#funny when the [just some guy] was clearly not at all intending to murder them but so far as they know he might've. which yeah terrifying

[unproduciblesmackdown]

nonzero people podcasting about goosebumps the musical & it’s never enough. neither extensive enough nor enthusiastic enough & that’s coming from me which is the entire explanation for the assessment. 

on the same topic but a completely different point, i was just appreciating how extra fun i always find understudy buddy to be. and obviously i would like to think that maybe tina & the unit that is brooke & zeke are like, more neutral to amicable after the show lol. tina is a lot of fun as is, like, automatic shoutout to any character just being like, getting in the way being offputting / a pain and all powered by one’s own intensity, that’s fun & funny & who among us? and like yeah she’s also definitely doing the mean girl thing like, in the song as mentioned lmao like please, rein it in. and maybe she will, but then when other suspects are being kind of crossed off the list just before thee play she manages to just be regular supportive towards brooke, so that’s promising lol. and also just shoutout to the Fun of a lively antagonistic role, great stuff, delightful number for her there, and sure helping ramp things up. and zeke and brooke not just showing up for this one horror musical (also i would love to shoutout zeke’s plight there lmfao like, the experience of original readers of poto where the twist is “nah it’s not a phantom it’s just some wet pathetic guy” like he’s so hyped to be The Ghost Lead and then he’s like oh god i’m a romantic lead in a hole & i’m five & it’s embarrassing & i even know my counterpart irl (the bestie) like i guess technically the role’s a ghost by the end & good for the mystery mask wearing element being exciting still) but that they were unnamed ensemble members in guys & dolls & saw that through, they’re bringing support & appreciation for the theatre, & on the flipside tina might just enjoy the theatricality & attention from it but she was having a great time informing everyone that on top of their haunted school it’s a specifically haunted (cursed) play, so maybe she can also relate to zeke and brooke’s horror genre appreciation. and she might warm up at all to zeke when he’s cleared about the fact he wasn’t trying to prank their efforts into oblivion, at least to the same degree she can manage to provide regular supportiveness to brooke when it comes to it. and on the one hand, despite brooke and zeke sure seeming like that hell of an established unit like probably just have their [socializing at school] foundation covered by hanging out w/each other, they could let brian in on that easily enough for something of a triumvirate, but now not only are they bffs since 5ever who love a genre together, they sure had an Adventure in emile messing up by [you never try to scooby doo villain your way through it] but also doing it all wrong where they think You’re the danger here & that you’re going to murder them, plus it’s scary for real exploring the darkness elevator underground tunnels anytime, but also now they have this off the shits experience with that new guy friend who was a ghost for real. kind of its own bonding element & maybe you wouldn’t exactly let anyone else in on it, much less like, tina lmao. she might be interested in The Legend but she was also super interested in telling everyone all about it, and idk, difficult and weird to explain, thing it’d all be quite the stuff to process for one lol like sure we love drama and ghosts and attention too but it’s A Lot. ghosts are real and i online dated one except across time rather than space and he was just some guy hanging out and i also hung out with him sometimes but then in the end it got weird b/c he was the suspicious understudy all along and this role is really not coming through....but also hey, could talk about it all eventually, and tina’s got plenty of context already. next year’s cast n crew party for the last show, be like hey guess what, b/c we’re solidly amicable now also

plus being extracurricular buddies like, ms. walker head in hands dealing with these three menaces lmao....although zeke wasn’t Really up to that much, tina’s sure committed to the show, etc. and it’s like, being a student or teacher or anyone else at a middle school is just always gonna be like that. could really be worse, she can handle it. and maybe she can know of the lore also, she’s out here engaging in irl drama and lore about like avenging her grandmother’s theatrical aspirations, or none of this would be going on lol. get used to these three and actually they’re reliable really, maybe tina will have learned to better accept not getting the dream role, which will be an easier time for everyone. but it’s just always gonna be a handful lol but all these kids were also all about putting on the play too, actually, yes maybe some problems arose from messing around with the platform but they could’ve been worse problems (queues of ghosts in line for their turn at finally achieving one last goal of performing their part in this one damn play lol) and does seem like it’s engineering issues inherently rather than Just messing around backstage unsupervised which isn’t often otherwise going to be fatally risky, and maybe just give people a rundown about the riskiness of things that Isn’t emile’s botched effort where he mostly just made children afraid of Him. like idk, i did shop class throughout middle school, we avoided injury w/successful cautionary rundowns. brian’s one other last goal could’ve been about safety measures, but whaddaya gonna do. anyways point is, hanging out after school for theatre purposes and having an understanding and bonus patience affordance with the teacher in charge of this and maybe everyone gets to know the Real Ghost Story or maybe it’s zeke & brooke’s personal inside secret, it was already a shared adventure for all involved even if they didn’t get the Full story the way those two did, all of them are up for Drama and for Horror, they’re good to go. and good for them

[blondeboyfriend]

𝐖𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 (𝟏𝟖+)

𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐒 𝐃𝐍𝐈

[ PAIRING ] Yoshikage Kira x f!reader [ AUTHOR'S NOTE ] I'd be lying if I said American Psycho didn't inspire bits of this fic. [ SYNOPSIS ] Against his better judgment Kira takes you up on your offer to grab some dinner after work. [ WORD COUNT ] 3k [ CONTENT ] Canon AU, POV switching (though most of it is written from Kira's POV), he is so goddamn mentally ill, y/n is crushing hard, masturbation, oral sex (f receiving), penetrative sex, handjob, murder, angst without a happy ending.

Yoshikage Kira never intended to go out to dinner with you. He was already fantasizing about a quiet evening at home as he finished up his work. He could picture it so clearly: sitting at his dinner table eating leftovers from the night before, eventually making his way to the couch to watch mindless television until the early stages of slumber enveloped him, then he would drink a warm glass of milk and do some light stretches before snuggling up under his freshly washed linen sheets, sleeping soundly until morning came.

But for reasons unknown to him, he felt compelled to take you up on your offer. Maybe it was how you walked by his desk six times before getting the courage to actually speak to him. Or maybe it was your feeble attempt at acting nonchalant about it and how cute it was when your desperation trickled through.

“I haven’t had the chance to try shabu-shabu since I moved here and I cannot be seen doing it alone. Think of what that’ll do to my ego.”

He chuckled even though he didn’t find your comment particularly funny. “Find a time when no one is around and go. Then no one will see you.”

“But I’ll know I’m alone. Like, I’ll have to live with that memory for the rest of my life.”

“What if the food is so good you forget about that part?”

“Kira,” you whined. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“I can’t; I have to return some library books. Why not ask someone else?” He leaned back in his chair, trying to see who was still toiling away in the office. “Ah, Natsumi would be a good choice. I bet she eats food.”

You attempted to quiet your laughter with your hands which annoyed him to no end. Who were you to put yourself on display in such a manner?

“I barely talk to her,” you finally said after reeling in your laughter.

“I don’t know what to tell you then. Maybe another night,” he suggested though he hoped you’d never follow up.

“I’ll pay! Please?”

He sighed, denying a cute thing like you was too cruel. “Will you have me home before 8?”

You reached out and put your hand on his shoulder. “Of course I will,” you replied, your tone comically serious. “You can count on me.”

He brushed your hand off of him while making note of how gentle your touch had been. Your hands were a sight to behold, just looking at them made all his blood flow straight to his cock. He crossed his legs and smiled sweetly, trying to maintain a veil of normalcy.

Kira knew he would be testing himself by going on a social outing with you. But it wasn’t as if he was an amateur. There had been plenty of times he didn’t let his urges get the better of him, even when presented with the perfect opportunity to indulge. He was more than capable of exercising self restraint. Besides you were his coworker. Killing you was far too risky. That in itself was enough of a deterrent.

“Do you have somewhere in mind?” He asked.

You nodded. “There’s a place not too far from here. It’s a few blocks down.”

“Have you heard good things about it?”

“No, terrible things. A guy got food poisoning and died in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles. They say his ghost haunts the restaurant to this very day with his dick hanging out.”

“Oh I love that,” Kira said quietly as he shut down his computer.

“Thought you would.”

He cleared his throat and looked up from his monitor. “I’ll meet you out front. I need to take care of a few things before we leave.”

You nodded and strolled off, unaware of the mental anguish that plagued him. Kira glanced down at his lap, watching as his cock fought against the fabric of his pants. He slowly got up, careful to obscure his erection with his quivering hands. Dizzy and humiliated, he skulked into the bathroom and quickly relieved himself. As he squeezed the shaft of his cock he fantasized about how your disembodied hand would feel stroking his tender flesh.

“Stop it,” he mumbled, hoping verbalizing his morality would make it appear.

Misery enveloped Kira as he washed his hands. He was careful to not look in the mirror, unable to bear the sight of himself. He breathed deeply as he unlocked the bathroom door, pulling it open only to be greeted by your expectant presence.

“I felt weird standing around in the lobby.”

He couldn’t follow your logic, but your earnest demeanor was precious so he didn’t think too hard about it.

“Great,” he choked out.

There was a sense of relief once the two of you were out in the world, away from the office. The air seemed lighter, the lights not so blinding and unforgiving. He was at ease as he walked beside you, your hands brushing up against his on occasion. Your disruption was more harmonious than he previously surmised. It was wrong to assume you were a woman of strife and discord. You were more benign than that. You were like petting a kitten that had been napping in a puddle of sunlight. Your presence carried the weight of a reassuring hug. He wanted to melt in your arms and drown in your sweetness.

Everything was painted in a blushy-orange hue as the sun slowly set. It gave your face an angelic quality as it danced across your face. To say you looked picturesque was an understatement. Nothing could shit on this moment; nothing could annihilate his peace. He was sure of it.

“This is… it,” you said sadly, noticing that the restaurant was in fact closed.

Suddenly everything came crashing down. Kira felt like he was going to vomit into his shoes.

“What a shame,” he said, voice straining. He was convinced he could cry at any moment.

Your eyes darted around. “We could get udon,” you said, pointing at a restaurant across the street.

Kira spun around and nearly moaned as relief filled his chest. It was directly across the street, its existence a good omen. He could have kissed you for pointing it out.

“Yes,” he said, wiping his eyes. “We can get udon.”

You gave him a confused look. Damn, he must really love udon.

Dinner went well. You both ordered the same thing, but that was only because Kira wanted to mirror you and what he perceived as your moral superiority. You talked about work, expressing similar grievances. He rarely voiced his discontent to anyone, let alone his coworkers, but you disarmed him. Everything he knew and held dear was now flexible; he didn’t mind bending a little for you.

You upheld your part of the bargain and covered the bill without a second thought. He contemplated paying for everything while you weren’t paying attention, but you were too quick.

“You could have at least let me pay for half,” he said as you signed the receipt.

You smiled. “Nah.”

The sun had set and the streets were not bustling with as much life. The sidewalks were practically empty. Eight o’clock was growing near, putting Kira on edge. His confidence in his self control was waning. It was time to go home.

“Well I’ll see you on Monday. Thank you for dinner. It was nice.”

“You don’t wanna hang out for a little longer? Maybe grab some tea? Pudding? Anything?”

He clenched his fists, nails piercing his palms. Your company was now a burden to bear. He knew you wouldn’t make it out alive if you stuck around.

“You know you wanna have tea with me,” you purred. 

A playful grin adorned your face. It was true. Kira did want to have tea with you, but not like this. He wanted to be with you under the warm gaze of a perpetual sunset. He wanted perfection, but the circumstances made it impossible, sullying it all. The longer he was around you like this, the more he wanted to hurt you.

“I doubt anywhere decent is open,” he said firmly.

“We can go back to my place! I actually have this really good genmaicha if you’re into that sort of thing.”

Fuck, he thought to himself. I am into that sort of thing!

“Alright, a cup or two won’t kill me.”

“Me neither. Let’s gooooo.”

He could control himself; he could show a semblance of restraint. Maybe spending more time around you would let him realize your true value. If he liked you enough, surely he’d want to keep more than just your hand around. And it would be nice to have a friend at work, someone to make him seem like a typical guy.

He sighed and convinced himself everything would be fine.

And it was. When the two of you arrived at your home, Kira was pleasantly surprised by its comforting warmth. It was no sunset. But it was close enough, disarming him all the same. He made himself comfortable on your couch. You prepared the tea, blethering about your interests. He watched you intently, taking in every little movement you made.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” you said, placing a cup of tea in front of him. “But you have the eyes of a hunter.”

“What?!”

Suddenly he was trying to look as doe-eyed as possible. He couldn’t believe his mask was already slipping.

“It’s not a bad thing,” you laughed, nervously scratching the base of your skull.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh my god, don’t be,” you cooed as you took a seat beside him. “It’s not a bad thing. I—I, uh…”

You cut yourself off by taking a big sip of tea.

“What was that last part?” He asked, taking off his Valentino jacket. 

He carefully folded it and hoped the wrinkling would be minimal. He then rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to feel less constricted, a little freer.

“Uh,” you mumbled, staring at his toned forearms. “It’s, like, attractive. I’m saying that objectively.”

You were courting him in the shadows. He wanted to shake you and beg you to stop, to end this nonsense, to kick him out of your home for his predator eyes. All the time Kira spent trying to shield you from it didn’t mean a thing. It made him ill. And it wasn’t as if he could tell you to stop being flirtatious because it made him want to kill you. If you knew that he was a demon with a thin veneer of sanity, he’d lose you forever.

“Thank you,” he said, sipping his tea.

“I’m surprised someone hasn’t scooped you up already.”

“I don’t really like to make myself… scoopable.”

“Fair enough,” you said, scooching closer to him. “So, you’re not seeing anyone then?”

He paused. “I am not.”

You placed your hand on his thigh, fingers grazing the inside of it. He stared down at your hand like it was a grenade.

“I’m not seeing anyone either,” you said bashfully.

Kira felt like he was going to implode.

“You know… I’ve always had a bit of a,” you coughed nervously, “crush on you. I don’t know why. I just feel drawn to you.”

His cock throbbed under his pants, begging to be freed. His carnal needs were taking over. He couldn’t remember the last time he actually fucked someone, and seeking solace in your cunt sounded endlessly appealing.

“Is that so?”

You nodded and squeezed his thigh. His body ached for you, all of you. He wanted to have every bit of it in his mouth and cover your skin with his cum.

“I need you, Yoshikage,” you said, pulling yourself into his lap. Your hands gripped his shirt.

He didn’t know what to say. You were seeing him too clearly. Hearing you say his name made it all too real. But still there was some allure to it. Rarely did Kira ever feel desired and it was clear as day that you wanted him. It stroked his ego in ways he never thought possible.

“Tell me how much.”

Your hands were now unfastening the buttons of his shirt.

“I’d rather die than be without your touch,” you mewled, rolling your hips against him.

Kira felt like his heart was caught in his throat.

You kissed his cheekbone. “Let’s go to my room.”

He followed you to your room and watched as you removed your work clothes. Your body was incredible, delectable, and he wanted to consume it. It was like a sun ripened peach, dewy and glistening under a full moon. He wondered how it would feel to sink his teeth into your flesh, how sweet your arousal must taste.

Kira did the same, carefully undressing and making sure his clothes wouldn’t look like crumpled paper once he put them back on. His ego sang as you took in his naked form. He knew he was physical perfection, a body in the image of a Bernini sculpture. Your eyes were wide, eager, and starving.

You crawled onto the bed, resting on your back with your legs spread wide. He had a perfect view of your slick cunt, one that nearly made him drool. Unable to contain himself, he got onto the bed and buried his head between your thighs. He lapped at your folds, the tip of his nose brushing up against your swollen clit.

