#idk the woman so maybe they are a great match but this man... he has 2 kids and he only wants to see them every second weekend

[babydollmarauders]

WHO’S AFRAID OF LITTLE OLD ME? — JACK HUGHES

jack hughes x fem!reader

summary: in which jack hughes should be afraid of what y/n can do to his reputation

notes: yeah, idk what this is either; there’s not much plot.

september 16th, 2023

deuxmoi

24,107 likes

deuxmoi pop sensation, y/n, is seen hands on with new boy toy?

if anyone has any information on who this man is, do come forward! we’d love to know who america’s queen of heartbreak anthems is with now!

view all 549 comments

user82 the hand placement?! HELLO?!

user3 oh great, new music where she makes herself some sad victim again

user55 a new love album next?! maybe?!

user09 let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s some low grade pap photos posted on a gossip blog. it could’ve been a first date for all we know

user45 @/user09 with the way they are in these pics? absolutely NOT a first date. y/n has famously said she doesn’t get “frisky” early on because of her ex. most definitely a bf

user92 oh her next song is gonna HIT

user06 that guy kinda looks…. where were these taken and when?

deuxmoi all the sender said was that they saw them in michigan last night! know something?

user06 hmm the tl matches! that looks like it could be @/jackhughes , a hockey player for the New Jersey Devils!

user98 OH MY GOD, YOU’RE RIGHT!

user67 those hands?! girlie better never let him go!

september 27th, 2023

y/nofficial

liked by sabrinacarpenter and 4,628,961 others

y/nofficial every dead end street led you straight to me 🤍

view all 7,923 comments

user72 SOFT LAUNCH OH MY GOD

user5 oh he’s got her using emojis?! she’s down BAD

user29 i’m so happy for her, she deserves so much love and happiness and it seems like he gives that to her 🫶

user6 MOTHER?!

user01 what poor boy did she sink her claws into this time?

user9 if you don’t like her, why are you on her post? obsessed much?

sabrinacarpenter he scored 😉

y/nofficial sab!! nah, i think i did!

user92 he better be treating her damn good! it’s what she deserves after ‘he who shall not be named’!

user76 i know who you meant but also started giggling at the idea of her writing an album about voldemort 😭

y/nofficial @/user76 gasp! don’t you know who lover is about?! the dark lord and i just couldn’t make it work :(

october 10th, 2023

jackhughes

liked by y/nofficial, nicohischier, and 815,736 others

jackhughes as a wise woman once said: “i was enchanted to meet you”

tagged y/nofficial

view all 2,865 comments

y/nofficial my sweet boy 🤍

jackhughes my pretty girl

user76 A HARD LAUNCH

user94 THEY’RE SO SICKENINGLY CUTE 😭 SHE DESERVES THIS

user36 JACK IS DATING Y/N?! OH THE SONGS THAT WILL COME OUT OF THIS

user8 he could do so much better

lhughes_06 about damn time

trevorzegras JACK WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE JOKING

user02 oh they’re so cute 🥹

dawson1417 did you just… hard launch with the biggest singer in america rn?

jackhughes y/n says “what? like it’s hard?” idk what that means

user16 can we talk about how happy she looks?! and i know her hockey loving self is giggling and kicking her feet over her landing a hockey player! too cute!!

john.marino97 if her next RED-like album is about you, i’m requesting a trade. can’t believe i’m gonna have to listen to songs about YOU

january 1st, 2024

y/nofficial

liked by jackhughes and 5,827,025 others

y/nofficial thank you 2023, you brought so much love and laughter 🤍 can’t wait to see what 2024 brings!

tagged jackhughes

view all 7,503 comments

user86 oh she’s so down bad she was taking pics of him at his game 😭

user9 one tour pic and three pics regarding to jack? she’s so in love

jackhughes here’s to another year with you, my talented girl

y/nofficial i can’t wait for another year with you, my love 🤍

user55 i can’t wait to see you in KC this year!!

user7 she’s truly living her best life and i’m obsessed!!

user21 i hope 2024 is just as good to you as 2023 was!

january 26th, 2024

deuxmoi

36,592 likes

deuxmoi fan submission: trouble in paradise?

pop sensation, y/n, and her boyfriend, hockey player Jack Hughes, were seen out by a fan last night. the fan claims that they overheard y/n consoling Jack about his recent injury that has left him unable to play. in the video (on our site), you can hear y/n telling Jack “i know not playing is hard, i know it’s sad-”. Jack is heard cutting her off and snapping “you don’t get to tell me about sad. you don’t get it, so stop acting like you do.”according to the fan, y/n left the date alone and in tears.

what do you guys think, is this couple over?

view all 1,251 comments

user29 wow what an asshole, she was just trying to be comforting

user4 wtf?

user07 yeah, can’t say i didn’t expect them to end soon enough

user99 she was trying to comfort him and he snapped at her? yeah, i’d hope they’re over

user20 she deserves better

user19 it’s just an argument, everyone is being so overdramatic

user3 do i think they’re over? no. if we know anything about y/n, it’s that she’s forgiving, sometimes to a fault.

user67 i don’t think they’re broken up but if she was leaving alone and crying, i hope they will be soon enough

user82 has anyone thought that maybe he didn’t need comforting?

user13 umm, obviously he did if he snapped at her

user98 idk about everyone else, but i do think they’re broken up if she left alone and was visibly upset

user23 oh i can’t wait to hear what she writes about him. i’ve known he seemed too good to be true

february 14th, 2024

y/nofficial

liked by oliviarodrigo and 7,431,846 others

y/nofficial happy valentines to my favorite boy 🤍

the most kind-hearted, respectful, and loving man i’ve ever had the pleasure of being able to call mine. nobody is perfect, but i think you’re pretty close to it. i’m so eternally grateful to have you in my life 🤍

tagged jackhughes

view all 278 comments

user6 oh, she’s still with him

user02 y/n, baby, please come to your senses

user14 i don’t like him at all after last month

jackhughes happy valentines, beautiful girl ❤️

user65 “nobody is perfect” oh, mother is telling us rn

comments on this post are now limited

march 23rd, 2024

deuxmoi

29,783 likes

deuxmoi looks like y/n and her hockey beau have called it quits! eagle eyed fans spotted last night that they’ve unfollowed each other on instagram and y/n deleted all photos of him.

previously, y/n ONLY followed jack, now she’s back down to 0, which fans seem to read as a finality to their relationship.

view all 1,736 comments

user95 about time! after that spat in january, i feel like everyone was waiting for this

user72 EVERYONE MOVE! EVERYONE REJOICE! MOTHER IS FREE!

user24 GOOD RIDDANCE!!

user61 can’t wait to hear who the catalyst was, him or her?

user3 obviously she’ll make herself out to be the victim

user61 @/user3 tell me you’ve never actually listened to y/n without telling me you’ve never actually listened to y/n 🙄 she doesn’t shy away from admitting if she was the one who ruined a relationship, she admits she has problems and that sometimes she gets in her own head

user8 it was obviously him after that video in january

user23 everyone is celebrating but have we stopped for a second to realize that she’s probably really heart broken right now?

user70 fr! like, she seemed so in love with him and i feel so bad for her. she seemed to love him a lot more than her exes and we all know she’s a hopeless romantic at heart, so she was probably imagining marriage and babies with him and then he showed his true colors

april 1st, 2024

y/nofficial

liked by tatemcrae and 14,698,276 others

y/nofficial there’s always a fool, but i guess all’s fair in love and poetry… new album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. out May 14 🩶

but surprise! the first and only single, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? comes out April 19 🩶

view all 3,279 comments

user18 MOTHER DOES NOT PLAY!!! AHHH

user63 may 14th 💀 she said “i’m not fucking around, y’all WILL know who this is about.”

user9 significance of may 14th?

user63 @/user9 it’s jack’s birthday 💀

user00 OH SHE MUST REALLY HAVE SOME SHIT TO SAY IF SHE’S ACTUALLY DROPPING A SINGLE BEFORE THE ALBUM

user78 i wonder if jack feels stupid yet

user12 new y/n album before GTA6

user93 the vibes??? mother didn’t write an album, she wrote a EULOGY

april 19th, 2024

y/nofficial

liked by john.marino97 and 9,726,820 others

y/nofficial at this hearing, i stand before my fellow members of The Tortured Poets Department with a summary of my findings.

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? out now.

view all 2,738 comments

user72 i’m speechless

user2 “you don’t get to tell me about sad” SHE REALLY FUCKING DID THAT

user33 I AM IN SHOCK!

user94 MOTHER CALLED HIM OUT

user78 once again i ask, @/jackhughes do you feel stupid yet?

user61 dude just got surgery and she still came for his neck 😭

user09 i mean, not like she was gonna change the release date just because of that but it’s still so 😭

user22 “the scandal was contained….. at all costs keep your good name” she really spoke on the january spat, didn’t she?

user12 “WHO’S AFRAID OF LITTLE OLD ME?”

user77 @/jackhughes you should be

john.marino97 🩶🩶

user82 oh he’s MESSY! i love it 💀

user50 tbh, i look at this single like a warning. it sounds like jack didn’t think it through before he broke her heart and didn’t think she would speak on him, but she’s warning him right now that he should be scared because she has a lot to say about him and their relationship

user31 she’s so— i love her

february 8th, 2025

y/nofficial posted on their story

february 10th, 2025

y/nofficial

liked by john.marino97 and 11,762,936 others

y/nofficial brand new, full throttle <3

view all 3,627 comments

user93 i- did she just inadvertently tell us we’ve all been wrong about who So High School is about?

user77 this is the fastest she’s ever gotten into a new relationship and you know that means she has to be in LOVE

user04 AHHHHH Y/N AND JOHN MARINO

user82 how do you know it’s him? she didn’t even tag anyone and you can’t see his face

user04 @/user82 she posted john on her story a couple days ago! they’re on vacation together while he’s on bye-week!

user23 i don’t wanna get ahead of myself but,,, they met through jack, did they not? and now they’re dating? mother is messy

user51 is it messy? yeah, maybe- but people have already looked back through old interviews of his, and she’s been his celeb crush for a WHILE now. and i mean, hey, she’s dating someone only a couple years older than her now, one can only assume he’s more mature than j*ck

user92 the way she clings onto him 🥹

user88 she deserves happiness, i really hope he gives that to her 🫶

john.marino97 i knew what i wanted and i got her ♥️

[itshype]

Excuse me, do you work here? (DC x DP)

This is sort of based off of the core idea behind The second, secret Justice League, so mayhaps consider reading that if you haven't? It'll take you 2 minutes max. Also, here's my masterpost.

