#so little people to present them to that will understand

[platypus-brained]

Is Linda a bad Mom?

Is this a “yes” or “no” question? Is it more complicated? Ultimately, that’s up to you!

Is she the best cartoon Mom? No, she has obvious flaws but in my opinion she’s not all bad! Especially compared to Doofenshmirtz’s Mom!!!

But I understand why some people don’t like her and viewer perspective plays a key role. A younger audience is more likely to see Linda as a bad Mom, while an older audience is more likely to see the bigger picture (and it can depend on the amount of times you’ve watched the show)

Angry that Linda doesn’t see what the boys do? Yes, it can be very annoying but it’s not really her fault because the show intentionally keeps Linda unaware if we apply real world logic, so the real blame is the “mysterious force” and the script

Also Linda’s in her 40s to 50s so it makes sense she’s struggling to believe or keep up with her hyper 15 year old daughter (16 in the revival) but she still continuously answers her phone to come home and lets Candace drag her to the backyard

Think that Linda calls Candace “crazy” or is a “dismissive” or “neglectful” Mom? Yes, there are instances that support this but think about real world logic again because we the viewers see everything but Linda doesn’t. Also think how when Candace screams at Linda that the boys have build some crazy thing EVERY single day and Linda repeatedly doesn’t see anything then those words lose all meaning

How you’d feel if you had someone who kept interrupting you every time you were shopping, cooking, watching a movie, hanging with friends, at the dentist, sleeping, etc to try to show you something you never actually see? Linda has dealt with that for months if not YEARS

You can roll your eyes at me, but admit there’s truth in the points I’ve made! If you can’t see it then you’re in denial just like how Linda’s in denial that her kids have more than “overactive imaginations”

Anyway, I’m going to go over some episodes in non-chronological order that indicate Linda is a good parent (not perfect but not bad)

Don’t like long posts? Then this isn’t for you😅

(By the way, I’m not counting what Linda does in “Phineas and Ferb get Busted” because that was a dream within a dream within a dream)

• In the episode “Mom’s Birthday” Linda is shown to love and appreciate everything that her kids do for her! And even though she's unaware that Candace’s efforts were unintentionally overshadowed by what Phineas and Ferb did, Linda does mention more than once that she doesn’t want the boys to overdo it:

“Oh, wow. You boys really outdid yourselves.”

“Oh, those boys are too much!”

“Oh, I hope the boys don’t go overboard with my present.”

And she asks where Candace is because she wants to spend time with her too: “Candace? Candace? Where’d she go?” Then later she asks Candace to sit next to her: “Candace, honey, come join us. The boys have put together a little video.”

Then Phineas and Ferb’s video reveals the song Candace wrote:

Phineas: “But a true testament to what a great Mom you are, is that your daughter would take the time to write this song.”

*The video reveals Candace practicing her “I Love You Mom” song in the music room*

Linda shreds a tear and goes over to hug Candace then says, “What a beautiful song, honey!”

And tells Lawrence on a video call: “The boys threw me the greatest party. And Candace wrote me this really amazing song.” Which brings a smile to Candace’s face!

(-> Here’s Candace’s full song on YouTube <-)

• Speaking of birthdays, in “Candace Loses Her Head” Linda makes Candace a birthday breakfast: “Happy birthday, Candace! I made you a special breakfast!” *holds a plate with a stack of pancakes with whipped cream, syrup, and a birthday candle on top*

Then the boys make them go to Mt. Rushmore and Linda offers to buy Candace anything she wants in the gift shop (at least she’s trying)

Linda: “Okay, Candace. It’s your birthday, you can pick out anything you want. Ooh, what about the Mt. Rushmore bobble head?”

Candace: “Mom, that's lame.”

But during the end credits Jeremy gifts Candace the same Mt. Rushmore bobble heads because he saw her looking at them and she immediately loves it and calls today the best birthday ever

Also before Linda can see the statue of Candace’s face it explodes with lava but Linda mistakenly believes Candace was talking about the president monument and says: “You're right! It's beautiful! *hugs her* Happy birthday, honey. *kisses Candace on the cheek* Now let's go find your father.”

• Another birthday episode is “Phineas’ Birthday Clip-O-Rama!” where Linda is shown frosting the cake for her son’s birthday party: “Where are you, Candace? You promised you’d help frost the cake after you got Phineas’s present.” And later serving it to the party guests: “All right, everybody. *standing next to a cake with a Phineas ornament on top* Who wants cake?”

• In “Out of Toon” Candace tries to call Linda and her voicemail says: “Hi, this is Mom. Leave your psychotic rant about the boys when you hear the beep.”

And before you go Ah ha! Proof Linda’s a bad Mom! listen to the voicemail Candace leaves: “Uhh! Mom, come home quick! There’s a giant mob, I’m a super fiend, I’m roasting them with laser vision! Hey, what do you mean, psychotic rant?”

Candace is talking about how Phineas and Ferb made her the super villain in their cartoon show (ironic) but her wording definitely doesn’t help her case of it not being a “psychotic rant” and at the end of the episode this exchange happens:

Linda: “Well, I’m here. Now, where’s this giant animation studio?”

Candace: “It got up and it danced away.”

Linda: “It what?”

Candace: “It got up and it danced away.”

Linda: “It got up and danced away…?”

Candace: “See? It even sounds crazy when you say it. I'll be in my room.”

• Another time Candace says something unbelievable to her Mom (that I want to bring up because it’s funny) is in “Split Personality” when Candace tells her the boys “made” her:

Busting Candace: “Mom, Phineas and Ferb made me!”

Linda: “Um, I’ve got some stretch marks that would say otherwise.”

Busting Candace: “No, I mean, they split me in half! Well, not like I’m cut in half, but they’ve made another me.”

• In “Tour de Ferb” Linda just got out of the shower and Candace picks up her up against her will and puts her Mom in her bicycle basket while Linda’s only wearing towels and a robe but instead of getting super mad about this (wouldn’t you?) Linda is glad that she picked that day to wear her bike helmet into the shower

Candace: *picks Linda up* “I know where the last obstacle is. Hee-hee-hee-hee.”

Linda: “Whoa! Whoa! *gets placed in the bicycle basket* Candace, I'm not even dressed!

Candace: “Sorry Mom, it’s an emergency!”

Linda: “Luckily, I picked today to wear my bike helmet into the shower.”

• In “Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror” Linda gets worried when Candace hasn’t called her like usual and leaves the spa to go see what’s wrong: “Something is very wrong. Not a single call from Candace. *checks her phone* Not even a text message. Oga hose me down. I'm going home.”

Then she calls Candace while driving home:

Linda: “Uh, Candace? Is everything okay?”

Candace: “Ohh, everything is just wonderful...”

Linda: “And...Phineas and Ferb? What are they doing?”

Candace: “Ohh, such wonderful things...”

Linda: “Candace, honey, I’m coming home.”

Candace: *breaks out of trance* “Wait, WHAT?”

Linda: “I’m right around the corner; I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Candace: “Wait! No Mom, you can’t!”

This is the first time we see Candace have fun with her brothers instead of trying to bust them, but her unusual behavior worries Linda enough that she leaves in the middle of her spa day to go home to see what’s going on to cause this change in routine. Sure, she “ruins” Candace’s time with Jeremy but it's mostly out of concern

• Something similar happens in “Tree to get ready” where Phineas and Ferb and Candace and Stacy are having a treehouse robot fight but Linda wonders why Candace hasn’t called:

Linda: “Hmm. That’s funny. I haven’t gotten the usual call from Candace.*gets phone out and calls her* Candace, honey, I’m at the car-wash, and I’m be heading home very soon. Bye bye.”

Candace: “Oh, no!”

Again Linda unintentionally “ruins” the fun but it works out in this episode since they all race back home and the treehouse robots break into normal treehouses before Linda gets there:

Linda: “Looks like you’re having fun.”

Phineas: “Well, Mom, you know what they say-” *Candace and Stacy throw a water balloon at him*

Ferb: “Fun never falls too far from the tree house.” *Also gets hit by a water balloon*

• In “It’s a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World” Linda goes to her cooking class and her cooking instructor breaks her phone after Lawrence called her about the boys having a monster truck in the backyard:

Chef Guilbaud: “Ahem. Madam Flynn, I have told you a hundred times, *uses meat tenderizer to break phone* No phone calls in class!”

Funny enough, his phone rings but it’s actually Candace asking to speak with Linda, implying this happened often enough that she has her Mom’s cooking instructor's contact information but Linda still picks up the phone despite being glared at and threatened

Candace: “Mom, I think the boys are building a monster truck.”

Linda: “Um, honey, I gotta go. No- B-Big chef. Big meat tenderizer in front of Mommy! Bye bye.”

• In “Ask a Foolish Question” she makes Phineas and Ferb homemade granola bars:

Linda: “Hey boys, want some fat-free whole-grain granola bars? They're still warm from the oven.”

Phineas: “Whole-grain and fat-free? *They each take a granola bar* You know us so well.”

Linda: “Yes, yes I do.”

Then the boys end up building a super computer just to ask it what’s the nicest thing they can do for Mom that day:

Phineas: “You know, Mom's always doing nice things for us. I think it's time that we did something nice for Mom!”

Then Linda goes out to use a coupon for a free hair styling from a new salon but she comes home with bags under her eyes and ugly yellow hair 

Candace: “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mo…*Stops when she sees Linda’s hair* Uhhhh....”

Linda: “I’m having a bad day.”

Candace: “Uh, never mind. Come on, come on, come on! *Pushes Linda into the backyard with eyes closed* It’s over here! It’s over here! See?”

And when Linda doesn’t see the giant super computer she complains that it’s too much that day: “You know, Candace, most days, this is just a little disturbing. But today, with the free coupon and this whole awful thing with my hair…”

But if you remember Phineas and Ferb had followed the super computer’s instructions and unknowingly fixed her hair:

Phineas: “We did something nice for Mom! We fixed her bad hairdo. Apparently.”

• In “Journey to the Center of Candace” (and in most other episodes) Linda takes an interest in what her kids plan to do that day

Linda: “What a beautiful summer day. Do you boys have anything exciting planned?”

Phineas: “We’re either gonna make this nuclear-powered submarine or this incredible shrinking ray. But for some reason, Ferb and I can't seem to make up our minds.”

Linda: “Well, I’ve made up my mind. *hugs Phineas and then hugs Ferb* You two have the most wonderful imaginations.”

But she’s in denial that her sons aren’t playing pretend so there’s a clear disconnect (too bad she’s unaware she’s a cartoon character)

Candace: “It’s real, you know.”

Linda: “What’s real, dear?”

Candace: “The submarine? The shrinking ray? They’re really gonna build that stuff.”

Phineas: “Well, actually we haven’t decided yet- *Candace uses her spoon to push Phineas away by his nose*

Candace: “Anyway, when I try to bust them, everything will just magically disappear. Always happens. you’ll see. Well, you won’t see. I'll see, trust me.”

Linda: “As usual, the imagination in this room is astounding!”

Hey, at least we know where Phineas gets his “oblivious genes” from

Also it’s hinted that her kids enjoy Linda’s cooking:

Phineas: “Ah tacos. You know who makes the best tacos? Mom!”

• In “Bee Day” Linda mentions how she and Candace played in an inflatable wading pool when she was little after seeing one: “Oh, look at that, an inflatable wading pool. Oh, it’s just like the one I used to play in with Candace when she was little. Remember, hon?”

This gives Phineas and Ferb the idea for what they’ll do that day. Then when Candace takes a teen identity magazine test and it tells her that she’s emo Linda is supportive: 

Linda: “Hi, honey. Love the new look.”

Candace: “You obviously don’t know me. Nobody does. And if somebody did, I’d just deny it.”

Linda: “Sweetie, I went through a similar phase when I was your age. Try writing some poems.”

Candace: “Whatever. I don’t care, No one gets me... Except my hair.”

Linda: “That's my girl.”

Candace is later seen writing poems under the tree, which means she followed Linda's suggestion. Bees deflate the giant inflatable wading pool before Linda comes outside to offer everyone iced tea, but she joins some kids in Candace’s old Ducky Momo one:

Linda: “Hey, kids! *Comes out with a tray with a pitcher and glasses of iced tea* Anyone up for some iced tea?”

Phineas: “Sure! Thanks, Mom!”

Linda: “Oh, look! You kids found Candace’s old wading pool! How sweet!”

Phineas: “We’re gonna have a pool party! Go ahead, wade away!”

Linda: *Dipping feet into the pool with Isabella, Holly, and Gretchen* “Aw, it’s just like old times.”

• In “Rollercoaster: The Musical!” Linda does call her “crazy” but Candace is getting in the way of her going grocery shopping for the who knows what time and she does suggest that Candace yell at the cheese in the grocery store until she feels better (which is funny since Candace is allergic to dairy and shows that Linda does care)

Candace: *Pulls Linda to where the poster used to be* “Here, look, look, look, look, look, see? I told you I'm not crazy! I told you!”

Linda: “And you’re not crazy because...?”

*Candace screams when she opens her eyes to see the poster’s gone*

Linda: “I see your point, Candace. No crazy person would scream at a post like that. I’ll be in the dairy section if you want to come yell at some cheese. *goes off-screen then comes back* Would you like that, honey? Would you like to yell at some cheese?”

Candace: “A little.” *takes Linda’s offered hand*

Linda: “Well, c’mon, then.”

• In “What A Croc!” Linda is shown trusting Candace to be in charge while she’s not home more than she trusts her husband after seeing him watching “Horse in a Bookcase” with the boys

Linda: “Alright, Candace, I’m headed out to the zoo to do my volunteer work.”

Candace: “Which means I’m in charge.”

Linda: “Well, not really, ‘cause Dad’s here. Right, honey?”

*Cuts to Lawrence, Phineas, and Ferb in the living room watching Horse in a Bookcase*

Lawrence: “That’s right, dear.”

Linda: *Looks at Candace* “You’re in charge.”

Candace: *Smiles and opens the door for Linda* “Bye, Mom! Have fun at the zoo!”

• In “Backyard Aquarium” it’s shown that Linda’s favorite author wrote the book series “You & Your High-Strung Teen” which implies that Linda reads a lot of books to try to understand her daughter (with varying degrees of success)

Linda: “I’ve gotta tell you, I read your first book and I love it.”

Bridgette Oshinomi: “Do you have a high-strung teen at home?”

Linda: “Uh, you could say that. *her phone beeps* Oh, this must be her.”

Bridgette Oshinomi: “She sent you a picture? Lemme see.”

Linda: “Well...okay.”

Bridgette Oshinomi: “How bad can it be? After all, I've been through with my own- *sees picture of Candace’s up close face while screaming* Oh. I think that maybe you need the rest of the set. *gives her two books* Uh, and why don't you take a whack at that first book again?”

Funny enough, this Bridgette Oshinomi character is also a news reporter who reported about Phineas and Ferb’s Perry the Inaction Figure in “Toy to the World”

• In “Phineas and Ferb Interrupted” Linda wants to spend the whole day with Candace:

Linda: “Hey hon, I was just reading this article about mothers and daughters, and really listening to your teen. And I realized I’ve hardly seen you all summer, so for the whole day today, it’s you and me. Whatever you want to do, I’m all yours. Anything at all.”

Although they end up sitting there watching the boys do nothing exciting after they got hit by Doof’s Dull-and-Boring Inator:

Candace: “Phineas, come on! What is wrong with you guys?”

Linda: “Candace?”

Candace: “Mom...”

Linda: “How about if I go get some lunch and bring it back for us?”

Candace: “No, no, no, stay, stay! I'm really enjoying this quality time with you.” *kisses her on the cheek*

Linda: “Me too, sweetie!”

• In “Hip Hip Parade” Linda and Candace have a girl’s day out but Linda understandably wants Candace not to try to bust or obsess over her brothers:

Linda: “Candace, you have to promise me that you won’t obsess about Phineas and Ferb.”

Candace: “Yeah, sure Mom, I promise.”

Linda: “Don’t just promise this time. Raise your right hand. Do you, Candace Gertrude Flynn, solemnly swear not to obsess about your brothers, or you’ll suffer the Pharaoh’s Curse?”

Candace: “The Pharaoh’s Curse?”

Linda: “Yes or no?”

Candace: “Okay, yes.”

Linda: “Okay, now we can have fun.”

And Linda says how she enjoys spending time with Candace!

Linda: “See Candace? Isn’t this nice to just get away and enjoy a day together?”

Candace: “You’re right Mom, this is the best. I’m not even going to think about– Mm, you know. I’m not even going to say their names.”

Linda: “That’s the spirit.”

But Candace is Candace and she can’t resist her busting instincts:

Linda: “Candace, I’m having a great time with you today. See how relaxing it is when you’re not obsessing about your brothers?”

Candace: “I can’t take it anymore! Mom, I really tried my best to give you a day, but it’s… the boys. The boys! They’re in the parade! With giant floats! So come on, you gotta bust them.”

• The whole “Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Max Modem!” episode where Candace learns her Mom was Lindana:

Candace: “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom! You never told me you were a pop star!”

Linda: “Oh yeah! Well, that was long before you were born. It was fun, but I was happy to give it up to raise a family.”

Then Candace comes with Linda to a revival concert (-> Here’s a video of that on YouTube <-) and she wants her daughter to sing with her onstage:

Linda: “I wouldn’t be here without you, honey. You backed me up all the way. So it’s only right that you should back me up onstage.”

Candace: “Me? Sing?”

Linda: “Just relax. You'll do fine.” *Candace grins and gives her a thumbs up*

Candace then had the time of her life! She and Linda even dance together during “Alien Heart”

(There are more but I’ll end this post here)

[whumpetywhumpwhump]

Maisie's guide to disguised AI

If you've been anywhere near AO3 recently, you've probably encountered AI writing at some point. As somebody who writes for, primarily, the ER fandom (and occasionally the Pitt, too), I've noticed a concerning trend over the last few days: AI-generated fanfiction clogging the tags.

Firstly, I'd like to say that if you ARE posting fics on AO3 that were AI-generated, and you're passing them off as your own, please stop. I know this is not likely to actually resonate with you if this IS you, but on the off-chance that you do see this- please use tags as intended and make it clear that you're using AI.

Secondly, before I go into some AI tells in detail, I want to preface this with a warning- just because you see one or two of these in a fic, there's no guarantee that it was AI-generated. Please approach the matter of flagging fics with care, because the last thing I want is to incite a witch hunt against innocent people just engaging in fandom.

However, when seen in tandem, these signs should act as a warning to think a little more deeply about what you're reading, and ask the question- was this human written?

1. Em-dashes

I'm getting this one out of the way quickly because it's something easily identifiable, but it should by no means discredit a fic on its own. Real people can use em-dashes, but ChatGPT uses them a LOT. Like, a distracting amount. And they're often used in conjunction with...

2. 'Not' qualifiers

ChatGPT doesn't do 'yes, and'. It seems to work off 'no, but' instead (sorry @pagingdoctorcarter , like an AI, I am stealing your phrase here. But I do have the decency to credit, I suppose!).

Take this sentence I've come up with right now:

Carter was so exhausted he was struggling to stand, legs trembling with the strain of keeping him upright.

AI might write something like this (using my own creative license here because I don't want to feed the beast):

Carter was exhausted— not the regular exhaustion that came with twelve hours on his feet. Something deeper. Heavier.

3. Repetitive phrases.

AI is not original, so it can't come up with anything original, of course. This means that it relies on basic phrases it uses over and over and over again e.g 'the kind of (blank) that (blank)'

4. The classic 'concrete noun' + 'abstract noun' combo

For reasons that I can't quite understand, AI adores this. Some humans include this combo in their work, too, but AI does it even more frequently. Some real phrases I've encountered so far include:

"a story about meatballs and betrayal"

"champagne and anxiety soaked into the upholstery"

5. Anachronisms and inaccuracies

This is especially present in a fandom like ER, where most of the time we're writing about the 90s, and this CAN be attributed to genuine human error... but if Carter is repeatedly 'swiping' on his phone screen to open a call, and everyone's always texting... could be AI.

In a similar vein, if someone is shouting 'code blue!' for things that AREN'T cardiac arrest, or mixing up names and even hallucinating random characters- think 'maybe AI'.

6. Short sentences, short paragraphs, short chapters.

AI doesn't have the ability to understand how paragraphs are structured for ease of reading and flow. So it likes short sentences. Snappy sentences.

And not just when the situation suits it. But always.

If there's a hell of a lot of paragraphs, it could be AI. AI doesn't like including many clauses. At all.

7. Generic similes and phrases that don't mean anything at all

This relates to the 'concrete noun + abstract noun combo' but, more generally, AI produces writing that veers away from specifics. It won't often describe places in too much detail, and when it comes to similes, it uses simple, overused ones OR spouts a series of words that are meaningless. If you see an abstract simile in a fic, take a second. Is it abstract because it's complex and has several layers, or is it utterly meaningless?

8. A crazy update schedule

This one is less reliable because it IS possible to bank chapters and then post a lot in one go, but if an author is posting many thousands of words in the span of a few days, consider this a small red flag- especially in conjunction with the other things mentioned. It could mean they're just pumping out AI-generated writing, and this allows them to move far quicker than any human.

9. Overly mushy dialogue

AI is a thief, but it's a happy-go-lucky thief. Characters speak like they stepped straight off Sesame Street at times, lacking any kind of emotional complexity.

10. Awful, awful jokes

AI cannot write jokes. It simply cannot. If you read a joke in a fic that feels Disney-Channel esque but also doesn't make sense at all? It very well could be AI.

For instance:

Nobody talks like this.

Also, note the 'concrete noun + abstract noun' combo again here! (This actually was an AI fic as confirmed by author before deletion, not naming them here): 'gauze and intuition'.

Conclusion

Be vigilant. Don't fall for AI crap and, if you disagree with the concept of AI work clogging AO3 tags, definitely don't leave kudos.

