#posting this before i overthink it to death

[m-ilkiee]

Gojo Satoru, Jujutsu Kaisen, Antiblackness and Apathy; An in depth analysis as a black girl

Hello everyone!

So I did complain that I was lacking motivation to write anything and I did say my asks are open for fics but since I didn’t get any feedback, I decided to go to my next line of help: watching horror games playthroughs and horror media analysis by my favorite youtubers. I was hoping I would get inspiration to write fanfiction, but then again, ADHD works in mysterious ways and decided to lump me with something that no one would ever read and also something that would get me death threats and slurs. Again.

But eh, what can I say? It’s best I develop thick skin rather than ignore my intellectual side.

Note: this is not hatred towards Gojo before you send me actual hate. Like just read it.

When I started reading Jujutsu Kaisen, I wasn’t necessarily interested in it. I was still in my huge Naruto phase and I genuinely thought Gojo’s design was a Kakashi rip off. I didn’t really care for the hype, seeing a lot of people write on wattpad about JJK and Haikyuu on wattpad at the time and get like a gajillion (100k views. I was like 16-17 at the time, sue me for overthinking it) as the popularity of both Jujutsu Kaisen and Haikyuu rose. AoT and MHA were really popular then too and I found myself leaning towards MHA when I started getting over my obsession with Naruto. Frankly I was growing tired of having to fight off misogyny in lieu of trying to enjoy myself in my fandom.

It was 2020 when I actually started reading Jujutsu Kaisen properly. After reading so many bad faith takes from MHA fans I really didn’t want to deal with another Naruto fandom 2.0 (lmao what an irony four years later). I stumbled across a fanfiction by a very popular writer, it was a Sukuna x Reader fanfiction I can clearly remember, set in the heian era and it was really, really dark. And her popularity was well earned because that fanfiction was good. (I know I’m yapping a lot but let me cook okay?). She was a very talented writer and I found myself immersed in the very good world building she did writing that fic. She is also one of the few people that I’ve seen ever characterize Sukuna accurately, down to Sukuna’s sadistic thrill. She made me get very interested in reading Jujutsu Kaisen and I was really there for Sukuna.

She was very talented, but there was a problem.

You see, she was writing a x reader fic but a lot of people of color, particularly black girls felt excluded with her descriptive words. You see, it was very apparent the reader she was writing about was rather white coded (not Asian coded, white coded)- blushing, long silky hair, smallish etc etc and it can really break your immersion. She was accused of being well racist. Back then, I was like “light skinned black women can visibly blush but not dark skinned girls' ', I didn’t think she was racist, I just assumed she was rather tone deaf or ignorant and she would eventually listen to others.

Turns out she was indeed racist because she deleted every message post and comment politely asking her to be inclusive. Not to mention she doubled down on her stance.

From her being racist, it ended up being hijacked by others who wanted her off wattpad because she was more popular than them - people who cared less about her racism but rather ran her off for writing a dark story. The black readers were pushed aside and no one cared about her lack of inclusiveness anymore, but about how much she was a “bad” person for writing a dark story and how much she influenced minors (her book was for 17+ up and she made it very clear she didn’t want minors following her) in writing disturbing things.

Some of these people even spoke over the black readers trying to contribute. After all, it was their issue first. They were her first victims and really they were the only ones wronged.

But I’ll talk about dark content and personal responsibility another time.

The funny thing is, she’s not the first wattpad author to be antiblack. Some of them were bolder, using the N-word freely in their work, some even writing a black slave reader x slave master (character) - white people mind you. These fics had 10k + readers by the way as of 2020.

What did they have in common? They were JJK and AoT writers.

As much as we’d like to blame newer fans for making the jujutsu kaisen fandom unsafe for black people- black women in particular- it has always been this way since the fandom took off in 2020. I hate to say it, but the jujutsu kaisen fandom has always been this way.

And it’s ironic. For a series that shows how discrimination fucks up people’s lives, it has really attracted a bunch of racist hes, shes and theys and edgy gen Zs and Alphas who think it’s 2012 and black face is funny.

PART 2: Gege Akutami and how he writes racism

Apart from Sukuna, while watching and reading Jujutsu Kaisen, I was captivated by how modern it was. At the time I was in high school and I could relate a lot to Yuuji, the protagonist. He was in the same class as I am, the set of 2020, he was very upbeat and fun to follow! I liked Megumi a lot too! He was reserved, a little unhinged but overall a nice character, plus I liked his cursed technique involving shadows (Kind of like Kage from Fairy tail and Shikamaru from Naruto, my anime crushes at the time.) I loved Nobara’s entrance. She felt like me, a true teenage girl who was just as unhinged. I liked Nanami. He was real and extremely relatable in terms of working hard and yet never feeling fulfilled, feeling stuck, a cog in the wheel.

But there was just one character I couldn’t really care for. Satoru Gojo.

Don’t get me wrong, I thought he was funny, especially that whole violin spectacle. Visually, he was appealing and I did like him protecting Yuuji from higher ups. I read the light novel that further endeared me to his character when he and Nanami went on that mission together and he begged Nanami to take on Yuuji. But there was something missing about his character. As much as he was hated by the higher ups for being rude, he was still their golden boy sorcerer. As much as he hated the higher ups, he still worked for them. I didn’t understand why he was there. Why didn't he get up and leave if he really hated how they operated? I understood everyone else, but what was Gojo’s motivation?

When Yuuji died the first time, he said something about Youth. What did it mean? Why?

Gojo was a character that raised more questions than answers. The character, Getou, who was at the time with the curses was also a character with more questions than answers. Why was a human working with curses?? Unless maybe he was secretly a curse himself.

(If only I could tell my 2020 self that I was right about every prediction I made about jujutsu kaisen 🤭)

Sorry I’m digressing here but just stay with me, it’s still on topic. 

I didn’t understand Gojo until I got to the hidden inventory arc. The hidden inventory arc is like a mirror to Kakashi Gaiden - both characters who raised more questions than answers had a specific arc about their youth that not only pushes the story forward, but shows why they are the way they are. As well as have their bosom friends turn into horrible people due to soul crushing -literally and figurative trauma- (Maybe this was why I knew that Getou was not in possession of his body, using my previous knowledge on Naruto and piecing together the prediction, like how Obito was used as puppet by Madara. You can tell when there IS a naruto reference in jjk. Akutami does it better though.)

What makes Hidden Inventory Arc very pivotal to the present events are three key things: 1. Getou watching his already twisted ideology fall apart. 2. Gojo has to grow a moral compass beyond his privileged upbringing 3. The existence of Toji and a glimpse of Jujutsu’s treatment of non-sorcerers and women born in the society.

The thing I liked about Gege is that he doesn’t do things on the nose. It’s implied. Heavily implied. You can already tell by the way Gojo spoke to his peers and his nonchalance towards non sorcerers seeing them exorcise a curse that he has a superiority complex. He is part of a main clan, the Gojo clan, that has produced powerful sorcerers. He tipped the balance of the world with his birth and he has been told constantly that he is the strongest. It’s ingrained into him. You can tell that a man who has been told he is destined for greatness would have some sort of arrogance attached to him. Gojo of that time would not hesitate to kill Yuuji for eating a cursed finger, because he feels he can and should do whatever he likes.

Getou is more subdued. You see him entertaining Gojo’s Shenanigans, but also giving him some sort of balance and stability. He’s the moral compass of Gojo, having seen and lived with non-sorcerers before coming to Jujutsu tech. He urges Gojo into the strong, protecting the weak. You can even call him the token sorcerer who came from a non-sorcerer family. I don’t think Gojo would have ever taken Getou seriously if Getou wasn’t as strong as he was, given by how he often expressed his thinly veiled disgust with weakness, but eh.

But when you peel back the layers, it should make you wonder why Getou thinks non-sorcerers are “weak”. Strength does come in different forms, so how can you judge people who don’t follow your own system?

And then there is Toji who subverts their expectations. Toji is not stronger than the two teenagers, but he is smart. He is a non sorcerer who has battled and killed sorcerers, he kills Gojo and essentially makes him realize that he is not invincible. And he attempts to kill Getou, making Getou realize that non-sorcerers are not the weak people needing to be protected. Changing their lives forever. Gojo became more sympathetic towards weaker people, having been in a more vulnerable state at the time and Getou gave into the budding superiority complex.

(Stay with me here, I’m cooking aiit, I’m cooking)

For Gojo, the event changes him for the better. A once arrogant and headstrong boy who was heavily reliant on his cursed technique and his identity of being strong, being killed humbled him. If he was never murdered by Toji in the first place, he would have never been put in a place of desperation to survive. For the first time in his life, Gojo felt weak. It’s something only associated with people beneath him -lower grade sorcerers and non sorcerers alike. He was vulnerable, lying on a pile of maggots and flies like a piece of shit. He couldn’t handle losing mentally, and he willed himself into learning reversed cursed technique. It’s like losing everything and realizing the importance of the little things.

When he wanted to murder the people at the cult and Getou told him it wasn’t worth it, it kind of opened his eyes to how cruel and weak the world truly was. Those people were made to believe a young girl was evil, simply because they do not understand what Jujutsu is all about. It’s a fatal flaw to jump into conclusions that something beyond your understanding is automatically evil and it blinds your sense of rationality, for both Gojo and the cultists. Gojo realizes if he kills them, it’s just proving them right, that it’ll just be a full circle moment. Because of this event, Gojo has it at the back of his mind he is not invincible.

Getou however, makes an interesting turn. You see, the thing about Getou is that he comes from a non-sorcerer family. There is a sense of pride being a sorcerer, a strong one at that, that you are a head above the rest. Getou sees himself as a protector over weak fragile beings. He is okay with their existence because they serve a purpose in his world. But the moment he saw them exerting power over sorcerers, being evil and ugly, and cruel, it shattered his world view. How can “Monkeys” be more powerful than special people like him? The weaklings that should be protected dared bite the hand that feeds them? They should disappear. He no longer wants to co-exist with them as their savior. He wants to be their executioner. Only the strong should survive and he spares no one, not even his parents. Getou doesn’t identify himself with his humanity, he never did from the start, he identifies with his strength and ability to use curses. To rationalize his thought process, he feeds into eugenics and also dehumanizes non-sorcerers, calling them animals, Monkeys.

I believe Akutami uses monkeys to refer to non sorcerers to show they are not as “evolved” as sorcerers, as if they are still “primitive”, still primates, hoping to catch up. Kind of like how it was proposed we came from monkeys (debunked btw). It is also brilliant because for example, I remember reading “Joys of Motherhood” by Buchi Emechta when the main character was taken by her husband to Lagos from her village to work for a white family (this was set in the time Nigeria was colonized by the british, also the time pseudoscience about africans being of primitive nature, subhuman was rampant) and the white couple often referred to them as monkeys or barbarians, dehumanizing them.

Gege Akutami right off the bat is showing on the nose that Getou IS racist- dehumanization, believing in a superior race and planning a genocide on non sorcerers. I like how it is shown as being bad and never leading to the right results. Getou’s defection and then death doomed humanity to Kenjaku’s plan, even the sorcerers he tried to protect are now subject to Kenjaku and Sukuna’s destructive plans to subjugate humanity. If he had re-evaluated his thought patterns before or during the hidden inventory arc by realizing non sorcerers are not a monotony, perhaps he would not have had his short sighted world view tilted. He is capable of seeing it was a bad plan, but wasn’t aware enough to see the flaws in his ideology.

Getou and Gojou are on the two sides of racism, blatant racism and heavy ignorance. Gojo still shows he is ignorant in the case of him and Miguel, both in zero when he insulted Miguel’s accent and then used eugenics to try and understand Miguel’s technique, instead of just… asking him about African sorcery. Oftentimes people assume things about Africans, like if we have infrastructure, roads, running water or we speak English without either doing research first or even just asking us what our countries are like. They make comments like “You speak very good English for an African” or “You have running water” or we are turned into some sort of weird fetish and spectacle for westerners trying to push their propaganda about us to the world. It has affected us negatively - I’ve been called a scammer once by a white girl just because I mentioned I’m Nigerian or my phenotype insulted, calling me a horse faced ugly simply because I am not white.

The good thing is that at least Gojo does check his bias after Miguel rightfully corrected him. But Jujutsu Kaisen fans… don’t.

PART THREE: THE ANTI BLACKNESS IN JUJUTSU KAISEN FANDOM

I was quite disappointed that the only thing jujutsu kaisen fans got out of the entire arc was SatoSugu. I’m opposed to questioning people’s intelligence, but honestly it made me realize that the majority of the people I share this fandom with are absolute morons.

I’m not sorry.

Perhaps it’s because I was born with a critical, pessimistic outlook of life that was nurtured by me being black in a white dominated world, where the narrative of my own country is controlled by people who don’t even have any connection whatsoever to it, and see my country as some sort of charity work.

When I started writing for jujutsu kaisen, I loved plugging in my culture and traditional work in it with my ocs. Mr. Perfect, my first ever Jujutsu Kasien fanfiction was a story that followed the life of a Nigerian Sorcerer Hachikara Osita, the daughter of a Nigerian sorcerer higher up, navigating her way through the Japanese system of sorcery and trying to be promoted to grade one so as not to be married off. I loved that fic and it was my first reason for writing on tumblr because I got to be Nigerian in my text. She spoke pidgin, her powers are reminiscent of the Nigerian folklore of Marine spirits and it featured part of growing up in Nigeria as her past is revealed. My brother and I felt connected to jujutsu kaisen because in Nigeria we have similar themes here. Curses here are also born of human hatred and can take shape or form and possess people. We have cursed items, totems etc. We have witches, good and bad. We have healers, spiritualists. In my earlier Gojo fics, reader was Nigerian, I used Nigerian pidgin. I wanted to control the narrative at least for once and show we love things others love. We like fanfiction.

But no one wanted to read that and I was desperate for views. So instead I wrote a cheap, half baked nanami smut and basically white washed my writing and got my first ever 300+ notes.

Eventually, I found solace in xblack reader tags, although still western, they were closer to me in terms of race. It made me have hope that at least people like me can like these things. Then watching my black peers get racist slurs for just existing in a white dominated space and writing solely x black reader until they stopped writing one by one, I lost mutuals and once again I was stuck with only white people, who as nice as they were, would never understand the dichotomy for racism and the fandom. Whose hate only consisted of someone calling their work stupid, not attacking them as a person or their culture or their race. I was even accused of culture appropriation because I liked anime. That I as a black person wasn’t allowed to like anime and only white and Asian people can.

Perhaps the breakdown I had on my old account was the accumulation of all the hatred from 2020 until present day. Racism was not new to me on highpri3stess, it was the reason I started the new account in the first place. It was my breaking point. It always came from the jujutsu kaisen side. Everyone remembers 2020 as a fun year of anime fans, but for black anime fans it was hell. You would get lots of hatred if you cosplayed a character from mha or jujutsu kaisen, or just any anime. The monkey jokes were rampant. Black face. Name it.

To this day, jujutsu kaisen fans especially have not changed. Their boldness in misunderstanding Gege’s outright condemnation of racism and using it to hurt black fans is appalling. Using it as a sexual fetish or to clown on the only black character, Miguel.

And they feel apathetic about it. As long as their golden boy Gojo does it, they’re okay with it too. They assume every bad thing written about Gojo is trying to ruin his character when it just shows he’s deeply flawed, they refuse to see Gojo as a flawed, privileged adult who was told he was  destined for greatness. They refuse to acknowledge he can be ignorant. It is a testament to how they refuse to confront their own racism and anti-blackness.

From being dismissive to outright racism and calling the rampant racism drama, it’s a wonder why a lot of black fans are actually tired of the series. Last month I was going back to school with a family friend who watches anime and she expressed her deep dissatisfaction with Jujutsu Kaisen’s fandom particularly the obsession with Gojo and not the big picture, and finally the racism. She said she was essentially tired of engaging with the JJK fandom as a whole because it wasn’t fun anymore.

Safe to say she wasn’t pleased when I shared my own story with my experiences.

Epilogue

If you made it this far without running to my inbox to call me a slur, congrats, here’s a cake to celebrate 🍰

The question remains “what do I have to do to be better?” My answer is Nothing.

I’ve seen posts with a bunch of white and nonblack authors saying they want to do their very best to stop racism. But then they run away when their black mutual friend is being racially targeted. The truth is you don’t care. You don’t care about understanding characters beyond your idealized version of those characters and you have no empathy for black people nor do you care about listening to us. At the end of the day, you should do nothing because that is what you’re good at. I’ve spent the majority of my time in fandoms swallowing microaggression after microaggression or just in your face racism that I really don’t care to believe yall would change. So good luck with that I guess.

To any black writer reading this, anyone poc who has faced racism in the jjk fandom and is thinking of quitting, please don’t. We need you here. Keep writing that fic and feel free to tag me in it.

