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genericpuff · 28 days

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Lore Olympus just pulled off the biggest whiff in webtoon history.

I promised I would choose one of two headlines and of course, this is the one we wound up with. But should we really be surprised? Rachel herself seemed to be telling on herself down to the minutes leading up to the finale, fully confirming to us that yes, she's been writing this comic at the last minute, by the seat of her pants, for ages now.

(that second one was literally posted TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES BEFORE THE COMIC UPDATED.)

Welp, let's get into it. Possibly the last essay I'll ever write about this dumpster fire of a comic (but probably not, let's be real LOL)

CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND FASTPASS SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE AHEAD!

Holy crap, where to even start with this. I knew it was going to be bad. I knew it was going to be rushed. I knew it wasn't ever going to live up to what I had hoped it would be years ago when I was still a diehard fan.

But I didn't think it was going to fall quite this hard. Despite bracing myself for the worst, Rachel has once again let my expectations down through a final display of explosive mediocrity and disappointment.

Yes, the episode is called "You're Welcome", and yes, that instant "ick" you're feeling is the exact same as what we're all feeling. This title plays into the dialogue later, but what a shitty, lowkey mean-spirited title for the series finale.

Now, before we get into the actual episode, the WT ads for this are just... so desperate and misleading.

They are trying SO HARD to hype up something that isn't there, and at the last minute to boot, because Rachel definitely hadn't written any of this ahead of time.

First off, the bit about the gods being in "eternal chaos" of course isn't a stake worth worrying over because Gaia literally does away with Ouranos in the first 5 panels.

Did you really think I was joking about that 5 panels thing?

That's it. That's the death of Ouranos. As mysteriously and quickly as he arrived, he was gone, after Gaia ripped out of him what appeared to be some purple sunny side up - but it's actually, in fact, Apollo.

And that's when we start to get some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen throughout LO. Remember when I said LO's dialogue was like Shenmue 3? Welp, the finale decided to continue that tradition and further fuel the suspicion that this entire thing was written by ChatGPT.

Oh, by the way, that "thank you, ma'am" was Artemis' first and last line of the episode. So once again, just like in Episode 248, we're completely robbed of her reaction to Apollo being a rapist piece of shit and the character development she could have had as a supporting character. The women in this "feminist retelling" really couldn't be more half-baked.

Gaia stumbles upon Persephone, and I'm not even gonna fucking bother showing the panels where Gaia says it's time to "make things right" because they literally don't matter. Why don't they matter? Because Rachel just had to get in one more pointless time skip.

We're shown a sequence of pointless images that I'm not gonna show as I don't want to waste my image limit on them, depicting Hades having a sad day because his small wife isn't with him and oh nooo what could have happened?? Did Persephone finally divorce him ??

Nah, we couldn't possibly have an actually happy ending in this comic. Instead we get a completely pointless phone conversation between Hades and Hecate-

Not only is the grammar particularly bad in this episode, but the actual script-writing is atrocious. We literally did not need this phone conversation to happen because-

-we're cutting BACK TO THE PRESENT THAT WE JUST CUT AWAY FROM FOR A 3 MONTH TIME SKIP. FOR NO REASON BESIDES SHOWING HADES BE SAD OVER SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY ISN'T THAT BIG A DEAL, AS YOU'RE ABOUT TO SEE.

I- I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS. I HAVE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS. ALL I CAN HEAR IN MY BRAIN IS THE LEGEND OF ZELDA ITEM GET MUSIC-

youtube

-BECAUSE THIS WHOLE THING SUDDENLY SOUNDS LIKE SOME CONTRIVED FETCH QUEST. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HADES AND PERSEPHONE HAVE PROVEN 'TRUE LOVE' IS REAL? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY HAVEN'T USED 'LOVE' AS A FORCE FOR DESTRUCTION?? ARE WE FORGETTING THAT HADES MUTILATED A GUY IN THE NAME OF 'LOVE'? THAT PERSEPHONE LITERALLY INVADED THE HOME OF HADES' CANONICAL FIRST WIFE BECAUSE SHE FELT MILDLY THREATENED BY HER?

This whole concept of "true love" that Rachel is trying to convey feels so juvenile especially for a series that has sold itself as being mature and thought-provoking and progressive.

HAHAHA SO FUNNYYYYYYY why does Rachel write like this. this is, at best, the writing of a 13 year old on fanfiction.net, which I SHOULD KNOW, because I WAS ONE OF THEM. BUT I'M 28 NOW AND RACHEL HAS ANOTHER 10 YEARS ON ME.

Okay, this is the part where I'm CONVINCED Rachel either just mashed this into the episode in the MINUTES leading up to its release, or she used ChatGPT or something. Because NONE of this dialogue makes any sense. Beyond how stilted and lifeless it is (seriously, this dialogue reads like something from Empress Theresa) Gaia is clearly meant to 'replace' Erebus here which I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO EVEN EXPLAIN IS SO FUCKING DUMB, but ALSO what is even Persephone trying to communicate here? "That is true, but it was a deal I was willing to make and ties me to the Underworld. Please don't change me." What? Gaia hasn't even insinuated that she's going to do anything to Persephone, why is Persephone immediately jumping to this conclusion? What does 'changing' her mean? Is she asking Gaia not to force her to sacrifice something (which she never did)? Or is she asking Gaia not to strip her of her Underworld status? Because again, why is that even something Gaia would do?

Maybe this is harsh but I'm pretty sure even Empress Theresa is more coherent than this, what in the flying fuck is Gaia talking about?

"I can just see the potential for conflict! To relieve you from the burden of the whats, the hows, and wheres." Like... okay, first of all, that second sentence isn't even a complete sentence, it's a dependent clause left hanging, but also what the fuck does this MEAN. Is she EXCITED for the conflict but then contradicting herself by saying she wants to relieve Persephone of that conflict? Or is she saying she can see the conflict it would cause for Persephone to have to perform duties in both realms and trying to insinuate that she's going to relieve her of those complications?

Here's what I think happened - I think that second 'sentence' wasn't supposed to be a sentence, but the start of the sentence to the next panel-

So with that theory in mind, the sentence becomes, "To relieve you from the burden of the whats, the hows, and wheres, you are to spend three months in the Mortal Realm to do spring and the rest of the year in the Underworld. That seems fair to me."

It's still a very poorly written line of dialogue, but at least with that fix in mind it makes sense. But man, you can really fucking tell this episode was submitted at the last minute because that's a serious syntax error that should NOT have happened in this two-time-Eisner-winning comic.

Errors aside, it's clear that Rachel is following through on having Persephone spend only three months in the Mortal Realm, rather than the traditional six. There ARE other translations that have that number closer to four, but those four are the time she spends in the UNDERWORLD, meaning she's always spending either equal or MORE time in the Mortal Realm. Of course, Rachel doesn't want her self-insert small wife power fantasy to actually have to be separated from Hades despite this being a retelling of The Abduction of Persephone, so instead of her spending three months in the Underworld, she's now spending them in the Mortal Realm, literally doubling the MINIMUM amount of time (four months) she was originally meant to reside in the Underworld.

But oh no, apparently those three months are STILL NOT SHORT ENOUGH FOR PERSEPHONE-

Of course, Rachel "Retcon" Smythe had to have her cake and eat it too. I always worried something like this was a possibility, but I never thought she would actually prove me right - not only is Persephone only separated from Hades for three months out of the year, but actually he can visit her any time he wants to, so really, they're not separating at all.

I think Rachel needs to look up "reunion" in the dictionary, because if you can visit each other any time, then that means the 'reunions' are no longer special occasions. This completely removes any semblance of depth or meaning from all of the storytelling leading up to this, all of it with the expectation that this was a retelling of the Abduction of Persephone, because that's what Rachel said it was going to be. At this point it's safe to say that Rachel has zero business attempting to "retell" mythological stories, because she doesn't even seem to grasp the concept of why they were written the way they were to begin with. Either that, or she really just doesn't care, and the only reason for making LO a Greek myth comic at all was to propel her career.

This also brings me back to those promotional ads, the other one that posed the question, "Will sacrifice be enough to bring these two back together?"

This is stating the obvious, but I need to make it perfectly clear - Hades and Persephone have never sacrificed a single thing. The only thing they could POSSIBLY quantify as a "sacrifice" is "not being tied at the hip for a few hours", because even Persephone going on the equivalent of a work trip next door is apparently enough to make Hades sad as we saw in the 3 month time skip panels. Why is Hades so sad and lonely if he can visit her any time? Why is he acting like he hasn't seen her in years when he's actually on his way to reunite with her? Why is Hecate calling to ask him if he's "okay" as if he JUST got separated from her, but actually he's about to literally go to the Mortal Realm to reunite with her?

Hades hasn't 'sacrificed' a damn thing, neither has Persephone. They've both always gotten exactly what they wanted, even at the cost of breaking the story's own established rules. Their 'sacrifice' is equivalent to what billionaires think are 'sacrifices' when they can't buy another yacht or go on that third overseas vacation for the month.

And even outside of this episode, when have these two ever sacrificed anything?

I've tried so hard to think of what sacrifices have been made by the characters within LO, and I genuinely can only think of one - and that was when Artemis chose to go to the Mortal Realm with Persephone instead of staying with her family in Olympus. That was a genuine, selfless sacrifice, made by a character who has been shelved in favor of focusing on the self-centered pink and blue airheads.

Being forced to be apart for a couple days to do the equivalent of a day job and whining about it the whole time is not a 'sacrifice'. Neither of these characters have ever sacrificed anything, they just feel like sacrifices because they have the integrity and empathy of soggy cardboard.

sigh Anyways, we're back in the present and Hades and Persephone immediately decide they're gonna have sex because ofc, and then we get this gem of a panel-

MMMMMM

FUNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY JOKE

For some reason it's just a common thing for people to just be in Hades' home, and they can't seem to get any privacy as a result of this, but I digress. Turns out they still need to have that coronation for Persephone.

There is... so much wrong in these three panels.

First, to state the immediate issues - why the fuck are they mentioning Apollo at Persephone's coronation? Like first of all, no shit Apollo isn't gonna be there, but also, if this is supposed to be an event for and about Persephone becoming Queen of the Underworld, then why in the WORLD is Apollo even being mentioned? This is supposed to be a "feminist retelling" where the victims are empowered and heal from their trauma, but LO once again can't try to show any sort of positive growth for the victims without bringing up the assaulters and giving them screen time. It just goes to show that Rachel's idea of "healing" is purely rooted in the revenge, and not the growth. It's a very high schooler approach to this subject, hellbent on showcasing how all the meanies from the past are losers now and life just sucked for them forever, but inadvertently proving its own point that the victims haven't and can't move on because the narrative is spending so much time on caring what's going on with the abusers. It's the "I don't care! Look at how little I care! I'll prove it to you by putting in the effort of showing you how little I care!" approach, it doesn't really feel like moving on.

