#i want to know how jude was affected so badly

[beezpajamas]

since jude is going to go to war for oak and come at suren, does this mean we get to learn more about how becoming high queen affected her mortality and her magic? No doubt Suren isn’t going to feel as scared as she might have because of her magic, but what if Jude has more magic than she did in tqon she doesnt typically show people? And I know mortals age very slowly as long as they remain in faerie but I imagine becoming the actual queen of the land might have different effects

[differenteagletragedy]

heya! i loved your ol:ba headcannons, and i saw your post asking for requests, so i thought i'd sneak in here and ask for some more? have a wonderful day!

Sure, this is fun! And you too!

-- Baxter and Derek LOVE each other. Baxter would eat him up with a spoon. It doesn't matter if you end up with Derek and then reconnect with Baxter, if you end up with Baxter and introduce him to Derek, or end up with Cove and they meet at the wedding, this is the bromance we need to be talking about.

-- I thought about this because I was playing the wedding DLC last night and when you call Derek to ask him to be in the wedding party he answers "Hi, this is Derek," like yeah buddy, this isn’t 1999 on a landline, I know exactly who I'm calling. It was so cute and polite and formal, so I thought about Baxter's old texting style and how adorable it would be for them to communicate, then boom, they are best friends.

-- Baxter thinks Derek is the most charming person in the entire world, and he appreciates how well he was raised. He likes that he always opens doors and pulls out chairs. Derek does all the old-fashioned gentleman stuff too, like he always makes sure you walk on the inside of the sidewalk, if you're cold and he has at least one stitch of clothing on, you're getting it, and Baxter thinks that just so nice.

-- This isn't unique at all, but I like to think that you do all three Step 4s -- so regardless of romance, you go to your moms' anniversary with Cove, spend Father's Day with Derek, and meet up with Baxter at the wedding. So even if you end up with Derek, you make friends with Baxter again, and can you imagine planning a wedding with Derek when you and Baxter are solid buds? I love it so much.

-- One more one more -- Baxter and Derek making friends and Baxter going over to the Suarez house for events. Nicolas is OBSESSED with him, he's such a weirdo and plus Xavier likes him so that's an automatic win. But Derek's parents take Baxter in too, and now he's got a place to spend Father's Day and it just makes him feel so warm and cozy.

-- Is there another guy in this series LOL

-- There's at least a 90% chance that you cut Cove's hair for him. If you reeeeeally aren't comfortable with it then obviously he won't force it, but it just makes sense to him for you to trim it up for him when he needs it so he doesn't have to make it a whole thing. If you don't do a good job, that's ok with him -- you tried your best and he loves you for it!

-- Do you and Cove have a kid? Cove is that kid's doodle pad, and he gets at least one tattoo of a lil baby drawing your kid did. You might have to convince him not to do it every time. He loves that baby more than anything and the thought of having a little piece of them with him always, ugh, he really likes that.

-- Baxter loves cats and wants one very badly but he does that whole thing for a while where he doesn't feel like he deserves affection from any other living beings, so you'll have to talk him into it. But when you do, that cat is his child.

-- I'm not saying Baxter is in danger of turning into a crazy cat lady, but you might want to keep an eye on it.

-- "Baxter, did you spend $500 on this fancy robot litter box?" "Yes."

-- Baxter (I am currently on a Baxter kick, sorry) references magic several times throughout the story. Honestly I don't really know what else to day about this, but I think it's really sweet and important that he talks about it more than once.

-- Both Cove and Derek canonically like it when you wear their clothes, but Baxter likes to wear yours. It doesn't matter if you're smaller than him or if you wear traditionally feminine clothes, he wants in them. they smell like you and remind him of you, especially if you're long distance in the beginning after Jude and Scott's wedding. He's not going to like go out in them, but he'll wear your hoodie around the house for sure.

-- This also isn't like a hot take I don't think, but none of the boys ever change, ever. Like they grow and stuff, but if you're with Cove, he's going to be clingy and have heart eyes for you when you're 80, and there literally will not be a day that goes by for the rest of your entire life that he doesn't tell you that he loves you -- guy is going to be on his deathbed and blushing when you tell him how you feel about him. Likewise, Derek is going to be Derek forever -- always just so so excited to be with you. Hope you can handle literal decades of "it's Derek Day." Baxter does have a lot of settling to do, but please imagine a 90-year-old man smirking at you and giving you those flirty little lines. He'll never stop.

[cosmicjoke]

Jude and Brother Luke

Once again, I’ll be discussing spoilers for A Little Life, so if you haven’t read it, and you plan to, don’t read past this point!

So there’s another aspect of A Little Life that I want to discuss, and it’s one of the most tragic, but also one of the most complex parts of the novel that I rarely see discussed.  Even in all the interviews I’ve watched with Hanya Yanagihara, I’ve never seen anyone ask her about the relationship between Jude and who is, essentially, his main abuser, which I found confusing, since it’s such a pivotal and particularly devastating relationship for Jude.  So I want to discuss it a bit here.

I think one of the most heartbreaking, and also one of the most realistic and accurate aspects of Jude’s relationship with Brother Luke is his continued desire, well into adulthood even, to believe in Brother Luke’s expressions of kindness, care, and love.   Even as Jude knows, logically, that Brother Luke was a liar, that he was a bad person, that he manipulated Jude, he continues to want to cling to the belief that Brother Luke genuinely cared for him.

And he continues to think of Brother Luke, even after Luke’s death.  He thinks of him during his time in the Home, particularly, during moments when he’s being sexually abused by the councelors, and imagines him as hiding in the next room, ready to jump out and rescue him.  He thinks and dreams of Brother Luke while being held captive by Dr. Traylor, and begs silently for him to come save him.  We even see Jude think similar thoughts as an adult, while being assaulted by Caleb, calling out for Brother Luke to help him in his dreams and nightmares.  He doesn’t tell Anna the full details of his relationship with Brother Luke, because he doesn’t want her to tell him that Luke was a monster who’s kind words and gestures were nothing but a manipulation and a lie.  Jude’s thoughts regarding Brother Luke, even after everything Brother Luke does to him, remain confused and complicated.

And yet, of course, it’s Brother Luke who was the figure in Jude’s life who had, in many ways, the most negative and destructive impact on him.  

I found Brother Luke’s abuse of Jude particularly sinister precisely because of how horrifically manipulative it was.  

The other brother’s at the monastery were monsters themselves.  But they were blatant monsters, not only physically and sexually abusive toward Jude, but emotionally, mentally and verbally as well.  They were openly cruel to him, calling him names, telling him he was a bad child, telling him he was a monstrous child, telling him he deserved to be treated badly, etc...  The councelor’s in the home were the same.  As was Dr. Traylor.  They all treated Jude as if he deserved to be treated horribly.

Brother Luke, though, was different.  He was kind to Jude.  He told Jude he was beautiful, and brilliant.  He told Jude he was a good boy, and that he didn’t deserve to be treated badly.  He never hit Jude.  He never raised his voice at him, or called him mean names.  

Truly one of the most unsettling and upsetting sections of the novel is when we get to witness Jude being groomed by Brother Luke.  Because while we, the reader, are aware of what’s going on, and are able to perceive the manipulative nature of Luke’s behavior, Jude is not, and so we can only watch as Jude gets lead further and further into the wolf’s den, so to speak, unable to stop it, unable to help.  Jude is alone, and helpless, and oblivious in only the way a child can be.  The power imbalance between a grown man and a young child, and the abuse of that power, is never on fuller display in the novel than in this relationship, and its affect on the reader is profound.

And I think it was Luke’s seeming kindness, his seeming care and concern for Jude, which had, ultimately, one of the most damaging affects on him, because it caused in Jude’s mind such a vicious riot of confusion.  He was torn between feeling a deep fear of Luke, and a deep sense of betrayal from him, but also seeing Luke as his protector and caregiver.  Brother Luke, of course, purposefully and diligently set it up this way.  He makes Jude dependent on him as the only person able and willing to “protect” him.  He “rescues” Jude from clients who are too violent, or who tell Jude to do things he doesn’t want to do, hiding in the bathroom of whatever motel room they’re in, ready to jump out and intervene if need be, positioning himself as Jude’s savior.  But of course, it’s Brother Luke himself who puts Jude in the position to be sexually abused and raped in the first place.  It’s Brother Luke who manipulates and plays on Jude’s sense of gratitude and guilt and responsibility to maneuver him into the position he ends up in, making Jude feel as if he owes it to Brother Luke to let himself be used as a prostitute, and as a personal lover for Luke, as payment for Luke’s supposed kindness and love.  Luke creates the very situation from which Jude needs to be rescued, and then sets himself up as the one who rescues him.  The psychological impact this has on Jude is obvious throughout the rest of his life, and it’s devastating.  

Jude of course never wanted to do any of it, and that exposes Luke’s role as protector for the deception that it is.  But Luke manipulates Jude into thinking he agreed to it, that he’s good at it, that it’s what he was “born to do”, even that he must be enjoying it.  He convinces Jude, even, that they’re in love with each other, that he’s in love with Brother Luke.  This causes such a deep contradiction in Jude’s mind about what’s happening to him that, when he’s at last rescued from Brother Luke and questioned about how many times he was raped, Jude isn’t consciously able to define or understand what happened to him as such.  He thinks he agreed to it, that he consented, and so it wasn’t abuse, bur rather a result of his own, inherently corrupt nature and perversion, a result of his deformed nature agreeing to something obscene and dirty.  He continues to believe this, continues to blame himself and carry the weight of responsibility for it, into adulthood.  It’s one of the most tragic and heartbreaking elements of Jude’s story.  That he truly believes he did something to warrant the abuse he suffered, that it happened because there’s something wrong with him.   He doesn’t understand that as a child, unable to intellectually grasp the nature of what was being done to him, he was both mentally and physically incapable of consent.  He sees other people’s reactions to it, their horror and disgust, and interprets it as them feeling horror and disgust for him, for what he is.  He believes that they must see him as a perverse abomination, as the one responsible for such perversions, because it’s what he’s been driven to believe about himself. 

I think one of the saddest things to witness in the novel is Jude clinging to the belief that Brother Luke’s kindness wasn’t all a lie, that he really DID love him, in some way, because it shows such a desperate hope on Jude’s part.  He wants to believe Brother Luke really loved him, really meant all the kind words, because if he does acknowledge what he knows deep down, that Luke never really loved him, that he never meant any of the kind words or gestures he expressed toward Jude, that he only ever saw Jude as an object to fulfil his own, twisted desires, then it’s like irrefutable affirmation of all of Jude’s worst fears, of all the lessons he was taught about himself by every other abuser in his life.  That he’s unlovable, that he’s worthless, that he’s disgusting and monstrous and good only as a tool to be used for the fulfillment of someone else’ desires.  Even that he brings out those perverse desires, that he himself creates them in others.

And to acknowledge Brother Luke’s lies and manipulations, to acknowledge that Brother Luke never truly loved him at all, also forces Jude to have to question every other expression of love he’s received in his life, including the love he receives from his friends.  If Brother Luke’s love was a lie, if he was only being kind in order to get out of Jude what he wanted, then the same is possible for everyone else who’s ever shown kindness or affection to him.  And if that’s true, then it only serves as proof that Jude himself is unworthy of genuine love and affection.  It only serves as further proof of all the things Jude was told about himself as a child, that he’s bad, that he’s ugly, that he’s a monster, that he’s rotten, that he’s filthy, that he’s a whore.  It’s Jude’s belief in these things which ultimately lead him to taking his own life.  His inability to think better of himself, his inability to believe himself worthy of true love or affection, his inability to see the value in himself.  And a large part of the blame for that inability can, I think, be placed on Brother Luke, and the way his manipulative “kindness” and “compliments” toward Jude only ended up reinforcing and strengthening the negative beliefs he’d been taught about himself by others.  Only ended up serving as proof of Jude’s “wrongness” and “freakishness” and “monstrosity”, as proof of his only having value as a tool for the pleasure of others, as someone who was only capable of inspiring ugliness, cruelty and perversion in others.

Again, this is what ultimately leads to Jude taking his own life.  Because these beliefs about himself are far too deeply ingrained by the abuse he suffered, and can’t be undone, no matter how much genuine love and affection he received afterward.  Once again, A Little Life is a masterpiece in how it explores and exposes the true price of child abuse.

[bluejayblueskies]

i cannot stop thinking about tma hell's kitchen au

(@f0xesand0wls thank you for enabling me)

- elias is the head chef, and peter and gertrude are his sous chefs. there are 20 total chefs in the competition: red team: jon, tim, georgie, daisy, naomi, agnes, gerry, jordan, helen/michael, oliver blue team: martin, sasha, melanie, basira, mike, jude, julia, jared, jane, manuela

- the black jackets are jon, martin, tim, sasha, georgie, and melanie, and the finalists are jon and martin. the winner is probably martin, but it doesn't really matter, because the actual plot of this is a jonmartin rivals-to-friends-to-lovers slowburn

- annabelle is the one who puts all of the film and audio together at the end. jmart watch the show once it's put on television and go 'what the fuck i didn't say any of that' because that's how reality tv is babey

- martin is one of those chefs who does poorly at the beginning but gets better and ends up in the final two. even though he's not on the same team as jon, jon is like 'this guy sucks' and maybe martin messes something up for jon early on and jon decides he does not like martin.

- jon is so nervous that he's going to screw up and get sent home early (he doesn't have formal culinary training and feels deeply underqualified) so he's very stiff and overly professional at the beginning. he relaxes over time as he becomes more confident in his own cooking and as he does well at challenges and dinner services.

- somewhere around chapter/episode 5, martin tells jon that he doesn't have any formal culinary training and that he said he did in order to get into the restaurant job he had prior to coming on the show. he's been cooking for his mother since he was ten though, and jon surprises himself by saying that that's a lot more impressive than studying technique in france or something. that's the catalyst of their transition from rivals into friends

- somewhere around episode 8, jude (who got switched to the red team a few episodes prior) gets eliminated, but on the dinner service before she does, there's an incident in the kitchen and jon's hand gets burnt pretty badly (not so badly that he has to go home, and he fights through the rest of dinner service because of course he does). he insists he doesn't have to go to the hospital for it, and elias reluctantly agrees and has the medic look at it. in the dorms later, martin helps jon unwrap it and put more burn cream on it and change the bandages and... yeah <3

- daisy and jon do not get along at first, and daisy actually tries to sabotage jon early in the season/fic. jon nearly gets eliminated because of it and he is not happy. then, a good few episodes later, the red team wins a challenge and they go on some sort of outdoorsy award and something happens and jon saves daisy from getting seriously injured. they're on better terms after that.

- when jon, tim, sasha, martin, melanie, and georgie get black jackets, elias (like every actual season of hell's kitchen) brings their family members/friends in for them to see. jon gets his grandmother, tim his brother, sasha her mother, georgie her best friend alex, and melanie some of her ghosthunt uk (the restaurant) friends. the only person martin has is his mother, and they tell him that she was too sick to come, but he can't shake the feeling that she just didn't want to. she didn't even agree to make him a video. it's a very awkward affair, and after the challenge (which tim wins) jon stands by martin while they're... idk, peeling 200 pounds of potatoes or something and they talk about it and they talk about a lot of their personal lives. for most of the competition, they're very aware that they're on camera at all times, but jon decides that being there for martin is more important than worrying about that.

- jon wins the next black jacket challenge and, when asked who he wants to invite on the reward, invites martin. they get to go wine tasting in a beautiful vinyard together and then they get some time to sit in the vinyard and just relax. martin probably realized he had a crush on jon around... episode/chapter 8? pretty soon after his admission that he doesn't have formal training. this episode is when jon realizes that he has a crush on martin, and the wine tasting suddenly seems very romantic and he gets very flustered. martin just thinks he's getting nervous since they're getting closer to the end of the competition.

- it's martin and jon in the finals. martin has tim, melanie, basira, and agnes on his bridage and jon has sasha, georgie, daisy, and gerry. in the middle of the entrees, something goes very wrong in martin's kitchen (not because of martin, because agnes burns like... ten racks of lamb or something ridiculous like that) and it looks like martin might not even be able to finish and he's freaking out just a little bit, so jon does something incredibly stupid and tells sasha to take charge of the kitchen for a moment and goes over into the other kitchen and pulls martin aside and takes martin's hands in his and is like 'it's okay, you're okay, everything's going to be okay. you're extremely talented and an amazing chef and an amazing person and i love you and this is not your fault and you're going to go back out there and get things back on track.'

jon goes back to his kitchen, elias yelling at him the whole way, and martin kicks agnes out and gets his kitchen back under control and they have no other issues that night. and martin's brain completely skips over the 'i love you' until the end of service, when the adrenaline wears off and they start to clear down and jon gives him this smile and suddenly martin remembers and he's like 'oh fuck'

but jon doesn't say anything about it so martin assumes he hadn't meant to say it, because of course he didn't, because they're competing for a job and $250,000 and he probably just heard jon wrong or something. jon probably said 'i love your cooking' and martin's just being stupid and letting his crush get away from him. so they both go back and sit in the dorms and wait for elias to call them up to his office. meanwhile, jon also remembers that he accidentally let i love you slip and he's having a bit of a crisis about it because on the one hand he meant it, but on the other hand he should not have said it then and martin hasn't said anything, so maybe he didn't even hear.

still, martin needs to thank jon. so he's eventually like 'thank you for what you did back there. i don't think i would have made it through service without what you said.' then, after a moment, because it is a competition: 'why did you help me? you could have let me drown and you'd have a secure win'

and jon just shrugs and says, 'because you needed help, and i... i care about you. i didn't want to see you fail. you are a good chef, martin, and i... i know you deserve this job just as much as me. you can go work at elias's restaurant and i can go back to mine and... and that'll be okay, if that's what happens'

and martin realizes suddenly that jon lives across the country from him normally and he doesn't know if he'll be able to see jon after this (chefs are busy people, after all, not a lot of time for family and such) and before he can really think about it he's like 'i wouldn't be okay with that' and then when jon just looks at him he clarifies, 'i... i don't want to just go back to living in [washington?], working all day and coming home to an empty apartment, and you'll go back to [new york?] and i... will i even see you again? because it's been so nice, being here, being with you, and i want to see you again, jon. every day.' he hesitates a moment, then decides fuck it, if i'm wrong, at least i'll only be embarrassed for a little while longer and says, 'what you said during service. did you mean it?'

and jon, tentatively, is like, 'that you're a good chef? yes, martin, i meant it, of course i did' and martin's like 'no, the... the other thing you said. right in the middle of it all. i- i don't know if i heard you right, and i just... i need to know if you meant it'

and it would be easy for jon to say no, to pretend like he didn't. but instead, he sits next to martin on the couch and takes martin's hand in his and nods and says, 'i... i've meant it for quite some time, i think' and he smiles at martin, a little bit shy, and martin's overwhelmed with affection and he reaches for jon's face, leans forward, and--

and the phone rings. unfortunately. because elias made a decision

- martin's door opens and jon's doesn't. jon thinks he should feel crushed, and he does feel disappointed, but mostly he's just so, so happy for martin. martin is stunned, and tim and sasha and georgie and melanie and basira and daisy are waiting for him below to congratulate him. martin's stuck in a round of thank yous when he turns and sees jon, who's run down the stairs to join the celebration and is looking at martin with those same eyes he would get when he was determined to win a challenge or finish a dish that needed two more minutes in one minute. and then jon just hugs martin, so tightly martin can barely breathe, and he mumbles into martin's neck, 'i would very much like to kiss you, but i very much do not want our first kiss to be on national television' and martin laughs and hugs jon tightly in return and mumbles back, 'i love you too, jon. just in case it wasn't obvious' and even though jon just lost, he's never been happier

- (they watch the show when it comes out together half a year later, in the little bit of free time they have around running their own respective restaurants, and they spend the whole time picking it apart

jon: okay i did not say that, where did they even get that from??

martin: god do i really look like that from behind...

jon: oh christ. martin, i- i think they thought i wanted to have sex with you. ugh, they've put on weird romantic music. red lighting. i hate this. i clearly did not--no, martin, don't give me that look, you know what i mean.

martin: wow, this makes us look like terrible chefs

and, at the end:

jon: christ, of course they were recording us in the dorms after the last service. this is a cooking competition, not a romance.

martin: eh, it was a bit of a romance.

jon: hush, i'm trying to watch. they're about to announce the winner. i don't have much hope for this chef martin; after all, he did burn that risotto back in episode 2--

martin, trying not to laugh while he glares at jon: oh my god jon let it go)

[throwaninkpot]

This may be nothing, but MAG176 had me thinking. As they travel, Jon seems to be taking on the attitude of each Fear as he passes through its domain. Outside of the "statements", I mean.

