#the reason to which i feel unworthy of such tenderness...

[ronkeyroo]

Hello, i am one of your fans and i really love watching your content. I'm very sorry to see you've been distressed recently, i know i'm just a stranger on the internet, but I just wanted to tell you that, even if you think you're doing bad, you are already doing more than you might know. A lot of people give up and don't move on, and I mean a lot lot, but you, you've gotten up so many times with each fall, and while it may not seem like that for you, i think that's pretty amazing. It's okay to let it out every now and then, and whatever you do I will support you either way. I love seeing your art, seeing you being happy with all the fictional characters you adore, seeing how detailed and cool each drawing is.

I hope you have an amazing day being an amazing you. Wish you luck! ♡

Anon I...I never know how to properly convey the warm feelings stirring up within me as I read your note...The screen takes away so much of what I wish i could express most vividly..

If the possibility could present itself - I'd sit down by your side, hold your hand and pour every bit of gratitude and mutual fondness into our hold for the kindness, reassurance, and support you shone my way.

Its...I feel ashamed and defeated, having realized just how much i've been hurting the past year, what mess it brought out of me, and how long I've staggered under it. Every single day i but collect crumbs of whatever joy i can muster while the majority of my spirit is still shrouded in darkness. I wish i could shield you all from it, shield you away from worrying for me, for aching on my behalf... There have been countless times I was on the verge of giving up, but i've burned the meaning of what keeps me here so deep in my heart that even when i want to disappear, a big part of me aches to come back from it all.

To be here with my friends, to share the art i love creating, to know that despite all the hurt that exists; We can share on the wonderlust and joy that makes life any bit more bearable. I cannot begin, on how big of an impact you folks have played into this blooming joy...Strangers or not, the time I spent on Tumblr and its community has been a heart mending experiences that constantly, constantly lays a tender, warm glow on me.

I love being here with you all, I love sharing on my artistic shenanigans and expressions be it within my personal paracosms or the fictional characters I adore and it makes my heart soar to hear, to feel, and to experience this love back...Thank you for being here to enjoy it alongside me, Anon. For appreciating me & my art, for writing to me, for insisting on encouraging me even when i feel i don't deserve it with how sluggish and slow i've been with everyone...I want to get better, I want to stay so much.

I hope we both have an amazing day, and an overall kinder life. And once again, Thank you...

[meanbossart]

Hey! I was thinking of trying to write something for you about DU Drow but after a trying to gather stuff about him via your page I’m struggling to get something substantial for his personality- like I get it mostly (I think?) but it’s hard to put into words (which makes it easier for me) so if it’s not too much to ask; how would you explain DU Drows personality and maybe some of his values? - if you don’t mind! I love your art BTW!

Man, this is a tough ask and I MADE the guy. The fic is definitely the best place to see his personality in action, but it is also 20 chapters long so far - and I'm a fairly reasonable man.

Before I get to any descriptions, there's two important things to note: A) Overwhelmingly, his looks do not match his demeanor. and B) DU drow is extremely hedonistic in practice. He might claim to have certain beliefs or standards but hardly ever practices them.

Anyways, I present to you: The guy, more-or-less summarized to the best of my abilities.

BEHAVIOR: Purposefully standoffish. He wants to be noticed, but he does not want to be bothered. He's a little bit stiff with his body language and mostly makes use of head/neck gestures to assert his sentences and signal his level of interest. On that note, me makes it extremely obvious for the socially-versed individual to tell what he thinks of them - he hardly ever tries to hide if he's disinterested, annoyed, or having a laugh at your expense. He expresses emotion through his face a normal amount, but his default look is eerily bland, and subtle emotions might go unnoticed because of his eye-color and thin brows.

As it is with most people, the more uncomfortable he is with a situation the more stiff and inexpressive he becomes, and vice versa.

SPEECH: DU drow is very much well spoken, and simultaneously very blunt. He abides by most conversational formalities (definitely more formal than you would assume him to be) and basic etiquette. He will greet you and he will say please and thank you even if clearly not meaning it or feeling like you're unworthy of the gesture. Sometimes, he does it just to be patronizing.

With all of that in mind, he has a tendency to use violent turns of phrase and analogies to express himself, this applies to both negative and positive feelings. That being said he's aware of social norma and knows full well when things are or aren't appropriate, even if sometimes he chooses to ignore that and be weird anyway - usually with the purpose of intimidation.

He is the most earnest and sincere with very close friends (quite literally only Astarion and Shadowheart) and rather curt with everyone else unless you catch him in a particularly good mood. He's a little chummier with dwarves and duergar (he finds them amusing and fun to hang out with) and reserves a slight bit more tenderness and kindness for children and mothers, especially if they're elves. He's also fond of animals. He is dismissive of gnomes, goblins, bugbears, half/full orcs and hobgoblins. He despises githyanki and drow. He treats humans fairly respectfully but thinks they are a far lesser race than pretty much all others.

He has a very dark/offensive sense of humor and a tendency to make well crafted, but cruel jokes or quips about sensitive topics. This goes for everybody, including people he's on good terms with.

VALUES: Here's where things get tricky. DU drow is both a hypocrite and a unreliable narrator of his own story, not to mention deeply unfamiliar with his own inner-workings and feelings. Politically, he would be the guy who doesn't vote, doesn't want to pay taxes and dreams of living off the grid, who thinks everybody should pull themselves up by the bootstraps and that it's a dog-eats-dog world. He hates systems of government, authority figures, hierarchical structures and archaic customs. He believes it would a chaotic but functional world if people governed themselves.

In practice, he doesn't stand for anything and gladly overlooks injustices and things that don't align with his supposed values as long as they favor him, or just don't get in his way, and easily makes exceptions for things on a whim. He's indifferent to slavery; unless it's Astarion's. - He thinks humans are a worthless pet-race, except for his dearest and nearest friend, the half-elf Shadowheart. He thinks Half-orcs are intellectually inferior, but he will gladly be chummy with them if they amuse him and make for good-company during a night-out.

INNER WORLD AND INTIMACY: DU drow is extremely unfamiliar with his own emotions and very often comes up empty when he has to justify or explain anything that is based on feeling, while simultaneously operating on impulse and instinct for the vast majority of the time. He is subject to fear, resentment, and insecurity as much as anyone else, but carries a deep shame in acknowledging his own vulnerability at all. He is very intense when it comes to love, however, and shows no reluctance in expressing it through his words and actions towards the people he cares about. He does care for the levels of comfort of those dearest to him though, and doesn't bombard them with it unless the moment is right, or if overwhelmed into doing so. The same applies to physical affection - he's extremely comfortable with it, but cares deeply for respecting the boundaries of his loved ones. When it comes to strangers, he only touches them outside of combat if there is some kind of power-game at play.

A couple of other things that might be of note:

-He likes creature comforts, but is also fine with going without them and won't ever complain about having to live, sleep, or survive in less-than-ideal circumstances as long as he feels in control of the situation. -He can be enticed by valuables and gold because they make the immediate future easier, but he doesn't seek a life of vast riches. -He is not an alcoholic but probably has a binge-drinking problem. -While he is fond and respectful of animals, he has no issues killing them if the situation calls for it. -He pretty much always believes himself to be the most impressive person in the room. -He is not a vain man, but very much likes the way that he looks and to have it be acknowledged by his partner. -He believes faith, religion, and gods to be a waste of time.

[patrickjanebrain]

Patrick Jane's Problems with Authority

On the show there are two specific situations you can expect Jane to get excited about. The first is when he comes across a performer or another con artist, someone who is also in the craft of fooling people. No matter how skilled or clumsy that person is, Patrick is always intrigued. He likes to view the competition. He always perks up when he smells a scam. It’s endearing. 

The second situation is when Jane encounters a petty tyrant available for him to take down. It doesn’t matter how small the throne they sit on, if they’re in any way unworthy, he views it as his honor to kick over that chair and laugh.

It’s not just once in a while. It’s every time. Every tyrant. Every politician, principal, CEO, security head, or society snob. They don’t have to get in Patrick’s way or insult him (or Lisbon) either, although if they do, he strikes like a mongoose. No mercy.

Patrick Jane hates authority. He really does. He especially hates unearned authority, blowhards, and tyrants, but he does not recognize any authority over himself at all. As he tells the sheriff in Red Alert (3x13): “I’m not below or above, I’m to the side.” He sees himself outside the hierarchy, an authority to himself and the only authority over himself. If he cooperates at all, it’s only because it’s in his best interest to do so. Sometimes, even when it is in his best interest, his impulse to be a pain in the ass wins out over practical concerns.

As far as Lisbon goes, she doesn’t control him, and his affection and care for her is the only reason he occasionally lets her put the brakes on him. Not because she’s his boss (she is, but he doesn’t acknowledge it), but because his messes get her in trouble, and he doesn’t want her to suffer. 

Outside of the people he interacts with regularly, Jane has three basic approaches to people. 

AUTHORITY FIGURES

Any person in authority, he automatically begins to try to poke at their achilles heel. He’ll make little mocking digs or outright humiliate them. He’ll question their leadership ability or just embrace his naughty side:

See that flourish? Jane artistically adds it after he paints the last letter in “SNYDER SUCKS"? That’s a fuck-you flourish. The vandalism is enough to get him the principal’s attention (which Jane needs to expose the fact that he’s been illegally surveilling minors in the bathrooms). The message is one of (Patrick’s usual) disdain. The flourish, though: that’s for every kid who’s had to deal with this self-righteous, hypocritical prick. He’s sticking it to the man, almost literally. 

He just loves to do this. It’s not work for him, it’s a privilege. 

REGULAR  PEOPLE

When Jane questions average people who are not authority figures and who have information to give, he’s sort of a neutral version of himself. He can still be bratty, but it’s not in any way malicious. Sometimes he has to stir people up to get an answer or idea, but there’s nothing personal in that. He doesn’t want to hurt them or help them. He’s just doing his job, and often that’s making trouble to cause a distraction or get someone to reveal something. 

Jane was trained from birth to view regular non-carny people as marks, and it’s still a habit. He doesn’t get involved, and he doesn’t feel guilty about how he interacts with them as long as he doesn’t really hurt them. 

THE VULNERABLE

This is the facet of Patrick Jane’s character that is the most interesting to me: his care and tenderness with people who are hurting or are weak in some way. I’ve read commentary online from people questioning whether Jane is a psychopath or a sociopath, but I don’t think that you can view how he interacts with children, injured or sick people, and anyone who is vulnerable and call him incapable of empathy. He’s capable of enormous empathy.  

He has a personal understanding of grief and pain, and when he sees it in others, he softens. He doesn’t hug people, but he will give them careful, useful advice. Occasionally he will do little favors, like a quick hypnotism to help them break a bad habit, or show them his real self and what he’s learned through suffering. 

Interestingly enough, he will change his approach when he sees someone get downgraded from authority figure to a vulnerable person. He does this with Bosco once he’s injured, and he also immediately drops his desire to toy with the coroner, Dr. Steiner, who has shown him outright disdain in the past (and present!). In The Red Mile (3x18), as soon as Jane comes to understand that Steiner is sick, he goes out of the way to give him what he knows he needs: a front row seat to an adventure, breaking the rules to catch the bad guy personally. He also gives Steiner the great gift of sitting with him and distracting him while he’s committing suicide, though it clearly costs him to see death come and take another person he’s grown to like. 

Jane takes pity on Lorelei Martins after he understands what Red John has done to her, even though she tried to hurt him and engineer Lisbon’s death. 

It’s easy to see Patrick Jane as cool or funny or even cruel, but the reality is that he has experienced a ton of loss and trauma and that’s permanently altered the way he relates to people and how he sees them. Ultimately, I think the reason that he has so many problems with authority is because his father was very abusive and controlling. Every petty tyrant Jane takes down is a proxy for his father and a win for his younger self. He is taking back control for all of the times he couldn’t when he was vulnerable and had no other options.

[impossiblesuitcase]

Fighting, and Loving

“Do you ever take those off?”

Cinder’s hands were hauled up at her chest and gloved. The thin fabric was white, though it was hard to tell when they were so heavily stained with grease and soot. He didn’t think he had ever seen her without them, but then again, she had always been working in the few times they had met.

Few times? 

Kai realised, with surprise, that they hadn’t spent even a whole hour together since meeting. It felt much, much longer.

Startled but defiant, she clocked him dead in the eye. “No.”

Huh. This girl got more mysterious by the second, yet simultaneously felt like the most honest person he’d met in years.

Plus, she was pretty cute.

It was warm in the elevator—or that could just be him. He was already simmering all over from watery grief and rage that morning when Levana stood on his balcony and cast her control over his people. Manipulating them. Brainwashing them. 

His eyes were now barren, stickiness dried on his cheeks. If Cinder had noticed, she hadn’t said anything. She regarded him with a quiet tenderness; a condolence, but not surface-level like that of so many other staff and guards and representatives.

Stars, he wanted her to come to the ball. Needed her to, now that he knew the filthy Lunars had planted the chip in Nainsi to extract information.

He was a prince. He rarely faced rejection. While he did respect her right to decline, something in him was convinced that her rejection wasn’t completely true. It never reached her eyes, as though some force was drawing the words from her mouth. Why did she hesitate if she seemed so comfortable with him? From the little he knew of her, she did not strike him as the type to indulge someone’s feelings if she did not reciprocate. 

What was holding her back? He was a prince. He had resources. He could make those obstacles disappear. 

“I think you should go to the ball with me.”

Cinder’s eyes widened. “Stars. Didn’t you already ask me that?”

“I’m hoping for a more favourable answer this time. And I seem to be getting more desperate by the minute.” 

“How charming.” 

That wasn’t the cadence of a voice that was about to accept. 

“Please?”

They went back and forth; Cinder’s responses were still vague, never giving him an idea of why she refused. Until:

“Well there are about 200,000 single girls in this city who would fall over themselves to have the privilege,” she reasoned drily, glaring at her feet. 

Wait, was she rejecting him because she thought herself unworthy? 

“Cinder,” he started, softly. Soothingly. “200,000 single girls. Why not you?”

Cinder looked torn. Insecure. “I’m sorry. But trust me—you don’t want to go with me.”

Trust me, I do.

The doors parted, she scrambled outside, and Kai internally whooped when he saw the audience.

If she thought she was unworthy, he wouldn’t hesitate to prove otherwise.

“Come to the ball with me,” he declared.

Cinder froze. The staff froze. Kai could practically already read the hundreds of gossip posts that would emerge from their gospel testimonies. 

Let the whole world know that Cinder was worthy of his attention. Then maybe she’d believe it too.

She turned around with a sharp expression, oddly reminiscent of his mother when a seven-year-old Kai shattered her crystal lamp copying Taekwondo moves from a netdrama. The expression warmed him.

Cinder manhandled him back into the elevator—which would kindly exacerbate those rumours.

The doors shut incriminatingly and she sighed. “Listen. I’m sorry. I really am. But I can’t go to the ball with you. You just have to trust me on that.”

He studied her. Her scowl spoke of irritation, but the firmly planted hand on his chest was at ease. 

She noticed his gaze and retrieved her touch.

“Why?” he appealed, almost whining. “Why don’t you want to go with me?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to go with you, it’s that I’m not going at all.”

Aha. “So you do want to go with me.”

Kai was certain that he was seconds away from finally getting through Cinder’s barrier—assuring her that it didn’t matter if she couldn’t dance, trying to allay her doubts—when something…changed. Her whole body deflated as though he’d just delivered some terrible diagnosis.

“It’s my sister.”

“Your sister?” he questioned, puzzled. Was this sister selfishly barring Cinder from attending the ball due to some slight? 

“Yes. My little sister. She has the plague. And it just wouldn’t be the same without her, and I can’t go—won’t go.” Then, like it was the truest admission of them all, she murmured, “I’m sorry.”

The weight of his insensitivity pressed into him. Great going Kai, he thought, you got so caught up in yourself that you forgot people have lives. All that flirting and pushing, even in front of a crowd! And the whole time, he’d been disturbing her.

He took a step back, reconsidering.

If she didn’t come, that meant that the ball would proceed as dreaded. Entertaining Levana, disappointing the world with his announcement, feeling the final tattered shreds of hope slip through his hands.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He nodded, but it was a lie. He had no incentive to lie to her. “Levana thinks she can play me like a puppet. And it just occurred to me that she might be right.”

Nothing he did would change anything.

The warmth in Cinder’s gaze bandaged his wounds. He wanted to change everything.

“Imagine there was a cure,” slipped out unbidden, “but finding it would cost you everything. It would completely ruin your life. What would you do?” He leant closer, seeking some sort of surreptitious pardoning. An intimate assurance that, no, he didn’t have to marry Levana. It was completely fair for him to refuse and spare his own life.

Her face showed no hope. “Ruin my life to save a million others? It’s not much of a choice.”

Of course. Why was he even seeking that assurance? Cinder was a good person. Cinder was logical, as was he.

He would do the right thing. 

The right thing, 

the right thing,

She glanced at his lips and soon, he was doing the same.

An inner voice screamed at him. Now is not the time! You barely know her! Your country is on the brink of war and you have to find an antidote. Priorities!

But, being a teenage boy and all, priorities weren’t his friend when it came to pretty girls. 

“I’m sure this is horribly inappropriate, but… it seems that my life is about to be ruined.”

He couldn’t have changed his mind now even if he tried. Kai gently guided her elbow to have her facing him. He craned his head. It had been a long time since he’d kissed a girl and yet, he didn’t recall the thrumming of his heart ever being this loud. Cinder closed her eyes and tilted her head up. She thought this was the right thing too.

His pulse leapt up to his throat as they inched closer to each other. Her breath fanned his mouth, so hot her lips could already be on his own.

Then Cinder cried out and crumpled in on herself.

The band of tension snapped. Romantic distractions would turn into worried distractions, it turned out.

———

Kai could do with more distractions, he decided.

Despite the roughly eighty million pressing issues all demanding his attention, his thoughts kept sprinting away to Linh-mèi. Linh Cinder, who still wasn’t coming to the ball, who was still subject to some unspecified illness. 

Distraction. He pulled up his non-work related comms, hoping for a brand new alert that would pull him into something, anything. A ‘how are you?’ or ‘check out this vid’, or ‘dude, that levana chick be crazy. Stay away.’

His inbox was a barren desert.

Prince Kaito was loved by the world. Kai had no friends.

Cinder was a friend now, right?

Parted lips, her palpable jolt of surprise. Her scrunched eyes and tilted head.

Irrational disappointment gnawed at his chest. It was for the best. Kai had obviously been grief-stricken—no state in which to deliver a meaningful first kiss. Especially when for a whole second he’d looked at Cinder lying on the ground and found her face piercing and hypnotising and something was very clearly wrong.

She’d set her head in her hands, the spell broke, and he still had no idea what had come over him. Probably his sanity doing cartwheels.

Cinder hadn’t reached out. Still, he couldn’t resist shooting off a comm when he yearned for a friendly voice.

Hey, Cinder. I hope you’re recovering well. Like I said, if you need any tests done, feel free to come to the palace. We can’t have the city’s best mechanic in poor shape.  Yours, Kai.

A day passed, and nothing. She was probably resting. But an extra comm never hurt, right?

