#honestly the most powerful fuck you ever the damage is immaculate

[storiesbymads]

FIC RECS — JANUARY 2021

ok! so! first fic rec comp of the year! i’m not gonna lie, i started this list late into the month because of (1) singular fic —its first on the list for a reason— and i needed to share it to more people! anyways! here’s my favorite fics that i read in january!

sugar sugar by @holy-pucks (sidney crosby)

let me just saw this fic fucked me up. i made legit, audible noises during most, if not all, of the chapters and i even cried a lot little. i’m not even kidding when i say this solidified my love for mr. sid and everyone should read it at least once.

take me as i am by @barzzal (sidney crosby)

OK one of the first sid fics i fell absolutely in love with and the whole thing is honestly just a masterpiece. the smut is also a major plus.

on display by @holy-pucks (sidney crosby)

this fic is so hot it took everything in my power to contain myself good lord. possessive sid really does it for me.

all for you by @comphersjost (matthew tkachuk)

i went into not really ever reading for brady or matty at the time and boy, lemme tell you. emotional DAMAGE right here. but in a good way. 10/10 would read again.

sunflowers by @hockeyboysiguess (matthew tkachuk)

ok so i avoiding doing my book project by reading this but then i had to physically calm down after reading enough to do the project so lemme just tell you it was a TIME. but this fic is IMMACULATE. incredibly well done from start to finish, made me feel every feeling possible all @ once.

better man by @troubatrain (matthew tkachuk)

the development is so 👨🏼‍🍳💋. as everyone knows by now, i love matty very much and this fic intensified said love.

cooler by @mbarzals (matthew tkachuk)

oh my god oh my god. i love new girl and i love matty and this was just an impeccable merge of the two. i left this fic with my heart growing 20 sizes thank you.

playing with fire by @idontgiveaflyinggrayson69 (travis konecny)

i read this one a while ago but i love it too much not to add it to my 1st rec comp. teeks is just so *mwah* in this and overall just a beauty of a fic.

pictures by @idontgiveaflyinggrayson69 (anthony beauvillier)

this is so hot you may need to take a cold shower after it. tito is so just wow in this and it’s immaculate. one of my fav tito smuts ever.

[crlmson-cloud]

SUSUMU NAKAMURA - THE KNIFE OF NEW YORK

‘It seems I no longer define who I am...

I was not meant to be him.’

> BASICS「基本」 → Susumu Nakamura [進・中村] → 31 → Shy and lonely → Homosexual → Manga Artist, but will become a music artist in the Marvel AU → Speaks Spanish, English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese,  Italian and German → Nationality: Japanese/Irish → 5'9 before serum, 6'1 after > FACECLAIMS 「視覚」 [ PRE-SERUM MARKIPLIER  [ POST SERUM ] CHRIS EVANS

Videos taken of Susumu Nakamura at a manga convention, five weeks before he went missing. 

Experimental Copy of the Documents handed over by Susumu Nakamura, adapted by Angelo Sebastiani into a short story to tell of what happened. 

There were many emotions that Susumu was feeling within this moment. With his true self, he's finally managed to publish another manga, and Beijing was the first city that he was going to meet people at, finally. A chance to be with the fans, and a holiday from being a manga artist and book writer. And his husband needed a break from the modelling opportunities that he was getting. The name of the husband, you may ask? Nathaniel Huang.

A man of around the same age and popularity as the man that he's married. The love that he's had for years with him. Nathaniel, whenever Susumu felt that he was with him. He felt complete, well and truly, he felt complete. Susumu even based some parts of the manga around his husband because of the fact that Nathaniel inspired him so much with his manga. Susumu has done most of the manga however, being the one that's come up with the original ideas for the stories that are embedded within the nine hundred page behemoth of a book. But also within the intricate details of what happens throughout the story. Boarding the plane to Beijing from Tokyo. Susumu expresses his own fears of finding a hotel. Since everywhere may have been booked beforehand. The man looks down slightly and his husband reassures him that they'll find somewhere to stay for the night, even though the meet and greet was cheap and admittedly, a lot of people went through with wanting to meet them. 