So, Danny frequently works with the JL headquartered in the Infinite Realms. Basically, every League-Adjacent hero who died in costume chose to continue their work and make the Violent Afterlife a little safer. It's lead by Jason Todd as Batman (he never revived after Joker killed him in this AU - ....yet?) and has whomever else you like it in it. It's still just called the Justice League because with the zone inhabitants being long dead, never born or aliens, enough of them are unfamiliar with Justice League Earth.

They're better than ghost cops because they all died within the last decade. They remember what it is to be alive, they remember living people who they love and it changes the way that their minds think about crime and criminals in the zone. Their criminals are still people, not just obstructions to their obsessions.

And in a fun swap, Jason lives in mortal terror of the day anyone dares to kill the Joker. He hopes that asshole lives to the age of 108 and dies peacefully in bed so the chances of the Joker becoming an ecto-entity are as low as possible.

The regular, non-secret Justice League are kidnapped by a cool Alien species who want to make them fight. Not to the death, unless you feel like it, but more as a exhibition match. Martian Manhunter, Superman, Green Lantern and Constantine are not pumped to be kidnapped but the Lantern explains that doing well in this tournament will be super great going forward. If other planets hear about Earth's robust defence, they're all going to be less likely to fuck around and find out in future.

So, Constantine, in his infinite wisdom decides to - while they wait for the whole thing to start - summon the "best equipped" Justice League member to fight on their behalf. This other member (he assumes it will be Wonder Woman or Plastic Man) will probably not love being taken to a new planet. But, it's for the greater good and they'll all be taken home later.

But he didn't specify which Justice League - not knowing there are two. A 14 year old (looking) boy shows up. Superman is furious. Constantine, trembling with horror in what his hasty actions have done, explains everything.

Danny's thrilled, he's on a NEW PLANET?! He's met a MARTIAN? And he gets to do a low-stakes fight that could save millions of lives someday? This is the best day ever!

Danny tells them he's gonna fight, and he's gonna win, and they're going to help him get in touch with Batman on Earth when he's done. As payment.

He wants to tell Earth Batman that Ghost Batman loves him and never blamed him etc etc. Things Jason didn't exactly tell Danny to tell Bruce, but that he's mentioned to the team as wishing he could reach out and tell Batman before. (Why doesn't Jason go to Earth? Maybe he doesn't know which one, maybe the idea of being on the same planet as Joker sends him into a destructive rage, maybe he thinks telling Bruce he's still out there would do more harm than good... idk)

4 adult heroes watch in awe as Danny does a magic girl transformation into Inverted Danny and starts pulling more and more powers out of absolutely nowhere. Danny obliterates his competition and everyone is scared to hell of him. He gives an unwanted speech about what an honour it was to represent his solar system (he's thinking of his new bestie Martian Manhunter's culture's safety too).

It's only on the way home in the spaceship owned by the tournament mangers that it occurs to any of the Normal Justice League members to ask how this kid they've never even heard of is a member of their team and what he wants to discuss with Batman.

[runa-falls]

cat and mouse - 2

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x Supervillain(?)!Reader

Warnings: kissy kissy :3, mention of alcohol, you're broke. sorry.

a/n: i wrote this out today (what is now a few days ago) because i couldn't work on the other fic until i got this out of my system :) if there are plot holes its because i vomited out this chapter and threw it out like a dumbass. idk what Black-Cat's personality is like so i made it kinda mirror cat woman from the harley quinn show.

Summary: Every time you try to convince people it was an accident, you immediately get ratted out to the Spider. But really, it was! You don't know why you're being hunted, you didn't even do anything wrong. Yet.

w/c: 2.6k

part 1 part 3 part 4

masterlist

----

Nueva York’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, as he, and the world, likes to call him, is your official nemesis, or at least that’s what the city thinks.

You crumple up the half-soaked People magazine, filled with ‘juicy gossip about our favorite Spider and the new villain-of-the-week: Blaze’. Seriously, you might just become a villain if they keep calling you that.

You briefly forgot you swiped the news story off of a nearby food and entertainment stand (that’s barely holding up in the downpour) until you hear:

“Hey! You gotta pay for that!” 

You don’t. 

In your defense, it was only a dollar-fifty. And either way, it’s technically the Spider’s fault that you didn’t have a penny on you!

Honestly, if it were your choice, you’d never see his stupidly broad shoulders again. He truly is the bane of your existence and a major pain in your ass. You genuinely don’t understand why he even pays you any mind, it’s not like you are plotting to take over the city. You just want enough money to get some fries and a Koka Soda, and maybe a couple more black articles of clothing that aren’t covered in clawed-out stripes. 

Spider-Man? More like Cat-Man. 

You would say you’ve been “fighting” this man for weeks like the magazines insinuate, but it’s less violence than it is just you squirming out of his clutches and running away. You swear the Spider is a bloodhound. No matter where you are, or what you’re wearing, he always finds you. And you always get away. It’s actually quite pathetic. 

He goes: “It’s you again.”

You say: “No it’s not.” 

Then he has to say: “Blaze.” Like you’re some ultra-nemesis that has ruined his life.

And you can’t help but: “Stop fucking calling me that, dude.” Before you make a run for it. 

He catches up, obviously, either has you on the ground, against the wall, or holds you up so you can’t escape, but then you do. Every time. And he lets you. 

So really, it’s just fucking annoying. What a waste of a great plan and an excellently executed silent break-in!

You never asked for any of this. The fact you don’t have a flashy-ass elastic suit should be proof enough: You’re not a supervillain. 

But, when the opportunity to make a little more cash comes around, you can’t just say no. In your mind, the bigger the heist, the longer you can stay out of the public and away from him. 

And if the one girl on the team wants to make you a suit, how can you resist? The Spider has ruined all the other clothes you’ve worn (and not in a good way). 

You saw your new suit a few hours before you needed to meet up with the team. Felicia, or Black Cat as the rest of the group refers to her, is probably the most elegant and badass woman you’ve ever met. 

She has voluminous silver-blonde curls and sharp green eyes that match the deadliness of her talon-like retractable claws (which actually kinda remind you of someone…). Though she doesn’t have explosive energy inside of her as you do, her cat-like senses and martial art skills are almost as deadly. 

Felicia was happy to invite you over to her multi-million dollar penthouse to get ready and hang out a little before you needed to leave. 

She’s filing her nails into perfectly deadly points as you sit on her plush ultra-white couch next to the new suit, hands fiddling nervously together as you watch her pamper herself with extreme precision. There are two glasses of high-grade champagne in front of you on the glass coffee table. Yours is barely touched. Hers has been drained and refilled a couple of times throughout the hour. 

“You know, usually I’d work this job alone, but it’s a lot easier to get away when you leave a few maggots to distract the Spider. That’s what men are for. Us girls need to stick together, right?” 

Even her voice is elegant. 

“Yeah.” You croak out. You prefer to listen to her talk than say something dumb and non-villain-like. And yeah, you’ll admit you’re a tiny bit scared of her, but sometimes that’s something you have to go through when making friends. Right?

“Alright, we’ve got like 20 minutes. Go on, babe, try it on.” She loosely gestures to the suit, “Bathroom is in the hallway, first door to the left.” You stand promptly and shuffle over to her bathroom, taking a second to look back to send a grateful smile at her before you close the door. 

It almost resembles the one you saw on her the first day you met. The only difference is that yours is completely black and has a high collar neckline in contrast to her more provocative V-shaped suit.

There’s no fur-lining or silver details, just an invisible zipper that creates the illusion that this suit is painted onto your body. Felicia also provided a simple mask that you can pull over your head when you tie back your hair and some silver hair spray so you’re less recognizable to the general public. 

You stare in the mirror and smooth out any wrinkles down your torso with your gloved fingers. Alright. Now you look like a supervillain. 

Or at least a super-something. 

She makes you do a little spin. “You look lovely, darling.” A smirk pulled at her charming lips. “Absolutely, perfect.” 

—

Fuck.

So here you are, trying to break out of a bank that shut down around you as soon as you walked in. The two guys, who you never took the time to learn the names of, are freaking out, banging harshly against the metal doors that slammed shut in front of the exits. 

Felicia, on the other hand, is as cool as a cucumber, checking her nails like there isn’t a blaring siren and pulsing lights around her. 

So what now? You could probably blast the doors open with whatever comes out of your hands (you’re still not sure as you try to use your powers as a last resort). But that would leave a bunch of evidence that you were there and you didn’t come to knock down a whole building.

You walk over to her, trying to hide the anxiety that’s starting to bubble up inside of you. “What should we do?” She looks up from her manicured nails and looks at you. Then at the guys.

“Well, the boys seem a bit preoccupied,” As if to prove her point, one of them starts kicking the door, as if it would magically open up for him if he were to hit it harder and make more noise. She sighs, “I guess we could use the air duct that leads to the roof.” 

“Ok.”

So you follow her to one of the main offices in the building, watching as she easily rips off the cover of the vent and uses the desk for leverage to hoist her into the surprisingly spacious air duct. 

The chill evening breeze of Nueva York has never felt so good. Well, it has smelt better, but if garbage and crime-filled air meant you’re not going back to jail, you’ll take it. 

“Well, that could’ve gone better.” The Black Cat runs her fingers through her hair, pushing it back and out of her face. Of course, it falls perfectly over her shoulders. “So…I’ll see you later, yeah?�� She’s leaving?

“Uh, yeah, sure. I’d love to!” 

“Great.” She walks to the edge of the roof and scales down the back of the building like it’s nothing. Look, it’s not that tall of a building, but still, you weren’t about to follow her down. You watch as her black-suited figure lands on the concrete ground, barely making a sound, before she sashays into the shadows of the city, disappearing into the night. God, she’s so cool. 

And then it’s just you. 

You sit yourself down and finally take a breath. Your first job as a villain and you didn’t even get to see the money. What are you getting yourself into?

You pull slightly at the elastic holding your hair together, regretting the tight pony that’s now giving you a major headache. Maybe this life isn’t for you. With, probably an overdramatic, sigh you push yourself up. Now to figure out how you’re getting out of here. 

–

Turns out you didn’t have too many options. As soon as you were about to take a serious ‘leap of faith’ and try to scale down the building, you were ambushed by a series of fwp, fwp, fwp’s and lifted from the ground. That probably saved your life now that you’re thinking back on it.

So, he found you. Big surprise. He’s practically stalking you at this point.

He takes you for a ride, holding you close as he swings from building to building, barely breaking a sweat. You’re actually surprised that you didn’t hurl all over his stupidly firm shoulder. You should have.

You don’t know why he brought you to the top of a half-constructed building, but you’re assuming he’s just trying to be dramatic again. Superheroes, right? 

You struggle against restraints when you’re finally set down, at least trying to lay in a more comfortable position as Spider-man stands over you. Not only are you fully wrapped in red webs, but your arms are also tied behind your back.