Hi Cinder, how’s things today? Any more malfunctioning androids? I’ll let you know if there are any in the palace—hopefully none of them are befalling the same fate as Nainsi. You know what I mean.

Three comms in, Kai realised he was a touch presumptuous.

“Your Highness?” 

Kai startled and flipped around to see a palace official in the doorway, head lowered in a bow.

“Ah yes, Park-dàren, a pleasure to see you.”

The woman extended a portscreen. “I have the final details for your coronation security checks. They require your approval.”

Kai shook off his distraction and strode over, once again falling into the skin of the responsible royal. When the official gave her condolences for his loss, he remembered that he would be assuming that role indefinitely.

He was professional with guards and servants, even Torin now. He wasn’t himself with anyone anymore. The Kai he’d been with his parents and classmates would be locked up somewhere in his mind. He didn’t know when he would see that Kai again.

“As you can see outlined in section eight, we are taking strict measures to ensure your safety. Once 80% of guests have arrived, we will instigate a cut-off time, in which no further guests can be allowed to enter. Citizens under criminal restrictions will doubtless attempt to enter under the guise of being late, assuming the name of someone who failed to attend—”

“Wait,” he interrupted. Clenching his fingers around the port, he deliberated. “Remove the cut-off time.”

A slow blink. “...I beg your pardon?”

Kai couldn’t help but imagine Cinder on the day, debating with herself if she would or wouldn’t come. What if she vowed to stay home, only to regret it more and more with the ticking of the clock until she raced over to meet him?

“It’s just, erm, with this time of mourning, many of the guests may feel overwhelmed at the thought of attending without my father present. But perhaps they may change their mind that very evening?”

The woman considered this—or perhaps was thinking of a way to gently inform him that that was a stupid idea.

“Of course,” she corrected finally. “Please accept my apology on behalf of our department. We had not considered that. I shall amend the protocol to allow for at least an extra hour.”

A smile tickled his cheeks, but understanding followed it, and at once he berated himself. Did he really just compromise their security for a girl? 

As he handed the port back to the woman he noticed her hands, well-kept and uncovered.

There was one person, recently, that he’d been himself with. 

“Excuse me,” he said before he could stop himself. “May I ask you a question?”

“Certainly, Your Highness,” she exclaimed eagerly.

He did not allow himself to back out now, despite the embarrassed tension caging his spine. “Do you ever…wear gloves?”

Her eyes widened. Her hands folded over one another as though self-conscious, and he studied their complexion. It was impossible to imagine Cinder’s scrappy gloves on such pristine knuckles and cuticles.

“Uh, not often, Your Highness. On formal occasions, mostly. I have a pair that I wear to the peace ball. I’ll be wearing them this year.”

He nodded, pursing his lips. “Thank you. I realise it’s a strange question. I just wondered if they would make a nice gift for someone.”

An amused smile. “Any gift from Your Highness would be an appreciated one.”

Once she had left, Kai paced over to the window to ruminate on this new idea. He was used to being welcome in any room he entered. He was certainly used to girls admiring him endlessly, and he’d grown skilled at politely declining their advances whilst secretly basking in the feeling of adoration. 

But Cinder wouldn’t be so easily swayed. She seemed stubborn and grounded and unwilling to betray her values, no matter who asked it of her. 

Kai unclipped his port from his belt and checked his comms. Still no responses.

What was he trying to achieve by this? Would she even like gloves? Or would that send the message that he was so clueless about women that her workwear was all he could think to buy her?

But these would be formal gloves, no, ballroom gloves. For the ball. He would give them to her, kiss her gloved hand and lead her down the ballroom steps. He remembered how that surprisingly petite hand had been so stiff when he’d kissed it in Dr. Erland’s office, as though his very touch had turned it to metal. 

He liked to think that she’d been romanced by it. He liked to think he had an effect on her.

Her hesitant glance at his lips. Her pull towards him in an unconscious magnetism.

Maybe she would like gloves, so long as they were from him.

———

He’d made up his mind by the time his seamstresses were fitting him for his coronation garb. They would give him the best advice.

“Say,” he wondered aloud, aiming for naturalness. “Where could I find some gloves for a formal event, perhaps, the ball?”

One of the older women, Kaminari, pulled a pin from her mouth without a glance his way. She had scolded a five, ten, even fifteen-year-old Kai many a time for wriggling during fittings. “You have a collection of gloves in your closet, Your Highness.”

“No, ah…” Treacherous heat covered his ears. “I was referring to women’s gloves.”

Now she looked at him over thin-framed glasses. Her eyes were scrutinising yet she graciously answered after a brief hesitation. “Well, the city’s department stores have the largest collections. You’ll find many fine pairs there.”

Kai enquired further, lacing his voice with casualness as though he was barely interested in such a trivial topic. Not because he feared rumours would erupt—Kaminari was a shrewd woman—but because that shrewdness enabled her to read him easily. There begged a question of why the prince would want women’s gloves, and ultimately, the most plausible conclusion was as a gift for a lady.

———

Kai sent Cinder another comm that night. She would be finished her workday, he assumed, and he recalled her mentioning a sister and a stepmother, so he waited until it was late enough that any family responsibilities would be completed.

It was also late enough that sending a comm would glaringly imply that he was thinking of her, now, at this late hour.

His previous messages were admittedly quite formal. This time, Kai hoped a laid-back approach would soften her digital wall of silence. 

Just a thought, if you feel like taking up dancing—for no particular reason at all—I’d be happy to be your instructor. I can practically see you rolling your eyes from here, but hear me out. You never know when those skills may come in handy.

The sent icon blipped on the right side of the screen. He stared at the left, drumming his fingers, waiting for the icon showing that she was responding. For the next five minutes, there was none.

Okay Kai, baaack it up a bit.

Sighing, he slid out of the app onto his netlink. Holding two fingers down, he flicked them away from himself so the feed appeared—lifesize—on the holographic projector before his bed. 

Kaminari’s recommendation was scrawled on his hand with one of her pattern markers. Saying it aloud brought an array of fashions to life, cycling one by one a carousel.

Kai’s back straightened. He shuffled closer on the bed. “All right. Display: gloves.”

He knew immediately that the particularly flashy ones that passed by would not work. Nor did peacock feather accents quite seem that of a modest mechanic.

He specified some criteria. Ballroom, elbow length, and then, classic. The pink and frills were replaced with simpler options. With no idea what colour dress she would be wearing* (if she was even coming*) a neutral colour would be the safest. With white, some were toned with ivory, rose gold or pink, and others a stark white. He liked silver best.

One instantly caught his attention. Elbow length, silver white, not gaudy but not as plain as her work gloves. The hem was rimmed with pearls for a touch of elegance. Cinder wasn’t elegant per se, but she did have a sort of unmatchable grace, uniquely characteristic to her.

Something about them felt…familiar.

Leaping out of bed, Kai tossed the port from his lap and jogged over to his closet. The lights flickered on as he opened the door, illuminating the long room that seemingly extended almost to the other end of the palace. The eighth cupboard down, third drawer on the left.

Laying neatly folded in lush velvet casing were three pairs of gloves. Kai fished past the navy and gold for the white pair underneath. He pulled them out, holding them up and inspecting them under the light.

They were ivory instead of silver, with diamonds instead of pearls. His mother hadn’t been all that fond of gloves. She always said a hand was better to hold if you could feel the touch of it in yours.

They still smelled vaguely of her perfume.

Kai held it to his face, inhaling the only remnant he still had of warm hugs and soothing lullabies and innocence. He had vowed as a child that he would never forget her scent or her voice or her smile.

No image of wide-spread teeth could come to his mind. He usually had to reference old home vids for the singsong murmurs.

Kai set them back in the tray, folded to match the others, and trudged back to his bed.

How would Mum feel to know that he would be forced to marry Levana? 

His portscreen was still there on his covers, glowing in the dimness. He bookmarked the tab of the department store and shut off the holographs so the blue light wouldn’t keep him awake. In vain, of course. His sleep had fled weeks ago.

Kai settled back into his bed sheets, closing his eyes and willing himself to rest. Instead, his mind fixed on Cinder, and he indulged in a brief, fleeting fantasy of her reaction when he delivered his gift. Would she smile? Turn red in the cheeks and stammer out gratitude? 

Or, considering her clear vehemence against attending, would she scoff and toss them away? 

No, that wasn’t the Cinder he’d come to know.

Kai turned from his back to his side, smushing his cheek in his pillow. Even if it didn’t sway her a single bit on his offer, her smile would be repayment enough. It probably wouldn’t work. Really, he didn’t know why he was so determined to buy her a gift, but the best reason he could come up with was that he simply wanted to.

———

Imagining her reaction became a hobby of his. 

Kai woke the next day, quickly dressed and ate a lonely breakfast in the empty dining hall. He distracted himself by checking his schedule. A blank hour between meetings and preparations piqued his interest. It would be prudent to use that time to practise his speech for the coronation or catch up on his father’s unfinished work or spend time groaning over his next meeting with the Lunar Queen.

Instead, he decided that if Cinder was willing to go out of her way to return Nainsi to him herself, he should return the courtesy. It would take ten minutes to get to the store by hover, around thirty to weave through the crowds in the rush hour and purchase the gloves (fifteen, if he played the prince card), and another ten minutes to return. If he did play the prince card, he might even have time to deliver them now, but if not today, he would make the time. 

Kai scheduled a hover to be posted at the palace entrance at 12:00 and set an alarm to give him notice.

Right. Now he would…work.

Time passed agonisingly. Kai had no office and was adamant that he’d stay out of his father’s for as long as possible. It belonged to the emperor, and that was his father. It wasn’t his yet. Never would be.

Instead, Kai worked in one of his sitting rooms where Torin could locate him and inform him of his burgeoning reminders. But Kai knew his father’s—his adviser was refraining as much as possible, for his sake.

09:15. Reviewing the classified strategies the Earthern Union hoped to employ to gain control of Levana.

09:21. Realising that the strategies summated to ‘We don’t know. Let’s wing it.’

09:27. Cupping his chin, eyes wandering to the window, trying to recall exactly where he’d last left his sweatshirt.

09:30. Work. Memorising the final itinerary for the coronation.

10:00. Trying to recall if he’d washed the sweatshirt that had been worn in stifling humidity and he’d definitely been sweating—

10:11. Skimming the newest report on Letumosis figures. Heart dropping to his stomach at the figures. 

10:29. Thinking of the gloves.

10:40. Work!

11:12. Mapping out the fastest route to Cinder’s booth.

Kai rammed his fist into his forehead, steeling his thoughts into obedience. His wished his brain were a limb; his arm—he could force it down with the other. His foot—he could weigh down to stop movement.

His brain was where the old Kai lived, and like an infectious tune, she was what it strayed to.

Now that the Lunars were around, Kai wasn’t so enthusiastic about the words mind and control being in the same sentence, so instead he commanded his fingers. Pick up the stylus, put it to the port and work.

It obeyed. Kai managed to concentrate until the beautiful, blessed alarm chimed through the air.

He sprang up, beaming.

Torin entered, apology pencilled on his brow.

“What.”

“Your Highness, the queen has requested an audience with you.”

All the gravity in the room dialled up to eleven, dragging every molecule of his body down with it. Kai flopped back onto the chair, grumbling. So much for that idea.

———

Kai’s schedule remained unforgiving. An extra two comms to Cinder were fruitless, and no other free hours appeared. The gloves slipped to the back of his mind.

Two days before the coronation, Kai was closing the tabs on his port and saw the bookmarked gloves. He jolted upright, knocking the underside of the coffee table and startling the china vase. 

Kai gnawed at his lip, pulling up his schedule and flipping over meetings and duties in hourly and bi-hourly increments. There would be something, he convinced himself as Nainsi rolled in with a tray of hot matcha tea.

“Thank you, Nainsi,” he mumbled as he took the cup and sipped. The scalding water sloshed over the rim onto his fingers and he thrust it down, hissing.

“Are you injured, Your Highness?” 

He tucked his hand beneath his thigh. “I’m fine.”

Her sensor glowed yellow—what he’d always thought of as her version of a nod—and she began to roll away.

“Wait.”

Nainsi stalled and swerved her cylindrical body around.

“Nainsi, could you make an order for me?”

“I would be honoured, Your Highness.”

Kai sent her the details of the purchase which she processed without delay. “Where should I have it sent to?”

Kai had been busy reexamining the gloves, even when it was too late to change his mind. “Pardon?”

“I assume they are to be a gift since they would not fit you,” she observed in that ever-neutral robotic tone. “Should I have them delivered to the recipient?”

“No,” Kai blurted. Hesitated. “I’m sure I can find some time…”

He raced through his schedule for any open slot, knowing there was none. Every meeting and hour was dedicated to some very noble, very unavoidable cause. Except, he thought as his eyes stopped on an extra coronation rehearsal mere hours before the ceremony. He’d be fine, so long as he didn’t throw the crown like a frisbee at Levana’s head.

“Have it sent to me,” he decided, clicking the timeslot and sending out a note to cancel it. “I’ll deliver it myself.”

“Certainly, Your Highness.” 

As he closed his calendar the screen was replaced with a newsfeed—article after article on the protests in the Commonwealth. Guiltily he clicked on one and was instantly rattled to see the vitriol on their faces, but also the fear. They were right. Levana shouldn’t be here. He should be able to fix it.

“Would you like the gift to be wrapped in advance, Your Highness?” 

“Ah, no, that’s fine,” he murmured distractedly. Nainsi’s sensor glowed green with confirmation and she ambled away.

He picked up his tea, now cooler, and sipped as he looked through the feeds. The hysterical cries, scathing posters and critical journalists weren’t just a blow to the regal, world leader Kaito. They hurt the Kai locked away, too.

———

When his coronation day arrived, Kai was so overrun with visitors and preparations that he genuinely blanked when Nainsi informed him his purchase had arrived. 

The knock at his door jolted him out of his confusion. Kai sprung into action, rifling through his closet for the grey hoodie and wrestled himself into it.

The courier blinked in surprise when Kai came to the door to pick up the package, but all the same bowed and handed him the box as though it held the crown jewels. He had probably expected a servant, and certainly not one dressed for a winter marathon.

“Thank you.” Kai paused. It was a plain brown box. “Uh, was there any wrapping paper for it?” 

The courier’s mouth hung open. “...You requested it unwrapped, Your Majesty.”

Kai almost instinctually corrected him on the honorific but refrained. Technically, he would only be His Highness for a few hours more.

“Of course. That is my mistake. Thank you. Never mind it.”

The man ignored this, rummaging through his bags and producing a selection of paper and ribbons. “Do you like any of these?”

Kai picked out a gold foil and noticed a sturdy-looking white bow in the man’s bag. He pointed at it. “Do you have any more like that?”

The man cut a sheet of the foil and handed it over gingerly, avoiding crinkles. When he pulled out the bow, Kai saw it was already wrapped around a gift. Without hesitation, the courier unwound the ribbon and flattened it out.

“Oh no,” Kai attempted, shaking his head, “please don’t take someone else’s—”

The bow was forced into his hands. 

The right thing to do would be to insist he couldn’t possibly accept it. Conscious of the ever-dwindling time, Kai buried his courteous instincts, thanked the man, and rushed briskly past him.

As the elevator descended, Kai ran over his plan. He could always wrap the gift in the hover, except he would need scissors and tape. He didn’t even know where he could find them. Paper was scarcely used anymore, so scissors were solely for cooking or cutting hair or clothes making or essentially any activity that a prince never did. There was always a maid or servant delegated to that task.

It was very important to Kai that something for Cinder was something he did himself.

He quickly thumbed the doors-open button, landing him five floors above the ground level. As he emerged, the adjacent elevator opened to a group of maids. Seeing him, the man and two women bowed respectfully. Kai returned a kind nod. But when their backs turned, he called, “Wait.”

They turned around. 

“Pardon me, but would any of you know where I could find some scissors and, uh, some tape?”

The other two exchanged some surprise, but the shortest woman bowed again with confidence. “We can certainly locate some for you, Your Highness.”

It turned out that the servant supply rooms had everything a person could ever need, including a large, paint-flecked table. Kai assessed the supplies and got to work. He took his time, trying and failing to get a meticulous seal and clean fold. It was shabby but functional, so he moved onto the bow. One loop was larger than the other—his bow-tying abilities were strictly limited to shoelaces.

Kai remembered how his father would wrap gifts for his mother himself. It was never the finest job, and neither was Kai’s, but that didn’t matter.

Satisfied, Kai abandoned the supplies on the table and took the wrapped gift to the palace gate where the hover was waiting for him.

———

Cinder looked completely baffled when he presented the box to her. He might as well have brought her a strangled puppy for her horrified expression.

“What?” he protested. “I can’t buy you a gift?”

Cinder’s nose scrunched in disbelief. “No. Not after I’ve ignored six of your comms in the last week. Are you dense?”

Any regret for sending those comms dissipated. “So you did get them!”

Cinder huffed, turning away. “Of course I got them.” Her tone wasn’t angry. Of course I got them; Of course I read them. Enough, evidently, to know specifically that he’d sent six comms.

Hope awoke in his chest. “So why are you ignoring me? Did I do something?”

There was a haze over her, some kind of veil, and he just needed to lift it. “It’s just that I…” Cinder fingered the hem of her gloves contemplatively. Her mouth parted. She ducked her hands under the table and blurted, “Because you kept going on and on about the stupid ball!” 

Oh.

She was nothing if not obstinate.

Kai glanced down at his gift, startled. A laugh tore out of him at the irony of it all. “Stars, Cinder, if I’d known you were going to embargo me for asking you on a date, I wouldn’t have dared.”

Cinder looked away, grumbling.

He would be reasonable; asking a girl to be your personal guest at the most documented event of the year was more of a tenth-date level of request. This girl was mesmerising; intelligent, snarky, comfortable in her grease-spotted skin. But Kai knew how to read people. There was hesitation below that: anxiety, self-doubt. 

It needed to be non-committal. Casual. A first date.

He unleashed his winning smile. “Might I have the honour of treating you to lunch?”

As though she had a specific ‘reject any non-work-related activity involving Kai’ vendetta, Cinder continued to rebuff him.

She was deflecting, so he fought back. Ask the other vendors to tend to your booth. Ask your android. That last one seemed to irritate her the most.

His public speaking instructor would have told him here: when you’re at an impasse, there’s always something else to say. Another angle to convince them.

Cinder didn’t seem annoyed with him, but she wasn’t convinced, either.

It was all right. If she wasn’t coming to the ball, or she wouldn’t go to lunch with him, there would be other times.

Cinder regarded him in a way he thought—hoped—was almost regretful.

Could there be?

In a few hours, he would be emperor. If he were busy as a prince, he would have no time for respite now. And Cinder was…nothing more than a subject. A mechanic he sought a service from. She may have been willing to kiss him, but to let him court her?

One day—in the future. Maybe.

“Come on. I can’t take you to the…B-word; I can’t take you to lunch. Short of my unplugging the processor on one of my androids, this could be the last time we ever see each other,” he said nonchalantly, hoping there was no obvious tinge of disappointment.

Cinder stared at her toolbox. “Believe it or not, I’d actually kind of resolved myself to that fact already.”

Her words cemented it. No, he would not be able to escape his fate of marrying Levana. No, he would not be free to pursue a relationship with the only person left who made him feel like more than just a figurehead.

