Tumgik
#honestly more of my fear of being accused of leading people on. or making people feel rejected.
ask-shane · 5 months
Text
PSA
hi it's mod dawn here. i need to address something. i wrote this out in the tags on one post but i'll reiterate. when it comes to any of my ask/roleplay blogs, i CANNOT uphold established romantic relationships with anyone in character. this means the characters cannot say yes to being your s/o (dating or married). flirting is fine. it can be funny and sweet to interact like that. but i have to set the boundary there.
when the characters are 'reciprocating' your flirting, it is not to give false hope, nor is it supposed to be something sad. it's not a shane thing, it's a ME thing. there is a real person behind this. i do not feel comfortable roleplaying a romantic relationship, and i apologize if that makes people feel like the character is leading anyone on. it isn't my intention. if this boundary does not sit well with you, you are free to unfollow me. all that to say, please don't take the blog(s) too seriously. i just feel the need to make this clear due to some lingering concerns lately. thank you for listening.
81 notes · View notes
chiisana-sukima · 16 days
Note
Hello, what do you think about the take, and what Dean says in that one episode, that Sam is not like John than Dean?
Hi, Nonny! Thanks for the ask!
I'm guessing the episode you mean is 04x19 Jump the Shark, where Dean says Sam is more like John than he himself (Dean) ever was. If not, my apologies for misinterpreting, and I hope this is interesting anyway.
Imo accusations in spn of someone being like John are mainly about four things: anger, stubbornness, the desire for revenge, and child endangerment. And about those, my main thought is this:
Tumblr media
image source
I do think early spn makes comparisons between John and Sam that are intended to represent character flaws Sam needs to struggle against and overcome. Sam is sometimes angry, he's often very stubborn, and there are multiple seasons where he's driven in part by desire for revenge. For better or worse though, I don't find the comparison very compelling; mainly because anger, stubbornness, and desire for revenge are all morally neutral. The only actual bastard in that combo up above is the child endangerment, which isn't really relevant to early seasons Sam.
Anger, and even hate, don't actually lead to the dark side of the Force; maladaptive responses to emotions do. Whether one wants to go to Blackwater Ridge like Dad said to practice one's vigilante serial killing profession or search for Jessica's murderer to do the same is not the compelling ethical problem spn makes it out to be. Either option results in killing (people-like-)monsters that are killing people while being too busy to kill other (people-like-)monsters that are killing other people. And everyone who's dead at the end of the day is equally dead regardless of whether one's motive was "pure" (saving people) or "stained" (revenge).
Tumblr media
To give spn what credit it's due, s4, where this comparison from Dean occurs, *is* the closest Sam ever comes to having anger and desire for revenge drive him into maladaptive and harmful behavior. Especially in the flashback scenes to when Dean was in Hell, Sam is at least having a really rough time of it, even if he still honestly seems to not be harming anyone (more than usual for a hunter) but himself.
Any moral dimension is significantly undercut by the fact that Sam's kill count in s4 is not especially high (Sam 9/Dean 10), as well as by the fact that the behavior Dean doesn't approve of is saving possessed hosts instead of offing them indiscriminately as collateral damage to get at the demons inhabiting them.
And this quote itself is especially weirdly vibes-over-substance in that Dean is just disillusioned with Sam because Sam is disillusioned with life. There is no actual moral element to discuss. Adam was long dead before they got there. Sam is technically on the correct end of the argument: being left in the dark--the path Dean was advocating throughout the episode, and that he's bitter in this speech that Sam disagreed with him on--did possibly factor into getting Adam and his mom killed. Certainly Sam disagreeing with Dean in the present did not. But honestly, who cares either way? None of it is relevant now. Dead is dead, and neither Sam nor Dean had anything to do with it or has anything to be ashamed of.
Which brings me to the one thing the person who did have something to do with it actually should have been ashamed of: John treated all his kids badly. Whether he was motivated by anger and a desire for revenge or by fear for their safety or the side effects of alcoholism or not being able to keep it in his pants or whatever else is really only minimally relevant in terms of how much harm his behavior caused them.
And while I'm not a huge fan of the "Dean is Sam's parent" reading of spn, there's no doubt that because of John's neglect and parentification of Dean, Dean often feels like he was functionally Sam's parent. Which is fine! Feelings are neutral! But he also conducts his half of their relationship from within that paradigm; which is not great in the show's present because Sam is an adult.
And given all that, lets get back to Dean's "you were more like him than I'll ever be". Who, by the end of the season, is endangering their "child" here? Who, in Levee, puts their own needs and the needs of the hunt above the life of the person they (feel they) raised? Who says "You walk out that door, don't you ever come back"? And how likely do we all think it is that the writers didn't do that on purpose?
32 notes · View notes
strawberryamanita · 2 months
Text
Okay, so... hoo boy.
I try to acknowledge every time I make a political post that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I'm one irrelevant person, I'm not a political spearhead nor do I want to be one, I haven't been able to sway anyone about anything, yadda yadda blah blah blah. If this post gets completely overlooked, so be it. If I get verbally trampled-on by people who don't agree with me, so be it.
But while everyone else is causing a flood of coins on the floor, I'll throw my own 2 cents in.
I think what would be helpful right now -- just in this moment, for the short-term -- is getting through these feelings of worry and despair and panic that I see many posts on my feed announcing. The facts are in front of us: there was an assassination attempt, it failed, and that's worrying because it's gonna embolden the Right even further than they've already been lately. That's completely reasonable to be upset about, it's not irrational to see the danger this will put us in on the streets on the days leading up to the election.
At the same time, there ARE, believe it or not, some positive facts that are having an impact on your life right now. Trump had to go the hospital. He could possibly have a heart-attack. He could possibly go septic. He could possibly be assigned a medical professional that is brave enough to kill him. There was a person brave enough earlier today to show him and his following that enough people in the world hate him to want him dead. Social media being flooded with cheers that he was injured and laments that it didn't kill him is further proof to said willfully ignorant following that they are in the minority. Even if more US voters are enthusiastic about Trump as I type this, most of the world wants him obliterated, and that should be something to hang onto. So much of this is about ego and confidence of the Right. It's not in our best interest to let them think they have a leg up on us.
And the biggest piece of good news is, the US presidential election didn't happen yet! That wasn't the last stand right there, that wasn't the ballot count or the televised verdict. "Surviving" a non-lethal shot that didn't hit any important organs or arteries doesn't mean you automatically win an election. That didn't push an Eject button on Biden's seat to launch him out of the White House or anything like that.
Trump is not invincible. He is not immortal. He is not unkillable. And just because his cult of followers want to canonize him (though they wanted to do that before he was even elected the first time), that doesn't mean WE are obligated to throw in the towel and hang our heads and lick their heels. If it's cathartic or it's helping you de-stress, then by all means cry all you need to -- but we unfortunately can't afford to let this sink us into a collective depression.
He didn't win an election that hasn't happened yet. I promise you this. Look on ecosia.org if you need proof of who is in-office, since they don't use AI(currently).
And no, none of this is to downplay anything. I'm not living in a lie. I promise you, I've been making myself physically ill from the horrors of the world I've been exposed to, day after day, non-stop, on this fucking website. If exposing myself to the bottomless abyss of human evil actually desensitized me and helped me be less fearful, it would've worked by now, but all it does is exhaust me.
It honestly oftentimes makes me actively suicidal -- and I know for a fact I'm not the only one, especially after today, or when Trump was granted legal immunity, or any of these other awful past days. But if I killed myself before I did everything I could to keep this sinking ship of a country afloat just a little longer, that wouldn't be responsible of me.
So, if you're still reading, and not already typing out some response accusing me of things I already tried to tell you I'm not doing before you even finish reading...
Now is the time to practice being brave.
Look at the facts. Don't let yourself spiral from doomscrolling. Cry when you need to, and then keep going. Vote in every local election you can, attend protests and rallies, spread information from trustworthy sources to every social media handle you have -- and for God's sake, find something to keep you hopeful. Escapism is a survival tool: as long as you aren't using it to avoid reality, it doesn't have to be eliminated from your life. You will feel stronger if you let yourself recharge with moments of happiness, I guarantee this.
If you're too suicidal to keep going for yourself, keep going for someone else. It can be someone in your immediate life, it can be a stranger suffering overseas, it can be a child who hasn't been born yet that will see a future built on top of our present. Whatever it takes to keep you from giving up, put it to the front of your mind. Link arms with your Leftist siblings, and then make a habit of it. We cannot keep collapsing from the inside from the smallest of inconveniences, it helps literally none of us.
It's not over until they ring that bell. We have 3 and a half months, don't lose speed now.
I believe in you.
25 notes · View notes
kepnerandavery · 3 months
Note
Yea I honestly don't care at this point, it's just annoying to me that these folk who claim Michael is horrible, and how much they hate his guts, keep on using his tags, it's like they wanna force feed us this new Michaela version of him claiming that she's soooo much better than he ever was, and if we don't like it then we're all most definitely staring, homophobic white women, who are bitter that we can't use Francesca/Michael as our self-interests. (Newsflash I'm a woc who's been bullied for being a woc, I have black friends and trans friends all of whom I love dearly, and would bitch slap anyone who's disrespectful towards them. Also the Irony that this horrible male character is the one who provided the blueprints for their beloved Michaela.
I actually hate Bridgerton from season 2 because of how dirty they did Kate, with making it look like she stole her sisters man or smth. I'm a fan of Polin too but I hate season 3 because with the amount of pointless subplots, they don't get enough focus as as main leads, and honestly Polin spent more time arguing and being mad than in love which again I hate. The Michael getting gender bent part is just the breaking point for me, because now this show is officially not an adaptation, they have zero respect for source material and are basically making the show into a cheep wattpad fanfic version of everything it was.
Exactly! How are we supposed to be fine with it when most of us have waited years to see him on screen? I can understand the new fandom's pov, because Bridgerton does lack representation and some people are happy to see it in somewhere, and might feel fear that the backlash that this choice has gotten would make the creators undo it, but that's not our fandom's fault is it? And who even knows if Fran will get a season? This is most likely a way for the writers to pacify people who have been upset about the lack of inclusivity in the show. If they really cared about it, there would already have been lgbtq main characters from the starting point in season one. Why does one fandom have to suffer for the sake of another? Why couldn't we all get what we wanted? Why didn't they announce this before season three was released so we could have known this was coming and not have gotten our hopes up about seeing Michael once John showed up? (cause which fandom wants to be surprised and mocked like this?) Why does Fran now suddenly seem like she would emotionally cheat on John? Why is her character so wishy-washy? Honestly, the questions don't end.
And yes, I agree about the whole self insert accusations too. I respect the lgbtq community, and see the value of representation of it in media, and commend it when it is done right, but that doesn't mean I'm not sad that Michael was used by the writers of this show.
I too hate season two for how horribly kanthony was written. What was supposed to be an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers story was reduced to a silly love triangle that took focus away from the main characters' journey and past trauma (mainly Kate's). Polin are the writers' favourite and therefore the best treated ship, but yes, I didn't like how the writing of them lacked depth in part two of season three. And don't even get me started on the whitewashing of Portia.
Yeah, I'm done with this show too. It's just taking me some time to come to terms with it especially when I see people attack the franchael fandom and one of my favourite fictional characters with vile accusations and sadistic language. Shondaland is known to ruin good things so it's really our fault for continuing to watch this show for this long tbh.
9 notes · View notes
thegamingcatmom · 23 days
Note
A thing that hasn't left my mind for a bit. Hear me out.. MC Is a witch.
Now not Like some scarlet witch type witch, but a person who like sacrifices things 😅
I truly don't know I just have the idea of kate being all smug asking about what MC can do and MC just looks at her like "bring me a *something dead*" Kate believes it's bullshit untill MC does her thing and next thing you know they get a lot of money randomly. (Omg add to MC actually being like Salem witch trials old😭😭)
BUUUT if we wanna go the way of her actually having powers I was thinking of Morgana Pendragon! Katie Mcgrath my love, did an amazing job as Morgana. (Sorry had to show some love)
Excuse my rambling yet again! I honestly just was thinking of MC with the Feral sisters but she's a witch. Perhaps she's actually a lot stronger than the sisters and she thinks it's amusing?
-💙
Hellaw frosty!
Actually-
That has crossed my mind as well. Like, before I started on the first chapter I was contemplating having MC not be human because I was like "What makes her special? Why would the Denalis fall head over heels for her? How does one manage to charm an entire family of vampires?"
It was certainly tempting because I´m absolutely digging that concept of the Denalis being all smug and cocky, believing MC to be yet another mouse they can play with before going in for the final blow. Only for MC to...play along. Play the part of the innocent, because her appearance wouldn´t lead anyone to believe otherwise. To the public eye, she´s just an ordinary woman. A mortal.
The Denalis entertain her, so she´s willing to see where this goes.
...For now.
On the inside, however?
Tumblr media
ANYWAY-
I ultimately decided against it because it just didn´t fit with what I had in mind. I´m a sucker for Beauty & The Beast type of stuff. Yknow, being held somewhere against your will by something that could snuff out your existence in the blink of an eye, but it decides not to because, for some strange reason, it seems to have a soft spot for you. Everyone else can f off though, no mercy.
It also helps that the place is actually quite nice to look at. Despite its rather...peculiar inhabitants.
Sooo yeah, I needed MC to be your ordinary human girl, facing off against forces that could wipe out entire armies in a matter of seconds. Because, in my books, there´s nothing sexier than having those forces at your beck and call, absolutely smitten with you, willing to kill for you, while you´re just there like-
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
(The last one is so MC & Kate yall. Kitty Kat, you hopeless case. 😭)
ANYWAY-
I gotta admit, the money thing has me a bit confused. Is that a thing? Like, making a sacrifice and getting a shit ton of money in return? Does that happen in any tv show or movie? Honestly curious cause I very rarely watch anything anymore. I´ve become more of a gamer and writer over the past couple of years. 😅
I do know Morgana Pendragon, but I haven´t actually seen her in anything cause *points to the aforementioned*. But I know a lot of ppl got the hots for her. I don´t blame them, lmao.
Okay so, I had to google Salem Witch Trials (don´t judge me) and-
LISTEN-
I love love love history so ofc we gotta make a quick lil smt, yes? Yes:
.
Imagine MC (a witch) living in Salem Village, the place where the accusations of witchcraft began. Those accusations were false, obviously, but it made blending in much more difficult for her kind. People have become wary, paranoid, forcing MC to a life in the shadows. She watched from afar as men and women alike - some of them close friends - were brought to trial. Some of them never returned home.
To this day, MC is plagued by feelings of guilt for merely watching as good men and women were executed in the name of "justice". She should have done something, could have done something. She has that power. But her heart had been gripped by a power mightier than her own: fear.
She can´t change the past, but she can ensure a future.
Multiple.
She now works from the shadows to preserve the light. A light that draws in creatures far more dangerous than herself. How she despises them.
Vampires.
.
OKAY LISTEN-
Witch!MC claps eyes on the sisters, dragging some poor fella away. Fella´s already dead, so there isn´t much she can do. However, that doesn´t mean others can´t be saved. So she follows them, cloaking spell firmly in place, in the hopes they´re gonna lead her to their hideout. Because she couldn´t live with herself if she didn´t at least check, yknow?
Well, nobody´s there. Nobody with a heartbeat, that is.
Good.
She turns around, about to leave (because she might despise them but she doesn´t start fights without good reason), when-
"...Who´s there?"
...
Impossible.
.
Cue MC revealing herself. Cue MC acting all naive and innocent. Cue MC pretending to be human so she can infiltrate The Lair and find out what´s so special about that weird ass family that causes her powers to malfunction.
LISTEN-
I dunno, lmao.
I just know it´s gonna be a mess à la The Sisters from there on out. The Denalis obsessed with the fake!human, while said fake!human is just there like-
Tumblr media
Not even realizing she´s bewitching (hehe) an entire family of vampires - her sworn enemies - because she´s rather busy being a confused gremlin.
(Do you sense a pattern here?)
Hm.
She might have to annihilate them after all.
We´ll see.
.
.
.
Apparently, I can´t write an MC who´s not completely dense when it comes to just about anything.
I apologize.
(Never.)
Thanks a lot for your ask! 💋
6 notes · View notes
mynameis-a · 1 year
Text
rambling about levels in apeirophobia because i have nothing better to do with my time!
i played this game religiously back in march/april, and i've gotten to know the levels very well. (i've been accused of speedrunning multiple times because of how quickly i managed to get through some of the levels /srs) but i havent played it in quite a while.
(and for those who don't know [aka most people probably]: apeirophobia is a backrooms game on roblox. seeing as apeirophobia is the fear of infinity or endlessness, i think its very fitting for a game about being trapped in seemingly endless liminal spaces)
(also this is very long i'm sorry)
level 0: lobby [4/10]
definitely not the best level.
once you get spotted by the entity, you really just cant get away unless you have the gamepasses that give you more speed and stamina (at least i think that would work? i don't actually have the game passes so i'm not quite sure)
i do like the layout of the map though. as long as i don't run into the entity, i can get through that level pretty quickly!
level 1: the poolrooms [7/10]
its very easy to do in multiplayer, but i can't do it solo. (thats most levels to be fair though)
i know the exact locations of all the valves you need to find! one of them is on the left side of the map, while the other 4 are one after the other along the right wall (leading to the exit). most people either don't know or forget about the 5th one, so i always go for that one. it makes the level go so much faster when the group doesn't have to go back and try to find the last one!
but if people are whistling and drawing the starfish towards the spawn hallway before anyone has a chance to get out, any like i have for this level just goes out the window.
and speaking of the metaphorical window,
level 2: the windows [5/10]
theres literally nothing to even say about this level.
its just 30 seconds maximum of running.
no obstacles, no entities, no nothing.
i mean its kinda fun to race the other players but thats it.
ranking this higher than the lobby because this one isnt annoying.
level 3: abandoned office [5/10]
i either really really like playing this level, or really really hate it. which is why it gets a 5/10.
when people do nothing but distracting the hound, leaving me to carry everyone else by getting the keys and buttons? those are the best. i genuinely love carrying in this game! i know where all the buttons are, and having someone take the hounds attention away from me makes it so much easier than if everyone was trying to find stuff at once! plus i know what buttons have been pressed and what keys have been found.
when i get to be the distraction, that's also not so bad! i like to lure the hound far into the spawn hallway so that the other players can run faster without needing to worry about it. sometimes i do die, i'm not that good, but being farther into thehallway also means i can immediately run to the exit when all the buttons are pressed!
when everyone is doing their own thing, that's when i hate it. no communication whatsoever. nobody knows who has the keys, or what buttons have been pressed, and everyone keeps dying to the hound. and considering as this is the majority of the servers i've played this level on, it just makes me not want to play it as much.
honestly, i would prefer to play this level with 3 people who have never even gotten to this level before that just let me carry them, than a bunch of "pros" that don't even realize that they have one of the keys on them.
level 4: the sewers [8/10]
this is the level that makes people think i'm a pro.
i have joined so so many rooms when people couldn't get past this level because its such a long and complicated maze (which it is) and the i show up and beat it easily.
i actually went to the wiki and looked at a map of the maze while playing it myself on a single player server. and if there's one thing i'm good at, its remembering random shit. in this case, it just so happens to be the way out!
i'm not perfect, there are a few parts that i keep forgetting where to go (and considering as i havent played this game for a couple months, i'm probably worse now.) but most of the time i still get through very quickly!
a singular point is being taken off due to me not having enough stamina to keep running. i already black out constantly in real life, i dont need that in a video game too! /lh
level 5: cave system [6/10]
i have mixed feelings about this level