It's not about how Persephone and his other victims could have grown and healed, no, Rachel always needs to highlight just how much worse the bullies and haters and abusers are doing to make the victims seem like they've healed by comparison. Don't get me wrong, I can understand wanting to showcase the downfall of a character like Apollo, but this just... isn't the right context for that? Because it's once again taking attention away from the victim to focus on the abuser. It's once again spending screentime on the voices of the oppressors rather than the oppressed.

And speaking of, what the fuck is this punishment even? I knew Rachel wasn't gonna be able to resolve this plotline properly, she never had the capability to, but ... community service? Are you fucking for real? What is this even a punishment for even? Was this EXCLUSIVELY the SA, or does this ALSO include his attempts to overthrow Zeus by poisoning him, nearly killing Daphne, Eris, Eros and Psyche, trapping Eros and Psyche in an enchanted basement, and framing his father's 'death' on his half-sister? Because if so, how in the world is anyone content with community service? He hasn't even been turned into a mortal, HE'S STILL A GOD, so what's to stop him from going "WE'LL MEET AGAIN, SPIDERMAN" and trying something else? How is this a reasonable resolution in ANY context?

This is why I talked at length about what an issue it was to hide what Apollo really admitted to. Because now we really don't know what exactly he confessed to, and thus we can never really see the point of views of the victims outside of just Persephone - and we still don't even get Persephone's, because she just walks away from him and then he gets eaten by Ouranos and next we see of him is him doing community service! Once again, any emotional development that could be given to Persephone and the other victims is stripped away to make room for the point of views of the oppressive men. In this, the two-time-Eisner-winning "feminist comic" that is LO.

And that brings us to the "where are they now" segment. Yes, as we all feared, there's a "where are they now" segment, and it's as rushed and underwhelming as we ought to have expected it to be.

There is just... so much to unpack here, and yes, all of it is delivered in the dumbest way possible that only raises more questions than answers.

So Rhea and Metis are just back and we're not gonna talk about the implications of them being alive again?

Dionysus is a 3 month year old in the body of a teenager / young adult, and his mom is just alive now because Hades conveniently got his hands on more ambrosia and brought her back to life offscreen? But somehow Triptomelus and Hedone are still child-sized relative to their ages?

How did they 'heal Zeus'? And why is he so content with losing his power as King and Apollo being sentenced to community service after making an attempt on his life? How does he feel about the letter that Hera gave him? Did he even read it?

Where the fuck is Hebe in all of this? Is she okay? Do people still think it was her who put Zeus in a coma? Or did Apollo confess to that, too?

You're telling me Hera and Echo are just in a relationship now despite the fact that Hera is literally racist towards nymphs and there is ZERO reason for them to have a relationship in the comic beyond the fans making gratuitous headcanons out of it? How is Rachel, a bisexual woman, so bad at writing actual lesbian relationships and giving them the same amount of attention as the heterocis ones without shoving them into the background as props for insincere queer rep? And what about Hera herself? How did she overcome her role as the Goddess of Marriage to finally divorce Zeus?

"Ares is still a dog!" Haha! Ares is still a Persephone simp! Happy end!

Why is Eros just standing there smiling at the camera struggling to be seen past Hedone who's just floating right in front of him? You're telling me there wasn't a better place to put her out of that entire panel?

"Hades and Thanatos have been making more time for each other. Sometimes they even have a conversation." I'm sorry, is this supposed to be funny? The man abused Thanatos for years, treated him as just a lowly employee when he was literally his adopted son, and now you're trying to play it off as a joke that they're "making more time for each other"? What the fuck is this?

TGOEM disbanded? Why? What about the women who were genuinely a part of it?

Also, Artemis and Selene are just good friends now because reasons? Because they're both affiliated with the moon, I guess? Why is Selene even in this comic-

"They are still looking for Kassandra". Who? And why? This feels like such a last minute addition to acknowledge a character that the comic spent WEEKS foreshadowing only to have her finally appear as a pointless McGuffin, but it's so last minute that it does nothing. I'm assuming it's Eros and Psyche looking for her, but like... why can't they find her? They're gods, tracking down one mortal shouldn't be that difficult LOL ???

And also, where the fuck is Leto?? You're telling me she was an accessory - maybe manipulating Apollo, maybe not - but we don't see what happened to her? Is she just back to being a social outcast then? jesus christ this comic isn't finished-

Kassandra is where the "where are they now" sequence ends, and we're treated to one final horribly written dialogue scene between Hades and Persephone, where they tell each other how much they love each other in a desperate attempt to convince the audience that this is, in fact, a romance.

There's this thing in romances called chemistry, and if you're good at writing it, you shouldn't have to write dialogue like this. You should be able to see how much the characters love each other through their actions, through their small behaviors around each other. It's not always about what they say out loud, it's about what they don't have to say, because when two people really share that close of a bond based on love and trust and chemistry, words often aren't necessary.

Hades and Persephone do not have that chemistry. It has been apparent for years now, but this final exchange really is the nail in the coffin. There are no microexpressions or subtle emotions, no subtlety in their word choice, and nothing unique setting their voices apart. It's all just "wow thank you for being such a wonderful amazing partner, you are amazing and I love you" word salad that has to do all the heavy lifting for the completely non-existent chemistry that's been at its absolute worst throughout this entire season.

And worst of all, despite this story trying so hard to be focused around Persephone, around her story, her trauma and her healing, her voice... it's still all just about Hades. In the end, she's thanking Hades, and forcing him to say "you're welcome". All of it is trying so hard to convince us that Hades has been a positive addition to her life, that she 'owes' so much to him, but we've obviously seen plenty throughout the comic that begs to differ. And even if he were a better person than he is, it still doesn't change the fact that once again, the men are being held up above the women, with the women being grateful to the men who choose them. LO can try its hardest to convince people that it's feminist, but it is, at best, reinforcing the very same structures of the patriarchal system that it claims to despise and rebel against.

We do get one line from Hades acknowledging Persephone's part in the relationship-

-and it falls so fucking flat because it's still about him and what she does for him, and because nothing about their relationship was built on any sort of organic chemistry. There was a lot more chemistry back in S1, but it was still predicated on Hades lusting after a vulnerable 19 year old girl.

Yep, and that's it. That's the end.

Except it isn't because Rachel wanted to try and be smart by including an 'epilogue' that's really just stretching the episode out pointlessly for another few panels. And of course, we had to get another time skip, just a final dose of salt in the wound, this time to years ahead when we inevitably had to reconnect with Persephone and Hades in the future after Melinoe was born.

To recap, Melinoe doesn't remember... because Hades had Morpheus erase her memories.

This plotline has really started to give me the ick because it actually feels very familiar. Bear with me here, because I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent about my own original work, but it's because I wrote a plotline exactly like this years ago.

There's this... turning point, in Time Gate: Reaper, when the main character Uzuki is kidnapped by a Reaper (see: undead) who wants to experiment on her in the hopes that he can somehow gain her abilities to bond her soul with others (which later allows her to literally possess people after she becomes a Reaper herself). Mitsuhiro, the male deuteragonist who kickstarts the plot by telling Uzuki she's got a limited amount of time left to live (which he knows thanks to his magical death timers that mark themselves on his skin), feels an immense amount of guilt after finding out she was kidnapped by the Reapers (at this point she's been gone for three months), as they were originally after him; he worries that she was made a target simply due to him associating himself with her, and vows to rescue her.

With the help of some other spunky teenagers and anime trope characters, Mitsuhiro does eventually rescue Uzuki - but for the three months she had been gone, she had been tortured, abused, and experimented on, causing her mind to split and for her to lose any sense of awareness of who Mitsuhiro or her other friends were. She was no longer herself after the hell she had been through.

Mitsuhiro's solution to this is to have Springlock - another Reaper with motivations that are not yet clear to the cast - erase her memory. This is not a light decision that comes without consequences - for the remaining duration of the story, Uzuki is plagued by night terrors and panic attacks, unable to really remember what happened to her aside from whatever brief flashbacks her brain recalls in its haze of memory loss. She is traumatized, both physically and mentally. She has lost three months of her life and memories, and doesn't know how to explain why she's covered in scars that are still healing, why she's missing organs, why she's now blind in one eye, and why the sound of scraping metal and ticking clocks gives her panic attacks. Mitsuhiro has convinced her friends that she's suffering from memory loss due to trauma, but only he knows the truth that he forcefully took her memories away from her, without her consent. This was not the right choice to make. It was not noble of him, it was not a grand gesture of love, he made a decision on her behalf without her consent that has now resulted in her becoming a nervous wreck. Sure, she still would have had PTSD if she remembered what happened, but at least she would know why and could then seek adequate help. Without those memories, she has nowhere to begin to heal. And so we see the consequences of this throughout [AFTERBIRTH] and even the upcoming Thread of Fate. It is a long-term problem that is not going to be solved overnight, especially not with Mitsuhiro withholding information from her.

Reading about Melinoe having dreams about her experiences trapped in Tartarus with Kronos ... it felt familiar enough that I had to talk about why the insinuations of this are so fucked up. I know there are people who are gonna handwave it away as "she's just a kid", "these are gods so what does it matter", etc. but ... it just feels like such an oversight to have Hades effectively erase her memory of her trauma and then hint at them still being present in her mind through her dreams. She did not ask for that. And the fact that she's now dreaming about it all does not bode well. But we're supposed to think Hades made the correct choice, regardless.

But none of this is effectively expanded on or explained, because we get one final scene of Melinoe and Demeter visiting Persephone, who has just given birth to... Makaria?

So it turns out Persephone and Hades are just able to have biological children now. Don't know why, but of course they both look exactly like Hades.

What I was really confused by though is the fact that it's Makaria and not Brimos. Do you remember Brimos? The child that was foreshadowed in Hades' original fantasy dream sequence about his future children about Persephone?

Either Rachel completely forgot about him, or she saw all the criticism over the fact that Brimos isn't a confirmed child of Hades and Persephone (rather, an epithet that can apply to basically any Underworld god including Persephone and Hades) and that her "research" was dependent on a book she read when she was 13 and decided to axe that. But she went to the effort of establishing that all the dreams Hades had were , in fact, canon visions of the future, so good job Rachel, you created yet another plothole on top of the hundreds of others.

And that's where the series ends, on a final nuclear-family-photo of Persephone, Hades, Melinoe, and Makaria. Of course, Dionysus and Thanatos aren't present in this shot because this is Lore Olympus and only biological children count /hj

Why Rachel couldn't move the "the end" portion to THIS part, I don't know, but I'm also expecting way too much of the person who finished this 20 minutes before it was due.

