#like there’s a million reasons why this isn’t a good idea even without considering it from an economic standpoint

[mx-misty-eyed]

remembering the time i was complaining about concert tickets being expensive and my former friend casually just said you could just rent an apartment near a venue for $500 a month so you wouldn’t have to pay for tickets

like. average rent in the us is over 1k (not to mention apartments in a big city where all the concert venues are would probably be more). and that’s not even considering, yknow, leases and security deposits and whatnot. your father is a millionaire landlord and you claim to be a socialist (despite saying that all people should work to, yknow, live while defending ur dad evicting an unemployed drug addict). why do you think that you can just casually rent an apartment for $500 so you don’t have to pay for concert tickets.

[sweet-as-an-angel]

MW Reaction to You Leading Them On

Warnings: 18+, Implied Smut, Dark! Modern Warfare, Horny! Modern Warfare, Possessive Behaviour, Territorial Behaviour, Entitled Behaviour, Threatening Behaviour, Incel-Coded! Modern Warfare, Dub-Con Themes, Implied Age Gap (Price), Physical Restraining, Kidnapping, Breaking and Entering, Reader Being Held Hostage, Abuse of Physical Power, Slut Shaming, Pet Names, Profanity, No Pronouns Used For Reader Except You.

Ghost

You’d only just noticed that Ghost stood at the front door of his apartment as if he were guarding it. Perhaps from your attempts at leaving.

You’d tried apologising to him for ‘stringing him along’ as long as you had, but you genuinely believed the two of you were just being friendly, bantering. Nothing more to it.

Obviously, Simon hadn’t seen it that way. You know that now as you watch his hand slip down the front of his sweatpants, palming his erection through them.

“Why don’cha come and show me how sorry you are with that pretty little mouth of yours.” He’s so monotone when he says it that you think he’s joking. His face tells you otherwise.

Of course, you’re speechless. But Simon cares little for your bewilderment. He looks down at you, his eyes narrowing. When you don’t come to him, he steps towards you.

“You know,” he says, coming closer. You step back. “Y’hear about pretty little things like you wandering into a man’s trap. Gettin’ ravaged.”

He’s before you, now, all but chest-to-chest. His eyes are black. Gone is the man you’ve been playfully flirting with these last few months; who you’d tried to push over the edge with your accidental grazes, your unintentional whines, the batting of your eyelashes.

None of that will save you now. His voice carries the weight of a dark star.

“How do you know this isn’t exactly where I want you.”

König

König was eerily silent upon your rejection.

You both stood in his kitchen where, after watching you cook, his heart swelling beyond reason and fathom, König had blurted out that he liked you. A lot.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t return those feelings, only viewing König as a good friend at most.

And now, he stands sentinel over a reaction you can’t possibly predict. Especially as his eyes, usually crinkled with a smile and laughter, seem lighter than usual, as if drained of all their warmth.

“I see,” is all König says. He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He leans back against the kitchen counter, one hand gripping its rounded edge while the other remains free.

“I suppose I only have one option, then.”

König stands to his full height, approaching you, invading your personal space. He’s almost chest-to-chest with you, the bulk of his frame, the size of his biceps becoming glaringly obvious to you now as his shirt struggles to contain him, pulled taut over his musculature.

“I’ll just have to destroy you for any other man you try to whore around with.”

The way in which he says it suggests indifference; as if this is something he’s done or thought about a million times before. He presses you into the counter, hands coming to rest either side of you. He bears down on you, jaw clenched and teeth gritted behind straight lips.

“Then you’ll have no choice but to come limping back to me.”

Soap

“Oh aye, Bonnie? You’re gonna drop me, just like that?”

The look Johnny gives you is one of incredulous disbelief. Yet, in some way, you feel that he already knew you weren’t dedicated to the idea of a relationship with him. Even after all the time you’d spent together, the many nights you’d enjoyed sleeping over at his apartment, the many treats you’d baked for him; these were all things one could easily mistake for friendship.

You’d considered that perhaps tonight hadn’t been the best time to let him down, regardless of how gently you did it, considering it was your weekly movie night and it was his turn to host. 

You wish you’d listened to your inner self. Especially now as Johnny watches you, his eyes silver and sharp like a wolf’s. Without warning, he pounces on you, taking your wrists and planting them into the sofa cushions.

He lies atop you, heavy. Unmoving. Struggling only makes him grunt, a spark flashing in his eye.

“Tell you what,” he proposes. “If y’can still remember yer name by the time I’m through with you,” he presses his hips against yours. You gasp at the feeling of something heavy and pointed catching you. 

“We’ll see how willing y’are to try’n lead me astray.”

Valeria

“I see how it is,” she sighs, arms crossed over her front. She has you tied to a chair in her office, mouth gagged as you try to plead with her through your tears, your eyes. “You thought you could have your cake and eat it too. Thought you could have me while trying to fuck every other bitch that crosses your path.”

You’d dared to try and break things off with Valeria – ‘things’ referring to the one-sided pursual of your love by a certain cartel mommy. But alas, your efforts to repel her had only strengthened her resolve – her need – to have you.

“I’ve dealt with your type before,” she says, bringing her face down to your level. You swear her eyes are black, devoid of the slivers of humanity she still possesses – somewhere. The wrinkle in her nose forecasts disgust, an emotion you know first-hand does not bode well with Valeria.

“I thought you were different. Thought you’d know to shut up and take what’s handed to you – especially when you’ve worked yourself so hard to get it.” Valeria’s hand comes down between your legs, her fingers wrapping around the meat of your thigh. Gripping. Tight.

“Maybe the you I’m looking for is buried in there somewhere.” You can taste the venom in her voice as her scrutinising gaze roves over your bound form. She brings her mouth to your ear, intentional and without haste.

“And all I need to do is fuck it out of you.”

Price

You considered for a moment that John hadn’t actually heard you. What, with his lax demeanour and total lack of acknowledgement of your rejection.

Of course, you were glad he wasn't reacting poorly, but to see him not reacting at all worried you.

“I could have you hidden away somewhere–” Price starts, lighting his cigar and not even looking at you, “–where you’d be for my eyes only.”

The fact that he says it so casually almost has you believing that you’ve misheard him. You blink, wait for him to prove you wrong

Much to your shock, he does nothing to quell your growing anxiety. 

“Bet you’d like that – having the attention of an older man. ‘Specially since you’ve worked so hard to get it.”

Now, he looks at you, with eyes hard and sharp as diamond, half-lidded, a glare that could cut glass.

“Sitting on my lap, wearing those tight little shorts around me. Bet you wanted this to happen, didn’t’ya.”

When you don’t respond, too shocked to even conjure a response that could cover even a fraction of what John had said, he spoke for you.

“Well, Love, got anything to say for yourself?”

He didn’t give you time to answer. He took his legs off his desk and stood, staring at you.

“Better say it now since y’won’t be able to say much by the time I’m done with you.”

Horangi

“I just can’t believe you thought this would end well for you.” Hong-Jin paces before you as you sit on the edge of your bed, a hostage in your own home. Clearly, your rejection of his proposal to become his partner hadn’t ended well, hence the lock on your front door now lay broken, your security system disarmed.

“Especially after all I’ve spent on you, after all I’ve done to you – for you.”

His eyes never left you, staring you down. You tried not to shake, tried not to make a run for the door that, while open and tantalising in its beckoning for your escape, a steel model of a man patrolled it, patrolled you. Had you prisoner.

He stops before you, stands just inches from where your knees are jittering. His hands come down to grip them, giving them a squeeze. If it’s meant to be comforting, his intentions are lost in translation.

“Maybe I wasn’t clear enough with you,” he says. Offers you an out. “Maybe I’ve given you too much freedom.”

At that, he sinks to his knees before you and, without warning, parts your legs. You yelp, trying to pull away, but he keeps you tethered to the spot. His hands shoot to the top of your thighs and you can feel his fingers hooking over the sides of your bed shorts.

You try to reason with him, try to tell him you’ll do whatever he wants, so long as he doesn’t hurt you.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Only want to show you–” he pulls the sides of your shorts down– “what you’re missing.”

Alejandro

The instigator of such a cold reception from Alejandro had been your refusal of a date with him. One which, unbeknownst to you, he’d been planning and psyching himself up for for the past week.

“I see.” Alejandro’s face was stern, thunder clouds rolling over him, making his features dark and pointed. The onset of a storm.

You didn’t know what to say, what to do, as Alejandro stood by your front door, dressed as if he was prepared to take you out right now.

You could see his jaw clench, his eye twitch.

“Is there someone else?” he asks.

You know that getting rejected solely because someone favours another over you is bad, but being rejected without competition is worse. You swallow, unsure of which option will infuriate Alejandro more. When you fail to answer, he sighs.

“You know, I always thought you were smarter than this, (Y/N).” His voice is low and intentional, like a plane flying too close to the ground. You look up, only to find him staring down at you, taking up all the space of your doorway with his hand perched on top of it like it’s nothing.

“But maybe I just have to teach you.”

You try to speak up for yourself, try to ask Alejandro what he’s playing at, but he shushes you. Steps into your home.

“I’ll have you crawling back to me by the night’s end, Cariño.” His words carry a weight that roots you in place. “I promise you that.”

Rodolfo

“Oh, I know,” he says with all the certainty in the world. You’re in his apartment, coming to break the news to him that you can’t accept his boyfriend proposal; the one he’d sent you in a five-page-long love letter.

You blink, befuddled. “You…you know?” Your brow raises. “You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”

Rudy gives a hum, a smiling one. He puts his hands in his pockets, leans against the wall behind him.

“That’s because I know you don’t mean it.” He gives you little time to contemplate his statement before he’s descending upon you like a solar eclipse. “I just needed an excuse to get you somewhere we wouldn’t be…” He searches for the right word. “Disturbed.”

Strange, considering how he was disturbing you right now. He went on.

“I mean, how else was I going to get you here? If I’d just text you, you could shoot me down without coming anywhere near me. But now,” he’s close enough that his hands rest on your arms when he reaches for you, pulling him closer to him. You stumble on uncertain legs.

His grip is soft but you feel trapped, even if Rudy is one of the few people you’d feel comfortable being trapped with.

“Now,” he says, voice low. He pulls you into his chest, hard with years of training.

“I can show you how well I can please you.”

Graves

Graves is far more used to being the player, not the played. So when he discovered that you were, in fact, engaging in what could be construed as promiscuous behaviour with him without the intention of falling for his charms, he went silent. His stare hardened.

He’d never admit it, but he’d actually grown to like you in the time you’d been together. A lot.

“So that’s it?” he says. His voice, usually rounded with his southern charm and honeyed words, strikes you like an arrow, ice and sharp. “We have a good thing goin’ and you’re just gonna throw it all away?”

You’d tried to explain to him that no, that wasn’t what you meant when you’d suggested some time apart. You just wanted to explore other options, is all.

He gives a whiplash, humourless laugh.

“Can tell you’re lyin’ from a mile away. I know you want me, need me.”

When you roll your eyes, ready to back out of the conversation altogether, he’s on you, closing the gap between you and gripping you by your shoulders. He presses you against the wall.

“Fight it all you want, but we both know you’re just gonna come crawlin’ back, so why don’t I make this easy for ya.” His breath is hot against your cheeks, a bull on the prowl. His fingers dig into your shoulders and he gives you an impish smile. One that seems to substitute something much more insidious.

“I’ll have you begging me to fuck you by the end of the night,” he promises. “One way or another, whether you like it or not, m’gonna make you all mine.”

Gaz

Gaz has played the nice guy for far too long. This, he realises as he watches someone try to chat you up from across the bar, only to make the fatal mistake he himself had made: leaving you unattended.

Gaz wasted no time. He slithered through the crowded bar to you, taking your wrist in his hand on his way. He dragged you to a small room, dark and out of the way. He locked the door behind him.

“What was all that about, then.”

He faces away from you, but even through the dim light of the one, flickering light bulb above you, you could see his shoulders heaving, his hands clenched into fists as he awaits your response.

A friend, just some guy – it doesn’t matter. Gaz turns and bears down on you, backing you against the wall. Your hands fly up to his chest to try and quell him, to put some distance between the two of you. His heart pounds and so does yours, albeit for different reasons.

“You’re mine,” he says. He pens you in, his form broad and sculpted by horrors unknown. A hand comes to take your chin between its fingers, jerking your gaze to meet his. “Have I not worked hard enough to be able to have you yet.”

His voice cracks, though he shows no signs of crying. No, Instead he presses his front to yours. Something catches your thigh and you gasp.

“Maybe you just need reminding,” he tells you, “of how much I’ve done for you.” He rolls his hips against you, his hands coming to bolt themselves on the wall behind you, caging you.

“How much I can do.”

Reblog for more content like this! It helps creators like myself tremendously and it is greatly appreciated :-)

Masterlist Masterlist [Continued] Masterpost Modern Warfare AI Masterlist

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[what-even-is-thiss]

Gender has always been a shaky and loose ever changing category. People asking for a strict definition of a man or woman are always going to be unsatisfied with any answer you give them because their definition of man or woman is the only one they want to be true.

Usually men have beards. But not always. Usually women have breasts. But not always. Often in many cultures “men” are the ones who do the fighting. But not always. There are cultures where women fight as well or even form their own warrior or soldier groups. There are men who can’t grow beards. There are women without breasts.