And if you're posting this stuff, yet again I ask you politely, please STOP.

Thank you.

[daggerfall]

Between all the Darien postings, I did want to say my thoughts on Gabrielle as well:

In my opinion, Gabrielle's arc from base game to Solstice is a story of survivor's guilt. She goes from respectable portal mage in the Mages Guild, to combatant in the final charge against Molag Bal to stop the Planemeld. She's not some high ranking mage in the guild, she's just been in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. She lets Darien flirt with her for fun but plays hard to get. This isn't the time for serious feelings - this is war. And then she watches him vanish in front of her without getting to even confront her own feelings, and watches King Dynar, leader of the charge, die in front of her. She watches these two brave warriors sacrifice themselves to save the day in a way she could not. That is a deeply, deeply traumatic experience - especially when everyone is likely telling you how brave you were for your part in the battle and how happy everyone is that the Planemeld is over. They don't know what it cost.

She spends the next few years doing little but trying to find Darien - scouring books in the Anvil mages guild and making no progress until you give her the note from Darien from Wrothgar. She even joins the Antiquarian's in an attempt to find him (dialogue you can only get if you did the main quest but Not Summerset). But she has to learn about Darien returning and then being lost again in Summerset, again from you. She didn't even get to see him or speak to him or help save the world again. She's been left behind yet again and is following in the trail of the Vestige and their encounters with her obsession. And then she feels responsible for the death of Merric and the capture of Vanus, and has to step in to fill his shoes as the leader of the Mages Guild and Stirk Fellowship alongside Prince Azah.

Look. Gabrielle Benele is not a leader. She is not some legendary, powerful mage with a high ranking in the guild. She is an extremely capable portal mage with experience in war and boatloads of PTSD, and a valued Antiquarian (albeit with some... controversial codices). She's portal girl. She's one third of the OG cov gang. She should not be leading the Mages Guild. That level of pressure on her after everything is insane.

I do not think her crush on Darien is solely why she was so quick to suggest sacrificing herself to bring him back - I think she was struggling and lost for many years. Her life purpose to alleviate her guilt was trying to find Darien; someone she viewed as the best of us all. I feel like it's not unreasonable to think that she may have had thoughts of "it should have been me", knowing how much she admired the person Darien was. I think that hero worship in itself could have fed into the romantic feelings she held for him, and made them into something more than what they actually had in Coldharbour. She's had a long time to stew in those memories and obsess over them. So it's not surprising she would be rather quick to suggest the exchange with the Gift of Death when presented with her own immediate and unavoidable death, and knowing that using it even once would stop Wormblood from being able to use it.

And I think in some way, she recognized that she herself was stuck in the past. Everyone else was able to move on, but she can't. Others may miss him, but she's the only one Still Trying to bring him back. She can't heal, she can't move on.

The only people who could understand are Vanus and the Vestige. Vanus is her superior and now imprisoned, and regardless of your Vestige's relationship with Darien, I think she would feel some level of jealousy at them getting to always be involved in Darien's life. The note in Wrothgar, Summerset, the sidequest in Southern Elsweyr, his ghostly apparition in Blackwood. She doesn't get to be involved, but the hope of his return is the only thing that keeps her going.

I think her sacrifice is far more than just "girl likes a boy enough to die for him" or "killing off woman to bring back some guy". It's a disservice to character to look no further to her obsession with finding Darien and dismiss it narrative favoritism to Darien. It's a heartbreaking conclusion to an 11 year long arc about the only other regular person to leave the Chapel of Light. You got to be a Hero, and she had to just... go on with life. Alone.

And maybe it's not a conclusion! Maybe she will come back in some equally miraculous plot twist. But I think it's important to view her story not as girl sacrifices herself for a boy, but as a story about survivor's guilt and hero worship left unchecked.

[firingstars]

no one asked for this, but this is a dissection of my own fic bc i love this characterization of bucky x reader and tbh i might just do this to other fics that i adore. <3

Bucky hated his phone, but he still texted you often. Texted you good morning and good night every single day.

guys bucky wrote reader a LOVE LETTER in the first fic and told her during their first date that he hated his phone and everything about it. however?? bro still texts reader like its his job. like its the only thing he knows.

You were pretty certain that he wasn’t joking when he said that he assassinated JFK, too. Except, you were drunk when he confessed that to you during a drinking game that you two were doing when you first started dating. You don’t know if you dreamt it. Bucky refuses to comment, like a true politician.

bucky tells reader everything. he told reader everything about his past. and obviously, she took it like a champ. this was part of his non-negotiables that he quietly hinted at during match made that he was kinda scared to actually say out loud. someone to accept him and his faults. the reason why he fully accepted reader to begin with was because during the first date she said:

“Well, you can’t run from me,” you smiled at him, “I already know your past. There’s nothing that you need to hide from me that I’ll be scared of.” (this is from match made not locked in lols)

AND SHE DIDNT EVEN KNOW THE EXTENT OF IT she js knew what was put online as the backlash bc of the mfs that were like ?? congressman assassin???!?!? extra: bucky once asked her what she thought abt that and she said she still thinks he's better than the other politicians by a loooooonnnnggg shot so she rly doesnt care extra extra: she's worked with clients that are way worse than him and never elaborated. bucky is confused on what that could possibly mean

You finish your own skincare routine faster than he does, as per usual.  “I don’t understand why the hell I have to do this, doll,” he grumbled as you left the bathroom. “I’m over a century old.”

bucky complains, but does he ever mean it??? no. bro is whipped. always whipped. do not forget man is the same man that did not understand reader when she said people generally have one love language. he has all five.

- “Just a present. Saw it, thought it would look nice on you.” - His card is slid into your palm, and his lips are pressed against your knuckles. “I’ll pay for you and Mel,” he said, giving you one more smile. - “I bought [these shoes] for you,” he said, tilting his head as he examined the design a little closer. ... he always wanted to be the kind of man that was able to spoil his girl rotten– to bring his woman to the best places and sign the check without batting an eye.

and the influx of flowers after reader confirms that she loves flowers teehee. he's always getting her flowers. there's always fresh flowers somewhere. always. if he sees the flowers he last got her wilting?? oh lord. someone's dying

- He learned over time that you just wanted silence, the same way that he did. - Bucky answered any questions that you possibly could’ve had for him, already knowing what you would’ve thrown his way. - ... you still had to do work when you came home ... Bucky seemed to plan for that, which is why he had a room specifically made for a home office for the two of you.  - “Do you know how many times you have ranted to me about the fact you hate restaurant proposals? You hate planning them, and you hate watching them. Why would I ever propose to you in a restaurant?”

the wording was very deliberate- bucky learned over time. do you know how many times. there was trial and error in the beginning of their relationship bc bucky still wasn't up to speed with modern dating (and obviously still isnt with how nervous he was about asking to move in) but reader was very patient with him throughout all the speed bumps bc she understands his struggles and his past, which is exactly what he was looking for from the very beginning of this whole matchmaking shenanigans

idk this entire fic was just a love letter to reader because i didn't feel like writing an actual

dear y/n, blah blah blah love, bucky

kinda thing.

someone did ask me what the love letter did entail and i rly did entertain the idea of writing the love letter... but i felt too lazy. so this fic if what came out of it. which honestly. feels like the opposite of laziness.

locked in

— a sequel to match made

congressman!bucky x matchmaker!reader

summary: you and your boyfriend have been together for a strong nineteen months and counting. problem is, you’re starting to notice he’s hiding things from you.

warnings: 18+, mdni, smut, semi-public (?) stuffs, oral (f+m receiving), hair pulling, face grabbing, fingers in mouth, unprotected sex, backshots, fingering, window… sex…, soft dom bucky, slight sub reader, language, no use of y/n, alcohol consumption, bucky is the best boyfriend ever and loves you very much

word count: 15.2k

a/n: due to popular demand, here’s a second part! this is also my formal apology for whatever happened in love, persevering <3 please accept. // also if anyone saw this get prematurely posted with NOTHING attached you didn’t fucking see it. i wasn’t made aware until EIGHT HOURS LATER and the fic wasn’t even done yet!!! 😔 i always make my fic intro template things before my fics are done for motivation

masterlist

You almost lost your fucking job. 

You expected it, honestly. With the amount of lines you crossed, boundaries broken, and toes you stepped on… Yeah. There was only so much that your boss could take from you— star employee or not. 

Thankfully, your boss kept the whole thing quiet from the rest of your coworkers to spare you the embarrassment since you had the decency to come to her and tell her the truth. 

It still meant you had to refund Sam Wilson the entire Ador Luxury Matchmaking Package, which your boss was not happy about.

Sam, on the other hand, was over the moon. 

When he received the refund transaction, he called you almost immediately. You had to go into a private conference room to answer the call, away from your coworkers.

“Mr. Wilson,” you answered the phone, trying to keep your tone light.

“Hey, Ms. Matchmaker,” he said, suspicion in his voice. “Did Buck cancel his membership?”

“That is correct,” you said, clearing your throat. 

“I thought we had an agreement. I paid you guys extra to not allow him to bully you guys into ending the program,” Sam said. You can hear the frustration in his voice. You don’t blame him. “What happened?”

“I can assure you– the refund is not due to Congressman Barnes just cancelling the service,” you said. “In fact, he is no longer in need of my services.”

“What? Then he’s been on a date?” Sam asked. “If that’s the case, then why the refund? If the date was successful, then doesn’t Bucky get the benefits or whatever?”

There was no response from your end for a good handful of moments. You were stuck, unable to respond. You couldn’t figure out how to say the words in the most professional way possible. You needed to find the right concoction, just in case there was someone walking down the hall at that exact moment,  and overheard your conversation. 

In the end, all you could think was that Bucky was a dead man walking.

You were going to kill Bucky. You weren’t sure how you were going to do that, seeing as he was the one with the years of experience of fighting between the two of you, but you would do it. You were hoping that he would’ve told his one and only friend that he had a girlfriend. 

Then again, Bucky refused to answer any of Sam’s calls. You texted Sam back most of the time when you got ahold of Bucky’s phone, pretending to be Bucky. Bucky didn’t care that you were doing that– though you wondered if Sam would be heartbroken if he ever found out. 

“Hello?” Sam asked, calling out your name. “Are you there?”

“Congressman Barnes terminated his membership with Ador as he and I have mutually decided to pursue a more personal relationship with each other,” you quickly answered him, cringing at your own words. You took a quick breath in before continuing, “The refund is due to my own oversight, and is serving as an apology to you for wasting your time on our service. I truly hope that you will forgive me for being unable to maintain a more professional connection with the client.”

It was Sam’s turn to fall silent. You had to check your phone to make sure that the call was still active. There was a slight rustle on the other end, letting you know that he was still there– that he was on the other end, dissecting your words, gears processing through his mind.

“The matchmaker I hired is dating my friend?!” he cackled. 

“Mr. Wilson, I truly apologize for the inconvenience–” 

“There is no inconvenience!” he cut you off, still laughing. “Holy shit, let me tell you– after that first meeting with you? I asked Bucky what he thought about you as his matchmaker and his only words? He thought you were pretty. Would not say anything else. Fuck, listen, let me call you back– or let’s all go to dinner. You, me, Buck, and my girl. I gotta head down to the office and harass Bucky right now.”

You went on an unpaid suspension for eight weeks after the refund transaction went through. The HQ of Ador had to undergo a full on investigation to figure out if you were worth keeping around as an employee or not, seeing as you ended up breaking client-employee conduct. 

Your boss wasn’t awful, though. In fact, she was only pissed off about the refund because she knew that headquarters back in London would have been alerted. Either way, it was still the right thing to process the transaction. She promised you that she would be your biggest advocate during the investigation, and she would try to argue for you to get the time to be paid seeing as you were the best employee in the New York branch.

The second you told Bucky– who told Sam– you found money wired into your account the next business day. It was the same exact amount that you had refunded back to Sam. It was still more money than you would’ve made if you were working those eight weeks. 

Neither man told you how they got ahold of your bank information. Neither man would look you in the eye when you questioned them. 

So, you had eight weeks of basically overpaid, free vacation to do whatever the hell you wanted, and a new boyfriend. Which meant you spent damn near every single day in his office, cosplaying as some government worker– an intern or secretary. And you were helping him. You actually were. 

“You really don’t have to do any of this, baby,” Bucky told you. You had been coming for an entire week straight at this point.

“If I stay stationary for two months, I think I might die of brain failure,” you told him, stealing a stack of his files from him. “Besides. You look like you need some help. You should really hire a secretary. Or someone to help you out. A personal assistant, maybe?”

“I can handle it on my own,” he sighed, shaking his head. Despite his words, he looked grateful as you took the files to the lounge area of his office and spread them out on the coffee table.

“Tell that to me when you sleep more than two hours a night, handsome,” you said, tucking your legs under you.

With less sensitive information that he was allowed to hand over to you, you organized and kept tabs on. You summarized documents for him perfectly that made his life easier. You helped train other onboarding interns that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. You managed his calendar when he looked like he was about to combust into flames. You got to spend time with him during his breaks, have lunch with him, eat dinner with him, and he would drive you home, and spend the night with you most nights.

Not that anyone knew that, though. They thought you were an actual employee of this official government building in New York. With the way that you walked side by side with Bucky every single day, holding files and looking down at his work phone– they really thought that you were working for him.

“Where’s your secretary today?”

You don’t know who asked the question, and you don’t really care. There’s about three other officials in this room that barged in out of nowhere, when you were on Bucky’s lap. 

Both of you had panicked, and he had shoved you into the hiding space beneath his desk before any of them could see the scandalous position he had you in. 

Unluckily for him, he had chosen the wrong place to put you. 

“At a training session with other interns,” Bucky said, tone clipped and short. He was irritated at being interrupted out of nowhere, but also at the fact that you were ignoring his warnings. 

You grinned, pressing an innocent kiss to the hand that gripped over your wrist. Tight, but not enough to hurt you. You continued to palm over his hardening length with your free hand. 

You weren’t paying attention to any of the fancy words that were being thrown around over your head, but you were certain that Bucky wasn’t either. You rested the side of your head against his thigh, feeling the muscle tense and hardened at your touch as you continued to lazily play with him over the fabric of his dress pants. 

Bucky’s metal hand slipped from your wrist to your hair, carding through it and stopping at the base of your skull– another cautionary message being sent to you as Bucky tried to focus on the sudden meeting thrown his way. Thankfully, these men loved the sound of their own voices. They couldn’t hear you slowly unzip him, and free Bucky from the confines of his slacks. 

“Your thoughts, Congressman Barnes?”

Your boyfriend cleared his throat above you as your lips kissed the tip of his cock, wrapping your hand around the base of him to keep him in place as his dick twitched in response. You fought back the small hum that threatened to come forth as you licked up the small bead of precum that leaked out.

“It’s a very… worrying matter,” Bucky said slowly, clenching his jaw as he took in a slow breath. You licked a thin strip up from the base of his cock– focusing on the thick vein that you knew was sensitive. “That is very worrisome. And we’ll get to the bottom of this uh– worrying... issue.”

You paused at his words, unable to believe what you were hearing from him for a moment. You pulled away from him for a moment, hand still wrapped around his dick as you pressed your face to his thigh, trying to hide your laugh into his flesh. 

Bucky’s hand tugged back on your hair roughly, pulling your head back and away from his thigh. Immediately, his metal hand shifted from your hair to clasp around your face, covering your mouth. His fingertips dug into the soft skin of your cheeks, daring you to make another noise. Surprise and excitement shot through your body in response.  

You could test him. You could press it. 

You decided against it, and licked his palm instead, closing your eyes. You could feel his hand twitch against your face— he told you once that his arm was calibrated to feel sensations. That he felt nerves like his other arm did. You smiled just a little, then kissed right where your tongue had just been. 

All the while, your hand was still pumping at his dick in lazy strokes. Nothing too much, nothing that would alert anyone of your presence, nothing that would make him let out noises that were only yours to hear. 

“Right,” one of the officials said slowly. “Well– we have lunch with some of the other representatives in ten minutes. You are welcome to join us, Congressman. If your secretary comes back from her training, she is more than welcome to join us as well. Lord knows we need a little more eye candy around here.”

A chorus of laughter rang around the room, but not from Bucky. In fact, he just stared at them until their laughter became uncomfortable, and they awkwardly excused themselves. 

The second the door to his office shut, Bucky’s chair was rolled back instantly, and your hands weren’t touching him anymore. 

You were still on your knees, looking up at him as Bucky stared down at you, hand still on your face to shut you up before you had been caught laughing at his inability to form proper words with your mouth on his cock.

“You’re so pretty like this, baby,” he murmured, hand shifting to cradle your face.

A metal thumb brushed against your lip slowly, a shiver running down your spine involuntarily. His touch was gentle. Reverent. He touched you like you were made of glass. Unlike the blown out, hungry look in his eyes, the gruff, low tone of his voice as he whispered to you. 

From the corner of your eye, you saw his other hand tuck himself back into his pants. When your eyebrows furrowed in response, he let out a soft chuckle.

Bucky leaned down, pressing a sweet kiss to your forehead. Then, he stood up tall. He rolled his shoulders back, but you couldn’t focus. Your eyes were on him, and the aching bulge above his zipper. 

“I have to go to lunch, sweetheart. When I get back, you’re going to get exactly what you wanted from me, okay?” 

Your boyfriend left you there. Left you partially under his desk, still on your knees. What was supposed to be you teasing him, quickly shifted into you being extremely hot and bothered. You didn’t know how long lunch would take, either. 

You busied yourself with literally anything else. Not that it worked. Every footstep that came down the corridor, you were jumping in attention like some rabbit in heat.

Except, Bucky moved like a ghost. You wouldn’t hear his footsteps. 

When he finally returned, you didn’t even hear him until the sound of the office door locking caught your attention. You barely had the time to turn around before he was all over you. Lips were on yours as he hoisted you upwards, wrapping your legs around his waist to carry you to his choice of christening. 

An arm swiped his desk clear of any debris so no pens or other office supplies would be digging into your skin. He bunched your skirt up to your hips, and pulled your panties to the side. Bucky bent you over his desk with fingers shoved into your mouth to keep you quiet as he did what you wanted from the beginning. He curtained you, his chest pressed against your back as he whispered sweet nothings to contrast the punishing thrust of his hips— letting you know that he still very much adored you, but was also extremely annoyed by your little game earlier.

Afterwards, Bucky cleaned you up gently. Kissed you softly, held you tightly in his arms. Then presented you with food that he brought back for you– he ordered you lunch while he was out eating since he knew you wouldn’t have left the office while he was gone. 

You almost jumped his bones again right then and there for how considerate he was of you.

So yes, you almost lost your job, but you weren’t necessarily upset about it. Not when you got to spend an entire month with Bucky, helping him out at work, cuddling with him at night, and waking up at whatever time you wanted the next morning. On the rare days that you weren’t at the office with him, it was because you were somewhere else– still with him. 

Eventually, you were called back into work.

You convinced Bucky to hire an assistant to take care of his little things— stuff that you did for him to make his life easier so he could focus on more pressing things. It managed to ease his workload just a little bit, but not by a lot. Bucky still managed to bite more than he could chew, and you knew he was stressed from how slow the process was for passing bills and getting change to happen. 

Despite it all, the two of you were content. Happy. Overjoyed, really. He was perfect, and he swore to the heavens that you were, too.

A cacophony of voices, poppers, music, and sparkles were blasted into your face as you pushed open the door to the office. Streamers were shot directly into your face, colors cascading directly before your eyes, showering you with colors of the pastel rainbow. 

Your coworkers, all dressed to the nines, were cheering. A few of them held flutes of champagne. Two of them held balloons– together making the number twelve together. One of them held a cake that read congratulations.

There was a catering table set for the party that was clearly waiting for you. You saw the table set, ready for everyone to dig into. You knew your boss didn’t hold back when it came to celebrating any kind of achievements, especially not your own. You were the best at what you did here.

Your grin wasn’t smug, even though you had every single right to be. You shrugged your blazer off as you sauntered into the room, allowing the applause and cheers to wash over you. You dropped your purse and other materials off at your desk as your boss approached you with a grin, hands going to your shoulders.

“My star employee– our number one matchmaker!” she cooed at you, everyone shouting around you in response to our praise. “Tell me, with this wedding upcoming this weekend, how many will you be responsible for?”

You paused, only for dramatic effect. The ceiling looked suddenly oh so interesting as you smiled. Then, you guessed, “Twelve?”

“Twelve!” your boss roared, the girls around you jumping up and down with excitement and cheer. 

“Do a speech, a speech!” your deskmate urged, and you only let out a small, playful sigh as everyone died down around you.

You were handed your own glass of champagne, led to the front of the room, and turned to look at all the girls. Girls that you worked with for the past six, almost seven years. Your boss had been doing this job for well over a decade now. There were a few new faces that had just started a few months ago. 

With your glass lifted into the air, you smiled, “Love is all around. It’s easy to find the perfect match for someone.”

They squealed, toasting to you. The cake was brought to you, letting you blow out the candles as if it was your birthday or something– just a tradition your company had for good luck. Something to bring more successful matches and weddings to your clients.

Your two clients, Luke and Jessica, were tying the knot after twelve months of dating, and another four months engaged. One year and four months— which was a relatively short time, but who were you to judge? They both told you they knew the other party was the one after the first date. Who were you to stand in the way of them? 

Just because you were fucking bitter, and jealous that you couldn’t spend time with your own boyfriend despite the fact that Luke and Jessica got together three months after you two did didn’t mean a thing. Not a single thing. 

You masked your growing irritation well with your clients. After all, your performance margins had been going through the roof within the last six months. Your productivity has never been better, your clients have never been happier with your performance, and you have been churning out perfect match after match like you might as well have been Cupid himself. 

Yet, you couldn’t find a single time for your own boyfriend. 