on the one hand, the concept of the skin stealer thing is really cool! granted its kinda dumb in single player, but in multiplayer it makes it so much harder (in a good way). plus, i really like the map layout! even though i keep getting lost.
on the other, its just like the lobby in the sense that there's nowhere to hide from it. and since its the same size as a player, it can just follow you everywhere. also the bland white player model for the skin thing is pretty boring.
level 6: !!!!!!!!! [9/10]
another one i really like! one point off for not having enough stamina (like the sewers).
oh no! theres a large creature running after us! and the lights are all red! and theres loud emergency sirens going off!! clearly this level is extremely difficult, right? wrong.
it takes several seconds for the thing to actually start coming after us, plus its really slow. the red lights and sirens only serve to make you think its really dangerous.
most of the people who die on this level either dont know the layout and get stuck on the obstacles, are lagging and get stuck on the obstacles, or aren't good with the movement controls (mainly mobile or console players) and get stuck on the obstacles. once you beat the level once or twice, you figure out how it works and don't get stuck as often.
"but it sounds like its right behind us!" the entire map is us turning corners in a long hallway. if its in the hallway beside us (that we've already ran though), its going to sound much closer than it actually is, because its right beside us. not behind us.
this isnt actually me complaining about this levels difficulty. the fact that the entire level is designed to make you panic about a threat thats much more mild than you would expect? i actually love that! its purposely trying to stress you out and it works! (until you know about it that is)
maze + psycologically affecting the player + not needing to hide or gather items = 10/10 level in my book!!
but like in the sewers, i keep running out of stamina and blacking out. so minus 1 point for that.
level 7: the end? [9/10]
its a puzzle map!!!! and i've gotten really good at figuring it out!!
the only complaint i have is that the part with the book is soo time consuming. i have to look at the book, memorize a code, run over to the door, try the code, and pray that it works. otherwise its back to the book again.
thankfully, i have 2 monitors. so i can take a screenshot of the book, run to the door, and try all the codes i need without having to run back to the book.
still annoying though, so a point removed.
level 8: lights out [2/10]
there's only one level i hate more than this one.
its pitch dark, your flashlight does jack shit unless you're near a wall, and the stupid potato sack just loves camping the ONLY PLACE you can go to access the second half of the map. you know. the second half of the map where the exit is located???
like with the sewers, i have (mostly) memorized the way through the level. but unless there's someone distracting the sack thing, which typically there isn't, its going to take a long time to beat. if we even get that far.
also, there's occasionally a vine boom sound effect in the level. i have no idea why, but its a thing. plus one point for that.
level 9: sublimity [3/10] / [5/10]
this is my 3rd least favorite level, but hopefully the reason why has been fixed.
there was a glitch where, when you spawned, there is a large chance that you will end up stuck in the pool. completely unable to move. you just drown. and to make matters worse, if you respawned your screen just went completely black! you could still access the escape menu thankfully, but you couldnt even see the chat. your only hope was that someone didnt get stuck, and beat the level. because that takes you out of the "you died" screen without fucking up your game.
not including the glitch however, its like the windows. nothing really to do.
there's like 5 slides for the exit. i'm not sure if the different slides do different things, but i always just do through the purple one and it works.
3/10 because of the glitch, 5/10 if its been patched.
level 10: the abyss [7/10]
this level glitched out every single time i played it, but it was actually really funny.
the entities just. broke! they would occasionally move around a little but, but they never left the area that they spawned in. neither of them. you could even run up to them and they wouldn't even try and attack you! obviously if you run right up on them, you die, but that's different.
there supposed to roam around the map, and try to kill you once you once they spot you. so, you're supposed to hide in the lockers. but that glitch just makes it so much easier!
its annoying to try and find the keys in such a large map though, hence the lower score.
i've never actually played this level where the smilers actually work, so i don't know how the level is supposed to function. but with my glitched experiences, i like it!
level 11: the warehouse [8/10]
this one is parkour.
that's it, that's the level.
its difficult at first, but if you do it enough times you get used to the jumping physics of the game.
once you manage to get past the initial parkour and end up in the pretty easy maze, its smooth sailing from there! (unless you fall on the easiest jump like i did like twice)
its pretty easy to fuck up a jump and land in one of the lower shelves that you can't get off of without dying. but i'm not removing a point for that.
simply because its really funny to be speedrunning though the parkour and see someone in chat say "hey *user* look at me" and you look down and see them on the very bottom shelf just standing there staring at you.
level 12: creative minds [8/10]
i know where the paintings are, and where to put them, this is by far the easiest level to do in single player.
but i'm not going to talk about how the level works, i'm talking about the memorable encounter i had there.
my old avatar was mostly black (with some purple accents and white eyes). most of the entities in this game are pitch black. someone saw me turning a corner in this level and freaked out, thinking i was an entity at first. but what they said what that i was "too black". the other person on the server immediately called them out for being racist because they didn't have the context of black meaning #000000 and not the skin color. i got apologized to for an accidentally racist sounding comment about my roblox avatar on that level. i just think that was funny. especially when you add the context of me being very white irl.
level 13: the funrooms [0/10]
the entity teleports behind you. and if you dont turn around and look at it fast enough, it kills you.
there are 3 things that i am viscerally afraid of, and the third of those is being attacked from behind.
plus the creepily happy atmosphere just makes it worse.
i hope that the person who came up with this level gets a hole in their sock.
level 14: electrical station [6/10]
i haven't played this one very much, but its like the polar opposite of the funrooms. and simply because of that, it gets a 6/10.
level 15: the ocean of the final frontier [???/10]
what even is this level?
why are we on a boat?
how do we get off the boat??
question marks out of ten.
level 16: crumbling memory [3/10]
its like the lobby but worse. you can't see anything because of the black goo.
not much else to say
i didn't mean for this to be so long jesus christ 😭😭😭 very sorry about that
but anyways when the game updates and more levels get added, i'll reblog this with my opinions of those levels too!
so we'll see what happens then!
4 notes · View notes
captainsspnanon · 2 years
Text
C2E63 - Intervention - rewatch
Lots of announcements this episode, but AAAH one shot with Stephen Colbert!  Surprise, Matt, this is just the FIRST one.
(it’s such a cute one shot though, just seeing Stephen’s delight with it!)
I love when Ashley makes a joke “maybe I should do the talking this time” and everyone just holds her to it.  Both supportive friends and roasting friends at the same time.
I’ve said it before, but I really do prefer Sam’s flask here to what he does in C3.  It just feels more disruptive in C3, they always seem to have to stop and look at it, whereas here the roleplay keeps going and there’s only bits of acknowledgment.
Nothing shows that this is a real dnd campaign that isn’t scripted more than Jester ringing the bell as soon as they’re in the Lucid Bastion and Matt having the NPC come out and be aggravated, even though the bell and the guy are in Asarius and not Rosohna.  If it was scripted, would they do that bit in the completely wrong building and city?  (also, fuck the spelling of Rosohna, I NEVER remember how to spell it. Especially because I want to spell it like Rosh Hashana, which is something completely different XD)
Poor Beau and Caleb, desperately trying to get the Bright Queen to not go full slaughter on the Empire.  On a shallow watch, I fully stand in their shoes.  On this more in depth watch, …. yeah, trying to think about this in terms of actual military strategy and stuff?  What the Bright Queen is doing makes sense.  I don’t like it in terms of a fictional narrative, but trying to put it in real world terms?  Now, not only is it super above my head, but also I’d suspect that if they are more gentle and withdrawing as Beau suggests, then the Empire would just move in and conquer just that much more easily.
Also, Essek tells the Bright Queen that the Nein not only can be trusted since they are capable, but also that they had his ‘tutelage’.  There’s been a lot of analysis (and lots with shipping goggles on) of the moment that Essek decided to teach Caleb dunamantic spells.  I wonder now if this was something that had already been run by and approved by the Bright Queen – hence why a persuasion roll of 12 was able to work, because it had already been decided that it would be done.
In hindsight, it’s very interesting to see Caleb be so fervently gung-ho about having the Xhorhasians take the Nein along to defeat the Assembly, how much of his plan relies on the Bright Queen essentially using the war to do it for him – give him the opening, versus how it ends up by the end of the campaign with Caleb and Beau working with the Cobalt Soul and mostly just themselves to try to take the Assembly down. Personally, I think the end result is better.  Having the Assembly taken down in a war?  All it will do is push the Empire to immediately rebuild it, probably even stronger.  Have it taken down by people in the Empire, proving crimes?  That might work to disband it eventually, or clean the corruption out of it.
Jester going “let’s form our own country!” and just BREAKING everyone.  LOVE IT
I honestly forgot so much of the stress for Beau with having to contact Dairon, and the fear she had regarding it.  Knowing that it turns out well, I just remember the good parts of it like the promotion and leading the charge for the arrest.  It makes the rewatch and re-experiencing this tension all the better because it feels so real, so honest.  Beau HAS no way of knowing that it will turn out well, hell, MARISHA has no way of knowing.  And so in this fictional game is the truth of a new and quick mentor relationship where there is a level of appreciation and respect for being the one authority figure who listens, couched with the fear of knowing how authority figures tend to act.
I love Caleb’s hypocrisy.  Nott accuses him when Yeza was taken – “these are YOUR people”, Caleb throws up and freaks out.  Caleb wants to get Dairon involved, constantly tells Beau that she needs to get “your people” involved.  Never once considers that Beau might not want to be so tightly linked to the Soul like people assume Caleb is linked to the Assembly.  Maybe he considers it fine because she hasn’t abandoned the Soul (except she basically did except for Dairon, at least at this point), but it’s a level of self-centeredness that adds a lot to Caleb’s character.  Honestly?  I don’t remember if he stops being as hypocritical by the end of the campaign, or if this is a flaw that he continues to have.  I THINK he gets better, at least by a good amount?
Also with Caleb – for some reason him acting like he’s the smartest one in the room usually doesn’t rub me the wrong way that Molly and Kingsley do. I’m trying to figure out why, and I think it’s because Molly and Kingsley would act like the smartest by acting like others were stupid, whereas Caleb doesn’t even seem to be thinking about the intelligence level of others?  ...that’s a terrible way of describing it.  I don’t know!  There’s also a good chance that it’s just character bias, or the fact that people are way more willing to call out Caleb being an ass than Molly or Kingsley (one shot spoilers for part one, but notice that no one has called out Kingsley at all yet?  Despite him being a massive asshole to Fjord? And pretty flippant to everyone else re: their capabilities? Seriously, with Taliesin it seems that he deliberately designs PCs who need to be called out, and only Marisha seems willing to call him out.  Improves in C3, but STILL.)
I really like this map of the Overcrow.  It’s not a very complex map, just houses and some exterior items, but it really FEELS good.  We’ve had a few exterior maps like this in C3 that haven’t felt as nice.  I’m not sure why – if it’s just the angle we’re seeing at it or something different.
...this has GOT to be the episode that Jester turns into a moth, right?
(off topic, but I told my mom that I find Sam sexy when he has a beard, and she doesn’t see it at all.  I’m not alone in this, right???)
I actually really enjoy when they all overlap a bit and get confused, it’s the occasional moments that really remind me that this is just a game like any other, just a bit more polished and put on the internet. Sam rolling but then not knowing if he was rolling investigation or stealth because there were like three different things going on a the same time, yup, that’s happened.
CONTROVERSIAL HOT TAKE TIME: I don’t like when Tal has his PCs just show up during other people’s moments when it doesn’t make sense for them to be there.  This happened a LOT with Percy and Molly, but every once in a while, Cad hits it too.  Like right now.  Cad is hopping in through the window after Nott has entered the building sneakily, with all the rest of the party NOT going there, and him not knowing what’s going on.  In character, there’s absolutely no reason and also no MOTIVATION for Cad to go in there.  It just doesn’t make sense for him as a PC!  He never sneaks off on his own or joins Nott for stealthy things, basically just moves with the group when they do. But all of a sudden he’s now jumping in a window that no one else has gone into and hasn’t been confirmed clear?  It just feels a lot more like Taliesin than Caduceus, that’s all I’m saying. Luckily, most of the time that Tal does this it’s more for exploratory stuff so usually doesn’t hit the RP or story that hard. It just bugs me.  (for clarification purposes, a scene like where Percy ended up killing Vex because Tal didn’t wait for Laura to finish checking for traps?  Does NOT fall in this category.  The scene where Vex and Vax were upstairs in some building having a conversation about something or other and then Percy interrupts despite not being involved at all and not even in the area, but then claims that he heard over the earrings when they protest that he wasn’t there?  DOES fall in this category.  Don’t ask me what episode or what it was about though because I have no recollection and searching transcripts isn’t helping.  I’ll find it and give my mini-rant when I do my C1 rewatch.)
YESSSS Moth with an intelligence of ONE!!!!  Oh, the looks of realization on their faces!!!  To be fair to them, they are very used to wildshape from C1 in which the mind is kept, and they really haven’t polymorphed THEMSELVES much yet, only enemies.  Before this, it was only Jester as the dire badger digging through the tunnel.
Oh lol after just typing that up they literally bring up themselves how wildshape is different
Holy shit, Jester used her channel divinity to turn invisible!!  I swear I thought she only used this once when she was showing it off to Nott, when she didn’t realize that it was only for a few seconds.
Ten hours total for everyone to get a long rest?  I’m guessing this is probably the episode where Matt gets spammed with a ton of corrections about how long rests work.
Oh dear, I just realized I’m going from the last one shot (so much combat!) right into combat and then a dungeon crawl.  *le sigh*  Ah well, not as bad as the last few episodes of the campaign will get. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy combat!  Just, when it lasts a long time, I tend to zone out.  And the last two/three episodes of the campaign?  OOOF.  One of the reasons why I struggled at times with C1?  SO MANY LONG BATTLES.  I’ll have to see if I feel the same after the rewatch of both campaigns, but having seen C2 first and then into C1, I DID feel that C1 had more tense on-the-edge-of-your-seat battles.  With C2, and now even into C3, it doesn’t feel the same.  I genuinely can’t figure out why, because the combat in C2 and C3 isn’t bad!  There’s just as much risk of people dying!  I suspect that it’s due to the level discrepancy. C2 is mostly low to mid level combat, C3 is currently in low level combat (only level 7 at the time of me writing).  C1?  STARTS at level 10 combat and only goes up from there.  I mean, look at Kevdak! Level 16!  PLUS there were 20 other NPCs in the fight!  Vox Machina was between level 13 and 14 at the time, and this was around episode 53.  For comparable Mighty Nein?  They weren’t between level 13 and 14 until episodes 108-124.  This was undead Avantika and Aeor fights. I think people who really worship the C1 combats and are highly dismissive of C2/C3 combats need to realize the immense level difference.  (Then again, there’s also just a case of feel.  There was a somewhat recent combat in C3 with unexpected outcome, if you know you know, and yet despite what happened and how it went, I still ended up not feeling as intense as the C1 fights?  In the moment, I think it was a failure to process what was happening.  SIDEBAR, I’m looking forwards to my eventual C3 rewatch, because I DO think that watching it on a weekly basis rather than being able to binge the entire campaign in a go DOES make a difference as to how things feel, especially pacing.)
WOW TANGENT SORRY
and now I’m back from the tangent break, where I made the stupid mistake of trying to stay informed with the news and everything is awful here and there, local and global, and I almost set myself into a panic attack.  FML.  LET ME DROWN MYSELF IN FICTION.
Oh hey I just noticed Marisha’s wearing a shirt that says “Everything is Awful”.  ...YUP
Jester as noble woman demanding her money back, lots of comments are talking about Vex, but I’m assuming in character that this may be influenced by people she met at the Chateau.
Glad that everyone does get a full rest though.  I could not remember, was worried that Beau and especially Caleb would be going in with a broken rest.
You know what.  I keep wanting to watch this episode, and keep stopping because I don’t have the energy to write.  So fuck it, gonna watch the rest of this and if I don’t write any more, that’s fine!  TIME FOR ME TO HAVE FUN.
I was about to say I wonder what the payoff was for this dragonborn, because I don’t remember any context for her.  Looked it up in the wiki, she dies in the fight.  Whoops oh well.  Wonder what her role in all of this was.
They REALLY do use “making my way” as a crutch phrase, don’t they?  The singing bit (which hasn’t started yet) probably helped them recognize how much they were relying on it and try to diversify their language usage.
I’m feeling very strongly about this being one of the strongest table setups (maybe I would switch Ashley and Taliesin, but I’m not sure, WAIT I KNOW.  Switch Sam and Taliesin. THAT I think would be strongest table setup), and a big part of that is the constant casual touches throughout the campaign.  Sam and Laura are always poking each other, top table is flailing into each other constantly, Tal and Ashley collapse into each other a few times.  It’s hard for me to remember if Travis has as much casual touch with the C3 table layout, I feel not?  I feel like the new bottom table is the more touchy one. But yes, I think my ideal table layout for a campaign is Top Left – Travis, Top Middle – Marisha, Top Right – Liam, Bottom Left – Taliesin, Bottom Middle pt1 – Laura, Bottom Middle pt2 – Sam, Bottom Right – Ashley.    Yes, this feels good.
They completely forgot that Beau still had an action left here, I wonder how the encounter would have changed once she got inside if she realized she could still attack as well.
Love rewatching the reactions when the Mysterious Drow says “Orphanmaker” and everyone FLIPS OUT.  Or rather, Taliesin flips out first, Ashley’s eyes pop open wide, and then Travis and Sam are getting into it while everyone is going ‘oooooooo’
Fjord’s first counterspell!
Stop. Fucking. Hitting. Me.  UGH such a great Yasha moment, and perfect Ashley timing.
What is it with the second half of this episode and me having such a struggle watching it???  Basically since they started the stakeout I have just NOT been able to watch this in more than brief chunks. There’s nothing wrong with it, but for some reason I am just Having Issues.  I only have half an hour left!  But that just feels so hard!
Mmmm, Fjord deception.  It’s weird though, because I just watched the reunion recently so the british accent is in my head, even though right now he’s still using texan accent, so it SHOULD feel like a fake accent but my brain is going ‘real’ even though he’s about to drop back into texan again
I got through the rest of it by being zoned out half the time, and looking at my phone.  Really really unsure why this was a struggle for me, as it was filled with a lot of fun and is taking us right into the Obann arc.
3 notes · View notes
fangirlings-things · 4 years
Text
To get the job done
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x female reader
Word count: 5.1K
Summary: going undercover as a couple with your boss in order to serve as bait for an unsub, definitely should have been more... professional
Warnings: smut, sexual innuendos, chocking, language, fingering, oral sex (female receiving), unprotected sex
A/N: I wrote this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep and couldn't shake this idea out of my head lol. this is my first hotch smut ever written so I hope this is good. hope you guys enjoy this, lots of love!!!
TAG LIST: @imaginesofyourfandom ; @locke-writes ; @regalbanshee || GIF IS NOT MINE
Tumblr media
“It’s not working”
Between the loud music resonating through the nightclub and the proximity of civilians who shouldn’t hear your words, you had come closer to Hotch to speak, so that he could fully understand what you were saying. As you did, mouth close to his ear, you were able to smell the scent of perfume coming from him. That was a good smell.
You both had done your best to look incredibly good on that night, for the operation the BAU had developed alongside the local police department on the last two days. As the unsub had been targeting couples on that nightclub specifically and there were no bodies to sustain the accusation even though he had been the last one seen with all those people, the best approach was to use a bait and catch him in the act.
At first you believed you were going in undercover with Morgan, what you guys had already done before when the situation called for it. But according to the profile and the fact that all the previous disappeared male victims were white, the team agreed that it would be better to send Hotch, and that was how you ended up playing couple with your boss, something you were sure shouldn’t be making you as nervous as it was.
“We've only been here for half an hour, (Y/N)” Hotch replied, eyes wondering around a bit before he focused on you and smiled tenderly, placing a hand on your cheek. You had been exchanging soft touches like that, to blind in between the other couples present. “Maybe he isn’t here yet”
You sighted heavily, but nodded in agreement, because there was a good chance he was right. For another hour, you and Hotch kept on to your disguise. You smiled at each other, even danced a bit, which really made you laugh because you had never pictured your boss doing such thing, and he had managed to laugh a bit as well. At some point, you felt his hands circling your waist and pulling you close towards his own body. You couldn’t deny the shiver that ran down your spine in that moment.