* * * Five hours later, they manage to get to a hotel in Beijing as quickly as possible, before having to go into town square the following morning. Nathaniel looks longingly at a Captain America badge that someone was selling up at a market counter. Grabbing it, he decides to pay for it, as a present for his husband. Susumu thanked him quickly for the present and immediately wore it with happiness. Ever since the hero had gone missing, the popularity of his merchandise had been boosted in China. Meiguo Duizhang was becoming a staple of Chinese merchandise and strangely enough it had not been censored whatsoever when he went missing. Well, if he went missing, that is. The details were hazy upon the case of him. No one knew, and China, they were trying to find a new one in order to go through with trying to recreate him over and over. Even though the avengers originally promised that there would be another one if he was to ever step down. 'Wasn't your idol always Captain America when you grew up?' Nathaniel joked. 'Well, only when I found out the comics were being sold in Ireland.' Susumu responded, laughing slightly at what his husband had to say. 'But, yeah, I absolutely loved him.' 'Seems like the whole of China is going crazy over him.' 'Well isn't that obvious?' asks he. The Irish accent almost erupting from his voice as he asked. 'Hey-- calm down.' 'I am calm. What do you think we should do now?' 'Get something to eat, get some rest?' 'Sounds like a plan.' 'Quick question, babe?' 'Yuh-huh?' 'I'm just wondering, I have a meeting tomorrow morning, so are you good with just holding the panel on your own.' 'Yeah sure, I'm fine with that.' 'Alright, thank you.' Nathaniel says, hugging him tightly. A laugh erupting from his lungs slightly as he cuddles him. 'Stop crushing me with your hugs!' Later on within the night, they both had a romantic dinner and eventually, they both went to bed, cuddling together and eventually going to sleep. Susumu struggling more to go to sleep than Nathaniel. They decided to watch a film together, Susumu huddled up into Nathaniel's shirt. They kissed for a while, and they finally laid down. Holy hell he was excited. So excited for what tomorrow had to bring, so excited for whom he'd meet tomorrow. He eventually went to sleep with these thoughts within his head. * * * A few hours later, Susumu couldn't feel his husband by his side. He woke up, and only saw a bunch of black figures and Nathaniel in the background, instructing them all in Mandarin as to what to do with him. 'No! Get off me! I said get the fuck off me!' He shouts, they tried to bring him in but he continued to try to fight them off, that was until he felt a needle in the nape of his neck and was laid to rest once again through sedatives. What happened next, it's a much more darker story. He remembers these men trying to put him in a chamber, spraying him down with a lot of disinfectant before they started on him. Giving him his own clothes and then another injection to the back. China was obsessed with becoming the next power and this was one of the first ways of doing it. Susumu screams out as he feels himself getting pricked with needle. He felt himself grow larger with every injection that they made, and then they finally moved onto another part of him. 'Make him look like his crush, why don't you?' Nathaniel seemingly mocks him from the speakers. Susumu was shaking at this point, he still had a tan skin tone. His face was still all the same, still flawed. Still imperfect. He curled up into a ball and eventually was put to sleep yet again by sedatives. Although, the sedative didn't exactly work as intended. He felt everything, every single cut and prod that they pulled on him when they wanted to render him immaculate. How they changed his jawline, how they changed his skin tone. Everything. They changed everything about him. Up to the point where he was no longer recognisable as his normal self. 'Perfect...' Nathaniel says to himself as he looks down upon his quivering boyfriend in the corner of the room. Susumu didn't want to be perfect, he just wanted to be himself. 'What did you do to me?' He asks, looking up at his boyfriend. His voice croaking through. He had to stop himself from crying. 'I just wanted you to be more happy than you were before.' Nathaniel states to him. Shouting was then heard: 'No-- no why isn't the power fitting in with him?! You're saying it's his gene pool? What the fuck-- I've been trying my best to coax him into this for so long.' He shouts, lying to the people he's faithful to in the process. 'Only for it to fuck up because of his heritage?! I thought, I thought he could have fitted the genes. Give it to me! Give the fucking serum to me!' He hoped to wake up and see whether this was all a bad dream that he was having in his head. * * * Susumu eventually woke up in the hotel bedroom. He smiles softly as he begins to slowly think that it's nothing but a simple nightmare that he had. He gets out of bed. 