Take this episode. The Hunt manifests as predators tracking down their prey, and here Jon is downright cunning as he hunts Basira. He lays multiple traps, using himself and Martin as bait for Trevor and using Trevor as bait for Basira. And he does all of this without communicating to Martin what is going on.

MARTIN

(passive-aggressiveness kicking in) No, Jon, that’s the goal. What I want is the plan, the steps in between that need us to be hunted through the woods. I’m flying blind here, I’m –

ARCHIVIST

(exhaling) Yeah. I’m sorry. I do know what I’m doing.

MARTIN

How nice for you, but I don’t, unless you tell me!

This particular domain of The Hunt feeds off the fear of being betrayed by those you trust most. Good intentions and practical reasons aside, keeping Martin in the dark about his plan treads very closely to that fear.

Let's go back to MAG174. The Vast deals with open space and heights, yes, but slao the fear of insignifigance in the grand scheme of things. And Jon looks at his revenge tour in the big picture of it and comes to the conclusion that it accomplishes nothing.

ARCHIVIST

I know. I, I, I know, alright? But well – That’s kind of the problem; I have all this – power and I want to use it to try to help, but I – [...] I’ve done so much damage, and – and anything that might help to balance that is – But killing other Avatars is, is not – I, I don’t think it makes anything better. I think it just makes me worse.

MARTIN

You’re removing evil from the world.

ARCHIVIST

I, I’m not though, am I? The tenement fire is still burning. The mortal garden is growing wild. The carousel –

Jon chooses not to smite Simon because his death simply wouldn't change anything on any level that matters to the victims of his domain. Beyond that, this is the moment when Jon finally admits (at leadt out loud) that they haven't helped anyone with the "Kill Bill" quest. In the Fearpocalypse, change can't be affected on such a small scale, and there's only some vague idea that looking above the avatars and their domains to the Entities themselves is the only way to fix anything.

Go back further to MAG169. The Desolation feeds on suffering and pain, and Jon purposefully guides him and Martin towards the burning building so that he can smite Jude.

ARCHIVIST

I - Oh, right: I want revenge on Jude Perry. I want to… smite her. Make her feel what - (sigh) What all her victims felt.

And then when he actually confronts Jude:

ARCHIVIST

(not in the mood for games) I’d have thought that was a mindset you would appreciate. Now, feel it. All the terror and pain you’ve inflicted.

It doesn't come through just reading a transcript of the scene, but there's a certain detachef relishment in Jon's voice as he calls down all the pain of The Desolation's victims on Jude Perry.

And lastly, MAG168. The End isn't about being proactive or taking action, but instead it waits and lets death happen in its own time. Fitting that Jon becomes very live and let die during that episode.

ARCHIVIST

I feel badly for those who exist in his domain, o-of course, I do, but - At least their suffering will be over. Eventually.

I can’t destroy everyone I cross paths with, it - No. If Oliver will not seek me out, then I will leave him be.

It's a very passive attitude, much like we've seen in previous statements of The End.

This is Jon experiencing each domain as the Archivist. It's another side of his vents that make him the mouthpiece for the "statements" of a few of the victims trapped inside.

It's a subtle theme, and there are plenty of unconnected explanations for all of this. Jon had to be cunning because Basira was too clever to be caught, Jon admits he hasn't fixed anything because he has been worn down by each domain, Jon wanted to cause Jude pain because she caused him pain and helped turn him into a tool for ending the world, Jon didn't want to kill Oliver because he empathized with him. These could all be coincidences, but it's interesting that its happened at least four times, maybe more but these were the episodes that stuck out to me.

[thosebrookfieldgirls]

1,4,11, and 18

I have another ask with number 1 on it after this one so I’m going to answer that one there I hope you don’t mind~ 

4. Share something that’s special about TWST to you 

I don’t necessarily know if there is anything “Special” about TWST for me, I keep waiting for the hype fixation to fade but it hasn’t so far so I’m not arguing with it. But I will say this much, I absolutely love the morally grey the characters tend to be. No one is a perfect little angel, no one saw the ‘error of their ways’ and is suddenly trying to be a RSA goodie-two-shoes. Most are sorry they got caught more then sorry it happened XD. Even the ‘light’ characters like Kalim, Rook, and Silver have major flaws that can rub people the wrong way. I love being able to psychologically pick characters apart. It’s my favorite past time is doing character analysis. Trust me my poor partner has had to sit through me doing twenty-page verbal papers on what ever character has my interest at the time. So if there was something that had me latch onto TWST enough to actually get involved in the fandom rather then lurk like I usually do, it’s probably the characterization. 

11. Favorite dynamic

Hands down its the dynamic between Kalim and Jamil. Unlike Black Butler, where we see the dynamic of master and servant as a very unconditional thing (Ciel/Sebastian being a unconditional until contract is completed and Soma/Agni being one of gratitude) we get to see the implications of someone who didn’t chose to enter that kind of life and how it affects them. It’s not sugar coated to the idea that people love their bosses or really care all that much about them. No one was really right in chapter 4 and no one was really wrong. They were two people pitted to have opposite goals in life that Kalim chose to ignore and Jamil wasn’t given the choice but to follow. If fact I loved this dynamic so much it ended up influencing my OC’s Jude and Anne because I wanted them to have a similar relationship but not exactly as I didn’t want Anne to be subservient over Jude being the one who always pretended nothing was wrong to keep “entertaining her guest” so to speak.... plus I just love grumpy vs sunshine dynamics in genral XD. 

18. Anything you want to happen in-game in the future

I want more events like the Fireworks event in Scalding Sands so badly. I want to see these places the characters talk about (not on a map) and learn about how their lives are and how their movies influenced the way these countries ended up developing. I would particularly love a Harvest Festival kind of event with Epel as the event SSR where we go to his home town and get to see it and do a kind of country fair kind of event. Everyone there could where cowboy hats. It would be so much fun! Like just think of all the traditions they could make up for it like “It’s said once a beautiful princess lived in the forest around here and a kind old lady gave her a wishing apple so all her dreams could come true. And once she ate it they did! So now it’s tradition to give an apple so someone you care about, particularly grandparents and parents to their children.” Just things like that I think would be so much fun. 

I’ve thought way too much about that I know....

[nuestraluzdelaluna]

Thank you guys so much for 200 followers, this means so much to me!! Special thank you to everyone that’s always commenting and reblogging works, y’all are angels.

Since i love prompt lists i decided to do my own. So inspired by @emwritesfootball and @footballerimaginess put together a list with prompts i loved.

All credits for the prompts go to @creativepromptsforwriting and @palettes-and-prompts, check out they’re pages they are amazing!!

Request with the number and from which list you are choosing from,i’ll be taking more than one person for each prompt. If they’re crossed out they’re taken.

Touching

Feeling another human’s touch.

full masterlist

1) touching foreheads

2) running fingers through hair | Julian Brandt | Virgil van Dijk | Leon Goretzka

3) hiding face in neck | Kylian mbappé | Jadon sancho | Leroy sané

4) caressing the other’s hand | Dele | Leon Goretzka

5) feeling their pulse

6) patting the other’s head | James Maddison

7) holding hands | Leroy Sané | Kai Havertz

8) shielding the other one with their body | Jadon sancho | Leon Goretzka

9) listening to the other’s heartbeat | Reiss Nelson

10) spooning at night | Leon Goretzka | Mason Mount | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

11) laying their hand on the other’s neck | Dele

12) pushing a strand of hair behind their ear | Virgil van dijk

13) nudging the other one | Leon Goretzka

14) putting an arm around the other’s waist | Leon Goretzka | Kai Havertz

15) hugging each other | Robin koch

16) massaging them | Joe Gomez | Kai Havertz | Leon Goretzka

17) holding the other’s chin up | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

18) squishing the other’s cheek | Mason Mount

19) high fiving | Leon Goretzka

20) bandaging/stitching up an injury | Dominic Calvert-Lewin | Joe Gomez

21) kissing the other’s brow

22) falling asleep on the other’s shoulder

23) carrying the other one in their arms | Dele | Trent Alexander-Arnold

24) whispering in their ear, lips touching the skin | Son Heung-Min | Ben Chilwell

25) stroking the other’s arm soothingly | Héctor Bellerín

26) kissing the top of their head | Julian Brandt

27) pulling the other one towards them | Dominic Calvert-Lewin | Leon Goretzka | Dele

28) feeling for each other in the dark | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

29) tickling the other one | Mason Mount

30) grabbing onto their arm | Mason Mount

31) doing a pinky swear | Ben Chilwell

32) caressing the other’s back | Jadon Sancho

33) washing the other’s body | Julian Brandt | Kai Havertz | Joe Gomez

34) kissing their bruises and scars | Jadon sancho | Trent Alexander-Arnold

35) putting their head on the other’s chest | Robin Koch

36) stroking their leg | Mason Mount

37) patting them on the back | Héctor Bellerín

38) sitting close and knees touching | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

39) braiding the other’s hair

40) sitting on the other’s lap | Kai Havertz

41) touching their elbow to get their attention

Kisses

Showing affections.

full masterlist

1) goodnight kisses | Harry winks

2) hand kisses | Jadon sancho

3) smiling while kissing | Jadon Sancho | Serge Gnabry

4) lips barely touching | Héctor Bellerín

5) morning kisses | Julian Brandt

6) slow kisses | Virgil Van Dijk

7) passionate kisses | Joe Gomez | Mason Mount

8) kisses on the cheek | Dele

9) first kisses | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

10) goodbye kisses

11) welcome home kisses | Leon Goretzka

12) kisses on the corner of their mouth | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

13) frustrated kisses | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

14)kissing each other breathless | Son Heung-Min

15) soothing kisses | Trent Alexander-Arnold

16) nose kisses

16) kisses as a promises | Héctor Bellerín

17) short pecks | Ben chilwell

18) forehead kisses | Jude Bellingham

19) kisses on head

20) “we’ll face this together” kisses | Mason Mount

21) kisses in the rain | Leon Goretzka

22) hard kisses | Ben Chilwell

23) giggling while kissing | Leon Goretzka

24) desperate kisses | Dominic Calvert-Lewin | Kai Havertz

25) neck kisses | Jadon sancho

26) hushed conversation in-between kisses |Jadon Sancho

27) eyelid kisses

28) gentle stroking of cheeks

29) small kisses | Jude Bellingham

30) kissing it better | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

31) jaw kisses | Kai Havertz | Robin Koch | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

32) wake-up kisses | Leon Goretzka

33) kissing away tears | Jadon Sancho

34) public kisses | Mason Mount

35) relieved kisses | Trent Alexander-Arnold

36) kisses for comfort

37) tummy kisses | Héctor Bellerín | Leon Goretzka

38) kisses to shut them up | Julian Brandt | Mason Mount

39) slowly kissing down the body | Joe Gomez

40) “we’ll see each other again” kisses | Kylian mbappe

41) kissing each finger

42) sleepy kisses | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

43) angry kisses | Jadon sancho

44) feather-light kisses

45) kisses with trembling lips | Joe Gomez

Smut dialogue prompts

1) “You know, you always look so much better when I mark you up.” | Julian Brandt

2) “You look so good with my hand wrapped around your throat.”

3) “How do you feel about adding another person to the mix?” | Jadon sancho

4) “You’d better be quiet if you don’t want to get caught.” | Joe Gomez | Ben Chilwell

5) “You look good all soaking wet.” | Dele

6) “Are you sure that’s what you want? I could really hurt you.” | Jadon sancho | Virgil van Dijk

7) “Oh my god you’re so much better than the last person I was with.”

8) “If you’re going to act like a little brat then I’m going to treat you like a little brat.” | Leon Goretzka | Jadon Sancho

9) “I don’t care how good it feels you’d better not cum until I tell you to.” | Jadon sancho

10) “Look, I’m not into choking but I wouldn’t mind if you grabbed me by the neck every once in a while.” | Virgil van Dijk

11) “I bet you think you’re real cute letting them put their hands all over you. We’ll see how cute you look later when I get you home.” | Jadon Sancho

12) “You don’t have to be gentle with me, I don’t break easily.” | Trent Alexander Arnold

13) “Touch yourself for me.” | Virgil van dijk

14) “Do you think you deserve to be punished?”

15) “You take my fingers so well don’t you?” | Karin Havertz

16) “Shut up and take your pants off.” | Leon Goretzka

17) “When I get home I expect you to be undressed and waiting on all fours for me.” | Mason Mount

18) “Are you wearing my shirt?” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

19) “Do you need me to finger you first?” | Leon Goretzka

20) “You’d better be quiet or everyone’s going to know what a naughty little slut you are.” | Mason Mount

21) “Did I stutter? Do as you’re told!” | Jadon Sancho

22) “Look at you, I’ve only started using my fingers and you’re already shaking.” | Ben chilwell

23) “I can’t wait to be on my knees for you later.” | Jadon sancho

24) “Maybe if I punish you it’ll help you remember who you belong to next time.” | Trent Alexander-Arnold

25) “Do you want it on your back or would you like to be on your stomach?” | Mason Mount

26) “Suck on my fingers and get them nice and wet for me.” | Leon Goretzka

27) “Oh honey, you know, you really shouldn’t tease me.” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

28) “If you keep making those sounds I’m not going to be able to stop myself.” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

29) “Take it off. Slowly.” | Héctor Bellerín

30) “Such a needy little thing, aren’t you?”

31) “Why don’t you go put on something pretty for me?” | Eric Dier

32) “Kitten, don’t make me tell you twice.” | Héctor Bellerín | Trent Alexander-Arnold

33) “Pushing back against my fingers already? How pathetic.” | Trent Alexander-Arnold

34) “I love the sounds you make when you come undone.” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

35) “Maybe I should get you a collar so you don’t forget who you belong to.” | Julian Brandt

36) “You’d better watch your fucking mouth.”

37) “Did I say you could stop?”

38) “I need you. Now!” | Son Heung-Min

39) “I’m so sick of your voice. Why don’t you come over here and put your mouth to better use?”

40) “I love the way you look with my fingers inside you.” | Virgil van dijk

41) “You keep acting like a little brat and I’ll take you over my knee right here, I don’t care how many people are watching.” | John stones

42) “I guess I’ll just get off all by myself.”

43) “Don’t you want to play with me? | Leon Goretzka

44) "Yes! I mean yes, Sir!” | John stones

45) “When we get home I’m cuffing you to the bed and going down on you all night until my jaw is sore.” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin | Kylian Mbappé

46) “Wanna see what I’m wearing underneath all this?” | Leon Goretzka

47) “You deserve a reward for being so good today, what would you like it to be?”

48) “I can’t wait to put bruises all over that pretty skin.”

49) “You look so good on your knees like that.”

50) “I only want to please you.”

51) “Did you touch yourself while I was gone?”

52) “Are you going to be good from now on?”

53) “Is that a tattoo?” | Julian Brandt

54) “These walls are pretty thick, which means you and I can be as loud as we want.”

55) “Well, since you want to cum so badly, why don’t we see how many times I can make you cum right now.” | Joe Gomez | Mason Mount

56) “Come sit on my face, let me show you how much I missed you.” | Kai Havertz | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

57) “I wonder what your girlfriend/boyfriend would do if they knew what you were doing right now.” | Trent Alexander-Arnold | Joe Gomez

58) “Do you know how beautiful you are? It’s truly distracting.” | Héctor Bellerín | Leon Goretzka

59) “So desperate for it, aren’t you? Well, if you want it so bad you’d better start taking it.” | Joe Gomez

60) “Please? I’ll be good, I promise!”

61) “If you don’t change out of those shorts and into some pants I’ll have them around your ankles by lunch time.” | Julian Brandt

62) “I bet all our neighbors can hear you, I bet they all know what a dirty little slut you are.”

63) “Open your mouth.” | John stones

64) “I never knew someone could cum that fast just from a few fingers.” | Leon Goretzka

65) “Pull my hair!”

66) “If you leave the house wearing that then the second you get back home I’m going to bend you over that bed.”| Leon Goretzka

67) “If you want to cum you’d better beg.”

68) “You know I don’t like to be teased.”

69) “Come here, baby, let Mommy/Daddy take care of you.” | Julian Brandt

70) "Say my name over and over again and, once you think you’ve said it loud enough, scream it. I want the whole neighborhood to know who’s making you feel good.“ | Julian Brandt.

71) "I’m gonna fuck you in front of the mirror, I want you to see how pretty you look when you’re spreading your legs for me.” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

72) “Maybe I should leave you like this, that way anyone who wanted to use you could have a go with you. Would you like that?” | Trent Alexander-Arnold

73) “I wanna fuck you right against the glass so everyone can see how good you take it.” | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

74) “Wow, I think you’re blushing even redder than the vibrator inside you.” | Virgil van Dijk

75) “You know, you look real pretty when you cry.” | Julian Brandt

76) “I think I like you better with a gag in your mouth.” | Neco Williams

77) “Tell me what you like.” | Trent alexander-arnold

78) “Shh, don’t worry, I’ll take very good care of you.” | Jadon sancho

79) “Look at you, grinding against everything, you’re really desperate for it. Aren’t you?” | Leon Goretzka

80) “How do you feel about two at once?”

