#gets women but is ultimately cringe and fail

[snowwydaydreamr]

Freaklet’s Father, the most Wretched villain of the last century, a man whose criminal background exceeded any villains' wildest dreams in Statua City. A Man who one day, stumbled upon ancient rituals performed by his ancestors by pilfering around in an old home he’d inherited from his grandparents. He found old rituals detailing the creation of old magic tools forged from the blood of magical beasts, an old near-powerless ring, and the aforementioned rituals which also detailed the summoning of the spirits of the beasts whose flesh became the tools man in ancient time used to conquer the world.

Summoning a Demon of Pride, he went on to massacre both friend and foe, leaving a horrific scene of ash and blood wherever he travelled. Doing it all for money and fun, the egotistical man was slain at the height of his reign of terror after the Demon he’d summoned gained enough sacrifice to become a Devil. She’d learn of his betrayal, and in violation of their original contract she killed him and remained dormant.

The news will have you believe the former Hero of Selflessness, now retired, had been responsible for ending the horrific duo. However, this is only partly true. As she sat, completely lost in her newly acquired mortality as a Devil feeling the once lost sense of a heartbeat that the spirits of old once mourned, a spear was plunged into her back and her damned soul was sent back to hell from which she originally began.

Returning to hell with her accomplishments made her one of the top matriarchs of the underworld. She grew to despise the disrespectful nature of other devils, instilling in her only child the kind of nature that would ultimately contradict her wishes later in their life. Raising a child that’d ultimately be very bad at being a villain. While she had high hopes for their own reign of terror, Malice grew to be a rather respectable youth and despite his mischief nobody ever came to be harmed by “The Freak”, or Freaklet as everyone knows them.

Malicious was raised by his mother to never disrespect her, but what she had not realized, was that she did not clarify that it was only her that they had to respect... Fortunately for Freaklet though, despite everything that happens, they end up finding contentedness, and happiness with their life. Being proud of what they’ve accomplished and protecting the people and the things they hold dear to them. Despite not becoming the Demon she’d hoped, Freaklet does become something that their mother ends up finding peace with. 

Because at the least, Freaklet will never be that man.

[random-fun-polls]

FOR SALE: @grimmoire — The Ultimate "Pick-Me" in Disguise

Meet Ashlay aka @grimmoire, 35, single, and circling the drain toward 40 with no hope of a ring in sight. She’ll tell you she’s all about women supporting women… until a man even so much as breathes, then it’s "sorry, ladies!" as she scurries to be his personal doormat.

We are going to use Karen for @grimmoire

Warning: Side Effects Include Extreme Annoyance:

- The Professional Hypocrite: She’ll roast your mom for fun, but mention her dead mother (who, yes, committed suicide) and she’ll cry like she’s auditioning for an Oscar. It’s all drama, all the time, because Karen’s mastered the art of weaponized victimhood.

- Tumblr’s Loneliest Blogger: Karen aka Ashley posts more inspirational quotes than she has friends. Each cringe-worthy “life is beautiful ” post is just a sad cover for the fact that her boyfriend is never going to marry her. She’s practically *begging* for the internet to validate her failed love life.

- Loyalty? Only to Men: No guy is too trashy for Karen’s defense. Whether it’s Poet or her ghosting boyfriend, she’s always ready to justify why they’re the victims. The sad truth? She’ll never admit that she’s the real loser in this equation.

- Sisterhood, My Ass: Claims she’s a “girl’s girl” but will throw her friends under the bus the second a guy’s involved. Whether it’s defending his cheating, lying, or plain disrespect, Karen’s there with her cape on, ignoring reality in favor of male attention she’s clearly not getting anywhere else.

Grab her now before Karen’s @grimmoire positive quotes turn into full-blown breakdowns about why men “just don’t understand how special she is” — because they don’t, and neither does she.

hello??? 😭

[urlocalrambler]

DN thoughts: Alex Palmer.

My views on Alex are probably not as interesting or as spirited as some other people's viewpoints. However, as someone who was thoroughly apathetic to her storyline, I think the DN fandom is skewed on a double-ended spectrum of either hating on Alex like a devil incarnate, or revering her like a goddess. I find this difference very fascinating as someone just peering in as a casual observer of her character.

Ultimately, I think the problem with Alex is that often, in typical dark romance series spanning over several couples like Devils Night, you'd expect Alex to get her own book and to end up with a horsemen. This is what many fans expected of Alex. She was Rika's best friend, the only other woman we were allowed to care about and be invested in through the duration of Corrupt and I guess, beyond it too, so fans were invested in her. Unlike the other girls, Alex was never villainised by the horsemen at any point, she was accepted into the fold and that made her interesting because she was untouched by the brush that tainted all the other female main characters. Alex was put on a pedestal and was the 'all-around badass' of the series.

If this was any other dark romance book, the next tale in line would've been for Alex after Corrupt.

Add in the fact that there was also A LOT of Will / Alex shoved into the books prior to Nightfall... Well, it probably fed into this assumption regarding Alex. Nightfall and Conclave only made it worse as they both put forward the idea of a love triangle of Alex / Will / Emory. It probably felt natural for some fans to be pre-disposed to supporting and excusing all of Alex's actions because we met her first, Alex was portrayed as Will's partner in crime, so it maybe felt natural to ship AlexWill over WillEmmy. Personally, I was never a fan of Alex (and I also wasn't much of a fan of Will) but I can see why Pen subverting expectations and pursuing WillEmmy as endgame from the very start might've surprised people. After all, Alex was pushed into the spotlight so much in the other books. She was given so many scenes with Will, and she even ended up invading the storyline of Nightfall and was positioned as Will's other choice who stuck with him at his worst... So even if she was shitty to Emory, it's very easily swept under the rug.

Alex was cool girl. Alex was the one who stood by Will. Alex supported Rika as her ride or die. Alex could do no wrong... Alex was honestly a very hollow character.

I think, within DN, Alex was the only character who felt the most like caricature to me. She was the very embodiment of the 'female lead's best friend' trope. Pen tried to get her out of that mould, but it didn't really work because they weren't willing to let Alex's character fail or stumble or be anything other than well-liked and universally adored.

In my opinion, this glazing is because Alex's character is supposed to be proof that the books aren't misogynistic or self-insert wish fulfilment – Alex is a neon sign that says 'look! this book doesn't shit on all women that aren't named Rika. It really doesn't. Look, we have a sex worker bff character who everyone loves too. This isn't just Rika's world. See, see, look at Alex!' But well, the problem is that the world is still very clearly Rika's to own and we are only really allowed to like Alex because she bows down to Rika and will never be perceived as better than her.

Then, as the series progresses, Alex evolves into the fairy godmother role of being the cool girl who gets the other girls outside of their square box by ?? talking up sex a lot ?? Personally, I found it weird. I strongly disliked Alex's scenes in Hideaway, I didn't understand why she had to come onto Banks, I kinda got Rika / Alex in corrupt because that was about Rika showing Michael that she could do exactly what he does even if I did found it kinda cringe. But Banks / Alex, I didn't see any value in it– all of Alex's scenes in Hideaway were just done for the purpose of shoving her in as that fairy godmother, sexually-charged bff role again. Same with Nightfall, I found the Emory / Alex sex scene to be useless rather than them reclaiming power, reconciling, getting square with each other, or whatever the hell it was supposed to mean.

Personally, I think the problem with Alex is that she is a trope rather than a fully-formed character. In some instances, she even felt more like a plot device. To improve her character, Alex should've been given her own book rather than glomming her into Nightfall's storyline. Or she should've just stayed in her trope-y role of Rika's BFF.

Keep in mind. This is just MY interpretation of the character. I neither like nor dislike her. Y'all feel to love or hate her as you wish.

[cringefaillosersummit]

Round 2 - Group 3A

Submission notes under cut. Some submissions had notes others did not:

Eleanor Shellstrop:

not really cringe more arizona trash bag

she got sent to Hell with a capital H because she just sucked in life. in Hell with a capital H she was tortured for i think a few centuries in Hell with a capital H time (jeremy bearimy baby) and wasn’t allowed to say fuck during any of it. specifically she was tortured in a simulation where she was in heaven but because she was such a bad person she knew she didn’t belong there. over the course of the show she gets less pathetic but is still incredibly cringe. also she canonically died in a grocery store parking lot because she dropped a bottle of margarita mix and a row of shopping carts sped towards her, and though she managed to hold onto the shopping carts, they then plowed into a truck advertising erectile disfunction pills. thats how she died. ultimate cringefail woman behavior.

Yaegashi Yasuko:

She is Reigen Mobpsycho but for women. She sends newbies on a suicide mission. She stuffed a whole ass cup of coffee into her pants. Her maid cafe is failing spectacularly and whatever she tries to get more customers, nothing works. She pisses off the maid cafe mafia everyday. THIS POLL WAS MADE FOR HER!

she is in so much debt and everything keeps fucking up so she gets in worse and worse debt. shes in a cycle of gang debt

Propaganda: [1]

[postdespair]

FOR SALE: @grimmoire — The Ultimate "Pick-Me" in Disguise

Meet Ashlay aka @grimmoire, 35, single, and circling the drain toward 40 with no hope of a ring in sight. She’ll tell you she’s all about women supporting women… until a man even so much as breathes, then it’s "sorry, ladies!" as she scurries to be his personal doormat.

We are going to use Karen for @grimmoire

Warning: Side Effects Include Extreme Annoyance:

- The Professional Hypocrite: She’ll roast your mom for fun, but mention her dead mother (who, yes, committed suicide) and she’ll cry like she’s auditioning for an Oscar. It’s all drama, all the time, because Karen’s mastered the art of weaponized victimhood.

- Tumblr’s Loneliest Blogger: Karen aka Ashley posts more inspirational quotes than she has friends. Each cringe-worthy “life is beautiful ” post is just a sad cover for the fact that her boyfriend is never going to marry her. She’s practically *begging* for the internet to validate her failed love life.

- Loyalty? Only to Men: No guy is too trashy for Karen’s defense. Whether it’s Poet or her ghosting boyfriend, she’s always ready to justify why they’re the victims. The sad truth? She’ll never admit that she’s the real loser in this equation.

- Sisterhood, My Ass: Claims she’s a “girl’s girl” but will throw her friends under the bus the second a guy’s involved. Whether it’s defending his cheating, lying, or plain disrespect, Karen’s there with her cape on, ignoring reality in favor of male attention she’s clearly not getting anywhere else.

Grab her now before Karen’s @grimmoire positive quotes turn into full-blown breakdowns about why men “just don’t understand how special she is” — because they don’t, and neither does she.

lets kill her

[kuruk]

FOR SALE: @grimmoire — The Ultimate "Pick-Me" in Disguise

Meet Ashlay aka @grimmoire, 35, single, and circling the drain toward 40 with no hope of a ring in sight. She’ll tell you she’s all about women supporting women… until a man even so much as breathes, then it’s "sorry, ladies!" as she scurries to be his personal doormat.

We are going to use Karen for @grimmoire

Warning: Side Effects Include Extreme Annoyance:

- The Professional Hypocrite: She’ll roast your mom for fun, but mention her dead mother (who, yes, committed suicide) and she’ll cry like she’s auditioning for an Oscar. It’s all drama, all the time, because Karen’s mastered the art of weaponized victimhood.