He looked up at you and watched as you grabbed your breasts, pinching your nipples between your fingers.

“Feels s’good,” you mumbled in a blissed out daze.

Kira gave your clit slow, languorous licks, savoring the sweet taste of your arousal. He found himself rutting against the mattress, desperate to feel some form of friction. The sounds of your breathy moans sent him spiraling into a pit of pleasure and despair. His urges were creeping around him, whispering in his ears.

I wonder if she’d make the same noises if you sliced her up a bit.

He closed his eyes and focused on kissing the inside of your thighs while he slipped his fingers inside you. Your moans grew louder, more comely, as he curled them.

“More,” you moaned as you laced your fingers in his wavy, flaxen hair.

Show her the real Yoshikage Kira.

“I want your cock,” you whimpered.

He got on top of you, his blue eyes lost in your haze of ecstasy. Lust radiated off of you, drawing him in. There was no way he could deny you.

He guided his cock inside you, tossing his head back as it was surrounded by the plush heat of your cunt. You locked your legs around him, clinging to his body like your life depended on it. He loved every minute of it; feeling wanted and needed was the best sensation in the world. He was sure of it.

His thrusts were languid and sensuous. Kira liked to take his time while fucking. He was never plagued by the overwhelming reflex to come as fast and hard as possible. He preferred to focus on the needs of his partner, slowly drawing out their transcendent moans. He was hypervigilant in his awareness. You couldn’t hide a thing from Kira. He noticed every muscle twitch, every gasp and groan, every gloriously enraptured expression.

“How does it f—feel?” You asked.

He didn’t want to speak. He felt safer with his mouth shut.

You tightened your cunt around his cock.

“Shit,” he choked out as he bottomed out.

You let out a deep moan and dug your fingernails into his shoulders. Your orgasm flowed through your body, replacing your blood with unadulterated ardor. Your sweet sounds filled the room, overwhelming him.

“I can’t,” he spat out abruptly.

He pulled his cock out of you and rolled gracelessly off the bed.

“Huh?” You were in a fucked out daze.

“I have to go.”

“Is this about the library books?”

He shook his head. “No. I j—I have to leave.”

“Can you at least tell me why?”

“I’m afraid if I stay I’ll do something to you.”

You gave him a confused glare. “What are you talking about?”

KIra stared down at his hands, hoping they would have an answer.

“There is something terrible happening inside me and I don’t want it to interfere with my work life.”

You sat up, your annoyance was tangible and took up space in the room. Your eyes were fixed on his erect cock.

“No one has to know.”

“But—”

“Come on. Let me make you happy before you leave, hm?”

His eyes darkened. “You want to make me happy?”

“Yes. I wanna be filled with your cum,” you begged.

He walked over to the bed and grabbed your right wrist.

“Jerk me off.”

“Uh. Okay,” you said, squeezing his swollen shaft.

Precum dribbled out from the tip, coating your hand and you serviced him. You didn’t look enthused, but you gave it your all.

“Good girl,” he choked out as his cock spurted cum over your chest.

Kira looked down at you, trying to memorize your face since this was the last time he’d see it. He would miss your goofiness and your sweetness, but living without it wasn’t impossible. Life would just go back to the way it was before, the way it should be. Home by 8:00 PM. A glass of warm milk. Stretching.

Surely you would understand why he had to do it.

“Whoa,” you said suddenly. “Wha—what’s that fucking pink thing behind you?”

He panicked and Killer Queen vaporized your body, leaving nothing behind. Kira fell to the ground and buried his face into the side of the mattress. The pain in his chest was sharp and raging. He wished he could go back in time and never agree to dinner. He would have forced Natsumi to go with you. He would have insulted you to your face. Anything to keep you away from him.

Kira was at a loss, alone in your home. He had no idea if anyone saw him come in or if anyone at the office knew you two had gone out. He cursed himself for being so reckless and began to sob. His hubris has gotten the better of him.

What a waste. But don’t worry. There will be another one.

Before you ask: yes, y/n was a stand user. Her stand was Baby One More Time and she could bring plants back from the dead.

[kimberlyannharts]

LAST TIME ON POWER RANGERS: The Omegas are getting kind of fucked up because Andros freed a non-binary icon named Death Ranger to revive his twinksicle, as you do.  So who is this Sans Power Ranger guy running around possessing people and making zombies?  I guess we’ll find out here!  Power Rangers Unlimited: The Death Ranger!

- as we saw in the previews, the framing device for this book is a bedtime story being told to Andros and Zhane by their adopted....mom......which is still really weird to say because i don’t know if they’re intended to be romantic or not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  but I think it’s kind of funny because this story seems PG-13 at the very least

- Little shot of the original Omegas.  The designs are..........well.  They’re okay.  I can’t really be so hard on one-off characters that we’ll never see again after this book fjkfd but I’m so tired of technicolored humanoids with maybe a couple physical quirks, guys.  Why couldn’t Apophee have a beast face rather than just the lovechild of Goliath and Elisa.  Red being Kiya’s species is just rubbing salt in the wound 

Me: Can I have Kiya please Boom: We have Kiya at home The Kiya at home:

- also fun fact i thought the original Yellow was a Xybrian because of the thing on her forehead, but it’s an eye, not a gem.  so okay

- So Spa’ark’s species operates on a big hivemind situation.  this will probably be important

- UH-OH SISTERS

- oooooh nice morphing panels!!  the art and coloring are really cool an

- oh.  bye Haza.

- Shoutout to the Supernova Sister for beating the “why can’t the villains just attack during the morphing sequence” allegations

- so my thing here is.  Is all of this going to be important to the Xi of the present.   because this is a lot of potential for fleshing out Xi as a character but it’ll be moot if they just never address it outside of here

- .....................Dark Specter???  Question mark???????

- .......the Omega rangers have had sidearms this whole time??????????  I guess that makes sense since literally every ranger ever has a sidearm but.....where are they on the current Omegas.  Why don’t they have holsters.  Can they turn into a knife I bet they can’t.

- some people???  make a deal with the devil to bring back their friends as zombies????  to cope?????????

- oh??  Hi, Death Ranger suit??  That was kind of sudden

- also i have to admit the skull face on the helmet always kind of confused me....I thought the implication was that somehow their whole face turned into a skull but I guess it’s just the mouth plate?  And some of the previews for #100 support this.  Even though when Zhane was possessed his head was clearly supposed to be a skull on the inside?  So maybe that only happens to their zombies?  Am I thinking about this too hard?  idk

- So this answers some questions I suppose.  They’re basically just using the Morphin Grid as an engine for the dead bodies that they can operate.  Makes sense, even if we’re going all in on the “the Morphin Grid is just The Force now” with it powering all living things 

- BETRAYED!!!!!!!!!!!

- this will probably also be important

- damn I guess I understand why Spa’ark went all murder mode the second Andros let them out.  They didn’t even get to kill ANYBODY here (even though I thought them killing all the originals would explain why the powers were dormant when Blue found them but i digress)

- gay baby jail

- Replacing blue rangers is apparently a time-honored Omega Ranger tradition, as well as just locking away their problems and never addressing them ever again <3

- tfw your sons don’t have basic comprehension in media literacy 

[adultswim2021]

Saul of the Mole Men #15: “Village of the Damned Dolls” | June 4, 2007 - 12:00AM | S01E15

This episode is all about little guys being nasty. The Johnny Tambourine dolls have sprung to life and are going full ass hog on some fools using sharp household objects, like pencils, combs, bottle openers, and screwdrivers. They even kill the Strata operators who are almost done repairing the drillship Saul intends to travel back to the surface with. 

Fallopia has declared her intent to come with Saul to the surface, and they discover the Strata operators bodies. One of the operators has written “Johnny Tambourine” in the sand, so Saul fingers him as the killer. This is immediately cleared up when people start plainly seeing the Johnny Tambourine dolls are the true culprits; wasting any actual dramatic tension. This time instead is dedicated to just random acts of violence being committed on random Mole people by the dolls. 

At the end of the episode, Clancy takes Bertram, Lil, Saul, Johnny, and Fallopia to a secret chamber inside project Thunderhole, revealing perhaps why the idea of digging up was considered a forbidden taboo. Inside are ruins filled with various artifacts from America’s founding, including an old photo on the wall of a forefather with a Mole Man. We don’t dwell on this too long, the important thing is that there are 18th century muskets in the cave, which our heroes use to fend off the dolls (loading the muskets between firings takes a comically long amount of time). 

Just when they thought they blew away all the little Johnnys, the episode ends with one of them having tied up Fallopia to a “don’t tread on me” kite, with a sharp object pointed at her face. He wants the stones, and he means business. This is the requisite cliffhanger ending.

I don’t know how much it actually makes sense to criticize this show for lacking dramatic tension when the show is so clearly focused on being intentionally shoddy and also has five more episodes to wrap up it’s story. I suggested they might have milked the plot point of the real human Johnny Tambourine as murder suspect. I guess it ultimately wouldn’t have mattered, and I suppose it’s a little funny that he doesn’t even seem to grasp the dramatic weight of such an accusation. Historically, when something heavy comes across Johnny’s plate, we cut to him smiling, one hundred percent oblivious to the dramatic implications of almost every plot point. That’s the joke. 

The follow up episode to this is actually one I’m looking forward to: it’s the episode that spawned the spin-off series Young Person’s Guide to History.

[specialagentsergio]

rationalizations

rationalizations: a defense mechanism in which one makes up a false but reassuring explanation to explain their behavior and/or feelings to both themselves and others, thus avoiding the reality of why they are really acting or feeling as they do.

summary: You’re the psych evaluation for Spencer. You think he’s full of shit, so you refuse to sign his clearance form until he actually tells the truth.

pairing: spencer reid x f!reader

category: angst (happy ending)

content warnings: spencer’s canonical trauma, flashbacks, mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation, swearing

a/n: i wrote this for @imagining-in-the-margins‘ enemies to lovers event. it’s not my favorite trope, but one of the prompts sparked inspiration for me. i also took a good amount of inspiration from meredith’s various therapy scenes in grey’s anatomy, so if some of it feels familiar, that’s why! i swear i intended to make this cute and funny, but, well… here we are lmao.

word count: 3.6k

masterlist

Spencer throws his bag onto his desk with a frustrated huff. It thumps loudly, startling JJ at her desk across from his. She gives him a sympathetic look regardless. “Still not cleared yet?”

“No!” Forgetting that it’s wheeled, he drops himself into his chair. It skids backwards and he has to scramble to grab something to keep from falling out of it.

“Careful there,” JJ says, trying valiantly to suppress a laugh. “That psychologist's got you really worked up, huh?”

“I don’t know what she wants from me!” he complains. “It’s been nearly a month! Hotch’s ex-wife was murdered by an unsub, but they cleared him. I was only shot in the neck.”

“I mean, that’s still kind of a big deal,” she says. “You could’ve died, from the gunshot, or from the nurse that tried to kill you afterwards.”

“Speaking of that nurse,” he starts, “Garcia is the one who shot him and she’s been a wreck over it. She insisted on going to the guy’s execution. But the therapist cleared her!”

“Penelope’s not in the field,” JJ points out.

He crosses his arms. “Still. This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot. That possibility is part of the job. It’s not like it came out of nowhere and I was completely unprepared for it.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Spence,” she says. “Just keep all of your appointments and I’m sure you’ll be cleared soon.”

He pulls a stack of papers on his desk towards him. Paperwork—one of the things he’s actually allowed to do. “I better be,” he mutters.

---

“And it was really scary, you know?” Spencer wipes at his eyes with a tissue. “Not knowing if I was going to live or die.”

“Mm-hmm.”

He takes a deep breath. “But… it’s over now. The preacher who shot me died in the same shootout. Owen McGregor, the leader of the corrupt deputies, died later that night, in another shootout. And Greg Baylor, the one who posed as a nurse and tried to kill me, was sentenced to death row and he’s gone now, too.”

His psychologist makes a note on the paper in front of her, but doesn’t say anything, so he continues.

“I… I feel better now, just letting that out.” He takes a new tissue and dries his nose. “I feel ready now. Ready to go back to work.”

She nods slowly, considering him. But she doesn’t even look towards her desk where the clearance form sits, frustrating him to no end. After five minutes of silence, he breaks.

“You can’t be serious.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’ve been coming to these sessions for over a month, and I’m still not cleared to be in the field. I…” He musters up more tears and makes sure his voice wavers during his next words. “I just don’t know what you want? I’ve tried everything.”

“No, you haven’t,” she says plainly.

He blinks in surprise, sending some of the crocodile tears down his cheeks. “What?”

She crosses her legs. “You’re full of shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not being honest with me, and I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself either,” she says. “You’re a great actor. I can see how you’ve gotten clearances easily before. But that stops with me.”

Spencer stares at her. “I don’t understand.”

She moves her notebook to the side. “What happened in Texas isn’t the first time your life’s been in danger. Why do you think that is?”

“Wh—that’s part of my job,” he argues, fake crying long since forgotten.

“Not to the extent that you take it. I’ve read your file,” she says. “You take unnecessary risks with regularity.”

The tissues crumple in his hand as he clenches it. “I do not.”

“Let’s go back to the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Of your career.” Yet she doesn’t take out his file, or look at her notes. She speaks from memory. “2005. The BAU is assisting with a hostage situation. You go into the train, posing as someone who is there to remove a microchip from the unsub, but the first thing you do? You take off your bulletproof vest.”

“Okay, clearly you don’t understand what the situation was,” Spencer cuts in. “Ted Bryar was suffering from a psychotic break. He was somewhat unpredictable, and he told me to take off the vest.”

“And you just listened?”

“He—he had a gun, and was threatening both me and the other passengers with it!” he says. “What was I supposed to do, not listen?”

“Uh, yeah,” she replies. “You easily played into his delusions just a few minutes later to distract him. Why not do that to keep yourself safe?”

“I was twenty-four and was running on adrenaline,” he says defensively. “And it was my first time doing something like that. You can’t expect me to think of everything.”

“You’re right, I can’t,” she agrees. “So let’s jump forward a few years. How about the time you approached a teenager who was wielding an assault rifle with no protection, not even your own firearm?” she challenges.

“You mean Owen Savage? That was a unique situation,” he protests. “I knew I could talk him down.”

“No, you didn’t. You thought you had a good chance, but there’s no way to be one hundred percent sure of that. He was volatile, and on a killing spree,” she counters. “You didn’t know if you’d succeed--”

“I did!” He startles himself by unconsciously raising his voice, but he doesn’t apologize. “I did, because….”

“Because you related to him,” she fills in. “And that’s fine. Having empathy for an unsub doesn’t suggest something’s wrong in and of itself. But you still put yourself, and the rest of your team, in danger, didn’t you?”

He crosses his arms. “I got that lecture from Hotch when it happened, okay?”

“So then why’d you confront an unsub alone a few years later in Miami?” she asks. “You didn’t even tell anyone where you were going. You left your vest behind and just ran off.”

“I was having a head—wait, how do you even know that happened?” he questions. “It wasn’t in the report.”

“Well, first of all, you just confirmed it,” she points out, and he wants to kick himself. “Secondly, I can read between the lines.”

“I was having a headache,” he repeats. “I wasn’t thinking all that clearly. I just knew Julio’s life was in immediate danger, so I went to help him.”

“Uh-huh. More recently,” she says, brushing past his excuse, “You confronted your girlfriend’s stalker without your vest or gun.”

Spencer’s getting angry now. “I was trying to save Maeve. She asked me to leave them behind.”

“And you simply listened. Do you see the pattern I’m drawing here, Dr. Reid?” she asks. “These are just a few of the instances that stand out. Time and time again, you put yourself in unnecessary danger. So I’ll ask you again. Why do you think that is?”