Lastly, I’m glad I wrote this post. For a while I struggled to connect with Gojo as a character. He was the opposite of what I liked - an overrated, overpowered character. I prefer watching an underdog grow and Gojo felt boring and flat to me. But beneath the arrogance is a flawed, overworked and ignorant individual. It makes Gojo feel real to me now. The beauty of his character is just how raw and similar we are. I hated him for a while after I had terrible run ins with his stans bit at the end of the day, there was no reason to. Gege wrote a humane character that changed his thinking pattern, that wants to protect the future at least. I just wish his fans understand this.

[loverboybrightsideghost]

blorbo bleebus → MORPHEUS DREAM OF THE ENDLESS!! and if you feel like doing two: crowley good omens :^)

MY BLORBOS

[lost-in-fandoms]

Logan and Max have a talk. Sort of. (I have never written Logan before, so I don't know if this even makes sense. Almost nothing happens, but there could be a second part in the future, who knows (not me)).

Logan wishes he was better at telling Alex no. He doesn't want to be at this party, for a race he barely even took part of, his car giving up on lap 15. He doesn't want to be standing here, near the wall, as he watches the other drivers drink and dance, ignoring him completely. He doesn't want the drink Alex placed in his hand before disappearing, without even telling him what was in it. He wants to go to bed. He wants to call his mom.

One hour, that's how much time he has promised himself. He'll stay one hour, long enough to say he was there, not long enough to make him want to get completely smashed and sob into some girl's chest (that had been one time, but it had been a low point he does never want to repeat), and then he'll go back to the hotel. He doesn't remember the time difference well enough to know if he'll be able to talk to his mom before going to sleep, barely remembers in which country they're in.

He's contemplating his glass again, trying to decipher what kind of alcoholic concoction is in there and to ignore the thumping bass, when a pair of sneakers and blue jeans appear in his line of vision.

He looks up and finds himself face to face with three-soon-to-be-four times world Champion Max Verstappen. He doesn't think he's ever been in a one to one conversation with Max before, so he can't think about a single reason why he should be standing in front of him, looking straight at him. Unless he's here to kick him out? Would Max kick him out of the party for being too pathetic?

Now he's being self-pitying, he needs to stop. No drinking and sobbing incidents tonight.

"You okay, mate?" Max asks, voice barely loud enough over the music, eyes intense. The glass in Logan's hand feels slippery, he's afraid he'll drop it.

"Yeah, fine!" he replies, cringing at his own basic response, even if he doesn't know what else he could have said. It's not like Max is asking because he really cares, and it's not like he could give him the truthful answer either.

Instead of moving on and going back to the party like Logan is expecting after the somewhat failed social interaction, Max keeps looking at him, tilting his head slightly, eyes narrowed, before he steps closer and plucks the glass from Logan's hand, placing it on a nearby table.

"Follow me," he orders. He doesn't wait before turning around and walking away. For some reason, Logan doesn't even question it, just unsticks himself from his wall and follows him to the bar, where Max orders a beer and another g&t, and then up a flight of stairs, onto a balcony.

"Are we allowed to be here?" Logan asks, looking at the very obvious DO NOT OPEN sign hanging on the balcony door Max is already pushing open.

Max just shrugs, going outside and sitting down on a lawn chair, placing the drinks on the low table in front of him. Of course, Logan reminds himself, he's Max Verstappen, who's going to tell him no? He probably could buy this whole place out himself if he wanted to.

Logan sits down next to him.

"Here," Max says, passing him the beer. Again, Logan doesn't question it before taking a sip. Much better than Alex's weird drink.

For a long moment, they just sit in silence. They can still hear the music from downstairs, but it's different out here, with the sounds of the city and the fresh air. Logan almost forgets about being confused and upset, about wanting to go home. Home home. Then Max speaks again.

"We can talk about why you are sad, or we can sit here until I finish my drink. Both are okay."

Logan doesn't understand. Why is Max, of all people, wanting to talk to him about his shitty season? And why would he want to just sit there with him? Does he look that pathetic?

He tries to feel upset, tries to look for the spark of indignation, but he comes up empty. He can just stare at Max's profile as the other takes a sip of his drink, eyes fixed on the skyline, throat working.

Max doesn't ask again. He must accept that Logan's answer is silence, doesn't even seem put off by it, but Logan's brain can't stop buzzing, questions bouncing around so fast he can barely keep up with them.

They stay quiet. Max finishes his drink. Logan keeps watching him as he stretches slightly, before he stands up and turns to face him.

"If you want to come talk to me, I know how it feels, to be hungry" he says slowly, measured, like he's been thinking about this for the whole time. "But if you want advice right now..."

It takes a second for Logan to realize Max is waiting for a sign, and he rushes to nod. Max's lip curls up slightly, his eyes crinkling, before he turns serious again.

"At some point, you will of course have to decide if you want to lay down and wait for the team to take pity, or if you want to bite and make them work with you."

Logan blinks. Max blinks back.

When it's clear that Logan isn't going to say anything, Max nods, turns around, seems to rethink and turns back, his eyes impossibly bright.

"I can show you how to take what you want, whatever you want." Suddenly, it feels like they're not just talking about racing anymore. Logan's neck feels hot. Max licks his lips, something dangerous in his expression that is usually reserved for the track, for when things aren't as he'd like. Logan has seen it before, but never turned towards him. He's stuck on his chair, feeling like prey despite Max telling him he could, and should, take.

He waits for the blow, he knows it's coming, but is still completely unprepared for the way Max smiles when he speaks.

"I will even call you a good boy, if you do it right."

The sound Logan lets out is undignified enough it will have to go in the lowest points list right next to the drinking&crying episode, but Max laughs, not unkindly, squeezing Logan's shoulder.

"You have my number, and you know where I'll be next week. Drink your beer."

Logan has the bottle pressed against his lips even before Max has made it across the balcony, going back to the party.

[pathologicalreid]

next of kin | S.R.

disaster strikes and you and Spencer try to take custody of your younger sister

part two

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst content warnings: actually might be gn! but i'm too scared to say it is. death, orphan-ing, funerals, child custody issues, blood, general cm violence, like actually an abhorrent amount of death. sorry i killed your parents for the sake of my fanfiction can we still be friends? word count: 3.33k a/n: this is the fic that this post is about. i am in fact my own worst enemy. i hope y'all like it actually genuinely i am most definitely overthinking this. if your name is maya im sorry that sucks.

“What did your parents say?” Spencer asked, walking into the conference room that the local precinct had offered to you.

You had been staring blankly at your phone since you got off the call with your mother, “Uh, they said thanks, but no thanks.”

The uneasy feeling had settled in your stomach as soon as you found out the team was being called to your hometown, and you had been nauseous ever since you found out the UnSub’s pattern.

Married couples with an older child who had moved out and a younger child who was still at home.

Your little sister was a surprise, you had incorrectly assumed your parents were done having kids.

Until today, you wouldn’t have traded Maya for the world, but now you sat in fear of your family being targeted by a serial killer. Hotch had offered them a protective detail, but they declined. Self-righteous as they were, they told you it wouldn’t feel right for them to accept help that couldn’t be offered to everyone.

Clenching your jaw, you stood at the table, “I’ll go by later and check in on them.”

Spencer had met your family twice by now. Last Christmas he had tagged along to meet them and celebrate with your family before the two of you spent New Year’s with his mom. Then, while your sister was on Spring Break, they flew out to Virginia, and you and Spencer had shown your family around Quantico and the District.

Maya had loved Spencer, partially because you loved him, but mostly because of his magic tricks.

“Do you want me to go with you?” He asked, stepping up next to you and placing a hand on the small of your back.

You sighed and shook your head, “No, not if you’re needed here.” You reached up and cupped his cheek, smiling softly, “Thank you for offering, Spence.”

He nodded affirmatively, “If you change your mind,” he offered. Gently, he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead before the two of you returned to the rest of the team.

The fact that your parents lived only five minutes from the police station gave you some relief, but you still felt tightly wound. Everyone had noticed. You just needed this case to be over.

The porch lights were on when you got there, and you used your house key – which you had never taken off of your keychain - to open the front door. “Hey, kiddo,” your dad greeted from the couch. A peek into the kitchen showed you that your mom was wiping down the counters. It all felt so eerily normal.

It was dark by the time you had gotten there. Maya was already asleep, but you tip-toed into her room anyway and kissed her goodnight before going back downstairs. Once you had hugged both of your parents and told them you loved them, you made your way back to the police precinct.

By nearly three in the morning, there was no new information, and the team was starting to consider calling it a night until the police chief got a call.

“We just got a call. Lady reported shouts coming from her neighbor’s house at 86 Meadowbrook,” he informed you, putting his hands on his hips and looking around at the team.

None of them even spared him a returning glance, everyone’s eyes were on you.

Blinking rapidly, you nodded assuredly, “I have to go get Maya.” You didn’t even recognize your voice even as you said it. It couldn’t have been your voice. That was the rasp of someone far away from you.

All of the other voices around you were muffled, you couldn’t hear what people were telling you, let alone understand them.

Maya. Maya. Maya.

Brown eyes. There they were, right in front of your face. “Let’s go get her,” Spencer whispered.

You had been speaking out loud. Repeating your sister’s name like a prayer without even realizing it.

Hotch let you go with them, but he made it abundantly clear to you – and the rest of the team – that you weren’t working this case anymore.

Surrounded by reverent voices in an SUV, JJ drove while Spencer stayed in the back with you. He held your hand tightly in his.

The house was closed off with police tape. Bright yellow plastic fluttered in the wind as you watched your team and other emergency personnel enter and exit. At your insistence, Spencer went in to get Maya, it felt like it had been hours before he walked out, carrying her in his arms.

Carefully, he brought her to you, and you pulled her close to your chest, blocking her eyesight as two body bags were brought out of the house.

You didn’t hear anything after that. You just let yourself be moved to wherever you needed to be, holding your kid sister as she cried for your parents.

They had to take their bodies to the hospital even though they were already gone, and you needed to be the one to confirm their identities. Spencer stayed with Maya while you were busy. She had cried herself to the point of exhaustion, you were grateful that she was sleeping, and then you felt cruel.

By sunrise, she was still asleep, and you had been set up in that same conference room from earlier. Sitting across from you was a social worker, a representative of the state. Your lips had parted in shock as you looked at her, “What do you mean they denied my request?”

In an attempt to be helpful, JJ worked with you to file an emergency request for custody of Maya, and the case worker had just told you that the request was denied. “The state doesn’t believe your request is valid,” she told you.

Your mouth went dry, “I don’t…” you glanced over at your little sister. “Our parents were murdered last night, and they won’t let me take custody of my sister?” You asked indignantly, peering at the social worker. It wasn’t her fault, somewhere in your grief-ridden brain you knew that, but you couldn’t help the feeling that she was somehow your enemy.

“They don’t believe you can provide her with a stable living environment,” the social worker, Brittany, explained.

Narrowing your eyes, you responded, “A stable living environment like a foster home? I’m her sister. We’re family – the only family each other has left.” You stood up, excusing yourself for a moment before walking out of the precinct. Once you were outside, you promptly hurled into the bushes.

That was how he found you, to the side of the building with your hair haphazardly moved out of your face, dry heaving into the shrubbery. Gently, Spencer placed a hand on your back before starting to rub small circles on your back, “You should eat something, love.”

You just shook your head in response, you weren’t hungry. “They won’t let me take her,” you whispered morosely, straightening up, you kept your back facing him.

“What?” He asked, his hand abruptly stopping its movement on your back.

Taking a deep breath and sitting on the curb, you looked up at Spencer. “The state thinks I’m not stable enough to take her in,” you said, resting your chin in your hands.

Your boyfriend crouched down so that he could sit next to you, “Are you going to challenge it?”

“Of course I am,” you cried. “But what happens to her in the interim, Spence? She gets placed with whatever foster home here and I go back to Virginia? I see her when the family court resolves this in two years?”

Treading carefully, Spencer cleared his throat, “What are you going to do?”

Defeated, you shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m…” your voice trailed off. “My parents are dead, Spencer,” you murmured softly, tears welling in your eyes.

He reached out and wrapped his arms around you, “I know, darling. I know. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t think I can do this alone,” you whispered, leaning gently into him.

Spencer turned to kiss your temple, “It’s a good thing you’re not alone then. I’m not going anywhere.” He waited for a moment before continuing, “Give me something to do. Give me a job to take off of your shoulders.”

In the end, you let Spencer take over funeral planning. He thanked you for trusting him before the both of you went back into the precinct.

You had just hung up with a family lawyer who had offered to take your case, letting your phone drop to the floor, you let your arms hang at your side. Someone had taken Maya to get breakfast while you spoke with the lawyer.

At the sound of the phone falling to the floor, Spencer stepped into the conference room, letting the door click shut before him. “Hey, what did he say?”

Pressing the heels of your palms into your eyes, you took in a deep breath, “Um, he said he’d be willing to take the case if I could put together a case plan to present before the judge.”

Before that phone call, you didn’t know what a case plan was, you could’ve gone your whole life without knowing what a case plan was.

“I need a year-long plan for how I’m going to prepare to have Maya in my custody, but he said a year is the best he can do,” you said, staring blankly at the wall ahead of you. “A year?” You whispered aimlessly, “I’m not waiting a fucking year to take custody of her. I have to take her home, Spence. I have to.” It wasn’t your intention to snipe at him, but you felt like you couldn’t help yourself.

The events of the last twelve hours threatened to take you down, but you had to stay strong for Maya.  

Taking a shaky breath, you looked up at Spencer, “Why is it that every time I convince myself that it’s going to be okay, I get tossed to the ground again?” You asked him.

Maybe because you weren’t fully convinced. Maybe it was because it had only been seven hours. You needed to remind yourself of that.

“She’s a ward of the state?” Spencer asked for clarification, holding you tightly.

Nodding absentmindedly, you rested your head on his shoulder as he swayed gently. “She can stay with me until after the funeral, and after that, she has to go with the social worker.”

The sad look on Spencer’s face told you that he was running out of ideas, and you were coming to the very same conclusion. “We could get married,” he offered.

“Stop, Spence,” you said, shaking your head. You couldn’t believe this was where he was going.

He shrugged helplessly, “I’m serious, Y/N. If we get married, they might think we’re stable, as a couple. They might give us custody.”

Your shoulders slumped, “I don’t want to get married just to get custody of my sister.” It certainly wasn’t that you didn’t want to marry Spencer, just not like this.

He nodded understandingly, “I know, but I’m just saying. If that’s what it takes, then I’ll do it.” Placing a comforting hand on your knee, the two of you sat in silence for a moment. “Do you have any ideas?” He asked you carefully.

Looking through the blinds of the conference room, you saw the rest of the team coming back to the precinct. Setting your jaw, you nodded, “I might.”

Opening the door, you had Maya go in with Spencer while you approached your Unit Chief. “Hey,” Hotch said, a glint of sympathy in his eyes. “How are you holding up?” He pulled you away from the people, wanting to give you privacy.

This wasn’t fair, they were still working on an active case. A case that was disturbingly close to you, and yet, you felt you were out of options. “I need a favor,” you blurted to him, wringing your hands. Your nervous energy made it impossible for you to stay still.

Hotch nodded, “What do you need?” He asked, studying your composure with the eye of a profiler.

You took a deep breath, “I was… I need you to call in a favor with someone. Anyone, really. The state won’t let me take custody of Maya, but I can’t let her become a ward of the state. Not when I’m right here, ready, willing, and able to take her.”

“Okay,” he responded, not even pausing to think about it.

Taken aback, you looked at him curiously, “I- that’s it? I had groveling prepared.”

He nodded almost imperceptibly as if he was trying to tell you it wasn’t necessary. “You’ve been a part of this team for years and not once have you ever asked for anything in return for everything you do for everyone else. This is the least I can do,” he told you.

You couldn’t help it. Overwhelmed, you tackled Hotch in a bear hug, “Thank you.” Your voice was low, “Thank you so much.”

Succinctly, Hotch hugged you back before you pulled away, “I’ll go make some calls.”

It was the smell.

The smell that you’d sensed countless times before on the job, the metallic tang of the blood. It should’ve been mostly dried by now – you supposed you were more susceptible to the scent, considering it was your parent’s blood, but it put you on high alert.

Emily had brought you by so that you could pack a bag for Maya, but you found yourself stuck on the landing. To one side, there was your childhood bedroom and Maya’s room. On the other side, there was your parent’s room.

“Y/N?” Emily called your name from downstairs, “Are you alright?”

No, you wanted to say, but you bit your tongue, scanning the house you had grown up in. “This doesn’t belong here,” you told her, glancing behind you as she made her way up the staircase.

You didn’t have gloves, so instead you pointed at the figurine that was resting on the bookshelves, a little bear facing in the direction of your parent’s bedroom door. “This is in the wrong spot?”