Time passed and passed, and except for a woman that got close to flirt with Hotch that he politely dismissed by holding your hand, nothing happened. The unsub didn’t approach you, like he had done to the other missing couples. Only then, a thought occurred to you and you remembered something important about the abductions. Or more exactly, previously to those.
“Hotch, we forgot something” you said, slowly pulling him by the arm to one of the corners of the club, like you where just getting away from the crowd to make out a bit.
“What?” he asked, frowning while trying to keep a relaxed expression on his features. Under the shinning lights of the nightclub, his short hair and white shirt with the two first buttons open and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he looked extremely handsome. Not that you hadn’t noticed it already on a daily basis, but then, he was your boss. On this night… he was playing your boyfriend. You had some kind of permission to allow yourself to think such thing.
“The unsub's method. What made him choose those couples instead of all the others” you said, pressing your back against the wall and bringing him close to you with a smile, feeling other people’s eyes on you both. His hands found your waist and stayed there, unmoving. “He likes to play the gentleman before actually abducting the couples” you told Hotch, hands running up his uncovered by the rolled sleeves arms. “Witnesses said they saw the male and the female getting into some kind of discussion, that the men were sometimes violent with their girlfriends, so the unsub would come and defend her” you saw that he had understood what you meant even before you said the words. “You have to be violent with me”
“So he gets to play the good guy with the women before abducting them and the boyfriends, to later kill them both” he completed your line of thought and you nodded, agreeing. “(Y/N)…” Hotch then began, hesitant. You saw the way he squeezed his lips on a thin line and sighted heavily, looking around again before getting his gaze fixed on you. “are you sure this is what we have to do?”
“I am” you guaranteed, eyes fixed on his as seriousness filled your tone. Hotch stared at you for a long moment as if he was thinking about it, but then he pulled back, taking his hands away from you and stepping back like he suddenly wanted distance. Fearing it would blow your cover, you looked at him even more seriously now. “Hotch? Come on! You have to…”
Before you could finish your sentence, expressing your indignation for his hesitation to get the job done, he closed the gap between you both once again, body now fully pressed against yours. His breath was on your face, heavy and hot. One of his hands, had gone to your throat. He was squeezing your neck, fingertips digging into your skin just enough to put some pressure on it.
“Why can’t you ever stop talking” his voice came out rough, irritated. With widened eyes because of the fact that he was suddenly all upon you, you realized that Hotch was playing along. He was following the plan. And really, you wanted to think about the unsub, but it proved to be really hard when you had Hotch’s hand around your throat and his breath on your face. The scent of his perfume, so close… you felt intoxicated by him in the best way possible.
“Hotch…” you began, glad that he had to be the one leading the actions and not you. Honestly, professionalism was the last thing on your mind in that moment and even though you knew it was wrong, you couldn’t help it.
“Shut up” he replied in the same instant, which made you go instantly quiet, as his hand increased the pressure on your neck just a bit. The fake anger was there in his voice but in his eyes, there was no such thing. They were cautious, inspecting your features to see if you were comfortable with this. You stared back at him silently and he understood, that you were good to keep up the little scene, which set him into action once again. “Just shut the fuck up for a moment” his hand moved further up your throat, brushing against your skin smoothly as it went. He only stopped when he was finally able to touch your bottom lip with his thumb, eyes on your lips as he did so. “Just shut up”
And right and there, you did something you couldn’t have predicted.
You moaned.
A low, breathy moan that you silently wished for him to not have heard, but of course he had, being pressed up against you like that. You closed your eyes for a long moment, embarrassed and desperately wanted to disappear. You had just moaned because of the hand of your boss around your throat. That wasn’t something you felt quite pride of. Still, you forced yourself to open your eyes and stare at Hotch. His eyes… they were unreadable. Even though you were a profiler, you had no idea what was on his mind. None.
Before you could think of anything to say, suddenly a man approached you and Hotch, getting too close. He was extremely tall, had brown eyes and blond hair. There was a calm expression on his features, the kind of expression you had often seen in the faces of unsubs when they talked about their crimes. “Hey, you’re hurting the lady, man!”
As both of your attentions were on him now, that being the unsub the police had already locked up but then let go because of the lack of evidences, Hotch released his hand from your throat, but then he grabbed your forearm with it, keeping you in place. When he spoke, he used the best angered voice he had. “I’m having a private conversation with my girlfriend. Why don’t you leave?”
The unsub focused his gaze on you, ignoring Hotch like he hadn't even spoken. “Is he hurting you?”
“Yeah, (Y/N), am I hurting you?” Hotch said turning to you too, provoking the unsub by forcing you to share the full attention he clearly wanted.
“No” you replied, eyes going from Hotch to the unsub. Looking into the latter's eyes, you forced yourself to give out a little smile. “I’m fine, but thank you” and as to reassure him, you gently placed your hand on his arm.
You heard Hotch take a deep breath by your side, annoyed by you touching the other man, and then he gripped really tightly at your arm. “We are leaving” and then without warning, he began to drag you towards the exit. You didn’t have to look back to know that the unsub was following you both.
“The others are outside, right?” you whispered to Hotch, as he continued to drag you along between the great amount of people.
“Yes, Morgan has a S.W.A.T team on the roof top of the next building” he said back, while pushing open the door of the nightclub. Instantly, the cold air of the night outside the place made you shiver, because of the great amount of exposed skin from your dress. Without saying anything else, he continued to drag you along. Seconds later, you heard the door being opened and closed again.
“Hey!” a voice that clearly belonged to the unsub said and you and Hotch stopped, turning around to look at him. He had pulled out a gun, and had it pointed directly to your face. “Come here you both, or I’ll shoot her right in her pretty face”
“Alright man, take it easy!” Hotch let go of you, raised his hands in the air and motioned for you to walk alongside him. You placed the most scared look you could on your face as you walked towards the unsub.
When you and Hotch had already closed half of the distance between you both and the unsub, armed agents appeared from every corner of the empty, barely illuminated parking lot, pointing their guns to the unsub.
“Richard Jones, put the gun down right now!” Morgan’s firm voice echoed through the parking lot as he screamed, standing just a few feet away from the man.
The unsub looked from the many agents to you both and seeing the controlled expressions on your faces, he clenched his jaw, filled with anger. “You two are cops, aren’t you?” hearing the instability in his voice, Hotch took a step forward to stand in front of you, shielding you with his own body. “Son of a…” the unsub took a enraged step forward and then the sound of a shot filled the night. In the same instant, the unsub fell to the ground, dropping the gun and using the now free hand to press on his shoulder, where the bullet had hit him.
Morgan quickly ran towards the fallen unsub and kicked the gun away from his reach. “You two good?” he asked without turning around, still pointing his gun to the now unharmed unsub.
“Yeah, we’re fine” you said, after touching Hotch’s shoulder for a moment. He just nodded, fine. Good.
The ambulance came after ten minutes to take the unsub to the closest hospital. Morgan talked to the local officers to decide which one would accompany Jones there and Reid and Prentiss had just congratulated you for the good job. Rossi, talked to Hotch a few feet away from where you were. When Spencer and Emily walked away to verify some last things with the paramedics, Hotch approached you.
“Good job” he said, hands on the pockets of his pants. The professionalism was back, now that the operation was done. The boss was back like he had never left.
“Thanks. You too” you gave him a smile, eyes on the paramedics that were just putting Jones inside the ambulance. “That’s how he did it. He threatened the women to make the men comply to whatever he said”
“He envied the men, they were always his real target. He overpowered the men and probably made them watch whatever he did to the girlfriends” Hotch said, also looking at the unsub.
“Do you think we will find the bodies?” you asked, frustrated. Now, Jones could be charged for the crimes but the families of the victims had nothing to hold on to. No bodies to bury. The thought was awful.
“I don’t think so” Hotch replied, as clear and honest as ever. The sound of the ambulance's doors being closed made itself heard and then Hotch sighted and put himself in front of you, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that beautifully defined the muscles of his arms. “(Y/N), about what happened in there…” for a second you thought he was going to mention your moan and all air left your lungs. But thankfully, he didn’t. “I hope I didn’t hurt you too badly. Gripping you like that”
“Oh, you didn’t” you rushed yourself into saying, trying to calm down your still heavy beating heart. You gave him another smile and a shrug. “We just did what we had to do to get the job done, right?”
“(Y/N)!” Reid called you, standing close to one of the SUV's, motioning for you to come close.
You briefly touched Hotch’s arm. “Don’t worry, Hotch” and giving him one last friendly smile you walked away towards Reid, taking a deep breath as you did so. Being under Hotch’s stare had never been so intense, exciting and anxious all the same.
With every step you took, you wondered if you would ever be able to look at Hotch like you did before that night. Merely as your boss and a friend.
━━━━━━━━━━ × ━━━━━━━━━━
It turned out, things weren’t the same anymore.
It had been a month since that case were you and Hotch had gone undercover together as a couple. A month. It always felt like it had happened on the previous day to the one you were living. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t shake that night away from your mind.
Everytime Hotch would sit close to you at the jet and you would smell his perfume, you would inevitably close your eyes and remember the feeling of having his hands on your waist. When he would hand you a file and your hands would end up casually brushing against one another, you would remember having that same hand closed around your throat and that thought alone would make you have to hold back a whimper.
Truth was you wouldn’t be able to deny your attraction to your boss to anyone that asked about it. Thankfully though, you hadn’t wore wires on that night and no other members of the team had gone into the club. So, those moments had belonged only to you both. Your corrupted mind, was more than grateful for it.
“(Y/N), my love?” Garcia’s voice brought you back to reality, making you snap out of your thoughts and focus your eyes on hers. She was staring at you with a smile and curious eyes. “Now, you were daydreaming about some lucky sugar out there”
Cleaning your throat, you did your best to keep on a straight face. It was unbelievable how even though you daily spent your time with profilers, she could be more perceptive than all of them went it came to emotions and personal innuendos. “I’m sorry Penelope, I drifted away. Was is it?”
She stared at you with interested eyes for a few more moments before looking down at the table you were both sitting at for hours now, at the lobby of the hotel you had all booked in the city. “Well, I just finished doing all the background check I could get on the previous victims, like you guys asked me to” she handed you a folder, filled with information that certainly would be significant for the current investigation the team was working on. You were glad she had travelled with you all for this case.
“Penelope, you’re amazing” you grabbed the folder and took a few glares to the pages inside of it, before closing it again and looking back at her. “We should call it for the day and get some rest like the others”
“I’ll do that, I just have to check one last thing. Will you please spare me the trouble and take this to Hotch on your way to have some amazingly good sleep?” she pouted, knowing you wouldn’t be able to resist such a request.
“Sure” you said, thinking about the fact that you had just agreed on going to Hotch’s room to deliver him the folder in the middle of the night. You took a deep breath before standing up. “Goodnight, Penelope”
“Rest well, my lovely friend” she winked at you and you smiled back at her before making your way to the elevator. You were all staying on the same floor, so you pressed the bottom to the seventh floor and waited with a fast beating her inside the elevator, that seemed to get to the said floor too soon. Too fast.
Room 220. You stared at it's door for what seemed to be hours. You thought about Hotch inside. The fact that you were about to come in. Him, alone. Alone with you. Like you two had been on that nightclub.
Taking a deep breath, you concentrated on stopping those wondering thoughts and knocked on the door. The answer came seconds later, an 'enter' you would often hear at the office. Of course he had been waiting awake for the files. That was Hotch, after all.
Taking another deep breath you opened the door and your gaze immediately met Hotch, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest close to the table placed at the corner of the room. Pictures and other files filled it and he looked through it like always, searching for leads and trying to begin the building of the unsub's profile. He had removed his black suit and red tie, standing there with just a white shirt covering his upper body. Just like on the nightclub.
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother, but Garcia asked me to bring you these files” you raised the folder in the air, a small polite smile on your lips as you did so.
“Thank you” he crossed the distance of the room towards you and stopped just two steps away. You handed him the folder, and he looked inside it for long moments before looking back to you so your eyes would meet. “Do you want to help me go over this knew information?”
You swallowed dry at the suggestion you hadn’t been expecting. Who needed to sleep when you could just spend time with the man you daydreamed about, right? This thought, got the next words out of your mouth. “Yeah, sure”
“Okay, close the door” Hotch said with that professional tone of his, nodding in the door's direction before turning around and going back to stand close to the table. You did close the door and then went to stand by him, looking at all the files splayed out in quite a mess. “I still haven’t been able to make any progress with the profile”
“Well, we’ve only been here for two days” you said, getting some of the crime scene pictures in your hands and looking attentively at them, searching for anything that might have passed your attentions before. “we don’t have much but we’ll get the job done, like we always do”
Then, Hotch chuckled. The sound was so unexpected and it happened to rarely that you instantly stopped looking at the photos, placed them back at the table and then turned with a frown to look at your boss, not being able to stop yourself from smiling a bit. “What?”
“Nothing, is just that…” he shrugged, arms still crossed over his chest and eyes not staring into yours. “we have been making a great team lately” and then he looked at you. And he must have recognized the conflicted expression on your features, because the intensity of his eyes suddenly became too much to bare. And still, you found yourself unable to look away.
“Yeah, we have” you found it within yourself to answer those simple three words and then it happened exactly like in the nightclub. Before you could even realize what was happening, Hotch got closer and closer until his body was almost touching yours. Painfully almost.
“Can I?” he asked, staring into your eyes with beautiful fixation. His breathing was heavy and it made you realize that you weren’t the only one nervous in that room. You just nodded, staring back at him with your heart beating so hard and fast inside your chest it seemed like it would explode. Slowly Hotch raised his eyes and placed them on your cheeks, fingertips caressing the skin beneath them gently. And then, even more slowly, he closed the gap between you both and touched your lips with his.
It wasn’t even a proper kiss. Just a brush of mouths. Curious, anxious, insecure. He brushed his lips against yours and stopped, as if giving you time to decide what to do. To have Hotch there like that, with you like you wanted him to be, it went to your head in a burst of delight and you were the one who urged forward and fully pressed your lips together, hands going to rest on his forearms. He tasted good. So unique, so fine.
You kissed slowly. Exploring, getting to know each other’s mouths little by little with tongues and lips. But then you got impatient, excited, and you pressed your lips more hardly against his, wanting to make those kisses as deep and breath taking as you could. Hotch responded immediately at that incentive, kissing you just as intensively as you wanted him to. And so, one of his hands slipped down to your throat and he squeezed it slightly, putting pressure. Such an amazing pressure. And it made you moan. At that point, after all those kisses, you didn’t even bother to try to repress it.
“I have been wanting to make you moan again since that night” Hotch said against your lips and that, actually made you moan again. Louder this time and it made his squeeze on your neck get tighter and if you were being honest, you weren’t having it any other way.
You kept on kissing, bodies fully pressed against one another, mouths devouring each other unstoppably until your hands found the buttons of his shirt and you started opening them. It seemed to take hours but you finally managed to slip the shirt out of him, the piece of clothing ending up on the floor just to be shortly joined by your own t-shirt.
Hotch’s hands then were on your waist, gripping at the bare skin of your hips in a way that made you weak. One of your hands was on his cheek and the other, played with the short hair at the back of his neck. Together you moved towards the bed, mouths only letting go to do so. You pushed Hotch to the bed and he sat at the edge of it, looking up at you breathless and with his mouth very reddened from the kisses. He was beautiful.
You moved to sit on his lap, hands on his neck and mouth back on his because you already missed it. Through the layers of your intimate clothes and both of your pants, you felt his hard member beneath you. As you kissed you pressed your body down into him, pressing his member, and his breath hissed. You smiled.
Hotch gripped your thighs with his hands firmly and flipped you both around, making you lay back on the bed as he got above you. He kissed you, tongue exploring your mouth and hands squeezing so tightly your thighs that you felt like you were going to burst.
His hands went to open the button of your jeans and you helped him get rid of it. Another piece on the floor. Then, after giving you a series of quick kisses, Hotch stood up from the bed and started to take out his own pants. You just watched him, smiling with your bottom lip caught between your teeth.
“Liking the view?” he asked with a smirk, and oh, that was a version of Hotch you could easily get used to. The way he took out the pants and disposed it to the side, standing now in just black boxer briefs, eyes not leaving you not for a second, that was something you wanted to mark in your memory.
“How could I not?” you replied just when he knelt back on the bed and then, crawled his way to be on top of you again. Looking up at his face, you sighted. That was amazing. What was happening… you couldn’t have predicted it not even in your best dreams.
Hotch kissed you again, hands traveling to your back just so that he could undo your bra. One more piece gone. One of his hands slowly found your left breast and he caressed it in his hands, making you moan again and again. He kissed you. He kissed your breasts. He kissed you again. His hands caressed your skin unstoppably.
“Hotch…” you moaned his name when he began to give you small bites here and there, the feeling of your skin between his teeth making you suck in a breath. He probably noticed the desperation in your voice, because next thing you knew he was sliding his kisses down to your belly and then, he kissed your pussy from above your panties. “Hotch” his name was emitted from your mouth again, louder this time.
He took his time just kissing you like that, with that layer between his mouth and your intimacy. Torturing you to the most. When he found it proper he removed your panties using both of his hands and after discarding them just like he had done with his pants, he used his hands to spread your thighs and get his face close to your pussy. He kissed your thighs, ignoring your intimacy. You could feel his hot breath down there and it made you lose your mind. You could almost feel yourself dripping your wetness into the bed.
“Hotch!” you urged him to stop teasing, eyes shut and chest raising and falling incredibly fast due to your erratic breathing. The moan you gave out when his mouth finally came in contact with your pussy was obscene. Was loud and you did not give a damn about it because you had your boss's face between your legs and that was it. That was all you cared about right then.
He sure as hell knew what to do with his mouth. He kissed, sucked and he fucked you with his tongue, his saliva mixed with the wetness of your own body making you become a moaning mess. Your hands went to his short hair and you gripped tightly at it, pulling. You moaned again, and that made him moan a bit. Suddenly the feeling of his mouth was gone and you felt extremely disappointed. Just a bit more…
One of his fingers found it’s way inside your body and your moan was cut short by his mouth back on yours. You tasted yourself on his mouth and the thought alone almost made you come. After a couple seconds, another finger joined in and the feeling of having them coming in and out of your body was incredible. Your hands stayed in his hair, pulling and gripping like you were holding yourself into dear life.
His movements were slow, calculated. The kisses were deep. At some point, you made it know you wanted more by sliding one of your hands down between both of your bodies and touching him through his briefs. He stopped kissing you, stopped the movements of his hand and looked into your eyes. You smiled at each other, and then he pulled back away from you to get rid of the last layer. The last piece ended on the floor.
You motioned to grab at his hard member, bit he held your wrist gently halfway and you frowned. “Another time. Right now” he came close again and with one of his hands, stroked your hair for a bit. “I want to make you feel good”
“Okay” you managed to say, already excited by the idea of 'another time'. You were certain, that was something you wanted to keep happening and for the look on Hotch’s face, he did too.
You both moaned together when he entered your body with his member. Finally. His mouth and fingers had made you as slick and open they could and you managed to fit all of him inside of you, all pain disappearing in just a few moments as you locked your legs around his waist.