'Nathaniel! Nathaniel, did you go for your meeting?' His voice hasn't changed in the slightest, it must have been a bad dream. he smiles even more widely. Relieved. 'Fuck he left, didn't even get to say good morning to him...' He then thinks to himself. Looking down at a table he notices a note completely in Japanese. 'Susumu, I've had a lot of fun with you over the past few years, but I've finally decided that we'd best go our separate ways. I hope you the best in the world and honestly, I really do hope that you feel happy. The reasons why I wanted to leave I'll disclose right here in this note. I no longer felt that spark that we once had back when we first met, I no longer felt that love for you that we once had. We both have such large differences, creatively and mentally that it's almost boggling as to how we got together. I'll admit, I'm so surprised that we lasted this long. I'm so sorry, Susumu. I loved you. I really did, but now I just can't keep that façade up for much longer. I'm so sorry. I hope you find happiness. Love Nathaniel xx' The man looks down at the note for a few minutes. Sitting back on the bed as he reads it, over, and over, and over again. He can't believe what he's seeing. He just wants to rip up the note. The feeling of being broken up with after a four year relationship made him feel sick to the stomach, he went into the bathroom, quickly, to get himself ready for his first meeting. He'll still be there. That's when he looked in the mirror. 'No . . . no . . . ' He lets out as he looks at himself. An arising fear beginning to grow and flourish within his body. He looked exactly like what Nathaniel wanted him to look like within the dream. Captain America. He has the brown, almost blonde hair, the chiselled jawline, the beautiful adonis like body that he had. He has everything about him. The only thing that Nathaniel didn't change about him was the beard. He kept that. The only thing that he kept about Susumu. When Susumu's fear starts to grow, he notices a shadow appear on the wall and break the mirror in front of him. He freezes for a moment. He was going to punch the mirror but that would be damage to property and he couldn't do that. 'Fuck--' He lets out as pieces of the mirror were all over the sink. He clenches his hand in anxiety as he wishes to fix the mirror again. Almost as if he could reset time, the mirror returned to its original state. No longer broken. Susumu looks down, noticing that there's still a piece of glass upon the tile floor. He picks it up and looks at the mirror. The mirror in reality was still broken. Thinking that he could get away with this, he changes his appearance to fit that with reality, although when he went out, a lot of people gave him strange looks, and some even called him by the name that he no longer wishes to be associated with. Meiguo duizhang. He went through with the meeting and a lot of people pointed out that he looked different to the profile photo that he shared of himself. Fuck this isn't working. The thought went through his head and thankfully, no footage of the meet and greet was ever posted on social media or was ever on the news. Susumu had to give back all the money that he gained, he hoped to give it to a charity that was about the poverty line. Helping those who were homeless. But now, there's no money. Susumu feels that he has no identity, nothing, he's left with nothing. His husband  fucked up his whole life. He got on the plane back to America and quickly set course for New York, on a panic flight. Not even knowing where he was going. He managed to get through to the airport through a loophole in the system. His fingerprint was still the same, and the Chinese airport checked everything. While it took a day or two, he had a new passport and he could get in. * * * Eventually, he managed to get back there and he walked through the alleyways in order to feel as if he was slightly safer, that's when he stumbled across a woman with a knife, threatening to stab and kill him if he didn't give her his money. The woman was caucasian, a ripe age and unfortunately had stumbled down into the black market and got herself into debt. She started driving the knife closer to his stomach. 'Give me the fucking wallet!' She screams out. A circle of darkness forms behind her and pulls her back onto the wall. Trapping her there. Susumu then quickly makes his escape and manages to get to his house, letting the woman go before doing so. He eventually stays in the house and he begins to break down completely. Curled up in a corner, taking deep breaths to avert the point of sensory overload. He continues to do this for around thirty minutes. Going into his room, he ends up making a mirage for someone else unintentionally. He looked out the window and created another vision of a car, completely totalled in front of a driver. The driver who witnessed it got out of his vehicle and went towards the wreck, only for the wreck to then disappear. Causing him to panic and run back to his car immediately. That's when he realises, that he can bend reality to his own will. 