Nodding, your eyes followed the ceramic bear as Emily picked it up with a gloved hand. “It’s mine, it should be in my room,” you informed her. Your parents never changed anything about your childhood bedroom, not since you moved out. “It was like it was watching them,” you thought aloud.

“Do you think the UnSub did it?” She asked you gently, her voice was low but steady.

Blinking rapidly, you kept your eyes focused on the figurine, “Little Bear,” you murmured, “They called her Little Bear.”

Emily shook her head in confusion, dark hair swaying as her head moved. “Who was called Little Bear?”

Dropping the bag you had packed to the floor, you buried your face in your hands, “I should’ve seen it sooner.” The victimology, it all suddenly made sense to you. “When I was a kid, there was a family like mine. A brother who was in his twenties when his parents had another baby, a girl. They called her Little Bear.”

Realization dawned on Emily’s dark features, “Like this bear?”

You picked up the bag and started making your way back down the stairs. “Their mother made those figurines. The parents died in a fire two weeks ago – they left everything to the younger sister. It was all over the news. God, I should’ve figured it out sooner.”

“Hey,” Emily said sympathetically, “You had other things going on. None of this was your fault.” Her voice was stern, harsher than you’d ever heard her, as she pulled out her phone and called the team.

Your teammate drove, passing the police station on the way to drop you off. They left for the takedown, and you felt yourself floating into the precinct. Maya was waiting in the conference room for you, watching cartoons on someone’s laptop.

Kneeling in front of your little sister, you tapped the space bar, pausing the video. “Hey, kiddo,” you whispered, reaching over, and smoothing her hair away from her face. “How are you feeling?”

She had cried herself to sleep earlier, and you felt like you hadn’t been around enough. Maya sat up on the couch and rubbed her eyes, they were red, but not teary. “I miss mommy,” she told you, pouting slightly.

You nodded gently, moving to sit next to her before you pulled her into your lap. At six years old, she was all gangly limbs, just starting to grow into her own person. Just old enough to understand death, “I know, baby. I miss them too.”

“They wouldn’t lemme go home,” she continued, leaning her head on your shoulder. “I wanted Thumper,” she whined, sounding younger than she was.

Looking up at the light, you silently begged for your tears to go away. “I got him for you,” you told her, reaching into your bag and producing the small stuffed bunny that you had given her as a baby.

You savored the way her eyes lit up as she grabbed the stuffed animal from you.

“So, you and Thumper are gonna come to stay with me in Virginia. Do you remember going there? You said you liked it?” You kept smoothing her hair back as she held her toy.

She was silent for a moment, “Will Spencer be there?” She asked quietly.

Smiling slightly, you nodded, “He and I live together, so he’ll be there with us.” Slowly, you started rocking back and forth, trying to soothe the both of you simultaneously.

“As long as he doesn’t pull money out of my ear,” she answered succinctly, shutting her eyes as she leaned up against you.

There was approximately an hour before you watched the team return to the precinct, slowly, you laid Maya down on the couch before walking out. “It was a clean shoot,” you heard Rossi tell Morgan, and one look at the rest of them told you everything you needed to know.

The team went back to the hotel, and Spencer filled you in on the funeral arrangements he had made on your behalf. You were about to try to get some sleep when Hotch approached you and told you he needed to speak to you.

“I called a good friend of mine on your behalf, and he gave me some information. We were able to work out a plan,” he told you, sitting across from you in the hotel lobby.

You were about to tell him that a case plan wouldn’t work, but he held his hand out, telling you to wait.

He nodded before he kept going, “He was able to file an emergency request to grant you temporary custody of Maya, and it was granted.”

You felt sick to your stomach, “She’s mine?”

“Temporarily, you’ll have to take care of some formalities back in Virginia, but you have full custody of her,” he informed you. “You’re being granted family leave, and I’ve encouraged Reid to apply for it as well,” Hotch told you, reaching out and placing a hand on your shoulder. “I am… I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through this but thank you for coming to me when you needed the help.”

You nodded absentmindedly, your head still whirling with the information that you had just been given. Stumbling, you walked back to your hotel room that you were sharing with Spencer and Maya.

The funeral was planned, the custody issue was solved, all there was left to do was…

“Baby?” Spencer said softly as you swung open the door, “Everyone else took Maya to get ice cream, I figured it couldn’t-“ his voice broke off at your first sob.

Everything you had held in came bursting out, all of the grief and stress and exhaustion nearly knocked your legs out from underneath you.

But Spencer was there to catch you.

part two

[eamour]

a manifestation routine.

! long post ahead !

in this post, i want to give you an idea of how a manifestation "routine" could look like. i'm aware that this is one of my longer posts but i wanted to give as many insights and as much reassurance as possible. it’s a guide especially for those, who need a bit guidance, who may have come off track a little and who want to discipline themselves a bit more.

morning and evening.

right before you wake up or fall asleep, lay down on your bed and close your eyes. try to calm your mind, loose any tension built up in your body and take deep breaths in and out. with your eyes closed, pay attention to the darkness you're seeing. everything around you doesn’t exist for now. the outer world is none of your concern. your responsibilities fade away and in this given moment, there is nothing that needs to be worked on, nothing that needs to be fixed, nothing that needs to be dealt with. right now, it’s only you in this darkness. you are safe. you are protected.

now, think about it: what is it that you want? what is it that you wish to experience? this isn’t about what you feel like you should want or what you need to experience but rather what YOU deeply want. what would having / being it feel like? what would it look like? what if you had / were exactly what you wanted?

as you become more and more decisive and definitive about who you want to be and what you want to have, you begin to enter the state of the wish fulfilled. you take a step towards the end. you start to bask yourself in the feeling of being the version of yourself who has or is what you desire to have or be. for this, you can visualise yourself or use affirmations that go hand in hand with your desired outcome.

at the same time, let go of your old conception of self. leave your old mindset. right now, you aren’t who you were before you entered this state of calmness. shift your states. go from your former one to your desired one. give life to your new state and death to your old state. abandon the old story. you don’t need it now. you no longer need to retell it. you don’t need to carry it with you anymore.

don’t focus on details. don’t worry about your scenes of visualisation or wording of affirmations. don’t try to make it perfect. don’t question it. and don’t reason your way into it. try to make it natural. try to make it enjoyable. in imagination, you cannot do anything wrong. feel free to imagine any way you would like to. doing any technique without feeling it to be true and without accepting it won’t do anything. it cannot change you. not the technique itself but the feeling will alter self. your visualisations and affirmations shall only support you by guiding you to your desired state. don’t perform anything in vain. do it with purpose. do it with conviction. do it with acceptance. mere repetitions lead to mere results. if you repeat, then do it with feeling. for feeling is the secret.

this way, you become conscious of your new self. and since consciousness is the one and only reality, things can only appear through consciousness. becoming conscious of having your desire means to feel your desire to be yours. by making consciousness your aim, you are aiming to become conscious of BEING and HAVING your desire.

rest of the day.

after you took time to meditate in the morning, you continue to live with your wish fulfilled during the day. whenever you think of your desire, whenever you start to desire something, you claim it to be yours. you declare that it’s part of your reality now. you simply accept it to be true instead of letting your mind wander, overthink or worry. you don’t leave any space for feelings of desire and refrain from living in desire as well. you don’t have to go into a deep meditative state either. you think of it, recognise your desire, imagine it to be yours, feel it to be yours and then go on with your day. this way, you only aim for your inner fulfillment and get rid of any desire that comes up.

you don’t need to force yourself to think of your desire for a very long time, nor do you need to immediately start affirming or visualising a scene that implies you having your desire. what you do is that you take some time, not a lot, to acknowledge your desire and to shift your state from desiring to owning. you do this for as long as you like, until you have accepted your desire to be yours. you will know when you have shifted your state as you won’t feel feelings of desire anymore. you won’t want it anymore because you know there is nothing left to desire that isn’t already yours.

there's no need to constantly bring you back and to remind yourself of your manifestation. the moment you accept it, you can let it go. it’s done now. it belongs to you. assuming your desire to be yours once you think of it is totally enough. you don’t need to obsess over it either.

the more you do this, the easier it will be for you to remain in your desired state. you will get used to the state because you get used to the feeling. it will start to feel familiar to you. it won’t be as difficult as before. it won’t scare you as it did in the beginning.

once in the state, it will become easier to handle the outer world. your thoughts come from your state aka your feeling and if you happen to be in the state you wanted to occupy, you will respond better to 3D circumstances (if there are any). you'll stop viewing your physical world the way you used to and you'll also stop feeling like it’s a lot of work to be in the state of the wish fulfilled. you'll stop viewing the act of shifting your state as effortless. as normal. as natural. you can happily live in the 3D while still experiencing your manifestation from within, giving your inner self what you want. from now on, you will want to identify with your real self more frequently and anything outside of you will lose importance. you won’t care about how the world may look like, you won’t stress about your physical existence. anything that does not serve you will be of little account.

everyday.

the purpose of this guide is to motivate you to make fulfillment your one and only goal. make it a lovely habit to daily manifest your desires. do it each day.

do not waste time contemplating whether your desires are easy to manifest, quick to manifest, possible to manifest or logical to manifest. stop categorising your manifestations into "big" and "small". do not concern yourself with these matters.

the moment you accept your assumption to be true, it has no option but to materialise. your 3D can never stop reflecting your 4D. you can never run away from your feelings, so why not change them? why not choose lovely feelings for yourself? why not claim great things about yourself? why not immediately grant yourself every wish you have? stop wasting time, conditioning your desires and doubting your abilities as creator of your reality.

within imagination, all things exist and all things are possible. you can be or have anything you'd like in your imagination. it doesn’t have to be hard to get. you don’t need to earn your way to happiness. and you don’t need to work hard for it either. so why would you deny yourself that experience? why would you actively choose not to fulfill yourself? why would you not manifest your desires?

make your imagination a place you love spending time in. make yourself feel feelings of wealth, love, success, health and more. make it so amazing, so addicting that you cannot be bothered or moved by the limitations of the outside world. quoting aphrodite apprentice: "see your desires as invitations to experience something new within yourself and fulfill yourself. and then walk in that fulfillment. just live your entire life in fulfillment."

with love, ella.

[moonastro]

Solar Return chart notes i

**not my images**

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ chart ruler in 12th house can suggest you moving abroad ( i had my chart ruler- moon in 12th house conjunct Jupiter (travel, foreign) when i moved to a completely new country. also my 12th house was in Gemini which rules over travel and trips so that enhanced it).

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ i had my 12th house packed with planetary objects (venus, northnode, uranus, sun, mercury and moon) and that year i was not doing too good with my overall mental health HOWEVER, i was very spiritually inclined that year, i started to develop habits related to spirituality.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ the year that i studied my a** off i had a SR virgo rising and mercury (the ruler) in 10th house in gemini (knowledge, mind, writing). i wrote alottt like loads and loads of notes for my exams.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ in the year my daily routine changed and i had a very difficult time to process it, i had my 6th house in scorpio and pluto (ruler) in 8th house (of death, endings, transformative occurrences). oh and to put the cherry on top pluto was in capricorn so yeahh.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ when i had moon in 5th house i was fantasying a LOTT about romance. i had moon conjunct neptune in PISCESS. i was very delusional about love. i didnt even want to be in a relationship lol i just liked the idea of it.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ the asteroid enterprise (9777) in my 11th house was the year i made lots of job applications through the internet. i sent in lots of digital stuff and had some calls through internet involving my career.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ in the year i had a very healthy friendship my 11th house ruler was in the 7th house (equality, balance, partnership) this was the most stable and very communicative (mercury) based friendship meaning that problems were solved were fixed through communications. mercury (ruler of my 11th house) was conjunct northnode, i received lots of gifts (7th house), opportunities, and she spent money on me on food mostly (in taurus). VERYY fascinatingg

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ when i started to post officially on social media, my sun was conjunct uranus.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ SR chiron in 6th house is not for the weak. i had this in 18 degress (virgo) and my physical appearance was all i was focused on and was very critical about it VERY.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ uranus in 9th house- i was very confused with my school work, the overall school experience was very unfamiliar to me.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ on the solar return that i had an 8th house stellium (chiron, venus, jupiter, neptune, mars) that year i had lots of luxury gifts given to me (Venus). i went to the movies on my birthday of the beginning of my SR (Neptune) we ate at a luxury restaurant (venus) in that year i got a brand new laptop (Uranus). i got a new set of tarot cards (Jupiter) and was bought a gym membership (mars).

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ when i had mercury in my SR 7th house i studied a lot about my future spouse (5 degrees) like i was looking at solar returns, reading my chart so on and on.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ moon at 1 degree in my SR, i was very sensitive and was overthinking about everything whenever someone would hurt me.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ sun in 10th house in SR, i wasn't seeking any recognition but i had no choice in the matter, others could NOTT leave me alone. i was talking a lot also to new people that i never spoke to before (sun conjunct mercury in Gemini).

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ i cant get enough about the 12th house but, the year when i had a 12th house stellium, i started to observe my dreams more and started recording them on paper.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ the year when my 12th house was in taurus (throat, voice), i barely talked, like i was very quiet.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ SR scorpio ASC was very focused on occult things, i spent hours and hours studying (pluto in 3rd house) natal charts, tarot online (aquarius).

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ my SR MC in leo was the year i changed my hair completey the way i havent before, i developed confidence with that hairstyle and never went back.

thanks you for reading. hope you enjoyed this post. have a lovely day !!

[actual-changeling]

Welcome back to Alex's unhinged meta corner - although today it is less unhinged and more of a watertight analysis.

What I am about to present you is something most people have probably already noticed, but it has been three months and I still lose my mind while going through the final fifteen frame by frame (which is a normal thing normal people like us do, right? right).

You literally cannot convince me my following meta is wrong, and the only person whose criticism I will accept on this post is Michael Sheen and Michael Sheen ONLY. If you're not Michael Sheen (hi Michael Sheen who probably has a secret tumblr account) then your guess is as good as mine, though again, I think mine is solid.

So.

We all love and hate Aziraphale's "I forgive you", but what I find even more painful is the fact that before that he almost said "I love you". Then he stops himself and changes it, and the amount of micro-expressions on his face as he makes that decision is my current cause of death.

Here's the clip as evidence #1, and while it can definitely support itself, let's dive into the pain a little more, shall we?

One important thing I noticed is that Aziraphale doesn't look at Crowley while he stutters his way through his initial reaction. He blinks up at him for a few frames before averting his eyes again and only holds eye contact after the almost-confession (from here on referred to as IL-).

This is Aziraphale holding eye contact with Crowley (left) vs. him looking away (right):

The frame on the left is from the I forgive you (IFY) part of the scene, the other one from right before IL-. If we go through the above clip little by little we will find that he avoids Crowley's face the entire time and his gaze slips further and further down, which I interpret as him overthinking/trying to come up with something to respond to this entire situation.

He is overwhelmed and surprised, caught between his two main desires: Crowley and being a Good Angel.

Combing through the frames, we can actually nail down exactly when Aziraphale first makes eye contact before the IL- and when he stops. Keep the above comparison in mind! The angle is slightly different because his chin is lower and he straightens up throughout the scene.

So! This is where he starts looking at Crowley:

And this is where he stops:

Hard to see? Let's zoom in on his eyes (numbers are the file names):

Now, you might ask me "Alex, this is all fine, although a bit insane, but why is any of this important?"

Because, fellow tumblr user and good omens enthusiast, I think that looking at Crowley is what changes his mind about what to say.

He doesn't look at him -> about to confess his feelings.

He looks at him -> says the absolutely worst possible thing.

Partly to hurt him because they're both lashing out at each other during this argument, but he looks at Crowley, looks at the person that just kissed him, that told him they could have been an us, that wants him and has always wanted him, screw everyone else.

He looks at Crowley and he wants to say l love you but then what? Once he says those words, he can't leave. He just can't.

We have to remember that they have existed within a complicated dance, a game that they have been playing for centuries without ever telling each other what that game actually is, what the rules are - because they couldn't. It was based entirely on trust and knowing the other person well enough to play it safe.

Crowley just flipped the playing board. Nothing is the way it should be, he is refusing to do their dance, refusing to play. He is looking at him and daring him to stop trying to put the pieces back on the board. The only thing neither of them has done yet is actually say I love you out loud.

Saying those words would mean stepping away from the playing board and acknowledging the room they have been playing in. It would mean saying fuck you to heaven, yes, but it would also force Aziraphale to finally define himself outside of the role he has been playing for both Crowley and heaven, and he isn't ready for that yet.

Additionally, there is the fear and/or knowledge (depending on what else the Metatron might have said or done that we did not see) that heaven will retaliate against him and Crowley if he disobeys them now, and he does not want to risk that either.

All that is what, in my opinion, happens in his head when he averts his eyes and interrupts himself. I do kinda what to make a whole different post about his facial expressions leading up to the IFY, so I will end this one with one more bit of pain.

Ready?

Firstly, the face he makes when he makes his decision.