So that's it. Six years and that's what we get. I didn't expect much, but I was still incredibly disappointed, as were many others who walked away from this dazed and confused. Maybe it's all the "haters" deserve at this point. But what of the fans? While many of them are celebrating this ending at best and tolerating it at worst, I can't help but think of the fans of this comic who hung on for so long in the hopes it would "pay off", just for it to go out as gloriously as a wet fart.

As for me, I have such mixed feelings about Lore Olympus ending, but none of them pertain to the comic itself. Most of what I'll miss from this comic isn't the comic itself, but the people who have made reading it every week so fun, the artists and writers who have enriched the content with their own interpretations of what could have been, and the experiences of being part of such an amazing community made up of people who are as long-term-obsessed about this piece of media as I am.

I get people who ask me a lot if it's "worth it" to be so engrossed in the LO slander, who assume that I'm going to "regret" ever being a part of it all... but from where I'm standing right now, I couldn't ask for a better view.

Even if I didn't love every minute of it, everything I have here I owe to this comic. This stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing, pile of shit comic.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical

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vivwritesfics · 7 months

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Going to be a little self indulgent but how about Lestappen or Charlando and reader is so overworked and exhausted from studying. But she’s worn herself down so bad while the boys were gone they come back to her like that! Hope this is okay, I haven’t requested something in so long 🥺🩵💙🩵

Grief makes me write apparently

"Yes Max, I promise I'll sleep," Y/N said into the phone as she held it between her head and her shoulder. "I'll just stay up long enough to watch the first corner."

"Mijn liefje, no. You've got a test tomorrow; you need sleep," Max said as he sat in his drivers room, using the last piece of privacy he had before the race. "Promise me you'll prioritise sleep over us."

Actually, Y/N's test was that day. Her test was in six hours, actually, and she hadn't yet gotten any sleep. She'd been either calling her boyfriends while he could or watching videos of them online. Y/N had tried to sleep. And if she wasn't sleeping, she was trying to study, but even that was proving fruitless.

"Okay, Maxie, I'll try," she muttered and wished him good luck for the race. They said goodbye and around a thousand 'I love you's' before Y/N hung up.

She scrolled down to the next name on her contact list.

Lightning Mclerc 🏎💖

Y/N swiped her finger across the screen and pressed the phone against her ear.

There was a good minute before Charles picked up the phone. "Chérie!" Charles cheered as he answered the phone. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

Y/N let out something of a sigh as she leaned back in her desk chair. "I've already done this with Max," she mumbled.

"So you should be sleeping."

"I just wanted to wish you good luck before the race."

"Aw," she heard Charles say down the phone. "Thank you, mon amour. Good luck with your test tomorrow."

She thanked him quickly. "Charlie," she began, dragging out the eeeee. "When are you guys coming home?"

"Soon, baby. As soon as the race is over, Max and I will come home to you."

"Thank you, Charlie. I miss you guys so much."

"I miss you too, Chérie."

After making her promise to try and get some sleep, Y/N hung up the phone. But she couldn't sleep. She had the build up to the race on in the background as she tried to study for her test and complete her essay. It wasn't going to tell.

Within half an hour Y/N was asleep, drooling on her notes.

She woke just a few hours later to her phone, blaring in her ear. She woke with a start, almost falling out of her chair. "Holy shit," she mumbled, wiping the drool from her face. Her notes were a mess, the ink smudged to the point of being unreadable. "Fuck, shit, fuck," she mumbled as she tried to sort through them.

Y/N made her way out to her test. She wasn't prepared, not in the slightest. The boys had probably just finished her race by the time she was heading out towards her campus.

Throughout the entire test, Y/N was sweating. Her hands were shaking as she wrote, but she got through it. She answered every question with little confidence, but the questions were answered, at least.

After the test, Y/N didn't speak to anybody. She walked out of her exam and made her way straight home, straight into her bed, trying her best to sleep.

She couldn't sleep. No. The test may have been over, but Y/n couldn't stop thinking about it. She couldn't go back, couldn't change her answers now, but she was still stressed about it.

Suddenly, the door to her apartment opened. Y/N jumped out of her bed, dressed in Charles' old Ferrari shirt, and made her way to the door.

There they were. Her boys. Tired and exhausted after the first ever race in Vegas, but they were there. They could have gone home to Monaco, but they'd gone to Y/N's instead.

"Oh my god," she muttered as she walked into their awaiting arms. "You're here. You're actually here." Her face was buried in Charles' chest as Max wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.

"We missed you too, Schat. So, so much," he said, pressing a kiss to her neck.

"How was your test, Chérie?" Asked Charles as Max took their things into the bedroom.

Y/N didn't answer. She kept her face buried in Charles' chest as he walked her further into the apartment. Not good, that much he could pick up on. The test hadn't gone well at all.

When Charles released her, Max grabbed her shoulders and turned her towards him. "You look so tired, schat. Have you been sleeping?"

She nodded her head. Maybe it wasn't enough sleep, but it was still sleep. "But you guys must be tired, too," she said, leaning against them.

The boys settled on the sofa as Y/N ran to grab her laptop. "What're you doing?" Charles asked as she settled down between them.

"Uni work," she answered quickly as she opened the lid.

Before she could type in her passcode, Max pushed the laptop shut. "No, baby. You've just had a test. You can relax, now," he said as he placed her laptop down.

Reluctantly, Y/N accepted it. She cuddled up to her boys as the three of them watched television. If they weren't going to let her burnout, so be it (actually no, she was very grateful that they were forcing her to take a break. Y/N never would have done it on her own.).

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avocado-writing · 3 months

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AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

*eats your words*

no but seriously, your writing has me kicking my feet when I’m supposed to be typing an essay 😞‼️ I was wondering if you could do some headcanons for the companions x monk! Tav who, when being confessed to, Tav responds with “it’ll pass”?

basically fleabag inspired 😍‼️ please and thank you! stay safe n warm 🔫

OH GOD HEARTBREAKING i tried to make it have a happy ending tho!!! enjoy! and I'm so glad that you enjoy my writing! (mild nsfw mentions)

writing as if you're saying this because you think you wouldn't be the best option for their future, one way or another, and want to try and soften the blow for them by replying like this. you only want them to be happy and you're scared it can't be with you.

Astarion

you cup his face, and the look in your eyes is so, so sad.

you think perhaps your simple nomadic lifestyle will not be enough for him. you love him, you do, but he needs someone more modern. more cosmopolitan.

when you tell him it will pass you see a myriad of expressions cross his face: sadness, confusion, anger... but finally, resolve.

he takes your hand in his, firmly.

"my heart. I know when things will pass, and when they won't. my love for you is not some trifle, a fashion to be abandoned like it would go out of style. I mean it. I can make my own decisions, and I have decided where I want to be. It's with you."

he reaches out to embrace you. you're surprised, but let him do it anyway, and you bury your face into his neck to hide your emotions.

maybe, just maybe, you were wrong.

you hold him tighter than ever that night.

Gale

you're worried he is too smart for you. that he will get bored of you, and the idea breaks your heart.

you tell him "it'll pass" when he confesses because you're scared.

seems actually offended that you'd tell him his love for you might be fleeting.

"there are things which will span the ages. stories, gods, heroes. my love for you is one of them. I do not confess that lightly. you are a beacon of hope in my life, love... and that will never fade."

goes on for some time afterwards about how committed he is and how much he loves you, until eventually you accept that he's not going anywhere.

bloody wizards, so good with their words...

fall asleep that night after having the most intimate lovemaking session, all about feeling each other's breath and heartbeats.

he is here to stay, forever.

Wyll

wyll deserves someone amazing. someone who could handle his life if he became duke, and you're scared you'll let him down.

when you tell him 'it'll pass' he is hurt, and leaves the conversation for a moment. you think perhaps it is for the best. you don't need this to cause any more pain.

but later he comes to find you and asks if he can have a private moment. you find out he wasn't hiding from you but preparing: he has a little intimate picnic set up where you can sit and be alone.

when you're comfortable he tells you about how deep his love is, how fate has thrown you together.

"there is nothing about how i feel about you that could pass. nothing."

to prove his point, he slips to his knee, and that is when he proposes.

you're overcome with emotion. you have to accept how committed to you he is, and work out if you deserve something as fierce as his love.

there are tears in your eyes when you accept. you never think his love will pass again.

Karlach

probably the hardest one to say this too. together, your future is so uncertain. it will be easier to break it off here rather than maim both of you.

gets angry. in fact, goes into a rage. tears up the surroundings, and for a moment you're taken aback--

but then she turns and she's sobbing, stuck at the midpoint between being apoplectic and brokenhearted.

"you don't get to decide that for me! you don't! you're the first person i've loved... I've touched... I've felt anything for, for a fucking decade! when i feel this, it doesn't fade! how dare you think about yourself like that? as if you're some sort of phase?"

eventually she calms down enough but bursts into tears instead. you go to hold her and she embraces you so tightly that the wind is knocked from your body.

"i love you. i won't leave you. don't leave me." her voice is tiny.

how could you ever say no? how could you ever doubt her?

when the two of you are in Avernus, you're reminded of this moment, and so glad she fought against it. you'd trade this away for nothing.

Lae'zel

would she want someone like you? long term? she's so brave, so fierce. what if you're not good enough? what if your relationship develops only for you to let her down?

she gets angry too, but quieter.

is furious that you would question her affection.

"githyanki do not give their devotion lightly. the fact that you think my love for you could pass makes me wonder how well you know me."

it turns into an argument where you try and explain your side, and she's angry at you for thinking this way.

eventually it descends into angrily making out. some fierce lovemaking. her saying how much she loves you, possesses you, between every bite and kiss.

you lie in the afterglow. she says she will not leave, and pretty much tells you that you won't either. you agree, and tangle your hand with hers.

Shadowheart

tries to hide how hurt she is.

yes, Shar is the lady of loss, but the idea of losing you... of not having you in her life? unthinkable.

you only tried to tell her it will pass so that, if she wishes to become a dark justiciar, she will have no lingering attachment to you after.

and yet...

it is blasphemy for her, but she refuses to let you go.

"no. i won't allow it. i can't believe this will fade between us. you are the most precious thing to me. stay."

you're weak for her, end up tumbling into bed, reconfirming your love for each other.

you never quite believe that this is forever until she changes her hair, embraces selune. then your heart is full of joy. and it is full of Shadowheart.

