#being regarded as a woman feels bad. but so does the idea and practice of a guy. oh! im nonbinary! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sweet-as-an-angel · 1 year

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MW2 Reaction to You Being A Virgin

Warnings: 18+, Implications of Smut, Corruption Kink, Purity Kink, Innocence Kink, Ownership Kink, Age Gap, Implied Slight Yandere Graves Inexperience, Objectification, Dominant MW2, Soft MW2, Gaz is anxious :-( but trying his best, MW2 Trying To Be Smooth, Profanity, No Pronouns Used For Reader Except ‘You’.

Ghost

The fact that you, innocent, are his to love and corrupt sends white-hot anticipation between his legs.

He’s imagined what you’d be like in bed: how you’d take him, the sounds you’d make. Of course he has – practically everyone on Base has.

But now, his fantasies are tinged with something feral. A primal need to show you that he is the best choice for you (even if he doesn’t believe it himself) – the only one strong enough and skilled enough to be yours and to make you his.

He’s fantasised about you looking up at him with doe eyes while he pins your wrists to the mattress, voice meek as you tell him, as if it’s a secret, that you’ve “Never done this before…”

He can’t live without it. The fact that he can – will – be your first time. Satisfy you in ways nobody else will ever be able to compete with.

He’d never admit it, but a dark part of him has plagued him with ideas of ravaging and corrupting you, about making your first time so pleasurable and carnal that nobody will ever be able to satisfy you as he can.

“Don’t worry, Sweetheart,” he tells you, taking your chin between his fingers. He lowers his lips to your ear. You don’t see the dark gleam in his eye. Don’t see the deliciously dark idea cross his mind – the impulse to fuck you so hard that you won’t be able to feel anything, nevermind pain. And he makes a promise to you anyway.

“I’ll take care of you.”

König

“Thought as much.” König’s words are blunt yet sharp.

“Seeing as you have everyone wrapped around your finger, it’s clear you have no regard for the way you conduct yourself.”

You may construe König’s words as mean. Derogatory, even. He means it as a compliment. Even if you don’t know it yet.

“You think I don’t see the way you flaunt yourself in front of the soldiers – thinking that you’ll be able to get away with it without consequence.”

König’s frame towers over you. His gaze is ice, and any trace of the socially anxious soldier you knew is gone.

“I wonder how you like it.” he muses aloud. His voice is tinged with something unreadable. Venomous.

“How you’ll take it. Rough, gentle…” His eyes narrow.

“Mean.”

He’s boxed you in with his stature alone.

“Makes no difference to me,” he tells you. Deceptively calm. And then, an offer. One you can’t refuse.

“I’ll fuck you every which way until I find what makes you scream the loudest.”

Soap

“Oh, really?” he says, eyebrow quirked and a hidden smile teasing his lips.

Johnny really couldn’t care less that you’ve never had sex before. But, the fact that you shared this information with him – albeit after he steered the conversation towards more…intimate topics – gave him hope that you were hinting towards something.

Something that Johnny’s wanted since he realised he was massively, whorishly down bad for you.

From his position opposite you, against the kitchen counter, he takes a step forward.

“I suppose you’re not very experienced then, are you?”

He advances until he’s in front of you. A wolf and a lamb. Close enough that you can smell his cologne.

His eyes are piercing, but there is a softness behind them. Something that writhes and wants and needs.

His hands come to rest upon the counter behind you. Nowhere for you to run. The heat from his body is scorching.

“Though, I’d be more than happy to…” His voice husks. “Beef up your résumé.”

Valeria

Corruption kink to the MAX

Valeria is a territorial, dominant woman – that much is easy to see.

And the fact that you haven’t had anyone else before her just does something to her.

Alters her brain chemistry permanently.

There’s not one soldier, police officer or government official she doesn’t own in Las Almas.

So why shouldn’t she own you, too?

Now she’s thinking of every conceivable way she’s going to take ownership of you.

She thinks about it so often that she struggles to complete her paperwork without having to disperse the issue before she can continue.

But be warned: there will come a day when satisfying herself just won’t cut it. When she’s going to seek you out and ruin you.

“It might hurt at first, mi Amor,” she tells you, hand stroking your cheek, coming down to your jaw. “But trust me when I say that–”

Her hand grips your jaw. Tight. A viper’s strike. A fire burns in her eyes and the corners of her lips curl up in a cruel smile.

“I’ll make it hurt a whole lot more if you don’t do as I say.”

Price

Given his age, Price has had his fair share of experiences.

But that doesn’t harden him to the simple fact that you haven’t.

In his eyes, there’s something endearing about how you’ve yet to give yourself to another person.

Another person that, he hopes, will someday be him.

The idea makes something in him stir. The fact that the difference between your age and his makes him that much more confident in his ability to please you in ways no mere boy can makes him anxious to act.

“Oh. Is that right, Love?” He says, eyes light and his smile dangerous.

“S’ppose you’re waiting for the right person.” His posture is inviting. Tempting. Belies the rush he’s feeling — the desire to have you at his mercy in the most carnal sense.

“Pretty little thing like you, you could have your fill of men.”

He’s angling for something. His face says it all.

He steps towards you. Again. Again. He’s in front of you.

His chest is almost to yours. His smile is shallow now. Strained. Like his pants.

“Probably looking for someone with experience.”

He thrives on the way your chest flutters. His does, too, but it’s masked beneath a heavy stare.

“And trust me, Love,” his voice is low. A message for you and you alone as he brings his lips to your ear, breath hot against your skin.

“I’ve got plenty to spare.”

Horangi

You don’t hear it for his mask, but Horangi lets out a shuttered breath.

“That’s why you’re always so quiet when sex talk comes up.”

He says it as a fact, but you take it as a question. You nod.

Horangi’s arms unfurl from his chest, come to rest at his sides. He’s looking at you.

Even through the layers of his mask, his gaze is heavy. Leaden.

He steps towards you. His frame, broad, fills your vision.

You can hear how heavy his breathing has become. How thick the air is.

How much he’s trying to restrain himself.

“How about a deal,” he proposes. Commands.

“You give me something to have a nice, long, hard think about,” his hips are to yours. You feel him pressing against you.

“And I’ll give you something to talk about.”

Alejandro

“You surprise me, mi amor,” he says, natural as anything. As if he already knew.

“I’d have thought someone would have swooped in and claimed you by now.”

Truth be told, Alejandro wanted to be that somebody so badly that it made him ache in places he’d rather not think about. Especially when you’re already making containing himself incredibly difficult with that pouting, wide-eyed, innocent look.

God, you had no idea what you were doing to him.

“Or…are you saving yourself for someone specific?”

Before you, his frame is broad and imposing even without all his military gear on.

He takes your chin between his fingers. Tilts your head so your gaze can’t escape his. A shiver runs up his spine at the sound of your breath stuttering.

His words aren’t rhetorical. He’s pulled the answer from you – seen it in your eyes.

“Or are you just waiting for a man who knows how to take care of you?”

Rodolfo

“O-oh!” Rudy chokes out. His cheeks are already giving way to a telltale pink. He tries to cover it.

“But– you’re so pretty and smart and kind – I thought you’d have a boyfriend by now!”

In some ways, Rudy’s a bit of a traditionalist: his mind still jumps to the idea that you’d typically only be intimate with someone you’re already in a relationship with.

Not that he’d judge you if this were not the case for you.

But he sees his chance. And he takes it.

“Well, if you’re not with anyone, then…would you like to go out sometime? With me?”

His eyes are wide and filled with hope – something you’d never have expected from a man in such a brutal line of work.

Sex is the last thing on his mind right now: truly, he’s so taken in with the idea that you’re single and available that your sexual status means very little to him.

Though, that isn’t to say he hasn’t thought about you like that before, or that he hasn’t spent many a night with his face smothered with pillows as your name escapes from between his lips, panting, moaning.

That’s a little secret for you to uncover later in your relationship…

Graves

“So you’re tellin’ me that no one’s had the privilege of fuckin’ that pretty little ass of yours?”

Graves sure has a way with words.

For all his slimy business practices, this is the one time he’s genuinely surprised. Unable to be slick.

He puts his game face on. Gives you a half-lidded stare and lowers his voice. His heart hammers: he conceals it behind a cool tone.

“Well, colour me impressed, Angel,” he says. A hand comes to the hem of your shirt, takes it between slow, intentional fingers. He has to resist the urge to look at your chest when he pulls the fabric taut.

“And here I was thinkin’ I already knew everything about you.”

He’s moving in before you can analyse his statement. Before you can begin to understand how badly this man has lusted after you – how deeply entrenched in your life he’s become. And all without you knowing.

He places a hand on the wall behind you. Presses himself closer to you.

“How much to let me be the first,” he drawls. Your eyes widen. His thin smile grows.

“And last.”

Gaz

Bless his little cotton socks, he doesn’t know what to do with both this information and himself.

See, despite being incredibly intelligent, Gaz is still the youngest of the 141, so he’s not entirely accustomed to situations like this.

He can’t tell if you’re hinting, flirting, or just telling him something about yourself.

He remembers what Soap taught him, though.

Should a situation arise where someone is flirting with you, just use your intuition and don’t fuck it up.

Gaz leans against the doorframe, almost misses, scrambles to resume his ideal posture.

“Oh, so we’re more similar than you’d think, then.”

He can feel Soap banging his head against a wall. Jesus, Gaz – at least try to impress (Y/N) !

At your raised eyebrow and your playful “Oh?” Gaz coughs. His voice lowers.

“But…” he steps closer. “Maybe we can un-virgin each other.”

Long story short, Gaz has no idea what he’s talking about. But, somehow, his nervous disposition and pretty boy charm have enamoured you. And you may have told him you’d take him up on his offer 👀.

Reblog for more content like this! It helps creators like myself tremendously and it is greatly appreciated :-)

Masterlist Masterlist [Continued] Masterpost Modern Warfare AI Masterlist

Yandere Masterlist Juicy Original Content <3

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steampunkedparm · 2 years

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me and my grandma were at a cafe a few months ago or something and at one point had gotten onto the topic of identity within the queer space and their respective nuancs and cus of how many lables i use i often use my own identity as examples and at one point i revealed im not opposed to polyam relationships and she asked me how i knew that and??

how the fuck DO i know that??

#all other parts of my identity i feel i had to label i know full why that label is there #but i dont know why polyamory is here #i struggled with that part of me like i did any other part as you do as a kid who has only ever known queerness as being a 'bad' thing #(my family werent the ones to do the bashing. but i wonder sometimes if they ever brought positive queerness into my life before i became #so obnoxious about my identity)#regardless. i came to a conclusion with most of it #being regarded as a woman feels bad. but so does the idea and practice of a guy. oh! im nonbinary!#I've never felt any romantice attraction to any dude ive met. the idea of being with a guy like that feels wrong. oh!! im a lesbian!!#and so on and so forth #but like. never had that with polyamory #it just was like. oh. i am that.#that is a thing i am and im beginning to be okay with that #i would've prolly been more open about it if my freshman year health teacher didn't openly bash on polyam :)#fuck that guy. he wouldn't ever shut up about his wife eitjer so like #like! good for you but you just hurt not only me but my friends and a whole fucking community #sidetracked oops #im content in the knowledge of my identity #and i dont think id actively seek out more than one partner #even if i wasn't with my current partner i dont think i would #if it's just me and it id be very okay with that :)#polyam or not i love them a lot and im glad its them and im glad they're okay with it #im also glad its easy to communicate with them about it too #im at the point where i dont think im malign sense #like. if i have a crush on another person and we vibe well and i communicate well about it with my partner and it goes somewhere sure okay #r8gby THATS literally how it works what are you saying

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immoralimmortals · 5 months

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A Song With Ten Names

Chapter 3: Misanthrapologist (1)

Chapter 1 ☆ Next chapter

Summary of chapter: Time for a sacrifice.

Author's note: This chapter was originally part of the upcoming one, but I decided it should be standalone, both because it is Hidan-centric and because of its contents. I plan on more installments with this song, and if I follow through they should overall end up more fucked up each time. In addition, please regard the notes and warnings of chapter 1 if you have not read it already. Song is Misanthrapologist by Will Wood.

CW for references to periods, being on your period. Also, Hidan, of course, does not reflect how a normal person should view a chronic condition and he's a bit of an ass about it.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I wanna meet your maker

Shake him by his ensanguined damask lapels

Holler "Look what you've done, gave this planet a sun

And made a man to wonder if he's more than the sum of his cells"

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It becomes impossible to hide, no matter how hard she tries. A flush face, tired bones, and overly sensitive heart make one very vulnerable, especially if those who judge know the reason why. The two Akatsuki don’t yet, and the performer hopes to mitigate it as much as possible.

Doesn’t keep Kakuzu from inquiring, though.

“Sick?” he asks abruptly, looking up from counting the tips made yesterday. It’s been half ten minutes, and the most she’s done for practice is hold her guitar to her abdomen and look pathetic and self-pitying. She fidgets from her seat on the rugged couch, embarrassed as hell.

“...A bit,” she admits.

“Will it effect how well you can work?”

She forces herself to shake her head “no.”

“Alright.”

And that’s the end of that on his end, but unfortunately, after much deliberation, the performer finds she must stand up. A violet eye cracks open from his side of the living room. It watches as she leans down closer than she’s every purposefully been to Kakuzu, and covered lips whisper in his ear. “...Hn,” the older one grunts, “How much?” She mumbles a number as Hidan’s mouth goes into a lopsided pursing. “Mm.” A few bills are dropped into her trembling hand. “Get a receipt.” Without even a look to the prophet, Jashin's disciple is gone; the nature of the whole thing leaves Hidan sour.

“The hell was that all for?” he inquires, praying hands still clasped around his pendant. Kakuzu doesn’t even look up.

“Nothing,” he responds, same tone as ever.

“Fucker.”

“Sure,” he dismisses.

Kakuzu gets the receipt he asked for an hour later, slip of paper in his hand from out of a bag the bard otherwise keeps closed up, lest contents see daylight. He grunts again. Couple cents off, but same bill amount-- decent enough guess, and he got all the change. She thanks him with a small bow and excuses herself up the creaky stairs. As soon as Hidan’s nose is in his space, Kakuzu shreds the paper till unrecognizable.

“OI!”

The old man hasn’t decided yet if this is funny or about to be supremely, unnecessarily annoying, seeing his partner squirm so badly. “Just don’t bother her about it.” Oh, how he should know that kind of talk will only plant ideas in Hidan’s head.

Ugh. People speak too lightly of this kind of thing, she laments in her head as she props herself up against a bedroom wall. “Sick” is the only way to describe the sensation. Her stomach curdles and insides burn. It’s like a vampire bit her and pulled out a cork at the same time-- just totally drained of energy. This pain is so bad her lips quiver as she frowns. The door is closed, but Hidan isn’t the type to knock.

“Oi!” Her eyes flutter open; he walked up without her noticing, somehow, so close she starts with his legs and works her way up. He continues speaking once the eyes lock. “The bastard won’t say anything.” A silver eyebrow raises. “The fuck is your problem?”

Oh. The woman’s cheeks get so red they begin to sting, her mouth feeling more like a squiggle than the line she tries to maintain. “I’m just sick.” The word “just” was a mistake.

“Dying? Fuck, you’re not contagious, are ya?!” Sounding bored with the former option and annoyed with the other. Urgently, the woman shakes her head. “So! What else is it then?!” Frustration loosens up in his expression as he comes up with the only option left. “...Chronic?”

…

She nods.

“Painful?”

Quietly, again she nods.

The expression he has is something you never want from Hidan:

Pity.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

'Cause you defy creation

I hate you, I hate you, I do

Hands to the night sky, praying you might die

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The preparations have been made for her mercy kill. Yes, Jashin has convinced him, Hidan needs to end this now. Despite being an immortal, he understood at least a little bit what Deidara was always on about-- the beauty of the end. Last breaths, a body draining till pale like a tipped inkwell, till it stains the ground around it. It was glorious. His disciple had even witnessed first hand! She listened to Hidan, eagerly, curiously; she always asked questions, ones that no one has bothered to since the Akatsuki swallowed him up. Yet...she doesn’t LEARN. The beauty of slaughter has yet to sweep her away in a tangible way, not just philosophical bullshit. The follower will never, ever WANT to kill.

And so it’s better to kill her now and not make anything more of it. Maybe Hidan misunderstood his lord, perhaps she was only to serve as a refresher to his faith, his excitement for the hunt. No more of a pointless existence being whored out for cash by his dumbass partner while he watches idly by. What kind of life is that for him to come back to, night after night?!

It’s time for a sacrifice.

“Uh.”

As she’s wont to do, the performer wrings her hands when particularly anxious about what’s to come. He’s certainly set...a mood…to warrant some tension, her corner of this dilapidated home swathed in shadow, shades down, door closed as a candle passes its light to the others while Hidan savors the burning wax bleeding down his fingers.

For once, he says nothing to even the slightest of words. His gaze concentrates on the fire till he sets the last one, light flickering in anticipation over his purple irises. It’s a sight to behold, someone willingly within his ritual circle. She’ll be good for something, after all.

“I think I complained too much,” she tries to backpedal with less urgency than she really should have, as he begins to prowl towards her backside. “It’s not...curable, per say, but it’s not something I can’t handle. If that’s what this is about,” she adds almost guiltily.

There’s no going back now-- in his mind, she’s a wilting flower, one he’d rather cut and frame for his savior than let decay into nothing at all, but damn if he isn’t curious still about whatever it is making her suffer so much. “Really,” he states, skeptical. His own shadow now doubles over the others, over-top her head. The shift from blades hitched to his spine to being wielded in front of him is unperceived from where she is, seated on the floor, thanks to the refraction of candlelight upon shapes making every one a blur.

“Hidan, I-- it’s-- it’s not a big deal. I promise.” The scythe pauses in place from the height of his swing, only being held by his own insatiable need to know what- exactly- has made her such a tragedy.

“If it ain't a big fucking deal, then stop dancing around and tell! Me! What! It! IS!”

His words come vicious and desperate, hardly contained before, and it makes teeth grit so much Hidan’s mouth begins to ache. Later, he will find, this passion surprised even him-- not because he’s incapable of passion- hell no!...it’s the reason behind it.

Jesus, it’s really going to be like this, huh? Breathe in...breathe out. Alright. It’s gone too far, she decides. He needs to know.

“I. I....period. I’m on my. Period.”

Static and white noise briefly take up the space of the voice in his head, the narrative he made no longer words but nonsense, drowned away. He shorts out, not moving an inch, like a guillotine still waiting to drop down.

