that shit.

“She was incredibly hot, in that popular-girl-with-bleached-teeth-and-anorexia kind of way, which was Colin’s least favourite way of being hot”

This is just one quote of many that shames people with eating disorders and weight problems (on both ends of the spectrum, “too fat” and “too skinny”. Another fun one being: “there’s the weird culturally-constructed definition of hot, which means ‘that individual is malnourished, and has probably had plastic bags inserted into her breasts.’")

Know what this line is? It’s called “negging”, and it’s a popular tactic of incels because it works. You make someone seek your approval by intentionally giving them backhanded compliments to undermine their self esteem. The idea is that the more you insult them, the harder they’ll work to try and impress you. It doesn’t work on everyone, but you know who it does tend to work on? Insecure younger people (usually girls). You know who John Green’s target audience is? Insecure teenage girls.

As for the actual substance of the quote… I hate it. He’s shaming a woman for the choices she makes over her appearance. Which are, fun fact, none of his damn business. Also the idea that “skinny” and “anorexic” somehow need to go hand in hand is just wrong, insulting women for a mental health disorder they have no control over is offensive, and using a serious mental health disorder (did you know that anorexia is the most deadly mental health condition?) as an insult is disgusting.

Coming back to my earlier point about shaming “normal” girls, this quote is just the tip of the iceberg. He repeatedly shames women in his books for looking or behaving “typically”, while quirky girls are lauded as the ideal. Quirky girls are “weird and interesting” and normal girls are “boring”. If this was intended as a compliment, it’s a shitty one. If you have to shame one group to make another feel better, it is not a compliment. You are lowering all women when you pull that shit. You teach them that in order to feel good about themselves another group has to be made to feel worse.

And hey, maybe the pretty girl likes her teeth bleached because it makes her feel confident? Why can’t bleached teeth girl and anime t-shirt girl both be beautiful and unique and confident in their own right? Why is it “powerful” for anime t-shirt girl to wear her nerdy clothes, but scorn-worthy for bleached teeth girl to like bleaching her teeth?

What John Green is doing is simply replacing one ideal (skinny pretty girl) with another (quirky cute girl), and then he pretends like his version is somehow “woke” because it’s not based on physical appearance (though all of the women in his books are also physically attractive. Hmmm. Guess “nerd girls” are only “viable resources” when they aren’t hard to look at?).

And trust me, I’ve been down this path. I’ve been taken in by guys who try to make me feel ~special~ by putting down other women, and it leads to absolutely nothing good. It doesn’t make you feel better. It just makes you feel angry and resentful, and that’s not a place you want to be in. In fact, this was a mentality I had recently escaped from around the time I picked up this book. Seeing someone with as much influence as John Green parroting this specific brand of toxic shit to exactly the audience that would be most likely to feed into it? I was never going to be able to like the guy, sorry.

I know some people are able to “separate the art from the artist”, and I might have been willing to do that had the book actually been good… but it wasn’t. So in the end the book just looked worse for all of the author’s shortcomings.

So yeah, in summary: The book was mediocre at best, the author pushed all of my angry feminist buttons, and elements of the fanbase were annoying, condescending, and spiteful. I didn’t like the book in the first place due to the myriad of problems plaguing it, but everything else just made it look so much worse in hindsight.

Anyways, this probably got kind of ranty, but it was cathartic and I did make this blog to vent about dumb stuff. I think this qualifies.