Usually men have a penis. But not always. Usually women have a labia. But not always. Such as it is for every other characteristic associated with one gender or another. And the necessity of one characteristic or another for being considered a man or woman varies greatly between time, culture, and place. Not to mention the vast variety in presentation in physical primary and secondary sex characteristics.

It’s not a thing that can have a solid definition with no exceptions. There are trends in what we perceive in the cultural moment as being necessities for being this or that gender but those general groups of characteristics always have exceptions to them and are prone to change with evolving cultural attitudes from within a society and influence from other outside cultures.

And generally the characteristics that people associate being a “good man” or “good woman” with overlap a significant amount. Like if you ask someone to just sit down and list things there will be something like a 90% overlap or more. Characteristics like caring for others, resilience, being a good listener, intelligence, etc. tend to be valued in people of any gender. The line between being a good man and a good woman is often more aesthetic than any concrete set of actions or physical characteristics.

Why am I a non binary man? There’s a thousand small things I could point to in order to explain it. But none of those reasons fit into a neat one sentence definition. But if you ask a cisgender man why he’s a man like really actually make him explain it, he will likely have a similar level of complexity to his answer if he really thinks about it. If you really grill cisgender people about their own opinions on this stuff they are often surprised to find how many thoughts they actually have about gender and how much more complicated those opinions are than they thought.

Transgender, intersex, queer, and gender nonconforming people are often forced to actually look at gender in a way that cishet people aren’t. It’s easier to see all of the tiny puzzle pieces when none of the ones you were assigned fit in your life and you’ve got to find your own. Gender isn’t one solid mass. It’s a mosaic made out of a lot of tiny tiles that can be swapped out or removed and still generally look like something you recognize.

What’s a woman? Well, that’s a question with a million answers but if you step back you can get a general idea. Kind of like with pointillism. If you stand too close to it and try to pick out one bit that makes a woman a woman you won’t see much. Just a singular splotch of paint. But if you back up a ways you’ll see something there you recognize. And what you see will likely still be up to your own interpretation.

[midsummer-semantics]

under the dancing lights

Small break while I do a million other things but here's *checks calendar* day 16 of @steddieangstyaugust.

Prompt: Halloween

Rating: Teen and Up

Tags: Underage Drinking, Cemeteries, Canon Complaint (question mark???), Ambiguous Ending

divider by @steddiecameraroll-graphics

He isn’t sure why he’s out here. It’s not like there’s anything left, anything calling him to action. The kids are old enough to trick-or-treat without supervision, Robin is with Vicky at a party he didn’t want to third-wheel to, and everyone else…

The point is, traipsing through Roane County cemetery on Halloween night seemed like a good idea when Steve is three Jack and Coke’s deep and unsure of where he fits into the regular world. He bought a dozen flowers on the way here just before the shop closed for the evening, like he couldn’t risk showing up to the cemetery empty-handed for some reason. 

Barb’s grave is overrun with flowers 365 days a year, three years running. Steve leaves several of the carnations in the bundle he carries at the tombstone, begging forgiveness as he does every few months. He hasn’t told Nancy what he does, even when he’s accompanied her a few times. He simply stays silent, lets Nancy grieve, and returns a few weeks later to replace the dead ones when no one is paying attention.

Next is Bob Newby, whom he didn’t know, but the kids did, so he drops a couple of flowers off out of perfunctory expectation.

Billy is the one of the hardest, his grave near Steve’s dad’s grandparents’ joint plot. He tends to spend a little more time here, aware of how the plot feels under his knees, remembering how Max looked as she lifted in the air under Vecna’s influence. Sometimes, Steve comes just to sit, to stare at Billy’s name and curse his existence, even if it brought him Max. Other times, Steve sits and talks, tells his rival how his step-sister is doing, how Steve learned to plant his feet, how regardless of what a piece of shit he was, no one deserved to deal with the bullshit the Upside Down had to offer. He leaves one flower out of obligation, but he doesn’t linger like he normally would.

He leaves a few at Chrissy’s grave, not just because she died, but because he knew her, even vaguely because she was a cheerleader while he was still on the basketball team. And because Eddie would want him to.

He flips off Jason’s grave as he passes it.

Three years — less than, technically— since the first death. Almost three years since Steve took Jonathan’s nail bat and made it his weapon of choice against the monsters that lurk beneath their feet. 

Over half a year since Max went into a coma that doctors — UD connected or otherwise — or Eleven haven't been able to wake her up from. 

Seven months since Eddie Munson was added to the list of people Steve couldn’t save.

The sun has dipped well past the treeline on the edges of the cemetery by the time he reaches Eddie’s grave. There’s no one else around, thankfully, but Steve knows it’s only a matter of time before some idiot high school kids make their way to the cemetery to get trashed and try to see a ghost or fuck near one of the graves. He should know, he was one of those idiot kids not too long ago.

There’s writing on Eddie’s headstone, scrawling letters spelling out MURDERER in red spray paint. One of the R’s is backward, Steve notes, rolling his eyes, a gesture that makes his vision swim a little. It’s not the worst thing that’s been blasted across the headstone since it was placed, but it’s by far the dumbest. He sets the remaining flowers down at his feet as he crouches to examine the writing closer. It’s dry, but it can’t have been there for more than a few days considering he was just here for Eddie’s birthday and had cleaned the last slur himself. He should have brought a bucket and brush instead of the stupid flowers, but he’s a little wobbly from the alcohol and the idea of going back to his car for any reason other than to go home and pass out alone sounds terrible. He’ll come back tomorrow and clean it, plus whatever gets done to it tonight probably. Maybe he should have brought his nail bat. Camped out next to Eddie’s grave and waited to see who exactly is doing it so he can make sure they know never to do it again.

Steve loses his precarious balance, falling back on his ass in the cold, damp grass with a soft “oof!” The flask in his back pocket digs into one cheek, and he shuffles around until he can extract it, then leans back on one hand while the other holds the cool metal.

“Probably stupid to drink more, but I doubt you’d give me shit about it,” Steve says to the grave, holding the flask up like he’s making a toast before closing his eyes and taking a swig. He actually hates whiskey, but it was all that was in the house since it’s his dad’s favorite, and beggars can’t be choosers.

Still, he coughs a bit as the straight liquor burns a path down his throat — he really should have brought some kind of chaser with him, but hindsight and all that — and then lays back on the grass as soon as it clears.

He keeps his eyes closed, breathing through the slight roil in his stomach, and imagines what it would be like if he simply sank into the ground beneath him. Not like if vines were to spring up and drag him under, but if he just slowly melted into the earth the way one feels like they’re melting on a really plush mattress.

It’s only a slight comfort that the grave he’s lying on is empty. Otherwise, his vision of being swallowed by the earth might come with the extra twist of Eddie’s hands dragging him down Evil Dead-style. 

He snorts to himself, his head lolling back and forth a bit. Eddie would have loved that reference, he knows it. He may not have known him for long before. . . before, but he’s sure of it regardless.

After a moment, he brings his hands up to rub the heels into his eyes, waiting until he sees stars before he opens them. The stars continue to blink for a few seconds as his eyes adjust to the inky black sky.

Wait.

No.

There are stars dancing. Little lights swaying to and fro in front of his face, with more popping up around him. He turns his head in awkward directions against the grass, knowing he’s getting foliage in his hair the whole time, watching as more blink to life.

He shuts his eyes again as he sits up, but when he reopens them, they’re still there. It’s too late in the year for fireflies, too cold this late at night at the end of October, and yet the lights dance regardless. 

“Whoa,” he breathes, feeling a distinct sense of deja vu to when he was blitzed out of his mind on Russian truth serum and staring at the ceiling of Starcourt.

One of the stars comes close to him, wisping against his cheek like a tickling feather before flying away. Another does it to his left arm where he’s holding himself up, another to his hip where his shirt has ridden up slightly under his windbreaker. Steve giggles uncontrollably as another brushes his forehead and he turns his head to follow them. There’s another, and another, and another, and as he reaches out to catch one—

“Having a good night, big boy?”

[queenwille]

are you pro-israel/anti-palestine?

hi, first, i appreciate you asking very politely and not assuming things.

i’ll say i’m a zionist, which isn’t an offensive word. i believe in the right of the jewish people for self determination in the form of a jewish state in the land of israel, the promised land of the jewish people.

i find calling israel, the only jewish state in a sea of muslim/christian states, an “ethostate” and mocking the jews for feeling the need in one, as very antisemitic rude and offensive. that goes without mentioning how ignorant and rude it is to claim all jews are white europeans. literally cancelling the whole rich history of the jewish people in the arab countries (which they were mostly chased out of as well).

the need to live within your given or chosen community is such a natural thing, even animals do it. for some reason, when it comes to israel and the jews, it’s wrong. before anyone starts, please let me remind you that within this very large jewish community, there are 2.5 million arabs (mostly muslim, some christian). they share equal rights, a citizenship and an israeli ID/passport. yes, even the sister of the top hamas man (who was arrested this week for having documents and money linked to hamas, a terror organization).

that being said, i am in no shape or form, nor never was i, anti palestine. i think it’s just not as simple as some people who joined the hot trend across the world see it. the state of palestine was never established for many reasons that don’t involve the jewish people. i do mean this when i say i do wish the palestinian people a safe and established land, but it’s simply not that easy. it really isn’t no israel=yes palestine. they have so many other needs other than demolishing the land of israel. their inner conflicts are very much alive to this day (google fatah/hamas conflict), their lack of actual support from neighboring countries and other reasons they have there. they’re really not at a good starting point, but no one ever talks of that. it’s just easier to masturbate to the idea that protesting in favor of demolishing israel and sending +-7,000,000 jews to fuck knows where will be enough.

let me make it clear, the fact that civilians are being killed and hurt breaks my heart. i say this knowing fully well that many took part in the oct7 massacre. generations, on both sides, being brought up with nothing but hate and fear of each other boiled up to this disaster. which is why i find the whole western pro pal movement, spreading fake news and hate and deepening the conflict, as not just offensive, but also very dangerous. for both sides (+diaspora jews). calling hamas freedom fighters and not the terror organization that they are is as dangerous to the palestinians as as it is dangerous to israelis/jews. they are given actual legitimacy for actions that are considered extremist and terror on an international level. yes, they do hide in UN protected facilities, using inocentes as human shields. and when we say the west is next, it’s not just a spicy slogan, it’s not really about the jews, but the western culture.

i am very angry of the way the hostages are being ignored or bluntly canceled (ripping off their posters everywhere). it’s hypocritical and very upsetting. i will also mention that i seriously don’t appreciate using the jewish holocaust and appropriating it’s terms and the well known generational jewish trauma and mocking it.

lastly, i would like to mention that a lot of what’s happening right now around the world just proves the need in a jewish state. being close with an army that’s main goal is protecting its people literally feels safer for jews even under missiles and terror attacks. let me inform you that the main reason that israeli casualties are lower, is the invention of the Iron Dome, operated by the IDF. It has saved thousands of civilian lives since it’s first use. no, it wasn’t hamas’ more humane ways or idk what i read. israel literally spends every last dime to keep it’s people safe, while hamas won’t even let the palestinian people have a safe hospital. instead of mocking our worries and constant feeling of being persecuted and in danger, to the point that a jewish state feels like a life or death matter, maybe try to think what you can do to change that. saying we’re delusional or closing mouths when we claim for antisemitism isn’t helping, and it sure isn’t what’s currently happening in the world and social media.

again, thanks for asking. i have so much more to say and that’s before actually going into current antisemitism or even into october 7th, i just think i’ll stop here for now. i hope this somewhat answers your question.

[the-monkey-ruler]

I want to ask about Houyi, if we assume the suns were bringing pain to humanity, why did the Jade Emperor and the other gods do nothing or not want to? Or couldn't they do anything? Also, Houyi's ending seems a bit tragic to me, but I don't know how many versions there are of the story. That the gods gave him that ending wasn't unfair?

If I had to give a straight answer as to why Houyi had to do it it’s in story reason is that HouYi is meant to be the world’s greatest archer and that’s why he is the one to shoot down the suns, and out of story reason is that if he wasn’t the one to do it, then the story wouldn’t be about Chang’e and Houyi. Sure there could be a million ways about other gods taking down the suns… but now Houyi is irrelevant and has no story anymore. Like I get what you’re trying to say about the same point you have to understand this is folklore, this isn’t like a comic book universe where other gods can just swoop in. There were even contradictions within stories! Hence why you just have to be aware of most of them, and see which ones are most popular that most people ran with.

From what I’ve seen, there were two popular versions of the stories with at least 4 different endings. One being that Houyi and Chang'e were normal humans and that they were given immortal pills as a reward for shooting down the suns, not that they were being punished. And from there, it is whether Chang'e stole the pills all herself OR she was trying to hide the pills from HouYi's jealous rival and she accidentally swallowed them all while hiding them in her mouth. That is more on Chang'e's character and whether she was either a thoughtful wife or not, depends on who is saying it.

But yes another version is that Houyi was tasked to shoot down the sun but he was actually trying to shoot down them ALL! And that is a HORRIBLE idea to shoot all the suns down. His last arrow was stopped by King Yao or Xihe (the sun's mother) to spare at least one of her children before he could shoot them all THAT is what he was punished for. Because while he was tasked to shoot down the sun, killing them all would also lead to humanity's downfall making him a villain. OR That HouYi was ORDERED to shoot all tens suns down and that he ONLY shot the nine. And THAT is what he got in trouble for, for he was actually a hero looking out for humanity and went against an order despite the suns being criminals making him a hero but still punished for his defiance. From there he goes to get the immorality from the Queen Mother but still whether Chang'e was either selfish or trying to protect the pills comes into play.