81) “Is that a thong?” | Joe Gomez

82) “Yeah, that’s it, baby, just like that.” | Jadon sancho

83) “Aww, poor baby, you want me to take care of it for you?”

84) “I love it when you dress up for me.”

85) “Did you dress up just for me?” | Eric Dier

86) “Let me show you what happens to little brats who don’t follow the rules.” | Trent Alexander-Arnold

87) “Think you can handle that much?”

88) “Mmm, good morning to you too.” | Son Heung-Min

89) “Just pull the car over!”

90) “What’s wrong? I thought you liked teasing.” | Héctor Bellerín

91) “Aww, is my little princess/prince getting shy?” | jadon sancho

92) “Come on, take it all on your own like a good little pet.”

93) “It’s okay, honey, you can pull my hair as hard as you want while I’m between your legs.” | Kai Havertz | Mason Mount

94) “Be a good girl/boy and do what I tell you.”

95) “That tickles.”

96) “Were you touching yourself without permission?”

97) “I think you forgot to lock the door, that means anyone could walk right in and see you like this.” | Trent Alexander-Arnold

98) “I see the gift I got you fits well.” | Leon Goretzka

99) “You know, there wasn’t a single thing to eat in the kitchen until you walked in.” | Ben Chilwell

100) “Call me selfish, but I don’t ever want anyone else to touch you.” | Jadon sancho

[divinerivals]

Fire Like Sin

Written for @fateandluminary​ 

Prompt Request: Jurdan- “Horns”- Bryce Fox 

I basically listened to this song on repeat until I stopped typing. 

WARNING NSFW CONTENT BELOW

                   ******************************************************

Cardan strode into the heady club, smoke swirling around him as he moved passed the hoard of desire-driven patrons. This was madness, utter madness. If they were going to make a break for it, it was the only way.

The first time he watched her wrapped that damned silken leg around the silvered pole as she spun round and round. Her hair cascading down to the stage and two makeshift horns styled atop her head, he had become entranced. Then her bronzed eyes locked on to his. From the moment they made contact on that fateful evening she had damned the very air he breathed. It was like the black mark on his soul had a match with the then stranger. The first month of her dancing he watched her in an obsessive annoyance as she had called it. He recognized the anger and fury roiling in her. The cold as ice blood and stone heart too. Cardan knew it so well because he was the same on the inside. Just a pit of blackness using his tongue, liquor, and sex to get through his fucked up life. Until her.

Several months ago, Jude Duarte cornered him in a private room saved for the higher paying customers. They argued, voices hoarse as screaming at each other. Over a patron who touched her in a way that made Cardan’s blood boil. He had no grounds to step in. He should have let her make the mistake, yet he couldn’t help it. The youngest Greenbriar chose to express it as Jude being property to not be touched. That she belonged to the Hollow, to his brother Balekin. Until she paid off her debt. And no one was to touch her less they pay for it. Locke was a dirty patron Cardan knew didn’t pay it. Jude raised her hand, striking him across the cheek. Every fiber of being filled with heat and lust. It was then Cardan realized he was insane. The smart thing would’ve been to get Balekin. He did no such thing. She was his tinder, and he, her flint.

Cardan gripped her arm, then the flint struck against tinder, igniting the sparks that led to burning flames. Crushing his mouth onto hers, bruising those lips he’s dreamed of since he first saw them. those smooth lush lips and the teeth behind them that grazed and pulled on his own. She never backed away. Only pushing into him further and further. He could taste the want and desperation on her as her tongue rolled around his. The need to feel alive. They were alone and he opened the way for Jude to get everything she needed. At that time it meant nothing. He meant nothing. Cardan didn’t care how or when she wanted him. All he knew was she was a tempting sin that he couldn’t resist. Horns like a devil, mouth as wicked as one too. He would sell his darkened soul to this she-devil if only to experience this high again and again.

He was undone. Forever.

Now he sits in the same leather seat that started this all. The very same that begun his fascination with her. When all he did was pleasure himself to wicked thoughts of her body and his. To bringing those dreams to life where they both used each other's bodies purely for distraction. The feelings, the deep-seated affection, and love came after. Until Balekin found out and Cardan was attacked brutally by him. Struck repeatedly till his bones screamed in agony for sleeping with his brother’s prized dancer. Balekin tripled her debt to a price even Cardan couldn’t pay off. Cardan was stuck in the hospital for a week as he and Jude discussed plans to leave Insmire behind and for good. Jude wanted to kill the bastard for what he did to Cardan. His face swollen and bloodied so badly she hardly recognized the devastatingly handsome features underneath. Cardan said no. He didn’t want his brother’s death on her hands nor did he want them to be running all their lives. Cardan had enough money for them to leave Elfhame and the city of Insmoor behind. To live on a new continent where the name Greenbriar was just another name.

On the outside, he looked calm and ready for this. To bolt like hell when her dance was done. On the inside he felt the burning rise of bile, his stomach churning and anxiousness rippling through his veins. After this, they would be freed from a hellish paradise to a heavenly one. Cardan was sure after the grueling and horrid things he and Jude have done in their lives that neither deserves such a thing. They didn’t care, They were sneaking their way out to freedom. Lights turned low as the deep red lights shined on the black curtain before him. The bass began to fill the room vibrating within his chest. Cardan had to stifle the grin when he heard the song play. Horns, the one he played for her in his apartment claiming it reminded him of her. Of how it described the way she burst into miserable life, She laughed crawling on top over his lap, taking him to the hilt.

Cardan shook away from the pleasurable memory. This wasn’t the time to reminisce he needed to keep alert and focused. Hell, he hadn’t even touched his wine, only ordering for show. The curtains pulled apart and there his wonderfully wicked lady stood. Her last and final dance, she was to make a show of it. As the bass thundered around them, Cardan only saw her, as he knew she did the same. Mother above the costume choice, Jude truly took the song and magnified it. Hair darkened by the light fell in long waves, except for those horns of hers styled upward with a slight edge. Desperately he longed to grip her hair of horns and fuck her ruthlessly. That would come later when they were safely away.

She sauntered down the shimmering black catwalk in eight-inch heels that melded from red to black and red again. His darkened gaze followed up from her accentuated legs to barely-there garment hugging on her hips, showing off the curves of her ass and hips for all the world to see. Her breasts generously spilling over from the center of the bra, if one could call it that. Both pieces black with a glittering crimson throughout. Good. She kept it as practical as she could without raising too much attention. Jude’s lips were of the deepest scarlet, and eyelids covered in the darkest of blacks. Her gaze met Cardan’s as is if to speak one single word.

Soon.

Yes, soon they would be away from abusive family and men who leered at Jude while she moved her body in tantalizing ways. Wishing to eat her alive. What these men didn’t know, was Jude would do the same and leave their corpses in her wake. In minutes they would be away from here and the grimy streets of Insmoor City. Jude reached up to the top of her pole and begun her dance.

Her legs spread wide, for her audience. The whistles came and so did the money being thrown to the stage as he wrapped her legs around the pole, arching her back upward. Her palms trailing up the expanse of her body grasping her breasts in the movement. Winking and blowing kisses at no one in particular. She was making it difficult for him to focus. With the way, she grasped at her soft mounds. The same way Cardan did when he plowed into her and Jude’s leg wrapped around him. His mouth hot on her neck. He shook his head once more watching with wanton intensity. Listening to people around him shouting at her to remove more. He fought the envy roiling inside him at the demanding, pleading requests. Cardan watched her glide round and round on the pole like it was a slide. She gripped the metal once more flinging her body around and curling herself inward before slipping to the stage. On all fours she crawled towards him, eyes sharp and glowing like a predator hunting her prey.

Cardan leaned back in the cushioned, worn leather as Jude climbed on to him in a sensual fluid motion. Her hands sliding up his thighs, reaching in between palming at his half-hard cock. His hands steadied on her hips, the tips of his fingers pressing into her ass, Jude rolled her hips tipping her head back simultaneously against him. Winding her fingers through his thick onyx locks angling his head where she could run her hot mouth and fire breaths over his neck and to his lobe.

“Do me and my two horns give you a little bit?” that lustful wickedness pouring out of her, her fingers dropped back down stroking his length over his slacks, “I guess so.”

“Fuck Jude,” he growled.

She kept grinding her hips over his, As she pl toyed with his hair. Nails raking along his hairline as if he was another customer, "Did you do it?”

He resisted every urge in his body screaming at him to claim her mouth, bury himself in her witnessing Jude turn into a mess of keen moans and panting breaths. Give these people a real show. It wasn't beneath him to do so. His brother's cronies were in the shadows and leaving held priority.

"Out like a light," the scorching touch of his palms splayed on her bareback, sliding to the nape of her neck. Jude lifted a leg in front of him, twisting around her back against his solid frame. Cardan pulled Jude flush to him. Nose brushing along her shoulder replacing the path with his mouth then his teeth, nipping at her exposed his flesh, "The ghost said he gave enough for him to be out cold for 8-10 hours, " he murmured into her ear, "By then we will be gone."

Jude turned to face him. A smirk on her rouge colored lips resolve and excitement dancing in her eyes at the unknowing future, gone the face of a broken exotic dancer who lost everything and everyone. Cardan pretended to whisper sultry nothings in her ear. She giggled perfectly playing the part of a flirty dancer.

"Good. I'm done dancing," Jude slipped her hand in his, tugging up him from his seat, "Ready?"

"My dearest Jude, lead the way."

He followed her like he was another drunk patron, paying for extra services. They maneuvered through the crowd and no one paid the pair no mind. Slipping past a waitress with a tray of drinks in her hand, Jude pulled Cardan onto her in a small alcove. Her eyes searched his. A moment of sincerity crossed onto her features.

"Card, if he finds us. I won't hesitate to kill him," it wasn't a threat, but a promise.

"I know. Let's hope he doesn't," he knew she would. If not for the determination in her tone, but the fact she swore it daily, "Shall we?"

Bracing an arm on the door, the other curling around her waist. His mouth meeting hers in a hungry kiss, teeth, and tongues clashing, acting the way a drunk patron would if she was going to take him. Jude reached for the knob, twisting it, while Cardan kept her close, and together they slipped through the doorway into the cool night air.

                            ******************************************************

Available on ao3

would anyone be interested to see this continue??

taglist: @slightlyrebelliouswriter23​ @clockworkgraystairs​ @hizqueen4life​ @b00kworm​ @negativenesta​ @sjm-things​ @whataboutmyfries​ @justgiu12​

If you’d like to be added to my taglist let me know!

[auliasbookcorner]

Review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Book 1 of 2022

Start reading time: 3 January 2022

Finish reading time: 19 January 2022

Page Count: 720 Pages

TRIGGER WARNINGS: SEXUAL ABUSE, CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, SCARY VERBAL ABUSE, PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION AND GASLIGHTING, KIDNAPPING/IMPRISONMENT, MANY MODES OF SELF-HARM, A VIOLENT ACCIDENT, A FEW MOMENTS OF PREJUDICE AGAINST THE DISABLED, DRUG USE, ADDICTION, GRIEF AND LOSS OF A LOVED ONE.

We're starting the new year with PAINS a BANG, my friends. Or should I say... my comrades.

Nope. Too soon. The scars inside me are still too raw from that part of the book.

Firstly, before we go into the review of the book, I'd like to officially wish you a happy new year of 2022. I hope you'll have a happy, meaningful, and amazing year.

And secondly, with this new year, I have new and exciting plans regarding my book reviews. In 2021, I only posted my book reviews, quotes, and random things like memes, rants, etc. about books to my personal instagram account @auliaindriana__, and I have collected them on my insta stories highlight. And for a while in 2021, I did make long book reviews that I posted through multiple stories instead of just one story per book, but then I changed it back to one story per book, but then the review isn't that long and I kept the full review in my reading journal. Well, for this year, i think i will post my full book reviews here in this blog, and post the link with a quote of the book and an excerpt from the review to my instagram stories. That way, I think, we can get the best of both worlds: full and longer reviews but only one instagram story per book. I also have other bookish plans for the year, but I don't want to get ahead of myself and announce them here since I don't know if I can make it happen or not, so I will just end this announcement here.

Okay now, let's get into the review of the book.

This is the spoiler-free part of the review. I will put up a spoiler alert before going into the review that contains spoilers.

THIS BOOK IS, AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. Before reading this book, I thought I like it when books give me pain and make me cry. I thought I have read some really sad and depressing books in my life. I thought having read some gruesome and heart-wrenching stuff, this book wouldn't affect me much. I knew people have called this book the saddest book of all time, and that it's torture porn, but back then i thought, "Well, how bad can it be?" I was sure, confident even, that I could handle it. How foolish I was. How innocent. How naive. I couldn't be more wrong back then.

I didn't know a book could give me this much pain. There are times while reading this book when I seriously consider DNF-ing it. There are times when I put the book down, closed my eyes, looked up and prayed for God to give me strength to continue reading it. There are times when I was in complete denial of the things happening in the story and wanted so badly to make a fanfic of an alternate universe where all of my beloved characters in the book get their justices and happy endings.

This book was so emotionally hard for me to read. It is so emotionally draining, that I had to take breaks and watch some cute videos, listen to some happy, uplifting songs, and refill my dopamine level until I have enough emotional energy to continue reading it. Seriously, if you are not in a good mental state, I do NOT recommend you to read this book. Yes, this book is THAT depressing and more. But all of that is not to scare you to not read it at all, if you're intrigued by it and want (and ready and prepared) to feel some pain, then by all means, please read this book, because it's truly a great book. As my rating shows, I personally love this book, despite all its flaws (oh, yes there are flaws with this book, alright), and despite all the pain I got from it.

BOOK SUMMARY: This is a poignant and stirring story of 4 best friends: the mysterious and brilliant Jude, the talented aspiring actor Willem, the anxious Malcolm, and passionate artist JB, about their lives and friendship, spanning from their twenties to their fifties. We don't get much of Malcolm and JB later on in the story, but we get to see how the friendship of all four of them grows from college dorm friends to mature adult friendship, and how they individually also grow into adulthood, and how they're tackling careers, relationships, and illnesses. As it progresses, the story focuses more on Jude's mysterious past, and his relationship with Willem as his closest friend. Jude's past is some of the most tragic story i have ever read, and it's being unravelled bits by bits throughout the story, and some of the most heartbreaking moments of the book are when he's struggling with his lingering traumas and illnesses from his past while trying his best to live a normal adult life, and how his friends try their best to help him. There's some unexpected twist at the end of part 5 of the book, that'll take the wind out of your lungs.

(SPOILER ALERT: From this point forward in the review, i will mention spoilers, plot twist and the ending, so if you don't wish to be spoiled, you can skip the rest of the review and come back once you've finished reading this book)

Here's my favourite things about the book:

The friendship. I think I read a lot of books about friendship because I think that's one of the things I value the most in life. But rarely did I read about friendship like the one in this book. We get to see realistic depictions of how adult friendship stretches, the fights, the reconciling, the effort to make time to spend with them. But most of all, the love that they have for each other. Their friendship is truly one of the best I have ever read. Even outside of their friend group, their friendship with Jude and Willem's other friends like Richard, Andy, The Henry Youngs, etc., I love reading about their friendship and how they take care of one another.

The characters. God, these are such complicated and multidimensional characters. Hanya Yanagihara did such a great job making these characters come to life in my mind and my heart. I love them so much, but especially Jude (of course, that's a given), Harold, Willem and Andy. Harold and Andy deserve so much love from the book's fans, honestly, they are angels. I wish we get more of Malcolm, because I relate so hard with him on the parts of his POV, and I really like him even from what little we have of him in the book. But most of all, Jude St. Francis. I love him, with all my heart. At times, I wished I could've reached through the pages to him so that I can hold him and protect him from all those horrible people: Brother Luke and other Brothers that abused him, and Brother Luke's clients, Dr. Traylor, and Caleb. (This is a side note and this is not really important, but I had this story in my mind, some kind of an alternate universe, perhaps it was some kind of a coping mechanism for me while reading this book, where there's a girl younger than Jude that's really close to Julia. And although she's not adopted like Jude, she's really close to the Steins and she was keeping a secret of her own, about her past that's similar to what Jude went through, only instead of Brother Luke, it was her own birth parents. However, instead of suffering quietly from it like Jude, she turned violent, she was coping by getting her revenge and killing all of those people who abused her, brutally. But because she's a scientist, like Julia, she knows the means to hide her crimes. And when, somehow, she got to know what Jude went through, she avenged him and hunted and killed those people too. It started with Caleb, whom she came to know because she interrogated Harold until he told her the truth, and when she told Jude about her past and told him to not worry about Caleb anymore because she killed him, Jude was shocked, but then overtime, he comes to appreciate her and felt some kind of kinship with her because of their similar experiences, and he let her into his secrets of his past too. And that's how she hunted and killed Dr. Trayor too, and finally, those Brothers that are left in the church. And in this alternate universe, nobody got into a car accident, and everyone gets to live happily until they're in their 90s. That's how much I think of Jude. It's a bit dark, I know, but what do you expect from a die-hard fan of Fang Runin of The Poppy War?)

The realistic depiction of mental health struggle. This book really doesn't shy away from the gore and horror of self-harm, PTSD and other mental health issues. Well, I may not like reading it (because oh dear God was it hard and heartbreaking to read), but i like that it is depicted realistically. I always appreciate it when authors don't romanticise mental illness, and tell it like it is in their stories.

The found family. One of my favourite moments from the book is when Harold and Julia adopted Jude. I love how they kept loving him despite all of his struggles, i love that they showed him the love that he deserved and had always wanted but never gotten before them. I also love that Jude also loves them even if he can't show it at times. I wish we get to see more of Jude's relationship with Julia. From the moment Harold took Jude shopping for his new suit for his job, until the very last moment of him with Jude at the Lispenard Street, i love every moment of them together.

The prose. God, I kept so many quotes from the book in my reading journals, and I posted some to my insta stories too, because they are just so beautiful. Hanya Yanagihara is incredibly gifted. Even though it surprises me at first at how long the paragraphs are, but then I got used to it, and now I love her long paragraphs.

The diversity. The characters are racially diverse, and also there’s representation of different sexual orientations.

I wish I could leave it at that, but I have to be fair and honest, because as much as I love this book, it is not without flaws. So here are my criticisms and things i don't really like about the book:

The thing that annoys me most of all is that twist, the car accident. Is that really necessary? Hasn't Jude suffered enough? And with Malcolm and Sophie too? This just came so out of nowhere and just feels like it’s added in the story purposefully to add to Jude's already overwhelming suffering, and to be the hand that push him over the ledge into his suicide.