“I’m sorry. It’s not a big deal, it’s really not! I can handle it, I have to. I’m just...in the bad part.” The part where she can hardly stand up, that is. Pathetic. “I’m sorry,” she says again.

The shadow of the blades shifts, slowly, surely, bit by bit, as his wrist lowers to his side. Ah, what sort of punishment was she going to endure? For making him go through...whatever all this preparation is meant for.

He walks around the circle, scythe still in his hands as he wraps his head around this. The woman is kneeling down, obedient to him, to his judgment. Her face is drained of color, hardly keeping her head up and not bothering to brush the hair out of her way. Hands folded, hands praying. Her eyes are wet, refusing to meet his own. Something occurs inside of him that’s less of a “click” and more like a sunrise: gradual, consuming, warming. It's foreign, and yet a part of him-- guiltily-- accepts it. Though he doesn't fully understand why, he is granted wisdom that this "condition" is not something he shall remedy.

After all, bloodshed is bloodshed.

“Ah. Well. Shit, then.”A small clink as he reattaches his red guillotine to his back. “Why didn’t you just say so?” Truth is, the performer had correctly guessed that he has a bit of a religious obsession with blood-- didn’t need Kakuzu’s advice to keep the subject private. God, but does she really have to feel so silly right now? That Hidan thought that he needed to do something to save her from it?! She’s...huh.

She’s flattered.

The woman sits lowered before him, and though as helpless as she is, damn if she isn’t curious.

“Did I really worry you that much?”

He quickly spits the taste of affection out of his mouth.

“Sorry.”

“...Shut up,” he murmurs.

“Sorry.” She shuts her eyes.

But just as soon they have reason to flutter open; they can only do so, of course, when she finds a gentle hand takes her own. Hidan’s fingers brush over her knuckles. It’s him, this time, that won’t meet her eyes, his own narrowed while closed lips try to seal in the little breath not lost. The chain around his neck rises over his head. The pendent is set into her palm, and then his own palms fold underneath it. Abruptly, the world is hers.

“We praise Jashin for this pain, for this blood. Thank you for our lives, as we are reminded of the mortal cycle. In life, we anticipate death. In death, we begin to feel alive. Thank you for blessing your disciple, lord Jashin.”

He’s never prayed out loud before in the time they’ve known each other, let alone for both of them. There’s a long pause; the assumption it’s her turn comes around. What should she pray for?

...She doesn’t know. But still, with this spectacle, she’s filled with something overwhelming, and it should come out. Instinctively, she leans down at the end of his prayer, and Jashin’s cold silver sigil is pressed to her lips gently, reverently. He’s foolish enough to look up at this moment and witness this kiss. For the first time, in all her pure, weary glory, Hidan sees he was wrong. He sees she is radiant. He sees she is beautiful.

And silently, unknown to her, he repents for the sin of doubting his lord.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Before I fall in love with you

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

#akatsuki x reader #hidan x reader #songfic #hidan #aswtn fic

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away-ward · 1 year

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NAUURRRRR I SAW THIS, AND KO YOU JUST HAVE TO SUFFER WITH ME 😭😭😭 MichaelRikaKaiBanks bonus i swear im not lying, please be angry with me 😭😭😭🤡. L*nk on twitter/ x:

https://x.com/mytinyfighter/status/ 1702017261370851814?s=61

Just delete the space between / and 7.

I hope there'll never be a willemmy alexaydin istg 😭😭😭 ngl i kinda pd now

Ohhh someone told me about this! Thank you so much for sending it to me. Congratulations, you get a live reaction.

Wait... EmoryWill? D-do they not know Willemmy? Do they not use Willemmy? Willemmy is such a cute name for the pair/ship and honestly much cuter than the other couples'. I'm not being biased, this is fact.

EmoryWill. I'm already mad.

They're what? No. No. Rika is not the most hated. We hate how you interject her in scenes she's not needed. And I've never gotten anything but love for Banks.

Although, I do get a lot of Rika hate in my message box. I never get Banks hate. What are they talking about????

What side of the fandom are they interacting with?

How does everyone know about the steam room? I remember someone coming in on them but it's really gotten around like this that even in their own club, a "young woman" feels bold enough to sass Rika? And Rika has to keep "her chin up" like what? Are you embarrassed suddenly? Can't handle someone sassing you? Have you grown up at all, Rika?

And why is this girl allowed back if she's been given bloody noses before, probably for trying to insult Banks? Clearly, she's not there to learn so maybe they recommend they find a different club, hmm?

And Banks comes in with the logic. This is actually good for me because I've framed Banks differently in my head. So, for a clearer idea of her, I appreciate this.

I can't. I just.

It's not the overwhelming "Rika is perfect and beloved" narrative. Don't get it wrong. It's the way in contradicts the way I've framed them in my head (which, again, we've established is way off anyway so I don't know why I'm so annoyed). But I want them to all be all the same level. Why is it that Em and Alex and Will and Winter all love Rika, but Banks doesn't feel that same love from them?

In short, this is not the "chosen family" vibe I wanted. And now I'm mad. And sad. I'm Smad.

Let's see what else is in this box of fun, shall we?

Of course it was! He didn't practice abstinence before he met you. He had plenty of practice that had nothing to do with Rika.

I don't like her jealousy. Where's my logical Banks? *checks under a rock*

"It's been sitting between us." No, Banks. It's been sitting on you. No one else cares.

Does this mean Emory's safe??? I don't have to worry about random scenes popping up to ruin my ideas of her?

oh wait. you're right. Alex and Aydin are still waiting in the wings for their chance to steal the spotlight.

And on one hand, I get where Rika is coming from regarding Kai. On the other hand her saying things like "I don't think about Kai" and "Don't bring him up again" feels rude. Like dude, what he'd do to you? As far as I know, he's always been nice to you. You should think about him. I mean, respect that he has a wife and don't objectify him. But like... have nice thoughts about the guy.

I don't have to have nice thoughts about him. But I'm mad on Em's behalf.

I really wish this was the end of it. I wish it ended here with Banks agreeing but letting know Rika she doesn't mind and then they leave as friends with a deeper understanding of each other. Yay.

Knowing Michael (which, again... I don't), he probably got a little kick when talking to Kai, knowing that Rika wanted Banks more than him. He also probably kept it a secret because it fixed the relationship between him and Kai. No reason to be jealous of his best friend when his wife doesn't even want him.

She's what...? What kind of family is this????? Ten years and she's never had a reason to call Michael?

Michael starts talking and I immediately retch. That's horrible.

Well... that was something. I kind of feel bad for Kai. Is it just me, or does the line "trying to sort out his feelings" seem like he's not all that into it? I mean, of course he is because PD created him to be, but like... doesn't sound like someone who was positive that what's happening is what he wants.

Anyway. Thanks, I think. I don't know why I'm so annoyed. I knew how this was going to go and yet...

I object to everything here. Just for the record.

#asked and answered 106 #I laughed the entire time because it was so ridiculous #Realizing it's been ten years and Rika (33f) is getting sassed by a “young woman” (20f) and feeling bad about it #I can't imagine a scenario where getting lip from someone more than ten years younger than me matters at all in my world #asked and answered #devil's night series #rika fane #michael crist #kai mori #nikova banks #michaelrika #kaibanks

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pink-strawberry-kissess · 1 year

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So, while I do think a lot of the criticism of Remake Ada is in bad faith, I do think there is something to be said about how the design of the character does not match the personality they gave her.

They clearly want to portray Ada as someone who puts up a cold, professional front with a heart hidden underneath but the outfit they gave her still screams Femme Fatale and is in some ways even less appropriate than her original outfit. The animated direction doesn't help either with quite a few shots of her ass. Not that any of this is remotely the fault of Lily Gao who clearly knows what type of character she is supposed to be voicing.

Basically, the writing and acting for Ada aren't the issue, the design and visual direction are the issues.

i really took some time to think of an answer because i know this is not sent in bad faith

i think i can agree on the basis of (this outfit is still not practical) but when have her outfits been super practical? you could even argue that her re6 top has JUST WAY TOO MUCH OPENAGE.

i could see it being, her personality is meant to be colder, so why is she dressing like that? but at the same time, ada has always had this innate girlness that i think male audiences sometimes doesn't understand. like the inherent.. girlness of dressing for yourself. her outfit isn't inherently sexy. i can see her dressing like that, entirely for herself. and it aligns with most of her outfits in a sense.

it can be hard from a male perspective to see a sexually provocative woman and be unable to detach their own sexual desire for said woman. i think a good way to maybe understand is how woman do not inherently dress for men, and i've never seen ada dressing for a man in this sense. (sure, you can argue that a male developer dressed her) but in this narrative, i can see her dressing for herself.

i respectfully disagree with you on the basis of, ada dresses like this, because ada WANTS to dress like this. she's always worn heels, so no argument there. she's still covered nearly head to toe. i think i just need a bit more substantiation on this idea, because i think i have to respectfully disagree.

i can understand in some ways, but ultimately i don't think her outfit conflicts with her personality. let alone her sexualization with the direction of her scenes. she doesn't do anything overtly sexual, and even the bed scene could be interpreted as a nervous response to avoid more confrontation from wesker. her response to wesker is a way to not show that she's weak or afraid of him, her "flirtatious" response she defaults to because she's already been shown to be incompetent. she's "flirting" to remain in control of the situation.

in regards to her outfit again, she's always been a feminine but stylish person. i don't see how her outfit doesn't fit or doesn't scream her.

one could argue- well ada's outfit is skin tight, so is leon's top? she still shows no skin at all so i think i have a hard time really sexualizing her outfit that much to the point where it feels out of place.

i know this isn't sent in bad faith, but i just can not see it

thank you for the discourse tho! made me think a bit

#ask heart #heart answers #cbros5 #ada wong #aeon #leon x ada #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy #re4r #re4r separate ways #separate ways #separate ways remake

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lookbluesoup · 2 years

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(New Adventurer Asks) 6A, 8A, and 5B?

6A. Which Scion(s) did you meet first and how did you initially feel about them?

Nahte met Y'shtola first. He was a bit skeptical of her initially, given how abruptly she appeared during the goobbue attack. But he recognized her Sage tattoo and, being relatively sure it wasn't a glamour, afforded her some credibility and conditional trust lmfao

He found her to be very self-assured and somewhat... difficult to read. He didn't take her confidence for arrogance, but did feel that whatever angle she was approaching the situation, and the world in general, was coming from a very different perspective than his. As a fellow student of the arcane, it made him curious!

8A. How painful is the Echo to you? Do you appreciate the insight it offers, or is is it more uncomfortable, emotionally or physically? Does this change over time?

Answered here!

But I'll add that the "sixth sense" it gives Nahte has been a massive boon to him and allowed him to save both himself and others on countless occasions. He is extremely grateful to have this ability, but it does cause him some internalized conflict. He's killed a lot of people, and though it's always been with the goal of protecting others, and he often had no practical alternative, it has felt a bit unfair at times given the advantage he has over them. He feels guilty about it on bad days. Nahte holds himself to an impossibly high standard and has sometimes weaponized his gift as a way to self-flagellate.

5B. How did you feel about being invited to join the Scions of the Seventh Dawn? Did you travel to the Waking Sands to hear their pitch? What was your initial impression of Minfilia, and her reveal that she also had the Echo? What did you make of the rest of the Scions?

Answered here!

I'll add that Nahte found Thancred a bit of a puzzle, especially with regards to his womanizing tendencies. In Nahte's culture, of course, polyamory is the norm rather than the exception. However, he'd lived long enough in the city to have a grasp on the idea that in most other places, monogamy was the standard, and whoring on the side or taking multiple lovers was considered 'normal' but... frowned upon, if done too openly, by ""good honest folks.""

Nahte was not overly fond of Thancred's tendency to lead women on and lie to them, but it was also a bit frustrating to see him get in trouble with women (and occasionally their boyfriends/husbands) who placed so many contradictory, arbitrary restrictions on a facet of human nature that simply was not sacred in Nahte's culture. Between that and Thancred's fondness for wandering and circumspection, Nahte thought Thancred would have been a much happier person if he'd been born a Keeper of the Moon. Nahte still thinks that, frankly.

#thank you so much for the ask! sorry for the delay answering <3 #new adventurer asks #nahte'to vhia #text #thancred #ffxiv

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moviemunchies · 1 year

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Being the owner of an English degree, I get alerts whenever there’s a big Shakespeare movie or television show that comes out. And of course everyone wants to do something with Romeo and Juliet, because that’s the most famous Shakespeare play. So I was a bit interested in this project when I started seeing trailers for it.

Rosaline tells the story of Rosaline, the mysterious Capulet woman Romeo was in love with before he met Juliet. Rosaline, upon finding out that her secret boyfriend has ditched her for her cousin, decides to break the two of them up by any means possible. Meanwhile, Rosaline’s father has been desperately trying to get her engaged to a man, any man, much to Rosaline’s chagrin. Though his last attempt isn’t quite as bad as the usual senior citizens.

This is a movie that’s quite fun for people familiar with Romeo and Juliet. Mind you, I don’t think it’s a deep dive into the text–there’s nothing about the movie that makes me think it was written by, or used research from, any Shakespeare scholars. There are some jokes regarding the original text, but there are a lot of things changed as well. Which is probably best for the tone that the movie’s going for–it would probably have quite a dark final act. That’s just not what this movie is.

What Rosaline does best is that it’s a comedy about a side character in Romeo and Juliet trying to take hold of her own destiny. It’s a silly movie, overall, but it’s also loads of fun. I know plenty of people reading Romeo and Juliet felt that they would do a better job if they were in the story and were able to affect the events. I know I certainly did at the time (I did not enjoy reading the book very much in eighth grade).

The resulting film is certainly loads of fun, and it’s satisfying for the most part, but it’s not particularly clever. For instance, there’s a really nice moment towards the end in which Rosaline’s father helps her in her hour of need, but he’s not actually been that supportive for most of the movie. It’s a nice, heartwarming moment, but it doesn’t feel entirely earned in the movie itself because I don’t think it’s gotten quite the proper buildup.

Still, it is loads of fun, and it does have some neat character work. Rosaline isn’t presented as being the perfect person who would have fixed all of the story’s problems–in weirdly Shakespearian fashion, she’s part of what causes a lot of the problems in the first place, and it takes a while for her to own up to it.

It’s another one of those movies that you feel like you’ll get exactly what you expect from watching the trailer. It is a lot better of a film than another Hulu original I said that about, The Princess, and a lot more complex. (And The Princess wasn’t aiming to be that deep of a movie anyway, so that’s not to slam that movie.)

And also–it IS a bit of a romantic comedy, so there is a romance arc. If you were expecting this to completely lampoon all ideas of romance, then sorry, Rosaline has a love interest that’s not Romeo. Which is fine, because Romeo kind of sucks.

The movie deconstructs Romeo as a love interest in some interesting (if fairly obvious ways). He’s not a bad guy in this film, but he isn’t all there, not precisely a practical sort of guy you can depend on. Part of his appeal in the first place was him being one’s lover in a secret relationship, but once you take that away, what does he really have going for him?

So I enjoyed this film. I didn’t think it was brilliant in terms of reworking the Shakespeare story, but I did find it massively entertaining. If you need a relaxing comedy lampooning Shakespeare, or never really liked Romeo and Juliet in school to begin with, you’ll probably have a lot of fun with Rosaline.

#Rosaline #Romeo and Juliet #Movie Munchies #Hulu

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rae-is-typing · 2 years

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Being Asahi’s Crush Part Two: Operation GAG brought to you by Suga’s schemes

Notes: Welcome to part two! Part one is here :)

Description: headcanons about suga scheming and hinata being precious, part two of four

Characters: you, karasuno’s vbc

Warnings: you get hit in the head with a volleyball and somehow sprain your wrist in the process

Word Count: 1.8k

I wholeheartedly believe that this man knows how to give gifts

Look at me and tell me he wouldn’t know exactly what to give everyone he loves

That being said, he doesn’t know what to get you

He likes you so much and with the cultural difference, he doesn’t want to offend you/make you uncomfy or do literally anything that would ruin his chances with you

Hell he wouldn’t want to ruin the friendship either because you’re one of the only people not to judge him off his looks alone

So now he’s in an awkward stage

When is he not in an awkward stage lets be real

Anyways our lovely and chaotic sugawara notices this immediately

He devises a plan

Thus creating Operation Get the Ace a Girl, or Operation GAG

Okay maybe the name could use some work

But the plan is going to work, yeah?

Well…

Let me explain

There were three phases

Phase one: they spend time together

Phase two: they confess to one another

Phase three: they get together and make beautiful babies

Easy peasy lemon squeezy

Except you aren’t in the same year which means you aren't in the same classes

And it appeared that you were very busy after school

And they don’t know what you like

…

Okay this is gonna be harder than he thought

But never fear, karsuno’s goddess Kiyoko has a loophole

“It may be a good idea to recruit another manager to keep Hitoka-chan from getting overwhelmed next year.”

Kiyoko you brilliant woman queen goddess

Now suga has another plan to devise

Commence Operation Recruit the Foreigner or Operation RF for short

Much better than operation gag if i do say so myself

But for this to work, he needs help

Help from a certain ray of sunshine

From some light stalking asking around, he found out that you enjoyed tutoring elementary and middle school aged kids in your spare time

So he recruits Hinata, the babiest baby to ever baby ever

He doesnt tell hinata the whole truth, just that he should ask the foreign second year for help in his foreign language class and if things go well, he should see if she was interested in becoming their third manager

Hinata, you sweet summer child you

Baby boy didn’t even consider that his senpai could have ulterior motive for having another manager

But alas, he asks

And how can you say no??????? He hits you with 🥺 when asking for help

Seriously only a monster could say no

And so it begins!