Those are the popular, two versions but there MORE! Like another version of the story is that after HouYi shot down the suns when he was on earth he actually became the king of his land and then a horrible tyrant. He was so cruel that Chang'e took the first chance she got and swallowed all of the immortal pills to escape his wrath. But without his wife he repented for his sins and tried to win her back but never could reach the moon where she fled for her own safety.

What I'm trying to say here is that... there is a lot of stories about Houyi and not all of them are good. In some stories, he is a guy that was doing his job and was punished for being sent out to kill another goddess's children. In another version, he is a cruel man who rather put the world into darkness for the sake of the hunt. Another is a lost husband who last his wife in tragedy. And another he is a horrible husband that even his own wife tried to escape him and left him on earth. I'm going to be honest, I see more versions of HouYi from the Western Han Dynasty were he was being rewarded with the pills of immorality to come up to heaven to anything else because that is considered what is the most logical in storytelling. And whether Houyi was a bad man or Chang'e was a selfish woman is bounced back and forth from there.

There are a lot of reasons that these stories could have changed over the years and I'm even sure what came first. Perhaps he was an evil man at the start and thus his punishment at the end makes sense, and as time progresses the story makes HouYi more sympathetic as a good man but now the punishment at the end doesn't fit.

Bt if anything this kind of morally grey area can make Houyi a far more interesting character! I think why he and Chang'e's story is still so popular is that it can be changed and seen in so many different ways! Maybe making him the villain, a misunderstood anti-hero, a pure-hearted heart-of-gold sweetheart, there can be so much done with him! I would say that don't feel too beat up by Houyi's story because there are at least seven other versions that either explain why he deserved it and he's a villain or why he went against his order and is a hero. And that is one of the great things about such old folklore is that you can interpret the story how you want to as well. Either way, he is a character in a tragedy love story... so of course he is a tragic character.

Endings:

Mortal and Rewarded, Wife screwed him over

Mortal and Rewarded, Wife and Him were both screwed over

God and Punished, He tried to Overkill

God and Punished, He was Merciful

God and Punished, Wife screwed him over

God and Punished, Wife and Him were both screwed over

Mortal and Reward, Wife ran away from Abuser

God and Punished, Wife ran away from Abuser

https://baike.baidu.hk/item/%E5%90%8E%E7%BE%BF/1504

[laundrybiscuits]

(purify our misfit ways tag | AO3)

Technically speaking, Eddie’s not actually allowed to know any of the stuff he knows about what went down at Starcourt. Robin isn’t even totally sure how much he does know at this point; both she and Steve have completely and without discussion disregarded all the NDAs they’d been strong-armed into signing, when it comes to Eddie, but it’s not like they’ve sat him down and walked him through the night beat-by-beat. 

She hasn’t told Eddie that Steve knows about her, now. She’s not sure why. There’s no one reason that she can point to, she just doesn’t feel ready to have a real conversation about it.

It’s not like Robin to avoid conversations. She’s usually the kind of person who’ll march right up and confront anyone about anything, as soon as she gets the idea in her head. She’s never really understood why other people don’t do that more, honestly—it normally drives her up the wall when people talk around issues and dodge questions.

This is different. It’s not because she’s scared. It just feels too big, like something she can’t see the edge of, looming all the way up to the sky. Every time she starts to think about it, her mind kind of skitters away. She has to think around it, which is getting pretty annoying, actually.

Lately, a lot of things have been feeling really big. She’s so tired of feeling like she’s got all these massive secrets inside her, Russians and monsters and sketchy government agencies and—and the Tammy Thompson thing. It’s gotten so that she doesn’t even feel like she can breathe unless she’s with Steve or Eddie.

She’d thought it was impossible to talk to her parents before, but now she just stares at them across the dinner table and feels like a completely different species. She’s pretty sure kids aren’t supposed to know huge complicated things about the world that their parents don’t, because how would anyone deal with it? How is anyone supposed to live under the roof of people who can walk around not knowing about what’s out there in the dark?

It’s not that she’s scared, she just can’t get herself to believe they know what’s best for her anymore. This isn’t some stupid teenage rebellion, she’s signed official government documents that prove she knows more than they do about what goes on in Hawkins.

So it makes sense, how she only really feels okay when she’s around the two people who know all the things she has to remember not to let slip around everyone else. There’s a line around their little three-person pack, an us-and-them kind of line, and now she finally understands why all the high schoolers she knows are so obsessed with being in cliques: being part of an incontrovertible us means it doesn’t matter how many other groups you’re not in, because you know who your people are. You’ve got a steady place to stand in the world, when you’re part of an us.

She’d briefly considered feeling bad about dragging Eddie into all of this, but it’s not like they’d really had any other option. She swears Eddie can read minds sometimes, with the way he just looks at her and knows what she’s feeling. There’s no way she’d have been able to keep something like this from him for long, and if it just so happened that telling him would give her another safe harbor in Hawkins, so much the better.

Robin lies to her parents all the time now. She never used to, but she never had a good reason to before. But she knows that no matter how much they like to talk about their wild times in the sixties, they would never in a million years let her sleep in Eddie’s bed like she’s been doing lately. She just sneaks out as soon as she hears their bedroom door click shut and bikes over; by now, Eddie knows to expect her. He’s usually up anyway, and when he’s not, he’ll leave the door unlocked so she can come right in and shove at his shoulder until he wakes up enough to move over so she can get under the blanket with him.

She doesn’t go to Steve. For one thing, his parents are around a lot more than Eddie’s uncle is; for another, Steve’s house is much farther than Forest Hills, and Robin doesn’t love the idea of biking for like an hour in the middle of the night. Not now that she knows about what’s out there. She’s not scared, she’s just being practical.

Steve finds out about it when Eddie swings by to visit them at Family Video for the first time. It’s their third shift there ever, and Robin’s already bored out of her mind. It’s not like it takes an abundance of intellect or effort to shelve returns and dust the shelves.

Not that she’s complaining, at all, because this job is a pretty big step up from Scoops—no uniform, just a vest, and no food safety protocols to follow. Plus, they get to put a movie on in the background, even if Steve’s taste is totally pedestrian. She’s working on getting him to appreciate more of her favorites, but it’s been an uphill climb. To be fair, most of her efforts have revolved around pointing out how hot the actresses are. It’s not very subtle.

Robin’s contemplating whether she can sell him on Les Demoiselles de Rochefort when the bell above the door jangles, and Eddie saunters in.

“M’lord, m’lady,” he says, bowing deeply. The one other customer in the store, some little old lady, gives him a withering side-eye. Eddie’s so embarrassing sometimes. She doesn’t bother hiding her fond grin as she leans her elbows on the counter.

“Welcome to Family Video,” she sings out. “Can we interest you in some of our very finest John Hughes films?”

Eddie clutches at his chest, faking a swoon. “You always know the way to my heart, Buckley. But, uh, I just wanted to swing by and let you know that Wayne’ll be in tonight. Just in case.”

“In case of what?” Steve butts in, looking confused.

Eddie looks a little panicked, and Robin really needs to find a way to tell him that Steve already knows about her.

“Um,” says Eddie. “In case…there’s…”

Robin sighs and rescues him. It feels wrong to lie to Steve anyway; it feels like violating the sanctity of their little circle. “Sometimes I spend the night at Eddie’s. It’s just easier than being around my parents, with all the…” She waves her hand, meaning all the nightmares come to life in Hawkins.

“Oh,” says Steve. He’s still frowning. “Wait, doesn’t Eddie live in the trailer park? Is that safe?”

Robin shrugs. “Safe as anywhere, I guess.”

“Okay, but…” Steve glances at Robin. “Is that…the best idea?”

She stares at him, confused. He stares back.

Eddie hauls himself up to sit cross-legged on the counter, glancing between them.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” Steve says, but Robin’s pretty sure he’s just saying it on autopilot. They’re both intimately familiar with how Eddie will scale pretty much any available structure whenever he gets even a little bit bored.

Eddie tilts his head, regarding Steve. “You know it’s not like…she’s not spending the night, spending the night, you know? It’s just trauma stuff, Harrington.” He pauses. “You’re welcome anytime, too,” he says. His voice is quiet, not teasing. Honest and unadorned, in a way Robin’s only ever heard him get with the two of them.

Eddie’s been treating both of them a little gingerly ever since Starcourt. Robin doesn’t mind it as much as she’d have guessed; she has to pretend like nothing reality-shattering ever happened to her at Starcourt Mall with everyone else, but Eddie knows better. If that means he acts like they’re skittish baby bunnies sometimes, she doesn’t mind too much.

Steve never seems to know what to do with himself whenever it happens, though. Like now: he looks at Eddie and then looks away immediately, crossing his arms and uncrossing them again.

Steve never seems to know what to do with himself whenever it happens, though. Like now: he looks at Eddie and then looks away immediately, crossing his arms and uncrossing them again.

“I’m good,” Steve says. “Don’t worry about it, man.”

“Okay. Offer stands.” Eddie hops down from the counter. “Probably not tonight, though. Like I said, Wayne’s home, and I doubt you’re as good at wriggling through windows as Robin is.”

“Uh, are we talking about the same Robin Buckley here? The one who can’t walk halfway across the store without knocking over at least two display racks?” Steve snorts.

“Excuse you, I am not the one who dumped the entire contents of the cash register on the floor yesterday!” Robin says, offended.

“That’s not—I just pushed the wrong button! The latch must’ve been broken! Anyway, that’s different. I’m saying, I could totally get through any window way better than you can, because I’m, like, athletic and stuff. I’ve got moves.”

“Sure you do, Steve.” Eddie smirks, glancing over at Robin. “A thousand pardons; I stand corrected. Long as you can make it through the window, you’re welcome to come by my humble abode any day you like.”

[nedjemetsenen]

Why do Fanfic writers generally hate “constructive” criticism?

This is a topic that comes across my dash a couple times a month, but those posts generally focus on how unsolicited criticism is rude. Today, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the ways that it’s also generally useless even if you’re trying to be helpful. To do this, I will be using examples from my own comment section, but please do not seek those comments out. This post is about informing, not about creating a hate mob.

Issue One: You don't know if your criticism is already known

No story is perfect. There will always be flaws. Sometimes you find a flaw that the author can improve on. Sometimes you pick up on something that the author accepted as a flaw during the writing process for whatever reason. It may have been because they're writing for fun. It may have been because they liked the flawed version of the story better than the story without the flaw. It may be because they genuinely didn't know how to fix it, but still wanted to tell the story flaw and all.

To give an example of this, here’s an excerpt from a truly lovely comment where the person also tried to give some helpful feedback:

you did a fantastic job with the characters you altered to fit the story. They were mostly rounded and felt like whole people instead of cardboard cut-outs. However, this made the characters that you didn't change feel very flat. [List of characters] often felt like window dressing, like they were included solely because they were part of the original show.

This is exactly why those characters showed up in that fic and the issue of them being window dressing isn’t something that I introduced. It’s a flaw in the original work. To fix this issue, I would have cut these characters or merged them into one character. But this wasn’t original fiction. It was fanfiction, so I decided to sacrifice quality for the sake of honoring the source as it felt wrong to remove these guys when they’re a classic part of the roster. I also actively chose to not develop them more as it would have killed the pacing and added nothing to the story I was trying to tell. There are characters that I arguably should have given more screen time to in that fic, but these were not those characters.

Issue Two: Timeliness

Unless the story is newly published, you have no idea if your criticism is still useful. Even if it is newly published, how long has the fic been going for? Are you critiquing a chapter from 3 years ago or last week? Unless it’s the latest chapter, you don’t know. Even if it is the latest chapter, you don’t know when it was written. Sometimes people find an old work of theirs and just post it without editing because they don’t want to edit and they know people will enjoy the story as-is. Sometimes people write the whole fic and then post it week by week while they work on the next one.

I recently had someone ask me for some feedback on a section of dialogue and I pointed out an area for potential improvement. The person who asked for the feedback has read some of my stuff and pointed out that I’d used a similar technique in a fic and they were absolutely correct. I had. But the fic was a few years old and I simply haven’t yet taken the time to go back and edit all 100k+ of it. I write at least a quarter of a million words every year and that means that I’m always learning. It’s incredibly rare for me to reread an old piece of mine without finding something to edit. It won’t always be something major, but it’s there. Waiting. Taunting me.

Along similar lines, if you're pointing out a flaw that's specific to the story, I'm not sure what you're expecting to happen next. While some writers go back and edit old works (I certainly have), a lot of writers consider older works done and prefer to focus on new ones.

Issue Three: Most people are shockingly bad at giving good constructive criticism.

Constructive criticism is a skill that you have to learn and practice. It’s also genuinely difficult to learn as it's the difference between helping a person tell the story that you want to read and helping them tell the best version of the story that they want to tell. The first is not good crit, but it is the crit that most people give.

There are times when I’ll beta for a fic and think “that character would never do that”, but that’s terrible feedback because I’m imposing my version of the character over the author’s take on the character and they’re not trying to tell a story with my headcanons. They’re using theirs and my job as an editor/beta is to accept that and help them tell their story as best they can.