Hotch looked into your eyes again, smiled by seeing your clearly pleasured expression and then began to move. Slowly, enjoying every bit of it. But after so much previous teasing, he couldn’t hold himself back too much and hearing you moan like that, probably didn’t help his state of mind.
His movements became rough, fast. You both moaned and moaned, each other’s names being the only thing leaving your mouths. One of Hotch’s hands found your throat and the feeling of his fucking you with the squeeze on your neck made you come, moaning loudly. So loudly. Hotch came just a few movements after, moaning too.
He laid beside you, both of you breathing heavily with your skins glistening in sweat. You kissed him once more before snuggling up to his chest and closing his eyes, you fell asleep.
━━━━━━━━━━ × ━━━━━━━━━━
“Morning, guys” Prentiss said, yawning while joining the rest of the team in the hotel lobby. The sun had just raised itself in the sky and you were all heading to the local precinct.
“Morning” Morgan replied, smiling by her clearly sleepy face. Sitting by Garcia’s side in one of the couches, he had a cup of coffee in his hand. “Hope you all had a nice night of sleep, because this day will probably be too long”
“I couldn’t sleep until four” Reid said with a heavy sight, also having a cup of coffee in his hands. Standing beside you, he looked to Hotch and then back at you before whispering. “The walls were really thin”
2K notes · View notes
kellinrk800 · 4 years
Text
toko fukawa comphet no i don’t take criticism
nobody will even see this because my account just. doesnt get traction but here have a ramble abt toko’s backstory and how much i firmly believe her attraction was comphet.
Tumblr media
spoilers for thh, sdr2 and udg
tw// ab/se, n/glect, severe bullying
toko was severely neglected and unwanted when she was a child. she grew up with two mothers and one father due to both sleeping with the same man and neither wanting their child which caused her to be mistreated. once she was locked in a closet and forced to stay there for three days without food. clearly, she grew up in a household completely devoid of healthy love. genocide jack’s development was likely a response to cope with the traumatic experiences.
her time in elementary was no different. in third grade, she was used as a scapegoat for stolen money and her classmates tied her to the jungle gym with a garden hose as punishment.
her first real “love” was with a boy who she had been friends with since elementary but when she finally confessed through a letter, she found it pinned to the bulletin board to mock her. this was genocide jack’s first kill, leading me to believe that her murders were actually a form of protection.
on one occasion (and most likely more considering her difficult relationship with understanding rejection) she was ghosted halfway through on a date after spending three days and nights planning it so that she would not mess it up. she later found out that the boy only asked her out because he lost a bet.
the most likely only healthy representation of love she ever has was through media, which is arguably extremely heteronormativity and the actual healthiness of how relationships are presented in media is debatable.
she internalised all of these things happening to her and believed she deserved them somehow, building her inferiority complex. she began to assume that people only expected bad of her and self victimises herself almost on instinct despite her nature to express opinions without care for others most of the time. her self esteem is extremely low and she often worries about being considered an “old hag” in ultra despair girls.
toko fell in love with the idea of love, not an actual person. at some point she turned to novels and writing as a way to express her emotions and she used that passion to create works of art through her novels and created a toxic idolisation of the perfect relationship with nothing but media, her family’s relationships and her past experiences to go off.
she began to let herself get hurt and internalise it which ended up building her inferiority complex even further to the point of becoming unhealthily infatuated with anyone she saw fit as a stand in for the dreamy perfect people that made her books succeed.
time and time again genocide jack and toko were mistreated in their relationships, causing their system to suffer greatly. jack began to kill anyone toko saw fit as a perfect romantic interest to protect them both, but this most likely caused her own mental health to decline as well, leading to the aggressive, startling and manic personality we saw in the games.
toko began to both idolise and fear falling in love. while she knew they would most likely be killed and she would have to cope with knowing that the police could come knocking any day if they put the pieces together, she also still purposed her life around being in a perfect relationship because it was now causing her to gain traction through her novels.
this only furthered her unhealthy infatuation with relationships. she became determined to find a man who fit her description of the perfect man and would not mislead, use, mock or hurt toko in hopes that he would not be killed and she would finally achieve her dream.
enter byakuya togami. blonde, blue eyed, rich, cold and most importantly, entirely unattainable. he was an ideal stand in, especially considering the circumstances of the killing game (jack’s unique killing style would immediately be found out). she was able to fantasise from afar without ever really getting as severely hurt as she had in the past because he simply did not care to provide her his attention.
jack had two options. kill byakuya and get executed, or suck it up. clearly you can tell which option she chose. in addition, she had all of her memories from prior to the game which most likely slightly numbed her thirst for blood. by the end of ultra despair girls, she has grown a respect for toko, a softness for komaru and even calmed jack down to the point where it’s suggested that she no longer uses her skills to murder but instead fight despair.
in fact, near the end, toko is acutely aware of what is happening despite the fact jack was fronting (they don’t usually share memories, only emotions), suggesting they may have slightly integrated but i don’t really want to make assumptions considering i do not have did and am not educated enough to speak confidently about did.
ironically, the killing game was actually good for both of their mental health’s. i’ll only be talking about toko but in ultra despair girls she was emotionally stronger and more mature. she believed she finally had a purpose other than romance and that she could fight against all odds. she even credits makoto for her newfound courage. she criticises cowards and those that remind her of her past self. she is willing to challenge her fears.
komaru had an amazingly powerful and positive effect on them both. her softness, optimism and empathy help toko’s character develop even further. when komaru tries to give in to despair, toko encourages her to face her fears. toko, who was before extremely afraid and uncomfortable with being touched, is now willing to comfort and even hug komaru. she claims she’s finally found a true friend (that’s actually human, can’t forget kameko the stinkbug) and that she found hope in her.
komaru admires toko and doesnt really mind her split personality, instead just considering it “a bit strange���, which is a noticeable difference from how she was treated by everyone else for it. toko is protective of komaru during chapter two due to her suspicion of shirokuma. later, they even sleep in the same bed.
however, when toko risks komaru’s life for byakuya, they get into an argument in which toko accuses komaru of manipulating her with terms such as “friends”, which leads to komaru showing that she really does trust her.
later, this arguably resolved after servant forces jack and toko to fight against komaru for byakuya. they fight back against servant and komaru forgives her because they are friends, which makes toko extremely happy, so much that she blushed and admits she has never had a real friend before. she thanks komaru genuinely for the first time and they try to become real friends.
toko swears she will help komaru with anything she can’t do by herself, just like komaru would do for her.
toko even stays by her side to the point of rejecting the opportunity of going to future foundation to stay with komaru :)
in the end of danganronpa goodbye despair, which is set after ultra despair girls, kyoko reminds byakuya that someone is waiting for him and he jokes that she shouldn’t remind him of “something so horrifying”. and honestly i think the fact he was able to joke about it shows that perhaps toko and byakuya found a somewhat healthy relationship as friends, acquaintances, or even just bearing eachother’s presence.
a notable addition that didn’t really fit anywhere else is toko’s scrapped execution. “first kiss prank” is the title and it consists of byakuya running towards her before toko gets hit by a roller. that says enough about her biggest fears and how badly her past memories affected her.
in conclusion, toko fukawa’s obsession with byakuya was comphet due to pressure from the media and her toxic ideals. the fact she was able to form a healthy relationship with komaru is hhh and i could talk about them for hours. tokomaru is the second closest thing we have to inmedia stated canon (fuck kodaka’s statement me and the homies hate kodaka’s statement about naegiri /j)
sources: toko fukawa’s fandom wiki, genocide jack’s fandom wiki, free time events, transcripts
Tumblr media
358 notes · View notes
kumaradosha · 3 years
Text
I’m seeing a whole lot of bad takes and ignorance of past/present content and lack of critical thinking or ability to understand character motives regarding this most recent Dream SMP lore. So please, allow me to lay down some facts, some sense, and also some speculation of my own. This’ll be really rambly, because I’m tired, and I want to say a lot. Rewatching ALL the streaming perspectives now, my thoughts start here:
Considering Sam doesn’t want to enter the cell to dirty his hands himself, he clearly has some aversion or moral qualms about torturing prisoners, but Quackity has convinced him to go along with it. Quackity spends a lot of time before he goes into the cell repeatedly making sure Sam won’t have a change of heart and intervene, which indicates Sam probably has some misgivings. Quackity feels he has to remind Sam that this is for the greater good and to stand back and let him do his thing and that this will probably be the last time. These are all reassurances and instructions that would not be necessary if Sam were known to be totally cool with it all already.
Sam believes the stringent measures Dream put in place for the prison are just desserts for him to suffer, but Techno doesn’t deserve the same cruelty, because Techno didn’t enact those rules. And that’s why Techno gets baked potatoes from Sam, and Dream doesn’t. Sam clearly believes this harsh treatment is justified, because Dream was going to do it to someone else. He thinks he’s being just. Of course, allowing the torture, though not his idea and not really comfortable to him, was still crossing a line, considering physical torture was not something Dream did to his victims (and besides, there’s the argument that not everything a criminal has done is morally correct to be done to the prisoner regardless). That, he was convinced, was for the greater good, to get the revive book. Quackity manipulated him; he thinks he’s doing what’s best, but no, of course that doesn’t make him right or his hands clean.
Sam wanted the dog dead because it’s a security risk, especially with Quackity entering the cell with two other people. He killed it later for the exact same reason. Y’all act like nobody else has ever killed an animal in Minecraft RP; get it together. Is Sapnap also evil? Tommy? He killed his own cat. Random animals are not treated with the gravity you guys are giving them; it makes no sense to call out this one time.
When Techno raised the point that he would be fine if Quackity killed him, because Dream could just bring him back, Dream countered with his warning that Techno doesn’t want to experience death, judging by how messed up it made Tommy. What motive would he have to argue that, aside from actually caring about Techno’s well-being? If Dream was only thinking of himself, he would benefit from Techno being willing to die and be brought back to life by him, giving him an easy reason not to give the resurrection knowledge to Quackity. I honestly can’t think of a reason he would argue other than the fact that he doesn’t want Techno to die even temporarily or experience death--that he cares. Interesting...
Dream hiding in the escape tunnel to make it look like he disappeared too was 5,000 IQ, but he didn’t do it just to be silly or smart. Quackity literally threatened to kill Dream when he came back. Dream HAD to pretend to disappear, because he was legitimately in fear for his life. You saw how terrified he was when Sam found him, how he just immediately begged him not to tell Quackity. He was afraid Quackity would come back and kill him before Techno managed to come back and break him out. He believed that would be his fate and had to make a last ditch attempt to avoid that outcome.
Phil confirmed on stream that the blueprints Techno was led to via coordinates are for the prison. Not Tubbo’s missing nuke, like I’ve seen speculated.
“Steve is your polar bear” was written on stream during the “Prison Podcast” Technoblade lore. This is not a mystery. Dream said he wrote it down when Techno started talking about Steve rescuing them.
If Sam doesn’t approve of Quackity killing Dream, why doesn’t he just tell Quackity Dream is still in the prison but not allow Quackity in anymore? Quackity needs Sam to lead him inside, to let him in. Since when did he have any power against Sam to force him to let him in? I don’t understand why Sam has to keep it a secret just to keep Dream alive. Just don’t let Quackity into the prison anymore. Clearly it was a bad idea, since all these security risks happened while Quackity was getting a free pass to not follow the rules of the prison.
Dream casually walking in the way of Sam’s pickaxe to disrupt his swing once Sam almost had the bell broken gets me every time.
The rapport between c!Dream and c!Sam in prison fascinates me. Clearly Dream is much bolder with Sam than Quackity and still seems to trust his sense of duty to a degree. Sam is also more malleable, convinceable, his fatal flaw being actually listening and talking to Dream, even after it clearly messes with him psychologically. He let Quackity manipulate him, too, and he compromises too much. That might seem weird to say, considering the harsh conditions he has Dream in, but. He does give in to a few things.
I’m wondering if Dream wanted to go to the courtyard hoping it was less secure and easier for Techno to break him out of.
Sam has no reason to lie and gaslight about Dream being the one to suggest raw potatoes and sealing up the courtyard. That’s not in his character to do. So clearly Dream suggested these things. In fact, we have proof. Search for the clip of Dream revealing a teaser for future lore, with him telling Sam the hole in the courtyard ceiling for the light is a security flaw. He straight up says that. Update yourselves. Furthermore, are the recordings we have of Dream suggesting nicer features for the prison even lore? Are they in-character, or was it cc!Dream and Sam making plans? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t remember/am not sure. In any case, clearly the plans changed at some point, and they were Dream’s idea.
Dream said he didn’t realize how bad it was until after he experienced it. This could very well be a lie. However, it could also be a wake-up call. We just don’t know. Dream clearly possesses low empathy, and every person at some point doesn’t fully realize how poorly another being can feel in a bad situation. Sometimes it actually does take experiencing it yourself to realize how it feels. People can do cruel things to others before the empathy fully clicks. It is possible that Dream really does only now understand how harsh his plans were. Unfortunately, it’s just as likely he doesn’t care and is pretending to, because he has a history of acting, lying, and manipulating. We just do not know, and I think that’s part of the fun, the speculation. Note that none of this is excusing what he’s done; that bores me. I just like understanding characters and their psychology and motives.
Sam is ASKING if Dream had this prison built for Tommy. He is suspicious that that is the case. Dream did not TELL him this, because OBVIOUSLY Sam would have absolutely nothing to do with building a prison he knew Dream meant for Tommy. So no, Sam thought it was for something else. And guess what? It was. Back during the disc war finale stream, Dream told Tommy and Tubbo that the prison was originally intended for someone else (maybe multiple people, the number was not specified), but that he changed his mind and would now put Tommy in it (ha ha punny). Tubbo asked who it was originally intended for, and Dream wouldn’t tell him, preferred to keep it a mystery. Dream had zero reason to say this if it weren’t true. In fact, it would have been more impactful to pretend (or admit) he intended it for Tommy all along. Think of the horror, or even the betrayal finding out Sam, his friend, helped make it. So yes, there is every indication that it is the truth--Dream meant the prison for someone else at first.
And Dream didn’t argue with Sam’s accusations, because why WOULD he? If he didn’t tell Tubbo who it was for, he wouldn’t tell Sam now. Plus, he wouldn’t want to argue with Sam, make him more heated and less sympathetic, and risk him deciding to tell Quackity Dream was there after all. Dream has no reason to speak up. Let Sam think what he wants. Dream’s silence does not mean confirmation. This is not a new thing with him. He keeps things mysterious, and there is a lot about his planning and mindset he does not disclose.
Now, whether Dream made the prison harsher before or after he decided he wanted Tommy in it is up for speculation. We don’t know that timeline.
Anyway, Sam’s speech about Dream getting what he deserves is really delicious. All these people out here mocking Dream fans for Dream still being in prison (like Techno’s not imminently coming to break him out, hello?) and being told off by Sam, yet plenty of us are enjoying it, too, like?? Bruh, what kind of Mary-Sue-touting asshole likes characters who are flawless who never go through strife? Can’t be me. I love watching my favs through triumph AND despair, so this is all just a win for me, thanks.
It is possible to sympathize with a bastard who is highly flawed and wrong AND to understand his motivations without justifying his actions AND to realize he deserves punishment (though to what degree I don’t care to argue). All the black and white morality and taking one extreme stance of “this character is perfect!” OR “this character is wholly evil and only ever does things to be sadistic!” and polarizing the community is cringe, yo. You need to calm down. Enjoy the ride or like...get off?
Anyway, Dream is my favorite, Techno is my second favorite, I adore Sam, I really enjoy Quackity, and the SMP wouldn’t be the same without Tommy. So much love for all of this creative work and its creators. I’m having a blast.
118 notes · View notes
iliveiloveiwrite · 3 years
Text
When He Sees Me // Benedict Bridgerton
Request: Hey! I've just finished reading all of your Benedict fanfics and it's like, "let me have more!!!" *-* Could you maybe write something where the reader and Ben meet at Mr Granville's house? Where the reader is lower class and mocks him for with his lord manners, and eventually they get along well and all that? And he falls in love with her but she's just a seamstress and is scared he fetishizing her poverty and the "starving artist" lifestyle... Thanks in advance, love your writing xxx - anon.
A/N: Thank you so so much! This is such a sweet message. Thank you for requesting something from me; I can only hope I have done it justice. This is a really long fic, I know that - it really did get away from me. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy and I hope you are all well!
Title: Waitress - When He Sees Me
Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x Fem!Reader
Warnings: mentions of alcohol and nudity, making out, amorous activities,  light voyeurism (very light), class divides, pining, mutual pining, fluff, light angst, humour, Bridgerton family feels. HAPPY ENDING.
Word count: 6.8k (this is so long, I am so sorry)
Tumblr media
“Bridgerton!” Henry Granville calls, a large smile spreading across his face as he spies Benedict by the front door. “I was hoping you’d make it.”
“Here I am,” Benedict laughs, spreading his arms wide in evidence.
Granville chuckles, grabbing a glass from a nearby tray and handing it to Benedict who takes a healthy sip immediately. “Come,” Granville gestures, “Let me show you around.”
Benedict follows the man he already classes as a friend. He hums at the appropriate time, eyes dancing around every room he is taken into, taking in the numerous pieces of art and the growing number of people.
Finally, Granville leads him to a room bathed in studious silence. Five people stand in the room; four stand behind easels – the picture of concentration as brushes scratching on canvas is the only sound in the room. The fifth person stands proudly before the back wall; posing elegantly, a lady stands completely naked save for an apple held delicately in the palm of her hand.
“This is Ariadne, our life model for tonight,” Granville introduces, smiling at the model without an ounce of care that she stands naked in his living room.
“Ariadne,” Benedict nods, doing his best to look anywhere but her naked body. He wasn’t usually this awkward around women, but the last thing he expected tonight was a life model. His usual influences for art came from clothed members of the public.
Granville takes a seat at an easel, studying Ariadne with great care before picking up a thin brush. As he runs it through the nearby oil paint, he calls to Benedict, “Join us!”
Benedict shakes his head, heading towards the door. Granville nods understandingly; it was a lot for a person’s first time at a soiree such as this. “Another time perhaps,” Granville says as Benedict leaves the room.
Closing the door, Benedict leaves the artists to their muse. His fingers twitch for his sketchpad, thinking of the images he could create; he had seen the empty seat in front of a spare easel, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit down and create the art he saw in his mind. Another time, he thinks to himself.
He turns away from the door where his attention is immediately tethered to a couple across the hallway.
The couple are in the middle of an embrace; connected at the mouth with hands beginning to wander clothing. The stays to the lady’s dress are loosened, the relieved gasp quickly swallowed by her partner’s mouth. Hands continue to wander; moans swallowed by joint mouths. It’s a sight to behold even as the position is changed; the woman straddling her partner, beginning to move her hips to the rhythm of music only they must be able to hear.
Unable to tear his stare away from the couple, Benedict feels his mouth drop open at the impropriety before him.
“Come now, Mr. Bridgerton,” A feminine voice teases, “Surely you’ve seen worse.”
Benedict bristles; unhappy with the tone of her voice and the accusation lightly punctuating the air. “Not that it is any of your business, but I have seen worse.”
Her eyebrows fly into her hair, clearly not expecting the rebuff. Benedict represses a smile at the expression on her face; his eyes dance around the hallway, not knowing where to look without fear of landing on the amorous couple. Benedict had never been one to shy away from love and lust and where it can lead you, but he had never been witness to such an event. The last thing he needed for himself (and his family) was to be classed as a voyeur.
“Follow me,” She announces, crooking a finger at Benedict before walking away.
Helpless and out of his comfort zone, Benedict follows the nameless lady. His eyes pour over her figure as he walks behind her like a lost puppy; her dress is finely made, the fabric clearly new. Benedict keeps his eyes fixed head, refusing to let his gaze drop any lower as she opens a door, standing to one side to let him enter first.