He explains that it would be best to study near the gym so he can make it to practice on time

You shrug, honestly not caring all too much

But then he invites you to stay and watch because he wants his cute senpai’s praise and attention and he wants to show off a bit, sweet tangerine has a small puppy crush

ANYWAYS

You say yes, because as we’ve established, you genuinely enjoy playing and watching volleyball

You two are there first and he’s talking so so so fast and showing you everything with no regard to whether you know anything about volleyball or not

Your heart melts because AH HE'S SO EXCITED

Like hinata is such a cute lil guy and he wants to share the things that make him happy because it could make them happy toooooooo

As you can see, i am platonically whipped for precious #10

And so are you, Y/N, I’m happy we have something in common

OKAY BACK TO THE PROGRAM

So the next people to come are obviously the captain and the coach

You feel a bit bad for crashing practice so you explain that you were helping Hinata with his course work and he asked you to stay

Daichi smells something fishy

He knows suga’s schemes when he sees them

But he agrees and so does coach ukai on the stipulation that you aren’t a distraction

Thats a lot ask lmao these boys have two moods: volleyball and girls

I mean… same

But this can go one of two ways:

You distract everyone

You motivate everyone to play their best as to impress the new girl

spoilers its the second one

Suga thought it was going to take a minute for the plan to really kick in, but he was pleasantly surprised to see you at practice

He didn’t tell asahi you were there

He was gonna wait cause hes a bastard that loves drama

Again, same

So everyone shows up and practice is about to begin

Hinata is an oblivious bb that is somehow unaware of the absolute chaos that is about to ensue when he excitedly announced that he asked the pretty second year to watch practice

Deadass Hinata is like

“I GOT Y/N-SENPAI TO WATCH US TODAY :D”

How he said :D idk but he did and it was precious

Tanaka and Noya get whiplash from how hard they turn their heads to where you, Yachi, and Kiyoko are standing

You smile and wave at them while you promise not to be a bother

“Oh, Y/N-san, you’ll never be a bother to us!” Suga reassures while elbowing asahi

Asahi.exe has stopped working

He was conflicted

He wanted to show off because you like volleyball

But he doesn’t want to fuck up and make a fool of himself

At this point coach ukai was getting impatient and practice starts

You chill with yachi and kiyoko

Yachi asks you if you were a model and felt like throwing herself into the sun when you said no

You talk about your old school and how lucky the boys were to have managers as nice as them

Kiyoko offhandedly mentioned something about needing another manager for next year when she leaves so Yachi isn’t alone wink wink nudge nudge

You say you’ll think about it

Kiyoko is pleased

Yachi is shocked at how slick Kiyoko is

Lets be real here, kiyoko knows

She knows

What does she know?

Everything

She knows about suga’s plan and she wanted in even if she didn’t say anything

All she needed was a few minutes after hinata wooed you with his precious boy tendencies and she had it in the bag

But would this be a haikyuu headcanon set without someone getting hit in the face with a volleyball?

No it would not

Let the headshots begin

This time, it is you

Sorry girl

But asahi doesn’t hit you!

I’m pretty sure he would drop dead if he did tbh

Instead its tanaka

Sorry bro, i’ll say some nice things at your funeral

So tanaka is up to serve and at the same time, you’re walking over to grab something

The ball goes out of bounds because tanaka wanted to show off and he hit it with enough force to dent metal

But instead of metal, it was the back of your head

ouch

You fall forward, hitting your head again and land on your wrist as you try to catch yourself

Double ouch

The gym erupts into chaos

Yachi is sobbing

Yamaguchi is shell shocked

Suckyshima is laughing

Kiyoko is getting the first aid kit

Daichi and suga are running to you

Kageyama is stunned

Hinata is D:

Noya is maiming Tanaka

Tanaka is being maimed by Noya

And asahi

Poor sweet baby asahi is furious

But his body won’t move

He just witnessed the attempted murder of his girlfriend fiance wife mother of his children and pets crush friend!!

It takes him a good five minutes to come out of the shock

Now back to you, my friend

So i don’t know any language other than english

I know i know im working on it

But i can imagine that getting hit in the head twice can disorient someone to the point of not being able to process a non-native language for a good few minutes

So when they try to ask if you’re okay and you don’t immediately respond with words they’re concerned

But what’s even more concerning is the look you give them

You look at them like they grew two heads

Everything becomes even more chaotic

Tsukishima actually grows slightly concerned

Hinata is actively crying

Kageyama is yelling that he shouldn't be crying because he was not the one that was hurt

Yamaguchi was yelling for someone to call an ambulance

Asahi is still frozen

Tanaka and Noya are praying lmao

Kiyoko is back with the first aid kit

Daichi and Suga panic as well

They think you’ve forgotten where you are and who you are

Coach Ukai and Takeda, the reasonable adults deescalate the situation like pros

Coach Ukai tells everyone to give you space

Takeda aska series of questions to which you’re like

😃?????

So with his limited knowledge of your native language, he asks if you’re okay and then you nod

Okay everyone breathe a sigh of relief

He helps you up and walks you to the nurse and to get paperwork for the incident

You can’t tell me there won’t be any paperwork for this lmao

After you leave, they try to continue on with practice

Key word being try

Everyone is very worried so it ends early

Shocking, i know

Anyways, they all feel awful about what happened

So when the next day comes and you aren’t in class, everyone assumes you’re dead

Practice turns into a eulogy

Rest in peace my love

Jk you aren’t dead, just navigating an entirely different healthcare system and that takes some time

To make it worse, no one has your contact info and it’s a friday

So they have to go the entire weekend believing they killed you

But then you show up on Monday with a wrist brace

You didn’t break it, just sprained it

Tanaka omg he literally falls to the ground and begs for forgiveness

He thought you would be seething

You were upset at first, but you had gotten over it

You laugh it off

He is s h o o k

it was music to his ears

The third years weren’t lying, you really were super duper chill

When he stands up, you punch his shoulder lightly with your good hand and complement his serves

Again, he is s h o o k

But it was break time and the break was over so you parted ways

Noya deadass had to drag him to his classroom because he didn’t want to leave

Hinata, the sunshine baby boy he is, brought you snacks and cried because he felt so bad

Poor baby was blaming himself because he invited you to watch

Pls hug him tightly and give him all the head pats

You do lol

You give him a small hug after getting permission and ask if he needs help

You keep helping him, but you don’t watch practices

So Operation Recruit the Foreigner fails

P S Y C H

It doesn’t

You actually missed volleyball a lot more than you thought, so you stayed behind one day, wrist brace and all, to talk to kiyoko

She was happy and happily helped you talk to the coach and takeda

They triple checked you were sure after what happened last time

You were like

Fuck yeah mate lets go

Operation Recruit the Foreigner was a success

@millenialfanfictionaddiction @rebloging-everything

#asahi azumane x reader #asahi x reader #karasuno x foreigner!reader #karasuno x reader #foreigner!reader #haikyuu x foreigner!reader #haikyuu x reader headcanons #haikyuu headcanons #haikyu x reader #haikyuu!!#asahi is a bb #karasuno x manager!reader #Karasuno x foreign!manager!reader #haikyuu x manager!reader #manager!reader

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ashesandhackles · 4 years

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The Hogwarts Express scene in Prince's Tale: A Sirius and Snape analysis

I really, really enjoy Sirius and Snape as characters and their respective narrative functions in story. But what gets me most about them is how much Rowling hints about their backgrounds and so much of it makes sense with regard to who they are as adults. So I am going to be breaking down a very small scene from Prince Tale and getting into long winded hypothesis about their respective childhoods.

So, let's start with Snape. The scene begins with Snape rushing to find Lily, already in his Hogwarts clothes. Harry notes he must have been eager to get out of his clothes - ones that look like he borrowed from his mother, as Petunia spitefully pointed out. This has always been a very interesting detail to me - first off, it indicates how poor Snape's family is. Second, this indicates his tiny rebellion from his father - he refuses to wear clothes of the abusive man, and prefers his mother's. I admit, I am partial to the reading that Snape refuses to associate with his father in tiny ways, rather than Tobias refusing to hand his son clothes.

(I have seen readings which say that it is also a sign of neglect - perhaps his parents bought clothes that simply don't fit him, but I am more inclined to think it's a hand me down, simply because Harry identifies so strongly with it. Because Harry knows what it is like to wear a hand me down that don't quite fit, that are too big for you, or the ones that make you look ridiculous.)

Lily and Petunia's relationship is fraught with Petunia's jealousy. And young Lily is upset over it when Snape meets her. "I am not talking to you. Tuney hates me" she tells him. "Because we saw the letter from Dumbledore". Young Lily shows signs of being extremely emotionally reactive and this scene is one of them. It's easier for her to deal with Petunia's rejection of her by telling Snape she doesn't want to talk to him. It's a childish displacement of her hurt over her sister's rejection. (I am genuinely baffled by interpretations that Lily and Hermione are similar. Hermione is very cognitive person, Lily, as we have been shown repeatedly in memories, is not).

Snape, however, with his bad history with Petunia and his inability/ poor social skills to understand why this matters to her, goes: "So what?"

Lily, who throws him a look of deep dislike, says "So she's my sister". This seed is important because this is what develops into "he doesn't get me" feeling she later displays in her teenage scenes with him. Interestingly, most of Lily's personal relationships have deeply interwined love and dislike - Petunia (whose rejection bothers her but she cheerfully informs Sirius that Harry nearly broke a vase her sister sent - which means there is resentment on her end too), James - who she was attracted to even before 7th year but also disliked at one point, and Snape - again, a contentious friendship filled with love and distance.

"She's only a -" we dont get to hear what Snape intended to say. And given his own acrimony with Petunia, it could be anything. However, I read it as "She's only a Muggle" because it ties into his feelings about his father. Snape, who is proud of being half a Prince, emphasizing his magical lineage from his mother's side, his refuge in a violent, neglectful home. (Barty Crouch Jr and Snape with their disappointing fathers - I imagine Voldemort is supremely attractive leader to people with broken homes like this)

Snape, by all accounts, shows a disorganised attachment style. His caregiver, his mother - and perhaps the only parent he seems to have regard for, is too preoccupied by her own abuse to be there for her son - we see this in glimpses Harry sees in OOTP: " woman cowering" where a man shouts at her, and a young, neglected Snape cries in the corner. Children born in homes like this have trouble regulating their emotions, simultaneously displaying tendencies to aggressively lash out or show disassociative symptoms. Both of which Snape displays. Statistically, this is also seen more in low income households where economic instability and resulting domestic instability creates an unsafe environment for the kids to safely form ideas of their identity, or express emotions in healthy ways, modelling instead out of behaviour seen at home.

Then, Snape reminds her that they are going to Hogwarts. He is already in his Hogwarts clothes - now, Snape gets to be the impressive figure. The one who told her about magic, who theorised about how Muggles get letters from magical people, the one who told her about Dementors and Azkaban. He has already left behind the Spinner's End version of him, he wants to bigger than that, and is keen to be in place of magical learning and to join Slytherin. Essentially, he shows signs of unstable identity, insecurity - all prime for grooming into a cult.

And here comes along James Potter, who looks around at the mention of Slytherin. James's comment uses Snape's line and directs it to Sirius instead and it becomes a conversation between them, as a way to bond more with a fellow "rowdy boy" Sirius. Effectively ignoring the other two.

Sirius as we see here, "does not smile" when James talks about Slytherin. He essentially says something that can be construed as a way to nip that conversation in bud: "My whole family has been in. Slytherin". This suggests to me that there is some loyalty to his family there and his disillusionment with them isn't entirely fixed yet. After all, Sirius's intense loyalty to his friends, more specifically James, did not come out of thin air. It is reasonable to suggest that he felt some loyalty to his family at some point and the intensity with which he regards his friends is a reaction to burned off and being a "displaced person without a family" as Rowling put it.

Interestingly, while his reaction to his mother and Bellatrix are obviously sore spots, his response to Regulus is comparatively quite soft. ("Stupid, idiot" - something he calls James later on in the same book, OOTP). I imagine Sirius has quite complicated feelings about his brother and he is capable of nuance (when the person isn't Snape, where his dislike seems to be borne of an intense projection): "The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". As someone who is grown up among them, Sirius would understand that.

His framing of Regulus's need to please his parents also further highlights what exactly is the source of disillusionment. He calls Regulus "soft enough to believe them" - which means he is crediting his own intelligence to see through his parents bigoted world view. Clearly, bigotry is not something the Blacks explained in a way that Sirius, eldest of their male line and their heir, bought it. It also probably didn't help the Blacks case that Grimmauld Place is in a Muggle neighborhood and that their eldest son is a bit of a wild boy with interest in pushing boundaries. His intellectual disconnect leads to the righteous rage he later feels but it began there. (Boy, it must suck to discover that everything you have been taught to value in the world and in yourself as the heir is essentially rubbish). Since his differences with his family began with seeds of intellectual disconnect rather than on intense empathy with downtrodden, it makes him, as a pureblooded privileged boy, unable to truly understand Lupin's fears regarding his lycanthropy. Hence, the Werewolf prank (I am not getting to the Snape bit, just the Lupin bit). To James' credit, he does understand what that means for Lupin and saves all three of them from different set of consequences.

Anyway, back to the scene. James, who has made an ass of himself in front of his new friend, who he was getting along with fine until now, then goes "Blimey, I thought you seemed alright". (Btw, I find James wildly large ego kind of hilarious here, especially in light of Snape's comment about him to Sirius in OOTP: "You will know he is so arrogant that criticism simply bounces off him"). Sirius, who I believe has been raised like "royalty" as Blacks would, has good enough social skills to defuse a situation. He grins and says: "Maybe I will break the tradition".

This line is an indication of Sirius's desire for independence, an identity seperate from his family. The use of the word "tradition" is interesting. It sounds like Sirius is expected to behave in a certain way, the heir of Black family whose parents thought being a Black "made you practically royal". Adult Sirius is contemptuous of this, or their "valuable contribution to Ministry" which means they just gave gold - it tells me that any and all conditions put on him by his family were to fulfill tradition that is either worthless or holds no meaning in his eyes. The root of the emotional abuse Sirius suffers from his family is this - realising his parents love for him is conditional on him being a certain way. (In fact, you can read Regulus desire to emphasise his connection to the family as a reaction to what he sees with Sirius - Sirius does not behave, Mum and Dad don't love him). As a child with unconscious knowledge of lack of love, Sirius then acts out, they react, rinse and repeat "until he has had enough". Sirius chafes against boundaries well into adulthood and doesn't react well to people enforcing it on him, even if it is out of love for him. Cue the fire scene with Harry where he behaves as if Harry is rejecting him instead of protecting him.

Sirius asks James about where he wants to go, and Snape, who is incensed about James being insulting about a House he put stock in, which he made part of new identity (so that he is no longer that Snape boy from Spinner's End) and was in general trying to be impressive about in front of Lily, "makes a disparaging noise" once James talks of Gryffindor. Snape's response to James' : "Got a problem with that?" is interesting. He says: "If you'd rather be brawny, rather than brainy-"

This is an important value for Snape. He knows he is clever and values it. He spends his spare time inventing hexes, making great shortcuts to Potions. He has genuine thirst for learning and he hones it. In SWM, we see that he has written far more longer answers than anyone else, he is poring over his paper after exams. He even mocks Hermione's lack of inventive answers: "Answer copied word to word from the textbook, but correct in essentials". He values originality. It may be me stretching this, but I am partial to the reading: this is his way of rejecting his father once again, who is implied to be a violent man. (in other words, someone who is hypermasculine - "brawny". In fact, Snape's rejection of hypermasculinity is a huge post on it's own - Potions (brewing, cauldrons - coded as feminine arts), the doe Patronus, his proficiency in Occlumency and Legliemency (intuitive mind arts, again seen archetypically feminine) etc).

"Where are you hoping to go, seeing as you are neither?" - Sirius is quick with emotionally cutting insults. Snape hasn't even finished his sentence, but Sirius is already on his case. Which suggests growing up in a household with sharp tongues. It's a fair assumption, given Mrs Black's half mad portrait. It also tallies with Sirius's talking about his mother: "My mother didn't have a heart Kreacher, she kept herself alive out of pure spite" . The wounds are fresh enough on this. (Another interesting way Snape and Sirius act as inverse mirrors - Snape rejects his father, Sirius rejects his mother. Sirius acts as proxy for James for Harry while Snape takes on Lily's role of protecting him). However, you know who else is spiteful? Sirius.

While James is the physical bully (the tripping Snape, doing most of the bullying in SWM), Sirius attacks emotionally. ( Sample the one about Snape's appearance - "I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment, there will be great grease marks all over it, they won't be able to read a word" or even the carelessly vicious- "Put that away, before Wormtail wets himself in excitement"). Curiously, with all that talk of how his mother being spiteful, it's her room he spends time in when he is depressed. (Again, in inverse mirror way, we can talk of how Snape looks for a father figure in Dumbledore - craves his validation and is proud of Dumbledore's trust in him). We could argue it's also because Buckbeak is there, and perhaps it's the largest room in the house, but it's very telling that's where Sirius spends time when he is "in a fit of sullens". Sirius's sense of abandonment from his family, makes him look for family connections with friends - a trait he shares with Harry. Interestingly, the first time he glimpses Harry in Privet Drive, Harry is also running away from home - just like he did. Anyway, I could go on.

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brotheralyosha · 3 years

Text

Art does not exist to be evaluated on a scale of “harm” to “uplift,” and if we want to talk dog-whistles, that right there is a huge one: it’s deeply anti-intellectual, and it centers a form of toxic individualism that evacuates solidarity/difference in favor of moral purity.

Also, relevant from other recent intra-community trans Discourse: the fact that something triggered or hurt you, personally, is real— but that doesn’t actually make it bad, or wrong, or Harmful (tm) because you *are not the center of the universe.* Other trans folk who have different experiences of gender and the world might be deeply seen by the art that you think is morally bad and harmful personally. To some extent, we know why this is common: traumatic stress forces your focus to be survival oriented, internal, and evaluative. It’s hyper-vigilance! However, what it is *not* is healthy or productive—especially when turned relentlessly outward to hold others responsible for your bad feelings as opposed to processing them, or saying “ouch, not for me.” (Which is not to say artists shouldn’t be cognizant of other people’s pain and the larger social implications of their work, so please don’t reduce what I’m saying here to “fuck it, who cares.”)

The other huge flaw with “the story harmed me” or flat harm-critique is the lack of acknowledgement that, if we’re using that metric, then your insistence on the story harming you is EQUALLY harming to the other trans folk for whom the piece was a revelatory story, or productive. It’s powerfully self-centered and not feasibly sustainable. This is where the whole “criticism is an art itself and has theory” thing comes in. Because Sedgwick wrote re: queer theory’s internal failings a long ass time ago about “paranoid” vs “reparative” reading practices.

What we saw here was a classic case of destructive/paranoid readings that (1) FORCIBLY OUTED A TRANS WRITER and (2) caused a lot of misery and stress across the board for everyone... but that stress has been processed unevenly. Paranoid readings are also a valid understandable response to a violent world that seeks to harm us! But they close in on themselves and each other like a fucking bear trap. Reparative readings are open to pain as useful and potential, and are by definition attempting generosity.

Generosity in critique MATTERS. And furthermore, here’s where I get mad as hell: direct-effects audience theory has been discarded for like 40 years for a reason, but it HAUNTS twitter discourse like a hideous revenant. This framing of art and culture is very conservative, pretty fucked up, & spooky to someone who does this stuff professionally. If your replies are full of people saying “hell yes this is critical theory RUN AMOK” I want you to think hard about that.