I've also been given feedback like this. Here’s an excerpt from a comment where someone pointed out something that they didn’t like in one of my fics:

it's cute to see him like this once in a while but he's a grown man and "adorable" feels a little out of place in this situation

This is utterly useless feedback and I will die on that hill. In my opinion, I wrote this character perfectly because this is how I see him. It’s my headcanon and the version of him that you'll see in all of my fics. What’s funny is that I actually think that I got the female lead in this story a bit wrong. I should have toned her down, but this was early in my journey to learn these characters and then we’re back to issue two.

Final Thoughts

If an author asks for constructive criticism, then absolutely feel free to give it to them, but if you've ever wondered why most authors don't, the above is probably why. It's why I only welcome grammatical corrections and historical/cultural accuracy corrections on my own fics. Those are the only comments that I've ever found useful.

There are times when I seek out other types of feedback. I just don't get it from random readers after the story is already published. I get it from select individuals during the writing process and that's the feedback process favored by most writers as it's the one that's most likely to lead to improvement.

If you ever come across a fic that you love, but you feel like it could use an editor, my advice is to leave a comment saying how much you love the story and then offer to beta read (the fandom word for an editor. No I don't know why fandom has a different definition for that word than the definition used in the publishing industry. It just is what it is.) And if you don't want to take the time to beta for someone, that's okay! But if you don't want to make the massive time commitment to truly help the person improve, then maybe don't give unsolicited feedback that's more likely to make them stop writing altogether? I promise you, that person will improve on their own just by writing more. I certainly did! If you read the fanfic that I wrote when I was 13, you'd be shocked by how bad it is compared to my current stuff.

I personally consider that fact a source of pride.

[honorarycassowary]

In preparation for Oppenheimer’s release in a couple of weeks, I’ve been doing some reading about the Manhattan Proejct. Largely the focus of this has been a man I only learned about last summer: Józef Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project early over moral objections. Here’s a quick list of things I’ve read and found thought-provoking:

1. The Strangest Dream, a documentary film by the National Film Board of Canada. This places Rotblat’s life into context much more thoroughly than the pieces he authored himself. To properly understand why he would volunteer to build an atomic bomb, you have to know that he was a Polish Jew and was unable to extract his wife and family to the UK after the German invasion started.

2. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published a special issue on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Rotblat’s essay begins on page 9, but really the whole thing at least through the essay about Truman should be read to give context to the Manhattan Project era and the reasoning behind the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Oppenheimer apparently thought [the poisoning of food with radioactive strontium] worthy of consideration, and asked Fermi whether he could produce the strontium without letting too many people into the secret. He went on: "I think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men." I am sure that in peacetime these same scientists would have viewed such a plan as barbaric; they would not have contemplated it even for a moment. Yet during the war it was considered quite seriously and, I presume, abandoned only because it was technically infeasible.

3. An interview from Voices of the Manhattan Project, which is highly focused on Rotblat’s work in Los Alamos itself. It has

But immediately [Oppenheimer] struck me as a person, very quick, highly intelligent. I think he had good information. I noticed straightaway that he can take things in almost instantaneously, and he gets the grasp.  If you come to him with an idea, he would immediately see it as a major part of this important thing. [...] You could then present it in a way which is much better than the original was. From this point, he is a genius. I am not surprised that he managed to be such a good director for the laboratory. This is one quality which is most important in a place like Los Alamos, where you had so many people with original ideas, but not always capable to present them in a coherent form. He really could master this.

4. Leaving the Bomb Project, an interview self-explanatory in topic.

[General Leslie Groves] said, "You, of course you realize that the main purpose of this project is to subdue the Russians, our chief enemy." Now this was a shock to me, because uh...I always thought that the main idea of the project it was to develop the bomb, if need be, uh...to prevent a Nazi victory. And now I found that this was not. That the main aim...the main aim was that after the war was over -- by that time it looked as if it will be over even before the project is finished -- then I guess, we'll then be able to use this...the atom bomb, as a means of political pressure or whatever else or maybe even military pressure against the Russians.

5. Not authored by or about Rotblat, but relevant to him is Nathan J. Robinson’s essay How To Justify Hiroshima dissecting arguments that treat the bombing as self-evidently justified. (Also interesting to compare/contrast this to the essays in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.)

That isn’t to exclude the possibility of making the “better than the alternative” argument. It is merely to say that in order to make an argument justifying the obliteration of 100,000 civilians, slight discomfort will not do. If the utilitarian case is ever to be made, it must be made through tears. 

[vintage-bentley]

The timeline doesn’t make sense to me at all. It is implied that they’ve known each other for millions of years and Aziraphale says it can be like the old times, probably referring to that. However, in the opening scene, crowley doesn’t pay him any mind at all, and is quite dismissive of him seemingly caught up in his own things as a higher ranking Angel. So I don’t see why aziraphale would want it to be like then, unless there’s more to that story. But he also adds “only better” which probably means something like back then they weren’t really together or knew each other, but now they can be which will make it better. I get the impression that aziraphale might not recognise crowley in Eden as the Angel he talked to before for some reason. Or perhaps they only spoke fleetingly like that for millions of years before those 6000. It’s unclear to me.

Anyway, as for Gabriel and beelzebub, even though I think it came totally out of left field, I think the point was kind of….both of these characters were shown to not really care for anything. Or have almost disdain for most thing, especially human things like falling in love. So even though Gabriel didn’t redeem himself, he still showed aziraphale that even someone like Gabriel (and beelzebub) can change for the better in the sense of caring about somebody other than themself and their job with the power of love or whatever. So perhaps that influenced his wish to “reform” heaven. Like if it’s possible for Gabriel to care about someone other than himself, then maybe aziraphale can make heaven ok too, but heaven is a much bigger task than just Gabriel

I really think that part of the reason Aziraphale is so stuck on the idea of angel Crowley, is because Crowley did look happier then. Imagine that somebody you deeply care about is grinning and squealing in complete and utter joy, then as time goes on they become more jaded and grumpy. I’m sure that part of you would assume that things were better before for them. Now combine this with the fact that Aziraphale has been brainwashed by Heaven for thousands of years to believe that being a demon is the worst, most miserable, most terrible fate anyone could have.

I think that to him, Crowley being an angel again means Crowley being truly happy again. Being with his stars again. Being able to be Good without restriction. Only this time it will be better, because they’ll be together (unlike last time, where they hardly knew each other).

When I think about it that way, it makes perfect sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if Crowley’s claim that they’ve talked for “millions of years” is an exaggeration, because in that scene he’s stressed and annoyed and deflecting. He’s not really in the mood to be giving accurate facts about the relationship he has no interest in opening up about to these two people he barely knows.

I agree with you about Gabriel and Beez, it was most likely to show the ~power of love~ by showing that the two most selfish terrible beings could choose love over everything else. And you make a really good point about it giving Aziraphale hope that anything/anyone can be redeemed no matter how hard of a task it seems to be.

I just really hate that a straight couple had to take centre stage and get the romance for this season. It’s even worse that so many people are pretending it isn’t a straight couple…despite the ship benefitting from heterosexuality and heteronormativity, considering how many homophobes are saying “A/C came out of nowhere, they were just really good friends. Why can’t men be friends anymore? But B/G made complete sense to me!”.

So like. Is the Message of the ship worth the massive headache they’ve brought upon me via idiot fans? Nah. Not at all lmao.

[infinitethree]

There are times that, actually, Aster kind of hates most of his life.

One of the biggest reasons for that is that it can feel hard to breathe among the main population of the server. Too many of them look at him like…

Well, they look at him like he’s something to idolize. Something to put up on a pedestal and marvel and/or swoon over.

The idea of being together with basically anyone makes his skin crawl. He already feels a hell of a lot like he’s an imposter in the majority of situations; the last thing he wants or needs is to have to lie to a significant other.

Plus he’s just. Aggressively not interested.

The little chat he had with Theo after he’d gotten the earrings from the eldest and youngest Was-Taken brothers, in which they commiserated over how little they wanted to touch any of that…the years have only made that more and more true.

Aster is, ultimately, a fairly public figure. He also is carrying the burden of multiple secrets that could shatter the server– secrets that he has to hide from those he holds dearest.

So, when he wants to actually be able to breathe somewhere truly private…he retreats to the Council HQ.

The fancy rooms no longer bother him on a visceral level. Maybe it’s because they’re so familiar now– a sign of absolute safety.

…Or, almost absolute. There’s still the risk of Daz showing up to be a fuckin’ bastard.

Less so, lately. Daz has been more than a little preoccupied with teaching Lee and dealing with all of the fuckery surrounding the Scribe.

One of their rewards for their first deal was what, at first glance, looks to be a Magic 8 Ball.

It technically is. But it’s also so much more than that.

It’s the way that they can ask a questions to the Scribe. There are limitations, which Aster is pretty sure are listed on a piece of paper taped in the back of an innocuous book on the bookshelf in the potions room.

He hasn’t bothered to keep track of them. Being smart about this kind of thing isn’t his forte. He’s here to be brawn, and he’s very, very good at that part.

Not that he’s stupid. He’s just…very aware that Daz can, does, and will run circles around him.

Again, though; the bastard has been busy lately.

…It’s weird that it’s been so quiet without that jackass deliberately antagonizing him. Keeps making him feel like things are getting dangerous.

Uhg. He glares up at the ceiling of the main room from his place flopped on the couch. He doesn’t like that he’s not really even able to find peace here anymore.

Especially because the damn Observers are here. They’re not asking anything, though, so Aster sure as fuck isn’t going to offer them more than he’s obligated to.

Well isn’t this just pathetic!

Prime fucking damnit, that’s the last entity he wants to hear from. He’d take a million weird and invasive Observer questions over the Scribe deciding to focus their attention on him.

Oh, don’t look so sour. Due to some recent events– don’t worry about it– I’ve realized that maybe you’re not as much of a lame stick in the mud as I thought!

“My face and voice are broken. I can’t not look like this,” he points out, still not fully used to having to curb his snark for literally anyone.

Smartass. Look, do you want a deal or not?

His eyes narrow. Not bothering to get up from his relatively comfy pose, he tells the horrible entity likely capable of destroying everything he knows and loves, “Aren’t you supposed to give me reasons why I should do it? Isn’t that your whole thing– make me an offer I can’t refuse?” There’s a beat, and he tacks on, “Y’know, like the Devi?”

Laughter comes from the Scribe. Oh, man, this is why you’ve caught my eye! Not a lot of people would sass me. Even the brains of your operation is scared shitless, but you…see, I know you’re not stupid enough that you think it’s a good idea. You’re just…that kinda person. 

Almost against his will, Aster has learned to read tone well enough to get the impression that they don’t consider his boldness a bad thing.

Weird! Usually gods or whatever the fuck the Scribe is are touchy about respect. They certainly seemed to dislike when Daz got too mouthy, after all.

They continue, You’re right, though. So, Stardust, I know something has gnawed at you for a long time now. 

He does not take the obvious bait, and instead patiently lets them draw the suspense out for their reveal.

Don’t you want to know more about that bastard that dragged you into this mess? I mean, really– he doesn’t just have a few cards he’s holding back, he’s got a whole fucking deck he’s hiding! 

He is curious, but at the same time…it’s a horrible, almost violent violation of Daz’s privacy.

Daz has kept a lot of things secret, presumably for a reason. Going to someone else to pry his life open is liable to result in a nasty situation that Aster can’t possibly recover from.

Oh, and Lee wouldn’t forgive him. There’s that, too.

But despite how much he dislikes Daz as a person, he liked the idea of ripping his defenses away even less.

That armor is pretty much the only thing standing between Daz and a total mental breakdown. Daz going off the deep end is pretty much the worst-case scenario for the entire server.

Still, he’s not so dumb that he turns it down right away. “That’s an interesting proposal. What is it that you want from me?”

A new perspective. He’s hogging the spotlight and it’s getting on my nerves. Sure, yeah, he’s– interesting and nuanced and whatever. But variety is the spice of life, and you have proven to be capable of quite a bit of spice!

None of that makes much sense to him. Beyond the metaphor, he’s pretty sure the implication is that they’re all just entertainment and Daz is grating on them by now.

He has no fucking clue what they mean by him being spicy, though.

“That’s your motive, not what I would have to do,” he sighs.

Their voice is flatter this time. Impatient little shit, huh? Fine. Make things interesting, same task as that bastard. I want a reason to turn the camera away from him for once. Even if he has to be in the fucking scene, I’ll accept a change in POV. 

That makes him sit up. “Camera? Are you recording us?!” In a manner of speaking. Don’t look so surprised, it’s obvious! And, look– there’s a big secret that’s hovering over Sanctuary. You find that out, and I’ll give you a VIP tour of what’s really going on.

“I don’t–” And a wish! No rules, no limits. A single, solitary wish that you can use to get anything you can imagine. Reality will bend to your will. I’ll even let you trade it, if such a weighty prize doesn’t feel right in your own hands.

He swallows.

He doesn’t want the rest of it, especially not learning more about Daz, but…

A wish, huh?

Considering it makes him feel a bit sick, but he asks, “...What are the limits. Not the wish– you said that already. I mean the rest. What am I not allowed to do?”

As long as you give me something interesting, I don’t care what it is or how you do it.

“And…what are the consequences if I can’t pull it off?”