The lifestyle porn. I really liked it at the beginning, when Hanya depicted Jude and Willem realistically struggling economically, because they are in New York after all, which is one of the most expensive cities to live in in the whole world, and they were fresh out of college, and they’re both orphans. And i find it so relatable when all four of them were anxious about their career choices and if they can have somewhere to live in in the future, and specifically for Jude, he's afraid if he'll be able to afford his medical expenses since he realised that his illnesses will cost him a fortune in the future, and all of other uncertainties that the working class people know so well. But then, boom, it feels like overnight, they became huge success stories (well, maybe not JB, but he was also fairly successful with his art too when the other three boys' careers took off). Jude became a successful litigator, Willem became a famous and busy actor, Malcolm founded his own architecture company and JB's arts and shows were successes too. And after that, it seems that they're living like how I think millionaires live, dining out almost every other night, dinner parties, overseas trips every month, vacay in exotic places, second homes, etc. And also Andy never charged Jude for his consultations and treatments (i honestly don't mind this one, BUT if i didn't know Jude's story, a rich person getting free medical consultations and treatments? As a poor person i can't help but despise that. I’m a supporter for universal health care, i think EVERYONE should get free health care, but in this world we live in today, especially in a place like New York, where the economic gap between the rich and the poor is really big, and everyone has to pay for health care, and once again, seeing this as a poor person, this kind of bugs me).

I can't help but wonder if it's possible for someone to be as brilliant and amazing as Jude is. I mean, the dude can play the piano, sing beautifully and easily to extremely hard songs to sing, amazing at maths, can speak multiple languages (although he never learns Swedish even though the love of his life, Willem is Swedish and fluent at it), and as a successful litigator, he must have vast memory and knowledge of law. This man is a genius and incredibly talented, that it seems almost impossible and unrealistic.

I love Jude, I think I have stressed that multiple times at this point, but man did he become heartless at the end, when he still wanted to sue that drunk driver despite knowing that he had a chronically ill child and the lawsuit would ruin the family. I mean, he uses Willem's money to fund scholarships and donate to his charities, but I mean, that driver's family is one of the charities that they need to give to. That's one of the reasons that I hate that twist so much, it turns Jude into this almost malicious being. I mean I understand, I do. I love revenge as much as the next person (if not more, judging from the alternate universe I mentioned earlier), but to ruin the family that's already suffering? God, i hate to see it.

And finally, there's too few women characters and/or their influence in the story, it seems too male-centric that only male characters have big roles and most if not all of the dialogues are of the male characters. Even semi important characters such as Sophie and Julia, we get so little dialogue from them. Even Ana. Hey, remember her? She got so little scene time, but she was an instrumental part of Jude's recovery.

These are my favourite scenes from the book:

When they're having a dinner party at Jude's Greene street apartment, few months after Jude's operation, with the people they love there, and Willem was wheeling Jude back to their room because he noticed that he looked tired, and as he's being wheeled in, Jude called out to everybody there that he loves them, and they said "I love you" back to him. (Part V - The Happy Years, Ch. 3)

When Willem was holding Jude so tightly that night to keep Jude from cutting, he told him to “Pretend we’re falling and we’re clinging together from fear.” and Jude didn't cut himself and slept really deeply that night. ( Part V - The Happy Years, Ch. 2)

The little celebration after Jude's adoption at Harold and Julia's house, when Willem surprised Jude by being there, and they gave Harold and Julia gifts and Jude hid his gift for Harold and Julia because he was too shy to give it to them then. (Part II - The Postman, Ch 3)

That night when Harold made him dinner but Jude was depressed and hurting inside so badly and wanted to push everyone away that he insulted Harold's cooking and refuses to eat it, and when Julia gave him a grilled cheese sandwich for him to eat and Jude throw it against the wall, and Harold stands up and walks toward him, and Jude was readying himself to get hit by Harold, but instead Harold hugs him and call him "my sweetheart" and "my baby". 😭😭😭 (Part VI - Dear Comrades, Ch. 3)

My favourite quotes from the book:

"“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”"

"Friendship, companionship: it so often defied logic, so often eluded the deserving, so often settled itself on the odd, the bad, the peculiar, the damaged. "

" His persistent nostalgia depressed him, aged him, and yet he couldn’t stop feeling that the most glorious years, the years when everything seemed drawn in fluorescents, were gone. Everyone had been so much more entertaining then. What had happened?

      Age, he guessed. And with it: Jobs. Money. Children. The things to forestall death, the things to ensure one’s relevance, the things to comfort and provide context and content. The march forward, one dictated by biology and convention, that not even the most irreverent mind could withstand."

"Both of them were uncertain; both of them were trying as much as they could; both of them would doubt themselves, would progress and recede. But they would both keep trying, because they trusted the other, and because the other person was the only other person who would ever be worth such hardships, such difficulties, such insecurities and exposure."

"As you got older, you realized that really, there were very few people you truly wanted to be around for more than a few days at a time, and yet here you were with someone you wanted to be around for years, even when he was at his most opaque and confusing. So: happy. Yes, he was happy. He didn’t have to think about it, not really. He was, he knew, a simple person, the simplest of people, and yet he had ended up with the most complicated of people."

"Wasn’t it a miracle to be adopted at thirty, to find people who loved you so much that they wanted to call you their own? Wasn’t it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable? Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?"

"...that awareness that sometimes touches him, as lightly as wings, that the people he loves are more temporal, somehow, than others, that he has borrowed them, and that someday they will be reclaimed from him. “Don’t go,” he had told Hemming in their phone calls, back when Hemming was dying. “Don’t leave me, Hemming,”

"“You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”"

“And who are you?” he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn’t recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person.“Who are you?”

The man has an answer to this question as well. “I’m Willem Ragnarsson,” he says. “And I will never let you go.”"

"When they were young, they had only their secrets to give one another: confessions were currency, and divulgences were a form of intimacy. Withholding the details of your life from your friends was considered first a sort of mystery and then a kind of stinginess, one that it was understood would preclude true friendship."

" But back then, back on Lispenard Street, I didn’t know so much of this. Then, we were only standing and looking up at that red-brick building, and I was pretending that I never had to fear for him, and he was letting me pretend this: that all the dangerous things he could have done, all the ways he could have broken my heart, were in the past, the stuff of stories, that the time that lay behind us was scary, but the time that lay ahead of us was not."

"He had looked at Jude, then, and had felt that same sensation he sometimes did when he thought, really thought of Jude and what his life had been: a sadness, he might have called it, but it wasn’t a pitying sadness; it was a larger sadness, one that seemed to encompass all the poor striving people, the billions he didn’t know, all living their lives, a sadness that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It’s so sad, and yet we all do it. We all cling to it; we all search for something to give us solace."

Overall I really love this book, although I don't think I will reread this book anytime soon. Maybe one day when I really feel like crying. But right now, I'm in desperate need of some lighthearted and funny books to read. This was a hard book to read and I'm so happy and proud that I have finished reading it. I walk out the other end with pains, yes, but also these amazing characters and their stories that will stay with me for a long time.

RATINGS:

PLOT - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

WRITING STYLE - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

PAIN LEVEL- 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

BOOK COVER DESIGN - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OVERALL BOOK RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[marshmallowprotection]

Commission for @that-russian-gal

Fandom: Mystic Messenger

Bio: You found yourself drawn in by the two of them and by the time you’re in too deep, there’s no way to turn around and escape from those devious western partners. 

Characters: Reader, Judas Choi, Minji Cho

Length: 1500

This is 100% OC Centric, so keep that in mind.

This was never any place for someone to live and travel without knowing what they were getting themselves into. 

When you left home to find someplace where you could see yourself living and changing for the better, or the worse, frankly, anything was better than staying at home, you never thought that you would find yourself in the sprawling area that amassed mountains and desert. 

But, this is where you had come and this was where you had wound up. 

There was no changing that fact so you made time to try and settle down. 

At least, for the time being. 

This area was different from what you were used to by all accounts, and though you were still going through periods of culture shock to being a fish out of water… you were settling in rather nicely for the most part. You had got a steady job working at the local bank which was an influx of visitors due to the booming gold industry. 

Some people were getting lucky and others were just slaving away in the dirt, unable to get the fortune that they so desperately wanted to hold in their hands. That’s not what you were invested in. No, you’d just wanted to live a quiet and peaceful little life in your bubble and enjoy the company of the nice feeling of knowing that you were living the way you wanted.

And not the way that someone wanted you to be living. 

It was a quiet little life but it was one that you proud of because you’d done all of this on your own. Nobody had helped you put together your house and nobody had given you anything to get to where you were today. It was built upon your own two hands and for that, you were proud of how far you’d come from that person you used to be. 

Time can change a lot about a person but one thing seemingly would never change: The fact that you’d been drawn to eye people that shined like jewels against the dusty clay soil, and as guilty as you were of this fact, you had no shame in that regard. If you saw a pretty face? You would lean towards that person in the hopes that maybe you’d be able to catch their eye someday. 

For example, you had an ongoing little game with the local baker, who made what you would call the best bread in all the west. It was made with the delicate care of her hands and each step was done with the notion that any bite someone took would have the same consistency. She took her job seriously in a way that nobody else could or would. 

Banana bread and raisin bread… all kinds of specialty items that she worked hard to get deals for considering the area that they lived in. It was hard to maintain gardens and food out here.

However, Minji was nobody to laugh at. She had managed to make deals and friendships with all kinds of people. Which meant that nobody dared mess with her in the slightest. If they did, they knew that it would not only occur the wrath of the people that cared for her but the people that had a strong need for her baked goods. 

You could never tell what she was thinking but God, you could’ve listened to her talk all day about nothing and you’d still be interested in seeing her every day. It was the same song and dance every day you visited her at her bakery once you got out of work. She’d smile at you, extend her hand, and you’d shake it with a gentle fever. 

“Nice of ya’ to drop by,” she’d beam without question. Her golden curls carefully braided and out of her face. “I was hoping that I would see you again. There’s something that I’d love for you to try out for a taste. I want to share it in the shop but I need to know that it may be good enough for my customers, and I trust you dearly.” 

“Absolutely, anything to help you out,” you responded, never once looking away from her face as she giggled and laughed. “It’s no trouble for me. You do make the best of the best, Minji. You always make sure that everything you sell is perfect.” 

Her head bobbed as she nodded, “Only because you’ve helped me so much lately. I doubt the business would be fairin’ as well without ya’ helpin’ me out, my favorite customer! Well, less yer’ countin’ my honey and darlin’, too.” 

It was always the same story but you never pressed her to do anything that she wasn’t comfortable with. She was the one setting the pace for you. She was the one luring you in with a heart of gold and making you fall deeper and deeper into a trance around her heart. 

Whether she liked you the way that you liked her or not, God, you always wanted to stay her “favorite customer”.

The way that her fingers ran through your hair and coaxed you to come closer and closer, the way that her lips lingered close to yours whenever she pulled you into a strong hug and the way that she smiled so broadly whenever you got tongue-tied from one of her compliments. As eccentric and as bubbly as she was, she never quite realized just how easy it would be for her to date someone. 

That was the portion that was hardest for you because you didn’t just have a tender feeling in your heart for Minji alone. No, because her darling that she mentioned happened to be the other person that you could never get off of your mind. His name was Judas, and he was the star of the show in the local saloon. 

Nobody could take their eyes off of him.

Not men, not women, and not anyone in-between or outside of that. 

He was always center-stage and he always knew how to make people swoon and sigh. You spent quite a bit of your free time just sitting in that bar and watching him flirt and taunt some of the patrons as the outfit you wore left little to the imagination. He would always take the time to come and see you when he noticed you were around.

His fingers curling underneath your chin and beckoning you to look at him, only him, and watch as his lips brush so sweetly against your cheek. It left your heart pounding and he always whispered so low in a sultry tone that, “Ya’ don’t owe me a thing, sweetheart. Pretty little fillies get my affection my free and you’re just my type.” 

It left you sputtering and kept you on your toes for the longest time. You never knew how to react or respond to him, all you knew that he liked playing with you and you weren’t going to tell him to stop doing that. A part of you wanted to be played with. 

The corset was snug around his waist and the unbuttoned state of the shirt lay flush against his skin. His raven hair contrasted the softness of his skin tone, and his blue eyes shimmered like starlight on a cloudless night. He had a way of purring and pawing at people to get them to pay up or to listen to what he had to say. 

Anyone and everyone that had taste was interested in getting to know him and getting close to him, but it was known that he was very intimate with the baker. The way that he always lit up when he’d seen her stop by was telling enough. Not that it made anyone jealous, no, as a matter of fact, if and when people realized that the tall girl was around her short boyfriend—

They’d wind up fawning over the two of them and sighing contentedly if they were given any little ounce of attention. 

To be pushed and pulled between the two of them was a dream and a dream that you were quite frankly living. You weren’t sure when it started or how it started, all you knew that you were right where you wanted to be. It might have had something to do with how badly Judas wanted you and how quickly you realized that Minji had just the same desire. 

Weeks of you missing their hints because you were too caught up in the idea that you were shameful for wanting the both of them when they so very clearly wanted you as their cute little partner to have and to tease with a smile. 

They had been working together to pin you down until you realized the truth that had been there all along. You had spent so long pining that you had blinded yourself to the fact that they were both flirting with you openly and presently for so long. 

It took one of them grasping you by the arm and kissing you for you to stop and think: Oh. Oh.

That was why you were pleased to be where you were at that very moment; Judas’ arms clasped tightly around your waist as you sat in his arms and he kissed at your neck with a gentle desire, all the while Minji’s hands carded through your hair and her lips kissed every single spot on your face that she had desired. Between the two of them—

You had never felt so wanted in your entire life, nor had you ever felt this warm and flustered. They’d been more confident and blasé about the entire time, and you felt like you were catching up to them but they would always be one step ahead of you. Which wasn’t such a bad thing. You could’ve kept yourself in this spot forever. 

“Darlin’, you’re just too good for us,” Judas’ voice was low and reverberated in your ears as he chuckled. 

Minji kissed your forehead. You could feel the smile brewing against her lips. “Mhm, they’re too cute, it’s not fair. I’m glad they’re our darlin’, Jude.”

This was right where you wanted to be, and you’d let out a contented sigh, melting into their touches as the hum of the cicadas echoed from outside. 

[extremelyblackandwhite]

reader being best friends with carter while he's chasing serena but also being in love with him?

CARTER BAIZEN APPRECIATION SQUAD ASSEMBLE! (i promise i’ll get to non carter requests)

y/n and carter had known each other for a while

they had met during a summer at the hamptons when his parents invited her family over for dinner

she had helped him inside the house after returning from a particular night out which to his parents was a meeting with some of his friends to go over stuff for the new school year

from then onwards carter and y/n became friends

he would meet her in the back of her parents apartment and the two would drive around the nights of new york talking about their problems

it hadn’t taken long for y/n to fall in love with him

he was an attractive, smart man who seemed to have more goals other than the vapid boys she knew from st.judes

it wasn’t like she expected him to return her affections. she was his sister’s age, 3 years younger. she knew he wouldn’t be interested so she hid it deep inside her heart where no one would see it

after all she’d rather have a tiny bit of his heart than have to pretend he never existed

maybe she should’ve seen it coming that he would leave, but she didn’t and one afternoon as she knocked on his door to pick him up to go for their weekly lunch at his favourite spot was the moment she wished she could’ve avoided it

it was his mother who had opened the door, tight smile on her face, pity in her eyes as she stared at the girl in front of her “do you not know, sweetheart?” “am i supposed to know something?” “he left. says he doesn’t want anything to do with this family anymore”

her heart stopped for a while, the buzzing sound of her mind wondering why, why he wouldn’t tell her

it had been his sister caroline who had helped her through it, telling her he wasn’t even worth the hazzle, to instead focus on the much more attractive boys her age attending st.judes

y/n wasn’t interested but as time flew by she slowly learned to accept that he wasn’t returning

she had built a life for herself, becoming one of constance’s shining stars holding near perfect grades

she had also built a friendship with blair waldorf after serena had left her, both of them bonding over having someone leaving unexpectedly 

“my mum was supposed to host a tea party for CeCe and she went to paris. usual” “do you need any help?” “wanna come? might make it less boring besides you still need a date for cotillion“ “well not everyone can have nate archibald for a date” “i am pretty lucky aren’t i? but you need a date, you cannot not have an escort. even serena is taking ... dan” “alright, i’ll go to the tea party” “perfect”

she should’ve not gone. she should’ve just accepted caroline’s invitation to go shop for a cotillion dress but she didn’t. she couldn’t see the future.

as she walked off the lift into the van der woodsen’s apartment, a familiar face showed, sat in a couch surrounded by girls 

“y/n” blair rushed over to her side “i don’t want to frighten you but ... carter’s here” “i’ve seen.” “i want you to know that i didn’t invite him. cece invited him, she wants him to be serena’s escort.” “that’s fine” “are you sure? i could kick him out” “that’s fine”

it wasn’t fine. 

she spent the whole tea party as further from him as possible, not sure of what to say to him or how to even react

although she had to admit it broke her heart that he wasn’t interested in even talking to her, instead looking her way and immediately turning to receive the praise of several girls

“he’s not even that attractive” blair rolled her eyes at her minions which were fauning over him “urgh, imagine being attracted to a wannabe matthew mcconaughey” “you don’t have to make me feel better, blair” “look at that last season suit. disgusting” 

she stayed until the end of the party, chatting up with several people who came to ask about her family business and by the end of the party she had even started to help the maids bring dirty dishes into the kitchen

“you were always an odd one, i have to give you that” a voice made her drop the porcelain onto the soapy water and turn her face towards its direction. carter. “y/n, i’m really sorry” “yeah i could tell since you didn’t call or write after you left” “i didn’t have any way to contact you” “you didn’t even tell me you were leaving carter. do you know how it felt walking up to your house and having your mother tell me you left?” “i had to go y/n” “so have i, carter.”

she didn’t want to speak with him, she didn’t want to fall back into the state

at least she had decided not to speak with him until nate punched him at cotillion 

“you look like shit” “thanks, y/n.” “i gotta say, i wanted to do that myself. nate stole that away from me” “how long are you gonna be upset with me, y/n?” “as long as i want” “c’mon, let’s do something together” “i said i would act civilised with you not lobotomised” “c’mon, y/n. i’ll pay” “do you even have any money? didn’t your parents cut you off?” “i’ll find a way” “... fine. the bar of the lotte new york palace

blair and caroline had told her not to go but she thought that it would be better to get it over and done with. to call it water under the bridge and not have him haunt her what ifs anymore

she found him at the bar of the palace, black suit on. he never used to wear suits, she still remembers him in his messy st. judes uniform, undone tie all the time