And regarding some subtweets: it is, in fact, some people’s job—a job for which they have trained extensively!—to do critical work. That does not mean your opinion doesn’t matter, but it does mean (as I teach students every semester!!) that when doing heavy lifting with art, perhaps the metric of “who is allowed to speak about rhetoric and discourse” is not *solely* an identity based category. That’s a dangerous game. All of us can read badly, or be missing the background that a piece is speaking from, and being trans is NOT a guarantee against that. I’m exhausted and upset by the idea that we can’t have things that dig into more than 101 level exploration of gender, or our pain and tropes and violence, because it won’t be perfect for Everyone. And a queer woman who has the background to engage with what rhetoric and discourse and criticism do, weighing in specifically on those things, is not out of line—and neither is a trans person speaking to their identity experiences. Both can coexist and be discussed with an ethical approach to critique that is not infuriating.

I’m extremely tired and frankly feel violated by the level of anti-intellectual rhetoric and vitriol that cropped up in this discussion, and I’m not talking about fair critiques of a story’s functions or failure to fulfill those. Shit got personal quick, in unproductive ways. In short: harm-based critique of art sounds reasonable on the surface but its application & implications are intensely problematic and almost impossible to ethically or properly deploy, particularly when applied not to, like, egregious hate speech, but affectively difficult art.

That Twitter Thread (On Criticism), By Lee Mandelo

#yes!!! Y E S !!!!!#twitter #media #literature #isabel fall #lee mandelo

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marvellovegalore · 3 years

Text

Loving You

Chris Evans

Synopsis: Chris is over the moon, he's met you and life couldn't be better - you're all he's ever dreamed of and there's nothing you could do to ruin that.

Warning: explicit language, sexual content

No one in your industry would ever consider you difficult to work with, neither mean, arrogant, conniving or calculating. Most would go out of their way to praise you, proclaim their adoration for the movie star of dreams. On the other hand, your previous partners would. Ex-boyfriends that would bravely volunteer to be interviewed about your past relationship would recount their experiences with the same look as a shell-shocked soldier. If they could, they would gather in a support group for those left with deeply affecting, unresolved trauma - left by you.

You would deny it, if you could be bothered; or if the media had declared your heartbreaker ways to be of public interest. Which they are, but you’re largely untouchable therefore they're unreported. A Hollywood starlet, philanthropist, trend setter and tastemaker - alongside with being viewed largely as a sweetheart. Your childhood nannies coming in storming with adulations and saccharine recollections of a sweet and shy child. Friends that are more than happy to celebrate you on social media and fans who fill the internet with high production videos of you strutting on the streets and red carpets cement the idea that you are the moment, and you are loved.

To the world outside of the sphere of your ex-boyfriends, you were the most eligible bachelorette. There was no flaw in sight, no illusion to dispel or enchantment to break; you’re the real deal. Until you get bored, and you need to hurt someone. Because hurt people, hurt people. As the saying goes. There’s no need to go into that - just yet.

So, when Christopher saw you at the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscars after party, he fell head over heels. Your eyes cast a spell on him, and the enchantment was cast by the world’s master mage, you. You barely realised what you did, you were in no mood to flirt or truly fraternise. You were attempting to drown your sorrows of missing out on another Oscar win for the second time - in a mojito glass. You looked spectacular, possibly more than how you looked during the ceremony. But to Chris, your face of indignation looked like the angelic expression of a good second place loser with no hard feelings. He attempted to approach you, but too many people go into his way, they came with unprovoked film criticisms and pseudo interview responses that would get them into the academy board. All he wanted was to see your face up close and know how you spoke when you weren’t being regarded by a crowd of enraptured spectators.

He could see that you weren’t being left alone either, you hadn’t won the Oscar, but you are being treated as if you did. Your eyes bounce off of him every once in a while, but he couldn’t capture your attention - and then you left the party. You hardly made the French exit you were seeking. Stars old and young clamoured to say their goodbyes and kisses on your cheeks. You finally managed to escape. If Chris were to attempt to lie and say that he wasn’t disappointed, a blind woman could have seen right through him. His heart dropped, and he couldn’t explain why - he didn’t even know you.

Some other actor friends managed to drag him to a more intimate after party, the setting hardly intimate. A compound nestled in Hidden Hills, twenty-four-hour security circling the property, of one starlet who presented herself at the beginning of the night but chose an early slumber rather than socialising.

You came in half an hour after him, a miniskirt showing off your incredible legs - which were insured for an absurd amount.

His breath caught in his mouth. You were dressed down, but you looked too incredible to even try and claim you didn’t try. Everyone’s head turned and everyone was captured by the beauty at the door, accompanied by a friend. Your demure appearance fooling everyone into thinking that the attention was unwanted. You grabbed yourself a drink and half an hour later you were still enveloped with a group of equally intoxicated friends.

Though, Chris was determined to get your attention. He grabbed a drink off of the barman and slowly and easily made his way to you. The word ‘chill’ being chanted over and over again in his head. He was dead set on not making a fool of himself. Three steps away from you, glass of mojito clutched in his hands, his anxiety being beaten down and desperately suffocated into his stomach and away from his brain. He goes over his words, and before he finishes walking to you, you turn suddenly.

Your eyes pierce into his, a smirk glossing your lips. “Hi.” Your voice is low, characteristically different from your stage voice - your accent just as strong.

“Hey, got this for you.” Chris thrusts the glass into your unexpectant hand, some of the drink splashing out over the frosted rim. “Hope, it’s not too presumptive of me to have gotten it for you?” His eyes have glossed over, he shifts his weight from one foot to another. You shake your head no, a sweet smile playing at your lips. He’s even easier on the eyes much closer up. “Sorry you didn’t win that Oscar, real shame, I was rooting for you!”

You store it in the back of your mind that this man manages to look like a golden retriever even when he’s several drinks down, “It’s nothing, what does it mean anyway, I’ll still get more jobs in the future.” You take a sip of your drink after he takes a sip of his.

He compliments your eyes, your complexion and goes on an eager rant of how much he admires your capacity for acting. You drink in the adoration diluted by alcohol and take his words with a pinch of salt. After twenty minutes of solid, drunken conversation you’ve moved to a nook shadowed by statues. Your legs next to his on the red velvet sofa. You remark on the class of the artistic statues, clearly purchased illegally from a Mediterranean museum. He barely takes in your words, much preferring to intoxicate himself with the sight of you - and his fifth beer.

You’ve decided that you want him. Badly. But you’ve sussed him out. He’s not just going to be a one-night stand - in the animal kingdom he’s a Golden Retriever, and those aren’t dogs to be messed with. Your last fling was essentially a Doberman pinscher - discardable - but this Chris had to reeled in slowly.

You interrupt his musing about the Boston markets with a kiss.

Your lips smoothly capture his, your lipstick smearing over his lips. His hand presses tightly on the small of your back, arm underneath your waist holding you up higher. Stars explode inside your eyelids and his fingers grip tightly onto your shirt as your tongue licks his bottom lip. Your entry is granted, you lips pressing tighter against each other. Your eyelashes dance over his. Your hands rise to his face, your hands imprinting themselves onto his cheekbones. His hand brushes over the bare skin of your leg, his fingertips tracing the insides of your thighs. A small moan rises from the back of his throat.

The hold you have on him is cemented, you part away from him. You untangle yourself from him and stand up from the sofa, your eyes refusing to look at him, you smooth your clothes and slowly strut away from him.

Chris looks at the fire that you’ve set on his limbs in disbelief, he doesn’t grasp what you’ve just done. Did he do something wrong? Does he smell? No. You just didn’t care for the ceremony of the first ‘after-kiss’ moments.

He doesn’t see you for a year.

You truly are elusive - to the media and him.

He couldn’t get you out of his mind, and the fact that you starred in another award-nominated film did little to help him forget you.

You were curious to understand whether you really enticed him or not. You decided to not pursue that line of questioning, and never bothered to reply to his direct messages. It wasn’t done with the intent of hurting him, you just didn’t care. But life has a way of putting things in your way that deep down you didn’t know you wanted.

Nevertheless, here you are, with your boyfriend of a year - Christopher, sat across from you telling you story about his nephew. You simper, your eyes flitting between the sight of him and the view of the sea. The coast of Martha’s Vineyard enraptures you, you drink your wine, eyes steadily moving to the coastal view.

You grew up coming here. Your family often choosing the quiet island to rest in during the late spring holidays. You brought Chris back here to stay at your family holiday home as it’s not too far from his own family home, a perfect last stop after spending the week with his family.

He watches you curiously, his blue irises begging you to let him in to your thoughts. You refuse silently and beckon the waiter. You ask for the bill, it’s quickly on the table and you pay - ignoring Chris’ refusals. You smile at him, for the second time during dinner. He responds in kind, remarking on your bad mood and how he’s glad you’ve cheered up after having some food. He muses on the lovely weekend you’ve had together as you leave the restaurant. Candlelight following you as you make your exit with your hands holding each other tightly, his other hand in his preppy shorts.

You walk slowly, watching the sunset. His arm finding its way around your shoulders. His sweet and intimate embrace enveloping you in warmth. Your heart beats quickly against his bicep as you near your home. Your hands tremble for some reason and you practically sprint up the porch steps after you’ve crossed the gate and walkway, leaving Chris five steps behind you.

You open the door and make a quick beeline for the kitchen in the far back of the house. You enter the pantry, ignoring Chris’ questions of what is wrong. You take a bottle of Rosé out of the wine fridge and forgo pouring it into a glass and drink it straight from the bottle. It tastes incredibly sweet, and Chris finds you eventually in the pantry. He looks at you in surprise as you gulp the drink.

“Everything okay, baby?” He walks to you, his hands failing onto your hips, his adoring eyes almost boring into your soul. You refuse him entry into the pits of your emotions. Steeling yourself against the onslaught of therapy-like talk.

You don’t want him to know that hurt people, hurt people. And that you’re one of them.

You kiss him, silencing his calming words.

His fingers tighten on your sundress. The colour melding with the colour of his fingers. Your lips become one.

You go through the steps of getting out of the pantry in a seemingly choreographed dance, your dance ends in the smaller reception room; your bodies tangling themselves on the rug. Neither of you giving a care to fact that you’re undressing in front of the window overlooking the pool and coast.

The flickers of the setting sun’s rays highlight his now bare chest. He returns his lips to yours in a hypnotising kiss. Your hands dance with the muscles of his back as you caress his skin, his torso vibrating in between your legs with the fervour of his movements. Your dress is ripped off your body. He directs his attention to your right breast, his soft lips caressing your skin. His tongue lashes slowly against your nipple, you fight to hold back your moans as his hand lowers to your pussy. His fingers pushing aside your pants, his fingers sink into you like it’s their second nature. Your head rolls back as he makes love to you with his fingers and his lips lower down to where his fingers are. He licks you where you need him most, his love for you being written inside you with his tongue.

You orgasm. Slowly.

And all that runs through your mind is how much you’ll miss him.

You pull him up to you, you turn over and straddle him. Tasting yourself on his lips as the sun sets even lower. The waves crash against the shore violently as the wind picks up. You lower yourself onto him and start riding him, your hips bucking in an impassioned manner against his. He doesn’t hold back his moans as he caresses your breasts and stomach.

You realised you loved him four months ago, but every time you catch sight of his loving eyes when you’re fucking, it makes you fall in love all over again.

Chris switches and puts you on all fours, he grips your hair in his hands, the rising intensity making him grip you harder. His thrusts are merciless, his spare hand spanking you and stroking, you’re on the cusp of a sensory overload when he turns you over. On your back you have the most beautiful view. A strong ray of sunlight brightening his eyes as he makes love to you. His kisses are tender but intense. His hand grips onto yours, your fingers intertwined and his other hand griping onto your face.

A tear slips out of your eye, you wipe it away quickly. Your increased sensitivity makes the second orgasm come, Chris fucks you through your breathy moans and you throw your head back. Momentarily blinded by the bliss; the pink sky wakes up from the saccharine, cloudy state. Chris orgasms into you with four thrusts.

You push away from him and stand up; you pull on your silky pants. You sigh and leave Chris on laying breathless on the rug. You walk upstairs and enter your room. You use the toilet, wash your hands, have a glass of water and throw on a short black dress. As you pull on your boots Chris enters the room, a smile gracing his lips.

He pulls on some shorts, “Want to tell me what all that was about?” He gives you a confused expression as he lies back against the bed, taking one of the fluffed pillows from behind him and tucking it between his chest and arms.

Hurt people, hurt people.

You turn towards him, facing away from your walk-in closet. “When we fuck, I have to think about other men to get through it.”

His eyes widen alarmingly, he turns to you, the light of the tv making him blue. “Say that again?” The disbelief is almost tangible in his words.

“I feel embarrassed about being seen with you now. I feel I’m just too good for you.” You walk into the closet and you hear him stomp off the bed.

“No, rewind to what you first said.” His voice is louder, his features twisted with confusion and hurt.

“I have to think of other guys to get off,” your eyes connect with his, you don’t look away, you fight the smirk biting at your lips. “I can’t stand the thought of being with you any longer. I’m sick of it.” You grab the suitcase that was packed for you when you were at the restaurant. “Also, you’re not as ripped as you were when we met, there’s other guys that can provide that image for me.”

“Take it back.” The hurt he’s feeling is completely tangible now. “Take it back right now. Right. Now.” His eyes are pleading with you to have mercy.

You've decided that you've gone past the point of no return. “I’d be happy never have to see you or have to hear from you - ever again.” You scan his eyes, your heart swelling with an eerie feeling of pride as his eyes flood with held back tears.

“This must be some elaborate prank— “he chokes on his words, his hands reach for yours, but you step back.

“This year has been tedious, completely boring and I’ve gotten nothing but only ten decent fucks from you.” Not true, and both of you can attest to that, you've had the best sex, your mutual adoration is clear when you make love. So, Chris is at a loss to understand how this is all being said and happening. “I’m off to New York, stay as long as you like or don’t. I don’t care. Have a nice life.” You slip past him.

Taking his heart and soul with you.

He can’t stop the tears from ballooning in his eyes and then trickling down his cheeks.

He must be stuck in a nightmare. He doesn’t know how long he’s been pacing in this closet filled with your clothes, your smell haunting him.

He rushes downstairs and there’s no sign of you. He stumbles outside and there’s no sign of you or your driver. He rushes in to get his phone and calls you. Five times. The sixth time it goes straight to voicemail.

He feels his heart break.

He falls right in the spot he’s in. He vomits his heart out, the pieces being spat out onto the wooden floors. The blood shinning underneath the soft lights of the lamps.

He wants death. Slow and steady death.

——

Part Deux -

#chris evans imagine #chris evans #chris evans blurb #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagine #marvel #captain america #steve x reader #steve rogers #steve rogers x you #chris evans fluff #chris evans smut #andy barber #andy barber imagine #andy barber fluff #Chris Evans angst

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

Text

No, Re-Destro Is Not Destro’s Literal Son

and

Yes, I Will Die On This Hill

I have a number of small, persistent quibbles with some of the widespread misapprehensions I see included in BNHA fanfic, quoted as fact in meta posts, even cited on the wiki. Quirk cancellation restraints, what the 20% quirklessness data point means in practice, when Kurogiri comes into existence relative to the time of the Shimura Family Massacre, things like that. My biggest one, though, is as the title suggests: the idea that Yotsubashi Rikiya is Yotsubashi Chikara’s son.

I don’t entirely know where this confusion comes from. As far as I can tell, the early scanlations didn’t get it wrong—one rendered the line in Chapter 218 about Destro having a child he didn’t know about as being children, plural, but otherwise, they were all accurate enough. It seems people just assumed that the child mentioned in 218 must be Re-Destro, who was, after all, right there on the panel. Even though the scanlations never said it, even though the official translation never said it, even though ample evidence in the manga disproves it, the idea still got around that Rikiya is Chikara’s son.

I have and will maintain that this is obviously wrong if you stop to think about it for even a moment, but unfortunately, most people don’t. The error can be found on less well-tended parts of the fandom wiki[1]; it’s in tumblr meta posts about the villains; it’s in fanfic.

And now, god help me, it is on the official anime website, too.

“Stillness-in-green, maybe you should consider that you might just be wro—”

I will face BONES and walk backwards into hell.

But if you want, you can come with me, and I’ll explain on the way. Hit the jump.

Dialogue + Narration

There are two places where the relationship between Chikara and Rikiya is explicitly addressed—the lead-in to the dinner scene in Chapter 218 and the fight between Clone!Shigaraki and RD in Chapter 232. If you include the Ultra Analysis databook, the number goes up to four: once each in Re-Destro and Destro Classic’s character blurbs.

Let’s take a look at each of those places, shall we?

The relevant Japanese text here is in the first narration box: 子ども, kodomo.

Kodomo is not gendered. It literally just means child. The key kanji is 子, ko. Like most kanji, it has a lot of potential readings, and you can add other kanji to it to modify it. Add 息 and you get musuko, son. Pronounce 子 as shi instead of ko, and you get a term that is frequently, though not exclusively, used to refer to boys. Add 女 to that reading and you get joshi, woman/girl. 子 is in a lot of words, many of them gendered! Used for kodomo as Hori does here, though, it does nothing to indicate a gender one way or the other.

Also too, it does nothing to indicate that Rikiya is the child in question; it simply states that there was such a child, somewhere in the world. Now, the natural assumption for anyone who knows how the graphic novel medium works and who understands basic literary analysis would be that the significant character we just met is, in fact, the child in question—except that everything else we learn about Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army here makes it entirely impossible.

I’ll do a full breakdown on why that is in the next section. In the meantime, here’s the next reference:

Here, we’re looking at the phrase the Viz translation renders as, “His blood runs through these veins.” The literal Japanese there is, Desutoro no matsuei chi o tsugu mono! In a literal translation, chi o tsugu mono means, “one who inherits the blood,” or, more loosely, “blood successor.” It’s matsuei—末裔—that’s the key word here.

Japanese has several words to express the concept of “descendant.” Matsuei is one word; the data book uses shison. So what’s the difference? Well, I’ll talk about shison in a moment, but I had an inkling of it just from looking at the kanji in matsuei—“end” and “descendant” respectively, leaving me with an impression of something like a final descendant or the terminus of the bloodline. Further research confirmed it: shison can refer to any lineal blood tie, but matsuei refers to a bloodline’s final inheritor, the person at the end of a long line of many, or even countless, generations. It’s the difference between being able to point to a grandparent and the kind of painstaking genealogical research that lets you[2] point to a famous royal from eight hundred years ago—matsuei is a word that very much assumes the existence of those countless generations.