#shadowheart x tav #shadowheart x reader #lae'zel x tav #lae'zel x reader #karlach x tav #karlach x reader #astarion x tav #astarion x reader #wyll x tav #wyll x reader #wyll ravengard x tav #wyll ravengard x reader #gale x reader #gale x tav #gale of waterdeep x reader #gale of waterdeep x tav #my writing #request

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likedovesinthewindd · 5 months

Note

pookie!!! saw u are taking saltburn requests!!!!

thoughts on farleigh + reader with the same amount of snark as him?? like initially not being able to STOMACH each other & biting each other’s heads over (both ignoring felix’s groaned requests to “keep the peace”) and then being like…. wait why r u….kinda……

just that back and forth banter would be so good with him + ur WRITING!!! big smooches mwah

ugghh your mind!! love this and love you, sending smooches back ×100 !!! (fem!reader, wc: ±1700)

"I don't understand what's wrong?" you asked, briefly looking over your essay again before sparing your tutor a confused glance, waiting for his input instead. "There's nothing wrong with it," Farleigh's voice only deepened your frown, "It's just a little... loose."

"Loose?"

"Yeah, loose. You don't have a really strong argument," he continued, head resting in his palm as he peered at you from where he sat on the couch. "I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you. My argument is quite coherent right throughout," you said. "Maybe, but is it convincing?" he said, small smile on his lips that made your blood boil.

"Okay," you sighed softly, "How about your essay, Farleigh?" you asked, internally reveling at the way his cocky smile faltered. "I'm working on it," he huffed after a short pause. "Well until then, keep your comments to yourself."

"I was just trying to help," he retorted.

"Oh, screw you."

"Alright, I think we can end tonight's session early. Give you some time to finish up," your lecturer interrupts. "And give you, mister Start, time to actually begin?" he gives Farleigh a pointed look.

You hastily packed your things away before wordlessly making your way out. Your poor tutor must've been used to the two of yours constant arguing by now, seeing as that was how many of your sessions ended. You never saw eye to eye and the banter was stupid most of the time, but Farleigh had a way of getting under your skin like no one else could.

You were beginning to think he had some sort of personal vendetta against you, even though you really couldn't think of ways that you've wronged him in the past that deserved that sort of behavior. He loved embarrassing you, and as many times as you've tried to be the better person, you just couldn't help from slipping your own little comments, satisfaction only really gained when you managed to wipe the smug smile from his face.

Farleigh had completely spoiled your mood, and you figured the best way to forget about your day would be to go out for a few drinks. You definitely felt like a loser going to the pub alone but you wouldn't have been great company anyway. You however, very quickly regretted your decision when you saw the very source of your foul mood sitting by one of the tables causing a commotion as he often did. Felix saw him before he did, excitedly calling out to you and asking you to join them.

Farleigh wasn't as excited as the rest of the table at your presence, but you refused to let him ruin your night.

"Funny seeing you outside." Farleigh said, ashing his cigarette in the ashtay in the middle of the full table. "Why would it be funny?" you asked. He pursed his lips and furrowed his eyebrows. "You're just such a homebody, hardly see you anywhere," he said. "But it's probably for the best, right?" he added, and you already sensed a verbal lashings following. "You'll need all the extra study time if you're gonna keep up."

"Farleigh," Felix silently scolded, but by now your heart was already beating in your ears, irritation setting deep inside your chest and making you feel hot with rage.

You bit the inside of your cheek. "You always seem to forget that you got into Oxford on favors," you said, watching the way the corner of his mouth twitched, facade still holding strong. "I'm not the one partying my life away. If anyone needs extra study time, it's you." In retrospect, it probably was a low blow, but the ethical line was hardly visible when it came to Farleigh.

The silence at the table was all consuming, and Felix, like the godsend he was, decided to speak up and end the wordless staring competition between the two of you. "Okay, uhm, shots. We need shots," he said, everyone quickly agreeing with him. "C'mon Farleigh, come help me," he said, practically dragging the boy along with him.

From there it only got worse the more time the two of you spent together, which was quite frequently because you ran in the same circles. You were friends by chance, only really connected through Felix, who you've known for years. Your mothers were friends, and the two of you quickly became close through her visits to their sprawling estate, often dragging you along. You've met Farleigh through Felix, and though it was evident the two of you didn't get along, Felix was still determined to try and make it work.

₊˚⊹

You were beyond relieved to be able to spend the summer away from uni and get a chance to breathe again without any academic stress. You had planned to visit your mother back home until Felix had asked you to come to Saltburn to spend the summer with them instead.

"C'mon," he tried, "Venetia will be so happy to see you again. And mum." You bit the inside of your cheek, contemplating his offer carefully. It wasn't an extremely difficult decision; the days at Saltburn served as some of the best memories you've ever made.

You certainly didn't regret accepting his offer either. The last few weeks have been amazing at the grand estate, exciting and overwhelming in the best way. It would've, however, been much better if Farleigh wasn't looming over you like a dark cloud. You genuinely tried to keep the peace, but he knew exactly how to aggravate you. You could see it was beginning to irritate everyone around you, especially Felix.

"Will this work for tonight?" you asked, smoothing your hand over the soft material of the dress. It was so easy to run out of appropriate attire when you had to give your best every night at Saltburn. Tonight was special, and although you weren't specially dressing up for the Henry's, you still didn't want to embarrass Elsbeth by being underdressed.

Venetia was lounging in the bed while you paced around the room. "You've already worn that dress," she said, making you huff. "I know," you whispered. "We can get something from my closet," she said as she stood up from the bed and made her way to you. "Or we can ask mum. Don't worry," she added with a smile.

₊˚⊹

The dinner was kind of dull, the Henry to your left not nearly as entertaining as the one to Venetia's left judging by the quick glances she spared you every time one of his jokes fell flat. Every now and then, your attention would sneak over to Farleigh; a pensive look thredded between his furrowed brows when his eyes caught yours.

The highlight of your night was definitely after dinner, when sir Catton had suggested karaoke. You were quite amused by Henry's rendition as the lot of you watched as the man made a fool of himself. Farleigh took a seat next to you on the couch, sparing you a smile.

"You clean up nicely," he smiled, sparing a look down at your dress, the sparkly material reflecting the warm light from the fire. His hand ghosted over the necklace around your neck, fingers tracing over the small pendant. You prayed that he didn't notice the way your breath caught in your throat at the little bit of contact.

"Thanks," you answered, smoothing a hand over the lapel of his suit jacket. "You don't look too bad yourself." He only scoffed, eyes now focused on your hand as it retracted from his chest. You didn't spare him another look, attention refocusing on Henry's recital.

The whole affair was getting boring, and before you knew it, your thoughts were back to Farleigh, a question on your mind that you've been burning to ask him. "Can I ask you a question?" you turned, asking before you lost your confidence. He raised his eyebrow in interest, urging you to continue. "Why do you hate me?" you asked. The question caught him off guard, rendering him speechless for the first time since you've known him.

"I don't," he started before scoffing, "I don't hate you." You pursed your lips, shaking your head in disagreement. "You do. At least you act like you do." He only smiled, shuffling closer on the couch, face impossibly closer to yours as he gave you a once-over.

Even though the topic was quite loaded, it was ironically the calmest conversation the two of you have had in a long time. It was reminiscent of the time the two of you were younger and still getting to know each other. Somewhere along the line, something shifted, and he started treating you like shit. You only returned the favor.

"You weren't always this mean either," you added. His eyes still examined the expanse of your face; trailing down the slope of your nose and into the dip of your cupids bow. His attention made you feel self-conscious in a way, tongue poking out to wet your lips.

You had no reason to even feel self-conscious, but Farleigh had a special talent for making you feel small in his presence. Somewhere beneath the irritation and resentment hid a feeling that made warmth settle deep in your belly everytime you saw him. It's a feeling you only gave yourself the luxury of experiencing in the dead of the night when your thoughts were all that kept you awake. The overbearing anger would subside and then that funny feeling would settle over your body and deep inside your chest in a near painful way.

You never called it by it's name, too scared that if you did it would manifest itself and become reality. But now as the two of you sat on the couch, the cheering and singing fading into background noise as a pair of deep brown eyes stared into yours, you finally had to courage to admit it to yourself.

"I don't hate you," he repeated one more time, voice slightly breathless and a sullen look on his face. "On the contrary, actually." That made you laugh almost too loudly. "So what," you scoffed, "you act like a teenage boy and pick on me because you had a crush on me?"

He shrugged, the motion causing the refined material of his suit to rub against your arm. "Maybe I just wanted your attention," he smiled, placing a brief kiss to your cheek before briskly getting up from the couch to cut Henry's musical number short. You uncleanched your balled fists that were bunching up the expensive material of your dress, the tension leaving your body with a sigh once Farleigh's words register.

#saltburn #farleigh start x reader #farleigh start x you #farleigh x you #farleigh x reader #farleigh start #likedovesinthewindd

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leporellian · 23 days

Text

actually i could write a whole essay on why referring to opera productions as '''traditional'' is not only a nonsense term but an actively revisionist one when concerning the history of opera.

when people SAY 'traditional', what they actually MEAN are productions that employ late 19th century standards of realism. while realism had existed as an art movement starting in 1848 (the year everything happened), the conceptualization of it applying to theatre really started around the 1870s. the realism movement, in opera, became what we now call verismo. (there's some kind of lesson here in how even the verismo operas have batshit premises like murder clowns and flowers that kill you, but that topic of conversation is for another day.)

anyway, so if you're staging something like tosca which was part of that verismo movement, then yes, you could reasonably stake the claim that going about it from the angle of 'everything is meant to happen as if it were happening in real life with real people' is the traditional one. but that leaves 272 years of opera history in which 'realism' didn't exist, and therefore... there were 272 years in which 'traditional' productions as we know them didn't really exist.

let's whip around to an opera that 'traditional' staging is particularly egregious to apply to: our good old, fairy-tale-potential-allegory friend, the magic flute!