- Tumblr’s Loneliest Blogger: Karen aka Ashley posts more inspirational quotes than she has friends. Each cringe-worthy “life is beautiful ” post is just a sad cover for the fact that her boyfriend is never going to marry her. She’s practically *begging* for the internet to validate her failed love life.

- Loyalty? Only to Men: No guy is too trashy for Karen’s defense. Whether it’s Poet or her ghosting boyfriend, she’s always ready to justify why they’re the victims. The sad truth? She’ll never admit that she’s the real loser in this equation.

- Sisterhood, My Ass: Claims she’s a “girl’s girl” but will throw her friends under the bus the second a guy’s involved. Whether it’s defending his cheating, lying, or plain disrespect, Karen’s there with her cape on, ignoring reality in favor of male attention she’s clearly not getting anywhere else.

Grab her now before Karen’s @grimmoire positive quotes turn into full-blown breakdowns about why men “just don’t understand how special she is” — because they don’t, and neither does she.

What that means

[specialmouse]

FOR SALE: @grimmoire — The Ultimate "Pick-Me" in Disguise

Meet Ashlay aka @grimmoire, 35, single, and circling the drain toward 40 with no hope of a ring in sight. She’ll tell you she’s all about women supporting women… until a man even so much as breathes, then it’s "sorry, ladies!" as she scurries to be his personal doormat.

We are going to use Karen for @grimmoire

Warning: Side Effects Include Extreme Annoyance:

- The Professional Hypocrite: She’ll roast your mom for fun, but mention her dead mother (who, yes, committed suicide) and she’ll cry like she’s auditioning for an Oscar. It’s all drama, all the time, because Karen’s mastered the art of weaponized victimhood.

- Tumblr’s Loneliest Blogger: Karen aka Ashley posts more inspirational quotes than she has friends. Each cringe-worthy “life is beautiful ” post is just a sad cover for the fact that her boyfriend is never going to marry her. She’s practically *begging* for the internet to validate her failed love life.

- Loyalty? Only to Men: No guy is too trashy for Karen’s defense. Whether it’s Poet or her ghosting boyfriend, she’s always ready to justify why they’re the victims. The sad truth? She’ll never admit that she’s the real loser in this equation.

- Sisterhood, My Ass: Claims she’s a “girl’s girl” but will throw her friends under the bus the second a guy’s involved. Whether it’s defending his cheating, lying, or plain disrespect, Karen’s there with her cape on, ignoring reality in favor of male attention she’s clearly not getting anywhere else.

Grab her now before Karen’s @grimmoire positive quotes turn into full-blown breakdowns about why men “just don’t understand how special she is” — because they don’t, and neither does she.

America has a problem

[bcbdrums]

I think my biggest unpopular Kim possible opinion is that the live action movie wasn’t bad, it wasn’t the greatest thing ever, but it wasn’t the worst thing ever.

There’s a lot of things I liked about it, I liked that Kim had a little arc and that she was allowed to be insecure and be more opens about her doubt and fears, Shego and Drakken were the best parts of it hands down (and they helped revive Drakgo 💙💚), Ron was great as well.

Some people said it was cringe that he referenced memes, but for Drakken that is completely in-character. Drakken would 100% try to use slang and fail miserably.

I’m also appreciate that the live action showed us what Kim and Shego’s age gap actually looks like.

I never thought of it that way, but maybe that also contributed to the movie falling in ratings? It really puts the ship into perspective and I bet some people didn’t like that.

drakken DID try and fail to use slang miserably in the cartoon! they even used the same book cover that he used in the cartoon in the final shots of the live action when shego is driving mini-drakken to high school:

the live action should get a LOT of credit that it doesn't. the canon references are...profound. I mean, that bueno nacho set! wade's striped cup. the grappler. the original mission outfit. I could go on for a LONG time about how very much IN the world of Kim Possible they tried to make us believe we were with numerous background details and references like the aforementioned, and even deeper nuances about the characters and story. but I'll save that for another time if anyone is interested.

I loved that Kim got her identity crisis. I just didn't like how it ended, as I've addressed in other posts. but the cartoon dealt with that very thing in the series' soft-finale episode of Team Impossible. that episode did the same thing: if she's not saving the world, then who is she? and it felt much more Kim-like than the movie did... but you can read my past posts about why I didn't like the end of the movie.

Drakgo. were. awesome. everyone agrees. and they perfectly transplanted them from early 2000's to late 2010's. I very much believed that if those characters lived naturally in that year, that's how they'd behave. that was another win for the movie. they weren't trying to make it like...the cartoon chars had time-traveled, but as if this is their normal world, and it worked perfectly.

part of me wants to rant about the character slaughter of James Possible, but...I'll save that for another post.

and of course, as I've said, I loved that the show distinctly showed the age gap between Kim and Shego. but in doing so it also kind of...broke the suspension of disbelief you need to believe in a...teenage world-traveling crime-fighter who goes to public high school. it's kind of in the same vein as.... Spy Kids, if anyone remembers that franchise. great fun, but wholly unrealistic. and we're not expected to pretend it is! we know we're living in a fantasy world and they don't try to make us believe otherwise... and KP is wholly unrealistic if you take it out of the cartoon world and put it in the real world... ultimately I think that's why the movie didn't launch into something more. some things are simply suited for animation, and do not work in live action without...eh...well, without the grandiose technology it takes to make a Marvel movie. I was just looking at clips of WandaVision a few days ago and thinking how these women just...flying, hovering in the air, with no visible power source... just magic... this sort of thing you don't believe in live action. our logic won't really let us if we're adults. but they had enough high-budget CGI, enough incredible photography direction...they made it more believable than Kim and Ron on the jetpacks. and even so, the world is so grandiose that we don't really believe the marvel world is the real world either. so yeah...the KP live action tried to make us believe it was the real world, and we just...couldn't.

some things simply aren't made to be on film. some things are meant to be cartoons, and should stay cartoons. in my opinion the superhero genre is one such thing, but... that's another topic.

[bmacreadz]

"House of Earth and Blood" by Sarah J. Maas

Oh my, Sarah J. Maas. I loved this book. I really, really loved this book. At 799 pages, it's the longest book on my "read" list this year, and it was worth every page.

"House of Earth and Blood" is set in a modern fantasy world and tells Bryce Quinlan's story of heartbreak, vengeance, understanding, acceptance, friendship, love, and redemption. Her story had everything, and I felt everything.

Bryce Quinlan, for the majority of "House of Earth and Blood," is a twenty-five year old half-human, half-Fae bastard daughter of the Autumn King of Luthanian. Her best friend is an Alpha wolf named Danika. Her brother is the crowned prince of the Fae, her mother and stepfather (who she considers her father) are human, and her lover turns out to be a fallen angel - "Fallen," because he was the commanding general in a failed rebellion that took place two hundred years prior to the events in this book. And if you think that's complicated... Just you wait.

Bryce is a hardened, stubborn, young woman just trying to live her life in her broken world. She's the stereotypical Maas female protaganist. And per usual, I found it super hard to relate to her. Maas portrays her female characters as secretly messed up, but tough, and wanting everyone to believe it by projecting sarcasm, selfishness, and mystery onto those they interact with. In my opinion, this makes them less fierce. Vulnerability, imagination, kindness - these are the things that read, to me, as being truly feminist. Not because women are dainty, passive creatures, but because we can be vulnerable and still be strong. We are sensitive AND resolute, imaginative AND mysterious, helpful AND capable. Bryce made me cringe with the way she acted towards people who were trying to help her and befriend her. The forced fierceness translated as petty angst. Granted, she was justified in her angst, but that merely made her average and sometimes even cruel, in my opinion. And I found it extremely hard to relate to her in the beginning of "House of Earth and Blood."

I was incredibly relieved when Hunt Anthalar, the Shadow of Death and Bryce's eventual shadow, finally put Bryce in her place by calling her out on her attitude. I get that she was hurting, and everything I disliked about her in the beginning was redeemed by the end of the book, but it still took me an unusually long time to actually start liking her. I also found it super hard to relate to her because of those damned heels that she insisted on wearing. Short, tight-fitting dresses and sky-high heels when you know you're in the middle of an intense investigation and at the mercy of an unexpected attack at any moment - it would definitely not have been my outfit of choice for every single day preparing to do everyday things.

Reading through Bryce and Hunt's interactions, though, made it so much easier to genuinely like our protaganists - both of them. They brought out the best in each other, and that was ultimately Bryce's redemption for me.

Moving on: There is so. much. to unpack in this entire story. There are so many characters, names, places, relics, rules, rulers, hierarchies, and stories within the main plot. It was incredibly confusing to try to keep up with everything during the first half of the book - especially because Maas stuck to her M.O. and used names that are not really names, but several letters put together to create something that might, in some world, resemble somewhat of a name. She also wasted no time in throwing all this information at the reader right at the beginning, so it was thoroughly mind-boggling and I forgot about half of it when that information actually became relevant - which it did later on in the book.

Thankfully, I had help in consolidating the information in the form of bookmarks, which I used at least once for every chapter - if not, every other chapter. I honestly don't know how I would've read this without going back to each part of the book where those things were mentioned to recap. If you read this, you will probably need to take notes to help guide you through all the backstories and histories of every character and place that's mentioned. Because it all does become relevant, and is not, in fact, random and extraneous information that I thought it to be in the beginning.

Also, if you read this, I would suggest practicing patience because there is a bit of back and forth in the book. I found myself getting so frustrated that the climax was being dragged about, and was furiously reading to finally arrive to it. I will say that the extra-long buildup was definitely worth the wait - and I was not expecting it at all, despite all the back and forth in every direction.

The ending of "House of Earth and Blood" was breathtaking, heartbreaking, and so, so powerful. I was in awe and shock, and I was sobbing before I even knew what was happening. I couldn't have imagined a better ending to this novel, and I'm still reeling over it two days later. So much so that I'm finding it hard to be interested in my current novel.

The ending, however, was also very open-ended. There was a lot there that was not addressed that I felt should have been immediately addressed. Like, where were all the other characters during and after that final, big scene? You know the scene I'm talking about. What happened to them? Where did they go? I still have no idea, but I'm hoping those answers will make it into the next book in the series...

Maas really did it in "House of Earth and Blood." She wrote an incredible story, and if I know her by her writing, this series is only going to get more interesting. I am completely blown away and so excited to get my hands on the next book, "House of Sky and Breath."

Before I leave this review, I do want to take time to note a couple of different things I noticed while reading, like Maas' use of the term "unearthly." Technically, everything on this planet (which is not earth) is unearthly and it was funny that the oversight was made. It wasn't a big deal, but it would've been nice for her to be a little more imaginative. There were also a lot of modern references and apparatuses that were used, including mobile phones, guns, and the types of clothing. This was an adjustment on my behalf because it was a new take on my normal fantasy reading, but I didn't dislike it once I got used to it.

I also want to mention that unlike Maas' other novels, this one lacked the steam that Maas is usually known for. There was barely one - not even one - whole sex scene in this entire novel. I was a bit perplexed because I was expecting, and hoping, for Hunt and Bryce to finally do the damn thing. Don't get me wrong, there were super intense moments where there was clearly something, but they never ended in anything.