When you had a free night, he didn’t. There was a dinner that he had to get to, one that required secrecy amongst government officials. You understood that. You didn’t hold that against him– especially not when he looked pained to tell you that you couldn’t join him when you offered to come with him the first time he said he had the work dinner. Because you didn’t mind joining him for work related activity. You just wanted to spend time with him, by his side.

But you were a fucking matchmaker. You didn’t have any business being in a government setting, and you knew that. He knew that. The entire government knew that. 

Sometimes it wasn’t even dinner. Sometimes, he wasn’t even in the city. Or the state. Or even the fucking country. Bucky always let you know in advance when he had to travel for work, but there was usually never any chance for the two of you to meet for even a brief look at each other across the road. Just to see each other in person before he had to hop on the plane and head hours away from you.

On the rare occasions Bucky had a free night, you most certainly did not. You had a proposal to plan for. Not a policy or business proposal like he worked on. A marriage proposal. One that had you sneaking around parks in bushes, setting up trails of rose petals, hiring and arguing with musicians– things that you didn’t need your boyfriend around to trail you like a lost puppy asking you if there was something that you needed help with. 

If it wasn’t a proposal, you had another work event. A client on the verge of a breakdown because their date cancelled on them, or some bullshit like that. You would be so close to finally being in your boyfriend’s arms, but you would have to cancel on your own lover to play therapist even though you were severely undereducated and underpaid for the position. 

Bucky was understanding. Too understanding. So understanding that it made you want to bash your head into the wall. 

The two of you had working hours that were strenuous, strange, and demanding. 

Bucky hated his phone, but he still texted you often. Texted you good morning and good night every single day. He reminded you to eat at least twice a day knowing you were only running on the fuel of your own brain to make it through your work hours.

Absence definitely did not make the heart grow fonder. If anything, your heart was growing irritated. Angry. These happy couples around you were pissing you off. 

Each and every single one of your clients that reported to you that they were falling in love with the person that you set them up with, was like another person setting you up for failure. You were a ticking time bomb just ready to explode, and the only one who would ever be able to defuse you is currently locked away in his office with his pretty fucking secretary that you know he doesn’t care about, but spends more time with than you do. 

You’re not jealous of her perse. 

You’ve seen them work together. It’s strictly professional. You don’t know if she has a boyfriend, and you don’t really care if she does or doesn’t– you trust Bucky, bottom line. He hasn’t given you a single reason to not trust him. You know he has eyes for you and you only. What you’re envious of is the time that she gets to have with him. She sees him every single day. She handles his schedule, hands him coffee, speaks to him face to face, sits with him during meetings, and discusses his fucking policies with him. 

You’re jealous of the time that you don’t get to have with your own boyfriend. You haven’t seen him in over a week and a half by this point. Last time you saw him, it was for a brief lunch that lasted forty-two minutes before you both had to run into meetings. Before that, two weeks. 

You scratch angrily into your notebook, then rip the page out. You crumple it up, throwing the wasted piece of paper into the bin with a frustrated groan before scrubbing a hand down your face. 

The time on the clock reads 1:44am.

Bucky should be getting home by this time, you think. Your phone hasn’t rang otherwise. There’s no good night text yet. 

This was easier before. Easier before you got so attached to him. Easier before your world got shifted on its axis, and started to rotate around him, just a little bit. Easier when you didn’t love the man so fucking much. 

You couldn’t dwell on this though. Not when you had to go to sleep. You had somewhere to be tomorrow, and you couldn’t look like death itself. You sent off your own text to him, then let your sorrows and loneliness cuddle you to bed. 

As much as you wanted to wait for him to text you back, you couldn’t. You had a battlefield to get to. A networking event. A bride to maybe convince that she wanted to marry her groom. 

By the end of the wedding, your purse was full of business cards, and your lips were full of promises to call women on Monday to get them on your books as clients. Your face muscles hurt, your feet ached, and your heart was breaking.

Your phone was full of notifications, and not a single one of them was from your loving boyfriend. Did he get JFK’d somewhere? He couldn’t have. It would have been all over the news already if he did. Sam would have called you, too. Besides that, the serum in his veins would have him feeling the murderous intent from a thousand miles away.

You were pretty certain that he wasn’t joking when he said that he assassinated JFK, too. Except, you were drunk when he confessed that to you during a drinking game that you two were doing when you first started dating. You don’t know if you dreamt it. Bucky refuses to comment, like a true politician.

You make it through the rest of the wedding, get invited to the afterparty, decline, and step out into the street to wait for your Uber to arrive. A car pulls up to the curb that you know is not a silver hatchback like the app indicates, so you ignore it–

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing all alone on a Friday night?”

Your head snaps up at the voice. Bucky’s stepping out of the driver’s side, holding a colorful arrangement of fresh summer flowers for you, wrapped in kraft paper, tied off with a bow. He’s dressed in a formal suit– bowtie and everything. You vaguely remember him telling you that there was a gala event that was happening tonight the last time that you two had a chance to speak on the phone. He must have had a chance to slip away from there. 

“Need a ride?” he asked, feet stopping just right before you.

You let out a laugh, looking up at him. You take a moment to admire him. Bucky’s smiling at you. There’s so much love in his eyes for you. There always is. In fact, it seemed as if there was more love there than there was than the last time he saw you. You were certain that there would be double the amount the next time you would meet.

“I have one,” you sighed, deciding to play coy with him. “Coming in about five more minutes.”

Bucky clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Five minutes? That’s too long. Shouldn’t make you wait out here for even a second.”

You couldn’t fight back the grin that makes its way onto your face. You close the remaining distance between the two of you, your hand resting on his chest as you lean upwards towards him to meet his lips. Bucky’s hand wraps around your back, holding you to him to stabilize you, a small sigh escaping through his nose. 

“Hi, handsome,” you hummed, parting from him. 

Your smile only widened a little more when Bucky chased after your lips instinctively, wanting more. Wanting another kiss. You gave him just a couple more pecks before you settled the heels of your shoes back onto the cement of the sidewalk. A laugh rumbled through you at the disappointed look on his face.

“How’d you know where my wedding was, Congressman?” you asked, looking back at your phone to cancel the ride. 

“Oh you know. A birdie told me,” Bucky said, shrugging as he moved to open the passenger door for you.

“You had Redwing spy on me?’ you raised an eyebrow at him, stepping into the car..

“More like I had Sam send a trail on you tonight. Don’t know if he used Redwing,” he corrected, holding the flowers out for you to take. 

You rolled your eyes at him as you took the bouquet. He was messing with you, and you knew it. You shared your location with him on your phone a long time ago, and he only just figured out how to use the function of it a few months back. He was even shocked to find out that there was such a feature so easily accessible on regular technology. Bucky even asked you if you had his location. You didn’t, and you told him that you didn’t want it. You figured he would be weirded out by that kind of stuff as a former spy, and you were right. He was more at ease after your reassurance. 

However, he did enjoy the fact that he didn’t have to go through several satellite feeds and camera playbacks to find where you were.

In the car, the music is soft. Low. Something from the forties that you don’t really listen to unless you’re with Bucky. He’s tapping his finger on the steering wheel to the beat of the song, and you find yourself relaxing into the comfortable leather of the seat. 

Neither of you are speaking, nor do you find the need to. 

Bucky knows you. You’re exhausted after an event like this. He used to ask you how the job went, like a mission debrief. To you, it is a mission. This was your battlefield, and you just fought against enemies and kept your cool against a thousand different obstacles that could’ve made the mission go sideways.

He learned over time that you just wanted silence, the same way that he did. Bucky used to think that you wanted to talk after these events, which wasn’t totally wrong. You talked if the event went horribly wrong and you needed to vent your frustration out to someone that wouldn’t get you fired. You talked his ear off because you couldn’t say what you wanted to in front of your own clients.

Bucky misunderstood and thought you wanted to talk after every single event. Eventually, he realized that most of the time, you enjoyed the peace and quiet of a job well done. That you wanted to sit without having to force a smile anymore, to close your eyes, and feel the weight of his hand on your thigh comfortingly as he drove. 

The sound of a text message coming through cut off the music momentarily. Your eyes cracked open, and on the center screen of Bucky’s dashboard, you saw there was a message from Bucky’s one and only friend.

Don’t Respond [12:08am]: Did she find out what you’re doing yet?

“What’s Sam talking about?” you asked, shifting to reach for Bucky’s phone that was in the cupholder. 

Bucky was faster. His hand left your thigh, grabbing the device before you could. He looked at the small screen momentarily, taking his eyes off the road for just a second. Then, you watched as he long pressed the side of his phone, turning it off completely before putting it back in the cupholder.

“Nothing, sweetheart. I’ll text him back later,” Bucky said, giving you a smile before looking back at the road. His hand returned back to its rightful place on your thigh. 

You stared at the side of his face, blinking at him. There was no more music in the car, since his phone was turned off. You were left in silence, just the low thrum of the engine and your thoughts being your only source of entertainment as Bucky turned into your apartment’s parking garage.

Bucky will text him back later? Bucky will text him back later?

No the fuck he won’t. 

As much as Bucky loves new technology like a nerd loves Star Wars, he hates it all at the same time. He thinks it’s disgusting for any sane person to spend the amount of time they do glued to their phones willingly outside of educational and work purposes. He’s a man that had zero choice in life, and he prefers to see the world. If he has free time, there is no way in hell that he will waste it typing away on a tiny screen to text back anyone. 

Except you, of course. He’ll only text and call you.

His reaction was even more strange. Bucky didn’t swat your hand away or anything like that. He didn’t scramble to get to his phone before you did– but he did react. He didn’t answer you. He deflected. He’s always answered your questions to the fullest.

Besides that, this wasn’t anything new between the two of you. You always texted Sam back through Bucky’s phone. When Sam texted, you would read it out loud, Bucky would answer, and you would type what Bucky said, but in a nicer… less aggressive way. In fact, 99% of the conversations Bucky had with Sam through text was done by you. Sam still did not know of that fact, and you were not going to be the one to tell him. 

You’re still reeling in your own thoughts by the time you get to your apartment. 

You shove your downward spiral for just a moment to accept Bucky’s extremely tempting offer to shower together– which is never anything sexual. 

Bucky enjoys the intimacy of being able to hold you, bare, and help you get cleaned from your day. It’s one of his favorite things to do. You revel in the way he takes his time, hands scrubbing at your scalp slowly to lather up the shampoo. He’ll ensure that not a single part of your body goes untouched.

You do the same for him. You take great care in every part of his body. You remember the first time you touched his scars– paid close attention to them. It looked self-inflicted. Nothing like a surgery or done by doctors or scientists, like how he said the arm was attached to him. When you saw his face, you knew you were right.

Every once in a while, you can still see the dark shadow casting over his eyes when your hands run over his shoulders. You simply move to kiss against the scars to quietly remind him that you aren’t afraid of him, and you watch as the shadows fall mercy to the light.

You finish your own skincare routine faster than he does, as per usual. 

“I don’t understand why the hell I have to do this, doll,” he grumbled as you left the bathroom. “I’m over a century old.”

“And I’m trying to make sure that you don’t look like it,” you replied over your shoulder. 

Bucky huffed, but continued with the routine that you strictly put him on. He complained, but he never went against your words. You knew that he was still following it even when he wasn’t spending the night at your place, too. He’s always been a handsome man, but you would say that he’s been leveled up even more since you came around.

While he’s distracted, you move towards his bag. 

You don’t distrust him, but you’re not stupid either. Turning off his phone, saying things out of character– yeah. Something is different. What’s even weirder is that he doesn’t have any of his usual things with him. There’s only his laptop. He doesn’t have any of his regular written notebooks or calendars that he usually carries around with him. The man loves his written, visual items. He likes to flip through pages and see things with his own eyes, to be able to edit with a pen instead of a tap of his fingers.

You hear the last cap of the bottle close, and shut his bag. You’re only left with more questions as you move his bag towards the hanger where your own purses hang.

“Ah– sorry,” Bucky apologized, seeing you move his stuff. 

“It’s alright,” you hummed, thankful you were able to play off your snooping.

The two of you move towards your bed, sliding under the sheets. You settled into his arms naturally, assuming the position that the two of you had found most comfortable in the almost two years of dating. Your head rested on his bicep like it was a pillow, his metal arm coming around you to wrap around your waist to keep you cool against his furnace of a body. 

“You ever respond to Sam?” you whispered into his chest, closing your eyes to snuggle closer into him.

“Fuck,” Bucky groaned, moving to grab his phone from the nightstand behind him. You immediately shifted, just slightly– to try and see the screen.

But so did he.

With one hand, he angled his phone so that it was distorted. The brightness was down low enough that you weren’t able to properly see the messages between both men. However, you saw him silence the chat. You saw the swipe of his thumb, and the icon that signified a silenced message.

Then, Bucky put his phone face down on the nightstand before returning to you.

“Good night, doll,” he murmured to you, hand moving to tilt your head up to him. He kissed you once, twice, a third time before settling back against the pillow. “I love you.”

“Night,” you whispered back, though your mind was everything but asleep. Suspicion was creeping up on you. You could feel it– the sign of something coming. You pushed your gut feeling down. “I love you, too.”

Bucky ❤︎ [2:48pm]: What days do you think are your most free days right now?

You paused, staring at the text on your screen. This is different. This isn’t a text that you normally received from Bucky. Especially not in the middle of the work day, either. Momentarily, you want to entertain the idea that someone stole his phone, but you were certain that someone would be injured or dying if they even got close to ever trying to rob Bucky.

Me [2:50pm]: Are you asking me on a date, Congressman?

Bucky ❤︎ [2:53pm]: I’m trying to plan one instead of our random spontaneous ones, yes. Can you let me know what days work best for you so I can look at my calendar?

Last time he ‘planned’ a date, the two of you went to Romania for your first year anniversary for a week. You didn’t even realize that’s what he meant by planning a date until you were at the fucking airport with no luggage. Except he packed for you, had your passport, and everything else you could possibly need. You were just completely oblivious to the entire thing. 

Me [2:54pm]: Is this a trip kinda date?

Bucky ❤︎ [2:55pm]: No, but I do need two days of your time.

Me [2:56pm]: You’re asking for a lot, handsome.

Bucky ❤︎ [3:01pm]: I promise I’ll be worth it.

You smile at your phone at his words. Of course he’ll be worth it. You take a moment to go through your calendar, flipping back and forth between all your different events. You cross check between client meetings, event plannings, meetings with your coworkers and boss, and then text him back with your response. 

Me [3:12pm]: Weekends are really bad right now. Mondays, too. Wednesdays are also surprisingly bad… Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best. Fridays are a hit and miss.

Bucky ❤︎ [3:25pm]: Tuesdays are bad for me. Rep. dinners on Tuesday nights and Wednesday morning debriefs. Can you block out Thursday and Friday for me two months from now? The 17th and 18th. I’ll give you more details about our date when it comes closer.

Two months? That’s more than enough time to block out. You’ll even take the weekend off for good measure, just in case. Still, two months is a long time to prepare for just a date. You can’t help but tease him a little bit.

Me [3:27pm]: You don’t plan on seeing me for two months? :( 

Bucky ❤︎ [3:30pm]: You’re funny. We’ll still have our random and spontaneous dates. Like tonight. I’m picking you up for dinner. Don’t call a ride after work.

Excitement flutters in your chest. You saw him four days ago, but you’re still happy. 

Time is thankfully on your side today, and he’s waiting for you outside your company’s building. You’re starved for food, for his affection, attention, and everything in between. 

Except all of that dies once his phone rings in the middle of dinner. Bucky silences it, and you see the screen. It has a name that you don’t recognize, then his phone goes faced down onto the table. A few moments later, it buzzes, indicating there was a voicemail left. Bucky swipes the device, pocketing it safely away. 

You’re really trying to not let this bother you. But change doesn’t just happen overnight, and this is Bucky’s personal phone. This isn’t even his work phone. He leaves his work phone in his bag, permanently silenced when he’s not working. This is his phone that he carries with him that he purposely ignores, that is only supposed to have two contacts in it– yours and Sams.

Bucky drove back to your apartment, even though his apartment is closer to the restaurant that he chose for the two of you to eat at tonight. 

You’re lying awake in his arms that night, listening to the sounds of Bucky’s soft snores as he sleeps beside you. It took him a long time to be able to sleep first between the two of you. You used to see how long you could stay up, to see if you could fall asleep after him. The first time he fell asleep on your lap, you almost cried.

Now, you’re staring at his sleeping face wondering if he thinks you’re a fucking idiot. 

The signs are right there. All the blaring signs are screaming in your face, loud and angry. The hidden phone screen, calls, and texts. Hiding his calendar, and all his written notes from you. The sudden trip planning, even though there was nothing special about two months from now. Two months was your twenty third month together. Not even the second year anniversary. 

Yeah, Bucky thought you were stupid.

The biggest sign? You’re currently sleeping in your own bed, and not in his. He’s hiding something in his apartment that he doesn’t want you to find—

An engagement ring. 

You go through Bucky’s drawers like those are your own clothes to wear because they are, and he loves to see you in his shirts. You once spent an entire weekend properly organizing his apartment in a way that made sense because his junk drawer consisted of bullets and lego pieces from when Sam’s nephews came over.

You once found guns and daggers in his apartment just by dropping pens and searching for them. There’s absolutely no way that Bucky can hide a velvet box anywhere in his apartment from you that you won’t accidentally stumble across. Hell– you found a loaded nine millimeter in your own apartment, and asked what the hell it was doing there. 

“Safety,” is all he answered with.

This was your job. This is what you did for a living. You helped other boyfriends hide proposals from girlfriends like this. This is exactly what you did– this is how you told them to do it, though you were a little more slick with it. You definitely made sure your clients weren’t hiding their phones from their potential fiance’s, that’s for sure. 

You made sure that your clients did not know that they were being proposed to. It was your mission, honestly. You saw enough of those TikTok’s where women truly had that gut feeling where they knew it was happening. You refused. It needed to be a surprise. You scouted out every single person in your client’s lives to ensure that every single moment would come to be a surprise. From ensuring that their nails would be done to the ring itself- everything would be perfect. 

Your boyfriend of almost two years was planning on proposing to you in two months, and he thought you wouldn’t find out? Jesus Christ– what were you going to do with him?

Marry him, you supposed.

If you were anyone else, if you were any less stable in your emotions, you would’ve thought he was cheating on you. Hiding his phone definitely made your eyebrow twitch for half a second, if you were being honest. Thankfully, you were able to maintain a rational and sane mind.

Sane was an overstatement. You were now planning an entire wedding in your head without the engagement ring on your finger. You were anything but sane. Insanity was taking over every single cell in your brain as you stared at Bucky, imagining your future. The thought made you extremely giddy. 

A smile crept up on the corner of your lips as you moved into the warmth of his embrace. His arms tightened around you instinctively, and he let out a soft, contented sigh.

You can’t keep it to yourself as the date starts coming closer and closer. 

Mel, who has graduated as your client and now has become your friend, is sitting in your apartment, telling you about her most recent date with her boyfriend of six months. Not in a way that she would when you were her matchmaker, but as friends would. You find yourself liking this arrangement much, much more.

“Enough about me though,” she grinned, swirling the wine in her glass. “Tell me about you and Bucky. How are things going?”

“You really wanna talk about the guy that your boss hates?” you asked, raising an eyebrow at her as you take a sip out of your own glass.

“I can separate work from girl talk,” Mel said, smiling at you. 

“Well,” you said, smiling at her, “If you’re free the rest of the evening, I was wondering if you wanted to get your nails done with me?”

“Nails?” Mel repeated, raising her eyebrows at you as she brought the glass to her lips.

“Yeah,” you nodded. “I think Bucky’s gonna propose to me on Thursday.”

Her eyes widened as she choked on her wine, the alcohol spluttering back into the glass. You couldn’t hold back a laugh before you jumped to your feet. You turned, rushing to grab paper towels from your kitchen to wipe off her face before it dripped, and stained her clothes. 

“Shit– shit! I’m so sorry,” she coughed, patting her face. 

“It’s okay,” you said between laughter, desperately trying to compose yourself. “Do you– do you want more wine?”

“Do I want– No! What? We need to go to the salon now! One of us needs to drive! Why the hell don’t you have a car again?!”

“Uh… I just… order a ride everywhere, or Bucky drives me,” you answered her, sheepish. “I’ll just order us a ride, we’ve both had a glass already. We don’t need to drive there, Mel.”

“Must be nice–”

A knock on your door makes you both pause. You move, going to check the peephole and find your boyfriend standing there with a box in his hands. You rip the door open, shocked.

“Bucky?” you asked, surprised. “Don’t you have a dinner to get to soon? It’s Tuesday.” 

“Yes, but I wanted to drop this off to you,” he said, giving you a smile. He leaned over the box, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. “Just a present. Saw it, thought it would look nice on you.”

“What is it?” you asked as he transferred over the gift box to you.

“A dress,” he shrugged. “What are you up to today?”

“Mel’s here,” you said, opening the door further so he could see her. He looked past you, giving her a small wave that you’re certain that she returned back. “We’re about to go get our nails done. I was about to order a ride.”

“Oh? Don’t do that. I’ll just drop you two off. You’ll go the place you always do, right? It’s on the way to the dining hall,” he said.

“What? I don’t want you to be late,” you said, frowning at him. 

“It’s fine,” Bucky insisted, shaking his head. “They can start without me. Talbot is late more than a few times anyways.”

“It’s true,” Mel said from behind you. You turned around to look at her, finding that she was gathering her jacket and purse. “Talbot is always late.”

“See? Thank you, Mel.” There’s a bit of a gloating tone to his voice that makes you smack his arm. Bucky chuckled in response, a smile settling over his face. “Come on now, grab your stuff so we can get down to the car so I’m not too late for the meeting.”

You sighed, knowing that you wouldn’t be able to change his mind and get him to leave you. You put the box on the counter to inspect once you return later, and snatch your purse from where it’s resting on the table. Both you and Mel follow Bucky down to the car. He holds open the back door for both of you to climb into the backseat like he’s your chauffeur, and not your boyfriend.