There’s a low, ominous laugh. You’ll forget this ever happened and I’ll make your life worse. 

There aren’t a lot of people that know better than Aster that Daz would accept this. Not only that, he’d come up with a masterful plan to make everything work out wildly in his favor.

Fuck. He hates this, but he can’t refuse it.

He gives a soft, humorless laugh of his own. “Alright, Satan. I’ll shake your hand.”

Excellent. A pleasure doing business with you, Stardust.

The camera suddenly snaps to the Showrunner.

They’re hovering over what looks like a representation of the Council HQ, and Aster himself, on the stage.

A wide, almost manic grin is on their TV-screen head. “Gentle audience, I’ll need your help with this one. You can suggest things you want him to see– things from the bastard’s life.”

The lights suddenly dim, and they add, “But be aware! My favorite little monster’s presence might be shown, but not perceived. At least, not yet.”

They roll over mid-air so that they’re on their back. “This is your chance to peek at any moments you feel didn’t get a proper scene! Not just within his backstory, but beyond. Prologue, sequel, even a sneak preview of upcoming attractions if you want to be so bold. Whether or not Aster sees inside his head will depend greatly on what makes things more fun.”

A loud giggle escapes them and they kick their feet in excitement. “Ohhhh this act is gonna be killer!”

[bl6ckr0s3]

Anxiety Overload

Do you have any idea what it’s like to have so much stress and anxiety in your system bottling up in your system and you literally haven’t had the chance to completely release it fully? Well, it fucking sucks because that’s where I am at right now. While me and Josh had been doing Uber deliveries either after I get off work or right after we wake up around 1:30 pm or 2pm, it’s straight back to working on the road trying to make every dollar we can get by the end of the day, Mentally and physically it’s taking a toll on me and I know I said it myself that even if I have taken a 2nd job if I had to go make extra income, this would be my other job. I would like to make a good living off of what I enjoy doing with photography. I would even consider applying for a 2nd job somewhere to do photography and try to better my skills and learn even more things that I have yet to learn. Sadly, my opportunity of bettering my skills with videography hasn’t given me the funds to be financially stable enough to buy the tools I need for my camera and that’s all I really need is that tool to hold my camera to have that stability of being able to record images without shaking. It would take a million years before Josh would allow me to do a project on him because he hates how he looks right now. His weight is the main factor and it has been for a long time, just like I wasn’t happy with my weight for the past 6-7 years until I finally worked hard in achieving my weight loss goal. I didn’t think it was possible for me to lose down to 120 lbs which was my maximum goal and I am so happy I have reached it after wishing for so long to be that skinny again. I will always want to retain my muscle and strength. Even though my weight has gone back up since our move to Tennessee because of all the delicious southern foods down here, I am trying to get back on track on controlling the portions of my food intake and trying not to over eat too much which is s habit that is hard to break because of growing up with a family who encourages for you to keep eating until you are full and they still want you to keep eating even though you are beyond full. 

It’s not just the old Asian culture that is like this. It’s a family that grew up trying to survive because they almost could’ve died dealing with communist and genecide. They had nothing to eat, and they were starving a lot, coming to America poor with nothing. It pisses me off that my dad wants to sell the Pomona house after they have finally a home they own especially for a good deal in a state that’s so fucking expensive to survive in. What does it matter, it’s not my business anymore because this is the reason I can’t stand living under the same roof with my father. I refused to be controlled. Fuck society. 

I been in my depressive state because of my current situation, and Joshua wasn’t helpful by telling me to go back to California. I had a talk with him and told him what he needs to work on in this relationship, because he lacks emotional affection and comfort and it’s not a good trait to have when the person who says he loves you doesn’t really show it physically. I understand he’s got his own issues with his own comfort, but it really isn’t hard to hold somebody and say everything will be ok even though it feels like it won’t for awhile. If you communicate with your partner about what they need to work on, you are giving them a chance to know where the relationship can fuck up if they neglect to. Joshua has a lot to work on and I am not sure how long it will take him to succeed with his goals/endeavors.

Struggling for a long time makes it harder to get thru day by day with your life unless you have things that can help alleviate your stress and pain. I need to attend some shows and shoot some bands. That is my therapy. That’s why I just do it and not concentrate on being paid for the work because it’s truly my therapy to help me keep going and enjoy life. If I only cared about money, I wouldn’t be any different than most of these typical humans of Los Angeles. I would just be another person that’s considered greedy and I am nothing like that. I hardly have any time now to be on my games which is a bummer because I hardly have any time to do anything for myself because of my job of being stuck on the machine. I just to go back to tour 3. I may not have to deal with the robots much if I am on that tour because I was told that they run the robots until afternoon. 

[luminnara]

Omega Depression || Alpha!Kiribaku x Omega!fem!reader

Hi! Can I request an alpha!Kiribaku x omega!fem!reader where she is strong on the outside, but sensitive on the inside. Then, some asshole alpha comes and insults her saying that she isn't worthy of having alphas and other super mean stuff that makes her go to omega depression. After that, she confines and isolates herself in her room, not allowing her alphas to enter. Days pass, she misses school for like a week, and her alphas are tired of waiting, so they bust the door and find their omega deep in omega depression and starving herself, and they're super worried and try to help her get out of it, cause she could die if not. The rest can be little angst with a fluffy happy ending!

Yo I live for alpha kiribaku, not gonna lie

Warnings: angst, mental health stuff, depression, eating disorder/starvation stuff, abo

Requests are open!

You were always happy with your alphas. Bakugou and Kirishima were the loves of your life, you were sure of it. The three of you got along well, and there was nothing you enjoyed more than spending time with your boys. You kept up with them easily, never having trouble when it came to handling Katsuki’s temper or Eijiro’s enthusiasm. They loved protecting you, too, not that you ever really seemed to need it; you were tough as nails, as far as everyone was concerned. 

You weren’t, though, not really. 

“What a useless little omega.”

The words kept repeating in your head, over and over.

“Two alphas? Yeah, right. You don’t even deserve one, not with an uppity attitude like that.”

They kept echoing, no matter what you tried to do. 

“What a stupid bitch. They should just leave your sorry ass. You aren’t worthy of anyone, much less alphas.”

You curled in on yourself. You felt sick to your stomach. How could someone say that about you? How could a shitty alpha go and ruin your mood, and your day, by saying something so awful?

“I am worthy!” You had argued. “And we’re happy together, so just fuck off.”

“Oh yeah? Then why haven’t they claimed you yet?” His lips had pulled over his teeth in a sick grin. “You know they’re just biding their time, waiting for something better to come along. You’re nothing to them.”

The little spat had been earlier that morning. It was rare that you ever went out alone; usually Eijirou or Katsuki or both of them were stuck to you like glue, but this had been one of those instances when you had absolutely insisted you would be fine. After all, you were just running a couple errands. You weren’t even going very far from campus. What’s the worst that could possibly happen?

Well...this, apparently.

You had rejected the advances of an alpha who had been eyeing you for quite some time. He was annoying and his scent always made you recoil, but you would never, not in a million years, have thought that he could hurt you so deeply.

Why were his words even bothering you so much? You knew your boys liked you. They made sure to constantly cover you in their scents, they happily gave up their shirts for you to tuck into your little bed nest, they held your hands and gave you sweet little kisses...

And yet, he was right. They hadn’t claimed you yet. There were no big bite marks on your neck to show the world that you were taken. Why hadn’t it happened yet? You always thought that maybe they were just nervous, and they wanted to wait for the right time. Maybe they wanted to wait until school was over and they were better established as heroes.

Or maybe they were just playing with you, maybe you were nothing more than their favorite toy for the time being. What if they got tired of you? What if they really were planning on kicking you to the curb? Without a bond mark, nobody would even blink if they cast you aside. It would just be a normal break up, nothing for anybody else to even care about or get involved in.

But your heart was already aching at the thought of it.

You huddled up in your nest, ugly sobs wracking your body as you clutched one of Katsuki’s hoodies to your chest. An undershirt of Eijirou’s was nearby, a few plushies that they had given you tucked in amongst the blankets and pillows. The scents of burnt sugar and cinnamon wafted around you, and as comforting as they usually were, they weren’t helping you now. Nothing was.

You heard your phone vibrate, but you didn’t reach for it. You didn’t care. You were too wrapped up in your own thoughts, absolutely trapped in your head now. You were plagued by those same words as they kept repeating, telling you over and over that you were worthless, useless, nothing.

When you finally managed to glance at your phone, you had missed texts from both your alphas. You replied to them with a couple of half hearted “yeah, I’m fine” -s, then finally slithered out of bed to make sure your door was locked. You didn’t want to face them when they came to bother you.

If they came.

You spent the entire day like that. When you were out of tears to cry, you just grew numb. It was the worst you had ever felt, and while some part of you knew, deep down, that you needed your alphas to come help you, you couldn’t stand the idea of them seeing you like this. How had you managed to grow so afraid? You usually told them everything, but now...now you abhorred the thought.

“Oi!” Katsuki’s rough voice came from the other side of your door, his scent wafting in. “Open up!”

You didn’t answer, curling in on yourself even further instead. 

“Omega!” he called angrily. “Stop ignoring me, dammit!”

“Go away!” you managed to squeeze out, your voice sounding weak and strangled. 

He was silent for a moment, his scent changing. It grew more burnt-smelling as his anger mounted, and as it reached your nose, you felt panic and annoyance spiking in your chest. 

“Omega,” he growled, voice low. You heard the doorknob jiggling as he tried to get in, but you had locked the deadbolt, and unless he unleashed his quirk right there in the dorms, there was no way he was entering your room.

“I said go away!” you yelled. 

On the other side of the door, Katsuki was fuming. The beginning sparks of little explosions were popping around his hands, and if Eijirou wasn’t there to hold his arms down at his sides, there was a good chance he would have done some real damage to the hallway. 

“Katsuki, c’mon.” the larger alpha said. “Let’s just leave her alone for a little.”

“Something’s wrong,” Katsuki pulled back as his partner started trying to drag him away. “She stinks.”

“Yeah, she definitely doesn’t smell happy,” Kirishima paused, frowning. “But...we need to give her the space, if she wants it.”

“Fuck that,” his partner spat. 

“Katsuki....” Eijirou sighed. 

Bakugou’s nostrils flared angrily for a moment, red eyes wild as Kirishima grabbed his arm once again. Someone was trying to drag him away from his omega, from his perfect little mate, and if it had been anyone other than Eijirou, he would have done far worse than simply dig his heels into the floor and growl in protest. Kirishima was right, though; if their omega wanted alone time, they couldn’t just barge in without permission. As much as it hurt both boys, as desperate as they were to get to you and make you feel better, they weren’t total animals. They respected you, and prided themselves on being two big, capable alphas who listened to their omega. 

They returned to their own rooms, expecting to at least hear from you within an hour or two. 

Hours turned to days. 

You texted them a few times, listless, half-assed messages that did little to reassure them. You would send a pathetic I’m fine or a It’s okay here and there, only after they had both blown your phone up for a few hours. It was the only reason they hadn’t tried to tear your door off its hinges; they knew you were alive, at least. But by the third day, Katsuki was beside himself, and even Eijirou was getting upset enough to consider using his quirk to get to you. 

You wished that he would. You didn’t want to face them, but at the same time, the fact that they weren’t tearing the building apart to reach you was making you even sadder. Your sad scent was starting to leech out into the rest of the dorms, and by the end of the fifth day, nobody could stop your alphas. 

“Oy!” Bakugou snarled, his fist thudding against your door. “Open up, omega!”

You didn’t answer, too weak and listless to bother. 

“Babe?” Kirishima asked, his voice strained with the effort of not yelling in panic. 

“We know you’re in there,” Katsuki growled. “Quit avoiding us!”

Still, you didn’t answer. 

Then, you could hear some shuffling, and the door was being torn off its hinges by Kirishima. Bakugou stormed in as soon as the path was clear, his red eyes blazing with anger, his hands balled into fists.

“You’d better show your face right fuckin’ now, or I swear I—“

He fell silent at the sight of you. His eyes widened, his nostrils flaring. Your scent was so strong and so incredibly miserable that a wave of nausea passed through him. He hadn’t expected that it would be so pungent in your room, and as he covered his mouth and nose with his hand, he rushed towards you.

“Baby,” he cooed, vaguely aware of Kirishima behind him, “what the fuck is going on?”

You tried to bury yourself in your nest, trying to burrow away from the world, but a big hand caught you around the middle and pulled you back out. Eijirou manhandled you easily, his eyes wide with concern as he sat on the floor and placed you in his lap.

“You haven’t been eating,” he observed, looking at your tired eyes. “Or sleeping.”

Katsuki was beside himself with worry. He was immediately sitting in front of his boyfriend, caging you in between them as he began looking you over. “What the hell is goin’ on?”

You didn’t want to tell them. Your throat was sore from crying, and you felt stupid for being so upset. So, you did the only logical thing you could think of and buried your face in Kirishima’s broad chest, clinging to his shirt weakly.

“Omega, please,” the big redhead pleaded, leaning his head down to scent you. “Tell us.”

You shook your head.

“We know Somethin’ is wrong, so spit it out!” Katsuki barked.

His voice was harsh, but you felt a warm, gentle hand on your back that could only be his. The familiar touch made you sigh, and after a shuddery breath, the dam finally broke.