The room is adequately sized; enough room for a fireplace already blazing, a couch big enough for two and a small table and chairs. It’s comfortable; the room is well lit from the candles around the room and the large fire.
The well-dressed lady follows Benedict into the room, leaving him standing in the centre as she heads towards a drinks cabinet. She grabs two glasses and a decanter of liquid that Benedict cannot decipher. Scotch, whisky, brandy – all three would fare him well at this point.
Wordlessly, she hands Benedict a drink. A knuckle’s length of amber liquid swirls in the glass, lit up by the roaring fire. “You have me at a disadvantage,” Benedict starts, “You know my name, but I do not know yours.”
She smiles; eyes crinkling from the force of it. “You can spy a Bridgerton by the colour of their eyes,” She snorts, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of it, “I’m (Y/N).”
Benedict bows his head; the very picture of gentlemanly politeness. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
If possible, (Y/N)’s smile grows larger, trying her hardest to repress the laughter bubbling inside of her. “This isn’t your usual scene, Mr. Bridgerton.”
Benedict shakes his head. “I’m a friend of Henry’s and call me Benedict please. After being witness to the couple outside, I think we can forgo formalities.”
Laughter escapes her mouth, powerless to help herself. Benedict frowns at her reaction, but (Y/N) waves a hand in apology. “I remembered your face,” She offers in explanation, “You mentioned that you had seen worse, but you still looked so scandalised.”
Benedict huffs, crossing his legs, sipping at his drink before answering. “I didn’t know what to expect from tonight. Henry is an artist! I just never expected that.”
“We’re all artists, Benedict, in one form or another. We’re practically bohemian.”
“Does that happen often?” He asks, nodding towards the door where Benedict holds no doubt that more clothing will have been lost between the enamoured couple.
(Y/N) lifts a single shoulder in a shrug. “More often than not. The intimacy that is required with art combined with the amount of alcohol consumed tends to lead to such things.”
“Have you ever taken part in such things?” Benedict asks before realising the extent and implication of his words. “Forgive me,” He coughs, “I’m not usually so forward. You don’t need to answer.”
“No, I don’t think I do,” (Y/N) answers honestly, amused at the lack of filter from the Bridgerton. “Why don’t I ask the next question?”
“Please do,” Benedict responds, loosening the cravat at his neck, deciding to take it off altogether.
“Tell me,” She begins, eyes on the skin now bare to the room, “Do you prefer paints or pastels?”
“Neither,” Benedict answers, “I prefer graphite or charcoal.”
“Interesting…”
“Is it?”
“It is! But I cannot think of a reason why.”
Benedict snorts, draining the last few amber drops in his glass. Silent for a moment, Benedict hums before asking, “Do you draw?”
“Heavens no,” (Y/N) responds, “I’m a talented seamstress, but landscapes and watercolours are not for me.”
“Then why are you here?” Benedict asks; the words unintentionally sharp. He cringes before offering (Y/N) an apologetic smile.
“My friend invited me,” (Y/N) defends, “You met her earlier.”
“I did?”
(Y/N) nods. “You did. She was the life model you were trying your hardest not to ogle.”
Benedict flushes; heat spreading from his neck to his cheeks – partly fuelled by the alcohol in his system, partly fuelled by the knowledge of being caught out. Benedict clears his throat, unable to hide his embarrassment. “I didn’t think anyone had noticed.”
(Y/N) smiles widely. “They didn’t, but you don’t make it habit to frequent such parties. It was clearly a shock to your system.”
Benedict exhales with a laugh; all the while wishing he had another drink in his hand. “I’m not new to art,” He confesses, “But I am new to this… environment.”
(Y/N) leans forward in her chair; her eyes sparkling in the dim candlelight. A coy smile crosses her lips and Benedict idly wonders what she would taste like as she asks, “And what do you think of this new environment?”
Benedict drags his gaze away from (Y/N)’s mouth to look her in the eyes. Evenings like this are something he could quickly get used to so long as he had her company in the early hours of the morn. A wicked grin spreads across his face as he answers, “With your company, I’m fairly certain that I could come to enjoy this new environment.”
“Only fairly?” (Y/N) murmurs, sipping at her drink before continuing, “I think we’re going to have to turn ‘fairly’ into an absolute.”
Benedict tips his head to one side, wondering whether it would go against societal customs to offer his hand in marriage after only knowing someone for an evening. The thought lingers at the back of Benedict’s mind as he replies, “I have complete and utter faith in your ability to do such a thing.”
(Y/N)’s answering smile has Benedict wondering about marriage for a second time in less than two minutes. What would be the appropriate time to ask someone for their hand? He thinks. A powerful enough thought that Benedict has to look away from her; desperate not to ruin a newly budding friendship.
The clock strikes one; the chimes making (Y/N) jump as they ring through the tension-filled room. A sad sigh leaves her lips as she stands, placing her glass on a nearby table.
“I’m afraid I must go,” She declares, biting her bottom lip, lingering in front of the Bridgerton.
Benedict rises from his seat, his voice close to wobbling as he murmurs, “Must you?”
(Y/N) smiles wistfully. “Not all of us have family money, Benedict. I have two dresses to finish for tomorrow evening and I need to sleep.”
“Will I see you again?” He asks, unable to keep the hope from his voice as his mind spins all sorts of fantasies of their next meeting.
(Y/N) nods; Benedict’s heart soars.
“Thank you for a lovely evening, Benedict Bridgerton. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” Benedict replies a second too late. She’s gone and Benedict is left to wondering how many seamstresses there are in London.
-------------
If Benedict was thinking logically, he knew that there wasn’t thousands of modistes and seamstresses across London. He knew that the number was much closer to hundreds, but to him that was still too many. He thinks back over the interactions from that night, examining the conversations, trying to find a hint of whether (Y/N) had given him the address of her shop. The more he cross examines, the less evidence he finds.
At this point in his investigation to her whereabouts, Benedict was no longer thinking logically. He was thinking with his heart – desperate to see her again so soon. He didn’t want to have to wait until another party where she just might show up. No, he wanted to see her in her own environment where Benedict had no doubt she would flourish.
He makes himself wait three days before beginning the task of tracking her down. His first port of call was to Henry Granville, asking whether he knew anything of the lady accompanying the life model. Henry knew of her by face, but not much bar her first name. He leaves Benedict with a word of encouragement and a promise of another party soon; Benedict thanks the man heartily, knowing that Henry had tried his best.
However, it left Benedict in a predicament that meant he had to bring in reinforcements.
“I need your help,” Benedict pleads of his dear sister, Eloise Bridgerton a day after starting his hunt for her.
“Whatever for?”
“I need to find someone… a friend.”
“A friend?” Eloise asks sounding very much as if she didn’t believe a word leaving her elder brother’s mouth.
“Am I not allowed to have friends?” Benedict asks of his sister, exasperated at her curiosity. Eloise raises a single eyebrow, and it isn’t a minute later that Benedict begs of his sister, “Please do not tell mother.”
The laughter that leaves Eloise lasts for the next three streets, her chuckles grating on Benedict’s nerves. “Where did you meet her?” Eloise eventually asks, much calmer now that she had gotten the laughter out of her system.
“At Mr. Granville’s if you must know.”
Eloise doesn’t answer; she casts her gaze across her brother’s face, reading eh expression there and the hopeful look in his eyes. Whoever she was, she had done a number on her brother for him to be this desperate to find her.
“Why not wait for the next party?”
Benedict huffs, “She may not go to the next party, then I would be back at the beginning.”
Eloise falls silent again. She watches her older brother, watches how he fiddles with his fingers – a nervous tic he’s hand since he was a boy apparently, it happened more when he was itching to reach for his sketchpad in an attempt to keep his mind quiet.
“She’s really made an impression on you, hasn’t she?”
Benedict sighs, peering up at his sister as he calms his hands. “Please?” He asks quietly, not daring to voice the beg any louder than it needs to be.
Eloise reaches across the gap between them, covering Benedict’s hands with hers. For a moment, he isn’t the elder brother but a man in need of help. “I’ll help you, Benedict.”
“Thank you,” He replies; the relief in his voice evident as his whole body relaxes.
-----------
The tightness in his chest that has plagued him for the last week lifts as soon as his eyes land on her. She hasn’t seen him yet; too busy with another client gushing about their latest dress. (Y/N) looks flattered as she takes in compliment after compliment and Benedict can see why; she is clearly a talented modiste. If it didn’t raise suspicion on his end, he would suggest his mother come here instead of the seamstress just off Grosvenor Square.
The customer soon departs leaving Benedict and Eloise the sole clients in the shop. (Y/N) brushes down her dress, collecting herself before greeting her newest customers.
She freezes when she finds the tall stature of Benedict Bridgerton in and amongst the countless mannequins of her shop. Plastering on a polite smile, she steps forward, “How may I help you today?”
Benedict remains frozen; his stare solely focused on (Y/N). Eloise steps forward, nudging her brother in the side with her elbow. Eloise smiles at (Y/N). “From my brother’s reaction, we have found who we were looking for.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m in the market for a new dress,” Eloise states, elbowing her brother once more.
“Yes!” Benedict coughs, brought out of his stupor, “Eloise needs a new dress.”
(Y/N) glances between the siblings; the awed expression on Benedict’s face combined with the knowing smile on Eloise’s doesn’t settle her nerves. Instead, it heightens them. (Y/N) turns to Eloise, flashing her a friendly smile. “If you wouldn’t mind, could I borrow your brother?”
Eloise snorts. “You may keep him if that helps.”
(Y/N) laughs, covering her mouth before grabbing Benedict’s hand, leading him to the back of the shop. “What are you doing here?” (Y/N) questions; her eyes wide as she closes the door behind them. This was a conversation to have in private; not one to be had in front of Benedict’s sister.
“Accompanying my sister to buy a new dress for an upcoming ball,” Benedict replies smartly, his tone innocent as he applauds himself for asking Eloise to join him on his mission.
(Y/N) fixes him with a flat look, not believing a single word leaving his lips. Benedict flounders for a second before smiling bashfully at the seamstress. It wasn’t often that Benedict was left speechless, but (Y/N) reduced him to such manners.
After a moment, Benedict sighs, deciding honesty to be the best policy. “I wanted to see you again.”
(Y/N)’s face softens at Benedict’s confession, unable to fend off the growing fondness for the Bridgerton. If she was being honest with herself, (Y/N) hadn’t stopped thinking of the man since leaving Mr. Granville’s party.
Just as quick as the fondness set in, so does the worry on Benedict’s behalf. Gesturing between them both, (Y/N) offers Benedict a sad smile. “Nothing can come of this, Mr. Bridgerton.”
“What do you mean? Call me Benedict, you did the other night.”
“There were no class lines the other night,” She all but cries, “Outside of Mr. Granville’s home, we cannot be friends, Mr. Bridgerton.”
“Benedict,” He emphasises, “To you, I am Benedict. Not ‘Mr. Bridgerton’.”
“Benedict,” She whispers, giving in to the pleading look in those blue eyes of his.
“Why can’t we be friends?” He asks quietly as if scared to voice such a question louder out of fear of the response.
“You’re the son of a Viscount. I am a seamstress. Outside of my making dresses for your female relatives, where do our paths cross socially?”
“I want them to cross,” Benedict protests almost childishly, crossing his arms as if they were the personification of the budding relationship blooming between (Y/N) and himself.
(Y/N) laughs without humour. “Think of the fallout, Benedict. You would lose friends and contacts. I would be reduced to the rumour of a mistress and lose clients.”
Benedict purses his lips; trying to find fault in her argument but he comes up empty. Class lines were so rigidly drawn in current society and Benedict knew that (Y/N) was more than deserving to be thrown to the vicious rumour mill of London ton.
“What about Granville’s parties?” Benedict offers as a solution. “You say we cannot socialise so openly so let’s meet there with every party.”
“You would go to that extent to win my friendship?”
He nods. “I had the most fun the other night than I had in a long time and I have a very strong feeling it was down to you. You say we cannot be friends so openly, so this is the next best thing. Do I feel go about keeping you a secret? Not particularly, but London society can be unforgivably cruel, and I’ll be damned if I see you suffer at the hands of it.”
(Y/N) blinks rapidly, ridding herself of the tears that grew throughout Benedict’s impassioned speech. “Mr. Granville’s it is, then.”
Benedict smiles; relief flooding his system at your words of agreement. Impulsively, he takes your hand, squeezing it once before letting it drop. The very action sets his veins alight with emotions he has not felt in a very long time, but he doesn’t not let them distract him as he whispers, “I’ll send a messenger with the date and time of the next soiree. Will I see you there?”
“You will,” (Y/N) murmurs, “I promise you.”
Benedict flashes her a handsome smile before returning to the front of the shop, knowing full well he has been too long to be acceptable.
Eloise greets him with a superior smile. Crossing her arms, she asks, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Turning back to face the back of the shop, Benedict smiles to himself. “Yes, I think I have,” He answers, offering Eloise an arm, departing the shop once and for all.
-----------
28th April, 9pm. Mr. Granville’s home. I hope to see you there.
The missive arrives not four days later. (Y/N) reads and rereads the small piece of paper, memorising Benedict’s elegant handwriting. Anticipation curls in her gut making it hard for her to focus on the task at hand; she had three dresses to finish all for next week. If she didn’t focus now, nothing would get done. She would end up wasting the evening by daydreaming of a Bridgerton and their handsome smile.
She hadn’t expected him. He had entered her life so suddenly. After their initial meeting, she hadn’t expected to see him again; had accepted that it was a one-off meeting that Benedict would soon forget, soon taken with the newest fascination in his life if he wasn’t married off by the end of the season.
That didn’t happen. Instead, he had shown up in her shop with his sister in tow. He had begged for a friendship, to see her again. He kept surprising her at every turn, kept startling her when she least expected it.
Yet, she knew she had to be careful. Not only of her heart, but of her reputation. If the two were caught and things misunderstood, it would not be Benedict to suffer. It would be her; she would be reduced to rumours of impropriety, labelled a ‘fallen woman’ whilst Benedict would most likely suffer a harsh word from his mother and a clap on the back from his brothers.
Society, in general, was cruel. London society, however, was punishing when it wanted to be.
--------------
The 28th April rolls around quickly. (Y/N) losing herself in her work, sewing until the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning to ensure that the gowns are ready and that she is free enough to attend the party.
Stepping out of the carriage, (Y/N) steadies herself for a moment, taking a deep breath to settle the butterflies exciting her. She felt ridiculous, letting herself be this affected by the man after only one meeting. Yet, he had shown up at her shop, after searching for her for however long.
(Y/N) felt in two minds. On one hand, she wanted the friendship of Benedict Bridgerton for the simple fact that he was entertaining. On the other hand, she despised the idea that she may be a project for the man – their opposite places in society becoming a barrier between them.
The atmosphere in Mr. Granville’s house is heady as (Y/N) enters the premises; the party very much in full swing as she sheds her shawl and leaves it on a side table. She smiles at those she recognises, waving quickly at Ariadne who she finds modelling for many artists once more. Ariadne smiles back but doesn’t move; her eye on a particular artist, a female she knew she would be going home with that night.
(Y/N) shakes her head fondly at the antics of her friend; having known Ariadne for years and loved her proclivity for men and women. (Y/N) admired Ariadne’s lack of shame for who she is, who she wants to be. She doesn’t let the law stop of her from loving who she wants to.
Arriving at the door she entered through last time, (Y/N) hesitates, feeling unsure of herself. A small flash of doubt lances through her mind as she reaches for the doorknob; how long was this going to last before Benedict got bored? How long did she have with the man that was no doubt going to change her world?
The very thought haunts her as she enters the room, finding Benedict in the same spot as last time. He stands when he sees (Y/N) standing the doorway; his suit elegantly rumpled as if he had been sat there for some time. His blue eyes sparkle in the dimly lit room; the only light coming from the fire in the grate. His smile brightens as he takes in her appearance.
“You came,” Benedict breathes, his voice relieved as if he was worried that she may not attend the party after all.
“I promised you I would,” (Y/N) replies, taking the offered glass from Benedict. Their fingers brush and (Y/N) tries exceptionally hard to ignore the jolt of electricity that passes between them. Friendship, she snipes to herself, nothing more.
“I know,” He whispers, “But I’m glad all the same.”
Something in (Y/N) melts at the stark honesty of his words; she found herself being knocked off her axis and it was only their third meeting.
“I have to know,” (Y/N) starts, her voice amused as she takes a seat across from the brunette, “How many shops did you go into before finding mine?”
Benedict averts his gaze, distracting himself from answering by taking a long sip of his drink. “Too many,” He eventually answers.
“You don’t know the number?”
“I know the exact number, I could even tell you their names, but I hesitate to tell you.”
“You have to tell me now,” (Y/N) prompts, leaning forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the table. “Please?”
Benedict sighs a war-weary sigh; acting as if (Y/N) had worn him down to his very last nerve. With a light blush dusting his cheeks, Benedict admits, “I visited close to fifteen shops with Eloise before finding yours.”
“Fifteen?!” (Y/N) all but shouts, laughter soon falling from her lips as rain would fall from the sky. The very sound sets Benedict’s heart racing within his chest making him wonder whether it was going to run right out of his chest any moment.
“Eloise was very grateful when we found you. She despises dress shopping.”
“Yet she went to fifteen dress shops with you in order to find me.”
“She’s my favourite sibling, but don’t tell the others.”
“How many do you have? I’ve heard of the famous Bridgerton brood but never focused long enough to find out how many children there were.”
“Eight of us in total,” Benedict laughs at (Y/N)’s gasp, “We’re named alphabetically too. My father used to joke it was so he could keep track of us easier.”
“A wise idea,” (Y/N) murmurs.
“He was a wise man,” Benedict states, thinking of his departed father with a keen sting of grief. It didn’t matter how long his father had been gone, the wound would never heal. He would miss his father until his very last day on this earth; Benedict would spend the rest of his life trying to emulate Edmund Bridgerton’s life lessons.
A pensive silence descends only for a moment before (Y/N) asks, “Why did you look for me?”
The blush returns to Benedict’s cheeks. “Would you believe me if I said I wanted to see you again?” He asks sheepishly. He had prepared himself for such a conversation but having it in real life was no comparison to the fantasy in his head.
“Why did you want to see me again? Why not wait for the next party?”
“I wasn’t sure you would attend the next party,” Benedict reasons, “And I really did want to see you again.”
(Y/N) smiles bashfully, ducking her head as his words wash over her. She fiddles with the stem of the glass in her hand before taking a long sip; the worries from earlier had returned with the conviction behind his words. She had to know; if she didn’t ask him, she would never know and she would never be prepared for the day he would inevitably grow bored and move onto the next project. “Can we be honest with each other for a moment, Benedict?”
“I thought we have been so far.”
(Y/N) smiles despite herself. Schooling her face into a mask of polite interest, she tries to cover the concern and worry steadily rising in her gut. “This isn’t a saviour moment for you is it? Befriending a poorer seamstress, getting to know her before eventually getting bored?”
“I haven’t thought of it as that for one moment.”
“You haven’t?”
“I haven’t, but the fact that you have says more about my character than I care to admit.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” She hurries to say, worried about losing the friendship that had only just begun and scared of hurting Benedict’s feelings.
“You haven’t insulted me,” Benedict promises with a small smile.
“I can’t help but worry,” She admits in a small voice.
“I would socialise with you in public, but you made such a sound argument the other week that I couldn’t find fault. You’re right, it could lead to all sorts of trouble, but I want you to know that I do not have a saviour complex. I just enjoy your company.”
(Y/N) relaxes, sagging further into the chair as she lets herself breathe freely since the worrisome thought entered her mind. Now that it was out in the open, she could smile more without worry. “I enjoy your company too,” She confesses, “You’re quite refreshing.”
“Refreshing?” Benedict asks, sounding close to laughter.
(Y/N) rolls her eyes at the older gentleman. “Yes, refreshing. I deal with meddlesome mothers and droll daughters all day. You make me laugh… it’s refreshing.”
“I’m glad I can provide refreshment,” Benedict laughs, his smile wide with his happiness.
Happy smiles are exchanged as the worries leave (Y/N)’s mind. She was wanted here by the man sat across from her; he had no plans to leave any time soon. For now, her mind is settled and as she raises her glass to the Bridgerton across from her, she briefly wonders whether her heart would soon be settled too.
------------
The friendship continues for weeks; neither of them the wiser to their growing feelings for the other. If they are, they remain silent, not wanting to disturb the status quo but rather, pine from a distance.
They continue to meet at Mr. Granville’s, sneaking away to their room where they talk for hours about anything and everything.
At one point, (Y/N) manages to convince Benedict to bring his sketchpad with him where he fills pages with drawings of her. She doesn’t realise it; she doesn’t know that the small sketch of hands holding a champagne flute is Benedict’s study of her.
Time passes and they become attached to the other; saving pieces of information and stories of friends and family for when they finally get to see each other. The time they have together filled with laughter; the class lines that separate them outside Mr. Granville’s home practically invisible as Benedict chokes on his drink at the scandalous nature of (Y/N)’s story, unaware such language could leave such a woman.