Bucky drives in silence, you and Mel scrolling through pinterest hurriedly during the car ride for inspiration pictures for your nails while trying to be subtle about the fact that you know that you’re getting proposed to. Your boyfriend doesn’t seem to notice that you know, though.

Once he pulls up to the salon, Mel thanks him for the ride and slides out. You lean over the console to give him a kiss, and he grabs your hand, stopping you.

His card is slid into your palm, and his lips are pressed against your knuckles.

“I’ll pay for you and Mel,” he said, giving you one more smile.

You want to race down the aisle right at that moment. 

Instead, you get your nails done with Mel, swallow down butterflies that are forcing their way up your throat, and get to the restaurant that Bucky told you to meet him at while he runs late at his last meeting before your date. 

It’s a beautiful skyline restaurant in the middle of New York that your own company can’t even secure a date at. You’ve tried multiple times. In fact, your own clients have wanted to get proposals done at this restaurant. It just couldn’t be done. Reservations were booked out at least a year in advance, and somehow Bucky was able to secure the two of you a spot with two months to spare. 

There’s live music playing here by world renowned musicians. The chefs are even more well known. The lighting was low so that it wouldn’t take away from the view outside the windows. The time of night that Bucky chose was perfect– New York was lit up like stars on the ground from the table that you were sitting at. 

You were dressed in the gift Bucky bought for you. A backless, square neckline gown. The straps came up and wrapped around your neck like a halter top would, and tied around the back in a thin bow, the long straps kissing down your bare spine. It was soft and airy against your skin. 

Bucky arrived earlier than you expected, but you were sure he was still later than he wanted to be. Either way, he still had another bouquet of fresh flowers in his hands for you that you two had placed under the table. Of course, he didn’t take a seat before giving you a kiss for a greeting, and murmuring his apology for not being able to pick you up.

“You look beautiful,” he said, smiling at you. “I didn’t think you would wear it tonight.”

“I thought you bought it for me to wear tonight?” you asked as he placed the flowers under the table. You watched as he sat down across from you. 

“Mm… Well, I bought it for you to wear,” he said, reaching his hand across the table. You easily slipped your hand into his, watching him bring your hand to his lips to press a kiss to your knuckles. “When you wear it doesn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get you a present.”

“A present?” you echoed, unable to stop smiling. “Even though you already do so much for me?”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t want to do more for you, sweetheart,” he hummed. 

The waiter came by not a moment later, letting you know that the first course would be coming out momentarily. You both thanked him, and returned back to each other. 

“I feel like I don’t see you as much these days,” Bucky said, thumbs brushing over your knuckles. 

“It’s been really busy for the two of us,” you agreed, releasing a soft sigh. 

“I even contemplated hiring you as a matchmaker again, just so I could block out meetings and have you in my office again,” he joked, making you laugh. 

“That would be fraudulent, Congressman,” you teased, shaking your head. “For you and me.”

“What are they gonna do? Threaten to fire you again?” 

You rolled your eyes, but the smile on your face is firmly planted, and isn’t moving anytime soon. 

“You know our dates don’t always have to be somewhere big or fancy, right?” you tell him, your voice softer.

“So you keep telling me,” he hummed, squeezing your hand a little bit. “I know, sweetheart. You said this to me. Several times. I just want to do this for you. For me, too.”

You soften a little bit at his words. You’re gently reminded of a previous confession he told you from when you first started dating. 

You told him that you were more than happy to just get takeout with him on busier days. To get fast food or something quick, if it meant that you two would have more time to spend together. You didn’t always have to sit down and eat somewhere nice. He said that he knew that, and he liked doing that, too. But as a kid in the forties, he always wanted to be the kind of man that was able to spoil his girl rotten– to bring his woman to the best places and sign the check without batting an eye.

This kind of thing was healing for him, too.

“We can get burgers tomorrow,” Bucky said, giving you a smile. 

“Deal,” you grinned at him. 

The first course of your meal was brought out to the two of you. You two never spoke about work over food. It was your rule. You talked about everything else. Sam. Mel. Your parents and siblings. The conversation Bucky overheard while he was in line getting coffee the other day. 

There was always a lot to talk about when you two never saw each other. Then again, you were certain that you would ever run out of words even if you spent every waking moment with him. If there ever came to be a time when that was the case, you were more than happy to spend the rest of eternity in a peaceful silence with him, as long as you were able to hold him. 

Topics never ran dry between the two of you. More than once, you two needed to remind yourselves to shut the fuck up in this fancy establishment because there were sophisticated people around you having very nice meals. 

“I’ll book a private room next time,” Bucky said under his breath.

“I don’t think they’ll let us come back, babe,” you whispered between soft, gasping laughs. “The host is glaring at us.”

That only made Bucky snort, which made you have to cover your own mouth in return before another fit of giggles wrecked through your body. It took everything in the both of you to compose yourselves before dessert was brought out. 

Once your table was cleared off, and you were left with just your wine glasses and the centerpiece on the table, you and Bucky smiled at each other. You were strangely reminded of your first date with him. So you told him that.

“This reminds you of our first date?” he said, his nose crinkling just slightly. “How so?”

“Mm… The ambiance,” you said, shrugging just a bit. You rested your chin in your palm. “You. Me.”

“It’s always you and me on our dates, sweethearts. Who else would it be?” he sarcastically joked, rolling his eyes at you.

“You know what I mean,” you scoffed at him, watching him smile a bit. “I just… feel a bit nostalgic. Just a… who knew, kinda thing.”

“I knew,” Bucky said, making you pause for a second.

“You knew?” you repeated his words, raising an eyebrow at him. Your heart picked up speed just a little bit. This felt like the start of a speech– the start to the speech.

Bucky cleared his throat, and your chest grew tighter at the sound. He shifted in his seat, and you watched as his hand dipped into his pocket. Oh, shit. It’s coming. Your eyes shot back to his face, and your mouth went dry.

“I thought you were the matchmaker, sweetheart. You didn’t know that we would end up together?” he clicked his tongue at you. “I knew I couldn’t trust a matchmaker that didn’t have a boyfriend of her own.”

“I have a boyfriend now, don’t I?” you asked, but thought– Not for long.

He smiled, eyes meeting yours. Then, a velvet box is produced. Placed right on the table in front of you. You can’t bring yourself to look down at it, not when Bucky is still looking at you.

“I want to spend the rest of my days with you. And it’s getting really fucking hard when I can’t see you all the time because we both live on opposite sides of the city, and have awful work schedules that keep us apart. Even so, I love you so much and I can’t imagine being with anyone else,” he confessed to you. Bucky takes in a deep breath that slightly shakes before he whispers out your name, nervous, “Will you move in with me?”

You freeze.

What the fuck?

“Move in with you?” you echoed, blinking.

Bucky opens the box. It’s a key. A shiny, silver key.

“I bought a penthouse in Manhattan,” Bucky said, sliding the box over to you to inspect the key even closer. “I want to see you more often. Not just the random dates when we both have time– I want to sleep next to you every night, and wake up to you in the mornings.”

“A penthouse… In Manhattan,” you said slowly. 

Your brain was short circuiting. In fact, it was fried. Gone.  You were still staring at the key, lips parted. He… wasn’t proposing to you tonight?

“I’m sorry. Am I– Are we moving too fast?” Bucky suddenly asked you, and you could hear the panic in his voice. 

Your head snapped up to look at him. His eyebrows were furrowed in worry, eyes scanning all over your face. You slapped yourself mentally. You could only imagine how you looked just now– staring at him and the key with a blank look on your face, and giving him no answer.

“What? No! No, Bucky– we’re not moving too fast at all,” you reassured him, hands darting across the table to take his hands in yours. “Most couples our age move in together by the first year or so. Mel and her boyfriend are already planning on moving in together when Mel’s lease breaks in a couple months.”

Bucky lets out a breath of relief, and you watch as his shoulders drop. You feel guilt surge through you at the pure stress that is released from his body at that moment.

“God– I just… You know, the penthouse… It’s fully furnished. I’ve been– Sam has been helping me out, actually. He helped me meet with some realtors, get the place fully furnished and decorated,” Bucky said, dragging a hand down his face. “I’ve been living there for the past two and a half months while waiting for all the furniture to come in, and it’s finally all finished as of yesterday and it never occurred to me that you could possibly say no until just now.”

“You’ve been– Is that why you take me back to my apartment after our dates? Instead of yours?” you asked, surprised.

“I already got rid of my other place, sweetheart,” he said, giving you a small, anxious smile. You can see him bouncing his leg up and down just slightly. “Got the penthouse so that we could have enough space for your stuff and mine.”

“You took me out to a fancy dinner, and prepared a speech for me to ask me to move in with you?” you whispered, your heart feeling fuller by the minute.

“I grew up in a time where couples didn’t move in together until after they were married, doll,” Bucky reminded you, his voice small and soft. 

You’re speechless, for just a moment. You take your eyes off of him, to look down at the key in the box, a smile finding its way on your face. You look back up at him, watching as he mirrors your own smile.

“I think it’s time to head home, Congressman.”

Bucky trails behind you quietly as you step into the penthouse. The elevator directly leads to your home– something that you had only ever seen in movies before. You barely took a step into the rest of the home before you were running numbers into your head.

“What’s my share of the bills?” you asked, heart racing as you look up at the high ceilings. “And don’t you dare tell me not to worry about it, Bucky. If we’re living together, then we’re splitting bills. I don’t care that you make more money than me–”

“We’ll talk about finances later, baby,” he cut you off, hands rubbing your shoulders to soothe you. “We’ll split it equally based on our incomes. Just go explore for right now.”

“I don’t know if I can afford this, Bucky,” you said, turning around to look at him. You were freaking out.

“Your salary was put into play when I got this place,” he said, cradling your face. “Sam and I met with the banks. We met with financial advisors to ensure that this would be feasible for both you and me. Please don’t ask how we got your information.”

“Is there a loan–”

“There’s no loan,” he assured you. “Do you trust me?”

“I do,” you answered instantly. 

Bucky gave you a smile, then pressed a kiss to your lips. You melted into his embrace, feeling your worries wash away with just one touch. He wrapped his arms around you, rubbing your back comfortingly. When he pulled away, another kiss was pressed to your forehead. 

“I’ll give you all the documents later to look over. If you still hate it, then we’ll break the lease, and we’ll find somewhere else. I don’t care where we live. I just want to be somewhere that’s with you,” he promised. 

“Okay,” you breathed, nodding. 

Bucky’s hands leave your body, and he steps away from you. He’s quietly urging you to take a look around. 

You had two floors to explore. The elevator opened up the first floor, where there was an open concept condo. You were staring at a living room, kitchen, floor to ceiling windows, and there were built-in shelves on the wall that held Bucky’s books– and had empty spaces for your own books. Down here, there were two doors– one leading to a half bath and the other leading to a home office. 

You saw two desks, separated by a bookshelf. Bucky’s desk was already occupied with his things, while yours was empty and waiting to be used. On the shelf were pictures and other momentos collected by Bucky over the duration of your relationship so far. There was space for you to decorate with whatever you pleased. On the other end of the room was a daybed and some other furniture to cozy up the area. 

Upstairs, there was a platform for another lounge area. Also furnished to hang out in case the two of you ever had any guests come over. Here, your bedroom was behind a closed door. 

A king sized bed was in the middle of the room, along with two nightstands on either side of it. There was a full walk in closet, Bucky already having his stuff hanging on his side with yours waiting to be filled. The windows are touching the floor just like they are outside, and Bucky has the curtains pulled back so you can see the city lights from your bedroom window. 

“What if I get fired?” you whispered, Bucky’s arms wrapping around your waist from behind. “I won’t be able to pay my share of the bills.”

“I’ll pay then,” he said, pressing kisses to your bare shoulder and neck.

“What if you get fired? Or what if you quit? Join Sam and return back to action?” you asked, heart racing. 

Bucky chuckled against your neck, squeezing you against him. 

“Iron Man’s late wife donates a large portion every year to the heroes that do the work. If that’s me, then we’ll be fine,” he promised you. “It’s how Sam gets paid right now.”

“Oh,” you breathed, nodding a little dumbly. You tilted your head to the side, allowing him more access to more skin. You felt him smile against you. 

“You like the place then?”

“I can’t believe you hid this from me.”

“I hide you from the entire American government so you can continue to walk the streets of New York without being asked about politics that you don’t care about. I hid Romania from you. I think I can hide an apartment,” he listed off, scoffing softly at the end.

All of your hair is gathered in one of his hands to get it out of his way as he continues to press dizzying, nipping kisses against your body.

“A penthouse,” you managed to correct.

“Same thing,” he muttered, and you felt him tug on the string of your dress. A moment later, the soft fabric was sliding down your body, and pooling at your feet, “C’mon, sweetheart. We gotta christen the place.”

You’re being turned around to face him, and your arms move to slide up his chest and wrap around his neck. Bucky’s lips met yours in an opened mouthed kiss halfway, tongue gliding over yours easily. 

Your eyes fluttered shut, and you sighed into his mouth, feeling his hands glide up and down the sides of your body. Something about him being fully dressed, and you with nearly nothing at all did something to the both of you.

Your fingers grabbed onto the collar of his dress shirt, tugging him into a deeper, needier kiss. Bucky groaned into your mouth in response, hands finding purchase on the flesh of your ass. His fingers dug into the supple skin, making you moan softly as he groped you.

Your boyfriend gently pushed you until your back was pressed against the window. Once you were situated where he wanted you, Bucky parted from your lips, only to attach himself to your neck once again. He kept shifting, moving down to your collarbones, your chest, your sternum. Lower. 

You watched helplessly, every inch of you thrumming with desire and need as Bucky slowly shifted to his knees in front of you. His hands moved down your body, dragging your underwear down your legs as he positioned himself to sit back on his feet, thighs spread just a bit for comfort. You’re certain your breathing was erratic as you stared at him.

Usually, you were the one on your knees for Bucky. This was different– this was new. You were more than certain that you would still be the one at his mercy.

“Don’t your feet hurt in these heels?” Bucky asked, hand closing around one of your ankles to lift your foot off the ground slightly. “They look uncomfortable. Very tall.”

“It’s not too bad,” you whispered, unable to trust your voice to speak any louder. “I like these shoes.”

“I bought them for you,” he said, tilting his head as he examined the design a little closer.

“That’s why I like them,” you murmured.

Bucky chuckled just a little bit, shaking his head. He moved slowly on purpose, undoing the strap around your ankle and slowly pulling it off of your foot like you were some sort of princess. He gently led your foot back down to the floor, keeping an eye on your posture to make sure you didn’t suddenly fall from the shift in height. When he was certain that you were stable, he switched over to the next foot, repeating the same process.

Except, he didn’t put your foot back onto the ground. Bucky lifted your leg higher, pressing a kiss to the inside of your ankle, eyes closing as he did. When they opened, he met your gaze, never looking away as his kisses went higher and higher up your leg. He settled your knee to hook around his shoulder, moving to fully kneel before you as his hands went to grab your waist, keeping you pressed against the glass behind you. A firm, tight grip. 

You wouldn’t be able to run from whatever he was about to do to you. Not that you would ever want to.

If he wasn’t holding you up, you were certain you would’ve folded over and collapsed the second his tongue met your heat. The vibrations from the groan sent shockwaves through your entire body that made you tremble above him, hands darting to grab onto his shoulders for an extra form of stability as his tongue parted your folds and flattened against you.

“Shit, Bucky,” you moaned, your mind going blank. All you could feel was him. 

His tongue dipping just slightly in and out of your aching hole, only to drag up to your sensitive clit to swirl figure eights around the nub. Bucky’s hands on your torso, his thumbs  drawing circles into your skin to soothe you against the stimulation he was giving you. The heat of his body radiating against yours from where he was positioned beneath you. 

“Your pussy is squeezing around nothing, baby,” he murmured, pulling away from your core for just a moment, a whine ripping through your throat in response. Bucky clicked his tongue at you, and kissed the inside of your thigh to subdue you. “Have I been neglecting you? Not fucking you enough for you to be so needy?”

Definitely not. Maybe it was the fact that everything was crashing down on you. The fact Bucky went so far to secure the two of you an entire home without you knowing, furnishing the whole place, meeting with financial advisors– all of it made you incredibly desperate for him. 

It was like that one time when you watched him do the dishes for the first time at the beginning of your relationship. He was at your apartment, doing your dishes that you were too lazy to do before he came over. You don’t know what the hell happened to you at that moment, but you just watched him. The second the water turned off, you were unzipping his pants and giving him head. It confused him, but he also wasn’t complaining. 

“I’m always needy for you,” you barely managed to answer him.

Bucky’s lips parted, eyes scanning your figure above him for a few moments. Then, one of his hands left your waist, and two fingers were shoved into you without a single warning. 

A moan ripped through your throat, and you weren’t given a chance to even recover before his mouth was back on your clit, sucking and flicking at the sensitive nub. His fingers entered and exited you at a delicious speed, and he could feel you coming apart around him. Your body was beginning to tremble, walls beginning to shake– and he curled his fingers the way he knew you liked.

You came undone, Bucky’s hand moving to press against your stomach to keep you from collapsing forward. Your chest rose and fell in uneven breaths as you whimpered his name, tugging on his hair weakly to pull away from your overstimulated body. 

Reluctantly, he released you. Bucky’s hands never left you as he stood, keeping you upright. Your legs were still shaking when you had both feet on the ground, but fuck if you were going to let Bucky stay dressed. 

You had every intention of returning the favor once Bucky was just as bare as you were. Bucky saw it in your eyes, too. The way your gaze dropped down his torso to his cock that was stiff and high up against his stomach, waiting for you. You barely moved your hair to the side before you were being spun back around, chest pressed to the glass– eyes to the view of the New York city skyline. 

“Next time, doll,” he promised, pressing a kiss to your shoulder blade that made you shiver. You let out a small moan as you felt him drag the length of his dick through your folds, coating himself in your slick to get him ready to enter. “Gotta be inside you right now or I might go insane.”

“Hurry up, then,” you whined to him, pressing your ass back further into him. A mistake, and you knew it. Not that it really was a mistake on your end though.

His hand came around from your stomach, gripping your throat and jaw, pulling you back into him. Your back was arched, hands resting on the glass for some sort of security in the position he had you in. Bucky forced your head to turn, to look at him. 

Bucky wanted to watch your face contort with pleasure as he finally slid in, watch as you fell apart as he speared you full with his cock. There was a look of satisfaction and fucking arrogance in his eyes with the way your mouth fell open in a noiseless moan. Bucky took advantage of it, shoving his tongue into your mouth to swallow up any of the noises that he knew would start coming once his hips started moving.

You couldn’t keep up– not with his kiss, not with the pacing– not with anything that was happening right now. His hips were snapping into yours at such a brutal pace, his metal hand gripping your hip to keep you in place, and you barely managed to pull away from his lips to breathe. 

“So good– so good,” he groaned as you turned back to the glass, chin falling to your chest for a moment as you moaned in response. 

Bucky didn’t let your head hang for too much longer. He pulled your head back up to look out the window, and you could feel his breath against your ear as he continued to pound his hips from behind you.

“Isn’t the view so nice, baby?” he whispered to you.

“Wh… what?” you moaned, mind spiraling for just a moment.

“It’s so nice,” he continued, grunting behind you, “I know your pussy loves it– loves it when I fuck you in front of all of New York to see.”

Excitement shoots through you, and you unexpectedly clamped around him. Bucky’s hips stuttered as he cursed softly. You were close– again– and Bucky wasn’t making this any better for you. Then again, you almost just brought Bucky over the edge with you.

“Shit. I knew you were a fucking freak when you tried giving me head in front of my coworkers,” Bucky muttered, a small laugh falling from his lips.

“Bucky,” you whimpered. “I’m so close–”

“It’s too bad. New York can’t have you,” he cut you off, pulling out of you. 

The sense of loss is immediate, but not for long. Once more, he’s spinning you around. This time, he’s hoisting you up like you weigh nothing at all. Your legs are wrapping around his waist immediately, and he’s sinking you back down on his length within seconds. 

Your lips are collided with Bucky as he’s fucking you against the window now, holding you up in his arms as you hang onto him for dear life. Your fingernails are digging into the muscles of his shoulders, scratching down his chest in a way that he once admitted that he loves, and you’re moaning into each other’s mouths.

The thrusts are growing sloppier as the kiss grows messier– there’s no need for words between the two of you anymore. You both know your tells at this point.

Bucky angles his hips just slightly to hit that one spot in you, forcing you over the edge as his own orgasm threatens to take him. Your body seizes, and you can’t kiss him back anymore. Bucky busies himself with your neck, leaving marks on your skin as he fucks you through your high, chasing his own that comes just moments later, coating your walls and dripping down onto the new floors of your new room together.

You’re still panting and trying to catch your breath, head dropped onto his shoulder when Bucky moves, carrying you to the bathroom to clean up. His kisses are softer as he walks over, his words more gentle. His body separates from yours as he rests you on the edge of the bathtub so he can start the water to fill the tub.

“How’s the view?” Bucky asked you, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

A soft laugh rips through you, and you can feel him smile against your skin.

“The view is perfect, handsome.”

You didn’t find a single number out of place in the documents he presented you either. You took an entire weekend going over the numbers while Bucky watched you quietly. He didn’t bother you while you did so. In fact, he just stayed nearby and took the days off work, too. Bucky answered any questions that you possibly could’ve had for him, already knowing what you would’ve thrown his way.

Which only made your heart grow fonder for him, if you were being honest. He knew you like the back of his hand.

Once you were satisfied with everything, he helped you move all your stuff from your previous apartment over to your new home. Bucky timed the move in perfectly– your lease was about to break the following month, so you had just the right amount of time to tie up all your loose ends. 