Spencer looks over her—really looks over her, trying to understand what she’s getting at. “Are… are you suggesting that I’m suicidal?” he asks quietly.

She looks him straight in the eye. “You don’t act like someone who wants to be alive.”

It’s like she set off a bomb in his brain. Memories, and the feelings attached to them, emerge—Elle handcuffed to a seat, a teenager with a rifle, a blinding headache, Maeve and blood on the warehouse floor.

“Here’s what I see,” she says. “I see a man who’s been through so, so much. Your mother is mentally ill, your father left--”

His father is packing a suitcase. Spencer doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do or say, so he falls back on what he knows.

“Statistically, children who grow up in two-parent households attain three more years of higher education than children from single-parent households.”

It doesn’t help. “We’re not statistics, Spencer.”

“Your file says she’s staying at an institution, and with your father out of the picture, I can only assume you were the one who had her admitted--”

“Spencer, please don’t do this to me!” she cries as she’s escorted out of the house by Bennington Sanitarium’s transport staff.

“A few years into your work here at the FBI, you were kidnapped, tortured and drugged--”

He’s tired and cold and his whole body aches. Tobias—the real Tobias—looms over him with a syringe.

“Please. I don’t want it,” he pleads of his captor. “I don’t want it, please.”

The needle punctures his skin regardless.

“—you were held hostage by a cult leader--”

Emily sits across from him on the plane with a black eye. “What Cyrus did to me is not your fault.”

He pretends to agree.

“—you went through the death and reappearance of Agent Prentiss--”

He’s tried to make it clear to Jennifer that he wants to be left alone, but she won’t stop trying to talk about it with him, and he’s had enough.

“I came to your house for ten weeks in a row crying over losing a friend, and not once did you have the decency to tell me the truth.”

“—and your girlfriend was shot in front of you.”

“Who’s Thomas Merton? Who is he?” Diane demands, gun pressed against Maeve’s head.

“He’s the one thing you can never take from us,” Maeve replies, and Spencer’s heart drops. Thomas Merton is Maeve’s way of saying goodbye—she’s giving up.

“Wait!” he cries out, but it’s too late.

“This is just some of the more traumatic stuff. And then there’s what happened last month, which is why you’re here. You present a face of not being bothered by all of this, because that’s what you’ve been doing all your life, but I think you are bothered. You really, really are. And you don’t want to admit to anyone just how much it all has affected you. Maybe you don’t even want yourself to know.” Her expression and tone of voice are certain.

Spencer can’t take it anymore. The whirlwind of emotions and memories is overwhelming.

“The number of times you’ve almost died is staggering--”

“Yeah, and sometimes I wish I had!” He glares at her, breathing heavily. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

But she doesn’t seem intimidated or alarmed at all. She leans back in her armchair. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

The response only serves to make him angrier. She questioned him relentlessly and made him admit something he swore in the dark hours of sleepless nights that he’d never think again, never voice, let alone admit to anyone. She forced it out of him, forced. She made him say it against his will.

So why does he feel a sense of relief?

“I…” Tears well up in his eyes—real ones this time. “I’m done,” he chokes out.

He pushes himself off of the couch and out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

---

He storms in Hotch’s office and demands to see a different psychologist. But she was one step ahead of him—a few hours before the appointment, she had emailed Hotch and told him that under no circumstances should Spencer be allowed to get a clearance from someone else.

“And you’re going to believe her?” he cries.

“She’s doing her job, Reid.”

“You barely know her! You’ve known me for a decade!”

“Yes, I have,” Hotch agrees. “And you’ve told me yourself that you’ve fooled psychologists and therapists before. So if this one is saying you’re not ready yet, I’m inclined to believe her.”

Spencer just stares at him, but as usual, Hotch doesn’t blink.

“Unbelievable,” Spencer eventually mutters.

“Take the rest of the day off,” Hotch replies, glancing down at fists Spencer hadn’t realized he was clenching.

“Fine.”

Too agitated to stand in the elevator, he takes the stairs. As he stomps down them, he swears he’ll never go back to her office, even if it means never going into the field again.

A week passes, then two, and he hasn’t seen the psychologist since. But he doesn’t feel any better—he actually feels worse. It’s like her words broke a dam in his mind, in his gut, and feelings of unease and uncertainty won’t pass. It keeps him up at night. Her words echo in his head. “You don’t act like someone who wants to be alive.”

Spencer’s had yet another sleepless night and is struggling not to doze off at his desk despite the coffee he’s drinking. He stands up with the intention of splashing some water from the bathroom sink on his face, but his feet take him somewhere else.

He stares at the nameplate on the door. He swore he’d never go back, yet he feels compelled to knock.

It only takes her a few moments to answer. “Dr. Reid. Can I help you?” she asks.

“I…” He sighs. “Are you busy?”

“No. Come on in.” She steps to the side, opening the door wider to let him pass. He sits down on the couch.

She waits patiently. She doesn’t rush him. She lets him speak first.

He wrings his hands in his lap, staring down at them. “Something you said is bothering me.”

“What was it?”

“About… living,” he admits quietly. “I… I think you might have been right.”

When he gets the courage to glance up at her, he finds a soft smile on her face. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Spencer hadn’t realized he was expecting judgment and disdain until it didn’t happen. His shoulders slump down in relief. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think I would.”

---

“You’re still thinking about her, aren’t you?”

Spencer looks up from his paperwork, slightly out of it, to find Derek watching him. His coworker had, indeed, caught him thinking about her again. His psychologist. Well, former psychologist. After his second session back with her, she’d handed over a clearance form and a referral to a therapist outside the bureau to see long-term.

“And you better follow up with that,” she’d told him, the corner of her mouth turning up despite her serious tone of voice. “I’ll know if you don’t.”

He’d promised that he would, and had followed through. But despite the progress he was making with the new therapist, he was feeling a little disappointed that he didn’t get to see her anymore. He only saw her in passing, sometimes in the elevator or walking down the hallways of the building. They would exchange hellos, she would ask how he was doing, then give him a little wave as she left. Each time his heart would skip a beat, and he’d feel an urge to follow her to wherever she was going.

Yet he hadn’t quite realized why he seemed to be preoccupied with her until a dream he had a few weeks ago—a dream in which he found himself kissing her. Despite being alone in his bedroom, he’d woken up feeling embarrassed. He promised himself that he would put her out of his mind. Having a crush on his psychologist? It was ridiculous.

But then he saw her in the elevator a few days later and he couldn’t help but analyze her body language. It was open, and she twirled her hair around a finger while she looked at him to ask him how he was. A few other people entered the elevator on the next floor, but her attention remained on him. They were subtle signs, but signs that he recognized nonetheless—signs of attraction. And once he started seeing them, he couldn’t stop.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Spencer tells Derek, picking back up the pen he hadn’t noticed he dropped.

“You can’t pull that on me, kid,” he replies. “It’s your psychologist. You can’t stop thinking about her, can you?”

Spencer sighs. “So what if I can’t?”

“So go ask her out already!” Derek says like it’s obvious.

“You don’t think that’s just a little inappropriate?”

“You’re not seeing her as a client anymore, are you?” he points out. “Go for it, kid. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Spencer takes the advice—as soon as Derek said it, he knew he was right. He would regret not taking a chance on her and the connection he felt. Sure, she’d helped him with therapy, but it went deeper than that. It feels like she knows him.

He leaves the bullpen ten minutes early that evening, hoping to catch her before she leaves for the day. On her doorstep, he feels just as nervous as he did on the day he admitted that she was right, but it’s a different kind of nervous. An excited nervous. He knocks on the door.

She’s surprised when she seems him. He watches as her pupils dilate, and it boosts his confidence. “Dr. Reid. Can I help you?”

“You can. I’d like to talk,” he says.

“Oh. Well, I guess I could do that,” she says. “I thought things were going well with the therapist I referred you to, though.”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t mean I want an appointment.”

Her eyebrows come together in confusion. “Okay, then, what do you want?”

Spencer doesn’t hesitate. “I want to take you out to dinner.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I really like you, and I think we’re meant to be together,” he replies, voice softening a bit.

She pauses before answering. When she does, her voice is gentle. “Dr. Reid, sometimes a medical professional’s care can start to feel like affection over a period of time, but--”

“No one has ever listened to me like you do,” he interrupts.

“That’s my job,” she points out.

“I’ve seen therapists before, but none of them have been like you,” he counters. “You understand me.”

She sighs. “Well, I’m glad I was a good fit and was able to help you. But that doesn’t mean that I see you as anything more than a client.”

“You’re lying.”

“Excuse me?”

“You do feel something more for me,” he says firmly, but then backtracks a little. “Well, I know you’re attracted to me at least.”

She blinks and shakes her head slightly, take aback. “Dr. Reid, this is not appropriate--”

“Please call me Spencer,” he says, then jumps into his explanation. “See, when we’re attracted to someone, our bodies display involuntary signals, and I’ve seen you do some of them when you’re around me. Whenever we run into each other here, your body will turn a little towards me and you’ll play with your hair. Your attention is almost entirely focused on me. And, when you see me, your pupils dilate. They did it when you opened the door just a few minutes ago. Oh, and I’m attracted to you, by the way,” he adds as he realizes how one-sided he’s been. “I imagine my pupils probably dilate when I see you, too.”

Her mouth opens and closes a few times, like she wants to speak but doesn’t know what to say. She looks flustered, and he wonders if maybe he’s pushed it too far or said too much, but he can’t turn back now. “So, please, let me take you out,” he says quietly. “Just… just give it a chance.”

She bites her lip and looks at the ground. There’s a crease between her eyebrows, which he’s come to learn means she’s thinking. She speaks seriously when she looks back up. “If I go out with you, I can’t treat you anymore. If you ever need another evaluation or session, you’d have to get it from someone else.”

“I know,” he says. “I get along well with the therapist you referred me to, though. And having to get clearance from a different psychologist at the bureau is something I’m willing to give up in favor of getting to know you better.”

She considers him. “You’re serious about this,” she states.

It’s not a question, but he answers it anyways. “I am.”

She tilts her head to the side, eyes unfocusing as she ponders the situation. Eventually, she says, “Let me think about it.”

It’s not exactly the answer he was hoping for, but he’ll take it.

---

It’s only six PM, but Spencer is already exhausted. He unlocks his apartment door, fully intending to collapse onto his bed, but instead receives a pleasant surprise in the form of his girlfriend waiting for him on the couch. He can’t help but smile.

“Sweetie, what are you doing here?” he asks, then adds, “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Penelope told me it was a bit of a rough case,” she replies. “And I missed you.”

She holds out her arms and he takes the invitation, joining her on the couch and laying down between her legs, placing his head on her chest. “I missed you, too.”

Her next words are overly familiar. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Hey, we agreed to no therapy,” he says. “Something about I can’t be your client anymore?”

She huffs. “This isn’t therapy. This is being a good partner.”

Spencer smiles into the fabric of her shirt, snuggling in closer. “I know, I’m just teasing you. I don’t need to talk about the case,” he says, finally answering her original question. “I feel fine now that I’m here with you.”

She lets out a pleased hum and starts running her fingers through his hair. “I ordered take-out for dinner, by the way.”

“Where from?”

“You know where.”

A wide grin spreads across his face. She must have ordered take-out from the restaurant he took her to on their first date. He lifts his head to look her in the eye. “Aren’t you glad you said yes to me all those months ago?”

“Oh, I suppose,” she says with pretend annoyance, rolling her eyes.

Then she kisses him.

Spencer’s never been so happy to be alive.

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

tell me what you thought here!

please note that i DO NOT ENDORSE asking out your therapist/former therapist. this is fanfiction. thank you.

general taglist: @calm-and-doctor​ , @spencerreid9​

[cinnamonest]

Yandere HCs - Kaeya & Diluc

Kaeya Alberich

This man. This man is one of the best at manipulation and mind games. He can read people very well, just from spending some time around them, watching them, he can understand the kind of things that gets under their skin, the things that worry them, the things they're insecure about, and he knows exactly how to utilize that knowledge to his benefit, so subtly you'll never even realize it.

Among his many techniques of mental manipulation is his effect on your own self-perception, a careful form of gaslighting to make you completely dependent. In your case, he utilizes your foreign status - you don't understand the culture, so it only makes sense you wouldn't recognize that that guy you were talking to clearly had ill intentions, that that merchant was trying to scam you, that that bartender was trying to slip you something when you weren't looking, that that person you thought liked you actually finds you annoying, that they're signaling for you to leave. You're awful at reading the air, really, that's how the cultural difference works, but if you asked anyone else for help, well, they might just intentionally mislead you for their own amusement, you know? He's a trustworthy guy, he'll be like a guide for you, keep you safe.

Of course, he's a very busy man, so while he's working, it's probably better for you to stay indoors by yourself. You have to promise not to leave - after all, if he thinks you're out there, all by your naive self, he'll worry about you, and he might zone out and get hurt on a mission, all because of you, and you don't want that, right?

And while you might be excited to finally get to go out once he's back, when he comes through the door you see how exhausted he is, and he knows you're so sympathetic and selfless, you won't force him to go out when he's tired, you can just have a night in to yourselves. He's your friend, of course he wants to spend some time with you. That, and he's locked himself out of the knight headquarters again, and he doesn't want to wake them up, so he not-so-subtly tells you he needs a place to stay, sheepish smile, passed off as embarrassment over his forgetfulness - which is odd, since he never seems to be forgetful otherwise. He's like that - constantly just teetering on the edge of your kindness, testing the boundaries of how much you're willing to do for him, laughing as he promises to pay you back somehow.

He's got that laid back, confident air to him, and that contributes to how easily you trust him. It makes him one of least detectable yanderes you could have - he has a trained poker face and can keep his anger restrained with a smile, only making a slight passive aggressive comment to relieve any irritation. It takes a lot to get him to lash out, but one of the quickest ways to do so is get him concerned for your safety, or panicked if you can't be found. In moments like that, he's more likely to become moody and snap at you or others, but he'll calm down eventually and apologize, treating it as so trivial you can't help but feel like you overreacted to it. He keeps his cool very well, and recovers from outbursts very easily. The other way to irritate him is showing very blatant affection for someone else, initiating physical contact with them, etc. He's a little slower to recover from that, and might need to storm off to cool down, telling you you shouldn't be so stupid as to trust someone like that.

And don't think he won't degrade you - so subtly, he makes it clear how he sees you, and how you should be seeing yourself - naive, clueless, stupid even. Immature, you don't know how the real world works, you're just like a little kid when you get mad over the latest friend of yours he's passive-aggressively insulted. You're really lucky he puts up with your tantrums. You could stand to show some gratitude that he chooses to be forgiving.

He likes to think he isn't a jealous person, and that's true, but only externally. Inside, it's a slow burning feeling, one that eats away at him. He actually won't recognize it at first. He usually doesn't have reasons to be jealous - he's the one others are envious of, and he knows that. Once he recognizes the emotion, it only makes it worse, now irritated by the insult to his arrogance that someone so beneath him, as all your friends are, could incite such emotions, that he'd even worry if they might be better. Which is a ridiculous notion - he's the best at virtually everything, the most desirable person you'll ever meet. He tells himself you're just too nice, your attention too easy to capture.

But Kaeya won't kill anyone, no, at least not personally. He's definitely above that, as appealing as the idea may be, he tells himself that whoever has earned his wrath doesn't deserve the effort, doesn't deserve the honor of being killed by him. He can't stand the thought of stooping so low as to become a murderer. 