The Spider kneels down, watching you continue to struggle, “Alright, Hardy, give it up.” Hardy? Shit, he must think you’re Felicia. The black suit, the silver hair. Dammit. 

He takes off your mask before you can say anything, pulling out your loose hair tie with it, and boy, is he surprised to see it’s you.

“Wh–Blaze?” He takes off his mask like he can’t believe his fabric-covered eyes. His scarlet gaze not so subtly takes in your new look. A big change from the usual getup you wear. “What, uh,” When he finally meets your eyes, one of his gloved hands raises to rub at the back of his neck. Is he nervous? He briefly looks away from you, “What did you do to your hair?”

“Who cares! Let me out of these!” You glower at him, arms tugging at the luminous webs, “And you know I hate that stupid-ass name.”

“What the hell were you doing here? Why are you suddenly hanging out with a bunch of criminals?”

You give him a deadpan expression, “I’m a villain, remember.”

“Ah,” He slices through a couple of the overlapping webs that fit snugly over your stomach. “Finally giving into the narrative, hm?” Then the ones around your arms.

“S’not like I have much of a choice.” The red webs start to loosen until they unravel completely and pool on the floor. “So, you’re…letting me go?” You rub at your sore wrists, feeling the ache dissipate almost immediately. He shrugs like it’s no big deal for him. 

“It’s expected, isn't it?” He’s at the edge of the roof staring at the buildings around him, a soft breeze sweeps through his hair, and the lights of ‘the city that never sleeps’ soak over his suited figure from below.

“Just like that?” 

“...Just like that.” He says. But he says it more to himself than you. With that, he swiftly puts his mask back on, hiding the wonderfully serene expression he once held, but you never got to see in full. 

Spider-man is confusing. He treats you like you’re some sort of catch-and-release criminal. Acting like a push-over parent that reprimands their child even when they know they’ll do it again. You don’t get it. 

And the way he looks at you sometimes. Like he’s having fun. You see it when he’s chasing you, webbing you to the wall, or holding you under his claws. There’s a glowing heat that pulses in his eyes and you can almost see the barest gleam of his fangs. You can’t even wrap your head around how he can both infuriate and draw you in at the same time. And then he lets you go. 

And now he’s leaving you. 

So you take your chance. 

“Wait.” He stills but doesn’t turn back to look at you. He just stays there, merely stopping to listen to whatever you have to say. But you want him to look at you. You need to see those simmering red eyes that are hidden behind the mask. “I-” You stop yourself. You’re not actually sure what you were going to say. All you know is you just weren’t ready for him to leave yet. “I, um, never caught your name!” It blurts out of your lips before you realize what you’re saying. 

Then silence.

How awkward. 

You were sure he was going to leave you there. No sane superhero would reveal his secret identity, dumbass! Especially to a girl like you.

But then his hand comes up, slips off his mask again, hair slightly ruffled from the action, and he finally turns. Before you know it he’s approaching you, fast. And you can’t do anything but stand there, watching as his looming form starts to take up more and more of your vision until he’s standing right in front of you, head tilted downwards and red eyes low. 

Two warm palms cradle your jaw and you lean into the touch, eyes fluttering closed at the feeling. Just as your eyes start to open again, his head is dipping toward yours. Then his lips meet yours.

And it’s perfect. His soft plush lips move against yours, occasionally nipping and sucking on your bottom lip until it was satisfyingly plump. The warm, masculine smell surrounding you makes your knees weak as his hands drop from your face to your waist in an effort to pull you toward him.

Your body melts against him as he starts to softly lick into your mouth, thoroughly seeking out the taste of you. He pushes you gently against the unfinished concrete wall behind you, eliminating any space that was left between your thinly suited bodies. You swear you’re about to melt when you feel his broken groan against your lightly suited-chest.

And then you separate, heavy breaths and intense gazes floating between you. “Miguel.” He looks down at the way he’s holding you, the size of his palm against your smaller body. And then the ridiculous suit that was tailored specifically for the heist, but looks more like something you’d wear for a BDSM session. He clears his throat and looks back up, “Miguel O’Hara.”

“Miguel…” His hand on your waist clenches at the sound of your hoarse voice and you can tell he’s tempted to pull you back in. 

“You’re one of the few who know.”

Now, you’re curious. You hum, “Who else knows?” His eyes glance at your hair and his hand drops. Suddenly, you feel cold. He steps away from you, not unkindly, but it’s clear he’s trying to create space. 

He brushes it off, “No one important.” And then he’s walking away. Back to the same spot he was going to leave you from. Cool. 

“Well,” You take a few steps closer, eyes roaming over his muscled back,  “I promise not to tell anyone.”

“I know.” His mask is back on, and this time you know there’s no stopping him this time. “Catch you later, Little Red.” He jumps. 

Little Red? 

[flowersandbigteeth]

Question around the Roth Mothman story/universe…

Would it ever be possible that genuine romance blooms at Roth’s club between the monster men and human women?

I know that it’s a exclusive fetish club, but I wonder if some monster men go who otherwise can’t have a normal relationship with a human woman, due to something like species’ societal expectations/discriminations. (Like in the Unicorn story, with some families wanting pure-bred lineage, with no humans or other monsters in the mix). Or maybe, some monster men go to the fetish club cause they’ve faced a lot of rejection when trying to date human women normally (on dating apps and stuff), so going to a place where women won’t reject them is better grounds for relationship prospects.

Obviously, one should never expect to find more than what they’ve come for. And it’s shitty to expect a genuine relationship to form with an employee, as they’re working on the clock. But I still wonder if this’d be possible to happen, or if this establishment has a strict no strings attached policy?

If romance did ever bloom between some of the monsters and women, it’d be cute to see Roth and reader set up a match maker business. It’d be a great business venture since Mothmen have great ideals of love.

If you did decide to continue the story, maybe this time reader is one of the women working at the club, and is matched with a new x monster man (with Roth working a bit behind the scenes)?

This is a really interesting concept. Some spicy discussion below the cut

The first thing I thought of would be that it could make a really interesting polyam romance if the girl in question is juggling a lot of different partners...There's an illustrator who does or used to do? a sort of monster bathhouse comic that comes to mind where the main gal Ollie has a unique relationship with all of her different customers and I LOVED that: https://twitter.com/sframboob

Idk if they are doing that meta anymore, but I'm pretty sure that's the right artist. You have to go way back in the medias to find the original comics.

I think a matchmaker business is an adorable idea, though <3 I could see that as a separate business for Roth and the reader because some monsters come to the club hoping for something or they are awkward and don't really dig the vibe...like they are close to what they want, but not quite there since they want something meaningful and idk, maybe while they are leaned over the bar having a pity party, the bartender slides a card across the counter to them for the service.

Generally, I've read some romance books where the sex worker heroine falls in love and gives up her work for the guy, but personally, I don't love that. I feel like if a romance does develop, the monster should accept her for who she is and gas her up.

I think it would be cute if he went shopping with her for lingerie or heels for her job, maybe helped her with her makeup or photoshoot, or even did a sexy roleplay where he pretends to be a customer and they get to experiment with maybe an unusual sexy game that they wouldn't normally do. Or maybe even something simple, like he likes to pick her up to make she gets home safe because she gets out of work at crazy hours

Even spicier if it is another employee, like the bartender, who is always winking at her from across the room because he gets to watch his hot girlfriend splayed out in different situations all night but takes her home to rub her feet and cuddle after closing. Also, that there are things that she does for work that she doesn't mind doing or even enjoys, but there stuff at home that only he can do for her, even if it's something innocuous, like he knows exactly how to touch her because it's about her, not her client.

The more I'm writing about this the more I like, I might just open up a new doc for this one ^_^

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

first of all, happy new year! i love your work and i hope you have a wonderful year! ❤️✨

second of all... I've been having such a brain rot from this picture. i cannot function thinking about it... to make matters worse, I've been listening to some old playlists and i came across this song. and idk i feel like the pic and the song kinda...pop off together. so i was thinking if you could write something based on the pic or the song or both maybe?

Hello lovely! It is great to hear from you. Very rare that anyone reaches out off of anon. I admire that!

Poor Aemond! He has been airbrushed to death here. He is beautiful as is. But unedited, I agree, this is a great photo of him.

I'm not really an Ed Sheeran fan, but I Googled the lyrics to see if any inspiration came to mind and picked out the following: "Yeah, I've been feeling everything From hate to love From love to lust From lust to truth I guess that's how I know you So I hold you close to help you give it up"

Hope you enjoy the little fic I have put together for the lyrics and picture!

Give It Up

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x female character (third person perspective) - strangers to enemies to lust to potential lovers Warnings: Mild smut. Mild violence. Dub-con if you squint. 18+ Word count: 1150 Eternal thanks and handies to @emlikestolurk & @lady-phasma for casting their eyes over this and tossing my word salad into something palatable. Love you.

______________________________________________________________

For weeks now, things have been going missing around the Red Keep. 

First, an emerald brooch belonging to Alicent disappears. She cannot find it when she searches her jewellery box. Helaena is then devastated when she sees that her favourite necklace is gone, a Valyrian steel chain with a pendant in the shape of a spider, a ruby for its abdomen. She only took it off for a moment while she went to bathe, but when she came back to her bedchambers, it was no longer on the dresser where she left it.

The servants are questioned sharply and their quarters searched - however, nothing is found, and so the mystery remains unsolved. Aegon feels particularly aggravated upon waking one morning to find his beloved silver wine goblet has been taken from his bedside. 

Additional guards are placed around the Keep to man all points of exit and entry. Yet, things of value continue to vanish into thin air.

It is early evening when Aemond returns to his chambers, having spent the afternoon in the yard sparring with Ser Criston Cole. He freezes when he sees the cloaked figure. He knows immediately that this is the culprit of the recent thefts. They disappear through an opening in the wall upon noticing his return, a passage into his chambers that Aemond never even knew existed. 

He knows it would be wiser for him to raise the alarm with the guards and have them chase down this thief. But he also knows that every moment he wastes is another moment that they get further and further away, decreasing the chances of their capture. Without another thought, he throws on a cloak of his own to conceal his identity and gives chase.

The opening in his bedchamber wall leads to a winding stone staircase. He races down it, catching sight of the person as they reach the bottom and run out through a wooden door. Aemond hastens his pace, he pursues them down Aegon's High Hill via the twisting path of Shadowblack Lane.

The thief's pace is no match for Aemond's long strides and he quickly catches them up as they attempt to lose him down an alleyway at the bottom of the hill. 

Angrily, Aemond yanks them back by the shoulder, spinning them around and slamming them back into the wall.

"What did you take from me?!" he demands, his hand seizing their throat as he awaits their answer.

Aemond's eye goes wide as their hood falls back, revealing a young woman - a beautiful woman. He had not been expecting that. Previous experience with miscreants convinced him that he would be apprehending a man.