'what the fuck is happening in that image? is it racist?' no, IN THIS CASE the magic flute is not being racist. those dubious dark shapes are meant to be animal costumes. this is part of a set of early engravings by the schaffer brothers of the first magic flute production, which are invaluable both in researching this opera and opera production history as a whole. this is the scene in which tamino charms the animals with the titular flute, in the year of our lord 1791, and they decided to have it look like this!

anyway, once romanticism kicks into gear in a couple decades magic flute productions start taking a turn with it. remember at this time 'the magic flute is meant to happen in egypt' was still something everyone was sticking to, so we end up with these interpretations of magic flute set designs:

you've probably seen at least a couple of these before because that one on the top left is one of the most famous opera set designs ever. anyway, the design philosophy here between these productions, because there's at least two included here, is weird. there's like 3 things going on: you've got the aptitude for spectacle, this vague orientalist approach towards ancient egypt that was influenced by then-recent discoveries but still very obviously rooted in exoticism, and the cosmic abstraction you can see both in the famous hall of stars and sarastro's temple.

all very interesting! but still not 'traditional'! these, at the time, were a radical re-interpretation of mozart's work- compare them to the above engraving. but because these illustrations have a gorilla grip on the public consciousness they superseded the original 'a bunch of skintight suits constitutes animal costumes' production, and now when an opera company wants to go 'traditional' with their magic flute they do this:

hello my good friend august everding! anyway this is seen as the 'traditional' production out of the two magic flutes in repertory at the berlin staatsoper and yet this isn't what the opera originally even looked like- this is a negotiation with the later early romantic illustrations of the work. sure, it's 'traditional' in the sense that you look at that and immediately know what opera that is meant to be. but at the same time was it ever mozart's intention to stage the magic flute on this grand a scale? is this 'traditional' production really in the spirit of the mozart opera designed for a much smaller stage and with a much smaller set? famously mozart is dead so we will never know.

but then that brings us to the question of What would an actually 'traditional' magic flute look like? well we have multiple options here. first, we have ingmar bergman's film version of the opera, which is sort of the equivalent direction-wise of an opera nature cam. modeled after the drottningholm theatre, this recording tries as hard as it can to emulate the magic flute as it might have been seen in the 18th century:

i mean that does look very 18th century, and wouldn't be out of place with the above engraving. but there's still a fatal flaw here: the magic flute was written as an opera for everybody, and was performed not in the drottningholm (which belonged to the swedish royal family and which resides in their palace) but in the theatre auf der weiden, which was, while certainly impressive (trap doors! fly systems!) also a commoner theatre where everyone could just go hang out and watch fairy tale operas. this is a great snapshot in time of what a 18th century magic flute should have looked like. but what would a 21st century magic flute that still adheres to the original 'vision'- no grand sets, no massive theatres, performed by a cast that isn't even entirely opera singers, done with a bunch of jokes meant to appeal to an everyday audience- look like?

well the good news is we might have an idea with the matchbox magic flute, which is on tour right now and which i hope continues to run on said tour.

the matchbox magic flute is the magic flute. it's also not really the magic flute. this is technically an adaptation. it's also not really though. this is the closest i have ever gotten to being in a theatre, watching this opera (which i have seen many times at this rate) and thinking 'shit, yeah, this is what the theatre auf der weiden must have been like all those years ago'. the matchbox magic flute scales down the whole thing into a very small orchestra and ten singers, who alternate roles like crazy. it is designed for very tiny theatres. most of the cast do not sing opera! they have a few classically-trained singers in there but it's actually sung, in modern english, mostly by musical theatre performers. the jokes are regularly updated; since i saw it in chicago, there were jokes about the evening commute on lake shore drive. parts of the plot are entirely updated or worked around.

and yet, it reflects the original design vision of the original magic flute and what mozart and schikaneder set out to accomplish so perfectly, i almost WANT to say that in some way this too is traditional.

(also, they should put tamino in a dress forever and ever. he gets to twirl it even. really good.)

So, what have we learned here. well for one thing 'traditional' productions, as a catch-all category, don't exist. is a traditional magic flute the one based on the early 19th century designs, or the one based on what 18th century theatre would have been like exactly, or the one that tries to reflect its original spiritual vision?

It's all of them because traditionalism as a term is an inherently reactionary term that upholds a time in operatic history that never really existed and which rapidly changes meaning based on the personal values of who is ascribing it, often forgetting that every opera production represents a negotiation and not a reproduction and that the notion of how it ought to be is one of the most dangerous ideas someone in the arts can have. Go watch who's afraid of modern art by jacob geller on youtube and come back to me.

#opera tag #the magic flute #rambles

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torasplanet · 6 months

Text

❝𝙎𝙏𝙐𝘿𝙔 𝙎𝙀𝙎𝙃.ᐟ❞

A. ARLERT + YEAGER!F. READER

𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮 ; eren made your grade in history drop 'cause he's a fat jerk! so what better way to get back at your dear brother than to fuck his best friend behind his back?

𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 ; smut, fluff, aftercare, riding, p in v, nerd!armin, kinda slut!reader, eren being eren, like two flashbacks, armin being a sorta good best friend, praise, petnames (baby), kinda switch!armin, childhood crush to lovers, reader having a HUGEE crush on 'minnie >o<, seduction, loverboy! armin, eren being jean's #1 h8r, round two hinted at end, college au, lingere, armin wears glasses cuz i said so >:( !!, kinda sappy, unedited might do it l8r idk, science shit cuz im a nerd, skin color not mentioned

Eren was the worst big brother ever.

You wouldn’t have chosen to live with him if housing wasn’t so expensive and you two didn’t go to the same college because he’s annoying as shit. He always holds it against you that you’re living with him whenever you tell him to leave you alone. He was probably the worst person ever to be honest and what he had done yesterday was not helping his case one bit.

See, eren was a coffee person and not one of those regular coffee people. The ones that go insane without their dark roast.

Not so surprising when he’s a college student but he’d never been once before being enrolled so you still weren’t used to him drinking it so when he went into your room saying he forgot something in there with a mug in his hand, you didn’t think much of it and stayed in your spot on the couch watching some random Netflix show you liked, you’d watched it a thousand times but it still entertained you but not enough that you didn’t hear eren curse from your room.

When you rushed up to go inside and ask what in the fuck he did, you couldn't even speak when you saw dark brown liquid spilled all over your five-page essay that was on your desk and there was no saving these, they were completely soaked and the words were mixing because of the wetness of the paper. You cursed your professor for making you write it on paper because this could easily happen. And with Eren being as clumsy as he is, of course, he was the one to make it happen.

He didn’t even care that much either! He just said ‘Whoops, sorry.’ and left, he didn’t offer to redo it for you or anything! And because of him, your grade in history has dropped by a lot. Like a B to an F-. You didn’t even know an F- was possible!

Eren was going to pay for this one way or another, but the issue with upsetting him was that Eren didn’t care about most things in the world. You could cut his hair in his sleep and he’d just get a new haircut, you could key his car and he’d be mad but he’d probably do worse to you. You could tell Mikasa about all the embarrassing dreams he’s had about her but he’d just deny it and then punch you later.

But the one thing that would send Eren off the rails was getting with one of his friends. Eren didn’t care if you were friends with his friends but if you even thought about liking one of them, he’d shut that shit down immediately. The idea of you getting with any of his friends disgusted him and he never wanted it to happen which is why you were going to do that; not only were you going to do that but you were going to do it behind his back which would just piss him off more once he eventually found out.

Sure it was extreme but it was the only thing that would actually fuck with him and that wasn’t your fault plus he was friends with a bunch of hot people…including, Armin.

Armin Arlert. Eren’s best friend since they were little kids, you often saw him a lot in your childhood and still saw him a lot in the present and you liked that. Armin was a cutie ever since you guys were young, even with his long hair he was a cutie but now that he cut it short, he was hot. So with your choice of revenge and Armin being hot, you practically had everything laid out.

You didn’t know how Eren would find out or if you would tell him but you got the seduction and the fucking part down! That’s all you needed honestly.

Most of this was so you could get back at Eren but at the same time, some of it was because you had the tiniest crush on Armin ever since you both were little kids. Even though you’ve fucked a bunch of guys, had them sleep over, and dated a lot, your micro feelings for Armin were always resting in the back of your head coming to the surface when you were alone in your room with your hand between your thighs in your panties and a pillow pressed to your face to block your moans.

You’ve been doing that for quite a while as you’ve wanted Armin for years.

Since his junior year and your sophomore when you two landed in the same mixed gym class, he had his blonde bob and wore glasses during that time but you still wanted him. That one class when some loser let his hand slip and hit you in the face with a dodgeball; Armin was helping you to your feet with his hand accidentally cupping your ass which he, of course, apologized for but you didn’t mind. Not at all.

You wanted to tell him that so badly but of course there was Eren ruining everything after he got done yelling at that loser for hitting you. For the first time ever, eren decided to be a good big brother and not let Zeke fill that role instead and take you to the nurse when all you wanted was for Armin to take you there. You thought you’d get him to take you another way if he did but of course, Eren had to be a cock-block even when you both got back to class.

“Ah is she okay!?” Armin asked loudly as he rushed over to you and Eren as you both walked through the gymnasium doors with you holding a paper towel to your nose that was just running with blood in hopes that it wouldn’t continue its rapid flow. Eren took his arm from around your shoulders as he hummed “Yeah, she’s okay. It’s not broken or anything.” Armin let out a relieved sigh at your brother's words as he pushed his rectangle-framed glasses up while you shamelessly stared at him in his gym uniform that seemed a little too tight for him. You could see his scrawny body with little to no muscle (he’s working on it okay!) through his shirt.

Armin made eye contact with you “That’s good, thought we’d have to call Zeke to get you.” He said sweetly which made a smile appear on your face but it quickly fell at the sound of your brother’s voice “Yeah, thought I’d have to get Ymir and beat the hell out of that guy.” Ugh, he was annoying. Eren knew he couldn’t kick anyone's ass even if he had Superman’s powers and yet he was still saying he would.

Of course, Armin looked at him concerningly but said nothing and shook his head before turning to you once more “I’m just glad you’re okay.” He told you comfortingly as he embraced you into a hug with his hands resting on your lower back, you wished that they went even lower like they did before but what he whispered next into your ear really made you want that “Don’t tell Eren about earlier, ‘kay? He’d be so mad.”

He said it like he meant to put his hands on your ass which contradicted his previous apology and it riled you up and made your childhood crush really blossom and now…you had finally gotten your chance to act out all those fantasies and thoughts you had due to his words and piss Eren off at the same time. It’s like a dream come true!

So when you were getting ready to go to Armin's dorm on college campus for your study session that was hopefully going to turn into more, you made sure to put on the cutest black lace thong with a matching bra that was practically see-through, you could see the darkness of your nipples showing through the fabric before you put on your skimpy top and tight-fitting shorts.

Falsies fluttered constantly as you looked through them peering up at Armin’s dorm door waiting for him to come and open the door for you and his study session. You perked up at the sound of the door unlocking before it opened revealing the blonde already staring at you but his gaze turned confused very quickly and you knew why.

You looked stupid, didn’t you? Here for a study session and yet there was nothing in your hands, no books, no pencil, nothing. Everything you needed was in the pockets of your shorts, your phone, and of course a condom. “Hi Armin, can I come in?” You questioned looking him up and down, he was wearing the white tee and grey sweatpants combo that almost made you drop to your knees while foaming at the mouth clawing at the waistband of his pants in the middle of this hallway.

His blue eyes drifted down to your boobs that were practically out of your shirt but quickly returned to your face that had gained a promiscuous smirk at the drifting of his gaze “Uh y-yeah, sure.” Armin stammered shaking his head seemingly to snap himself out of a trance that your body put him in. He moved out of the way and let you walk inside the dorm room that he shared with Bertholdt but clearly, the male wasn’t here which would make this all the easier for you “So what do you need help with exactly, you didn’t bring anything?” Armin asked his voice less nervous than it was before as he closed the door and leaned against it while his eyes followed your body as you sat on the edge of his neatly-done bed kicking your shoes off.