So instead, he'll use his authority to dispose of them. It's very unfortunate that you didn't notice your little friend was a criminal, didn't realize they were so violent that they'd rather die fighting than be arrested by knights. But he gets it, you're spacey, unaware, maybe a little dumb, even. Or perhaps it's a cultural difference yet again. You're just too easy to fool and deceive, this is exactly why you shouldn't wander around with people you can't trust - unlike him, someone with a reputation, an authority figure, the epitome of trustworthiness. 

And finally... He is touchy. He is always finding some way to just sit on the border of normal touches, stopping short of anything you would actually feel justified in getting mad at him for. When you walk through a door, he presses your lower back to push you in. When you're drinking, he has his arm around your neck. When you say goodbye, he wraps you into face-to-face hugs and hangs on just a little too tight for just a little too long to be comfortable.

Diluc Ragnvindr

A very obvious yandere, really. Diluc is significantly less charismatic than Kaeya, but he's charming in his own little way. He's funny when he's not trying to be, taking everything way too seriously, saying unintentionally funny things with the most flat and neutral expression that makes you laugh even more.

He isn't the best with expressing his emotions, but also unlike Kaeya, he doesn't do a very good job at keeping them hidden, either. It comes out in awkward displays of affection and an intense protectiveness. He insists on paying for everything you do while in the region, will buy you random gifts, intending to give you them in person but ultimately leaving them outside your door, anonymously, hoping maybe you'd just conclude it was him and be grateful. His protectiveness is intense. He needs to know where you are, who you're with, what you're doing, virtually every hour of the day. For your safety, of course. Still, the very fact that he shows such concern is a considerable contrast from his usual complete cold stoicism.

God forbid you hang out with someone sleazy and cunning and much better at the flirting thing than him like you-know-who. No, he'll make sure you keep a good distance from the knights, insisting to both anyone who asks as well as to himself that it's because of his distrust in their competence. They can't get the most basic of tasks done, why would he ever trust them to protect you?

He's significantly easier to piss off than other yans, and he lacks both the ability to keep a cool head or quickly backtrack the way some others would. He's not prone to violent outbursts, but if he's upset about something, you'll know it. The scowl on his face and the annoyance in his tone is as unrestrained as it is threatening. 

Which, speaking of, will play a role in your interactions with him. He's the most threatening persona of the genshin boys, really, and can get a little frightening at times. He'll accompany you in your journeys, and should you encounter any human enemies, he'll treat them exactly the same as he would monster ones - merciless, brutal kills. He's so caught up in protective instinct that he doesn't really process how horrifying it is for you to watch, doesn't think about how it probably doesn't look too good for him to be chasing down a fleeing enemy or running a surrendering, begging criminal straight through with a sword. Should you have the courage to bring it up, and not be too afraid to even mention it, he might try to come up with some excuse, but it's more likely he'll be his bluntly honest self and say it was for your safety. He won't insist that you thank him the way the others might, but there's a clear edge to his tone that says you shouldn't question what he does for your sake. 

His threatening nature is also beneficial when it comes to any potential rivals - sometimes he doesn't even need to have a private conversation, he just has to look at them, and they're running the other way.

It's not as insufferable and delusional as Kaeya's, but he's still got that prideful streak to him. Diluc doesn't go out of his way to show off or speak in such an arrogant, snide way like the other, his pride manifests differently - his generally cold demeanor contributes to an aloofness that speaks for itself. He's better than the others around him - and he believes that himself, mostly. Which is why seeing other people around you likewise irritates him. It's not so much that he deserves your attention, though, more than they're unworthy of it.

And that's one of the primary differences between him and Kaeya - Kaeya will, albeit subtly, demean you, belittle you, talk down to you like you're a silly child, he sees himself as above you, but Diluc will place you on a pedestal, see you as some perfect being that's constantly tainted by the presence of others. You deserve something perfect too, like himself. He won't pull the same attitude of making you feel unworthy, but rather try his best to make you understand how much more you do deserve.

If you should become wary around him, try to distance yourself, try to avoid him, he'll catch on. He's not very delusional, he's a more rational yandere that could understand why you might react that way. He's also one of the more guilty yanderes, doesn't want to do anything that would make you more upset, so he'll first try earning back your favor, make you smile at him again rather than looking away and seeming so nervous. He beats himself up mentally, tells himself it's his own fault, he's not one to blame you or another force. He knows he's not the most smooth or eloquent person, but he tries his best to apologize and win you back. It takes a lot for him to apologize to anyone, but he will do so surprisingly quickly for you.

If that doesn't work, however... He'll give you a set amount of time he's determined in his mind for you to come around, and if you don't... He'll still feel guilty, he'll say he's an awful person and apologize for what he'll do, but the guilt isn't strong enough to stop him from more forceful means of isolating you and getting your attention back. If you're especially good, though, he'll let you back outside. Eventually.

As for touchiness, he's very hesitant. It's not something he's used to, poor boy is very touch-starved. But once he does, it's an exhilarating thing, even just shaking your hand will have him spacing out for the rest of the day with the memory.

[souljoon]

Follow up fic to the corpse roommate fics? Where they admit on stream ( at different times when the other is not playing) that they would date the other and then they only find out the other said that through the usual streamer group and Twitter and then they have to confess feelings to eachotjer but like it’s funny and awkward when they do it bc they’re so close already. Thanks I love your writing!!

Here it is!!

pairing: corpse x gender neutral!reader

genre: fluff, humor (?)

warnings: cursing

note: this is kinda late i was supposedly gonna post this yesterday but the power was out in the neighborhood :-(

~~~

You cannot fill in a spot for today’s Among Us session since you already had a prior engagement with another group. It’s not that Corpse is anything remotely close to being bored, but he just thought it was different without you around.

If he doesn’t try to marinate you, you could be his first victim on his murder list just to annoy you, or could be framing you up for something that he had done to fuel more of your frustration. But most of the time, he just loves having you around to vouch for you. Now, he feels a little lonely out there.

And while he’s fulfilling his tasks, he unconsciously proceeds to talk about someone he’d want to date with the image of you sitting comfortably at the back of his head.

“I hope everyone’s having a great time while I’m boring you out in this game. Does that even make sense?” He chuckles, before continuing, “I think you little freaks aren’t aware how much I appreciate your support and I always read everyone’s comments. And... most of you are sort of curious of what qualities I’m looking for someone I’d date.”

Corpse pauses, pretending to think for a second, “I’m not purposely looking for someone. But I do have—you know... crush, if that’s what you wanna call it. I guess... you’re all aware that Y/N and I are really close. And amongst all my friends, Y/N is leaning towards the ideal person I’d date with. But yeah… don’t tell them that. I don’t want us to feel uncomfortable with one another.”

Corpse laughs awkwardly, too late to realize how he just confessed his feelings for you.

“Uhh… so Sykunno just self-reported my body and as you can see everyone just bought just his alibi.” He says, quickly veering away from the topic.

Few minutes later, Rae unmuted her mic while everyone else was occupied with their own tasks, “Guys, I have an announcement. Lily just came into my room to tell me Corpse and Y/N are trending on twitter! Apparently, our boy Corpse here just confessed his undying love for Y/N in his stream!”

His friends fell into a mess of chaotic cheering.

“Y’all are straining my ears.” Corpse immediately complains.

On the other hand, Sykunno simply brought him back to the topic. “We knew it, Corpse. It’s not like you were good at hiding your admiration for Y/N.”

“Ahhhhh our ship is finally sailing!” Poki gushes out.

Corpse went completely red. Is he that obvious? This is the fucking end of their friendship, he could feel it!

“Come on, Corpse. Don’t be too shy. At least, the love of your life feels the same way.” Felix fills in the void of what he had missed in the previous stream.

“Y’all are fucking with me!”

“He’s telling the truth! Y/N said so a few days ago! You stood us up in the game, remember?” Rae says, backing up Felix.

Corpse couldn’t possibly believe what they were telling him. He’s been friends with you for quite some time now and because he shares the apartment with you, it’s inevitable for you two to grow much closer than ever before. However, you’ve treated him the same you would with your other friends. So he’s certainly convinced that his feelings for you is unrequited.

Out of utter embarrassment, he called in too early for the day after staying for another round in the game. He knew that his fans would endlessly talk about his confession on Twitter but he didn’t think they would be able to trend it in just a short span of time.

Corpse refuses to go out of his room the rest of the day, not prepared enough to see you— much less talk to you face to face. But given that he lives with you in an average sized apartment with mini kitchen and a small living room, avoiding you is quite the impossible thing to do. To make things worse, you two just kept bumping into each other, then mumbling apologies as you both poorly try to go towards the opposite direction. It’s been like that the entire day.

But the following day, Corpse has been pacing around his room—clearly affected by the awkward air between you. And right after he took a shower, he decided to confess it to yog as he’s certain that you’ve already heard about it on social media by now, going straight to your room where you’ve obviously been hiding as well since yesterday.

The pair of you stood there awkwardly in the doorway, staring at each other—you looking away when his gaze gets too intense and vice versa.

Your face aflames furiously, blinking as you try to calm the beating of your heart.

“Hey,” He spoke with his usual deep, intimidating voice even when his insides are liquifying.

“Hi Corpse. You need anything?”

“Y-You— I mean—fuck!” Corpse hears your adorable laugh, making him instantly blush in return.

“You’ve probably heard this from everyone else, on Twitter. That’s not something what I had in mind when I‘ll confess my feelings for you—”

“I like you, too, Corpse…”

His face lights up. “You do?”

“But…”

And as soon as he picks up the hesitation in your tone, he went pale. “But?”

“But you seriously need to put a shirt on if you don’t intend to seduce me.”

His eyes widened, “Holy shit.”

~~~

[strawberryjamsara]

Keiji and Sara’s relationship throughout yttd

In which I analyze the found family dynamic between Sara and Keiji then nobody reads it. But jokes aside, I realized back when that anon asked me for my thoughts on Sara that I had enough thoughts on the relationship between these two alone for its own meta so here goes. What Sara and Keiji’s relationship means in the grand scheme of yttd.

ALSO THIS IS NOT SHIPPING SHIPPERS GET THE FUCK AWAY

Sara when she meets Keiji is distrustful of him. And how can she not be? The guy has some creepy bags under his eyes, doesn’t seem to care about the situation, and for no reason is gravitating towards her. And his response when she asks why the hell he keeps putting a random stranger in charge? “Because you’re cute.” Yeah. I’d stay within 50 feet of this guy too Sara. Especially when he’s not spilling a word about himself.

Alright we might as well get the gross part out of the way. To clear things up. In the Japanese version, the word he uses “Kawai” can be seen as a more fatherly word to use with a kid. But the comments about going on dates from himself and from Shin? Those are still there. And I still think they’re really uncomfortable and wish they weren’t in the game period but we can get thematic significance out of them.

We still don’t know Keijis reasons in game for being attached to Sara. My theory? She’s his handicap. He was told to get close to the higher scorer who could easily backstab him, and he’d be stuck with her. It just kinda makes sense to me. But since that’s just a theory I won’t lean to heavily on it for support. But let’s talk about his comments.

Keiji… well, it’s shown at many points in the game that Keiji just thinks of himself as doomed to be a bad person. It can be seen during his day two negotiations when he calls himself a killer and explains he can’t even trust himself so Sara shouldn’t really bother and more explicitly so is the classroom scene between him and Ranmaru where he says he isn’t fit to protect Sara because of his sins. The flirting is both a way to distract people, and to put distance between himself and Sara. He’s not really “protecting” her.

Okay gross bit nobody wants to talk about is over I promise we won’t talk about it again. Let’s talk about Russian Roulette. In this scene, Keiji once again tries to make Sara the leader with no explanation, but then, Sara yells at him, something he didn’t expect. And through this he actually reveals something huge. The source of his trauma. His shooting. For Keiji to have actually revealed something that big, I think that this is the first moment he began to see Sara past whatever reason he first started making her a leader. This is the beginning of their bond.

This bond gets solidified over chapter 1-2s investigation. Keiji is still putting her in charge because his handicap said to build her up for whatever reason, but they’re able to have chats, and she keeps picking at his armor. He reveals his dark sense of humor to her, and she, suspicious just sort of keeps him at arms length. Also she rides his shoulders to screw in a light and he complains which is funny. The scene post Nao also helps the two of them sharpen investigative skills together, as they discuss the mystery of Miley, and Mishimas head.

Then another significant scene. The white room. I call this scene significant because, instead of letting Sara investigate the gruesome scene of the first trial, Keiji for the first time, allows Sara to walk out. Something that will become relevant later but until then, Keiji has begun to put Sara’s well-being above serving whatever purpose he had by building her up. So keep that in your pocket while we go over the main game.

There’s only two points for the main game I want to cover. While Keiji and Sara do put their heads together a few times, Sara still doesn’t fully trust him, so I will only go over 1. When Shin brings up Kai’s emails. Keiji has been fully logical this whole time, questioning everyone’s alibis including Nao’s who he saw the emotional plea from, but when Sou brings up potentially damning evidence of Sara, he just asks if he read the emails wrong. 2. When Sara is panicking over being chosen for the final round, Keiji loudly shouts “GET A GRIP SARA!” With a serious expression. Before quickly backtracking and going back to a devil may care expression. This shows he is both already emotionally attached to Sara, but unwilling to stake himself towards giving himself to a new cause.

Anyways, he stops her from pressing the button blah blah blah, onto chapter 2! I’ve made a post about this before but it seems as early as here, Keiji is trying to talk Sara down from pushing herself further. But at this point, Sara has already dedicated herself to the role because her best friend died due to her priority to protect everyone. Keiji sees the problem and he tries to get her to rest up, but he still doesn’t spend the time to have a serious talk about it because as he says in the classroom. He isn’t fit to protect her. He doesn’t think of himself as a good person who can help her. He thinks of himself as a murderer and he doesn’t allow himself to recover from the trauma.

Sara however is starting to rely more on Keiji. He’s been willing to comfort her in her times of grief and furthermore, she has something to relate to him on. They both have deaths of important people in their lives they feel responsibility for.

There’s also the fact that Keiji sees a lot of his old self in Sara. An idealistic person, being beaten down, and worrying over the idea they might be becoming a bad person. He feels the same as her.

Not to mention… Keiji follows through on his promises. He actually tells Sara about the person he respected like he said he would which establishes a further sense of trust.

However, something that tears that sense of trust apart is the tokens scene. When Keiji doesn’t even let Sara hold 50 tokens, it raises suspicion. Sara already knows he shot a person- what more could he have to hide? That scares her away. The negotiation event is an attempt for Keiji to win back her trust. But it slowly turns into Keiji’s self-loathing session. And his declaration maybe Sara shouldn’t trust him.

However, time passes enough (and Keiji supports Sara enough in the final attraction) for them to get together and investigate in 2-2. And there’s a lot of moments I can talk about there so I’ll be just doing a few rapidfire things. So first, Sara is in peak weird girl mode and Keiji can hardly control her chaos. Second, Keiji makes a full on decision at one point to go against Sara when she’s putting herself in danger of getting caught for their search so they can hide. Third, his response to “I don’t intend to die” when he asks “will you die with me” is that’s a good answer.

And fourth… a moment I really wanna touch on… Keiji watches something that could easily incriminate Sara. It’s not just some word of mouth thing like with Shin who lied about things several times before this point. But in that moment, he still relies on Sara and says he wouldn’t feel bad betting his life on her. The message is clear. Keiji supports Sara unconditionally.

Now let’s talk about Keiji totally dropping Sara’s ass with the card trades.