“you came” “i said i would” “i know you have every single reason to hate me but i miss you, y/n. i really do. i have so much to tell you” “some people would use a journal” “i fucked up, i know but ... second chance? you can punch me too if you want” “that’s a really good offer, i think i’m gonna pounder it” “how about i pick you up tomorrow night? late driving around new york” “you got yourself a deal, baizen”

soon enough she found herself in the same situation, still in love with him

he was still the same man, still the same chuckle, talking passionately about his projects, making stupid jokes

but one thing still was the same, the same thing she didn’t want to accept, he still would never reciprocate her feelings

“y/n, i can’t pick you up tonight. i have a date with serena.” “serena van der woodsen?” “yeah, do you mind?” “uh ... no... sure, go on”

her blood boiled out of jealousy

she always thought the reason he would never reciprocate her feelings was because she was younger but serena, serena was the same age as her and it stung, it stung so badly

she ended up at the house of the same person who could understand being jealous of serena : blair waldorf’s

“oh, please, y/n. seriously? carter? he’s so ... boring. god” “well i’m sorry blair not everyone can have their first time in the backseat of a limo with chuck bass” “hey now that nate is single maybe you should go out with him” “i’m not gonna go out with nate” “why you two would make such a nice couple” “i’m not in love with nate” “i’m sorry, y/n.” 

she pretended it was okay

she would smile whenever he talked about serena

she would be next to him when she undoubtedly got him inside her petty little games with chuck

she would be there when he quit her and she would be there when he took her back

she was there for everything until one morning where she was woken up by someone banging on her door

“nate?” “something happened and you might want to sit down” “what happened? are you okay?” “serena left with carter last afternoon” “what do you mean?” “they left y/n, together.”

suddenly she found herself in the same spot she had been years ago abandoned

he returned later that summer during the races but this time she didn’t forgive him

she spent the day with dan and blair, mindlessly listening to serena talking about how carter followed her but she knew better

she knew they’d be back together and surely again they were

carter should feel happy, serena was back but he didn’t feel better

he felt ... empty, like something was lacking

whenever he laid down next to her and feel asleep he dreamed of y/n

he dreamed of her vintage oversized tees reaching her knees as she read her favourite books in his study 

he dreamed of her laughter whenever he took her to a driver in theatre, fingers holding popcorns to her lips

he dreamed of her red tinted lips during festivities, dancing under streetlights singing showtunes, bitting her lips whenever she had a test

he convinced himself it was just missing her but part of him knew it wasn’t that

he should be with serena, her family approved, his family approved

so he stuck it out, convincing himself this was a phase just a phase

as serena dumped him on the side of the street he looked at the streetlight, remembering y/n in an oversized cardigan jumping puddles over it, twirling around it playfully

“what am i doing?”

he rushed down the streets of the upper east side like a mad man

he’d never walked this long

but he kept on walking, he kept on walking until he saw her apartment

he knocked on the door for what felt like a hundred times 

“i’m coming” he could hear her sleepy voice from the other side and sure enough, soon enough the sound of her steps became too loud and she opened the door “carter, what are y...” “let me just say something okay? then you can shut the door” “it’s 1 AM” “please” “20 seconds” “i’m sorry, y/n. i’m so sorry, i should’ve told you when i left years ago, i shouldn’t have left with serena. i should’ve stayed with you. you always listened to me, you always believed in me and i always let you down. i miss you, i miss having fights with you about star wars plots, speaking with you on the phone at 5 AM, trying to make you laugh when you were upset. i miss seeing your sleepy smile every single morning, i miss you” “carter” “all this time being with her i just kept thinking about doing those things with you. taking you to cotillion, dance with you, be at your graduation and help you move into college, take you to fancy bars and restaurants, buy you flowers and everything else money can afford and i missed out on it, i missed out on it and i cannot give them to you. but here’s what i propose ... i wanna be there when you graduate from college, i wanna be there to help you move into your very first apartment, i want to be there when you start your first job, i wanna be there for you.” “you’re not one to stick around, carter” “let me try, please let me try” “isn’t this your third chance?” “i will ask you for a million chances as long as i get to see you for the rest of my life” 

[fanfic-writer]

Cole Fanfic: Chapter One

I finally finished the first chapter lmao. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if you’d like to see more. 

“Hurry it up already,” That was the first thing I heard as I woke up. Waking up was never a pleasant experience. I never felt fully rested, sometimes it felt as if I got no sleep. 

The only thing shielding my eyes from the bright lights was the figure standing above me. His face became clearer the more the sedative wore off. I had never seen this man before. His blond hair covered part of his face as he was looking down, not at me but the guard that was assigned to me. The guard was the one who woke me up but not by choice as the blond man was pointing a gun at him. 

The man pulled out what looked like zip ties from his back pocket. 

“Put these on now,” he threw them into the guard’s lap. The guard did as he said but not without talking back. 

“They’ll find you, you won’t get far,” the guard said. 

“Yeah we’ll see about that.”

The blonde man wasn’t paying attention to me as I was attempting to sit up. He was talking into a phone. The guard was in the corner of my cell now zip tied with tape on his mouth. 

“The cell floor is clear I need Jude down here, they’ve still got the collar on,” he said.

The collar around my neck. It’s what they’ve used to keep me in check. If it even looked like I was going to use my abilities they would shock me. Even when they used me for their dirty work I had to wear it. 

As I was trying to sit up the man noticed what I was doing. He came to my side to try and help me. I tried to move away from him but my body failed me. He must have seen the fear in my face because he backed off. 

“I’m here to help you, I’m going to get you out of here,” he seemed nice but so did the people that took me. 

Every part of me was saying don’t trust him. I didn’t want to end up in another bad situation like this one, or worse. 

I heard someone running towards us, the man heard it too because he turned away to see who was coming. He stood with his back against the wall so whoever came in the room he could take them by surprise. 

A boy came into view who couldn't be older than 14.

“Cole?” this must be Jude. Why in the world was a kid this young breaking into this building?

“Finally you're here, we gotta hurry they’ve probably got more people on the way,” Cole said. Jude jumped at the sound of Cole’s voice. 

Jude turned to me, I noticed he was looking at the collar on my neck. He walked towards me and tried to grab it. 

“N-no,” I tried to speak. It would shock me if he tried to take it off me. I went to push his hand away but it was more of a light slap as my body was still weak. 

“I have to break this thing if you want to get out of here,” he said. How would he get this off my neck? I've already tried everything. 

The sound of people yelling startled us all. Cole left the cell probably to see where it was coming from. 

While I was distracted Jude took the opportunity to grab the collar on my neck. I prepared myself for the pain. But there was no shock, within seconds there was a cracking sound and the collar fell off my neck. The only way he could have done that is if he was a yellow. 

My neck felt naked without it on, but at the same time I felt like I could finally breathe. 

I wanted to thank Jude but Cole came back in looking very worried. 

“Good you got it off now we have to go,” he continued, “I'm sorry but I’m going to have to carry you out as it seems you still can't walk,” Cole picked me up not waiting for me to respond. 

Who did these people think they were? There was no way they would even be able to get me out of the building.

We had three floors to get through before we could get outside. Judging by the yelling that sounded like it was right behind us they already cleared the first three. 

As we made our way to the first floor I took note of all the guards that were unconscious. How were they able to over power all of these highly trained guards? 

Before we even reached the first floor I knew there would be guards waiting for us. There was no way they would allow their most important prisoner to be taken. 

There were at least 15 guards blocking our way out. Jude looked to Cole like he was asking what they should do. They stood no chance against them. Judging by his looks, Cole was too old to have been affected by IAAN. And Jude’s abilities couldn't work on guards who had no electronics on them. 

“Put prisoner 2367 down and get on your knees,” one of the guards commanded. Even if they complied there was no way they would let them live. 

Nobody moved. Cole's skin was hot like his blood was boiling. His heart felt like it was going to come out of his chest. It seemed like they had no way out of this. I was never going to leave this place was I?

Before the guards could even move half of them were thrown from where they were standing. The impact from hitting the ground knocked them out. 

A girl with blue hair was standing in the entrance. Her hands were out towards the guards who were on the ground. One of the guards that were still standing tried to grab her but she was too fast for them. In less than two seconds the rest of the guards were being thrown through the air. So this must be the person who took out all those guards. Looks like she’s a blue. 

“Vida!” Jude sounded excited to her.  

“Thank you Vida,” Cole said. As we exited the building there were two black cars waiting for us. The blonde woman in the second car looked relieved when she saw us. Vida and Jude went to the first car and Cole took me to the car with the blonde woman. 

Cole laid me down in the back and then hopped into the passenger seat. Once Vida and Jude’s car drove off we followed. 

I was able to sit myself up against the car door as we got farther away from that awful place. I actually started to feel happy that I was finally out of there, even though I was now stuck with strangers. 

“I thought I was going to have to leave you guys you took so long,” the blonde lady said. Cole was busy digging through the glove box. 

“The rest of the team is already heading back, someone got hurt badly,”

So was no one going to tell me what the hell just happened? Or who they were?

“Who are you?” I asked. 

They both looked at each other before Cole decided to speak. 

“Well I’m Cole, that’s Cate. Jude is the other guy you met and the blue haired girl is Vida, and we work for the children's league.” Cate turned to smile at me. 

The Children’s League, I know I’ve heard about them before. I’ve heard someone mention them. I waited for him to say more. Instead Cate spoke this time. 

“You’re probably wondering how we found you. I'll tell you it wasn't easy, they made it hard to find the building itself,” Cate said. “You’re very important to them, I’m going to guess you’re the only Orange they have.” 

As far as I knew I was the only orange they had. The only other kids I’d seen were blues, yellows, and one red. 

“What was the point of taking me?”

“We help kids like you, our job is to stop the camps and expose the president,” Cole said. Camps? What camps was he talking about? Why would they need to expose the president? How much time had passed?

“What camps are you talking about?” For all I know they could be lying to me, trying to make it seem like they’re the only ones I can trust. 

They shared a confused look. 

“Do you know how long you were there?” Cate spoke this time. 

I really didn’t know. I could never keep track of the days with how much they worked me and I was almost never allowed to leave the building. I guessed that it had been at least 3 years. 

They took my silence as an answer. 

They might have been telling the truth but these people were strangers. They did save me from that nightmare but no one was nice for one reason. I had to learn that the hard way. 

“Well, we will be taking you somewhere safe, far away from here,” Cole was the last one to speak. 

My only option was to stay with these people until I could find a way out. Get myself some supplies and find a place to go. Using these people should be no problem, after all they should know not to trust an orange.

[haberdashing]

I Am Destruction, Decay, And Desire (4/?)

Martin finds out that Jon’s going to meet with Jude Perry and acts to intervene. It goes… poorly.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4

on AO3

Martin had never been a fan of the old idiom that time heals all wounds. In his experience, if time made you forget about certain wounds, it was only because newer ones took precedence. That being said, however, by the time Martin returned to the cafe where the life he’d known had ended just twenty-four hours ago, his mood was as least somewhat better than it had been the previous night. He still was all too aware of what had happened, but it didn’t sting quite as badly as it had when it was fresh.

He still had a purple smudge on his finger that had not in fact washed out during his bath, or rather his mostly-unsuccessful attempt at the same, but that was... fine. It would be fine.

Martin had made a point of being on time to the meeting he had arranged, but even so, he saw as he had arrived that both Jon and Jude had beaten him to the punch, having taken a seat at opposing sides of an outside table.

Jon was wearing the same ridiculous fluffy pink coat as he’d worn the day before, though if it was especially chilly out Martin couldn’t feel it, and Martin felt a pang as he got closer and saw that it was still visibly stained where his waxen hand had brushed against it.

As Martin approached the table where Jon and Jude sat, he found that that same coat he had fixated upon was apparently the current topic of discussion.

“Look, I lost my normal coat, and i-it’s cold. Some of us actually feel it, you know?”

Martin’s stomach sank a little further at that confirmation that it was indeed cold out, that he simply couldn’t feel the cold anymore, that that was yet another sign that he was no longer human. (Even if it was kind of amusing to watch Jon get so indignant about that coat, of all things...)

“You wouldn’t shake my hand.” There was a strange grin on Jude’s face as she spoke, a grin matched in intensity by Martin’s growing certainty that this conversation was going to be... well, simply “uncomfortable” was probably a best-case scenario, now, wasn’t it?

Martin pulled up a chair and sat down between Jon and Jude; Jon glancing his way for a moment before returning to staring at Jude, and Jude nodded vaguely in his direction but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him. That was fine, though. There were worse things to be than overlooked.

“Well, no, I’m not stupid! I saw what happened-”

Jude’s grin only got even wider as Jon spoke, and evidently he noticed, as he switched conversational tracks quickly enough.

“L-look, will you stop that?”

The wild grin turned to biting laughter, though only for a brief moment. “Oh, alright. Ah… I hate explaining jokes, but, um… Imagine you’re, um… a butcher, and one day an injured little lamb walks into your workshop, and strides right into one of the mincing machines, but when you go up to it, knife in hand, it shakes its head and tells you ‘I’m not stupid’. Do you get why that’s funny?”

“Right.” Jon didn’t sound the least bit amused even after the explanation, but honestly, Martin didn’t exactly blame him. “But no more abattoir metaphors, please.”

“Suppose it’s not really me, is it? Would you rather be a really stupid piece of firewood?” Jude’s grin and the playful tone in her voice suggested that she was amused enough by her own jokes for the three of them.

And then Jon just... plunged ahead, asking questions about names and dates and places that Martin by and large didn’t recognize; perhaps it had been foolish of him to assume that Jon’s research, Jon’s search for answers, would have stopped just because of a little thing like, oh, being on the run for murder. In hindsight, Martin knew Jon well enough that he really shouldn’t have been surprised that the man kept searching for information come hell or high water, kept seeking out danger even when he was already knee-deep in it.

Really, the surprising part was that Jude actually cooperated, more or less. Sure, she protested, she threatened, but she also answered Jon’s questions in the end.

(Some might have found it even more surprising that Martin managed to remain little more than an onlooker in the conversation, but not Martin himself; he was too used to it, too used to being overlooked and underestimated, and honestly, given the circumstances, he didn’t much mind not being the center of attention at the moment.)

“Yes, yes, I understand, you could easily kill me, I’m at your mercy...” Jon barely blinked an eye at Jude’s latest not-so-veiled threat, a reference to a statement Martin actually did remember and a man who ended up horrifically burned because of the events within it. Martin doubted anyone else could sound quite so bored when being threatened with agonizing pain and disfigurement by a woman who had already proven that she could easily make good on such threats if the mood struck her. “So... why haven’t you done it?”

“We’re in public.” Jude, for her part, seemed more amused with the situation than anything else, the grin on her face sneaking its way into her voice once again.

“Well-” Jon started to say, but Martin interrupted before Jon could finish the thought.

“That didn’t seem to stop you before, now, did it?” Martin didn’t bother hiding the aggravation in his voice--it was one thing to discuss weird happenings Martin wasn’t privy to without including him in the conversation, but ignoring the events of yesterday, ignoring the very relevant fact that Jude had burned him in a setting every bit as public as the current one, went a bit too far for his taste.

Jude tilted her head to one side, and both she and Jon looked Martin’s way for a long, silent moment; Martin couldn’t read the look in Jude’s eyes, but Jon’s contained something like guilt, or perhaps pity.

“I was a bit careless there, wasn’t I?” The upbeat tone of Jude’s voice was only slightly dampened, far from the apologetic tone her words might otherwise have signified. “I shouldn’t have given you time to scream. If I moved fast enough, I could-” Jude turned her gaze back at Jon as she continued to speak. “-reach through your chest like runny wax, and hold your heart while it cooked, and no one would even notice.”

“Right. R-right.” Jon finally sounded at least slightly affected by Jude’s threats rather than just bored of them; perhaps it was the graphic nature of this one that did the trick, or perhaps being reminded that Martin was now living proof that Jude’s threats weren’t empty ones was enough to make the seriousness of the situation start to sink in. “So why don’t you? Does your ‘god’ not want you to?”

“...mmm, hard to say. When I look at you, I feel that burning liquid pain, eager to flow out and purify your rotten carcass...” Jude glanced over at Martin, and her gaze looked almost conspiratorial, like she was expecting him to be in agreement, but all Martin felt upon hearing that was a bit sick. “But I feel that a lot.”

“Oh.” Jon looked a bit peaky, and if Martin had to guess, he felt at least as ill as Martin himself did upon hearing the graphic details of Jude’s desire to burn and destroy. “M-more or less than normal?”

“Hard to say when every nerve ending’s on fire. Hard to tell degrees.” Another glance Martin’s way, looking for something in him that wasn’t there. (Or wasn’t there yet, at least--Martin thought back to Prentiss’ statement, how she could recognize that something was wrong before becoming little more than a worm-filled husk. Maybe that’s where he was now, in the in-between period, no longer human but not yet monster.)

“Third degree, maybe?” Jon muttered, the words probably meant mostly for himself rather than for the benefit of his conversational partners, but Martin still snorted with amusement, though Jude looked more annoyed than amused (apparently in her mind, she was the only one allowed to make jokes in this conversation).

“Sorry, sorry, it was a...” Jon trailed off before finishing his sentence, and when he started speaking again it was to start on another train of thought. “I have a god too... right?”

“Is that another joke?” Jude’s wry grin was back, despite the fact that what Jon had said didn’t strike Martin as a joke, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that any laughter in response to it would have to be at his expense.

“N-no, I... I’m new to this. Everyone keeps calling me ‘Archivist’, like I’m special, and that... that I serve the Eye. Trying to kill me for it.”

“Yes.” Jude leaned back a little in her chair.

“S-so... i-it’s like your ‘god’, right?”

“Oh please, your god is nothing!” Jude wrinkled her nose, apparently disgusted by the mere thought of comparing the two “gods” on equal terms. “The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher...  whatever you call it, that’s all it does. It watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge. I serve a reckoning, a surging tide of destruction and pain.”

Martin could feel his pulse racing as Jon breathed, “The Lightless Flame.”

“The Desolation. Blackened Earth. The destructive, agonizing heat of burning flesh and land scoured of life. The light, the comfort of fire stripped from it, leaving nothing but the terror of its approach. When it triumphs, it will leave The Eye a burned and shriveled husk that sees nothing but its own agony.”

Jon spoke up again, starting to get into yet another tiff with Jude by the sound of it, but Martin wasn’t really listening as the two went at it, too preoccupied by dissecting the information Jude had just given him about the “god” she worshipped, the power she had pulled him into serving by force.

Martin rather preferred the term Jon had offered up for it to those Jude had given; lightless flames could still provide warmth if one didn’t get too close, after all, while desolation, blackened earth... those phrases spoke only to landscapes with all the life in them stripped away, spaces emptied by force of any comfort that might once have been found there.

The mere thought of it made Martin’s stomach turn a little... and yet, part of him wanted to agree that their “god” was the better one, the stronger one, destined to reign superior, even if all it could cause was destruction and pain.