It’s easy, it’s natural. It’s all Benedict has to fill his time between the mind-numbing balls and luncheons set up by his mother in order to find him a wife. Little does Violet Bridgerton know that Benedict has found someone he would devote the rest of his life to but whether she would be willing, whether she loves him as wholly as he loves her is another matter entirely.
--------------
He starts to haunt her dreams from their very first meeting. The colour of his eyes combined with the brightness of his smile chased her from sleep much faster than she would have liked.
Sitting up in bed, she rests her chin on her knees, feeling the helplessness that often accompanies the swift descent into love.
In the short time she had spent in Benedict’s company, (Y/N) had to admit that she had fallen head over heels for the brunette. Sighing heavily, she tries to pinpoint the exact moment her feelings turned from platonic to romantic but finds herself unable to do so. At this point, she cannot help but wonder whether she had fallen for him the first instance she saw him. He looked so out of depth in his perfectly pressed clothes; it was adorable.
(Y/N) runs a hand across her face in an attempt to dispel the lingering tiredness but to also ride herself of thoughts of the man who had so readily captured her heart without knowing he had done so.
How could she explain this feeling? Her heart refused to calm in his presence, beating away in her chest as if ready to take flight. Benedict smiled in her direction and her mind ceased to form coherent thought. She didn’t tell anyone how in the darkest hours of the night, she stretched a hand across the empty blankets of her bed, imagining what it would be like to have Benedict lie next to her. Would he snore? Was he an early riser or did he prefer to sleep in?
Such questions would travel the expanse of her mind until the birds began to announce the arrival of a new day. Her mind creating daydreams that left her heart aching in her chest when she came back to earth, reminded harshly of the barriers that divided them.
What scent did he prefer? Did he favour scotch or brandy?
Endlessly she tortured herself with such questions. Spinning fantasies in which she woke up every morning with Benedict by her side. She would wake to find him already watching her, as if in disbelief that she would choose to love a man such as him.
A single tear escapes (Y/N)’s eye as she forces herself back to the present. Eyeing her small rooms, (Y/N) thought that she should be fortunate that a man such as Benedict Bridgerton would give her the honour of his much requested time. It would do her no good to fall in love with him now.
Straightening up and running a hand through her sleep plait, (Y/N) vows to rid herself of her feelings for the second eldest Bridgerton.
However, as the vow is sealed, a small voice in the back of (Y/N)’d mind casts doubt on her ability to do such a thing.
----------------
“Eloise has been asking after you,” Benedict comments; choosing the line of conversation for this section of the evening. At this point, they’ve been at Granville’s home for hours, covering all topics of conversation conceivable. (Y/N) had updated Benedict on Ariadne’s clandestine love affair with a daughter of a prominent member of His Majesty’s Navy to which Benedict spent over an hour trying to guess which officer and which daughter. (Y/N) delighted in announcing his incorrect guesses.
“How is she?” She asks, feeling a distant fondness for the woman who had shown up in her shop so many weeks ago.
“Distracted if I’m being truthful,” Benedict murmurs, “Her hands are always covered in ink. I think she has an admirer.”
“And why shouldn’t she?” (Y/N) demands, crossing her arms. “Eloise is a beautiful young woman. Any man would be lucky to have her.”
“She’s turned down the last three marriage proposals so I’m curious to see what type of man has captured her attention.”
“Siblings and their nosiness,” (Y/N) admonishes though there is no heat behind it.
“I want what’s best for her,” Benedict defends.
“I know you do,” She whispers, fondness for the man sitting across from her surging through her. It leaves her quiet; it leaves her breathless as she fends off the heart racing, stomach turning affection she feels for the second eldest Bridgerton.
Benedict closes his eyes, kicking up his heels and resting them on the table. A happy, content smile crosses his lips as he lets himself enjoy the moment they find themselves in.
I could do this for the rest of myself, (Y/N) thinks to herself, I could sit with him for the rest of my life.
It’s with that thought that (Y/N) knows she has broken the vow she made only a few days ago.
“You’re different tonight… quieter. Is something the matter?” Benedict asks, a note of concern in his voice.
(Y/N) shakes her head, refusing to look the man in the eye. Instead, she focuses her gaze on her glass, swirling the liquid around as if it were the most fascinating thing in the whole world.
Benedict sighs, reaching across the table, taking her glass from her hand and placing it on the table in front of them. He stops himself from covering her hand with his; that is a luxury for couples. As much as Benedict wanted more, he would settle for being her friend.
“You can tell me anything, (Y/N),” Benedict murmurs quietly, breaking her resolve clean in half.
“I broke my vow,” She whispers, voice close to breaking.
“What vow?” Benedict asks, panic beginning to rise internally. “Are you promised to another?”
“Nothing like that,” (Y/N) reassures, “I broke a vow that I made to myself which somehow makes me feel worse. I would rather I broke a promise of marriage.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
(Y/N) sniffles, wiping a hand under her eyes before laughing humourlessly. “A few nights ago, I made myself a promise and it seems that I am unable to keep such a vow.”
“Would you tell me that vow?”
(Y/N) sighs, seeing no point in lying to him. “I vowed that I would rid myself of my feelings for you.”
“And have you?” Benedict asks warily; he needs to know whether he has a chance to love her the way he wants to. He wants to be her everything; he wants to kiss her goodnight and then kiss her good morning hours later.
She shakes her head; wisps of hair flying loose from her updo. “I don’t think I ever really tried. I don’t think I want to lose my feelings for you.”
“I don’t often make grand declarations, I don’t believe in over the top displays of affection,” Benedict begins; his eyes fixed on her face, on every movement of her lips, “But I love you, (Y/N). I love you and if I need to, I will make a grand declaration, I will shout it from the rooftop of Buckingham Palace.”
“Please don’t do that!” (Y/N) gasps, an amused smile on her face. “I love you too, I love you with everything I am, but aren’t you worried?”
“Worried?”
“Of the fallout? It could never work, Benedict. See sense, please,” She pleads; eyes wide.
“Why wouldn’t it work? We love each other, surely that should be enough.”
“It is enough for me, Benedict,” She reassures quickly, “But it isn’t enough for the rest of society.”
“Why do you care what they think?”
“My entire business relies on such things, Benedict! Whether I earn an income over the season is down to what the ton think.”
“It is so easy to get lost in the wealth, the titles and the balls,” Benedict whispers, “You bring me back down to earth; remind me that I could happily live without the grandeur because I would have the love of the woman I have come to adore.”
The words have her argument crumbling into ash before her. There was no arguing with that; he was prepared to live a simpler life with her.
“You would do that for me? Live a simpler life?” She asks because she has to know; she has to know that she isn’t something he would come to regret in the weeks, months, years that pass. She couldn’t live with herself if he harboured any resentment towards her for his loss of societal ties; the very thought terrified her.
“Darling,” Benedict states, “I would give it all up for you. As long as I have you, I do not need the life in London and everything else that comes with it. We can live in the country; I have a cottage there that I am sure you’re going to love.”
“What about your family?”
“They’ll love your almost as much as I love you.”
“They won’t hate me?” She asks, voice timid as she thinks of the matriarch of the Bridgerton family, knowing she was not a woman to cross.
“They could never.”
(Y/N) begins to nod; slow at first before growing more rapidly with a smile breaking out across her face. “Okay,” She breathes, “I love you, Benedict Bridgerton. I’m not scared anymore.”
Benedict gathers her in his arms, finally getting to hold her after dreaming of such an action for so long. Better than his dreams, he thinks to himself as he glances between her stare and her lips. Silently, she nods, smiling softly as Benedict takes that final leap, pressing their lips together.
(Y/N) sighs against his mouth; a noise he could happily hear for the rest of his life. Her hands grasp the lapels of his jacket, pulling him even closer. She feels like heaven against him as Benedict continues to taste the remnants of her drink on her lips.
Her hands leave his jacket, reaching up to card through his hair. (Y/N) tugs lightly at the dark brown locks, smiling into the kiss at the sound of the low groan in the back of Benedict’s throat. (Y/N) loses herself in the feel of the man against her; all hard lines and muscles, he feels like a Greek god and she a mere mortal getting to experience the heady passion written about in epic poems and plays.
Desperate for air, but not desperate to leave the arms of the man she loves so wholly, (Y/N) breaks the kiss. Panting, Benedict kisses her lightly once, twice, three times before pressing his forehead to hers. A moment of peace before the rush of the future began.
Boundaries, divides, lines really meant little when you had found the one who truly saw you.
****
Bridgerton Taglist: @heloisedaphnebrightmore​ @dreaming-about-fanfictions​ @janelongxox​ @now-its-time-for-a-breakdown​ @aspiringsloth20​ @wallwriterstuff​ @magicalxdaydream​ @darkestbeforethedawn16​ @gryffindors-weasley​ @spideysz​
272 notes · View notes
heliianth · 3 years
Note
Hi helli do u wanna maybe possibly talk about the pet wars and how they reflect on like c!dream n c!sapnap? 👉👈 Its like
i've been thinking about it but the most ordered thought i can make is thinking about c!sapnap and going :((((((( D:
hnn ok. so. i wanna talk abt c!dream first bc hes my kitty cat u know how i am. c!dream has some very interesting interactions as it pertains to c!sapnap or c!sapnap's involvement in the pet wars. the most prevalent one that caught my mind was how he approaches mars and beckerson. here are a couple quotes i'll throw at the wall. FUNDY: "...So I joined and I’ve noticed this—this little pet—I had a little pet, alright? Well, it’s—the thing is… he is now buried six feet deep underneath the ground due to a person named Snapchat. What is Sapnap’s fish? Just a random question, just—what’s his name?”
DREAM: “Mars and Beckerson.”
FUNDY: “Alright, so. Mars, great, I’m just picking a random one. I would love to pet the fish on my own without you being there.”
DREAM: “These fish are not just Sapnap’s, okay?”
FUNDY: “Oh.”
DREAM: “They are the first, like, named animals on the entire server and they need to remain… y’know, alive. But—” (Aug. 29 2020, Fundy's The War Against Sapnap..., 4:20) “Tommy. I’m about to give you something, and don’t tell Sapnap this, but no matter what you do, you cannot destroy or kill or damage it. Okay? But you can have it and you can act like you will, but you can’t, okay? Promise me that you won’t. That’s Sapnap’s fish.” (Oct. 5 2020, Tommy's TommyInnit, Dream & Technoblade TEAM UP (dream smp war), 1:32:40) i'm sure there are more displaying what im getting at. dream cares very much for mars and beckerson in one way or the other, and honestly i'm a little unsure of what to make of it? in fundy's video, he immediately leads fundy to sapnap's dogs and foxes, and specifically tells him and niki which fox is sapnap's, and, in this VOD, he straight up leads tommy to sapnap's secret base filled with his dogs and cats (though he denies it was with the intent to have them killed)—so his care probably isn't by virtue of them being sapnap's pets. i think at one point he genuinely considered them sentimental because of how important they were to sapnap, but considering they ended up in his vault during the S2 finale i really don't think they remained as such. they probably took the same turn the discs did, if i'm real, as in he began to see them only as weapons to be used against someone he thought was powerful. if you look at it through the lens of his words to techno in prison being truthful, c!dream might perceive it as a spiteful sort of self-defense or as a sort of justice for the hurt he proclaims sapnap caused him. i really do think the pet wars were some of the things that made c!dreamnap's relationship degrade. dream constantly tries to stop things from escalating between them, explicitly telling people not to imply his involvement or backing out retrospectively [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], so c!dream knows what he's doing here, and later on i don't think he cares too much about whether sapnap finds out anymore. in this VOD, dream wants to kill sapnap for next to no discernible reason? iirc, i think its some petty unrelated reason? which causes sapnap to levy some heavy accusations of "[his] own brothers betraying [him]" (1:01:14). and in this one sapnap says dream handing tommy mars was a betrayal on the level of eret (1:43:33). it's obvious that these scattered events were the beginning of a major breakdown in trust between them. i've seen a few nebulous takes floating around saying sapnap overreacted to dream's spirit speech but honestly, considering their history of tenuous trust and sapnap's near-fear (maybe out of respect? but nonetheless unhealthy for a friendship. also flypaw has a compilation of this. i would go digging but its 3 AM) of dream, AND what i've talked about here, i wouldn't blame him for having such a severe reaction. i think the major reflection on sapnap here is how he considers c!dream after everything is said and done. c!sapnap is a character who is very desperate to not be alone, and he knows deep down that c!dream will not be the person he remembers him being and obviously cannot see him as someone who will become that person in the future. i think his reflection in this VOD (around the 25:00 mark) is pretty telling. but there's also his statements from tina's tour stream, where he says he thinks about c!dream every day and wishes he was [out of prison] with him. c!sapnap is a very squishy little guy and i think he's still processing the big change that is c!dream not being in his corner. on the other hand, i really don't think c!dream reciprocates. you can guess as to whether he genuinely feels like c!sapnap betrayed him (i haven't gotten the prison streams in my transcriptions), but i don't think he cares for him much at all. i think out of c!dteam, c!dream cares for c!george the most in the way you care for the memory of a person, not them presently. and i don't think he's cared for c!sapnap for a while, if the nov 28th stream is enough to go by. ANYWAYS hi night ily :3
24 notes · View notes
Text
I’m going to be honest before I get to the Sam/Rebecca subplot: if they drop plots threads indicating that this continue into the next season and uplift this pairing, I’m out.
This storyline is gross and I can see why some people quit the show when the revealed happened.
When I say I’m repulsed by age gap relationships of this nature, this isn’t a shipping thing or a race thing. This is a moral and ethical thing. Because it’s not just an age gap, it’s also that Rebecca is Sam’s boss. I legitimately don’t see how people can overlook this and ship how “cute” this is. I’m not judging anyone, it just genuinely doesn’t make sense to me.
And for people who think I’m a hypocrite, Ted/Rebecca is not the same. Sam and Rebecca is like a principal dating a student. If you want to age Sam up, because people love to accuse others of infantilizing Sam, it’s like the president of a college dating a student. In both cases, there would be backlash, and have been, to these types of relationships.
Which would make Ted’s position that of a teacher/professor or someone higher. In most cases, there aren’t objections, however, both parties have to be transparent about their relationship and careful about how and if that influences their professional relationship with each other and others.
Last week, I mentioned a friend of mine who was 18 and dated someone who was 28. Both are white for reference. When I found out their ages and respective positions, I became concerned and doubly concerned.
Oh, they had chemistry and he made her so happy, but he was also controlling as fuck and emotionally abusive. During the duration of their relationship, he became her boss and would monitor her interactions via cameras in the back office. She was stressed out as fuck and would go to the bathroom to cry. You know, where cameras weren’t and where he couldn’t enter.
And it was a secret relationship because he could get in trouble. I didn’t say anything because she was with her boyfriend before she knew me. Me telling someone could’ve gotten him in trouble or fired, but that wouldn’t have ended the relationship. It would’ve made her end our friendship and cling closer to him. Instead, after I quit for other reasons, I sporadically checked on her to see how she was doing and give her advice and resources.
As far as the actual episode itself goes, I struggled to enjoy it due to the Sam/Rebecca situation. It should’ve ended at dinner at most.
The only emotional beat that landed, imo, was Jamie and Roy’s hug. I do think Ted’s confession was strong, but the flow was kinda weird for me. By itself it works.
Two things working for me that wasn’t at the forefront of the episode was 1. How Ted’s problem is fucking over the team. 2. That Nate is in over his head.
Even if AFC Richmond had lost with Ted being in his A game, it wouldn’t have been that made and the team would’ve been more competitive. They were sloppy and making baffling errors. Their head was not in the game and it showed. Man City wasn’t that good, Richmond was just that ill prepared.
And who led training?
Nate.
Nate has great instincts, but he isn’t ready to lead a team and he still has a lot of work to do before growing into coaching a team as head coach.
But let me stress, this falls completely on Ted and even Beard to an extent. Yes, Ted is having emotional issues, however, many people rely on him and he wasn’t there. I don’t mean literally because teams should be able to function without their head coach for stretches of time. He hasn’t been there mentally and emotionally for most of the season. Because AFC Richmond’s competition isn’t as premier as Man City, it’s easier to appear more dominant that you are, esp if you’re coach isn’t on his A game. However, when you’re up against actual Goliath’s in the league, you’ll get your ass handed to you like Richmond did.
As I mentioned earlier, if they do go through with supporting and uplifting Sam/Rebecca, my time with this fandom ends with the season 2 finale.
But if we take Ted’s dark forest into consideration, there is another way this could play out. Actually many.
The one I can see happening that can get her somewhat redeemed, because some will never get over this happening in the first place, is her hitting rock bottom via her relationship with Sam. Something will happen or make her have unflattering thoughts about herself and her actions that will drive her into a tailspin.
And I’m unsure if it’ll be just a personal crisis or if it’ll also be a professional crisis.
Some may disagree with me, but I do want this affair to come to light. Because if it doesn’t, it sets up this fucked up precedent that Rebecca can do fucked up shit and get away with it in private.
Rebecca fucked over her club, uprooted a man’s life in bad faith, and almost ruined several people’s careers due to her bullshit in the first season. The fact that she didn’t have to answer for any of this is a God damn mercy on Ted’s part even though she didn’t ask for it.
Now for her to date/fuck a player because “she just has to know.” Because she doesn’t want to let something pass her by?
Yeah…no.
Rebecca’s fear of loneliness is leading her to make very bad decisions and I fear what this means for Sam’s career and relationships if this breaks. There were people who allegedly care for Sam, yet cheered for this relationship to happen. What do you think happens with his locker room relationships? I’ve already explained in another post that either this sours those relationships OR they want favors from him because he’s dating/fucking the boss.
He’ll get crucified in the media. He may even have trouble getting employed. Why? Because that’s how racism works.
“But, masterthespianduchovny, if Sam may receive hate and racist acts committed against him, why do you want the affair exposed?”
Because this shit show of a relationship isn’t about just Sam. It’s about Rebecca’s fear of loneliness leading her to make bad decisions that effects everyone not just her and Sam. It’s the fact that a white woman isn’t thinking about how her actions could have major consequences for a young black man.
Rebecca is so obsessed with not being lonely and being loved that 1. She never sought help or productive ways to deal with the fall out and humiliation of her marriage. 2. She dated a man because he was “fine” and not because she was actually invested in him and the relationship 3. She’s getting involved with a player on her team without thinking of any of the consequences. 4. She’s not considering the other players, the coaches, or anyone else she’s responsible for.
Oh, and considering we got that call from Sam’s dad…his relationship with his father will most likely suffer as a result. AND now that Dubai Air thing looks suspect, esp because she was talking to him around that time unknowingly.
Oop! And isn’t she getting her relationship with Nora back on track? Even though Nora and Sam can’t legally date and I’m not saying every decision should be swayed by a teenage girl, however, Rebecca is literally sabotaging every relationship just because she’s afraid of being alone (I agree with another poster who said we really didn’t need to explore this storyline, but alas…)
Although Ted forgave Rebecca for her scheming in season one, I honestly don’t think he’d be so forgiving for this. It’s his job to protect players and look out for their well being and how can he one his boss is involved with one of his players, which again, affects others players. This relationship has major consequences for other people who are not in it.
Also, Sam…for someone who people love to say is mature enough to date an older woman, not once did even be consider the ramifications of getting involved with the boss.
Not once.
And that looks bad because a mature person his age would be mindful of such a thing. This isn’t considered or, at least, isn’t said onscreen. Sam os either thinking with his dick, his heart, or both, but he isn’t thinking with his head. Because there is no way you’re thinking with your head and don’t stop to say, “hey, this thing could jeopardize my relationship with my teammates and the other people I work with. Maybe I should think some more of this before pursuing a relationship with my boss.” Sam was all in from the moment he decided he wanted to have dinner with Rebecca. There was no thinking on his end.
But Sam’s super mature, right?
Another poster mentioned that there might be a screaming match between Rebecca and ted and I’m so here for that. No, I don’t think this argument will be romantic. They’ll have legitimate gripes with each other, but yeah…this is an argument that needs to happen. Which will most likely be before Rebecca gets help.
That’s all assuming this happens. Like I said, they could have Sam and Rebecca being a power couple (🤮), or handle this some other way. But if this is going to be framed as a good thing, others can enjoy it, but the show will have one less viewer from me.
58 notes · View notes
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
(click for better quality!)