So not only does Rikiya’s line there not imply that he’s Chikara’s son, but his specific word choice also tells us that he cannot be Chikara’s son. That’s, uh. Pretty conclusive, I would say.

Lastly, though, there’s also the data book. This is, perhaps, the actual closest you’re going to get to a manga equivalent of those character blurbs on the anime website, at least until such time as Hori deigns to give the MLA types character profile pages. (I live ever in hope.)

There are two relevant bits of text, one in Re-Destro’s entry, and the other in Destro Classic’s. The first describes how Re-Destro organizes the MLA as Desutoro no chi o tsugu mono: the same phrase he uses for himself in the manga, minus the matsuei. @codenamesazanka (the one who told me about the databook references among other citations, bless) rendered it as “Destro’s blood successor”; I have also seen it given as “the successor of Destro’s bloodline.” Note again, the lack of reference to a father/son bond.

Chikara’s entry uses that other descendant word I mentioned before, 子孫, shison. Notice that the term uses that ko kanji from kodomo before? As it does in joshi, 子 here reads shi. The other kanji, 孫, means grandchild. Thus, literally, grandchild-child—or, in the vernacular, simply descendant.

And then we have the anime website.

So, for comparison’s sake, the anime website uses 息子—the same combination of kanji that I said earlier gives you musuko, son. Heck, it even uses 父, chichi, for Destro—father. It’s as explicit as it’s possible to be, and I just don’t know why or how the anime website could fuck that up so bad when absolutely nothing in the manga describes the two Yotsubashis that way, and, indeed, one specific word choice actually rules out the possibility.

So, that’s all the manga says directly. It’s not the only evidence there is, though. In fact, the next piece makes it even more clear how colossally and impossibly wrong a father/son connection for Destro and his modern successor is.

Timeline

The long and short of this section is, “Since Harima Oji was Sako Atsuhiro’s great-great-grandfather, there is no possible way that Destro—who pre-dated Harima—can be Re-Destro’s father.” If you read that sentence and nodded your complete understanding and agreement, feel free to skip ahead to the last section. If you’d like the full explanation it takes to reach that sentence’s conclusion, though, read on.

So, aside from the word matsuei, the timeline is the most telling piece of evidence to my eye. I address it secondly rather than firstly because it’s less direct than the explicit narration; it relies on drawing conclusions based on things we’ve been told elsewhere rather than on the immediately relevant text. Oh, Mr. Compress’s relationship to Harima is explicit enough, but on what am I basing my claim that Destro predates him?

Regarding that, there’s no explicit year relative to My Hero Academia’s current events given for when Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army were active; the same is true for Harima Oji’s escapades. However, we are given some broad-strokes information, relative not to current events, but rather to the history of heroism as a legal institution in Japan.

We know that there was a widespread, lengthy period of chaos following the rise of quirks—called meta-abilities in those early years. At some point, however, people began to search for a way for meta-humans to live in peace with non-metas. The compromise that was reached was the foundation of professional heroism in Japan—while the use of meta-abilities would be legal in private settings, it was only by becoming licensed by the state as “heroes” that people could use their quirks in public.[3]

The legislation curtailing the use of meta-abilities—and the appropriation of a dead woman’s language to popularize a law establishing exactly the opposite of what she used that language to call for—is what catalyzed the rise of the original MLA. Thus, we can position Destro as being alive and active around the same time that heroism as a legal institution was being formed. Since we further know that he committed suicide in prison, we can assume that his child was conceived at some point prior to his capture. Ergo, Destro’s child, were they alive today, would be as old as Japanese professional heroism itself.

Next, consider Harima Oji, the Peerless Thief, a criminal who targeted the riches of “sham heroes.” We’re specifically told that he was active in the days in which the current system was settling into place—e.g. he only became active once the Hero System was established enough to have produced corrupt heroes. We’re told he preached reformation—he wasn’t just some pre-existing criminal who saw a shiny new target in heroes; he had specific grievances which he wanted addressed by the system, and which the system was not addressing.

The earliest Harima could possibly be active, then, is concurrent with Destro—Harima fighting against the corrupt people who had found their way into the new heroic institution, and Destro fighting against using the institution of heroism to oppress non-heroes. What I think is more likely, though, is that Harima came after Destro—Harima needed to have had time to realize what kinds of fakes had been drawn to this shiny new career path, maybe even to spend some time trying to change things the legal way.

I don’t suspect they were separated by very long—I would imagine Destro was easily within Harima’s living memory, and might well have influenced why he chose the path of protest that he did—but I do think they were separate.

Moving forward, then, Mr. Compress is four generations distant from his famous ancestor. Thus, even if you assume that Harima is of the same generation as Chikara, that’s what you’re looking at for Chikara’s child: someone who, were they alive today, would be old enough to be the great-grandparent of a thirty-two-year-old man.

Re-Destro’s probably a few years older than Mr. C, sure,[4] but that man doesn’t have Ujiko’s slow-aging quirk. Unless you want to start pulling theories about cryogenic stasis the story for some reason never saw fit to mention out of thin air, Re-Destro is in no way old enough to fit the bill.

This is backed up by one other piece of the timeline as well, and one more place we can look at language:

The small child at the center of the image is Rikiya, so young that he’s in schoolboy shorts for a meeting otherwise so formal that he’s been made to wear a tie. He’s, what, six to nine here, tops? And the adults speaking to him say that they’ve been in hiding for generations—代々, daidai, the kanji for generation followed by a kanji that just means, “See that kanji written right before me? Yeah, just read that one again.”

The original MLA was active for only a handful of years, and, per Chapter 218, they didn’t dissolve until Destro was captured. Thus, we can assume they have been in hiding since then, but not before then. With that in mind, this is another line that renders a father/son relationship impossible.

Remember, Chikara already had a child in the world circa his capture. If Rikiya were Chikara’s son, then Destro’s capture and his army’s subsequent dissolution could not have happened any farther back than nine months plus however old Rikiya was in this exact moment of his youth. Rikiya, who we see here as a child of less than ten.

Ten years in hiding doesn’t make one generation; it damn sure doesn’t make multiple ones.

Now, you could make theories about cryogenic statis that would explain this ludicrous discrepancy, sure. You could also theorize about e.g. artificial insemination,[5] or time stop quirks, or any number of other possibilities in the vast panoply the HeroAca world offers. The point is, though, that you don’t need to. There was, in the manga, no discrepancy that needed to be explained. It is only fanon misinterpretation and a glaring disinterest in the series’ villains from official sources that have presented this issue.

I’m praying that it’s all just a misunderstanding on the part of whoever maintains the website, and that the anime itself will render the relevant bits of dialogue correctly. Given the extreme cuts and alterations that My Villain Academia has been subjected to thus far, though, I’m sure you can appreciate my being concerned.

…So that’s the meat of it. The idea that Rikiya is Chikara’s son is wrong simply on the basis of what’s said in the text, and it’s doubly wrong on the basis of the timeline. There is, though, one other thing I think points towards Re-Destro being exactly the descendant he says he is, not a son playing down the connection out of humility or something. This one is a lot more headcanon-y, though, so I saved it for last.

MLA Social Dynamics

It’s quite simple. We have, in the MLA, a group of people that venerates Destro’s bloodline to an obviously unhealthy degree, putting up portraits of him wherever they can get away with it, tagging his successor with a “Re-” as if to invoke reincarnation or miraculous return, entirely willing to throw their lives away for what they think was his cause, and others’ lives if those others say anything too scathing about the words Destro wrote, quite as if they treat Destro’s memoir as some sort of holy writ.

They venerate Destro that much, and you’re trying to tell me that they wouldn’t just call a spade a spade and acknowledge RD as the son of their great leader? Come on.

Since long before I turned up the matsuei factoid in researching this piece, since long before Mr. Compress gave us such a helpful generational comparison, I’ve held the opinion that, given a group that holds their leaders in such high esteem, with such particular regard for bloodline, the only reason Rikiya does just call himself a descendant, rather than citing the specific term for what he is, is that the specific term is distant enough that it actually does sound more impressive to just say “descendant,” rather than something like, “great-great-great-grandson.” That kind of thing just begs the question, “What took you guys so long?” or, “You and how many other people, buddy?”

Mr. Compress may have the panache to carry off a line like that, but Rikiya’s a different story. If he had something so amazing up his sleeve as, “I am the son of the great Destro,” I have to think he’d just say it proudly, not fall back on the impressionistic vaguery of something like chi o tsugu mono. Even if I had no other evidence to work with, I’d think the same—all the evidence you need is right there in the character writing of who Rikiya and the MLA are and how they talk about the man whose dreams Re-Destro was raised to carry.

A closing note: I will allow that Rikiya is being overdramatic when he uses matsuei and its connotation of countless generations. There are a few other things we can use to trace the history of heroism—Ujiko’s age, and the 18-years-or-less periods that One For All was held by its pre-All Might bearers—and running those numbers leads me to believe that it is, in fact, entirely possible to count the number of generations between Rikiya and Chikara, and the number, while higher than one, is probably not all that high. Certainly matsuei is being more dramatic about it than is entirely warranted, hence the poetic flourish of the official translation’s, “His blood runs through these veins!” The theatricality only makes me fonder of him, however.

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

FOOTNOTES

[1] It was changed and reverted on Re-Destro’s page at least twice before it finally stuck in January of this year. Chikara’s page took until July to be corrected, and it’s still wrong on various other subpages.

[2] Or your kids, if you have those. Only the last generation in the bloodline is the matsuei, but that’s a moving goalpost as long as the bloodline is still propagating.

[3] This summary of events combines what we know from both My Hero Academia proper and the Vigilantes spin-off, which I recommend to anyone who’s at all interested in finer-grained worldbuilding on Hero Society Japan than the main series makes time for.

[4] I personally headcanon him as 42.

[5] To which point I would refer back to the word kodomo, and note that that word choice indicates that Destro had a child in the world. Not a sperm sample kept in a freezer somewhere, waiting for the right would-be mother: an actual child. Some quick research on my part says that the farthest that term stretches is in using it to refer to yet-unborn children, fetuses still in the womb. Seeing as Japan doesn’t even allow inmates conjugal visits in real life, much less in a setting where villains are so dehumanized that Tartarus is an acceptable punishment for them, the line about Destro “having a child out in the world” takes us right back to a date of conception no later than Destro’s final night of freedom.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha meta #yotsubashi rikiya #yotsubashi chikara #re-destro #destro bnha #meta liberation army #my writing #i have thoughts on the anime's nonsense too but #hahawow #that's gonna take a little longer to get coherent #preview: it's not about capitalism #it's about fear

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tales-unique · 3 years

Text

FAITH, LOST II

Tagging @chelseareferenced so she can read this goodness first hand! ;3

Chapter 2

“You have got to be joking!” Heisenberg can’t contain himself, not that he ever censored himself in the past. This is beyond ridiculous, even for the high and mighty bitch herself. He’s quick to turn on his heel to stare down the deceiver but he doesn’t call her out. Not yet anyway. He doesn’t need to, not when Lady Goliath looks about ready to burst a vein. “Mother Miranda, I must protest!” Lady Dimitrescu hisses, eyes practically glowing with rage. “Heisenberg hasn’t the faintest idea of the gift you are giving, he’d sooner throw it to the dogs!”

You wince at how little she regards you, conflicted. As it stands Lady Dimitrescu is fighting viciously to no doubt claim you as her own, which bodes marginally better than the man who would sooner toss you aside without a second thought than look at you. The Countess stands tall but her posture reminds you of a petulant child, demanding to be given what they want. Albeit a regal one. All while Heisenberg stands there with a mean snarl on his lips that brandishes his impressive canines, aimed squarely at Mother Miranda. Lady Beneviento sits silent as the grave watching the exchange while her devilish doll wiggles in excitement on her lap. Lord Moreau lingers on the edge of the fray, wringing his hands; he’s clearly distressed at the fighting and you almost feel ashamed for being the cause of the turmoil. “My decision is final,” Mother Miranda states firmly, voice echoing unnaturally around the room, her form already receding towards the doors. “Mother Miranda, please!” Lady Dimitrescu calls out, a brief look of panic flitting across her porcelain features when she receives no response at all. The cracks are already showing — she will not get her way today. In a desperate attempt to regain control she turns to Heisenberg, who stands tense as he watches Mother Miranda leave. “Heisenberg!” She seethes, hands balled tightly into fists that threaten to snap the delicate neck of her opera length cigarette holder into splinters, “say something!” You watch, helpless, as he casually lifts his hammer, taking his sweet time under Lady Dimitrescu’s smouldering gaze. The others have already made a hasty retreat, following their Mother’s steps closely, leaving you at the mercy of the feuding siblings. When Heisenberg finally locks eyes with her, hammer set proudly on his shoulder, the tension is so thick you struggle to breathe. Then, he smirks. The tautness of his body melts away into a well versed confident swagger, complete with a wolfish grin, and Lady Dimitrescu recoils so quickly in rage that you fear she’s given herself whiplash. The tirade of pure and unadulterated hatred that spills forth is in no way befitting of a woman of such high standing but Heisenberg seems unaffected. In fact, it amuses him to see her become undone when he ignores her. You don’t understand how he’s so calm when faced with such venom, practically cowering when she turns to you, face twisted in indignation. “Now don’t be a sore loser,” he tuts, quickly tugging you to his side, “Mother Miranda made her choice, are you really going to defy her?” He teases, grin widening at the sight of faint colour spreading on the Countess’ face. Heisenberg always knew how to get under skin and make her squirm. Sparing you one last glance Lady Dimitrescu turns sharply on her heel to leave, huffing in annoyance and frustration. Neither of you are worthy of even a biting retort, it seems. “You can breathe, you know.” You startle at Heisenberg’s teasing remark, finally releasing the breath that you didn’t realise you had been holding the whole time. You had been so transfixed on the very real prospect of your demise at the hands of a nine foot tall Vampire woman that you may have neglected that small fact of life. Lightheadedness makes your vision swim and for a moment you think you’re about to faint. If ever there was something to make you feel like you had one foot in the grave that moment was very much it. It does not bear repeating. Heisenberg takes in your deer-in-headlights expression, chuckling at the way his stare makes your little hummingbird heart flutter more. You’re absolutely petrified. It’s understandable, he knows that he’s dangerous and your little flock has more than enough stories about the big bad Lycan master that lets his hounds descend from the ominous Factory to feast on the nonbelievers. Utter bullshit. Well, mostly. But they don’t need to know that, of course. “So,” he drawls, tilting his head, “Mother Miranda says you’re my new— what was it? Ah, right, right, my new servant.” It’s a statement, but you’re not sure if he fully understands what he’s supposed to actually do with you, just like Lady Dimitrescu remarked. You nod shakily, bringing your still bound wrists up in a feeble attempt to warm yourself. It doesn’t offer much, the metal is so cold it brings your skin out in goosebumps. Thankfully, Heisenberg notices. “Oh, uh, sorry about that,” he clears his throat, a sudden switch, and with a flick of his wrist the shackles snap apart and shoot off to the side. They clatter to the ground unceremoniously, rusted and broken. It’s almost sad how much you relate to them at that moment. “T-thank you,” you answer meekly, rubbing at your sore wrists. The blood rushes to your fingers, making them tingle. It’s an odd, but muted, sensation, given the gravity of your situation. He doesn’t reply, merely tips his hat at you before motioning for you to go ahead of him. You’re unsure if it’s because he’s a gentleman or if it’s a power play but you move regardless, your pace hesitant. You’re not eager to be thrust out into the chill of the mountain, not that it’s any warmer inside at this point. You can only hope that the Factory is better than this.

It’s so much worse. The heat— it’s humid, stagnant, and downright heinous. Steam hisses and spits from rusted, internal pipes that streak across the walls and ceilings of the corridors, making the air humid and cloying. Your feet ache through your boots as you try to keep up with Heisenberg's strides, echoing off the metal grating underfoot in an annoying clank clank clank rhythm. In an attempt to cool yourself down you try to sweep up your damp hair from where it sticks to the back of your neck, grimacing at the wetness that covers your fingers. You’re a sweating mess and you hate it. The elevator is your near breaking point. In such a small space the heat intensifies, stuffy and borderline unbearable. It’s normal, your muddled mind tries to rationalize, since the lower levels are closer to the furnace, and it’ll get better once you go up, but it doesn’t take away from discomfort. You notice with great irritation that Heisenberg is barely batting an eyelid, though it’s to be expected. He lives there, of course he’d be used to it. The ride to the upper levels is uncomfortable and not just because of the humidity. His eyes are on you the entire time, at least you think so given those round glasses that he wears obscure his eyes from your view, no doubt wondering just why he’d taken in such a mess. And a mess you most certainly are. Heisenberg can see how your desperately try to keep stringy, moist hair from plastering itself to your sweat-soaked skin, failing miserably as the rebellious strands slip from your fingers. There are dark patches to your simple dress, made worse by how it clings to your body from the heat. He can barely stop himself from smirking when you curse quietly under your breath, rolling your eyes in irritation as you fuss over your hair. It’s the first time that you’ve shown some real spirit. Your annoyance is refreshing on your flushed face, the dim, artificial light casting you in a dewy, warm glow. Sadly, it’s not enough to overpower how badly you need a bath and fresh clothes. “Well, here we are,” he announces as the elevator stops and the door opens up; your new home. It’s another long hallway that looks similar to the dozen odd that you walked through to get here, but you do notice that it’s comparatively cooler. It must be near the top of the Factory. It’s a pleasant relief and you follow Heisenberg to a cluster of rooms a little lighter on your feet. The tour is, well, barely that, as he shows you a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom, all outfitted with the barest of necessities and far too much scrap metal, tools, and other engineering components. You linger in the doorway of the modest bedroom, staring at the single bed pushed up in the corner as though that’s the out of place object in the room. He leaves you for a moment, fumbling through papers and projects on the heavily cluttered desk that takes up the length of one wall, and you wander the hallway, peeking inside rooms with doors slightly ajar. Most are storage rooms with all sorts of junk inside, but one looks salvageable with an old, banged up couch and minimal debris. As you look about envisioning how to make it more homely, leaning against the door frame, you’re not paying attention and it gives Heisenberg the perfect opportunity to scare you. “Found yourself a room, huh?” He whispers into your ear, pulling back quickly as you shriek in alarm and swing out your arm instinctively to hit him. You can barely hear your heart hammering wildly in your chest over the sound of his raucous laughter, retreating from him quickly. “Why would you do that?” You shout, wide eyes staring at him. Heisenberg can barely pull himself together, breaking into small fits of laughter at the sight of your astonished expression, exhaling deeply to try and ground himself. “Couldn’t help it,” he explains, grinning at you, “it was a perfect setup!” Flabbergasted, your mouth falls open at his response; this man was one of the four Lords of the village, not some child playing tricks! Noticing the offense you take at his actions Heisenberg scoffs, his own expression souring as he turns away from you. What was he honestly thinking? You were just another haughty, stuck-up, loyalist to Mother fucking Miranda that clearly wouldn’t know a joke if it came up and slapped you in the face. “Bathroom is right there, you reek,” he snaps harshly, pointing into a small room lined with cracked, dirty tiles and rusting, dated appliances. You glare at his back, wordlessly going inside and doping your best to slam the door shut, but all you manage is a half-descent rattle. You look about yourself and suppress a shiver of disgust, staring at the old, rusting shower that has clearly seen better days, questioning whether you can forgo washing after all. Needs must, you think to yourself, as you dig out the cleanest towel you can find from a rickety old cabinet in the corner. Thankfully the water is fine when you turn the handle and you quickly strip to take advantage of the first good thing since you came to the Factory. As you stand under the tepid spray you wonder if you are, as Mother Miranda had said, perfect for this task. Doubt nips at your resolve and tries to whittle down your faith, but you refuse to let it win. You must succeed, for Mother Miranda.