He didn’t allow her to give him back the gloves. All the same, he would treat her with kindness, and show his gratitude, and then perhaps she wouldn’t forget about him.

Pushing the box to her, he requested, “Take it. And think of me.” 

He smiled sincerely at her, hoping it would leave a lasting mark in her memory. Something just as indelible as she had become to him.

His mood soured when Cinder’s stepsister arrived, spoiling what may be his last interaction with her. And yet as he stepped back into the crowd, he turned once more to watch. The messy hair and grease-stained clothes and magnetising charm. That was what he'd remember.

———

Kai was an idiot.

Grade A idiot. World-class idiot. All his fans who called him charming and kind and benevolent were wrong.

At first, seeing Linh Pearl at the ball was just another nail in the coffin of the awful day that was his coronation. But her news struck an unexpected chord in his chest.

Cinder’s stepsister had died. The one she had mentioned in the elevator. The reason she hadn’t come to the ball.

Kai had completely forgotten that the girl was ill. And he’d marched up to Cinder’s booth, attempting again to get her to come to the ball; he’d even nagged her for ignoring his comms! Was he so dense?

Idiot.

For all the guilt, there was also a twinge of hope. Because if Cinder was in mourning, perhaps she wasn’t rejecting him. Perhaps it had just been the wrong time. So then if…

No. It was wishful thinking. Cinder hadn’t shown up to indicate anything. And tonight he had to announce his plans to wed Levana.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said Kai to the girl, genuinely meaning it.

Pearl sniffed, though it was more haughty than mournful. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I know you truly do feel that in your heart. I can’t say the same of my awful stepsister.”

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“Oh, she is a monster. If only you knew what she’s really like. And don’t worry, I made sure she wouldn’t taint your generous gift with her filthy claws.”

“What do you mean? Those were a gift for her to use.”

Pearl’s sneer was frighteningly sincere. “Trust me, a creature like her doesn’t deserve them. You see, that awful, ungrateful wretch is a cy–”

A voice boomed over the speakers, spreading commotion amongst the joviality. Kai frowned at the interruption, too busy waiting to correct whatever nonsense Linh Pearl was about to spew. Then he heard the announcement.

“Please welcome to the 126th Annual Ball of the Eastern Commonwealth, a personal guest of His Imperial Majesty: Linh Cinder of New Beijing.”

Kai’s breath snagged, heart tripling in size. At the top of the stairs, Cinder stood in all her crowning glory. That being her version: a muddied, wet dress, mussed hair and—

Holding up the dripping silver skirt were silk-gloved hands. 

Every mouth hung as she descended the stairs. Heat rushed to his cheeks, then laughter to his heart. Cinder had come to the ball. She was wearing his gift. 

That had to mean something.

Cinder’s fierce eyes were trained on him as she marched forward. It didn’t even seem to bother her that her ballgown looked half dragged out of a sewer, the crowd around her staring blades and ice shards into her back. He didn’t know if she didn’t notice, or if she didn’t let herself. Kai rushed forward, blessedly excused from his delightful conversation partner. He was just preparing to meet Cinder halfway when she was intercepted by a woman. His feet stopped beneath him.

The two argued. Pearl scurried next to the strange woman to hurl accusations of her own. Cinder’s nostrils flared, and even the guards looked perplexed at whether they should intervene.

The woman raised a flat hand, Cinder flinched, and Kai saw scarlet red.

“Your Majesty!” the woman gasped out, as his firm hand locked around her wrist.

“That is enough,” he disciplined. He kept his fury contained, lest any shows of anger make Cinder even more afraid.

Pink filled the woman’s cheeks. “I am so sorry, Your Majesty. My emotions—my temper—this girl is…I am sorry she has interrupted…she is my ward—she should not be here…”

Her stepmother. “Of course, she should. She is my personal guest.” His tone was light, but commanding all the same. His eyes darted to Cinder. Traced over the shock on her face. The defused fear. The arms wrapped around her waist, cradling—or caging—herself.

He wished so fervently to strip that pain away.

Kai released the woman and ordered the merriment to resume, which everyone attempted half-heartedly. Then he pulled Cinder into his arms and into the most socially acceptable method to have a private conversation amidst a crowd: dancing.

Once having guided Cinder away, Kai was finally able to give her a closer inspection. That’s how he noticed the dark smudges on the silver silk gloves.

Okay. Maybe she had defaced his gift, but she was still wearing them. How could he expect anything else from the girl who had been so exponentially unlike anyone he’d ever met before?

Cinder gaped up at him, and while the damp glove was seeping cold into his shoulder, her waist was warm under his hand. It took only a heartbeat for him to realise that she was not experienced in the ways of waltzing. 

He chuckled. “You have no idea how to dance, do you?”

“I’m a mechanic,” she hissed, and it stirred a louder laugh under his sternum.

“Believe me, I noticed. Are those grease stains on the gloves I gave you?” he teased, because really, he couldn’t even make himself mad about it. He expressed that by twirling her under his arm, to which she stumbled and toppled into his chest.

A grin overtook him. Cinder cringed. She was wholly out of her element, and clearly uncomfortable by all the scrutiny. And yet, this flustered and dishevelled version of Cinder had come all the way to the ball for him, despite the opposition from her guardian. Despite her own self-doubts.

Then he remembered the other reason she hadn’t wanted to attend.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he started softly.

He momentarily thought that she might start to cry. “I didn’t know how.”

“I would have understood.”

The more he apologised, the more at ease she seemed. It was as though he was pardoning her, assuring her that being here would not dishonour her sister’s memory. She looked at him like she was seeing his face in whole for the first time; not just in pieces.

A voice came to him, Torin this time, lecturing him that this was a foolish pursuit; that he would still have to make his announcement of his betrothal to Levana. But it was a small heartache he didn’t dwell on it. Because something else Torin had once said came to him.

“Perhaps you’ll meet a girl at the festival. Have a whirlwind romance, a happily ever after, and have no more worries for the rest of your days.”

Cinder tied her fingers in the hair at his neck. She was here. Reasons she had rejected him didn’t matter now. He liked her. She liked him. There were no other reasons needed.

Somehow, ludicrously, Cinder being here meant everything.

As long as Cinder was around, he knew that the Kai locked away inside of him would stay alive. And, one day, return.

Fighting, and loving.

Notes

…And then everything crashes and burns spectacularly :D 

Writing Kai at this stage is so interesting because his life is falling to pieces and yet he is so effortlessly flirty with Cinder, making it appear that he's coping. Then you get to his povs and he is not coping, and when you read 'The Mechanic' you see how he wants to sound "witty" to impress her. He was holding in all those emotions so he could flirt effectively lol. Anyways I recommend reading these scenes in the actual book because I didn't include all the dialogue, just snippets to highlight Kai's perspective.

I am most indebted to @spherical-empirical for the line, "I can practically see you rolling your eyes from here, but hear me out." It was from a post from a long time ago, but I started this fic a long time ago. I am VERY happy that this is finished after TWO YEARS of it sitting in my drafts.

@cindersassasin @hayleblackburn @spherical-empirical @salt-warrior @just2bubbly @gingerale2017 @icarusignite @kaider-is-my-otp @slmkaider @luna-maximoff-22 @cosmicnovaflare @kaixiety @snozkat @mirrorballsss @skinwitch18 @vincentvangothic @bakergirl13 @wassupnye @linh-cindy

[kedsandtubesocks]

*stomps my little foot* I WANNA HEAR ABOUT HUSBAND JAVI P AND WHY HE MAKES THE BEST HUSBAND

ERI!!! ITS BECAUSE HE IS AND WE DESERVE TO DISCUSS IT!!

There’s a reason why he is tied for first in my heart against Din as my favorite pedro boy and it’s because he’s just…so good and is peak husband material and I am here to proclaim it with my entire heart!!

So I’ve been holding onto this ask because the perfect timing of you asking about husband Javi P even before I event sent you my one shot that includes husband Javi P??? Like?? We are on an IMMACULATE WAVELENGTH I SWEAR!!!

Also because I feel so dang serious about this I am going to full depth like it’s one of my dissertation papers and I apologize SO MUCH for how long this got lmaooo so…let’s get into it lol

(yes I’m using a pic of Pedro at the golden globes but I wanted to start off with this off because this look…this is Javi on his wedding day. I don’t know why but I feel it in my soul)

In Defense of Husband Javier Peña

When that lovely poll was making its rounds around on which Pedro boy has the biggest want for a housewife I had to vote for him… I just had to. And yeah it might be because I’m a Javi Girl at heart but it really is because I feel Javi would just be the most lovesick man in the world knowing he’s married, knowing he’s someone’s husband. He would treasure and cherish his spouse with his very last breath.

I imagine the possible base of how he views marriage comes from seeing his parents. Knowing how much love he witnessed built between them I feel is what Javi strives to have. But, he possibly just believes he doesn’t deserve that because he views himself as this unworthy corrupt guy who’s done bad things.

And while yes he’s made mistakes that doesn’t make him bad or evil or even a bad husband!!

When he rescues Helena the first thing he does is take off his vest to cover her. He’s tender and speaks to her with such compassion. Then later when they rescue Christina, there’s this moment when he touches her arm and then pulls her closer in the helicopter to almost protect her that just says so much!

He’s comforting and tender, probably even more than he lets on! Heck there’s even that small moment during that tense scene at the checkpoint with los pepes when he fondly pats Hugo Jr’s cheek in a reassuring manner. There’s just so many moments we see how soft he is!

So when you apply to the idea of him as a husband, can you imagine just how generous and wonderfully tender he’d be?

He probably couldn’t keep his hands off you!!! From playful winks (which we see him do so many times and they make my heart flutter every damn time) to simply wanting you in his arms, he’s a physical touch as a love language husband for sure.

Yeah he might miss a few anniversary dates or might forget to pick up a some items from the grocery store but he would extraordinarily caring and tender. And he’d be your rock in the storm and I stand by this.

(And yes I’m going to put this under a read more because I just…I have so many thoughts on this)

He’s seen so much, yet stays so kind. He would be by your side through thick and thin because that’s the type of man he is.

Alongside that, i feel having that unwavering loyal love again comes from his parents. I sadly imagine his mom passed away from an illness. And with that in mind, for Javi to see his dad stay by his mama’s side even if it got bad…I believe that became the cornerstone of how he views not just a marriage but a true deep kind of love.

He would be the exact same way with his spouse.

For better or for worse just as those vows say. And even if they didn’t Javi would just be there for you because that’s love, that’s what it is at its purest form for him.

Then I think about this one line Murphy says when Javi is about to leave back to the states. I can’t quote it exactly but it’s along the lines of “no American had given more” than Javi. He was there from the start, stayed in when it got bad and even showed how much he was willing to give of himself to fight. I know this can be argued of him being a possible workaholic but instead I think it goes back to my theory that he’s just truly so loyal.

He’s unwavering and sticks with it because that’s the type of man he is, that’s the type of husband he would be. He’s the type of husband who holds you as long as you need to when you cry, who would probably move heaven and hell for you because you’re it for him.

Javi was almost someone’s husband (which is a whole other tangent I could get on) and he probably might think maybe that time for him has passed. Or maybe he thinks because he’s done so much shit, seen so much, Javier again views himself as damaged goods who just isn’t husband material.

There’s that moment when he looks at Lorraine and her family that he pauses. He stares at them for just a second but it’s enough that we see him take this moment. I know it can be argued that it’s him just taking in the path Lorraine’s life has taken, but to me the look in his eyes is one of longing. Like he’s staring at something just out of his reach or that he’s not meant to have.

With that yearning, Javi seems like the type longing to be with someone who says yes Javier I pick you every time, I will stand by your side and be with you through it all the same way you would be for me, I see you, your scars, the darkness you hold onto, and your pure golden heart that means well and I will love you…

So when he finds you, realizes he’s gets to have that, gets to be your husband - he’s yours for life!!!! He would just get so overwhelmed at finally having that true companionship.

Yeah he would be grumpy and maybe tease you from time to time but he would be the husband who drives at midnight to go pick you up fries and a shake because you mentioned you had the munchies. He would face any of your demons with you by your side.

He’s the man who wears his wedding ring proud and probably sees you as his best friend. He’s loyal, kind, bit grumpy but tender with the biggest heart and he would hold your hand even when the sky is falling.

Just…Husband Javier Peña forever

[possible-eldritch-catboy]

lmfao thinking on the mbti stuff it's really fuckin funny cause like,, ppl wanna insist intp and infp are practically functional opposites, because one consults a logical framework however personal to make decisions, weighing options and their possible consequences, while infp consults personal thoughts feelings and emotions to form a moral and emotionally gratifying decision. and sure!! on paper these sound very functionally different. in practice for me tho?? less so!! bc ofc I try to make the most logical decision, but are possible thoughts, feelings, and moral interpretations completely unworthy of consideration when making a logical decision?? no. very much the opposite.

(full rant and reasoning under the cut here :3)

because neurochemistry begs to reason that feelings stem from biological necessities of some sort, and can therefore inform more personal decisions equally or even more reliably than some frameworks of "logic". to try to completely sterilize logic of all emotion is to deny the merit of biochemistry, and in deeply personal situations in which the consequences are less material and external than they are emotional and therefore physical, this is an exercise in futility at its finest. after all, in cases of toxic relationships, perhaps "logically" it would make sense to stay with a toxic partner, because on paper they seem to bring more good than bad.

perhaps they're talented with finances, have a well paying stable job, give frequent gifts and praise, and are loyal and don't keep secrets. but, perhaps by that same token, they're uncommunicative or cold in their mannerisms, they don't seem to adequately communicate care or tenderness, they have irksome habits that make it hard to live together, and perhaps they have a temper that makes them argumentative and unsympathetic.

by some frameworks of logic, perhaps you should stick it out to see if these troublesome feelings based issues can be resolved. however, with interpersonal relationships, these things are highly subjective to how this person makes you feel on a day to day basis. if you generally feel these issues are small and fixable, then by all means, sure. a toxic relationship has the potential to improve, sure. however, if you feel fundamentally as though your communication styles are incompatible and you don't feel loved the way you know you ought to feel loved in a relationship, feel respected the way you should be, and you don't feel as though communications can improve, then despite ample reason to stay, that's plenty adequate reason to leave.

even if it seems "crazy" or "illogical" to leave such a "good" partner, if you feel it isn't working, then it isn't working. you can't force it to. that, I feel, is the well roundedly logical answer. to consider feelings as a logical variable. not of course THE logical variable to decide all others, but one in many with its merits not unlike any other.

moral questions are the same. these are much more complex, as humans are only that, and feelings inform logic and legality (ESPECIALLY LEGALITY) much more than "cold, hard facts" types are often willing to admit, but that makes it much more important to consider all sides to a moral dilemma before decisive action is taken. harm reduction (punishment) and positive impact (rehabilitation/community care) are sometimes pitted against each other as opposite consequences of moral decisions, but a well roundedly logical solution (if one Can be reasonably found and enacted) should keep both solidly at the forefront of its decisive reasoning.

compromises should be made where necessary, and as many variables should be considered as possible, as humans are complex and societies are built on relationships, systems, and inherently personal goals and agendas, even and especially in groups and teams. to imply otherwise is naivety. to simplistically imply inherent selfishness and lack of morality on all ends is laziness. humans are complex creatures, and the only sort of logic that exists to us is also something invented, something felt as much as it can be observed (for there is no truly unbiased observation; everyone can only see from their own individual perspective).

for these reasons, I feel to be a true "thinking" type, one absolutely must be wary of emotion, yes, as it is subject to subconscious, environmental, and chemical sway, but one must absolutely never disregard emotion entirely. One cannot cleanly compartmentalize all of human experience into "emotional" and "logical", because they will always, always feed into one another. there is logical merit in tenderness, in kindness, in working towards a world in which man thrives, logic and emotion intertwined in symbiotic harmony. there is logical merit in art, expression, and feeling. to imply otherwise is baselessly cruel, and cruelty, as one may observe interpersonally and historically, is a cheap and self destructive means to survival that ultimately hurts the whole and therefore hurts the individual.

there is no human damage that can be isolated in its entirety. there is no war that is waged purely by the few and felt only by the few. there is no suffering of the many that will not threaten the few. there is no society built on violence and fear that does not eventually fall. nothing is built to last forever, but terror least of all.

thx for coming to my ted talk this has been your local intp who's incREDIBLY HORRENDOUSLY sick both of "feelings are always logical and right" and "logic is always unfeeling and therefore 'good' " pathways of thinking. please for the love of FUCK get it together. literally. get your fragmented theoretic boondoggling and put it all together. please stop trying to completely separate out and reject parts of the human experience PLEASE INTEGRATE IT ALL INTO ONE COMPREHENSIVE WORLD VIEW PLS

[disneymbti]

The Duncan parents and PJ Gabe and Toby from Good Luck Charlie

Hi there, sweetie! I really hope you like this a lot!

Bob Duncan's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ISFJ [The Defender]

ISFJ types need time alone to re-energize. They are self-sufficient and independent thinkers.

They are very observant and prefer to focus on the details of every situation. They listen to and follow past experience and present understandings.

Defenders prioritize the emotional needs of others. They make decisions based on what feels right, rather than what might make most logical sense.

They also prefer structure and organization, tending to follow rules and processes to an end goal. They are responsible and have a strong work ethic.

Big Three: Cancer Sun, Libra Moon and Taurus Rising

Cancer Sun: Ruled by the Moon, Cancers are emotionally mature, intuitive, sensitive, and artistic. They are guided by their tender, loving, and protective hearts.

Libra Moon: Moon in Libra is makes for a relationship-oriented individual. They may base their decisions upon how they are viewed by others. 

Taurus Rising: Those with Taurus risings exude grace and sophistication, and handle business with a sweet disposition.

Enneagram Type: 9w8 [The Advisor]

Basic Fear: Nine wing eights are afraid of being separated from the world. They avoid this by preventing conflict; however, their eight wing also encourages them to be assertive, which can create an internal tension.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to be internally balanced. They seek to be at peace with themselves and others.

Advisors defend themselves by numbing their negative emotions through routine and repetitive patterns. They avoid facing their own internal struggles by distracting themselves in this way.

Amy Duncan's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ESFP [The Entertainer]

ESFPs are very outgoing and lively people. They thrive in groups and prefer not to spend too much time alone.

They are very observant, focusing closely on the details rather than the grand scheme. They think in terms of the present.

Entertainers tend to prioritize emotion when making decisions, concerning themselves more with how their decisions will affect others. They are empathetic and diplomatic.

They rely more on opportunity than rigid scheduling. They are spontaneous and playful people, with a passion for finding new adventures.

Big Three: Leo Sun, Aries Moon and Cancer Rising

Leo Sun: The Sun rules the sign Leo, which is why Leo Suns all about ego, will, and character. They’re known to be creative, playful, and bold.

Aries Moon: Lunar Aries are known to be emotionally responsive and impulsive at times, as they lead with fiery passions over than logic or reason.

Cancer Rising: Cancer ascendants tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves and take care of those they love.