Overall, yes. Just yes on this book. A resounding "YES!"

[luna-rainbow]

*Leaps enthusiastically onto the criticizing Peggy Carter train*

I guess finding a partner wasn't so hard after all and you always wanted be a soldier and now you are, just like all the rest are two lines in particular from Peggy that just make me violently cringe. They're both such nasty jabs at two things/values that clearly mean a lot to Steve and for her to say that while he was scrambling after her and profusely apologizing was so harsh.

And it just furthers the whole thing everyone else has been saying, that Peggy is supposed to be this ultimate, special, Not Like Other Girls character. Her jab about finding the "right partner" is pretty clear in stating that she thinks that ONLY she could be the right person for him, and that any of these other people who might be interested in him are not good enough.

The "just like all the rest" comment is really what gets me because in it's quest to fulfill it's role as military propaganda the film actually kinda fails in showing us how this was bad thing? There was Hodge who was a dick, but other than that pretty much all the soldiers were portrayed as pretty ok people. You have the commandos, who all seem in the short screen time they had, to be good, nice men (who Peggy was also shown to literally be close friends with in the AC show; I wonder if they know how lowly she really thought of them considering this comment). Her saying this would have made more sense if we had seen more of the soldiers being massive assholes, but the movie never shows us that. It also could read as a pretty harsh jab at Steve's self esteem, like she's almost trying to tell him that he isn't really that special after all--is that perhaps a bit of jealousy that she wasn't considered for the super soldier program herself? I'm not sure, but it was a cruel thing to say no matter how upset she was at him in the moment.

Thanks for the ask!

Now that I think about it, most of the Peggy scenes in the movie seems quite forced and felt like they belonged to a different movie. Like, maybe in a romcom where the two characters get the time to build up their relationship, those interactions are okay, but because they had so little time together, those scenes just felt uncomfortable and unfriendly. It was such an odd sense of entitlement over the kiss when the guy wouldn’t even respond to your very obvious advances to invite him to a dance.

Based on her interactions with him, it doesn’t gel that she would even appeal to him? It’s the usual dudebro fantasy of the unattainable woman who falls impossibly for the main character despite her high standards, and it’s because she sees what’s inside.

The thing is, and I think it’s part of the writers not really thinking about Steve’s disabled experience: Peggy being unattainable isn’t a new experience for him - she’s not special because she’s unattainable. He’s met a lot of women who think they’re above him because they refuse to look at anything deeper than his skinny frame.

Peggy only changes her mind after Steve gets the serum. This could have been fixed so easily if they demonstrated Peggy’s interest in Steve before he got the serum. If she was the one who asked him why he wanted to be in the military, instead of Steve’s inane comment about why a girl like her would want to be there. If she made a passing compliment at Steve after he took down the flag instead of ignoring him. The first time she really showed interest is by grabbing his serumed up boob 😕

What this really reinforces to Steve is that women - including Peggy and Lorraine - are still judging only by the most superficial part of him. This makes Peggy not special at all from Steve’s standpoint. She’s only special to the audience by the fact the camera focuses on her - I highly doubt she’s the only woman Steve had an ongoing collegial relationship with in the 4(?) years he lived with the serum.

[persephones-wren]

Could you write a Kaz Brekker request where the reader and Kaz are more than friends but not lovers and the reader is a Crow and therefore, can handle things for herself so she doesn't tell Kaz when a friend's ex is threatening her but Kaz ultimately finds out when the ex comes to the Crow Club and Kaz handles it since as much as he knows she capable, he is still protective of her and it leads to them finally becoming official?

Protective (Kaz Brekker x Reader)

I'm sorry about the ending, I couldn't find a great way to finish it- but maybe I'll fix that when I can think of something. Besides that, I hope you like it! :)

Warnings: depicted abuse, mentions of sedatives, misogynistic language (please let me know if there's any more)

Genre: not fluff

Word Count: 2705

You had a confusing relationship with Kaz.

It was an odd “more than friends, less than dating” relationship. It made sense, considering in the Barrel, women were more property than anything else. Besides, leverage was a thing everyone wanted on Kaz, even his closest allies. He wasn’t going to put himself in a position that made him anyone’s puppet. You didn’t exactly need him to declare you untouchable, anyway; you were usually more than okay with skirmishing with the Dime Lions and others that happened to be in your way.

You had never expected him to help you handle things that you could do alone.

It had been one of your wealthier friends, who helped get you out of the Menagerie. She had dated Zachariah Alix, a man with power and influence. She had usually dealt with his off-putting advances and abuse, but even you, who couldn’t see her often, could tell she wasn’t happy.

“Break up with him, then.” Your voice echoed in her private chambers as she sighed, multiple emotions running through her expression.

“Y/N, I just, I can’t. We’re already supposed to be married soon. Criminals in the Barrel are lucky in the way that you’re allowed to love who you please,” and damn your head for immediately thinking Kaz, “but merchers, well, it’s not that simple.”

“You callin’ me a criminal?”

“Yes,” she muttered, and you laughed, “but that’s not the point.”

“Are your parents forcing you to marry him?”

“Not exactly, but there’s going to be a lot more pressure if I break up with him.”

“Alright, well...from the list of merchers we’ve stolen from-'' she shot you a look, “sorry, sorry. It’s true though. I’m sure there’s someone on the list that’s for you.”

“I’ve got someone in mind already.”

“Well, that makes things easier, doesn’t it? Break up with him and get with the other guy. No parental pressure. Why do you need my advice, then? I get caught here and I’m as good as dead.”

“Okay, okay! It’s not parental pressure,” she lowered her voice, guilt painted across her face. “He’s going to stalk me if we break up. He might kill me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Alright,” you mulled it over. “That’s different. What can I do for you, then?”

“Can you be there when we break up? Moral support? And perhaps, well...if it wouldn’t trouble you, maybe do a little something to get him to leave me alone.”

“Like beat him up. It won’t trouble me,” you had answered. “Sure, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you,” she sighed in relief. “You’re the best, Y/N.”

“It’s nothing.”

…

“I don’t think we should continue on like this.”

There was a tension-filled silence, before Alix spoke again. “Why not, sweetheart?” He advanced towards her, and you had to prevent yourself from physically cringing. You were mostly moral support, and there to defend your friend if she got into deep shit, but, well...hopefully it wouldn’t come to revealing yourself.

“You- get off of me,” she pushed him away harshly. “You don’t get to talk me into forgiving you again. You are a child. You hit me and scream and throw tantrums. I want to be with someone who loves me, not someone who treats me like his mother. So that’s it. Get out of my house. We’re breaking up.”

There was another silence, before he spoke up again. “You little bitch,” he snarled, and grabbed at her dress, “you think you can just break up with me? No one’s ever going to be there for you. I’ll kill you and blame it on some Barrel thug. Check yourself, you’d be nobody without me.”

His hand closed in on her neck, and she looked to you, panicked. You put a finger to your lips before you snuck behind him, flicking off the safety and putting the pistol to his head.

He froze.

“Drop her.”

He did, and she slid down against the wall, tears streaming down her face. You had never intended to let it get that far, and it hurt your heart- but you had to deal with him first.

You knocked the gun into his head and used your elbow to knock him to the ground, putting a foot on his chest.

He looked up at you, terrified. What a coward.

“Too bad your daddy never taught you how to use guns,” you taunted, and grinned. “You leave her alone. She’s broken up with you. Get out of her house.”

“You’re Brekker’s whore, aren’t you?”

Your grin grows incredulous. You apply pressure to his chest steadily, and he wheezes, but he still continues.

“Yeah, look at you.You’re all upset, aren’t you, girl? Bet you’re sold out to half of the Barrel by him. Brekker likes his Kruge.” His eyes scan from underneath you. “Can’t say I’d blame him if he wanted to keep you as his personal pet, though.”

You scoff. “Careful what you say, I’m the one with a gun,” you remark, and you click a bullet into place for show, before taking your foot off. “Get out. If you touch her again, it’ll be more than me you’ll deal with.”

He scrambles upwards and disappears, and you hear the front door open and shut. You sigh.

“I’m sorry, I never intended for him to get that far. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” your friend sighs, hands lightly touching the bruises on her neck. “I think I’ll be okay. Thank you. What about you? You’re not-”

“I’m not with Kaz.” You help her up, and she smothers out her dress. “If Alix ever bothers you again, let me know.”

“Of course. I doubt he will. Thank you again, Y/N.”

…

He never did bother her again, but you- you were a different story. Every day, now, Kaz would offer you a note with some vague taunt on it.

“I’ll kill you.”

“Brekker’s slut! Slept your way to the top!”

“Let’s fight without a gun next time. I’ll have you pinned underneath me.”

“I’ll sedate and have my way with you. You still know some things from the Menagerie, don’t you?”

You had brushed off most of the taunts and threats, but they might’ve been starting to impact you, just a bit. You had assumed that Kaz had never read the threats. Each time, he would hand you the note with no expression.

Today’s note was a bit different.

“Y/N. Another note came in for you today.” He set the note on the table.

“Huh? Oh, thanks.”

You picked it up and unfolded the note, shielding the back of the paper with one hand. Kaz was clever, one of the many things you liked about him. You were sure that he’d try and read the back of the note if he could.

“Let’s meet on your territory. Crow Club at eight, in the alleyway.”

“Got yourself a boy, Y/N? These notes have started coming in every day,” Jesper whistled next to you, eyes scanning over the note. You look up, and Kaz is gone, watching from more of a distance. They’ve got it completely wrong.

You glance back down, and fail to notice how Kaz’s fingers tighten on his cane. Your laugh is dry, and you shake your head. “Nothing of the sort.”

Jesper ignores your denial. “Well, whoever he is, he seems awfully persistent. He wants to meet at the Crow Club, in the alleyway? Kinda sweet he wants to meet on your land, but why won’t he come in? He afraid of us, or somethin’?”

“Something like that,” you affirm.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to meet in here, either,” Inej says.

“Especially not with him here,” Jesper adds.

Your eyes meet Kaz’s across the room, and you both stare for a moment before he turns and looks away.

“Maybe.” Your answers are ambiguous, and you’re sure both Inej and Jesper want to know more, but you need to prepare for tonight.

“Sorry, guys. Excuse me.”

…

You have three throwable knives strapped into your boots, a small handgun holstered in your coat, and a syringe full of clozapine tucked up your sleeve. You’re prepared to take Alix down easily. You don’t exactly intend to shoot him, if only to make sure that the Crows don’t have a bigger target on their back from getting involved with the wealthy, but- well, you can’t deny it’s good to be ready in dire circumstances.

It’s 7:58 by the time you’re heading out to the back of the alley. You’re hiding behind the wall, just about to step over, but there’s already voices conversing there.

Did he bring backup? You grimace. You hadn’t considered that he might not fight fairly.

“Did she send her boyfriend after me ‘cause she was too much of a pussy to show?”

“I’d be careful what you say about Y/N.”

That’s Alix, and Kaz.

You’re not sure what you’re supposed to feel. He never did these kinds of things for you, never declared you his, but- you could handle this yourself. You didn’t need his protection, and you didn’t need him going out to deal with things because of one creepy ex.