The way Keiji makes his trades is very telling. He first, steals a keymaster card from either Sou or Kanna to give to Sara. This is supporting Sara, but it’s doing it in a way that supports his view of himself. That he’s a scumbag who would steal someone’s immunity just to give it to someone he likes more. And would a shithead like that be “worthy” of sacrificing themselves and taking the card for Sara? (And he knew she had it. Qtaro had to tell him for their plan to happen) no. Instead he essentially opts for a revenge plot. A plan to ensnare Shin and kill him for pawning off the sacrifice to Sara. Basically, he wanted to fuck up Shin like how he fucked up Megumi. Nice going Keiji. This is… kind of his low point in the story.

But 3-1….. man this chapter hits in all the right ways. I don’t remember 3A that much, (although I do know that Keiji shows a lot of concern over Sara potentially being triggered by Joe memorabilia) and also if you fail the Keiji Midori fight you can have Sara attempt to tag Keiji and he rejects. And how can we forget… the mr policeman flashback. As Sara says, this is Keiji’s first time opening up on his own.

And then… coffin saga. Sara through everything is not willing to let Keiji die. Although she’s had her ups and downs with him, leaving him to die is inconceivable to her with everything they’ve been through together. So she opts to sign the contract both times she is offered it.

Keiji clearly is somebody important to Sara. Important enough that Ranmaru bringing him up is enough to snap her out of her murderous trance. Enough that she throws logic out the window when she has a sign he’s okay.

Likewise, the scene in the classroom for Keiji is… a huge step. When he’s alone with Ranmaru, who is unstable, in that classroom, his priority is Sara. He turns his back to the threat to hold Sara and try and make sure she’s okay- dumb move, but it shows how far he’s come.

And again, I want to reiterate- Keiji is Sara’s anchor. At the banquet when Sara is about to give up, she imagines Keiji talking to her which brings her back in the game. Much like Joe did back in chapter 2. The message is palpable. Keiji is Sara’s new Joe. And when Keiji comes back to comfort her? He’s now fully willing to sacrifice himself. It winds up not being needed seeing as Qtaro is the one that died. But in that moment, we see Keiji has made a huge leap from chapter 2. He almost sacrificed himself for Gin. And he would’ve used his final moments to comfort Sara. He’s embraced that he’s a father figure. He allows himself to be a good person.

Anyways I don’t know how to conclude this and I’ve been writing for hours. Bababooey.

[shadyteacup]

Hello! If you’re free, I was wondering if I could have a request where 15y/o Dazai meets his future s/o which he feels comfortable around them and has good impression abt them. Like he’s wandering somewhere and suddenly run into them. They have a chitchat abt their thoughts on something and have fun talking to each other. Then leave and meet again when he joins ADA. (s/o is a weird kind of person, like out of this world)

I’m not an English speaker so sorry for my terrible English y-y. Btw, i love your writings!!💟

This is such an amazing idea! I had fun writing this! And dw, your English is spectacular ♡ Enjoy, dove!

Dazai Osamu x gn! Reader||Reader has a time traveling ability

Timeless

You were a time traveler. Your ability allowed you to visit places from different timelines. The only drawback was that you aged no matter where you were, even if you were using your ability. This meant that if you wanted to enjoy the present, you had to ensure that you didn't spend much time in the past. You couldn't visit the future.

But that was okay. You loved finding out the root of all problems. That's why you joined the ada. Your ability helped them to identify who the perpetrator was. You would travel in the past and be there at the crime scene at the right time. Then you'd come back and reveal important information like the hiding place of the murder weapon, or if they had been looking at the wrong suspect all along.

You were currently investigating the death of a businessman. His body had turned up near the docks. It was highly decomposed, and probably atleast 2 years dead. You decided to travel 2 years into the past, and made your way to the docks. While searching for the potential crime scene, you bumped into someone. A mop of brown hair stood a few steps ahead of you. The boy wore bandages all over his arms and neck, and had an eye covered. Judging by the absence of any outline of his eye on the bandage that covered it, and the lack of moisture, his eye probably wasn't injured at all. He was probably only wearing bandages to appear weak. But this was just an assumption on your part.

"Ah, I'm so sorry, boy. I didn't see you there!"

He looked at you with a dead look in his eye, then gave you the fakest smile to ever exist.

"It's alright. May I ask what you are doing at a place like this?"

You were taken aback by his cold demeanor. It reminded you a lot of your own self.

"I'm here to investigate a death."

You said. His eyes darkened at your words.

"You see, the body will be discovered two years later. No tangible evidence will be recovered, then. So I must find something useful here, now."

The boy smirked.

"Time traveling ability?"

You smiled.

"Yup."

His smirk dropped and he glared at you.

"I see. This is a dangerous adventure, dear. You might get caught in a string of trouble, one that might lead you to harm."

The boy's aura and dark look had made you suspicious about his employers, but now you were certain that he worked for the mafia.

"Don't worry. I'm pretty positive that the murder wasn't committed by someone from the mafia."

His surprise was momentary, but obvious. It caught your eye.

"Before you ask, no, I don't know your future self. Also, the method of the crime doesn't match the mafia's M.O."

He nodded, thinking.

"Well in that case, I don't think you and I should be enemies."

He chirped, a happy look on his face.

You were taken aback by the sudden change in his mood.

"Sure, kid."

You said, patting his shoulder and walking away, trying to find the crime scene. The area was littered with compartments and shipment goods. It all looked so similar, almost like a maze.

"Hey, kiddo, can you lend me a hand?"

He blinked in confusion.

"Um. Sure."

He was confused as to why you weren't afraid of him. You clearly knew he was from the mafia, but you still acted so casually around him. It made him think that you either represented somebody powerful, or worked for an influential employer.

You rummaged through your pocket, trying to find the picture. Handing him the the snap of the crime scene, you observed him as he peered into the paper.

"This way."

He said, walking between two cargo containers, and leading the way.

"I never got your name, boy."

He shrugged, peering at you over his shoulder.

"Does it really matter?"

You mimicked him, raising your shoulders in a lazy shrug.

"Maybe, maybe not. But I'd like to call you something other than 'boy'."

He hummed in thought.

"How about 'knight in shining armour'?"

You scoffed.

"I get the whole 'I'm helping you, so I'm a knight' thing, but I'm no damsel in distress."

He smirked.

"Oh? And what if I were to abandon you here? What would you do?"

You smirked.

"I'd find my way on my own. I don't need you, eye-patch."

He grinned at you smugly, stopping in his tracks and moving towards you. He leaned in, his face almost touching yours.

"And what if I were to overpower you, hmm? What would you do then?"

You shuffled closer to him, much to his surprise. You whispered near his ear.

"I'll ensure that you'll never be able to have kids."

Pushing him back, you snatched the picture from his palm, and continued searching for the location. He was astonished at your bravery. He always comes across as intimidating, and that was putting it mildly. You were very courageous.

Following you like a lost puppy, he watched you hide behind a bunch of wooden crates.

You patted the space next to you, beckoning him to sit there.

"The show's about to start, eye-patch."

You took out your camera and were ready to click.

That's when two men, clad in expensive suits walked over. One of them was explaining something to the other.

You began clicking a few snaps.

The guy who was observing, turned his back on the other for a second. That's when he brandished his knife and plunged it into the other's back. You were furiously tapping away on the camera's button, determined to get every detail of proof.

The victim suffered atleast 50 stabwounds, 53 to be exact, when the killer decided to stop and hide the body. You snapped every single second of the ordeal.

When the killer left the crime scene, the two of you got up, and dusted your clothes.

"Do you have any plans after this?"

He asked you.

"Well, not really. I was planning to grab a drink, maybe something to eat, before heading back."

You said.

"Or heading 'ahead', since I'm going to the future. I don't even know."

Dazai nodded his head.

"How about I treat you to a drink?"

You eye him suspiciously.

"I have no reason to harm you. You literally don't belong here, so I've got no reason to hurt you."

You hum in acknowledgement.

"Okay then. Lead the way."

....

"How old are you?"

He asked, swirling his drink in his glass.

"A few years older than you."

"Cryptic."

"Intrusive."

"Touche."

"You have so many questions, don't you, eye-patch. "

Dazai hummed, taking a sip.

"Consider me intruiged by your... ability."

He turned in his bar stool to face you.

"Why didn't you prevent it from happening?"

"Because if I break the flow of time, or even mess with it, everything will go haywire."

"And if you were able to prevent it, without disrupting the flow of time, would you have intervened?"

You gaze at your own glass.

"I would do some heavy research before I make my decision."

Dazai was curious. Did you not want to save people?

"Everybody has a reason for murder. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to kill someone. I'll dig into their lives and find out why the killer did it. And I'll decide whether or not preventing the murder would save an innocent life, or harm many others in the future."

"So, in short, you intend to play God."

You chuckled.

"If given the power, who in their right mind would turn down the offer? Everybody wants to play God. Our entire society is built that way. The one who has more money, more power, more influence, has the right to play God to those beneath them."

Dazai found you very interesting. The way you viewed the world was so unique. You were a textbook 'good person' but could easily become the 'bad guy' if given the resources. Good or bad doesn't really matter to him, he finds the difference between the two very confusing.

"Doesn't that make you, and everybody who has power, a "bad" person?"

You chuckled.

"Funny coming from a mafioso."

Downing the rest of your drink, you answer his question.

"The distinction between good and bad is so distorted. The same set of actions can be termed as good for certain circumstances, and bad for others. The villain is always the hero when you try to see the world through his shoes, and the hero is always the villain for those supporting the so called 'bad guy' ."

"I agree. I don't care about what's 'good' or 'bad' ,either."

"Then what do you follow?"

"What do you mean?"

"There must be some set of rules that you abide by. What are they?"

"I.. Don't have any. I'm a free bird!"

You tap your chin in thought.

"One must have something to fall back on when they don't know what to do. Something to blindly follow. For example, I follow a set of rules created by my morals and values. When I don't  know how to proceed, I remember them and act accordingly. "

Dazai observed you as you spoke, absorbing every single syllable that floated out if your luscious lips. He was attracted towards opinionated, strong and focused people. He adores the look on people's faces when they speek about their passions, and express their opinions on matters. Even if he disagreed with them, the fact that they have a strong reasoning behind their actions, and the way they calmly portray their points so skillfully, makes him like them more.

The way you were effortlessly articulating your inner thoughts was something that he was fascinated by. He had so much going on inside, so much turmoil, that it was impossible for him to express it out in words. But you seem to be so sorted and disciplined. He loved that about you.

"You'll get there someday, eye-patch. Don't worry. "

You comforted, smiling at the young man.

He smiled back at you. For the first time that day, he had given you a genuine smile.

"You should smile more. It suits you."

He blushed at your words. It was a weird feeling for him. He didn't understand why his face was heating up, or why his ears felt like they were on fire.

Flicking your wrist to check the time, you sighed.

"Well, time to leave."

Dazai held your wrist as you were about to get up.

"Wait!"

You looked at him quizzically.

"Will we meet again?"

You tilted your head and smiled at him.

" I can't say for sure, but I do hope that we do."

With that, he watched you walk out of the bar. He only respected Odasaku. But now, he respected you, too.

....

Time skip to a few weeks later.

....

"L/N san, please get yourself together, we're expecting a new member to join us, soon."

You laid on the couch of the ada as Kunikida rambled on about how everyone must be in their best behavior to greet their newest member. Yosano was handling most of it, so Ranpo and you had no work to do.

"Yes, yes, Doppo. Also, it's Y/N."

You said, stretching your arms above your head.

"Y/N kun, you need to try this new type of cookie. It has two different flavors!"

Ranpo said, offering you a cookie from his bag.

You smile at him, accepting it.

"Yum!"

"I know, right!"

"Ranpo san, Y/N san! Please come here! Our newest member has arrived!"

Both of you lazily got up and strolled over to the front of the office.

"What is the big deal, Doppo-"

You stopped mid sentence when you saw the person standing at the doorway.

"Eye-patch!"

Dazai's eyes widened when he saw you, the one person who had managed to intruige him other than his deceased friend, standing in the office. The office where he was to work at, today onwards.

"Damsel!"

He said, pointing at you.

You scoffed at his choice of nickname.

"Ha! I knew your eye was fine!"

"Do you both know each other?"

Kunikida asked.

"Ofcourse they do. They met a long time ago, right, Dazai?"

Ranpk said, muching on his sweets. Ofcourse, he figured it out.

"Well, not that long ago for me."

You smiled.

Dazai had finally met you. He was elated.

"I'm glad we met again."

"Don't worry, eye-patch, we have a lot of time to catch up. ;)"

[petalsmooth]

Ok.

Let’s talk Lili.

First off we only know what stars put out about themselves or other people say about them. We are not friends with these people. We are not in their homes. We don’t usually hear what they say in unguarded conversation. What we know is what is out on social media with some highly distorted soundbites from chats or DM’s with her mother that were exposed.

We were initially presented a portrait pushed by her and her family no less of a middle class family with the standard girl next door hit it big narrative. Down to earth, relatable, somewhat quirky. Strong two parent supportive household. All that was missing were the apron and pearls.

This girl came out of the gates talking about a modernized Riverdale with two girls who would be actually close and not vying for the same redhead. Feel free to add/or correct along the way of course...especially early on when not following as closely.

We got very little in the way of insight into Cole and Lili because they were trying to keep it quiet even if there were hints together. Mostly during this period what fans were fed was that she was slightly awkward socially, maybe not the most intellectual but nice and harmless. She spoke of empowering women, independence, she constantly shut down the idea of Barchie and praised Bughead. Along through the year’s she would speak to social bullying or bullying in general. She would openly talk about struggles with mental health. She’d talk and show her cystic acne and share photos not all airbrushed in ode to body positivity. She’d talk about not having an hourglass figure, and cellulite and often go out in ratty shorts and a bun sans makeup. You see she’d talk about it then follow through by showing lived the walk or calling out photoshops done of her.

Again this is “relatable girl next door quirky Lili” we told was the REAL Lili.

She would frequently talk and post about her family and dogs at home and how much she loved and missed them...though oddly not so much her older sister.

At a certain point it became undeniable Cole and Lili were together to even the hardest deniers. Of course also the Met gala eventually made official for media.

We get have her liking posts such as Miley’s about how lucky she was to have a man who checked off all the boxes. But at times there were glimpses all wasn’t kosher. People have mentioned various cons where she’d be caught flirting somewhere else, or she’d be in a bad mood giving Cole a cold shoulder. We recently saw an old video of them walking and her basically demanding he drop the fans and attend her. We have the con were Camilla is sexually harassing Cole everywhere and Lili doesn’t shut it down until Camilla tries to grind on him. It was so bad even Mads intervened. We have the interview where she is talking over him or rolling her eyes and basically being the unprofessional brat her fans claim she is not. Even though it’s ON CAMERA. Snapping at your co worker/boyfriend and rolling your eyes during a professional interview is not deniable.

Flashforward to the trip to Italy because for me there was always something off about that. That trip was obviously planned far in advance. Clearly Lili was supposed to be there. Her fans quickly blamed Cole because Lili was working. Lili didn’t have to work. It wasn’t a career changing move to do that film. It did not do well. I’m not entirely sure what was happening around that time but I have the sense Cole was disappointed/a  little angry she prioritized it over him accepting very likely the offer AFTER the trip was planned.

Lili spirals during this time. Cole comes back to clean up mess. They are quiet on social media for a long time then slowly emerge again and eventually get the photo booth shots, the wedding and her mingling with NY friends for once. Turns out close to the end for them.