All you really had to move over to the new place was your wardrobe, books, and sentimentals. You found out very quickly that during your random dates where Bucky would come home with you, he started taking stock of all your little things around the house. Anything that was running low, he just went ahead and bought so it was already at your new home, ready for you to use.

The last couple weeks were spent with you listing all your unneeded furniture up on the marketplace for an extra few bucks. Things like your dining table, sofa, coffee table– everything that Bucky had already bought and decorated for your home together. 

“You know this couch?” Sam asked you as he flopped down on it. “And the coffee table? The rug? Those barstools? The fucking light fixtures?”

You and Bucky invited him and his girlfriend over for dinner for a small celebration– a little get together to commemorate the fact that you and Bucky were officially fully moved in together now. 

“What about it?” you asked, handing him a bottle of beer.

“I picked it. Me. Bucky just swiped his card. You’re so fucking lucky, matchmaker. Your boyfriend sucks. If I wasn’t there– shit. You would’ve had clashing colors and patterns in this luxury penthouse,” Sam scoffed, taking a long swig. “I had a fucking headache just standing there. The sales associate thought we were married the way I was arguing with him in the store.”

“You two basically are,” you said, grinning against the rim of your own bottle.

“Don’t say that,” Bucky muttered, a shudder running through his body. “I’d rather die than spend the rest of my life with that idiot.”

“God, I’m glad we agree,” Sam groaned, shaking his head. 

“We picked more neutral stuff,” Bucky told you, sitting beside you on the couch. An arm draped over your shoulders, pulling you into his warmth. “We thought it would be easier for you to add whatever additions or colors you’d want in the future.”

“Oh, so you did think about me when you purchased an entire penthouse and furnished the whole damn thing without telling me,” you teased. 

Bucky rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t fight the smile on his face. “Yes, sweetheart. I thought of you.”

With the two of you living together now, it was easier for you both to see each other. You reveled in the fact you could fall asleep every night in his arms, even if you went to bed first. He didn’t want you waiting for him if he had an event that had him staying out late, but you would often wake up to him pulling you into his embrace.

In the mornings, Bucky would usually be the one to wake up and leave first. 

You no longer set an alarm on your phone. Bucky’s sweet kisses were your wake up call every morning. He wouldn’t leave until you kissed him back, no matter how long it took you to wake up. 

“Morning,” you would whisper to him.

“Morning,” he’d reply, kissing you one more time for good measure. “I made you breakfast. It’s on the table.”

“Wake me up earlier tomorrow so I can eat with you,” you whined to him, though you just rolled over on your side, closing your eyes again.

Bucky chuckled, leaning over your body to press a kiss to your temple. You sighed, letting the morning wash over you for just one more moment before you pushed up off the bed. You’d follow him downstairs, watch him grab his blazer off the seat of the dining table, and you’d tie his tie for him at the door.

“I’ll be home early tonight. I don’t have any events today,” you said, smoothing out the fabric on his chest.

“You’ve been coming home early every night,” he said, raising his eyebrow at you.

“So have you, Congressman. Almost like there’s something you’re running from. Something you’re avoiding at work?” you teased, smiling at him.

“No. Just trying to get home to you,” he hummed, smoothing out your bedhead with both hands before he held your face gently to kiss you one more time before he went off into the world.

This was your new daily morning routine. 

The trade off on coming home early meant that you still had to do work when you came home. Both of you. However, Bucky seemed to plan for that, which is why he had a room specifically made for a home office for the two of you. 

You two would spend your evenings there before dinner for a few hours, finishing up any work that you weren’t able to do at your respective offices. You two would be silently working on your own jobs.

You, researching your clients preferences and trying to match them up based on their profiles. You would also be looking up the best date spots, trying to keep up with the latest trends for dating, and making sure that you weren’t falling behind on anything else.

Bucky would be going through packets upon packets of different meetings that he would have attended. There were several different duties that he had acquired since you first started dating, and there were a lot of responsibilities that he had started shouldering. You were certain that he was also helping Sam on the side, though he couldn’t tell you full details as per usual. 

Usually, you would stop working when you heard Bucky stop working and open the door to the office. He normally ordered food for the two of you, and would go out to the lobby to pick it up, and bring it back for you two to eat.

It was your signal to put everything down, and relax with him for the rest of the night.

You heard him close his binder, heard the wheels of his chair roll backwards, but you didn’t hear the elevator open and close to signify his departure down. You shook it off– wondering if he just went off to the bathroom or something.

Then, you felt him behind you. 

Bucky’s chest was pressed against your back, enveloping you in his warmth. His hands were on your shoulders, and as always, the left side of your body was colder from the touch of his metal prosthetic. 

“Hi, handsome,” you said, a smile coming onto your face. “Is it time for dinner?”

“Almost. Delivery is on its way,” he answered you.

His hands slid down your shoulders, goosebumps rising on your bare skin as his hands moved all the way down to cover your own hands. He left his hands on top of yours, and you hummed, happy to feel him all over you for just a moment. Bucky’s head pressed against the side of yours, then he dropped his forehead into the crook of your neck.

“Are you okay?” you whispered, tilting your head to the side to give him more space to rest. He took it, burrowing deeper into you.

“Yeah. Just a little nervous,” he murmured into your skin, taking a breath. 

You were about to ask him what he was talking about, to turn around and look at him properly. Then, you felt his hands slide up just a little bit, resting now on your wrists instead of covering your hands completely. Except, there was a weight he left behind that wasn’t there before. Your eyes shifted downwards, and your breath caught in your throat at the ring he slipped onto your finger– the cool metal that he masked with the metal of his own arm.

Your breath is caught in your throat, your eyes widened at the sparkling star on your finger. Bucky plucked this thing out of the fucking sky– he had to. There was no way. 

“Marry me, sweetheart?” he asked softly. There was a slight tremor to his voice that you caught. A slight shaking in his right hand that you could feel. 

You couldn’t repeat what you did at the restaurant, make him freak out with worry over your quiet shock and silence.

Your sudden jolt into standing surprised him, but he didn’t seem to mind when you wrapped your arms around his neck, kissing his lips, then his cheeks, his eyes– everywhere you could as tears were beginning to well up and spill over. You couldn’t help it. You felt Bucky’s anxiety release with each kiss, his hands resting on your waist to hold you against him.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, smiling at you.

“Why would I ever say no to you?” you demanded, making him laugh. “Fuck– I thought you were going to propose to me at the restaurant when you asked me to move in with you!”

“The restaurant?” Bucky asked, blinking. “What– really?”

“Yes!” you nodded, wiping your tears away roughly. Bucky caught your hands, putting them down to your sides so he could wipe your tears away in a more gentle way with his thumbs.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said, looking appalled. “Do you know how many times you have ranted to me about the fact you hate restaurant proposals? You hate planning them, and you hate watching them. Why would I ever propose to you in a restaurant?”

“If it was you, then I would have changed my mind about it right away!” you argued with him, stubborn. “If it was you, you could’ve proposed to me with a candy ring, and I still would have said yes! We can elope– I don’t need a fancy wedding or anything. I just– just you. I just want you, Bucky.”

You watched as his eyes softened for you as he looked all over your features. You were certain that you looked like a mess right now, but you were finding it harder to believe that with the way he was looking at you right now. He looked as if you were the one that created the universe, and solved all his problems. There was nothing but admiration, love, joy. These were eyes that only you had the privilege to see. 

A smile came onto his face, one that you adored. A smile that you were going to be able to have for the rest of your life.

“Well, I’m your fiancé now, but you’ve already had me from the beginning, doll,” he said, “I’ve had this ring for over a year now, actually.”

“A year?” you whispered, eyes wide.

“I’ve been trying to find the right time to ask,” he admitted, a bit sheepish. “And just… right now. It felt right.”

“Me working in the same room as you felt right?” 

Bucky rolled his eyes at your blatant sarcasm. Except, he’s still smiling. He never gives you a real attitude. He wouldn’t dare. He loves you too much to ever do that.

“The fact that we’re both able to do our own thing in silence, but still be together felt right. We don’t need to speak. We don’t need to be touching. Don’t get me wrong, I love all those things, but… When I looked over at you just now— I felt at peace. Peace that I never thought I was ever allowed to have. So yes, it felt right.”

You’re about to cry again. You’re about to start fucking ugly sobbing in your boyfriend– your fiancé’s arms. You have a thousand things to say, but you know none of them will make sense right now. So, you bury your face in his chest and hug him tight, his arms coming to hold you even closer to him. 

“I love you,” you settled with, your voice breaking slightly.

“I love you, too,” he chuckled in response.

You listened to his chest rumble with laughter under your ear, felt his head rest against the side of yours. He led your bodies in a gentle sway, rocking the two of you back and forth. He took in a breath, releasing it slowly in a contented way. 

Your mind is racing still, and you ask one single question– just one to get his opinion. 

“Where should we get married?” you whispered to him. 

Bucky’s quiet for a few moments. A few moments too long. You pull back from him to look at his face, finding a smile on his lips, and a small sparkle in his eyes.

“I have some friends that want to meet you. Do you think you’re up to traveling to Wakanda?”

masterlist

taglist: @duacruel @natsomens @decthaxhrcv @shortandb1tchy @iyskgd @ifuckwithyouanyday @miss-chuchu @bighappypiels @snnoopyy @messrkarmaismygf13 @thebuckybarnesvault @aekzla @simp4f1 @its-in-the-woods @lvrrinx @herejustforbuckybarnes @djotummy @star-yawnznn let me know if you would like to join my general bucky taglist for whenever i post a fic!

[angeliteeyes]

Platonic Shenhe + Sibling Reader Headcanons

Inspired by an ask sent by @the-ultimate-puppeteer ❤️ hope u enjoy!

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

- For a period of time, you two were completely estranged from one another, an unfortunate side effect of her less-than-stellar history with your father. It's honestly a miracle that you managed to find and recognize each other later on in life at all, given how many lies and rumors clouded your understanding of your formerly close sibling. If it weren't for your timely use of a familiar exorcism technique, you two may have remained estranged to this very day.

- Shenhe ends up warming up to you rather quickly once her mind starts to fully process the situation. Something tells you that you're going to have to get used to being doted on sooner than later, with how tenderly she's already treating you, despite only having recently reunited.

- If anybody EVER dares to threaten you or harass you to any degree, they have essentially signed their own death warrant. There is no world in which she could ever forgive herself if any danger were to befall you. Even if you're the eldest sibling, it does not matter to her one bit. In her eyes, no matter your age, gender, or anything like that, it is her responsibility to protect you.

- You are easily her strongest motivation for improving herself as a person. Every step that she takes toward properly reintegrating with regular human society is—at least partially—done with the hope of making you proud and showing how reliable she can be. The thought of you is honestly just as, if not more, effective than the red ropes when dealing with crude individuals. She still might deck them though, if need be.

- For a while, very few people are actually aware of your shared ancestry due to the nature of her past and lifestyle. Many don't even recognize the fact that she's also human to be able to put two and two together. Still, those who are aware and have hung out with you as a duo always seem to comment on how it "makes total sense". If your personalities are roughly the same, they'll note how you're practically a carbon copy of one another. If yours are opposite, though, they end up noticing just how well you two balance each other out in a yin-yang type of fashion.

Xianyun, in particular, is a huge fan of you siblings. At some point, she's inserted herself into both of your lives far enough that she's essentially your adoptive mother. Bonus points if you take the time to write to her often or stop by for some afternoon tea.

- She tries her best with things like birthday gifts and the like. She really does. The problem is that she's not quite aware yet of what exactly constitutes an appropriate present. Unless you tell her in explicit detail what exactly you want for each holiday, you're basically leaving it up to luck whether you're getting a cute trinket or a pile of herbs you have absolutely no use for.

- Once she got her job as a waitress at Wanmin Restaurant, you better believe that she's bringing home leftovers for you on the daily. True, her own tastes are a little... peculiar, but that doesn't stop her from enjoying whatever goodies she managed to snag for you vicariously.

Speaking of, she really appreciates it if you stop by for a meal during one of her shifts. As much as the majority of customers who come in nowadays know to be on their best behavior, every now and then, a particularly obnoxious person winds up waltzing in and making a scene. Having you around really helps a lot in calming her spirit down once the altercation is over and done with.

- Another thing she'll greatly appreciate is if you decide to go out in the mountains and train with her. Your two fighting styles already are quite similar given your history in exorcism arts, so it feels only natural to her. Plus, it puts her mind at ease knowing that you're capable of defending yourself in a worst-case scenario.

- While she may still struggle somewhat with emotions, she's incredibly skilled in the matter of physical ailments—both detecting them and treating them, provided it's something curable via herbal remedies. You won't even get the chance to feel sick before she's already guiding you back home, quietly taking note of your temperature and other vital signs.

She gets that your taste buds aren't as accustomed to bitter flavors as hers are, so she does her best to disguise those notes with honey or other pleasant ingredients. Still... you may need to wash whatever concoction she gives you down with a generous amount of juice or whatnot. To her credit, at least you end up recovering far faster than you ever would've otherwise.

- Physical contact is a bit difficult for her to adjust to at first, admittedly. Simple things like feeling your forehead for your temperature come to her just fine, but hugging? Feels completely alien to her.

That isn't to say that she wouldn't eventually grow to enjoy it, though. Particularly if you're the sort to initiate that sort of stuff, she ends up actually enjoying it far more than she first expected. This cozy, warm feeling feels strangely familiar, even if she can no longer recall a time in which she would have experienced it before.

- Overall, Shenhe is easily the greatest sister you could've ever hoped for. It's a shame that you two spent so many years apart, but at least now you can make up for it as much as you like!

[deadeyedfae]

Hi Fae,

I was wondering if you had any advice for someone who was questioning. I dont really have gender dysphoria or euphoria, but I do feel a lot of Gender Envy, and im just not sure how I should proceed

Hey ^^

Well you don't need to experience dysphoria to be trans, euphoria is often the one that people say you need but I think that's a wrong take as well, because you are just questioning right now, you feel gender envy and from someone who was apathetic to her mortal body before coming out, well sometimes you don't feel things because you are so apathetic to your own internal struggles!

I would say, if you feel gender envy, then you should try presenting in ways you are comfortable with that mimic those you feel the gender envy from! Even just little things, you might find once you start, you start to notice the feelings of euphoria or dysphoria and can understand them internally better ^^

There isn't anything wrong with experimenting with your gender expression, even if you come to the conclusion you are cis!

[mochineesan]

YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING THERE!

Personally, whenever I think of Bernard with powers, I just feel like he would have healing powers. I can't imagine it any other way. He's the group's medic, and he's able to self-regenerate so he can fight however and wherever he wants, I also think it would add more flexibility and strength to his body.

He doesn't know it, but he's a natural meta; he was born with those powers. But they would never have activated if it weren't for the cult. They moved something, and that's why his powers manifest

It started out a bit strange. He noticed he hadn't gotten sick for so long, that when he cut himself, he didn't feel it, and even if the cut was big enough, it healed very quickly. When he connected the dots, he was terrified to bits, even though he always thought it would be cool to have powers and be a meta, he could only relate these new powers to the cult. He thought they did something else to him, that they altered his DNA while he was unconscious or something, and worse, he could only think that they could control him with those powers.

He didn't tell Tim, God no. All he could think was, what if Tim saw him as a monster? He got a little paranoid. Tim definitely didn't know what the Cult was like, what they did to him. Bernard would never forget it, it's something you only understand if you experience it. He didn't want to distrust Tim, but he also wasn't sure how he would react positively to "Hey, so now I have these powers right after being part of a cult, do you think it has to do with that?"

He hid it as much as he could until, on a date with Tim, one of those spontaneous situations in Gotham happened where they get attacked. Tim told him to run, and when, as always, they separated, Bernard hid in an alley. He saw people getting hurt. He cursed himself for being so aware of his surroundings and then thanked himself for always having a mask in his bag and wearing his hoodie that day. So he just ran around, taking advantage of his recent energy boost and improved fitness, and healed everyone he encountered. Of course, the bats noticed him, Red Robin noticed him. At first, he suspected him, then after some investigation, he discovered Gotham's mysterious new meta. Who presumably only appeared to heal the wounded he found and then left without a trace.

Here, the idea fell a little short; I don't know what could happen in the midst of all that. But somehow, Bernard decides he won't let the cult control him, if that's who gave him those powers. So in true Peter Parker fashion, he dons his suit and travels to Young Justice headquarters when Tim is on a "business trip." And of course, he arrives in the middle of a fight. And he helps them, because even though his powers are primarily healing, he knows how to fight very well, and he also has a physical advantage thanks to those same powers. Tim immediately knows he's Gotham's meta, and confronts him, as the leader of the YJ. Bernard asks to be on the team, but avoids at all costs the reason or his origin.He basically presents himself as a guy who came from nowhere with good intentions and wants to help.

I've had this idea for a long time, I even have a name for Bernard, it's super basic But I think he would call himself "Healer"

Alright, so looking into Young Justice Outsiders and Phantoms, I think Bernard being a metahuman in that particular DC universe would make a lot of sense.

Similar events to the comics happen at Louis Grieve High and Tim and Bernard end up going separate ways. However, Bernard doesn't join the pain cult in this universe. Instead, after a terrible fight with his parents (most likely over his sexualit), he runs away from home and ends up being kidnapped by one of the groups trafficking metahumans and is tested for a mete gene. It turns out he does have a meta gene, and they experiment on him to learn more about his abilities.

Eventually, this group is dealt with thanks to the Justice League/Young Justice and this is when Tim sees Bernard again. Tim is Robin at the time, but still approaches Bernard and checks in with him.

Bernard tells Robin then that he currently doesn't have anywhere to go home to as he doesn't want to return to his parents. Robin recommends he stay at a recently built Meta-Human Youth Center in Gotham (funded by the Wayne Foundation, of course).

So Bernard ends up staying there, and Tim stops by to reunite with him as his civilian self this time. While he's there, Tim learns that the staff of the center have decided to keep Bernard in their care permanently for the time being as his powers are unpredictable and hard for him to control.

Cue Tim wanting to help Bernard control his powers and visiting frequently to spend time with him. Then gay TimBer shenanigans ensue.

Also I know in Young Justice there's a Meta-Human Youth Center established in Taos already, but I like the idea of one being in Gotham because I think it would be nice for Duke to visit the center as he is aslo a meta-human learning about his own powers and he meets Bernard.

[accioepiphany]

I’m halfway through season 4 of the bear and I think I get now what my problem with the show is… it should have ended at season 1

And I’m saying this as someone who looooooved season 2. But I’m now understanding that that season was overtime… it was a spinoff… it was a remake years after lol

Cause what I’m seeing in season 3 and 4 is them hammering a point that was so beautifully made Season 1…

The whole you had fallen out of love with your passion, but seeing someone else have that spark can help you revive it. The, if you manage to get out of your head for a while you might connect with others and build something with them. The, you need to figure out some things to stop hurting people but that doesn’t mean you are not going to hurt them ever again… The… you gotta try!! And that’s what keeps your present.

That was literally all there exposed AND resolved in season 1. And the ending to that season was actually perfect in ways of giving hope without closing the doors to whatever might happen.

I love The Bear for its art. For the cinematography, the editing, the music!!!! But much like Carmy, I feel in a loop with it. Like it keeps trying each season to make the same point over and over. And though I love when we get this little episodes exploring each characters lives like Forks, Napkins, the fourth episode this season… I think for my own sanity and relationship with the show I’ll just take all these seasons and the ones to come as little specials. As windows into what my favorite characters are doing, the little adventures they are getting into. Because otherwise I’ll never leave the time loop lol

[bitchesgetriches]

Hi bitches! I work at a group home that will be teaching young adults with Intellactual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) the skills nessesary to live independently with weekly visits from staff. For many of our folks, this'll be the first time living away from mom and dad and the first time they're given the rights and respect of an adult.

Which makes me concerned about sex education. It seems mom and dad forgot that disabled people can be horny and have treated their young adult as such. While our group home understands Dignity Of Risk and how we can't legally impose restrictions on personal relationships.

What resources, books, guides, etc should I have available? How do I present myself as someone who's cool and can talk about sex and can be trusted with deep secrets like needing to get a sex checkup and will keep things as private and low key? Im 26, I'm not that much older than these guys.

This is a little outside of our purview... so I went to the experts: Planned Parenthood!

PP has lessons specifically on teaching sex ed to adults with disabilities. Learn more here.

Kitty and I are both lifelong devoted aunties. I remember when my (Piggy) teenage niblings were learning sex ed, I had an arrangement with their parents. Their parents knew I would privately tell the kids they could ask me anything... and I gave the kids examples of things they could ask. This also meant spending one-on-one time with the kids doing activities where they felt safe and private enough to talk to me.

I know adults with disabilities are a little different from preteens, but I think the principle is the same: explicitly tell them you're a nonjudgmental, safe resource, and then give them safe and private opportunities to talk to you about their concerns.

Good luck! Here's some more of what we've written about disabilities:

The Social Safety Net for Disabled People Is Broken 

Long-Term Disability Insurance Is a Necessity… and a Scam 

Short-Term Disability Insurance Is a Waste of Money… With Two Very Specific Exceptions 

Why There’s So Little (Good) Personal Finance for Disabled People 

Did we just help you out? Join our Patreon!

[midnightactual]

PSA: Respect is Minding Your Own Damn Business

Let's have a little chat about what basic respect actually is. Now, this isn't contemporarily political, so don't run away screaming into the night just yet. Stick with me. I know it's hard in the age of TikTok and doomscrolling, but stick with me. Tim Walz articulated a pretty good idea of respect not even a year ago:

[...] because in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make. And even if we wouldn't make those same choices for ourselves, we've got a golden rule: mind your own damn business.

This applies anywhere and everywhere in this world you happen to find yourself. I know, I know, it's the zeitgeist to look at this or that and say it's problematic, that it's triggering, that it's whatever. I'm not going to lecture you about the abject failure of purity culture to do anything besides divide people, make the perfect the enemy of the good, and give those who actually are the devout enemies of inclusivity and cosmopolitanism all the ammunition they could ever dream of. I'd be here all day if I was going to do that, and it still wouldn't be enough.