Look at the tight line of his lips, the pain etched into his face, the pure pain in his eyes.

This is the face of someone who knows exactly how badly he is going to hurt Crowley and himself. This is an apology, an I'm sorry for what I'm about to do, this hurts me as much as it hurts you. I'm sorry but I have to.

And then he winces afterwards. I don't know about you, but this is exactly the kind of face I make when I'm emotionally torturing myself with my own thoughts. For the final blow, please look at the picture very, very closely, especially the last frame, because Aziraphale isn't just sorry and he isn't just in pain.

Aziraphale is scared because he knows* that he might lose Crowley over this. He knows that saying I forgive you is (almost) unforgivable. He KNOWS.

He does it anyway because he will lose Crowley either way but he'd rather have him alive and hating him than dead.

With that I am concluding today's unhinged meta corner, thank you for your attention and you're welcome for the pain.

Also: If you want to call me a 'tin hatter' or insane or otherwise make fun of me - this is very much a girl, what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament moment because you read my meta post all the way to the end. <3

-

*authors note: what Aziraphale thinks he knows and what is actually real is not the same thing but that's a different post

[ma1dita]

to love is to rest

words: less than 1k

summary: Regulus whispers sweet nothings to you as you sleep.

warnings: none :) regulus x gn!reader, sleepy babies in love, he is an overthinker poor baby, children at war

a/n: had to get this sleepy little regulus oneshot out of my head! thanks for the love & feel free to send more requests & yell at me in the comments ; barely edited sorry i just want to be HELD

(posted: 10/17/23)

—

Regulus doesn’t even remember falling asleep. It was hard to, with the war looming over the horizon. He’d lay awake in bed for hours, pouring over strategies on how to take down the Dark Lord until sleep would rob him of consciousness, without permission. He fights back with fists, wrangling it in his smooth hands with copious amounts of dark roast coffee and ambition. Sirius always said he was a fighter, but he moreso believes that he is one who endures. There isn’t much of a choice in it all, despite the fight he puts up. One must fall victim to sleep, and Regulus is familiar with having to endure the choices life makes for him.

“Baby? What time is it?” he mumbles, sleep still clutching at his eyelids.

The room is dimly lit and the candles are burning low. Blinking rapidly to adjust his eyes to the darkness, he observes his surroundings and notices that you are nestled into his side, nose against his heart and lightly snoring. Cheekbones framed in moonlight and a little pool of drool over the beating in his chest, Regulus would’ve never thought love to be so soft. Love has been portrayed to him as a scary, unsightly thing—proclamations that cut like swords, a fierce grip that bruises, a performance that marks one forever. But as he smiles and traces your spine over the shirt you stole from his trunk, he realizes he’s never known a love like yours.

“I didn’t know how much I could love until I met you.” he whispers.

Having you here in his arms with only the moon as his witness, he worships you as if you’re something divine. He believes this so strongly because loving you is easy, with no expectations to uphold the family name, no etiquette to perfect, or punishment other than the one he brings upon himself if he gets it wrong. He wonders what must’ve gone right in his past lives so that he can hold someone so closely—someone so angelic. He's far from religious but he’d do anything you ask him to, and you believe in him too much for him to fail. The faith you have in him could give him the strength to survive any unforgivable curse, any death sentence the Dark Lord orders him so as long as he can run home to you. There’s so much he has to do at 17, so much to more to live for— and it’s inconceivable how much he prays to survive long enough to see you at ease.

“You don’t even know how little I loved before I loved you. You don’t even know…”

Should his chest dare give in at this exact moment, he reckons he could make his bones a home for you to live in. At least you’ll have something to remember him by, and his love will be immortalized by you, echoing into the next lifetime until you find each other again. There is nothing more mortifying than to be forgotten. Your hand reaches his forearm and for once, he doesn’t flinch. Regulus presses kisses onto your wrist so that you can carry it with you tomorrow, until you ask him to replenish you with more. His nose glides along your hairline, pressing kisses so that your mind won’t forget. He hopes these acts of love reach your subconscious, that in every plane of existence, you know of him.

“I cannot wait to live the life I stayed for. This is all for you, my love. I promise.”

A sharp inhale comes from your nose as you shift, waking from a dream. Your lips carve another soft spot onto his chest, and he is utterly yours. Fingers reach to cradle his jaw, smiling sleepily as you settle back into his space. His mind is finally empty, finally at peace—even if it’s just for tonight, he can be just a boy in bed with the person he loves.

Sleep covers the both of you slowly, and gently. He shuts his eyes once more and lets it envelop him without a struggle. Yes, he doesn’t know much about love, but for you, he’ll figure it out. For now, Regulus Black is at ease.

—

Love,

you claim, comes close to this,

no space

between your words, a hand

over the other’s heart. How do you live

with this distance?

-Nick Flynn

taglist: @jsjcue

[huicitawrites]

MAJOR, HUGE, GINANEMENOSOROUS SPOILERS FOR JUJUTSU KAISEN MANGA 236!

You have been warned.

SPOIL OF WAR

yandere! Sukuna x Reader (x Gojo Satoru)

Inspired by @stupid-sloot-headcanons and their post:

warnings: major character death, non-con, kidnapping, yandere.

wordcount: 2,2k

This should not have been the outcome.

Your hands would only ever be delicate and affectionate with him, but this time they were rough- clawing, banging and shaking his chest.

“Satoru, please! You promised…”

You buried your tear-stained face in his blood-stained chest. Unable to take in his familiar scent, your nostrils were tormented by the stench of iron.

You stood waiting at the end of the stairs. A few footsteps away, you heard the sounds of clapping and cheering. The corners of your lips rose a tiny bit, it made you feel a little more at ease knowing they supported Satoru and had his back.

That they prayed on his victory, and so do you, you pray that he will be able to return to your arms again. You clutched the scarf in your hands tighter.

The sound of footsteps going down the stairs stole your attention, and you looked up to meet the pair of radiant blue eyes that always made you lose yourself in the sky- you would never get tired of them, you could not ever dream on it.

He halted in front of you, his diamond eyes softening their gaze on you. A pink blush painted his pale cheeks, and a warm smile spread through his lips.

“Well,” he broke the silence, “can I get a goodbye kiss?”

In the ever, so, aloof attitude Satoru’s voice lacked any worries. He sounded confident, eager even. You differed.

An exasperated chuckle left your lips, “Only if you promise to come back.”

“I promise”

You stepped closer, the tip of your nose brushing against his chest, and you lifted up your gaze. You scrutinised it, staring past through his eyes and into his soul- the white-haired sorcerer felt shivers up his spine.

“Pinky promise and all,” he said and popped out his little finger, “ Cross my heart and hope to die, I’d never lie”

You only raised up a single eyebrow in response.

“Pfft, you don’t believe me? Your lover? The strongest jujutsu sorcerer might I add?” He dipped his face lower, bumping your foreheads. His hands, such calloused, combat-faded, skin fell on your hips and he brought you closer until your bodies were flushed against each other.

You giggled, but the relief was short-lived “It’s not that Satoru.”

Your [s/c] arms snaked around his back and you took in the warmth radiating off his body. He felt cozy, he felt like home.

And he would soon depart to battle.

“What if this time, you don’t come back? What if I’m left all alone-“ your voice began to break in sobs and your throat tightened. “What if I don’t get to see you ever again? What will I do-? And what about Megumi? Oh gods, he must be so scared“

He cut off your overthinking with a kiss. His lips on yours were soft and sweet, you melted into the kiss- into his arms. You wish this moment was forever, and yet.

“[Y/n]” he called out your name calmly. The least he wanted to do was alarm you, he wanted to be gentle with you and comfort you. “- it’s a promise, I’ll win.”

You smiled as he held your cheeks in his palms. Your lover swatted away your tears with his thumbs.

“-And if you are still not sure, I’ll leave you with this” Satoru reached his hand to the pocket in his pants and your eyes widened in curiosity. When you caught glimpse of the little box in the palm of his hand, your heartbeat picked up and drummed against your chest.

“Satoru, are you?”

“Tsk, tsk! Lemme finish here,” he grinned and proceeded to lean on one knee. Without further words, he opened the box to reveal a beautiful, silver ring with a small yet brilliant diamond in the center. Gently, he took your left hand in his and slid the ring in your finger.

You gasped and tears of joy formed in the corners of your eyes, before breaking down in uncontrollable sobs. You shared a passionate, fervent, kiss as he held you in his big, strong arms.

“It’s a promise, I tell you”

As cherished memories flooded your grieving mind, your back shook violently and you clutched his split body tighter. You took a look into his eyes, now they were dull. There was no trace of the shining and lustrous Six Eyes you adored.

“There, there”, a coarse voice interrupted. You froze upon the feeling of a hand petting your back in a sick mockery of comfort.

The voice belonged to no other than Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses, the usurper of Megumi Fushigoro’s body and the murderer of your fiancee.

“No use in crying over dead men, darling.” He snickered, “He had a good time, that much I can say. The best fight I had since, well,” he dragged his words, “-ever.”

“Don’t you dare lay your hands on me.”

“Oh?”

When you turned around, Sukuna was met with a nasty glare. Your face was covered in blood and your white irises highlighted your quivering pupils.

The King of Curses raised his eyebrows in amusement and smirked upon sensing the spurt of cursed energy radiating off your body.

“And just what exactly are you thinking about doing?”

He challenged you with his words, and although his usurped body was battered and tattered, his stance was confident. His words echoed in your mind, and flashbacks of Satoru and his promise flooded your mind once more.

Right, you could do nothing.

If the strongest sorcerer to ever exist was defeated, what could you - a retired sorcerer - hope to do?

The flow of your cursed energy vanished and your face fell. Silently, you dropped your body to lay next to your deceased meant-to-be husband. If you could not live a future without your beloved, you might as well follow suit.

The laugh of Sukuna tormented your ears, “You gave up? That easily? I had become excited, I thought you would put up a fight!”

His wicked grin and four mad eyes looked over your form with fake pity as he neared your form, looking over you. He squatted down, arms lazily over his knees and body to close for comfort- not that you paid much attention in your depressed state.

In the shell of your ear, like a cunning, venomous snake, he whispered “Got nothing left to do, now that he is gone… I can change that”

“It’s good to treat yourself after a good fight, after all.”

When a single arm wrapped around your waist picked you up, you began to thrash. ‘No’, ‘stop’, ‘don’t’, and many other words were begged for mercy as you furiously cried and tried to reach the body that became farther and farther away from you.

With your body in his arms, he carried you away. He laughed over the nastiest of insults you spat at him and found your resistance somewhat cute- but also annoying.

Above the two of you, the grey skies turned darker and darker. The sound of thunder boomed through the air as lightning flashed in the clouds. This picked Sukuna’s interest. He sighed.

He tilted your body to his other arm and used his claw to pinch on a nerve cluster in your neck. Suddenly, your thrashing body fell limp and your eyesight was shrouded in darkness.

“It seems I have to deal with some things first, worry not… We’ll have plenty of time later.”

...

...

...

Your forehead felt heavy against the corners of your head, it was throbbing. Still drowsy, you lifted your head off the pillow and squeezed your eyes before opening them wide. Light invaded your sight, blinding you partially as you blinked and adjusted to it.

You took in your surroundings, you were in a strange, lavish room.

What happened? Where is… Satoru...?

Your body woke up as soon as a glimpse of your beloved’s corpse flashed in your mind. In an instant, tears began to fall down your cheeks.

Satoru Gojo had lost the battle against Ryomen Sukuna.

The horrible image repeated itself a couple of times, before you remembered the transpired events and fell on the unknown bed- but not a stranger’s bed per se, his bed.

The strings in your heart pulled and ached as a sense of emptiness overtook your chest. You curled your body into a small ball.

You desperately wished to feel Satoru’s warmth.

You would never feel his warmth again.

“Still thinking about him?” A rough, morning voice spoke and before when you turned around, you met face-to-face with none other than The King of Curses.

You were staring wide-eyed directly at Ryomen Sukuna.

Amidst your shock, you could not mutter any words. However, your throat attempted to make sounds which died down in between your parted lips.

Sukuna chuckled.

“Good morning, darling. Had a good sleep?”

Part of you thought this was all a nightmare, a bad dream. Any moment, you would wake up now and be cuddling in the shared bed you had with your fiancee.

And yet, you franticly blinked your eyes, pinched your skin, all the tricks you knew to get you out of a bad dream all to earn the amused laugh of the King of Curses.

“This is very much real.” He cooed and before you could bolt and make a run for it, a pair- no, two pairs of abnormally huge arms trapped you in their hold.

“I finally have you all for myself.”

His confession did not shock you or washed you in either horror or confusion. No, you were too focused on the fact that you felt four arms around you.

The gears in your head slowly began to turn and click, when the realization dawned upon you, you snapped your head to observe his face.

His body had transformed, this time his four eyes were split- a set of horizontal eyes and a set of a vertical placed ones. Then, you took notice of his hair, it was salmon pink and slicked back- not dark and spiky. The ears beside his face were rather pointed and wide, decorated with black expanders, unlike the smaller ears of a teenager you had grown to care for.

You need not look at his enormous build, four arms, bigger markings, and mouthed belly to notice what happened. Ryomen Sukuna had reincarnated and Fushiguro Megumi, the boy you helped raise, was no longer.

True horror once agained adorned your eyes and with a cracked voice you called out the boy’s name, “Megumi? No, no, you… you-!”

“Oh yes, yes I did”

You broke down crying and sobbing once more and in taunting mockery Sukuna brought your body closer. He placed his chin atop your head and slowly caressed your back, leaving traces with his sharp, black nails.

Your flimsy hands pushed and bumped their fists against his head, all of which felt like a little tickling to the King of Curses. He laughed and mused.

“You are really cute, y’know? Gojo Satoru was lucky to have you.”

“You took everything from me! My husband, even my son!” and your enraged confession only made him chuckle more. As if it were all a joke to him, a mere slip-up or incident. Some bugs he had dealt with.

You continued balling your eyes out and pushing his body, but seeing it led you nowhere- your resolve cracked. You were all alone, stolen from the people you cherished most- the ones you viewed as close family.

“Sh… Don’t cry [Y/n],” he said your name so casually, “It doesn’t suit your pretty face”.

“What do you want from me…” An exhasperated demand left your lips and you feared looking up to meet his four, tormenting eyes. However, your hesitation to face him was ignored as one of his thumbs hooked under your chin and lifted your head.

You were looking eye to eye with the cursed king. You shivered upon clashing your [e/c] with his red eyes glistening with weird adoration, desire, lust, and hunger. An indescribable madness you could not describe, an unsettling obsession.

“If it’s a husband and a kid you are mourning over, I am more than glad to lend you my undivided aid with that.”

His voice dropped decibels lower, as he did his head which he dipped in the crook of your neck. Burying his nose in it, he inhaled in deep your scent and his arms lowered down your body.

Once again, you begged for mercy. Plea's and ‘no’s’ left your lips, yet they were muffled over by his own. His ‘kiss’, if a word of love could be used to describe such a monstrous act, drained you of the oxygen in your lungs, leaving you dizzy and gasping for air as his lips traveled down your unwilling body.

The sheets were cast aside along the torn layers of your clothes and soon, you found yourself bare beneath the devil.

“Don’t worry darling, I’ll take care of everything from now on,” he whispered in your ear as his hand pushed down your back and pressed your abdomen against the mattress. “After all, you are no longer Gojo Satoru’s but mine. You are my prize, my spoil of war.”

[mimicha-arts]

I have not written fandom theories for a long time, but LInkClick fuels my interest and search for meaning too much. Recently, I reviewed all the available series, and came across details that I had not connected before. For the most part, this post is speculations about Cheng Xiaoshi, as well as ... timeline.

Spoilers! Please be careful.

Considering so many details about Cheng Xiaoshi, it seems that there has always been something strange about his "symbolism". In fact, I'm really into the theory that the moment in episode 1 of season 2 (when Lu Guang gets stabbed) is the vision & flashback of the past about Cheng Xiaoshi's death. In fact, it amazes and delights me how many details in OverThink support these thoughts. At least because once a frame flashes, which somewhat resembles a scene from Lu Guang's flashbacks.

But there is more. We have 3 main points: clock, сlockwork and camera. 1. Clock - possible time of death Very specific time appear several times. The clock hands look very strange, still not 6, so probably the time is 5:20 (thus, given the symbolism of 520, I have even more questions). They show the same time in any frame.

But the most interesting thing is that at the very end, when we see Cheng Xiaoshi (with the design from the first season), for a few seconds, in addition to the patterns of gears, a very faded inverted dial of this clock appears on him, where inverted 4 is the most visible part. No need to say that 4 is a symbol of death.

This can only be seen in 1s1s ED. Because, in fact, there are 2 versions of the ED, and it's different (without these details) for the remaining 10 episodes.

Even the very first intro with characters contains very similar clock placed in the background of Cheng Xiaoshi. So, at this point, I'm guessing that this strange 5:20 was the key node and the death of Cheng Xiaoshi.