I don’t want to make this a Sprousehart post though although some relevance to bring part of it up. The point is Lili put her career over her relationship. It was a calculated decision. It was also the wrong decision. Her fans talk about her being this warm giving person but that was a cynical call and a pretty lousy thing to do to your boyfriend of several year’s. I’m all for supportive partners but there are time’s where you make sacrifices if you really care for someone and this was a special trip planned long in advance. She blew it off. If I’m the partner she does this too, I question why I’m putting in the effort if it doesn’t mean to them what it means to me. 

TBH I think the bad choices she made there is why tried to make it up by meeting with his friends, the wedding etc...

Something than clearly happened because by January they were done. Not sure we’ll ever know but it looked like they were trying to fix things given the happiness hadn’t seen on Cole’s faces in a long time in those booth pics and then...it was done. We didn’t know at the time, but this is timeline Cole gave. There was a brief attempt at reconciliation where she babysits him at a photo shoot and posts a photo of them in bed and then shortly after...Cole calls it off. 

He heads to LA, she follows him there but not without making sure to shove Casey’s face into her chest to post and rent a place close to where he is staying. She posts weepy messages about the world ending etc....and weird new photos mimicking old shoots with him so naturally people think this means whatever happened they worked through. Around same time she and hers manipulated her fans to try to cancel him earlier because she misunderstood a picture of Kaia....although flat out if he had been with Kaia he was SINGLE and it was no longer her business.

She tries to walk back the firestorm she unleashed on him by “defending” him from a lesser twitter trend after realizing misconstrued the Kaia picture, All summer she weirdly seems to be trying to avoid the topic if they are together or not despite saying once if they weren’t she’d tell people. She finally puts her foot in her mouth one two many times' and Cole confirms they broke up which she doesn’t acknowledge. Because she doesn’t want to be broken up.

As we know know it wasn’t all rainbows on the set even before all this happened as in the musical she’d launched an object at him hard enough to have the crew concerned. Lili fans keep saying Cole is abusive but the only evidence we have of abuse is her towards him. We also had her suddenly doing a 180 from past 4 year’s and excusing cheating with Archie and promoting everyone in her live recaps except Cole/Jughead.

Back to the events following Cole’s post....then we get a sudden string of interviews taking shots at Cole, doxxing him, implying he could have strayed (just to resurrect hate against him) but can’t say he actually did because she has no proof. We know this because in those chats admit it was just suspicion and paranoia and never did have any names.

We learn that Lili has been funneling news and gossip and photos to keep her mother’s hold on the fandom in check and her mother in turn has been bullying people who would stand on Cole’s side. They sought to ruin him. This is not debatable.

For year’s people had made fun and called Bree out for being an obsessive stalker unable to let a relationship go, then Lili starts doing the same. We know she has tried to copy Ari’s style, her mother made a snide comment about breast size, Lili tried to taunt Ari from on set and Ari shut her down. A girl who almost never was in the line of sight of paps suddenly is snapped everyday following break up even before the public new. That doesn’t just happen. She wanted the attention.

I’m not going to go into all of it, you all know it. Suffice to say revealing she has a bitter vindictive attitude she has submersed herself in ever since Cole made it clear no reunion. She won’t even broach the topic of Bughead/Jughead unless forced. You can spin all you like but the split screens was not an artistic choice by RD. It was spurred by need to keep them apart.

Lili last summer was doing precious little other than a post or two of Black Lives matter and then when Cole gets arrested suddenly she jumps on the me too and sets up impulsive lives. Maybe she meant well but a part of me thinks she did it to attract his attention. Notice once she got praise for it and the initial protests faded she more or less doesn’t bring it up anymore. Cole never intended to get attention, it just happened because he’s a star and got taken in to a jail cell. He never put himself on camera for notice. 

Lili also co-opts the murder of a girl to flaunt she thinks she looks good naked. Completely tone deaf. 

Lili very rarely is seen in fan photos, only usually when she’s getting flack for it online. She, a girl who talks about bullying, went on a  midnight tirade against a guy who dares to critique or poetry setting her fans on him. Then deleted it probably because publicist in her ear.

She first said poems not about Cole, than said you could read into what you wanted to sell them. Now she doesn’t want to talk poetry or sequels because it flopped and was critically panned.

There are constant rumors about Lili on sets of productions to point they even had someone on her newer movie try to downplay. Yet we see in a video the cast barely talking and looking tense on a boat. 

The girl who used to talk about body positivity now lets them airbrush abs onto her.

The girl who used to talk of therapy and mental illness now promotes OTC supplements for $ and cults.

If she mentions cellulite she uses other tik toks of people showing not her own. 

She said she would never be on tik tok, yet now has her own and post old videos that aren’t funny.

Lili once tired to attack Cole by talking about losing yourself in drugs or alcohol or sex yet we’ve seen her drug paraphernalia because she advertises. Her friends post and laugh over her being drunk. She was in an off and on relationship with Wallis that doesn’t seem to be about anything but sex.

We were told Coles friends are bad influences but Taylor is out there solicitating questionable clients and making videos slamming LILI’S COWORKER as a bad actor and his brother,

The majority of Lili’s posts no longer feature Sunny or her family/Addy. 

She insulted Vancouver, compared to a prison, and made it clear her creature comforts were of more importance than a pandemic. Not quite the attitude of an empath. Which she claims she is with intention to be a master which require sucking more gullible people into the cult.

She brags about being a “rich man” without understand the context. She went from artistic photos to modeling pinups to fuel her lack of self esteem.

She’s in her mid 20′s, claims she had grown and matured in the last year but there is no evidence of it. Still can’t work with her ex without buffers which still influences show direction though her fans deny.. Still lives off junk food and hangovers. Those glasses aren’t just for sun. Her timeline is mostly an ode to her vanity with pictures of herself and then her dog. She doesn’t seem to have any causes she’s deeply involved in on the side apart from her cult. She’s still stalking Cole as her impulsive makeup tutorial showed. She said she cut out of her life anyone who doesn’t service her. I highly doubt she is receiving quality therapy on the regular right now. She still does not seem to possess the ability to own her mistakes and apologize when warranted, rather deflects or erases when heat becomes too hot.

The content she puts out about herself post break up is very different than the bill of goods fans were sold before. She is a far cry from that quirky girl next door that stood FOR something more than vanity and shallow affirmation. So no, I don’t see what you see in her stans. Everything that once seemed to distinguish her from other spoilt princesses has long faded. 

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

[moon-light-jukebox]

Learning Styles - [Reid x Reader]

Summary: Reader has worked hard to get to the FBI, but a misunderstanding has her feeling insecure. 

Pairing: Spencer Reid / Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2.5k

Genre: Fluff

Rating: PG

Content Warning: Mention of normal criminal minds stuff briefly. 

A/n: I got these two requests and they were so similar I decided to combine them. I hope that’s okay, but I feel like the stories would have been almost identical. 

Requests:  - I have a fic suggestion. Reader pretends to be dumb but is actually really smart. I’m thinking of that quote about marilyn ”you have to be really smart to pretend to be dumb”. One day spencer realizes that reader is smarter than she lets people know.

- Hi! Can I request a spencer reid x reader fic where reader isn't great with numbers but brilliant with behaviour and humanities (i.e. literature, history, sociology, up to you)? Maybe a dash of insecurity to spice things up?

-- Learning Styles -- 

My favorite professor in college told me that everyone learns differently; what works for one person won’t work in the same way for another. We are all different human beings that are shaped in different ways.

I had always been oddly insecure about my intelligence level. One of my earliest memories was my mother yelling at me while I sat at the kitchen table when I was in first grade. I was the only kid in my class who still hadn’t learned how to read. I just didn’t understand. All of my friends were progressing so much quicker than me and my mother was losing patience.

It wasn’t until my grandmother stepped in that everything changed. My elementary school teacher was training children to read by memorizing sight words, a concept I didn’t understand. When my grandmother sat down and taught me phonics. I distinctly remember everything snapping into place.

I was in 1st grade and reading at a 7th-grade level by Christmas. Once I finally understood my learning style, I really began to thrive.

But no matter what I did, I could still hear my mother yelling at me, telling me I was stupid.

In my line of work, I see just how much the throw away comments that parents make can shape a child’s development. Luckily, those comments just made me a bit insecure, not a murderer.

Up until I was 22, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do beyond this desire I had to help people. SSA David Rossi had come to guest lecture in one of my abnormal psych classes during undergrad. After I heard him speak, I was done. I couldn’t have done anything else with my life. I had obtained my master’s in psychology before I joined the FBI.

It took some time, but I was finally assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico. I was so excited on my first day that I remember my hands physically shaking.

Until they weren’t.

I can still remember my first day so clearly. SSA Hotchner had introduced me to the team, saving the “best” for last.

“And this is Dr. Spencer Reid,” he had said. “He’s our expert on…well, everything.”

Reid was my age and he had his Ph.D. I remember feeling awed by him.

Until I didn’t.

"I hold 3 Ph.D.'s in Chemistry, Engineering, and Mathematics. I also have BAs in psychology and sociology."

I remember my jaw almost hitting the floor. While I was impressed by him, I wasn’t insecure about my place on the team.

Until I was.

My grandmother may have helped me master reading, which opened the door to me mastering anything else I put my mind to…except math.

I was fine at statistics, luckily. You couldn’t get a psych degree without a ton of statistics work. But statistics was different, I could see the practical use of statistics. I just couldn’t wrap my head around calculus or algebra.

On my first case with the team, Reid had calculated some insane mathematical equations on the whiteboard, running down the probabilities and applying a mathematical formula to the unsub’s behavior.

It wasn't until later, after the case was solved when I was standing in front of the whiteboard that my confidence was hit. Reid had come into the room and saw me looking at his work.

“Don’t bother trying to understand it,” he had said. “You’d have to be a genius to understand what I do.”

I didn’t have a word to describe the feeling that settled in my stomach at his words, I wasn’t sure such a word existed. The feeling was cold and heavy, but also made my body burn with shame.

I had just offered him a tight smile before I left the room.

On the plane home I had made a decision. I was no match for Dr. Reid, I doubt anyone was. So, I would take myself out of the competition. I couldn’t get hurt if I wasn’t playing the game.

And that is how the next year of my life went. I allowed Dr. Reid to explain things to me that I was an expert in, never saying a word. I acted like I didn't understand concepts that I had written papers on. The only thing I didn't dumb down was my profiling skills. Those were necessary for my job and for saving lives.

I don’t think anyone realized what I was doing.

Until they did.

--

The team had been called to Colorado to assist in capturing a serial rapist.

All of our cases bothered me, every last one…but something about ones with this vile element really struck me.

We had the unsub’s name, Tyler Childress. He had spent time in prison for sexual assault and burglary. It seems while he was in prison, he spent time perfecting his methods; it was only by pure luck that we found his fingerprint inside the victim’s house, making him the main suspect.

When we paid Mr. Childress a visit, he had managed to get the drop on Prentiss and Morgan, allowing them to escape. Morgan was furious.

All of us were sitting around a conference table in the local prescient while we let Dr. Reid talk.

I was trying to be calm, I was, but my nails were digging into my palm so deeply I was worried I was about to draw blood.

“Guys,” the expert on everything said. “He has to have some sort of accomplice.”

Rossi just sighed. “But the profile doesn’t point to him being the sort to do well with others; he’s a narcissist.”

Reid wouldn’t budge. “I know that, but he isn’t intelligent enough to pull this off alone. He’s just not. He had an IQ test done when he was 20. He scored in the mentally handicapped range. I’m telling you he has to have help.”

“Are you sure, Reid?” Hotch asked.

“Positive. I have his results right here.”

“IQ tests aren’t a good measure of intelligence on their own.”

I was so startled that someone had contradicted Dr. Reid that it took me a second to realize it was me who had contradicted him.

He turned to face me; his brown eyes wide. “What?”

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “IQ tests aren’t a good measure of intelligence.”

Dr. Reid laughed. He laughed at me like my comment was funny. “I don’t know where you heard that,” he began.

But I interrupted him. "IQ tests are classist and oftentimes racist. The man who invented the IQ test never intended for it to be used as a complete measure of intelligence. He regretted making the test.”

Reid sputtered. “You…it’s not racist!”

“Yes. It. Is.” I ground out. “If it wasn’t it wouldn’t be illegal to administer an IQ test to a black child in the state of California.”

"Wait, it's illegal to do that?" JJ asked, her brows drawn together.

"Yes. There was a court case in the 1970s over it. Teachers were using tests to separate white children from black children. The black children were put into special education classes they didn’t need to be in. Just because the teachers didn’t want those children in their classrooms.”

I should have stopped, but I was on a role. “They’re also inherently classist. How can you expect a child to answer a question about Romeo and Juliet if they haven’t heard of it?”

That had Dr. Reid scoffing. “Everyone has heard of it.”

I shot to my feet, unable to hold back anymore. “No, they haven’t. Children in underfunded schools that don’t have access to resources might not have heard about the most famous play in history because their school wasn’t able to provide the materials to teach them about it. There was a study done in a remote part of Russia right after the IQ test was invented. Every. Single. Person. Scored in the mentally handicapped range. Because they didn’t understand.”

I knew my voice was rising but I couldn’t stop myself. “Once the researcher took the questions and applied them to things they understood, they all scored as above average. They didn’t understand math as an abstract concept, but they understood it when it was applied to their businesses, to something they actually knew about.”

I cleared my throat. “The test isn’t fair, it’s not equal. Tyler Childress didn’t go to a good school and he didn’t have a stable home life. You can’t use one measure to calculate his intelligence. He’s gotten away with 7 assaults so far that we know of. He’s not stupid.”

The entire room was silent once I had stopped speaking. I couldn’t bring myself to regret it though. What kind of person was I if I played dumb because I was afraid of being mocked when a monster was out there attacking women? No, those women deserved to have me at my best.

And I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t give it to them.

Rossi spoke first, his eyes twinkling when he looked at me. “Took you long enough,” he said. “But y/n is right. We trust the profile; we don’t let personal bias cloud the way. That’s how we catch this bastard.”

--

Later that day, we were cleaning up the conference room while the local police processed Tyler Childress.

Pathological narcissism is a complex disorder, but we followed the profile and Rossi was right. Hotch set up a press conference in which JJ and Prentiss took center stage. They tore Childress’s ego to shreds on live television.

His narcissism wouldn’t allow that to slide. He got angry, he made a mistake, and we got him before anyone else got hurt.  

While the cat was out of the bag about my intelligence and that made me nervous, I couldn't regret any of it. I got to be the one to tell our last victim that we got him. I got to hug her while she cried because now that he was locked up, she felt like her healing could begin. I wasn’t sure if my rant about structural racism and the classism of IQ tests actually helped anything, but that didn’t really matter. There was one less monster in the shadows.

Today was a good day.

I was alone in the conference room, untacking photos from the evidence board when I heard someone clear their throat from behind me. I turned my head to meet the wide, honey brown eyes of Dr. Spencer Reid.

Oh boy, I thought. “What’s up, Reid?”

He shifted from foot to foot, his hands twisting in front of him before he crossed his arms over his chest. “I asked Garcia to look into you.”

My eyebrows drew together. “I’m pretty sure any nefarious things I had done would have popped up on my initial background check.”

“Right, I didn’t mean like that,” he mumbled, the apples of his cheeks turning pink. “I asked her to look into you academically.”

Shit.

He went on. “You double majored in psychology and sociology before you got a master’s in cultural psychology. She pulled your thesis. I just read it.”

“I see.” I turned my attention back to the board.

“You also guest lecture on cross-cultural psychology at Georgetown several times a year. And you’ve co-authored two papers since I’ve known you.”

Meh, it’s three. But that doesn’t matter. “Did you read those too?”

I took his silence as confirmation.

He was so quiet I almost thought he had left, but the crackle of energy I felt in the air told me he hadn’t. “Do you need something, Dr. Reid?”