Martin hoped, distantly, that he hadn’t reached the point where all he could cause now was destruction and pain.

[conduitandconjurer]

share five songs that represent ur muse! just repost, don’t reblog.

001 :  This Year | The Mountain Goats 

 I drove home in the California dusk / I could feel the alcohol inside of me hum / Pictured the look on my stepfather's face / Ready for the bad things to come / I downshifted / As I pulled into the driveway / The motor screaming out / Stuck in second gear / The scene ends badly  / As you might imagine / In a cavalcade of anger and fear / There will be feasting and dancing / In Jerusalem next year / I am gonna make it through this year / If it kills me / I am gonna make it though this year / If it kills me

002 :  Damaris | Patrick Wolf  

Black rain / Floods the downs / Ferrets burrow / Moles make mounds / Round your bones / Deep underground / But nobody knows / Nobody knows / How I wait for you / Summer, Spring / Autumn, Winter / Here perishing / Gypsy, stray / Bleak orphan / No one could say / The land you came from / But deep in my arms / You belonged / But nobody knows / No body knows / How I wait for you / Summer, Spring / Autumn, Winter / Here perishing / My god damned Damaris / Killed with last kiss / God damned Damaris / I loved you / Goddam these tears / And this religion / Thought I was more / Than just my father's son / Who says in limbo / Be where you've gone / But nobody knows / No body knows / How I wait for you / Summer, Spring  / Autumn, Winter / Here perishing (wait for me) /  My god damned Damaris / Killed with last kiss / God damned Damaris / I loved you / And now I kiss / I kiss the earth / Oh rise up / Rise up / Rise up / Now / From the earth / And I smash my fist / Into the earth / Oh rise up / Rise up  Rise up  / I loved you / Black rain / Floods the downs / The black rain / Black rain

003 :  Grapevine Fires | Death Cab For Cutie  

We bought some wine and some papercups / Near your daughter's school when we picked her up / And drove to a cemetery on a hill / On a hill / And we watched the plumes paint the sky gray / And she laughed and danced through the field of graves / There I knew it would be alright / That everything would be alright (burn) /  Would be alright /  And the news reports on the radio / Said it was getting worse / As the ocean air fanned the flames / But I couldn't think of anywhere I would have rather been / To watch it all burn away / To burn away... / The firemen worked in double shifts, / With prayers for rain on their lips / And they knew it was only a matter of time

004 :  Oh My Dear Lord | The Unlikely Candidates 

Here's my confession  / I've got a death wish / I'm in the fast lane / Addicted to excess / Living my best life / I was on top right / Sipping the limelight / A deer in the headlights / My future used to shine as bright as a diamond / Where did time go? / I was so high, it was frightening / I know I messed up, but there's no use in crying / (No use in crying) / Oh, my dear Lord / I've been running wild, had a good time / But I can't stop now / (Oh, my dear Lord) / Over my head in a landslide / Can you pull me out? / Oh, my dear Lord

005 :  All These Things That I’ve Done | The Killers 

When there's nowhere else to run / Is there room for one more son? /One more son / If you can hold on / If you can hold on, hold on / I wanna stand up, I wanna let go / You know, you know, no you don't, you don't / I wanna shine on, in the hearts of men /I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand / Another head aches, another heart breaks / I'm so much older than I can take / And my affection, well it comes and goes /I need direction to perfection, no no no no help me out / Yeah, you know you gotta help me out, yeah / Oh, don't you put me on the back burner / You know you gotta help me out, yeah /  I got soul, but I’m not a soldier / I got soul but I’m not a soldier / I got soul but I’m not a soldier / I got soul but I’m not a soldier / Over and in, last call for sin / While everyone's lost, the battle is won / With all these things that I've done

006 : St. Jude | Florence + The Machine 

Another conversation with no destination / Another battle never won / Each side is a loser / So who cares who fired the gun? / And I'm learning so I'm leaving / And even though I'm grieving / I'm trying to find a meaning / Let loss reveal it / Let loss reveal it / St Jude, the patron saint of the lost causes / St Jude, we were lost before she started / St Jude, we lay in bed as she whipped around us / St Jude, maybe I've always been more comfortable in chaos

Ok I cheated LOL.  Note: I am excluding like 50 songs from the Sixties because psychedelic rock is a little too obvious. <3 

tagged by: new garbage verse inductee, @nvmbcrtwo <3 

[myqueenjudeduarte]

Something Like Trust: Chapter 1

Here it is y’all... the fic you’ve been waiting your whole lives for... a 10k word first chapter of Jurdan BDSM. 

Post-The Wicked King

Tags/Warnings: Slapping (in a sexual context), references to spanking, teasing, orgasm delay, uhh angst and emotional fuckery, BDSM obviously, alcohol, also alcoholism because Cardan is present, kind of exhibitionism, I can’t accurately prepare you guys for this fic so just don’t read it if you aren’t comfortable with BDSM relationships. The later chapters will have a lot more intense stuff so just... be warned. OH also warning for them both being COMPLETELY out of character like honestly y’all this is DISGRACEFUL.

Summary: “I was thinking of an arrangement which would allow you moments of powerlessness. An arrangement in which I would take the control, allowing you to experience the feeling of an utter lack of responsibility, a feeling in which I am in command of all and you have no worries to speak of.”

Word Count: 9,426 I’m sO SORRY

Let me know if you want to be tagged in my fics!

Everyone who knew Jude Duarte came quickly to realize that what she sought, above all else, was power. Control. Influence. That she had long felt powerless, and that she remedied this through a combination of scheming and working to rise to the top.

And rise to the top Jude had.

There were few higher places for an 18-year-old mortal girl to be than by the side of the High King of Elfhame, ruling a kingdom with him. And there were few people more profitable to be close to than the High King himself.

There were times, though, when Jude — though she would never admit it — craved above all else a respite from the power. The control. The influence. Craved, in fact, a moment of return to that place of powerlessness, when the worries of the kingdom had been anyone’s but hers and she was free to rest and roam rather than reign.

And there were moments, now, after nearing 6 months since Jude’s return to Elfhame and eventual semi-reconciliation with Cardan, when Jude imagined herself as powerless once more and still imagined Cardan by her side, not ruling together, but simply being together.

When these thoughts struck Jude she would roughly and with decisiveness shove them to the back of her mind and pretend she had never experienced them. Jude could no more afford a break from her power than she could afford to become emotionally involved with her fellow ruler. These were thoughts she had no choice but to keep to herself, as she did most of her thoughts and all of her feelings.

Until tonight, when Jude was drunk.

Jude was, to be quite transparent, far past drunk. Jude was heavily intoxicated, and, she reasoned, through no fault of her own. She had overheard several subjects of Elfhame debating how, exactly, they were expected to take seriously a queen who was not only mortal, but didn’t even drink. The King, of course, drank his fill — why was the queen so serious all the time? How could she ever expect to fit in with faeries if she wouldn’t even let loose at a revel?

Jude, of course, wanted nothing more than power, and power was a child, born of respect and fear. She rationalized, then, that to fit in in Elfhame more fully would be to earn respect, and with respect, power. She gained from this the idea that she had no choice but to drink.

And drink she did.

Cardan looked on from his throne in bewilderment and something akin to amusement as Jude danced and drank with the people of Elfhame. He wanted nothing more than to join her in her drunken fun, but felt that this was something, strange as it was, she needed to do on her own.

When Cardan was falling asleep on the throne and the sun was beginning to make the day known, Jude finally approached the dais, stumbling and smiling and so, so stunning — at least, that was all Cardan could think of as she draped herself over her throne, positioned beside his.

“Cardan, I danced,” she said. Cardan made a most concerted effort to school his face into seriousness, or at least not to laugh at her. He didn’t want to ruin this.

“Yes, Jude. I watched,” he said in a low voice.

To Cardan’s surprise, he saw a faint blush spread over Jude’s cheeks.

“Did you?” she said, and pushed herself with some difficulty closer to him. “Would you like to watch me further? Perhaps in my chambers, and perhaps wearing less than we are now?” Jude whispered the words, but Cardan was still taken aback. It was rare — unheard of, really — of Jude to be so forward, or forward at all.

Cardan and Jude were no strangers to sleeping together, but Cardan usually initiated it, delivering smirks and pointed remarks until Jude rolled her eyes and almost admitted to having desire of her own. Now, though, Jude was too drunk to care that her want could be used against her as a weakness.

As strongly, though, as Jude’s words and posture affected Cardan, he was loathe to do anything with Jude that she would regret in the morning, or that he would regret as taking advantage of the woman he had begun to admit to himself that he had feelings for.

“I think, my dear Jude, that you have had too much to drink for me to consider your admittedly delightful proposal.”

Jude merely smiled and closed her eyes, swaying slightly. “I love it when you call me dear,” she said softly.

Cardan felt a pressure on his chest, the sensation that his ribs might break and puncture his heart and end his immortal life right here and now.

“And I love that you’ve told me that, but I think I should return you to your chambers before you say anything else you will hate yourself for in the morning.” The words were sad, and so was Cardan as he considered what Jude would likely do to herself for even that small admission.

Jude and Cardan didn’t share chambers, and certainly not for Cardan’s lack of trying. Jude refused to become closer with Cardan than sex and a rare moment of shared silence afterward, than discussing the workings of the kingdom. Cardan had asked — near begged, really — Jude to move in, but she had steadfastly refused to assent.

“Your chambers, today, I think,” said Jude, her voice low. Cardan felt his blood heating despite himself, but pushed the thoughts away — now was not the time to lose himself in his passion for her.

“My chambers, then, but to sleep.”

Jude positively pouted. “You’re no fun. Why are you no fun? I’m supposed to be the no fun one.”

Cardan smiled at that. “Yes, those are our usual roles, aren’t they? But tonight, you’ve had a little too much fun, so I am saddled with the role of the serious.”

Jude continued to pout. “Are you gonna take care of me?” she asked, brightening slightly at the thought.

“For the night,” Cardan said quietly, before standing and offering Jude his hand. “On any other, you would run me through for the barest implication that you needed caring for.”

Jude laughed. “I wouldn’t run you through. You’re Cardan!”

“So I am,” he replied.

“I wouldn’t run Cardan through. I’d miss him.”

Realizing that Jude seemed to have forgotten with whom she was speaking, Cardan led her in silence to his chambers, still mulling over her words. It was nice, at the basest level, to hear that she had no desire to kill him. Even that small mercy took him by surprise. “My ruthless girl,” he thought, and then corrected himself. She was not his girl, after all.

When they arrived in his chambers, Cardan helped Jude into bed before lying down beside her. He may have been unwilling to engage in anything sexual while she was in her present state, but he had no qualms about taking advantage of it to be close to her. The morality of his behavior had improved over the past months ruling with Jude, but he adopted no pretense of being perfect.

To his shocked delight, Jude snuggled close to him, tucking her head against his chest when he rolled toward her. He tentatively placed an arm over her side, and she hummed happily. Jude and Cardan had shared time, shared kisses, shared rule of a kingdom, but they had not shared true intimacy since the night they were married. Until, that is, this moment, a moment Cardan placed quietly into his heart to cherish in the days, weeks, months of cold that were sure to follow this night.

He thought this was the end of the happy moments, that Jude would drift off to sleep and that he would face an angry, hungover mortal the next day, but instead, Jude spoke.

“I know I’ll be too afraid to say this tomorrow,” she whispered. “I’m not so drunk as to forget my own nature.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t—“

“I’m cruel to you anyway, Cardan, wouldn’t you rather hear what I have to say now and face my wrath tomorrow?”

Cardan remained silent.

“Sometimes I don’t want this power,” Jude spoke, slowly, softly. “Sometimes I want to feel powerless again, to feel like the weight of a kingdom doesn’t rest on our shared shoulders. Like we’re kids again, like you’re treating me badly during lessons on warm evenings in the gardens. Or like we’re older, and you’re kinder, and we have time to be away from all of this. Can you imagine if we had the space and time to be powerless, even for a second?”

Jude sighed. “I know it makes no sense,” she said, “I know you think that everything I am seeks power, but there’s something else there, inside me. Don’t forget that there’s something else, ok?”

Her words grew more desperate, and with the desperation, more slurred, as she continued speaking. But Cardan barely noticed her fading — an idea had come to his mind, one he could not release despite its insanity, despite the fact that all would be lost when they woke.

“It makes perfect sense, Jude,” he spoke as she drifted off to sleep. “And I know exactly what you need.”

—

“What is it?” These were the first words Cardan heard upon waking. He had slept until nightfall, they both had, and he could see the rays of the setting sun outside the window, the pink and purple hues of the night-turning sky. For a moment, he didn’t even process the question.

“What?” he asked sleepily, beginning to sit up only to find a hand on his chest pinning him to the bed.

“I asked you what it is,” Jude said, voice nothing more than mildly annoyed despite the harshness of her actions. “What is it that I need?”

“You remember that?”

Jude rolled her eyes. “I may have been mildly intoxicated, but I still remember the morning, Cardan.”

Cardan smiled at what she termed “mild” intoxication. “Do you truly want to know?”

“Yes.” Her voice was solemn now, almost nervous, as if she could sense that his answer would not be an easy one.

It wouldn’t.

Cardan’s smile turned to a smirk as he looked up at her, hair and clothes rumpled from sleep, eyes wide with anticipation. She was beautiful, and he was glad to be telling her this, despite how she would surely react.

“I was thinking, my Jude, of an arrangement of sorts.”

“What kind of—“

“Let me finish, Jude.”

She was quiet.

“I was thinking of an arrangement which would allow you moments of powerlessness. An arrangement in which I would take the control, allowing you to experience the feeling of an utter lack of responsibility, a feeling in which I am in command of all and you have no worries to speak of.”

“You would take charge of the kingdom?”

“I would take charge of you, Jude.”

There was silence for several moments, utter, complete silence as Jude studied him. He expected at any second for her to yell, hurt him, get up and leave, or in some other way snap. It would be worth it. But, to his surprise, she merely said,

“Explain.”

And explain he did.

“I would take charge of you — specifically of your body, and specifically sexually, but your mind would follow, I expect. My every command you would follow, or risk punishment. This could be situational or constant, depending on your level of comfort. That means that we could either have assigned stretches under which these conditions are met — you obey me, I care for you, and the focus is on the sexual — and the rest of the time we would be the same Jude and Cardan we are now, bickering and never once obeying the other, unless forced to do so” (this he said with a pointed look, reminding Jude of their past arrangement). “Alternatively, we could have a constant arrangement, one in which you always obey my commands or you are punished. In this way, you could both have power and powerlessness simultaneously, depending on the situation. Both of these, I assume, sound far outside your comfort, but Jude, I implore you to at least consider what I suggest, even if you do no more. Consider what it would mean for you.” With this last desperate plea, Cardan fell silent, awaiting the stormy anger he expected from Jude. This time, his expectations were met.

“Do you think,” she said in the deadly calm he had learned to fear in their time together, “that I trust you, Cardan?”

“No, but I think that you need to.”

“For this? For your deranged sex idea?”

“For this, for our ruling together, for our marriage, for your health.”

“Our marriage has been a sham since you exiled me,” she spat, bringing up wounds Cardan had never been so bold as to think healed.

“I should like it not to be.”

There was a moment of silence before Jude spoke once more.

“What kind of punishments?”

Cardan felt acutely the whiplash of this conversation.

“Some physical, some lack of privileges, depending on the intensity of the relationship. Some pleasant and playful and some less so.”

“Would you ever hit me?”

“Only with your explicit permission and desire.”

“Hit me. I desire it.”

Concentrating on the effort not to let his shock and his own desire show on his face, Cardan brought a hand up from where it had rested on the bed, reached to where Jude still hovered over him, and slapped her thigh, hard. She still wore her dress from the revel of the night before, allowing his hand to connect with bare skin.

Jude gasped in surprise, then rolled onto her back beside him.

“And what if I did obey?” was her next question, asked tentatively.

“I would reward you.”

“What kind of rewards?”

“Would you like me to demonstrate those, as well?”

Jude’s silence served as assent, and Cardan rolled onto his elbow to hover over Jude’s frame.

“I might start like this,” he said, trailing his hand across the high neckline of Jude’s dress, over her throat.

“And move lower,” he added, running his hand over her chest to cup her breast gently. “Like this.”

Jude bit her lip, rubbed her missing fingertip against her thumb, the tell-tale sign of her nervousness. Cardan continued.

“I might tease you a bit, even when you had been good, because the important aspect of this is that you are subject to my desires. No matter how good you’ve been, if I want to punish you, I may, and if I want to reward you, I will do so at my leisure.” As he spoke, he grazed his fingertips over her breast, studiously avoiding her nipple. She wasn’t wearing a bra — she must have removed it in her drunken sleep, and he could see the peak of her nipple under the thin fabric of her dress.

When, after several long minutes, he finally brushed her nipple with his knuckle, Jude breathed a sigh of pleasure.

“Here,” Cardan said, pausing his ministrations, “I might give you an order. I might tell you to be quiet, or not to move, or both, and if you break the rules...” he slapped her thigh hard once again. “You might find you rather dislike the results.”

Cardan could see the effect he was having on Jude and pushed forward, wanting nothing more than to convince her that this was what she needed. He had never expected to get this far on a subject he expected her to shut down immediately, and he would not sacrifice the opportunity.

“Next, I might move lower...” he slid his hand down over her stomach, felt the softness there that covered hard muscle.

“Down to here, perhaps,” he said as he reached the junction of her thighs. “And since this is a reward, I would likely not make you wait too terribly long for what you would so desperately, desperately want.”

As Cardan’s hand slipped under Jude’s dress, he felt the wetness between her thighs and knew his words and actions had their desired effect.

“I see that this is already what you desperately, desperately want, my dear Jude?”

Jude’s hand darted out and clasped Cardan’s wrist, pulling it out from under her dress. He could never hope to be stronger than her, so he waited in anticipation for what she would say.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly, and Cardan relaxed slightly. “Alright, Cardan. Let’s try. You have tonight to convince me that this is anything other than a horrible idea.” Here she paused, and he saw a shadow come over her face, knew that whatever she was about to say was hard for her.

“I don’t trust you, Cardan, and maybe I never will—“

“Jude—“

“But,” she said emphatically, “I’m willing to try. To see how it goes. And besides, I suppose that I trust you more than most people in my life, okay? That’s something.”

Cardan felt the familiar chest-crushing feeling as he gazed at her in the wake of that admission, one that would have been small had she been anyone but Jude Duarte.

“Does my time start now?” was all he replied, not wanting to get emotional and ruin this moment.

“I suppose,” she said, feigning a lack of care when Cardan could tell she was still flustered from his actions.