2. Clockwork - сhanging a key event Gears are shown both literally and in pattern. For a long time, I thought that Lu Guang's shadow was just a shadow, or an indistinct noise, but if you look closely, it becomes obvious that Lu Guang is covering a pattern of gears - probably as a sign of changes with clock mechanism and time. Details such as water drops and film strips are also interesting, as both OP (Dive Back in Time and Vortex) connect these elements to Cheng Xiaoshi.

One of the moments shows how the silhouette of hands (overlapping the trees, which may coincide with the background of the forest in the vision in s2s1) touches the inverted clock, after which the second hand of the clock begins to move back.

And the most beautiful thing .. The fact that the hands belong to Lu Guang, as well as the context of this action, confirms that the animation literally coincides with the scene from the end of 4th (and the beginning of 5th) episodes, when Lu Guang explains to Cheng Xiaoshi how key events (nodes) and changes in the past work. But inverted. What a coincidence, right?

Honestly, I think that all these details can further support the theories about Lu Guang, which already have enough speculation. Given all the hints, it is possible that due to Cheng Xiaoshi's death, he changed something in time, thus erasing the "future in that present" and created a new present as an alternate reality. Just a thought.

3. Camera - another timeline Let's go back to the very end again. Here Cheng Xiaoshi is holding a camera in his hands.

Remember this diamond-shaped mark. This camera is very specific, as it has appeared several times, but not in the main series (yet). There is an easter egg in the mini-series, Lu Guang has a rather similar model, only with a round (clock-like) mark.

It's importance becomes even more obvious, especially now that we have a poster for the second season.

So. What's wrong with this camera? Because there are actually two of them. The one on the table has a rounded clock mark. But the camera in reflection is the one that Cheng Xiaoshi holds in the ED, with a diamond mark.

For me... Seems like it is probably one of the main connecting elements or "anchor" between the timelines / alternate realities, at least conveys this idea. All this makes me feel excited and inspired, how it was possible to place all this so neatly. And which of these can really confirm conjectures and theories … Thanks to the scriptwriters and animators, it's nice to be a part of this game.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking… Anyway, thanks for reading to the end. Perhaps someone has their own thoughts, feel free to discuss ~

[tsukimefuku]

Let me die

I've been obsessed with a bit for a fic I want to write, so I just decided to put it here. Nanami fluff and some angst ahead, be careful.

Disclaimer: NO ONE DIES, it’s just a conversation in a bar where y/n requests something.

This is part of my "Jujutsu Partners Canon Divergence AU". A sequence of short stories and random drabbles for a fic I'll eventually write (eventually). To see the ever-growing list of one-shots, please visit my masterlist :) 

Disclaimer: they’re NOT written and posted in chronological order of events. To see where this story fits in the timeline, please check the masterlist mentioned above.

You had just finished a mission that left a pretty bad taste in your mouth. You were forced to choose between two people to save, and one of them was your friend. Was.

The glare she had as she embraced her beloved's dead body made you sure that she would never forgive you for saving her instead of him. You chose to save her for egotistical reasons, you knew that. You knew (or thought you knew) that his death would not weigh on your shoulders as much hers would. However, you just didn't account in your egotistical equation how much his death would weigh on her, and how much more suffering you bestowed upon her by choosing to let him die in exchange for her life.

"Nanami, I need to drink." you said on the phone. "I had a horrible day. I'd like some company."

"We can meet at the bar by your house at 7PM." He promptly replied.

You and Nanami had grown close during the course of the last few months. He was assigned to you as your informal mentor until you were promoted from a grade 2 to a grade 1 sorcerer. There was some history before you went to work for Jujutsu High. Both of you met when he was on a mission that led to him eventually saving your life, and your gratitude eventually started to become something more. Sometimes, you wondered if he felt as close to you as you felt to him. These night drinks were turning into a regular thing, and you usually let your mouth say things you couldn't think to say out loud if it weren't for a few beers in, and Nanami being the person you were talking to.

***

After a while, when you spend so much time around somebody, you tend to pick up on their mannerisms, like their brows frowning, the way their mouths twitch when they feel mad, or how they are dead silent because they're drowning in unsaid things.

"What is it?" Nanami asked, out of the blue, surprising you. Both had already been drinking for a while, and you specifically were 4 beers down in misery. "I can hear your thinking from the other side of the table."

“I have a request for you.” You answered.

He took another sip of his drink, and said, unfazed, "What request?"

He inquired like he already knew you wanted to ask something from him, even before you knew you would.

"If you’re ever faced with a situation where you have to choose between saving my life or someone else, don’t choose me." you said. Nanami lifted his gaze to meet yours, and seemed surprised.

You continued. "Please, don’t make me live with the fact that me being alive is because someone died in my place and I had no choice over that. Don’t assign me that guilt.”

It would be something harsh to say to anybody, but you knew Nanami. You knew him well enough to be sure he'd not take that as an accusation of sorts. That's why you chose to tell him this kind of "if this ever happens" desire before telling anybody else. Shoko would probably chastise you for such a request, given you were prone to overthinking and martyrdom, and Gojo would never listen to that in the first place, simply doing whatever he felt like.

Nanami went silent for a while, mulling over what you asked him to do. Different from you, someone that had a little trouble controlling your emotions and how they impact your words and actions, Nanami was the man that you used to call in your head as nerves of steel. You had never seen him lose his composure. Ever.

He started talking, his face lightly flushed from alcohol. “There are two sides for this. You assume I’d be willing to live with the guilt of not saving you when I could have done so."

You were not expecting that answer. He was the most dutiful sorcerer you had ever met — hell, he was the most dutiful person you knew. If there was one thing Nanami was known for, it was not letting his emotions interfere with his judgement when making a decision. You never thought he could ever feel guilty if you died in a situation where you gave him permission to let you die.

"You'd feel guilty?" You questioned.

"Yes." He replied. "Your request would make me live with a guilt I don’t want, either."

"My request of letting me die, with my authorization, to save somebody else?" You inquired.

"Yes." He replied, looking down on his glass.

You were both silent for a moment.

"I can't accept your request, because you’re assigning me your guilt just as much." He took another sip from his now almost empty glass of whiskey. "I don't think I could bring myself to let you die, even if you asked me to.”

That pulled on your heart strings. Hard. You were instantly flooded with all the memories of the time you two spent together working, or simply chatting like this. All the times you had a silent but deep understanding of each other. Could he be...?

"I never pegged you for someone with any dose of egoism of not letting someone go when they'd rather die." You responded.

"Not letting you die." He answered. His answer made you fluster, ever so slightly, and you reclined yourself in your chair, trying to hide your face in the bar's dark ambiance.

“Would you ever curse me for that?” You asked. "Curse me for dying to save somebody else?"

“No, I wouldn't.” He replied. "That's who you are, and that is something about you that I respect, even if I don't understand it."

You chuckled softly, trying not to get too emotional. The alcohol was not helping. “Well, I might just have to curse you, then.” you responded, smiling.

“To curse me for saving you, you'd have to be alive.” He bottomed his drink. "I can live with that.”

[henneseyhoe]

I JUST READ THE MELO SMUT🥵🥵so good can you do another one we’re he’s obsessed with the reader like he’s always posting her and showing her love or even like him being overly obsessed and a little dark

CLOSER.

Lamelo x BLACK!FEM!reader.

WARNINGS:!!SLIGHT CNC!!, daddy kink, stalking, mentions of blood and death, k!dnapping, mentions of mental health, kn!fe play(kinda), breeding if you squint, crying(as always), reader is a tad bit delusional, no protection(wrap it before you tap it)

Ps. I feel like being a perfectionist and overthinking fucked this up for me but I can’t keep holding this damn request hostage 😩 so I hope you still enjoy this, it’s LONG lmfao.

Pss. I thought I lost this request, whole time I just had to scroll down LMFAOOO

✮✮✮✮

“Damn, girl. This like the fiftieth love note you’ve gotten this month!” Karina exclaims, looking down at the stack of notes on Y/Ns counter, the girl adding one more from today into the pile. Truthfully, Karina had been sick of seeing them, disgusted by the amount she got weekly. “Girl, stop! It’s not…maybe fortieth” Karina makes a face, side eyeing Y/N with slight scornful expression. She was more than weirded out at the creepy gestures not moving her friend even a bit. Karina on the other hand, got goosebumps even looking at the letters. They were creepy to her, and every time she read one about this mysterious person confessing their love to her bestfriend, she grew more concerned for her wellbeing. “Like that makes a difference, Y/N. You don’t find this shit kinda..weird?” Y/N shrugs, not seeing the point in looking deeper than the notes themselves. A part inside of her liked the attention she got.

“No, not really. It’s kinda sweet!”

“Sweet?! this man, woman, thing, whatever the fuck! Has been writing to you for almost five months now and has not shown their face. You don’t think that’s creepy?”

“I dunno. Maybe they shy, Karina”

“Nuh-uh. I don’t trust it, I don’t like it. What if it’s your ex?” Y/N laughs, taking her jacket off and setting it on a coat hanger in her closet before heading to her kitchen to prepare a meal, Karina following closely behind her to continue her scolding.

“You are so dramatic, you know that? Me and Jason haven’t talked in so long, I doubt it. I haven’t even seen the nigga around”

“So? Nothing about me is dramatic, I’m telling you the truth. That’s more than a secret admirer, that’s a stalker”

Y/N shrugged her off, laughing once again, and further annoying Karina with her lack of urgency to get down to the bottom of the situation at hand. “Stalker? What is this, a lifetime movie?”

“No, it’s real life. that’s why I need you to stay ready for whatever, especially with that creepy ass message your ex sent you after your breakup”

Little did she know, her friend was right all along. It wasn’t her ex, but someone who was far more demented and delusional. Lamelo had been sending eerily specific love letters to Y/N’s house for months, but had been watching her for well over a year now. Almost as soon as he saw her, his last obsession became a buried memory, Y/N now being in the forefront of his mind and sticking there like double sided tape to itself. After some time, he knew her from top to bottom, back to front, and soon, inside and out. If it was up to him, she would have always been his, but he wasn’t the best with approaching women of Y/N’s caliber. She was smart, a college student studying computer science, and none of his silly mind games that’d usually trip up other girls he was interested in would work on her. He had to up his game, and so, he set his plan in motion until he got her in the right place to sink his teeth into her.

✮✮✮✮

“Be safe, okay?”

“Yes, Karina! I won’t get murdered or chopped up over my vacation week, I promise” Y/N joked, but Karina was dead serious, finding no humor in her mess. Y/N’s smile drops, and she becomes serious, mostly so Karina would leave her alone about those ‘silly little notes’. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll be safe” she reassured, both the girls finally saying their goodbyes with a loving hug and wave. Closing the door, Y/N sighs. Karina was her bestest friend in the world, but sometimes she could be overbearing. Y/N felt maybe she needed a bit of attention since her recent breakup. She craved it, really. It didn’t matter if the attention was physical or something with a little less contact, Y/N wanted it. But, It wouldn’t go farther than that, she didn’t need a rebound.

Walking into her kitchen where she just finished preparing dinner, she began making herself a plate of spaghetti and freshly toasted bread. The smell of the food made her stomach growl. She knew if she didn’t give Karina a plate of her own before she left, she’d complain that Y/N hogged all that good food to herself. Satisfied with the plate she made, she grabbed her a fork from the dishwasher and sat down at the dining table. Taking a generous amount of pasta on her fork, her mouth watered just as she was about to send her tastebuds to food-heaven.

Then, the doorbell rang.

The girl pauses, praying whoever the hell that was would go away on their own so she could finish eating.

Knock, knock, knock.

Damn. Her lights were on, they knew she was home. She sighs, her fork lowering back down to her plate. Swallowing the saliva that had accumulated in her mouth, she unsticks herself from her comfortable seat, grumpily making her way towards the front door. Oddly, she saw no one through the frosted glass frame placed in the middle of the door, so she was forced to open it up and see what was going on.

“Hello??” She called, aggravated by how she had to leave her hot dinner just to answer the door and be met with silence. Stepping out on her porch a little, her eyes scan her yard, though nothing but darkness surrounded. Shaking her head, Y/N slams the door shut and locks it. “Stupid ass kids knockin’ on my door. One day imma stick my foot up one of they asses” She rants, walking back to her little set up. Feeling happiness again, she takes that lovely bite of food and does a little dance in her seat.

As her eating progresses, she couldn’t help but to notice her vision blurring, creating two of everything around her. Her head began to spin, and her heartbeat could be heard in her ears mid bite. She had lost her appetite completely by now, currently only focusing on not throwing up all over her table.

‘Where’s my phone?’

She could have sworn she had set it right next to her plate, but it was no where to be found now, even in her corrupted vision. Holding her head in her free hand, she gags at the sudden smell that fills her nose. It was a faint smell, but noticeable. sweet smelling, almost. Ironic for the bitter moment. Her brain told her to stand, and she followed suit, but she couldn’t stop the weakening of her knees or how slowed her breathing was getting.

Her body hit the floor with a ‘THUD’, her limbs feeling completely weighted down, and her consciousness slipping from her as she laid on the cold tiled floor, unable to move.

✮✮✮✮

There she was. Finally where Lamelo wanted her to be. He was so jittery and giddy about his successes that he could scream, but he held off on that till he was alone. His letters, fake pages, dms, and Instagram likes had finally paid off. He had her all to himself, and finally, no one was in his way. Not her colleagues, not Karina, not even her ‘crazy ass’ ex. He had gotten rid of him as soon as tension rose in their relationship. Jason hadn’t seen REAL crazy till he met Lamelo, and he made sure he knew that before his last breath.

The first time Lamelo and Jason interacted was when he witnessed their first relationship fight, which was fairly petty, but Melo didn’t see it that way. He had left a reeeal lengthy note on Jason’s dorm door, describing in step by step detail about how he would gut him like a fish, cut him up into tiny pieces and send every single bit of him off to his ‘helpless whore of a mother’, as Melo described her as. Of course Jason was shaken up, rightfully so. But obviously not shaken up enough to back off.

After not talking to Y/N since the argument, Jason appeared on her porch with that same note, tearing her a new one. He thought Karina was playing jokes on him for arguing with her bestfriend and making her cry. He took his anger out on her, yelled up a storm, and burned up the letter in his hand with his lighter, leaving it on the poor girls porch to stomp out as tears flowed from her glossed brown eyes.

Lamelo took the whole thing as a challenge. Did he really think Karina was on his level of literacy? That note was too well typed for it to be her. So, him being the man he was, made his threats come to fruition. He easily beckoned Jason into close arm reach by teasing him on his campuses basketball court as Jason was doing solo drills. Lucky for Lamelo, he trained at night.

Walking himself into the low lit court, Lamelo began taunting him, which stretched over three whole minutes. Knowing the hot head would react with physical anger, Lamelo kept a guard, and as soon as Jason tried him, Lamelo revealed the bat he held behind his back, swiftly taking a mighty swing at the man’s left leg, hitting right below his knee. Jason couldn’t have possibly seen it coming.

“Right out the park!” Lamelo continued to tease with a wide smile as if blood wasn’t splattered on his shoes. Red spilled from the back of Jason’s knee from his bone completely breaking and stabbing its way through his muscles and skin. You could have heard the snap of the bone and the sound of him hitting the floor echo through the gym, a sound Melo wanted to hear, but Jason’s loud screaming ruined getting the full effect. “I guess this is the part where I run to base” Grabbing the man by his destroyed, bloodied leg, Lamelo drags Jason off of the court as he screams bloody murder.

Lamelo instantly began regretting not bringing anything else to knock him out with without killing him, but every mastermind had slip ups. a shame somebody is gonna hear his screams and probably have nightmares about it now though. Not that Lamelo cared about either parties wellbeing, he just didn’t wanna hear his or anyone else’s mouth.

Then, in Lamelo’s basement face down, Jason continues to cry like a baby while Lamelo took a much needed drink break for the sake of his sanity, or what was left of it.

“How the fuck am I supposed to play ball now!?” Jason heaves suddenly with a quiet sob leaving his dry lips, his coffee colored hands holding his thigh as the blood spilling slowed. “You genuinely thought you were gonna get that far?”

Before Jason had time to attempt to answer, two bullets were already lodged into his skull, one exiting from between his eyebrows and one through his left eye socket.

✮✮✮✮

His daydreaming was cut short by Y/N mixing in her seat. Her consciousness had finally came back, but confusion quickly filled that space in her mind that was once occupied by unconsciousness. She looks around, not recognizing anything around her. “Look who’s up” Melo leans up from his seat in front of her, peeling off the ghostface mask he wore just for dramatic purposes. Y/N’s eyebrows knit together. “I know whatchu thinking. Where am I? Who are you? I’ll tell you all that later. But, for right now, we’re gonna celebrate” He smiles, and tosses the mask, standing from the couch he sat on.