"Why didn't you get your Ph.D.?"

I had answered that question many, many times. “I didn’t need a doctorate to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to waste time. Once I figured out what I wanted, I charged at it.” Which was a far more honest answer than most people got about that from me.

“W-why did you pretend to be dumb?” he rasped out, causing me to look back at him. “32 days ago, you let me explain the long-term effects of gerrymandering and the complex causes of poverty.”

“Of course, I did,” I said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“One of the papers you authored was about generational poverty.”

“Just because I know a lot about something doesn’t mean I can stop listening to information. That sort of thinking breeds ignorance.” I smiled, unable to not tease him just a little bit.

Reid took a step closer to me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

I just shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t have a good answer.”

In all the months I had known him, Spencer Reid had never touched me, not even so much as a finger brushing against mine when he handed me something. That fact is why I was so startled when I felt his hand on my upper arm, turning me towards him.

He licked his lips, his eyes darting around. “Did everyone else know?”

I shook my head, my teasing mood long gone. "No. I mean, clearly, Rossi suspected but…No, I didn't tell anyone else."

“I just don’t understand. You’re brilliant.”

I scoffed. “No, I’m not. I’m decent a psychology, sociology, stuff like that. I can’t apply math to behavior to find patterns. I can’t even calculate how much something is gonna cost when it’s on sale without a calculator half the time.”

‘What do you…” Reid trailed off. “Wait. The very first case. You were looking at the evidence board.”

Goddamn eidetic memory.

The boy wonder was on a roll now. “I told you that you’d have to…is that why you didn’t tell me?”

What else could I do? I just nodded.

Those brown eyes closed, and he let out a groan. “I said that because I thought you were going to…I was worried…” He huffed out a breath and opened his eyes. “I wanted you to like me. I didn’t want you to think I was just a nerd.”  

Now I was confused. “Why?”

Spencer Reid’s blush went all the way down his neck. “Well…I just…Morgan said I should just talk to you. But I’m not…I’m not good at that. I panic, then I start to ramble. Like I’m doing now…”

“Reid,” I interrupted. “I’m not playing dumb now. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I like you,” he blurted out right before he smacked both of his hands over his face. “Oh my god. I sound like a child.” I thought I heard him mutter idiot under his breath. “Emily says that my IQ gets slashed to 60 whenever I see a pretty girl.”

Much like that moment all those years ago when I was a child, I felt everything click into place. Oh.

I couldn't suppress my smile any longer. I rose up on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Well, we've already gone over how IQ tests aren't a good measure of overall intelligence."  

With that, I quickly stepped away and hurried out of the conference room, leaving a stunned genius in my wake. When I turned back to look at him, I saw his fingers brushing over the place where my lips had just been.  

--

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comment/message to be added 😊

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

So I watched 10.09 recently, and it has that part where Dean tells a story about him basically being almost roofied as a teen, but somehow it ends up framed as the funny joke and yet another proof that John "did what he could", and I kind of hate this? And it's the same episode in which MoC!Dean killed guys that kidnapped and tried to rape Claire, and you'd think writers would've addressed the parallels and acknowledge that Dean could've been triggered by this situation. 1/2

2/2 But in the end, it's never addressed, and the whole situation is framed as the proof that Dean is evil now. And I'm not even sure what I am trying to say, but with that being the show's approach back in s10, I'm not surprised about the finale anymore. Guess we should've known?

That’s an excellent angle to look at the issue because the Mark of Cain arc is a clear example of how people with different experiences will see the same thing in wildly different ways. There’s this phase of season 10 where everyone is like “oh no Dean is Getting Worse” and when you look at what Dean is doing... you actually go “...good for him”.

Let’s give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It’s not “the writers” in this case, it’s Dabb. Plenty of other writers don’t fall into this John apologism thing. Just look at how the episode before Lebanon, written by Buckner and Ross Leming, says that sometimes John would temporarily kick Dean out because he was “pissed at him” despite Dean always taking his side to mantain the peace. It almost seems like a statement to sprinkle some salt given what Dabb does in Lebanon, you know? Maybe not, but there is a tension between “John was shitty” writers and “John did his best” writers.

In hindsight, we gave Dabb too much of the benefit of the doubt. We were like, weeell, that’s supposed to be way the characters perceive the truth, which is distorted by the trauma... But now it’s obvious that he truly believed in the John-did-his-best version. He brought him back and got Mary back with him. No matter what happened to the finale, the network didn’t print those pictures of John and Mary to hang on Sam’s wall. He never took Dean’s abuse seriously and it shows.

The “anedocte” of Dean getting drugged and “saved” by John from being raped is obviously there to parallel him with Claire. Which works! It’s so weird because it’s like. You are soooo close to getting the point. Younger Dean was assaulted just like this teenage girl is assaulted and Dean saves her... but apparently John yelling at those people is a good way of dealing with the issue, while murdering child traffickers is an overraction thus bad.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? That Dean’s murder spree is framed as an overreaction. Sam is like “tell me you had to do this! tell me it was you or them!” - the answer to which (by the narrative) is obviously no, it wasn’t self defense, he just killed them because he could. He just murdered those men for no reason except he felt like being murdery. And the audience is supposed to be like “oh no! Dean is murdery for no reason except for murderiness! That’s bad!”.

But it’s a power fantasy, isn’t it? Going on a murder spree on rapists and traffickers. I bet any people who’s been violated like that has fantasized of doing the exact thing Dean does here. Killing them all.

Dean had the physical strength and skill to kill them all, why shouldn’t he kill them? (I mean, in real life I’m against private justice because I’m a fan of the state of law, but the Supernatural universe obviously works on different principles than the state of law. Again, it’s a fictional narrative that plays out as a fantasy for the audience, so.)

So what was Dabb’s intention? I’m afraid it’s the worst one. “John Winchester’s not going to win any Number One Dad awards, you know? But, you know, damn if he wasn’t there when we needed him”. What the fuck, Dabb? It’s been established since season 1 that John WASN’T there when they needed him. Which... I’m afraid... leads us to the Cas-Claire plot in the episode. Cas has fucked off with Jimmy’s body leaving Claire on her own. Parallels how John wasn’t going to win wny Number One Dad awards. But! Cas is there when Claire Really Needs Him i.e. when she’s about to be raped by older men. Parallels how John was there when Dean Really Needed Him i.e. when he was about to be raped by older men.

I think the point is to say, Cas kinda sucked because he took Claire’s dad away but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Claire because he gets there in time to prevent her from being raped. Just like (ew) John kinda sucked as a father because hunting and stuff, but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Dean because he got there in time to prevent him from being raped.

It’s pretty yucky. Literally NOBODY wanted a parallel between Cas and John. But he made one. And he made one to absolve Cas from the guilt he carried for what he did to Claire (Claire’s mother is a mother so who fucking cares about her. She’s basically a Blurry Wife(TM), she’s only a tool for Claire’s arc, Cas apparently only cares about the harm he did the child, not the wife, for some reason.) and to absolve Cas from his guilt it absolves John too. Don’t worry, being a parent is hard. You often screw up. But you can *looks at smudged writing on hand* prevent the kid from being raped by predatory adults and everything’s fine now.

It’s not really important if the child suffered hunger or whatever, the only important thing is that they don’t get raped, because that’s bad, everything else is just a little detail.

All Dabb got with that scene was to paint Sam as extremely unsympathetic because he’s no longer a child, he’s a full adult now and still thinks of that episode at the CBGB as a funny story. That’s not a good look. It almost makes you think that the writer himself saw it as a funny story. Lol teenage boy biting more than he can chew. But then why the Claire parallel? The Claire scene onviously is not supposed to be anything but horrific. I'll give Dabb the benefit of the doubt on this specific thing.

It’s weird, yes, because Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon where he establishes that John was a bad husband/father even before tragedy hit the family. But apparently that’s the “not going to win any Number One Dad awards” part, I suppose? I guess he intended to write John as this flawed, ~complex~ figure who was imperfect but still brave and whatever blah blah did his best blah blah. I’m all for flawed complicated characters but a horrible father is a horrible father. A rose by any other name... parental abuse is still parental abuse even if the poor guy was complicated and traumatized and did what he thought he had to do to prepare his sons for a violent world.

Also, the story frames Dean’s escapade as a teenager being stupid. “You know what he got for that? Me whining about how much he embarrassed me. Me telling him that I hated him. But then he stopped and turned around looked at me and said, Son, you don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked.” “It’s my job to raise you right.” This seems straight from a novel about teenagers doing something stupid that they’re too young to realize that their parents are right to be against them doing. But this isn’t just... a parent walking into a bar to stop their child to drink alcohol. Dean literally describes feeling sick from something that was inside the alcohol.

Sure, it makes sense that he’d lash out to John because of the shame and shock. But the scene is... off. Are we supposed to see this as a typical teenage mistake? Are we supposed to read it as something as horrific as what happened to Claire, literally sold into rape? Or, worse, are we supposed to see what happened to Claire as a teenage mistake, ah silly teenager, blindly trusting shady people, no wonder you end up in a situation where you’d get raped if a father figure didn’t sweep in and save you. I hope that wasn’t the intent.

To get back to Dean’s Mark-of-Cain violence, the writers clearly didn’t intend it to come from the Darkness up to a certain point. It was supposed to an arc about your own inner darkness (consider the Charlie episode, a couple episodes later). Then they came up with the idea of The(TM) Darkness, the suppressed cosmic feminine. While it caused a bit of dissonance in the subtext, it doesn’t really change Dean’s narrative, because his inner darkness is the trauma, and his trauma is inherebtly tied to the “feminine” i.e. the parts of him that don’t fit seamlessly into the scheme of toxic masculinity values. That the violence that comes from the Mark of Cain comes from Dean himself and that’s it, or is connected to the Darkness, it doesn’t change what it means for Dean. Dean and Amara have parallel histories, the feminine principle locked away, the trauma the anger stems from.

In 10x09 we’re still in the Before The (TM) Darkness era, before the suppressed cosmic feminine. The Mark of Cain arc is still about... well, Cain. But the shift is the signal that someone looked at Dean’s arc and said... you know what? “Lucifer gave me this curse so now I’m demonic and murdery” is meh. “Toxic masculinity suppresses the feminine and it creates trauma which rage and violence comes from” is more interesting. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good idea, and surely the idea came from seeing how Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding.

Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding in a certain way, in fact, because of a pretty simple reason. There’s a fundamental tension in Dean’s MoC arc. We want him to go murdery, but it’s also our main character, so we don’t want him to do really horrible things because he still needs to be relatable. The audience cannot hate him, so he must NOT do something entirely unforgivable. He still needs to be somewhat relatable, even when demonic or demonic-adjacent.

So he goes on a murder spree... but it’s rapists and child traffickers. He’s demon, but he kills a misogynistic dude that wanted his wife dead for cheating on him. He’s a demon, but beats up dudes that harass women. He does a slaughter, but they’re nazi. He’s off the deep end, but works a case of kidnapped and abused young women...

Speaking of which. 10x23, written by Jeremy Carver. Dean works a case where a girl was killed while dressed scantily and Dean makes some slut-shaming remarks, and we’re supposed to think “whoa Dean, that’s bad”. But later he confronts the girl’s father and what does he say?

I’m just doing my job, Mr. McKinley.

By suggesting my daughter was a slut?

I’ll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home.

You shut your face right now.

And you know what? I don’t blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

Back then the episode was super controversial and everyone hated the case because of the apparent slut-shaming but I loved it! Because it’s not about the girl. It’s about Dean. Dean doesn’t think that a girl gets killed because she dresses in a miniskirt so it’s her fault. Dean is projecting on himself and he’s not actually victim blaming the girl, he’s victim blaming himself. And when he absolves the girl by putting the blame on the father... well, subtextually he’s absolving himself by putting the blame on his father. On the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervaded his own home. He’s textually not ready to absolve himself, of course, he summons Death to ask him to kill him later, but subtextually he’s on the right path.

Rose McKinley basically did the same mistake Dean did at the CBGB when he trusted some older people who offered him drinks and the same mistake Claire did when she trusted a man who sold her for money because he offered him a place and stability. She trusted the wrong people (in this case, vampires, which adds the whole subtext of vampires and sexuality) who took advantage of her. Except Rose had no one to save her. (Her friend, Crystal, gets rescued by Dean, even if he causes the other hunter Rudy to die in the process.)

Carver’s writing is pretty brutal. The girl made that mistake because was abused at home, so she was desperate for validation and that desperation drove her into the wrong hands. (Rose even has a brother who blames himself for bringing her sister to her future murderers, destructive sibling relationship check.) It doesn’t actually even matter if Dean guessed right about Rose’s family situation, because what matters is what it tells us about Dean. He basically relates to a dead abused girl. Actually all through the season Dean is paralleled to “skanks” “sluts” and sex workers. Obviously this happens kinda all through the show, the whole “the business is based on absent fathers” thing happened much earlier in the story, so it’s not new. But s10 draws a picture of female suffering - abuse, manipulation and death. Season 10 was difficult to go through. In hindsight, it was probably on purpose because it was supposed to be darkest hour of the feminine. Summed with some good old fashioned misogyny, but hey.

The Carver era was wonky but Carver wanted to free the feminine. (I believe that Mary’s comeback, while written by Dabb because of the showrunner shift, was planned before the showrunner shift.) We thought the Dabb era wanted the same, with Mary choosing life and Amara being independent and so on, but it evidently wasn’t the case. Not a single woman arrives at end of the story. It’s hardly ~Bucklemming or ~the network or ~covid because it starts before the very end.

I’m not saying that dead sluts are more feminist than living women, but if the women die or disappear anyway (and they did) I’d rather have an exploration of trauma than nothing. And I definitely prefer a dead slut narrative that calls out parental abuse than a narrative where women live but abuse gets the you-did-your-best treatment.

Whoops! I digressed! But feel free to ask for any clarification or send me any observation or thought.

[mshomestyle]

Ok this is gonna sound odd. But how would Kaminari and Shinsou (either separate or together would work tbh) react if their teenage daughter brought home her boyfriend but they don't trust him. Like he looks like a total fuck boy, but they wanna trust their daughter. So later on they would stealthily follow said boyfriend to make sure that he wouldn't hurt the daughter. While hiding Kami and/or Shin overhear him completely just bashing his friends words and shit because his so called 'friends' were disrespecting his girl/their daughter, and he wasn't having that. They then decide that he's alright. They'll leave baby girl in his hands. He looks like a bad boy, tattoos and piercings and the whole shebang. But clearly he drinks his "Respect Women" juice.

Bonus if the boyfriends favorite hero is Red Riot, so of course he's gonna be drinking that "women are queens" juice daily lol.

I never see any dad things for Kami or Shinsou and I hope to start something here. I think they'd be great dads tbh

Definitely not odd!

Thing their Daughter’s Boyfriend is bad when He really isn’t [Head Canons]:

(Kaminari, Shinsou)

Kaminari:

-Kaminari watched with an eyebrow raised as you buzzed around the dining room, setting the table and such. “Come on, he’ll be here soon,” you spoke.

-The hero only shrugged and casually picked up a dish, “He’s our daughter’s boyfriend. He has to impress us, not the other way around.” You just rolled your eyes at that.

-”Yes, and we’re trying not to embarrass her,” you said. Speaking of which, your daughter rushed into the dining room.

-”Thank you, mom,” she said before giving her father a pout. Kaminari sighed, but he relented.

-”Fine, fine,” he said, giving his baby girl’s head a rub, “I’ll be good.”