Her eyes are fiery with anger; she juts out her jaw in defiance as she looks up at him. "Let me go, Prince!"

She spits the final word with such venom, as though it is an insult. It shakes Aemond from his state of shock, and he tightens his hold on her throat with renewed annoyance.

"Show me what you took." His voice is cool and calm sounding; however, his brow is furrowed with irritation, his nostrils flaring.

"Is the spoiled Prince going to miss his little trinket?" she pouts mockingly, holding out a silver dragon head cloak pin on the upturned flat of her palm.

Aemond's eye flickers downwards and she uses the momentary distraction to push back against him, attempting to escape. He is much too quick for her though, crowding her back against the wall, unsheathing his dagger and pressing it to her throat.

"Is the wretched little street rat going to miss her life, when I take it from her?" he sneers at her.

She says nothing. She is not afraid to die. She stares him down, maintaining eye contact, a silent challenge. Do it, I dare you.

Aemond had fully been expecting her to scream or at least plead for her life. He is stunned once more as he looks upon her, his face mere inches from hers.

She does not miss it when his gaze drifts to her lips, hesitantly lowering his blade. She lunges forward, sinking her teeth into his bottom lip so hard she tastes blood, before making another run for it.

He drags her back by the hood of her cloak and surprises even himself when he pulls her against him, kissing her hard.

She is taken aback by the Prince's actions at first, but finds herself melting into his embrace, the metallic tang of his blood hot in her mouth as she kisses him back. She breaks the kiss, letting out a light gasp when she feels Aemond's hands wander beneath her cloak.

Aemond lets out a satisfied "mmm" as he gropes at the warmth of her body through her clothes. She is soft and pliant against him. When their lips are no longer touching, he dives in to mouth hungrily at her neck. Ordinarily, he would never behave in such a depraved manner, but this woman's open defiance of him has seemingly awoken something within him that he is unable to render dormant again.

She fights hard to keep her wits about her as her body betrays her with its wanton response to Aemond's attentions, her head becoming foggy with lust. Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she uses his unguarded stance to push him back against the wall. Their lips meet once again, a sloppy mess of blood, teeth and tongues as her hand creeps its way up his solid thigh muscle.

Aemond's breath hitches as he feels her fingers wandering up his leg. He grunts as they slide home to grasp at his cock. He is hard. Of course he is; how could he not be when this temptress has been taunting him since he first laid eyes upon her?

She smirks as she feels his want for her through his breeches. Their lips cease their movements, but do not part as they pant against each other. Her hand takes a firm grasp of him through the material, moving it up and down.

Aemond's eye flutters closed as he voices a groan. Her touch builds a pressure at the base of his spine. His hips buck to meet her hand. And then she is gone.

His eye snaps open in time to catch a glimpse of her running full speed away from him down the alley. He does not chase after her. Shock keeps his feet planted firmly to the floor as he struggles to catch his breath and bring himself back to reality.

It's then that he realises he is no longer in possession of his dagger - he never got his cloak pin back from her, either.

"Shit!" he exclaims quietly, turning and heading back to the Red Keep.

When Aemond returns to his chambers that evening, he leaves the door to the passageway in the wall slightly ajar. Should she ever choose to come back, he'll be ready for her.

[suzannahnatters]

My final Love Like the Galaxy reaccs!!! the tl;dr:  I loved it and it's the sort of show that probably demands to be seen twice because TWISTS and HINDSIGHT so IDK, one day maybe! Anyway it's either on Viki or on YouTube for anyone who wants to see what happens when Jane Austen comedy of manners meets The Count of Monte Cristo, but, like, in Ancient China, featuring an epic romance between a naive sledgehammer engineer girl and the terrifying murder general who cannot help looking utterly besotted with her every time she drifts past: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZZZLpfFwcBprNI6msl3NWt3pdX6F-eGs And now: for the reaccs for episodes 43-56, including the famous Murder Party (TM), check under the cut!!!

If Yang Yang ends up with Smug Scholar instead of her sweet little marquis I WILL throw things (thankfully, the sweet little marquis is getting actual screentime with her)

oh I LOVE this: the Empress apologises to Consort Yue for stealing her husband, and Consort Yue points out that if it's anyone's fault it's the Emperor's, and why should the Empress apologise? it's the little things, you know?!

I love that in amongst all this scowly strategising and betrayal and people's families in mortal danger…there's a whole running joke about whether the armour Niao Niao made her beloved makes him look more like a chicken or a mandarin duck

cdramas asking the real questions

wow they really kept like 90% of the action budget for this episode and money well spent say I

once again murder general is rushing off to save our girl, only this time he guesses precisely where she is and what she's doing, and knows she's probably doing a great job of it :')

GASP we are suspicious of Elder Brother Snacks now???

I've got a bad feeling about him and the crown princess turning out to be bad eggs - almost as though we're building up to a BIG BETRAYAL between our babies

Wan QiQi swaggering into prison in a wedding dress is the energy I aspire to

Hmm… Lou Ben feels very very foreshadowy of an obsessive man making a self destructive choice to grab what he wants no matter how it hurts the woman he loves

All the foreshadowing is REALLY mounting up now - Snacks still caring about NN but not wanting to see her after what she's done, NN observing of another couple that they were birds on the same tree but flew apart when trouble came

Anyway we are all headed for a heck of a third act breakup aren't we

is zisheng,,, allergic to almonds

what an absolutely bonkers twist

poor little Wang Ling! how terrible does her family have to be that she is trying to save her murderous traitor of an elderly husband, just because he treated her better than anyone else in her life?

"he even had a flower garden planted in my courtyard to please me, although he has life-threatening asthma! which means that he can't visit me very often! he's the best husband, Niao Niao!" okay Mrs Charlotte Collins

"Cheng Shaoshang, it seems you really don't know anything about Ling Zisheng" OOOOOOHH

Smug Scholar: a voice of reason. a stickler by the rules. an indefatigable drama queen who is quite ready to beg murder general to go right ahead, be his guest, do crime, because then Smug might get to marry Niao Niao instead

torture is always wrong, revenge kids! that said, it's very funny that murder general has been busy with hot iron and boiling oil all night and found out nothing, while NN has put herself fully abreast of the situation armed with nothing more than…a conversation with a female acquaintance

"wait - all that stuff you did in my name was ALSO in pursuit of your revenge plot? who are you really?" this show keeps serving the best stuff

matching bite marks on the arm is a way cooler idea than matching tattoos tbh

why are you not telling her, zisheng, she already knows!!!

she's sworn up and down (with bitten arms!) that she won't mind, it's keeping this from her that she can't forgive, get a clue!!!!!

ooooo - we have been cordially invited to a MURDER PARTY love the gearchange from Jane Austen Romcom to Jacobean Revenge Tragedy

OK LET'S GO, WHERE'S THAT MURDER PARTY I WAS PROMISED

Glad that we were given this scene of Marquis Chengyang being delusional and Chunyu being Justly Terrified that the young man obsessed with revenge has finally agreed to come to his father's birthday party, it doesn't quite explain how nobody realises this is Very Bad News but at least lampshades it

Since filial piety is the norm in this society, I guess it's hard for the elders to realise just how at risk they are from someone unfilial!

I LOVE that Chunyu (sp? the stepmother) gets a whole speech to point out the hypocrisy of HER continually bearing the blame of "climbing into the master's bed" after so many ppl in the show have ridiculed her for it as though it wasn't a decision made by the marquis

oooooooooooohhh this is amazing: Yang Yang is disturbed that NN's farewell before the wedding sounds like she doesn't ever intend to return home. and from NN's response, she KNOWS murder general is about to do something crazy and is fully prepared to suffer the consequences alongside him

it's…really amazing that during the stretch of the cdrama when the male lead traditionally starts Machinating and Scheming and lying to the female lead about it, THIS show keeps the heroine's agency intact, she sees right through his lies, she is still front and centre. Chef's kiss.

she knows where it's happening; she knowns when it's happening; she's sending someone for news. she's amazing and so are these writers.

meanwhile: murder general refusing to enlighten the marquis as to his true identity is Irene of Athens-level pettiness and I love it

the way this show keeps this whole episode focused on the story's main character even though she has little to do with -

oh wait never mind she has decided to involve herself anyway!!! now we get the entire Cheng family charging into battle? with NN at their head on a black horse? EPIC?????

well THAT was the best of Jacobean revenge tragedy

shocked to discover that Zisheng has Always Known who was really behind the fall of the lone city - he's just been quietly, methodically working through the destruction of all the perpetrators, COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO style

I love a protagonist who holds cards so close to his chest that not even the audience knows what's going on

more than that, it really adds nuance to the show's themes about revenge. Sometimes the system is broken, & even in a good system people will sometimes get away with murder. What to do then?

I can't support the vindictiveness of the leads (& I'm not sure I'm meant to) but as revenge plots go, I like the weightiness of the themes - how to fight for yourself in a world where laws and manners tell you you shouldn't? - better than Dumas' more superficial take.

where did these two henchmen come from, because they are NOT being paid enough to be part of this absolute disaster

also WHEE Niao Niao gets to swoop in and save HIM for once! Well done our girl!

oh what an idiot. what an absolute peanut.

I was pulling for you, murder general, but I'm not sure how you'll manage to come back from doing the One Thing (abandoning her) she asked you not to do

she's still calling him by his false name T_T

something something she only ever knew him by his false name and identity not his true one

moment of silence, please, I'm experiencing an emotion

well, duh - of COURSE Third Prince is here to collect NN to go help him plead for murder general, who has obviously been quietly helping him all along. even better: we don't know if NN is just figuring this out now or has known it for months but she understands it perfectly, just like we do, the moment she sees Third Prince's face

!!! murder general has been deceiving everyone in so many other ways too???????

it's not just that he knew all along who was responsible for the lone city's fall and has just been working silently to gather evidence on them: he ALSO has been playing four dimensional speed chess with palace politics, supporting a totally different faction to the one he was supposed to be aligned with?

IT WAS HIM IN THE PAGODA ALL ALONG????

I just love the sort of character who plays certain things SO close to the chest while also being utterly open and vulnerable about certain other things. like, as long as we trust their judgement for hiding the certain things and know it's not for purposes of control. and while NN does interpret his secretiveness as control, due to her upbringing, it's also easy in hindsight to see things from zisheng's POV: he is playing not one but several high stakes political games, treading a tightrope between the prince he is supposed to be supporting versus the prince who would clearly be a better choice, and now suddenly thrown into the middle of all this is a naive and well-meaning sledgehammer fiancee who is an absolute force of nature but who is not yet quite insightful enough to see and understand where the deep waters run; she's simply driven by personal loyalty to protect her empress' son. and she keeps forcing choices on him: protect her, or serve the Third Prince? and he makes tremendous sacrifices, as with the Tiger Tally, to save both of them. so is he going to take the risk and tell her and trust in her, or is he going to keep her in the dark just about this, until the game is over (it's so close to being over) and he can be as candid about these things as he can be about everything else?

but at the same time, he was so frustrated with her for not being candid with him, for not telling him when the mean girls tried to KILL her, for lying to him about choosing to help the crown prince - he should have known better than to reproach her about this when he was doing exactly the same things to her all along.