You blinked your falsies at him as you leaned back on your palms “A lot, I just thought I’d watch you y’know…do some of the work.” You replied making sure to purse your glossy lips out a bit with your words as you gazed at the blonde that was inching closer to you “I think it’s easier if I watch someone like you do it.” It wasn’t a lie, you weren’t very good at science and Armin was but you were playing it up a little bit. Like you needed him…well you did just not in the way you were telling him.

Armin nervously crept over to his desk that had his PC and everything on it which was sometimes used to play video games loudly with Eren, Connie, and Jean but its main use was for school work “What do you mean?” He asked as you stood up grabbed a chair from Bertholdt’s side of the room and sat down right next to Armin who was glancing down at your cleavage and your thighs, and who knows what he was looking at when your back was turned. You never took Armin for a perv but you weren’t hating the idea of that.

“I mean smart people, eren’s useless so he can’t help me and Mikasa never has time. She’s always with Eren in his room.” You blabber watching as Armin’s blue eyes were focused on his computer screen which was now showing the science homework you two had and you saw all his little glimpses toward you and your chest but you didn’t say anything and sat there all pretty like you had no clue what he was doing. When for the first time ever you knew.

Whenever Armin talked about things he liked such as the ocean, ‘nerd stuff’, and whatnot, you were the only one who really listened. Like actually listened to the point when he referenced something from previous conversations, you were the only one who remembered every single thing. It was a miracle that no one knew about your crush, well no one cared to say anything because if pretty much any of the guys knew, they’d definitely say something and laugh at you for doing something so stupid that would make Eren murder someone.

Armin’s cheeks turned pink at the mention of Eren and Mikasa's private relations “What about the times he’s not?” You merely shook your head at his question as you watched him solve the science problems easily “It’s still easier to watch you. You’re smarter than Eren.” You said wrapping your arms around Armin’s and leaning against him snuggling your head into his shoulder and you felt Armin tense up at this action but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Thanks, (n/n),” Armin said with a sheepish smile as he glanced down at you before back at the computer screen. You placed your other hand on his thigh not wanting to waste any time here because Bertholdt could be back any minute, you didn’t even know where he was but you just didn’t want him to come back anytime soon.

A whimper let out from Armin’s lips as you began to rub his thigh gently moving your hand up closer to his crotch but only subtly though he could tell. Armin could tell anytime you touched him compared to someone else's no matter where you put your hands. Your hands were gentle when they touched him almost like you were scared to touch him. You weren’t.

You wanted to be as close to him as possible and savored every touch you got with him, you were definitely going to savor this night even if it was just a one-time thing “You’ve always been smart Armin…I thought it was cute.” You muttered softly as you looked up at the male who was already looking down at you nervously, his expression was so cute! His flushed face, his nervous gaze, and how he was nearly sweating just by your hand on his thigh.

“I still do y’know.” Your hand trailed up to the waistband of his sweatpants but you didn’t do anything but sink your fingertips past them just pulling them away from his skin and letting it slap back against his soft pale flesh. His skinny hand came down and placed itself on top of yours stopping you as you felt warmness overtake your skin “We–...We shouldn’t do this (n/n).” The blonde male said as he looked down at you like he was scared but he was obviously enjoying it with the movement you felt coming from his sweatpants.

The clacking of his keyboard had stopped and it was now silent in the room “Do you not want to?” You asked slowly drawing your hand away but his hand which was just resting on top of yours now had a tight hold on yours and was holding it in place which startled you, it was a drastic change from how gentle he always was with just his hand on yours.

Armin looked away as if he was ashamed of his actions “I just think Eren would be mad.” You knew that was coming soon, Armin was a lot of things, and stupid was definitely not one of them, not even a little bit and you knew he’d catch onto what you were trying to do and tell you something about Eren and blah blah blah but you obviously didn’t care much for that, only what he really wanted to do.

With his hold on your hand, it’s obvious he didn’t want you to go anywhere but you still had to make sure “But do you want to?” You questioned again ignoring his previous statement about your brother and how he might disapprove of it. Eren was a dick and if he wanted to play that card, you could too. You could be a dick by riding his best friend’s.

Armin stared down at you for a while thinking about what he should say and what it would mean if he said something “Yes but–” With that, your fingers went back to his waistband but this time you were gently pulling them down but not completely yet, just teasingly “...what if eren finds out? He’ll be so mad at me.” Armin continued saying those words he said in high school but a bit differently and the context behind it was very different and not just a small accident.

You glanced down at the band of his Nike Pros before looking back up at him through your lashes “I don’t care. Why do you? You want it right?” Armin was quick to nod at your question making a smile stretch across your glossy lips as you ran the tip of your finger over the Nike Logo on his boxers “Yeah…I guess he doesn’t have to find out, right?” Armin said leaning back in his chair his eyes locked on your fingers just wanting them to inch closer to his crotch nearly bitting into the softness of his pink bottom lip that was almost the same color as the apples of his cheeks that showed his enjoyment and flustered feeling.

You shook your head not breaking eye contact with him “I won’t say anything.” You said seductively allowing your hands to slip past the waistband of his boxers and into the small bush of his blonde pubes before lowering it further to his cock.

Armin’s back arched slightly as he felt your hands wrap around him “I w-won’t say anything either.” He sputtered out as you moved your hand up and down while remaining eye contact with him, god you were such a bitch. Keeping eye contact with him while slowly jerking him off knowing it’d make him more embarrassed and completely bricked.

You leaned up releasing your hold on his arm and pressing a kiss to his lips that were letting out small whimpers and grunts. It grew sloppy very fast with Armin being eager. His hips were bucking up into your hand and his hands were just by his side not knowing where to go or what to touch, maybe your wrist? Your waist? Your shoulder? Or should he just keep them where they were? His mind was full of just you and only you that he couldn’t even think straight and you hadn’t even really begun to do anything yet.

You moaned into his mouth as he did the same before gently pulling away with a thin string of saliva connecting you two, your lip gloss was now on his lips and even around it, you could only imagine what it looked like on your lips now. Armin watched as your head tilted down to the movement you were causing in the confinements of his pants before you looked right back at him tilting your head curiously.

“Can I?” Armin wasn’t sure exactly what you were asking here but he had an idea so he nodded ferociously but when your hand left his pants, he got confused.

When he saw you beginning to take off your panties and shorts in one go, that’s when he caught on and began to do the same. He lifted his hips to slide off his grey sweatpants and then his all-black Nike Pros allowing both of the clothing articles to pool at his ankles as he sat there awkwardly waiting for you.

You grinned up at Armin before transferring yourself to his lap using it as a chair but you were just hovering over him now with your knees on each side of him supporting your body as you lined him up with your dripping cunt.

Armin’s hands instinctively went to your waist as you rested on his shoulders. The male stared up at you as you carefully perfected the lineup to make sure he didn’t miss the hole, he’d wanted you for the longest and he finally was going to get you. I mean, this wasn’t how he was planning on it going down, he was going to ask you out and then you guys would get to this part but this was okay too. It was great actually because he didn’t know if he could wait until you two started to date to get some of you. He definitely could not but good thing you’re a slut right?

A loud moan left your mouth as you slowly lowered yourself onto Armin’s cock making him throw his head back while he leaned back in his chair.

His back arched as you fully sunk, his legs spread allowing you to bottom out as you let out a whimper at Armin’s nails digging into the bare flesh of your hips harshly surely leaving indents there “Are you okay?” Armin asked as he managed to open his eyes and look at you reaching up one of his hands to cup your cheek carefully.

That’s one of the things you loved most about him. He was always thinking about other people. You were sure Armin was losing his mind right now by the way he was scarcely thrusting up into you and the grunts in between his words and yet he was still making sure you were okay when you were way more than okay. Nearly losing yourself in how full you felt but you were still feeling amazing.

You nodded your head as you smiled at him “Of course. Are you?” Armin nodded silently at your question taking in the warmth of being inside you and how tight you were, squeezing him every other second. You began to play with his hair slicking it back and running your fingers through it making a mess of the beautiful blonde locks. You wish you’d been able to do this when he had his long hair but this was just as enjoyable.

Armin leaned in for a kiss again which you happily obliged to. The kiss started sweet and soft as your hands went to his neck holding onto him for support as you began to grind on him rubbing your thighs against his which made the brutal feeling of his nails piercing into your skin grow. You and Armin's tongues fought for dominance with it quickly ending with Armin taking control, you’d like to say you let him but you didn’t. He won the battle and got a little rougher with his win.

He kissed you harsher as he pulled you closer to his body. Armin lifted you taking you by surprise before slamming you back down on him making you shout into the kiss and biting down onto Armin’s lip “Sorry…” You muttered as you broke the kiss watching as Armin touched his bottom lip which was bleeding a bit before looking down at the tip of his finger “It’s fine. Just keep going, baby.” You couldn’t even think of a response and just continued your grinding but this time you were bouncing a bit closing your eyes as you moaned.

Armin’s hand snuck up your shirt and under your bra squeezing your boob roughly as he went and buried his face in your neck kissing and sucking on you, covering the bare skin with purple marks some darker than others. His nails released their hold on your skin and his hand trailed down to your butt harshly groping it as he bit down on your neck smearing the blood of his lip all over your neck.

“Fuck.” You cursed getting quicker with your pace as you fucked yourself on his cock while whimpering like a slut. It’s a little crazy how Armin was just the one that was whimpering a second ago but now you were and he was the cause.

You never pictured Armin as a rough lover. In your fantasies, he was always so gentle, so calm, his fingers softly trailing over your skin as he whispered comforting words into your ears. Nothing like how he was in reality, biting you, covering you in hickies, creating indents in your skin from how rough he was grabbing you.

You weren’t necessarily complaining, it just took you by surprise and you didn’t know how to react other than with your moans of delight “So pretty. You put this on for me?” Armin asked as he backed away from your neck leaning right back in his chair as he lifted your shirt revealing the lacy bra, you didn’t even say anything and just nodded rapidly while continuing to moan “Was for me to take off or look at ‘cus...I don’t know which one I wanna do.” The blonde cooed looking up at you as you finally opened your eyes to look at him. You’ve never really seen Armin look at you like that, you’ve never seen him look at anyone like that. His eyes lidded damn nere closed, lust in his eyes, a smirk on his face and it seemed as if the blue of his eyes were more noticeable than usual. They were practically glowing as they traveled up and down your half-naked body.

“I don’t know…” You blabbered. You couldn’t even remember what you put the bra on for if it was just for him to look at or if it was for him to take it off too. You just wanted to look pretty for him and didn’t think that far ahead into what he would do “C’mon baby…you gotta know.” Armin whispered slapping a hand on your ass and making you jolt up earning a small whimper from him.