Walking over to a small bar, he pours an unknown drink into a glass. Y/N had no idea what was going on, nor did she really care to find out. She was too worried about all the guns and knives that were laid out on the floor next to his seat. Fear pumped up her body with adrenaline, her entire being tingling. She wanted to jump out of her seat, but her arms were tied behind her back, and her ankles were tied to the chair’s own legs.

“I wanna make a toast. To a new life, and new love” He held up his glass and drunk some of the mystery liquor. Waking over to her, he holds the glass to her lips. “Drink” he instructed, Y/N shaking her head and looking away. “Why not? You think I poisoned it or somethin’?” He takes his hand and grabs her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “I wouldn’t do that to myself, so drink” he insists.

Looking back at him, her eyes trace his features, stretching down his long, tatted arms. Creepy shit aside, she thought he was cute, but she had to stay focused. “If you don’t drink, imma just force you” Y/N didn’t budge, but Lamelo had no problem with setting her straight early on. Gripping the sides of her face to make her open her mouth, he tilts her head back roughly and pours the drink into her mouth. The liquid went down smoothly, but burned her throat like hell. She didn’t drink, she never did because she got drunk easily, and Lamelo knew that.

She jerks her head away with a strong gag, tears welling up in her eyes. “I dunno if you realized yet, but I’m the one in charge, I’m the one who ain’t tied up, I’m the one that could end you like *snap* that” he threatens with a snap, but it holds no weight to him. He wasn’t gonna kill this one, or at least he hoped he wouldn’t have to. “I know you’re a smart girl, so I know you can listen. I didn’t go through all those letters to find out you can’t follow simple instructions, pretty”

Her eyes were drawn to him, anger now flickering within them like a flame in a dark room. “Letters?…You were the one writing those fuckin’ letters?” She spoke through clenched teeth. Lamelo smiles. “Surpriiiise~” he sings, gulping down the rest of the alcohol before slamming the glass down on the floor. The glass shattered into pieces, making Y/N jump at the sound. Her breathing was ragged, and pressure built up behind her eyes like a dam waiting to be cracked open.

“You’re a sick person” She spoke with distress, shaking her head. Melo shrugs with no sympathy. If he had a dollar for every time someone said that to him, he’d be a Rockefeller. “Everybody sick, I just have no problem showing mine, unlike the rest of society”

“Jesus Christ” she muttered, her head hanging low in regret. Karina was right all along, and she didn’t listen. If she did, she wouldn’t be in this position, her life in the hands of a man she didn’t even know. “Don’t act so sad. You’re gonna love me…or at least learn to. again, you’re smart”

“I don’t wanna love you. I wanna go home”

“You are home. Don’t be stupid” He spat, waltzing by her and picking up a blade from the floor, inspecting in. Y/N tenses up, Lamelo immediately noticing. He side eyes her with a slight smirk, mischief infesting his energy. “You think imma cut you, Y/N?” She kept quiet, but he continued to pry. “You think imma scar that pretty frame you got? What about this beautiful face?” He walks over to her, using the knife to swipe a box braid out of her vision. Y/N sniffles, taking a deep breath.

“Let. Me. Go”

“Or what?” Lamelo challenged, getting close to her as Y/N gave him a look, one he couldn’t make out or tell if it was anger. “You can’t do shit, I made sure. I tied you real good. Your friend thinks you went on vacation, so if you aren’t answering tomorrow, that just means you made it safe and you’re having fun. Maybe found yourself a fun fling that’s distracting that pretty mind. Somebody you invited up to your room” he continues, the tip of his knife swiftly making a cut into her gown with a quick swipe, making the thin fabric fall from the top of her body, pooling into her lap.She wanted to cover her naked body, but the rope restraints stuns her movements.

“Would you take me back to your hotel room, Y/N? I would have been a great candidate” the sadistic nature of him alone had her terrified, he could have done anything to her. She began shedding tears. She was exposed now, realizing the gown wasn’t even something she remembered wearing or buying, so he had to have put it on her himself when she was knocked out.

If he pulls the rest off, she was for sure fucked, no pun intended. He stares with no shame, the tip of his tongue grazing his plump bottom lip.

‘Fuck’

She attempts clenching her thighs together to stop the tingling, but it never subsided, and her brown nipples getting as hard as pebbles helped nothing. She wanted to keep a guard up so badly for her own safety, but the wetness coating the lips between her legs was telling her to do something else.

He notices how her legs were trying to move and her hips slowly circled, unintentionally trying to find a specific position to stimulate her clit. She couldn’t help it, she just wanted the tingling to stop. “Lemme help you wit’ that, ma” Melo smirks, putting his hand right under her soaked pussy. She stops immediately and lifts her butt as much as she can, feeling the warmth of his hand under her. She shakes her head ‘no’, but he nods a ‘yes’ and keeps his hand placed, kneeling on one knee in front of her. “Go ‘head” He says. The approval he gave her lingered in her head as the tingling intensified, giving her no choice but to fall into temptation.

Y/N hesitantly lowers herself down and begins to move against his hand, swirling, bouncing, and grinding down at the speed she wanted as her hips stuttered backwards every time his finger tips would swipe over her clit. She let out a stifled moan and threw her head back, rocking her hips faster as she felt herself climb closer to her end. Lamelo only fed her urges by bringing his hand up higher every time she’d raise her hips when the feeling got too strong, aiming to stimulate her clit through even the strongest parts of her orgasm. His dick was as hard as an iron pole in his pants now. It almost painfully pressing up against the material, the tip leaking precum just practically begging to be set free so he could fuck something, and soon it’d get its turn. Y/N could just see it through her eyelashes, she couldn’t help but look, it was so obvious.

Lamelo slides his fingers between her wet folds, collecting her slick to keep her clit wet while she used him as she pleased. “Speed up” he instructed.

✮✮✮✮

Fifteen minutes had passed and she had already came twice in the palm of his hands. Her seat was sticky and her thighs were wet, but Lamelo’s hand and arm were wetter. He slid his hand from under her and took a taste of what he had craved for so long. All of the timeless nights he had spent looking through her bedroom window, watching her feel, fuck, and taste herself, wishing he was there to catch every drop.

Feeling defeated, Y/N’s head lulls backwards as she rests her eyes on the ceiling above her. There was no other sound but the ringing frequency in her ear and the huffing of her breath trying to slow itself. She could hear her own heartbeat slowing too, just until the sound of wood creaking above them drowned the sound out. She pauses, her eyes shooting wide.

‘Who could possibly be here? could they help?’

Was what she began thinking as all the color from Lamelo’s face seemingly drained, his breath now still. Suddenly he reaches for the knife he held earlier, grabbing it from the floor and clutching it in his hand. Just in case someone had creeped down the stairs to the basement and witnessed what had been going on, he had no problem getting rid of whoever was responsible for ruining their moment.

The walking upstairs prologued, the hot tears that filled her eyes starting to flood her flushed cheeks as he placed a finger over her lips, signaling her to shut up. The cold blade of his knife pressed against the skin of her throat, so hard that she could practically feel her pulse and she was holding her breath purposely, scared the blade would cut her precious soft skin if she moved even an inch, and he cared less.

As the footsteps went away, distancing from them, he moves his hand. He lets out a much needed breath of relief and licks his lips, a smile growing on his face. “Roommate. Thought we were goners there for a second. You did good though, ma” He praises, standing from his crouching position. “I think you deserve a treat because of that”

Positioning his knife under the rope that held her feet in place, he looks up at her with a warning look before cutting both of her legs free. He walks around the chair and does her hands next, giving Y/N the room to rub her aching joints, feeling relief. Only one thought ran through her mind just then, and though she was tired from the recent back to back orgasms, she knew she only had one chance to get it right. So, she stood like a lamb taking its first steps, and took a run for it.

‘Please, please, please’

She pleaded in her head over and over again as she ran though the large basement, hoping to find an exit. Just as she had spotted a door at the end of a dark stairway, light of freedom shining through the cracks, her body jerked backwards and spun in the opposite direction, the miss placement of her sore feet being the reason why she hit the floor. The taste of iron filled her mouth from the gash on the inside of her lip, her teeth accidentally biting down on it as she went down.

She thanked god that carpet covered the floor or else she would have definitely knocked a tooth loose, and maybe lost one. “Run pretty fast for someone who’s been tied up for hours” He flipped her over so easily, prying her legs open so he could kneel between them. He admired her entire body as he held both her wrists down above her head with just one hand so he could capture them in a pair of cuffs, making sure she had no fighting chance this time. She couldn’t believe his hand was big enough to hold down both, and even with her struggling, he didn’t budge once.

✮✮✮✮

The take down was rough, but when he fucked, it was nothing like she expected. He slid his shaft along her clit, the pink bud erect and sticking out from her hood. He couldn’t stop himself from jumping against her pussy with excitement, the tip of his dick slapping the bottom of her belly with every bounce. He pulls his hips back, the tip of him now resting against her dripping entrance, ready to ruin her for the next, if Lamelo didn’t get to him first. “Stop..” She mutters, but deep down, she was really anticipating the contact.

Her sexual organs were completely against her once again, fogging her mind with thoughts of him she didn’t want and didn’t expect to have. She was forced to sit there, pondering on how he felt and how deep he could go inside of her, but she no longer had to wonder as he pushed his hips back forward to give her a taste of what she would be stuck with for the rest of her days.

He sunk into her slowly, her walls gripping him as a welcome upon entrance. He practically had to force himself inside with a drawn out sigh as Y/N sucks in air, both of them exchanging looks into their eyes before looking down at where they connected. Her stomach involuntarily sucks in, showing the bulge of his dick every time he thrusted forward with skill into her. The feeling deep down was so indescribable, so good that she almost cracked a smile. She hadn’t even noticed how much he was stretching her out, she was too busy feeling every inch of him.

Her eyes rolls back and her toes curled as she brought her legs back further for him, Lamelo smiling at how he didn’t even have to tell her to do so. He was just proud that she was learning, but she had much more to get down pact.

“Good girl…” he rasps.

“It’s so fucking deep” She whispers, her voice slightly hoarse from her throat being dry. As his hips tempo changed, the chains connected to her wrists made jingling sounds, making music with the clapping of their thighs joining in the harsher he got. He couldn’t tell if his bodies reaction to her was cause he hadn’t had sex in a long time or if she was just that damn tight. Meanwhile, YN was Lost in clouds of her own, feeling the repetitive push of Lamelo’s tip knocking against her g-spot, her own cream starting to slip out of her and drip down to her ass.

“This pussy grippin’” Melo compliments, one of his hands moving downwards to grip at the girls throat, making her tear up once again.

“Yeah? You like it?” She spoke breathlessly, the man above her nodding and laying a singular kiss on her lips, making her swoon momentarily before going back to her struggling whimpers.

“Mhmm, fuck” He moans. He never moaned, but he guessed she was changing him too.

“Call me daddy”

“Daddy!”

“Yeah, what’s my name?”

“Daddy! Fuck!”

“You so fuckin’ pretty, mamas” he groans out, almost whimpering as his dick pushed inside her further and further. She felt like he was trying to make her cervix a home for his dick with how deep he was going. Y/N began to think how they had gone too far for her to ignore how she was enjoying every bit of this. No matter how much she tried to tell her pussy to stop cumming for him, she continued, making the carpet under her soaked with her honey. Hours ago she wished her hands were untied to beat his ass, but now she wished they were uncuffed so she could trace his tattoos while he dug her out.

He was hitting spots that not even her ex man was hitting.

Using her thighs for leverage, he begins to fuck her in a push-up position, ramming his long dick directly into her coven, her walls squeezing him almost like she was showing thanks without words. Her juices made it easier for him to fuck her with no limit, slipping and sliding into her with no trouble apart from how tight she was gripping.

He didn’t hold off to cum either, he had already came twice, but he had more to give her and she had no choice but to take it. He was convinced he could imprint on her, and it was a bonus if his seed grew inside of her after all this hard work he put in. She was gonna stay with him, and he was gonna make sure of it.

✮✮✮✮

[graneymar]

#1. NEYMAR: Bitter taste

SUMMARY: You and Neymar have been dating for only a few months when there were rumours about you being on vacation with your ex.

WARNINGS: angst

PAIRING: Neymar x female reader

Neymars POV:

Impossible. This can't be real. She would never do that. She loves me. I kept looking at the pictures and videos Y/N's ex posted on instagram a few days ago. She told me she'd be on vacation with her mother, but seemingly my fans knew better. They found recent pictures of her and her ex in Malta. I couldn't take my eyes off those pictures and stories. Pictures and videos of them at the beach together, clubbing, hugging, even kissing. Of course these images went viral instantly. Everyone was talking about how the "former playboy" Neymar Jr. got cheated on himself this time. Some people called it my karma, saying I deserved it. Others wished Y/N death in the comment section. But me? I felt nothing, pure emptiness. No emotions, no feelings. No sadness, no anger, nothing. Looking at her in these photos, I couldn't even recognize her as the woman I loved so much. She seemed so different. Her facial expressions, her gestures, her whole behavior. Who is she? Have I been really giving my all to someone I didn't actually know at the end of the day?

"Sinto muito irmão", Cris, one of my closest friends, texted me [I'm very sorry, bro]. Obviously he heard about the news already. I didn't even have the power or nerve to respond.

I was sitting outside on the terrace. It was about 8pm and Y/N was supposed to get here in about two hours. In those eight months we were together we have never been apart from each other for so long. We always managed to at least see each other at the weekends. Now she has been gone for three weeks and to be honest, I didn't even want her to come back. Thinking about how jealous she always used to be, how scared she was of losing me, and now it was her I saw in the arms of someone else.

I walked around the apartment, trying to find something to distract myself. The bottle of red wine I planned to drink with Y/N tonight caught my eye finally. Sinking into the couch I opened the bottle and couldn't stop myself from taking one sip after another. My family and friends called and texted me non-stop, reaching out to make sure I was alright, but I didn't want to talk to anyone. I switched my phone off and continued gazing at the TV that wasn't even on. All I saw was my reflection, sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine in my hands. Like a damn fool.

Soon enough, the second bottle was opened and I started feeling a little tipsy. No, I can't be here when she arrives. I can not stand looking or talking to her now. "Hey Kylian, what's up? Wanna go out tonight?", I called him after switching on my phone again, ignoring all the messages and missed calls. "Do you really think it’s a good idea to go out clubbing? Y/N will be there soon, you should probably talk it out", he replied.

"This is exactly what I don’t want and need. I've been sitting here overthinking it all for hours now. I need some distraction." It was clear to me that Kylian wasn't thrilled, but in the end, he agreed to get some drinks with me.

Y/Ns POV:

I could barely hold back a squeal of happiness the moment I opened the door to Neymars house. Three weeks without him felt like a year to me. I never thought I would miss someone so much.

Why are all the lights turned off? Weird. I expected him to wait for me, but didn't think of anything bad as I assumed he probably fell asleep on the couch, but no, he didn't. The only thing I saw were two empty bottles of red wine and a third one open. I laughed to myself "He really couldn’t wait and got drunk before I even arrived, hm?" Being sure that he already dozed off in the bedroom, I entered quietly, only to find the room empty. I slowly started worrying. Where the hell was he? What was going on? Is this another one of his stupid pranks? I tried to switch on my phone to see if he texted me anything, but the battery was dead. As I was looking for a charger, I noticed a little note at the side of my bed and picked it up.

I hope you had a great vacation with (your ex's name). Pack your stuff and be gone by tomorrow morning.

What the fuck? Where did this come from? My heart was racing, I started panicking. "Come on, come on, come on", I said as I tried to turn on my phone once more. A sigh of relief escaped my lips when I finally was able to type in my code. I tried calling Neymar, but as expected, he didn't pick up. After the probably 7th call I decided to check if he posted something on his instagram story, revealing where he would be or what he was doing. He didn’t post anything, but Kylian did. He was out with Neymar, in some kind of club. Suddenly I got a text from my best friend. "Uhm, why is (your ex's name) posting pictures of you two together? Aren’t these old?" What did he do? I knew he never liked seeing Neymar and me together, but making up rumours?! For what? Did he really think I'd go back to him after he tried to destroy my relationship?

I searched (your ex's name) up on instagram and was in shock. He indeed posted pictures and videos of us together in Malta from a year ago. I scrolled through the comments. Some people were making of Neymar, saying he deserved to get played after everything he has allegedly done to women. But most of them wished me death, stating they expected me to cheat, I am so fake, I never loved Neymar but his money and fame only.

The tears started rolling down my cheeks as I sat down on the bed. How could he ever think I would actually cheat on him? Didn’t I show how much I loved him? Wasn’t I doing enough for him and our relationship? Glancing at the note he wrote once more, I shook my head. I wouldn’t just leave him like this. Not for some stupid cheating rumours.