#RE #RE8 #RE 8 #Resident Evil #Resident Evil 8 #Resident Evil 8 Village #RE Imagine #RE Imagines #RE8 Imagine #RE8 Imagines #Resident Evil Imagine #Resident Evil Imagines #Karl Heisenberg #Karl Heisenberg Imagine #Karl Heisenberg Imagines #Karl Heisenberg x Reader #Heisenberg Imagine #Heinsenberg Imagines #Heisenberg x Reader

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thatoneitaliangirl · 3 years

Note

Oh my gosh could you write a childe x reader thing 🥺🥺 I wanna just have some sweet angst with a happy outcome somehow 😔

I may have gone a bit overboard- At this point, I feel I'm literally incapable of writing anything under 1,000 words. So sorry this took so long, I had to take a break from writing to work out some things with school. A bunch of nonsense and stuff lol. You didn't specify gender, so I wrote the reader as female, only cause that's what I'm used to working with. I apologize if that's not what you wanted. I can always whip up something for ya with your preferred pronouns! But I'm not sure if I'll make it this long . . . I honestly don't know how I even did this, like this is a feat I feel. Anyways, I hope Childe isn't too OOC in this. I'm not the best when it comes to writing angst, so I hope you like it! And just as a little explanation beforehand, I read up that Childe joined the Fatui when he was about 14, became a Harbinger at 18, and is considered a young adult. So in this fic, it's assumed that he and you are at least 20 years old just so the timeline adds up and stuff. Also, despite how long this is, Childe isn't in it as much as you probably wanted- I have a tendency to write more about the reader than the characters. It's something I'm trying to break, but I was just so proud of this. I hope you like it! Anyways, happy reading!!! ^^

Childe x Reader Angst

Plot- Reader and Childe have been together for years when Reader finds out that Childe killed her sister when she was young.

Word count- 8,864 (I'm so sorry)

Warnings- Mentions of death, sadness, bad writing, possible suicide at the end(But just mentioned as a fear), swearing, and cringe 'funny' moments cause why not.

The wind blows through your hair as you sit atop a ledge overlooking Liyue Harbor. Today is your younger sister's birthday, and for the past six years, it's been nothing but a reminder of your failure. You were supposed to take care of her. After your parents passed away, you were all she had left, and she, you. But you were just a kid yourself, hardly capable of raising a child.

You bite your lip and look over at all the families walking about, having fun. It brings a smile to your face knowing at least some people can be happy on this day. She wouldn't have wanted doom and gloom to be her only remembrance. The sun in the sky is warm, beaming down on your skin. You've fought many battles for the Adventurers Guild during your time living in town, and are proud to say you've survived. Even escaped a few sparring matches with Childe relatively unscathed.

You win every time, but it's no surprise given he lets you win. That's one of the many things you love about him. He tries to put you first in most situations as much as he can with his job. And it's the little things like letting you win a fake fight that makes you feel like you're floating.

Your relationship is practically plastered on every notice board in town with how affectionate you are to each other. Not a soul in Liyue can look at you and not know you are the Harbinger's lover. But you're okay with that.

Taking in a calm breath, you hop down and glide your way to the docks below.

"Good morning, _____! Nice weather, isn't it?" You smile at the young girl as she approaches you. You've known her for a while now, and have come to consider yourself friends. She seems a bit nervous though.

"It certainly is. Are you okay, Chen?" Her smile drops and she grips onto her arms.

"Can I ask a favor of you? It's rude of me, but I'm desperate!"

"It's fine, what's the matter?" The young girl sighs.

"My brother borrowed a loan from Northland Bank last month and the payments were due two days ago. He told me he was going to pay it back . . . He hasn't been home since. I just thought that . . ."

"You want me to ask Tar?" Her eyes snap up to yours.

"Will you? Please? I'm just so worried about him! I told him not to take that loan, but he never listens to me." You put your hand on her shoulder to calm her down.

"It's okay. It's no problem at all! I was just headed there anyway. I'll see about your brother for you." Young Chen sighs in relief and reaches in her pocket.

"Here, I want you to take this as payment." You shake your head and push her hand away.

"No, I could never!"

"I insist! My mother gave this to me when I was a kid," She opens your hand and places a small coin in before closing your hand around it.

"She told me travelers would give these coins to people who did favors for them and that they grant wishes! Though I'm sure that's just a children's story; I was never able to get it to work." You give the coin a look, hesitant, before slipping it into your pocket.

"Alright, I'll accept. Thank you!" You wave goodbye to Chen and head towards the bank. Childe spends most of his days there, what he does, you have no idea. It's a mystery. The most you get out of him is 'business' which, yeah, obviously you do business. But it's understandable. The Fatui are a questionable lot, and not many people in Liyue trust them.

The Qixing keep a close eye on them as well, though you're sure even they hardly know what goes down under the 'bank' façade. Sometimes Childe comes home with cuts and bruises, claiming they're from training with his comrades, and while you don't buy that one bit, you play along. No need to add to his stress. If he thought you needed to know, he would tell you. No doubt about it.

Walking up the many flights of stairs, you nod to Vlad who lets you in.

Lucky for you, the first face your eyes land on is the exact one you came looking for.

"Tar!" He immediately looks over in your direction, smiles, and dismisses the Fatui agent he was talking to.

"Well, if it isn't the most beautiful woman in all Teyvat. Come to steal my heart?" He pulls you into a hug and kisses your cheek.

"No need, I already have it," You pull away, giving him a smile.

"I actually came here to see you."

"I'd hope so! Who else would you want to see?" Rolling your eyes, you grab him by his hand and lead him to his office.

"I have a favor to ask of you," The joking atmosphere surrounding you turns heavy as you hold his hands in yours.

"As you know, today is . . . Very important to me. I was wondering if you could get off early tonight? If not, it's okay though. I don't want to trouble you or anything." Childe chuckles and pats your head.

"I know what today is. I already requested an early leave this morning, but they haven't gotten back to me yet. If we're that backed up, I'm not sure I'll be able to," Your face falls a bit, but you smile. He made the effort to try and get off early without you even asking.

He places his hand onto your face and rubs his thumb over your cheek.

"But I promise to make it up to you. If I don't get back too late, we can go up to Mt. Tianheng and watch the lights at night. I know you like to do that when you're upset." The kind smile on his face is only magnified by the gentle look in his eyes. He's always been soft with you, even before you got together.

It was always an odd sight for people to see the two of you interact before you were a couple. He always regards people with the same jokester attitude, especially those he has to keep an eye on. But when he's with you, he may joke around, but is always much more concerned for your wellbeing.

"Thank you, Tar. I really appreciate it." He smirks and laughs.

"You appreciate it, huh? How much?" You roll your eyes again and give him a kiss on the lips. Childe smiles into it and tries to make it deeper, but you pull away with his lips chasing after you.

"Easy there, tiger. Save it for later, huh?"

"So, there's a later?" You lightly smack his chest and pull away from him as he laughs.

"Get back to work, Tar." You turn to leave but stop in the doorway.

"Oh, before I forget, I ran into Chen earlier," The look in Childe's eyes shifts slightly, but you barely notice.

"She mentioned that her brother stopped by here about two days ago, and was wondering if you knew where he went after? He hasn't been home since and she's very worried."

He ponders for a moment before his eyes light up in realization.

"Now that you mention it, he did say he was headed towards Lingju Pass. Don't know what for though." He shrugs.

"Okay, thank you! I'll be sure to pass it on." You exchange words of love before you leave.

After speaking with Chen, you decided to head towards the countryside. Your conversation with her went about as well as you expected. She seemed distressed and unsure of the information you gave her, but any criticisms were held as she thanked you and left. You hope that she'll be okay and that her brother comes back. Archons know, you understand what it's like to lose a sibling.

You take in a deep breath.

The air in Liyue is unlike any other. Once you leave the city and all the warm bodies, it's nothing but gentle breezes and the smell of earth. And the occasional Hilichurl, but you can easily take out a few to preserve the peace.

Walking along a random path in the sand, you reflect.

When you and your sister were young, you would often take walks like these while your parents were arguing. Despite only being a few years older than her, you actively chose to take on a more nurturing role. But after your parents died, you realized just how hard it was to provide for the two of you.

You knew how to use a bow to hunt, but not well, and even though you had your mother's catalyst, you didn't have a vision. Sometimes just showing it off and pretending you had a vision was enough to scare off petty thieves and weak Hilichurls, but it was only a matter of time before that wouldn't be enough.

Unfortunately, that time came all too soon.

The two of you had found an abandoned campsite and you decided to rest for the night. Your sister and you were headed to Mondstadt in search of a distant relative who you believed could help you. But during the night, your sister got thirsty and you were all out of water in your canteen. So you heading out to find a lake close by to fetch some, only to return to see a dark figure escaping into the night and your sister, laying in the tent, unmoving.

You were only a few hours walk to the city.

Sometimes you wonder if you had kept going that night, maybe whoever it was would have never even crossed your path. Your cries for help were heard by knights close by and they gathered your sister. Everyone in the city was welcoming and understanding, and the church gave her a wonderful service.

But nothing could mend the hole in your heart. Thankfully, the family member was able to take you in and trained you to become a knight. But that's not what you wanted. You wanted to find the person who killed your sister. And after completing your training, you left for Liyue and gained your Cryo vision along the way.

You summon your catalyst and flip through the pages. It's strange how magic works and how everything interacts with your vision. Before you, this weapon served your pyro vision-wielding mother. After you gained your vision, all the spells changed to fit the cold rather than the heat. You sigh and close the book. Sifting through it is just going to make you more sentimental. The sky above begins to turn shades of orange and pink as the sun goes down, so you decide to head home.

"I know you did something!" A loud voice yells, not too far from you.

"Chen?" You whisper to yourself and make your way around to see her at the edge of town, yelling at a Fatui agent.

"Calm down, miss Chen. We don't know what you are referring to." She balls her hands into fists, her face twisted in anger.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about! Lingju Pass? He hasn't set foot there since our father died. How dare you make up such lies!" You decide to make your way over to try and calm her down. She's obviously upset, and you know that Fatui agents aren't well versed in the ways of 'feelings.' In fact, most of the ones you've met have all been quite stoic and unconcerned.

"Are you calling the Fatui liars, miss Chen?" You stop, Childe stepping out in front of the other agent.

What is Childe doing out here?

"You Fatui lie about everything! Everyone in Liyue despises your presence here, and this just proves to me how low you people actually are. What did you do to my brother?!" She reaches up to hit Childe, and you run up to her and grab her by her arms. You know she can't hurt him, but if she tries she could get into some serious trouble.

"Chen, listen to me, you have to calm down." She looks up at you with tears streaming down her face but shakes off your grip.

"No! I refuse! He knows something about my brother, I know he does!" She looks at you with pleading eyes.

"Please, _____, tell him. Tell him to tell me where my brother is!" Chen sobs. Tears start to form in your eyes.

"Chen, I'm sorry, but Tartaglia doesn't know," You look up at Childe and are taken aback by the look in his eyes. His eyes are dead, angry, violent as he stares at Chen. He waves his hand, and two Fatui agents come from behind and drag Chen away.

"Let go of me!" She struggles as they hold her arms and pull her through the dirt path. Chen glairs at Childe, digging her feet into the ground to slow them down.

"You're a monster, Harbinger! A monster!" You continue to stare after her as she's dragged away. What just happened? You've known Chen and her brother since you moved here. What could have happened to make this poor girl act like this? You jump when Childe places his hand on your shoulder.

"I'm sorry you had to see that." He wipes the tears from your cheeks and smiles his normal, dashing smile. Nothing like the look he was giving Chen just a moment ago.

"Sometimes those awful rumors spreading about the Fatui make people act irrationally." You look him in the eyes as he holds your face. His eyes are soft and caring now, just how he always looks at you.

"Do you know what happened to her brother?" You ask softly. His eyes darken a bit, but his smile never faults.

"_____, my love, are you questioning me now too? Come on, you know none of that stuff is true, right? I work at a bank, not much else to it." He answers, his voice joking, but there's this undertone you can't quite place and have never heard before. You force a smile and hug him close.

"Your right, I'm sorry for asking. I'm just so concerned for Chen and her brother. Do you know where they're taking her?" He hugs you back, tight, and kisses your forehead.

"I think you should just leave it be for now. Go home and get some rest. I should be getting off work soon, and we can do what I promised. How's that sound?"

"Good." You lean up and give him a kiss. His voice drops low as he whispers in your ear.

"I love you, _____. Don't ever forget that."

And he leaves before you can reply. A chill goes down your spine as you watch him leave, and it's not from your vision. You've never seen Childe like that before, even when he interacts with the Traveler. It made you freeze in place, made your blood run cold, and had your heart beating faster with fear all at the same time. That was Harbinger Childe, not your Tartaglia. You rub your hands along your upper arms to calm yourself. You never want to experience that again.

Taking a deep breath, you reach into your pocket to grab your handkerchief, but pull out the coin Chen had given you instead. All it does is remind you that once again you failed to protect someone you cared about. Poor Chen is scared and afraid, and you're positive that Childe's reaction did not help her any.

But as you hold up the coin, you notice a faint glow emanating from around the outer edge which turns the intricate patterns into Liyuian Characters.

'Let the truth be revealed.'

What does this mean? You remember Chen telling you the story of the coin, but it was just that. You've never heard of any coins gifted by travelers before, and it definitely wasn't a common folk tale.

You shove it back into your pocket and rush home.

The sun is almost fully down, and the stars begin to light your way as you walk hastily down the path. Once your house is in sight, you pick up the pace and run inside.

The glow from the coin is brighter now, illuminating your darkening house. How does one even make a wish on a coin?

"I want to see the truth, but I don't know how," The glow of the coin shifts and changes colors in your hands, giving off an almost mystical wave of magic you've never felt before. Whoever made this coin had to have been powerful. You take a deep breath and look at the coin with determination.

"Show me the truth!" The glow envelopes you and when you open your eyes, you're shocked at what lays before you. The dark figure that haunts your dreams at night looms over your dead sister, red-stained blade in hand and a mask over his face.

You step closer, the classic mask of the fatui on the hooded mans' face making his eyes glow white in the darkness. His stature is much smaller than yours, and his outline seems to be that of a boy. At the time it would have been easy for you to confuse him with a man, being he would have been taller than you. But now that you're an adult, you can clearly see his youth. He smirks and laughs down at your little sister's body while whipping the knife on his sleeve.

"You should never have crossed the Fatui." Your heart drops as the young boy removes his mask revealing ocean blue eyes. The eyes of your lover that you adore on the face of the person that you've despised for years. A woman appears next to him, the same woman you've seen him speak to on many occasions but have never spoken to yourself.

"Good work, Tartaglia. You've proven yourself useful to the Tsaritsa after all. But your job here is not done," Childe looks up at the taller woman, his face determined.

"The other daughter has left to fetch water. Unfortunately, there are too many knights around on patrol to take her. Dispose of the body, and return at once." Childe bows to the woman and she smiles wickedly.

"Yes, Signora. Anything for the Tsaritsa." She leaves, and Childe begins to wrap up the young girl's body in a blanket. He stops suddenly, lifting his head up as young _____ approaches from over the hill. Childe smirks, fixing his mask and hood back on properly.

"Until next time, _____." He says and begins to run.

You gasp as the light invades your sight again and you're returned to the present. Your heart is beating a mile a minute and your breathing begins to pick up. The realization is overwhelming, and the shock is preventing you from crying.

Tartaglia was the one this whole time? It can't be, it just can't! You love him, and he loves you, he says so all the time. Has he lied to you this whole time? Has he just been keeping you close to screw with you before breaking your heart and killing you? That coin has to be lying. There's no way your Tar would ever do something like that, especially to you! He tells you everything. There are no secrets between the two of you.

Right?

The clock on the wall says that it's seven-o-clock, usually when Childe gets off of work. You don't want to be here; you can't be here. How can you face him after seeing that, even if it was a lie? You quickly run up to your shared bedroom and grab your adventuring bag, filling it with few essentials.

Where will you even go? There's nowhere in Liyue where Childe can't find you. Even across Teyvat, the Fatui have eyes and ears. You just need some time to reflect, get your barrings, and confront him. If you'll confront him. This has to be some kind of joke, or lie placed by some unknown power to question your love for him. There's no way he could have-

"What are you doing, _____?" You gasp, started by Childe suddenly behind you, blocking the exit to your room.

"Tar, you scared me!" You say shakily, holding your bag close to your chest. He smiles his usual caring smile at you, but all you can see is the smirk he held while staring down at your little sister.

"Sorry, my love. I got off of work early like I said I would. Is that why you have your bag?" His ocean blue eyes dart down to your bag and back up to you again. You subconsciously grip the bag tighter, Childe noticing.

"N-No. I accepted a commission last minute." The lie slips out like acid on your tongue.

You've never lied to him before, and it feels wrong. But you have to get out of here. Every alarm bell in your body is screaming at you to run as fast as you can away from the man you love.

His brow furrows a bit with concern and he takes a step closer to you, but you take one back.

"This isn't about what happened today, is it?" He sighs and shakes his head.

"I'm sorry if I scared you, it's just I don't like it when people falsely accuse me of things. I kinda slipped into Harbinger mode for a sec there." He laughs, again trying to come closer to you, you step back.

"Are they false though?" The question falls from your lips before you realize it, and Childe's eyes widen in surprise.

"_____, you can't be serious? You know I would never lie to you-"

"How do I know that, Childe?" You've never called him Childe, and it shows from the shock on his face when you do.