Cardan leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to Jude’s lips. To his continual surprise, she didn’t pull away- instead, she reciprocated, deepening the kiss slightly. This, if nothing else, revealed how aroused she was, and Cardan couldn’t help but smile at her willingness and desperation.

When he finally pulled away, it was because Cardan had business to attend to before they could truly begin the day that might change everything.

“There are a few things we need to discuss, and they happen to be the type of things that are best gone over with paper and pen.” He moved to retrieve both of those items, and to his delight Jude remained still on the bed, awaiting his return. Perhaps, he mused, she would be more obedient during this whole endeavor than he ever expected.

When he returned, Cardan sat cross-legged on the bed as Jude drew a knee up on which to rest her chin.

“The first item we need to discuss is your limits. These are the things I am absolutely, under no circumstances, allowed to do to you or to order you to do. These can be sexual or not, and this list can be edited at any time as you think of more.”

“I don’t...” and here Jude paused, taking a moment to overcome embarrassment over what she was about to say. “I don’t think I know enough about the things we might be doing to know what my limits would be.”

“And that is utterly acceptable,” Cardan said, rushing to reassure her. “They can be anything. For example,” and with this, he ran a hand down the side of her arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake, “you’ve made it abundantly clear that you have no qualms about being slapped. If you did, we would add it to the list. But if it helps you, I can list some things I may do and you can enlighten me as to how you would respond to them.”

Jude nodded, and Cardan steeled himself against his arousal, driven higher by the prospect of listing potential acts, to focus on the task at hand.

“How would you feel,” Cardan asked, “if I made you wait to orgasm for, say, 2 hours as I teased you?”

Cardan could see, feel the change in Jude’s posture as she became more aroused.

“I’m sure I would not feel good about that in the moment,” she replied, eyebrows raised, “but hearing about it, it sounds... appealing.”

“And if I made you wait for a day?”

Jude snorted. “As if you have the time as High King to take an entire day to tease me.”

“Nothing would be stopping me from ordering you to tease yourself when I was otherwise occupied.”

Jude flushed now. Cardan had been trying, to little avail, to help Jude become more comfortable talking about sex. They were doing it, after all, but outside of the act itself when Cardan brought it up Jude often became irate or uncomfortable.

Maybe, Cardan mused, some part of that was to do with the fact that he, as frequently as possible, brought it up loudly and in public.

Still. This conversation was a significant step towards growing Jude’s comfort in the topic, and Cardan planned to milk the opportunity for all he could.

“And if I didn’t have the time?” Jude asked at length, returning to the conversation.

“You might be surprised,” Cardan said, lowering his voice and leaning closer to Jude’s ear, “how easily you can slip out of a meeting and into a closet when the threat of my hand on your beautiful ass looms over you.”

Jude tried to jerk away from Cardan, but he held her chin tightly and pulled her back.

“You forget, I think, that we have already begun. You will not pull away from me, do you understand?”

Jude flushed hotter and grumbled something that resembled, “okay.”

“That was your first and only warning. Back, now, to the limits. Answer my last question.”

“Yes, I think I would accept waiting a day.”

“And a week?”

Jude’s eyes grew wide. “I... would prefer not to, but it isn’t a limit.”

Cardan, alert to the smallest minutiae of Jude’s actions, noticed as she shifted near imperceptibly closer to him. He smiled inwardly. What this small action conveyed to him was that his plan to make Jude desperate for his attentions, both sexual and non, before they even began was beginning to work.

“And if I wanted to brand you?”

“Limit.”

Cardan grinned, having known, of course, that this would be the answer.

“And there, my dear, is an example.”

Jude rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry that I needed to make clear that ‘permanent disfigurement’ is off the table.”

“You need to make everything clear, Jude, to reduce the possibility of my doing something that genuinely distresses you. And,” he said, growing serious, “I will allow it for now, but when we are done with writing and discussions and begin in earnest, I will expect a more respectful tone from you than that.”

“And if I don’t, you’ll punish me?”

Cardan could hear in Jude’s voice that her reply was no form of backtalk, but one of apprehension and excitement.

“Yes, Jude,” Cardan said, leaning closer once more. “I will punish you, and you will not enjoy it.”

“And if I do?”

Cardan frowned. “It is... a complicated line, to answer you with honesty. I want you to enjoy all that we do, because that is the main purpose of all of this. My role, above all else, is to protect and care for you while putting you in positions of vulnerability, and to make sure that the things we do while I am in control serve you well. However, a part of your enjoyment and powerlessness will be the knowledge that when you transgress, you will be corrected, and that the correction will make you want to avoid repeating the offense. So while I want you to enjoy the process, I do not expect you always to enjoy the particular instance of punishment. Confirm whether or not that makes sense to you.” This was Cardan’s attempt to help Jude grow used to following orders, and it succeeded as she obeyed without question on this small matter.

“Yes, it makes sense.”

Cardan saw Jude rub her legs together, almost too lightly to be noticeable, and smiled.

“Growing a bit desperate, are we?”

Jude scowled, then realized herself and schooled her face into neutrality. Cardan smiled wider at this indication that she was beginning to behave.

“Are you trying the teasing thing now? Trying to make me desperate?”

“Oh, Jude. If and when I tease you, I strongly suspect you shall know. No, when we finish this,” and he waved the paper and pen, “I will make sure your desperation is alleviated.”

“Then let’s get back to work.”

“Begging?”

Jude scoffed again, then looked guiltily at Cardan. It would take some time to break her of these habits, and Cardan fully expected to enjoy every moment of doing so.

“You are free to try to make me beg,” she replied, opting for a neutral statement that still conveyed her derisiveness.

Cardan smiled. “I love a challenge,” he retorted, “thought I doubt that it will be one after I have brought you to the appropriate headspace.”

“What does that mean?”

Cardan set down the paper and turned toward her for this section of the explanation.

“Sometimes, during arrangements such as the one we’re forming-“ At this, Jude raised her eyebrows, reminding him that this arrangement was far from settled.

“The one I hope to form,” he corrected himself. “During these arrangements, there is a certain state of mind you can enter. I have done it at the hands of others- it is a most wondrous, delightful feeling, as though everything in the world is taken care of and the person in control can do no wrong. I tell you this in advance of its happening because I want you to know that I in no way am provoking this state in you for my own gain, or so that you will think more highly of me. I do it because I want you to feel that incredible feeling, and to feel that you are safe and cherished. Do you understand?”

Jude nodded, but then a shadow passed over her face, as though thinking of something she would rather not.

“How do you know all of this? Who made you feel that way? Have you made others feel that way before?”

The jealousy present in her tone was uncharacteristic, and Cardan couldn’t help experiencing a rush of pleasure as he heard it.

“I have a good deal of experience with the topic, and a good deal of knowledge in how it can go poorly,” he answered with a sad smile. “There was a time when, in search of that feeling, I would entrust myself to anyone willing to help me. Many of them took advantage of the situation to cause me pain, not that I can say I didn’t often deserve it. But this is my promise to you, Jude - I will cause you pain, but it will never be more than you can tolerate, it will never be emotional pain, if I can prevent it, and it will never be for the reason that I want you to genuinely suffer. If I punish you, it is to correct you, and if I hurt you because I want to, it is for both of our pleasures.”

“But to your other question. Yes, I have made others feel this way, but never one who I... cared for, as I care for you. It will be entirely different. I hope you can believe that.”

“Nicasia?” was all she replied, unwilling, of course, to acknowledge the depth of feeling in his statement.

“Among others.”

Jude nodded, apparently satisfied for now with his answers.

“I think I understand the limits now. I would not like to be permanently disfigured,” she said with a pointed look, “nor would I like to be overly disgusted by anything we should do.”

“Elaborate.” He knew this would be a challenge for Jude, to speak explicitly about her likes and dislikes.

“I would not like... spit,” she said, “if that was even an option. Nor would I appreciate an excess of any fluid to touch me. I would like to remain relatively clean. Is that—“ Jude caught herself about to ask if that was acceptable and stopped there, frowning as it came to her attention that she had already begun to enter a place of asking his approval.

“Yes,” Cardan answered, as if she had finished the question. “Very good. Lie on your back.”

Jude tentatively did as instructed.

Cardan leaned over her, bringing his mouth to her breast and pressing light kisses along its top, still working through the fabric of her dress. His tongue moved lower to circle her nipple before he sucked it into his mouth, hard. Jude gasped in pleasure and Cardan hummed against her tender flesh.

He pulled back, but left a hand lingering on her cheek. “When you do as you are instructed, you are rewarded,” he said lightly, before returning to the paper. Jude tried to sit up with him, but he held up a hand.

“I want you in that position until I indicate otherwise.”

Jude lay back down.

“Good,” said Cardan with a smile. “Now. Any other limits you can think of currently? It is completely understandable if not, and we can add more at any time.”

Jude shook her head.

“Then we will move on to apprehensions. What are you apprehensive about going into this?”

Jude thought for a moment before replying.

“Vulnerability,” she said slowly. “Putting faith in someone other than myself, not that I even have too much of that in myself lately.” She turned her head away after speaking, realizing she had shared more than she meant to.

Cardan reached over to take her hand gently. “Keep going.”

“Being without weapons, without defenses. Being in a situation where I need to be protected. Being in a situation where I can’t protect you.” The apprehensions came out of her in a rush now, to Cardan’s relief.

“I’m also apprehensive that I will be bad at this, that I won’t be able to bring myself to be obedient and that you will quickly tire of trying to correct me.”

“Oh, Jude. I will never tire of correcting you, and you never need worry that you will be too disobedient. You have already shown me, given your actions of tonight alone, that you will be good at this, not that there is even a way you could be bad.”

Jude shot Cardan a quick grateful look before continuing.

“I’m apprehensive that this is going to make me seem weak.”

“To me?”

“To you, to the kingdom. To anyone who knows.”

“No one will know without your express permission, Jude. Besides, who would I tell?” Cardan spoke the words with some bitterness, reminding Jude that he had few people in his life besides her. The thought crossed her mind that she should endeavor to treat him slightly more kindly, as he had her.

“Those are all of my apprehensions for now,” was all she said. “What else do you need to write down?”

“You need two words - one which stops everything we are doing completely, and one which signals me to make sure you are okay before we continue.”

“Nicasia and Locke.” She answered without hesitation.

“Fitting,” Cardan said, amused. “Our ex lovers.” He hurriedly wrote down her answers before continuing.

“What shall you call me?”

“Cardan, perhaps?” she answered sarcastically.

Cardan frowned at her.

“A name which denotes respect, Jude. May I suggest ‘My Lord’ or ‘My King’? I won’t make you go so far as to call me master.”

“My Lord,” Jude replied after a brief moment of consideration.

“Good. For the rest of the night and day, from this moment on, you will address me as ‘My Lord’. You will respond to my questions with answers like ‘Yes, My Lord’ and ‘No, My Lord.’ Is that clear?”

“Yes, My Lord.” Jude said quietly. Cardan leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

“Good. That concludes the information I need to gather for now. I will store this sheet safely for future use.”

“You seem quite confident that there will be future use.”

Cardan raised an eyebrow but let the disrespect in her tone slide. “I think you need this, Jude, and I think you will come to realize that by the end of the time you’ve allotted me. Another thing to note is that from this moment forward, I will not take your disrespect quite so lightly.”

Jude nodded once, and Cardan seized her chin in his hand once more.

“Say, ‘yes, My Lord’.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Jude replied, averting her eyes, still unable to believe she had put herself in this position.

Cardan smiled. “So far, you have been fairly obedient, and completed all that I’ve asked of you with a minimum of complaint. Frankly, I’m impressed, and I do plan to reward you.”

Jude shivered.

“But first, I want to address something you said earlier, about my viewing you as weak. Jude, to submit to my control will be the ultimate show of strength. I know what it would take from you, and how bold you will have to be in order to do so. I will never, never think you weak for giving up a small piece of your power. I will see you as all the more powerful for it, do you understand?”

“Yes, My Lord,” she said quietly.

“Good. Then let us begin.” With that, Cardan returned his mouth to Jude’s breast, licking and sucking over the fabric of her dress as his hands inched the bottom upward, baring her upper thighs. He finally pulled back to remove her dress entirely and stayed hovering above her, gazing down at her near-naked form.

“Tell me what you think of your body, Jude.”

Jude blanched, and Cardan could see the panic in her eyes, wondered if he had gone too far. Then, though, she reminded herself of his prior words - that this was strength, power, not weakness and defeat.

“I think it is strong, and serves its purpose, but is out of place among those of the faeries. You are all so... well, thin, and I am not. I have always wished to look as you do, despite knowing I never can.”

Cardan nodded, having suspected exactly this response.

“And would you like to know what I think of your body, Jude?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“I think your body far surpasses the beauty of that of any faerie I have ever seen. I think there is nothing more attractive to me than your muscles and flesh. I think that the more of you there is for me to touch,” and he touched her, “kiss,” and he kissed her, “and caress the more I will be satisfied. And I think that your body gives you life, and that is the most beautiful thing of all. After the undersea, when you had so little flesh on your bones, I was terrified. I would never want to see you like that again. I am grateful for every day that you have enough to eat, and I count myself lucky to share the bed of someone strong enough to snap my body in a heartbeat.”

Jude laughed at this. “I meant what I said, though. I wouldn’t kill you.”

Cardan put his hand over his chest and said with mock sincerity, “and you have no idea what that means to me,” but they both knew it was far from sarcasm.

“Thank you,” Jude said softly, “my lord, for what you said.”

“I speak only the truth, unlike some,” he replied, touching her face lightly. “Anyway, Jude, would you like me to return to the task at hand?”

“Very much so — my lord.” He heard her stumble, forget herself for a moment, and resolved to push her deeper into the headspace she so desperately needed to enter.

He started by kissing his way down her stomach, running his tongue along the bones of her hips, the line of her pelvis. He nipped the skin of her inner thigh gently, causing her to yelp, and grinned against her.

Finally — finally — he attended to her burning need, pulling her remaining underwear down her legs and situating himself between them. He heard her give a sharp intake of breath as she realized what he was going to do, as she did every time they did this, and smiled once more at the familiarity of the situation.

With one hand, Cardan spread Jude before him, as he pressed his tongue against her folds.

“Spread your legs for me, Jude, dear,” he muttered against her, and she squirmed even as she did as he asked. Demanded.

When she had obeyed, he resumed his actions in earnest, licking and sucking with vigor, trying to bring her to the edge as quickly as possible. He entered her with two fingers so suddenly that she gasped in surprise, and he pulled back to grin up at her and gaze at her flushed cheeks and half-closed eyes.

“Your nipples. Touch them,” he commanded, and she did as instructed, pulling and rolling them between her fingers, moaning lightly at the sensation and more loudly as he curled his fingers inside her, still watching.

“You are stunning,” he said simply, before resuming the work of his mouth against her. He flicked her clit with his tongue, slowly at first, but increased speed with his tongue and fingers until she was on the edge, crying out that she was about to go over it.

He stopped all motions, pulled back, and said, “hands at your sides.”

“I thought this was a reward,” she said, anger flashing in her eyes even as she obeyed.

“It is,” he replied. “The reward is the fact that I’m touching you at all. And I don’t appreciate your attitude. Spread your legs.”

She had snapped them closed in the wake of his motions ceasing, but opened them again now. Cardan pushed them farther apart roughly.

“In the future, know that it is my right to stop touching you at any time, and that you have no leave to contest my decision. I won’t fully punish you now, because this is a first infraction, but I will give you a small reminder of your place.”

With those words, he slapped her directly on the junction between her legs, one of his many rings hitting her clit. While he congratulated himself on his excellent aim, Jude cried out in shock and pain.

“Car— My—“ she sputtered, trying to find something to say that wouldn’t provoke another slap. Cardan merely raised an eyebrow, waiting for her decision.

She stayed silent, biting her lip against the desire to protest and the residual stinging between her legs.

Cardan looked down at her. “Next time, your punishment will not be so easy to bear. And before I forget, there is a rule I want to set for the future- you ask me, rather than tell me, when you are close to orgasm. Do you understand?”

Jude closed her eyes briefly before responding. “Yes, My Lord.”

Cardan could see the struggle in Jude, sense the way she worked to control the impulse to resist him, and found himself impossibly proud.

He lay down beside her and began steadily stroking a finger in circles around her clit, so slowly that there was no risk of her coming from the stimulation. Jude bit her lip and moaned.

“Normally, at a time like this, I would be waiting for you to beg,” Cardan said conversationally, as if discussing the weather in Elfhame. “But, as circumstance has it, begging will do nothing for you here. I plan to let you come—“ with those words, Jude’s wide eyes shot to his, but he continued with a small smile “but not for some time.”

Jude’s face fell, but lacked the spark of anger it had earlier held. Good. That meant she was beginning to accept that she had no choice but to allow Cardan to do what he would with her pleasure.

He continued his gentle ministrations on her clit, listening for small moans and breathy sighs as she wished for more stimulation, for several minutes. Then, without warning, he rose.

“Get dressed,” he ordered.

“Why?” she asked, even as she stood from the bed.

Cardan raised an eyebrow by way of answer, and Jude paled.

“I will, My Lord.”

Cardan knew that Jude was likely still allowing this sort of behavior from herself by rationalizing that it was only for the night, but it still pleased him to see signs of her growing obedience.

Jude had dresses in one of the many closets contained by Cardan’s chambers, for those times when hers became rumpled and dirty and she didn’t want anyone to know what she had been doing or with whom. She pulled one on now, not bothering to search for a bra, knowing Cardan would likely stop her anyway. She did, however, pick her underwear back up from where Cardan had carelessly discarded it earlier, but he tsked and plucked it from her hands.

“Not tonight,” he said decisively, and she had no choice but to obey.

When she was dressed and had smoothed down her hair enough to be presentable to... wherever it was they were going, Cardan led Jude from the chambers and into the halls of the palace. When they reached the throne room, a horrible thought occurred to Jude. Surely, surely, Cardan didn’t expect her to spend hours on the throne as she usually did at night, watching revelers and hearing complaints from the citizens of Elfhame. Surely he wouldn’t be so cruel, when she could still feel the wetness between her thighs and knew her clit remained as swollen as ever.

But he was so cruel, and in they went to settle on the twin thrones, side by side, perhaps an inch of space between the two seats.

“Bring a table,” he ordered loudly to the room, “with a cloth.”

Cardan was quickly obeyed, and a table was set before their thrones on the dais, covered in a white cloth that reached to the floor. To Jude’s shock, Cardan actually thanked the faeries that delivered the table. He was clearly on his best behavior in an attempt to convince her that this was a worthy arrangement.

Jude had no idea why Cardan would request a table when, again to her shock, he did not appear to be drinking. His reason soon became apparent, though, as his hand slipped across the space between their thrones and under her dress once more, blocked from the sight of the room’s revelers by the cloth on the table.

She realized at that moment that Cardan planned to keep her on the edge of orgasm for the entire duration of their time in the throne room, and closed her eyes as a flush began to rise on her face.