Enneagram Type: 3w2 [The Enchanter]

Basic Fear: Enneagram type three wing twos are afraid of failing and being unworthy of love. They avoid this by setting and accomplishing goals, in order to feel successful and worthy.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to be admired and accepted. They seek value through accomplishment, which may push them deeper into their work.

Enchanters tend to adjust their persona to their audience, in order to feel as though they are easily liked, which may lead to playing a character rather than being themselves.

PJ Duncan's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ENFP [The Campaigner]

ENFP types are generally very outgoing and lively, preferring to go out rather than stay in. They love conversing with other people and generally process their thoughts externally.

They are great problem solvers and enjoy figuring out how everything is connected. They tend to focus more on the future than the present.

Campaigners like to keep the peace and avoid conflict. They care more about subjective principles than logic and fact. 

They are flexible and spontaneous, preferring to keep their options open. They dislike routines, schedules, and strict rules.

Big Three: Pisces Sun, Cancer Moon and Leo Rising

Pisces Sun: The planetary ruler for Pisces is Jupiter and Neptune, which gives Pisces Suns a sentimental, intuitive, imaginative, and dreamy nature. 

Cancer Moon: The emotions of Cancer Moons have no limits, restraints, or depths. This is a cosmic placement that often leads to sweetness, kindness, emotional awareness and responsibility. 

Leo Rising: Leo ascendants bask in the glow of sunlight, radiating positivity and charm. Performers through and through, those with this friendly, radiant, and outgoing placement exude confidence and strength.

Enneagram Type: 7w6 [The Pathfinder]

Basic Fear: Sevens with a six wing have a deeply-rooted fear of missing out. They want to be trustworthy and honor commitments, but they also want to leave room to allow for last-minute opportunities.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to feel fulfilled and happy. They express this by searching for joy in every small thing that comes their way.

Pathfinders defend themselves by rationalizing away negative feelings. They unconsciously convince themselves that they are happy, even when they are not.

Gabe's Duncan's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ENTP [The Debater]

As extroverts, ENTP types have higher levels of energy and love being around other people. They tend to avoid being alone.

They are more interested in the big picture than on specifics and details. They love solving complex problems and have a great sense of intuition. 

Debaters make decisions based on logic. They care less about what makes people happy and more about what’s right.

They dislike schedules and routine, preferring to keep their options open. They love surprise experiences and challenge the need for rules and regulations.

Big Three: Gemini Sun, Sagittarius Moon and Aries Rising

Gemini Sun: Geminis are chatty and talkative, priding themselves on being in-the-know when it comes to news and gossip. Their dualistic nature allows them to see situations from a number of perspectives.

Sagittarius Moon: The Moon is considered to be lucky in Sagittarius, as it brings excitement, adventure, and abundance. However, those with Sagittarius Moons can be defensive at times.

Aries Rising: Aries ascendants are known as the go-getters of the zodiac. They don’t let anything stand in their way of achieving their personal goals.

Enneagram Type: 7w8 [The Opportunist]

Basic Fear: Seven with an eight wing fear being deprived. They want to pursue new opportunities and avoid being controlled by schedules.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to content and satisfied. They love experiencing the world by travelling and going to parties.

Opportunists defend themselves by justifying others’ negative actions and rationalizing away bad feelings.

Toby Duncan's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ENTJ [The Commander]

As ENTJs, Commanders are talkative, high energy, and thrive around people. They seek action and tend to involve themselves in events. They prefer not to spend too much time alone.

They focus more on the big picture than on tiny details—they’re interested in how everything connects together and trust their internal thought process more than they trust past experience.

ENTJs use logic rather than emotion in decision making. They tend to follow what makes sense, rather than what feels right.

They are structured, organized, like to plan ahead and know what’s going to happen. They appreciate rules, processes, and schedules.

Big Three: Cancer Sun, Gemini Moon and Sagittarius Rising

Cancer Sun: Ruled by the Moon, Cancers are emotionally mature, intuitive, sensitive, and artistic. They are guided by their tender, loving, and protective hearts.

Gemini Moon: Ruled by winged messenger, Mercury, Gemini Moons enjoy discussing their complex feelings with others in order to gain a mindful and clear emotional perspective.

Sagittarius Rising: Sagittarius risings are jovial, optimistic, and full of energy. They sparkle with confidence, and you can't help but sparkle back when you're around them.

Enneagram Type: 8w7 [The Nonconformist]

Basic Fear: Eight with a seven wing fear being controlled by others. They dislike authority and prefer to work alone.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to remain in control of their own lives. They also want other people to be free, and are often advocates for those less able.

Nonconformists defend themselves by denying vulnerability. They don’t want to appear weak and therefore avoid situations that may leave them exposed or defenseless.

[ruki--mukami]

Tw: mentions of sexual assault, childhood sexual assault, kinda victim blaming? Idk and self harm

Ruki finds his lover sitting by the wall on their bed, their arms are warped tightly around their knees which are pulled up to their chest, their eyes are half lidded but they look as dead as they can be their nails are digging deep into their skin, and on their other hand, they're holding a sharp pencil, and their thighs are covered in scratches.

When asked what's wrong, they just start bawling and explaining everything.

From how their cousin forced them to watch erotic content, strip and then probably was gonna rape them when they were only 9,how their grandmother always gropes them everywhere and degrades them and threatens to rape them to how, just a few weeks ago, they got assault on their way back from school from a man that creepily rubbed their chest.

And then, they spill more terrifying things. About how their parent protected that cousin, how the parent just laughed when they were getting assaulted and threatened like that, how the parent BLAMED THEM for not making a scene in front of people.

They're troubled, soul rotten from inside and out, no smile on their face, just want hand grasping a pencil, and thighs turned into scratched up messes.

"I had no idea so many others touched you without my knowledge, lesser still denied such deplorable activities even happened when you tried your utmost to express yourself. Livestock... Whoever did this to you, surely I will make them pay. Even those who shoot you a lecherous glance, their heads will be rolling when I'm around. It's for this reason that I'll never allow you to leave my sight again."

Snatching the sharpened writing utensil from their hands, Ruki looked down at his lover's tarnished and marred body, sustaining pain from a source outside his fangs and even the pencil he just confiscated. An immense wave of concern drowned his visage as he threaded their fingers with his, urging them to release their knees or at least reciprocate his gaze. The other hand stroked their moistened cheek as gently as possible, shouldering the tears that fell.

"No one should have to suffer something this awful from such a young age," he said as he lightly embraced his beloved. "None of this is your fault whatsoever. If anything, the ones I will never forgive are your perpetrators, the ones who laughed it off, and the ones who will continue to harass you should I be absent from your side—which shall never happen again. From here forward, I'll watch over you. Ha, isn't that ironic...? An impure Vampire like myself, pretending to be some kind of guardian angel. It doesn't suit me one iota, but even so, since it's within my power as a demon, I will put those recreants where they belong. Six feet under, struggling for dear life in their graves. That's what people like them deserve for what they've done."

The comforting pats he administered along their spine differed drastically from any of the unwanted touches his lover once coped with, showing no signs of anything less than chaste as Ruki showed genuine, tender care. Rather than a hug between lovers, as they were, he embraced them as a protector. As a supporter and a nonpareil in the face of those who would dare to subject children and adults alike to trauma easily etched into the mind akin to his own from eons ago.

"You can rely on me when I say that I'll ensure the past won't repeat itself. So, don't shed your tears over those pathetic curs, your 'family' included. No, they can hardly be called your family if they treat you like the opposite; a stranger unworthy of their sympathy. When we're together, I want you to tell me immediately if you feel unsafe. Shout my name, call for my help, do whatever you can—even if the person seems leagues stronger and domineering, I'll eviscerate them. As for your relatives... I should like to speak with them about how neglecting one's child and grandchild will someday be their undoing. If they forsake you one more time, then I won't hesitate to steal you away myself and keep you somewhere you'll never be hurt again. Because I love you with all of my heart, Livestock. And those who hurt the one I love should just perish."

[whileiamdying]

Jane’s World

How Jane Austen has remained a phenomenon for more than two centuries.

By Martin Amis December 31, 1995

Photograph from BBC / Album

Currently, it seems, Jane Austen is hotter than Quentin Tarantino. But before we try to establish what the Austen phenomenon is, let us first establish what it is not. About eighteen months ago, I went to see “Four Weddings and a Funeral” at a North London cineplex. Very soon I was filled with a yearning to be doing something else (standing at a bus stop in the rain, for example); and under normal circumstances I would have walked out after ten or fifteen minutes. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Beside me sat Salman Rushdie. For various reasons—various security reasons—we had to stay. Thus the Ayatollah Khomeini had condemned me to sit through “Four Weddings and a Funeral”; and no Iranian torturer could have elicited a greater variety of winces and flinches, of pleadings and whimperings. One was obliged to submit, and absorb a few social lessons, in agonizing surroundings. It felt like a reversal of the Charles Addams cartoon: I sat there, thoroughly aghast, while everyone about me (save the author of “The Satanic Verses”) giggled and gurgled, hugging themselves with the deliciousness of it all. The only good bit was when you realized that the titular funeral was going to feature Simon Callow. I clenched my fist and said yes. At least one of them was going to die.

“Well,” I said, when it was over, “that was bottomlessly horrible. Why is it so popular?”

“Because,” said Salman, “the world has bad taste. Didn’t you know that?”

Still, bad taste doesn’t quite cover it. I can see that the upper classes might enjoy watching the upper classes portrayed with such whimsical fondness. But why should it appeal to four hundred berks from Hendon? In any postwar decade other than the present one, “Four Weddings” would have provoked nothing but incredulous disgust. A sixties audience would have wrecked the cinema. Yet now it seems that the old resentments have evaporated, and “the million,” as Hamlet called them, feel free to root for the congenital millionaires. They can lapse into a forgetful toadyism, and abase themselves before their historical oppressors. Class is harmless, class is cute; class is even felt to be classy. “Four Weddings” is of course deeply “sentimental” in the colloquial sense: it displays false and unworthy tenderness. But it is also sentimental in the literary sense: an exhausted form has been speciously revived. Houses, parties, house parties, amorous vicissitudes in opulent drawing rooms and landscaped gardens, do’s and don’ts, “p”s and “q”s, old money and unlimited leisure. To get in the mood for “Four Weddings,” imagine you are the Reverend Collins on laughing gas. It is Jane Austen, in a vile new outfit.

“Persuasion” has recently been filmed, and so has “Sense and Sensibility,” and there are three versions of “Emma” in the works (not to mention “Clueless”), and no doubt someone will soon knock off the amiably mock-Gothic “Northanger Abbey,” and someone else will find the nerve to tackle the problematic austerities of “Mansfield Park,” and that will be that. For “Pride and Prejudice” has been most comprehensively taken care of, in the BBC’s six-part, nine-and-a-half-million-dollar serial, which has been emptying the streets of England every Sunday night (and which will arrive on American screens on January 15th). Austen fever, or more particularly Darcymania, is upon us. Features editors have been reduced to commissioning interviews with lorry drivers and insulation engineers who happen to be called Darcy; tourist pilgrimages to Jane Austen’s house (in Chawton, Hants) were up about two hundred and fifty per cent in October, and sales of Austen tote bags, Austen crockery, Austen sweatshirts, Austen tea towels, and Austen aprons were comparably brisk; while you’re listening to “The Jane Austen Music Compact Disc” (stuff she might have heard or played), you can rustle something up from “The Jane Austen Cookbook” (all ingredients have been modernized); and so on. Much of this enthusiasm is, of course, collateral enthusiasm, or Heritage enthusiasm: a blend of disembodied snobbery and vague postimperial tristesse. No doubt, too, many of the serial’s ten million viewers watched it in the same spirit as they watched “Four Weddings”—contentedly stupefied by all the eccentricity and luxe. But such wastage is inevitable, and even appropriate. “Sense and Sensibility” and “Persuasion” play at the art houses. “Pride and Prejudice” plays in your living room; and—true to the book—it comes at you with a broad embrace.

Some may be funnier than others, but all Jane Austen’s novels are classical comedies: they are about young couples finding their way toward a festive conclusion, namely marriage. Furthermore, all Jane Austen’s comedies are structurally the same comedy. There is a Heroine, there is a Hero, and there is an Obstacle. The Obstacle is always money (not class—Mrs. Bennet’s origins are in “trade,” but so are Mr. Bingley’s). With the exception of Emma Woodhouse, all the Heroines are penniless and have no dependable prospect other than comfortless spinsterhood. As the Hero heaves into view, he will appear to be dogged by a female Rival—schemer, heiress, or vamp. The Heroine, for her part, will be distracted, tempted, or merely pestered by a counterfeit hero, a Foil—seducer, opportunist, or fop. The Foil can be richer than the Hero (“Persuasion,” “Mansfield Park”) and, on the face of it, much better fun (“Mansfield Park”). The Hero can also be uglier than the Foil. In her adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility” (which has a double Heroine), Emma Thompson does what she can to spruce up Colonel Brandon—the part is given to Alan Rickman—but the novel makes it plain that he is a pitiable old wreck of thirty-five. Brandon represents authorial punishment for Marianne’s unrestrained infatuation with her Foil, John Willoughby (played in the film by the charmlessly handsome Greg Wise). The flaws of the Foil will highlight the Hero’s much solider merits. While the Heroines have foibles, the Heroes are all paragons. Two of them—Henry Tilney and Edmund Bertram—are vicars.

In “Pride and Prejudice,” Austen turned up the dial that controls the temperature of comedy, giving it some of the fever of what we would now call romance. Both Rival and Foil are almost melodramatically garish figures: the self-woundingly feline Caroline Bingley, the debauched and self-pitying George Wickham. They create logistical difficulties, but neither is capable of mounting the slightest threat to the central attraction. For Elizabeth Bennet is the most frictionlessly adorable Heroine in the corpus—by some distance. And, as for the Hero, well, Miss Austen, for once in her short life, held nothing back: tall, dark, handsome, brooding, clever, noble, and uninhibitedly rich. He has a vast estate, a house in town, a “clear” ten thousand per annum. His sister Georgiana has thirty thousand pounds—whereas Elizabeth’s dowry amounts to about a quid a week. No reader can resist the brazen wishfulness of “Pride and Prejudice,” but it is clear from internal evidence alone that Austen never fully forgave herself for it. “Mansfield Park” was her—and our—penance. As her own prospects weakened, dreams of romance paled into the modest hope for respectability. “Persuasion” was her poem to the second chance. And then came death.

This autumn, as the new serial got into its stride, distressed viewers rang up the BBC in tears, pleading for the assurance that fate would smile on the star-crossed pair and all would yet be well. I was not among these callers, but I sympathized. And I quite understood why the “Pride and Prejudice” video, released midway through the run, sold out in two hours. When I was introduced to the novel, at the age of fourteen, I read twenty pages and then besieged my stepmother’s study until she told me what I needed to know. I needed to know that Darcy married Elizabeth. (I needed to know that Bingley married Jane.) I needed this information as badly as I had ever needed anything. “Pride and Prejudice” suckers you. Amazingly—and, I believe, uniquely—it goes on suckering you. Even now, as I open the book, I feel the same panic of unsatisfied expectation, despite five or six rereadings. How can this be, when the genre itself guarantees consummation? The simple answer is that the lovers really are made for each other—by their creator. They are constructed for each other: interlocked for wedlock.

Andrew Davies, who adapted the novel for television, was shrewd enough to regard his function as one of artistic midwifery—to get the thing out of the page and onto the screen in as undamaged a state as possible. After all, he had before him the example of the Olivier-Garson version of 1940 (based on a script by Aldous Huxley, among others): cold proof that any tampering will reduce the original to emollient inconsequentiality. Huxley’s reading is disastrously winsome; even Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a good egg. Still, the adapter has to do what the adapter has to do. The pious and vigilant Janeite looks on, ever ready to be scandalized by the merest breach of decorum.

Very early on, we see Elizabeth in the bedroom she shares with Jane, saying, “If I could love a man who would love me enough to take me for a mere fifty pounds a year, I should be very well pleased.” This puts us in the financial picture (and we will soon be seeing Mr. Bennet sighing over his account book); but it commits Elizabeth to a predisposed mooniness quite at odds with her defiant stoicism. Later, when the scandal of Lydia’s elopement breaks, and Darcy gauntly takes his leave of Elizabeth in the inn near Pemberley, Austen writes, “Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire.” This translates as a one-line soliloquy: “I shall never see him again.” Austen’s lines show a brave face in adversity, Davies’ an admission of a love Elizabeth does not yet feel. Each shifted brick threatens the whole building.

TV is TV, and TV Man wants visual equivalents for every “it” and “the.” And the visual is always literal, funnily enough. Any protracted passage of background explication is accorded a lavish collage. Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth, with its revelations about Wickham’s character, inspires a scene set in Cambridge: Darcy in his gown and mortarboard, striding through a colonnade, mounting the stairs—and surprising the smirking Wickham with a half-clad scullery maid on his lap. We see Lydia and Wickham’s midnight flit (la, how they cuddle in the carriage!), we see Darcy pacing the festering streets of London in search of them, and we see the runaways in their bedroom at the rude tavern. Elizabeth and Darcy don’t just think about each other, they have hallucinations about each other. They’ve got it that bad.

Davies’ more minor interpolations are usually pretty deft and sometimes downright felicitous. But every Janeite is like the Princess and the Pea. Wickham doesn’t say that Darcy “refused point blank” (though he might have done—the epithet is sufficiently elderly). Elizabeth would never say (skeptically), “Astonish me!” Even Lydia would not wonderingly repeat the (invented) line, “A whole campful of soldiers. . . .” Nor would she say, “We shall have some laughs.” When Elizabeth refuses Darcy’s first offer of marriage, he notes that she spurns him “with so little effort at civility,” whereas the book has the clearly superior “so little endeavour at civility.” A few pages earlier, a nifty subjunctive is lost when “I expected at least that the pigs were got into the garden” becomes “the pigs had got into the garden.” I could go on. But by now I feel I am trespassing on the reader’s patience. Then again, I would argue that these tiny precisions, these niceties, are the atoms that constitute Jane Austen’s universe. And after a long immersion in her work, I find that her thought rhythms entirely invade my own. Normal social intercourse becomes increasingly strained. People look at me oddly. If, for example, the editor had called, to inquire after the progress of the present piece, I would have been like to reply, “Nay, Madam, I find I get on excessively ill. I need more time alone with Jane. May I extort, then, the indulgence of a further se’nnight?”

In David Lodge’s novel “Changing Places,” a tweedy little British academic goes to teach at Euphoric State University, on the West Coast, while a big brash American academic goes to teach at a rain-sodden redbrick called Rummidge. The American, Morris Zapp, wearily begins his seminar:

“What are you bursting to discuss this morning?” “Jane Austen,” mumbled the boy with the beard. . . . “Oh yeah. What was the topic?” “I’ve done it on Jane Austen’s moral awareness.” “That doesn’t sound like my style.” “I couldn’t understand the title you gave me, Professor Zapp.” “Eros and Agape in the later novels, wasn’t it? What was the problem?” The student hung his head.

The immediate joke here is the contrast in critical styles: the British still locked in the ethical battlefields patrolled by F. R. Leavis, the Americans soaring off into the architectonics of myth and structure. But Lodge’s deeper point is that Jane Austen is weirdly capable of keeping everybody busy. The moralists, the Eros-and-Agape people, the Marxists, the Freudians, the Jungians, the semioticians, the deconstructors—all find an adventure playground in six samey novels about middle-class provincials. And for every generation of critics, and readers, her fiction effortlessly renews itself.