Or, your thoughts betray you, you’re worried for him, because this could be a trap.

He glances over at the wall, where he seems to know you’re standing. It’s a warning glance, one to be quiet and let him deal with it.

“Aw, Brekker, you sweet on her? And here I thought it was a one-sided thing. Too bad I’m gonna ruin that pretty face of yours.”

Alix comes swinging. Kaz doesn’t say anything in reply, and instead jabs his cane forward, right into his stomach. He stumbles backward, and Kaz is still poised, waiting.

“I thought you were going to be more of a challenge than this. Even a fool knows not to attack first.”

“I’m no fool, Brekker. Don’t make any more sudden moves, or you’ll be shot. Do you know how easy it is to hire hitmen?”

There’s a faint look of surprise in Kaz’s expression before it smooths back into calm. “Well, to be honest,” he smiles pleasantly, “I thought merchers were above such methods.”

He’s glancing at you again, before his eyes move over two guard towers.

He’s pointing out to you where they are. Shit, what do you do? You’re no Inej, who can scale the walls and take them down silently. You’re no Jesper, who can shoot them with precision. You’re not going to be able to take out both snipers quickly enough. If you kill Alix and Kaz doesn’t dive behind the wall in time, he’ll get shot.

You let out a silent sigh. If only you could get both Kaz and Alix behind the wall, then you can get rid of the problem at its source, and then fuck the hitmen. They’re not going to kill Kaz if they can’t get paid.

“The rich are never above any methods. The only thing the rich care about is eradicating the criminals that roam the streets. I thought I was gonna get Y/N, and I could take her back to Tante Heleen,” he grinned, “But you’ll be worth a lot more. Wonder who’ll lay claim to you first.”

Kaz doesn’t say anything, just puts his hands behind his back, as if he’s waiting to be cuffed. But he gives quick signals to you, right before Alix steps around to secure the bonds- a quick countdown. He’s expecting you to shoot.

“No plans up your sleeves this time, Dirtyhands?”

You suddenly fire at Alix’s shoulder, a scream tearing through his throat as the cuffs drop to the ground. Kaz dives towards the wall, grabbing his cane along the way and breathing hard next to you.

Somehow, your aim remains true, and when you peek over the corner, you see Alix desperately trying to grasp at his wound. A grim sort of satisfaction greets your expression.

“Should’ve shot him in the head,” Kaz looks on with you.

“I’m trying not to paint a bigger target on our backs,” you explain, before you remember you’re supposed to be mad at him. Damn him for taking the fall for you. Did he know it was going to be a trap?

“Why the hell would you confront him alone? I had it handled, Kaz.”

“Not now..” His stare is directed at the shadows. And before you can get another word out, both of you are headed to his office.

The brisk walk is silent, and the tension could be cut through with a knife. At last, you reach his office, and he shuts the door, and sits down at his desk. You stand in front of him.

“Care to explain why you decided to confront Alix by yourself?” “I read the notes. I knew it was a trap.”

This doesn’t make you feel any better. “So you read the notes, where he called me a whore, a slut, your personal toy, and you don’t decide to tell me? You let it continuously happen, and then when the note comes today, you decide to go and white-knight for me because protecting me is a better idea than consulting me, huh?” you scoff. “That’s bullshit. You know I can handle myself. There’s a reason you chose me to be a part of the Crows, is there not? Or is what Alix said true? Did I sell myself to get to the top? Become your bitch?”

“I knew you could handle yourself just fine,” Kaz says calmly. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, because you didn’t consider the fact it was a trap. You could’ve died.”

“I would’ve been fine alone. Just because you’re the one who accounts for everything doesn’t mean I don’t use my head.” You know you’re being unfair, he’s right about the fact that you thought the fight was legitimate, but you could’ve saved yourself all the same.

“I’m not saying you don’t use your head, I’m saying that the probability of you dying if you went alone were much higher. I wanted to help you, save your ass back there,” he refutes.

“I would’ve died. So what? Deaths happen all the time in the Barrel! I die, and what?”

He doesn’t say anything.

You give a sardonic laugh. “I’m just an investment to you. I do what you want, with no question or hesitation, because I put my faith in you. My death just means the loss of a good soldier. I’m replaceable, though. My opinions are invaluable, so you don’t talk to me before you do shit. I’m always going to be underneath you, just a pawn.”

“You’re assuming things.”

“Like what, then?”

“Have you considered the fact that I was there because I wanted to help you? Because you’re a part of my Crows, and I don’t take anyone threatening us too kindly?”

His admission has you pausing, but he continues. “You die, and what? Forget what I may feel. What about Inej and Jesper? What about Nina, Wylan? I don’t want you to be underneath me. I see you as an equal.”

“I-”

“That’s why I was there. Because I-” love you, he nearly says, but he stops himself. “I protect the people I love.”

“And I’m someone you love,” you state quietly.

“Yes.”

You’re not sure how much you must have pissed him off to make him an honest man, but you can’t help smiling a little. “Saints, Kaz, at least ask a girl to be yours before you tell her you love her.”

“Fine. Y/N, will you be my girlfriend?”

“Who the hell are you and what have you done with Kaz Brekker?” You grin.

“Stop dodging the question,” he bites out.

“Yeah, I will,” you sigh. “But don’t get yourself killed, and especially not over me, please.”

“Well, darling, I think it’s fair of me to ask the same thing for you- don’t be reckless. People die far too easily in the Barrel,” he responds.

There’s another small silence, before you speak up again.

“Kaz. Thank you.”

He’s slightly surprised at the genuine warmth in your eyes, quickly replacing the anger that was in them before. He shrugs a little.

“It’s what lovers do, right?”

“Yeah,” you answer. “Lovers.”

Lovers, indeed.

[mypoisonedvine]

Consolation || Bucky Barnes x reader

summary: you know it’s probably not great that you always turn to your best friend Bucky whenever you’re especially hurt by your husband.  you know your husband should probably care that you spend so much time with him, but he doesn’t.  which is good, in the end, because you two really are just friends… until you’re not.

word count: 4k

warnings: smut!, infidelity (see summary, reader is married), descriptions of failing/sexless marriage, angst, fluff, ~feelings~

You were good at hiding it— the real reason why you showed up at Bucky's apartment unexpectedly, that is.  

It wasn’t entirely unexpected: you sent a text first, asking if he was down for a movie night, telling him you missed when you used to hang out more.  He did, too, but he had always been afraid your husband would be an issue.  Nice enough guy, but he didn’t seem to trust Bucky entirely… certainly didn’t seem to love that you two were so close.

And who could blame him?  A beautiful, sweet, smart girl like you… he understood why your husband didn’t want you hanging out with other guys when avoidable.  I’ve told him a thousand times, you’re just a friend— you’re just Bucky, you would tell him when you were recounting arguments, explaining why it had been a while since you two had had a chance to catch up.  But Bucky never told you that your husband was right to worry, that he had dreamed since he met you of being more than ‘just a friend,’ that he himself was the reason you two didn’t spend more time together: because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from confessing his feelings.

Because of course he would never make a move on his best friend— on a married woman.  It would be so overwhelmingly inappropriate, such a colossal waste of time; and it wasn’t like he couldn’t handle just being your friend.  Sure, it killed him a little bit sometimes, but it was worth it a million times over to be near you at all.  He would take what he could get… and if that meant platonic movie night because you’d had another argument with your husband, then so be it.

“I stopped by the store on my way; heard your ice cream reserve was depleted,” you explained as you brandished the Ben & Jerry’s before slipping past him to put them in his freezer.  

He watched you walk there, silently hating how comfortable you were in his apartment.  He loved it, but he hated it, too.  

“What are we watching?” you asked, snapping him back to reality.

“Uh, I dunno…”

“You were supposed to pick while I was driving over, genius,” you grumbled sarcastically.

“I narrowed it down to The Ring or You’ve Got Mail,” he decided suddenly.

You chuckled lightly and the sound lifted his spirits. “Okay, so, two drastically different evenings."

“I mean, if you think about it, they’re both about meeting new people through technology,” he corrected.

“Do VHS tapes count as technology?” you raised an eyebrow incredulously.

“They do to me,” he shrugged.

//

With the ice cream supply exhausted and Bucky’s largest plastic bowl now containing only the unpopped kernels and little broken pieces of popcorn that didn’t make the cut, the third act of The Ring was beginning and you were spending more time covering your eyes than not.

“Let me know when the scary part is over,” you requested weakly from between the hands on your face.

“It’s a horror movie; the whole thing is one long scary part!” he laughed.

You peeked out through your fingers only to see another terrifying moment, yelping and hiding yourself in his chest.

He froze, not sure at all what to do with your face pressed against him; he held his breath in case the inflation of his chest would disturb you.  

“I can’t look!” you whimpered, voice muffled by his shirt.

He lifted his hand in consideration of stroking your hair comfortingly, but ultimately decided against it and set it back down.

Thankfully, the movie was almost over and you wouldn’t stay cuddled up to him after it ended— meaning he’d finally be free from the glorious torture of your nearness.

But then the credits were rolling and you still didn’t budge, holding him tight.  At first he thought you were just still scared, but then you took a slow, shaky breath… and he realized something was wrong with you, way beyond just a spooky movie.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly, preparing to hear you explain what really happened with you and your husband that made you come here.

You just shook your head a little against his chest, making him sigh.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” he continued, and you hesitated before pulling back and sitting up straight again.  As painful as it had been, he missed your touch already.

“Yes,” you answered, “but I shouldn’t.”

“Okay,” he nodded.

“But I need to.”

“Okay.”

“But I can’t.”

“...okay…”

You groaned and hid your face in your hands— not from fear this time, but exasperation.  “I told myself that if it ever got to this point, I’d tell someone.  But now I… I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” he soothed.

"He doesn't… we don't…” you started and stopped a few times.  “God, Buck, I can't even say it…"

"You don't have to—" he began to tell you, but you said it anyway, tearing your hands away from your face and looking back at him sternly.

"He hasn't touched me in months.  And today marks an entire year since the last time I had sex."

He tried not to choke when he heard that.  He figured you were just going to say that he was texting a female coworker too much or flip-flopping about if he wanted kids or not.  This was something else entirely.  "Oh… um, wow."

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t sure where to start.  In spite of all his obliviousness, he was pretty sure he should say something, he just didn’t know what.  “And he… he knows that you… want that?  I mean, you’ve like… tried to, you know… initiate things, right?”  He cringed at his own voice, and stupid question.

You laughed a little, in a sad way.  "I've begged him for it, fuck, it's so humiliating.  It doesn't even work.  He's always too tired, not in the mood, busy with something.  And of course I want to respect him and not pressure him into anything but at the same time, I feel so fucking unlovable— so hideous."

"You're not hideous,” he said firmly, more sure of that than anything else he’d said so far.

“I try to believe that, really,” you mitigated, “I try not to take it personally— but fuck, it feels personal.  Do you know how often people talk about sex?  It’s like society has this idea that men just wanna bang twenty-four hours a day and the only thing stopping them is women being prudes.  Do you know what it’s like to hear people talk like that when your husband rejects you every night?  Do you know how it feels to hear your girlfriends complaining about how their boyfriends are pestering them for sex too often, and you’re just sitting there screaming inside your head ‘at least he wants you’?  Bucky, you can’t even imagine…”

“I can’t,” he agreed.  