“Th-there was an alpha,” you whimpered, voice muffled by Kirishima.

“What the fuck did they do?” Katsuki growled, his voice deep and savage. It sent a chill down your spine and you whined, clinging to Eijirou for dear life.

“Cut it out,” Kirishima snapped, snorting at his boyfriend angrily. “You’re making it worse.”

“I just wanna know what happened!” He grumbled, his hand pressing into your back.

You hiccuped as a little sob wracked your body. “A-an alpha I rejected, h-he told me…he told me that I wasn’t good enough for you.”

The low rumble in Kirishima’s chest was like nothing you had ever felt before. It was threatening and powerful, putting Bakugou’s growl a moment ago to shame. His arms tightened around you, the scent gland on his neck slipping over your hair as he tried to cover up your unhappy omega stink.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.” Kirishima snarled, uncharacteristically angry.

“Hey.” Bakugou slipped a hand around your waist, prying you away from the other alpha slightly. “Look at me.”

You faced him with teary eyes, and when you tried to shy away, he took your chin in his fingers. 

“We fuckin’ love you. Okay? I don’t say it much. Maybe I should say it more. But it’s true, ‘n no stupid, two-bit, shitty-ass alpha knows anything about the three of us.”

He leaned forward, pushing you back up against Kirishima with his head resting on your shoulder. You finally sighed, surrounded by the scents of your alphas, allowing yourself to relax as the dam broke and your crying started all over again. This time, though, it was freeing, and as your alphas rocked back and forth with you, you felt the dread and the anxiety slowly leaving your stomach. 

“Better?” Eijirou asked after a while. 

“A little.” you said, voice muffled by his tear-stained shirt. 

“Good.” Katsuki said gruffly, pulling you up to stand. “Let’s go get some food in you. Point that shitbag out if you see him...I wanna have a few words.”

[chaotic-good-vampire]

a glimpse of us 

Pairing: Jonathan Levy x AFABreader (she/her)

Summary: Trying to deal with her husband’s affair, our protagonist takes a glimpse at their story, wondering if he ever loved her or if he just liked the idea of being loved.

“That's the thing about illicit affairs and clandestine meetings, it's born from just one single glance but it dies a million little times."

Word count: 3,500

Warnings: Angst, cheating, mentions of sex, no use of y/n, non-descriptive reader (but it’s kind of implied reader isn’t Jewish). Also, I'm not Jewish, so if anything related to their tradition is incorrect, please correct me.

Inspired by: Basically Taylor Swift's entire discography.

Other chapters: Chapter 2 · Chapter 3

Chapter 1: Shock & Denial

“I don’t understand.” The words come out of her mouth with a nervous giggle, the smile on her lips intact. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, don’t you find it a little suspicious?”

“No, why?”

Her confusion is legitimate because, at first, the idea of Jonathan and Mira even being in the same room together is absurd. Sure, they don’t hate each other– and for the most part– any kind of resentment is long gone, but they tend to avoid interacting unless Ava is involved. Whenever they face each other, there’s always a palpable tension in the room and, more than once, she’d feared their sarcastic and ironic remarks towards one another would turn into a screaming match or worse. Therefore, the only logical reason she can come up with as to why they’d willingly walk into a room alone, let alone a house, is that they had founded a secret underground Fight Club of something.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing.” Winona, her best friend, sounds as confused as her, but for another reason. “I didn’t mean to bother you; I Just thought I had the responsibility to tell you, that’s all.”

“Oh, it’s okay, no problem. Thanks.”

And for a couple hours after she hangs up, as she goes up and down the house cleaning and organizing, trying to figure out how to deliver the good news, it’s genuinely not a problem at all. She goes on with her night in a peaceful ignorant bliss, blinded by her excitement and good faith.

By ten, when she sits on the living room's couch with a cup of cocoa in hand and the biggest smile on her face, the weight of Winona’s words hasn’t quite settled in yet. She opens her messages with tingling fingers, a corny romance movie playing in the background, and she texts Jonathan with enthusiasm bubbling up her chest and hot cheeks.

«Thoughts on Italian? I have something very important to tell you.»

«Was thinking about that restaurant near Ava’s school, the one with the fettuccini you so much like. Maybe tomorrow night?”

«btw, I miss you. The house is so quiet without you and Ava :(»

Normally, she wouldn’t expect him to answer right away, especially considering he’s supposed to be mourning with his family. Still, she's so happy that she can't help but be a little impatient. So, after some minutes of scrolling through social media to distract herself, she ultimately gives in and calls him instead, heart on her sleeve. 

The phone rings for a while, much to her dismay, and she's about to hang up when his singing voice greets her from the other side of the line:

"Hey, sweetie." 

"Hello, handsome." She sings back, giggling, a mushy warmth blossoming deep in her chest. 

"Hi, baby." They both chuckle, and she can perfectly picture him smiling, messy curls falling over his glasses, a vision that makes her smile. 

"Why are you whispering? She whispers back jokingly. "Am I interrupting something?" 

"Oh, my mom fell asleep already, and I don't want to wake her up." He clears his throat, nervous, and while she knows he tends to do that when lying, she lets it slide. 

"Sorry for calling this late, my love, but I miss you horribly." 

"It's no problem." 

"How's your mom?" 

Even though she had offered to take some days off work to accompany him to his father's shiva, Jonathan had insisted on going alone. It bothered her a little, feeling it was her duty as his wife to be by his side in such a delicate moment. But ultimately, she accepted it after he told her he didn't feel like dealing with his mother's snarky comments toward her for seven days straight. However, she still called each family member to express her condolences and spent an entire night baking kichlach for Jonathan to take with him. When it came time for the funeral, she asked again to go with him, but he refused once more, claiming his mother only wanted her children and herself to be there. It hurt, but she wasn't about to disrespect the widow's desires, especially since she kinda abhors her. 

"She's fine. It's just... You know, the whole thing at the ceremony was really draining for her.

"Oh, my dear." She feels guilty for leaving him alone in a moment like this. Maybe she should try harder to build a relationship with his mother for the sake of their little family. "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, don't worry, darling." 

"Are you sure?" 

"Yeah. Well, you know how it is. It's like the... Being at the cemetery and then going to an empty house. It was a lot for her." 

"Of course, it must be terrible to lose your life-long partner." God knows, even if she had only been with Jonathan for three and a half years, she couldn't imagine a life without him now. "I'm so sorry, my love. Don't you want to stay a little longer? Maybe your mom would like that." 

"No, no, I gotta go back to work." 

"Okay." A huge smile creeps on her face at his words. "So you're coming back tomorrow?" 

"Uh, yes. Taking the 6:30 train out of Valley Stream, then the Amtrak from Penn Station." 

"I wish I could pick you up, but my shift starts at seven." 

"It'll be fine, sweetheart. I'll see you at home when you come back." 

"Ugh, fine." She bites her lip, trying to hold her excitement to not spoil the surprise. "Did you see my messages?" 

"No, I'm sorry. What they say?" 

"Can I facetime you? I want to see your gorgeous face." 

He laughs, but there's something hidden in the way in which he stutters before answering:

"Okay. Yeah. Just, uh..." She can hear him panting as he walks hurriedly, then a door closes. "Trying to connect here."

She hangs up, and not even a second later, his phone starts buzzing, her name displayed in big white letters on the screen. 

"Oh, look at you, such a marvelous sight." Her cheeks heat up, something she'll always be surprised by. No matter how many times he complimented her, he always managed to turn her into a giggly schoolgirl with his sweet-talking. "I love how that sweater fits you." 

"Only because it makes my boobs look bigger." 

"Oh, I like your boobs just the way they are, honey." There's an eco in his video. "I'll show you just how much tomorrow night." 

As she laughs at his flirty attitude, her eyes divert to his background, where she can see a strangely familiar tile. 

"Where are you?" A strange uneasiness suddenly overcomes her, a sign that her brain has already caught something her mind has yet to figure out. 

"I'm in the bathroom." 

"What?"

"I'm in the bathroom." 

"Oh." She tries to match the tiles to a room in his parent's house, but nothing comes to mind. 

"What did you want to tell me?" 

"Ah, yeah... Um..." She can't focus on her words, distracted by those damn tiles of unknown origin. "I have great news, amazing actually... So I thought we could celebrate in that Italian restaurant near Ava's school." 

"Basile?" 

"Yeah, there." 

"Uh, they have the best fettucini." He licks his lips, and she forces a smile, her mind rushing. "Seems good to me. May I have a hint of what we are celebrating?" 

"No, it's a surprise." 

The whole situation feels like a deja vú, from the way he's whispering to how he stutters every three words, anxious voice rushing through the conversation. It all takes her back to three years prior.

«Hey, how did it go?» 

«Are you okay?» 

«Hope it wasn't too bad.» 

«Wanna have breakfast together? I think I can make it before you leave for work.» 

Four innocent messages were all it took for Jonathan to blow up at her, even if she had only sent them because she was worried. 

When Jonathan had told her Mira was going to stop by their house to discuss the divorce, she became wary, but only because he'd been doing so well for the past few months, she feared her presence would trigger him. It took time, money, therapy, tears, and some inebriated late-night conversations, but his eyes had finally regained their light, and his lips remembered how to smile. It irked her to think a conversation with his ex could throw so much effort out the window in a matter of minutes. 

Thus, when he didn't call or text like he'd promised to, she immediately assumed the worst. And, as much as she wanted to drop everything and check on him, she had a duty at the hospital, so for now, she could only hope for him to answer the texts. 

Just as she was putting her phone away, it started buzzing, his name and photo illuminating the screen, making her smile. Even after months of dating, she felt like a teenager every time they talked or were together, a dozen butterflies fluttering in her stomach at the mere thought of him. 

"Hey." 

"Hey, hi!" She walked outside the emergency room and stood beside the entrance, watching the rain, to avoid getting in the way of doctors and patients. "How are you? I was dead worried–"

"Good, uh, yeah." He interrupted her, whispering in an irritated voice. "But, listen, it's not cool to, like, bombard me with–"

"Bombard you?" She tried her best not to match his tone, thinking he may have had a terrible evening and was just tense. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you; I just wanted to know how you were." 

"I told you I'd call you when she left." Suddenly, she went from a teenager to a scolded child with how he talked to her like she was stupid.

It took her by surprise, really; he'd never been anything but a gentleman with her since the day they met a little over a year before. He'd never been rude or condescending, not even in his worst days, and he always spoke to her with such tenderness she just melted on the spot. 

Why he's acting like a complete imbecile out of nowhere? 

"Yeah, I know, but it's almost midnight, and you–" It clicked then. "She hadn't gone yet?" 

"No, she hasn't. She's still here, okay?" 

"Oh, is everything all right?" Her blind fade was present there since day one. "Where is she?" 

"She's..." Out of all the possibilities, she certainly wasn't expecting him to say the next. "She's in bed." 

"She's staying in?" She really wanted to keep calm and be mature enough to not let jealousy invade her, but then a thought crossed her mind. "Wait, whose bed?"

"My bed." 

"And where were you before you called?" 

The line goes silent for some seconds in which she can hear him calmly breathe with nothing more to add. She waited for an explanation, anything that could soothe the turmoil of emotions tearing her apart from the inside out. Tears were already forming in the corner of her eyes, but she blinked them away as she bit her lip, troubled. 

"Why?" She inhales deeply, passing back and forth. "Jon, baby, I'm trying to understand you here, but you're not helping much. What happened? You were supposed to talk about the divorce and..."

"Listen–"

"Why is she in your bed? The same bed you made love to me just this morning..." He called her name, but she was so distracted in her ranting that she didn't listen. "And then you have the audacity to call me and complain about four text messages as if I was trying to control you or something." 

"We... we need to talk, 'cause this is–" 

The phrase sent her on a panicked rambling because nothing good ever came out of those words. She was shaking, the hem of her uniform getting wet as she mindlessly stepped on puddles. Her friends had warned her; they'd told her numerous times that dating an older married man wasn't the greatest idea, but she was already head over heels for him when all these happened. His gentle touch, sweet words, and ease with which he made her laugh and feel cared for; he was her safe space and vice versa. Or so she thought. 

"Yeah, of course, we need to talk. We're in a relationship, Jonathan, you kind of owe us some respect, you know? That means establishing certain boundaries with Mira..."

"This is really just not, uh...–" She kept talking over him, between upset and scared for what he had to say.

"We can talk about this over breakfast, alright? I'll pass by Starbucks on my way to your house, I'll be there by seven–" 

"I'm trying to tell you we should take a break because this is just not..." That's all it took to leave her speechless, a shaky sight leaving her lips as the first tears fell down her cheek. "Not working out for me right now." 

"What are you talking about?" Her voice cracked, anger boiling down her throat. "It was working perfectly fine this morning, Jon." 

"No, uh, uh..." He didn't know what to say, a part of him breaking at the sound of her crying, the other just wanting to hang up and go back to Mira. 

"Jonathan, what the fuck!? When I left this morning, you swore she would only be there an hour or so to start the divorce arrangements. You kissed me, we had sex, we ate together. Everything was fine, and now you just decide it's not? What the fuck is wrong with you?" 

"Okay, you know, let me just... Let me stop you here before you say something that you're gonna regret" It only made her angrier, the way he was avoiding talking about the subject and treating her like a child. "Look, I'm... I'm really sorry it has to end like this, but, uh... Honestly, I've been feeling for a while that–". 