AO3 Link

Cody places the chest plate over his sternum, allowing the magnetic clasps to attach the piece to an equally plain one over his back. It feels strange, the lack of protection over his lower body. His midriff remains unprotected under the overshirt.

“This feels… unsafe.” he grumbles “Too Exposed.”

Rex hands him the kama with a small grin, the little di’kut. Of course he and Wolffe had mocked him over it, how he was finally gonna wear one like they did. While Cody ties the thing in place, Rex points a finger at him.

“Listen, senator Organa told us to keep it simple. You’re not headed for battle, vod.”

“He might just be.” Wolffe quips with a low growl, handing Cody his belt “There isn’t one kriffing person in there that’ll be happy to see a clone in the senate floor.”

Cody sighs with the belt in his hands. Again, too simple. No thermal detonators hanging from it, much less his holstered blasters. Just a plain strap of leather shielded by plastoid plates.

He reaches for the arm guards over the table, running his finger over its grooves. The senate. How much did they know about the soldiers fighting and dying for them off-world? How did they feel about their existence? Senator Organa said they might listen to him, but what are the odds of him being forcefully escorted out like a droid speaking out of turn?

What if he is actually putting them all at risk? If the kaminiise start thinking that even their Marshall Commander is starting to sound like a traitor, how long before they arrive to the conclusion that the clones were a failed experiment and that it would be better to terminate every single one of them?

His eyes drift over to the carefully folded cape, to the names that he had personally embroidered on its inside, thinks about how no cape, no flag, no amount of fabric would be enough to actually get all of them, thousands upon thousands of men lost to this endless war.
Rex walks up to Cody, glances at him to then gently bump his hand guard to the commander’s.

“Me'bana, vod?”

Wolffe steps over to his other side brushing his shoulder to Cody’s, and the three of them stare at the names on the fabric as Cody unfurls the cape, spreading it some over the table. The three of them look at it in silence, reading and associating each name to a face, to a voice, to a personality. There are some of Wolffe’s men, lost to the Malevolence’s attacks; some of both Rex and Cody’s men, all lost in Umbara, several of them to friendly fire. And many others, as many as Cody could manage to fit in such a small space.

That piece of fabric is the only concrete form of remembrance for these men without graves or monuments. Clones can only trust their memories to keep the history of their brothers alive, and it makes Cody’s heart ache.

“Ni chaabar.” Cody says quietly, and it was only in their Mando’a that he could find it in himself to explain his feelings “I could end up getting us all killed with this.”

There is a small moment of silence, and then Wolffe sighs.
 “We are already getting killed. Every time we fight we lose dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of our vod’e in battle, or we watch them die in the medbays.”

Cody turns to face Wolffe. The commander, as many other clones, was never fond of speaking more than strictly necessary, especially about the bleak conditions in which they all lived and fought in; Maybe it was to protect himself, maybe to protect his men. Maybe it was just his way of managing to cross the tightrope of war without ever looking down. But now he speaks - and Cody listens.

“They’re keep lowering the age of drafting.” Wolffe traces  with his gaze the embroidered name of a wolfpack trooper lost to the Malevolence weapon “First it was by a few weeks, then months, and now…”
Cody notices him poking his cheek with his tongue, shaking his head almost unnoticeably. Wolffe continues:
“I was nine when I was sent out to lead my battallion. I was scared but I was grown and ready.” Wolffe continues, eyebrows creased in a weave of confusion and barely-hidden anger as he turns his eyes to cody “Last week I received word of new batches coming out, most of them eight, a couple of them barely there. The kaminiise are sending out a bunch of still-growing kids to fight before their standard training is even done. We already have accelerated aging to fit the needs of the Republic, but this? This is just sick.”

“And we can’t say a word about it because we aren’t a people, technically.” Rex adds sheepishly “We can’t say a word about being forced to work overtime. Can’t say anything about being paid in ‘special GAR’s credits’. Or about the overcrowded dorms, or the need of longer breaks, or mental healthcare, or entertainment, or a life outside the army.”

Rex runs a hand over his cropped blond hair.

 “We are loyal in a way most governments only dream of.” he continues, eyes sharp at Cody “We live and breathe and fight and die for the republic, and we are all proud to do so. But we need to believe that we receive back at least half of the high regard in which we hold the Republic. We aren’t asking for much, and the Republic has denied us the right to even ask.”

And, after a small pause, Rex swallows down, and his tone shows how much he knows he’s risking just to say it.

“Do we risk death for our freedom, or do we continue to live as slaves?”

“Rex.” Wolffe says in a warning tone 

The two of them know of Cody’s loyalty to the Republic. When the idea of having him speak against it in the senate even came up, Cody’s first response was to accuse them of threason. It had taken long enough to convince him to find the narrow path between his fear-based respect for the Kaminoans, his dedication for the republic and the jedi, and his love for his brothers.

Cody frowns to then run a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes and speaking between his teeth.
“I’m not a slave. I love my duty. I love the Republic!”

Maybe he should just give up on this. It was all a huge mistake, he had allowed Wolffe and Rex to drag him along with this nonsense. He could just turn his back on this and get back to the barracks, to his armor, to his command, where he belonged…

He opens up his eyes, and the very first thing he sees is one of the names in aurebesh in front of him, drawing in his gaze like a trance.
 
Waxer. How could someone with such a kind, gentle heart be so deadly in the battlefield? Cody remembers him, the eager cadet that would always be seen hanging out with his batch brother Boil. Waxer had a heart soft enough to make him adopt a lost child in the middle of a war zone, to pet and feed stray animals and let them in their cover when it rained. He would make such an amazing parent, Cody could almost envision him holding a tiny bundle in his arms, just like Jango would do with his own. He would love his kid with all his heart… 

If he had lived to have them. Instead, Waxer died in a dark world, fallen to a brother’s blast, crying in pain and fear as Rex had reported it.

Wordlessly, Cody puts on the vambraces, then the arm guards. Lastly, he takes the cape, brushes his gloved thumb over Waxer’s name. He owes it to him. To them, all of the Clone Army of the Republic. He owes it to them to at least try. Cody throws the cape over his shoulders, securing it in the straps on the inside of his chest plate.

His brothers look at him with pride, and it makes his heart swell. His comlink rings, and Bail Organa’s voice comes through it: 

“Commander Cody, are you ready?” 

Cody looks at Rex and Wolffe, draws in a deep breath. 

“Yes.” 

“I’m about to announce you to the senate. Remember - keep your opening statement short and fast because we don’t know what will be their reaction. And, from personal experience: if they try cutting your speakers up there, just carry on by shouting the rest of your statement. Good luck, my friend.” 
Cody chuckles, pressing the comlink. 

“Good thing that us commanders are good at shouting.”

-

Mando’a translations:

Di’kut - Idiot
Me'bana, vod? - what’s the matter, brother?