Each age will bring its peculiar emphasis, and in the current Austen festival our own anxieties stand fully revealed. We like to wallow in the accents and accoutrements of Jane’s world, but our response is predominantly sombre. We notice, above all, the constriction of female opportunity: how brief was their nubility, and yet how slowly and deadeningly time passed within it. We notice how plentiful were the occasions for inflicting social pain, and how interested the powerful were in this infliction. We see how little the powerless had to use against those who might hate them. We wonder who on earth will marry the poor girls. Poor men can’t. And rich men can’t. So who can? We fret and writhe at the physical confinement (how desperate these filmmakers are to get their characters out-of-doors). Of all virtues Jane Austen valued “candour”; but candor, as we understand it, has no arena in which to exercise itself. One honest exchange between Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth and “Persuasion” disappears. We long to give them our pleasures. We wonder at their self-repression. And we are terrified by their circumambient boredom.

The BBC’s new serial has been touted in the press as revealing the latent “sensuality” of Jane Austen’s imagination; naturally it reveals much more about the blatant sensuality of our own. Austen, after all, is notoriously cerebral—a resolute niggard in her descriptive dealings with food, clothes, animals, children, weather, and landscape. But we in the nineties will not have it so. Thus at the outset, on our televisions, Darcy and Bingley thunder toward Netherfield Park on their snorting horses, while Elizabeth enjoys a hearty tramp on a nearby hillside. Later, climbing from the bath, Darcy looks out of the window and sees Elizabeth romping with a dog. Lydia is surprised half-clad by Mr. Collins—and gigglingly confronts him with her cleavage. In the throes of his imprudent passion for Elizabeth, Darcy takes up fencing. “I shall conquer this,” he mutters. “I shall.” Returning to Pemberley, unshaven, with the hot horse between his thighs, he dismounts and impetuously plunges into a pond. Here, clearly, we are moving away from Jane Austen, toward D. H. Lawrence—and Ken Russell. “There is a lot of pent-up sexuality in Austen’s work,” Davies has said, “and I have let it out.” But why stop there? Why not give her some Vitamin C and a backrub? Austen’s characters resist the ministrations of the therapy age. As literary creations, they thrive on their inhibition. It is the source of all their thwarted energy.

Now for the performances, which are a testimony to phenomenal strength in depth and to the accuracy and inconspicuousness of Simon Langton’s direction. Jennifer Ehle (pronounced “Ely”) is not quite the perfect Elizabeth, for such a creature could not exist in nature; Elizabeth, simply, is Jane Austen with looks, and such a creature could never have created Elizabeth. Ehle has the spirit and the warmth; she has a smile of almost orgasmic sweetness; she contrives to look voluptuous and vulnerable in the egg-cozy maternity outfits that “authenticity” has clothed her in; and she has the eyes; but she cannot quite inhabit the surrogate intelligence. Colin Firth is an insidiously persuasive Darcy, as he makes his journey from probity to right feeling. To know her heart, all Elizabeth needs is the facts before her. Darcy has to complete two centuries of evolution. The ensemble players are led by Alison Steadman. Some dull dogs have found her Mrs. Bennet too broad, too Dickensian, but in fact she establishes a miraculous equipoise between bitterness and boiling vulgarity (and this balance is sustained by the memory of her physical allure). Susannah Harker makes a languid, comfortably ponderous Jane; Julia Sawalha gives us Lydia’s “high animal spirits”; David Bamber is a marvellously contorted and masochistic Mr. Collins; and Anna Chancellor locates an unexpected pathos behind Caroline Bingley’s expert barbs. The one important failure is Mr. Bennet. Benjamin Whitrow’s line readings are thoughtful and confident, but he is too quick to take refuge in wryness and twinkle. The most cynical character in all Jane Austen, Mr. Bennet is the dark backing behind the bright mirror. He, too, is very close to his creator, and Jane Austen feared his weakness in herself. Mr. Bennet makes sport with his own despair.

The sensualism imported by Davies and Langton brings one unarguable gain: all those creamy, dreamy scenes in the bedroom shared by Elizabeth and Jane, with the candles lit and the hair down, make us feel the crucial heaviness of their sisterly love. We are reminded that the emotional argument of the book is intimately bound up with this relationship; and we feel its weight without realizing why it weighs so much. Watching Marianne’s near-death scene (lovesickness, fever) in “Sense and Sensibility,” I wondered why I was so pierced, and so desolated, when Elinor addresses her sister as, simply, “my dearest.” We are moved because the endearment is literally true—and may well remain true, for life. For the unmarried, no reconfiguration awaits the pattern of their love; their nearest are their dearest, and that is the end of it. In “Persuasion,” we sense Anne Elliot’s further privation as she probes for warmth in the humorless solipsism of her sister Mary. And we naïvely console ourselves that Jane Austen, whatever else she lacked, at least had Cassandra.

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” had something to be said for it; as a result of one typically embarrassing scene, an opportunist edition of ten Auden poems climbed into the best-seller lists. This book was called “Tell Me the Truth About Love” and had a photograph of Hugh Grant on its cover (and Grant, incidentally, makes a creditable Edward Ferrars in “Sense and Sensibility”). On Jane Austen, Auden was great but wrong:

You could not shock her more than she shocks me; Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass. It makes me most uncomfortable to see An English spinster of the middle-class Describe the amorous effects of “brass,” Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety The economic basis of society.

We of the nineties would most certainly shock Jane Austen, with our vast array of slovenly and unexamined freedoms. Nonetheless, there is a suspicion of cant in Auden’s lines. “Brass” made Charlotte Lucas accept Mr. Collins (“disgracing herself” with a prudential marriage), but it didn’t make her love him. Elizabeth turned down Mr. Collins; and, with so little endeavor at civility, she turned down Mr. Darcy, too, with his ten thousand a year. Writing about Gray’s “Elegy,” William Empson said that the poem presents the condition of provincial oblivion as pathetic without putting you in a mood in which you would want to change it. But “change” is the business of satire. Satire is militant irony. Irony is more long-suffering. It doesn’t incite you to transform society; it strengthens you to tolerate it. Jane Austen was indeed an English spinster of the middle class. She died in unrelieved pain at the age of forty-one. On the other hand, she has now survived for nearly two hundred years. Her lovers are platonic lovers, but they form a multitude. ♦

Published in the print edition of the January 8, 1996, issue, with the headline “Jane’s World.”

[vxctorx]

❛  here , in our bed , you need only be yourself . i will love you regardless .  ❜ / from Zach!

@id1eyouth 𝙎𝙊𝙁𝙏 𝙒𝙊𝙍𝘿𝙎  &  𝙎𝙊𝙁𝙏 𝙎𝙆𝙄𝙉 

For Zachary to whisper those words whilst lying bare beneath him, his kind gaze overwhelming him with its affection, invites him to unveil his own vulnerabilities. Yet he cannot think of anything to say in return, for fear of getting interrupted by his swallowed tears, and so, with his heart brimming with tender emotions, he turns his head, and presses his lips to the hand which clings onto his shoulder as a show of gratitude.

There are a great many things he feels undeserving of, owing to his deception; the position and fortune that he is promised, the wife whom he cannot bring himself to love. However, in this moment, he does not feel an ounce of guilt which he bears towards Zachary, for all the other reasons behind his crushing sense of unworthiness.

[earlyspringtranscendence]

corin pushing past his own comfort zone to allow patrick the comfort of touch during a deeply traumatic time for p like literally im so fragile right now i can’t even begin to explain all of what’s going thru my mind. but i will.

like i think the biggest reason this mental image is so important to me is that andrew rowe’s writing with patrick (and mara tbh) has always held so much nuance & tenderness, like here’s this golden retriever type of boy who holds so much love and positivity in his heart, here’s this little nerd who loves the world he lives in & loves his friends so much theyre family (again, same goes for mara who im p sure was the one who said she needed family time while they were discussing blackstone banditry but it could very well have been sera which is still a win for me bc all these characters are so fantastic*) & he would do ANYTHING for coring — remember him being the first person to stand up to magnus for corin ?? remember corin being hit & his first thoughts are thank fuck patrick saw this? cause i dont think he’d have felt that way if it were anyone else, not even mara or sera or even derek or keras (though derek & keras ymmv bc they are still adults in this situation so theyd be far more likely to be able to do anything, but still theres the shame of it which i think would be more pronounced w them than it is w patrick bc he’s just such an unbelievably kind hearted character)

he doesn’t have the same sway over corin’s emotional intelligence as sera does but he still offers guidance by just being so emotionally intelligent himself, and anyway these are all his perfect traits but then not only that he’s also vulnerable (which is still a perfect trait but you get what i mean) and its not the first time he gets to be vulnerable but for the tables to have turned so severely that now its corin who has to be the brave, kindhearted one.... when patrick gets to be fr scared and hurt and young it’s by far one of the best parts of the books that happens outside of the story, because theyre ALL like that, bc in silence of unworthy gods im pretty sure theyre still only 18 (and you can tell the difference btwn an 18yr old who grew up in an awful family, an 18 yr old who grew up practically without a full family/her current family, an 18 yr old who had the best family but other circumstances denied her certain privileges and an 18 yr old whose home life idk jackshit about but i feel like it was probably pretty good bc a) how could u not adore patrick and b) well he came out bright as sunshine so you know, but anyway theres nuances in their maturity and patrick is by far the youngest but theyre ALL young & scared & inexperienced & going through far too much... i mean like read wobm keras is 21 in that im p sure and like ok yes he does go through a whole thing in book 1 fighting gods or whatever (overachiever) but his actual training is a piece of cake in comparison to what these guys go through)

anyway idk where that was going so nvm but its not only corin, it’s keras who .. ok to be honest i havent read more than the first book in 6ss which i need to get to bc i feel like im missing some context lately but keras clearly is in a very bad very stressed out place right now & mara telling him he needs to fucking COOL IT &&&& all of this being done through the medium of touch, which is such a taboo topic in AA because its from corin’s perspective and corin is you know. traumatised to hell and back.

its fucking magnificent. andrew rowe is so fucking good, not just for his worldbuilding but for his characters and his KINDNESS towards them, UGH !

* i was gonna go in depth on that but this is long enough so lemme just say im also loving sheridan this book i mean i loved them before but now that theyre like a more established type of love interest (.. sorta ??) it just makes me giggle bc there is no one for coring to end up with without me adoring the shit out of it. jin? im so down. cecily? i feel like itd be a little sad & they need to build to it but i LOVE cecily so sure !!! sheridan? literally i’d scream itd be so funny and SO good, LUTE ??? i mean. no ones even hinting at that happening but yes 100% yes.

plus i feel like corin has a crush on keras in that ‘thisman is 26 and beautiful & knows so much’ kind of way. anyway. AH !!! 

[phoeebsbuffay]

Imagine Vader falls in love with you. He’s been in angst after his recent encounter with Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. But hope rises when he’s with you. You are neither too good nor too bad. You, in fact, are the balance he needs. Part II.

Warnings: smut; drama, angst. No minors. Part III is coming because boy this is going long again 😂

Warnings 2: inspired by Ed Sheeran’s song “Give Me Love”.

Recommendations: but some parts of here go out of the scope of the song, so in case you want to listen as you read it, here are other inspirations for this fic: “Easy on Me” by Adele; “I Bet My Life” by Imagine Dragons; “Laura Palmer” by Bastille.

***

Vader’s POV.

He did try to refuse you. Oh, Maker. He really did. But an strange and unnamed sentiment ignited a spark that is now starting to burn his self hatred. As he dwells in the matter again, in the darkest hours, Vader’s thoughts are drifted to how everything used to be easier when he was plagued by the pain he tied himself to; unworthy of the light that seems to dissipate the eclipse he’s been merged to, he tried to push you away.

But the day you decided to leave… no, he would not accept that. How could he cling to you like that? The conflict messes with him and he is rewarded with your patience. Even though there were moments both of you argued, you stayed. He stayed.

To train you with the Force that is so absurdly strong in you, though? Hell, no.

“I’ll be making the same mistake again. You should do best and refuse me like Ahsoka did.”

You, however, didn’t take “no” as an answer. Which prompted him to say:

“Why, by the Maker, you don’t give up on me?!”

“Stop pushing me away and you’ll see why.” It was the answer you gave him.

He rolls in his bed, wide awake. Troubled. Hurt. Vader cannot sleep. He runs his hand over his hair, flashbacks of Padmé coming back to the back of his mind. As if she tells him that there’s still good in him.

Here comes the salty tears again when he remembers the pain he inflicted on Ahsoka by trying to corrupt her to dark side too. The women he loved, however in different circumstances and by different reasons, are lost to him.

But he is distracted of his own angst when he hears you sobbing. Vader closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. He can’t ignore this anymore… It’s been a year and these nightmares don’t cease to give you peace.

Vader doesn’t request your permission to open the door of your bedroom. He is, however, surprised to see you in such a delicate state—much the opposite of the sweet tempered woman he’s grown used to. His chest weights on him when seeing your hair a mess, your eyes red and you gripping the sheets of bed as you sweat.

“Y/N.” Vader takes a seat and gently searches for your hand. You look at him as if you finally notice he’s there.

“What… What are you doing here?” You are breathless and feel so exposed, so fragile that you feel like pushing him away.

A feeling Vader knows well.

Nonetheless, to your consternation, he stays. He does the exact opposite you want him to. Vader takes your hand and does not let go.

“What are you doing?” It’s all you can ask.

“I know how you feel.” Vader’s metallic hand moved to your shoulder, and for the first time your skin, ever so warm, is under his touch, providing a stark to the cold that emanates from his fingertips. He swallows, but forces to focus in what actually matters. “I detest see you like this.”

Vader knows his behavior is atypical, but when he pushed you against his chest at long last and strikes your long wavy hair, you don’t fight away his tenderness. You embrace it. It never occurred you that you need it.

“It never stops.” You mumble, eyes closed as he rubs your back.

“They haunt me too. I’m my own ghost most of the time, but if I thought I’d find comfort in the sleep it’s when I’m the most tormented.”

You raise your eyes. Vader knows the silent question there is in these irises: are you opening up with me? Are you finally letting me in?

He is inclined to say, yes. But neither speak for some time until you break the silence.

“I’m sorry, Skyguy. It never occurred to me you have your own demons to deal with.”

“Your naivety never ceases to amaze me, Y/nickname.”

And just like that, Anakin comes to surface. You can tell, even though you never rejected Vader. You take him as he is, and the male knows it. Before both of you are aware of this subtle change, you lay down in bed with his arm cuddling you.

Vader watches over you, reading every sentiment you always thought you could hid from him. Where he is the moon, you are his sun. You seem to evoke the best of him without efforts.

“What you perceive my naivety is, in fact, my ability in making you smile when you think I’m not seeing.”

He snorts at you, but a smile comes to his lips. The same smile that once enchanted Padmé so many years ago, that warmed Ahsoka’s stubbornness. As his thoughts drift to them and to Obi-Wan, his smile begins to falter. But you, of course, distract him from himself.

“Why so quiet? No scoff at me? Am I consoling myself tonight?”

You slightly turn at him so Vader sees you. When he does, his eyes linger at your face and how your hair falls in messy waves. Where there used to be tears, your old sweet disposition seems to take the usual place. He smiles, and a hand is there to caress your shoulder.

“You know what? I’m going to train you. But…”

He scoffs when you embrace him, making your hair fly to his face as you lie your head on his chest.

“I don’t do with “but”s, Skyguy.”

He closes his eyes briefly, finding finally the peace he needs when his arms hold you against him. And just like that both of you sleep with no nightmares for the first time in years…

***

Your POV.

“You have to concentrate, Y/N!” He exclaims at you, impatient as you knew he’d be to you. “Stop giggling about whatever it is that is making you giggle. What are you, four?”

“If you think vociferating at me will get you better results, my friend, the only one frustrated here is going to be you.” You snap back.

He heavily sighs, pacing impatiently from one side to other. Skyguy seems to suspect that you are doing this on purpose to get him back at light, but whether this is true or not he doesn’t find out. However, once he does quiet himself, your meditation works better.

He watches as you breathe in and breathe out.

“Concentrate”, you are told. “Close your eyes and be mindful of your thoughts. Empty them away and focus on your surroundings.”

You suddenly feel anxious. It feels as if a door is open and so many things come out there. Your heart races. Old memories rush back to you.

“You will be tempted by your fears. But don’t hold onto them.” He says, his eyes on you. “You can do it, Y/N.”

No word comes from your lips. Silence remains, but you feel his eyes transfixed in you. The trainings have been occurring for a while, but, as patient as you have been, you don’t think you’ve progressing.

Until you successfully manage to levitate from small to bigger rocks. Apples begin to fall from the trees, but even so the moment you hear the fruit start to fall, you hold it back. It’s not until you get tired of it, that every thing goes back to its place. And when you open your eyes, you see he’s very impressed with you.

“By the Maker, Y/nickname! I never thought…”

“…that I’d make it?” You scoff at him. “Thank you, Skyguy.”

“No. I would say…” And your heart seems to skip a beat when he smiles warmly at you. “….that I never thought I’d find someone as powerful as you.”

You glance at him, positively surprised. You beam delightedly, the blush in your cheek giving away what had there been always in your heart. And he knows. He gently strokes your cheek, though hesitates in making a further move.

“Come now. Get your saber.”

You are disappointed when he removes his hand out of you. Where there had been warmth, there is cold. You swallow.

“That is awesome!” You take the saber he gives you. “Let me see what color is this…”

“Hey!” He exclaims when you are not managing it in a correct manner. “This is not how you hold the lightsaber, unless you’d like to have a quick and painful death.”

“Oh.” You are quick to grip it properly. “How about it now?”

There is something close to amusement twinkling in SkyGuy’s yellow eyes that make you soft. You clear your throat. This is not the time to concentrate yourself in sentimentalism.

You watch as he takes his saber. In opposition to the blue that is yours, his is red.

“Hold it tight, Y/N. I will not make this easier for you.”

You know he means it, but you are ready. So you are going now to the next level of your training at long last.

***

Vader’s POV.

It’s a rainy and cold day today. Once more you two are confined to your household. Impatience starts to grow in both of you.

“We should head to other planet. I’ve heard one where it is not under the full dominance of the Sith.” He is told. “It’s been a year and half under little changes and in all honesty I feel like I’m under household arrest.”

Vader knows you are joking, but he doesn’t share your sense of humor. He has his particular reasons why he isn’t willing to leave this planet, much so to expose you to danger.

Before his silence, you walk where he is and say:

“We deserve better than living in fear, SkyGuy.” After some hesitation, you add: “You deserve peace.”

“I don’t.” He answers almost immediately. “There’s no place for me in this world after all I’ve done.”

Vader is instigated at your constant support and patience, so when he turns at you it’s what he sees in your eyes. Perhaps something else too but he’s scared to find. He’s always been.

You gently stroke his cheek and place his curly locks behind his ear. It’s a little difficult doing so because he’s taller than you, which makes him smirk when realizing the difference between you two.