I love that the show just doesn't support him in this. for two people who both say they want to work as a team, these two both spend an awful lot of time keeping things from each other. and it's only after going away and thinking about it that I start to see his side of the story at all, because she is so totally front-and-centred in the way the story is told.

oh wow - now she gets a whole speech and thesis statement about how just because she's a woman she shouldn't be shut out of her husband's confidence, and ends: "Ling Buyi is my most beloved person in the world. But I am still me."

I love this show so much

It's really wild that murder general, who everyone knows went on a murderous rampage to kill the entire Ling clan, goes from being condemned to death to the apple of the emperor's eye based on his surname changing

no doubt it's historically accurate and murder uncle, at least, deserved it - but for me it's just another sign of how irretrievably this system is broken, that bloodline so clearly outweighs right and wrong.

I'll be chewing over the question of whether this last-minute aversion of filial impiety ("it's ok! he was doing it to avenge his REAL father!") undermines NN's previous point about the right to filial reverence depends on a parent's conduct, or whether it's an author's saving throw to secure a HEA

"but I can never forgive him for abandoning me - he even swore it was for my sake" aha! How To Critique The Break Her Heart To Save Her Trope (Without Actually Using The Trope??????) this show didn't HAVE to hunt down and kill every bad Asian drama romance trope like this but is that stopping it? no

Empress telling NN that whatever decision she makes, she will support her in - hits like a punch because the only person who's told her this till now is murder general. On the other hand it is comforting, and underlines the themes of NN being a whole person without him, bc she still has love and support!

as an aside, I also like how the show has handled NN's terrible parents. by the end of the show, she's fought for, and won, their respect and support, & has come to understand the pressures they are under. but she will never love them the way she loves the Empress, bc they haven't earned that love. I feel this consolidates the filial piety critique.

we finally get to hear murder general's side of the story - and it's fascinating to hear him say that he failed. he did everything to bring ling yi to justice - and couldn't. the murder party was his failure.

I'm finding the murder party less problematic at this point than the Censorate beating

whoah, the empress is sailing in to admit that she spoiled her children until they were useless, so she's not upset about the crown prince being demoted? seems a rather unfortunate theme if children are only ever bad because of bad parenting

NN still taking absolutely no prisoners in the romance, though: "oh, I understand you perfectly. the problem is that you never understood ME" that's quite a burn

The Empress is now requesting to be deposed, and it's a complicated scene - is she blaming herself, or voicing regrets? I think she's regretting not fighting for herself: as she points out, her accepting a menage a trois has not spoiled Consort Yue's life so much as it has spoiled her own chance at love.

while the show has sometimes been finger-wagging, it's saved here bc she also blames the Emperor for going along with the flow, too, and tamely accepting a three-way marriage.

meanwhile at home, everyone's like "Niao Niao is so mature now!" and I'm sitting here like NO SHE'S NOT, SHE'S HAD ALL THE HAPPINESS CRUSHED OUT OF HER and…….along comes Not-Quite-So-Bad-Mum to say that precise thing, and confess to having been wrong all along???? This show just keeps hitting.

Love that NN's 3rd brother is completely on her side at this moment. he understands the assignment ("break up with murder general and send him away with a flea in his ear") and executes it with prejudice.

oh…mum has repented too late. I'm not sorry for her, but I AM sorry for the way NN chooses to spend the next forever - when there were so many things she wanted to see and do!

and now: five years' worth of mutual pining in excruciatingly aesthetic slomo, thank you

meanwhile everyone in the Cheng family is getting married? Yang Yang is getting married? Mum's warrior maid is getting married? Good for you warrior maid!

Smug Scholar, otoh, has remained UNmarried for our girl, and I actually love the choice he's presenting her - NN doesn't much care who she marries if it's a business arrangement; she just won't marry the man she loves knowing he was willing to lie to her and abandon her

is it really weird that I suddenly want to write the story about the coldly pragmatic fake marriage of convenience between NN and Smug Scholar

!!!! she IS going to get engaged to him??? murder general is going to come back from five years of picturesquely scruffy suffering to find her engaged to Smug Scholar??!?!?!!!??!

oh this will be GOOD

"thanks, but I can ride without stirrups these days" I love that this show is allowing the heroine to establish a life of her own apart from the hero - they have to be complete on their own before they can be good for each other.

and now: a break from reality for an absolutely bonkers carriage chase, which, because this is a cdrama, comes complete with one of the parties trying to extort a proposal of marriage from the person chasing them

I swear this is the third time this exact same cliff has cropped up in this show, one would think that people would know better than to gallop madly down the DEAD END CLIFF ROAD

Empress pays her last respects to the emperor: "I know that if it wasn't for Emperor Li's tyranny you would have asked nothing more than to live a simple life" LIESSSS this man requires a constant stream of drama to live, how would he have survived as a gentleman farmer?

"if you are truly filial, don't exchange your life for mine. Live well." while this show has come down in the end in favour of filial piety, I think that for the most part it keeps filial piety where it belongs: subordinate to ethics - and that's something I can get behind.

With NN decided that murder general is not the man for her and murder general determined to accept her decision, I really don't see how this will get believably sorted out in the next…3 eps. Bc she's absolutely right, he had his chance and he blew it. That said, I was really worried the show would blame her for being unreasonable, but only the recent antagonist has done that

even NN's mother is now telling him: we don't need you to perform guilt for us, we also had our chance with NN and blew it, now we can only defer to her conscience AND YOU SHOULD TOO

so, I guess we're headed for an "undeserved grace" ending, and I hope they make it a convincing one and not cheap, bc it's too late to show him doing any work to prove his repentance.

oh I love this scene: she tells him she forgives him but cannot trust him, and he without defending himself, vows to live well and take care of himself (because quietly protecting the people she cares about is the one last thing he can do for her)

and he won't ever tell her that he's been doing this because he knows it would only make her despise him more!!!

time for the bad family to apologise, the grandmother in particular for trying to control her children, and Niao Niao to decide no longer to carry resentment, but to dwell on the people who love her instead

I love that the themes have largely to do with resisting control, even when it's from family members, and fighting for yourself. Even more, I love that the highest expression of this theme comes in the trust there's supposed to be between husband and wife. Sometimes, lack of communication IS an attempt at control - although on thinking it over I'm not sure it always has been that on murder general's side. but if there's one thing the past five years must have taught him, it's that he's going to have to be be particularly open with this particular woman, because her family HAS tried so hard to be controlling in the past, and she can't take even the appearance of it from him.

somehow, yet another of NN's old enemies has an overly complicated plan to kill her sigh

loving how murder general jumps into this trap and promptly becomes useless and it's time for the lil henchmen to save the day

stop shouting his name and figure out how to open the trapdoors Niao Niao, smoke inhalation is no joke

murder general looks amazing for someone who was just blown up

TEARFUL RECONCILIATION SCENE

ahaha Snacks has fallen in love with his wife, we love to see it

Smug Scholar, meanwhile (exact words): are you all done flaunting your love?

EXPLODING PICKLES

flailing I love it NN is deploying her secret weapon….the family Cheng

"you can't be in two places at once, General!"

maybe not, but wifey and he can

"i'd like to see who interferes with my best granddaughter's marriage!"

*smash cut to the emperor having a hissyfit because he can't interfere with the marriage *

it's over? pokes couch cushions for spare episodes

OK I LOVED that murder general's grand gesture in the final ep comes in the form of a dilemma. should he go rescue his beloved as everyone is telling him - or should he stay on task, submit to everyone's ridicule for not protecting his woman, and risk her thinking he's abandoned her again?

his answer shows that at last, he has come to truly understand her (five years after she told him he'd never understood her). it's not physical abandonment she truly fears. what she fears is not being trusted & allowed to act as his equal. So he leaves her to protect Guo village while he stays on HIS task. His grand gesture, after so many rescues, is not to rescue her at all.

SCREAMING at that moment when Third Prince is like, seriously, mate, you'd better not abandon her! she needs help!!! go on I'll be fine!! and Zisheng VISIBLY WAVERS and then pulls himself together and shouts GUO VILLAGE HAS NIAO NIAO! GUO VILLAGE WILL BE FINE!!!

since the root of the contention between them was always him not treating her as an equal, this is probably the best proof of change we could get in the screentime. and the show is very insistent to tell us that if NN bends to take him back, it's because it's what SHE wants, not bc she can't survive without him.

the show does give her that moment of fright during the explosion to rush her past her abandonment issues, but since the real issue was always about control, I can make my peace with it. Similarly, she taught him a 5-year lesson about not consulting her. He knows - & her family makes it explicit - that he can never pull something like this again.

final overall thoughts: I have rarely seen such a well done romance in Asian drama, especially cdrama. The show was long & got repetitive, especially in the 2nd half, even though it had some of my favourite stretches as NN starts fighting for respect & equality within her marriage.

The themes about family, state, and fighting for oneself got fingerwaggy at a lot of points, many side characters were brutally humiliated and many of the numerous female characters became nonsensically villainous just to give NN antagonists. So, I would say the show is quite flawed.

that said, what this show does well, it does SO WELL. I was absolutely invested in this romance to an extent that is very rare for me. I was delighted by the way the show critiques asian romance tropes, there's a wonderful Dumas-level revenge plot, the fight scenes while rare are terrific, the show remains laser focused on its female protagonist all the way to the end, and if you are not delighted by the utterly besotted looks murder general serves up five times per episode, I don't know what to do with you.