Instead, I want to ignore the forest for the dirt, and focus on some basic concepts that seem to have been forgotten both here and more generally in society:

Just because you like something doesn't make it good.

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it bad.

Liking good things doesn't make you a good person.

Liking bad things doesn't make you a bad person.

Being nice does not mean being kind.

Being kind does not mean being nice.

Someone engaging with problematic material does not mean they are problematic.

Someone not engaging with problematic material does not mean they aren't problematic.

Unless something actually presents a real, tangible physical, emotional, or psychological danger to others with intent to harm or exploit, it is not your business to point it out or "warn" others. It is also not your personal decision as to what constitutes real, tangible danger. You are not an authority. You do not have credentials. You are not held accountable by the public. You were not voted for by the public or appointed by representatives. It's not your business.

I could go on. I think you ought to begin to understand: respect is leaving people well enough alone if they're not hurtin' nobody, and "hurtin' nobody" doesn't include things like "they said a thing I disagree with" or "they said something that was true but it hurt my feelings". That's free speech. Now, I could have a whole entire diversion here about how free speech cannot survive including hate speech—and how hate speech can be much more than advocating for harm, and can include the normalization of hateful actors—but we're not talking about that because we're taking baby steps here.

It is okay for you (or someone else!) to like bad things, even openly, and doing so doesn't make you (or them!) a bad person. Now, hold on, I'm not defending pedophiles or rapists or racists or misogynists or whatever else here, let alone saying they have a right to promote their viewpoints. Don't get it twisted. Those are not simply bad things, and you know I'm not talking about those kinds of matters when I talk about it being okay to like bad things. You know exactly what I'm actually talking about.

You know what I'm talking about includes acknowledging those listed things actually do exist and happen, and that censoring ourselves about their existence or happening doesn't make them go away. You know that what I am advocating for includes being able to discuss the existence of such things (and much more) in a mature, adult way, that is respectful and sophisticated, especially within art. I am not talking about fetishizing it, glorifying it, or whatever else.

You know that in an age where people are self-censoring and saying "unalived" instead of "killed" and "unalived themselves" instead of "committed suicide", and it's considered "cringe", that all this has gone too far. You know that in an age of book bans and government censorship, all this has gone too far and been weaponized by the worst people you know of.

So, let's do something about it. But first, let's go over some examples, because this has been highly theoretical so far.

A piece of fiction that includes infidelity as part of its structure is not in fact promoting or glamorizing or normalizing infidelity. Even if it was, with characters openly saying things like, "Infidelity is amazing!" protesting that particular piece of fiction would not change the rate of infidelity in the real world. To complain about the media would, in fact, be avoidant of the issue—pretending one is doing something while actually doing nothing. This is usually called "ragebait" these days.

I think guns are fascinating machines, even if they are only machines made to put holes in things (usually people). I sometimes watch videos about guns. I sometimes talk about guns. I sometimes think about guns. I have never owned a gun in my life. I have never even handled a real gun—the closest I've gotten was an airsoft M4. Do you see the separation between thinking about a subject, engaging with a subject, supporting a subject, promoting a subject, and actively utilizing a subject? Even someone who owns guns and promotes gun ownership is probably not regularly shooting people with them.

My main muse, Yoruichi, is the tropenamer for the TVTropes entry "Ambiguously Brown". She's right there on the page. I have seen people in the wild make statements like, "If you think Yoruichi is brown and not black, you're a racist." We could argue back and forth all day on her ethnicity, but the truth is it doesn't matter. If it mattered it would've been stated. Some possibilities are perhaps more likely than others, but she can be whatever you want to imagine her to be. Likewise, some people think she was in the form of a cat for a century; some dubiously canon sources promote that idea, and some people run with it. I'm not one of them. I've stated my opposition to that take here, in my own personal space, but do you know what I've never done? Gone and jumped down the throat of someone who took up and propagated that idea with a public callout wherein I trash them as a racist and a misogynist who actually secretly hates Yoruichi and wants to tear her down and dehumanize her. I haven't done that because that would be insane to do in like 99.99% of cases, and the remaining 0.01% would almost certainly be "ragebait".

Now that I'm finally talking about muses, let's really dial in on roleplaying.

I don't go police what other people do with Yoruichi because even if I do style myself an expert on her (let's be real: the expert on her) I don't have any authority to tell other people what to think about her. I can present my ideas and other people can take them or leave them, but that's on them, not on me. It's not my business to tell others what to think, how, why, when, where, or to whom. It's only my business to state my opinion in my space. My opinion might be informed by facts and evidence, or it might simply be my opinion. My opinion might be as close to factually correct as could be, or it might be as far away as could be—and even if I had all the facts on my side, roleplaying is a transformative activity where people can do what they want.

It would be wrong of me to go out and hit other people with my opinions like a cudgel. It would also be equally wrong of other people to come here and attack me for my opinions. This is why being a hater or an anti is stupid: content doesn't just flash into your mind unbidden. You usually have to go out and look for it, and even if it comes to you, you have to choose to look at it or read it, and then you almost always have the option to block, unfollow, say you don't want to see the post, or simply exercise some self-control and choose to ignore it.

The only time you reasonably ought to say something if you see content you don't care to see is if something has been said which is factually untrue, and even then you're not Snopes: it's not your job to be public fact-checker. In the case of roleplaying, this occurring is even less likely.

So, your opinions! It's okay if you don't like something! You can make your dislike known in your space. You should, in fact. It's your responsibility to establish your boundaries and to curate the content that you see. That's entirely on you. Whatever you have to do to make your space comfortable for you? Go right ahead! No one can complain.

The moment you step outside your space though, all bets are off. If you put one toe over the threshold in order to tell someone else to not make certain kinds of content, not do certain things, not talk about certain things? You're in the wrong. You're the problematic one. You're the bad guy—yes, the bad guy—because what you are trying to do is censor other people for the sake of your own comfort.

What gives you the right? What could ever give you the right? Nothing. You're not entitled to be the Thoughtpolice for any reason whatsoever, unless as long-ago specified there is some real, tangible danger occurring.

When you act like you're the one who gets to decide what is and isn't acceptable for people to put forward, you're fundamentally being a disrespectful asshole. You're inherently acting like you're the adult, and the stupid children over there need to be yelled at to stop doing whatever—or else.

When this happens in real life, we call it "being a Karen". Well, don't be a Karen here either. Nobody wants it. If you can't articulate a real, tangible danger, keep your mouth shut and stay in your lane, because that's the fundamental basis of respect. You know as much too, which is why everybody and their mother writes some variant on "muse does not equal mun" in their rules.

If you can't adhere to that most basic definition of respect, you don't belong here.

[liedownquisition]

If you think that Batman being a good guy means he can't be a fascist, congratulations! You are fully ready to uncritically read any propaganda and convert to the whims of it because the whole point of propaganda is to present the fascists as good guys! Like... that's the whole thing about propaganda, you're supposed to root for the guys they want you to root for and be against the people they want you to turn against. That means presenting them with universally admirable qualities and then using them to prop up fascist institutions.

US Cops are part of an inherently fascist structure. I didn't think this was in question at this point. Bruce has multiple instances and discussions throughout his history including and especially relevantly in Jason's time as Robin where he discusses that they have to operate within a limited framework alongside The Law.

And Jason's ideology is EXPLICITLY to Be a Better Batman.

So it's really just a more extreme version of the EXACT same ideology. Jason in UtH, and continuing into OYL was a crimelord, possibly only ended by BftC (it's a little vague/goes unmentioned that he ever did). meaning he's not JUST getting rid of other gangsters/mobsters, he's Replacing Them. He was really explicitly taking over Black Mask's territory and taking his people, and then once he hit whatever threshold he was eliminating the competition. ->And yeah there is a difference between a shattered leg and murder, sure. Once the medical debt racks up I think the former might be a slower, more agonizing death and condemn you to always continue being a criminal because no one's going to hire you with a rap sheet and a bum leg.

And if you want to criticize Jason for that, you have to acknowledge that Batman also has a crime lord persona: Matches Malone. Which he has explicitly for the purpose of taking it over. (Add War Games to your collection if you don't understand what I'm talking about. Which, wow, that happened RIGHT BEFORE UtH, what a strange coincidence.)

Anyways, the Joker confrontation was for Jason's self-interest, yeah he pretty much says that, but everything else? Nah. He doesn't have to do the crime lord thing to set that up. That's about Being Batman.

Re: Bruce getting punished: His broken back has not had long-term consequences. His venom addiction did not have long term consequences. Outside of those runs, they might as well have not happened most of the time. Bruce losing girlfriends who only existed in one or two runs explicitly for the purpose of being lost is not a long term consequence esp since they're rarely discussed outside of those runs. Breaking up with girlfriends like, say, Catwoman, who only got back with him for one or two arcs for the purpose of dumping him again isn't really a long-term consequence so much as a continuation of their dynamic. Dick always comes back. Tim comes back. Alfred came back until they finally killed him off but they made that DAMIAN'S consequence and not Bruce's. Cass comes back. Damian comes back. These consequences are always reverted back into the status quo. The only real long-term consequence Bruce has is... Jason, actually. And that in-canon rapidly got shifted by the narrative to being Jason's fault. And even Jason coming back never really shifted the status quo back to normal, because he doesn't fit in it.

Also Kori was not just a sexy goldfish you just haven't read anything but maybe the first handful of issues. <3 I'd say that's fair because it's not a good comic, but I have a firm stance in not letting people pretend to be experts in comics they aren't reading. I'm the annoying person who is going to point out that the characters do actually have a lot more in RHATO than most people usually say, even if it's not within the realms of what I would call a "good" comic. She struggled with the personal dilemma of getting sucked back to her planet and wanting to save them, but not wanting to stay because she hadn't forgiven the circumstances of being effectively sold into slavery to save them (which didn't work anyways), as well as facing down one of her former slavers. A more accurate description is "sexy worf" since her role throughout the comic was largely to be the team's badass and show when things are Serious Business by having her lose.

And frankly, it's so funny seeing everyone modernly call Jason "DC's Punisher" because for the most part no one thought that like... in those years between his re-intro to Flashpoint. You know who DID get called that? Roy. Roy got called DC's Punisher and was a much closer allegory because former gov't agent->murderous vigilante because of his daughter beign killed is a much closer comparison to former Cop->murderous vigilante because of his family being killed. -Roy really wasn't groveling at Jason's feet, either btw. And the Outlaws... did not resemble the Titans? Unless you mean that any team with a number of former Titans on it basically "resembles the Titans." In which case would include Outsiders, some versions of the JLA, and more. --> actually speaking of the Outsiders, a lot of people wondered if THAT was the comparison they were trying to make since "Batman and the Outsiders" is a much more similar title. After all, Roy did have a team on Outsiders with Kori, and Jason did show up briefly in that run (though Kori had left the team by then). --->I'm pretty sure literally everyone was dumbed down in n52 btw. Outlaws and other titles as well. If there were titled that didn't feel kind of like an insult to long-time fans in the early days of that era, they weren't one I found to read.

You weren't blaming Editorial for Roy & Kori, really. You blame Jason as a character for Roy and Kori as if he wasn't gutted and hanged on display in an ill-fitting parody of himself just as badly as the other two. Worse, actually, because Kori doesn't have long-term consequences from that. And Roy? Roy's problems didn't start here, they started in Titans '08 when they started retconning a less-sympathetic version of his addiction into his background, In Rise of Arsenal and Titans for Hire when they continued to present him with a horribly prejudiced version of his addiction that they could "blame" him for, and whenever it was that they decided to kill his fucking daughter off in Cry for Justice in the first place.

As for that page, your answer is right there:

He doesn't tell Bruce to kill Joker, he tells Bruce that he is going to kill Joker and Bruce just needs to stand there and let it happen. His alternative is to kill Jason.

Like, this isn't even being media illiterate, this is refusing to read the words on the page in the orders they are in and understand them on the literal most surface surface level.

"I AM GOING TO KILL HIM." "YOU WILL HAVE TO KILL ME" <- do you see why your reading is not only subtextually incorrect, but explicily IN-TEXTUALLY incorrect?

To be honest I think that a lot of people who share the anti Jason Todd sentiment don't even actually hate Jason. I think a lot of them hate what he forces the narrative to do.

Jason forces the subversion of the hero genre -- he's the single, most extreme proof that Batman's hero fantasy wouldn't be effective in real life, and therefore Jason showing up can take you out of the universe really fast really hard. A lot of people are here for what comics are meant to offer, the one man hero fantasy that makes you Feel Good, and Jason showing up doesn't Allow you to enjoy it! And if that's the case, you're completely justified in not liking Jason, he takes you out of the thing you enjoy.

I think a lot of you don't actually find his personality or acts annoying in of themselves, you just hate what those actions do to the genre itself. And I think once you realize that and start looking at comics like actual pieces of literature, Jason and shitty comics both will become a lot less rage inducing to you.

[wonderlandwalker]

The Cut that Always Bleeds

𝐏𝐭. 𝐈 /𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 / 𝐭𝐥𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 / 𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: abby anderson x medic!reader 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 4.5k 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: She doesn't know how to come to terms with her feelings, but she doesn't know how to let go either. 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: hurt with very little comfort, a few time jumps I don't know how to fix

𝐚/𝐧: I may have yearned a bit too close to the sun with this one, hope y'all are ready for some hurting (also I haven't actually played the game so if any of these are out of character i'm sorry i'm just going on vibes)

Isaac’s voice is pure disbelief the moment they step into the command tent, sharp enough to slice through the low hum of radio static.

"Abby, what the fuck?"

She tenses—just slightly, just enough that someone who knows her would notice. But her face stays carefully blank, a practiced neutrality she’s perfected over years of biting back everything she actually feels. (And god, she’s good at it. Good at locking her jaw, good at swallowing words, good at pretending her heart isn’t a live wire sparking against her ribs.)

He doesn’t wait for an answer, already pacing, arms crossed like he’s physically holding himself back from shaking her. "I got told you were hurt on patrol," he snaps, "so I haul ass to check on you, and instead I find you—" He gestures wildly toward the tent flap, as if the scene is still playing out behind them. "—shagging up with one of the medics like we’re in some goddamn soap opera."

Abby blinks. "A what?"

"You know—" Isaac waves a hand like he’s swatting at a fly. "Those stupid shows where people make out in broom closets and then lie about it."

Her jaw clenches. But she doesn’t say anything.

Because what can she say?

It wasn’t like that. 

It was—just not the way Isaac thinks. Not careless. Not meaningless. Not something she could laugh off with a shrug and a "Yeah, got carried away."

Because she hadn’t been carried away. She’d been fully present, every nerve alight, every thought drowned out by the way your fingers curled into her shirt, the way your breath hitched when she crowded you against the door. She hadn’t lost control—she’d surrendered it, willingly, like a soldier laying down her weapon.

Isaac exhales, dragging a hand over his face. The sound is rough, impatient—but his eyes linger on Abby a second too long, sharp with something that isn’t just frustration. It’s understanding. The kind that scrapes too close to the bone.

"Just—get it together."

The words are a command, but the edge in his voice isn’t just authority. It’s a warning. A blade held at her throat. 

This isn’t just another distraction, and maybe Isaac knows it too—this is the kind of thing that seeps into your ribs, curls around your lungs, and stays in your blood like a fever. 

That’s the part that terrifies her.

Because she can’t get it together.

She’s pulled to you like you’ve become her North Star—not a choice, but a law of her universe.

Gravity drags her pulse southward every time you enter a room, her body betraying her with the same inevitability as tides chasing the moon. Every cell in her body is alight, humming with the phantom memory of your voice—that low, easy tone curling around her name like you’d already tasted it. The fantasy unfolds in relentless detail: the way your door would creak open if she went to knock, your face flickering from surprise to something hungrier in the space of a heartbeat. That half-smile of yours, the one that’s been haunting her for days, would finally meet its match against her mouth. She can feel it—the way your fingers would twitch in her hair, hesitating for one torturous second before fisting tight, dragging her in until there’s no space left to pretend this is anything but ruin. Your hands shoving her jacket off her shoulders, your nails scraping down her back as she cages you against the wall.

The world is a haze—a dull, shapeless blur of routines and obligations—until you step into the room.

Then, suddenly, the air sharpens. Colours brighten. The hum of conversation, the clatter of supplies, the distant shouts from the training yard—it all fades into white noise. All she can focus on is you: the way your hands move with practiced ease as you sort through medical supplies, the way your brow furrows in concentration, the way your lips had felt against hers—soft, hesitant, then desperate.

Her friends notice. Of course they do.

Ellie’s smirk is the worst, all-knowing eyebrows and barely contained amusement. Manny elbows Owen and mutters something under his breath, and Abby hates the way her stomach twists at their silent exchange. She shuts them down with a glare sharp enough to draw blood, and for now, they drop it. But they’re not stupid. They’ve seen the way her gaze lingers when you’re not looking, the way her fingers flex at her sides like she’s resisting the urge to reach out. 

She’s helpless as morning sun spills over the compound like honey, but it's you who holds her attention—golden light catching the sweat beading at your temples as you stretch, the hem of your shirt riding up just enough to reveal a sliver of skin that makes her grip tighten around her coffee mug. The bitter swallow she takes does nothing to wash away the taste of want thick on her tongue, desperate to trace a path down your throat to where the sweat trickles down to your chest.

When you turn—when you catch her staring with those dark, knowing eyes—she braces for the usual defences: an awkward chuckle, deliberately break the moment with some clinical observation. The careful walls you both built.

But instead your gaze pins her in place, as if you're both remembering the same stolen moments—your body pressed flush against hers, the way your breath hitched when her teeth grazed your pulse point. How perfectly you fit together, like two halves of the same stubborn stone, cleaved apart by some ancient violence only to find each other again.

The air crackles with the memory of your hands on her—practised medic's fingers that now haunt her dreams, calluses dragging over her hipbones in the dark. She's memorised every scar on those hands, every ridge and rough patch. Knows exactly how they'd feel right now slipping beneath her waistband, tugging her closer by the belt loops until—

The assignment sheet glows like a death warrant in the sun, your name etched beside hers in ink that’s too bold, too permanent.

It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal. Logically, she knows this—knows that every squad is structured the same way: a leader, a cartographer, a medic, and fighters. Knows you’re good at your job, that you’ve patched up enough of their people to earn your place in the field. But logic has nothing to do with the way her pulse kicks against her ribs, the way her fingers tighten around the paper until the edges split under her grip.

Your name stays untouched. Unflinching. As if the universe is laughing at her.

It hadn’t even occurred to her when she picked up the mission brief this morning. Her mind had been elsewhere—lost in the phantom press of your mouth against hers, in the half-formed fantasies of cornering you again, this time without an audience. Without hesitation.

But this?

This is a sick joke.

Get in. Find the Seraphite outpost. Get out. She’s done it a hundred times. Should be routine.

Except now there’s a new variable. Now there’s you—steady hands and quiet focus and that infuriating habit of stepping closer than necessary when you're near her. 

She wants to scream. Wants to slam Isaac against the map table hard enough to splinter the wood, to snarl in his face that this isn’t some fucking supply run—that she’s seen what the Seraphites do to the medics they catch. How they carve up the ones who know how to put bodies back together, who understand the sacred machinery of muscle and bone too well for their liking. A violation of divine will, they call it. A lesson.

The memory hits like a boot to the ribs: last month’s retrieval mission, what was left of Thompson strung between two trees like a grotesque anatomy lesson, his own suture thread looped through flesh in meticulous, mocking spirals. The smell had clung to her for days—iron and bile and something sweetly rotten, the kind of stench that lives in the back of your throat.

She could pull every string.

Call in every favour owed, twist every rule until the assignment reshapes itself into something safer—something that doesn’t make her map exit routes and casualty odds like you’re the mission now. It wouldn’t even be hard. A word to Owen, a hissed argument with Isaac, and suddenly you’d be reassigned to inventory duty or perimeter checks, far from the bite of Seraphite arrows.

But then what?

You’d know. You’d look at her with those infuriatingly perceptive eyes, and you’d see it—the fear she can’t name.

The war doesn’t care about stolen moments. Doesn’t care that you taste like hope, stupid and reckless, and that she’s still chasing the ghost of it days later, tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth like she can trap the memory there.

Across the compound, she spots you—

Your hands are moving with methodical precision, rolling gauze into tight, efficient coils. She's memorised the exact pressure of your fingertips against her skin, the way your knuckles flex when you work. It’s obscene how easily her mind twists the motion into something intimate—those same fingers dragging down her spine, gripping her hip, pressing into the give of her throat.

The briefing crumples in her fist before she forces herself to smooth it out again. You haven’t even looked up.

Don’t you know? Haven’t you read the assignment yet? Or worse—do you know, and this is your answer? The silence, the distance, the way you’re so carefully not glancing in her direction, like she’s just another soldier, just another mission.

Look at me, she wills, teeth gritted so hard her jaw aches. Look at me and see what this does to me.

But you don’t.

And she doesn’t call out. Doesn’t cross the distance between you. Just folds the paper neatly—once, twice—tucks it into her pocket, and walks away like it doesn’t feel like signing her own death warrant.

Because that’s what soldiers do. They follow orders. They swallow fear. They pretend.

So she pretends—fiercely, desperately—that this isn’t tearing her apart. And when the team assembles, their gear clattering like a discordant symphony of finality, Abby doesn’t dare meet your eyes.

Not when the route is finalised, the map slashed with jagged red ink that carves through terrain like an open wound. Not when Manny cracks a joke about Seraphite hospitality—"Hope you packed your Sunday best, Anderson, ‘cause we’re going to get a real warm welcome"—and the laughter curdles in her throat, heavy as a stone.

Especially not when you catch her staring.