"What are you going on about? I could never-"

"Get away from me!" You yell at the Harbinger, tears finally falling from your eyes. There's no way you could be near him like this, knowing that he could have . . .

"Why? I love you, I won't hurt you." You try to steady your breathing as he slowly inches closer, treating you as of your a wild animal he wants to tame.

"You don't love me." You shake your head, gripping your backpack with white knuckles.

"What?" The question comes out as a whisper from the man's mouth in disbelief, hoping he didn't hear you properly.

"You don't love me!" You say one again, louder, confirming what he has hoped wasn't true.

"_____," Childe tries to come closer, but you shove past him and run to the front door. Before you can grab the handle, Childe grabs you by the shoulders and spins you around.

"Please, _____," His eyes are glassy with unshed tears as he gazes into your own.

"Tell me what I did to make you think this way?" You sob, hands pushing on his chest to break free but failing. You can barely breathe as the sobs rack through your body.

"You-" Trying to get the words out only makes you cry harder as the realization hits you. All the rumors are true. The Fatui are evil, conniving, and uncaring. They kill, pillage, experiment, torture, and don't care about who they have to step on to get their way. And your boyfriend, the love of your life, the man you wanted to marry and start a family of your own with, is one of them.

"You killed my little sister!" Your hands ball into fists and punch his chest as hard as you can, but in your state, you have barely any power.

"My baby sister is dead because of you! How could you?" You managed to get out through your tears, finally breaking down in the arms of the man you've despised for years.

Childe stares at you, unbelieving. He pulls you into a tight hug, crying on your shoulder, continuously apologizing. Never in your life have you seen Childe cry. Even when talking about how much he misses his family or his country, the farthest he gets is a sentimental smile and longing. Never have you thought you'd see him cry either. It's almost enough to make you forget that he's practically admitted to the murder.

He killed your only sister. How do you know he's sincere with his tears as he holds you close and begs you not to go? You've seen him lie before, never to you, but if he kept this secret for so long, what else has he been hiding? But none of that matters right now. The man you've been searching for years for, who you wanted to kill with your own bare hands, is the same person holding you so tenderly now.

How could you forget the countless nights you've woken up from nightmares of that boy coming to kill you and finish what he stared, only for Tartaglia to wake you up and hold you close, promising that he'd protect you? Every year when you mourn your sister and confide in him about how you were going to find that monster no matter what it took, did he fear you'd ever find out and kill him?

Is that why he kept you close for so long, to make sure you'd be too weak for him with love to ever even try? How can you love someone who killed your sister? It's easy to just assume you'd hate him, but for some odd reason, a little voice in the back of your mind is telling you to trust him and love him like you always had.

Another voice is telling you to end his life with no mercy and finally bring your sister to the peace she deserves.

Gathering up your strength, you manage to push him off of you.

"_____, no," He's in a state you've never seen before, face wet with tears, nose running, eyes puffy. But, he doesn't try to pull you back in.

You swiftly grab your bag and leave the house and Childe behind.

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

"_____," Your cousin John calls your name, pinching the bridge of his nose. He watches as you continuously use your vision to destroy training dummies.

"You continue this and the knights aren't going to have anything left to train with." You stop temporarily to glare at him.

"I'm training."

"So it seems." He watches as you continue your 'training.'

"You know, this doesn't seem healthy. I'm no doctor or anything, but, maybe you should, like, not?" You sigh irritated and cross your arms.

"Not what, John?" He gestures to the broken wood pieces scattered around the courtyard. You roll your eyes.

"I'm doing no worse than the average rookie knight!" John nods, leaning up against the wall.

"Yeah, yeah, except no. Why? Thank you for asking, cause your not a rookie and you're upset, at what? I don't know because you refuse to tell me. All I know is that my cousin is back after being gone for three years and the-," John looks around before stepping closer and lowering his voice.

"The Fatui in town have been eying us up everywhere we go. What the hell happened while you were in Liyue?" You bite your lip and message your wrists. The tips of your fingers have begun to turn purple from the cold, but you hardly seem affected. John pats you on the back and leads you inside the knight's headquarters.

"Look, I know we were never very close, and when you lived with us, we barely spoke, but I'm here now. We're not kids anymore, _____." The two of you sit down in the library. The three years you lived with your uncle and cousin were your worst. They treated you nice, but you were grieving and took it out on them and many training dummies. It seems you've done the same again.

"I'm sorry, it's just . . ." What happened with Childe months ago is still fresh on your mind. You haven't seen him since you left that night, and you aren't sure if you want to. You're conflicted. You thought coming back to Mondstadt would help you clear your mind and help you decide what to do, but you can't, and it's frustrating.

Despite how hard you've tried . . . You still love Tartaglia with all of your heart. But you can't forget what he did. You could never forgive him either. You've held hatred for this man for six years now, and every waking moment has been used to devise a plan to find him and kill him. But you can't kill him; not when you still hold these feelings.

If this was his goal, then he succeeded. You know he knows you're in Mondstadt. As John said, the Fatui have had their eyes on you since you showed up. You wouldn't be surprised if they all have you listed as a threat. After all, being one of their high-ranking officer's vengeful lover with intent and reason to kill would put anyone on a list.

But, with that said, he hasn't tried to contact you. No letters, no passing of words, hell, no carrier pigeons. He's extra enough to do that. And this has caused you to feel even more upset. Cause you still love the man, and there's some hope still there that he meant what he said and he does love you and the fact he hasn't done anything is killing you.

"_____, you good?" You snap out of your daze and nod.

"Yeah, I was just thinking."

"You seem to be doing a lot of that lately. Please, what's going on with you?" You decide it's best to tell your cousin the truth.

You explain to him the situation. How you fell in love, what life was like for you the three years you were gone, the coin, and finding out the killer's identity. John looks at you in shock.

"Wow, that's a lot. And this is why you came back?"

"Yeah, I know. I should have come back sooner to at least visit, but," John cuts you off and waves his hands.

"No, you're fine. I mean, it would have been nice to see you, but that's irrelevant right now. You found out your boyfriend, a Fatui Harbinger, was the one that killed your sister, and you're here? Doing what? Destroying Favonius property?" You agree hesitantly.

"I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds odd."

"No, _____, odd is an understatement. Why are you here? You should be getting answers, slapping people, storming Snezhnaya! Actually, don't do that last one, that could get us in a lot of trouble."

"True," You agree.

"Honestly, I don't know what to do. Do I confront him? I mean, if he did kill her, which I'm about 90% sure at this point that he did, do I get revenge? I've wanted to for years, but I know that I could never kill him." John takes your hand in his and speaks with sincerity.

"You love him, I get that, but you can't let that get in the way of things."

"No, I mean, I literally couldn't kill him. He's a beast in battle, and could probably end me without even blinking. I've seen him take on multiple ruin guards in seconds, like, he's on a whole nother level." You sigh and put your head in your hands.

"But even despite that, I do still love him. At this point, I feel the best thing to do is to just move on. Go my own way and let him go his."

"And what about your sister, huh? Just gonna forget about her?" You look at him questioningly.

"Look, you need to at least get closure. Obviously, he doesn't want you dead, because you would have been so by now. I can't even tell you how many times the Fatui could have nabbed you, gagged you, and sacked you since you've been back."

"Gee, thanks John, that really makes me feel better about the situation." He rolls his eyes.

"Talk to the man, _____. There will always be a home here waiting for you to come back to." Maybe your cousin is right? If Childe did want you dead, you know damn well he has the power to have made it happen. But how would you even react when you see him? The only way to find out is to get it over with.

With newfound enthusiasm, you jump up from your position and slam your hands on the table.

"Alright, I'm gonna go! I'm gonna talk with Tartaglia and I'm gonna punch him at least once!"

"That's the spirit!" A series of loud shooshes sound around the library and you slowly sit back down.

"Sorry!"

You and your cousin John devise a plan over the next few days. You're still unsure about this whole thing, but with encouragement from John, you gain the confidence you need to push through.

In the end, you decide the best thing to do is to sneak out of Mondstadt without any Fatui seeing you. It's still dangerous to speak with him, and the two of you decide the safest thing is to get him unprepared and off guard. If he's not expecting you, he has no time to plan. Not that he needs a plan to kill you, he could just do it. But still-

As the sun seeps down past the hills and flatlands of Mondstadt, John and you make your way out of headquarters and down to the main part of town.

"You know what sounds so amazing right now? A tall mug of cider from Angel's Share!" John exclaims and grabs your arm. The two of you practically run towards the tavern, gaining looks from the other citizens.

"Cool it, John," You whisper yell to him as you head inside.

"You wanna actually look suspicious?" He laughs, sitting down at a table in the back.

"Sorry if I'm not good at being convincing. Dad always said acting would be my downfall."

"When would you ever have to act to be a knight?" He shrugs his shoulders.

"Right now?" Okay, he has a point. Merely minutes after you sit down, two Fatui agents walk in after, taking a table far enough away, but close enough to keep you in their sights.

"Don't worry, _____," Your cousin says, noticing your worried expression.

We'll get you out of here."

John waves his hand and gains the attention of Master Diluc as he's walking around the tavern.

"We'd like two Valberry Whiskey's please!" Your cousin asks loudly and winks. Diluc rolls his eyes and heads towards the back of the tavern, getting the 'drinks.'

It was a miracle and a half that John was able to convince Master Diluc to help you. But John said he owed him a favor. For what, you have no idea. Not even a second later, a young bard runs over to your table and slams his hands down.

"What did you just order?"

"Uh," You look to your cousin for guidance. The drink was simply a code, not an actual order.

"Valberry Whiskey?" The young bard looks at you in amazement. He's clearly drunk, but the sheer excitement in his eyes seems to sober him up enough to eagerly rush to the bar counter.

"A new drink! And Diluc didn't tell me?!" His shouts of joy gain the attention of the entire bar.

"A new drink?!"

"One not on the menu?"

"Master Diluc!"

Your cousin and you share a look as the crowd goes wild, rushing towards the front bar and to the back looking for Diluc to inquire about this new drink. The few Fatui agents that had followed you in stand up from their seat to get a better view of you and John. John grabs your arm and pulls you into the crowd, the Fatui agents desperately searching for your whereabouts.

"This way, _____." He pulls you farther and farther away from the Fatui till you feel another hand grab you and pull you out of the back entrance to the tavern.

"Hey, watch your hands, buddy!"

"Would you rather still be in there then, _____?" You smile nervously up at Diluc, who's handing you a bag and cloak.

"Things didn't exactly go as planned, huh?" The redhead smirks and crosses his arms.

"I knew that bard would be in here tonight. Drunk off his ass, he wouldn't be able to resist the call of a new drink item." You laugh, pulling the hood over your head.

"Thank you, Diluc." He gives you a rare smile and nods. You begin to walk off but stop, looking back at the tavern owner.

"Hey Diluc, what was the favor for?" Diluc sighs and pinches between his eyes.

"I'd rather not talk about it."

__________________

The journey back to Liyue is a tiring one. It seems a lot closer than it actually is on the map, but heading to the main harbor is always a task. Thankfully, you're able to make your rations last the whole trip, and as you enter the harbor in the wee hours of the night, you smile at the familiar buildings. You may have only been gone for a few months, but this was your home for the last three years.

Your home with Tartaglia . . . You pull your hood farther down your head and try to remain in the shadows. Despite the time of night, the area is still bustling with people. Merchants making deals, ships delivering goods, the whole nine yards.

You flatten yourself against a wall as a few Fatui agents walk past. The place is absolutely crawling with Fatui, even more so than usual. Could it have something to do with you? You doubt it. Harbinger or not, Tartaglia could get in serious trouble for using Fatui resources in such a way.

You carefully slide through cracks and crevises, branches and bushes, trying to stay out of any Fatui sights. Eventually, you find yourself on the outskirts of the city, not far from your shared home. It surprisingly takes a lot from you to not run straight for it. You miss your house. You miss your bed. You miss Tartaglia.

But now is not the time to get sentimental!

You still need to confront him about what he did. And depending on his answer, one of you may not make it through the night. You keep yourself stealthy as you enter the house from the back. He's not home, which is good. But the place is in disarray. Furniture turned upside down, plates smashed against walls, everything caked in dust. It's hard to believe he's been living here if he even has been.

If that's the case, you may have to go looking for him. You look around the house at the disaster. He may have been trying to look for something; maybe a clue to what you had planned or something to use against you.

With that in mind, you run up the stairs to the master bedroom and open the closet. You fear the worst but are surprised to find your sister's belongings still in place.

Surely he would have found them in here.

The bedroom isn't as bad as the bottom floor, though still a mess. The bed is unmade, with a small pile of your clothes on your side of the bed, and his clothes on the floor. All of your things, besides the clothes, are still neatly in their places. Pictures of you and him together that were once on the walls are now on his nightstand, face up and smudged with fingerprints.

"What the hell happened here?" The sound of the front door opening startles you. Could that be Childe? There's no way he's living like this!

Footsteps move across the floor, into the kitchen, into the living room, and slowly up the stairs. Whoever it is, your about to face them.

The door opens slowly, almost torturously so. Soon, the sunken and sullen face of your lover is in your view, and even faster, your on the floor with a knife made of hydro to your throat. Your hood continues to obscure your identity as Childe pins you down.

"Bold of you to break into the home of a Fatui Harbinger! What did you expect?" With the pressure from the knife digging deeper and deeper into your skin, you freeze the hand wrapped around his holding the knife, and kick your leg out. Childe falls over, dropping his weapon which shatters on impact. Before you can get your bearings, he's lunging at you again. He grabs you from behind and holds you in a chokehold.

"Your fast, but you'll never be fast enough!" You gasp for air, holding onto his arm as it's wrapped around your neck. He's trying to kill you, you know he is. All the times you've sparred with him, you knew he was holding back, but he's definitely not this time. Even so, his hold on you is weak. Weak for him, at least.

You rear your elbow into his stomach as hard as you can knocking him back and you summon your catalyst. As he said, he's faster than you, but before he can get back, you place a wall of ice between him and yourself. It's not enough to hold him back for long, but enough to catch your breath. He laughs as he can hear you choking, attempting to regain your oxygen.

"You think this little wall will stop me?" He attacks the wall with his fist, making a section crumble. Your breathing is fast, but you can't seem to gain enough breath to speak. As he crumbles your wall piece by piece, you pull back your hood and lean on the bedroom wall behind you. Finally, he lands the finishing blow and the ice dissipates in a gust of cryo magic. The crazed look of bloodlust vanishes from his face the instant he sees you, hand on your throat, and your breath heavy.

"___-," He can hardly finish his whisper as he lets out a shaky breath. With the tense atmosphere suddenly calm, you're able to regain your breath and look up at the man. His skin a pale and his eyes are dull. He has large dark circles under his eyes and he looks a bit thinner than normal.

"_____," He manages to get out, still shocked you're actually here.

"Are you okay?" You shake your head.

"You haven't seen me in months and that's the first thing you say to me?" He rubs the back of his neck and looks down, ashamed.

"I didn't know it was you. I'm sorry if I hurt you." You can hardly believe what you're seeing. He seems broken, utterly defeated. If he hadn't fought you just now, you'd assume he'd fall over with the breeze.

Looking at him now, it's hard to believe he's the same man that killed your sister.

"We need to talk." He nods, refusing to meet your eyes.

"You need to tell me the truth, Tar," He takes in a shuddering breath at your words.

"All these years, I've been beside you. I've stood up for you, I've loved you. I told you all my darkest secrets and nightmares. Not once did I ever lie to you."

Tears come to his eyes just as they do yours. He bites his lip to prevent the tears from falling. You step closer to him, dropping your cloak, and put your hands up to his face. He flinches away from you but relaxes when your palms cup his cheeks and he finally looks you in the eyes.

"Over the past few months, I've thought long and hard about what I wanted to say to you. And no matter what scenario I came up with, I could never tell if I was doing the right thing. But, even though I carry some semblance of anger, I know that what I feel for you is real. And with that, I still hold hope that you feel the same and it wasn't all just a lie."

He grabs your hands, the tears now falling one by one down his pale cheeks.

"I swear to all the Archons that I love you! I never lied about that!" You hesitate for a moment, blinking away your own tears.

"And though I don't want to, I believe you," You rub your thumbs across his face, clearing some of the tears.

"But I need you to tell me everything." Tartaglia closes his eyes. He never dreamed in a million years he'd have to tell you this story. He'd hoped that you'd live in blissful ignorance for the rest of your life with him. But the gods had another plan for him and you, and he prays that at least one of them will let him keep you. Even if that's a selfish request.

"I joined the Fatui when I was young. I was constantly trying to prove myself to Signora and the Tsaritsa that I was willing to do anything they asked me. I still am," He looks at you with regretful and sorrowful eyes as he recalls the past.

"Your parents had fled Snezhnaya when you were born, because of a debt they racked up with the Fatui. When they were found in Fontaine, it was revealed that they were working for a group of rebels intent on infiltrating Snezhnaya. It was my job to take you and your sister to use as leverage on your parents. But, your sister fought back," You release his face and look away, finding it harder to keep eye contact with him.

"I wasn't as skilled as I am now, and I panicked. But La Signora said I did a good job. I didn't know that your parents had already been killed by the rebels, and neither did the Fatui. Not until after we had left you. At that point, there was no reason to continue after you. But you were never forgotten about. And when you came to Liyue, I was instructed to keep an eye on you," Childe lifts his arms up and places his hands on your shoulders.

"But I never expected to fall in love with you." You look into his ocean blue eyes and are overcome by the warmth they hold for you.

"The day I met you, I could feel it, and I tried so hard to forget about it, but you were just so . . . Amazing, and beautiful, and kind. I never expected that from you. You never once judged me or ridiculed me, even though you knew who I was. I thanked the Archons every day that you came into my life, and I prayed that you'd never find out what I'd done."

A sob breaks through as he wipes the tears running down his face. All the years you harbored hatred for this man, you never once thought about what he could have been going through. It's true that this doesn't excuse his actions, but to know that he truly regrets what he did brings you some kind of closure. In the end, revenge would have never made you feel better. Your sister wouldn't have wanted that.

You love Tartaglia with all your heart, and in this world, it's better to forgive than to let it eat away at you any longer.

"Tartaglia," His name comes out as a whisper with your breath, but he hears you loud and clear. The fear of rejection in his eyes tells you everything you need to know as you carefully speak to him.

"I forgive you." He cries, pulling you to his chest and you hug him back. Unfortunately for him, you weren't finished.

"But, I need some time to think about this. I love you; I never stopped loving you, and I always will," You pull back and smile at him before gently kissing his chapped lips.