"Bullshit, Jonathan!" Some staff turned to see her as she yelled, and her cheeks heated up at the undesired attention. She was a crying mess, and she felt ridiculous for falling that hard for someone in only a matter of months while he just pretended to feel the same. She breathes deeply and lowers her voice, trying to control herself. "Jon, listen to yourself. Five seconds ago you wanted some time, now you're breaking up with me over the phone?" 

"Well, you know, that–"

"Jonathan, I love you." He immediately goes silent. 

Neither of them had said it before, but she had been tempted to more than once. As she lay on his chest, intertwined bodies under the covers; as he drank his coffee in the morning, wet curls fell over his glasses; as he talked about his students and his job; as he and Ava played. She knew she could only suppress it for so long, but she was scared of freaking him out, of it being too big of a sentence for his heart. 

"I love you, I really do. I love you so, so much." She sobbed, internally hitting herself for her bluntness in a moment like that. "Please, we can talk about it, please."

"I'm not..." He wasn't sure of what to say, caught off guard by her confession and the pain in her voice. 

Did he love her back? He had thought about saying it more than once, but the words always died out on the tip of his tongue. Sure, he was scared of loving again, but mostly he didn't even know if he was ready or completely over Mira. He felt terrible because she was perfect: Clever, funny, gentle, and caring, and the sex was the best he had had in his entire life. Then why couldn't he bring himself to tell her what he was sure he felt? 

"You don't have to say it back, it's okay." Her heart was being ripped open inside her chest, but she wasn't going to guilt trip him for it. "I, just, um... Please, please, don't leave me." 

He pronounced her name in a breathy voice, blinking his own tears away. "I'm sorry, it's better this way." 

"Jon–" Her beeper goes off, and huffing, she checks the message as she roughly wipes the tears from her face. "I have to go, they need me here." 

"Okay, bye." He swallowed the lump in his throat, resisting the urge to take back his words. How could he after everything he just said? "I'm sorry." 

The tile is the same as the downstairs bathroom in his old house, the one he shared with Mira for over ten years. She comes to the realization with trembling hands, a tight pressure on her chest making it difficult to breathe. 

"I love you." Jonathan says with a smile, not noticing her entire world is shattering right beneath her because of him. "Can't wait to see you tomorrow." 

It took him so long to be able to say those three simple words that every time he pronounced them, she treasured them in the deepest of her soul. But not today, today they feel like the worst of burns. 

"I love you too." The words are bitter on her lips. "I'll leave you, you must be tired, and you still gotta travel tomorrow." 

"Okay. I'll see you at the restaurant at 8, is that okay? 

"Yeah." 

"Great, love you. Laila tov."

"Laila tov." 

He hangs up, leaving her alone with the TV voices and her inner turmoil. Her previous excitement is gone, and all she can think about now it's Winona's words:

"I saw him entering his old house with Mira, and they've been there for a while." 

“No.” She whispers for only the wind to hear. “Not my Jonathan, not him.”

My Jonathan, a conjunction of words so familiar to her tongue, it almost feels wrong to say one without the other. Yet, as she absently fidgets with the gold band on her finger, she wonders if they were ever true or if it was just her turning a blind eye to the obvious. She wants to laugh and brush the whole thing off as her being sensitive, but her inner voice keeps telling her there's something terribly wrong. 

Surely, this all has to be a misunderstanding, right? Jon, sweet loving Jonathan, wouldn't betray her trust and lie straight to her face with no remorse. Not when he knows how much it hurts and how much she loves him. And even if he did, he wouldn't be as stupid as to do it in his old house and with his ex-wife. Not when her best friend lives just down the street, with a perfect view of the master bedroom from the second floor. 

It's Jonathan, her Jonathan, and he'll never hurt her like that. 

She doesn't even realize what her fingers are doing until the dialing tones sound beside her ear. One, two, three, then a female voice picks up:

"Hello?" Elisheva, his sister, greets her softly. 

"Hi, Shevi" She's holding her breath, livid and a little nauseous. "I'm sorry for calling this late, I just wanted to check on you and your mom." 

It isn't a lie, she truly cares for them even if Myriam sees her as an intruder in her family. Besides, she doesn't take it personally; Mr. Levy's hostility isn't directed at her as a person but rather at her status as his son's second wife.  

"Oh, no worries. We're as good as we can be, thanks for calling." Shevi's always been friendly with her, making an effort with Arie to integrate her into the family after getting engaged. "Although, it's a shame Jon couldn't stay longer, you know? Maybe that could have cheered up mom a little."

"He's not at your house?" The surprise and distress in her voice confuse Elisheva. 

"No, he left right after the funeral, at four." No, it couldn't be. Jonathan had told her he'd stayed with his family until tomorrow, and even if he'd decided to leave early, he should have been in the house hours ago. "He isn't home yet?"

"Oh, yeah, I just remembered." She lies, holding her tears and embarrassed. "He said he was going to stop by a friend's house, he probably lost track of time." 

The conversation pretty much dies there, and after wishing her goodnight and promising to call in the morning again, she hangs up, feeling a hole in her chest. 

She blankly stares at the TV for some minutes, dismayed, convinced she'll wake up any minute, and he'll be beside her. Messy hair, soft lips slightly apart, and his chest rising slowly in rhythm with his light snores. She'll cuddle him, bury her face in the crook of his neck and leave a trail of kisses from his jaw to his lips; he'll wake up and return the gesture, and they'll have morning sex and have breakfast together, and everything will be just fine. 

This was all a nightmare. 

Just a nightmare. 

A nightmare. 

Then, as a bucket of cold water, the cuckoo clock on the wall chimes, and her inner hell unleashes. 

[sylvielauffeydottir]

Hello, it is I, your friendly neighborhood historian. I am ready to lose followers for this post, but I have two masters degrees in history and one of my focuses has been middle eastern area studies. Furthermore, I’ve been tired of watching the world be reduced to pithy little infographics, and I believe there is no point to my education if I don’t put it to good use. Finally, I am ethnically Asheknazi Jewish. This does not color my opinion in this post — I am in support of either a one or two state solution for Israel and Palestine, depending on the factors determined by the Palestinian Authority, and the Israeli Government does not speak for me. I hate Netanyahu. A lot. With that said, my family was slaughtered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have stood in front of that memorial wall at the Holocaust memorial in DC for my great uncle Simon and my great uncle Louis and cried as I lit a candle. Louis was a rabbi, and he preached mitzvot and tolerance. He died anyway. 

There’s a great many things I want to say about what is happening in the Middle East right now, but let’s start with some facts. 

In early May, there were talks of a coalition government that might have put together (among other parties, the Knesset is absolutely gigantic and usually has about 11-13 political parties at once) the Yesh Atid, a center-left party, and the United Arab List, a Palestinian party. For the first time, Palestinians would have been members of the Israeli government in their own right. And what happened, all of the sudden? A war broke out. A war that, amazingly, seemed to shield Benjamin Netanyahu from criminal prosecution, despite the fact that he has been under investigation for corruption for some time now and the only thing that is stopping a real investigation is the fact that he is Prime Minister.

Funny how that happened. 

There’s a second thing people ought to know, and it is about Hamas. I’ve found it really disturbing to see people defending Hamas on a world stage because, whether or not people want to believe it, Hamas is a terrorist organization. I’m sorry, but it is. Those are the facts. I’m not being a right wing extremist or even a Republican or whatever else or want to lob at me here. I’m a liberal historian with some facts. They are a terrorist organization, and they don’t care if their people die. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

There are two governments for the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. In April 2021, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed planned elections. He said it was because of a dispute amid Israeli-annexed East Jerusalum. He is 85 years old, and his Fatah Party is losing power to Hamas. Everyone knows that. Palestinians know that. 

Here’s the thing about Hamas: they might be terrorists, but aren’t idiots. They understand that they have a frustrated population filled with people who have been brutalized by their neighbors. And they also understand that Israel has something called the iron dome defense system, which means that if you throw a rocket at it, it probably won’t kill anyone (though there have been people in Israel who died, including Holocaust survivors). Israel will, however, retaliate, and when they do, they will kill Palestinian civilians. On a world stage, this looks horrible. The death toll, because Palestinians don’t have the same defense system, is always skewed. Should the Israeli government do that? No. It’s morally repugnant. It’s wrong. It’s unfair. It’s hurting people without the capability to defend themselves. But is Hamas counting on them to for the propaganda? Yeah. Absolutely. They’re literally willing to kill their other people for it.

You know why this works for Hamas? They know that Israel will respond anyway, despite the moral concerns. And if you’re curious why, you can read some books on the matter (Six Days of War by Michael Oren; The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich; Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergmen; Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt; and Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis). The TL;DR, if you aren’t interested in homework, is that Israel believes they have no choice but to defend themselves against what they consider ‘hostile powers.’ And it’s almost entirely to do with the Holocaust. It’s a little David v Goliath. It is, dare I say, complicated.

I’m barely scratching the surface here. 

(We won’t get into this in this post, though if you want to DM me for details, it might be worth knowing that Iran funds Hamas and basically supplies them with all of their weapons, and part of the reason the United States has been so reluctant to engage with this conflict is that Iran is currently in Vienna trying to restore its nuclear deal with western powers. The USA cannot afford to piss off Iran right now, and therefore cannot afford to aggravative Hamas and also needs to rely on Israel to destroy Irani nuclear facilities if the deal goes south. So, you know, there is that).

There are some people who will tell you that criticism of the Israel government is antisemitic. They are almost entirely members of the right wing, evangelical community, and they don’t speak for the Jewish community. The majority of Jewish people and Jewish Americans in particular are criticizing the Israeli government right now. The majority of Jewish people in the diaspora and in Israel support Palestinian rights and are speaking out about it. And actually, when they talk about it, they are putting themselves in great danger to do so. Because it really isn’t safe to be visibly Jewish right now. People may not want to listen to Jews when they speak about antisemitism or may want to believe that antisemitism ‘isn’t real’ because ‘the Holocaust is over’ but that is absolutely untrue. In 2019, antisemitic hate crimes in the United States reached a high we have never seen before. I remember that, because I was living in London, and I was super scared for my family at the time. Since then, that number has increased by nearly 400% in the last ten days. If you don’t believe me, have some articles about it (one, two, three, four, and five, to name a few). 

I live in New York City, where a man was beaten in Time Square while attending a Free Palestine rally and wearing a kippah. I’m sorry, but being visibly Jewish near a pro-Palestine rally? That was enough to have a bunch of people just start beating on him? I made a previous post detailing how there are Jews being attacked all over the world, and there is a very good timeline of recent hate crimes against Jews that you can find right here. These are Jews, by the way, who have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. They are Americans or Europeans or Canadians who are living their lives. In some cases, they are at pro-Palestine rallies and they are trying to help, but they just look visibly Jewish.  God Forbid we are the wrong ethnicity for your rally, even if we agree.

This is really serious. There are people calling for the death of all Jews. There are people calling for another Holocaust. 

There are 14 million Jews in the world. 14 million. Of 7.6 billion. And you think it isn’t a problem the way people treat us?

Anyway (aside from, you know, compassion), why does this matter? This matters because stuff like this deters Jews who want to be part of the pro-Palestine movement because they are literally scared for their safety. I said this before, and I will say it again: Zionism was, historically speaking, a very unpopular opinion. It was only widespread antisemitic violence (you know, the Holocaust) that made Jews believe there was a necessity for a Jewish state. Honestly, it wasn’t until the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that I supported it the abstract idea too.

I grew up in New York City, I am a liberal Jew, and I believe in the rights of marginalized and oppressed people to self-determine worldwide. Growing up, I also fit the profile of what many scholars describe as the self hating Jew, because I believed that, in order to justify myself in American liberal society, I had to hate Israel, and I had to be anti-Zionist by default, even if I didn’t always understand what ‘Zionism’ meant in abstract. Well, I am 27 years old now with two masters degrees in history, and here is what Zionism means to me: I hate the Israeli government. They do not speak for me. But I am not anti-Zionist. I believe in the necessity for a Jewish state — a state where all Jews are welcome, regardless of their background, regardless of their nationality. 

There needs to be a place where Jews, an ethnic minority who are unwelcome in nearly every state in the world, have a place where they are free from persecution — a place where they feel protected. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that place being the place where Jews are ethnically indigenous to. Because believe it or not, whether it is inconvenient, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. I’ve addressed this in this post.

With that said, that doesn’t mean you can kick the Palestinian people out. They are also indigenous to that land, which is addressed in the same post, if you don’t trust me. 

What is incredible to me is that Zionism is defined, by the Oxford English Dixtionary, as “A movement [that called originally for] the reestablishment of a Jewish nationhood in Palestine, and [since 1948] the development of the State of Israel.” Whether we agree with this or not, there were early disagreements about the location of a ‘Jewish state,’ and some, like Maurice de Hirsch, believed it ought to be located in South America, for example. Others believed it should be located in Africa. The point is that the original plans for the Jewish state were about safety. The plan changed because Jews wanted to return to their homeland, the largest project of decolonization and indigenous reclamation ever to be undertaken by an indigenous group. Whether you want to hear that or not, it is true. Read a book or two. Then you might know what I mean.