It happens in flashes—fleeting, stolen seconds where her resolve crumbles. Your gaze locks onto hers, questioning, knowing, and it’s worse than any blade. She tears herself away each time, sharp and deliberate, like severing a lifeline.

"You good?" Manny’s voice cuts through the noise, too close, too perceptive. His elbow nudges her ribs, but there’s no teasing in it now. Just concern. He follows her line of sight—straight to you, crouched to check your med kit’s contents.

"Peachy," she mutters, adjusting her pack straps with unnecessary force. The lie tastes bitter, the heat crawling up her neck not helping.

But the truth claws at her ribs: she doesn’t know how to do this—how to care for you and lead them, how to want and not falter. The mission demands her focus, but her thoughts keep circling back to the press of your palm against her collarbone, the way you’d whispered against her lips like it mattered. Like she mattered.

She hates the way her body betrays her.

Hates how her throat tightens when you adjust your pack, the straps pulling taut across your shoulders, the fabric straining against the shape of you—always so close, yet never close enough. Hates the way her stomach twists when you murmur something to Nora, low and private, your lips nearly brushing her ear. She shouldn't care, shouldn't even notice, but she does—

—and it burns.

She wants to grab you by the straps of that damn pack and yank until there's no space left between you, until her hands can prove what her mouth won't say.

She wants to tell you not to go.

She can’t.

Not without playing favourites. Not without dragging this thing between you into the light, raw and undeniable. Not without admitting—to herself, to you—how much it would destroy her if something happened. And when the briefing ends, when the others file out with muttered plans and last-minute checks, she hesitates.

Just for a second. Just long enough for her resolve to fracture—long enough for her to consider crossing the space between you, for her mouth to form the first syllable of your name, and her eyes scream what her voice won't:

I can't lose you.

It's a confession she'll never speak aloud; doesn't know how to, but for a heartbeat, she lets you see it—the raw, unguarded fear in her gaze, the way her breath catches when your eyes meet. She lets herself pretend that stolen contact is enough.

Even though she knows it isn't.

Not with the way the mission goes to hell fast.

It had started perfectly normally, and she'd almost let herself relax. Almost let herself believe this would be different. That maybe, just this once, the universe would cut her some slack.

Then the rug gets yanked out from under her with brutal efficiency.

One moment, you're moving in perfect sync through the undergrowth, the forest holding its breath around you. The air smells of damp earth and pine, sunlight filtering through the canopy in fractured gold. You're close enough that she can see the way your shoulders tense before each careful step. The next—

A sharp whistle cuts through the trees.

"Down!" Abby barks, but it's too late.

Arrows hiss through the air like serpents striking. The forest erupts—shrieks of Seraphite scouts rending the silence, their painted faces twisting through the foliage like vengeful ghosts. The world fractures into chaos: Manny's rifle barking to her left, Nora's curses, the sickening thunk of steel finding flesh.

And then the comms crackle to life, static-laced and frantic:

"Surrounded—fall back—"

Abby's blood turns to ice. She can feel it freeze in her veins, time grinding to a halt as the words echo in her skull. Because that's not your voice.

The absence is louder than any scream. Just dead air where you should be.

"Status checks—now!" She barks into the radio, her voice too sharp, too loud—the words tearing from her throat like shrapnel. The response is a garbled mess of voices—coordinates called out between gunfire, shouting about a flank collapsing, cursing as arrows rain down—but none of them are yours.

She tries again. And again.

Static.

It claws at her insides, relentless, teeth sinking deep between her ribs with every failed transmission. She should be moving, should be shouting orders, should be leading—but all she can think is that you were right there, just beyond the treeline, and now—

Abby's grip on her rifle is white-knuckled, the metal groaning under her fingers. Her entire body coils like a spring wound too tight, muscles trembling with the effort of not sprinting into the fray as reports trickle in—each one worse than the last.

"Pinned down near the creek—"

"Lost visual—"

A hand grabs her shoulder—Manny, his face streaked with dirt and sweat, eyes wide with something too close to panic. "Abby, we have to go—they're pushing hard on the east side! Rally point's compromised!"

She shakes him off hard enough to make him stumble, her pulse roaring in her ears like a war drum. Blood rushes too fast, too loud—she can barely hear his protests over it, over the voice in her head screaming one thing, over and over:

Not without you.

She's already moving before the thought finishes, strapping on extra ammo with mechanical precision even as her vision tunnels—rifle checked, knife secured—when Manny grabs her arm again, fingers digging in.

"Abby, listen! There's no time—"

Her expression is raw, scraped down to something beyond anger—something desperate, feral. Terrified.

Every instinct in her body screams that you’re hers—hers to protect, hers to drag back from the edge, hers to keep. The realisation should shock her, but it doesn’t. It feels carved into her bones, older than war, older than loyalty, older than anything that ever mattered before this moment.

She whirls on Manny, and for one terrifying second, she doesn’t recognise her own voice. It’s low, guttural, vibrating with something ancient and unstoppable.

"I’m going."

She knows it’s a suicide mission. Knows it’s illogical. 

But it’s not even a choice.

Her body has already decided. Her heart has already decided.

The weight of her fear is a living thing, coiled tight around her ribs, squeezing until every step is a battle, every breath a betrayal. Time fractures—she doesn’t know if it’s been seconds or minutes or hours. The world narrows to the next tree, the next shadow, the next goddamn breath until she finds you.

Mud slicks her boots, sucking at her steps like the earth itself is trying to drag her down, to bury her here before she can reach you. Branches claw at her arms, drawing blood she doesn’t feel.

Then—footsteps. Close.

Her pulse jackhammers, a wild animal thrashing against her ribs. For one fractured second, hope and terror wage war inside her—a collision so violent it leaves her dizzy, breathless:

It’s you. It’s them. It’s you. It’s—

She whirls, finger taut on the trigger, her body strung so tight she might shatter.

Manny and Nora stand frozen on the path, hands raised. Manny’s mouth quirks, but his eyes are dark with something unspoken—pity, maybe, or the grim understanding of what she’s still denying.

"Did you really think we’d let you die alone?"

Nora exhales sharply, adjusting her grip on her pistol. "No way I’m missing the first proof you have a heart." But the joke is hollow, her voice stripped raw. They’ve seen the way Abby moves—like something feral, something broken. Like every step forward is another thread of her unravelling.

Without another word, they follow her.

The forest becomes a blur of sound and shadow, the world narrowing to the next frantic step, and the next, and the next.

Every snapped branch cracks through the silence, sending her pulse spiking. Hope and worry wage war in equal measure, each more brutal than the last.

The light is fading, the air thick with the metallic tang of blood and gunpowder, and with each passing minute, the truth becomes harder to outrun.

Manny grabs her arm. "Abby, stop—" His fingers dig into her bicep hard enough to bruise. "We've circled this sector three times. There's no—"

She whirls on him so fast Nora actually raises her pistol. For a heartbeat, Abby just stands there—chest heaving—and the rational part of her knows it’s hopeless—a lost cause she’s still chasing, as if she can conjure you out of thin air just by wanting it hard enough.

Her rifle slips in her sweat-slick grip. Somewhere behind her ribs, something vital is crumbling, and oh god, she's actually considering it—actually hearing the awful logic in Manny's words.

Then she hears it.

A scream carving through the trees, jagged and desperate, and Abby knows. Knows in that gut-twisting way you can hear the thunder before the lightning strikes you down.

You.

The broken thing inside her stitches itself back together with brutal efficiency. When she looks up, whatever Manny sees in her face makes him release her arm like he's been burnt.

Then she's running, faster than before, leaving her squad scrambling to follow.

When she finally bursts into the clearing, time fractures.

There you are—

Kneeling. Choking. An arrow buried deep in your abdomen, its shaft still quivering with the force of the impact. Blood blooms across your shirt like ink in water, dark and relentless, spreading faster than she can comprehend. Your hands clutch at the wound, fingers slipping in the crimson tide. A Seraphite looms over you, dagger drawn, their painted face twisted in triumph—too cocky, too sure of their victory to notice the storm crashing toward them.

Abby doesn’t think.

The gunshot is immediate. Deafening.

The Scar drops like a puppet with its strings cut. Abby doesn’t even remember pulling the trigger. Doesn’t remember crossing the distance. One second she’s at the treeline, and the next she’s collapsing beside you, her knees slamming into the dirt hard enough to scrape them open, her hands scrambling—searching for a pulse, for breath, for anything to prove this isn’t happening.

Your eyes meet hers, wide, bright with pain and something else—something that splits her open, cracks her ribs apart like desperate hands wrenching her apart from the inside.

Relief.

Peace.

As if you’d been waiting for her. As if this moment—this ragged, blood-soaked second—was the one you��d been fighting toward all along.

No. No. No.

This isn’t how it ends.

It can’t be.

Her hands hover over you, shaking violently. She doesn’t know where to touch or what to do—the arrow’s still embedded, and pulling it could kill you faster, but leaving it in might—

Behind her, Manny and Nora crash into the clearing, their shouts distant, muffled, like she’s underwater. None of it matters. The only thing that exists is you—your blood on her hands, your laboured breathing, and Abby—Abby who never cries, who never breaks—feels something hot and furious spill down her cheeks.

She presses her palm hard against the wound, fingers slipping in the slick warmth of your blood. The metallic scent floods her nostrils, thick and cloying, as crimson seeps between her fingers no matter how hard she pushes.

"Hey—" Her voice cracks. She tries again, rougher this time. "Hey, look at me."

Her free hand cups your jaw, thumb brushing your cheekbone. Your skin is already too cold, the pallor of your lips all wrong. A tremor runs through her fingers, but she steadies them against your face, forcing your gaze to hers.

"You're okay," she rasps. The lie tastes like copper on her tongue.

The only truth that matters is the shallow rise of your chest beneath her palm, the flutter of your pulse under her fingertips—weak but there, still there.

She repeats it like a mantra, like if she says it enough she can make it true: "You're okay. You're okay. You're okay."

She doesn't know if she's assuring you or herself.

Doesn't care.

As long as you keep breathing, she'll keep lying.

Nora crashes to her knees beside you, her medic training snapping into focus even as her fingers tremble slightly around the gauze. She rips open her pack with her teeth, spitting out the fabric strip that catches between her lips. "Pressure here," she orders, grabbing Abby's wrist to reposition her shaking hand lower on your abdomen where the bleeding pulses darkest.

But she knows Nora doesn't have the same knowledge you do.

Where you would've already torn open a field suture kit while calmly directing others, Nora fumbles with the packaging. Where you'd have that quiet intensity that somehow steadied everyone's hands, Nora's voice wavers on the count for chest compressions.

You're the medic. You're the one who would know how to stem this bleeding, how to stabilize the wound with those precise fingers, how to keep your own damn heart beating. But even Nora—practical, ruthless Nora who once stitched up her own arm mid-gunfight—understands this isn't just about saving you.

This is what Abby needs.

"I've got you," she grits out, sliding an arm beneath your shoulders to lift you up. The movement pulls at her own wounds—the gash along her ribs screams, the bullet graze on her thigh burns—but the pain is nothing compared to the way your head lolls against her collarbone with terrifying looseness. Your breath comes in wet, uneven bursts against her neck, each one warmer than the last as your body loses the ability to regulate temperature.

"Stay with me," she whispers into your hair, your blood soaking through her shirt, your heartbeat thready under her fingertips. 

"Please. Please, just—" Her voice cracks. Breaks.

She carries you to where Manny leads her, where EVAC has gathered, stays with you, tethering herself to you on the drive back. The moment they crash through the gates of the base, the medics surge forward, gloved hands outstretched, voices sharp with urgency. But Abby’s entire body locks up, muscles coiled like a sprung trap. Because the simple thought of letting go feels like tearing open her own ribs and offering her still-beating heart to the open air.

The medics freeze in their reach for you. Even the clamour of the base seems to hush, holding its breath.

Manny steps in, hands raised—slow, cautious, like approaching a wolf with its jaws around fresh kill. "They need to work on her, Abby. You’re not helping like this."

Like this. Like she’s some wild, cornered thing, trembling and bloodied, holding onto you like you’re the only thing keeping her from drowning.

Her vision tunnels. The edges go red.

"Then work around me," she grinds out, voice raw.

No one moves.

A beat. Two. The silence is suffocating.

"NOW!"

The roar tears from her throat, primal and desperate, shaking the very air. 

They scramble, not daring to defy her like this—not when her eyes are wild, not when your blood paints her hands like a confession.

A cot is dragged close, the legs screeching against concrete, and Abby's arms shake as she finally—finally—lays you down, but her hands don't leave you. One cradles the back of your skull, fingers tangling in sweat-damp hair, anchoring. The other presses flat over your heart, as if she could steady it with her palm alone, as if she could will it to keep beating through sheer fucking stubbornness.

The medics swarm, cutting away fabric and barking orders, but Abby doesn't blink. Doesn't breathe. She catalogues every flinch of your face, every shudder of your chest, every weak gasp that leaves your lips—

A twitch.

Faint. Fragile. There.

Your fingers spasm against her own, weak but present, and Abby's breath comes in a punched-out gasp. Around you, the world narrows to the space between one heartbeat and the next.

She doesn't pray. She never has.

But for you?

She'd start.

[tawked]

I think ultimately my beef with Chris Claremont is that he will discuss bigotry at length but seems not to understand how many forms of bigotry are manufactured on a societal level.

Take "God Loves Man Kills," which is kind of the thesis work for the concept of "X-Men as minorities" under Claremont imo. I think it's fine to point at fiends like Pat Robinson and so on as a vector for increasing bigoted beliefs in society, sure. That's very accurate.

I uh, have never met a bigoted Christian who functions in precisely the same way as William Stryker, and bud believe me I have met bigoted Christians, but fine. As a broad "fuck this kind of dude" thing I think it works and starts conversations for a lot of young boys reading these comics at the time, mission accomplished.

My issue is, the same text presents the cops as ranging from indifferent and "just doing their job" to heroic because one of them shoots Pat Robinson. There's a rejection of the concept that the cops are themselves agents of bigotry in society, or even susceptible to bigotry. All of the cops we see talk shit about Pat Robinson. Why? I believe it's because Claremont genuinely believes in liberal societal myths that if all is functioning smoothly, then we are in fact equal. In Claremont's X-Men, racism is an aberration from the norm brought out by individual bad actors and their stupid sheeple followers. It's like how you see liberals attempt to understand the Daily Wire or Tucker Carlson or whatever by insisting it's just grifters and nameless faceless stupes who don't exist in the way you or I do, and sans Tucker would perhaps not be racist. They understand racists as amorphous masses, and not people created by complex systemic and cultural realities that can be addressed, is my point.

And that's just not my worldview man. So reading a text about racism that fully embraces this concept of racism feels naive and, if I'm being really honest, a little embarrassing.

I think that it's also impossible to really ignore that this text does contain an ambiguously brown rape gang. The only character with a voice uses Spanish phrases, and his mate is wearing a Sikh dastar (it was also a time when "Sikh" and "Muslim" were, hilariously, not distinct in the minds of most white Brits and Americans lol). These characters attempt to rape Kitty Pryde, and are then all killed by the child-murdering anti-mutant extremist who wants to kill Kitty Pryde. What is going on here, and what is Chris Claremont unintentionally - or perhaps intentionally - saying about the actual nature of bigotry? That sure, some people in society are A Problem, but it's not these nice mutants who all live in a mansion under the watchful eye of a benevolent white billionaire? That racists feel justified because hey, they're not sending their best, they're not sending people like you and me, they're sending rapists?

I don't know.

The thing is, in my opinion, Claremont seems unaware or uninterested in many flavours of history. He is, obviously, very aware of and responds often to Nazi antisemitism, using Nazism as some a kind of warning as to where society might be headed if we're not careful with the slurs. Fine.

He also has a range of Native American characters lol. Oop! The thing is, Native American history consistently debunks the entire concept of normative peace and tolerance vs. individual bad actors and mass hysteria. In fact, the concept of tribalism, that is the idea that people innately react with hate and hostility to folks what look and live different, is consistently used to deny the extreme intentional nature of colonialist genocides.

Frustratingly, Claremont doesn't engage with Native American or colonialist history beyond this football teams concept. In fact, Claremont solves this issue by just... not talking about it much at all.

Now, perhaps something is eventually said with Dani Moonstar or someone, sure, but I simply did not read enough to reach that point. Which is a problem, because I read 16/18 volumes of the Masterworks Uncanny re-issues (meeting Mickey Twoyoungmen and my favourite, Forge), and 4/8 of the New Mutants. So, regardless of whether Claremont chooses to get around to it sooner or later, it's certainly not frontloaded like the presence of the characters is.

Frankly, at one point, Claremont puts pro-colonialist words in Dani Moonstar's mouth, as if she simply would not have a more complex inner world or reaction to seeing colonialist violence.

Claremont will have his Indigenous characters yell "hoka hey" in direct reference not to Chief Crazy Horse, but to cowboy movies about Chief Crazy Horse. He will not sit with the concept of colonialism as a manufacturer of racism in a way that distinguishes that racism from, say, a Klansman lighting a cross. Dani just hates white people, 'cause teams. They play for the Bulls and she's a Celtic.

To demonstrate what I mean by not giving equal weight to history:

In her introduction, Dani Moonstar is told she's going to be relocated to live with Charles Xavier, a white billionaire. She screams no, fuck that, white people are "the enemy" and I'm not going to live with one.

Claremont does not couch this in a discussion of how for generations the United States has weaponized child protective services and similar state entities against Cheyenne and other Indigenous people. Relocating Native American children into residential schools and white households is not a neutral subject, or something one can explore with a "two football teams" idea of racism. There's history of this as a tool of colonialist violence and Dani, often politically aware of colonialist violence (see: her grandpa's death) is not written to articulate this sentiment in a way the reader can access.

Thus, Dani's resistance to being forced to live in a rich white man's home is couched in some kind of strange "racist black guy" concept. She never deconstructs this further, and is characterized as a bit paranoid and traumatized, sure, but not correct.

A more informed audience may fill in that blank if they want to. Will an ignorant reader be able to do the same?

Racism has complex roots.

When black historians discuss redlining as "going all the way back to the plantation," that's what they're getting at. White supremacist cultural practices exist in layers of beliefs built upon colonialist attitudes that began on day one and persist, mutating through generations to fit new realities and circumstances, but never deconstructing the core.

When Columbus met the Taino, the Arawak and the Carib people, and he infantilised (and enslaved) the Taino, but used the Arawak as a scapegoat to claim a "caniba" nature of the Carib people. He was not responding honestly to observation, and this was not a "egad! brown skin? verily these fiends play for Detroit Pistons and I, the noble Denver Nuggets!" situation.

This bitch wanted fuckin money and was enacting older, Crusades-era concepts of Christian dominionism (see how history cycles work?) So, he was marketing this new uncolonized land to his investors as having slaves, and dangerous locals who he characterized as so savage they could not be Christianized and thus had to be killed, justifying further investment of resources.

It wasn't

ah! different people! my urge to kill... EXPLODING!! NNNGHGN

Listen, I like the X-Men fans that I've met. It's one of the nicest fandoms on tumblr and the people in it are broadly cool, educated and hot with excellent pecs.

However, and I do mean this with love, I bet not a single fuckin fan from when Claremont's books were on the shelves found it odd that Storm XMen, a Kenyan living in Kenya in the 1970s, was somehow untouched by colonialism or decolonialist concepts, during Kenya's decolonisation era.

The region was forcibly Christianized by the British starting in the 1890s, or debatably earlier if we count missionary efforts, and yet Storm XMen lives in this weird little untouched pristine village where they worship her as a goddess.

The 1970s audience probably just accepted this because 1. she controls the weather, so obviously right, and 2. they're like dumb black African villagers or something so they probably worship all kinds of shit.

An opportunity for education was, in my honest opinion, wasted.

And it fucks me into a coma leaving my asshole wet and gaping because I see older fans insisting that it's just "of its time." man! man!!

the time of Black Panthers, feminists, queer and disabled liberation marches, all of these anti-bigotry activist causes out in the street causing a ruckus!!

Roy Thomas' ASS, I mean Roy Thomas' All Star Squadron, contained a clumsy but somewhat informed expression of the systemic causes of American anti-Japanese racism during WWII. It was bad, yes, but at least Thomas was able to explore the concept that most white Americans didn't even know where Japan was beforehand.

Bro! He explores how American culture created arbitrary and fucked distinctions of "good Japanese" vs. "bad Japanese" based primarily on immigration status and other mechanisms weaponized against this marginalized demographic. He was out there dropping terms like issei and nisei, which sure yes whatever that's diet shit for historians, but I have simply never seen other American media care enough to acknowledge how white supremacy genuinely did create complex wedges in Japanese-American society in the 1940s.

There's even a moment early in the run where a white bloke articulates that China and Japan are like even forces and thus removes the Sino-Japanese War from its colonialist character lol. Although I believe this is unintentional on Thomas' part, veeery funny and apt considering the overall vibe and the era Thomas is discussing. That kind of thing coupled with anti-Asian racism is why the west never intervened before the creation of Manchukuo.

It's bad! It's ahistorical and frustrating! It contains a "Heroic Jap" narrative meant to debunk the concept of absolutist racism!

But it demonstrates an adjacent of-era comic series that is able to engage with racism as a systemic and manufactured concept at a level that Claremont can't or won't or whatever.

And another thing, Claremont's use of schizophrenia -

[lotus-holloway]

Lotus had stood beside Juno like the pillar of strength she’d always been for the people she loved. That was her place—shoulders squared, jaw set, spine straight—anchoring Juno as she cracked open her most private trauma for the world to dissect. It was bravery most people would never understand. And Lotus was there, exactly where she was needed.

But her mind… her mind was elsewhere.

She’d never admit it—not to Juno, not to Claire, not even to herself out loud. Not when they needed her present, steady, unshakable. But beneath the surface, she was drifting. Drowning in thoughts of Ryan. No matter how she tried to claw her way out, his name stayed lodged in her chest like a shard of glass.