-About an hour later, the door bell rang, and since he was the closest, Kaminari went to answer it. Upon doing so, however, he was greeted by a teenage boy with several piercings and tattoos. “Uh...We’re not looking to buy anything,” he said.

-The boy just laughed “[Daughter Name] said you were funny!”

-Needless to say, Kaminari thought that something was up with this teen. There was no way his daughter could like some punk like this! He was in no way good enough for his daughter and Kaminari was gong to prove that.

-”He’s a nice kid, leave it alone,” you merely told him when he asked for your opinion.

-That went into one ear and out the other as soon enough Kaminari came up with the idea to see if this guy was legit or not.

-This guy came off as a fuck boy, after all, as the kids would say, and the last thing Kaminari wanted was for his daughter to get hurt. Make no mistake, however, as he did trust his baby girl, he just ultimately wanted to protect her.

-So, when the day finally came, Kaminari decided to misuse his hero training and follow after his daughter’s boyfriend.

-The guy wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary so far. He just met up with some friends and they went to hang out at a coffee shop. Typical of teens, but Kaminari remembered his days at that age and how he did similar.

-Making sure to sit at a table right behind the group, Kaminari listened intently. For some reason the teens seemed fire up, and he wondered why.

-”So, have you figured out if Charge Bolt’s daughter is as electrifying as her daddy.” Kaminari raised an eyebrow at this, feeling curious as the boys giggled. It took him awhile, but he finally figured out what they were saying, which caused him to nearly shoot out of his seat, intending to blow his cover and confront them on the spot. But then...

-”What are you talking about?” He heard his daughter’s boyfriend and his question seemed to make the others laugh louder.

-”You know, if she’s good in bed? Puts good use of her quirk there? She’s got such a nice body and such a smackable-”

-”Hey, you can’t disrespect women like that! And certainly not my girlfriend.” At the defense, Kaminari listened intently, not believing what he was hearing. “Besides, the first thing that shouldn’t come to mind when you think about a woman is sex and her looks. She’s a person and very sweet, so I better not hear you talking about women like that again, especially her.” The way your boyfriend defended you sounded so sincere and passionate that Kaminari was awestruck.

-There was just no way this guy was that respectful...What he was saying was also sounding familiar, too, “I mean, what would Red Riot say? Everyone deserves respect, right?” Ah, there it was-But wait a second!

-”Red Riot, really?!” Kaminari completely blew his cover as he got up and approached the teens, who were looking at him rather shocked, “Charge Bolt! Charge Bolt should be your favorite hero!” Then in that moment, Kaminari quickly covered his mouth, realizing his mistake.

“Mr. Kaminari what are you doing here?”

-Needless to say, Kaminari now approves of his daughter’s boyfriend.

Shinsou:

-It got to a point in most relationships where parents were met with and got involved.

-Now, Shinsou’s daughter was definitely spoiled and loved by him. He wouldn’t do much things in fear of looking stupid, but when it came to his daughter, he would do anything and more.

-So, when she told him about her boyfriend, of course he wanted to meet the guy who got his daughter so interested.

-He and you had not met the teen yet, and this would be the first time your kid brought someone home, so this was rather exciting.

-”I told him all about you, dad, and he thinks you’re a cool hero and can’t wait to meet you,” The teen girl smiled. Shinsou returned her smile and rubbed at her head.

-”Well, I can’t wait to meet him.”

-Those were words that Shinsou certainly wanted to take back once he met the guy in question.

-The doorbell had rang without warning, and you rushed to open it, greeting what Shinsou knew to be known as a typical fuckboy.

-This guy showed up with his phone in hand, tattoos, piercings, and also wearing a leather jacket. Nope, Shinsou was not approving.

-He remained civil, however, not saying much during the dinner that the family ate together with their guest, but as soon as the boy left, he made his disdain known.

-”No, I don’t like him,” he told his daughter without delay once she asked, “You’re going to get your heart broken, and I won’t allow that.”

-”But daddy! You haven’t even gotten to know him yet!” Shinsou didn’t agree with that, which led to his daughter slamming her bedroom door on her way up. You just sighed and looked at your husband.

-”Come on, the boy is nice and makes good grades,” you said, though your words sailed right out the window.

-”I’ll prove it to her,” was all Shinsou said before turning in for the night.

-It was about a week later before he put his plan in motion. It was simple, he was going to follow the boy and record him cheating on his daughter. It was just bound to happen at some point, and he would use this as leverage to expose the boy and get you on his side for preventing his daughter from dating him. He’d spare her the broken heart, however by not telling her the truth.

-So, Shinsou found out where the teen was and began discreetly following him and his group of friends. Nothing was seeming out of the ordinary for now...

-”Oh, Red Riot!” Shinsou ducked, wondering if Kirishima were actually there, but all that could be seen was the hero appearing on a TV that his daughter’s boyfriend seemed to zero in on.

-’He likes Red Riot?’

-”Come on, dude,” his friends seemed to call him back, chuckling all the while.

-”I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, only to receive more laughter.

-”I bet that’s what your girlfriend said last night!” The teen stopped dead in his tracks, and Shinsou felt as if he might end up getting his hero license revoked for beating some kids.

-”Hey, don’t make jokes like that, about any woman ever, okay? It’s not cool or funny.” That murderous feeling seemed pass as Shinsou’s eyes widened in surprise at what he was hearing.

-”Come on, it’s just a joke dude. I mean, your girlfriend’s hot! Be grateful we don’t think she’s gros-”

-The other teens immediately shut up as they were being glared at. “Just because she’s beautiful doesn’t give you a free pass to talk about her like that. So you better not ever.”

-Shinsou let out a sigh. He started to feel a bit sorry for his preconceived notions. He hated to think that his baby girl was all grown up and dating, but he knew that he should be grateful it was with such a good guy.

[greensaplinggrace]

What Is There To Celebrate About the Darkling? (Part 3)

1 2 3 4

His shadow powers are so badass, literally how could you not celebrate him for that alone?

Villain wears black trope REPRESENT.

The way his cloak billows dramatically in episode one before Alina enters the Fold.

The way his cloak billows in general.

His little face in the background after his and Alina’s first kiss as he tries to compose himself.

Him knocking on the table in episode five when he gets back to see Alina. My mans was so hopeful that he’d finally get to third base with the love of his life. RIP.

Large hands. Very tall.

The way he literally cannot tear his eyes away from Alina during the entire scene where Alina dresses him and they have their first kiss.

The softest looking hair I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe Alina got to run her hands through it and she still left him.

How he urgently looks around for Alina outside after she leaves in episode five, right before he confronts Baghra. He’s very frantic and panting and clearly concerned and not being subtle at all about his emotions.

Also the way he walks when he’s leaving Baghra, with his hands stuck out to the side and his fists clenching and unclenching as his form grows smaller in the distance. He looks like a tiny penguin waddling away.

Son’s evil dastardly bastard plans once again thwarted by own mother. Can you imagine living for an eternity and never being free of your parents? Fuck all that other shit, no wonder he went darkside.

“She is all that matters now, not me. She is the future. She is the one-” SIMP

His little smile before he goes to answer the door after they kiss. The way his hold on her lingers as if he can’t bear to part with her. Forehead touch. They are giggling.

The way he runs back in for another kiss. This man is so gone it’s not even funny.

He calls her to him in the books and she spends the entire time agonizing over how upset he’s going to be. The man literally just wants to ask her about her day.

Defends Alina to Baghra after he witnesses her getting harassed. Defends himself to Baghra after she treats him like shit. Love that for him.

“I made something.” / “Let me make a mark on this world before I leave it.” / “It’s my own name I’m afraid of forgetting.” / “He understood then. The Grisha lived as shadows, passing over the surface of the world, touching nothing. Forced to change their shapes and hide in corners, driven by fear as shadows were driven by the sun. No safe place. No haven.” / “There will be, he promised the darkness, words written upon his heart. I will make one.”

Him offering Alina his kvas. They drink from the same glass.

Sasha “no thoughts head empty only Alina” Morozova having to look away and calm himself when Alina licks her lips after drinking his kvas.

Literally his entire confrontation with Kaz. Absolutely hilarious. Local centuries old Black Heretic gets bested by a teenager with one (1) flash grenade.

“I never intended for it to be the blight it’s become.” - Genuine regret. A+++.

Asks Mal what Alina’s favorite flowers are and then gives them to her. Was it manipulative? Yes. Was it awful? Absolutely. Was it the funniest and smoothest shit I’ve ever seen? 100%. I laughed my ass off.

Alina: *enters the fete dressed in the black kefta* *Darkling.exe has stopped working*

This man takes one look at her lack of guards and goes: what’s more important than how beautiful the wifey looks? her safety. *protective bf mode initiated*

He admires how pretty he appears in the mirror of his room with absolutely zero shame and 100% pride. We stan a vain icon in this house💕. Also the mirror is in front of the bed?!?! 👀👀👀

His knife ring.

“You looked like you needed saving,” as fire plays across his features and he looks at Alina with an expression that makes my soul want to splinter into pieces. The implications, the pain.

Will display his complete and utter adoration for Alina in front of the entire Court including the King and Queen despite the fact that that is the worst thing he could possibly do in the political environment.

“No ordinary tracker. No ordinary girl. Orphans of Keramzin reunited. AdOrAbLe.” - How do you say you have issues without saying you have issues?

The way he eclipses Alina when he’s stepping down from the dais. The inherent romantic symbolism of the eclipse and what that means for him.

Him getting excited about the stag to the point where he’s eagerly rummaging through the maps on his table and urgently asking Mal tons of questions.

The five second delay in his thoughts as he processes that Mal isn’t cooperating. Poor guy really thought that everything was finally coming up Sasha for once.

He constantly uplifts Alina after Baghra’s emotional abuse. He constantly helps her with her self esteem and reassures her that she’s doing well and that she just needs more time.

“Yeah I don’t know what Baghra’s summoning ability is,” he said, like a liar.

Even after Baghra suggests that Alina left he doesn’t believe it. He has to hear it from Kaz after searching for ages before he finally begins to believe it.

“You smuggle Grisha out of MY PALACE!”

Titty grab during the kiss scene.

He lifts her up onto the table!!

Local whipped dark overlord gets excited that Fedyor has found Alina and has to suffer through the embarrassment of acting like a lovesick fool when he learns it’s just about Nina.

His relationship with Nikolai.

The fact that Alina’s scarf blows past him before they even meet.

The way he nods with such an understanding expression when the Conductor is lying his ass off as if he sympathizes with everything the other man is saying and isn’t secretly planning his elaborate murder.

Puppy dog eyes all the time.

Every time his smile is forced and ingenuine and he looks like he’s about to stab someone.

Every time his smile is genuine and he looks super soft and loving.

“You have no chance, ShAdoW mAn.” Literally how is he ever going to recover from this.

His hands motions when he summons. I just think they’re neat.

He kills the Conductor. Hated that guy. And he looked sexy as fuck doing it.

He hates the Druskelle, he hates the Ravkan monarchy. I can relate.

He’s NOT a bootlicker, unlike some.

Dad mode gets activated when David raises his hand. Aleksander just goes along with it like an exasperated father.

Ben Barnes nose scronch.

He begs for Luda’s life.

“Merzost feeds on us. I forbid it!” two seconds later *frantic rummaging through notes on the merzost* *reading the Forbidden Knowledge™ without any hesitation* *Immediate Disaster Occurs*

“Mom look what I made!” “Your art is atrocious and you’re no longer my son.”

His history was written by the victors. The tale of the Black Heretic is straight up propaganda by the corrupt monarchy.

Immortal old man caught in a young adult love triangle: I read your letters. Malyen “what the fuck is happening on this here day” Oretsev: ??!?!?!!! who even are you??

Aleksander admitting he needs Alina.

Darklina hand holds.

He did not have to make that episode eight hand-hold on the skiff so sensual but he did it anyways.

The way he hides under his cloak like a turtle when Jesper shoots at him.

He looks so awkward and isolated at the fete surrounded by all of those colorful nobles.

He’s always ready to murder a bitch and honestly I respect that.

Would kill for his gf.

That entire scene where he kisses Alina in the snow in the books like the most awkward motherfucker and then goes “wtf just happened?! Darkling out” before fleeing the scene of the Emotion.

He’s eternally confused by his feelings for Alina and it’s hilarious.

“Looking for trouble, and if I cannot find it I will create it.”

He’s basically just a moth attracted to a fatal light. RIP.

The way he throws open double doors like a man on a mission.

“Follow.”

He’s utterly precious and I would die for him. 🖤

[writernotwaiting]

Oh look, more Loki meta!

So you are probably not wondering at all what I think about part one of the Loki series, so guess what? I’m going to tell you anyway.

I have to admit, I was pretty worried before I watched. I had that awful feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you really really want to hope for something totally amazing like a new puppy, but you’re actually afraid that you’re just getting lured into the room so your brother can jerk back the rocking chair you’ve been lounging in so you see your short unfulfilling life flash before your eyes (not that I’ve ever had that happen—no way).

I have to say, however, that even though there are bits that I am pretty uncomfortable about, I remain cautiously optimistic. (I’ll put the rest of this beneath a cut, in case you’re still avoiding spoilers).

I’ll start with the squicky stuff (and some things that actually tick me off).

I really really hate the slo-mo punch. Sorry. I just don’t think it’s funny. It’s unfunny. Off-putting in fact. I hate it. I’ve never enjoyed humiliation humor, and slapstick only works for me if it follows the Bugs Bunny Rules of Comedy (which I will explain some other time if anyone is interested). It’s just mean.

I’m also not a fan of a post-cranial-recalibration Loki still insisting on the whole “I will be king” schtick. The fact that the MCU continues to ignore Loki’s torture (and perhaps other forms of coercion) while under Thanos’s thumb absolutely hacks me off.

On top of that, Mobius’s manipulation and borderline gaslighting are also disturbing. His statement that, “you only exist so other people can become their best selves,” is the worst sort of objectification, and he sounds very much like some man-baby in an MFA program explaining why the girlfriend in his novel has to be sexually assaulted and murdered.

And another thing, how have we all forgotten that the Kursed did not actually go right from the dungeon Frigga’s rooms? He went to destroy the shields first, and then went to seek out Malekith. Loki did not send the Kursed to kill Frigga. End of story.

Why do I remain cautiously optimistic despite all of that?

First, Loki’s introspection did not result from a single epiphany in the episode. There were a lot of little pieces that added up to his break. His insecurity shows up as early as the “are you a robot” scene. He really isn’t sure who he is. And yeah, Mobius shows him his disturbing home movie. But the really brilliant scene is the one with Casey. Loki asks who he is—Casey is a really person to him. Loki has to work himself up to threaten him—he doesn’t really want to and probably doesn’t intend to follow through with it. He is deeply unsettled by the pile of infinity stones, “oh yeah, some of the guys use them as paperweights.” When the enforcers show up, they interrupt some serious introspection. Plus, when he f*cks around with what’s her name, it’s clearly because she’s been bullying him and enjoyed causing him physical and emotional pain. She deserved it.

Secondly, I am hopeful that what we see of Mobius’s character here is the Mobius who will become a better person over the course of the series. How boring if Loki is the only character who experiences any growth over the course of the story. Yes, Mobius is a bit of a dick. He totally lacks empathy, and he “saves” Loki because he sees him not a a really person but as a potentially useful tool. But he also respects Loki’s intellect and versatility. He is attracted to Loki’s ability to play (god of mischief—life at the TVA looks really damn boring). And Mobius recognizes that Loki is probably pretending to be something he is not. So maybe as they work together, Loki and Mobius will learn stuff and grow as caring, empathetic beings.

So, I think the show has potential.

Plus, goddammit, Loki is hot.