“I’m not giving up on you… Anakin.” His heart races upon hearing you calling his name for the very first time. Vader would hiss at you, but he is unable to. His eyes close, enjoying your touch. “I never will. Not only because you provided me a life of liberty that was unfairly stolen from me, but because…”

You hesitate. He knows the words by reaching your mind. To say he’s not affected by your thoughts and sentiment is to incur in self lies and self sabotaging once again. Somewhere inside him he’s prepared to leave the past behind and get ready to rewrite his future. However, in a seeming unending internal battle, there is reluctance.

Vader opens his eyes and glances at you. There is a long silence where he perceives your anxieties. Again, similarities draw one to the other.

“I thought I would remain a broken man for the rest of my life.” Vader tells you, cupping your face with his hands. “How could you stay after all?”

You smile and the sight of the blush painting your cheeks makes him smile too. It is so easy to love you, to admire you, but he is as scared as you are.

“What if I break your heart? Y/N, you deserve some better than me.”

“My heart has long been broken.” You lean into his touch. The callous hands a stark contrast to your soft skin. “Yet here we are. Let me give you the love you need.”

Vader’s heart race. Once a ghost, he feels alive again.

“I love you.” The words slip out his tongue, however hesitantly they may sound.

Your blush deepens and there is a spark of joy in these y/c irises that warms his heart.

“I love you too, Anakin.”

You are pushed closer to him and as your hands envolve his neck, Vader leans to kiss your lips for the very first time.

For someone so reluctant and for the other part so full of patience, the kiss compensates the long waiting. The balance is felt in the Force, perhaps even more than he’d like to—and there would be consequences, whether they were aware of it or not.

It’s a gentle kiss, full of affection and tenderness. It is as if after a long winter, where nights seem unending, spring comes and the days begin to prolong.

As he gently caresses your cheek, fingers moving to tangle your hair, there is no more fear to be loved. Vader pursuits your lips, but he holds back the intensity of the kiss, always careful when it comes to you because to him, you are fragile—not because he underestimates your strength, but as his counterpart, he wants to preserve your innocence, your light, your goodness.

And now that you are finally disciplining the Force there is in you, you begin to dive into the depths of his mind almost unconsciously—such is the strength of the bond that binds one to the other. You smile at his carefulness to you, the affection that irradiates from the sun there is in him after a long eclipse.

“You will not lose me.” You tell him as you break the kiss to catch your breath. You brush your lips against his. “I promise you, Anakin.”

He opens his eyes again and there is a smile growing in his lips.

“Thank you, my love, for saving me.”

Unbeknownst to him, the yellow that was once characteristically part of his eyes begins to dissipate.

***

Your POV.

You cannot help a smile to yourself when you feel his gaze transfix in you. You are now swinging your saber, proceeding to your saber exercises you do every morning, starting it before sun rises.

“Your discipline never ceases to amaze me.” You hear Anakin’s amusement remark.

That day your hair, which is now falling down to your hips, is tied in an elaborated braid. You are wearing the most comfortable clothes you could find to the training.

“How come? Because you lack the good will of leaving early?” You tease him.

“It’s not worthy waking 4h30 in the morning for that.” Anakin groans. “Once upon a time I did so. Today I value my sleep time.”

“Of course you do, my darling.” You leave aside your exercises to run to where he is and jump right to hug him; he catches you and holds you close like the little monkey you are. “You lazy head.”

He laughs heartily and you beam because in the last two years you’ve never heard him laugh like this. Not that you need any reward, but to see him this happy again is what you earn. You press tons of kisses against his cheek, giggling softly as he runs you around before you go back to the ground.

“You make me feel like a young girl again.” You poke his sides.

“Do I?” Anakin tickles you in response. He is mesmerized by how easily he makes you laugh, a sight he beholds in awe, which makes you blush. “You are a distraction to me, Y/N. That makes you very dangerous.”

You giggle at that.

“Some might actually agree with you. I was once called witch for absolutely no reason.” You twirl around yourself.

“Really?” Anakin folds his arms, interested. “Care to show me the big picture?”

You sigh. As much as you’ve made peace with your past, some part of you remains uncomfortable with it.

“I’m patient.” He adds when you hesitate in responding you. “I have all the time in the world.”

You know it’s unfair to pay the trust Anakin placed in you and all the demons he shared with you with silence. So now you take a seat on the floor and he joins you.

“I was a girl like any other of this planet.” You begin avoiding the curious glance he casts at you. “I had a family, we were neither poor nor rich. We had enough to survive. Our lives were happy to some extent: we had some share of problems every now and then. There was nothing extraordinary about it even though we lived in days of clonic wars.”

You make a pause. Anakin then asks, somewhat moved by this story:

“Did you, uh, have someone… like me and Padmé?”

You smile a little when he tells her name. You think his progress to balance is admirable, which encourages you to be open with him.

“Sort of. We were in the process to become that, I suppose.”

“What happened?” He asks you, eyebrows furrowed.

“He was taken from me.” You tell him, now unable to look at him. “We were no more than sixteen years when he was summoned to war. He promised me we’d marry when he came back. But he never did.”

There is silence for a moment as Anakin ponders your story. A tragedy he is familiar with, though ironically in different poles. His eyes are glued back at you.

“I’m sorry.” He says at last.

“It’s all right.” You clear your throat. “I’ve made peace with this long time ago. So after that, the war came to us when the Senate fell. It was a difficult period. Violence here, violence there, violence everywhere. It was when I felt the Force. I tried using it to protect my family but I couldn’t. It was how I ended up slaved.”

You see he’s frowning at that, a parallel even you sees to his life. You take his hand into yours and give it a gentle squeeze.

“How did you come to all this without descending into darkness?” Anakin asks you, looking at you impressed.

“Oh whoever says I didn’t?” You giggle softly. “It was not the same way you did, though. I never heard about Jedis or Sith. But I knew I was unwell when I discounted my rage and my fury into my enemies. However, due to the lack of discipline I was overpowered and easily defeated. I tried to follow the path of vengeance. It felt like hell.”

Again, another moment of silence where you both seem to contemplate the long journey that led you two to the present. You know Anakin is seeing through your mental images all your processes. All your struggles. All your victories. All your losses.

“That is how I have faith in you.” You close the narrative with serenity. “I’ve been there too, where you are now. I too had my doubts, my self hatred. Turns out, though, that light needs darkness as darkness needs the light.”

“The balance in the Force.” Anakin says, before pulling you against him. You gladly welcome his embrace, craving for his affection. “You’d be a great Jedi.”

“I don’t think so.” You look up at him. “Had you met me earlier you’d be shocked at how temperamental I can be.”

The idea of your fluff self being eclipsed by something darker and dangerous almost makes Anakin smile. You nudge his side.

“I mean it. I learned by myself that we all need to use our darkness to canalize the light and use it in our favor.”

“Aren’t you wiser for your age?” He looks at you in bewilderment. “And how did you come up to it?”

“I needed that”, you tell him. “I need to come to some sort of healing if I wanted to survive. Because if I allowed myself to go into the depths of hell, I would have become what my captors wanted to make out of me: a demon.”

***

Vader’s Anakin’s POV

He watches as you recreate the steps of a popular dance, typical of your planet. Your y/c hair is loose, the wind messes a little with your locks but your posture does not allow it to ruin your presentation.

There is no lyrics, no rhythm, but you dance like there is. Anakin’s eyes are all on you, the one who sparks the hope that is now igniting into a supernova. He smiles at your graciousness, the hand gestures, the way your eyes find his. And how, as a result, the corners of your lips pave the way for a smile.

He takes notice too of the gown you are dressing today. It’s shorter than the previous ones, so he can see a little of your skin. But Anakin still feels guilty for desiring you—yet he cannot look away from your moves. You are so beautiful, and somehow reminds him of the planet where, many years ago, he went with Ahsoka and Obi-Wan. The Force had led them there and the Light now seemed so similar to you.

“You are lost in your thoughts again.” You walk to where he is. “What are you thinking?”

“You are beautiful.” Anakin tells you. “Don’t look at me like that, Y/N.”

You blush. You lean to touch his cheek, cupping his face carefully, tending him like you did in the past twenty four months.

“You are the one I crave for. The one my heart came to know as the other half. I’ll go easy on you for as long as you want me to.” You press your lips against his cheek. “I came to stay, Ani. I’m not going anywhere.”

He wraps his arms around you, speechless. There is so much to be said. You are the best part of him, the cure he needed, the love he required. Even before he could ask you anything, you’d give. Because the words of his heart is long meditated in your heart.

Give me love. Redeem me of my sins.

The next events carry without his overthinking. As he walks back inside, you take him to your bedroom. The cold is not enough when fire seems to spark in you too.

And once the door closes, his lips are in yours and you push him against you. The urge of a personal touch moves you. Finally the needs are aligned. Anakin finally unlocks his desire for you as his hands are quick to remove your gown, lying you down in bed as he caresses your thighs and letting his shirt be tossed away by your needy hands.

“I want you.” You tell him, parting the kiss to explore his neck. You turn him to your bed, moving on top of him.

Anakin contemplates your state for the first time as he takes a seat and holds you against him, firmly wrapped in your legs. His eyes move up and down and the lust in his bicolor irises makes you shiver.

“Your scars…” he mentions it when his callous hand gently touches your neck down to your shoulder and chest. “My love, what have you endured?”

You lean forward, hands around his neck; moving up to his curly, sandy hair, you wrap your fingers around his hair all the while you rub your womanhood against his stiffness under his pants. Anakin groans in response at your provocation.

“I have endured enough.” You say softly. “But I’m here now, better and stronger.”

Anakin admires the iron underneath you. It arouses him more. You know it and smirk at him; loosing a hand right to his pants, where you work to release the pressure you find there.

“All for me, my darling?” You bite down his lips.

“Fuck, it’s been some time.” Anakin closes his eyes and lets you hold control for a while.

“Let me love you.” You whisper in his ear, planting kisses from his jawline down to his neck. “Let me tend your wounds…”

His chest goes up and down with anticipation as you slowly go on your knees. His eyes open again and that is the moment you lock gazes. A sly smirk runs on his lips when he sees he overpowers you with desire.

And that is how the game begins.

*

If yet he can call so when he buckles his hip to move right with you. Anakin is surprised to the synchrony with which your bodies moves. The darkness there is him comes like the announce of twilight. His intensity is shown as he kisses you hungrily, locking hands with you as he thrusts into you in fast pace.

His mouth leaves bruises in your skin, in your neck to your chest, taking a long time to each breast. Your eyes are closed, you mewl pleasantly under his lips, eager for more. You whimper as his lips twist and turn around your nipples. You’ve been wanting this for such a long time and he knows how to care your needs now.

It is, however, as incomparable when his fingers slip into your womanhood, intercalating with his thrusts. You cry so loud that Anakin raises his eyes to watch you. His face darkens in lust as your moans are like the sound of sin.

“Hmm. Come to me, Y/N. Let every sentiment repressed go. I want you to come undone.”

You lift your legs, eyes rolling back. Like the ocean sending great waves to hit the shore, it’s how you perceive the climax. Anakin smirks at how great is the effect on you.

More so when your juices are all over him. And it does not take longer before he seeds you inside, much to your delight.

“I love you.” He pecks your lips, never leaving your side as he holds you against him.

“I love you too.” You beam at him, cuddling close at him. “I’ll be here to love you, Anakin. Always.”

When he looks at you, he smiles in great content.

“I’ll never let you go, Y/nickname. That is a promise.”

Anakin plants many kisses around your face and holds you close. But the peace both of you know is not yet to last…

(To be continue)

[pandoraimperatrix]

Wandering Worlds

DickKory | Core Four Centric | Cannon Divergence | Longfic

Summary:

Dick Grayson is dead. His life taken by his own brother. The Abel to Jason’s Cain. Consumed by grief, Rachel gives in to despair, losing control, a portal opens, but from it no destroyer of words come through. Instead a man who looks just like him, how can he be?

---------------

*90's infomencial voice* Tired of Dick Grayson getting no character growth every season? Can't stand the lack of development? The fact that we barely got any DickKory content since season one? I have just what you need! *normal voice* Okay, so in this fic Dick died, and Rachel pulled an alternative version of him from a dying universe, a version of him that will not take his family, Kory and his life for granted, he's not perfect, but he's doing his best.

————————————–

Chapter Seventeen – I don’t want to borrow

Why did she claim he was not interested with such certainty? Dick thought after she was long gone and apparently sticking to her promise of a cold shower – which brought vivid images of how his mornings used to start two lives ago – and not coming back. Because it took him a while to process that bombshell she just dropped on his head out the fucking nowhere. That woman had spent months pretending he was unworthy of the ground he was walking and he didn’t exactly disagree but it was still so much, how could she…

When he worked enough brain cells to move his body again, Dick detected a dire need of hitting something, not out aggression, but just to unload all that surplus energy of having all too many thoughts at once. He dragged the wooden dummy to the middle of the tatami and started with warm up drills.

Was she right? She seemed really sure of herself. Granted, last time he had told her no, but that had been when they were in totally different places. And if she wasn’t, what would that mean? Either way, should he just take that as his way out of an unnecessary complication? She had just acknowledged him as her friend after such a bad, complicated, start, and sex did take a big part on making it even messier than it needed to be and now…

READ ON AO3

He stopped a little, staring at the dummy but not really seeing it.

Should they risk everything again? Was even worth it? And could he really do it? Fuck her as a friendly kindness since she was obviously hot and bothered and be it? Nothing more? And if she wanted more… would he be able to give that to her? His Kory’s ring remained around his neck.

He touched it with his bandaged fingers, gathering the object made of alien metal in the middle of his palm, holding it fast until it’s edges bit into his skin.

And then let go to hit the dummy with renewed energy.

She said he didn’t want her. She had the certainty himself could never be sure to have. Still, attraction would always be, undeniably, there. But other than the primal desire of fucking each other’s brains silly, the other stuff, the reason why she went with him to Metropolis. The reason why she held his hand then, the feelings the led her to braid his hair – and he could still picture that moment in his head, the tenderness he thought he would never be the subject again – to joke with him, and talk him thorough his crises… What did belong to the two of them and what was hand-me-down affection from two badly unfinished love affairs?

It wasn’t fair to Koriand’r to project in her all the feelings he had for a woman lost, a woman he, was beginning to realize now, after so much was uncovered, may not even existed. Someone that belonged to another reality far more distant that the one he came, of entirely of fantasy.

Yet…

He had lost so much, yes, but gained so much too, would it be fair to let this chance of happiness hanging for a memory?

Was Koriand’r even offering?

He could very well interpret that last conversation as another rejection. After all, she didn’t even try to ask him before taking her own conclusions, and maybe, when she said she knew he didn’t want her, what she really meant was that, despite her attraction to him, despite of her body’s urges, her aversion to him was greater. 

Eventually, his body forced him to stop, and when Dick checked the clock it was way over one and half in the morning. Lying on the tatami floor he sighed, this felt very much like his first days in this Tower, that now he almost always forgot was not his own. The children might have seen him deep into training and fixed themselves dinner, which made his heat a little heavy, because even if the trip to Metropolis lasted lass then a week, Dick still regretted missing the few past dinners with them.

After taking a hot mind-numbing shower, his body finally started to relax and his plan was to eat something and hit the bed, but as he sat down with his cup of tea, a stack of papers on the table got his attention.

“How many times I have to ask to not bring paperwork to the kitchen table where anyone can spill liquid on them...” Dick mumbled as he organized the loose paper inserting them in the manila folder.

“Man killed by gargoyle” reads the headline of a tiny cut out from a newspaper. Puzzled, Dick starts reading, and the old feeling of chasing a mystery starts talking over, a feelings that he haven’t  been able to enjoy in years and that is welcome distraction.

***

“Dick? Dick? Are you okay?”

Dick awakens startled; Rachel was in front of him, a worried expression crumpling her young face. He blinked and stretched the arm he had been using as a pillow towards her, curling around her waist and pulling her for a hug.

“I’m fine,” he yawned, “Rach it’s 5am, did you fall from the bed?”

“Haha so very funny coming from a guy that didn’t even make into his,” she sassed back, although making no move to escape from their hug. Instead, she lied her head on his shoulder, looking tired, bags under her pretty blue eyes. He wanted to ask if she’s having nightmares again, but doesn’t  want to upset her, and just enjoys the feeling of having her close and safe in his arms for a while.

“Want some breakfast?” he finally asks.

“Does Krypto’s farts stinks?”

She still looked more sleepy and moody than normal, Dick snorts and stands up, stretching his arms over his head stretching again and that’s the exactly moment Koriand’r chooses to enter in the kitchen with the smallest bikini he had ever seen in his life.

Lord have mercy…

“What is happening here, were you kicked out of the bed?”

Rachel snorted and walked to Koriand’r for a hug, but it looked like she’s just hanging on whoever showed more disposition do hold her dead sleepy weight like a baby sloth.

“See,” Rachel mumbled, her voice barely audible, muffled by Koriand’r’s curls, “you have to be soulmates even the shitty jokes match.”

“Morning,” is all he managed to say in a pathetic tiny voice letting this arms fall.

“Are we going to the beach?” Rachel asked completely unaware or uninterested in the fact that he was in a melting pot of emotions behind her.

“Didn’t plan to,” mused Koriand’r petting the girl’s hair, also seeming to be unaware of how her surprise apparition was making him feel like a screeching kettle internally, “meant to sunbath in the roof to recharge, but that’s an idea. Do you have school today?”

Rachel rose her head and snorted again.

“Kory, it’s Saturday.”

Koriand’r beamed and his heart fluttered.

“Lets go, then.”

Dick clears his throat.

“Koriand’r…” he says her name letting the syllables stretch and licking his lips and ignoring that she bites hers as he does so, “we’re in the middle of October.”

Rachel detached herself from her undeclared mother as the woman moved further into the kitchen.

“So?” Koriand’r asks turning around and bending over to get her favourite mug from the washer and he is hit with a privileged view of her full butt. That woman said, just a few hours ago, that she was trying not to fuck him. What she was even doing by giving him that show?

“Humans get sick when you put them out in the cold,” he babbled in a tight voice.

“It’s not that cold,” Rachel tried, Dick tore his eyes from Koriand’r’s ass to gave Rachel a look, “fine, we never get to do anything fun around here, and this one spent the night working, I should have pulled a Dick that was less of a loser, but I don’t think such parallel universe exists.”

He watched incredulous as the girl walked to the living room, throwing herself on the sofa and turning the TV on, volume high. Dick searched Koriand’r’s eyes for sympathy but instead was hit by the vision of that literally out-of-worldly gorgeous woman leaning on the counter over her forearms, beautiful dark breasts gently pressing against the marble as she snickered at Rachel’s antics.

“There is no coffee,” Koriand’r complained pouting and shaking her empty mug, “better get it done before Donna wakes up, always so cranky in the morning…”

How come can she act so normal after what she said the night before? And for the love of… It’s like she turned a switch in his brain. He had fantasies with her before, of course, but he always berated himself internally convincing himself it was disrespectful, but now, well, now she was the one coming up with ideas, wasn’t her? Six-nineing on the tatami floor, she said. What was she thinking now when she stood half-naked in his kitchen? About him tearing off that scrappy excuse for a bikini she was wearing, tying her wrists behind her back and worshiping every inch of her smooth midnight skin with his mouth? Because maybe that’s what he was thinking too.  