She wanted to hate him. God, she tried. She reminded herself of how he walked away. How he said he loved her one night and started seeing someone else the next. How he said he’d protect her—always—and then left because her father's sins were too big for him to stand beside.

And yet, it wasn’t just him. It was Sam, too. That little girl had stolen a piece of her heart the first time she’d wrapped her arms around her neck and whispered, “I missed you.” Letting go of Ryan meant letting go of both of them. And Lotus didn’t know how to do that.

Realizing her thoughts had wandered again, she barely registered that they’d pulled into the long, winding drive that led up to the house. The silence in the car had stretched the entire ride, punctuated only by the occasional chime of Juno’s phone blowing up after her public declaration. People were calling her a hero. She was one. And Lotus had told her that—again and again. She just wondered if Juno knew that the woman beside her, the one who seemed so composed, was fraying at every seam.

Lotus was the strong one. The unshakable one. But what did it mean if that strength was an act? A mask she wore so no one would see how broken she really was?

They were just getting out of the car when she felt it: the familiar buzz of her own phone. She didn’t check it immediately. Part of her hoped it was Ryan. Maybe—finally—he’d ask to see her. To talk. To say he was wrong. She told herself it was just for closure. Just to finish things properly.

But deep down, she knew better. She didn’t want closure. She wanted him.

Except it wasn’t him.

It was the one person she never wanted to hear from.

Dax.

Her stomach turned as she played the voicemail, already expecting some new manipulation, some thinly veiled threat she could hand over to the police. But this message… this was something else.

“Hey little flower, I know you're still mad at me, but I heard what your friend had to say and quite honestly, I'm hurt that you would believe those lies. Is that why you stopped talking to me? That's why you decided daddy wasn't a good man anymore? Because of some lies out of a whore’s mouth?”

Her blood went cold.

“You know what she said was all bullshit. She got drunk, fucked some guy, and forgot about it, and now she's trying to get attention by saying it was worse than it was and throwing me into this mess. See, my temper’s getting the best of me again. I just wanted to tell you that I miss you, baby girl. Call me so I can explain, please.”

She stared at the screen, the recording finished, her thumb hovering over the delete button but not pressing it.

It was pathetic. The message. The manipulation. The denial. The rage barely masked as remorse.

And yet… it wasn’t just his voice that made her feel sick. It was hers, too—the one in her head that still longed for Ryan. The one that missed him even as her father’s evil clung to her name like tar. The one that kept wondering what she had done wrong, why she was always the one people decided was too much, too complicated, too broken to stand beside.

She let out a hollow breath. The kind that rattled in her ribs.

The truth slammed into her all at once, cold and sharp:

Ryan didn’t leave because he stopped loving her. He left because she reminded him of everything he was afraid of—violence, mess, trauma. And Dax? Dax was the reason any of that fear existed in the first place.

Maybe it wasn’t Ryan who ruined her.

Maybe it was always her father. The man who broke her world so completely that even the people who claimed to love her ran when the dust settled.

And as much as she wanted to scream, cry, break every mirror in the house, she didn’t.

She just stood there—still, silent—and hit delete.

Because if the world was going to keep treating her like she was built from glass, they were about to learn just how sharp she could be.

[meear]

But what Ryukishi portrays in ep8 does isn't acceptance, it's erasure. The battle in the golden land is an example of this. The goats are right to call out Rosa for being a neglectful mother who'd prioritise her dalliances with men over her daughter. Her writing wouldn't be half as good if that wasn't true. But instead, Ryukishi urges you to focus on the genuine love she did harbour for her daughter. Ryukishi is telling you "whatever else Rosa did is not the point right now and you should only remember the good things about her", and the other perspective is presented as villainous for refusing that.

He's not accepting both, he's framing her family' flaws as a side of themselves that wasn't as important and that Ange shouldn't focus on too much, for her own happiness. He can describe it however he wants to make it sound better ("believing in her family", "having love", etc etc), but it is ultimately running away and the fact that the Trick ending is obviously presented as the bad choice (despite being simply the truth) is another proof of that.

to R07, you either accept magic as a coping mechanism or you become Erika. Love and truth are fundamentally opposed. There is no world in which Ange can just accept her family as shitty people and still live happily. So no matter how many times she does it, Ange is doomed to always freak out at finding out the truth, even after knowing about it and preparing herself, because the point is she'll never be able to handle it.

The ep7 tea party is kind of like that too. The red flashbacks about KuwaBeato and Kinzo actually trying to steal the gold from the Italians are framed as Bernkastel "tearing out the guts". The villain defiling the sanctity of the story and showing you something you're not meant to see, something that was kept hidden to preserve the dignity of the corpse. Sometimes r07 has good takes on abuse, but sometimes it's obvious he buys into the "why are you mentioning it now/we don't need to know this/this should stay private/this is inappropriate/we're in polite company and you're airing out the family's dirty laundry" mindset (which might be even more prevalent in Japan, I don't know).

The red flashbacks are essential to understand what Kinzo really is and how much he embellished his own story to make himself look better, and they should be exposed, because the extent of Beatrice Ushiromiya's abuse shouldn't be something that you hush up to protect Kinzo's privacy. Kinzo's true backstory in the army is a fundamental part of his character. But by having it exposed by Bernkastel, the obvious villain of the story who only does it for her own sick pleasure, Ryukishi makes it very clear he thinks the very act of revealing it is pointlessly voyeuristic. "Good" truth-seekers like Will let sinners have their little skeletons in the closet out of respect (incidently KuwaBeato never gets any respect or even her own perspective, and her rape is entirely about developing Kinzo's character and how bad that made him feel, so the very narrative is validating her treatment as an object, but I digress)

Basically it's exactly that kind of thinking which is pervasive in ep8. I don't see Ange simply accepting her family as humans, both good and bad, because episode 8 doesn't show her actually doing that work (the manga does make more of an effort to depict this though). She just goes from one extreme to the other (not that she was even wrong originally). She's not reconciling their flaws with the possibility of happy memories. Instead she stops addressing the flaws entirely and they're just slander from the outside world' Instead, there is one way to remember them which is overwhelmingly presented as more correct than the other . Ange made very valid points about not wanting to comfort herself with illusions, and then she suddenly drops all of these points without ever addressing them. She's framed as wrong for wanting to know the truth, even after reading Eva's diary. In the VN, she is very apologetic about reading it - about seeking something that was supposed to be forbidden knowledge. She had every right to read it. Yet when she does, she finally "sees sense", Battler's mindset becomes the correct one in the eyes of the narrative, and even worse, she shares the blame with everyone for the way things turned out (despite ep4 addressing the flaws in Japan's collective responsibility culture, through Ange's character). All of her negative perspective becomes her "irresponsible imagination", and she tells Battler that the truth "wasn't that important" because she should've just believed in her own truth. That she should've just accepted what Battler was trying to show her.

There is way more weight given to the positive side of the family (for Ange's sake because she needs something to hang onto) and that's what makes it so cheap and hollow. There's admitting that abusers are people outside of their abuse, that they can show warmth, play pranks, have fun, act sympathetic, etc. of course, and I enjoyed Umineko because it knew how to that in the first place. And there's choosing to depict Kinzo's last appearance in the story like... That, and having Ange say she should've called Eva Mom.

The manga version is at least a bit better in showing a more balanced perspective between the family's good and bad sides and the dangers of using magic as a way to cope, so I guess R07 did have some changes to make... but the trick/magic dichotomy is still there and I'll never approve of the idea it's somehow voyeuristic and immoral to reveal the truth behind a mass murder just because there are some true crime freaks who want to find out for the wrong reasons. Not when the memory of innocents is being tarnished because of that selfish choice (and it's even worse because Virgilia clearly addresses this in ep5, that Ange is an idiot because keeping the box closed just enables more people to speculate about her family), when Gohda can be treated as a potential killer despite not doing shit, and not when the victims have loved ones who are very much alive and who are still suffering (Nanjo's son, Kumasasa's grandkid, along with many other people who might've cared for the dead and might like closure as well, such as Jessica and Battler's friends, Maria's teachers, etc. But Ryukishi has a funny definition of reading with love which doesn't include characters he doesn't care about). All because of ep8's asinine ideas of not letting the truth taint your own, and of a serial killer needing to have their identity protected for some reason

Is it ACTUALLY possible to solve Umineko on your own? Like, realistically?

This article contains no spoilers beyond chapter 2, which is the bare minimum you need to read to even understand what Umineko is about.

As I was reading the answers arc of the Umineko no Naku Koro ni visual novel, also known as Umineko When They Cry, also known as Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru, I wondered:

Can this mystery actually be solved before the story explains the solution? And by “actually” I mean “being an average reader that spends a couple hours thinking really hard about it”, since I assume that it is solvable if you are a die hard fan with 4.000 free hours that is willing to re-read each chapter 10 times and write a book full of notes.

Also, by “possible” I mean that the solution makes perfect sense and can be reached by following logic steps.

I feared that looking up the answer on the internet might produce an accidental spoiler that ruins the whole experience. Still, I took a peek, since I needed some guarantee before committing the time to try and solve it.

I found some threads on reddit where everyone agreed that it was in fact solvable. Some people going as far as claiming they solved it all by episode 4.

So I tried to solve it. I spent some hours on it, rereading some chapter and competitions of red truths. I had some theories, but nothing that neatly explained all the murders. It didn’t look like I could get any further, so I kept reading.

After having finished the whole visual novel, reading over the manga, watching 8 hours of video on youtube, and reading old forums for even more hours, this is my red truth:

It is impossible to properly solve Umineko.

But then, how come that all those people claimed to have solved it themselves?

The truth about those people is that they did not solve Umineko, not by a long shot.

What those people did:

- Figure out a certain twist in the story that heavily implies who the culprit is and assume that’s the solution.

What those people didn’t do:

- Actually go through every murder and provide a proper explanation of how that character could have done it, supported by clues in the game and without contradictions.

Why is it impossible to properly solve Umineko?

- Most of the actions that the culprit must have taken are not hinted at all. - There is no limit on how many culprits/accomplices there are. - There is no guarantee that the accomplices or even the culprit are the same in all the games. - There is no guarantee that the culprit is not killed. - Anything that is not a red truth can be disregarded as “lies of the narration”. - Red truths are valid as long as they are technically true in any possible context or interpretation, which makes them worse than useless (more on this later). - It’s never explicitly stated that the Umineko mystery follows any of the “rules of a good mystery” explained in the story.

So, basically, there isn’t nearly enough information and rules to find the truth. Even if you reached a solution, you could never be sure it is the solution, and coming up with a solution given the listed conditions is unsatisfactory and trivially easy.

Before proving that, let me quickly address the riddle of the epitaph.

Is it possible to solve the riddle of the epitaph?

No.

Why is it impossible to solve the riddle of the epitaph?

Because the solution requires:

- The map of a certain country during a certain time period (none of which are mentioned in the first 4 chapters, I think, and I doubt you could even find it on the internet). - Expert knowledge of Japanese kanjis and a some Chinese. - Solving metaphoric riddles of questionable logic. - To be actually present in Umineko’s world so you can examine and interact with “the door to the golden land”.

However, the riddle of the epitaph is possible to guess.

This is what anyone who claims to have solved the epitaph actually did. They guessed the answer using these 3 steps:

1- Ignore the most convoluted parts of the epitaph and assume the location of the door to the golden land based on what would make sense for the narrative of the story. 2- Solve a play on words by interpreting it in the only way that would fit the description of that place. 3- Roughly guess how opening the door to the golden land could work.

—-

Now, let’s go back to the solution to the murders. I claimed that coming up with a solution given the listed conditions is unsatisfactory and trivially easy.

Let me demonstrate. Here is the solution for all the murders in Umineko assuming the culprit is whatever character you want:

- All the servants, Nanjo, and all the members of the family required to make it work are accomplices. They are either bribed, threatened, convinced or tricked. - Every death is being faked unless stated in red. - Every scene not directly witnessed and described in a literal fashion by Battler is a “lie of the narration”, so it never happened. - If it is stated in red that your chosen character is not the culprit, it is because the word “culprit” is not being used to mean “the mastermind behind the murders” but “the responsible for some particular action” that your chosen culprit is not directly responsible for. - If it is stated in red that your chosen character is not a murderer or did not kill a particular person, it is because while carrying out the murders they were roleplaying Beatrice, so the red truth is considering that the actual murderer is their Beatrice impersonation, not their actual self.

Easy, right? Completely unsatisfactory too.

You would assume that the actual solution is elegant, doesn’t require twisting the red truth so much, and is completely supported by hints, but you would be wrong.

The VN doesn’t even explicitly confirm who the culprit is and it doesn’t go into detail about how each murder was carried out either. However, the manga does. I will refer to this as the “official solution”.

The official solution is so bad and full of holes and contradictions that a lot of people think it’s actually a trap set by the author for “people who stop thinking”.

So there’s 2 possibilities here:

- Umineko is a disappointment and is not solvable. The author did a poor job shoehorning explanations that were not hinted and forgetting details that contradict them. - Umineko is a hidden masterpiece. The author committed to a master trolling and pretended, even during interviews, that the flawed official solution is the truth, all just to hide the proper solution for those who don’t stop thinking. Let’s call this the “hidden solution”.

Why is the official solution so bad? Short edition.

I’ll go into more detail later, but in brief:

- The solution requires fairly ridiculous “anime logic”. - The solution doesn’t follow the rules of a proper mystery that Umineko itself explains. There are no clues to figure out how most of the murders where carried out or by whom. - The are as many clues pointing to the culprit as there are red truths contradicting it. - The solution is willing to disregard basically everything that is not a red truth as “lies of the narration”. - The red truth directly contradicts this solution, unless we interpret it in arbitrary and twisted ways in order for it to mean something else. - The logistics and details of the murders are ignored. Corpses are moved around like pillows. The culprit is never stained by blood. Shots are not heard unless the plot requires so. Etc.

Is it possible to reach the official solution?

It’s possible to figure out who is the official culprit. There are heavy hints for it, hard to see initially, but sorta obvious in retrospect. Since it’s a big twist, you should be fairly certain that you found it when you do.

However, for the reasons listed before, finding the culprit doesn’t allow you to find the solution to the murders, since anyone can be an accomplice, any narration can be a lie and any red truth can be interpreted as something else.

So, what about the hidden solution?

Is it possible to reach the hidden solution?

I’m not saying a hidden, elegant solution doesn’t exist, but for the reasons listed under “Why is it impossible to properly solve Umineko?”, you would never know if it is elegant enough to be the actual truth. It would also certainly require 4.000 hours if not more. Such a hidden truth would require you to disseminate and analyze almost every single word of this 120 hours novel.

However, I don’t see how you can make sense of all the red truths without twisting their logic and meaning so they don’t contradict real facts or one another, which makes me think that the actual solution being bad is more likely than a hidden, perfectly logical solution.

Up until chapter 6, I would have totally bought that the whole story was perfectly thought off up to the last detail, but chapters 7 and 8 are so bad I don’t believe that anymore.

Why is the official solution so bad? Extended edition.

Since I don’t want to spoil it, let me give you a fictional example of a solution that is roughly as bad as the official one, with the same kind of justifications.

The following are not spoilers, just a completely fake theory I just made up that not only appears to fit perfectly as a solution, but also appears to be heavily hinted through the game:

The culprit is Maria. She is actually not 8 but 20 years old. This is the big twist that makes people think they have solved Umineko upon realizing it, regardless of whether it completely fits or not. Then they reinterpret everything as needed to make it look like it’s supporting this truth, as I’m about to do.

This truth is right in your face the whole time, as Rosa is constantly scolding her for not acting her age. It makes no sense that she would be that bothered by it if Maria was actually 8 years old.

This is also heavily hinted by the way Rosa abuses Maria in front of other people while they all allow it. Hitting a 20 years old is not nearly as abusive as hitting an 8 years old.

All the characters agree to treat Maria as an 8 years old since that’s the way she acts and they don’t want to be mean to her, unlike her mother. This is also the reason why she is visually depicted as a little kid; as far as anyone is concerned, she is a little kid. “Without love it cannot be seen”; because they love Maria and respect her personality, they can see her as a kid.

This is all a facade maintained by Maria to trick everyone. She’s such a fanatic of the occult that her mask slips when talking about the topic and she starts acting like the creepy adult she actually is. Another massive hint that’s in your face the whole time.

She’s also shown to know Hebrew and have the whole Bible memorized. There’s no way she could be a little girl.

Even her appearance reveals the truth: She’s the only one who wears a crown, signaling that she’s the queen of the chess game.

If you have read up to chapter 5, you should recall a scene in which a certain character seriously confronts her about the existence of magic as if she was an adult, to the surprise of everyone else, who think this character is being rude. This is another massive hint that she’s actually an adult and everyone is pretending for her sake.

The reason she carries out the murders is because she truly believes Beatrice exists and will be resurrected with the ritual depicted in the epitaph. She is always saying so openly and being unaffected by the murders no matter how grueling they are or if the victim is her own mother.

The kind of person who claims to have solved Umineko would have stopped here and decided the mystery is solved. The twist is obvious in retrospect and it seems like Maria could actually have carried out the murders if she was an adult. It’s obvious that this is the solution, so there’s no need to think it further or go through every murder to check if it actually fits and is supported by clues. This story is a masterpiece!

But now we are on the internet and there are idiots who claim this solution is bad or contradictory, so let’s prove them wrong:

First chapter, first twilight:

Maria enters the parlor with a gun and kills everyone.

Yes, she kills 6 people by herself without missing a shot, even though in later chapters it’s said that the guns in the mansion don’t shoot straight and are very hard to reload for an amateur

She then carries 6 corpses to the storeroom at the other side of the garden all by herself, without getting blood stains on her clothes or on the path to the storeroom, and without anyone hearing a thing.

Later on, Natsuhi also has a gun. This confirms that there are guns in the mansion, so Maria could also get a gun, making this crime hinted and solvable.

First chapter, second twilight:

Maria goes to Eva’s room. Eva has no reason to suspect her, so she lets her in, then Maria kills her and Hideyoshi with the gun she carried hidden on her purse (another big hint; she’s the only one who can carry weapons around without being noticed).

The chain on the door was never set, that was a lie of the narration. This makes sense since Battler himself didn’t witness the scene. Genji and Kanon find the bodies and go tell other people.

While they are out, Maria somehow draws a giant magic circle in blood on the door, without moving the bodies or staining herself, the floor, or the bed where the corpse of Eva is laying. She had drawings of the same circle on her notebook, making this crime hinted and solvable.

You get the point, so let’s skip the rest of the murders and assume they can be explained by Maria somehow.

Let’s assume that in later chapters it is said in red that Maria is dead and her death was a homicide. This might seem to contradict our theory that Maria is the culprit, but it actually doesn’t. The sentence is referring to “Maria the kid”, which is treated here as a different entity from “Maria the adult”, in a similar way as how Maria treats her mother as either her real mother or “the evil witch” depending on whether she’s angry or kind. “Maria the kid” being dead means that she has discarded that facade and won’t use it anymore*. This can be considered a homicide since “Maria the adult” is the one who decides to “kill” her facade.

*She will actually use it one more time when it’s convenient for the plot, but this is treated as a resurrection and doesn’t contradict the truth that “Maria the kid” was dead at that point in time.

All of this makes sense and is solvable.

This is what the official solution apologists believe.

Umineko completely betrays the player.

Umineko is constantly asking the player to solve its mystery, going as far as to insult readers who don’t try hard enough, and seemingly assuring you that the game is perfectly solvable and follows the rules of a good mystery.

All of this is a lie.

I take particular issue with the red truth.

The red truth is introduced in a way that requires trust and cooperation from the player. It is not realistic to think that Battler (or you, the player) would be convinced that a lying witch that is trying to trick you would be trustworthy when explaining the rules of the game or the nature of the red truth.

However, you do the concession because you are, in fact, playing a game. You understand that the game is challenging you to solve it, so some rules must be laid out.

The red truth is accepted as a shortcut to avoid having to read through 2 hours of explanations for every minute detail. You accept that when “character X is dead” is said in red, the purpose is to tell Battler (and you, the player), that you should not waste your time trying to find ways in which the death of character X could have been faked, and for the story to not waste time either trying to deny every possible way to fake that death (which would be futile anyway since you can’t believe anything the witch says).

Red truths are sometimes used for misdirection, but that’s all good and part of the fun as long as they can still be taken at face value and interpreted literally. “Character X didn’t exit the room” tricks you into assuming that character X was inside the room to begin with, but the solution here is to take the red truth literally and don’t make any extra assumptions, not to change the meaning or the context of the red.

Eventually, however, the game provides consecutive red truths that directly contradict each other. The official explanation is that a red truth is valid as long as there is a way in which it could technically be interpreted as true. For example, if you and I are in the same room, I can claim in red that “there’s only one person in the room”, because I’m speaking out of context and by “the room” I’m not referring to this room, but any other room with a single person in it, or because you did cruel things in the past, so I consider you to be a “monster”, not a “person”. Therefore, the red truth “there’s only one person in the room” is no truth at all.

You might think it’s a cool twist that the red is not reliable and the witch was tricking you all along, and I agree that from a narrative standpoint it is.

However, from the point of view of a player being encouraged to try and solve the mystery, it is a complete betrayal of the truth you placed in the game.

The ending of Umineko is awful and the whole “solvable mystery” is a hurtful lie.

[spork-supremacy]

Is there ever an intrensic need in you to create a slide show for everything you think about?

Like several times it's just been "I like this season of a show, I should slideshow that."

"I commonly get a crush on a character, I should compile them all into a slide show to catagorise them."

"In this building there are several bubblers, here is my slide shown on which are best according to, water pressure, cleanliness of basin and location."

And then you never make that slide show anywhere that isn't inside your own head where it's already planned out.