If you didn’t know before, you definitely don’t know now with how he was talking to you “W-Which ever you want.” You sputtered out as you slowed down your movements trying to compose yourself your eyes shutting close again.

Armin hummed in delight at your words “Really? I think I’m gonna keep it on you. Makes ‘em look so pretty.” He spoke lowly running one of his fingers over the pattern of the lace, his eyes locked on your boobs less ashamed now. You nodded and hummed as you sat still on him getting more sensitive by the moment just from him being inside of you.

The male’s blue eyes drifted down to where you two were connected and looked back up at you “Baby, you’re gorgeous and I love you but I’m gonna need you to move a little faster f’me.” Armin cooed smiling up at you. It’s not like you were going fast exactly before you stopped but something was better than nothing even if he wanted much more.

You smiled brightly and opened your eyes peering down at him “I love you too Armin.” The blonde let out a laugh and his smile widened. It was no surprise that you only paid attention to that part of his sentence, it looked like there was nothing in that head of yours anymore “You need me to take control? You can just lay there and look pretty, I don’t mind.” He said sweetly tilting his head slightly making his blonde hair sway and it made him look even more pretty.

No matter how much he cut his hair, his golden locks were always so silky especially when they moved in the slightest tilt of his head or the small blow of the wind “No, I-I got it.” You said placing your hands on his chest before beginning to move once more but this time you weren’t grinding with the addition of small bouncing, you were going up and down making slapping sounds echo off the off-white walls with wet sounds following it.

Groans escaped Armin’s throat with some slips of whimpers and whines as he threw his head back, hands gripping your ass as if his life depended on it while your tits bounced in the lacy fabric in his face. Armin’s blue eyes stayed focused on you and didn’t close once, he wanted to keep looking at you and how pretty you looked with your mouth wide open letting out pornographic sounds.

Armin had never admitted it to anyone in the world but he always thought you were the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He believed it when he was young and still believed it.

Even though he hadn’t told anyone about it, a few people caught on when he was younger maybe in his elementary or middle school years? He didn’t quite remember but what he did remember was when Eren came to him during their math class and told him about how obvious his feelings for you were. Armin was so embarrassed when that happened and a little devastated by what Eren said but he did it anyway because that was his best friend and he’d do anything for him.

But looking back at that, he was sure he only agreed to that because Eren was his only friend and he was very much a pushover.

“Armin, I know you like my sister.” Eren had told him when sitting down on the empty desk beside the blonde’s with a straight face. Armin’s face went pale and his eyes widened in shock at that moment not knowing what to say as he was just doing long division a second ago.

He dropped his #2 pencil on the worksheet and pushed his glasses up “Don’t lie. I always see you looking at her.” Eren said narrowing his eyes at his friend practically sensing that guilty excuses of denial were soon going to start pouring out of his friend’s mouth “Sorry eren…She’s just…very pretty.” The long-haired boy muttered as he began fumbling with his fingers while looking at his lap refusing to meet his friend’s eyes.

Eren sighed as he dropped his head understanding how he was probably making his friend very nervous “I know. I can’t keep those stupid soccer boys away from her.” He grumbled remembering all the times he’s literally had to jump in front of you with his arms in the air yelling for them to back away from his little sister. He didn’t think you were old enough to be dating even though he’s had his fair share of five-day relationships. Eren would use that excuse for you until you were in the eighth grade and would then lay out a list of guys you shouldn’t date because ‘they’re the worst guys ever’ which consisted of soccer guys, basketball guys, and Jean. Jean was the only specific name on there.

Armin glanced up at his friend still nervous as he shuffled in his seat “Look, I don’t care if you like her or anything but don’t date her! I’d love to have you as a brother but she’s super annoying, you deserve better than her.” Eren said with a small pout on his lips making Armin laugh but the blue-eyed boy nodded while agreeing with the conditions “Okay eren. I won’t date her.”

It was stupid how he told Eren that but continued to like you after all this time. Armin was sure that the ‘deserved better than her’ reason had worn off now and was replaced by something like ‘It’s just so gross’ and Armin understood where Eren was coming from now. He and Eren had kissed two times at two separate parties both times with them being basically blackout drunk and of course, you didn’t know, no one knew and that’s the way both of them wanted it to stay, and Eren seeing him start dating his sister after all of that would be very weird for Eren and Armin. Armin still wanted to date you regardless though but was still considering how Eren would feel about it.

But who said he couldn’t fuck you? Eren didn’t have to know about that and if he did find out, it’d just be something to ease him into accepting Armin dating you.

Plus, it’s not like Armin cared very much about what Eren felt now that he was six inches deep inside of the warmth of your soaking cunt.

“Ughn! Shit, you feel so good.” Armin whined loudly as he squeezed his eyes closed feeling a tightness in his stomach but he quickly snapped them back open reminding himself of the beauty in front of him who was quite literally doing all the work to make him and herself feel good. Shit, by the way, you were fucking yourself out, he wouldn’t have cared if you wanted to peg the shit outta him.

The pleasure both of you felt was soon interrupted by a loud ringing of someone’s phone. You opened your eyes and turned your head around slowing the bouncing and resorting to grinding which made Armin hate phones “Who is it?” He asked though it came out as a whine with his heavy breathing. You saw his phone glowing and ringing on the desk which his PC sat on and you squinted trying to see the contact name through the growing tears of pleasure and when you saw it your eyes widened and you let out a whine of frustration.

It was Eren. Stupid Eren being a cockblock once again.

Yeah, you did this whole thing to get back at Eren and take advantage of your anger against your brother to finally do what you’ve wanted to for a while but if he called, you were going to stop. Having your brother listen to you fucking his best friend was disgusting. His finding out about it was a whole other thing and now in the state of mind you were from this dick that made you dumb, you didn’t really care too much about if he’d find out at all.

Fuck, this wasn’t even about getting back at Eren anymore. This was about feeling your desire and your need for the blonde.

“S’ eren…” You muttered turning back to Armin with a saddened look on your face and his eyes widened too seemingly snapping out of whatever trance you had put him in. He took his hand off the flesh of your ass and went to reach for his phone with his hand trembling from the pleasure he was still receiving from your small movements but you placed one of your hands on the desk in front of the phone before he could grab it.

You shook your head as you sped up the pace lifting yourself up and down once more “Don’t get it.” You pleaded looking down at Armin hoping to persuade him to just ignore the call and he didn’t say anything and just stared back at you. He broke eye contact and looked behind you seeing the phone and sighed. He knew Eren was just going to keep calling until he eventually got the idea that he was not going to answer the phone and he’d definitely get scolded for not picking up.

Fuck it. It’s whatever.

“Fine.” The Arlert male said looking back up at you and you smiled slightly before picking up the pace making Armin’s calm manner quickly disappear and back into his little whines and deep groans “Fuck, you killing me.” Armin said with a groan his hand gripping the edge of the desk and his other digging his short nails into your ass once again remaking the marks that had faded.

You leaned down and began placing sloppy kisses onto the fair-colored skin of his neck and he gave you full access with his head being thrown back. Your body pressed further against his with your boobs pressing against his hard chest making you moan onto his neck from the feeling of your sensitive nipples pressing against him.

You could feel yourself inching closer and closer to a release with every second and every bounce. You were falling more in love with Armin as his pretty groans and whimpers filled the silence along with yours, he was so sweet, so gentle yet still so rough but it was the perfect balance.

That balance was pleasurable enough but the sound of your moans mixing with his was like the most perfect lemonade to ever exist. Sweet and Sour, the sour was his occasional deep groans after the sweetness of his whimpers had run out.

Your back arched as you let out a loud whine letting go and cumming all over his cock biting down on his neck as your toes curled.

However, Armin hadn’t cum and he was not done. Not one bit. His other hand came back to your ass and he continued to bounce you up and down even after you had stopped to catch your breath “Sorry…just need this s’bad!” Armin apologized with his voice wavering. You weren’t really sure what he was apologizing for exactly, maybe the increase in roughness? Maybe the sudden force? It didn’t matter because you didn’t care. He was just helping you ride out your orgasm. Well, the rest of it.

Soon you felt his warm seed sputtering inside of you and filling you all up, it seemed endless until it stopped “Did I hurt you? Are you okay?” Armin asked through his deep breaths, his chest rising and falling under your sweaty palm as you retracted your face from the crook of his neck to look at him breathing just as heavy as he was.

You shook your head lightly “No, m’ okay…” You whispered as you tried to catch your breath and Armin nodded at your answer.

His hands went to your hips much gentler than they were before almost as if you were fine china and it was the first time he was using you and in a way, it was. He lifted you from his limp cock with ease and allowed you to stand to your feet but your legs and feet had fallen asleep by now, it’d be pretty hard to walk home now “What are you doing?” Armin asked as he saw you bending over to grab the clothes you had discarded while he pulled up his Nike Pros but kicked the sweatpants off.

You looked at him not really knowing what to say and just shrugged your shoulders “Can’t leave yet, I still gotta clean you up.” Armin said standing to his feet and swooping you into his arms not asking you or giving you any heads-up so you sat there being carried confused as to what he was doing.

“I just do that myself when I get home.” You said as the blonde carried you to the bathroom kicking open the cracked door before waddling over to the tub “Why? It’s the least I can do, you were practically doing all the work.” Armin said laughing awkwardly as he set you inside the porcelain tub being careful before reaching over and letting you take the remainder of your clothing off before turning on the faucet letting the warm water flow into the tub and onto your feet.

It wasn’t necessarily a secret that you had your more than fair share of horrible boyfriends but not everyone in the world knew. Armin and a few of you two’s other friends knew because either you told them or Eren blabbed his mouth to them about every time you’d complain to him about some stupid guy and that’s the reason why Armin knew about almost everything.

Since the ninth grade, he’d heard from Eren about all the horrible guys you’ve dated who played you, lied, cheated, yelled, even left you stranded at a party and all Armin wished was that you found a guy that actually found the sweetness and greatness in you. He wished more than anything that it would be him.

He dreamed about all the things he’d do for you, to you, and with you, that’d put a smile on your face. All the things you’d deserve that he’d give you even if it nearly killed him.

He wanted that more than ever right now as he looked at you relaxing in the hot water that was filling up the tub very fast. He reached his hand into the tub and grabbed yours holding it comfortingly and rubbing his thumb over your knuckles which made your eyes open and dart to him “I love you (y/n).” Armin spoke softly leaning his cheek against the side of his tub never looking away from you with his light-colored eyelashes fluttering with minor blinks and it seemed as if he was trying to stop blinking so he wouldn’t waste a single second looking away from you.

“I love you too Armin.” You said with a kind smile on your face as you squeezed his hand with his cheeks turning red from your words. Your smile slowly turned from kind to mischievous as your pure thoughts changed to the complete opposite realizing you were naked.