[ganymedesclock]

On the subject of 'Don't call Shiro Dad' thing, I'm 30 now and Jesus Christ if I was in Shiro's position at 25 I'd be an absolute trainwreck. Like when you're a teenager, people in their twenties seem like adults, but we're all faking it! We don't know what we're fucking doing! That is the dark secret of adulthood.

Spoken as someone who’s 22, why do you think I’m so driven about this.

And most 25-year-olds aren’t also dealing with flagrant PTSD and cut off from therapeutic support.

Like... any version of Shiro in a mundane AU that retains his trauma, I’m always bewildered by, “what do you mean he doesn’t have a therapy dog and a regular counselor he’s seeing”

Shiro in general, as I’ve said before, strikes me as always someone who was kind of a driven overachiever and perfectionist, he’s very focused on his image, and seeming like this charismatic bastion of certainty. It’s actually one of the more interesting points of foil between past Zarkon and Shiro- in that for both of them, the concept of “discipline” and rigid standards of behavior are a major factor, but in opposite ways.

Zarkon pretty much was very poor at managing his own feelings and desires. If he wanted something he bashed ahead with it using his force of personality and stubbornness to get there. He resented anybody trying to tell him otherwise. But he instead directed all his unrelenting standards outwards, on other people.

Shiro, with very rare exception, does not put his standards on others. And said exceptions are virtually always when it seems as if he’s projecting onto other people.

Slav? Someone obviously traumatized and anxious, and Shiro absolutely explodes at him, why aren’t you just putting your issues in a jar because the fact that you’re affecting other people with them is unacceptable, and this is unlike him as Pidge and Lance’s near-horrified reactions tell us:

And Shiro himself realizes this, and tries to soften up or at bare minimum ignore Slav because on a level he realizes Slav doesn’t deserve it- but that first impression got under his defenses.

From s3e6 through s4e1, we see that Shiro is uncharacteristically hard on Keith- and I think this is the same mechanism afoot. He’s projecting. He feels like he can’t be Black Paladin so he’s trying to load all of those expectations of what that should be onto Keith and that trips up the empathy and compassion we know he has for Keith’s situation, that comes back full force when he realizes that his expectations, his insistence on Keith replacing him, nearly drove Keith away from the team.

And what this tells us is that Keith and Slav are effectively collateral damage for Shiro’s monstrously destructive self-talk. Shiro’s bedside manner with Slav’s trauma is how he’s handling his own issues. And he’s slowly, painstakingly getting better.

This scene, I’ve said before, is actually one of the most heartwarming scenes for me. Sure, at a glance, this seems like a major low for Shiro, and it is, but that’s why I think it’s so important: because there’s no way in hell he hasn’t crashed like this or come close to it before. He’s trying to hold up a massive weight, endlessly, without talking about it.

For Shiro to have returned to the team and spent some time in isolation in his room, not trying to clean up and pretty much having himself a depression power nap, is ironically one of the healthiest things he’s done because he’s allowing himself to react like somebody who’s not okay. And what just happened to him? Everything in s3e5? He was not okay. There is no reasonable person that would expect him to be okay after that.

He actually looked at his team and went “I’m not okay, and I need time to become okay again.”

And it’s a baby step, and I can’t help but believe he cut it off way too short. Because now that we have a better sample of post-s2 Shiro, I feel like the unnerving sense of “fakeness” achieved by the strange camera angle and slightly awkward posing in this scene...

...Wasn’t trying to warn us that there’s something unnatural about Shiro now.

I think it was trying to warn us that Shiro forced himself to clean up and go back to acting like Good Charismatic Leader Figure before he was actually ready. This is why he feels stilted, going through the motions: because mentally he’s still sitting there in a dark room in his undershirt going “what... the fuck... just happened.” As I think anyone would with prior trauma if they were literally abruptly teleported from somewhere they felt safe into the hands of the people who hurt them the most.

But he doesn’t see himself as allowed to do that for long. (which is still an improvement over thinking he’s not allowed to do that ever- if you want a direct canon example of Shiro directly stuffing a panic attack into a box, see s1e9) He’s worrying the team, they all need this more than he does (he thinks.)

What I think is interesting about Shiro’s new look, is that it actually does make him look younger than his previous style, and personally, I think this is character development rather than clone- I think this is indicative that the pedestal that separated Shiro from his team is breaking.

Because even if they come to it from opposite directions and for opposite reasons, isolating themselves and their issues from their team is one of the fatal flaws that literally killed Zarkon. Shiro is gonna need to cut that out if he’s gonna survive.

(not to sound overly alarmist. I think he is gonna survive, because, again, it already seems like he’s setting down the path of being more honest with himself, and with others)

Honestly, I think that’s totally why Black didn’t immediately take him back- when we see in s4e1, it wasn’t because Black didn’t trust Shiro, as when he asked them to, they did.

Black, as someone who lives in Shiro’s head, was calling beans on his speedy turnaround. Black knew Shiro was faking it and went “uh, no thanks, Keith’s got this, you’re gonna stay home, and take care of yourself,” with a very, ironically Shiro-like “you need this more than I do, and I feel responsible for taking care of you. Whatever happened to hurt you, even if it was completely out of my power, I think it was my fault.”

(which is a small thing I find completely morbidly hilarious: Shiro reads the Black Lion as a kind of immaculate untroubled figure whose behavior around Zarkon- which reads so much like anxiety and panic attacks- are judgments against his inherent lack of worth, when he plies most of the same methods himself to cover his own trauma. They’re so alike that Shiro is misunderstanding the Black Lion.)