“My lord,” she said, too quietly for anyone but Cardan to hear her. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You can,” he responded, “because I know your limits, and because I am telling you that you can, and because you want to please me.”

Jude was surprised to find that she did, indeed want to please him.

“My lord,” she started again, “you aren’t drinking. I was just wondering why.”

Cardan’s face grew serious. “As greatly as it pains me to go a night sober, I don’t believe in engaging in this sort of... activity while intoxicated. One of my main responsibilities is to ensure that I can read you well enough to know your limits, and I can’t easily do so with an alcohol addled mind.”

Jude nodded, touched and realizing for the first time that Cardan’s role in this was as difficult, if not more so, as hers.

“So, in the hypothetical and far from plausible situation that we made this arrangement permanent...”

“I would still drink on occasion, but any rewards, punishments, commands, or otherwise would wait until my sobriety.”

Jude found herself slightly disappointed. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she worried about his drinking, about the fact that his drunken state seemed the only time he even bordered on happiness. Not that she did much to help with the misery he experienced in life.

All thoughts shattered in Jude’s mind as Cardan brought her nearly over the edge once more.

“My Lord, can I-“

He pulled away.

Had they not been in the middle of a room full of faeries, Jude might have cried out in frustration.

They passed the next hour in silence, Cardan bringing Jude to the edge again every time she got far enough from it to be comfortable. She spent the hour in misery, near writhing in her seat from the arousal. She knew she would have a damp spot on the back of her dress when they finally left the throne room, and couldn’t bring herself to care. She couldn’t even care, in fact, that all of this was happening publicly, and that someone could rise too high on the dais and see what Cardan’s hand occupied itself with at any moment.

“Alright, Jude,” Cardan said loudly, finally taking pity on her. “Let us retire for the rest of the night.”

Jude sighed in relief and stood, following Cardan out of the throne room. When they reached his chambers, Jude had no time to react as Cardan pinned her to the wall, holding her wrists above her head.

“You’re mine, Jude,” he said, stroking her wrists with his thumbs. “I love having you as my own, to do what I will with. You have no idea how deliciously appealing you looked on the dais, sitting in your throne and letting me touch you like the slut you are quickly, beautifully becoming. Tell me - are you enjoying yourself?”

“No, My Lord.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Cardan smiled. “It’s not nice to lie, Jude.” He slapped her in the face, hard enough to sting and take her by surprise but softly enough not to leave a mark. Jude exclaimed in surprise.

Cardan knew he had taken a risk, that face slapping was something they had not discussed and something with which Jude might be wholly uncomfortable, but she said nothing, merely looked at the floor in guilt.

And she did feel guilty — guilty for lying to him about her enjoyment in one last, desperate attempt to pretend this wasn’t exactly what she needed, that she couldn’t already feel a glimmer of the feeling Cardan had described, that she wasn’t close to total surrender.

“Look at me,” Cardan said softly.

Jude looked at him, biting her lip gently, willing him to forgive.

“There’s something important which I neglected to tell you.” He continued stroking her wrists in small, reassuring circles. “After I have punished you for whatever infraction you’ve committed, it’s over. I harbor no more negative feelings about it, and you have no more repentance to do unless I explicitly tell you otherwise. A punishment is an absolution.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Jude said, lifting her head in an attempt to push the conflict from her mind. “I will not lie again.” She meant the promise.

Cardan bowed his head. “Noted and appreciated,” he said, before looking up at her, sternly but with mischief on his face.

“Now. Get on your knees.”

Jude dropped to her knees immediately, growing more and more eager to please, and reached up to undo the buttons of his breeches.

“No,” he said, and stilled her hands. “Take off your dress.”

She obeyed, sliding it over her head eagerly and casting it aside, leaving herself naked before him once more.

Cardan cast his own shirt over his head and undid his breeches himself, much to Jude’s disappointment, before sliding off the remainder of his clothes.

“Start slowly, and using only your mouth.”

Jude obeyed, leaning forward to kiss her way up and down the length of him, pausing to give particular attention to the head before moving back down. Cardan braced a hand against the wall behind her.

“Lick me. Stay slow, but be thorough.”

Jude did as instructed once more, licking and gently sucking her way around his cock, over the head, pausing to swirl her tongue around his balls.

After several minutes, Cardan gave his next order.

“Pull as much of me as you can into your mouth. You may use your hands now, and do go a bit more quickly.”

Jude smiled, hearing the effect she had on him in his voice, and proceeded to do as told, sucking him into her mouth and blowing him in earnest.

Cardan’s sounds were like a reward, as they always were on the rare occasions that she did this, and she smiled as she worked on him, desperately wanting to bring him over the edge, desperately wanting to please.

“Jude,” he groaned, “yes, yes, like that.”

Quickly, Cardan went over the edge, spilling come into Jude’s mouth which she swallowed diligently before wiping her face with her hand. She smiled up at him when she finished, a mixture of sweetness and wicked pleasure on her face.

“Evil, talented girl,” was all he said before pulling her to her feet and pushing her across the room, onto the bed. “It’s my turn now.”

Jude did not point out that Cardan had, in fact, taken many turns already, merely lay on her back awaiting him. When he arrived, he quickly got back to the task at hand, spreading her legs and using his tongue to work her clit, alternating speeds to keep her from coming to the edge too quickly.

Still— after hours of torment, it was a matter of moments before she was at the edge, legs trembling hard beneath Cardan’s hands.

“May I come, My Lord, may I come?” she pleaded, close to begging, desperation evident in her voice.

“Yes,” he paused just long enough to say before resuming his ministrations.

He didn’t stop, nor even slow down, as she came, crying out and tangling her hands in his hair, chanting his name and “my lord” and “god, god, god” intermittently. Nor did he slow down when she came a second time, writhing beneath him. By the time she neared a third orgasm without a break, Jude had tears of pleasure and overstimulation in her eyes and was pleading with Cardan alternately to stop and keep going. He chose to continue, and she came four times before Cardan finally slowed to a stop and pulled back to look at her.

Cardan moved to the top of the bed and pulled Jude into his arms, head resting on his chest. She let out a slight whimper of protest, a part of her uncomfortable with this level of intimacy, but was too spent and needed to be held too badly to resist.

“Are you in a space where you can listen to me, my darling Jude?” Cardan asked, so heartbreakingly gentle in voice and touch that she felt as though her chest was cracking.

“Mm hmm,” she said in assent.

“Another important thing to remember about what we’re doing is that you must allow me to care for you. This is undeniably important. This sort of... play, if we might call it that, can only happen with the knowledge that I will care for you afterward. You cannot protest when I pull you into my arms after whatever we’ve been doing, whether punishment or pleasure. You cannot prevent me from tending to any injuries I may have caused or ensuring your safety, health, and wellbeing. If it is my responsibility to correct you, and to keep safely your power, then it is also my responsibility to care for you, and I take it quite seriously. Do you understand?”

“Yes, My Lord, I understand,” Jude tried to say, but it came out more like “hmmlord derstand.”

Cardan smiled tenderly down at Jude, and knew in that moment that he was much farther gone than he had ever suspected when it came to his feelings for the woman he held.

Jude, for her part, was terrified. Since her return from exile, she had never allowed herself this kind of intimacy with Cardan, and she was shocked by how desperately she desired it. She was mentally and bodily exhausted and wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in his arms, but her mind would not allow her that, setting off all the warning bells of the danger she could be getting herself into by allowing this, and with him.

But she had promised to be honest, and knew that he would consider keeping her thoughts a secret when they needed to be shared a lie of omission, so she spoke.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“I know,” he replied, and for a moment they were silent. “I don’t want to put pressure on you, but if you’ll give me the time to do this right, I’ll prove to you that you have nothing to be afraid of.”

Jude opened her eyes. “I want to,” she whispered, as though saying something shameful. “I don’t want this to end, but I don’t know if I can do it.”

“I do. I know.”

“Where did this resounding faith in my strength come from?” Jude’s words were teasing, but her sentiment was genuine.

“I’ve had it for a long time, I think. Since I’ve known you. I was cruel to you in part because it was easier than acknowledging my feelings and in part because I saw strength in you where in myself there was only weakness, and I hated you for that.”

For reasons Jude could not understand, the reminder that Cardan had ever hated her nearly brought tears to her eyes at this moment, but she remained silent as he continued.

“I now see that hating you for your strength was the solution of a child. You have my apologies and my regret.”

They both were silent, unspoken emotion crackling between them, for several minutes.

“Why can’t this be easy?” Jude said at last.

“It’s not too late,” Cardan whispered, and kissed the top of Jude’s head, the mortal curve of her ear, the tip of her nose. “Jude, admit that you need this.”

“I do, but that doesn’t mean I get to have it when it feels like giving up all that I’ve worked for.”

Cardan closed his eyes in frustration. “You’re giving up nothing, Jude! You would only be gaining a new form of freedom. You lose nothing by surrendering.”

“I lose the war between us.”

“What war!” Cardan exclaimed, raking his hands through his hair. “The war of children? The war of two people who have been horrible to each other and now have a chance to be good? There is no war for me, Jude - not any more.”

Jude was choking back tears now, impossibly distressed at having gone from the sweetness of a few moments ago to the harsh reality of their situation and of Cardan’s frustration with her.

“I’m sorry,” she started, but then Cardan was there and he was holding her again and comforting her and kissing her temples and oh god, Jude had never been so overwhelmed by emotion and sensation and desire.

“No, Jude, do not apologize. It was my responsibility to keep myself calm after putting you into that emotional place and I failed. The responsibility is mine, and I am truly sorry.”

Jude didn’t cry, not any more, but she came close now, squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears, and finally, finally assented.

“I don’t know what I can commit to, and I don’t know that I won’t back out at any moment, because I’m terribly, terribly afraid. What I do know is that I want this, and I’m willing to try.”

“That’s more than I expected from you, Jude,” and she could hear the grateful tone behind his words.

“We can try it all the time, if you still want to.” The words came out of Jude in a rush of nervousness, and Cardan took her trembling hands in his own.

“I would love to, Jude. Go get the paper and pen from earlier.”

“Yes, My Lord,” she said, already relieved to be back to this, showing her just how badly she did need this arrangement.

She returned with the paper, which Cardan quickly signed at the bottom.

“Sign this when you’re truly ready to begin,” he said. “I won’t rush you. You can take all the time you—“

With decisiveness, Jude signed the document.

[padawanlost]

Sorry I don’t have a tumblr or I’d respond directly. Re: Young anakin being returned to Tatooine, I don’t wholly disagree with you but I do think the council would be in a stickier situation that the one you described. If I’m wrong about any lore, I’d love for you to let me know. I’m pretty sure the Jedi are officially very against slavery, and rogue Qui-Gon as per usual put them in a pickle when he, technically, bought a child slave as a representative of the Jedi Order. (cont’d)

(cont’d 2) Legally Shmi had no claim on Anakin to begin with. Selling her with her child seems to be considered a courtesy on Tatooine; Watto has no problem splitting them up. He feels bad about it in the comics, but like, he does it. Returning Anakin to his mother would effectively, legally be returning him to his slave owner, which I’m sure everyone on the council would feel strongly against. It would also reflect badly on the Jedi Order. (cont’d)   

(cont’d 2) Legally Shmi had no claim on Anakin to begin with. Selling her with her child seems to be considered a courtesy on Tatooine; Watto has no problem splitting them up. He feels bad about it in the comics, but like, he does it. Returning Anakin to his mother would effectively, legally be returning him to his slave owner, which I’m sure everyone on the council would feel strongly against. It would also reflect badly on the Jedi Order. (cont’d)

(Anakin Tatooine anon) Sorry about the long message, hope it makes sense. Very nervous about sending it in lol, so for the record, I mean no disrespect & good vibes only!            

Hey!!! Don’t worry, it’s okay. I totally get where you are coming from :)As from where I get the idea that they would return Anakin to Tatooine, it’s from Dooku.

“Nine years old,” Palpatine said when he could. “Surely too old to be trained.” “If the Council shows any sense.” “And what will become of the boy then?” Dooku’s shoulders heaved. “Though no longer a slave, he will probably be sent to rejoin his mother on Tatooine.” [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

This is before Dooku left the Order and became a sith, so here he still has inside information on the Council’s decisions and knew exactly how they operated. he knew enough of the Jedi Order to guess what they would probably do with a force-sensitive too old to train. We also know that the rule was to NOT to bring any force-sensitive too old to train back to Coruscant. All the kids they found should be left where they were found:

There was a deep, aching regret in the child’s voice. Looking at her, Taria realized Greti understood she was trapped here. For a moment she was furious with Obi-Wan, for waking the girl’s potential when he knew he’d have to leave her behind. And then she sighed. [Karen Miller. Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Siege]

We also saw it happened to Anakin and Ventress, who were both deemed too old to be trained and, in her case, she was not welcomed to Coruscant even though she was living on a planet plagued by crime, slavery and poverty. Anakin was the exception, not the rule. Force-sensitives found too old to be trained were left where they were found, they weren’t rescued. The only other force-sensitive they “rescued” was Baby Ludi but she was still an infant, therefore, not too old to trained (and we all know what a shitshow that was)

As for the jedi being very against slavery…nope! On paper, yes they condemned it but in reality they did very very little to fight slavery. In fact, the two times the Jedi Order disrupted major slavery rings was because Anakin got personally involved and broke a few rules.

I should have done it before now. Wasn’t that my other childhood dream? Become a Jedi and free the slaves. Instead I became a Jedi and let myself forget. Let them convince me that it’s not our job to remake the Republic. The Jedi were keepers of the peace, not legal enforcers. That was the Senate’s job. How many times had he been told that? He’d lost count. But the Senate was falling down on the job, wasn’t it? What was the use of having anti-slavery laws if the barves who broke them never paid for their crimes? It was enough to shake his hard-won and harder-kept faith. If scum like Watto and Jabba and the other Hutts kept on making their fat profits on the backs of living property—and if the Senate continued to turn a blind eye—how could anyone believe in the Republic? How could he? Padmé says she understands, but she hasn’t pushed for a Senate hearing. And Palpatine—he’s promised he’ll tackle the problem but nothing’s been done. It’s too political. Too corrupt. Too complicated. There are credits in slavery—and credits trump justice. Always have. Always will. And the Jedi? They didn’t want to get involved. Even Qui-Gon… Karen Miller. Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth

“I am Condi, from the planet Zoraster. I am not a pirate. I am a slave. As are my companions. Stolen from our home worlds by Krayn. Under penalty of death, we have been assigned guard duty aboard the ship.” Condi looked at him eagerly. >“Thank the moons and stars, we have rescue in our grasp at last.” Obi-Wan deactivated his lightsaber. The naked desperation on Condi’s face unnerved him. It was mirrored in the faces of his companions. All of them had obviously suffered great deprivations. “I am sorry,” he said. “I have not come on a rescue mission.” Condi’s face fell, then brightened. “But you can take us with you. We will help you fight.” “I cannot.” Obi-Wan felt these two words were the most difficult he had ever said. “I have only a small ship, big enough for me and my companion.” He wanted to promise them he would return, but how could he make that promise? If he got off the ship safely with Anakin, Krayn would be gone. The ship could hide anywhere in the galaxy. He believed too strongly in a Jedi promise to make one he did not know if he could fulfill. [Jude Watson. Path to Truth]

Beside him, Anakin muttered something. Not in Basic. His outrage was palpable, a red shimmer in the Force. Oh no. Not now. “Anakin …” “Look at them!” Anakin retorted, low-voiced. “They’ve been turned into slaves!” “I know. It’s irrelevant Focus on why we’re here.” [Karen Miller. Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth]

Anakin looked uncomfortable. “If they win, they free their sister. She’s a slave.” “I see.” Obi-Wan nodded at the two brothers. “I wish you good luck. Anakin, may I speak with you a moment?” He drew Anakin aside. “You know this is wrong,” he told his Padawan with a frown. “I’m sure you are helping for the right reasons. But this is not our mission. We have more important things to do. And may I remind you that Podracing is illegal?” [Jude Watson.Dangerous Games]

“We have more important things to do” that’s the usual jedi take on the subject of slavery. Something else always took precedence and they only acted after they got themselves trapped in the mess. They took no measures against it unless it directly affected Republic’s interests. And the fact Tatooine was ruled by slavers would be considered irrelevant when compared to the Order/Republic’s best interests, as we saw it clearly when they sacrificed a lot of man power and resources to rescue ONE child that happened to be a slaver’s son.

So, no, I don’t believe they would show much concern for Anakin’s situation if he were to be returned to Tatooine. Hell, they were fine with Luke – their last hope – growing up there and were quite dismissed of how it traumatized Anakin (someone who they watch struggled with those traumas for years):

“As close to kinfolk as the boy can come,” Yoda said approvingly. “But Tatooine, not like Alderaan it is—deep in the Outer Rim, a wild and dangerous planet.” “Anakin survived it,” Obi-Wan said. “Luke can, too. And I can—well, I could take him there, and watch over him. Protect him from the worst of the planet’s dangers, until he can learn to protect himself.” [Matthew Stover. Revenge of the Sith]

Yes, Shmi had no legal claim over Anakin but to take a kid from his mother by promising you would take care of him and them put him somewhere else for adoption is cruel. Especially after recognizing Anakin’s bond to his mother.

And, as far as orphanages go, it seems the GFFA doesn’t really have them. The only mentions of them I could find in the original canon were from one game. Considering the amount of kids that end up with or as criminals, I’d say the GFFA doesn’t have the best child protection laws and agencies. Even if they had an orphanage in Coruscant or Naboo, again, leaving Anakin in one without Shmi’s knowledge would be cruel. And if that were to happen, I don’t see Padmé making such donation. Not because she’s selfish, but because she unaware of how daily life works when you are not a happy Naboo. In her mind, as long as the government is working, everything is fine. I mean, if Anakin is in a government-run place and the government has a budget for it, he’d probably be fine, right?

Padmé trusts the Jedi. She has no reason to believe they wouldn’t put a child’s interests ahead of their own. That’s why she never checked on him after the Battle of Naboo in canon. He was with the Jedi so he was fine.Also, we can’t forget Padmé was a 14 years old girl who had a planet to rebuild. It’s not fair to put this on her, Anakin was never her responsibility nor should he be. When I remove Padmé from the situation, it’s not because I think her bad or selfish but because she’s a kid and, realistic, not old enough to understand what it took to raise a kid and definitely not experienced enough to feel responsible for the well-being of another child. If the much older and wiser Jedi – the peacekeepers of the galaxy – tell you they will take care of the kid, you believe them. At that point, she would have no reason to double check their efforts and, realistically, all that excludes the possibility of her doing anything beyond showing her gratitude.

PS: thanks so much for sending an ask even though you don’t have a blog. wow! how cool!