You lifted your foot out of the tub and rested it on the edge which drew the blonde’s attention “Y’know armin…I didn’t learn much from your study session.” You whispered looking back up at Armin who very quickly caught onto what you were trying to say and got incredibly embarrassed “Come on, you’re the one that called it that…” He muttered lifting his head from the side of the tub as he looked away from you his cheeks burning a bright red.

That was true, you were the one who called it that but you both didn’t even attempt to get down to the science. Got down and dirty before Armin could even get to the beginning of the science work “Yeah but I hope we get another one, I actually wanna learn somethin’.” You said shrugging your shoulders as you placed your other leg on the other side of the tub spreading them.

Armin’s eyes were locked on your wet legs as water dripped in droplets from your calves, he wondered if his cum was still there or if it had washed out into the water “What next? Seems like you got biology down pretty good.” He said meeting your eyes again with a smile on his face that matched yours.

“Maybe neuroscience. I can teach you stuff too like what makes girls happy.” Armin almost laughed at how you were referring to serotonin but clearly forgot what it was called, he would’ve if he didn’t watch how the drops of water rolled down your tits to your areolas and down to your tummy.

Armin brought his hand to your leg and rubbed it up and down making you bite down into your lip “I think I know what makes girls happy.” He said his hand growing closer to your crotch moving down to your inner thigh and the ache in your cunt returned practically pulsing as you watched the way he looked at you. Seemed he realized the way you were squeezing around nothing.

You tilted your head as you looked at him sinking deeper into the warm water “Really? What makes me happy then?” You questioned with a whine slipping out with each inch Armin’s hand came closer and his smirk widened as the glowing in his eyes returned as if he was some sort of predator getting ready to pounce and eat you alive.

“Me.”

#torasplanet.ᐟ #eren yeager #marls-fics.ᐟ #armin arlert #armin arlert x reader #armin arlert smut #aot x reader #aot smut #aot college au #armin arlert fluff #so sappyyy #can u tell when i got sad halfway through writing this #◛⑅·˚armin;p

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sneezypeasy · 3 months

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Why I Deliberately Avoided the "Colonizer" Argument in my Zutara Thesis - and Why I'll Continue to Avoid it Forever

This is a question that occasionally comes up under my Zutara video essay, because somehow in 2 hours worth of content I still didn't manage to address everything (lol.) But this argument specifically is one I made a point of avoiding entirely, and there are some slightly complicated reasons behind that. I figure I'll write them all out here.

From a surface-level perspective, Zuko's whole arc, his raison d'etre, is to be a de-colonizer. Zuko's redemption arc is kinda all about being a de-colonizer, and his redemption arc is probably like the most talked about plot point of ATLA, so from a basic media literacy standpoint, the whole argument is unsound in the first place, and on that basis alone I find it childish to even entertain as an argument worth engaging with, to be honest.

(At least one person in my comments pointed out that if any ship's "political implications" are problematic in some way, it really ought to be Maiko, as Mai herself is never shown or suggested to be a strong candidate for being a de-colonizing co-ruler alongside Zuko. If anything her attitudes towards lording over servants/underlings would make her… a less than suitable choice for this role, but I digress.)

But the reason I avoided rebutting this particular argument in my video goes deeper than that. From what I've observed of fandom discourse, I find that the colonizer argument is usually an attempt to smear the ship as "problematic" - i.e., this ship is an immoral dynamic, which would make it problematic to depict as canon (and by extension, if you ship it regardless, you're probably problematic yourself.)

And here is where I end up taking a stand that differentiates me from the more authoritarian sectors of fandom.

I'm not here to be the fandom morality police. When it comes to lit crit, I'm really just here to talk about good vs. bad writing. (And when I say "good", I mean structurally sound, thematically cohesive, etc; works that are well-written - I don't mean works that are morally virtuous. More on this in a minute.) So the whole colonizer angle isn't something I'm interested in discussing, for the same reason that I actually avoided discussing Katara "mothering" Aang or the "problematic" aspects of the Kataang ship (such as how he kissed her twice without her consent). My whole entire sections on "Kataang bad" or "Maiko bad" in my 2 hour video was specifically, "how are they written in a way that did a disservice to the story", and "how making them false leads would have created valuable meaning". I deliberately avoided making an argument that consisted purely of, "here's how Kataang/Maiko toxic and Zutara wholesome, hence Zutara superiority, the end".

Why am I not willing to be the fandom morality police? Two reasons:

I don't really have a refined take on these subjects anyway. Unless a piece of literature or art happens to touch on a particular issue that resonates with me personally, the moral value of art is something that doesn't usually spark my interest, so I rarely have much to say on it to begin with. On the whole "colonizer ship" subject specifically, other people who have more passion and knowledge than me on the topic can (and have) put their arguments into words far better than I ever could. I'm more than happy to defer to their take(s), because honestly, they can do these subjects justice in a way I can't. Passing the mic over to someone else is the most responsible thing I can do here, lol. But more importantly:

I reject the conflation of literary merit with moral virtue. It is my opinion that a good story well-told is not always, and does not have to be, a story free from moral vices/questionable themes. In my opinion, there are good problematic stories and bad "pure" stories and literally everything in between. To go one step further, I believe that there are ways that a romance can come off "icky", and then there are ways that it might actually be bad for the story, and meming/shitposting aside, the fact that these two things don't always neatly align is not only a truth I recognise about art but also one of those truths that makes art incredibly interesting to me! So on the one hand, I don't think it is either fair or accurate to conflate literary "goodness" with moral "goodness". On a more serious note, I not only find this type of conflation unfair/inaccurate, I also find it potentially dangerous - and this is why I am really critical of this mindset beyond just disagreeing with it factually. What I see is that people who espouse this rhetoric tend to encourage (or even personally engage in) wilful blindness one way or the other, because ultimately, viewing art through these lens ends up boxing all art into either "morally permissible" or "morally impermissible" categories, and shames anyone enjoying art in the "morally impermissible" box. Unfortunately, I see a lot of people responding to this by A) making excuses for art that they guiltily love despite its problematic elements and/or B) denying the value of any art that they are unable to defend as free from moral wickedness.

Now, I'm not saying that media shouldn't be critiqued on its moral virtue. I actually think morally critiquing art has its place, and assuming it's being done in good faith, it absolutely should be done, and probably even more often than it is now.

Because here's the truth: Sometimes, a story can be really good. Sometimes, you can have a genuinely amazing story with well developed characters and powerful themes that resonate deeply with anyone who reads it. Sometimes, a story can be all of these things - and still be problematic.*

(Or, sometimes a story can be all of those things, and still be written by a problematic author.)

That's why I say, when people conflate moral art with good art, they become blind to the possibility that the art they like being potentially immoral (or vice versa). If only "bad art" is immoral, how can the art that tells the story hitting all the right beats and with perfect rhythm and emotional depth, be ever problematic?

(And how can the art I love, be ever problematic?)

This is why I reject the idea that literary merit = moral virtue (or vice versa) - because I do care about holding art accountable. Even the art that is "good art". Actually, especially the art that is "good art". Especially the art that is well loved and respected and appreciated. The failure to distinguish literary critique from moral critique bothers me on a personal level because I think that conflating the two results in the detriment of both - the latter being the most concerning to me, actually.

So while I respect the inherent value of moral criticism, I'm really not a fan of any argument that presents moral criticism as equivalent to literary criticism, and I will call that out when I see it. And from what I've observed, a lot of the "but Zutara is a colonizer ship" tries to do exactly that, which is why I find it a dishonest and frankly harmful media analysis framework to begin with.

But even when it is done in good faith, moral criticism of art is also just something I personally am neither interested nor good at talking about, and I prefer to talk about the things that I am interested and good at talking about.

(And some people are genuinely good at tackling the moral side of things! I mean, I for one really enjoyed Lindsay Ellis's take on Rent contextualising it within the broader political landscape at the time to show how it's not the progressive queer story it might otherwise appear to be. Moral critique has value, and has its place, and there are definitely circumstances where it can lead to societal progress. Just because I'm not personally interested in addressing it doesn't mean nobody else can do it let alone that nobody else should do it, but also, just because it can and should be done, doesn't mean that it's the only "one true way" to approach lit crit by anyone ever. You know, sometimes... two things… can be true… at once?)

Anyway, if anyone reading this far has recognised that this is basically a variant of the proship vs. antiship debate, you're right, it is. And on that note, I'm just going to leave some links here. I've said about as much as I'm willing/able to say on this subject, but in case anyone is interested in delving deeper into the philosophy behind my convictions, including why I believe leftist authoritarian rhetoric is harmful, and why the whole "but it would be problematic in real life" is an anti-ship argument that doesn't always hold up to scrutiny, I highly recommend these posts/threads:

In general this blog is pretty solid; I agree with almost all of their takes - though they focus more specifically on fanfic/fanart than mainstream media, and I think quite a lot of their arguments are at least somewhat appropriate to extrapolate to mainstream media as well.

I also strongly recommend Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians" which the author, a verified giga chad, actually made free to download as a pdf, here. His work focuses primarily on right-wing authoritarians, but a lot of his research and conclusions are, you guessed it, applicable to left-wing authoritarians also.

And if you're an anti yourself, welp, you won't find support from me here. This is not an anti-ship safe space, sorrynotsorry 👆

In conclusion, honestly any "but Zutara is problematic" argument is one I'm likely to consider unsound to begin with, let alone the "Zutara is a colonizer ship" argument - but even if it wasn't, it's not something I'm interested in discussing, even if I recognise there are contexts where these discussions have value. I resent the idea that just because I have refined opinions on one aspect of a discussion means I must have (and be willing to preach) refined opinions on all aspects of said discussion. (I don't mean to sound reproachful here - actually the vast majority of the comments I get on my video/tumblr are really sweet and respectful, but I do get a handful of silly comments here and there and I'm at the point where I do feel like this is something worth saying.) Anyway, I'm quite happy to defer to other analysts who have the passion and knowledge to give complicated topics the justice they deserve. All I request is that care is taken not to conflate literary criticism with moral criticism to the detriment of both - and I think it's important to acknowledge when that is indeed happening. And respectfully, don't expect me to give my own take on the matter when other people are already willing and able to put their thoughts into words so much better than me. Peace ✌

*P.S. This works for real life too, by the way. There are people out there who are genuinely not only charming and likeable, but also generous, charitable and warm to the vast majority of the people they know. They may also be amazing at their work, and if they have a job that involves saving lives like firefighting or surgery or w.e, they may even be the reason dozens of people are still alive today. They may honestly do a lot of things you'd have to concede are "good" deeds.

They may be all of these things, and still be someone's abuser. 🙃

Two things can be true at once. It's important never to forget that.

#zutara discourse #the colonizer argument #anti anti zutara #text post #long post #anti maiko #anti mai #tagging just in case #anti purity culture #this is not an anti-ship safe space

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