Neymars POV:

I decided to spend the night at Kylians house, giving Y/N the opportunity to leave before I'd get home. Normally, going out with friends and drinking always distracted me for at least a few hours, but it didn’t help me at all last night. Quite the opposite even. My eyes were still red and puffy from all the crying. My throat was burning due to the amount of alcohol I drank.

Entering the house I could still smell her fragrance. I took a deep breath, knowing this was the last time I would be "that" close to her. Looking around I realised there really wasn’t any of her belongings, meaning she most probably read the note and left like I told her to. "Oh shit", I whispered to myself as I entered the living room, seeing the bottles of wine that left a disgusting smell. As a consequence of the heavy drinking from last night, I couldn’t stand to smell any form of alcohol, so I decided to spend some minutes on the terrace. To my surprise, the door stood open. I stepped out and saw Y/N sitting on the bench, drinking coffee. "What are you doing here?", I harshly asked, "I told you to leave by the morning."

"And you really think I would just leave you like that?" Her eyes were as red and puffy as mine. She looked like she hasn’t slept the whole night. My heart would actually break seeing her cry, especially knowing I was the reason, but this time I didn't even care. "Well, you really should since I fucking told you to." The tears in her eyes were forming again as she looked away from me. "Have you at least packed your bags?", I asked her. She shook her head from left to right. "Then I'm going to do it for you", I said going inside.

"Neymar", Y/N shouted following me. I opened the door to her closet and started taking her stuff out. "Can you at least hear me out? I just want to explain it all to you." I looked at her in disbelief and laughed sarcastically. "I don't need an explanation. Everything I need to know, I saw."

"But it isn’t true Neymar, I didn’t cheat on you." I let out an annoyed moan. "You want to tell me these pictures are photoshopped? You met him by accident and then decided to spend your vacation with him so you wouldn’t get bored with your mom? Honestly, just drop it. I don’t wanna hear shit from you." Watching her breaking down in tears made me swallow very hard, but I couldn’t give in, not after her cheating on me with her ex. "The pictures and videos he posted are old. It was on his birthday, last year."

"Mhm, and it’s just a coincidence you've been there on his birthday again right?"

"Actually, yes. You know he lives there. The year I've been with him I was there all the time. I even thought of moving there. Trust me, I don't give a damn about him anymore. I just fell in love with the island." We remained silent for a moment, while I continued to throw her belongings into a random suitcase I found. "I don't know how to prove it to you, Ney. I deleted all those pictures as soon as we got together. I can’t even show you they’re old." No response from me. "He always wanted to tear us apart because he knew you were the real reason I left him."

"Congratulations to him. He succeeded", I coldly replied. She took out her phone and started scrolling, "Here." From the corner of my eye, I saw her holding her phone up. "Y/N, I don't want to see anything. I don't even care anymore. We're done."

"But this is undeniable proof that he is lying", her voice got louder, which made me raise an eyebrow at her. "Undenibale proof you say, huh?" I took the phone out of her hand and saw her instagram story archive. The same pictures and videos he posted a few days ago. My heart stopped for a second when I saw the date. Over a year ago. Not even able to look at her, I handed her her phone back. I couldn’t say a word, I felt so stupid. "But if you wish for me to leave, I will", she broke the silence, ripping her stuff out of my hand, "I just wanted to let you know that I would never cheat on you and if you still decide to go separate ways, it’s okay. Just please know that I really do love you and could never do anything to hurt you." I watched her filling the suitcase with her clothes. "And for your future relationships, you should really consider talking to your girlfriend first before leaving her without even giving her a chance to explain herself", she somehow managed to say inbetween her sobs. "Y/N, baby…" I softly hugged her from behind and turned her around. She buried her face in my chest and started crying even harder. "I'm so sorry. I can’t believe I even thought you would do that to me. He just made everything seem so legit and real." We just stood there, no one saying a word until she calmed down a little. "I love you Neymar, I love you so much. How could you even believe it for a second?" she spoke up.

"I didn’t at first, but… what would you think? I knew you were actually there and all of a sudden these photos appear on his instagram. And it’s not even a year ago that you broke up with him. I was scared you could possibly go back." Y/N finally looked up, staring right into my eyes. "I love you, you idiot", she said before pecking my lips quickly. "I love you too." I wiped away her tears with my thumb. "How about we'll take a nap, order food later and watch some movies? I think none of us really slept this night." She yawned as she nodded. "Sounds good to me."

[glossamerfaerie]

This is obvious, but bear with me.

2020: publication of Crescent City 1, which introduces the concept of the four Houses of Midgard and how the series titles will mirror them.

2021: A COURT OF SILVER FLAMES (Nesta’s book with Cassian as love interest)

2022: CC2 releases. We find out about upcoming crossover.

2024: HOUSE OF FLAME AND SHADOW (CC3 crossover in which Nesta and Azriel are the main ACOTAR characters)

Double meaning: Nesta is Flame and Azriel is Shadow.

2025 (?): upcoming ACOTAR title. Extremely likely to be A COURT OF [ADJECTIVE] SHADOWS. (Azriel book with Gwyn). The phrase could also be “SHADOWY + NOUN” but I think that looks messier. Nesta’s book also used the plural noun with Flames.

***

Assuming that my 2025 guess is correct, HOFAS is literally bookended by two ACOTAR books with the ✨exact same title word as HOFAS.✨

“But wait,” you say, “this is just a coincidence. HOFAS is named after a House of Midgard, the one with the reapers and necromancers. CC1 was published way before these ACOTAR books. Flame and shadow are super common words!”

I think these titles and book order have been planned for a long time. It’s possible that SJM had shifting ideas when she wrote ACOFAS in 2017, but by the time she wrote CC1 (which clearly introduced multiverse concept with Bryce’s tattoo) in 2018/2019, SJM knew that she wanted Nesta and Az to be the prominent characters in CC3 and the upcoming ACOTAR protagonists. The crossover details may have changed over the years, but Nesta and Az prominence didn’t.

Definition of House of Flame and Shadow: “Daemonaki, Reapers, wraiths, vampyrs, draki, dragons, necromancers, and many wicked and unnamed things that even Urd herself cannot see.”

There is literally no reason why this House HAD to be named Flame and Shadow. The other Midgard houses have elements (Earth, Sky, Waters), but why use the word FLAME specifically? It could’ve been Embers, Blaze, Inferno, etc. SJM could’ve also used “Fire” — it didn’t need to be fancy since House of Many Waters just used Waters.

Same analysis with Shadow. What about that creature classification necessitated the word Shadow? There are lots of natural phenomenon associated with darkness and death and wickedness — the use of Shadow is a deliberate choice.

I genuinely think that this fandom overreaches with the theories. It’s like Taylor Swift — Swifties overthink every Easter egg, but sometimes the answer of the album title is just a giant billboard in a music video.

HOFAS is that giant billboard. SJM is not a complicated writer re: worldbuilding or foreshadowing. It is as simple as “the next ACOTAR books are Nesta and Azriel — what if I represented them in CC3 with the crossover title?” It’s obvious. Setting aside foreshadowing in the actual story, the answer can solely be found in the title.

I love Elucien and know it’s been a long wait, but I’m afraid that the wait is going to be longer than some people hope. I know people think Elain’s book is next but I really don’t see how that’s the case. Not interested in debating or explaining the Gwynriel ship rationale since there’s a million other posts out there.

Re: Azriel’s title being A COURT OF [ADJECTIVE] SHADOWS. I’ve seen people on all sides of the ship war suggest that the adjective be related to the heroine (Gwyn or Elain). I really don’t think so. The title will solely focus on Az, just like how SILVER FLAMES solely focused on Nesta. It could be MELODIC SHADOWS or WHISPERING SHADOWS or something else. But the adjective will fit an ability that we’ve already seen from Az’s shadows (we know they whisper to Az and can sing). Similarly, Elucien book title will solely focus on Elain. Cassian and Gwyn and Lucien are extremely important characters, but they won’t be represented in the title.

[linkspooky]

You need to make another one of those "metas written by comparing characters with another show you liked" post about Getou now that you experienced FGO Morgan/Aesc.

Time to compare two characters from two different shows I liked (in this case Jujutsu Kaisen and Fate Grand Order: Cosmos of the Lostbelt 6 Faerie Britian) to illustrate what makes a good corruption / fallen hero arc. Two of the best examples I can think of in recent memory are Geto Suguru, and Morgan le Fay of Faerie Britian. They both have tragic arcs which follow similar beats which I think will illustrate exactly why audiences find these characters so compelling.

Both of these characters have their stories told out of order, appearing as villains first before their backstory is revealed but for the sake of simplicity I'm going in chronological order, the heroes they started as all the way to the villains they ended up being.

Before beginning though, a brief lesson on tragedy. Aristotle's poetics argued tragedy runs on the principal of catharsis. The audience feels for the characters on stage, no matter how terrible their acts may be. He argued in favor of moral ambiguity in its heroes. The tragic hero must neither be a villan or virtuous man, but a "character between these two extremes, ... a man who is not eminently goo and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice of depravity, but by some error or frailty [Aristotle's Poetics.]

The protagonists of tragedies are still heroes, but their good qualities are twisted against them. A tumblr post I see going around from time to time makes the argument that if Othello (the protagonist of Othello) were in Hamlet the story would not be a tragedy because Otello would just stab his uncle and avenge his father. If Hamlet (the protagonist of Hamlet) were in Othello, the story would not be a tragedy because Hamlet who is a characteristic overthinker would probably not fall victim to Iago's manipulations and jump to conclusions the way Othello did. Both of these characters are heroic, Hamlet is a clever and scheming prince, Othello is a talented general a moor who's managed to rise up the ranks in a racist society. However, they are both put into stories where those heroic values are twisted against them by the narrative framework itself. So to make the protagonists of tragedies into villains who were evil all along, ruins the moral ambiguity and therefore the catharsis of a tragedy.

Geto Suguru and Morgan Le Fay are heroes, placed in a narrative framework that twists their own heroic traits against them in ways they can't endure. They fall because of frailty, not because they were inherently evil to begin with. They are antagonists who have the qualities of protagonists, and once were arguably protagonists of the story, which is probably why they have so many fans in the audience despite the fact that they are both of them mass murderers and tyrants.

Now with the long preamble let's look at the stories.

Both characters start as essentially protagonists, and they foil the protagonists they are fighting against during their villain phase. Geto Suguru is a heavy foil for Yuji (we'll talk about this later) and Morgan so heavily foils Castoria because they are both the chosen one.

I'm going to start with Morgan because Fate/Nasuverse lore is a pain to explain. To simplify her story, Morgan Le Fay is from an alternate universe version of Britian. In that Britian everything is ruled by faeries. These are trickster faeries who are total jerks and extremely murderous at times. They were supposed to forge excalibur, but they just didn't do it because they were lazy. This was very bad, so the universe sent a big huge guy to tell them to forge the sword. They were lazy though so instead of listening to him they murdered him in his sleep and he died a horrible death.

The faeries could no longer be forgiven for failing to craft excalibur which is a really important sword that needed to exist, so god or heaven or fate or whoever decided to punish them and sent Aesc who will later be known as Morgan le Fay.

There's some time travel shenanigans but I'm going to skip it because it's confusing. Basically Aesc's job is to wipe out all fairy life and bring an end to their alternate universe, but she decides to defy her destiny instead. The heavens or whoever keep conjuring calamities to wipe out the fairites to punish them for their sins, but instead Aesc fights against them and saves the fairies.

I had a duty to paradise, but I knew that duty would result in Britiain's destruction. This other me, though... She loved Britiain dearly, even the lostbelt version of it. I thought about it, and I realized I wanted the same thing she did. From then on I chose to live as her. (Witch! Witch! Witch! You were the only one to survive the calamity) Countless times, I stopped the calamities. Countless times, I mended clan disputes to end wars. I did not mind. It was not the fairies I loved. I only loved britain itself and the home I would make here. It would be my very own Britian - something that was forever beyond my reach in Proper Human History. I did everything I could to make it a reality. Eventually though, I realized the best way to do that was to keep the faeries safe.

However, because Aesc is not one of them the fairies are generally ungrateful for her saving them again and again. Aesc gathers comrades around her to help ward off these calamities and save people, but she's often attacked by the same fairies she's just saved.

She continues fighting the system of her world again and again, until she's betrayed for the last time in her attempt to save Britan. The final straw is when after years of hard work she's finally brokered a piece and made a king who rules over all the allied fairy tribes, only for his coronation to be ruined, the king to be assassinated along with the entire round table. The king was also her lover, Uther.

Aaah! Aaaah! Why? Why? Why? This was supposed to be the greatest day in fairy history... Everything was supposed to change for the better! BUt they killed Uther! They slaughtered my entire round table like they were trash! They asked the world of us! They thought the world of Uther! BUt now, they've poisoned him...THey were too afraid to even face him cowards. Uther talk to me, please say something! I never let failure stop me! I've kept trying all these thousands of years! Am I doomed to failure here, too! Is it still not enough? Am I not enough? Is it not... Can I not save Britain? Is there no Britain that can be mine! Peace, equality, I never should have tried for either! How dare they! I can never forgive them ever!

You see much like Geto Suguru which I'll later illustrate, Aesc is caught in a cycle where she must continually fight disasters for the faeries to save them only to be met with their continued disdain. Her own higher minded intentions to save the people are what damns her to this painful cycle. If she'd been less heroic, if she didn't care she wouldn't have suffered. She's sacrificing herself over and over again, but sacrificing yourself is in a way just suffering. No one actually wants to walk the thorny path of the martyr, you'll get your feet hurt from all the thorns.

The people who are now accustomed to being saved despite doing none of the work themselves, are by and by completely ungrateful for Aesc's sacrifice. Aesc is a hero, but she's not in a hero's story so she doesn't get any of the benefits of a hero really. She's working with higher minded and more idealistic goals in a deeply cynical world and punished for it. I remind you, she was just there to kill all the faeries and end the world but she tried to save them instead.

It's important to emphasize their good intentions, because a shallower character reading would suggest that they just came out of the womb wanting to murder people. However, they're driven to it because they tried to be good, because they tried to be a hero. They are like Hamlet, and like Othello in the wrong story. They're also sacrificing themselves going against the system of their world and trying to be better than it, only to get dragged down. Their resentment grows against the people they are trying to save, the selfish and weak people who don't seem all that grateful for their heroism. The ones who aren't making sacrifices, the ones who are just content being saved.

I finally understood. My enemy wasn't just the calamities, it was the faeries of Britain as well. They were pure and innocent in the truest sense, they enjoyed both good and evil things alike without losing either that purity or innocence. They are at their core, no different from the loathsome humans who drove me from britain. So I crushed every possible source of malice. Vested interests. Discrimmination. Oppression. Envy. Mockery. All of it. But it wasn't enough. A few fairies took a look at the foundation of peace so many had worked so hard to build ... and tore it apart, because they didn't like it, because they could.

This is what finally leads to Morgan's breaking point, to decide that actually... fairies don't deserve rights. Morgan decides that the fairies are unworthy of salvation and rather than being the hero the only way to accomplish her goals is to become the oppressor and tyrant.

I give up, if everything has failed if it has all come to nothing, then I can never believe in people's so called goodness or understand it. Even if I did, what would be the point? Everything I did, everything I worked for... was just a waste of time. After all the times they betrayed me I should ahve known better... but I still clung foolishly to a sliver of hope. ANd now, because I wasted my time caring about something so utterly absurd, I've failed yet again. If my intent was to keep britain alive, then I was a fool to think being its savior was the way to accomplish it. No more. I will find another way. A better way. ...That's it. I won't deliver the fairies to absolution; I won't deliver salvation. Enough of this faerie of paradise, enough of being Avalon le Fae, I should have ruled this land from the start.

However, as I said it's only Morgan's repeated attempts to be the hero and save the fairies that drove her to this conclusion. However, I'd be amiss to say that Morgan didn't have flaws or selfish qualities from the start. Morgan le Fay is created from the Morgan le Fay we created with from proper legend. I'm not going to explain the lore, but basically she's an alternate universe version, who received memories from the Morgan le Fay of our universe. She knows the story of Morgan le Fay who tried to steal King Arthur's kingdom out from under him.

Alternate Universe Morgan le Fay still had the same chip on her shoulder, and entitlement that our Morgan did. She wanted the kingdom, and wanted Britain for herself. Her desire to play savior might have come from that very same entitlement that she deserves britain. Similiarly, she was most likely hurt so badly from the lack of praise because she also deserves praise for her actions. She has a bit of a superiority complex that places her above the fairies and makes her believe she has the right to rule.

However, as I said Morgan didn't start out as a tyrant she did earnestly try to save the faeries despite harboring those more negative qualities and selfish intentions. She may have had a more self-serving variety of selflessness but it's more the fragility of her that causes her fall. She didn't fall because she was rotten to begin with, she was just not strong enough to withstand years and years of ungratefulness from the faeries and betrayal. She has all the makings of a proper hero, she decides to defy destiny to save the people of faerie britain when she was supposed to be their destroyer. However, because she's in a tragedy she falls due to her insecurities and flaws overwhelming her rather than rising to the occasion.