“Come on, Grayson, stop standing there looking stupid, help me make some breakfast, you know I’m a shitty cook.”

He could feel the heat coming from her body as he carefully stepped further into the kitchen, crossing past her who only leaned back into the counter, legs that went forever crossed in front of her. She was wearing high heeled strappy sandals and looking absolutely out of place in his kitchen, like a model in a naughty calendar or the start of a porn movie.

“Any chance of getting some pancakes this morning?” Koriand’r asked, looking very aware of how she was affecting him despite her claims that he didn’t want her. Dick sighed and bent over to get his favourite skillet, he was unable to stop himself to steal a look of her long, long, creamy chocolaty legs and hit the top of his head as he rose.

“Real ones,” shouted Rachel from the living room, muffling Koriand’r’s giggles, “not those weird tapioca things.”

“I thought she liked them,” he mumbled sadly turning the stove on with one hand and massaging the top of his head with the other.

“She does, she just likes to complain about your healthy food more. Are you okay, Grayson?”

He would be okay alright, as soon as he pressed her to the fridge and made her feel just how hard he was quickly growing and made her beg for him to bend her over the counter and-

Breath in, breath out.

Again.

Breath in.

The child was just across them.

And him and Koriand’r were friends.

They let their gazes linger at each other after that, he licked his lips again, throat desert dry. Dick picked his apron, tying it a little loose around his waist. Koriand’r has a smile plastered on her face, and her eyes are dark.

She fucking knows what she’s doing, doesn’t she?

“Koriand’r...” he calls in a croaky voice. “About last night-“

“Shh, forget it,” she says dismissive, “I’m just getting side-effects from my powers coming back. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”

HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO FORGET THAT???

HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO IGNORE NOW???’

His face must had been very transparent of his internal turmoil since, she pressed her lips together to contain the smile on her face and moved away from the counter, approaching him. Her hand touched his arm sliding down to just above his elbow and giving it a squeeze. Dick could swear that the electricity of that little act could light up the entire town. And it’s only for a very little that he doesn’t forget the past, the kid on the other room, and all the reasons they definitely shouldn’t, and make a move on her right now and there.

“Well, I think it’s better to skip breakfast and head up before I try to convince you to come with me,” she says with a throaty laugh and then leaves swinging her hips.

“Whaddaya doin?” he hears Rachel asking, it takes him a while to notice her trying to look over his shoulder.

Dick jumps and notices that the bottom of his skillet is black.

“Dammit,” he said picking a towel and throwing the pan in the sink as the tap water make it screech.

“Still no breakfast? We have to forbid Kory from walking around half-naked around you when you’re about to feed us.”

“I wasn’t –“

Rachel rolled her eyes.

“Please, don’t even try, I saw you ogling her butt.

“I was not-“

“Pfff, pants on fire. I’m getting some cereal.”

***

He was back to his files, trying to read the same paragraph for the fifth time when Donna entered the library and threw a can of beer to him, that Dick caught without even rising his eyes from the paper.

“So, Rach says Kory is trying to seduce you,” his best friend begins as she clicks open her own beer.

In his mind, Dick answer as smooth as he got the flying beverage, but instead what comes out is a mess that makes his grateful for the coldness of liquid as his face heats up.

“W-what are you talking about? Seduce! Me?!”

Donna let out a laugh that came from the depths of her chest, Dick haven’t seen her laugh like that since… Well, since they were children.

“Down boy, we don’t want you to overheat and crash. Rach said she was walking around in those tissues held by a dental floss she calls bikini and that you almost burnt the kitchen, like, come on Dick…”

“Come on what, Troy?”

“Hera… I mean, she literally came back from that trip with you glowing, and the other night she tried to get me into bed, you have to tell me, you at least kissed.”

Dick’s head twirled.

“She tried what?”

“I said no, of course, I’m not Hank,” Donna said in an offended tone. “What I mean is: why you’re both dancing around it? We all knew it was just a matter of time until you decided to cut out the drama and began being embarrassingly in love.”

“We? Who is we?”

“Oh please.”

“Donna, it’s-“

“Complicated, alright. Tired of this same old bullshit conversation. But listen to me,” she said in a dead serious tone, “right now, Kory is in alien heat or whatever, and she was already, well, her before. Eventually, and maybe sooner than later, someone will come along and make things very natural and very simple unless you make a move. Got it?”

He just rolled his eyes, but started flipping the pages with way more violence than required, which was none.

They sit there in silence for a while, Dick drank the entire can of a beer in one go and used his pent up frustration to crush the foil between his hands.

“And your folks,” said Donna again in a more lighter tone, “how that went?”

Dick took a heavy breath and settled the files on the side table, resigning to the reality that he was not in the right mind for light reading such as gruesome murders and what looked like demonic possessions.

“It went surprisingly fine, actually…” and he told Donna all about the conversations he had with Bruce and Selina, not adding, of course, how Koriand’r’s presence and warm steady hand holding his, made it all possible to bear enough for him do listen everything he needed to hear and come through with a positive outlook.

---------------------------------------------

So we have here, Dickie boy overthinking, Miss Kory taking decisions for the silly human and creating chaos by being hot, Rach serving sass, Donna serving sass and realness, and also, a little bit of foreshadowing. Girlies, you saw I updated the tags with the approximated number of chapters, 33, this is one longass fic. I’m so sorry. The idea was to finish before the new season, I’ll still try, but haha. Hahahaha.

Next time we have Mr Garfield’s 18th b-day, our baby is all grownup now! And we get to parte-y. What, another party you say? I’m a simple woman, I watched tons of The Vampire Diaries when I was a bored teen, and just like Julie Plec, I like to throw fictional parties. They are cheap. Cost literally nothing.

I mean, if Dick and Kory all sober are already trying to jump on each other’s bones, what can a little alcohol may do? Not bitter truth this time tho, maybe some margaritas…

Also, we’re are saying goodbye to someone.

Thank everybody for the comments, kudos, likes, reblogs and shit, you guys are the best and I love you.

[sondepoch]

HC: Married life with the boys!

With one chaotic human and a handful of boys too attractive for their own good, it's always been a simple matter of time before love found its way into the Devildom. And where love blooms, marriage often follows—and nothing will stop these boys from giving their human all the love in the world.

Word Count: 5.9k

*Mild NSFW themes for Beel & Diavolo ;)

Characters: All Brothers + Undateables - Luke

MASTERLIST

Lucifer

It highkey blows everyone’s mind when the two of you get married

Because absolutely nothing changes

Lucifer still reprimands you if you do something ridiculous, he still crosses his arms and frowns when you tease him, he still sends a scowl your way when you mess around with Diavolo - if anything, the two of you are distant, and alarmingly so to everyone who gazes upon the supposedly happy couple

But that’s only because they can’t see what goes down in private

And yes - the grass is greener behind the closed door of Lucifer’s study

It was different when the two of you were simply in a relationship: Lucifer’s pride was always there. He would allow you to have your way with him, touch his hair and kiss him and hold him, but he could only reciprocate so much

But now that you’re married?

If anything, Lucifer’s pride dictates that he now has to be open with you, the single person he trusts more than anyone else in the world

Something that he can only do in private

And honestly - you savor moments when you’re alone with him because of it

For the first time, he is the one to initiate contact. The barrier of pride is broken, and in its place lingers Lucifer’s neverending desire to be wrapped in your arms

It doesn’t matter if you’re smaller than him, you are big spoon

You pamper him, giving him all the forehead kisses and tight hugs and quiet handholding he could ever desire. And in exchange, he finally becomes honest with his emotions - finally casting his pride away so that he can ask you when he wants a hug, when he wants a kiss, when he’s needy for affection and love, and he wants you to give it

It’s reached the point where he only wants to be alone with you, eternally savoring the feeling of your arms around him and pulling him closer - finally vocal about his desires 

But he does feel guilty that he can only do this behind closed doors

So slowly, very slowly, he tries to sacrifice his pride and begin treating you different publicly

It starts small: a more tender voice whenever he addresses you, a secondary “are you sure?” whenever he’s worried that you’re uncomfortable, a ghost of a smile on his lips when you laugh so merrily

But soon, it morphs into small touches: fingers brushing against each other when you walk, a hand on your back when you’re next to each other, standing closer to you than everyone else

Slowly, the people around you become relieved. They start to understand that you are like any married couple, but that Lucifer was simply having a hard time adjusting to the abrupt closeness

And then, on the day when you and his brothers throw him a surprise birthday party, Lucifer is so overwhelmed by love that he kisses you then and there, right in front of everyone, pride be damned

And the process is slow going, but eventually he becomes as open with you in public as he is in private, until the two of you are so close that it seems nothing can ever keep him from holding your hand the way he wants again

Mammon

s m u g

It still blows his mind that you chose him out of everyone, that you chose him to marry and love and spend the rest of your life with

And while he is absolutely dumbfounded by this fact, it won’t stop him from rubbing it everyone else’s face at every chance

“Hey guys, wanna go to this all-inclusive resort next month?” Mammon grins, an uncharacteristically innocent smile on his face. “I’ll pay and all!”

“Oh, yes!” Asmo squeals while Beel’s ears perk up at the word all-inclusive. “I have so many cute outfits that I can’t wait to wear!”

“Oh wait, my bad!” Mammon exclaims dramatically, a silly grin on his face. “Looks like it’s only for married couples. Guess I’ll just take MC then, sorry guys!”

PDA turns up by 10000000%

Man is a touchy demon by default, so in private (now that you’re married) he finally has the courage to quietly cuddle you the way he’s always wanted to

But bring him into public?

Oh boy

You cannot get him to stop touching you. Ever.

There is always a hand on your butt, or two arms around draped around your neck, or a single arm linked with your arm, but no matter what, Mammon makes sure that you guys are touching and that you are intimate

The only time you’re in public and he might not actively touch you is if you’re the one touching him - and holy hell, when you do, this demon melts in your hands

LOVES it when you get possessive. Man wants you to be greedy with him, just like he is with you, so if you yank his attention away from other demons in a fit of jealousy, he’ll just find it hot

Tangibly, the nature of your relationship hasn’t changed much after marriage. You both still live in the House of Lamentation (though you have moved into his room) he’s still in debt (but things are better than before, and Lucifer doesn’t shout as much), and he still has an only slightly unhealthy obsession with Goldie (fixed only by the fact that you have told him that no, he should not sleep clutching his credit card like a teddy bear)

But inside, marriage means everything to this demon

Man was assertive before, but never confident, ya know? All those big, fancy words were more of a coverup for his insecurity after being made fun of for so long

But now?

His confidence is real

And because of it, being around him is actually easier. He doesn’t need to call himself The Great Mammon or remind you to come to him when you need protecting - because at last, he believes those words

Why?

Because when he falls asleep every night with his head buried in the crook of your neck, it’s to your words of praise, slowly but steadily building his confidence up

And he loves it

(Bonus:) When he proposed, he proposed with ten rings because “you’re better than everyone else so you deserve more rings than everyone else”

Leviathan

Sigh

This man really tried to talk you out of marrying him

Of course, by that time the wedding date was already final and everything ,so you shut him up with a firm whack on the back of the head, but that never stops Levi from being continually insecure

It’s not that he doesn’t want to be married to you

It’s that he’s worried you’re missing out on something by being married to him

:(

Poor baby is so precious

And so insecure

At the beginning of your marriage, it takes hours to convince him that he’s not “unworthy” of your love 

Often in the morning, you’ll be able to tell that he’s having self-deprecating thoughts just by the look in his eye, so you’ll cuddle and kiss and love him for hours until it’s almost lunchtime - and only then, after hours of you reassuring him and reminding him why you love him, does he begin to believe that he isn’t a “yucky otaku”

For the remainder of the day, Levi makes sure to repay you in full - literally showering you in love as he makes you his Player 2 for every video game, going as far as to allow you to sit in his lap while he reads manga over your shoulder

And while things often reset at night - and the next morning the demon looks equally fearful about your decision to marry him, there’s no denying that the amount of time it takes to convince him that you love and want him is growing shorter and shorter

And then, one day, when Levi wakes up, he doesn’t have that look in his eyes at all

And he just straight up kisses you

This is the story of why Levi kisses you every morning, first thing in the morning (even if it’s just a forehead kiss)

Man is eternally grateful to you for bearing with him (despite you insisting that you weren’t “bearing’ with him - you were doing it out of love) while he was so hesitant and fearful, and vows to return every ounce of love tenfold

Man will do anything for you

Of course, he still prefers to stay indoors and to marathon TSL with you

But he does stop glancing away every time you praise him, and all the instances where he might have previously insulted himself now turn into simple blushes where he wraps you in a hug to hide his warm cheeks

Man is surprisingly touchy, even when he’s not fighting with other for your attention

100% sleeps best if you’re spooning him - no questions asked

(And please don’t ask questions - he’ll get so embarrassed)

And yes, after much begging him, he does finally purchase a bed for the two of you to sleep in instead of his bathtub (which is surprisingly comfy, given that you can just lay on top of Levi and cuddle him)

But yes, sometimes he will randomly lift you up in the middle of the night and carry you to the bathtub, because while there’s no chance this man is letting go of you as you sleep, he will always prefer the bathtub 

Sigh

But you love him anyway <3

Satan

No one would have thought that the Avatar of Wrath would be able to lead such a peaceful life, but the second you guys get married, that’s what things are

Peaceful

Man treats you like royalty, making sure that things are always perfect for you

Mornings are no longer spent at the dining table, but are instead spent on the small table in Satan’s bedroom, where the two of you roll out of bed every morning and lazily curl up together on the same armchair while drinking tea and coffee, chatting about whatever dreams you had

Afternoons are quiet: Satan’s nose in a book and your fingers occupied with whatever your favorite pastime is, but you guys are always right next to each other, always touching in some way 

Evenings are calm - Satan will sometimes play a disc of your favorite human world band or will put on some music of his own preferred Devildom artists, and the two of you will simply talk until it’s nighttime and you both are sleepy

In essence, man mellows out after you marry him

And the reason?

He always feels so calm. It’s like you’ve quelled the eternal storm within his heart by marrying him, by promising that you’ll spend the rest of your lives together - and Satan hardly thinks he has any need for emotions like rage and anger when he always feels so blissfully happy with you

It becomes his favorite thing in the whole world to just pull you onto his lap and play with the ring around your finger, listening to the sound of your voice

He’s just so soft for you

Highkey wants to spend the rest of his life locked away inside his room with you, away from other people and other things that make him angry, but he will venture out into public with you because he knows that there’s value in exposing oneself to various social environments

In fact, now if he leaves the house at all, it’s usually with you by his side

His favorite place to visit is 100% the cat shelter, with the local, cozy bookstore taking its place as a close second

But this man will not hesitate to throw hands with anyone who disrespects you

It’s actually one of the reasons why he finds it so tedious to go outside - because no matter what, there’s always some foolish demon that treats you poorly, and then Satan’s disposition dictates that he can’t let that demon go home until the fool learns his place and apologizes

Of course, after the whole ordeal you guys 100% go somewhere to cheer each other up, and that’s the story of how you become the local ice cream store’s most valued customers

But Satan will always prefer being safe in his room with you, surrounded by his books and your things and everything that screams home

And are you guys secretly hiding a cat in your room?

Who knows? 

All you can say is that when the stack of “books” eternally buried under Satan’s desk sneezes, it’s not because Satan “enchanted them” to do so 

;)

Asmodeus

d e d i c a t e d 

h u s b a n d o 

Anyone can see the switch in Asmo when he settles down and marries you

Like

Man changed when you guys started dating for sure. His posts on Devilgram began featuring you, he spent money he would have spent on hair products on buying you gifts, he stopped talking about himself and began focusing on complimenting you

But now that you’re married? And shit is official?? And you’ve actually legally sworn that you want to spend the rest of your life with him???

It’s the first time Asmo cries tears of joy

Man pulls a full 180 - there’s no longer any such thing as Asmo, or even MC. No, the two of you are now a package deal - and everywhere you go, it’s Asmo AND MC

And the whole Devildom knows about you two

And really, how could they not?

Ever since Asmo made that one post on Devilgram where the two of you are posing, flashing the camera your engagement rings - every single post Asmo has made is of you

In fact, some of his posts don’t even have him in it - they’re just you

Because this boi is so smitten for you

And he wants the whole world to know it

You guys start matching everything (or everything that’s fashionable. matching t-shirts are NOT the wave, honey, so put those back)

Nail polish? Matching. Jewelry? Matching. Aesthetics? Matching.

Asmo has so much love in his heart that it literally comes pouring out in every action he does

Man will miss his beauty sleep for you if you ask him for a glass of water in the middle of the night. And better yet, he won’t even complain if you keep him up late, as long as it means he gets to hold you close and shower you in kisses

And if you thought Asmo before marriage was touchy, then you have a big surprise in for you

Asmo’s touches are no longer sexual. (Or some of them are, but only when you’re ready for it ;)) He’s now more preoccupied with the closeness that accompanies touching you, and so his skin is always brushing by yours even in the briefest of touches, because it always sends such a lovely rush of warmth to his heart whenever you touch

Everything reminds him of you

Man will send you pictures of trees, birds, flowers (honestly anything beautiful) with the caption saw this today and it reminded me of you xoxo

And though he maintains the ruse of this being completely casual, that this marriage is just another wonderful thing that’s happened to him, you know that he never stops fangirling over the fact that you’ve actually chosen him to love and marry

And yes, he was an angel born to be loved: he was the jewel of the heavens and everyone who looked upon him was instantly charmed

But to him, none of that matters

The only love he cares about is yours, and now that you’ve given it to him, you’ve literally brought heaven to him because there’s nothing in the world he would trade for this

Beelzebub

Imagine being married to Superman

That.

That is what this marriage is like.

To the rest of the world, you are literally untouchable - because the moment you marry him, Beel will not allow anyone to mistreat you

Did you think he was baby? That he was precious?

Well, you were right. But now that the two of you are married, he looks at you with that same lens of protectiveness, and he wants to shield you from all the evil in the Devildom

Man is devoted in public and in private: nothing will stop him from showcasing his love for you

Expect to be offered food at all hours of the day, to be lifted up and hugged at random, and to be given forehead kisses on the daily 

And listen, when Beel kisses you on the forehead in public, it’s not just a show of affection to show the world how much he loves you. It’s a silent threat to anyone who might hurt you - a silent warning that Beel has extended his protective domain over to you, and now anyone who messes with you is messing with him and will not be shown mercy

That’s only in public tho - in private, this man goes back to being the most precious thing in the world

So 

Many

KISSES

Contrary to public expectation, Beel is just like his younger brother in that he adores lazing around with you in bed, laying kisses across your skin for hours on end while you just sigh in bliss

He just adores the intimacy of the whole situation alongside the sensation of your smaller frame being literally enveloped by his own

His favorite thing in the whole world is laying on his side with his head resting on top of yours, your back pressed against his chest while he hugs you from behind and listens to you rant about whatever. And while this is going on, he will absolutely slide his ring off his finger and absentmindedly slide it onto yours, watching as the larger band dangles so loosely off even the thickest of your fingers

It actually opens up a whole new kink realization to him: that he adores seeing you in his things and watching the way your smaller frame is nearly swallowed up by all his clothes

And while it has always been normal for you to casually wear his shirts and walk around his room in them without anything else on, the fact that the two of you are married gives him the confidence to sneak you out of his room looking like that, where you occasionally run into his brothers. And the sight of you dressed in his clothes in front of other people awakens a side of him that he never knew existed

100% tries to get you to leave the house looking like that

“Babe, I can’t wear this outside”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not wearing any underwear beneath this and if the wind blows, then—”

“You’re not wearing any underwear?”