"It's been so long…” you sighed shakily, collecting yourself before you started again.  “It's been so long since somebody touched me.  I wondered if I would forget what it felt like."

His hand shook a little as he reached out with his flesh hand and brushed it against your arm, staring into your watery eyes and finding less fear there than he expected, thankfully.

"Did you forget?" he asked softly.

"I must have," you mumbled, "it feels better than I remembered."

The heartbreak in your voice made anger bubble up in his chest, amazed at how your husband ever allowed this to happen; ever allowed you to become so touch-starved that even just a brush on your arm made you emotional.  "I can't imagine being with you every day and not wanting to touch you whenever I could get the chance,” he admitted.  “I can't imagine being your husband and not making love to you every day, every hour, whenever you wanted; whenever you'd let me.  I can't imagine having you beg me for something and not giving it to you— I'd give you everything."

He had to fight a gasp as you suddenly grabbed him and pulled him into a kiss, a bit sudden at first but melting into something gentle and patient and soft.  

“Then do it,” you whispered as you finally pulled back; he could barely think straight to even process what you were saying.  “Give me everything.”

He nodded a little before he kissed you again, rough but deep and slow.  His hands roamed your body like he'd wished to for so long; his tongue slid against yours and the taste of you drove him wild.

As hard as it was to break from your lips, he moved his kisses down your jaw to your neck, sucking at your pulse as you groaned and clutched at his shoulders through his shirt.

"Fuck," you whispered under your breath, and he must've heard you swear a million times but this time it sounded so different.  

His cock was straining against his jeans already, just from this— it was like he was a fucking teenager again, but to be fair, you'd always had that effect on him: sweaty palms, stammering, sudden boners.  It was like lifelong puberty with you around.

When his fingers toyed with the hem of your shirt, just barely brushing over the skin right above your sweats, you pulled back briefly to pull your shirt off over your head.  He thought it might be awkward if he just stood there gawking at your chest, so he only allowed himself a moment of it before he got back to work holding you tight and kissing your collarbones.

He pulled you closer and you must've felt his cock pressed against you because you gasped a little.  And you must've liked it, because your hand slipped down and rubbed him through the front of his jeans, making him choke on nothing.

“S’big,” you mumbled, and he grinned a little.  

“Feel what you do to me?” he asked softly, and you nodded a little before grabbing his wrist and pulling his hand down your body and into the waistband of your pants.  He shuddered when he felt how warm your skin was, the lacy fabric of your panties, the slick folds you guided his fingers through.

“Feel what you do to me?” you shot back, but your cockiness faded when he circled his middle finger over your swollen bud.  He loved the way your body reacted so easily, subtle little gasps and shivers, your hips jolting forward for more stimulation.  You both moaned when he pushed a finger into your channel, your walls already pulsing around him.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

You whispered your approval and he twisted the finger inside you.  Even just that made you let out a heavy breath, your hands reaching down to grip his wrist— they didn’t push him away, thankfully, just reminded him to be gentle with you as he added the second finger, pushing a bit deeper than before.

“More,” you whimpered your plea, “I want more.”

For a second he thought you meant more fingers, but then you opened your eyes and gave him a look… that look.  

It made it abundantly clear that fingers weren’t going to be enough.  After all, you had asked him to give you everything.  So he gladly obliged when you started to tug at his shirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it aside.  You lifted your hips to let him pull down your sweats, not giving him much time to drink in the sight of you before you started opening his fly for him.

Being undressed by you made his heart race; the way you rushed, like you couldn’t wait a moment longer to have him, was flattering yet relatable.

You sighed when you got his cock out, instantly wrapping your hand around his shaft and stroking.  He shuddered at the softness of your hands, at your gentle but persistent exploration.  Clearly it had been a while since you’d gotten the chance to interact with a dick, but it didn’t show in any lack of skill— if anything it just made you more eager, your grip firm but your touches gentle.  He kissed you again, holding your face in one hand and leaning you back with the other until you were laid on the couch and he was hovering over you.

He guided your hand away from his cock, replacing it with his own as he guided the weeping head over your slick folds, smiling at your gasp when he bumped against your clit.

“Do you want this?” he asked, fully prepared for you to back out now before you did something you really couldn’t take back.

“Yes.”  Your answer was more confident than he was expecting, but he still couldn’t really believe it.  It was just too good to be true.  So he had to check again.

“...are you sure?”

"Don't make me beg, Bucky," you whimpered, "I've done it enough, I can't do it again.  Just make love to me— I need you inside me, please…"

Your head fell back as he pushed into you, your nails digging into his shoulders until he stopped from fear of hurting you (even though it took more willpower than he knew he had).

"Don't stop," you whined, "need to feel all of you, Bucky, please please don't stop—"

He definitely didn't have enough willpower to resist that.  Slamming into you all at once, he hissed as you cried out, baring his teeth at the sight of you quivering and moaning beneath him.

"I— I need a second," you explained, voice tight with ill-concealed pain, "it's been a while.”

"I can wait," he nodded, "I won't move until you're ready."

He could tell you were struggling, because how could you not be when you felt so fucking tight around him?  He guided you to breathe slowly with him, feeling your body relax slightly and noticing the way your face untwisted as you became more comfortable.

You nodded a little, but he needed to hear you say it.  "Fuck me," you whispered.

And he did.  

He still kept his pace measured and relaxed, savoring every inch of you— savoring your reactions to every inch of him.

But watching your face was going to push him towards the edge too fast, and he wanted to make this last if possible, so he leaned down to suck on your neck, thoroughly tasting your skin as you moaned and writhed beneath him.  It felt incredible to surround your body with his, to cage you in and pin you down with his weight— it made him feel like he could protect you, keep you safe, even though he knew he couldn’t save you from heartache as much as he wanted to.

If you wanted someone to touch you, to give you affection, to make love to you and make you feel loved, then you’d come to the right place.  That came to him naturally; the hard part was going to be letting you go, letting this be the one-time favor for a friend that he already knew it was.

“You feel so good,” he found himself whispering against your skin, just beside your ear, “so good for me.”

The praise must have had a strong effect on you, because your walls tightened around him suddenly.

“So perfect,” he continued, wanting to feel it again, “my perfect girl.”  And you weren’t his girl, but maybe he could pretend you were; you certainly seemed to enjoy pretending, with the way your moans egged him on.  “God, baby, your pussy feels so fucking good around my cock.”

“Bucky,” you whined, arching your back, and he grinned because it was obvious that you responded even better to dirty talk than praise.

“You like that, huh?  You like makin’ me feel good?” he pressed, laughing a little when you nodded feverishly.  “Fuck, such a good girl… takin’ me so good, so fuckin’ deep…”

You grabbed him by his hair to make him kiss you again, hungry lips smashing against his.

Inspired by your passion but afraid of what he’d do with all of this control, he wrapped his arms around you and hoisted you up until he was sitting while you straddled him, looking up at you with a grin.  "Ride me, pretty girl, show me how bad you want it," he instructed lowly.  The way you rocked your hips and threw your head back was everything he'd dreamed it would be, increased exponentially.  Of course, he'd never told anyone that he dreamed about that, but he'd also never thought it could ever come true.  He ran his hands over every part of you he could reach, just to make sure it was real; just to make sure he memorized the feel of you while he could.

He leaned forward and wrapped his lips around a hardened nipple, sucking gently and smirking a little when you moaned loudly.  “You’re sensitive here,” he noted aloud, kissing his way to the other nipple but still teasing the first with his metal fingers.

Your moans came faster and louder, your fingers combing through his hair and pulling seemingly unintentionally.  He noticed that you let your eyes fall shut, your head crane back, and although he was glad that it was a sign of pleasure, he wanted to see you; he wanted you to see him, know that it was him making you feel this way.  so, he reached up and cupped your face in his hand, cradling your cheek, pulling you closer to look at him, staring into your eyes— and he knew it wasn't a subtle move, wasn't believable as a guy just helping out a friend, but he didn't care anymore.  When he kissed you again, it almost felt like you meant it, too; like you wanted him first, and not just as a consolation prize.

But you pulled back a little too soon, a reminder to both of you that this couldn’t be anything more than what it was.

Your hips gyrated faster and more vigorously, his hands gripping you tight and guiding your movements while you sighed and bit your lip.  You looked so indescribably good when you were immersed in pleasure like this, your hands gripping his shoulders tightly for balance, your chest swelling and deflating with quick breaths.

“So fucking beautiful,” he whispered below his breath as his hand softly trailed from your collarbone down to your thigh.  The sounds you made were constantly changing, a little more high-pitched and needy now as you rode him faster.  He was already picking up on the little signs that you were getting closer: your thighs flexing where they were straddled beside his own, how your body jolted and shivered in his grasp, your eyes wrenched shut and your skin breaking out into goosebumps.

Already he knew your body so well, but he knew there was so much more he would never get the chance to discover.  For now, he’d just have to settle for a preview of all the perfect little ways you fell apart.

And, in the interest of speeding that process up a bit, he reached down to where your bodies were joined and circled a thumb over your clit.

“Fuck!” you yelped, your inner muscles bearing down on him out of nowhere until he was forced to groan from your tightness.

“You close?” he stammered out, way less confident than he meant it to be.  He should’ve said something cool like ‘I know you’re close’ or ‘aw, baby, does that feel good?’ but no, he was too far gone and gave his own desperation away.

"Yes, baby, I'm so close," you sighed, "I'm gonna come— you're gonna make me come."

You said it with a hint of shock in your voice, like you could barely believe it.  He couldn't believe it, either, because it was surely too good to be true.

"Come for me," he instructed firmly, pulling you closer until his nose brushed against yours, "say my name when I make you come."

It was unfair, but he needed to pretend you were his for just a moment.  Only his.

"Bucky," you whimpered shakily.  Your walls tightened around him so perfectly, over and over, until it took everything in him not to bust right then.  "Bucky, I'm coming, fuck, I'm coming—"

"I know," he whispered, "I know, pretty girl, keep going."

Your nails dug into his skin, but he couldn’t even notice the pain when he was watching your face as you came— it was tight and twisted at first, before falling into a gasp and a moan that made his heart swell along with his cock that painted your walls the absolute second he knew you’d come.  It was intense, not just from holding back for so long, but from knowing he was coming inside you.

He sighed and started to catch his breath as you slumped forward and buried your face in the crook of his neck.  His arms wrapped around you and pulled you closer, the warmth of your body nearly overwhelming now as he felt little aftershocks ripple through your channel around where he was still within you.

"Thank you," you whispered, so quiet he could barely hear it.  But he did, and he nodded a little as he rested his face against yours, stroking your hair gently.  You held each other in silence for a long time, so long that when your breathing slowed down significantly and he could feel your body relax entirely, he realized you had fallen asleep.  

Carefully, he held you tighter so he could stand up and carry you to his bedroom, your body instinctively wrapping around him like a koala… like even in your sleep, you could act all adorable and break his heart just that much more.  