[spamgyu]

rating and how long i would date svt based on mine and their birth chart bc they the hell not

my sun: scorpio / my moon: aries

(disclaimer this is done in pure fun and based on my interactions/dating history with the signs— dont fight me)

seungcheol — sun: leo / moon: capricorn

7/10 - 9 months

we're both stubborn and tbh i'd probably want to put him in a box and shake it really hard 3 months into dating

also as a scorpio... i am possessive and god........ a leo wanting attention??? from everyone??? god i am not ur strongest soldier

we'd be good for a bit but im crazy so

jeonghan — sun: libra / moon: aquarius

2/10 - 1 week

1 week bc he'll get bored and get the ick

my scorpio ass would love bomb him and he'd be over it after a week

also libras are too independent and just do whatever they want and they run away when someone likes them back so yeah hard pass

joshua — sun: capricorn / moon: taurus

9/10 - honestly maybe a year??? if he wasn't resident ms. bitch maybe i'd marry him...

okay honestly..... caps and taurus are actually a great match for scorps

BUT i have such horrible experiences with capricorns who put their EVERRYTHING first over their significant others and taurus men who ARE SO STUBBORN so...... minus one point

not zodiac sign but he's an only child...... that's too much for me.

jun — sun: gemini / moon: aries

0/10 - 1 day

i would think he's cute and maybe i can get one flirty interaction in.... maybe

when it comes to romantic relationships i stay away from geminis... they are the worst.... AND WITH AN ARIES MOON??

baby ur fine as hell but i might actually throw up bc with my aries moon .... girl if we fight.... yeah no

hoshi — sun: gemini / moon: gemini

-1000000/10 - no

get this man away from me

wonwoo — sun: cancer / moon: leo

3/10 - 3 months

HAHAHAHA

that pretty face disguising how crazy he is

like first of all the worst water sign to ever exist

second of all..... stubborn, passive aggressive, holds grudges.......

it would be good for like 2 months and then we have a fight and it will be the same fight we'll have over and over again bye

we're literally too much alike with our rising except as a scorpio im not AS sensitive idk i think two water signs will just be a fucking mess

woozi — sun: sagittarius / moon: aries

2/10 - 1 month

not just a sag but a sag CUSP?? yeah no

he seems like a great guy friend but no thanks im good luv xoxo

i think we would date for like a month but both of us have horrible commitment issues so...............

seokmin — sun: aquarius / moon: cancer

7/10 - 2 years??

maybe he'll be like a really good match??

idk bc he's an aquarius and they have commitment issues too.... but that cancer moon..... i feel like it would cancel out?? bc cancers are commited??

out of all the signs i have never dated an aquarius but one of my guy friends is an aquarius and he stresses me tf out when it comes to his love life so idk man......

mingyu — sun: aries / moon: pisces

10/10 - married with two kids, a boy and a girl. we just put a downpayment for a house in the hills. we're doing great

i MAY be biased just bc he has a very similar chart to my bf and if u read backburner he uh... he's my easy love.

he's also very much similar to my bf and when i tell you we have only fought once since we started dating......

and idk our sun and moon are at complete opposite so ??? idk guys maybe i'll dm him

anyways....

minghao — sun: scorpio / moon: aquarius

8/10 - not a single chance

8 only bc we may not date but GOD i know he would be that guy i flirt with just for validation LMFAOOOOO

like he got the two signs with commitment issues i know it wont happen

i feel like he would be a fun situationship pure toxicity involved lmfaoooo

anyways that says a lot about me, a scorpio woman

seungkwan — sun: capricorn / moon: virgo

10/10 - probably married to him if he wasn't a top contender for the title of resident ms. bitch

out of all the charts.... i think relationship wise he would be v compatible with me..........

but also i love virgos so ???

but ,...... a capricorn???? idk same issues with shua, ms. bitch and all.

vernon — sun: aquarius / moon: scorpio

4/10 - not a single chance

the way his sun and moon is minghao's but reversed

he'd be fun to like flirt with maybe???? literally same as minghao but he won't be toxic... but also idk??? that scorp moon tells me otherwise

4 only bc i know he and i would be on each other's roster but never date

more of like yeah we kissed when we were drunk but eh...

dino — sun: aquarius / moon: leo

3/10 - no

not a single thing in common

.... at all

the way we wouldn't even look at each other

...... he's fine as hell but lmfaooooo no

we'd be friends who kinda flirt but only bc his sign is very warm to people and kind in general and scorps flirt for fun so i'd take his kindness and just run with it lksfdjsldfjkf

and his leo moon would love the attention but

yeah no.

[neopuppy]

don't know how to say this but I do agree jaemin just looks perfect.. And it was before I even started reading fics he kinda gave me manipulator vibes idk.. He has definitely used his looks and words in his favor at least once in his life ( I too would have done the same if in his place) they all try to maintain the perfect green flag image but we all know reality is by far from it... Anyways sorry for bringing practical stuff to a place where we are supposed to be in fiction

well yeah I don’t want to change anyones opinions or feelings on him or anyone else! at the end of the day they are idols doing their job and we are JUST fans!!! so it’s REALLY not that deep and I can’t tell you anything about that guy or my biases aside from what we see which is fact: he is a VERY beautiful man

like he’s the type that can walk into a room and make every woman go silent bc you have to stop and take in how gorgeous he is. there’s no way anyone can receive that type of attention and not have a bit🤏 of a complex, it is simply human nature. we should all know that if you stroke a mans ego too much…..he’ll rly run with that shit.

as an outsider who simply enjoys observing people, I think it’s safe and not overstepping to assume that he’s very confident and in return wants someone who matches up to his level. first of all… have you seen that head of hair on him? men with full thick hairlines have a different type of self assurance lmao(especially with how popular surgical hairlines have become in kpop🤐🤐🤐 and before anyone asks I’m not speaking on anyone in nct!!!)

do I think he’s a great person? WELL, NO! because I don’t think that about anyone that I do not know personally. I believe celebrities have proven time and time AND time again that we should not worship them nor put them on a pedestal because they will always disappoint.

this includes idols, just this week Hyuna for example… I don’t buy into the kpop image of perfection. I enjoy the music firstly and then look for a fav member from there bc we all want a fav🤷🏻‍♀️ but yeah I just dont think its that deep. I am a fic blog but maybe thats also why I dont have strong parasocial relationships with my fav idols, bc im actually cool with keeping it fictional, its way more fun this way imo.

I figure I wont be as heart broken or devastated if my favs ever get exposed for being terrible people(or y’know, just human💀 bc who in actuality is that perfect. absolutely no one.) cancel culture, its silly.

I meet awful people all the time, and if theyre good looking even worse. why are we so convinced that celebs who get praised and worshipped every hour of their lives and hold more money/power than most of us would be better than the average person??😅

ESPECIALLY a man! WHEN DID WE START TRUSTING MEN?😭😭

[raging-psycho]

She’s Mine(Part One)

Seonghwa x reader

Yandere/mafia au

Tw: cussing, blood and gore, explosions. Don’t read if you can’t handle a bit of gore. Oh and changing pov (idk if that counts) also not proofread.

Summary: Seonghwa is the second in command of the mafia group Ateez. Everything was going great for him, he didn’t need anything more or less, but that changes when he sees her. He has to have her, she’s his.

Main Masterlist

Want more? Request here

I fixed my dress for what seemed like the 100th time. My friend dragged me out to this charity event and I promised I’d join her, but now she’s busing herself on all the men in the room. I’m sitting by myself at the bar trying to kill as much time as possible, but unbeknownst to me, something more sinister is going on.

…

Seonghwa was scanning the room. There were people interacting and sharing small talk on the main floor. All their conversations seemed anything but pleasant. There were people sitting at their tables enjoying their overpriced meals. The waiters and waitresses were trying to look as elegant as possible. The people at the bar were trying to hide their boredom. And that woman in the black sequin dress looked divine. Wait. Who is she? I’ve never seen her before.

I started making my way over to her. The closer I got the more I could see her features. Beautiful (y/h/c) hair, that matched perfectly with her (y/e/c) eyes. I just have to get closer. I have to have her.

“Seonghwa”

“Fuck”, I muttered under my breath.

“We have a reputation to uphold”

“Cut the smirk Joong. I’m getting to it.” I could since that stupid grin plastered across Hongjoongs face as he watched me from the snack bar.

A familiar face flashed across my vision as I saw the logo skz. Seungmin. One of the members of the gang we’re trying to stop tonight. And then there’s Kai from TXT on the opposite side of the room. But her.. no time for that now.

“San. I want you to keep note of the girl at the bar. I want to take her with this when we’re done. Oh and I have eyes on them.”

“Maybe you should’ve started with that.” Count on Wooyoung to be sassy.

If we don’t stop this group tonight, it could spell the end for Ateez. We’re not very popular among other groups, probably because we’re labeled as the worst, which is a compliment. Everyone is scared of us, but I love it that way. But the audacity of trying to join forces to stop us. These bastards should know better.

“They’re heading to the back room” Yunho chimed in.

“I’m on it”

I followed Kai and Seungmin. They were trying to be discreet, but man they suck. Before Kai could enter the back room, I came up right behind him and slipped a chip into his pocket. The chip will send files out to Chan’s computer, making it seem like TXT will be double crossing him. Hence the deal is off and Ateez has nothing to worry about. Just to keep things from going south for us, Yeosang is keeping an eye on the room, and listening to one of the bugs we planted.

While they’re finishing that off, I’m going to go do some research on that pretty (y/h/c).

…

“Hello” said this unfamiliar voice behind me.

“Um hi.”

“You must be new in town.”

“What makes you say that.”

“I know everyone, and I think I’d remember a stunning face like yours.”

I couldn’t help the heat that rose to my cheeks and ears. This man was utterly handsome. His hair and eyes were so dark and so eye catching. He is the definition of beauty.

“I can’t say I’ve heard that one before. I’m y/n.”

“I’m Seonghwa-“

BOOM

Debris flew into my hair, and someone’s finger fell into my drink. My ears were already ringing, but now they were ringing with screams. Maybe they were my screams, or maybe they were a chorus of everyone else’s.

“Y/n! Let’s go! I got you!” Seonghwa sounded all muffled, and I could barely process the touch of his hand in mine as he pulled me away. My brain wasn’t processing, so I just followed him. When we got to the front entrance I saw a creature covered in blood and flames reach for my dress. Before I even realized that creature was a man, I blacked out.

…

The blush that formed on her cheeks just made me want her more. I had to make her mine.

“I can’t say I’ve heard that one before. I’m y/n.”

“I’m Seonghwa-“

BOOM

I was cut off by a massive explosion. Debris went flying everywhere.

“Hong Joong! What happened!”

“I don’t know but the building is coming down! Everyone out now! Abort mission. Abort missi-“ the Comms were cut. I need to rendezvous at the van.

“Y/n! Let’s go! I got you!” She could barely hear me as I reached for her. Her body and mind isn’t used to this like mine is, and that severed finger isn’t helping.

I grab her hand and drag her along with me, she’s stumbling a little and letting out little screams as everyone is scrambling across the floor. When a bloody mess of a man was reaching for her, I knew that was it. She started losing her balance so I picked her up bridal style. Her hair was flowing and bouncing as I ran with her in my arms.

When we made it to the van and I set her in the floorboards, I got weird looks from the rest of my members.

“You brought her!” San shouted.

“Just drive I’ll handle it!”

“Get her out! We don’t need a bitch slowing us down!” Jongho yelled.

“You shut the fuck up! She’s mine and I’m keeping her! Now drive before the cops arrive.”