When people say this is a complicated issue, they aren’t being facetious. They aren’t trying to obfuscate the point. They often aren’t even trying to defend the Israeli government, because I certainly am not — I think they are abhorrent. But there is no future in the Middle East if the Israelis and Palestinians don’t form a state that has an equal right of return and recognizes both of their indigenousness, and that will never happen if people can’t stop throwing vitriolic rhetoric around.  Is the Israeli Government bad? Yes. Are Israeli citizens bad? Largely, no. They want to defend their families, and they want to defend their people. This is basically the same as the fact that Palestinian people aren’t bad, though Hamas often is. And for the love of god, stop defending terrorist organizations. Just stop. They kill their own people for their own power and for their own benefit. 

And yes, one more time, the Israeli government is so, so, so wrong. But god, think about your words, and think about how you are enabling Nazis. The rhetoric the left is using is hurting Jews. I am afraid to leave my house. I’m afraid to identify as Jewish on tumblr. I’m afraid for my family, afraid for my friends. People I know are afraid for me. 

It’s 2021. I am not my great uncle. I cried for him, but I shouldn’t have to die like him. 

Words have consequences. Language has consequences. And genuinely, I do not think everyone is a bad person, so think about what you are putting into the world, because you’d be surprised how often you are doing a Nazi a favor or two. 

Is that really what you want? To do a Nazi a favor or two? I don’t think that you do. I hope you don’t, at least.

That’s all. You know, five thousand words later. But uh, think a little. Please. 

[plus-size-reader]

Cute

Void/Stiles Stilinski x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 2939 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader finally gets up the courage to tell Stiles about her feelings for him but Stiles isn’t really himself at the time. 

—————————————————————————————��———

You should have seen this coming.

Of course Stiles was never going to go for a girl like you. All your lives he had been absolutely obsessed with Lydia Martin and lord knows you looked nothing like her. You were never going to look anything like her, but it was easy to ignore when it was just her.

Stiles had always liked her, drooling over her in math class and talking about her every chance he got but you both knew he had about as much of a chance with her as you did with him.

It wasn’t going to happen.

...but now he had Malia.

She was just as thin and gorgeous as Lydia was, but she was actually into him. She wanted to go out with him and there was nothing stopping them from going for it, why would there be?

It wasn’t like Stiles had any clue that you had been in love with him since middle school or that you were actively more and more in love with him as time went on.

He didn’t know you thought about him as much as he thought about them, or beat yourself up because you were never going to be a size three like Lydia was.

You adored him, but he was never going to see that.

It made you feel so empty, like the last seven years didn’t mean anything to him which wasn’t even close to true. You knew that both Scott and Stiles cared a lot for you, like they cared for each other but it wasn’t enough.

You wanted Stiles to daydream about you, to see you, because you were right in front of him. You would have done anything for him, and did, but for some reason, it was still like you didn’t exist.

It was getting old.

Really old, and the more you thought about it, the more the reality of the situation upset you. You had been there for Stiles all his life.

You were right by his side when his mom got sick, and beat up Jackson Whittemore once in the eighth grade for calling him a geek, but none of that seemed to matter to him.

Stiles still couldn’t see you.

“You’ve been staring at them for thirty minutes” Scott hummed, shaking you out of your thoughts with a bump to your shoulder with his own. You were searching for anything that could explain the strange occurrences around here as of late, but there was nothing.

It wasn’t your fault watching Stiles canoodle with his new girlfriend was more entertaining than looking through some dusty old book.

“I have not” you sighed, shooting him an almost defensive look as you glanced back down at the book in question. Had he been anyone else you may have pretended to have your shit together, but Scott knew better.

He knew the two of you better than anyone else in the world, and even if he wasn’t the true alpha, which he also happened to be, it wasn’t hard to see what was going on.

You clearly liked him, in a way that wasn’t just platonic like your relationship was. You had never gotten so shook up when Scott was seeing a girl, he would have noticed.

“It’s okay, I get it” he tried, hoping that you weren’t going to try and shut him out over this again. Scott had tried to have this conversation with you a few times already, and it never worked out the way he wanted.

You always got cagey and didn’t want to talk about it.

“No you don’t, Scott. You’ve dated every girl you ever had a crush on, because you’re you” you grumbled, poking him in the abs as aggressively as you could without hurting him to prove your point.

He didn’t ever have to worry about the things you did.

Not only was Scott one of the sweetest and most brave men you’d ever known, but he also couldn’t have been in better shape if he wanted to. He looked like one of those perfectly sculpted men in the movies, with six pack abs and chiseled muscles.

It wasn’t like he constantly had to live with the knowledge that the person he loved most in this world didn’t love him back because he wasn’t good enough. You knew that Stiles didn’t feel the same way about you because you weren’t as skinny as you could have been, or as pretty as the others were.

At this point, you doubted he even saw you as a girl at all because you were just his best friend, and that was it. That was what you’d always been and considering how oblivious he was to the feelings you had for him, it wasn’t surprising.

You weren’t even on his radar in that way.

“First of all, ow! Second of all, you’re super cute, why wouldn’t he be into you?” Scott wondered, that same supportive, loving tone that was always in his voice making itself known to you. He really did believe that, not that it made you feel better.

Cute.

That was all you were ever going to be.

Puppies were cute, and everyone loved them but no one was actively dreaming of taking their favorite puppy out on a date or dreaming about a puppy out loud to their friends. You didn’t date someone just because they were cute, which was the whole problem.

You didn’t want to be cute.

You wanted to be beautiful, to be hot, to be drop dead gorgeous in the way that Lydia was, and it killed you every day that you weren’t.

“Thanks Scott, but I don’t think cute is gonna cut it” you decided, closing the book in front of you as a way of closing this conversation before getting up and heading out of the library.

It didn’t make any sense to Scott.

It was clear to him that you and Stiles had something that could very well be a great relationship but you kept getting in your own way and it wasn’t like Stiles knew what he was doing. 

Some days, Scott worried he’d leave his head at home if it wasn’t attached.

“Hey Y/N, think about it” he called, catching the way you turned around to look at him before heading out to the parking lot.

There was no way Stiles was going to come to the conclusion that you cared about him as anything more than a friend on his own, and until you got that push to do it yourself, it wasn’t going to happen.

He just had to wait for one or both of you to take that chance.

~

Scott had a point.

Of course he did, Scott usually had a point as much as you hated to admit it. You were super cute, and while it might not have been enough, there really weren’t that many reasons why Stiles wouldn’t be into you.

Now, all you had to do was figure out what you were going to do about it, before all desire to do so left your body completely if it hadn’t already. 

You had only been trying to sike yourself up about this for the past hour in the rear view mirror and it just wasn’t happening.

You felt like an idiot.

Here you were, sitting across the street from Stiles’ house like a creep, without a single idea of what you were actually going to say to him if you ever made it to his front door. It didn’t make any sense, this was a guy you’d known since you were a kid.

You had never had a problem saying anything to him or doing whatever you wanted, but now, the idea of even looking him in the face was enough to make you want to be sick. It was hardly fair but you had done this to yourself after all.

It was perfectly fine before, even if you were unhappy. No one else had to know that you had feelings for him and you could just suffer in silence but now that you had Scott in your corner, it was hard not to want to try.

Surely your shared best friend was the best authority on whether or not there was anything between you and Stiles. If anyone was going to know anything, it was the true alpha, after all. 

That was like, his whole thing.

“You can do this. You’ve fought monsters, this is just Stiles” you reminded yourself, before pushing the mirror away completely, getting out of the car before you could buckle back up and drive home. It was now or never, and whatever happens, happens.

You couldn’t worry about it now.

“Hey Stiles, are you feeling better?” you hummed, the words barely registering under your breath as you tried to figure out what you wanted to say. You’d had this nightmare a million times over but you’d never actually considered doing it on your own.

Now that you were, the words just weren’t coming to you like they should have been.

“I just had something I wanted to run by you” you tried, testing out how that would sound before immediately scrapping it. That sounded like you were making some kind of business proposal and you certainly weren’t.

It had to be perfect.

Not that you had time to actually nail down what you wanted to say before you found yourself at his front door, already having knocked out of habit. Again, you briefly considered sprinting back to your car before it opened but you couldn’t make your feet move.

You knew that you had to do this.

“Hey Stiles, I was hoping we could talk” the words left your lips before you could police them, as soon as the door opened. You knew that it was hardly the smoothest you could have been but at this point, there was nothing between the two of you to soften the blow.

You just had to get this over with. If he accepted your feelings, he accepted them but if he didn’t, there was nothing you could do to change that either.

Naturally, those words freaked Stiles out a little because he assumed something terrible had happened but you didn’t seem as panicked as you should have been if someone was dying. This was a little more than your usual high strung but not by much.

“Yeah for sure, are you okay?” he allowed, moving away from the doorframe to let you in before closing the door behind you both. His dad was working late again, so it would just be the two of you but that had never been a problem before.

Especially lately, you and Stiles had killed time on several nights when Scott was busy with the pack or on date night. It wasn’t strange for you to be alone together, normally but there was a strange air about it today.

You just couldn’t tell if it was coming from him or you.

You knew that Stiles had been having a little trouble sleeping lately, and the nightmares were driving him crazy but the pack was going to handle it. 

The pack always took care of those kinds of things and you both knew Scott wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.

All he had to do was wait it out and try to relax in the meantime.

…And of course, you were having a hard time being your calm and collected self as you tried to figure out the best way to go about this whole thing.

It wasn’t every day you confessed your feelings to your best friend after all.

“I’m alright, I just have something I want to talk to you about is all” you shrugged, sitting down on the couch. This was a lot harder to do than you could have ever thought, and it just seemed like it wasn’t going anywhere.

There was only so much stalling you could do before you had to tell him the truth.

“Okay, I guess I’m just gonna put it all out there,” you sighed, your hands falling on your thighs. This was your last chance to walk away and no one would ever have to know what it was you were hiding, and that almost seemed like the right thing to do.

Though, the way he was looking at you took that all away.

You knew that if you ever had a chance at being with him in the way you wanted, you had to be able to tell him how you felt, at the very least.

Here goes nothing.

“I’m in love-with you” you allowed, exhaling as if you’d been holding that in your lungs all this time, which you pretty much had. You had no idea how this was supposed to feel, but you were pretty confident it wasn’t like this.

He didn’t even say anything at first.

All you could see was Stiles rubbing his temple out of the corner of your eye, his eyes screwed shut. It was hardly the reaction you had been expecting but at that moment, it didn’t even matter. You knew what he’d been going through, and it worried you.

It always worried you, especially knowing about his mom and all the stress he’d been under lately. 

Needless to say, you were more than happy to forget about everything you’d just said in favor of making sure he was alright, especially if your words had upset him.

If he didn’t feel the same, you would have happily moved on as if this moment had never happened. It would be easier than having to swallow that rejection.

You didn’t know if you could handle that after all this.

You had been hiding your feelings for Stiles all this time, and now that you said it out loud, you hoped you’d feel better but you just didn’t. This whole thing was really starting to seem like a mistake, and you didn’t even know everything yet.

Neither did Stiles.

In reality, he was more than thrilled at your confession but something was wrong. He felt like he wasn’t in control, like he wasn’t even in his own body anymore. It didn’t make any sense but he had never had a feeling like this before.

Stiles was vulnerable.

Before this moment, the Nogitsune hadn’t been able to break through to the surface but you provided the crack in his armor that it needed to escape. It was perfect, at least for the void, it certainly wasn't going to be pleasant for you.

After all, it had been a long time since it had seen the light of day and it was hungry, hungry and wearing your little lover boy like a cheap Halloween costume. Of course it was going to use that against you, void would be an idiot not to.

Your love for the boy made you little more than an exposed nerve, one that the Nogitsune could poke and prod at all it pleased until it was satisfied.

...and it certainly intended to.

All at once, there was a huge change in the room between the two of you, and more specifically, in Stiles. 

There was a cold, darkness to him that you had never seen which you didn’t even realize was there until he started laughing, a deep chuckle leaving his throat.

You weren’t ready for it, but what you were less ready for was what happened when he spoke.

“Did you really think I could ever feel like that, for you? We both know that’s a little crazy” he scoffed, an almost mocking tone that didn’t sound like Stiles at all. It shocked you, in all honesty, but not for the reason you may have thought.

Deep down, you knew that Stiles wouldn’t be interested in you but you never could have imagined him being so aggressive and cruel in his rejection of you.

He’d never spoken to anyone like that before, especially not you.

“I just-” you tried, but he stopped you before you could even try to get through this whole thing with any dignity at all. For the Nogitsune, this was all fun and games, but for you, it was so much more than that.

This was quite possibly the worst moment of your life.

“You aren’t blind, you had to have known this wasn’t going to work out the way you wanted. I mean, look at you?”

Stiles was screaming, using everything he had to try and get through to you, to overpower whatever this thing in his head was, but he couldn’t make it happen. It was too much, too strong, and all he could do was sit back and let it happen.

He knew it was breaking your heart, he could see it in your face but no matter how hard he fought, there was nothing he could do to get back in control. He felt like he was locked in a cage in his own head, and someone else had the key.

He just didn't know who.

You sat there for a second more as you tried to process whatever it was that was happening right now before you felt tears pricking in the corner of your eyes, and decided that it was probably time to leave.

Staying here any longer was just going to make this worse. Besides, it wasn’t as if Stiles was in the mood to talk this out or even treat you like a person.

Clearly, Scott was wrong, being cute wasn’t enough to make someone care about you.