He did his best to tread quietly and gently, laying you down onto the bed and only then pulling his softened cock out of you, finding his discarded boxers to put back on before joining you between the sheets.  

He knew you would be gone in the morning but he indulged himself in holding you tonight, breathing your scent and pressing your back against his chest.  He didn't want to fall asleep because he didn't want to miss a second of your body wrapped in his, but it was impossible not to with the soft pace of your breathing almost rocking him to sleep like a beautiful lullaby.

Where there was warmth and peace before, he awoke to cold and emptiness— both between his sheets and in himself.

It’s not like he really expected you to stay, and even if you had it wouldn’t mean that you would leave your husband for your best friend, that this would have ever been anything more than a glimpse of what could’ve been in another life or another universe.

He could still smell you, barely, and he buried his face in the sheets to take it all in before it faded away.  When it was gone, he pulled back only to find a wet patch of his tears there instead.

[olderthannetfic]

"1. A shitton of conflicted AFAB m/m shippers grow out of their "girls suck" problems when they finally realize that they are not girls and that this hatred of everything to do with women is coming from a place of being constantly triggered by how people perceive them." Yeah I'm not talking about them or you. And I'm literally one of these people, which is why I'm talking about this to begin with because I do believe it was legitimately harmful for me and is something I still struggle with today as an adult. I'd be stunned if I wasn't the only one.

Apparently I was too focused on making a casual tone so I wasn't explicit enough but who I'm talking about are people who identify as heterosexual and cisgender who use and used people who are NOT in the way that I'd previously mentioned - as tools for furthering their nonsense. A lot of these folks happen to self-identify as 'fujoshi' ime - hence, my ask. So thank you for answering that subject. However, I'm not putting words in your mouth, please don't put them in mine. I'm trying to have a genuine and respectful conversation with you, but I understand that being on the defensive on the regular in regards to this subject may make this a difficult one for you, so my apologies, and I'll stop. You have a good night and stay safe.

--

I assumed you were trying to operate in good faith, and I still assume that. You sound like it.

But these are still canned talking points coming from a massive anti-m/m shipper trend on tumblr in recent years. (There have always been anti-m/m shipper trends, but these specific talking points are of a relatively recent vintage.)

'Fujoshi' is just a word for female m/m shippers. It got popular in English in the mid 00s from what I saw and was initially used in Asian media fandoms like 'slasher' was in Western fandoms. Now, as 'slasher' (and indeed 'slash') gets less known, it's spreading to m/m shippers regardless of fandom type.

The idea that 'fujoshi' is mostly associated with cishet fans and specifically fetishizing, appropriating ones is a toxic myth spread by people who hate m/m shipping.

I too have side-eyed many a fellow shipper, but the reality is that we cannot know who is cishet, and cringe is a matter of opinion.

Can you be certain the maker of some crappy flash game in 2005 was a cishet woman? If she said she was, does she still say that now? This really sounds like extrapolating from a handful of examples.

I get that you feel harmed by the shitty stuff you found on the internet, and I guarantee you are not alone in that. No one grows up unscathed. There was other stuff just as toxic and damaging all over the place. The stuff you saw was what was being put out in the spaces you otherwise enjoyed being in. That means you're familiar with the failings of people one step removed from you, and that's normal. But when you point the finger at them--and only them--for a thing that was universal across other types of fandom you didn't enjoy and hang out in, that's not so great. What makes fanfic-writing women on the internet so uniquely guilty and not the reddit dudes who make most fandoms' subreddits unlivable for shippers or for queer fans?

This is a topic I feel strongly about, but I wouldn't say it's difficult for me. I'm not reacting strongly because I feel attacked. I'm reacting because you've come to me with the fandom equivalent of:

"But what about wellfare queens though?"

I understand that you are operating in good faith, but the people behind the spread of this concept are not. The rise in this discourse coincides with a major rise in radfem-lite shit in fandom in general. The ultimate purpose is to shame any AFAB for liking m/m content.

[lochnessies]

ok here’s a dissection of a post an anon sent me the link to and bc i have the worst time management possible and i completely forgot i had it lol so sorry anon here you go ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

I am constantly thinking about how Edelgard just doesn’t seem designed to appeal to cishet men.

i hate to be the one to break this news to you op but just because a character doesn’t show skin like charlotte fire emblem doesn’t mean she isn’t designed to pander to men. she’s very much designed to pander to the (majority straight male) player base with her ‘uwu i only trust you professor omg did u see that rat? pls don’t look at my painting of you uwu’.

then there’s the whole edelgard c support in japanese where byleth makes reference to having come to her room for ‘yobi’ which is

there’s also the scene where byleth can make an unsolicited comment about edelgard’s breast size. which is… uhh… gross.

edelgard also has cipher cards that go from slightly fanserviceie to full on suggestive

and also her breast armor that my sister relentlessly mocked lol

and here’s a chart from the 3h subreddit about gender/sexually in regards to edelgard and edeleth. it’s extremely straight male. op might have just overlooked this since they probably don’t go on reddit and stay on tumblr (which unlike reddit is mostly female and has a high lgbt demographic).

Like the joke is that Bleagles is the Gay House, but everything about her feels deliberately non-hetero.

i don’t like where this is going…

She’s dressed in sharp outfits covering her upper body, with proportions that don’t seem exaggerated.

so women who cover up must be lgbt because straight women are naturally more revealing? oh y i k e s

Her poise and the way she effortlessly flourishes her axe exhibits an air of coolness. While titties out =/= character of no substance, Edelgard being dressed more modestly suggests that she wasn’t designed with male-centred fanservice in mind.

“titties don’t equal no substance but here’s my post on how she has more substance because she doesn’t show titties” ok

And she still looks absolutely stunning in her more modest attire (like seriously, I haven’t felt the need to return to cosplay in years but I want to do her academy look so bad). 

yes she does. amazing design 10/10. i have a feeling this is the only part i’m going to agree with

Edelgard is intense. She does not mince her words and she is constantly evaluating you. Though she tries, she has a difficult time understanding her peers initially. Early on, she talks about how she would sacrifice herself and others in the name of some greater good. She is terrible at communicating with her peers. She has to be seen as infallible. Her heart has been hardened for years and she assumes she has to stay that way. She also assumes everyone mourns the same way she does - which is why she (kind of insensitively) insists you move on when Jeralt dies. Because to her, grief has to be channeled towards action, or else you’ll get lost in it. This attitude is demonstrated time and time again as she presses on. It can make her come off as cold and unfeeling - but look closer, and she’s anything but.

don’t really have anything to say at this part. it is pretty on the nose though i would slightly disagree with that last sentence a bit. i wouldn’t say she’s as i feeling as hubert is but all of her talks of the war boil down to how she feels and never her victims.

Her story is ultimately about her realizing that to achieve her goals, she needs to let people in and allow herself to want things like cakes and tea parties and lazy days in peace. 

????? what ????? her goals include imperialism, ethnic and religious targeting. her story is about having a set of beliefs and mowing down anybody who stands in her way. that has nothing to do with tea, friends, and lazy days. also am i supposed to be sad that she has to get up everyday and work? i do that and i didn’t start a war and only throw a pity party for myself

The game leaves the player guessing as to how involved the Flame Emperor was in each Part I event, makes you feel hurt by her betrayal, and leaves you with a choice: do you follow the orders of the woman who tried to make you a god without your consent, or a young girl with questionable morals about to throw the world into upheaval?

this isn’t an ideal situation but i think i’m going to stick with the woman who tried to make me a god since i’m not selfish and i know it’s not only my desires and life at stake here. plus the green hair slaps ngl

Choosing her of your own volition (not for completionist reasons) requires the basic ability to sympathize with a woman’s pain. It also requires the player to read beyond her unwavering will and dubious methods to get a sense of how deep that pain goes and how the theme of humanity relates to her differently in each route.

i’m not going to touch this since @nilsh13 made a post on it that i’ll link here. i agree with everything he said so to repeat it would be redundant.

The player must be able to see a young woman’s desperate resolve to change the world so it stops exploiting people and ruining lives. They must be able to accept the fact that women can make the same morally wrong and ambivalent decisions that complicated male characters get to make all the time and still be the one to root for.

literally the same reason i love rhea lol her goddess experiments are dubious at best but her reasons are the same you mentioned. i would say that i like this quality in edelgard too if her ending, while bloody, actually ended in a good outcome for fodlan.

This is not unique to LGBT+ people, but this population is likely to understand why Edelgard feels so strongly about why she has to change the system. 

i understand wanting to change a system, i really do. like edelgard, i’m an opinionated bisexual woman (who’s also physically disabled) so yeah i get it. and change can be good but it can also be terrible. even if the church was the boogeyman edelgard treats it as she still replaces it with her own shit regime. so it’s the same circus just with a new conductor.

I don’t think “Edelgard gets undue criticism because she’s a woman” captures the full picture. An important aspect of her treatment by certain parts of the fandom is that she’s a radical woman.

or maybe she does some pretty fucked up shit and it goes unacknowledged in her own route. and yeah she’s radical but in all the worst ways.

Her hatred of the Church and the Crest system resonates way harder with people who have been hurt by institutions that are deeply engrained in our society. 

and what about people who have been hurt by systems where their ‘merit’ didn’t measure up and they were left behind? what about people from nations that experienced imperialism?

Siding with her means siding against the Church - which, while different from real world religious institutions, still invokes language about “sin” and “punishment.

yeah the ‘sins’ and ‘punishments’ are used in relation to attempted murders which i think everybody can agree is a bad thing that needs to be condemned.

Choosing Edelgard will likely hit different if homophobic and transphobic Christians used that rhetoric against you.

it has literally nothing to do with ‘sins’ and ‘punishments’ in regards to being gay or trans. that’s you projecting. especially since the church has 2 canon gay characters and two coded ones.

like i can understand why having a church condemn you can be uncomfortable but i’m begging you to please look at the context of what’s happening.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that the reason F/F Edeleth is the more popular iteration of that ship because most people who would choose to S-support Edelgard are LGBT+ themselves. This is not a revelation. To anyone in the community, it’s fairly obvious. 

i was talking to nilish and he said

so yeah… while there is definitely sapphic femleth shippers out there, there’s still a whole lot of weird fetishizing going on from straight men about edelgard.

Crimson Flower was my first route. I went into the game knowing absolutely nothing. I played it during the last week of 2020 and hoo boy was it cathartic. 

i can tell. this wasn’t supposed to be a dig but it came out that way and i’m not taking it out.

I felt like I was living out a gay revolution power fantasy, where I could truly change systems of oppression while fighting alongside a group of troubled students I’d shaped the lives of.

so a gay revolution power fantasy (cringe) goes hand in hand with imperialism and installing a dictatorship? also the war had nothing to do with sexuality.

Through your unwavering support, Edelgard learns that she needs to be human, that she must listen to her friends, and that she’s allowed to enjoy the world she’s creating.

edelgard gets to learn how to be human all while hunting those who don’t. and she doesn’t listen fo her friends. she doesn’t even trust them. she’s willing to talk to byleth but keep the people who’s been by her side for five years in the dark about everything. and yeah she gets to enjoy her new words since she’s on top. hate to be a commoner under her rule after she burned down my village in her war.