"I'm going back to Mondstadt, but I'll be back. You just need to give me some time." He smiles as best he can and nods enthusiastically.

"I'd give you all the time in the world if I could." He moves to kiss you again, but you put a finger up to his lips to stop him.

"Save it for later, Tar." He laughs, looking back up at you with bright eyes.

"So, there's a later?"

(A little something extra. It doesn't quite fit to be an ending, but more like an epilogue just tying things together I guess lol.)

___________________

You sigh as you sling your bag over your shoulder. It's been a good few months back in Mondstadt after your reconciliation with Childe, and you've decided it's time to go home. You've kept in regular contact with him since you've been here, writing letters to each other like new lovers. You found the whole thing quite cute, despite the circumstances. He's been regarding you with caution, taking things one step at a time, and never pushing you past any limits you set. You're grateful for that.

"You sure you wanna go back? You can always stay a bit longer, just to give yourself a bit more time to think it over." John says, arms crossed and head down. You two have grown closer over your time spent here. It's a shame to think you were so caught up in your misery to be blind to the best friend you could have had. And it's tough to say goodbye, now that you've grown attached.

"I'm sure. You don't have to miss me too much, ya know? I'll be back to visit, and I'll write every week!" John huffs.

"You better, or I'm coming over there and kicking that Fatui's ass for keeping you away! I don't care how many ruin guards he can take on!" You laugh and pull him into a hug.

"I'm gonna miss you." He hugs you back, holding you tight.

"Yeah, I know." You roll your eyes and wave goodbye to the family you didn't realize you had.

Once back in Liyue, you get settled into your home with Childe. Thankfully, he cleaned up the mess he made while you were gone. He had said he was so distraught at the thought of you leaving him, he trashed the place in anger. Not anger from you, but anger at himself. He was afraid you'd think he was a monster, that he was heartless, and that you'd never want to see him again.

He was relieved when he heard you were in Mondstadt. There, he could keep an eye on you. One of the things he was afraid of was you doing something to yourself due to the pain of it all . . . If you did that, he wouldn't know how to cope. And when he received word that you had disappeared from Mond, well, he thought that fear had come true. But in the end, things worked out. You could never forget what he did, nor do you want to. It's something you have to live with, just like he does, and it's up to you to put it aside.

You know there are many things he's done that he's not proud of. Many things of which he promises to tell you when he's ready. And you'll be there to listen as he spills his heart out to you.

You take in a breath of air as you enter the harbor, smelling the salty water of the ocean and the wonderful herbs being brought in from traveling merchants. You'll never get over these smells.

"_____!" You look over your shoulder, surprised as Chen runs over to you. You haven't seen her since the incident outside of town.

"Chen! Are you okay?" She smiles and hugs you.

"I'm doing great! My brother and I have been selling a lot more of our goods since he's been back, and business has been booming!"

"Your brother?" You tilt your head.

"Yes!" She nods enthusiastically.

"He did go to Lingju Pass as Childe had said. It turns out, he had a buyer out there but didn't want to tell me in case the deal went south. I overreacted. . ." She puts her head down in shame.

"All the rumors about the Fatui got to my head, and I assumed the worst. But Childe went out and found my brother for me. Can you please tell him I said thank you? Also that I'm sorry. I really owe him one."

You pat her on the head, relieved.

"Of course, Chen." She reaches into her pocket and pulls something out.

"For payment-"

"No!" You shove her hand away.

"Gotta go! I'm late to see Tar!" You sprint off, leaving a confused Chen in your wake.

#genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin childe #genshin impact childe #genshin impact childe x reader #genshin childe x reader #childe x reader #genshin impact angst #genshin angst #genshin impact x reader angst #genshin venti #genshin impact venti #genshin diluc #genshin impact diluc #angst

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tenthgrove · 3 years

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Hello, I just saw that you opened your request. I'm the one who ended up writing a whole prompt! Imagine this for each member from La Squadra: they had an one-night stand with a random woman, she accidentally got pregnant and decided to have the baby without telling them. After a while, the woman got ill and passed away, but not without before sending her child with their father (let's imagine she has the direction of their hideout even if it's ooc, or she knew where they hang out). So, one day someone knocks the door and introduces themselves as the kid of one of the members/if it's too young, someone left them on the door with a explainatory note... How do you think each member would react by discovering that they have a child and they're supposed to take care of them from now? You can make each kid with different ages if you want, it would be funny to see Prosciutto or Ghiaccio dealing with a rebellious teenage son or Risotto trying to take care of a toddler, but I guess not all of them would want to keep their children. Sorry if it's a lot, haha.

La Squadra did a Diavolo

La Squadra x Reader, Platonic/Familial, SFW

A/N: your idea about mixing up the ages got me thinking, and I ended up using randomisers for the children’s ages (though I did consciously change some of them) and genders. It added a fun bit of chance to this prompt.

Formaggio, with an 8 year old daughter

The whole thing feels surreal to him. There's a little girl on his doorstep calling herself his daughter and by all evidence, it's true. He doesn't really know how to feel about it at first. On one hand it's kind of cool he had a kid all this time and you're clearly a lovely girl, but on the other hand, what the fuck? Still, not being the practical sort, his sense of sentiment far outweighs any question of how he's actually going to look after a child, so without much deliberation, Formaggio agrees to let you stay.

Formaggio isn't too experienced with kids but he doesn't exactly dislike them either, so he figures he knows what to do. At your age you can at least do the basics of looking after yourself, so he isn't too worried. The only problem is that if you ask him to cook for you or help clean your room, his eyes go very wide. He never quite picked up those skills himself, he's afraid, so you're going to have to ask someone else for that one.

The good news is that Formaggio is a very easy-going, fun sort of dad, who is a natural at playing with you and lets you do what you want when he can't be around. He quickly gets used to showing affection to you, letting you cuddle up to him on the sofa in front of the squad and even carrying you around once in a while. He gives amazing piggy back rides.

The bad news (or more good news, depending on how you are) is that you have to leave school. Risotto says that at your age you can't be trusted not to tell anyone your new family is a bunch of assassins, and taking you to and from school each day would be too much of a hassle. Nonetheless, you're welcome to continue your education from home, though Formaggio will hardly push you if you don't keep up with it. Melone is much better on that front.

Despite the risk, Formaggio can't bring himself to force you to lose all your friends, so he lets you keep meeting with them. Furthermore, he knows a few guys in other squads who have kids about your age, so he's happy to introduce you to them if you want a friend you can be more honest about your home life with. Formaggio might not have a clue what he's doing, but he's doing pretty good.

Illuso, with a 3 year old daughter

He's been fearing this day would come for years. A small child knocking on the door of the hideout, holding a note in hand addressed to him, just as a shady looking car drives away. Yeah, Illuso remembers your mother pretty well and he remembers the distinct lack of precautions they took during their encounter. Now, the consequences of his actions are here at his house, and Risotto is currently standing in the doorway of the office looking ready to give him the biggest dressing-down of his life.

After his tongue-lashing, Illuso frantically agrees to take responsibility for what he's done and see to it that you're well cared for, and begins the task of looking for relatives who might take you. Unfortunately, none of your mother's family can be traced, and Illuso can't exactly call up his own right now. Leaving you on the door of an orphanage isn't an option because you're old enough to say where you've come from, so it looks like for the time being, Illuso is stuck with you.

Initially, Illuso is not thrilled. He pawns you off on Melone, Sorbet and Gelato whenever possible and tries to live his life as before. But increasingly, he can't help finding himself visiting your room whenever he's stressed or has had a bad mission. There's something so pure about gently stroking your hair as you sleep. He can't help but feel... attachment, as he rubs his thumb against your tiny palm.

From then on, Illuso starts to make a point of spending more time with you. You're at the age where you just want to touch and explore everything you're given, so letting you make a mess with his makeup and beauty creams is an easy way for him to observe and learn about you. He even starts doing the more practical things like washing and feeding you every so often.

Eventually, Illuso becomes an actual father to you. He loves you as a father should and puts his time into making you happy. Illuso is glad he didn't give you away, as you've opened his eyes to so many things. For the first time in many years, he feels human. He feels redeemable.

Prosciutto, with a 13 year old son

As you tell him your story Prosciutto racks his brains. He didn't have many one-night-stands in his youth but the ones he did have were so far back he barely remembers them, so your mother's name doesn't immediately ring any bells. If it weren't for the striking resemblance between you, Prosciutto probably would have thrown you out for a liar there and then. But as you are, it's clear you're being honest. He lets you in.

After a short interrogation by Risotto to make certain you aren't acting on behalf of some third party looking to infiltrate the squad, it's agreed you can stay, so long as you keep quiet about it to your friends. At your age you can largely look after yourself and all you really needed was a roof over your head, so there's no problem with you moving into the spare room as long as you stay out of the others' way.

Education isn't much of an issue either, since you're likely well settled in your current school and can get yourself there and back. Just whatever you do, don't go telling anyone you live with a bunch of gangsters now. Prosciutto means it, you could seriously put yourself in danger if you do that.

Much to your father's ire, you end up befriending several members of the squad, especially the younger ones like Melone, Ghiaccio and Pesci who have some generational overlap with how you were raised. Prosciutto would rather you didn't do this but at the end of the day, he can't really stop you. God forbid you call him an old boomer again.

Your relationship is overall positive- Prosciutto makes a point of taking you on outings when he has the time, and giving you parental advice when you need it. However that doesn't stop you from making fun of his stuffy, old habits, and playing the moral high ground in regards to his work.

On that note, the problem comes when you develop an interest in the squad's work. It's only inevitable, given how pervasive the topic is in conversations around the house, and the fact you're more than old enough to know what a gang is, but the day you first ask him about it is no less welcome. What's scary is that you're about the same age as Passione's youngest recruits and, well, if you ended up joining them because of him, Prosciutto might never forgive himself.

Pesci, with a 6 month old son

He knew it had been a mistake. Not long after his 18th birthday he'd given in to the squad's pestering about his virginity and finally gotten rid of it just to shut them up. Now he's ridden with guilt. Not only did the poor woman get pregnant because of him but now she's died. He can't help but wonder, the letter attached to the basket you came in was very vague after all, was your mother's death at all related to your birth? If so, Pesci doesn't know how he'll forgive himself.

Pesci immediately panics and stumbles into his Fra's bedroom crying louder than you are. Prosciutto remains calm, advising him to first make sure this actually is his baby through Melone, in case this is somebody trying to trick him, and to then think through his options rationally. As far as Prosciutto sees it, he has two. He can either see to it that you're taken in by a caring, reliable individual, or he can keep you for himself. Surprisingly, Prosciutto's actually okay with the second one, since in his eyes duty to one's family is absolute.

Pesci stammers a bit and asks if he can wait a few days to make his mind up, which Prosciutto permits. But it isn't long at all until Pesci is far too attached to you to ever let you go, and it becomes clear you'll be staying for the long-run. Risotto is hardly happy about this but agrees with Prosciutto's sentiment of family, so he doesn't try to insist you be sent away.

Pesci is an incredibly loving father. He'll dash from the other side of the house at a moment's notice if he hears you crying. That said, being so young himself it's inevitable he requires some help with raising you. Sorbet and Gelato chip in quite regularly, as does Melone when Pesci is desperate enough to fall on using him. Prosciutto helps out too, being your uncle, and occasionally you've even had Risotto answer your cries.

La Squadra can only hope their situation improves somehow in the coming years, since Pesci has no idea how he's going to deal with an older child in a house full of assassins. At very least, being so young it's a long time before he has to worry about things like school. For now, what's important is that you are loved very dearly. Pesci has discovered a new protective streak in himself, something he discovers every time he looks in your eyes.

Melone, with a 4 year old son

When you arrived you were frightened and confused. You struggled to babble out the story you were told to tell as the strange men crowded around you in the front room of the house. Then, a bizarre looking man with purple hair pushed to the front of the crowd, insisting he knew what to do in a situation like this. He carried you somewhere quiet, and gently asked you to repeat your story again. You told him you were looking for your father, Melone.

Melone is elated. He's always wanted a child, but getting into a relationship stable enough to produce one has never been an option with the life he lives. Now the happy accident he never new he had has come home to him! Carrying you back to the living room, Melone introduces you as his son and announces to the team that he will be keeping you.

This is met with some protest. Not only are you of the age where you'll need constant supervision, but quite frankly, nobody trusts Melone to take care of a kid. Melone refutes their accusations harshly, making it absolutely clear he will not be giving you up without a fight. Finally, Risotto surrenders, on the terms that if he catches any signs of abuse or neglect, he will see to it personally that you are re-homed elsewhere.

Melone's parenting style is relatively laid-back. He believes parents should be a 'safe base' from which children should explore the world, coming back when they need advice but ultimately following their own whims within reason. He encourages you to play as you wish and does not stop you from bonding with the rest of the squad. Finding supervision for you while he's on missions proves to be a non-issue, since his stand's massive range means he can often do most of a mission's work at home.

When the time comes to educate you, Melone decides against the risks of enrolling you in school. He is an amazing teacher and can teach you everything you'd need in half the hours of a typical curriculum. Beyond the essentials of literacy and simple maths, Melone largely encourages you to follow you own interests rather than stick to some boring, arbitrary list of useless things a normal curriculum for some reason expects you to learn.

That said, he knows the importance of making friends, so he frequently takes you out to meet with neighbourhood children. All-in-all, the squad is surprised at his sensible parenting choices, and the happy child you are turning out to be.

Ghiaccio, with a 2 year old son

It's almost comedic the lengths Ghiaccio goes to to avoid the problem. As the others crowd around you in Melone's lap, Ghiaccio cowers in the corner insisting that you absolutely cannot be his. It's very obvious you are, of course. You look almost exactly like him, and have a cry to match. You've even inherited the same, mild visual impairments that earned him his glasses. There's no getting away from the truth.

After accepting the truth, Ghiaccio takes you away to his room to 'clear his head' before deciding where to send you in the morning, but when morning comes, that deliberation time quickly turns into a few more days, then a month, then never. It's clear Ghiaccio's become attached to you, and he cannot bring himself to give you away.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have the foggiest clue in hell how to look after a toddler. He has a hard enough time understanding what it is adults want from him, let alone small children. There are times he even considers giving you away again, but they never last long enough for him to go through with it. Bit by bit, he slowly learns how to be a father.

Melone is his primary co-parent. As cautious as Ghiaccio is about letting him around his baby, it soon becomes clear Melone can understand your needs far better than he can. The pair have many sessions together teaching Ghiaccio how to do things like wash you or cook your food. It's honestly a massive help, and probably the main reason Ghiaccio doesn't completely melt down within a month of having you.

These issues aside, Ghiaccio is a person who is very genuine in his affections. He would break the shins of anyone who even looked at you threateningly, and every fibre of his being wants you to be happy. He even learns to control his temper, as he knows from experience just how damaging an angry parent can be for a child. He's going to give you a better childhood than what his parents gave him, and that's a promise.

Risotto, with a 6 year old daughter

Well, perhaps this ought to have been expected. In his early 20s Risotto was really far less careful than he ought to be in regards to his encounters, so he probably had this coming. You are at a difficult age, old enough to understand your father is a criminal but young enough to still need his care. If he takes you in, there will be many challenges. And yet he cannot bring himself to turn you away. Looking at you he feels... obligation.

In the early days he tries his best to shelter you. He keeps you in his room and tells the others not to talk to you. But that's no way for you to live, and he knows it. Eventually, he swallows his fears and lets you explore your new home, even taking you out to the park a few minutes each day so you can run around. He talks to Melone about continuing your education, and asks Sorbet and Gelato if they'd let the spare room next to them be turned into a bedroom for you. He's going to make sure he raises you right.

Risotto may be quiet and introverted, but do not mistake that for emotionally distant. He does not underestimate his vital role in your emotional well-being, and is quick to pick up on when you are feeling sad or lonely. He makes sure to pick you up in his arms and ask what's wrong when that happens.

Though he didn't know her well, he mourns your mother with you, and is very watchful for the signs of attachment issues that may result from losing a parent at such a tender age. Being all you have left, Risotto gains a new instinct of self-preservation. For the first time in years, his life has meaning.

In terms of bonding, he prefers calm activities that allow him to passively observe your interests, such as watching movies or reading you books. When he's working in his office and doesn't need his camera on, he's happy for you to sit in his lap as long as you're quiet. He would ask if you don't read what's on his screen, though, at least not while you're so young. He'll give you a better explanation of what he's doing some day, but not just yet.

Sorbet and Gelato, with a 12 year old daughter

First of all, let's make clear that regardless of which one is biologically your father, they both feel equal responsibility for you. No doubt they were both present for your conception anyway, so as far as they're concerned, if one of them has a secret kid from a hookup, they both have a secret kid from a hookup.

Having always wanted children, they are happy when you appear on the doorstep and introduce yourself as their daughter. Though they don't say it out loud to avoid upsetting you, they kind of wish your mum had kicked it sooner so they could have raised you from a younger age, but they're more than happy to make do with what they've got. There's no hesitation in welcoming you to live with them permanently, and anyone who has a problem with this isn't brave enough to say it.

Right from the get-go they are very permitting parents, awarding you a generous helping of their cash each week and having a rule list that pretty much starts and ends with "don't talk to the police." Despite your age they don't expect you to be independent, and are happy to cook for you and help you out with other things when you ask. It seems parenthood was made for them.

Despite all this, there is one problem in your relationship that is making things difficult. That of your fathers' work. You're 12 years old and you aren't stupid. You know they kill for a living and you know they enjoy it. When you stumble into the bathroom at 1am to find them covered in blood and laughing together, there's no making excuses. No matter how good they are with you, this is going to make you afraid of them.

Sorbet and Gelato are incredibly stringent in solving these early issues. After all these years they've finally got the family they wanted, and they aren't going to let it slip away from their own cruelty. They are honest with you about their occupation, since they want you to know you can trust them, and make absolutely clear it won't affect their care for you. You are welcome to ask questions and receive honest answers, but other than that Sorbet and Gelato will make a point of not accidentally causing you to witness something you shouldn't.

With them, you are welcome to continue your old life in terms of school and friends. They want to spend time with you, but they don't want to overtake your existence completely. When you are up for it, they are keen to take you on outings that interest you so you can spend time together as a family. They hope you know how happy you make them.

#la squadra #la squadra di esecuzione #la squadra x reader #formaggio #formaggio x reader #illuso #illuso x reader #prosciutto #prosciutto x reader #pesci #pesci x reader #melone #melone x reader #ghiaccio #ghiaccio x reader #risotto nero #risotto nero x reader #sorbet and gelato #sorbet and gelato x reader

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