Her manga chapter and the FGO Lostbelt game prose itself uses the light in the distance as a metaphor for this. Morgan continues going forward on the faint light of hope that things will work out for her and that even as a tyrant she can save Britain. However, it's that same light that damns her. In tragedies heroic qualities become flipped into flaws. Morgan's most heroic quality is her determination, the willpower to endeavor for thousands of years to try to save Faerie Britain, but that determination makes her unchanging, causes her to make the same mistakes over and over again, and just makes her continually suffer like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill.

But that light is just an insect trap - or at least that's how it is for the protagonist of the tragedy. Road to hell, and all that.

After reaching her breaking point Morgan decides she'll no longer try to save the fairies but rather only care about saving the kingdom itself. She goes from the kingdom's hero to its oppressive tyrant after seizing the throne for herself.

That's where we meet the villain we know today.

Now shifting gears to Geto Suguru, he is someone who starts out his story trying to be a hero. A little bit of context on the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, it takes place in an urban fantasy version of Japan where the jungian collective unconscious and the negative emotions of humanity create curses that kill and eat people. These curses need to be exorcised by a few special humans who are given superpowers known as jujutsu sorcerers.

There is an institution of sorcerers known as Jujutsu High, which raises sorcerers from a young age gifted with these powers to exorcise sorcerers. THese teenagers are often sent out on msisions. This is different from most stories of teenage heroes with superpower, because fighting curses is brutal and dangerous and most of these kids are going to die young. There's also no end in sight to the fight against curses, because no matter how many curses are exorcised humans will just keep making more.

Not only do they live in a cynical, and brutal world but most sorcerers are insanely selfish. Just to give an example of how immoral sorcerers are, one of the allies of the main characters is implied to molest her brother, and if she's not she still uses her like 12 year old brother as a child soldier. Nobody ever bothers to question this because the institution of sorcerers are inherently corrupt, it's an instituion that continually sends children off to their deaths and uses people as nothing more than cogs.

Caught within this unfair system and trapped in a cycle of exorcising curses that are just going to come back anyway is Geto Suguru, who is not only a model sorcerer he's presented as much more selfless than your average sorcerer. He's directly contrasted against Gojo Satoru who is kind of just a petty kid with a god complex.

Gojo uses his powers selfishly, he only fights because he's really powerful and killing curses is a way to test and use his abilities. (This is literally stated as canon by Nanami don't fight me on this I'm simplifying his motivations because this is not a Gojo meta look at the entire fight with Sukuna saving Megumi was a secondary concern he wanted to fight a strong opponent). Whether people are saved by his actions are a secondary concern.

Geto on the other hand goes against the grain for most of Jujutsu Society, and believes that they as stronger people have a duty to use their strength to protect the weak. This idea of noblesse oblige is way way different from the attitudes of most sorcerers, who as I said usually turn into petty little people with god complexes.

Not to say Geto doesn't have a god complex, but we'll get to that later. Geto is explicitly contrasted against Gojo who's the only other powerful sorcerer and his best friend, but doesn't think they have an obligation to use their powers to help anyone.

Right away we have two things in common with Morgan le Fay, number one they hold themselves to a higher minded ideal that of using their powers to act as a hero and protect the people underneath them. Number two, this is a choice they make to be better than the people around them. Morgan's destiny is to destroy the faeries and she tries to save them. Sorcerers usually just keep their heads down and do their jobs, they're not heroes, they don't save people they kill curses. In fact, the sorcerers who are selfish assholes (Mei Mei) are wildly succesful, the ones who try to help other people like Nanami die young.

They sacrifice themselves for others. Geto pursuing his higher minded ideal is faced with the same kind of tragedy that Morgan is, where his attempts to save a teenage girl named Riko not only blatantly fail, they fail because of Toji a person who cannot use cursed energy. Everyone they tried to protect died, and they're shown first hand not only does the world not really care about their idealism, but they're not really powerful enough to change this world in any way.

Morgan's lover Uther and all of her allies is ruthlessly slaughtered, by the same faeries she was trying to save after she brokered peace. Geto tries to save a little girl, and he not only watches her die, but he sees an entire crowd of normal people, the people he is fighting to save applause for her death. They all applaud her death because they're a part of a cult that believes that the girl was an affront to their god, but she was mostly just a normal teenager. He witnesses first hand that normal people do not care for the fate of Jujutsu Sorcerers whatsoever.

If Geto were more selfish he would be rewarded. If he didn't attempt to save people, if he just only cared about exorcising curses like Gojo did he'd probably become more powerful and he wouldn't succumb to despair the way he had. Geto exists in a narrative where selfishness is rewarded, and his selfless, heroic traits are continually punished.

This traumatic event makes him aware similarly to the brutal cycle he is caught up in. Morgan le Fay can't save the faeries, because faeries are jerks who can't change. Geto will just continually exorcise curses over and over again. Not only is humanity just going to keep producing more curses, but humans are vastly indifferent to the sacrifices that sorcerers (who are mostly children) keep making to try and save them.

Geto's choice to protect people is the cause of his suffering, because sacrifice is inherently taking on suffering for the sake of someone else - therefore sacrifice is suffering.

This too, leads to Geto's eventual breaking point where he lets his resentment for the same people he's trying to save corrupt him. An incident where just after seeing his dear friend die because of a curse, he's brought to a village of people. The whole village put two little girls in a cage, who were capable of seeing curses and blamed them as the scapegoat for a curse reflecting his village. Geto sees a flash of what happened to Riko again, a crowd full of normal people who don't have to fight curses applauding for the sacrifice of a little girl who was innocent. It's the macrocosm, all of society forcing a few sorcerers to die exorcising curses for them, shown on the microcosm, one village scapegoating two little girls who did nothing wrong.

That's what leads Geto to snap and massacre the whole village. He's now turned against the masses he wants to protect. He then decides that instead of protecting the masses, he's going to kill them and build a world of only sorcerers. He's no longer trying to save them, like Morgan le Fay he's turned to the hero and the Tyrant.

They both even utter similiar words.

I will never save the faeries! I will never forgive the faeries! I don't like monkeys. That's the truth I chose.

Monkeys is by the way, the word Geto uses to refer to normal people who cannot fight curses or even see them. People who don't have superpowers.

One more time I want to emphasize Geto did not come out of the womb wanting genocide. Hamlet didn't start out the play stabbing people. He does have his flaws, just like Morgan by assuming the role of the hero he sees himself in a separate, superior category to the people he wants to protect. There's a line I like in a youtube analysis for for Yuji that applies to Geto as well.

(Other people exist to be saved, which gives Yuji a role in the world) In a way Yuji thinks other people exist to validate his own existence.

Geto begins the story not seeing other people as people. They exist in a category separate from himself. Part of the reason that his failures hit him so hard, is because they disprove this idea of superiority he has for himself. He's shown his god complex is just a complex and he's as flawed and capable of failure as any mortal.

It's an inability to recognize that failure, learn from it, and reconcile it with themselves that causes both Morgan le Fay and Geto to spiral. They are the hero, they are trying to be just, they should reap the just rewards for being a hero. Geto even says as such in a moment of rare jealousy for Gojo, that Gojo is someone who also has godlike power and if Geto had that same power he could change the world the way he wants. He could create his more just world.

Morgan and Geto are characters who begin their narratives with superior complexes and senses of entitlement, selfishly selfess heroes and those negative qualities eventually lead them to fail. Geto thought being a sorcerer made him superior, he just also thought that with that superiority came a responsibility to protect others. Morgan le Fay thought she was the rightful king of Britain, she also thought that divine right to be king also came with an obligation to protect Britain. However, they're not meant to be seen as people who all along wanted to oppress and hurt others.

The key word with tragedy is catharsis, we are supposed to feel for the protagonists of tragedies. We're supposed to see our own traits reflected in them. It's their human qualities to drive them to tragedy.

After all, you reader on tumblr would probably not be able to be a perfectly selfless hero. If you saved someone and then they immediately tried to kill you, you would probably just be a little bitter about it. If you were like Geto and you were working tirelessly to exorcise curses, and all you got was your friends dying, I don't think you'd be like "This is okay :D". If anything, going mad in their extreme circumstances seems like a reasonable response, because could we as the audience do any better in their situations?

Of course the last similarity between Geto and Morgan (besides the fact they both adopt daughters they raise up to be little psychos but this post is getting too long already) is the fact that they both heavily foil the heroes of the story they occupy. They see themselves as villain, they play the role of villain, but they're really just heroes of another story.

Paradise or god or fate or whatever in Faerie britain eventually conjures up another chosen one. This chosen one Altria or as the fandom calls her Castoria is far less heroic. IN fact unlike Morgan who embraces the role of savior she would rather do anything she could to avoid Britain.

This is because for similiar reasons as Morgan, the faeries have basically abused her and tormented her all her life. Yet they still expect her to selflessly step up as their chosen one and save the day from the evil oppressive tyrant Morgan.

You have one protagonist who embraces their heroic quest, and even goes above and beyond by ignoring her destiny to wipe out the faeries and saving them instead. You have another who continually runs away from the heroic quest, and honestly doesn't seem to care that much about saving faeries.

Morgan is actually openly sympathetic to Castoria, and even offers to ally with her a couple of times because she bears the same burden as chosen one. This is another example of how Morgan doesn't quite fit the role of either hero or villain, the ambiguity who makes tragedy.

However, while Morgan does everything to defy fate, Castoria just kind of keeps marching along every step of Joseph Campbell's the heroes journey until she ends up defeating Morgan. Well she doesn't truly defeat her, but Morgan meets her tragic end and gets stabbed a whole bunch of times.

There's a similiar foiling between Geto, and the series protagonist Yuji who both start out the story believing that as sorcerers they have a duty to save others. There are several in story comparisons and direct parallels between the two.

Yuji attempts to save others with his power as a sorcerer over and over again, and is met with the same continual failure that Geto has. Yuji is the only real sorcerer in his generation that cares about saving strangers with his powers. Nobara wants money to live in Tokyo, Megumi only cares about protecting Yuji and his sister, Yuta only cares about his friends, Maki only wants revenge against her clan. Like Maki blatantly says whether people get saved or not by her actions is none of her business.

His own attempts to save people not only fail badly, but he watches people die. He watches a lot of people die in a situation where he is powerless to stop them.

He's met with the same tragedy of Geto but he doesn't succumb to it. The same for Castoria she doesn't decide to be a Tyrant the way that Morgan le Fay did. I would argue this isn't because of any inherent goodness that Castoria or Yuji have but rather because both of them are able to let go of their egoes. Yuji kind of believes the same thing Geto does, that other people exist to be saved by him. He's broken when he realizes that he's not a savior after all...but he's able to continue in a way that Geto isn't.

Yuji lets go of his ego entirely and believes that he's just a cog in the machine and he doesn't need to be some big hero or be rewarded at the end of his hero's journey.

Geto and Morgan le Fay both long for a role in the grand scheme of things. They are still employing narrative thinking, they need to play a story role to validate their existences. It's just that they flipped their role, they tried being the heroes but it didn't work so they're the villains now.

Geto is similiarly rebuffed by Yuta who is his eventual killer by saying that he doesn't actually care about saving the world or if Geto is right that sorcerers are superior to humans, he's only fighting for his friends.

I would say for both castoria and yuji it's not a matter of being inherently good people, but rather of being better at enduring than their counterparts are. Morgan le Fay and Geto try to take the world's suffering on their shoulders, and it breaks them because they're not heroes they're just normal people. Yuji, Castoria and to the same extent Yuta kind of learn to let go of their great heroic aspirations but because of that they're able to take on suffering better. They're trying to live in reality not a grand heroic fantasy.

To bring the example back to FGO, for Castoria and for Morgan the light of hope that led them down their heroic journeys mean two different things. For Morgan that light is an insect trap. Her flying towards that light just causes her to keep suffering through her sisyphian task. Castoria has a much more realistic point of view, she's not trying to get a happy ending or even save people, that light is the hope that at the end of her journey her actions will have meant something. It's more about the journey itself and the people she met along the way, then some big grand reward at the end.

Morgan le Fay and Geto both fail because they are fragile, because they are human. That's the most important takeaway of this long rambling post. They may be selfish, they may be entitled but they're flawed in human ways. After all, who doesn't want a happy ending?

[hiimawarish]

for you, i would fall from grace

s. diluc overthinking whether he is worthy of you or not. cw. a little angst? maybe? also fluff. fem/afab reader. reader is not from mondstat, but it is never specified where she comes from. tw. mention of death (crepus). not proofread. wc. 0.9k a/n. idk what to say, i just had a thought and it ended up in this. i wrote this before i had to connect to my teaching training, so excuse any typos. credits. dividers by @/cafekitsune.

He was tainted.

The realization dawned on Diluc as slowly and certainly as the sun set every evening. He was tainted. His hands, the same hands he used to protect Mondstat from the Fatui, were stained in blood. He had always known, of course—there was not a day when he could forget that his own father’s blood had been spilled by his hands, even if he had done so out of mercy. 

What was that saying Adelinde always said when he was a child? 

Oh, right.

Hell is full of good intentions.

In any case, Diluc had never truly been the oblivious type. Not to his own faults and flaws, anyway. He was aware of his shortcomings, his mistakes. Perhaps that was what had pushed him to spend sleepless nights protecting the city. Whatever his reasoning, Diluc had always known that his actions would never wash the blood off his hands. He didn’t mind. He hadn’t minded. Not until you came along.

You came barreling into his life on an evening he remembered perfectly. If he had been any good at painting, perhaps he would have been able to replicate the crimson glow of the sunset that day. He would have been able to place each cloud perfectly in the sky, stained in shades of pink, orange, and purple. You came into his life laughing, an outlander visiting Mondstat for the first time—he had been fortunate enough not to have to leave his post at the Angel’s share, and instead spent the night refilling your drinks and snacks, listening to the stories of your travels.

Diluc had never been quite as chatty, and he had realized early that most people found him too broody and intimidating to even approach him. You did not. Whether it was the adrenaline of finally arriving at Mondstat or the dandelion wine working through your organism, you didn’t know. The only thing you knew was that you needed to speak, to ramble, and he had turned out to be a good listener.

That should have been the first sign, Diluc realized. He should have known at the moment that you would become more necessary to him than air—that he would feel an asphyxiating pain within his chest whenever you were away. He should have known, but who could have guessed that Master Diluc, the head of the Dawn Winery, the owner of Angel’s Share, would fall head over heels for a sweet thing like you?

You were sweet.

You were, in Kaeya’s words, full of joy. 

“She’s good for you”, he had said, ignoring, as usual, the glare sent his way. “You need some sunshine.” 

Sunshine. He had called you sunshine.

Diluc soon realized that, no matter how much he willed Kaeya to be wrong, he was not—you were sunshine incarnate. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear the sweetest wines he produced were all made when you were around. He might even swear that the longer you stayed, the less Fatui incidents he encountered. You were sunshine—you were his lucky charm.

But he was tainted.

He realized that as blinding as your light was, it seemed to dissolve his own darkness. The shadows that had grown within his heart melted whenever you wrapped your arms around him; your warmth trapped him in a golden cage he’d gladly stay. It dawned on him as you laid next to him in bed—your soft breathing, your chest rising and falling, one of your hands clutching the pillow, the other wrapped around his waist. 

Your hands were clean, only ever tainted by the occasional tears of frustration. He feared, sometimes, that you’d be tainted by him whenever he held you in his arms. He lived in constant terror that you would realize what he actually was, that you’d see through his mask only to realize he was far too damaged for you… That he was far too consumed in darkness for a creature of light like you. 

“Just go to sleep.”

Your voice, as if it were no more than a mermaid song, snapped him out of his musings. His amber eyes looked down at you, your frame curled up against his side. Your eyes fluttering open, just slightly, enough for you to glance at him, an amused smile on your lips. He still relished in how easy you made it seem—how contagious your smile was, pulling his into a curve without him willing his lips into it.

“I thought you were asleep,” He whispered back.

You closed your eyes, head softly nuzzling into his side. He could feel you taking a deep breath, as if trying to take all of his essence in. “How can I sleep knowing you’re overthinking again, hm?”

Harsh words whispered in the softest tone made Diluc chuckle amidst the darkness of your shared room, the vibration from his laughter resonating deep within your ribcage.

“Overthinking,” He repeated, almost musing.

You pulled on him, then, asking him quietly to close his eyes. Diluc merely smiled, allowing you to pull him wherever you wanted him, until he had transformed into a protective cocoon for you. 

Maybe you were right.

He was overthinking—even if he were nothing but a moth attracted to your flame, you would not burn him. You were too gentle a burst of sunshine to ever dream of such a thing.

And he was far too powerless against you, no matter how blood-stained his hands were.

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