I love this character so much.

clearly. and i honestly don’t care if somebody likes her. i do as well even if my sometimes scathing words can make it seem otherwise.

It has been six months since I first played and I am still analyzing her,

me too. please help me escape i’m losing my mind

because there’s so much depth. Yet so many people fail to see that depth and dismiss her as evil,

i mean, she does some fucked up shit that goes beyond any of the less than desirable actions of the other main characters and does an extremely poor job in trying to make herself seem innocent. i personally don’t think she’s pure evil but i completely understand where the people who say she is are coming from.

because they never had the will to understand complicated women in the first place. 

that’s big talk from somebody who implies that a gay pope is comparable to homophobic and transphobic irl religions and that leads an oppressive regime all because she uses the vague terms of sin and punishments that you have to gay power fantasy your way out of

[steeleyespan]

the transmisandry stuff is insane to me. hink it's this thing i notice all the time were folk dont actually understand in any way how oppression actually works. so they just see that trans woman have a word for the specifc institutional n societal discrimination etc they face so that means trans guys need one an aw....despite the fact theres no observable instances of transmisandry as far as i can see its all misdirected misogyny or transphobia and sometimes homophobia and probably various other things that arny misandry cos...misandry dont real

this is personal experience and i am stealth and pass so its different to many ppls experience but all thr shite i used to get abt my appearance (cos i was viewed as cis girl) and general treatment frm ppl just stopped cos they saw me as (an albeit feminine or younger) guy. and obviously i still am somewhat gnc (esp for where i live) but i faced just as much ignorance fae folk. specifically experienced just as much problems using gendered bathrooms before i started transitioning and was read as a masc gnc lassie. also as a trans guy av had folk misgender or question or stare at me in the bathroom but ive never had someone imply i was in there to abuse or assault someone or to fulfil my fetish or whatever thr fuck cos that's specifically a problem experienced by trans women because its transmisogyny.

like what even are the major issues that SPECIFICALLY only trans men face....ig like lack of access to reproductive healthcare n stuff but thats also something trans women struggle with and also again i think related to misogyny cos some healthcare that trans guys need access to is mostly used by women and thats partly why its bad underesearched underfunded being taken away etc and why theres a cultural stigma and ignorance surrounding it. and that obviously then effects trans women too. so it's made worse because of transphobia but its not making an instance of misandry worse nd isny caused by institutional misandry present in the healthcare system....

and the rest of the issues are legit like. women are mean about men online. trans women are mean about trans men online. theres more trans women in tv shows than trans men. and anything else is just transphobia that all trans folk experience as well.

ultimately theres like. no need for this to be a term just say transphobia. theres no societal institutional cultural discrimination or oppression that effects only trans guys exclusively thats why it's no a thing and disny need a word. Another one of this things that if ppl were being normal and just wanting to improve the lives of trans ppl but specifically spoke about the issues trans men face cos idk thats their lived experience and were incorrectly and unnecessarily using the term transmisandry, ad be like alright thats a wee bit stupid but its no the end of the world (i swear it used to be slightly mair like that). But now theyre no doing that theyre just like redpilled incels now but instead of moaning about women in general they moan about trans women specificly and make brave statements such as Friendly reminder its valid for blokes to drink pints of beer and watch the fitbaw and be angry.

its hilarious it's just them being misogynist proving therefore that misogyny is real and misandry isny and proving trans men arent immune to being misogynist or exempt fron the privileges of being a guy. Unreal they legit got mad at a rando posts online about men being fail and cringe. Most reddit-coded community on this site

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

BFCD Reviews by Nesha: Final Space, Season 3

Everybody that know me know that I’m high class #Quillective trash and my main thoughts and feelings go out to Quinn Ergon and Gary Goodspeed - precious Gemini gems, and of course the BABIES: Little Cato, Ash and Fox #NeshaLuhDaKids I had some attachment to Avocato once upon a time, but that n***a got on my LAST nerves this season, so we currently at “Do you, Boo” status by the end of S3, and eventually, yes, I’ma get to why that is. 

Disclaimer for somebody who stumbled across this post because of the fandom tags - I am an independent partaker of this content, not “part of the fandom,” and my audience in particular is NOT for everybody. SO: If you may have been criticized in the past for casual racism, tone deafness to Black women’s concerns or accused of misogynoir or antiblackness, leave now. 

If you don’t like cussing, AAVE, general ratchetness and mean lesbian energy, you too might wanna go. A bitch can be eloquent, but I type like I talk, at times, so it is what it is and I don’t curate for kids, dudes, or nonblacks. That’s just what that is.

I wanna start with Ash Graven. This season is about Ash more than anybody else, despite the fact that there was a lot of emphasis on Avocato’s toxic ass man pain and growth in Quinn and Gary’s relationship, ULTIMATELY, nobody in the crew did more coming into fruition as Ash did, and I have a lot to say about her, because I have a lot of feelings.

♡ Ash Graven

1. Ash is a kid. Lol. Everybody got very confused because of the unnecessary transformation that Invictus gave her. Ash did not “grow up,” her body was altered. That’s a fuckin kid in a woman’s body. A kid who has previously been living with survivor’s guilt, parental abuse/neglect/exploitation, chronic trauma, and a disastrous superpower that most people could not be trusted to carry. She’s a child having a coming of age moment in this season that is mostly molded in manipulation. If you hate on Ash, go fuck yourself. ESPECIALLY if I’ve caught you stanning other characters who have been shit characters, in this fandom or not. Ash was dealt a shit hand and nobody had her back but her brothers, and she’s done what she could and thought was best to care for them. Anybody that missed that - just don’t have kids, K.

2. Ash has no parental guidance. As far as she knows, the only adults who have ever had her back are dead and the ones that she’s stuck with now, she GAVE a chance to try to trust them. She gave Quinn a chance to try to see some of Nightfall (the only adult that we’ve seen not exploit her) in her. She gave Gary a chance by choosing him over Clarence, when she had to make a choice. She even gave Clarence’s ass another chance - with which he responded by dying to not fail her. Now, she has Gary, who just a few days or weeks ago, idek, forced her to try to summon her powers while she was both injured and also upset over having to leave her brother behind - TO SAVE HIS GIRLFRIEND! And she got snatched away in the process and left behind with the enemy, to be mentally assaulted and returned changed, only to have them not trust her.

I love Quinn too. I love her dearly. But the facts were that she was dying and having an episode that nobody could really help with, and Gary didn’t take the time or consideration to think about the stress that he was putting on Ash by putting her in the position to make her feel like she needed to save Quinn for him. Whether or not she was the only one who could, that is a lot to put on a child, and not only did he do it, but he didn’t even seem to think that hard about it whenever he then left her ass. Sure, he was glad when she was returned, but that was a fucked up situation that yet another adult put her into, and the first thing that he should have wanted to do when seeing her was to apologize and try to make it right. It was a huge miscalculation to treat her as a potential enemy that he and Avocato needed to vet. EVEN IF that’s what she was to them, both of them should have had the sense to assess while still treating her as the kid that they supposedly knew.

3. Most of her trauma has been recent and continuous. She looked up to Nightfall, watched her die, and had a meltdown. The events from Season 2 (with Clarence almost killing Fox and leaving him to die, her leaving his side to help out, seeing that Sheryl was treacherous to her own son, losing Nightfall), and the events that are taking place in Season 3 are only in the span of a few months.

They were only stranded for a month whenever we see them surviving together. That girl has had more happen to her to hurt her than to help her and nobody around her BUT Little Cato has been sensitive to that. And they are all fucking adults.

These things being noted - changing Ash’s design was the absolute worse fucking thing. Aging a girl up to make the bad things that follow more palatable is what that seems to be. Ash is still a kid. And THEN, they allegedly made her a queer kid. I say allegedly, because that “reveal” was so poorly done and subtle and weak that I, an almost 40 year old queer, didn’t realize that that’s what they meant whenever they said that they were gonna reveal somebody as a character who is part of the LGBT community.

So... FS production just gon’ decide not only to transform her body into that of a woman, when her mind is still full on traumatized child and hormonal teenager, but also, she likes girls, and they didn’t even do it in a cohesive way that added to the story. They threw it in, like, “BTW, she likes girls, and also, she’s full grown now.” then immediately went for the “Villain” lever, and bitches just ate that shit up. Fuck y’all, forreal. 

& Fox

He didn’t deserve that shit. And, I know a lot of people felt that he was pointless and boring, but his ass was sweet and caring and searching for love and acceptance. As a background character, I liked him. But, he was literally just fodder for Ash’s downfall, which was unfair and problematic, considering that his ass is definitely Black coded. Don’t play. He was voiced by a Black man, spoke with a blaccent, and definitely would be read as Black if you wasn’t looking at him and seeing an alien. They gave him a sacrificial negro trope, the big friendly negro that can kill you but loves everybody trope, and they used his death to just push some narrative forward to set up the one verified queer character as a villain. They got they ass in a vehicle and rolled right over another Black character, and another queer character. Chile...

 ♡ Little Cato!!!

My precious have not been getting some good for too long, and I have had it. He’s not focused on so much this season as he is in the background of other people’s stories, but a very important takeaway is and will always be that Little Cato, aside from Fox, really was the only one here who consistently treated her like she mattered, so it made a lot of sense that he could be the catalyst for her finally having ENOUGH with these people.

I really wish that he could have found out the truth about his past from Avocato, because that’s really who OWED him that truth, but Ash did the thing that I’d expect and told him, to be honest with him. She even told him that Avocato wanted to tell him and that she took that right away from him, because she didn’t believe he deserved it, and I’m respecting her for that, too. I wish she could see how much it hurt Little Cato for her to try to take him away from his home. 

Little Cato has lived before, for a while, and he’s not mature enough to behave as a man, but he at least has a loving foundation to draw from, and having had that support, this is more of his home than it is Ash’s. He doesn’t know how to explain that to her, and she doesn’t know how to understand that for him. Just a tragic situation for two kids with a lot of problems.

♡ Quinn Ergon & Gary Goodspeed

Quinnary notes that might not be featured in the BFCD Reviews by Nesha:  (Quinn Ergon/Nightfall x Gary Goodspeed) rundown - 

I've had two favorite parts of this season so far and they're very mediocre things that you wouldn't think would be like my favorite part but they are. One of them was that the first thing Gary does when she wakes up is to ask her about her sister (someone obviously very important to her who he's previously promised to allow to let live through Quinn's memory and says he wants to hear about her when he's trying to keep Quinn from dying). Because... He really did care and wasn't just saying something to keep her.

Quinn's mother fucked her up in a way that is so frustrating because Black mamas really will traumatize you about their younger kids. That shit hurt. You showed your daughter dead bodies to make her think about that in the event that your other daughter might be in battle? Bitch wtf

Whenever we say that Black girls are programmed to put everybody ahead of us, that's unfortunately not just including Society, it's in households too. And Quinn comes from this place where that is her reality... Then she meets Gary and he doesn't even register for her as anything special. He doesn't appear impressive or incredible in any way... But he (admittedly) weirdly locks on to her and shares himself - thinking that he's showing himself to her, and ultimately he DOES. And he wants to see her too, beyond all this, who she is, at her most humane. He wants to know about her sister. About someone who mattered to her enough to have the helm of her trauma when she was out of touch with reality. Very soft. Very sweet.