Ni chaabar - I’m afraid
-
Senator Cody picked up from several bits of headcanons across tumblr. I highly recommend checking the #senator cody tag on @transmikecrew​‘s blog bc it’s honestly the best and his writing is *chef’s kiss*
1K notes · View notes
nishisun · 3 years
Text
suna rintaro is NOT a genius.
summary: you loved the idea of soulmates. suna rintaro didn’t. it isn’t that hard to put two and two together to realize that maybe people with different opinions on things don’t belong together.
part 2
a/n: this was literally supposed to be a series, i gave up on it because i just didn’t like the way it turned out. it used to be called “out of my league” and this was the intro. i also renamed it. just emptying drafts!! please don’t get confused with the random timeskip, once again, this was a part of a series i never ended up posting😭
WARNING!!: suggestive themes, mentions of death, idk kinda angsty but tell me if i missed anything
Tumblr media
Soulmates. Whatever the hell that means. The idea of soulmates is something I truly don’t understand. It’s bullshit, honestly. It’s all-pervasive.
My mother always told me I'd eventually find "the one.” I used to believe that when I was younger of course. But in my opinion? It’s all cliches. It's unhelpful, and it's certainly not true. Destiny is an excuse for the weak. Why do you think most marriages end in divorce? It's 'cause people who believe they are “destined to be" assume everything will fall into place without any effort. I don't appreciate people pontificating bullshit like that just to make me feel better, especially if they haven't found their "soulmate" themselves. My sister once told me, “People who believe in soulmates are more likely to break up and encounter more difficulty in their relationship, which will lead them to give up on one another eventually.”
I sure do believe that.
My mother is a prime example. Fumeiko Suna, my dear mother. Well, she clearly hasn’t found hers. I found out when I came home after a tedious day of school in 5th grade and found my dear mother on the floor crying, with bruises all over her face and a busted lip.
Initially, I thought a burglar had broken into our home once again, but if that were the case then there would’ve been missing furniture. But there wasn’t.
In fact, the place seemed cleaner than usual. When I ran up to her and asked her what had happened, there he was. The devil himself. My father. He reeked of alcohol, and I could detect his shadow towering over me. It’s funny how that I think of it. I used to fear that son of a bitch. Now, I’m way taller than him, and hate his guts. I turned around to see a faux-sympathetic smile plastered on his face.
He explained how my mother was being “clumsy” and had fell and busted her lip on one of the corners of the kitchen table and when I turned back around to face my mother, she smiled gently and nodded in agreement. She didn’t say anything after that.
It was then I realized my father had beat my mother to a pulp.
Long story short, when I found it was my father, sure, I was frightened. In fact, I remember going into my siblings’ rooms to inform them, they shrugged it off and told me that dad had been doing it for a while now.
Over time, when my dad had found out that I was aware, he didn't mind beating the absolute shit out of my mother in front of all three of us. This was when my burning hatred for that man started. Nobody in the house even attempted to stop him. I did a few times, though. He took all his anger out on me. At least my mom had a break for the day.
I almost pitied my mother. Almost. Maybe if she was strong enough to leave him, then yeah, I’d feel bad. But she still decides to stay with his sorry ass. It’s pathetic. It’s unrequited love or whatever you call it. How could she still love that asshole?
I mean, I’m not even going to lie, I’m an asshole too, but I’m definitely not my dad. I would never want to be him. He’s not someone I looked up to, he doesn’t do anything inspirational. He’s a businessman. He travels the majority of the time, and I’m pretty sure my mom invites men over when he’s gone. I don’t care enough to find out. But if I ever hear some guy rearranging my mom’s guts, I’ll kill him. I don’t even blame my mother. What she’s doing is wrong, she knows it and so do both of my older siblings. But they don't seem to care so why should I?
Who knows why she just won’t leave him. Maybe it’s cause they don’t want to ruin how people view our “picture perfect” family. I wonder what they’d say. “I thought the Suna’s were the ideal family? I guess not.”
My dad would probably lose it if he heard that.
Both my mother and my father are the cause of this broken family of mine. They never fed me or any of my siblings the love we always desired when we were younger. They never came to any of my volleyball games when I was younger. They never applauded me for the little recitals we’d have in class in primary school. They were never even here for most of my childhood. They always put money first and left us with the housekeepers. Hell, the housekeepers probably know me better than my own parents.They failed as parents. I despise them for it. They’re most likely the reason I am the way I am, but to be honest?
I don’t give a fuck.
In fact, I should thank them! Because of how they “raised” me, i’m extremely blunt, which is why people respect me. I use the hatred I have for my family and take it out on people and no, I’m not proud of that. I may be a heartless asshole, but I like that people fear me. The hell? Does that make me a sadist? Either way, people know to never fuck with me cause I’d fuck their shit up. I’ve overheard many people say it’s ‘cause of my privilege. It probably is. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy you many other things.
If my parents were broke, I’d probably be expelled from school by now. Abuse of alcohol and drugs are forbidden on school property. I don’t even take them at school, I somewhat care about my education and health, but sometimes I just need to blow some steam. Even if I did, nobody’s gonna say shit since my dad is the head of Japan’s board of education. How did his ass even get there?
Call me lonely or cynical. Maybe I am. But how is that a bad thing? Why do people need a significant other to rely on? What, a soulmate is just going to turn my life upside down then suddenly bring me happiness? Pfft, I’m gonna need actual proof that shit like that still happens. I’ve only seen shit like that in fairy tale movies. It’s whatever, though. I can live with being alone. I’ve basically been alone my whole life and it isn’t as bad as people make it.
Tumblr media
You loved the idea of having a soulmate. The thought of meeting someone who just understood you, accepted you for who you were, and most importantly, loved you excited you. You couldn’t wait to meet your soulmate.
But recently, you weren’t sure soulmates existed.
When your older sister, Akira, came into your room and burst into tears, it frightened you. Your older sister, the one who’d always provide you advice on relationships and how to keep one was in your room sobbing hysterically because hers hadn’t worked out.
“I just can't believe it,” she sobbed.
You couldn’t believe it either. Your sister had recently gotten engaged to her boyfriend of 9 years. They started dating at the age of 15 and managed to make things work out even after high school, and out of all those years of dating, they never broke up. Not even once.
They’d go on romantic dates on Saturdays and they’d always write love letters to one another every day, just to remind one another of how grateful they were to have each other in their lives. On Halloween, they’d dress up as fictional characters from TV shows and books and take cute selfies and bake a bunch of sweets. They’d invite you to come bake with them, but you would politely deny. You knew they were only offering so you wouldn’t feel left out, which you appreciated.
Of course, they’d argue every now and then, but at the end of the day, they always managed to talk things out. Oh to have a relationship like theirs. They were everything you wanted to have in a relationship and more.
“I really thought he was the one for me, y’know?” No, you don’t know. But that doesn't matter. What mattered was cheering your sister up.
“Maybe he wasn’t ‘the one’ Akira, and that’s okay! People come and go all the time, soulmates come and go all the time as well-”
“You still believe soulmates are real, huh?” she let out a humorless laugh and sniffed her nose, “What If I missed my one shot at love, Y/N? What if I lost my soulmate?”
That’s some deep shit.
Now that you think about it, were soulmates real? Soulmates come and go, yes, you’re aware of that, but even though they leave, it’s always temporary. Soulmates always find a way back to their other half, the piece that completes them.
Your dad never made it back to your mother.
He died in a car crash 5 years ago. Your mother and father had been arguing because she claimed your father was cheating on her since he wouldn’t let her check his phone.
You were 13 at the time. Your sister Akira was accompanying you in your room, listening to them arguing back and forth with one another. There was furniture flying across the room, glass breaking, and both of them throwing curses at each other. You were scared. They never argued in front of you and your sister. They'd bicker sometimes, but it was never anything too deep.
Eventually, your father had enough of your mother’s false accusations, and out of anger, he packed his things and left home. For weeks. It wasn’t until one of your uncles called your mother and broke the news. She didn’t take it very well.
Late 2012-early 2013.
Not many people came to your father’s funeral, his family didn’t like the fact that he and your mother were together, they said your mother was trouble, but your dad still stayed with her, even if that meant it would completely destroy the bond he had with his family. Now that’s true love, you had thought. Only your mother, Akira, the Sunas, your uncle, and you, of course, attended the funeral.
It hurt a lot. It hurt when your mother informed both your grandparents on your mother and father’s side and all they could do is put the blame on her. It hurt how they had claimed you, Akira and your mother were a hindrance to your dear father’s well-being. How could they be so cruel at a time like this?
That was the first time you ever questioned if soulmates were real. Maybe they fell in love at the wrong time? Who knows.
After your father’s passing, Fumiko Suna, your mother’s best friend, was there to help your family out financially. Your mother couldn’t even find the motivating to go to work. Your mother and Fumiko have been best friends since junior high, they’ve literally been inseparable ever since. In fact, after they both got married, they decided to live right next to each other.
Your mom didn’t cope with your father’s death very well; none of you did. But your mom had it the worst.
She would cope with alcohol and clubbing which would always result in her bringing different men home almost every night. You didn’t say much about it, you thought it would be selfish to since that’s what seemed to make your mother feel better about herself, but your sister hated it. She was already 19 and in college at the time, but when she visited and found out that your mother had basically been neglecting you, she was furious.
“Seriously, mom? This is what you’re gonna do while your 13-year-old daughter is in her room having a literal mental breakdown because of your childish behavior?” Your sister had barged into your mother’s room when she thought you were asleep, she was screaming loud.
“You’re interrupting something important, Akira. You know better than to-”
“Oh, shut the hell up mom. You’re the last person on earth to be saying shit like that.”
“Well, if you’re done, you can leave my room now. You’re being disrespectful, and this behavior is not tolerated!” Your mother was screaming now. The man in the bed covering his body under the covers and looking back and forth between Akira and your mother.
“Sakiya, maybe you should hear your daughter out-”
“Not now.” your mother scarcely interrupted the man, eye contact never leaving Akira. “Y/N has never complained about this when you were in college. She knows this is my way of coping, why can’t you understand that too!”
Akira scoffed. “So what, getting fucked by random strangers you find on the filthy streets is your way of coping? Getting wasted every damn night to the point where Y/N has to drag you up to bed is okay with you? Do you even know how much this is affecting Y/N? Did you even bother asking her how she felt? I hate breaking it to you mom, but you need serious help.”
“You selfish child!” Your mother screamed, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her body, getting up from the bed. “How dare you say that to your own mother?”
“I’m only telling the truth! If you’re the mother, then it’s your job to be taking care of Y/N, not neglecting her. When’s the last time you’ve engross in an actual conversation with her when you were fully sober?”
Your mother was silent. She quickly walked up to Akira and grabbed her by the hair and slammed her headfirst against the wall.
“You’ve got a big mouth! Maybe I should wash it with soap like I did back in the day, hm?” Akira was attempting to push her mother away, but she wouldn’t let go of her grip. The man that was still on your mother’s bed was in panic, yelling her name, which didn’t have any effect. He might as well stop.
"Look," Akira mumbled, struggling to get away from your mother's grip, "I know it's been hard ever since dad left-"
“Mom! Let go of her!” You cried from the door of her room.
All 3 adults froze and looked at your glassy eyes, mouths wide open.
“Hey, kiddo, I thought you were asleep?” Akira playfully said, your mother let go of Akira and crossed her arms then looked away from you.
“Well, I can't really go to sleep when there’s a bunch of adults yelling about my well-being,” you muttered incoherently. You quickly wiped the uncontrollable tears off your face and sighed.
“Honey,” your mom started, she walked slowly to you, carefully examined your face, and attempted to hug you, but you didn’t accept the offer which made your mother frown. She stopped walking until she was almost face to face with you and placed a hand on your shoulder gently. “Baby, your sister told me that you weren’t happy. Is this true?”
You looked away from her and stared dully at the floor, subtly shifting your feet, then you softly shook your head “no.”
“See Akira, Y/N is happy. So please stop stressing her out.” Your mother said through gritted teeth, then faced you once again. “Y/N honey, how about I go tuck you into bed, hm? I’m so sorry for the excessive noise that was caused.”
“Mom, how clueless can you be? Y/N looks miserable! It’s unhealthy for Y/N to be living-“
Slap.
Your mother just slapped Akira on the face.
“I know what’s best for my daughter! I am her mother! You are not the one who should be telling me how to take care of my own kid!”
“That’s enough, Sakiya.” a familiar voice said from the door.
“Fumeiko-“
“It’s fine. Sakiya, we need to talk.” It was Fumeiko Suna, your mother’s best friend, also known as your next door neighbor. She had been standing in the hallways the whole time, you didn’t even know she was there. Akira was the one who called her over.
That night your mother agreed to get help for her drinking problem. She was gone for 6 months. During those 6 months, the Suna’s took you in since Akira would be in college and you couldn’t have been more grateful.
You and Rintaro were the only kids in the house, being that you both were the same age and the others were in college. It was okay, they were all very polite, dinners were awkward, you could feel some sort of tension between the family but you didn’t pay any attention to it.
When your mom finally came back, it was awkward at first. She still seemed the same, loving and caring, just sober and free of alcohol. It was nice. You two spent the weekends bonding at the mall, watching a movie, or even getting your nails done. Eventually, she gained your trust back, and you couldn’t have been happier.
Tumblr media
January 2017.
“Akira, don’t say that. You may not believe me now, but you are such an amazing person, don’t ever think you’ll never find love again. It’s all about having a positive mindset!” you said, thoughtfully stroking her hair as her head laid on your chest.
“I told you that.”
“You did,” you chuckled, “you should take your own advice.
“Oh, shut up!” you both laughed, and Akira let out a shaky sigh. “Thank you, Y/N.”
“Of course, you don't need to thank me. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Tumblr media
— so this is one of the writings that i wrote in January 😭 it’s been in my drafts and i re-read it once and instantly hated it right after. if there’s any typos please tell me!!
— also i wanna apologize again for putting gmds on hiatus,, i feel so bad 😭 i wanna make it up to you guys but idk how so if you have suggestions pls tell me
130 notes · View notes
jitterbugjive · 3 years
Text
Something I wish more people would understand is how unhealthy and misguided I was in my early 20s. I came out of a life of mental and sexual abuse, for a bit I had a much older boyfriend than me that I didn’t realize until fairly recently was grooming me since I was 14. I was a hyper sexual teenager due to the exposure I had in childhood and I sought people out constantly to ERP with, even adults, without really thinking anything was wrong with that. I had an old friend who started running away from home to look for random adult men to sleep with so my understanding and feelings towards that kind of situation got all twisted and confused and I didn’t know how to help my friend. I had another friend who was pulled in to a 3 way by another minor and an adult, and the other minor was also the sort who actively looked for adult men who would be sick enough to sleep with her. And my best friend had a sister who was also exhibiting this behavior despite my friends’ many protests, because their mom didn’t give a single fuck about anything. I had an older babysitter, by older I mean in his 60s, who would bring up conversations about sex with me and show me porn on TV from when  I was 10-13. I was dealing with unchecked PTSD which made me overly reactive, prone to fits of anger and anxiety.
My point is, back then I didn’t have any kind of professional help or anywhere I could go for answers on things I didn’t understand or had a limited understanding of. When I ask the question ‘what do you do if a kid is seeking out adult sexual attention’ it’s not because I’m trying to blame kids for this, it’s because it scares me when kids are unknowingly, maybe even knowingly, exposing themselves to danger for whatever screwed up reason they may have. And no one wants to talk about that kind of situation, so I couldn’t find any answers. I couldn’t find an appropriate way to process my feelings on the matter, my understanding of it, the way I viewed it, I couldn’t find what the correct way to feel or deal with it was. Again, because no one wants to talk about it. With my naivety and personal experience, I at first held resentment towards kids like that, because I remember being put in danger because of them or they put my friends in danger, and those kids seemed very sure of their choices even when they were perfectly aware it was wrong. One of them I knew, even as an adult, didn’t ever think anything was wrong with what they did, they didn’t come with that regret you hear most people talking about. I regret the way I’ve reacted to these situations and I regret the way I phrased things when I was trying to come to terms with this issue that I’d been honestly traumatized by.
Another thing I didn’t understand in my early 20s was appropriate boundaries, because I wasn’t given appropriate boundaries as a kid I only knew one big basic thing: Don’t do anything sexually explicit with minors.
And when it came to RP, I thought that meant PG13 content was okay. I thought if there was a fade to black, or a time skip, or an implication, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Now, there are literally only 2 instances I can think of where there was any sort of implication of sexual acts between characters with a minor, I still made sure nothing explicit was shown or explored and I was of the impression that I was just letting the other person have fun because that’s what they were in to. And that was a mistake. Not as big of a mistake as it could have been, mind you, but I’d never cross that line. I thought I had a good line drawn in the sand but I didn’t really understand where it was supposed to be. Because if we’re gonna be honest here, looking back I know now even romantic fluff RP between an adult and a minor isn’t okay, even if it’s through characters and not as ourselves.
I know now how much of an emotional impact RP can have on a person, considering most of my romantic relationships started with RP. When you have a character you deeply connect to interacting with someone else’s character, it’s really easy to start mistaking your character’s feelings for your own. You could believe because your characters get along so well that maybe the two of you can get along romantically too. I’m not saying that RP shouldn’t lead to romance, but that it can easily blind a person from how their RP partner really is. So it’s dangerous to RP with kids like this. I should know, my abusive ex that groomed me until I turned 18 in order to date me certainly had me convinced we were meant for each other just because our characters clicked and my character happened to be a representation of myself.
Something I’m really ashamed to admit as well is a serious misjudgement on my part, where for some reason I assumed bodily fluids weren’t NSFW. Probably because I’ve seen people get away with censoring out naughty bits but leaving the spunk in an image, or just drawing the character with spunk on them or something. Point is, people were getting away with it not being flagged as porn, and my dumb brain was like ‘okay so it’s not that bad’. I need to make something clear here, I don’t entirely remember what happened or why it happened, but it’s true that Bedeviled Derpy had a post that showed spunk in 2 of the images and it was drawn from some sketches of mine by a teenager. I don’t believe I would have requested such a thing, I certainly didn’t script it to say ‘draw spunk here’, in fact the sketches don’t show any indication of a mess anywhere. I just remember being given the finished images with the spunk being added, and I was dumb enough to think “oh yeah this is totally okay for a SFW blog” and my brain didn’t even register like ‘hello yes a child drew this maybe ask them to remove the spunk also spunk isn’t sfw or child friendly in any way shape or form’
Some people, maybe only a handful, or more, I don’t know, but some people have this assumption that my mindset in all of this was like “Hahaha I’m taking advantage of a minor” and that’s just... not it?
I’m a colossal dumbass, I admit that, and I was really irresponsible, but it was NOT because I had any intentions on preying on a child. I just don’t do that.
The things I said and did, I did out of ignorance, and most of the bad stuff people talk about me saying was from 5+ years ago, before I got any help, before I had anyone to walk me through these incredibly complex emotions and opinions that were ingrained in my head since childhood.
I just wish that people could see I had no malice or ill intent, I wish people could realize they’re way overthinking my actions and taking things a lot more personally than they were ever meant to be. Maybe if they could see this for what it is rather than assuming I’m a villain who purposefully did everything wrong, they could learn to move on in a healthy way.
I understand I did a lot of harm and there’s no undoing that.
But I do NOT deserve to be accused of pedophilia. Pedophilia has literally ruined my life and my perception of the world. I’m a victim too, and just because I became an adult doesn’t mean I suddenly know right from wrong. That’s not how becoming an adult works. You’re allowed to make mistakes as an adult, being an adult doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes any more. Yes it’s easier to say to someone ‘you were just a kid, it was a mistake, you didn’t know any better’, but adults have a hard time knowing ‘any better’ too. We’re always growing and learning and I’d like to think people are smart enough to see that I have grown in to a better person.
I hope people can find it in their hearts to forgive me, but I fear some people are too far gone down the rabbit hole of being convinced that everything was on purpose and from malice, that I’m some evil mastermind who thrives on manipulation and taking advantage of kids. I’ve only ever associated with 2 minors since becoming an adult and I have no intention of associating with any more that aren’t directly connected to my family or my friends.
Anyone who actually knows me would know I have a 0 tolerance for IRL pedophilia, when I found out a member of one of my groups was showing nudes to minors he was immediately kicked out and I kept tabs on the situation to make sure he’d be caught by police. When a member in my server was exposed for ERP and orbiting with a minor, I kicked him out too.
I worry about kids to a point that it’s part of my PTSD, I have anxiety attacks just worrying about how a kid might be getting harmed, the last thing I want to do is bring harm to them.
And I did cause harm, I didn’t know that was what I was doing, but I did, because I wasn’t mature enough to understand how to interact with kids as an adult. And again, I’m just incredibly sorry things had to even come to this. I’m not lying when I say I think about this every single day, and sometimes spiral in to really bad anxiety because of it. It affects me heavily.
I want to move on.
And I want the people affected to move on too.
Because dwelling on this isn’t going to do anyone any good.
44 notes · View notes