And then Beel realized that he really had discovered a new kink

Belphegor

The marriage no one foresaw

Nah, but fr tho

It’s not that Belphie doesn’t love you - even a blind man can tell that he’s hopelessly fallen for you

It’s just that you guys were acting like a married couple so long before you guys got married that no one thought there was any point in actually sealing the deal

And honestly, things really don’t change much after you both get married

You still sleep in the same bed, you still cuddle each other at night, you still bicker back and forth 

From a distance, it seems like the nature of your relationship is entirely unchanged, save for the fact that you both have matching bands around your ring fingers

B U T

That’s only because no one else can see how Belphie treats you in private

Where there would once be peaceful naps where he dozed off on your thighs to the feeling you playing with his hair, he now spends that time lost in slow conversations with you, their topics varying based on whatever has popped through his mind that day

Man realizes that, now that you’re his spouse, he wants to know everything about you

And he’s willing to spend all the time in the world learning these things

He’ll lie you down on the bed and play with your hair, asking you the most random questions

“Do you dislike mushrooms?”

“If you had a pet frog, what would you name it?”

“What do you think of stickers?”

Of course, that may be because your answers are utterly ridiculous

“Only if they stand over four inches”

“Fluffy”

“They’re only good if they smell good”

And for the longest time, you really only humor his questions with responses because, well, he’s your husband and you think that he just wants to get to know you better (albeit in a rather unorthodox method)

But then, one day, the two of you are casually walking through the Devildom market in preparation for it being Belphie’s turn to make dinner, and the demon selects the ingredients to your favorite dish without even consciously knowing what it is

And you realize that every question you answered was one Belphie took to heart, and that the reason he always wants to learn so much about you is so that he can use the information to be the best husband he can be

And when you figure it out, you nearly tackle Belphie to the ground in a hug, because you’re so touched

“You’re the best husband ever!” You murmur, wrapping your legs around his waist as you bury your face in the crook of his neck, clinging to him like a koala as you trap him in an embrace he can’t wriggle out of

“Did you really just realize why I always ask these things?” Belphie questions, sighing as if he’s disappointed

But even he can’t hide the small grin that creeps onto his face as you hug him tighter, and you know he’s just savoring the affection. And who are you to deny him any?

Solomon

cHAoTiC

Arguably the most stressful marriage, but not for either of you: for the people around you

You guys are that couple

Things were hectic enough before, when you guys would pull pranks on the demons every time you were together. But now that you’re in love? And married??? And ALWAYS together?!?!?

RIP to everyone around you

The two of you never really seem to grow old - your energy is seemingly inexhaustible and you’ve already pranked all 72 demons that Solomon has pacts with four times over (and yes, that does include Barbatos, who has now made multiple threats to break the pact)

But, again, this is one of those instances where there’s a sharp difference between how you guys act in public vs. in private

In public, things are a hot mess. You guys are always laughing, always joking, always smiling

But in the privacy of Solomon’s bedroom, without any potential targets for pranks and any demons that you guys need to keep your guard up around, things change substantially

Contrary to public expectation, you guys are almost completely silent when you’re alone - but it’s not an awkward silence, by any means. No, the silence that you and Solomon find is nothing short of comforting, and every time you guys escape to the confines of his room, you both let out a breath neither of you realized you’d been holding

Because although you guys are strong, and arguably the most powerful team of humans in the Devildom, the fact remains that you guys are human.

And you can only let your guards fully down around each other

Nights are spent in the absence of any loud laughter or obnoxious rackets, the two of you preferring to savor the sound and comfort of silence. You guys fit together like pieces to a puzzle, and no words are necessary for the two of you to change into your nightwear and snuggle up under the same blanket, soft sighs escaping your lips the moment your skin comes into contact with one another

It’s only times like now, when there’s no one else in the world around, that you both can find true peace

And on nights like these, Solomon will just hold you close to him, sometimes pressing his forehead against yours, and he’ll stroke your sides softly, thumbs rubbing soothing circles into your skin

And of course, you’ll reciprocate in full, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to the man’s jaw as he continues his ministrations, sometimes letting out a quiet hum of contentment as you pull him closer

It’s a relationship where speech isn’t necessary; you guys are so in sync with each other and so helplessly in love that words only complicate things

But still, on occasion, one of you will open your mouths to disrupt the silence, and on nights like these, there’s really only one thing either of you will even consider saying

“I love you”

And if there’s one certainty in life, it’s the fact that the other will repeat the same phrase back, punctuating it with a kiss that reminds you both why you love each other so much

And just how worth it this marriage really is

Simeon

The marriage that everyone foresaw

Nah, but fr tho

This is the relationship where everyone knew about it except for you two

Even the day Simeon proposed: it was so spontaneous - he was planning on doing it the following week - but every single person who crossed paths with him could see how helplessly in love he was with you, so it shocked no one when the two of you announced the “surprise” that you were getting married

And this is arguably one of the best decisions you have ever made

In every way

Simeon’s an angel, so marriage is probably the most important to him out of everyone. He was treating you like royalty long before you two got together, but now that the two of you are married? This man CANNOT hold back. And believe him, when he says he will get you whatever you want - he will get you whatever you want

Funny part is, most of the time, this man knows what you want before you do

You’ll be diligently taking notes at the RAD library and you won’t realize that your pencil is blunt until the words are barely legible - but when you get up to find a sharpener, you’ll see that Simeon tossed one onto your desk right before he left to grab a book

You’ll wake up at three in the morning and realize you’re thirsty - but the moment you open your eyes and sit up on the bed, Simeon will already be there with that charming smile and a glass of water in his hand

You’ll be returning from a session of painting your nails with Asmo, only to realize that there’s no way you can grab your keys from your pocket without smudging the semi-dry nail polish - and Simeon will miraculously come home at that second, kissing you on the forehead before opening the front door for you

Like seriously, it’s a gift

Of course, then there comes the day where you try to return the favor, trying to study the way his eyebrows furrow as he reads his book to determine when he’s about to stop and turn on the TV instead (only for you to triumphantly hand him the remote)

And then the affection never ends and the rest of your marriage is characterized by nonstop trying to outdo each other in thoughtfulness that everyone just looks at and sighs because it’s so wholesome

And will Luke become your and Simeon’s honorary child?

Absolutely.

And does Luke hate this in every single way?

Oh yes:

“This is ridiculous! I am two thousand years older than MC! You can’t expect me to have to listen to them every time they tell me to do something! They should be listening to me!”

“Watch your language, young man,” Simeon warns. “I won’t have you talk that way in this house.”

“It’s not even a house!” Luke screams in defiance. “And I refuse! I will say what I want, when I want, and how I want!”

“That’s enough, Luke. Go to your room and think about what you’ve said until you’re ready to apologize!”

And God help Luke the day he accidentally calls Simeon “Dad,” because nothing can break the family after that moment

Barbatos

“Teach me.”

Listen, marriage isn’t a concept that demons are familiar with

They love you, so they’ll do it for your sake - but if a demon weds a human, the demon is 100% playing it by ear and desperately hoping that they’re doing things right

But Barbatos?

Nah, this man gives everything his all, and you’re more important than everything combined. So suffice it to say that when he marries you, he is committed to being the best husbando he can possibly be

And how does he go about achieving such a thing, you ask?

Why, two simple words: “Teach me.”

He asks that you be completely upfront and honest with him about what you desire, and he does everything he can to fulfill them

Things start slow, of course

You mention to him that married couples often sleep in the same bed and share a bedroom - and then he’s requested that Diavolo provide him a new room (one which doesn’t have doors that lead to other timelines) where the two of you live together

Then you talk about how married couples usually have matching wedding rings, and the next morning you find two obscenely expensive (but beautifully artistic) rings, and a wide-eyed butler asking if they’re to your liking

You explain that married couples sometimes get closer to each other by having a family pet and (bless his heart) Barbatos takes you to an aquarium the next day and the two of you bring home a pet fish

And things are slow going with Barbatos, but progress is steady

And soon, he starts to get the hang of it

You guys don’t just sleep in the same bed, he starts to pull you closer. Casual touches turn into cuddling, and then all of a sudden he can only sleep if he’s spooning you in the process

He decides that he likes it when you wear things he buys you, so he gifts you even more woefully expensive but equally stunning jewelry, until you’re always leaving your shared room with one of Barbatos’s presents adorned on your figure

And although Barbatos is too responsible to get rid of the (immortal) pet fish he bought, the two of you have a talk and then you head down to the pet store and buy an actual pet, one which you guys can touch and hug and cuddle

And before long, Barbatos doesn’t need you to teach him how to be a good husband, he realizes that most of it is instinctive; he understands that to make you happy, he really just needs to do the things that make him happy

Of course, he still approaches many things textbook style

Every morning and every night, man will whisper that he loves you - no excuses. You guys could have a fight and he will still do this

But gradually as time moves on, he sees that marriage doesn’t have to be a big, fancy show

And he starts to just savor the sensation of being helplessly in love with you

Diavolo

POWER COUPLE

No, but literally - you guys are the most powerful couple in the world

And Diavolo is living for it

You are royalty now, and Diavolo won’t let you forget that for a single second

You want a snack? That’s fine, here’s a nine-course buffet featuring food from the human world, Celestial Realm, and Devildom

Been feeling tired and want a break? No worries, the next week has been declared a newfound Devildom holiday, so rest up for as long as you want

You don’t like this specific brand of nail polish? Oh okay, there are now four hundred samples in your room to help you find one you do like

It honestly gets to the point where you have to sit Diavolo down (*cough* sit on Diavolo’s lap *cough*) and tell him that no, when you tell him you’re considering cutting your hair, he doesn’t have to hire four professional hairstylists and a consultant to help you select the style

After much discussion he agrees to talk these things out with you

And it’s the sweetest thing in the world

“Babe, can you help me get this jar? I can’t reach it.”

“Does this mean you just want me to get you the jar? Or do you want me to make it a law that all Devildom households cannot have shelves higher than the reach of the standard human height?”

“Just the jar, hon.”

“Oh”

Will never deny you anything, ever

Actually begins putting your interests in front of his own, asking Barbatos to cook your favorite meals and desserts instead of Diavolo’s own preferences because hey, food is just food, and it makes him so happy to see your face light up when you find that dinner is your favorite dish

And listen there’s one thing you need to know about: this man’s bed

Holy shit, nothing compares

It is the most comfortable thing in the world, and you’re pretty sure that even God is missing out if he hasn’t taken a nap on Diavolo’s bed because goddamn that shit is amazing

Like you love Diavolo to death but his bed is absolutely revolutionary with how comfortable it is, and you really feel like you could spend an eternity just starfished out under the covers

And of course, since you love the bed and Diavolo loves you, the two of you can spend hours just lazing around in the morning, cuddling and giggling until it’s almost lunchtime

And mornings with Diavolo are the best

Again, though, you’re royalty, now that you’re married to him. So Diavolo isn’t going to let you be woken up like a commoner. With him, there are no alarms, no loud voices, none of that obnoxious shaking you awake or any such nonsense

No, when Diavolo wakes you up every morning, it’s truly in a way fit for royalty, in a way that only he can do - a way that you honestly prefer to all the others ways you’ve been woken 

And does this include Diavolo smirking up with you every morning from between your thighs?

Absolutely.

But does that stop him from doing it every day? 

Never.

[disneymbti]

My niece loves Sofia the First, so can I please have Princess Sofia, Princess Amber, and Prince James?

Hi there, sweetie! I really hope you like this a lot!

Princess Sofia's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ENFJ [The Protagonist]

ENFJs are high-energy people who dislike spending too much time alone. They take initiative and tend to talk more than they listen.

They usually trust their intuition and focus on the future. They are good at analyzing complex ideas. 

Protagonists are motivated by feelings and values. They work to avoid conflict and are very diplomatic.

They like to make lists and schedules, preferring to follow a plan. They are hard-working and responsible.

Big Three: Cancer Sun, Virgo Moon and Pisces Rising

Cancer Sun: Ruled by the Moon, Cancers are emotionally mature, intuitive, sensitive, and artistic. They are guided by their tender, loving, and protective hearts.

Virgo Moon: Virgo Moons use their calm nature to gain deep clarity on matters, filtering questions through their kind, but reasonable, lens.

Pisces Rising: The Pisces ascendant commits fully to their beliefs, and has an active imagination.

Enneagram Type: 9w1 [The Negotiator]

Basic Fear: Nines with a one wing are afraid of being separated from the rest of the world and losing what matters to them.

Basic Desire: They desire peace, both internally and externally. Their type one wing encourages them to make their idealized and peaceful world a reality.

Negotiators defend themselves by participating heavily in routine to distract themselves and avoid negative emotions.

Princess Amber's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ESFJ [The Consul]

As extroverts, Consuls are talkative, energetic, and thrive around people. They prefer not to spend too much time alone.

Highly observant, their focus lies more on the details than on how everything connects together. They trust facts over theories—and they make decisions based on what they can see right now.

ESFJs are feelers who prioritize emotion rather than logic in their decision-making.  Empathetic and diplomatic, they do what feels right rather than what makes sense.

They’re structured and organized, preferring to plan ahead so they know what’s going to happen. They like rules, processes and schedules.

Big Three: Leo Sun, Aries Moon and Leo Rising

Leo Sun: The Sun rules the sign Leo, which is why Leo Suns all about ego, will, and character. They’re known to be creative, playful, and bold.

Aries Moon: Lunar Aries are known to be emotionally responsive and impulsive at times, as they lead with fiery passions over than logic or reason.

Leo Rising: Leo ascendants bask in the glow of sunlight, radiating positivity and charm. Performers through and through, those with this friendly, radiant, and outgoing placement exude confidence and strength.

Enneagram Type: 3w2 [The Enchanter]

Basic Fear: Enneagram type three wing twos are afraid of failing and being unworthy of love. They avoid this by setting and accomplishing goals, in order to feel successful and worthy.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to be admired and accepted. They seek value through accomplishment, which may push them deeper into their work.

Enchanters tend to adjust their persona to their audience, in order to feel as though they are easily liked, which may lead to playing a character rather than being themselves.

Prince James' MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ESFP [The Entertainer]

ESFPs are very outgoing and lively people. They thrive in groups and prefer not to spend too much time alone.

They are very observant, focusing closely on the details rather than the grand scheme. They think in terms of the present.

Entertainers tend to prioritize emotion when making decisions, concerning themselves more with how their decisions will affect others. They are empathetic and diplomatic.

They rely more on opportunity than rigid scheduling. They are spontaneous and playful people, with a passion for finding new adventures.

Big Three: Leo Sun, Taurus Moon and Cancer Rising

Leo Sun: The Sun rules the sign Leo, which is why Leo Suns all about ego, will, and character. They’re known to be creative, playful, and bold.

Taurus Moon: The Moon loves to be in the zodiac sign Taurus. Those with Moon in Taurus delight in the earthly pleasures and seek out emotional security.

Cancer Rising: Cancer ascendants tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves and take care of those they love.

Enneagram Type: 7w6 [The Pathfinder]

Basic Fear: Sevens with a six wing have a deeply-rooted fear of missing out. They want to be trustworthy and honor commitments, but they also want to leave room to allow for last-minute opportunities.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to feel fulfilled and happy. They express this by searching for joy in every small thing that comes their way.

Pathfinders defend themselves by rationalizing away negative feelings. They unconsciously convince themselves that they are happy, even when they are not.

[jonthethinker]

Beau’s reaction to Yasha’s letter has been on my mind a lot lately, and I think I can finally explain why it is a supremely and universally relatable moment, and not just some weird thing Marisha decided to do.

So you’re at a real low point. You’re impossibly depressed, and you’re really not sure you’re going to make it. But somehow, with a grim determination, you pull through. You do it not because things are suddenly all sunshine and rainbows, but because something inside of you decided you just needed to get through it. To see the new season of your favorite show. To watch your brother graduate. To help your friend move next month. To meet your soon to be born niece. To have at least one more Halloween. Whatever the reason, you decided it was time to, albeit temporarily, put aside this existential crisis to be solved at a later date. Nothing is fundamentally better than it was at your low point. But you’ve still got shit to do, so you bury what you can, and begin your steady march back into the land of the living.

And then you receive a phone call, or a voice mail, or a text message, or maybe someone bumps into you at work or school, or maybe even shows up at your house. The thing is, you really love this person. To you, they are one of the few little beacons of light in what is a rather dark and dreary moment of your life. More often than not you probably feel inadequate to the warmth of this person. You question how you could repay them for the dearth in your contribution to their life, compared to theirs to yours. They are supremely important to you, far more than you could ever consider yourself being to them.

And they say something that to them must feel so innocuous. So simple. They say they miss you. That they love your laugh. They ask if you remember something you did together that is still one of your fondest memories. They pay you some totally unexpected compliment. They ask you for your help with something that they clarify that you are just wonderful at. They force you by accident to consider how much of a presence you have in their conception of their life.

And a regular person would bask in this warmth. Or not even acknowledge it due to the banal regularity with which they have experienced this feeling from others. But for you, something cracks. The sweetness, the warmth, the tenderness, all feels to your skin like fire. And suddenly you want to hide, to cry in secret, to deny to yourself the reality of being known and loved while feeling so unworthy of such strength of feeling.

It��s a lot like getting so used to the cold of a winter day, that when you finally make it back to the warmth of indoors, your teeth begin to chatter so much you feel like they’ll crack.

Beau went into reading that expecting to just be continuing the playful, subtle courtship between her and Yasha. She was expecting a cheesy little poem. Think of her getting her wine and cocoa, settling into a comfortable bath, ready to accept a little harmless and sweet gift from Yasha. But instead what she got was a laser accurate counterargument to every single one of her major insecurities, and the knowledge that she makes the object of a battle between a Storm God and a twisted Demon, the person who lost both her romantic and platonic great loves, feel safe and strong.

She’s finally pieced herself back together after the hag, finally found a task with which to focus her mind and give her a drive to move forward, and maybe sometime in the future, she considers the possibility that she may be loved like she never thought possible. But she never in a million years expected that future to be so present, to already be right there for her to take for herself at a moment’s notice. How absolutely terrifying. Because suddenly, this seems like it’s actually real to Yasha, and Beau has to acknowledge that it’s just as real to her, too.

Consider the lonely life Beau has lived, her struggles with what to her mind is the temporary nature of the Mighty Nein, and her recent decision to commit herself to seeing it to its conclusion. And out of nowhere, an Angel decides to give her the rather novel idea that maybe her loneliness may never return, that maybe someone else has found strength in her the way she has in her friends, and that maybe they weren’t exactly keen on ever letting go of that new found source of strength.

I’m practically looking for a tub to drown in just thinking about it.