The other was when they were talking about how they met and stuff and Gary absolutely cringed thinking about how corny he was when he approached this woman. A lot of dudes never do that. The complaint of earlier seasons that Gary was overbearing, obsessive and creepy , if you missed the fact that he has terrible abandonment issues from his father’s death and his mother’s rejection, here we have him, in his adult state, looking back at the way he was and being embarrassed about it, and that’s growth!

A close third is whenever at the beginning of the Season he says "Quinn it's been a month eventually you have to open up to me about what you've been through" and she says "I will in time" and he respects it but he reiterates that he's there whenever she needs him. I don't think that people realize how revolutionary that kind of statement is especially for a character like Quinn to hear - who has always felt like she had to take charge, had to take the lead, had to make the sacrifice.

Even when she realized that she was dying, she didn't want to burden him with the information. Not even like ‘a thing that she knew if that could help prevent it and she didn't want him to have to go after it,’ but... she didn't even want him to have to deal with knowing about it!

Maybe she thought that she would just drop, maybe she didn't realize that he was going to have to see her in that condition. And then once she realized that he was going to have to see her in that condition one of the first things she says is "I should have told you." Girl is on her deathbed wishing she had done it differently, for Gary's benefit.

I saw somebody on Twitter tried to come for her about not going to Gary after he killed Fox (you know, shortly after her surgery to save her from the very brink of death, and listen... Quinn comes to see about Gary when she can. She’s done it several times. In fact, I’ma make a whole POST about Quinn and Gary moments SPECIFICALLY to point out to haters in the main tag - where they got Quinn Ergon, and by extension, me, FUCKED UP.

Stop Playing in Quinn Face

HI! HELLO. ACTUALLY MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS SEASON IS THAT QUINN AND GARY JUST FUCKED. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANKS. OK. Back 2 bidness

See.. after Gary and Quinn got over the humps of Quinn’s Final Space poisoning... everyone got it... nobody told her until Avocato was mad and told her during a lash out, and let me say something about Avocato’s fucking audacity this season... 

♡ Avocato (Note: His name is A-V-O-C-A-T-O. Some of y’all be tryna stan and y’all can’t even spell his name.)

I done seent Avacata, Avocata... That’s not that dude name. Be writing whole ass expositions about some other Ventrexian n*gga. Hope this helps:

AVOCATO. Listen, boy. YOU decided to be a traitor to your people and your king and queen. YOU decided to dedicate your cause to the Lord Commander and lied to your son his entire life about killing his parents, raising him, and never talking to him about it.

Yet and STILL - whenever you had the chance to finally tell him, you ain’t do the shit. Lord Commander gave you the perfect ass opportunity - WHEN IT CAME UP, and even then, with that boy looking you dead in the face and being glad that now he knows everything... you ain’t Ventrexian man up.

Then, whenever you were supposed to be checking on Gary after his traumatic murder fight with Fox and Invictus, you turned it around and literally made it about you. attacking him in the process and only after a physical fight did you apologize. (And y’all still didn’t get back to what had happened to Gary, which was no real fault of his own). 

Fast forward to after you willingly agreed to stay behind and fight and y’all lost. Now, it was Quinn’s turn to be the center of your blame and you lashed out at her because everybody is dying, despite the fact that y’all agreed to stay behind and fight, nobody even told her that y’all were sick, AND you still wasn’t 100 with Little Cato. 

You just had a lot of mothafuckin audacity this season, Avocato, and I personally was not here for the shit. Even when Ash blasted yo ass, your main thought was to threaten to kill her if she took Little Cato, instead of assuring her that despite what you’ve done, Little Cato was safe with you. No, she wouldn’t have listened to you. But, the words you chose tell us about who you are and how you are. You a war mongering killer that don’t ever take responsibility for his shit, and even in those brief moments that you do, its always somebody else’s problem. 

I’da thunk that LC getting snatched away would be humbling for you, but I guess you were chosen by the writers for minimal growth. Bye, Avocato. Witcha bitch ass. We is not cool right now, but you do you. Hope you find some growth up there in ya ass, where ya head been. 😁 Can’t believe I mourned yo ass. You coulda stayed dead as hell.

FINALE NOTES:

OK BITCH OK THIS FINALE WAS HYPE!

Let me pull it up so that I can liveblog it for the shit that I need to conclude this journey. 

We start out after Ash done took Little Cato and burnt off. Gary and AVOCATO done said they finna go get they son. Chile, I cannot handle Biskit voice. I like that lil’ dude but ya voice, Mane. I can’t with it. 

OK OK OK... Whenever Quinn comes up to Gary to talk to him and say potential goodbyes, she look like she wanna say some and that makes me think about whenever she looked like she wanted to say something in season 1 and didn’t. Quinn as grown a lot in her feelings for Gary, but she still has that hard time with talking about her feelings, but I love that you can see them in her face.

Chile... these folk was kinda taking they time gettin started, huh? Knuckas, do y’all remember that everybody finna die of FS poisoning? Lol. Also... why didn’t they start hallucinating and shit? I guess its not until it covers ya face? 

NIGHTFALL. 😥 I love you, Sis. I miss you. But, “Because I’m you and WE think of everything...” YES. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT! EVERYBODY EXPECTS QUINN TO THINK OF EVERYTHING AND WHENEVER THEY DON’T THINK OF THE THINGS, SHE GETS BLAMED FOR MAKING THE TOUGH DECISIONS THAT NOBODY ELSE COULD EVEN MAKE. Underappreciated, really. And people still mark Nightfall as a villain, despite the fact that she not only sacrificed herself, but also came specifically to help another Gary. Sidenote - Nightfall didn’t actually pursuit Quinn’s Gary until Quinn was trapped in Final Space and she thought she got a signal from him. So, I’m still salty AF that she been labelled as a villain just because people don’t like her, when her actions have all been to try to help. Here is no difference. She thought of the things that she didn’t think a younger version of her would think of, and left it for Quinn to find. Nightfall be on RNS, and most of y’all didn’t deserve her.

Quinn’s identity crisis is so sad, but I liked that Nightfall EVEN thought about that. And Sheryl... you kinda starting to grow on me. I hate to give shitty mothers who find compassion in old chance a try, but she do seem to really be giving it a go. 

Ash is so fucked up that she rushes right into the devil’s arms. This reminds me of when trafficking victims go back to their abusers because they don’t have the resources to adjust in the system. 😪 She REALLY believes what she’s saying. She really feels like Little Cato is safer with Invictus with the Team Squad. That’s sad as fuck, bruh. 

THE. ACTING. AND. ARTWORK. IN. THIS. CONFRONTATION. SCENE.

Avocato... I’m proud of you for FINALLY taking responsibility ad opening up about it. Little Cato’s reaction is precisely how kids in the system are, as well. They wanna be at home with their parents, no matter who their parents are or what they’ve done. and Avocato meant what he said and did what I referred to earlier as “Ventraxian man up.”

“I’m sorry we failed you,” from Gary was so important. Because, they technically did fail her. Had Ash seen the same amount of love from Gary as she’s seen him give to others, she might have been more receptive to the truth and less susceptible to lies. But, as she had just said earlier, it was too late for kind words. She’s currently beyond accepting them from him. For a brief moment, it breaks through, but without that ability to know love from an adult properly, she can’t accept that apology right now.

H.U.E. with his big robot, Lord Commander...EYE. There’s so much happening right now bitch processing has left the room girl. Biskit did so damn much this episode. And it was good to see everybody on the team have a moment to help things, instead of like one person having to handle the bulk of things. 

Quinn’s begging voice... its such a contrast from whenever she sent out the SOS in season 1 and was afraid and angry. Like... the desperation here shows her softness. 

Ash’s RAGE Bitch...

Gary’s “I love you...” She looked so happy! And then she just sat with it. I feel like she definitely loves him too, but she doesn’t communicate that way. But, her FACE. She was just... did she think that he didn’t before, or was she just speechless because she didn’t expect to hear it? Because, we gotta be real... Sis probably has not ever heard those words from anybody before. And that first time, when it’s really there is a DOOZIE. She had an abusive mother, a seemingly jealous or competitive sister, and we saw how nobody in the Infinity Guard respected her ass when she was serving them the real. I think this is the first time she’s been in love or felt it and when Gary said it, she had to collect herself. The way she ran to him and jumped into his arms??? SHIPPING CRACK. And Mooncake was a part of their hug too. I have a lot of feelings about this dynamic since Quinn and Mooncake are the only characters that we’ve seen Gary have these “love at first sight” reactions to and Mooncake is the first character that I recall Quinn being nice to in S1. 

So.. my heart was very full when they ripped it from my chest moments later. Mooncake has been watching Team Squad members be self sacrificing for a little while now, and he loves his family and Gary so much that he rushes straight towards danger. (Sure, I don’t think that he estimated how powerful Ash could be at this moment), but he had to at least consider that he might be caught or left behind.

Bitch, Ash is GONE. She said, “Fuck all y’all!” Not knowing whether or not Mooncake is destroyed makes it very hard for me to know how much I can stand this, but I also want to hope that he is gonna survive. Quinn having to make the decision to lightfold is hella sad, but even though Gary is destroyed, he has to know that this is exactly how Ash must’ve felt whenever he had to make the call to leave Fox behind. She hated to do that to Gary. She even seemed more regretful about it than Gary did whenever he had to leave Fox and when he left Ash. Sure, its because she loves him more than he loved Fox and Ash, but its a terrible position to be in to have to hurt somebody you love like that. On the other hand, they gave her hella shit for them not escaping when could have the first time, so naturally, she was going to make this decision. 

It very much sucks that Invictus is free and my brain can’t eeem FATHOM what that means for everything and everybody, but the Final Space poisoning left the Team Squad’s system, so maybe there is a rejuvenation of some sort in Invictus’ power? Or does Final Space poisoning leave your system as soon as you leave Final Space? I don’t think that was clarified. 

Anyways, I still don’t hate Ash. Y’all can say whatever about it, but I see sad white boys get forgiven all day every day on this site, and I’m upset, but I’m not letting my baby go. I’m not cheering her on, but unless she dies, I’m gonna hope for the best for her, like I said here. 

DAMN this season was some shit. Ionknow if I’m emotionally capable of watching another season of Final Space in progress. If they make it back for another season, I will most likely just wait until the end to dive in and let them shock my senses all at once instead of on a weekly goddamn basis, because GODDAMN GODDAMN GODDDAMN!

@andromidagalaxie @daintyurbanprincess @shslargue @space-finally​  The Quinnary Moments Masterlist probably won’t be ready by Quinn’s birthday, since her birthday is the day before Juneteenth, but I’ve started on a little fic that I might have the first installment of posted by then. We shall see. 

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Here is my JOURNEY during my first watch of the first two seasons of the show. (I watched Season 3 in progress and waited until it was over to write up this review) and my probably incoherent tag of whenever I do me a lil’ liveblogging: Nesha Watches Final Space, and here is my review on Quinnary: BFCD Reviews by Nesha: (Quinn Ergon/Nightfall x Gary Goodspeed) FINAL SPACE