The van sped out of the parking lot, and didn’t slow down until it got a safe distance away. The members were filled with confusion and misery. How could their mission go so wrong, and why did Seonghwa have to add to it. Let’s just hope she’s useful.

[destinyc1020]

idk if its fair to compare austins future relationships with vanessa. He was with her for a very long time. He grew up basically with her. So the guy didnt really have any thing to compare it to. He hasnt had many relationships. So I wouldnt blame him now for trying diff things. And i think vanessa is more outgoing than kaia with is probably why there was alot of pda lol. I dont have any problems with austin and kaia. I have resting bitch face so i get it lol. It would be nice if she was a couple years older tho. And Maybe Austin doesn’t wanna be papped like that anymore since his work gets more attention now. sorry for the rambling. I understand your frustration tho with nepo babies.

Maybe you're right? 🤷🏾‍♀️ I'm not saying that we should compare ALL of Austin's future relationships to Vanessa, I just think that when you're really into someone, it shows? 👀

I know Austin technically hasn't had a lot of relationships since he typically tends to stay in them for a while lol, and he was with Vanessa for a very looong time.... But his relationship with V just seemed way more genuine to me. And yea, she's more outgoing, so they were the perfect match on that aspect. But he also seemed way more into her and connected and "outgoing" with her as well!

But you might be right, maybe they were so close because supposedly according to fans, Austin and Vanessa met through Ashley Tisdale and started off as friends and basically a FWB situation (maybe because he was several years younger than her when they first hooked up romantically?). So their relationship started off as a casual FWB thing that quickly turned into an actual serious relationship, according to what fans say. So maybe that's why they had so much attraction, chemistry, and friendship with each other that seemed way more genuine? 🤷🏾‍♀️

But even his chemistry with Lily Rose Depp seemed more genuine too imo. He seemed happy that night, and who can forget those kissing pics lol? 👀 🤭They too knew each other for years though before that fling happened, cuz they had worked together on a film years ago. So, maybe he just has better chemistry with women he's known for a little while?

He and Kaia on the other hand just look like they were selected and hand-picked to be in a relationship together because it just looks like it would "fit" right (actor dates model-actress), but to me, they look like they have zero natural chemistry or even just friendship with each other. 👀 Idk, it's just weird. 🥴

It's kinda like the same feeling I got years ago when Tom and Olivia were spotted at the Hyde Park festival. It's like, you visually SEE two people linked together romantically, but your gut is telling you that something is OFF, and that this man isn't as into that woman as you would think he should be. It's like your gut is telling you that something is wrong lol. It's smthg in the body language. I always say that the body doesn't lie. 👀 Same feeling I got when Z was with JE btw. It seemed forced. Like, it didn't have the same vibe that she and Tom had. I can't explain it. But there's nothing wrong with being in a relationship with people and just seeing where it goes. 🤷🏾‍♀️

And hey, if Austin's happy, then great! 😅

[buddiebuffer]

S7 E1 live reactions! (Except I cram it in one post cause I'm lazy)

Big props to whoever put a big dramatic abc logo in the flashback exactly one minute into the first episode airing on abc XD "abc presents a world television premiere" indeed

Damn I missed this show, I'm cracking up already at the therapist being all 🤨 at her movie trauma

Congrats to the national guard pilot pockets being more secure than the plane itself

NGL I really thought that plane would end up hitting the ship

No one from the national guard was able to match the arrival speed of the firefighters??

Oh hey, another Eddie disarming an explosive scene! Throwback 😊

SGAKFHD I looooove the joke of someone giving bumb disarming instructions badly

Awwww I feel a lil bad for pilot Joe but he's the one who volunteered bomb disarming instructions

SGAKFHD THEY JUST RECLINED THE CHAIR?? GREAT WORK CHIM, MY MAN

And there's the parallel between the crew and the case, which is still one of my favorite elements of this show

CHRISTOPHER FIRST DATE PROUD OF HIM

Honeymoon phase to Athena and Bobby was a good transition

Man, Angela Bassett is gorgeous 😍

THE FREEWAY SIGN COUPLE, THATS SO GOOD DGAKDHSHF

So many callbacks in one episode, this is great

The cruise has assigned seating? Wild

👀 what's up with Julian, why is Lola making faces like that

Rent bicycles? On a cruise ship?

Athena's anxiety is so fair, their life is chaotic, easy to be afraid of the slowdown

NGL, a date spreadsheet would be enjoyable to me

CHRIS DHDFFYTHD WHAT DAMN OKAY IM MAD AT HIM ON BEHALF OF THE GIRLS BUT ALSO IMPRESSED SHFKSHDH

"where does Chris get it from" Buck maybe? 👀

EDDIE DRAGGING BUCK INTO THIS PARENTING MOMENT SHFJSHFJS

Oh Athena has that found a case face XD

Okay I saw posts about the AA scene being funny and y'all weren't lying 🤣

Okay sure Eddie ASMR to make her vagina unclench, why not, this show is so fucking weird sometimes

Not a fan of the womanizer Chris logic being that his mom left. What about his grandma? His aunt? The best babysitter? There have been women in his life who didn't leave him. Idk, it's a weird mix of I can see it And it feels like a stretch

👀 what the fuck is happening on this cruise

Chim �� Bobby: list of dates

BOBBY'S LEGS ARE SO WHITE LMAOOO

I really hate Julian's voice

There's no way that's Lola, not with that hat!!!!

ATHENA ALWAYS RIGHT NEVER WRONG LOVE HER SO MUCH

Chimney helping fish a passed out, penis stuck man out of a hot tub and then getting his own hot tub is wild

HOLY SHIT NOT JUST BAD WEATHER ON THE CRUISE BUT A FUCKING RAID OKAY TRULY CENTER OF CHAOS COUPLE

That's where it ends?? Okay fine guess we'll see how all that goes next time lol

[mikuni14]

Be My Favorite Ep 9

I was worried that BMF might lose some quality as soon as Kawi and Piseang became a couple, but again the show didn't disappoint me 💖 Piseang and Kawi have been true to their personalities, they still have GREAT communication, they still talk to each other a lot and Piseang is a relentless flirt 😁

What I also like is that the series has scenes that I objectively don’t like, but which fit the plot and characters' personalities: - Piseang gives Kawi a choice: me or the work/hobby, which isn't cool. But somehow it fits in with Piseang in this moment, who FINALLY got Kawi, though he just thought it would never happen and would selfishly want to keep him by his side for as long as possible. It also matches the behavior of Piseang - A Rich Boy, who has a different view of these things than Kawi - the same differences in the view of money showed up in his offer to buy a phone (also thanks for the nice flashback to Unintentional Love Story😉) - I personally hate this trope when one of the MLs insists on kissing (or sex) and the other keeps rejecting it, acting like the physical aspect of love is, idk, inferior or dirty. I didn't like Kawi's behavior, but on the other hand, his reluctance to kiss in public turned out to be right after what Not did. Besides, Kawi is that kind of a person: he easily gives in to emotions, he panics, he doesn't know how to behave, he always wants to look and act the best and not let anyone down, he has low self-esteem and a lot of anxiety, he is skittish, so maybe he just needs more time for physical closeness. Especially when it's with a man. Piseang has already gone this journey and feels confident, and Kawi has only just discovered his attraction to a man, having been in love with a woman and convinced of his sexual orientation all the time and needs time to adjust. I don't think physical intimacy is a problem for Kawi (after all, they've kissed before), so I decided not to care about it much 😎

I really like that Piseang always confronts Kawi, that he always tells him about his feelings and how Kawi's behavior makes him feel. Because it gives Kawi the opportunity to explain himself and cut off all speculations, false scenarios created in Piseang's head. And I love it, I don't understand why all other shows prefer to create tension and build the plot on misunderstandings, when they can shoot an exciting and interesting scene where the characters confront, where they clash with each other and explain things.

Kawi worrying about others, feeling guilty that he is happy and others are not, is exactly what I expected of him. Plus, he's just a good guy, and it's obvious he'll care. I really liked Piseang's reaction, who did not ignore Kawi's worries and supported him at the moment. Fortunately, the show AGAIN didn't let me down and cut off any possibility of Pear's relationship with Not *shudders*, Pear and Not scene was so good! Actually, the whole Pear’s story in this episode, her private life, was great. I have no idea what Kwan sees in Not. But nice girls falling in love with complete assholes is something I've seen, so it's actually very real. The other thing that I liked is that Piseang and Pear, though angry with Kawi, still manage to stand up for him and act decently. Also Kawi sticking to his decision not to drink? Piseang respecting his decision and supporting him, taking his drink (another nice flashback to The Untamed this time)? How cool is that! 💖

BMF is a VERY, VERY GOOD SERIES ✨

[movedtodykedvonte]

ok you mentioned it what would all of these fools go to karaoke songs be

I was just gonna pick songs from potential voice claims but since I'm not sure of those yet I'll avoid doing that and just go with songs that fit their vibes and themes.

Banner: I'm Not Calling You A Liar by Florence and the Machine. It is melancholy but sweet and allows her to be appreciative of her group which she can't always say in her own verbal words. Not a bad singer but is not a performer so some lyrics that should be belted are soft so as to not stand out, maybe just a tad flat due to shyness. Was most likely urged on stage and has the ads very enthusiastically cheering them on while they lament on how silly and embarrassing it all is. He still had fun in the end tho. 9/10 on the accuracy, 5/10 on voice.

Vidie: I Need a Woman to Love, Kesha Edition.Lloves the theatrics that can be involved in karaoke and wants a song that equally matches that. Was thinking of putting Hermit the Frog on her or Seventeen by Marina but so many pink ads are already Marian coded and it somewhat doesn't fit with Vidie's vibe to me. She like being the center of attention by provocing and this song does it for him. I imagine she more concerned with putting on a show than the lyrics so some things may sound off, just to get a point across or mess with the group... most likely Banner or Spam. 4/10 on voice (no control when singing) and 6/10 on accuracy.

Surv: Life in Her Yet by Rag N' Bone Man. I know you were thinking something really upbeat but I think Surv's singing voice is more suited towards mellow melancholy songs. It's probably Banner's tastes rubbing off on him or Audi's love of sentimental tracks seeping in, but he likes how they feel to sing and likes to direct the songs, especially ones like this one, to his partners. Plus it's nice to be smooth after all the intense peppiness he has to have for commercials and stuff. 7/10 on voice, 10/10 on accuracy.

Audi: Maple by Haley Kioko. This is a song that you don't necessarily need to be a strong or even great singer to sing. I like to think Audi would be playful and adlib with it, giggly like a teenager performing for their high school sweetheart(s). Audi is not a singer by any account and knows it and also doesn't care. He'll belt this song like it's a ballad for the audience and its partners but also like just them having fun. Lots of voice cracks and missed lines, maybe even asking the DJ to play something back so he can "nail it". 3/10 on voice, -100/10 on accuracy.

Spamton: Fear and Delight by the Correspondents. Idk if anyone saw the short animatic with the song but I can imagine a very not sober addispam giving the song all the energy he has and doing it pretty well. He, of course, misses some notes, but it's just the pace, tempo, and vibe he would nail if he had the confidence to do it sober. Plus, he could absolutely ham up the performance for the crowd and the other addisons. 8/10 on accuracy (the glitches mess him up) and 7/10 on voice ( a bit shy like Banner but also the glitches).

Now you may wonder what type of karaoke bar has this variety and range of songs, but you must remember this is the literal internet they live in, I think just about anything that was ever sung is at their disposal.

[tsuki-sennin]

Ohhhhhhhh boy! We have a story on our hands today, Donbura Nation!

Idk about you, but whenever Inoue does his Inoue thing, I get obsessed. This man has a gift for really winding me up, as you've no doubt noticed.

Spoilers, I guess...

-You feel real bad about it, huh Tsuyoshi? It's okay, we might both wind up feeling even worse <3

-Fun fact, before this episode aired, Hirofumi Suzuki and Toutaro (the respective actors of Tsuyoshi and Tsubasa) put up neat little teaser photos. Suzuki's said something along the lines of "You were my best friend, Inuzuka-san", but Toutaro's got mangled by Twitter's into saying something like "Kimono, you were my friend."

-No respect, even from machines.

-Donbura Mutual Support!

-DON'T MAKE IT HAPPEN AGAIN HJKLHJB

-TAROU HJKL:K"

-"Ironically, you fucked up the least last week!"

-...what the fuck was that squeak hkjlhjgk

-"Thank you for doing open heart surgery on me, Don Kaito-san."

-Acting very Tarou!

-...interesting how he's not dying there, maybe he really doesn't believe it.

-"I am one of a kind!"

-Say the two boyfriends with difficulties expressing what they really want but a genuine desire to protect others who'd otherwise shun them.

Sononi: Y'know, I could be wrong, but I don't think imitating your weird boyfriend is a good way to impress him. Sonoza: Bro, c'mon, you were way less creepy when you were just hanging around and acting distant to the only two other people who live here. Sonoi: BEGONE THOTS -Oh shit, they talkin'.

-Aw, they gon' eat.

-...this will end in tragedy.

-Awwww, not in the mood, eh? :(

-The cutest monster.

-...ehhhh, not really a Sun Vulcan fan. Carranger though, that's quality television.

-Hug and kiss the bird man.

-Chef?

-Let's see, police siren... wolf head... Doggie Kruger??? Boss???

-This must be the Tokusou-Ki then. Super Cool. Perfect!

-Don Momotaro!

-Let's go, companions!

-Ahhhhh, Haruka called Sonoza "chief editor"!

-Wow, that doggie got jump!

-Ohhhhh, Tiger Jirou.

-Murasame really fucked you up, huh buddy?

-Had the Dragon to come out for his shift, huh?

-Oooooooh, that looks great.

-Oh, you taught Natsumi how to make this huh?

-This. Do not look good. For Tsubasa Inuzuka.

-Oooogh... this hurts.

-"I bet you tell all the girls that." Ohhhhh fuuuck.

-...hey, Tsubasa, buddy, would you like a bit more champagne? Or whatever the heck this is? Not really a drinker, hehe, but y'know, we oughta relax a little, you're kinda... lookin' a little bit like you're about to go a little stir-crazy.

-Oh, we just

-Goin'

-Okay, bye, see you! Have a nice night!

-Where ya goin, Crane Lady?

-I really have to wonder if the kids and parents who were watching this yesterday in Japan feel just as confused and awkward about this as I do?

-Ah, okay! Crane Lady does fully recognize Tsubasa!

-Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhghhhhh INOUEEEEEEE

-Help

-"Miho-chan?"

-Oh... things are going to go very sour very quick.

-I'm gonna be honest, I did not expect to be so invested in the story of two CGI scrimblo bimbos and the woman they both adore above all else.

-Tanabe!

-That's nice!

-Okay, I think I get the full picture of what's happening now. I think it's possible the Juto's more forceful method of getting Crane Lady to copy Natsumi's appearance affected her a lot more than what happened with Sayama or Mrs. Hanamura, causing an alter to form. I'm, of course, no expert on this subject, but I think that Miho might've formed after Natsumi's no doubt extremely horrible experience of being so violently abducted in front of her beloved fiance and forced to chomp on a paper crane.

-It'd explain why she barely reacted to Tsubasa's presence for so long, even as she was making the dish he taught her right in front of him, but instantly recognized Tsubasa and instantly forgot Tsuyoshi when he said something so personal to Natsumi.

-Hey... Tsuyoshi... are... are you okay? It's okay if you're not, I just want you to think carefully before doing anything rash.

-Sono

-Sonoi, what

-Dude, your styles are not matching up at all.

-...I mean to be fair, Sonoza's one of those guys who probably has like... the one set of fancy clothes that actually fit him. I'd know, I'm one of them.

-Oden. The next Delicious Party PreCure episode revolves around this stuff, so I am absolutely going insane on the inside when that happens.

-Six whole oden chairs.

-Woooooow, okay Shinichi.

-Everybody loves Oden!

-Mmmm... egg. Fish cakes...

-Oden research!

-Devoid

-Egg

-HE ATE IT

-Oh. Oh shit, Sonoi.

-He's back! ...did he leave?

-They're so happy :)

-No haiku for you, macaque man!

-San-juu-ni!

-We were so close to having a normal lunch today, Tarou!

-"Battle first! Friendship later!"

-Dogbird!

-Party Time!

-Here comes the Wasshoi!

-Seiya Seiya Seiya Seiya Seiya!

-Let's gooooo

-Get peached, idiot.

-Big Doggie.

-Let's fuckin' goooo

-Ohhhh, we goin' big big.

-GolDon Onitaijin!

-Pointless!

-NO DON'T YOU DARE

-Oh man, I'd have been so mad at you, Inoue.

-Donbros Utopia!

-We win! Big time!

-Shef

-Sandwich :)

-Oh? What we askin?

-Ohhhh...

-Natsumi Kuramochi.

-Here's the big confrontation.

-Kijino Did Nothing Wrong!

-OHHHHHHH

-OHHHHHH BOI

-OHHHHHHHHH LORD

-GOD DAMN

-Alright, what's the damage?

-OH GODDAMMIT IT'S AUNTIE YURIKO

-Christ, how small IS this town?

-...those are origami cats.

-I am going to die next episode.

-Oh no...

-Oh hey, that's ToQ 1gou's Hyper Mode! Omikoshi Phoenix lets Tarou become-

-Ohhhhhh, wait, nope. Nuh-uh, false alarm! It's just his cape. Sorry folks, didn't mean to alarm you.

[kkusuka]

HELLO HOW DO U FEEL ABOUT MILFS AND DILFS

oh man, here we go-

disclaimer!!- my feelings towards these people have nothing to do with their cannon actions, it is simply based on how much i want them to step on me!

also, if you think i forgot someone, let me know! i am always up for dilf/milf conversations!!!

(all photos are form either the manga or cannon animation<3)

the dilfs<3

there are so many of them so these are just a few, lol

toji fishiguro<3

this man makes my pussy leak.

take a second and look at him, google this man, it send me into shock every time without fail

(ignore the worm that i am most definitely not jealous of, definitely not, never)

idk if it’s the scar on his lip, but HIS SMIRK

ahem, back to the dilf-ing

you can’t tell me he wouldn’t domestically abuse your holes

this man would give you the dicking of your life then let you sleep alone and i’d let him

and if you pretend he didn’t forget his own sons name, he’s a pretty decent guy!

jk, lol

unfortunately, he has some cons:

would not remember your name

cares more about money than you

would leave you in the dust the second something came along

overall, 10/10

would do again, def recommend

(pro tip! if you shift into jjk and get to fuck him, you can convince yourself that you aren’t forever alone!) deff not a personal experience

enji todoroki<3

pls don’t kill me

have you seen his thighs?

and/or his titties?

i’d let him suffocate me in either of them

plus i think he’s grown out of the whole misogynistic/ sexist front so there’s that too

 and there is no way this man is 6’4 and doesn’t have a magnum dong

he’d wreck my pussy them ask me to get palates for him, and i would

and his whole breeding kink thing, definitely into that

overall: 7/10

y’know the five kids thing, that’s a lot

ukai keishin<3

this is understandable

not technically a dilf, but accepted in the community as the technical team father and i’m good with that

how could anyone pass up being fucked on the counter of his shop, exactly, you can’t

in real time, right now, he’s 32

so he definitely has some experience, he knows where the clit is

this man tears you like royalty in public then fuck the shot out of you when you get home

100% dilf material

(not that anyone was doubting it)

overall 9/10

i will never not think about being fucked over the store counter, never

ikkei ukai<3

JUST HEAR ME OUT

he knows where the clit it

and he still has a fair amount of stamina left in him

and he still has muscles, he could throw his grandson onto the floor sooooooo

seems unconventional, but he would be a good sugar daddy, no question

overall, 8/10

he’s definitely really sweet to you too

silver fullbuster<3

look at him

he has big strong arms

and abandoned his son, but that doesn’t matter

he is also a villain, but that doesn’t matter either

this man would dick you to the end of the earth then ask you what’s for dinner

plus, he has earrings which is an immediate pussy getter

and he has a really hot voice, like really really hot

overall: 9/10

he’s a total asshat, but definitely would rearrange my cunny

ryuuji azuma<3

he likes food

doesn’t gain weight

it all goes to his dick, that’s cannon

he also has a hot voice, and i would actually die if he called me a good girl

he’s like 31 so it’s not that bad and he used to be a swimmer so he has a hot body

i could go on and on about how much i want to do this guy

he has a blog to do real dad behavior!

overall: 8/10

i love this man, have a nice day!

the milfs<3

mitsuki bakugo<3

yup

hate to bring this up but: boobs

i feel like she would take good care of me too

she would let you wear the bakugou family matching slippers too

but you do have to deal with katsuki, sooooooooo

overall: 8/10

she’s just a regular, extremely attractive, milf

irene belserion<3

she’s a pretty bad person

but that makes her a perfect mistress, or maybe a dominatrix

lemmie tell you, i would be this woman’s submissive in a heartbeat

plus her thighs are out of this world

no but she would definitely treat you great, no objections

overall 9/10

she’s still sweating vengeance for things that happened 400 years ago but we can move past that

hoshiumi’s mom<3

i literally don’t know what to say about this woman other than i would let her use me as a step stool

thank you

midnight<3

i feel like this is self explanatory too

i would be her fuck toy

plain and simple

this was short, but it said a lot

overall: 10/10

i would let her do literally anything to me

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away